Jul 22 2008
Living in Reaction: Who’s Pushing Your Buttons?
BY THEBOSTONBACHELOR.COM / July 22, 2008
It starts with the email.
We wake up in the morning, stumble to our desk, and click the Outlook icon in the taskbar to sort through the day’s digital deluge. And as much as we hate it, it makes feel important in a certain way. Someone out there knows I’m alive. Someone out there cares about me.
Soon the minutes turn into half-hours, then hours. Due to corporate politics, 3 line thank you notes to Managing Directors turn into 40 minutes of rewriting, proofreading, spell-checking, and BCCing. Welcome to productivity in the 21st century.
Email. The news. Phone calls. Conference calls. Reminders. Angry clients. Worried clients. Bored clients. Meetings. Questions about software usage. Letters of intent. Advertising. You need to do this. You need to buy this. You need to worry about this. You need to not do this. The messages come from everywhere. Oh, there’s always something there to remind me… sing it with me.
The fact is, we have all been trained to live in reaction ever since birth—and this especially applies to the average American male.
The journey goes something like this:
Ages 4-14: If you don’t study, then how are you going to get good grades?
Ages 15-18: If you don’t get good grades, then how are you going to get into a good college?
Ages 18-22: If you don’t graduate from a good college, then how are you going to get a decent job?
Ages 22-Eternity: If you don’t have a decent job, then how are you going to find a girlfriend? If you don’t have a decent job, a condo/house, and a relatively new car, then how are you going to get an attractive wife? If you don’t get a pay raise, a bigger condo/house, and a new car on a regular basis, then how are you going to keep that attractive wife of yours?
Everything is laid out, step by step, piece by piece. A trail of bullshit the length of five football fields. Climb the ivory ladder. Laugh a few seconds longer at your boss’ jokes. Ask your coworkers every Monday morning how their weekends were. Gossip with “the boys” about the hot new secretary. Ogle the airbrushed photos in Maxim during your lunch break. Get the promotion. Buy the house. Buy the car. Buy the ring. Buy that feeling of self-worth. Feed the white-picket fence arms race. Love the system, and the system loves you back. Follow all the steps, and you can finally call yourself a success.
And isn’t that what success is after all? Getting that 5% pay raise every year so you can spend it all when you’re 65? Going from a workstation to a cubicle to an office to a corner office? Or shimmying up from an analyst to a senior analyst to a consultant to a senior consultant to a manager to a senior manager to a managing director to a senior managing director to a partner? Now if that doesn’t get you excited, then nothing will.
So… how was your weekend?
-The Boston Bachelor
So true, I had many corporate jobs since college and they al felt the same way. You fall into this awful daily routine that after a while just starts to seem like one giant blur as each day blends together. Wake up, get your cube, pound away at your keyboard and then before you know it the days starts over.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERbvKrH-GC4
It was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing and dance along the way…
Tear
Brilliant video, kid. Here’s another one:
That guy reminded me of Philip Seymour Jackson when I first saw him.
“I got depressed early in life.”
High Comedy
You do realize who that is… The Game there of.
It could be worse. If you were a woman, your little list would include
Age 22-25 Establish your career. Prove you have a brain in that purty lil head of yours and pretend you don’t notice when men twice your age call you darlin and shoog. Try to date a guy who is not intimidated by your brain, ambition or the fact that you make more money than he does. When you find the perfect boy, tell him you’re really not interested in having kids any time soon (maybe someday, but seems hard to run a company from a maternity ward). Watch perfect boys run far far away. Realizing perfect boy does not exist at this age, convince family you’re not a lesbian, you’re just not focused on marriage. Waste at least 24 weekends per year on bridesmaid duty (6-8 weddings/year, rehearsals, showers, bach parites) and ridiculous amounts of money on gifts, the stupid dress you’ll never wear again, the horrible matching shoes nobody even sees under the dress, up-dos, gawd-awful jewelry, etc. Oh, and vodka. Lots of vodka.
Age 25-30 Continue to pushback lesbian rumors w/ family. Spend ridiculous amounts of money on baby gifts, divorce parties and 2nd wedding gifts. Most men this age are still completely freaked out you make more money than they do so better get yourself a doggie.
Age 30-35 Try to explain to your family that while you would like to have a husband at some point, there really is no need to freeze your eggs (they must have heard this on Paul Harvey) b/c you may. not. want. kids. Then try to explain your wonderfully selfish life to these people who began having kids when they were 20– yes, it really is possible to be a fulfilled human being w/o little league and PTA. I have a lovely adult-proof home w/ many pretty, breakable things. I travel on whims. I have no debt. I’m not spending a small fortune for a kid to get into a certain pre-school. I have a CLEAN car that still smells new and does not have koolaid stains and mysterious bodily fluids on the leather or sticky fingerprints all over doors that slides shut.
Feeling better, yet? I could go on and on. I would trade places w/ a guy any day…as long as I didn’t have to kill spiders!
High comedy…
E - If you were a decade younger it would have been over.
What a time to be alive.