The Fear™, and Life's Terrible Truth(s)

Last night, in conversation with a Highly Successful Ridiculously Wise Investor: So you brought your life and your business to a whole 'nother country, where the culture and the language are different from everything you know and understand. Weren't you scared?

Me: Yeah, but I'm still scared. I'm scared every day. I am starting to think this 'fear' thing never actually goes away.

HSRWI: YES! It never does.

I guess depending on your worldview, the above revelation can either be highly motivating or the exact opposite extreme. In the event that you don't know what to think, have some ideological Cheerios.

Humor me ››

Happy Bastille Day

Here is a story about liberation.

In 2006 I had a fairly cushy office job that I contemplated leaving in pursuit of a bohemian dream. This day three years ago, 14 July 2006, I stepped into the elevator to head home for the night and found myself facing a super-giddy guy.

We probably shared the elevator a handful of times before. He asked how my day was and I said it was fine. I asked how his fared and he replied with haste, almost as if he'd been waiting to say it: "I resigned today."

"Oh yeah?" I said. "Was that your choice or were there problems?"

He toyed with his answer a few moments before replying. "They made me some offers," he said slowly. "They wanted to make it hard for me to leave. But it was time to go." He raised his eyes to mine. "Really, I was already gone."

"Then congratulations," I said. He gave me a long look and asked if I was happy, addressing me as if we'd had a long rapport. That's one of the luxuries of knowing you'll never see somebody again.

My responses were brief; I felt pressed by the knowledge we were running out of time, but wanted to be truthful. He listened with peculiar interest.

We exited Oakland's Central Building together and walked down the same block. At a corner near BART we said good-bye. "I'll see you," he said. "Actually, I guess I won't." He half-coughed, half-laughed, and walked off without looking back.

I waved. A week later I filed for vacation time; a month after, I left for Paris. It took another year to leave for good.

Image details: Prise de la Bastille by Jean-Pierre-Louis-Laurent Houel.

No A for Effort.

Lib-Arts kids want credit for trying hard.

Life isn't Full House, and if you can't get the job done, it's in no one's interest to rub your back and give you props for spending precious time. Suck it up and -- hey, while you're at it? -- SUCK IT UP.

---

Notes on image: “Four Women Crying” (c.1878). Tintype photograph, via.

The Dirty Knife Allegory

A few days ago, a friend presented me with this scenario:

"What if you were dating a guy, and one night he came over to your apartment. You cooked him dinner, everything was fine, and when he finished eating he washed all the dishes he used -- except for a single dirty knife that was already in the sink when he arrived.

"How would you react?"

I answered from my gut: "It would be weird, but it wouldn't bother me. I mean, if you invite somebody over, he's not obligated to wash any of your dishes. So if he washed the ones he used, that's pretty much the bare minimum of courtesy, right?"

"This happened to me," he said. "My girlfriend invited me over for dinner, and I washed all my dishes except for her dirty knife."

"Why?"

"Because I feel uncomfortable washing other people's dirty dishes. It's like telling them they're not clean enough to meet my standards."

"I see."

"Anyway, she left me over it."

After a setup like the one he gave me, a statement like that is fit to make your eyes pop. But really it was an oversimplification: the girl treated the dirty knife like a microcosm of everything else wrong with their relationship, in particular his own emotional unavailability.

The guy wrote the situation off as one of those instances where you become so ruled by your own fears that you project them onto situations that don't mean much at all. Sometimes a knife is just a knife. But I've been obsessed with it -- what I've come to call The Dirty Knife Allegory -- ever since.

I presented the scenario to an ex-boyfriend in the same way the first guy pitched it to me. His response to the hypothetical love interest who wouldn't wash his dirty knife:

"Wow. That can mean so many things. For me it would indicate that I can't trust her; she's only out for herself."

For some reason this completely freaked me out: the fact is, I wouldn't wash the knife. I might wash the dishes I used, but then again I might not. I guess it's a matter of how delicate the social situation is.

Crucially, the Dirty Knife Allegory put a clear face on a personal fear: however good, ethical and kind I try to be, there's a part of me I think is fundamentally bad. It's the part that, as a kid, wished my parents would divorce. It sabotages my romantic relationships, or ferrets out -- and broadcasts! -- bad qualities in people I personally just don't like. It's the part of me that resents hippies -- and that, a year and a half ago, dropped a big rock on a crawdad in Fall Creek.

(I felt really crappy about that afterward.)

I can terrace or hide these aspects of myself, but they never really go away. This leads to the question of whether there's a core to someone that is fixed -- something they're born with, aspects of character that betray them in the little things they wouldn't consciously think to change. Like me not washing the knife.

If a piece of us, the essence of us, remains static, then you have to wonder: are some people born with counterproductive or antisocial characteristics?

Pragmatic people will argue that's subjective, and to an extent I agree. But part of me has bought into the idea that a villain can be born as well as made. However hard I've worked to be the kind of person I admire, there are still things I've missed, things that fall through the cracks. Like other people's dirty knives.

Verdict's still out on this, and it probably always will be. My guilt over what I am -- and the irrepressible sense of empathy I feel for Anakin Skywalker's bad rep -- are probably just things I'll have to get over.

Some social media grokking on the topic (non-Twitter responses come from Facebook):

Me -- "Wondering if there's an aspect to people that can't be changed -- however hard they try, however much they want."

@andrewlockhart: "I was wondering about that the other day. I think some things are just in the hardware. No amount of programming will help."

@woodswittdealy: "It's a good bet that the best and the worst are never going away--greed and selflessness--they're with us forever."

@jolieaodell: "If people can't change, I think it's because they don't want it enough or try hard enough. Sincere, diligent effort is IT."

Evan B: "people can change themselves with a tremendous amount of effort. like, herculean. however it's all case specific, so your chances are fifty-fifty."

William O: "you can't 'fix' people."

Atif C: "There probably are some aspects about yourself that you can not change, but you can change the behavior associated with them...."

No Room to Negotiate

Whenever I feel my circumstances begin to box me in, I think of something a friend said after a long afternoon of listening to me vent and swear:

Lower your standards or jump higher.

It struck me as devastatingly, stupidly simple -- but today, four years after he uttered them, the words still feel airtight.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Peering into uncertainty

Years ago my dad and I shared the same dentist: one young, handsome Dr. Kramer, whose friendly staff and general competence made it pleasant to have our teeth cleaned, X-rayed and otherwise manipulated.

The time came for my regular check-up, so I drove straight to his office after school -- only to find the door locked.

I peered in through the windows and experienced a mildly nauseating mixture of confusion and foreboding. The clock on the wall ticked the seconds off like always, and the receptionist inbox sat loaded with files and documents beside a telephone with a blinking red light. Magazines were spread neat across a corner table, waiting for antsy perusers; and a king-size water dispenser stood dormant, three-fourths full, paper cups at the ready.

But on the other side of the door, where letters were pushed through a silver slot, a pile of mail sat untouched, approaching knee-height. The office had apparently been deserted for weeks, maybe more.

I called Dr. Kramer's number but didn't even get a recording; just one of those messages that indicates the box is full. So I went back to my parents' and told my dad. He frowned, perplexed as I was. "I'll look into it," he promised.

A week later he called and said, definitively, "Looks like they're gone."

"Weird," I said. "Any idea what happened?"

A thoughtful pause. I waited for something scandalous but banal: tax trouble, a malpractice lawsuit, dental Rapture.

Instead he said, "Sometimes a person leaves his car parked outside his work, or maybe the post office, and disappears. Nobody knows what happens to him. Ten years later you find him in a different country, with a new family and a new life."

I was stunned by this elaboration. Instead of waiting for me to express the awkward "Hrm" rising to my throat, he powered on:

"That's what happens when you fail to plan properly. You fill up with regrets and do something you should've done when you were young, except now you're old and have responsibilities, and everybody thinks you're crazy."

Nothing from me on that one. After a heavy remorseful sigh, he moved in for the kill.

"That's why I always tell you to plan your life now. Get all your fantasies out of the way before you have obligations you can't escape." ...like a family seemed to linger at the end of this grand proclamation, but he didn't say it, and I didn't call him on it.

Months later we found out Dr. Kramer had relocated to a larger office in Lafayette, twenty minutes away from us. The damage, however, was done: dad found a new dentist, and the story he told -- that bizarre midlife escape scenario -- has played itself out in my mind again and again.

It's at least one of the straws that compelled me to pursue this Paris thing, which ironically annoyed him:

"We did everything to have you kids in a free country, and now you want to move to where they don't even have indoor toilets," he once sneered. (The toilet thing is an overstatement, but I chock it up to the intensity of his feelings. It must suck when your firstborn bids you adios and moves to the other side of the world.)

Three weeks have passed since I landed on French terrain. Here's a synopsis of what things have been like so far.

I visited Paris, essentially to stake it out, three years ago. I embedded myself in its rhythm, insofar as you can do that from a youth hostel, to gauge whether we'd mesh well. My memory of that period is unrealistically romantic: I made friends, stayed busy. My French wasn't great, but I felt I could survive.

Something in me's changed since then. On my first full day I was so terrified by the size of my undertaking -- living here, as opposed to being on vacation -- that I couldn't even bring myself to reciprocate Bonjour to strangers on the street. I was too scared to buy food, too intimidated even to utter "Pardon" when I bumped into other pedestrians.

I sought solace at the nearest cyber café and confessed all this to my friend Kito, who's been living in Germany for seven months. (We're ultra-chummy now because we more or less share a time zone.)

"Get over it," he said grumpily. "You have to at least eat something."

So I got over myself and went grocery shopping. It was not without its hazards (I didn't know where to put my shopping basket at the cash register, and everyone stared like I was a Martian), but it marked a victory: these days, I eat.

Now I oscillate between really discouraging moments -- like when the perfumier asked if I checked the bottle I was buying for damage, and I just stared stupidly -- and super-awesome ones, like when a woman on the street asked me for the time, and I gave it to her, or when I took the metro by myself (and transferred TWICE!).

I've also been lucky enough to tap into a small network of people willing to keep me company. Kito visited once, as did a friend living in Zurich; I have a Parisian friend, Alexia, who's enduring enough to let me hang out with her chums sometimes; and a few fellow expat/writers let me bootleg their wifi and sometimes even treat me to drinks.

So life is not bad. The biggest challenges? Living without being digitally connected 24/7. The general consensus is that it takes about a month to get internet access at home.

Heaven knows why it takes so long, but the telecoms seem to have no trouble finding ways to stretch the wait. After waiting three weeks and counting to receive a setup box via post, SFR sent over a letter that read, "Congratulations! Your request for internet access has been approved. You should receive a box in the mail within days of this mailing, and our technicians will ensure you are set up within three weeks."

I was all, You gotta be kidding. Three MORE weeks? Comcast back in Walnut Creek took 48 hours, and I thought that was heavy laggage.

Things have progressed since then. I should have wifi access by Wednesday, fingers crossed.

But being 'net-free hasn't been all bad. I go out daily on a quest for "weefee," and as a result found Sesame, a homey café by the Canal St-Martin, where the proprietress lets me futz around on my laptop and partake of her quiche all day if I want. I also spend a lot of time with an expat friend who lives close to Montorgeuil, where you can apparently buy some kick-ass cheese.

The walking is doing me good, and so has life without elevators. (My flat is on the fifth floor of a building -- 95 steps up. I count them twice a day, sometimes more, on my long way up and down.)

And because the language barrier obviously limits opportunities for engagement, I spend a lot of time alone, doing things I never do: staring out the window, preparing dinner, cleaning my apartment, listening to the radio and reading.

To echo Kito: "Life has become a lot quieter." More poetic, sure, but definitely quieter.

On Sundays everything is closed (with the bizarre exception of IKEA and restaurants), so the solitude I typically only experience for a few hours during the weekday compounds. When I finally get out of bed in the morning (...afternoon), Sunday is prime for aimless rambling.

Around every corner is a bookstore with a poetic name: L'Arbre à Lettres, Les Cahiers de Colette, Mona Lisait. Each is outfitted with its own aesthetic, its own altars raised to the authors it worships. I feel a compulsion to buy something from all of them, so my whitewashed bookshelf is far less empty than it was last week.

I also made the requisite pilgrimage to Shakespeare & Co. It's good to be surrounded by English volumes I'm intimately familiar with, coupled with a looming sense of anticipation: one day something I write may be sitting there, waiting to infuse some other naive scrivener with purpose.

To wrap this up, here's a stack of handy-dandy French words and expressions.

• se connecter à internet -- to connect (oneself) to the internet
  
• carte sans fil -- wireless card
  
• prise -- electrical outlet
  
• carte SIM -- sim card
  
• wifi (pronounced weefee) -- wifi
  
• blogeur -- blogger
  
• la pub -- advertising (short for "la publicité." "I work in advertising" would be "Je travaille dans la pub." Get it?)
  
• marketing -- marketing
  
• télécharger -- to download
  

Non-techie stuff:

• sans doute -- probably
  
• sans aucun doute -- without a doubt (thanks, Olivier)
  
• enterrement de vie de garçon/jeune fille -- bachelor/bachelorette party. The phrase translates to something like "funeral for the life of a boy/young girl"
  
• tant qu'il y a la vie, il y a l'espoir -- as long as there is life, there is hope. This is from Alexia, who's been teaching me a lot of proverbs.
  

Sometimes, to be funny, she also repeats ad slogans: "Il a free, il a tout compris!" And if you want to know what that's all about, you'll have to Google it. Or, well, tune in next time.

On the Quest for Absolution

Happy new year!

Benj and I returned on Friday from a three-week stint in California, where we furtively shared my gilded (and now embarrassingly leopard-print)* childhood bed -- and my sisters, to my chagrin, introduced him to Mario Kart Wii.

I have always hated Mario Kart. It takes everyone from me.

Little happened in California that was especially notable, except that we ate out a lot, forgot how to exercise, played tons of board games and saw a passel of movies -- including:

• Slumdog Millionnaire - a satisfying watch, even if the whole "cherchez la
  femme" thing is overplayed. It's Bollywood, bitch!
  
• The Tale of Despereaux - the casual destruction of a great children's epic. I don't know if you read the novel, but that vegetable creature that pops out of cookbooks? THAT'S TOTALLY MADE UP. And for WHY?!! WHY would you throw a vegetable spirit into a story, willy-nilly?
  
• The Curious Tale of Benjamin Button - dragged a little, but overall a chewy and engaging piece of cinematic taffy. I'd buy the DVD, sure thing, and whip it out for scrubby friends that come over and (unreasonably) want entertaining.
  
• Seven Pounds - I totally guessed what Will Smith's character wanted to do with all those sick and disabled people. Also, neither the film nor Wikipedia explains where the "seven pounds" reference comes from. (In Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, a stickler merchant demands seven pounds of a debtor's flesh when he can't repay in coin. So unless you already knew that, by film's end you'll still be sitting there going, "Seven pounds...?")

California was also one social event after another. I had a list of people I wanted to see, and Benj had places he wanted to visit. We tried navigating all that in addition to the parties my parents brought us to -- both scheduled and at random. (At some point -- and yes, at random -- they even took us to a hospital to visit my uncle, who experienced an unexpected near-fatal reaction to either a flu shot or Mexico. It was Benj's first time in an American medical center. His verdict? "Much like the English ones.")

Under these conditions it was difficult to work, so I avoided it as much as possible, compensating for productivity lost by drinking copiously. On Christmas Eve there was a family party, raucous as usual, reprised on December 31st. At ball-drop my uncle played YMCA and everyone burst into dance. Like every year prior, we ushered the new year in with jingling pockets, violent hand gestures and The Village People.

Glazed over with the charms of an '07 vintage of The Prisoner, I swirled my glass and tried to focus on resolutions for 2009. For the first time EVAR, my mind drew a blank -- frightening in its immenseness. Have I run out of ambition?

Grasping for straws, I asked Twitter what its resolutions were. Les réponses suivent:

• #1 quit smoking #2 no drinking until credit card is paid off.
• run at least a 1/2 marathon, heard HARO is pulling a team together. more travel.
• drop 30 lbs. and get back into wing chun training.
  

It's the stuff you hear every year, noble nonetheless because the goals belong to other people and not me.

My dad -- the guy who said Paris would deprive me of brain food -- once told me a person must work tirelessly to perfect four major pillars if he wants to live life to the fullest: mind, body, spirit, finances.

I hit a point two years ago where I was fairly happy with the condition of all four. It isn't clear what stupidity or lack of foresight convinced me of that. But it occurs to me now that at this point in my life, all the pillars could use renovating.

This year I started dancing the tango, but otherwise don't exercise much; I'm reading a lot, but still feel my mental development is in a dangerous stasis; finances could always use some work (I came home from CA with twice the number of shoes I had when I left); and my spirit...? I don't think much about it. It's the privilege and the bane of being in your 20s: Michelangelo didn't reach earnestly for the invisible Saviour until close to death, and even then -- do I still believe in the concept of God?

At Watershedapalooza last October, somebody asked me whether I did. "I grew up an Evangelical Christian, but I guess now I'm agnostic," I said, sensing that's the closest a person can get to rational precision. Spirituality is outside the realm of science; there are no yardsticks to either prove or disprove a transcendental experience.

The guy who posed the question nodded thoughtfully and said, "Yeah, I was agnostic at your age. You'll grow out of that." It seemed flagrant at the time, but my head keeps coming back to it -- what is my stance on the God thing? Do I remain open to the idea of God out of comfort, fear or force of habit -- and is it true that I'm slowly growing out of it?

For a girl who spends her time writing about ads and marketing, this probably seems like an irrelevant tangent. But I increasingly feel like finding the answers to these esoteric questions -- what do I believe in and why? -- are key to the direction I take next.

And speaking of direction, in less than two weeks I lift off for Paris -- a place I've wanted to live, and around which I tailored the flexibility of my career path, almost my whole life. The why is muddy, but that's a whole 'nother dissertation. Benj and I will spend the next several days showcasing my personality-stripped bedroom to people, selling tenants on a dream I once inhabited.

I still have trouble explaining the Paris thing to people; drunkenly I explain it thus: "Man, it's like there's a string tied to my bellybutton, and something in Paris is pulling it, and I gotta find out what that is." Sober, I write it off as emo writer crap: why not make a pilgrimage to the Mecca of Henry Miller, Sylvia Beach, James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway? It can't hurt, and it's nowhere near as random as my inexplicable leap to Ithaca, New York.

Maybe the reason I had so much trouble drumming up my own resolutions is because 2009 is already pre-loaded with opportunities for dramatic, tumultuous change (and hopefully growth). Given everything I'll be forced to experience and (at times re-)examine, it's probably not the year to quit smoking just yet.

---

*There's something about animal prints that captures the imaginations of earnest mothers from coast to coast. It seems my mom swathes everything in some sort of jungle flesh.

Disabilities (Can) Yield Competitive Advantages

Dyslexics make great entrepreneurs, says BusinessWeek. (Eh?)

Charles Schwab is cited as one example.

Well, while we're on the topic, don't even get me started on the benefits of Asperger's for engineers and technicians-to-be.

Okay, "benefits" is a strong word. But being possessed of a "healthy" mind lends us the luxury of cognitive laziness. I don't know much about living with dyslexia, but I do know that having to live with a sense of distrust for the way your mind works forces you to examine things more closely than most people would.

And learning to communicate with a person with Asperger's is an useful exercise in discovering how heavily people rely on semantic shortcuts, body language and restricted code in order to deal with each other.

A person with Asperger's will not comprehend the rationale for doing something unless you're able to clearly explain the methodology and its connection to the end result. For this reason, a number of them tend to excel in math or other "logical" pursuits.

On the Meaning of Occupation

"Should men and women, after all, be defined in any important way by their work? The answer, of course, is yes, otherwise the activities that largely support our lives and consume our time would be unfriendly, foreign, and irrelevant to us.

"Our occupation should not be something we visit like the seashore in summer or a prisoner in a prison, despite the fact that the work may be unpleasant [...] Even if it is like speaking a foreign language we haven't learned, that incapacity itself is totally defining."

-Foreword by William Gass, Stanley Elkin's The Franchiser

You Want Me to Do What?

Dude: "Why don't you do marketing for our band?"

Me: "You guys do fine with word of mouth; you're overcommitted."

Dude: "But you could help."

Me: "What do you want?"

Dude: "Just get us on the front page of the internets."

Why I Love Warren Buffett

They say Warren Buffett made his first stock purchase at the age of 11, a small number of Cities Services shares for $37 each. When the price hit $40 he sold, only to see them hit $200 some years later.

This allegedly taught him what it meant to invest for the long term. And not just in companies but in the people behind them, too.

One thing I admire about Warren Buffett's annual shareholders letters is their lengthy tell-all nature. You feel the same intimacy encountered when hearing the precious particulars of a good friend's life. He reflects, makes jokes and considers past decisions. He also takes great pains to explain the underpinnings of his methods.

After describing the past year's goings-on and some recent acquisitions including Business Wire, in his 2005 letter Buffett reflects upon the way Berkshire develops relationships:

Unlike many business buyers, Berkshire has no “exit strategy.” We buy to keep. We do, though, have an entrance strategy, looking for businesses in this country or abroad that meet our six criteria and are available at a price that will produce a reasonable return. If you have a business that fits, give me a call. Like a hopeful teenage girl, I’ll be waiting by the phone.

Berkshire does it for keeps.

Businesses aren't just currency machines. They're functioning entities with a culture and an ethos supported by people.

Two contributing reasons to Buffett's decision to join forces with Business Wire lived in company president Cathy Baron Tamraz's two-page letter to him: “As president of Business Wire, I’d like to introduce you to my company, as I believe it fits the profile of Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary companies as detailed in a recent Wall Street Journal article [...] We run a tight ship and keep unnecessary spending under wraps. No secretaries or management layers here. Yet we’ll invest big dollars to gain a technological advantage and move the business forward.”

A close watch on finances, coupled with the gumption to take educated risks, made strong recommendations. Let's add a third element: Cathy who, upon reading Berkshire's profile, wasted no time in developing what appears to be a straightforward, no-nonsense relationship from the get-go.

As a proponent of sincerity in networking I should first have mentioned how important I think it is to start yourself off right before even trying to develop relationships with others.

A responsible financial plan, where you don't spend what you haven't earned, may seem old-fashioned and conservative. But a chill attitude about credit will ease a young business out of your hands faster than you can lift it off the ground. Each debt you take on is like a blood pact against your business's strength. Is a blood pact something you really want to make at every open opportunity? The way you manage money reflects a lot about your character.

A willingness to look facts in the face, take criticism and scrutinize the raw elements of your enterprise are also critical. Buffett knows his businesses in and out. And as well as he knows the balance sheets, he knows the people running them.

Then there's the people element. You should never discount the partners and employees whose near-term destinies it will be to make your business a great one. Even if you don't know all the details of their kids, you should at least keep eyes and ears open to what they love, why they work with you and how they manage others - particularly your customers.

It's my opinion that these are the characteristics that put an enterprise at Berkshire caliber, bearing in mind it ain't Google. You're not looking to explode in a handful of years, you're building a solid foundation that many people can feel good about standing on, perhaps even after you're gone.

The conclusion to Buffett's 2005 letter includes the following admission:

Charlie [Munger] and I are extraordinarily lucky. We were born in America; had terrific parents who saw that we got good educations; have enjoyed wonderful families and great health; and came equipped with a "business" gene that allows us to prosper in a manner hugely disproportionate to other people who contribute as much or more to our society’s well-being.

It's not everybody who shares Buffett's net worth, or the sense of immense gratefulness and personal responsibility he exhibits to the people who make it possible and society at large. It merits noting.

Moreover, we have long had jobs that we love, in which we are helped every day in countless ways by talented and cheerful associates. No wonder we tapdance to work.

Oh yeah, that last thing. It helps to pursue something you love doing. Be passionate. Please.

I Just Don't Buy It

Let's forget about the Warrens, Bills and Steves for a second.

The Tila Tequilas, Larrys and Sergeis, Toms and Marks of this world say it loud and clear: there is no reason, absolutely NONE, that can justify this. (And I mean it. See Harsh Letter.)

The world is different. Nine-to-five was the dream of my parents' generation, a world where you put in cubicle time (two-thirds of your adult waking LIFE!), hit the bar and made babies. All for a good pension, a nice house and a decent social life.

That's not a bad lot. But it's no longer the only option. What's more, the excuses people made to get us to defer our dreams, excuses like, "There's only one Warren/Bill/Steve and millions of failures," no longer hold water when today's success story icons are racking up faster than we can learn their names - and they're getting younger and younger.

If we're honest with ourselves, we can find an outlet for whatever we want to do - and with streaming video, podcasts, blogs, wikis and tagging having turned us into actors, producers, editors, deejays and journalists, we have unlimited access to our own self-marketing arsenal.

We just have to be willing to take risks and commit to them.

To those who'd prefer to roll with nine-to-five, making this choice will look completely insane. That's okay. You have to consider that if you're going to lay claim to a personal passion, the majority is naturally going to reject the gameplan. But is the majority right? Look at where the majority is. Consider what you want.

Why the rant? Oh, no reason really. Aside from that the MySpace Empress herself just opened a casino. Tila's only 24, and there's nothing she did to rack up her fame that is inaccessible to us.

So beloved self-entitled Echo Boomers (meself included), please let's stop bitching and pull ourselves together. We're the most educated generation the US has seen thus far. We're more tech-savvy than previous generations. We want things our way and we're vocal about it.

We have all the makings of success. All we need do is want it enough to shoot for it. That's it. That's it and the world is yours. Ours. Whatever. Take it.

A 'Harsh Letter' to My Post-Collegiate Peers

In high school I had this one friend. If she ever felt my behaviour or thought process needed intervention, she'd look at me and softly but firmly say, "I'm going to write you a harsh letter." And she would, outlining carefully what she perceived to be my error and how, perhaps, I could correct it. She always concluded with a reminder of how awesome I am as a person in general, like a peppermint at the end of a meal.

Her harsh letters served as handy yardsticks for me. It is always good to get constructive criticism on how you're faring from somebody on the outside, particularly when you'd rather just complain about your sad lot in life and be sympathized-with.

In her honor, this is my take on the harsh letter. It is written, gently but firmly, for my peers.

Yesterday someone sent me an article about how college graduates have a hard time finding the kind of work they want in this economic climate. They're also strapped in mountainous debt and consequently moving back in with their parents. This article pretty much tells the same story.

Say hello to our generation: the self-entitled, the bewildered, the indebted. It comes as a major surprise for some that those diplomas might not have been worth all the blood, sweat and tears. Oh yeah, and money.

Here's my perspective. If you go to college and study aborigine art, then for some odd reason try to land a financial consulting job, you're not going to get jack unless you have work experience in that field or can demonstrate on the fly that you've got savvy in that arena. I don't know how else you expect to go about it in a rational world.

The old adage about how college is about studying what you want really only works in two scenarios:

• If you're willing to study what you want, which could be totally left of center, with the raw understanding that getting great work isn't about your degree; it's about selling yourself. That's tough and it requires some thought and skill-set development
  
• If what you want to study happens to be in line with what you're actually going to get work in. Judging from the stories coming out of the woodwork, apparently this is harder than it sounds
  

Serious about committing yourself to a profession? Plan your curriculum and start easing the door open before finishing school. Nail an internship. Get to know people on the inside. I don't buy it when people say they can't study and work at the same time. I did it and while I wasn't a fantastic student I still got what I needed out of college.

If you go into sociology, for example, and would like to write a book on social welfare or the effects of culture on society, that's fantastic. But don't come out of the educational incubator wondering why social welfare opps at $65K a pop aren't falling out of the sky back home in suburbia. Take that waitressing job, volunteer at a non-profit (YES! For FREE) and go write your book. There's no shame in that.

Ayn Rand said it best when she noted that wanting something doesn't automatically entitle you. Show the world how much you deserve your heart's desire. Show the world you're willing to do it just to do it, like breathing. Then the money comes.

Just my $0.02. Take it "until your $#i+ starts to make cents" as Jay-Z would say. And yeah, lit-lovers, that's a pun. (English minor over here. Can you tell?)

When all is said and done, we as people change and so do our interests. It's not like we're married to whatever we choose to do right after college. But try to prepare for at least that first gig.

If you've already graduated, be practical and think systematically about how to get where you want to go from here. You can't demand a powerful, high-paying dream gig for no other reason besides an unmanifested belief that you "earned" it over four years bent over books.

This concludes my harsh letter. And because I'm kind, and because you're awesome, here's a bit of optimistic news - just for you.