The Mechanical Turk Diaries

You see another penny, another block away, and decide to walk again

Mechanical Turk is not for everyone. You will not make a living off of it and be able to quit your day job. You literally make cents and at the same time, don’t make sense. I would describe it as though you are taking a walk down Mechanical Turk Lane, and you see a penny on the floor and decide to pick it up. You see the flash of another coppery gem, however it’s another block away, but your piggy bank is always hungry, so you go through the trouble of walking the distance. You see another penny, another block away, and decide to walk again. That’s what Mechanical Turking is about - you are virtually walking a block to pick up one penny. The downside is that just when you get to the 5th block, just when you are about to pick up that 5th penny - somebody slaps it out of your hand claiming it was theirs because you weren’t fast enough to earn it or they didn’t like your stride so you don’t deserve it. Why would anyone walk a block to get a penny? Well, what keeps people coming back for more is that really lucky day that you found $1 or even $20 on the floor and that was worth walking the block for. Unfortunately, the next time you spot a greenback, there are others right behind you, to your side or even across the other way that see and want it too. Pretty soon, the street will be so crowded, that you can’t even see the sidewalk.

Jul-29

A story that has already been written by you, enacted by you, lived by you

Your life story! A story that has already been written by you, enacted by you, lived by you as well as read by you yourself! Have a heart-moving story of your life to tell? Click here to share your story with visitors to this page! Why don’t you give us a chance to read it too? After all it is a real-life story! And every real story has all the seeds of becoming a classic in itself. People may love you for what you have written - a moving life story of yours, or a short memoir of yours relating to your family, your school, your friends, your relationships, your struggles, your successes, your failures, your sports that you loved playing, your best entertainments, your adventures, your career, your business, your tryst with money, your unique travel experiences, your romances, your love stories, your sex perceptions as well as your sex problems, your marriage with your beloved when the skies rained flowers, your creative parenting or the problems you faced in it, your health concerns, your cultural fondness, your religious and spiritual faiths, your equation with your society around, your political ideas and preferences, your management skills in office as well as at home with an emphasis upon managing you life in Toto, and your original insights into how to change the world. What is love if not our sensitive concern for the ones we start feeling close to, by knowing them a little bit more closely? The more we know about someone, the more we sense her/him, the more we associate with her/him, and the more we feel concerned about her/him - in effect, the more we love the person. Let us love each other and let us love one another. Since it is love only that is going to solve all the problems on earth! So, go down the memory lane and do not hesitate to come out with the best pearls of your life on the tips of your fingers on the keyboard. We are eagerly waiting for the best life story that is yet to be told on earth. May be - and it quite may be - it is your life story only that the world has so impatiently been waiting for since the dawn of humanity! Since it is not the visible heights that a story measures, but the invisible depths that it fathoms; which make a story great! May be it’s you who has it - the depth! Choose out of any of the following domains of life-facets that your story naturally fits in and submit it there by clicking on its link here:No more now! We have gone too occupied with our families to sense each other without any material concern between the two of us. Family We have turned insensitive. You might try to refute me here. You could say you are very sensitive for your wife/husband or your parents, your siblings or your kids - in short, for your relationships; but the two sensitivities are very different from each other. Rather they are opposite to each other. My sensitivity for my family is emotional in nature. I am bothered about my family members. I am worried about them. I feel anxious when something wrong happens to anyone of them. I feel a sense of duty toward them. In fact, I extend my identity into as well as onto them. The two merge into one.I propose replacing family with community - the neighborhood community having a professionally run community kitchen, which will turn our dining experience tastier, cheaper, more nutritious as well as more colorful as community dining is certainly going to be a more interactive incident than only the same two or three people eating together everyday. Family The more, the merrier! The way to the heart always passes through the stomach! The basic building block of the society is going to be the individual as such, and not family any more. Won’t this new arrangement open new vistas as far as interaction between the community members is concerned? Won’t it give a new colorful dimension to our social life - much more than our family life? Family Won’t this community life turn into an entertaining club all through our mornings and all through our evenings - the club of interaction, the club of knowledge acting as a full-fledged school for our kids as well, the club of all kinds of sports for us as well as for our kids, the club of cultural amalgamation, the club of arts and crafts, and the club of music and dance? We together can afford much bigger and much better space to live a better quality of life than we individually, or with family, can! Something like a five-star hotel where everyone has her/his private corner in one of the suites allotted to her/him - it needs more creativity than it needs money! And the membership of the community is not going to be a fixed one for life, like in a family it is; it would keep changing with a transfer of a member’s job leaving the area or an establishment of a new business by a new prospective member coming to the area. New faces, keeping it fresh and green! Together we can, divided we can’t! Of course, together we stand; divided we fall. Do you feel things should change in life, on earth? If yes, why sit passive? Let’s be in the active vanguard.

Jul-29

And now for another horrible week in the life of… Me

And now for another horrible week in the life of… Me. You can call me Rick. I am a college student whose life is not going as planned or even nearly as desired. I am struggling to keep in touch with my friends from high school but it is very difficult. Many of them are going out and finding new friends from their new schools. Me, on the other hand, have failed classes and am becoming more anti-social by the minute. I was arrested a few months back and am still dealing with court costs and trying to erase the incident from my record. I have about 3,000 dollars that I need to pay off in a relatively short amount of time. To make things worse, I am starting a new job that requires training, but the training is only twice a week. No money is flowing in and the bills are piling up. I also am beginning to gain weight rapidly, I think it’s because I am shutting out to the world and living life in my 14 by 10 foot room. I would like to take more initiative in my life, but feel like I do not get as much support as I should be from those who truly matter. I am debating whether or not to continue going to school, or if I should stay in school, to continue going to the university where I am flunking, or to a community college. I hope life is going better for those who read this. Until next time…

Jul-28

Sometimes our “yard” is the ocean

Let’s see…..what is my story? I’m a nomad. I live fulltime in an RV and access the internet with a mobile satellite internet connection powered by solar photovoltaic panels. So sometimes I do my Mechanical Turk work from California, and sometimes from Florida and all points in between, sometimes from a truck stop on the Interstate and sometimes from a wilderness location in one of our country’s beautiful National Forests. It’s an interesting life, and a simple one, as living in a small space like an RV doesn’t allow you to accumulate much in the way of consumer goods. My husband and I have lived this way, with no fixed home base for more than fifteen years. I wonder sometimes if other nomads do this work…..I’ve never encountered one. It used to be a lot harder to stay connected while on the road. Before cell phones, we would stop somewhere once or twice a week and call a relative collect to make sure all was well with the family. Now, today, they can email us, call us on our cell phone, and we can be in as close a contact with friends and family as if we lived in a suburban house. We have all the comforts of home in our little condo on wheels, but our “yard” is really, really big. Sometimes our “yard” is the ocean, and sometimes it’s the desert, and sometimes it’s just a truck stop parking lot, but wherever you go, there you are, and we find interesting things about every location in which we find ourselves. Best wishes to all the other Mechanical Turks out there!

Jul-28

I will never forget the day that changed my life

I will never forget the day that changed my life. I was going to visit friends at college and the drive is about 75 minutes or so. I drove for about an hour and had about 15 minutes left to go when out of the blue I was hit by a drunk driver. I don’t remember any of the accident, but from what I was told the driver came into my lane like he was taking a turn and I t-boned him in the passenger side. 2 Life-Star helicopters were needed at the scene. Over 90 minutes after the accident he still had a BAC of .23! I went through 7 hours of surgery, 12 days in the hospital, 3 months out of work and 9 months of physical therapy. Talk about life changing. He had a suspended driver’s license, suspended insurance and no assets. He had a history of DUI issues before. He ended up getting 5 years, suspended after 2 with 3 years probation. He spent a year in jail, a year in a half way house. I got $20,000 from my insurance for uninsured motorist and $11,000 from him for out of pocket medical expenses, value of my car and lost wages at work. I am now a bartender, part-time, hoping to keep anybody else from having to go through the horrible experience that I had to go through. Needless to say I don’t drink and drive and think about this accident EVERY day. You should too.