Hot Trends, Bad Ideas

The answer to this should be obvious...and yet people constantly make their lives harder than they need to be. Maybe it's America's Protestant origins, maybe there was some natural selection for industriousness during the neolithic era, but whatever the cause, the lives of other people (not mine) could be a lot easier. The best things in my life didn't require long hours grinding away at dull, hard work. In fact, the dull, hard work offered few rewards. I spent four and a half miserable years in engineering school only to graduate and find the market was flooded with mechanical engineers. My school advised...more school. Which I went in for--and amazingly, it didn't create a job opening. I finally switched to admin work--which didn't even require a college degree--and finally enjoyed a steady paycheck. I traded my arduous diet and exercise regime for a low-carb diet and lost 20 pounds and a gaggle of health problems. I sold my ridiculously overpriced house in Den...

Never give up! How I hate that phrase. Now and then, I hear people say they wish their parents had made them keep taking piano lessons. Well, I was one of those kids who had to take piano lessons for years and years after I wanted to stop. Long story short: I'm not grateful for those goddamn lessons. Nor do I play the piano anymore despite having some aptitude for it. I don't have any desire to. My mother started taking me to piano lessons when I was six and I said I'd like to play. For four years, all was well. Then I reached the limit of my ability: I didn't have the dexterity to play really difficult pieces, despite lots and lots of practice. And many of the practice pieces didn't interest me. I asked to quit. But my mother, wishing she'd had piano lessons, frog-marched me to more piano lessons for the next four years. It was nothing but an exercise in frustration and probably learned helplessness. Practicing didn't help me improve. My teacher tri...

Do you go off-roading? Do you need to drive on goat paths? Do you need lots of cargo space? Does your vehicle need a lot of clearance from the ground? Do you need to tow a heavy load? No? Then you might not need an SUV. People buy SUVs for various reasons. Traditionally, people bought them for off-roading or driving on treacherous terrain, or for the cargo room, or for pulling a heavy trailer or a big boat. Now it seems more people buy them because they're trendy or because they're scared of driving in bad conditions. I see SUV drivers gingerly driving around potholes and creeping along snowy streets. I pass some of them in my old Camry. But even in the 28 years that I had a Colorado driver's license, I got along with a car; so did most of my relatives in Colorado. If you need transportation to get groceries and go to the office on paved roads, a car will probably do. Some people drive an SUV because they're safer than driving a smaller car. Having been broadside...