Dear Diary,
I've been reading this excellent book by Tom Lutz "Doing Nothing - a History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers and Bums in America."
If you have call display and have ever gotten a cell phone call from me you'll know my extremely pro-leisure position and somewhat opposing nature my personality type has to that dreaded beast we call work.
Unfortunately in modern times the position of "gentleman philosopher" is rather extinct and I've had to get down and dirty with the best of them.
But it's made me come to an interesting revelation - nothing that in this point of my life that I would rank in the "major accomplishments" portion of my life has been achieved through work.
The realization hit me on a kind of blasphemous gut level, even more so when it sank it that... it was true.
I've gotten scholarships for being precociously intelligent and a teacher's charmer (people think you're being a suck up - but they don't realize that they're a sucker because you're getting away with murder), two of my coolest jobs were places I used to hang out in order to avoid school, I went on a diplomatic mission for the Canadian government in my teens because I was a hilarious social gadfly at a conference in Ottawa that I applied to so I could get away from high school, most of my teenage jetsetting (flying all over the world) in the area of children's rights originated from doing some kind of activity that would allow me to cut classes and skip school. A good memory, critical sense and flair for words allowed me to basically phone in a degree when the majority of what I now feel my "real learning" came in going out drinking, mixing at parties, kissing girls, and hanging out at the campus radio station. Even my mayoral campaign in my 18th year was based on farce and an irreverent (possibly pretentiously Situationist worldview) way of taking on affairs.
I wouldn't say I've lived a golden life, but for someone with a work ethic based around the notion of slack I've arguably achieved more than most members of my (perhaps) more hard-working family.
Being a cocky smartass with a flair for social happenings and an insatiable desire for knowledge of all forms has it's benefits I suppose.
If I took things too seriously and overly applied myself in high school and university, other things may have happened - I could have went to law school or got some ridiculously well paying job. But none of those things are fun.
Now I think it's a question of leverage - if I apply myself only a little - the rewards could be deliciously catastrophic (not for me, necessarily, but the world as I see it).
And I can still maintain a Brando-esque level of epicurean laissez-faire that the world will still be my living beating raw succulent oyster.
Slurp.
I've been reading this excellent book by Tom Lutz "Doing Nothing - a History of Loafers, Loungers, Slackers and Bums in America."
If you have call display and have ever gotten a cell phone call from me you'll know my extremely pro-leisure position and somewhat opposing nature my personality type has to that dreaded beast we call work.
Unfortunately in modern times the position of "gentleman philosopher" is rather extinct and I've had to get down and dirty with the best of them.
But it's made me come to an interesting revelation - nothing that in this point of my life that I would rank in the "major accomplishments" portion of my life has been achieved through work.
The realization hit me on a kind of blasphemous gut level, even more so when it sank it that... it was true.
I've gotten scholarships for being precociously intelligent and a teacher's charmer (people think you're being a suck up - but they don't realize that they're a sucker because you're getting away with murder), two of my coolest jobs were places I used to hang out in order to avoid school, I went on a diplomatic mission for the Canadian government in my teens because I was a hilarious social gadfly at a conference in Ottawa that I applied to so I could get away from high school, most of my teenage jetsetting (flying all over the world) in the area of children's rights originated from doing some kind of activity that would allow me to cut classes and skip school. A good memory, critical sense and flair for words allowed me to basically phone in a degree when the majority of what I now feel my "real learning" came in going out drinking, mixing at parties, kissing girls, and hanging out at the campus radio station. Even my mayoral campaign in my 18th year was based on farce and an irreverent (possibly pretentiously Situationist worldview) way of taking on affairs.
I wouldn't say I've lived a golden life, but for someone with a work ethic based around the notion of slack I've arguably achieved more than most members of my (perhaps) more hard-working family.
Being a cocky smartass with a flair for social happenings and an insatiable desire for knowledge of all forms has it's benefits I suppose.
If I took things too seriously and overly applied myself in high school and university, other things may have happened - I could have went to law school or got some ridiculously well paying job. But none of those things are fun.
Now I think it's a question of leverage - if I apply myself only a little - the rewards could be deliciously catastrophic (not for me, necessarily, but the world as I see it).
And I can still maintain a Brando-esque level of epicurean laissez-faire that the world will still be my living beating raw succulent oyster.
Slurp.
VIEW 5 of 5 COMMENTS
trevallion:
On a mostly unrelated note, I saw a Native American waiting for a bus wearing a Nirvana shirt last week and it seemed really really funny to me.
quickley:
Ah. Box office opens at noon. Closes at 10.