Tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it

I know it seems as though a lot of my Friday earworms have been songs by Bob Dylan. But that’s because—in the dystopian hellscape that’s our world these days—it’s just a fact that there’s always a Dylan song that’s appropriate for the latest tsunami of general and specific fuckery going on.

So today let’s have “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”. The melody is kind of uninspiring, as is typical with early Dylan. The imagery in the lyrics have always struck me as being a 1960s version of the Book of Revelation—pretty apocalyptic. But these days, they’re almost a model of restraint, given the reality around us.

I mean—a wave drowning the whole world? A dozen dead oceans? A young woman’s burning body? The well-hidden executioner’s face?

Yeah—we’re there.

Here’s Patti Smith singing it at the 2016 Nobel Prize Ceremony where Dylan was awarded the Prize for Literature. Smith famously lost the lyrics early in her performance, apologized and then carried on with grace. Which I hope we all can do.

The fog

This does not happen often, but here’s a schmear of radiation fog on the nearby golf course a few mornings ago. As you can see, it's only a few feet thick, and the sky is completely cloudless.

 

 

 

Four stars

The clematis season has passed us by, but I thought I’d post a few shots before I archive them for this year.

You're welcome.

 

 

Inspiration

Well, hey—looky who it is waiting for me to get back from my walk yesterday morning.

Nice greeting, eh?

 

Gratitude Monday: not Fred

It’s odd that I’m having to grasp at straws for something to be grateful for today—today being Independence Day.

I mean—usually I spend today contemplating the bold ideas of the founding fathers and marveling at how our idea of a national holiday parade looks more like a picnic than a May Day affair.

But for the past couple of years, my heart is just not in it. MAGAts and the MEAL Team Six crowd have delegitimized the word “patriot” and beclowned the flag. On Saturday, a contingent of the incel infantry stomped along part of Boston’s Freedom Trail (they’d never have made it through the whole 2.5 miles of it, especially if they had to pass any Dunkin’ Donuts), waving flags & thumping a drum. The gang who’ve declared for the past two years they will never wear a diaper on their face because “mah freedom” were all gaitered up, possibly so no one’s mom could recognize them and toss them out of her basement, as happened at their last outing attempting to disrupt a Pride parade in Idaho.

As I understand it, Boston cops escorted the Nazis back to their U-Haul rented trucks (their preferred mode of transportation) after their outing; they didn’t scuttle back ahead of angry locals like they were in Philly last July 4^th.

But here’s what I shall always see and hear whenever these douchebags appear in the news. And that’s something to be grateful for in our current situation.

 

 

 

I won't do what you tell me

Given the complete shitshow that June 2022 has been, it seems appropriate to have as our welcome-July earworm Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name”. Not only because it speaks to the dystopian hellscape that the right-wing nutjob SCOTUS has ushered in, but also because a soft-rock FM station in Vancouver, B.C., played it non-stop all day Thursday.

Why not?

Also, happy Canada Day, eh.

 

Hemerocallis

This week has been one of those weeks. (Actually, the entire month of June has been one of those weeks.) So I’m looking for beauty around me.

Beauty doesn’t have to be exotic; it can be common or garden. Like daylilies.

You just have to look around you and acknowledge them when they present themselves to you, like these acting as a herbaceous border.

Walking the gauntlet

Man—time does fly, doesn’t it?

Came across the Crips of the avian world on the W&OD Trail this weekend.

Barely escaped with my life.

Also—those goslings are really growing apace. They’re going to start stealing hubcaps from the cars in the trail parking lot pretty soon.

 

Nature's mysteries 9

Well, alrighty, then—time for another #IDme.

This tree is along the W&OD Trail; I’ve only seen two instances of it. The leaves look like they might be related to laurels, but I’m no tree surgeon.

What gets me is the fluffy bits. I don’t know what purpose all that frilliness serves.

Whaddaya think?

 

Gratitude Monday: #playingtowin

As you might imagine, after the utter shitshow that was last week in the United States, I had some gratitude challenges for today.

Actually, there’s more to it than the Christo-fascist decisions of SCOTUS, so I’m taking my gratitude practice in a slightly different direction.

About a year ago, the product management group I was in was dissolved and its PMs scattered. I ended up in a completely inappropriate “team”—operations—but I was doing what I’d been focusing on, which is collecting, analyzing and reporting customer and user feedback. But a few months back, when I talked about conducting my Voice of the Customer interviews, my manager threw a hissy fit.

“I don’t even have feedback as one of my goals!” she moaned. She tried to persuade me that she might be able to see her way clear to letting me do feedback maybe 20% of the time, but…I gave her a précis of what my work involved, and 20% was not going to cut it.

She was struggling with that, because she had these goals, and at some point she muttered, ”Feedback should belong in PM.”

I replied, “I don’t disagree. How should we pursue that?”

Well, it wasn’t what she’d expected, but she said she’d speak with her manager, the VP of Customer Success. That was in January.

Fast forward to three weeks ago, after I started conducting new rounds of VoC interviews, and VP sets up a call with me out of the blue to basically say that feedback belongs in PM, but that the SVP of PM thinks his PMs should be doing it and therefore doesn’t need another resource.

I agree—feedback belongs in PM, and in an ideal world, his PMs would be doing what I’m doing. But this world is far from ideal, and they have fulltime jobs without layering on my interviews. (I also manage win/loss analysis, beta programs and surveys; plus I Have Ideas.) Which is what I told VP in a conversation that—as is typical with him—ran over the allotted time by 37 minutes. (Among other things, I suggested that he could transfer my slot over to PM; he hesitated and then said no. Well, he totally can; he just wants the slot to hire another CSM or maybe a support rep.) The TL;DR is—if SVP can’t be persuaded that the value of what I do is sufficient for him to allocate a resource, or if I can’t find another position within the overall organization, I’ll be let go.

Well, then—I’m putting together a case for why they need feedback and why I’m the person they need to manage it; I have a strategy for meeting with the VP and the SVP to make that case in words of single syllables. And I’m careening between three emotions: anger, fear and the excitement of opportunity. Longtime readers will know how crap I am at selling myself; I broke that mold when I applied for the job that brought me to cybersecurity,. I concede that in the intervening years, I’ve got a bit complacent and reverted to my old ways of just being in the background. But this most recent experience has reminded me that #playingtowin has to be my goal, even if I end up having to leave this company.

(Toward that end, I have interviews this week with two prospects in the industry.)

TBH, I’m having to rein in the anger and fear, which is a challenge, and I have to say that the uncertainty is wearing me down. When my immediate manager (who presumably knows I have the Sword of Damocles hanging over my head) talks about prospective events six or 12 months down the road, it's all I can do to tell her to STFU. That, however, would not be productive, so I’m working with a couple of colleagues to roll-play my interaction with the VP. (You may have twigged that I rate him only marginally higher than a waste of space. It feels very risky to be transparent with someone who has a vested interest in not supporting my proposals, so I'm kind of at the cliff's edge.) I’m shooting for confidence, not contempt, so I need the practice.

So, while I’m not particularly thankful that I’m having to come up with matrices and PowerPoint presos, or to replace sarcasm in my voice with a smile, I am grateful that I have strengths to play to, sharp arrows in my quiver and good allies at my side.