The Demotivation

It doesn't take long working for the government to figure out that hard work doesn't pay in the long run.  In fact, it is quite the opposite.  No matter how hard your brain tries to deny the evidence, you eventually realize and then accept that hard work means nothing in terms of pay or advancement in the federal service. 

There are people that will deny that this is the case.  These people are truly delusional , the people that somehow believe their service is special, important, or meaningful in some measurable way.  These people can either be managers who erroneously believe their promotions were based on merit, or workers who have fooled themselves into thinking that they provide a unique and special service to the American public.  Something that can't be found for cheaper elsewhere, or perhaps some special property that makes them, and only them, a unique snowflake.  Some are just obvious wastes of space that defy all logic, and justify their existence through some morbid sort of unexplainable magic.  This may seem fantastical to someone who has never worked in the federal service, but it seems downright run of the mill to those unfortunate enough to have worked in a federal setting for extended periods of time.

False promises:  Performance Rewards and Promotions in the federal service.

First, we will tackle the almost laughable concept of "performance awards."  I use quotations here, because when compared to the private sector, "performance awards" in the federal service are meaningless and miniscule. So much so that most people would consider them insulting.

We will also discuss the haphazard world of promotions in the federal service. I say haphazard because to understand the workings of upper level government management, one must delve into the realm of the insane.

To begin to understand these concepts, you first need to understand the basics about the federal pay system.

The General Schedule Pay System

The general schedule pay system is the basic federal pay system that most federal jobs fall under.  This system is divided into grades and steps.  The current GS schedule from the Office of Personnel Management is shown below in Table 1.  A grade is a large span of pay, ranging from GS-1 to GS-15.  The maximum pay in the GS system is currently $157,100 per annum.  Bachelor's level graduates are typically brought in at the GS-5/7 range.  Those with advanced degrees are typically brought in at higher grades (9-11), but it depends heavily on the degree obtained and the type of work being done.  After performing a year of work in one grade, you are eligible to apply for positions in one grade above your current grade in the same line of work.  Typically, promotions up to the 11/12/13 level occur quickly, depending on the full performance level of the position, which defines the top grade obtainable in the position.  For instance, an analyst position will hire at the GS-5/7/9 grade at entry level with a full performance level of 12.  This means that someone hired at GS-5 can work their way up to GS-12 in the same position, without having to compete for the same job up to grade 12. 

OPM Pay Tables:  2015 (link to external website)

For steps, there is a waiting period for different ranges.  Advancement up to step 4 requires a waiting period of one year per step.  From steps 4 to 8, there is a two year waiting period.  For steps 8 to 10, there is a three year waiting period.  Herein lies the main  issue with the GS system: all continuing pay raises at the full performance level are obtained by length of service, no matter what your performance has been, with one rule:  To get a step increase, you must be rated as "fully successful" in your current job description. 

The definition of "fully successful" is different depending on your job classification and agency and means that your supervisor must believe that you are accomplishing your job goals at an acceptable level during your annual performance review.  What this means for most positions, in reality, is that you maintain a body temperature somewhere around 98 degrees and continue breathing.  It has been my experience in the federal service that supervisors do not want to alienate their workers, so that "fully successful" is the absolute minimum that any supervisor will assign each employee.  With unions, destitute morale, and other headaches, it is much easier not to rate even the lowest performers under your purview as less than "fully successful."

"Performance Awards"

As far as bonuses, they vary widely by organization, but in general your annual performance rating in the federal service can be thought of as a grade, just like back in school, from 0-4 in several elements (typically four).  A grade of 4 is outstanding in an element, akin to an "A" back in school.  A grade of 0 is "unsuccessful," or "F."  The elements are averaged together to give your overall rating (or GPA, as it could be thought of).  Bonuses are assigned a dollar value per point.  For instance, if your organization assigns a value of $800 per point, your bonus for a perfect GPA of 4.0 would be $3200.  This is unearned income, so the taxes on it approach 50%, leaving your outstanding performance over an entire year at a whopping $1600.  Hourly, using the OPM guideline of 2087 hours worked per year, your outstanding performance nets you $0.76 per hour in your pocket, or about $61 every two weeks.

Now, let us contrast the benefits of outstanding performance with those of fully successful performance.  Fully successful is defined as an overall rating (GPA) of 2, a solid C effort.  In this case, your annual bonus is only $1600, of which you take home around $800.  Still, this nets you an extra $0.38 cents average per hour, or about $30.66 per two week pay period.  If we take the difference between the outstanding candidates bonus and that of a fully successful candidate, we arrive at a difference of $30.66 per pay period.  To put this into perspective, the current step increase in the GS-13 pay band is $2,998, and at a tax rate of 23% results in an hourly increase of $1.10 and a pay period increase of $88.19.  Therefore, the reward for your outstanding work is less than half of one step.

A fully successful candidate will get the same step increases as an outstanding candidate.  While the outstanding candidate may have better promotion potential than the fully successful candidate, this motivation wears out once the GS-15 level is obtained, and in many cases at the GS-14 or GS-13 level, in organizations in which promotion to higher grade positions is not possible.  Spoiler alert:  this covers most organizations in the federal service.

Promotions in the federal service

Promotions are a tricky thing in the federal service.  The methods for obtaining promotions vary widely between organizations, but the general promotion environment is determined by a capped number of high grades that is defined for each organization.  For example, an organization may be capped at having 10% GS-15s, 15% GS-14s, 30% GS-13s, etc.  These positions are rarely distributed equitably among departments in an organization.  Upper management uses the higher grades as bargaining chips on a regular basis, so don't expect a high grade to stay in your department if someone retires.  It can vaporize in an instant.

To complicate matters, you can only get a high grade position if you have 12 months of service in the same position, one grade lower.  Therefore, a GS-13, even if they consistently perform at a level consistent with most GS-14s or GS-15s, can only apply for GS-14 positions.  GS-12s, similarly, can't apply for GS-14s or GS-15s.  As a particularly horrendous example, in rural communities the federal government expects GS-12s, in some cases, to have supervisory duties.  In cities, supervisory duties are typically GS-14 or GS-15 positions.  If the GS-12, performing the same work, applies for a job in the city, human resources will simply throw out their application because they do not have the prerequisite experience, even though they have performed the same duties.  There is a loophole that lets you state that you have performed high grade work in order to get around this nonsense, but these approaches generally meet with very little success.  

The people that get promotions in the federal government fall into several categories.  First, there are the ladder climbers.  These are the people that will do and say anything to work their way up the ladder.  The fastest ones spend a year (or less) in one job, and then immediately apply for anything at the next higher grade.  Typically, they are not interested at all in the work they will be performing, just in getting that high grade position.  Which means, when they get the job, they are not likely to enjoy what they are doing, and in another year they will apply for another position. 

Second, we move to seniority.  Many promotions in the federal government come down to seniority, meaning that the person with the most years wins.  Regardless of whether or not the person has become nothing but a dried husk of hatred, self-loathing, and solitude, seniority gets them the grade.

Another route to promotion is the leadership academy.  Many agencies have leadership programs to groom people for high grade positions.  In these situations, graduation from a training program practically guarantees an applicant a high grade position, regardless of previous experience.  This results in some truly strange situations in upper management, where the staff is forced to report to individuals that have absolutely no idea what is going on in the agency.  You can tell if your agency has one of these if in every meeting, every manager sounds like a bad carbon copy or broken record.  This is because they all listened to the same online course in their studies, and when a lack of knowledge confronts them, their brains revert to the organizationally-approved leadership handbook that was drilled into their heads.

In other cases, promotions are actually given to the poorest performers or those that have been formally disciplined for abhorrent behavior.  The logic in these cases goes like this:  I have a horrible performer.  I can't unload them on another group, because the other groups know they are awful.  They are poisoning the morale in my group.  What is my option to isolate them?  Promote them.

Of course, in those rare "I discovered a new species" moments, promotions are actually based on merit.  If you find one of these people, I recommend you transfer to work under them immediately.  It can provide at least a shield from the howling madness around you, knowing that you work with someone who defied the norm.

In a nutshell, promotions in the federal government are rarely based on merit.  Of course, no generalization is absolute.  What I mean is the majority of promotions are not based on merit, and rather that they are based on one's ability to "game the system," either through building connections (schmoozing, bullshitting, empire building, etc.), enrolling in a leadership program, or performing so badly that the organization has no choice but to promote you.  While I admire "gaming the system" as much as anyone, allowing it certainly erodes organizational confidence and morale.  Rewarding, and even encouraging behavior that is purely a means to an end, rather than dedicated performance, is at the heart of the federal service's broken promotion system.  And as far as morale in the organization, nothing utterly annihilates morale than a haphazard and unbalanced approach to awarding promotions.

Thought Experiment

Assume you are a worker in an small group of eight workers.  You are all GS-13s.  Thanks to congressional limits on funding and the number of high grades allowed in your organization, there are no opportunities for advancement to a higher grade in the foreseeable future.  Your base pay is the same or higher than two of your co-workers.  However, five of your co-workers get paid MORE than you.  Assume also that you are an outstanding performer.  You work every day as hard as you can to get your work done.  The remaining seven workers around you sit around all day, talk loudly, take long lunches, and get the absolute bare minimum done.  Your boss, seeing that you do work, rewards you with the work that the others cannot get done.  Your boss recognizes you with pieces of paper that do not have monetary or other value, and rates you as outstanding during the annual review.  Not wanting to sow discord in the group, the rest of the employees get fully successful reviews.  How long will you continue to work as hard as you can, without tangible benefits?  How long until you start thinking about leaving your organization?  A month?  A year?

Addicted to Speed

It occurred to me as I was swimming the other day.  I looked over into the lane beside me as someone blew past, clearly putting all they had into the lap they were swimming.  I was swimming along at my leisurely pace, just enjoying the fact that I wasn't at work.  The people around me that day all had their Speedo caps and low-drag suits, more in a fist fight with the water than swimming.  And that's when it hit me:  America is obsessed with speed.

Maybe not so much speed as competition.  In America, everything is taken to extremes.  Whatever you can do, you should do it faster, faster, faster.  You should run faster.  You should chase promotions, even in jobs for which you show no interest.  Get that promotion, it will make your life better.  You should play games only to win.  A whole nation full of people who transfer their own shattered dreams to the next generation,  hoping to transform their pathetic, work-dominated, stressful lives vicariously through their false hopes for their children.

Of course this all plays directly into the hands of the rich and powerful.  They can pit you against each other in a performance battle and shower whoever is willing to sacrifice the greatest portion of their life to their work wins.

"Winner takes all."  We've all heard it.  But is it true?  What do they take?   If you're talking sports, the winners are only getting a shiny medal from some higher authority, whether it be a trophy in little league or a massive salary from a professional sports team.  They're just marionettes dancing for the camera.  Convincing the people watching them that they are so great that you should buy the crap the TV is peddling to you.

It inundates our society.  Those who make more money are automatically assumed to be better people.  A whole television industry devoted to promulgating this lie.  Putting kids who can't spell but can throw a football at the top of a pedestal, making their lives so easy that people completely ignore the intellectual degradation of our society in favor of forcing their kids to play sports they hate with kids they hate more.  Feeding them a false standard that is to its very core meaningless, and then wondering why we have so many mass shootings.

The only thing I learned in graduate school was that foreign students were willing to work night and day for $19k/year, and that I wouldn't even get out of bed for $19k a year.   The only thing that has changed since then is that I will barely get out of bed for $120k per year.  In fact, for so paltry a sum, my employer should be thanking their gods that I bother to come in at all.

Opiate of the People

Karl Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people, that it was an insidious force used to overrule the minds of the working class.  This is certainly true in less advanced cultures.  In today's world, people strapping explosives to themselves for religious reasons has become all too familiar a scene.  Why do people do this?  Because their lives are so shitty that they will allow a maniac to promise them life eternal in exchange for strapping a bomb to yourself and killing a lot of innocent people.  Makes sense, if you're an uneducated wretch brought up in the forgotten wastes of the world.  But as far as believing ridiculous things, there is no shortage in the poorer parts of America, particularly in the "Bible Belt."  It's the same story that has played out for centuries.  Uneducated people will believe whatever you tell them, particularly if it strokes their self-worth, promises them a better life (carrot-dangling), and doesn't threaten the status quo of a homogenous, like-thinking mob.

My goal here is not to speak to the uneducated portion of the world.  Frankly, I don't believe that they are capable of understanding even the most basic of arguments.  My focus here is on something that is replacing religion as the opiate of the people.

In the educated world, religion is losing its grip.  It's not a far stretch from the basic lessons of biology, physics, and mathematics to realize that God doesn't exist.  There are always exceptions to the rule, of course.  There are spiritual scientists, even religious ones.  I can't explain their existence, but what I will say is that my hypothesis is the  following:

If you claim to be a scientist and you believe in God, then you aren't a true scientist. 

Basically, people who fall into this category have failed to apply objective criticism to their own belief structure.  The fact that they have the ability to apply these principles in their professional lives and refuse to do so in their personal lives is deplorable.  After all, a sentient mind is a terrible thing to waste.  But for these people, religion is still the opiate they choose to numb them to world, therefore they are not of primary concern to this discussion.

My focus here is alcohol.  For those of us that have lost religion, either through self-realization, education and reasoning, or outright rejection of mass mentality, there is a hole that is left.  Religious people don't have to worry about purpose.  Their purpose comes from God.  In fact, that's what scares religious people most when they start to think that God doesn't exist.  If God doesn't exist, why am I here?  Very good question.

The search for purpose in this world is not so simple.  Some people dedicate their lives to a cause they believe in.  But these causes typically don't pay well.  Most of us, caught up in the capitalistic urge to make a living, take jobs we hate to buy shit we don't need.  In my opinion, this approaches the level of stupidity that suicide bombers illustrate so very well.

So, you have a job you hate.  Your substitute for God has become money.  It's the thing you serve.  The thing you want most.  In all respects you have become money's slave.  The thing is, since you have no God, you have no purpose but for the amassment of funds. 

What do you do?  You drink.

You drink to forget how miserable you are with your work.  You drink to forget that your only purpose in life has become paying the bills.  You drink to forget that you are wasting your time on this planet, working endless hours in a place that you wouldn't dare lock your kids in for fear they will turn out just like you.  You drink to smother your unquenchable rage and hatred for society, which has locked you in a cage from which you see no escape.

Thus, in the place of religion, alcohol becomes the crutch that allows to you accept and even celebrate the status quo.  It dulls your senses and brings your intelligence down to the background level of humanity.  It muddles your ability to assess your life with reason and clarity.  When you drink, you can't focus on the true meaninglessness of your existence.  It makes you happy, at least until the next morning, when you end up back at the job you hate or wasting your weekend sleeping off the booze.

So why is it the opiate of the people?  Because, like religion, it serves the goals of our overlords so very well.  It keeps us in line.  It keeps us subjugated.  We don't act out.  There is no civil disobedience anymore.  We're all distracted by television, religion, booze, antidepressants, and an endless diversionary campaign to keep us so afraid of the world around us.  When you're not at work, you're locked up in your house watching advertisements for more shit you don't need, drinking the booze that is advertised on the screen, and pissing your life away.

This is all very good for the booze business, and for your employers.  It keeps you in your job, working slavishly to buy more things and throw money into the pockets of CEOs all over the country.  It's a perfect system for the subjugation of a populace.  For the dumb ones:  Religion.  For the educated ones:  Alcohol. 

For the ones that figure it out:  Marginalization.  The forces of alcohol and religion combined are very great in this world of ours.  Almost a perfect storm to keep the collective intelligence of mankind on what seems to be an unrecoverable death spin. 

Lest you think that I am complete outsider looking in:  I grew up in the Bible Belt.  I was baptized and believed, at least for a while, in the divine, the Holy Spirit, the whole lie.  I bought it hook, line and sinker for a while, until I reached my teens and achieved self-awareness.  I was dry until age 21, since after all, it was illegal.  I then spent a few years as a social drinker.  By the time my first job was in it's fourth year, alcohol was a regular part of my life.  I spent a few fleeting dry periods, but drank socially.  As work became more and more pointless, I began to drink more and more.  I recently stopped again, discovering that clarity returns like a vengeful avalanche between two and three weeks from the cessation of drinking.  Today is day 20.  And here I am.  I don't know where this is going, but I do know where I would like it to go.  I would like to never drink again.  Although it is probably my favorite thing to do, I am not at all willing to surrender reality back to a God in a bottle. 

Alcohol has become the equivalent of religion in my opinion.  And given my extreme disdain for religion, I am very reluctant to do something that, although a tangible object, accomplishes the very same thing.  I no longer wish to surrender my will to an external being, whether or not it happens to be real.

Alcohol is an antidepressant.  If you use it, it is your Zoloft.  In some cases, your Ambien.  It is a way to self-medicate and check out from the world around you.  Alcohol gets you high.  You accept your fate.  You will spend your life doing something you hate, year after year, calm as a Hindu cow on the outside.  Even if you are a raging mess on the inside, you appear normal to the outside world.  It makes you fat.  It wrecks your metabolism.  And still you clamor for more. 

Most people will ask me why I am dry.  I will ask them, why do you need to be wet?

Rewarding Performance

A thought came to me today - a thought about the ratio of work to pay.  For me, that ratio has reached an absolute minimum.

And why are so many people so incapable of even the simplest tasks?  That's right, the educational system.  People leaving our schools lack fundamental skills that prepare them for the real world.   Not surprising, since today's school curriculum focuses on passing standardized tests while completely ignoring the need to teach critical thinking skills.

Many people bemoan the state of our educational system.  However, I have come to realize that we, at least those of us who are capable of teaching ourselves, should be celebrating.  Without a dysfunctional educational system, how could we hope to command such a work to pay ratio?

What would happen if our educational system became functional and produced rational, thinking individuals? We would have a tidal wave of people who could do the jobs that need to be done, increasing the supply of skilled workers and decreasing the demand (salaries) for skilled work. 

The fact is, I find my job easy.  So easy that sometimes I want to scream at the walls.  But at the same time, 90% of people stemming from our educational system would not be able to perform my job function. 
 

I know a lot of teachers.  You know the old adage:  "Those who can, do.  Those who can't . . . . teach."  It now seems they are self-replicating, passing their "vast" knowledge of the real world on to their students.

Think back - it may be harder for some of you than others.  Did your teachers seem like smart people to you?  If so, enjoy digging that ditch or flipping that burger.  If not, I'm guessing you get the picture.  And let's be honest, can you really call a person with an education in education educated?  What did they teach you, how to learn?  How people learn.  Apparently they left out the part about failure being the best teacher.

So, a big thanks to all the teachers as they prepare to take the summer off.  You've earned it.  By performing so poorly that somehow, even a shred of knowledge can pay such vast returns.

So enjoy your summer off, and think about doing an even worse job next year in your "noble" profession.  I don't want my kids to have any competition.

The New God

The thing we die for.  The thing we live for.  The thing for which we spend cooped up in little cubicles or offices, wasting the best years of our life.  That's right, if you live in America, your God is money.

People can pretend all they want that they have other Gods.  The thing that rules their existence is cold cash.  It's the vehicle by which society has imposed upon itself a caste system, with the ultra-rich at the top of the heap.   They buy politicians, Hollywood, and everything else.  News networks, internet providers, buses, trains, buildings, and plaster them with ads to make you chase the same materialistic goals that they have decided for you.

Buy my book, you need new furniture, a bigger house and car than you'll ever need.  You NEED a car.  Thousands of years of civilization without them but by your new god, you will drive and drive and drive to pump gas into your car and money into their pockets.

George Carlin said that we are way too prosperous for our own good.  No shit.  It's too easy here if you have a brain to make a lot of money and do nothing with your life in this country.  I'll put aside all arguments of "nothing matters" for the moment.  Too easy to crawl into that box you call a home and insulate, get in your habits, and wake up 60 years old wondering what the hell happened.

A bunch of rich magnates got together over the weekend to discuss "inclusive capitalism," finally realizing that hoarding of wealth and resources tends to piss off 99.9999% of the population.  They discussed that when capitalism is seen as one of society's problems, it's a bad thing.  Capitalism is another word for slavery.  Capitalism is the worship of  otherwise worthless pieces of paper and the things others will give you for them, printed by governments to keep you in line.  It's an ingenious system.  Even more powerful than religion.  You can get people to throw away their lives for religion.  But I don't see many people spending 40-70 hours a week trying to get their religious fix.  They only do that for money.

Needless to say I've come to find the whole thing a bit trite and meaningless.  It's been 26 days since my last drink and I think the effects are just starting to wear off.  I feel the urge to trash my car keys, throw everything in my house away that I don't need, move into a smaller and cheaper place, eat the cheapest food, stop buying anything for anybody, start to put my money where my mouth is, and start retracting from this sick, diseased, and dying world. 

I mean, how much shit do you need?

Do I want my kid to end up like me, working a job I hate to buy shit we don't need?  And worse, having my wife work a job she hates to buy shit we don't need.  Do I want to pay $15k-$25k per year to have someone else raise my kids?  Just so they can drill the same, prescribed, designed, capitalistic propaganda into his brain, year after year, until he ends up just another peon in their regime?  Spending so much time with other forgotten kids of our era, with constant exposure to tablets, cell phones, spastic TV, etc., etc., that he ends up an undisciplined, spastic mess?

I don't think so.  Clarity is a hell of a thing.  You start to see the world as it is.  And South Park, "You're Getting Old, Man," had it right.  This world is all shit.  It's not in the capitalist overlord's interest to have an informed public.  Have you seen the news, lately?  They spend all of 30 seconds per story.  No depth.  No analysis.  No comprehension.  I can only assume other countries see our news programs and laugh at the utter lack of information being supplied to the American public.  If you haven't tried it, watch a few BBC stories and you'll know what I'm talking about.

And education, wow.  To give the rich tax breaks we have sacrificed the quality of our educational system.  Of course, this, along with their news propaganda, plays into making the working class dumber by the decade.  Set up two opposing sides and develop a divided idiocracy, where conservatives and liberals are pitted against each other and argue so vehemently that they can't take a step back and see that they are all slaves to the same god.

And the value of hard work?  Gone.  Every medicated parent thinks that their kid is special, so we have eviscerated the ability of the educational system to distinguish merit.  You see these kids come out of school, and they've never failed.  They expect the world to hand them everything.  Unfortunately, in many cases, it does.  Such is the American way.  Random awards bolster the false notion that hard work pays. 

So go home, have a drink, and forget, you benumbed masses.  Buy another round with the money they paid you to sell your life today.  Forget, and teach your kids in turn to forget and deny the obvious truths that you have chosen to ignore.

Long ago in an agency far, far away?

I’m having the dream again.  I’m in a maze.  Not the scary type, like the one in the Jim Henson movie, Labyrinth, well, not mortally scary anyways.  It’s just empty, plain, cold.  There’s a long corridor of gray stones, infinitely long it seems, and I’m standing in it.  The ground is crushed gravel of the same stone.  When I walk my footsteps follow me, grating, mocking me.  One listening to my footsteps would assume I was going somewhere, that I was a person in action.  But really, I’m in inaction, or useless action, like struggling in quicksand, or a hamster on a wheel.  As far as the eye can see, in either direction, there are paths off the corridor.  I’ve tried going down a few, yet have had the same outcome each time.  Dead end.  Sometimes I can see the ending, and I don’t go down the path.  Sometimes I haven’t been able to see the end, so charge blindly on, till I hit the wall.  I want so badly to get out of the maze.  Not for survival.  On the contrary, I seem quite comfortable overall.  I hunger for nothing.  The temperature is unnoticeable, like when you dip your foot into a still pool of tepid water, and barely notice it’s submersed, the temperature is such a match to your own.  The air is still, no breeze to chill me, or tickle my skin.  I have the sense I could exist in the maze forever without physically wanting.  In fact, it’s as if my physical being no longer exists.  I know it’s there, I can see it, and touch it, but it matters none; I’m completely numb.  Only my fear of passing my years away uselessly, in this isolated gray world, feeds the urgency of my escape.  My footsteps on the sharp stones leave no trace in this world.

A long time ago, I would wake up every morning, greeting the day with enthusiasm, thinking about the things I looked forward to that day.  This was not some exercise a therapist made me conduct.  This was genuine happiness with my life.  These things were not necessary big things.  Sometimes they were very small things, like the knowing a graded test would be returned in class that day and feeling confident that I’d aced it, or a promise that Mom made that she’d buy me a new outfit for school, or that they were serving chicken nuggets in the school cafeteria for lunch.  Sometimes they were bigger things, at least in my mind, like in elementary school, when I’d jump out of bed for a fieldtrip downtown to the National Mall, where I could visit the American History Museum and see my favorite exhibits.  Like the huge dollhouse, taller than myself, where every little detail was recreated in miniature so lifelike, even down to the tiny, motionless fish in the aquarium, as if you could jump in and live in that perfect little world.  The father sitting in the armchair reading some newsprint, the mother cooking miniature cherry pies and cookies in the kitchen, while the children play with alphabet blocks on the floor.  I longed to make myself tiny, like Alice In Wonderland shrinking down at the bite of a pill, to explore and live in that great bourgeois house, from cellar to attic, with all its elaborate treasures.  Or the movie memorabilia exhibit, which consisted of such relics as Fonzi’s cool leather jacket from Happy Days, Harrison Ford’s jaunty hat and whip from Raiders of the Lost Ark, and Dorothy’s magic ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz.  For some reason I adored the latter, despite my shock at their ragged appearance, discovering that there was nothing really special about them.  They were old and rusty looking, not rubies at all but faded sequins hanging by worn threads to plain ladies pumps; rust-touched plastic turning transparent.  They seemed to hold the promise of good things, that the right pair of shoes could make your life’s voyage safe, even take you over the rainbow.  What I should have learned then though, was that things weren’t as beautiful as they were made to seem, that most things were shabby under their polished façade.  That there were very few truly special things in the world.

Then there was a period of sudden change in my psyche, brought on by deep currents of uncertainty and fear in my world and the world at large, amplified by personal failure and loneliness.  A feeling of despair, and the revelation that I would flounder in this life, that I was ordinary, and nothing I did would ever amount to anything notable, so there was certainly no need to put forth any effort.  In this dark time, I hated mornings, wishing as I climbed out of bed that the day were ending rather than beginning, that I was once again returning to my blanket cocoon, so I could hide face-down in my tear-stained pillow until sleep relieved my mind of its cheerless wanderings.  Mercifully, this period was not too long in duration, continuing for less than a year, after which I returned to a state of mental equilibrium.  Gone was the bright enthusiasm, optimism, and contentment of my younger years, but gone also were the depths of despair.  Most mornings I greet the day with indifference, peppered with days of happiness, mainly those days when I’m free from the chains of my futile job.

I cope with my job in much the same way I imagine people remove themselves from mortal pain.  My mind wanders free from my body, drifting aimlessly over ways for me to escape my current life path, while my fingers do what’s required of them, the smallest portion of my mental capacity committed to work.  And yet, I still perform at a higher level than most of my coworkers.  I wonder if this is because of my relative youth, whether they are just so much more removed from their work after years and years of boredom, or whether it is a matter of aptitude.  I have no definite answer for this question.  Upon overhearing most of their hallway discussions I am inclined to believe the latter, but then, who am I to know?  My guess, and an admittedly conceited one at that, is that it’s a combination of both.

No pain, no gain.  That’s what my track coach used to say.  So I worked and labored, really felt the burn.  And I gained, yes, the work paid off!  But it was clear in my head what the goal was.  To be the winner of the race, to run the fastest, was the goal.  And I trained for every scenario I might encounter in a race.  Ran uphill, downhill, around the track, over logs, on the street, on the path, in a pack, alone.  Based on the success of my running training regiment, I took care to apply the same principles to life.  Labored at everything I put my mind too.  Whatever I did, I tried to do it the best, thinking that must be the secret to life, to do everything the best.  But inexplicably, it wasn’t!  Not at all!  Much to my surprise and discouragement, unlike in running, effort did not seem to have the same effect on outcome of job, life happiness, health, wealth, etc.. Even more annoying, was the realization that not everybody started from the same point.  In a race, there was a set start line, and every runner had their toes on it, not one inch farther ahead or behind anyone else.  Fair.  In life, some people were just ahead to begin with.  Their Daddy owned the family company, their sister could hook them up with a great job, their grandparents left them tons of money.  Rarely, they were just born with extraordinary talent, but usually even this gift was ineffective when not coupled with effort, so I never begrudged people with great talent.  I knew that without some lucky turn of stars, or the correct mind-set and will-power, they could be in the same boat as me, as the talentless.  The only thing I envied about people with great talent is that their path in life, their proper labyrinth corridor if you will, seemed pre-chosen for them.  At least to start, maybe their path grew gray and the air dull after awhile too.

And yet I could walk in a day like this, among the sunlight and the trees, and not care what I did for a living, whether I’d failed or succeeded.  In fact, maybe I should thank my stars I had time to enjoy it.

Amused

I remain fascinated with old yearbooks tucked away, forgotten on bookshelves in almost every home. Every yearbook filled with the dead, staring out of the page at you like frozen caricatures of their once youthful self. As the years pass, more and more of the faces fall. How often does the last face know they are the last? If they did, would they care? Would the scribblings from days long forgotten provide them with comfort or sorrow?

So many people spend their lives making as much noise as they can in the dark nothingness of this world, as if trying to swim against an obvious and overwhelming current. Desperately clinging to a vain hope that their life will be remembered, allowing them to somehow cheat the inevitable death that constantly looms, failing to realize that memories and pictures can capture no more than a feeble distortion of identity through the narrow lens of common experience.

I wish more than anything for my life to pass like an whisper amongst the clamor. Like an unremarkable whisp of smoke rising from a raging forest fire. A broken shell washed on the beach, passed over again and again, and cast into the sea upon further examination.

We obediently march to the death of all.