journey to the center of my navel

[johnnyfavorite]

thanks to the miracle of facebook, i recently got a bit more information about some of the people mentioned in this story, which i originally wrote on november 17, 1999. it includes the full name of one participant, which i would normally change, but it turns out that i had remembered it wrong. which explains why i couldn’t ever google up anything

Comments

[agmsmith]

Makes me wonder how your path through life could have turned out differently. Would being married earlier put on more stress (less mobility and more worries in finding work) or would it be happier being a couple? It depends on the personality mix, which I can't estimate.

The closest I came to that was a girl I was tutoring who seemed a bit infatuated with me; I could have been dragged into running her dad's construction supply business. That would have been a different life - more business work, less fun computer programming.

[johnnyfavorite]

that's a very interesting way to look at it

[agmsmith]

Business work would be less desirable in my view since it is less important in the history of the world than some outstanding deed of computer science. Just count the long term famous books on business as compared to the number on war or romance. Hmmm, not that many CS books in comparison

[skeletaltime]

it's human nature to look closest at the one underneath your nose and declare it the best

This is very true, and has even been a point of interest for some recent researchers. It's basically our psychological defense mechanism against being unhappy with what we've got. You should watch this TED talk if you havent already. Gilbert can be a little annoying when he's trying to be funny, but the content is worth absorbing, if you can swallow you old man grumpiness for a minute. I have his book, actually. It's a little dry, but fascinating stuff.

http://www.ted.com/talks/dan_gilbert_asks_why_are_we_happy.html