Better living through apathy

When I was a young kid, I always thought it would be great to get older and be able to make my own decisions - when to go to bed, when to get up, what to do with my days, etc. I thought, at the time, that when you became an adult, you automatically knew what to do in any given situation. And, I assumed, adults knew exactly what life was all about and had a kind of situational compass that would tell them what they needed to do, what was right, wrong, necessary, etc.

I came by this belief because my parents were always telling me that they knew what was best for me because they were older, and that I wasn't old enough to make certain decisions. Logically, that meant that at some point - presumably when I turned 18 - I would just know what I needed to know.

At some point, probably around the age of 21, it dawned on me: my parents were absolutely full of shit. They were making it up as they went along.

Granted, with age comes the benefit of experience. But that just means that you're able to compare current situations against past situations (if you're wise enough to even do this) and make a more informed decision based on past experience. It doesn't mean that you actually know what to do. Just a higher probability of being making a good decision assuming you've learned anything worthwhile from past experience.

At this point in my life, I just feel tired. Tired of always having to plot my own course. Tired of having to make the right decisions, knowing that any decision I make today - like quitting a job or not quitting a job - will affect not only tomorrow and the day after, but likely the rest of my life.

Right now, I feel like my life has no structure. No predictability. Completely off the rails, really. I'm not enjoying it. I want someone to just tell me what to do for a change, and to be able to believe that they know what's best for me - cause I'm certainly not sure I do.

It's been a long time since I thought about a "random Larry." I got the term from my friend Pete, a very, very long time ago. Pete pulled the term from some news item about some loser (named, of course, Larry) that got arrested for something stupid. Somehow, if I recall correctly, it was decided that anyone named "Larry" would be a loser, and so the article could have been about any random Larry.

How odd that I would think of this all of the sudden without any prompting. The term has just been lurking in the back of my consciousness for many years and suddenly decided it was time to be used.

What one person considers friendly, others may consider creepy. Take, for example, finding someone's blog by Googling them. Blogs are inherently public, so it's probably silly to expect that other people would respect your privacy on what is a public forum.

Still, there are some folks you don't necessarily expect to see reading your blog -- for example, a new boss, or your grandma. (Unless you give those folks your URL, of course.) When a co-worker or casual acquaintance pops up on your blog, it may be a might unsettling. (In retrospect, I may have done this on one or two occasions when trying to be friendly. Oops.) I've never wanted to go the password-protected walled-garden route, but I don't want any random Larry to be able to find my blog.

So, I'm glad I decided to go "undercover" with this blog. I haven't had a really good run of posts here, but I plan to keep things here that I don't want everyone to connect to me. Sometimes it's nice to express oneself without being held to those expressions by employers and family who know how to use Google well enough to track you down.