Boring is okay

What is wrong with boring? What is wrong with stasis? What is wrong with living the same day everyday?

I don't understand the people who crave novelty and change all the time. Like, I just got here, why can’t I stay here for a little longer? Newlyweds know: soon as the wedding reception is over, everybody is asking when are you two going to have babies. Okay, maybe after you return from the honeymoon. It’s as if staying married with no babies for any period is not allowed.

Everybody knows: you hit certain age milestones and the questions start coming. 20: what do you plan to do with your life - for money? 30: why aren’t you married yet? 40: where are the babies? 60: what are your retirement plans? Honestly, is it your life, or society’s life? Other people are so eager for you to follow along to what everybody else do.

If you’re still single in your 30s and not looking to match up, you’re the weird one. Your parents, who are staring at the face of mortality in a few decades, are thinking: damn, I really want some grandchildren. So they nag you to get on with your life trajectory, to settle down with a girl and start producing some babies. And if you follow along with that, I think you’re foolish. You’d be living your life at the behest of others.

If you yourself want to settle down and make babies, that’s a different story.

Run your own race. So what if it doesn’t conform to the societal norms. So what if things don’t change for a while. Life is often boring anyways. People who can’t stand to be bored are those wont to divorce their wife soon as a younger/prettier version arrives on the scene. Is that what you want?

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HDTV.

What would you do?

What would you do if you have many millions of dollars? As in, what you would be doing instead of your present situation? This is not in relations to anything material - spending that money on lots of nice things - but rather a philosophical questions on how would you change your life right now if all money concerns are taken away. However absurd and hypothetical the question may be, I think it’s a worthy exercise to do from time to time, because your answer will reveal what is truly most important to you and what you are passionate about.

Because let’s face it, a big reason of why we do the work we do everyday is to take care of the money problem, and who amongst us haven’t daydreamed that if only we’d hit the lottery, we’d be doing something else way more interesting instead. Well, why not follow that daydream all the way to the end: what is that “something else” you would be doing if money is not a problem? No vague answers like “follow my passion” or “quit my job”, but really drill down to precisely what specific things about your life that you would change.

Last night in conversation a friend of mind jokingly predicted I was going to the first billionaire amongst the group. To that I replied that if I had that much money, I’d move to Asia, buy a small house (with a garage, obviously), and probably read books most of the time. That is indeed what I would like to be doing, if money issues of modern civilization was not a factor: have a little place of quiet to myself, so I can do plenty of reading and studying, with a garage to store and work on my car (automobiles is the big passion of my life).

The question then becomes: is there anything actually stoping me from doing those things right now - without the bundles of cash in reserves? I may not have a house, but the type of abode doesn’t prevent me from reading books and studying. I may not have a garage, but I already bought my dream car, and keeping that lovely machine maintained and in good shape doesn’t require my own private enclosed parking space. Even the part about moving to Asia: I can do that right now (well, after COVID) if I sold much of my possessions and investments. Of course, I’d need to find a job over on the other side of the world, but even billionaires continue to work, even though they are set for life many times over.

Perhaps the lesson is: you don’t need absolute financial security to change your life towards what you truly want to do. Figure out what that is, and make a change - however small - starting today. I’m going back to reading…

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Observe!

When this is all over

As we go pass over a month of being under the shelter-in-place rules, the mind tends to wander into the many possibilities once this coronavirus business is over. What would I want to do first once I am able to go outside freely? Anything big I would change about my life now that this once-in-a-generation pandemic has put a mirror to our current lives?

Lots to thing about, honestly. The exercise also provides something to look forward to, that there’s light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, that this too shall pass, and we will get through it relatively okay.

Of course, I speak as someone supremely fortunate enough to have a job where I am able to work from home. The countless people who were laid off these past few weeks certainly don’t have the ability to indulge in the pleasant what-if thinking of the post-coronavirus world. I can’t even begin to imagine what it would be like to have to worry about finding gainful employment once the lockdown is over, and the other tangential things that comes along with a job, such as paying rent, and having health insurance.

I have pondered about the negative possibilities with my job, steady as it may seem to be working for the State of California at a public university. It’s already a forgone conclusion that the Spring semester will remain completely remote and online; the mystery is what will happen in the next school year beginning in September. No one can say for sure what the situation will look like by then, and regardless I think enrollment will be significantly lower than usual. Less students means less funding for the college, and those of us working there just might have to bear some of that.

We all remember the furloughs following the financial crisis, though from a different perspective, that might be of some assurance. No one (that I know, anyways) got fired; we simply took a 10% pay-cut collectively. I hope it won’t come to that, but it’s certainly something to think about.

Whether good or bad, the best we can do is be ready.

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I’m itching to play with cars again.