In his grossly inaccurately named five-volume Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, Douglas Adams came up with an ingenious character named Wonko the Sane. Wonko called himself that because he had determined that he was the only sane person on earth.
After coming to this conclusion, Wonko decided that the rest of the world belonged in an asylum, so he built a house to contain the entire world. He built his house inside-out. The inside of the house looked like the outside, while the outside of the house consisted of painted walls, furniture, etc. In this way, by going “into” the house, Wonko and his wife (”Arcane Jill”) could live on “the outside of the asylum.”
So how, you might ask, did Wonko determine that the rest of the world was insane? Well, one day he was unwrapping a toothpick and noticed that the wrapper had printed instructions on how to properly use it. He decided that any society that needed instructions on how to use a toothpick was certifiably insane and should be committed to an asylum.
It is with tremendous amusement and not insignificant trepidation, therefore, that I present you with a link to an article (complete with demonstration video, no less!) found this week on no less august a publication than the Wall Street Journal.
Even disregarding the last five months of fantasyland economics and nationalization, this article proves to me beyond a shadow of a doubt that the world has finally gone completely and irrevocably insane.
If you need me, I’ll be at Home Depot getting some building supplies. Heck, I’ll even be contributing to an increase in New Home Construction.
Ever been to Disneyland and gone on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride? Even if you’ve only seen the movies, you will almost certainly remember a striking tableau with some unsavory pirates in a jail cell desperately trying to attract the attention of a nearby dog. A dog who just happens to be holding the key to their cell in his mouth.
Ignore, for the moment, any alleged transgressions these pirates may have committed. Think instead about their mental state. Here are people who desperately want something that is, quite literally, just barely out of reach. They can see it. They can see someone else getting to use it. Their inability to obtain it is preventing them from doing anything other than sitting in that cell, eating what is provided to them and being told they’re lucky to get anything at all.
Now imagine being in that mental state for four consecutive months and you’ll have experienced the job I just left.
For four months, I watched other people coming up with fascinating and creative ideas. Big ideas. The kind where when someone says, “this is my Idea,” you can hear that “Idea” is capitalized. Ideas. Big projects, often with big budgets. Sometimes I even got to chip in a little with the conceptualization. But that wasn’t my job.
My job was to:
take notes on conference calls
follow the instructions of the creatives,
get quotes from vendors,
write descriptions for the contracts,
estimate the time and costs,
re-estimate the time and costs when sales people griped that it would be too hard to sell,
set the schedule given the reduced amount of time available,
reset the schedule when people complained about the deadlines and how little time they were budgeted to do the work,
send out reminder emails that everyone had missed their deadlines,
send out another reminder email that everyone had missed their deadlines,
send out an apology email for being so difficult to work with because I called attention to the fact that everyone had missed their deadlines,
open purchase orders,
receive and approve invoices,
take responsibility for everything coming in on time and on budget despite being told to reduce the time and budget because the sales people said so,
and all while making sure that I hit an approximately 75% billable time mark, despite being told that I had to reduce the hours I could spend on the project so the sales people could sell it.
Sorry, I got a little carried away. The point is that I was the caged pirate, being told to do accounting work and be happy that I had a job at all, while watching creatives do what I really wanted to be doing.
Now, before you feel too sorry for me (and I know you’re on the verge of tears), I put myself in the cell.
I took the job knowing the basics of what I would be doing, though admittedly not having a clue what kind of firestorm I’d be dealing with on a daily basis. I thought I might get to do at least some of the smaller creative projects (that never happened), but I did understand that the bulk of the work would be project managementish in nature. But I also was told that it was merely a foot-in-the-door job and that I would be moved rapidly into a creative role.
So I took the job and I did it and I did it well. But it wasn’t what I wanted to do, and it only got worse once the company decided to start firing people because of “the current economic condition.” My workload doubled, staff morale plummeted, and proving one’s necessity via billable hours became more important than ever. Couple that with me being a corporate jester smartass in a political climate worthy of an HBO drama and you’ve got one heck of a fun workday. It was The Office meets Oz with me, your host, Joel McHale.
It’s amazing how much you can put up with when Something Better is dangled just out of your reach.
It quickly became very clear to me, however, that the creative job carrot was actually the key on the other side of the cell door. (Take that, metaphor police!) Even if times had been good, I don’t think the plan to move me into creative was ever communicated up the food chain. It was certainly never mentioned to me again.
So I left.
There was a time in my life when I would have stayed on for at least a year or two, silently hoping things would get better while knowing deep down that they wouldn’t. I would have ended up seriously depressed and transferring my stress and anger somewhere else, probably in the form of bitching to my wife. Or smoking crack. One of those. And neither of those is a “Plan A” option.
But I am, in all likelihood, past the halfway point of my life and don’t have time to waste on things I don’t want to do. I feel bad enough playing World of Warcraft, and I like playing World of Warcraft. Why would I want to spend one more minute in a dead end job?
In some ways, my decision was an application of a lesson from grad school: there’s no way to recover sunk costs, and you shouldn’t factor them into a decision. In this case, I decided that between not liking the job, having concerns about the internal culture, and having a very different philosophical approach to business from that of the company, that no amount of time spent in the job would ever make it better, nor should the amount of time I’d been on the job play a factor in deciding to stay or go.
So I start my new job next week. It’s taken about two months to get everything lined up, but this time, there’s no cell door and no dog taunting me with a key. I’ll get to use my creative, communication, and business skills from the start, in an environment much more conducive to my way of working. It’s going to be an invigorating and inspiring challenge and I can’t wait to get started!
Avast, ye scurvy dog! I’ll be takin’ that there key, if you please.
Yes, I’m still around and have things to talk about but haven’t had the energy to write with my normal verbosity, and I’m not a good enough writer to pare it down just yet. I do appreciate those of you who have let me know you’re reading and urge everyone to create an account. As I’ve said before, I want this to be a dialog. Or at least a benevolent propaganda disbursement center.
I have been noticeably absent from this blog for the last couple of weeks. Well, noticeably may not be the right word since there are only a couple of you reading, though I must admit, it’s a lot more of you than I expected.
First off, welcome to the four of you who created accounts. Mike and ZanoT, I apologize for the delay in getting your initial comments approved (part of my anti-spam defense) - I thought the server would email me about the queue, but there appears to be something wrong with my site configuration that I haven’t tracked down yet. Future comments won’t need approval.
Now then… my absence. I’ve been taking a “vacation” for the last two weeks. I’ve actually accepted a position with a marketing company and was taking a decompression break before starting work this Monday. During that time, I’ve gotten my composition studio more or less completed and started mucking about in Logic Pro Studio. There is much to rant about there, but I’m going to hold off until I have my bearings with the software. It is likely that my gripes are simply due to either a lack of vocabulary or a differing UI/workflow philosophy than I’ve been used to with previous sequencing packages.
I also got a game called Bioshock for the Xbox 360 and have played through the first few levels. It’s a fairly standard first-person shooter, but the environment is fantastic. It’s set in 1959 in an underwater city where something has gone horribly awry. The storyline was written by someone who apparently skimmed Ayn Rand (the city’s founder’s name is “Andrew Ryan” for you anagram fans) and came away with a superficial and negative understanding of objectivism. As a result, Bioshock features a hyper-capitalist anarchy where a few psychotics end up running things thanks to some nifty genetic advances. Apparently self-preservation only kicks in for the bad guys.
But it’s all fantasy, right? I’m not really a Russian thug who steals cars, shoots cops, and picks up hookers, but I sure enjoy playing Grand Theft Auto, so why not go with the flow?
My favorite part of Bioshock is the world design. It’s a wonderful 1950s art-deco revival. Think “The Hudsucker Proxy” meets “The House on Haunted Hill.” The sound design is appropriately chilling and insane. The first major level takes you into the medical wing and there are few things creepier than a blood-spattered hospital room.
But I’m going to have to press pause on all of those things, at least for a little while, while I get my career back on track. I’ve been thinking about my next topic and will try to get it written before our weekend guests show up tomorrow.
Thanks for the comments so far (both here and elsewhere for those of you who haven’t registered). I look forward to hearing more from all of you.
Well of course I am. I’ve been going through nothing but phases for my entire life. But this time I’m aware of it and it feels a little different. This one started a few years back for a variety of reasons (many of which I suspect I’ll write about down the road), but can be best summarized as “the end of the acquisition phase.”
Or more accurately, “how did I end up with all this crap?”
Actually, just watch this (at least the first minute and a half), then continue reading.
Prior to our move, Mary and I sold, donated, or trashed a lot of our stuff. We were moving from a 3,500 square foot house into a 1,500 square foot apartment and there was no way it was all going to fit. So the great purge of aught-seven began.
In some cases, it was really nice stuff. In other cases, it wasn’t useful to us, but would certainly have been useful to someone else. More often than not, however, our reaction was, “why did we ever think we needed that?”
Take a moment and look around whatever space you’re currently inhabiting. Look critically at each thing. Why did you buy it? How long have you had it? When was the last time you used it? As we went through our stuff, the litmus test for keep or not came down to a highly complex mental equation that can’t possibly be described without a psychic link. The closest summation I can provide is that if it hadn’t been used in a year, it was a very good candidate for oblivion unless it was either very small or very expensive. The latter became my personal prime criteria. “Given that I haven’t used this [insert obscure object here] in over ten years, how much would it cost to replace it if I ended up needing it again?
The worst part of all of this is that I am largely helpless to prevent this ongoing collection of objects. I am genetically predisposed to packrattery. As evidence, I present a ziploc bag of peaches.
Peaches
Around 2002, my parents moved. Among their belongings was a large coffin-style deep freeze that they bought (used!) in 1978. The thing was indestructible. It was also apparently magic. If you asked my mother what was for dinner on any given day during the two decades following 1980, she would tell you, “leftovers.” I never could remember the last time she had cooked an “original” meal - it was always “leftovers.”
It is my belief that she purchased a pound of ground beef in 1979 and placed it in the freezer which then dutifully produced leftovers for the next 23 years until it was at last unable to maintain the wormhole connecting it to whatever parallel universe feeds on ground beef and secretes leftovers as waste energy.
So what, you might ask, does that have to do with said ziploc baggie full of peaches? Well, the freezer wasn’t entirely full of leftovers. There were various other things lurking at the bottom under the fog. Past the occasional tub of ice cream or package of frozen burritos, buried beneath the sedimentary layer of paleolithic leftovers, you would find glistening ziploc time capsules covered in an inch-thick protective layer of razor-sharp, quartz-like ice crystals. Leather gloves were required to extract these without needing stitches. Included in this treasure trove was a quart-size baggie full of some sort of yellow-sliced fruit pieces and labeled, simply, “Peaches - Alabama.”
We hadn’t lived in Alabama since 1982.
Put aside, for the moment, the horror of realizing that we were looking at a twenty year-old bag of sliced peaches. Ignore that these peaches were eligible to vote, almost of legal drinking age, and just five years shy of being able to serve in the House of Representatives. What is most amazing about these peaches being in the freezer is that my mother transported them across state lines three separate times.
These peaches, which were grown, harvested, and purchased in Alabama, moved with us to Georgia, Virginia, and Texas. Thinking about this logistically, every time we moved my mother would have to have taken the peaches out of the magical leftover-spewing deep freeze on moving day, stored them in a non-magical household freezer, lovingly placed them in an ice-packed cooler for the interstate drive, transferred them to the ordinary freezer in the new house, and then placed them back in the safety of suspended animation below the leftover zone when the deep freeze was finally delivered by the moving truck.
Three states. 2,326 miles. Twenty years.
Peaches.
PEACHES!
It is this biological heritage, this genetic baggage handed down through the eons, that makes it impossible for me to get rid of things, especially shiny, sparkly, technology things. Mary once guilted me into throwing out a largely useless, tiny 3″ IBM green-screen monitor. I tossed it in the dumpster in a fit of rebellious “oh yes I CAN SO throw things away” and then went to bed. After an hour of tossing and turning, I put my clothes on and fished it back out. I actually went dumpster diving to retrieve a miniscule and obsolete monitor. Despite it now having a nervous twitch and being slightly out of focus, I still kept it for another three months.
Since moving to Milwaukee, I have gotten pretty good about throwing at least some things out. Granted, I still have every videogame system I’ve ever owned dating back to an Atari 2600 and an original Pong game from Sears. I still have half of the books that were in my library prior to the move. I still have every shred of paper from my MBA program.
But I’m getting much, much better and I’ve thrown a lot out. I’ve been carting some of these things around since high school: homework, previous versions of software, Happy Meal toys… all finally losing their grip on me. And with each bag sliding down the trash chute (or going in the recycle bin for all you horrified hippies out there), I feel just a tiny bit of weight lifted from my shoulders. And I’m about to get serious about not having stuff. Really serious.
Payments
For the last ten months, Mary and I have only had one car. We gave my car to a nephew before leaving Texas with the intention of buying a new one here once I got a job and/or we sold the house. But during that time, I’ve grown to like not having a car. I haven’t really missed having it, I don’t have a payment, and it’s one less thing for me to deal with.
But it looks like my job search may finally be ending, so I spent several hours this past weekend looking at cars online. I built dream cars. I contemplated tolerating an econo-box. I even looked at a couple of hybrids just for grins (even with higher gas prices, they’re still not as cost effective).
I constructed an Excel spreadsheet to give me projected fuel cost calculations for each model. I incorporated insurance and maintenance. In short, I did my homework.
And after all of that I don’t think I’m going to buy one.
But apparently it’s not for the reasons that most people go carless. I did a quick Google search on “living without a car” and was dumbfounded by the level of smug, self-satisfied, self-righteous, earth-loving, tree-hugging, global warming hippie crap I found. Instead of the tips or general overviews I was looking for, I found everything from anti-corporate diatribes to Al Gore disciples screaming that it was my “responsibility as an American” to get rid of my car to some pretentious soccer mom patting herself on the back for “riding the bus with the poor.”
The following are not reasons that I going car-free.
To reduce my “carbon footprint”
To “do my part for the environment”
To avoid depleting our precious remaining fossil fuels and natural resources
To impress everyone by “going green”
To be a “good world citizen”
To express solidarity with the poor
To feel smugly superior to those helpless prisoners of Big Oil and Madison Avenue
To satisfy my responsibility as an American
To stick it to the man!!!
You get the picture. Nope, my reasons are entirely selfish, capitalist, and greedy. In a nutshell, I don’t want to spend that much money, time, or mental energy on another piece of stuff.
Here’s a quick fiscal breakdown. I’m going to use two scenarios: “Best” and “Worst.” Best consists of a totally generic, lifeless, soulless, econo-box. The specific model doesn’t matter because they’re all the same. They look the same, they cost the same, and they get about the same gas mileage. But they’re relatively inexpensive. Right? To put it in the absolute best light, I’m using only the highway mileage estimate.
“Worst” for this comparison is a tricked out Nissan 350z. It has bluetooth, gps, cameras, satellites, cruise control, and a small thermonuclear device if you get the premium package. (Carpeted floor mats, however, are extra.) It gets you there and leaves you with a vapid smile on your face along with an unnatural craving to smoke a cigarette. To make sure that this harlot gets her due, I’m using only the city mileage estimate.
In both comparisons I assumed:
a commute distance of 5 miles (it’s actually 4.2, but I rounded up to be conservative)
250 days (50 weeks) of commuting
10k discretionary miles for a total of 12k miles/year (probably too high)
60 month financing at 6%
a gas price of $4.50/gallon (possibly too low)
annual insurance costs of about $700, though I think that’s low, even for the econo-box, because I apparently live in the worst zip code outside of Tehran.
four oil changes per year at $50/each
a registration fee of $80/year
As anyone with a car knows, I’m probably underestimating my costs. I’m not allowing for major non-warranty repairs, accidents, tickets, depreciation, etc.
Best (Econobox)
Worst (350z Succubus)
Approximate Sale Price
$15,300
$35,700
Annual Loan Payments
$3,600
$8,532
Fuel
$1,704
$3,125
Total Monthly Cost
$524
$1,053
Total Annual Cost
$6,284
$12,637
Total 5-Year Cost
$31,420
$63,185
So the cheapest possible option for me is still over $500/month. Over five years, I’m looking at spending between $31k and $63k - roughly double the sales price of the cars!
So how do I get to work? Well, there are a few ways:
Walking/Bicycling: Free, 45-90 minutes, only in good weather, my schedule.
Motorcycle (45 mpg): $30/month, 10-15 minutes, only in good weather, my schedule.
Bus: $75/month, $900/year, 35-45 minutes, year round, their schedule.
Taxi: $458/month, $5,500/year, 10-15 minutes, year round, my schedule.
I could also combine those with other options like having Mary drop me off/pick me up or carpooling with a co-worker who lives in my building.
There are four primary things making this a feasible choice for me:
Short commute
No kids
Living downtown and within walking distance to most anything I need
We do already have one car
Are there tradeoffs? Of course. There are times when there’s just no substitute for having a car. Most of those, however, involve getting more stuff and that, of course, is what I’m trying to avoid.
So I’m going to try it. I’m quite certain there will be days that I will be cursing myself. The benefit to you is that there will be a high probability of entertaining rants. On the whole, however, I think it will be worth it . The fiscal savings that can be applied directly to getting out of debt combined the mental health benefit of not carrying around a giant bag of peaches for the next ten years is just too seductive for me to pass up.
