Subway Thumbing

The fingers around this subway pole have chipped purple nail polish--seemingly quite a few days old.  I wonder if you could plot that out consistantly.  Like, 35% coverage means six days.   It matches her yellow eye shadow--that is, if she were a Lakers fan.  I doubt it.  She's reading a comic book--graphic novel rather.  Mice with sunglasses are in the one flopped over panel that I can see.  The man next to her is trying to man a call as we cross the Manhattan bridge.  It doesn't seem to be working.  He is reading an article in the paper about some kid hit with a stray bullet that just got out of the hospital.  I wish someone would adopt all these stray bullets--or at least spay or neuter them to help control the bullet population.  Airwalks.  That's what she's wearing.  Bronx mother admits to fatally bashing tot.  Poor tot.  Never had a chance.  Canal St.  Asians get off, hipsters get on.  Sudden turn...  I nearly fell over but I grabbed he pole just in time.  It was good aim because there were five hands on the pole already.  Comic girl is sleeping standing up.  For some reason I think everyone knows I'm writing about this subway car.  I'll stop now.  The jig is up.

She dreams in digital: Dating on and off the grid

I dated someone once who tried getting to know me better by going back and reading every single one of my blog posts from day one--back in February 2004.  Whenever she would confuse the events of the present time with something that she read about years ago, I'd say, "No, that was Paralell Charlie."  To her, the near-daily account of my thoughts was backstory--years of context to compliment her realtime experience of me.  Facebook photos work the same way--visual evidence of the rest of the life of this stranger you just shared dinner with.  What's more is that it's all content not curated to impress--at least less so than date banter.  It's the animal in its natural digital habitat--to the extent that their digital self represents their true nature. 

It's certainly better than nothing.  In fact, it's so much better than nothing that sometimes I wonder how anyone ever gets to know anyone who is basically off the grid.   It feels so forced and unnatural.   You have to ask someone about their day and what was on their mind--manually!--instead of just commenting on it directly.  To make plans to hangout, you have to call them.  How obnoxiously disruptive! 

Ever think about introducing yourself on the subway?  Ask them to unplug from their iPod to talk to a stranger in mid-sardine can transport with no ability to Ignore or Block?   Yeah, right.  How would they know who I was if they couldn't Google me?  BTW, exactly what day was it that it became creepier *not* to have a web presence?

The web is so much more casual.  It's timeless and asynchronous.  A real life first date can feel like a race against the clock.   Will you score enough points before to time runs out to stay alive or will you fail to reach the next round?  Maybe you didn't find that shared interest as you were blindly feeling around in the dark of uninformed, non-prestalked meatspace conversation. 

The idea of being judged based on dinner, drinks, or a single pithy pickup line feels almost unfair.  I have a whole body of work--over five years of blogging, two plus years of Tweeting and thousands of Flickr photos.  I'm a person, dammit... look at all these ones and zeros--I have proof!  See, published character depth! 

"How did you meet?"

Nowadays, it goes something like this, "Well, I found her after searching a keyword that I'm interested on Twitter.  I clicked around to her Facebook, saw that she was attractive, seemed to have a nice *normal* group of friends, no upside down keg photos.  I started following her blog and her Twitter.  Then, I waited until I had something genuinely useful and relevent to say--something I wanted to say not something I felt I had to say in the pressure of the moment.  That began a short, but interesting, online conversation and then we decided to take it into the real world.  We had real conversation, over a delicious meal, based on things we already knew about each other.  "

How did we ever meet anyone before the internet?

Be an asskicker

Someone sent a note to the nextNY list about how he was unemployed and looking to work for a startup--how it was really hard to find something.  He sent a link to a piece he wrote on a site about being unemployed.

This was my response:

"So the one link you send us is on a site about being unemployed?

Why on earth would you market yourself as an unemployed guy?  In your first instance of participation in this group, you cast yourself as laid off and desperate.  Who wants to hire an unemployed person?

No one.

If I showed up to a date and the girl introduces herself by saying, "I've just been going on nothing but first dates and they never work out...   I'm so desperate to find someone" I'd be looking for the door in a heartbeat.

We all want to hire someone who kicks ass at something.  If you do not kick ass at anything, you should at least be in the process of learning how to kick ass at something.  Startups, or frankly any company for that matter, cannot afford to hire a non-asskicking generalist.

Think of it this way...  If you know the media, perhaps you could have spent the last five months doing free PR and marketing for a handful of startups.  You weren't working anyway.  The goal would be to be so good at it that one of those companies can't help but hire you--or some other company would hire you because they noticed how good you were at it--or worst case you'd suck at it but you'd really learn something.

Forget pursuing.  Spend 110% of your time honing some kind of value proposition that you'd be a no-brainer hire for.

Forget the "I'm unemployed" shtick and work on the being awesome without advertising the fact that you are awesome to everyone.  If you do not know what awesomeness is, try and figure out who the top 30 most awesome people in the NY tech scene are and interview them.  Publish the interviews on your blog.  Make a list and publish it.  Here are my suggestions:  David Karp, Anthony Volodkin, Chris Hughes...

And God help you if I see your blog and it's yourname.blogspot.com.  To be awesome, you must splurge for the $13 domain name."

Why aren't you striving to be a leader in your field?

I went to a very selective high school--Regis High School in New York City--and from very early on I was intimidated by my peers.  Our class was made up of the top 130 or so students out of nearly 1000 boys who took the test to get in.   I felt like I was #130, particularly at the speech and debate tryouts, where the guys waiting next to me were debating some political topic I wasn't even aware of.  For four years, I basically tried to hangout somewhere in the middle--and the top of the class both in terms of leadership and academics seemed unattainable to me. 

Fast forward four years and after an amazing internship, I felt ready to take on the world.  My time at Fordham was all about leadership.  I started a newspaper, ran clubs, interned, etc.  At the end of my time there, I was selected to be one of the top seven student leaders in my year.

So what changed?

It was a few things for me.  First, I didn't think I was capable of leadership--so why try if you're pretty sure you're going to fail, right?  Second, I never really saw a path to leadership.  I didn't really know where there were opportunities for leadership.  It was only when I got to college that I realized the third point--that you can create your own opportunities for leadership.  I had an idea for a newspaper about business in college and so I just went after it.  I did the research, figured out what I needed to do, and it was easier than I thought.

I'm curious about other people, though. 

If I said that the top people in your field, at your experience level, are active participants professional societies, write popular blogs about your industry, get asked to write articles for magazines and regularly speak on conference panels, that's probably a reasonable estimation of what it means to be on top, right? 

One would assume that such a person in a visible leadership position would basically be able to call their own shots in terms of the direction of their career, right?  If nothing else, they'd certainly be less likely to be laid off.

So, my question is why wouldn't everyone be setting that as a goal?  Of course 99% of people don't take a
look at their own industry and say "I'm want to be the most highly sought after person in this field... be recognized as an expert, and call my own shots."

But why don't they--specifically?

Is it because...

a) It seems like a big risk, because if you try and put yourself out there, you could fall on your face.

b) It seems like an awful lot of work and you don't have a ton of extra time.

c) You feel ok about your career and you don't really see the value in being one of those top people.

d) That seems like a good path, but you really don't know how or where you'd really start on a path like that.

e) Some other reason.

 

I'm curious...   Ask your friends that you think highly of, but who don't strive for leadership.  Ask yourself.  I really want to identify the causes.  I suspicion is that it's more of an information problem (what to do, where to do it, perception vs reality of taking career risks).

I'm thinking she died for a reason...

I wrote a post about losing our family dog that now has nearly 100 comments on it...mostly dead dog stories.

Listen to this story...

"well i had a dog in kindgarden threw 4th grade and it was hit by a car in those grades i didnt have any friends and it was my only friend i would talk to her i would pet her for hours she was my only and best friend i loved her dearly the day i was told she died i cried for months but right after she died i made my human best friend and then other and now im 13 and have alot of friends and im thinking she died for a reason. R.I.P buttercup"

a lifetime burning in every moment

"It is, I think, that we are all so alone in what lies deepest in our souls, so unable to find the words, and perhaps the courage to speak with unlocked hearts, that we dont know at all that it is the same with others." Sheldon Vanauken, A Severe Mercy"

a lifetime burning in every moment

The most trivial thing I am world class at...

I can stay on my feet like nobody's business. I don't mean in terms of taking a punch. I mean that I never slip and fall to the ground. There have been too many times to count, like with dress shoes on ice or misstepping up a flight of stairs, where I say to myself "Wow, I can't believe I didn't fall flat on my face there." In particular, when something causes one of my feet to just completely wipe out, I'm incredibly good at shifting my weight and recovering without a fall. In fact, I sometimes think that I'm so good at it that I might be the best person in the world at doing that one tiny insigificant thing--not falling when a foot that I'm planting on loses traction.

Do you ever have that? Where you do something totally random so incredibly well over and over again where you think that you may very well be the best person in the entire world at it?

Fifty People, One Question: Brooklyn

Fifty People, One Question: Brooklyn from Fifty People, One Question on Vimeo.

 

I hadn't seen this before.  It's really amazing.  The woman in the blue scarf pictured above gives my favorite answer--a world where every closet connects to someone else's closet and you can use it to travel to meet someone new and have breakfast with them.

That's kind of how I think of Twitter.  I wonder if she Twitters.  Probably.

Subway Thumbing

Long eyelashes and a long thin smile...pointed nose just like the guy she's with. He's in a dusty Yankee cap. They are both too casually dressed to still be single. I can't see her hand but they must be married. My view is blocked by the baby carriage turned towards them, awning and plastic weatherproofing raised to expose the baby in pink. It belongs to the woman next to them.

They are making funny faces at the baby. I can only see an arm poking out the side--tiny fingers pointing. Mom was a tattoo on her hand and a ring under her bottom lip--just a stud. She has big star earrings. The couple is chatting between themselves now. She has pulled down the hood of her coat. She has a single blonde streak across her otherwise brunette hair. They're nuzzling and he's kissing the top of her head as she buries it in his chest.

She's back to the baby now...and back to him. She makes a comment and he responds with a kiss. I can't hear because Alphaville is playing Forever Young in my ears.

Mom is tired. She yawns. She has a small piece of rolling luggage with her next to the carriage. The baby has thrown something on the floor. She pushes the carriage back to find it, exposing yellow leather boots.

The woman in the couple next to them is tapping the Yankee cap with her arm outstretched behind her against the subway car window. Her nail polish is very dark--almost black but not quite. Her nails are short.

The baby has an Elmo. I yawn myself and my eyes tear up as they always do when I yawn. The couple exits at Pacific Street. Elmo is dancing now--in rhythm with mom's arm. I can see the baby in the reflection of the subway door window. I didn't realize that before. Mom leans back. She seems a bit pregnant actually, but it could be her coat. Oh. Definitely not her coat.

Ted talk: Barry Schwartz: The real crisis? We stopped being wise