Cash happy checks, live your life, keep an eye on your joy quota.
I’ve recalibrated my brain to reward me for the things I am doing, not the things I could be doing.
- Pete Holmes
That amazing philosopher, Pete Holmes.
I love his HBO show, Faces and Sounds. I have it on my phone and listen to it frequently when I’m in the kitchen or doing some other kind of mindless work.
He really has gone through a tremendous amount and has come out on the other side still funny, but wiser. He seems to understand instinctively the way comedians do, the very nuanced, culturally and universally unique way humans fuck themselves up.
That’s really what comedians are.
They are speaking the unspoken and sometimes unknown truths about ourselves and then making us laugh at it all.
We sure need comedians.
So today, as I had to give Jay all the numbers that reflect the sad state of our personal finances, I just have to shrug it off, know we have a plan and just get on with things. I can’t let it get me down that we could last about two years right now in retirement with the way we spend money and the amount we have in savings. All our money is in our business, but that often doesn’t make me feel any better.
If anything happened to Jay, it’d basically be a giant fire sale that would be all on me. I’d have to hire a CTO and a rockstar programmer that could makes sense of what he was doing and how to keep things stable for our clients as well as continue the improvements he was making and the new product plans.
I don’t know what you do w/ that kind of stress. I just try and plan and hedge and do what I can, but these are big risks, still.
So Pete Holmes, keep my joy quota up, right? Okay, gotta work on that for sure. I’m meditating more, yoga is working well, starting to watch shows again that are funny and read. I’m making slow improvements. I’m reading the Blue Zones book and they have a lot of practical advice about not going overboard on how much you’re trying to change. Change fatigue is probably a thing I don’t even know about.
(It makes sense, that at the beginning of this next millenium and century, we’d wake up from the trance of the industrial and technological revolutions and go, wait a minute. We really fucked up our world in a lot of unnecessary ways so a handful of people could become the wealthiest pricks in the world while the rest of us have toxic waterways and limited healthcare.)
Anyhoo… I’m making progress and just trying on new ways of thinking and being. It’s work but the rewards are tremendous. f
*****
There was an article that ran in January in the NYT on the savage society the middle class find themselves in today in the US. Here was my comment:
I was struck by the term “savage society” to describe the situation in which many middle class Americans find themselves. Everyone benefits when the pie grows and the growth is shared. Quite simply, there has been little sharing over the past 20-25 years. The rich have gotten richer due to access to capital and favorable tax laws and the benefits of the tech revolution. In particular, the ability to invest in data gathering, analysis and manipulation tools has resulted in not only tech companies like Facebook and Google being the big winners, but also hedge funds, private equity groups and other highly sophisticated global investors who have been able to benefit in ways that the average person simply cannot.
So the wealthy, who have taken advantage of change, have also taken virtually all of the growth in the pie, as well as more of the existing pie. I get that we are a capitalist system. But not only have the wealthy beneficiaries of change done nothing to help those who are hurting and suffering from it, but they have made it worse by actively working to cut their own taxes, weaken labor protections, cut governmental safety net programs and fan societal divisions. Once you have $100 million, $1 billion or $10 billion in net worth, why are you so greedy and mean-spirited that you then have to actually TAKE from those who have not shared your abilities or good fortune? The problem is less about economics and more about sociology, psychology, greed and selfishness.
*****
The last few weeks, I’ve made huge progress in getting the house organized, and more importantly, my places to do art and store art and start to be creative in a way that I can handle: not chaos.
I’m getting my time organized. I found a copy of that book that helped me so much years ago w/ time management called Getting Things Done by David Allen. Who knew that most tasks we assign ourselves are many, many smaller tasks?
When we don’t break the tasks down, we defeat ourselves and don’t get much done. It’s pretty hard to see the same task get moved from week to week, seemingly not getting accomplished when in fact, you could be making substantial headway toward getting it done. It might be over 50% done, and it won’t even show it!
So thank you, David Allen, for helping me get some sanity in my life. feel better about what I do get done and also, give myself a break to not do too much.
*****
One thing I am going to have to face eventually is that you can organize and work on your house literally forever. At some point, it’s a form of distraction and avoidance. I have to get things to the point of being decently organized. My life has to start to have rhythms again. I am consistent. Things are on a schedule. I have routines.
Part of my new life has to start to involve creativity and production. I don’t know exactly what, but I have enough ideas and interests to keep me busy for a dozen lifetimes. I’m eager to get started, but want to be ready and healed first.