re-entry, withdraw, repeat.

As a culture we romanticize the DIY, the living of live on your own terms, the standing tall with nothing to lose.  I can confidently say there’s not a thing romantic in worrying about rent - even moreso when you’ve told your now-burdened girlfriend that you’ll land something anyday now… half a year later.

Those six months of job hunting were brutal, demoralizing, and every “sure thing” inevitably turned to ash in my hands.  I took the first job I was offered, the best choice out of the pool numbering one.  I didn’t feel proud about my “decision”, but at least I didn’t end up at a known misery (i.e. Amazon).  My offer wasn’t even full-time, it was intended to try me on as you would pants.  I let the resentment of that 90-day on-trial  period seep into my everyday, the lone contractor in a sea of established employees, and I couldn’t see the future beyond my own upturned nose and imaginary hurt.  What I should have been was grateful.  Instead I let myself be disappointed in myself.  (Which is never a good way to treat anyone.)

Last week I accepted a full-time job offer at the company I resigned myself to showing up at, and as I contemplated my fit in the world and at this company I realized it was the perfect island of misfit toys.  The levels of dysfunction, historic failure, and fear of the alpha men in charge created an atmosphere just begging for someone to call the Emperor out on his naked bullshit.  I just happen to stand six foot four and have nothing to lose.

The cast of characters at this startup are a sitcom in the making, and in my old age I’m finding that my love of entertainment value might exceed my need to align with company values.  There is a penchant among the Directors of Nothing for wearing dress shirts buttoned just above Fabio level, sans undershirt.  They unknowingly bring a wealth of Euro-gigolo, raising and/or sinking the “dress for success” game to a whole new level.  This is in stark contrast to the Mötley Crüe of us expected to implement their questionable vision: pants riding high above our socks, bearded and opinionated, young and eager, antisocial and angry, intentionally oblivious and brilliant….. most importantly both welcoming and helpful.  This company built around a specific kind of female empowerment is marked most starkly by the abundance of dirty dishes left in the sink, mostly by the men in charge, inevitably to be cleaned up by a woman that never realized “maid” was part of her job description.

My peers at this place are reason enough to stay, my amusement of the Lead By Title Not Example keeps the everyday most interesting.  It’s the kind of company you have to explain to people, awkward and below-the-radar and kind of perfect for me.  I feel like I’ve shown an old man with bad habits a new way to live, and much of my fun has always been to stir up righteous revolt in every established system.  And I too feel like an out-of-touch old man – being told I’ve done a good job is something I haven’t heard in nearly five years.  It’s amazing how much being on a collaborative team has improved my outlook on life.  Nature might abhor a vacuum but it’s nothing compared to what a vacuum can do to a man.  This irregular puzzle piece has found his fit, and the sense of relief brings an inexplicable salty fluid to my optic transducers.

I will always adore the startup, the underdog, the complete unknown, the ecstatic anticipation in watching that slow-rolling die, and the probably nevers in our lives.

Who wants to be the largest gear of the most proven machine, anyway?

(answer: sane people)

ground up from the spit out.

“We're testing you to see what you're capable of”, he says.  It comes from a cubicle on the border of contempt, 5 miles outside of pity.  He can’t / won’t comprehend that he has simplified the two decades of my career and struggle and effort into the final trivia question of the afternoon.  I explain how I’d try and solve the puzzle he’s posed, but philosophy is often not enough for these boys-beyond-men-beyond-boys who have been weaned on tests and quizzes as measure of worth… of comparison… of success.

“You should solve this using recursion.  Do you know what recursion is?” he says a little too clearly after it’s clear mere philosophy isn’t enough.  I’m talking around the problem, but admitting where I’m not sure how to solve certain pieces of it.  His voice has gone from cold to chilled, and I notice it wavers the more patience he loses.  But saying “I don’t know” isn’t enough.  He wants me to expand on my failure.  He wants me to type my failure out.  He’s already judge-and-juried me, but he wants to watch me crawl up the mountain so that he may properly kick me back down again.  I suddenly want to be anywhere but on the phone with him.

I think about the happy hour I’m already late for.  These thoughts of dark wooden tables and ice-cold Old Fashioneds are far too specific and far too not-this.  My eyes  scroll across what I’ve done, across stubs and fragments typed out in pseudo-code.  “I’m not going to give you what you want.”  I say, frankly.  His silence lingers a bit, but he snaps back to duty.  “Well then.  I’ll submit my feedback to the team.”  At that moment I realize the absurdity of this situation, that he never once asked me about my work or my ethos or my desires.  While my distracted brain sorted through the stimuli, my mouth took over and muttered an obviously-defeated “Thank you for your time”.

In hindsight it was the very worst thing I could have said.   Letting my voice admit defeat was somehow admitting his ruler was a fair measuring device.  I played along with the game and I let him reduce me, completely.  Think of the absurdity of the parallels – making a writer pen a poem in 20 minutes or less, having an HR candidate fire someone in front of you, watching the secretary file a large stack of papers before the buzzer goes off.

It isn’t really the footrace that I resist so much – it’s the assumption that I’m incapable of learning, and if I fail the Final Jeopardy question then I am entirely unsuitable.  Wouldn’t you rather see my finest work?  The code that I’m proud of, and fully thought through, and built with my own two hands?  Why is the concept of a portfolio only relevant to visual artists?  I’m not sure exactly who originally came up with this interview strategy, but it’s an ageist and unfair tradition that no one ever rails against.

Why?  Because we-the-applicants need the job.  We need it or else we don’t pay the rent, the bills.  We’ll get in fights with our loved ones and we’ll let people down.  While I’m feeling a little #firstworld about my inability to land the right job in a well-paying field - it feels that much more arbitrary that I am given a Yay or Nay having little to do with culture fit, aligned ideals, or prior prides.

If you aren’t familiar with Glassdoor and are in the tech industry, you should be.  Each company profile now has a tab labeled “Interviews”, and people post the details of the interview questions they were asked.  It’s grade-school cheating on an entirely new scale, it renders these alpha-tests even more irrelevant, and I’m so very tempted to post my own pains so that the next Running Man can fare far better.

But again – playing the game feels like the biggest disservice I can give myself.  It’s Day 61 and I’m officially too old for this shit.  I’ve got to come up with a way to bow out of these mind games with my head held high, to reject the maze and the assumptions and to stop the machine from rolling over me again (and again, again).  The right kind of people would welcome bravado – I’ve used it to my advantage before, and I’ve got to find a way to stand up for myself now.

vacation, all I ever wanted (had to get away).

Working in Manhattan didn't exactly feel like a vacation.  We were bound to our computers during the weekdays, mere feet from one another, contorted by the worst ergonomics possible.  Coding from a sofa feels like a breakfast-in-bed luxury for the first few days, but then turns into a certain kind of bedridden-needs-breakfast.

On the horizon for 2013 vacation proper were the final two ever UK weekends for All Tomorrow's Parties, the music festival for music fans that hate music festivals.  A quick jaunt to Paris (my first time in France) was a lovely bit of escape from playing the role of rooster in our 6-person henhouse.

I'm normally of the mindset that the more work you put into organizing your trip, the more fun you can have in letting go once you are there.  While "winging it" certainly has its advantages, I typically only save that for slow travel, and slow travel off-season.  I quickly realized in my living among 5 other people that I was in no way a wh[at/en]ever roommate, and perhaps I've turned into a four-letter creature of comfort.

There's a certain kind of mental shift you go through in your younger years.  You become charmed by unusual philosophy (fuck you Ayn), jaded by hierarchy and authority (fuck you Hubbard), and often come to the conclusion that the people in charge are as-if-not-more clueless than the ant you realize you are.  Unfortunately hippie hugs and chill pills are useless in the face of why-are-there-no-clean-coffee-mugs and god-dammit-my-socks-are-wet-again.

I slowly realized that communal living is all about establishing lowest common expectations,  and there's usually one person that wants the bar higher than everyone else.  This marked the first time I've been that person, and it was interesting to see just how much the cheese stood alone.  Benevolent dictatorships are in no way the democratization of friendship, but in both business and otherwise: they get shit done.

I've historically saved Thanksgiving for friends and Christmas for family - savoring the vast differences in the gatherings year after year.  Previous Thanksgiving highlights were renting houses on the Oregon coast for the sole purpose of slow-moving gluttony and excuses for extended road trips.  This year the six of us spent far too much money on a single night in a fantastic London flat.  The owner was leaving as we were arriving, her partner wearing a chainmail coif in a non-ironic manner, her son of years past artfully featured in giant photo-frames scattered around the 4-floor house.  The glitter-covered horror movie posters completed the wonderful surreality in an otherwise modern, uppity home.  We were by far the loudest Brits in a nearby Indian restaurant, and coming back to a chilled, celebratory, duty-free bottle of Veuve Clicquot was the perfect pinnacle to this feast so very far away from home.

Flying back to New York was shortly followed by flying back to Seattle, and the silence in being back is near-deafening (but that could easily be the lack of car horns).  There is a palpable gap when you remove yourself from the social flow, and re-insertion often comes with the answer to the question "will I be missed when I'm gone?".  My closest circle is either thinly spread across the world or knee-deep in babies, and I'm struggling a bit trying to count time in the double dutch back home.

Though I must say the ease and thrill of leaving will never ever give you that warm sense of joy in opening your actual front door - utterly exhausted, and forever thankful.

in the thick of it.

The bustle through the hustle takes focus, awareness, and slowly drains away your need to be around other people.  I'm not sure I could actually live in Manhattan - each bout of fighting the flow comes with a craving of retreat, of surrender, and of eventually giving in to the oncoming shoulder-check once your reserves of being-most-polite empty entirely.

I've only listened to headphones once within it.  The speeding cars are quite rare, but quite dangerous.  A synchronized gasp erupted from our collective mouths last night when a woman crossed on a yellow, inches away from the impatient silver sports car, and inches away from being spread across Broadway.

But there are rewards for putting up with the madness.  This is my view, come sunset.  There is a palpable excitement that runs through this city.  A certain freakshow curiosity in exhibitionists fucking against windows sky-high.  The fact that anything could be happening behind those doors, and these doors.  The potential of this city is almost more intriguing than the reality of this city.

At least until you become part of the reality.  The most memorable moment started off waiting in line for half-price tickets at the Times Square Madhouse.  The lines wrapped five-thick, winding as they do for the finest of Six Flags attractions.  Ten minutes in and I hadn't moved at all - an inquiry as to where the secret Window 12 was had me into a line containing a mere handful of people ahead of me, total.  This was the line for plays only, and this was the line that received the most scorn from the DO YOU KNOW HOW LONG WE'VE BEEN WAITINGs - either ignorant that this existed, or people dead-set on seeing Annie.

No Man's Land was our top pick on my list of four possibilities, but it had two stars next to its name on the board.  Was it sold out?  Was it full price?  The barking face behind the thick glass wanted cash instead of questions, so I paid what felt far too much for half-price and slipped out of the tourist trap, and back to work.  My mind understood the fact that I had just bought tickets to see Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen on stage, together, but it wasn't until the curtain rose that the gravity of being there hit me.

So many people use celebrity sightings as a certain kind of identity, as if rubbing up against someone imbues you with even a hint of their success.  It drives me crazy, frankly, and is one of the biggest reasons I can't stand Los Angeles.  If you constantly wear stories of woven success as your sleeves, chances are you care far too much about some arbitrary, dare I say illusory concept of success.

I'd never ask someone I admired for an autograph, or a photo.  Somehow that feels like stealing time from their downtime.  But this.  THIS is how I want to spend time around incredibly talented people - seeing them performing the job that they have perfected over years and years, and feeling a certain sense of humbling privilege that I can be a part of an intimately shared moment.  A fabulous evening out and one I'm still pinching myself awake over.

Only in New York. *

* and any other metropolitan city, really

the endless paperwork trail.

Running your own show comes with some very real timesinks - specifically the annual and/or quarterly dance with the IRS and hungry local government.  There's a certain paradise of ignorance that you can float on for awhile.  Get your data into Quickbooks and renew your business license and pay your taxes once a year.  Accountant strongly recommended but not required.  Relatively simple.

The contract gig I've been doing came with some new-to-me caveats, particularly the fact that they are paying me through my company, adding an ever-widening complexity vortex that absorbs space and time and sanity.  The moment I became on the payroll radar was the same moment the alarms and alerts began.  Harassing-ish messages started landing on my voicemail, of missed due dates and threats of possible subpoena.  And here I stand wondering why exactly I'm paying unemployment tax on myself.  And how exactly am I supposed to file future unemployment claims against myself?  Relatively absurd.

A helpful hint for everyone visiting from Google - in Washington state you do not need to pay Unemployment Tax if you own your own company and have zero employees outside of yourself.  I was told this will probably change in 2014, but I can't wait to get back under this quasi-hostile government radar.

However, if you own your own business (specifically a S-Corporation) you are expected to pay yourself a reasonable salary so that the Federal government can get some of that sweet, sweet income tax.  Which is never an issue when you continually dump all of your resources into the ever-emptying coffers of zero-profit-meaning-zero-salary.  But I'm suddenly in a world where I'm taxed on both ends, where I'm paying taxes on expenses, and my reasonable hourly rate is suddenly not-that-reasonable.  And losing hours of research time among the weeds of conflicting legalese, the pinnacle of which is the ever-terrifying word "optional".

(Why would I ever optionally pay out anything?  Optional-as-required is far worse than required-as-required.)

In summary: don't ever try to invoice side gigs via your business, unless invoicing business is your business.  Let them do the work, carry the burden, and hire you on as a standard contractor.  Dream of running your own show?  Expect a good 5% of your waking time spent chasing down windmills like these.

not a bad place to work.

New York City public library.  I've been thinking Ghostbusters ever since.

and back, again.

I’ve contained a bubbling tirade for weeks, one where I justify removing a huge chunk of my Facebook friends list, rant endlessly about privacy and the illusion of our enclosed, social dam(n)s which have actually sprung dozens and dozens of information leaks to a wide sea of hungry life-as-comparison fish.  Not to mention the NSA-as-fisherman.  Did you see the latest privacy revision?  The one where anyone can find you by your name?  Stalkers, rejoyce!

TLDR: if we’re friendly and previously co-workers you should add me on LinkedIn.  I’ll write the best god damn recommendation you’ve ever seen.  If we were tight friends we’d probably be talking outside of Facebook on a regular basis, no?

AND BACK, AGAIN is what I titled this entry.  I'm back in New York.  Back in one of my best of friend's place... this time, without him.  It's odd because he's still here, and just beyond his musk is his entire point of reference - him living here for years numbering at LEAST I-can't-remember.  And me watering his plants.  (Probably too much.)

The device on her hip tells us we've walked 18,440 steps today, and I believe.  Leaning into the loud roar of this city has given me some needed short-term purpose, something to keep up with.  New York has no patience for patients.

This is my home, my new place to work for the next month.  This trip marks a certain responsible return to the workplace of the free - said without irony, even.  I've realized that my dream gig allows me to spend quality time with the latest of my sick newborns, and that any amount of brick-meets-headwound is absolutely worth being light on my feet.  It's harder to see when you're trapped in the undertow of "being the new guy".

TLDT: Marketing is everything, kids.  I've had dreams of YouTube, of angles and hooks and minimizing blood loss.  The cold reality of capitalism is that the sale has far more meaning than the meaning itself.  If I am to become successful I've got to make the people see what I see.