Incite Full

Pretty simple and quick drawing of a cartoon dragon I did for Stef. It’s kind of an inside joke between us, the dragons and the unicorns. Anyways, this is today’s creation, and we’ll see what I can put up tomorrow.

I’m trying to be more creative, either something that I value or simply for creativity’s sake. Here is the first of many “creations” I plan on making.

I was reading Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air (an amazing book so far) last night and a short passage really resonated with me. It was from Alone To Everest, by Earl Denman, and reads:

I grew up with an ambition and determination without which I would have been a good deal happier… I was not sure what could be accomplished by means of tenacity and little else, but the target was set high and each rebuff only saw me more determined to see at least one major dream through to its fulfillment.

It’s both good and bad that this quotation gripped me, as I see a lot of myself in it- the raw passion and ambition into which I want to channel my energy; the hope to create something lasting or greater than myself. Unfortunately, I fear my resolve, dulled by the rebuffs and disappointments, might not be strong enough to last.

These last thoughts made me wonder, is it better to have no ambition than only a little ambition? Surely Denman’s ambition was that of a demigod. I imagine his failures and successes were, figuratively, one step back, two steps forward. His each failure meant to him success was inevitable. But what about the rest of us? What about us (myself included) that see failure as worse than moving backwards,  seen as an ending, not as a direction? Those who put their passions aside because they aren’t the easy route, or aren’t a sure thing?

It’s obvious that the sure things aren’t the building blocks of  fame or legends. And that “nothing ventured, nothing gained” or any other parable you want to throw at it, are all well and good (and obvious). But that doesn’t make it easy to leave the comfort zone of routine and expectations. In this sense, no ambition is the ultimate comfort. One doesn’t dream of being anything bigger or better, or leaving the world a better place, so they don’t have the disappointment of not living up to those expectations levied upon themselves.

Left of that idea, are those (the majority) of us that have a little ambition.

Where did that ambition come from? Well, the last generation or two has been raised by parents all preaching the uniqueness and exceptional-ness of their children nearly non-stop. I was a product of this environment, the one in which every team in the league gets a trophy, lest we make some little tykes feel bad. Or the art show with 300 ribbons given out for honorable-honorable mention, and the teachers who say “yeah sort of” when they really should be saying “No, not at all.”  Look, I understand that we need to encourage our youth, and make them confident and have good self images; perhaps the people with no ambition are the ones who did not benefit from bolstered self-confidence thrown every which way. But we also owe it to our children to let them know the truths about the world, to let them know some people have more ability in one area or another, or that mistakes are made and it’s OK, or that, well, sometimes we screw up and it’s not OK.

I grew up with a near perfect model of success. My father did incredible things in the business world, and I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to match those feats. I understand this now, but for a long time, he would tell me that he expected us to be more successful than he, which was always my goal. Looking back, I shouldn’t have ever used a person I am so close to, and look up to so much as a benchmark for myself. Not only because it’s difficult to achieve that level of success, but the disappointment if and when I fall short is magnified.

I should rewind a bit and say that my father’s (and mine, begrudgingly) indicator of success is financial success. An indicator that will take massive amounts of inflation for me to overcome. I also understand there are other criteria for success that are not financial, but my brain is wired this way, for better or for worse.

I’m aware that only a handful of people in the world will succeed given my criteria for success, and there is a good chance I won’t be one of them. I think I needed to learn that earlier on, not that I couldn’t live a decent, hardworking, and rewarding life, but rather dreaming without the work and fortitude will end up making me wonder where time has gone, and why have we not all done the great things we wanted to do when we were young. The Offspring also wondered this same thing.

I’m not really sure how to overcome these feelings, or what these feelings really are. Inadequacy? Inferiority? Shame? Despair? They all seem a bit too strong for what I’m feeling, especially since I still have time to change.

Disillusionment.

Disillusionment is the feeling! That moment when you realize the world isn’t our oyster, when all the wills become could haves, and the dreams our younger selves had become more distant, both figuratively and literally. Like when you beat your dad for the first time in chess or basketball, and realize he isn’t perfect or invincible, and someone else’s dad could beat him up. When we start living to pay the bills and get work done, instead of pursuing the things that make us happiest, that is disillusionment.

I don’t feel this way all the time, but when I can’t find the words to write, or the pictures to raw, or the song to hum, my mind falls back to this thought, that I’ve been blunted not by failure, but by the thought of failure.

What I do know, however, is this: no one cares if I fail. Sure, if I screw up  huge project at work, that’s not good, but in my personal life- if I don’t take the best pictures ever, or write the great American novel, or cook the tastiest meals, these don’t reflect poorly on me, and anyone worth hanging out with won’t hold it against me either (on the contrary, the ones who tell you are the ones worth keeping around).

And it’s not too late to turn it around. I don’t necessarily need to exceed my dad’s expectations, but rather change my criteria for feeling successful and whole.To meet my own expectations and to look back and feel good about the decisions I’ve made and the time I’ve spent. This I can do.

The quote above is supposed to be inspirational. I’m not sure it inspired me, but it did make me think about a lot of things that have lived in the outskirts of my subconscious. These feelings of disillusionment and failure, however slight, are not healthy for the soul. And if a paradigm shift is needed to overcome them, to be able to breath easy and feel a sense of accomplishment from within, then that’s what I’ll do. That is the dream I will see come to fulfillment.

WordPress is great. And a lot of people use the free blogging service they supply for writing those cool updates and sarcastic posts bashing the latest Michael Bay film. I, however, run my own version of the blog and use it a little differently than most people.

In fact, a majority of the post I make never make it to the light of day, as most of them are private. The reason I do this is I use WordPress to save a bunch of different things, journal entries, writing prompts, and photos on my site. I have a bunch of pages set up that feedback all the posts matching a certain category (for instance, the “Writing” tab in my header is a collection of all my posts with the writing category. All of that is rather straight forward, but what you don’t know, is that when I log in I see a bunch of extra tabs for private pages up top.

I don’t like the security risk of “password” protected pages, because that lets the public know that something exists. Something I don’t want them to see. So I publish private pages and changed some word press code to display those to logged in users. I should note that I’m the only user that logs into this site, so I can see everything once logged in, there is no need for levels, such as user, contributor, and administrator, but the following code is malleable to that as well.

in $WORDPRESS/wp-include/post.php file

There is a line in the “get_pages” function that looks like this:

$query = "SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts $join WHERE (post_type = 'page' AND post_status = 'publish' ) $where ";

Just below that line, add in the following code:

if ( is_user_logged_in() )
{
$query = "SELECT * FROM $wpdb->posts $join WHERE (post_type = 'page' AND (post_status = 'publish' OR post_status='private') ) $where ";
}

UPDATED for wordpress 3.0:

There is a line in the “get_pages” function that looks like this:

$where_post_type = $wpdb->prepare( "post_type = '%s' AND post_status = '%s'", $post_type, $post_status );

Just below that line, add in the following code:

if ( is_user_logged_in() )
	{
	$where_post_type = $wpdb->prepare( "post_type = '%s' AND (post_status = '%s' OR post_status = 'private' )", $post_type, $post_status );
	}

This now checks to see if a user is logged in, and if so, will output private pages to the caller of this function (usually wp_list_pages()).

That’s all there is to it. Be warned, it might will get overwritten during WordPress updates, as I have not gone to version 3.0 yet, and this seems like a feature they’ll add at some point.

Of the many qualities that described me when I first began work, the one that I see most universally amongst my peers is the inability to say no. I’m not talking about saying no to drugs, or to taking candy from a stranger. No, what I’m referring to is the “can you do it” question that is, for all intents and purposes, unanswerable by someone just starting out. No is such a loaded word when you’re first starting out- is it rejection? Is it disappointment? Is it unexpected? Is it unimaginative? Is it the last word you’ll say at your brand new job?

When I started work, I was asked my professional opinion on a lot of things, most of which I could only respond with “I’ll get back to you.” A good question is usually asked by other engineers or other developers: How do you do this? Did you think about this? Why does it do that? These are questions that I like, they rely on things that I know or have dealt with before. They are ones on which I can draw from my immense (ha!) experience. Compare that to, say, a manger’s question and you can instantly feel the your feet moving- feel that? That’s the earth shaking. It’s a question like “How long will this take you?” or even worse, it’s a question that has the dreaded binary, yes/no answer. “Can you do it”, is by far the worst question a new hire can be asked, and the reasons are all summed up above with those implications we attach to our response.

Or maybe this whole “no” thing comes from confrontation-avoidance. While this is a whole other topic of conversation, my generation has been raised to think they are the most special people in the world, and any dent in this (mentally created)  armor might cause far away universes to die. But I digress.

As a new employee, I was eager to prove myself, as were many of my peers I’ve since talked to about it all, by becoming dependable and have that “get-it-done attitude”. If I said no, I’d be setting limits on my ability too early and without actually knowing what they were. Of course, we should let the answer be the truth, and not let our emotions or view of what that means move us otherwise. If the answer is disappointing, perhaps the question should be rephrased (re-scoped) or maybe they should ask someone who is more qualified, which is sometimes a staggering few people, as it turns out. But I felt I’d be sending a clear message that other people were better suited for certain tasks than I was. I wasn’t about to let that happen, and as it turned out, I got in over my head pretty quickly.

Now, maybe other people inherently have the ability to say no to certain tasks and people, but I wasn’t one of them, but part of me feels, in retrospect, that I shouldn’t have been asked some of these questions. It’s not that the project failed or I didn’t meet my deadlines, but I had to kill myself to do a few of them. At some point, people need to know what new employees don’t know, or at the very least, multiply what they think the effort will be by 2.5 (at least).

I’ve learned my lesson in one respect, I know my time lines a bit better than before. I still think I’m the right person for every job floated my way (this both a product of my self-perceived talent as well as the nature of the “find your own work or you’re out” job market). But it’s hard for me to say no when people ask me to do something- i might say that it’ll take me a while, but I’ll still say I can do it. I want to do it. I still am young and need to prove myself. And maybe I should let me work speak for itself, but the more that’s out there I feel the louder my words will be- and when something is particularly exciting to me, I don’t want to pass it up.