I'm back to 18 hour workdays (although that's interspersed with meals and stuff; not really a “true” 18 hours of work), and even with that I'm falling behind… Every tool though that I build these days is integrated into IAM's user verification system with a goal of being able to have others helping — so the time is an investment I hope — but it seems like all that accomplishes is making schedule space for the next task.
It's like a hydra.
And it really makes me understand how these businessmen fall into sad lives that are nothing but work — at least I like what I do (it's just the exhaustion that gets to me). They're trapped I think; not knowing what to do, being on one-way paths where no one can see the sacrifices they make except them, and eventually their misery explodes out and destroys everyone around them.
It's “funny”… Years ago when BME would have a couple hundred images added per month, I'd get a lot of “thanks for the cool update” messages*, and zero complaints minus the “you so sick” funmail. Now the monstrous majority is people saying “why are BME updates getting smaller and smaller”, even though I'm literally adding thousands of images every week — more all the time — if it wasn't for the fact that people seemed happier when things weren't updated so much, I'd have assumed that maybe it was that some people have a “cup half empty” attitude, but it's more than that.
* This isn't a request for such messages — I know those people are all still out there… I learned a long time ago, that for every happy person that emails you, there are five thousand who sit silent, whereas unhappy people are hundreds of times more likely to write.
I really think it's a reflection of a much larger global malaise.
Maybe the grass is always greener in the past, but I have this notion that there were simpler times. Are people starting to clue in that every day that passes is a day closer to the apocalypse, and that there's not a damn thing we can do to stop it? I think everyone feels trapped; we know how to fix things, but we also know that unless we all commit ourselves to fixing the problem, those of us in the ethical minority will “lose”. And we just don't have enough trust at this point in society it seems to step out onto that plank.
I mean, what is there that makes life good? Friends? Food? Sex? Really, it's pretty damn simple.
St. Paul in his letter to the Ephesians
Said, "It came to me upon a midnight clear
I finished writing all of my gospel
Now all I seem to want is sex and beer"
Back in '96 or whenever it was that Shawn and I launched BME/extreme, “extreme” was the big catch-word. Everything started getting that label… and it wasn't just marketing… maybe it was at first, but it's a chicken-and-egg thing. We collectively turned the contrast up on life, and jacked up the saturation, and either observed the effects or induced them. Everything — especially ideas — become full-throttle or dead with not a whole lot in between. Not only that, but the concept of “truth” has all but disappeared from Western culture, making reality obsolete, and the idea of any sort of objectivism irrelevant.
I've seen some amazing stuff, I mean, really wonderful stuff. I've seen some horrible stuff as well — and little inbetween… It's a strange thing being told you saved someone's life… Wonderful, but strange in what it leads to. It's an even stranger thing to watch someone kill themselves and then have their friends tell you that you could have stopped it (three times now, that I know of…). I don't think it's normal to find out you introduced your young friends to predatory pedophiles… it's even stranger to see one of them on the news getting arrested as a serial killer, and then suddenly everyone pretends that they never knew them.
“Jack who?”
Well, back to work now.
Post a Comment