I’ve been struggling to come up with good topics to write about, but I think this one is broad enough to cover a lot of random recent thoughts floating through my mind.
Adversity
One of my pet peeves of modern television culture is reality talent shows that spend a vast majority of the airtime milking/creating/curating people’s back-stories to highlight some adversity they’ve overcome in order to add a deeply personal or emotional attachment. It really grinds my gears. Its not that I don’t empathize with many of the challenges portrayed, or even admire the contestants for overcoming them, it just seems sort of exploitative to put this sort of stuff out in the context of a talent show.
Part of the problem could be a sort of jealousy that I haven’t really had much adversity in my life. Or at least not the type you could write a really great heart-wrenching backstory saga to couple with my dynamic performance of some sappy popular music rendition. I grew up in a small well-off town, solidly in the middle class. My family is loving. My family has stayed mostly healthy and away from tragic life-threatening events. Even my dog has lived a long, healthy life. Maybe rather than jealousy we should call this a feeling of overwhelming relief & thankfulness for the somewhat uneventful life I’ve led thus far.
Another pet peeve is when multi-billion-dollar companies attempt to curate a false sense of adversity to their employees. In my stint with John Deere, there was always this vague undertone to management presentations that the world was going to starve without our efforts to improve farming productivity (read: print more money for our shareholders). While there is maybe some underlying truth to this adversity, its a hard sell to me, working in a datacenter in the food-rich midwest, to see the overpopulated-starving-world future and work differently because of it.
Motivation
So what actually motivates me? Great question and glad you asked.
- I enjoy learning new things.
- I enjoy digging deep into how things work.
- I enjoy seeing people I love do well.
- I enjoy creating little useful things.
- I enjoy puzzles.
- I enjoy simplifying the complex.
- I enjoy working as a small team towards a common achievable goal.
Exploring. Curiosity. Utility.
Curiosity (The Expanse)
I’ve taken a recent liking to the tv series The Expanse. If you haven’t seen it, I’d highly recommend. I imagine the novel series its based off is excelent as well, but I’ve taken the lazy route to entertainment this time.
I’m just getting started with Season 4, and this show really appeals to my sense of imagination & curiosity. The premise is that humanity has colonized our solarsystem and, as are apt to do, have divided into some warring factions. In the midst of this tension, some new unknown dangerous & mysterious alien tech/lifeform emerges. The lifeform eventually kills a bunch of people in various strange ways, but then opens a portal to a number of other colonizable systems. A new gold-rush is on as humans’ innate urge to explore the unknown kicks in and they go bumbling over each other into the great unknown.
I can’t even imagine the curiosity explosion that would happen if there were reachable, habitable new worlds to explore. The sheer amount of new things humanity would discover & learn is unimaginable.
:It’s Me:
As the COVID-19 pandemic lifts in the US, and as I begin to explore new career opportunities, it feels a little strange to be exploring the world again. Suddenly, grilling out with friends in the backyard, taking the kids to a park playground are options again. While not the same as full new worlds of possibilities, maybe its enough. To my 2-year-old son, who has spent nearly half his life in quarentine, it is a Brave New World.
