2013

Fear

While I try not to anticipate the reaction anything I write will get, I can’t help but know that certain topics will attract the attention of certain people. Yesterday’s post about quitting your job for example, I have a group of friends who I’ve had this discussion with in person for a long time. Some who already knew it and some who had recently come to that same conclusion. It’s a challenging position on a challenging topic, but I knew these people would be supportive.

I hoped there would be some others who might have been thinking along those lines but had been to afraid to make a move and seeing a post like that might encourage them to make a change in their lives for the better.

I’ve talked about this topic before and I had an idea what reactions I might expect. The haters were new, though perhaps shouldn’t have been surprising. That post, like this one is about fear. It’s about identifying that fear, addressing it and pushing past it. That’s the ideal anyway, some people are afraid and rather than face that they lash out.

Some people think that quitting their job means they will be broke and then homeless and then starve. When I hear someone use that argument – and I’ve heard it a lot – what is really clear is that those people are afraid that they have no worth. They think they are lucky to have the job they have and if they walked away they’d never be able to get another job. Because they aren’t good enough. They are afraid. Some of them might be right. But this argument says more about the person making it than the opportunities available. And my point is that many opportunities don’t present themselves until you are in a position to take advantage of them.

Self worth is a huge piece of this, because if you think you have some value in this world, then you have to trust that someone else might agree you have value, and if someone else agrees you have value then you can always find a job because you are a valuable person. So if you leave one job, the possibility that you will never get another job isn’t even something to consider. You are trying to get a better job, and if you can’t, you can always get one just the one you already had. If you think you can’t get a job like the one you have now, then you think you aren’t worthy of the job you currently have.

Some people think it’s crazy to take a step until they know exactly where that step will land. I can’t agree. I think planning out every single step prevents you from taking chances, and if you don’t take chances then you can’t ever expect to have a chance work in your favor. Some people are afraid of taking chances. I can’t imagine living under that kind of fear. I just don’t think that lowly of myself.

Whoever you are, I think you can do something awesome. And I want your life to be awesome. That’s why I keep pushing. And I don’t plan on stopping.

Quit your job. Today.

If you are standing on the ledge looking over and need a little push I’m here to kick you square in the ass and push you the hell off the roof. You’ll learn to fly or you die at the bottom, but you know that I’m right when I tell you that either of those options are better than just standing on that ledge forever. At least they are action.

Here’s the thing, you only get one life. And in the big scope of things it’s pretty short. So why would you waste a single moment of it doing something that isn’t awesome? If you love your job and can barely tell the difference between when you are working or not then I’m not talking to you. But if you dread going to work every day and count the seconds until you are finished for the day I might as well have put your name in the title of this post.

Yes you.

What are you waiting for?

There’s never going to be a right time. There will never be a safety net. It will never be comfortable. It will never be easy. But change and growth isn’t supposed to be. It’s scary. It’s nerve wracking. It’s terrifying. It’s also the only option you have if you don’t want to look back and think you wasted your life. It’s the only option you have if you want to be happy. It’s the only option you have if you want to do anything besides just sit still being depressed. And it’s the most rewarding thing you will ever do. Really, what are you waiting for?

You know full well you don’t like what you are doing. So do something else. The worst thing that can happen is that you won’t like it. In which case you are exactly where you are right now. Every other potential out come puts you in a better position. I know this, because the people who can’t do something else, the people with no vision to do something else, the people with no dreams to do something else don’t ever consider it. They don’t even know there is a ledge they could be looking off of. They are clueless to the better options laid out before them. But you know about the ledge, you know about the options, you are just scared to reach for them.

Don’t be scared. Be excited.

If you don’t try you are assured to fail. 100% guarantee that you won’t pull it off if you don’t go for it.

So go for it. Stop fucking around and talking yourself out of it. The next thing you do will be awesome. You just have to believe that, and then do it. What are you waiting for?

Acceptance

Given how quick I am to judge everyone else around me you might think I’m more comfortable being judged myself. So might I, but as I’ve gotten older I have to admit that isn’t entire accurate. Or rather, I realize there is some grey area between what judgements I care about and those I don’t. I spent a large portion of my child hood being worried that everyone was judging me all the time, and then I realized that was a waste of time and the pendulum swung hard the other direction and I spent the rest of my formative years not giving a shit. Middle age has landed me somewhere in the middle.

It turns out that I walk a razor thin line between fear of rejection and not giving a crap. The truth is I’m still pretty indifferent about most people’s feelings about me. I’m fairly comfortable with the person I am and the choices I’ve made with regards to how I live my life. Because of that I generally feel that if a person doesn’t like something about me they are welcome to fuck right off. Seriously. Right off. And this is true for almost everyone I encounter on a daily basis. But not everyone.

There’s another group of people – a very small one mind you – who I’m constantly nervous that I’m going to offend. Or maybe offend is the wrong word, I know I’m going to offend everyone at some time so I’ve given up worrying about that. I’m constantly nervous that they will think less of me. This small group of people, these are the people I genuinely care about. These are the people that I love. The ones I’d be heart broken if they weren’t in my life anymore – so to some extent I guess I’m worried I’ll do something to push them away.

The result of all this is I think I’m much more guarded around people I know than those I don’t. I don’t care what people I don’t know think about me, but I totally care about the ones I do.

In thinking about that, I don’t think that’s unusual. To care about the opinions of people you care about. But when you step back a little bit it’s actually kind of weird. Look at this math: People I don’t know or causally know + don’t care what they think of me = confident // vs // People I care about + do care what they think about me = less confident

Do I tell some guy about to back into me that he has no idea how to drive a car? Sure. Do I tell my friend that her band is unoriginal and kinda sucks? Probably not. Do I tell my wife my every dirty, sexy and freaky desire? Of course not, like a normal person I keep that shit locked up and just hope she magically reads my mind.

Doesn’t it seem like maybe that should be reversed? Am I alone on this one? What causes this? Fear? Trust, or lack of it? If the situation was reversed wouldn’t I want the guy I was about to hit with my car to keep his damn mouth shut? Wouldn’t I want to trust that my friends would give me honest opinions about my band? Wouldn’t I be excited to learn I was married to some kind of dirty, sexy freak?

Like usual I don’t have the answers here, but it’s something I’m thinking about. I should more often put on a smiley face for strangers and be more honest and forthcoming with friends? The most honest and forth coming friends I have are generally considered dicks by most everyone else, because most people don’t want honesty. Yet I very much appreciate their candidness and openness. Hrm..

Research, global citizenship

I’ve talked about this idea here and there in the past, and am working on a longer piece about it but I wanted to throw out some ideas here and get some feedback to see what people thought and what issues are the ones most likely to be stickiest. So this is obviously a continuation of some of the ideas that have come from the technomads discussions and kind of gets into the roots of what citizenship is all about. And how that all plays into the world in 2013 and beyond.

When thinking about citizenship I think it’s useful to discuss the pros and cons, as well as the past vs the present. Let’s think of the big ones.

Most obviously the major benefit of being a citizen of anywhere is the support that comes along with that. I think this is the main thing – having a government “watching your back” so to speak – at least while traveling internationally anyway. You could argue that many of the benefits you receive as a citizen inside any country are also shared by many non-citizens inside that country so classifying those as perks of citizenship are difficult. Being able to vote is a plus, at least if you want to help influence the direction of some level of politics. If you don’t live in the country you are a citizen of that becomes less important, until you start thinking about “branding.”

The “branding” (I don’t know what else to call it) that comes with being a citizen of somewhere can be positive or negative depending. In some places in the world advertising that you are an American for example could attract some unwelcome attention – people who are upset with actions the US government has taken might project those feelings onto individuals. Similarly being an American might grant you some extra freedoms in other parts of the world where there are positive relations.

In the past, being a citizen of some place related much more to where you were, since people didn’t travel as much as they do now. And there was risk of neighboring people invading you, so having a country looking out for you was a pretty good thing. These days, with much more bouncing around the world which passport you happen to have is just as likely to cause problems and headaches as it is to open doors. The argument that a citizenship reflects a culture makes sense in really small geographic countries, not so much in widely spread ones.

I’m thinking a lot about the value of “where you are from” vs “where you are” as well as “where you are going” and how these things play together – nicely or not. I have a lot of questions and not a lot of answers. Would love to hear peoples thoughts on anything that might relate to this.

Global Neighborhood

Somewhere between Vienna & Paris, from above

I was incredibly lucky as a kid to have a family that on occasion took me to far corners of the earth. And while most of it had goofy religious justifications I was really too young to understand that, but still old enough to know I was going on a great adventure around the world. I don’t remember every bit of it, actually just flashes like a slideshow. In fact it’s weird what images from those trips are burned into my head. My grandfather standing in a hallway of a hotel in Rome. My cousins walking through the lobby of yet another hotel looking out over the Adriatic Sea in Split in what used to be Yugoslavia. Some people standing on the side of a street in Medjugorje, current day Croatia. I barely remember the landmarks, but I remember these images vividly. Anyway, point being when I was growing up I was exposed to this wild stuff and it great.

It was great because it taught me that nothing was out of reach, and even these places all the way around the world were accessible. And there were people there just like me.

That understanding continued with me through my teens and early adulthood even though I wasn’t traveling as much at that point. But I missed it, and when I had the opportunity to go somewhere far away and different again I jumped at the chance. I’d dreamed of visiting Japan for as much of my life as I can remember – originally because of an obsession with Japanese monster movies and robot cartoons, and later an affinity for a handful of Japanese film directors and martial artists, as well as the cultural aesthetic in general – but I’d always had a reason not to go. When I finally said fuck it and just went, I was both delighted that it was better than I ever dreamed, and disappointed that I’d talked myself out of visiting so many times previously.

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Aaron

I woke an hour ago to the news that Aaron Swartz killed himself. From my vantage point it seems like the entire internet is mourning him. It only takes reading a a few posts by people who loved him to understand why. Not why he did it, but why there are Alderaan levels of horror and sadness being felt that he did. An entire world crying out in pain.

I didn’t know Aaron personally, I knew of him of course – he was a very cherished person to many people I cherish. When I’d read his name, like many others out there in similar circles, I’d often think how weird it was that I hadn’t met him yet and wondered when I finally would. I so frequently meet people that I’ve known about for years, or who I’ve interacted with online but never met in person that it’s not even noteworthy anymore. I just expect that anytime a friend talks about someone that I’ll someday be hanging out with them. To the point that it’s almost a game. What will be the circumstances when I’ll meet them? Where in the world will it happen? Who will do the introduction?

I’ll never have the chance to meet Aaron now, and I’m saddened by that.

Knowing what I do about him and what he accomplished in his relatively short life, and reading the words my friends are writing about their friend – we all lost one of the good ones today. And regardless of if anyone knew him personally, we’re all worse off without him. It’s so terribly unfortunate that he felt this was his only escape.

I’ve written about my own experiences with depression and suicide in the past. I likely will again in the future. Today, I don’t know what to say. Except this sucks.