Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 75

“I’m trying to start another company. The first one failed. I...

“I’m trying to start another company.  The first one failed.  I tried to get a regular job for awhile but I just couldn’t do it.  There are a lot of downsides to being an entrepreneur.  No boss to ask for help.  No regular paycheck.  My girlfriend and I have put a lot of our plans on hold.  But at least I’m in control.  I’m free.  I own the value of my work.  At my old job it was the same thing over and over.  Same office.  Same people.  Even if you get a promotion, it’s just a different set of responsibilities.  A different brand next to your name on LinkedIn.  Nothing meaningful has changed.  The only thing that’s changed is how people see you.  And what is that worth?  When I was in college I met all these people with dreams of starting NGO’s and changing the world.  But then they had kids, and got a new condo, and a new car, and they got stuck.  Everyone keeps saying: ‘one day, one day.’  But you ride the metro in the morning and you see all these people who’ve been working the same job for twenty years.  They look empty almost.  We all know that nothing takes eight hours to do everyday.  But that’s the culture.  We’re stuck in that structure.  We’re stuck in meetings.  Or killing time on our phones.  Just waiting for the weekend.  And what’s the point of it all?  To buy new things.  To seem important.  I just can’t do it.  I have to find a way out.”
(Montreal, Canada)

“I’m twenty-seven. But I’m starting to feel like a grumpy old...

“I’m twenty-seven.  But I’m starting to feel like a grumpy old man.  I’m negative and cynical and pessimistic.  I feel detached from people.  I even feel detached from myself.  I sometimes view myself from the outside, like I’m dealing with things in the third person.  It’s been like that since childhood.  I’ve always come across as cold.  People tell me that I was a little shit as a kid.   My family called me ‘King’ because I’d have anger fits and always get what I want.  But even with these difficulties I did well in school.  I was able to graduate college.  And now things are going well.  I have a good job.  I have no housing issues or major stresses.  But still I feel so negative all the time.   And I don’t want to be this person.  I’m not actually cold.  I’m just stuck in a mindset.  I’m not focused on being kind because of unaddressed issues.  My mom was in and out of my life as a kid.  She had bipolar and maybe schizophrenia.  She’d whisper to herself.  She’d scream in public.  She’d disappear for months a time.  Last week I went to her funeral.  Everyone was crying but I’m so detached from things that it barely affected me.  I didn’t even tell my close friends.  All of us hung out after she died, and I didn’t say a thing.  Because people tend to back away when you share.  It’s not a criticism against them.  I’d do the same thing.”
(Montreal, Canada)

“I never saw myself as a smart person. Definitely not book...

“I never saw myself as a smart person.  Definitely not book smart.  Maybe smart in other ways.  I never liked school all that much.  No matter how hard I tried, I could never reach past a B.  I even got a tutor in high school, and she was great, but my grades didn’t really improve.  I was intimidated by how well other students could write and speak.  I didn’t think I’d ever reach that level.  I figured that college just wasn’t for me.  After graduation I took a year off and backpacked through Southeast Asia.  I loved it so much.  I didn’t want to leave.  When I came home I decided to major in history, because at least I could keep learning about Asia.  I’m almost finished now.  I made it through with about a ‘B’ average.  Last term I even got nominated for an award by my favorite professor.  His name is Arne Kislenko.  He’s a little bit of a hard ass.  He expects a lot.  He doesn’t even post lecture slides.  But he has stories and tidbits for everything.  Even though I almost failed his class, I registered for two more because I learned so much.  I wrote my final paper on Thai Foreign Policy from 1932 to 1945.   He handed it back with a note that said: ‘See me.’  He told me that he was nominating me for the Dean’s List Essay Award.  I was the only student he chose.  I didn’t win, but I didn’t care.  It showed me what I could do if I write about a subject I care about.  It was the first time I’d ever been recognized for something academic, and it came from the smartest person I know.“  
(Toronto, Canada)

“I had an incident at the end of last year. It was during exam...

“I had an incident at the end of last year.  It was during exam time.  I was on edge, and irritated, and it was kinda like a storm.  This one kid kept bothering me.   Just bothering me.  And I sorta went blind with rage.  I didn’t actually hit him, but I grabbed him aggressively.  Then I started hitting the desk, and yelling about how I hate myself, and how all I do is annoy people, and how I know that everyone hates me.  I felt so much shame afterwards.  I was disgusted with myself.  I used to have so many emotional problems when I was younger.  I’d yell.  I’d cry.  I’d throw tables and chairs.  But none of that had happened since primary school.  I made a promise to myself.  No more outbursts.  The incident happened on Friday, so I was able to go straight home.  All weekend I thought about suicide.  On Monday they called me into the office, and I confessed everything.  I told them I was in a bad place.  They sent me to the hospital for a few days.  When I came back to school, a lot of kids approached me in the hall.  They told me they were worried.  And they hoped I got better.  I just kept saying ‘I’m fine, I’m fine.’  But one girl told me that she’d cried during cheerleading practice.  And that shook me a little bit.  I laughed it off at first, but later I started thinking about it.  It’s easy to say ‘get better.’  But I never thought someone could actually cry for me.”          
(Montreal, Canada)

“I just finished my first year of college. I expected it to be...

“I just finished my first year of college.  I expected it to be like a 90’s movie where I’d sit under trees, read books, and meet a nice boy who’d show me his yacht.  But I’m not a good protagonist.  My life would be a terrible movie.  I sit around in my dorm room.  I sleep a lot.  My grades are terrible.  I got one ‘B,’ but that’s it.  The rest were C’s and D’s.  My parents have always been supportive, so there’s nobody holding me back.  I’m just not handling my freedom well.  I’ve got to learn how to keep promises that I make to myself.  The funny thing is that I hate letting other people down.  I never want to seem unreliable.  Because if you disappoint other people too much, they’ll turn away from you.  But I have no problem letting myself down.  Because I know I’m not going anywhere.  I’ll always be here.  And I have a whole lifetime to work on my issues and bad habits.  So I keep putting them off.  But that’s got to stop.  I don’t want things to get so horrible that I’m forced to change.  So I’m going to join a study group.  I’m starting to eat out less.  I’m going to exercise more.  I’m not drinking every weekend. And from now on I’m going to know my boundaries.  I’m not talking to boys who treat me bad.  This summer is my redemption arc.”
(Toronto, Canada)

“I come from Iran. Twenty years ago I went through a bad...

“I come from Iran.  Twenty years ago I went through a bad break-up, and afterwards I went to the top of a mountain to think.  There I found a pack of hungry dogs.  I bought some chicken and began to feed them.  They wagged their tails.  There was happiness in their eyes.  And that was enough for me.  I began to come back once a week.  Then three times a week.  And I started to learn about the terrible life of dogs in my country.  Some of the dogs began to disappear, and people would tell me the municipality had killed them.  That’s when I decided to create the first dog shelter in Tehran.  I ran it alone for fourteen years.  I had to buy the food, pay the salaries, nobody would help.  Many people in Islam think that dogs are unclean.  It was very difficult.  At the time I owned a shop selling tires, and half of my income went to the shelter.  I grew very depressed.  Our shelter could only handle one hundred dogs, but 10,000 were being killed every year.  It wore me down.  I didn’t have the energy for it.  Two years ago I handed off the shelter to a brave young girl, and I moved to Canada.  I’m working as a barber now.  But I still send money to the shelter.  And every day I come to this bench and feed the squirrels.”
(Montreal, Canada)

“You could make a horror movie about my life. My mom died of...

“You could make a horror movie about my life.  My mom died of cancer when I was five, and my father tortured me.  I mean tortured.  Really tortured.  Chained me to a chair.  Slapped me with leather.  It was like Jack Nicholson in ‘The Shining.’  Every single day.  He’d never say a thing.  He’d just kick down my door and come after me.  I was born into hell.  I spent twelve years alone with a demonic presence.  And now I’m nervous.  Really nervous.  I play the piano to calm myself down.  I always have these thoughts they aren’t even my thoughts: fat fuckers, fucking bastards, fuck all of them.  They’re my father’s thoughts.  The violence is inside of me.  My energy is black, black, black.  I used to kill little birds when I was a kid.  Then I moved on to cats.  By the time I was seventeen I was beating the shit out of everybody.  Bigger than me, taller than me, I didn’t care.  It was more torture to keep it inside.  If I kept the violence inside I’d mutilate myself.  Suicide myself.  A few years ago I set a guy on fire.  It was 3 AM.  He was passed out beneath a bridge.  Just some druggie.  I didn’t feel a thing.  I felt like laughing.  If anything, I felt free.”
(Montreal, Canada)

“I came from India in 2011 to get my Masters, and ended up...

“I came from India in 2011 to get my Masters, and ended up working for a major tech company in San Francisco.  It was a lucrative job, but there was always a looming cloud of uncertainty.  Half of the people in my department were international workers, mostly Indian and Chinese.  All of us were on visas, so our future in America depended upon keeping our employment.  I don’t think the managers intended to push us harder.  But the international workers were more afraid, so we took more abuse.  It just became part of the culture.  We were given extra work, and the only way to keep up was to kill yourself every day.  I just couldn’t do it.  Eventually I burned out and moved to Vancouver.  Canada was very welcoming.  My wife and I have residency already.  I’ve started my own business.  I have all the clients I need.  But most importantly I have a home.  And I’m not talking about a brick structure.  I mean a place that I’m allowed to be.  Because once I had that, all my other problems seemed smaller.  I could start thinking long term.  Because no matter what happens, at least I know I’ll be here.”
(Montreal, Canada)

“I hated going out with them because something would always...

“I hated going out with them because something would always happen.  It was usually on birthdays and special occasions.  I was painfully shy, but they weren’t shy at all.  They’d scream at each other in restaurants.  He’d never hit her in public because he was smarter than that.  He’d save that until we got home.  I felt like a soldier growing up.  Even the quiet times were stressful, because things could go wrong at any moment.  One time he chased her around the house with a knife.  Another time he broke her finger.  We’d always go to my grandmother’s house after the big incidents.  Those were the calmest times of my life.  But after a few weeks he’d always show up with flowers, and Mom would say: ‘OK, we’re going back.’  I tried to tell her that it wasn’t just her.  That we were suffering too.  But her answer was always the same:  ‘We can’t survive on our own.  And he doesn’t do it to you.’  Things changed once I started going to college.  I became more confident.  I felt powerful for the first time in my life.  I packed his bags.  I took his house keys.  I went to court, filed the forms, and served him myself.  Mom’s doing much better now.  She looks twenty years younger. She’s going out with friends again.  She’s taking theater classes.  And I just finished my first year of law school.”
(Toronto, Canada)

“I’m closing the chapter with my last job. I was a research...

“I’m closing the chapter with my last job.  I was a research engineer.  I really loved the work, and I felt like I belonged, and my colleagues were like my family.  But recently we were bought by an American company, and a lot of people were laid off.  Maybe that’s a normal thing in America, but in France we’re not so used to this mentality.  So it was quite a traumatizing thing for me.  Many of these people had families.  Some of them were older and won’t be able to find new jobs.  It kept me up at night thinking about it.  It made me question a lot of things.  So a few weeks ago I decided to quit.  And before I start a new job, I’m going to travel by myself for two months.  Just to turn the page.  This is the first day of my journey.  I’ve never done anything like this before.  I’m nervous, I’m anxious, I’m excited.  I have no idea what to expect.  I’ve never spent this much time alone, and I know I’ll have to think about stuff.  Personal stuff that I’ve never had to think about before.  Because I was too busy with work.  But those things were always there, whether I thought about them or not.  So I think I’m doing something that I should have done a long time ago.”
(Montreal, Canada)