You're Taking Up A Seat
I ranted last week about an idiot who used to "practice" law for 20 yrs. and now he's running a sham tech college.
It's said today that people will go through three careers in their lifetime. With the changing, fickle job market and people living to retirement, that seems likely. But then I have a friend who's in his late 70s and still practicing law. He regails me with law stories from the 1940s. How the Hell didn't he jump careers two or three times?
This has all gotten me thinking about wasted opportunity and how it pisses me off. I have wasted lots of opportunity. I have wondered if there's the brass ring. Someone read one of my scripts and said, "if you have more stuff, let me look at it." I did nada. Back in the 80s, I was in the queue to code v1. of Civilization. Civlization! (in a fantasy world, there is a time dilator where I can kiss Alice good night, pop into the dilator, play three weeks of Civ, come out and go to sleep with Cheryl). I actually keep that acceptance letter handy and read it to myself to sting me good when I start new projects. In a sense, it seems like there are so many brass rings. I just need to practice to jump to get them.
What has me pissed is people who take up seats. There are so many spots at university. If you get in, someone didn't If you get that seat, consider yourself lucky. What happens if you take up that seat for four or six years? Well, you had better practice what you were taught. Otherwise, the person who could have had your seat could have done that.
You could look at it one way: What if the person in your place was the next Col. Green, Lee Quan or Khan Noonian Singh? Then, sitting interference would have been good. What if you instead took up the seat of someone with low grades that was one spot away from getting in. There, he would have bloomed and found himself? What if he grabbed that bottom rung, pulled himself into this bigger world and accomplished something? Stephen Hawking was so brilliant that he was apathetic about school.
I know people who have had a year off to write and pissed it away lounging about Montreal or their apartment. I know people who have had time off to try something new and spent the whole time inventing reasons not to do anything new just yet. My opinion: You're taking up a seat. In "Brave New World", people were in a utopia not because the Deltas were shit upon. It was a utopia because the Deltas were given rights and responsibilities that were actually at their level: no reaching, no boredom. Sure we all want to be Alphas. Too bad, some of us just have to line up for soma and live with it.
Remember: In the pursuit of happiness, you're running for something that no one has promised to give you. That's why "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is a scam. If you're not alive, don't worry. Liberty: if you're given liberty that means it can also be taken away. In other words, you don't have liberty as its equivalent to anarchy. And the pursuit of happiness? The pursuit makes poor guys who should look for factory jobs aspire to be rappers. It makes starry eyed geeks with ADD think they can write the next great piece of vampire lore. Sometimes you're taking up the seat you were intended for. Sometimes you're playing musical chairs and when you get up, someone else has your only seat.
It's said today that people will go through three careers in their lifetime. With the changing, fickle job market and people living to retirement, that seems likely. But then I have a friend who's in his late 70s and still practicing law. He regails me with law stories from the 1940s. How the Hell didn't he jump careers two or three times?
This has all gotten me thinking about wasted opportunity and how it pisses me off. I have wasted lots of opportunity. I have wondered if there's the brass ring. Someone read one of my scripts and said, "if you have more stuff, let me look at it." I did nada. Back in the 80s, I was in the queue to code v1. of Civilization. Civlization! (in a fantasy world, there is a time dilator where I can kiss Alice good night, pop into the dilator, play three weeks of Civ, come out and go to sleep with Cheryl). I actually keep that acceptance letter handy and read it to myself to sting me good when I start new projects. In a sense, it seems like there are so many brass rings. I just need to practice to jump to get them.
What has me pissed is people who take up seats. There are so many spots at university. If you get in, someone didn't If you get that seat, consider yourself lucky. What happens if you take up that seat for four or six years? Well, you had better practice what you were taught. Otherwise, the person who could have had your seat could have done that.
You could look at it one way: What if the person in your place was the next Col. Green, Lee Quan or Khan Noonian Singh? Then, sitting interference would have been good. What if you instead took up the seat of someone with low grades that was one spot away from getting in. There, he would have bloomed and found himself? What if he grabbed that bottom rung, pulled himself into this bigger world and accomplished something? Stephen Hawking was so brilliant that he was apathetic about school.
I know people who have had a year off to write and pissed it away lounging about Montreal or their apartment. I know people who have had time off to try something new and spent the whole time inventing reasons not to do anything new just yet. My opinion: You're taking up a seat. In "Brave New World", people were in a utopia not because the Deltas were shit upon. It was a utopia because the Deltas were given rights and responsibilities that were actually at their level: no reaching, no boredom. Sure we all want to be Alphas. Too bad, some of us just have to line up for soma and live with it.
Remember: In the pursuit of happiness, you're running for something that no one has promised to give you. That's why "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" is a scam. If you're not alive, don't worry. Liberty: if you're given liberty that means it can also be taken away. In other words, you don't have liberty as its equivalent to anarchy. And the pursuit of happiness? The pursuit makes poor guys who should look for factory jobs aspire to be rappers. It makes starry eyed geeks with ADD think they can write the next great piece of vampire lore. Sometimes you're taking up the seat you were intended for. Sometimes you're playing musical chairs and when you get up, someone else has your only seat.
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