The Art Of Being The Neighborhood Dog

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They say that journaling is supposed to make you feel better about your life, or some shit. Pretty sure I heard that from a credible source.

For me, it’s just a good way to figure out what the fuck is going on in my head. I make progress towards clarity when I put it all on paper. Or the computer screen, as it were.

Anyway, I’m at somewhat of a crossroads right now.

What I mean by that is that I have to make a decision in the next few weeks as to how I’m going to spend my immediate future. Say, the next 6–12 months or so.

Is this how normal people plan their lives? I feel like it isn’t.

For some reason I don’t think anyone plans too far out, they’re just going further and further down the same path.

Why do I always have to make decisions?

As I wrote that, I thought of a good friend of mine. He’s a successful business guy. Just put $50k in the stock market because he had too much cash lying around. Hard life.

I used to work with him, and I remember him making lots of decisions. And just because he made them all the time, that doesn’t mean that he didn’t change them. He did that too.

But he didn’t hem and haw and think to himself, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”

He just picked an option and went with it. If it wasn’t working out, he’d change it. This happened all the time.

Me on the other hand, I like to repeat the same conversation in my head over and over in an attempt to figure out the “best” solution.

There is no best solution. They’re all great, and they’re all shit. It just depends on what you choose to focus on at any given moment.

Well that’s all and good, but it doesn’t really help me make any choices for my immediate future.

Honestly, I’m beginning to wonder if the options even matter. Maybe my decision making process is just fucked.

I suppose the options do matter, at least a little. If only because they’re so different from one another.

On the one hand, I could move to Australia to go sell hair straighteners for a few months. I’d save money, and then go to Tel Aviv University in October 2017. 3 years later I’d have a useless piece of paper that says I learned Psychology.

If all goes well, I would have had sex with a lot of dumb Israeli girls along the way. Or American girls. Or French. I’m not picky.

My skin would be a dark shade of brown from all the time I’d spend at the beach. Oh, and did I mention I’d be in the best shape of my life from the constant exercise, yoga and walking culture in Tel Aviv? Not to mention the trim figure I’d get from riding my bike all over town.

So I’d be tan, muscular, have sex with lots of dumb girls AND could get the government to pay for most of it.

I’d probably have to work at some shit job for supplemental income and would probably end up going to Australia (or an equivalent location) for a few months out of the year in order to work.

Then after graduating in 2020 (OMFG), I could apply to business school and get an MBA.

I’m not sure why, but that seems like the cool thing to do these days.

Honestly I’d probably fucking hate business school. Just seems like a giant circle jerk. It’s basically like a real life version of LinkedIn.

I don’t really see any value in the undergraduate degree itself, rather the value is in being in a university environment.

While that may not seem like such a big deal to whoever is reading this, that’s because you’re probably a college educated, reasonably-intelligent person with a somewhat normal job.

(If you have a cool job and are living a life of adventure, well, I hate you. Unless you want me to join you, in which case, hit me up.)

But the point I’m trying to make is that I think I would benefit from spending some time in the university environment. It’s good for networking. Plus I want to work out at their gym and swim in their pool.

They have all these clubs and shit you can join also, and if you don’t see a club you like you can just make one up. I feel like it’s a free-thinking environment that encourages you to experience as much as you can.

Of course, I could have absolutely no idea what the fuck I’m talking about, but at the very least I’d be tan, ripped and having semi-regular sex with dumb Tel Aviv girls.

I suppose the fact that Israeli food is delicious also counts for something.

Okay, now the other option.

The second potential life plan is to stay in Los Angeles, get my real estate license and go to work for my friend Corey. I’ve mentioned him a few times, but suffice to say that he’s a Jewish guy a few years older than me who has been in the RE game for a long time.

He’s one of the gym people that I talk to on a regular basis. One day a few months ago, I mentioned to him that I had quit my shit job and was looking for something new.

Long story short, he told me that if I get my real estate license, that he’d get me a job at his firm.

They pay $25 an hour for part time while you get your feet wet, and any deals that are closed get split. According to him, I could make $100k my first year.

One thing I just realized is that trying to imagine how my life would be under this plan is not as easy as the other one.

For one thing, I’ve already lived in Tel Aviv, ridden my bike around and had sex with dumb Israeli girls. I can somewhat envision what that will be like.

However, I haven’t ever made $100k a year from selling real estate.

In fact, I haven’t ever had a normal job in Los Angeles where I made enough money to support myself, aside from when I was working with my previously mentioned business guy friend.

And driving for Uber of course, but I don’t consider that a real job.

So regarding that, I have no idea what to expect. Is this what people mean when they say you should take risks?

That’s actually fucking hilarious if you think about it.

For most people, moving to another country is taking the risk. For me, taking a risk is staying in my hometown and getting a good job.

So fucking weird.

Anyway, like I said I can’t really speculate on what life would be like as a real estate agent, but part of me suspects that I would fucking hate it.

Well, actually that’s probably not fair of me to say.

I imagine that making that kind of money would be good in some way, but I’m not a very materialistic person anyway. I’d probably just spend most of it on weird nootropics and drugs.

I’d be able to help my parents out too, so there’s that.

I’d be able to pay the money I owe the IRS. That’s nice.

What else… well, I suppose those two things would make me feel better about myself in some way.

In fact, that’s really all this whole making money thing is worth: it’s just a tool to elevate your status in society.

If you are making big bucks, then you have higher status than the person who isn’t.

I don’t know if that’s just a weird belief I have or if it’s actually true. Hmmm..

For example, the gym I go to is pretty fucking snazzy. At $230/month, only people who have lots of expendable income choose to be members there.

And then there’s me.

But the point I’m trying to make is that despite the fact that I have a decent level of self-confidence, have lots of friends there, and would say that I’m well-liked, I still feel like I’m lower status than all of those people.

It’s really strange now that I think about it, but sometimes I feel like I’m like the neighborhood dog.

People are happy to see me. They’re nice to me. I’m nice to them. They’ll hug me and be friendly.

Yet I have lower status than they do. Could this just be in my head?

Now that I actually say that, I’m pretty sure it’s just in my fucking head. I mean, what kind of retarded shit is that to believe about yourself just because you don’t make any money?

But I mean, isn’t that how the world works? Don’t people judge each other on their cars, houses, clothes and bank account?

Yeah yeah, I know at the end of the day people are people, and when you put multiple humans together in the same place, they’re all going to have human tendencies.

In other words, just because someone makes a million dollars a year, doesn’t mean that they’re not out of shape, compulsively masturbate to fetish porn, are terrible with the opposite sex or are addicted to Netflix.

Everyone has problems, regardless of how much money they have.

My problem just happens to be that I have no money.

Still… for some reason I have this sneaking suspicion that if money is your problem, then you’re lower on the totem pole of human value.

I feel like money is the problem everyone is trying to solve. Once you’ve solved that problem THEN you’re allowed to work on the rest of them.

But if you haven’t solved it? Well, then you better forget about everything else in your life and get cracking.

Is that dumb to think?

I don’t know.. This is where having a sounding board would come in handy, but it’s embarassing to talk about this.

Plus, it’s not like people are going to say, “Yep you’re right. If you don’t have any money you’re a worthless human being.”

Hmmm.. I just don’t know what to make of all this. Hypothetical futures don’t really solve the problem.

The next thought in the never-ending loop is: If I had 6 months to live, what would I do?

Well, I can tell you for sure that I wouldn’t sell fucking real estate.

Would I go to Australia and sell hair straighteners? Probably not either.

I’d probably just chill on a beach somewhere and try to have sex with exotic women, do yoga and work out. Isn’t there a job I can do where those are the requirements?

Probably not, but I suppose that my first plan comes closer to that than the other one.

Actually now that I think about it, that IS my first plan!

LOL, that’s actually fucking hilarious.

It doesn’t solve the problem of how to make money, but it does answer the question.

Alright alright, so after that thought runs through my mind, the next thing I think is:

Shouldn’t there be more to life than simple pleasures? Am I setting the bar too low by only wanting to live a life of beach time, sex and exercise?

That’s what kind of gets me, because I don’t have an answer for that.

You hear people talk about shit like, “You need to find your purpose in life.”

Well, that’s all well and good for Steve Jobs, because he gave us the iPhone.

But what about the rest of the world? I’m not going to invent the next fucking iPhone. I’m just a dumb guy who can’t figure shit out.

Purpose.. purpose.. come to think of it, didn’t Steve Jobs spend the last days of his life working at Apple when he was about to die from cancer?

I suppose I can pick whatever I want to be my purpose. I could even say that my purpose is to be as physically attractive as my body will allow, have sex with beautiful young women, and write stupid journal entries.

I know I don’t have to be the next CEO of Apple or invent the iPhone. I just feel bad when I see all this self-improvement porn flying around where people talk about success stories.

“I was eating out of the garbage and now I drive a Bugatti!”

It’s like, if they could do it, why can’t I?

I guess the answer is that they sacrificed for it. They worked for it. They gave up their morning yoga classes, their perfect body, the semi-regular sex with young women in order to have a certain amount of money in their bank account.

THEN they bought the fancy gym membership.

Reminds me of this great quote by the Dalai Lama:

“Man surprised me most about humanity. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money.

Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

Seriously, this guy is fucking on point. No wonder he’s a spiritual leader.

Maybe that’s why I love that whole new age feel good bullshit. They just say to live in the present, not worry about the future and take care of your health.

That’s what I’ve been doing my whole life.

I feel like the problem comes when you start worrying about money. This normally happens when you get older, but eventually the pursuit of money totally swallows up everything else in your life.

Interesting experiences, relationships, and adventure all take a backseat to earning a few more dollars. The assumption is that when you have that money, then you’ll be able to spend it on the aforementioned things.

Unless you have a wife and kids. Then you’re just fucked.

But assuming you don’t have kids, then why not just cut to the chase? Why not just live like you were going to die tomorrow? Why not just forget about money and pretend that it doesn’t exist?

You can’t take it with you when you go, so why spend so much of your waking life worrying about it?

Seriously, what the fuck?