alright there was a friend of mine that was older than me and he was always
looking for the right girl and the right girl to settle down with and to marry
and have kids and all that stuff and it never seemed to happen and the reason
never seen it happens cuz he was always looking for perfection always looking
for perfection and I told him that you know profession doesn't exist and I also
had another buddy of mine that was like surfing and he was always looking for
like the next good time always looking for you're looking for happiness right
and one time we're surfing and I go bro you keep looking around for happiness
this is it this is it man we're surfing this is happiness right now do you ever
feel like you're searching too much and looking for something instead of
enjoying what you have 10 years ago I would have said yes right now I feel
like I've found I found a few things meaning realizations and I view my job
as testing things on the fringe and reporting back it's like half like ethno
botanist might be eaten by cannibals plus a little bit of athletic stupidity
and really trying to find the things at the extreme so I can inform the mean and
as an experimentalist or an experimenter I view that as my responsibility my job
and I've also replaced a number of words in my life so we we used happiness
because it's just the easiest reference point for a lot of folks I think that
the better word is excitement so I chase what excites me now that's a razor's
edge you got to be careful with but when I say excite it means I wake up excited
and I go to bed basically is what that means and I've
also realized that there are things to optimize and there are things to savor
and I don't have a lot of trouble with that most people would think that I'm
just like speed reading poetry and watching every movie on like 28x forward
with subtitles just to cram in as much mr. robot as I can or whatever and no I
feel like I am increasingly better at the appreciation portion of the equation
the achievement I've always been I wouldn't say hardwired for but very well
trained for I'm good at putting goals in the sights and achieving those goals but
if you're constantly looking for the next thing whether it's the next goal or
it's the next girl or it's the next high then you are never going to be operating
in the present tense so it was there something that you said ten years ago if
I would ask you this you would have probably been on your heels a little bit
is there something that happened when you said you don't want what did I just
you know did you get home from a trip one time and say what did I just do or
was there no I can tell you what I can tell you it was so this this is related
to something that you know Robert Rodriguez who's the director producer
writer musician everything is a fascinating guy also huge I didn't
realize how big it was so Sin City good on the list right he
has a lot of hits and he said I always find it funny and I'm paraphrasing here
but he's one of the longer chapters in the book he said I always find it funny
when filmmakers come out to be a brand new filmmakers and they say nothing went
the way it was supposed to go like this happened and that happened and shit
broke and then we missed this shot and I don't know he said they don't realize
that that's their job that nothing is going to work like if you're the
director your job is nothing's gonna work so one
point I was feeling maybe existentially scattered all saipan trying all these
different things and doing all these different experiments and what am I
gonna figure out my thing and then at some point someone just said no your
thing is going meta like your thing is doing these types of experiments and
what I realized is my my one thing is learning things quickly and whether that
is cooking or sniping I've taken some sniping courses that's a separate story
rally car racing whatever right tango doesn't matter that the approach to
deconstructing these things have learned them quickly compounds so if I get
better at one I get better than next doesn't matter what the subject area is
so that's my one thing and it just gave me great peace of mind
hey you don't need one thing in a traditionally defined sense maybe your
thing is as I have found you know being a human guinea pig and trying to train
people to be better learners is my one thing and that that made me feel more
confident in this sort of experimental approach I don't have ten year plans and
I used to that used to bother me a lot I am no longer remotely bothered by that
because I have two-week experiments and have six-month projects and if I do my
but we actually talked about this and you've written about it but rather than
worrying about the the next 17 promotions you just do what's in front
of you in my case say a book project if I do an exceptional job I knock it out
of the park with this one thing opportunities will present themselves
that I couldn't have conceived of six months ago and then it's just a matter
of paddling for the wave but yeah but I'm a lot better at appreciation than I
was along say ten years ago because ten years ago it didn't matter how how well
I did what I won what I accomplished I was always obsessing on the next thing
I never took the time to actually enjoy it a good lesson