Dealing With Negativity

Last week I got to a point where I was seriously considering leaving where I live and going back to being homeless.  For most people, that idea is unthinkable.  I realize that.  But the situation I'm living in is so negative that I had to actually spend a couple of days weighing my options on which situation would give me the best chance of getting back on my feet at some point.  For three years I've been living in this situation, and not paying my way.  That really pisses me off because since I left my family's house at age 20, I'd always been able to take care of myself.  I never made a lot of money, but I was able to get by.  Then I quit taxi driving for both health and financial reasons, and became homeless.  There was no way to make a decent living once I got to that point. 

One of the little known facts about homelessness is that most people don't want homeless people to get back to a "normal" life.  There are hundreds of organizations that help homeless people.  But most of those help homeless people... stay homeless.  These programs help homeless people get through the day with food, hygiene products, or a bed in a really crowded room at a shelter.  But few of these programs help homeless people get back to paying their own way in life.  Even the programs that help homeless people find homes usually require the homeless person to get on Social Security disability and become dependent on the federal government for the rest of their lives.  Their are people who legitimately need to be on disability, but there are also thousands of people taking advantage of that system.  For the last three years, several people around me have been pushing me to get on disability, as if that's the only answer.  This is something I've been fighting against.

So why don't I just get a job?  The simple answer is that I haven't found anywhere that will hire me for a variety of reasons.  First of all, there aren't that many jobs out there.  Sure, the Great Recession has died down, but the job creation never fully came back.  Secondly, my current job history is taxi driving for several companies with big gaps in employment.  In today's online job hunting world, that seems to be what's holding me back.  A third reason is that I spent much of my life working in the BMX, skateboarding, and TV production industries, and those industries don't exist here to any decent degree.  So every time I fill out a bunch of applications, I simply don't hear back.  This is where the thinking stops for most people.  If you're not making money, "go get a job," they say.  For most of my life that wasn't a problem.  But now it is.  But there is another option that most people here don't think about.  It's possible to create a job. 

Having spent most of my adult life around highly entrepreneurial people in Southern California, this seems like the best option to me.  There are several ways to create your own job, but they ultimately come down to either doing freelance work or starting your own business.  Or even a combination of the two.  This is not easy, but it's what a huge number of people are doing in today's society.  We're not an industrial society with lots of good paying factory jobs in every small town anymore.  Those factory jobs have been replaced mostly by robots, and also by corporations taking those jobs overseas where people work much cheaper.  In this weird transition period between the Industrial Age and the Information Age, most people just keep trying to get a job...ANY JOB.  Meanwhile, there's a growing group of people who are creating their own jobs.  This is the category I fit into best psychologically.

But creating your own job first starts with a new idea.  I have to find a niche that isn't being filled, and think up a business (or freelance opportunity) to fill that niche.  That's not hard, there are hundreds of niche products and services that need to be filled in this part of North Carolina.  The problem with coming up with a new idea is just that, it's a NEW IDEA.  That means almost everyone around will think it's a BAD IDEA.  If it was really a good idea, someone would have done it now, right?  Then comes the next part.  Starting any new idea usually involves a lot of initial work that you don't get paid for.  During that process, a person like me has to wake up every morning and immediately get past the notion that everyone else thinks I'm wasting my time.  Another aspect of this is that there are two types of people around you at this point:  people who support you, and people who don't support you.  The people who don't support you not only don't believe in you, but they often go to extreme lengths to put you down, sabotage your idea, and otherwise work against you.  So... in that case, a person like me has to wake up and get past all my own negative thoughts, then I have to deal with everyone else's negative thoughts all day long as I work to manifest my idea.  That's tough.  It's just plain tough. 

So how does a person deal with negativity in a case like this?  I have to do everything I can to not let all the negativity drag me down.  I listen to music that gets me pumped.  I listen to inspiring lectures and Ted Talks on You Tube.  I visualize where I want this idea to go.  I resort to deep breathing when someone is beating me down psychologically, and then try to move on.  It's really fucking hard.  I try not to cuss too much in my blogs, but that's the only way to say it.  I've found one opportunity to do some work for a friend's company.  It's not very much money, and it's not consistent.  But it's something.  I have to try to use that small amount of money to get another idea going.  There's an idea I've been sitting on for about 25 years.  It never seemed like a good enough idea to really focus on.  But now it does.  It's hard to deal with negativity day after day and then try to start this idea I'm not even totally sure about.  But I guess that's what keeps life interesting.  I just need to keep picking myself up and chipping away at this idea, and the other projects it could lead to.  Onward!

Reboot Your Life

Today didn't start off that well.  After eating some cereal for breakfast, I decided to take the garbage out.  I pulled the bag out of the trash can and carefully leaned it against a leg of the kitchen table.  Then I turned around  and  walked the few steps back to the trash can to pick up an empty cereal box that was sitting beside it.  I picked up the cereal box, turned back around and headed the few steps back towards the trash bag.  At just that moment the trash bag slumped to the side, dumping about one third of its contents onto the floor.  Crap.  It wasn't just cans and boxes and paper plates, it was almost all produce, discarded pieces of meat, and what appeared to be salad dressing slopped all over it all.  It was a rotting, slimy, disgusting mess. 

That's just how my life feels sometimes these days.  It's a big mess, and I really don't feel like cleaning it up.  But cleaning up the mess is part of life.  So I picked up the gooey pieces of garbage, put them back in the bag, added the empty cereal box, and took the trash up to the dumpster in the car.  As I tossed the bag into the dumpster, it caught the metal edges on both sides and ripped open.  Luckily, this time it all went into the dumpster.  I headed home and went out for my morning walk.  Every day I possibly can, I walk a mile and a half to the library.  I read for a bit and cool off.  Then I gulp down some water and walk a mile and a half back.  But today my mom left me a note saying  I shouldn't walk today because it's supposed to be the hottest day since 2012.  The weatherman predicted 97 degrees out today.  I walked anyway, because that's what I'm doing to starting cleaning up the mess that is my life, lose weight, and get healthy again. 

This leads to the library book in the photo above, Ctrl Alt Delete by Mitch Joel.   I found this bright orange book in the library last year, and I just finished reading the book for the third time.  The book is about this crazy time we find ourselves in where the internet, social media, and mobile devices have completely changed society and business.  Mitch Joel heads up a digital agency, which is what advertising agencies are turning into these days.  He's been blogging on the subject since 2003, and he really understands how new media are changing the way we communicate and how we interact with businesses. 

But I don't own a business (at the moment).  I came to this book after delving into internet marketing as I tried to figure out how technology has changed the writing industry.  I had three blogs that were hits in their little niches, but I had no idea how to make money with a blog.  So I dove in and started learning. 

I read websites, blogs, and free ebooks on the subject, and watched lots of You Tube videos about blogging, internet marketing, and today's writing industry.  I also started reading traditional books about blogging and internet marketing.  Ctrl Alt Delete is one of my favorites.  The subtitle of the book is, "Reboot your business.  Reboot your life.  Your future depends on it."  Joel describes this present time as "purgatory," a time when new media channels are changing society so fast that many people feel overwhelmed by it all.  Whether you're a business owner, a marketer, or simply an employee, Joel says we need to reboot our lives and to embrace the tsunami of change washing over us right now. 

I spent most of the internet age avoiding technology.  I was waiting to see how it would all shake out in the long run.  I was working as a taxi driver most of that time.  As I've mentioned before, technology came to the taxi industry in the form of computer dispatching, and it changed everything... for the worse.  When I finally had a computer to starting learning about the internet, it was 2008, and everyone seemed to have a huge head start on me.  I started blogging about my BMX days as a creative outlet, and without realizing it, I started a new direction in my life.  But six and a half years later, I'm still not making a living with my writing.

I'm still working on rebooting my life.  I'm still struggling to find a niche in this world where I can make a decent living again.  Oddly, all my studying has led me back to an idea I had about 25 years ago.  I hope to get that idea off the ground soon.  Like so many other people in today's world, I'm struggling with the reboot.  I'm working to re-invent myself in a world that has changed dramatically from my childhood, when I was told to do good in school and then get a job that I'd hold my entire life.  Those days are gone, and like with the spilled garbage this morning, I'm cleaning up the mess so I can make a new start.  Anybody else feel the same way?     

Where Have All The Jobs Gone part 2

This is a quick clip of professor Richard Florida, who has been promoting his findings about the "creative class" for about 13 years now.  As he mentions in this clip, this is where the real job growth is these days.

The region of North Carolina where I now live was once thriving thanks mostly to three industries:  tobacco, textiles, and furniture manufacturing.  It's no coincidence that the city of Winston-Salem is the name of two brands of cigarettes, and that the city's nickname, "Camel City," refers to yet another brand of cigs.  You know what's happened to the tobacco industry over the the last 20 years as the dangers of smoking were finally brought to the forefront.  For other reasons, the furniture and textile industry jobs have taken similar hits.  As I mentioned in the last post, we've lost thousands of jobs in this area, and millions nationwide to automation (robots) and out sourcing of jobs to lower wage countries.  Now this area is one of the worst in the nation in childhood hunger.  There are thousands of people looking for jobs that no longer exist.  The same is happening in the smaller cities and towns all over this country.  It's not just industrial age cities like Detroit, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland that have taken the hit, but thousands of small towns and cities as well.  This is where Richard Florida's Creative Class idea comes in.

I first heard of the Creative Class concept in the local entertainment weekly paper about five years ago.  It made mention of the cities here trying to attract the creative class.  I was intrigued, and went on to read three of Richard Florida's books.  He was a professor at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh, which had a great hi tech program.  Florida's area of expertise was economic development, something the struggling city of Pittsburgh sorely needed in the 90's.  But Florida noticed that the top IT students were leaving, going to the Silicon Valley in California, Boston, Austin, Texas, and other cities.  So he began looking into what was happening.  He learned that today's tech companies don't wait for smart people to come to them, the companies go to where the highly skilled people are in abundance.  This trend is a factor in why the majority of hi tech is clustered in the San Francisco Bay Area, Boston, Seattle, L.A., Raleigh/Durham, Washinton D.C., and Austin, Texas.  That's where the big groups of highly talented people are.  In addition to the businesses moving to where the quality people are, the talented and creative people tend to move to cities that are tolerant of all kinds of people, have lots of jobs, and afford a good quality of life.  In short, highly creative people like to live around other highly creative people.  This has created a brain drain that is attracting the best and brightest people coming out of college to a hand full of urban areas.  Meanwhile, most of the rest of the country is falling further and further behind.  I happen to live in one of those areas that's way behind the times and is not attracting much in the way of tech companies at the moment. 

As I mentioned in my last post, Winston-Salem has spent a lot of money to develop a biotech research area.  They are actually remodeling the old R.J. Reynolds cigarette factory into a center for biotech research and start ups.  Time will tell if they are able to attract a significant portion of the biotech industry.  But they're trying, which is good.  Many other small cities and towns are trying similar tactics to bring hi tech businesses and the Creative Class people to their areas.  But we're still in a weird middle area where there are lots of people still looking for traditional industrial age jobs.  The majority of civic leaders in this area are still trying to bring industrial jobs back.  So we have a disconnect.  There are thousands of people locally, and millions nationwide, looking for jobs that are long gone and won't come back. 

After my last post about jobs, my friend Mike left me a link to Mike Rowe's Facebook page.  As you probably know, Mike Rowe hosted the Dirty Jobs TV show, and now hosts Sombebody's Got To Do It.  Through his shows, Mike has shined a spotlight on all the people working hard at jobs that aren't the most pleasant.  He's given props to the hardworking Americans who were never in the spotlight before.  But Mike Rowe is part of the Creative Class, he found his niche in the entertainment industry by being willing to do really physically demanding jobs... for one day each.  He makes a good living precisely because he is a creative guy.  The job growth in the future won't be in the jobs Mike does on his show, but in creative work like Mike Rowe himself does as a host and producer.  Isn't it ironic, don'tcha think?

The question remains:  what do we do with the millions of people who have the wrong skills for the highly creative jobs that are being produced in abundance these days?  What do we do with an education system that was designed to produce factory workers when there are few factories left?  How do we get the city leaders across the country to focus on inspiring the people in their area to create more new businesses and more jobs?  We are in a big, long, tough period of major change right now.  It's going to be really hard on lots of people.  At the same time, there are all kinds of opportunities for people using new technology and new ideas.  I don't know how this will all shake out, but we need a lot more people working on this issue than we have right now.

A Weight Loss Program That Includes Oreos

It's been a couple weeks since I started walking.  I've been trying to walk 3 to 4 miles a day at least five days a week.  Those first couple days I walked, I had to just keep on trudging along.  My hips hurt.  My knees hurt.  My ankles hurt.  But I kept going.  I haven't been able to walk every day I wanted to because of doctors' appointments and other events.  But I've kept going most days.  Today I felt really good as I went for my walk to the library, which is about a mile and a half from my apartment.  Nothing hurt, and I walked a tad bit faster than I had before.  I read for a while at the library, then walked home.  Today is the hottest day of the year so far, and though the temperature is in the mid 80's, with a stiff breeze, it didn't feel that bad. 

The other day, I bought a pack of Oreos.  Yes, Oreos.  Why?  Because I hadn't had them in quite a while, and I like sweets.  I'm not even trying to change my diet at this point.  Three times in my life I've lost 50 pounds or more in six months, and each time it was by walking, drinking more water, and eventually eating a bit less than normal.  So I'm not worried about the Oreos.  My main health focus right now is to turn walking every day into a habit.  I've noticed I'm already eating a tiny bit healthier just because I want to.  I'm also eating seconds at dinner less and eating much less for lunch.  I'm not trying to eat better, it's just happening slowly.  I feel better when I walk.  I don't need as much time to recover after I walk.  And I'm just plain starting to feel better in general.  That's what I'm after at this point, I just want to get my body used to moving again before I add more exercise or different foods into the mix.  So far, it's working.