The Long and (Very) Winding Road

Blog # 3

Hello again. To all of you living vicariously through me here is another installment for you. After leaving Tahoe, we drove down to San Francisco. San Francisco is huge, by far the biggest city we will visit on this trip. I usually really like big cities. I have spent time in LA, London, Paris, Rome, and New York. With the exception of LA, which I hate, I have loved all of them and not wanted to leave. All of these cities are massive and offer so many different things to pleasure your five senses. San Francisco is no different, it has all of those things in spades. So, why then do I not like SF very much? I think the overall vibe is one of stress amid a heavy clash of classes. There are so many sad, dispirited, fucked up people in SF, and weaving in between them so many rich, sane, happy people. Even New York doesn’t feel as if its coming apart at the seams like SF does. I felt stressed and rushed, and never really felt all that safe for the two days we were there. There were a lot of aspects of SF that I loved, such as all the ethnic neighborhoods, great bars, the park, and free festivals in the middle of the park. But most of these can be found in any great city you go to. I met some really nice people in SF, but for the most part I felt as if the people were either extremely fake or extremely self-centered. I think a lot of this is the effect large cities have on people.

Cities are a strange thing. They are incredibly artificial, yet more human than anything else on this planet. To me, a great city is the embodiment of all things human. They show off our greatest strengths, and our darkest secrets. Everything around you is human created or human its self. Even the “nature” around you is created and controlled by humans. Having grown up in the mountains, a huge city unlike the kind we have in Colorado, is essentially an alien planet. A city has a profound impact on it’s inhabitants lives, just like living in the country does, but I feel that this impact is usually negative.

City life is fast, constant and aggressive. Because of this, the mentality of the people changes from laid back to go get shit done mode. Because a city never sleeps, neither do its inhabitants in a sense. You might go to sleep, but the constant noise of the city subconsciously, or consciously too, repeatedly reminds you where you are, and exactly what you should be doing tomorrow. The body never really gets to shut off, check out, and relax. After an extended period of never being able to fully shut off, your mentality and health begin to be affected poorly. This leads to what I call bullshit blind; not being able to see through the bullshit of the city and your life to the real stuff behind it. Bullshit blind screws you up real good. Your stress level skyrockets, your mood drops in to despair and depression, and you begin to focus on the only thing you can see: YOUR JOB. I know I write about this sort of thing a lot, but my greatest fear is becoming the opposite if what I preach, so its kinda important to me. To me, your job should never ever be your life. You can have a job that you love and be absorbed and challenged by it, which is more than anyone can ask for. It can be a large, important part of your life, but it should never be your everything. It should support the rest of your life without encroaching upon it. When your job is everything, you are a shadow drifting through the voids in your life, and you miss out on everything.

I think you should love your job, but never love it as much as everything else in your life. People need perspective, and need to keep what is really important, like your loved ones and passions in front of your eyes. Love everything you do in your life, just make sure you know what is truly important.

- Zack, October 7th