Random thoughts 1

Well... the good news is that I found my mom's wedding band last night.  She took it off in a hurry the other day and set her rings on her computer desk.  When she went back to get them, her wedding band was gone.  I looked all over and under that area and everywhere around it, but had no luck.  The ring was missing for several days.  Last night I was sweeping our small kitchen, and decided to sweep the little spot of tile by the front door as well.  There, right behind the door was her ring.  So that's good.  She was really happy.

On the weight loss front, I got weighed at the doctor yesterday.  I weigh exactly what I did two weeks ago.  That's a bummer.  I've been walking three miles, three or four days a week.  But now I know that I need to 1)  walk more miles every week, and 2) and to work on eating less and eating healthier.  That's the hard part since I'm living with my mom.  She really likes to cook, and she likes to have someone eat what she cooks.  I'm the only someone around, so I end up eating too many second helpings.  I need to work on that.  To celebrate my weight loss plateau at five pounds lost, I had a Little Caesar's pepperoni pizza last night.  Yeah, I know, I know.  But I hadn't had a pizza in quite a while, and it tasted really good. 

Also, I want to talk about the Kernersville library.  When I walk to the library in the morning, I plop down in one of four big, old, comfy chairs they have in the center of the library.  On the wall by these chairs is a big, glass display case where they display collections of various kinds.  Right now there's a collection of handmade baskets.  Yawn.  Sure, they're well made, but not that interesting to the majority of people in the library.  Before the baskets, they had a huge collection of Transformers there.  Day after day as I sat nearby reading, I would see small children, about 3 to 7 years of age, literally RUN up to the case to check out all the Transformer toys.  It was really cool to see kids get really excited by something in the library.  I've been an avid reader since I learned to read, and I want libraries to survive and thrive the onslaught of technology like ebooks and e readers that are changing the way people read.  Sure, it's cool to have 500 books on your tablet computer, but there's also something magical about wandering through those tall stacks of real, physical books.  I hope that doesn't get lost in the future.

Finally,  in that last post, I shared the story of Evantube HD, the 8-year-old making big bucks on You Tube.  In previous posts, I wrote about why so many people, myself included, are having a hard time finding jobs these days.  In the future, I'm going to write about more people who are finding success in various ways in today's work and business world.  There's a huge paradigm shift happening in the work world these days, and lots of people need to find a new way to earn a living.  Since I'm one of those people, this issue is important to me, and I'm going to spend a lot of time in this blog on this subject. 

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.

Where Have All The Jobs Gone part 1

This clip is Andrew MacAfee talking about how robots, droids, and other technology will affect the number of human jobs available in the future.  Though he starts off with some dark ideas, he's got a positive attitude for the long term.  You may notice that this isn't a Tedx Talk in some backwater town somewhere, he's in Boston, one of the high tech capitols of the United States. 

My mom likes to watch Steve Harvey's afternoon talk show, which means I often watch it since I'm unemployed at the present time.  On his show a couple days ago, Steve had three women with financial problems, and a woman who just wrote a financial book advising them.  One of the women said she recently graduated from college with $160,000 in student loans.  That's not a loan payment, that's a freakin' mortgage in my book.  The woman said she had no job prospects.  Not poor job prospects, she had absolutely NO job prospects.  She went to work for a non-profit organization which allowed her to defer her student loan payments for one year.  The woman said she lived in a converted storage unit, with a roommate, surviving on a small living stipend she got.  After that year, her student loan payments alone would be nearly $3,000 a month. 

The sad thing is that this isn't a rare situation.  I hear over and over on TV how smart college graduates are having trouble finding jobs.  The job hunt is much tougher for people (like myself) who don't have college degrees.  We keep hearing that the great recession is over, but the job market still seems to be pretty bad for large numbers of people.  More people are on Food Stamps and other government assistance problems than ever.  Food pantries are having a hard time keeping the shelves stocked because of increased demand.  At the last job fair I went to in this area (Piedmont Triad region of North Carolina) I walked past about 2,500 people to take my place in line... for 100 rudimentary jobs at a local employer.  My first thought wasn't to apply for a job, it was to open up a snack bar next to the people waiting for hours in that huge line. 

So where have all the jobs gone?  A lot of you are probably thinking, "China."  Yes, thousands, maybe millions of factory jobs have gone to China.  Lots of jobs went to Mexico before that.  Many jobs went to Japan, Taiwan, Southeast Asia, and India before that.  But I've heard several times that we've actually lost more jobs to robots than to other countries.  I couldn't find a specific article to back that up, but if you search "robots taking jobs" on either Google or You Tube, you'll find that a lot comes up, like the Ted Talk above.  We need to realize that most of the high paying factory jobs are gone forever.  Unfortunately, in my area, that's what the economic developers are still looking for.  They want to bring a major car factory to Greensboro, the largest of the three cities making up the Piedmont Triad, as this region is known.  Winston-Salem, the second largest city here, has taken a different tack.  They've spent over $400 million (according to a recent newspaper article) to build a biotech research area in the once empty downtown.  This huge project is anchored by Wake Forest University's extensive biotech program.  They're on the right track, but they're about 25 years late to the biotech party.  Time will tell how the new research area fairs. Even if it takes off, it won't provide jobs to the thousands of unemployed and under-employed people who needs jobs in this area.  It will most likely bring in well paid scientists from other areas.  What do we do with all the average people who need jobs here... and everywhere else?

This is a huge issue now, and will continue to be a major issue in the future.  Today's huge tech companies employee far fewer people than manufacturing companies of similar economic size did a generation ago.  Even scarier, technology is evolving to take many of the intellectual jobs in the future.  So where is everybody going to work?  The answer I keep coming back to is entrepreneurship.  As far as I can see, we are going to need huge numbers of people to start new businesses, both big and small, to employ the unemployed people of today, and those in the future.