I’ve been having fun with a new site statistics package called ShortStat from Shaun Inman. Not just a counter of hits, this slick PHP/MySQL combination shows me the browser breakdown of my visitors, and what country they are from. I can see search strings and pages viewed.
I know know that 48% of the “hits” to my site are from web crawlers, and that another 41% and Windows users; Macintosh holds in at 6%, with Linux right behind at 5%. The browser list includes several flavors of Internet Explorer, and several version of Firefox as well. Safari, Camino, Netscape, Konqueror, Lynx, and Mozilla round out the field. I’ve had visit from 18 countries including the Republic of Korea, Greece, Estonia, and the Czech Republic.
Very cool indeed.
Almost every day when I wake up I have music running through my head. Songs, well not so much songs and just refrains from songs, fill my head in the morning. Usually one song, repeated endlessly on my internal MP3 player. This morning is was “No One Is To Blame” by Howard Jones. I honestly can say that I haven’t heard this song since it was popular in the early 80s. How it got into my head is beyond me.
Usually as the day progresses I am able to replace the tune with something else, or turn it off entirely. Other times I am forced to find a copy of the song and listen to it from start to finish to erase it from the playback loop. Thank God for the iTunes Music Store. Otherwise I’d still be listening to faintly remember lines from “No One Is To Blame” this afternoon.
Michele and I just finished reading “What’s The Matter With Kansas?” by Thomas Frank. The subtitle of the book is “How Conservatives Won The Heart Of America.” It is a fascinating look at the radical shift towards the right that is happening in America today. Using Kansas, and the century or more of Populist movement that originated in here in the 1890s, Frank paints a clear, concise picture of how the radical right is is using polarizing issues to leverage the very people they are hurting the most.
For the first time I understand that the new conservatives, the neo-cons, eliminate economy from their arguments, that their entire house of cards is built on the idea of victimization and attacks from the liberal left. I cannot begin to do justice to his arguments. Mr. Frank’s presentation is lucid, engaging and ultimately shocking.
If you live in the United States you owe it to yourself to read book.
The Hopi Native American word for “a state of life that calls for another way of living” or “life out of balance” is Koyaanisqatsi.
Since March of this year, and perhaps extending further back, my life has been out of balance; I’ve been in a state of Koyaanisqatsi. The depression in my emotions, the hesitation in my decisions, and the fear in my soul are all the result of being in this unbalanced state. As a child of Western culture and thinking I am sometimes crippled as my first inclination is to act, to use movement to leave the depression behind. That only acknowledges part of my integrated self. I acted when we moved to Kansas, and the depression and hesitation, the fear, continues here just as it did in Illinois.
As someone who considers himself on a quest for enlightenment I have pondered many times what makes up my integrated self. The image I have is of a four-side pyramid, with each side representing one facet of my self. The four prime areas in my opinion are physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual. I believe that living solely though action, dealing with just the physical aspect of being, strengthens just one side of the pyramid, leaving the other three sides withered and unable to provide balance. Devoting yourself wholly to spiritual pursuits has the same result, the physical, mental, and emotional aspects of your being are not in balance with your spiritualness. Only by giving each aspect of your essence its proper due can you achieve and maintain as state of balance.
The first major unbalancing force that toppled my pyramid was the death of my sister, Amy. I was twelve at the time and it was decades before I finally put to rest all of the emotions her passing created in me. During the time between her death, and my regaining balance emotionally I struggled with numerous physical problems, and I was spiritually adrift without direction or even understanding direction was possible. Only when I started to explore my spiritual side, and strengthen its aspect in my life, combined with truly dealing with the emotions I was feeling towards Amy, did I start to regain my complete balance.
I believe I have experienced brief periods of total balance in recent years, but a lifetime of conditioning has made me reject these moments of clarity and understanding as aberrations. Through my relationship with Michele I have opened up my emotional aspect tremendously. I am strong enough now to express my true feelings regularly and appropriately. Physically I have started to care more about my body, not just through exercise or eating proper foods, but through actual emotional and physical care. And I have begun a deep and far reaching exploration of my spiritual aspect, rather than shunning it as I did for so many years. On occasion I think I have had all four aspect, all four sides of my imaginary pyramid in balance. I think of this balanced state as inflating the pyramid and turning it into a sphere capable of rolling in any direction without much effort at all.
The ease of life that comes from this transcendent state is alien and new to most of us, certainly to me. With no resistance from any of my four aspects life was almost too easy. The absence of emotional or physical pain, the clarity of spiritual contentment, and the smoothness of intellectual understanding created a state, which was painfully refreshing. Without something to push against; physical pain, emotional fear, mental confusion, spiritual ennui, I felt out of balance when in fact I was truly in balance.
As I go about my daily life these days I am depressed emotionally, and I am physically very tired. Mentally and spiritually I feel blocked and exhausted. I am in a state of Koyaanisqatsi. Looking at just my job, or just moving back to Springfield, or just caring for Michele, or just any one thing is not the way to regain balance. I must find it within myself to approach all four aspects of my being in order to feel balanced once again. Physically I must tend my body and care for it tenderly and with love. Mentally I need to seek out places of rest where I dwell on one thing at a time and not everything all at once. Spiritually I need to focus on my belief of essence, karma, and the Tao. And perhaps most importantly I need to deal with the emotions of quilt, anger, and fear I have about my situation.
My web site is named zanshin, which means literally “remaining mind.” In my life it has come to represent the state of enlightened balance we all seek consciously or unconsciously. Only by giving each aspect of my self proper due and no more, can I regain a feeling of harmony with myself and with the world I inhabit.
My wife is older than I. This is not something that has ever disturbed me or mattered in my love for her or my appreciation of our live together. However, it is likely, probably even, that she will die before I do, leaving me alone for the final portion of this lifetime. I am not looking forward to being alone once again. We talked about this yesterday as an outgrowth of a discussion about my career. At 43 I need to start seriously planning for retirement. Since my career is lucrative we both feel that as long as I am working Michele can semi-retire or completely stop working when she wants. However, without a retirement plan that starts very soon, I will not be able to stop working.
I am not blaming anyone but myself for this situation. I have made choices that best navigated the chaotic employment landscape of the past few years in the technology industry. And I am content to live with the results of those choices. However in a powerful and emotional discussion yesterday, Michele helped me to see that continuing to pursue the “right” job may not be in my best interest anymore. I have pursued jobs with an ever-increasing set of skills or ability for several years now. While these have improved my resume considerably, none of the employment situations have aided my ability to retire someday. In fact given the financial disaster that was working on contract for the State of Illinois, you could make a strong argument that I have actually lessoned my ability to retire.
So I need a new set of criteria for evaluating my job. No long can it be solely about the latest technology, or staying current with new trends. It must also include a strong potential for longevity. I need to stop thinking in terms of 6 or 12 or even 24 months, and start thinking in terms of 10 or 15 or 20 years. In twenty years I will be 63 years old. Given that three out of four grandparents lived to see 90 or greater, and that both my parents are easily going to see 80, I have a better than even chance of seeing 80 or 90 myself. Without a retirement income I could be forced to spend the waning years of my life working or living well below the level to which I am accustomed.
Looking at the present employment iteration here in Kansas City I see a potential for long-term employment with the client. Becoming a federal employee may not be sexy, especially in the technology field, but it does offer long-term employment. The opportunity I am considering in Springfield also has a potential for long-term employment. In the initial phone interview they were adamant about wanting a resource that was willing to make a 5 or 10 or 15-year commitment to the company. The company has been in business for over 60 years, which is encouraging. However, never have made a career choice based on retirement criteria I am somewhat at a loss as to how to make an honest evaluation. And following close on the heels of three months of unemployment, where I started to question my ability and I lost faith in myself to some degree, it is very hard to face a choice that may very well determine what my life will look like in 20 or 25 years time.
And larger than the career choice I am facing is the need to build community for myself so that I am not alone at the end of my life. I do not regret my choice to not have children, but that coupled with geographic distance from my brother and his family, and an overall lack of personal friends, leaves me facing a future that could be very lonely indeed. As I look at my employment choices I need to consider the location in terms of our ability today to make friends today that will continue to be present in my life, as I grow old. To put it very bleakly, there is a strong possibility that by the time I am 70, I will still need to work and Michele will be dead or dying. Facing that future without a community of friends and family to support me would be impossibly daunting.
I have reached the mid-point in my life without every really planning it or placing expectations on the future. However, looking ahead now I see that I need to step up to a new level or responsibility so that the final years of my life are comfortable and filled with meaningful fellowship and love.
It has been almost four years since I was last an employee. In that previous iteration I was working for a company as an actual employee, consulting was not a part of the mix. There was a small, dedicated staff in the “front office” who dealt with our benefits; you could walk down the hall and ask questions about benefits, costs, et cetera.
In the current employment iteration, I am once again a consultant. I’ve never even seen the “home” office. I only vaguely know where it is located. I’ve seen my “boss” three times. The first visit was post-hire but before I started work, to hand in paperwork. It was a pleasant enough visit; both Michele and I found the company president personable enough. The second meeting was my first day on the job. It lasted all of five minutes. The third was equally short, he just dropped off my first paycheck and left.
I have had no real contact with him or the company since. Recently there were some layoffs at my site, including two fellow consultants working through the same firm. I expected to get some kind of email or phone call assuring me that I was okay. Nothing.
This afternoon a total stranger, a woman I have never met or heard of before, showed up and presented me with a health insurance form to fill out. I explained that I had already done this once before, back in June. She replied that our company was thinking about switching, and that I needed to fill this out and submit it no later than tomorrow. Lovely. No prior notice, no information, just fill this out, and oh, by the way, do it right now.
Also today, I got a series of cryptic emails about a new account I had signed up for. I was almost ready to hit the “report as spam” button on my gmail account when I saw that the URL contained the name of my company. Hmmm. It appears we now have a rudimentary intranet. Again, no detailed information, no heads up, just an abrupt message in my in-box.
I understand completely that being a consultant, working for someone else’s company, means you are just a set of billable hours. I have worked in this capacity on and off for several years in my career. I had just forgotten how cold is was out here on the pointy end of the consulting stick.
I realize I currently feel out of control about my situation here. Layoffs a mere six weeks after the start of the project do not bode well. And the assurances that everyone is okay now, coming from the same people who engineered the layoffs in the first place, do nothing to ease my concern. Having two poorly communicated changes in my employment context, on top of no communication about my status in light of changes at the client, is only adding to my anxiety.
I realize that no employment situation is safe and stable anymore. Certainly not one in the high tech consulting industry. Even so, it makes the opportunity percolating in Springfield look all the better. That job maybe just as out of control feeling as this one, but they haven’t had the chance to keep me in the dark. Yet.
In the past few days I have been setting up and configuring a new statistics page for zanshin.net from Shaun Inman. In the course of testing the page I had occasion to visit several of the larger search engines to search for myself. On a9.com, altavista.com, lycos.com, alltheweb.com, and of course google.com, putting in “mark nichols” results in zanshin.net being listed as the first site, or first non-sponsored site.
I’m just saying.
Remember the posters that show some cute animal, usually a polar bear with a paw over its eyes, that have a caption that reads, “Just when I figured out the answers, someone changes the questions.”? That poster pretty much sums up my life this weekend.
A Brief History In April 1998, Michele and I moved from Springfield Illinois to Vancouver Washington so I could pursue my career in the Pacific Northwest. Living in that region was a dream we both held, and my skill set provided a means to relocate. Thirteen months later the bottom dropped out of the semiconductor wafer industry and I lost my contract.
Fearing the unknown of abandoning my speciality of Forte, I chose a job at a pre-IPO company in Charleston South Carolina next. Moving cross-country, buying a house, enduring flooding, lighting strikes, and three hurricanes; all within the first 90 days there should have been a clue. Nine months after arriving the IPO failed and I scrambled to find local work. Our dissatisfaction with the whole “deep south” thing drove us to secure a contract in Illinois.
Returning to Illinois as an independent consultant, working for myself, seemed like the way to go. The next three and a half years would be ones of constant cash flow difficulties as the State took its time paying their accounts. It was also a time of diminishing returns, as the budget crisis caused a nearly 45% cut in my rate. In the end they cancelled my contract.
After 99 days of searching, sweating, worrying, and nearly giving up, I found work in Kansas City. Once again I am an employee. The transition to this new place hasn’t been awful, but following on the heels of this spring’s trauma, it hasn’t been easy either.
The Set Up Last week I got an email from a recruiter looking for java development people in Springfield Illinois. My first thought was, where were you three months ago? I responded, more out of curiosity than anything else. Our initial phone conversation was good, and after seeing my current resume, he was excited about my chances with his client. The position is a 6-month contract to hire for a private company. I must admit I was very intrigued.
Meanwhile, Michele has secured and is loving a position as adjunct instructor for a local community college. The part-time nature of the position, combined with teaching and working with interested adults appeals greatly to her. She is signed up for training in administering and leading online courses, which would allow her to work from home.
Then on Friday, as I was leaving for the day, I had a conversation with Tom and Doug, two of my fellow consultants who started just days before I did here in KC. They had been given their two-week notice. September 3rd will be their last day on the project. My stomach dropped in the now familiar free-fall that comes with impending employment disaster.
The Quandary I haven’t received any phone calls, good or bad, about my current position. The sub-phase of the project I am coordinating is very active and I am quite busy these days. In talking to Tom and Doug I got the feeling that mismanagement of the project, that is causing delays in getting needed requirements artifacts to the design team, is what drove the decision to let go of resources. The thread that is keeping me employed this weekend is the fact that my assignment isn’t dependent upon the requirements delivery. However, I am rapidly approaching the completion of this task.
So, we moved and moved and moved in the last few years. Each time as a result of economic forces beyond our control. Each time we thought we’d found a better situation, one that would insulate us from outside forces. Each time we have been proven wrong. This summer we moved once again, we were willing to start over again, in an apartment, with little or no savings, in order to survive. The project seemed long-term and secure. We felt that over time we’d regain what we’d lost, and that we could move on.
Now we have an interesting confluence of events. Our house in Illinois hasn’t sold. My job here in Kansas City may not be secure much longer. I have a potential job in Springfield. Most of our belongings are packed away. A week’s work with a 28-foot U-Haul would see us back in our house. Michele might be able to teach online classes at a college here, regardless of where she currently lives.
We honestly don’t know what to think or do at this point. The anxiety of the past few months had finally started to subside. Now my insides are all knotted up again.
I know that the only constant in all these events is me. And it is very hard not to wonder if I am somehow causing all of this drama and turmoil in our lives.
The recent news that my cousin has a form of cancer has stirred up old feelings, and awakened new fears in me. My sister, Amy’s, death from cancer cast a long shadow over my family. For years I couldn’t understand why that one event seemed to define and limit the rest of our lives. I know now that the members of my immediate family, myself included, didn’t grieve enough. Moreover, we never grieved together in any meaningful way.
My mother and I have talked about Amy, and cried about her many times in the years since her death. But I never got a sense of relief from this crying, or the connection it provided between Mom and I. There was always a sadness in our house, one that was present all the time. As Christmas approached the tension would become thicker and heavier. The Christmas holiday itself become a perfunctory exchange of gifts and a rigid set of events, year after year after year.
Even today there are still traces of the “tradition” that became our Christmas. Amy is never talked about, and certainly never brought up in front of my father. When she died my parents couldn’t afford a grave site for her, so her remains were interred in Pennsylvania with her paternal grandmother. She was gone, ripped from our lives and we didn’t even have the ability to go visit her.
My observation is that it altered and forever damaged the relationship my parents have with each other. Their individual styles of grieving were incompatible, and rather than seek a common ground to resolve their emotion needs, they, through inaction more than anything else, left their grief for Amy lying in between them. I am sad to say she lies there still. Chris and I, as children, had our own struggles with losing Amy. I know that true cognitive ability doesn’t manifest until a child is about 12-14, and then it takes time to develop. I was just at the verge of being able to comprehend what had happened to my sister, Chris was still at an age when death was too abstract. Neither of us had a healthy outlet for our grieve, nor did we have a place to move forward.
My parents were stuck, they didn’t know how to console themselves, much less Christopher and I. Over time the collective wound we all shared scabbed over, but it hasn’t really healed. In my late twenties I sought out counseling and started to address some of my issues of anger and guilt over her death. It wasn’t until I met Michele that I finally had a safe, loving, nonjudgmental place to sort out the complex stew of emotions I had for Amy. I was shocked to discover I was very angry with her, and more shocked to discover the tremendous amount of quilt I had that she had died and not I.
The work I did, and continue to revisit from time to time, has given me Amy back. Her memory is now a happy one, I am content with my relationship with her. I still grieve her dying, and I still miss her everyday. But I am no longer stuck in time 31 years ago. I believe we all have a purpose in life, and I know that once we complete our task for a given lifetime we move on to the next. Amy completed her life goal very quickly and she moved on in a manner that left us all a gift. The way to receive the gift is to work through your grieve over her passing. Once I found peace with her life, her whole life, then I get her last gift. I regained the warm feeling of love and companionship we shared. Amy was, is, a wonderful sister, who cared very deeply for her family. Even as she lay painfully dying in the hospital her thoughts were of us - she made sure we got a small Christmas present from her. She was selfless and loving, an ideal I try to live up to even today.
Amy is a part of my life today. Not just her dying, but her living too. I still have her favorite stuffed animal, Myrtle the Turtle, she always has a special spot in our home. Myrtle smiles her wise, knowing little smile, and she is infused with the goodness and joy that was Amy. After I release my anger and accepted my quilt about her passing, I was able to start reconnecting with my parents in a truer way. I cannot imagine the sense of loss and horror losing a child must produce, so I will never fully understand what they continue to go through. I have seen a rebirth of happiness in my mother in particular, as she dotes on and beams about her granddaughter, Riley. I think too, that having daughters is helping to heal my brother. Having a family is hugely important to him, and he has blossomed into a strong and caring father.
In the end it isn’t that failing to understand our past dooms us to repeat it, it is that our emotional life is shaped by all that has happened to us, whether we deal with those events or not.
Cancer is in the air it seems.
It’s in the air we breathe and the water we drink, and the stress we fail to deal honestly gives it birth in our bodies.
I’m just saying.