Good advice

Seeing as to how this week has gone down a kind of careers pathway, I’ll close it out with this Pro Tip:

While I’m sure that no hiring manager is favorably impressed with a job aspirant screwing up his/her name, it’s pretty much the kiss of death for any career that revolves around communication through the written word. 

This Mr. Holton's ears must still be crimson at the memory 40 years on. One wonders if he left the field of journalism altogether and became, perhaps, an investment banker, where all anyone cares about is the number of digits to the left of the decimal.

 

Career sidestreet

Further to yesterday’s post about not signing up to the course that’s all about writing a book, I was thinking about the instructor’s suggestion that it would be swell if I wanted to use publishing my idea about strategies women use to shift careers around age 50 as a way to start, say, a coaching and speaking business.

This guy framed the suggestion within the context of knowing me, but if he did, he’d know that such a business is not anything to which I’d aspire. Spending 14 weeks writing about anything doesn’t make you an expert in it; it only—best case—scratches the surface. I’m not going to prance around yapping at people about the one tiny part of the subject I think I understand; so, no.

But it occurred to me, looking at the profile of a self-described coach and speaker on Twitter, that this is in fact the model for a good number of people describing themselves as speakers and coaches. They keep regurgitating the same few one-size-fits-all “guaranteed [number] of steps” to success, regardless of the audience. The only guaranteed success element of their methodologies is the one that fills their bank accounts. I wonder if they started out in a writing course?

I’m insulted that the instructor thinks I’d want to join their ranks.

Cradle me

Yesterday was pretty craptastic, even before we got to #SOTU.

I’d been toying with the notion of taking a course whose object is to publish a book. My idea was to write about mid-life career changes, but turns out there’s no point to going through the course if all you’re going to do is publish a book; it’s supposed to be a stepping stone to something else—a great job offer or a new gig. Well, I know I’d never get a job offer on the back of my book idea, and I’d rather swallow coarsely-ground glass than start up a coaching or speaking career about mid-life career changing.

So that was a bummer.

Then, I spoke with someone who’d said he’d be happy to help with my job search (but has been remarkably unforthcoming), and asked him about a specific company that makes community engagement software. He knows most of senior management of this company, so I asked for an introduction. Oh, well, um—I should talk with my recently ex-manager about this company—he introduced him to the company, and I probably wouldn’t like the culture there. (Dude—my ex-manager doesn’t know I’m job hunting; I’m not going to ask him about the culture of a company I’m looking into as my next gig. Just come out and tell me you’re not going to be any help.)

So that was a bummer.

Then there’s all the news from the cesspool that’s the White House and Capitol, which I don’t have the stomach to summarize. Suffice it to say I did not watch the Kleptocrat struggle against sundowning to read the teleprompter last night.

And that’s a real bummer.

No, I got home yesterday afternoon and just inundated myself in something that’s unequivocally beautiful: music. And here’s one of the pieces I chose.

I first heard Natalie Merchant’s “Motherland” a couple of weeks after I returned from my European assignment in October, 2001. I was in my car, listening to someone from NPR interview her on a Sunday morning, and she sang it live in the studio. I kept driving down Route 7 until I got to Tower Records in Tysons, and I bought the CD.

I’ve not thought about it for a while, but its lyrics seem especially appropriate these days. What’s crawling about a thousand miles a day now is worse than concrete. Lust and avarice? Yeah. 

We have got to figure out a way through this.

And I have to figure out a way to get over the bummer that was yesterday.

Lost and found

One of the straps on my backpack bag was starting to disconnect, so I dropped it off at a repair place last Saturday. Since I won’t get it back until this coming Saturday, I had to swap my stuff into an alternative. I’ve had that bag in constant use for two-and-a-half years, so having to carry around something different is a huge break in my pattern.

Sunday morning, I popped out to Whole Foods to pick up stuff for my workweek breakfasts and lunches. I didn’t want to haul my substitute bag, which is a cavernous canvas jobber from J. Peterman that’s mostly used for travelling (it will hold two cameras, a laptop, a folding umbrella and my journal with way too much room to spare for more stuff), so I just took my wallet and a tote bag with me. I paid for my groceries, popped my wallet in the bag and came home, thinking to myself, “Self, remember to put the wallet back in your bag, because you’re going out to lunch later.”

Well, I put away the groceries in the refrigerator, made breakfast and did some work until it was time to meet my friend for lunch. As I was about to walk out the door, I thought it might be good to check that I had, in fact, put the wallet in the bag, and I discovered that indeed I had not.

You ever had one of those searches where you start out looking in logical and reasonable places, and then move on to ridiculous and stupid places? Yeah, that was me. For 20 minutes, I looked in the J. Peterman bag (which only had three things in it) repeatedly, checked the pockets of my parka, ran upstairs, riffled through papers; bupkis. Also: I looked in the refrigerator, behind the container of cottage cheese I'd bought. Twice. Eventually I grabbed a couple of twenties from my backup stash and went out to meet my friend.

On the way over, I called Whole Foods (even though I distinctly remembered dumping the wallet in my tote bag after I paid for the groceries, but remember: once you start down Stupid Street, you find it’s one-way, and you just have to keep on). Nope, no wallet.

I had a nice lunch and a major catch-up, which is always nice, and then I came back for another round of searching. I recalled one of my friends going through a similar exercise the week before—she was trying to remember where she’d put her passport. Someone posted something like “Seven Steps to Finding Everything You’ve Lost”: methodologies for trying to remember where you left stuff. I didn’t read the link, because at the time Susan was looking for her passport, I hadn’t lost anything. But just as I was considering PMing her to ask for the link, I recalled how she eventually found the passport. She associated it with the last time she’d used it (on an African trip), and then fished out the envelope where she’d put all her leftover Rand. Hey, presto!

So, I started associating what I do when I come home with shopping; one of my constants is to put the receipt in a kitchen drawer. I opened the receipt drawer, and Eureka!

Massive relief, because I almost never use cash, and in addition to my driver’s license, two credit cards and ATM card, my wallet holds all my supermarket and restaurant affinity cards, my Dolcezza frequent drinker and District Taco frequent eater punch cards, library cards for four local systems, and the paid receipt for my handbag repair. I would not fancy having to replace that lot.

Gratitude Monday: a helping hand

A couple of weeks ago I got a message through LinkedIn from a woman who said she’d just moved to the District They Call Columbia from San Francisco, and noted that we seemed to have some similarities in background. She asked if I’d be willing to share my experience in making the transition from California to DC, and from tech to non-profit.

Well, you know—LinkedIn, right? But I thought, oh, why not, and I connected with her (I’ll call her Carol) on LinkedIn. She said she was interested in a couple of positions at my company, and would I be willing to meet in person to discuss?

I did a bit of sleuthing and discovered the reason for one of the requirement for a Ph.D. in one of the essentially social media positions (basically, they’re looking backwards, quelle surprise), and set up a coffee date for last Wednesday. Further to that, I asked my ex-manager what he knew about the non-Ph.D. opening. He got very excited—this position, it seems, is one of the best in the company, melding social media with social policy. Apparently, next to [communication and collaboration platform], this remit is the innovation that’s going to change the world. One component (the SoMe) will be led by someone who’s certainly sold herself as a thought leader/guru/disruptor in the area; the other (the policy content) will come from a woman who is a globally-recognized treasure in the field. So the incumbent has an opportunity to learn a great deal while doing some good work.

I met with Carol, and we commiserated on The Weather—that’s always a good conversation starter—and how we’re adjusting to it, coming as we do from what’s essentially a climate paradise. (If you leave out the droughts, fires, floods and earthquakes/tsunamis.) Carol moved out just before Christmas, and hasn’t yet bought real winter clothes. We’ve both recently started looking at Uggs, for pity’s sake.

I’d looked at her LinkedIn profile and seen a string of short-term contract SoMe gigs at Valley They Call Silicon giants. I didn’t ask her about them because I’m painfully familiar with that employment model of indentured servitude practiced by the tech industry—they hire contractors through vendors in a system where the actual providers of labor get no benefits, no future and no sense of being valued. Instead, I gave her a data dump on the position—such as I knew, which wasn’t in depth, tbh—and my take on the organization.

As it happens, she mostly grew up in the area, with a B.S. in biology from the University of Maryland, and she added an Ed.M. in public policy from Harvard. (My ex-manager has an MBA and an MPP from Harvard, so when I discussed Carol with him, I made a point of bringing up that connection.) She’s also worked in non-profits before, so she really didn’t need much from me on that score.

Well, the short version of this is that when we parted, Carol was visibly energized. Back in the office, I sought out the madam who’s doing the screening for the position (and who will be the dotted-line supervisor of the SoMe part of the job), who declared herself “happy to have an informal chat”, and I made that introduction. They had the conversation on Friday, which elated Carol further.

Naturally, there’s no predicting how this will turn out. (Over the weekend I recalled my difficulties filling an intern position once HR inserted itself into the process before I could even see the submissions. The “talent acquisition specialist” passed on applicants without qualifications, and I had to ferret out someone who I knew had applied, but hadn’t been sent on to me, so I don’t know what good researchers never made it to me because of HR. There’s no telling what could happen to Carol’s application before it even makes it to the interviewers’ eyes.) There are also other people in the works, with whom Madam has also had informal chats, and I have no insight into that.

But my point, on this Gratitude Monday, is that I was in a position to offer help to someone who’s standing where I’ve stood in the past. And I did. It’s pretty ballsy to do a cold call via LinkedIn (our mutual connection is someone I don’t recall); most of the unsolicited communications I receive there are spam, and get filed in the appropriate bin. But I recall people who surprised me by offering help, and I recall how very much those offers meant to me.

Over the years I’ve sunk into the mindset that I don’t have much to offer; I’m not well connected, I don’t have a wide expertise; I feel my limitations acutely. This time, I was able to do a bit of digging and make connections that may help Carol find a job sooner rather than later, one that makes good use of her background and sets her up for more good things in the future.

That’s best-case scenario. Worse case is that I’ve given her encouragement early in her job hunt, made her a more confident networker and become a new acquaintance with common experiences in this area.

In turn, she’s reminded me that I do have things to give, and that even small acts of generosity can warm the soul and be banked against the days when everything looks bleak. And I am grateful for this.

Not the stairway to heaven

I’ve been going through computer hard drives both at home and work, clearing things out, because you should do that periodically. And I came across some photos of the environs of my last residence.

That's one of the downsides of living on a ridge: the climb is always on your return trip. Sixty-three steps up this hill every afternoon on my way home from work. I’m very glad indeed that I don’t have to walk that any more.

Phoning it in

Following on yesterday’s post about the not hardest working Kleptocrat in show business during the #TrumpShutdown, here’s another take on the key photo. As noted in, well, pretty much everywhere, the attempt to persuade, well, anyone that the Chaos Monkey was doing anything productive, it failed.

(Here’s one deconstruction, if you want to go there. Share Blue leans way left, but for purposes of today’s discussion, it’s close enough for government work.)

But, once again, Twitter has done itself proud. This is from a different thread, started by Aunt Crabby with that same pathetic fake photo. (Pro tip: Aunt Crabby seldom disappoints.)

I like how, whenever someone uses a simile or metaphor in a discussion of the Kleptocrat (or his minions)—impulse control of a toddler, attention span of a cocker spaniel, dumb as a box of rocks—someone else pops up to defend toddlers, cocker spaniels and rocks.

This thread was short of Photoshop skills, but there were a lot of excellent exchanges.

And this one takes us exactly back to reality. Sadly.

Not the ripest banana in the fruit basket

During the #TrumpShutdown, someone must have told the Kleptocrat that he needed to look like he was doing something to move negotiations forward. So they had him pose at the Resolute desk, with the phone handset to his head.

The utter stupidity of this was apparent to everyone on Twitter, as evidenced in this one thread:

I love how the Photoshoppers stepped into the breech.

But basically the gesture was as empty as everything else in this pathetic git’s life. So I’m glad we got a few giggles out of this at least.

Here's a suggestion...

In the wake of all the Russian crackpot crap pushed on Americans during the 2016 election, Facebook is trying to avoid getting more than its knuckles rapped, and has promised to limit stories that appear in your feed to crackpot crap your friends have posted. Instead of (one presumes) stuff that’s essentially advertising.

I don’t know when this is meant to go into effect, but it can’t come too soon for me. I’ve noticed a lot of things like animal videos (marked “popular on Facebook”) or stories from corporate accounts (marked “[friend name] likes [company name]”) in my timeline. Neither of these categories is anything a friend has specifically chosen to share, and I’m sick to death of it.

But now I see they’ve expanded it further. This showed up yesterday, and it was so ludicrous it stopped me in my scrolling tracks.

There is nothing in my multi-year history on Facebook that has ever indicated I’m in any way at all interested in cleaning. And there’s nothing that will ever make cleaning fun—oddly or otherwise—for me.

That is one broken algorithm.

Gratitude Monday: hope in dark times

Right after the 2016 election, I gave my thoughts on what we were in for with the least-qualified president in history (yes, worse than Warren G. Harding and James Buchanan). While I was right that we were in for a nightmare, I actually grossly underestimated the scope of the possibilities for catastrophe. I’d been counting on the checks and balances put in place by the founding fathers, and did not anticipate the level of sycophancy to which the GOP in Congress would sink—turns out they’ve all had their spines and their consciences surgically removed, and their only position is self-abasement before the Chaos Monkey in hopes that they can retain control of the legislative branch (and therefore access to their big donors’ money).

At this point, I have no words for the lot of them, from Ryan and McConnell on down. There are a few who talk tough, but in the end vote for whatever the Kleptocrat has decreed. The founding fathers, having just fought a war against a system of government based on the Divine Right of Kings, just never imagined they’d have to hardwire in protections against a class of legislative toadies. Oops.

In the year since the inauguration (fun fact: not only was the event sparsely attended, but turns out that many of those who did show up were Russian “businessmen”, hoping to be first through the door to cut deals with their new tovarich-in-chief; quelle surprise), we’ve seen a constant stream of lies; missteps; unconstitutional executive orders; playground-bully diplomacy; assaults on consumers, immigrants, workers, science,the environment, our allies, history and basically everyone/thing that doesn’t fit into his view of Those Who Can Further Enrich Me. He and his Keystone Kops Kabinet have made the United States an international laughingstock, as he blusters and preens, while the GOP keeps nodding and applauding him.

(I personally had never imagined that we would witness a group of high officials go round the room and give public thanks to God on camera for the opportunity to serve any elected official, much less an American one—but we have, twice. So far.)

And every single revelation of yet another scummy, disgusting behavior only makes his supporters like him all the more. Because he is living proof that—when they win the Powerball—they too can be as disgusting and scummy as he is, and no one will turn away from them. This is especially true of his “Christian” supporters, who have been remarkably silent about his affair with a porn star that began four months after his third wife gave birth and continued for a year. They’re apparently not only down with the adultery, but with him paying the woman $130,000 hush money a month before the 2016 election. Hey—if that was necessary to put a racist, misogynistic, homophobic, ignorant xenophobe with no notion of governing and no human empathy into office, then it was clearly God’s will, and therefore money well spent. (Well, okay—they’re used to that sort of payoff from the likes of Jimmy Swaggart and Jim Bakker.)

That ignorance of how government works has resulted in this administration looking like amateur hour, from the first immigration bans (overturned again and again by the courts) down to the current government shutdown. Mitch McConnell (R-Bring-back-slavery) basically said he’d be all for whatever the Chaos Monkey wanted, if he could just figure out what that is. And Chuck Schumer (D-NY) declared on the Senate floor that trying to deal with the Orange One is like “negotiating with Jell-O.” Klepto, of course (and his supporters) thinks that’s good business practice, when in fact it’s ineptitude.

And so here we are at the #TrumpShutdown.

(I make it a point never to use the Kleptocrat’s name online, because I don’t want to contribute to his Klout score, even if the context is negative; he and his ilk think that every mention of him attests to his greatness. However, given his/their pathetic attempt to place the blame for the current federal shutdown—the result of a Republican-controlled White House, Senate and House’s inability to pass even another Continuing Resolution on the budget—on Democrats, has led me, this once, to include this hashtag, which burns his bacon: #TrumpShutdown. Feel free to use it on every social media account you have.)

The Kleptocrat had Air Force One’s engines all warmed up to fly him down to Florida on Friday, so he could get another weekend of golf in and be the star of a fundraiser at his West Palm Beach club. He had every intention of going there no matter what, but someone (my money’s on John Kelly) took away his car keys and told him the optics of him doing that while the government ground to a halt would be bigly bad. So he reverted to type and tweeted how the Democrats were being mean and making him suffer!

As Saturday came and went, with no escape to Florida and counting the $100,000- and $250,000-a-couple gate for the “celebration” of his inaugural anniversary, I’m picturing a toy-tossing tantrum of titanic proportions at the White House. (The event went on, although I wonder if there were refunds of the $250,000 tickets, which included participating in a “roundtable” with the Kleptocrat. No Klepto, no roundtable, so… Yeah, okay, no—obviously it’s harder to pry money out of the Chaos Monkey’s tiny hands than to get sense out of one of his supporters. So there were no refunds.) At any rate, I would not want to be the White House staffer who had to bring him his 14^th Diet Coke of the day.

But, hey—you want to celebrate the achievements in the first year of this #shithole administration? How about these for starters: first to be elected with the help of a hostile foreign power; most days vacationing; most games of golf played; least number of bills signed; lowest approval ratings; most provable lies; most cabinet firings/resignations; most criminal indictments. (Also: first to make one of George Carlin's Seven Words You Can't Say on TV publishable in broadsheet newspapers.)

So that’s where we are today. But there’s cause for hope, and therefore for gratitude.

A year ago, I reported on my experience at the Women’s March on DC. There was so much to describe, it took me all week (here, and here, and here, and here, and here, and here). It was an extraordinary day, not only being part of it in DC, but also knowing that women (and men and children) across the country and around the world came out in their millions to serve notice that they weren’t going to stand idle while a pussy-grabbing (and—as we now know—porn star-banging) ignoramus used the planet as his personal piggy bank.

By way of reminder, here’s a comparison of the how the National Mall looked at the Kleptocrat’s inauguration:

Versus the same real estate an hour before the Women’s March on DC was supposed to have begun:

This year I was unable to join the first anniversary march, being laid up with what I’m hoping is not the flu. But I am greatly heartened by the reports of hundreds of thousands of women and men and children who took to the streets in US cities in every state, and tens of thousands more who did the same around the world—to remind those who try to pervert the principles of democracy and decency that we the people will resist and we the people will prevail.

(I—and thousands of others—got a laugh out of him tweeting about the great weather across the country on Saturday being perfect for marchers to get out and celebrate all his accomplishments. Although it is concerning that delusions of tertiary syphilitic proportions seem to be the guiding lights for someone with this much power.)

I am grateful today for these people, and the millions of more like them, for literally standing up and being counted. I am grateful today for the voters in elections around the country—from Alabama to Minnesota—serving notice that even in the face of GOP voter suppression, we the people reject the party of plutocrats and racists. I am grateful today for the 23 (so far and counting) congressional Repugnants who’ve announced their retirement or resignation because they know they wouldn’t win if they ran again, or because they’re fleeing the results of being caught out in various crimes. (I resent every nickel in retirement pay they’re getting, and look forward to the door hitting their butts on the way out.) I am grateful today for Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller, III—USMC combat veteran of Vietnam, former director of the FBI; and generally acknowledged straight-arrow, unflappable, untouchable in pursuit of the truth—and his team, who are continuing their probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election despite the #TrumpShutdown, and despite the efforts of GOP apparachiks in fear of being uncovered for their own kompromat to close down the investigation.

And I’m grateful today for a new crop of Democratic politicians who are standing up for the interests of all, regardless of ability to grease their palms. Like Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill., and Lt. Col. USA, Ret.), who lost both legs and suffered damage to an arm when an RPG shot down the Black Hawk helicopter she was co-piloting in Iraq. A few years ago, while in the House of Representatives, Duckworth neatly flayed a federal contractor with a “disabled veteran” status whose “disability” came from injuring his foot…playing football at a military prep school.

So watch her this weekend flay the five-time-Vietnam-era-draft-deferred Chaos Monkey for flying the false flag that the #TrumpShutdown will cripple and penalize our armed services.

I love her choice of words—she won’t refer to him as president, just current occupant of the White House.

This year has taken a toll on me—the actions of #CadetBoneSpurs, his appointees and his congressional toadies scare the bejesus out of me and depresses me, both for my own future, but also for that of the country, the world and the future. It’s true that the evil that men do lives after their time in power, and we’ll have a crap ton of evil to clean up after this lot are frogmarched out of office. But this weekend’s activities give me hope—the reminder that we march, we run, we vote and we take back—and for that I am grateful.