When you are young, you pretend. You pretend you are a professional basketball player. You pretend you are a race car driver. You pretend you are a knight. A super hero. A rock star. I once even pretended I was a car dealer. I wore a suit and  carried around a set of car keys. I talked to my grandfather about the types of cars I had available.

You don’t think you’re being a fraud. It’s harmless play. After a few hours you go back to being a kid. You eat dinner with your parents. You take a bath, brush your teeth, comb your hair. You get into bed and your mom reads you a story.

And you grow up. And when you’re in college you get to think about what you really might be. You have no idea, because the types of things you pretended to be when you were 10 are no longer viable options.

So you sort of float into what makes sense. Your dad knows a guy, who knows about a job. Need to have a passion for “land use,” whatever that means. But this guys seems alright. He’s a grown up who has things figured out.  So you give it a shot and you like it. You’re actually pretty good at it and you have a passion for it. You see how people in this business make a positive contribution to the world. The best of them are perceptive about how buildings, streets and parks impact people’s lives, and they use their creativity to come up with viable solutions to real problems. So you run with that.

But the urban planners and architects are not their own masters. The people who control the money – those are the masters. The developers! But when you really dig in, it’s the private equity funds, and the banks, and the high net worth individuals who really control the money. So you play to the test. You don’t want to be at the mercy of some  other master – you want to be the master. If you control the money, you can do all these cool and interesting things that naive planners just dream about. So that’s what you do.

And here you are. On your way. But controlling  some money doesn’t necessarily make you anyone’s master. It doesn’t mean you control anything. It more likely means that the money controls you.

So if you’re having to do these boring mundane things and put up with this bullshit, well in that case you might as well get PAID. And a part of you hopes they say no. But you’re fucking good at this, and they need you. And they’re making money hand over goddamned fist, so ask for the stars and take the moon as a consolation prize.

But still. A part of you hopes they say no. Because that will make it easier. It’s justifiable to all those people to whom you feel you need to justify things (you being at the top of the list): I left because they weren’t prepared to give me an equity stake. So I might as well pursue projects where I can get that on my own.

And the reason you feel that way, the reason that you don’t just fully hope with 100% of your being that they give you a meaningful equity stake so you can continue to help build the company and do quite well for yourself in the process, is because you are righteous. You want to do good in the world, while doing well. And you have some fuzzy idea in your head, reinforced through what people write in Urban Land magazine and what they say at conferences, about the “double bottom line” and the “triple bottom line” and “doing well while doing good,” and blah blah  blah. But in your experience at companies led by people who say these types of things, it’s all basically bullshit. At the end of the day it’s money that makes the whole machine go. Making a decision that maybe isn’t that great for the environment or for human beings won’t cost you. But making a decision that isn’t good for the real bottom line is not fucking acceptable.

So they’re all still pretending. And rather than scoff at that, why not just admit that it’s a perfectly valid coping mechanism. In the same way that you wouldn’t ask a child in the midst of pretending he’s hitting the game winning shot for the Chicago Bulls in game 7 of the NBA finals that they’re just a four foot tall white kid on a driveway in Van Nuys, and go inside and do something useful rather than just pretend, why tell all of these people that they should stop pretending they give a shit about the environment and social equity and city building? The pretending very well may be what keeps us going. And isn’t it better than being a cynic?

Up at 5:30 am. Meditate. Kale frittata. Shave. Gym. Shower. Desk. Coffee. List. Check, check, check. Tick, tack, toe. Keep motivated. Moving forward by creating the illusion that this is a fun game. No need to get overly excited about the outcome. Even keel. Level headed. Just business. But so tedious sometimes! …Just a quick look at ESPN.com to pass the time… Curbed LA, WSJ, Facebook, Eater, Saveur, REI… No! Back to work. Focus on checking things off the list! One foot in front of the other.

Stop.

Be grateful for what you have. You are so unbelievably fortunate. You are in the 99.99th percentile on the George Clooney Scale (in which the entire human population is ranked, from a blind, limbless beggar in the streets of Calcutta to George Clooney). So stop whining about having to motivate yourself to do the work for which they pay you handsomely. Better a few trivial items to tick off on a 3 by 5 card than a shovel and a ditch to dig.

On the other hand, if all of the other lucky fucks were just grateful – if they didn’t have that feeling that  things could be even better – then we probably would still be living in caves.

I honestly do not know whether that would be better than our (i.e., humanity’s) current situation.

They say that humans are engaged in a crude struggle all the world over. Whether that struggle is for food, shelter, security, washing machines, iPhones, or self-realization depends on where you happen to be born. So a great majority of lives are defined by suffering. And money, above a certain income that is lower than you would think, doesn’t make you happy. What really makes you happy is serving others. Serving a purpose higher than yourself. But human beings probably won’t make it another 10,000 years, maybe not even 1,000. So what matters then is the small improvements you can make in the lives of others. The extent to which you can give joy, hope, and security to other people. To children. To single mothers. To families who didn’t grow up with all the advantages you had. To those who come to the US seeking a better life and end up living in overcrowded housing in South LA.

He comes home from the business trip and puts his brief case down in the dining room, leaning it against the buffet so that it will be easy to pick it up in the morning and take to work. He takes his shoes off before coming into the house, but will come back and pick them up later – after taking the dog out – and bring them upstairs and remove the insoles and put shoe trees in them so that the leather stays fresh. He will carry his roller bag upstairs and lay it on the carpet in the bedroom and unzip it. He will remove his dirty clothes and put them in the hamper. And remove his dopp kit and liquids, gels and aerosols in their quart zip lock bag from the roller bag and dump the liquids, gels and aerosols into the dopp kit and put it in the bottom drawer by the bathroom sink. And he will eat something, because even though it is late it has been five hours since his last meal and he is hungry. Something sensible. And he will talk with his wife about the trip. About the restaurant they went to and what they ate, and the honky tonks on Broadway, and going for a run in the humid morning. And most of all the spicy fried chicken they had, which he sent her a picture of in real-time, before he ate it. And they will talk about what she did, and pet the dog. And then they will go to bed because it is late and he has to be downtown tomorrow for a 9 am meeting.

And it will go on. And in some ways it all sounds quite lovely, and in some ways very boring and mundane. But it is what it is for now. At least until next spring, when they will go to Greece with her parents, and he will decide whether to switch jobs, and maybe they’ll move to a Ojai, or Petaluma, or Sunland. What you think about it, and whether you feel suffocated or optimistic about tomorrow, next week, next month, next year depends on whether you enjoy every single day. And whether you like the people you work with, and whether you have interactions that leave you smiling and positive, or whether life just wears you down until you’re raw and mean.

The clouds stretch out into the distance like a flat white desert. There are divots and dry creek beds and places where a meteor has fallen from space and punched a hole in the desert floor. I say it is like a desert but really it is otherworldly, like the surface of another planet. Or just clouds. I feel that if I stare hard enough at the horizon I can see the earth curve. My thinking is interrupted by lightly salted peanuts, mini pretzels, and Biscoff cookies. I study the Biscoff packet to determine its country of origin. Found it: Belgium. Staring out the window I think about how I am in a metal cylinder with wings speeding across the continent, above the clouds, which look like their own planet but are just an ethereal sheet floating above the earth, which itself was created by a random combination of elements that got stuck together and spun and twirled for a period of time so mind numbingly long that they turned into everything we see in the world and everyone in it. All the trees, all the oceans, all the animals, all the people and everything they created, which they say will soon include artificial intelligence with the ability to take over the world and dominate human beings the way that human beings have come to dominate and fuck over the world that created us.