Nothing to Fear

And you know the famous end of this sentence from FDR: there is nothing to fear but fear itself.

As a career coach speaking with a variety of talented but recently unemployed people around the country, I hear fear on the other end of the phone. I don't blame any of them. "What can I do to prepare for a new job if there isn't anyone willing to hire until this whole financial debacle is resolved"

Until is what the optimists say.

I think we're in for a major transformation in how we view money, credit and where money even comes from. We are globally dependent and we're watching world markets quiver and change every day. We're interdependent in far more ways than we could have dreamed of even a month ago. It's all too obvious; as goes the American economy, so goes at least Western Europe, if not much of Asia. (I haven't heard a word about China in all this, other than we will be borrowing from them to pay for the inevitable bailout).

What will the transformation look like? It will be something closer to the 1930s than most Republicans would like, but that's too bad. We need to shore up our infrastructure, improve education and other systems for the general public good. We can also pump money and jobs into the economy with large government funded programs. Putting people to work to improve the inner workings of this country boosts confidence and develops skill. Improving education promises a future. The free market will not die with this solution. It's time to bolster the confidence of the US citizens and from there to show the world once again our resiliency.

Locating yourself in a US financial disaster

I call this locating yourself, but I can only write about myself and hope you resonate. This week has been an education in financial terminology I've heard for years but am finally hearing explained. Frankly there's a part of me that lives back in the 1950s. People go to work, get a paycheck, put it in the bank and maybe set up a savings account. They may have a single credit card and use it sparingly, paying it off in full every month, and consult a sound family budget weekly.

Never mind that I don't live this way, but I do think this way. And there's the problem. I actually learned my lesson the hard way with credit cards and for the most part charge everything to a debit card, which is just cash in plastic.

But I currently have only one secure savings "instrument" and it amounts to less than a month's overhead. In short, I live by the sweat of my brow; I depend on my work to pay the monthly bills and I'm not earning enough to meet the monthly numbers. This means that for the first time ever I am doing such a drastic spending plan and debt consolidation that my lifestyle of the past thirty plus years is about to change beyond my wildest (and probably most fear-filled) dreams.

Honestly I do not know right now what life would look or feel like living exactly within my means. From here it looks like poverty living. It feels reductionist and small, without vision or hope, in a place of defeat, devoid of opportunity, within a cocoon of depression and lackluster energy.

Hmmmm. Is there another way of looking at this? Is there any tiny ray of light in such a dark picture that something creative and expansive and life enhancing could emerge? I don't know yet; I'll keep posting on this as I do not wish to resolve that which is in flux and cannot be tightly and neatly concluded before its time. I will say this: there is some measure of comfort in the big downslide. I am not the only edge person out there. There may be comfort in numbers and we may work this out together way better than alone.

Just A Job

We work not just for money, but for a large variety of psychic rewards. Nowhere is this more evident than with people who retire and make themselves busier than they ever were as "employed" members of society.

The ripple effect of work comes in the experience of community expressed in the terra firma of belonging. When we belong to a working community, we are part of a group, part of something larger than our small and vulnerable selves. We are, for better or worse, connected to a system of people organized to achieve a common goal. It is in this psychic circle that we find ourselves loyal to the others with whom and for whom we work.

In the world of work of thirty to forty years ago and way back through the evolving workforce of the 20th Century, people were hired into jobs for which they could expect to remain for some fairly large measure of time. Today, Manpower Inc is the largest non government employer in the US. This is primarily a temporary agency. A large number of people today work in contract positions, brought in to solve a problem, address a specific need, but with no added benefits other than their hourly wage or contractual financial limit.

And enter the thought: it's just a job.

Although it's wise to take a deep breath and fully accept that the caring, nurturing employer has long since left the stage, it helps to see what we've lost in this and how we cope with that innate lack of belonging to a group. In my case, I have just expanded to three "jobs" each of which has deep personal rewards emanating from use of my talents to contribute to the greater good and get paid in doing so.

But what's missing is a deep sense of loyalty to any of these entities. Not one of these "jobs" provides benefits. Not one of these jobs promises to be around a year from now (yes, for themselves, but not necessarily for me). Contracts are temporary and renewable, depending on the flow of business, none of which is in my control.

How do I, or for you dear reader, create that sense of belonging and not just show up, deliver, walk away as if it was someone else's responsibility to own the system and give back to it more than the minimum? In the old paradigm there was a pressure to devote a certain degree of thought and even emotion to the organization, or at least to its people. In the new paradigm, it's way easier to get to the divisive "every man for himself". No matter how nice the people you work for are, there is still no structural framework to act as your safety net.

I have no answer for this, just questions. It's just a job may be a way to keep from getting duped and dumped or it may be a way of driving a wedge into our own well-being at work. I hear those words as defensive.

Harder to write it than to read it

Every time I'm impelled to behave well by, in fact, adding material to my blog, I have to face the exact same demon: WORDS!

Think about it: words swirl through our minds all day long. We probably have the exact same thought fifty or more times a day. "I'm hungry; where's the bathroom; how am I going to pay for that; has the dog been walked; ohmygod, everything I need for tomorrow is in the cleaners!"

Most of our daily appetite for words are banal and mundane and most assuredly cliche. Even those of us who are pretty good with words (like writers) dry up when we're put under some pressure, especially when there is no paycheck on the table. Blog writing is especially hard. If we have no big following or we don't know who's reading because they don't comment, we're writing in a vacuum, looking into our own navels and saying what's on our minds (and remember the list of useless thinking I gave you above).

Yet I read the blogs like an addict. Some are punishingly biased and consequently not worth the time they take to even boot up. Others are open, nuanced and enlivening. I read Andrew Sullivan's Daily Dish daily and David Kuo on Belief Net several times a month (and that's about how often he posts there). But suffice it to say, writing is hard work, not casual play. But if you have the gift of words, you are compelled to write now and then. Invitation: comment!

Authenticity and the 2008 election

It seems that the pundits who are worth listening to (the PBS dudes who talk to Charlie Rose at 11 PM after the children are asleep) think that the only quality any presidential candidate must exhibit to win the US presidency is the power to connect to the everyday person. This makes sense on its surface, but only if you believe the everyday person is actually a voter!

I wish I knew the average American. I don't. I'm too long in the Northeast to recognize the lunchpail Democrats in Ohio as the biggest voting bloc, the ones Obama HAS to connect to, or even women over 50 as so terribly significant (and that's a category where I fit).

I don't recognize the description of rich which Obama gave at the Saddleback forum as over 250K (McCain said over 5MM). I live in Boston and I can figure out how to live on under 100K and still feel rich. I lived on under 12K thirty years ago and I shared space in Manhattan with a roommate and went to museums and outdoor music fairs. I always had plenty of food to eat.

Average Americans are rich by any standards in world terms, but we don't (want to) know it. The statistical comparisons are staggering. If Obama doesn't raise taxes (or Mc Cain) we won't have an infrastructure to leave our children. Our children and grandchildren are paying for a social security they will never get to use. It's time for America to get authentic about how rich and poor we are. We live in an unfair, unequal society and we must sober up from the silly stuff of this election. I think we can handle straight talk. and I think the way to connect to the average American (whoever that is) is to appeal to our sense of fairness and inherent appreciation of truth in the face of shared sacrifice.

I await hearing the details of the Democratic platform. Will it resemble the way we live or will it pander to the imaginary lunchpail people? These are not selfish isolated folk. They are "can-do" and they will follow a real leader. Are we ready to actually elect someone good, or just settle for a loser we deserve?

Tough stuff

This is Tuesday's complaint department:

I have a part-time job where I have to maintain a sane and healthy working relationship with people who "supervise" my work (but can't read my attitude) from 1500 miles south of me. It's a virtual call center for career professionals and I attempt to make sense of a complex network of instructions that occasionally becomes unwieldy. My "boss", the woman who hired and trained me, has to manage 186 people remotely from her perch in North Carolina. She's busy ( she IS a Vice-President, after all), and she has more email than anyone ought to have (or so I hear). She announced on one of our multi-city teleconferences about two months ago that she doesn't get to all of her email. This means she doesn't answer inquiries, so don't bother to send any. As one who had already sent her unanswered email six weeks prior, I can attest to that!

So today I needed to find a document she had sent about two weeks ago and I emailed the head of the administrative staff to get the old info for me to make a meeting connection on August 25th. This admin lady couldn't help me, but asked how she could help me get to the source. So, I emailed the Source, the one who doesn't open her emails, and voila! MADAME picked up the phone and called me. And she was offended I was sending out email announcing she doesn't answer her email!! Well, with that phone call, I guess she showed me!

What's wrong here? It's that I called her on her bs with not answering email and she woke up! God forbid anyone should notice that if you announce on a teleconference that it might take you six weeks to hear back from her that you would seek to get her ear by going around her to anyone who could help you out!

I have a big problem with poseurs! Straight talk about relationships that have to be maintained long-distance is essential for s smooth working relationship. I was kind in apologizing for her misunderstanding that I might have sounded like I was complaining about her, but it's time to get the big picture: hire an admin to read your mail and respond or I'll call you next time!

Big Stuff

My book (and my blog) is nothing if not about building character, and not to be confused with backbone, stiff upper lip or any of the prep school idiosyncrasies.

We spend our lives in behaviors developed from character and we travel over and over again back to its monumental maintenance. Every once in awhile, we get the blessing of a really bad event, (did I say blessing?) or culmination of a series of events, habits or lifelong behaviors that hits us with a WHAMMY!

These are the times that try men's souls. And women's I might add.

I am in the midst of just such a life altering event. Predicament is more the word, for events happen and pass somewhat quickly; predicaments take time to unravel and finally straighten out. The details of my messy experience are not important here: you have one yourself; you will have one soon or you've had one in the not so distant past and you'd rather not discuss it, much less remember it.

The question is what happens on the journey through the mess? How do I behave? I'll give you one simple example. I had to call a lawyer to begin to take care of my predicament, and I was given a referral of someone from a friend who hadn't paid the gentleman when she used him four years ago. I was embarrassed to tell him I couldn't name my source, but I went ahead and told it straight. I wasn't free to tell him. I had rehearsed other nonsense, but told the simple truth.

The victories we find in life come from very small steps, even when we clean up very big mistakes. We die a thousand deaths as we stumble through our years, but we wake up and make a tiny dent in our integrity, one simple sentence at a time.