Category: Happiness

The Ant, The Grasshopper, Tim Ferriss, and Ben Franklin.

“Do you want ants? Because that’s how you get ants.” – Archer

grasshopper

Thankfully I’m not alone.  Stupid Grasshoppers.

There are occasions when a simple question can punch you in your gut like a rabid Mike Tyson reacting to a paper cut that you just poured lemon juice on.  Here’s a question that hit me last week:

“What do you do with your money?”

“I keep it in the bank.”

“Then why do you do so many things you dislike to earn more of it?”

The above quote is from a conversation between Tim Ferriss (an author with an unusual fondness for the letter S) and Ryan Holiday (I’ve mentioned him before) –you can read the rest of the article here (LINK).  Holiday puts this exchange first in his piece – it’s pretty powerful, so powerful that it might even relate to issues we face as a country – not that I’ll solve those.  That sounds like it would be hard.

Working is good for you.  Producing value is good for you.  It says so right on the label.  But I worry sometimes about money being my goal instead of a way to allow me to work toward my real goals.  When I lived paycheck to paycheck, I was fixated on money – as a single dad with little savings, it was tough.  Did I focus on fulfillment?  No, I focused on keeping enough money in my bank account so I could pay the electrical bill, which is why it was 40°F in the house in the winter and 85°F in the house in the summer – air conditioning was for closers, and the kids were awful about closing.  Mainly awful about closing the window, but I digress.

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I had Alec Baldwin give the kids a speech about cleaning their room.  He fired them, but only after they cried.  But Pugsley got a set of steak knives.

When you’re in that condition, life is about that struggle for money.  I remember we’d eat Kraft® Macaroni and Cheese™ on the nights we weren’t having Hamburger Helper©.  On really good nights, we’d have actual hamburger in the Hamburger Helper©.  If an expense wasn’t absolutely required?  I’d avoid it.  Oil changes?  Why would you do that, there’s still some in the car?  What do I look like, a Rockefeller?  Stitches?  That’s what Super Glue® is for.

At that point in my life I viewed money as the end.  Everything was about making more of it or saving what I had.

When I really think about it, maybe the only common value we have left as a country is this secular religion of chasing money.  It’s like the old fable of the Grasshopper and the Ants, where the Ants work all summer to store food for the winter, but the Grasshopper uses a leveraged buyout to get money to buy the mortgage to the Anthill from the bank and bulldozes the Anthill to put up a Starbucks®.

Okay, that’s not the way the fable ended.  The first time I saw the Ant and the Grasshopper, it was the 1934 Disney® cartoon version.  They showed it at school on a field trip because movies are easier than teaching.  The end of the movie version of that fable had the Ants inviting the Grasshopper into the Anthill for the winter, provided that the Grasshopper played music for them and voted for FDR.  I was a horrible child – six year-old me thought the Ants were just incentivizing negative Grasshopper behavior and I thought he should have been left out in the cold.  Why?  Because even at age six I was heartless.

I would have enjoyed the original fable more.  In Aesop’s version, the Ants work all summer, and the Grasshopper plays all summer.  When it comes time for winter, the Grasshopper comes begging from the Ant, and the Ant tells the Grasshopper to die in a fire.  I find that a bit more satisfying than the Disney™ version, but I guess Disney© didn’t like the idea of having a cartoon turn into Silence of The Grasshopper where the Ants eat the Grasshopper with some fava beans and a nice chianti.  It could be that hordes of traumatized and crying six year olds isn’t good for business, unless you’re a therapist.

Thankfully, if the story of the Grasshopper and the Ant were real and happening today, the Grasshoppers would form a Grasshopper PAC and would vote in a pro-Grasshopper Congressbug that would immediately introduce legislation to tax the unfair profits of Ants.  Additionally, the Grasshoppers would also denounce the Ants for the culture they created that was the source of all that wealth.  It’s only fair, right?

Me?  All kidding aside, for most of my life I’ve been an Ant.  Working huge numbers of hours to try to provide for the family, build up some financial resources for the future.  Some years I worked in excess of 3,000 stressful hours to provide for the family – that’s an average work week of over sixty hours, every week for a year.  Some people work even harder.  The kicker?   There’s an alternate view of the Ant:  some felt that the Ant isn’t always the good guy, that his very industriousness was driven by the love of money.  In the words of dead-guy-with-a-comic-book-worthy-name-from-1690, Roger L’Strange (I swear I didn’t make up that name) about the Ant (spelling and capitalization in the original):

“Vertue and Vice, in many Cases, are hardly Distinguishable but by the Name.”

In L’Strange’s oddly capitalized view, working too hard was itself a vice.  The poor Ant can’t get a break – everybody wants his stuff, but now he can’t even work hard without people piling on.

But L’Strange was right.  Maybe I worked too hard.  And maybe I am too stunningly handsome.

benedict

Okay, he’s not L’Strange, but Dr. Strange is cool.  And Benedict Cumbereberbatch Bandersnatch Cumberdoodle plays him well.

But the Ant and the Grasshopper might be the one fable that encapsulates the American dichotomy.  Are you a spender, or are you a saver?  Something tells me there might be another way.

There is a very important role of money in a free market economy.  It gives incentives for behavior that fills the needs and desires for others.  It’s a scorekeeper – resources flow to those who best used them to create economic prosperity.  It’s a rationing system for goods and services that doesn’t require the hand of government to make it function.  There are some pretty negative roles of money, too, but I’ll skip those for this post.

There is a way to be neither Ant nor Grasshopper.  If you’re working hard and understand why you’re working, that’s a start.  Paying bills is important, but trading your life away for dollars is really selling your soul.

benfranklin

As Ben Franklin said, “Dost thou love life?  Then do not squander time, for that’s the stuff life is made of.”

And I don’t think Ben was talking about the magazines Life and Time.  If he was, I guess that makes the quote stupid instead of powerful, and it’s unlikely that Ben read either Life or Time, since he spent most of his time on his phone or watching Netflix®.

The powerful question remains and is really a restatement of old Ben’s comment:  “Then why do you do so many things you dislike to earn more of it (money)?”

I’m blessed now to be able to view money is a means, not an end.  The results of the Tyson punch?  Spleen ruptured.  Thankfully it’s not something serious, like having to examine my life choices . . .

The Search for Meaning Might Drain Your Bank Account

“They haven’t said much about the meaning of life yet.” – Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life

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So, is the meaning of life having a super sweet car like this?  If so, would having a Bat Cave be like double extra meaning?  If so, count me in!

One tragedy of our current culture is lower amounts of social interaction leading to meaning.

So what do I mean by meaning?

Meaning is significance.  Meaning is working on something important.  Meaning implies actions that change the world for the better, or at least change someone’s life for the better.  Ideally, this work is something that you are uniquely suited to do and that you’re good at, but those things aren’t absolutely necessary.  The idea is that you have some way that you can actively change the world for the better.  And you don’t have to paint the world to make it better, because the world is really big, and it would take a very long time to paint it, kind of like my house exterior, which, at last count, has taken me 10 years to paint, mainly because I haven’t started yet.

But meaning takes time.  And it takes persistence.  And sometimes it takes money.

Those things can be difficult, especially if you’re lazy like me.

So where can you get meaning?

  • Your job. A job is a good and admirable place to find meaning, and ideally yours is such a place.  But it probably isn’t.  Some people, like those at the IRS, actually have a job that implies they will make others angry with no real discernible benefit to society.  How about being a prison guard?  Tough duty.  And how many jobs are, well, just plain BS?  If you have one of those or aspire to one of those, you’re in luck!  There’s an entire web page dedicated to generating job titles for you!  (LINK)  Chances are better than even that your job is just that – a job.  It’s a job that people pay you to keep doing rather than a saintly crusade to save the planet.  Hey, at least you get paid, right?
  • Your family. This is a great place to get meaning.  But if you’re a dad like me, your main job is to produce independent and tough children who view the world as a challenge that they want to beat.  It’s like you light a bottle rocket and then . . . off it goes.  After you’ve done lit the fuse, well, it’s gone.  And it doesn’t need you anymore – it has a purpose and a path.  I apologize to anyone who really desires to make dependent children who are needy basket cases, but that’s not the way we roll at Casa Wilder.  So, by definition, my children need me less each and every day.

What are the alternatives if you don’t get meaning at work, and need more than family can provide?

meaning

In the United States we used to take part in civic organizations to do meaningful work, or at least drink and smoke cigarettes, pipes and cigars while we pretended to do meaningful work.  Or smoke and talk drunkenly about the meaningful work that we really, really intended to do.  But those civic organizations really did accomplish a lot – from scholarships to the foundation of hospitals and clinics to funding zoos and draining swamps to get rid of disease-carrying mosquitoes.  And our forefathers accomplished all of that with a hacking cough and a buzz on.

Sadly, one last civic organization I attended spent more effort complaining about other members of the organization that weren’t there than it did changing the world.  And they didn’t even drink.  I don’t go to meetings anymore, though I did suggest beer would be good at the meetings.  If we’re not going to do something to help humanity, at least we should drink, right?  I don’t smoke, but I’d be willing to learn, if it helped.  Alas, this sober and smoke-free organization does little to change the world.

As a nation, our civic participation is down overall – the book Bowling Alone recounts how membership in groups that meaningfully participate at the local level of communities is . . . down.  Rotary.  Lions.  Boy Scouts.  Knights of Columbus.

It even reaches from structured clubs to bowling leagues.  Bowling leagues?  Well, the author used that data to show that social interaction was down across the board.  The overall number of bowlers is up, but the number of participants in bowling leagues is down.  We’re bowling, but we’re only bowling with people we already know.  We’re not using any sort of social energy to meet other people and forge new friendships and relationships that strengthen the civic core.  But at least you can drink and bowl.

If I was a cynic, I’d say the system was designed to do decrease civic participation – if we’re not actively making our community better ourselves, well, we can leave it for government to do.  Government likes this a whole lot.  Things that used to done by ordinary citizens in the community, say, being on the volunteer fire department, can now be replaced by professional firefighters who get paid.  Government wins both ways – the fire department employees like to get paid and vote for the people that pay them, and government has assumed another duty that it must tax for.  A win-win!

Unless you’re the guy paying taxes.

Regardless of why civic participation is down, it is down.  The reasons might form a future post.  And that removes a very significant opportunity to be, well, significant.  Thankfully there are other outlets.  Me?  I write this blog.  I know it’s seen by nearly every person on the planet right now.  Okay, okay, it’s not.  But traffic is heading that way.  At current growth trends in the year 2371 everyone on Earth will be doing nothing but reading my blog six hours a day.  Which is as it should be.  Then I will be officially meaningful.

However, there are other outlets besides writing that are preferred by other people:

Gaming.  I think I’ve told this story before on the blog, but keep in mind, when I originally wrote it I was getting about 1/10th the traffic I’m getting now.  So, if you’ve heard this story before, pretend you haven’t, because I’m going to tell it even better this time:

In the 1990’s, I remember watching the HBO™ series Dream On.  In this series, a newly single guy in New York had numerous adventures.  Since it was on HBO®, many of the adventures involved scantily clad females.  Or completely naked females.  But I turned away from the set and read my Bible during those naughty, naughty scenes.  Thank heavens the VCR was recording.

The main character had an office job in New York.  He also had a secretary, Toby.  She was written as a nearly worthless secretary with an attitude.  In one particular episode, she does nothing but play a video game on her work computer.  You could do that before the Internet and the IT department tracked every keystroke.

The game involved a supermarket.  Toby started the episode as a stock boy in the game.  Then she worked her way up to bag boy a few scenes later.  Then, cashier.  Then a few scenes later?  Produce manager.

Finally, at the very end of the episode, she yelled:

“I DID IT!”

“I’m the MANAGER!”

“Of a supermarket . . . that doesn’t exist . . . .”

With each phrase, her emotions changed.  At first, joy in achievement!  Secondly, a questioning voice . . . a manager.  Finally, her voice got very small.  She realized her accomplishment was really no accomplishment.  It lacked meaning.

If you like games, if you like escaping in them, that’s fine, more power to you.  But remember, they’re not really a substitute for actual achievement.  Plus, this is Wealthy Wednesday – how much money do you want to spend on games, anyway?  And how much time do you want to spend on them?  Yeah, I know, I spent two hours today.  But . . . umm, I’m sure I had a good reason.

Consumption.  Yes, this is Wealthy Wednesday, and as such we finally have to get around to this.

Consumption is used as a replacement for actual significance and achievement.  It’s even encouraged.  Why does it work?

Where else can you go, hunt for something, find it, and then get it.  It’s certain to work, every time.  You can’t fail.  Yet you get the opportunity to experience the flush of success, the dopamine rush from having found and purchased what you were looking for.  And if you bought it off the Internet, you get a second rush when the little brown box from Amazon shows up*.

That purchase gives the same feeling as accomplishing something that has actual meaning, and there’s none of the work and none of the uncertainty.  It almost doesn’t matter what the thing is.  It could be shoes.  It could be books.  It could be lightbulbs.  It could be PEZ® dispensers.  As long as it’s something that you can actually do, your brain can take this stimulus and turn it into a replacement for actual achievement.

And it has been culturally jammed into our heads – we’re not who we are, we are the sum total of what we own.  We are our car.  We are our house.  We are our slacks.  We are our PEZ® dispensers.  This consumption has replaced civic virtue.  It has replaced the Lions Club.  It has replaced the Rotary, the Kiwanis, and the Knights of Columbus, but unlike those groups, you can do it alone, at night, downstairs in your underwear, after a few beers.  At 2AM, feeling like you haven’t lived up to your potential in life?  If you’re tired of being the manager of a supermarket that doesn’t exist, well, perhaps you can check in at Amazon.com® to see what you can buy to fill the achievement and meaning-sized hole in your heart?

This post is about wealth – and the first requirement of being wealthy is that you don’t spend thousands of dollars on useless crap to replace meaning in your life.  Especially if you don’t have the cash to spend.  If you don’t have the cash to buy that new truck and you buy it anyway?  Now you have debt.  And the debt removes your peace of mind and you go in search of more meaning, so you buy the boat.  And you and your wife have to work for years of your life to pay for it all.

That’s okay, it’s not like you can become a slave to your own consumption based on your search of meaning, is it?

Nah.  I’m sure that doesn’t happen.

*I refuse to say how I learned this.

Opportunity – Like The Truth, It’s Out There

“This technology has been falling to Earth for centuries.  All it took was the right mind to use it properly.  Oh, the advances I’ve made from alien junk.  You have no idea, Doctor.  Broadband?  Roswell.” – Doctor Who

roswell

Business Cat is ready for another adventure . . .

As I’ve made clear in previous posts, (Rome, Britain, and Money: Why You Can’t Find Fine China after the Apocalypse, More Budget Doom, The Rolling Stones, an End Date, and an Unlikely Version of Thunderstruck, Early Retirement: Things to Consider (cough Health Care cough)) I think that our financial system is in trouble due to debt, currency debasement, and structural benefit issues with things like Medicare®.  In fact, I think that it’s mathematically certain that we’re going to have at least one more catastrophic dislocation (fast or slow), and my bet is that it occurs between 2024 and 2040.  Could it come sooner?  Sure, you stunning optimist!

However, none of that means that you can’t give yourself the means to be comfortable despite the decline.  And if I’m wrong about the decline – which I really hope is the case – then you’ll be in better shape.  I mean, round is a shape, right?

So, how do you make a bunch of cash so you can snort Cuban cigars, or do whatever it is the kids are doing with Tide® Pods™ while being flanked by surgically enhanced Instagram models?

Start by doing something.

Action leads to opportunity.  Inaction might help your video game scores and Cheeto® consumption, but to really create a situation where you’re going to have opportunity, you’re going to have to do something.

Living in a big city is great for creating opportunity.  But living in a big city also involves living in a big city.  And the last time I lived in a big city, it was Houston.  Houston was great – I met a guy who gave me baseball tickets.  Baseball tickets that were right behind President Bush’s (the first one) seats.

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Yeah, I took this picture.  How cool is that?

H.W. and Barb were there that night.  Then President Bush took us to his house and showed me the actual documents from Roswell while The Mrs. and Barb arm wrestled in the kitchen and then played some drinking/fighting game from Mexico that involved tequila, a bandana, and knives.  H.W. shared the big secret with me in his study over snifters of brandy:  turns out what they found at Roswell wasn’t aliens, it was just dolphins with spaceships off on a drunken joyride.  No biggie.

uforoswell

The real cover up?  They had actually found Eleanor Roosevelt’s underthings.

Okay, the Roswell stuff I made up.  But I did get those tickets and President Bush was there that night.  And nobody in Podunk, East Midwestia is going to have tickets like that.  Big cities breed opportunity to build connections based upon the sheer concentration of people.  If you’re young and looking for opportunity?  Big cities are it.  Although my brother, who is also named John Wilder, did meet Bob Denver when he stopped for gas in a town of 1,500 people.  My brother was working at the station that day.  Said he was the nicest guy you’d ever meet, so, yeah, random meetings will happen.  But they’re the exception, not the rule.

If I were fixated on opportunity, yeah, I’d move to a big city.  But it’s not my cup of tea.

bobdenver

Okay, this might be fake trivia . . .

When doing something:

Don’t quit your job, unless you already have a lot of money, or are certain your crazy scheme will work.  Or unless you have nothing to lose.  When Jeff Bezos quit to start Amazon.com, he had enough money and enough connections that he knew he could restart if Amazon failed.  But for every Bezos, there are tons of people like Davos Riggins.  Who is Davos Riggins?  I don’t know.  He didn’t do anything.

A minor bragging point – I found a name that returns zero hits on Google® on the second try.  Ha!  And apologies to Davos Riggins if you really exist.  But you have to admit you’ve squandered your potential.

Don’t borrow zillions of dollars to put your idea into practice, unless bankruptcy can’t hurt you.  And even if you win?  The debt will make your company less profitable.

What can you do to create opportunity in life?

Depends on you.  One of the things (not the only thing) I do is write.  Before this post, I’d written 229 posts comprising 316,000 words in the last 18 months.  Why?  I enjoy it.  Also why?  It’s doing something – it’s using the Internet to create possibilities that didn’t exist before.  And after 229 posts?  I still have dozens of sticky notes with topics that I want to write about – I have more topics than time.

But that’s my thing.

What about you?

  • Build something cool. Sell it at a flea market.  Or on EBay™ or Etsy®.
  • Start a company that to help people find PEZ® dispensers. Oh, that was how EBay© got its start.  This is a lie.  A sweet, beautiful lie (see comment below), but a lie nonetheless.  And now I owe doughnuts!
  • Start a social network that only allows communication via cat emoji – suggested name? Snapcat©.
  • Write a list of 100 things you’re good at.
  • Write a list of 100 things you like to do.
  • See how the lists overlap? I bet there’s opportunity there.
  • Go to conferences and meet new people.
  • Meet their friends, too. They know someone that can help you.
  • Learn from your losses.
  • Start again.

Regardless of the way the world is going, you can thrive.  You really can.  If you imagine the US economy as a swimming pool, each gallon of water in the 40,000 gallon pool would be worth $5 million dollars.  And that’s every year.  And it’s not counting all the pee in the pool from when you had your nephew over.

Would you miss one gallon out of 40,000?  No.  Nobody would.  And just like the pool, the economy doesn’t care.  Not even about the pee.

There’s room for you to be as successful as you want to be, if you’re willing to sacrifice your time and location and fail again and again.  And even when you win, you won’t be satisfied.  That’s the biggest gift yet – the quest.  If you’re good at it, if you like doing it, if you can make money at it, and if it changes the world?

That’s a start.

A good one.

Seven Deadly (Financial) Sins, Together For The FIRST TIME!

“Deserves got nothing to do with it.” – Unforgiven

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Actually not my favorite Clint Eastwood movie.  That would be Outlaw Josey Wales, or ANYTHING he did in the 1970’s.  But I do know my limitations . . . .

When it comes to my life, I’ve made mistakes, like convincing George W. Bush to attack Iraq.  I should have remembered – never get involved in a land war in Asia.  But those mistakes aren’t the ones we’re discussing today.  Today . . . we’re discussing the Seven Deadly Financial Sins, at least after I put on some spooky music to scare you into never sinning.  Oh, I did discuss the Actual Seven Deadly Sins, and you can read that post here (The seven deadly sins and society. How do they fit together?).

We’ll start with the worst sin:

Debt

Is debt a sin or the result of sinning?  I’m not going to sit and argue it – these aren’t really sins you go to Actual Hell for anyway.  You just go to Financial Hell.  So, I’m calling Debt a sin.  And I’m calling it a result of sin.  It’s the “Y” of Sin – sometimes a vowel, sometimes not.

Debt is really, really bad for individuals.

Why?

With debt, you get what you want, now.  Like a brand new Corvette®, or a rare 1621 A.D. PEZ® dispenser originally whittled by Galileo while he was in prison for stealing cable television.   I’m sure that was the best deal I’ve ever made, only had to pay $500 for it!

But now you have the object of your desire.  And you have to pay for it.  That’s not a problem.  You only borrowed $50,000 for the Corvette™, right.  You’ll pay (for a seven year loan) about $680 a month at 4% interest.  Not bad!

But of that, your first payment will contain around $170 in interest, money that you’re paying the bank, every month.  $1,800 in interest in the first year.  The total interest you’d pay in this situation is $7,400 over the life of the loan.

Now let’s say you buy a house for the average price in the country, $200,000.  Your payment on a 30 year loan would be a little more than $1000 for principle and interest, with a whopping $750 of that being interest in the first month.  In the first year?  About $8,800 in interest payments alone.

Sure, you have a house and a car, but you’re paying nearly $1000 a MONTH just to borrow the money in the early parts of the loan.

How much income would be required to fund this?  Your tax rates will vary, but I’ll assume your tax rate leaves you with about 70% of your money after you’ve paid all of your taxes.

$17,000 in pre-tax income would be required . . . just for your interest payments.  Toss in the principle, the taxes and insurance?

$50,000 in pre-tax income to pay for taxes, insurance, and the full payments.  Some people work a whole week and don’t make that much money!

If you make the median family income of $59,000, you have the princely sum of $9,000 before taxes ($6,300 after taxes) a year to buy absolutely everything else in your life.

“Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage:   Pay cash or do without.  Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats up domestic felicity.” – Robert A. Heinlein

Is there a place for debt?  Sure.  Businesses use it to expand.  Families use it to create a reason to divorce.  Or buy a really cool PEZ® dispenser.

The least bad debt?  Mortgage debt.

Worse?  Credit cards.

Worst?  Student loan debt or money you owe to mobsters.  But I repeat myself.

Have I sinned?  Yes, I have.  But that day in January of 2001 when I paid off my last non-mortgage debt except for student loans?

Priceless.  And marriage harmony went up 41.7% that day.

Fear

Had I continually invested all of my spare cash into the market, say in a nice S&P 500 fund?  The cash that’s sitting in the bank, gathering only a little interest?

I’d be retired today.  Smoking nice cigars and drinking good scotch.  With an airplane.  A cheap one, but an airplane.

Dang.

I’ve successfully predicted 11 of the last three recessions.  That may not be the most useful talent I have.  I will note that I at least come by it honestly.  One set of great-great-grandparents decided that they wanted to get out of Germany because they saw the increasing militarism in society and figured that war was coming, so they’d get out before it got bad.

They left Germany in 1880, 34 years before World War I and assimilated the heck out of themselves – one of them was Eisenhower’s grade school teacher – how American was that?

I’ve said before that being right too early is the same as being wrong, but in this case?  I have all of my cash.  And my great-great-grandparents avoided the mess that was post World War I Germany, where, I hear, the Internet was horrible.

Greed

Okay, I did play with some great stocks during the teens.  Several of them doubled within a month of me buying them.  And I kept riding some of them right into the ground.  I turned $20,000 into $40,000 into $5,000.  Which will be a great tax write off, when I finally sell it.  Will someone please cue the sound of a forehead repeatedly hitting a desk?

Waste

In a recent post, I mentioned that the most expensive food is the food you don’t eat.  I’ve done the math:  when we go out to eat at Taco Bell®, we spend around $40.  How much steak does $40 buy?  A lot.  How much steak gets wasted around the Casa Wilder?

Zero.

And we can’t eat steak every day.  I mean we could, but we can’t.  But when we have to throw out food, I feel horrible.  Maybe it was the way that Great Grandma McWilder would talk about how fortunate we were to NOT BE STARVING when I wasn’t finishing lunch.

And Great Grandma McWilder came through the Depression on the “nearly having to eat your shoes” side, so she knew how to put a guilt on you.  And waste was the sin that she preached against daily.  In her house, it if had any use?  She’d save it and use it.  Thankfully she didn’t die in her sleep and eat me (Sleep Deprivation, Health, Zombies, and B-Movies).

That would have been one big waste of an amazing blogger . . . .

Lust

I think the most evil word in the English language is “deserve.”

  • “You deserve a nice car.”
  • “You deserve health care that someone else pays for.”
  • “You deserve that stereo – you work so hard.”

When raising my kids, I wouldn’t allow them to use that word.  When you do, you create a foundation for your desire for an item, which in Actual Sin terms would be Lust.

Needs

Modern life has increased the level of needs that we have in an amazing fashion.  If you look at the following list:

  • Electricity
  • Internet
  • Phone Service
  • Mobile Phones
  • Natural Gas
  • Multiple Cars for a House
  • Cars
  • PEZ®
  • Air Conditioning
  • Netflix©
  • Facebook™
  • Faster Than Light Travel
  • Wireless Keyboards

None of those things were invented before last Thursday.

Okay, they were here last Thursday.  But how many on them didn’t exist before 1990?  Before 1950?  Before 1900?

These things aren’t needs.  They’re nice – some of them amazingly nice.  You can live amazingly well without them, as humanity did forever before 1900.

Reassess your needs** – not only of the services above, but of anything that doesn’t make your life better.  Half the games that are available on the smart phone are designed to sell you or sell something to you.  Either way?  You lose.  Except for Candy Crush®.  That’s just fun*.

*I have never played Candy Crush™.

**If you don’t want to have electricity and your wife disagrees, it would amuse me if you used me as a source.  It would NOT amuse me if she came to my house to complain.

Sloth

I’d write more about this . . . but I’m just not feeling it.

Just kidding.

Don’t ignore your money or financial situation if you’re lazy, like me.  I put in place systems so I wouldn’t forget to pay bills monthly.

It’s a secret, but I’ll tell you because, you know, we’re cool, right?

It’s a calendar.

Pay your bills on time.

Otherwise?

You get what you deserve, which will be penalties, fees, and interest.  You can use deserve in this case.  Because you deserve it.

Sinner.

The Paradox of High Standards: Making You Happy or Killing You?

“I don’t suppose you’d find it up to the standards of your outings. More conversation and somewhat less petty theft and getting hit with pool cues.” – Firefly

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It’s important to have standards – like licking and sticking standards.  Stick to your guns!

I was watching Tony Robbins™ over a year ago while working out at the gym.  I like to watch videos when I do the cardio machines – it seems to make the time pass more quickly.  I’m not sure that’s a good idea since (at least subjectively) that makes my life shorter.  Perhaps I should fill my underwear with sand before I get on the treadmill – that might make it seem a little lot longer. But I digress.  Going from memory, Robbins® was talking about if you wanted to change your life, you had to raise your standards.

What is the result of a change in standards?  Well, if Robbins© is right, changing your standards changes the way you view the world.  And if you raise your standards, well, you’ve changed your life for the better, right?

No.

You’ve changed your life for the better if you’ve raised your standards and changed your behavior in such a manner that you are moving to meet those standards.  If you change your standards of, say, your new pants size?  And your new standard is a 32” waist (451 meters)?  Great idea!  But you don’t change your daily habit of 86 Krispy Kreme® delicious glazed donuts?  What has your new awesome changed standard given you?

Nothing.

Wait, worse than nothing.

Frustration.  Which leads to death.  Okay, after decades.  But it still leads to death.

With all apologies to Mr. Robbins® (the host body) and the symbiotes/parasites that are his amazingly immaculate hair (no actual human has hair like that, so I expect that his hair is a separate living entity, perhaps responsible in some psychic way for his charisma), changing standards without changing actions just breeds a sense of impotence, anger, discontent, and, when present in relationships?  Divorce or an end to friendship.

High Standards + Poor Execution = Sadder Than Johnny Depp’s Bank Account

Let me give an example:

Let’s say I have a standard that includes having a spotless bathroom.  One where you could eat chateaubriand off the tiles (and had an Alexa® speaker that told you what chateaubriand was) with the Queen and she’d be excited to come back for dessert.  A bathroom where the towels were laundered by angels in heaven with unicorn blood as the soap.  I mean a really clean bathroom.  Really clean.

Okay.  I now have this standard.  Cool.

But I hate cleaning, and I’m not really good at it.

So my standard is a really clean bathroom.  But The Mrs. has to clean it.

Sadly, The Mrs. is neither an indentured servant nor someone who is easily cowed.  Did you think I’d marry a weasel-woman?  Nah, could have had dozens of those.  I need a woman with fire in her eyes!

But if I expect The Mrs. to clean the bathroom to my “dinner with the Queen” standard?  Never going to happen.  And the result?

I’d be angry at The Mrs., for something she never promised nor intended to do.  If this continued through other aspects of our relationship?

We wouldn’t have a relationship.

And I understand that.  If we expect more than the other can or will give?  We don’t have a relationship.  But some standards really are important.  How can you tell which ones?

When it comes to standards:

  • What standards are you willing to fight for? Real fighting, not Twitter® or online petitions.
  • What standards do you actually control? If you don’t control it, how will it happen?
  • What is the consequence of the standard not being met? If nothing, then . . . what?

Focus on standards with consequences that have meaning to you.  That you control.

You do control your pants size.  Are you willing to fight for it?  Does it have consequences?

The questions above really do have consequences:  if you spend your life being upset about things you don’t control, and that you can’t change, and that don’t impact your life?

Even the stupid dead Romans had this one figured out:

“Today I escaped anxiety.  No!  I discarded it because it was within me in my own perceptions, not outside of me.” — Marcus Aurelius (stupid dead Roman)

I guess Tony Robbins© is just not fit for a toga.  And his hair would a little tiny toga, which would be cute, but really, really creepy.

Read This Blog or I’ll Shoot This Car and You’ll Feel Guilty Forever

“You have learned to bury your guilt with anger.  I will teach you to confront it, and to face the truth.  You know how to fight six men.  We can teach you how to engage six hundred.  You know how to disappear.  We can teach you to become truly invisible.” – Batman Begins (The good 2005 one, not the earlier crap.)

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If you don’t read this blog, I’ll shoot this car.  Then wouldn’t you feel guilty?

I sat staring at the ceiling in the darkened apartment, the lights from the parking lot casting shadows on the walls.  I couldn’t sleep.  I tossed and turned.  Finally, I resorted to reading.  I’d read every night until I literally fell asleep with a book in my hand.  I remembered, in particular, reading a big, heavy hardcover at the time, one that was about 1053 pages long.

I was being eaten alive inside.  I was wracked with guilt.

What was I scared of?

Well, I hadn’t finished my master’s degree yet, but I had moved halfway across the country and started a new job.  No one was asking me about my degree, but I knew that dreaded moment was coming soon.  “So, John Wilder, where’s your degree?  We need to see a copy.”

This was impossible.  My thesis wasn’t even written yet.  And I had moved halfway across the United States and taken a new job.

My torture continued.  Outside of the lack of sleep, the guilt from knowing that I hadn’t finished my degree sent a chill down my spine (or is it up my spine?) every time I thought about it.  At work.  Shopping.  Waxing my moose statue.  Finally, after a week or so of this torture, I went in to my boss, who was only five or so years older than me.  We started off talking about the work I was doing.  At the end I brought up the degree.

John Wilder:  “Oh, and one other thing, I’m not quite done with my master’s yet, I still need to finish and defend my thesis.”

Boss:  “Whatever.  I’m not even sure the company cares.  In fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.  We hired you, not a degree.”

And that was that.

In that moment all the fear left me, and I felt silly for worrying about it, and even sillier for keeping it bottled up inside of me, eating away at me like a Kardashian at an all-you-can-eat waffle and cream cheese covered bacon buffet.  Sometimes that horrible truth you have bottle up inside of you . . . is no problem at all.

This has been the norm in my life:  if I confronted the problem, or was honest about it upfront, the problem (most times) went away.  And when the problem didn’t go away, fixing it because I was honest and upfront was easier than the times (in the past) that I’d waited to confront the issue.

Guilt is a cousin to Worry, and not the good kind of cousin that brings a twelve-pack to your backyard barbeque and then offers to watch your kids so you and the wife can go have a dinner out.  No.  Guilt is a bad cousin that shows up at 3am, kicks your dog, and eats that steak leftover you have in the fridge while talking with its mouth full and smelling vaguely like a wooden barroom floor near a Marine base.  But Guilt and Worry are related.

Worry is paying for the future problems you might have, whereas Guilt is worrying about the repercussions from past actions.  Let’s be real:  I wasn’t worried so much about not having the degree (I did finish it a year later) but was really worried about having moved halfway across the country only to be fired and become economically destitute – a warning sign for future people to say, “don’t be like that idiot.”  I had done the deed.  Or in this case not done it.  My question was what would happen once I’d been found out.

And most of the time your imagination can create future consequences far scarier than they ever would be in normal reality.  Unfortunately, I’m an imaginative guy.  I can go from getting a “C” in a college class to getting kicked out of school to living in a squalid drug den and smelling like Johnny Depp in about three steps.

The choices (if you don’t want to eat yourself up alive inside) are simple:  confront the guilt, or, better yet?

Don’t do things that make you feel guilty.

Duh.

What is Wealth? Is it More Than Money?

“Aristotle was not Belgian, the principle of Buddhism is not “every man for himself”, and the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.” – A Fish Called Wanda

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This may be the most important philosophical question of our lifetime, especially if you’re haulin’ oats.

The other day I was listening to the radio and the hosts (Walton and Johnson) were discussing wealth.  Since actual radio around Casa Wilder consists of a single AM station broadcasting crop reports and lean cattle futures and an FM station that is “All Hall and Mostly Oates, All the Time!”  Therefore?  We listen to radio stations on the Internet.  Walton and Johnson are out of Houston, but we also lived in Alaska, so we also often listen to a station we like out of Fairbanks.  Obviously, when the radio in the bedroom says it’s -40°F and the kitchen radio says it’s 85°F, there’s likely to be wind and a rainstorm down the hallway.

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Maybe I misheard that lyric?

Anyhow, Walton and Johnson were discussing wealth.  They mentioned that a recent study showed that, in Houston, a survey said that to be considered “wealthy” you had to have $2.5 million dollars in net worth.  To be considered “well off” you only needed to have $1.4 million dollars – which is quite a bargain – many people work a whole year and don’t make that much money!

After a bit of research, I found the source of the story:  Charles Schwab®, the investment firm.  You can read the study here (LINK).  In San Francisco (according to Schwab©), it’s even more money than Houston to be considered wealthy:  $4.1 million.

Looking at the best numbers I could find, the median household net worth is about $100,000.  To be in the paltry $2.5 million Houston-wealthy club (versus the expensive San Francisco $4.1 million club), means that your household is in better financial shape than 96% of American households.

But that’s the problem with this survey – since, at most, 4% of the people taking the survey would be considered “wealthy,” most of the people taking it have about as much idea about how much money it requires to be wealthy as a monkey trying to understand Nietzsche.  I mean, apes read philosophy, but they just don’t understand it, Otto.  And I imagine people who aren’t wealthy don’t understand that, either.  The answer is just a bit more complicated . . . .

I’ve done about 70 posts on wealth, but I need to step back and ask that question:  what is wealth?  To say it’s purely a number is to show that you don’t understand wealth.  Money represents not a fixed number, but a possibility.

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If you measure wealth in love . . .   

What is wealth?

Wealth is time.  In fact, if you go to the basic equation – your life is made entirely out of time – nothing else.  Your life literally is the sum of the things that you do with your time.  So wealth is doing what you want to do with your time, which means doing what you want to do with your life.  It’s entirely probable that a Wall Street investment banker with $10,000,000 in the bank from a job he hates and shrill wife with more implanted silicon than actual original equipment is less wealthy than a hunting guide who lives in a log cabin in Alaska who has less than $5000 in the bank.

In my case, I’ve traded a LOT of time for money in the past.  My theory was to work hard while I was young so that I could build my career so I could save enough money so that my family would be secure in the future.  You would say that working all the time is not a very wealthy (or in some cases healthy) thing to do, except . . . I loved the job I was doing!  In many cases it was stressful.  Difficult.  Uncertain.  Long hours.  And when I did an awesome job?  Yeah, it was like winning the World Junior Baking Championship.  Not that I can bake, or even that there is a World Junior Baking Championship, but I think you know exactly what I mean.

I watched the documentary Lynyrd Skynyrd:  If I Leave Here Tomorrow this weekend, and those guys simply loved playing music.  They’d do it all day long, even when they weren’t getting paid.  Being a rock star was awesome, sure, but it wasn’t the point.  They were wealthy as soon as they could get paid for playing small clubs.  Arenas were just the gravy.

And, yes, I’ve said in the past (and still maintain) that to support yourself, support your family you might really have to suck it up, buttercup, and work jobs you don’t like because an Alaskan hunting guide has really crappy health insurance and his spouse has neurohemoblastaphobia which can only be cured by a mouse egg (before the baby mice hatch) extract that’s been strained through bigfoot hair and breathed on by an honest politician.  Yes, it’s as expensive as it sounds.  Then you have to work the job you have rather than a job where you play guitar all day.

Wealth is freedom.  Could you quit your job tomorrow without having a new one and still meet all of your obligations?  For most people, the answer is no, either because the obligations are too high or the amount of cash they have is too low – 60% of people in the country live paycheck to paycheck.  However, sometimes it’s self-inflicted.

Some people trade their freedom for a car payment.  I’ve seen people who purchase a $60,000 pickup, and then have to pay $1,200 a month in car payments.  I don’t know about you, but my 4,000 square foot house has a payment of less than $1,000, so it’s not making me freer to be tied to a depreciating asset that I have to pay $14,400 a year for.  Plus insurance.  Plus whatever taxes the state would extract for a $60,000 vehicle.

I have a pickup.  It cost $6,000.  I paid with cash.  It didn’t cost very much because the car dealership was having a hard time selling a stick shift.  The truck runs fine.  Engine is a bit small, but 95% of the time it’s just being driven by a teenager to school and back.

But if your idea of wealth is a $60,000 pickup, I’ll never be wealthy in your eyes.

But I can be free without a $60,000 pickup.

And, no, I’m not a radical get rid of stuff and never buy anything sort of person – I’ve probably got more books on some topics than any library in my state.  And, I’ve bought more than my share of crap in my life, but very little of it has made me happy, and very little of it has made me a better person.  Except for the PEZ®, of course.  And I’ve been on some incredible vacations.

Wealth is time.  Wealth is freedom.  And your wealth is determined by things you “need.”

The less you need?  The wealthier you are, and the more choices you have.

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Friends, Flexibility, and Value Creation: Keys to a Corporate Career

“The thing is, Bob, it’s not that I’m lazy, it’s that I just don’t care.” – Office Space

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I’m glad cats don’t run corporations.  They like to play with their prey before they kill it.

The economy is changing.  That’s a newsflash from every decade since Sunday in 12,241 BC, when Chieftain Brad Von Thundernose (he snored) invented bacon-wrapped shrimp.  Unfortunately, Brad was allergic to shellfish, and puffed up like Elvis on carbohydrates.  Brad aside, if you look back in the distant past to the year 2000 (which, for some of us, used to sound futuristic) you’d see that the largest five companies were:

  • Exxon-Mobil®
  • General Electric™
  • Ford©
  • General Motors®
  • Wal-Mart™

What were the largest five companies in 2018?

  • Apple™
  • Amazon©
  • Google®
  • Microsoft™
  • Facebook©

They’ve all changed.  And these are the five biggest!

I’ve been fortunate to (so far) to be able do the same thing for most of my career, admittedly not with the same company.  I’ve generally been okay doing it – in at least one place I’ve worked some things I set up literally saved the company a few years after I left.  That’s nice – the thought that hundreds of folks still have a job because of something I did.

And at a different company, I saved a career.  Pay attention and it might help yours, too.

Let me explain:

A friend of mine was offered a chance to move out of our department and move into recruiting.  She took the opportunity.  Then the economy took a downturn.  And she didn’t get along with her boss.  And was close to getting fired.  I told her she was over thinking it – no way that they would fire her.

This particular person was smart, talented, and personable – not smelly, irritable, and brooding like your humble author.  I checked around and found out how close she was to getting fired.  The answer was very close to being fired – they’d started the 90 day clock before the final paycheck.

As a department head, I knew that she was better than many folks everyone that I had in my department.  Her boss, however, “didn’t want to transfer a problem” and “this person isn’t a good fit with the company’s values.”  That’s HR speak for “it’s personal.”

Thankfully, I managed to drag my boss into the idea that she’d be perfect for our department, and he was able to go up three levels of management to convince his great-grand boss that she’d be a great fit.

Today?  She’s an executive VP, hauling in the big bucks (seriously big bucks), but she had to change career focus after leaving my group.  Essentially now she’s a corporate ninja-nun who goes around the company smacking people’s knuckles with a metaphorical ruler

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Do not make my friend angry.

Lessons:

  1. Have friends that can help you.

In a big corporation if your intent is to move up the ladder, you need friends.  Let’s face it, we all screw up.  If someone higher up in the company can vouch for you when they’re looking for a designated victim, a highly-placed mentor (or sponsor, or friend) can tip the scales in your favor.  That being said, if your role has put you in a spot where you were the designated bad guy (“no, you can’t spend that money for elephant rides, PEZ®, and pantyhose for the welders in the assembly line”) then sometimes you won’t be able to survive after your sponsor is gone.

Why do I put this one first?  Despite how good you might be, having someone to cover your back is huge – it’s sometimes the difference between unemployment and the executive suite.

The reason they say, “it’s not what you know, it’s who you know”?  It’s true.

When you look above you in the org chart and don’t see anyone who would go to bat for you?  Your time at that job might be short, my friend.

  1. Be able to change what you do.

Chances are you have skills, unless you’re at the DMV, and heck, they have skills, too, if you count seething rage and the ability to take literally the worst possible picture of a human being.  Understand that during your career you might have to take those skills and transfer them from making people who are attempting to get a driver’s license miserable to, say, making people who need a new license plate miserable.  If I could write one thing on a billboard, the idea that “What you’re doing today might have no value in the future” would be second on my list.  Sadly, “Do you know where my car keys are?” would be number one.

But it’s true.  Just as Exxon-Mobile® has been replaced by Apple™ in valuation (and in my gas tank – sadly my car only gets four miles per iPhone®), the idea that you’ll spend your career doing the same thing is becoming less common.  How many people started their career in nuclear engineering and ended up running a carpet installation company staffed entirely by nude circus clowns?  More than I can count!

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  1. Be able to create value.

At one place I worked, there was an employee that watered and dusted plants.  That’s all she did.  The company had a huge office, and it had plants on every floor.  I had no idea that you had to dust plants, but, apparently if the plants live only by the dull fluorescent light of corporate America, you do.  One day (when profits dropped from enormous to merely massive) the plant lady (and the plants) were gone.  I think someone figured out that plants in the office building didn’t add a single dollar to the company profitability, so they let the plants (and the plant lady) become free-range.

One person in the company was notoriously difficult to work for and with, made business decisions like a drunken leper in a fish factory (I have no idea what that means, but it can’t be good), and smelled vaguely of gin and regret.  I asked my boss, “Why don’t they fire him?  He stands against literally every value that management says they’re in favor of.”

My boss:  “But he makes SOOOOO much money for the company.  Millions.”

That’s a huge defense.  If you make piles of money for the company and can prove it?  They’ll never fire you until the Grand Jury indicts.

In the end, my friend met all three of the criteria up above – had friends, had a flexible skill set, and could demonstrate how she made money, which is why she flies around on the corporate jet to eat bacon-wrapped shrimp.  Thankfully, I was able to help her avoid being a free-range plant lady . . .

What is health? My definition. Bonus topics: Indiana Jones. Snakes. Super Glue.

“It’s not the years, honey, it’s the mileage . . .” – Raiders of the Lost Ark

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If only I could find a temple to raid, then I could pay for insurance . . .

Okay, this is listed as part I.  I don’t have a part II planned, really, but I sometimes think we look at health in a really messed up way so I’m sure at some point I’ll have another post, or I’ll forget about this one and do it again.  Guess I picked the wrong week to stop sniffing Super-Glue®.

First, what is health?  I did some thinking about it (it was in the morning, and I’m not sure I had enough caffeine for this function) but I came up with my own definition.  Enjoy!

  • Physically able to do stuff you want to do.
  • Mentally able to do stuff you want to do.
  • Not in constant or unreasonable pain.
  • The body is (generally) working the way it’s supposed to.
  • Stuff that should stay in, stays in. Stuff that should stay out, stays out.
  • Not missing critical bits and pieces.
  • The bits that are left, generally work pretty well.
  • No bits are ready to fail right away (that you know of).
  • Absence of current system disruption (you don’t have a cold or the flu).

I think this is a very different definition from the rest of the world.  I’ll argue that this definition makes a lot of sense if the goal is happy people.  If I want to go run, and I can do it, and am not suffering from some sort of stress thing that makes me think that if I go running that the kimono-clad ghost of Tom Petty will chase me around with a butcher knife, well, I’m healthy enough to run.

And I am healthy enough to run.  Once per week.  Maybe.  My knees, after a lifetime of football, wrestling, and running from booby traps while pilfering South American treasure are, well, shot and will hurt like Bernie Sanders trying to explain how a socialist mayor is a multimillionaire.  And I like running.  So, I guess when it comes to running, I’m not exactly healthy.

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My hair.  Where did it go?  Oh, my back, and my ears.  So I’m missing some bits, but unless it’s sunny outside, well, I’m okay – these aren’t critical bits.

So, if I had a sudden heart attack tomorrow and died, am I healthy today?  Surprisingly, by my definition, I am totally healthy.  Nothing in my definition of health implies indefinite or infinite life.  Nor should it.

Tonight, The Boy dropped a glass cup on the floor of the kitchen.  It shattered, since we live in a reality where glass doesn’t bounce.

Twenty minutes later?  The Mrs. walked into the kitchen and stepped completely on a shard (not a shart, which was my original typo) of glass.  Immediately blood poured from her heel like money from Elon Musk’s Tesla® factory.  Yeah, it was a lot of blood.  I mean a lot.  I immediately asked The Boy to wipe that up so the dogs didn’t get into it.   Even though the dogs are small enough that you could stomp them if they went crazy, I have a strict policy of NOT teaching the dogs to like the taste of human flesh.

So, The Mrs.’ inside bits became outside bits.  Healthy?  Sure.  I think.  The Mrs. claims she has a tetanus shot that’s recent enough to keep her alive, so I’ll go with that.  But the line that I said to The Boy and Pugsley that is worth repeating is this:  “You’re Mom’s going to die!  I mean, not tonight, but sometime.”

And that’s normal.  Death is normal.

A lot of the current focus of medicine is on saving life.  Duh.  But a huge amount of the money is spent on the last year and last month of life.  When life sucks.  If the outrageous spending on the last month of life, when let’s face it, you have much worse problems than a shard (shart) of glass in your heel, well, is that money well spent?

Not by my definition.  Literally, not by my definition above.

Hey, I’m not trying to stop you from spending whatever money you want on whatever you want.  If you want to spend $400,000 for a 50% probability of living another two months stuck in a hospital bed at 147 years old?  Sure!  Go for it.

But that’s not how it works.  Virtually no one spends their own money on health care when they’re in the last year of their life – this money is coming from Medicare®.  And Medicare™ money?  It comes from you.  And me.  I’m not happy about public radio, let alone public funding of health care, but it’s a real thing, so how do we make it suck less than it does now?  (Not the radio, the health care.)

I’d much rather spend that money on making life better for people who are Kinda™ Healthy®.  People who are in otherwise pretty good shape.  I’m also entirely against euthanasia.  It’s murder.  Make whatever argument you want – but when you turn doctors and hospitals into consciously life-ending organizations?  Yeah, you’re not on the side of the angels.  “OMG – this baby has NO chance of making it into Harvard™!  Better end it all now.”

Part of the problem of healthcare today is that we’ve disconnected virtuous actions with reward.  Sure, they can charge you more money for insurance if you’re a smoker, but the current system allows anyone to skip out on paying for insurance, and then only purchasing it after they get sick.  That’s not insurance – it’s a con job.

That’s not insurance, that’s a cheat.  And it irritates me.  I’ve been paying for insurance for myself (either directly or as part of a job) since I was 22 or so – hundreds of thousands of dollars into a system that we’ve pulled very little out of.  Heck, I haven’t been to a doctor since 2012 (being healthy) and I just needed some antibiotics at that point.  Allowing people to be non-virtuous (be a freeloader until sick) breaks the system.

My brother, Other John Wilder, told me a story (a LONNNNNG time ago) about a wife and mother who was without insurance.  She got cancer.  She didn’t have insurance.  The doctors wouldn’t do anything to help her.  She died.

A tragedy?  Sure.  And I’m sorry for her.

Plan better.  Really.  If the taxpayer (or, worse yet, insurance payers like me) bails out every sad story?  Yeah, the insurance costs will explode.  Like they have.

What else ails our system?

Litigation.  I think our system would be much better if we removed judicial and jury decisions and replaced it with trial by combat to the death.  With the attorneys involved being the combatants.  It might not be a fair decision, but it would be awesome television.

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Sir Habeas Corpus, Attorney at Arms™.  Okay, Attorney at Arms™ might be a really cool idea for a short story or a book series.  I hereby trademark thee!

Insurance is really a problem.  It requires a ton of codes, and billing staff, and it’s a risk (if you’re a doctor or a patient) if you’re going to get the money.  I was reading on the Internet about the Surgery Center of Oklahoma®.  No insurance.  They don’t take it.  Cash only.  And if you don’t have cash, don’t show up – they won’t treat you.  Their costs for surgery are often less than the copay for insurance or Medicare™.

Don’t believe me?  Go to their website and check it out (LINK).  It would be nice where . . . you could just avoid insurance and government altogether . . . .

But insurance isn’t cheap – Obamacare© has resulted in (or occurred at the same time as) huge cost increases in premiums for insurance that only covers injuries resulting from meteorite strikes on alternate Tuesdays and pregnancy services for men.

And hospitals mark stuff up.  Here is a bill of a guy who got bit by a rattlesnake.  Note the cost for “Pharmacy” – this is almost all anti-venom.  Costs $200 a vial in Mexico.  Let’s say this guy had to have 20 vials.  That’s $4,000.

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Snakes.  Did it have to be snakes?

Yeah.  They marked the stuff up 20 times.  If you or I did that?  They’d avoid a trial and just execute us.  But for lifesaving drugs that you have no choice but to take, like anti-venom or insulin?  The hospitals look to remove your wallet through your throat, like they did with Pugsley’s stitches.

Yeah, he was camping with the Organization Formerly Known as Boy Scouts.  He had his knife out, and was whittling a piece of wood.  No, his finger.  The Mrs. took him to the emergency room.  Three stiches.  $4,000.

Yeah.  If it would have been up to me?  I’d have Super-Glued® it shut and we’d have solved the whole problem for $1.42.

Super-Glue®.  Can it save American health care?  Only one way to find out . . . .

Purpose, Retirement, and Life. Spoiler: You need a purpose.

“We’re the middle children of history, man.  No purpose or place.  We have no Great War.  No Great Depression.  Our Great War’s a spiritual war.” – Fight Club

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I love Demotivators.  You should buy a calendar a year from them.  Or more, if you have more than one year each year.   

Men must have a purpose.  If they don’t have one, they’ll either find one, or die.

During the vast majority of my career I’ve been a supervisor of between one (which is the minimum you can be a supervisor of, unless you have multiple personalities) and 200 people (they worked for the eight or so people working for me, so I was like a great-grand boss).

I’ve seen all sorts of weird things – an employee on day one had his company laptop stolen out of his hotel room in New Jersey and then got punched in the face at his apartment building the next day and showed up to work with two horrible black eyes (this story is true).  I worried he would be an awful employee – bad luck often seems to follow some people around, but he turned out just to be unlucky that week – the rest of his career has been pretty good.

I’ve seen employees quit for no real good reason, I’ve seen them quit for very good reasons.  I’ve (unfortunately) been in the position of forcing an employee out (i.e., letting them know that the hammer is coming down so they’d better find something soon) and I’ve had to fire people.  Firing is the roughest, but it also helps the employee find a place that they can be that will help them – most of the times, they’re just not a fit for the job.  One employee developed diabetes and ulcers while working for me.  The job wasn’t high pressure, but the employee just wasn’t cut out for it.  Or, maybe I’m an amazing jerk.  Nah, it must be he wasn’t cut out for it.

Sometimes the happiest occasion is when an employee retires.

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Not that I want them to retire, especially if they’re good at what they do and fun to be around.  But after 45 or 50 years, it’s nice for them to be able to spend the next few months before they die doing whatever they want to.  I kid!  But how many people retire and then die within a few months?  Far too many, and I think I know why.

I was fortunate enough to be a supervisor to two employees that retired on the same day, Kermit and Fozzie.  Kermit and Fozzie had worked together for decades.  They had vacationed together.  They lunched together.  I think they even shared shoes and toenail clippers.  It was only fitting that they retire on the same day.

Fozzie was ready to retire.  Really ready to retire.  He had plans.  He had a big RV, plans for fishing and grandkids.  He had bought a house about 100 miles away and sold the one near to town.  He’d calculated his retirement down to the penny – and figured out how to maximize every benefit he could think of.  And he was done.

About six minutes after we cut the retirement cake, he was gone.  The last time I heard from him was as he walked out the door at his retirement party, essentially telling us if we ran into any problems and needed his help, he’d be available approximately never.  His last act was to place a huge poster on his office door specifically mocking in a humorous way about a dozen employees that he found fault with.  (Thankfully I wasn’t on the poster.)

Fozzie was done.

In truth, he was probably done two or three years earlier, but he had waited for Kermit.

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Kermit had a house that he had bought that was closer to 200 miles away.  But Kermit didn’t have plans.  He rarely saw his grandkids, and his hobby, his passion was really work.

Both Kermit and Fozzie had a great amount of technical knowledge – and I promised either of them that they could get an hourly consulting contract to assist teaching the 24 year old kids that were replacing them.  Fozzie told me in rather distinct medical terminology exactly where I could put that contract.  Again, nothing personal.  Fozzie was done.

Kermit?  Three months later Kermit was in the office at least 20 hours a week.  I rarely tasked him with anything specific – I mainly had him help and teach the younger employees (which I think he loved).  I’m not in that position anymore with that company, but Kermit is still coming in every week.

Why does Kermit keep coming in?

It’s his purpose.  If he wasn’t at work, he wouldn’t have a purpose.  That’s not an indictment of Kermit – he’s a heck of a guy.  He simply understands (or maybe feels) that he has the ability to keep going and to keep adding value in the workplace.  And he’s got nothing in his life outside of work that makes him that happy.

Kermit would do it for free if he wasn’t being paid.  I actually think there are some months he didn’t bill the company – and I recall having to nag him about turning a bill in at all.

I’m certain that if Kermit wasn’t coming in?  He’d die.  It’s who he is.

Men must have a purpose.  If they don’t have one, they’ll either find one, or die.

What’s your purpose?

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