Pay Day...And relax, people!
Dear blog,
Thursday was another tough one at work. But I got the check today, which is always a good feeling. And this week's check was huge, thanks to the extra work on Thursday. Well huge in a relative sense, not an empirical one. Let's just say that this check was for about 133% of my regular check (and, no, it's not $133).
Woke up kinda late today - did my sports & politics blogs, then went over to our cousin's house where Kait used to live and is in the process of getting the very last of her possessions out, and got the Christmas tree out of the basement. This, by the way, is one year where I can not wait to put the Christmas tree up. You may have read my earlier entry where I mused about not having a place I feel is really "home" right now. I think I'll be a lot further along that trail with respect to this apartment once I've put up a Christmas tree here. Call it hokey, but it's true.
Dinner was jambalaya, with chourico because they don't have andouille up here, at least not at our supermarket. Despite the sausage discrepancy the meal was a success - in fact, I thought the chourico was quite decent. Not andouille, but quite decent. And Scrubs, of course; great stuff, as always.
Then it was off to work...
ESPN.com has a particularly good football analyst by the name of Gregg Easterbrook who writes on all manner of subjects (he is a regular writer for The New Republic). Lately he has been throwing into his column information supporting the argument of his new book The Progress Paradox, which is that people who spend more time enjoing life and less time trying to get ahead are happier. It seems obvious, when you think about it, but so many people spend so much time clawing their way to the top (but such a minute percentage of us will ever get to the top, or anywhere near the top, that it is a lifetime struggle of futility for nearly all who undergo it), that even the obvious wisdom of the idea has trouble talking root.
But it is true. Money can not buy happiness, and the struggle for money can, in fact, make one unhappy - creating the exact opposite effect you were going for.
And if it ever could make you happy, boy, now is the time. We live in what will forever be known as the Golden Age of Consumption. We have it all - Ipods, high speed internet, XBox 360, gigantic-assed trucks, SkiDoos, cell phones that play our favorite songs when our friends call us and can take pictures and in some cases shoot video, little fucking things we can stick on our dashboards and ask it to give us directions to the nearest Cambodian restauarant...(and if you can't afford all that shit, well, you don't need to be able to! Just sign over your soul there and we'll give you this credit card. Of course, you'll immediately use it to buy everything you can't really afford, always telling yourself, "I'll pay it off, someday." How, that's how we make all our money - hounding these people for 100 bucks a month for the rest of their lives!)
Think about going back a mere decade and telling yourself about all the great shit that was in store for, well, you. The past you would go nuts, thinking about how great life was going to be.
Well, it's like that now. And is all of that stuff making you happy? I mean, really happy? Do you go to bed at night thinking, man, life really is great!
I'm not sure you do. I think, if you did, you woudn't be so ready to go to war at the drop of a hat (of course, I don't mean actually going to war - most of you hawks have no plans nor ever had any plans of volunteering to go over there yourself. Most of you were kind enough to volunteer to fight "the war on the home front", as it were). But trust me, life is that good. It's great, in fact.
You just have to slow down and realize that.
Thursday was another tough one at work. But I got the check today, which is always a good feeling. And this week's check was huge, thanks to the extra work on Thursday. Well huge in a relative sense, not an empirical one. Let's just say that this check was for about 133% of my regular check (and, no, it's not $133).
Woke up kinda late today - did my sports & politics blogs, then went over to our cousin's house where Kait used to live and is in the process of getting the very last of her possessions out, and got the Christmas tree out of the basement. This, by the way, is one year where I can not wait to put the Christmas tree up. You may have read my earlier entry where I mused about not having a place I feel is really "home" right now. I think I'll be a lot further along that trail with respect to this apartment once I've put up a Christmas tree here. Call it hokey, but it's true.
Dinner was jambalaya, with chourico because they don't have andouille up here, at least not at our supermarket. Despite the sausage discrepancy the meal was a success - in fact, I thought the chourico was quite decent. Not andouille, but quite decent. And Scrubs, of course; great stuff, as always.
Then it was off to work...
ESPN.com has a particularly good football analyst by the name of Gregg Easterbrook who writes on all manner of subjects (he is a regular writer for The New Republic). Lately he has been throwing into his column information supporting the argument of his new book The Progress Paradox, which is that people who spend more time enjoing life and less time trying to get ahead are happier. It seems obvious, when you think about it, but so many people spend so much time clawing their way to the top (but such a minute percentage of us will ever get to the top, or anywhere near the top, that it is a lifetime struggle of futility for nearly all who undergo it), that even the obvious wisdom of the idea has trouble talking root.
But it is true. Money can not buy happiness, and the struggle for money can, in fact, make one unhappy - creating the exact opposite effect you were going for.
And if it ever could make you happy, boy, now is the time. We live in what will forever be known as the Golden Age of Consumption. We have it all - Ipods, high speed internet, XBox 360, gigantic-assed trucks, SkiDoos, cell phones that play our favorite songs when our friends call us and can take pictures and in some cases shoot video, little fucking things we can stick on our dashboards and ask it to give us directions to the nearest Cambodian restauarant...(and if you can't afford all that shit, well, you don't need to be able to! Just sign over your soul there and we'll give you this credit card. Of course, you'll immediately use it to buy everything you can't really afford, always telling yourself, "I'll pay it off, someday." How, that's how we make all our money - hounding these people for 100 bucks a month for the rest of their lives!)
Think about going back a mere decade and telling yourself about all the great shit that was in store for, well, you. The past you would go nuts, thinking about how great life was going to be.
Well, it's like that now. And is all of that stuff making you happy? I mean, really happy? Do you go to bed at night thinking, man, life really is great!
I'm not sure you do. I think, if you did, you woudn't be so ready to go to war at the drop of a hat (of course, I don't mean actually going to war - most of you hawks have no plans nor ever had any plans of volunteering to go over there yourself. Most of you were kind enough to volunteer to fight "the war on the home front", as it were). But trust me, life is that good. It's great, in fact.
You just have to slow down and realize that.
posted by k - L - g | 5:31 AM
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