LittleWyvern.com

Yes it is true. I am back from Australia. I have seen the other side of the world and returned to tell the tale.

It was fun (some of the time), interesting (some of the time), and incredibly hot, humid, and uncomfortable (for what seems like ALL of the time). I was completely burned out on kangaroos, koalas, and salt water crocodiles by the fourth day… and just like that Australia had lost its novelty. The quirky perversion of Americana that I initially found charming ultimately gave way to boredom. Eventually the constant sensation of “just like home… but not” led me to helplessly wish that I actually WAS home.

• I want to watch football not cricket.
• And while I’m at it I want more than four channels on TV (especially since three of them apparently show cricket 24/7).
• Dammit, I want to understand the rules (or point) of cricket.
• I want to eat hamburger meat that isn’t 60% onion flakes.
• I don’t want the girl behind the counter at McDonald’s to laugh at me because I asked for a “Sprite” and not a “Sproyt!”
• I want one dollar to equal a dollar and not some multiplication of the day’s exchange rate.
• I want high speed internet access to actually be “high speed” and not be charged by the minute.

…Ugh, it really wasn’t that bad. Maybe three weeks is just too long for a vacation.

For descriptions and photos of our trip to Australia you should visit Altworld.net.

After a week of staying in various Australian hotels and condos (3 different hotels in 2 different cities in only 7 days) we boarded a cruise ship and settled in for the next two weeks. Unfortunately, and I probably can’t avoid sounding like a snob with this one, but cruise ships just don’t do it for me anymore. They are basically just giant hotels on water, and living inside a hotel for two weeks – cruise ship or otherwise – can’t possibly hold my attention. It didn’t really help matters that the average age on the ship must have been somewhere in the low-to-mid sixties. The live entertainment was clearly catered toward the mean, the typical show being some perverted Frankenstein of American pop culture from the 1950′s as seen through the lens of an Australian. Not only was everything WAY before my time, but even the stuff that I could recognize was very… off. So that pretty much left me to find entertainment in the casino, but as you might expect of someone who lives in Vegas and is on a first name basis with the entire staff of a local card room, a ship-board casino loses a lot of its luster. And unlike every other cruise that I have been on before, the rest of the passengers seemed to have a general aversion to gambling. Most nights the casino floor was nearly empty save the dealers and a handful of bored degenerates like myself. There was no excitement to be found. Once again I found myself spending a lot of my time in a “casino,” the whole time wishing I were back home and inside the real deal.

Anyways, that was my general feeling during most of the time that I was in Australia. This post makes the trip sound depressing and horrible, but I assure you that it wasn’t. There were a lot of cool things that we saw and did, and I’m glad that I made the trip, but I have no interest in going back again any time soon. It isn’t really Australia’s fault either. That is pretty much how I feel about every place I go that isn’t home. I’m glad to see it, but always eager to leave. I find little novelty in just being someplace, and so once I’ve seen and done the particular things that I came to see and do… it’s time to move on.

It also didn’t help that being across both of Earth’s meridians meant that I was near-completely cut off from the rest of my world. Of course, leave it to the Fates – and Lukas – to pick that exact window of isolation to drastically alter the nature of my life back home.

To properly appreciate the situation, you need to understand that Lukas and I have been talking about forming a company together since some point shortly after the two of us met for the very first time. From the very moment of its imagination our company has always been referred to as “Schemes, Incorporated” and initially the plan was very concrete. Our individual responsibilities were clearly defined: Lukas would steal things and I would sell them. We would dream up elaborate plans (or “Schemes” if you will) that ultimately would end up with Lukas stealing something and me finding some way to then sell it for money.

Of course, over time we have modified that business plan a bit… but the goal remains the same. “Schemes Inc” has long been a mutual rallying cry for the most idealistic version of our imagined futures. It is the incarnation of what we each wish our careers, our lives could be. In college we found in one another someone who was similarly disillusioned, both with the rigid structure of college and the accepted path into and through the real world that followed. But unlike a lot of other people with similar claims, we weren’t simply lazy (although we both skipped a lot of class). Rather, I think we both saw in one another a profound lack of purpose resting atop a fiery desire to DO. Lukas did his best to flunk out of college – almost succeeding at least once – but in the end we each managed to harness our otherwise unfocused powers just enough to graduate. Still lacking purpose and direction we both reluctantly entered society, masking our disappointment with feigned delight at Casual Fridays and company holiday parties. The dream lived on, however, as after a long day or a bad week one of us could be counted on to remark to the other, “Don’t worry. Once we get Schemes Inc going, everything will be a lot better.”

Eventually our jobs and lives took us to opposite ends of the country, but it is the nature of our natures that particular locations and occupations can’t change who we are. I found myself increasingly lost and unhappy with work. Talking to Lukas it was clear he was feeling the same way, and not at all surprisingly it was for very similar reasons.

Maybe it is just our arrogance – likely as a fault and not a virtue – that we both always think that we can do just about everything better than everyone else. However, it is a disappointing fault of reality that I can’t always have everything my way.

No matter where I worked my bosses would often ignore my advice, even when it was asked for. Quite often the Powers-That-Be would choose to go “a different way” than I believed to be best. The idiotic reasoning behind many of these choices is beyond the scope of this particular post, but for someone of my temperament that can be a very hard thing to tolerate, and an impossible one to enjoy. I mean no disrespect to anyone in particular, but there is a limit to the number of unheeded warnings I can issue. I take no pleasure in saying, “I told you so.” Even worse, I take no pride in doing good work towards a bad goal. There is a limit to the amount of wasted effort I can pleasantly provide before losing faith – particularly when I felt very little passion for the job or project to begin with.

But what if I actually DID care about what I was doing?
What if I were the one making the decisions?

Nine months ago I quit my job. A matter of minutes later I called Lukas and told him to do the same. “This is our chance,” I told him. “Schemes Inc can happen RIGHT NOW.”

His enthusiasm was less than I had hoped for.

I knew he still shared the dream, but I also understood that he was never as whimsical and impulsive as me. We both understood the difficulties that I was proposing, and the raw practicality of NOT doing it. I obviously couldn’t force him to accept the offer, so I didn’t press the issue when he turned me down. Soon after that conversation Karen (his best-friend slash ex-girlfriend slash its-complicated) was diagnosed with cancer and his life became impossibly complicated. Although I continued to tease him a little bit, I just assumed that I would have to go this particular road alone.

And then I went to Australia.

One day while browsing the internet at $0.80/minute I received a retardedly long email from Lukas politely informing me that he now wanted to accept my offer, eight months after it was first made and rejected. (Whatever. I knew it was only a matter of time. My methods are insidious and my will cannot be denied. I planted the seed in his mind and discretely nurtured it to the point where Lukas probably even thinks that finally saying Yes was his own idea. Time is not an obstacle for me, it is a weapon.) Over a dozen or more similarly long emails a rough proposal was mutually hammered out, the end result of which is that in eight hours I am boarding a flight to New York City. I will spend a few miserable days in Hoboken, NJ and then spend a few more miserable days driving with Lukas back to Las Vegas. He has quit his job and sold off most of his worldly possessions to come live in our spare bedroom and work full-time as the Vice President of Schemes, Inc. (job titles TBD)

I can’t go into any details as to the actual business plan of Schemes, Inc right now (particularly in an open place such as this), but I will say that we will almost definitely have to come up with a different company name. There is something inherently shady about a business named “Schemes” – although that is exactly why we gave it that name during our freshman year. I guess Tony Brooks Productions will cease to exist (even though it never legally began), but in its place will soon arise something far bigger and better.

Sincerely,
LW
Founder, Owner, President, Dictator, Decider
Schemes, Inc