I’ve noticed there are a lot of happy homeless people in Berkeley. Or at least people that look like they are homeless. The ex-Lawrence Livermore Lab’s employee I met who now walks the streets looking for donations for his ‘Tutor Kids Now’ project. (Note: I made up the name as I don’t believe his project actually has a name.) Anyway, he pays $50.00 a month to live in a shack behind someones house in Berkeley.
He seems very happy. I’m not sure he was happy at Lawrence Livermore Labs but next time I see him I think I’ll ask. He has a long list of names of people who have signed up to be tutors that he carries with him along with some other papers. Not sure who gets the list as it looked old and I doubt if he has a copier, so I doubt anyone is getting it at this point.
Then there’s the black lady with the shopping cart and the portable cd player playing R&B. I saw her yesterday and she was just as happy as a clam and dancing away. She said something to me as I walked by but she didnt’ seem to want any money. Something about a dancing fool. She laughed as she said and gave me a big smile.
My mother used to call them bag-ladies and claimed that she would be one someday. Then of course her wish came true when she had her surgery and they replaced most of her colon with a colostomy bag. She’d say, “I told you I was going to end up as a bag lady.” and then she’d laugh. We’d just sort of grin uncomfortably. The smell was hard to deal with. She didn’t survive long as a ‘bag lady’. I don’t think she much enjoyed that life.
But then there’s the guy selling ‘Street Life’ at Peets. He always has a smile and nice things to say.
I’m quite interested in this subject now because I’m pretty sure I wasn’t happy making my six figure income. Every day another change, another direction, another project that replaced the last project that didn’t get finished. I got dizzy from all the spinning. I finally said, what is the point. I worked myself to death trying to keep up only to have things change and good projects get scrapped and bad projects get implemented. The good projects that did get implemented always got implemented so poorly that you couldn’t tell they were good projects. But I kept doing it for 17 years just so I could ‘live the good life.’
Finally, after many bad projects came my way and went, I was downsized. You see there was a short time when I realized that the best bet for me and for the company was to not do anything. In other words, I figured I could save my company money by not completing the projects they were pushing. That’s because I knew the projects would have disastrous consequences, but I was unable to get anyone to listen to that. So, since my job title was business analyst, and since the purpose of the business analyst position is saving the company money, the only way to do my job was to not do anything.
This worked for a while but then of course they realized that they could pay someone a lot less than I was getting to tell them their projects were stupid and the best way to save the company money would be to not do anything.
So now that I’m no longer doing that, I’m thinking maybe I should just continue my downsizing. Maybe see what it’s like to sell ‘Street Life’ magazine and eat out of tin cans…. hmmm… that part doesn’t sound glamorous. Sleeping in the street….. naaaah. I know, I’ll write a book. How about this:’
“How to make a six figure income while waiting for them to figure out you aren’t worth it and ‘downsize you’”.
How wierd. I just got a popup for Ode magazine. The byline says:
“Smile, Laugh and Cry with Ode. The magazine for intelligent optimists.”
I didn’t make that up, it really happened. It must be a sign. I think I’ll subscribe.