Constant Stimulation

I good friend and colleague said something to me a couple of months ago when I was discussing my general career path. “Peter,” he said, “you’re the kind of guy who needs constant stimulation.”

His words stuck with me, and I’ve had a chance to come to terms with their truth in the interim.

One of the reasons I love travelling so much is because it is the ultimate in the constant stimulation game: when you wake up every morning with a blank slate, ready to attack a city, find a new place to stay, figure out how to make train reservations in Spanish, and so on, it’s like a pure adrenalin rush all day long.

The last week has been, for me, like coming down off a high: it’s a rough landing making the transition from constant stimulation to the workaday pace of normal static life.

I used to describe my goal as being to create a “vacation-like life.” Most people, when I told them this, thought it meant that I wanted to laze around by the pool a lot. What it really meant is that I wanted, in my daily life, the same sort of Gatling gun of mental stimulation that being on vacation affords.

If I can somehow work to combine the camraderie of summer camp with the frenetic pace of the moving vacation with the focus that the market demands, I will have attained the charmed life I seek.

Comments

Kevin's picture
Kevin on May 26, 2003 - 22:44 Permalink

When I was born the secret of success was having done that.

When I was ten I thought the secret of success lay in a deadly wrist-shot.

When I was twenty I was sure the secret of success wasn’t talent alone and began thinking it lay in something like fame or influence or what lies between them, and if possible, on wholesome ground.

When I was thirty I was certain there was no wholesome ground between influence and fame and that the secret to success was in the Internet community.

When I was forty I was shown my own childhood dream in the Internet and it’s potential and began to think that the secret of success was somewhere out there and that all one has to do is become a modern day “Columbus” and set out to find an “America” but, this time, do it on purpose and make that Spaniard fade into history (actually Portuguese wasn’t he?).

The secret of success, I now know (harumph! he said confidently), is recognizing it when you have it. In describing what you’re seeking, from here, you’ve described what you’re doing.

Marcel Proust's picture
Marcel Proust on May 27, 2003 - 15:23 Permalink

As I once said, “The real voyage of discovery consists not of seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”