Enjoy.

Tags: society, into the wild, eddie vedder

Case No. 218

How’s this for the good life? You’re rich, and you made the dough yourself. You’re well into your 80s, and have spent hardly a day in the hospital. Your wife had a cancer scare, but she’s recovered and by your side, just as she’s been for more than 60 years. Asked to rate the marriage on a scale of 1 to 9, where 1 is perfectly miserable and 9 is perfectly happy, you circle the highest number. You’ve got two good kids, grandkids too. A survey asks you: “If you had your life to live over again, what problem, if any, would you have sought help for and to whom would you have gone?” “Probably I am fooling myself,” you write, “but I don’t think I would want to change anything.” If only we could take what you’ve done, reduce it to a set of rules, and apply it systematically.

Right?

Case No. 47

You literally fell down drunk and died. Not quite what the study had in mind.

———————————————-

Case No. 218, continued

On first glance, you are the study’s exemplar. In Dr. Vaillant’s
“decathlon” of mental health—10 measures, taken at various points
between ages 18 and 80, including personality stability at ages 21 and
29, and social supports at 70—you have ranked in the top 10 of the
Grant Study men the entire way through, one of only three men to have
done so.

What’s your secret? Is it your steely resolve? After a major
accident in college, you returned to campus in a back brace, but you
looked healthy. You had a kind of emotional steel, too. When you were
13, your mother ran off with your father’s best friend. And though your
parents reunited two years later, a pall of disquiet hung over your
three-room apartment when the social worker came for her visit. But you
said your parents’ divorce was “just like in the movies,” and that you
someday “would like to have some marital difficulties” of your own.

After the war—during which you worked on a major weapons
system—and graduate school, you married, and your bond with your wife
only deepened over time. Indeed, while your mother remains a haunting
presence in your surveys—eventually diagnosed with manic depression,
she was often hospitalized and received many courses of shock
therapy—the warmth of your relationship with your wife and kids, and
fond memories of your maternal grandfather, seemed to sustain you.

Yet your file shows a quiet, but persistent, questioning about a
path not taken. As a sophomore in college, you emphasized how much
money you wanted to make, but also wondered whether you’d be better off
in medicine. After the war, you said you were “too tense & high
strung” and had less interest in money than before. At 33, you said,
“If I had to do it all over again I am positive I would have gone into
medicine—but it’s a little late.” At 44, you sold your business and
talked about teaching high school. You regretted that (according to a
study staff member’s notes) you’d “made no real contribution to
humanity.” At 74, you said again that if you could do it over again,
you would go into medicine. In fact, you said, your father had urged
you to do it, to avoid the Army. “That annoyed me,” you said, and so
you went another way.

There is something unreachable in your file. “Probably I am
fooling myself,” you wrote in 1987, at age 63, “but I don’t think I
would want to change anything.” How can we know if you’re fooling
yourself? How can even you know? According to Dr. Vaillant’s model of
adaptations, the very way we deal with reality is by distorting it—and
we do this unconsciously. When we start pulling at this thread, an
awfully big spool of thoughts and questions begins to unravel onto the
floor.

You never seemed to pull the thread. When the study asked you to
indicate “some of the fundamental beliefs, concepts, philosophy of life
or articles of faith which help carry you along or tide you over rough
spots,” you wrote: “Hard to answer since I am really not too
introspective. However, I have an overriding sense (or philosophy) that
it’s all a big nothing—or ‘chasing after wind’ as it says in
Ecclesiastes & therefore, at least up to the present, nothing has
caused me too much grief.”

Case No. 47, continued

You are the study’s antihero, its jester, its subversive
philosopher. From the first pages of your file, you practically explode
with personality. In the social worker’s office, you laughed
uproariously, slapping your arm against your chair. He “seems to be
thoroughly delighted with the family idiosyncrasies,” Lewise Gregory,
the original staff social worker, wrote. “He has a delightful,
spontaneous sense of humor … [a] bubbling, effervescent quality.” “My
family considers it a great joke that I am a ‘normal boy,’” you wrote.
“‘Good God!’”

You ducked the war, as a conscientious objector. “I’ve answered a
great many questions,” you wrote in your 1946 survey. “Now I’d like to
ask you people a couple of questions. By what standards of reason are
you calling people ‘adjusted’ these days? Happy? Contented? Hopeful? If
people have adjusted to a society that seems hell-bent on destroying
itself in the next couple of decades, just what does that prove about
the people?”

You got married young, and did odd jobs—including a stint as a
guinea pig in a hospital study on shipwreck survival. You said that you
were fascinated by the “nuts” on the psychiatric ward, and you wondered
whether you could escape the “WASP cocoon.” You worked in public
relations and had three kids.

You said you wanted to be a writer, but that looked like a
distant dream. You started drinking. In college, you had said you were
the life of the party without alcohol. By 1948, you were drinking
sherry. In 1951, you reported that you regularly took a few drinks. By
1964, you wrote, “Really tie one on about twice a week,” and you
continued, “Well, I eat too much, smoke too much, drink too much liquor
and coffee, get too little exercise, and I’ve got to do something about
all these things. “On the other hand,” you wrote, “I’ve never been more
productive, and I’m a little wary of rocking the boat right now by
going on a clean living kick … I’m about as adjusted and effective as
the average Fine Upstanding Neurotic can hope to be.”

After a divorce, and a move across the country, and a second
marriage—you left her for a mistress who later left you—you came out of
the closet. And you began to publish and write full-time. The Grant
Study got some of your best work. When a questionnaire asked what ideas
carried you through rough spots, you wrote, “It’s important to care and
to try, even tho the effects of one’s caring and trying may be absurd,
futile, or so woven into the future as to be indetectable.” Asked what
effect the Grant Study had on you, you wrote, “Just one more little
token that I am God’s Elect. And I really don’t need any such tokens,
thank you.”

In the early 1970s, Dr. Vaillant came to see you in your small
apartment, with an old couch, an old-fashioned typewriter, a sink full
of dishes, and a Harvard-insignia chair in the corner. Ever the
conscientious objector, you asked for his definition of “normality.”
You said you loved The Sorrow and the Pity
and that, in the movie, the sort of men the Grant Study prized fought
on the side of the Nazis, “whereas the kooks and the homosexuals were all in the resistance.” You told Dr. Vaillant he should read Joseph Heller on the unrelieved tragedy of conventionally successful businessmen.

Your “mental status was paradoxical,” Dr. Vaillant wrote in his
notes. You were clearly depressed, he observed, and yet full of joy and
vitality. “He could have been a resistance leader,” Dr. Vaillant wrote.
“He really did seem free about himself.” Intrigued, and puzzled, he
sent you a portion of his manuscript-in-progress, wanting your
thoughts. “The data’s fantastic,” you replied. “The methodology you are
using is highly sophisticated. But the end judgments, the final
assessments, seem simplistic.

“I mean, I can imagine some poor bastard who’s fulfilled all your
criteria for successful adaptation to life, … upon retirement to some
aged enclave near Tampa just staring out over the ocean waiting for the
next attack of chest pain, and wondering what he’s missed all his life
What’s the difference between a guy who at his final conscious moments
before death has a nostalgic grin on his face as if to say, ‘Boy, I
sure squeezed that lemon’ and the other man who fights for every last
breath in an effort to turn back time to some nagging unfinished
business?”

You went on to a very productive career, and became an important
figure in the gay-rights movement. You softened toward your parents and
children, and made peace with your ex-wife. You took long walks. And
you kept drinking. After a day in your “collar,” you said, you let the
dog loose.

“If you had your life to live over again,” the study asked you in
1981, “what problem, if any, would you have sought help for and to whom
would you have gone?” “I’ve come to believe that ‘help’ is for the most
part useless and destructive,” you answered. “Can you imagine Arlie
Bock—God bless his soul—trying to help me work out my problems? … Or
Clark Heath? The poor old boys would have headed for the hills! The
‘helping professions’ are in general camp-followers of the dominant
culture, just like the clergy, and the psychiatrists. (I except Freud
and Vaillant.)”

Around this time, Dr. Vaillant wrote about you: “The debate
continues in my mind, whether he is going to be the exception and be
able to break all the rules of mental health and alcoholism or whether
the Greek fates will destroy him. Only time will tell.” Dr. Vaillant
urged you to go to AA. You died at age 64, when you fell down the
stairs of your apartment building. The autopsy found high levels of
alcohol in your blood.

In Adaptation to Life, where you appeared as “Alan Poe,”
Vaillant had admired your altruism and sublimation, and your eloquence,
but worried you were “stalked by death, suicide and skid row.” You had
written in retort, “Of course, the prognosis of death is a pretty sure
bet … Hell, I could be dead by the time you get this letter. But if I
am, let it be published … that—especially in the last five years—‘I
sure squeezed that lemon!’”

What Makes Us Happy? – The Atlantic (June 2009)

Windows is so bad

American businesses lose billions of dollars a year to lost productivity from using windows computers for business, instead of computers that work, like Apple.

The only reason I mention this again is because I had to stop what I was doing (formatting my recent Northern California photos to share) and help my wife get her P.O.S. windows computer, provided to her by her multi-billion-dollar employer, to print something. Whatever crappy Microsoft software she was running stopped, and we both wasted another half an hour doing what Apple always just does.

Using Windows is like living in a Communist country. It wears you down and tries to make you think that you owe it your allegiance. Weak people say “I can’t beat the Communist government” or “all the people in my industry use windows, so I have to, too,” and we all lose.

Our duty as Americans is to keep the world free, and stop Communism anyplace it might sprout. America doesn’t sit around idly and let bad things happen. America gets out and brings freedom to people all over the world, whether they live in Iraq, Afghanistan, or anyplace there are problems. So why do Americans settle for the daily hassles that trying to use windows brings?

You can do your part by using Apple, which just works. All your software runs on it, and if not, you can run Windows on Apple computers anyway, and so what: Apples open all your windows files and sends them just fine.

I remember back when I had a job and my employer’s crappy $4,000 windows laptop was in for one of its usual repairs for the week. I continued to work unimpeded on my personal Mac.

When I met my boss and handed him all the paperwork he wasn’t expecting to get, he said “I thought your computer was in the shop?” “Yes,” I said, “so I did this all on my Mac.” He had no idea that all our secret and proprietary hoop-de-do files worked even better on my Mac than the windows crap Tektronix used, like most computationally more foolish US businesses.

Last week a colleague asked if I knew how to fix his virus-dead computer. I responded “Buy a Mac.” I was right: he was on a windows computer, which are designed to get viruses so that you have to replace them every couple of years.Me? My laptop is over 5 years old and runs perfectly, any my main Mac is over three years old and runs flawlessly.

OK, the windows P.O.S. finally choked out my wife’s document, so I can get back to my own work. Criminy, windows still can’t print word-processor documents as well as DOS did back in the 1970s. If you’ve been watching this as long as I have, it’s obvious that windows doesn’t work, and will never work properly, because it is designed to work that poorly.In case you were wondering, I never have to restart my Mac, while of course the fix for my wife’s P.O.S. was to restart it. My Mac runs perfectly for months on end. I only turn it off if I go away shooting for a week.

Sad, but true. Windows hurts America. All these little “computer problems” cost time, which costs money. All these little glitches add up to billions of dollars in lost productivity, which costs everyone jobs, except the folks overseas who support windows computers. This is not acceptable, which is why I have no tolerance for windows and its finicky defects that require you to be a hacker just to get it to go.

If you want to get something done, get an Apple. It’s all you’ll need for a very long time.

Original Post: Ken Rockwell’s Updates

Everyone isn’t going to be a leader.

But everyone isn’t going to be successful, either.

Success is now the domain of people who lead. That doesn’t mean they’re in charge, it doesn’t mean they are the CEO, it merely means that for a group, even a small group, they show the way, they spread ideas, they make change.

Those people are the only successful people we’ve got.

Read original here: Seth’s Blog: Pithy quotes

Tags: Leaders, Seth Godin

Having been through a divorce myself, I kinda have to agree with this. Sure it’s not necessary, but I honestly believe that having a tragic romance can really improve your life. It certainly will give you another perspective

Get signed up today, and learn to make your first dollar online.

http://howtobecoolanddostuff.com/thirty-day-challenge-is-go/ I’ll be busy everyday of August with the 30 Day Challenge.

www.ThirtyDayChallenge.com

Warning – I Do This For The Money

There. I said it.

While I like helping people and enjoy life, I need to make money — and I do make money from this blog.

I just wanted to say that because some people get upset once they realize it, for some reason. So be it; I just thought that I’d save you the time and trouble of possibly reading this blog for months before you realize that I’m in it for the money (among other reasons).

So what does this mean to you?

First, the only way I’m going to make money is if I can provide my customers (hopefully you — you can become one by purchasing this computer and website security interview — see, I just tried to make money!) with more value than what they give me in exchange. Money is a universally accepted instrument that represents value. In this case, when you give me $27, I need to convince you that I’m giving you at least $27 worth of value before you’ll pay me. If I can’t do that, you don’t pay and move on.

So who got more value? I always try to ensure that my customers get more value than I.

And the next reason why I’m so self-centered is best revealed in Dr. Robert Anthony’s Secret of Deliberate Creation course (oh no, not again! ). I’m listening to it again, and just today I heard about how we are constantly creating. That creation takes on the form of positive and negative creation. And we can’t help BUT create — we were made to create.

Now if we focus on all of the bad stuff around us and try to change others, all it does is drag us down to their level. In what may appear to be a paradox to most people, the only way to really help others is to focus on improving yourself. Focus on yourself, think positive stuff (more or less; I’m glossing over a lot), and things get better for you. And guess what? Once your lot in life improves, you have something to give finally, don’t you? And there’s a universal law about giving that says you get it back — just not from the same source you give it to — and you get back much more than you give.

So I do focus on making money so that I’ll have more to give. Heck, if I didn’t make money, I couldn’t even afford to pay to host this website and you wouldn’t be reading this. In other words, how can I help you if I don’t make money?

OK, this post may be a bit strange, but it was inspired by a thread that’s currently running over at Willie Crawford’s Internet Marketing Inner Circle (Argh! Another money-making attempt!), it’s spur of the moment and entirely impulsive, and I’ll probably regret it at some point in the future. But then again, who wants to read the same old boring stuff day in and day out?

Oh, one parting random thought: I absolutely despise people who try to take advantage of me. Both my wife and I are extremely generous, but if we find out that somebody took advantage of our generosity when they could have taken care of themselves, we’ll cut you off at the kneecaps. And don’t put one hand in my wallet while the other one is stabbing me in the back.

OK, now I’ll get back to being my nice old self…

Thanks for listening,

Tom

Original Post Here

The object isn’t to be perfect. The goal isn’t to hold back until you’ve created something beyond reproach. I believe the opposite is true. Our birthright is to fail and to fail often, but to fail in search of something bigger than we can imagine. To do anything else is to waste it all.

Excerpt from Seth’s Blog: Is it worthy?

I’ve struggled with this myself… if you really want to BCDS, then you’ve got to start failing.

Fun Fact: Did you know that a plane is off course the majority of it’s flight?

The continuous corrections in flight, get the plane to the final destination. Isn’t that applicable to your life’s destination? I believe it is

Tags: perfect, failure, seth godin

When I was a kid, the DUMBEST POSSIBLE THING YOU COULD DO and the EASIEST WAY TO LOOK STUPID was to leave the brim of your new hat flat. Instead, what you really wanted to do was bend it until it curved upward slightly.

Today, the DUMBEST POSSIBLE THING YOU CAN DO and the EASIEST WAY TO LOOK STUPID is to BEND THE BRIM OF YOUR NEW HAT. Kids today!

Anyway, if you want to look cool and feel summery, a DC Hat should do the trick. And if you don’t believe my fashion observation, just ask Jesse Litch, pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays. He knows what’s up.

Excerpt from: Highly Obsessed

The evidence: (note the curved brim)

Tags: fashion, proper wearing of hats