Entries from October 2003 ↓

One of the new pleasures I am getting from this whole blog experience is reading other people’s sites. I like to start my day first checking to see if anyone has posted a comment to my site (ahem), and second, going down the list of folks in my blogerium to see what new discussion is taking place elsewhere. Always interesting reading, and often exposure to even more bloggers through their comment sections.

So, I was reading about j’s encounter with a secret booty admirer and it got me thinking about the larger issues it presented. (Go read the piece first then come back and finish reading here. But don’t answer the questions based on his experience, base it on your own.)

I came up with some questions:

1. What makes some statements, seemingly intended as comments, come across as insulting or offensive to you?

2. Is a compliment made about your physical features less appealing to you than one made about say, your personality or your intellect? Why or why not?

3. If someone comments about your physical features, do you automatically assume they want to get to know you better, or can you accept it and leave it at that?

4. If someone comments about your personality or intellect, do you automatically assume they want to get to know you better, or can you accept it and leave it at that?

5. Accepting the premise that meeting people can be difficult under any circumstance, is it ever permissible and/or necessary in your opinion to try unorthodox approaches to reach out to people you find attractive?

6. Have you ever seen someone you found attractive and wanted to approach, but couldn’t find any words to say to them, so the opportunity was lost?

Inquiring minds want to know.

It was an offline meeting of folks who meet quite frequently online. A certain visitor from down south came north, causing several bloggers to turn out to greet him. The stars of the blogosphere aligned over Newark.

It was casual and fun, good food and nice company. I’m sure he will tell it better, with pictures.

Every year at this time, I celebrate my anniversary. It was on Wednesday, October 17, 1990, at 3:00 pm that I got laid off from a well-paying, highly responsible position as a public relations director for a New York State agency. Had I not been terminated, I might have stayed in that position for at least a few more years, spending most of my days fighting petty office political battles, doing work I didn’t necessarily enjoy any more all in pursuit of a big paycheck.

I had been on that job for less than a year. The executive director of the agency and I had come over from another agency, where he had been in charge of PR and I was his junior deputy. This new position was then a promotion for me, and quite frankly I wasn’t enjoying it as much as the previous position. As a management level director at such a young age, I wasn’t ready for the administrative details of the job, and the lack of time to devote to actual press duties, which I preferred. This was a world of meetings and memos, fighting over territory with other directors who were more experienced and skilled at such gamesmanship, and it was all making me sick.

I was only three years into government service, having left a job in radio news. I had actually had a lot of fun in my first state posting, realizing what was possible when the forces of government organized to solve problems. It was heady stuff. But this was different, as so many staffers in this new agency marched to the beat of their own drummer and no one seemed on the same page. Factions formed, and the office environment was usually tense.

I spent my free time in those days pursuing my long-held dream of being an actor. I was developing my voiceover work, growing in reputation amongst the local advertising agencies to the point where I was getting more and more bookings. I was also doing my first ever stage work, as a guest artist with a local college theatre department.

But on Wednesday, October 17, 1990, at precisely 3:00 pm, things changed. I had spent the week putting my budget together for the next year, a time consuming process for a novice. That morning I got a memo from the executive director telling him to see him at 3:00. I thought nothing of it.

Between 2:15 and 2:30, something strange happened. A female co-worker came down the hall shouting about how she was gonna sue. I came out of my office to see what was up. She said she had just been fired and was gonna sue for age discrimination. I went back in her area and found another co-worker in tears. She too had been fired. Shortly thereafter, a third woman came out of the director’s office, also terminated. This was madness I thought.

I went into the office of a male co-worker to ask him if he had heard the news. He had, he said, and he said he’d been fired too. He said, “We all got this memo” and showed me a letter from the director that was exactly the same as the one I had, except for the time. Apparently five of us were to be let go that day and were all summoned to his office in 15 minute intervals beginning at 2:00 pm. It was then around 2:40 and I was the last to go at 3:00, so I had 20 minutes to fall into depression.

I took it like a man. There was nothing I could do really. This was a result of the office politics. All of us who got fired were in a different office faction from the ruling elite. I remember staring out my window for about ten minutes in disbelief and complete uncertainty over what to do next. We were given until 5:00 pm on Friday the 19th to clean out our offices and it was a strange departure.

The weekend went as normal, but when Monday rolled around I was suddenly a man without anything to do. That was disorienting. I had nothing to do and all day to do it. And no real plan for what to do next. I had a large severance package, and could collect unemployment, so no urgency either. But I had always defined myself by my job and now I was without one. Who was I?

As the days, weeks and months wore on, I redid the resume and sent it out, looking for PR work. I got a few interview and some of the jobs even seemed interesting. But I’d often sit in those meetings fearful of going back to another office setting. Subconsciously I probably even sabotaged a few opportunities.

In the mean time, I was still getting acting work. Every time I got a call to do some voiceover or a commercial or an industrial video, I was sky high. It was fun, interesting, never dull, gave me freedom during the days, and between that and my severance, enough to get by.

As I ponder my future employment situation and where to find the next PR job, it took about 6-8 months before a light went off in my head, “You’re an actor, stupid.” I was so limited in my vision of myself I couldn’t see what it was that gave me real joy and purpose in life, and it wasn’t 9-5 PR work. It was acting, and there was no use in forcing myself back to office work if that wasn’t going to bring me happiness.

To make a 13 year story short, I spent up until 2001 employed as a full-time actor, and sometime writer/PR consultant/temporary project manager/whatever else I could do to make a living because I finally realized that that was what gave me the most fulfillment.

I realized that my identity was greater than any job I held, and that job security comes not from having steady employment but from having the skills to earn a living. When I took stock of all the things I could do and who would pay for those services, I was able to generate an income through persistence and organization. It is a lesson I’ve never forgotten, but which I probably would never have learned had I not been fired.

So, happy anniversary to me.

First off, if you’re from Boston, there is no curse of the Bambino. There is only human effort and human error. The effort leads you to victory. The errors lead to losses.

Baseball’s greatest franchise…no, the greatest franchise in pro sports history…the New York Yankees, did what they’ve done so many times before. They didn’t sweat, they didn’t panic. They just rose up off the deck and came back to beat the Boston Red Sox 6-5 in 11 innings, in Game 7 of the American League Championship Series. For the 39th time in their history, they will go on to the World Series, where they’ve won it 26 times. While Boston’s 85 year quest for another World Series championship will have to wait yet another year.

You can see what time it is as I write this. I’m wide awake and so is my neighborhood. I live not far from Yankee Stadium and when the game ended on Aaron Boone’s walkoff home run, the volume level went up. This was one exciting game! Drama with every single pitch. The 26th time these teams have met this year. Every game has been a battle, but this series and this game was a war.

The Yankees won with a total team effort. When starting pitcher Roger Clemens couldn’t do it and was pulled in the 4th down 4-0, starter Mike Mussina came on and pitched brilliantly in relief to settle Boston down. Jason Giambi, who had been struggling all series, hit two solo home runs to keep New York close at 4-2 going into the 8th.

With Boston up 5-2, the human error showed up on the Red Sox side. Starter Pedro Martinez stayed in too long. He was tired, yet convinced manager Grady Little to keep him in, and the Yankees came back to tie. That was all the break they needed. Mariano Rivera pitched brilliantly in the remaining innings and got the win and the ALCS MVP trophy. The Yanks got the win and the League Championship. And Boston goes home empty-handed again.

The World Series starts Saturday in the Bronx.

The Los Angeles Times and NBC News are reporting that a high-ranking U.S. military official assigned to track down Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein and other targets, has made highly controversial and inflammatory statements pertaining to the war on terror.

Lt. Gen. William G. �Jerry� Boykin, the new deputy undersecretary of Defense for intelligence, has made speeches before church groups characterizing the war against terrorism as a clash between Judeo-Christian values and Satan.

Boykin is a 13 year veteran of the top secret Delta Force, a covert operations unit of the U.S. Army, who has played a role in the 1993 assault on Somalia�s Muslim warlords, the hunt for Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar and the failed attempt to rescue American hostages from Iran in 1980. The General is also an outspoken evangelical Christian.

The LA Times reports that in June, speaking before a religious group in Oregon, Boykin claimed Islamic extremists hated the United States “because we’re a Christian nation, because our foundation and our roots are Judeo-Christian … and the enemy is a guy named Satan.”

The article goes on to say… �Discussing the battle against a Muslim warlord in Somalia, Boykin told another audience, “I knew my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God and his was an idol.”

Boykin even went so far as to allude that President Bush�s administration was divinely inspired. “He’s in the White House because God put him there,” Boykin is reported to have said to a group in Sandy, Oregon.

Right-wing religious extremism has now officially run amok in Washington. We have always known that such sentiments were a part of the underlying purpose for being in this administration. Right after 9/11, Bush himself said he wanted to lead a �crusade� on terror, before retracting those remarks. But for them to be so publicly brazen now smacks of an arrogance and air of invincibility that we can only hope will be their undoing in next year�s presidential election.

Quite predictably, the Defense Department from Donald Rumsfeld on down, is trying to distance itself from Boykin�s comments. Boykin himself has made no public statement. But the damage has already been done. At a time when Middle Eastern impressions of the U.S. are at an all-time low, views such as these, whether made public or not, harken back to the dark ages in more ways than one.