This is a deeply personal post. Typically I like to keep this blog technical in nature but I recently did an exercise that I felt could be useful to others. I’m not a terribly introspective person and I’m generally content with my life but once in a while the mood of self-review hits me.

I was listening to the TED Radio Hour espisode on “What can you control in this chaotic world?” Normally NPR productions drive me up the wall. I have a lot of trouble with the cadence of speech, or the “NPR” voice. Today I had hit the bottom of my list of usual Linux and Gaming podcasts and was trying to find something to listen to while I cleaned up the house. Given the drought of content, I hit play on the first podcast in the backlog of my “possibly interesting productions” list.

It was a generally unoffensive and insightful episode. At the end they played some clips from Bill Burnett’s talk “5 Steps to Designing The Life You Want”. I thought the first part of his exercise on making a plan for one’s life would be an interesting exercise to go through, so I fired up apostrophe, put it in focus mode, and just started typing. Pasted below this intro is my stream of consciousness from that text buffer, without any editing.

I think my takeaways from this exercise are that I am relatively comfortable with my present, I am uncertain about my future (as many people are), and I probably don’t see too far past the end of my nose very often. I am on the fence about completing the second part of the exercise: connecting the parts of the first exercise and prototyping my future. For better or worse, I am far too busy at the moment to think much about it.

The Exercise

Connecting the Dots: Who you are, what you believe, and what you do in the world. If you can connect these, you will see your life as meaningful.

First Exercise:

1. Write a work view: What is your theory of work? Not the job you want but why do you work? What is it for? What’s work in service of? (250 words)
2. Write a life view: What’s the meaning of life? What’s the big picture? Why are you here? What is your faith or your view of the world? (250 words)

Second Exercise, a thought experiment for three futures:

1. The thing you’re doing right now. Just do it.. it’s working. What does that look like?
2. Your job no longer exists and we don’t need you to do that anymore. Now what are you going to do?
3. What’s your wildcard plan? What would you do if you had enough money and you didn’t care what people thought?

My Responses

My Theory of Work

My theory of work is that work is a means to an end but that end may be a varied thing. At the moment I work predominantly for two reasons: one because I feel like I have to and two because I am conditioned to work.

I feel like I have to work because I have things that need to be paid for. Various services like the utilities or “healthcare”, food, and all the other necessities. I work to acquire money so that the people that depend on me can also have these things. Additionally, I need money for a lot of the leisure activities in life given there are not a lot of places you can exist for free any longer.

I am conditioned to work. When I am not working I am severely uncomfortable and feel like I am doing something wrong or that the fact that I am not working will cause something to be off in the future. Writing these words gave me a short spike of adrenaline. There is a lot of fear in not working. I work because I am afraid of not working.

I also work because I have been told that I will fail if I do not work. My worth has regularly been measured by my ability to work and my output at work. Many people who are above me in some way (parents, management, etc.) seem to care deeply about my output, and in some cases, the returns from that output.

My Life View

I find that I do not know what the meaning to life is, though I think about it not-infrequently. Sometimes it bothers me to not know but most of the time I am generally indifferent about not knowing. There seems to be a great indifference toward me from the universe or whatever happens to be beyond that so I return in kind.

I also find that I don’t know what the big picture is. I am inclined to feel like the big picture should be mutual aid. Helping those around us to be safe and happy. Generally doing good and living by the mantra “be excellent to each other.”

I am here because my parents wanted me to be here and I’m not sure that there is more to it than that. I continue to be here because I generally want to be. I continue to be here because I want my son and my wife to be comfortable and content. I continue to be here because I want my elderly family members to have good quality to their remaining years.

My faith remains one of general agnosticism. I have never seen, heard, or felt “god” regardless of the number of times I have tried with great effort. More often than not I am severely uncomfortable with spiritual, religious, or faith based gatherings. Partially due to the severe levels of hypocrisy that exists within them and partially because of a lack of control in one’s life that faith presents. I do not reject the notion of diety, though. I do not yet have enough evidence to support either idea: that god(s) exist or that they don’t. Perhaps there is some level of Pascal’s wager here.

Plan 1: The thing I’m doing right now.

I continue on as I am: constant circles of chasing and performing technical work. I receive above average pay for my services in exchange for a heavy congitive and mental stress load. I continue to balance this through metering hours, guarding personal time, and physical activity. I am afforded comfort as a trade for that stress. I am able to work from home and be with my family. I am not displeased with this work but it would be nice not to be chasing work all the time.

Plan 2: My job no longer exists and my skills are no longer needed.

It would be very difficult to make the same level of income that I do now and I would have to be re-trained for other work. I would have to spend a great deal of time away from my family. I think I would enjoy something mechanical or physical. Perhaps working as a lineman, a fire fighter, or a forest ranger. I could also try to work at one of the electrical facilities as I have friends in both of the local power companies. This would be close to my current pay.

My body would eventually wear out in those trades as I am already in my middle age so perhaps it would make more sense to attempt some sort of business venture. I don’t know where I would acquire the capital to start, but after running my own business and seeing my wife run hers, I am less afraid of being independent in work than I was when I was younger. Capitalism is uncomfortable but there are ways to make that less worrisome.

Plan 3: Money is not an issue and I don’t care what others think.

The first course of action would be to absolve my family’s debts and ensure that their homes were properly fixed, perhaps getting everybody closer together on a single property if they were willing.

Once that was accomplished, I would want to do some sort of service for a community. I like the idea of being a librarian, a specialized teacher of some kind, helping to clean up or fix up spaces, providing clothing and shelter for people, food for people, providing spaces where people can go without needing to spend simply to exist.

I don’t care to interact with a lot of people. I would like to avoid recognition and simply handle things and help. Provide my physical efforts or money or presence wherever it is useful. Plan 3 would be to serve people after my family is set up to pursue their plan 3.