The fatigue of success

The better-than-expected grade led to me squeaking onto the Dean's List for the term. How about that. And it only took three weeks after taking the final to get the grade, the Thursday before this term's classes started, the first week of which has just concluded. I was literally trembling when I logged into my school account to view the grade, not knowing whether it was the end, or another beginning. 

My loan funds came through "sooner than expected" in posting to my account, but no one can tell me when a check was cut, or when it was mailed - only that it was "requested" on the 4th, so practically speaking I am up the same creek that I have been ever since I started in this program. I am very lucky that my landlord is understanding with the late rent.

I've become accustomed to poor performance from my university bureaucracy and keep reminding myself that no one grows up dreaming of working in a school's financial aid office. I won't ever claim to be the best and brightest of anything, but I work hard, get results and make this fact obvious to others. Repeatedly and at numerous points, incompetence has trumped "quick" results and curt indifference has usually been the norm in my dealings with the lead sled which attached itself to the sports car of a program that I am working through. I just need these last dollars to arrive and I will never have to deal with these fuck-ups ever again.

I am trying to go full-speed with the start of the term but the physical release of the stress of uncertainty over the finance grade has not yet abated. I have been unable to get myself out of the mud and back into the cranking swing, as I have weighed myself down with the additional responsibilities of informational interviews and preparing an entry for Canada's Next Top Ad Exec, even as I try to broaden my focus beyond being an account executive at an ad agency and position myself as a "strategic brand advisor" which I feel would split the difference. So much is so exciting, but so much is just so much: while about a hundred other students attend a winter getaway weekend, I try to relax and fire up my engines to really begin to work hard.

I have replaced the constant worry over failing the class and program expulsion with fear of not finding a job in time and going really broke before I graduate. Knock down one domino and the next one appears. How can I change this perception? As my aunt said, it takes a special person to live with this kind of uncertainty, and I intend to remain that person.

Last fall was no fluke. I must continue to build.

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.