BORING, TRIVIAL, POINTLESS LIFE? GOOD JOB

Doing a good job means what?

Following orders and delivering a finished product according to the highest standards of the industry?

Let’s not get carried away.

How about finishing on time with something that works the way it’s supposed to work?

You can do that and your masterpiece at the same time.

If you don’t write your masterpiece, who will?

So you slog along, year after year, pushing the pile, moving the mound, shoveling the . . . you get the idea.

 

F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby is widely considered to be one of the greatest American novels. It tells the story of Jay Gatsby, a rich man in New York who throws lavish parties; his lost love, Daisy Buchanan; and Nick Carraway, the narrator of the book and a man new to the neighborhood.

A harsh commentary on the American Dream, The Great Gatsby’s ending is a devastating critique of the idea that hard work can get you anywhere. The final line is one of the most famous and memorable in literature.

 

”And so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

 

Borne back ceaselessly into the past if you don’t paddle fast enough, if you don’t wait for the right tide.

If you chase the past with more enthusiasm than you have for current times, you’re going back.

If you have a job that affects a lot of people you don’t consider important enough to care about, you’re going back.

If you consider normal people who get up in the morning for the best day of their lives boring, trivial, and pointless?

You’ve going back.

 

What Kind Of Person

No one says America’s best days were before Lincoln became president.

Why? You know why.

Depending on your moral tone it would have been the best of times, or the worst of times.

The American Civil War showed what kind of time could be had: a bad time.

More Americans died then than in any other war.

 

During the Civil War, the US only had about 31 million people in it. 22 in the North and 9 in the South. So as a percentage of the population the fatality rate was much higher than it even looks here. Considering WWI about 132 million people were alive.

 

How many of you see read war history and see yourselves as commanders and generals and field Marshalls, not some forgotten rag doll laying in a ditch, looking out of a hole, or on the march with a bunch of others just like you?

Think of watching a football game: Which player do you identify with?

THE QUARTERBACK.

With lots of linemen, runners, and catchers, there’s only one qb.

Ten players on offense, eleven on defense, and one quarterback.

If you were a lineman in football, and a PFC in the Army, like me, you know your role.

It’s boring, trivial, and pointless until called on to make the quarterback saving block, make the game saving tackle, or save a life.

 

What People Forget

Who remembers feeling sorry for nations with leaders who lost their way?

Their guys were interested in educational programs that included them, publicity about them, and loading important jobs with people loyal to them.

None of that could ever happen here because we have a process that weeds the fucko’s out.

If not, we have a process where they’re made to account for their actions.

The American system is boring, trivial, and pointless until you need it, like a quarterback needs protection to pass, and a soldier needs a tourniquet to stop the bleeding.

The voter is the blocker, the voter is the medic, and each state decides on their own who votes.

While not perfect, the state system proved strong with all of the challenges since 2020.

 

States have the expertise and tools to keep voter lists accurate and up to date, and they have procedures in place to ensure that only eligible American citizens are included on the rolls.

The federal government has neither the authority nor the resources to conduct list maintenance.

 

With all of the shrill sounds, people still forget to vote.

Vote for what means something to you, like protecting civil rights to keep people you know safe from overreaching legal rookies.

Vote for due process so your motor-mouth grandma doesn’t get tackled to the cement and piled on at her next protest.

Vote for boring, trivial, pointless people, living their lives of quiet desperation until they run for an office that means something to you.

Now is the time to remember November.

Time by Pink Floyd:

 

 

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
Fritter and waste the hours in an off-hand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun but it’s sinking
Racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say

 

PS:

Is voting some kind of super power for us citizens?

Things have a game-like feeling of winning and losing when the tally comes on live and you’re one of millions.

The numbers are so big a single vote feels insignificant, but getting counted is the point.

PSS:

How does a boring, trivial, and pointless life goal become a badge of honor?

When you vote for the future of your sons and daughters.

When you vote for the future of your grandsons and granddaughters, if you’re lucky enough to have them.

Do it for them and you’ve done a good job, then you can get back to other things.

 

Q: What are you doing?

A: Nothing.

Q: That’s what you said yesterday.

A: I’m not finished.