You are currently browsing the archives for the Satori category.
7 active projects. 5 pending projects. 10 project proposals (several of which are bound to be accepted). This is no way to live. It is definitely time to raise rates, or I will go insane. The only thing holding me back has been my fear that the work will dry up, but I can’t go on like this and I suppose I could always lower rates when times are tough to stimulate further demand. And with the exception of one large project, none of these lend themselves to outsourcing at all, they are too small. The time it would take me to explain what I need done would only be marginally less than the time it would take me to do them myself. Is this all the result of the economy getting better? Of word getting out about my skills and work? Dumb luck? Or a mix of everything?
I just said good bye to my brother and niece who have been here the last few days. We had a fun packed weekend and it was nice to spend a little quality time with them. We ran around the city doing a lot of kid friendly things and generally having a great time. I believe (I hope) we left her with a very favorable sense of wonder about the city of New York. My niece is growing up so quickly and seems much older than her 8 years. She is especially adept at problem solving and I can see her going into some type of career that utilizes these skills. She is also incredibly well behaved and very clean and respectful of her surroundings. I told my brother at some point that she seems a lot like our mother and me when it comes to this. (And like her middle namesake, my mother’s mother Annette, whose OCD about cleaning and order made my mother and I look sloppy in comparison). It is really funny to see among families our various traits and peculiarities manifest themselves in the next generation. It always makes me wonder what percent is culture and what percent nature.
Now it is back to the work grind for me, I have tons to do before my next guests arrive on Thursday…
Last year, my brother brought my nephew Max to see New York on a father-son trip. This year, it is my niece Zoe’s turn. They arrived yesterday and we will spend the next few days introducing Zoe to the wonder that is New York City. I have been wracking my brain for what to do that will impress an 8 year old girl. Today we will go to the Natural History Museum to see the butterfly exhibit, then wander through central park to the castle and such, finally making our way to what is apparently a holy pilgrimage site for children, a place called Dylan’s Candy Bar.
You have to be astounded at the random connectedness of things. Sometimes I think I see almost instant karma at work.
I had a dinner last night with my friend L, down near the Flatrion building. L and I met at a Xmas party and then went on a date or two. We didn’t really click in a romantic way, but got along so well personally that we decided to be friends. Our dinner conversation was pretty wide-ranging and easy, covering topics as diverse as the decline of American culture, recent work, travel, and what our dating lives had been like recently. L mentioned that he had seen me on OK Cupid before and we talked a little bit about that site and what it was like. L told me that he had met someone there and been on a few dates and so far, so good. I mentioned to him that I had also met a guy on the site recently and gone on two or three dates with him, which was a good first sign because I usually don’t get beyond date one. I told L I didn’t know if it would lead to anything, but my philosophy has always been that there is no such thing as a bad date, because everyone has something interesting about them. I mean it, I feel like you really can’t lose. Even if the date is terrible, you have a funny story to tell later. People get so hung up on the “end game” (marriage or whatever), that they fail to experience the “now” of the date itself. Although ultimately, sure, I would like to meet someone serious, I can really enjoy the date itself outside of a greater context.
We then moved on to discussing signs of the apocalypse or the excesses of capitalism or something like that, and among other items I mentioned the ridiculousness of things like the American Girl franchise (Modern Family recently did an amazing send up). L perked up and said,
“What a funny coincidence you mention that, the guy I am seeing works there as a visual merchandiser. We have a date tomorrow night in fact.”
My jaw dropped. The guy that I had been going on dates with also worked there. I asked L his name and sure enough, it matched. And to really kick things in the rear, I realized something kinda shitty, and said,
“Wait a minute, and you have a date with him, TOMORROW NIGHT? We had a date for tomorrow night as well, but he sent me a text yesterday telling me that he had to cancel because — and I quote — ‘something came up and I have to address it’ — unquote.”
L and I were both floored. Then we compared texts, and he showed me how the guy had asked him if he was free during the week, and when L said Wednesday, the guy said no problem. And a few minutes later, I got my cancel text. Then we started comparing notes on all sorts of things, and found that the guy has given us conflicting stories about a lot of things, his family, where they lived, etc. I believe he even gave L some bullshit story about only being able to date “one guy at a time”, that sort of thing.
L said he was going to cancel the date and I suggested he send the guy the exact same text he had sent me about needing to “address something that came up”. Or that we just show up at his work one day pretending to know nothing and letting him squirm a bit. The whole situation was just too sitcom perfect. In fact, you couldn’t even write it, it would seem too contrived and unreal. Imagine the coincidence! Here in a city of millions, that we should not only be dating the same guy at the same time, but also make the connection from a random discussion, AND find out he was lying to both of us, AND on the night before his date. Pretty awesome I say. I told L I was thrilled at the blogging potential.
Well, as they say, isn’t karma a bitch? L cancelled his date, telling the guy exactly why. L got a weak “sorry” text response, and I got roughly the same text from him about an hour later. I resisted the urge to spellcheck and correct the grammar on it and send it back.
I was just reading an interesting article on Popular Science about “uploading” human consciousness to a robotic body. There are many variations on this idea, and many purveyors and proponents as well, most notable among them perhaps Ray Kurzweil. This is one idea among many that are currently floating about to enable humanity to achieve functional immortality, or at least vastly longer life spans. I have a fascination with this particular idea because it begs all sorts of questions about identity, feeling, and what is essential about being human. The article talks about several stages of scientific advancement that would start
first by creating a robot controlled by the human brain, then by actually transplanting a human brain into a humanoid robot, and then by replacing the surgical transplant with a method for simply uploading a person’s consciousness into a surrogate ‘bot.
The first two are definitely coming at some point in our lifetime, the third I can imagine happening at some point, but they all beg a series of questions about what it means to be human, and more specifically, What is essential to being oneself? What is identity?
1. This business of uploading one’s consciousness reminds me of the trouble with the Star Trek transporter idea: One is not really being transported, what is happening is that one example human is being exactly copied, and the original destroyed. While what is on the other end no doubt fully believes it is the original, the basis of that copy also believed itself to be real, and was annihilated.
2. Let’s say my human brain could be put inside a robot body. What would I feel? How would my senses be different? What about hunger, sex, and the feel of the wind against my skin? How much of being oneself is inseparable from the feelings of a human body? How alienating would it be to be a human mind in an artificial body? What inevitable transformations would consciousness go through to adapt and what comes out the other side?
3. What if parts of my brain and body could be slowly replaced, molecule by molecule, over time, until everything was brand new and a part of some advanced robot? Would I still be me? At what point would I stop being me? Even in biology, our bodies are replacing themselves all the time. The cells that make up one’s body today are mostly replacements for earlier ones. Are we the same people? Yes and no. How would this apply to replacing our cells with robotic parts?
Ultimately, all of these questions are as interesting for what they tell us about being human today, and the illusions we are under about our “immutable” selves. This immutability is more of a fearful belief we have, and the reason why obvious afflictions of self and identity (mental illness, Alzheimer’s) are among the most terrifying things for us to contemplate. But in reality, can you say you are the same as you were many years ago, and would you even want to? We value the hard won experiences that we gather over a lifetime, and we mostly think of these as additive to our total knowledge and personhood. But in a very real sense we can be thought of as completely different people than we were previously. The self is truly an illusion, we are a bundle of ever changing experiences, along for the ride. But what an amazing ride.
I very often have people tell me that they could never be freelance like me, and that I clearly have a great deal of discipline to be able to sit at home and actually get work done (as opposed to, say, hunkering down in front of the TV with a container of ice cream leafing through glossy glam magazines). And it is true that for whatever reason, I don’t find it difficult to focus on my work. That is not to say that I don’t get creatively stuck, I do. But I simply move on to another project while my subconscious comes up with a plan, and then I return to it. I don’t waste a lot of time when working on things that have to be done. Sometimes I will take time out from direct work to learn about some new technique or design strategy, but even these are really in the service of my work and becoming better at it, and they usually relate to a current project. I remember many years ago (long about 1999), when I had my first experience with freelancing. I was an almost total failure at it, and this was largely due to my inability to stay focused on the task at hand. Back then, I never missed an opportunity to leave my workstation, and I had a great deal of trouble getting motivated to do my work, even though I had just as much economic incentive (the need to eat and pay rent) to do so as I do today.
I have often thought about why things are so much different today. What has changed in the intervening years that allows me to be so much more motivated and productive? I have a number of theories:
1. Age – The mere fact of getting older has changed the way I view a lot of things in the world, and in some unexpected ways has made me more focused and disciplined. Being more at ease with the general flow of life has helped to not always jump at every distraction.
2. Deeper knowledge – Interestingly, the more I learn about the areas of my work, and the better I get at making things, the easier it is to stay focused on them. I think this is easily as important (if not more) than number one above (age). The more I am able to express my creativity with the tools at my disposal, the less likely I am to become blocked and give up in frustration. The combination of better tools to do my job (constantly improving technology) and the greater experience I have with those tools keeps me much more engaged. It is the case that the distance between what I can conceive in my mind and what I can realize in my work or personal projects is shrinking with each passing day. This is highly motivating.
I am incredibly lucky I was not born 40 years earlier. I would have been trapped in a world very much at odds with my personality type. I could never have been someone who worked at the same job for 40 years at the same place. The skills that I use and the things that I excel at would have been mostly useless back then. Or at least they would have gone unrecognized, and I would not have had the same opportunities to chart my own course. Not only because of technologies (like the internet) but because of the more rigid social structures I would have found myself in. The globe-trotting, career-changing, self-taught person I am would not have been able to exist unless I had been given some very large trust fund.
Ultimately, I think the key to unlocking everyone’s potential lies in shortening the distance between what they can conceive of and what they can realize. There are many ways to do this, but they involve a huge array of changes in cultural norms, societal structures, and tools and technologies. Many of these are underway, and many seem hopelessly stuck and unmovable. But it is so worthwhile to push ourselves and our world in this direction, because in unlocking people’s creative potential, we open doors to their happiness.
I feel a little sad when I neglect my blog, I have to admit. But the amount of work I have had over the past couple of months has been staggering. And knowing how up and down the work of a freelancer is, I am loathe to say no to any particular project. At some point however, I will have to. I have a project coming up that I decided to take as an experiment. Because I don’t really have the time to do the entire thing myself, I will do the design and technical architecture, and then have it built to my spec by a programmer I will hire over the internet. This is the first time I have done this type of thing, and there are all sorts of practical, ethical and emotional questions swirling about my head, for example:
Personal growth – Part of the reason I like being so “hands on” with everything is that I learn more by doing than by directing other people to do, and I generally find it to be more satisfying. I don’t like the idea of being removed or remote from my work product.
Risk – This is somewhat new territory, and a big part of the success of this project will depend on some factors outside of my control, ie a remote programmer. What if something goes wrong and he screws up the project in some way? What if our interaction at a distance does? What if I am left holding the bag and having to recover from something that is on a tight schedule?
Exploitation – There are multiple things about hiring someone in this way that beg the question, “Is this exploitation?”. If I hire a programmer in India because I can get a good one for $20/hr, is it wrong? Should I hire a programmer in the US at $60/hr with lower (or the same) skill instead? What is the difference? Especially when that $20 there actually goes a lot further than $60 here? Is this a question of loyalty, and to whom? Myself, my country, my planet, my profession, or something else? What about markup? I went to the trouble to find and hire said programmer, am I to recharge my client exactly what I am paying, or a little bit more? And if so, what is just?
Cost and Quality – Hiring someone in this way will actually reduce the total cost to the client, because I am not charging my full rate for anything but the hours I actually work. The quality of what is produced may be better, or it may be worse that what I would make alone.
I don’t think there are necessarily “right” answers to the questions above, but they are the ones that are preoccupying me. I will of course make some decisions in the next few days and time will tell if I have made the correct ones. And really, this is just one small project, not the end of the world. That said, it does represent a distinct change in the direction of my work life. As such, I must consider carefully if this is the path I want to walk on.
In my technology career, I have had many types of job, but basically they all fall into one of two major areas: development, or support.
Development includes areas such as research, design, programming, integrating, building, testing.
Support involves customer service, responding to “crises”, fixing things that are broken in a hurry, running maintenance tasks and constantly checking the health of a system to make sure things are operating as expected.
Although I am quite good at both, I much prefer the former. Development is calming to me, feeds my soul, is education. It is (mostly) divorced from client freak-outs. It is iterative, thoughtful, and most of all, creative. And support for minor things (fixing someone’s computer, helping them setup email or some program, explaining to them how facebook works, etc) does not stress me out. I do not mind it, and I feel a bit of good karma in helping others.
“Mission critical” support, on the other hand, is something I do not care for at all. Mission critical systems are those wherein any major problem is potentially catastrophic to that business. It may be a large company’s email system or website, or a service they offer that paying customers have a right to expect will work flawlessly. I am not a huge fan of mission critical support, because it is highly stressful and people lose their heads and all sense of proportion. I don’t blame them, but it is quite a challenge to remain calm in the face of emails in ALL CAPS with many exclamation points (!!!!), to say nothing of the repeated phone calls and yelling. And I have realized over time that this type of support also brings out the worst in me. I don’t like the person I become towards others when people are screaming about fixing a problem (stat!). I definitely keep my cool much more than in the past, and I doubt that I project the agitation or tension that many people do. Still, on the inside, this type of support causes a greater level of anxiety than I would prefer.
I bring this up because I have recently taken on a client for whom there is a great deal of need for just this type of mission critical support, and I am debating with myself whether the stress is worth it to me. I am blessed at the moment to have a huge amount of work of all kinds, but as a freelancer I know it could all be gone in a few months. Feast or famine, as they say. And because of that, I have a slight aversion to turning down any work when I have it. I think I will continue for a couple more months and see how it goes.
Hey, for my fellow New Yorkers: Ever been bugged by a bunch of extra subway cards that you can’t do anything with because they have some odd amount of change on them, or because they are expired? They seem to pile up and are wasted money, because the MTA vending machines don’t allow you to combine the money on several cards. They only allow you to add money to your existing card, which in many cases may be on its last legs or damaged (unlike BART machines, which allows you to combine and issue new cards). The MTA sort of counts on this inconvenience I suppose, because they raise many millions of dollars every year from unused fares.
Fortunately, I discovered recently that you can get old cards combined at any manned booth. You still have the risk of dealing with a surly booth person whose tv watching, phone calls or newspaper reading you are surely interrupting with your petty service needs, but it can be done. They will, however, only combine four cards at a time, requiring you to go to another booth to combine more. (At least that was the story I got from the ill tempered man at the booth at 16th street the other day) So at the end, I had recovered about 30 bucks from expired or small change cards, not bad at all.
I watched the president’s state of the union speech last night, and couldn’t help but cringe at the heaping portion of American exceptionalism. Why has it been so impossible to get Americans to face up to reality and do something about it? Why is it politically untenable to say that we are anything other than the best, the smartest, the bravest, etc? Like a mother spoiling an only child, our political leaders fawn over us, stunting our prospects. It is rather like social promotion in schools, being passed along to a higher grade and told we are good, rather than holding ourselves to any standard or (heaven forbid) actually challenging us to change our bad study habits and become better. Take but one example (of many) from the President’s speech (referring to the military):
We gather tonight knowing that this generation of heroes has made the United States safer and more respected around the world.
Really? Do you read the news? Do you honestly believe that people around the world welcome the military of the US with open arms? Do you honestly believe that every military action we take makes us safer? How can you even peddle this fiction with a straight face? Why are we so emotionally needy and intellectually bankrupt as to accept this fairly tale? I expect this jingoistic bullshit from nativist Republicans, but I would like better from a Democratic president I voted for.
How about telling Americans the truth: that we have greatness in us, just like all people do, but to achieve that greatness we need to look at ourselves honestly. We need to look at our problems honestly. And instead of puffing ourselves up with empty and false flattery, we should use our resources to make our society better for everyone. I was glad the president mentioned income inequality and that it was central to his speech. But I wish he had been a little more honest about our shortcomings and stopped glorifying our worst impulses.
