When I was a kid (and even now), I had a weird way of taking exams, or at least multiple choice exams with lots of questions like the SAT: I would start at No. 1 on the test, finish it and go on to No. 2, but then after the first 2 or 3, I'd tend to go to No. 11, or to the 2nd page of questions, basically skipping around to different questions. I couldn't really explain why I did this other than I was curious to see what the rest of the test was, etc., but now I realize it might just be my mind not wanting to have such order. Just like how I live my life, sometimes I like a little disorder in ordering my test questions. When I look at fantasy baseball players, I don't go in order, I like to skip a round to different parts of the rankings from the Top 10 to maybe like the 50-60 range, or skip from looking at closers to second basemen. It's weird, but I think disorder is like a kind of sugary snack for my brain: I know it's not the best for me, but it feels stimulating for a second, and it doesn't kill me, so I do it.
As a contract attorney, my work life is prone to disorder. I sometimes work exclusively at home, I sometimes work in downtown LA where I live with a nice walk to work (by the way, I mix up the ways I get home too, not taking one path all the time), I sometimes travel to faraway cities to do jobs, I sometimes don't do any jobs. Recently I started a new job in Mid-city L.A., near LACMA, and it is TOUGH to get to. Its not really close to any one highway, it takes a lot of local roads to drive there, and it doesn't have a subway stop until the purple line gets extended to LACMA.......in 5 years or so. So it's been tough commuting an hour each way to and from work and then actually doing the work, which is different: new desk, new elevators, new computer, new location, new scenic view all around L.A., new bosses I have to report to. A lot of new stimulus and a lot of disorder which I try to organize. I think that's why I like dodgeball too: A LOT of disorder that I revel in, trying to keep track of each ball and who is doing what. It might be why sometimes I get a craving to drive through traffic.........nah, I hate traffic. As I'm writing this (in a kind of disorderly, rambling kind of way) I kind of realize that's how I think: I create disorder to try to find some order within disorder. Kind of a paradox, and maybe I'm giving myself too much credit.
Anyway, having so much disorder does cause sudden changes, and I've had to adopt to sudden change in my life a lot the last few years. I used to be on a project that lasted almost 2 years where every day I would go to the same office and see the same people and do the same thing over and over again, a lot of repetition and predictability, but now I have a lot of randomness.......and I kind of like it and thrive on it. It might drive MJ crazy though. It is amazing sometimes to look back and think, "wow, just 2 weeks ago I was doing something completely different (for example, staying at home learning Korean every day and reading To Kill a Mockingbird). Or just 2 years ago I was freezing my butt off in Chicago while MJ was able to go to the Art Institute of Chicago as one of its esteemed members. How life changes so quickly! But maybe that is life, the entropy of life, the science of life....to change quickly. Maybe life is just one of those pinball machines and we're the balls that get put into motion and bounce around in no particular order. Sudden changes are an essential part of life, and it's part of what makes what our life experience is. So I'll try to enjoy it........at least until I get sick and tired of sitting on the bus stopping to pick up passengers every 0.3 miles.......how do people bear it?
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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