pseydtonne | Something I am liking about getting older

Remember when you were a teenager and you'd have angst-ridden moments about the meaning of your existence? You'd wonder why you or anyone else was on this planet, what was the purpose of life. Gregor Samsa made total sense.

I woke up this morning after 7.5 hours of sleep. Even though I went to sleep knackered, I could sleep no more. My body was ready and within a few minutes my brain had a good idea for the day.

"Let's take that empty 250 GB IDE drive, make one big NTFS partition on it, install XP on it and a few tools, get it up to date and copy all of the files from my old desktop machine onto it. Then I can copy the rest of these heavy, tiny drives onto this new beater machine and toss any that are smaller than 40 gig. I have the parts and I want the space back -- let's do it. This is what I'm doing before going to therapy this evening."

Then I twiddled my toes, sprang from bed, poured a bowl of cereal and opened the shades.

I realized while I was mixing cereals that I can still remember having that angst, even at older ages, but it's not something I feel now. I know exactly why I'm on the Earth: I fix things, I take notes on how I fix things, then I show others how I fixed things so they can fix things for themselves. I do it, I explain it, and then I do something else.

Oh sure, that sounds simple. Don't you wish more mission statements were that clear? "Our company will synergize the strategies of... err...". Nah.

Portland Oregon has a mission statement, and it's my favorite:

"Every child should be able to walk to a library.
Every resident should have a view of Mount Saint Helens."

Of course now I can't find this mission statement and perhaps it was bullshit. It still nailed what a city should be about: living somewhere worth staying and keeping it so. If Cleveland's were "our river should never catch on fire again and be drinkable, fishable and swimmable -- and we'll rebuild our economy to make that happen", people wouldn't be fleeing. Instead, their economy's based on Lebron James. One NBA trade and the city will lose a huge amount of income.

Angst... man, I'm glad that stuff fades.