Three full months pass and I take the blog title to heart

I've neglected this blog for a very long time. It was begun a relatively short time ago, in the way that March 15, 2010 counts as "short". The discipline of writing has been entirely channeled into schoolwork, and though I miss the comfortable routine of daily journal writing which I began just before losing a job in 2008, I do not miss the repetition of thought that I know is present in this blog just as it was in my handwritten journals. I have written without looking back, vowing at some point to do so, but that time has not yet come.


The writing here has served mainly to catalog a turning point and a risk, the latter of which is still in process. After 16 months in Canada, I approach my final semester with some excitement, a renewed sense of purpose, and hope. My last semester required intensive commitment and I've received formal grades of A, A-, A-, and B+ for four of the six courses I took, respectively. A graded final paper was received yesterday for another class, for which I received an A on a project worth half the course grade; having received an A+ on the previous project which was worth 40% and participating in class with as much insight as I could muster, an A+ is not out of the question for that course. Being that the course was on power and politics in organizations, it serves as a kind of demarcation point, encapsulating much of what I thought I knew coming into the program, much of what I have yet to learn and allowing me to focus that final project on content curation and its importance to people as they build their careers in the age of social media.


During the final class, I surprised myself by stating out loud that the course had renewed a sense of optimism which had been dormant and left for dead for many years, owing to painful interpersonal developments, financial strain and dependence, the inability to sail my own ship through a sea of unemployment, and the jading effects of performing a style of music which at one point held so much weight and meaning, but from which I began to grow distant as avenues of exploration withered before my eyes. This optimism comes despite renewed dependence on a relative to cover basic necessities before my final loan installment kicks in, and the final grade that I need to have come in for the last term - that of my finance class, which I failed earlier this year and need to pass again in order to continue on in the program.


That latter bugaboo has hung like an invisible pinata over my head for months now, and in the face of my continued struggle with the subject, I still performed to the best of my ability on the final exam, which though a source of pride is also one of worry, as I thought of things that I knew I did wrong after the test, and a small handful of questions that I had to leave blank, owing to time pressure and the anxiety of performing on the test. I have had to repeatedly stop thinking about it over the last couple of weeks, as I kept checking my grade report to see the course grades come in; as December 23rd came and went with no finance grade, I resigned myself to January 3rd, the date on which the university reopens after its closure for the holidays. I have not speculated on what I will do when I check the grade report again and see a favourable mark, only what I may do if a poor mark is received and I have to plead my case before the administration in whatever process that must take. (Even here, I am trying to think positively, not even wanting to type "failing" and typing "poor" instead.)


If there is anything that I will have to continue to conquer, it is the fear of failure. Even here, the solid grades for the other courses cannot yet be fully savoured, as it is the one grade outstanding which may hold disproportionate weight in the options which I may have available in the coming months. And I still have to find a job, of course - no fear of failure there yet, and I will strive to keep it that way as I look to meet with as many people as possible to get my advertising career launched with strength.


In this year of 2011, this year of dodging constant financial bullets and relearning the importance of pursuing my dreams in the face of possible failure, I worry not about whether or not I am pushing my luck with things. New opportunities, however modest, continue to propel me forward and I am determined to make the most of them, to be as open to the future as I can and gradually chip away at the iceberg of personal debt that follows me everywhere through the successes that await achievement in the near and not-so-near future.


At least three more days must pass before the die is cast on the direction of my next move, and in writing this, I have further strengthened my optimism and resolve. I will well need it in the immediate and not-so-immediate future, so it is just as well that I keep tempering the steel of my resolve, come what may.


With exactly 5 hours and 58 minutes remaining of 2011, I sign off until the next time, as my fiancee's clock-radio awakes her from afternoon slumber. Together she and I charge forward in our own way, heads held high, with our individual and shared futures before us.

Regaining lost perspective through the act of writing

Very little compares with having very little money. Everything in our modern society is dictated by its presence or absence: what you can eat, where you can live, what you may ultimately be able to do for a living, who you can spend time with, who you can communicate with, where you can physically go.


As I try to settle into a somewhat-musty basement apartment with bugs and mildew and battle it with bleach and love, I am grateful in some sense just to be there, as I had a nightmare of a move-out of my condo unit. I never really wanted to live there, it never felt like home, I never felt like I belonged, I went broke, and as I type I may yet be billed speciously for repairs, but we'll see. And so now, on this Labor Day where I'm from or this Labour Day where I am, I escaped to the Starbucks on Queen Street East in Leslieville, taking advantage of the wifi access to write and think and write.


I won't have home Internet access for the balance of the week. It is not as difficult for me since I'm still working at school and can be online there, but it is very isolating for Jen, who I'm pulling for with all my heart as she works to settle into the same living space. Moving is never fun but this was almost more difficult than last year, where me moved a thousand miles east over the course of two days. We have very little money to work with until my student loans come through, as I need to fork over funds for that Internet access and the transfer charge, which thankfully was only $20. Last year at this time, we still didn't know what was waiting around the bend financially, what would pinch us painfully. This year, moving a mile and a half presented its own set of challenges both known and unknown, with stressful logistics at the fore.


At $800 per month all-inclusive, the new apartment is literally half the rent of the old place, and is still close enough to the things we need to be close to, namely to job opportunities, school and public transporation. But above all, what I have to force myself to do is regain a feeling of potential: what can I do? Where can I go? How can I best tackle the formidable academic and professional responsibilities that return again a week from now?


Being relatively impoverished has polluted the idea of stretching myself as I have had to simply struggle to get by. It has been eye-opening for reasons I never wanted to experience, but which I will continue to experience for at least the next 12 months. Reading about leadership, innovation, and high-minded business ideas seems like a pretty big load of shit when I can barely afford to eat and am down to only two pairs of shoes, one of which is a dress pair with steadily eroding show leather, the other a pair of running shoes which require daily baking soda so as not to crinkle my own nose, much less that of others. So how to relate this to that of the charmed people I'm in school with?


First, I need to remember that plenty of people are working mightily to get through financially; several of my friends moved back in with their parents last year to get through school and have enough money for things. Second, relating it to other people really isn't all that important: no one needs to know how much I have to struggle, no one needs to know plenty of things. They only need to know what I tell them, and oftentimes not even that.


So as the year starts, the steady development of my inner Machiavelli will continue, my efforts will work, and I will reread things like this when the need to buoy my own confidence comes around again. Despite the struggle, and perhaps because of it, I remain grateful for this new day.

Six weeks to Round 2

The second year of my MBA program begins in mid-September and much is yet to be decided on the fronts of residence and finances. We put in application for a great basement apartment in a nice neighbourhood late last night, and my boss already received a call from them homeowners (though she misread my $ sign for a 3 and thought I made $35 an hour, which is odd considering I wrote "$550 biweekly, but whatever) so at least there's interest even if they don't like the finances, which are yet to be formally determined by the school but I feel could be affected for the worse by the current political posturing by these fuckers in the U.S. government.

I've made a point not to use such language when writing blog entries, because unlike in speech to me, it smacks of laziness and an unwillingness to find a more descriptive word to convey one's irritation. But it's the only word that fits to be applied to those who at this very moment are toying with the economic lifelines of millions of Americans and countless more people worldwide with the ongoing debt-ceiling "negotiations", in clear defiance of popular sentiment.

And though I've learned not to trust the numerous entities I can't control when it comes to determining my finances (and in so doing coming full-circle from my mortgage days, when I was the one on the other end of the phone call or email saying whether or not someone could get their home loan approved), I've made peace with it as best I can. With the current exchange rate (via this site which I still morbidly check from time to time) at 94.364 Canadian cents to one U.S. dollar, I'm still fine, but if those...frauds in suits... can't reach a debt agreement and the practical effect is to tank the U.S. dollar against the loonie, then we figure out another Plan B. I can control what I do, and I can give it the Stuart Smalley treatment now and then, but I have learned well how to bull forward and advocate for myself. That skill will never suffer from lack of demand.

Both of my nice basses sold, giving us money to live on and some hope of obtaining an off-campus apartment (though the on-campus one is still there, awaiting its turn at the countertop where lemons are made into lemonade). And my friends Mehdi and Kyle offered to sell at a discount and straight-out loan textbooks for two of the six courses that I'll be taking in the fall, likely saving me nearly $300.00. They'd be great guys even if they weren't helping me out, so hopefully I can do the same for them at some point. And I may yet be able to use the same finance textbook for the fall class as I did for the bungled winter version, as the school bookstore had dozens of new copies still shrink-wrapped on the shelves as they transition from the summer course material offerings to the fall ones. Pre-emptive corks for where the bucket threatens to spring leaks are some of the most satisfying corks to have.

I am enjoying life, finally relaxed and awake at 7pm in the evening after being tired all day, as Jen sleeps back into a more normal Circadian rhythm after interviewing for a job this morning and waging a noble battle to win unemployment pay after being dismissed by a former boss whose once rosy image gets re-tarnished with each return communication. My girl is a strong fighter and doesn't need me to be proud of her to be who she is, but I am proud of her anyway and inspired by her constructive defiance of the expected roll-over.

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If you find this blog randomly, find me on Twitter. Slowly but surely, I am incorporating more and more facets of my diverse life into the proudly visible collection of people and entities that I follow, and doing so more regularly than I do here. Thank you for reading if you've made it this far!

Kudos to the union of the rainbow flag and the Empire State Building!

Last night, gay marriage became legal in New York state. While it does not affect me in the immediate, it moved the needle a little more towards the "full" in my personal reservoir of hope. So many of us struggle with so much in relative silence, and knowing that an essential dignity which has been denied to a group of people for decades in my home country is now a reality makes today that much better of a day than it would have been. Gay marriage is legal all across Canada, and has been legal for almost six years now - so many things in this country are more progressive than in the States.

The Guardian story that I read was one of over twenty tabs I opened on my browser just yesterday - as always, I continue to be fascinated by countless avenues of world experience and happily have difficulty filtering out "what is most important". Better than being disengaged and discouraged, I suppose, which always seems to accompany the reading of any best-business-practices article that I feel I should bone up on to potentially reference in my studies and in the workplace. Such dull language!

The more I write, though, the more the confidence grows about being able to communicate using my own style and voice, rather than hammering myself into a format. That was just one of the reasons that I decided against pursuing a journalism career many years ago, what the with the Internet providing so much for free (for which on my limited budget I continue to be grateful) but also in which people could express themselves according to their own wishes, in which the cream has a chance to rise to the top. I'm glad that people like Bill Simmons have pursued it, though, with his new flagship for New Journalism sating not only my love of great sportswriting, but the recognition that those of us who value the underlying dynamics beneath the consumerism have other interests, with writers contributing great stories on the continued dearth of real comedic roles for women that reference other great recent stories that I missed.

I may not feel like I have an intrinsic fight in me like the supporters of gay marriage do - especially those in the community who are fighting for that right for themselves - but I have hard-won insights into conflict, communication, and maintaining the amateur's creative life, and it's these insights that I return to time and again as I continue to move forward.

Filling the holes created by the emptiness of so much modern language

I might make edits to this later, but wanted to get just one main thing down before I go and get subway tokens for the week, in advance of being in a chicken costume outdoors when it's expected to hit 27C today.

(Quick summation of the last two months: finished first year of MBA program, failed the finance class, started a year-long strategy project, had to beg relatives for money in one of the most uncomfortable and drastic situations I could imagine which I am still learning from, got kicked out of strategy project by school requirements to the disappointment of my team, searched for a paid internship with no success, came to terms with my employment for the summer, got approved for an on-campus apartment as a safety measure, sold the first bass I ever bought two days ago to a great guy named Brian for $1,000.00 which goes to the new-apartment fund.)

But none of that inspired me to write today. What did is my hatred of a now-common phrase, and how I actually thought up something to begin to counter it. The phrase? "Personal brand".

I was reading Chuck Klosterman's latest Grantland article and enjoying not only his take on an interesting subject, but also that I'm enjoying his writing again, really identifying with it, when I had written him off many years ago after reading Fargo Rock City. He brought up this phrase in describing a Hollywood producer and my hatred was rekindled, but this time with a realization: a personal brand is simply what others see based on how I choose to present myself, what parts of my history may fit onto a resume or into a social-media context (since nothing I do is the subject of any media coverage, the likes of which defines other people). And it is something that I have control over, which is heartening at a time when I feel like my choices to this point have made the "easy out" a thing of the past that may never have existed for me anyway.

It might go something like this, say, in a job interview:

Q: What is your personal brand?
A: I define myself as...

And stop right there, for now. No pretentious marketing language, no stupid B-school buzzwords or catch phrases. Simple, strong, concise language, which has always come to me more naturally in print than in speech. If there's any benefit to our now-atomized media and historical culture, it's the opportunity for each of us to define, explain, and defend ourselves in the ways which we deem most pure, most effective.

It's never too late to define yourself. Every time is the right time to start. Just don't ever fall let yourself be fooled into objectifying yourself into a brand. You're a person. No one should fall for being branded against their will.

Learning from failure

Earlier today, I wrote my managerial finance exam and in all likelihood will not pass the course. Beyond the fact of it being demoralizing and the fact that I will be re-taking the course in the fall barring an unlikely grade curve, I'm grasping at straws for a silver lining and not finding one. If anything, it's made studying for tomorrow's marketing exam that much tougher. Such is the gloom in the house today (since Jen had a rough day at work as well) that even the arrival of my off-campus work permit today - ahead of schedule, even - barely stood out. Wisely, Jen picked up a couple of bottles of beer for us, one of which I downed gradually as I felt sorry for myself.

Getting an F in something makes the good marks I've earned worth something, I suppose. And it'll give me that much more drive to improve my quantitative skills over the summer, which I'd already planned on doing. I just hate the feeling I get that other of my classmates can seemingly get something more intuitively, while my level-best effort wasn't good enough to pass.

Another expensive lesson, I guess, as I also have to borrow a significant amount of money from my parents after other best efforts didn't bear the financial fruit that I thought they would. It's like a mortgage at my old job where it fell apart despite my best efforts, and just as in this instance, it's money out of my pocket not being able to close the deal. But that doesn't mean that my next opportunity to excel (as an old high-school teacher one dubbed his tests) won't be the one that gets me over the hump. I have to maintain the mentality that I've succeeded just by getting here, and that the opportunity is mine to lose. But it's in that vein that I'm most frustrated, having done my best, but still having come up short.

This time.

Weird oldness

Today I realized that I missed seeing my friend Matt play here in Toronto with his band, Comeback Kid, for the second time since moving here, and got a little depressed at how I can't afford the time or funds to go out and see shows. This was on the heels of listening to a ton of Grieves yesterday while studying finance, happy that I'd discovered a new MC to get excited about. The absence of playing music in my life has been difficult with the stress and time demands of school, like the colors of the world have less vibrance. (That, and being in a business school environments where other students either seem to go out 'clubbing' or not at all, has been a drag.)

Then this afternoon, Jen and I were having was having a conversation with Jen about bears, natural selection, human ethics, and bus tours, and suddenly found myself excited about the future prospect of taking a bus tour out to Banff where we could see wild grizzlies and amazing vistas. Lo and behold: another cliched getting-older moment! I should be so lucky to think about that, a day after my friend Ben (in town on business from Seattle) asked if there we felt trapped in town without a car; at that point, I'd mentioned the possibility that she and I could probably take a bus or train out to Stratford-upon-Tyne this summer for their annual Shakespeare festival.

Lots to do here, even though I often feel guilty about spending the smallest amount of money at all with how broke we are tight money is (trying to stay positive!). And as if on cue, I need to get out to Canadian Tire and pick up a cheap vaccuum that's on sale so that we can finally clean up our bedroom (shh! don't tell the landlord!), even if it does take me away from my finance study.

Woe be to me the next time I have to dive into such a dry, analytical subject again. My visual-storytelling brain doesn't do well with it, has no interest, and forces me to go against my natural instincts of avoiding something that I truly don't care if I ever see again.

And thus the sun returns, beckoning me outside, to get on with it, just like everything else I have yet to do today, and for the next two weeks.

Reflection

Sounds travel up to our balcony quite readily from the street, especially at night. For some reason, it reminded me of how much older I am as compared to most other students, with several going out to the bars for St. Patrick's Day a couple of days ago. I happily spend time at home, finally finishing 200 or so flash cards for finance so that I can have some peace of mind at being more or less caught up with the material, even though I have a load of practice problems to do.

I'm putting on weight with the stress, but am staying focused and will do my best, despite feeling less than prepared for the papers I have to write yet this weekend. There's only so much that one person can do, and I've learned that if I state the obvious in my papers, I'll get points for setting up the problems effectively. Too often early on I felt that I had to start with a much higher-order idea before getting rolling, but just as life requires a foundation, so does a good case analysis.

At least I don't have to go war in Libya, right? Silly Democratic voters we were, thinking we were getting an innovative hybrid vehicle for a President, but it's clearly just the same old Chevy. I thought to myself earlier, "even if there was a fraud line I could call to report him, the automated voice would say 'please deposit $1 million to be connected to a representative'". I'll post that Who song on my other page for that... just another rich man's war, protecting those oil interests. I could go on, but will calm the nerves with some other study before bed.

Pastor Martin Niemoller, please know that many of us heed your words, and that we speak up for others. We may not run things, but dammit, we are trying.

Rant

I hate Managerial Finance.

After failing the midterm and being determined to pass the class on the force of sheer spite, I spent much of today and will spend the first part of tomorrow making flash cards that I can read on the train and the bus to and from school. The professor, while a great teacher in class, has made it clear from the midterm that you had better know everything, becuase if you don't, son, you are screwwwwwed.

I studied like a madman for my Management Accounting final a few weeks ago and knew everything that was asked on the final, going with my gut hunch and spending extra time on a couple of items that ended up being central to the exam. I stunned myself by pulling an A- in the class, leaving my school Internet account page up for half an hour, convinced for a time that I'd received someone else's grade, that they'd correct it and I'd get the B- or C+ that I had been expecting. But no, there it stayed, and there it still is.

I'd said that I wished the M.A. class lasted the whole term, but at this point I am joyously taking my A- and running. Hell, I can learn more on my own time any time I want to. But the sad truth is that yes, I am judged on the grades I get; I still have no internship for the summer and am fortunate that I have a chance at working at school full-time in an expansion of the part-time work that I've only just started. And the M.F. class is one where I truly don't give two sh*ts about the material, as though internalizing it would align me with the sh*tlickers that go on to Wall Street (and here, Bay Street) and become "financial analysts" and ten other versions of boring and pointless that I cannot imagine doing.

(Look at me being decent and censoring! Proof that all is not lost.)

In four weeks, I'll never again have to care about bond valuations, the new present value of anything, the present value of the capital cost allowance tax shield... it goes on and on. I brought the textbook with me to skim on the train while I ran errands and two separate people commented on how "interesting" the book must be. "It's my weakest subject", I responded in both cases.

Not for long, though. Not for long.

Involuntary meditation

Dinner's ready on the stove, a simple meal of alphabet pasta and inexpensive sauce. I've had to learn a lot about how to eat well on a budget, and wish I would have learned that lesson much earlier in life, but can't go back and redo that, so will keep doing my frugal best going forward. I still have an internship to apply to and a paper section to write, with the dim hope of getting to some managerial finance reading before bed.

I've been under so much stress of late that I literally cannot think at times, and my mind draws a blank when I consciously try to think of something. It's as though my mind is keeping me from freaking out about things, trying to help me keep moving with the stress of a new part-time job, the 9.5 hours-a-week that the job takes that I desperately miss already, but which is providing me with valuable Canadian work experience.

I spent four hours today trying to apply for my Off-Campus Work Permit, including the train ride to and from school in which I brought my laptop along to do readings for the paper section I'm responsible for. I'm glad I went to school, though, as wrestling with the scanner and trying to get legible passport and study-permit grayscale copies, plus the system time-outs with the CIC website, easily would have cost over $40 with all the time I spent on it. And after all that, it wouldn't accept my U.S. debit card or the one credit card that I theoretically still have space on. In short, I'll have to request a special form that CIC has to mail to me, then I bring that to my bank with the $150.00 payment. Hopefully it won't delay the processing and I'll still be on track to be able to work full-time starting mid- to late-April.

The joys of being international, one step at a time. Dinner!

Post-script

As I went to the counter to settle up, the counter guy told me shook his head when I gave him my chip card to debit my account. He wouldn't accept it.

"But you have a sign on the front door that says you accept Interac."

"Actually, I think that's just for the ATM."

"Well, THAT sucks."

Grumbling about the rip-off, I went to the ATM and paid a $1.50 fee to get $20.00 from my checking account, all because I didn't bring enough cash with me from across the street. I gave him the $20 and took my $18.50 back, and didn't give my customary thank-you after receiving the change. On my way back across the street, I thought, "Well, I suppose I could have left without paying," since he didn't have my name or anything of that sort. But it would have made no sense to bring on such bad karma, at the very least. We all pick our battles, and sometimes just knuckling under (and in this case, paying a total of $4.50, making Jen's printout ultimately cost 75 cents per page) is what life commands us to do.

After I got home, I went outside onto our balcony and looked scornfully down at the business. What did I see but a Second Harvest truck now parked out front of the 24-hour computer store, with people unloading a few overstuffed boxes of food and delivering them into that same building: a cosmic reminder that I needed to regain, quickly, the perspective that a small incident caused me to lose.

There's some recent backstory to explain my needlessly harsh reaction. Just last night, I had a conversation with a relative that I never expected to have to have, which nonetheless confirmed that financial support will be provded to keep us afloat here amidst the constant financial uncertainty. It will provide a level of certainty that we haven't known since receiving the news way back in early September about my financial aid award.

I won't soon forget waking up this morning; my brain was still confused, as though it still couldn't process the fact that the help will be provided, that the daily worries that have been at the front of my mind every single day do not have to hold such negative influence over my thoughts.  To think that I can actually concentrate on school, work my new 9.5-hour-a-week job, keep on networking in the quest to secure a paid summer internship... the degree to which that cauldron of worry/frustration/suppressed anger/fear has bubbled is surprising. We'll keep on scraping and stretching just as we have, but with this, it will make it easier to keep an extra $1.50 fee from wreaking such havoc on my mood, as though that $1.50 was the difference between staying afloat and sinking.

Barring a truly bizarre disaster, I'll never know what it's like to be truly poor. I am an extremely privileged position to simply have worries about a course exam in a competitive graduate program, and am humbled. Still, I know what it's like to struggle. And I also know the lesson that we can never truly know what others are capable of until the time comes, with another reminder having arrived just 18 hours ago.

With that, I continue.

The boat still floats and journeys onward!

I decided to write for a bit as I'm across the street from our home printing out some materials for Jen, and had to pay for a half-hour of computer time in order to print the 25-cents-per-page (welcome to Canada!) document, which thankfully was only a couple of pages. The place smells like unwashed punks, which brings back the memory of some basement shows, but I can't tell if it's just the place, or if it's the guy who's fallen asleep and is snoring in front of computer No. 5 (I'm at computer No. 10 about ten feet away) but is not logged in, as evidenced by the oscillating graphic on the screen in front of him. It's pretty impressive, actually, how he's just asleep in the chair, while the front-counter guy pays him no mind, having since gone outside for a smoke and come back in. It's not that cold out - only 18 degrees - but who knows. It's a 24-hour place and there's that Mickey's Diner-type vibe that this place and all 24-hour joints have. It makes me a little nostalgic for the nights when I'd stay out at Hard Times reading things that I simply wanted to read, digesting the verbage of James Baldwin, Zora Neale Hurston, David Korten, so much that was so formative for me.

But back to the matter at hand.

After I'm done typing here, I'll resume studying for my management accounting final on Tuesday afternoon, which hopefully will not be as demoralizing as the managerial finance mid-term I took on Thursday, where I clearly failed it and it's only a matter of whether I am at the bottom of the score range or not. At least most everyone came out of the room shaking their heads, but it would have been nice to have some more rigorous class examples to give us a hint at the steamroller that we'd face. When studying the chapters gives you no real preparation, is that on me or the professor? It's a little of both, but the stereotype persists that every professor thinks that their class is the most important, and that things should be clear.

Then again, I've been exposed as a poor test-taker, much to my own irritation. My experience in the business world has taken me out of the if-you-fail-at-this, you'll-fail-in-business mentality, as my life experience has taught me that that's clearly not how the business world works; it may be that way in some areas, but of all the good I've been able to do, there's no punishment that has mirrored the effects of passing or failing a test.  (Each loan application I ever worked with was its own "test", in a way.) I'm a much better writer than test-taker, am comfortable talking in front of people even with no real preparation, all thanks to my self-study and my band experience, respectively.

More to the point, though, I like the explanatory power of management accounting, regardless of how brutal and comprehensive the test is going to be. As I was going over the slides earlier this morning, I was reminded of how I'm still adjusting to adopting the mentality of a manager, being rewarded for thinking analytically and holistically, when my entire professional career (save perhaps for my Wellstone time when I'd mastered the requirements of the position) has provided no such reward for such thinking, and has in fact actively discouraged it through the job design and the organizational expectations.

To learn to think in new ways is one thing, but to have the confidence that you'll not only be able to apply them, but be expected to apply them - well, that's something I've never experienced, but it's something that I'm being trained for.

The sleeper has stopped snoring for the moment, and my time here is almost up. Time to move on, time to continue to prepare yet again for a three-hour moment during which I will do my best.

Post drought

At home today while Jen is at work. Our older cat hollers, the younger cat expresses his hostility to the running dishwasher, and I've essentially finished one of the three papers I want/need to get written today; the next one up to bat is a group project where my portion is late, and I need to make sure I'm pulling my weight with the other three group members. No one likes a slacker in a group project, and no one wants to be perceived as a drag on the effort or as dead weight.

Another financial nightmare tailspin was averted when my payment plan at school was inexplicably cancelled, then an emergency loan was issued by another staff member who cared enough to ensure that I didn't have to beg for a place to, essentially, squat in Toronto, as without that loan, there was no money for March and April rent. There's still the stress of trying to find a well-paying summer internship that allows me to pay off that emergency loan by the end of May, but for now I'm maintaining the delicate balance. If I ever harbored any illusions as to why it was so difficult to go back to school, those illusions were demolished a long time ago!

News update: Jen is at work! Since I last posted, Jen was hired on to work full-time at what turns out to be a wildly popular day spa in downtown Toronto. It starts at minimum wage, but that is $10.25 an hour and will at least go up to $11.00 an hour by late April. I too was fortunate to be chosen for a student work-study position at school, where I'll be in contact with recent alumni and updating the school's demographic database. Rankings, rankings, rankings... the same system that had an effect on me (the Aspen Institute laurel, along with the Financial Times, the Economist, and BusinessWeek) is one that I'll now be contributing to. It should be fun, and I'll take all the money I can get, since what I've got money-wise isn't much! Training starts in about a week and a half.

No matter what, I've made great friends up here, every other student I know is just as shellshocked with the workload as I am, and those who went for finance/investment banking/consulting jobs have had to let their coursework slide for some significant portion of the term already, as I continue my quest to find something in Human Resources. At least I'm still making the solid effort across the board, and despite the financial pressure, am as glad as ever that I'm here.

Lost six paragraphs, so now to summarize...

Someday I'll figure out what lazy left-hand motion of mine occasionally serves to select-all, and then erase all unsaved typing!  Whoops.  Maybe it's best that I just list a few bullet points, B-school style, anyway:

1.  Sustainability is good, but organizational behavior is what I'm passionate about.  I want to make people better at what they do and have a chance to effect change one person and/or company at a time, rather than pushing against environmental forces of destruction that are quickly overwhelming our planet.  Not to be bleak, but India and China have only accelerated their fossil fuel consumption, and I don't have the energy to constantly fight against such well-oiled opposition (pun intended) for a living.  Maybe I can be a change agent to better equip those who are already fighting that fight, and doing so with more environmental knowledge than I'll ever have, plus help people in other walks of life, where I can sate my thirst to understand the seemingly disparate parts of the world and make new connections, both socially and intellectually.  I have no reason to doubt myself.

2.  I started playing bass again this week after ignoring it for over six months, and it's like re-activating a limb that I'd forgotten about.  Band or no, bass is a part of my DNA, and I'm less of a person when I don't play.  I've never been so happy to rebuild my callouses.

3.  I found the workout room again, even though I may not be making a big sledgehammer change.  Just doing a few lifts and elliptical is better than the next-to-nothing I've done since August, and though my runs often flag before 30 minutes, I was able to go nearly 50 minutes the day after Christmas, so I know I've still got it in me to control my health.  (This after I just had a bacon-and-lettuce sandwich for lunch today.  But there you go.)

4.  I didn't expect to get a big takeaway out of this collection of Harvard Business Review articles that I've nearly finished reading, but I did.  Namely, that of all the disabilities from which people suffer, the most common and potent disability is fear.  That really resonated with me, as the double-edged sword of my reflective personality has long been to find something to depress myself about at the expense of the wide expanse of good for which to be thankful.

5.  I've gotten better at re-explaining to myself who I am in the course of having to do so around scores of new faces in this new place, around people where my past is not a shared experience of any kind.  Playing my bass keeps me connected, as does social media, but so also does indulging my want to stay connected to a broader world, diving into news articles all across the Internet.

6.  I can re-write six new paragraphs to replace the six I lost and have nothing to lament whatsoever, as I'm fueled by the long view of intellectual compatriots as well as others with expansive concerns.

So much for that bulleted list... my words may not be all that remarkable today, but I keep in mind that most things in life are not graded; they simply lead to other things and those things are what I make of them.  "2011" is an arbitrary marker on the Julian calendar, but that doesn't mean that only arbitrary lives are out there to be led.  As I depend on others, so still others depend on me, and the web of relationships becomes all the more important, all the more central.