Thoughts On: Thoughts as I Write This Post.

We shall both discover what this post is about as we progress through it.

Money...  money money money money money.  It empowers you and it limits you.  Everyone can't seem to get enough of it.  Anthony and I were debating about if perfection is, by definition, God and God is, by definition, perfection. It was a long and heated debate, but still very civil, as are all of our debates.  I won't go into details, but one of my arguments struck me because it seemed as if my voice was talking to me.  At one point I said: "There's no such thing as a perfect amount of money."  Shortly after, I thought how weird that is.  We can never ever, no matter how much we try, have the perfect amount of money for ourselves.  You can have ample amounts or money or you can lack it; somewhere in between those two there doesn't exist a line that denotes a perfect amount: no optimum.  How odd.  Calculus tells us that a continuous function from point A to point B has, at most, one minimum and one maximum.  If we're talking about optimizations, something Calculus is very good at finding, we're able to quite easily compute that too.  If we were to represent our amount of money by use of a Cartesian plot, it would appear quite continuous.  There isn't a point, for example, were that "money" function is undefined, so shouldn't we able to compute an optimum amount? A perfect amount?  You might be able to narrow it down to a certain situation for a certain individual.  Say you have $6.02 in your pocket and you want to buy the Angus Burger Deluxe meal at the McDonald's in Marathon Wisconsin.  In that specific situation, you would have the perfect amount of money.  (I feel a bit troubled that I can remember the exact cost of a McDonald's burger but nothing else).  However, you'd be wanting more, because having no money in your pocket is not optimum; not perfect.  What's the perfect amount of money to be in your pockets anyway?   I'm still troubled by this thought, because the reason why greed exists is because there is no optimum; greed is always trying to get as much as it can because it doesn't know when to stop.  There is an optimum in box buiding, for example.  Say you're given a certain amount of wood and you're told to create a box with an optimum/maximum amount of space.  You can do that.  There's no better way of doing it; greed has no place in that situation.  Then again, in everything besides Math it seems that there may not be a perfect amount (if you could quantify it) of anything.  Say you're a marathon runner, and you win!  That's all well and good for you.  You had the best time for that specific race.  You might even have the best marathon time in the world, but you still didn't reach the perfect time, whatever that may be.  Say you're as fast as the speed of light!  Well then you would've completed the race in 0.0014 seconds.  That's pretty damn good, but what if you were faster than light, or would if... you completed the race before you started.  Isn't that better?  Marathon runners are "greedy" in the sense that they want to continue to lower their times; with no perfect time in mind.  Greedy is the wrong word to use here.  Greed's nice cousin goes by several names: determination, focus, motivation.  I would say the latter three are better suited for a marathon runner's description.

I may have gone off on a tangent,so now I'll attempt to elaborate on what started this post: money.  I clearly don't have a perfect amount of money.  I want to scuba dive here, for example, but if I did I wouldn't be able to afford to feed myself!  That doesn't really bother me a whole lot, because snorkeling is fantastic and quite satisfying.  The only reason why I want to get PADI certified is because my friends are: envy.  (I just discovered where I may be going with this post (greed, envy, ...).  Can you tell?)  Anyway, I have plenty of cash to be able to everything else here in Fiji, so I shouldn't be complaining. I'm living as full as I can; I have no regrets.

Someday, hopefully sooner than later, I shall follow my uncle Tim's footsteps by hopping on a motorcycle for over 2 weeks, see some beautiful sights, and sleep under the stars with, maybe, the mesh of a tent separating me from them.  How cool would it be to make it to Alaska in such a fashion!  If I had a dog and/or a girlfriend to join me that would be quite spectacular as well; no complaints there.  Problem is, at the moment anyway, I lack the money. 

I want to change this.  Money is crushing my ambitions and I despise that.  

I've started to learn more about back-end web technologies so I can make myself more relevant to the Freelance Web Development scene.  There is good money there and, best of all, I can do it while I travel.  In fact, I am doing while I travel!  I'm still getting paid from my employer back home to update and maintain websites.  It's a pretty sweet deal, but it's proving not enough.  I am admittedly being greedy because I want more money so I can travel more!  However, my greed does morph in motivation and determination.  It motivates me to learn, work hard (no Sloth for me!), and better myself.  

I unfortunately must be headed to a meeting now.  I'm the secretary for the University of the South Pacific International Student Associate and I have to take minutes.  Can't be late!  Although this is Fiji, and no one is ever on time.