Sharpening my focus...

I guess it's been about a month between posts. Aside from being busy (a lame excuse, to be sure), I have been struggling about what to write. It turns out (for me, anyway) that having too much freedom is actually limiting. Fortunately, you, my reading public, figured it out for me. I am thrilled (and flattered and humbled) that a number of you (more than 5, less than 100) have actually asked me why I stopped writing after producing several entries in Week 1. And then the light bulb went off! I have no unique expertise to share and I realize that my the populace of readers won't expand much (if at all) beyond those who know me. However, given that I live so far from many of the people who mean so much to me, I can use this blog as a tool to keep you posted on what's transpiring in my life. Admittedly, I can only do this in a superficial, stick-to-the-facts matter, but any of you who would like some emotional elaboration can always call or e-mail if something piques your interest. For many reasons, this shouldn't be the place for me to share my innermost feelings. Having seen so many articles about the link between what one blogs and the end of that person's career growth, I'd prefer not to be the subject of one of those articles. (Just in case I ever have a career again. :) ) . . . Does this mean I have to abandon the "Oprah" dream? . . .

So, you ask... what's new? Well, for starters, I have a job again, albeit another contract attorney job. I'm working at Amazon.com handing procurement, operations and retail contracts, among other things. This gig is slated to last "four to six months, maybe longer", but perhaps there will be a long-term opportunity at some point. This position will also give me a chance to add some operations experience to my resume. I did have some exposure to ops at T-Mobile, but the Amazon job is a true legal ops position. I will also continue to network to put myself in the best position to land a permanent job later this year, be it at Amazon or elsewhere.

I started the job in earnest last Wednesday, immediately upon returning from a great trip to New York. I almost had to cancel my visit; I interviewed at Amazon on Monday, 3/9, heard back (from the recruiter) on 3/10, and was asked to start on Monday 3/16 - the day I left for NYC. The folks at Amazon were wonderful in accomodating me - I actually started work that Thursday, 3/12 - got acclimated for two days, met several people, got familiar with company policies and procedures, and then hit the ground running when I returned on 3/25. The trip to NYC was great - I managed to see 11 friends and my Mom, Dad, brother and nephews. I put about 1,000 miles on a rental car and enjoyed every minute of it. I missed my girls, of course, but it was great to be home for a while. Thomas Wolfe was wrong . . .

One more point of interest (perhaps)... I'm contemplating running another marathon for charity - some of you will recall that I did this in 2001 and raised $4000 for leukemia research. I think I'm up for the challenge of training for a marathon (my last one was in 2006) and I should pursue some challenges aside from job-hunting and keeping my daughters out of jail. If I decide to do this, I'd probably do it through Team in Training again and look for a late fall marathon. Raising money is harder than the physical training, and as you'd imagine, I'd be asking all of you (and many others) for donations. And, as I did last time around, I would/will match the largest single donation. I'll keep you posted.

That's all the news here - at least all of the news that I can share without compromising anyone else's privacy. Even a blogger with a few interested readers that can't genuinely be called "followers" (even though Blogger labels them as such) has to weigh some of the same considerations that journalists think through - or should - before publishing.

This is your blog too!

As [both of?] [all three of?] [do I hear "four"?] my faithful readers know, I decided to launch this blog without a specific theme or pet subject matter. Although that gives me carte blanche to write about anything and everything (wouldn't "everything" encompass "anything"?), I'm finding the lack of restrictions to be surprisingly limiting. My solution, you ask? I'm soliciting your input; feel free to suggest topics on which you'd enjoy hearing - or at least reading - my world view.

Anything goes - with the sort of caveats you'd expect. Although I am not easily offended, I know that not everyone has the same threshold for what they might find off-putting. So I need to keep it clean. And, while I have some interesting views on a number of controversial topics and can defend them well, or at least coherently, I have to remember that my words are accessible by all, including potential employers. I don't mean to imply that I would ever claim a point of view that doesn't reflect my true beliefs; instead, it simply means that this is not the forum in which to address anything and everything. There's that phrase again.

Switching gears entirely, let's test the power of internet. I would like to be a guest on Oprah. Rather than appearing above text that reads "Has 15 wives in 14 states" or "Space aliens stole his wallet", I'd like 20,000,000 of my closest friends to see me appear on television above the words "Regular guy who just wanted to be on Oprah". (I know that "regular" may not apply to me, but all things are relative.) Let's see if we can make this happen, shall we? With 71 LinkedIn connections, surely I must know someone who knows someone who knows Oprah. Or her hairdresser. Or Gayle. I think we can actually pull this off without involving Kevin Bacon. Who's with me?

Out of the mouths of babes. . . While watching an episode of Spongebob Squarepants recently, my six year old daughter noted that there really aren't any squirrels in the sea. To which one of my five year old daughters (of which there are two) replied "Unless someone throws one into the sea". Sometimes life really is that simple. Incidentally, Spongebob (or anything else for that matter) can be used as a valuable teaching tool. I ask my oldest to read the title of each episode as it appears on the screen and I discuss plot development with the twins.

I just saw the following headline appear on the CNN news page: "Men see bikini-clad women as objects, psychologists say" (http://www.cnn.com/2009/HEALTH/02/19/women.bikinis.objects/index.html?iref=newssearch) And so, I ask you the following: Is this really news? Will someone win a Nobel Prize for defending this groundbreaking conclusion?

With that, I bid you - in the words of the pioneer broadcast journalist, George Clooney - good night and good luck.

Random Thoughts...

Thought I'd share a few trivial thoughts before calling it a night. . . . I'd like to place a temporary hold on my staunch anti-death penalty belief to make an exception for the CEO of the Peanut Corporation of America. OK, I don't think he should be executed, but how does this guy live with himself? He almost makes Bernie Madoff seem ethical by comparison. . . . I'll own up to watching "Snapped" on the Oxygen network. For those unenlightened, the show profiles women who seek vengeance of spouses, ex-spouses, lovers, etc. Why the hell do they call it "Snapped"? All of these women plot their actions carefully; more often than not they use a third party to carry out their actions. They really should call the show "Premeditated Murder". Which reminds me, what goes through the mind of the various women who hook up with Drew Peterson? Is the challenge of staying alive really that intoxicating? Don't these women know they're playing a slow-motion version of Russian Roulette?. . . . I think there are far more frustrated comedians and witty authors than anyone realizes. For proof, look no further than the "Best of Craigslist" (http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/all/) . You'll thank me. And when you find that you spend too much time reading the posts you find there, you may curse me as well.

Perhaps I'll tackle more serious topics in my next post (it would be hard not to) but for now, I will bask in the liberation that self-publishing provides, regardless of whether my audience extends beyond myself.

Good night. Thanks for coming. Drive safely.

On Being Goal Oriented...

The world's longest job search continues... or maybe it only seems that way to me. How many times can one person be told that (a) he's too experienced, (b) the prospective employer knows that he can do the job but still wants someone whose experience is precisely on point, (c) the prospective employer is certain that he really wants a higher level position, position with more responsibility, etc. despites assurances to the contrary or (d) he's the ideal candidate but the company has decided not to fill the position? Times are tough out there, unless you have a following/clientele/book of business, and sometimes even that's not enough.

So what keeps me going? Well, aside from the obvious (I have a family to support, I'm getting a bit tired of draining my savings and I enjoy what I do (did?) for a living), I'm too stubborn to give up on a goal. The short list of things I have always wanted to do is as follows:

1. Get married (I am.)
2. Have children (I do.)
3. Run a marathon (I have completed three, although if I ran one today, I'd have to drive the last 15 miles.)
4. Be a game show contestant (Wheel of Fortune, 1987)
5. Be a lawyer (I am. Or was.)
6. Play guitar (OK, nobody's perfect. See below.)

So far I'm 5 for 6. As for number 6, I did take a guitar class for beginners last summer but haven't picked it up since. (Ed, if you're out there in cyberspace, I know I have failed you.) There still time, though. I just don't have it in me to give up. And I have certainly tried some unorthodox approaches to finding my next position. Sometimes I really feel like I'm in the Twilight Zone. (Imagine a man with a linear, progressive employment history....)

It occurs to me that like most of us, I have always been a net consumer of the popular culture. I don't act, I watch movies. I don't sing (and you should all be grateful for that), I listen to music. And I read. A lot. So now, in some small way, I feel like I am actually contributing something to the world's collective work product. And I have you to thank, for what is text if nobody reads it? If a blog falls in a forest, does it make a sound?

Let's create some buzz...

I may be the unlikeliest person to have entered the blogosphere. Except perhaps, my mother, who often asks "Did you get my e-mail?" as though the successful transmission of an electronic message is somewhere between a random event and a true miracle. But I digress....

The only thing is really know about blogs is that most of them are subject-specific. Or purport to be, anyway. I'm smart enough to know that although I find many topics fascinating - or at least interesting - I won't stick to any single one. So I will admit defeat now and tell you that I don't expect that there will be any discernable segue between posts, or even between thoughts within a post. Think of me as a slightly saner version of John Nash (of A Beautiful Mind fame).

I'm hoping that this blog will help me stay connected with old friends and introduce me to some new ones as well. No topic is off-limits, so feel free to comment. I have always thought that if you took anyone's life history and turned it into an episode of A&E's Biography, it would hold my interest. Maybe it's the voyeur in me. I liken it to the beginning phase of a dating relationship, where everything is fresh and exciting. Of course, if I stick to that analogy, it's inevitable that we'll break up at some point. We can cross that bridge when we get to it. If you want to learn about the inner workings of a stranger, stay tuned....