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What would Kermit do?

Kermit The Frog
It’s not easy being green means recognizing that life is sometimes hard for everyone, but how do you weigh your needs against the needs of others?

Back in the old days (aka: the 1990s) there was a public meme that grew out of the evangelical Christian community. This meme manifested in a lot of paraphernalia that read “WWJD?” (What would Jesus do?). It was, theoretically, a reminder to folks who wore the wristbands, t-shirts, hats, sweatshirts, and what have you to act in a way that would demonstrate their love of Jesus and his beliefs. Human nature being what it is sometimes this reminder worked better than others. But that’s not the point of this essay.

The point of this essay is to try to embrace the idea that many memes you may not agree with entirely may still have something of value embedded in them, for what is American culture but a series of rapidly changing memes some of which stick (democracy, meritocracy (even though we don’t really have that)) and some of which don’t (slavery).

The “What would Jesus do?” meme carried embedded a couple of concepts key to American thinking: leading by example and hero worship. These are things Americans say we value. Unfortunately, these values and behaviors when not supported by other key concepts like equality, compassion, and patience tend to lead to the impatient, resentful, harried, fragmented, fractious culture currently on vivid display to the rest of the world.

I feel I should inject at this point that I’ve recently spent a week in Canada, Montreal and Toronto to be specific. Some things I took away from my time in Canada:

  • Yes, Canadians really are that polite, even the native French speakers.
  • Mostly plastic currency is never going to feel natural to someone who grew up handling currency that is made of cotton and linen.
  • If you extrapolate from Montreal and Toronto, Canadians must take a lot of photographs (3 camera stores in Montreal and 6 in Toronto that I saw (that’s 8 more than we have in DC)).

One thing that I found interesting about being in public in Canada has to do with public politeness. Politeness requires one of two things to be in play: social opprobrium or social security. [Read more…] about What would Kermit do?

Not a minute too soon either

I would like to say that I can feel the darkness receding but the truth is that in my Federally mandated cube farm I’m so cut off from the world’s natural processes that for the first time in a long time the growing dark as we’ve headed toward mid-winter hasn’t had that much impact on me. Yes, even though it’s midnight when I walk out of my office building I’m just so damn glad to be in the “natural” world again it really doesn’t matter. Regardless, here are this year’s charts: [Read more…] about Not a minute too soon either

Finding the scent

Well, I’m sucking at this NaBloPoMo thing. It’s now the 17th of the month and I’ve only written 10 entries. That means I’ve missed a week’s worth of entries. In some ways I’m surprised by this; it’s not as if I’ve got a wild social life that’s taking up a ton of time. In other ways, it’s pretty much par for the course.

Loathesome Job has had a lot of deleterious effects on my personality over the past 8 months. In order to survive, to keep my spleen from exploding from both astonishment and outrage I’ve had to spend a lot of mental and emotional energy detaching:

  • I have learned not to care about the fact that virtually everyone I work with has a rampant case of not my job-itis.
  • I have learned not to care that the person who is ostensibly in charge of making the websites my group works on good thinks that making the experience pleasant for the user is the same as making sure someone who is blind can access the site at all.
  • I have learned, mostly, to stifle my bullshit alarm when Management sends a note out saying that the IT guy will be around to install webcams on all our computers but it’s not so they can watch us during the work day.
  • I have learned to accept that I’ve been given what is essentially a window watcher job because Management has such a need to control its staff that they’d rather waste my talents than give someone on the “content” side “technical” tasks.

I’ve detached so well that things that used to really bother me merit merely a weary shrug these days. I can’t seem to get exercised about or involved in virtually anything.

It does not help that it is midnight outside at 5pm. It does not help that I work in a 12 ft x 8 ft cubicle jammed into an interior room with 14 other 12 ft x 8 ft cubicles. It does not help that when I do make it out of my office building there is nothing, and I mean nothing, stimulating in the vicinity. It does not help that almost my entire support system, anemic as it is, exists no where near me physically (not to mention the fact that everyone in my support system is dealing with their own problems right now).

Manhunter, 1986

There’s this great scene in the movie Manhunter, in fact it’s the first time we meet Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox). Will Graham (William Petersen) has brought the files from the Toothfairy case to Lecktor ostensibly to get the doctor’s opinion on the killer’s motives and methods.

Lecktor realizes that Graham isn’t actually there to get his opinion on the case. No, Graham is there to get the old scent back, to get back into the mindset that allowed him to catch Lecktor in the first place.

I’m afraid that I’ve detached so well that I’ve become detached not only from life but from who I am and what I want. I’m even more afraid that I won’t be able to get my own scent back.

Rockwell had no idea

You are being watched. You might think you aren’t but you are.

I’m not talking about security cameras of which there are an astounding number: Slate.com reported in 2010 on a five year-old study done by the New York Civil Liberties Union which counted 4,176 in Manhattan below 14th street. That’s 4,176 concentrated in one-sixth of the island. The same Slate.com article reported “The initiative [in NYC] is based on London’s Ring of Steel, which launched in the 1990s in response to IRA bombings. Britons may be the most videotaped people on earth. London has some 500,000 security cameras, while Great Britain as a whole has about 4 million.”

Think about that for a minute: that’s 4 million cameras in an area smaller than the state of Oregon. Security cameras aren’t just the province of big cities any more. Speed cameras, toll booth cameras, even cameras at the fast food drive through can all be used to observe your movements. But this isn’t what I mean when I say “you’re being watched.” I mean something even more insidious. I’m talking about your filter bubble.

Wikipedia defines the filter bubble as “…a concept developed by Internet activist Eli Pariser in his book by the same name to describe a phenomenon in which websites use algorithms to selectively guess what information a user would like to see based on information about the user like location, past click behavior and search history. As a result websites tend to show only information which agrees with the user’s past viewpoint.”

Pariser’s book and website provide more insight into not only how Google and other entities track your behavior online but how the smallest interaction with an add, link, or seemingly unrelated site can accrete to form what may or may not be an accurate picture of who you are and how that picture will influence in the future what messages you see.

Contemplate an Internet where ads pop up on unrelated sites simply because you visited a merchant’s website at some point in time.

Or how about a world in which search isn’t neutral but tailored specifically to what the algorithm thinks you want to see.

Imagine a political campaign where the messages are so micro targeted that you never actually get a full picture of the candidate’s positions, only message tailored to your interests designed to sell the candidate to you.

I didn’t notice the filter bubble in effect until after I read Pariser’s book but once I started looking for it I could see it everywhere: when I search for political topics or news stories Google serves me results from particular sources slanted toward what I normally read online and quite often those results are neither the freshest or most complete; when I visit a merchant’s website invariably that merchant’s advertising shows up on other sites powered by Google ads; and then there is the fact that Google reads my gmail.

Over the weekend I emailed a friend/former coworker to follow up on a remark she made to me while we were socializing at dinner on Friday. She highly encouraged me not to just quit my demeaning, frustrating job at which I have been totally marginalized and specifically told that I am not allowed to use anything but the barest range of my skill set. No, she said, make sure you have some place to go to before you leave.

Since there was beer involved, and since I am completely exhausted pretty much all the time now, I wasn’t thinking as quickly as I should so Saturday morning this is part of what I wrote to her:

My point about “just away,” which I was not expressing well thanks to the uberpils, is that if I were in a romantic relationship where I was being gaslighted (I don’t remember things correctly), jerked around (No, I can’t have a clear definition of my role.), marginalized (So, my work assignments are things that no one gives a cr*p about and that offer no value to the American public thereby negating the whole idea of “public service.”), patronized (I’m supposed to take career and technical direction from people that don’t understand the fundamental principles of web communications? Seriously?), and just generally aggravated (I wasn’t kidding: I’ve woken up angry and thinking about work every. single. morning. for the past month. This sh*t is getting old.) on this scale no one would be saying to me “Don’t leave until you’ve found someone else to be with.”

Right after I sent that message gmail served up this advertisement:

Now tell me, how long do you think it’s going to be before I start seeing ads for relationship counselors all over the Internet? I suspect I’ll start seeing them sometime within the week.

If you’re interested in searching where you aren’t tracked try duckduckgo.com or learn visually about how your filter bubble works.

Blog title gleefully swiped from Rockwell’s 1984 single “Somebody’s Watching Me“

Eating the strawberry

Human beings are not known for our ability be present. Nor are we known for our ability to see details. We do not approach situations with beginner’s mind – that state of possibilities rather than knowledge.

We tend instead to cling an imagined, romanticized version of the past; we call this nostalgia. We tend to anticipate and extrapolate based on previous experiences which may have only the slightest bit in common with a situation in which we find ourselves. And it is these two actions – clinging and extrapolating – that often cause us to make the worst decisions.

For the past five and a half months I have been working at a job that I loathe. It’s not particularly onerous as jobs go: my life is never in jeopardy while working; my boss isn’t physically abusing me; and I am paid a decent wage for the hours I am expected to work. But other than money, which in this economy is not something to be rejected, this job provides absolutely no rewards:

  • The work is not interesting.
  • I have no autonomy or control over my work flow.
  • I’ve repeatedly asked to use a broader portion of my skill set even going so far as to volunteer to take on massive responsibilities only to be told no because the skills I want to use do not fit management’s narrow definition of my job duties.
  • The physical working conditions are inherently dismal with no privacy, no ventilation, and no access to natural light.
  • My expertise, that for which I was theoretically hired, is consistently disregarded in favor of decisions, when decisions are made at all, that risk nothing and benefit only the few.
  • My bosses’ management style is not management so much as a series of conflicting games with ever changing rules.
  • In the five and a half months I’ve been there five people have left for other jobs

Because of this not merely lack of reward but soul sucking despond, I have found myself lately looking back on my previous job with loving longing and good feelings something for which I have roundly slapped myself.

My previous job at FlounderingNonProfit was filled with conflict:

Once there was a monk being chased by a group of tigers. The monk ran and ran until he found himself at the edge of a cliff. When he looked over he saw a ledge but it held another group of tigers. Then the monk noticed a perfect, ripe strawberry growing in the grass. He reached down, picked it, and ate it.

I am a firm believer in the theory that my job is not my life but because I am so miserable for so many hours in the day my job is taking over my life substituting seething anger at Management’s audacity and SeniorManagement’s inability to see Management’s incompetence for relaxation and enjoyment of my hobbies. Creativity sailed out the window months ago as is clearly evidenced by the gaps between, and the one note theme of, these essays.

My last job was not perfect but it provided me with some intangible rewards I was unaware previously how much I value, and it is those rewards and that value that incline me to ignore its conflicts and to cloak that time in a haze of nostalgia.

The challenge is to see through that nostalgia and to figure out how to apply what I value – autonomy, broad range of tasks that allow me to solve problems creatively instead of just enforcing management’s whims, flexibility in my schedule along the order of “your job is something you do, not necessarily some place you go,” and access to natural light – to not only the job search but to the rest of my life.

The concurrent challenge is to figure out how to be present and eat the strawberry.