I live

Months on the new job. Startup hard. Tired. Miss family. Little time for self, little time for much. But the company is real, the people are fun to work with, and I feel that I am doing valuable work. It is challenging me in different ways than I am accustomed to. My leadership is developing, while I am using about one-sixth of my technical muscle. Maybe one-eighth. It is OK though, I am giving them what they need when they need it. It is not about my ego gratification. It is not about what I want to do. It is about the job at hand and nothing more.

I was starting to do a real mechanical engineering project a few days back, and my direct supervisor commented that we could get an intern to do that. I thought, probably not very well, which is what the last person did, and that is why I need to work on it now. But it is key to pick battles and observe terrain, and shape perception by giving people what they want rather than what they need sometimes.

And then be really sneaky and do something that does fulfill you, and does meet needs, and doesn't get you in trouble because it is so right. Yeah. Take that.

See this film!

The long wait is over

I am happy to say I finally was offered and accepted a job. I will be moving to the South Bay Area in August, working in Sunnyvale, presently checking out potential roommate situations.

The job is fuel cells again, but not again in away. This new place is really wired. They know what they are doing, they have a vision I believe in, and that vision has stayed on course for at least six years. Wow. That must be some kind of record in the fuel cell business. Best of all, I get to work with Jim S. and Dave H. again. Its been a long time.

California is a ridiculous place to try to make a living, but oh well. We will work through it, Connie and me, and the kids, all together.

Thirty Mondays, I have survived

I would not recommend unemployment as a means of self-discovery, in general. It is hard, and you don't get much stuff. But, I did get the small victory of toilet training my three year old son as of Monday. I am renewing my yoga practice a bit at a time. I have been gratified how many of the people I have called friends for many years are in fact true friends. I have read some bad books, and some good ones. I have built a small business, after a fashion. Life continues.

A different Monday, thankfully

What a difference a week makes. Maybe just writing about it helps, though it tends to scare the spouse when she reads it. I don't intend that certainly. Anyway, this is Monday twenty-one, and things don't seem quite as bad, though I am not in any better material condition. I don't have any new prospects, actually one less based on some recent news.
My friends at a local tech company were waiting for some funding to come through before offering me a position in their small but high potential company. The technology is interesting, reforming hydrogen from hydroccarbons. This would support any fuel cell to generate power on a potentially 24x7 basis. So, yeah, I was hopeful. They would not have been able to pay me as much as I was worth, but I am in a gambling mood, and there would have been some equity. This weekend I found out that their efforts to raise capital in a somewhat complex Canadian deal had pretty much fallen apart completely. From my vantage-point, it looks like general skittishness over the global economic situation is making all VCs check their shorts for poop frequently. So, with that deal dead on arrival, I am not likely to get on there.
My opportunity at the national laboratory in Richland is like Heisenberg's Cat, neither alive nor dead. Those people either can't make decisions very quickly or don't know how to sever things that are done. I can't figure out which from the information available. My last interviews were on March 12th. Yeah, that's quite a while for a decision, I agree.
I am participating in a group proposal for a big DOE grant to work on some hydrogen sensors. It would give me enough money to put my little product development company in a laboratory at SIRTI, the local technology incubation facility, and pay a reasonable salary for about two years. Time enough to figure out what comes next. But we won't have any fruits from that until October, if we get it.
So why am I happier today than last Monday? I don't really know. I have been taking better care of my body, doing some yoga. Maybe that is helping. I have been enjoying my time with the kids. I am relinquishing control of an uncontrollable situation. I am not trying to contain the whole problem in my chest, like that critter in the "Alien" movie, trying to bust out all the time. I'm not going to go all biblical on you, but I am putting this problem to a higher authority, whether it makes sense or not, because if it works great, if not, I have lost nothing but some stress until I figure that out too.
I mean, really, something's got to give sometime. Someone has to acknowledge that I might be able to meet some need of theirs at some point.

Breathe, you are alive...

Twenty Mondays

Mondays are the worst ones. The days when you know from the moment you get out of bed an hour later than you should that it just doesn't matter. That you are not going anywhere anyway. That there is no time-clock to punch, no project to get back on, no mission to accomplish.

One, two, three, ..., twenty Mondays later it has not changed. The feeling of worthlessness tries to come back every seventh day. It is not me, it is not part of me, I do not own this. It comes like a shadow across the sun every seventh day. It is me, in truth. It is you. We all wonder if we are worth anything all the time, it must be related to mortality. If I could only do something worthwhile before I die, God, that would really be something. Not asking for that much really. We are frequently distracted from this topic, normally, ironically, by the fact that we organize in semi-productive groups of individuals trying to accomplish more or less insignificant goals. We strive against the blackness, toward ignorance of it, by being constantly distracted.

Those without work spend too much time thinking. This is a dangerous activity. Need new distractions that cause no permanent damage. Yoga. Climbing rock walls. Cutting wood. Any opportunity for mindfulness works. A moment of focus, outward and inward, but not on self.

I should take a lesson from my coffee cup. It is no less a cup for coffee, sitting empty and forgotten on a dusty shelf. Its purpose and identity are untouched by doubt or lack of use. It knows its mission will come again, or not. It remains a coffee cup regardless.

It is also an inanimate object. And maybe lucky for that.

Looking forward to Monday #21. But in the meantime I have worthwhile things to do, if I can think of any of them.

What Big Eyes You Have!

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

And now, the news...

I am laughing rather than crying about this confluence of crises that is tearing apart the order of the financial world we thought we knew. This laughter is a matter of personal choice, and it is not ha-ha funny laughter. It is hoarse-throated, uncomfortably loud, and not at all jovial laughter.

Congress is shocked (really?) that the invisible hand of capitalism has reached its hand so far into the cookie jar, and tried to take so much from the people at the bottom of the food chain, that the jar is on the ground broken. So, lightning-quick, to the rescue, Congress develops razor-sharp legislation to help the criminals gather up all the cookie bits and leave us sitting in the shards of glass. Nice. "The only way we can save the system is to give them all they were grasping for and more" is the message I am getting from the televised (corporate) media. Solution: stop watching television.

What's a poor boy to do? Not at issue. Some sources of news that have really helped me inform myself into such a state:

Democracy Now - Thomas Geoghegan on "Infinite Debt: How Unlimited Interest Rates Destroyed the Economy"

Amy talks with Thomas Geoghegan from Harper's, see the recent article in Harper's (April 2009) if you have access. Essentially, with unlimited interest rates permitted by lawlessness, there is no longer an incentive to have low rates and a culture set up for everyone to succeed in paying the loan back. If you can get enough money from those just barely capable of paying you back, you can afford a lot of defaults!

Democracy Now - “The Zombie Ideas Have Won”–Paul Krugman on $1 Trillion Geithner Plan to Buy Toxic Bank Assets

The darkness is growing before my eyes...

Harper's Magazine - It’s Deja Vu All Over Again: Wall Street and Bill Clinton

Mommy, make it stop...

Mother Jones - Panning Geithner's Plan

"There's no place like home, there's no place like home..."

We are fortunate to have an LP radio station is Spokane, KYRS, with a wide array of opinions on public affairs and great music shows as well. I support KYRS and encourage you to give some shows a listen, and consider whether you could support this grass-roots information effort. Michael Reid has a show, "Does that answer your question?", that I have found uniformly insightful to the point of boredom (not really, sorry for the left-handed compliment, Michael). He just always nails it. Check out his blog too. Oops, that is really hard to log into. I am not sure he has it set up correctly yet. I will try to get that info to him. Definitely in the category of people I would like to have coffee or lunch with.

Well, thanks for letting me brighten your day!