To make a long story short…

Look, I don’t want to wax philosophic, but I will say that if you’re alive you’ve got to flap your arms and legs, you’ve got to jump around a lot, for life is the very opposite of death, and therefore you must at very least think noisy and colorfully, or you’re not alive. – Mel Brooks

I’m off flapping my arms and legs. Until I return, feel free to check out my archives or read a random post.

Quicksand and Sinkholes

Of the blogging sort, that is. Some people let their blogs linger on and on and others perform a radical blogectomy, deleting all their posts or even their entire blog. Several friends have lately decided to put a torch to what was their home on the Web. One of them routinely does so, along with almost all her other online accounts. It shouldn’t surprise me by now, but it still does. I sorely miss connecting with those online friends, many of whom I’ve known for close to a decade or more. On the other hand, other real life friends have taken up blogging with a passion and it amazes me they waited so long to do it. (Yes, SJ, you’re one of them. )

One of my favorite reads is The Pioneer Woman and her post on Ten Important Things I’ve Learned About Blogging speaks to me loudly, with the obvious exception of her second point, which I don’t think I’ll ever be able to stick to and maintain my sanity. (Have I mentioned that I have a brown thumb?) In spite of having a blog, I am not a writer by nature (I tend to express myself visually) and after 8 solid years of daily business writing, my personal  writing “style” has taken a serious hit. Worse still, at times it’s hard for me to find things that I think would resonate with my readers.  Heaven knows there’s enough WordPress.com memes around (Plinky and Post a Day for example), but I find I’m not much of a joiner and tend to go off in my own direction and certainly at my own pace.

There’s a crazy number of blogs online these days, somewhere around 30 million on WordPress.com alone, and finding the blogs that speak to you is an enormous challenge. So if I haven’t said it lately, I’m thankful for each of you that takes a few minutes to stop by my little salon. Coffee?

When Good Social Networks Go Bad

“When we use a social network religiously, we feel a sense of ownership. Which is what the social network’s parent company wants us to feel: a sense of loyalty. But with that sense of ownership, we feel entitlement as well. Entitled to being part of the process of change, to be able to give our input before change happens, to be able in some way to control the change.

While some smaller companies do gather input from their users to determine modifications of their services, most larger ones, like Facebook, will make changes often, and seemingly at random. We’re left scratching our heads or panicking because of the potential negative impacts of the new changes on our social media presences.”

via Surviving Sudden Social Network Changes: Business Collaboration News «.

Posted, ironically, using WordPress.com’s “Press This” utility.

Sound familiar?

WordPress.com is not the only social network where I’ve experienced this kind of change. All the icons above represent services that I started using way back when they still felt like close-knit communities, flickr and last.fm being the most painful transitions thus far.

The kind of heated discussions that we’ve seen in the WordPress.com Support forums and elsewhere during the last few months over implementation of reblogging, the 30-minute “Under Review by Staff” delay and such like are all symptoms of the collision between a rapidly growing service and those of us not directly associated with it who may feel, correctly or not, a certain amount of “entitlement”. As a for-profit business, I have no doubt that WordPress.com will continue to go through major changes and have made a conscious decision to “keep calm and carry on“.

But it won’t keep me from thinking that it’s a failure for everyone concerned when a service no longer listens to its most devoted users.

We Stand Strong Together-Reflections on September 11

The WTC from the Observation Deck of the Empire State Building-2000

Memorial NYC-2002

The top photo was taken late in the summer of 2000, not long before our eldest was drafted into the IDF, when we visited the US for the first time together as a family since returning home to Israel in 1990. The kids weren’t exactly thrilled to be in New York. They were ready to go home after 2 intense and enjoyable weeks of DisneyWorld and visiting with family in Minnesota. None-the-less, we took the ferry and toured the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, walked through Central Park and along Broadway to Times Square, checked out the viewing decks of the Empire State Building and the WTC, visited Pier 54, saw the UN, the Guggenheim, ate dinner in Chinatown; in other words, we did all the usual touristy things. And then we went home and the memories of our trip to the US quickly faded into the background of our daily routines.

Almost exactly one year after our return flight home from JFK, at about four in the afternoon, my husband called to tell me to turn on the TV, that there’d been some sort of aviation accident in New York City. The first images I saw on TV were of smoke billowing out the side of one of the World Trade Center towers, accompanied by hesitating and uncertain commentary how such an accident could have happened. This went on for a while and then another plane flew into the 2nd tower. My disbelief slowly turned into anger and then disgust at what I was seeing.

Stories of loss and survival, heroism and sorrow were told in the days after the hijackings on 9/11. Many of us realized for the first time how vulnerable an open society like the US was and how easy it was for someone to intentionally turn that openness against us. The anger and frustration many felt were expressed in bigoted, ugly acts against newly stamped Americans who had themselves escaped from extremist or oppressive regimes. As the granddaughter of Russian immigrants, those acts, while few, made me feel ashamed to be an American.

Now, nine years later, recalling that day brings up emotions just as strong and an additional one, regret. Regret that it took such horrific acts to shake the US out of its stupor; regret that not everything that followed was carried out with the same pureness of purpose that the deaths of more than 3,000 people mandated; regret for the continued bigotry and hatred.

Five or ten years from now one can only wonder where the aftereffects of 9/11 will have taken the US and the world in their wake. If we forget the ideals that made the US a beacon for so many of our forebears, then I fear it will be a dark path. I would hope instead, like the sentiment expressed in the flag above, that we would choose to stand strong together.

Two Scoops and a Dollop of Karma

Flashback to late 2009: After several months of again being unemployed, my husband suddenly lands two job interviews. During the first interview he is asked how old he is (“Logan’s Rerun” anyone?) and whether he’s capable of working 12-hour days (which made us laugh since that’s the norm in hi-tech management). The second interviewer seems genuinely interested in his skill set since they are looking for someone to bring their current product (!) up to UL compliance and lead product development.

To make a short story even shorter, after starting to work for the second company he discovers fairly quickly that all the important cards are held by the person from whom the company took away responsibility for product development. Ouch. Things go from bad to worse and then, a phone call and job offer… from the Company that let him go seven years ago.

Friends tell us, “Be happy that he’s returning to the Company”. I am infinitely thankful that my hubby is again employed and in a place where many faces are familiar. But after living out of the proverbial suitcase for the past seven years, I admit to being a bit wary. In this particular circumstance there is a good chance we’re looking at yet another layover on the road to somewhere else.

In a comment I left on my earlier post, “Logan’s Rerun”, I mentioned that I’ve reinvented myself job-wise so many times that I occasionally have to check my ID card to make sure I’m me. But then again, I’ve never had a “career” (other than a broad service-oriented one). I think reinventing oneself is infinitely harder for someone who has invested their heart and soul on working in the field from which they graduated and in which they worked for most of their adult life since then.

Gaping Void, by Hugh MacLeod and released by him under a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 License

(Make sure to read the comments on Gaping Void for more perspective from another over-50′er trying to get a grip on a changing world.)

There’s no doubt that in such an employment environment as this, one has to be creative not just in day-to-day problem solving, but also in one’s approach to life. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Editor’s note: The above image is from Hugh MacLeod’s website @ http://gapingvoid.com/2010/07/03/the-only-way-to-keep-your-job-nowadays-is-to-constantly-re-invent-it/ Unfortunately, due to the PicApp image on the front page of this blog, the link to Hugh’s original post has been taken over by PicApp. This behavior doesn’t appear in the single post.