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.

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.

Merry Christmas, all, especially to the guy yelling in front of the church across the street

As I sat down to write something, I suddenly heard the sound of a man yelling down on the street.  Jen and I looked, and she correctly deduced that he was "crazy preaching", dressed like the Fourth Wise Man who was written out of the story.  The iPhone picture really doesn't do his outfit justice, since he was carrying what must have been one or two Holy Bible-esque parcels with his left arm, in the manner of students holding schoolbooks against their chests.  Even though we can often hear full conversations at the level of normal speech being seven stories up, the man's loud yelling bouncing off of all of the stone walls is making it difficult to make out much of what he's saying, except when he said "That is NOT loving thy neighbor as yourself!".  He's still going as I type.

I was going to write something about getting started on a book I bought several months ago, Harvard Business Review on Managing Yourself, about how I'm working to build up the fearlessness that I'll need to secure a paid internship for the summer, about how I was excited to go downstairs to the gym since it's never technically closed.

But all that has a tin ring to it when compared to the street preacher on a cold Christmas early-afternoon.  Most everything that I have to worry about is containable and none of those things involve the possibility of being unhinged in public.

As they saying goes, "the Lord works in mysterious ways".  I don't think you have to be religious to understand that.

Give thanks for your loved ones, work your plan, and enjoy the unstructured time that you've been given, wherever you happen to be.

Slow Saturday night, now Sunday morning

Semester is done, save for one paper that's due on the 23rd that I want to have done by the 21st.  Gave a good representation of what I could do, learned the system, what carries weight, met some great and solid people over the last few months.  Three-and-a-half months went by pretty quickly, it seems, but I feel like I'm on the right track with the school idea, and obviously need to have things fall into place financially for Year Two to happen, but trying not to be too concerned with what I can't control yet.

I have just over two weeks off until the winter semester begins and with it the summer-internship stampede, where I see what I can get and where I'm wanted, obviously in the hope of staying exactly where I'm at here in Toronto.  Jen continues to stay on the job-hunting trail and seems to have more frequent interviews coming along, so hopefully something will come through for her - not just so that we can breathe financially, but so that she can more fully take part in this city.

It's actually hard to write about the uncertainty, even though being a "poor" college student is hardly new or uncommon.  I feel like I can make the needed grades as long as I can stay the course, can meet the people that need meeting, can find the opportunities that need finding, create what I need to.  But the money thing... fuck.  Before, living in the same city where I grew up, there was always the feeling that I could just crash out somewhere if things really fell apart, could keep up the continuity of a job, where no one has to know or care where you live as long as you keep on showing up and keep meeting and exceeding what's expected of you.  But my family unit doesn't have that flexibility now; if we do, I can't imagine where that flexibility would come from.  And if "it" doesn't work, then what?  Do we get on a bus and go back to Minneapolis, or do we go somewhere else?  To Washington D.C., for example, where Jen has friends?  Do we try our hand in a place like Chicago?  And we have two little four-footed members of the family to consider, too, if it ever came to that - how would we pull it off?

The flip side of this, of course, is the amazing opportunity of just being here, having this platform to truly improve, and I can feel it helping.  Maybe this is what a new professional sports player feels knowing that they can be cut or sent down to the minors at any time, have everything upended; maybe this is what a fighter feels when they step into the ring, where the wrong defeat at the wrong time can throw them, sometimes permanently, from the ladder or wall that they've been climbing.  But the thing that keeps these people going is their own will to succeed, cliche though that may be.

I feel an affinity with that - I went downstairs to the gym today for the first time in weeks, determined to push my physical self as I've pushed my mental and time-blocking self with my schooling, I want to build my network further over the next few weeks, and really start to set out publicly what I'm all about when it comes to postitioning myself within and outside of school.  For I may feel the age and life-experience gap with a number of people, but that doesn't take away from the fact that they're good people, and ultimately that's the best reflection of the experience that I can take away so far.

As always, I keep on, and keep working to make the best keep on happening.

Quickly

I've worked hard before, but never with so much determined focus.  The degree to which the car distracted me was made clear by how much I've been able to buckle down, even though I frequently take longer to read things than I would like to, longer to chimp out a paper than I feel I need to.  The next couple of weeks will see a mountain of work that I've already scaled significant parts of, and I'll be grateful to see Friday, December 17th, at which time all of my finals will be done, and (with luck) my economics paper will be nearly finished, if not already completed.

I've made peace with the financial stress of school, but in so doing it has revealed another unexpected feeling: I am reluctantly spending loaned money and feel much better with the idea that I actually created some of my still-small surplus by selling the car.  I didn't actually create any wealth; I merely converted the durable good into income at a price less than its market value, feeling that the extra $1000 that might have resulted from higher pricing or a delay would not have been worth repeated trips to Buffalo (which I didn't and don't have time for) or the prospect of a snowstorm undoing the proper testing of the car (which still hasn't hit - a twenty-minute snow flurry yesterday is all that's really happened yet this year and even that melted away to reveal the still-green grass).  I was able to trust my gut, and again have it work - even letting the father of the buyer take the car for a spin while I waited in their home, talking on the phone to his son, who agreed to buy the car sight unseen on his father's recommendation.  The driver could have vanished, but he didn't, just like so many people that we trust could betray it, but don't.  It's a big small thing.

I woke up seven hours ago and with this writing exception, all that I've done is research for a group accounting project, get my portion of a paper completed for a group information-systems project, and have begun plowing through readings for tomorrow's classes, with a quick resume review needed as I have a strategy session at 5:30pm tomorrow for that.  I've never stared at a computer screen so much in my life, but I'm doing much more than staring: though the research, the note-taking that has resulted in an incredible pile of used scratch paper in the "den", I've had great focus, so much so that when I looked to my right and out the window a few minutes ago, I was again reminded that yes, I'm in a new city in a new country.

The view has become very familiar, but I think I'll always be an outsider, or rather, will never forget where I came from.  And that's a very, very good thing.

Fare thee well, fair Sally!

Though the prospect saddened me yesterday, I gratefully sold Sally the Subaru today (so named by Jen) to her first suitor in the greater Buffalo area.  I met with Bill, whose son Tim was intersted in it, and everything went far better than I could have expected.  Bill is the kind of conservative you don't see on television these days, someone eminently sensible and simply great to chew the fat with. He even drove me to the bus station and gave me a rundown of the run-down that is much of Buffalo, as "our recession hit about 30 years ago" when giants such as Bethlehem Steel saw their fortunes undone by global competition.

When I pulled up to their sleepy hamlet and saw another silver Subaru in the driveway, the good sense I had about it was reinforced.  It's good to know that yes, there are still limitless opportunities to find good people, no matter how brief the meeting may be, for a particular extended moment in time.

I'm on the Greyhound bus as I type, as yet another innovation takes hold, that of onboard WiFi.  I hope they're turning a profit with it, but regardless, I am a current beneficiary, and I only spent 20 dollars (!) on a one-way ticket from Buffalo to Toronto.  The things I've had to spend that much on in my new home for something that only provides a fraction of the utility...then again, maybe this is another reminder that yes, utility abounds for those who know where to find it.

I was apprehensive in a big-picture way yesterday: with the car now in the care of a new owner, my family is now fully committed to T.O. residence, come what may.  No "screw this, we're taking the cats and high-tailing it out of here" is an option now, like it would have been even if we might have been down to our last dollar at some point.  That last dollar is now a good distance further away with the sale of the car, though, and the freedom from gas that costs nearly $1.10 a liter, car payments of over $400 a month, car insurance that would have likely exceeded $400 a month - all of that is officially a thing of the past.

Amazing how car culture seeps into your pores, makes you think that you're at a disadvantage without one.  The car was wonderful, did everything I asked it to, and more; after all, the main reason I got it was to be able to court my girl, who at that time was a 30-40 minute drive away with scant public transportation options.  Now, of course, we live under the same roof, and without a car, I can focus that much more on my family and the challenge of my MBA responsibilities.

Back to work, onto the next challenge... and as the QEW traffic clog reminds me that I'm once again close to home, I again give thanks for the blessings I've been given, which I live every day.

Reframing idea: the Spaghetti Northern

Good grades, bad grades, ugly grades: all have arrived already and the job is to press onward, retain as much as possible, and really learn, ensuring that I get a B average in the process so that I may graduate.  The stated objective of the program is to take the student out of existing comfort zones and it has accomplished that in many ways; there's so much to take in with the new city and the learning that it's hard to turn off the switch.  Even surfing the Internet only packs more information into the Tokyo subway of the mind - I can look outside at the time and temperature on the Manulife Financial building just a few blocks north, which seems to be the closest I'll get to meditating anytime in the near future.

I'm off in a flash to finally get the box for the amplifier that John purchased ten days ago, and perhaps visit an appliance store in the event that I can't obtain a free box.  Then, I study macro- and micro-economics for the mid-term exam, complexity science, and organizational behavior.  Then, tomorrow morning, I team up with another student to do the written analysis for a quantitative-methods assignment that's worth 45% of our grade.  All of the huge numbers aren't really a stressor; knowning that there aren't many chances to shine through and affect a grade is where that comes in.  At least it's not law school, where one test at the end of a semester is the only shot a person has.

And it's amazing how much the Internet has changed formal education.  Half of my textbooks have "exclusive" online reference, half of the textbooks themselves are functionally useless in that they don't match up well with the covered material, and in times of difficulty, people ask one another their opinions rather than strugging in a vacuum.  It's not far off base from the world of work, I suppose.

Any romantic notions about self-betterment have largely been dispelled, but one person notably described my effort as "heroic", which continues to be inspiring.  As I try to bottle that feeling and all of the other emotions and thoughts that swirl around this effort, I give thanks for my fiancee, with whom I've been exploring this new place (we went on a "haunted Toronto" walk around the city this past Thursday, which was a great treat) and who has done wonders to help me adjust to the new hat that I wear as a graduate student.

And hey, if I ever feel too hemmed in, I can always look up Illuminati conspiracies online, or something - some things are simply guaranteed to restore harmony to my view and remind me that yes, I am paying attention to and focusing on the right things.