How to be a loser

Adversity is a part of life and sooner or later you will fail trying to accomplish some important goal. In fact I am expecting a major professional set-back in the next couple of months. In anticipation of the pain, anxiety and anguish I have decided that rather than suffer later I should prepare now. My expected downfall is fairly standard and the three-step method that I describe below should apply to most situations when your better judgment did not prevail.

Anger

This is a purifying flame and a source of great satisfaction. Other than fantasizing about the destruction of your enemies and their properties (these exercises you can design yourself), I recommend Jack Reacher novels (any one will do) and Dirty Harry movies. They depict you - supremely confident character who punishes forces of evil with great deal of violence and without a trace of hesitation. You are an outsider and a rebel and weak and stupid constantly stand in your way and slow you down.

After this initial phase you may conclude that life is a bit more complicated and responsibility is not so easy to assign. Perhaps your misfortunes are everybody's fault and the punishment should be more even-handed and spread out. For this phase I recommend movies such as 2012, Deep Impact, Melancholia, and Bambi (particularly these fragments). They will resonate with the need to deliver a punishing blow to entire continents and populations. While you will no longer be in the driving seat of the destruction, the sense of righteousness is likely to be very satisfying.

In the last stage your anger will turn against yourself. You failed and there is no point in blaming anybody else. Instead of fantasizing about pulling a cord on the suicide belt you will wallow in self-pity. Visits to finalexitnetwork.org and reading their guides will become your daily routine and sadness will engulf your soul. Watching Old yeller and reading The Giving Tree  will make you weep for hours. Check this link for additional suggestions of movies that will take you to the bottom of your despair.

Hope

Your anger will eventually burn down and new hope will enter the picture. Yes, you have lost a battle but you may yet win the war. It may take many years but so what. Flicker of hope never glows very brightly but it can last forever. Furthermore, while the nature is patiently working towards rewarding you with the most satisfying solution you do not need to do much but wait.

For this phase I recommend Lassie Come Home, When Harry met Sally together with Sleepless in Seattle. Reading Captain Blood  will warm you up as well. Not only you can live your life as before without introducing much disturbances but in the end you will be paid with interest! Indeed, when the adversities felled you you did not really know what you wanted, and now after many years and endowed with 20/20 vision you have a sense of a fulfillment of your destiny.

Alas, sappy movies and books will leave you longing for more. Rather than waiting for Lassie to come home start planning your next move. Perhaps there is a great deal more randomness in life and for a moment you just drew bad cards? Read Wall Street Journal and watch C-Span - everything you see there is somebody's win and somebody else's loss. Best laid plans are wasted, careers are ruined and this is just the way things are.

At this point reading books and watching movies is no longer enough - you are climbing up from a hole and you need a great deal more. Go shopping! Spend freely and make sure that you are not guided by your household needs. Remember that you are rebuilding your soul, not your kitchen. Depending on your financial stratum this, this or that might provide a lasting lift.

Grand fusion

You are approaching the final stage of your recovery and this step is entirely up to you. Anger and hope coexist next to one another and hang in a perfect balance. You are buoyed by your recent purchases, and your anger slowly transforms into wisdom. You are poised and endowed with a quiet sense of resolve. You work fewer hours and you have developed a sense of another dimension. Colleagues are seeking your opinions and you are back to your usual self without the burden of former responsibilities. It is time to pick up new hobbies and update your wardrobe. Dark clouds have parted and the first day of your new life has just started.

Reading for this period might include Deepak Chopra (particularly this book) or getting familiar with the miracles of modern medicine (as described in  that book).

Diary from the past - a year in turmoil

I have posted translation of my uncle's diary from the 70's year ago (you can
find it here ). Recently I have found a handful of later notes. Evidently they were written sometime after the described events and the chronological order is unclear.

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Corn, Beets and Plows

Exactly a year ago I have written that our management has a great deal of concern for the name  of our unit. Evidently plain "Botany Unit" is not inclusive enough and corn people are frustrated and restless. Little I knew... Our new boss  devoted a large part of the year to these issues and still there is no end in sight. The first proposed name was "Corn, Beets and Plows".  It brings most of the things that we care about together with the exception of potatoes. However potato people are too busy doing their work to care about such trivialities. Unfortunately  plows really do not belong. Not only they are not  a part of the world of plants, but also Ministry of Everything has the entire unit to deal with agricultural machinery. Some comrades from other units   were showing irritation and our bosses started backing off.
But this was just the beginning...

Fateful meeting

Two months later an official from the Command Center came for our midday meal. After small talk about the failures of the capitalist pigs in just about any endeavor they embarked upon the conversation turned to the virtues of corn. Evgenij (the leader of the Command Center) very passionately described the newest  from the corn fields - from the obvious and well known (food, animal feed) to newer and important (fuel for various machinery, building materials, and so on). It quickly became obvious that corn  growing married with mechanized farming can change the landscape of our unit. All comrades got quite excited by these ideas and started inquiring about the resources that such a change in our agricultural habits would entail. At this point Evgenij confessed that the resources are much more needed for our comrades in different units, but that the first step in these transformations would be
to change the name of our unit to "Botany and Corn unit". The respect for our leaders kept us applauding  but the logical cracks in these plans did not go unnoticed. Even if corn fuels the ballistic missiles that one day will obliterate our enemies, it is still a plant and "Botany" covers it inasmuch. More discussion followed, some of it in the spirit of whether tomato is a vegetable or a fruit, but ultimately the consensus emerged that our farming community will not benefit from this turmoil.
However, we were already in trouble.


Chaos reigns

Beet people started saying that they can grow better corn, corn people were bringing up long forgotten grievances and life became miserable. Furthermore, farmers got the wind of the changes and started inquiring and complaining. Beet grower union, Corn grower union and various potato grower organizations started asking comrades for their opinions. Suddenly, rather than growing stuff together we had the whole farming community debating whether Beets are from Mars and Corn is from Venus (paraphrasing a trendy capitalist publication).
Sometime I feel that we are at the rough seas, far away from home.


The International

The previous minister was an old and seasoned comrade. He ran our ministry for six years and managed to stay invisible for most of that time. Senior colleagues say that he was injured in the Battle of Kursk and lost some spunk since then, both likely to be true if you ask me. The new minister is of a completely different breed. In a year since his coming we saw a number of new initiatives coming directly from the top. Since repelling capitalist pigs takes most of our resources these initiatives are mostly symbolic yet the powerful propaganda apparatus that we employ on their behalf keeps them very visible. The Botany unit is very much engaged since the fathers of the minister and of our boss served in the same unit during WWII.

So what are these initiatives? One is called MAGELLAN after the discoverer with a dreamy sounding name who was a favorite of Marx and Lenin. The plan, or rather our portion of it, involves virtual
farming. On a practical level it is a pen-pal program where farmers from several countries write to one another and exchange ideas. Unfortunately in order to undercut capitalist enemies in this trying times MAGELLAN is setting very ambitious goals and it is supposed to transform our agriculture. With no real resources allocated I am afraid that these transformations will also be virtual and  no actual farming will occur as a result. However, I hope that it brings us closer to our foreign comrades  and burden on censorship to scrutinize all those letters will not add too much to our administration.

Great leap forward

is another initiative from our management. As it turns out we have many tedious procedures and quality controls. Before we actually plant anything there is a lot of reviewing, testing, consultations and so on. We try to bring best farming experts with detailed knowledge of all sorts of plants and seek their advice.  This takes time, energy and on many occasions what we are told is what we knew all along.  Great leap forward aims at simplifying the process and leveraging our own expertise to make faster and bolder decisions. We already received a handful of one-of-a-kind projects for evaluation and some of our colleagues are quite excited. Some ideas involve using industrial run-off for watering fields in the arid areas, farming salmon in the nuclear reactor cooling towers, and so on. Luckily all are required to be multidisciplinary and this  dilutes the responsibility and somewhat broadens the expertise.

iJob or the end of work alienation

is the last of the new director's gifts. Within the Botany unit it is supposed to work as follows: a farmer is supposed to get together with comrades that process, package, and prepare the food and other things that are made of his agricultural products. This way the whole purpose of  farming is clearly displayed and benefits to the society become apparent. Next a participating farmer and his newly acquired comrades undergo political training and start a cooperative that  is responsible for the totality of the production process from planting the seeds to delivering food items for worker's families. It is not clear to me if afterwards the farmer has any time left for farming but perhaps it is not a big loss. So in the end, our hands were sore from clapping when these plans were unveiled at a yearly gathering of the whole ministry. 



Foreign farmers

In spite of MAGELLAN initiative our treatment of foreign comrades worsened lately quite a bit. Traditionally we were bringing foreign farmers to our farming outposts, most of our working groups involved foreigners and many  comrades escaped oppression to come to our glorious country. 
Since we live in the best system under the sun it is understandable that the foreign comrades are struggling to catch up with us and are a bit starstruck at times. Yet they come here to farm with us and seeing their reduced food rations just because they are from other countries pains me. We have brought up this issue many times but apparently the directives from the Central Committee are making clear that only after a lengthy certification process the treatment could be equal. It is all rather sad and I suppose that in a long run we will not have very many foreign farmers in our working groups.

Continued here.