Oct 2001, 3 entries

Find Your Purpose As Soon As You Can

I’ve always had something in my frontal lobe that I’ve designated as a “Purpose In Life”, be it to start a genetic engineering pet store called “Invent-A-Pet” that would allow you to design your own pet, or to become a Nobel Prize winner (which I told my Dad I would do in my last conversation with him), or to become an artist, or to be “The Second Greatest Man Ever To Have Lived, After Jesus” (which I told to some people who hated me, just to illustrate the difference in expectations that they had in life and I had in life), or, lately, as in the last few years, to be a writer. These aren’t really “Purposes” for life, they’re just “Things To Do, During Life”.

The Purpose is elusive. What is the purpose of my life.

It is so elusive, that many of you are probably thinking, “Oh, what an old thought, there is no purpose to life other than to live!” or, “Life is what you make of it!” or, “Life will be wasted if you spend the entire thing trying to find a purpose. There is no Maker, and if there is, He hasn’t given you specifically a purpose. Purposes are a man-made invention things we give to tools—a lamp’s purpose is to create light, a shovel’s purpose is to move dirt—but which non-man-made objects do not have—what is the purpose of a dog? A cloud?”

To this, I say, “Bullocks! My life is man-made, made by me. So I will give it a purpose, after I stop twiddling my thumbs and find out what purpose is worthy enough to be given to it.” That is what this page is about. Are ya with me? Can I get a “YO!”

You Must Do Things All The Way, Or Not At All

If you start something, finish it. If you pick up a book, read to the last line. If you start a meal, clean your plate. If you buy a dog, don’t put it to sleep the first time it poops on your pillow.

I believe it is crucial to finish things that you start, and that’s partially why I’ve started this Manifesto. The weblog was nice, the journal was cool, but what it ultimately made me feel was that I was never getting anywhere. Trivial thoughts, day in, day out. When is a thought ever completed in a weblog? What resolutions can be made with a journal? So, with this Manifesto for Right Living, I plan on finishing the thoughts that I start. To state them in such a way that they’re almost complete even before I write about it.

This is the counter-argument to the statement made at the top. While you should make sure that you finish things that you start, there comes a point when you realize that you are doing the wrong thing. In those cases, it’s crucial that you drop everything you’re doing, and think for a minute about what you really want to do, and then do that instead. It’s a fine line though. The way I know when to finish what I’ve started versus change course to what I really want to do is take a look at where my guilt rests, at what my guilty conscience wants me to do, and do the opposite. For example, if I’ve told someone that I will do something for them, and I feel guilty because I really don’t want to do it, I will tell them that I will not be able to do what I told them I would do—the opposite of what my guilt would like me to do. On the other hand, if I’ve begun writing a book and guilt makes me feel that there are better things to do with my time (which I’ve argued can’t be true since writing is the only thing worth doing), such as help at a charity and otherwise give my time to the less fortunate, I will stick with writing the book. Is guilt is the opposite of passion? And passion is all we have time for with our lives?

I’ve decided that What I Want To Do (and maybe you’ve heard this a million times already) is Write A Book. To do this, I want to take between one and two years off. And to do this, I need money, and although the actual needed amount is uncertain, I’ve convinced myself that $60,000 is what I need to live for two years. I can get this money a couple different ways, but none of them seem good or fast enough.

• I can stay at Amazon.com until the stock price goes back up. In five years, if the stock was at $60 per share, I’d have maybe $250,000 before taxes (assuming I got no more stock options). If I leave before that, but the stock price is at the same $60, then I’d have only a fraction of that. That’s 5 long years.
• I can freelance, while still working, and put all that extra money into savings, until I have enough to take time off. I’m interviewing for my first paid freelancing job tomorrow, so maybe that will work out… although I’d need many of them to make enough money.
• I could spend less money while keeping my current job. This is probably a good idea, now that I think of it. Do I really need two mochas a day (yes). Do I really need a CD a week. A book every couple weeks, eating out a couple times a week, buying lunch instead of bringing a lunch. All of these things should change, so that my savings increase.
• All of the above.
  

This is only the money-making portion of the goal. It’s true that I might possibly be focusing too much on the money, and not enough on the goal, which is to write a book. So these are the things I should be doing to make sure that the book is always at the forefront of my attention.

• Write for one whole day every weekend, and plan and write during the week when possible. Unfortunately, I can’t write every day, just because I don’t have enough time unless I sacrifice commitments with friends and other projects.
• Continue reading so I stay in touch with what is possible with words.
  

What else could I be doing. A lot. I could be waking up an extra hour earlier and writing then, except I need to think for an hour or so before writing or else my writing is filled with too many tangents and word games (which I’d like to avoid).

The important thing is that I know what I want to do, and I’m doing things to get towards that goal. I can’t believe that I could want this as much as I do and not get it eventually. My spoiled life has ingrained this truth in me.

There comes a point in your own personal journey to becoming obsessed about a project that you begin to lose that smidgen of pride that had once prevented you from begging family and friends. I’ve reached that point.

Yes, I would ask my mom for money, in fact, I already have, but problem is she doesn’t have any.

If any of my friends becomes rich, you can bet your bottom dollar that I will be at y0ur doorstep the next morning asking for $60,000.

This is where you come in. If you are reading this, and find that there is more money in your bank than in, say, the typical 7-11, please sit back in your chair for a moment and seriously consider this proposition. You give me $60,000 (mind you, this isn’t lending me money, you’re giving this to me from the bottom of your heart, and would never dream of asking for it back… and on my part I won’t feel guilty about not paying you back), cash, under the table so I don’t have to pay taxes on it, and you will have the benefit of seeing what I can do with it, like a hamster in a cage, given an unlimited food supply. Will he run on the wheel all day? Build a bigger nest with the extra sawdust? Or will he be able to really do what he says he can do? You can consider yourself in the same crowd as Paul Allen, those richies that sponsored Michelangelo… what was that family’s name (M…. Marioni… Marcus… something with an M, crap), you know, a regular philanthropic humanitarian who recognizes the inability to create themselves, and so lives by helping others create. If you’d like to be this person, contact me today and we’ll work out the details. I’m serious!

Foster/White Gallery

I am working on my first website (other than amazon) for money. Leanne is doing the same. There’s a lot of thinking recently about doing this more, because the subject is more interesting (still commerce, but the commerce of art rather than books, music, and video… although I guess that’s art too), the people are more interesting (artists versus businessmen… hm… not too difficult), and the idea of working at home is almost irresistable. Should I?

My Other Projects

You Must Spread Yourself Thin. In order to be successful, you should participate in as many unrelated activities as you can, while giving the impression that each individual activity is consuming your entire attention. It is crucial that all but your closest friends have the impression that you’re probably only working on one thing—whatever concerns them most—since they want to believe that what you’re doing is as important to you as it is to them.

If ever anyone wants to take a closer look at you and your activities, they will find a virtual catalog of mysterious projects that they had no idea about, and which will endear them to you forever, especially since you for some reason had never mentioned them.

Nervousness.org is a collection of experiments in land mail, and the community that can sprout from the seeds of the postal service.

Seattle Stories is one of the many City Stories sites around the world. It was started in February of 2001 by myself, Stephen, and Alan.

I work at amazon, in the Personalization & Automation web development group. We do things like Recommendations, “Customers who bought Prozac also bought these gardening implements…”, etc.

These are my projects:

• /home>Page You Made: that page that lists what items you’ve looked at, browse nodes you’ve been to, searches you’ve done. People either hate this or love this.
  
• /0>Your Store: the tab that says Erik’s Store, or whatever
  
• Search Explorer: you’ll have to search pretty hard for that one
  
• Gift Wizard: soon to be revamped for h2001.
  

That’s about it. A whole year spent. But I like it there for the most part, hope it will one day make me a million bucks, etc. Yes, the stocks are going down. It’s okay. We don’t care. Really.

The Foster/White Gallery was my first chance to create a website whose primary purpose was to support an off-line organization. They hired me to redesign the website and take over their monthly photography so that they can concentrate on selling the art. This has gone really well, and it’s got me thinking of starting a business along these lines.