Life is Hard

When I was wrapping up high school, I interned at a company that my brother in law cofounded, and was a VP at. He worked hard, made a lot of money, and shortly after, my sister divorced him, he got brain cancer, his company shit on him, he struggled through treatment for a while, and he died. He had to give up the BMW that he loved to drive because he couldn't drive stick with the damage to his brain that he had. He lost my sister because he was an absentee husband, giving all his time to his company. He lost his company because corporations are heartless, and everyone left wanted to make more money, not spend it taking care of one of the founders, who worked so hard for it that his marriage fell apart.

When I was a little kid, we ate government peanut butter and cheese. I was the youngest of 4, and I didn't know that there was anything else, and was just happy to eat what I could get. My parents took good care of me, even if we didn't have a lot. But my dad was a drunk and abusive to my mom and my two oldest sisters. He never laid a hand on me, but he'd lecture me all the time about how awful and inferior women were, and how important it was to be a man, and whatever bullshit. Eventually, my mom left, and over time, she got custody of all of her kids, but it was a trickle, and for a while it was just me and my dad, because he fought hardest to keep his only son. The drinking and misogyny got worse. I was still in elementary school, and I'd spend my nights begging my dad to drink less. Later in life, he'd apologize for that, and for his other behavior, but then he'd go right back to whining about my mom and women. Still an asshole. Maybe meant it about the drinking. Clearly didn't mean it about the other stuff. I gave up on him, and now I don't even know if he's still alive.

When I was a little kid, I wanted to become a programmer, wanted to make video games, like the ones I grew up playing, maybe as a coping mechanism for the awful violence I lived with. I wanted to make a ton of money. I can program now. I could make a ton of money now. I look at the reality of the AAA games industry, and the endless crunch time, and the strain it puts on families, and I don't feel as good about that idea. I look at the effects of globalization, of people making fortunes in Silicon Valley, and how they make the things around them almost literally turn to shit (seriously, there's human feces all over San Francisco), and I don't feel as good about that idea, either. Wages are stagnating for regular people, but you can buy much nicer stuff for the same wages, and rent always goes up, so it's complicated. A lot of our brightest kids are making fortunes on sexting apps, or ones that do facial recognition and overlay stupid graphics, and I have no desire to be a part of that. But these kids' fortunes are driving the rent up around them, so regular folks have to leave their homes. I definitely don't want to be a part of that.

I think Twitter is terrible. I'm a wordy guy, but I'm wordy because there's always a lot to consider. The other day, Crystal was asking me what brand of kitchen knife I like, and I ended up going into a rant about metallurgy, and handle construction, and blade profile shapes, and other geometry, and different kinds of forging. What's a good knife for me, with appropriately gentle cutting technique and as someone who sharpens his own knives, isn't a good knife for a beginner, who's going to leave a knife wet, have it dull, and then never take it to someone who can repair it. Pro-tip: Your improperly maintained $300 knife isn't going to perform any better than your improperly maintained $15 knife.

I've run into people on the internet that seem to have only ever practiced 140 character arguments, devoid of nuance, and dismissive of any that you'd try to bring up. I think there are people whose brains are forever broken, because they developed this habit of communicating entirely in buzzwords. I think Facebook is awful for a lot of reasons, and I see a lot of people flocking to React (a JavaScript view library that you have to tack a ton of shit onto), and I'm having a hard time seeing how it's not just going to be Backbone (a JavaScript model library that you had to tack a ton of shit onto) all over again. This has almost nothing to do with what I'm trying to talk about, but maybe the theme of history repeating itself is pertinent.

But people aspire to work for Facebook, and Twitter, while Facebook and Twitter give a country like Russia the means to fuck with our American democracy, and help elect an unqualified president, but also just a terrible person. I really had no idea so many people in America were still so racist. Meanwhile, the people working in the troll farms in Russia are just trying to have a better life than they could by not working for a troll farm.

It's good to have some money. It's hard to make money without being a cog in some machine that makes some rich assholes richer, or without being an asshole directly. You really have to go out of your way to keep wealth from concentrating out of control, and by you, I mean society.

I'm a decent cook. I enjoy the creative process. It appeals to me like science has always appealed to me. You do experiments, and you look for connections that empower you to combine things in novel ways, but also ways that are obvious when you stop to think about them. When you understand a food, you understand how you can substitute something similar into a classic combination to get something new and exciting, but that always made sense. At some point, my (other) brother in law offered me some work, cooking something in rich people's fancy new kitchens that he was the contractor for, as kind of a welcome home, here, have a good feeling about what you just spent a bunch of money on kind of thing. He has clients who are celebrities, and bankers and whatnot. The other thing I enjoy about cooking is bringing joy to the people I love. I'm still that little kid, happy to eat that government peanut butter and cheese, but a lot of people I love get more happiness from eating good food than I do, and it makes me happy to be able to give that to them, and to give them Dave Choi originals nobody can get anywhere else. I have no desire to give that to someone who made a fortune fleecing other people. Maybe I'm an asshole, but I have a hard time seeing bankers any other way. Tae works for Goldman now. Maybe he can turn me around on this.

Rich people commit suicide at pretty crazy rates. I've written about this a little before. People need to feel like they're needed, personally. Poor people who depend on each other have that. Rich people who give all their time to however they're getting rich, whose families know their money better than they know them don't have that. A rich person's money will pay for a cook, and a gardener, and tutors, and nannies, but so will any other rich person's money. The whole point of money is that it's interchangeable. If all you are is someone who makes money, then you're interchangeable. At some point, a fortune will sustain itself, unless your society really went out of its way.

But where does that leave you?

I'm also still that little kid who wants that Star Trek TNG future where nobody has to worry about money, and they help each other because it's good to help each other. Until we agree to abolish money, though, that's a bad business model.

Design appeals to me the same way cooking and science appeal to me. There are a lot of underserved markets where everyone serving them is competing, but nobody's really being smart about it. They all kind of copy each other, duplicate features, but the features were never a good idea, so they still suck even if you implement them perfectly.

I've always liked helping people. Playing a support role, learning about things from whomever I'm supporting. I think I've lost some of myself in that, though. Learning is always growing, and I'm not complaining about time wasted or anything. But this year, I'd like to pursue my own goals harder.