From Mind To Box To Shelf

Right now I am playing a computer game called Cave Story. The game was produced by one Japanese man over the course of five years. How one person can spend such a large part of their life working on something that others can enjoy is always a refreshing sentiment. This makes me think of the man who created the portable clock. He worked diligently, day after day, for almost his entire life and left behind something that we use everyday. We usually take these little marvels for granted and completely forget about the people behind them.

I sit alone in my room surrounded by all of these products, Books and DVDs and furniture, and think of how much work and time has gone into each item. My clock radio was first theorized, then designed, then built, then someone wrote an instruction booklet while another person did the box art design, and someone put the box together, and someone drove a truck and dropped off the radio at a retailer, and someone checked this item off of a list, and someone else put it on a shelf, and then someone sold it to me, and I used the money that I got from my job where I sold alcohol that was made in a building while another person designed the artwork for the label. Most of the people involved were not rich or even above average intelligence. They were probably just regular people trying to make money to pay their bills and feed their family. And you think of all the stores and all of the products with all of the labels and advertisers and lawyers and writers and laborers. It doesn't seem like there is any end in sight.


*Seagulls*

For some reason when I was in High School, I never considered all of the job possibilities. Every track always seemed so narrow. If you studied law, you would be a lawyer. If you studied medicine, you would be a doctor. Teacher, Manager, Actor. I think that, in High Schools, they should discuss all of the thousands of different roads you can take after graduation. Maybe possibilities didn't mean much because, at the time, almost every decision was made for you. My future was roughly planned out between the ages of 5 and 18. We are brought up without much serious decision making experience. Maybe that is why teenagers love to rebel so much.

I still have not heard back from my friend from Moldova and I am getting a little worried. It is starting to make me wish that I followed the news more carefully. I could tell you who won the Golden Globes, but I couldn't even begin to explain what's going on in Israel right now. The world is so big, I know that, but for some reason I choose to keep my world so small and so safe and so insignificant.

Speak easy,
Neil