A Mistake

As I apply for the umpteenth mcjob. As I send out countless digital resumes, I realized, once again, I made a terrible mistake.

Now,I am not one for great regret, but the other day, waiting for a meeting to determine my future among the "not-a-living-wage" type jobs, I found a book on tackling the"Brick Wall" of a tight, hyper-competative job market. 

This book starts, with all, to find a direction. You have to know what you want. It asks that we perform an exercise called the Seven Stories. The premise is simple: write down 20 to 25 enjoyable accomplishments. Look back into childhood,  in young adulthood, hobbies and in jobs  orcareers you have held.

I did my list on the back of the folded piece of paper I snagged; some expired advertisement for well-passed Employment Fairs. When I have a phone, or camera, or scanner, I can prove it. Imagine a scribbled note here:

Editors Note: Scribbly Note goes here. Use your imagination.

Some items that were on the list were: Piggy Pirates, A relationship that helped me learn about relationships, myself, and people, My brief stint with chain mail, Several stories I wrote in college and my work in  400 University Drive and the Ubiquitous. A portrait of Ian Anderson that caused my father to not have a critical remark. Tutoring adults and children in several subjects and having them do well.

I want you to note something - something immediately apparent. Not a single accomplishment was related to IT, Technical Support, or call center work.  I am reminded of 2001 when I had the option
to intern with an Art Instructor. Since I could not ratiocinate both work and the instruction with respect to time, I gave up on the internship, because you've got to work to eat.

The mistake has always been my inability to sacrifice a job for a career.  I always chose the job: A small piddly, temporary thing over the work of a career: a long course. My head wa snever one for computers. I can work with computers, I understand their value,  but I found them incredibly tedious to work with. Had I been able to find them even a bit interesting, perhaps I would have tried harder. But the work with them was about as interesting, and important to me, as one might feel working at Mcdonalds.  And whilst working these jobs, I did not work on my talents/


 When you have gifts, you must work in the direction to increase efficacy. If you have talent for something, it would be foolish to let it whither.

And I am not saying I am special (not in this post, anyway). I think we all have talents and I think most of us give up on using them. I want to say it's circumstances that lead us to this, but that's only half of it.  Circumstances, internal and external can only become so obnoxious before your will is thwarted.

Mastering a skill boils down to desire overcoming obstacles.  And success, and expertise, is simply displaying mastery in a skill. Your upbringing and genetics make it somewhat more easy to walk some paths than others. We call these talents.
 
When I was offered opportunities to master skills in my life, to test skills, I tended to withdraw. And this was my mistake. I was not prescient enough to realize the existential pain of regret would be far worse than the difficulty at the time.

I don't know if GenY has this problem. Do you? There seems a certainty among others that I never felt. Better parenting, better schools? Better information? The Internet has done wonders to help our self-esteem, and (destroy it).

All I can say, is, in wisdom borne from foolish mistakes plus years of making the same mistakes, is that if you have a passion, do make time to work on them. Work on them intensely, passionately, and consistently.

The Comcast Effect.

I seem, very much, to be in a tizzy over the economy - specifically how we work, why we work, and what we work on. I think the whole system, created by industrialization, has turned like some modern-day ouroboros, onto itself. The mechanization and industrialization has ran away with regulations (and de-regulations) all in the wrong places. It's left the free market, good work, and the lower-class gasping in the dust.

As for the middle class, our current legislative body, from fed to state, and often local, stabbed it in 2002, it just took this long for it to bleed out. The middle class barely had tiem to gasp "Et tu?"

The ever-increasing hatred of Comcast is a bandwagon that has perhaps circle. Recordings and interviews  making the rounds, showing us the madness of the Comcast system. And regardless of claims to the otherwise, Comcast knows about and encourages it.
In fact, I feel like translating the Comcast apology:

We are very embarrassed by the way our employee spoke with Mr. Block and Ms. Belmont and are contacting them to personally apologize.

 Translation: We are so busted. This is just like when mom caught me stealing as a child. I had to go, apologize, and promise to pay back the shopkeeper. So now we have to apologize even though the candy we stole was delicious. Lame 

 The way in which our representative communicated with them is unacceptable and not consistent with how we train our customer service representatives.

Translation: We do not precisely train our CSRs like this. In fact, it's not until they get on the call center floor where we discreetly discuss metrics. We reinforce these metrics at their 30- and 60-day reviewt

We are investigating this situation and will take quick action. 

Translation:   So, we know what's up and we will handle it in-house by completely ignoring it and.or firing the employee. 

While the overwhelming majority of our employees work very hard to do the right thing every day, we are using this very unfortunate experience to reinforce how important it is to always treat our customers with the utmost respect.

 Translation: This happens all the time, but we will add an extra ten minutes in training to discuss how much we care about our customers so we can update the published date on our training materisl. We'll make it look like an overhaul by paying people way more money than they ought to rewrite the language of our training materials.

(As a mercenary who doesn't have apersonal beef with Comcast, I'd like to say to them: I am up to the rewrite job, and my fees are reasonable. It's will be $10,000 a month. You can bundle that with my $5000  a month  consulting and my $3000 cartooning. Now separately you'd pay 18 grand for all that, but with introductory bundling, I can get you two for $9000 or all 3 for only $6000 for 6 months!  What a deal!)*

 Sometime in the past we gave up on the simple idea of good products and services. There used to be this process. You made a product or a service, then shared it and exchanged it for money. if the product and/or service was good, and you were reasonable, you would get returns and some profit. Industrialization was, supposedly, simply an extension. of this.

But something went sideways. We stopped looking at return customers and happy customers as signs of good work and started engineering opinions. We sent out surveys. And the surveys said things like 'the call was too long" or "they didn't fix the problem and I had to call again."  And we valued signing up new customers, at any cost. We added flow lists and databases and metrics because we thought the science and data backed it up. And it did, to a point. 

But we stopped offering service, and offering to do the jobs, and starting managing the customer. Not his expectations, but them. We forgot that all the data in the world isn't giving the customer what they want or need. 

The fact is, while it's true that no sane or honest business owner goes into the game to lose money, the profit - the bottom line, comes from relationships, and connections.

Rather than asking "What can we do to help the customer?' We ask: "Can we make the customer happy in 6 minutes." Then we ask "Can we finish the call in 6 minutes to help the next person, and can we make them wait in a queue."

I have discussed this before here.

Comcast is not alone. I worked for a small Telecom, TDS. I was a pretty solid employee,but I had a problem. I wanted customers to be helped. I want to solve their problem and make sure they didn't need to talk to me again.
Did some of the customers need multiple things? Yes. That, at first, didn't bother me. Did some customers ask me for things outside my scope of support? certainly - I explained that I could help, or couldn't. If I could help, I said other agents might not be able to help.

I had excellent customer service. But in the world of metrics and numbers, this was unacceptable. And the simple answer is because our managers were so divorced from the customer and the process that they couldn't even understand good customer service, and why their metrics were detrimental to the people on the floor. Customer Service Representatives breaking out in a sweat when the difficult call takes very long. raises lost to skewed averages and you miss a metric.  

All companies do this. Marco's Pizza did this. Measuring the time to make pizza, the time in the oven, the time on cut and time out the door. All of these do, in fact affect customer service. But, in the end, the only thing that really matters is the quality of the pizza and the good customer experience.  At Marco's Pizza, the management is not distant from the customer. If a customer is happy, metrics are loosened. If a customer is unhappy, no amount of metrics repair it.

Metrics tell very little about the customer experience. It is a game of testing boundaries - how much can we get away with in our search for profit and speed and still have a positive experience.

It seems insane. In order to give a "positive experience" I had to not do all the things that made an experience positive.

Now the same telecom sent all their tech jobs to uneducated Jamaicans, costing the US jobs and giving a worse customer experience.

Madness and bad customer experience in a search for profit. No company went out of business by building positive relationships.

Something has happened. Industrialization and profit-hunting have become metric chasing. Desperate attempts to show your job is relevant by explaining why your imaginary measurements are good measurements. That the science of profit, time management, and efficacy replaced the ability to craft a good customer experience.


*Comcast must sign a 12 month contract. After 6 months the introductory rate become $19,999 a month. Early termination fees apply.

Jobs don't work.

Marco's update: Apparently my legend grows, even those who loathed me (except for the antagonist) say they miss me. I am touched by the sentiment, but sadly sentiment doesn't pay the rent(iment). I am still planning a crowd funding and to add a donation/buy stuff button as soon as I can figure out a product or service other than "miserably bad advice", "swear word portmanteaus", and "anti-corporate screeds."  Hell, I bet I could raise about 50 dollars just for the service of "shutting my mouth." 

I looked back at my work experience, and I have settled all previous jobs into two categories: "Useless Insanity" and "Unskilled Idiocy." I imagine that I am not the only person to categorize so, nor the first to realize the futility of work. My talent for miscreance, and the words of Michael Ventura, Alan Watts (or read the transcript) ,and Harlan Ellison have left me bereft of job morale.

Why, in that video by Alan Watts, he echoes my sentiment - or perhaps I echo his:

But if you do a job, if you do a job with the sole purpose of making money, you are absurd.

He suggests that when we do so, we begin to equate money with happiness. I can't argue, or won't, rather. I don't want utilize my talent for opposition today

My work has been as absurd as Alan Watts suggests. I was taught, rather harshly, that I must have a job. That my talents were not in fast food or factory, that I have a natural savant-like idiocy when it comes to schedules, rules, and policies. A trained monkey with a severe bleeding head injury can follow rules that I find as alien and incomprehensible as Martian mating rituals.

Actually, given my lewdness, I suspect extraterrestrial sex makes more sense to me. 

I was raised to work jobs. I had to have a job, according to my father. I don't blame my father completely. His father was raised on German work ethic and an industrial-revolution perspective of the world. My father would pull apart guns at age six and draw each part, then put them back together flawlessly. And when he performed this miracle, his father and mother told him that it was "nice" , but he ought get a job in a factory.

Lamentable. If a child showed such precociousness today, his parents would encourage him to study math and become an engineer.

My father said the same thing, like a mantra. You have to have a job. You have to have a job. You have to have a job.

And so I spent much of my time working as call center tech support, my stock and "trade". This trade constitutes being yelled at, screeched at, cried at,  for 40 hours a week, but for the blissful two hours a month when we were  droned at or yelled by our manager about our metrics.

No call center I worked for scored me on customer satisfaction. On the contrary, they scored me negatively if I spent the time to actually help the customer.   I was told at TDS Telecom that despite having more "Kudos" (compliments from customers) than other technicians, if I didn't lower my call times I would be fired.

Let that ruminate in your head. A kudos required extra work from the customer, and generally meant they were satisfied beyond mere resolution. TDS threatened to terminate me for helping customers. 


But that doesn't matter. What matters is call times. If your call takes longer than 6 minutes, you are doing your job wrong. Hang up on the customer - so long as they don't call back - and the managers are happy. Avoid helping the customer and - so long as the customer doesn't complain - call centers are happy. 

And if we are being honest, companies placed "First Call Resolution" as a metric only because agents hung up on customers to meet call length metrics.It's hard to fix someone's error in six minutes when you spend two of those minutes gathering required information and another two trying get them to find the start button.

Absurd, absurd, absurd.  Insanity. Put together unreasonable expectations and then get angry when people cannot meet them. That is the nature of corporate jobs.

I don't have a particularly good answer - I have some, but that will have to wait for another blog post.

If you want to read more, or see videos of these screeds, don't be afraid to subscribe, share on Facebook, on Twitter, or +1 on Google.


Marco's update part II: As I typed this, a  coworker texted me that the blow-job-enjoying manager told the antagonistic coworker to eat a bag of dicks as well. But he did it when they were punched out (and away from the eyes of corporate). Marco's me fired for breaking the illusion of cog-like perfection and order Frank -er, my manager, had cultivated. 
Don't send them hate mail. Send me 5 dollar donation I receive I will mail them a drawing of a bag of dicks. A dollar donation means I'll spent more than 30 seconds proofreading.Or, actually proofread.

Self-Soothing, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Learned to Love the Moment.

A lot of times people say you need to let go. Yesterday I finally understood it. I discovered something that helped me. Hopefully it will help others.

I am not a psychologist, a psychiatrist , or a psychic. But it struck me with a particular pop profundity.

Depression causes me to hold on tightly to negative experiences instead of positive ones.

Experiences are how we build self-identity. What we experience informs who we are. In self-soothing, we are asked to experience, in a positive way, a moment in our day.  We are to focus on the five senses. they say, for ease of remembering, this mnemonic: 5 sights, 4 sounds, 3 touches, 2 smells, 1 taste.

For example:

After my workout, I sat in McDonald's and watched a breeze play over a pink dogwood. The leaves rippled and swayed, I imagined, in an extemporaneous and improvised dance. As I watched, a woman leaned urgently over an envelope in a table to my left. She would carefully write in small letters, then look up at me tersely. Her arms warded off onlookers.
I sipped my ice water. Condensation collected on the outside in spite of the the air conditioning. I lifted the cup to my lips, and I was struck by how heavy and leaden it felt in my hands.My knee pressed into the half-wall near me. I felt grave. I moved my knee away and suddenly felt as if I might fly away. I turned and set it again to the wall.

In therapy we discussed some moments in our past that were pleasant. As we relived them, even the most unhappy of us smiled wistfully. It was then that the thought struck me that for the briefest instant that telling these stories, these details, made us seem like people without depression.  When "normies" talk, they share positive experiences. In sharing them they relive them. Most often they share humorous, happy, and pleasant stories. Let me emphasize: They are routinely connecting with levity.

I hold tightly to negative experiences and ignore positive ones. So my self-identity is made up of a remarkable number of sadness.
 And in pandering to this depression caused me to avoid positive experiences. I often suffered bouts of depression that kept me from engaging in and enjoying positive experiences. Parties, concerts, dinners with friends.

I see it a lot in my father. He will have a bad day if he has a single bad experience in a day. If I attempt to argue that his day went well, he will refuse to acknowledge it.

Depression is described as a black hole. I can't argue. i use positive emotions to try and fill that hole, but can't seem to. And while I won't discount biology (Well, I will for me), I will say that depression has trained me to connect with negativity. I feel intimately tied to it. It's cliche to say, but I wrapped myself in it.I gave unhappy moment s more gravity than they deserve.And I've spent years practicing this.

People without depression seem to have a much easier time letting go of  sadness. They have an easier time finding pleasant experiences that connect them to happiness. they, in fact, have a long history of practicing self-soothing.

Self-soothing is connecting with positive experiences. Pleasant experiences. As trite as it sounds, self-soothing trains people with depression to look on the bright side. Something we often dislike being told to do.

This module has convinced me further that dialectical behavioral therapy simply trains you to think and act like a normal person. 

All the world's a stage, yadda yadda yadda.

I love misfits. I admit it. I love people who just don't seem to fit. My favorite fiction, "'Repent Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman." is the story of a misfit. Everette C, Marm, who "wasn't much to begin with, except a man who had no sense of time."  In a world where being on time is the most important of values, he simply had no ability to do so. He couldn't fit in.

I wonder when he stopped trying? What day did he become the Harlequin?

I hero-worship misfits. I can't help it. All my heroes, all the stories I adore, are stories of misfits. Ellison, O'Conner, Butcher, Martin. I identify with them because I am a misfit. I can't keep my trap shut. I cannot be anything but what I am. I am a loudmouth, a snarker, and a clown.

I am not much to begin with, except a man who has no sense of propriety. And we live in a world that values decorum over morality. You can be a scumbag as long as you are polite about it. 

Yesterday during group therapy we read about activities to distract from emotional distress. The last line was "Sex; put a rubber band around your wrist, pull it out, and let it go."

Dear Kittens, when presented with something like this, what am I to do? When the universe gives you a gem like this, who am I say to no? Simon Peter spoke with the Holy Spirit to Jesus, right?

"Sounds exactly like my sex life."

Everybody laughed. I mean the kind of laughing, guffawing, and giggling that comes from releasing pent up energy. Therapy was derailed. Luckily, we neared the end of our session.  

The problem is twofold, my dear kittens. Chiefly, I am rewarded. When I mouth off I get laughter and I get likes and I get attention. Like a comic I get approbation from the audience. I have a reputation for being a funny guy. An amateur - very amateur -Patton Oswald. Which therein lies the second problem: I seem to believe I am always on stage - always entertaining. And it's not particularly exhausting to entertain all the time. But it is dangerous. Talking about telling someone to eat a bag of dicks is all well and good. And telling the story entertains - on stage or in a small group. And certainly all my coworkers were overjoyed that I told off the nagging bitchy shrew.

Seriously, she needed to eat a bag of dicks and shut her pieholster.  

But work is not a stage, and insults, however just and however warranted, are not tolerated in this "PC Bullshit" world. No matter how often we talked that way as a crew, no matter that a manager was blown by a subordinate and another manager sent dick pics to six subordinates without punishment until Marco's was threatened with a lawsuit.

So once again I find myself on the receiving end of a Pink Slip. I have a Kickstarter as soon as Amazon payments goes through.  We'll see what I can do from there. I've been on stage a long time, maybe it's time to pass the hat.  

Is this the condition that I so feared?

My kiddos, I have a confession to make:

I never wanted to write about politics in this blog.

I never want to be political. I call myself an anarcho-moderate, and I am fanatically so. I had a rule

But I broke the rule and waxed political.

I waxed political because deep down this blog is about independence. The most important thing for man (or women!) is to have the liberty to live their life as they wish. To be free.

Free from illness by being healthy.
Free from hatred, ignorance and unhealthy agendas by keeping your mind open.
Free from mental illness through diet, exercise, reflection and meditation.
Free from drugs by being responsible for your body and mind.
And sometimes, free from a corrupt government (regardless of the party affiliation - from which you should also be free!).

Many people, and myself, often say we need something. And yet a lot of people get along without. I need a car, I need a gym, I need a job.

You don't. Your mind, your ingenuity, and your positivity are all you *need*. Everything else is optional or obtainable with those things.

I know, I sound like a raving hippy.

We are hooked - chained, to the world by needs and desires - for money, for love, for sex, for food, and those chains are being used to make you act in ways that maybe you don't want to act.

Well, there are two ways to release those chains. The first is to give everyone everything that they desire. If everyone is fulfilled, then there is no way to use fulfillment to motivate someone.  While I like this  option - because hay, free stuff, I think it's a dangerous option. There will always be something that is scarce - and that means something more valuable than another thing.

Plus it requires changing the world. That step's a-doozy.

The better solution is to reject those desires. Learn how little you actually need, so that you can  find what you really want. Reduce the value of something from the demand side, by simply not desiring it. This requires you to change yourself, but it's effects, if done by the commons as whole, will be immense.

The obvious and simple example is "I need a gym." Do you really need heavy equipment to get a workout, to become strong?  Smith racks, Leg Press machines, and thousand-dollar treadmills?

Not at all.  I have a gym membership. I do not need one.  All the equipment I really need is my body - and that's free.

I have spent about 45 dollars on exercise equipment that I use almost daily. It's cobbled together, grabbed from junk yards, and works better than the gym equipment. And Instead of a treadmill, I just go for a run.

To be free, you must remove things from your life, not add. Perhaps, like Diogenes, I see things as often a distraction.  Perhaps, like Seneca, I see us all working jobs we don't like for things we don't need.

So that's what this blog is about. Independence. It's a lot of work, kiddos, but it's worth it.

So my assignment for you is to take some time and remove yourself from a habit. I spent 5 weeks without Internet, and it was extremely productive. I advise you remove something - Internet, TV, even idle reading, if you are so inclined, and ask yourself as Seneca asks, "Is this the condition that I so feared?"

More on living as independently as possible next week, my friends.  

Leadership (An Outsider's View)

Hello, Kiddos!

Hopefully I make a little more sense than my last post. Sorry, I was shaking off the rust. Today I want to discuss leadership. From the outside.

I say from the outside because I have never considered myself a leader. Even when I've lead, I don't consider myself a leader. I am just doing what I do. No worries and cheers, mate.

If I were describe my leadership style, I would call it Positively Absolutely Canadian.

"Eh."

I was a leader, I just didn't know it. And don't tell me. If I found I was actually responsible, I might have an attack of the vapors.

My dad always told me "Whoever among you who wants to be leader must be your servant." The quote comes from Matthew 20:26. I used to think "that's stupid. I thought that leaders lead. In this age of CEOs and inherited wealth (I'm looking at you Waltons!), it doesn't seem most leaders had to serve in the trenches. They blithely walk in and fire 10 thousand people.  Or they decide to bomb other countries.

Perhaps I ought not listen to Bad Religion while discussing Leaders of today.

Still, My Dad is not wrong. To lead requires service. But a little deconstruction is in order. because I think a lot of leaders have forgotten there job, and why their job is important.

A leader has served. That's why he is a leader. In order to lead effectively, you need to have spent years learning your craft, honing it, and leveraging that experience into success.  So here is how to be an effective leader, from someone who isn't.

A Leader is an Expert
I shall name 3 leaders off the top of my head.   John Taffer, Robert Irvine, and Gordon Ramsey. They are all on Television right now, but they are excellent examples because their fame should make them accessible.  What do they all have in common?

Years and years of service.  They didn't simply walk in to a restaurant, take over, and lead. They started out at the bottom. They didn't read a book and start spouting answers. They did hard work. They slogged in the trenches.  They made mistakes, as a cursory biography makes clear.

But their experience allows them to ask the right questions and to direct people to the best answers. A leader has screwed up, gone down cul-du-sacs, and hit the wall enough times to see things coming. If you have a problem or an idea that is, to put it bluntly, stupid, wouldn't it be nice to find someone who's been in that jam to help you out of it?

Education and Experience are the marks of an expert. And Expertise is the Mark of a leader.

A Leader Is Successful
We love losers. Sitcoms show us this. Movies show us this. Books and Comedians show this. We love a loser. But we don't respect a loser, and we don't follow one. We want proof that our leader has lead and his followers are successful.

Would you follow Custer into battle?.Heck no. Despite an excellent and admirable career, his spectacular failure and death give us pause.  His name is synonymous with failure.

What do you think about Pete Best? Who? Sometimes called "The 5th Beatle."  He has had a unimpressive successful career. But his success has not been meteoric, and few would care about his notions of music and the industry. I daresay, for the sake of hyperbole, he couldn't conduct a kids choir.*

We want to see proof of success. We all want to win, and so we want to follow winners.
A good concept is fantastic. A rousing speech, a handsome face, and a good feeling are all wonderful. But what real followers want - need, even, is to trust the leader will bring them a win.

I find it strange that people would challenge the ideas of Chef Ramsey, Chef Irvine, or Mr. Taffer. I have to presume it's for ratings. These men have awards, merits, and most important, money. Seems when they speak on their  topics, one would shut the fuck up and do as they tell.

Maybe it's me, I dunno.  I respect experts.

Success goes hand in hand with expertise - it is tangible, observable proof of  concept. An expert puts many more wins in the column than losses (But see below).

A person with no successes is a braggart or a liar (but see below)

A Leader Gets A Mentor (And Is One, Too)
A leader is part cheerleader, part director, part shepherd and part drill sergeant. It's cliched to say, but a leader's goal should be success. They may not seem to have your best interests at heart, but they have a vision and they want followers to successfully engage that vision.

I had a professor (several, actually) who encouraged and cajoled effort out of their students. The best were very nearly unsympathetic. They were hard on people, and harder on the people at the top. They did not embrace excuses. They had a vision of a student successfully professing as they profess - provided the student worked hard.

The best thing a would be leader can do is find another leader in his field. This allows you to use the mentor's expertise and learn how to lead. It's a one-two combo, and I cannot stress enough useful this is. Don't follow yours truly and treat your mentor's input lightly.

One last caveat. If your vision doesn't mesh with the leaders vision, you aren't doing yourself any favors, nor them. Likewise if your vision does not engage your followers, you need to change it or work with them.

A Leader Is A Failure Who's Hung On Long Enough. 
Anybody who's read inspirational quotes no doubt knows this gem from Michael Jordan 

I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

It may soothe the feelings of those without success, but the truth is a leader makes mistakes. When they steer a person away from a course of action, or make a decision, or ask a question, it's because they went there. They fucked up. And that fuck up stuck with them. And they want to spare their charges the same failure.

But it isn't merely self-aggrandizement of the mediocre. experience that teaches nothing is worthless. And so they dust themselves off, and try something else.


So that's it, kiddos. A leader is an expert with experience that helps guide people away from the same screw-ups they encountered.  To do this they had to start at the bottom, and serve and fail and learn.He who is to be master must first be a slave.

So go out, jump in at the bottom, and fail like you vote: Early and often!

Adventures of a Middle Class Mobo

Hello Again!

My plan was to write more often. I have not. Dear readers, I have done you a disservice. I throw myself upon my lappy! I prostrate myself for your forgiveness.

Or perhaps I just sip my large black coffee.

I have pushed my other projects back to tell you about my latest adventure. I am excited to say that I am a Mobile Hobo, or "Mobo". I confess that i do love that term. I cannot claim credit for it's invention. My friend Don told me it. No idea where he got it.

A Mobile hobo is a hobo who has a car. If we want to get pedantic, a hobo is a wandering worker, car or no. I am actually living the life of a tramp or a bum. Unfortunately, trying to combine "mobile" with tramp or bum makes me sound like a demented octogenarian tapioca junkie. M'tramp. M'bumramp. Tramampum...Mobum.

Trump? No. That would imply I have money to not look like a hobo, but still choose to for reasons of toupee.

Speaking of dressing up. My friend Jes (read her blog here) is a master fashionista.  She knows her stuff, and is a master deal finder. Want to look good on the cheap. She can help. She says I would look good in Taupe. I trust her. However, I find the name incredibly vulgar.

Taupe. Say it. Taupe.

So when I lose these last "few" (80) clinging pounds, I shall get something Taupe.

Back to the topic. I am a bum, at least temporarily. I shall go into my justifications in future blog posts, but for the time being I want to give a few first impressions.

1) Early to bed and early to rise, more or less.
I worked out hard yesterday.  I walked for an hour, then I did the Arc trainer, then I lifted. I was beat to hell. But I started at 10:30 pm and finished my post-workout shower around 2. Getting to bed that late normally isn't a problem. It usually takes me about a half an hour for me to get to sleep, more in the car. Suddenly it's 5:30 am and light's shining in. I don't want to get too much sun..So that means moving indoors. I got 3 hours of sleep last night.
I'm a little hinky

2) Walmart becomes your friend.
I slept in the parking lot of a local Walmart. The advantage of Walmart is the parking lot is huge. There are plenty of empty spaces to park in. You look exactly like any of the drones working. One person parked right next to me. they either didn't see me or didn't care. And more importantly, when morning comes you can head into the bathroom quickly and take care of business.

3) Kill the lights and put it in neutral...well..park, actually.
These are what will get to you. The lamps in a lot are pretty bright. This discourages crime, but makes sleeping difficult. I solved this by hanging blankets as makeshift curtains. It has the added effect of obscuring me from the curious.   Always hit the parking break

4) Internets
We cannot, in this day and age, live without our Cheezeburger Cats. Here is my cursory exploration of local internets.

Starbucks:  Internet Speed is good, but it's costly to sit there (about 3 bucks a day). Second best hours (6am to 10pm) and if you go late at night they sometimes give you food they would otherwise throw away.

McD's:   Where I write this. Only a dollar for a soda pop or a coffee. Sit all day. Longest hours (5:30 until Midnight). Internet is woefully slow. Especially if some douche-canoe is HOGGING ALL THE BANDWIDTH. I'M LOOKING AT YOU, KID WITH THE HEADPHONES! QUIT YOUR YOUTUBINATING AND STOP CLOGGING MY WEBPIPE!

Library: Shortest Hours (10am to 5pm). Comparable to Starbucks. Cheapest (FREE).

Any other locations that you know of? Send me a line.

5) It's not so bad.
As long as you have a moderate size car, you can sleep pretty well. I have to sleep sitting up - mostly because I normally sleep on my stomach, and until I get a van, that's not an option. So I just sit up on a bank of pillows and stretch my legs out. But it's cozy and so far I am lucky to have cool evenings, few insects, and zero . We shall see if this continues.

Well, that's it so far. If you liek this, then like it, or follow me. In the future I shall discuss other strategies for going "off grid". Most notably food and income.  How do you maintain a diet? Can you live on canned beans alone? Gluten free and Vegan options?

Also, I added to the list of books here

How to be happy: Get off the computer!

For those tuning in, I want to advise something. If you want to be happy, get off the computer.

Remember when the computer first appeared? It was going to revolutionize our lives. We were going to share information and research. We would link the wolrd and share culture.

Now all we do is look at cat pictures.

Social media like Facebook and Twitter have replaced conversations. I have to hold back on what I say on Facebook, lest I have this conversation.

Me: "Did I tell you I saw Iron Man 3 finally?"
FB Friend: "Yeah, saw it on Facebook."
Me: "I rather liked the part where <spoilers>."
FB Friend: "Yeah, I saw your tweet"
Me: "Oh."

That's it. It's worse in person. What do we talk about?
Well, I used Facebook for good, and not evil. I crowdsourced a list of books I am to read, both Classic Fiction and Non-Fiction.  The Art of Nonconformity suggests at least 30 of each. Well, I have nothing but time and a Library Card, so let's do this:

First 15 of each:

Non Fiction:
1. Conflicted leader
2. Defending the Crown
3. The Selfish Gene
4. The God Delusion
5. Guns Germs and Steel
6. "Surely You Are Joking, Mr. Feynman!"
7. Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
8.  The People Who Eat Darkness
9. Hired Swords, the Rise of Private Warrior Power in Early Japan
10. Samurai, Warrior, and The State in Early Medieval Japan
11. The Teeth and Claws of the Buddha
12: The Vikings
13: The Vinland Sagas
14. The Signal and the Noise
15. Freakonomics

Fiction:
1. The Prose and Poetic Eddas
2. Egil's Saga
3. Dispair by  Nabokov
4. White Guard by Bulgakov
5. The Pigeon by Suskind
6. Fahrenheit 451
7. Count of Monte Cristo
8. Ivanhoe
9. The Brothers Karamazov
10.Watership Down
11. Anna Karenina
12. Voyage of the Beagle
13. Hojuki
14. The Tale of Heike
15. Dream of the Red Chamber

Thanks to Lorrie, Mike, Chris, Joe-Bear, Lynn, and the restof my literate friends. If a book you recommended isn't listed, then it is in the second part of the series, I have read it, or it's a Bronte sisters' book.
Now I shall take my own advice and get the hell off the computer!


EDIT:  I found a list of books I wanted to read. So I have added:

Fiction:
16. A Sport and Pastime
17. The Postman Always Rings twice
18. Tropic of Cancer
19. Revolutionary Road
20. As I Lay Dying
21. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
22-25. Factotem, Post Office, Ham on Rye and Women by C. Bukowski
26. Midnight's Children
27. Lolita
28. Underworld by DeLillo
30. CivalWarLand in Bad Decline

Non-Fiction
16. Hell's Angels by Hunter S. Thompson
17. Artful Sentences
18. Super Freakonomics.