I'm Baaaaack

For various reasons, I'm going back to my old blog. For one, I don't really need all of the bells and whistles of wordpress, as my "career" as a freelance editor and copywriter is, well, over. Fear not, though, I wouldn't just announce a return without a substantive post, as well. And here it is:

It's Never Enough

One of my tasks at work is improving the efficiency of our teams processes. On Thursday, I made a major breakthrough (yay me!), and figured out how to significantly speed up one aspect of our process.

[Now, as a brief (and deliberately vague) background to this, during this one step, there are four sub-steps. The 4th step was traditionally the longest and most annoying. I didn't mind the first 3 so much, but dreaded the 4th, as I kept thinking, "There must be a faster way to do this." On Thursday, I figured out how to significantly speed up the 4th step, to the point where it goes faster than any of the first 3 steps.]

So, as I was completing this process on Thursday (with the accelerated 4th step), I found myself getting annoyed with the first 3 steps, thinking, "These are so slow; they need to be sped up." As I was thinking this, I realized that a mere 24 hours ago, I felt exactly the opposite about these steps, marveling at how fast they were. And now I was frustrated with them, wishing for them to be even faster.

At this point (as I have a (bad?) tendency of doing), I realized that this is basically a microcosm of one of man's classic faults: never being satisfied, no matter what. And it just becomes a self-perpetuating cycle, feeding on itself, and never being satisfied. There will always be more money to gain, more toys to purchase, or more power to wield.

It was a an insightful into the kinds of choices one has to make in life. Money, property, power, etc. are essentially limitless. Friends, family, happiness etc. are not. Now, I suppose I could always want more friends or more family or something, but in these categories, the simple accumulation of resources does not make for more, or necessarily better assets.

Now, does this mean that one shouldn't have material goals? I don't think so. (FYI, my goals are to own a major league baseball franchise and a catamaran that is the size of a yacht.) But rather, it made me realize the importance of those things which are not traditionally associated with the term "successful." Because, while I may one day fall into the tax bracket termed "successful," I'll probably just be talking with my financial advisor about how I can reach the "very successful" bracket in a year. However, I probably won't be talking with a shrink, analyzing ways to increase my happiness 5-fold in the next quarter.

**To clarify, I would never write an entire post with just the ridiculously cliched message "The best things in life are free." Rather, this was a realizaiton that the reason for this cliche is that a lot of material items are self-feeding, and can never truly satisfy any desires.