Okay, great

Look, I’m trying to be positive; truly I am. But dealing with recruiters just kind of wears you down. (And it’s not just me. I could give you lots of stories told to me by others looking for work here in the Valley They Call Silicon.)

So let me introduce you to my new code, via a couple of memes:

But when—for the moment and for so very many reasons—you cannot say what is beating on the back of your incisors trying to escape your mouth:

Over and out.

The best mistakes we know how to make

I recently read How Can We Keep from Singing: Music and the Passionate Life, by Joan Oliver Goldsmith. Goldsmith is a member of the Minnesota Chorale, a truly amateur group in the sense of doing something fine purely for the love of it. She uses various musical concepts as the framework for discussing life itself, and it resonated with me.

In the chapter titled “Creativity’s Compost”, Goldsmith takes on mistakes.

“What kinds of mistakes do you make? Do you err on the side of jumping into possibility when life beckons? Or do you hold back until conditions are definitely favorable? Are you more afraid of not following your heart’s dream or spending your old age bagging groceries?”

From those questions she goes on to discuss how businesses approach mistakes—whether they welcome and learn from them, or fear bagging groceries. The example she chooses, being in Minnesota, is from 3M Corporation:

“A productive mistake is: (1) made in the service of mission and vision; (2) acknowledged as a mistake; (3) learned from; (4) considered valuable; (5) shared for the benefit of all.”

(I have to say that, here in the Valley They Call Silicon, a lot of disruptive game-changing execs talk about innovation a lot, and hit hard on how they want employees to be creative risk-takers. But when you ask them for examples of how they as a company learn from mistakes, you get nothing but caffeine-charged crickets.)

Then she brings it back to the personal level:

“In this life we make the best mistakes we know how to make. Then, with any luck, we go out and make new ones. I don’t make mistakes when I watch TV or take a walk. These activities are pleasant, restful. But I could not make a life of them. After all, the easiest way to avoid wrong notes is to never open your mouth and sing. What a mistake that would be.”

I’ve made so many mistakes in my life; you know—the ones that still make you cringe decades later. And I’ve gone through the walking-and-reading retreat periods; I know exactly what Goldsmith is talking about. I know from personal experience that it can be very risky to open your mouth and sing, but worrying about bagging groceries is worse.  

Bubble relief

Well, there’s good news on the Bubble Wrap front. Sort of.

(And if you didn’t know there’s a Bubble Wrap front, there is, if you’re one of the 99.932% of humanity who can’t resist popping the cells of the packing material. Of the people who know about Bubble Wrap, of course.)

It came to my attention after yesterday’s post that some benevolent benefactor has given us Virtual Bubble Wrap.

And if that’s not enough to pull you back from the edge, there’s an Insane Version of Virtual Bubble Wrap, with extra-special sound effects, on the same site.

Plus—you can get it for your Android device. But apparently not iOS. Probably on account of the Flash thing.

In any case—crank up the volume when you click on the bubbles. If you’re at work, on the train or in the library, use headphones.

You’re welcome.

Wrapping it up

We learned last month that the Product Formerly Known as Bubble Wrap is being “improved” and that we, the paying consumer, will no longer be able to pop the bubbles. Because there won’t be any.

So on one of my walks around the Valley They Call Silicon recently, when I spied this in someone’s trash, I almost snatched it for possible sale on eBay:

I didn’t, though. I just don’t have that kind of entrepreneurial drive.

Gratitude Monday: Unasked and unlooked for

On my Sunday morning exercise circuits, I like to add in walking the labyrinth at what I refer to as the Triune Church(es) of the Valley They Call Silicon.

  

Dunno whether the rock-lined Cretan-style labyrinth was an ecumenical project, or whether the Methodists, the Lutherans or the, uh, Very Gooders took point, but I’m glad it’s there.

(It’s kind of interesting to me that they didn’t follow the Chartres style, but this one is a lot easier to install, I’m guessing. Also, perhaps there was disagreement amongst the three congregations as to whether cruciform represented something too close to Papacy and this was determined to be non-denominational and therefore acceptable to all.)

Breaking my brisk pace to follow the mini-pilgrim path is both a physical and metaphorical pulling away for me. I turn off my pod and just walk the path in brain-neutral, instead of my usual mental speed-hopping. Yesterday I was focusing on a part of a prayer I’ve been practicing for a few days, on graces that have come “unasked and unlooked for” in my life.

There are a lot of those, of course, but a lot of the time I’m just not paying attention. So I was focusing on being open to them: to seeing them and hearing them when they appear, even unasked or unlooked for.

Well, as I was approaching one of the turns, I heard the unmistakable honking of Canada geese, and at the turn I looked up to watch a V-formation of maybe 15 of them flying fairly low overhead in front of me. As they passed from left to right, I heard a couple of honks off to the left, behind a tree. “Poky little gosling,” I thought (interrupting my meditative focus, to be sure). And then there appeared a much smaller formation—perhaps half as many—just flapping and honking, like they were doing their very-goose-best to catch up.

It was so quiet in the pre-0700 Sunday air, and they were so low, that I realized I could hear their wings beating. I’ve never heard that before, that whap-whap-whap-whap sound, multiplied by seven or eight sets of wings.

What a joyful thing—completely unexpected, and in the normal course of life around here, mostly impossible. The quiet around me, the quiet in myself, the initial squadron alerting me to their presence and the low formation of the hurry-uppers all came together to give me those beautiful moments, before everything returned to “normal”.

Now, I do not ordinarily find Canada geese charming. They’re an invasive species, taking over whatever environment they settle into, and you do not ever want them congregating anywhere you need to be walking or playing. (The phrase “crap through a goose” doesn’t even begin to approach the enormity of their output.)

But yesterday I was extremely grateful that they appeared so serendipitously, unasked and unlooked for, preparing me for the week ahead.