Wrong Turns In Life

[X_4AD_84]

So that others might learn .... and ... for pure pleasure of venting.

What were your wrong turns in life?

What was wrong about them and what were the lessons learned?

What would your X year old self tell your Y year old self and / or, what would you tell up and coming Millennials and eventually, Homelanders. A few Homelanders are now approaching tweenerhood, which is typically where wrong turns start to happen. Some of my earliest wrong turns happened when I was 9.

[pbrower2a]

(07-31-2017, 07:03 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: So that others might learn .... and ... for pure pleasure of venting.

What were your wrong turns in life?

What was wrong about them and what were the lessons learned?

What would your X year old self tell your Y year old self and / or, what would you tell up and coming Millennials and eventually, Homelanders. A few Homelanders are now approaching tweenerhood, which is typically where wrong turns start to happen. Some of my earliest wrong turns happened when I was 9.

In view of Asperger's Syndrome I wish I had been a philosophy major and psychology minor, or vice-versa, in college. Knowing about it would have saved me much pointless hardship.

But I am going to give some more general advice.

1. Learning is worth the cost and potential disappointments. It may be the difference between getting work that you like and getting work that you hate -- and work that you hate will grind you. It may prepare you for a life unavailable to you; you may find that economic forces and the general corruption of our social order consign you to a job that you hate. So save every penny that you can to start a business. Train yourself for a job that pays better than what you get stuck with first.

2. Do not trust the political system. If the American people can end up with Donald Trump as President, then anything bad is possible. Expect government to first reward those who bought the politicians.

3. Expand your world. Even if you are too broke to travel beyond some dreary hick town, you can read. There is much video. Maybe travelo0gues will better enrich your life than will fecal television.

4. Don't allow your economic condition to be the cause of your esteem or lack thereof. Profit for elites, the only obvious virtue in America today, depends on multitudes being poor. Poverty is not shame. In a thoroughly-corrupt system it may be the strongest evidence of your integrity.

5. Stay clear of status symbols that demonstrate only two things: that you have the funds for buying them and that you are foolish enough to waste money on them. Truth be told, the Old Rich snicker at such things anyway. You can spend thousands of dollars on a wristwatch, and what will that wristwatch do that a throwaway watch from Wal*Mart will do? It will cost you savings or the opportunity to do something really interesting, and it will show the rest of the world that you are a schmuck insecure about how  others perceive you.

6. Develop loyalties to family and community, even if those are terribly flawed, unless those are so dysfunctional as to cripple your life. Much of the needed improvement  in America will come from people deciding to make miserable places, including ghettos, barrios, the Reservation, and dreary hick towns more tolerable. San Francisco may be a paradise due to the climate, but you may be priced into such a place as Lima, Ohio. Then make the best of Lima (which will be tough) and try to make it better. Incremental improvements, like moving to Fort Wayne or Toledo, may be all that are available.

7. Get in shape and stay in shape. Obesity is a choice, and a bad one. Avoid street drugs and drunkenness.

8. Don't watch so much TV. Don't be a big sports fan.

9. Remember this: everything corrupt, cruel, inequitable, and repressive in our society has powerful interests behind the nastiness.

[Kinser79]

(07-31-2017, 07:03 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: So that others might learn .... and ... for pure pleasure of venting.

What were your wrong turns in life?

What was wrong about them and what were the lessons learned?

What would your X year old self tell your Y year old self and / or, what would you tell up and coming Millennials and eventually, Homelanders. A few Homelanders are now approaching tweenerhood, which is typically where wrong turns start to happen. Some of my earliest wrong turns happened when I was 9.

For me it was gravitating toward Marxism when I was 13.  Since then I can't say that I've made all that many wrong turns other than making poor choices in friendships but those always and inevitably end up ending, though sooner now than later and that failing is universal.

I would say to my younger self, and to Millies and Homelanders to not expect the political system to be capable of addressing social issues.  In a democratic republic the so-called leaders are the ultimate followers.  Rather build up the metapolitic base first then concern yourself with capture of political office.  It is only by addressing the culture that one can address political issues. 

Identity --> Culture --> Politics

[tg63]

I would tell myself to fail more. It's the best way to learn, at least for me.

[Eric the Green]

(07-31-2017, 07:03 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: So that others might learn .... and ... for pure pleasure of venting.

What were your wrong turns in life?

What was wrong about them and what were the lessons learned?

What would your X year old self tell your Y year old self and / or, what would you tell up and coming Millennials and eventually, Homelanders. A few Homelanders are now approaching tweenerhood, which is typically where wrong turns start to happen. Some of my earliest wrong turns happened when I was 9.

The sixties (including all the 2T years as defined by S&H) was a great Awakening, but I got caught up too much in arguing and protest, which was not always the best approach to people and persuasion, especially regarding some of those who considered themselves to be in authority over me. I was too concerned and hurt in early life about peoples' rejection; I would know better that I am as good as anyone and have the potential to be more of what I want to be, regardless of their opinion. That was a more positive lesson I gained (to some extent) from the post-mid-sixties Awakening world.

[Warren Dew]

Selling that 3000 shares of AAPL when this funky new thing called the iPod came out that I didn't understand.  I'd be retired comfortably now.

[pbrower2a]

(08-01-2017, 11:03 AM)tg63 Wrote: I would tell myself to fail more.  It's the best way to learn, at least for me.

The best way to learn is to observe and analyze others' mistakes. We rarely get to see that, unless it is as slick comedy.

The investor Bernard Baruch found that Sir Winston Churchill was a reliable investor -- as reliably-bad an investor as he would be great as a wartime statesman -- and ordinarily did the opposite.

...that said, almost everyone wants the shelter of a bureaucratic organization that has answered all the questions except how to stave off the debilitating effects of bureaucracy even with the limitations of opportunity that come with bureaucracy. To get away with some mistakes one must own his own business. Entrepreneurial types. except in sales, do not last long in most organizations.

This said, however comfortable life may seem for people who get steady income from bureaucracies, organizations in the bureaucratic stage of existence are already dying.

http://adizes.com/lifecycle/

[pbrower2a]

Choosing the wrong sort of firm, or settling for the wrong sort of firm for short0term objectives,  in which to start a career is one of the most common errors in life. Here's where you may want to get a start:



The Adizes Corporate Lifecycle: Adolescence


Go Back to the Lifecycles Page

Quote:During the Adolescent stage of the organizational lifecycle, the company is reborn. This second birth is an emotional time where the company must find a life apart from that provided by its Founder. This critical transition is much like the rebirth a teenager goes through to establish independence from their parents.

The Adolescent company teeters on the brink of both success and disaster. So long as the Adolescent company does well, investors and the Board regard the Founder as a genius with a golden touch. However, when the infrastructure collapses, sales slow down, costs mushroom or profits decline, the finger pointing begins in earnest. The Founder, accustomed to the magic of adoration, is instantly transformed into a goat who is no longer up to the task of leadership.

Adolescence is an especially stormy time characterized by internal conflicts and turf wars. Everyone seems at odds with everything. Sales fall short or exceed production's estimates, quality is not up to customer expectations, and old timers plot against the new hires. Emotions are volatile and organizational morale traces a jagged line: ecstasy in one quarter, depression and dejection in another. Throughout the organization, people are busy tracking the real and imagined injustices they have suffered, which they nurse with great care. The Founder's safe conduct through this tempest is by no means guaranteed. If these conflicts are not resolved, Adolescent companies can find themselves in Premature Aging that can lead to the early departure of entrepreneurial leadership, or the professional managers leading to pathologies called Divorce or Premature Aging.

Comment: this might be the wrong sort of company to join if you want a personal or family life quickly. You might do well in getting ahead, but that will be at the cost of nights and weekends. But if you are 22 years old and fresh out of college, what will you do with a near-average pay for people of all ages? Watch lots of TV? Blow money in nightclubs? Attend lots of sporting events or rock concerts?

Sweating to create wealth for an employer with real potential growth isn't the worst situation in life. It's not easy, but it can be well worth it if everyone else seems to be doing much the same.


The Adizes Corporate Lifecycle: The Fall
Go Back to the Lifecycles Page

Quote:The Fall is positioned at the top of the Lifecycle curve, but it is not the place to be. That position is Prime, where organizational vitality is at its maximum. Companies that are in the The Fall phase have started to lose their vitality and are aging. When an organization first begins to age, the symptoms won't show up on its financial reports. In fact, the opposite is true. The Fall companies are often cash rich and have strong financial statements. Like medical tests, financial statements reveal a problem only when abnormal symptoms finally surface late in the Aristocracy stage. If you wait until the signs of aging appear in the numbers, the company will already be significantly aged. If you want to catch aging early, you must look elsewhere.

When people begin to age, the initial signs aren't apparent in their actions or bodies. Aging starts in their minds with subtle changes in attitude, goals, and their outlook on life. This is also true for companies. When an organization starts to age, the first place the symptoms appear is in the attitudes, outlook and behaviors of its leaders.

The leaders of The Fall companies are starting to feel content and somewhat complacent. This attitude has been developing for some time. The company is strong, but it is starting to lose flexibility. It is at the top of its lifecycle curve, but it has expended nearly all of the "developmental momentum" it amassed during its growing stages. The rocket is slowing down and starting to change direction and head down the lifecycle curve. The organization suffers from an attitude that says, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The company is losing the spirit of creativity, innovation, and the desire to change that brought it to Prime. It has sown the seeds of mediocrity. As the desire to change lessens, the organization mellows. There is less contention than in previous stages. More and more, people are adhering to precedence and relying on what has worked in the past. The company's dominant position in the marketplace has given it a sense of security. From time to time, creativity and a push for change surface, but such eruptions become less and less frequent. Order and predictability prevail. To avoid endangering success, people opt for conservative approaches.

But this zone of corporate life has its attractions. The financial statements look as good as they ever will be. (They will weaken as the firm loses its edges in innovation and flexibility and younger corporations fill niches that this firm neglects because it refuses to fill them -- "we just don't do that"). Organizational life will even be collegial so long as one does not shake things up. The setting may be plush, and people generally seem to have lives off the job. They need them. Personal growth? That's over.

Going into real decline, a firm goes through what Adizes calls "aristocracy" and then a really-nasty phase of recrimination. (Examine the website). Maybe the firm survives because its customers need it as a supplier for which there are no alternatives, or creditors  recognize the fixed assets (real estate) or aging intellectual property as desirable items to sell off at the appropriate time for fit terms. The firm may have a rising share in a dying industry, may have monopoly power that allows the company to survive another couple of cycles by simply raising prices just high enough to stay alive but not high enough to create opportunities for competition. The company is full of 'survivors'
... OK, your condition is not as good after surviving a heart attack or cancer  as it was before the calamity, and a relapse in your weakened state may be fatal.

Montgomery-Ward went through this stage in the 1990s. Radio Shack effectively died a couple years ago. Does either JC Penney or Sears look like a place to get a start?

The Adizes Corporate Lifecycle: Bureaucracy
Go Back to the Lifecycles Page

Quote:Although it should be dead, the company in Bureaucracy is kept alive by artificial life support. The company was born the first time in Infancy, it was reborn in Adolescence, and its third "birth" is in Bureaucracy when it gets an artificial continuance on its life. Death occurs when no one remains committed to keeping the organization alive. If there is no business or government commitment to supporting a company in Recrimination, death can occur instead of bureaucratization.

In the Bureaucratic stage, a company is largely incapable of generating sufficient resources to sustain itself. It justifies its existence by the simple fact that the organization serves a purpose that is of interest to another political and business entity willing to support it.

 The Bureaucratic organization:

• Has many systems and rules and runs on ritual, not reason.
  
• Has leaders who feel little sense of control.
  
• Is internally disassociated.
  
• Creates obstacles to reduce disruptions from its external environment.
  
• Forces its customers to develop elaborate approaches to bypass roadblocks.
  

[The Wonkette]

(08-09-2017, 01:22 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: S&H noted that the Boomers were raised under the influence of Dr. Spock, but I actually have to challenge this. Most of the Boomers I know were raised in a dichotomy. Their typically GI parents (plus the odd Silent who started making babies young) while on the one hand not wanting their kids to experience the Great Depression type deprivation, on the other hand tended to beat the living shit out of their kids, either physically or otherwise. Therefore, only Boomers growing up in fagademic households were raised in the Spock fashion.

I have a quibble with that. Lots of Boomers were raised by Silents, particularly Disco-wave Boomers. Silents tended to marry and have their children young; it was not uncommon for folks to graduate high school and marry right away, the husband getting a factory job and the wife having babies. My mother, marrying in 1952 a few months short of her 22nd birthday, felt like a spinster in her senior year of college (she graduated in June 1951) because so many of her classmates were sporting rings and she wasn't. Back then, women went to college to get their "MRS" degree.

One of the reason why the Baby Boom was so pronounced in the 1950s is that GIs, who often deferred having children because of the Depression and WWII, and Silents, who looked up to the GIs, were all gettin' hitched and makin' babies all at the same time, or close together.

Most of my contemporaries had Silent parents, rather than GI parents.

[Warren Dew]

(08-09-2017, 03:06 PM)The Wonkette Wrote:

(08-09-2017, 01:22 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: S&H noted that the Boomers were raised under the influence of Dr. Spock, but I actually have to challenge this. Most of the Boomers I know were raised in a dichotomy. Their typically GI parents (plus the odd Silent who started making babies young) while on the one hand not wanting their kids to experience the Great Depression type deprivation, on the other hand tended to beat the living shit out of their kids, either physically or otherwise. Therefore, only Boomers growing up in fagademic households were raised in the Spock fashion.

I have a quibble with that.  Lots of Boomers were raised by Silents, particularly Disco-wave Boomers.  Silents tended to marry and have their children young; it was not uncommon for folks to graduate high school and marry right away, the husband getting a factory job and the wife having babies.  My mother, marrying in 1952 a few months short of her 22nd birthday, felt like a spinster in her senior year of college (she graduated in June 1951) because so many of her classmates were sporting rings and she wasn't.  Back then, women went to college to get their "MRS" degree.

Indeed.  And by the end of the boom, the oldest Silents were 36, hardly young to have a child.

[pbrower2a]

(08-04-2017, 10:58 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: This one goes back even prior to age 9.

I think I must have been 6 and change. Early part of 1st grade. I was already aware that I had a knack for science. I also had a knack for saying clever things to the grown ups. My mother said something to the effect of "you are a Little Professor." I let all of this go to my head. So I was a bit too full of myself in 1st grade ... and beyond. This ended up being a bad diversion that hindered my socialization with other kids. Things that the grown ups think are witty seem lame to other kids. Most kids, especially in early primary school, don't give a rat's ass if you can do science. I should have been perfecting my pitch and my swing. I had to do that more painfully a few years later, too late to be on a certain track. I do have natural baseball talent ... something I found out too late. By the time I found out, the kids who were on the secondary school team (and in some cases collegiate) track were way ahead of me vis a vis skills development. Talent is nothing without skills development.

Malcolm Gladwell gets this well in Outliers,  recognizing the secret to consummate achievement is 10,000 hours (roughly) of early preparation before age 25 in anything from sports to the arts to engineering and computer science to academia. This applies in the arts as much to popular culture (the Beatles, the most polished pop group to have ever existed, all did about 10000) hours in semi-pro music in performing (in awful locations), practice, and study of music of all kinds. Then they went pro and made it look easy.

But there is a price. one that Gladwell misses. One must get away with about 5000 hours of preparation while still a child, which implies a dedication that few people can get away with. If you consider playing a violin... it is easy to develop a certain level of mastery fairly quickly and feel satisfaction in obvious achievement, but beyond a certain level of refinement one must get the opportunity to spends hours of drudge work on scales and other studies in which the difference is so subtle that recognizing a difference worthy of further effort is a valid use of time. There will be temptations to do something more immediately satisfying or necessary. If one has great talent and grows up on a farm, then there will be crops to plant and harvest, eggs to fetch, livestock to feed, or cows to milk. If one is from a poor family there will be economic pressures to get a job and perform it instead of sing in a choir. Popular culture, conformist as it is, might show the person trying to master the fine art of painting as a freak when the temptation is to date, to tool around in cars, or hang out at the mall.

High achievement often comes with a stilted life. Musicians in symphony orchestras may be highly refined in music and perhaps languages, but they are often utter naifs at just about everything else -- including romantic love. But falling short of the needed perfection comes with no chance of a second chance to be anything other than a 'prole' -- and quite possibly a very unhappy prole because of having had a taste of Elysium and ending up as doing clerical work, being a short-order cook, driving a truck, doing vehicle repair work, or delivering letters. The person whose ambition is to be a short-order cook, a truck driver, a vehicle repairman, or a letter carrier might find life tolerable. Someone who wanted to be something more exalted and fell short can live a life of guilt and regret.

[pbrower2a]

Obviously we can't all be violinists in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra; we cannot all write novels that people can't wait to read; we can't all decide whether the next painting that we are on the brink of achieving for sale for thousands of dollars at a gallery is to be an abstract-expressionist work or a primitive. On the other hand we really do need milk, produce, grain, and (for most people) meat. We need to get our checks in the mail to pay off Chase Manhattan for the underwear that we bought. We need people to deliver the underwear at the store and someone to collect the cash or credit-card data for it. We need our cars repaired, and if we are not to have to pay thousands to get the engines fixed more often than otherwise necessary we need people to change the oil.

Reality is the mind-numbing, dirty, muscle-straining toil. Reality is also the banality of fast-food places and the ugliness of payday loans (Egad!)

High personal achievement comes with a price, and many of us are unwilling to pay the price even before we get started. Some of us lack the needed talent and the opportunity to achieve. Some of us give up when we saw the progress slow. Some of us had to milk the cows or get a job sweeping floors, denying us the chance to live our dreams.

The Right has always recognized a need for toil, but it has typically seen the peon or the prole as less than fully human -- someone whose dreams must be reduced to an animal level of survival. I see Donald Trump no better than the aristocrats of old who saw peasants as little better than livestock or of magnates of the early-industrial era who saw factory workers as machines of flesh instead of such inanimate materials as steel and wood. So the woman in a convenience store  angry at people who have things a little better (well, maybe not if one considers the hefty school loans -- unless those workers have cr@ppy jobs and a hefty student loan to pay off!) finds someone who will tear down the middle class and bring it to the same debased level. That is Donald Trump. He's learned the trick of every demagogue from Vladimir Lenin to Francois Duvalier -- run against visible elites on behalf of either some  dubious ideal (himself) or on behalf of elites even more exploitative than those that he castigates.

But Donald Trump is not only a plutocrat -- he is the worst sort of plutocrat, a profiteering rentier.  If you live in a cheap place to live (like the rural Midwest) you have some distance. He's OK -- until he starts turning loved ones into cannon fodder (as he is talking about with respect to Venezuela). Even if he isn't invested in the provisioners of war he can at least get his ego stroked while President.

He sees himself as a Great Man, much unlike the 'lesser' man that his predecessor was.

[pbrower2a]

For millions the wrong turn will have been supporting the President that we now have.

[noway2]

(09-05-2017, 07:23 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: For millions the wrong turn will have been supporting the President that we now have.

Say what you will, but I still think he beats the alternative.

[beechnut79]

(08-01-2017, 03:21 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-31-2017, 07:03 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: So that others might learn .... and ... for pure pleasure of venting.

What were your wrong turns in life?

What was wrong about them and what were the lessons learned?

What would your X year old self tell your Y year old self and / or, what would you tell up and coming Millennials and eventually, Homelanders. A few Homelanders are now approaching tweenerhood, which is typically where wrong turns start to happen. Some of my earliest wrong turns happened when I was 9.

In view of Asperger's Syndrome I wish I had been a philosophy major and psychology minor, or vice-versa, in college. Knowing about it would have saved me much pointless hardship.

But I am going to give some more general advice.

1. Learning is worth the cost and potential disappointments. It may be the difference between getting work that you like and getting work that you hate -- and work that you hate will grind you. It may prepare you for a life unavailable to you; you may find that economic forces and the general corruption of our social order consign you to a job that you hate. So save every penny that you can to start a business. Train yourself for a job that pays better than what you get stuck with first.

2. Do not trust the political system. If the American people can end up with Donald Trump as President, then anything bad is possible. Expect government to first reward those who bought the politicians.

3. Expand your world. Even if you are too broke to travel beyond some dreary hick town, you can read. There is much video. Maybe travelo0gues will better enrich your life than will fecal television.

4. Don't allow your economic condition to be the cause of your esteem or lack thereof. Profit for elites, the only obvious virtue in America today, depends on multitudes being poor. Poverty is not shame. In a thoroughly-corrupt system it may be the strongest evidence of your integrity.

5. Stay clear of status symbols that demonstrate only two things: that you have the funds for buying them and that you are foolish enough to waste money on them. Truth be told, the Old Rich snicker at such things anyway. You can spend thousands of dollars on a wristwatch, and what will that wristwatch do that a throwaway watch from Wal*Mart will do? It will cost you savings or the opportunity to do something really interesting, and it will show the rest of the world that you are a schmuck insecure about how  others perceive you.

6. Develop loyalties to family and community, even if those are terribly flawed, unless those are so dysfunctional as to cripple your life. Much of the needed improvement  in America will come from people deciding to make miserable places, including ghettos, barrios, the Reservation, and dreary hick towns more tolerable. San Francisco may  be a paradise due to the climate, but you may be priced into such a place as Lima, Ohio. Then make the best of Lima (which will be tough) and try to make it better. Incremental improvements, like moving to Fort Wayne or Toledo, may be all that are available.

7. Get in shape and stay in shape. Obesity is a choice, and a bad one. Avoid street drugs and drunkenness.

8. Don't watch so much TV. Don't be a big sports fan.

9. Remember this: everything corrupt, cruel, inequitable, and repressive in our society has powerful interests behind the nastiness.

I have the condition and yet somehow have managed to be able to reside within the quite pricey Chicago area. I have done it by renting rooms in private homes for the majority of my adult life. On one of the other threads I posted a blurb in response to your coming clean about the condition but it somehow got lost in the shuffle. Hope you got the chance to look at it. Many times I tend to feel a tad emotional about being cursed with this condition that has largely prevented me from living the lifestyle I had one aspired to.

[pbrower2a]

(08-01-2017, 03:21 AM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: So that others might learn .... and ... for pure pleasure of venting.
[quote pid='27463' dateline='1501545839']

What were your wrong turns in life?

What was wrong about them and what were the lessons learned?

What would your X year old self tell your Y year old self and / or, what would you tell up and coming Millennials and eventually, Homelanders. A few Homelanders are now approaching tweenerhood, which is typically where wrong turns start to happen. Some of my earliest wrong turns happened when I was 9.

(I am rewriting this to improve it).

In view of Asperger's Syndrome I wish I had been a philosophy major and psychology minor, or vice-versa, in college. Knowing about Asperger's from early adulthood would have saved me much pointless hardship.

But I am going to give some more general advice.

1. Learning is worth the cost and potential disappointments. It may be the difference between getting work that you like and getting work that you hate -- and work that you hate will grind you. It may prepare you for a life unavailable to you; you may find that economic forces and the general corruption of our social order consign you to a job that you hate. So save every penny that you can to start a business. Train yourself for a job that pays better than what you get stuck with first. Learning will show you, even if you fail economically, some glories of culture that will give you cause to find meaning in life when life gets nasty.

2. Do not trust the political system. If the American people can end up with Donald Trump as President, then anything bad is possible. Expect government to first reward those who bought the politicians. Even if he is one-and-out, he will not be the last similarly-awful President. But latching onto a corrupt order makes one vulnerable in the event of a proletarian revolution  whose first steps in establishing what looks like a better world begins with killing off those whose lives of luxury seem to result from the suffering of multitudes.

3. Expand your world. Even if you are too broke to travel beyond some dreary hick town, you can read. There is much video. Maybe travelogues will better enrich your life than will fecal television. But not only place but time. There may be great gems of antiquity worthy of your attention. Such greats as Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle are still relevant.

4. Don't allow your economic condition to be the cause of your esteem or lack thereof. Profit for elites, the only obvious virtue in America today, depends on multitudes being poor. Poverty is not shame. In a thoroughly-corrupt system it may be the strongest evidence of your integrity. Never sell out your principles to participate in something corrupt and exploitative.

5. Stay clear of status symbols that demonstrate only two things: that you have the funds for buying them and that you are foolish enough to waste money on them. Truth be told, the Old Rich snicker at such things anyway. You can spend thousands of dollars on a wristwatch, and what will that wristwatch do that a throwaway watch from Wal*Mart won't do? It will cost you savings or the opportunity to do something really interesting, and it will show the rest of the world that you are a schmuck insecure about how  others perceive you.

6. Develop loyalties to family and community, even if those are terribly flawed, unless those are so dysfunctional as to cripple your life. Much of the needed improvement  in America will come from people deciding to make miserable places, including ghettos, barrios, the Reservation, and dreary hick towns more tolerable. San Francisco may  be a paradise due to the climate, but you may be priced into such a place as Lima, Ohio. Then make the best of Lima (which will be tough) and try to make it better. Incremental improvements, like moving to Fort Wayne or Toledo, may be all that are available.

7. Get in shape and stay in shape. It may give you an opportunity to see the nastiness go away, as the grossly-unfit shorten their lives. Obesity is a choice, and a bad one. Avoid street drugs and drunkenness.

8. Don't watch so much TV. Don't be a big sports fan.

9. Remember this: everything corrupt, cruel, inequitable, and repressive in our society has powerful interests behind the nastiness. Even slavery had its loud defenders -- people who thought it the best of all possible institutions.

[Kinser79]

(09-05-2017, 07:23 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: For millions the wrong turn will have been supporting the President that we now have.

OF COURSE!  Because Hillary "Imma gonna nuke Iran" Clinton was a better option.  

Look even if people think 2016 was a shit show most still felt that Trump was better than an establishment politician with a history of strokes who seems to think yelling at the internet is an effective tactic.

I'm not sorry at all for my vote.  Honestly I think Daddy goes from strength to Strength.

[pbrower2a]

(09-06-2017, 04:24 PM)beechnut79 Wrote:

(08-01-2017, 03:21 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(07-31-2017, 07:03 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: So that others might learn .... and ... for pure pleasure of venting.

What were your wrong turns in life?

What was wrong about them and what were the lessons learned?

What would your X year old self tell your Y year old self and / or, what would you tell up and coming Millennials and eventually, Homelanders. A few Homelanders are now approaching tweenerhood, which is typically where wrong turns start to happen. Some of my earliest wrong turns happened when I was 9.

In view of Asperger's Syndrome I wish I had been a philosophy major and psychology minor, or vice-versa, in college. Knowing about it would have saved me much pointless hardship.

But I am going to give some more general advice.

1. Learning is worth the cost and potential disappointments. It may be the difference between getting work that you like and getting work that you hate -- and work that you hate will grind you. It may prepare you for a life unavailable to you; you may find that economic forces and the general corruption of our social order consign you to a job that you hate. So save every penny that you can to start a business. Train yourself for a job that pays better than what you get stuck with first.

2. Do not trust the political system. If the American people can end up with Donald Trump as President, then anything bad is possible. Expect government to first reward those who bought the politicians.

3. Expand your world. Even if you are too broke to travel beyond some dreary hick town, you can read. There is much video. Maybe travelo0gues will better enrich your life than will fecal television.

4. Don't allow your economic condition to be the cause of your esteem or lack thereof. Profit for elites, the only obvious virtue in America today, depends on multitudes being poor. Poverty is not shame. In a thoroughly-corrupt system it may be the strongest evidence of your integrity.

5. Stay clear of status symbols that demonstrate only two things: that you have the funds for buying them and that you are foolish enough to waste money on them. Truth be told, the Old Rich snicker at such things anyway. You can spend thousands of dollars on a wristwatch, and what will that wristwatch do that a throwaway watch from Wal*Mart will do? It will cost you savings or the opportunity to do something really interesting, and it will show the rest of the world that you are a schmuck insecure about how  others perceive you.

6. Develop loyalties to family and community, even if those are terribly flawed, unless those are so dysfunctional as to cripple your life. Much of the needed improvement  in America will come from people deciding to make miserable places, including ghettos, barrios, the Reservation, and dreary hick towns more tolerable. San Francisco may  be a paradise due to the climate, but you may be priced into such a place as Lima, Ohio. Then make the best of Lima (which will be tough) and try to make it better. Incremental improvements, like moving to Fort Wayne or Toledo, may be all that are available.

7. Get in shape and stay in shape. Obesity is a choice, and a bad one. Avoid street drugs and drunkenness.

8. Don't watch so much TV. Don't be a big sports fan.

9. Remember this: everything corrupt, cruel, inequitable, and repressive in our society has powerful interests behind the nastiness.

I have the condition and yet somehow have managed to be able to reside within the quite pricey Chicago area. I have done it by renting rooms in private homes for the majority of my adult life. On one of the other threads I posted a blurb in response to your coming clean about the condition but it somehow got lost in the shuffle. Hope you got the chance to look at it. Many times I tend to feel a tad emotional about being cursed with this condition that has largely prevented me from living the lifestyle I had one aspired to.

Thank you for reminding me of your post.  I am going to re-post the content here  in appreciation:

Quote:I need to respond to all this because I have the condition as well although it affected me in somewhat different ways, creating much emotional jeopardy down through the years.  Emotional jeopardy is an unusual game; sometimes you just have to play, which means that you have to be vulnerable. I also was bullied frequently as a child, and the year I was in fourth grade I was removed from public school following the Thanksgiving break. My parents supplied a tutor for a couple of years before space at a private boarding school became available. Much has gone wrong in my life through the years from that point on. Loud noises really don't bother me much except when trying to carry on a conversation. In fact my mother always said I played music and radio too loud. (No longer do much of that, though). Never did have trouble climbing stairs, but too have had difficulty obtaining and holding jobs at times although I had two jobs that lasted seven years, which in this day and age is about par for the course. By that length of time they will usually figure out some way to consider you too big an expense.

In the dating realm, we may not have had the same experiences, and this is where the topic of emotional jeopardy comes in. I wanted an active dating life very badly and did at times have some successes and had a few relationships that possibly could have led to marriage. I admittedly blew my last opportunity in the early 2000s because of my own restlessness. I had a fall in 2008, the same year the economy had its own fall. While I recovered well physically my financial stability took a big hit from which I have never recovered. Did obtain a job by the end of that year only to be removed unceremoniously in March of 2009. That's when I learned without a doubt how, in today's workplace, office politics and political correctness trump reason, and that petty jealousies can and often do lead to real-world consequences. A book I wrote titled JUDAS TIMES SEVEN is a somewhat fictionalized account of my experience, as I never learned the truth as to what went down and why after I developed an attraction to a woman who also was my lead person for most of my time there.

The only way in which we may have gotten better regarding our common condition is that we have at least come to recognize that vulnerability isn't a sign of weakness. It actually provides us with strength to overcome the toughest of obstacles. There are those who have told me that I managed to overcome tremendous odds in order to be able to live independently. And yet I don't come even close to considering myself as any kind of hero. If I were going to write my own autobiography, which I may take on sometime before my last breath occurs, I would probably title it "Ladies' Man Dreams", as I had almost an obsessional dream of being the ladies' man who could win the affection of nearly any woman I desired. The obsession was so intense that anybody who tried to get in the way, even family members, I considered to be the enemy. Now 72, I figure that it's now safe to go public with it because it is no doubt too late in life to try to become that ladies' man now. And do you feel that the term "Ladies' man" is more derogatory today that it may once have been? I have heard that there was a time when it carried a certain sort of mystique.

If  one knows about Asperger's in oneself or a loved one, then one can make adjustments. Perhaps the wisest thing to do is to hone the efforts of someone with Asperger's even if the activity seems statistically a poor chance. Just because the statistics are more favorable for most people as office clerks than as creative people, someone with Asperger's probably has no chance as an office clerk in which facial recognition, office politics, and relating to banal conversations matters greatly.  I may have no natural empathy or optimism -- but I can pretend empathy and optimism because even a pretense of those can do good. Imitate a virtue (empathy) or a practical behavior (pessimists get exactly what they expect) and you earn a reputation for decency and practicality. Note well: normal people must learn empathy and optimism. Of course I must watch myself, just as an alcoholic must watch for the snares of situations in which alcohol might be available and resist alcohol.

Having read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers, I have come to the conclusion that doing really well in American life depends upon extraordinary preparation before one starts making money at what one does. Everything basic has been done. There are no simple, profound truths to be discovered in any field of endeavor. Even in physics the last such discovery was relativity which has been known for 112 years.

Want to be a violinist in one of the top orchestras in America? Gladwell suggests that it will take about 10 thousand hours of dedication to musical education and practice of the violin to get that good. To be sure you will not get a chance to do such if you lack in the obvious necessities of near-perfect pitch and the talent for reading music. But lots of people with the talent fell short of playing a violin for a symphony orchestra because they never got access to a violin, could not get the privacy for practicing three hours a day, or got stuck with child labor (including farm chores) that ensures that one can never reach the apex of virtuosity necessary for meeting the standards of a first-class orchestra. Add to this, one must care. Get involved in an incompatible activity, like modifying cars for speed or racing cars, and you will not become a very good violinist because such also takes time. Yes, auto racing takes much time, effort, and experimentation. This applies to writing, popular music, or painting.

10,000 hours is roughly the time needed to become a PhD or get a medical degree. Put my level of learning back in the 19th century (without the anachronisms) , and I would probably be a college professor. With what I have I am lucky to be a substitute school teacher.

But put such a quest to someone with Asperger's who can do the repetitious, purposeful activity -- and one might get a fine cartoonist. Or anything that requires almost superhuman excellence as an intellectual or creative activity.

Maybe I have some chance to get married. As a man I have some chance to marry a woman in later middle age -- a widow or a single professional. I am good with children, so I have value right there. The older that a man gets, the better his chances get. As with other handicapped people I am cautious. That is good for survival.

I am contemplating a book... "My Other Life" in which I know about Asperger's  and make the appropriate adjustments. Life without Asperger's? No. I would be a hero out of one of those trashy romance novels. Besides, "Federal Judge" is too boring for a story.

[Tim Randal Walker]

I think that I am lucky-I ended up in Seattle rather than some dreary hick town. I won't be traveling that much in the future, as I feel a need to prepare for retirement. Which, will probably be well into my seventies (I'm 62 now).

Seattle is nice enough. Not one of the great cities of the world, but good enough for me. With the high COL, though, I would probable relocate to someplace cheaper if I were younger.

I used to fantasize about Adventure Travel. Safaris, Antarctic cruises, Machu Pichu, the Galapagos Island, Madagascar..... I would even get brochures. But the cost was a barrier.

Now I fantasize about retirement. Awhile back, I came across online comments by a guy in his late fifties, who was sick and tired of the regimentation of work. I figure that regimentation starts when you are a small child, with school. By the time you are in your late fifties, you have endured half a century of regimentation.

[David Horn]

(02-01-2019, 08:13 PM)Tim Randal Walker Wrote: I think that I am lucky-I ended up in Seattle rather than some dreary hick town.  I won't be traveling that much in the future, as I feel a need to prepare for retirement.  Which, will probably be well into my seventies (I'm 62 now).  

Seattle is nice enough.  Not one of the great cities of the world, but good enough for me.  With the high COL, though, I would probable relocate to someplace cheaper if I were younger.

I used to fantasize about Adventure Travel.  Safaris, Antarctic cruises, Machu Pichu, the Galapagos Island, Madagascar.....  I would even get brochures.  But the cost was a barrier.  

Now I fantasize about retirement.  Awhile back, I came across online comments by a guy in his late fifties, who was sick and tired of the regimentation of work.  I figure that regimentation starts when you are a small child, with school.  By the time you are in your late fifties, you have endured half a century of regimentation.

One person's error is another's brilliant play.  We're all different.  I'm just shy of 72, and 3 years retired.  I planned to retire at 70, not 69 as I actually did, but an unfulfilling work life and the opportunity to retire as I wished made that decision for me.  In that, I'm extremely lucky.  I'm not in my perfect place, but I am in a really good one.  I'll be staying until I get too old to live here -- hopefully 15+ years from now.  In the meantime, there is always travel.