14 July, 2000


Contrast

Kiss me goodbye and write me while I'm gone.
Goodbye my sweetheart, hello Viet Nam!

Every person needs a cause to start their adult years with. I count myself as very fortunate to have happened upon Tellme. It is not like what we're trying to accomplish is great for humanity or anything. It'll save lots of people time and money down the road if we pull it off right, I suppose. What I love about it though is that I'm surrounded by a lot of great people who are all dedicated to a pretty good idea, from the Gung-Ho college grads to the more seasoned veterans of past business successes, and failures.

For some strange reason, I really love the movie Full Metal Jacket. I sometimes think it is because I tried and failed at the whole Military thing, and that Full Metal Jacket presents an interesting life alternative that I have fortunately missed out on.

I've worked at other places besides Tellme, and I've always enjoying doing my job, but at Tellme there's the added dimension that I get to work for a lot of other very smart, very talented, very motivated, sane people. Of any other place I've ever worked, the military was the most unlike Tellme, but despite the shit, I found things to enjoy; Spending 18 hours washing pots and pans can be enjoyable, you can let your mind wander. In a fucked-up situation like Viet Nam, people find other things to enjoy:

These are great days we're living in bro's:
We're Jolly green Giants, walking the Earth, with guns!
When we rotate back to the world, we're going to miss having anyone around that's worth shooting at.

And I guess it is because the economy is doing well: business is war and I've found a great Company to issue my marching orders. I get mp3s instead of cadence, and a fuzzy concern for my professional development instead of orders and intimidation. No MREs please, we make our own sammiches out of the company fridge! When the economy goes bad, so too do the wars. The Nazis came goose-stepping in from the Great Depression, but the prosperous fifties and sixties were a bad time to draft young men to work in Korea and Viet Nam.

But no more long days of KP duty. There's little time spent standing in formation, letting the mind wander. One of my favorite hobbies these days is lying in bed, isolated, relaxing, and dreaming. It's weird though, I'm getting more and more capable of fulfilling my dreams, but I insist on the opportunity to idly have them! And I guess that's good - I pride myself on trying to figure out what I'm really trying to do beyond the moment - I do excellent work and at heart I'm a slacker who'd rather be dreaming. I tell myself that the best is yet to come, so there should still be time for dreaming about the future. I can't guarantee that it will be rosy.


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This document last modified Wednesday, 19-Nov-2003 23:24:54 UTC <dannyman@dannyland.org>