Random Thoughts and More Pointless Rambling

I had someone ask me earlier why I do all the things I do. They surmised that I had “talent”. Far from it actually. I’m not special in any way, shape or form. I’m what the average American USED to be.

Let me explain a little…. A lot of people these days concentrate on making a lot of money. Money can’t buy you everything — or even happiness— but it’s a bit more comfortable crying in the front seat of a Mercedes than on the seat of a bicycle. It’s just a fact of life, no matter how you want to slice it.

But money ain’t everything. It’s just a medium of exchange that allows me to buy a piece of your time. Or for you to buy a piece of another person’s time. It’s part of a social contract that has no real value except what we assign to it. There’s some people in this world who are masters of manipulation that their situations seem to bring them a lot of money. They don’t really produce anything of value that’s truly tangible. Me, for example…. I don’t have the Midas touch that brings me a lot of money. I don’t have the knack.

What I do have is the knack for being able to make things that I need, or even want. I can’t afford to buy them, so I build them instead. I learn to make do with what I have, or learn how to make things — or do without. I trade or barter what I do occasionally make, but most times I generally don’t. Why ? Because I value my time where other folks don’t. In a push button world where there’s instant gratification at your fingertips, people don’t understand or realize the amount of work you put in to accomplish what you set out to do. Making anything requires dedication and work — and that’s something many people don’t want to do anymore. When you work hard to create something the satisfaction kind of sticks with you a while, and since I didn’t take responsibility for the world, I don’t give away my time for nothing.

There’s plenty of things that I can’t do. So I study and work at it and experiment and fail until I finally get it right. It doesn’t diminish me in any way at all to admit there’s things that are way above my understanding. I’ll never be a surgeon, never fly a space ship, never build a skyscraper, never be a professor, and I’m fine with that. None of this is practical to me and I have no desire to be any of those things.

I’m of the opinion (for what it’s worth) that any average person can be anything they want in this country…. Within the limitations of his or her intelligence and imagination. You just have to want it bad enough and be smart enough to carry through with it. I have no talent… just the drive to continue to push my personal boundaries out a little more each day. A day not spent in deep thoughts or study to improve yourself is a day wasted as far as I’m concerned. Maybe I’m delusional, but I like to believe that I do a little bit more than take up space and waste oxygen.