Category Archives: musing

Grit and Pushing Through Fear

The most important single factor for success, we are told by those who sound like they know, is grit.   Grit is the ability to keep going in the face of discouragement.  It requires a long goal, an ability to persevere and unshakable faith in the value of the goal.

Fear is what stops us from accomplishing anything difficult.  It is much easier to do the easy thing than the hard thing.   Fear is a primitive emotion, easily accessed, and it overrides every other emotion when it is activated.   It comes from our survival mode and tells us to run like hell from danger, or curl up in a ball and pretend we’re dead.

Seth Godin makes this point about the amygdala, the part of the brain where fear lives, and how we must learn to overcome the impulse to shrink from a challenge.   He also points out that grit is essential.   He also says this, which is scary as hell:

Grit and faith in an idea is not enough.   The idea itself must be great.   A friend of his parents lived his life the slave of a single idea that he pursued with grit.  The trouble was, the idea itself wasn’t so great and it did not merit the grit and singleminded devotion this failed man gave it.

Picture Woody Allen’s father from Love and Death.  “My father was very attached to his small piece of land,” Allen’s character narrates and we see a crazed man in a cell, hugging a small square of sod.  “My father was an Idiot.”  Mmmm.

Marketing Rules Part 2

A politician’s editorial team does a sloppy job and leaves an important word out of a sentence, leaving a non sequitar where a powerful statement was intended, to wit:

We’re not going to our call for action.

The reader, if she even notices, is left wondering why issue a call to action if you’re not going yourself.  (see previous post for context of this flub)

But that was clearly a typo and not really an example of what I’m talking about– the supremacy of marketing in modern society and how crucial skillful marketing is for the survival of any enterprise that aspires to reach the public.  

I intend to give an example of my own marketing attempt below, but meantime, no less an authority on the subject than the famous Seth Godin, putting the dilemma of a person with a promising idea and a distaste for advertising, in an illuminating perspective:

“When I grow up…”

No kid sets out to make Doritos commercials. No one grows up saying, “I want to go into marketing.”

More than ever, though, folks grow up saying, “I want to change the world.” More than ever, that means telling stories, changing minds and building a tribe.

You know, marketing.

At least if you want it to be.

Seth Godin is a guru to those who would push through to the next level of success in any number of areas, his expertise is in marketing.   He loves it and he’s a master of it.  You can read his pithy, minimalist take here.

As for me, I have come to realize that my idea for a program to change the world for a few kids, and a few adults, will never flourish among the people I know.   The people I know are cool, and fine, but virtually none of them can relate directly to being in a room full of noisy kids inventing and creating clunky animated sequences.  It simply doesn’t excite them, they don’t get it, they are not the tribe to embrace and sustain it.  So, like Godin says, I need to find the tribe that loves this stuff.   To do that, short punchy pitches.

Answer the question in a way that turns on a light for those who care to see what they’ve asked about.  

Why animation?   You can read a long account on this blahg.  Or, this, still too-long marketing pitch:

Animation lets children’s play come alive on the screen.  It integrates drawing, writing, singing, speaking, painting, reading, whimsy, music, photography and computer skills.  It requires a skilled team, everyone doing their part.   Animation depends on free play and also focused attention to detail.   Animation leads to the integrated mastery of every art involved and a world of imaginative possibilities.   The workshop is a place of discovery and community building.

Perhaps most importantly, animation is like an acrobat’s work:  it can only happen in a room where everyone is relaxed, and ready, supporting and helping out as much as possible.

That said, it behooves us to show the mark how it works in practice:

Wehearyou.net’s animation workshop is portable and gets to work instantly.  With only an electrical outlet, a couple of tables and a room full of children ages 7-11, any room is turned into a beehive of child-run creativity within the first five or ten minutes.   While children watch a sixty second animated demo on a laptop computer, the camera stand is set up and an array of art supplies is laid out.  If there are no questions, and there seldom are, the children hop into the making of animation like a bunch of ducklings making for the pond.  A few minutes later they can watch the first results of their animations.  At the end of the session, if desired, their animation can be posted to the internet and shared with everyone in the world.

God bless.

Dropping the Mask

Zora Neale Hurston has a great scene in Their Eyes Were Watching God when her heroine, Janie, finally realizes that her critical grandmother, a former slave, her domineering first husband and one or two others who influenced her so much had been poisonous influences that made her doubt and hate herself.  She sees them as a row of idols, suddenly revealed not be be special at all, falling off a shelf one after another.   That moment of clarity, as the false idols lay smashed on the floor and Janie no longer was bound by their strong opinions about her life, was the beginning of her self-discovery.

People treat you the way they do because of their inner lives, not always because of yours.  Advice is as often as not given from fear, from jealousy, from resentment, things that may have nothing to do with the object of that advice.  Follow such advice at your own peril, or learn which advice to spit out.

Human affairs are not primarily guided by logic or consistency, nor are the ideals we claim to hold always what we hold them out to be.  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator, blah blah blah” for example.  The genius who wrote those lines owned 300 men, women and children who were his property, bought with money inherited from his wealthy parents. Nobody would seriously claim those poor souls were endowed with the same unalienable human rights their master was.  Rhetoric is one thing, reality something more rugged.

We recently celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the March on Washington.   Pious, eloquent speeches were delivered, reaffirming our deepest held American values: that all humans are worthy of respect, dignity, an equal chance at life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  The president made a fine speech, full of feeling and passion.  It almost sounded like commitment to the things he was saying.

But, please, don’t try to sell that empty speechifying to the doomed children of Harlem, Appalachia, inner city slums and rural areas every where.  Sing it from the mountaintops, from the rooftops.  Yeah, right on, baby.

I shuddered recently to see some footage from 1964 where Malcolm X points out, irrefutably, that in the ten years since the Supreme Court ruled “separate but equal” to be in violation of the US Constitution and ordered the integration of public schools “with all deliberate speed” that the schools were as segregated as ever. Now, going on fifty years later, much the same can be said about “all deliberate speed.”   The only thing moving with deliberate speed now is the determined campaign to dismantle public schools and place education, like much of the prison system, in the hands of profit-driven private entrepreneurs.

Some lament how far America has come from the golden age when there was actual democracy here, where groups of now powerless people could unite and have their voices heard.  It may be slightly worse now, or slightly better, depending on your point of view, but representative democracy is still a flawed and difficult experiment and, as a wag once had it, the worst form of government, aside from every other form.

During the golden age of American freedom we did a lot of terrible things to millions of people, many of whom died, or wished they were dead, as the great wealth of this nation was created for the enjoyment of a smaller and smaller group of people.  Advances were made toward greater equality, then backwards steps smartly taken.  

Right now, for some reason that is hard to understand, particularly in light of recent regrettable American military decisions, American warships stand poised to rain down perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars worth of powerful Tomahawk missiles, targeting with powerful explosives certain areas of Syria and the inadvertent “collateral damage” surrounding each target.  Let us not think, for a second, of the hideous irony of naming these weapons of mass destruction after the war axes of a native people our great democracy systematically all but wiped out.

Whatever thinking people might think about this course of hands-off military action against Syria, nothing is likely to dissuade those in charge from doing it.   We are told that the Syrian dictator used poison gas against his people.   We are told this is unacceptable under international law and that we must teach the Syrian dictator a hard lesson.  Let’s see how he feels about US missiles destroying a bunch of his infrastructure, killing a number of his people.   We will teach tyrants about killing people just because they feel like it.

The mask drops away as we hear the official voice of America yell:  Do as I say, not as I do.  Freedom is on the march, for some.  And democracy shall be spread, as long as it’s the democracy we want to see spreading.

“Doesn’t this make you glad to be an American?” the sardonic skeleton of my father remarks from his lofty grave on a hill outside of Peekskill.

 

It Should Be Noted

When delivering a low blow, timing is everything.

You can greatly enhance the effect by acting like nothing happened when the other person cries out.  If the person makes a scene, tell him to stop whining.

The opposite is also true:  I once almost took out an eye of my friends’ four-year old, horsing around at the dinner table.  I hoisted him into the air, from a seated position, and he howled in delight and squirmed in the air, until I lost my grip on him, he went eyeball first into the back of the wooden chair and began howling in agony.  

I was immediately on the verge of tears myself, as I leaned anxiously over him, apologizing profusely.   He bawled for a moment, then saw my distress and I watched him pull himself together, rather quickly.   He stopped crying and told me he was OK.  He was reassuring me.

Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen, and one of the most beautiful.

The Burnout Scale

Feeling burnt out lately as I try to somehow advance my exciting, innovative program alone. Trying to revive my spirits to continue rolling the child-run animation workshop hoop down the road, cheerfully, winningly, I search the internet for advice and inspiration.   Here is some I found last night:

4. Identify the specific causes of your burnout.

The Maslach Burnout Inventory identifies six areas leading to burnout:

  • Workload (too much work, not enough resources)
  • Control (micromanagement, lack of influence, accountability without power)
  • Reward (not enough pay, appreciation, or satisfaction)
  • Community (isolation, conflict, disrespect)
  • Fairness (discrimination, favoritism)
  • Values (ethical conflicts, meaningless tasks)

After identifying the source, name it out loud. Brainstorm with someone you trust about how to specifically change this aspect of your work life.

My father’s 17 years older first cousin Eli, a very tough old bird, complained of the side effects of his fentonyl patch.   Eli’s children, who approached the prickly old man with caution, did not tell him he was wearing the pain patch because he had inoperable cancer.  His doctors were instructed not to tell him either.   He started wearing it only a few weeks before he died, when the doctors he went to couldn’t prevent or explain the excruciating pain he was in.  I only found out he had cancer once he was dead from it.

But it was the side effects he grumbled about on the phone that day.  “I got dry mouth, constipation, acid stomach, you name it….” he muttered.   When I arrived he had me read the list out loud to him

“cramps,”  

“yop!”

“sleeplessness?”

“yop!”

“fatigue?”

“yop!”

“irritability?”

“what the fuck do you think?!”

“yop.”

I thought of this as I began to take the good advice offered in the post about how to combat burn-out.  That there is nobody I can really talk to very much about it is another problem carrying out that excellent advice.  But I did read most of the list aloud.

Undaunted, I searched further:

2. Tell people about it. 

Share your vision with anyone who will listen. Sharing your idea will keep you motivated as you get reconnected to your goals with each conversation. More importantly, you will be amazed by how much others want to support you in your endeavors and are willing to connect you to the right people.

Yes, actually, I have been amazed by how much others have been willing to connect me to the right people.  The only problem, so far, is that nobody I know has ever met any of the right people for my program.  A small, temporary setback, no doubt.

3. Don’t do it alone.

The number one cause of  feeling overwhelmed is trying to do it all alone, and being overwhelmed creates fear. Hire a coach or join a meet-up for support. Ask people for help, seek out partnership, and build a team.

Excellent advice!  I’ve been trying to build a team for a year now, and so far, like the US Army, it is an army of one.   I don’t want to sound sour, but the people I’ve paid, who seemed to have such a good time playing with the kids, gone.  The volunteers I’ve had, so enamoured of the creative beehive of child animators I’d assembled, gone.   Got to keep building, I guess, searching for the right partners!

4. Fail.

Waiting for the ‘right time’ keeps you in perpetual procrastination. You will make mistakes. But this forces us to be creative, often landing us in better places. Welcome failure as an opportunity for growth.

Yes, this is perhaps the best advice of all.  I am going to welcome the failure to form a team and find people to brainstorm with and learn from my mistakes — as soon as I am able to figure out what they were.   Perhaps it takes a team to brainstorm why it is that a friendly person with a great program that kids love can’t figure out how to build a team to brainstorm and solve that puzzle.

Oh, well, back to work.

The Opposite of Love

It has been observed that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.   This sounds right to me.   Hatred, like love, is a powerful emotion, and powerful emotions are subject to change — indifference is the complete absence of any feeling about it one way or the other, there’s nothing to work with there, no redemptive moment possible when one party absolutely doesn’t care.  

Don’t kick the person when she’s down, step over as though you haven’t even seen them lying there.  It may seem an academic distinction, hatred vs. indifference and which is the opposite of love, but come for a short stroll, please.

Tell a joke, around the table people either laugh, laugh politely, groan, or shake their heads.  One person looks you dead in the eye, with the dead fish expression.  And afterwards doesn’t break character by winking, smiling, saying anything.  You make yourself vulnerable, to some extent, telling a joke and the dead fish reaction sticks a skewer in that willingness to open yourself.

Not the best example, perhaps.  My father was a master of this technique, I should be able to describe it better.   It requires, more than anything, knowing when to apply a good cold dose of strategic silence.   When you open yourself up to express a concern, speak directly about your feelings and ask for a reply– silence.  When you complain of the lack of reaction, you become a whiner and the silent party can now focus on what an asshole you are.  

It’s a foolproof system.   Mildly provoke somebody (“just kidding!!”) up the ante a bit (“for your own good!!! I love you!”) wait for the reaction and then — silence.   Beautiful, to a certain type of angry person, what a nice dose of silence will do.  Who needs the rack or a water board? 

“When you ask my opinion you just want me to tell you what you want to hear!” protests someone giving you the hard truth and dismissing the feelings you express as paranoia, over-sensitivity, lack of epidermis.  You can point out how many times you have sought and used contrary opinions to make changes in your life, your projects, your ideas, but in the case at hand– “you only want me to tell you you’re right” serves to end the conversation.   So be it.

Be direct, we are told.  In marketing, as in life, honesty, directness, integrity– these things rule (although countless exceptions apply).   The cure for directness?   Silence.

And of course, one person’s directness is another person’s double-barreled shotgun blast to the kisser.   C’est la guerre, I suppose. 

Temper, Temper

As I am in a ditch today, spinning muck with my rear wheels, I checked on the Yankee game which was supposed to be in progress.   “Delayed” it says on the ESPN website, where to Sekhnet’s grim amusement I tend to follow the box scores of games in progress while I do other things on the computer.

“The game’s not boring enough?” she asked the first time she saw me open the window to see how many hits Cano had, “you need to turn it into a box of numbers?”  I began explaining the beauty of a box score, the complete story told with a list of names and a few columns of numbers, but she was already heading back to the garden to do something that made sense.

I felt a sharp pang of annoyance when I went to check the score just now, since I live only a few miles from Yankee Stadium, where the game is supposed to be ticking away in a box score in another window, and it doesn’t seem to be raining here.   I had a sudden memory of my father, a man of towering anger, shaking his head and laughing once when I got angry about something as a boy.

“You were mad at the rain one time, in a rage that it was raining!”  he observed brightly.

What it was, of course, was a boy’s disappointment and frustration that the thing he’d been looking forward to had been cancelled on account of rain.

The little flash of annoyance, almost anger, at the rain today, reminded me to be grateful.   Gratefulness, my friends, better than anger almost every time.   I’m not talking a tumor with a silver lining, I’m pointing out that it is good to see the larger picture.   In the context of a life, every change for the better is something to be thankful for.

Now to call my old friend who is busy dying.

A Walk in the Park

After six hours or so in the chair reading advice on marketing, watching videos on social media, networking, what makes a video viral (most often celebrities tweeting about them, surprisingly enough), fundraising, and getting updates from a friend who was putting in a hard day’s mostly futile research on behalf of my nonprofit, I took a walk.  

Balmy day, the nearby park was green and lovely, dotted with people out enjoying the summer afternoon.  As I came over the hill to the tidal basin by Spuyten Duyvil I saw that it was low tide.   The open metal sphere, a work of public art built in the middle of that usually watery expanse, was sitting on mud.   There was mud in every direction for a few hundred feet.   I made my way to the end of the little island that looks west, over the treacherous stretch of river the Dutch named “Spouting Devil”, to the cliffs across the Hudson.

I saw on the mud, each a few hundred feet from the water in the channel, two young women in bathing suits on landlocked water motorcycles, large jet ski type vehicles intended for slicing through water.  In the channel two men were in the water.   The tide had apparently gone out quickly, the boats had become stuck on wet, sticky land, and the men had somehow made it into the water while the women stayed on the large padded seats.

The men hailed some passing jet skis plowing through the channel and these bison-sized one passenger boats approached the shore, but were careful not to get too close.  “We have a rope!” called one of the men in the water.   He thought it was a great plan.   The jet skis backed up, like skittish horses, it was not hard to see their reasoning.   It was like watching a scene by the watering hole on the nature channel, the drinking animals lifting their heads in unison, the one in the water already doomed.

When I left the park an hour later I could see, from another angle, that the jet skis were still firmly on the mud, while others were skittering in the water nearby, but not getting too close.

Nobody likes getting stuck on the mud in low tide, I’ve noticed.

Psychopaths Among Us

As many people know, not all psychopaths are violent murderers who kill without remorse.  Granted, psychopaths who are violent murderers do kill without remorse, since they lack even a soupcon of empathy, but not all psychopaths kill.   There is a psychopath test, and a scale, and many people who achieve top marks on the psychopath test never kill anyone.

Take Jim Fallon, an affable neuroscientist who describes himself as a hobbit.   He studied the brains of numerous psychopaths, both mass murderers and corporate CEOs, and speaks convincingly about what separates the killers from the highly functioning confident, bright, driven, remorseless psychopaths who climb to the top of corporate hierarchies and amass fantastic fortunes.

According to Fallon the gene for violence in a brain configured for psychopathy is activated by a three-dimensional experience of unspeakable violence at a young age. Being the victim of, or witnessing, traumatic violence triggers this gene and it is only a matter of time until the time bomb goes off.   Many with brains identical to mass murderers never express violence, except perhaps as ruthlessness in the board room, where it is admired as one of the traits of a winner.

I’ve probably written about Fallon here before, and his fascinating talk can be heard here.  Fallon, well into his distinguished career, learns of his family history of murder and discovers that his brain has the same damage in the orbital cortex that is the hallmark of psychopaths.  

The mild-mannered, avuncular Fallon subsequently asks everyone he knows if they can see the defining trait of the psychopath, lack of empathy, in him.   To his surprise they all see it.  “You don’t really listen after you ask how I am,” notes one, and the others all echo some variation on this.   He realizes they are right, he doesn’t really care.  He thinks of parties he attended instead of going to the funerals of close friends and family members.  He sees a pattern of genuine disinterest in himself.  He then has that moment of clarity when he realizes he really doesn’t care that he’s a psychopath.

I’ve found myself wondering lately, as the frail bark of my program, kept aloft by optimism and faith, sits almost abandoned now on the seaweed covered rocks, if I perhaps possess something like this trait.  In a year of operation I have not recruited a single reliable ally.   It will require a piece of luck I am hard-pressed to imagine at the moment to move things in a good direction.   If the next stop of this successful program is the end of the line, it’s no mystery that I find myself a bit distressed as I try to imagine Plan B.

Take the sad facts of the case.  I didn’t want to exploit young people who might be interested in working in the program by making them “interns” or volunteers.  I was determined to pay them for what I (alone, apparently) consider important work.  I paid them generously out of a small donated fund that is now almost gone.   These payments did not result in loyalty.  

One assistant “forgot” to tell me she couldn’t be at the last session, even as we made plans to discuss it, even as she hugged the kids for the first and last time.  I was touched to see her getting hugs, since she often complained that some of the kids were mean to her.  I had no idea they were saying goodbye, since she “forgot” to mention to me that she wouldn’t be back until an email a day or two before the last session.   Another assistant didn’t show up for the final session, nor did he contact me before or after, and another was 40 minutes late for two out of four sessions over the summer.  My grant writer has vanished from the face of the earth.

“Maybe I am a psychopath or something,” I muse to myself, because there needs to be an explanation for what otherwise seems like plain bad luck.  “Maybe people sense that I genuinely don’t give a shit about them, are only using them to try to make my program succeed.  Maybe they realize that they are only tools, and they resent it.  As much as I try to make nice, they see through it and realize they are dealing with a psychopath.”

Sekhnet comforts me when I raise this troubling idea.  “You’re an outlier,” she says soothingly, scratching my back tenderly.  By this, of course, she means I am that rare psychopath who is neither dangerous nor effective.

Fan Mail from A Troll

(Pardon the formatting, wordpress is having some fun with me)
Got this email about a month back:
I saw  your site and was filled with wonder. Do you need an event planner and fundraiser? As I am both I also have experience with volunteers. I currently work with homeless families as well as homeless individuals suffering with the HIV virus.

I would love to work with you as your are doing amazing things with small ones!

Sincerely,

Ed Snowden

Although I felt like somebody might be sadistically playing with me, sending exactly the kind of email I’ve been waiting for, signed with a famous and controversial name, I wrote:
Thanks for your kind words.  We could certainly use an event planner and fundraiser.  Where are you located, Ed? 
Then these two: 
On Sun, Aug 4, 2013 at 1:59 PM, Ed Snowden  wrote:
Hi  I am in NYC.
Thanks for getting back to me.
All the best,
Ed Snowden
On Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 2:06 PM, Ed Snowden wrote:
Hi I am in NYC.

Thanks for getting back to me.

All the best,

Ed Snowden

A few days later I took another step into the troll’s trap:
The coincidence of your name being the same as the young man’s who revealed the NSA data-harvesting and surveillance program has given some at our organization pause.  I’ve been told this coincidence has to be some kind of prank by a friend, a misguided attempt to poke a little fun at an organization with a successful program that is currently hanging on by a thread.

 
I prefer to think that you are experienced in event planning and fundraising and have some kind of links you can send showing some of your work.  If you send me some samples of your work I will be glad to have a look at them.
Troll:
 
Never mind. This has been my name for eons I am named for my dad and grand dad  and the fact that it bothers you means I should keep looking for work, I am an excellent fund raiser and event planner but I have no time for what my grandmum would call “foolishness” I wish you well.  
Still acting with characteristic (and foolish) good faith, I wrote:
No offense intended, Ed, though clearly it seems to have been taken.  I didn’t say the coincidence of your name bothered me, in fact, I think the other ES did a brave and important thing.  I merely passed on a concern and asked you for some examples of your work.  If you read the second paragraph you will see my hope, and good faith, expressed quite clearly.  
To which the troll replied:
Thank you for your response. I am not offended merely annoyed. 
I think your program sounds amazing but I think I should keep looking for an organization that will allow me to make a difference as that is what is most important to me!
 NYC is a big town with oodles of places that need skilled volunteer and event managers so I shall keep looking.    Again thank you for your kind reply.

(Ms.) Ed Snowden 

As I am out of kind replies, and the (Ms.) before its name would make me hesitate to offer a well-intended bitch slap, I leave this up here, for whatever grotesque value it may have to someone.