Breaking Out?

Society will have you believe life is this perfectly linear thing, and it’s all structured. Public school facilitates this concept. You get up at the same time every morning and you go to school, where you will sit for eight hours listening to things that, in all likelihood, don’t interest you. You will then go home and do an hour or two of homework. Dinner’s at a specific time, too, and before you know it, you go to bed.

This continues on until you’re in your late teens. Then you have to start thinking about college, which requires more structuring. Suddenly you’ve gotta do all of the above, but you also have basketball practice on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and community service on Tuesdays and Thursdays. A little work experience don’t hurt, either. One day you’ll be a success!

And then you’re whisked off to college–an expensive one with a fancy name if you’re “smart,” and you major in something really exciting, like Public Health Policy, because everyone knows how exciting that is. There are always more schedules and internships and impressive-sounding credentials; all the while, you’re trying to balance your personal and social life. But it’s tough to have a minute for yourself when you’ve gotta read chapter 8 for your Ancient Near East class before Thursday, do those 35 math problems by tomorrow, and get to your part-time job by 3.

Then one day you’ve really done it, you’ve finished school and gotten married and bought a house, and that’s when it gets really fun. You go to work five days a week from 8-4, but let’s be honest and count the time it takes to get to work, etc., so it’s really from 6-6. Then you get home and have dinner and, if you’re lucky, veg out in front of the television for a few short hours before getting up and repeating the process. The weekends, those two sweet days of freedom, are comprised of even more important things, like mowing grass and going to weddings and birthday parties and church. Before you know it, it’s Sunday night, and the cycle continues.

You do all of this because it’s “normal,” because one day you want to be “rich” so you can afford not to live by the structure. But by the time that comes around, when you’re 50 or 60 (if you’re lucky!), will you even be able to function outside the box? Won’t your mind be so accustomed to schedules and dates and on-the-dot meetups that doing something out of the ordinary, like making a midnight run to Steak N Shake even when you aren’t hungry, will make you feel uncomfortable, bizarre, weird, wrong?

I put in my time in elementary school, and they sent me to middle school.

I put in my time in middle school, and they sent me to high school.

I put in my time in high school, and they sent me to college.

I’m putting in my time in college, and they want to send me to law school.

If I go to law school, I’ll put in my time there and they’ll send me to a firm where I’ll work 80 hours a week on bullshit “casework” and performing all sorts of soul-sucking tasks. I’ll make a ton of money so I can take a two week vacation every year and spend the whole time freaking the fuck out because, dear god, there’s nothing scheduled.

I want to circumvent all of this, somehow. Society-at-large and my parents and my friends and all sorts of well-meaning people insist that I’ll regret it. I feel like I’ll regret it if I don’t break out. It’d be easy for me to slink off after I get my undergraduate degree, wandering through the swamps of Florida, the unrelenting Arizona sun, the cool tides of Washington, and the bright, busy streets of New York. I could throw my thumb out and ride with truck drivers and Christians and drugged-out psychopaths. I could walk for miles, getting sunburned and drenched, meeting people, getting into all sorts of wild and probably dangerous adventures.

Because as bad as it sounds having to wash dishes in Peggy’s 66 Diner just to afford your meal there, there’s a certain freedom involved. Once you’ve paid for your bacon and eggs, you’re free to just go. Anywhere, everywhere. As a lawyer, I might make $250k a year, but it wouldn’t matter because I’d be chained to it. Chained to the townhouse, the nagging wife, the Mercedes. I think I’d rather wander.

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Self Confidence 1

This past week has been interesting. For one, the dude I was filling in for at work finally returned, so I was no longer needed. I spent the days doing a whole lot of nothing, and in between that, reading Charles Bukowski’s Women, which is a phenomenal book. At nights I drank beer and hammered out around seven thousand words on my novel.

In all, it’s been a fairly unproductive week, and I’ve started feeling the mental/emotional effects. Truth be told, I haven’t been taking the advice I made in the previous post. In any case, I’ve made some kind of philosophical headway in the past 24 hours. For one, my right-wing Republican uncle informed me last night that if he had known at my age what he knows now, he never would’ve gotten a job or settled down. Instead, he said, he would’ve just wandered around hippie-style. During the same conversation, he informed that, “if you can reach a point where money doesn’t mean anything to you, then you’re truly free.”

Okay, so my thoroughly backwoods, red state uncle is starting to sound like Timothy Leary. Nothing out of the ordinary here…

Then today my dad and I went to see me 81 year old uncle. We talked about sex and girls and even a little religion. Somehow we got on the topic of self-confidence, and I asked him the best way to improve self confidence. Without hesitation, he said self affirmations were the most important. He’s certainly no psychologist, but he for some reason believes that people are more likely to believe what they hear from themselves over what they hear from others. I’ve done a little reading about self affirmations, and even practiced them some in the past (with limited success), but I suppose it won’t hurt to try.

Later down the road, my uncle opined that fasting, too, would help my self confidence. I asked how the two were connected. “It’ll help you take control of your mind,” he said, adding that the longest he’s ever fasted was three days.

So here I am, definitely not on top of the world, but not upset either. I haven’t eaten anything since noon (it’s nearing 11 pm now) and I’m getting pretty hungry. I want to start practicing self affirmations as well as meditation. I’ll try to keep you updated with the progress.

Suggested reading: “Self Reliance” by Ralph Waldo Emerson, translated into modern English

Just Do Something

Similar to this post for those of you familiar to “game,” the best thing you can do at any point in life is to just do something. For instance, I could be watching YouTube videos instead of writing this post. Which is going to be better for me in the long run (especially since I want to be a writer)? Exactly.

As a 20-something college student, it’s easy to spend summers inside in the air conditioning, chatting on Facebook and reading blogs. And, interestingly, that’s what I think I want to do. But after a week of such shenanigans, I’m a unwashed mess, both physically and mentally. The past couple of weeks, I’ve been doing a manual labor job that is dirty and hot. One day the heat index was 126. At the end of my eight hours, I feel exhausted. My muscles are so sore that it hurts to pick up my laptop.

I imagine a lot of readers, especially “educated” ones from the East Coast, would scoff at this. After all, lumber yards are meant for high school dropouts addicted to meth, who live in that unfortunate void better known as the Midwest. And hell, maybe they’re right to an extent. I’m certainly not doing this for a career. And let me tell you, it sucks to work all week for a measly $320… The point is, I’ve felt better in the past three weeks than I have in a long time. I have fewer worries about the future, fewer episodes of the blues, and, get this, enough money for booze!

Earlier this summer I spent a month backpacking through South America. What should have been an amazing, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity was filled with constant worries of law vs. grad vs. no more school, nervous contemplations on how to constantly “improve” myself, and awkward, try-hard interactions with girls. I wouldn’t take back the experience, but I could’ve squeezed a lot more out of it if I had let go and just done something.

That’s why this manual labor gig is so brilliant. I’m actually doing something. At the end of the day, I can look around the yard and see all the bundles of railroad ties and think, “Damn, I’m responsible for that.” In a culture where most of the guys my age only aspire to play video games and smoke weed, actually producing something is a huge boost to the self. I would say self-esteem, but it’s more than that. It’s made me happier, but it’s also made me feel more physically fit. When I look in the mirror, I like the guy I see a little better than I did when I started. Even my interactions with girls have improved; I have a quiet confidence about me that they seem to pick up on.

And perhaps the funniest thing about all this is the fact that when I was in high school, I was a complete prick. I scoffed at the blue collar types, as I was headed for a top-tier university. I laughed at the thought of manual labor–after all, I scored above 99% on all the standardized tests. I’m still on the track to becoming a white collar professional, but for this summer, I’ve let go and I’m embracing my physical side.

I’m not advocating everyone go out and get a heat stroke. What I’m saying is, if you’re stuck in a rut, if you’re a pasty nancyboy whose major accomplishment last week was leveling up on WoW, if you’re feeling bummed out and listening to way too much Nirvana, then just do something. Go for a run and get some fresh air. Hit up the gym. Hell, go to the local diner and flirt/tease the waitress relentlessly. Because while I’m as addicted to Facebook as anyone, the real shit goes down OUT THERE in, you guessed it, the real world.