And mostly dead means partially alive.
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.
I’m going through a phase.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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.
Note: With this entry I introduce a new category: The Sharpest Tacks. While I consider myself to be relatively patient and easygoing, there are times when sheer stupidity, be it from a person, a law, a system, etc., just astounds me.
For the last six months, I’ve been conducting a job search. One of the inevitable questions I get is “what is it you want to do?” The trouble is, I don’t really know. I want to do lots of things, but have trouble narrowing it down to a sound-bite sentence or mission statement. Mostly, I want to learn, grow, do some good, and help people and companies achieve the best that they can. I’m not all that particular about the particulars, though.
My career has been a series of fortunate events. I’ve enjoyed nearly all of it and learned a great deal. I’ve been an actor, a writer, a secretary, a designer, a systems administrator, a musician, a producer, and a consultant.
The downside to all of this is that it’s very hard to put me in a box, and that’s what HR departments have decided they should be doing in the hiring process. Narrow the job description’s focus and requirements until it’s so sharp you risk getting a nasty papercut just by looking at it. Get the HR person, ironically titled a “generalist,” to check off enough boxes on the list and you get an interview.
In one of the final (and most useful) MBA classes, my teacher, a former Fortune 500 CEO, said the following in nearly every lecture:
It wasn’t the first time I’d heard that. The true talent at most companies will tell you that they want multi-skilled employees with the ability to shift, change, and learn. Specialists have their place, but it’s the renaissance employee that makes a company flexible and responsive with an eye on the big picture.
Everyone wants a renaissance employee in their company. Nobody wants to hire one.
And by “nobody” I mean HR.
The renaissance employee can’t be quantified or measured. There are few, if any, objective metrics. It takes a subjective eye, an analytical streak, and some intestinal fortitude to connect the dots and determine whether an applicant is truly multi-talented and has a positive attitude or just someone who hasn’t been able to hold down a job. And even a highly talented hire may not fit in culturally.
In short, there is a not-insubstantial element of risk in hiring this type of worker, and HR isn’t exactly a poster-child for risk taking. And for part of its function, it shouldn’t be. When navigating the regulatory quagmire, you don’t want to jump out and pet the alligators. Unfortunately, most of the HR groups I’ve come across have let the regulatory nanny part of their job bleed over into everything else, when a totally different skill set is required.
Now, I’m not claiming to be a renaissance man, just someone who has a broad experience base and wide variety of interests that makes it difficult to easily classify my core talents, skills, and aptitudes. Put that up against a narrow-focus job description and you have a recipe for disaster.
This is actually the second time I’ve conducted a job search. The first was in 2003 following a layoff. The worst part of the search was dealing with HR folks. Here is an actual conversation I had (I am not making this up) with one particularly obtuse rep after being rejected for a position for which I was actually overqualified.
Me: I was wondering about this rejection letter I got. It says I’m not qualified for the job, but I meet all of your listed qualifications.
Her: One moment, Mr. Toler, let me pull up your application. . . . . . . Ah. Here we are. Yes, this job requires a college degree.
Me: I have a college degree.
Her: You do? It’s not on your resume…
Me: Yes it is.
Her: Where?
Me: Under “Education” where it says BFA, George Mason University, 1990, Cum Laude
Her: A BFA is a degree?
Me: (pause) Yes. It’s a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
Her: Oh. Well, you might want to spell that out for future applications.
…
In my head, I was thinking: “Sweetie, here’s a tip for you. If you see the letter ‘B’ near the word ‘University’ in the section titled ‘Education,’ THERE’S A PRETTY GOOD CHANCE THAT IT’S A FRIGGIN’ DEGREE!!!”
Again, I am not making that up. That is an almost word-for-word transcription of the conversation.
These are the people holding my career in their grubby little gatekeeper hands? These are the people to which one of the foremost hospitals in the world is trusting the hiring of top talent? Or ANY talent for that matter?
Ultimately, I abandoned my search and started my own consulting practice. While I didn’t make $40 million dollars and retire to a private island, I was able to pay the mortgage, grow the practice, increase rates every year, and get an MBA, so I consider it a success.
Sadly, my HR experience in the current job search has been largely similar to the first. While I haven’t run across anyone as delightfully dim as the young (I hope) lady mentioned above, I’ve met plenty of check-box police who are looking desperately for some reason to throw my resume out of the pile.
Like the one who decided that my 4+ years as “Marketing Coordinator” and my 5 years as (among other things) a marketing consultant didn’t satisfy their need for “7 years marketing experience.” Her title, by the way: “HR Intern.”
Or the one who felt I wouldn’t be competitive for a job and an interview was pointless because I only met 13 of their 15 experience requirements, despite the fact that the job had been listed for eight months.
Eight.
Months.
Forget what this says about those individual people. What does it say about the companies they work for? I normally take the approach that I’m interviewing the company to see if I want to work with them, not the other way around.
With that in mind, let’s look at my interactions with these three companies again. What do their presumably best efforts look like?
The first company trotted out someone who couldn’t even figure out that I had a college degree. Really? That’s the first impression you want to make? If the position requires higher education, why isn’t the person reviewing resumes qualified to recognize higher education?
The second company showed that they were incapable of connecting relatively clear dots. If you can’t add 4 and 5 together and find that it’s more than 7, I probably don’t want to waste my time working for you, much less see your books or salary increase calculations. Worse, they sent a rejection letter for a 6-figure job from an intern! If that’s how they try to impress and attract experienced applicants, imagine how they treat their employees.
The last company now looks a little fussy, doesn’t it? Eight months of not having someone fulfilling a strategically important position, yet dismissing a candidate who meets nearly 90% of the qualifications without even spending thirty minutes on a phone interview to see if there’s a fit? Oh yeah - planning sessions must be a joy at that company.
Now, I’m not putting all of the blame on HR. I’ve made some pretty big mistakes myself, but that’s another essay to come.
Finally, lest you think I’m simply bitter, I present to you OTIFOTI: Opinions That I Found On The Internet™
Today I turn to Cheap Writing Trick #78: Quoting a Classic. The following is a fairly oft-used passage from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.
‘Cheshire Puss, . . . would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?’
‘That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,’ said the Cat.
‘I don’t much care where–’ said Alice.
‘Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,’ said the Cat.
The most common interpretation of this is that you need to know where you’re going if you’re going to get anywhere. It’s frequently used as a conversation starter for planning, goal setting, and efficiency discussions. But what most people never include are the next two lines in the passage:
‘–so long as I get SOMEWHERE,’ Alice added as an explanation.
‘Oh, you’re sure to do that,’ said the Cat, ‘if you only walk long enough.’
Now we have something a little different. It’s not always easy to know what the destination is, especially when exploring, brainstorming, or doodling. If we always focus on the goal, the destination, we miss opportunities to discover, learn, or have “happy accidents.” But it’s not enough to wander. You have to wander long enough to find something.
My past creative efforts (at writing especially, but in many other areas as well) have nearly always fallen by the wayside because I stopped walking, as it were. When a destination wasn’t immediately obvious to me, I decided that the journey was probably pointless. Unless you work for a certain spacing guild, what’s the point of traveling without moving, after all?
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been reflecting on the progress I’ve made in various areas of my life, and it’s been somewhat… well… depressing or disappointing aren’t the right words, but they’re in the neighborhood. I haven’t written or recorded any music in a few years. Most of my design and video projects have become work instead of fun.
For many years now, I’ve held my own work in relatively low regard. I’ve long held myself to have “Salieri Syndrome.” Bear with me for a moment as I explain that for those of you who haven’t seen Amadeus. In the story, Salieri is a locally celebrated composer and a peer of Mozart’s. After hearing the perfection in Mozart’s music, he hears only mediocrity in his own, ultimately proclaiming, “I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint. Mediocrities everywhere, I absolve you!”
When Trent Reznor released Pretty Hate Machine in 1989, I was simultaneously thrilled and crushed. He had released the album I had been working on, in both style and topic, for nearly a year. Worse, he had done it far better than I ever could have. It was one of the ultimate “I wish I’d said that” moments in my life. It was one more confirmation of my own internal assessment of mediocrity, despite praise from those around me. I’ve struggled with this internal critique for a long time now.
Two days ago, however, in a fit of synchronicity, I came across a link to a YouTube video by Ira Glass titled “Working Through The Suck.” I’ve embedded it at the bottom of this post and highly recommend that you watch it, especially if the previous paragraph struck a chord with you. The essential message of the video is that all creatives go through a period where they don’t like the quality of their own work, and that it takes tenacity to stick with it until you get really good. He further asserts that this period can take years to get through.
This was an “Ah HAH!” moment for me, because I thought I was the only one. And it’s not just music. I’ve discounted all of my creative abilities. I’m constantly waiting for someone to expose me as a hack, a fraud, because I see things from other people that strike me as genius. How can I possibly compare? How can these other people not see it?
So I have resolved to begin walking again. My entries here are part of a multi-pronged offensive against my throng of internal critics. I’m beginning to find new things that are interesting to write about and that, hopefully, will be interesting to read about as well.
Enjoy the video…
