This is My Brain Without Drugs

Occasionally when I write a post that gets a strong reaction, I feel the need to write a counter-balancing post a few days later. I'm the kind of guy who will argue like crazy for a particular point of view until people start agreeing with me, and then I'll switch to the other side where it's not so crowded.

I'm not going to contradict my anti-authority stance; I'll remain bitter at my idiot junior high school teachers for pretty much forever. Yeah, you, Mrs. B., who told us that you didn't think anybody should get paid more than the president of the United States. You're an idiot. And you, Mr. P., who asked Glacial Spain, when he wanted to draw pictures in study hall after finishing his homework, "Don't you have anything more constructive to do?" You're an idiot. And you, Mr. B., who marked me down 7 points for writing "Ye Olde Testament" on my (otherwise flawless) list of the books of the Old Testament. You're a big f*#%ing idiot. I was smarter than you then, and guess what? I'm a successful software developer who is building a house and finishing up a Master's degree in the humanities. Meanwhile, I'm pretty sure you've only gotten dumber. If I ever write a book, I'm going to dedicate it to all the jerkwad teachers who would have steered me into selling insurance if they could have. You're all idiots. By the way, I'm coming into town in a week, so if you get a break from peddling mediocrity you should stop by.

I didn't mean for this to turn into a rant on my junior high teachers, but while I'm on the topic, let me clarify that I'm not pissed off at all my teachers. My grade school teachers were pretty cool. And actually my high school teachers were mostly ok. I mean, they gave me lousy grades because I screwed around and didn't do the work, but I can't really blame them for that. And my college professors were almost all good people too. I'm sure a lot of them remember me as a lazy jerk, but that's mostly because I was a lazy jerk, so again, not really their fault.

No, it's just you, my junior high teachers, who wrung your hands over my jokes about leaving the cat on the roof overnight and held special conferences about the Dungeons and Dragons figurines that I brought to school one day, whom I hold in such low regard. You are all a bunch of smug, sorry-ass, close-minded, by-the-book pablum-spewing dullards, and I hope you have a dictionary close by because I want you to look up all those words I just used. I pray none of you are still teaching, but in case you are, give me your address so that I can send you a T-shirt that reads "If you believe everything I tell you, some day you'll turn into me." Then you can die having taught your students something really valuable.

Okaaaayyyyyy. And that's why we generally keep a lid on the bitterness kettle around here. Things got a little ugly there. Sorry about that.

Anyway, the point of this post was to provide a counterbalance to Wednesday's post, in which I went on about my beautiful wife, wonderful children and gigantic house. I was facetiously suggesting some tips for avoiding my "fate," when in fact I'm pretty much the luckiest guy in the world. I mean, it's true that I made some smart decisions along the way (like marrying the first pretty girl who could put up with me, and buying 10 acres of land in California in 2002), but the fact is that I've also been phenomenally blessed beyond anything I deserve. Not five minutes ago Mrs. Diesel and I were eavesdropping on Speed Pony (age 5) "reading" from the Bible to Climber (age 7) about cheese. I'm not sure which epistle covers cheese in such detail, but it made for a good story. There's no way I deserve kids who are that cute. So it's a bit misleading to suggest that I ended up with such a great life because I'm so freaking smart.

It's also true that my life hasn't always been so great. I have a very weird brain, and it's taken me most of my life so far to figure out how to use it. I'm still not really sure what it was designed for. I seem to have a gift for writing, humor, graphic design, software development, and building stuff, among other things. Occasionally I'll meet someone who is a better writer, designer, or programmer than I, but I've never met anybody who can do all of these things even remotely well. I don't say this to brag; I'm certainly not responsible for these abilities. I just have them, and I don't know why.

And on the flip side, I am a complete idiot in many ways. I have a terrible memory for practical details. I can literally put down a hammer, turn around, and think, not five seconds later, "Now where is that damn hammer?" I lose things all the time. It's almost impossible for me to focus on what a person is saying for more than about 18 seconds. I have a horrible sense of direction. On top of that, I take a wrong turn about half the time I drive somewhere, even when I know exactly where I'm going, because I'm thinking about something else. And as if that weren't enough, I've been fighting depression since about fifth grade. My brain is always going a hundred miles an hour, and if I don't give it a problem to solve, it will create one. For example, it might say to me, "Hey Diesel, what's the point? Why not just shoot yourself in the head?" And other than not owning a firearm, I have a hard time coming up with a good answer to that one.

Before stumbling into software development, I worked at a succession of low-skilled jobs with minimal success. My first job was delivering newspapers. I would get a call nearly every evening from someone who didn't get their paper. You wouldn't think it would be that difficult to deliver newspapers to the same 80 houses every day, but somehow I almost always missed somebody.

After that I bagged groceries. I was ok at the bagging part, but I refused to engage in small talk with the customers. One guy actually seemed worried about me. "What's wrong?" he asked. "Nothing," I said, a little surprised. Nothing except for the fact that I feel like I'm leaving a little bit of my soul in every bag of groceries. I eventually put in my notice because the management pissed me off. "Why are you quitting?" asked one of the managers, as I bagged her groceries. "Because the management here sucks," I said. I only had four days left to work, and they fired me.

At another grocery store, I worked my way up to stocking the shelves. I was constantly getting yelled at because I was so slow. Everyone was convinced I was screwing around, when in fact I was working as fast as I could. Eventually the stress got to me and I quit.

In college I worked at a Christian bookstore. I was bad at that too. One time a guy told me he wanted to buy a Bible, and I asked him what kind of cover he wanted. To me, Bibles were categorized in several different ways (translation, print size, etc.), one of which was the type of cover. I had planned to narrow down the options based on his answers regarding the various categories. I didn't realize how gauche it was to start with the cover. I went home for the summer and when I came back the store didn't need me any more.

I got a job at a store in the mall that sold things like luggage and those little clacking balls on a string that people put on their desks. I was terrible at that job, because I hated that crap and I hated the people that bought that crap. To be fair, I pretty much hated people at that point, although people who bought little clacking balls for their desks were a particularly annoying subset. After Christmas my name wasn't on the schedule any more.

I worked at the job service on campus for about three years after that. That was a pretty good job, and I wasn't all that bad at it. But this was during the peak of my depression so I started showing up later and later for work and would have gotten fired if I hadn't been rendered ineligible for on-campus employment by graduating.

After college I continued to prove my incompetence at a wide variety of simple tasks. I delivered pizza for three weeks. I worked at Blockbuster for 6 months. I worked for a moving company for 3 weeks.

I once loaded trucks at Amway (they're headquartered in my home town) for 2 weeks. I was particularly bad at that, because the packages were all different sizes and had to be loaded onto the truck really quickly. It was like playing Tetris in 3D. I have no sense for spatial relations. People were always having to come over and help me out because my line was backed up for like fifty yards. I went to the office to ask for a transfer to a different job, but they said there had been no complaints about my performance. I told them that there would be if I kept working there, but they said there were no other positions open. I went home at lunch and didn't come back.

Then I got a job cataloging documents that were being subpoenaed in lawsuits. I was bad at that too, but made friends with a manager and got promoted to a position where I was monitoring other employees' work. I did ok at that, but I had a tendency to get in trouble for showing up five minutes late. Because you see, if you showed up five minutes late the previous shift would have just left, so you could get a much better parking spot. They warned me not to show up late any more, and the next day I got stuck in construction traffic. They fired me.

So here I was, the kid who scored five grade levels ahead of his class on standardized tests, and I couldn't hold down a job loading trucks. Even when I got a job that I could manage to do, I was so enveloped by depression and self-doubt that I convinced myself I was going to screw up eventually, and anyway it was a pointless, stultifying job that made me want to hit myself in the head with a hammer if I could only remember where I put it.

Things eventually turned out ok. I got to thinking that it might do me some good to larn some 'bout those newfangled computers. So I studied a little, moved to California and managed to get a job doing technical support for a company in the Bay Area. From there, I moved on to web development, which I turned out to be really good at. I worked as a web developer for most of the past ten years. I still had problems with depression, but eventually got treatment for that. After three days on Prozac, I felt like I hadn't felt since fourth grade. I felt happy.

Eventually I got tired of software development, and when my job dissatisfaction and home equity both reached a critical point, I quit. I tell people that I'm retired. In truth, I still work pretty hard, building my house, landscaping, and yes, "wasting time" drawing pictures and writing silly stories.

I'm still not really sure what this brain was designed to do. I keep trying different things, and I find that it's true that I can do whatever I set my mind to. Of course, setting my mind is a little like programming a VCR with a soup ladle in the dark, but still.

Anyway, I'm having fun. Some day I'll probably run out of money and have to get another real job, and that will be ok too.

Maybe I'll teach junior high. I understand any idiot can do that.



Now where did I put humor-blogs.com again?