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| Took a Cisco test today, and did worse than I expected (80% on second retake...it was 69% on the first go...ERGH) but I am contented with what I made out with after actually taking the test. Other things are going on, such as EverQuest, games, this new Mt. Dew Code Red stuff I've found and love, but I'd like to address a few things that have been on my mind lately rather than a day by day analysis. This will be very disjointed; I'll connect the dots after I've put them down, but I apologize if it is confusing.
I'm preparing (slowly) to take the starting certification exam for Cisco 1 and 2. If I manage to pass it, then I'll have the first part of my certifcation for my CCNA. And in Networking, certifications seem to mean much, much more than a degree. They prove that every sneaky, backstabbing thing that Cisco will manage to throw at you, you've turned it away with your Shield of Knowledge (sold separately with "Real Life" Networking Figurine and Kung Fu Routing Protocol action!) and shown that yes, you can take it. Then it's just a matter of finding a job...
I'm reluctant to do that. Jobs are nice and all if you enjoy what you do (and blistering nightmares of redundancy and stupidity if you don't), but that's still that responsibility and time you're sacrificing, and really, I have no desire to plug away hours; just enough to get me by personally (and that's not much these days). However, companies don't like that attitude. "What, you don't want MONEY?!" What good is money if you're too exhausted too spend it? Sure, you can treat yourself right nice (if even you have the time for that!) but there's always that looming 6-11, or 9-5 on the horizon that you have to come back to.
I've thought of working on my own, but I've heard that is just as hard. If you build credibility yourself with customers, they come to depend on you, and then it's just as bad as the company situation; you have once again sacrificed your own time for money/someone else's burden. What is life but strings of sacrifices, you may say? Sacrifice occasionally is good; it keeps you in check, allows for money, and makes one humble. Too much sacrifice is not good, in my opinion. It encourages people to walk all over you, you lose your time, personal enjoyment, and ultimately are much more unhappy at the cost of some extra pieces of paper in your pocket.
I also look around at this community and I see terrible things; nothing but grunts. Grunts and landscapers. People building things. And it's not even USEFUL things! Mini-malls and banks and restaurants and ugh. But what irks me the most about all this is that people do these things for support, to feed their kids, to support their wife, whatever. Innovation is crushed by security.
I recently studied in Sociology about types of people in society (the main focus was Deviance, I believe). One in particular struck out to me, and it was called the Ritualist. People that do things that they know not what they do them for anymore. This is FRIGHTENINGLY accurate of many people in the workforce these days. They lack information, they don't know , and they completely forego any sort of investigation into alternatives. The options are there. Opportunity is abound. Life is what you make it. And the most disgusting thing about it is that options are discouraged! "SHUT UP AND WORK FOR ME, PEON. WHERE ARE YOU GOING TO GO? YOU ARE NOTHING WITHOUT ME."
THAT is the cost of sacrifice. People! Do what YOU want to do! Put focus and work and study into what YOU are interested in! Investigate! Our schools and workplaces discourage shooting for what YOU want to do; they crush dreams. "Don't do that! There's no money in that (we come right around to money again!)!" "That would be much too hard for you!" "You're not ready for such things!" Please! Do what you feel you'd like to do! Research, and study, and plug away at something that you LOVE. Flight of fancy for drawing? Study it. Like to write? Read, and practice practice practice! Don't become one of these soulless automatons that landscape, that grunt, that lost that fire in their heart! That had that dream shot down with the Artillery that people far more devious than ourselves planned for you "because they had your interests at heart", that they "know what's best for you". WHAT DO THEY KNOW?! They are NOT you! It will be lots of blood, sweat, and tears. If that love is strong, you'll perservere. It is NEVER too late to do what you want. Listen to NOONE. Do what you will with your heart. Don't be afraid! Learn! Soak up EVERYTHING like a sponge. And if something doesn't mesh, question it! If you're wrong, then all the better; you now know. | | |
| According to the "Which Big Lebowski character are you?" quiz: 
Why don't you check it out? Or we cut off your Johnson!
Hell yes!
Also, I am no longer at Cock of the Walk! Another hell yes!
Also! I am wearing pants! Yes!
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| So I think I have depression.
No, I don't think that I have it. I know it. I just didn't
know what that gnawing feeling that I have had for the past 9 years or
so really was. I thought this was something that everyone had
dealt with. The pressures of life, job, and existence. Only
now do I know that it is an illness.
Why going to school, going to work, doing anything routinely is such a
chore. Back in High School, getting up, getting there, and
imagining Soviet Russia, trapped in the Gulags until 3.20 PM.
"Oh, smile Jared, it's going to be alright!" "It's gonna be
okay." "Cheer up." I see these as insults, as disingenuous
garbage. I can't do these things. It's not something you can snap
out of. It IS you. It's that permeating feeling in the back
of your skull that never quits. It never truly subsides.
It's always there, always stuck in your mind. It dulls you, your
view of the world, it dulls everything. You force a smile, so
maybe those people will leave you alone for once, but they talk to you
anyway, and then you have to expend that energy just to respond.
Or you don't respond, and they start asking questions. And then
you get even more annoyed by the questions, the poking, the
prodding. Being the gecko on the wall that the kids jab sticks
at. Then you feel even more exhausted afterward.
Why do I tell all this? I don't know. I hate that I'm
telling you this. Nothing would please me more than to keep it
inside me like I had done all this time. I don't enjoy revealing
this at all. I see it as a weakness, as a flaw. As
something that people on Oprah peddle books for for idiotic people that
because their pie they were making burned. I think so many more that
have deal with it, and feel even more guilty that I can't deal with it
myself, and that just continues on even more. I'd rather keep it
inside me like I have all this time. I can't do that
though. It has to end. I must end this somehow. This
is the last thing that I wanted, the last thing that I would want to
reveal. It's not a cry for help, or whatever psychotic trash you
wish to throw at me, it's merely information. Take it as you will.
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| I don't have anything to report.
I got another cold again. I think I'm over it now.
That's about it.
I think Slash said it best: "Attack attack attack..."
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| Changed the music, and my profile picture. Guess the music and old armchair warriors in the sky will love you forevermore.
So I'm 20 now. I don't really feel different. The same thing happened when I turned 18. I didn't really feel much different then, either. I wonder if I will turn 30 and feel the same then.
I remember when I was just some kid starting out in HS, 4 years ahead of me. I thought that'd take ages. I really did. Heh, that was 6 years ago, and it still feels like it was maybe, a year at most spent.
I got to thinking (OH GODS NO......heheh) and it was really this: you know when you look back to when you were a kid, and you had that lag between kindergarten and school (well, I did anyway), and you just feel like you'd had foreverday to live and you had no worries except for that time you used Uncle Mickey's toothbrush to clean out the bathtub and you got a spanking for it, or you fell in the toilet when you were trying to reach for something and your granddad's first thought is to go get the camera?
(Yeah, okay, your memories might be different that mine. Mileage may vary and all that.)
And then you come to now and wonder, what the hell happened to that feeling? What happened to that carefree, I'm-gonna-live-forever-cloistered-wit'-me-cool-family!! attitude? It just disappeared? I refuse to believe that.
You know, we all seem to struggle to regain that, and several times in your life you think you've grasped that feeling again, only to find out that it was just another red herring. Just some fruitless chase.
Yeah...I'm starting to think we don't ever get that back. | | |
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