Throwing Stones.
The internet, particularly twitter, has become a wonderful new way to cast stones at sinners. The latest eruption, the dentist who killed an African lion for sport, is currently being played out. It’s distasteful to kill large, elegant animals, especially those with uncertain futures at the species level. We shouldn’t do it. And here this rich man has gone and done it. In a shady – though perhaps not illegal – way. Other things that have come to light about his background suggest he’s a generally unsavory character.
I feel like there was almost a sigh of relief in the internet when this came to attention. There has been so much to be furious about lately. An enormous amount of absolutely legitimate rage is percolating constantly. The city of Cincinnati is preparing for riots in anticipation of the release of yet another video of yet another cop killing yet another unarmed black man. It keeps going on and on, and I don’t see an end or a solution, sadly. I don’t know how you fix a problem like a nationwide denigration of the right to life and liberty for a segment of our population.
When this dentist shot this lion, I felt a gasp of release online. Here is a problem which is clean cut and simple. It fits all the right pegs into all the right holes. A rich white man, with a history of being accused of sexual harassment, has killed a lion for no reason other than his own selfish pride. And a beloved lion, at that. It is the essence of imperialism distilled to a fine elixir of privilege and arrogance.
There are many times when rage is not only justified, but required. The last year, since the death of Michael Brown and the parade of likewise unacceptable atrocities, there has been cause for rage, activism, and change. We’ve seen some. The President has ended a program by which police departments are given military surplus equipment. That’s a small but good start. More and more police wear body-cameras. That’s a small but good start. Video of these horrific events is being broadcast to the world. That’s critical accountability. In Baltimore, police were charged with murder and other crimes. We may finally be turning a corner toward justice.
But amidst all this important rage is another kind. An ugly kind. A fashionable kind. The kind directed at this dentist. For a few, perhaps, this is their issue. Their science. Their hill to bleed for. But not many. For most, it’s about the opportunity to be outraged and mean while being on the right side of a political issue that their friends will praise them for. The victim of this public shaming is seen as deserving it.
And far be it from me to defend him. I wouldn’t kill a lion, and I’d prefer others didn’t too. But I know for damned sure that I’ve done things that, if suddenly thrust into the public sphere, would have many howling for my own blood. Fashionably. Popularly. And so has every person in the mob assailing him.
Lots of academic philosophers defend (or deny the existence of) internet mobs. It’s simply the public’s individualized expressions collated. There’s nothing wrong with it. But there is. At the mob level, and at the individual level. There’s no introspection. So few people seem to be able to imagine themselves placed in another person’s position. Every single one of us has done something that warrants the same kind of reaction as this man killing this lion, to some community. Each of us has done something that some community thinks ought to condemn us to death.
The vast, secular internet community, especially my community, the academic community, is as pious and repressive as any church. It is as puritan. And it wields the same weapons that mobs have wielded since the time of Socrates. Ostracism. The mob send mass emails to employers. The mob makes public the associations of individuals seen to be apostates. These are the stones of modern times, and they can be just as deadly as the literal sort.
But my what a relief, isn’t it, to be outraged about something that doesn’t really matter? A dentist and a lion and now we get to shame someone! Hopefully, we can hound him to destitution! He deserves whatever he gets, right?
There’s a place for all this rage. We need to change our society, and change access to liberty and justice. But rage has become a sport. One we can all participate in. It’s ugly. Because we’re ugly.
Taking a Day.
I had a great weekend with my old friend from St. Louis, Jimmy Legs, visiting. We went to a soccer game and the art museum and we just sort of generally hung out. And we walked and walked and walked. BB was here this weekend too, and so we also did our training runs. 11.2 miles on Saturday, and 3.3 on Sunday. So, 14.5 miles running. And 45.5 miles walking over the four day Friday-Monday stretch. And an hour-long strength and conditioning workout on Sunday.
And so yesterday afternoon I was cooked. I had to beg off my training run. Well, I don’t know if I had to, but I did. I was exhausted, and sore. So I was scheduled to do five miles yesterday and instead I didn’t run at all. I still got in more than 9 miles walking. But no running. There’s just only so much I can do, and if I need an extra day, I’m taking it. Today I have a training session with my personal trainer, and then I will try to add on the run after.
I have taken to riding my bike for an hour after my training session. So I think a nice slow five mile run should also be possible. It’ll be hot, but I don’t think it’s crazy to try to do the run today. I’ll see how I feel. There’s a long way to go in training, and skipping a day is not unreasonable. Rest is crucial to good performance. But I also need to get in my short runs if I’m going to be fit for the long ones.
So I don’t know what I’ll do this afternoon yet. But I’ll get my mileage in.
Keeping the Joy.
I see a lot of people in the world invested in being unhappy. This is true in relationships, careers, and personal goals and activities. As an alcoholic, my investment in my addiction was an investment in unhappiness. In exchange for the momentary flood of intoxication that I thought I needed, I surrendered my joy and desire and success and contentment. I use to lament that I just wanted to be happy. And yet I sabotaged myself at every turn.
Much of my unhappiness was associated with trying to get what I wanted and control the outcome of my circumstances. I was terrible at recognizing what I could control and what I couldn’t. I felt victimized by random events going against me. And I externalized my own mistakes onto the actions of others, so that I wouldn’t be to blame for my own failings. This is a seductive trap. Feeling like a victim excuses so much. It obviates the need to actually work to change my circumstances.
A few things I’ve learned, now, as a sober person in life have helped me move out of that shadow of self-enforcing despair. The past is the past. No one can ever control the past. But we can let it be in the past. One of my favorite movies, Magnolia, has a refrain that “We may be through with the past, but the past ain’t through with us.” And that’s definitely true. But we can choose to set it down, and stop engaging with it, actively. Decide to move on instead of living there and trying to correct it.
Obsession is another source of self-arranged misery. I can get deeply interested in topics, and that’s a strength of mine. It helps me learn and grow. But I can also take things far overboard, and become entrenched in detail and minutia. I am avoiding this with my fitness. I don’t have a heart rate monitor. I don’t count calories much. I know that I could get lost in the quantification of my fitness, and that that would lead me to stop enjoying it.
I read a number of running blogs, and I find so many people obsessing about their time and distance and pulse rate and VO2 Max or something and then talking about how their last three runs were awful because they didn’t make a specific goal or mark. I guess that’s fine if that’s where your goals lie. Personally, I resist making goals that require that. My runs might be hard or easy or fun or awful. But I never really feel like I wasted my run, or had a terrible week running, or whatever. Every time I run, it’s a time I ran. I did something good for myself. I’m happy.
I have decided to try to live without investing in my own unhappiness. I’m not going to participate in things that I can’t influence in positive ways. I’m try to avoid outcome-based assessments of my performance at work and on the running path. I measure what I put in, not what I get out. Sometimes, if I put in more than zero, it’s too much. Sometimes, I need to put in all I can repeatedly, and be grateful I have that opportunity.
On and On We Go.
Well, I spoke with my stepmother, and she clearly rejected any financial assistance for the time being, telling me that she’s appreciative that it was offered and will keep it in mind. I’ll reach out to her periodically. Until such time as she wants the kind of assistance I can provide, there’s not much else I can or should do. I’ll continue doing the little (and I recognize it’s very little) that I have always done, which is send them gift cards on special occasions.
I continue to do the things I need to do to build my own life according to my father’s instructions. Not necessarily the ones he gave me verbally and with intent, but the ones he gave me by showing me what will happen if I follow the path that I am rather seductively pulled towards: drink, sloth, and self-centeredness. There have been some exciting developments.
My job here at MECMC is going about as well as I could hope. I’ve been promoted, I am now hiring an underling to train as an acolyte. Soon, hopefully, I will be the director of my own “laboratory”, though that’s not likely what it will be called. And I will essentially have the entire hospital as my playground, and be able to do science, and engineering, and academics galore.
I am also now being considered for two different faculty positions at one of the nation’s most prestigious institutions of health and medicine. I don’t know if I want either one. But frankly, it is something of a coup in my life just to be on the shortlist for such a place. If I get so far as to go give a job talk and a chalk talk, I’ll be over the moon. But I don’t know that I would take a job if it were offered. There’d be salary issues, and it would mean a shift to either a heavy teaching load, or to soft-money research. But they’d also be closer to BB. If I’m fortunate enough to get an offer, there will be a lot of thinking to do.
I am continuing the marathon training and fitness regime. It’s really coming along since the dark days of 2011. Monday, I ran an 8:30 mile in 94° heat. (For those of you who think in Celsius, that’s 168°.) I’m up to about 73 miles in July, on my way to about 102. August will be closer to 120. I have also added in the bike for about 90 minutes a week, which is nice. I don’t work as hard on the bike as I do when at the gym or running, so it’s a nice active break for my routine.
I’ve been really pleased with the effect of my workout regimen on the things that actually really matter. As much as I’d love to be very fit and lean and sexy, what truly matters is my metabolism and my mobility. Seeing those things destroyed in my father has had a powerful effect on me. I know there are no guarantees in life, but I know that people who do what I do are far less likely to suffer those kinds of consequences in middle age.
My A1c and my blood pressure have been very good for a couple of years. I am not, according to basic diagnoses, diabetic yet. though as my doctor says, I’m definitely insulin resistant. I have a lot of work to do for the rest of my life to maintain my metabolic health. But the last time I took my blood pressure, it was 112/63, and my resting pulse was 47. Those are the numbers of a man in reasonable cardiovascular health. As I build my skeletal muscle, I ought to improve my insulin resistance significantly.
Fitness, especially when one has allowed themselves to become as ill-conditioned as I allowed myself to become, it a project of moments and years. I’m now working out something like 8-10 hours a week. All those little moments that I have to devote to retraining my body. And it retrains my mind and my spirit as well. I am a different man than I was only a few years ago. And I think I’m a better man than I was only a few years ago. One step at a time. Sober. Getting fit. Reaching forward.
Obligation and Responsibility.
I love my father. He is an intelligent, kind, sweet man who knows a lot about the world, and is generous with that wisdom. But my father wound his way through this world making canyons out of ditches, for himself, and for others. My parents were divorced when I was six, and there’s enough blame to go around. Perhaps it says something that I tend to let it fall more on our father, while my sisters seem to me to let it fall more on our mother. Though, in truth, I don’t think any of us have sat around apportioning blame for twenty years. My parents were friendly again after I turned 11 or so.
After the divorce, none of us saw our father for three years, even though he was living relatively near by. I still don’t know entirely why. But I know that finances and economics were among the chief reasons. Both of the divorce and of my father’s subsequent disappearance. My father quit many jobs, to go play chess tournaments when he didn’t have any leave. And finances are a chief complication now.
I’ve written many times that I don’t know if my father is an alcoholic. I know very well he’s a habitual drunk. Every place he’s ever lived has been strewn with empty bottles. Back when I drank, we drank together plenty of times. My father is a drinker. Between uncontrolled diabetes, alcohol, and depression, my father was frequently unemployed and occasionally homeless. And once imprisoned, for a time during my high school years, for embezzlement. I love my father, but I am not at all certain that he has ever taken on, and followed through on, any responsibility to anyone in his life.
He remarried a wonderful woman. Who divorced him a few years after that when he gambled away the mortgage money. My father is also a gambler. But she reset her boundaries, and after a few years of divorce she took him back, and they’ve been mostly together since then. Something like twenty-five years now, though with periods of schism when my father lived with my sister.
Around the time he was 58, my father had a stroke. It left him severely weakened on his right side. Early on, I heard that he was told that physical therapy would enable him to regain some motion. But he never did any that I’m aware of. Now, he’s been in a wheelchair for a decade or so. His wife has been his caretaker for that time. He’s cantankerous and often miserable, but they seemed for a long time to have found a relationship that worked for them.
I remember his long fights with the Social Security Administration and the Department of Veterans Affairs, trying to get them to declare him disabled when in reality he was perfectly capable of working. Now, my father is legitimately and almost completely disabled. His wife is past being able to take care of him alone, I am told (and I believe it). She is the sort of person who will not complain.
And so now, with all this background, I wonder. What is my obligation? To some, it seems clear. He is my father and I love him. That’s the trump card. I am to make financial sacrifices to care for him, whatever he needs, because of familial bonds. I don’t see that that’s so obvious. My father made repeated choices that always favored himself over anyone else, for his entire life. It is telling too that my father has six brothers and a sister, most fairly well off, none of whom have made any offers of financial aid in decades, to my knowledge.
I have, personally, given my father many thousands of dollars over the years. The rest of our fractured little nuclear family has provided him with living space and money and food and support for his entire life. The fact of it is, my father has never been able to take care of himself. He’s never been able to manage in the world.
Now, I’m at risk of fracturing that family further, I think. Simply because I don’t understand my obligations in the same way others understand theirs. I love my father. But I am not at all certain that I owe him anything. And so now I don’t know what to do. It comes down to a different question:
What do I owe myself?
There is no bottom to the pit of expenses when it comes to elder care. And there is no bottom to the pit of shame society will try to heave you in for not shoveling all of your resources into it. What balance do I strike in my heart? What do I contribute to? Does the fact that others have made a different calculus change how I ought to make mine? Am I responsible for him merely by my familial relation? And then the second question:
What can I live with?
If I choose to wash my hands of it, to say, “You never took care of me. I am not obliged to take care of you,” there will be far reaching consequences in my family. Am I prepared to bear those, if I think that that’s the right thing for me to do? I don’t know. But I know that everyone in life, in any circumstance in life, eventually makes their own choices about what they’re going to do. And each of us is individually responsible for that. I cannot make others see anything my way. And no one else has the right to decide that their actions and opinions place obligations on me.
I don’t know what to do.
Training in Real Swing.
It was hot this weekend. Hell, it’s still hot now. But as we pass through the month of July, heat or not, I have to get running if I’m going to be ready for a marathon at the end of October. Our training plan feels good, and we’re sticking to it so far. This weekend called for 13 miles on Saturday, and 3 on Sunday.
We went out early Saturday morning because it was supposed to be a hot day. And it was. I took my new CamelBak 2L “Marathoner” vest. It’s a good item, holds a decent amount of water, and has easily accessible pouches in front for chews, a phone, etc. The rear pouch is also reachable while running if your shoulders are flexible. The front pouches will even hold additional 20oz water bottles if you need more water.
And I will. At the 9 mile mark I stopped at a little kiosk and added about 12 oz of water to the bladder, and even then I drank it dry. By the end of the run, it was about 85 degrees and it was very humid the whole time. And we were done by 9:45. We actually ran 14.06 miles, because we missed the turnaround marker, which was covered in Kudzu. Which makes this the second longest run of my life, and only missed the longest by three tenths of a mile.
Sunday we did a 3.37 mile “recovery” run, which was actually pretty hard. We ran later in the morning, which meant it was hotter, up around 90, and again very humid. And the route had a couple of hilly bits, including a half mile long 5% grade up. But it was a good run. Our pace was slow both days, but I’m not worried about pace.
Right now, in the horrible heat and the long runs, we’re running between 10:20 and 10:50 miles. When it’s cooler, we’ll be going around a minute per mile faster, maybe more. My hope for Race Day is something like 10:30 overall. Though, I maintain it’s not about pace. It’s just about finishing. It’s always just about finishing.
I am starting to try to come around to a new way of thinking about myself. As I run further and further, I am reframing how I see my life and where I stand in it. I’ve been a lot of things in my life, if only in just my own eyes. A nerd, a genius, a student, an idiot, a skinny kid, a fat kid, a traveler, a grad student, a grad student, a grad student, a drunk, a smoker, an engineer, a scientist, a husband, a step-father, a divorcé, a failure, a success, a quitter, and now, a sober person, and a professional. I’m still evolving. And I think I’m adding something to that list.
A recreational endurance athlete.
It makes me tear up just typing those words. I was a fat, drunk, smoker only seven and a half years ago. I was a fat smoker only six years ago. And I was still obese only four years ago. I am still overweight right now, as I sit here typing. But running has awakened something in me that seems to encapsulate many other things and experiences in my life. I am moving forward. It is often painful. Tiring. Imperceptible. But I move forward.
The idea that the word “athlete” applies to me is frankly absurd. I’m a loser, and a fool, and a drunk, and a fat man. And yet here I am, someone who runs miles and miles without stopping. For two and a half hours, Saturday morning, with my partner by my side, I ran. And ran. And ran. Pausing only once to add water to my pack. I am beginning to feel like an athlete. Not because I’m gifted, athletically. I’m not. My coordination is poor, I’m not fast. But because I can do things that are difficult. That many people won’t do.
I have a long way left to go. I am not yet where I want to be. I haven’t gone as far as I can go. With my own, slow, plodding intention, I am going to run from this place to wherever I can find myself. A long way off yet. I have a horizon to chase.
Old Wisdom in Stupid Packaging.
The clickbait world has reached addiction and TED talks. There’s a recent one called “Everything You Think You Know about Addiction Is Wrong.” It starts with a discussion of Rat Park, a study from the 1970s that seems to show that rats in isolation become addicted to morphine-laced water, but that rats in a pleasant, social environment do not. It’s a pretty dramatic study and has some important insights. It’s also worth noting that follow-up experiments showed similar, but less robust, results.
Fundamentally, it seems likely and reasonable that morphine addiction in rats is moderated by social interaction and access to enrichment material. Furthermore, it is reasonable to me, and to many researchers, that there are basic analogues of this in humans. Isolation seems to make addiction worse. Warm and caring social environments seem to make it better. Rare indeed are people who recover from addiction through will alone in isolated circumstances. Communities matter.
This is old wisdom. AA has been discussing and employing these ideas for roughly 80 years. When drunks get together and discuss their drinking, and help each other through difficult times, relieve isolation, and form communities based around survival first, and then flourishing, we recover. We recover together, because we cannot alone. I know several people who say that they don’t really have alcohol problems. They have isolation problems that they treated with alcohol.
The TED talk is pretty ridiculous then, that this speaker is suggesting that this is some kind of new insight, when it was (a) known from at least about 1938 on, and (b) based on a rat study that can’t quite be replicated from 35+ years ago. But nevermind. It’s decent wisdom and there’s no need to nitpick over who thought it up first. But he really goes off the rails after that.
I’ll even stipulate that I agree with his basic point: treating addicts like sick people instead of like criminals would be a step forward. Finding ways to relieve the burden of addiction in a caring environment would be helpful. And prison is a notoriously uncaring environment. I don’t think that imprisoning addicts who are not criminals in other, aggravating ways is a useful response from the perspective of promoting recovery. Though it’s not really my business to tell the criminal justice system how to behave.
But next, the speaker goes on to state that he believes that addiction can be “cured” by promoting human connection. As if that’s some panacea which magically makes cravings vanish. And he then proceeds to tell people how to treat addicts in their lives: to be there for them, connect with them, love them, and never give up on them. This sounds like a lovely sentiment.
In reality, that’s a vicious piousness that places a toxic burden on the families and friends of addicts. It says, “If your addicted loved one doesn’t recover, it’s your fault for not connecting well enough.” That’s absolute bullshit. You don’t owe an addict anything. Period, end of story.
We addicts are liars, users, manipulators, and thieves. Unless we are ready to recover, we will suck anyone dry of any succor they offer, emotional, financial, or otherwise. We will abuse your affection and commitment to make ourselves sicker. While an addict is using, while an alcoholic is drinking, you don’t matter to us. You are a tool that gets us what we need. You are under no obligation whatsoever to aid us in that pursuit. And pious shame-peddlers like this TED speaker, wrapped in the language of compassion, are cruel charlatans.
Look: it’s good to love people and connect with them. Even people who are addicts. But you can’t cure us. It’s not your fault when we die of substance abuse or suicide. And the sole motivating factor I’ve ever heard from people in recovery was pain. When we hurt enough, some of us become willing to recover. Some of us never do. And that’s neither your responsibility nor your deficiency.
It was the prospect of losing things that led me to recovery. Losing my family, losing my respectability, losing my health and my comfort. That is the story I see echoed everywhere in the halls where recovered people congregate. Is it the only way? I don’t know. I don’t pretend that AA is the only route to recovery, or that I have any magical keys to this kingdom. But I know that you don’t have to go down with my ship, when I’m sinking.
Modern Isolation.
I am feeling completely cut off from the online world. Since ending my promotion of this blog on twitter, there is minimal readership, and almost no interaction. My professional account online is dull and doesn’t connect on a human level with anyone. Most of my community on twitter is ruled by trolls who flit from outrage to outrage, mindlessly parroting the latest political fashion. I can be happy there as long as I am willing to replace my own insight and thought with the groupthink.
But as soon as you step back and say you’d like to think a moment before climbing onto the latest torchwagon, you’re labeled an infidel. The community has become a bizarre incestuous hate-fest. Ruled by trolls. And even when (as is usually the case) the general consensus is one of justice and rectitude, it’s still patrolled by small-town cop/school marm assholes bent on enforcing the orthodoxy and running anyone who doesn’t agree off the internet.
Politics is religion. And academic twitter is a particularly pious church. I wish I knew how to interact with that community without being shamed for failing to participate in the show trials. I wish there were a community that accepted diversity of thought, as well as diversity of personage. But there isn’t. Not in the online academic world. It’s disturbingly ironic that in the world of online scientists, awaiting evidence is one of the greatest sins there is.
The Weekend Away.
BB and I went up to the Poconos this weekend for the holiday. We stayed in an old Tudor mansion B&B near Bear Creek in Pennsylvania. This was our first weekend of marathon training, but it was also our weekend away. We wanted to be very active, but it was less important to get in the actual distance. Especially considering how tough the runs turned out to be. We went to the Bear Creek Preserve, which isn’t far from where we stayed. If you click the “trail map” link (pdf) at the end of the page, you can find the red, “difficult”, trail that we did. The map says it’s 6.1 miles, but my GPS said it was 6.7. And it was a grueling, brutal trail.
It had rained all night, and it rained all day. The path was wet, slick, muddy, and often ankle-deep water. Much of it was large rocks, and covered in undergrowth. Because of the inclemency, or perhaps the remoteness, we were the only people there. Literally, not a single other car in the parking lot. The trail guide warns of “black bears, bobcats, and rattlesnakes”. Joy! I made sure BB understood that if we were eaten by bears it was her fault. And away we ran. The 6.7 miles took us an hour and forty-five minutes. We twisted our ankles, and plowed through deep mud, and ruined our shoes. It was awesome.
The next day we went to Ricketts Glen State Park, and did the Falls Trail, which is not runnable, and was too crowded even if it had been. It’s a five mile trail that passes something like 17 waterfalls, some more than 90′ high. It descends deep into a valley and than back up. We ended up adding another mile or so onto it because of where we had to park. It was a beautiful and challenging hike, but accessible to anyone interested in a challenging two-hour hike. You don’t have to be really fit, just willing to stick it out. I’d highly recommend it to anyone visiting eastern Pennsylvania.
I really enjoyed the four-day weekend, and it was very nice to take a little time off and get myself moving. Trail running is a whole different beast from road running. Harder. More mentally demanding. And I prefer the road, all things considered. But it’s a good thing to do to find another level inside that I can get to. Dredge up something from inside and put it out there. It’s not mystical. I’m not doing ultra-marathon endurance challenges. I’m not an athlete. But I’ve become someone who does things. And I like that about myself.
For the fourth of July, we went into Wilkes-Barre (WILKSbarry) and found a fun little traveling carnival and rode the tilt-a-whirl which was indisputably more dangerous than any bears. BB made sure I understood that if we died in a tilt-a-whirl accident that it was my fault. We threw darts at balloons and went home to bed before the big fireworks display. It’s pretty obvious that Wilkes-Barre has not recovered from the recession yet. A great old American town, still suffering badly. Abandoned shop-fronts and burned-out buildings on prominent corners. It was sad.
All in all a very nice vacation. Now I’m back. I have a paper to finish and a bunch of presentations to give and a person to hire. I’m sore from the runs and nervous about marathon training. There’s a new plumbing problem in my house, and I need some flooring replaced. We’ll see what the world brings me next. But I can handle it. Because I’m here, and sober, and accepting of the things life brings. Even when they suck, like plumbing problems.
Planning a Speech.
I am planning a speech for my alma mater’s alumni association. I was invited to speak this fall, a few weeks before I run the Marine Corps Marathon. I’m thinking of essentially giving an AA talk without the booze. I don’t feel the need to talk about my history with alcohol in that setting. I don’t want it to be too motivational speakery, but I was also told not to make it a technical, academic talk. It’s a speech. Not a talk. And it’s nice to be invited.
I’m going to talk about incremental progress, and about moving forward in the face of uncertainty. Achieving things by taking small steps in the right direction, not always knowing the best way, but in trusting forward momentum to carry me through the difficult and uneasy moments. About having to take leaps of faith and trust that the outcome will be a surface to land on.
I’m going to try to weave in three themes: careerism, personal health, and hospital improvement. How each has goals and challenges and how identifying what’s an ambitious but achievable goal is crucial to success. What can I do now? Where do I want to go? What are the steps to take to get me there? What do I want to get out of life, and what do I want to contribute?
And finally, I think, that is the big key. That if my goals are all about me, achieving them doesn’t endure. It matters that I contribute to my career, my environment, my society.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s a stupid idea. But I think it’s a speech I can give. And I hope it’s a speech people will want to hear.
Infactorium 