The Art of Living Other People's Lives Page 7
One of my most ridiculous breakups came in the middle of what ended up being an on-and-off four-year relationship with a girl named Amber. We’d been fighting for months and the relationship was on a steep and obvious decline. We’d gotten lazy and comfortable and sought more than we could provide for each other. She was more interested in planning a stable life together and I was ready to leave the suburbs as quickly as I could to pursue a writing career in New York City. Even the sex, when it happened, was nothing more than muscle memory. We were both so afraid of throwing away four years of effort that we kept pulling apart then coming back together, like a rubber band begging to just snap.
One day we were sitting in her room when she told me, with conviction, that she could beat me in a race. I’m not sure where the idea came from, but I immediately jumped up, furious, and demanded that she put on sneakers and meet me outside. Then she told me she thought it would be a close game if she played me in basketball one on one. This assertion pushed me over the edge. If there’s one thing I take too seriously in life, it’s basketball. I still have hoop dreams, despite the fact I’m five foot nine and the last time I played on an organized team was middle school. I still hold onto hope that a European scout will see me playing in the park and offer me a contract to be the star of some obscure team in Estonia or Latvia. If the opportunity ever came, I’d drop everything I’m doing and devote my life to ball in a heartbeat. So when Amber, who had never played a game of competitive basketball in her life, looked at me with a straight face and said it’d be a close game, I couldn’t handle it. I told her it’d be an embarrassment and that she wouldn’t even score a point if we played to one thousand. We eventually decided it’d be better if we spent some time apart and I left her house.
We ended up getting back together, and then broke up again shortly after because she said my healthy eating habits were annoying and she needed to be with someone who could eat cake and pizza whenever she wanted. The on-again-off-again cycle continued for about another year. Neither of us wanted to be the one to throw in the towel and call it quits. Eventually we just started seeing other people, which pretty much confirmed things were over.
During a breakup you spend so much time defending who you are and why you’re that way that you end up getting to know yourself better than you ever have. There’s a certain beauty in breakups for this reason. I spend too much time on a daily basis focused on my insecurities and worrying what people are going to think of me, so when I’m suddenly sticking up for myself, it’s like a refreshing glass of water that makes me realize how thirsty I’d been all along.
Maybe all the breakups in our lives are just reminders there’s still a lot we have to learn about ourselves before relying on other people for happiness. If anything, breakups should be renamed breakdowns. That’s all they really are. Whatever drew two people together in the first place eventually breaks down, and then, more often than not, we end up breaking down as a result. But when that breakdown is over, and we get up off the floor with wounds that have finally healed, it’s amazing how capable we are of building ourselves up again. It’s strange to admit, but some of my most defining moments and clear-minded decisions have come right after breakups, when I was prepared to be selfish and focus on my own well-being.
Maybe the real definition of love is finding someone who doesn’t cause you to break down in order to build yourself up. Someone who gives you the support you need to build yourself up each day, little by little. Someone who just wants to make out in the library once in a while, or who doesn’t think about whether or not they could beat you in a race or score on you in basketball.
The New American Dream
The American Dream has faked his own death and reemerged as something far more contemporary and sociable. He ditched his gray flannel suit for running shoes and a man bun. He sold his two-story home with a white picket fence for a small room in an industrial warehouse turned communal-living space in Brooklyn. The building is occupied mostly by website developers, a few actors who have gotten steady extra work since graduating from their respective conservatories, and a grocery store cashier who once uploaded a YouTube video that has since amassed 327,543 views.
The American Dream is no longer a follower of established commercialism. And certainly no longer in pursuit of a steady paycheck. The American Dream is entrepreneurial and driven by the kind of ideas that make people irate because they didn’t think of them first. The people who achieve this new American Dream are more than dreamers. They challenge the norm and disrupt the existing condition. They don’t consider social mobility to have limits or rules. They are out there, conjuring up million-dollar ideas on their laptops, in their pajamas. Perhaps right this second. Every great brand was a startup at some point. Every great idea almost thrown out and abandoned because of a shred of doubt.
I’ve put together a short list of ideas I believe have great potential to succeed. Consider it my gift to you, the reader. They are at least worth the price of this book. What the world needs is ideas that are even less unafraid and unashamed than the success stories we currently look up to. If the future is now, then what comes next? It’s up to us to decide. There are plenty of brilliant ideas out there, yet to be discovered and harnessed. So with these ideas as starters, grab your laptop, go to a coffee shop full of failed screenwriters, and give birth to the future of the future.a
Trendy’s Supermarket
Whole Foods is a Fortune 500 company. It’s publicly traded. It generates annual revenue in the tens of billions. It’s also the devil’s playground and everyone knows it. Yet we still shop there. And it makes us feel good. It makes us feel modern and connected with a world we don’t quite understand. A world in which asparagus water is sold for six dollars a bottle. A world in which camel milk is on the rise and kale has made its way into our ice cream.
Well if people want ridiculously expensive, insane sounding food items, then they deserve to have just that. And the truth is, Whole Foods isn’t going to cut it anymore. I’m convinced people protest Whole Foods because Whole Foods pretends to be something it’s not. As an organization, Whole Foods acts like it’s not a big deal that they charge ten dollars for things like egg-white chips and upwards of eighty bucks for organic honey.
This is where Trendy’s Supermarket comes in. Trendy’s will be the first unashamed, openly pretentious supermarket that takes the artisanal health craze to the next level. The beauty of Trendy’s will be that it doesn’t pretend to be something it’s not. Trendy’s slogan will be “You can’t shop with us.” Trendy employees will be required to wear flannel shirts around their waists. Where Whole Foods is enigmatic and untrustworthy, Trendy’s will be transparent and honest. Yes, Trendy’s overcharges. Yes, the food is so obscure it’s probably doing your body no good. This is what people want. This is what they will spend their paychecks on. The proof is already out there, thanks to Trendy’s less honest competitors, who will quickly be left in the dust.
Whole Foods can own the locally sourced vegetable and tofu ginger rice muffin market, because Trendy’s will be offering food trends that don’t even exist yet. Think locally sourced tap water in a bottle. What person in their right mind living in Montana wouldn’t pay twenty dollars for a bottle of tap water from Anita’s apartment in the Bronx? What trendsetting New York City dweller wouldn’t want to sip on some abundantly refreshing H20 straight from the sink of Mark, a college professor living on the Oregon Coast? It’s hard to imagine how overly priced the tap water from Alaska will be, but people will want it.
Of course, at Trendy’s, all gluten-free products will have only ever been handled by gluten-free individuals. This includes the farmers, distributors, packagers, and Trendy’s employees themselves. This way, customers know they are getting a true, fully gluten-free experience they can’t get anywhere else. Trendy’s also understands that anyone who still eats 7-grain bread also probably still uses an iPhone 5, so the store will serve nothing less than 143-grain products. All customers will
also receive a free matcha latte, made with certified opossum milk and an all-natural sweetener made from the stomach lining of farm-raised, free-range house flies from Guatemala. Naturally, all produce will be picked by young Malaysian children whose sugar and carbohydrate intake will be monitored and whose skin tone can be considered “sun-kissed.”
It’s assumed that Trendy’s top-selling products will be ornamental Mason jars filled with air from the Pamir Mountains in Central Asia, specifically from a peak in Kyrgyzstan. It’s time to give the people what they want.
Business lesson: Listen closely to the market, it will tell you exactly what people want more of.
rEalBOOK
Face it, the death of the book happened a long time ago. Paper books are antiquated devices that even I use as decorative trinkets in my apartment. There’s nobody out there reading a book that isn’t looking up between each paragraph to make sure everyone around them sees they are going through the effort to turn pages and protect their cover from creases. It’s a respectable effort, but an unsustainable one.
From a business perspective, it’s important to be ahead of the curve. We can all agree that one day we’ll all be reading on tablets and probably even through retinal contacts so it looks like we’re all just staring off into the distance. At least it’s easier on your neck than staring down at your phone. That’s progress.
But let’s start with the idea that electronic reading devices and tablets will only become more advanced and widely used. Let’s assume it’s where the money is and the manufacturers of these products can act as publishers and offer authors deals worth way more than any traditional publisher ever could. So authors start writing e-books only. What happens to the paper book readers then?
What happens is rEalBook, the first of its kind paperback e-book concealer. Each rEalBook is designed to appear as a literary classic, with an original cover design and real pages that actually function. Except each page is cut out in the middle, the way movie characters use library books and Bibles to stash money and drugs. The cutout will be customized to securely fit any e-reading device. This way readers get the convenience of an e-book, but can hide the fact they are weak and conformed to the ease and popularity of modern technology, as long as they remember to turn a fake page every minute or so.
Business lesson: Nostalgia sells. Nostalgia always sells.
Rent-A-Baby
Have you ever sat by yourself or with a significant other on one of those tragically uneventful days and thought, I wish I had a dog right now? Of course you have. But maybe you live in a small apartment in a city and can’t properly care for a dog. Or maybe you’re shit poor, working two internships, and can barely feed yourself anything other than stale pasta and carefully designed artisanal lattes. You’ve probably thought to yourself, it would be great if I could have a dog for the day, or even a long weekend. Why can’t we? Why can’t we have a dog for a day? We can have a movie for a day without owning it. We can drive a car for a day without owning it. We can even, if you want to go down that road, have a sex partner for a day (or an hour) without ever having to see or speak to that person again. People pay for all of these temporary services, and people would sure as hell pay for a dog they don’t have to bring to a veterinarian. There would also be no better first date than bringing a dog you don’t own to the park.
Well, unfortunately this business already exists. I had the idea for a dog-renting business, which I’d call Rent-A-Paw, at least three years ago. But thanks to a new app called Bark’N’Borrow, you actually can borrow people’s dogs.
Business lesson: If you have an idea you think is great, move on it immediately, because it’s only a matter of time before someone else thinks of it.
Well, don’t worry, there’s still a great idea here. Let Bark’N’Borrow have their fun, we’re thinking bigger now. So, back to square one. Have you ever been sitting by yourself or with your significant other and thought, I wish I could have practice taking care of a baby? Of course you have. But maybe you’re just not ready to welcome a child into the world. Maybe you’re unsure if you ever even want kids. You’d love to try without having to actually inseminate a woman or adopt. You’re concerned about how you’re going to pay their college tuition. Enter Rent-A-Baby, the first ever baby-borrowing business. Like Bark’N’Borrow, you could be a babysitter looking for work, or just someone who wants to spend a day with a baby.
I know what you’re thinking: How can we trust people to safely and responsibly watch a baby for the day? When you’re sitting at a round table with angel investors or dripping sweat on national television on Shark Tank, you look directly into the eyes of everyone in the room wearing a suit and tell them Rent-A-Baby will conduct top-of-the-line background checks on all interested customers. Of course, once they’re in the system it will be easier to rent a new baby each time. Business is all about return customers. Rent-A-Baby will also provide an adequate amount of baby food and diapers (included in the rental fee). Renters will also be required to check in with Rent-A-Baby every hour using a live video feed or else they will be charged an additional fee.
A man with a suit more expensive than your parents’ car and hair so thin and gray that you wonder why he doesn’t just try the bald look may then raise his pen and ask you how Rent-A-Baby will operate if people don’t want to let strangers take care of their babies. You look at that man, run your fingers through your thick head of young, vibrant hair and tell him Rent-A-Baby will work directly with local adoption agencies. The kicker is that when the renters are done with their babies, the immediate opportunity to adopt that baby is made readily available. And who wouldn’t fall in love with a baby after spending a day with it? Suddenly your lucrative rental business is transformed into an organization that will lead to the nationwide increase in child adoption. That’s when you find your face on the cover of Time magazine for its “100 Most Influential People” edition. You’ll be saving the world and your bank account, one crying, snot-filled, perpetually hungry baby at a time.
Little Brother, Big Son
Reality TV is addictive. We all know it, even if we don’t enjoy it. This idea is less of a strict business strategy and more of a creative entertainment pitch that will lead to instant stardom and unimaginable riches.
There is one requirement though. You must have a sibling. I’ll use myself as an example since that’s how the idea began. I have a younger brother, Cole. The initial idea was to figure out a way to gain legal custody of him. Then once that was established, we’d pitch a show to TLC called Little Brother, Big Son. Cameras would capture every unorthodox struggle and victory of having a younger brother who is also, legally, my twenty-one-year-old son. It would be an instant hit. There’s not a soul in America who wouldn’t tune in to that show on a weeknight after work.
Let’s not even get started on the episode when Cole’s ex-parents, now his grandparents, though still my parents, come to visit. Or better yet, the moment during season thirteen when Cole is married and has his first child, and in the same moment I become both a grandpa and an uncle.
The idea is yours for the taking.
Business lesson: Always be prepared to exploit yourself and others to achieve success.
Made of Money Interest Tracker
What parent hasn’t uttered the phrase, “Does it look like I’m made of money?” The answer is none. It may, in fact, be one of the most commonly used phrases among parents, along with “I’m not going to ask you again” and “Are you deaf or something?”
There’s no doubt that when it comes to finances, being a parent is strenuous and costly. Besides supporting yourself, kids are suddenly thrown into the equation. Little peanut-shaped bodies that don’t know the value of a dollar, and, let’s face it, may never understand it.
The amount of hard-earned money parents spend in a lifetime on their kids must be astronomical. And what do they get in return? They should be getting interest, for one. Their money does act as a loan after all. An investment, with the ho
pes their child-rearing and support throughout the years will result in a successful, money-making, sane member of society they can proudly call their kid. But that doesn’t mean they don’t deserve the proper return on their investment.
Made of Money Interest Tracker would be the perfect tool for parents. The service will electronically track all money that parents spend on their kids within the time period parents select. Each time they lend money to their child, pay their kid’s rent, or buy them groceries, they can update the amount spent and Interest Tracker will automatically include the determined interest rate based on a percent mutually agreed upon by parents and child. Though, all a parent really needs to do is get a signature when the kid is eighteen, and that can be done early on a Saturday morning when they’re tired and won’t care to look at the fine print.
It would be pretty inhumane to track money spent on a child since birth, but Interest Tracker is perfect for parents whose millennial children are overstaying their welcome at home, refuse to get a job, or have been duped into paying a colossal New York City rent so their child can “find themselves” at a liberal arts school. After all, the average millennial income is somewhere around thirty thousand a year, and an increasing number of twenty-something-year-olds either never left their parents’ home or are moving back in.