I have a lot of work to do – a prioritized, organized to-do list but cannot seem to focus clearly because I am feeling a bit like a lovesick teenager. I have never really gone through such a thing before – certainly not in this way. It’s belated, arriving only in my middle-aged life, when I find myself much more sentimental than I was in my youth.
The nice thing about it, despite its obvious distractions, is that it is simple. I can’t control it, can’t plan it – can’t do anything except give in to it.
Its simplicity is the exact opposite of the corporate world. Almost every day, new layers and processes are added to already convoluted layers and processes – none of which are useful or mean anything or help anyone. I am convinced that people spend so much time creating these processes, endeavors, initiatives, efforts, workshops, sessions, meetings, summits and whatever else to convince themselves that what they are doing is much more complicated than it really is. It also masks the considerable overlap in job functions – so many people are present creating and then following nebulous “processes”, completely sure they are contributing – and more importantly – busy. And that’s what counts – look and feel busy.
The only similarity with the lovesick thing is that the addition of these processes and layers is completely out of my (your, our) control. Every time a new “thing” is introduced, I find myself shaking my head, sarcastically muttering under my breath, “Oh yes, more processes and layers of management – that’s always better.”
Working in an environment that does not invite or encourage an ethos of working where and how one is most productive, it can be difficult to believe that there are companies with flexibility in their DNA. Leaving the flex nature of the small- to medium-size tech enterprises, it did not seem like it would be that vast a cultural chasm to cross because we’re all working in this fast-paced, tech-driven world, aren’t we?
Truth is – no, we aren’t. Tech companies live and die by the technology. A conservative, traditional company operating in selling commodities does not believe it needs to be on the fast-track to digital change (either in how it does business/sells or in how it works internally). For all the grandiose, pie-in-the-sky talk about embracing technology, change and finding new ways of working, leaving that comfortable zone where one has “always had success” doing business is still how things are plugging along. Fundamentally, there is a disparity between the talk of change and innovation and the walk of eschewing change, putting up obstacles and viewing flexibility with suspicion.
It comes down to communication, on some level – first, a company (whatever its size, business or take on flex work) needs to go beyond lip services regardless of what they want. If they want employees to innovate and work where they feel best or chained to their desks 8 to 5, they need to make that clear in an honest and clear way. And employees need to make their needs known as well. Many companies have flex-work policies on the books, but people are afraid to take advantage, fearing being perceived as “not dedicated to their work”.
But, as a Virgin/YouGov survey predicts, we may be moving close to the almost office-free world in the next 20 years. It would be better and easier to start confronting the challenges and barriers now. Starting with the aforementioned and all-important practice of communication. Can we not shake off the stigma of flexible work and be clear about what “flexible work” means and what employers and employees expect of it?
The partial answer, at least for today, is: We’re not there yet. An apt answer for flex and telework (as well as for relationships in the undefined, “budding” stage!).
As with most things, I could ask whether there is actually a right or wrong way to introduce and undertake some of the flexible work options that are out there. Are we doing it right? No, probably not yet. As stated, we’re not there yet in terms of every company jumping on board looking for options – but we are at a stage that most companies have some of their workforce that could be offered flexible options – and the benefits go both ways.
“Flexible work” could mean a host of different things. Telecommuting, near and dear to my heart, alone has tremendous potential for changing the workscape as we know it today. A couple of ZDNet articles grabbed my attention for their focus on bigger societal benefits (not emphasizing the benefits to the individual or even the economic benefits to the companies taking advantage of remote or virtual work). One article made the point: Working at home is going green. The commute is reduced/eliminated – the environmental impact of that could be huge. Right now there are well over 200 million Americans making a daily commute. The second article discussed how policy-level decisions to support telecommuting would incentivize business growth. In this era of lost jobs and economic uncertainty, it does seem like policy change (especially with regard to making taxation more transparent and easy to handle for small home-based businesses, as an example – or making clear deductions possible for those who work from home offices and forgo the commute) would go a long way toward changing the dialogue and figuring out how to get flexwork going — the right way and for real.
It’s been one of those frenzied evenings that is a bit too productive – as evidenced by the sudden disappearance of unanswered emails from my email inbox. In an overzealous and optimistic fit of some sort, I archived a handful of messages and had to go back and find them. Funny how you can think you’re so on top of it, so organized and yet are still doing silly, thoughtless stuff like that.
Sometimes when I can’t sleep (like now) I stare at the ceiling and try to see things in the knots and patterns in the wood. I have never been a visual person (at all) and often don’t see things that are right in front of me – but all my life I have had a strange fascination with staring at pieces of wood or even wood paneling to discern images or – usually – faces. I remember seeing distinct faces in some wood paneling during my childhood and actually feeling some kind of empathy with these people hidden in the wood. One “woman” looked so worried and mysterious. Half of her face was hidden, as though she were standing behind a door, maybe eavesdropping on a conversation in the next room or … who knows what? This was the kind of storytelling that would play itself out in my head as a child (also when I struggled with sleep).
To this day, imagination and any visual inclinations long ago beat out of me, I find faces in wood. Just now I looked up and quite suddenly the knots appeared as the face of a baby seal. Hahaha. I know – it sounds crazy. I cling to this in some way though because it is a kind of creativity that is not really a part of who I am – and I think if I had more discipline or interest, I might be able to focus it better to use it for something more than seeing things that are not there in pieces of wood.
(Makes me think of the ridiculous and bad Jim Carrey film The Mask, when his character takes his wooden mask to someone – to get some answers or something – I don’t know, I barely remember the film – and the Ben Stein character dryly comments, “This is a piece of wood” after Carrey’s character tells him an outlandish tale about what the mask can do. Never in my life did I imagine an occasion on which I would cite The Mask for any reason. Oh, and don’t let it scare you or make you feel old or anything, but The Mask turns 20 this year…).
It occurs to me that it has been a while since I leisurely killed time in an airport duty-free shop. These trips are my normal time for stocking up on all the lipstick I don’t at all need. But the salespeople in the duty-free can see me coming from a mile away – sporting bright fuschia or, more probably, red, lipstick, they undoubtedly believe (and are not wrong) that I am an easy target. I never leave without a new lipstick. One saleswoman at Gatwick actually laughed and called me an “easy mark”.
Tonight I put on some red lipstick for no reason at all. I wasn’t going anywhere, no one was coming here – but suddenly it just seemed to be the salve for everything from dry lips to bruised heart. (Yeah, of course I am exaggerating for effect.)
My next project is to build a treadmill desk – and heaven knows I need to wear lipstick for that! Every occasion is a lipstick occasion.
You know how sometimes you get this feeling that you really don’t like someone and perhaps you feel like he or she is phony? And then something happens to reveal something about them that puts all the pieces together and sheds new light on their behavior – and you realize that that sense of dislike was really just your radar telling you that that person was putting up a front and not being himself? Yeah. When you are not yourself – you are often less likeable.
I recognize that there are plenty of times when I am myself and am still not likeable, but then it is really a matter of not getting along or seeing eye to eye. That’s fine. Not everyone is going to get along and like each other. But if you want to have the best chance of putting your best foot forward – in personal or professional relationships, you are going to have to be yourself. (Maybe with a layer of diplomacy baked in, but still – yourself, with your own ideas, your own voice, your own interests.)
I don’t say this because I think you should go through life trying to be more likeable. It is just that you are not living a full, real life if you are not living as the you that you know best. I realize that a lot of people have trouble with this because they don’t really know who they are, and some people are born “people pleasers” and would sooner jump off a bridge than go against the “make everyone happy” instinct that has propelled them through life. Ultimately you have to live with yourself and make yourself happy first and most of all.
I’m doing it. Listening to obscenely loud music in my house in the Swedish woods in the middle of the night while baking cakes and playing with a hula hoop – all a little off the beaten path, but I am who I am – and I like it. Even if no one else does. (Of course I know that some people do – it is just that it does not matter so much if they do if I am happy with myself.)
A similar kind of stigma used to exist when it came to online/internet dating. A CNN article highlights the fact that fewer than one percent of Americans were using the internet to meet dates in 1992 – and by 2009, almost a quarter of couples were meeting online. The Guardian reports, based on a University of Rochester study, that online dating is the second most common way Americans start relationships today.
My guess is the numbers may even be higher than what the CNN article reports; the stigma is virtually gone, but I think people probably still underreport their online-love exploration.
Online dating became broadly experimental, then accepted, and then mainstream. People (almost) proudly talk about how they met on OkCupid or Match.com or whatever the flavor-of-the-month or niche dating site is. The process has moved a lot like the bell curve of technology adoption. Online dating started with innovators and early adopters – I imagine that those who adopted early were tech-oriented people but also possibly the kind of people who would benefit from the barriers and anonymity of online interaction. (Hey, not taking any shots – I am a wee bit techie, a wee bit nerdy and a wee bit shy myself.) Eventually a wider audience could see the benefits of doing a bit of pre-date vetting, getting to know people a bit better before meeting and being exposed to a broader array of people than one could meet in everyday life – particularly if they are busy people tired of trying to make some kind of connection with drunk people in bars. (Of course that assumes that the other people engaged in online dating are like-minded souls. That’s where the diffusion of innovation curve, in this case, does not work too well, especially in the early stages, in the early adopters’ favor.)
Okay, so online dating is not a panacea that answers all dating ills, and in fact there are some psychologists who claim that there are pitfalls (the aforementioned CNN article makes that clear, citing that online daters may be susceptible to warped outlooks and expectations, relying too much on vague profiles and contributing to a sense that one can be too picky or judgmental.
The Guardian article cited above also explores the idea that people online are looking for different things – and perhaps deceiving each other about it. There are some other great looks at how online dating is unsatisfying and can never really give people an accurate idea of whether they will really click with someone or not. Too true:
“…online dating sites assume that people are easy to describe on searchable attributes. They think that we’re like digital cameras, that you can describe somebody by their height and weight and political affiliation and so on. But it turns out people are much more like wine. That when you taste the wine, you could describe it, but it’s not a very useful description. But you know if you like it or don’t. And it’s the complexity and the completeness of the experience that tells you if you like a person or not. And this breaking into attributes turns out not to be very informative.”
Personally, I would also argue about the creation of the illusion of endless choice – related to the point about pickiness and judgment made in the CNN article. People also don’t always know what they want – or need. But that is totally beside the point here. It’s a complex thing, like relationships themselves.
The question is – how has online dating become accepted, acceptable and the de facto thing to do while something totally above-board like online, virtual work isn’t? It’s not like for like and may not be comparable, but I suppose the difference is the line between what is personal and what is professional – and in the professional realm, more is at stake. On the other hand, do people pay a certain price for taking steps (personal or professional) that fall under one of these “stigma umbrellas”? That is, is the online dater somehow limiting herself to just that pool of people willing to be online and to those who can craft a profile that speaks to what she (thinks she) is looking for? Is the person who takes advantage of “workplace flexibility” also being stigmatized at work – not advancing in her career, perhaps – because she has asked or opted for a more flexible arrangement?
“There can be a stigma for remote or blended schedules, however: parents who want to be more available to their kids may opt for this, and that usually means women. These remote employees may not be as available as someone in the office, may appear to be slacking off, and may reduce their opportunities for promotion. Whether or not those things are true does not matter if there is a perception of truth to them.”
“The fact working from home is often less pressured is probably why 19% of those asked, felt home workers take advantage of having no boss around and slack off.
Yet, when you look at the 2.8m home-based entrepreneurs who are running businesses from their kitchen tables and turning over an extra 284bn for the UK economy, you start to recognise that home-workers can be just as productive and even more driven.
Lastly, giving employees the option to work from home can make good business sense in other ways too. It can help a business save money because it means it won’t have to fork out for a huge office and there won’t be as much wear and tear on the office utilities.”
I have had the same questions – how is it, if I have successfully operated my own content business from my home for 15 years, that a corporation who chose to hire me as a regular employee would not be able to value the productivity and experience gained in those 15 office-less years? Imagine this: Microsoft in Finland a National Remote Working Day, asking employers to think about the benefits of remote working, including shorter commute times and further reaching environmental benefits. Events like this are unfortunately rare enough that the idea of virtual work may still be holding businesses back.
Many times people have asked me why I never pursued a PhD in anything. I have given it some thought, and I realized that I am an MA-level kind of woman. That is about the extent of expertise that I can undertake myself. For most of my adult life, I have been enrolled in higher education pursuits – because I was interested enough to learn formally but not interested enough to get too deeply into all the subjects.
My work in many ways has been the same thing. I stick with one profession (communications/writing/content) but never with one topic. I like to dig deeply – but temporarily – into in-depth subjects. I actually have to learn fast, absorb a lot of new and diverse information and act on it. Get in, become an overnight amateur expert, get out. This is how and why I switch industries periodically. It is also why I was drawn to freelancing and self-employment after I did not really need to do it anymore. The more subjects and topics the brain accumulates, the more of a jack-of-all-trades one becomes, the easier it is to get bored – or at least want to branch out all the time.
It is for this reason that I realize I will never be a specialist. At least not in the sense that I would likely become a doctor of anything. I can be a specialist without being a specialist. I don’t want to get too bogged down in a specialization. There are individuals who know everything about their field of expertise, and we need those people. I am just not one of them.
Who doesn’t want passports with wild animals on the cover? First Côte d’Ivoire’s passport and now Congo! Okay, yeah… I don’t think anyone really wants this one, but you know… the cover!
Funny thing about going on TV and movie-viewing binges – there are so many threads that connect so many things together. This past two weeks, for example, I have not seen a single TV show that did not use a reference to someone being another person’s “wing man”. It started when I went on a Suits-watching marathon, and there was an entire episode in which the characters were excessively quoting Top Gun (which is not even a film with dialogue – just a long series of annoying one-liners). After that, every show has referenced the ubiquitous “wing man” and in some other show (unfortunately I have half-watched so much TV that I don’t remember which show), the characters argued about who was Maverick and who was Goose.
Smaller connections can be seen if paying attention – binge watching allows for sewing together disconnected threads in specific series – but it also allows for small connections and thematic linking between things where there really is no reason to believe there are connection. For example, the obsession with Quaaludes in The Wolf of Wall Street pops up again in HBO’s True Detective, where Matthew McConaughey’s character wants to get some Quaaludes. Not to mention that McConaughey turns up briefly in The Wolf as a drug-obsessed Wall Street guy schooling Leonardo DiCaprio in how to behave (that is, take drugs, more drugs and only care about making money for yourself). And frankly, how often do you hear about Quaaludes in everyday life? Never. Now it’s twice in one day – thanks to entertainment.
TV
In the midst of other things, I have done a lot of wasteful TV and movie viewing lately. It’s on in the background while I do a million other things. There are plenty of other things I have been watching and love (not listed here, such as Shameless, House of Lies, Episodes, Justified, etc.), but I am only listing things that I have not really written much about elsewhere – new shows or things that I have something to say about them.
Among the dumbest or most infuriating shows:
The Following: This show just makes law enforcement look like it is all bumbling idiots, always ten steps behind. But the bad guy never quite seems like he could be smart enough to pull it off. In general the show just makes no sense to me because it is just not believable.
The Fosters: This is classic-style ABC network family programming with a “clever” (or not) title (the titular Foster family are also foster parents) and lots of hot-button topics (lesbian, biracial couple with a bunch of kids – one biological and the others adopted fosters). The good part is that this backdrop is not overdone or made to seem unusual. This is just the way it is. But the storytelling is one step away from overdramatic soap opera with too much shit going on to be real. So I don’t like the show, and both the leads (Teri Polo and Sherri Saum) lack the personal warmth to make them seem like loving parents – they try to oversell it to the detriment of the end effect.
Helix: I keep waiting for it to get better and it isn’t. I felt the same way about Caprica. And is it just me or is Billy Campbell becoming a worse and more false actor as he gets older? The only good thing is the actress who was Kat in Battlestar Galactica. I did not like her that much in BSG, but here she’s tough without the immature, annoying, extreme edge she had as Kat. Oh, and Jeri Ryan is going to show up any minute now, so that’s a good thing, right?
Looking: I don’t know – a show about a group of gay friends in San Francisco. Would be fine as a premise, but it just feels so pointless every week.
The Crazy Ones: I keep trying to watch this and this is not funny. The end.
How I Met Your Mother: I started watching this only around the time that the show was in its sixth season on TV. It could be quite funny for network comedy, but this last season is dragging out in the worst way. Boring and unfunny to an unmanageable degree.
Not bad but not good:
Nashville: This gets worse all the time. I want to like it because I really like Connie Britton. But every storyline is annoying and over-the-top. While all are annoying, the worst one is Rayna’s determination to start her own record label. It belies the whole direction of the music industry – and I refuse to believe that a huge star that this character is supposed to be would be that blind to the trends of the industry. Or that she would be so naive as to not realize the intricacies of the business and getting out of her contract. There is something naive about the whole story – her former label maneuvers against her by making a couple of phone calls (as if it is as easy as that) after we have just heard from another businessman that deals are made and cemented months or years in advance for retail shelf space. And the whole thing comes down to – who the hell needs retail shelf space any more? That’s the thing – why not try to move forward with your new, innovative, fresh label using the new, innovative, fresh tools that the modern music industry is built on? Most people are downloading and streaming. Getting distribution at Wal-mart or wherever is still part of the strategy for a huge star – but a huge, veteran star starting up a label would not be so completely blind to the business end of the business. And if she were, she would have lined up a lot more industry-specific advisers (rather than her sketchy sister?!) to help her plan and get the whole thing off the ground. She would not just mouth off at her music label and leave and decide to fly by the seat of her pants and suddenly find that she is stuck.
If they stuck with the music, this would be a better show.
Trophy Wife: Surprisingly funnier than I expected but still not something I cannot live without. I find myself questioning the man in the story – how is it that he just keeps getting married – and is he so lacking in discernment or so desperate not to be alone or just so open-minded that he married these three massively different women? I can’t figure that out. I mean really – who would marry that second wife? He seems too normal and put together to marry someone like that unless it was a whimsical rebellion after the uptight, driven and mean first wife? I don’t know, I really don’t.
Almost good, but not totally sure:
Orphan Black: I never planned to watch this but recently watched the whole thing – I was entertained, surprised and impressed with Tatiana Maslany’s performance in multiple, quite different roles in the same show. I will give the second series a whirl. I am interested in the ethics of cloning and identity, and this show has started to explore some of the issues that come to light as a result of this kind of scientific experimentation.
Suits: As a kind of entertaining filler, I am enjoying Suits. It can be a laugh, but it’s not classic television or anything. I enjoy the constant movie quoting and references the characters make to other things (Top Gun, Mississippi Burning as examples), but that’s the best it gets for me.
The best shows:
True Detective: By far the best new show I have seen. Understated, great cinematography, great soundtrack, great dialogue and superb performances. The tense relationship between the two leads, Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson, and their outstanding verbal exchanges, makes the show worth watching. I never imagined in my life that I would claim McConaughey had done something great, but in truth, he has actually built a fairly impressive resume without my paying attention. (His role in Dallas Buyers Club was pretty powerful, but I have not seen him do something as inspired as his role in True Detective.)
Movies
I watched a bunch of movies in recent weeks – but I have not really kept track of them. I saw Dallas Buyers Club, 12 Years a Slave, the recent Mandela movie starring Idris Elba… but there is not much to say about these films. It’s difficult to distill a film into just key points. And films like these – well, they’re kind of Oscar bait, meaning that everyone writes about them.
I saw the film The Wolf of Wall Street, and hated it. Frankly I don’t like stuff like this. Movies in which people behave stupidly, get all fucked-up on drugs and live and die by their own greed and excesses don’t do anything for me. I am only interested in the fact that Kyle Chandler is in a small role as a tenacious FBI agent. He’s just so bloody cute! Happily he will be in a new Netflix series soon.
