Jan 20, 2007
Making My Mark

PIGS, as time goes on and the world scrapes you down to size one terrifying and painful inch at a time, you start to realize that there are few Total Victories in this world. The key to success with any endeavor is capitalizing on small gains, incremental improvements. If you go after something head-on, seeking to win everything in one rush, you're most likely going to end up with a headache and little to show for the effort.

Or at least this describes me. Some of you Olympian bastards may effortlessly achieve everything without breaking a sweat, and I hate you. Stop reading this immediately. I am not here to amuse the Olympians with my pathetic struggles, I am here to amuse my fellow Strivers who will laugh at me, yet weep themselves to sleep tonight because they see themselves in my antics, though they deny it, even to themselves.

Anyway: Small gains. I've been trying to apply this new approach to my Rampant Time Leakage, which is, at last calculation, robbing me of about 23 hours out of every day. I know I shouldn't complain, really, about all this shit I gotta do, because there are people in this world whose to-do lists start off with don't be killed and end with find something to eat within the next week, so me bitching about working eight hours a day and trying to squeeze beer-drinking in on my lunch hour seems almost. . .silly, suddenly. But then if I started to think globally like that this zine would cease to exist, and that would be a terrible loss to posterity, don't you think? So: Small gains. I'm trying to get back some time every day by whittling down the amount of time sucked out of me by common, everyday events. Most recently, I'v been experimenting with my signature.

Like many coddled, self-centered people, I learned early on to take some pride in my signature. That magical moment when you realize that your name has a value, and you spend hours practicing your signature like the future asshole you are. Ah, memories. When I was a young pup I worked on that signature, and even created a nifty ligature of my initials to use in secret projects. But recently I've come to realize a dirty secret of the world: No one gives a rat's ass about your signature, bubba. No one. You might think that your signature is your unique mark, used to verify your identity and certify your stated wishes, but you're fooling yourself. No one—not the banks, not the courts, no one—cares about your signature.

Don't believe me? Try this experiment: Next time you buy something with your credit/debit card, sign your name “Donald Duck”. Then wait and see if the charge is questioned by anybody. Or if anyone even comments or notices it. I'll bet you no one will, because whether or not you sign the damn credit slip means nothing. Absolutely nothing. This is true just about everywhere, too—anywhere you sign your name without a notary present to verify the signature, you might as well doodle a picture of Calvin peeing on Hobbes for all the attention anyone's going to pay to your signature. At one time, signatures had an almost magical connotation, of course, but in this day and age of computers the cache is lost.

Once I realized this, I saw an opportunity to save a few seconds of time every time I had to sign my name, which is typically three or four times a day since I buy a lot of things using my debit card. The plan was simple: Instead of signing my full name, complete with flourishes, I'd simply scrawl something squiggly and leave it at that. I've been doing this for months now and guess what? No one has ever questioned a single charge on my card. While the implications for evildoers are clear, I figure this hasn't actually changed anything: Obviously people could have forged my signature easily any time before this, since no one is actually paying attention, so what difference does it make? So, over the course of a few weeks, my standard signature went from this

to this

to this

and, finally, to this

Now, the time savings of scrawling a single squiggly line with an aristocratic flick of my wrist instead of a lengthy, practiced spelling of my name in vaguely cursive lettering is minimal, sure. But it adds up—I did specify small gains, after all. And, after all, there's no effort involved—there's actually less effort, so it isn't costing me anything. If I save a minute a day from something like this, can can identify 10 things to gain from, I might walk away with just 10 extra minutes, but that's something. That's one tumbler of whiskey, appreciated. That's half an inning of baseball.

Besides, for a man of my limited and withering abilities, this sort of victory is really the best I can hope for beyond finding change on the street or discovering I am secretly the long-lost prince of a magical underground kingdom. I'll take what I can get.