Seeping Matter

A very early memory of mine is walking with my mom to the church down the street on a Saturday morning before Easter Sunday to participate in an Easter Egg hunt.  Way back then the local church would put on quite a hunt with certainly hundreds of eggs placed around in the rather expansive gardens outside the church.

I was probably only maybe four years old at the time.  All the kids would line up and go look for eggs together on the “Go” signal.  Mom helped me find a neighbor boy, a friend of mine who was a couple of years older than me, to stand by and feel more comfortable while we waited to start.

On “Go,” we all headed off to search for eggs.  I followed my friend around, just a few paces behind him as we did the hunt.  Everywhere he went, I followed.  He would look under a bush, I would look under the bush.  He would look next to the wall, I would look next to the wall.

Mom observed all of this, going on for maybe 20 minutes, as I searched everywhere my friend searched right after he’d searched there.  It was no surprise at the end that my friend’s basket was overflowing with eggs while I’d found only three or four.

Mom put on her sympathetic face and probably gave me a hug or something.  She said, “Matt, you can’t expect to find a lot of eggs if you search where everyone else is searching.”

I remembered that well.  The next year, I didn’t follow my friend.  I searched where nobody else was searching.  At the end my basket was overflowing; I seem to recall counting 20 eggs.

The next year, they had budget cuts and they canceled the Easter Egg hunt, and they’ve never done it again.

Still, I’ve remembered that lesson my whole life.  I’ve used it in pretty benign situations, like trying to find a parking spot at the mall during the holidays.  But lately I’ve been using it a lot more for more significant things, like my career.

There’s a really interesting part in the book “Linchpin” where he addresses the desire of readers to have explicit instructions on how to become a great leader.  I can relate to this desire also.  Seth Godin makes a great point in the book:  If you are trying to become a linchpin, and part of being a linchpin is being a leader, how can you possibly expect someone to give you instructions on how to get there?  If there are instructions to follow, this implies you are a FOLLOWER, not a LEADER!

It’s unfortunate that it’s taken me such a long time to internalize a lesson I was taught when I was so little, but I’m kinda pleased that I seem to be getting it now.  But in case you don’t believe me or Seth Godin, maybe you’ll believe Robert Frost.  He also taught us this lesson using different words:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I —

I took the road less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Despite what some might think, not every moment I worked at Novell was torment.  In fact, most of my time there was pretty good.  But I admit there was a time when I got pretty discouraged.

It was some time after we’d shipped Novell Forge.  Multiple attempts to expand the scope and vision of Novell Forge had been thwarted when I’d repeatedly failed to make a good enough case to invest further in it.  The Developer Services organization was growing smaller and smaller, through layoff and attrition — Novell, sadly, never really did understand the need to invest in their developer community.  I’d been reassigned to a new team from a boss I really liked, and had been given what seemed like a busywork assignment.

I used to joke back then that I could prove I was the least important employee at Novell.  First, organizationally:  Developer Services was surely the most underappreciated and least important organization in all of Novell, and of all the assignments in our organization, mine was the lowest priority assignment.  This part I’d actually confirmed with my management, who had presented a slide deck with our ongoing objectives listed on one slide and those we’d rejected on a subsequent slide.  I’d verified that the first slide listed the accepted objectives in priority order, and my assignment was last.

Second, geographically:  You could (jokingly, of course) judge an employee’s importance by a) how close their building was to campus center, b) what floor they were on (higher floors being more important), and c) how close their office was to the corners and edges of the building (corners, then outside walls, being more important).  Since my office was the ONLY office not on an outside wall on the bottom floor of the building farthest from campus center, I’d joke that this also proved I was the least important person at Novell.

So I joked about it, but also wondered most days whether it really mattered if I came to work at all.  Did anyone care if I showed up?  Did anyone care if I left early?  Did anyone care if I actually accomplished anything during the day?  Did my assignment really matter at all?

I kinda wallowed around in this mire for some time, still coming to work and going through the motions, but wallowing anyway.  I thought about leaving Novell but nothing really materialized.  I’d heard all my life that you should love your job; shouldn’t I be finding a place to work that I loved?

Then one day it finally hit me:  Instead, shouldn’t I be loving the job I have?

I realized that, regardless of the importance of my work to the company, I could make it important to myself.  I vowed that I would take a lot more pride in my work, that I would try to deliver software of high quality and craftsmanship regardless of the assignment I was given, and that I would find other ways to get involved.  I started delivering better on my project.  I created a new technology.  I worked with some great guys at Red Hat to start a new Eclipse subproject.  I got involved with Novell’s Software Development Community of Practice and eventually became one of the practice leaders and one of Novell’s primary thought-leaders and bloggers around agile development methodologies.  I enjoyed my job much more and got an opportunity to move to a different team, a product development team, comprised of some great individuals whom I would never have gotten to know otherwise.

I’ve just finished reading Hugh MacLeod’s book “Evil Plans.”  One of the key phrases in that book is:  ”Life is too short not to do something that matters.”

I’ve been thinking about this and about me and my past and about tidbits I get from conversations with friends and things I pick up on Twitter and Facebook.  How many of us wake up every day with the sole goal of getting to the end of the day?  Every day?

What is it you are looking forward to?

When you wake up in the morning, are you most looking forward to about 16 hours from now, when you can go back to bed?  Or the time when the kids are finally asleep?

When you head in to work, are you most looking forward to noon, when you can take a break from work for an hour?  Or five o’clock, when it is time to go home?  Or the weekend?  Or summer vacation?

Isn’t that a waste, to spend so many hours of the day waiting for them to be past?

I realize that not all of us have our dream job.  But, as I learned, instead of yearning for your dream job and lamenting all the ways that your current job isn’t your dream job, you can also decide to love the job you currently have.  You can give more than you are currently giving — not more time, necessarily, but more heart, more care, more passion.  If you are a schoolteacher, you can yearn for summer vacation and lament those kids you have to put up with for such a low salary until then, or you can ignore the voices telling you how poorly you are paid and decide to make a difference in the lives of as many of your students as possible, a real difference, and find fulfillment in being the best in your profession.

And if you can do that with your job, if you can choose to love your current job instead of waiting until your dream job finds you, can’t you also do that with your life?  Can’t you also take the approach of choosing to give more heart and passion and care and love to the life you have instead of waiting for the life you want to come and find you?

The funny thing is, in my experience I found that as I gave more to my job, it started to become more like the job I wanted.  Things started to happen in my favor.  Opportunities came up that weren’t coming up before.

I’ve found this on other occasions as well.  At times when my career wasn’t heading quite where I wanted, choosing to care more and give more seems to get things moving again.  Things just start happening when you do that, somehow.

The best part, however, is that you have more days that are meaningful.  Each day is a day to give and add value and feel important.  You find meaning in your life every day when you stop worrying about all the things that aren’t working out for you and start finding ways to give.

Enjoy your job more by giving more of yourself at work.  Gain better friends by seeking opportunities to be a better friend.  Take time to read a book to your child, or play with the trains or Polly Pockets, or watch “Tangled” again even though you watched it yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that, because they will not be little for long.

Make your days meaningful and live every day.  Don’t spend your days waiting for your dream life to happen to you.  You deserve better than that.

Last week this was on Dilbert.com:

Proactivity might be one of the most misunderstood and abused terms in business today and over the past decade.  As it is described in Covey’s “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, it is a powerful principle that enables a person to realize they are truly in control of their own life and that it is up to them to make their life what they want of it.  As it is used in business, however, it is a catch-all used by management to lay blame at the feet of individual contributors.  For as much as business people use the term, it is surprising to see how poorly they really understand it.

(I believe Scott Adams would agree with me; hence the cartoon above.)

I’ve been told countless times in a business context that I need to be “more proactive.”  One of the champions of this was IBM.  I was hired by IBM in April of 1998 to port a server application from a mainframe to an RS6000 UNIX platform.  Funny thing was, once I started I found out something kinda funny:  My team didn’t have access to a UNIX machine for me to program on, and didn’t have budget to buy one.  I spent the better part of that year prototyping the code on my Windows laptop, hoping it would work on a UNIX machine, along with searching throughout the site for groups with unused UNIX workstations that I could repurpose for my needs.  It took several months before I finally found a refurbished RS6000 machine that we could afford and was able to arrange to have it shipped to Boulder where I worked.  Finally I had the right equipment to do the job I had been hired for many months before.

At my annual review, I was a bit surprised to hear in my feedback that the company was disappointed in the work I’d done.  Given the constraints on budget and purchasing, and given my organization’s complete lack of any knowledge whatsoever as to how to even acquire the hardware I needed, I felt I’d done a pretty good job of finding what we needed to move forward.  Instead, my feedback was that I hadn’t made nearly the progress on the code that they had hoped for.

When I pointed out to them, “But, you failed to provide me the equipment I needed to produce this code,” their response was, “Well, you need to be more proactive.”

I heard it then and I’ve heard it a lot since.

Last week after we exited the freeway where there was no exit ramp, I thought about this a lot for a good 24 hours or so.  I felt horrible about what had happened.  I felt bad for what had happened to the car, bad for frightening my son, bad for nearly having a serious accident.  I thought over and over about all the things I could have done differently.  Most dominant in my mind was this:  I could have assumed that the driver of the other car would suddenly move over into my lane and cut me off and force me off the road.  I could have assumed that he would not see me there.  I could have passed at a different spot on the freeway.  I could have …, I could have …, I could have …

Then I suddenly realized:  No, Matt.  No.  When a person is driving, it is THEIR responsibility to make a safe lane change.  I was established in my lane.  The other driver did not make a safe lane change.  It was his fault.  Not mine.  His.

I realized that I’ve been trained to feel responsible for things that are not my fault.  I’ve been trained to feel guilty when something I’m associated with goes poorly, as though I am automatically responsible for the success or failure of anything with which I have any association.

Fact is, this is just simply not true.  Proactivity means to accept responsibility for those things which are your responsibility, and to take it upon yourself to take action, make the best of things, and improve your life and those around you, true.  But it doesn’t mean that you accept blame or feel guilty for things you are not responsible for.

If, heaven forbid, one of my children were to start using drugs, I would feel terribly about that.  I would examine the situation and do everything in my power to help change the situation, to support their attempts to quit, to get them the help they need, whatever.  That is being proactive.  But I would not take the blame for their choice.  My children know that it is wrong to use drugs.  They’ve been taught.  They ultimately have a right to choose, and I don’t have to accept full responsibility for their choices in order to be a proactive person.

The driver of the red car made an unsafe lane change.  Can I drive more defensively in the future?  Sure.  Can I do a better job of assuming the person I’m passing doesn’t know I’m there?  Yes.  Is my accident last year my fault?  No.  No it is not.  And I’m not going to waste another second of my life feeling guilty about something that isn’t my fault.

I’ve raved before about “7 Habits” and, without question, I’m a Covey disciple.  Proactivity is a key guiding principle of my life.  But sometimes, it isn’t my fault.

Let’s just start out by saying that I’m really glad 2010 is in the past.

I started off 2010 with some enthusiasm and even determination, you might recall.  My intentions were good, but apparently karma didn’t like it.  Maybe I came across too arrogant, I don’t know.

All I know is that in 2010 it seemed like the blows just kept coming, one right after another.  You know in those Rocky movies (just pick one, they are pretty much all the same after Rocky 1) where, at some point during the fight, he just stands there and keeps getting hit over and over and over again?  Yeah, like that.  $12000 of car repairs in a single year alone can do that to you, even if you aren’t trying to do the Dave Ramsey dance.  If you ARE trying to do the dance, that makes it worse, because it compounds the feeling of failure.  Combine with that a major misunderstanding at work plus missing a coding deadline right around the same time my daughter came down with a serious life-threatening illness causing me to miss a week of work with her in the hospital right at the time year-end evaluations were due…

It was not a very good year.

So it was early last fall when a friend of mine suggested I read Seth Godin’s book “The Dip,” which I immediately followed with “Linchpin.”  Reading these two books in that sequence changed my entire outlook on my career.

The premise of “The Dip” is very simple.  Think of a time when it has seemed to you like things just aren’t working out, when they seem harder than they should be and not nearly as fun or fulfilling as you had hoped when you began.  Maybe it is in a job or a career.  Maybe you are trying to learn to play an instrument or you are training for a marathon.  ”The Dip” that Godin is speaking of is this time — the time past the beginning, when things were new and exciting, but before the time when it becomes fun again because you are really good.  In “The Dip” he explains how to tell whether the low point is really a dip or just the beginning of the end.

To me, however, the biggest lesson was this:  If you try hard enough, you can envision what the dip will be like for any new endeavor you think of starting, and you can decide early whether you think you are interested in going through the dip.

I think it is a natural law that anything worth doing or having has a dip associated with it, where the size of the dip is proportional in depth to the value of the thing worth doing or having.  Learning Spanish was like this for me.  At first, it was interesting and novel (“Hey, check me out!  I can say an entire sentence in Spanish!”).  But then there was the long arduous time period where it just was not happening.  I’d hear people speak in Spanish but I couldn’t translate what they were saying fast enough to understand them; I’d try to reply but I couldn’t translate my thoughts to Spanish fast enough to keep their interest.  But I pushed and pushed, and suddenly one day it happened:  I was suddenly thinking in Spanish.  I could understand and speak without any problem.  I was truly bilingual, and it was fun again.

Learning to write computer software was like that.  So was learning to play the piano, and a host of other things.

Since I know that anything worth doing has a dip, and since I also believe that the size of the dip is proportional to the pursuit, I should be able to objectively analyze a new endeavor at the beginning.  I should be able to imagine how it will be to achieve excellence in this endeavor, and I should be able to envision at least some of that which will constitute the dip.  Then I can analyze up front whether I think it is worth the effort.  Then, if I so choose, I can move forward with a bit more awareness and less surprise when the dip hits.

However, there’s another perfectly good alternative:  I might be honest with myself and realize that I’m not willing to see it through.  In this case, I’m better off to focus my energy in other areas where I AM willing to make the investment.

(There is a point to all of this, really.  I’m getting there.)

For a good 15 years of my career, almost since my career began, I’ve thought about starting my own software company.  I’ve had numerous ideas for products that might be monetizable over that timeframe and have conducted various levels of research for many of them.  Eventually, every one of these ideas got shelved or abandoned.  And suddenly, after having first read “The Dip” and then “Linchpin,” with the context of the Money Flow Principle, I knew what I had been doing wrong.

See, all this time one main reason I’ve wanted to have my own company was because I’ve wanted to work on what I wanted the way I want to do it.  So I’ve had all these ideas for possible software companies.  And every time I’ve had an idea, one of the first things I start to think about is, “How can I make a business out of this?  How can this idea make money?”

It is at this point where I start exploring financial models and business plans.  I spend time thinking about how to deliver the product and how much to charge, whether it is a rich client or a web application, whether it is a product or a service, whether it is a subscription model or a license model.  I think about the customer I want to target.  I run the numbers to see if it can make money.

And I either can’t figure out how to make any money, or I simply get bored and quit.

When I read “The Dip” and thought about my career, I had a major epiphany:  I’m not sure I am actually willing to see my business through the dip.  I think I understand a little about what needs to be done.  While I don’t claim that I’ve thought of everything, I think I’ve got a fairly representative picture.  And I’m not convinced that I am interested in seeing it through.

However, I AM still interested in working on what I want to do, the way I want to do it.  But now that I realize that I may not be interested in doing it as a business, I feel relieved.  Suddenly I’m not compelled to monetize whatever I choose to do, because I’m not sure that is really what I want.  I’m free instead to just pursue something interesting and try to give society a valuable gift, and trust that if I do, the money will eventually flow in my direction.

I don’t think I can clearly express how liberating this was to me.  At a time where I was feeling somewhat trapped and beaten down, I realized I could start creating fulfillment for myself, with no obligations other than just those I make to myself, to create something that is enjoyable and satisfying and interesting to me, the way I want to do it.

So I did.  I created an open source software project, called Zoomulus.  I’ve been working on it ever since, and it has been great.  There’s not much there yet, and I’m not even sure yet what it will actually be.  But it is mine, interesting to me, done my way, and it is making a big difference in my life.

For some time now I’ve been telling friends about this concept I have which I refer to as “The Money Flow Principle.”  Despite the risk of it sounding a lot like hero-worship, I’ll let you in on the secret.

It was in 2003, when I was at Novell and was vigorously championing an open source strategy, that Novell acquired Ximian.  Since I worked in Developer Services it wasn’t long before we engaged in conversations with Miguel de Icaza, one of the founders of Ximian and the driving force behind the Mono project, the premier open-source C#/.NET implementation.  Since that time Miguel and I have kept somewhat in touch, or at least we have some vague awareness of each other.  It isn’t like we hang out or anything, but we have a friendlike relationship.

Since that time when we first met, I’ve given a lot of thought to Miguel and the career he’s created for himself.  I noticed, for example, that when Novell acquired Ximian (or sometime thereafter), Miguel was given a vice-president role — specifically, a role that did not exist within Novell at all prior to the acquisition.  I marveled how, due to his affiliation with Mono, Miguel was virtually un-fireable.  Even if he were to get “fired,” he would continue to be affiliated with Mono, would continue to lead the project, and would without doubt soon find employment elsewhere, still leading the Mono project.  I’ve found it interesting to think that, if Miguel and I were to both attend Microsoft’s Professional Developer’s Conference, he would be having lunch with Microsoft executive VPs (I know this because I know he has done so in the past), while I would be sitting anonymously at some table in the cafeteria.  Yet I’m the one who works for Microsoft, not Miguel.

This is all the more interesting since it appears that Miguel didn’t strategically set out to put himself into this position.  Rather, it seems that he simply set out to do interesting and valuable work and trusted to karma to see what would come of it.  It seemed that, over time, the effort he made to create value caused money and opportunity to naturally gravitate toward him.

This leads us to the “Money Flow Principle,” which is simply this:  Money eventually flows toward he who creates value.

The premise is sound and seems to hint of truth, and Miguel’s example of this principle in action is noteworthy.  Perhaps you, like me, have come up with any of a number of ways that you could contribute to society, but you’ve withheld your contributions because you couldn’t figure out how you would be fairly compensated for what you might choose to contribute.  Perhaps you, and I, need to internalize this concept a bit more.

This, by the way, is one of the messages of “Linchpin”, the book by Seth Godin which I wrote about previously.  What gifts do you have to give?  What talents do you have to share?  What contributions do you have to make?  What if you knew you would be well compensated for offering your gift to the world?

Maybe it’s time you stop worrying about whether you will get paid and start worrying about making contributions that are highly valuable, contributions that give you intrinsic fulfillment and help you feel pleased with your place in life.  If my so-called Money Flow Principle holds true, eventually the money will flow towards you.

(By the way, I previously contacted Miguel to let him know I was thinking of writing this blog post.  He was quite gracious and seemed pleased that I would consider it.  Miguel, if you should happen to read this, I simply wish to express thanks for your friendship and example, and I hope the post doesn’t embarrass you.)

I read a lot.  A LOT.  To give you an idea, I usually start out a new year by going through my book collection and picking out a bunch of books that I’d like to re-read, you know, to get myself headed in a good direction for the new year.  This is usually a stack of some five or six books.  In addition to this I’ll add another 10-15 books or so a year.  I bet in a given year I’m reading somewhere around 20 books, somewhere between one and two a month.  Usually, these are non-fiction books.  I mostly read for information, not entertainment.  I might only read a couple of novels a year.

Given that I read so much, you’d think that I’d be finding lots of books that I rate really highly, but that isn’t the case.  I’ve read a number that are “interesting” or “valuable,” but it is rare that I find one that is really super impactful or life changing.

“Linchpin” by Seth Godin is one of those rare books.

As I’ve expressed my recommendation of Linchpin to others, they’ve asked me what it is about, so I tell this little anecdote.  It might come from Linchpin, I really can’t remember.  If it does, Mr. Godin please accept my apologies.

Imagine Bob.  It’s 1975 and Bob is a young entrepreneur in a smallish town.  He just opened his own grocery store, named Bob’s Groceries.  It’s a decently sized store that serves the needs of the people in the town.  Bob sets prices that are fair and pays a fair wage to his employees, and is still able to make a good living for himself.  It’s not a bad life.

Skip ahead 10 years.  Now it is 1985 and a statewide grocery chain (for the sake of argument, let’s call it “Macey’s”) has just opened up a new store in town.  They are a larger company, spread over dozens of local economies, allowing them to tolerate economic fluctuations more easily.  Their larger size enables them to get good deals on many grocery items.  Because of these and other reasons, they can price their groceries slightly lower than Bob’s Groceries while still paying a competitive wage.

This is a problem for Bob because they can outcompete him on price.  How will he cope?  Bob decides that, in order to remain competitive, he will have to try to match the competition both in prices and in employee compensation.  The only way he can see to do this is to cut his own salary.

Skip ahead another 10 years.  The story repeats itself, this time with a much larger regional chain (again, for discussion’s sake let’s call this one “Safeway”).  The problem is exacerbated.  What is Bob to do?  He tries to match prices again, but cutting his own employees’ salaries is not a sustainable plan.  Bob cuts his own takehome pay again.

Skip ahead another 10 years.  The story repeats itself again, this time with an enormous new store built by a national chain (call it, oh, “SuperTarget”).  The prices they can charge are so low Bob almost cannot compete.

By this time, Bob must be wondering if it was just a huge mistake, clear back in 1975, to even open the store in the first place.  He’s now been in business over 30 years but he’s working more than ever in order to avoid paying extra help.  While his costs of paying employees has gone up, he’s been trying to compete with sales prices, and thus he almost can’t even afford to stay in business anymore.  Instead of retiring rich, he wonders if he’ll ever retire at all.

This is what Seth Godin refers to as “the race to the bottom” and almost all of us are doing it.  Our business environment and economy may be different than Bob’s, but we are doing the same things:  We are all trying to survive by being willing to accept more responsibility, work more hours, and endure more stress for relatively lower and lower compensation, just trying to outcompete others who are willing to do it for even less and/or who have completely different environments or economies.

In my life, for example, this plays itself out in several ways.  I compete against software engineers from India and China, very capable and qualified software engineers, who can live like kings for less than half of my annual salary.  I compete against other local software engineers who have made tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, or more, on stock option grants, and therefore are willing to take the really rewarding and interesting software engineering jobs for less pay.  And I compete against other software engineers who are only one-half of a dual income household and are therefore less sensitive to their income level, not to mention much more risk tolerant.

So what is Bob to do?

This is the crux of Linchpin.  The book doesn’t give you the answer, but it helps you to start asking the right question.  What Bob needs to ask himself is, what value can I offer that “Macey’s” or “Safeway” or “SuperTarget” cannot?  What unique value can I bring to my town that people would be willing to pay for — even at a premium price?  If Bob can answer that question, he has the key to not only saving his business, but to open doors to the successes he dreamed of in the beginning.

Can’t be done?  Are you sure?  Whole Foods did it, didn’t they?

So what could Bob do?  Well, what if Bob always had someone there to help you take your groceries to your car?  What if the people in the store knew you by name?  What if, when you couldn’t find something, they would take you directly to that item instead of just telling you where it was?  What if only Bob carried certain items that people in the town needed but nobody else carried?  What if Bob would accept orders over the phone or shop for you in advance, and let you come pick it up?  What if Bob provided each customer with a recliner on a platform and people who would push them around the store shopping for them?

Would any of these ideas work?  I don’t know.  Maybe they wouldn’t but another idea would.

This, friends, is the essence of Linchpin.  I read it and started asking myself the question on the front cover:  Am I indispensable?  If not, how can I become indispensable?  What can I do so that my employer, or my community, or my industry, simply cannot stand the idea that I might not be contributing to their success?

I give this book my highest recommendation.

More on this later.

Blogging is an interesting thing.  It’s interesting to throw an idea out into the ether and see if anyone has anything to say about it.

When people have something to say, I use that to gauge how well I did at communicating my point of view.  For my previous post, “Outside the In-Crowd”, I can tell from the response that I didn’t do a very good job communicating.  For the record, I want to make it clear that I really do appreciate the responses and the care behind them.  That means a lot to me.  The fact that I didn’t convey my message well is not your fault and it doesn’t make your comments less meaningful.

When I wrote that blog post, I was trying to convey a simple realization that I’d had.  It’s a twofold realization.

The first, er, fold, is as follows:  One of two things happens when you put a group of people together.  Either the group will generally concede to be accepting and interested in everyone, or some subset of the group will work together to elevate themselves by pushing the others down.  I don’t think this is necessarily done consciously or vindictively.  It just IS.

The second part is:  When a subset of the group bands together to elevate itself, the remaining members of the group have an interesting choice.  Being a majority, they can ignore the group trying to elevate itself and choose to be accepting and interested in everyone.  Taking this path disempowers the smaller group trying to elevate itself.  Ironically, most individuals in the majority support the smaller group by trying to get themselves into that group.  This is done by, in turn, pushing down other people.

This happens in junior high and high school, but I found it interesting to note that it doesn’t just happen there.  That’s simply a common thread I used to try to help make the point.

The general reaction I’ve had to this is basically this (okay, I’m exaggerating slightly):  Matt!  Why are you saying this?  I liked you in high school!  I know for a fact that at least some other people did as well!  Just because you could never get a date doesn’t mean you are a loser!  PLEASE DO NOT KILL YOURSELF!!!!!

To which I express my gratitude.  I appreciate your friendship.  My point is, I didn’t write the blog post because I’m insecure about whether I was popular in high school.  I don’t really care about that.  There are, however, a couple of things that I am concerned about:

• I don’t care about popularity in high school now (sheesh, that was, uh, more than 5 years ago), but I did then.  I’m ashamed to admit it but it’s true.  And I fear that I was one of those people on the outside trying to get in by pushing other people down.  I really do worry about this.  I fear and regret what I might have been like and hope I’ve changed.
• Even though I’m older now, and my friends and acquaintances are older now, I’m still seeing this and have been seeing it ever since.  I just now figured out how to make sense of it.  So my concern now is, now that I understand it and can quantify it, am I really changing?  Am I supporting the in-crowds by pushing down others around me in order to conform to the ideals of the in-crowds?  Or am I creating the ideal I would rather have, where people are generally accepting and interested in everyone else?  Do I still care about being accepted by the in-crowd?

See, the thing is, regardless of the context (high school, work, church, etc.), the nature of the in-crowd is the same.  And the appeal of in-crowd membership is entirely dependent on context.  Remove the context, and the appeal is gone.

It’s my hope that we will see this for what it is and disempower the in-crowds around us by simply refusing to give them the support they need from us to survive.  It’s my hope that we will instead work to be accepting and interested in others.  Hey, in a way it is a form of civil disobedience.  Cater to your rebel spirit!  Take a look around you and assess yourself.  I’ll be interested to hear what you have to say.

If you are like me, I’m sorry.

I’m sorry because that means your life in high school was the pits.  Of course, if you are like me, then college was excellent and you have a pretty great life now, so I take it back.  I’m not sorry.

Probably every high school has this in-crowd of the cool people.  Only a few people get to be a part of this in-crowd.  Everyone else is outside looking in.  Some people get to a point where they realize they are not going to be a part of that crowd and go on with life.  Others try to figure out how to get into that crowd, in vain, because, hey, you are not cool like the in-crowd.

It isn’t until later that many of these people look back objectively and realize, what was so great about the in-crowd?  And who decided they were cool anyway?  The in-crowd did!  They decided they were cool and created rules to keep themselves that way.  Oddly, those on the outside looking in supported the rules and preserved the image, spiting themselves in the process.

After they get away from the immediate situation and gain additional perspective and context (for example, going to college), they realize how dumb this was.  In high school being cool is about being another boring clone of sameness of the self-proclaimed “cool” people, whereas in college it is entirely different.  In college, it is about being unique, interesting, and friendly, showing concern for and interest in others, and being true to yourself.

Additionally, once you spend some time away from high school, you start to see the other “cool” kids for who they really are, and you realize that some of them are really not that cool or interesting at all.  It was all just a façade, supported by the immediate context.  Once the context changes, the façade disappears.  And it doesn’t bother you that you weren’t part of the in-crowd back then.

So here’s the question:

What about the organizations you are involved in today?  Does your employment resemble high school or college?  What about your church, or your neighborhood?

For example, how do you get to be one of the in-crowd at your job?  What does it take to be cool?  Are you considered cool because of your unique talents, because of your interesting perspective, because you are a valuable, concerned team member?  Or do you have to conform and be just like the other cool kids to also be cool?

If your job, or any other organization you belong to, resembles high school, maybe you need a change of context.  If you look at this in-crowd from a different, distanced, more objective point of view, maybe they won’t all seem as cool as they do from the work context.  Maybe not being part of the in-crowd won’t be such a big deal.

This month marks one year since I bought my 2003 Nissan 350Z (heretofore “the Z”).  I’ve learned some interesting things about it, about cars, and about myself this past year.

First off, I bought the Z because I like hot cars.  I like horsepower, speed, handling, and great looks.  I didn’t buy the Z to impress anyone or to try to be cool.

I know that sounds like an excuse, but after a number of comments from friends hither and yon, I really did think inwardly about why I bought that car.  I can honestly say that I did it for myself, not to impress people or try to be someone I’m not.  I’m relieved to find that out.

That being said, one of the first things I learned about the Z was this:  You get noticed.  People look as you drive by them on the freeway or as they drive by you.  They will comment, “Nice car, man,” or some such, when you park near them in the parking lot, or you’ll catch them walking around your car looking when you come out of the convenience store.

Not most people, but some people.  This never happened with my Grand Prix.

Another thing I noticed:  It’s kind of a chick car.  I had it parked there at the Roosevelt Car Show next to my brother’s Mustang GT and I spent a fair part of the day sitting there while people walked by.  When people were walking up, girls would walk to the Z and guys would walk to the Mustang.  Guys would look at them both and comment to each other on how they liked the Mustang better; girls would comment to each other on how they liked the Z better.  In the latter case, some variant of the word “cute” was overheard a number of times.  This was pretty much a universal thing.

So if a Mustang is more of a guy’s car, maybe I should’ve bought a Mustang instead.  Except my wife really likes going out on dates in the Z.

A good thing I learned:  If you buy a sports car, you need some time to get used to it.  Learning where the clutch engage point is, how long it takes for the engine and transmission to warm up, how strong the brakes are, etc. took a while.  The friction limits for turning are particularly important.  I’ve almost gotten myself into trouble trying to turn with too high a g-load.  After a year of driving and about 15000 miles, I’m still learning, so if you buy a sports car, be prepared to settle in and get to know her slowly.

300 horsepower can get you into trouble in a hurry.  This is a long-term relationship, not a fling, so get to be friends first.

Now that I’ve had the Z for a year, I can tell you about some of the bad points:

• The blind spot.  Holy cow, do the 350Zs have a blind spot.  That spot off the left rear corner is completely out of my vision.  This is especially true a) if the sun is shining into the driver side window, or b) if it is dark.  Now you know — 350Zs have a serious blind spot.  If a Z is merging onto the freeway and he cuts you off, just know that he probably can’t see you there and it was most likely unintentional.
• Alignment.  You have to be very careful with a Z’s alignment so you avoid tire problems.  This means I end up having the tires rotated a lot – every 3000-5000 miles.  It’s annoying.
• Expensive repairs.  Since I bought it about a year ago, I’ve spent over $4000 in repairs.  Here’s what I paid for:
  • $1100 – New tires.
  • $2600 – New fan, water pump, and thermostat.  (Yes, really.)
  • $100 – New battery.
  • $300 – New serpentine belt and tensioner.

Of course, those are minor in comparison to the good points, some of which are:

• Handling.  The Z is like the ideal child:  Whatever I tell it to do, it does.  Immediately.  Turn here?  Okay.  Stop here?  No problem.  Jump into that small opening in traffic?  Yes Daddy.
• Power.  The Z has a weight-to-horsepower ratio of just over 11 (lower numbers are better).  Compare that to 19 for my wife’s Durango and my old Grand Prix, or 18 for my CRX.  Or compare it to 11 for a Mustang GT, 7.5 for a Corvette, or 9.2 for a Porsche Cayman S.  The Z can push you back in the seat and as you climb through the gears it just keeps grabbing at the pavement and lunging you forward.  I have no idea how fast it will go.
• Sound.  The Z comes with an excellent sound system:  The Nissan VQ35DE, an awesome 3.5L multi-port-fuel-injected V6 with variable valve timing.  If you romp on it hard enough to cross the variable timing threshold you will be rewarded with an awesome sonic wonder as the engine climbs toward the 6600 RPM redline.  And if you don’t like that sound system, or are in a place where you can’t really experience it, the Kenwood/MTX/Rockford Fosgate setup in my Z is a pretty decent substitute.
• Look and Feel.  It looks awesome from nearly every angle.  It feels awesome when you are sitting inside it.  The ergonomics would make Steve Jobs proud.  And when you strap into those bucket seats and close those high-sided doors, it feels like your car is giving you a big old man-hug.  Sorry, but it is true.

So, am I glad I bought it?

Yes.  And no.  But mostly yes.  I love driving it.  Love love love driving it.  Even when I’m not speeding, which truthfully is most of the time, I really love to drive it.  I love to look at it, and then drive it some more.

I love the thought of owning it.  The reality of owning it is less great.  It’s expensive to maintain.  My other car was fully paid for, and when I sold it there wasn’t a thing wrong with it.  Now, every time I make a payment on the Z or have to get something fixed, I think about how the Grand Prix was running excellent and was fully paid for.  Maybe I should have just stuck with the Grand Prix instead.  Inside my mind, it will forever be running perfect with no flaws.

But it will never be as much fun.

This weekend — tomorrow, actually — is my 20 year High School class reunion, which means I’m, uh, 29.  Again.

As everyone knows, the purpose for Facebook is to help you connect with old friends, like that girl who wouldn’t go with you to Homecoming, you know, to see if her life is in the crapper and she got what she deserved for snubbing you.  So I’ve been using Facebook for it’s designated purpose, and I’ve found a bunch of the people I went to high school with, who, inexplicably, all seem to have great lives despite the fact that I pretty much never had a date in high school.

Since the reunion is tomorrow, many of them have been asking me whether I’m coming to the reunion.  When I say, “No,” they want to know the reason, and so I tell them, “Because.”  This reasoning seems to work well when I’m explaining to my son why he has to mow the lawn, but it doesn’t seem to be working with the old high school friends.

So, in order to avoid explaining this a hundred times, I decided to just write a simple blog post about it.

I actually alluded to this in another post some time ago, but basically the issue is this:

I’m not a fan of high-school Matt.

I’m a fan of perpetually-29 Matt.  That guy is happy with himself, he’s confident, he makes loud noises on a guitar when he feels like it, drives a pretty cool car, mostly wears T-shirts to work, and has great taste in music and movies.  He’s got a wonderful wife and a great family that are awesome to hang out with.  He’s a pretty darn good software engineer and he doesn’t even feel nerdy about it (well, not TOO nerdy).  He’s so dang funny that it is sinful.  He feels free to be himself pretty much all the time and enjoys his life.

He’s not like high-school Matt at all.  High school Matt was ignored because he wasn’t athletic and ridiculed because he was smart.  High school Matt carried labels given him by other people that worked so well even HE thought that’s what he was like.  He didn’t feel good about himself for who he was and instead kept trying to pretend he was someone he wasn’t and fit in with a crowd of people that he didn’t fit with and date the girls who weren’t interested in dating him.  Even worse, he ignored the crowd he could have fit with and the girls he could have dated instead.  He was a poser and a fake, someone who didn’t value his own abilities and instead kept trying to make himself into something he wasn’t.

Whenever I’m around high school people again, high-school Matt tries to come out.  I don’t like high-school Matt.  He makes me feel ashamed of myself, not only of my past but of who I am now, almost as though who I am today is not good enough even though I’m quite happy with it.  He makes me act like someone I’m not, someone I don’t like, someone like him.  So I try to keep him hidden.

And the best way to keep him hidden is to avoid situations where he insists on coming out.  And if I go to the reunion, he will insist.

I’ve really enjoyed catching up with those friends on Facebook and hearing about their lives today.  I’m not really interested in letting high-school Matt come out to feel like a loser again in person.

So, thanks anyway, but I won’t be going.  Don’t be offended.  Or, take offense, whatever, I don’t care.  High-school Matt is obsessed with what you think of him, but that dude is gone.  The current version wants to be your friend, but only at face value.  Otherwise, nevermind.