I Can't Keep This Inside Any More...

I recently watched this SmarterEveryDay video , where toward the end Destin talks about how he failed to see things from his collaborator's perspective, and emotionally tried to block him out, rather than seek understanding. I keep having to relearn this, the power of perspective, the power of seeing from multiple perspectives, and how experience and education can actively block efforts in that direction, especially when the retreating mind resorts to emotional tricks to further cloud the rational mind. While between jobs in early 2017, I spent 6 months volunteering full-time as an algebra tutor at a high school whose mission was to target students who were failed by other schools in the district (in both senses of the phrase) , especially those who were about to age out of the system.  Many of these students had life stresses with which I had no direct experience whatsoever: Homelessness, violence, poverty, and more.  Yet they kept showing up to school, despite having jobs to

I just finished watching a rare video by the popular machining and engineering blogger AvE, where he gives some useful life-advice .  Even allowing for AvE's "colorful" language, it's still some very solid advice. Please watch the video first, else what follows may not make much sense. The next most important thing is to give yourself permission to change or reorder your goals, and to do so by treating the goal selection process itself as a goal, something to pursue and learn to do well. In my case, back in the early 1970's I was a very dysfunctional teenager who happened to get decent grades, and who everyone assumed would go directly to a good university.  I desperately wanted some breathing room to figure myself out (I was depressed and silently suicidal, with one older brother dead to suicide and the other extremely emotionally disturbed).  I didn't disagree that college was in my future, but I knew I wasn't ready.  Yet I didn't see any alter

Some recent minor events came together for me as a powerful realization about myself. I have a friend, a former co-worker, who used her engineering career to put her husband through medical school debt-free.  Once he was established, they bought a house and she spent the next decade building their family, with some engineering contracting/consulting on the side, both to keep her skills active and to have a little extra income.  Once their youngest was in third grade, she started her tech-focused MBA, and he shifted toward academia (with a huge pay cut), together ensuring their family was always well-parented. Not only are they the most joyous family I know, but their kids are simply fantastic individuals. They both plan to be working when their kids start college, to ensure they all graduate debt-free.  Their empty-nest dream was to semi-retire together and travel the world, but now they're talking about adopting teenagers. This family-focused partnership started well before

Andrew Yang is a "dark-horse" candidate campaigning to become the 2020 Democratic Presidential nominee. The first and largest plank in his policy platform is a version of Universal Basic Income (UBI) he calls the " Freedom Dividend ". Many view UBI as a non-starter issue. While the general notion is easily understood, detailed definitions and proposed implementations vary widely. Andrew Yang's reconceptualization of implementing UBI does add a solid dose of practicality, and deserves a closer look and ongoing discussion. I believe my own story may be relevant to the UBI debate: On my 60th birthday in October of 2016 I started receiving $1000/month from the government as a delayed result of retiring from the US Navy Reserves back in 1996. I'm from a family with a history of living active lives into their 90s. Several worked into their 80s. Getting a "retirement" at age 60 seemed a bit ironic to me, as I expect to work for two more decades (I'v

I just finished reading Juliana Piskorz' piece at The Guardian , and was left with some thoughts to share.  She writes about how traditional life and work dreams don't map well to the lives many Millennials are experiencing, and the resulting sense of hopelessness and despair. First, this feeling isn't at all unique to Millennials.  Pretty much everyone experiences it, often multiple times.  Especially after traumatic events like losing a job or a relationship, or merely when comparing yourself to others in your circle (the "Greener Grass" syndrome). Second, the problem isn't having a poor outlook.  That's putting it backwards.  It starts with having toxic dreams.  Such dreams have nothing whatsoever to do with who you are, and are typically taken in as whole cloth because we were raised on them by family, culture, media and society. Please, push back against all such toxic dreams.  Free yourself from their pernicious grasp.  It would be better to ta

In the summer of 2014, the owners of my employer at the time chose to stop investing in the company and close it down, just as we had performed a series of very successful field demos for the prototype of our new flagship product.  This product had been my primary focus for two years, pushing me to some of my best engineering efforts. Talk about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory!  That shutdown took the wind out of my sails, making me wonder if I wanted to ever work that hard on anything ever again.  In particular, I wasn't sure I wanted to tie my career so tightly to a single employer. After taking some time off, I chose to pursue shorter-term employment via both contracts with technical temp firms and independent consulting.  Both turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated.  In particular, the list of contacts and references I had built over the years had been depleted by retirements and relocations: My network had largely evaporated. In early 2015 I lan