Application to play Sysiphus

Editors Note: Trying a new thing. All instances of swear words have been replaced with other words. The author is woefully unaware of our trick. Let us know if you it.

I don't know how many of you are on the hunt for a job. I'll say I am, but the truth is I am half-heartedly engaged in the process. It's not that I don't want to work, it's just that I don't really want a job.  If I, or anyone, is required to perform such a job, perhaps there should be some recompense in less hours?  I mean, robots can do our work anyway. 

Recently I got the chance to speak to my friend Linda, who is about my fathers age, about work. Labor. Her generation, and therefore my fathers, prided themselves on work. A good job, in a factory, marked your status in the community.

Even Norman Rockwell would find this quaint. A modern jaded hipster would find this the worst, hopeless conceit of a poor imagination. Not because we are afraid of work, but because the stable jobs are all low-wage unlivable jobs or high-stress paperwork jobs. Go on, read about the twenty hours staring at excel.

The truth is, the economy is sideways. The black-and-white Calvinistic, Austrian model of economics hasn't just been turned on it's ear, it's been kidnapped, gagged, and forced to inform people by the use of hoots, grunts, and interpretive dance.

Face it, the rules that applied back then simply don't anymore. Not in any meaningful way. Our parents, leaders, and corporate elite  haven't informed us that the rules have changed. Partially from ignorance.   But also, out of malice.

Job applications have certainly not changed for the better. They are, in all honestly, a hopeless  bureaucracy,designed to inhibit, deter and prevent you from getting a job.

In my father's day, you could walk in, ask for a job, and get one, or told to get lost. And, if so rebuffed,  you'd head down one door.  "Hitting the pavement" was the euphemism for what you actually did.   Now you apply on  for Internet websites, press submit. Answer 400 questions about your personality. And though there are no right answers, clearly I answer them wrong because I never get a call back. i just send my application into the either.

And call on an application? They don't really do that anymore. They will call you.

Sure they will. 

The worst so far, Qdoba. Do you really need to ask 300 questions. I go to Qdoba frequently, and the biggest question I have is: Can you find someone who can actually roll a borking burrito? fire the people who make those long personality tests, use that money to bus your burrito rollers to La Bamba for a day.

McDonald's was only slightly less aggravating. They ask a series of questions and you choose the question that most reflects your views. These are the same questions.  For example

"I am a hard worker" vs "I like to watch butterflies fly into my bosses nose." 

"OK" I clicked the former - though my boss has nose hairs you could land Apache gunships on.

"I am a lazy good-for-nothing slacker"  vs  "I eat baby dolphins because I hate life."

So now what?  Do I contradict myself or do I make Jack-the-ripper look like a children's educator?
Sure, it's a bit of hyperbole, but it still aggravates me. What does any of this have to do with pressing burgers and dropping fries in hot oil? 

I'll tell you what, I ain't no slacker. Baby dolphins be damned. 



Sparkfire kindly posted this  graphic. I know it's bogus  when it talks about farmers. "No Job Hunt. No Career improvement."


Nonsense. Farmer is one of the most important jobs. The plight of the farmer was not one of improvement, it was about the poor economic and political policies. Yes, being a feudal serf might have sucked. But barring disaster, a skilled farmer lived quite a good life in the US.

And besides, in this hyper-corporate project-based, intern-serfdom world. Maybe a stable job with consistent pay is just the thing we need. 

I tell you Zach Weiner is positively prophetic. I suspect he has a lot of Millennial friends less-than-employed. 

We are reaching the existential crisis of the Job Market.  On one hand, we have a a bunch of slack-jawed sociopaths babbling about "returns on investments", "10 percent improvement in process efficacy" and "item action productivity", on the other, we have an overabundance labor jobs (replaced by automation) and service jobs "not meant to be a living wage." On the third, yes, third hand, we have an ever-swelling, leviathan-like government bureaucracy that exists to leech off the low- and moderately-waged and make serfs of those at the bottom. And the fourth hand we have people who, by virtue of illness, disability, or plain orn'riness, refuse to have anything to do with this nonsense.

Yes, the current job market is basically a 4-armed tentacled monster. In my nightmares it has Newt Gingrich and Barack Obama's face, melded like a sick love child.

And it's not like the basic rules have changed. So why the horse and pony show? 

The massive tentacled beast destroying or economic possibilities does have some vestigial arms - farmers (often automated), medical technicians (rapidly becoming educated button mashers), the arts. Things that were, or are, still valued for producing. But the system doesn't like those arms. Bankers making money on bailouts hate to hear that maybe the guy that grows pumpkins is doing more for the country. At least the farmer isn't giving money to people who hate the US. 

At least you can become a plumber or tradesman, with years of schooling and byzantine apprenticeships.

The markets are being made to keep people out.

But that's another blog post (or two, if I talk about neo-cottage revolutions). I'm losing my point today. Forgive me.

If you are, or were, looking for a job in an old way, you are right-borked. Unless you know somebody. And I am not even kidding. 

That McDonald's job? I have applied at McDonald's before. That specific McDonald's, for a soul-sucking mcjob that I can work around my desire to not actually do that job. Something that lets me pretend that I will be an artist some day.

They have ignored my application, but a caseworker of mine works with  and knows the manager there. And he says he will hook me up.

Networking required for a "not a livable wage" job. This is madness. Absolute madness. Regulation and litigation have made companies terrified of just giving a job.

If I weren't already a little on the batshit side, this would be enough to make me so. 

If you can't talk to people and hob knob, you might as well enjoy mopping floors. It's not like starting a business is much an option. Even in the blog post above, he needed way more money than he new. if you are in poverty, how are you going to manage that?

Remember when we were told to get a good job and not to be an artist? Remember that? I sure as hell do.

That was before Patreon and Kickstarter made fools of all of us, except the damn fools that followed their dreams. It's a new world, and prescient as I might have been, I was sure dumb on that account.  

Self-Soothing, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love the Moment.

A lot of times people say you need to let go. Yesterday I finally understood it. I discovered something that helped me. Hopefully it will help others.

I am not a psychologist, a psychiatrist , or a psychic. But it struck me with a particular pop profundity.

Depression causes me to hold on tightly to negative experiences instead of positive ones.

Experiences are how we build self-identity. What we experience informs who we are. In self-soothing, we are asked to experience, in a positive way, a moment in our day.  We are to focus on the five senses. they say, for ease of remembering, this mnemonic: 5 sights, 4 sounds, 3 touches, 2 smells, 1 taste.

For example:

After my workout, I sat in McDonald's and watched a breeze play over a pink dogwood. The leaves rippled and swayed, I imagined, in an extemporaneous and improvised dance. As I watched, a woman leaned urgently over an envelope in a table to my left. She would carefully write in small letters, then look up at me tersely. Her arms warded off onlookers.
I sipped my ice water. Condensation collected on the outside in spite of the the air conditioning. I lifted the cup to my lips, and I was struck by how heavy and leaden it felt in my hands.My knee pressed into the half-wall near me. I felt grave. I moved my knee away and suddenly felt as if I might fly away. I turned and set it again to the wall.

In therapy we discussed some moments in our past that were pleasant. As we relived them, even the most unhappy of us smiled wistfully. It was then that the thought struck me that for the briefest instant that telling these stories, these details, made us seem like people without depression.  When "normies" talk, they share positive experiences. In sharing them they relive them. Most often they share humorous, happy, and pleasant stories. Let me emphasize: They are routinely connecting with levity.

I hold tightly to negative experiences and ignore positive ones. So my self-identity is made up of a remarkable number of sadness.
 And in pandering to this depression caused me to avoid positive experiences. I often suffered bouts of depression that kept me from engaging in and enjoying positive experiences. Parties, concerts, dinners with friends.

I see it a lot in my father. He will have a bad day if he has a single bad experience in a day. If I attempt to argue that his day went well, he will refuse to acknowledge it.

Depression is described as a black hole. I can't argue. i use positive emotions to try and fill that hole, but can't seem to. And while I won't discount biology (Well, I will for me), I will say that depression has trained me to connect with negativity. I feel intimately tied to it. It's cliche to say, but I wrapped myself in it.I gave unhappy moment s more gravity than they deserve.And I've spent years practicing this.

People without depression seem to have a much easier time letting go of  sadness. They have an easier time finding pleasant experiences that connect them to happiness. they, in fact, have a long history of practicing self-soothing.

Self-soothing is connecting with positive experiences. Pleasant experiences. As trite as it sounds, self-soothing trains people with depression to look on the bright side. Something we often dislike being told to do.

This module has convinced me further that dialectical behavioral therapy simply trains you to think and act like a normal person. 

Is this the condition that I so feared?

My kiddos, I have a confession to make:

I never wanted to write about politics in this blog.

I never want to be political. I call myself an anarcho-moderate, and I am fanatically so. I had a rule

But I broke the rule and waxed political.

I waxed political because deep down this blog is about independence. The most important thing for man (or women!) is to have the liberty to live their life as they wish. To be free.

Free from illness by being healthy.
Free from hatred, ignorance and unhealthy agendas by keeping your mind open.
Free from mental illness through diet, exercise, reflection and meditation.
Free from drugs by being responsible for your body and mind.
And sometimes, free from a corrupt government (regardless of the party affiliation - from which you should also be free!).

Many people, and myself, often say we need something. And yet a lot of people get along without. I need a car, I need a gym, I need a job.

You don't. Your mind, your ingenuity, and your positivity are all you *need*. Everything else is optional or obtainable with those things.

I know, I sound like a raving hippy.

We are hooked - chained, to the world by needs and desires - for money, for love, for sex, for food, and those chains are being used to make you act in ways that maybe you don't want to act.

Well, there are two ways to release those chains. The first is to give everyone everything that they desire. If everyone is fulfilled, then there is no way to use fulfillment to motivate someone.  While I like this  option - because hay, free stuff, I think it's a dangerous option. There will always be something that is scarce - and that means something more valuable than another thing.

Plus it requires changing the world. That step's a-doozy.

The better solution is to reject those desires. Learn how little you actually need, so that you can  find what you really want. Reduce the value of something from the demand side, by simply not desiring it. This requires you to change yourself, but it's effects, if done by the commons as whole, will be immense.

The obvious and simple example is "I need a gym." Do you really need heavy equipment to get a workout, to become strong?  Smith racks, Leg Press machines, and thousand-dollar treadmills?

Not at all.  I have a gym membership. I do not need one.  All the equipment I really need is my body - and that's free.

I have spent about 45 dollars on exercise equipment that I use almost daily. It's cobbled together, grabbed from junk yards, and works better than the gym equipment. And Instead of a treadmill, I just go for a run.

To be free, you must remove things from your life, not add. Perhaps, like Diogenes, I see things as often a distraction.  Perhaps, like Seneca, I see us all working jobs we don't like for things we don't need.

So that's what this blog is about. Independence. It's a lot of work, kiddos, but it's worth it.

So my assignment for you is to take some time and remove yourself from a habit. I spent 5 weeks without Internet, and it was extremely productive. I advise you remove something - Internet, TV, even idle reading, if you are so inclined, and ask yourself as Seneca asks, "Is this the condition that I so feared?"

More on living as independently as possible next week, my friends.  

Racing Rats Should Leave a Sinking Ship

Well, kitlin's. good news, for once.This is the best time to start self-improvement. I'm not going to be throwing a lot of links at you today. It's mostly just opinion. But I think young people have a real opportunity. And old people. You know, 30-year-olds.

I'm especially talking to 30 year-olds. Listen up. This is where many of us are. Retirees couldn't retire, so they took the jobs we would have. And then the young took some of them, too.  Unemployment is still too damn high. Sure, things are turning around. But we are still working shitty jobs.

The jobs available to most of us are shitty retail jobs. The kind of job that you used to get through college. The kind of job that you were suppose to go to college to avoid.

I am a rambling man, it seems. My editor, Sir Huffinpuff McSockSocks has pawed angrily at me as if to say "get to the goddamn point." So here it is.

5 reasons a downturned economy is AWESOME for Self-Improvement.

1) Adversity breeds creativity.
This is becoming an old rag, but I want to say it. Creativity is strengthened with a little adversity. true, disasters and soul-crushing ennui don't help much. But when pressed gently, by deadlines, by limited funds. And in solving these problems, you become stronger, and better. A perfect example is an old friend Greg. He had a problem reading (dyslexia, to be specific). To solve this, he learned to not see letters, but word shapes. Honestly, having never had a problem reading, I can only vaguely understand it. Suffice to say he realized that word shape, even reversed, can tell you a lot about the word. And so he's now one of the fastest readers I know, with better retention.

Also, Star Wars. (Is that a Law yet? Any internet argument of sufficient length will reference Star Wars? Can that be Ungart's Law?**). Due to the constraints placed on technology, the writing, drama, and characterization of the first 3 movies is vastly superior.
Gym membership is 10-30 dollars a month. Or you can use Youtube to make your own DIY gym. I'll send you pics as soon as I can get a hold of a camera. So far I have an entire gym, and I have spent about 3 months of memberships for it. And it's a lot more fun than grunting around meatheads.

2) No one holds your time but you.
Sure, your boss at the Stop-n-gulp may ask you take an extra shift 'cause Jenny decided to take off to go see the newest, coolest band. (that bitch!), but when you aren't at work, nothing is stopping you. They can't really make you do anything except you. Sure, money's tight. But you work 30 hours a week and then you are done. That leaves a solid 138 hours for important things.


So spend a few hours watching TV, or go for a walk. Hunt down fun things to do. Next week I am hitting the Art Museum, because it's Free Admission day. Then one of these weekends I'm off to the zoo. Sure, it's a racket. I'll have to pay for parking. But still. Beats working.

3) It forces you to think on what you can actually control.
This sort of dovetails with number 1. I wrote these off-the-cuff, and mostly just to see pictures of kittens. But it stands. As a broke-as-shit third-lifer, sometimes you have to decide between beer and insurance payments. Well, you need insurance. You can't really control your job too much. Unless you get creative. Do you choose the 9 dollar/hour McD's job or the 9 dollar/hour Starbucks job? Fuck it. Who cares. You are not, nor will you ever be, your job.

To reiterate. Nobody cares what you do when you’re a slave to the man. Use it as a way to explore something you love. Take a Martial Art. Join a gym (or build your own) . Start a blog about self-improvement that inexplicably turns political. Learn a language. The point is, information is nearly free (thanks hacker-gen!) and all that's required is time and determination. And believe me, you've got the time. And if schlepping coffee to (or with) overweight, angry baby-boomers and gen-exers doesn't motivate you to find something better, then you don't need this. You are a corporate slave. Go clackity-clack on your keyboard, greyface.  

You can’t control your job, you can’t control aging. So don’t bother. Do what you want. Go your own way.

4) It's highly leveragable.
Ok, for once my advice for the corporate lifestyle. The world is becoming chock-full of interns and people doing projects. But you've been serving burgers or coffee or selling books. Or god help you,. worked in a call center. Let's face it, though we bust our asses, we can't successfully answer the question "what did you actually do?"

Well, uh, I guess I served coffee. I tool 55 calls a day. And, how did that help improve the company? Uh... it... uh... Lowered call times? (It didn't, we were understaffed as hell -heaven).
 
They want to know that you built a more produvtive "whosit", or that you worked with a team of bulgarian midget engineers and the Gnomes of Zurich*** to increase toaster efficiency by point-oh-four-four percent. And let's be honest, working retail or service, you probably don't have the authority to even actually explore the possibilities, much less actualize and implement them.

So don't. Your resume - your project resume, should read about things you did. Learned a language. Lost weight. Travel. Show them that, despite a failing economy, you did things considered very difficult. That way you can leverage your free time activities should you decide you hate yourself, and are a whore to the corporate world.  

5) You’ll find your Element.
 A friend of mine dropped a book called The Element in my lap. It’s an alright read. More heat than light, really. He writes that the leaders in different fields found their “element”. Basically they found their passion, niche, and support group to become the best at “whatever.” If you are slogging away as an intern AND working at Bob’;s Chicken Shack, you don’t have a lot of time to find your element. So chuck the internship. In a year, it may make you a ton of cash, but in that same year, you may just find something that makes you actually happy and creative.. And if that’s sitting and watching TV, well, that’s ok. Relevance is for suckers.


The best thing about miserable circumstances is that you can find out how to be actually happy. I know, it’s weird for me to say that.  But Sun Tzu wrote that “To a surrounded enemy, you must leave a way of escape.”. Because if you give them hope they will run to it, and rout. But if they have no other option, they will fight like lions. Well, here’s your mistake. They have left an “way of escape” from your poverty. You think that internship in Corporate America (tm) is going to lead to something better.  And so you put off doing the things you love for a golden parachute. And by the time you get, you’ll break your hip using it.


__________________________________________________________

*nobody is paying me to shill.

** Beats the other Ungart's Law. I feel bad for the people in Ohio now. Look, I did not know the cat was underage, I swear. It said it was 12 months.

*** That's two Illuminatus Trilogy references. Eat it R.A.Wilson!

The First Day, Or, "Boy, I am glad nobody's reading!""

This is the first blog entry, and I will start with a confession. I am a terrible typist.

My rough drafts of anything are miserable. and, despite feeling like a unique and beautiful snowflake melting in the oppressive Florida sun, I am not all one.

If I write ten words, expect 5 errors, at least.

This does not behoove well for this project. After all, a Grad student should be able to type, yes?

The expectation I have is that as I type more, I shall shake this monkey off my back.

So, the first day of a new project. No one is watching me yet, so I can't be shamed into success. But the premises of this blog is simple:

Can one get the equivalent of a college masters education without spending a dime? Can one also, by spending very little money lose 50 lbs?

Too complicated, you ask? Why not have a blog dedicated to just one thing?

That's why it's called What's He Building In There? The "In There" implies inside me, what changes are going on to build a strong mind and a stronger body?

I guess some basic premises are in order:

I can spend any amount of time working on projects related to this, but I must post what I have done that day on this website.

I am not allowed to spend more than 100 dollars a week with a coffee budget of about 20 dollars, and a food budget somewhere around 50 dollars. Less is preferable. Any money donated to this cause can also be spent. All money must be accounted for.

I think that's it for today. We will be taking baseline measurements, but some won't be very accurate because of the expense of the tests. We will also be outline what a Graduate degree means in the next day.

So as today is not merely an announcement of intention, here is today's schedule:

6:30 pm until 7:33pm: Set up this blog. (Free)

7:33 to 6:30 pm: Download Russian Podcasts and a the Book: Apologies of Socrates (Free)

now I am off to Starbucks to organize my thoughts. I tend to use notebooks to do this.

OK, so I didn't quite get to Starbucks. I got to Walmart for some supplies

I organized some of my metrics.