Another Banner Year

I started writing this blog in December 2005. In fact, my “blogoversary” (don’t judge me, I didn’t coin that term) was on December 18^th with “My First Blog Entry – Ever!” That post and these past ten years overall are a time capsule of sorts. This was never intended to be that; it was never intended to be anything, at least not anything I could put my finger on. It was just something I decided to do (that happens a lot in my life – it’s not always a good thing). In rereading that first post, all of my naiveté, my enthusiasm, my not-so-youthful exuberance and my inexperience all shine through. I have written more than 550 original posts since that day – hundreds of thousands of words – and all are part of me. I have written the vast majority of my words in the past 12 years, only some of which are posted in my blog. Much of that work can be found in the various newspapers I once worked for, some in the academic papers I’ve written (some of which were accepted for presentation at regional and national academic conferences), some of my words are hand-written and lost forever and, of course, since Facebook has conquered the world, much can be found there as well. In my second post I revealed why I named this blog “The 25 Year Plan” and why I started it in the first place. I also revealed more about myself and in doing so I set one of the more particular, more defined directions this body of work would take. Reflection.

The subtitle for this blog is “Perspectives, Purpose & Opinion.” While it still is certainly that, it was much more so in the earlier years. In more recent years it is more about my life and what it all means than anything else. To be clear, I’ll write about anything and post it here, but I don’t write just for the sake of writing like I used to. I wasn’t exactly young when I started this and I am ten years older now – my idealism is heavily tempered by realism. Furthermore, the blog forum, or what it once was anyway, has been usurped by more sound-bite sized Facebook posts. I am “accused” of writing too much (or using too many words, or taking too much of others’ time, or whatever…) on Facebook often enough to notice it. But it seems that prior to the globalization of the world through Facebook, the “blogosphere” (again, not my term) was the place to get deep and really think about what our positions are… and why. It was the critical thinker’s version of online discussion and, for the most part, is was also civil. However, I have written blog-sized Facebook posts and I do get a fair number of readers who actually do engage with what I write. Civil discussions often ensue. It is good. But returning to what this blog is about in its current manifestation, I’d say it’s that middle term in the subtext, “purpose.”

The term, “blog,” is actually a consolidation of two words, “web” and “log.” A “log” is an accounting, a record of what has transpired; the term can be captured in a line often heard from Captain James T. Kirk in Star Trek – “Captain’s Log, Stardate 93601.3” A blog, therefore, is an online journal. At least that what they started out as. This one still is and, to a certain extent, is even more so today. That purpose written into the subtitle is most often revealed through reflection and, for me, the best way to access that is by writing. Subsequently and instantly sharing my thoughts with the world through the quasi-magic of the Internet doesn’t change the real magic created by the written words. Like Captain Kirk’s log, my blog (and other writing) tells me where I’ve been and helps me understand what it means. It is about discovering that elusive purpose.

As today is the final day of 2015, it is appropriate to look back over the previous year and give it some context. While I haven’t done a year-end reflection faithfully here, I have, in some way and in some place written something about every year for the past several years. Since I really started to write in mid-2003, my life has been pretty amazing – and amazing is not necessarily amazingly good. It was for a while. For a few years in a row I would write that “This past year has been the best year ever, and next year looks even better.” And then the next year was – until it wasn’t. In my reflection last year, I realized I turned a corner that I predicted would happen a year prior, but that prior year and the one or two before were not good years. The details can be gleaned from my past writings, it serves no purpose to go into it here, but it is worth noting that all the turmoil I either created or walked into (some of both) came… and left. And when it left it left me a little beaten, a little bruised, a little stronger and a whole lot wiser. Did I want to be stronger and wiser? To be perfectly honest, I could have done without the pain and what came from it, but since I cannot go back in time and change anything, at least I did gain some more perspective, some more purpose and formed a number of new opinions. This year started off with some challenges and some new hurdles came along as the year progressed – nothing really new under the sun there – but like 2014 was, and faithful to my prediction that 2015 would be, it has come to pass. This has been a very good year and… 2016 looks like it will be even better.

Peace.

Ghost Towns

I’ve been doing some cyber housecleaning lately. That includes moving and reconfiguring various things ranging from the physical hardware components of my electronic “self” to the intangible binary ones and zeroes that combine in infinite combinations to constitute the vastness of my recorded experience. Just as an aside, as vast as that vastness is, it is but a drop in the bucket of my overall life experience. That is, what is held in my physiological, emotional and spiritual databases exceeds by many orders of magnitude my experience stored as electromagnetic ones and zeroes on electronic storage devices. But that’s not what this is about. Despite my cyber-life being a small fraction of my life overall, it is still a huge amount of what we understand to be data in the age of information. Moving it, reorganizing it, and ever so cautiously deleting much of it turned out to be all consuming, not just time consuming. Added to this task one must also consider the various and sundry virtual rabbit holes that demand to be explored… the adventure becomes almost real.

For the last couple of hours I have been in one such rabbit hole. It used to have a name – it was once called the “Blogosphere.” Not unlike Alice’s Wonderland, this blog-world has many curious things in it. It is an old world, almost ancient when placed into its Internet evolutionary place. It is also an eerie, odd place. It is a place I once new very well, but like so much else of late, the Blogosphere is barely recognizable to me anymore. It is evolving and its ancient remnants are disappearing, disintegrating, decomposing. Even the name, “Blogosphere,” no longer means anything to those who were not there. And like it, we are disappearing, too. No, we are not generally so old yet to be physically dying off like the civilizations of antiquity, but with the new, we are abandoning - we have abandoned - the old. And all that data… That indestructible data that was supposed to be immune to the deterioration of time – no pages to rot, no ink to fade, instant, error free and precise replication. We created a form of data storage and transmission that would never fade away. And yet, the Blogosphere, like Myspace, Tripod, Compuserve, AOL, and the computer bulletin boards of the early Internet are not just fading from memory; they are fading completely, physically.

That’s where this particular rabbit hole led me today. I was walking through the blog wasteland, pouring through old bookmarks – some almost ten years old now, and finding too much death, too much desertion, too much decay. The Blogosphere as I once knew it is all but dead, replaced now by “blogs” that are nothing more than any other website. I remember seeing it coming. I remember when adding links, pictures, sound, and other now very elementary objects to blogs took a considerable amount of know-how and effort. And I remember when progress came. It came slowly at first; we could “drag and drop” a photo into our text. Hyperlinks, imbedded video and advertisements came along and, like a snowball barreling down a mountainside, the “progress” could not be stopped. Soon, other platforms entirely replaced blogs and even mainstay blogs like Blogger and Wordpress became yet another “user-friendly” platform to build a website. And, let us not forget the ultimate in efficiency and utility, Facebook. Now anything longer than a one-minute video, a collection of any more than four of five pictures and certainly anything more than 20 words is too much to be bothered with, especially when the next item in the “newsfeed” will take only 3.4 seconds to consume.

I have a list of links to blogs I used to frequent on a regular basis. The authors of those blogs would visit mine regularly as well. The Blogosphere was more of a Blogoverse with various discrete communities, or Blogospheres, populating it. Every different community had its own character and not unlike the real world, there was plenty of intersection amongst various different communities. After just now visiting those in my community, I have found that most have moved away - and many without a trace. A handful still have a presence on the Internet, their sites are still there, but they were left abandoned with no new activity for the past three, four, five or more years. Some left a “farewell” post with a forwarding address consisting of their Facebook profiles. Others indicate they have created new blogs, the links to which are equally dead. Some URLs are “for sale” and some forward to non-existent places or, weirder still, foreign language sites that have seemingly nothing to do with the URL or the name of the site. Squatters have taken over, or, perhaps it is the cyber equivalent of overgrown foliage taking over a once thriving homestead. For the most part, my old neighborhood is a ghost town.

This is progress. I am as much a part of this mass migration away from this pivotal Internet building block as I was a contributor to its creation. My last post in this blog, The 25 Year Plan (now just shy of its 10^th anniversary), was last June. Prior to that, I was more prolific than in recent years, but of the 550+ posts written since this blog’s inception, the vast majority were written in the first five years. I have not visited another blog on my “blogroll” (my “neighbors”) in many, many months, probably some years. And I cannot remember the last time I read a post or left a comment on someone else’s blog. Progress. For my part, I do not limit my Facebook presence to sound-bite sized posts, although many are. I remember where I came from, I value the power of the written word. In owe much to the Blogosphere and my neighbors there. Some moved to Facebook, too, and we are “friends” there. But I bet they would tell you it’s not the same.

For many, it is difficult, perhaps even inconceivable to imagine that a platform such as Facebook will ever be relegated to an Internet ghost town. And maybe, just maybe Mark Zuckerberg found that perfect formula that will stand the test of time. I wouldn’t bet on it, though. Something different, probably even easier and faster than Facebook will come down the pike. It will probably, with the speed of technology today, happen even faster than anyone can predict. It will blindside us. Many will find themselves wandering around the Facebook ghost town, much like the Myspace ghost towns today, wondering what happened. It’s progress.

Jack of all Trades, Master of Some

This LinkedIn update is intended for potential employers. Since I am currently seeking employment, it is reasonable to expect potential employers to look here and other places in which I have an online presence. While much of my writing, research, interests and perhaps a little too much of my personal life over the last ten years can be found by a simple search of my name (the top three hits in a recent Google search return my LinkedIn profile, my blog site and my Facebook profile), there is much more to my story than what can be found by clicking those links. LinkedIn reveals my basic biographical information, my blog showcases a specific style of my writing (but requires much more time to digest than a busy hiring manager has), and my Facebook profile is largely private unless one is in my “friends” list. But even if it was all was public, my story, as depicted online, is fragmented, disjointed and incomplete. This essay cannot even begin to fill in the gaps, but it can offer some context, it can help put a frame around what many consider to be an “interesting life;” it is designed to both mitigate any negative preconceptions as well as promote myself as a hard-working, creative, intelligent, compassionate and driven asset to any employer.

On October 17^th, 2000, I was involved in a violent head-on collision that nearly took my life. I not only could have died, according to many, I should have. While I have no clear memory of that incident almost 15 years ago, I clearly remember regaining consciousness in the hospital five weeks later. Up until that time, my employment history entailed several jobs that spanned everything from manual labor to upper management in a Silicon Valley tech firm. I fixed cars, worked sheet metal, tuned microwave electronics, developed new products for that tech firm before moving into the marketing manager position for that same company, built and configured personal computers, worked as a machinist/model maker and, at the time of my accident, I was running a cellular phone store when digital cellular was still relatively new. Experience and specific vocational educational targets, along with learning my craft as I worked was sufficient to not only secure employment, but also excel at everything I undertook. My brush with death stopped me in my tracks and it would be almost three years before I was rehabilitated enough to begin my life again. I was 40 years old.

I discovered the job market changed in ways that were completely unfamiliar to me in just three years. For the first time in my life I was not able to secure employment easily, at will. Indeed, I was not able to secure it at all. The economy, a three-year gap in my employment history and the lack of a college degree compelled me to return to college in the fall of 2003. I have been there ever since. In the winter of 2007 I was awarded a BA in government-journalism from California State University, Sacramento (magna cum laude) and during that time, in a way that paralleled my former employment opportunities, turned a journalism internship into a part-time job. While that job was amongst the most personally rewarding I have ever had, it was not sufficiently financially rewarding. I decided to go back to school to earn a master’s degree in communication studies. My plan upon graduation was to secure full-time employment as a professor while still writing news part-time. I taught at CSUS while working on my MA, but instead of entering the “real world” upon completion of my MA, I applied for doctoral programs at several universities. I accepted an offer from Louisiana State University in the fall of 2011. Until last June, I was living in Baton Rouge, LA while teaching and studying at LSU.

After four years at LSU, my doctoral coursework is complete. I plan to have a dissertation ready to defend at some point in 2016. I have taught hundreds of students at both LSU and CSUS in many of the various arts and sciences found under the umbrella of “communication studies.” My students found in me what any potential employer will also find – an individual who brings a breadth of experience into everything he does. I am equally comfortable in the classroom, the boardroom and the garage. My forté is not just the ability to communicate effectively, but to do so with an ethos my target audience can identify with. Furthermore, through my research – not specifically what I have researched, but rather the fact that I have extensive experience with research - I am able to learn and understand complex ideas quickly and, most importantly, analyze, synthesize and present those ideas coherently in terms that others can easily understand.

Finally, it is important to say a few words about not my words found on the Internet, but my pictures. My profile picture for LinkedIn is a “head shot” taken by a photographer for Prosper Magazine when I was one of several student bloggers chosen to cover the Perspectives 2006 event in Sacramento, CA. While I am dressed professionally, and although I was working in a professional, albeit unpaid, capacity, some might view my hair style as anything but professional. It should come as no surprise that I respectfully disagree; however, I am not blind to the realities of the world. A potential employer might find this essay compelling, could see my experience – educational, professional and personal – as a valuable asset to his or her organization, but might also feel that my appearance is not in line with what that organization is trying to portray. I’ll be perfectly honest here. I have had long hair most of my life. I don’t know why, but it seems to be an extension of my creativity. Having said that, I am not Samson. Cutting my hair does not in any way diminish who I am, what I can do or my value. If offered a job, my hair is on the table, so to speak.

Now more than 1,000 words into this work, I would hope that any potential employer who has read thus far is interested in what I could bring to any organization. It is perhaps serendipitous that George Anders’ article in Forbes Magazine, “That 'Useless' Liberal Arts Degree Has Become Tech's Hottest Ticket,” ran yesterday. I am looking for work; I look forward to the opportunity to apply my “interesting life” in a meaningful way.

When Things are Cool

I have been back home in California for about two weeks now. I retook possession of my house in the unincorporated Sacramento suburb of Fair Oaks a about a week ago. Although I have been home for some time now, the moving-in process has taken - and will take  - a while. This is a luxury – most moves have a finite window where all stuff must be packed, transferred and unpacked within a certain (usually short) time frame. I have time. Time to resettle. Time to reestablish connections. Time relearn the lay of the land. Time to assess to the various and sundry interpersonal dynamics that I am connected with. Time to observe those I am not connected to. Time. For the time being, lots of it.

This time, however, does not come without its costs. It feels like an undeserved vacation in some ways. And, as far as vacations are concerned, this would be a “working vacation,” except that I do not have a job. I have work to do, plenty of it, but it is not work in the traditional sense – traditional meaning that I get paid for it. I am unemployed by design (in part), but uncomfortably so. It’s been a while since I have been so gainfully unemployed and I didn’t think it would feel like this. And “this” is, at best, uncomfortable.

But it is temporary. Soon enough I’ll be working full-time in some as yet unknown capacity while working on completing my dissertation. For those who have been following along – yep, it’s not done yet. It’s really hardly even started. I’ve gone from being excited about doing it to not even wanting to do it to where I am right now - needing to know if it’s even in me. For better or for worse, the only way to know that is to do it. But there is more to it than that. Completing a PhD is, for someone like me, a veritable miracle. It wasn’t supposed to happen. It was not not in the cards, the deck didn’t even exist. It is my personal holy grail – and I can almost touch it.

I spent the entire last year not writing my dissertation. It’s not entirely unheard of, but the odds are that those who do not finish while they are at school (as opposed to those who go elsewhere or home to “finish”) are much less likely to ever complete. I don’t have those stats handy, I cannot offhand cite any studies, but they do exist and, moreover, it makes sense. But there are those who do finish despite the odds. My guess is that they are the ones who have been regularly defying the odds their entire lives. I know I have. We are the ones who are forever presenting researchers with those pesky “outliers;” we are the ones who prevent them from saying things like “all,” “always,” “none” or “never.”

So, as I reflect on what I just wrote, I wonder what it is all about. I mean, I am the author – I should know, right? I don’t. I am trying to get a grip on life, a life that at present is unusually calm, drama-free and serene. I don’t expect it to last (we odds-beaters tend to do everything the hard way), but for now things are cool. Maybe that’s all this is about.

Blind

Words, for me, are powerful. They are not just powerful in what they do, have done and are capable of doing, but they are also my power. Putting words together with punctuation in a way that makes sense is art. There is beauty in writing such that words can be assembled in near infinite ways that mean essentially the same thing, but those that are beautifully arranged carry much greater impact. And in the big picture of writing, while this craft is the one that picked me, the one I hold some talent for, my ability falls woefully short when compared to the great writers of our time and throughout history. However, I read recently that it does not do to aspire to be the next great Hemmingway, or Maugham, or even Shakespeare, but rather I should aspire to be the first great me. Of course, actions still speak louder than words and what people do say more about their character than what they say, but history shows in ways both great and small that it is often words that inspire people to act – and they often inspire them to greater versions of themselves than they thought possible. I know from personal experience it is true for me. I have been inspired into action by the words of others.

It is a double-edged sword, however. This “gift,” this super-power, my very strength can also be my downfall, my greatest weakness. Some of that is a necessary evil, a curse, if you will, that with art there will be some who view those versed in that art with disdain. That exists, and it might even be truer of the “academic” arts, but it’s not the norm. The larger problem comes from within; it comes from me. It is also a problem that mirrors denial – part of the problem is a blindness that says there isn’t a problem. And it’s not that my writing isn’t thoughtful, it’s not that there is not an inherent truth in everything I write, but like any other art, it is very reflective of where my mind is at the time the work is produced, and depending on the type of writing it is, the oversight process varies from extensive to none at all. My Facebook posts tend to be extremely temporal, they are produced on the fly with not a lot of scrutiny – in a way they are the most truthful in terms of my psyche in the given moment. The essays I write for The 25 Year Plan are, by their very nature, more scrutinized; they are intended to be more detailed and as such I review them and edit them and, often, soften them – to a point. But, like my Facebook posts, they are more reflective of my internal state than the professional or academic work I produce. I believe that, by and large, the best art is spawned from trouble, it reflects the universals of the human condition as portrayed in specific and individual life experiences. I have had some of those, and I have written about them.

Up to about three or four years ago, the general theme in my personal essays (most of which can be found in my archives here), was positive. While they document certain life experiences I’ve had, for the most part those experiences are of a redemptive nature. Even when I’ve struggled, I found a way through it and came away with some nugget, something that added to my life in a meaningful way. Beginning sometime in late 2011 or early 2012 that optimism started to fade. Although I held onto it for most of 2012, by early 2013 I had life experiences I wouldn’t wish on anyone. My writing started to take a darker turn. It wasn’t any less artistic, and what I wrote about was absolutely real, truthful and as universally indicative of the human condition as can be, but that darkness enveloped all areas of my life to one degree or another. The one that came home to roost is this apparent need to condemn not only those who crossed me, but also others who, in my view, acted in certain ways that were less than honorable. I transferred my indignation for a very limited few onto many others – usually namelessly and in abstraction, but nonetheless I entered a period of justification and condemnation.

Perhaps if I call it what most others do, it would make more sense. I tend to stay away from the word “judgment” because it is more ambiguous than condemnation. But for the purposes of this, and very much in keeping with one of the more common connotations of the word, “judgment” is appropriate. And even in making this qualification, it could be viewed as arrogance that, up until very recently, I did not feel I deserved. But I’ll just go on the record and call it what it is – judgment. And through my justification I was blind to it. I can be assertive, I can even be direct and sometimes I can be an asshole, but when I am those things as a result of looking down on another person because of that person’s behavior, I am in judgment. While I never claimed to be perfect, I would insinuate that because I never did “that” or because I have “progressed” beyond doing it anymore, I am better. I don’t consciously believe I am better than anyone else, but for certain “anyone elses,” because they did certain things to me I that I felt I would never do... yes, I went there. The problem is that, while I have a right to hold certain opinions about those who did directly and intentionally harm me, I expanded that to those who did not. And while it is obvious in hindsight, I didn’t know I was doing it at the time.

And here is the really fucked up part. I do not truly believe that I am a better human being than anyone else. While I do certain things better than others and others do certain things better than me, and I have behaviors that could be viewed as more honorable and some that can be viewed as less so, too often I still come up short by my own assessment. And I am certainly as subject to being (and have been) judged as anyone else. It does not mean I have to appreciate those who entered my world and fucked it up, it does not mean I have to trust them, but it also does not mean that those things done - be it to me or anyone else - make anyone necessarily a “bad” person. Bad to me? Sure. But just bad? That’s not for me to decide. Really. If others were to apply the same standards to me as I have to others, even though they would have to pick a different poison because my terms do not apply to me (that’s what makes judgment possible), there are terms available that do apply. And, truth be told, I often judge myself negatively against those applicable standards, too.

This entire revelation has been as enlightening as it has been painful. With the clarity of hindsight, I can see the effects. I have pushed some people away. Also, because of this ability to use words so effectively, I might have made it extremely difficult for anyone to approach me and say anything about it. I’d surely have a well-articulated justification for my view. While my self-righteousness might have been a defense mechanism (and, in certain isolated cases, justified), it is no longer serving me. Although I do not excuse the indiscretions done to me, I am in a place where those acts can no longer justify my arrogance. They say “hurt people hurt people,” but I didn’t see what I was doing as that. I see it now and, fortunately, this curse I have been gifted with works equally well to make me a better person today – compared only to who I was yesterday.

One More Time

I used to write this sort of writing a lot. Not once a week, not twice a week, but more like every two or three days, on average. Furthermore, I was doing it when I also had quite a lot of other writing to do – first (and continuously) for school projects that became increasingly more complex as I moved from undergraduate to graduate study. But I was also writing here as I was writing (from 2006 to 2008) as a newspaper staff writer, reporting and writing for a weekly local newspaper. In 2006 and 2007 I wrote more than 250 original blog posts – essays, really – that were mostly about my experiences, perception, revelations and opinions. Or, as this blog’s subtitle suggests, “Perspectives, Purpose & Opinion.” In the next three years combined I produced less than those first two combined and from 2011 to right now my production has been sporadic, at best.

The overall blog content for this online journal never had a defined plan. I wrote (and write) mostly about what is on my mind – some of it so bad I’m embarrassed to claim it, but some of it so insightful that I am honestly surprised it came out of my head. With rare exception, however, it all remains (though when I catch typos in older work, I do fix them). It isn’t about producing excellence in isolation, but more about an ongoing narrative, the near real-time telling of a story that now spans more than nine years. To put that into perspective, I have publicly documented part of nearly 20 percent of my private life. And this year, so far, while not nearly as productive as those earlier years, is off to the best start since 2011. No plan, still, but I’d like to pick up the pace.

And what better time? So much is going on, so much is about to change, so much work is left to do and so much of that gets sorted out right here. I didn’t know that was what I was doing when I started this project. I don’t really know what I was doing. And that is nothing new; it is, for better (sometimes) and worse (too often), a defining factor in why my life has turned so many times. Starting over has been a living place for me and, to be perfectly frank, I am tired of picking up the pieces and reassembling myself. To be fair, this last reassembly has been much more thorough, yielded far greater success and is not finished yet. The changes coming down the road are positive (if, to some degree, heart-wrenching) and build upon what I have already established. In other words, I am not starting from scratch this time nor have I burnt any bridges. But… it’s a lot of change all at once and while I don’t exactly feel as though I am facing it alone, a significant part of it necessarily means just that.

I’ve been on a bit of an emotional roller coaster. There is some trepidation, some excitement, some anticipation and some dread all taking turns at the front of the line. I am torn between two places that are more than 2,000 miles apart. I have friends and family who love me and whom I love very much in both places. My decision to move back to Sacramento was based on numerous factors, but there were absolutely pros and cons – it was not a slam-dunk by any measure. And, to inject a little more honesty, I had no idea that I would develop the intimacy I have with the friends I made while living in Baton Rouge. These friends mean as much to me as do my close friends do in California or anywhere else and I wish I could have them all in one place.

I have learned so much in the last four years in particular; what I have studied as a doctoral student is only the tip of the iceberg. I have learned more about life, about me and about love than I ever knew I could. It wasn’t always easy, in fact, it rarely was. I have a restored faith in humanity not because I have read so much about it, but because I have seen it in action amid all the destruction, all the despair, all the hate not just in the world, but also in my very own little piece of it. I would not go so far identify as an optimist, but I have moved far away from pessimism, through idealism and maybe, just maybe beyond realism. What I have, especially after the weekend I just had, is hope and love. And today, that is enough rebuild one more time.

The Phoenix

Today is a defining moment in my life. Today marks the end of my eighth semester at Louisiana State University. Although I will still be enrolled for another two semesters, and while I am still technically a student, I have come to the end of both teaching and taking classes at LSU. I will be enrolled because I still have yet to clear the final hurdle standing between a PhD and me. That is largely due to the fact that I have pissed away the last year doing next to nothing in writing that dissertation. I have researched (not enough), I have consulted (also not enough) and I thought about it (maybe too much), but I have not written anything. And I was about to throw in the towel with a monumental “fuck it.” I changed my mind. I will make the effort and that decision was also a defining moment. In this period of defining moments, there is another big one – soon I will be going back to Sacramento, I will be going home.

The fact of the matter is that a PhD does not do all that much for me professionally. It isn’t worth nothing, and it even has some monetary benefit, but at this point in my life, considering my “non-traditional” status (traditional being a student who is 20 years younger), the doors it would open are logistically closed for me. It helps in some ways, to be sure, depending on which direction I choose to go, but too many of those directions involve sacrifices I am not willing to make. I am not willing to relocate outside of Northern California to where a tenure-track assistant professorship position might be; I am not willing to jump through the significant hoops involved in landing such a position and I do not have enough career years left to climb the ladder even if I was willing to do everything else.

But the PhD has become important to me – again – for the reasons that it should have been all along. It is my personal Mount Everest. It is a challenge I undertook that just 10 years ago wasn’t even a fantasy; it was so far outside the realm of possibility that to even dream of such a trajectory could be considered nothing more than delusional. Yet here I am so close to the top that I can see it. It has not been an easy road. The last 10 to 15 years have seen a complete rebuild of a life I almost completely destroyed. And “completely destroyed" means dead. Starting over doesn’t even begin to describe the journey of where I was to where I am. For me to leave the biggest prize on the table without even reaching out for it is insane.

But even with a PhD, the Phoenix has not finished rising again yet. There is still the little matter of getting a real job. I have been on the periphery of gainful employment since a near fatal wreck in October of 2000. That is not to say I haven’t been working all that time, but much of that work has been on my education. As an undergrad, I worked part-time writing news and full-time on getting excellent grades. As an MA graduate student, I worked as a teaching associate at California State University, Sacramento while I also worked more than full-time earning my MA. As a doctoral student at LSU, I also worked part-time as a TA and much more than full time on my own coursework. A nine to five, 40-hour workweek is not something I would even recognize anymore. There has not been a single moment in my graduate studies when there wasn’t something on my plate, something I could be doing… something I should be doing.

I have spent most of the last four years in Baton Rouge. I have never been that far away from home for that long in my entire 52 years on the planet. Had I logically thought about the practical implications of a doctoral degree, I probably would have decided the effort is not worth the payoff. But there is a payoff that defies logic. Hell, I defy logic. I do and have done lots of things that I probably should not do, but in the grand scheme of things, at least this thing has some merit. And when all is said and done, I will have climbed that mountain. The key, then, is to not fall off it. I don’t know how many flights the Phoenix has left.

Late in the Fouth Quarter

This blog will see it’s 10^th anniversary later this year. In the past nine-plus years, I have written far more than I ever did in the previous 40+ combined, and (conservatively) more than half of that was written for no other reason than to write. Although writing became a regular, integral part of my life just a couple of yeas before for the inception of The 25 Year Plan, I did not consider myself a “writer” until about ten years ago. By the time I fully embraced this defining art, this veritable core of my aesthetic essence, I was on a roll. I wrote a lot and the number of entries in my archives over the first couple of years are an indication of just how gung-ho I was. I still enjoy writing immensely, I am improving and while I do not do this type of writing for anyone else, I do appreciate the feedback I receive. I don’t know that my luster has faded, but my output certainly has.

Since sometime in early 2003 and continuing to this day, I have also written quite a lot for others. I have written for money, for class work and as favors for friends. I would say that I love that sort of writing as well, but the truth is that I don’t; I never have. Even when it was for money, a motivation that should be sufficient, I can now say that it is really nothing more than part of the game. That is not to say that I hate it or even dislike it, and in most cases I derived a lot of satisfaction from it, but I am much happier writing for myself and only myself. There are a number of reasons why I do not do this sort of writing as much anymore, the fact that my required writing is much more demanding is only part of it. I think a much bigger part of it is that my overall mood, my general contentedness or my baseline “happiness” is not what it was in those earlier years. The subtitle of this blog, Perspectives, Purpose and Opinion, is an indication of what one will find here. My perspective, while still positive, is now less so, my purpose, while once focused, is now fuzzy and my opinions regarding the outside world are no longer informed enough to document them in sufficient journalistic detail.

I am on the edge of not caring about much of anything anymore.

Disillusionment? Maybe. Disenchantment? Perhaps. Frustration? Likely. Futility? Probably. And all of that applies not to just the sorry state of affairs in the world generally, but it also, especially, applies to my own internal state. It very well could be that my early writing was not so much a reflection of my general content, but rather a cause of it. These internal reflection pieces explore who I am, not to explain myself to others, but to discover more about me. Maybe I gained so much insight in the beginning that I feel I have learned enough? I don’t know, I didn’t explore that facet of myself in writing, so, paradoxically, I have not arrived at “enough.” I suspect I never will. I don’t know about anyone else, if others are constantly fighting to understand themselves and I don’t know if those who appear so confident and self-assured really are. I’m only know that I am not.

 

I am staring down the barrel of another monumental failure. I’ve had quite a few in my life including a recent short-lived marriage that was a foreseeable mistake from the start. This particular potential one is professional in nature, is probably tangentially related to the recent turmoil in my personal life, but as far as failures go, it is different. If it goes that way, it only means a failure to complete a journey that was necessarily marked by significant success. Like the team that gets to the Super Bowl, it had to win its conference just to be in the game. However, no member of any team that ever came in second place, especially in a close game, felt like a success. My PhD is a dissertation away, but at the moment it might as well be on another planet. That could (and hopefully will) change, but I am already feeling the sting of second place even though that hasn’t happened yet and despite that fact that the “season” has produced a BA, an MA and, if I fall short on the PhD, a second MA at LSU. Those degrees all spell “success,” but placed in context, it is still second place. I haven’t lost yet, but it’s late in the fourth quarter and I am behind. And if I don’t get the ball back soon, I will not win.

Faith - Revisited

In August 2005, almost ten years ago, I wrote an essay titled, “Faith.” I posted the essay in my blog in February 2006 and, today, I do not remember why. The piece predates the inception of The 25 Year Plan, and most of what I wrote for my blog was actually for my blog. That is, they were usually new essays written with the intention of publication in my blog. Of course I was writing well before my blog’s birth on December 18^th, 2005, and it is likely that I pulled some prior work into it on occasion, but my blog fundamentally dictated the type of writing I did for it. With a only a few exceptions, its genre of choice is the so-called “personal essay.” It is essentially a more formal version of a journal.

The fact that I wrote that sort of writing prior to my blog should come as no surprise (to me). I did and I even kept a hand-written daily journal for about six months in 2003. But I typically do not go back into my archives – electronic or otherwise – and, in effect, plagiarize (not really, I did source it) myself. I cite my older pieces sometimes, I quote them sometimes, but I don’t often reread them in their entirety and, when it comes to pre-blog/Internet material, I think the “Faith” essay might be the first one that has been so appropriated. Since my blog’s inception, since MySpace and then Facebook, I have re-posted things through hyperlinks, but not a total cut-and-pasted essay in its entirety. That I found - and posted - "Faith," was a weird happenstance that is even more so today.

This morning I got to thinking about faith in much the same way I must have ten years ago. I was experiencing a lack of it and it got me to thinking about writing something about it. Writing almost always helps when I am uneasy about something – anything. I figured it would be blog fodder, so I searched my blog for the keyword, “faith.” I was pretty sure it was the title of a past post and indeed it was. I didn’t plan to do more than scan it to see if my views have changed much and, more importantly, to see if I have anything new to add to the discussion. And although it is among the longest essays posted to The 25 Year Plan, it sucked me in… and I remembered what it was that inspired what are some of my more profound reflections. It’s one of those pieces where I’d say, “Man, I wish I’d written that,” except with this one, I did.

At the time I was emerging from a particularly dark period in my life. I was 42 years old and the past three to four years were chaotic, to say the least. It painted a picture of emergence, an enlightenment, a point in my life in which I finally got past much of the denial that was ruling me. I finally accepted my world as I had created it. No more finger pointing, a huge reduction in ego and some much needed humility were all key components to that particular “awakening.” In that old essay I went to great lengths to qualify faith; I looked at many things that faith might or might not be. I sincerely attempted to look outside the box, to view the world from a more metaphysical perspective. I believed what I wrote.

Ten years later, my beliefs have changed. It’s not that I no longer have faith, indeed, that faith is stronger than ever. However, it is far less metaphysical than it once was. Regardless, my faith still wavers sometimes and this morning it did just that. I was looking at circumstances - my distant past, my recent past, my immediate future and my distant future – and I became profoundly ill at ease in the present. And it hit me. More often than not, when I am feeling that sort of uneasiness, it is precisely a lack of faith, but I rarely ever know it. I am much more likely to identify this thing that happened or that thing that didn’t and from that project into an inevitability, or at least a likelihood, of what those things foretell. Obviously, if the “signs” point to what I want, I’m cool. But if they point to an (imagined) outcome that is not what I “want,” I am decidedly not cool.

The revelation? Simple enough, even if it did take 52+ years to come to it. Life itself is a gamble. Everyday the world is out to get me, the things that can stop me, the things that can kill me, the things that can shatter my dreams are literally everywhere. Yet, everyday, I get up and go on. I move about my day knowing the real risks involved – something is likely to go “wrong” and the chances that I might not survive the day are real. I make a bet everyday. I bet that I will survive it and, more importantly, that in the long run it will be worth it. It is a bet I could not make if I didn’t believe that I had a good enough chance of winning.

I used to gamble at casinos a lot. I did it not because gambling is so much fun, but because I believed it would be worth it – I believed that I would win. I had faith. Sometimes I did win, but after losing enough over a long enough period of time, I no longer have any faith that casino gambling will pay off. I have lost my faith in casinos. As a result I rarely ever play anymore and when I do I am done at $50 – and often not even that. I don’t believe I will win and once it stops being fun (again, $50 tops), I’m done.

I think that if I ever felt that about life, I would no longer be here. In that respect I think that even those with very little faith must have enough to go on one more day. The risk must be worth the gamble. So what is faith? It is much simpler than I ever thought it was. It is simply the belief that no matter what happens, I will have enough reason to place that bet another day. That does not mean that any specificity in that bet will necessarily pay off. It does not mean I’ll get that job, that house, that contentment, that love, that relationship, those friends, the health or even the serenity I hope for. It simply means that I still believe I could and it is worth one more day of trying.

Half-Assed

I feel as though I should write something. It’s almost like a pressure in search of relief, an escape, someplace to go so that something else isn’t forced to adapt to the presence of whatever it is. If that path is not too twisted, not too restricted, the words will flow out almost – or seemingly – effortlessly. If the path is too direct, however, they will explode forth with little rhyme or reason. Anyone who writes with any regularity, with any experience, with some acumen, knows both extremes. Likewise, anyone who reads enough can usually feel when writers are in the zone. This so-called “zone” is certainly not unique to writers or even other artists. And it is more than just confidence, more than just acquired skill, more than just comfort with one’s craft. It can be elusive, but it can also be a place we find ourselves for longer periods of time. It is, in the simplest of terms, the perfect pathway for controlled release.

Benjamin Zander, the conductor of The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and the Boston Philharmonic Youth Orchestra, touches on this idea in a 2008 TED talk about the power of classical music. While the overall point of his presentation is not about getting into a zone, in his introduction he presents a narrative of the progression of a student pianist. At first the student’s musicianship is labored, choppy and viscous. Later, as lessons, practice and time elapse, the student becomes more fluid, smoother and more comfortable with the keys. Zander shows how the student moves from placing an impulse on every note to one on every other note to every fourth, and then every eighth note as time moves on. Finally, Zander portrays the student placing just one impulse on the entire passage at which point the music actually “pushes” him over - into a zone, if you will - that he calls, “one-buttock playing.” I get that. There are times when I am writing that the piece seems to just write itself; I am simply a conduit that gets the already arranged words out of my head and onto paper. There is no “composing,” the piece comes already assembled.

In fact, there are times that I can’t get the words out fast enough. The words are actually pushing me over – I am “one-buttock” writing. And as I think back, I might mean that literally. I would go so far as to say, and I think Zander would agree, that this zone, while always elusive to a certain extent, is there and available. And there is no question that the more I attempt to get there (translation: the more I actually write), the easier it is to find. That is no guarantee that it will always be at my fingertips, but the more I write, the more I find myself at the edge of my seat, hanging on as the words crash over me. I would not say that these words are that, I don’t feel I am so inspired, but I am dancing on the edge and that is at least a necessary point of departure.

It seems that there are some people who, when doing what they do, are always in a zone. I’m thinking of sports superstars or popular musicians or other artists – maybe particularly in-tune investment bankers who, it seems, never guess wrong. But I think that even though that’s what we might perceive, the reality would reveal much more miss than hit. The simple truth is that rising to an occasion still requires an occasion and some of us possess honed skills that are typically on display in public. Obviously, there is a whole lot of non-zonal stuff that goes on in private. But for most of us, it’s not a public thing. It’s all in private or, at least, not public. If we are performing on just one buttock, no one else knows it, they only see the results. For all they know, it might not be one-buttock at all… it might be half-assed. One can scroll through my archives and find plenty of that, too. And then there are those groups of words that found no clear path, those that read as semi-disjointed ideas linked in a hodgepodge of gibberish, those that read half-assed but are really much closer to the zone than they appear. Words like these...

The Truth

I was inspired to write today. I want to say that I haven’t been inspired like that in a long time, that the reason why my dissertation is in limbo, the reason why I haven’t written anything substantive in some time is due to the fact that I have not been sufficiently inspired. I’ve been burnt out. I have not been able to find the right words. I can’t get what’s inside my head onto paper. It has been suggested that I am suffering from “writer’s block,” though I am not sure those suggesting it know what it is anymore than I do. I have even denied that it is writer’s block, saying that it must be something else holding me back from writing what I am ultimately here at school to write. I rationalize, “But I can write other stuff.” And that is partially true. I’ve written some letters of recommendation, I’ve written some commemorations, I’ve engaged in rational debate and I’ve even used my powers to flame a cyber-bully who needed to be taught a lesson. But that writing is like this writing – it comes more or less naturally to me. When it comes to really serious writing the likes of which I cannot seem for the life of me to do right now, I am lost. I have writer’s block, whatever the fuck that is.

So diagnosed, what do I do about it? The kind of writing that I cannot seem to do is the kind that takes organization. It must, in the end, be neat and orderly. It must make sense. It has to be perfect, not just pretty. This “stream of consciousness” stuff is, for me, fairly easy to write. Also, judging from the feedback I get, it is interesting to others (maybe because they can relate - I know this sort of introspection, when written well, interests me). I am no stranger to balking in the face of daunting tasks – it is a battle I have fought my entire life. It’s not so much lazy as it is a specialized kind of lazy and at the root of it is fear. It, whatever it is, is the sort of thing that has to be perfect. This might not be an external requirement – indeed, it rarely is – but my head has me hesitating if I cannot see my way through to perfection. And it happened today.

The Communication Studies Department at LSU hosts an annual lecture that commemorates the late Giles Wilkeson Gray, professor emeritus of the Department of Speech (what would become Communication Studies) at LSU. It is an honor to be invited to deliver the lecture and since the series’ inception in 1984, numerous leading scholars in the field of communication studies have come to LSU to discuss their research. This year, Dr. Carole Blair with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was our distinguished lecturer. Dr. Blair is also the current president of the National Communication Association. Her lecture, “World War I and the Expatriation of American Memory” was held Thursday, but, for reasons that aren’t important, I missed it. However, on Friday our department held a colloquy with Dr. Blair and, also for reasons that are not important, I did make it to that. At the end of the colloquy, I was inspired to write something really important. I resolved to go home and do just that.

The colloquy took the form of a question and answer session with Dr. Blair.  Our department faculty and grad students were given the opportunity to pick the brain of not only a preeminent scholar in my field, but also the president of our national organization. I listened intently, but the most interesting question and answer came right at the end of the session. While I don’t remember the question exactly, it had to do with the health of our discipline both within the humanities and in more general terms. It is no secret that public university funding nationwide is getting cut at an alarming rate. Tuition and other fees for public universities are skyrocketing as fast as the administrators’ salaries are. Tenure-track professorships are few and far between and the hardest hit areas always seem to be within the humanities and social sciences. Communication studies, like some other disciplines, can fall within the humanities or the social sciences. According to Dr. Blair, within the larger academic division of “the humanities,” communication studies is among the strongest. This is nice to know, even encouraging, but it must be tempered with the fact that humanities generally are not considered “career path” majors unless one wants to go into teaching, research or other jobs not known for making a lot of money.

The idea that those with communication studies degrees, or other degrees within the humanities, are people that can do a multitude of jobs is one that is again gaining some traction. These “well rounded” college experiences (otherwise known as a “liberal education,” but the term, "liberal," has such an negative connotation with so many I hesitate to use it – but suffice it to say that it doesn’t mean what they think it does) are what good citizens are made of. This is why those “general education” courses that so many view as a waste of time and money are required. And thankfully they still are, but although the world still needs scientists and engineers and chemists and physicist and all of the other disciplines that fall within the hard sciences, we also need those well versed in the classical knowledge of the ages. The histories, the philosophies, the cultures and all that has been learned that got us where we are today – all of it – is still fucking important.

Those of us sitting in that room and countless others like it all know that. The question was how do we get that information to those outside the walls of academia. How do we interest kids in majoring in areas where they might not achieve the “new” American Dream of striking it rich (because simply owning a home, providing for our families and saving for retirement is no longer a big enough carrot). One place that was suggested – and I don’t remember by whom – is the parents. We need to sell parents on the value of raising good citizens who are well versed in history, in philosophy, in ethics, all components of critical thinking. Successful democracies have always depended on educated demos – a citizenry that is capable of thinking critically. I don’t know what has caused all the polarization in the last 20-30 or more years (it’s not as new as some would like to think), but it seems that part of it is this willingness to swallow whatever is thrown out there.

And before I forget, I need to say something about this so-called “liberal indoctrination” of your children when they get to college. While it is true that college faculties tend to lean towards the left, it is not a universal truth, it is irrelevant in some fields and it doesn’t matter anyway. Your kids had 18 years of your influence before they ever got into my class. There is very little I can do to undo the influence you have had, even if I wanted to. Are there some professors who try to push their views on their students? Sure. But they are not the norm and again, it doesn’t matter. And if your kid comes home with a “radical” thought he or she learned in school, hopefully it is an opportunity to enter a discussion rather than a war. Maybe your kid – who is smart enough to get into college - gave this radical thought some serious consideration. Maybe you should respect that and maybe you can shed some light - though an intelligent, rational conversation - that your kid’s professor might have missed. You kids are not robots and we cannot program them. We can, however, give them the tools to think clearly for themselves. And you can help, if that’s what you want for them.

So that’s what I was inspired to write about today. But it wasn’t going to be like this. I thought that I would try to use my command over the written word to present some good reasons why education should be more highly valued, more robustly supported. I personally think that a public college education should be free – call me a radical, but I think an educated population is good for everyone and as such, everyone should pay for it.

But that’s not what this is all about anyway. This was supposed to be in the form of an op-ed piece and I was going to submit it to the New York Times. I read their Opinionator, I read the other editorials, and I know I can write as well as some of those commentators, and I know I can write better than some, too. But that kind of writing is precise, it has to be closer to perfect than my level of confidence would allow me to get. I balked after just two lousy paragraphs. I would not be able to just sit down and whip it that out no matter how inspired I was. Never mind that one does not just “write for the New York Times” (even at 52 years old, I have a childish naïveté that is probably no longer cute). I am beginning to think there is much more to this “writer’s block” than meets the eye. And despite the 1,500-plus words I just puked out, I am still balking at the daunting tasks in my life. I do know this: This is not good enough for what I was inspired to write. And that is the truth.

Stuck

I don’t know what it is. I seem to be suffering from some kind of cerebral paralysis; something as impenetrable as the proverbial brick wall is standing between where I am trying to get and me. I’ve been here before, but never at this level. The irony in that statement is simple enough – whatever it was before, I overcame it or went around it or some other way moved past it. “This level” means I have moved beyond where I was when I got “stuck” before. But at some point the bottom will fall out. At some point, stuck is where I stay. I will have maxed out. The problem is, although I have climbed a long way up the ladder, I can’t stay here. And now it’s a long way down.

I hate this shit.