Outer Life

At Least She Cares

It intrigues me when people hate me.

The default is indifference. Most people I know are, like me, so self-absorbed that I’m happy just to be an occasional blip on their periphery.

So when someone cares enough about me to hate me, I notice.

A few years ago she married into a distant branch of my extended family, but one we see fairly often because they live near us. She has a job that’s superficially similar to mine so, at family functions, people pushed her towards me because, after all, people with similar jobs have so much in common.

We actually had more in common than they realized, for it turned out that she, like me, was self-absorbed but, alas, she, unlike me, made the all-too common error of presuming I was as absorbed with her as she was. Which, of course, I wasn’t, for no one could possibly be as absorbed with her as she was, and anyways I was already happily occupied being absorbed with myself.

Angrily unaware that no one cares, she regaled me with tales of personal woe and injustice, all punctuated by a common theme: her needs ignored by a heedless world. I tried to tune out her incessant jabbering, but she proved an especially persistent bore, attaching herself leech-like to me as I wandered through the room, trying to shake her off without success.

Thankfully we were seated far apart, and I managed an early getaway, so that was that, or so I thought.

A week later I got the email. In it she related what appeared to be a long and twisted tale of workplace intrigue and injustice that, I am sure, took her hours to write, and to it she appended a single-spaced narrow-margined multi-paged report that I think she was planning to submit to an ombudsman or news organization or federal authority or all of the above. She wanted me to read it, revise it, press it on a specific person she was sure I knew. It took only a minute of skimming for me to see her fevered ravings for what they were: a demand to draft me for her personal crusades. If I took one step in her direction, I’d plunge down the yawning chasm of a deep dark pit from which I would never return, so I pondered how best to divest myself of this unwelcome missive.

My choices were: (1) ignore it, (2) devote my life to serving her needs or (3) put her off as gently as possible. I chose alternative (3), or so I thought, for in responding to her I pointed out that in life other people don’t always see things the way we see them, and in fact other people may not even appreciate that others may see things differently, so it is always best in life to steer a course that doesn’t require, as an essential condition for its success, every single individual in the entire world to see every last thing your way. I also extolled the life-affirming value of looking forward instead of backward, and counseled her to cultivate an aura of bemused indifference when faced with life’s inevitable slings and arrows. I closed with a note about how most people don’t appreciate that time is their most precious asset until they have none of it left, and offered my sincere wishes that she would seize this opportunity to use her time wisely and move on with life, hoping she would get the hint and leave me alone.

Unbeknownst to me, I had not, in fact, chosen alternative (3). I had chosen alternative (4), which was put her off as gently as possible but find that, upon reading my response, she would interpret it as a brazen public statement of my traitorous alignment with the forces of darkness arrayed against her, my declaration of all-out war. Or so she managed to convey in many more hastily typed words sent by email in the early morning hours.

She plays dirty, but I admire her for that. She has convinced many on her side of the family that it is I, in fact, who hates her and that is I, in fact, who has threatened her and that it is I, in fact, who refuses to be in the same room as her. We no longer get invited to as many birthday parties, this year we are off the Thanksgiving list, and there are rumors that a competing Christmas get-together is being surreptitiously organized.

I am, of course, pleased with these unexpected spoils of my victory, but my wife, who values these things much more than I, is starting to chafe under the wartime restrictions and pressuring me to seek a rapprochement. I am holding out, confident that my enemy will, sooner rather than later, allow her madness to consume her, but I have to admit I am easy to hate and may, in fact, be helping her appear more normal to others, as I siphon off her hateful energies and leave with her none to share with others.

I’ve tried to convince my wife that in serving out the rest of my days as the exclusive outlet for her hatred I am performing a valuable public service, but I fear that if that competing Christmas get-together actually comes together, my wife will tell me public be damned and I’ll have to run up the white flag.

So, What Do You Do?

I try to avoid situations in which people ask me what I do for a living.

It’s not that I do anything particularly shameful, such as robbing banks or being a banker, it’s just that if I’m in a conversation where someone asks me what I do, it means  at least one of four undesirable things have happened to get us there: (1) I am speaking with a herd animal trying to figure out where I fit in his personal pecking order, or (2) he lets his job define him and assumes I’ve done the same, or (3) he is trying to figure out how much life insurance he can sell me or, most commonly, (4) we have nothing of substance to discuss.

Lately I find myself having more and more of these conversations, probably because my wife’s and daughter’s social obligations require me to attend ever more meet-and-greets whose rules of superficial social engagement self-select for a disproportionately high number of people whose gambit while working the room is to feign interest in what you do for a living.

Most discussions along these lines elevate form over substance. Who do you work for? What is your title? Where is your place of business? Does Bob still work there? The point seems to be to maximize the proper nouns, minimize the understanding.

To shake things up a bit, I’ve starting telling people I’m a “problem solver.” Although I do have a title, and a box on an org chart, and, at least in theory, a job description, which are exactly the factoids these people crave, I’m withholding this meaningless information and simply telling people that I solve other people’s problems.

This has the benefit of being the truth: I actually do spend most of my time solving problems. It also has the benefit, I hope, of increasing the likelihood that I’ll meet someone at one of these functions who can teach me something. Solving other people’s problems is often a challenging and solitary job, so I’d appreciate the opportunity to pick the brains of someone else doing this sort of thing. It’s hard to find problem solvers — it’s not the sort of job people put onto an org charts, you never see a “VP of Solving Screw-Ups” — so to increase my chances of finding these people I have to get behind the titles and start talking function.

If I ever do find a fellow-traveler at one of these functions, here are a few of the problem solving occupational hazards I'd like to discuss:

Superiority complex: I often see people at their worst, doing things I’m sure I would never do, so it’s a constant struggle for me not to over-extrapolate what I see into thinking (a) everyone is an idiot and (b) except me. Neither is true, but it’s hard to see that when you spend all your time mired in the dark underbelly of underperformance.  I try to stay humble, but I’m afraid someday I’ll have humility forced on me the hard way, by creating my own problem that someone else has to solve.

Decelerated learning: I learn more when I feel like everyone else knows more than me. Insecurity is a great motivator. Spend your time dealing with other people’s problems and you quickly lose that insecurity, as, alas, you discover that those around you aren’t supermen and women but all-too human people who make mistakes just like you. This realization might be psychologically healthy, but it’s a little too healthy for me. It makes me feel too secure. A few years ago I noticed that without my insecure edge I wasn’t learning as much as I once did, and ever since I’ve been trying to find people who’ll make me feel more insecure. It isn’t easy, what with all the problems I see, but I keep trying.

Grim reaper: While optimism is essential to human endeavor, pessimism seems to be the essential ingredient in problem solving. In the early stages of a problem, people are usually in denial, either out of defensiveness or an overabundance of optimism, so they fail to act quickly and decisively and end up letting the problem metastasize. I go in expecting the worst and often find that even I’ve underestimated the situation. All this gives you an overdeveloped sense of impending doom, one that ends up permeating everything you do, as you perceive fragility where others assume solidity. It’s a drag. It’s also, I fear, a particularly distorted lens through which to view the world.

The Bond Villain: A Reassessment

You have to respect the Bond villain.

Sure, he’s hell-bent on world domination, careless with the lives of millions, enjoys torture even more than Cheney, but think of the severe psychological afflictions he’s had to overcome, often with little or no outside support. With his historic level of megalomania, his massively outsized sense of entitlement, his complete lack of perspective, his issues with impulse control, that infantile fixation on revenge, it’s a wonder he gets anything done. And yet he does. In the biggest way. You have to give him credit for making the most of a tough hand.

And don’t get me started on the whole secret hideaway thing. I mean, do you have any idea how difficult it is to conduct large-scale real estate development free from the interference of neighbors, building inspectors, planning councils and construction unions? Can you imagine the logistical challenges of moving vast amounts of steel, concrete and other building supplies to a mountain top or an isolated tropical island? It’s hard enough to build a simple house these days of NIMBY BANANA, but our Bond villain, for all his faults, shows a remarkable facility for cutting through the red tape and construction delays and cost overruns and environmental impact reports to build efficient, often beautiful, hideaways in the most difficult construction environments imaginable.

In these hard times, we have to acknowledge that the Bond villain excels as a much-needed jobs creator, providing many high-skilled and presumably high-paying jobs in fields for which there isn’t always high demand. As anyone who’s employed anyone can attest, it is no small task to find and retain the right person, let alone an army of the right people. You can’t just post an ad on Craigslist for jumpsuit-clad machine-gun toting goons and expect them to show up ready for work. You have to work it, recruiting worldwide, competing against other employers seeking similar skills. Not an easy task, but one our Bond villain manages quite nicely, assembling a training a hoard of employees with the talent, dedication and high degree of discipline necessary to do the job.

Most of all, though, the Bond villain is a dreamer, one of the rarest of individuals who dares to be different, who rejects the comfort of the mundane and familiar in favor of the unknown and untried, who reaches for the stars and demands the most out of life. Sure, that often requires us to lose our lives, but don’t let one wrong turn distract you from the essential lessons of his extraordinary and singular journey through life. Don’t be one of the herd – dare to live the dream!

So although the Bond villain is, after all, a villain, I cannot help but feel a grudging though strong sense of respect for what he managed to accomplish before Bond dealt him his gruesome death.

My Funeral, if Famous

If I’m ever a famous statesman, I’m going to leave specific instructions that when I die, and the nation’s elite gather for my funeral service at the National Cathedral, the officiants will commend my teeth to the Tooth Fairy, telling the crowd that they are in a better place, finally free of the burden of cavity-causing sugar products and the scourge of gum disease, joined in bliss with my long-long baby teeth and looking down lovingly on us, occasionally providing brushing and flossing guidance to those who faithfully beseech them in times of need. Dressed in sober but inspiring robes emblazoned with an image of a smiling tooth, the officiants will then lead the congregation in a long, impassioned call-and-response exhortation to the almighty Tooth Fairy, humbly acknowledging her almighty reign, with a short but sad lamentation on the destruction caused by her enemy unchecked gingivitis, and end with an inspiring hymn to the efficacy of orthodonture and various tooth whitening products.

Then again, this is one of the many reasons why I’ll never be a famous statesman.

Vice Versa

Your greatest strengths are your greatest weaknesses. And vice versa.

The first part is a cliché, the “vice versa” part should be too.

I try to remind myself of that when I confront my weaknesses. Staring into the darkness of my inadequacy, it’s easy to overlook the strength that may be lurking in there as well.

For instance, one of my most glaring weaknesses is that I am not a social animal. I prefer to live in my head. I avoid social occasions. When compelled to be social, I have a hard time masking my disinterest. I could care less about others’ concerns, except on the rare occasions when they happen to intersect with mine, at which point I overwhelm them with learned discourses they’d prefer not to hear. I am, fundamentally, a deeply selfish person. So it’s no surprise that I don’t form connections.

This is not good. It has resulted in a great deal of unhappiness in my life, and in others’ lives as well.

However, it does have its advantages.

For one, my thinking is probably more independent than it would otherwise be. Avoiding people makes me less susceptible to social proof, that strong urge to follow the herd that so often leads us over a cliff.

My thinking is also more abstract and systemic; I am less prone than most to personalize complex phenomena. Creationism and the Great Man Theory of History are examples of attempts to personalize and simplify complexity. Normal social beings are more prone to take these mental short-cuts, and therefore more prone to their distortions.

Another benefit is I have more time to think, what with my social calendar being clear of obligations, my phone never ringing, my email rarely pinging me with new messages.

But the most surprising benefit, and one that I have only recently begun to truly appreciate, is that being asocial has actually taught me a great deal about people. Social interactions that come naturally to most people do not come naturally to me. What most do unconsciously, I can only do consciously. I have to analyze my social interactions in order to make them work. My analytical approach is artificial and can result in stilted interactions, but over years of trial and error I’ve managed to refine it to such a degree that I can navigate my way through most social situations while looking more natural than I am.

That’s not surprising to me. What is surprising is that I have also become a social resource for others in my family and small circle of friends. What could these naturally social people possibly learn from me? When they find themselves in social quandaries, and their own natural instincts fail to guide them, an artificial but analytical approach like mine can help reveal answers they otherwise couldn’t see. They never needed to develop analytical social skills, so their social strength is now their weakness, while my social weakness has led me to develop this strength that they sometimes need. So they increasingly consult with me, the most asocial person they know, about social matters.

On the whole, I still believe I’d be happier if I were naturally social. The lifetime benefits of being naturally social significantly outweigh the benefits I’ve outlined above, but rather than rail against the injustice of my weakness I will try to dwell more on its attendant strengths.

David Bashing

I didn’t want Tom Watson to win the British Open yesterday.

Watson had already won five British Opens. Would winning a sixth make a material difference in his life? I doubt it. Last week he was a golfing great, this week he’s a golfing great. Nothing changes because he lost.

Stewart Cink, on the other hand, has been playing golf for nearly 20 years without a major tournament win. It is likely that his win yesterday will be his one and only major victory, and that it will make a large difference in his life. He may never rise to the level of golfing great, but now he will always be Stewart Cink, British Open champion.

I’m happy for him. Am I the only one?

While Watson’s age made his challenge interesting, and gave a lift to many of his aged viewers, I am more comfortable in a world in which the old yield the floor gracefully to the young.

There was an accidental aspect to Watson’s moment in the sun, as if it was all unexpected, even by him, which contributed greatly to his appeal. In this he bears no resemblance to Lance Armstrong, the latest in a string of greats incapable of ceding the spotlight to others.

Armstrong returned to the Tour de France after setting every cycling record worth having. The only records left for him are those not worth having: most narcissistic, biggest megalomaniac.

Yet we root for him. Even the French!

We like to say we favor the underdog, look out for the little guy, but in practice we often prefer Goliath to David.

The Immortal Dead

Sitting in the restaurant, waiting for our order, the din is cut by a very young Michael Jackson’s voice over the sound system: “A-B-C / 1-2-3 / Baby you and me!” An amazing pop song.

What happened to that exuberant youth? He faded, literally, into the wraith who died last week. Died for the few who knew him, that is. For most of the millions who mourned, who knew him only through songs, he died forty years ago, or thirty years ago, or twenty years ago—their version of Michael Jackson died long before his body did.

The muse is so fickle, touching few, favoring then casting them aside, that I find myself mourning the death of many still-living artists who I know only through their art.

But with preservation and mechanical reproduction, their art lives on, so in a real sense each version of Michael Jackson will live forever, cutting through the din of crowded restaurants, grabbing us while we sit waiting for our orders.

Book With Legs

I read a lot. So much, in fact, I wonder whether it’s too much.

I live surrounded by books. Books I’ve read, books I want to read, books to which I refer, and too many books I borrowed or bought that I will never read but, in the interests of filling my newly expanded shelves, will probably continue to live with me.

I read more than books, of course, spending an hour or so every morning harvesting content from the internet that I read throughout the day. (As I recently detailed, I have a semi-automated typesetting apparatus that transfers these harvested articles from electrons into paper, permitting me to read them safe from the distracting allure of my flashing computer screen.)

There’s always something to read. I’m never satisfied. My brain’s a bottomless pit with a limitless capacity for more words. I feed it every chance I get.

I read instead of watching TV, preferring word consumption over image viewing.

I read while waiting, a practice that walls me off from the rest of you during my rare forays into the real world, such as waiting on line at the bank. Head buried deep in a book, oblivious to life, the bank could be robbed and I’d never know.

I read while walking, a sometimes dangerous practice that has, on occasion, torn my clothing, stubbed my toes and caused internal and external bleeding. For me and others.

I used to read while driving. Then I nearly killed myself by glancing at an article instead of braking. I reacted just in time. One more second, and who knows? So I started taking the bus and subway. It lengthened my two hour roundtrip commute to nearly three hours, but freed up two more hours each day to read.

I used to read while eating with others but, I since learned, this is rude to your eating companions. So I try to eat alone.

I used to read late into the night but this kept my wife awake and left me feeling groggy the next morning. So now I go to sleep one hour earlier and wake up two hours earlier, magically gaining an extra hour of reading each morning while avoiding the grogginess. I suspect that extra hour’s coming out of my life expectancy, but so long as I spend it reading who cares?

I’m a chain reader: on completing one piece of reading material my immediate reflex is to reach for the next piece instead of contemplating what I just read. I regret that, but there is so much to read, so little time to do it, so I must move ever on. I hope I’m sorting it all out in my subconscious.

In rare moments of repose, brought on by the temporary out-of-reachness of my next read, I wonder why I read so much. Is my reading a means to an end, or is it just an end in itself?

Perhaps I’ll find the answer in my next read.

Uni-tasker

Our office went multi-monitor a few years ago, shortly after the flat panel price crash made it economical for everyone, even the lowliest assistants, to put two or three monitors on their desks, making us all look like masters of the universe trading currency futures.

To the extent there was any thought behind this move to surround us with pixels, that thought went something like this: “In this multi-tasking age we need to craft a desktop cockpit environment that enhances the end-user’s multi-usability by presenting multi-graphical interfaces with an always-on click-operable inter-utility.”

And indeed there was a certain click-operable inter-utility to the set-up, what with my emails open on the left, my internet phone interface to the right, my task list floating above somewhere, and my various documents scattered all over the place. My whole digital life splayed out in full multi-monitor dimensionality in front of me—a data cornucopia!

The problem is I was incapable of resisting the allure of the flashing pixels. With all those windows open and active, something was always flashing, seeking my attention, pulling me away from whatever had distracted me the minute before. I wasn’t getting things done like I used to. More troubling, I wasn’t thinking much either, just lots of pointing, clicking, navigating and noting, signifying nothing.

So I unplugged the extra monitor. I resized my default windows to full screen, so now I can only see one at a time.

That helped, but I have to say it wasn’t enough. It was still too easy to switch back and forth between programs, toggling with the ALT-TAB combo, so I had to take a more drastic step: I returned to the land of paper.

Now I can’t eliminate the computer from my work life, and I don’t want to, but I have come to the realization that my little mind is incapable of multi-tasking and, more importantly, incapable of realizing that it is incapable of multi-tasking. So to avoid getting sucked into the void I have to treat my computer like a limited-purpose tool, basically just a card-catalog to the library of the world and a communication delivery device.

Each time I find something to read, or receive an email I need to read, I print it out. Once I am finished finding and printing, I have a stack of paper I can read offline, preferably far from the blinking allure of my computer screen.

It’s old school, and it’s not environmentally friendly, but I find reading on paper suits my uni-tasking mind very well. I have no problem focusing on one page at a time, and when I look up from my reading material I see a blank wall, which is much more conducive to reflection than a flashing screen.

It helps to have access to a good printer, preferably one that can print out two-sided sheets, as there is so much good stuff to read that transporting it can be a problem.

Another practical problem is typography. Simply put, articles you print from the web look terrible. Many websites, such as Outer Life, are formatted exclusively for the screen and provide no printing tools at all. Those that do allow for printing rarely pay much attention to the formatting.

My solution was to cut-and-paste these articles from the web into Notepad, a program that strips them of their formatting, then cut-and-paste the raw text into a pre-formatted template in my word processor designed to produce easy-to-read text that looks professionally typeset. My template is anchored by Adobe Caslon Pro, a typeface specifically designed to look good when printed (unlike the fonts included with your computer, which are designed to look good on the screen). I widen the side margins so that the column of text I read is a little more than five inches wide, which I find optimal for avoiding eye fatigue. A few search-and-replaces ensure that quotes are curly and dashes are wide enough. All this takes me about a minute per article.

Now I realize we are all in the process of figuring out how to manage the cognitive challenges of the information age, so my challenges with multi-tasking aren’t particularly unique or interesting, and I also realize that my reducing the content of our digital age to a sheaf of personally typeset printed documents is an eccentric response to these challenges, one that probably says more about the limitations of my mind, formed as it was in the days before any monitors, let alone multi-monitors, than it does about computers or the common human condition, but I have to say, leaning back in a reclining chair while leafing through a pile of articles typeset to please my eye, my computer blinking away behind my back, out of sight and out of mind, I feel an inordinate pleasure, as if I’ve recaptured a piece of my mind from the machines.

The Purity of the Tune

I love music, but I find it difficult to write about music. There is the whole “dancing about architecture” difficulty in reducing anything so sublime yet ineffable to mere words, but for me the problem runs deeper: music sneaks its way into my brain at a sub-analytical layer, effectively evading my higher analytical processing centers.

And that’s why I love it so, I think, because when I listen I don’t think.

I suppose I could sit at the keyboard and force myself to describe in words what I am hearing, but in doing that I fear I’d break down the barriers that have for so long protected music from my higher reasoning centers.

So I generally avoid the topic.

One thing did occur to me today, though, what with all the hubbub surrounding the death of a pop star, and that was to marvel at the sheer amount of interest in that person that had nothing to do with that person’s music. In fact, with all those extracurriculars to contend with, it is doubful anyone could even listen to that person’s music as music.

One music area I gravitate to is pre-war (WWII) American rural music, a category that includes blues, folk and country tunes. Lacking a better descriptor, I’ve decided to refer to it by the acronym PWARM.

Anyways, listening to Dick Justice’s “Brown Skin Blues,” a PWARM song that’s currently worming its way deep into my brain, it occurred to me that I know nothing about Dick Justice. All I have is his song, his voice, his guitar. So there’s a purity in his tune, a listening experience unadulterated by extraneous information.

This is common with PWARM artists, most of whom recorded a few forgotten tunes before disappearing. When you listen to them, there’s nothing to distract you.

Except news reports about a recently deceased pop star.

("Brown Skin Blues" is available here.)

We Are Not Amused

Okay, so things have been awfully quiet around here for a while. A long while. Three years since I posted with any frequency, but, hey, who’s counting?

I miss Outer Life. Many times I’ve tried to start it up again, but my attempts would end in failure, either a stillborn piece that went nowhere or, worse, a piece that got posted but should have been stillborn.

While trying once again to reignite the spark, yesterday I did something I haven’t done before: I scrolled through the archives and re-read some of the posts I wrote back when this place was humming.

I liked most of what I read. Some of it made me cringe, but a lot of it held up well, if I may be so immodest. I remembered how easy it was to write these pieces, that wonderful feeling of a long piece flowing from my fingertips in real time. A feeling I haven’t had in three years.

And reading these pieces, it became clear to me why I can no longer write them: I am no longer the person who wrote those pieces. When Outer Life started I was more self-absorbed than I am now. I’d spent much of my first four decades trying to figure out the world around me. Then, right around the time I started Outer Life, my curiosity turned inward. What fascinated me was me. While that lasted, posts flowed. Then I turned away from the mirror and went back to looking out the window. And the posts stopped flowing.

My muse left me. Very unamusing.

It’s a bit odd that a website called Outer Life doesn’t work when its author looks outside his life. But then that title wasn’t chosen because it made any sense.

I’m not sure what to do. I have the desire to do something, but I’m not sure there is anything I can do. Scrolling through the archives I noticed that my earliest posts were, if anything, even weaker than my more recent posts. Perhaps, I thought, if I embraced my current awfulness, made peace with the rudderlessness, and just got the site going again, maybe I’d find that groove again. Or at least another groove.

I also did something very uncharacteristic for me: I started an Outer Life Twitter account. I have no idea what I will do with it, but being desperate I’m willing to try anything to kick-start the creativity.

So, I’m loathe to promise anything, but if there’s anyone out there still reading this, I’ll beg your indulgence as I start throwing words at the canvas, hoping some will stick.

Little Man

     Staring out the window at ships in the harbor. In the spring of 1988, that was my job.

     My real job had disappeared with the merger announcement. Collecting data for new projects was no longer a priority, now that there would be no new projects.

     No one told us to stop. The futility was just so obvious, even to the dumbest and most in denial among us, that it only took a few days after the announcement for the work of an entire department to grind to a halt, its data-spinning machinery shut down by an informal but uniform consensus.

     The first week, huddled in cubicles, we traded internal rumors.

     By the next week, most talk turned to life on the outside. We’d started drifting apart.

     The big offices emptied first. Those with initiative and internal connections grabbed lifelines, pulling themselves out of our sinking ship. They promised to keep us in the loop, but once in safe departments, none looked back.

     Those with initiative and external connections just disappeared. With nothing going on, few bothered to give two weeks’ notice. They’d tell their friends and walk out with a banker’s box of pictures. If you missed them in the elevator lobby, you wouldn’t know they’d left until you saw their empty desk or called their dead extension.

     The rest of us sent out resumes. We wore our best suits each day, never knowing when opportunity might knock. We kept showing up. We hung around, ate long lunches, left early, wondering all the time what the hell was going on.

     After a month or so, so many had left that we abandoned our cubicles and grabbed the vacant offices. Mine had a nice view of the harbor, a couch and a huge desk.

     The desk was too big for me, its vast polished wooden top a constant reminder of the work I wasn’t doing. A desk needs to be cluttered.

     The couch was a constant temptation to loosen the tie, shut the door, lie back and sleep the day away. Everyday I thought of doing it, but I never did.

     What I did instead was stare outside at the view. I’d recline in the ludicrously large leather wingback chair, put my feet up on the massive empty desk and stare out at the ships floating in and out of the harbor.

     The office was old enough to have windows that actually opened so, as the days got warmer, my reveries would be punctuated with sounds of engines and horns and gulls drifting up on sea breezes from below.

     A dream job, I suppose, but I wasn’t happy.

     I wasn’t worried for my future. I was young enough to know that things would turn around, that I’d find something eventually, so that wasn’t what was getting me down.

     And it’s not that I missed the data job or mourned the department’s loss. Much of the work was tedious, the subject matter often dreary. I never saw myself doing it for long.

     I think I missed having a purpose. On even the most mundane tasks, I used to try to make small improvements, to achieve small efficiencies, growing as I progressed. So even though I was low on the ladder, my daily masteries made me feel much bigger.

     Now that I wiled my days away staring out the window, my only task figuring out how to keep my feet elevated without having them go to sleep, I lost my sense of mastery, of progress. Sunken into that huge chair, dwarfed by the vastness of my empty desk, I looked like I felt: a shrunken little man.

     The window staring gig ended a few months later, soon after the merger closed. We scattered, losing track of each other, our time at the department reduced to a line or two on our resumes.

     I eventually found a new path, and started growing again, but even today, over 20 years later, a part of me remains permanently diminished, haunted by that little man. 

A View From the Top 2%

     Last year my family’s annual income exceeded $250,000. As a result, we will be one of the 2% of American families required to pay for the new spending proposed by our President.

     I am struggling to figure out how I should feel about this.

     My initial thoughts were dark, I’ll admit. If there’s anything I like less than paying taxes, it’s paying more taxes. And if there’s anything I like less than paying more taxes, it’s knowing that 98% of my fellow Americans will not be sharing this burden with me.

     In a democracy, anytime you find yourself in a group of 2% paying for a group of 98%, you’ve got a problem. How do you persuade the 98% to switch from a program in which you pay for their government benefits to one in which they pay for their government benefits? Assuming they hate paying taxes as much as I do, I’m not sure how one does this.

     My income dropped last year, and I expect will drop even more this year. At this rate, someday I will drop out of the top 2%. I suppose that is one solution, but I’m not too excited about it.

     In any event, our fiscal hole is so deep it can’t possibly be filled by the top 2%. The President can tax us up to 100% and he’ll still need more, lots more. So someday my pain will be yours.

     I work hard for the money. Even in the halcyon rich-friendly days of Bush I and II, when I was permitted to keep slightly more than half of what I earned, I often dreamed of working less hard. Too many late nights in the office. Too many lost weekends at the office. Too many interrupted or cancelled vacations. Now that my state and federal governments would like more than half of what I earn, my idle daydreams of quitting the rat race are shifting to active plans.

     But I can’t just quit. While I earn a lot, I don’t have nearly enough to retire. I think of myself as one of the working rich – the minute I stop working is the minute I stop being rich. A few years ago I thought I’d have enough to retire in my fifties. Now with my house value plunging, and my 401(k) awash in red ink, it looks like I’ll be working into my seventies. So stopping work isn’t an option for me.

     Instead I need to be more tax-savvy. In exchange for its burdens, a job offers a bundle of benefits. Some of these benefits are taxed, while others aren’t. Taxable benefits include salary, bonus and stock grants. Tax-free benefits include job security, time off, status and the freedom to do what interests you. As tax rates increase, the value of taxable benefits decreases, and the relative value of tax-free benefits increases. So if I can shift my compensation away from salary and bonus and into free time and freedom to do what interests me, my tax bill will be smaller but my life may be richer.

     A classmate of mine from graduate school is now a professor. Every so often the green-eyed devil possesses him, usually in spring when his best students leave for starting salaries that exceed his. This seems unjust to him, but that is because he is only looking at one benefit to the exclusion of all others. Sure his students make more money than he does, but is that all that matters in comparing their jobs to his? Of course not. Tenure gives him complete job security, while his students are struggling to prove themselves in sink-or-swim environments. He has huge amounts of free time, including three months off each year, while students rejoice when they have a clear weekend. He enjoys the elevated status of a professor at a prestigious university while his students are grunts scrambling to hold on to the lowest rung of the ladder. And, best of all, he has almost complete freedom to pursue whatever interests him, while his students must toil away their youths serving their masters.

     His students may earn more money, but who is richer?

     My friend, whether he realizes it or not, is extremely adroit at tax avoidance. Clearly I have much to learn. And I feel his green-eyed devil possessing me.

When Trouble Came

     When I was in first grade, we “wrote” our autobiographies. We did this by filling out a questionnaire that asked questions such as: “What is your favorite color?” and “How many doors does your house have?”

     Not the most scintillating stuff, but my parents nevertheless preserved this sample of my early autobiographical writing for two reasons: (1) I pretended I grew up in Texas when in fact I’d never been there and (2) when it asked “What do you want to be when you grow up?,” I responded: “A milloinaire” [sic].

     I remember thinking if I had a million dollars, I’d have the freedom to do pretty much whatever I wanted. But my parents thought this was evidence of a budding taste for the good life, often referring to me as “The Big Spender” (my allowance was 25 cents a week) and joking that I’d somehow developed champagne tastes in a powdered milk family.

     What made that funny was we really did drink powdered milk. And eat food from dented cans. Perhaps all this ruined my taste buds – by the time I got older and could afford champagne I found I didn’t like it. Same with caviar. Alas, no champagne wishes or caviar dreams for me.

     But I never lost sight of my desire to be a millionaire, though with inflation I’d now need to be the Six Million Dollar Man in order to give me the same buying power I would have had in first grade. I’m not at the Steve Austin level yet, but I still hope to get there someday.

     In fact, I need to get there, for I’ve come to recognize that a bleak sort of financial insecurity gnaws at the deepest levels of my being.  Call it my fear of powdered milk. In good times, I worry that things will go bad, and in bad times, I simply worry. My wolf is always at my door.

     Always looking on the dark side has insulated me from get-rich-quick schemes and the manias that repeatedly infect investors, thereby preserving my capital, but, of course, there is also a dark side to my dark side: my fear keeps my own investment returns down in the passbook savings range, barely beating inflation.

     Seared into my mind is an panel discussion I witnessed many years ago on TV in which a bearish money manager made a convincing case that the then-current investing craze was an ill-conceived bubble that would soon burst. One of the other investors on the panel retorted: “You may be right, but for a long time now a lot of people have made a lot of money being wrong.”

     I agreed with the bear – clearly things at that time were headed for ruin – and I agreed with the other panelist – clearly a lot of money had been made by being wrong. Probably most of the money that’s made is made by being wrong. Maybe only a few isolated geniuses seem to do well by doing it right. And even then, I have my doubts about most of them.

     So these days I’m left betwixt and between: Just as my worst fears are being confirmed, and for the first time in my adult life I’m in the right, I recognize that if I’m going to make any money at some point I need to leave the shadows behind and walk in the light.

     While I await my conversion experience, I can at least console myself that there’s no chance I’ll ever go back to powdered milk: I’ve become lactose intolerant. And until I get that infusion of faith, I’ll keep reciting the following verses from Housman:

     I to my perils
       Of cheat and charmer
       Came clad in armour
         By stars benign.
     Hope lies to mortals
       And most believe her
       But man's deceiver
         Was never mine.

     The thoughts of others
       Were light and fleeting,
       Of lovers' meeting
         Or luck or fame.
     Mine were of trouble,
       And mine were steady,
       So I was ready
         When trouble came.