Making Beauty

I was seated next to a young couple on a flight recently. The young lady was only a bit older than J and her partner a few years older. For the length of the five hour flight they both sketched on their tablets and compared notes with each other, sometimes assisting or improving the other's work. They worked in companionable silence and there was a peaceful energy about them. I would have loved to learn more about them - judging by the quality of their work and the pace of production, I would guess they were professional artists of some sort. 

I can't recall any other time that I have been seated next to a couple where both spent the entire flight time creating art. It was wonderful to experience as an outsider looking in. I realized that it would be rude to peer because it is their personal space and this is like a private conversation between them. While I was consumed with curiosity to see what they had made, it did not feel right to interrupt their flow. Seeing their happiness with each other made me wish for such joy to come J's way - a partner with whom it is possible to co-create beauty, a partner who brings renewing energy.

Fake Hire

I read this article with interest having been a beneficiary of the allegedly fake hiring free by tech companies when the going was good. It was a hiring wave and new people kept pouring in where I worked at the time and from what I heard anecdotally from friends in similar companies. Folks were job-hopping like mad too and asking their ex-coworkers if they wanted out. 

Many did and that triggered a backfill hiring. My own observations during this time have been that the level of engineering and technology excellence in such companies is patchy at best. It is very much the story of the cobbler's son with no shoes. The level of chaos and dysfunction is quite mindboggling, I have heard this from friends, through insights gleaned from interviewing for roles in these companies and also first-hand.

The large enterprise discipline that I have seen with client organizations in my decades of consulting simply does not exist. Ad-hocism is the rule of the land. Maybe some notion of breaking things and failing fast to drive growth is at play here. The reality is there is no magic shortcut to sustainable success. My theory is a lot of this hiring spree was driven by the fact that increased demand stressed the systems to the point that these companies needed a warm body per hole that needed to be plugged as the water gushed at furious pace. 

When one body was not enough for the job, they threw in more often with some kind of manager person overseeing the hole pluggers and reporting up the food-chain along with others like them. Now imagine there are a thousand holes being blocked and and status reported - it can drive a decision-maker crazy to keep up with the chatter. So that required tiers of report aggregators to distill the essence of all the hole plugging activities in a way that was easier to digest.

Lately, there is not that much flowing through the pipes and many holes have been patched. That leaves both the hole pluggers and their tiers of overseers without an avocation. There never was a plan to fix things from the ground up or actually take organizational responsibility for the mess anyway. At the moment the problem is not quite as big and all these people are extras that need to be dropped. As long as folks understand their place in the world, none of this should come as a surprise.

Trying to bring about meaningful and enduring change requires more stamina and will-power than most folks can summon up - so while they see the futility of the hole plugging reporting, they limit their remit to what they are strictly speaking being paid to do. So ironically, things get worse over time despite the patched holes. 

Celebrating Women

On International Women's Day a few weeks ago, I had a few friends and co-workers wish me for the occasion and each time I felt offended. My reaction made me also feel like a kill-joy and a curmudgeon - the very stereotype of a person who is needlessly disaffected by the most mundane things in the world. 

Notwithstanding, I took it upon myself to explain to these well-wishers why I felt so offended. I am tired of women being put on a pedestal and being made a big deal of on a specific day and being treated like second, third and worse tier every other day of the year. I recognize I am in a position of great privilege and that makes it all the more reason to feel that such celebration is a slap on the collective face of womanhood.

The overwhelming majority of my sisters around the world have is way worse than I do. That was true centuries and millennia ago and it continues to be true today. Women have not had it good as a default state of affairs - ever. It has been a infinitely long fight of attrition to wear down the other side to submission. The good in a woman's life as it relates to men often comes locally - friends, relatives and professional connections. These people in her immediate circle, are good men and do what they can do to further her cause - they are champions, cheerleaders, mentors and coaches who transform her life. So in that microcosm, the woman thrives like an orchid in a greenhouse. Sometimes she thrives so well, she can even do well for herself out in the wild. I have been very fortunate to have such men in my life.

A couple of years ago, a nice guy I worked with at the time, invited me to be an advisor to the Male Ally group he was running. I have a problem with the concept of male-allyship but that is a topic for another day. M is an outstanding fellow and I have no issues with him but the job he was asking me to take up pro-bono was basically to correct the omissions of parenting that resulted in these men in their 40s and 50s that most women find incredibly hard to tolerate. As an "advisor" I was meant to point out to them the error of their ways (the job that their parents and early caregivers were delinquent in performing and thus left the world with this mess to clean up) so they may correct it best they could to score points as male allies.

I cannot think of a worse more useless undertaking and expressed my opinion to M as nicely as I could. He understood, took a long pause and went on his way to find other candidates who may see such a role in more positive light than I did. I could get behind a day of mourning for the the state of woman once a year - really put a sharp focus on what is still not working instead of the celebration of a handful of wins which is actually an abdication of real rights. 

Tech Canary

The stories that come out of Twitter generally give pause these days but selling office plants to employees for cash is a new level of creative. Given that Meta is such a faithful follower mimicking the subscription service and such, would not be out of the realm to see office plants there being up for sale - maybe they will throw in the furniture as well. People can bring their own to work (add some bedding for good measure) so they can stay devoted to making money for the company every waking hour. 

Seems like the logical next step. Just get a big empty space where the laborers can keep working until they drop. If the tech companies execute well enough on downgrading the employee experience, time will come when the food services and hospitality industry jobs will start to look quite attractive. Meta's move to demote was an interesting one and seems like Google borrowed a page or two from that playbook which gives everyone else in the business to say no to promotions and raises - people should just be grateful to be employed. Musk deserves credit for doing things that others would not dare to do but will gladly follow in his footsteps - like the many rats behind the Pied Piper.  Thanks to him, Twitter has turned into the canary in the coal-mine of Big Tech.

Long Game

I have been dealing with a field mouse that found its way to my kitchen for several nights without success. Trying our best not to kill it and only trap and take it away is proving impossible. So far the mouse has prevailed and I start my mornings disappointed. But my recent troubles seemed like nothing when I heard this man's story about his fight to the finish with the bobbit worm. My mouse troubles will be over if I resort to harsher measures and there is some comfort knowing that. Such was not the case with this guy. Whatever the creature that needs to be overcome in such situation we apparently rely on the wisdom the "Art of War"

.. the famous military treatise written in 5th century B.C. by Sun Tzu, source of the famous quote, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” So, Arndt decided, he would start off by befriending the Bobbit worm.

“So I started feeding it, trying to feed it every night,” he said. “They’re nocturnal mostly, and I would stay up all night waiting for it to stick its little head out.”

The mouse in question first became interested in the moong beans I was sprouting in the kitchen and ate copious amounts of it every night that we missed catching it. Cheese was added next as lure into the trap that the mouse successfully dodged - again three nights in a row. So now moong beans and cheese were both gone but mouse was still at large. It makes you wonder if there is a larger purpose to this creature's life than being caught in a trap - most likely dying in the process if we are not around to take it out. 

Sharp Words

I happened read this poem first thing in the morning in my daily feed and was left thinking about what kind of mood the words created. 

Love by Radmila Lazić

I sharpened knives
All night.
To welcome you
In the brilliance of their blades,
And among them,
My love sparkles
For your eyes only.
 

—Translated from the Serbian by Charles Simic

The simplistic view would be that the person (a woman presumably) was cheated on by the lover and there is a mix of passion, hate and threat in those world. It conjures a vision of a scorned woman who is bent on revenge. If that was not the case, maybe this is a woman who lives a bit dangerously, her love is shiny and bright, can cut like a knife, So maybe this is a word to the wise, not to take her casually - this is a love that can turn another direction quickly. Maybe the hope is the recipient will say alert and focused on her and not take the lazy route in the relationship. Either way, it was amazing how much can be conveyed with so few words

Fast Forward

I met F through a mutual connection who thought it might be interesting for us to network given our professional backgrounds and interests. F was pretty upset when I needed to reschedule last minute. I gave him a pass given he is older than my father - and he is a career academic. Not the kind of person who deals with having the whole world stomping on their calendar and needing to fight for personal time. Maybe something he did not need to deal with in the course of his career. I did not have a good feeling about this meeting but second guessed myself and decided to meet him anyway. 

F turned out to be a person who stopped being curious about things a while back but based on years of practice had muscle memory to respond correctly to new information and opinions that contradicted his own (I had plenty of those) in our short conversation. I wondered why our mutual connection had decided this would be a good learning experience for us both. I can learn something from talking to just about anyone - always have. Maybe my bar was too high for F given his extensive resume and age. I might have been hoping for a nugget of wisdom that would have clarified the many confusions of my life. 

None of that happened and judging by the flow of conversation, it is unlikely further engagement would yield those results. F insisted that I watch a short video he had set to music that helps explains his current avocation. He insisted that we do it while on the call so trying to be polite I acquiesced. That musical presentation had the vibe of something from forty years ago - perhaps that point in time when F became incapable of incorporating anything new to his repertoire despite having good intention. He was incredibly proud of his production and I did not have the heart to tell him that what I thought of it. 

After the call, I had to take pause and think about what lay ahead for me - this could me a few decades out, untethered from the reality of the day, living in my la-la land, imagining that I am still at the top of the game when the world has moved so far that no one knows what game I am even talking about. F is luckily not blessed with much self-awareness or insecurity about his place in the world - I may have a bit too much of both which will make things worse I suppose. 

Struggling Mother

I can't say I enjoyed The Lost Daughter but there were many quality moments throughout the movie. One of my favorites came towards the end of the movie where Leda describes herself as an unnatural mother. We see her trying to overachieve as a mother of two young girls. Her influence on their little lives is oversize and matches their level of clinginess to her. Leda is the sun and they can only reflect her light or be in her shadow. In the phase of life the girls are shown in the movie, it seems like they cannot discover the world and need mother to show the way and shine the light. This gets Leda beyond the point of exhaustion and she abandons them. Some element of post-partum depression is alluded to and then there is the extra marital affair that presumably helps her cope with it all.

This is something many an overzealous mother is not told when she has just given birth - there is a fine line between being supportive to children and being the tree that does not allow young plants to grow in its shade, fight on their own terms without turning parasitic. Perhaps some of that zeal is driven by motherhood feeling unnatural yet having a high bar for what a good mother looks like. So the woman pulls all the stops to deliver on good motherhood and like Leda comes a point where she explodes. She is fully depleted and has nothing left to give.

Explosion manifests its self in a myriad of ways - the one depicted in the movie is possibly the more mundane way to burst for such a woman. Of all the mothers I have known in my life including myself as mother to J, I have only seen a couple that found their natural stride in the state of motherhood - they struck the perfect balance. I was and am so far from that -  I should consider myself lucky to have made it thus far without implosion.

Happiness Index

I came across this paper which was linked from an article I was reading. The topic piqued my interest and I went past the text to the graph which shows clearly that if you are a liberal teen then irrespective of gender you are more depressed than your progressive counterparts. There was a lot to read there but some things stood out for me: 

Among liberals, female adolescents without a parent with a college degree reported the highest average depressive affect scores, increasing from 2.02 (SD ​= ​0.81) in 2010 to 2.75 (SD ​= ​0.92) in 2018. 

That makes for quite the combination - female, teen, liberal and parent without a college degree.  Taking a very textbook notion of what a liberal is - desiring equality in society, respect for the individual no matter what defines the individual, seeking freedom and access to due process. In the context of this young woman, the prototypical depressed liberal teen, most of what she values is not a given in society and can feel rather unattainable. 

She is not an equal socio-economically most likely if the parent does not have a college degree. Her identity is meshed with status and she can feel lack of respect. Freedom can be sought but prove hard to attain by way of college education because paying for it may be an unsurmountable challenge. Access to due process is sometimes a result of having privilege this archetypical woman does not have. Maybe having a mindset that is not supportable by the person's circumstances is a driver of depression in this case. 

Downy Woodpecker

I have a Downy Woodpecker working diligently a few trees in my yard. He makes a perfectly spaced set of holes on the bark on the tree is the closest to the house. After he is done with his day's work, there is silence until he is back again. Watching him at work is soothing and if the symbolism is true then we are lucky he has been coming around so consistently,

If a woodpecker has appeared to you, pay attention to the new possibilities and opportunities in your life. You may need to dig deep to find your creativity, but don’t give up. Keep persevering! To reach your goals, you must be relentless and push through, even when facing the toughest challenges. If the woodpecker is your spirit animal or totem, you most likely missed out on crucial moments that could have altered your path. This animal is pushing you to right the past.

The thrum of the pecking can be heard as a death rattle assuming the tree is nearing its end. I would not know seeing how it is in full bloom right now. That looks like a live and healthy tree to my untrained eyes but maybe the woodpecker sees an impending death that I don't. Maybe the inspiration to draw is that life is finite and the end is observable by those who are outside looking in. So imagine there was a figurative woodpecker that could go around the bark of my life, there would be reason to peck at it as well - alert me to the early sounds of dying so I may wish to seize the life that is left - not counted in years as much as in what I am still able to get done.

Poison Fog

 Read these lines in the book What Happened to You? about how child abuse can manifest itself:

If a child experiences abuse, their brain may make an association between the features of the abuser or the circumstances of the abuse—hair color, tone of voice, the music playing in the background—and a sense of fear. The complex and confusing associations can influence behaviors for years; later in life, for example, being served in a restaurant by a brown-haired man who hovers over you while he takes your order may elicit a panic attack. But because there is no firmly embedded cognitive recollection—no linear narrative memory—the panic is often experienced and interpreted as random, independent of any previous experience.

I was in a relationship with a man a very long time ago, who I suspected might have been a victim of childhood abuse. M was highly intelligent, creative and personable - traits that made him attractive to me and people who knew him socially or professionally. Yet, for me things were much more complicated. We could go from having a perfectly wonderful time on a weekend to dark, a vicious, inescapable place by Sunday night that would wait the entire week to pass. The triggers felt random at first but over time, some patterns emerged. They were things one could not avoid in daily life and yet I tried. 

It became my job to shield M from those triggers, distract his attention away from them and hope for the best. He wanted to confide in me but could not trust me enough - he did not have confidence I was able to correctly identify his demons. Most importantly, M did not think  I had the desire or patience to wage this war alongside for as long as it took to slay them. He was right on both counts. After a while, I gave up trying to stop "some poisonous fogbank, roll in" on his mind as it inevitably did - I just left him. He needed a woman who would make it her life's mission and purpose to rescue him. I hope for his sake he found her.

Feeling Used

Watched Side Effects a few days ago and it brought to mind my own visits to the doctor's office over the years. No matter what the issue and what my age at the time, the pattern remained consistent. For each out of bound metric that defines "ideal" health, the doctor who suggest a medication. Had I acted on every prescription that they so readily doled out, I would be on a full regimen of drugs by now - one an hour every hour every day. That would get me really sick too and likely a candidate for various procedures as well. It's been my observation, that the desire to push new, untested, unattested pills reigned supreme at all times. 

Every single encounter with a physician that I have had left me feeling that this person was most certainly not looking out of my best interests. And if I cared for my health and well-being, I was mostly on my own. I refused to take any one of the medicines I was prescribed over all these years and I am okay for the most part. Lately, doctors like to tell me that whatever med they are prescribing, I will need to likely take for the rest of my life - what little is left of it. And they say this without a shred of compassion or concern - it seems like a rather big step from where I stand, creating a lifetime commitment between a person a drug - to be so laissez faire about it never fails to astound me. 

The only two doctors that did not fit this pattern were the my ob-gyn when I had J and J's very first pediatrician. I felt like I was with caring, competent human beings who were not solely interested in getting me latched to a few dozen drugs to make me a gift that keeps giving to them and pharma companies. 

Yellow Narcissus

Between my yard and the neighbor's there is a rather dense tree line and then a narrow creek. The trees are yet to green but there is a big clump of Narcissus is in full bloom somewhere between the creek and the trees. Every time I look out the back porch, my eyes are immediately drawn to them. The flowers are lovely and are a delight to see but they make me think of death and flowers by a grave. 

Some years ago, I visited the grave of a child one of my close friends had lost their oldest close to two decades ago. We spent time cleaning the headstone and the earth around it, working together but in silence. Then we drove to the nearest Home Depot to look for perennial flowers that would bloom there even if no one was able to visit. 

As I recall they were some kind of lily and in full bloom at the time we planted them. We left the place looking brighter and well-cared for. My friend used to say there were no more tears left to cry but the pain remained forever. I stood there in silence by this parent whose loss I could not even begin to comprehend- it felt disrespectful to say anything. On our way to the airport, normal conversation resumed - it was not awkward but there was a certain cloud over the day. Maybe that was the day, I first connected lilies to paying homage to those we have loved and lost.

Uneven Fairness

I was fortunate enough to work from home for over fifteen years and my run of good luck might be running out. Before the pandemic, it meant finding jobs in the local market that allowed me flexibility or something with a large, dispersed global presence. I was not able to take the opportunities that my peers in bigger cities had access to. It was a choice I made - to stay where I was for the greater good of my family even if that meant limited career opportunities. Remote work brought by the pandemic allowed me to work for companies that would have been completely out of the realm before that. I jumped in and it has worked great so far - both for me and my employers. 

Around the world, I am sure there are millions of such stories. Of women, disadvantaged people of different stripes who magically had doors opened for them that had until then been out of their reach. Once in, the realized to their surprise and happiness that they were more than well-qualified for these roles that had been inaccessible to them. The companies benefited too from the diversity of talent coming from traditionally overlooked areas. All good things come to and end and no surprise that women will pay disproportionately more for it. This story is an example of the kind of trade-offs a woman is forced to make

This fall, the Manhattan-based advertising agency she works for decided to go from remote to a hybrid in-office schedule. She knew that "wasn't going to be sustainable," not only because of the long commute since she's moved further away, but also because her newborn will only eat if being breastfed.

For the health of herself and her baby, she reached an understanding with her boss that she would not come into the office regularly, although she said had she not been a new mother, she would have been pressured to come in.

Replace the newborn baby with other needs that bind the woman to her home - lack of after-school care, her desire to take care of her health and well-being while being a mother, wife and employee. If employers do not value what these women bring to the table and create conditions that make employment untenable, it is as much their loss as it is for the women. 

Nightmare Nightgowns

Some time back, J needed to fly very early one Monday morning for a business trip. I spent a completely sleepless night worrying about her being alone in her Uber on the way to the airport at 3 am. At times like this, I can forget that she is a grown woman, living independently for a while and capable of taking care of herself. All night long, I had images from J's childhood flash through my restless mind that could not fall asleep even though I was tired. I was anxious for her with the same intensity as when she was a child. Once she texted me from the airport a little past 4 am, I finally dozed off. In the life of every mother there are many such nights and you want them to end so you can sleep a bit. I take great care not to bring any of this up with J. The worries might not be unwarranted but there is no way for her to make them go away for me. They can only create mental constraints for her, break her stride.

Thinking back, I am following in my mother's footsteps - she too never talked about her worries about me until well after the fact when it had almost no bite left. This is probably how we mothers in the family have tried to liberate our daughters to be free to do what they need to do. My mother's horizons have always been far more limited than mine for good reason and that translates into her tolerances - what is the point at which she would start to worry about my well-being. The figurative lakshman rekha for me at J's age had a much smaller radius than the one I have for J. We are achieving degrees of freedom, giving the next generation of women more room to breathe and be - permission to make mistakes and recover from them. Reading this rather brutal poem on a related topic brought my sleepless night to mind

No Answers

Reading this Inc. article made me think of people I have come to know over the years. Could not think of anyone who is prone to using all the six phrases in the list consistently - some leaders use more from this set than others. L came to mind for always getting on calls with customers with "How can I help you" - and did not matter how upset that customer was when they called L, they always end up calmed down and eager to do more business with L's company. "I trust you" is a popular one - the folks that came to mind in that context were typically managers that teams liked and got along with. They were also more likely than not to ask "What do you need from me" - to make sure they were being useful and removing obstacles for the team. 

I think what I have heard the least and wish it was more popular for the powers that be to say "Honestly, I don't know". There is a presumption that they do or should know. When they don't allow themselves to be vulnerable and admit to not having answers, that presumption becomes an axiom - everyone proceeds from there to the great detriment of the organization. It takes a great deal of courage to say I don't know but I can try to work out the answer together with everyone else. That would be viewed as an admission to not having vision, not being strategic and the rest. So down in the ranks, folks might not be inclined to accept this person as their leader. 

Company Town

Enticing employees back of office buildings by going resimerical is an interesting idea but needs to be taken a lot further to have a chance. Depending on the age and life-stage of the employee their needs and wants will vary a great deal. Lets say for the sake of argument, a vast majority of the employees at a certain company ExampleCo are either single or coupled with no kids or pre-school kids. A resimerical situation that could work for this set is heavily subsidized housing in walking distance from the place of work. Add to that easy access to amenities they would care for like daycare, fitness centers, food and entertainment - ExampleCo might have a good number of takers for working from the office all days of the week. 

Assuming this office location is the downtown area of the city, it will likely not cater to the folks with kids that need to go to school - and the desirable ones currently tend to be in the suburbs. To get this crowd to come to office everyday, would take more doing - they need bigger homes, they likely want to own the home, the schools need to be equal or better than what they have in the suburbs. Notwithstanding all these incentives, if there are employers out there who are willing to accommodate 100% remote workers, they might be the ones to come out ahead. 

The singles and couples with no kids will prefer the ability to work from anywhere in the world - make the most of their years of freedom instead of being tied down to a subsidized apartment less than a mile from their office. It is all about how much choice does the person have and what they will be willing to give up in the face of such choice. Back in the day, these problems were solved by company towns. I grew up in one myself back in India and am very grateful for the quality of life and the opportunities it afforded me. 

As companies layoff tenured and newer employees for no understandable reason and the most uncivil manner possible, they can no longer have a reasonable expectation of loyalty for anyone who works for them. People will not make life and lifestyle changes to comply with the mandates of company leadership when they know full well they can be tossed out like last week's garbage any time. They want to make the choices that are right for them and their families - not what helps the CEO make more money.

Magical Music

I had a chance to listen to María Dueñas playing with our local symphony orchestra. It made for an unforgettable experience being in the presence of such talent and having seen her at twenty. My friend M who was at the concert with me recalled seeing Anne Sophie-Mutter when she was a rising star several decades ago - it was the same thing for M, hearing Dueñas. 

The following week doing mundane chores at home, I recalled how her music brought tears to my eyes and how much this young woman had already achieved at twenty. She was playing along with an orchestra that has played together in our town for many decades - some of the oldest members have been around for forty years. There is something to be said for such solid continuity in a world that has been hit by many waves of turbulence in the last four decades. These folks stayed together and made music the whole time - maintaining an unshakable center. 

They have played with top talent from around the world - artists who stopped by to play with them for one evening, maybe two. Some went on to become mega stars who are now beyond the reach of a small-town orchestra as I am sure Dueñas will be too some day. But some of us who live here, come into contact with greatness in the passing and our life is enriched for it. 

Native Plants

The Bradford Pear tree in my yard is visible from my kitchen window and is a trusty bell-weather for the season. It is a male tree and is a sight to behold when in full bloom. This tree is problematic and should probably be taken down. My friend's sister L is an activist for growing native species and we recently got into a conversation about what is that bright red line in time after which things are no longer native and how much data do we have about species that existed before that time. I did not get a clear understanding based on her responses which are not unlike what I have heard from others like her. 

Poking around for better answers, I found a couple of things that looked interesting - one of which is chloroplast sequencing and a database of plants thus sequenced. Unfortunately, neither is geared to a lay person who has a question while shopping for plants at their local nursery to see if its native or not. Would be very helpful to have this database provide a plain English response to that question based on the name of the plant and the location. The pear tree might be a mistake in my yard but its stood there longer than this place has been my home - I am not inclined to let it go unless it poses a real problem. 

No Trace

I have known a few victims of domestic abuse in my life and none of these women were able to sever links to their abusers successfully. There were children involved and lack of financial resources to strike out on their own. That is not counting how the cycle of abuse tears a person's self-confidence to smithereens. 

They view the world through different eyes and nothing is easy or unassociated with fear. The idea of not having logs of phone calls and text messages made by the victim of abuse is a great one but it should be much wider than just crisis hotlines and the like. Even calls to a neighbor or a friend can trigger violence from the abuser - their goal is to isolate them so any signs to the contrary is problematic.

 A person should be able to go to their phone company's website and register themselves as a victim of abuse and determine exactly how much visibility they want their abuser to have into their phone records. That will be a great first step in empowerment - gaining control of what the abuser sees and knows about them. This allows the victim to plan an orderly escape, gather the resources needed to pull it off. Turning off the ability to track the phone should be part of the solution too. 

The reason things will likely fall apart as some of the commentors on the Ars article have pointed out, is the opportunity this opens up for abuse. A person pretend to be a victim of abuse and do a lot of shady things and now have a way to evade detection. To prevent that the system will require hard evidence of abuse and that will limit the number of victims who can actually get the help they need

Making Art

Read this Kurt Vonnegut quote today and it made me smile. My father has always sung for pleasure - never a professional but good enough to perform at smaller venues. It was always his escape from all that he did not like or could not control or both

“Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

He created my earliest taste in music on which everything else was layered and built over time. I associated the sound of his voice with the ability to escape to a happier place. To this day, it is his way to disrupt a difficult situation - he can break into song unexpectedly and suddenly there is a diversion from the problem at hand. I do believe those are all things created as Vonnegut says.

I often ping him requests to send me recordings of old Hindi songs I grew up hearing him sing. It is my way of clinging to a time long past and forcing him to engage with the world instead of checking out, feeling old and redundant. I don't know how much of a reward he finds in music but there is certainly a lot it gave me all my life. 

Staying Apart

 As someone who believed that sharing space with someone everyday is the thing that destroys relationships and indeed spent a good many years diving between two homes to prevent, I understand this issue of needing separate bedrooms. In many situations, this bit of space and the room to breathe undisturbed can be what it takes to keep the relationship eco-system survivable. But based on my personal experience it does not make for peace, comfort and tranquility that makes that relationship a sanctuary one craves for. That can happen when this need for separation and space dissolves - sometimes the process and slow and winding but given enough time and patience the dissolution might come about and bring great results for both. The need for private time and space is a real one but it can be accomplished in many other ways without needing be in separate bedrooms

..according to the International Housewares Association, a trade organization, 31% of surveyed couples who said they sleep apart reported that the arrangement had no impact on their relationship, and 21% said that their relationship improved because of it. (Granted, the remaining half of the respondents did not see the setup in such a positive light.)

Reading this reminds of one of my younger relatives who has recently bought her first home and does not share it full-time with her boyfriend of two years. The relationship as she describes it is strong and happy but she needs her space and does not like being crowded. So the man goes back and forth between his place and hers based on what she is in the mood for. Sometimes she visits him in his home and spends time there if he does not feel like coming over. There are two homes separated by a few miles and to my old-fashioned soul, this sounds like a woman who is not sure about who she is with.

Wrong Hair

I read about the Dove CROWN Act the same afternoon as I was squirming while on video because my hair did not sit quite right compared to other that of other women who were on the call. I have long forgotten that my hair was once considered beautiful and I received a lot of compliments for it. That was back in India and ofcourse I was way younger. Adjusted to age, my hair is still nice. I think deep down I understand this to be a fact - it is not such a big surprise, Indian women do have the best hair in the world. So why do I feel so unsettled each time I am on video and something is every so slightly off with my naturally wavy hair that I don't like to use any products on. 

I don't want to change anything about it - don't want my hair to look like someone else's hair. I love what I have but each day it brings me some low level of anxiety around other people who don't have my kind of hair. I have a lot of sympathy for any woman whose hair is viewed as distracting. I see mine as a bit of distracting and unprofessional in comparison with the baseline hair that is common in this country's average workplace setting. I expect that others view it the same way and there is a value judgement attached to it. Each time I use a flat iron on my hair, I feel like a sell-out and also ugly. That flat straight conforming hair is not what God intended for me and it simply does not look right. I need to become an uglier version of myself in order to fit better and that has not stopped hurting with over two decades of practice. 

Eternal Tunnel

I have lived through the H1-B ordeal that upended my personal and professional live profoundly. My story is over two decades old counting from when it started. I had and continue to look at it as the price to pay for making my own choices and pursuing my personal idea of freedom. I was not forced into any situation against my will and I am very cognizant of that. While that is likely true for people enduring the same pain today, it does not diminish the level of needless suffering and how it makes a person feel like they are on unstable ground every minute of "their life" as "normal life" goes on all around them. The ones who try to insulate the kids from the chaos, try to plant roots - buy home, form community and more, incur even more stress because they have added the weight of baggage to the unrelenting uncertainty of their lives. Nothing seems to have changed in the two decades that have gone by since my time. There are wave upon wave of people who go through the same crush of anxiety walking through a tunnel where there is no light at the end. 

The 60-day grace period that foreign workers have to remain in the U.S. and try to secure new jobs doesn’t apply to those who are laid off while abroad, says Hiba Mona Anver, a partner at Erickson Immigration Group, a law firm based in Arlington, Va. If a worker on a temporary work visa has their role terminated while they are traveling out of the country, she says, that visa is no longer valid for re-entry unless the worker manages to secure another job while abroad. 

I made some hard, inflexible choices in the day - no buying a home, no travel out of the country including India, no  vacation beyond a day or two added to a long weekend once a year. Not everyone should have to make choices like that and extend their suffering on to their family - but sometimes that is the only way to survive with some sense of control over your destiny. I would not wish the way I lived through that time upon anyone else but the truth is people did and continue to have it even worse than I did. 

Managed Away

I read this story about Meta asking their managers and directors to become individual contributors or quit,  with a tinge of amusement. It seems to be borne out watching layer upon layer of management fail to add any value to the organization whatsoever. Have long held that people who need to be actively hand-held and managed are bad hires. Even high-school and college interns that have worked for me over the years have proven to be capable of self-direction with some basic steering. If a person that young and inexperienced does not take extensive management effort, there is no reason that someone with a few years on their resume should. 

The greater the number of management layers in the organization, the higher the level of dysfunction and lower the quality of production - people are too lost managing up, down and sideways to actually work. The ideal situation would be for teams to be organized by executive management and given team goals to deliver on that can be broken down into individual goals collaboratively with a team coach guiding the process. There could be group goals that roll up into the overall team goal. Everyone has marching orders and go do their thing. The team coach is there to resolve logistical challenges. Show-stopper issues are brought up to management for resolution. 

No one manages anyone. People do their job and do it well. I can count the number of times in my career than I have seen a truly high-functioning team but on those rare occasions that I have, every last person in the group had clarity of vision and the desire to do a first rate job. They were a team of professionals that took pride in what they put their name behind. That is all it has ever taken. Their manager of such a team is almost invisible, focused only on clearing their path - not managing them or their work. 

False Label

I have stopped paying attention to fabric labels for a long time now. The first time was when something I bought was labeled as silk, but clearly nylon. The merchant did not fuss about the return but the event opened my eyes to the fact that the labels were decorative and should not be taken seriously. This article breaks down the reasons why accuracy of such labels is a hard goal to achieve. The item in question changes hands too many times to have its chain of provenance correctly accounted for and there is plenty of room to introduce false data along the way

A typical supply chain in the textile industry can be incredibly complex, with separate facilities, often in different countries, completing each step in the process. Cotton grown in Egypt might be shipped to India to be spun into yarn in one facility, woven into a fabric in another, then sent to Portugal to be cut and sewn, before being sold in a department store in London.

Both my grandmothers used to wear pure cotton sarees in white or very light colors. This was their every day attire. The borders of the saree would be intricate or not based on whether it was meant to be worn around the house or outside. I remember how that fabric left to touch when new and as it grew older and softer. When they were visiting our home, I helped them starch and iron those sarees. Some of those old sarees got a second lease of life in the form of a kantha usually made for one of us grandkids. I know what cotton feels to touch and just about nothing that is labeled is pure cotton feels anything like it. It is a crude way to measure, but works for me - I know the cottons I wear now are not the real thing and it one of the many signs of the times we live in. 

Love Essay

I read this essay around Valentine's Day and thought there could be no sweeter or sadder tribute from a woman to the man she loves. While Jason may and (still might be) all the things his wife of 26 years says about him, it is also true that he is the product of their love made from the bonds between the two of them at first and then between them and their children. He perfection exists in the mesh of support created by the ties that bind this family together. It is not to say that this man is not amazing on his own, but I imagine he will manifest himself differently with another woman, another context and another life. We are blinded by love as we should be and the person we love is imbued with perfection we bestow on them. 

Sometimes we help them be their best selves because they feel so loved they want to exceed expectations. So it is a two way street- to love and be loved back in return, not in a quid pro way but because it feels so wonderful. Doing things for the one you love is a almost a selfish act - it is more about what it does for the doer than for the one it is done for. And we are fundamentally selfish creatures. Those of us like Jason have also been fortunate enough to stumble upon love can act out their selfishness all day long and come out looking all around fantastic to the one they love. That is probably the story of this couple. It was a wonderful, bitter-sweet read that stayed on my mind for weeks after I first read it. 

Needless Busy

When anyone asks me how I have been or how is work, I really make an effort to provide a thoughtful reply and very rarely claim to be busy never mind crazy busy. I notice the confusion and bewilderment that my response is usually met with. Something must be wrong if I am not making claims to being busy - what exactly am I then doing to justify my existence. It is true as this author points out, that most people do claim they are crazy busy and with a sense of pride and accomplishment. I am always intrigued by those that don't - they are fun to talk to, there is something to learn from how they are living their lives.  

Over the holidays, I met B who is unabashed about doing what he needs to to collect his paycheck and focus his time on learning things he is curious about - which is a wide range of items. So the learning time while it takes up most of his mental capacity is not "busy" time. B can break off any moment to run errands, do things with his family or just sit back and relax. He was happy to claim he is not particularly busy and likes it this way, has no intention of working a job that busies him out. When he says this over dinner, not everyone in the room is aligned with his thought process but I could tell many envy what B has. We could all do with less useless busy just to prove that our lives are consequential. 

Chicken Eggs

In a neighborhood close to mine, some folks have chicken in their backyards. They are nice to watch from afar but seem like a lot of work. Reading this little tirade against brunch and the true cost of cheap eggs, brought those chickens to mind that I see sometimes on our walks. The writer has some interesting pipe-dreams about such chickens and the riches they could bring to their owners:

My sillier hope is that, as the end times draw seemingly closer, backyard chicken keepers like me become the supply cornering barons of apocalypse narratives. I imagine myself sitting in a heavily guarded enclave, wearing a feathered cloak and stroking a pekin bantam, receiving supplicants hoping to exchange their treasured possessions (petrol, jewels, cashmere) for a single, precious egg. Finally, my girls would earn their keep and eggs would get their lustre back. Imagine how you’d revere an egg if it was as rare and luxurious as a truffle: imagine how differently you’d view the creature that produced it?

I don't know about elevating the status of eggs to that of truffle but it would be nice not to be view eggs as endless - it makes a person think harder about when and how to eat them. That is a good thing for all concerned including the hen. 

Blank Stare

Irrespective of how Twitter does it, there is a great value in sharing ad revenue with the consumers who are helping generate those revenues. We watched the Decameron movie recently and it was on a channel that is ad-supported - something I am not used to these days on Netflix or Prime. The ad choices were quite bewildering to me - one specific car-maker, one specific Italian designer, a range of frozen meals from one brand and then with unrelenting regularity a vitamin pill ad. Taken together the whole set of ads made no sense for me. I do not do frozen meals - so that data point is missing or dead wrong. The car-brand choice is interesting but also one I have not shown any inclination for - personally or as a family. The vitamin pills seem to be an antidote to the processed food that was being promoted - there is no other way to explain the juxtaposition. 

It is like if I take action and start eating copious amounts of processed food then I will need vitamins to go along with such diet. Then the designer perfume - that made sense given its an Italian brand. The only ad that appeared and just once was for an Italian cruise - that was the most relevant thing to show up in the entire time and it featured just once. All but one ad was completely wasted on me. Now if I was promised a revenue sharing model that would appear in the form of a discount on purchasing any of the items that were presented to me, I would be way more interested and I would ask to be shown things in my categories of interest that I may not be aware of. There is no sense is sharing revenue with a consumer who is absolutely not going to push the buy button related to the ads they were shown. 

Telling Lies

The posts from folks who have been laid off the last few months have a certain formulaic, untruthful tinge to them that makes for painful reading. The structure of all posts are alike - Was in a complete state of shock at first and upon recovery felt ever so grateful for the 10-20 years they had with the company and "the people they collected along the way" - that turn of phrase has a stomach churning effect for me - what in the hell is collecting people? People are not objects you add to your collection of things and objects. Then to go on to say they don't know what is next but will figure it out, big thank you to the company that just threw them out like last week's festering trash. Strong and positive close just as the the societal norms expect. That is so crazy wrong at every level.

A post like this in my network garners several hundred likes and comments. I have been laid off and have known people who have been as well - some at the same time as me, others at other times. I have been in situations where a lay-off is being announced in an all-hands call and my boss is texting me to let me know I am safe but he won't have time to chat with me until next week because a lot of the team is impacted. I experienced the combined, vomit inducing forces of guilt, relief and sadness punch me in the gut. 

Then I became aware of who they decided to let go and it made no sense - not to me, not to their manager and not to anyone who had ever worked with these folks. The randomness of the event was like a  hard slap on the face. I know for a fact that the other side did not have any single positive emotion about the company that had down-sized them. The morale of those that remained sank, after the dust settled, a lot of people left on their own because they knew it could be their turn next and they did not want to be passive recipients of bad news, have their dignity shredded publicly. 

They do not feel good about the company that treated their peers and friends so capriciously. Everyone has one question in mind that I saw only one person ever openly talk on LinkedIn - why is no one placing responsibility where it squarely belongs, highest levels of management where bad bets and decisions were made resulting in the need for such inhumane correction? why are those people not being held accountable for their actions and being laid off too? This whole game of not burning any bridges and keeping it positive takes a heavy toll on people - no one believes a single word they are writing and the same is true for everyone who has to play along and pretend they are aligned with such performative trip along the moral high road.

The company that once laid me off tried to hire me back. One of my close friends had a similar experience with her company. We decided to politely decline -maybe we are too random to matter but I can't think of one reason to return to the company that fires you in the middle of the night, disables all your accesses like you were a common criminal and leaves you to connect the dots out about your fate listening to the morning news.