Inspired by life's ebb and flow...

Don't confuse me letting it go for forgetting about it.

Man lives.

Man dies.

The rest is vanity.

In a world seeking fame and fortune, give me only fortune.  In fact, I'll take a full order of it with a side of anonymity.  Because look... all this talking and convincing others to see what you see and feel as you do for a way that you believe it could be, or maybe was before, but your birth day didn’t allow for you to revel in it then... or maybe you never did fit in anywhere and it seems simpler somehow to trade today's trends for something suitable for you... and maybe it reshapes reality in a familiar fashion where for the first time in your life, you belong. But hey... Here’s the problem with all that.

A lot of us have risen through the traditional rank and file and paid our dues sometime before now and watching you there willing to die to tell us who to be... how to live... using only your words to wedge divide after divide into people... No... not me... I won't participate...  There's more to see here than you'd like to let on.  But we still see.  The ones who can shut out your noise anyway.  

My moment of vanity though... this life of mine... is not for you... or him... or the party of them... or a sect of script.  It's here. It's now and it's purely mine, bought free and clear with my own values.  With no apologies to Socrates or the theologists, you may never know it exists or even that I do, but it's authority of power you will never have.  Kind of makes it all worthwhile in the end.

In every job I've had to this point, all for some kind of corporation, the only thing that matters is the growth created.  To use this burger place as an example, if the owner managed to sell 5000 burgers and fries this year and projected 7% growth next year, the first 5350 burgers and fries he sold would be meaningless but he would start to see success once burger 5351 was served.  Looking deeper into the business, the owner and the town, I learned that this was a family business where his wife handled a lot of the financial components while he focused on the daily operations.  One of his three kids worked part time at the service counter and was learning to manage the kitchen.  They live in a very nice home on a sizeable plot of land just outside of town and enjoy camping in their rv and off-roading with their atvs and a modified Jeep.  They also have taken nice vacations to Disney parks and to see some mlb ballparks.  There is a college fund for the kids. They are looked at favorably by the community and donate their time and money into all sorts of things in the area. Everything funded because of the work they do at the burger restaurant.  

Obviously this all made me take a critical look at my employer and found they are just doing as corporations do.  They exist for the growth, to appease executives, investors and a board of directors made up of a mix of those executives and investors.  If the growth projections fall short, even when profit is measured in billions of dollars, it's considered failure.  It's just an amazing concept when you think it through.  Aside from just making money, what even is the point of it all?

Word of caution:  Those truths will be intermingled with a fair amount of tall-tales.

To share

But I can't share your misery

We used to feel everything together but I can't be made to feel your agony.

I'm sorry that the world has beat ya'll down but I won't accept the blame.

But it also brings back a time for me that wasn't the greatest where my best times were very often when I was watching baseball.  A friend had gotten an opportunity from a friend of his, who I also knew to go to the game as part of an operation school supplies event and invited me to go with.  I was really excited about it as I hadn't had a chance to go that season because I was unemployed and I was looking super forward to the social element as well, until the mutual acquaintance found out it was me who was invited and told my friend no. My friend obliged because he had to and tried to soften the blow at first but ended up telling me that the guy had issues with me. I hadnt done anything to him but he didn't like that I went to some parties his clique had thrown the year before and I was generally accepted in his circle.  Dude just didn't like me, even though I never did anything to him. But that still sticks with me and I think about it often when dealing with people who could just use a win, especially where I'm not taking a loss to give it to them. Yes a little kindness goes a long way but so does not actively being a jerk.

Because I hold a grudge, I hope he's miserable.  Sack of shit.  But in a way it made me a more compassionate person, so there's that.