So allow me to center my interpretation around the book which is heavily referenced in the movie (especially the directors cut), The Philosophy of Time Travel.  If you take a few minutes to read this, the movie, and my interpretation will make a lot more sense as the entire plot of the movie can be explained by it.  I will segment my interpretation, chapter by chapter, to directory correlate to the above “book”.  All quoted items through this article are quotations from The Philosophy of Time Travel.

The Tangent Universe

… Incidents when the fabric of the Fourth Dimension becomes corrupted are incredibly rare.

If a Tangent Universe occurs, it will be highly unstable, sustaining itself no longer than several weeks.

Eventually it will collapse upon itself, forming a black hole within the Primary Universe capable of destroying all existence…

Shortly after the start of the film Donnie is awoken to a voice, the voice of the giant rabbit Frank.  From this point forward Donnie is living in the Tangent Universe.  The Primary Universe is the normal world.  The Tangent universe is the highly unlikely occurance mentioned in the above quote.  During his first encounter with Frank he is told that the world will end in approximately 28 days.  This is the length of time the Tangent Universe will exist for.

So this sets the stage for the rest of the movie.

The Artifact and the Living

When a Tangent Universe occurs, those living nearest the Vortex will find themselves at the epicenter of a dangerous new world.

Artifacts provide the first sign that a Tangent Universe has occured.

If an Artifact occurs, the Living will retrieve it with great interest and curiosity.  Artifacts are formed from metal…

The Artifact in this case, is the jet engine which crashes into Donnies house during his meeting with Frank.  The next morning when he wakes up and returns home, he sees that his house has been destroyed by this jet engine.  More importantly, it landed directly in his bedroom, and he should have been killed.  It is eluded to several times that the FAA has no idea where the jet engine came from.  Meaning that no plane crashed, nor landed, missing an engine.  This makes the item an item of great curiosity, as well as solidifying the existence of a Tangent Universe.

The Living Receiver

The Living Reciever is chosen to guide the Artifact into position for its journey back to the Primary Universe.

… The Living Reciever is often blessed with Fourth Dimensional Powers.  These include increased strength, telekinesis, mind control, and the ability to conjure fire and water.

The Living Receiver is often tormented by terrifying dreams, visions and auditory hallucinations during his time within the Tangent Universe…

Donnie is the Living Receiver, meaning he was chosen to “guide the Artifact into position”.  This basically means that he is responsible for making sure the jet engine crashes into his house after 28 days and kills him.  Though he does not realize this fact for most of the movie.  If he does not fulfill this task, the Tangent Universe will consume the Primary Universe.  Basically, the Living Receiver has to save the world, but no one will ever know he did.

He is tormented by dreams/auditory hallucinations, seeing/hearing Frank, and he exhibits some of the other prescribed traits.  He somehow managed to lodge an axe into a solid bronze statue, and he “conjured” fire and water when he flooded the school and burned down Cunninghams house.  Although I think they could have done a better job with the “conjuring” since you don’t need special powers to use gasoline to light a fire.

Also, the watery tubes he can sometimes see coming out of peoples chests are his way of seeing into the future, which also appear as water, what the book claims the the Fourth Dimensional (time) construct is made of.  As well as using his powers of telekinesis to guide the artifact back into position at the end of the movie by using his mind to rip the engine off the aircraft.

The Manipulated Dead

The Manipulated Dead are more powerful than the Living Receiver.  If a person dies within the Tangent Universe, they are able to contact the Living Receiver through the Fourth Dimensional Construct.

The Fourth Dimensional Construct is made of Water.

The Manipulated Dead will manipulate the Living Receiver using the Fourth Dimensional Construct.

The Manipulated Dead will often set an Ensurance Trap for the Living Receiver to ensure that the Artifact is returned safely to the Primary Universe…

The Manipulated Dead in the movie are Gretchen (Donnies “girlfriend”) and Frank.  This is because at some point within the confines of the Tangent Universe they die.  This is how and why Frank can contact Donnie, independant of time.  Gretchen also plays what seems to be a more subconscious role in setting the Ensurance Trap.

The Ensurance Trap is basically the Manipulated Dead’s way of making sure the Living Reciever does what he needs to do, and is essentially given no other choice.  In Donnies case, the series of coincidences which occur leading up to Gretchen dying, and him shooting Frank.  After those events occur he either understands his purpose in the Tangent Universe, or he simply has no other reason to live, so he sacrifices himself to guide the artifact into its position in the Primary Universe.  That position of course, is in his bedroom, while he is still in it.

The Ensurance Trap is the sole purpose of the Manipulated Dead, and is the only reason those two characters are in the plot.  Every interaction Donnie has with them leads up to the ending.

1. Frank tells Donnie world will end.
2. Frank convinces Donnie to flood the school
   1. Donnie meets Gretchen, due to this.
   2. Consquently, his teacher is fired due to the book “The Destructors” she had them read.
   3. When she is fired she writes “Cellar Door” on the chalkboard.
3. Frank shows Donnie the watery plumes from peoples chests, leading him to find his fathers gun.
4. Donnie finds wallet, which leads to him burning down Cunninghams house.
   1. Kitty stays home to defend Cunningham, forcing Donnies mom to travel with the dance team.
5. Due to Frank, Donnie becomes curious about time travel, science teacher gives him Philosophy of Time Travel.
   1. Donnie writes letter to “Grandma Death”
6. Donnies mom leaves, enabling him and his sister to throw a party.
   1. Gretchen’s mom runs off, leading Gretchen to Donnies house.
   2. Gretchen and Donnie further solidify their relationship via sex.
   3. Frank is driving to the party with Beer.
7. During Halloween party Donnie realizes how much time he has left.
   1. Suddenly something clicks in his mind, and he goes to Grandma Death’s house, notably into the “Cellar Door”.
   2. A quarrel happens with he and some thugs.
   3. Frank drives down the road, due to the quarrel Gretchen is in the street.
   4. Frank has to swerve to miss Grandma Death who is in the street, only to read the letter Donnie sent.
   5. As a result of swerving, kills Gretchen.
   6. Due to Frank killing Gretchen, Donnie kills Frank.
8. Donnie realizes what is going on and fully understands the book now, goes home, and sets everything right by allowing the aircraft engine to kill him.

The Manipulated Living

The Manipulated Living are often the close friends and neighbours of the Living Receiver.

They are prone to irrational, bazaar, and often violent behavior.  This is the unfortunate result of their task, which is to assist the Living Receiver in returning the Artifact to the Primary Universe…

The Manipulated Living are everyone else in the movie, other than Gretchen, Frank, and Donnie.   They play a seemingly unconscious role in the Ensurance trap, whereby they act “bizzare” because they are somehow alert of the fact that the world is ending, and are acting irrational in order to save it, even though they are not conscious of any of this.

There are not really a weath of examples of the “bizarre/violent” behavior without stretching, but here goes.  Kitty, the health teacher, is obsessed with two things, one, the cult-like “fear/love” system by Cunningham, which ultimately results in her leading his defense team when he is found out as a child pornographer.  Which in turn, leads to Donnies mom having to leave.  Also, she is obsessed with the dance team, Sparkle Motion, winning the talent contest.  Because if they don’t, the artifact cannot find it’s place back.

Other small things are how his parents act, father being glad Donnie got suspended, mother asking for a divorce which never happens.  His shrink giving Donnie a placebo pill (which further argues that he is not insane).  Teacher writing “Cellar Door” on the chalkboard, teacher making Gretchen pick a seat “next to the cutest boy”, teacher making them read/watch very questionable material in class.

A lot of people just act a little “strange” throughout the film.

Dreams

When the Manipulated awaken from their Journey into the Tangent Universe, they are often huanted by the experience in their dreams.

Many of them will not remember.

Those who do remember the journey are often overcome with profound remorse for the regretful actions buried within their dreams, the only physical evidence buried within the artifact itself; all that remains from the lost world…

The movie ends, with the key cast members all waking up from what appears to be a dream, or in some cases, a nightmare.  The teachers wake up happy, they still have their jobs, and feel somehow content with their role in setting things right in their dream.  Cherita wakes up happy having remembered when Donnie promised her everything would be better.

Kitty wakes up remorseful after realizing that she devoted herself to a pedophile.  Cunningham wakes up horrified, remorsful of being a fraud and a pedophile (whom, according to the cryptic Donnie Darko website later commits suicide).

Frank wakes up rubbing his eye.

Others, such as Gretched and Donnies mom, seem ignorant to the occurances other than having a strange familiarity with one another at the end of the movie, even though they never actually met.  The therapist also wakes up in the middle of the night but I am really unsure as to why.

Summary and Conclusion

To summarize the above:  A rift happens at the beginning of the movie splitting the universe into a tangent.  The movie entirely takes place within the tangent, where everyone in the movie is, consciously or unconsciously, working toward closing the rift to ensure the real world doesn’t end.  Donnie is the unfortunate individual stuck in the middle.  In order to make things right, he needs to make sure the jet engine kills him before the rift sucks the real world into oblivion.  The entire movie is centered around setting up/making sure, Donnie does just that.  By the end he understands fully what is going on, and fulfills his destiny.  He dies, and the world goes on as it was supposed to.

I believe that the writer/director have made it quite clear at this point that The Philosophy of Time Travel should be taken as canon.  As such, the movie is a pure sci-fi tale of time travel and parellel universes.  While I think other interpretations are interesting to read, I do not believe that is how the movie was meant to be recieved.  Especially with respect to the “emo” crowd.

I do not believe it was a tale of a troubled young man, who saw the future.  Saw the future and saw himself causing all sorts of damage to the world, due to paranoid schizophrenia.  Later killing himself to save the world from his dastardly deeds.  I believe the addition of the scene where his doctor talks of giving him placebo pills further solidifies the fact that even she did not believe him to be ill.  So please, emo kids, pick a different movie to love so I don’t feel gay when I watch Donnie Darko.

Once a week, everyone in the gifted program (there were about 10 of us), would get bussed off to a special building to be taught special topics. Leaving class on those days, to leave the others behind, knowing that they all knew who we were, and where we were going, was a good feeling.  It was my first taste of pride.  Proud of myself for being noticed as something more special than the others.

Yet, I do not feel I used the tools given to me in any special way. By the time I was in high school, I was enrolled in all advanced placement classes, and I was over 6 feet tall. Looking back, had I tried, I probably could have been a star athlete in the sport of my choosing, or maybe a star student. I probably could have gotten scholarships, or into Ivy League schools on either academic or athletic merit. But I didn’t.

I used my gifts, to enable me to be lazy. I could sleep through class, skip homework assignments, write book reports on books I had barely skimmed through. I could skate by without even trying. Sad thing is, this trait followed me through college, and into my adult life, and I behave much the same now. I appear to excel at things when in reality, I am hardly even trying.

When it was time to take my SAT’s, I didn’t care. I knew I could get the score I wanted. I didn’t prepare, I didn’t study. The night before I stayed up too late and got to my test 15 minutes late, having forgotten my pencil, and my calculator. I took the test, without a calculator, using a borrowed pencil, and finished first. I scored 1450.

The difficult thing is, pride. I was later told by my mother the score I got on the I.Q. test. I don’t take it for much since I was probably only 7 years old when I took it, but the score she told me was 157.  While I am almost certain that number is a lie.  I was proud of it. Not only was I proud of it, I was cocky about it. I did not openly brag, and did not appear cocky, but in my own head, and in my own life – I was cocky. I knew I didn’t have to try very hard, and as such I didn’t.  The gifted program, and that number, made me so cocky and proud, that I was probably worse off.

Now I realize, perhaps, I am not really all that smart after all. I see kids who I easily out performed in high school with doctorates from the finest Ivy League schools, scholarships, everything I didn’t get. I graduated college and took a high paying job right away. A job in a field I do not like. A job I am still in today. All because I was lazy. I was, and still am, complacent.  If I was smart, I would have recognized the power of what I had, and used it in a much better way.

There is a phenomenon where I feel some people are too smart for their own good.  I have had a theory about it for a long time, but I never actually applied it to myself, until now.  The theory is that some people are so smart, they are stupid.  Not in the savant sort of way, but an entirely different way altogether.

One of my best friends growing up, is who gave me this idea.  He was easily smarter than I ever was, or ever will be.  Yet, the decisions he made, were terrible.  He saw the flaws in society, and rebelled against them.  He saw the flaws in the school system, and as such, dropped out of school.  He was smart enough to recognize the flaws in the world, and probably how the fix them.  But he was too dumb to realize that he was better off playing along with the system, and taking advantage of it.

I have coasted through life on raw intelligence alone, but I lack any sort of real drive.  There are things I want to do, things I wish I could do.  There are ideas I have, and dreams I dream.  I see a world full of things I could do, becoming things I could have done.  I have some major personal flaws which intelligence cannot outweigh.  I lack drive and motivation to be something more, and I contain just enough pride to the point where I still feel like I can sit up on a perch above everyone else.  Expecting people to simply recognize something in me that third grade teacher did, and handing me an opportunity to be something more, again.  My mind races all the time.  I become easily stressed out and overwhelmed with my own ideas.  I am perpetually depressed.

The tunnel is short.

I need an outlet.  I need to start doing things myself, before everything I want to do becomes something I can no longer do, but merely something I could have done.

I want a Red Ryder carbine-action, 200-shot, range model air rifle with a compass in the stock, and this thing which tells time.

The types of features I am talking about are a very specific type.  I cannot in my right mind suggest that everything considered a “feature” is a bad thing, however, I can suggest that the vast majority of things both tangible and intangible, are by and large, useless widgets that appear to add value to a particular item.

When I was building this website, I had to resist the urge to add feature after feature to the design.  I, myself, am an admitted feature whore where I tend to want to do things because I can.  Some of that has slipped through in elements like the mostly useless expandable footer, while I somehow managed to resist the urge to add a color picker so the user could dynamically change the background color.  Similarly, when Ralphie finally got his Red Ryder BB-gun, how many times do you think he use the compass?  My money is on none, same as the average user on this site likely does not even realize the footer is expandable, much less care.

When I first saw the feature list on the release of the iPhone 3 GS I was somewhat releived.  Apple didn’t really go overboard on adding a ton of new features, for the most part, all they really did was improve something which was already pretty good.  They made the camera a bit better, made the device as a whole a bit faster, and tweaked and improved a few other elements.  What I could not understand is, why the hell did they add a compass?  The answer is, because most tech nerds, geeks, and gadget lovers all have one thing in common – just like little Ralphie, we love features.

To liken the addition of a compass to one of the greatest selling toys for adults in history to the compass in that old Red Ryder bb-gun just seems logical.  Imagine how useful it will be for you, here I’ll even help a bit:  You are out in the woods, lost.  No cell phone signal but conveniently you have your iPhone with you.  Nothing else, just your iPhone.  Oh, and it has a good amount of battery left.  You are paniced trying to figure out how you can get yourself rescued.  You break out your trusty Compass app and navigate yourself to safety!

Right.  Problem is, the above scenerio, will never happen.  What will happen, though, are things like this: TwittARound.  Some clever developers came up with a way to make the otherwise useless compass feature of the iPhone, even more useless!  Just what I always wanted, the ability to spin around in the circle watching the twitter activity of nearby people.

The iPhone’s compass, and the app that uses it in such a usless way, are the perfect embodiment of a misuse of features.  The age old addition of a compass to anything, makes us want it more.  Many times in my life have I been duped into buying things by getting sold on features which I ultimately never used.  Cell phones are not the only offender.  Computers, game consoles, cars, pretty much any product on the shelf has some sort of feature we either don’t understand, or don’t need.  Yet, that feature is the single thing that made us actually buy said item.

Everything right down to toothpaste and shampoo has usless added features.  I remember a while back “Herbal Essence” shampoo commercials touting that their shampoo’s now feature Hawafena!  What the hell is Hawafena?  I have no idea, and apparently no one else does either, but people wanted it.

Luckily for us, things will always have features.  The only thing we can do is become more conscious of what features we need, what will use, and what will will not.  It seems that product marketing is already making a return back to simplicity, if not good old minimalism – which will be a topic for another time.

Could this be you?

Whatever the situation may be for these people, you can bet that McDonalds is very happy about it.  But the situation itself still boggles my mind.  How does a person find themselves working these types of jobs so late in life?  I suppose I ask myself the same question about homeless people, since I don’t really understand how anyone can be entirely homeless.  Maybe temporarily, but not permanently.

It is very hard to have insight into the things around us we have not experienced first hand.  Perhaps these ill-employed people are in fact ex-convicts, ex-drug addicts, or just plain old american fuck-ups*.  Perhaps someone should film a documentary about these people.

When you were a child, you had high hopes.  I can say that with relative confidence as I have never heard a child say “I want to be a trash man when I grow up!”  Although, when you look around, as it turns out, the vast majority of the world are working in jobs I would never dream of working in, and without them, we would be pretty screwed.

So how does it work?  What would happen if the dreams of every little child were to come true suddenly and everyone was blessed with quality parents, a quality education, and most importantly, quality decision making abilities?  When I walk down the street, I see fast food restaurants, video stores, nail salons, mega-stores, and trash trucks.  I suppose most of these businesses were founded under the assumption that there will always be someone to hire for $7 an hour to do this type of work, but what if that wasn’t true?

I once saw a movie called A day without a Mexican, which was a fictional depiction of what the United States would be like if all of the sudden every illegal immigrant were to disappear, and the reality of that situation was fairly bleak.  As mentioned above, I would love to see a similar depiction of a world where all of the sudden everyone was educated and trying to all work as doctors, lawyers, or other types of professionals, shifting the balance forever.

Every president makes a speech about how they want the youth to be educated, most parents do their best to ensure the best for their child, but the reality is, the world needs people to work in these jobs.  I imagine a future like the one portrayed in GATTACA, where there is a clearly defined caste system which forces a low class to always exist to carry out…the jobs no one wants.

But then again, I guess there are always robots.

Look Familiar?

*Please do not mistake what I am saying as a generalization that anyone who has a crappy job late in life is a “fuck-up”, I apologize in advance if you are offended.

A friend is someone you can trust, someone you can rely on to be there even in the darkest times, and most importantly, someone you enjoy being around.

I think a lot of people today skip the first two parts of my definition, and go right to the enjoyment part.  I imagine that  a lot of people hold like-mindedness paramount as well.  For me, having a like-minded friend is a bonus, but not at all important.

Growing up, I always had lots of friends.  Some of that was interrupted when I moved away from my original home town when I was twelve years old.  But I slowly gained a new “core” group of friends at my new school.  Many of those friends I am still close with today, many of them I am not.  When it comes to friends, as I have gotten older, I have also become a lot more picky, as such, I have decided not to be friends with certain people anymore.

As you get older, the opportunities to make new friends often lessen, combined with having less time than you had in times past due to family, or kids, or job obligations, making new friendships and properly nuturing those friendships can prove quite difficult.  This is where I find myself:  Wishing I had more quality friends, but struggling to find them.  Most people would just look back to the old addage:

I would rather have 1 great friend than 10 good ones.

I am not sure, though, if that is always a true statement when people say it, or if it is just something they would like themselves to believe.  Personally, I think I would love to have 10 great friends.

Over the years I am purposely ended a lot of friendships.  I do not regret these choices, as most of those people were simply not good matches for me, and my definition of friendship.  Although it can become a little awkward when mutual friends of myself, and those I am no longer friends with, are brought into the picture.  It is very hard to explain to someone why you do not wish to be friends anymore, much like breaking up with a girl, except with old friends, there is always someone in your life with a connection to those old friends, and always someone who again wants you to justify to them why you cannot be friends anymore.

In middle school and high school, as I mentioned before, I had a great core of friends.  Toward the middle of high school, for reasons I will never know, I became a very popular guy, and suddenly I had literally, hundreds of friends.  If I had to guess, I’d say it was due to the very party friendly atmosphere which was my house, and nothing more.  At the end of high school, something very interesting happened:  I went to college.

I do not want to sound like an elitist or anything, but, the majority of my original friends, did not attend college.  All those people I was friends (partied) with toward the end of high school, simply disappeared.  Most of my core group of friends stayed home, sat around getting stoned, working at dead-end jobs.  In fact, most of them still live at home with their parents and they are almost 30 years old.  At some point toward the end of college, long after I had quit doing any sort of drugs, mostly quit partying, and had made a life and a career for myself, I had only a couple of friends left.

I do not feel bad that I basically wrote off a lot of my old gang for nothing more than being a bunch of losers.  Mostly because I am friends with a small portion of them, and I do not judge them at all for their choices in life.  The thing that keeps me friends with them fits my definition:  I can trust them, I can rely on them, and I enjoy being around them.

Those who I am no longer close to are very spiteful toward me, and they feel as if I had passed some sort of judgment upon them for not living up to my expectations, I only wish I could make them realize that is not the case in the slightest.  The truth is, anyone I am no longer friends with, betrayed me, more than once.  Maybe I should be more forgiving?

Either way, the real point of this is about the sources of new friends.  For me, there are really only a few ways to meet new people:  At work, locally via clubs and meetup opportunities, and via the internet.  Since I am a bit anti-social by nature, I do not generally venture out into the public or join some sort of club with the intent of making new friends, and having worked at the same place for over 3 years now, my options of socializing with co-workers have been exhausted, so I have found myself with a couple of very high quality friends whom I met online.

When I tell people that I met my fiance on World of Warcraft, or that I spent 4th of July weekend with a couple whom I regularly talk to on Twitter, I am normally met with a bit of an awkward look.  I don’t mind though, because the people I have met online have turned out to be some of the best friends I have ever made.  I think that more and more, people are meeting their best friends, and future wives, online.  Any why shouldn’t they?  Why should this be considered taboo?

To me, the internet is just as viable a place to meet someone as the local bar is.  Sure the initial meeting can be a bit awkward, but once you have spent 3 years talking to someone online, you tend to have a pretty good idea of what you are getting yourself into.  If you have spent a good amount of time talking to someone online, chances are they can become a great “real life” friend.  If you have ever considered meeting someone online, but have been nervous about it, my advice is: do it.

Me with Jzy (on twitter)

Can a butterfly flapping its wings over the ocean in Florida cause a tidal wave in Australia?

Well, to answer the above question, I would think not.  The context of what I am going to talk about here might even be best described as the domino effect, but, I think butterfly effect sounds way cooler, so lets stick with that.

In my life, many things have happened.  If you trace any one thing back, you can surely account each thing happening back to the decision to do something else.  As a ficticious example:  If I hadn’t decided to start smoking again I wouldn’t have been out at 4am driving to buy a pack of smokes when I got hit by that drunk driver.

You can pretty much trace everything that happens to everyone, backwards, indefinitely.

A friend of mine, loves to do this to me.  You see, about four years ago I was working on my car and he came over with this awesome new game that I had to try.  That game was World of Warcraft.  After a few hours of playing I decided to get my own copy.  Some of his EverQuest friends were playing on the “Stormrage” server, so thats where we decided to play.  You see, it is entirely because of him, that I play WoW on the Stormrage server.

This is where it gets interesting, and funny.

You see, I met my current girlfriend in WoW.  I know it sounds pathetic to meet someone in an online game, but that is a topic for an entirely different post, and something I am not ashamed of at all.  Anyhow, from time to time, my friend loves to account everything in my life, to himself.  “You know, if I hadn’t gotten you to play wow, you would have never met Cass, so you never would have gotten Dirk, and you wouldn’t live here, or work there.”

The funny thing is, he’s right.

However, before I can give him any credit for anything in my life, the question must be asked:  Does this sort of domino effect even matter?  While I recognize that he is entirely joking when he says these things, and I do not take it seriously at all, it is an interesting concept.  How does one action, or choice, affect you throughout the rest of your life?

Like I said before, almost anything in your life, someone elses life, or the world in general, can be traced backwards from event to event, all of which lead up to the current reality.  Some people believe that every choice made splits the universe into separate universes, each containing the possible outcomes of every choice, everyone has ever made.  This is known as the Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.

Regardless, its neat to think about.  How many choices did you make just today, which could affect the way the rest of your life turns out?

1. to carry out, or bring to realization, as a prophecy or promise.
2. to perform or do, as duty; obey or follow, as commands.
3. to satisfy (requirements, obligations, etc.): a book that fulfills a long-felt need.
4. to bring to an end; finish or complete, as a period of time: He felt that life was over when one had fulfilled his threescore years and ten.
5. to develop the full potential of (usually used reflexively): She realized that she could never fulfill herself in such work.

The above definitions aren’t bad, especially #3 and #5.  I believe #3 is the most accurate as to what I am looking for, with one problem, you would then have to define the word satisfaction, which would be sort of circular.

To me, fulfillment is something you feel.  You either feel fulfilled at a given moment, or you do not.  The feeling to me, is mostly about feeling like I have done something useful, toward the betterment of my self.  For some reason though, going to work, getting a paycheck, or paying a bill on time, does not fulfill me.  What does fulfill me, is, taking a day off of work to do things I enjoy, writing a blog post, or helping out a friend.  I suppose, to me, being fulfilled is directly tied to feeling like I am making a difference in someones life, even just my own life.

The problem is, for me, that feeling is rare, and often short lived.

Do you feel fulfillment should be something along the lines of a “high” where you feel it directly after you do something useful, or more of a constant?  I tend to believe it should be a constant.  You should feel like your life is fulfilling, all the time.

When people see my life from the outside, they think I am just some sad dude, with no reason to be.  I make a good living, have a stable job, a great girlfriend, a house, a new car, and a dog.  What’s not to like?  To quote another comment on my last entry by MooGoo:

I’m starting to think that overall, happy people are happy regardless of their situation, and depressed people are depressed regardless of their situation.

Happy people have this mystical ability to accept whatever life throws at them. Non-acceptance, always wanting something else, thus never having what you want, is depressing.

Knowing that “you have it pretty good (compared to some other people)” is small comfort. After all, you’re not some starving African kid with AIDS, so you should stop bitching right?

I have to say, I agree with this 100%.  I am starting to believe that I am simply one of those glass is half-empty sort of people, and as such, never satisfied.  Being compared to someone less fortunate than I, does nothing to make me feel better about my current life.

If I was a starving kid in Africa, and you gave me a warm house and tons of food, it would probably only take me a few weeks to complain about something.

The American Dream is belief in the freedom that allows all citizens and residents of the United States to pursue their goals in life through hard work. Today, it often refers to one’s material prosperity, which is dependent upon one’s abilities and work ethic, and not on a rigid class structure.

Although the phrase’s meaning has evolved over the course of American history, for some people, it is the opportunity to achieve greater material prosperity than was possible in their countries of origin. For others it is the opportunity for their children to grow up and receive an education and its consequent career opportunities. It is the opportunity to make individual choices without the restrictions of class, caste, religion, race, or ethnic group.

To me, this is not a dream.  Perhaps if you come from another country where you have been previously oppressed, the life I live would seem like paradise.  Perhaps, I am just a spoiled brat who can’t accept that the life he has is actually quite good.  No matter how you want to label me, I think the American Dream sucks, and I think it is an illusion.

So what is the modern american dream?  I would summarize it as saying:

To live in America, in a nice housing development, with two kids, a dog, a cat, and a heaping mound of debt.  To work at a job you barely enjoy, to make money, so that you can spend it on shit you don’t need.  Hope that you can afford to put your kids through college so they can live the same life you did.  Retire, and actually start to enjoy your life, once you’re almost 70 fucking years old.  Then die in a retirement home because your selfish kids didn’t want to deal with you.

I am just a ray of sunshine aren’t I?  But seriously, boiled down, this is the modern American Dream.  This is what the lucky members of our society are living.  Not to discount the fact that in reality, I know I have it pretty damn good.  It’s just that, living life should be what you want it to be, it should be enjoyable.  That’s the point, right?

This is where I am.  Should be enjoyable.  Without sounding too emo and suicidal about the whole thing, I can make an analogy.  If you are reading a book, and you don’t like it, do you continue reading it?  If you are playing a game, and it’s not fun, do you continue playing it?  If you are with a girl, and you are unhappy, do you stay with her?  The answer to all of the above questions is clearly, no.  So then, how come if you are living a life you hate, it is unacceptable to simply quit life?  Suicide is obviously a bad idea, it is the most selfish act one can commit.  I am not suggesting anyone do it, nor would I ever do it.  I am simply posing the question – Why is it so unacceptable?

How can I find Joy in my life?

Yup.

Education and Employment

For most people, from the time you are born, you are being sculpted.  Sculpted into what you will become someday.  From the time you are about 3 years old, barely even self-aware yet, you being the process of formal education.  Saving pre-school and kindergarten, you spend about 8 hours per day, 5 days a week, at school.  From the time you are about 6 years old, to the time you are 18 years old, you are being taught.  Trained.  Shown the things you need to know to be a successful adult.  After you are 18, many people volunteer for more education, with the expectation that the more educated you are, and the more pieces of paper you have, the more successful you will be.  Success?  A topic for an article in itself, the concept of success has become very warped.

From a very early age we are given the idea that we need an education to work towards a goal, that goal being, a good job.  So at 18, we either go to college for several more years, or we jump right into the workforce.  Those that go to college, after those years spent learning even more, we jump right into the workforce.

Why?  To make money.  If anyone even tries to suggest that they want/get a job for any other reason, then to make money, they are a liar.  So basically, we spend the first couple decades of our lives being groomed into a money making tool, so that we can provide income to ourselves, and our family, under the pretense that having that money will provide us the things we want, and need, to be happy.

The system has been designed in such a way that one cannot survive without money, and that one cannot obtain money, without a job to provide income.  Clearly these jobs can vary greatly on the scale of how much they suck, but even the best jobs, still suck.  Even pro athletes, and movie stars, I am sure, would much rather spend their time in leisure, or with their families, then being grossly overpaid to do things that to us, seem fun.

The purpose of your life

So then, if it can be argued that the purpose of your life in this day and age, is essentially a linear progression of:  Birth, Infancy, School, More School, Work, Retirement, Death.  What would you say the progression should be if you had to choose what you did?  If you did not need money to survive, if someone else provided everything you needed to you, what would you do?

Since the dawn of time, man has sought purpose.  No other organism on this planet has such a superficial life with such superficial purpose.  We are given roughly 75 years of life on this planet, to do with it what we choose.  Nature’s only concern is that we reproduce.  In days of early man, time was spent raising a family, making babies, and hunting food.  Later, we decided to make tools to aid us in this effort, even later, someone devised the idea that one could make a tool for someone else, and sell it, for a fee.  And even later, our entire life on this planet became being spent devising ways to make our lives easier, and, finding ways to profit from those ideas such that our own lives can be even more comfortable as we reap the benefits of our ideas.

Fast forward to modern times.  A system of currency has been developed, companies that provide such goods that our lives are more comfortable proudly provide us with all the things we need to live a happy, comfortable, fulfilling life.  Problem is, we need to be able to give these companies something in exchange for their goods.  Since we cant trade skins anymore, we trade labor.

You work for me helping to create these items of value, I will give you tokens for your efforts.  You give me those tokens back, I will give you the items you desire.  And thus, the cycle starts.  The purpose of our lives has become a constant uphill battle of obtaining the objects of our desire, and working hard to earn the tokens we need to pay for them.

When we age too much to be viable labor anymore, we retire, and enjoy the last few years of our life, doing what it is we wanted to be doing the entire time.  Nothing.  Shortly after which, we die.

The machine

As outlined above, there is a machine at work here.  A system of goods, services, and currency.  Companies exist to create the things we enjoy.  Other companies exist to provide those companies with the resources they need to create the things we enjoy, and even more companies exist to provide the services, logistics, and resources to all those companies, all so, you guessed it, we can have the things we enjoy.

So, we work at one of these companies, to make money, so that we can spend our money by giving back to the exact people who are paying us.

All this so that, when we are not at work, we have our television to watch, we have our video games to play, and our pre-packaged food to eat.  We have our care to drive, and electricity.  We have central air conditioning, and heat.  We have a comfy mattress to sleep on, and a toothbrush to keep our teeth nice and white.  We work so hard so that when we are not at work, our life is, what we think it should be.

If these companies did not exist, and no one created these luxuries we enjoy so much.  If the objects in our homes, and the video games we want do play did not exist, nor the tv shows or movies, nor the luxury car, or boats, nor the fishing rods and cameras, what would we want?

It is indeed a machine.  One enormous machine creating the very reasons we tire of work, creating the reasons we would rather stay home to enjoy these items we work so hard for.  And as such, in order to obtain these items, and maintain a standard of living, we go out each day, and contribute work into this machine.  We are the fuel for which the system burns to churn out the very objects we crave.  We resent the fact that we must spend so much of our life doing things we do not want to do, just so that when we get home, we can do the things we want to do.

What it boils down to…

As I am sure you already know, we must work.  We, the masses, must have a job to collect our dollars, to buy the things from the companies we work for.  All so that for about 4 hours a day, we can truly relax and enjoy our lives, all to go to sleep, wake up, and do it all over again.

The activities we enjoy the most get relinquished to being mere “hobbies”, and we spend but a fraction of our time actually doing the things we love.  But, such is life in this world.  In a system designed so that all of us humans are merely a means to an end.

Reproducing and raising families has become secondary to work.  People cannot afford to have children either due to time, or money constraints.  Some people choose to have children when they cannot afford to, and live a live of near poverty, others, decide to never have children because they are too selfish to share their income and wealth with someone else.  Then there are the minority of people who have kids, and can easily afford to raise those children properly…properly meaning, providing them with objects they want, providing them with a good education, and steering them in the direction their parents went in, to become another cog.

I know this seems like a gloomy outlook, but in my opinion, it is the truth.  Fact is, this is how it is, and how it must be.  I just wish I could find a job, a purpose, in life, which I actually enjoyed to some extent and did not dread waking up each day.  A job where I could create, a job where I was not subject to the whims and bias of other people, a job where I had the freedom to work as much or as little as I wanted to on any given day.

I guess I should launch a website and cover it with advertising.

Instant Gratification

Now lets try the opposite.  Imagine a world where people stay up so late watching TV and playing games that they barely make it to work on time.  Imagine a world where people will use any excuse they can get to take a day off of work.  Imagine a world where people do the bare minimum at work each day just so they don’t get fired.  Imagine a world where your co-workers throw you under the bus at any opportunity to make themselves look better.

Which of these two worlds sounds closest to the world you actually live in?  Hopefully neither, to be honest, but I suppose if you were forced to choose it would depend on which world you live in, the real world, or the world of an MMORPG.

I recently starting messing around in World of Warcraft again, except in a much more limited capacity.  I don’t play it that much and I do not forgo anything else in my life such that it provides me more time to play.  The odd thing is though, that I am now tagged in one of the top 5 best guilds in the entire world.  I won’t say the name here just so they don’t get upset about this post, but it probably wouldn’t be that hard to narrow down.

I got tagged in this guild because my girlfriend happens to know the leader and half of the officers from her home town.  Since joining I have taken the role of a sort of silent observer, and it has given me much insight into the inner workings of one of these so-called “uber-guilds”.

As it turns out, the players in this guild treat the guild like it is a job in the world described in the first scenario above.  It is a perfect communism, in a way.  Everyone works hard toward the betterment of the guild with very little sense of self.  Loot drops go to the person who would turn that item into the maximum guild benefit.  The players spend countless hours working toward making themselves and the guild better.  When a raid is scheduled, everyone logs on, early.  When a first kill is on the line, everyone stays late.  All for no pay.  All for virtual nothingness.

How do you convince a person, a real human being, in the real world, to spend such large amounts of time in a fake world, working toward fake goals?  How come these very same people are far and wide the greatest bunch of under-achievers the world has ever seen?  Could you imagine if the real world had such a robust system which combines the best aspects of a reward system with a sense of instant gratification?  What if you spent 6 hours this evening playing a guitar and became a “level 2″ guitarist, instantly becoming slightly, but noticeably better?  What if you stayed late at work today, and got a promotion tomorrow?  Would you?

Probably.

The problem is probably just that, gratification.  If I work late today will I see any benefit from it?  If I work extra hard every day, and my company ultimately does better because of my hard work, will I ever receive any recognition?  If I show up late to work, and never get in trouble for it, why should I show up on time?  If I take the day off to relax, and stand to lose nothing because of it, then why not just take the day off?

This is the real world.  The world where you spend your entire life, dying.  The world where everything good in your life takes vast amounts of time to achieve.  The world where nothing is a sure thing.  The world where no one cares about how hard you work, or how smart you are.

This is where the allure of gaming lies, for me, and probably everyone else playing them.  If I spend 6 hours playing WoW today, I might get a better item, I might gain a level, or I might simply win a few arena matches.  No matter what though, something, even if it is a very small thing, will occur which will make my character in the game slightly better then he was before I logged in that day.  If I went to bed each night a better person then I was when I woke up, I might be a lot more excited about waking up each day.  If a week of hard work and overtime gave me some sort of global recognition, I might be a lot more apt to work a lot harder.  In the game, if you work your ass off toward that world first kill, and you get that incredible item that only you have.  The entire population of the game (in the case of WoW, over 10 Million people) are in awe of your accomplishments.

If you aren’t on time for that raid, you might not get a spot ever again.  If you take the night off from raiding, you might miss out on getting that item you really want.  If you talk back to your guild leader, you might get kicked out.

How can one recognize the small incremental improvements in themselves on a day to day basis?  How could such a reward system become a part of the real world?  

People obviously work the best, and the hardest when not only rewarded, but when time spent instantly equals personal gain, even if that gain is virtual.  What if we could somehow recognize our own real life gains in the same way a game presents them.  What kind of world would we live in then?

It is obvious that almost all forms of technology that reach the consumer market are geared towards making our lives easier: the dishwasher, the television, the computer, for example.  All of these technologies came from a scientific discovery that made them possible, and the end result of all that research was for someone to not have to wash dishes by hand, or have an easier means of obtaining the news. It should be known however that many sciences and technology that we have so fondly become used to using every day in our home are direct derivatives of military sciences, sciences developed for the sole purpose of “defending” our land, from our own kind. It is only after they have been used, or attempted to be used, in the military realm, that some usefulness for the consumer was discovered.

The first true computer, the ENIAC, was built for one reason, to calculate launch trajectories of projectiles. This led the forefront of a revolution in science which in turn gave rise to home computing. It is still the military and the government which leads the driving force of computer technology. It could still be argued however, that no matter what the use, even military science is used strictly as a means of making someone’s life easier, and thus happier. Weather it is easier to calculate the distance to a target, or easier to do your taxes. It could also be argued that even though being able to blow up a city from half way around the world, makes us happy, it doesn’t make all humans happy. With inventions designed to wage war, I would feel safe saying that human happiness is not the goal.

Another military derived technology is the satellite. The idea of an earth orbiting object is what started the space race, and once it was achieved the first purpose of one of these objects was merely research, but then the idea of military spy satellites was born, then military defense/attack satellites. The space race, in the beginning, had no real purpose; it was simply a pissing contest with Russia. The benefits we have reaped from this research are insurmountable however. Today, we have navigational satellites, communications satellites, weather satellites, and many other types. These allow us to use cell phones, watch television, and know the weather a week early. All of these technologies are clearly devised at making our lives easier. While satellites have proven quite useful as a military technology, and most research on them is driven by the military, aside from more effective reconnaissance and targeting, it is my opinion that there are far more benefits to people all around the world then there are risks.

There are many sciences and technologies that have no roots in the military. Some of the more significant ones include the cotton gin, the plough, or the printing press. These not only made human life much easier, and happy, but they also paved the way for the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution gave way to countless inventions with little military use, but much domestic use. Even the musket gave the people on the frontier a means of survival, through hunting or defense. One of the most prime examples of a non-military rooted science is that of medicine and pharmaceuticals. This industry has lead to the development of more useful science and means for survival than any other since the dawn of time. Medicine is geared strictly toward human happiness. Anti-depressants, pain killers, cures, vaccines, treatments, all of these are created to either make us happy, or to help us stay alive longer.

I feel like I am letting my point wander a bit right now, but I also feel that in doing so I am forming a strong basis for my thesis. DuPont formed the saying “Better Living Through Chemistry”. DuPont is actually the perfect candidate to make my point very strong: The E.I. DuPont Company was formed in 1802 as a gunpowder mill on the Brandywine River in Wilmington Delaware.

DuPont later evolved into one of the world’s largest chemical companies, and in the 20th century led the polymer revolution by developing many highly successful materials such as nylon, Teflon and Kevlar. Today, DuPont is a multi-national chemical, paint, and health care company with 2002 revenues of $24.5 billion. This company encompasses everything. It has roots and current strong interest in military technology. It has been on the forefront of almost any significant development of the 20th century. However, many of its developments have made our lives much easier in the strictest sense. Nylon – has made it possible for us to go out in the rain without getting wet, and is much more comfortable to wear then rubber or plastic. Teflon – has made it possible for us to cook almost anything, and burn it to a crisp, and literally be able to wipe a pan clean with a sponge. Kevlar – one of the strongest pliable materials ever devised can make a lightweight, wearable vest, which even a bullet cannot penetrate. DuPont has made paints that change color in different types of light for us to use on our cars, or paints for the home that are stain proof, all of which make our lives incredibly easier, and thus make us all much happier. However, DuPont also has had its hand in chemical warfare development, nuclear weapons, and many dangerous, unpopular military technologies.

To go in the opposite direction briefly, I also believe that too much technology has put us in a mindset that all things should come easily, and things that were devised to make us happier are actually doing the opposite. Good examples include cell phones, or the internet. Cell phones obviously make our lives easier, and make us happier in many ways, but they are also a heavy burden. In classrooms, people are taking calls, we allow ourselves to become distracted at inopportune times, and we rely on the ability to use the phone rather then to have physical contact with other people. The internet has all but replaced books for most modern students. Barely anyone checks out a book from the library anymore, or does good old fashioned research. We have become lazy. Online chatting has replaced even talking on the phone for many people. We have isolated ourselves from human contact in many ways. While many people think they are happy because of these things, many eventually realize the drawbacks. Many technologies have given way for much of today’s youth to have no idea of the benefits of good old hard labor, or crafting something with your hands. Almost no one today has the goal to work in a factory, or on a construction site, jobs that are required to help build the world around us. To put it bluntly, reliance on science and technology has made us lazy. While we all seem to be happier, we are not, we just haven’t realized it yet.

In conclusion, I feel that, yes, all science is geared toward making our lives easier, and making us happier, one way or another. It is the main reason for doing anything. Anything we do today is in an effort to someday have an easier way of doing it. We even have easier ways to eat food. Even the military sciences are, when you boil it down, made to make life easier. Without the overall goal of an easier more effective way of doing, most science would not exist. There are only a handful of sciences that are purely in the pursuit of knowledge, and even those have bi-products which turn into happiness. Science is happiness, in the modern world; science is the only thing that makes us happy.

Pro – fes – sion – al :

1) adjective – following an occupation as a means of livelihood or for gain.

2) noun – a person who is expert at his or her work.

The problem with words like this, in the English language, is that they have two radically different definitions which people interchange so that it suits them.  Taking the first definition above, I would be able to call myself a professional web developer/designer, a professional backup and disaster recovery administrator, a professional mechanic, and a professional computer repair man.  I do not, however, declare myself an expert in any of those things.

Where does the line get drawn?  I feel so many people claim they are a professional at something because they have made a job out of it, yet, they use the word professional is such a context that it makes it sound as if they are an expert, for their own gain.  There are many people who take pictures for money at their friends garage band’s shows at the local bar, who claim to be professional photographers.  Many people who have been paid $200 to play at the same bar, who call themselves professional musicians, people who have put together a catchy hip-hop beat on their home pc who call themselves professional producers, and many people who won a few bucks at a local game tournament who call themselves professional gamers.  The only thing these people have in common is, they made a few dollars doing something, so they use the word professional to make it sound as if they are an expert at doing such a thing.

I think a distinction needs to be made, in a few ways.  First of all, being a professional does not automatically mean you an expert, or even good at, what it is you are a professional at.  It simply means you make money doing it.  Also, making money doing something, does not mean you exhibit any professionalism.

Food for thought:

Michael Phelps – Not a professional swimmer, clearly, the best swimmer in the world.

Not a professional.

Stephen Baldwin – Professional Actor, clearly, the worst actor in the world.

Professional.

All things not being created equal, professional does not always mean good, and does not always mean expert.  However, when someone claims to be a professional, they usually convey it sound as if they are.  This article was prompted by a friend of mine who showed me this survey, which asks people to declare what type of photographer they are.

If you read down the list, you will see a common trend.  Some of the better photographers who post a response modestly claim to either be an amateur, or worse.  While most of the teenagers, ranging from 13-17 years old, claim to be professional or semi-pro, because they take shots of their friends band, or try to sell their pictures online on some stock photo website.  Clearly, they just love the word “pro”.  In the world of photography, if you have some sort of crazy expensive Nikon digital SLR, you must obviously be pro.  Especially if you don’t even know how to use the majority of the features the camera has.

So, it seems the best definition for professional these days is: Something you make money doing, but aren’t necessarily good at. What about professionalism then?  Do professionals always exhibit professionalism, is the showing of professionalism only limited to people who claim to be professional?

To me, professionalism is very difficult to describe in words, but easy to exhibit through actions.  I feel that there are many people who exhibit the absolute best traits of professionalism and are not even professionals, and that the vast majority of professionals do not exhibit any professionalism whatsoever.  Professionalism is an attitude, it is a certain modesty and open-mindedness which allows you to take the suggestions and input of others, and use that to better do whatever it is you do.  It is the mindset which allows you to constantly strive to be better.

In today’s world, people are so obsessed with titles and powerful words they can use to make themselves appear to be something of importance.  Most self-proclaimed professionals are too obsessed with themselves and the idea that they are some sort of authority on a subject to have the professionalism to actually become better at what it is they do.

Actions speak louder than words, and describing yourself as a professional, but acting like an amateur, makes you an amateur in my eyes.

Professional Gamers

Much like becoming a rock star, a movie star, or a pro athlete, there is a very small percentage of people who can actually succeed in this profession, and a very large number of people who spend their lives trying, just to fail.  The current generation of kids idolizes professional gamers more than they idolize astronauts, baseball players, or any other form of previously held types of heroes.  This is all fine and good, but as I mentioned earlier, peoples priorities get out of whack.

There are many successful celebrities who never graduated from college, or even high school.  Many pro athletes who skipped college to go straight into the big leagues.  Many successful people of all walks of life who made it on no education.  What we really don’t know is, how many people dropped out of school to pursue a career in sports, acting, or music, but never made it.  Where are they now?  What do they do?

While you can’t knock people for trying, following their dreams, yadda, yadda.  You know, “you’ll never make it if you don’t try.”  All that sort of stuff applies here.  What I wonder is, how can people take such huge risks with no contingency plan.  Didn’t the thought “What if it never happens for me?” cross their minds?  Or do people delude themselves so much that they simply do not believe there is even a possibility that they won’t be hugely successful if they just try hard enough?  The contestants on American Idol come to mind.  Not the ones who make it, the ones who don’t.  They are some of the most delusional people I have ever seen and they have a whole suite of other people (family and friends) who reinforce their believe that they will be the next huge star.

Fast forward to now, the new big thing, professional gaming.  To touch on some of what I talked about above, there is now a whole generation of people, a whole sub-section of society who is obsessed with making money playing games.  Just like being a rock star, this is now entirely possible.  Problem is, the prioritization issue comes up again.  I recently found this article about a 16 year old kid whose parents withdrew him from high school so that he could pursue a career playing Guitar Hero professionally.

This is not a competitive environment, so the score hardly matters. But his attitude about it underscores some Peebles family truisms: Blake is so dedicated to gaming that his parents let him quit school so he can better concentrate on it.

They pay for home tutors instead. Mom and Dad do this, even though there are very few people in this country who make their living playing competitive video games.

Now I know for a fact that playing guitar hero professionally is actually a viable way to make money, now, as are many other games.  But that game won’t be around forever.  So lets just assume that Blake can actually be successful in this.  What happens when he gets older, loses his skill, or the game simply goes out of style?  With no education to back him up, and some obvious parenting issues, he is destined to failure.

Professional gaming is just like anything else.  It can be very lucrative if you are good, while you are good.  But the games change and evolve so quickly, that it can’t really last that long for anyone, can it?  You don’t get contracts, you don’t get a retirement plan.  You go to tournaments with a chance to win a ton of cash, if you win.  As long as you keep winning, the money flows, as soon as you stop winning, what then?  I doubt you’ll see Blakes face on the cover of wheaties any time soon.

Winning Big

While I could easily see myself watching a WoW raid or arena tournament, a street fighter tournament, or a guitar hero match on television, much like I would watch a football game, I am not so sure professional gamers will ever have the same type of celebrity status that real athletes do.  At least not for a couple of more decades.

I could name the top 10 guitar hero players in the world off the top of my head using their Scorehero username, but I have no idea about their real name or what they look like, much less do I care.

I think gaming should be fun, it should be an entertaining hobby, and if you find yourself exceeding good at a particular game, polish your skills, and go to a tournament.  Who knows, maybe you can make a couple bucks while you’re at it.  But please, at least graduate high school first.  The last thing this country needs is more reason to be labelled as one of the fattest, lasiest, stupiest countries on the earth.

Obvious Uniqueness

Conformity is much more than most people think it is.  It’s not just emo kids who all wear dark clothes.  It’s not just polo shirt wearing middle managers who go home to their comfortable house in their cookie cutter housing developments.  It’s not just how everyone on digg has the same political views.  No, it’s about not having the ability to formulate your own opinions, lacking the ability to think freely, and being too inhibited to express those thoughts and opinions.

Everyone likes to believe they are unique.  No one will ever tell you that they are a conformist, after all, conforming is always a bad thing, right?  Or is it?

Society is cruel.  It forces you to conform.  We must all obey the same laws, shop at the same stores, live in the same cookie cutter houses, and drive the same types of cars everyone else does.  We must work at a job, we must do what society allows us to do, to survive.  There are exceptions to this rule of course, many people have found unique ways to provide for their families, and unique ways to live, but for those of us who have already made choices in life which have left us feeling very much “the same”, as everyone else around us, what can we do?

I think the answer is simple:  Re-think what conformity actually is, and redefine it to yourself.  I myself, believe I am unique, of course.  Thing is, I live in a townhouse community, and I work at a 9 to 5 job in Information Technology.  I wear khakis to work every day, and I shop at Old Navy.  How much more “normal” could I be?

Being normal, or conforming, is not a bad thing.  If you want to be totally unique then cover your entire body with tattoos and run naked through a shopping mall.  If you want to be unique, paint your house bright pink.  Hell, you could drive to work in a bright lime green 1948 Oldsmobile.  I bet no one else in the parking lot has one of those.  Would you want that kind of attention though?

My point is, uniqueness is more of a state of mind.  Most people feel uniqueness is simply the ability to draw attention to yourself by looking or acting different.  When I watch the news, I accept the information being told to me, and formulate an opinion based on the facts I have.  When I choose who to vote for, I go with my gut.  When I design a website, I design what I like, not someone else.  I am opinionated.  I am outspoken.  I think, freely and I speak, freely.  This is the key to being truly unique.

So many people strive so hard to appear unique, when they aren’t.  If you are goth, emo, preppy, or a skater.  You look just like your friends.  If you are truly unique, on the outside, then you probably have some sort of birth defect, in which case the looks you are drawing from the people around you, aren’t the types of looks you want.  Pardon my insensitivity here, but it is the truth.  Have you ever taken someone out to eat sushi and had them say (looking they are about to puke):  “It tastes very…unique.”  Being unique, isn’t always good.

Uniqueness is inside all of us.  It is a matter of expressing it.  In day to day life, it is easiest and often best to just blend in and go unnoticed.  Wear jeans and a t-shirt, lay off the eye shadow.  When it comes time to truly express yourself, in the form of art, music, public speaking, web design, or whatever other subject it might be, be yourself.  These are your opportunities.  If you feel strongly about something, speak up about it.  When you have a class presentation to do, don’t just stand at the front of the room and read from a sheet of paper, use these opportunities to express who you are.  Sitting in the back row wearing all black, won’t help you later in life.

Be who you are, and let people know who that person is.  Take opportunities to constructively express yourself, don’t waste time and energy drawing attention to yourself when you don’t need to.

An example from my real life is, firstly, as I stated above: I am about as normal as they come.  On the outside.  I do not waste effort and energy in my life toward trying to look unique.  I wear what I want to wear, I drive what I want to drive, and I live in a house which is economical for me.

I am an IT professional, and a good analogy for me is – look at this server rack below.  They all look the same don’t they?  Nothing stands out about any of them in particular, just like me.

Hidden Uniqueness

What you don’t know about these servers, though, is that they all do something different.  Equally important.  Each one of them has a job, a function.  From the outside looking in, I look like your regular run of the mill IT guy.  If you ask around the office about me, most people will tell you something very different though.  I go against the grain.  I speak my mind.  I come up with ideas.  I embrace change, and I cause change.  This has helped me in my career greatly, and it is all thanks to my ability to think freely, and speak my mind.  My ability to be unique.

In high school, I made some of the most memorable class presentations of all time, but every other day of the week I was just that quiet normal kid that no one paid attention to.

Work toward drawing positive attention to yourself, highlight your abilities, your uniqueness.  Make it known to the world what it is that you are good at, what ideas you have which should be known about.  Make an impact.

Don’t waste time with the eye shadow anymore, please.

Prior to deciding that I wanted to write, I thought that blogs were one of the stupidest things ever.  Who wants to read some assholes opinion on things?  After getting bored enough one day, I decided that I wanted to write about some things, and I decided that a blog was the right avenue for it.  It was at this point that I began to read other blogs.  

It wasn’t so much that after having my own blog, my opinion had changed.  It was more that I wanted to see other peoples sites, their designs, the topics they wrote on.  I wanted to see what other successful bloggers were doing, and how they had become successful.  I wanted to comment on other blogs, to promote my own, and read other blogs, to get ideas for my own.

This, I think, might be the case for many bloggers, and blogs.  Bloggers read other peoples blogs, write about the topics they find on other peoples blogs, and comment on other peoples blogs.  I honestly do not know anyone, who does not have a blog of their own, who makes a habit or reading any particular blog on a regular basis.  For me, I know for sure that is the case.

Using an RSS reader for me was almost impossible before I started blogging.  There were simply no other blogs out there that interested me enough to make me want to subscribe.  Now, I subscribe to over 30 blogs, and read them on a very regular basis.  Prior to this, the only blogs I read were simply by consequence of something interesting on digg being a link to a blog post.

I think this is interesting, since the number of people who blog is always growing, thus, the reader base for existing blogs is always growing.  Is blogging some sort of self-fulfilling prophecy?