Friday, May 25, 2012

End of the Lull


Last week, things felt oddly quiet. Not so, this week. It almost felt like being back at work, juggling several tasks, some with deadlines. A brief blip, or a sign of things to come? It doesn't matter, it just felt good to pick up the pace a little.

My sister has taken on my professional website as a class project, and her updated, redesigned efforts are in an entirely different league from my current website (which I patched together from a very basic template). If you would like to see the "before" picture, go to The Wordchemist. Linda and I live almost 3000 miles apart, so we collaborated via email and IM across three time zones. Both of us got a useful review on being clear and specific in our communication with each other. Over the space of a couple of weeks, the website evolved from "nebulous concept" to "this looks really good!"

The new design is being critiqued by others in my sister's class this week, and it will go live after we tie up a few loose ends. The new website includes a science blog, which serves as a prod to get me back into writing professional-caliber pieces on a regular basis.

A couple of my former co-workers from the American Chemical Society still freelance for the ACS website. I'm filling in for one of them while he is on vacation. This week, I got my first assignment. It wasn't difficult, but I had to make sure that I could log in, and I had to make sure that the template they provided worked with OpenOffice. Other than those two rather low hurdles, I got back into the swing of things rather easily. We will see how the next couple of weeks go.

The usual domestic chores, bill paying, journaling and reflection sessions, yoga classes, discussion group, and a half-day science policy symposium (plus downtown commute) added up to make a week that was eventful, but not overwhelming.

Saturday, May 19, 2012

Shoe Shopping in the Eye of the Storm


The last couple of weeks have felt very quiet. No major insights gained, no sense of progress, just life going on as usual. My over-achiever self is getting impatient: "Shouldn't you be signing up for more things, writing more pages in your journal, going on longer walks -- something? anything? You shouldn't wait until December to start making plans for after your sabbatical!"

Some time ago, my yoga teacher spoke about the uneventful times as being like the eye of a hurricane. All the craziness subsides for a while, but you know that it will start up again soon. The eye of the hurricane is a short respite where you can check on things and make sure that everything is well secured. You can check in on the people you love, and then sit back and enjoy the unearthly calm. When the winds start to blow again, you will be ready. That pretty much describes my current state. I'm doing what I can do, and I know that the pace will pick up again, but right now, I don't feel any particular need to stir things up unnecessarily (except for the over-achiever part of me, of course).

Looking at my calendar, I see that my life hasn't been entirely devoid of events. My twice-monthly discussion group had a very deep, insightful session. I went with a friend to see a fascinating documentary film and panel discussion on how our night skies are becoming progressively brighter and less starry. Afterward, our discussion of what we learned about eco-friendly outdoor lighting prompted me to write to my condo manager and post a summary on my various forms of social media. I had a review session with my investment adviser. My sister and I are working on a major update to my website. I got all new windows installed in my condo, which required me to take down all my blinds and valances -- and put them back up again afterward. I'm signed up for a half-day science policy workshop this coming Monday. That's all in addition to my twice-weekly yoga classes, daily domestic chores, journaling, walking, and reading. Oh yes, I also went to see "The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel".

One of the things I'm reading is Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. She and I are very different people, but I am learning a lot from her account of her renewal year. She wrote at length about letting go of anger at things past, rejecting the prepackaged lifestyle that was eroding her personal integrity, and finding quiet at her own center. Her journey of discovery was far more adventurous than mine -- I still have my home, and I'm not getting off the plane in a country where I don't speak the language with no idea of where I am going to sleep that night. On the other hand, I don't have a book advance and a lifetime of foreign travel experience, so she did have some advantages. Still and all, I share the desire to escape the life that I'm "supposed" to be leading and find my own voice.

I never saw the movie, but I've been reading some of the reviews. The harshest criticism comes from people who think that this was an exercise in self-indulgence, an abandonment of a richly blessed lifestyle, and a sudden betrayal of a loving husband. Some people seem to think that taking more than a day or two away from your work for quiet reflection and self discovery is morally suspect. When life has handed you everything that you're supposed to want, how dare you say that you want something else -- especially when you can't quite put your finger on what that something else is?

Maybe there really are people in the world who are truly satisfied with all the default settings. All the beliefs that were handed down to them, all the expectations that go along with their predetermined place in society, all the people in their immediate neighborhood -- all these things fit them so well that they have no need to stop and question who they really are and what they are really meant to be doing. For most of the people I know, at least some parts of their prepackaged life chafe them like badly fitting shoes. Some people steadfastly endure the blisters and corns. Some people cushion the parts that fit the worst. Some people go out and look for "life shoes" that actually fit.

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Bedraggled Victory


Last night, I got absorbed by a late-night show called "The White Room Challenge". Four young interior designers were each given a stage set-like space (three walls and a ceiling, open to the front) and a few basic pieces of furniture, all white. They had 15 hours, a warehouse full of accessories and paint, a field trip to a candy store, the services of a crew of carpenters, and $2000 to spend. Their assignment was to create a child's room based on a theme of candy. Whatever else they did, they would be judged on two things: did it look like a child's room, and how cleverly could they incorporate actual candy into their design.

The four designers must have been chosen very intentionally, because each embodied a specific mindset almost to perfection. One designer, a young woman whose specialty was art installations, set to work almost immediately. She decided to keep the walls and furniture white, to set off the bright colors of the candy. She nailed the furniture to the wall -- chairs and tables all jumbled up into the air as if they had been swept up by a tornado. Strips of wallpaper, sheets of candy dots, candy strewn on the floor, giant puffy white flowers -- the room was a riot of whimsy. The judges said that it looked as if a birthday cake had exploded. The whole room radiated the chaotic joy of childhood, but it wasn't a room that a child might play in, it was an avant-garde art installation. All execution, no planning, nowhere for the eye to rest. That designer was the first one eliminated from the competition.

One designer, a young man, had a much more specific, detailed vision for his white room. He wanted to make a fantasy land where a young girl could retreat from the rest of her family and indulge her imagination. Red theater curtains allowed just a glimpse into the space within. An orange candy sun shone in a deep blue sky. A white couch sported giant red painted ladybugs with chocolate-kiss spots. A giant tree with green candy leaves sunk its plywood roots into chocolate-candy soil. The designer was absolutely confident that his room would win the competition. You couldn't fault the guy's planning and the detail of his execution, but the room looked weighty and claustrophobic. The colors were too intense, the elements were too large, there was no playfulness. The room was trying too hard, the concept was too heavy. That designer was the second one eliminated.

A third designer, a young woman, immediately latched onto the concept of a giant friendly robot. She painted the tables and chairs in bright colors and stacked them on the back wall to make the body. Colorful geometric patterns painted on the side walls became a pair of arms, reaching all the way to the front of the room in a gigantic "hug". The robot was big and friendly and you couldn't help but smile, but there was no candy. As time grew short, the designer crafted gears and pulleys from pieces of candy -- a very clever idea, but clearly an afterthought. In her enthusiasm for her own idea, she had lost sight of what her client (the judges) had specified as the main theme. She came in second.

The winner was a young man who set out to make a young boy's room. His theme idea was to make candy rain from the sky. He asked his carpenter to make 100 strings of hard candy to attach to the ceiling, creating a candy deluge. The carpenter set to work, but he warned that he might not be able to finish that many strings in the time allotted. Meanwhile, the designer painted his space in bright greens and blues, and he carefully crafted a candy sign that said "Yummy".

At the end of the first day, the designers were escorted off the set -- time to rest and recharge imaginations and allow glue and paint to dry. The following morning, the designers came back to complete their projects.

The "candy rain" designer saw that the carpenter had only been able to make a few candy strings -- a slight spotty drizzle rather than the glorious deluge he had envisioned. His "Yummy" sign was ruined -- the glue had foamed up and spread all over the place. He had spent too much time on his main pieces, which were now unusable, and he had only made a bare start on the rest of his room. The young man burst into tears, convinced that he had failed utterly.

After a while, he pulled himself together and began a modified, simplified version of his original plan. There would not be hundreds of tiny pieces of candy hanging from the ceiling, but rather, a dozen or so giant jawbreakers hung like colorful planets in one corner. Giant lollipops formed asterisks along the back wall. Giant rainbow-colored sticks of candy formed a thicket near the floor.

By the time the 15 hours were up, he had created a simple, cheerful, aesthetically pleasing space. The candy was fully integrated into the design, and it looked like candy rather than mechanical parts, trees, or chaotic clutter. The judges' only criticism was that the room looked a little too adult, but they praised him for staying focused on his assignment and for his ability to recover quickly and adapt his design after his initial failure. Out of the four designers, he was the one who "got it" -- not only the idea that the judges had asked him to convey, but the prize as well.

I have heard that some of these reality shows and contests are scripted -- real life is either too boring or too complicated to package neatly into a one-hour time slot with time out for commercials. Was "The White Room Challenge" scripted to make it turn out so neatly? I don't know, and I don't care. Watching these four designers and their four different approaches has gotten me thinking about the way I tackle challenges and problems -- and recover from my own messes. The edgy-arty people, the supremely confident people, the grand strategizers, the one-brilliant-idea people -- these people are sometimes celebrated by business theorists and self-help gurus. Sometimes, though, it's enough to just roll with the punches, pick yourself up, and muddle on through.

Monday, May 7, 2012

Hatchlings


By only pursuing “sustaining innovations” that perpetuate what has historically helped them succeed, companies unwittingly open the door to “disruptive innovations”. -- Clayton Christensen

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy. -- William Shakespeare, Hamlet, Act I Scene V

Often, two randomly juxtaposed thoughts will join together in my mind and hatch a hybrid concept that teaches me something that either I didn't see before, or I did see and didn't pay enough attention to. Earlier today, I was scanning my Facebook page to see what my friends were up to. I skimmed through the usual smattering of jokes about getting older and "remember when...". Then, I went out and took a short walk, using my need to mail off a couple of bill payments as my excuse. (Yes, sometimes I still need to gin up an errand of some sort to get me off my duff and out of the house.) Just the fact that I still mail paper checks to pay some of my bills brands me as a Baby Boomer, but I don't care.

It's a bit more than half a mile from my front door to the nearest post office, a decent-sized building with a mail sorting room in the back and room to park a dozen or so mail trucks in the back parking lot. Not one of those vest-pocket things tucked away in an office building. For the better part of a year, we have known that this post office was going to close -- an upsetting notion, given the size of the post office and the many thousands of people in this zip code. Today, I saw a sign on the front door: a week from today, the post office will be opening in its new location just a block from where I live. (Good for convenience, bad for nudging me into a one-mile walk.) The new location is a smaller space that used to house a dollar store, at the very end of a long strip-mall shopping center. The thought that "post office" might be the next step on a downward spiral from "full-priced retail" to "discount" to "dollar store" to, well, who knows what, made me a little melancholy. The post office is going the way of dial telephones and vinyl records (both of which I own, but haven't used in ages).

What we are seeing with the post office is just another example of what Clayton Christensen calls "disruptive innovation". I can still remember when the post office was never open on Saturdays. Air Mail was really expensive, so you only used that for emergencies or overseas correspondence. If you wanted to mail a package, you took a used cardboard box, padded your item with wadded-up newspaper (and prayed that would be enough, given the post office's track record for smashing fragile items), sealed up your package with brown paper tape, wrapped the whole thing in heavy brown paper (usually a cut-up grocery bag), and tied it all up with twine. It was a lot of work, but the post office was the only game in town.

When FedEx and UPS appeared on the scene, they shook things up just a little. They were very expensive, and people thought of them as something you used in an emergency, when you had to rush your delivery. The post office had a legal monopoly on letter delivery, and they would deliver your letters to the most remote locations or between two major cities for the same price -- although the remote location took a bit longer. Gradually, overnight delivery (or a couple of days if you were frugal) turned into the norm. Slick, made-to-order shipping boxes with machine-readable labels replaced brown paper, twine, and hand-scrawled addresses. Flat cardboard envelopes for documents skirted the post office's monopoly on letter delivery. The post office stepped up its game, staying open longer hours, offering self-service package mailing kiosks and online stamp sales. But really, it was just more of the same thing. And now, a whole new thing, once used only by the geeks and nerds in the government labs, is pushing the post office into obsolescence.

I have been an email user since the Arpanet days of the 1980s. At first, it was just a convenient way to communicate with the staff scientist who funded my postdoc while he was off on his frequent trips to the particle-smashing labs in Europe. The only people you could email in those days were other scientists and engineers, and you had to use dial-up modems where you put a telephone receiver on a cradle-shaped holder to transmit data more slowly than I could type it in by hand. Once, an undergraduate student tried to flirt with me via green-lettered text chat in a large room full of big chunky dumb-terminals, but that's as colorful as it got back then. If you had told me that one day I could go shoe-shopping, pay my bills, chat in real time with my sister almost 3000 miles away, and look at funny pictures of kitty-cats using a book-sized computer that sits on top of my desk and a fiber optic cable that sends data fast enough to stream full-length movies, I would have thought you were high on something.

Now, even that laptop computer of mine is becoming passe, big clunky thing that it is. Dick Tracy himself would have been amazed that ordinary civilians could buy things, run a business, pay bills, video chat, and share photos and video clips using tiny telephones that fit into the palms of our hands. Poor old post office never saw that coming. While they were busy trying to compete with the package delivery services, the digital age crept its way out of the laboratory and exploded full-on into the cultural mainstream.

What does that have to do with me taking a year to find my wings? I suspect that the current economic and societal upheaval is part of something bigger about to take shape. Big companies with multi-tiered organizational charts and a focus on conformity, command, and control, took a big hit in 2008. The Occupy Movement and its supporters underscored just how deep the discontent is within the long-suffering middle class. Digital file sharing has undermined the music-business behemoths, YouTube is challenging broadcast television, Amazon supports self-published e-books that the big publishers won't touch as well as keeping several musty little used book stores in business. Grassroots advocacy campaigns go viral, disrupting the rubber-stamp committees of the powers that be. Priuses outnumber Hummers on the streets (at least around here). It's getting very hard to sell McMansions in the outer suburbs, and "inner city" is no longer exclusively a derogatory term. I have been both fortunate and unfortunate during previous times of upheaval. This time, I'm going to see if I can be mindful and resourceful as well.

Saturday, May 5, 2012

Germinations


It wasn't a coincidence that I started this journey in January. New year, new start and all that. Also, I was feeling rather beat up by the usual November-December melee of managing a trade show exhibit (a very extroverted task for an introvert like me) and dealing with colleagues and clients who put things off until the last possible moment -- ignoring the fact that they were not the last link in the chain and the rest of us wound up nearly killing ourselves trying to finish all the subsequent tasks before the various year-end deadlines. Layered on top of that was the yearly barrage of nonstop advertising, multiple conflicting celebratory events, flashy decorations, and pre-packaged cheer that constitute the holiday season. January seemed like the ideal time to begin a winter hibernation, in preparation for the soul-searching work that lay ahead of me.

I had anticipated hunkering down in my jammies for a couple of months, drinking hot chocolate and plowing through sudoku puzzles while the snow piled up outside. Nature had a different plan, sending us the mildest winter we've had in years. So, in addition to my hunkering-down time, I got a head start on forming the habit of taking long walks around my neighborhood. The effect of all this was as stunning as it was immediate. Time immediately slowed to a crawl, but I was not bored. The daily commute and life at the office became a distant memory, just a few weeks after the fact. I placed a few check marks on the mammoth do-list that I had created, but mostly I was content to just be. I no longer needed to devour news articles, magazine essays, and books. My sense of outrage at the long list of social injustices in the world faded to a pastel sense of empathy and kind wishes for those who fought those battles on the front lines. For the time being, I was out of the action, recuperating and rehabilitating in a quiet place.

With the coming of spring, I anticipated the sense of restlessness that other rebooters and retirees have reported. I started to search the web for local events, museum exhibits, street festivals. I gave some thought to when I might start looking in earnest for sources of income. But still, I have no sense of urgency. The do-list is only slightly smaller than when I started, and I'm managing one or two special activities a month. Should I be concerned? I don't want to ruin this feeling of living in a state of blessedness by panicking about what might or might not come afterward.

Bear with me as I put the bird metaphors aside temporarily and talk a bit about gardening.

I have been reading a fascinating book, The Fire Starter Sessions, by Danielle LaPorte. This is another one of those "follow your bliss" books, but Ms. LaPorte does a better job than most about showing you ways to find out what your bliss actually is, and then take specific actions to organize your life around that bliss. I have been taking copious notes, doing the worksheets at the end of every chapter, and writing dozens of journal pages at a sitting. And by golly, a couple of my little mind-seeds are starting to germinate.

These little sprouts are not ready to show themselves to the world just yet, so you will have to trust me on that. I will, however, let you take a peek at the pictures on the seed packets. I have opened a channel of communication with a director of a policy institute here in town that may lead to some paid freelance work when I am ready to take that on. I have the beginnings of an idea for a series of science blog postings on a topic that has received very little coverage in the region between graduate school textbooks and late-night cable TV. And my sister (who is taking web design courses) and I are gradually pulling together an idea for a much more active and professional-looking website than the one I have now.

To be sure, these sprouts are still very tiny and fragile. I'm going to have to plant many more seeds to have a garden that will support me. But these are the sprouts that I have now, and if they are to have any chance at all in the world, I will have to be diligent about feeding and watering them. When they are ready, I will need to place them outside in the sunshine and perhaps build a little shelter around them if a big storm is approaching. Stay tuned for further developments.

Photo of Eranthis hymalis seedling by Nino Barbieri, wikimedia commons (Gnu license).