A horse with an inner fire

Men are from Mars

and

women are from Venus? Or maybe the planet Mongo.

This pulsing ray will turn you into a beta male. Do not resist, earthman!

But then we men must be a mystery to women too.

Illustration by Joseph A Smith, A horse with an inner fire

Behold, we ride a horse with an inner fire. So why do we ever allow it to be extinguished so willingly? The answer is easy. We want to get laid and as often as possible. This isn’t anyone’s fault. Women want to get laid too and even though neither side openly admits it, it is because we want to propagate the species. It is hardwired into our DNA.

Beasts of prey are converted into zoo animals and later farm animals because of our sexual urge. At first women withhold what we seek and then later give it willingly until they have the requisite number of children. Then the switch goes off and the withholding  begins again. Except this time there is no return. A man either seeks a younger woman or banishes himself to a sexless world of beta-hood. The lowest gate in Dante’s Hell.

Not all women are like this (but most are by design) and not all men end up banished to the barren place. But frankly right now it is quite crowded.

Guardian of the Deepest Gate, 1978, Joseph A Smith

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New Ranking Category

I realize that I have always divided up job seekers by three categories.

1. Beast of Prey
2. Zoo Animals
3. Petting Zoo Animals

But I was wrong. I missed one.

Farm Animals

My friend Manny mentioned this today at lunch. Manny has always found a way to survive no matter what the economy has been like. He looked at me and said, “I am no farm animal.”

So what’s the difference?

Beast of Prey’s are dangerous. They are trained to hunt either by other beasts or it is innate in their character. Do not approach. They will move off unless cornered and then they will let you have it. They find a way to eat. They hunt for their food. Very alpha.

Zoo animals may be caged or in a habitat but they are still dangerous. They will bite their keepers from time to time. Need to be sedated to be approached. Still, they will stay put unless pissed off. Some have been known to jump the fence of the habitat  become beats of prey. Some alpha but have been penned up and forced to act beta.

Farm animals are very approachable but you still have to watch out. Now and then they will kick or bite. They tend to want to stay put. Are easily slaughtered for their meat or because they have outlived their usefulness. Wait for feeding. Pure beta.

Petting zoo animals are the most docile. No danger here. These make the best long-term employees. Feed continuously. They have been known to get fat. What’s below beta?
Some of these “animals” may look like people you work with.

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She

I could never figure her out. She was beautiful in a sad sort of way. She drew me in rather quickly. Maybe too quickly. It turned out that my friend was interested in her but she had already relegated him to the friends ladder which if you want to get laid is the kiss of death. But she pursued me like a beast of prey or perhaps a black widow. You know. She mates, she kills! I took her out several times and finally ended up spending the night with her. For some strange reason despite her beauty, I was reticent. But in the end we slept with each other. Within a day or two she cooled towards me. I was young, still relatively new to the game and took her at her word that she needed some space. So I backed off until I found out that she had dumped me for another guy. So I drove down to her apartment and let her have it with both barrels and the drove off in to the night feeling much better. The next day she called and left messages at work (repeatedly). I finally called her back and we agreed to have dinner. Suddenly I was attractive to her again. She wanted to see me more often. She apologized for “the other guy”.  I was the alpha male but I never ended up asking her out again. I didn’t know game but intuitively I was playing it or at least part of it. A year later I ran into her one day. Her latest boyfriend had blown her off and she was in a bad place. I felt sorry for her but I was seeing someone else. Some immature thing that basically wanted to get married (I wanna get married!). She had even bought a wedding dress but hadn’t told me. But that is another story. We had another of those lunches and talked over life. I knew I could have slept with her right then. She would be my pity screw (okay, sex) but I couldn’t do it. Not because I was seeing someone else. It was because I could see that I would swim out and save her but in drowning, she would pull me down with her. Then we would both be lost. I would learn how to play game but I still had to go through the girl I was seeing. I knew that was bad too but for some reason I couldn’t end it. She ended it months later and that was the release point. After that I played the field. Deep center field interrupted by a few LTR’s.  But I never got too attached. More of the women in my life became friends while I still hunted for sex. I continued that way for 8 years until I met the woman who would be my wife. This isn’t meant to be a happy ending. Men marry women hoping that they won’t change but women marry men hoping they will change.

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PUA’s and the Work Place

I often say that hunting for women is like hunting for jobs. You can understand and refine you strategy but in the end you have to approach the target and accept the fact that sometimes you will win and sometimes you will lose and sometimes you are just in it for the thrill of the chase.

It is hard to explain to job hunters how sometimes I actually enjoy the “hunt” more than actually getting a job. There are several things I know about jobs and getting them.

There is probably somethings that you are going to like about the job and there is something you are really going to hate. So don’t give that crap that you have finally found the perfect fit. Come back in 6-12 months and tell me how great it is.

Consulting and contracting was better. If you do it right, your job is to leave and move on.

I really enjoyed the hunt for women back in the day. I would go to parties or bars or wherever and collect phone numbers. I was always closing but rarely committing  to a specific girl. That all came early on and was a consistent dead-end. You asked a girl out, treated her really nicely, you started to hang out together, sleep together and finally you began to plan marriage (or at least the girl did). I went through 3-4 of these in a row.

Nightmares!

Mini-Bridezillas!

I never asked them. They just began to plan it. Your typical late teen, early twenty something nubile girls whose genetics mandated that they get married, have kids and close the prison door on a guy like me. Oh every now and then I would meet that independent woman who I slept with but would never go down the dating track unless she saw you as an alpha male.

I thought of myself as an alpha but I also was a nice guy and nice guys finish back in the pack. I wasn’t an omega though. I don’t subordinate well. So my base nature saved me. But there were times in LTR’s and jobs where I could taste shoe leather. Fear got the better of me.

Fear of losing the girl and losing the job. In the end despite all that unnecessary fear, I lost both anyway. Life has a way of moving on. You move on or they move on.

I am married these days. I still do approaches on other women. I just don’t have sex with them. I am certainly not the rabid hunter I was back in the twenties and thirties. But I still know the game. I just do catch and release.But if I found myself back in the game I would focus on cougars. Mature but not totally over the hill women who aren’t looking to get married. I am not young so while I am still well-preserved, I also know that my main alpha status is my attitude and money. It doesn’t really matter. The game is the game.

I also don’t need to work. But I still do approaches on jobs. Almost all consulting gigs. I don’t want to be an employee again (ever). I recently helped a friend coach a local high school cross-country team. He convinced me that I should go on payroll. It’s really just a stipend but it was also turned out to be a thinly veiled job. Pretty soon I had to here or had to be there or had to be doing this and that. It was that mini zoo that I often speak about. It took a little slick maneuvering and some real back problems to get separation from all those “you have to’s”.

If I have to work then no office, no title, no office hours. No place I have to be at unless I want to be there.

Those who work want to see you in the same frame of mind that they are in. You must want to work too. It is hard to explain that I never wanted to work. At least not for others. But marriage, a kid and the need to fuel the yuppie fires of home and hearth and a few cars, caused to me to leave the plains where I hunted freely and seek reservation life. It wasn’t that bad of a life but it was never me. But then either was Barbara, Jan, Jean and a half dozen others who were more in love with marriage than me.

By the way, the painting (above) is pure Jack Vettriano. To me it signifies the penultimate cougar. A woman past her prime but she still has game. He says that people don’t like his work. Those who run national galleries and such.

He is that good.

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Courage is the price….

There are two types of denial.

Denial number one:

People would say that someone was in denial (DeNile as in the rivew Nile) but if they were really bad I would say that they were worse than denial. They were in DaCongo which means they are far, far up the river in the heart of darkness. It is super denial. You can’t save them. No one can save them. They are so far gone and if they are going to get out of that place they have to paddle or swim back down the river themselves. In other words they are going to have to save themselves or ask for help. But once you are far up that river it is often hard to know how to ask in the first place.

The second type of denial is one that is embraced for the sake of self empowerment. It is more zen in nature. To want some things can lessen your personal power. Here are some examples.

More money. Money is NOT the root of all evil. It is a tool. A nice one too as long as it doesn’t become an end in itself.

Higher Status (in the eyes of other). This can be things like exclusive clubs,  job titles, a craving for recognition.

Status symbols such as expensive cars, homes and clothes and the people you hang with.

In the case of guys, status can be sought by dating or marrying high status women. Same with women. Status and money can equal an alpha male even if the person is old, ugly and gnomish. Pretty base, huh?

By the way, I am not against any of these things except where they become the end product and subvert your true nature. If this is your true nature than you are another creature altogether. You are beyond help as in up DaCongo.

A friend of mine told me that if I were single I would have little trouble attracting single, younger women. I told him that I was past my prime as far as that was concerned. He said that my being wealthy would be the magnet. In other words, money would make me more attractive than I presently am. Well, I am not that wealthy but I have enough to make the playoffs. Of course one good depression and I am just another guy working to make ended meet at the local OSH.

Of course I was trying to figure out how you let women know that you are wealthy and then I understood the value of other women friends and wingmen (PUA term) spreading the word. It’s the same at work. It’s good to have a high value wingman who spreads the good word about you.

“I am not he that you seek. He has yet to come.” Sort of like John the Baptist. He was the wingman for Jesus.

Anyway, back to the second type of denial.

I found that a weapon in arsenal is to self deny wanting status symbols. Maybe that is easier for me because since I was very young I never really cared much for having the same things everyone else had. I have had periods where I “wanted”. In each case it has been my downfall. Wanting more money, a better job title and just “more” never worked really well for me. It led me into those myriad of box canyons where I end up trapped and at the mercy of others. It was only when I let that go that things began to come to me.

It is different to each person but for me I had to play the game for its own sake not for the sake of how others perceived me. In other words, do what I craved and enjoyed the way I best way for me. The best way for me came from inside me, not from outside. Oh sure, I read and studied and observed and got ideas but I did best when I incorporated what worked for me even if it was going in the opposite direction of the norm.

Opposite Man is actually a poor description of my modus operandi. It is Self Directed Man. I make mistakes but I don’t mind that. What I mind is making mistakes based on playing the game by someone else’s rules.

In business as soon as I stopped seeking more money and a higher title and focused on the quality of my work, my whole career changed.  More money came and so did higher titles. But I never asked for it. I made not asking an art form.

It also increased my ability to maneuver. Suddenly people no longer had me by the balls. I could work in a higher titled position or a lower titled job. I didn’t care as long as I was doing work the way I thought best. If things went south in a job then I simply left. Moved on. My career became very portable. It was “me” not how others saw me. That dramatically changes everything.

Does this shift mean that you don’t make mistakes and feel pain at work.

Hell no!

But there is a way out.

You can do things most people cannot bring themselves to do.

Confront or vote with your feet (as in walk).

Two characters in literature had this gift each in their own way.

Howard Roark in The Fountainhead

Larry Darrell in The Razor’s Edge

Each sought their own internal vision versus the more accepted path that others thought they should take. Every now and then I meet someone in life who has chosen this way of living. You can read the books or watch the movies (not as good but it will give you the flavor).

To live otherwise is to deny our true selves.

Amelia Earhart wrote:

“Courage is the price that Life exacts for granting peace, The soul that knows it not, knows no release from little things.”

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The Female Marius

No sooner did I recommend that Nasty Pelosi withdraw from the field than I read the very next day that she has been elected minority leader of the house.

Good on you Nasty!

Even Marius the great general of ancient Rome won consulship and unprecedented seven (7) times. Of the last time wasn’t very pretty. In his case he brought an army with him and forced Rome to recognize his waning but still virulent power. In Nasty’s case God knows what skeletons she pulled out of the closet to retain a vestige of her former power. It’s the Democrats who have lost. They had abdicated reform for same old, same old.  The road back to power will be long and arduous (as in TOUGH) with Nasty leading them.

But Pelosi got her 7th consulship so let’s give her credit for hanging in there even when the team needed a new coach.

Pelosi wins, Demo’s lose! Heads will roll!

She protested that  it was unemployment, not her that was the problem. Well, she was half right.

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Bad Leadership Pelosi Style

When “Nasty” Pelosi swept into power as Speaker of the House after the 2008 election she made it a point to lord it over the Republicans and anyone else who got in her way. My lasting memory of this person was her getting up and applauding every keynote speech in the house made by one of the Democratic leaders.

Up..Down

Up..Down

One would think she was sitting on a tack.

Or a dildo.

In any case, she became the Democratic Hammer in the house.

This was the first step in the process of the Democrats  losing the mid term election. Instead of becoming a unifier she became a polarizing agent. I believe that part of the reason the Republican’s joined ranks and basically refused to compromise was Nancy Pelosi. Queen of a day or in this case two years.

I am not a Republican or a Tea Partier (is that a word?) or a dyed in the wool Democrat. But I know bad leadership when I see it. She became the Democratic version of Dick Cheney (who is also out of power these days but is still luring off stage).

Now the Demo’s want her to step down but this old fool is clinging to her last thread of power which is the position of minority leader. She is being told that when a party looses an election the way the Democrats did, it is time for change. But she doesn’t want to hear it. Like our other friend (puke) Tony Hayward, her tongue makes her deaf to what is really going on. And like Tony Hayward, her time has come. Time to pay the piper. Time to step aside and become less relevant or suffer the fates of those who are run over by the judgment of history like “Tail Gunner” Joe back in the 1950’s. He didn’t listen either.

Nasty is nicer than Joe but not by much. Right now she is a dead weight to the Democratic Party. If they want to win back some votes in the next election, they will need to exile her back to her seat in the house where she can sit quietly for a time and contemplate the fact that she once held power, misused it and has suffered the consequences.

Young Nasty

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PUA’s for life

So all the PUA’s talk about Alpha male behavior which in reality is an indirect approach. The reason guys feel anxiety approaching women is because they think of it in a direct manner. One PUA recommended just going around asking women what time it was. The other day I was out running and I asked several younger women what time it was. They pulled out their cell phones, glanced at them and gave me the time (as I had asked).  Then they smiled, looked at my legs and walked on. So I am an older fart but I guess my legs have held up nicely.

In any case it was an approach.

It the same with jobs. These days, I almost never ask for a job. {{{What! Never}}} I haven’t asked for years. I co-locate and if there is some synergy, then the opportunity comes my way.

Whenever I ask it disempowers me. I have learned to go without that which I have to ask for. Like the desert where water is a rare commodity, the Bedouin learns to drink sparingly  until they reach a well or an oasis and then they drink there fill.

It was the same with women in my long ago past. Early on I asked girls out on dates and while I had a few LTR’s (long-term relationships) I found that to maintain them I eventually morphed from being an alpha male to a beta male with all the beta ass sucking behavior that goes with taking that path. One day I realized that I would rather be alone than be beta. So I found another way and it didn’t involve asking women out on dates. If this confuses you then read on.

The Jackal sent this to me.

Winning a fight by giving in

Military strategists have a saying:
“Rather than act like the lord of the manor,
I would rather behave like a guest.
Rather than advance an inch,
I would rather retreat a foot.”

The point of the saying is that you should:
Advance upon them without going forward
Seize their property without even bearing arms.
Attack where there is no enemy.
Prevail upon them without weapons.

There is no greater disaster than to underestimate your enemy.
If I did that, I would lose my 3 treasures (benevolence, frugality, never trying to be number one)
In combat, the most reticent side will win.

The secret is making an art form of the indirect approach. It is the strategy that if done right has no form or grip for others to directly attack.

Lawrence of Arabia wrote in Seven Pillars of Wisdom…

“Suppose we were (as we might be),” wrote T E Lawrence, “an influence, an idea, a thing intangible, invulnerable, without front or back, drifting about like a gas? Armies were like plants, immobile, firm-rooted, nourished through long stems to the head. We might be a vapour, blowing where we listed… Ours should be a war of detachment. We were to contain the enemy by the silent threat of a vast, unknown desert …”

Neil Faulkner wrote about Lawrence:

Military mastermind: Lawrence of Arabia’s 15 principles of modern guerrilla warfare

1. Strive above all to win hearts and minds

2. Establish an unassailable base

3. Remain strategically dispersed

4. Make maximum use of mobility

5. Operate mainly in small, local groups

6. Remain largely detached from the enemy

7. Do not attempt to hold ground

8. Operate in depth rather than en face (i.e. not in lines)

9. Aim for perfect intelligence about the enemy

10. Concentrate only for momentary tactical superiority

11. Strike only when the enemy can be taken by surprise

12. Never engage in sustained combat

13. Always have lines of retreat open

14. Make war on matériel (material) rather than on men

15. Make a virtue of the individuality, irregularity, and unpredictability of guerrillas

It’s not that I don’t want things. I have learned that I have my own way of getting the essentials (my essentials…You have to figure out yours).

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The Universe Doesn’t Care

One of the things I have learned is that life doesn’t care.

Period…

By this I mean that there is no great master plan for the universe. We exist and that is it.

Period…

Given this knowledge, we should seek pleasure as our end whether that be through work, relationships, climbing mountains or whatever. But let’s not think there is a God looking down on us who has especially picked us out as the favored one. If there is a God, then that entity is within us. It is our free will. It is our choice whether to surrender that critical essence of ourselves or not. What makes free will tough is that we are aware of ourselves. We see ourselves through the lens of our mind. What we really are is hard to get at because we are always polarized between our self perception and the perception of others.

I am short (5’7″ at my best). I walk down the street and if I allow myself to think of it, I will perceive myself as short. Shorter than what? Well, other taller men and women. I could perceive myself as taller than a large dog standing on four legs but you see in my world, I don’t care. I am not competing with dogs for alpha male status.

It would be interesting really seeing ourselves as we are. Bipedal, self-aware beings that go about self-appointed tasks that supposedly have meaning to ourselves. But really outside of pure survival most tasks are meaningful only to ourselves. Pure survival is eating, sleeping and seeking shelter from the big bad weather.

And of course we seek pleasure. The official title for pleasure seekers is hedonism. Of course Hedonists supposedly feel that pleasure is the only intrinsic good.

Last night at a local restaurant, I was eating a New York steak and sipping a nice glass of chardonnay. I wasn’t thinking of whether this was good for me or not. I wasn’t thinking about calories. I was simply seeking pleasure. It was a wonderful experience. I existed in the moment which is all we really have anyway. The past is gone and the future is always ambiguous. The fact that I am aware of it and can attribute different leans to events and places is because I am self-aware and I have the ability to give certain meanings to things.

Work is like that. I can give meaning to my work even if others don’t see what I perceive is reality. It is very personal and will remain that way. The character of Howard Roark in the Fountainhead just didn’t give a damn about what others thought of his work. He did what he did because he valued it. Eventually he found people who appreciated his work but those folks were surrounded by people who would never get what he did and (AND) he didn’t care if they did or not! Money aside, this is an important element in what I call the most the perfect freedom.

Some years ago I wrote a book about my Java Programming Languages experiences. It didn’t sell too well. Some people loved it and others hated it. It was a polarizing book. It had its flaws but it was written from my heart and that f my co-author. I often apologized for the book. The way I wrote it, the style, that fact that I wrote it at all. Then, a year ago I read the book from start to finish. Except for the fact that I had mostly written it, I had never sat down and just read it. When I finally put the book down, I realized that it was written exactly how I wanted to write it. Forget money, universal praise and acceptance. It was perfect. I found myself reliving a very interesting period in my life.

I no longer apologize for the way I wrote that book. The universe doesn’t care. Only I care and since I seek pleasure and self approval, that is enough.

By the standards of others, I have been both very successful and failed badly in various work and relationships. In the past year I jettisoned two long time friends not because I hated them but because they became way too high maintenance for me to deal with them. I don’t hate either of them. They are not bad people. Neither is a serial killers as far as I know. But the social pleasure of knowing them was outweighed by their need to judge (me) and also to receive constant validation (from me).

That wasn’t very much fun, was it? Oops! Don’t answer because I really don’t care.

If you read my posts you know I have been laid off 3-4 times, fired twice for sure (I think some of my layoffs were firings in disguise). My career was not always “up” even by my standards. It zigzagged like the life of a pirate being chased by her majesty’s ships on the high seas. I fought it for years but after Borland (the bottom of the barrel career experience) I realized that my strength was in not needing my career to go in any direction. I could work and earn money. I could be a vice president, a consultant, a manager, a director, totally self-employed in any order.  Any amount of money that I earned was “enough” if it paid the bills.

It was freeing.

There were no rules except the ones I decided upon for myself. If it gave me freedom and allowed me to exercise self-will, I was achieving my personal goal.

Life isn’t perfect. It doesn’t care. The universe doesn’t care. So given all that, I have to decide for myself. Rejection by others is simply a concept, not a reality.

{{{SELF WILL}}}

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Quieting my world

There is way too much noise in the world these days, especially my world which is located in the heart of Silicon Valley in the San Francisco Bay Area. The other day at a cross-country meet I was doing email, text and voice all within shouting distance of the other. I can’t even remember any details of the races. They are a blur. I do, however, remember and have records of the texts and emails. Only the voice is gone.

The culprits

• Me
• Others
• 24-7 (I used to think this was a crock but it isn’t)
• Cell phones
• Email
• Texting
• Instant  messaging (IM)
• Still involved in Silicon Valley

I left work in early March but didn’t really leave it at all. I didn’t get far enough away from  it.

It came looking for me.

It found me.

Yes, this is repetitious. I wrote about in another post recently. So now I have to find a way out again. I have been o-u-t in the past. I remember what it was like. It was a long time ago. When getting out it is nice to have a place to go. If not physical certainly mental.

This was to be my guideline.

Someday I’ll walk away and be free and leave the sterile ones their secure sterility. I’ll leave without a forwarding address and walk across some barren wilderness to drop the world there. Then wander free of care like an unemployed Atlas.
James Kavanaugh

Can’t say as my body is built like Atlas. I am BIG BONED but that is about it. Not more than 5’7″ at my best and sort of scrawny at 140 pounds. Long ago, a friend once told me that I make taller people feel large and flabby.

I need to decide on a plan to get myself to that unemployed Atlas persona.

My strategy is going to be built around some of the following

Meditation: This has to come from inside me. I understand the issue now I have to find the trigger.

Freely and fearlessly entering the neutral zone: It is like living life without a safety net. If you look down it could freak you out but you need to be able to both look down and look ahead without  fear.

No rules: This is critical. Ask others and they will come up with rules. There are no rules. Not really.

As it is, I just wrote three (3) rules, one which stated clearly that I should have no rules. So enough said on “rules”.

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