Overbooked and Underpaid: Notes from a Yes-aholic

How To Judge A Man....

 

My husband sent me this yesterday. I thought it was particularly relevant in an election year.

A Vacation From Google

 

I was raised on the writings of George Orwell.

Most particularly, Animal Farm and 1984.

So any time an entity, be it a government or a private company, starts setting off my "Orwell Alarm", I try to give it a wide berth. Which is the chief reason I am still not on facebook.

And why I have decided to see if I can go an entire week without using google. Their recent changes to their privacy policy are just a little to Orwellian for me.

I will still be surfing the web. I will just be using Yahoo instead.

I also won't be signing in to my google account to check my email or use my google+ account.

We'll see how it goes...

A Life Changing Program

 

Every once in a while you have an experience that profoundly changes something about how you view the world. The sort of thing that, once experienced, cannot be "un-experienced". 

I had such an experience in 1982 when I spent a summer studying in Europe. Once I viewed my home country from a distance, through the eyes of others, I could never quite look at the U.S.A. in exactly the same way I had before. 

I'm not saying I wanted to move to Europe or anything, I'm just saying I now saw some things very differently because I had new information.

I had another such experience on January 6th of this year.

While driving cross country I fired up my favorite new app (tune in radio) that lets me listen to my favorite programs from my favorite radio stations no matter where I am. As I frequently drive through patches of what I consider to be "quality radio wasteland" I am LOVING this app. (I have an older minivan so I have to patch my ipad through to my radio using a wireless transmitter device that somes with some static but you can't have everything.)

Which is how I came across the January 6th broadcast of "This American Life" episode 454 "Mr. Daisey And The Apple Factory".

Mike Daisey is a storyteller and this particular story is a doozy. 

And hearing his story changed my life.

I can't exactly tell you how yet because I am still processing the information from Mr. Daisey's story. I have a lot of conflicting emotions about it.

But now that I know these things I can never go back to "un-knowing" them. 

So I warn you, if you don't want your life changed, don't go listen to this program. 

Because you can never "un-listen" to it. And I promise you it will change you on some level - even if you don't want it to.

It's that powerful.

 

A note: you may have to buy the program in itunes for .99 if you are not listening on your desktop but, rather, on a mobile device. I promise you it's worth it.

Anti-Social Networking

 

I have a lot of issues with social networking.

1) I am basically anti social.

2) I read the book "1984" and HATED it. I thought it was probably one of the best and most important books ever written but hated it because it seemed possible.

3) I saw the movie "Minority Report". Pretty much the same deal as the Orwell book.

4) If I wanted to take over the world I probably wouldn't try to employ the tactics in 1984 or Minority Report via the government - no, I think I would create a cool social networking service and get everyone so addicted to it that they would voluntarily - happily, even - tell me everything I could ever want to know about them.

5) I am a middle aged person with a brain that processes change slowly. Which means that every time a social networking tool - or anything on my computer, for that fact - changes its format, it takes me weeks - nay, maybe even months - to figure the thing out all over again. By which time, it has changed again - possibly more than once - and I am, once more,  hopelessly out of the loop.

Which is a fancy way of saying almost none of the social networking tools make any sense to me.

Which is a subtle way of admitting that I am an not all that bright.

But I have had to come to grips with all of the above because, as a freelance artist, musician, and writer I have accepted how necessary social networking is to get the word out about whatever I am doing so that more people who are interested in my work can find it. 

And people who are not interested in my work can become interested in it. 

And, to be fair, I want to know what other people are doing creatively as well and help them spread the word about what they are doing.

But one problem I see with social media overall is that platforms originally designed just to connect people and facilitate their personal relationships are trying to evolve into marketing tools. And, while I can see the success of these sites on the relationship front,  I'm not seeing their value as much in marketing. They don't seem to help you find your audience as much as they help you find other people looking for an audience. I'm still waiting for the social networking equivalent of a publisher or record company.

That said, here are the social media tools I have tried and a little rundown of how well I feel they have worked.

So far I have embraced twitter, google+, stumbleupon and, to a tiny degree, facebook.

Twitter:

Twitter is my favorite place to find news and creative work by other people. I feel as though it is a little like a cross between a  newspaper, where I get to read interesting things, and a CB radio, where I can have conversations with multiple people at once. While I am not very adept at using it to share photos or videos, I love how easy it is to use overall. The format is simple and I am meeting cool people I might not meet otherwise.

Also, now that I have tweetdeck, I catch a lot more in the stream while I am working at other things on my computer. And, because the tweets are so short, they let me keep my main focus on my work.

As a tool to drive traffic to my websites twitter is only semi effective. I do not yet have enough followers to get the message to as many people as I would like. But it does have an impact. And, thanks to the practice of retweeting, I see all kinds of things I would not find just through the people I regularly follow and people who don't follow me can still "happen upon" me.

Stumbleupon:

There is a lot I do not understand about stumbleupon when it comes to following other people or interacting with them in any way. But as a tool to drive traffic to my websites it wins over twitter and facebook hands down. Any post that I share via stumbleupon tends to yield 10 to 50 times the page views of the other two.

Facebook:

I'm afraid I really don't like facebook for much of anything. Because of this, I do not have my own facebook page and simply have pages for my sites that are linked to my husband's account.

Beyond all the Orwellian stuff I've mentioned before is the fact that I primarily wish to use social networking to connect to people who are in my life currently and not to folks who are part of my past. But I don't want to be rude to the people from my past by not accepting their friend requests. And I don't want to accept friend requests in name only and then set up my account so that I never have to bother with those people. I feel as though that would be equally rude. So I just don't go there.

Plus, I find most of the actual template of facebook to be bewildering. I just can't seem to get the hang of how the site works. Especially since the powers that be at facebook seem to change something every week.

However, I cannot completely discount facebook as a tool to drive traffic to my sites. It tends to be roughly as effective as twitter for me.

Google+

I have only just joined this network and am still feeling my way around it. So far I find many aspects of it to be easier to use than facebook and I really like the idea of the different circles. It was easy to join. And it was easy for me to set up pages for my different sites.

My difficulties have come with finding other people on it. First of all - I can't simply access my twitter followers and transfer them over. Secondly, Not very many people seem to be using it yet. For this reason, I don't think it's going to be very useful as a traffic generator for a while. But I'm hoping to use it to meet some new people who like the things I like and hoping to have a more personal experience with some of my twitter followers than I have on twitter.

I also cannot figure out how to talk to anyone directly without using chat. I do think the facebook and twitter systems are much easier for just sending little messages to people who don't happen to be online at the same time you are. But then it could be that, once again, there is a perfectly good system there and I just am not seeing it because I'm so challenged at this sort of thing.

Another problem with google+ is that it isn't on any of my sharing buttons for my blogs. Which means I have to tweet something first and then use that tweet as a link. Which is time consuming. (I am sure there is a better way to do this but I don't yet know what it is. Feel free to enlighten me in the comments section.)

I mainly joined google+ as an alternative to facebook and thereby have avoided facebook for probably another 6 months. We'll see if it winds up being worth it.

Overall, I'm going to do my best with these tools and hope the benefits out weight the drawbacks.

And perhaps I'll even emerge from my cave a little and be less anti-social.

Which is probably the point.

 

What Makes Us Strong

 

I have heard it suggested that our greatest strength as a nation stems from the fact that we are a democracy.

But what is democracy? 

There seems to be a belief that it is simply having the power to elect one's leaders. That it ends there. That there is no nuance to it. 

Give everyone a ballot, line 'em up and let 'em vote and everything will sort itself out.

But elections are only effective when they reflect certain conditions of the culture.

The voters must have a real choice of candidates. 

Those candidates must understand and accept their obligation to their constituents.

Those candidates cannot be corrupt, using their position to benefit only themselves rather than those whom they serve.

Those who govern can never jettison the needs of the many for the needs of a few.

The few that might benefit from manipulating the government cannot be allowed to take hold of that government through coercion and bribery. 

There must be a non violent chain of accountability and a mechanism for removal of failing or corrupt leaders.

Those who govern must understand that all societies contain diversity and that governing requires a respect for that diversity. 

Those being governed must also understand that their culture is diverse and not expect the government only to implement policies that conform to their particular world view.

There must be a healthy and robust forum for debate of opposing viewpoints and that forum must be free from the threat of physical violence.

There must be an informed electorate and a free press.

When these principles are not in place, any democratic endeavor is bound to fail.

As we watch events unfold in the Middle East in the wake of the "Arab Spring" and we look for signs of true democracy there, we should step back and take a look at our own country. While we hold true to some of the above principles, are we following all of them?

Does our model of democracy hold up as something to be emulated?

When our leaders engage in corruption (Duke Cunningham and Charlie Rangel to name only two), when we stoke the fires of hate so forcefully that our elected leaders become targets of physical violence (Gabby Giffords), when we become unable to have a debate where we can listen to opposing viewpoints, when we turn our backs on our roles as citizens and become merely consumers driving an engine of capitalism - are we making the most of the "democracy" we have?

Since the events of 9/11, I hear all the time about when "The Terrorists Win". "If you don't go on with your regular life, the terrorists win."

And there seems to be a skewed idea of what "regular life" looks like. It seems to be a lifestyle personified by over spending and the narcissistic superficiality of reality TV.

Giving up that kind of lifestyle doesn't "let the terrorist's win"

When we choose to be superficial and self involved,  oblivious to our obligations to one another and to the principles of true democracy - when we adopt a single fixed ideology and attempt to force every citizen into it, that is when the terrorists win.

 

 

 

"Cyber-Free" Day

 

I declared today a "cyber-free" day and (except for checking my business emails which I cannot really ignore) tried to stay as far away from my computer and the internet as possible.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day here and lately we don't get many that aren't either too hot or too cold. Last week we had 3 straight days of 98-100 degree weather followed by 3 days of 50-60 degrees. 

Just had to get out and weed the garden and enjoy a book on my back porch - things that I never seem to get around to.]

Tomorrow is a big teaching day as us Thursday plus I'm going to kick back with some friends Thursday night, enjoy a couple mixed drinks and hit the movie "Bridesmaids". (From all that I've heard it's the sort of movie that will be greatly enhanced by a couple of drinks aforehand. So blogging will probably be pretty light the rest of the week.

So much for my new resolve about a posting schedule......

 

Losses

 

 

This has been a year of losses, some annoying, some difficult, some heart wrenching.

The annoying losses mostly concerned property.

First to go were the 20 year old washer and dryer. That was hardly unexpected and, except for the hassle and expense of replacing them, mostly welcome. We had been putting up with occasionally mangled and often mistakenly shrunk laundry for quite some time. And goodness knows what impact that old washing machine had on our water bill. (It's been difficult to ascertain the impact so far because of all the leaky plumbing we need to fix.)

Next was our beloved Mazda 3 which was barely a year old. I've written in detail about that incident here. The up side is that, while we were set back financially when it came to replacing the car, we wound up getting another Mazda 3 that has some new features that the old car lacked.

Third was the demise of my infamous "produce killing" refrigerator. (I've written in graphic detail about said fridge here.) The great news on this front is that I finally have the fridge of my dreams and, the best part, it was on sale.

Those were the annoying losses.

The difficult losses began with a loss of our sense of security with our aging parents as we face the reality that our time with them is finite. We had a very close call last summer with my step-father-in-law that really rocked our foundations and there can only be more of such episodes to come as each of our parents reach or near the 80 year mark.

Other difficult losses have been school and job related as we shift with the economy. The one I'd most like to single out here is that of the conductor of the Kenosha Symphony, Miriam Burns. Tomorrow night I will play what may be my final concert under the baton of Ms. Burns and it will be a tremendously challenging evening.

Firstly because of the challenging program: Don Juan by Strauss, Polyvetsian Dances by Borodin, and a series of opera arias with "flexible beat structure".

But secondly, and most importantly, it will be challenging through the simple fact that Miriam Burns is, hands down, one of the finest conductors I have had the pleasure to play for. In a career that has spanned over 30 years of playing with orchestras large and small, I have had my share of interesting experiences with conductors. Some are tremendously arrogant and temperamental (I will have the good grace to mention no names) some completely incompetent (again, no names) and only a handful truly professional and visionary. Ms. Burns falls into that last category without question. 

In the 14 years that I have worked with her she has displayed professionalism on every level. Her rehearsals are well planned and concise, she knows what she wants and she knows how to help the orchestra achieve it. I cannot tell you how important this is. I have occasionally played for conductors who - in the words of a colleague - are "tremendously generous with other people's time". There is nothing more frustrating than sitting idly while 60 minutes of rehearsal time are spent hashing out bowings. And there is also nothing more frustrating than sitting in witness to an out of control conductor whose only tool for improving the orchestra is to yell at and belittle them. Instead, Miriam excels at taking a passage apart and fixing its underlying structure.

Furthermore, she is skilled in selecting repertoire that challenges the orchestra but is not beyond our capabilities (we've played many, many pieces that could be seen as beyond the reach of a small orchestra that has only 5 rehearsals per concert - Daphnis and Chloe, Symphonie Fantastique, Bartok Concerto for Orchestra and Don Juan to name a few).

Ms. Burns is leaving, not because her work with us is finished, nor because we are unhappy with her direction. She is leaving, quite simply, because we can no longer afford her. She flies in from New York to work with us and our organization needs to find someone local to take over the conducting duties. The Symphony's loss is just another casualty of the horrible economy. Perhaps there will be a shift in our fortunes in the future and we will be able to have her back. I certainly hope so.

Finally, and I realize I've taken a long time to get here - thanks to those patient enough to still be reading - the heartbreaking losses. 

The first was our Rat Terrier Lucky - to whom I dedicated an essay here.

Now it is our beautiful Border Collie Lyra who was diagnosed with inoperable, incurable bone cancer the day after the Mazda got smashed (which was on Valentine's Day, now that I think of it - what a sucky present).

As difficult as the situation with Lucky was, he was an ancient dog (our best guess at his age was 16). Lyra is only 6 1/2 and we really took it for granted that we would enjoy her companionship for years to come. As I write this the clock is running down on her final two hours. God, just typing that chokes me up.

As heartbreaking as it is to put her down, we know that waiting longer will only make things more difficult, both for us and for her. As it is, the cancer has grown to enormous proportions, taking over the entire right side of her face. It has grown into her mouth and begun taking over the teeth and jaw on that side and creates enough blood and other fluids as to give her difficulty breathing. As I describe that, I realize it sounds as though we have already waited too long. The problem is, not only does she not seem to be in that much pain, she is still incredibly active, in good spirits and bouncy. She still chases squirrels and loves walks and riding in the car and is still happy to see us when we come home. I took her for a walk this morning and, as per usual, she tried to drag me the whole way.

And that complicates things terribly. When do you do this thing that is ending a life? When the situation is bad but not impossible? Or do you wait until you run the risk of the tumor rupturing outward or her lungs collapsing as she struggles for breath? (This type of cancer has almost always metastasized to the lungs by the time you see the tumor.)

When I look at the course of her day it currently breaks down to 10 minute intervals of "same old dog" with 3 hour spells of "will she even make it through the night, breathing like that?" And that is how we find ourselves today having to make the call. I cannot keep her with us past the point at which she is truly suffering and she is rapidly approaching that state.

That's really all I can say about it right now. 

I hope to write a tribute to her next week.

3 Proposals

 

Proposal #1) Business Hours

As I was shopping in my favorite local grocery store today, I saw a notice that they have changed their business hours from 7:00 am - 10:00 pm to 8:00 am - 8:00 pm. I imagine the economy is hitting them hard and this is an attempt on their part to control operating costs.

And it got me to thinking. How much of a difference would it make to our lives if we implemented a plan to reduce the business hours of the nation? What would our country look like if we were not all working and shopping and traveling 24/7? How much energy would we save? How many pollutants would we reduce? How much more time could we spend with our families? Could factories eliminate their late shifts and put more people to work in the daylight hours in buildings that are currently sitting idle?

I don't know if this is a good idea or not, it's just a thought. In the past, when facing times of crisis, we have enacted all sorts of measures requiring sacrifice. A few  that most readily spring to my mind are the 55 mile an hour speed limit (oil crisis of 1973) ration stamps and victory gardens (WWII) and daylight savings time (various origins, including some from WWII). 

It strikes me that we have mostly tried to sail through our current crisis with our lives unchanged and no sacrifices made. I find it hard to believe that we are going to be able to simply "shop" our way out of this one and settle into economic prosperity by osmosis.

   

Proposal # 2) 24 Hour Emergency Radio station and Internet Alert System.

Emergencies. They happen. 

When I was a kid, there was no such thing as dialing 911. As a result, you spent a lot of time being quizzed by adults about things like the phone number for the local fire station and the phone number for the local police. And, of course, every locality had its own numbers and they were all 7 digits long. Not exactly expedient in a crisis.

I find our current emergency alert system to be woefully inadequate in the modern world. We're still using sirens from 40-60 years ago. And what happens after the sirens go off? Where do you go for more information? Especially if you are driving in an unfamiliar locality or are at home with no power? And the alerts that come over the TV when a storm is coming? Useless to us. We watch almost no TV that is happening in real time. We are usually either watching netflix or something prerecorded.

Example A) We were driving to Minneapolis during the summer of 2009 when tornados began hitting the areas within 2 hours of the city. We got an emergency alert over our car radio telling us which counties were being effected. Trouble is - we didn't even know what county we were driving in! It's not as thought they put that info on the road signs every 5 miles or so. Not only that, after the alert, the station just went back to its regular programming. We surfed all over the dial and could not find any good information.

Example B) In the recent blizzard we lost power for 6 hours or so. We were also stuck in our house, hemmed in by 4 foot drifts. Without power, we could not access the internet or the television to find out what was going on. I did find a radio that ran on batteries, but, again, all I found was regular programming with an occasional news item that was, at best, vague about the situation

Radio - I would like to see a 24 hour emergency radio station that covers all kinds of emergencies - weather, terrorism, you name it. It should be the same frequency all across the country. Maybe 91.1 to make things simpler. To keep the information specific, each state could run their own station. When there is a crisis, the nature of the crisis should be clearly and repeatedly stated along with information about which roads and highways fall within the area of the storm or chemical spill or whatever. With today's technology, how hard would this be? And if there are stations already using that frequency for commercial programming, how hard would it be to get them to change by one number? Give them a tax break for migrating their signal and cover the costs of changing their logos and such. Even in a power outage, families can access radio stations if they have a battery powered radio. Which everyone should just have anyway. Like flashlights and smoke detectors.

The internet. We need an emergency alert system for the internet just like the one used for TV. It could be a little flashing lightning bolt that blinks in the corner of your screen when there is an alert of any kind. You would click on it and be taken to a site with full information on the crisis - what is happening, who is affected - and what to do next. And since the internet is delivered to us by phone providers for the most part, phone companies could be in charge of keeping the alerts specific to the area in question.

Proposal # 3 Recycling containers

My city has mandatory recycling. I have to separate out all my plastic, glass, and metal and put it in special blue bags to be picked up every week on garbage day. We also recycle all newspaper, scrap paper, chipboard (like cereal boxes) and corrugated cardboard. 

This is great. I am a big fan of recycling.

The problem is that when I am out and about in the city, there are no trash cans anywhere for recycling. Only cans for garbage. 

I would like to see dual garbage cans - with one side for recyclables and one side for non recyclables - everywhere there is a public trash can in my city. Whenever a municipality mandates recycling, it should be across the board all the way. Not just in my house. 

I've seen these dual trash cans in other cities so I know they exist. Eventually, I'd love to see them all over the country, not just in a few forward thinking communities.

So there you have it - 3 of my proposals to change the world!

Of course, I'm not holding my breath.

Evolving Into Exercise

 

I am a sloth.

My favorite piece of furniture is a chaise lounge. Since I don't have one of those, my favorite piece of furniture is my bed and my favorite accessories are a down comforter and 3 good pillows to lean against.

What I'm trying to say is - exercise is not my first choice when it comes to how I like to spend my time.

Despite that, I have spent quite a bit of my life exercising. My first choice of a career was dance. To that end, I spent over twelve years training intensely in ballet and modern dance only to have the whole thing derailed by a failure to grow to a stature taller than 5 foot 2. Well, that and the arrival of the D cup bust. George Balanchine material I wasn't.

I also did 5 years of gymnastics. Career derailed by injuries and that boob thing again. Plus - I really wasn't all that good.

But I absolutely hated every sport I ever played and every gym class I was ever in. I remember first grade gym class most particularly. Gym for young girls of that time included wearing something called "bloomers". As entertaining as that sounds, it's not nearly so entertaining as it looked. They were basically puffy dark blue shorts and all the girls were required to wear them. The boys got to wear their regular clothes. My feministic streak may very well have begun during this class. 

The other horrible thing about first grade gym was the gym teacher's love of the recording "Chicken Fat". We did exercises to this damn song almost every class.

 

 

 

Is it any wonder I spent most of the rest of my life evading exercise? Especially the boring kind designed only to get you fit?

But after I left dance and had three kids and watched my body slide completely down hill, I finally had to make peace with the idea that I was going to have to start working out on some level. 

To that end, I began walking outdoors three days a week with a walking buddy about 16 years ago. It was the height of Oprah's "Walk Yourself Thin" program. I enjoy these walks because I have a great walking buddy and we get some terrific chatting in. But I have to confess that, any day she doesn't show up, I just go back into my house and do something else, grateful for the extra time in my day. (Which may have something to do with never getting to the "thin" part.)

And I did spend a year working out with a personal trainer in an attempt to rehab a shoulder injury and get some better tone to my body overall. That wasn't too bad because, again, I got to chat with the trainer and take my mind of how boring the actual exercises were.

But now I have found my exercise niche. 

Over a year and a half ago I started walking an indoor track like the one pictured above. (Those of you familiar with my daily bookings know that this is supposed to be part of my weekday routine.)

But I didn't really approach it with any more discipline than any of the other things I tried and I can't say I paid particular attention to how walking the track - or not walking it - impacted the rest of my life.

Then, this fall, I stopped walking the track and in January started up again. After two weeks of putting it back into my routine I noticed something I hadn't noticed before.

I could write again.

Lightbulb.

For me, there is a direct link between a certain kind of exercise and creativity. I say a certain kind of exercise because part of the equation is the time to myself that I get when I'm walking the track vs walking with my walking buddy. 

The meditative quality of walking in circles, the time away from other people, the internet, and all the other things that steal my focus, and the uptempo music I choose to walk to, all contribute to making me more creative. I almost always leave a track session with several ideas for columns.

Since I'm a reward junkie, heightened creativity is just the sort of carrot I need dangling in front of me to make exercising worthwhile.

So I guess I'm evolving myself to a point where I can embrace exercise rather than despising it.

Just don't make me listen to that Chicken Fat song.

2011 Resolutions Part Two

I've had some time to think of more resolutions for 2011. They may get thrown under the bus in short order, but I can dream, can't I?

5) Do some Life Pruning. What is life pruning, you ask? (And well you may because I just made it up.) I was recently speaking with a harp colleague and we were catching up on our lives. I told her about all the new things I was doing - the blogs and, particularly, adding my teaching daughter's elementary music class into the mix - and she asked. "What did you drop?" 

Silence.

Because, of course, the answer was "Nothing".

She was stunned when I told her. She says she has a very strict rule about not adding something new to her schedule without eliminating something. 

Obviously this woman is not a yes-aholic.

And, obviously, she is onto something here. So I decided to take her advice and look for some things to get rid of in hopes of making my life more manageable . 

Hence, "Life Pruning".

6) Attain a better balance between cyber life and analog life. This is a little the same as the pruning thing but not exactly. It's so easy to get sucked into oodles of time at my computer and I need to make sure that I am monitoring the amount of time I spent looking at a screen (whether desktop or ipad) and limiting it. A) I'm sure it's horrible for my eyes and B) it's preventing me from spending quality time with family and friends . (see Analog Time for more on this)

Part of this resolution is going to involve reassessing all my websites and blogs and figuring out what goes, what stays, and what gets added. I can already tell you that the Bookings, Grades, and Shortfalls are leaving.  I'll be addressing their removal in a later post.

7) Get more fit. I don't need to lose a bunch of weight but I do need to get more fit and healthy overall. I'll also be elaborating more on this in a later post.

 

And I think that does it. Seven is number that almost feels doable. 

 

We'll see.