Revolt against the energy surrounding you

Originally posted on WoodyRoseland.com [Here]

A few months ago I left the company I co-founded, As I try to figure out what I’m doing with my life I started picking up some shifts at my old restaurant, it’s a pre-theater fine dining spot. The theater crowd is elderly, and stuffy. The kitchen isn’t very big, we often are understaffed and over seated. Ticket times sometimes go long, waiters and waitresses get flustered and demand their table’s food, the manager and chef yell at each other, the new lady working pantry gives you attitude for not saying please when you ask her to add the Maytag blue cheese to an incomplete Artisianal cheese plate. Dinner service can be a tense affair.

Last year I did a video project for the Denver Nuggets, I shot underneath the basket at a few games. Being at an NBA stadium for work instead of play is a completely different animal. It quickly becomes obvious how every facet of the stadium experience is tailored for your enjoyment. Bass coursing though the night air for blocks leading up to the stadium with flood lights illuminating the sky, the irresistible smell of decadent snacks once you enter, on-screen visuals and graphics, in-game entertainment during timeouts and halftime, the volume of the music pumping through their world class speakers, the bright lights, All of it designed to be an immersive experience that allows you to lose yourself in the moment and justify the price on your ticket.

In both of these situations, just by being there you’re implicitly agreeing to the collective feeling of that moment. In the kitchen, when everyone is shouting and yelling, you start scowling because everyone else is. In the stadium you instinctively bob your head to the music and lose the filter between what you think and what you say. At a game I was shooting at, a Nuggets player got hacked at the rim without a foul being called. Without a second’s thought I shouted “Come on, ref!” Except He was standing only 3 feet away from me and probably wasn’t expecting that kind of dissatisfaction from the press section, after an incredulous glance from him he trotted off to follow the action on the other side of the court.

These are two extreme examples of something that happens in a much more benign way in our everyday lives. We’re forced into a mindset that we didn’t consent to. We’re bombarded with messages at every turn of our day. From the second you turn on the TV, check Facebook, or open up your email, people are lobbying for a say in your mental state.

Louis CK famously said “Everything’s amazing and nobody’s happy”. As the amount of conveniences in our life skyrockets, it seems for most people, their threshold for inconveniences has dropped lower and lower. I’m constantly surprised by the creative reasons people find to get bent out of shape. Misery loves company, and people can’t wait to get you on their bandwagon of dissatisfaction.

Don’t feel obligated to join in. If you want to enjoy the hell out of your day, do just that.