http://www.ryanholiday.net/archives/the_narrative_fallacy.phtml

http://www.ryanholiday.net/archives/post_38.phtml

I’m not understanding this sentence, specifically the antecedent you are referring to.

Otherwise the message I pulled from this, was, take the time to step back and enjoy your hard work? Appreciate where you are currently at as opposed to a less favorable position from the past.

I used to be a scumbag drug addict, and over the past couple of years I sobered up and have really worked my ass off to turn my life around and do something with it. I’m a pre-med student now and loving it a lot, but at times I get too caught up in the present moment, in negative feelings, to appreciate the big picture and how far I have progressed.

“That more or less it was gravy from here. It was already what I’d asked for and thought too much to actually expect” I can really relate to that.

I look back at my decision to go to college and it was not a decision. There wasn’t even a moment’s serious consideration given to alternatives. It was always a certainty in my mind that I would get a BA, come hell or high water.

In retrospect, OF COURSE it makes sense–as a member of the generation with the largest glut of aimless college-goers ever–to distinguish yourself by NOT going to college. Yes, a degree still has utility as social signaling, but how much brighter is your signal when you succeed sans degree? Especially when every employer knows most BAs were foregone conclusions from the moment of inception: with some exceptions, BAs signal that you have internalized The Process and are prepared to don the yoke of wage-slavery on weekdays and live life on weekends until at least 55.

Unless you are in a top-rung school that can afford brilliant professors or you have a concrete goal to which your education is leading you, you are either paying for four more years of nursery school (during which you will hopefully mature, although it’s unlikely) or completely wasting your money. In either case you are deferring your engagement with reality and inadvertently classing yourself as a member of an affluent flock of compass-less sheeple.

If you don’t define what you want, you cannot be successful. Nothing printed on paper will replace the pull of a personal goal; not diplomas, not cash. If you are going to college as a matter of course, chances are, you have not defined success for yourself. Maybe you will find it at school, but remember that even school has an opportunity cost. It is by no means the only way to go.

Keep important options tabled. The big ones are sometimes the easiest to miss.

Re: American Apparel. I lost track of this, so I appreciate your linking to Dov’s statement. I think he’s failing to appreciate the distinction between referencing (some would say co-opting) public figures for the purpose of artistic expression and referencing them for commercial gain. American Apparel isn’t Andy Warhol. In his statement, Dov doesn’t mention any legal precedent involving a commercial advertisement; the only legal precedents involve artists (alas, even Larry Flint). His insurance company was smart to settle for this reason (and at half price, too!). But AA also did everyone a favor, because the price floor for this kind of commercial “reference” has now been set: $5 million (plus legal costs). And, of course, the old saying applies as it so often does: it’s sometimes easier to apologize than to ask permission. I think this was played shrewdly by all parties, including Woody Allen, who got paid in the absence of a contractual agreement. That’s not easy to do.

Being a non-US resident, I only just found out what American apparel actually was… and… far out man, how can a dude with unusual-for-a-22-y.o insight like yours work for a bunch of scum-suckers like that? Seriously! And to take the cake you post about Stoicism… The contradiction is breath-taking!

You know in a club there’s always a fat, creepy guy cracking onto women left right and centre? That’s American Apparel.

Honestly, I wish you good luck. But you’re a little lost right now.