You've probably heard me use the term "Too Many Interests Syndrome," on these pages
In some ways, it's the bane of my existence; in others it has made my life very interesting and — at times — distressingly chaotic.
These days, I am more tired than anything else, as I wrote the other day. At some point in my day, I always end up reflecting on the fact that I am definitely NOT 29 anymore. That's not an invitation to a "pity party," it's merely an observation.
Sometimes, I just want to sit by the creek and relax...
I also reflect on the reality that there are things we don't really get to choose. Like our root temperament and personality.
My own "natural placement" is that I tend to be a very diligent worker, but my "highest and best use" is to give me one type of work to do, all the time... rather than send me back and forth between a jillion different things. "Perpetual multi-tasking," if you will. I suck at it.
Sure, we can "teach ourselves" to act and work in certain ways as a practice, but there are inevitably some things we engage in simply for the purposes of life functionality given our current paradigms... and we would abandon those in short order (even after years) if our circumstances changed to where we were no longer in a place where we felt like we have to do those things.
Of course, we don't really have to do ANYthing... "having to" tends to be a story we tell ourselves, in service of being able to cope with unpleasant and stressful times in life.
For example, I don't actually have to work 70 hours a week at multiple jobs/businesses, but I choose to because I prefer a warm bed, a roof over my head and indoor plumbing to a plastic bag and a cardboard box under an overpass. But I still say I always have to work.
Damselfly on a rock...
Wal-Mart and The Pursuit of the "Simple" Life
I have often dreamt of the possibility of living a fairly simple life.
And whereas it may be possible to live a simple life — a life, for example, that isn't one long chain of multi-tasking — our broader societal paradigm doesn't really want anyone to have and embrace simplicity.
Simplicity tends to make us autonomous happy individuals... which stands in contrast to a system that "wants" us to feel like trapped rats in a laboratory maze we resign ourselves to as being "life."
I read an interesting "opinion piece" the other day, about the capitalist corporate culture in this day and age. The author asserted that modern-day corporations seek only one thing: To extract MAXIMUM VALUE from whatever business or industry they are involved with.
On the surface, one might be inclined to say "I don't see how that's a BAD thing!?!?" but it's not as harmless as it looks.
A good example might be Wal-Mart... their "formula" has always been to go into a community, drive the local merchants out of business by selling deeply discounted products, then hire the people who had those businesses to work at minimum wage, while re-distributing their profits to the "investors/shareholders."
In the process, the community ends up with a whole class of "somewhat struggling" individuals who have no choice but to shop the off-price Wal-Mart Supercenter because their incomes are too low to patronize the traditional "Mom-and-pop capitalists" who charge higher prices.
It's hardly a healthy situation.
Interconnected veins in a leaf
And it's not just Wal-Mart.
It's Amazon, in the online selling industry.
It's Uber, in the passenger transportation field.
The Hidden "Cost" of Rejecting the System
Although things may eventually change, the "cost" of rejecting this rather "predatory" system is pretty high, most of the time.
Mrs. Denmarkguy and I rejected it some years ago, to chart our own course, on our own terms. But the cost is very high... whether it's my struggle as a technical writer, competing against work outsourced to Asia, to people with legitimate English degrees from American Universities, but who are willing to work for a wage I cannot survive on...
... or our small store competing with cheap copies from China AND trying to do so under the abovesaid paradigm where many would-be customers around us are trapped in the aforementioned WalMart "feedback loop."
Which gets me back to the reality that my being able to wake up in the morning, work hard but a reasonable amount at just one thing, and it being enough is just a pipe dream.
But I keep thinking about it!
Thanks for reading!
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Created at 181218 16:09 PDT
I have long thought that a solution is to form/join an intentional community of conscientious people who are able to greatly reduce costs by sharing some costs like cars, tools, child care, etc.
It is enormously wasteful that even next door neighbors have to all individually own certain tools that are only used occasionally. Ladders? drills? cars? laser printers?
The problem is, of course, finding a group of people who can treat others as they would have others treat them. (And have the awareness to clean and put back in their place the tools they use. Now I'm starting to feel weary too LoL)
I have come across many intentional communities; even here in our small city of 10,000, there are six co-housing projects. But what I mostly see is communities formed not out of educated consciousness, but by various social dropouts and whereas the idealism behind them may be fair the execution tends to be a group of tents and shacks in a pasture where the primary "value" seems to be the freedom to be "baked" senseless, all the time. Maybe that's a harsh indictment... and there definitely are exceptions.
My (late) cousin in Denmark lived in an intentional community there for many years, and it was much more like what you describe: A very nice group of small cabins around a central "community house," but everybody had their own space, their own kitchens... individualism and cooperation lived side-by-side. But it also came with about a $75K "membership fee" price tag, and you got to live there as a "guest" for three months (paying rent) before the community would vote on you to decided whether you fit the community, or everybody parted ways with no hard feelings.
After that, it was sort of like the old UK system of ownership being called a "99 year leasehold." I guess many who are into "communes" and "collectives" would pooh-pooh it as an exclusive Club Med, but the point was that the high price of admission made people give a $hit about what they were participants in. Sad as it may seem, people's degree of "caring" is often directly linked to how much of their own skin they have in the game...
Oh goodness are your preaching to the choir with me on this one. I literally call myself out all the time about doing 7 things with mediocrity instead of just being really good at one.... I still continue to do it though with all my scaredycatguide stuff - steemit blog, radio show, website and then there is my real estate investing and occasionally acting as an agent.
Sheesh.....it's crazy.
It's a bit crazy, yes. And I'm no longer buying the "it's a sign of the times!" platitude. If that's TRUE, then we need to do something to change the times... so the times become more "human friendly."
Whereas I am all about free markets and enterprise and such, I have been reading a lot recently about the "dark side" of the capitalist system... and how much of what we currently look at as "capitalism" is actually an extremely predatory system that's FAR removed from the "mom and pop capitalism" that's the ideal the US was built on. A system that has as primary objective not innovation and excellence, but to extract value from and destroy its competitors is very toxic.
But that's a sidetrack.
I actually have a long ass dream of becoming a world class forex trader despite being told by many that I wouldn’t. This skill is something I solely focus on day to day in hopes of getting better at because I can fall back on it when shit hits the fan or I can do it as a side hobby when I go to work in the morning.
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