Postcards from the Funny Farm

Photo by: KitAy
Most people have odd stories of jobs they did in college.  I have more than most I think.  Much much material for my teaching and for my kid’s bedtime stories comes from the years I spent in my early twenties as a Pizza Hut delivery driver.  There is much to share but in this post I want to tell you a story about a can of anchovies and 5 bucks.

In between deliveries on slow nights, the guys and like one girl would hang out in the back trying to appear as if we were cleaning things.  I remember the freaks that worked there.  One guy would always feel the need to tell us about the drugs he was on, not to mention the fact that he had them for sale if anyone was interested.  A real “high brow” group.  Not much for inspiration but bucketloads for funny stories.

Tim bet me I couldn’t eat a can of anchovies and I called his $5 bluff.  I swallowed a whole can of those nasty salty raw fish and stuck my tongue out to the laughter and disgust of the onlookers.  I took my $5 and went on my run quite green I think.  Needless to say I never told the folks who got their pizza that I pulled over to the side of the road and let those fish swim right back out.  God, was I am idiot in those days.  Stay tuned folks, I’ve learned a lot about life from pizza and in this series I hope to share it all!

When Columbine happened I had this sick feeling.  I think everyone in the civilized world did.  I had that feeling again tonight as I read this story on Yahoo! of a man here in California who shot his entire family in their home and then himself.  What in God’s name is going on?  I keep asking myself.

I know most the people who read my blog as if they are friends.  So, when I write appeals like this I am thinking about those people … you.  We as creative possibility thinkers of our time have to reach out more.  We need to embrace one another and show interest in the dreams and hopes of those in our circle.  This mass murder reported in the news is nothing new.  I have heard about things llike this for years, long since Columbine.

We need to exemplify caring in our workplace and in our families.  There is no social program that will fix our society, it has to be one to one individual to individual.  Show you care for others today.  I won’t sit here and tell you there will be a return on your investment.  Of course there might.  But do it because it’s the right thing to do, not because you’ll get something back.

When I imagine that other people like you are showing caring in this world, I sleep better at night.

I once read that the Chinese dragon we see in parades and such is an emblem of an enemy to defeat. By making ones enemy beautiful, it is thought that one can better defeat him. Depression is well known to have risen in diagnosis in past decades.  Other mental illnesses remain in the shadows.  For an estimated 3-5% of the world’s population, a mental illness called bipolar is the enemy that must be defeated.  Unfortunately for them, their families, and friends, there isn’t a whole lot of help easily available. It is neurological and not a purely psychological disorder (though cognitive therapy must be present in concert with drugs).  The worst thing about it is the largely unfounded social stigmas that often keep bipolars from sharing their disorder.

Many true diagnosed bipolars live silent lives of quiet desperation.

As with most things, learning the facts produces a paradigm shift but society doesn’t seem too interested.  Folks with bipolar who find understanding are like unlocked cell phones.  Unfortunately friends of people with bipolar can’t get a clear understanding, neither can family.  Even bipolars themselves are many times confused and in denial of what they suffer from. It has been compared to life on a roller coaster.  That’s why I created a series on bipolar.  I hope you are entertained by it and that you learn more about your brain through it.

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This is the introduction to a series at Postcards from the Funny Farm.  If you are interested in the topic of this series, you may want to subscribe via -or- to not miss a post.

It’s probably overly judgmental of me to note but: don’t you think there are too many frantic, fake people in the workplace?  I run across people every day it seems who have a face for you and probably go home revealing another.  Why can’t people be themselves?  In my career I have learned that being frantic and putting a happy face only gets you so far.  Why not try being quieter and more of a listener?  If you blog for a side or full career as I do, an example might be reading blogs of friends you have been neglecting.  Your “grandiose” product will wait. ;)  Success at work can come through humility.

Eventually, people don’t want to be around you for your frantic profile.  You might think you are doing the right things working late hours to get ahead but in reality you are only distancing yourself from the real leaders who are not putting on a face.  They don’t respect workaholics.  Here’s a crazy idea from the Funny Farm: use your sick days!

I actually have made real advances in my career by simply doing nothing extra. Now, wait just a minute … that sounds really bad.  You must always do things at work and strive to do them well.  At the same time, you should go home when it’s time to call it a day .  The real rewards in life come to those who make their sense of calm and mental well-being a #1 priority.  You don’t want people noticing you because you are manic.  You want them to observe you over time being calm, cool and collected at work. Eventually they will call on you to solve the problems of work.  Of course, we all know that pays better!  My dad told me when I was about 18:

Work a lot for a little pay when you are young and you will work less for a lot of pay when you get older.

I have found this to be true.  I might also alter it this way:

Do your work well and more will seek you!

Instead of finding a way to impress the boss, find a way to keep your head calm, cool, and collected at work.  (Test it with a blood pressure monitor, it’s that important) Create a mantra to remember throught the day and help you focus.  She/he will notice.

“We are all time travelers moving at the speed of exactly 60 minutes per hour.”
-Spider Robinson

Some of us are traveling in limousines, others are at the freeway on-ramp with cardboard signs. Regardless of the means, we are going from a point a to a point b every day of our lives. It is easy to look at other peoples work and art in life as nonsensical and bad. Have you ever seen a car with a million poorly placed stickers on it and gone: “Why? It is such a nice car.” That is their art and you should respect it. Once we were down at the beach years ago and I was making sand castles with my niece. I saw the remnants of a sand castle with sticks like towers and assumed the creator was long gone. It was in a good spot so I swept it away as if it never existed. I think the creator must have been mentally ill because she came screaming at me and my young niece as if we were the devil for destroying her sand castle. We got through the scene some how and relocated. Luckily it didn’t seem to affect my niece much but I thought about it for weeks after. I really felt bad about it.

The sand castle wasn’t the real lesson here. For me, it was a lesson about other people and respecting the art they create along the journey. My recommendation is to be very slow to criticize the art that people make whether it is their bumper stickers, their sand castles, or … the way they do simple things in life. It never hurts to give compliments, you can find one for anything. Another way to grow in this area: do a listening experiment.  I hope the sand castle incident will have the same effect on you as it had on me and make you less reckless with other people’s art and hence other people’s emotions. Just like an effective acne treatment, so your words can help and heal someone struggling.