Throughout my information technology career in New York a few years back there had always been a hidden beast within me; a hunger to experience true solitude, to hunt or be hunted. While living in Anchorage in my younger days I would always go out with my father, venturing into the abyss of the forest in our backyard looking for our sacred meal of the day. Barbaric qualities would appear as we hunted, stripped, and cooked the fresh kill over our willow-log fire. Once my dad passed away on Christmas Eve of 1999 my hunting days had come to an end and I moved to New York. A feeling of emptiness began stirring inside me and I would question my thoughts through sleepless nights and daydreams at work, “Do I miss my father or do I miss the feeling of the kill?” In 2006, just a couple of years after quitting my IT career, I was back in Anchorage, on a journey to find my own true answer. Unknown at the time, what I was really searching for was an escape from today’s society; an escape from our ongoing worries of the future and our limitations of the past, a life where I could truly devote all my attention to a single task. In Ellen Goodman’s essay, In Praise of a Snail’s Pace, she speaks about how all of our current actions are not focused on 100%. Fueled mainly by new work environments where we must always be accessible, a need to multi-task has developed which only further restricts us from achieving 100% focus. Society today has shaped us to be ‘outcome’ dependant; our minds wander about, deeply analyzing every possible consequence before any action is taken. With our demanding work places of today, and as different mediums to communicate further develop, the ability to focus on what is happening in front of us diminishes; we are forced to be aware of things happening hundreds of miles away, such as our jobs. When we become adults in this world, and a need to take care of ourselves arises; we are bound to the chaotic work environment, 24/7, in order to survive. As children our parents examine our every need and we are free; we have no worries of the future. Developing jobs have created the need for employees to be available at anytime, even if they may not be getting paid. The “4-day work week,” which many say is the best way to live these days, only works to mask this environment where we are attached 24/7. Although they may ‘go’ to work only four days a week, they are ‘connected’ to their jobs just as much as others, through mediums such as phone calls, instant messaging, or email. A constant worry pertaining to our job is inescapable as we have been forced to depend on it for survival. These constant worries lead our minds to wander away from what is in front of us, away from the ‘now’. Although we examine ourselves of the past and imagine ourselves in the future, we truly only exist in the present; “a moment or period in time perceptible as ----- between past and future” (American Heritage Dictionary 2006). With new technologies of communication and the availability of these technologies to a vast amount of people, our perception of ‘now’ has been transformed to incorporate even events not happening in front of us. When we truly live in the present a constant “momentary happiness” is achievable as we are not worried about the future or limited from past experiences. As an example, one may describe the state of being ‘drunk’ as having this “momentary happiness” for an extended period of time. [REFER TO TYLER DURDEN] When we perceive how long one ‘lives’ as determined by their time spent on Earth, we begin to worry and scramble to get everything done; we begin to multi-task. People struggling to grow in the social hierarchy try to multi-task as much as possible which then leads the higher society to multi-task even more. Our working lives further push us to multi-task and provide everything we can, forcing out every bit of our energy until we die. Large corporations and businesses offer us a so called ‘opportunity to grow’.......WIP teacher wants us to use this format so its a bit wierd: -story relating to thesis -thesis -intro -1st point -2nd point -conclusionn/end story deep eh?
