edit: Wow, that was fast. Podcast is in the iTunes store though you can’t find it by searching for it right now. Here is the link to click on if you want to subscribe in iTunes. I’ll get a fancy-pants link up by the next podcast episode.

I learned two things from trying to record my first podcast. The first is that like anyone on earth who is subjected to a recording of their own voice, I wanted to stab myself in the ear while listening. The second, is that it’s VERY freakin’ hard to sound conversational when speaking to no one but a microphone.

None-the-less, I have recorded the seminal episode of the Brain Flatulence podcast. Nothing too shmancy as I get the hang of recording just yet. I started small and just recorded what is, for me, the writing that started this entire bloggy adventure we’re on together: Post College.

Every Wednesday I will be broadening the back-log of audio. You will begin to see flash versions of the posts come up. If you’d like, you can browse through the site and listen to them here.

I have also submitted the podcast feed to Apple for posting in the iTunes Podcast Library. With only one under my belt so far (and rough at that) I’m not going to assume that it’s going to get up anytime soon. In the meantime you can use the mp3 podcast feed HERE. Simply drag the favicon into your podcast library in iTunes or copy the feed link, go to your iTunes podcast library, and say Edit->Paste.

Thanks for sticking with me. The reading will get better.

…hopefully.

Read Part 1

Ethics

Character is what you are in the dark.

-D.L. Moody

The Loews Theater was a palatial tribute to corporate movie-going philosophy. Two floors. Twenty screens not dramatically larger than a well equipped home entertainment center. The lobby was gargantuan and at the center of it was a massive cube surrounded by candy counters. Inside the cube, something I’d never seen in a theater before: a kitchen.

One of the theater’s ten managers glanced at my application. I told him that I had just moved back to Illinois and had no idea what my long term goals were. But, I had always loved the theater and was looking to find a place to work for the foreseeable future. After considering me for a few moments, he hired me as the kitchen manager. I was baffled. Having not worked in a theater for a few years and with no kitchen experience, surely there was someone more qualified to do it?

The manager introduced me to the kitchen staff. There was Eric, the one who had been doing the duties of the kitchen manager since the last one quit. He was a sweet, overweight 17 year old who struck me as someone who came to work to get away from his schoolmates and family. Grant was a convict who took the bus in from somewhere in Chicago. He had a frame like a boxer and a long nail on his pinky finger whose function had to be explained to me later by my step-sister. Lewis was another city-dweller who came by bus. Eduardo was the hardest working member of the kitchen staff. He rarely spoke a word of English but would nod and execute any request he was given with the methodical efficiency of a soldier disassembling his rifle.

Other than just hot dogs and nachos the kitchen served mozzarella sticks, chicken strips, fries, jalapeno bites, burgers, and a personal favorite off mine: buffalo wings. Until I worked in a kitchen I had no concrete notion of where buffalo chicken wings came from. The wings may as well been born in a rainbow and marinated in unicorn tears. Not that I actually believed that. I just never bothered to think any farther beyond what I wanted to be true.

My first day Eric walked me through the process. Once an order for wings flashed on the monitor hanging over the kitchen door, dig into the freezer and tear into an enormous waxy paper bag. Withdraw the 6 frozen wings the customer paid 7 dollars for then carry them to the fry-a-lator (whose oil usually only got changed about once a week) and deep fry for 2 minutes. While they fry, pour a portioned amount of hot sauce into a cardboard tray. When the cooking is done dump the wings into the tray, cover it with another, and shake vigorously to coat. Finally, dump the results onto a depressed looking piece of lettuce, garnish with a single stick of celery and a plastic cup of ranch, and walk the meal out the kitchen door to the waiting customer.

The longer I worked at the job the less managing I ended up doing. I was a little terrified of Grant and Lewis. Between rushes they would take the opportunity to walk the trash out to the dumpster behind the theater. Thirty to forty minutes later they would return bleary eyed and lethargic. During one rush Lewis turned a bucket upside down to sit and talk on his cell phone. I timidly suggested that we might need his help and received a stare that made me a little terrified to walk to my car that night alone. Eduardo never needed any management and could have handled most of the work himself if he hadn’t been working two other jobs. Eric, who was only allowed to work 20 hours a week, wasn’t there enough to help out.

I had accepted the position because it was more money than working the candy counter. If I’d known how popular the food from the kitchen was though I might have chosen otherwise. During a rush we would have four fryers going at once, someone at the grill, and someone doing the prep that we were always running out of. Preparing an entire order took between five and seven minutes and that was once we actually got to start it. If we screwed anything up we would have to remake the order and lost that corresponding amount of time on the next. We were constantly short on equipment and staff for the demand. Worse, the customers were never adequately prepared for the food prep time by the cashiers. We regularly made them late for their shows.

By the early afternoon the floor of the kitchen was coated with fryer grease, food particles, and mud from our shoes. On a good day, the three of us on duty would skate around each other like synchronized Olympians. Usually though we were just trying not to topple into a fryer. It was hot and we were always sweating. I fell more than a few times and by the end of the evening would go home burned and coated in the mess from the floor, my own sweat, and condiments.

Still, being at work often felt like a relief from being at the house. Dad and I were awkwardly putting the pieces back together but things were still strained. My step-mom, in too much pain when she wasn’t on medication, was often too sick to come down from the bedroom. When she did and we were in the same room it was, for me, an awkward silence. In the months before the trip I had been so consumed by anxiety over seeing Dad for the first time in four years that I hadn’t adequately prepared myself to see her. I struggled to find what I wanted to say to her but whenever anything occurred it felt hollow and cliché.

Consequently I spent much of my free time wandering around the neighborhood I’d tried to leave behind, always in the grip of an uncomfortable nostalgia I couldn’t get away from. It didn’t help that I continued to get texts and messages from my housemates at school about all the partying they were doing. As the summer days ticked excruciatingly by, I began to hunger for my trip back to the safe and drunken embrace of my college life.

One Friday evening, Eduardo called in sick. That left Grant, Lewis, and I alone in the kitchen until Eric was scheduled to come in. Ordinarily studios stagger major releases but this was the only time this summer that two of them opened on the same day. A deluge of people filled the lobby. The entire evening was a single continuous rush. Having no expectation of the work I could expect from Grant and Lewis, I buried my head and tried to do as much as possible. At no point that evening did the board show fewer than seven hanging orders. The managers, inundated with angry customers, took whatever rare opportunity they could to run to the kitchen and yell at us.

Anyone who has ever worked in a restaurant or retail during the Christmas season has experienced the same phenomena. At some point you’re making so many decisions per second that your conscious mind shuts itself down. You start to work purely on muscle memory. It’s the extremely less glamorous version of an athlete being in the zone. I don’t know how long I’d been in this space before I realized that Grant and Lewis were no longer in the kitchen with me. The order monitor was flashing more orders than it could fit. I was drowning, and I didn’t dare step out of the kitchen to seek help. There was no doubt a small militia of customers standing outside the kitchen door ready to perforate me with their eyes.

I was suddenly overcome with distraction. An order for buffalo wings came up. As I tore into the bag I began to boil in my own anger and self-pity, not just for this evening but for the entire summer. Depression is for me a very unproductive emotion and my limbs became gelatinous. My pace slowed. Absently I burned myself on the fryer and then on the grill. I cursed them both as I portioned some hot sauce into a cardboard tray and waited for the fryer to finish the wings. What a mistake it had been to come here. I could have spent the summer at home with all the guys. The wings came up from the fryer and I dumped them into the tray. And Dad. The indignity of our compromise made me hateful again. I covered the tray full of chicken wings with an empty one and began shaking them angrily.

And that’s when one of the wings came loose.

As it hung in the air, spiraling lazily, I was suddenly calm. The board of flashing orders, Lewis and Grant, my managers who thought shouting was an effective motivational tactic, my Dad, my step-mom, and my college life that I had a moment ago so desperately wanted to get back to – blurred into nothingness. There was just me, the spinning chicken wing, and the choice I was about to have to make. I didn’t yell or curse. I didn’t try and catch it. I knew with certainty I couldn’t. And by the time it landed in that soupy terrible marinade on the floor, I already knew what I was going to do.

I picked the wing up, brushed it once with my sleeve, and put it on top of its piece of lettuce with the rest of the order. I put the wings on the prep table and went on with the next order planning to bring it out with two or three other orders.

Just need to finish.

As I continued to cook, it was as though the engine of my intelligence had died and wouldn’t turn over again, no matter how many times I tried the starter. My mind was empty as I prodded vacantly at the fryer, waiting for the next order to come up.

Just need to finish.

It seemed as though there was a blinding light burning me from the prep table at my back. I finished the next order and went on to the third.

Just need to finish.

“Hey man.”

I gasped and spun around. It was Eric, still wrapping his apron around his waist.

“Holy shit,” I stammered. “You scared the hell out of me.”

“Dude, there’s a customer out there who says he saw you drop a wing on the floor and put it back in an order. He says he wants to make sure I make his order again.”

I raised my chin and looked over Eric’s shoulder. In my rush, I had never noticed that Grant and Lewis had left the kitchen door open. Standing just beyond it was a counter full of customers staring into the cube. All had watched me pick the wing off the floor to serve it. A few of them were standing there with their mouthes hanging slightly open, their eyes boring into me. I felt my blood start to drain out.

“Did you…did you do that?” asked Eric.

“I…I…Eric I need your help. Can….can you close the door?”

Eric walked back to the kitchen door.

“We’ll have your orders out to you in a moment folks.” He shut the door on those angry faces and walked back to me. I couldn’t look him in the eye.

“Can you…can you make that guys order and I’ll go onto the next one?” I asked him.

He nodded and went to the freezer. I stood there for a moment staring at the tips of my shoes. Then I dumped the tainted wings in the trash and went on to the next order.

That evening when I got home, Dad was at the piano. At the sound of the door closing he looked up.

“How was your day?”

I stood in the entryway for a moment, my filthy apron still wrapped around me, considering how to answer his question.

“I dropped a customer’s chicken on the floor and then got caught trying to serve it to him.”

There was a long silence. Dad stared at me over his sheets of music expressionless.

“What did your managers say?” he asked, his tone more puzzled than anything else.

“After I told them and asked if I was fired they said they still want me to be the kitchen manager.”

“Well…okay then.” He shrugged and went back to his music.

I removed my apron, dumped it on the floor and walked up the stairs to my step-mom’s room. She was sitting in bed, a blanket over her knees and a knitted cap over her head. In the background an episode of Sex and the City was playing. She smiled as I came in and sat at the end of her bed. We watched television together for a few minutes.

After a moment she coughed and said in a hoarse voice, “Don’t let this go to your head but you smell delicious.”

“Oh I’m sorry. Is it bothering you?”

She let out a soft laugh. “No no. It’s fine. How was work?”

I turned to her and thought about it for a moment. “I think today I just had one of those tests where no one’s looking and you have a choice whether to do the right thing or whether to do the easy thing. I failed. Badly.”

She frowned, “Anyone get hurt?”

I shook my head. “No. I got caught.”

She thought about it for a moment and said finally, “Good. Make sure you pass the next one then. Because next time, you might not be.”

I have today’s piece completed but I’m going to switch to releasing every Monday. I’d like to spend more time on what I’m writing instead of cramming it in after the work week.

Those of you following along, thank you so much. Your support has been extremely helpful for me in keeping this going.

Check back in on Monday for morning for the new story.

Thanks for staying with me during these growing pains.

That was six months ago and the project has sat unfinished since. I was about 30 shots short and was unable to go back with them to get the missing footage. I knew I wouldn’t let myself work on anything unless I’d gone back and at least made SOMEthing out of the work that Carl, Stef, and myself did. So, such as it is, this weeks post is the result. A big thanks to my friends Carl and Stef.

After the break, Parks on Fire – Trifonic fan music video. If you can, please switch the clip into 720 and watch it full screen.

Next week – Family, Ethics, and Chicken Part 2 of 3.

I’m sure at some point Youtube is going to pull this for copyright violation. I’m working on hosting my own video content in multiple formats but hopefully it’s up until then.

Family

In the summer of 2000, between my freshman and sophomore years of college my dad invited me back to Illinois for a visit. After living with him for several years in Illinois, I had made the decision to move back to Colorado and finish my last two years of high school with my mom. He hadn’t taken the move well.

I told him I’d wanted to live with Mom for awhile and then we didn’t say more than that for 3 months. At the airport while I was leaving for the flight he wouldn’t look at me. I walked down the jet-way and heard his voice behind me saying have a nice life. For a long time after that he wouldn’t take a call. I made a trip back to Illinois with my first girlfriend and stopped by for a surprise visit, a plan my step-mom had aided in. He went in his bedroom, locked the door and wouldn’t come out until we’d left.

After a few years of stone wall silence that I’d chipped away at patiently, we’d been in the process of building up communication. Hastening that process was the fact that my step-mother’s health was fading. Dad, thinking this might have been my last chance to see her, asked if I didn’t want to come stay at the house I grew up in and work a summer job for two months.

The reunion was something I’d been building up in my head for a long time. After leaving Illinois, I spent my last two years of high school with my Mom in a two bedroom apartment. On graduation I took a year off and worked for an office temping service. It was just enough of a dose of the “real world” to scare me senseless. I ran to college in a panic having no real goal or intent for my education other than to stave off reality a little bit longer. Since entering I had been drifting between majors aimlessly, oblivious to my mounting student loans which were to me like some kind of grand cosmic charge card – unfathomable.

Denial, however, is only a blunt instrument, one that I had begun to fortify by chain smoking and binge drinking. Evenings of blackout drunkenness soon outnumbered the normal ones. In whatever few moments of clarity I allowed myself, I was beginning to sense that things were getting out of my control.

When the trip to Illinois came up, it seemed a chance to turn everything around. My Dad who had been refusing contact with me was now wanting to get together. On the flight there I had already seen the entire reunion in my mind. There would be tears. Hugs. Apologies. Heartfelt expressions of love and appreciation. “Son,” he’d say, “I don’t know how a father could ignore his child the way I did you.” And I’d take strength from the conversation and jump back into my life as a new man. Saved. Or perhaps, ready to save myself.

The Reunion

After a strange hello and ride home from the airport, I was anxious for the tearful reconciliation. As my Dad checked e-mail, his aviator style reading glassed perched at the end of his round nose, I sat on the carpet at his feet. For a few moments he continued to plunk away at the keyboard oblivious.

“So,” I said. “Maybe we should have a conversation?”

“Sure,” he said, not looking up. “What would you like to talk about?’

I stumbled. I hadn’t expected the need to be explicit. “You know…we haven’t seen each other for five years. You know?”

He stopped typing. Neither of us said anything for a moment.

Finally he cleared his throat, “Right?”

“Well I uh… I mean I’m here now, right? So… I mean when I left you told me to have a nice life. I was thinking…I mean…”

The words hung untouched in the air and began to mold. I felt as though I was choking from their stench. Dad took his glasses off and massaged his bald head, exhaling slowly.

“I don’t think you want to talk about this.” The words were kind and delicate, gentleness which I promptly misinterpreted.

“No. No. I do. I mean, why am I here? What’s changed?”

“Well,” he said. He leaned back in the office chair he’d had since the divorce. It groaned in protest as he pursed his lips and continued staring blankly at his computer monitor.

Finally, “I’m not angry at you for leaving anymore.”

I waited. A house is a living thing full of whirring fans, rattling vents, and buzzing electrical devices. But tonight it was as though my old home was holding it’s breath. It was so quiet all I could hear was the alien orchestra of cicada’s out in the wet Illinois evening.

“What do you mean?” I asked finally. My head felt heavy, and I no longer wanted to look up into his face.

He curled his fingers across his stomach and touched the tips of his thumbs together lightly, “I mean just that. You know. I was very upset when you left. It took me a long time to get over it. But I’m better now.”

I looked at the carpet. The same carpet I’d stared at when I was 14 and told him I’d wanted to go live in Colorado for awhile. I’m 14 again sitting at my father’s feet. I wanted to tower over him and scream. I wanted to throw things and storm out of the house and not come back again. I doubted my strength to stand-up.

“So you still don’t see anything wrong with what you did?” I asked, my voice a whisper.

Dad’s voice was still gentle, free of malice, “I was hurt. When you were growing up, I went to every parent teacher conference. I went to every game. Your mom didn’t, but I did. And then you left. I felt betrayed by you.”

“That means it was OK for you to ignore me?” I asked.

He was silent.

“So… if it happened again? If we did it all over again, knowing what you know now. I mean… it would go the same way. Nothing has changed?”

He shook his head. “No.”

I went and laid in the bedroom, my same bedroom from five years ago. Staring up at the ceiling, the reality of the trip set in. I felt ashamed and silly as I understood how badly I’d been deluding myself. Two months here. I rolled over and shut my eyes. Two months. The house exhaled, as the air-conditioner kicked on.

I wanted a drink.

The Next Morning

I’ve heard when you lose a finger, people like to tell you, “Well at least you still have your hand.” It’s an emotional magic trick in that it seems reasonable but actually defies logic. You may as well say to a man who just had his appendix removed, “Well at least you still have your penis.” When a person tries this sleight of hand what they’re really doing is exposing the limits of their own empathy.

But by the next morning I had begun generous self-application of the rationale. At least my dad and I were on speaking terms again. At least I had something. Maybe we were both right. Maybe I was wrong and he was right, and I should have stayed. Who knows? And maybe it didn’t matter. At least I was in Illinois and we were speaking again. At least I had the chance to see my step-mom. I found the guilt and self-hatred I started to feel for wanting more, to be more tolerable than the disappointment in not having it.

When I woke, Dad and I drove to the mall  to pick up some job applications.

After several tense minutes of silence he spoke up first, “You know, you don’t have to stay here this summer if you don’t want to. I mean, if you don’t want to we can make arrangements to send you back. That’s OK. Really.”

I considered the possibility of just getting back on the plane and leaving. Going back to college and friends and boozing felt like wrapping myself in a warm blanket. Staying felt like I would be complicit in his perception that I had betrayed him. That I would be admitting guilt for something I wasn’t sure I’d done. But I knew that leaving would most likely have burned down any progress the two of us had made together.

So, I scraped as much of my pride together as I could.

“No,” I said. “I guess this doesn’t have to be what I wanted it to be. Something is better than nothing. I guess we’ll both just have to go forward knowing that if we had it all to do over again, we’d both make the same decisions. And then we’ll end up not speaking. You understand that I would do the same thing again too right?” I looked at him.

He nodded.

“Then I’ll stay.”

Read Part 2

The first thing I remember wanting to be is James Bond. He seemed the ideal role model. Bond was a man confident in any situation, never at a loss for words, and always willing to put his life on his line to save the world. When I was old enough to realize I couldn’t be a fictional character, I decided to write instead. If I couldn’t be Bond, I could write about worlds like his. I didn’t quite realize at the time that Bond had just introduced me to something other than breasts – the first time I compromised on my aspirations.

The First Link

Of course in this case it was an utterly and completely reasonable compromise. Some of the ones that followed in the steady evolution of, “What do I want to be?” were not. I always struggled with plot as a writer and revising and editing was tedious work. From writing I went to acting. Maybe I couldn’t be James Bond but as an actor I could pretend to be characters like him.

After awhile I started to notice, though, that most actors in movies and on TV were much prettier than I was. Not only that but the theater geeks I was spending time with treated theater like it was cocaine. They were hungry for it. I thought if this was my calling I would be like them, and I wasn’t. So I switched. From acting to directing, and from directing to editing.

As I’ve written about previously the step beyond editing was the ugliest one. With that step, the important question stopped being, “What do I want to be?” and became, “What can I get paid for?” I gave up editing and got into I.T. Ultimately I ended up answering tech support questions in a call center.

What Now?

It has been a slow and steady process, the trading-down of dreams to get to this moment. Sometimes it was done with good reason and sometimes not. It’s a long way though from being James Bond to being yelled at everyday by the technologically inept. Still, I feel as though this chain of events has been wrapped around a gift box. Understanding the machinery of my own personality has given me the chance to break that chain and look inside. Inside the box is freedom.

That golem made up of my plans and expectations is turned to dust. Now that it’s gone, I’m distinctly aware of how little else there was. I have written no books, no sonnets, no plays. I have never acted in anything other than a high school performance. I have directed no movies and edited no big screen premieres. I’ve spent so much time in my mind planning who I was to be, that I never actually did anything. It’s as though I have been living my entire life in my own imagination, oblivious to the finite minutes of my allotted time alive that were dripping off my fingertips.

Considering where I go now feels almost paralyzing. I’m still never going to be James Bond, and I wouldn’t try to be even if I could. My appreciation of the vastness of life’s potential at that age was not sufficient enough to even know what I COULD want to be. Editing then? Writing?

The real answer, of course, is that it doesn’t matter. The important thing now is not the choice, but the action that follows.

I remember him getting into lamp making, kite and model building, cross-country skiing, and hunting. At a young age I sat with him and watched numerous videos on hunting, gutting, tanning, and trapping all manner of game. Our house became peppered with bird calls, small vials of animal urine, various tools covered in camouflage patterns, knife sets, and a small arsenal of firearms. I have vague memories of a shotgun, a 30.06 hunting rifle, a semi-automatic rifle, and several handguns all showing up within a relatively short span of each other. Eventually he purchased a compound bow for elk hunting.

The bow in question is not the kind of bow that Robin Hood carried. The compound bow was invented in the 60s and features a system of levers and pulleys that maximizes the range an accuracy of an arrow. The arrow it fires looks like something Klingons invented. The tip is essentially a nail with 3 or 4 triangular razors attached to it. As an eight-year-old kid, it was the stuff of nightmares.

For several summers he would pack his various gear into our Suburban and drive up into the Rockies, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone. He would hunt wild turkey, elk, and deer. Each time he went off my mom would turn to us three kids and say, “Let’s all pray that he doesn’t come back with anything.” The thought of a large amount of dead animal in the house that didn’t come wrapped in cellophane from the frozen food section was a revolting one to her. That might have been why she burned meat unrecognizable as well. I’m sure she was happy that in those years, he never did manage to kill anything.

While the family did go camping together every so often, I don’t remember ever going hunting with Dad except once. My parents were already separated at the time and, though I didn’t yet know this, Dad and I were ten months away from moving from Colorado to Illinois.

For this trip it was just the two of us, and I remember riding up a bumpy dirt road, flanked by pine trees and valleys. Dad and I talked enthusiastically about all the meat we would have to eat when the trip was finished. We picked the wall where we’d hang his trophy bull elk. We parked at the end of a short and rugged divergence from the main road next to a large empty field pock-marked with prairie dog holes, beyond which were the woods.

I helped make the trips required to carry the tent poles and various camping equipment the twenty minutes to where our site was. We pitched our mammoth tent, camouflage of course, then Dad went to work on dinner. At that age, I found any meal fascinating that wasn’t made in a kitchen or a restaurant. It felt as odd as if an elk had stumbled into my Mom’s kitchen.

That night Dad wrapped his wrist watch into the fold of his stocking cap, the alarm for the morning. We zipped ourselves up into our sleeping bags. When I woke up, the tent baking in the morning sunshine, he was already gone off with his bow in search of prey.

He came back in the early afternoon disappointed but still hopeful. We cooked lunch, talked about how much better elk meat would taste than the beans we were eating, and spent the afternoon doing things that a father a son do on camping trips. For two days this went on, but as the opportunities started to become fewer, and as he hadn’t even yet seen an elk,  Dad’s enthusiasm began to bleed out. He became quieter and more distracted. There was no more talking about all the elk we were going to eat.

Finally, on the afternoon of the third day, after another trip into the the trees, he came back and told me it was time to pack up and head back into civilization. We disassembled the camp site, packed his hunting equipment into containers, and started the trips to carry the various gear back to the Suburban.

But after several trips, I realized that Dad wasn’t with me anymore. I carried an arm load of tent poles back up the trail to the car, tossed them inside, and looked around. Prairie dogs were running for their lives like city dwellers running terrified from Godzilla. In the middle of the chaos was Dad, bow in hand firing, arrows at the retreating animals. I watched two or three miss their mark until one arrow hit the ground and continued to wiggle.

Dad sprinted to it and held the skewered animal up in the air by his arrow. It settled on the shaft slightly, Klingon weapon protruding from its chest. As with most suburban dwelling children, most of my experience with wild animals at the time was through Disney movies. In virtually every one of them the animals are cute, chatty, and lovable. I’d never seen a Disney movie with a talking elk or wild turkey, but I’d seen quite a few with animals that looked like the bleeding mess suspended from Dad’s arrow. It was like Thumper’s distant cousin Scamper.

He noticed me watching and smiled. The smile on his face wasn’t a happy one, but feverish.

“Keep carrying the stuff to the car Big Guy. I’ll be right there.”

Then he carried his prize to a nearby bench and pulled out his knife. I did as instructed. In the time it took to make the remaining trips Scamper was gutted, skinned, and boned and his hide was salted. When I was done I walked back to the bench and Dad was cleaning his tools. The look on his face from earlier was gone. He seemed spent, and didn’t make any eye contact with me. He had dumped Scamper in a paper bag and rolled the top closed. The bag was moist, like a delivery bag from a fast food restaurant.

He pointed at it and said without looking up from his tools, “Go throw this in that trash bin over there. I’m going to finish cleaning up the camp site.” Then he walked away.

I stared at the paper bag few a few minutes fearfully. I thought about Scamper. I thought about all of Scamper’s hopes and dreams – Scamper’s family, probably still hiding terrified in their groundhog city just nearby. I decided that Scamper deserved better than the trash.

I picked up the paper bag and walked past the prairie dog city into the trees beyond, carrying Scamper at arm’s length.

When I found what looked like a peaceful site for a burial, next to a small creek and in some trees, I put Scamper’s remains down and dug a grave. When I’d made a hole about a foot deep, I picked up the bag, inverted over the hole and closed my eyes. It was like pouring a pile of spaghetti into a waste bin. There was a wet drippy noise as Scamper’s parts landed in his grave-site. Then I put the bag aside, pulled the mound of dirt into the hole, and circled it with rocks so Scamper’s family could find him if they needed to.

I closed my eyes as I’d seen in movies and said a few words to God, telling him to take care of Scamper always. Then I picked up the wet paper bag and walked back to the car. As we started to drive back home Dad asked what I’d done with the prairie dog and I told him I’d buried it by a creek before I started to nod off.

"Face."

After about fifteen minutes I awoke, not from the bumpy road knocking the car around, but because we were at a dead stop. I lifted my head off my chest. Crossing the road leisurely was a female and large bull elk. They stopped for a moment in their walk – the bull sniffed at our car. Dad stared impassive, both hands twisting minutely at the wheel. I didn’t speak but my eyes darted between him and the animals in the road. I wondered if he was considering climbing in the back seat and digging out his bow, or perhaps putting the car in gear and slamming his foot down – but he just sat quietly and breathed through his nose, his eyes never moving. After a few moments of painful silence, the furry couple moved on. Dad put the car in gear and drove us home.

I don’t remember us speaking for the rest of the drive. That was the last time he went hunting.

In school there is a natural structure for success. The tools are just laying around for you to pickup and there are dozens of people there to help you be successful. After all that is the privilege that you are paying for. In every classroom there is someone dying to give away validation and praise. The idea that life would be any different didn’t occur to me. Considering it now, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway because dammit I had a PURPOSE. I had a dream. Whatever happened it would be the strength of that vision that would carry me through any hardship.

Then, I graduated and ran face to ass with reality. The first whiff of truth came when I had trouble finding a job for several months (“B…but…I’m so talented?”) after college and ended up in retail. After a year or two, I moved to San Francisco and got a help-desk job (the people who maintain a company’s computers) at a TV station. I considered this a tremendous boon. After I had gotten the attention of a few department heads, I would wow them with my demo and sidestep from I.T. right into a career.

"The Bug"

I landed an interview with the head of the editing department there. During our 30 minutes together one Thursday afternoon I showed him my demo reel, expressed my enthusiasm, and told him how much I wanted to get into editing. After I was talked out, he stared at the table for a moment considering. Then he smiled and said, “All right. Well, we can start you at 20 hours a week. 7.50 an hour. Putting the bug on clips during the overnight shift. Do that for long enough and show you can grind away at an editing station for a few months and we’ll maybe see about something else.”

Wait...you mean it's expensive to live here? GTFO.

Compared to what I was making at the time, taking his offer would have meant a 200 percent pay cut, to say nothing about half the total hours.  I didn’t know how anyone who actually would TAKE that position could afford to live in San Francisco.  I thought about it for a moment and was astonished that any of the editors in the building were actually working with that salary. A bit of anger started to set in. What he was offering was beneath me. Didn’t this guy see from my demo reel how talented I was? Hell, I didn’t even want to edit the stuff they were putting on the channel, I just wanted to be an “editor” and get out of I.T. It was crushing. I felt shamed and yet indignant. And in that moment, though I hadn’t yet realized it, I started to give up on editing.

After a few months it became apparent that because I’d been so attached to the notion of getting into movies or video production for so long, I didn’t know what to do. My girlfriend and I applied to teach English in Japan. We both got it and I promptly panicked and decided not to go. Feeling aimless and a little lost I convinced my girlfriend that we should move back to Colorado so she could get the Masters she wanted with in-state tuition. “I’ll spend the time figuring out whats next,” I reassured her.

That was two years ago. Since then I’ve been working in telephone technical support. At this point it’s been almost 7 years since I’ve edited anything substantial. My demo reel is moldy, my skill-set is ambiguous – and I’ll be 31 this year. Mostly when I go home, I play games, spend time with friends, and hangout with my girlfriend. I enjoy and love these things of course, but whenever the question of what’s next in my career had fought it’s way up from the basement of my unconscious, I’ve lapsed into a brief and inexplicable depression.

But then, just recently I read two things that stuck with me.  The first is a completely surprising article from Cracked.com. Normally Cracked is a bastion of dick jokes and silly top ten lists, a grown ups Mad Magazine. But I found this one surprisingly insightful:

How the Karate Kid Ruined the Modern World

I highly recommend you read the whole thing. Here is a relevant excerpt:

We have a vague idea in our head of the “price” of certain accomplishments, how difficult it should be to get a degree, or succeed at a job, or stay in shape, or raise a kid, or build a house. And that vague idea is almost always catastrophically wrong.

Accomplishing worthwhile things isn’t just a little harder than people think; it’s 10 or 20 times harder. Like losing weight. You make yourself miserable for six months and find yourself down a whopping four pounds. Let yourself go at a single all-you-can-eat buffet and you’ve gained it all back.

Then just yesterday, I was reading another article that got under my skin a bit. It’s from the Chicago Tribune:

The Downside to Teen Self-Esteem

…[she] belongs to a generation of teens for whom praise has often come as readily as oxygen. They’ve been bathed from the cradle in affirmations and awards meant to boost their self-esteem — and, by extension, their prospects in life.But some who research the psychology of teens have concluded that this trend, born of good intentions in the Age of Aquarius, has had toxic effects. By their estimation, today’s young people have been praised so much that some flail at their first taste of criticism or failure. Others develop a keen sense of privilege, believing they’ll coast into a golden future regardless of their actual talents, accomplishments or willingness to work.

Reading it again, I got a sickly feeling. And then it dawned on me: they’re talking about me. All at once I understood how colossally arrogant and self-entitled I have been . In hindsight, I can’t remember ever accomplishing anything really HARD that I didn’t already love to do before I started. In most things that I have been successful at, I was for the most part already naturally good at them and didn’t have to try very hard. Consequently at some point I got it in my head then that work wasn’t supposed to be difficult. Which is why the last seven years have been such a mystery to me.

Like many in our media saturated culture, when I was young I adopted the notion that we all had a calling. That was the career that took advantage of whatever you were naturally good at. Success in life then was simply going to be a matter of finding that calling and sliding right in behind it’s desk. If things were too hard then you just weren’t doing it right.

Hilarious...until you realize it's about you.

Since I hadn’t found “it” yet, I picked jobs that were less money but also less work and responsibility. That was preferable to having to bust my ass at something that wasn’t “fulfilling” (the word tastes a little acidic now.) When things have gotten tough I’ve bitched and cried and switched jobs. In my present position I have told friends before that a monkey could do my job, and yet sometimes I do my job poorly because I “just don’t wanna.” The inherent implications of this make me cringe.

“This isn’t really what I’m doing, this is just what I’m doing until my ship comes in.”

Even now considering this, my propensity to just complain and resist difficulty is already kicking in. The realization that you’re an alcoholic doesn’t make the urge to drink go away.

I guess what I’m saying is it occurs to me today that I never learned how to be a hard worker. I had quite a number of dreams and aspirations, but was totally unwilling to suffer for them. Now that the thought occurs to me, I’m not sure where to start.

But that 20 hour a week opportunity putting the bug on video clips sounds so much better than it did, especially seeing what hasn’t transpired in the 3 years since.

All right. Enough self-flagellation and regret. What’s next?

TLDNR: I just realized the value of a hard days work.

This was originally a post on a forum I frequent called the GTX. Given the topic and the fact that I hadn’t written anything for BF in a bit I thought it was fair game for an entry here. You can read the original post along with the great comments from other members here.

The View From the Bottom: What you’re working against already

Working at the telephone tech support level of IT, actual expertise in technology was considered mostly irrelevant by the numerous middle-managers above. We on the phones deal with the same set of five to ten problems, for fifty-five calls (per person) per day. When we receive a problem that isn’t one of those five to ten, there is an unspoken expectation that we send your problem up to the next tier of support, a group that doesn’t spend their days answering phones. This is never explicitly stated in our job description of course,  but is evidenced in the expectations of our “stats.”

Our “telephone” is a headset (the shackle) plugged into a computer, with a piece of software on-screen used to accept or disconnect a call, dial a number, or take a break. That software tracks everything we do including breaks. At the end of every week an e-mail is sent to each of us with a breakdown of our statistics which generates a score that is tracked against everyone else’s score. At the end of the quarter the top three scorers from the quarter win a fifty dollar Best Buy gift card, a free dinner at Chili’s, or songs from the iTunes music store. Promotions (when there actually are promotions available) are ordinarily dolled out to those quarterly winners. What this means is that someone who is going to excel in the job spends as little time as possible with each customer, transfers people the fastest, writes reports for the calls that need it the least (as those reports are the fastest to write), and takes the fewest number of breaks. It’s a system that emphasizes quantity over quality.

As the day goes on, one call bleeds into another and, though you try hard not to, the angry person you had ten seconds earlier affects your reaction to the harmless person you have now. Between calls you do what you can to stay afloat and manage your own stress level, taking a couple extra minutes to write a report or send an e-mail to a different department. Not too long though because you don’t want to spend  your break time frivolously and ruin your stats. Then you put the shackle back around your head for another round of asshole roulette.

Why does this matter to you?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Life is tough. At least you have a job. Why should I care? I have my own problems.”

Well, because at some point, you’re going to have to call someone like me. Whether it’s because your internet has gone out, your toaster is broken, your iPod dies, or you can’t get a piece of software installed you need to join your company’s meeting. And in this position there are sometimes things I can do to make life easier for you, be it ignoring the fact that your warranty ended 2 days ago, removing some meaningless charge, or giving you the number you really need to get into that meeting you’re trying to call. I’m not supposed to and am well within my rights to tell you no but that’s different than being prohibited from doing so. What we choose to do is really up to you and the situation. People who try to bludgeon their way into freebies with me cement my resolve to not give more than I am required to by my job.

Of course being civil is going to go a long way but there are a number of other things to do (or in this case not do) that will significantly increase your chances of getting an unexpected bonus on your call.

In no particular order I present them here:

First…I was born…
Some people begin tech support calls by recounting decades of back story that lead up to the incident requiring their call…and STILL forget to ask the question. I think this happens for one of two reasons: 1. People never sufficiently clarify for themselves what EXACTLY is the problem they need help with before they call and 2. They’re not sure what piece of information is going to be helpful so they give EVERY piece of information. If you’re not clear on what your question is before you call you’re going to waste time. Once you’re past the greetings, most tech support conversations should begin, “I can’t get X to do Z.” As in:

• I can’t get the link to join me into the meeting.
• I can’t get the iPod to turn on.
• I can’t get Photoshop to open.
• I can’t get the internet to work.
• I can’t get any e-mails to go out.

We will ask YOU questions from there to get the information necessary. The danger in providing too much information immediately is the person you’re talking to may already know a simple fix that your long-winded foreplay is preventing them from sharing OR you may inadvertently share information that already puts the person in the position of having to make a choice as to whether to do something they’re not supposed to do. In other words, don’t tell the person you dropped the iPod in the pool until they ask. But don’t lie about it either. By the time they ask, they already know.

*HUGE SIGH* Is this going to take much longer??
You think the thing I’m trying to help you use sucks? Well almost without exception, every company I’ve worked for provides software for their employees to do their jobs with that is often dated, pathetic, badly designed, and painfully slow. In the case of my last position it was a regular requirement of my job to look up a person’s account. This was a matter of typing their account number into a piece of software and hitting enter and then waiting for the computer to return the result. That process alone could often take three minutes.  I assume that’s the time it took for the Navajo code talker to decrypt the response that came from our “Customer Account” satellite that’s in orbit somewhere around Titan, probably built during the Nixon administration. I hate it too but the only thing complaining to me about it is going to accomplish is me inventing some new way of saying, “I’m sorry – it’ll be just another minute.” Minesweeper is on your computer for a reason.

So, what’s the weather like wherever you’re at? *Yawn*
If small talk is an art then the weather is a crayon. I work in a space with 15-20 cubicles, all with people taking calls. Throughout the day, the weather forecast bounces around the room like an echoing curse word. Of my 55 calls taken in a day, 20 percent of my callers will try to fill lulls in the call by first asking me where I’m located and then a followup question about the weather or something assumed about all the people living in my state (No, I don’t ski.) If you do this I’ll often place you on hold until my code talker gets back to me with your account info. There’s nothing inherently wrong with small talk and it can actually go a long way toward scoring yourself that favorable result from the person providing you support. But if you’re going to do it, use it as an opportunity to feign actual INTEREST in the person you’re talking to. Questions like:

• So how is your shift going?
• Have the callers been good to you today?
• Did you have a good weekend?

All of these questions are actually about the person you’re talking to – not some inane aspect of their daily life – and might score points. Added bonus, you might accidentally have a good conversation. Honestly though, I don’t care how your weekend was either so I appreciate the customers that are all business just as much. The one mitigating factor to this rule is if the person you’re talking to asks YOU how the weather is. In that case, all bets are off.

I’m going to ask you a question…then cut you off…and again.. bup…HAH….woot….beep beep
Use your turn signal, don’t just cut me off. During the conversation I may begin to provide you an explanation for something that isn’t what you want. In person, it is easy to indicate this without interrupting me but over the phone it’s a little more difficult. If you have to interrupt a simple, “Sorry to interrupt but I think that….,” will do. Manners don’t go out the window just because you’re in a rush and we’re on the phone.

Yes when I say, “Thank you for calling our company, this is Ian can I get your first and last name please?” I am reading from a script that pops up on my screen. I am REQUIRED to do this. It’s a part of my job. It’s still rude to interrupt me and by doing so you’re already starting the conversation off on the wrong foot. This is ALL I HAVE and you’re TAKING it from me.

“I’m not very tech savvy! Hahahahaha!!”
No. No, you’re not. But that’s not really very funny either. I know that people sometimes feel embarrassed when they don’t know how to do something with electronics. Be it program the clock on their microwave or install  Office 2007 on their computer, people are worried that someone is going to think that they’re less intelligent for not knowing how to do it. They may actually already think they’re a little stupid for not knowing how to do something. Our culture has created that stereotype.

When I was working as a software instructor, I once worked with a kind gentleman in his 70′s. Once, he came in and told me his mouse wasn’t working correctly. When I watched him use it I discovered that he had been holding it upside down. Though I explained them multiple times, he never understood the concepts of the desktop, file, and folder when it came to the computer and waiting for him to type something was like watching clay harden. He was a former Stanford professor who had invented several strains of wheat that helped stave off multiple famines in the world. The man had saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Not knowing how to copy and paste something has nothing to do with how smart you are. But neither is it funny. If you’re talking to me, it’s probably because you’re at work and, for our purposes,  if I need you to perform a task on the computer that is rudimentary you probably should know how to do that because working on a computer must be a part of your job. The fact that you don’t is fine and I am willing to show you how. That is a part of my job and I will do so patiently and pleasantly. But this may already be a slow and frustrating process for the both of us, not a hilarious one.

You should tell Bill Gates he needs to fix his operation system.
I don’t know the president of our company and he doesn’t care what I have to say about our product. As a matter of fact, I’m guessing I’m several degrees of separation closer to being able to tell George Lucas what you thought of the Crystal Skull than I am to telling our president what you think of the product we make. I realize that your suggestion that I do so is actually just an expression of your frustration tempered with an admission that I had nothing to do with causing it. But there are mediums for those kinds of communications and I am not intended to be one of them.

You guys are just TERRIBLE. Your stuff stinks.
Lastly, I know by the time you call tech support, you may already angry. I don’t expect you not to be. Something you’ve been using of ours has pissed you off and in order to relate to me in what way it has done so is going to require dealing with that anger and frustration during our conversation. Be angry. Be upset. You’ve probably earned it and I want to help you with it. Lets have a productive conversation and get you a solution to the problem. These conversations begin, “Hi, I’m really upset about this. I realize that it isn’t your fault but I’m pissed and I need to get this fixed ok?”

When you turn that anger on me and stop talking to me like I am some schmo doing a job but instead an avatar that our entire company speaks through, I’m not your ally just trying to find you a solution but an enemy trying to defend himself. I did not build your microwave. I did not write the computer software you’re using. The company in which I am employed did.

Now how can I help you fix it?

I have decided to address my latest correspondence directly to you because, as we both know, other than one or two travellers and a few spambots this really is just about you and me isn’t it? Yes, I have been callous lately and pretended you weren’t there, always telling myself that I would get to you soon and allaying my guilt by saying how much you would understand. But as with any relationship left unattended things really haven’t been moving forward lately have they?

For that I’m sorry. I have little offer by way of explanation. Only a few excuses and some self-interest. Regardless, I wanted you to know that I am still here, and still thinking of you everyday. I know there are still things to be explored in this relationship and discoveries to be made. I’m sure there is some fear in there that contributes to keeping me away so often.

But it’s a new year and, nearly, a new month – and while I sit and wait for a perfect plan for our relationship, life moves forward and ideas once fresh now stagnate. I don’t know why we have to learn the same lessons over and over again but it seems the one I am bound to repeat is that a game can’t be learned sitting in the stands and thinking about it. You have to get on the field and play. So it is with us. If I sit and wait until I am complete and ready for you, I will never learn what can only be learned through our collaboration. The readiness is all.

So, I will try to rid myself again of any irrational expectations and plans, and let come what may, with faith that whatever outcome there may be, it is one that will be complete in the way that it should.

Yours Always,

Ian