Standing out on the Precipice

Too bad I couldn't push somebody off right now (I kid). Well it's that time again, life just served me up a big whopping plate of change. I'm standing out on yet another precipice, and I have no idea of what I'm looking out at. No signs or hint buttons from here on out. I think I've got a pretty good chance of surviving it though. When you're changing, it may not always be for the better, but yet you still somehow progress. Funny how life is like that.

Even the stupid journeys I've made in life that seemed to produce no fruitful outcome seem to evolve into unique manifestations.

But the older I get, the clearer I can see that an epic fail earlier in my life may not have advanced me any, but did help me understand something more pertinent later down the line. Having that knowledge, it is imperative from this point on to have no regrets. Life isn't up to our own ambitious designs, it's just what naturally evolves. Regrets = bad use of time planning your next adventure.

And through the years I've been wrapped up and confused about the notion to just go for your dream and never look back. Or, if you want something bad enough never, never give up trying. Well, that's probably great advice for a future Olympian who has the ultimate body designed for javelin throwing or something like that. The truth is, throwing everything under your dream bus is a waste of time on the great trek of life.  Failure is an oft-looked friend who is highly versed in constructive criticism.  

Your best effort in pursuing dreams is to go for the one that you're naturally adept at. Are you totally hilarious and have a ton of people standing around you laughing all the time?  Then quit screwing around in community college and learn what it takes to be a comedian. Spend all damn day on your laptop, and you're not working or employed? Then get your butt into an IT or programmer certification program, and stop perturbing people on Facebook or Youtube. Is the only thing you're good at is having the latest smart phone with service without ever maintaining a job? Then quit loitering wherever you're loitering at and work that baby to score you a reality show deal. Lesson here is, never look past an  emerging opportunity while absorbed into something comparatively useless.

Of course in this day and age, opportunities are frighteningly scarce. You can thank globalization for that.



Our lovely elected and non-elected finance officials have turned us into a zombie nation of job hunters duking it out over crap jobs like this one:

So you have to look for it in unusual places. Now is the time to pounce while everyone else is still reeling from the effects of our corrupt economy. You snooze, you loose.

 When everyone is griping about what is all going on around them, you've got to think fast and look towards emerging trends in the future (i.e., health care, energy crisis, education, technology). From there, you can plot your road to success. We're in a new age that is in the midst of a rapidly changing, global technological infrastructure. This is not the time to be opening a gift shop in the strip mall. Pick a trend in the future, study it, and hit up the first opportunity you come across in it.

And when that opportunity starts to get moldy, it's time poise yourself for reinvention and move on into the next big thing.

 In this new cutthroat world, you can't rest on your laurels. You'll always need to update your skills to stay ahead of the pack. Continuous education can help you to navigate new industry threats which are emerging all the time.

So rapid, survival-of-the-fittest, change is the new norm. Stop driving your kids nuts about coming to the dinner table and let them take a plate back to their computer so they can finish their blog. Let them tweet until 3 am about turning their Kindles into instruments of espionage. Definitely encourage the nerd persona. Tech savvy and brains are the new cool.

If you feel like all this technical transformation is making your head spin, it probably is. We'll have to find appropriate outlets for our anxiety. Probably not this one.

I think if we have to ride the technology wave, we should definitely try and enjoy it! Come on holodeck!!!!!


                              

Because eventually we'll get old. Our super duper, amazing technical skills will only be able to carry us so far. Younger people with way fresher ideas than our brains can cook up will eventually wipe us out.

Hopefully by then we have already bought into the great retirement funding hype and begin to leisurely enjoy our lives in style.

I guess there are other options then dealing with all this rigmarole (< spelling?), like if you were rich you could just hide away in a cabin in the woods and watch the rest of the planet fight it all out. As enticing as that option is for me, I've got a dark and horrible cloud looming over me and it goes by the name of "school loans". In closing, I would like to leave with the best quote ever about life in troubled times from the best western movie of all time, Tombstone (1993).

Doc Holliday: What do you want Wyatt?
Wyatt Earp: Just to live a normal life.
Doc Holliday: There is no normal life, there's just life, ya live it.

If ya gotta live in tough times, might as well live a life they keep talking, and talking, and talking, and talking about....

P.S. Thank you for enduring my gratuitous use of movie shots, motifakes, and all other desperate grasps for attention to this blog.