Only in dreams could I find myself at a tree-top luau, enjoying a candlelit dinner with Erik Estrada, that ended with me recording his baby’s brain activity.
Let’s not attempt to unravel the symbolism there. If such is typical of my dreams, I’m glad I don’t remember them that often.
Last week I received the mass email below from the Barack Obama campaign. Looking at the email a second time, I guess I didn’t follow directions all that well.
This past weekend I went to visit my parents seeking impartial advice regarding my career plans. En route to breakfast in my dad’s Chevy Tahoe we stopped to get gas. Frowning because he was about to drop $80, my dad moored us beside a fuel pump. The moment made me recall the above email–I burst out:
“Oh yeah, Barack Obama wants me to convince you to vote for him; so will you?”
“Oh really…that’s hilarious.” [translation from polite Lutheran Elder]: “You gotta be shittin’ me.”
“Yeah. He’s much better in tune with the problems and injustices of our health care system than tax-credit McCain.”
“I doubt it. Obama’s alright though. Biden is a real piece of work.”
“What!?! How so?”
“[He] Does nothing but toe the party line. Anyway, if they’re elected, all their grand plans will be blocked by Republicans. You’ll see. Partisan politics doesn’t work and hasn’t worked for a long time.”
This populist outlook I never expected from my dad who, just two years ago, imbibed Fox News on a daily basis.
“Oh. I actually agree with that.”
“I used to be passionate about politics. Then I realized life’s too short to spend on things you have no control over.”
“Apathy does no good either.”
“So true.”
In this theme, in case you haven’t seen this yet…
Months ago I posted a notice that I would reward any individual/entity a sum of $100.00+ (US) who removed this eyesore from plain view of my apartment:
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Irregardless of the many weekends their lot lay filled with gaudy flare, no number of “sales events” could rescue Bill Pierre Dodge from its inevitable demise. Gas is now a luxury commodity that people can no longer afford to waste on shitty inefficient vehicles. As of Saturday, the lot will now be used to service Dodge vehicles (and no doubt the place will be busy once again). Unless they actually want to draw attention to their service branch, I doubt I will be seeing that fuckin’ Ram’s head balloon any time soon.
I guess now I have to figure out how to pay out the reward. Logic demands I put it towards further worsening the economy and increasing gas prices. Any ideas?
R.I.P. 05138.
Suddenly my career plans are uncertain.
My work-ethic is like a gas. The way gas expands to the volume of its surrounding container is the way I distribute my effort in working to meet a project deadline. That is, I am always working up to the last second before a project is due, regardless of how much time I have had to work on it. This practice is beyond stupid and I don’t know why can’t I work just as hard ahead of time, finish the damn thing early, and avoid all the stress that working right up to a deadline entails.
I’m sure mine is some variety of matching behavior akin to pigeons pecking for food pellets. Rather than pecking to maximize their absolute reward, they will actually adjust their pecking-frequency in proportion to the frequency at which rewards are given, even though (in the operant-conditioning scenario) they actually get fewer rewards over time than if they had pecked faster.
Starting my fourth year of grad school, my sole motivation for working is to alleviate the burden of responsibilities hanging over my head (unlike other jobs, my status and pay will remain fixed regardless of my output–I’m not whining here, I knew it would be this way when I chose grad school). These burdens manifest themselves as stress, a negative reinforcer, that I generally work to avoid. Rather than increasing my efforts early on in a project, which would minimize my accumulated stress at the time of deadline, I match my efforts in proportion to my project-associated stress-level at a given time. My stress-level tends to increase as the time until a project is due grows shorter. I’m certain this matching strategy leads to greater accumulated stress (less reward) as compared to working harder early.
Nice to know that my behavior is on par with that of pigeons.