Youth

I am at the coffee shop, having been driven out of my normally quiet home by the clatter and bustle of the cleaning people. In four high-backed upholstered chairs that don't match and have, in any event, seen much better days, sit four teenagers. They have the chairs pulled close around a tiny table - one of those short side tables that serve as central tables in coffee shops.

The little table above which the teenagers' chairs loom is crammed with food and drink, and the teenagers are gobbling. This is surprising. I doubt the three boys and one girl combined weigh 400 pounds. They are, all of them, freakishly skinny, drug addict skinny.

Their clothes and haircuts seem to have been chosen for maximum ugliness. Underwear is visible on all - the boys are sporting colorful tight briefs (the kind little children wear) with either jeans or slimy nylon basketball shorts slung on their palm-width hips, defying gravity; a ramshackle bra, which she does not need, pokes out of the girl's skimpy sundress, itself a plaid the colors of jaundice and fresh bruises. Two of the teenagers are dirty blond, two are dirty brunette; all of their hair is pasted greasily to their skulls and none of it appears to have been cut with any sort of plan or symmetry in mind. One of the blond boys wears a red woolen stocking cap. (This is Las Vegas and it is currently 104 degrees Fahrenheit).

The teenagers' skin keeps the drug addict imagery alive: they have no glow, no tan, no ruddiness, not even the slick shine of acne. They are gray. But for their oddly loud clothing, they could be characters in a black and white movie shot by a bad cinematographer.

How do I see all this? They cannot sit still as they gobble. First one, then another, then the first, then yet another pops up, wanders around the shop, texts, makes a quick call, sits back down. Perhaps all this fidgeting is why their food creates no bulk. Standing, the boys look like long-waisted optical illusions. Their legs are skin-wrapped sticks, seemingly nowhere near sturdy enough to support even emaciated bodies. One of the boys slings his arm around the girl. She smiles, but does not look up at him. Both the line of her jaw and the knobs where her arms meet her shoulders look sharp enough to cut glass.

It is impossible to think of any of them writing a term paper, running for public office, raising children, curing cancer, working in an office building (or, for that matter, in the Peace Corps) or in any other way assuming the mantle of adulthood.

There is no denying it: I am old. What a relief. I am giddy with the realization that my own transition from awkward awful adolescence to adulthood is so far in the past as to be all but beyond recollection.

A Howl at the Moon

How I wish it were possible to meet other people's behavior in kind without having to think of oneself as equally churlish. It irritates me to feel obliged to take the high road, even though I know it's the right thing to do, and the only realistic option, when others are ignorant, unresponsive, unreliable, rude, ungenerous, thoughtless or so wedded to their own agendas that the mere hint of a differing viewpoint pushes them to dizzying heights of defensive anger and uncivilized restatement or to awkward depths of sulky withdrawal.

I would give a lot never again to have to deal with people who, as William James put it, think they are thinking when all they are really doing is rearranging their prejudices. I'm tired of "you scratch my back; I'll refuse to acknowledge you even have a back" behavior. I'm weary beyond belief of people unwilling or unable to keep their promises, people who don't follow up, people who ask and take but don't listen or give, and people who don't mean what they say (or maybe they do, but it doesn't matter because what they say has no apparent influence over what they do).

When did breathtaking inconsiderateness become something basically decent people allowed themselves to indulge in with nary a blush or pang? Get back in touch with me after a decade to request a personal reference, but via a note that makes it plain that you didn't even bother to look at my profile on the LinkedIn/Plaxo/Biznik/Facebook/Twitter route you took to find me and so have no idea that I no longer live in Chicago or that I've written books or have a website. Request that I send you something, then fail to thank me for it or even acknowledge that you received it. Call me when you need something; live the rest of your life in blithe indifference to my existence. Ask me to be your friend, your fan, your follower, to vote for you in some contest, to comment on your blog, to read your book, to attend some event, all with no attempt or intent (or, as far as I can tell, even any awareness that it might be possible) to do the same for me. Yammer on about how relationships are important, engaging is important, generosity is important, then treat everyone else as if they are nothing but numbers who can boost you in some way.

I'd love to be able to make the decision to become a "me first, me only" jackass and still live with myself. The high road is often a lonely, windswept, howling place. I've learned from experience, though, that taking it exacts a lesser cost from me than does grubbing in the crowded mud of ill-mannered, uncharitable, self-absorbed ugliness. But oh how I sometimes wish it were otherwise!

Now Appearing on a Blog Near You

I've written another guest post, this one for M-BRANE SF, the creation of Christopher Fletcher. In addition to being a blogger, Christopher is a chef, a magazine publisher, and a fiction writer currently living "in self-imposed exile in OKC." My thanks to him for the opportunity and to GUD Magazine for introducing us on Twitter.

My guest post - "For Writers: A Story & Three Tactics" - is about my evolution as a writer of fiction, my writing process, and a few of the ways I polish my work. Please click through to read it. While you're on the M-BRANE SF site, be sure to take a look around; you'll find a lot of interesting material.

Lawyers & Their Careers

No one who knows or has worked with me would call me an apologist for large law firms. I have written, in some places scathingly, about the many, many things these firms could do better relative to their workforce, to their clients and to running themselves like sensible, for-profit businesses.

(If you're interested in reading any of my constructive criticisms, check out The Productive Culture Blueprint or browse the Careers and Feminism posts here.)

But when I met Ron Fox on Twitter and surprised him by saying that I thought large law firms, despite their many shortcomings, were still the best places for new law grads to learn the craft of being lawyers, I found myself limning the positives of what Ron calls "BigLaw" to explain what I meant.

Our ensuing email conversation was quite spirited, and Ron suggested we break it down into separate posts for publication on his Lawyer Satisfaction Blog.

Here they are:

Post #1 BIGLAW FOR NEW GRADS: FRIEND OR FOE?

Post #2 HOW DO LAW STUDENTS MAKE CAREER DECISIONS?

Post #3 ARE LAW SCHOOLS MERELY FUNNELS FOR BIGLAW?

Post #4 WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?

A Word is a Word is a Word. Or Not

Apparently, "balance" is now a dirty word. As in "Balance is a myth."

At first, I was inclined to dismiss this as so much sound and fury signifying nothing, but I can't seem to let go of it. The dirtying of the word seems to me to contribute to the repulsive notion that women are something other than full-fledged human beings with the ability and the right to manage their own lives - not to mention to focus on what actually matters.

I was informed this morning that in the context of work-life balance the word has come to mean 50/50, as in "I must spend the exact same amount of time and expend the exact same effort on my family as on my career in order to be balanced."

Obviously, this is ridiculous. A balanced life is just like a balanced story, a balanced diet, a balanced argument. The point of the word is that the thing in question works, it's pleasing, it has the right relative placement of the important and the less important. It does the trick. The 50/50 concept must be read into the word; it is not there as a matter of definition. Moreover, why 50/50? People have more than two things to balance; they have friends, lovers, hobbies, pets, causes and all manner of other activities in addition to career and family.

If the word has come to have this 50/50 connotation, the reason ties directly to the work-life balance conundrum faced by women. Whether adopted by women ourselves with the result that we feel bad about our own balance choices or batted at us at all times by a society intent on insinuating that it is not possible to have both a good career and a good family simultaneously, the whole "balance is a myth" phenomenon is misogynistic and limiting.

Does anyone hear the phrase "balance is a myth" and think first:

--Maybe I better reconsider taking a sabbatical to work on a political campaign?

--How am I ever going to incorporate care of my elderly parents into my life?

--Will it be possible to combine my career goals with being a dad?

I doubt it. I think most people hear the phrase and think either "Good grief! How am I ever going to make this career/being a mom thing work?" or "Women don't have what it takes to do both." The likely impact of this is concern bordering on despair for women contemplating taking on both, and narrowing of opportunities for women in work environments that demand dedication and commitment from their workers.

Neither impact helps women construct and lead full lives. The bottom line is that the dirtying of the word "balance" has a disproportionately negative impact on women and is inherently sexist.

Maybe I should just relax. One of the tried-and-true tactics for re-selling a tried-and-true concept is to make it seem fresh instead of old-hat. If we call balance a dirty word, we can spin a new one that, with any luck, will strike people as perky, appealing, and innovative. A bit sleazy perhaps, but OK. I can live with it.

Also, unintended meanings have been attaching themselves to words, like so many barnacles clinging to the hull of a boat, from time immemorial. The word "choice" comes immediately to mind. So does "working mother," which carries far more meaning than the usual adjective/noun combo. (It continues to annoy me no end that "working mother" is a loaded phrase and "working father" is not a phrase at all.) New nuances and meanings are how language evolves, and the evolution is not necessarily political. Evolution is OK with me, too.

But here's my problem. First of all, this wordplay is silly, in the same way the 60s talk about changing the word "history" to "herstory" was silly. Easily scorned silliness like this doesn't help the cause, both because it lends itself to being mocked and because it distracts our eyes from the ball. The word isn't what's in need of redefinition. Whether you call it balance or something else, the point is that each person has the right and the responsibility to define and then construct for herself a life that works.

Second, the world we live in does not need any help marginalizing women. It does not need any help insinuating that there's somehow a right way to be a woman and that all other choices fall short. Examples abound, be they discussions - in 2009! - of gender as a potentially negative issue when filling a Supreme Court seat, or the pregnancy of a 66-year-old woman (who is almost without exception referred to as a "career woman" instead of, more appropriately, as an example of selfishness and medical freakery), or a list of great 20th century books that manages to include only 7 books written by women (and to include among the exclusions, if you will, not only Edith Wharton and Flannery O'Connor and Alice Walker, but also the Great American Novel, Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird). (Don't like these examples, which, by the way, are all from just this morning? Here are plenty more.)

Even if the intent of throwing a nice word like "balance" under the bus is to empower women, the very separation of women from men in this regard suggests we are somehow not in the same position as men with respect to making our own choices, setting our own priorities, and doing what each of us, in her own wisdom and circumstances, deems the right things to do with her life. Backhanded sexism is still sexism.

Frontiers, Crossed and Crossing

My Twitter and Facebook friend Raul Ramos y Sanchez is the author of AMERICA LIBRE, a novel coming out this summer that is already an International Latino Book Award winner and one of USA Today's 2009 Summer Reads. Raul is thoughtful (in both senses of the word), and his passion for exploring issues of ethnicity in American life, culture and politics mirrors mine for exploring issues of gender. He is always posting provocative questions along these lines, and we have enjoyed stimulating conversations on Twitter, on Facebook, and here on my blog.

(In fact, Raul is the reason I now brave Facebook once or twice a week. The nicest thing I can say about Facebook is that I don't get it. The interface makes little sense to me, I have better ways to stay in touch with people I already know, and all those sophomoric quizzes and applications may well, it seems to me, put the final nails in the coffin of Western civilization (and, for all I know, Eastern civilization too). But Raul's thoughtful conversational prompts are great, and I can't stand the idea of missing one, so into Facebook's shallow, silty waters I now wade. I should also acknowledge, before I close the parentheses on this paragraph, that I recognize I'm standing in a glass house throwing stones when I diss Facebook. Twitter can certainly be sophomoric too, but I've found it much easier to tailor my own experience there. To each his or her own.)

Anyhoo, Raul asked today whether President Obama will name a Hispanic to the Supreme Court and whether achieving ethnic balance on the Court should even be a factor. I answered that it should indeed be a factor given our current circumstances, which are that there are eminently qualified Hispanic (and female) candidates for Justice Souter's seat. It is not necessary to relax standards to appoint a replacement who is not a white man. Given that, and in light of US demographics, I think achieving ethnic and gender balance on the Court is a completely appropriate goal.

In answering Raul's question, I lifted some ideas and paraphrased some sentences from A MERGER OF EQUALS. I concluded long ago, somewhat shakily, that quoting myself without attribution is not plagiarism. I feel...I don't know, derivative, I guess...whenever I do it, but I do it all the time anyway, secure in the knowledge that no one but I has read, let alone committed to memory, virtually every sentence I've ever written.

Today, however, my character Charlie keeps interrupting the writing I've been trying to do (on another book altogether) with a strong message to the effect that I didn't do justice to the point I lifted from him. So here it is (redacted to delete spoilers, for those of you who haven't yet read the book):

That created the first vacancy on the Executive Committee since the coup, and I felt strongly that we should fill it with a woman.

At the time of the coup, I had regretted that our slate didn’t include any women. But there were none of sufficient seniority at the Firm and we’d decided we had enough to manage without adding the effort of identifying and recruiting someone from outside, then selling her to the rest of the Firm. One step at a time, we’d told ourselves.

There was something about [recent events] that made me feel our “one step at a time” approach, however practical, had been essentially a rationalization. Women seemed to me to be able to handle just about anything, and it started to strike me as shabby that we hadn’t yet managed to handle getting even one into the Firm’s management.

The Firm still had no women positioned for appointment to the EC, although we had made good progress in the last year. I had no doubt that in another year or two several women would be good candidates for the EC.

We considered naming one of them to fill the EC vacancy even if it was premature. A couple were probably strong enough to make their voices heard even without a more established power base. But we weren’t looking to put a woman on the EC just so we could say we had one. The goal was to realize the actual benefits, financial and otherwise, of inclusivity and diversity – and to demonstrate that it wasn’t necessary to relax standards in order to include women.

Putting a token woman on the Committee satisfied neither of these goals. We needed someone with proven leadership skills and either a client base or some other equally credible value to bring to the Firm. All the EC members had strong client relationships; most were (or had once been) group heads and also chaired important Firm committees or held other administrative leadership positions. Naming a woman without these qualifications to the EC would undercut both the purpose behind our stated diversity goals and her ability to feel and act like a full-fledged member.

Because we’d have to look outside to fill the immediate vacancy with a woman, there was a fair amount of discussion at the EC about waiting for the next opening or seeking a woman for the open spot but filling it with the best candidate we found, irrespective of gender. As far as I was concerned, this was just so much bullshit designed to put off diversifying the Committee. I argued hotly that there was no reason we couldn’t find a qualified woman unless we failed to look seriously for one and that we shouldn’t settle for filling the vacancy with another man.

As I said to Raul, I applaud President Obama for taking into account the goal of achieving ethnic and gender balance and developing his Supreme Court candidate list accordingly. As Charlie reminded me, there is no reason we can't find a qualified and diverse candidate unless we fail to look seriously for one.

Hysteria

I don't understand the impulse toward hysteria. There's also nothing much to like about the phenomenon. Starting with the word itself, which derives from the Greek hystera, meaning uterus, "hysteria" was originally defined as a neurotic condition peculiar to women. With those misogynistic roots, one would think the term had nowhere to go but up.

But no. Instead, hysteria became a social phenomenon, nowhere more evident than in this recent ridiculous mania over swine flu. As I understand it, statistically speaking your chances of contracting and dying from swine flu are significantly less than your chances of choking to death on a ballpoint pen (which 100 people do every year). They are a tiny fraction of your chances of dying in a car accident (43,000 annually) or from assorted gun violence (17,000). "Normal" flu kills around 36,000 people every year. And these numbers are just for the U.S. The swine flu hysteria is even sillier when considered in terms of global numbers.

So what prompted it? Why were/are people with about as much risk of contracting swine flu as someone living alone on a mountaintop all hysterical at the thought of going to school or getting on a plane or eating in a Mexican restaurant? Why were/are they flocking to already overcrowded ERs because they imagine their tummies hurt?

I've wondered about this personalization of peril before. I was doing some work for a company in Los Angeles right after 9/11. For a couple weeks after those horrific events, a few of the people in the LA office - none of whom had been personally affected by the attacks - were "too traumatized to come to work." Was this their way of empathizing? Of honoring the dead? Or was it an exploitation, however unconscious, of someone else's loss? I hate to think it was anything other than empathy - how dishonorable to attempt to make events like those of 9/11 about oneself!

Why join in the hysteria over something that, if you weren't hysterical, you would plainly see poses no imminent threat to you? Does feeling in peril make people feel important? Or maybe it's the opposite; maybe it makes people feel like they belong, like they're part of the community.

If so, too bad the hysterical community in question is such a silly, self-centered and wasteful one. If we could inject all the energy behind the swine flu hysteria into a community bent on improving healthcare for the poor - or, for that matter eradicating gun violence or fatal car accidents - we'd actually accomplish something important and lasting. Not to mention communal.

Ersatz Wisdom

I'm feeling bombarded by bumper-sticker wisdom (an oxymoron, I know). It's everywhere! On the aforesaid bumper stickers. On coffee cups and paperweights. In email. Embroidered or stamped on those tacky framed homily things that hang in touristy stores full of kitschy crap. And littered all over social media sites, the online equivalent, it occurs to me, of touristy stores full of kitschy crap.

I guess it's OK for people to take inspiration wherever they can find it, but it's beyond me how anyone could find the following drivel* inspiring:

"If your goal doesn't make you just a little bit sick, then you are not reaching far enough."

"Act as if you have already achieved your goal and it is yours."

"If we set our attitudes by the days of the week, then our actions will remain the same continually."

"Knowing what to do is different than actually doing it."

"I act with balance in my heart. I speak with balance on my lips. I walk with balance in my feet."

"By thought, the thing you want is brought to you. By action, you receive it."

These little gems range from total gibberish to the sort of lame piffle only someone resolutely opposed to employing gray matter could find meaningful, inspirational or worth passing along. There is no legitimate response to this garbage, if you actually think about it, other than a bewildered "Wait. What?!?" or a sarcastic "Really? Ya think??"

I haven't even included coddling codswallop like "Mistakes are the route to success" or treacly tommyrot like "Just as the sun sets & we must find a way to let go of another day, the sun will rise with the promise of a new day & a new beginning." (I also haven't yet used all the synonyms for "nonsense" I can think of without consulting a thesaurus.)

Contrast all this balderdash, if you will, with the following pithy, profound and thought-provoking aphorisms:

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." Albert Einstein

"Example is not the main thing influencing others. It is the only thing." Albert Schweitzer

"The reward for conformity was that everyone liked you except yourself." Rita Mae Brown

"Amusement is the happiness of those who cannot think." Alexander Pope

"Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?" Sai Baba

And if we must have some treacliness: "The summit of happiness is reached when a person is ready to be what he is." Erasmus

I rest my case.

*I'd attribute these quotations if I could, but I've been scribbling them as I see them and, really, who would want his or her name attached to any of them anyway?

I'm a Guest Blogger!

Charlene Kingston, who will always be @Kinchie (her Twitter handle) to me, asked me to write a guest post for her elegant and useful blog, From the Crow's Nest. Obviously, I was thrilled, and today I am also feeling quite honored as I see my post up on her site, along with her generous introduction.

Pleas click over and read my post "Finding Career Happiness." I'd love it if you'd leave a comment on the post, but even if you're not in a commenting mood, do take the time to browse around and learn more about Charlene and her company, Crow Information Design.

The tag line for Charlene's blog is: "Finding the shortest distance between your message and your audience." Her company provides services that help companies and freelance professionals present themselves in writing for online and print media. Do you see why I'm so delighted to be guest blogging for her??

Ever the Iconoclast

I've decided to buck the social media trend and reduce the number of people in my online crowd.

I was never in it to rack up numbers anyway. My goal was and is conversation, not reach. I also don't mind the amount of time it takes to interact with my SM community even though it often takes more than I expected to spend.

No, my problem is that the prize isn't currently worth the price. My cost-benefit ratio is off. I'm irritated and annoyed too often. Sometimes, I'm actually angry. There may or may not be an upward limit on how many people one can legitimately befriend/follow/interact with, but too many of my folks aren't holding up their end of the bargain I thought we were making.

I want conversation. I want reciprocity. I want to read interesting, humorous, intelligent updates and click on thought-provoking, well written articles and blog posts. I want to be acknowledged and treated courteously.

I don't want to be bored. I don't want to be told the same thing 20 times. I don't want to feel obliged to read back in time to make sure I haven't ignored a friend, knowing and resenting that the friend has never once extended the same courtesy to me.

I don't want friends who recommend sophomoric or banal content. I don't want to read the work of writers who are evidently unaware that "it's" and "its" are not interchangeable, who think "lot's" is a word, who don't know the difference between "affect" and "effect," who can't spell. (I'm not talking about typos; I'm talking about people who "die" their hair or seek "resoprosity.")

In short, I want intelligent, interesting friends and requited friendships. Not numbers, not users, not talkers who never listen, not nonstop profferers of the self-congratulatory social media Kool-Aid, and not illiterates.

But wait. Who the heck do I think I am?

In social media, as in life, there's no percentage in holding other people to my personal rules of engagement. For one thing, it's not fair. One size doesn't (and doesn't have to) fit all. For another, no one died and made me king. Other people aren't wrong by reason of not defining friendship the same way I do. They're absolutely entitled to their own definitions, their own rules of engagement. The only person I get to be in charge of is me.

As I see it, I have three choices:

• I can roll my eyes and wonder what's wrong with people. Resent them for not having the kind of manners, writing style, intellectual sophistication or attention to detail I'd consider ideal. Feel ignored, unacknowledged and taken for granted as I meticulously read everything they offer even when it's obvious they are not doing the same in return. [Insert loud "Wrong Answer" buzzer sound effect here.]
• I can accept people as they are. Enjoy what they do bring to the party. Adjust my expectations and meet them on their terms. [Ding, ding, ding.]
  
• If my crowd includes people whose terms I can't manage to meet without excessive teeth-grinding and tongue-biting, I can walk away. Social media is to friendship what Las Vegas is to blackjack tables; it's always possible simply to get up and move to a more agreeable and satisfying table. [Ding, ding, ding, ding.]
  

How stupid of me to have spent even one minute choosing Option 1! How arrogant to hold others responsible for not making my choices while I blithely ignore my own responsibility for making them. How nice to have woken up!

So I'm culling my list. No judgment, no hard feelings - it's just a matter of placing the responsibility for tailoring my experience squarely where it belongs. On me.