I have an interview next week with a company that needs the one-two punch of modern promotion: graphic design and web coding. I can do one of these things, but I'm allergic to the other. The last job I had was a similar compromise: graphic design and technical writing. "No-one," quoth the Bible,"can serve two masters, for he will love one and hate the other." (While the book is mostly Iron Age fear-mongering, this is a diamond in the rough.) And so it went--I loved the design, but hated the 'writing'... as I grew more accustomed to the role I liked, the role I didn't like lost none of its power to annoy.
The intellectual vacuum that is my current job leaves me acres of opportunity to consider what a suitable, satisfying job would look like. But virtues are not represented best by contrast, but rather by aspiration; saying I want to be inspired is better than saying I don't want to be bored.
There have been studies on what makes two seemingly identical jobs awesome or terrible.
Things that make jobs bad
- not having enough authority to carry out your responsibilities
- being unclear on what you are responsible for
- not having a clear promotion path
- always being behind
- trying to satisfy conflicting demands of superiors
- feeling underqualified
- ambiguous evaluations/unclear expectations
- not having enough information
- making decisions that affect people you know
- not getting on with co-workers
- having your opinions ignored
- having a moral conflict
- not achieving a work/life balance
Things that make jobs good
- freedom over time, procedures, and other decisions
- continual, useful data generated from work itself
- continual, useful feedback from boss and others
- good social interaction
- clear, specific goals
- variety of tasks
- clear tasks with a beginning and an end
- exercising high-level skills
- exercising a variety of skills
- feeling job is significant to the company
- learning, improving
- clear promotion path
- feelings of achievement
- having input in key decisions
- open communication channels
- high-enough pay (not necessarily high pay)
- recognition from others
- good job security
All this is from Dail Fields' book, Taking The Measure Of Work. It assumes that subjects have chosen their jobs rationally and appropriately. Experience shows this is not always the case, but I can see some of these satisfiers in my video store job which make it less bad at times.
My chief question these days is how much compromise will turn an unsuitable element in a job role into a deal-breaker. Some things, like a 20-minute in-and-out workflow would be irritating but livable. Other things, like coding in... well, any programming language, would be a stone wall.
A guy dies and ends up in hell. The Devil greets him and explains that it's really not so bad. "You like drinking?" he asks. "Yeah!" the guy replies. "Well, you're gonna like Mondays." says the Devil. "Tequila shots, beer chasers, free vodka all night. How about gambling? You like that?" The guy says yeah; this place is looking pretty great! "You'll love Tuesdays then!" the Devil grins. "Do you like chronic? Into coke?" "Wow!" the guy says,"you've got drugs here?" "Sure we do! That's what Wednesdays are all about!" the Devil enthuses. "How about male action? You into gay sex?" "Uh, no." the guy says, recoiling. "Ooookayyy..." the Devil mutters. "Well, you're not going to like Thursdays much."
One thing I have noticed is that the worse my day is, the more euphoric I am after I finish. It wears off after a short time, but the contrast between obligation and freedom is great enough to make normality feel like happiness. An ancient Greek called Epictetus said of a angry man being thrown in prison: "What prison?—Where he is already: for he is there against his will; and wherever a man is against his will, that to him is a prison." A Stoic, he believed that it is not events that shape us, but rather how we interpret them and then twist our thoughts, and then our actions. Born a slave, his mind and thoughts were all he had to bear the suffering of life. Further reading here; bold quotes are most interesting.
Saturday, 19 January 2008
Wednesday, 16 January 2008
Better Living Through Chemistry
Because my job--in a total, awful and scientifically verifiable way--sucks, I have tried various ways of (a) making it unsuck, and (b) when that didn't work, make myself numb to wage-slave hell. Because my job is monotonous and repetitive, it provides an gentle rhythm of consistent, even suffering. This means I can control for the ups and down of work, because there are none. It is the perfect blue-screen backdrop.
Week One: Food and Drink
Nutritionists, dietitians, doctors, Arnie, yo' mamma and shoeless Greenpeace collectors all agree: your body is a temple and what you put into it can change your life for the better. I took the following steps for one week:
* Eating a high-fibre, natural breakfast * Snacking every two hours to keep my blood sugar up * Consuming low-GI foods * Avoiding coffee * Drinking plenty of water
Week Two: Positive Thinking
Deepak Chopra, Anthony Robbins, the Dali Lama, Tom Cruise and self-repressing suburban hausfrau all recommend banishing negative energy and welcoming love into your chakras. I took the following steps for one week:
* Smiling at people * Asking about others' lives * Counting my blessings * Being one with, you know, trees and birds * Violently pushing skeptical, critical thinking deep down inside until it formed a tight little ball in the pit of my stomach * Petting kittens
Week Three: Drugs
Sigmund Freud, Hunter S. Thompson, Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse offer case studies in drugs, of one form or another, being used to creative and mood-altering effect. I tried the following (week in progress):
* Drinking eight cups of coffee in eight hours * Smoking, drinking beer, and coffee on my break * Taking an ECA stack (ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin) at the beginning of (then next day, halfway through) my shift.
Of all these techniques, the only one which had any measurable positive effect was the ECA stack. While eating right and being nice to people is necessary to avoid sliding into a spiral of self-loathing and despair, the other techniques merely helped to keep me out of the valleys of the emotional rollercoaster ride.
Ephedrine is natural substance which is the basis of speed, and is banned in most First World countries for this reason. In Canada you can get it mail-order for ten bucks a jar. Bodybuilders use it in conjunction with its accelerators aspirin and caffeine to drive weight loss and take the dopey edge off a high-protein diet. It differs from caffeine in that it provides a cleaner high, a longer period of energy, is less habit-forming, and doesn't mess around as much with brain chemistry.
I took 8mg ephedrine with 200mg caffeine and 200mg aspirin. That's not very much; lifters in a serious cutting phase take 15mg of ephedrine four times daily.
It would cost too much to do that for me, plus I would have to cycle off it, having entire weeks without any at all.
Week One: Food and Drink
Nutritionists, dietitians, doctors, Arnie, yo' mamma and shoeless Greenpeace collectors all agree: your body is a temple and what you put into it can change your life for the better. I took the following steps for one week:
* Eating a high-fibre, natural breakfast * Snacking every two hours to keep my blood sugar up * Consuming low-GI foods * Avoiding coffee * Drinking plenty of water
Week Two: Positive Thinking
Deepak Chopra, Anthony Robbins, the Dali Lama, Tom Cruise and self-repressing suburban hausfrau all recommend banishing negative energy and welcoming love into your chakras. I took the following steps for one week:
* Smiling at people * Asking about others' lives * Counting my blessings * Being one with, you know, trees and birds * Violently pushing skeptical, critical thinking deep down inside until it formed a tight little ball in the pit of my stomach * Petting kittens
Week Three: Drugs
Sigmund Freud, Hunter S. Thompson, Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse offer case studies in drugs, of one form or another, being used to creative and mood-altering effect. I tried the following (week in progress):
* Drinking eight cups of coffee in eight hours * Smoking, drinking beer, and coffee on my break * Taking an ECA stack (ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin) at the beginning of (then next day, halfway through) my shift.
Of all these techniques, the only one which had any measurable positive effect was the ECA stack. While eating right and being nice to people is necessary to avoid sliding into a spiral of self-loathing and despair, the other techniques merely helped to keep me out of the valleys of the emotional rollercoaster ride.
Ephedrine is natural substance which is the basis of speed, and is banned in most First World countries for this reason. In Canada you can get it mail-order for ten bucks a jar. Bodybuilders use it in conjunction with its accelerators aspirin and caffeine to drive weight loss and take the dopey edge off a high-protein diet. It differs from caffeine in that it provides a cleaner high, a longer period of energy, is less habit-forming, and doesn't mess around as much with brain chemistry.
I took 8mg ephedrine with 200mg caffeine and 200mg aspirin. That's not very much; lifters in a serious cutting phase take 15mg of ephedrine four times daily.
It would cost too much to do that for me, plus I would have to cycle off it, having entire weeks without any at all.
Films that will Make you Stupider
I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry
Gaysploitation for mouth-breathers.
Dragon Wars
Straight-to-video CGI of dragons crushing houses.
Lost: SSN 3
Come ON. If you were stuck on a Third World island for this long, you'd have expired of massive renal failure and monkeys would have fought with giant crabs over your exquisite floppilidopplies.
Shoot 'Em Up
The worst film Clive Owen or Paul Giamatti have ever done; the third-worst film Monica Bellucci has appeared in.
Any Canadian TV series
Corner Little Mosque on the Prairie Gas, the animated series... not bad for Saskatchewan, eh?
I Know Who Killed Me
Here's a shock; it's your own hard-drivin' lifestyle, Lindsay. I only seys it because I luv you.
.
Sunday, 13 January 2008
Saturday, 12 January 2008
Get Out While The Getting's Good
Some people volunteer their time to the SPCA. Well, that's nice. Others give charitably when the Red Cross calls. OK. Many reach into their pockets for the Salvation Army. Good for you.
All that's not really my sort of thing, though. I'm designing, pro bono, for the Right To Die Society of Canada.
Yes, it's what Hitler did (let's get this one out of the way). He euthanised like crazy. He started with the mentally ill, followed up with the gays and lesbians, and topped it all off with six million Jews. He began with a re-education campaign calling the maladroit "useless bread gobblers." Then he ensured that no government department had complete authority, but rather competed with one another to indoctrinate best. Blended with a fervent medieval Aryan pride and a blaring background of Wagner, 100,000 non-Semitic undesirables disappeared into the bowels of the Third Reich.
That doesn't really hold much appeal for me. Quite apart from genetic science making a myth of race and therefore eugenics, killing otherwise healthy people because you don't want them around cluttering up your perfect society is a little unsustainable, because you tend to have trouble setting boundaries. Rather, having a right to die is more something someone chooses themselves.
We've inherited a 'life at any cost' mentality from our pious ancestors, who believed that God gaveth and God will taketh when He Feels Like It. These were people who also believed that leeches were a pretty good idea and wearing coloured clothing was for kings and hookers. We have moved on in many ways, but the way we deal with the end of life is mired in deeply traditional thought--just look at funerals--which is worlds apart from how we deal with life when it is active, vital and free. Hospitals update their equipment as quickly as they can, but their thinking about end-of-life issues is staid and Victorian.
Personal freedom has become elevated to an ideology; it is naive to think that the 'Me' generation will suddenly shift gears when considering the end; as Byron put it:
The leaves must drop away:
And yet it were a greater grief
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it pluck'd to-day;
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.
While doctors now may, with a sidelong glance, secretly prescribe fatal doses of painkillers to patients whose bodies are riddled with cancer, no politician with a sense of self-preservation (!) would ever advance the cause of this final and ultimate freedom: to end one's own life when it is clear that there is little ahead but pain, suffering and ineffectual intensive care destroying any financial advantage you had hoped to gift to the living. This taboo is idiotic, destructive and at odds with every other value we practice. This is not even a prolonging of life, it is a desperate pushing back of death, the horror of the unknown as primal as fear of the dark, of spirits, of monsters under the bed, or as Hamlet soliliques:
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
...And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
.
All that's not really my sort of thing, though. I'm designing, pro bono, for the Right To Die Society of Canada.
Yes, it's what Hitler did (let's get this one out of the way). He euthanised like crazy. He started with the mentally ill, followed up with the gays and lesbians, and topped it all off with six million Jews. He began with a re-education campaign calling the maladroit "useless bread gobblers." Then he ensured that no government department had complete authority, but rather competed with one another to indoctrinate best. Blended with a fervent medieval Aryan pride and a blaring background of Wagner, 100,000 non-Semitic undesirables disappeared into the bowels of the Third Reich.
That doesn't really hold much appeal for me. Quite apart from genetic science making a myth of race and therefore eugenics, killing otherwise healthy people because you don't want them around cluttering up your perfect society is a little unsustainable, because you tend to have trouble setting boundaries. Rather, having a right to die is more something someone chooses themselves.
We've inherited a 'life at any cost' mentality from our pious ancestors, who believed that God gaveth and God will taketh when He Feels Like It. These were people who also believed that leeches were a pretty good idea and wearing coloured clothing was for kings and hookers. We have moved on in many ways, but the way we deal with the end of life is mired in deeply traditional thought--just look at funerals--which is worlds apart from how we deal with life when it is active, vital and free. Hospitals update their equipment as quickly as they can, but their thinking about end-of-life issues is staid and Victorian.
Personal freedom has become elevated to an ideology; it is naive to think that the 'Me' generation will suddenly shift gears when considering the end; as Byron put it:
The leaves must drop away:
And yet it were a greater grief
To watch it withering, leaf by leaf,
Than see it pluck'd to-day;
Since earthly eye but ill can bear
To trace the change to foul from fair.
While doctors now may, with a sidelong glance, secretly prescribe fatal doses of painkillers to patients whose bodies are riddled with cancer, no politician with a sense of self-preservation (!) would ever advance the cause of this final and ultimate freedom: to end one's own life when it is clear that there is little ahead but pain, suffering and ineffectual intensive care destroying any financial advantage you had hoped to gift to the living. This taboo is idiotic, destructive and at odds with every other value we practice. This is not even a prolonging of life, it is a desperate pushing back of death, the horror of the unknown as primal as fear of the dark, of spirits, of monsters under the bed, or as Hamlet soliliques:
The undiscover'd country from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
...And enterprises of great pith and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry,
And lose the name of action.
.
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