October 19, 2006 :: The sin of low expectations

Earlier this week, we had an offsite meeting at work. The entire department (about 30-40 people) was in a cramped up meeting room for a day and a half, enduring Powerpoint presentations so dry they would make your skin peel. As you can imagine, I had a hard time staying focused during this marathon of boredom. So when we had the chance to break off into small teams and do a team exercise, I jumped on it. We were in teams of five, and each team was required to have a presenter, a scribe and a timekeeper - standard meeting management theory. I volunteered to be the presenter, because I figured that getting up and talking, even for 5 minutes, would be more interesting than listening to someone else talk.

Given some written goals, our team's job was to come up with strategies to achieve them and some metrics to measure progress; standard corporate stuff. So it's not like I had a fascinating topic to discuss. But I got up, did my talk-through, and went about my business.

I must have left some kind of impression on my co-workers (and I use the term lightly, since I'm a sub-contractor and could be gone at any time). A steady stream of people came up to me later that day and the next day to tell me how impressed they were with my presentation and my public speaking ability. I have taken a public speaking class, but I am by no means any kind of orator. But I guess the bar is low around here. You would have thought I was the next Winston Churchill or something.

Now I have to figure out how to turn this to my advantage. Of course, my project manager left before any of these people made these comments, but I am hoping it will filter around to him at some point. My review is ongoing as we speak, so hopefully this will play well into a bonus or something, and not just more speaking assignments.

posted by Rainmayun at 2:20 PM -

October 16, 2006 :: At the crossroads

First, let me apologize to my readers, if I actually have any left. I haven't written in well over a month, largely because I had nothing to say. The muse had left me. Of the topics and siutations to discuss that did come to mind, too many of them involved friends and acquaintances and necessitated revealing too much personal detail for a forum of this type. I've found something better to talk about, though.

This past weekend, I had the occasion to take a trip to Atlanta, and I spent a day hanging out with one of my old college roommates. I hadn't seen him in a few years, mostly because out of the rest of our "crew" from those days, no one else still talks to him, and so it is hard for me to integrate him into other trips I've made to Atlanta. He's something of a character - charisma in spades, questionable morals (at least until you find out what his philosophy of life is), smart but not genius smart. I've never had too many problems with him, as long as I didn't personally get mixed up in his schemes, but many others have decided they couldn't deal.

Of course, a lot of these judgments are based on incidents that happened as far back as 1992. I like to think I've grown and matured a lot since college, and I try to give others the same consideration. Who here has not done at least a few silly, childish, or slightly immoral things while in college? And if you're raising your hand, I would wager you missed out on a sizable portion of the actual learning experience in college.

Anyway, my friend gave me some things to think about. We caught up on where we each are in our respective lives. He's always been maverick enough not to work for someone else, and he's been involved in putting together a local TV show down there, having a part-ownership share in a nightclub, and other random entrepreneurial activities. He is not yet rich, nor as famous as he wants to be, but out of all my friends with spoken ambitions, he probably puts forward the most effort on a daily basis towards achieving these ends, whatever that requires.

On Sunday, that required tearing down drywall, closet and wall framing and ceiling materials in a commercial property that he's gutting and remodeling to turn into a tv studio. I helped out for a while, pulling and whacking away with a crowbar, an 8 lb. sledgehammer, an axe and (later, when we got a little smarter) a circular saw. He gets a kick out of telling women he workss in "construction", although that's only been for two weeks, and maybe will last two weeks more. For what it's worth, the young women we met outside Gladys & Ron's Chicken & Waffles thought he looked more like a poet. But they also thought I looked like an accountant (while wearing jeans and a sweatshirt), so maybe their judgment wasn't so good.

We also talked about the steady trickle of some of our friends out to the suburbs, to McMansions, to picket fences and dogs and babies and 401Ks and climbing the management chain at Fortune 500s and a comfortable if boring life. His take on it? They have slowly given up on their dreams, one by one, dream by dream, and accepted comfort and mediocrity and boredom.

So I had to think about that. Of course, not every has the same dreams. For example, we talked about another of our friends, who was among the first of us to plunge headlong into marriage, fatherhood, and suburban life. He's always been that kind of guy, and so by the yardstick in his world, he is fulfilling his dreams, and that works for him. I've never really been in that mold, and so while I watch them go down that path, part of me wonders if I am missing out, and part of me recoils in revulsion. While I certainly don't have the same exact desire as my friend to be rich and famous, I certainly don't want to struggle, or depend on anyone else for my livelihood... and that includes the Social Security Administration, Wall Street, an employer.

I have recently been developing a business idea, and trying to think how I can make my current employer my last employer... that is to say, to work for myself thereafter. Of course, any business will have clients and customers, to whom it still must answer, but that is infinitely preferable to just collecting a W-2 salary for the rest of my life. There is great risk involved, and great reward. I can't yet say I am ready to make the leap. But my resolve and certainty in choosing this path is greater than it was.

The way I see it, many folks come to this crossroads once they cross age 30. Most give up the dreams of youth as mere fantasies, and embrace the realities of the corporate life. Some are forced that way, by unplanned pregnancies and hospitalized parents and health problems and generally, the hand they are dealt by life. Not everyone can decide to run off and be an entrepreneur, much less in a "glamorous" field like TV. And yet, there is no reason why I can't... not TV per se, but to follow dreams and pursue things I've always wanted to do. I don't have any kids, no family obligations to tie me down, no particular ties to my city or anything else. I'm smart enough to figure out most things, and conceited enough to think that I can be in the top 15% of any endeavor with enough learning and practice and a little luck.

I always like to think that I would judge my life and the choices therein by the stories I will be able to tell my grandkids (or, at the rate I am going, my grand-nephew's goddaughter's kids). I never really cared much about money for its own sake, only in the things it can do for me, the doors it can open to places to be visited, experiences to be had, and the creation of new stories to tell. I don't care about fame, but if it happens to be a by-product of the other things, and opens more doors, so be it. But the best way I can think of to have those life experiences and tell those stories is to follow the dreams. So I've decided - I will figure out all the things in life I really care about, things I want to do, and from now on, everything I do will be tied to something on that list. It won't be a long list, either, but it will be broad enough to encompass a lot of discovery.

Stay tuned.

posted by Rainmayun at 2:28 PM -