Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Shattering the Status Quo

In the nine years since my college graduation, I have endured multiple periods of unemployment. Refusing to settle for just any career path, I’ve always been very selective of the jobs I’m willing to apply for, making my searches that much tougher.

And while this follow-your-heart attitude has been a source of pride, it didn’t make going to my 10-year high school reunion with an address that matched my parents’ any less embarrassing.

Fortunately, I have been gainfully employed for a few years now. But when I think back to my last stint of joblessness, I can’t help but cringe, the wounds and battle scars still tender from an extremely stressful time in my life.

I had just put aside my dream of playing competitive golf, and my mind and spirit were the consistency of jell-o. I couldn’t think about taking on anything meaningful, so I scrapped my idealist aspirations of finding work that I cared about. I just wanted a job – something that would give me a steady paycheck and allow me to get out of my mom and dad’s house.

“Job Search ’06: The Less Responsibility, The Better.”

But despite sending out countless resumes for countless jobs – many of which I was overqualified for – the rejection letters poured in (that is, when I received a response at all). Frightened at how closely my life’s arc resembled that of George Costanza’s, I wondered if things would ever get better.

After nine fruitless months, I was tired – of feeling down, of feeling helpless, of feeling sorry for myself. I didn’t know what to do.

That’s when it dawned on me that maybe the problem wasn’t the jobs I was going after, or the people I was dealing with, or the competitiveness of the market, or anything on the outside.

Maybe the problem was me.

I began looking at what role I might be playing in my lack of success. I determined that, because I wasn’t passionate about these jobs, my indifference was seeping into my interactions with potential employers. I wasn’t aggressive enough. I wasn’t selling myself enough. So I decided to implement a new strategy:

I started lying.

Over my next several interviews, I buried my inner-Peter Gibbons (Office Space) and became Mr. Enthusiastic, proclaiming my excitement for the opportunity and how good of a fit I would be. I stressed that this was the job I wanted, and all I needed was a chance to prove my value.

While the first few companies didn’t buy my act, I eventually found one that did. After grinding through three call-backs, I finally had a contract.

Sure, I had sold my soul to the Initech Devil, but it was a small price to pay for an upgrade in the state of my union.

Getting out of an unhealthy situation isn’t easy. Stuck in a rut, unable to stop looping the same traffic circle of pain and frustration, you start to feel like you’ll never find an exit.

Oftentimes, it takes something disastrous to jolt you out the cycle, to finally put your foot down and say, “Enough!” You switch up your diet when a loved one has a heart attack. You move on from an ex-girlfriend after hearing she’s dating someone new. You stop texting behind the wheel, because it caused the star player on your alma mater’s football team to drive into an apartment building (this actually happened – click here).

But what if it didn’t have to come to that? What if you didn’t have to go through the anguish and agony of hitting rock-bottom to make a change?

Looking back at the difficult situations I’ve dealt with in my life, they are all unique, each distinctive in their own particular way. They’ve occurred at different ages under different circumstances over different issues. There have been plenty where I piled mistake on top of mistake, and there have been some where I was the recipient of injustice and bad luck.

When it comes to struggling, I’m an equal opportunity employer.

But despite all of the dissimilarities, through all of the changing variables, there was one constant:

Me.

That took me a while to recognize, and it was a hard realization to stomach. But as I analyzed the valleys of my life, and I asked myself, “Why do these things keep happening to me?” I saw that there was a clear pattern of behavior, and I had to own up to it. Because as much as I believe in fate, I also acknowledge that we were blessed with free will.

Of course, when things aren’t going our way, it’s convenient to dismiss this reality, to throw up our hands and act as if the world is conspiring against us. Instead of adjusting our approach, we keep doing what we’ve been doing, even though nothing is working. Instead of welcoming the help of our friends and family, we “yes, but” their advice, as in, “Yes, you are right, but can’t you see that I’m the victim here?”

We blame our predicament on anyone and anything but ourselves.

Sure, making excuses may help us sleep at night, but it also holds us hostage, preventing us from ever moving forward.

Shattering the status quo is a challenge, because it requires us to step out of our comfort zone. And the longer we’ve been in a situation – no matter how toxic – the harder it is to extract ourselves from it. Strange as it sounds, that hurt we’ve been feeling, those distressing emotions we’ve been experiencing, have become familiar and safe. (In my “expert” medical opinion) It’s why someone who is raised by an alcoholic parent ends up with an alcoholic spouse – it’s what you know.

But we are not always at the mercy of our DNA or other people’s decisions or the universe’s sick sense of humor. Each of us has a choice about how we want to live our lives. And until we accept responsibility for that, the possibility of real change will elude us.

Yes, sometimes the breaks don’t go our way, and sometimes things simply aren’t meant to be, regardless of how badly we want them or how hard we try. But it’s up to us to take ownership of our lot in life and be honest with ourselves about the part we play in it.

We may not be able to control the outcome, but we can control the process.

Albert Einstein once said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results." Lord knows I’ve been guilty of this enough to have Nurse Ratched as a babysitter, but it's empowering to realize that whenever I want to make a change, I hold the key.

And since I hope to have a better showing at my 20-year reunion, I should probably get started now.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Lean on Me

I’ve always preferred taking a later lunch. Even though I’m usually ready to eat by 9:45am, depriving myself helps break up the day better, so when I return to my desk – on the verge of a food coma – there are fewer hours left for which I have to remain conscious. Plus, it’s a great way to avoid the crowds, allowing me to walk right up and place my order.

So I was disappointed the other day when I got to Subway around 1:30pm, only to find a line so long that it was snaking around a display in the middle of the store. But that disappointment was quickly replaced by anger because of what happened next…

I was patiently waiting my turn, when a woman walked in, clearly unsure as to where the line started. As she stood there for a few seconds, the man in front of me – who was at the apex of the “snake” – got out of line, creating a big gap between me and the next customer.

Suddenly, I was in no man’s land.

Before I could move, though, the woman stepped into the opening, killing the “snake” and extending the line towards the front door.

Now, if you’re at Subway, you’re doing one of three things: waiting, ordering or eating…it’s not a place you go to hang out or pick up chicks. And since I didn’t have a $5 foot-long in my hand, it was obvious what I was doing.

But this woman didn’t say anything to me. No “Are you in line?” No “Were you here first?” Nothing. She just re-routed the line to her advantage.

My mind began racing, dumbfounded by her actions. How could someone be so inconsiderate?

As I searched for an answer, the man who’d been waiting behind me did her one better, stepping around me to take his place at the end of the “new” line.

Ummm…REALLY?

Not wanting to make a scene, I didn’t say anything and quietly got in line. I waited for one of them to turn around, so I could flash an are-you-kidding-me expression, but neither ever did. They were probably too embarrassed to make eye contact with me.

How could they not be? Being respectful of others is one of life’s basic lessons, something we’re taught from the moment we leave our mother’s arms and integrate into everyday society. As pre-schoolers, we learn how to politely coexist – to not hit one another; to share our building blocks; to not pour juice on our classmate’s nap mat.

But as we get older, these fundamental teachings often become secondary to the hustle and flow of our day-to-day responsibilities, and there’s no one to make us stand in the corner when we misbehave. Stressed out, pulled in 18 different directions, we needed to be somewhere five minutes ago, and we have no time to hold the door open or wave “thank you” to the driver who let’s us merge onto the freeway.

And it would be bad enough if our biggest crime was our failure to perform these simplest of social niceties, but it’s not. This lack of common courtesy is emblematic of a deeper lack of respect that runs to the heart of our humanity.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve lived a charmed life. The product of stable, loving parents, I won the birthday lottery, and I have never really wanted for anything.

While I don’t consider myself lazy, and I’ve been employed (on and off) since I was 16, I haven’t had to fight for my standing in society. I inherited it, benefitting from the hard work put in by the top of my family tree. All of the comforts and opportunities I have been afforded – from living in a nice house to graduating college to a white-collar career path – are largely due to the circumstances into which I was born.

It’s taken some time, but I am now okay with that fact. While I’m thankful every day for my good fortune, I’ve come to think – and hope – that pulling myself up from my boot straps to make ends meet isn’t one of the soul-evolving tests I have to pass in this life.

(There have been plenty of others to challenge me, like quieting the negative voice in my head and figuring out how “could care less” and “couldn’t care less” mean the same thing.)

But that only makes stopping at an intersection to see someone begging on the corner seem that much more unfair. Sitting in my foreign-made SUV, I look around at the luxuries within an arm’s length – my cell phone, my iPod, my golf clubs – and I’m embarrassed. The amount of money I spent on those items alone could feed a family for a month.

Giving the person some spare change feels like a feeble attempt at doing the right thing.

I guess this is the Darwinist effect of a free market society – some people thrive, some people dive. The social order sorts itself out.

But it’s troubling to me how low the lowest class is on the range of socioeconomic status. Yes, many of these people, through their poor or sinister choices, have put themselves in this position, but whether they “deserve” their plight or not, no human being should have to resort to holding a cardboard sign to survive.

Our society is drastically out of balance. It’s not a community…it’s a hierarchy. There is excess everywhere you turn, from the inflated contracts of professional athletes, to the 30,000 square foot mansions featured on MTV’s Cribs.

Nobody needs that much.

So I can’t help but wonder if, out of the goodness of our hearts, we each made the smallest of sacrifices to spread the wealth more evenly. What if a couple spent $45 on a steak dinner instead of $90? What if a young executive spent $40,000 on a car instead of $50,000? What if an oil company’s CEO took a salary of $60 million instead of $70 million?

Just think what would be possible if we kept a little less money for ourselves, and shared a little more with those who really need it. We could still lead magnificent lives, while helping to ensure that everyone is taken care of.

If we are all G-d’s children, don’t we owe each other that much?

Look, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with indulging in the finer aspects of life. Every person has the right to spend his money however he chooses. Working hard at the office allows us to do things that make us happy – playing golf, decorating a house, "making it rain" – and there’s value in rewarding ourselves for a job well done.

What I am saying is that it is time we make some adjustments. If we’ve learned anything from this past year, with its financial crashes and scandals and frauds, it’s that our standard operating procedure is not working. Driven by greed and a me-first mentality, when we step on the fortunes of others to get to the top, we all end up sinking to the bottom.

When I was in third grade, I started riding the bus to and from school every day. While I spent most of my time listening to inappropriate rap music on my Walkman, I do remember hitting pause long enough to take note of the sign that was posted up front, in a spot where every impressionable, elementary school passenger could see:


The Golden Rule
Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.


Somewhere along the way, that message got lost, and we need to find it again. Too often we dismiss the inequality around us with a that’s-the-way-it-is shrug and go on about our lives. After all, we’re not the ones who have to wonder where our next meal will come from.

I’m as guilty of it as anyone, but if we each do our part, then little by little, piece by piece, we can create a world where nobody is left behind, and the biggest injustice anyone endures is waiting a few extra minutes for a sandwich at Subway.

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

The Devil's Advocate

In the Seinfeld episode “The Pick,” George is torn over whether he should call his ex-girlfriend to try to win her back. Out of desperation, he turns to Kramer for advice.

“What does the Little Man inside you say?” Kramer asks him. “See, you gotta listen to the Little Man.”

When George replies that his Little Man doesn’t know what to do, Kramer dismisses the notion.

“The Little Man knows all!” he insists.

“My Little Man’s an idiot,” George replies.

Like Costanza, I have been struggling with my Little Man, too. You know the Little Man – that voice inside your head that’s constantly reacting to the world around you, narrating your experience of life. Like the voiceover of the grown-up Kevin Arnold in The Wonder Years, it’s your unfiltered inner-dialogue, helping you decide what to eat, giving your true opinion of a friend’s outfit and cussing out that driver in the left lane who’s going 10mph under the speed limit.

And while my Little Man hasn’t told me to knock over women and children to escape a fire or to eat an éclair out of the garbage can, his impact has been just as destructive:

He’s turned me into my own worst enemy.

Ideally, the Little Man would be your biggest cheerleader, talking to you the way an encouraging friend would. He’d keep you calm when things get chaotic and would instill a you-can-do-it confidence when doubt sets in.

Unfortunately, my Little Man has taken on the opposite persona. He’s a drill instructor – think Private Pyle’s nemesis in Full Metal Jacket – berating me at every turn, casting a shadow of negativity over my entire existence. He gets an I-told-you-so kick out of seeing me fail, and my life is slowly turning into a demented self-fulfilling prophecy.

It’s not due to a lack of effort, though. I’ve continually put myself out there, trying different jobs and different addresses in hopes of finding a path that is in harmony with who I want to be. But my search has led to little success – and even less inner-peace – because I’m consistently derailed by the demonic voice in my head.

Having always been an evaluative person, I am constantly reviewing and analyzing everything I do, from my job productivity to how symmetrically I trim my sideburns. In a lot of ways, this is a positive characteristic, as it gives me a clear picture of where I stand, helping me to transform my weaknesses into strengths.

But this trait became a detriment the moment the Little Man shot it full of HGH. Now, every situation – no matter how inconsequential – is an opportunity for him to judge me. A casual conversation with a friend will get replayed over and over in my mind, as I try to determine if I said the right thing or cracked the right joke. I probably spend more time breaking down my “performances” than an NFL quarterback.

How I ended up like this is beyond me. Since the day I was born, my parents have done nothing but shower me with affection and acceptance. My mom went so far as to say that she’d love me no matter what – even if I killed someone.

And while I don’t plan on testing the bounds of my mother’s promise, I do feel like head-butting a wall when I think about the negative impact the Little Man has had on me. I’m always drained, constantly battling him, expending my energy on simply surviving instead of thriving. No longer relishing the thrill of being in the arena, I now seek out the relief that comes when something is over and done with.

That wasn’t always the case, though. As a kid, I loved to play golf. There was no place I was more at peace than out on the course at dusk, racing the sun to the 18th green, imagining I was in the hunt for a major championship.

Like the PGA Tour golfer Tim Petrovic said, “I was always happy when I was hitting a golf ball.”

So as I got older, and I went to work for Corporate America – where if you work in golf you never actually get to play golf – the Little Man was not pleased. He’d call me a coward for selling out and shrinking from the challenge of playing competitively. When I watched tournaments on TV and saw guys my age succeeding, he would mock me for being at home on the couch.

After a few years of taunting, I conceded that, despite his cruel delivery, the Little Man had a point – I was not doing what I wanted to do. So I quit my job, trading in the spreadsheets and staplers for my 3-wood and a daily tee time.

I thought that the Little Man had been so tough on me, because I wasn’t being true to myself, and I appreciated the nudge. Now that I was on the right path, I figured he would become an ally.

But nothing is ever good enough for the Little Man.

My golf game was just a new forum for him to deliver body blows. Every shot, every swing, every score was under his merciless scrutiny. No matter how hard I worked, and no matter how much my technique improved, my progress as a player was stunted because I couldn’t shut him up.

I don’t care how much talent you have…it’s hard to hit a 200-yard cut shot over water when someone’s screaming “Don’t choke” in your ear.

Going to the golf course became like going to the proctologist, and eventually, I couldn’t do it anymore. I was tired – of feeling inadequate, of thinking I was a joke, of emotionally going 15 rounds with Ivan Drago. The Little Man had taken something that I was passionate about, something that gave me joy, and turned it into a never-ending prostate exam.

I didn’t hit a golf ball for a year.

And now he’s starting to attack another one of my passions: writing. Lately, I’ve dreaded doing it at all, because I know that I’ll instantly start hearing about how I can’t come up with a good story idea, or that I’m not funny enough, or I won’t figure out how to say what I want to say. I find myself scrounging for anything that will keep me from having to sit down to the computer.

“Ya know, I haven’t been on Facebook in three minutes…maybe somebody who I haven’t seen since elementary school just uploaded some new pictures!”

With “compare” being one of the Little Man’s favorite verbs, it’s hard for me to even read or watch the work of accomplished writers. Instead of being inspired by the brilliance of Aaron Sorkin or Malcolm Gladwell, I end up taking a series of you-could-never-do-that punches to the stomach, leaving me scrambling to find an episode of the new 90210, so I can feel a little less inadequate as a writer.

The most frustrating part of all of this is that I’m doing it to myself…it is the voice in my head, and the Little Man is my own creation.

But I know that deep down, beneath all of the chatter, is my spirit, whose voice is the spokesperson for the true me – the one that pushes me along, that fosters my dreams, that gives me the energy to keep going in the face of the Little Man’s discouragement.

There are psychiatric hospitals filled with people who can’t control the voices in their head. I guess I just hide it better, but I am still searching for the Little Man’s “mute” button.

Who knows…it may take the work of a priest, but maybe someday he’ll get demoted to lowercase letters, from "Little Man" to "little man."

I often wonder what I’d be able to accomplish if I could get out of my own way long enough to allow my natural talent and abilities to flow through.

Come to think of it…Costanza did become a fake marine biologist, so that could be an option.

They Say...

There's nothing like a good quote. As a writer, I'm always hoping to come up with one of my own. But for the time being, I'll have to rely on others who have said it best. This page will be a work in progress, as I'm always paying attention to what "they say"...

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer."
-Henry David Thoreau, Walden

"Pain and suffering are inevitable in our lives, but misery is an option."
-Chip Beck, Professional Golfer

"I'm 36 years old, I love my family, I love baseball and I'm about to become a farmer. But until I heard the voice, I'd never done a crazy thing in my whole life."
-Ray Kinsella, Field of Dreams

"There's a diffrence between a failure and a fiasco. A failure is merely the absence of success. Any fool can achieve failure. But a fiasco, a fiasco is a disaster of epic propotions. A fiasco is a folk tale told to other's to make other people feel more alive because it didn't happen to them."
-Drew Baylor, Elizabethtown

"It's really an advantage when you don't watch film, because then you can be stupid."
-Mack Brown, Head Football Coach, University of Texas

"There's no dollar sign on a peace of mind, this I've come to know."
-Zac Brown Band, Chicken Fried

"When you're a little kid you're a bit of everything; Scientist, Philosopher, Artist. Sometimes it seems like growing up is giving these things up one at a time."
-Kevin Arnold, The Wonder Years

"Fundamentals are a crutch for the talentless."
-Kenny Powers, Eastbound and Down

"Don't let her be a regret...it's worse than being a loser."
-Simon Wilder, With Honors

"When nothing seems to help, I go look at a stonecutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without as much as a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred and first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not that blow that did it, but all that had gone before."
-Jacob Riis, Stonecutter Credo

"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing, and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For 15 minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid - ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember. Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in."
-Ricky Fitts, American Beauty

"The book of love, has music in it.
In fact, that's where music comes from."
-Peter Gabriel, Book of Love

"I have just created something totally illogical."
-Ray Kinsella, Field of Dreams

"Who's gonna turn down a Junior Mint? It's chocolate, it's peppermint...it's delicious!"
-Kramer, Seinfeld

“Well, all I'm saying is that I want to look back and say that I did I the best I could while I was stuck in this place…Had as much fun as I could while I was stuck in this place…Played as hard as I could while I was stuck in this place...Dogged as many girls as I could while I was stuck in this place.”
-Dawson, Dazed and Confused

“So you failed. Alright you really failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You think I care about that? I do understand. You wanna be really great? Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you're still smiling.”
-Claire Colburn, Elizabethtown

“You can’t lose what you don’t put in the middle…but you can’t win much, either.”
-Mike McDermott, Rounders

“That’s called the ‘quart-of-blood’ technique. You do that, a quart of blood will drop out of a person’s body.”
-Billy Ray Valentine, Trading Places

“I relate to George through you. We’re more like friends-in-law.”
-Elaine Benes, Seinfeld

“Remember those posters that said, ‘Today is the first day of the rest of your life’? Well, that’s true of every day but one – the day you die.”
-Lester Burnham, American Beauty

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.”
-Albert Einstein

“What will be the next thing that challenges us? That makes us go farther and work harder? You know that when smallpox was eradicated, it was considered the single greatest humanitarian achievement of this century? Surely we can do it again, as we did in the time when our eyes looked towards the heavens, and with outstretched fingers, we touched the face of G-d.”
-President Josiah Bartlet, The West Wing

“It became clear to me sitting out there today that every decision I’ve made in my entire life has been wrong. My life is the complete opposite of everything I want it to be. Every instinct I have, in every aspect of life, be it something to wear, something to eat – it’s all been wrong.”
-George Costanza, Seinfeld

“Yeah, you know gray…it’s my favorite color.”
-Counting Crows, Mr. Jones

“You’re a big winner. I’m gonna ask you a simple question and I want you to listen to me: who’s the big winner here tonight at the casino? Huh? Mikey, that’s who. Mikey’s the big winner. Mikey wins.”
-Trent, Swingers

“The man who thinks he can and the man who thinks he can’t are both right.”
-Henry Ford

“You know the message you’re sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You’re telling the world, ‘I give up. I can’t compete in normal society. I’m miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.’”
-Jerry Seinfeld, Seinfeld

“Faced with crisis, the man of character falls back on himself.”
-Charles de Gaulle

“The wind blows wild, and I may move.
The politicians lie, and I am not fooled.
You don’t need no reason or a three piece suit to argue the truth.”
-Brett Dennan, Ain’t No Reason

“In Philadelphia, it’s worth $50.”
-Pawnbroker (Bo Diddley), Trading Places

“If you’re dumb, surround yourself with smart people. If you’re smart, surround yourself with smart people who disagree with you.”
-Isaac Jaffe, Sports Night

“If you weren’t real, I would make you up.”
-Joseph Arthur, Honey and the Moon

“It’s only after we’ve lost everything that we’re free to do anything.”
-Tyler Durden, Fight Club

“I went broke believing that the simple should be hard.”
-Matt Nathanson, All We Are

“Everyone’s got plans…until they get hit.”
-Mike Tyson

“Straight cash, homey.”
-Randy Moss, on how he settles his financial debts.

"Do the thing you fear, and the death of that fear is certain."
-Joe Stoller (courtesy of Ralph Waldo Emerson)

"Greatness courts failure."
-Roy McAvoy, Tin Cup

"Sadness is easier, because it's surrender. I say, make time to dance alone with one hand waving free."
-Claire Colburn, Elizabethtown

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."
-Theodore Roosevelt, To the Man in the Arena

"The answer's in the dirt...dig it out."
-Ben Hogan, Golfer

"No true fiasco ever began as a quest for mere adequacy. The motto of the British Special Service Air Force is: 'Those who risk...win.' A single green vine shoot is able to grow through cement. The Pacific Northwestern salmon beats itself bloody by traveling hundreds of miles upstream - against the current - with a single purpose: sex, of course. But also...life."
-Drew Baylor, Elizabethtown

"Anyone can be confident with a full head of hair. But a confident bald man - there's your diamond in the rough."
-Larry David

"Yeah, it's overwhelming, but what else can we do? Get jobs in offices and wake up for the morning commute?"
-MGMT, Time to Pretend

"Like Papa Walenda said, 'Life is on the wire...the rest is just waiting.'"
-Mike McDermott, Rounders

"In that moment, I knew that success - not greatness - was the only god the world served."
-Drew Baylor, Elizabethtown

"'Cuz I could never live with me before you came along."
-The Churchills, Everybody Gets What They Deserve

"Bob Dylan once wrote: The times they are a-changin'. Ron Burgundy had never heard that song."
-Narrator, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

“According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. Number two is death. Death is number two. Does that sound right? This means to the average person, if you go to a funeral, you're better off in the casket than doing the eulogy.”
-Jerry Seinfeld

About Me

My photo
"It's not a lie, if you believe it." Those were the words of one of my generation's great sages, George Costanza, and the more of life I experience, the truer they ring. And while I still haven't found what I'm looking for, the search for my own personal "truths" is never-ending. Care to come along for the ride?