20.10.12 My first full week has come to an end. I’m alive. I can do it. Soon it will be routine and it won’t seem like any more work than I used to have. Already next week I’ll have a small break on Tuesday because my student at the printing company has flown to South Korea to negotiate with their ink dealer. Furthermore, I might also be able to adjust my schedule a little bit more, to cram some classes together back to back, thus giving me more time in between for lunch and other things important for health and sanity maintenance. I already moved that same student from Thursday to Friday last week, which gave me plenty of time to prepare for a long day at the end of the week. 28.10.12 Today is Sasha the 1st’s birthday. Sasha the 1st is the guy I lived with in Vladimir during my first year in Russia. I hadn’t written him since his birthday last year, or maybe even two years ago, but I remembered him today and wrote him a short note. Last week at work wasn’t as hard as it was supposed to be. There were plenty of cancellations, all of them convenient, as almost any cancellation fits well into my schedule. This coming week I’ll see how this new schedule works. Last week wasn’t an accurate test since that one student was in South Korea. Aside from work, things are going well. I’ve been writing much less, but reading much more. I’ve begun to read aloud. I record myself, and send it to my girlfriend, Sasha (the 4th). I don’t know if she listens to everything I record, or, if she does, how much she understands. She and I have switched books so that we have different things to record and read. This way, she can catch up to the point in a book to where I stopped recording, while I record the other book that she’s been reading. So far, we’ve been doing a lot of girly literature: Pride and Prejudice, by Jane Austen, and a book by Louisa May Alcott. I’ve also been reading Shutter Island, a typical thriller which was made into a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio several years ago. Aside from that, I’m still reading “B’esy” (Demons) by Dostoevski. This I read aloud too, but I don’t record myself. Who would listen to me? I try to read fifty pages every week, at which pace I should finish by Christmas. Working as much as I have been and will have to, I can’t help but dream of loads of free time. Halfway into one of Dostoevski’s novels, there’s nothing more I’d like than a week off to finish it. Recently I toyed with the idea of arranging to return to Vladimir for a few months. I could arrange a reading list of classical literature with my former teacher there, and I would take a few months off and read like a madman. Alas, the desire to read so much might disappear as soon as the opportunity comes. It's another example of wanting mostly the things that you don't have. I’ll just have to stick to picking away at some very large novels, page by page, and I’ll get there, wherever I’m headed, eventually. 2.11.12 I’ll write for half and hour and see what comes. I’m listening to some of Bach’s violin sonatas right now. I haven’t listened to these for a long time, so now they are especially therapeutic, as though I were taking a vitamin that I’ve deprived myself of for several months. I have been depressed recently. The work load is heavy, and the weather sucks. Under these conditions, if I don’t get enough sleep, which occasionally happens I think due to sudden severe changes in atmospheric pressure, then I’m a real grump and not the best guy to be in the same room with. This is not good for a teacher, but my students and I make do, somehow. I felt like crap on Wednesday. I talked with Sasha about my day, and she explained, as I knew deep down, that the day hadn’t been all that bad after all. I replied that my mood was such that it was very easy to make mountains out of molehills. Wednesday was full of molehills, each of which felt like the greatest disaster to me. In fact, almost every day is full of molehills. A good day doesn’t depend of the problems I encounter, but on how I relate to them. The quality of a day depends on my mood, which depends on a lot of things. It’s interesting though, how much my work depends on my mood. You would think that the opposite is truer, that if I work well, then I’m in a good mood. While this is true, I think the reverse dependence is even more valid: The better my mood, the better I work. The question arises, then, how can I generate a good mood to begin with? Can it possibly be maintained? The latter question is easy to answer: No, it can’t. This is because good and bad are relative things. If a good mood lasts a long time, then you get used to the goodness, after which bad things, however slight they may appear at first, have nevertheless more and more weight as time goes on. Conversely, if you’re used to living in bad conditions: bad weather, too much work, not enough sleep – then the slightest positive thing can have a terrific effect on your day. Two Wednesdays ago, for example, I was running late at the company, as I often do, and it seemed I wouldn’t have time for lunch before my first lesson at the Vodniki center, where I work evenings. I finished my last lesson at the company that day, and discovered that I had received an SMS from the Vodniki receptionist. My individual had cancelled. I could go home and enjoy a decent lunch! Oh heaven! Just that small event made my day. Imagine how simply happiness can come to us. Which brings me to the more complicated question: how do we generate good moods? What is the formula for happiness? I think there are many kinds of happiness. There seems to be a sort of vicarious happiness that a parent feels which their child scores a goal in soccer, or gets good grades in school. Still, I think this might be a particular case of a more general form of happiness, in which the parent considers the child’s physical or academic prowess to somehow be their own achievement. Consider a simpler example. Imagine you had to run a marathon tomorrow morning. You would have no help along the way, but at the end there would be a banquet of fruits and drinks. You would struggle and might nearly die of starvation during the event, but you would reach the finish line where there would be a ripe banana waiting for you. Can you imagine how good that banana would taste? Do you know how good its sugar would make you feel? Whatever that feeling is, I think it’s the same as what we feel when we perceive the rewards of any goal which requires hard work to achieve. In the case of vicarious happiness, the parent works hard to make money to support the child to see it grow and succeed. Getting back to the maintenance of feeling happy, bananas won’t suffice for long. The tenth banana is never as tasty as the first. Our child’s most recent perfect report card is never as rewarding as the very first, when the child worked hard to achieve high marks. However, it seems to me that according to an American way of life, people try to achieve and maintain positive feelings via, metaphorically speaking, bigger and more frequent bananas. Or maybe some people try to move on to supposedly better things, like papayas or avocados. They’re missing something. They don’t realize that a very important key to that good feeling they had when they finally reached their goal was the hard work, particularly the starvation they endured and the deprivation of those things that bring happiness in the end. A good friend of mine has imparted his wisdom on me on more than one occasion: there’s nothing romantic about poverty, or something like that. I think he says this to encourage me to make more money, although I feel that I have more than what I need to be happy. Consider two extremes of the professional spectrum. One on end there’s a man who has to work very hard to earn a day’s worth of food, and on the other there’s a multibillionaire, whose work entails checking a few stocks every once in a while (or hiring someone to do so), who has everything he could possibly need. Who’s happier? I think you could argue for the case of the hard worker for two reasons: First of all, he has a clear goal every day - work enough for a good dinner; Secondly, the worker is more likely to be able to appreciate the things he has. The so-called ‘rich’ man, on the other hand, lacks not only the ability to recognize the value of his possessions, but also a good reason to work hard, aside from getting more possessions – an empty endeavor. What good is a warehouse full of bananas when you’re too fat to run up an appetite good enough for eating a few? In order for my friend to convince me of the value of his advice, he’ll have to explain to me why I need luxuries like my own house and car. As far as I can tell, I maximize my satisfaction in life with a good meal at the end of my day at a job that I enjoy doing. The so-called rich man is a glutton. Is he any better off than a heroin addict who has access to exponentially increasing amounts of his drug, enough to keep him continually satisfied? If I come across as a communist or socialist, don’t think it’s because I’m in Russia. I’m actually a big fan of Ayn Rand. My parents might be unhappy to hear that alongside their lessons, she has also taught me a few things about hard work. But as far as happiness goes, I think I may have learned most of all from my dog, Caesor. I’ve written a lot about bananas here. Caesor liked bananas too, along with anything else thrown near his mouth, especially tennis balls and Frisbees – he loved chasing those. Have you ever seen a dog smile? I sometimes pass smiling dogs here and I think of Caesor. They must be going after a tennis ball, I think to myself, as I see them trot by, off to work, or whatever business stray dogs do. Many Americans and people in general, don’t like to lower themselves to the status of an animal. I’m not ashamed to admit not only that humans aren’t really special, but also that they can learn a few things from other creatures. Happiness, for example, can be a really very simple thing. Maybe it’s even necessarily so. All you need is a tennis ball, or a banana – call it whatever you want – and then you have to run like mad to go after it. Do you have yours? 4.11.12 I’ve been following the Presidential Race quite closely. I somehow enjoy looking at a map of my country, in red and blue. Sure it sort of highlights our lack of unity, but it also is a symbol of democracy. The battles are only at the voting stations, and they’re fought with our thoughts and reasoning, and not with violent weapons. Maybe Americans can be proud of themselves for this process. I was also wondering about people who live in swing states. I understand that polling agencies are surveying the citizenry of these states daily. Does that ever get annoying? If you live in, say, Wisconsin, then do you get called ten times every day by ten different polling organizations interested in your choice of candidate? I also think it’s interesting how Obama’s performance over Hurricane Sandy has seem to have a positive influence on the undecided voters. It indicates a very short attention span. Maybe, in future elections, the incumbent can secretly arrange a small terrorist attack in an important city. The attack would take place in such a way so that nobody is hurt, but so that access to power and clean water is lost. Then the President can fly over there and, with a fat smile on his face, stand where the cameras can see him while he takes charge of the water distribution exercises. So voters are swayed by how well a President handles a big hurricane, but not about what was done, or not, in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, or Detroit? Again, I guess some voters can’t remember that far back. As far as hurricane Sandy is concerned, I guess Obama can thank his lucky stars that he didn’t need any votes in Congress for allocating emergency funds to devastated areas in New York and New Jersey. 7.11.12 It’s election night over in the states. It’s early morning over here. I’m excited about the event. It almost strikes me like a championship football match. It’s like a political super bowl. I would say world cup, but this sort of thing doesn’t happen in the same way in other places. For one thing, we’ve got a twisted voting system. Let’s see how it turns out. Speaking of the electoral college, why don’t we take it to a further extreme? Not only could the president be chosen by the votes of delegates from each state, but those delegates’votes could be chosen by representatives from each county in each state, and each of those representatives’ votes can be chosen by additional, subordinate, representative voting from each district. In the end, my vote could be tallied in a household vote which gets contributed in our street vote, which is part of the district vote, then the county, state, and finally national vote. If you find yourself asking, ‘what’s the point of such a silly system?’ then you get my point. It’s silly, isn’t it?