Crashing On My Feet

Last month, I lost my job very unexpectedly, under circumstances beyond my control. Sounds terrible, right? It was, of course. It was shocking and disorienting and generally uncomfortable. Even though my performance was not at issue, my results were clear and acceptable and I was growing into the role, a decision was made and executed.

It's not personal. It's business.

I took it in stride figuring the executioner didn't want to be doing it anymore than I wanted to have it done to me. I comforted him during the process... even complimented his shirt. He made a comment that he couldn't believe I could still be bright and tell jokes and even compliment his shirt and support him during such a stressful event. 

I told him, "Humor and positivity have served me well in life. As such, there are few moments I look back on that were disastrous. those that were are marked by my failure to maintain a positive outlook". And it really was a nice shirt.

I think the way I handled the circumstance left an impact, as a couple days later, my boss called me back and offered me a lifeboat in the form of a job that used to report to me. Now, I'm with the same old crew, trying to feel my way through the situation and exercise an entirely different skill set, all the while trying to maintain that positive attitude and disposition. It's only my pride that hurts. I'll get over it.

Of course I've been looking for other jobs. While I am deeply appreciative of the opportunity to stay gainfully employed, and I believe the promise of "better things to come" within my organization is a real possibility, I have always been the kind of guy who makes his own luck. Patience was not a gift practiced in my house and I never bothered to pick it up along the way.

I've had a couple interviews this week. The first since this business all began. These are good companies and good jobs within my abilities. But the prospect of being offered any of them leaves me oddly ambivalent. What I have done up to now, what I know how to do best, doesn't really make my crystals vibrate. Sure, there are aspects I truly enjoy, but the bulk of the jobs would be just... bulk.

One of my favorite lines is to say "I don't know what I want to do when I grow up", funny because in a lot of ways I am childlike, but I am also middle aged and should be well and truly on a path by now. Or at least that's how I feel and how I think most people feel.

I have engaged myself in some thought exercises and today I had an epiphany. I really want to help companies go through the process of creating and following a strategic plan. I would spend a few months at each company learning about their business, their model, their people, their customers, culture and processes. Armed with those insights, I would facilitate a two or three day strategic planning session that addresses the way to get a company from where they are to where they want to be. I would go back for follow-ups on a quarterly or semi-annual basis to make sure everyone is doing their part and be a third party voice that would help dismantle croneyism and groupthink, and keep organizations on the shining path they agreed to follow. Or to adjust the plan for reality. Even the best laid plans have to cede to reality.

Who knew at 41, I would finally find a clarity of purpose that also fulfills what I love best and am naturally good at doing? In short, I grew up. But I feel more childlike than ever before because I don't have the first clue on how to break in.

My ideal life is not best explained as long stretches of monotony punctuated by moments of sheer terror. But that is the best way I can describe how I feel about my professional life right now. Being a person bound to faith and positivity, I cling to the concept of "crashing on my feet". In my past, and I have to believe going forward, every slip and misstep has been met, eventually, by opportunities to grow and learn and excel.

Right now, my question is, should I prepare for landing, or try to soar?

I'd love to hear from you if you've been where I am.

Wanna do a Podcast?

Yes. A thousand times, yes! I want to do a podcast, but have not the wherewithal, equipment or time to put it all together. Also, there's the issue of the fact that I have been bereft of any clever or even partially clever ideas for the last 18 months.

Hence no blentries. No ideas. No mojo.

According to my wife, I know everything. You'd think this is a desirable quality, and that when she says, "Ask my husband, he knows everything," she was saying so in a complementary fashion. I have come to learn this is not the case, but let's focus on the crux of the issue and not its predicates. I know everything.

When Tom and Ray Magliozzi retired from public radio as "Click and Clack, The Tappet Brothers" on their nationally syndicated radio show Car Talk, I said to my wife, "That's my dream job!" When Tom died in 2014, I took it hard. Not because a disembodied voice of a person I never met was gone, but that one fewer person in this world was living out my dream. After all, the next best thing to achieving something for yourself is to bask in the reflected glory of another.

I loved playing along with "Stump the Chumps", where Tom and Ray bravely had on previous guests to ascertain whether the answers they got from the hosts were accurate. I can tell you, I had a pretty good record against the gurus. And I'm at least as funny as they are, and mom always told my I had a face for radio.

Todays radio for amateurs is a podcast. The great democratizer. Nobody blogs anymore! How antediluvian, antebellum and anachronistic! With a podcast, any nut with an opinion can find there audience. People don't even need to discipline themselves enough to sit and read. You can absorb a podcast while you are supposed to be focused on texting and driving so that you don't get caught.

Hello, caller...

Firstly, my podcast is not open for just anyone to come in an blather their opinions on whatever matter is on the table. Have you listened to a call-in show lately? The callers absolutely stop the program. There is nothing worse than a caller who is either too star-struck or so verbally impacted they can't manage to stutter out the point they were going to make when they dialed the phone. I sometimes wonder if people are getting on the air after waiting so long, they have forgotten what they wanted to say.

I nearly always avoid call-in shows because they let me down. I'll be so in to a topic, eating up what a panelist, novelist, futurist, whatever-ist is on the show and then the callers come on and ruin it all.

Firstly, one question in 12 parts is not one question, just like 20 cans of cat food is not one item, no matter how much you protest, crazy lady who smells like pee and Paul Mason.

Also, why are you calling if you don't have a question? If we wanted your opinion, you'd be a guest on the show. What can Martin from Schenectady offer to the discourse that the 13 year-old triple PHD astrophysist from Betterthan U hasn't already said herself? Martin, are you trying to swim in the same pool as the panelist? Be honest, you called just to prove you were smart. Dumbass.

The single exception to this general rule of thumb was Car Talk, because they made the callers the joke and the callers were in on it. I guess the other single exception would be Wait... Wait, Don't Tell Me, another NPR production, where the callers are ostensibly contestants on a trivia show.

Yes, you can have two single exceptions. Remember rule #1... this is my blog.

Topical? Don't Rub it in!

If we delve into today, we do it only to offer waypoints relative to our topic. I want to have a podcast that is an escape into something that isn't an election or overly "newsy". My audience is someone who just ran out of weed and their 16 year-old dealer is at Disney with his parents until the end of the week, is freaked out that Trump will be the next president, and is "too broke" right now to renew their Amazon Prime membership, thereby necessitating the consumption of poorly produced, free media in the form of a midwesterner blathering on about...

Scripts are for Doctors.

Let's have a general outline. I envision something like this. "Today's Topic _________." Simple, effective, easy to crank out 3 minutes before the bell rings. Just like school. All that aside, I work better under the concentrated heat of the spotlight, as the aforementioned Tom Magliozzi of Car Talk fame would say, "unencumbered by the thought process". Thinking about things before you say them is for pastors and multi-level marketers. My mouth resides solidly on my cuff.

So, what do you want to talk about? 

Things that go, places to go, music, why people shop at Wal*Mart without being forced to, my cats... these are just some of the topics on which I consider myself an expert. I can also fake my way through nearly any topic not requiring the understanding of mathematical concepts I needn't employ whilst balancing my checkbook. On second thought, my wife does that, so let's just avoid math, shall we?

I like old movies and actors and imagining scenarios in which improbable things happened to famous people. My friend Mike and I used to do a "celebrity hot tub" bit where we would be people who kept namedropping stars from the 70s we were somehow inevitably with in the hot tub. It was really schticky.

"I was once smoking a cigar with Norman Fell in the hot tub, you know, like I did in those days... and out of nowhere, Lindsay Waggoner came over to borrow a cup of sugar! Turns out, she had just moved in next door, where Vic Tayback used to live. Now there was a neighbor. We used to sit in the hot tub for hours until our skin was about to come off.
Old Vic, what a funny guy. One night, the three of us, me, Vic and Fyvush Finkel..."

And so it went. Probably for too long, but goddam did we laugh.

Blahggging

Since the blog thing is played out and the podcast thing is about to be supplanted by whatever is popular now that I don't know about because I am not popular, (young, cool, well-connected), I figure it's time for me to jump into the mix. That will signal to the rest of the world that it's time to move on.

So, who's in?