WAYWARD
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It took roughly three months before BCG disproved my “burn-out proof” theory. Putting together PowerPoint slides was easy, the hours were lenient, and the fifth day of every week usually consisting of a leisurely day away from the client site. By all accounts, I should have been coasting through my tasks. What I learned is that burning out isn’t just about work load, it’s about work load being greater than the motivation to do work. It was relatively easy to drag myself to classes when I thought I was working for my own betterment. It was hard to sit at a laptop and crank out slides when all I seemed to be accomplishing was the transfer of wealth from my client to my company.
IT TURNED OUT THIS WAY, COS YOU DREAMED IT LIKE THIS: Dazed Digital publisher Robert Montgomery at KK Outlet, London
(via biznesslunch)
a Yámana Initiation Lodge, made of upright bent tree branches, and covered with boughs. Navarin Island, Tierra del Fuego Archipelago, 1925. National Museum of the American Indian
PATAGONIA
“You want a physicist to speak at your funeral. You want the physicist to talk to your grieving family about the conservation of energy, so they will understand that your energy has not died. You want the physicist to remind your sobbing mother about the first law of thermodynamics; that no energy gets created in the universe, and none is destroyed. You want your mother to know that all your energy, every vibration, every Btu of heat, every wave of every particle that was her beloved child remains with her in this world. You want the physicist to tell your weeping father that amid energies of the cosmos, you gave as good as you got.
And at one point you’d hope that the physicist would step down from the pulpit and walk to your brokenhearted spouse there in the pew and tell him that all the photons that ever bounced off your face, all the particles whose paths were interrupted by your smile, by the touch of your hair, hundreds of trillions of particles, have raced off like children, their ways forever changed by you. And as your widow rocks in the arms of a loving family, may the physicist let her know that all the photons that bounced from you were gathered in the particle detectors that are her eyes, that those photons created within her constellations of electromagnetically charged neurons whose energy will go on forever.
And the physicist will remind the congregation of how much of all our energy is given off as heat. There may be a few fanning themselves with their programs as he says it. And he will tell them that the warmth that flowed through you in life is still here, still part of all that we are, even as we who mourn continue the heat of our own lives
And you’ll want the physicist to explain to those who loved you that they need not have faith; indeed, they should not have faith. Let them know that they can measure, that scientists have measured precisely the conservation of energy and found it accurate, verifiable and consistent across space and time. You can hope your family will examine the evidence and satisfy themselves that the science is sound and that they’ll be comforted to know your energy’s still around. According to the law of the conservation of energy, not a bit of you is gone; you’re just less orderly. Amen.”
I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see, and what it means.
The biggest company in the cruising world is the Carnival Corporation, based in Miami (the Costa Concordia is owned by one of their subsidiaries). Carnival has its roots in a small company set up in the 1960s which had a utopian vision that cruise liners could transform the world. One of its founders believed that the giant ships were machines that could help bring about a new era of world peace.
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Evian Christ: Fuck It None Of Ya’ll Don’t Rap (via biznesslunch)199 plays
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bill callahan: so long marianne (leonard cohen cover)3020 plays
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I didn’t get the job. Through a connection that I never saw coming, I got an interview at a company that in many ways is the corporate holy grail. I immediately got my shit together, turning my inner-stoner off for the longest period since the exodus from my college campus, spending all day researching facts and figures to bring out during the interview. For days, I was so nervous I could barely eat, undoubtedly exacerbated by the completely inexplicable disappearance of my constant munchies. The day of my two hour and 15 minute interview, my blood vessels were so restricted that I’m sure my handshake felt like gripping death. Yet I smiled, I made them laugh, subtle hints were dropped and I was filled with optimism.
But I didn’t get the job. And that’s fine. It was an opportunity that I never expected so I never had expectations. Other people did, however. As word spread around my family and close friends, I received endless words of encouragement and reassurance. “I’m sure you’ll get it”. “You’re a perfect fit for them”. “I have a really good feeling about this”. These words echoed in my head over and over, placing a pearl of hope inside of my clammy exterior. I tempered the growth of that kernel, however, making sure to not let myself get ahead of the here and now.
And then I didn’t get the job. The echoes of encouragement suddenly turned to self-doubt. If everyone who knows me intimately is so assured in my ability and promise yet I cannot even get a part-time catering job, let alone one that actually takes into account my ability and promise, what am I to think of myself? It is as if I have let down those who have an invested interest in me, that I cannot translate my “potential” into the language that resume-bombarded employers understand. I want so badly to believe things will work out neatly, my inner 90s child having fully ingested the maxims of an approach to education now made defunct by the ebbing tides of economic prosperity.
A friend recently referred to life after graduating from college as a “second adolescence”. I’m afraid it may still be a while before my second first kiss.
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The obvious child.
