Showing posts with label failure. Show all posts
Showing posts with label failure. Show all posts
Monday, September 5, 2011
Seven Things a Guaranteed Success Wouldn't Care About
Rejection and Failure
If it didn't at all bother us to look stupid, to not accomplish what we set out to do, or to be told we were not good enough for that play, that magazine, that girlfriend, we'd have just as much energy to invest in the 500th attempt at something as we did for the first or second attempt. And with nothing to make us even a bit reluctant, we could get to attempt number 500 in half the time as it would take when we need to pause for a while and recover from the failure.
How Long Something Takes
This is a cousin to rejection and failure, but need not include either one. Sometimes we know that a specific undertaking will be time consuming right from the start. Even as small success is made ever so often, and we have not had particular obstacles thrown in our way, the nature of a mission, goal, or assignment requires so much of our present and our future that the sheer size of the time investment can freeze us, or make us abandon it right away. But if we never cared for a even a moment about how long it took to accomplish something important, even if it took 25 years, we'd be more inclined to take more journeys towards more destinations.
The Status Quo
I myself am already quite well positioned to not give a damn about this one. I am after all, Too XYZ for most conventions. My success has not been anything near where I want it to be in most aspects of my life, and that may or may not be because of the select places wherein I do let convention, have too much influence over what I say and do. But when when we go forward with an idea with not even the slightest consideration for how well it may fit in with what everyone else is doing and has done for decades or centuries, our focus can be 100% dedicated to realizing what we have set out to do, and 0% of our energies are lost to determining how to adjust it to outside expectations.
The Presence of People in Your Life
I have often written of introverts, and by extension have commented on extroverts. How the former sometimes wants nothing more than to be left alone when crowded, and how the latter wants nothing more than to be surrounded by lots of people when left alone. (Except of course, when the opposite is true.) But what if, whether introvert or extrovert you didn't much care one way or the other about who was or was not around for the lion's share of your time? House full of people? Fine. Haven't seen a soul in weeks? Fine. To put it another way, imagine if your own sense of happiness, value and enjoyment remained unchanged by who did or did not come to visit you? Was a constant even in the midst of guests? Sustainable through outward abandonment by friends? It would mean that your entire perception of yourself, and hence your dedication to what is important to you would not in the slightest way be determined by the thoughtfulness of others. The decisions, (often cold, thoughtless and random) to come in and out of your life would have no bearing on same. That's a freedom most people can only imagine.
Sleeping Conditions
One of the things I most envy in any person is not their talent, or their looks, or their money. Those are all sometimes a strong second place, but in truth, I would rather be able to so as a few people I know can do and just "decide" to sleep. My father it seems was one of these people, as are a few of my friends. They find a bed, couch, cot, or if needs be a bathtub, fold their arms, close their eyes and are asleep for the night. I shit you not. Maybe there is a party going on. Maybe a freight train goes by every hour. Barking dog. Could be pitch black or maybe a neon sign from the strip club across the street blinks into the room for the duration of the nighttime hours. It just doesn't matter to such people. When it is time to sleep, they do it.
Imagine the power and convenience of this. You could go on any trip, find yourself in any circumstance, be spontaneous and go an on adventure, or your presence could be required somewhere odd in the case of some kind of emergency. And when the time allowed and you made the choice, you could lie down and decide it was time to sleep, without caring where you are or what was going on. You could recharge your body and mind nearly at will, and be ready to go full blast the following morning, no matter what. It sounds like a minor thing, but imagine the near infinite flexibility of a life wherein you could get the sleep you needed no matter what.
Where You Live
Not unrelated to, but more important than not caring where you sleep is not caring where you live. You will of course do a lot of sleeping where you live, but you will also do a lot of the other mundane everyday things at home. A lot of time, thought an heartache is put into where one should live. (As someone who is hoping to move to another apartment before the end of the year, I am well aware of this.) But supposing you had no living preferences? You could feel at home anywhere outside of a battle zone. (Desert, urban, or otherwise.) You could go where you could afford to go. Whatever was open and available, you'd take. No view? No problem? Third floor, eighth floor, dirt floor, it would all be the same to you.
The ability to imbue any domicile with the trappings and spirit of "home" is indicative of someone who can create their own atmosphere, or more accurately carries one with them wherever they go. Someone such as this would never be homesick, never long to return to someplace they left, and could more quickly feel a part of whatever community in which they found themselves. In so doing they would be able to mine the benefits of blending in far easier than others.
Success
Yes. It is now time for the irony portion of our program today. But consider what sort of freedom one might gain if they were not so much concerned about whether or not they are a success. And I do not just mean financial matters. Imagine someone who could care less if they are seen as a thought leader, spiritual guru, social commentator, or famous anything. What if someone were to be concerns only with being kind, and feeling warmth? not from other people, because that would dip into the previous category of not giving a damn about the company you keep. But warmth of spirit.
Suppose that someone cared only for increasing the amount of light in the world, whether or not it got them a job? What if a person could live in a homeless shelter, or in the proverbial "mother's basement" and gave not a second thought to whether or not his friends, potential mates, society, a particular church, or the blogosphere considered him a success? Would that person not eventually be free to spend his time however he damn well pleased, with whomever the hell he wanted, without having to worry about personal brands, rate races, nailing the interview, pitching the article, or any of that damn noise that keeps most of us up at nights? Would they night eventually find themselves in a place that also valued such an approach, surrounded by like minded people? And what is success but the ability to improve both one's life and somehow the lives of others or even the world through the use of one's unique powers and talents? Success would come to someone who didn't care to look for it.
********************
In conclusion, a person who could pay no attention at any time to all seven of these things would, I feel, be nearly bullet proof. I don't think such a person exists as a whole. I am certainly not he, as I can lay claim to apathy for only a portion of what I describe here. I imagine that would be true for most people, as many of these things are very seductive, prevalent, and possibly genetic. Yet as I have thought about it I have determined that although no one person may fit the bill entirely, each person is in fact made better if they can find a way not to care at all about at least one or two of these. If you can do that, you are still far ahead of most people in the Western World, who eat sleep, breath and piss all seven of these things.
Did I miss anything? What would you add to the list?
Monday, April 18, 2011
Still Too XYZ After All These Years
This post is angry. With reason. Yet, if you are one of those who feel anger is not an acceptable emotion, do me a favor and simply opt not to read this. For today I am angry. Tomorrow I won't be. Today I am weary. I one day will not be. My life is complicated, and if yours is not, or if you feel mine need not be, read no further. And certainly click away now if you judge an entire person by the days, weeks, or sometimes months of unhappiness with which they must sometimes deal as they try to find meaning in anything.
Too XYZ continues to be a very apt name for this blog, as the concept continues to very much apply to me in just about everything I do. There are very specific elements to my psyche that prevent me from doing specific things. Like the color blind attempting to interior decorate, or the tone deaf opting to offer singing lessons, there are things which no matter how valuable, I cannot do.
And I cannot do them because I am either missing something, or something is damaged, or atrophied within my being. Now former friends and supporters of my work have often climbed upon the highest of horses and declared from their lofty position that unless I suffer from a disease that is documented somewhere in the annals of either psychology or medicine, I have no right to claim occasional crippling difficulties with my life. That in the absence of such a diagnosis, any problems, difficulties, or obstacles I have faced as I try ferociously to succeed in a contrary world are 100% my own making. And hence unless I can prove otherwise, I can and must fix everything all by myself.
It is as though they were the principal in the school of life demanding from me a note from my doctor proving to them that I cannot come into school that day (a rather condescending requirement if you ask me).
Yet in some ways, Too XYZ has been my attempt at such a letter. Addressed not to the individual, but to the world, and ideally, those who share my view of same. Those with the same issues, whether or not there is a Latin term out there to describe them.
This blog is a place for me to be frank about my obstacles, internal and external. A place to express perceptions, plans, strategies and simple observations. A place to seek advice, and gain perspective.
Yet, as I have oft written about in previous posts, I usually just get the same perspective over and over again. And that perspective can be summed up in one tidy sentence.
Change what you are and what you do, because it currently isn't good enough.
The type of blog this is. My content. The way I market. The questions I ask. The help I seek, and the people from which I seek it. The problems I face and the solutions I offer. Even down to the font of my business cards, the nature of my profile picture, and the articles on which I choose to comment. No matter what I share with people, or no matter what of other people's advice I observe passively (by going to their blog, or reading their articles), it can just about all be summed up by that italicized sentence I posted above.
I guess if I had a response it would be "Easy for you to say."
Because to tell you the truth, whether it be the big gurus like Godin, or the CopyBlogger guy, or some of the people I have encountered personally in my social media travels over the last two years, I have noticed a pattern; basically none of them had to start what they are doing from Absolute Zero. I don't mean the lowest temperature in the universe, but having zero resources, zero friends, zero experience and zero money when they set off. That is the place I am coming from, and still struggling to get out of. I have not yet succeeded. That isn't to say I won't. Just that I haven't, and that I still don't know how.
Oh I know. Each of the people I am thinking of, whether familiar or famous, (and I am sick to realize that some of the people with which I am familiar are becoming famous by being great at being fake) will quickly point out just how hard it was when they started out. They had to have a big scary cry over quitting their 80K a year job when they started freelancing. "Could this work? What was I doing? Am I crazy?" But their 100K a year spouse reminded them to believe in themselves, and they pressed on. And they will tell you the horror stories of just how dumb they were at first. How they didn't know code, but learned it quickly because they had to. Or hated the idea of marketing but learned to love it. How they were introverted once, but became extroverted, and now can work the room with the best of them and make their fucking millions.
I have called it before, and I will again. Bullshit.
In each of the cases I am thinking of, the "rock star" in question, (whose ass everyone on the internet is happy to kiss in hopes of the magic rubbing off on their lips) had some kind of lucky break, or some kind of helping hand. And I don't mean advice, or a referral.
I am talking about, nobody surviving was based on their need to freelance. They were not in the poor house when they started up their business. They didn't deal with people who viewed them as unpleasant, cold, mean, or not worth the investment at every turn. They didn't have difficulty making people interested in them. Something within them or something about their situation over which they had no control put them ahead.
Now they don't like to think about it that way, because that means god forbid that perhaps they are not ninjas after all. That their own powers might not have brought the world to its knees before them. That they may not be quite as charming or "epic" as they need to believe they are to get through the day.
No, they may not say it, because they may not believe it on the inside, but they had some form of luck or circumstances to help them along. And for good measure they'll throw in an officially diagnosed eating disorder as the grand Deschapelles Coup of their own magnificence.
It is why I have all but stopped reading the blogs I used to read when I first entered the social media landscape on a regular basis. I was at one time subscribed to about 15 blog feeds or so, each of them it seems packed with advice for the freelance writer, the self improvement minded, the spiritually bent and the artistic. I have since canceled all of these feeds. Not just because they became boring (they did), but because I finally realized that despite the language used, such sites really are rather elitist in nature. They are for the most part not worried about helping you, so much as they are interested in making sure people succeed in the same way that they did. (Or at least the version of the way they did that they entertain in their own heads.)
In short, if you don't think you can do it their way, the advice is, "You have to. That's the world, bub."
And when you try to learn from them by asking them how you can be more like what they are, without changing what you are? When you get any response at all, (which I usually do not, regardless of how humble my approach), you get bitchy emails back that mock they very audacity you have shown in even suggesting that you are coming anywhere near their own level of commitment. Arrogant, bile ridden correspondence which made it clear that after reading the first three questions you asked them, they had no desire to even read the rest of your email until you "grow up and learn the ways of the world".
That's networking, to me, folks. Happens all the time. And the previous example is culled from my actual life, not hyperbole. It really happened in much the way I describe. And this wasn't even one of the gurus. Not yet anyway. This ass was a "friend" of mine. But like so many before her in this social media misadventure of mine, she was high on talk and low on action when it came to helping people. Very much willing to bend over backward to take what I had to offer her, but was too busy making her millions and rubbing elbows with the other internet elite to take a moment to offer me something of which I was in desperate need when I came to her.
Typical one-sided "what have you done for me lately" networking hypocrisy. And all because, as far as I can tell, I couldn't do what she had done. Or he. Or they. Or perhaps you? Because to tell you the truth, I shy away from advice these days. Even when I seek it, it is almost out of reflex. Because there is only so much of that sort of "tough love" a person like me can take. And if people only really want to reach out and help those that can in some way help them, that isn't help. That's bartering services.
Whether it be marketing, social media, freelance writing, contracts, fiction, networking, I can't do what everyone says I must. Why? Because I don't have the resources, the knowledge, or the resources to obtain the knowledge. So I seek to do it my own way. That is the message I have gotten from all the big wigs and self help types, and positive thinkers and creative visualizers, and the friendly extroverts. That I just don't have enough of whatever it takes to become whatever it is they say I need to become. And since there is only one narrow way they can think of that can bring about success, (their own), they just don't bother to reply to my questions in a prompt fashion, as they would for people who do it their way. Or they throw up their hands and say, "Don't know what to tell you. You are on your own." You're damn right I am.
I am not inspired by the success of other people, and I am baffled by those who are. This sharing in the joy song and dance is a front. My life is not improved because someone who started blogging a year after I started is already making 5,000 dollars a month blogging, when I make zero. I am not happy when "friends" become famous, because I know what it is they had to do in order to become so. Deep inside, I can't replicate it. Not because I am afraid. But because I simply am not built that way. I was, am, and shall remain, Too XYZ forthat narrow definition of "going after your dream."
I don't know how to do what all of you do. And I was fine with not knowing. And fine with learning what I could learn, and adapting to the rest. But that gets very lonely, and who wants to do everything alone? And if people can't advise those that are Too XYZ, must they spend their energy criticizing us too? Don't take out your obvious frustrations on not knowing the answers to any of my unique questions by scolding me for asking them in the first place. Stop assuming that my obstacles and handicaps make me less of a person, less deserving of success, simply because I don't have a note from the doctor.
I am trying to start this from nothing people. And I am probably not the only one. Take a minute out of your hardworking, successful, Seth Godin reading, friend cheering, article tweeting, extroverted networking, walking on sunshine sort of lives and remember that. We, the ones in the storm need help too. And if you can't provide it, at least have the decency to get the hell out of the way while we try to outrun the lightening.
Too XYZ continues to be a very apt name for this blog, as the concept continues to very much apply to me in just about everything I do. There are very specific elements to my psyche that prevent me from doing specific things. Like the color blind attempting to interior decorate, or the tone deaf opting to offer singing lessons, there are things which no matter how valuable, I cannot do.
And I cannot do them because I am either missing something, or something is damaged, or atrophied within my being. Now former friends and supporters of my work have often climbed upon the highest of horses and declared from their lofty position that unless I suffer from a disease that is documented somewhere in the annals of either psychology or medicine, I have no right to claim occasional crippling difficulties with my life. That in the absence of such a diagnosis, any problems, difficulties, or obstacles I have faced as I try ferociously to succeed in a contrary world are 100% my own making. And hence unless I can prove otherwise, I can and must fix everything all by myself.
It is as though they were the principal in the school of life demanding from me a note from my doctor proving to them that I cannot come into school that day (a rather condescending requirement if you ask me).
Yet in some ways, Too XYZ has been my attempt at such a letter. Addressed not to the individual, but to the world, and ideally, those who share my view of same. Those with the same issues, whether or not there is a Latin term out there to describe them.
This blog is a place for me to be frank about my obstacles, internal and external. A place to express perceptions, plans, strategies and simple observations. A place to seek advice, and gain perspective.
Yet, as I have oft written about in previous posts, I usually just get the same perspective over and over again. And that perspective can be summed up in one tidy sentence.
Change what you are and what you do, because it currently isn't good enough.
The type of blog this is. My content. The way I market. The questions I ask. The help I seek, and the people from which I seek it. The problems I face and the solutions I offer. Even down to the font of my business cards, the nature of my profile picture, and the articles on which I choose to comment. No matter what I share with people, or no matter what of other people's advice I observe passively (by going to their blog, or reading their articles), it can just about all be summed up by that italicized sentence I posted above.
I guess if I had a response it would be "Easy for you to say."
Because to tell you the truth, whether it be the big gurus like Godin, or the CopyBlogger guy, or some of the people I have encountered personally in my social media travels over the last two years, I have noticed a pattern; basically none of them had to start what they are doing from Absolute Zero. I don't mean the lowest temperature in the universe, but having zero resources, zero friends, zero experience and zero money when they set off. That is the place I am coming from, and still struggling to get out of. I have not yet succeeded. That isn't to say I won't. Just that I haven't, and that I still don't know how.
Oh I know. Each of the people I am thinking of, whether familiar or famous, (and I am sick to realize that some of the people with which I am familiar are becoming famous by being great at being fake) will quickly point out just how hard it was when they started out. They had to have a big scary cry over quitting their 80K a year job when they started freelancing. "Could this work? What was I doing? Am I crazy?" But their 100K a year spouse reminded them to believe in themselves, and they pressed on. And they will tell you the horror stories of just how dumb they were at first. How they didn't know code, but learned it quickly because they had to. Or hated the idea of marketing but learned to love it. How they were introverted once, but became extroverted, and now can work the room with the best of them and make their fucking millions.
I have called it before, and I will again. Bullshit.
In each of the cases I am thinking of, the "rock star" in question, (whose ass everyone on the internet is happy to kiss in hopes of the magic rubbing off on their lips) had some kind of lucky break, or some kind of helping hand. And I don't mean advice, or a referral.
I am talking about, nobody surviving was based on their need to freelance. They were not in the poor house when they started up their business. They didn't deal with people who viewed them as unpleasant, cold, mean, or not worth the investment at every turn. They didn't have difficulty making people interested in them. Something within them or something about their situation over which they had no control put them ahead.
Now they don't like to think about it that way, because that means god forbid that perhaps they are not ninjas after all. That their own powers might not have brought the world to its knees before them. That they may not be quite as charming or "epic" as they need to believe they are to get through the day.
No, they may not say it, because they may not believe it on the inside, but they had some form of luck or circumstances to help them along. And for good measure they'll throw in an officially diagnosed eating disorder as the grand Deschapelles Coup of their own magnificence.
It is why I have all but stopped reading the blogs I used to read when I first entered the social media landscape on a regular basis. I was at one time subscribed to about 15 blog feeds or so, each of them it seems packed with advice for the freelance writer, the self improvement minded, the spiritually bent and the artistic. I have since canceled all of these feeds. Not just because they became boring (they did), but because I finally realized that despite the language used, such sites really are rather elitist in nature. They are for the most part not worried about helping you, so much as they are interested in making sure people succeed in the same way that they did. (Or at least the version of the way they did that they entertain in their own heads.)
In short, if you don't think you can do it their way, the advice is, "You have to. That's the world, bub."
And when you try to learn from them by asking them how you can be more like what they are, without changing what you are? When you get any response at all, (which I usually do not, regardless of how humble my approach), you get bitchy emails back that mock they very audacity you have shown in even suggesting that you are coming anywhere near their own level of commitment. Arrogant, bile ridden correspondence which made it clear that after reading the first three questions you asked them, they had no desire to even read the rest of your email until you "grow up and learn the ways of the world".
That's networking, to me, folks. Happens all the time. And the previous example is culled from my actual life, not hyperbole. It really happened in much the way I describe. And this wasn't even one of the gurus. Not yet anyway. This ass was a "friend" of mine. But like so many before her in this social media misadventure of mine, she was high on talk and low on action when it came to helping people. Very much willing to bend over backward to take what I had to offer her, but was too busy making her millions and rubbing elbows with the other internet elite to take a moment to offer me something of which I was in desperate need when I came to her.
Typical one-sided "what have you done for me lately" networking hypocrisy. And all because, as far as I can tell, I couldn't do what she had done. Or he. Or they. Or perhaps you? Because to tell you the truth, I shy away from advice these days. Even when I seek it, it is almost out of reflex. Because there is only so much of that sort of "tough love" a person like me can take. And if people only really want to reach out and help those that can in some way help them, that isn't help. That's bartering services.
Whether it be marketing, social media, freelance writing, contracts, fiction, networking, I can't do what everyone says I must. Why? Because I don't have the resources, the knowledge, or the resources to obtain the knowledge. So I seek to do it my own way. That is the message I have gotten from all the big wigs and self help types, and positive thinkers and creative visualizers, and the friendly extroverts. That I just don't have enough of whatever it takes to become whatever it is they say I need to become. And since there is only one narrow way they can think of that can bring about success, (their own), they just don't bother to reply to my questions in a prompt fashion, as they would for people who do it their way. Or they throw up their hands and say, "Don't know what to tell you. You are on your own." You're damn right I am.
I am not inspired by the success of other people, and I am baffled by those who are. This sharing in the joy song and dance is a front. My life is not improved because someone who started blogging a year after I started is already making 5,000 dollars a month blogging, when I make zero. I am not happy when "friends" become famous, because I know what it is they had to do in order to become so. Deep inside, I can't replicate it. Not because I am afraid. But because I simply am not built that way. I was, am, and shall remain, Too XYZ forthat narrow definition of "going after your dream."
I don't know how to do what all of you do. And I was fine with not knowing. And fine with learning what I could learn, and adapting to the rest. But that gets very lonely, and who wants to do everything alone? And if people can't advise those that are Too XYZ, must they spend their energy criticizing us too? Don't take out your obvious frustrations on not knowing the answers to any of my unique questions by scolding me for asking them in the first place. Stop assuming that my obstacles and handicaps make me less of a person, less deserving of success, simply because I don't have a note from the doctor.
I am trying to start this from nothing people. And I am probably not the only one. Take a minute out of your hardworking, successful, Seth Godin reading, friend cheering, article tweeting, extroverted networking, walking on sunshine sort of lives and remember that. We, the ones in the storm need help too. And if you can't provide it, at least have the decency to get the hell out of the way while we try to outrun the lightening.
Tuesday, January 18, 2011
The King's Speech and Our Problems.
Unless you have been locked away for the last few months you have heard of the critically acclaimed movie starring Colin Firth called The King's Speech. The film,a bona fide hit at the box office, tells the story of King George VI of the United Kingdom's speech impediment; from the age of about five onward the man was a stutterer. The condition at times was quite severe, which we see as the movie opens with a scene of the future King (who is merely the Duke of York for most of the film) failing miserably to give a coherent public speech to an assembled crowd.
It is a time wherein the Monarch has become a very public figure in the sense of having to appear and speak publicly. And with World War II approaching the symbolic stability of a Sovereign who can ease the nation with his words becomes all the more vital to the war effort. With the abdication of his older brother, this staggering responsibility falls on "Bertie". (The name by which King George VI was known within his family.)
Believe me, I am not giving away anything that is not deduced in the trailer when I say that the Duke's wife (Helena Bonham Carter) eventually enlists the assistance of one Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush), a man with extensive experience in helping those with speech defects. Logue's methods are, shall we say, unorthodox from the first moment. Indeed so much so that "Bertie" abandons them totally for a while.
I loved the film. It would seem millions loved the film, and it is gathering serious hardware at various awards ceremonies. As with any film, The King's Speech is without a doubt different things to different people. Or several things to any one person. Most of the very best movies have this quality. I count myself in this latter category, for I found the movie brilliant for a number of reasons.
There is the historical angle. The humor. The fact that it deals with the British Monarchy. Not to mention excellent acting and writing all around.
Yet there is an added element to this true story which I think contributed not only to my own admiration of the film, but may also be why it has such wide appeal. It is, in the end, the story of a great man that overcomes a great handicap. A handicap for which he is mocked and ridiculed even by members of his own family. A handicap which many back then, and even now dismissed as illegitimate. A handicap that the man himself eventually concluded (falsely) that he could not overcome.
And how did he overcome it? No doubt in the end it was something within himself that won out. A determination, a belief and confidence in himself that was lacking in his early life, but showed up just in time when it was needed the most. Yet it would not have shown up if he had not encountered and worked with the eccentric Logue. A man who had the audacity to speak to the Duke/King in familiar terms. He too called him "Bertie", ignoring what Shakespeare's Henry V referred to as "idle ceremony". Logue opted to address the man as a man. As an equal.
This doesn't sit well at first with "Bertie", but there would be no movie if he never learned to accept it, of course. Yet it was perhaps Logue's strange exercises and questions and conversations, all seemingly without purpose, that shook the protagonist the most.
What am I getting at here? That "Bertie" was brought up from the day he was born with certain and at times unrealistic expectations that go along with being a member of a royal family. Expectations that were dictated by tradition and precedent, with no concern for the individual tastes and difficulties of any given person. Expectations which, one could argue, exacerbated Bertie's condition, the more he tried to conform to same.
The result was that a great man, a brave man, a witty, intelligent and conscientious man remained unseen by the world. And because this younger Prince, who unexpectedly became King was judged up until that point by what he was incapable of doing as opposed to what he could do, little faith in him existed. Especially when all of the traditional methods of "curing" a stutter had already been tried without success.
Enter Logue, who in the most casual of ways wipes all of that aside. He forgets social expectations, steps over tradition, lays aside judgment, and take a personal interest. He even calls the Duke "Bertie", and has him singing his way through practice speeches, among other wild actions for a Prince of the Realm, in order to prove the stutter could be controlled. More accurately perhaps to prove to Bertie that a great man resided beneath the stutter. Logue, in other words, addressed the man with a problem, instead of addressing the problem itself.
That is perhaps what appealed to me the most about the film. That in spite of all the strict expectations, the accepted science of the day, the knighted doctors and the protocol, it was a man with a funny hat and no tendency to genuflect that was able to help "Bertie" become the King George VI that the nation needed.
I am not royalty. And I doubt that any of my readers are. However I certainly identify with this royal character in this movie. I struggle with the reality of the better parts of me sometimes being obscured by expectations. Traditions. Conventions. As well as my own unique problems and difficulties. I know what it feels like to be assessed not by that of which I am capable, but by things such as a bad resume, being single, a small network, a blog without bells and whistles. Little to no money. No life coach. On and on.
In other words the things that are trappings that come quite naturally to most, but not to me.
There is, as of yet, no Lionel Logue in my life. But throughout my life it has been the rare times when I have been approached or assisted in a unique manner ignoring social expectations that have had the greatest impact on me. I have come to realize, (as I have often said) that I have control over my own status quo. It is I who can, and will, refuse to accept the social expectations of someone in my position. I will not cower behind what tradition and convention expected of me. I'll approach my problems, as Bertie eventually did, in ways that nobody finds acceptable, but will one day lead me to where I need to be. And I hope that you will do the same thing, if the conventional isn't working for you.
And if a Lionel Logue type shows up with unconventional methods and an interest in my success? Well, unlike Bertie I don't think I will hesitate to welcome his/her advice from Day One. Heaven knows I have absorbed as much of the conventional advice as possible for right now.
Any Lionel Logues in your life?
It is a time wherein the Monarch has become a very public figure in the sense of having to appear and speak publicly. And with World War II approaching the symbolic stability of a Sovereign who can ease the nation with his words becomes all the more vital to the war effort. With the abdication of his older brother, this staggering responsibility falls on "Bertie". (The name by which King George VI was known within his family.)
Believe me, I am not giving away anything that is not deduced in the trailer when I say that the Duke's wife (Helena Bonham Carter) eventually enlists the assistance of one Lionel Logue (played by Geoffrey Rush), a man with extensive experience in helping those with speech defects. Logue's methods are, shall we say, unorthodox from the first moment. Indeed so much so that "Bertie" abandons them totally for a while.
I loved the film. It would seem millions loved the film, and it is gathering serious hardware at various awards ceremonies. As with any film, The King's Speech is without a doubt different things to different people. Or several things to any one person. Most of the very best movies have this quality. I count myself in this latter category, for I found the movie brilliant for a number of reasons.
There is the historical angle. The humor. The fact that it deals with the British Monarchy. Not to mention excellent acting and writing all around.
Yet there is an added element to this true story which I think contributed not only to my own admiration of the film, but may also be why it has such wide appeal. It is, in the end, the story of a great man that overcomes a great handicap. A handicap for which he is mocked and ridiculed even by members of his own family. A handicap which many back then, and even now dismissed as illegitimate. A handicap that the man himself eventually concluded (falsely) that he could not overcome.
And how did he overcome it? No doubt in the end it was something within himself that won out. A determination, a belief and confidence in himself that was lacking in his early life, but showed up just in time when it was needed the most. Yet it would not have shown up if he had not encountered and worked with the eccentric Logue. A man who had the audacity to speak to the Duke/King in familiar terms. He too called him "Bertie", ignoring what Shakespeare's Henry V referred to as "idle ceremony". Logue opted to address the man as a man. As an equal.
This doesn't sit well at first with "Bertie", but there would be no movie if he never learned to accept it, of course. Yet it was perhaps Logue's strange exercises and questions and conversations, all seemingly without purpose, that shook the protagonist the most.
What am I getting at here? That "Bertie" was brought up from the day he was born with certain and at times unrealistic expectations that go along with being a member of a royal family. Expectations that were dictated by tradition and precedent, with no concern for the individual tastes and difficulties of any given person. Expectations which, one could argue, exacerbated Bertie's condition, the more he tried to conform to same.
The result was that a great man, a brave man, a witty, intelligent and conscientious man remained unseen by the world. And because this younger Prince, who unexpectedly became King was judged up until that point by what he was incapable of doing as opposed to what he could do, little faith in him existed. Especially when all of the traditional methods of "curing" a stutter had already been tried without success.
Enter Logue, who in the most casual of ways wipes all of that aside. He forgets social expectations, steps over tradition, lays aside judgment, and take a personal interest. He even calls the Duke "Bertie", and has him singing his way through practice speeches, among other wild actions for a Prince of the Realm, in order to prove the stutter could be controlled. More accurately perhaps to prove to Bertie that a great man resided beneath the stutter. Logue, in other words, addressed the man with a problem, instead of addressing the problem itself.
That is perhaps what appealed to me the most about the film. That in spite of all the strict expectations, the accepted science of the day, the knighted doctors and the protocol, it was a man with a funny hat and no tendency to genuflect that was able to help "Bertie" become the King George VI that the nation needed.
I am not royalty. And I doubt that any of my readers are. However I certainly identify with this royal character in this movie. I struggle with the reality of the better parts of me sometimes being obscured by expectations. Traditions. Conventions. As well as my own unique problems and difficulties. I know what it feels like to be assessed not by that of which I am capable, but by things such as a bad resume, being single, a small network, a blog without bells and whistles. Little to no money. No life coach. On and on.
In other words the things that are trappings that come quite naturally to most, but not to me.
There is, as of yet, no Lionel Logue in my life. But throughout my life it has been the rare times when I have been approached or assisted in a unique manner ignoring social expectations that have had the greatest impact on me. I have come to realize, (as I have often said) that I have control over my own status quo. It is I who can, and will, refuse to accept the social expectations of someone in my position. I will not cower behind what tradition and convention expected of me. I'll approach my problems, as Bertie eventually did, in ways that nobody finds acceptable, but will one day lead me to where I need to be. And I hope that you will do the same thing, if the conventional isn't working for you.
And if a Lionel Logue type shows up with unconventional methods and an interest in my success? Well, unlike Bertie I don't think I will hesitate to welcome his/her advice from Day One. Heaven knows I have absorbed as much of the conventional advice as possible for right now.
Any Lionel Logues in your life?
Monday, January 10, 2011
Doubting What's Nameless
Happy New Year. I realize I am ten days into the New Year now, long passed the point where most people even consider the greeting to be applicable. But part of my New Year has in fact been a sort of reorganization of my daily life into a new (non) plan, as I mentioned in my last entry. To that end my timing has been a bit off for a week or so. I am getting into of a groove now.
One of the reasons behind my approach to 2011 was my lack of progress in certain areas. Areas which, as I wrote before, I pursued in ways more suited to the "common" person with a common mind set as opposed to being suited towards me. I spent a great deal of time in 2010 accepting the fact that for whatever reason, my mindset is not that of the average person. In fact it may be quite rare in its own right, for all I know. It probably is.
The reason I cannot quantify how many people think, succeed or fail in the same ways that I do, is that I have no name for the particular personal collection of personal obstacles that I face. Of course there are plenty of external factors that have prevented me from getting what I deserve and achieving my potential, and those have been and will continue to be well documented on this blog. But as for the internal circumstances within my own consciousness and brain, there remains no single way to define it. Hence the very name of this blog; Too XYZ.
It is that very nameless quality I wish to discuss here.
There are many named handicaps and disabilities out there. Many that, when properly identified can be lived with, or in some cases eliminated, provided the right resources, knowledge and personnel. Such obstacles have names because they have been studied. And they have been studied because they have a consistent pattern of appearance and of repercussions for those that suffer the impairment.
Take as an example someone who finds they wash their hands more than others. And as they get older, they wash their hands raw to the point of being unable to handle objects. In the extreme this behavior begins to make a person late for appointments, and unable to attend social functions, because so preoccupied are they with washing their hands they can barely conentrate on anything else. Though this may be indicative of any number of things, and a professional evaluation is necessary to determine an individual cause, the literature indicates that such a situation is often the result of something called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. (Known as OCD for short.)
There is much we do not know about OCD. But we learn more all the time. Common symptoms like the ones I have described. We have discovered several things that seem to cause it. We have discovered therapies and medications which depending on the patient can lesson and in some cases eliminate the disorder.
While naysayers persist, abundant studies have been conducted at this point in history to convince fair minded people that OCD is an actual condition. And therefore when we know that someone officially suffers from it, we can make certain accommodations in our mind pertaining to the particular struggles and set backs such people experience.
Of course my point applies to far more than OCD. There are whole volumes of mental or intellectual disorders which have been named and successfully treated. Each of them opens a door in the minds of fair people. Not a door which will excuse any and all actions on the part of those with a disorder, but a door which will take into account the particular struggles associated with any given condition. The same with certain physical deficiencies.
There was of course a time, not very long ago, when none of these conditions had names. Or perhaps everything out of the ordinary might be labeled as simple "madness". At those times those with depression were told to merely, "cheer up." Those with Attention Deficit Disorder were told to "just calm down and pay attention." Those with OCD were ordered to just "stop doing that. Just stop."
These approaches did not work, of course. It was more than simply choosing to be different. And while the causes of any given disorder or illness continue to be debated in scholarly circles, (is it brain chemistry? emotional imbalance? Deep seated damage to the psyche?), these behaviors do have names and are at least seen as things which must be understood and treated in some specific way. In other words it is understood today that people are not going to simply talk themselves out of such conditions.
However despite how much we as a society appear to have learned about human behavior, it seems as though we have in reality learned very little. For in the absence of a named condition that appears in very specific journals and records most people still insist that those who have not succeeded according to the conventional definition must simply be lazy, stubborn, or just plain nuts. And it is not only the general, faceless public that fails to give much leeway in this regard. One of the cruelest ironies of them all is that it is often people with a defined, documented, clinical setback of their own who are most vocal in damning those who have fallen behind without the "benefit" of a specific diagnosis. As though struggling people without a diagnosis somehow take away from struggling people with one. I have been the brunt of such hypocrisy many times over in my unusual life. Most recently in the last few months, and in a very public manner online, as some of you may have noticed at the time.
I am willing to opine, at risk of major backlash from the online community that the self proclaimed most "Tolerant, open-minded, egalitarian, creative" generation of all time, the so called Generation-Y (Gen-Y) is in fact just as much, if not even more prone to this sort of out of hand dismissal.
As a demographic, the current, as well as the upcoming generation is in love with the idea of breaking down boundaries so that everybody can succeed. They don't need permission, they don't need approval, and they don't even need help. They are determined to tear down the status quo once and for all, flip off the naysayers and insist on success their way. On their terms.
That sounds great. Even noble and liberating. Until you consider that one major side effect of this approach is the assumption that "if Seth Godin can do it, so can I. And if I can do it, by God so can you and so can everybody." Under this life view, there are literally no excuses for anybody to fall behind. Those that run the online world right now cannot as a whole conceive of any reason why anybody should not have exactly what they want, or be well on their way to same all of the time. And if anybody isn't, they are not trying hard enough. Because, "you make your own luck, and you define what does and doesn't happen to you."
Unless of course you have been diagnosed with an eating disorder. Or dyslexia. Or fibromyalgia. Then you get to say you are going as far as you can given your circumstances. But to those, (like yours truly) who have great strengths but obvious weaknesses and consistent, sometimes problematic personality traits without a name? Well, you need to get off of you ass, suck it up, accept that life isn't fair, subscribe to 1,400 blogs, read the last 25 books on self-marketing, (never mind they are all exactly the same) hire a life coach, get out there and network, and (my favorite) insist on success. Said as though my whole life has gone the way it has simply because I have failed to "insist".
I believe in accountability and responsibility. Nobody gets to use their condition, named or unnamed as an excuse to do nothing. And indeed I know plenty of people with any number of certifiable conditions that do not in any way use them as a tool or an excuse. But in our success oriented culture we have got to start considering the myriad diversity of not just our success, but our problems. Our obstacles. We cannot ever know with 100% certainty what is happening inside somebody's head or heart. That means that there are times when we are going to be bullshitted by those who just don't want to put any effort into life at all. Yet we still need to stop and put some effort into learning wise discernment. Getting to the root of what makes someone do what they do, (or fail to do.) And certainly to create ways to help those who need unconventional help as often as we help those who can be helped in the conventional manner. If we can take the time and energy to read up and master WordPress, SEO, marketing, and all of those sort of "necessities", we sure as hell can stop and take the time to master the human component.
Not all of our handicaps have names. We must accept that perfectly decent, brilliant, valuable people with a lot to offer the world may be getting held back by something that is deeply ingrained into them but is not mentioned in the DSM-IV. They may not, and often don't understand themselves what their setback is. They too deserve help. And attention. And yes by God, a little bit of leeway as they make their way on their own terms according to their own timing. You don't have to help them, (us) but if you won't, for the love of heaven, don't stand in our way with your sanctimonious self-help platitudes either.
Named or not, we each struggle with something. It's high time we dedicate ourselves to helping people get around those obstacles when all else fails them, as opposed to labeling, doubting, or dismissing them when they are unable to destroy them.
One of the reasons behind my approach to 2011 was my lack of progress in certain areas. Areas which, as I wrote before, I pursued in ways more suited to the "common" person with a common mind set as opposed to being suited towards me. I spent a great deal of time in 2010 accepting the fact that for whatever reason, my mindset is not that of the average person. In fact it may be quite rare in its own right, for all I know. It probably is.
The reason I cannot quantify how many people think, succeed or fail in the same ways that I do, is that I have no name for the particular personal collection of personal obstacles that I face. Of course there are plenty of external factors that have prevented me from getting what I deserve and achieving my potential, and those have been and will continue to be well documented on this blog. But as for the internal circumstances within my own consciousness and brain, there remains no single way to define it. Hence the very name of this blog; Too XYZ.
It is that very nameless quality I wish to discuss here.
There are many named handicaps and disabilities out there. Many that, when properly identified can be lived with, or in some cases eliminated, provided the right resources, knowledge and personnel. Such obstacles have names because they have been studied. And they have been studied because they have a consistent pattern of appearance and of repercussions for those that suffer the impairment.
Take as an example someone who finds they wash their hands more than others. And as they get older, they wash their hands raw to the point of being unable to handle objects. In the extreme this behavior begins to make a person late for appointments, and unable to attend social functions, because so preoccupied are they with washing their hands they can barely conentrate on anything else. Though this may be indicative of any number of things, and a professional evaluation is necessary to determine an individual cause, the literature indicates that such a situation is often the result of something called Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. (Known as OCD for short.)
There is much we do not know about OCD. But we learn more all the time. Common symptoms like the ones I have described. We have discovered several things that seem to cause it. We have discovered therapies and medications which depending on the patient can lesson and in some cases eliminate the disorder.
While naysayers persist, abundant studies have been conducted at this point in history to convince fair minded people that OCD is an actual condition. And therefore when we know that someone officially suffers from it, we can make certain accommodations in our mind pertaining to the particular struggles and set backs such people experience.
Of course my point applies to far more than OCD. There are whole volumes of mental or intellectual disorders which have been named and successfully treated. Each of them opens a door in the minds of fair people. Not a door which will excuse any and all actions on the part of those with a disorder, but a door which will take into account the particular struggles associated with any given condition. The same with certain physical deficiencies.
There was of course a time, not very long ago, when none of these conditions had names. Or perhaps everything out of the ordinary might be labeled as simple "madness". At those times those with depression were told to merely, "cheer up." Those with Attention Deficit Disorder were told to "just calm down and pay attention." Those with OCD were ordered to just "stop doing that. Just stop."
These approaches did not work, of course. It was more than simply choosing to be different. And while the causes of any given disorder or illness continue to be debated in scholarly circles, (is it brain chemistry? emotional imbalance? Deep seated damage to the psyche?), these behaviors do have names and are at least seen as things which must be understood and treated in some specific way. In other words it is understood today that people are not going to simply talk themselves out of such conditions.
However despite how much we as a society appear to have learned about human behavior, it seems as though we have in reality learned very little. For in the absence of a named condition that appears in very specific journals and records most people still insist that those who have not succeeded according to the conventional definition must simply be lazy, stubborn, or just plain nuts. And it is not only the general, faceless public that fails to give much leeway in this regard. One of the cruelest ironies of them all is that it is often people with a defined, documented, clinical setback of their own who are most vocal in damning those who have fallen behind without the "benefit" of a specific diagnosis. As though struggling people without a diagnosis somehow take away from struggling people with one. I have been the brunt of such hypocrisy many times over in my unusual life. Most recently in the last few months, and in a very public manner online, as some of you may have noticed at the time.
I am willing to opine, at risk of major backlash from the online community that the self proclaimed most "Tolerant, open-minded, egalitarian, creative" generation of all time, the so called Generation-Y (Gen-Y) is in fact just as much, if not even more prone to this sort of out of hand dismissal.
As a demographic, the current, as well as the upcoming generation is in love with the idea of breaking down boundaries so that everybody can succeed. They don't need permission, they don't need approval, and they don't even need help. They are determined to tear down the status quo once and for all, flip off the naysayers and insist on success their way. On their terms.
That sounds great. Even noble and liberating. Until you consider that one major side effect of this approach is the assumption that "if Seth Godin can do it, so can I. And if I can do it, by God so can you and so can everybody." Under this life view, there are literally no excuses for anybody to fall behind. Those that run the online world right now cannot as a whole conceive of any reason why anybody should not have exactly what they want, or be well on their way to same all of the time. And if anybody isn't, they are not trying hard enough. Because, "you make your own luck, and you define what does and doesn't happen to you."
Unless of course you have been diagnosed with an eating disorder. Or dyslexia. Or fibromyalgia. Then you get to say you are going as far as you can given your circumstances. But to those, (like yours truly) who have great strengths but obvious weaknesses and consistent, sometimes problematic personality traits without a name? Well, you need to get off of you ass, suck it up, accept that life isn't fair, subscribe to 1,400 blogs, read the last 25 books on self-marketing, (never mind they are all exactly the same) hire a life coach, get out there and network, and (my favorite) insist on success. Said as though my whole life has gone the way it has simply because I have failed to "insist".
I believe in accountability and responsibility. Nobody gets to use their condition, named or unnamed as an excuse to do nothing. And indeed I know plenty of people with any number of certifiable conditions that do not in any way use them as a tool or an excuse. But in our success oriented culture we have got to start considering the myriad diversity of not just our success, but our problems. Our obstacles. We cannot ever know with 100% certainty what is happening inside somebody's head or heart. That means that there are times when we are going to be bullshitted by those who just don't want to put any effort into life at all. Yet we still need to stop and put some effort into learning wise discernment. Getting to the root of what makes someone do what they do, (or fail to do.) And certainly to create ways to help those who need unconventional help as often as we help those who can be helped in the conventional manner. If we can take the time and energy to read up and master WordPress, SEO, marketing, and all of those sort of "necessities", we sure as hell can stop and take the time to master the human component.
Not all of our handicaps have names. We must accept that perfectly decent, brilliant, valuable people with a lot to offer the world may be getting held back by something that is deeply ingrained into them but is not mentioned in the DSM-IV. They may not, and often don't understand themselves what their setback is. They too deserve help. And attention. And yes by God, a little bit of leeway as they make their way on their own terms according to their own timing. You don't have to help them, (us) but if you won't, for the love of heaven, don't stand in our way with your sanctimonious self-help platitudes either.
Named or not, we each struggle with something. It's high time we dedicate ourselves to helping people get around those obstacles when all else fails them, as opposed to labeling, doubting, or dismissing them when they are unable to destroy them.
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Life's Not Fair? Prove It.
"Life isn't fair."
Point out an ingrained disparity in a system? Somebody tells you "Life's not fair." Lament the fact that not everyone gets an even break? "Life's not fair." Stand up for yourself when you have not been treated in a way you deserve? "Life's not fair."
Well, I am taking it upon myself to make a declaration so audacious that medication will no doubt be suggested by some. But I am Too XYZ to cater to that fear. So here it is. You read it here first.
As a concept, "Life isn't fair" is hereby officially bullshit.
That's right. I refuse to buy into any more. I've had it. I will not longer accept it as an argument, or counterargument to anything anywhere. It is a tired, wittless response to the problems we face in life, utilized by the lazy, the unintelligent and the weak. A cop-out for status-quo fetishists.
The whole notion of "life isn't fair" has contributed to more abandoned dreams, unnecessary oppressions, institutionalized discrimination and all out poor mental health than just about any other phrase and concept. And I am calling it out here and now.
Life is a broad, nebulous thing.Unfathomable numbers of variables play into how "life" unfolds. Neither fairness nor unfairness enters into it. Life is life. The events in our lives can sometimes be random, and it can take us a while to process them. If we ever do. And certain random events can be painful, of course, just as certain random events can be fortuitous. But that is not a matter of fairness. We can rise above these things, but to declare that life itself is unfair really is no more logical than to declare that it is.
A law that is wrong. A hiring practice that is unfair. An individual being denied a chance that others have been given despite being of equal value. These are all concepts that have the potential to be truly unfair. Situations that need to be addressed by those involved in them. Things that can be rectified. Yet they are allowed to go unchecked with a staggering frequency because a wise-ass here and there repeatedly and loudly pontificates, "Life's not fair." Or its cousin, "That's life."
What such people are really saying is, "this wrong is so entrenched into this system that it would require work to correct it. I am not going to put forth any effort, time, knowledge, or energy to begin correcting it, because after all, it hasn't affected me. And even if it does affect me , I'll try unsuccessfully to convince myself what a big person I am by sucking it up."
Think about it. Such people actually shoe horn the supposed meaning and universal qualities of life itself to make an argument against action! When you ponder this for a while it's quite stupefying. To justify one's lack of commitment to change by pinning one's opinion to the (perceived) mechanics of the entire known universe?
Really? I mean, really??
There are problems one individual has no hope of solving. A Middle East Peace. A cure for AIDS. Legions of people have been unable to solve such things over decades of trying. But they have been trying. And legions are nothing but an accumulation of individuals who decided not to wave the white flag of "life's not fair."
Okay, so you are not a member of one of those legions. You can join legions of people working to correct something else. Maybe something as big as AIDS, or maybe something as "small" as starting a neighborhood watch group to enforce city noise ordinances so that everybody in town can get a better night's sleep. (My town could use this...)
Or forget legions. You can act as an individual agent for fairness. Is there something at your job that you know is unfair? A policy that works against a whole group? A schedule that favors some over others? A hiring practice that fails to give dignity to applicants? Whatever it is, speak out against it. Write about it. Expose it. In extreme cases, whistle blow. If you honestly believe a certain policy is fair, than so be it. But if you do not believe it's fair, do something! Even if in the end the policy/law/opinion continues unabated, you will at least have made an effort to address an unfairness. And it is by exposing and addressing an unfairness in your everyday life that change will happen. Not by yielding to every wrong you personally encounter because as a concept "life isn't fair" and everything has to be accepted as is.
Keep hiding behind "life isn't fair", and you are likely going to wake up one day all alone, because you can't be trusted, don't have compassion, and won't go out of your way to help anybody that crosses your path because of some lame-brained notion that nothing makes any difference in the long run. You'll have your own money, or success, or whatever it is you stepped on people to get while waving the "life's not fair" mantra, but you won't mean a damn thing to anyone anywhere. And if you want that, okay. But if you have any notion of wanting to belong to anything anywhere, you'll have to drop the "life's not fair" approach. Otherwise, you will have contributed more heat than light to anything, and those around you will judge you accordingly.
Which would only be fair, if you ask me.
Point out an ingrained disparity in a system? Somebody tells you "Life's not fair." Lament the fact that not everyone gets an even break? "Life's not fair." Stand up for yourself when you have not been treated in a way you deserve? "Life's not fair."
Well, I am taking it upon myself to make a declaration so audacious that medication will no doubt be suggested by some. But I am Too XYZ to cater to that fear. So here it is. You read it here first.
As a concept, "Life isn't fair" is hereby officially bullshit.
That's right. I refuse to buy into any more. I've had it. I will not longer accept it as an argument, or counterargument to anything anywhere. It is a tired, wittless response to the problems we face in life, utilized by the lazy, the unintelligent and the weak. A cop-out for status-quo fetishists.
The whole notion of "life isn't fair" has contributed to more abandoned dreams, unnecessary oppressions, institutionalized discrimination and all out poor mental health than just about any other phrase and concept. And I am calling it out here and now.
Life is a broad, nebulous thing.Unfathomable numbers of variables play into how "life" unfolds. Neither fairness nor unfairness enters into it. Life is life. The events in our lives can sometimes be random, and it can take us a while to process them. If we ever do. And certain random events can be painful, of course, just as certain random events can be fortuitous. But that is not a matter of fairness. We can rise above these things, but to declare that life itself is unfair really is no more logical than to declare that it is.
A law that is wrong. A hiring practice that is unfair. An individual being denied a chance that others have been given despite being of equal value. These are all concepts that have the potential to be truly unfair. Situations that need to be addressed by those involved in them. Things that can be rectified. Yet they are allowed to go unchecked with a staggering frequency because a wise-ass here and there repeatedly and loudly pontificates, "Life's not fair." Or its cousin, "That's life."
What such people are really saying is, "this wrong is so entrenched into this system that it would require work to correct it. I am not going to put forth any effort, time, knowledge, or energy to begin correcting it, because after all, it hasn't affected me. And even if it does affect me , I'll try unsuccessfully to convince myself what a big person I am by sucking it up."
Think about it. Such people actually shoe horn the supposed meaning and universal qualities of life itself to make an argument against action! When you ponder this for a while it's quite stupefying. To justify one's lack of commitment to change by pinning one's opinion to the (perceived) mechanics of the entire known universe?
Really? I mean, really??
There are problems one individual has no hope of solving. A Middle East Peace. A cure for AIDS. Legions of people have been unable to solve such things over decades of trying. But they have been trying. And legions are nothing but an accumulation of individuals who decided not to wave the white flag of "life's not fair."
Okay, so you are not a member of one of those legions. You can join legions of people working to correct something else. Maybe something as big as AIDS, or maybe something as "small" as starting a neighborhood watch group to enforce city noise ordinances so that everybody in town can get a better night's sleep. (My town could use this...)
Or forget legions. You can act as an individual agent for fairness. Is there something at your job that you know is unfair? A policy that works against a whole group? A schedule that favors some over others? A hiring practice that fails to give dignity to applicants? Whatever it is, speak out against it. Write about it. Expose it. In extreme cases, whistle blow. If you honestly believe a certain policy is fair, than so be it. But if you do not believe it's fair, do something! Even if in the end the policy/law/opinion continues unabated, you will at least have made an effort to address an unfairness. And it is by exposing and addressing an unfairness in your everyday life that change will happen. Not by yielding to every wrong you personally encounter because as a concept "life isn't fair" and everything has to be accepted as is.
Keep hiding behind "life isn't fair", and you are likely going to wake up one day all alone, because you can't be trusted, don't have compassion, and won't go out of your way to help anybody that crosses your path because of some lame-brained notion that nothing makes any difference in the long run. You'll have your own money, or success, or whatever it is you stepped on people to get while waving the "life's not fair" mantra, but you won't mean a damn thing to anyone anywhere. And if you want that, okay. But if you have any notion of wanting to belong to anything anywhere, you'll have to drop the "life's not fair" approach. Otherwise, you will have contributed more heat than light to anything, and those around you will judge you accordingly.
Which would only be fair, if you ask me.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Poor
I sometimes get the impression that at least half of the population doesn't know what being poor is. Or at least doesn't understand what being poor can be. I don't know whether to laugh, cry, or punch someone when I hear what people think does and does not constitute being poor.
I, Ty Unglebower, am poor. And I am not poor due to the fact that I can't eat out 4 times weekly. (The national average regardless of income.) I am not poor because I drive a used car. Renting instead of owning is not what makes me poor, nor is the fact that I buy clothes once a year as opposed to once a month.
My idea of vacation is two nights in a cabin camping, and even then only after enough money has been saved. Actual vacations of more than a few days happen in my life every 6 or 7 years.
If a website does not have a useful free membership, I do not join it no matter how worthy, because I do not have the money for a premium account. I only ever upgrade to the phones that are available for free with the renewal of my calling plan.
Yet none of these things are what make me poor. They are the things which, when you ask most people, are borderline immoral to be made to "suffer" through. As though in order to be a civilized, respectable human being, you must posses all of the things in that list which I currently lack. The very concept of being poor to such people revolves to a very large extent on what is convenient, trendy, or comfortable. The absence of those things simply means I am not middle class.
What makes me poor is the fact that as a freelance writer trying to break into more things, the paychecks are sporadic and smaller than needs be for the moment. (I'm working on that.) Being poor means that I get help from my family to pay the rent that is required on this tiny apartment. That I share groceries with my mother who is 5 miles away, and with whom I may have to live again in the future. That I eat meals with her a few times a week. Being poor means that I have nothing saved at all because everything, everything I do get goes directly to some immediate expense, because I so rarely can contribute to some of my own basic needs.
I am poor in that there is no money in my checking account. And I mean no money. As in balance equals $0.00. Literally. Not that I "only" have a few hundred dollars socked away, and things are getting tight. Nothing.
In fact, I have no bank account with any local bank because they all require a minimum balance and require the applicant to have no debt, if you can believe that. I have plenty of student loan debt. So I am ineligible for even a no interest checking account around here. I have to endorse my paychecks for writing to my mother, who then will cash them for me at her bank.
So, I cannot invest in things like Blackberries. 16 gigs of computer memory. Hiring a tax professional, a resume writer, a job/life coach. A personal trainer. (All things that the rather conventional wisdom says each of us should spend money on, as part of "building our brand".) A resume writer alone could be 500 dollars, and people toss that figure around as though it would be completely unheard of for someone to not have at least that much set aside for their own personal development.
"Yes, it may hurt you for a month," such people say, " but this is an investment in your career. If you are not going to take yourself seriously enough to drop a few hundred dollars when it hurts, why will a hiring manager decide you are worth the company's money? You wouldn't perform your own open heart surgery. You call in the professional. Why won't you give your career and personal brand the same professional treatment?"
Because...I...am...poor. Like, the real thing, "no shit! I have no money" type of poor.
Those who follow me on Twitter, or Brazen, or just here on the blog know by now about my ideas. About my writing abilities. About my experience and perceptions. About my accomplishments and my talents. I am not into "personal branding" at all, but if a brand emerges naturally out of the work and contributions an individual makes online, many of you are familiar with my so called brand. And I wonder how many of you might be shocked by just how poor I am.
Because you see, in addition to the "why not invest in a life coach" stuff, I also hear many other things which indicate that legions of people do not understand poor.
"You're intelligent. Healthy. Young. Unattached. You have a college degree! You write very well. There is absolutely no way you could be truly poor. You are not homeless. You don't panhandle. You can basically write your own ticket. Why haven't you done so?"
So intelligent people have no reason to be poor? The truly poor can only be those who are somehow damaged in the brain? Slow people? Retarded? Mentally ill> Begging for change on the Metro and sleeping under a bridge or over a grate" That's poor, right?
No. That is homeless. That is one type of poor. The type that arises when nobody cares. Fortunately for me, I have a handful of people, (usually my mother) who do care, and won't allow me to starve and wander the streets. But that could be the only reason I don't do so. Because if I had to rely on my own income and saving right now to survive, I would be hitching my way to the nearest Metro station to set up shop. (And for those who say that I would just need to get any paying job for a while, I would advise you that before freelancing, I tried for 5 solid years to get a full time job and couldn't do it. Reasons: Unknown.)
But a person as cultured, refined, and eloquent as me cannot possibly have to end up sleeping in a Metro station. I read, perform theatre. Am a top user at Brazen. I am working on a novel and have inspired people in ways I don't even know. Surely I have no reason to be that poor. I can't be only a mother's love away from having nothing to eat or no place to stay.
I am certain you would all like to believe that. I am sure many people who don't truly grasp poor are comforted by that notion. That to have all of the gifts I have is a ticket away from being poor. I'd like to believe that as well. But I have lived my life too long to buy into that one.
I don't believe I will be poor forever. I have to hold onto some hope that my life will make a turnaround now that I have rededicated it to my passions, as opposed to winning the rat race. As hard as it is to believe sometimes, I tell myself that at some point it will all pay off. That I will break even. That I will prosper. Not simply survive, and that only with the help of family. But until that day, despite it's obvious crippling problems for a free thinking artist like me, I must not be ashamed to be poor. I must own it. I must shine light upon it, and what it really is, not what the movies tell you it is. It is only in so doing that I can hope to change it. You cannot wrestle something from which you are always running away.
The poor exist. Those who have not broken even for most of their lives are out there. Around you. With you. Some of them are easy to spot. Easy to avoid. To cross a street to stay away from. And some of them are lazy. Homeless. Dirty. Addicted to booze and drugs.
But just as many, possibly even more of them, are hard working, cultured, polite and charming people with whom you converse every day. Who you share a ride on the Metro with instead of avoiding at the station. People with whom you exchange emails. Ideas. Hopes. People whom you would even hire, if you had a job to offer them, so much potential value do they represent.
The more horrifying thought is that they can be all of the above and still be homeless and begging. I do thank the Divinities that I am not one of them for right now.
But, despite having just enough food, a place to stay, and (older) clothes to cover my back, I still know the score.
I am Ty Unglebower and at the moment, I am poor. What do you think of me now?
I, Ty Unglebower, am poor. And I am not poor due to the fact that I can't eat out 4 times weekly. (The national average regardless of income.) I am not poor because I drive a used car. Renting instead of owning is not what makes me poor, nor is the fact that I buy clothes once a year as opposed to once a month.
My idea of vacation is two nights in a cabin camping, and even then only after enough money has been saved. Actual vacations of more than a few days happen in my life every 6 or 7 years.
If a website does not have a useful free membership, I do not join it no matter how worthy, because I do not have the money for a premium account. I only ever upgrade to the phones that are available for free with the renewal of my calling plan.
Yet none of these things are what make me poor. They are the things which, when you ask most people, are borderline immoral to be made to "suffer" through. As though in order to be a civilized, respectable human being, you must posses all of the things in that list which I currently lack. The very concept of being poor to such people revolves to a very large extent on what is convenient, trendy, or comfortable. The absence of those things simply means I am not middle class.
What makes me poor is the fact that as a freelance writer trying to break into more things, the paychecks are sporadic and smaller than needs be for the moment. (I'm working on that.) Being poor means that I get help from my family to pay the rent that is required on this tiny apartment. That I share groceries with my mother who is 5 miles away, and with whom I may have to live again in the future. That I eat meals with her a few times a week. Being poor means that I have nothing saved at all because everything, everything I do get goes directly to some immediate expense, because I so rarely can contribute to some of my own basic needs.
I am poor in that there is no money in my checking account. And I mean no money. As in balance equals $0.00. Literally. Not that I "only" have a few hundred dollars socked away, and things are getting tight. Nothing.
In fact, I have no bank account with any local bank because they all require a minimum balance and require the applicant to have no debt, if you can believe that. I have plenty of student loan debt. So I am ineligible for even a no interest checking account around here. I have to endorse my paychecks for writing to my mother, who then will cash them for me at her bank.
So, I cannot invest in things like Blackberries. 16 gigs of computer memory. Hiring a tax professional, a resume writer, a job/life coach. A personal trainer. (All things that the rather conventional wisdom says each of us should spend money on, as part of "building our brand".) A resume writer alone could be 500 dollars, and people toss that figure around as though it would be completely unheard of for someone to not have at least that much set aside for their own personal development.
"Yes, it may hurt you for a month," such people say, " but this is an investment in your career. If you are not going to take yourself seriously enough to drop a few hundred dollars when it hurts, why will a hiring manager decide you are worth the company's money? You wouldn't perform your own open heart surgery. You call in the professional. Why won't you give your career and personal brand the same professional treatment?"
Because...I...am...poor. Like, the real thing, "no shit! I have no money" type of poor.
Those who follow me on Twitter, or Brazen, or just here on the blog know by now about my ideas. About my writing abilities. About my experience and perceptions. About my accomplishments and my talents. I am not into "personal branding" at all, but if a brand emerges naturally out of the work and contributions an individual makes online, many of you are familiar with my so called brand. And I wonder how many of you might be shocked by just how poor I am.
Because you see, in addition to the "why not invest in a life coach" stuff, I also hear many other things which indicate that legions of people do not understand poor.
"You're intelligent. Healthy. Young. Unattached. You have a college degree! You write very well. There is absolutely no way you could be truly poor. You are not homeless. You don't panhandle. You can basically write your own ticket. Why haven't you done so?"
So intelligent people have no reason to be poor? The truly poor can only be those who are somehow damaged in the brain? Slow people? Retarded? Mentally ill> Begging for change on the Metro and sleeping under a bridge or over a grate" That's poor, right?
No. That is homeless. That is one type of poor. The type that arises when nobody cares. Fortunately for me, I have a handful of people, (usually my mother) who do care, and won't allow me to starve and wander the streets. But that could be the only reason I don't do so. Because if I had to rely on my own income and saving right now to survive, I would be hitching my way to the nearest Metro station to set up shop. (And for those who say that I would just need to get any paying job for a while, I would advise you that before freelancing, I tried for 5 solid years to get a full time job and couldn't do it. Reasons: Unknown.)
But a person as cultured, refined, and eloquent as me cannot possibly have to end up sleeping in a Metro station. I read, perform theatre. Am a top user at Brazen. I am working on a novel and have inspired people in ways I don't even know. Surely I have no reason to be that poor. I can't be only a mother's love away from having nothing to eat or no place to stay.
I am certain you would all like to believe that. I am sure many people who don't truly grasp poor are comforted by that notion. That to have all of the gifts I have is a ticket away from being poor. I'd like to believe that as well. But I have lived my life too long to buy into that one.
I don't believe I will be poor forever. I have to hold onto some hope that my life will make a turnaround now that I have rededicated it to my passions, as opposed to winning the rat race. As hard as it is to believe sometimes, I tell myself that at some point it will all pay off. That I will break even. That I will prosper. Not simply survive, and that only with the help of family. But until that day, despite it's obvious crippling problems for a free thinking artist like me, I must not be ashamed to be poor. I must own it. I must shine light upon it, and what it really is, not what the movies tell you it is. It is only in so doing that I can hope to change it. You cannot wrestle something from which you are always running away.
The poor exist. Those who have not broken even for most of their lives are out there. Around you. With you. Some of them are easy to spot. Easy to avoid. To cross a street to stay away from. And some of them are lazy. Homeless. Dirty. Addicted to booze and drugs.
But just as many, possibly even more of them, are hard working, cultured, polite and charming people with whom you converse every day. Who you share a ride on the Metro with instead of avoiding at the station. People with whom you exchange emails. Ideas. Hopes. People whom you would even hire, if you had a job to offer them, so much potential value do they represent.
The more horrifying thought is that they can be all of the above and still be homeless and begging. I do thank the Divinities that I am not one of them for right now.
But, despite having just enough food, a place to stay, and (older) clothes to cover my back, I still know the score.
I am Ty Unglebower and at the moment, I am poor. What do you think of me now?
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Frustrated Fellow Too XYZers (A Featured Post on Brazen Careerist!)
This is not an exceptionally creative post, but I came across a thread on a job hunting board that rang so true with me that I simply had to share it. Especially when I consider that no other thread that I have yet encountered in the world of the job hunt has been so universally in tune with my own experiences on the matter.
It is a frustrating, depressing, and some will say cynical thread. Many would probably dismiss it as belly aching. But these people are not worthless anymore than I am. They are worried, anxious, in some cases rendered hopeless, by a job hunting system that, no matter how many times it is written about, explain or engaged in, just simply doesn't make any damn sense to a certain personality.
Like my own. And to all of us who have found we are Too XYZ.
Read the thread. Each post. And don't dismiss the people as lazy or stupid. Those of you who never have any problem landing jobs, try to listen carefully to what these people who have been out of regular work for a year (or years, such as myself if you discount my freelance work) have to say about their predicament. This is what I and people like me have been up against. It is a perfect indication of just how unhelpful so much of the standard job hunting advice tends to be.
We don't know why. If this is you, perhaps you don't know why. But you are not alone.
Here is the thread. Perhaps add to it yourself?
It is a frustrating, depressing, and some will say cynical thread. Many would probably dismiss it as belly aching. But these people are not worthless anymore than I am. They are worried, anxious, in some cases rendered hopeless, by a job hunting system that, no matter how many times it is written about, explain or engaged in, just simply doesn't make any damn sense to a certain personality.
Like my own. And to all of us who have found we are Too XYZ.
Read the thread. Each post. And don't dismiss the people as lazy or stupid. Those of you who never have any problem landing jobs, try to listen carefully to what these people who have been out of regular work for a year (or years, such as myself if you discount my freelance work) have to say about their predicament. This is what I and people like me have been up against. It is a perfect indication of just how unhelpful so much of the standard job hunting advice tends to be.
We don't know why. If this is you, perhaps you don't know why. But you are not alone.
Here is the thread. Perhaps add to it yourself?
Monday, February 22, 2010
Optimizing Optimism
Be honest with yourself. You’re just Too XYZ to ever be an optimist.
Yes, you have read the articles and books. You have seen the movies. You have perhaps even attended the seminars and workshops. All of them insisting that the key to success in any endeavor is a constant stream of optimism. Total faith that things will work out. An expurgation of every single doubt and worry about your life. And as much as you may identify with the concept, you cannot put it into everyday practice.
You don’t wake up each day, jump out of bed and sing with a smile on your face, “Hello, World! What sort of happiness will you give me today?” You haven’t attained the ability within you to actually look at every failure and say, “What has this taught me, and how can I improve myself because this happened?” It’s not practical for you to say, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”
Yes, there are really people who do that. I’ve met them, and so have you. They are the optimists. And we must face the fact that they DO in fact meet with certain kinds of success more often than those who do not. Annoying perhaps, but indisputable. Yet don’t let anyone sell you the idea that you must become an optimist in order to succeed. You won’t ever be one, and neither will I. We’re Too XYZ for it. But we can succeed too.
Now, I may have given you permission to not be an optimist, but you don’t get off that easily. This is not a free pass to be a pessimist all day. You can’t park yourself on the other side of that road and bitch about everything and anything before, during and after it happens. Work is still involved, folks. Just make the work more suited to what you are.
We have the ability to obtain optimism. We just have to remember that we have a limited supply of it. It does not come naturally from within us. So we be optimistic ABOUT something, as opposed to becoming an optimist as a way of life. Focus optimism on a target, where it can be more potent, instead of trying to apply it to our whole lives, where it gets spread thin, and loses potency.
Work on smaller, individual moments at first. A single commute. One date. Maybe just one cup of coffee. Work on saying to yourself, (and believing it), “Maybe.” A simple “maybe” can in fact be one of the most optimistic things people like us can do because there is no Pollyanna assumption of success, but there is no assumption of failure either, and that is the key.
When those little successes do come, (Good date. Perfect cup of coffee) We can build up a reserve of optimism that we can take with us when the bigger challenges present themselves. And we can focus that accumulated optimism on the challenge, as opposed to trying to apply it to each and every aspect of our lives. Which means that yes, we then have room to complain (a little) about something else. We can be pissed about the weather, or we can bitch about getting the bad parking spot, but still be optimistic about the specific event in question.
After some time you may need to drop back rebuild your reserves. For people like us, we may have find ourselves having to do this if the big event is a failure, or even if it is a draining success. And it may take us a while to once again build up the optimism reserves at that point. We may have to go back to saying “Maybe,” about cups of coffee for a while. But at least this way we too can eventually reap the benefits of positive thinking, without having to beat ourselves up for not being Santa Claus all the time.
Yes, you have read the articles and books. You have seen the movies. You have perhaps even attended the seminars and workshops. All of them insisting that the key to success in any endeavor is a constant stream of optimism. Total faith that things will work out. An expurgation of every single doubt and worry about your life. And as much as you may identify with the concept, you cannot put it into everyday practice.
You don’t wake up each day, jump out of bed and sing with a smile on your face, “Hello, World! What sort of happiness will you give me today?” You haven’t attained the ability within you to actually look at every failure and say, “What has this taught me, and how can I improve myself because this happened?” It’s not practical for you to say, “Don’t cry because it’s over. Smile because it happened.”
Yes, there are really people who do that. I’ve met them, and so have you. They are the optimists. And we must face the fact that they DO in fact meet with certain kinds of success more often than those who do not. Annoying perhaps, but indisputable. Yet don’t let anyone sell you the idea that you must become an optimist in order to succeed. You won’t ever be one, and neither will I. We’re Too XYZ for it. But we can succeed too.
Now, I may have given you permission to not be an optimist, but you don’t get off that easily. This is not a free pass to be a pessimist all day. You can’t park yourself on the other side of that road and bitch about everything and anything before, during and after it happens. Work is still involved, folks. Just make the work more suited to what you are.
We have the ability to obtain optimism. We just have to remember that we have a limited supply of it. It does not come naturally from within us. So we be optimistic ABOUT something, as opposed to becoming an optimist as a way of life. Focus optimism on a target, where it can be more potent, instead of trying to apply it to our whole lives, where it gets spread thin, and loses potency.
Work on smaller, individual moments at first. A single commute. One date. Maybe just one cup of coffee. Work on saying to yourself, (and believing it), “Maybe.” A simple “maybe” can in fact be one of the most optimistic things people like us can do because there is no Pollyanna assumption of success, but there is no assumption of failure either, and that is the key.
When those little successes do come, (Good date. Perfect cup of coffee) We can build up a reserve of optimism that we can take with us when the bigger challenges present themselves. And we can focus that accumulated optimism on the challenge, as opposed to trying to apply it to each and every aspect of our lives. Which means that yes, we then have room to complain (a little) about something else. We can be pissed about the weather, or we can bitch about getting the bad parking spot, but still be optimistic about the specific event in question.
After some time you may need to drop back rebuild your reserves. For people like us, we may have find ourselves having to do this if the big event is a failure, or even if it is a draining success. And it may take us a while to once again build up the optimism reserves at that point. We may have to go back to saying “Maybe,” about cups of coffee for a while. But at least this way we too can eventually reap the benefits of positive thinking, without having to beat ourselves up for not being Santa Claus all the time.
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