Tag Archives: experience

Connections Crossing

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Life: the waking dream that hazes between points of rest. Each moment is taking place in an external world that my inner world just made up based on that same external world made up by everyones’ own inner world. I dream so vivid that times asleep become more real than the day to day.

I keep searching for truth and on the way I often fancy the notion I’ve found some. We make our own truth and it only becomes more and more apparent as we trust what our senses tell us. Our senses hear what others chose to feed us. Even as we accept it as reality, we know that deep down we’re victims of everyone’s filter, especially our own. We experience a reflection of a reflection spiraling off into eternity, so we may as well be blind.

I’m bound to this world the same as everyone else. Sometimes I get notions of how really lost and alone we all are as a whole who shares the same wants. Humanity, the race of contradictions, struggles to see behind the masks of one another. When I look at you, I try to see past our posturing and learned responses.

Connection crosses us so easily and is severed with the slightest touch. As we’re all seeking it as savagely as we pull away from one another, it’s a wonder we survive.

Falling, Failing, and Flailing in a Stream of Conciousness Emptying Into the River of Time

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The same things that make many shades of gray also say that failure isn’t an end, it’s a temporary setback, or even better, a new beginning.

You can do it all again. You’ve proven you can go so far, take the risks, push the barriers, and for a second, maybe you even poked through. Take from and value the experience, no matter how bad at the time, the best you can. Let it hit you, let it pass through you, move beyond it.

As we grow up we think of the far off distances that come to us sooner than one would think possible. Hopefully we grow not only in age, but we learn to have minds of our own, how to come to conclusions on our own based not only on outside sources, but our own unique inner voice. Hopefully we find a voice to speak it with. Maybe that voice reaches someone and changes someone’s world for the better.

We have to remember to keep taking, singing, and expressing as you grow without self censorship for both yourself and others. Learn to love yourself. Continue listening to those other voices. Allow them to become clearer as you can discern more subtleties as time goes on. The trained ear hopefully still can learn to hear something new and never cease being inspired.

Know that you turned out fine. No one is one hundred percent, so it’s nonexistent and a non issue. We’ve all been screwed, screwed up ourselves, even other people, and still we somehow survive. Because we survive, we can seek more than to just be the base line. Give living a purpose.

It scares me when definitions become too loose or too solid. The balance of chaos, change, and chance balances precariously with the safe foundation of stability. We look for the right choice knowing there is none. We search for salvation when we just want to be okay and unattainably perfect.

We teach ourselves to be above average with the risk of failing and flailing as often as floating. We want a community to belong to while fostering our uniqueness and independence. Do what you can with what you have time and time again and do your best to stay above the current in the river of time.

We live in a time with virtual community, more and more variation and possibility, as well as pitfalls. For every opportunity to focus there is a easier way to fall. Bounce back. Bounce back. It’s never too late, but never use that as an excuse to put it off forever.

At least part of this has the right idea, and that’s enough to feel some pride that pushes me to keep moving.

Self Improvement’s Guise

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If you’ve been reading this blog, chances are that you know I’m all about self improvement. I’d like to take a moment to make what I think is an important distinction, which I don’t think is always clear.

By being an advocate of self-improvement, I’m not saying that the Celes of yesterday was so flawed that a new me is needed. There seems to be the theme among people who are into self improvement that you need to hate yourself to want to be better. I don’t think improvement works well this way, nor do I think that improvement is about being better each day, every day.

I try to improve myself and my life, but I do so with knowing I will never reach level 1000. Life if not like some games where you’re gaining all these experience points and leveling up and leveling up until you’re at level 1000+ by the time I’m seventy-eight years old. As much as I wish it were, life just isn’t like that, my friends. Everyone whose self improvement is a linear picture of reaching perfection will be sadly disappointed in the end.

We as people, and life itself, go in cycles. You can’t always be happy or healthy. The best you can do is try to extend the times you are and minimize the times you aren’t. If anything, learning to deal with the times when things are bad in the best way possible is self improvement. To try to reach a state where you never trip, never falter, and never stray from the best of the best is not only an impossible goal, it’s a step backwards. To improve you first have to realize that you’re not horrible the way you are now, you’re never going to suddenly morph into that butterfly or swan or whatever, and you’re going to make terrible mistakes and have horrible things happen to you on your journey.

You are you, with your own faults and particular qualities. To pledge to make slight changes is one thing, but to act like some day a Honda Civic is going to become a Hummer is delusional and sad (about as sad as that metaphor).

Today is as important as tomorrow, and as much as you should be working towards something, you need to realize, accept, and live in the moment of who you are today as well. Do it because there may not be tomorrow. Do it because to really improve you have to love and accept who you are now. Do it because tomorrow, whether or not you like it, you will still be you no matter what you tell yourself. Do it because even if right now sucks, it is part of you and your story, and only you can do something with it that makes it worth having happened.

I know some things about myself, others I’m sure I’m still learning. By knowing I am a certain way, I can embrace and express that in ways that I am increasingly more comfortable with. Faults are not always faults, and finer qualities not always so fine. To focus on ‘changing the bad things about yourself’ is to place a black and white value on a part of who you are and either try to cut it out or replace it like some kind of Frankenstein graft. To see both sides to a coin is to admit the world is flat on only has two sides. Consider the many sides to the tetrahedron, or other polyhedrons that are the building blocks of life, and try to find how each piece can fit together.

I try to be realistic. Combine slight tweaks with strategies and meet yourself somewhere in the middle before you fall off the edge. If you hate who you are now and set an impossible goal for tomorrow, you will fail in the worst way. Don’t kid yourself into thinking you’re not who you were, because you will always be some version of yourself. Accept it as everything you were has made you today, and will make you every day after until the end of this life. All things shape us, the best we can do is try to take some control over how they do and accept the things we cannot so we can move past them.

Acceptance is the biggest piece to the puzzle I think most people miss. You have to accept yourself, your life, and the general way of life, that it is not a perfect pearl or even an oyster, before you can move on.

And move on to what? What do you really want? Figuring is as much part of the journey and figuring out how to get it.

I want to be better than yesterday may seem like a the daily goal to strive for, but in the long term it makes little sense as it is a generalization, a judgment on the unquantifiable, and an impossibility.

More than self improvement, I think of this as learning to live by living. This involves thinking and introspection as much as it involves getting out there, taking chances, and doing.

Role Playing is Playing a Role

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Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Pools of Radiance Japan
This post is brought to you by AD&D: Pools of Radiance for the NES, or should I say Famicom? This screen shot is inviting heroes to step up in New Phlan. Really, you’ll just have to take my word for it.

I recently started role playing again, and as much as it feels like sitting in that comfy divit in an old chair, I think maybe I picked the wrong chair.

A game master (aka GM or DM: one who runs the game) puts forth a framework in which to operate our imaginations. By playing in their game, we are accepting to follow that framework alongside the imaginings of the fellow players. The GM provides the world and our tasks, and we provide the heroes.

I realized that is my problem with this game I’ve recently joined. We didn’t provide the heroes. We had to fill in most of the lines on the character sheet- like our starting equipment, but we didn’t get to pick the name, sex, race (eg: elf), class (eg: wizard), or background (recent & far past) of our characters. Since we are a sum of our experiences and genetics, that sort of sums up the whole personality of the character we’re playing. We didn’t come up with our role to play while role playing.

At first, I saw it as a challenge. Play a character you would have never come up with on your own. I thought it would be kind of closer to acting in a play. I thought it could be fun.

And it is a challenge, so much so that not only do I feel like I don’t relate to my character in any way, I feel like I don’t know what my own character would do in most given situations. If given time to think I might come up with a list of things he might do with reasonings, but I don’t exactly have that luxury while playing in real time. It’s getting frustrating.

I love characters. If you would ask me why I write fiction or read it… why I play the video games I do or like the movies and shows I watch, it’s the characters. I admire the way they are developed through the story, their interactions through dialogs and gestures, and seeing how they grow and change. In a good story, you get to know the characters as if they’re real people and feel interested and invested enough in them to care what happens to them.

Is it such a stretch to think that the reason I love role playing is coming up with and playing a character? I love being the GM to make up and play many roles. Players only get to be one, single hero. I’m feeling like I’m fitting into my role like it’s a few sizes off, and it’s no wonder. I didn’t come up with or chose it. The one bit of creation that a player is allowed is their character, and I was denied that chance.

And so, it’s no wonder I’m thinking of leaving the group. It makes me sad because the players are top-notch. I really like playing with them a lot.

And the GMing isn’t so bad either, it’s just that he inadvertently took away my favorite part of role playing.

A lesson learned, I guess, but it’s a lesson I already learned once before.

In Milford, MA there used to be a gaming store called The Gamers’ Guild. I was in a game once where I was only allowed to play if I took on an existing NPC (non player character). There were two I was able to chose from. I selected the one I thought would be more fun based on her class.

Then, I tried to develop her as a character through playing her. I was told that my character wouldn’t do this or say that. I found out my character had a history and personality and relationships that I wasn’t aware of. Every time I tried to speak or act, I found myself defending my actions to one player in particular. In short, I found out that this wasn’t my character.

Yet again, they were a group of pretty awesome players, but it wasn’t allowed to role play, I was just a warm body rolling for a NPC of someone else’s imagination.

So, I feel like I don’t want to mess up the game by quitting. I also don’t want to stop playing with these neat people, but I’m fast losing interest in trying to play this character. For all of you thinking I should just kill him off, the in game situation makes even that very difficult.

Should next week be my last game? I can overcome any number of other game flaws if I enjoy playing my character, but without that, I’m not sure anything else is enough.

I think it may be time to take up the mantle of GM once again.

Interviewing: The Real Life RTS Game

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I’ve been doing this interview song and dance, and it’s an odd game. You think ET for the Atari 2600 was bad, but this is right up there only with better graphics.

Geek translation: it is hard, not because you are not skilled at video games (or the job you are interviewing for), but because the process itself doesn’t make a whole lot of logical sense.

I’ve been corresponding a bit with Rory on this subject matter, asking advice, which is a bit ironic considering he’s currently unemployed. However, he’s had some really great things to say that have made me a bit less nervous about interviewing and answered some of my WTF questions.

I wanted to share some of the wisdom he’s given me, passing along wisdom to you like the old man in the cave in Zelda giving Link his sword. He gives great advice, telling you not to go alone, and giving you a sword. Link, now sharing the company of a sword that shoots lasers, is better equipped to deal with the issues.

Do not go alone. Allow me to arm you with a laser shooting sword. It will be like carrying Rory with you, only not literally. I mean, technically you’ll still be walking in there and facing moblins and octorocks all alone, but it’s a metaphor you see.
 
So, below you will find some excerpts of emailed advice I edited together. Enjoy!

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Technology Job Interviews: The Real Life RTS
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PART A – Sure, certify, but don’t look like a jerk.
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Get a few certifications – not tons, as it’ll make it look like:
 
1. You’re trying too hard
 
2. You’ve been out of work so long that you’ve had time to get every certification in the book
 
I used to consult for hiring managers, and I was always suspicious of the people who had tons of certifications. In my mind it translated to “No real world experience.”
 
Experience + A few certifications = always good.

 
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PART B – Don’t be too cool for school.
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Attending courses and seminars is important. The best way to make connections and find work is to sleaze your way into an extensive network.

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PART C – Pwn. Don’t be pwned.
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If you don’t feel comfortable, then treat it like a game. It really is a game, anyway. You’re playing an RTS (Real Time Strategy). Your goal is to amass as many resources as possible so you can stomp all over your enemy. Your enemy is, of course, your potential employer. Your employer is not your friend. Your employer will try to get as much work for as little pay out of you as possible.
 
Except…
 
…when you’ve successfully sold yourself.
 
If you get an interview, then walk in with confidence bordering on hubris. Demand pay that’s well above what:
 
1. They want to give you
 
2. What your experience dictates
 
Demanding more makes them want you more. You won’t get what you demand, but you’ll get more than they would have given you otherwise. You also suddenly look more appealing than the other applicants because you have confidence, can back it up, and will stand your ground when they try to screw you.

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PART D – Fuck up, but do it with confidence.
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Be willing to totally fuck up. Go in to your first few networking opportunities without your inhibitions. Make a fool of yourself, but not too much. Do it enough that you’ll feel confident when it’s time to approach people “For Reals”.
 
Where ever you are, target the person in the room with the most influence. People, especially geeks and creative types, are afraid of eye contact and what they perceive to be alpha males/females. Don’t be afraid of these people. Approach them. Ask questions that display your knowledge, but will also appeal to their egos. Anyone who teaches anything, or does any public speaking needs other people to approve of them on a constant basis.
 
The insecure crowd, of which I’m a part, will take every opportunity to talk about themselves, what they know, and how great they are.
 
The people I always remembered from giving my talks were those who approached me afterward, asked a couple questions, taught me something new, and did so without the slightest bit of supplication.
 
Showing nothing but humility to people in charge, especially managers and other morons, will bump you out of the running. They’ll use you for their own purposes for the duration of the interview. Then they’ll either hire you on as a low-paid sycophant, or they’ll never see you again, their personal needs having already been met.
 
When selling yourself, this is what you need to communicate:
 
1. You’re confident because you have every right to be.
 
2. You’re charging what you charge because you’re worth it, and although there are cheaper people out there, they’ll just fuck everything up. You’ll have to be brought in anyway to clean up their messes. This is true. I made a lot of money when people gave in and brought me in to repair all the damage wrought by the unworthy.
 
3. You’re an equal, but not disrespectfully so. You don’t want to appear prostrate. If you do, people sense it, and they will enjoy stepping on you. Put yourself on the same level as them, and use that to fuel your confidence. You aren’t lording your amazingness over the hiring manager, but you’re also not begging.
 
4. MOST IMPORTANT: You can and will make the company money. Demonstrate your value through whatever means you can, and always focus on how you can make them money. That’s the point of hiring you. Applicants get hung up on how much they will make, forgetting that the purpose of the job isn’t to pay people, but to turn them into cash for a business.
 
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PART E – Binary Truth
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While you don’t “have to” lie to get a job, you’re much more likely to get a good job if you mangle the truth a bit. I’m compulsively honest. I’ve shared extremely private thoughts with hundreds of thousands of people, and it doesn’t bother me in the slightest. So, when I tell you all of this, keep that in mind. I’m freakishly devoted to honesty, and maybe you are too.
 
However, in binary, 10 = decimal 2.
 
When you search for a job, you aren’t operating in familiar territory. You’re working in binary, or hexadecimal, or octal, or whatever. The same basic rules apply, but the representations of the values have changed.
 
Tell a child that 10 = 2, and you’ll have a hell of an argument on your hands. But 10 does equal two in the right context.
 
You aren’t lying when you say that 10 = 2. Under normal everyday conditions, 10 = 10, but when you’re working in unfamiliar territory (like binary), 10 = 2 is true.
 
Job seeking takes place in its own pocket of the universe. You deal with humans (kind of), and you probably use English to communicate (here, anyway), but because everybody lies, the baseline for truth is altered.
 
Understand as well that honesty and truth are only barely related.
 
Honesty is what happens when you provide what you believe to be the case without intent to deceive. Truth is absolute.
 
If your code of ethics tells you that being honest is the right thing to do, then being honest is right.
 
Regardless of your personal values, however, you will never be correct in this case.
 
Right and wrong are moral decisions based on those personal values. They’re like honesty.
 
Correct and Incorrect are absolutes like truth. And given how little we really know about the universe, the likelihood that you’re ever going to be correct is infinitesimal.
 
So, you can be right while being grossly incorrect.
 
To map it back to the discussion, you can be honest without telling the truth.
 
The truth is slippery, anyway. Most people would agree that the sky is blue, but, in reality, the sky most certainly is not blue. What’s blue is the light in the shorter wavelengths of the visual spectrum that didn’t get filtered out on their journey down through the atmosphere.
 
You could be honest and say, “The sky is blue.” It wouldn’t be the truth.
 
Now, apply this to the job world. The fact is, you don’t know what other people know. That is, you don’t know where their skill levels truly lie. How do you like that double-meaning? You don’t have nearly enough information to determine how qualified you are or aren’t for a job. Based on the interviews I’ve helped to conduct, I can tell you that the hiring managers sure as hell don’t know what the job is about or whether you’re qualified. They’re lost as anybody.
 
Yeah, they’ll do some talking, and, if they’re smart, they’ll bring in some of their employees who do the same or similar work to what you’d be doing. Even in that case you can’t assume anything. They may have hired entire teams of people who bullshitted their way through the interviews. Most of those people will have some skill, some knowledge, but usually no natural aptitude for their work. So when they question you, they won’t ask the important questions. They don’t know what the important questions are. They just don’t know what in the hell they’re doing.
 
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PART F: Creativity works
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Now we’re going to get you a useful context in which to operate while conducting your search:
 
1. Assume the worst about other people. Most people are average. That’s what average is. They don’t have creativity, and they fake their way through life. If you are creative, you have novel ways of looking at things. Even if you assume that these people have a decent set of skills, creativity is something that can’t be faked. It’s in high demand right now. People are learning that creativity is much more important than many other qualities.
 
This is true.
 
When searching for test pilots to become astronauts, a bunch of pilots with extremely high IQs were rounded up.
 
It was thought that these pilots would do the best job of reacting to the unexpected, and since the unexpected is what awaited these people, an aptitude for handling crazy situations was required.
 
When these guys were tested, it was found that they reacted horribly. IQ tests are based on certain basic perceptual faculties, certain intellectual abilities, and so on. It’s all very linear.
 
These tests don’t measure creativity. There’s a French version that gets into creativity, but where logic and math puzzles can have “correct” answers, creativity isn’t so easy to measure.
 
The guys up in those planes could think their way through a situation, but they couldn’t feel their way through. And when the world is going terribly wrong terribly quickly, thinking through a problem is too, too, much too slow.
 
The high IQ pilots were replaced with a bunch of nuts. It turns out the wild, crazy pilots did much better. These are guys who had probably never tied their shoelaces the same way twice. They came up with new approaches to problems as a matter of daily routine. They were built for the unexpected.
 
Creativity is huge. Anyone can learn the linear aspect of assembling projects, but nobody can learn to be creative. You either are or you aren’t. If you have it, have confidence in that and value it over experience.
 
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PART G: KNOW
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2. Assume that the hiring managers don’t know what they’re talking about. This is nearly always the case. Even at Microsoft, managers sweat like mad over hires. It’s because they do not know what they’re doing. This is the corporate world. This is the business world. If the hiring managers are asking you what you want or what you’d like, it’s because they’re looking to you to provide guidance. They don’t know what to do, so they’re letting you run part of the interview. Take this and run with it. Or create this situation. But do your best to make it feel like it was their decision. That is, pick up on hints, questions, and so on, and work them into your game. Expand on their ideas for them. Where they drop off, pick up.
 
3. KNOW that you’re every bit as capable, if not much more so, as the other employees. Every job is a learning experience. You are NOT expected to know everything. You just have to demonstrate that you’ve got something going on and that you have the aptitude/skill/interest/determination to turn it into something bigger and better.
 
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PART H: Conclusion
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4. Don’t forget that 10 == 2. Job Hunt Reality is different than Reality. The values are changed. People have lied to the point that colors are swapped, humans breathe methane, dogs speak Italian, and so on. It’s all very Alice in Wonderland. You aren’t lying when you present a falsehood. You’re being honest in an unfamiliar context. Ask yourself what you believe about the situation. Do you believe that you deserve the job? Then you do. Do you believe that you can do the job as well or better than anyone else on the team? Then you can. It’s that simple.
 
Have fun. Treat it like a game. Look at your life as an experiment and take risks. If you’re already unemployed or have a job you don’t like, can it get any worse? Give new things a shot and trust yourself. Follow through even when you’re nervous. If you’re nervous, it probably means you’re taking a risk. Taking risks is the only way to stand above everybody else. Sometimes it works out, and sometimes you get stabbed in the face by a narwhal. That’s what risk is: it’s a potentially big win or a potentially big loss. It isn’t random or entirely up to chance. It’s up to you, your discretion, and your abilities whether a risk can succeed or not.
 
Don’t feel down because you fall on your face a few times. You’ll do that, maybe a lot. But there are jobs out there, and people need people to work them. People work jobs. Tons of people have jobs.
 
If those people have jobs, then you can have a job, too. There’s nothing magical about it. You just do it.