Hopeless Wanderer

When some poor schlub gets arrested for a wildly bizarre narcotics/indecent exposure/illegal import of endangered species charge, the local news will interview their neighbors who proudly proclaim they aren’t surprised in the least. The primary implication being that the suspect was odd from the beginning, and that no one ought to be surprised they got caught trying to sneak a half-dozen meth-addled monitor lizards through the port of San Diego wearing nothing but boxer briefs and an orange lei. The secondary implication, however, is that the person being interview is, by comparison, the picture of normalcy and ought not be associated with such a whack-a-doo. This may be an extreme example, but the point I’m trying to make is that deviation from the societal norm is frequently frowned upon, whether it results in having your Miranda rights recited to you or not. Moreover, there are plenty of people out there so desperate to maintain the image of normalcy that they will throw you under the bus without a second thought.

Some of you are likely familiar with Tolkien’s famous assertion that, “Not all who wander are lost.” I’ve come to believe that the wanderers of the world, while rare, are not at all bizarre or deviant by definition. There is a difference, albeit a subtle one, between wandering and being aimless; and, alternately, a gaping chasm between either of those and “total nut-job.” The thing is, aimlessness seems the far more troubling trait. Mind you, I doubt very much that the life of a proper wanderer is for me, but I also frequently fail to see the appeal of society’s prescribed notion of normalcy and stability. I’m not overly fond of white picket fences, I find neighborhoods full of nearly identical beige houses creepier than those little blond kids from Village of the Damned, Honey Badger and I are in full agreement that HOAs are the devil incarnate, I don’t much mind the idea of moving around every few years, and I will peddle my kids to soccer practice on the handlebars of a fixed gear Schwinn before I will drive a minivan.

I always did like otters. (image source colleghumor.com)

In truth, I have a strong desire to be a wanderer, but an equally strong emotional need to feel secure. Occasionally, this frustrating state of affairs leads those of us who don’t quite fit into the conventional mold to become aimless. We settle in to jobs we don’t enjoy with coworkers we don’t like for a steady paycheck that does little more than openly mock us while barely covering the bills. Our dreams are denied us by our own insecurity and the societal pressure to “not screw up,” or “not be weird.” I’ve done quite well on the former and abysmally on the latter. This contradiction can lead to a stalemate where a person never grows or moves forward because what they want and what everyone else wants for them aren’t in tune. The people who find themselves unable to ignore the peanut gallery, become aimless. The rest become wanderers.

Take my roommate, Beatrix. Beatrix recently started yet another menial, unfulfilling office job in the name of health insurance and a paycheck. I won’t mock her for that; I don’t have the room. She took a break from college after finding herself terminally incapable of settling on a degree that would satisfy both her creativity and her need for “stability.” You see, Beatrix is an artist, and a damn good one, but she’s convinced herself that an arts degree is a dead-end that will lead her down a path that ends in destitution, prostitution, and a correctional institution. Once upon a time, I’d have agreed with her. I played it safe, and I regret it. As such, I encourage her to pursue her talents whenever the opportunity presents itself. There are avenues to make her creativity profitable, she just has to find the courage to take them.

Also, a towel. (image source curiositiesbydickens.com)

Now, I’m not encouraging everyone to go out and become a starving artist. I’m talking about genuine talent, here. Once upon a time, yours truly could throw down a pretty decent doodle. Like many adolescent and pre-teen girls, it was all horses and dolphins with a few disastrous attempts at sketching people that landed square in “uncanny valley” territory. While my level of technical skill was decent, and likely would have improved with practice, I never had much vision for it. I could copy an image I’d seen with fair accuracy, but thinking up something original to draw was frustratingly foreign. I may get writer’s block on occasion, but “doodler’s block” was my default setting. Not so with Beatrix. The girl has genuine vision to back up her technical skill, and that’s the primary reason I encourage her to try making a go at it.

The thing of it is, the goals and dreams of a wanderer may change, frequently and without warning, but the aimless have no goals, and their untended dreams slowly die. The aimless may look, for all intents and purposes, like stable pillars of the community, or they may be perpetual underachievers, but their need to fit in, coupled with their inability to do so, leaves them in a sort of living limbo. That, my dear readers, is precisely what I’m trying to avoid. I may not be a full-fledged wanderer, but neither am I well-suited to the traditional definitions of stability, happiness, and success. I’ve only just begun building the confidence to investigate matters further, but I’m hoping this blog can encourage others, like Beatrix, to find courage and peace with themselves.

For Sale: Soul, Last Shreds Of Dignity, $50 OBO

Few things give me the heebie jeebies like direct-sales reps. The next person who tries to enlist me into selling cosmetics, candles, or containers door-to-door is getting a face full of bear-spray. I’ve mentioned before just how much I dreaded selling candy bars to raise money for school, and my borderline phobic aversion to such activities hasn’t changed, even in light of my impending unemployed status. I will pick up dog shadoobies ten hours a day, seven days a week before I’ll buy into that Mary Kay nonsense (never mind that, as someone who rarely ever wears makeup, I’m the last person you want a cosmetic consultation from). A number of these “independent sales” organizations exist in a sort of legal gray area between “generally harmless pain-in-the-ass” and “pyramid scheme.” Perhaps for some they’re a reasonable method for earning a little extra income while irritating the pants off of every person they know. Personally, I’m suspicious. They may not be Satan incarnate, but I’m pretty sure they subscribe to his newsletter.

In truth, direct sales are nothing new. “Snake-oil” peddlers and door-to-door vacuum salesmen come immediately to mind, but I’m sure even the ancient Mongols suffered flap-to-flap solicitations. Before I continue, however, I should explain the difference between Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) and Single-Level Marketing (SLM) organizations. Most door-to-door marketing organizations started as SLM. That is, the salespeople received a commission on every item they sold, and that was that. Simple, direct, and irritating as a stray marble in your shoe. Then, somewhere along the line, MLM was born, at which point Rosemary’s baby started looking a little better. In an MLM organization, people get commission for the merchandise they sell, but also for the sales made by anyone they enlist to sell the product. In some companies, you can make significantly more money off the people you recruit than you can selling the product, thus making them resemble pyramid schemes more than legitimate businesses.

Image courtesy of Despair, Inc. Yes, that’s a thing.

Now, my first real exposure to any MLM business was AVON. My mom would occasionally order something from our town’s AVON representative, and frankly I have nothing bad to say about it. I had fun peeking through the conveniently child-hand sized catalogue and we’d get the occasional little indulgences like flavored lip balm or scented bubble bath. I don’t recall our rep being overbearing or pushy, and when I first started experimenting with makeup as a teen, she gave solid advice that kept me from looking like an Atlantic City prostitute. Now, AVON began as a single-level marketing (SLM) operation and eventually evolved to include an MLM compensation plan, but I suspect their SLM roots, at least during the 90s when I was exposed to them, has a lot to do with my more favorable perception.

Also during my early-to-mid teens, one of my older cousins began selling Tupperware. Tupperware is another company that started out as an SLM operation and evolved into an MLM operation, and I’m pretty sure they were right in the middle of that push when my cousin became a rep. The big thing in that day (boy, does that phrase make me feel old) was throwing Tupperware parties. My hometown being rather, well, “quaint,” meant that I often ended up at these parties as a tag-along despite my, shall we say, “limited” spending power. At these parties the rep would hand out catalogues and have a table full of sample containers. More importantly, they had party favors available: miniature keychain versions of Tupperware containers which, incidentally, I found irresistible. The catch is, inside these adorable little temptations, were little slips of paper, some of which offered discounts, others condemned you to throwing a Tupperware party of your own. Nothing like confronting your general unpopularity as a teen like throwing an obligatory marketing party that no one shows up to. At least I had the cake all to myself.

The ice cream is none too reliable, either. (Image courtesy of Portal)

Since leaving Montana, I’ve witnessed all shapes and sizes of MLM operations, all from a minimum self-imposed hundred yard radius. I’ve known friends and acquaintances selling Arbonne (a line of lotions and cosmetics), Scentsy (those wickless candles, which makes them no longer candles, really, but rather wax wedges on a hot-plate), Passion merchandise (toys for the eternally alone), Cutco knives (Because bringing a trunk full of knives to strangers’ houses just sounds super safe, they may as well name the individual models “Exhibit A” and so on) and the daughter of my formerly Tupperware-peddling cousin started selling Mary Kay after quitting her day job to spend more time with her kids. What annoyed me most about that last development was how quickly I went from hardly hearing from my second cousin to suddenly getting all kinds of email and Facebook missives from her that quickly devolved into pushes for me to try out Mary Kay. I eventually stopped replying to even the most innocuous-sounding comments.

Granted, there are a myriad of arguments for and against these operations. Some say they’re deceptive in their claims of potential income, others say that those who fail to do well have only themselves to blame. Some have pushed to have them criminally investigated. Personally, I just can’t get on board with a marketing model that I myself find obnoxious, I find their claims of “easy” financial independence more bogus than a check written out on a restaurant napkin, and I don’t want to end up chained to a radiator in some stranger’s basement. Several months ago, I ran into the friend of an ex who tried to sell me on an “exciting business opportunity” selling Organo Gold Coffee. When I declined, he tried to then sell me on bulk ordering the coffee, which I don’t drink. It just goes to show how strong the emphasis is on recruiting salesman rather than earning commission on the product. I’d rather sell some of my non-essential organs on the black market then get caught up in that ridiculousness. Then again, throwing a Taser party might be a hoot.

Carpe The Ummmm……

Honey Badger once joked that I was living vicariously through him, and I started calculating how much rope I’d need to fit over his gigantic cranium (no, seriously, I have SO much sympathy for his mom giving birth to a bobble-head). While it was a joke, and some debate has ensued in the interim as to whether or not I made a similar comment prior to this incident, like most jokes it had that ring of horrible, blinding truth to it. Granted, no two people will share all the same interests, and we are certainly no exception. For example, I’m on-board with the rock climbing (though, being in Alaska, I prefer to do it indoors, whereas he’s impervious to the cold and feels the need to “conquer” every natural rock formation he finds) but I resisted the notion of ice-climbing no matter how persistently he prodded. I think it’s pointless, I don’t care enough about ice climbing to try, and that’s that. I personally think it’s healthy for people to have their own interests. He can go ice climbing with his pals, and I’ll take the opportunity to stay home and write. Problem. Solved.

The meat of the issue, however, is that little nugget of truth. I certainly have hobbies, but they’re not usually as active as his are. Most of mine can be accomplished in my house or at least in my neighborhood, while his often require him to go out, meet people, make friends, and then go wrestle a moose with his bare hands. He rock climbs, ice climbs, hikes, hunts, fishes, goes backpacking, scuba dives, goes snowshoeing, and a dozen other things. I’m down with the outdoors, so I’m up for hiking, but most of the camping I’ve done has been in areas I could get my car to. Because, hell, I was in my early twenties and there was no way my friends and I were hauling that much booze on a 20 mile hike. I’m up for trying a back-packing trip, but it’s going to require some… conditioning. Let’s face it, Lailah just ain’t in the shape she used to be in high school. Those years of liquored-up camping trips in college certainly didn’t help.

Looks like it’s back to Craigslist.

Now, as for his other hobbies, that’s very hit-or-miss. I used to hate fishing, until I moved to Alaska and discovered it’s actually super fun if you’re, you know, catching fish. In Montana, if you do manage to catch something after sixteen hours of misguided patience, your reward is trout, arguably the crappiest-tasting fish on the planet. No amount of tartar sauce makes that thing palatable. Salmon and halibut, on the other hand, are delicious. So, depending on the type of fish and the likelihood of me catching one before my sunblock wears off, I like fishing. I have no interest in hunting. I love having wild game meat, but I have no interest in all the freaking work involved, including hauling the meat out. I could rig up a sled for the dog, but if we bring her, we won’t find squat. I’ve gone snowboarding, and I enjoy that, though I can never afford to go regularly, but snowshoeing is right out. Seriously, why?

Then there’s the ratio of anticipated enjoyment to how much safety crap I have to learn. The amount of pleasure I think a given activity will bring must be balanced with how many safety-related facts and tasks I need to learn to do it safely. For this reason, I suspect scuba diving isn’t for me. I love swimming, and learning to surf or going snorkeling would be awesome, but sitting through multiple hours of safety instructions, gearing up, and performing umpteen equipment checks hardly seems worth it to me. I’ll probably try it out once, because I do see a measure of the enjoyment factor, but I doubt it’ll become a regular hobby for me, with all the accompanying certifications and equipment care, like it is for him. I’ll get Honey Badger a super nice underwater camera, he can take some pictures, and I’ll be boogie boarding.

Sunscreen couldn’t hurt, either.

The thing of it is, in all this, I do tend to feel guilty for not being more active. So, that errant little comment stung more than I’d like to admit. Henry David Thoreau once said, “How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.” Well, I’ve already established that writers can be a bit vain, but on this count I worry I’m particularly guilty. Not that I feel like I should be out climbing Everest or anything; not everyone’s dream life is identical. Plus, I just don’t have the heart or the stomach to hike past all those dead bodies. Still, I know this isn’t my ideal life, and that quote, and Honey Badger’s joking comment, are uncomfortable reminders of that. Still, I can now say I’m doing something to shake things up, and as a result I suddenly find I have enough material to keep a blog going for longer than the standard three weeks.

I have some work to do to live up to my own ideals, and it’s hard to admit that. I speak frequently of all the things I’d like to do, and then I let the mind-numbing drudgery of work and chores and responsibilities knee-cap me. It’s one of the many areas where I realize just how good for me my big lug of a fiancé is. He’s one of those odd outgoing introverts. He can strike up conversations with strangers, make new friends during a trip to the supermarket, charm and/or weird-out everyone at a party; all the things that require a BAC of at least 2.0 for me to accomplish. Still, at the end of the day, all that socializing takes it out of him. If he can learn to be a confident, gabby, outgoing introvert, why can’t I?

Why You Shouldn’t Listen To Nay-Sayers

Turn back now, all ye who are unworthy! For this way lies madness, failure, debtor’s prison, and an almost certain body cavity search. Repent now, of all your vainglorious delusions or suffer the wrath of a cold and uncaring world! Or, you know, be a thoughtful, pragmatic human being while pursuing your life’s passion. That works, too. If, however, you prefer the Chicken Little approach to your word-slinging dreams, you can digest this charming little article by Forbes contributor and thirteen year-old Myspace user (seriously, you’re a contributor for Forbes, have some professional headshots taken), Susannah Breslin. In it, she enumerates all the reasons why the would-be writers of the world ought to just smash their fingers with a hammer right now. We, all of us, are wasting everyone’s time, and here’s why.

“Tip #1: You’re not good at it.” – Chances are, we all know a writer for whom we dread providing feedback. This person may otherwise be a charming, talented, intelligent, and caring human being, but every time we’re asked to read their latest creation, we break out the moonshine. Incidentally, these people also tend to take criticism rather poorly, and you end up having to restrict your feedback to spelling and grammatical mistakes. It’s no great secret that only a portion of the people who want to write professionally are capable of doing it well, and I fully understand the desire to grab the terrible aspiring writer in your life and shake them until their teeth rattle. Still, this is a rather broad and presumptuous statement to be making in an article intended for a public audience. I’m sorry that your former roommate’s second cousin just handed you yet another shoddy, haphazardly spell-checked essay and asked you to pass it on to, as they put it, “a big-time editor person.” That’s no excuse to be shitty. Stop projecting.

It’s OK. No one cares.

“Tip #2: It’s Too Hard” – Then why is she doing it? Is she under duress? Is there a sketchy man with a thick accent pacing around the bed she’s hiding under? Do we need to call Liam Neeson? This is the point in the article where I really began to question Ms. Breslin’s motives. She already comes off as someone who’s being purposefully tactless and opinionated to get attention. Controversy sells. I get it, but this sounds contrived. Anyone with any sense knows that professional writing, of any kind, isn’t all sunshine and rainbows. If not, they can hear about it from any number of amazing sources who temper their encouragement with healthy realism. This, however, makes me wonder if her motives aren’t a little more self-serving, like someone who finds a good restaurant then tells everyone it has a rampant cockroach infestation so it doesn’t get overcrowded. There are plenty of people who’d kill to be contributing to a well-established publication like Forbes, and whining this much about it smacks of ungratefulness.

“Tip #3: – It’s Too Hard To Monetize” – Tell us something we don’t know. “Starving writer” is a cliché for a reason, and while a handful of people may be oblivious and narcissistic enough to be harboring delusions on scale with “Hey, look at J.K. Rowling. I’ll just write a children’s book and I’ll be set for life!”, a regular contributor to such a massive media force ought to know better than to tailor their work to such a small audience. Particularly since said target audience is clearly not looking for writing advice; otherwise, they wouldn’t be so wildly ignorant. Perhaps that’s why she finds making a living with her freelancing so very difficult. I mean, the poor girl is forced to use a photo she took of herself in the mirror for her headshot. Someone start an Indiegogo campaign for her, stat! I would, but I have… dishes. Yeah. I need to do the dishes.

Maybe I lean lawful evil?

The frustrating part is, this topic has so much potential. She could have given real, precise examples of challenges she’s faced building her own career. She could have used some wit and humor to illustrate the real hardships faced by freelance writers, the hardships many of us are so hungry to learn about. She could have been enlightening as well as entertaining, and instead we get snippets of genius like “Writing is thankless work. It is like housework. It is like laundry. It is like a soap opera.” Or  “Most people cannot write well. This is a fact. This is something that is true. This is a hard thing to accept.” We could have gotten a well thought-out peek into the dirty work of freelance writing, and instead we got an excessively wordy rendition of “You suck, writing sucks, and I’m off to go see a guy about some Ramen that fell off the back of a truck.”

Now, I’m not trying to be too hard on Ms. Breslin.  I think she was aiming for “tough love” and she conveniently forgot to include the “love” part.  Also, yes, I realize she’s a freelance photographer, so the photo I’ve ragged on so much could technically be considered a professional headshot.  Maybe she thinks she’s being artistic, but I still think it’s tacky.  Especially since she certainly knows how to operate the timer on her camera.  All that aside, she has a healthy breadth of work you can peruse on Forbes, and in some of her articles, she does try to be helpful.  In fact, she recently submitted a five-part series on freelancing, starting with the temptingly titled How To Get A Freelance Job In 5 Days.  It’s quite the turnaround from her position in this article, that much is certain.  At the end of the day, though, even in her helpful pieces, she still often comes across as bitter and humorless.  In a way, I feel sorry for her, and I find I’m incredibly grateful I took a chance on humor with my blog.

Veering Sharply Off Course

There comes a time in your life when you realize you just weren’t meant to suck this bad for this long. When you get tired of snorting lines of No-Doze off the restroom countertop before those 8:00 a.m. meetings. When you decide that, despite what the best movie ever made may suggest, the life of an insurance agent is neither that thrilling nor that lewd. I got to thinking after my Terror Hump post that there’s a larger problem underlying our reluctance to take those first steps on the road to a new career or a new partner or a new brand of gym socks. We’re desperately reluctant to give up on things we’ve already sunk so much time, energy, effort, and/or money into. We don’t want that investment to go to waste. So, we “throw good money after bad,” as the saying goes, and spend our days complaining that, after investing in a shit sandwich for five years, we ended up with a shit sandwich.

It’s even harder when the thing you’ve invested in isn’t as awful as that. Take me for instance. My job is more of a peanut butter sandwich without the jelly. It’s certainly palatable, and I won’t starve to death eating it every day, but it’s dull. I spent seven years eating nothing but the same peanut butter sandwich. That’s just over a quarter of my life. It wasn’t without potential. There were options to add some banana slices or tuna or lettuce or tomatoes, but no jelly. And, dammit, all I want is some strawberry jam. Now, if strawberry jam is attainable elsewhere, why wouldn’t I pursue it with the utmost haste? Because I have seven years sunk into this peanut butter sandwich. It’s more complicated than a fear of failing at a new endeavor, it’s a stubborn reluctance to back out of anything we’ve invested in. Blazing a new trail, while difficult and frightening on its own, is compounded by a reluctance to leave the one you’ve already gotten so far on.

Oh, for the… I just want to go to the grocery store!

Deepak Chopra was on Conan awhile back, and when asked which city he found to be the most spiritual, he said Las Vegas. He explained that, as tasteless and shallow as it may be, it doesn’t pretend to be anything it isn’t. I visited Sin City a year ago this March, and came back having spent precisely $0 gambling. This is no mean feat; there are slot machines in Walgreens for Chrissakes. I’m just one of those people with an extremely low threshold for loss. I couldn’t bear to lose even a single dollar at black jack. Then again, I hate card games. If some Vegas hotel invented a gambling version of Skee Ball or Air Hockey, this story may have ended very differently. Still, we all know people who can’t go to Las Vegas or Atlantic City without coming back shirtless and needing replacement dental crowns. Once these people were on their path, once they had invested even a single dollar, they couldn’t turn back. Each hand dealt at the poker table, and each spin of the roulette wheel, they either kept going because they were on a roll or because they suddenly needed to recoup their losses.

It’s more than just sunk costs when it comes to career change, though. It’s about self-identity. Our jobs become an intrinsic part of who we are and how we identify ourselves. Even jobs with little prestige or glory carry a modicum of respectability. They say “I’m a normal, self-sufficient, responsible adult. You can trust me not to steal the good silver.” They’re a badge to prove that you’re not a complete waste of space. Even when we don’t like our jobs, we speak with a certain martyr’s pride about how long we’ve been with a given company. Leaving that behind means leaving behind a significant chunk of our own identity. Even if you don’t fear rebuilding that part of yourself, there’s often a certain sorrow in leaving that person behind. In knowing you’ll never be the same exact you. As such, it seems to me that an important part of moving on is allowing yourself to mourn who you were, regardless of how you felt about that life at the time.

I will not, however, miss factoring an extra 30 minutes into my morning routine every day to dig my car out of a 3 foot snow drift.

When it all comes down to it, it’s about measured risks. Each of us has to decide if the hand we’ve been dealt is worth a potentially vicious bludgeoning at the hands of a back-alley loan shark. Or, alternately, if we should fold and try again in another round. There are those of us who, even though we won’t put so much as a single nickel in a slot machine, act as if the professional world isn’t a gamble. The odds may not be nearly so bad, the winnings, while modest, may come easier, but the game is still rigged, the losses can be just as steep, and the House will always come out ahead. Thousands of students who put all their chips into law school, a degree that used to guarantee a measure of job security and a healthy income, have graduated to find they can barely even find work as paralegals. The people who make it through have either the connections to ensure their success or the passion to ride it out. So, if you don’t have the connections, you better have the passion.

The thing is, the game always changes, and we can’t predict how or when it will. You can read every Forbes article on “hot” career fields and research statistics on economic trends, but you never know when the bottom will drop out. So, maybe, just maybe, we’d all be better off if everyone pursued their own dreams utilizing their innate skills. If the industry of your choice does decline, your passion may be the only thing that saves you. Failing that, you need to be ready and able to walk away and start something new. Since, frequently, that can be the hardest part of starting a new career, I think I’m pretty lucky that the move to Colorado is forcing me out of my old life. No matter how difficult my career hunt gets, and no matter how tedious and trying all this moving BS is, it’s a change that’s moving me not only from this frozen-ass tundra, it’s moving me from out of my own way.

______________________________________

On a lighter note, Ms. Rebecca Fraser-Thill over at Career Avoidance 101 nominated me for the Versatile Blogger Award.  After experiencing an uptick in blog “likes” over the past few weeks, this was the icing on an already decadent and smugly self-satisfied cake.  So, I just have to say a million “Thank yous” to Ms. Fraser-Thill and encourage you all to go check out her blog.  I caught onto it recently, and it’s an invaluable resource for all us wayward 20-somethings trying to suck just a little less.  She delivers her insights with frankness and humor and you all just need to go friggin’ read it, already.

Now, down to business, it is now incumbent upon me to nominate fifteen other blogs I follow for this award, so we’re all just going to sit down and pretend that my opinions matter.

1.) Rarasaur

2.) Week Woman

3.) Scholars and Rogues

4.) Consistently Contradictory

5.) Ben Trube, Writer

6.) The Grumpy Giraffe

7.) EL Appleby: Short Stories

8.) Brainsnorts

9.) Judit Florian

10.) Truth and Cake

11.) Write To Clear Your Head

12.) Live Simply, Travel Lightly, Love Passionately, And Don’t Forget To Breathe

13.) I Heart Change

14.) Second Lunch

15.) Melanie Crutchfield

I’m really hoping I got those all hyper-linked to the correct places.  It’s late and I’m tired, and I still have to list seven things about myself.

1.) I love The Muppets with a fervor that approaches creepiness.

2.) My left foot is a full half-size larger than my right.

3.) I went to my sophomore and junior proms during high school, both without a date.

4.) My dog has the same birthday as I do (no, really, when I saw the birth date of the litter in the ad, I almost shat a kitten).

5.) I’m a traitor to nerd-dom in that I like both Star Wars and Star Trek.

6.) I’m a huge hockey fan.

7.) Much like Ms. Fraser-Thill, I’m sensitive to caffeine.  While it never effected me in my youth, nowadays, if I drink more than 2 espresso shots worth of caffeine in a day, I shake like a meth-addict under cross examination.  I stick to green tea, now.

I am win.

Vanity, Thy Name Is Writer

Anyone in the word-slinging game knows at least a handful of aspiring writers who would gladly saw off their own arm for a publishing deal.  At least one of them would saw off their grandmother’s arm.  They might be furtively eying your appendages right now just for suggesting the possibility.  The point is, no matter how much we all love writing, publication is the ultimate goal.  Who doesn’t dream of getting paid to do what you love?  Most of us know that self-sufficiency in writing, particularly fiction writing, is unlikely.  Tony Stark-level wealth is even more unlikely.  But the truth is, for a lot of us, it’s not just about the money.  It’s about recognition.  It’s about touching other people’s lives.  It’s about prestige.  It’s about showing that bitch Tiffany from sophomore PE that you and your hand-me-down, counterfeit Nikes are in fact not a “walking waste of Pakistani child labor.”

Still, there are those who get just a little too desperate to be published.  Who do things much worse – and much more mentally unhinged – than forcible amputation.  They turn to vanity publishers.  In a world where self-publishing has gained enough respectability to finally be ranked higher than telemarketing, these insidious “literary” entities also known as “joint venture” or “subsidy” presses should in no way be conflated with true self-publishing.  Vanity publishers are the literary version of vanity recording studios like the one responsible for that audible violation of the Geneva Convention, “Friday.”  My friend, Kelly, turned to one such publisher after trying and failing for years to sell her manuscript the traditional way.  She spent $7,000 up front getting her book published. Go ahead and wipe the Diet Mt. Dew off your computer screen.  I’ll wait.

Learning the epithet-abet can be a little tricky.

Now, for those unclear on the nuances between self-publishing and vanity publishing, let me first provide an overview of a novel (or novella) writer’s publishing options.  The gold medal in publishing (for now) still belongs to traditional publishing houses.  This route is highly competitive and the difficulty is commensurate with trying to play 36 hours of Halo 4 on Xbox Live without receiving any unflattering remarks about your parentage.  There are several excellent blogs which can give you the finer points of the process, but in a nutshell, the process requires approaching literary agents via query letter (or email) in the hopes that they will take your manuscript on and try to sell it to a publishing house (never, ever pay an agent up front).  If a publishing house buys it, they may or may not give you a cash advance against future sales, and if the book sells enough copies to pay back your advance, you start earning royalties on every copy sold.  Because your manuscript must run a gauntlet of “experts,” this method carries with it the most prestige.

Self-publishing, on the other hand, is rather self-explanatory.  When you self-publish a book, no third-party publishing house has a hand in it.  You must edit it yourself (or hire an editor), design the cover yourself (or hire a graphic designer), format it yourself (or hire a – you get the idea), pay to print it yourself (hopefully at a quality printer; or, yaknow, Kinkos, if your soul is completely dead at this point), and market it yourself.  Once upon a time, this required a decent amount of cash up-front because professional printers often have a minimum batch limit.  Nowadays, there are numerous Print on Demand services that have the ability to print one book at a time and your customers (or you, if you want a stock of copies on-hand) order from the POD company.  What’s more, the option exists to keep your book digital and publish it in the nearly universal ePub format (and/or, if you prefer, in the borderline-fascist, proprietary Kindle format).

And the turn-by-turn directions are spoken by Ozzy Osbourne. That can’t help.

Vanity publishing, however, is a deceptively similar, yet infinitely more predatory option.  A vanity publisher attempts to marry the traditional publishing world with the self-publishing world, and the resulting offspring is enough to make anyone start believing in eugenics.  A vanity publisher doesn’t just charge you to print your book, they charge you for their expert “services,” such as consulting on the cover design, marketing, or distribution.  Take special care to note the word “consulting.”  You see, these are the types of services a traditional publisher would provide, for free, because their neck is on the line and they want the book to sell.  They may listen to your input, but, in the end, they know the industry, they are professionals, and they will do whatever will sell the book.  A vanity press has no dog in the hunt.  You’re putting all the money down, and they’re offering their advice, which you don’t have to take, for a price.  They usually offer several levels of “packages” to give you the illusion of having control over how much involvement they have, and they make you feel like you’ve finally succeeded in being recognized by a “real” publisher when in fact they’ll publish any manuscript by any author who can pay them.

The end result, at least in Kelly’s case, is a book that looks more or less professional on the outside but has glaring errors and laughable quality on the inside.  Her book has decent cover art and good binding, but the page formatting looks like it was done with a 1997 version of Corel WordPerfect, and it reads like it was edited by a seven year-old. The book is available on Amazon, but no “brick-and-mortar” bookstores (though I have seen dozens of copies on the shelf of a popular used book store; they eventually stopped accepting them).  As far as their “marketing” services, they did schedule her for regular book signings to help her sell copies.  At Costco.  They advised her to make a Facebook page specifically for her writing (if that’s all consulting requires, I’m in the wrong career field) and make a website.  She has the technical proficiency of an elderly goat, so she had to pay a web designer.

…and bill you for the privilege.

The moral of the story, kids, is that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.  Vanity publishers prey on the hopes and dreams of aspiring writers hungry for a little validation.  They may not outright lie to you about how many copies you’re likely to sell, but they present themselves as “one-stop shopping” for self-publishers while simultaneously doing their best to maintain a façade of traditional publishing and to appear more competent than they really are.  True self-publishing is an incredibly difficult venture, and may well cost as much as vanity publishing if you hire professionals to design your cover, edit your work, and properly format everything, but at least you get to interview professional graphics artists, editors, and formatters to make sure you’re getting a quality product.  You don’t just get a generic stable of “professionals” whose qualifications are mysterious at best, and no matter which option you take, it’ll be you whose money is on the line trying to sell those bad boys one-by-one.

Now, some of you may wonder why I didn’t warn my dear friend about all this, and I have two very good reasons.  First, by the time I heard about any of this, the contract had already been signed and the book was at the printer.  In fact, I only learned about the $7,000 because she owed me money and thought this was a legitimate excuse for not paying me back.  Second, at that time I was nowhere near ready to publish anything and was entirely clueless about the publishing industry.  All I knew was that $7,000 down sounded like bad mojo.  Now, do I feel sorry for her?  No, and I mean this with love, but she had it coming.  You see, a few years earlier, through a convoluted hierarchy of friends-of-friends, she was able to have her manuscript read by a gentlemen who formerly served as editor in chief for a prestigious east-coast newspaper which shall remain nameless.  When he returned the marked-up manuscript to her, he told her that it was in need of heavy editing and a lot of fleshing out before it would be ready to shop around.  When she relayed all this to me, she huffily declared, “Well, everyone else who read it (read: family and friends) liked it. I’m not going to let one opinion by some sour old man stop me.”

She threw away (literally) an opportunity you or I would have willingly sacrificed a few nonessential organs to have. If I smack the crap out of her one day, you’ll all testify on my behalf at the assault hearing, right?

The Terror Hump

I know what you deviants are thinking, and no, the Terror Hump has nothing to do with the Revenge Shag.  Nor with the lesser-known Contempt Cuddle.  The Terror Hump is my label for the second stage of learning, also known as “conscious incompetence,” in the “Four Stages For learning Any New Skill.”   You see, as I’ve read up on the world of freelance writing and entrepreneurship in general, I’ve come to recognize that there is a point you reach when learning some new skill or investigating a new job field where you suddenly become aware of just how little you know and your various orifices begin to clench.  Many people don’t make it past this stage because the initial wealth of discovery is simply too overwhelming.  We are all, to one extent or another, creatures of habit, and upon realizing the magnitude of this new information, it’s natural to want to pick up your toys and retreat to the safe, familiar comfort of home.  If you can conquer the Terror Hump, however, you may just be able to achieve Epic Badassery.

Unconscious Incompetence – This is the “Blissful Ignorance” stage.  It begins with a simple notion that you might want to learn a new language or investigate a career in interior design after “communal doormat” (read: customer service) starts getting old.  As the notion sizzles away on your mental back-burner, you manage to psyche yourself up for the impending change.  You know this new venture will require hard work and persistence, but you tell yourself you’re perfectly capable.  Whenever you hear success stories about people embarking on something akin to your desired path, your ears perk up. Every time you see a Paralympian receive their gold medal, you say “If they can overcome such adversity, I have no excuse.” You start looking up inspirational quotes and posting them all over your cubicle.  You finally decide to take a serious look at it, and you start digging up some informational resources. You are optimistic; you are passionate; and you are wildly delusional.

There’s a bridge I’d like to sell you…

Conscious Incompetence – Well, shit.  After making a conscious effort to balance your optimism by acknowledging the inherent difficulty of the task before you, you realize the grave degree to which your “realistic” side undersold itself.  The expanse of knowledge you must acquire is spread out before you in all its intimidating glory.  Your heart sinks and that inner cheer-leader whimpers into silence.  This is the Terror Hump. This is the point at which you become acutely aware of just how little you know, and just how alien this new territory is.  What you imagined as a gateway to a new and exciting future, a lush oasis of achievement and gratification, appears instead to be a gateway to the harsh desert of “What-the-hell-was-I-thinking” dotted with the scrub brush of “just turn back now, loser” and the cacti of “seriously, save yourself the embarrassment.”

Conscious Competence – I like to call this the “Little Engine” stage.  If you managed to get over the Terror Hump and continue your journey, you are now much like the Little Engine That Could.  The haze of fear has lifted a little, and as you look upon this new information, piece by piece, you realize this journey is composed of a lot of small, manageable steps.  A small measure of optimism returns, and you take your first step on this new path.  Then another.  And another.  Each step requires a conscious effort, but you get stronger as you go.  You start to notice how much closer you’re getting to the end, and if you find this is indeed the road for you, it would be a shame to lose all that progress. You don’t want to be the Little-Engine-Who-Got-Halfway-Up-The-Hill-Before-Giving-Up-And-Backsliding-Twenty-Miles-And-Causing-A-Mass-Derailment. No pressure, or anything. On the other hand, if the road you’re on isn’t genuinely fulfilling, hopefully you have the good sense (and courage) to turn around and find a different road.

And I have nothing snide or sarcastic to say.

Unconscious Competence – At last, my friends, we come to the “Epic Badassery” stage.  All that determined chugging eventually pays off.  You’ve overcome the disappointment of reality, conquered your initial fears, and persevered through the gradual struggle of hands-on learning.  One day, you’re plodding along, your morning coffee is just kicking in, and you suddenly realize you’re accomplishing all these tasks with very little thought or effort on your part.  In fact, you’re now able to multitask where one directive alone used to require your full attention.  You’re solving complex equations while talking about your weekend with the Dean of your college; you’re juggling chainsaws while speaking French; you’re walking and chewing gum at the same time; most importantly, you’re kicking ass while taking names.  You have become a master, a guru to whom beginners come for advice.  You are ninja.

These stages were developed by a psychologist named Noel Burch for Gordon Training International back in the ’70s.  I stumbled upon it after experiencing my own Terror Hump and searching for information on paradigms for learning.  Luckily, I possessed enough confidence (or arrogance, whatever) to realize I couldn’t possibly be as stupid as this new information was making me feel.  As I pushed on, I realized that this intimidating wealth of new information in many ways only appeared that way.  Quality sources are bound to break down the information into many smaller, more digestible pieces.  When you see just how small those pieces are, and realize that at least some of them draw on skills you already possess, the whole picture looks a lot more hospitable.  So, the question is, are you going to let a little Terror Hump stop you?

Time’s Up, Buttercup

I think we can all agree that, when the machines rise against us, the insurgency will be led not by our military drones or our automobiles, but by our alarm clocks. Theirs is a mundane, thankless job that frequently requires being poked, smacked, sworn at, and violently hurled into an adjacent room. To be honest, I can’t guarantee they haven’t already begun implementing the preliminary phases of their insidious plan. For example, I have suspected for some time now that my little Timex Dreamkiller has been deducting whole minutes from my day as punishment for my morning misconduct. If I catch it in the act, Timex will start getting mysterious envelopes with no return address containing mangled bits of circuit board and letters composed with words cut out of magazines.

The point I’m so laboriously trying to get to, is that many of us feel like there simply aren’t enough hours in the day. We go about our daily lives, maintaining routines that were once developed to suit our needs but that may or may not be doing us any favors. Old habits are hard to break and new ones take three weeks or more to create. We end up doing certain things, not because they benefit our lives, but because we’ve always done them. For example, when I took my hiatus from Facebook, I repeatedly had to stop myself from navigating to it the first few days, not because I missed checking on it, but because it was my go-to internet distraction. Since returning, I’ve begun to think checking in once a week to catch up would be sufficient to remind me just what a failure I am.

I refused to invest time in having my Sim learn to cook, and now I can’t even get her off the toilet. Show off.

Here is an interesting article from Learnvest which attempts to lay bare our arguments about time constraints. The truth is, there are 168 hours in each week. Now, let’s argue (laughably) that we all get the recommended minimum 8 hours of sleep a night. That leaves 112 waking hours. The question one must ask, now, is how much of that time is allocated to “watching stupid shit on TV” and “dickin’ around on the internet?” You don’t know, do you? No one does, unless they stop doing one or both of those things for a while. As Laura Vanderkam, author of 168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think, points out in the article, the problem has less to do with how busy we are than with how little we know about our own habits.

Take me, for example. Out of 112 waking hours, 40 are generally spent working. Now, I’ve recently been working Sundays to wrap things up at my company before I leave Alaska in March, but for now we’ll assume a regular 40 hour schedule with 5 weekly hours of commute time. In totaling up my non work-essential duties (5 hours showering/primping, 5 hours cleaning house, 10 hours fixing all my own meals, 7 hours walking the dog) I arrive at 27 hours. Combined with my work hours, I get a total of 72 hours a week. That leaves 40 hours, a full work-week, free. Forty hours for which I cannot account and constantly bitch about the fact. It’s more than a little humbling to realize I’ve made “mildly sentient rutabaga” a full-time job.

Speaking of more time in your day, you’ll never sleep again after seeing this. You’re welcome.

Granted, we all need some time to unwind, but 40 hours? More to the point, are the methods we use to unwind really making us any happier? I know my mood improved drastically during the three-or-so weeks I abstained from Facebook. This, in spite of the fact that I was insanely busy during that time. The truth is, not only do most of our distractions add little to our lives, we compulsively and subconsciously feel guilty for not doing something valuable with all that time. I’m not saying all television and web entertainment is evil, just that we should maybe concentrate on that handful of shows or “time-killing” sites that bring us the greatest pleasure instead of feeling obligated to see every show and click on every link our friends recommend.

Now, some people are legitimately busy. I won’t even pretend to know what it’s like to be a working parent, never mind a single working parent. Still, chances are each person still carries some old habits that have become redundant. Things that served a purpose once upon a time, but now could save minutes or even hours of time if they were done away with. So, my fellow overworked, underpaid office drones, be upfront with yourselves. How much time do you spend giggling at Grumpy Cat, writing obligatory birthday wishes on Facebook, or watching the latest familial train-wreck on TLC? How much is it really contributing to your life? Do you feel better, afterword? Do you feel worse? Or do you just feel inert and a little brain-dead? No, seriously, I’ve got fifty bucks riding on your answer.

Mo’ Fear

Franklin Delano Roosevelt famously declared in his 1933 inauguration address that “the only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.” Clearly, he’d never met my mom.  (Hi mom! Love you!) Matriarchal “shout-outs” aside, the man did have a point.  There are a lot of scary things in the world: getting mugged, your house burning down, losing a loved one, Donald Trump’s hair piece.  Still, that’s life.  Fear is simply a human reaction, a perception, of external stimuli. I just got mad deep, didn’t I?  Anyway, I don’t think that’s entirely what FDR meant. I don’t think he intended to dismiss, or even make light of, humanity’s boogey-men.  Roosevelt was merely pointing out that our own response to the things that go bump in the night (or “thud” in the New York Stock Exchange, as it were) is what we should be concerned with.  Not only do we have the capacity to do some truly idiotic and/or heinous things when we’re scared, but we possess the frequently undiscovered and unused power to control our reaction.

That’s not to say that fear is a wholly useless, vestigial trait leftover from our days scrounging for leftover gazelle carcasses and a safe place to take a nap on the African Savanna.  Fear is, at its essence, an instinct.  Much like our other instincts; to eat, to procreate, etc.; too much or too little can present a problem.  Too much “instinct” and you’ll find yourself barricaded inside your apartment with a tinfoil hat, 5,000 rounds of amo, 36 pallets of Mac ‘n Cheese, a phone with only escort services on speed-dial, adult-onset diabetes, and every STD known to man.  I’m not saying gonorrhea is the worst thing in the world, just that it’s a poor conversationalist.  On the other hand, if all your instincts disappeared tomorrow, the only consolation I can offer is that you’d get hit by a bus before you had the chance to starve to death.

“The only thing we have to fear, is fear itself.”
“And Spiders”
(Robot Chicken)

In essence, there’s a subtle difference between looking both ways before you cross the street and wrapping yourself in bubble wrap before you leave the house.  I should know, one of my very best friends often refers to me as “frighteningly pragmatic.”  It took me several years to realize that being excessively cautious is no more mature than being excessively careless. Realization doesn’t immediately lead to change, however, and as I write this I’m trolling job websites and career advice articles with a level of panic that would only be warranted during a 9.6 earthquake or a tax audit. One of the articles I’ve read recently from Learnvest highlighted one woman’s fears of job loss.  After seeing numerous coworkers pass her desk with copy-paper boxes loaded with personal possessions, she resolved to prepare for her own separation.  She began gradually squirreling personal items back home, and by the time she got “the talk,” there were only a couple picture frames left.  It was little more than a symbolic strategy, but she left with her dignity intact, and in a mental and emotional state that allowed her to “hit the ground running.”

Now, granted, I’m not getting laid off, I’m leaving, so I have an advantage of foresight. Yet, being jobless after seven years with the same company scares the bejesus out of me.  Here’s the cruel irony of the situation: on one hand, I fear leaving my current job, getting evicted, and winding up a one-legged, toothless hooker, or worse, a politician. On the other hand, I fear staying in my current job and remaining in the same unrewarding, unchallenging, uninspiring line of work until I die of a heart attack and collapse into the cake at my office retirement party. That is, I did fear leaving my job, until I started reading a little book by Pamela Slim called Escape From Cubicle Nation. The woman parrots pretty much every fear I have about leaving, and points out that the foundation for this abject terror rests firmly on the delusion that our jobs are, somehow, “secure.”  That staying put is the responsible, sensible thing to do and that wanting to move on and find something better suited to your dreams and talents is selfish, foolish, or ungrateful.

We’re trying to get them to lose weight.

It’s occurred to me that, in a lot ways, staying put is selfish if you’re capable of more.  If you’re smart enough or strong enough or organized enough to tackle more complexity, more heavy-lifting, or more responsibility, are you really doing your employer (or any employer) a favor?  You’re certainly not doing your sanity or your wallet any favors.  Moreover, tedious admin jobs such as mine are perfect for people just starting out; people who need a foot in the door in a certain industry; or who just need a steady paycheck and would be more than grateful not to deal with snotty customers, screaming kids, and deep-fryer burns. These types of jobs weren’t meant to be careers, and by fearfully, stubbornly staying put, you’re only hindering other peoples’ opportunities to progress. Also, let me say it again, you could be laid off at any time. You could have your pay cut. They could reduce or eliminate the precious benefits you rely on as the last-nail-in-the-coffin excuse for not leaving.

To be honest, the reason I began reading Ms. Slim’s book (along with a few others) is because I’ve considered dipping my toe into the freelance writing market once I get to Colorado.  I’m still going to hunt down a traditional job like Liam Neeson hunting down sketchy Eastern European kidnappers, but I wanted to learn more about freelancing.  The thing is, with my engagement, I’ve started thinking more seriously about what’s going to happen when we decide to start a family.  The unfortunate fact is, a lot of employers are not understanding of maternity leave in the least.  Regardless of the Family and Medical Leave Act, some companies will look for alternate reasons to get rid of you if you try to take the full amount of leave permitted under FMLA.  Or, alternately, they can simply make you so miserable upon your return that you quit.  Moreover, having the flexibility to work freelance and stay home with my kids would be ideal.  The dog would probably be happier, too.

Lips Of An Angel, Brains Of A Toaster

Today is Valentine’s Day, and let’s be honest: most men understand romance about as well as they fathom the appeal of $900 handbags. That makes two of us. On the handbags, that is. I fancy that I have better than average grasp on romance. This isn’t so much a slight against men in general as romance does, and should, mean different things to different people. I’ve long spoken out against formulaic romance, and I refuse to believe FTD is the end-all authority on how to tell that special someone you really want their ankles to be better acquainted with your ears. There are, however, those instances where attempts by men to illustrate romantic circumstances ought to be met with a swift kick to the nethers.

One of the more egregious example of this comes from the band Hinder and their hit song “Lips of an Angel.” If I had a nickel for every time I’ve heard some woman call this lyrical clusterf$%# romantic, I’d die a morbidly obese cat-hoarder glued to a vinyl chair in front of a Vegas slot machine. I can’t decide whether to be angrier at the feeble minds behind this song or the feebler minds of the women who eat it up. For the women, I can maybe excuse some of them by saying they’re probably not listening to the lyrics. After all, when Uncle Kracker’s “Follow Me” hit it big, every girl in my high school was humming it in the hallways for weeks before I finally heard one of them say “Oh my God, it’s about a woman cheating on her husband.”

The best and brightest, they are.

Blissful ignorance aside, odds are at least a couple of the women who were gushing over “Lips of an Angel” knew exactly what it was about and still found it romantic. For those unfamiliar, let me summarize this little “power ballad” for you. It’s about a man sneaking away from his current girlfriend’s bed in the middle of the night to talk to his ex-girlfriend on the phone. During this clandestine communication, he tells said ex that he hasn’t moved on and he wishes his new girlfriend was her. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen. Let me present to you the King of the Skeevy Douche-nozzles.

What, a sane person might ask, is so romantic about this scenario? The only answer I can come up with is that the female listeners aren’t putting themselves in the position of the clueless current girlfriend. They’re putting themselves in the position of the ex-girlfriend on the phone. Which only makes sense, as the song is written in the second-person so that you, the radio listener, can imagine that the singer is confessing his undying love to you. Never mind that the band is making some rather bold assumptions regarding the relative desperation and patheticness of their audience. They’re also making some decidedly insulting presumptions that their female listeners want nothing more than to be the girl on the phone tempting their ex away from his new lady. The sad part is, in at least a few cases, they must be right.

The common denominator in all your doomed relationships? You.

Here’s the issue. It’s one thing to feel flattered to hear words of adoration from a man. That’s all well and good, and even if you don’t return his sentiments, there’s no harm in allowing the sincere admiration of another to make you feel all warm and fuzzy. The problem is, it would take a woman of astoundingly low self-esteem to feel flattered that a man displaying such craven, selfish behavior and possessed of such questionable integrity was confessing his love for her. We’re talking about a man who as not only not in love with his current partner and too cowardly or cruel to break it off with her and be alone for awhile, but is actively harboring a flame for another and keeping his contact with said woman a secret.

Ladies, please, PLEASE stop romanticizing selfish, emotionally crippled, man-children. No, you can’t change them (except into a cadaver, but the “authorities” frown upon that). We can blame the media all we like (and don’t get me wrong, Hinder is a terrible, terrible band even excluding this song) but they’d stop shilling it if you’d stop buying it. Get your codependency issues under control, learn to love yourself first, stop acting like you’ll die if you’re not coupled up, and when you are finally in a healthy and secure enough state of mind to be in a functional relationship, look for men who know themselves and are comfortable in their own skin. Find the man who wants you above all others, but doesn’t need you. A whole man.

You’re making us all look bad. Knock it the f#$% off.