Jesse Kelber

  • Sometimes writers just can’t, you know, write

    Heads up: not an upbeat, feel-good piece. Not terrifying, either. Just life.

    I’ve been absent. Again. From all my writing projects.

    It’s been a slog of a year since being caught up in a round of tech layoffs (the company has gone on to a total of 5 rounds of them, so I’m not expecting them to be around much longer) last October. And when things get sloggy, my anxiety kicks up and invites depression along for the ride.

    Then, just for funsies, I got hit by that car in March. Which reignited old back injuries along with creating some all new ones.

    So now my empathetic Cattle Dog thinks he needs to protect me from, you know, the poodle down the alley so he yanks on my janky back. Now the anxiety flares up, reinforcing his opinion that I need protection…and you can see how this cycle isn’t going anywhere good.

    Shockingly, not really the headspace one would prefer when conducting revisions on ones first novel. Or drafting a new short story for a prompt contest. Or writing an essay for the newsletter you keep swearing you’re going to get off the ground before it flounders around pitifully and ultimately dies like the last one.

    And now to bring you all back from the edge of the pit I’ve been resting comfortably on, I have a new therapist I’m seeing early next week. My sister is helping me find, and pay for, a trainer to work with Rufus (aka Sir Dingus McSplootypants). And I had an interview this afternoon that went rather well (at least I think it did, see above comments about headspace, etc…). It turns out I worked with the hiring manager at a previous gig, so she already knows my work, and working style.

    Anyway, fingers crossed (and eyes, actually, but I’ve already got a new prescription for that) I’ll be feeling more like writing again in the near future.

    Thanks for reading.

  • Write What You Know…until, you know, you don’t know anymore.

    Isn’t that what they always say? Like it somehow helps get past the writer’s block. Or the imposter syndrome. Or the aching desire for someone, anyone to acknowledge that you sit in a non-ergonomic chair day after day, throwing words into the void.

    Where was I? Right, writing what you know.

    I’m wondering if you can take this too far? At least too far to still call the resulting narrative fiction. At what point does what you know become what you do? Or did? Or are?

    Let me back up.

    I’m writing a novel. I started drafting back in November ’22, had my first complete draft a year later, and now I’m working on a final round of revisions before I start querying agents. That means I’ll have what is to me a final draft that I’ll be sending out the first chapter of along with letters asking agents if they’d like to represent me and my nascent authorial career.

    I love how that sounds, “authorial career.” Anyway.

    My protagonist is a middle-age Seattleite, who happens to have a salt-and-pepper beard, bald/shaved head, and be a few pounds (cough…cough…) overweight. Oh yeah, and he happens to be both an HSP and am Empath. Sound familiar? If you haven’t met me, he’s me. His name might be Alex, not Jesse, but otherwise, he’s me. I made my main character me.

    I’m not the first author to do so, and I’m unlikely to be the last.

    Our backstories differ, of course, I didn’t literally make his bio my bio, but in broad strokes we grew up similarly. We experienced similar issues around our sensitivities as young men, and neither figured out our status as Aces until nearly middle-age.

    What’s worrying me is this—At what point does writing what you know become the lazy option?

    I’m about to start drafting the second book in what I hope will become a wildly successful series featuring said protagonist. He’s an intuitive investigator, using his innate sensitivities—slightly embellished for effect, of course—to solve what I guess you’d call cozy mystery-style cases for his clients. That means no murders, no gory discoveries, and no gratuitous sex scenes. The former because of my own sensitivities around even reading emotionally-charged stories, and the latter because of the above comment about us both being Ace.

    I wouldn’t know where to begin writing a sex scene.

    In this new draft, one of the characters seems to want to be a writer. So now I’m writing about myself, with extended…powers(?). I mean, I can’t actually see energy trails like Alex. That would be awesome, though, right? And now he’s going to take a case for a couple, one of whom is a writer.

    Like me.

    Where’s the line? At some point, surely my creativity will, I don’t know, branch out? Start including details that are pulled out of thin air, rather than out of my own archive?

    Right?!

  • Dammit.

    I’ve been spending so much time, energy, and mental capacity on where to write about what that I haven’t had enough of those resources left to, you know, write. Anything.

    I mean, I’ve been revising my novel, but other than that, nada.

    That means the blog on my professional site, Strategic Narratives, hasn’t had a new post since well before the redesign went live. It also means my blog for all things miscellaneous floating around my brain, I Like How You Think, has been dormant for like a month. Add to this that I decided back in January to give Mastodon a try, god only knows why, so I’ve been neglecting the only platform I actually like being on, Micro.blog.

    Sigh.

    OK, so I’ve already changed cross-posting to go the other way, so new stuff will start here on M.B. (Does anyone know if there’s a way to only send non-titled posts? Like NOT this one, which I’ll have to delete once it crosses over, which is awkward). Next up, I will start posting the essays that were going on ILHYT here on M.B instead. If they get enough traction, I’ll up my plan so I can start sending posts out as newsletters, as well.

    This setup will let me post more personal ramblings that I was keeping off ILHYT (no clue why, it’s not like I have dozens of subscribers).

    This last one is key. I’ve been writing a lot on paper that I read through and think someone else might get something out of, but haven’t had anywhere to post it. I mean, I always had M.B…never mind, now I’m just confusing myself.

    Stay tuned for more ramblings!

  • I'm a writer.

    I just posted/sent an essay/newsletter (yeah, I’m not sure how to call what just yet) that starts with the line:

    I’m a writer.

    It took until I saw the email land in my inbox to realize something. That’s the first time I’ve written that line for public consumption. I’ve been saying it for a while, mostly in response to the question, “So, what do you do?” since it’s actually more straightforward than trying to explain content marketing or executive ghostwriting.

    Imposter syndrome?

    I’m sure that’s part of it. But I feel like a bigger part is that I’m still in shock and awe that I can say I write for a living (no, the irony of currently being “between jobs” is not lost). After making the career jump I talk about in that piece, I wrestled with what to call myself for, well, years before finally coming up with a pitch version. I’ve already forgotten what that pitch was. Now, I just say, “I’m a writer,” and let the questioner figure out their next question. And if they don’t, cool, at least they know what I know.

    I’m a writer.

    (I am, however, still working out what posts show up where, so apologies if you see dups. And finally, if you’d like to discuss brand marketing and/or executive ghostwriting, I am working with private clients and would love to chat!)

  • 5 Lessons I Learned Jumping Careers At 40

    Ed note: This essay started life back in 2019 when I was freelancing at the start of my new career as a writer. Starting in mid-2020, I became employed full-time as an in-house writer, first on a contract basis, then moving to FTE. While the specifics have changed, the underlying reality of my career jump remains the same—as I transition back to freelancing—and remains something I think others can benefit from hearing about. Thus, this will be but the first of a series of pieces here on I Like How You Think that cover changing careers in midlife.

    The punchline, should you want to skim the essay itself, is that if I can do it so can you.

    I’m a writer.

    I used to be an IT guy.

    After much hemming and hawing about what to write about on LinkedIn1, I’d like to start with some lessons I’ve learned since becoming a full-time creative. Truthfully, many of these lessons came to light when I was still in IT, it seems that a fair bit of what I was observing was NOT, in fact, specific to IT customers. Rather, it seems these idiosyncrasies are more generally human in nature.

    "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not, 'Eureka! I've found it,' but, 'That's funny!'"

    Isaac Asimov

    I find this quote more and more appropriate the more I freelance.

    I watch people. OK, that makes me sound creepy. What I mean is that I tend to notice things that others miss. Whether I’m sitting at a coffee shop, or at my desk in the front room of the IT hardware team workroom. I just didn’t give the foibles I was seeing much thought until the other day when one slapped me upside the head—I opened my inbox to find that a client I had only just started working with was putting a complete freeze on new content.

    I had only just completed a site audit and presented a rough draft of an editorial calendar for their blog, so this was more than a bit of a surprise. I immediately flashed back to one particular day at the healthcare consulting firm I worked for in DC. The short version for today is that a guy walked into my office and dumped the contents of his computer bag on my desk. Aside from the piece with a particular brand logo, there was nothing identifiably laptop-like about the pile of rubble I was looking at.

    The jolting non-sequitur of these two situations almost caused a spit-take (ed note: ever tried to clean tea out of a keyboard? It’s not pretty).

    You’re forgiven if it’s not as apparent, I mean a client canceling a work order and a customer with a destroyed laptop don’t sound related. At first glance. Here’s the thing—it wasn’t the details that were so striking.

    You Never Know What Each Day Will Bring

    Or each minute as the case may be.

    That dude walking into my office with a bag full ‘o’ bits was a wake-up call. We were just finishing our Monday morning rush of “oh my god, my laptop did a thing!” visitors and I was writing up tickets for the work orders we needed to call in.

    Then, all of a sudden, rubble.

    And with the client, the request to pause all work was just as abrupt and came just as far out of left field.

    Clients are people. Customers are people, too, it turns out. No matter if they’re end-users within a large company or the CEO of a 5-person startup who wants a homepage rewrite and a blog; people will be people. And that means you need to stay on your toes. And just like you didn’t see the cross-over initially and I didn’t see the pile of laptop detritus coming—they’re a never-ending source of surprise.

    Lesson Learned—laugh.

    Non-sequiturs are funny as hell. My favorite t-shirt ever isn’t objectively funny, yet I chortle every time I even think of it. Why? because it’s a non-sequitur.

    Haikus are easy

    But sometimes they don’t make sense

    Refrigerator

    See? Not objectively funny, but I can guarantee at least some of you laughed. We should hang out.

    It Never Seems To Be “Their” Fault

    That dude with the bag of detritus? Deadpan, he looks at me and says he has no idea how it happened. He swears he just went to check email on Sunday morning and BAM, there was a bag full of scrap where his laptop used to be.

    Amazing.

    At the moment I was impressed with his ability to keep a straight face. As for the client, well shockingly enough, they were freezing work because somehow—as if by magic—they found themselves without any cash.

    And despite the CEO also being the CFO nobody could seem to figure out how they came to find themselves in this situation.

    Lesson Learned—Know when “go along to get along” is the right move.

    With Zolthar The Destroyer Of Laptops, it wasn’t my place to call him on his lies. Company policy stated that we replace broken equipment and deal with getting it fixed—it was up to his direct manager to dole out discipline.

    As for the CEO, I may not want to work for someone who mishandles money like that, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want his referrals.

    Mood Matters

    Humans are intuitive creatures. Even those who don’t know it. We have an ability to “read” a room, doing a sort of temperature check on the folks there and how they’re feeling. The trick is being able to pause and make use of that reading. Most of us can't. Or don’t. This isn’t intentional, or necessarily conscious, it’s usually simply because we’re too rushed to stop and take a deep breath as we enter the meeting room. Or the coffee shop.

    My desk at that healthcare place was in the front room, between the public and our workroom (where my team sat and did their thing), so everyone who walked in for help had to pass right by me. Not only did this impact how I felt at any given time, but it worked in reverse. If I was consciously aware of the mood I was projecting, I could tell when it calmed down an irate customer. And if I was stressed, I could tell that amped up some folks as soon as they walked in.

    Lesson Learned—Keep an even keel.

    Lead Quietly, Even When You’re the Only One in the Room

    This isn’t simply a volume request, it’s more of a leadership-style thing. The introverted among us (raises hand) have a unique leadership style that is often called quiet leadership (see the work of Susan Cain and Daniel Goleman among others). While we appear to be sitting quietly in the meeting, spacing out or otherwise not paying attention—we’re actually working out what we want to say in our heads before saying it out loud.

    This can lead to confusion, with bosses and coworkers often seeing us as not participating when in reality we’re formulating a response that will solve all the things in one blow.

    We just don’t talk through it out loud.

    This translates to a need for follow-up. Be the person who sends the email after a meeting, summarizing the salient points you took away and offering your thoughts on how to move forward.

    That client? I sent an email the day after our discussion with a summary of the work I had done, links to the product that was already paid for, and some ideas for how they could continue where I was leaving off. The CEO sent a lovely, apologetic message in response thanking me for being conscientious (his word). And I left the relationship secure in the knowledge that he’ll be recommending me to all his CEO buddies in the future.

    If I had just sent an invoice for work completed and left it at that, the client might still have remembered me but there would be nothing remarkable about the relationship. Over time I would fade into the background as just another vendor/partner he worked with once upon a time. By following up, I made sure I stick out in his mind. He’ll remember that I went that extra step (which took all of 3 minutes). I can’t stress this enough, follow-up can mean the difference between being the person who gets the referrals and the one who’s forgotten the instant the job’s done.

    Lesson Learned—Follow-up matters as much as showing up in the first place.

    If You Look For Problems, You’ll Likely Find Some

    Back to that meeting and the reading you get when you walk in. If you enter the room with a sense of, “OK, who’s going to piss me off first?” I guarantee you’ll be pissed off real quick. The thing is, whatever that person said that set you off, probably wasn’t so bad objectively. In fact, it may have been totally innocent and it was your attitude overlayed on top that actually caused the miscommunication.

    When this client signed on (I don’t use full contracts all the time, I know, I know) for this project, I admit, I had a bad feeling about it. And when that customer walked into my office, the first thing on my mind was the state of what was in the bag. Now, I’m not saying that the power of my thoughts caused the laptop to shatter (that would be kinda cool though). But my mindset did absolutely color our interaction.

    Lesson Learned—Trust your gut.

    Then be open to what happens. If I had followed my gut 100%, I never would have worked with this CEO. Since I moved past my initial misgivings however, I made some good money and ended up with a champion in my corner despite the seemingly negative outcome of our working relationship. I guess what I’m saying is that if you enter every working relationship skeptical of the possible outcomes you’ll just end up exhausted. So don’t ignore your gut, but work with what’s in front of you and see if you can turn the outcome positive in at least one way.

    I hope these lessons resonate with some of you. I’ll have more to say on many of these topics in the future, so I invite you to follow along if you like life lessons, stories, or a combination thereof.

    1. This piece’s original home.

  • Know Your Why, Part I

    If you don't know why you're doing what you're doing—how can you counter someone who says you’re doing it wrong?

    My grandma used to say something that drove me, and the rest of the family, nuts:

    “You’re right, I can’t.”

    That is one of the most deceptively simple sounding, yet incredibly complex— and the more I think about it, maddening—expressions I have ever come up against.

    Even more so when I found it coming out of my own mouth.

    The first time I recall hearing this sentence, it was in the context of getting my then-already-aged grandma out of the house. She was settled in her routines and unflappable against our attempts to get her to come to a larger family dinner. On the surface, the meaning was clear, she simply couldn’t gather herself enough to get ready and deal with being out in public, let alone meeting up with a larger group than the 2 of us staying with her. And there's no way to counter it, I can't say what she can or can't do, right?

    Hey, I’m an introvert, I get it. I’m well acquainted with simply having had enough peopling for one day, or week, and needing alone time to recharge. But I came to find out there was more to it. I came to find out, well after my grandma had passed, that she likely had lifelong, and undiagnosed, depression. Having dealt with what I sometimes call “funks” for the better part of my adult life, this fact completely changed the dynamic.

    And thus ends the dive into my and my family’s history for today, I promise. I do want to keep going on that short little sentence though, before bringing it back around and connecting this to why it’s so important to know your why.

    Understanding that the sentence was being said from a place of pain, rather than of obstinance or the sheer stubbornness my family is legendary for completely changed how I saw my grandma. It also changed how I understood my own interactions with pretty much everyone else I’ve encountered in my life, right up to today.

    Those four little, deceptively simple-sounding words, “You’re right, I can’t,” both acknowledge and dismiss the fact that the person uttering them is in complete control of their destiny. What they are truly saying is, “I know you have the best of intentions, and I know I should do what you’re saying I should do. But I simply can’t. I don’t have the ability to overcome a contravening force that is acting on my mind and body, limiting my ability to do even what I know full well I should be doing.”

    It was all of this background that opened my eyes when I heard myself say “You’re right, but I just can’t.”

    Then I sat in stunned silence. Had I really just said that!?

    I took a couple of deep breaths, I was talking to this person on video chat (it was a coworker at my last job) so they were starting to wonder why my eyes were closed before I remembered to turn off my camera. Funny pandemic moment aside, this is what I came up with:

    I was fine with having said it. And that was because I understood WHY I had said it. And that one word is what made the difference.

    I’ve been learning to accept, deal with, and work within my abilities and traits. It’s been nearly a decade since I figured out my status as an HSP and an empath, and in those years I’ve worked hard at honing my ability to block other people's FML vibes while allowing in enough of their energy to connect on the level I thrive on.

    What that coworker was asking of me was simply more than I could handle. After a day of interspersed meetings and deep work sessions, I was played out. Knackered. Done. They were inviting me, last minute, to a Zoom happy hour for someone whose last day it was with the company. Aside from the last-minute nature of the invite, Zoom small talk is not something I can do, let alone at the end of the day and without any time to prepare.

    In that context, saying I couldn’t attend was my only sound option, and that little sentence doesn’t invite probing questions. And importantly, it leaves no room for anyone to question your motivations, as long as you say it with the conviction that comes with knowing yourself well enough to know what you can, and can’t, do in a given situation. It’s final without sounding dire, and my coworker respected that.

    Knowing my own why was enough to not only carry me through the interaction but to feel OK about using what was once a phrase that made me as close to stabby as just about anything I can think of.

    That makes it a pretty powerful concept to keep in mind if you ask me.

    I’ve got more thoughts percolating on this, hence the Part I in the title. Stay tuned while I sort through those thoughts and see how they want to be written.

  • What’s Enlightenment Got To Do With It?

    “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.”

    Zen Proverb

    This proverb has been rattling around in my head recently, so I figured it was time to get some thoughts down here. You know, for posterity. But first a word of warning: as with any proverb, Zen or otherwise, interpretations will vary widely, and often wildly. What follows is simply the way I’ve been looking at this one, an interpretation that’s filtered through my life experiences, current situation, etc…etc…etc…

    Therefore what follows are my thoughts as of this moment right here.

    It’s About Being Present in the Moment

    Enlightenment can be found in the mundane as readily as in the profane. I’m referring more to those flashes of insight that come at seemingly random times—in the shower, on a walk, while you do the dishes—than to the state of enlightenment in the Buddhist sense. I know, confusing to be talking about a Buddhist proverb in a non-Buddhist context…welcome to my world.

    The catch is that you have to be present in the moment or you’ll most likely miss it. I mean, just imagine if Gautama Buddha had been scrolling Instagram while he sat under the Bodhi tree…

    The fact that even after you reach that Buddhist state of enlightenment you still have wood to chop and water to carry is a stark reminder of the fact that despite reaching such a rarified status you must still be present in each moment to reap the benefits—because life goes on regardless.

    It’s About Being Present For Every Task, Every Day

    Dovetailing from that last point is the idea that we all need to bring our attention fully to whatever task we find ourselves faced with. I don’t enjoy cleaning up after my dog, but I do it to the best of my ability (and yet still manage to miss some…) because if I don’t, the yard will start to look derelict (not to mention stink) and ruin the view out of my office window. Not to mention ticking off the neighbors.

    The fact that even after reaching enlightenment, one is expected to continue doing their daily tasks is heartening to those of us who know damn well we’re not heading for that state. That doesn’t mean I won’t keep doing my damnedest to ensure the crap is picked up, the dishes are done, and the garbage can is in the alley by Wednesday morning.

    It’s About How You Show Up

    Back during my training as a Wellness Coach, an instructor used the phrase, “It’s about how you show up.” That idea has resonated with me consistently for the last decade. I’ve heard similar sentiments in podcasts, books, and even one TEDx talk (but I’ll be damned if I can remember whose).

    This one truly underlies the other two points in that if you’re not paying attention to how you show up, you’re unlikely to be able to stay focused or be all that present in the moment (you’ll be too busy trying to remember where you left your keys, let alone your A game).

    Think of it like this: If you show up to work in your PJs with your hair unkempt and one slipper missing, what does that say about you and how much you value your job? What if you showed up to a date looking like that? Or to pick up your kids after school? Exactly, and an often overlooked aspect of this idea is that the same goes for your mental state and outlook on life. If you’re in a foul mood when you get to the office or a client meeting, do you honestly think that won’t impact the outcome?

    Paying attention to how you show up means that when it comes time to chop that wood or carry that water, you’ll be present and ready by default. And if not—after all, we all have our off days—now you’ll be aware of the difference it makes and ready to tackle whatever is standing in the way.

  • Resonance

    From Wikipedia:

    “Resonance is a phenomenon that occurs when an object or system is subjected to an external force or vibration that matches its natural frequency.”

    Also from Wikipedia:

    “Limbic resonance is the idea that the capacity for sharing deep emotional states arises from the limbic system of the brain. These states include the dopamine circuit-promoted feelings of empathic harmony, and the norepinephrine circuit-originated emotional states of fear, anxiety, and anger.”

    So when someone says, “That resonates with me,” do they mean that particular something sounds good? Feels good? Somewhere in between—or a combination of—the two?

    I think I generally use it to mean that an idea feels right or hits a particular note that I hadn’t thought about but that in letting it sit, feels appropriate.

    Wait, I literally just used the phrase “hits a particular note.” As is, it literally resonates, at just the right pitch, with just the right tone, and on just the right beat. And as an Empath, the idea that how we connect on the level of vibes may literally involve, you know, vibrations, is somehow reassuring. All of this feels right at first blush, will it stay that way? I mean, music is known for its emotional power, right? Why else do people cry at concerts? Or find themselves swaying to a beat they’ve never heard before, swept along with the crowd at a festival?

    Ideas as music, I like this line of thinking. Let’s see where it goes, shall we?

    So if ideas are like music in that they travel and impact us on the level of literal energy wavelengths:

    • what is it that makes one idea sit right today, but maybe a contrary thought will sound better tomorrow?
    • Is it related to how one day I might just have to listen to Rage Against The Machine, and the next it’s nothing but Miles Davis all day?
    • Does it mean our brain waves shift and change pitch, matching up to one band one day and something diametrically opposed to that the next day?
    • Or are these music styles, and human brainwave variations—when broken down to the wavelength level—not as different as they first seem?

    Jack Kornfield, a leading Western Buddhist scholar and teacher, says that this idea crosses cultures as it’s rooted in the very way our brains function:

    "Each time we meet another human being and honor their dignity, we help those around us. Their hearts resonate with ours in exactly the same way the strings of an unplucked violin vibrate with the sounds of a violin played nearby. Western psychology has documented this phenomenon of 'mood contagion' or limbic resonance. If a person filled with panic or hatred walks into a room, we feel it immediately, and unless we are very mindful, that person's negative state will begin to overtake our own. When a joyfully expressive person walks into a room, we can feel that state as well." 1

    The only thing I would add to that is that people’s receptivity to these vibrations can vary widely. As can their ability to discern what’s going on. The number of times I’ve had to explain why my mood just took a 180, while the person I’m talking to felt nothing…

    I’m drawn to the idea that some people’s brains operate at a universal frequency…or are better equipped to shift frequency to better match up with that of a conversation partner, coworker, or coaching client. And does this have anything to do with something I’ve experienced more often recently than at any point in my life: people saying they feel closer to me, more able to talk openly—and just more comfortable in general—than with anyone else they’ve ever met.

    Years ago, I grew weary of everyone wanting to unload their emotional baggage on me. I would say “Hi” to the barista and the next thing I know I’m hearing about their recent breakup and how their dog has cancer. Or I would enter a work meeting and before sitting down I’d be hearing about someone’s weekend binge and how they’re starting to think they might have a problem.

    I never knew what to do with all this, until it started weighing me down. I was unaware of my status as an Empath at this point, all I knew was that I needed it to stop—or to learn how to control it—before it dragged me under along with these poor folks.

    This idea of Empaths being able to either generate a universal frequency, like how some people are universal blood donors—or to quickly and subconsciously adjust their own to match another person’s energy—explains how we can connect with anybody. Thinking a bit more, I realize that frequencies are each unique, so there’s not likely to be a universal one that would allow these nearly instant connections to so many other people.

    So have I been quick-adjusting my brainwaves all my live without realizing it? And can I use this realization to help me more effectively block other people’s…stuff, say when I’m trying to work in a public place and find my brain being invaded by someone else’s FML energy?

    I think that’ll be a topic for another essay, once I’ve time to let this whole line of thinking sit a while. Maybe some of these ideas will find the right frequency and start resonating with the right energy to help me figure it out.

    If you’ll excuse me, today’s a Miles Davis sort of day.

    1. Jack Kornfield (2008), The Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology, Random House, Inc., p. 17, ISBN 978-0-553-80347-1 ↩

  • Paying Attention…on Purpose

    Before you ask, no, this won’t devolve into a rant about the “attention economy.” At least, I hope it won’t.

    Paying attention is a bit of a trigger for me these days.

    Can you blame me? I was knocked off my bike by a driver who hooked an un-signaled right turn through the bike lane I was in. Leaving aside the driving habits of Seattleites these days (I need to remember I also drive here...)—is it asking too much to just look around every once in a while?

    I digress.

    I think this focus on our lack of focus started in earnest in 2020 when I was knocked off my motorcycle by an inattentive driver who ran a stop sign (for those of you keeping score, that's inattentive drivers - 2, Jesse - 0). That's when I started seeing more and more examples of how we as a species are having an increasingly difficult time doing it.

    I’ve been an on-again, off-again meditator for something like 20 years, and in that time I’ve mostly practiced a form of Mindfulness Meditation.

    Without launching into a “sure to bore you to tears” historical explainer, the bottom line for me is simply that my mind only has two settings when it comes to attention—either I can’t stay focused for more than 5 minutes, or I fall into a rabbit hole only to emerge into the daylight, hours later, blinking like a bear emerging from hibernation.

    Mindfulness meditation proved the best way for me to train my brain to do what I ask of it. That is, to focus when I need it to focus and wander off in wonder only when I let it off leash.

    This brings me to the first version of this idea of paying attention with a purpose beyond not walking into a wall—or running into a dude on a motorcycle—from the founder of Mindfulness therapy himself, Jon Kabat-Zinn.

    "Mindfulness is awareness that arises through paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment, non-judgmentally...”

    Let’s break that down and look at each piece separately for a minute.

    “...awareness that arises through paying attention...”

    Right off the bat, Kabat-Zinn is drawing a line between awareness and attention that might strike you as unnecessary. After all, most of us meander through life figuring if we’re aware of something, we must also be paying attention to it. Think of the last time you were at the front of the line at a traffic light when it turned green. How long did it take you to notice the change of color and move your foot off the brake and over to the accelerator?

    I’m guessing more than you’re comfortable disclosing to strangers. So where was your attention? You were clearly aware of being at a traffic light (at least, I truly hope you were). But were you paying attention to it? How would things have been different if your full attention was on that light?

    “...on purpose, in the present moment...”

    This is the bit that resonates with me the strongest. How can you be paying attention NOT on purpose? Well, let’s think about that for a second. What was the last movie you watched? How far into it was the first time you found yourself elbowing the person next to you and asking, “What’s he talking about? When did that happen?!”

    You thought you were paying attention to the movie, but maybe you were only peripherally aware of it playing while your attention was on...I don’t know, a conversation you had with your boss last week. Or the parent-teacher conference next week. Or the argument you had with your partner right before the movie started.

    So it’s not a stretch at all to say you’ve probably spent a fair bit of your waking time NOT paying attention to what you thought you were paying attention to, yeah?

    That ‘present moment’ comment opens a whole ‘nother can of proverbial worms, and those buggers are terrifying to try and get back in the can so I’ll leave you with a suggestion that if you take one thing away from reading this essay let it be this:

    Focusing on the present moment is a great way to avoid many of the pitfalls being discussed and will start you in the right direction for lasting mindfulness.

    “...non-judgmentally...”

    Uh-oh, speaking of cans of worms. Forgive me for causing 90’s flashbacks: “can open...worms...everywhere!”

    Kabat-Zinn is making one of the toughest requests of all, he’s asking us to be kind to ourselves.

    When you find your attention wandering away from the present, from whatever is right in front of you right now, don't get upset with yourself. We’re all human, after all, and being human comes with some caveats.

    This whole dive was triggered by a comment John Green made in a talk...sometime. He said that when you want to get a handle on what you’re thinking about or what to write about, look at what you pay the most attention to. His line was, “Pay attention to what you pay attention to.”

    What I can’t decide is if Green’s line is an updated version of Kabat-Zinn’s, or if it’s a different beast altogether. Or is that a difference that doesn’t matter? So what if it is different, anything that gets you thinking along these lines is a good thing as far as I’m concerned.

  • Who decided we all needed to have our collective shit together, anyway?

    A lot of ink, digital and otherwise, has been spilt discussing the cult of busyness in society these days. So if you think I’m going to spill more in an attempt at muddying the waters with yet one more opinion...you’re right.

    You know me so well.

    Despite my best efforts, all too often I find myself being dragged into this sense of “if I’m not doing something, I’m failing at...something else.” And as an introvert who’s prone to overthinking ALL. THE. THINGS. That’s not a comfortable place to be.

    The Cult of Busyness (TM) indoctrination ceremony often ends early because the host is already late for a meeting.

    Where was I…?

    Right. The idea that you must always be proactively producing widgets is so engrained in western society that it’s easy to mistake it for a fact. But it isn’t. It’s just one idea, a thought, frankly more of an assumption—that you’ve heard whispered in your ear ever since you became conscious enough to hear whispers. And frankly, it’s getting quite irksome that despite knowing better, I still fall under the trance of those damn whispers.

    This all started back a couple of roles (contract business content writer for a cybersecurity/authentication provider), when my manager/editor said, “Hey, it’s OK, they’re paying us to think.”

    She literally caused me to do a spit take (then spend 20 minutes trying to clean the tea out of my keyboard). Remember, I spent my first career in IT support, where my productivity was measured in screens replaced, hard drives revived, and malwares exterminated.

    It was only with that comment, which came some 3+ years into my current career as a content/copywriter (an inexact title for what I actually do, but whatever, it works for my purposes here) that one of the major differences to become clear:

    I’m literally being paid to think.

    So what’s the measurable output? Where’s the pile of fixed laptops? Where’s the status report that attests to the eradication of that malware? Where’s the spreadsheet where I enter how many machines I worked on that day and for how long? It was one thing back at the agency where I got my start, we had a word count to meet every week (and for the record, I was hitting 8,000/week for 5 different clients by the end of my time there).

    But now that I’m spending time staying on top of industry news, planning strategy for upcoming campaigns, and oh yeah, writing customer stories and e-guides—how do I prove I’m being productive?

    Those of you already in the knowledge work sector might, at this point, be scratching your heads or stroking your beards in bemusement. You may also be wondering how any of this ties into the title about proverbial shit. Here it is:

    You don’t have to have your shit together, nor do you have to always appear productive, to be doing your best work.

    We’ve all had, or currently suffer through having, that coworker who always seems so…together.

    You know the one.

    Always at their desk 5 minutes before on-time.

    Always first to the conference room, with extra pens and name tags, you know, just in case.

    Always in the Zoom room first.

    Always sending around the team memos with links to the right and wrong spreadsheets to enter your expenses in if you actually want to be reimbursed.

    And somehow, they’re always between slightly and massively dickish about it.

    Here’s the thing about that person…they’re no more collected than anyone else. In fact, I would posit from experience that they’re often hotter messes than most. They’ve just learned how to use surface-level organization to make it LOOK like they’ve got it all together.

    And guess what often suffers while they collect pens and name tags for the next meeting? Yup, actual, measurable productivity. And nobody likes them, see the above comment about being dickish.

    When I was turning out 8,000 words per week you couldn’t always rely on my to know what day it was, let alone if I was late for a Zoom call with one of those clients. My editor was so bad at that stuff that I had to set a reminder for myself to remind her when we had meetings. But wow, was I turning out product.

    OK, summary time. Don’t be fooled by Mr. Got-it-all-together. He doesn't. Neither does Sally Widgetmaker. Productivity and the appearance of having “it all together” are not always as closely linked as we’ve been led to believe.

    If you’re producing work you love (or your boss, or whoever in your life judges your product), and you’re not being a dick to those around you, consider it a win.

    The rest will come in time.

    Or not.

    Either way, you’re good and I’d be happy to work on a project with you.

  • Shift Your Perspective

    This is an amalgamation of what started out as 3 posts on a previous blog. I’ve edited it heavily and in the end decided to combine the whole thing into one longer piece, hoping that the resulting total is indeed more than the sum of its parts. Trust me, it’s going to make more sense and be easier to digest this way. Think of it like throwing the entire week's leftovers into one pot and turning it all into stew. It goes down easier than the individual bits would.

    Perspective is everything

    I stumbled on an interesting piece on Placemakers (ed: they appear to have removed their blog since I first wrote this) some time ago that had a great, brief history of the NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) movement. The article’s goal was to pinpoint where the movement took a turn…for argument's sake let’s say for the worse, and it includes what I think is a fundamental life lesson about perspective:

    “The burden now falls on you to stop telling them what you don’t want. And start telling them what you do want.”

    In other words, if you go through life focused on the negative, you’ll likely miss all the positive that’s out there. This seems extra timely given the current state of the 24/7 news cycle. Don’t become so focused on a negative (let’s say news story) that you miss out on all the positive things that are also happening, often right under your nose.

    Take a step back and see negative situations/stories as a learning opportunity. Learn about the importance of shifting your perspective. Instead of "You can't do ABC," try "I wonder if XYZ would work?" By reframing the situation like this, you may be amazed that you can get results you’ll be proud of.

    Results that get you something you want, rather than just NOT getting something you don’t want.

    Back to the source quote and article for a second. NIMBYs focus all of their efforts and energies on blocking things they don't want; bridges, trails, airport runways (to use some examples from Seattle)—that they often miss what they already have—community. What if these groups of neighbors got together more often than just every time there was a hearing where they wanted to oppose something, and decided instead to build a community garden on a vacant lot? Or got together to help an elderly neighbor fix up their house so they could continue to live independently and remain a part of their community?

    “So maybe it’s time to flip our perspective upside down. Instead of talking about ‘lifestyle disease,’ maybe it’s time to start talking about ‘diseased lifestyles.’ This simple reversal will yield some new insights.”

    Frank Forencich

    It seems so simple on the surface. All you have to do is flip your view on something 180 degrees and you get a whole different perspective. You might find that you’re able to see it from someone else's point of view, making it easier to come to an agreement. So why is it so effing hard most of the time?

    Well, for starters there's this thing called the Backfire Effect. At its most basic level, this is a heuristic that says that no matter how much 'fact' you throw at someone, at best they will not alter their strongly held belief at all—and at worst your efforts will backfire and you'll actually strengthen that belief. In this light, the chances of you getting this person to 'see things your way' don't look so good.

    In terms of what Frank is talking about above, our Western medical system is the manifestation of a strongly entrenched belief that says 'treat the symptom.' It says nothing whatsoever about the cause. If you present with a stuffy nose, you're going to get a decongestant to dry out the mucus in your sinuses. If you have a fever, you'll get a pill to bring your temperature down. Never mind that mucus and fever are your body's natural defense, it's way of fighting off an intruder. By treating the symptom you never get to the point of finding out just what it is your body is trying to protect itself from, and you effectively cut off your own defenses before they have a chance to get started doing their job.

    And to effectively treat causes, you have to look at the root cause not just the immediate one. So if your symptom is that runny nose, the immediate cause might seem to be a seasonal allergy. If you look deeper however you may find that you're leaving yourself open to that seasonal allergy because your immune system is taxed past its limits because of the amount of sugar and refined wheat you eat (a little personal experience there). So we've gone from taking a decongestant for relief from the snot to examining a cultural assumption (wheat is part of a healthy diet) to find the root cause and eliminate it.

    All that from what feels like a simple shift of perspective.

    This 180 flip from symptom to cause can be useful in other situations as well. Take many of the culturally based assumptions we make about consumerism, the idea of keeping up with the Joneses. What if, instead of trying to out-spend the Joneses, we focused on out-experiencing them? Instead of buying a bigger TV, how about taking a trip with your family and making some new memories?

    Or instead of that new car you’ve been eyeing, how about selling the extra car and trying a cargo bike? The conversation on the way to school will shift from what video the kids want to watch to what bird made that noise, or how much fun it is to fly past all the cars stuck in traffic. All this from asking what the outcome could be if you did XYZ instead of ABC.

    Next time you have a decision to make around consumption, stop for a second and flip things over in your head. The results might surprise you.

    "If you change how you think about it, it’s impact on what you feel and do changes.”

    Walter Mischel

    This quote is a nice, tidy summary of the whole idea of shifting your perspective, and by extension, this essay. By definition, if you want to see something from the “other” side you want to change how that something is impacting your life. What Mischel is saying is that the simple act of looking at it differently can be all that’s needed to accomplish this.

    That takes us well beyond the realm of disease prevention and consumerism. In fact, it pretty well opens up any topic or situation for exploration.

    Having a discussion with your boss about when that big project needs to be ready for presentation? They say next week for the leadership meeting and you say 2 weeks later in time for the shareholder meeting? Instead of sticking to your guns, take a step back and look at it from their side of the table. You may find that having a dry run for the leadership group could be beneficial, plus you’d have 2 weeks to make changes and tweak your presentation before it goes public.

    In many ways, this is also connected to staying grounded in the present moment.

    When you get wrapped up in defending your perspective, you’re focusing on the future—and just one possible future at that. What you’re seeing is an extra 2 weeks of procrastinating, of being able to focus on other tasks that you view as more important than the project presentation. When you pause and take that step back, you return your grounding to the here and now. This is what allows you to shift perspectives over to that of your boss and see the future results of your actions now.

    In staying focused on your side of the discussion, you’re also staying focused on just one possible outcome. Being able to see an alternative can be extremely helpful in many areas of daily life. From work to your commute to asking how your partner’s day went (or knowing when to avoid asking).

    Even from crashing on the couch in front of reruns after dinner to playing a board game with the family, reading a book, or maybe taking a quiet walk around the neighborhood.

    All that from the seemingly simple act of taking a step back, staying present, and shifting your perspective.

    This piece took on a life of its own when I started editing. The idea was to show the wide variety of situations and topics where shifting your perspective can open up new vistas and possibilities. Perspective as a topic holds a special place in my heart since one of my traits is the innate ability to see things from multiple perspectives by default. I’ll address that trait and what it means to me in a future post, or possibly a series of posts.

  • 47th Rotation — Completed

    Update - 4/24/24: This was initially posted just after my birthday back in January. Since moving this blog from WordPress to Substack to Ghost (if you noticed anything off last week, please let me know!)—I'm updating and reposting pieces I find evergreen. So despite references to it being January, there are some points here I still want to make today. Look for additional scattered notes below.

    Welcome back to ILHYT!

    That was directed at me as much as you. I’ve been…derelict in my blogging recently, I know. All I can do is offer up a sincere apology and promise to be better going forward. I’d like to start with a quick rundown of 2024 thus far.

    (Ed. note: At least I've been less derelict since starting weekly posts last month!)

    Frankly, It’s more about the last week, seeing as how it was my birthday week and therefore I was culturally impelled to do some serious navel gazing and self-reassessing.

    Just kidding, you ought to know by now that I don’t generally fall into those sorts of culturally-defined habits. It’s taken me years to break them, but I’m happy to say that at 47 I can finally see most of them coming and swerve myself out of the way, without going off the road completely.

    OK, less aimless rambling, more blogging.

    I just turned 47.

    And, as I had made the reservation long before being laid off in October, I spent the week up at my happy place, Whistler, B.C. Just me and Rufus sharing a condo in Village North, a short walk from everything the village has to offer yet set back in the woods and quite peaceful as long as you ignore the noise from Hwy 99, the Sea to Sky Highway, that runs just on the other side of said woods.

    Rufus, aka Dingus, learns that snow will not, in fact, hurt him.

    My initial title for this piece was “In Search of Calm, I Found Dog Pee.” Since just off the edge of the patio there were 5 areas of yellow snow when we got there.

    Since the layoff, I’ve been struggling a bit. Not financially, mind you. Between the severance and state unemployment benefits, I’ll be OK for several more months. Rather it’s been a struggle to maintain all the great work I did with my therapist last year, before she retired a month before the layoff.

    (Ed. Note: Still struggling, just handling it more OK than I was in January.)

    I was hoping this trip would provide me with three things: a chance to reset up in the clean mountain air (Whistler regularly has an Air Quality Index score of 1), a chance to get some edits done on my novel, and a chance to get back on skis after 4 seasons off. And all that with my sister and brother-in-law staying two buildings away.

    Is it any wonder I love it up at Whistler?

    I finished a round of revisions on the novel and got two good days on the hill with my sister (including having her film me as I haven’t seen myself ski in…decades). As for the reset…sigh.

    I found it difficult to fully settle into being on vacation without constantly falling into an internal monologue about what I “should” be doing to find more freelance work, or how I “should” have tweaked my resume more for that last application I sent off, or…you get the picture.

    (Ed. Note: Yep, still having that difficulty back at home.)

    The week was absolutely a success despite this. If anything, it highlighted a few things I’ll be working on as January progresses and I find my 2024 feet. First, meditating has fallen to the side so I’m going to bring a regular daily practice back into the spotlight. (Ed. Note: Nope, that hasn't worked. Every week...ish, but not daily yet) Second, I’m going to be more present here at ILHYT. (Ed. Note: See above comment about weekly posts since last month, go me!) I’ve been stuck in a special version of Analysis Paralysis when it comes to writing here, one where I spend so much energy planning posts, doing research, and debating which title is more appropriate…that I never, you know, post anydamnthing. So the takeaway is:

    Less thinking about blogging.

    More blogging.

    Moving on to the weekend still in progress. I spent my actual birthday driving down from Whistler back to Seattle. With the recent weather happenings, the road was…messy. Snow, slush, ice, and what I now know is called Snirt (that icky mix of snow and dirt that litters…everything starting a day after a snowstorm rolls through) covered the road from Whistler all the way to the border. Then in Bellingham, southbound I-5 was closed. Not like ‘roadwork closed a lane’ closed, like ‘you’re getting off the freeway here, good luck’ closed.

    Needless to say by the time I reached home I was knackered. Happy birthday to me…

    Yesterday started with a Zoom meetup of folks from Micro.blog who are fans of analog tools. One need only look at my collection of currently inked fountain pens and multiple stacks of notebooks to understand why I was excited about this discussion. And the group did not disappoint.

    Aside from getting to meet and chat with the man I credit for getting me into all things analog, not to mention introducing me to Micro.blog in the first place, Patrick Rhone; I also got to hear about everyone’s current favorite analog writing tool. A personal highlight was the frank discussion with one person who wants to be into analog tools but asked for assistance as he continually finds himself back on the computer instead.

    (Ed. Note: That group is still going strong with monthly gatherings. Last week we had a member in the Basque Region of Spain and one in Scotland joining the rest of us on the West Coast.)

    Finally, today started with a quick dash through the farmer’s market to restock my eggs and meat supply, and now I’m comfortably settled in on the couch for a slow day of watching it rain and getting some reading done. As soon as I finish and post this, that is.

    (Ed. Note: Ironically, as I edit this I also spent this morning at the farmer's market. But this time it was followed by schlepping my sister and brother-in-law around since they have a flat tire and can't drive on the freeway until tomorrow.)

    The condo had a lovely couch...

    What’s next for I Like How You Think?

    A final word of the housekeeping nature. I know I’ve been absent more often than not, and for that, I apologize once again. The posts I’ve been overthinking are still in the works but will be spaced out between more posts like today’s—general updates and musings on all things…mundane.

    I find the mundane quite beautiful and would love to share more of those thoughts and ramblings here.

    Now I’m off for a tea refill then it’s into a good book with me. I hope you’re all having a wonderful January.

    (Ed. Note: Most of that is still true.)

    (Final Ed note: one more apology is needed, this time for the completely unintentional Alanis Morissette reference in the intro.)

  • Context Matters

    One of the topics I find meandering across my consciousness every so often is the importance of context.

    Ironically it's appeared across multiple contexts.

    Let’s look at a couple of examples. First, when I was writing for a B2B Software as a Service (SaaS) cybersecurity/authentication company, I was working on a whitepaper based on a subject matter expert (SME) interview where said SME talked about the important role context plays in his cybersecurity research.

    Then, in my own research into social engineering for that piece, I encountered 1/2 dozen expert comments on the importance of context when assessing risk and identifying social engineering in the wild.

    And at the same time, I was reading a bio/memoir of sorts (Stephen Batchelor's Confession of a Buddhist Atheist, it's quite good). Batchelor was an ordained Buddhist monk for more than a decade, with several years being spent in a retreat center in a small Swiss town. He talks about how conspicuous he felt there and contrasts that with the years he spent as but one of many robed monks at the monasteries where he trained.

    Next, while I was still working on that piece, I found myself sitting through a meeting about adaptive multi-factor authentication (MFA) and what do you know...the importance of context formed the outline for an entire section of the presentation.

    So, what do I take away from all this, other than the sheer, unadulterated excitement that is the day-to-day of an in-house writer?

    Simply this: context matters.

    I mean, I already knew that as a writer, but it was eye-opening to have it driven home in areas that diverse—life as a Buddhist monk and cybersecurity—at the same time.

    The SME I was interviewing made several interesting comments about the role context plays in his job when designing the systems that assess whether a login attempt is legitimate or not. For example, there's something called "the impossible travel scenario" that their product uses when determining how to use MFA (hence the addition of 'adaptive' earlier).

    Say you live in Seattle (I know, quite a stretch coming from a Seattleite), and the last 12 logins to your account were from the same location. Then, 5 minutes after your last login, there's an attempt made from Paris. Since there's no way for you to have hopped continents in 5 minutes, that's impossible travel and the system throws up a CAPTCHA or prompts a text message to verify ID.

    Context.

    In the world of social engineering — which blends roughly equal amounts of psychology, technology, and espionage — context is absolutely crucial.

    Whether in terms of situational awareness when spotting someone trying to piggyback (sneak in behind someone with an access badge) into a secure office space or simply double-checking the "sent from" address for typos to help spot phishing emails.

    It astounds me how many data breaches could be cut off at the knees if just one person had noticed just one thing that didn't look right.

    Context.

    Then there was that Twitter hack early in lockdown. The kid who pled guilty took advantage of the then-new work-from-home situation to call Twitter employees pretending to be internal IT and told them he needed their passwords to resolve an issue.

    Had these employees stopped and assessed that request—in other words, if they looked at the context of the request—they could have used the internal IT systems to verify that it was a legit request (it wasn't), coming via an approved medium (it wasn't), to work on a known issue (nope, strike 3).

    Instead, this clown made his way into multiple high-profile accounts and used them to run a cyber currency scam.

    Context.

    Situational awareness is a term that comes from the military but has multiple uses in the civilian world. That's especially true in security. A relative spent some time helping out an executive security firm during their interview process. She's a very average (for this region) woman in her 30s, so in no way does she stand out in a crowd. Her job was to turn up at 4 locations where the interviewee was supposed to be protecting the executive and just...hang around, acting suspiciously.

    Out of 12 candidates, not a single one picked her out. They saw her in 4 different, random places over a short period, and not one realized it. Situational awareness AND pattern recognition failed them and not one was hired.

    Context.

    Steven Batchelor writes about how after he de-robed, married a former nun from his order, and moved back to England, he reflected on the path that brought him to that point. Early on in his academic work, he was tasked with translating several ancient Pali texts along with some writings of his teacher that were in Tibetan, into English.

    That meant spending most of his waking hours locked in a study on the grounds of his monastery, surrounded only by other monks. Then, he was tasked with accompanying his teacher as he set up a new retreat center in Switzerland.

    This plopped him down in a purely western town, surrounded by all that entails, and for the first time since taking his oath, making him feel extremely exposed and out of place.

    Nothing about him had changed. Nothing about his teacher or others at the center had changed, they were all still robed, shaved-headed monks just like before. But the context around him had changed dramatically, and his interactions with those around the center showed that difference quite starkly.

    Spoiler alert—ultimately, he de-robed but has remained a Buddhist scholar and teacher based in France.

    Context.

    I'm interested to see how this new level of awareness of context will translate to my own day-to-day. I'm someone who is already acutely aware of some aspects of context, mainly around pattern recognition and other people's emotional state. If you're aware of the idea of someone being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP) you have an idea what I mean.

    If not, that's for a whole 'nother post.

    Or series of posts.

    Or maybe a book.

    In the meantime, I'm going to keep my eyes open for how context interacts with my daily life and will report back.

    Maybe you’ll do the same? If so, let me know what you discover.

  • What’s The Common Denominator?

    I've used this expression a lot over the years. Most often it comes to mind when someone is midway through telling me about how their bosses always seem to have it out for them, no matter how many times they change roles or employers.

    Somehow, magically, somebody else always did the thing that caused the bad result that they’re being called to task for.

    A team of coworkers is sitting around a table, arguing about the latest project that's gone sideways.
    Photo by Yan Krukau

    But what's the common denominator? Who was involved in all of the situations? Yup.

    I’m not saying they’re always wrong, mind you. But given the frequency with which I hear tales of this sort, I’m saying it’s also not always the other entity who’s to blame. Were you in the group that mucked up that presentation? Was it some other team that lost the big deal?

    Why did “it takes two to tango” just come to mind? Anyway.

    I’ve recently come to an additional realization about these scenarios. Many people associate shifting the cause (blame?) onto themselves with losing the ability to externalize their anger/upset. They want, no, they need to be able to blow up at something or someone else.

    And that’s legitimate. To an extent. It’s easier to swing at someone else than yourself. It’s when you find yourself always and only swinging at someone else that it may be time to step back and reevaluate.

    Besides, if the bad result was caused by someone else, then it should be their job to figure out how to undo/redo/clean up the mess. Now you’ve externalized the cause and the effect.

    All of this externalization has a downside, which shouldn’t be a surprise. Since it’s not your fault, you feel like you can’t take charge and implement change. It’s their mess, they should tell you what they need from you to get it sorted, right?

    Way to duck responsibility.

    A yellow rubber ducky floats on what looks like an above-ground swimming pool. The ducky is wearing sunglasses.
    Photo by Rajvir Kaur on Unsplash

    What these folks aren’t seeing is that they’ve actually gained the freedom to direct their next action.

    You and I may know that we always have that freedom. I mean, who else decides what direction we take in any given situation if not ourselves, right? Reading this right now, we have the benefit of not being tangled up in one of these situations. In practice, I see over and over people letting the fact that they see someone else as causing a situation dictate who decides what comes next.

    They’re letting the same person they blame for creating the situation figure out how to clean up the mess they made for everyone else.

    Is it me, or does that seem a silly thing to do in that moment?

    Writing this out, I’m seeing a new way to look at the ‘common denominator’ thing. Not only might you be the one causing the strife, but you’re also the one who can extricate yourself from the strife that truly is caused by others. Flips it on its head.

    So it can be a positive thing as well as a negative one, depending on the specific situation. But how to tell the difference?

    I welcome all thoughts here, as I just now formulated the question I haven’t had time to ponder…

  • Writing Processes, Side Projects, and Time Sucks…Oh My!

    Update 2 (3/13/24): I’m constantly amazed at how things can both change and yet remain static over time. Since this was posted, with the below update, I’ve been caught up in layoffs, started freelancing, and built up two new web presences (this newsletter and a blog at my freelance site). Yet the basic premise, and importantly the three lessons, remain solid. Only minor tweaks were necessary to adjust timelines, etc.

    Go figure.

    Update (mid-2023-ish): I started this draft as something to end ’22 with, and it ended up taking on a life of its own. Then my company had what’s euphemistically called a RIF, or Reduction In Force, and my team went from 6 to 2—me and the social media guy are the only ones left standing. So instead of a year-end wrap-up, I turned it into more of a ‘lessons learned’ kind of thing, you can stay tuned for more updates on how my workflow has been altered, but it’s looking like I’ll be shifting from Senior Writer to more of a ‘managing editor’ and relying on a more contributor-based model for content.

    It’s been nearly seven years since I jumped from IT into writing professionally, and two years since I landed my last full-time position, so I thought I’d take a minute to jot down some of the things I’ve learned on this journey.

    And now that I’m also making headway on the manuscript for what I hope will be my first novel, the differences I’ve noticed between paid writing (in my case, primarily for tech startups) and personal writing have become clear enough, ironically, to write about.

    My last day job was as Senior Writer on the Brand Content team. That means I mostly created newsletters, e-guides, blog posts, and so-called “thought leadership” pieces for the C-suite to post on LinkedIn.

    I despise that phrase, but that’s a topic for my therapist.

    Working with an editor/manager who came to startup land after more than a decade in journalism means we had a slightly different take on what marketing content should look, feel, and read like. There’s more rigor on my current team than I saw in my first 2 years writing for content farms. For my last couple of pieces, I would estimate I did 5:1 research/interviewing SMEs/outlining to writing.

    And in the process learned more than I possibly could have in an MFA program.

    The freelance work I’m doing now is similarly positioned between marketing writing, blogging, journalism, and thought leadership. It’s a crowded niche…

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    Contrast that to my novel. When I first started playing with the idea, I set out the same way I would with a long-form work paid piece—research, research, research. After 6 months or so, I had reams of notes, character studies, historical research on Seattle in the ’00s, etc…

    What I didn’t have was a single word of the actual story.

    Photo by Florian Klauer on Unsplash

    And after another 6 months, same. Rinse and repeat for another year before it hit me that maybe this wasn’t the right process for me.

    I can be a bit dim at times.

    I turned my attention to figuring out if I could be what they call a ‘pantser,’ or someone who writes by the seat of their pants, letting the story grow organically as they write it. I wasn’t sure I could let the narrative guide how the story developed, but after this much time down the tubes, I was game to give it a shot.

    In early September of 2022, I saw a post from someone who was getting ready for NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month and something clicked. This was the kick in the ass I needed to get started. I spent September and October consolidating my previous 2 years of notes into what turned out to be less than 2,000 words of mostly broad plot points and character studies. Then I archived the rest. And on November 1, I wrote the first 1,667 words of my novel.

    NaNoWriMo sets a word goal for the month at 50,000. That’s either a great start on a novel or a solid novella worth of words. For me, that word count continued for 2 weeks before I had another epiphany, writing for both a day job AND trying to keep up that much production before and/or after work wasn’t working.

    It turns out that while I needed the external accountability the project brought, I didn’t need the external, and arbitrary, word count.

    That’s enough of that ramble for today, let’s look at (a highly condensed and summarized version of) three main ideas that have coalesced over the last few years.

    Writing processes vary by writer. Or by project. Or maybe by genre. Whatever, they vary.

    Do I need to preface this with a “your mileage may vary” warning? No, cool.

    When I start working on a paid piece, whether it’s going to be a quick blog, newsletter essay, E-Guide, or something in between—I do some research. First, I check to see what if anything our competitors have to say on the subject. The last thing I want to do is turn out an echo piece, right?

    Then I compile my initial thoughts in a ‘notes’ document. Then, I sort those notes, adding more as I find it, into a rough outline. This outline only goes 2 steps deep, as it’s intended as something any stakeholders for the piece will receive and the other last thing I want is reams of notes on minutiae before I even start writing.

    Once I have the green light, it’s go time, and the first thing to go is that rough outline. I bulk that thing up until it’s nearly the length of the finished piece. Why? Because now when I move each section into my draft, I can just rewrite it for flow and brand voice as it already contains the stats, quotes, and general ideas for each section of the final piece.

    This final step may only take me an hour because I’ve already put anywhere from 5-10+ hours into the research and outlining stages.

    Compare and contrast that with pantsing this novel.

    I had less than 2,000 words of notes left after the great purge, consisting of vague character sketches, some locations I wanted to be sure to include (it’s set in Seattle, naturally), and a plot outline that was so vague a bystander likely wouldn’t be able to identify it as a novel outline at all. The first draft I completed late in 2023 was 65,000+ words!

    Watching it develop, grow, and morph right before my eyes and under my fingers has been wild for this former IT guy.

    Humans only have so much mental bandwidth to play with at any given time.

    Have you ever reached the end of a day of sitting at your desk staring at a medium-sized screen and realized you didn’t have the energy left to get up and make it to your couch to stare at a slightly larger screen for a while?

    That’s been pretty much every day since I started writing professionally. Add in the overload I feel when I have to be present in an office environment, and it’s a wonder I get even the simplest errands run.

    That’s not to say I regret making the jump. On the contrary, I may be knackered beyond what seems reasonable, but I’m also more professionally fulfilled than I believe I have a right to be (I’m working with my therapist on that, imposter syndrome, and…some other stuff).

    Given the above, how in the hell am I supposed to also make progress on a novel?

    That’s a topic for, well probably another book I’m pretty sure someone else already wrote. For now, what worked for me was using my early morning for intense writing sessions, taking a tea break, and then signing in for work.

    When I tried saving it for the end of the day, let’s just say it didn’t go well.

    A smiling lego figure is wearing a chicken costume.
    Sometimes, when I run out of mental capacity, I feel like a Lego dude dressed as a chicken. Photo by Nik on Unsplash

    Context switching sucks.

    I’m a big fan of the writing Cal Newport has been doing in recent years (and am super excited to jump into my just-received pre-order copy of his latest, Slow Productivity). In A World Without Email, he dives into the time-suck that he calls “The hyperactive hive mind.” For those of you who don’t wonk out over slow productivity or how to work when you’re inundated with Slack messages…Cal is a theoretical computer science professor at Georgetown who moonlights as a productivity writer/podcaster.

    In short, as I’ll have more to say on much of this at a later time—context-switching sucks.

    Literally.

    It sucks time, energy, and mental bandwidth. To the point where it can take as long as 20 minutes to bring your attention fully back to a task when you’re interrupted (if you must have a citation, I can find it…later).

    I’ve experienced that, in fact, it’s been my daily grind for most of the time I’ve been writing full-time. Folks often underestimate how much focus it takes to turn out great writing.

    Or code.

    Or financial documents.

    Anything that falls into the category of “the knowledge economy” takes focused attention to do, and even more of it to do well.

    And when you’re being pulled away from that focus by Slack or email alerts, well it’s going to take you that much longer to get back into your groove and turn out the kind of work that you know you’re capable of.

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