Believe me, there's nothing I'd like more than for Senator Craig to be a raging, hypocritical closet case. However, there is one glaring problem with this "scandal." Where is the presumption of innocence?
While I do not deny that illicit bathroom activities happen, let's think about this rationally for a second. Even the highest partitions between bathroom stalls only allow approximately twenty-four inches of room. At best, this sixty-two-year-old man is accused of risking his career to cop a feel? Isn't that what interns are for? If the man is agile enough to do more than that, God bless him and give him the Congressional Medal of Freedom. Lord knows it's been bestowed for lesser accomplishments.
Frankly, in these deeply divisive times, I'm not at all convinced that opposing political factions aren't making hay while the reflection of the scandalous sun flickers. Find me a callboy who steps forward and says that he too has dingled the senator's berries and I'll be more inclined to give credence to this story.
I have to give credit where credit is due, however. The Republicans, in absolute consistency are fleeing from Craig and indignantly calling for his resignation. There apparently has even been a demand for his resignation.
The fact of the matter is, if homosexuality hasn't been so demonized, men who seek sex with men wouldn't have to result to such illicit activity; public bathroom sex is really the lowest of the low in sexual arenas. For this Craig bears some responsibility. The irony that the tool he so often used to frighten his constituents being used against him is rich. That it's being used against him by his own party is the cherry on top.
But political irony and schadenfreude should not be enjoyed at the cost of one of the cornerstones of our society. The man is presumed innocent until proven guilty, and he's admitted to disorderly conduct and since claimed that he made the plea in an attempt to minimize the uproar. Frankly, that sounds reasonable. Give me more proof of his hypocracy before we destroy his life.
Friday, August 31, 2007
Thursday, August 30, 2007
Interviews
There is something to be said for living in the positive, for seeing the potential and not being sidetracked by the negative. Shoot for the moon and even if you miss you land in the stars.
Lately I've been surprised by how much I've done that in my life. Potential and possibility as opposed to history and fact have been been my watch words.
Yesterday I had a fourth interview for a job that was essentially the exact same job I just left, but more so. I met with the man who would be my boss and he did a brilliant job of making the job attractive, but about half way through I realized that he framed it in terms of how he'd like to see the position evolve. He spoke of his vision. All of that was fine, but an aspect of this job is supporting the head of a particular division, and there was no mention of what he thought was required in the position. There was no "we" are looking for this, only "I" want this.
That was a huge red flag to me. On more than one occasion I've been hired by someone who decides to take the position in a different direction, only to find that the boss failed to alert anyone else that the job has changed. I end up spending the first year realigning everyone's expectations -- especially my own.
What's more, it was clear that I'd been required to truss myself up in a suit and tie for a simple meet and greet. There were no other meetings scheduled and there really should have been. After four interviews, I should have been introduced to the head of the division at least, but nothing. It became clear that the entire process was a colossal waste of my time.
So, I cheerfully returned the favor. I became endlessly fascinated with the most minute detail of the organization. If I have one talent, it's coming up with questions that are precisely on point and defy a canned response. That's what makes me an excellent recruiter. I counted four different times when the conversation ground to a halt when I asked a question, my interviewer's eyes grew wider and he'd start his response with, "That's an excellent question...I don't really know..." and then he'd stammer something that sounded like an answer to the question, but really wasn't. I stretched what was to have been a ten-minute handshake and smile into an hour and ten minutes. Then I thanked him for his time and stood up to leave.
To be absolutely fair, my enthusiasm for the job was manufactured. I can think of nothing duller than discussing how to improve morale, or how to manage the performance of a weak employee, or looking at colorful organization charts. When will HR people realize that what looks pretty on the page really has little application in real life? With a feeling like that, I'm not a good interview subject.
The second company sent me an e-mail asking me to write eight mini-essays in response to their preliminary questions before scheduling an actual interview. I kid you not, question number three was, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" That question went out with the requirement that women wear skirts and hose and men's hair must clear their collar. Still, I dredged up the "I'm going to rule the world from a job just like this one," response. Then question four was if I'd submit to the personality profile.
Of course I said I would, but I also said that I thought there were more reliable techniques to determining whether a candidate was a fit for an organization. I did NOT say that standardized personality profiles are borderline illegal, that even the most scientific profile is undermined by the inherent bias of the profile writer, and that the results invariably prejudice the recruiting team by implying that a momentary snapshot, taken during a stressful situation such as the recruiting process, is a definitive portrait of the candidate. Frankly, I'd prefer to ask the applicant what his sign is and consult the Magic 8 Ball.
But in interviews I've been asked if I'm Jewish, how much I weigh, whether or not I'm married, whether or not I'm gay, and how old I am. Only once did I resist answering the question. Every other time I decided that it simply wasn't worth the headache and answered the question. But, if I was litigious I'd own a couple of companies today.
So, I'm going to continue sending out my resume and I'm going to continue putting my little business together. Next week is when I'm scheduled to start putting my PhD applications together. It looks like I'm not going to settle for the comfort of corporate America, but shoot for the moon.
When I first started acting, I hated auditions.
Lately I've been surprised by how much I've done that in my life. Potential and possibility as opposed to history and fact have been been my watch words.
Yesterday I had a fourth interview for a job that was essentially the exact same job I just left, but more so. I met with the man who would be my boss and he did a brilliant job of making the job attractive, but about half way through I realized that he framed it in terms of how he'd like to see the position evolve. He spoke of his vision. All of that was fine, but an aspect of this job is supporting the head of a particular division, and there was no mention of what he thought was required in the position. There was no "we" are looking for this, only "I" want this.
That was a huge red flag to me. On more than one occasion I've been hired by someone who decides to take the position in a different direction, only to find that the boss failed to alert anyone else that the job has changed. I end up spending the first year realigning everyone's expectations -- especially my own.
What's more, it was clear that I'd been required to truss myself up in a suit and tie for a simple meet and greet. There were no other meetings scheduled and there really should have been. After four interviews, I should have been introduced to the head of the division at least, but nothing. It became clear that the entire process was a colossal waste of my time.
So, I cheerfully returned the favor. I became endlessly fascinated with the most minute detail of the organization. If I have one talent, it's coming up with questions that are precisely on point and defy a canned response. That's what makes me an excellent recruiter. I counted four different times when the conversation ground to a halt when I asked a question, my interviewer's eyes grew wider and he'd start his response with, "That's an excellent question...I don't really know..." and then he'd stammer something that sounded like an answer to the question, but really wasn't. I stretched what was to have been a ten-minute handshake and smile into an hour and ten minutes. Then I thanked him for his time and stood up to leave.
To be absolutely fair, my enthusiasm for the job was manufactured. I can think of nothing duller than discussing how to improve morale, or how to manage the performance of a weak employee, or looking at colorful organization charts. When will HR people realize that what looks pretty on the page really has little application in real life? With a feeling like that, I'm not a good interview subject.
The second company sent me an e-mail asking me to write eight mini-essays in response to their preliminary questions before scheduling an actual interview. I kid you not, question number three was, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" That question went out with the requirement that women wear skirts and hose and men's hair must clear their collar. Still, I dredged up the "I'm going to rule the world from a job just like this one," response. Then question four was if I'd submit to the personality profile.
Of course I said I would, but I also said that I thought there were more reliable techniques to determining whether a candidate was a fit for an organization. I did NOT say that standardized personality profiles are borderline illegal, that even the most scientific profile is undermined by the inherent bias of the profile writer, and that the results invariably prejudice the recruiting team by implying that a momentary snapshot, taken during a stressful situation such as the recruiting process, is a definitive portrait of the candidate. Frankly, I'd prefer to ask the applicant what his sign is and consult the Magic 8 Ball.
But in interviews I've been asked if I'm Jewish, how much I weigh, whether or not I'm married, whether or not I'm gay, and how old I am. Only once did I resist answering the question. Every other time I decided that it simply wasn't worth the headache and answered the question. But, if I was litigious I'd own a couple of companies today.
So, I'm going to continue sending out my resume and I'm going to continue putting my little business together. Next week is when I'm scheduled to start putting my PhD applications together. It looks like I'm not going to settle for the comfort of corporate America, but shoot for the moon.
When I first started acting, I hated auditions.
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
Silver Linings
Another Republican senator caught attempting sexual improprieties with a member of the same sex. Could there be a more stale topic in the news?
But there's something significant happening with Senator Craig that no one has picked up on. He's claiming that he's not gay and never has been. Yet the media is jumping all over him for hypocrisy. He's voted against gay marriage, gays in the military, etc.
In the spirit of my previous post, I think it's time for the LGBT community to pick of definition for "gay." For as long as I've been alive, political activists have been arguing that being gay transcends that sex act. They've argued that being gay is an emotional identity, above choice. As support for the argument, men in women who've lived for decades in heterosexual marriages have been trotted out and encouraged to tell the stories of how they were able to perform sexually and build strong relationships, but finding something missing.
Therefore, if it's possible to perform sexually with a member of the opposite sex, but ultimately identify as gay, is it not possible to divorce the sex act from emotion, perform sexually with a member of the same sex and identify as straight.
Craig's hypocrisy is not found in his voting record. It's found in his stance that homosexuality and the accompanying acts are immoral, and yet seeking partners for those acts in the most sordid manner possible. And the evidence would indicate that not only was this not the senator's first cup at the tearoom, but that he was comfortable enough to be pretty aggressive in pursuing. Such comfort comes only with practice.
The hypocrisy comes, not in any obfuscation of sexual preference, but in the obvious fact that his marriage at least is not particularly sacred. His plunking a business card in front of a law enforcement officer and asking him what he thought of that indicates that Senator Craig saw himself as empowered and protected by an authority that transcends the average citizen, and his actions in a Minnesota lavatory would seem to say that he also believes he answers to a higher moral authority.
Yesterday I watched almost the entire first season of Project Runway. Wendy Pepper was cast as a ruthless, no-talent hack who back stabbed her way to the top. Given my recent experience in corporate America, I'm here to tell you that Wendy Pepper wasn't particularly sophisticated in her strategies. She set out to win a game, and she achieved a pretty high level of success. The other participants were very quick to hop on their high horses and not only condemn Wendy's "duplicity," but to indignantly huff at every turn that they would never stoop to such manipulations.
Yet in the final episode, we see Kara Saun using custom-made shoes that were provided at a deep, deep discount. While she held herself to the letter of the law, and only after she was forced to comply with her contract, she blatantly disregarded the spirit of the contract. Yet, when she was exposed, she had no problem defending her strategy and once again becoming indignant that anyone would question her integrity. She probably fails to see that she may very well have forfeited the victory because of her iron-man twisting of her ethics. She believes herself to be ethically pure, all evidence to the contrary. And by huffing and puffing about Wendy Pepper's lack of ethics, she seems to believe that no one would think to look at hers.
I suspect that Senator Craig is doing a similar mental gymnastic routine, convincing himself that there's nothing wrong with a little bathroom hanky panky. He's been a good provider and loves his wife. Anything else is no one else's business.
There's a temptation to pity or sympathize with Mrs. Senator Craig. I'm finding it difficult to nurture such an impulse. Such blatant hypocrisy does not exist in a vacuum. Even contestants on a reality game show are able to pierce such moral ambiguity. Faced with day after day, Mrs. Craig has got to have witnessed enough in her marriage to at least suspect her husband is capable of this. After decades of marriage she has either turned a blind eye, or she's outright wilfully stupid. Neither deserves pity nor compassion.
At the end of the day, there are a couple points of good news in this story. The first is that it becomes increasingly clear that attempts to legislate sexual behavior only forces that behavior to become covert. Sexual drives must be innate, or someone so vehemently opposed to them as Senator Craig would be able to resist.
Secondly, at age sixty-two, Senator Craig was randy enough to risk his senatorial career and marriage for the opportunity to play advanced tonsil hockey in public. And in spite of looking the way he does, he must be having some success. Oh, happy day for those of us slipping into middle age!
But there's something significant happening with Senator Craig that no one has picked up on. He's claiming that he's not gay and never has been. Yet the media is jumping all over him for hypocrisy. He's voted against gay marriage, gays in the military, etc.
In the spirit of my previous post, I think it's time for the LGBT community to pick of definition for "gay." For as long as I've been alive, political activists have been arguing that being gay transcends that sex act. They've argued that being gay is an emotional identity, above choice. As support for the argument, men in women who've lived for decades in heterosexual marriages have been trotted out and encouraged to tell the stories of how they were able to perform sexually and build strong relationships, but finding something missing.
Therefore, if it's possible to perform sexually with a member of the opposite sex, but ultimately identify as gay, is it not possible to divorce the sex act from emotion, perform sexually with a member of the same sex and identify as straight.
Craig's hypocrisy is not found in his voting record. It's found in his stance that homosexuality and the accompanying acts are immoral, and yet seeking partners for those acts in the most sordid manner possible. And the evidence would indicate that not only was this not the senator's first cup at the tearoom, but that he was comfortable enough to be pretty aggressive in pursuing. Such comfort comes only with practice.
The hypocrisy comes, not in any obfuscation of sexual preference, but in the obvious fact that his marriage at least is not particularly sacred. His plunking a business card in front of a law enforcement officer and asking him what he thought of that indicates that Senator Craig saw himself as empowered and protected by an authority that transcends the average citizen, and his actions in a Minnesota lavatory would seem to say that he also believes he answers to a higher moral authority.
Yesterday I watched almost the entire first season of Project Runway. Wendy Pepper was cast as a ruthless, no-talent hack who back stabbed her way to the top. Given my recent experience in corporate America, I'm here to tell you that Wendy Pepper wasn't particularly sophisticated in her strategies. She set out to win a game, and she achieved a pretty high level of success. The other participants were very quick to hop on their high horses and not only condemn Wendy's "duplicity," but to indignantly huff at every turn that they would never stoop to such manipulations.
Yet in the final episode, we see Kara Saun using custom-made shoes that were provided at a deep, deep discount. While she held herself to the letter of the law, and only after she was forced to comply with her contract, she blatantly disregarded the spirit of the contract. Yet, when she was exposed, she had no problem defending her strategy and once again becoming indignant that anyone would question her integrity. She probably fails to see that she may very well have forfeited the victory because of her iron-man twisting of her ethics. She believes herself to be ethically pure, all evidence to the contrary. And by huffing and puffing about Wendy Pepper's lack of ethics, she seems to believe that no one would think to look at hers.
I suspect that Senator Craig is doing a similar mental gymnastic routine, convincing himself that there's nothing wrong with a little bathroom hanky panky. He's been a good provider and loves his wife. Anything else is no one else's business.
There's a temptation to pity or sympathize with Mrs. Senator Craig. I'm finding it difficult to nurture such an impulse. Such blatant hypocrisy does not exist in a vacuum. Even contestants on a reality game show are able to pierce such moral ambiguity. Faced with day after day, Mrs. Craig has got to have witnessed enough in her marriage to at least suspect her husband is capable of this. After decades of marriage she has either turned a blind eye, or she's outright wilfully stupid. Neither deserves pity nor compassion.
At the end of the day, there are a couple points of good news in this story. The first is that it becomes increasingly clear that attempts to legislate sexual behavior only forces that behavior to become covert. Sexual drives must be innate, or someone so vehemently opposed to them as Senator Craig would be able to resist.
Secondly, at age sixty-two, Senator Craig was randy enough to risk his senatorial career and marriage for the opportunity to play advanced tonsil hockey in public. And in spite of looking the way he does, he must be having some success. Oh, happy day for those of us slipping into middle age!
Open Doors, Open Windows.
At the age of nineteen I accepted the fact that I would never be an astronaut; that I'd never never dance with the Bolshoi. Pretty much everything else was fertile ground for exploration and at some point I'd cover it all.
At this stage, I've accepted that I'll never be a fireman. I'll never look into one of my children's eyes and see his great grandmother. I'll never be President of the United States. I'm resigned to those facts and don't really feel like I've given up anything. Up until today, I feel like I've kept as many doors open as is humanly possible. At nineteen, I thought anything was possible. I now feel like anything that could be important to me is possible.
But the difference between being nineteen and today is that I'm beginning to feel like I'm going to step through one of these doors I've been keeping open and as a result some windows are going to close. For the first time in my life, I'm beginning to understand what true regret must feel like.
Understand that the choices I'm facing are not earth shattering. In fact, in the grand scheme of things the choices I face are pretty trivial. They could best be summed up by a horoscope I recently read. It said that I was faced with the choice of comfort and security, but boredom; or autonomy and freedom, but loneliness. I've been trying to travel both paths for the last couple of years. For me, they've been parallel paths and the gulf between the two has been pretty easily jumped. But I'm beginning to feel the paths really diverge.
I guess that's what they mean by growing up. By the time most people have reached my stage of life they've made several life-determining commitments. They've married. They've had children. They've made financial commitments that prevent them from doing radical things. There are mortgages and orthodontist bills.
But as I type this, I find myself wondering if those things really are life-determining decisions. Houses can be sold. Teeth are eventually straightened. Degrees can be earned, skills attained. But all of those things take time and jumping paths virtually assures that none of the paths will be distinguished. Unless you're exceptionally talented and lucky.
And that is where I diverge from most people. At my core I feel exceptionally talented and lucky. I feel like I've been blessed with a wealth of resources and that it's my responsibility to use as many of them as possible. And that's what I think I've done.
If you haven't guessed, today is a big day. There's an opportunity in front of me and I've been struggling with the question of just how aggressively I pursue it. I've reached the decision that I pursue it just as aggressively as if it was the only opportunity in front of me and that I wanted it as much as I've ever wanted anything. I'll put decisions off a little later. Right now there really isn't anything to decide.
When a door opens, a window doesn't necessarily close, it's just that stepping through the door makes the window further away.
At this stage, I've accepted that I'll never be a fireman. I'll never look into one of my children's eyes and see his great grandmother. I'll never be President of the United States. I'm resigned to those facts and don't really feel like I've given up anything. Up until today, I feel like I've kept as many doors open as is humanly possible. At nineteen, I thought anything was possible. I now feel like anything that could be important to me is possible.
But the difference between being nineteen and today is that I'm beginning to feel like I'm going to step through one of these doors I've been keeping open and as a result some windows are going to close. For the first time in my life, I'm beginning to understand what true regret must feel like.
Understand that the choices I'm facing are not earth shattering. In fact, in the grand scheme of things the choices I face are pretty trivial. They could best be summed up by a horoscope I recently read. It said that I was faced with the choice of comfort and security, but boredom; or autonomy and freedom, but loneliness. I've been trying to travel both paths for the last couple of years. For me, they've been parallel paths and the gulf between the two has been pretty easily jumped. But I'm beginning to feel the paths really diverge.
I guess that's what they mean by growing up. By the time most people have reached my stage of life they've made several life-determining commitments. They've married. They've had children. They've made financial commitments that prevent them from doing radical things. There are mortgages and orthodontist bills.
But as I type this, I find myself wondering if those things really are life-determining decisions. Houses can be sold. Teeth are eventually straightened. Degrees can be earned, skills attained. But all of those things take time and jumping paths virtually assures that none of the paths will be distinguished. Unless you're exceptionally talented and lucky.
And that is where I diverge from most people. At my core I feel exceptionally talented and lucky. I feel like I've been blessed with a wealth of resources and that it's my responsibility to use as many of them as possible. And that's what I think I've done.
If you haven't guessed, today is a big day. There's an opportunity in front of me and I've been struggling with the question of just how aggressively I pursue it. I've reached the decision that I pursue it just as aggressively as if it was the only opportunity in front of me and that I wanted it as much as I've ever wanted anything. I'll put decisions off a little later. Right now there really isn't anything to decide.
When a door opens, a window doesn't necessarily close, it's just that stepping through the door makes the window further away.
Saturday, August 25, 2007
Doubting Teresa
I have always been a huge fan of certainty. It's neat and clean. And although I've found much of Catholic doctrine to be nothing more than political manipulation and emotional terrorism, I've always sort of respected the rigidity and certainty of the Catholic faithful.
This week news surfaced that the personal documents of Mother Teresa detail her crisis of faith, at one point quoting her as saying that she feared she was living the life of a hypocrite. The news stories I've read seem to indicate that she went to her grave questioning the existence of God. Later on television I heard Michele Martin speculate that it wasn't any wonder she had a crisis of faith, facing the horror of humanity on a day to day basis.
I am a faithful, if not particularly religious person. I believe in God and in the good of most people. I sometimes think that the people I know would find that hard to believe, I can be quite negative and judgemental. But by and large, I start out believing the best in people and have a difficult time changing that belief.
And I believe in God. I won't bore you with all of the details here, but suffice it to say that I do believe I've led a blessed life. Not all of it has been easy and I've no doubt handled certain challenges with more grace than others. But in the final analysis, I do believe. I believe I've seen evidence of God in my life and I consider myself privileged to have seen that evidence.
And, ultimately that's what it boils down to. Privilege. Recently PBS had a special from a Dr. Wayne Somebody talking about the Tao Te Ching. I recorded it and watched parts of it over the course of a week. His talk boiled down to the same simple principles espoused by just about every other "positive thinker" who can operate a computer and put out a book. "You control your own destiny." "Yes, you can if you think you can." All of those books, tapes, and television shows are empowering and always leave me feeling better about myself and life. I feel like I've achieved quite a bit in my life from sheer will, and I'm no where near ready to stop trying new and daring things.
But, I'm privileged. I'm in a good home. I have money in the bank and food on the table. I have a very expensive education and am making plans to expand that education. My life isn't perfect, but I'm also not wandering the streets of Baghdad wondering where my family is, what happened to my home, or if I'll be vaporized by the approaching woman who may be concealing a bomb. And I'm confronted with the question: how does positive thinking, prayer -- faith -- improve that situation? It's easy to have faith when comfortable.
I don't have an answer. The formula for a good essay dictates that I pose a question and then offer a solution. But there isn't one. And any solution to be offered would be, at best, uncertain. The best that I can come up with is that for as long as man has been able to form a declarative sentence in an effort to give definition to life, he has failed in absolutely answering any question. Nothing in life offers absolutes. Nothing. And as I get older each question presents even more uncertainties. With my expensive education comes the ability to ask more questions and the ability to distinguish variables in any answer, virtually insuring a life of "yeah, but" and "why?"
This afternoon I wandered down Sheridan Avenue to treat myself to a burrito for lunch. As I approached the Loyola campus I became aware that the area was swarming with returning college students. Those three falls that I returned to campus are golden in my memory. That first month of school was always so full of possibility. That golden feeling was something I missed when working on my masters. As I get older I become more aware of the fading promise with waning youth and more acutely aware that now is the time I need to fulfill that promise of my undergrad days. Again, I find myself questioning if my continuing my education isn't really just some way to delay the fulfillment of that promise. Can promises of youth ever really be fulfilled?
I want to read Mother Teresa's letters and diaries. I want to know exactly what questions she was asking, and if she doubted God who was she asking the questions of? And I want to know that if she truly doubted God if she felt that her life was a waste. Because, ultimately if you don't or can't believe in God, isn't it all just a waste?
In my undergrad days I had a professor who'd made it very clear that he regarded me as a second-rate talent. He only cast me in one of his productions, and I'm sure it was because the actor that he truly wanted had been lost to another director. I saw gaining this professor's respect as one of my most important goals in college. I went to him and asked him why we never studied any French theater, or German, or Asian. Why was our curriculum so English- and American-focused? I don't remember his answer, but he asked me what I wanted to study. I wasn't prepared for that question, but I said that I wanted to know more about French theater, so he offered to do an independent study. I jumped at the chance. The first thing he had me read was The Myth of Sisyphus.
I'm sure that nearly ninety percent of it went right over my head, but it was my first exposure to existentialism, and I loved it. Those French writers were brilliant at asking questions as if to challenge God himself. Camus and Sartre did nothing to weaken my belief in God. They solidified it. A couple years later I challenged a world-renowned Eugene O'Neill scholar whose entire thesis was that O'Neill was an atheist. I asked, "If O'Neill's writings are all just rants about the nonexistence of God, how could you possibly say he was an atheist? How can someone be so angry about something he believes doesn't exist?" The professor had no answer for me and I believe gave me an A just to shut me up.
I guess all of this leads me to believe that Teresa ultimately did not doubt the existence of God. Although that may have been how she viewed it, I think she looked at the daily misery she worked so tirelessly to alleviate and began to doubt her effectiveness in the eyes of God.
I have to believe that her crisis of faith was a crisis of faith in herself. And hope she found nothing but joy and all of the rewards in heaven that she so richly had earned.
This week news surfaced that the personal documents of Mother Teresa detail her crisis of faith, at one point quoting her as saying that she feared she was living the life of a hypocrite. The news stories I've read seem to indicate that she went to her grave questioning the existence of God. Later on television I heard Michele Martin speculate that it wasn't any wonder she had a crisis of faith, facing the horror of humanity on a day to day basis.
I am a faithful, if not particularly religious person. I believe in God and in the good of most people. I sometimes think that the people I know would find that hard to believe, I can be quite negative and judgemental. But by and large, I start out believing the best in people and have a difficult time changing that belief.
And I believe in God. I won't bore you with all of the details here, but suffice it to say that I do believe I've led a blessed life. Not all of it has been easy and I've no doubt handled certain challenges with more grace than others. But in the final analysis, I do believe. I believe I've seen evidence of God in my life and I consider myself privileged to have seen that evidence.
And, ultimately that's what it boils down to. Privilege. Recently PBS had a special from a Dr. Wayne Somebody talking about the Tao Te Ching. I recorded it and watched parts of it over the course of a week. His talk boiled down to the same simple principles espoused by just about every other "positive thinker" who can operate a computer and put out a book. "You control your own destiny." "Yes, you can if you think you can." All of those books, tapes, and television shows are empowering and always leave me feeling better about myself and life. I feel like I've achieved quite a bit in my life from sheer will, and I'm no where near ready to stop trying new and daring things.
But, I'm privileged. I'm in a good home. I have money in the bank and food on the table. I have a very expensive education and am making plans to expand that education. My life isn't perfect, but I'm also not wandering the streets of Baghdad wondering where my family is, what happened to my home, or if I'll be vaporized by the approaching woman who may be concealing a bomb. And I'm confronted with the question: how does positive thinking, prayer -- faith -- improve that situation? It's easy to have faith when comfortable.
I don't have an answer. The formula for a good essay dictates that I pose a question and then offer a solution. But there isn't one. And any solution to be offered would be, at best, uncertain. The best that I can come up with is that for as long as man has been able to form a declarative sentence in an effort to give definition to life, he has failed in absolutely answering any question. Nothing in life offers absolutes. Nothing. And as I get older each question presents even more uncertainties. With my expensive education comes the ability to ask more questions and the ability to distinguish variables in any answer, virtually insuring a life of "yeah, but" and "why?"
This afternoon I wandered down Sheridan Avenue to treat myself to a burrito for lunch. As I approached the Loyola campus I became aware that the area was swarming with returning college students. Those three falls that I returned to campus are golden in my memory. That first month of school was always so full of possibility. That golden feeling was something I missed when working on my masters. As I get older I become more aware of the fading promise with waning youth and more acutely aware that now is the time I need to fulfill that promise of my undergrad days. Again, I find myself questioning if my continuing my education isn't really just some way to delay the fulfillment of that promise. Can promises of youth ever really be fulfilled?
I want to read Mother Teresa's letters and diaries. I want to know exactly what questions she was asking, and if she doubted God who was she asking the questions of? And I want to know that if she truly doubted God if she felt that her life was a waste. Because, ultimately if you don't or can't believe in God, isn't it all just a waste?
In my undergrad days I had a professor who'd made it very clear that he regarded me as a second-rate talent. He only cast me in one of his productions, and I'm sure it was because the actor that he truly wanted had been lost to another director. I saw gaining this professor's respect as one of my most important goals in college. I went to him and asked him why we never studied any French theater, or German, or Asian. Why was our curriculum so English- and American-focused? I don't remember his answer, but he asked me what I wanted to study. I wasn't prepared for that question, but I said that I wanted to know more about French theater, so he offered to do an independent study. I jumped at the chance. The first thing he had me read was The Myth of Sisyphus.
I'm sure that nearly ninety percent of it went right over my head, but it was my first exposure to existentialism, and I loved it. Those French writers were brilliant at asking questions as if to challenge God himself. Camus and Sartre did nothing to weaken my belief in God. They solidified it. A couple years later I challenged a world-renowned Eugene O'Neill scholar whose entire thesis was that O'Neill was an atheist. I asked, "If O'Neill's writings are all just rants about the nonexistence of God, how could you possibly say he was an atheist? How can someone be so angry about something he believes doesn't exist?" The professor had no answer for me and I believe gave me an A just to shut me up.
I guess all of this leads me to believe that Teresa ultimately did not doubt the existence of God. Although that may have been how she viewed it, I think she looked at the daily misery she worked so tirelessly to alleviate and began to doubt her effectiveness in the eyes of God.
I have to believe that her crisis of faith was a crisis of faith in herself. And hope she found nothing but joy and all of the rewards in heaven that she so richly had earned.
Thursday, August 23, 2007
Whoring
Things are going well as I assemble a portfolio of actor's headshots. So far I've taken about six hundred shots, and I'd say that about 5% are shaping up to fee worthy. Considering I've been at it for about a week, I'm pleased with the progress.
One of my models was an acting student from Northwestern. I met him briefly for coffee about a week before the shoot. Since these shoots are taking place in my home for now, I want to be sure of who I'm letting in. We chatted and during the course of the conversation I suggested that he bring a friend along, to make him feel more comfortable. They both showed up an hour-and-a-half late, but their entitled Northwestern students, so it's pretty much what I expected.
Anyway, the shoot went well. The kid loved the camera, and the camera loved him. He and his friend chatted away, almost as if I wasn't there and that was fine. He is gay, and I was sort amused with his comfort with that fact and that these two kids were just chatting about boyfriends.
The model was talking about a young man he'd dated recently who dumped him. The reason given was, "Our musical tastes are so different, and well I'm really looking for someone a little more masculine."
A little more masculine? Not Russel Crowe, not Brad Pitt, but not Zac Efron. Really someone who falls somewhere in between.
Now, understand that although this model's pictures came out looking almost thug-like, he's an educated kid coming out with a degree in drama. But he also wasn't swathed in marabou and rhinestones. He is smart, funny, charming, and very good looking. Now, no doubt he has his warts. In fact, I know he has his warts because I retouched them. But falling on the paler end of the masculinity spectrum isn't a reason to break up with someone. I might accept that you wouldn't necessarily date someone who made you uncomfortable, but masculine mannerisms are pretty apparent. You either got 'em, or you aint.
Anyway, I was just struck at how disposable people are to one another, especially for younger people. I've always had the opposite problem. Wrongly, as it turns out, I've always looked at friendship as a life-long bond. Sure, the relationship can change and friends can drift in and out of my life, but I'd like to think that the people who were my friends in college are my friends today.
There have been people I've discarded, but they've been discarded for very specific, well-thought-out reasons. In fact, I have gone out of my way to actually articulate those reasons and formally end more than one friendship. Those situations never go well and I've since learned it's best to just let those friendships fade away.
But, I understand that I'm sort of a social freak in those respects. God knows on more than one occasion I've been someone's best friend on Monday and virtually invisible to them on Tuesday. As a result I'm a little slower to peg someone as a friend, just because I like them. But I absolutely refuse to build relationships in my life because a person might represent some sort of material advantage. If that's the basis of the relationship, I do not pretend that person is a friend. I'm pleasant and all, but there are boundaries and I don't pretend any sort of emotional attraction or commitment. There's a word for people who pretend emotional attractions or commitments for material gain.
But I admired the model's resiliency. It was clear that he'd been used and although I have no idea what his inner-most feelings about that fact were, he didn't seem too upset by that fact. He didn't like it, but he seemed to move on easily. I admired that.
But then again, at what point does maintaining boundaries end, and emotional whoring begin?
One of my models was an acting student from Northwestern. I met him briefly for coffee about a week before the shoot. Since these shoots are taking place in my home for now, I want to be sure of who I'm letting in. We chatted and during the course of the conversation I suggested that he bring a friend along, to make him feel more comfortable. They both showed up an hour-and-a-half late, but their entitled Northwestern students, so it's pretty much what I expected.
Anyway, the shoot went well. The kid loved the camera, and the camera loved him. He and his friend chatted away, almost as if I wasn't there and that was fine. He is gay, and I was sort amused with his comfort with that fact and that these two kids were just chatting about boyfriends.
The model was talking about a young man he'd dated recently who dumped him. The reason given was, "Our musical tastes are so different, and well I'm really looking for someone a little more masculine."
A little more masculine? Not Russel Crowe, not Brad Pitt, but not Zac Efron. Really someone who falls somewhere in between.
Now, understand that although this model's pictures came out looking almost thug-like, he's an educated kid coming out with a degree in drama. But he also wasn't swathed in marabou and rhinestones. He is smart, funny, charming, and very good looking. Now, no doubt he has his warts. In fact, I know he has his warts because I retouched them. But falling on the paler end of the masculinity spectrum isn't a reason to break up with someone. I might accept that you wouldn't necessarily date someone who made you uncomfortable, but masculine mannerisms are pretty apparent. You either got 'em, or you aint.
Anyway, I was just struck at how disposable people are to one another, especially for younger people. I've always had the opposite problem. Wrongly, as it turns out, I've always looked at friendship as a life-long bond. Sure, the relationship can change and friends can drift in and out of my life, but I'd like to think that the people who were my friends in college are my friends today.
There have been people I've discarded, but they've been discarded for very specific, well-thought-out reasons. In fact, I have gone out of my way to actually articulate those reasons and formally end more than one friendship. Those situations never go well and I've since learned it's best to just let those friendships fade away.
But, I understand that I'm sort of a social freak in those respects. God knows on more than one occasion I've been someone's best friend on Monday and virtually invisible to them on Tuesday. As a result I'm a little slower to peg someone as a friend, just because I like them. But I absolutely refuse to build relationships in my life because a person might represent some sort of material advantage. If that's the basis of the relationship, I do not pretend that person is a friend. I'm pleasant and all, but there are boundaries and I don't pretend any sort of emotional attraction or commitment. There's a word for people who pretend emotional attractions or commitments for material gain.
But I admired the model's resiliency. It was clear that he'd been used and although I have no idea what his inner-most feelings about that fact were, he didn't seem too upset by that fact. He didn't like it, but he seemed to move on easily. I admired that.
But then again, at what point does maintaining boundaries end, and emotional whoring begin?
Tuesday, August 21, 2007
Interviews - Rant
I hate interviews. I have done more than any person walking. If you count the summer I directed a play and consider an audition an interview of sorts, one summer I did better than six hundred interviews. Even if you want to be a purist, that particular summer I did almost three hundred sit-down, why-are-you-looking-for-a-job interviews.
As a candidates I have probably interviewed for about fifty positions, with each position averaging three interviews. For one job, I interviewed with nine people. The last person I interviewed with turned into an argument. Later, after I got the job, I looked through my file and found that he gave me the highest marks. Ultimately I hated the job.
In interviews I've been asked if I'm gay. If I'm Jewish. How old I am. If I have any diseases, and how much I weigh. Of course all of these questions are illegal. I smile and answer them honestly.
One interviewer kept me waiting for nearly an hour, not because of some emergency, but because "lunch ran long." I let her ask me all the questions she wanted, which weren't many, and then I turned the tables on her. I put her through the toughest interview of her life. "How would you describe your managment style?" "What would you say has been the biggest challenge you've faced in your current position and exactly how did you overcome it?" "What is the turnover rate with this company, and how does your turnover rate compare? Do you have any idea as to why your employees take new positions?" Needless to say, I didn't get the job but it was very clear at the end of the interview that the job wasn't up to my standards, nor was the interviewer really qualified to work with me.
That said, I'm not always a total prick in an interview. One interview kept me waiting two hours, and again it was because she forgot about the appointment. But she was gracious and funny and very smart. I accepted the job and it was one of the best jobs I've ever had.
Because interviewing candidates is one of the most heinous, tedious jobs ever, the least experienced people do the initial interviews. These generally happen over the phone, and there's nothing like having a twenty-two-year-old bubbling in your ear that your qualifications aren't exactly what they were looking for, but they'll keep your resume on file...
I admit it. I'm an ageist. At twenty-two the human brain isn't even completely formed. And yet some of the most important decisions a company can make are left to a new graduate whose biggest issue is a) where he's going to get wasted the following Friday night, or b) if she's too bloated for that new tube top she bought. (The answer to both questions, if you're interested is generally, a) wherever there are dollar shots and b) yes.)
Interestingly, I believe the ration of men to women doing interviews is something like four to one. Certainly at the intitial stages. I think this is in part because of the tedious nature of the first interviews and because human resources is maybe the one profession that is singularly dominated by women.
But I think there's more to it than that. The prevailing thinking in most organizations I've been with is that women tend to be more intuitive, making more emotional decisions. And when it comes to hiring, most companies hire the person they like over the person with better qualifications. Women, I think the thinking goes, have an intuitive understanding of the type of person who will fit within the organization.
What's worse, I think most women buy that theory as well. For all the talk of equality in the work place, I find myself wondering how women who will take every opportunity to talk in generalities about what dogs men are, are capable of sitting down in a business meeting across from a man and not have that personal bias become a factor.
The fact is, bias is a part of business. I'm biased. I am biased toward experience over formal education. While I myself want pedigrees from the finest educational institutions, I've found that in hiring those pedigrees comes a ego and entitlement that can almost be suffocating. I'll take a state grad with ten years of solid experience over a Harvard grad with five years of experience any day. But, in my experience I stand alone in that assessment.
While the Harvard grad may have a more nuanced understanding of situations and approaches to problems, the trick is getting him to apply that understanding. And God help you if the problem doesn't resemble something that came out of their textbooks. Yes, they may be capable of creativity and complex problem solving, but most of them feel that once they received the diploma the world owes them something.
The state grad usually understands that his education is incomplete and isn't afraid of a new situation. If he's bright and has a history of success, he'll view every situation as a blank slate and come up with an innovative solution. For him knowledge isn't something to be acquired, it's something to be built. And he's not afraid to build it.
And ultimately that's what an interview is, building knowledge: knowledge of the organization, knowledge of the vacant position, knowledge of the business's needs, and knowledge of the candidates. An interviewer isn't just someone who gathers facts, looking for tab-A candidate to slip into slot-B job. And interviewer is a builder of an organization. Innovation happens in the recruiting process.
And that's why I get so frustrated with talking to Chip and Brandi about my professional life.
As a candidates I have probably interviewed for about fifty positions, with each position averaging three interviews. For one job, I interviewed with nine people. The last person I interviewed with turned into an argument. Later, after I got the job, I looked through my file and found that he gave me the highest marks. Ultimately I hated the job.
In interviews I've been asked if I'm gay. If I'm Jewish. How old I am. If I have any diseases, and how much I weigh. Of course all of these questions are illegal. I smile and answer them honestly.
One interviewer kept me waiting for nearly an hour, not because of some emergency, but because "lunch ran long." I let her ask me all the questions she wanted, which weren't many, and then I turned the tables on her. I put her through the toughest interview of her life. "How would you describe your managment style?" "What would you say has been the biggest challenge you've faced in your current position and exactly how did you overcome it?" "What is the turnover rate with this company, and how does your turnover rate compare? Do you have any idea as to why your employees take new positions?" Needless to say, I didn't get the job but it was very clear at the end of the interview that the job wasn't up to my standards, nor was the interviewer really qualified to work with me.
That said, I'm not always a total prick in an interview. One interview kept me waiting two hours, and again it was because she forgot about the appointment. But she was gracious and funny and very smart. I accepted the job and it was one of the best jobs I've ever had.
Because interviewing candidates is one of the most heinous, tedious jobs ever, the least experienced people do the initial interviews. These generally happen over the phone, and there's nothing like having a twenty-two-year-old bubbling in your ear that your qualifications aren't exactly what they were looking for, but they'll keep your resume on file...
I admit it. I'm an ageist. At twenty-two the human brain isn't even completely formed. And yet some of the most important decisions a company can make are left to a new graduate whose biggest issue is a) where he's going to get wasted the following Friday night, or b) if she's too bloated for that new tube top she bought. (The answer to both questions, if you're interested is generally, a) wherever there are dollar shots and b) yes.)
Interestingly, I believe the ration of men to women doing interviews is something like four to one. Certainly at the intitial stages. I think this is in part because of the tedious nature of the first interviews and because human resources is maybe the one profession that is singularly dominated by women.
But I think there's more to it than that. The prevailing thinking in most organizations I've been with is that women tend to be more intuitive, making more emotional decisions. And when it comes to hiring, most companies hire the person they like over the person with better qualifications. Women, I think the thinking goes, have an intuitive understanding of the type of person who will fit within the organization.
What's worse, I think most women buy that theory as well. For all the talk of equality in the work place, I find myself wondering how women who will take every opportunity to talk in generalities about what dogs men are, are capable of sitting down in a business meeting across from a man and not have that personal bias become a factor.
The fact is, bias is a part of business. I'm biased. I am biased toward experience over formal education. While I myself want pedigrees from the finest educational institutions, I've found that in hiring those pedigrees comes a ego and entitlement that can almost be suffocating. I'll take a state grad with ten years of solid experience over a Harvard grad with five years of experience any day. But, in my experience I stand alone in that assessment.
While the Harvard grad may have a more nuanced understanding of situations and approaches to problems, the trick is getting him to apply that understanding. And God help you if the problem doesn't resemble something that came out of their textbooks. Yes, they may be capable of creativity and complex problem solving, but most of them feel that once they received the diploma the world owes them something.
The state grad usually understands that his education is incomplete and isn't afraid of a new situation. If he's bright and has a history of success, he'll view every situation as a blank slate and come up with an innovative solution. For him knowledge isn't something to be acquired, it's something to be built. And he's not afraid to build it.
And ultimately that's what an interview is, building knowledge: knowledge of the organization, knowledge of the vacant position, knowledge of the business's needs, and knowledge of the candidates. An interviewer isn't just someone who gathers facts, looking for tab-A candidate to slip into slot-B job. And interviewer is a builder of an organization. Innovation happens in the recruiting process.
And that's why I get so frustrated with talking to Chip and Brandi about my professional life.
Busy
Well, last night I did my second shoot and it was excellent. I've been very lucky for my first two shoots to have two very patient models with very low expectations. I'm still experiencing minor technical difficulties that so far have not really hindered the quality of the final output, but have been incredibly annoying, at least to me. This morning I processed a shot and compared it to the work of my chosen prime competitor, and I don't think the comparison was all that unfavorable. I think I'm having to process my shots a little more than he does, but I'm sure he has superior equipment to mine. The bottom line is that I'm coming up with shots that I would not be at all shy about charging for.
I have two more shoots this afternoon. I have to say, they're exhausting. But I'm enjoying them. I will definitely be ready for a web launch on September 15.
Tomorrow I'm pretty much free and clear, so I'm going to spend the bulk of the day writing up the business plan. Then I think I can get back to my writing.
I have two more shoots this afternoon. I have to say, they're exhausting. But I'm enjoying them. I will definitely be ready for a web launch on September 15.
Tomorrow I'm pretty much free and clear, so I'm going to spend the bulk of the day writing up the business plan. Then I think I can get back to my writing.
Monday, August 20, 2007
Mid-Life Crisis Indicators
Remember when tattoos were sort of radical? I was watching What Not to Wear yesterday (because it was cold and rainy, and that's what I do on cold, rainy days) and nearly every woman they put in an empire-waisted, A-line dress sported a tattoo flower on her ankle, or tattoo barbed wire etched into her upper arm.
Like the goatee, in 2007 the tattoo either really dates you, or it says, "I'm a slave to fashion -- from fifteen years ago." Nothing screams mid-life crisis quite like the following items:
Visible tattoos
Striped Hair
Goatees
Abercrombie & Fitch
Spandex
Lattes
Dave Miller Band
Lollapalooza
Belly shirts
Toe rings
Please, America, stop. Just stop.
Like the goatee, in 2007 the tattoo either really dates you, or it says, "I'm a slave to fashion -- from fifteen years ago." Nothing screams mid-life crisis quite like the following items:
Visible tattoos
Striped Hair
Goatees
Abercrombie & Fitch
Spandex
Lattes
Dave Miller Band
Lollapalooza
Belly shirts
Toe rings
Please, America, stop. Just stop.
Sunday, August 19, 2007
Karl Rove
Two things strike me about this clip. The first, and most glaring is the sychophantic tripe spewed by talking heads at Karl Rove's departure. Yes, he successfully marketed George W. Bush to the Texan and American public, and he's arguably a brilliant political strategist. But I'm left to wonder if someone with this much brilliance would or could leave a job half done. Lately I've heard the Shakespearean comparison between Bush and Henry V. There certainly seems to be an archetype there. But if that's the case, then Rove's archetype is clearly Richard III. And if that's the case, Rove's brilliance may really be his ability to be content with almost taking the throne. He may just survive to fight another day.
Let's be clear: Karl Rove is not dead. He resigned and I do not believe that he is owed any public praise. The political mantra, "Are you better off now than you were four years ago?" is not something Rove would want uttered in his presence.
However, the second striking thing is the even-handed eulogy that Moyers delivers. I have not yet seen or heard anywhere except from this clip that Rove is not the gleaming Christian he purported to be. I'm not surprised. Is anyone surprised when the self-appointed God's chosen are discovered to be flawed? Still, I think that Rove deserves far more criticism than anyone has dished out.
It is possible to be an evil genius.
Cold Rain
Some of my favorite days of the year are when you get sort of a preview of the coming season. In spring there is always a day or two where the trees have yet to bud, the ground is soup, and you swear you're going to burn all of your co-worker's drab, dreary sweaters; the the sun breaks through and for an afternoon it's eighty degrees and almost everyone is giddy. It's like being allowed to open a Christmas present on Thanksgiving day. Yeah, it's just a package of underwear, but they're Batman underwear and they hint at what's to come.
Yesterday we got a foreshadowing of fall. Gray, cold rain. We're still probably two months away from the first yellow leaf, and yet the cool dampness was welcomed, at least in this household.
This is going to sound morbid, but years ago I decided that I wanted to die in the last week of August. The weather is usually perfect, and I want to go out on a high note. By the same token, I've always sort of felt that if I can make it to September 1, I'm golden for another year. Let me be clear. As the last week of August looms, I have no plans to check out. I'm really looking forward to the autumn weather.
Life in the northern-most reaches of Chicago right now is good. I'm comfortable revealing my potential business, which is to become a photographer. I KNOW! Talk about doing a one-eighty! Look, the PhD plans are still in place -- or at least the plans to put the applications together -- but that leaves me at loose ends for at least the next six months, waiting for acceptance, and potentially longer if nothing pans out. I am circulating my resume, but a combination of factors: time of year, short tenures, awkward career stage, are combining to make the search very slow. I've had nibbles, but nothing definite.
So, on Thursday I did my first test photo shoot. My model was a part-time actor and school teacher. I had sent out a blanket notice saying I was looking for actors wanting headshots. A friend of a friend responded. I'd not met Brad and asked for a current photo. I received a shot of him posing in a Star Trek uniform. It wasn't quite clear from the e-mail that accompanied it, but it might have also been his wedding picture.
Before the official shoot, I met with Brad to discuss what he was looking for and what I might be able to provide. He showed me the shots he'd had done about a decade ago. He'd hired a very reputable photographer and the shots were serviceable. This photographer has been in the business for years and she's developed a style that is immediately identifiable. She uses the same approach on everyone. Although that approach doesn't always work, (it didn't really for me) for Brad it did and he had some good shots.
When he arrived for the shoot, I had already experienced technical difficulties. The tripod was loose and none of my backgrounds had arrived. My backgrounds are going to take weeks -- and I don't have weeks to wait. So I ran to the grocery store and bought poster board and taped it to the walls. It looked like hell. Brad arrived with almost his entire closet. I picked some clothes and we began shooting.
The memory card filled up and we had to take a break so that I could clear the card. That took me nearly an hour to figure out how to do and in the process I discovered that almost all of the shots were blurry. I didn't know why.
We finished the shoot after four hours. Brad was a patient pro, and I could not have asked for a better first model. When he left, I sat down and began sifting through the three hundred shots I'd taken. All of them were blurry. Out of the bunch, I was able to find four that had potential, but of that only two really have any value to me. I spent nearly twelve hours running those four shots through Photoshop. At the end of the day I came up with some shots that I would not have been embarrassed to charge money for. That said, I am quite glad that the shoot only cost Brad four hours.
Still, I'm very encouraged. I produced two professional-quality shots that could help get a professional actor work. I have eleven more shoots scheduled over the next two weeks and then I put together my website. I think that even if I do land a job, I've found a side income that may help pay off those student loans even faster!
Yes, student loans loom. And with that realization comes the realization that I'm no longer a formal student. I was in my coffee shop on Friday and I sat next to a woman who appeared to be going to school to get her masters in nursing, and I was a little jealous. In a year, that should be me again and the foreshadowing of fall that comes in the middle of August will hold more excitement than just a change in the season.
Yesterday we got a foreshadowing of fall. Gray, cold rain. We're still probably two months away from the first yellow leaf, and yet the cool dampness was welcomed, at least in this household.
This is going to sound morbid, but years ago I decided that I wanted to die in the last week of August. The weather is usually perfect, and I want to go out on a high note. By the same token, I've always sort of felt that if I can make it to September 1, I'm golden for another year. Let me be clear. As the last week of August looms, I have no plans to check out. I'm really looking forward to the autumn weather.
Life in the northern-most reaches of Chicago right now is good. I'm comfortable revealing my potential business, which is to become a photographer. I KNOW! Talk about doing a one-eighty! Look, the PhD plans are still in place -- or at least the plans to put the applications together -- but that leaves me at loose ends for at least the next six months, waiting for acceptance, and potentially longer if nothing pans out. I am circulating my resume, but a combination of factors: time of year, short tenures, awkward career stage, are combining to make the search very slow. I've had nibbles, but nothing definite.
So, on Thursday I did my first test photo shoot. My model was a part-time actor and school teacher. I had sent out a blanket notice saying I was looking for actors wanting headshots. A friend of a friend responded. I'd not met Brad and asked for a current photo. I received a shot of him posing in a Star Trek uniform. It wasn't quite clear from the e-mail that accompanied it, but it might have also been his wedding picture.
Before the official shoot, I met with Brad to discuss what he was looking for and what I might be able to provide. He showed me the shots he'd had done about a decade ago. He'd hired a very reputable photographer and the shots were serviceable. This photographer has been in the business for years and she's developed a style that is immediately identifiable. She uses the same approach on everyone. Although that approach doesn't always work, (it didn't really for me) for Brad it did and he had some good shots.
When he arrived for the shoot, I had already experienced technical difficulties. The tripod was loose and none of my backgrounds had arrived. My backgrounds are going to take weeks -- and I don't have weeks to wait. So I ran to the grocery store and bought poster board and taped it to the walls. It looked like hell. Brad arrived with almost his entire closet. I picked some clothes and we began shooting.
The memory card filled up and we had to take a break so that I could clear the card. That took me nearly an hour to figure out how to do and in the process I discovered that almost all of the shots were blurry. I didn't know why.
We finished the shoot after four hours. Brad was a patient pro, and I could not have asked for a better first model. When he left, I sat down and began sifting through the three hundred shots I'd taken. All of them were blurry. Out of the bunch, I was able to find four that had potential, but of that only two really have any value to me. I spent nearly twelve hours running those four shots through Photoshop. At the end of the day I came up with some shots that I would not have been embarrassed to charge money for. That said, I am quite glad that the shoot only cost Brad four hours.
Still, I'm very encouraged. I produced two professional-quality shots that could help get a professional actor work. I have eleven more shoots scheduled over the next two weeks and then I put together my website. I think that even if I do land a job, I've found a side income that may help pay off those student loans even faster!
Yes, student loans loom. And with that realization comes the realization that I'm no longer a formal student. I was in my coffee shop on Friday and I sat next to a woman who appeared to be going to school to get her masters in nursing, and I was a little jealous. In a year, that should be me again and the foreshadowing of fall that comes in the middle of August will hold more excitement than just a change in the season.
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Sears Portrait Studio
When I was senior in college, I passed on doing the final show of my college career in order to get a job and save some money to move to Chicago and become a star. From March until September I managed to save $600, which paid the deposit and first month's rent on the one-bedroom apartment my friend Tom and I shared. After that, I was broke.
But I had one thing that Tom did not. I had a job. You see, I landed a job at Sears Portrait Studio in Des Moines, and somehow they agreed to transfer me to Chicago. I told them I needed to be at the Sears closest to the downtown area, and that ended up being in Niles. It took ninety minutes to get there and nearly two hours to get home. All for about seven dollars an hour. I kept that job just long enough for Tom to get a job, and then I went looking.
But I remember my first day at the studio in Des Moines. All of the poses were prescribed. As a photographer you were not allowed to deviate from the poses. The job was to snap the shot just as the smile began to appear on the face, or as it began to relax. It was a week before I was allowed to snap a shot. I was only allowed to stand and watch Jane.
Jane was a music major at Drake, and I think she might have been a class behind me. She was a magical soprano and quite heavy. Jane thought of the studio as a gig to get her through school. The other people we worked with thought of it as a career. I fell smack dab in the middle of the spectrum. I knew it wasn't my life, but I needed the job and wanted to do a good job.
I was so nervous when I took the pictures of the first little girl, I literally shook. She was about four years old and all blond curls and pink ruffles. I had to pick her up to put her on the posing table. Her mother was already positioned beside the table to keep her from falling. I wanted to make the little girl like me, and when I picked her up I tickled her and gave her a little shake. She giggled, so I swung her up in the air.
And put her head right through the ceiling.
It was a suspended ceiling and all I did was dislodge one of the particle-board tiles. The mother laughed and the little girl liked me enough not to think I might be trying to kill her. Jane, who was observing, had to excuse herself from the room and you could hear her shrieking with laughter as she waddled down the hall.
The shoot went fine, I suppose. I don't remember. But I remember that after that shoot Jane sat me down and told me that I shouldn't try so hard. It was a couple of weeks, but eventually I became the best photographer in the studio. And I was the top sales person, selling extra pictures and little plastic charms with the pictures inside.
I wish I'd learned Jane's lesson sooner, and I wish it had stuck. Trying too hard is really what gets me into so much trouble.
In addition to finishing my first dry run at the potential business I might start up, tomorrow I have a second interview for a serious job. Keep your fingers crossed!
But I had one thing that Tom did not. I had a job. You see, I landed a job at Sears Portrait Studio in Des Moines, and somehow they agreed to transfer me to Chicago. I told them I needed to be at the Sears closest to the downtown area, and that ended up being in Niles. It took ninety minutes to get there and nearly two hours to get home. All for about seven dollars an hour. I kept that job just long enough for Tom to get a job, and then I went looking.
But I remember my first day at the studio in Des Moines. All of the poses were prescribed. As a photographer you were not allowed to deviate from the poses. The job was to snap the shot just as the smile began to appear on the face, or as it began to relax. It was a week before I was allowed to snap a shot. I was only allowed to stand and watch Jane.
Jane was a music major at Drake, and I think she might have been a class behind me. She was a magical soprano and quite heavy. Jane thought of the studio as a gig to get her through school. The other people we worked with thought of it as a career. I fell smack dab in the middle of the spectrum. I knew it wasn't my life, but I needed the job and wanted to do a good job.
I was so nervous when I took the pictures of the first little girl, I literally shook. She was about four years old and all blond curls and pink ruffles. I had to pick her up to put her on the posing table. Her mother was already positioned beside the table to keep her from falling. I wanted to make the little girl like me, and when I picked her up I tickled her and gave her a little shake. She giggled, so I swung her up in the air.
And put her head right through the ceiling.
It was a suspended ceiling and all I did was dislodge one of the particle-board tiles. The mother laughed and the little girl liked me enough not to think I might be trying to kill her. Jane, who was observing, had to excuse herself from the room and you could hear her shrieking with laughter as she waddled down the hall.
The shoot went fine, I suppose. I don't remember. But I remember that after that shoot Jane sat me down and told me that I shouldn't try so hard. It was a couple of weeks, but eventually I became the best photographer in the studio. And I was the top sales person, selling extra pictures and little plastic charms with the pictures inside.
I wish I'd learned Jane's lesson sooner, and I wish it had stuck. Trying too hard is really what gets me into so much trouble.
In addition to finishing my first dry run at the potential business I might start up, tomorrow I have a second interview for a serious job. Keep your fingers crossed!
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
A New One for the Must Read List
I stumbled across Chicago Writer today. Check him out.
“But then you learn, very early in your career, that not only is life not fair, life is a lot fairer than theater.” -- Edward Albee
“But then you learn, very early in your career, that not only is life not fair, life is a lot fairer than theater.” -- Edward Albee
Michelle Pfeiffer Has a Pair of Brass Ones
So, over the weekend I saw Stardust, an ensemble fantasy epic with an all-star cast. I sent a couple of missives to friends suggesting they see it, which sparked a mini-debate about Michelle Pfeiffer.
As far as I'm concerned, Ms. Pfeiffer has borne the burden of beauty for far too long, and as a result she's been grossly under rated as an actress. In you early years, Hollywood could only cast her as the willowy, weepy ingenue. To be fair, however, there aren't a lot of roles of substance for women, let alone women under the age of thirty. If your nipples point upward, you're going to be playing some version of "the girlfriend," and you'd better be able to weep or glow on cue. Both skills are easily within Pfeiffer's grasp.
Roles of substance for women seem to most plentiful -- meaning one or two every one or two years -- for women between the ages of thirty and forty. However, that puts actresses in a bit of conundrum. Do they make their cinematic mark, or do they have a family. Those ten years seem to be the golden years in Hollywood. Nicole Kidman opted for a focus on career and adopted children. Pfeiffer stayed at home with her family.
Now, after the age of forty, the women's roles tend to fall into an even more rigid cookie cutter than "the girlfriend." Women as they turn forty in Hollywood turn shrewish. Oh, there are the few lucky actresses who can parlay a leading role at forty five, but let's not kid ourselves. They land those roles for two reasons: 1) they have the box-office chops to make the investment a gamble, and 2) they don't require much in the way of lighting magic to make the audience believe she's still thirty-five, which is the age the character was written.
Even Diane Keaton, who in the past few years has been praised for portraying a woman of certain age falling in love, is really just playing a thirty-five-year old character trapped in a sixty-year-old body. Kudos to Keaton for keeping the surgeons at bay for as long as she has, but as an actress she's done little to advance the cause of the maturing woman in Hollywood.
This all came into screeching relief with the culmination of that television milestone Age of Love. In my defense, I've have never watched a dating show before and I feel you have to have tried something before you can condemn it. For those uninformed, the premise was a bevy of women, some in their twenties, some in their forties, all vying for the attention of a thirty-year-old piece of man meat. All the women ,but one twenty-five, one forty-eight were eliminated. In the final moments the two women were tarted up in baby-doll dresses and false eyelashes and individually presented to the ersatz Prince Charming. And surprise! He chose the woman five years his junior instead of eighteen years his senior.
This left Jen, the forty-eight-year old, teetering in four-in heels and a day-glo pink baby-doll dress, coming to the realization that she had been a fool to think that the age difference wouldn't come into play. Jen is a gloriously beautiful woman, who has somehow managed to stop the clock at thirty-five. But I don't mean just physically. Mentally and emotionally she was thirty-five as well. The crushing disappointment for Jen did not come in the realization that she was staring fifty in the face, I think that disappointment was the realization that she was about to be fifty and was in no way prepared for it.
I think that with age comes the responsibility of leadership. There comes a responsibility for authority, and I think that the denial that there is life after forty is really just the denial of that responsibility. I think that men, who have a hard time facing mortality, and the responsibility of age handle it in many ways, but the most powerful is to sublimate the female, robbing her of any opportunity to establish authority, and then expecting her to magically have it once she's passed child-bearing years. If she doesn't have that authority, in Hollywood representation anyway, she's forced to become a bitch to establish and maintain it. And a successful bitch will never be as successful as a successful man, simply because she had to become a bitch to do it.
And becoming a bitch is the ultimate in disgrace for a woman. It is the penultimate insult, and the one that no woman really has a defense against. She either has to accept the moniker with aplomb, break down into tears to prove her femininity, or become an even bigger bitch to silence the insult. There is absolutely no way to win for her.
Unless you're Michelle Pfeiffer, in which case you take the lemons that are intended to turn her into a sourpuss and make lemonade. There has been one actress before her who has successfully played the Hollywood game and won. Bette Davis. Sure, at the end of her career there were some creaky star vehicles that paid the rent. But, just as she was to be discarded she was given a role that would have humiliated a lesser actress and she created an icon of mature womanhood. Shame on you if you don't know to which role I'm referring.
Mark my words, Michelle Pfeiffer will do the same thing.
As far as I'm concerned, Ms. Pfeiffer has borne the burden of beauty for far too long, and as a result she's been grossly under rated as an actress. In you early years, Hollywood could only cast her as the willowy, weepy ingenue. To be fair, however, there aren't a lot of roles of substance for women, let alone women under the age of thirty. If your nipples point upward, you're going to be playing some version of "the girlfriend," and you'd better be able to weep or glow on cue. Both skills are easily within Pfeiffer's grasp.
Roles of substance for women seem to most plentiful -- meaning one or two every one or two years -- for women between the ages of thirty and forty. However, that puts actresses in a bit of conundrum. Do they make their cinematic mark, or do they have a family. Those ten years seem to be the golden years in Hollywood. Nicole Kidman opted for a focus on career and adopted children. Pfeiffer stayed at home with her family.
Now, after the age of forty, the women's roles tend to fall into an even more rigid cookie cutter than "the girlfriend." Women as they turn forty in Hollywood turn shrewish. Oh, there are the few lucky actresses who can parlay a leading role at forty five, but let's not kid ourselves. They land those roles for two reasons: 1) they have the box-office chops to make the investment a gamble, and 2) they don't require much in the way of lighting magic to make the audience believe she's still thirty-five, which is the age the character was written.
Even Diane Keaton, who in the past few years has been praised for portraying a woman of certain age falling in love, is really just playing a thirty-five-year old character trapped in a sixty-year-old body. Kudos to Keaton for keeping the surgeons at bay for as long as she has, but as an actress she's done little to advance the cause of the maturing woman in Hollywood.
This all came into screeching relief with the culmination of that television milestone Age of Love. In my defense, I've have never watched a dating show before and I feel you have to have tried something before you can condemn it. For those uninformed, the premise was a bevy of women, some in their twenties, some in their forties, all vying for the attention of a thirty-year-old piece of man meat. All the women ,but one twenty-five, one forty-eight were eliminated. In the final moments the two women were tarted up in baby-doll dresses and false eyelashes and individually presented to the ersatz Prince Charming. And surprise! He chose the woman five years his junior instead of eighteen years his senior.
This left Jen, the forty-eight-year old, teetering in four-in heels and a day-glo pink baby-doll dress, coming to the realization that she had been a fool to think that the age difference wouldn't come into play. Jen is a gloriously beautiful woman, who has somehow managed to stop the clock at thirty-five. But I don't mean just physically. Mentally and emotionally she was thirty-five as well. The crushing disappointment for Jen did not come in the realization that she was staring fifty in the face, I think that disappointment was the realization that she was about to be fifty and was in no way prepared for it.
I think that with age comes the responsibility of leadership. There comes a responsibility for authority, and I think that the denial that there is life after forty is really just the denial of that responsibility. I think that men, who have a hard time facing mortality, and the responsibility of age handle it in many ways, but the most powerful is to sublimate the female, robbing her of any opportunity to establish authority, and then expecting her to magically have it once she's passed child-bearing years. If she doesn't have that authority, in Hollywood representation anyway, she's forced to become a bitch to establish and maintain it. And a successful bitch will never be as successful as a successful man, simply because she had to become a bitch to do it.
And becoming a bitch is the ultimate in disgrace for a woman. It is the penultimate insult, and the one that no woman really has a defense against. She either has to accept the moniker with aplomb, break down into tears to prove her femininity, or become an even bigger bitch to silence the insult. There is absolutely no way to win for her.
Unless you're Michelle Pfeiffer, in which case you take the lemons that are intended to turn her into a sourpuss and make lemonade. There has been one actress before her who has successfully played the Hollywood game and won. Bette Davis. Sure, at the end of her career there were some creaky star vehicles that paid the rent. But, just as she was to be discarded she was given a role that would have humiliated a lesser actress and she created an icon of mature womanhood. Shame on you if you don't know to which role I'm referring.
Mark my words, Michelle Pfeiffer will do the same thing.
Sunday, August 12, 2007
Cleaning
I've decided that if I'm truly going to start my own business, I need a proper office. That means really cleaning out my second bedroom and getting it properly organized. What a filthy mess! For the past three years it's served as sort of a computer, study, junk room.
And yet, it feels like everything in the room is important and I can't really part with it. I have a stack of paper that's at least a foot high, collected readings, drafts of papers and stories. I have to keep it all. I have theater books that I have not looked at since before the flood. I have stacks and stacks of Shakespeare books that I poured over in my fruitless pursuit of playing Hamlet. I can't get rid of them. It feels like I'm losing a part of myself.
When I was a kid there were three times between the ages of twelve and eighteen when I had no choice but to pack up as much as I could in two suitcases and say good-bye to everything else I owned. Then when I was twenty-three I had to pack up my father's house, selling virtually everything that wasn't nailed down. It used to be that if I had to, I could get rid of anything I owned and not look back. But today, as I sift through things I'm flooded with memories of where I was when this piece of paper, or that book came into my life. I have the music blaring trying to keep me motivated through the sweat; Etta James. There's a clarinet break.
When I was in the second grade, kids were introduced to musical instruments. I chose the clarinet. I took it home and made it screech. The next day I left it at school and the teacher told me that I obviously wasn't serious about learning to play and he took it away. I let him.
As I type this, I find myself wondering if that was my first test to fight for something and I wonder if I failed. Another thing these papers and books remind me of are all the things that I tried and gave up on. I quit acting, and I wonder if I'd stuck it out where I'd be now. But then again, I have some very talented friends who've never quit and still don't have two nickels to rub together.
There, on the bottom shelf are several books on bartending. I tended bar at blues club for six months. But when I had the opportunity to leave, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Was that quitting, or was that practicality? Bartending is not a career that will carry you through to retirement.
And it's moments like these that can overwhelm me, and the best thing to do is to plot a general course, put your head down and one foot in front of the other until you reach a destination. So, I dust off the books and rearrange them on the shelf. I stack the papers and try to store them somewhere out of the way. I run the vacuum and go to make dinner.
It's the best I can do for the day. Can anyone really do any better?
And yet, it feels like everything in the room is important and I can't really part with it. I have a stack of paper that's at least a foot high, collected readings, drafts of papers and stories. I have to keep it all. I have theater books that I have not looked at since before the flood. I have stacks and stacks of Shakespeare books that I poured over in my fruitless pursuit of playing Hamlet. I can't get rid of them. It feels like I'm losing a part of myself.
When I was a kid there were three times between the ages of twelve and eighteen when I had no choice but to pack up as much as I could in two suitcases and say good-bye to everything else I owned. Then when I was twenty-three I had to pack up my father's house, selling virtually everything that wasn't nailed down. It used to be that if I had to, I could get rid of anything I owned and not look back. But today, as I sift through things I'm flooded with memories of where I was when this piece of paper, or that book came into my life. I have the music blaring trying to keep me motivated through the sweat; Etta James. There's a clarinet break.
When I was in the second grade, kids were introduced to musical instruments. I chose the clarinet. I took it home and made it screech. The next day I left it at school and the teacher told me that I obviously wasn't serious about learning to play and he took it away. I let him.
As I type this, I find myself wondering if that was my first test to fight for something and I wonder if I failed. Another thing these papers and books remind me of are all the things that I tried and gave up on. I quit acting, and I wonder if I'd stuck it out where I'd be now. But then again, I have some very talented friends who've never quit and still don't have two nickels to rub together.
There, on the bottom shelf are several books on bartending. I tended bar at blues club for six months. But when I had the opportunity to leave, I couldn't get out of there fast enough. Was that quitting, or was that practicality? Bartending is not a career that will carry you through to retirement.
And it's moments like these that can overwhelm me, and the best thing to do is to plot a general course, put your head down and one foot in front of the other until you reach a destination. So, I dust off the books and rearrange them on the shelf. I stack the papers and try to store them somewhere out of the way. I run the vacuum and go to make dinner.
It's the best I can do for the day. Can anyone really do any better?
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Grumpy Old Man
So, as the afternoon has gotten more humid I sat in front of the television set enumerating the number of projects I have going:
1) Job Search
2) Starting Business
3) Short-story Collection
4) PhD Applications
Any one of those things is enough to make up a full agenda; all four of them at one time is lunacy. And yet I'm tackling all four, and making progress on none of them sitting in front of the TV watching Law & Order reruns. So, I hoisted my ever-expanding ass off the sofa and decided to wander down to the corner cafe with a small-business marketing book and my laptop and see what I could get accomplished.
The place was littered with people, lounging and doing crossword puzzles or staring out into space. In Rogers Park there is a certain element that cultivates a pseudo-Bohemian air, complete with Indian print skirts and anti-establishment tattoos. They reek of patchouli and NPR and in my best moments I have a hard time stomaching them. The only available tables were outside.
Perhaps it's my lack of security in a job, or perhaps I just getting crotchety, but I wasn't particularly kindly disposed to anyone in the cafe. I know I don't have a job, but do none of these people have to work? Or bathe? Is this really the haven of the great unwashed in Rogers Park? The charm of the neighborhood coffee shop is definitely waning. I miss the sterile uniformity of my Caribou Coffee. Still, although not exactly earnings generating, I have work that needs to get done. I was happy to make do with an outside table.
I stood in line. Now, my coffee-house orders are very simple: diet soda. I'm willing to accept that most people go to coffee houses and pay outrageous prices in order to get exactly what they want, no matter how precious the order might be. I stood behind a man who ordered a cappuccino with Splenda. A completely acceptable, nay downright manly coffee-house order. The young lady behind the counter asked for her three dollars.
To this request, the gentleman took exception. He paused and stared up at the menu that had been carefully etched in colored chalk.
"The price says two, seventy-five."
The young woman came around the counter and looked up at the menu. "No, that's a cafe au lait. The small cappuccino is three dollars." She returned to her proper place behind the counter.
Now, understand that I had waited patiently while his order was being made. She did an excellent job. But I simply want to give the woman my money. Customers pour their own sodas. It's hot and sticky and I'm being eye-balled by the over-weight senior citizen with a crop of dreadlocks shooting from the back of her head. (More on her later) I want my soda.
"Does that three dollars include a chocolate chip cookie?" Apparently sugar in a cappuccino is unacceptable, but the healthful combination of butter, brown sugar and chocolate is FDA approved.
I lost it. Part of my frustration comes from this gentleman letting the line back up behind him while he smooths his tie and tries to save a quarter and get a free cookie. I had enough and left. I walked across the street to the racist convenience store and for a dollar forty-five bought the same diet soda that a black person would be charged two dollars and came back home. As I crossed the street, I saw Mr. Cappuccino getting into his gleaming Mercedes.
I hope she got the quarter out of him.
1) Job Search
2) Starting Business
3) Short-story Collection
4) PhD Applications
Any one of those things is enough to make up a full agenda; all four of them at one time is lunacy. And yet I'm tackling all four, and making progress on none of them sitting in front of the TV watching Law & Order reruns. So, I hoisted my ever-expanding ass off the sofa and decided to wander down to the corner cafe with a small-business marketing book and my laptop and see what I could get accomplished.
The place was littered with people, lounging and doing crossword puzzles or staring out into space. In Rogers Park there is a certain element that cultivates a pseudo-Bohemian air, complete with Indian print skirts and anti-establishment tattoos. They reek of patchouli and NPR and in my best moments I have a hard time stomaching them. The only available tables were outside.
Perhaps it's my lack of security in a job, or perhaps I just getting crotchety, but I wasn't particularly kindly disposed to anyone in the cafe. I know I don't have a job, but do none of these people have to work? Or bathe? Is this really the haven of the great unwashed in Rogers Park? The charm of the neighborhood coffee shop is definitely waning. I miss the sterile uniformity of my Caribou Coffee. Still, although not exactly earnings generating, I have work that needs to get done. I was happy to make do with an outside table.
I stood in line. Now, my coffee-house orders are very simple: diet soda. I'm willing to accept that most people go to coffee houses and pay outrageous prices in order to get exactly what they want, no matter how precious the order might be. I stood behind a man who ordered a cappuccino with Splenda. A completely acceptable, nay downright manly coffee-house order. The young lady behind the counter asked for her three dollars.
To this request, the gentleman took exception. He paused and stared up at the menu that had been carefully etched in colored chalk.
"The price says two, seventy-five."
The young woman came around the counter and looked up at the menu. "No, that's a cafe au lait. The small cappuccino is three dollars." She returned to her proper place behind the counter.
Now, understand that I had waited patiently while his order was being made. She did an excellent job. But I simply want to give the woman my money. Customers pour their own sodas. It's hot and sticky and I'm being eye-balled by the over-weight senior citizen with a crop of dreadlocks shooting from the back of her head. (More on her later) I want my soda.
"Does that three dollars include a chocolate chip cookie?" Apparently sugar in a cappuccino is unacceptable, but the healthful combination of butter, brown sugar and chocolate is FDA approved.
I lost it. Part of my frustration comes from this gentleman letting the line back up behind him while he smooths his tie and tries to save a quarter and get a free cookie. I had enough and left. I walked across the street to the racist convenience store and for a dollar forty-five bought the same diet soda that a black person would be charged two dollars and came back home. As I crossed the street, I saw Mr. Cappuccino getting into his gleaming Mercedes.
I hope she got the quarter out of him.
Cross Roads
So, with the break in humidity also comes the break in my job search dry spell. Yesterday I had two responses. The first would require me to relocate to Dekalb. I politely declined. The second is more promising and I'll have a phone interview next Monday.
Which presents me with a bit of a dilemma. Do I take a job, or do I pursue my own business? I spoke with my mother last night and while her health seems to be stabilizing, there is still reason for concern. While in the hospital they found physical evidence of the possibility of Alzheimer's. She lives in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from her nearest relative. Is it a good idea for me to be taking on a risky proposition like a business? Wouldn't it be better to take a good-paying job with benefits?
At this point the question is moot as I have neither a business, nor a job. So it seems that the prudent course is to continue to pursue both. Who knows? Maybe do both is the answer.
Which presents me with a bit of a dilemma. Do I take a job, or do I pursue my own business? I spoke with my mother last night and while her health seems to be stabilizing, there is still reason for concern. While in the hospital they found physical evidence of the possibility of Alzheimer's. She lives in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere, hundreds of miles from her nearest relative. Is it a good idea for me to be taking on a risky proposition like a business? Wouldn't it be better to take a good-paying job with benefits?
At this point the question is moot as I have neither a business, nor a job. So it seems that the prudent course is to continue to pursue both. Who knows? Maybe do both is the answer.
Monday, August 06, 2007
The Lord's Day
Hasn't anyone else noticed that George Bush is a hypocrite? Yes, I understand that the Presidency of the United States of America isn't a forty-hour-a-week job, and that personal sacrifices must be made. Mr. Bush's selflessness is a trait that tends to be completely underrated.
That said, why is it that he seems to conduct most of his business from Friday to Sunday? Now he has expanded his wiretapping powers, and signed the legislation on Sunday. At the very least this speaks to a serious inability to manage his time. Most management experts agree that pushing major projects to the end of the workweek generally insures a shoddy job. Furthermore, hasn't he heard that it's hot in August and no one really expects elected officials to work, only soldiers. But of course that's a very cosmopolitan, nay French approach to work.
But, more important, where are the rest of our elected officials? How did this legislation even get to his desk for signature?
I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who first said something to the effect that those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither. Part of the price we pay to sit on ever-expanding asses and consuming the majority of the planet's wealth is that from time to time people will try and stop us from doing that. Part of the price we pay for easy-access Internet porn is that some extremists might try to kill us for that freedom. While privacy may not be a constitutionally guaranteed right, free speech and free thought is. The proverbial slippery slope becomes several degrees steeper with this legislation and it seems that Clinton, Obama, and all of the rest of that Capital Hill Gang are standing by with a big tub of Crisco.
That said, why is it that he seems to conduct most of his business from Friday to Sunday? Now he has expanded his wiretapping powers, and signed the legislation on Sunday. At the very least this speaks to a serious inability to manage his time. Most management experts agree that pushing major projects to the end of the workweek generally insures a shoddy job. Furthermore, hasn't he heard that it's hot in August and no one really expects elected officials to work, only soldiers. But of course that's a very cosmopolitan, nay French approach to work.
But, more important, where are the rest of our elected officials? How did this legislation even get to his desk for signature?
I believe it was Benjamin Franklin who first said something to the effect that those who would sacrifice liberty for safety deserve neither. Part of the price we pay to sit on ever-expanding asses and consuming the majority of the planet's wealth is that from time to time people will try and stop us from doing that. Part of the price we pay for easy-access Internet porn is that some extremists might try to kill us for that freedom. While privacy may not be a constitutionally guaranteed right, free speech and free thought is. The proverbial slippery slope becomes several degrees steeper with this legislation and it seems that Clinton, Obama, and all of the rest of that Capital Hill Gang are standing by with a big tub of Crisco.
Saturday, August 04, 2007
Exhausted
Two years ago I was possessed and purchased the Adobe Creative Suite, which included Photo Shop and other programs. It turns out that purchase was going to be very helpful in my new business. Most important is the fact that it included software that will build websites.
Not that I know the first thing about building a website. But I also purchased a series of training videos. So today I have been wading through the very complex software, Go Live, and going blind following the training videos. The plan is to have a template that I can then update and launch once I've finalized my business plans.
I've just completed the second lesson, which took me about three hours. There are a total of nine lessons. I'm pooped.
Not that I know the first thing about building a website. But I also purchased a series of training videos. So today I have been wading through the very complex software, Go Live, and going blind following the training videos. The plan is to have a template that I can then update and launch once I've finalized my business plans.
I've just completed the second lesson, which took me about three hours. There are a total of nine lessons. I'm pooped.
Getting Past the Third Step
Several years ago I had reason to go into a twelve-step program. I'm not an addict, and they're isn't an addict in my family, but there were some very stressful family situations that I needed help with, so I started attending Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) meetings. When I started I made the commitment to myself to attend the weekly meetings for a year. The meetings were gay-oriented and had an added bonus of being tailored to gay addicts. It was a veritable bonanza of dysfunction.
The concept behind ACOA is that children of addicts never really grow up. Because of the dysfunctional environment in which they get their start, these people can become highly functioning, intelligent and successful, but socially they remain stunted, victims. What's more, they tend to seek out those environments and relationships because they are the most comfortable to them.
I don't remember the ACOA twelve steps. I never really worked them. They all seemed reasonable enough, but from the start I got the sense that ACOA people, or at least the people in my meetings, tended to enjoy their status as a victim. I spent endless hours listening to men complain about things that had happened to them when they were children. I heard the same stories over and over again. The men in these meetings just never seemed to move on. After about eight months I was ready to go, but I'd made the personal commitment to stick with it for a year. And a year to the day was my last meeting.
If I remember, there were also ten or twelve characteristics that sort of summed up whether you were an ACOA or not. I always sort of view those lists in the same light as a Cosmo quiz to determine whether your man is cheating on you. Interesting little generic guideposts, but I'm hardly willing to let myself be defined by some random list of predetermined characteristics.
That said, there was one characteristic that I do remember because it really annoyed me. I think it was third on the list and no matter how hard I tried to argue against it or deny it, I had to come to accept that it really was one of my characteristics. It went something like this:
I hated that one. But over the course of the year I had to come to accept it. I realized that my social skills were such that I needed to portray myself as a victim -- that was how I saw myself -- and as a result the people in my life began to view me in that way too. Loving a victim is hard, but pitying them is what being a victim is all about. Pity is so much easier to achieve than love. By definition, pity makes no demands upon the receiver, whereas love carries an implied responsibility of worthiness. In a perfect world unconditional love would flow like a Wonka chocolate river, but the truth is that sustained love is earned. God may provide everlasting, unconditional love, and that may be the ideal that mankind is striving for (allegedly). It was a hard realization to make, but once made I had to really stop and analyze the relationships I had. I ended the ones that I decided were based on pity. No more, ever.
That doesn't mean that I still didn't see myself as a victim. Correcting that thinking took nearly another decade.
I've come to believe, however that sustained love and all of its forms (I think respect is a form of love.) is earned. Even a helpless baby earns love by cooing when his needs are met. There are few simple truths in the world, but that human love is earned is one of them.
I just finished reading You Can If You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale. It's an easy, uplifting read, but there was one point that sticks with me. Peale says that once something is finished we should leave it in the past. Not to dwell on mistakes. Postmortems are a waste of time.
It's that last one that bothers me. Listen, I'm the first to recognize that I hold on to things way, way too long. There have been relationships that I've mourned for three, five years or more. That's not productive.
But I do think that there is a use for postmortems. Whenever a situation ends, I try to look at it and define what I could have done better, so that next time I don't make the same mistakes. I think that's wise.
The problem for me then becomes that once I've done that, I do a postmortem of the postmortem. And then I review that. And then I start to review my review methods. Then I do it all over again, just be see if I made any omissions of examples of errors and guilt. I sometimes cherish those tangible examples of my inferiority to the human race. They are what make me special.
But, no more. NVP says they're a waste, and so I'm going to try to modify that sentiment. One postmortem. Then move on. If that means I doomed to repeating mistakes, then that's what it means. But I'm a reasonably intelligent person and highly skilled at seeking opportunities for self recrimination. If I miss a detail in my first go through, it's probably not important enough for the weeks, months, years of painful self doubt.
You see, I always have to be the best, even if it's at being the worst. But I'm becoming comfortable with being a mediocre screw up.
Acceptance is the first step.
The concept behind ACOA is that children of addicts never really grow up. Because of the dysfunctional environment in which they get their start, these people can become highly functioning, intelligent and successful, but socially they remain stunted, victims. What's more, they tend to seek out those environments and relationships because they are the most comfortable to them.
I don't remember the ACOA twelve steps. I never really worked them. They all seemed reasonable enough, but from the start I got the sense that ACOA people, or at least the people in my meetings, tended to enjoy their status as a victim. I spent endless hours listening to men complain about things that had happened to them when they were children. I heard the same stories over and over again. The men in these meetings just never seemed to move on. After about eight months I was ready to go, but I'd made the personal commitment to stick with it for a year. And a year to the day was my last meeting.
If I remember, there were also ten or twelve characteristics that sort of summed up whether you were an ACOA or not. I always sort of view those lists in the same light as a Cosmo quiz to determine whether your man is cheating on you. Interesting little generic guideposts, but I'm hardly willing to let myself be defined by some random list of predetermined characteristics.
That said, there was one characteristic that I do remember because it really annoyed me. I think it was third on the list and no matter how hard I tried to argue against it or deny it, I had to come to accept that it really was one of my characteristics. It went something like this:
Adult Children of Alcoholics tend to confuse love and pity.
I hated that one. But over the course of the year I had to come to accept it. I realized that my social skills were such that I needed to portray myself as a victim -- that was how I saw myself -- and as a result the people in my life began to view me in that way too. Loving a victim is hard, but pitying them is what being a victim is all about. Pity is so much easier to achieve than love. By definition, pity makes no demands upon the receiver, whereas love carries an implied responsibility of worthiness. In a perfect world unconditional love would flow like a Wonka chocolate river, but the truth is that sustained love is earned. God may provide everlasting, unconditional love, and that may be the ideal that mankind is striving for (allegedly). It was a hard realization to make, but once made I had to really stop and analyze the relationships I had. I ended the ones that I decided were based on pity. No more, ever.
That doesn't mean that I still didn't see myself as a victim. Correcting that thinking took nearly another decade.
I've come to believe, however that sustained love and all of its forms (I think respect is a form of love.) is earned. Even a helpless baby earns love by cooing when his needs are met. There are few simple truths in the world, but that human love is earned is one of them.
I just finished reading You Can If You Think You Can by Norman Vincent Peale. It's an easy, uplifting read, but there was one point that sticks with me. Peale says that once something is finished we should leave it in the past. Not to dwell on mistakes. Postmortems are a waste of time.
It's that last one that bothers me. Listen, I'm the first to recognize that I hold on to things way, way too long. There have been relationships that I've mourned for three, five years or more. That's not productive.
But I do think that there is a use for postmortems. Whenever a situation ends, I try to look at it and define what I could have done better, so that next time I don't make the same mistakes. I think that's wise.
The problem for me then becomes that once I've done that, I do a postmortem of the postmortem. And then I review that. And then I start to review my review methods. Then I do it all over again, just be see if I made any omissions of examples of errors and guilt. I sometimes cherish those tangible examples of my inferiority to the human race. They are what make me special.
But, no more. NVP says they're a waste, and so I'm going to try to modify that sentiment. One postmortem. Then move on. If that means I doomed to repeating mistakes, then that's what it means. But I'm a reasonably intelligent person and highly skilled at seeking opportunities for self recrimination. If I miss a detail in my first go through, it's probably not important enough for the weeks, months, years of painful self doubt.
You see, I always have to be the best, even if it's at being the worst. But I'm becoming comfortable with being a mediocre screw up.
Acceptance is the first step.
Friday, August 03, 2007
Old School Positive Thinking
I was around back when New Age was all the rage the first time. I got into tarot and crystals and all of that stuff, more for entertainment than anything else. When Marianne Williamson came out wit A Return to Love and introduced A Course in Miracles to mainstream, I was right there and practically memorized that book.
Then I got tired of New Age crap. It all felt marketed and every bit as synthetic as institutionalized religions. Still, I have stacks of those books and from time to time I flip through them.
But my reading tastes graduated from hippie-dippy empowerment books to management and business reading. For a period of about ten years I read everything on the latest management trends. What I found interesting was that the management books all sounded very similar to the new age empowerment books. Then I went to grad school, and my reading material took some very strange turns. It was grad school, what can I say?
So, the other day I decided that my work room was a complete disaster. I have a book shelf that has not been organized since I moved into my condo four years ago. Mostly it holds my old theatre books and scripts. There are two or three shelves dedicated to Shakespeare. And then in front of the book shelf there are stacks of books that have never really been sorted.
I found a book by Norman Vincent Peale, written in 1974. It was with a stack of management books, yet it's an empowerment book. Written well before I started purchasing either type of book, I'm not entirely sure where I got it. It may have come from a small library at one of my jobs where a VP was trying to get his management team to better themselves. I think I'm the only one who took some books.
Anyway, the title is You Can If You Think You Can and Norman Vincent Peale was the author of The Power of Positive Thinking. It's a very light read, but basically it says that anything you think you can achieve, you can achieve. I decided it was the right thing to read as I contemplate starting my own business. It took nearly three straight days to read, but I'm finished and now I'm a NVP fan. Have to get more of his books.
But, I also have reading I must do to plan my new business. The first chapter, almost the first paragraph, is about developing the habit of positive thinking. Without it, a start-up business is doomed. This book (with a pretty generic, forgettable title) brings me almost full circle in my reading phases.
But as I prepare, I'm discovering that this business idea has legs. I've yet to hit a snag that presents a real problem.
Then I got tired of New Age crap. It all felt marketed and every bit as synthetic as institutionalized religions. Still, I have stacks of those books and from time to time I flip through them.
But my reading tastes graduated from hippie-dippy empowerment books to management and business reading. For a period of about ten years I read everything on the latest management trends. What I found interesting was that the management books all sounded very similar to the new age empowerment books. Then I went to grad school, and my reading material took some very strange turns. It was grad school, what can I say?
So, the other day I decided that my work room was a complete disaster. I have a book shelf that has not been organized since I moved into my condo four years ago. Mostly it holds my old theatre books and scripts. There are two or three shelves dedicated to Shakespeare. And then in front of the book shelf there are stacks of books that have never really been sorted.
I found a book by Norman Vincent Peale, written in 1974. It was with a stack of management books, yet it's an empowerment book. Written well before I started purchasing either type of book, I'm not entirely sure where I got it. It may have come from a small library at one of my jobs where a VP was trying to get his management team to better themselves. I think I'm the only one who took some books.
Anyway, the title is You Can If You Think You Can and Norman Vincent Peale was the author of The Power of Positive Thinking. It's a very light read, but basically it says that anything you think you can achieve, you can achieve. I decided it was the right thing to read as I contemplate starting my own business. It took nearly three straight days to read, but I'm finished and now I'm a NVP fan. Have to get more of his books.
But, I also have reading I must do to plan my new business. The first chapter, almost the first paragraph, is about developing the habit of positive thinking. Without it, a start-up business is doomed. This book (with a pretty generic, forgettable title) brings me almost full circle in my reading phases.
But as I prepare, I'm discovering that this business idea has legs. I've yet to hit a snag that presents a real problem.
Quote
"I am not interested in the past. I am interested only in the future, for that is where I expect to spend the rest of my life."
Charles F. Kettering
Thursday, August 02, 2007
Quote
"The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can't be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it."
Harry Emerson Fosdick
What One Does When One Cannot Sleep Because of The HEAT!
For all my fans who are dying to know what I look like, here is a Wee Me depiction.
My brain is eroding.
I am a Coloring Book
What else is there to do at four a.m. when it's too humid to sleep, but take an online personality quiz?
Part of this hits home, and part of it is way off base.
I'm a fan a kids, but only in short amounts of time. I can get them to smile, maybe giggle, and then I want them to go away.
Part of this hits home, and part of it is way off base.
I'm a fan a kids, but only in short amounts of time. I can get them to smile, maybe giggle, and then I want them to go away.
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
What Is The Sound of a Phone Not Ringing If There's No One in the Woods to Hear?
I'm half way through my third week of unemployment and I'm getting antsy. This is the fourth time in my life where I've had a summer without employment and I know that July and the first half of August are death for the job seeker. There are jobs listed, but HR managers are juggling hiring managers' vacations and just the general apathy that is generated by the heat and humidity. Then, sometime around the fifteenth of August things seem to break and the calls for interviews come. It's happened that way all three of the other times.
When I was acting, toward the end I reached a point where I really put a lot of effort into perfecting my auditions. There was one memorable audition for Richard II that called for two Shakespearean monologues that demonstrated "risk and range." I was working with a collection of actors on audition pieces regularly, and they helped me with my selections. Of the group, I think three of us actually went to this cattle call.
I went into the theatre and announced my first piece. Iago. Now, you don't know me but if you did you'd agree that the character of Iago isn't a particularly risky choice for me. You could line up ten directors and at least five of them would say that yes, they could see me in the role. I delivered a competent, if not particularly inpspired performance of my monologue.
Then I said, "For my next piece, I'd like to give you Ophelia's mad scene." You could almost hear the eyes rolling in the auditorium. At 6'5, 240 pounds, I am absolutely no one's vision of the essence of innocence and vulerability. Over the years I've worked with five or six different actresses playing the role and several more who prepared the role for auditions. I know the role and what's required. As I made my exit from the audition stage I actually received applause from the director, designers, and other company members who were watching the audition. A week later I was called and offered a part. I turned it down.
At that moment I realized that for me acting had become all about getting the role. I realized I was interested in the hunt and I needed the validation of winning the role, as if that said that I was the best. But the tedium of doing the actual work, the endless rehearsals and performances for audiences of five had lost its thrill. Of course I've also been on the other side of the casting table and I know first hand that the role doesn't always go to the better actor. Most of my resume was built by either taking over roles or being cast because there was no one else available.
Now I find myself in pretty much the same boat. I'm sending out my resume because its a requirement to collect unemployment benefits, and I'd say that every day there might be one or two jobs listed that I think, "I could do that." But I'm not sure I want the job so much as I want the job offer. I want that validation that I'm good enough. But the prospect of hiring and firing, processing benefit paperwork and coaching managers on how to get a performance from their staff just fills me with a great big yawn.
I'm still moving forward with my plans to start my own business. It's scorching hot today, and instead of working up my electric bill with the air conditioning, I'm planning to spend the bulk of the day at Barnes & Noble researching small-business books, and then later in the day I'm going to treat myself to ice tea at the Boystown Caribou Coffee and start pounding out another short story.
But mostly I'm staying out of the house so I don't hear the phone not ringing.
When I was acting, toward the end I reached a point where I really put a lot of effort into perfecting my auditions. There was one memorable audition for Richard II that called for two Shakespearean monologues that demonstrated "risk and range." I was working with a collection of actors on audition pieces regularly, and they helped me with my selections. Of the group, I think three of us actually went to this cattle call.
I went into the theatre and announced my first piece. Iago. Now, you don't know me but if you did you'd agree that the character of Iago isn't a particularly risky choice for me. You could line up ten directors and at least five of them would say that yes, they could see me in the role. I delivered a competent, if not particularly inpspired performance of my monologue.
Then I said, "For my next piece, I'd like to give you Ophelia's mad scene." You could almost hear the eyes rolling in the auditorium. At 6'5, 240 pounds, I am absolutely no one's vision of the essence of innocence and vulerability. Over the years I've worked with five or six different actresses playing the role and several more who prepared the role for auditions. I know the role and what's required. As I made my exit from the audition stage I actually received applause from the director, designers, and other company members who were watching the audition. A week later I was called and offered a part. I turned it down.
At that moment I realized that for me acting had become all about getting the role. I realized I was interested in the hunt and I needed the validation of winning the role, as if that said that I was the best. But the tedium of doing the actual work, the endless rehearsals and performances for audiences of five had lost its thrill. Of course I've also been on the other side of the casting table and I know first hand that the role doesn't always go to the better actor. Most of my resume was built by either taking over roles or being cast because there was no one else available.
Now I find myself in pretty much the same boat. I'm sending out my resume because its a requirement to collect unemployment benefits, and I'd say that every day there might be one or two jobs listed that I think, "I could do that." But I'm not sure I want the job so much as I want the job offer. I want that validation that I'm good enough. But the prospect of hiring and firing, processing benefit paperwork and coaching managers on how to get a performance from their staff just fills me with a great big yawn.
I'm still moving forward with my plans to start my own business. It's scorching hot today, and instead of working up my electric bill with the air conditioning, I'm planning to spend the bulk of the day at Barnes & Noble researching small-business books, and then later in the day I'm going to treat myself to ice tea at the Boystown Caribou Coffee and start pounding out another short story.
But mostly I'm staying out of the house so I don't hear the phone not ringing.
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