This weekend, I went down to the city of Angels, as my nanners turned a ripe old 90. That means she was born in 1918. This.. this is insane. If I live to be the same age, it will be the year 2071. Somehow, it doesn’t seem plausible that yours truly will be scooting around at this age. Anything is possible, though.
Several things were learned about my family.
1) Apparently, I have a carbon copy set of physical features to my grandfather on my mother’s side. A photo of him recently was found of him in Germany in 1942 when he met my grandmother. The likeness is scary. Also interesting to note, in 1942, Germany was in WWII. Obviously, the question I’m now presenting to myself is.. was my grandfather a member of some sort of .. ahem.. government party at the time? Honestly, I don’t know the answer – I didn’t even think to ask of it.
2) Also interesting! My nanners built cluster bombs for the US Government during the war. She worked for Honeywell, who was making thermomenters at the time, when the Gov’t got them to switch to bombs instead. So, they happily made bombs. Granted, this was pretty standard practice at the time, so I do not hold this against her. It’s just an interesting thing to suddenly find out about one’s close relative.
3) I got the chance to sit down with her and get some 1-on-1 questions about her life. The answers definitely impacted me. After 90 years, the vast majority of her memories are of work. Working three jobs – working for x number of years at x place. Work, work, work. She worked. A lot. Granted, she was raising two kids on her own and this was a necessity to keep mouths fed, but I can’t help if that work ethic has worked its way down to me through my Dad.
In any case, it was sad that her core memories were regarding work rather than happier topics like travel, love, food, experiences, anything else. I do not want to end up like this. I have got to stop working so much – focusing on it and shutting everything else, and try to build myself a real life outside of tasks and deadlines. This actually made me think much more than I expected to, gave me a fresh perspective on things. I’m sure this wasn’t her intended purpose – as she still preaches the “work hard until you die” message.
Part of the reason why I work so hard is that I really have trouble believing that Silicon Valley is real. Like, the amounts which most of us in the tech industry get paid are unheard of at our ages, and it all still feels like somewhat of a dream. All of the stuff we’ve worked on, one day everyone will just realize that this whole Internet thing is a fad and that’s done. We won’t have any “real” skills to survive on. I’m still telling myself that this thing is here to stay, and that what I do is actually a valued skill in today’s environment. Dudes, I just make pretty graphics and write some code to make things look pretty and figure out stuff should be organized – this doesn’t seem like a “real” skill. If I tried to tell my nanners what I do, she wouldn’t even comprehend that what I do is a real task, much less that I should get paid for doing it. I’ve settled on just saying “I work with computers”, which is met with a casual “Oh, mmkay” and a shared understanding that she doesn’t really comprehend what I’m saying.
However – we do provide a product. This product delivers information, entertainment, and commerce-related services to those who are requesting it. There’s nothing really quite like it before – and we have trouble describing it. This is turning into a real business though. Money is being made, customers are receiving a “product”. I guess it sort of is a real thing.
In any case. I’ll finally be getting out of here in a couple days and hopefully generating some new memories that I’ll be able to share with my grandkiddies in 2071. Let’s hope that I’m in better shape, from a mental and health perspective, to relay my experiences in life to them.
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