Angry Vladendar

In the few spare minutes a day I get to think about something other than work I like to think about all the business ideas I could pursue if I wasn’t successful. One of them would be a “realist” calendar for someone in charge of shit (people|technology) that spends the day twirling a giant never ending mess into a cake masterpiece.

I’ve been posting some stuff I tell myself when I have a rough day on Facebook and every time I do a bunch of people like it and email me about it. Here is the one from last night:

When all else fails you… just continue working on all the other problems around it and fix everything you can.

I don’t think many people understand where these come from but it’s typically after I have tried and tried and tried and tried and tried and am left with 59 options of which 55 will totally fail no questions asked and the remaining 4 are mediocre. I’m typically wrong about my assessment too so I try to share what’s going through my mind. How do I get to this point?

If someone ever came into your office and said something so inconceivably idiotic that you started to laugh at the thought of it.. and they didn’t join in.. you know what I’m talking about. Something that is so hilarious until you realize it just happened to you.. and your options are murder, alcoholism or something else.

My Idea

I would build a calendar.

You know, kind of like the images and sayings that make stupid people feel better about themselves.

Unfortunately, motivational crap comes in three flavors:

1) Business – For managers that can’t inspire their workers so they settle for the next best thing, images that make the employees think they aren’t slaves (see Walmart break room).

2) Prepubescent Teen – Someone out there loves your ugly ass, you just haven’t stalked enough people yet. Cute, but doesn’t help with work.

3) Religious – Oh my imaginary friends come together now and relinquish me from this f’d up situation because I’d rather believe in a feelgood lie than face the messed up reality.

Of the three, I’d probably opt for the #2. Because I’m still searching for that fountain of accountable people and hardware that doesn’t suck.

But if I had a calendar.. Vladendar.. Here are the rules:

1. It would have an end of the world day. There is no better way to establish influence over people than pretending to know when the world would end.

2. Most of it would be filled by tragedies and starving people… cause no matter how bad and sad you may feel about how your day is going, someone else is definitely having a worse one so pull up your panties and be a big girl.

3. Instead of “on this day in ….” or national holidays, I would list creative ways to kill yourself. Cause let’s face it, if you aren’t contemplating murder you don’t need to be motivated to do anything. And if you are.. don’t half ass it. Man up.

4. There would be no weekends. If you own a business or manage a large product line you know what I mean.

5. There would be at least 4 weeks of blank pages. Those are for you to fill in as you want for at least 1 month of the year that you aren’t doing anything productive and just dealing with @$#%. Use it to write suicide notes.

6. One day of the year would be your day. Bring your Speedos to work day. Why, because fuck em, that’s why. If you can’t enjoy what you do and have to act it, well.. there is a reason why you’re not in Hollywood, mkay?

7. Back pages would have instructions from the Anarchist Cookbook. This way every day you could tear a piece, flip it over on your desk and leave it there. Folks that clean or hang out in your room when you’re not around would become a lot more hesitant to give you shit.

So that’s my idea and I’m taking it to Etsy as soon as this software biz thing falls apart.

Copyright © Vlad Mazek, 2013.