Skip to main content
OK, so lately I have been getting ever so slightly peeved when I am around other seemingly "progressive" types, if that's really a type of person at all. I have been frustrated because I couldn't figure out exactly why I have been getting annoyed. I mean, we're all on the same side, right? I would find myself reading an e-mail and getting agitated to the point that I just wanted to delete the e-mail, and pretend it had never popped into my box. It finally dawned on me. It's a syndrome I am going to entitle "liberal bureaucrat syndrome." This is when people, rather than trying to support an idea with activities like actually doing something become involved by making suggestions of things for you to do. Or, the most irritating habit to me, people making extended critiques of all things done by others in the past, from a safe and distant vantage point. I realized that it's not so much people bossing each other around that annoys me (although I'm still not crazy about that), it's having to hear an endless stream of chatter from people who are either not creative enough or too scared to do something for themselves or are too lazy to even try. I recently heard it described as the insertion of middle management into an activist movement, which is really dead on. A politically incorrect way to say it may be "too many chiefs and not enough indians." I read some punk rock lyrics recently that went something like: ideas flow from deeds, not the former from the latter. I totally agree. Personality and charisma based movements are over, and we sure don't need any more bureaucrats, self promoters or ego freaks. OK, so I'm done complaining now. Back to the struggle.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Starting Over

Reboot of the Blog I'm winding down my Facebook use. That whole destruction of democracy thing weighs on my soul. I know that it's probably impossible to give it up completely. Social media is like oxygen in our disconnected society as well as the general precarity of our jobs. But I am committed to using it less and less and definitely not getting my politics and news from it. So, I'm going to bring this blog back and start using it to corral some of the things that I am reading and share them out. I'll probably set up an email list too for anyone who's interested. I'm sorry that we're having to go back to walled gardens, but between foreign disinformation, surveillance capitalism and generally more challenges to social media use, it's going to have to happen. Even this blog content itself is product that someone is monetizing. I'm going to start using some of this extra time I'm now blessed with to explore alternatives to "free" ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Managing Through Plateaus and Disappointment

This is the hardest thing I struggle with. And I struggle with many things. I'm constantly amazed at how feedback (or the lack of it) drastically impacts me. I'm very motivated by positive feedback in general and very demotivated by a lack of feedback. I’m actually slightly less demotivated by feedback poorly given.  So, I take this as a challenge to me. Of course, I can complain about the delivery or quality of the feedback, but it seems more constructive to inoculate myself to it, especially when it comes from those with whom I disagree with or don’t share their perspective. The best feedback comes from those who a) have actually viewed what I've done over time and don't rely on one sample, b) give me meaningful points to build on and finally c) have struggled to build skills themselves versus having some degree of natural aptitude or demonstrating that they indeed need to practice.  But the problem is being too driven by feedback, good or bad. That means you are ...
Post a Comment
Read more
Since I spend about 75% of my work time either in or thinking about New Orleans but live in Austin, I am often asked to compare the two places. I spent the last five years of my life as a highly visible, highly vocal booster of New Orleans, so many people I meet are surprised when they hear that we have settled, at least for the near term, in Austin. For Cassie and me, the decision to stay in Austin was pretty easy. We didn't have any assets to protect in New Orleans. Our house was pretty thoroughly destroyed so there was no hurry to come back. We also wanted to find some degree of stability for our son; New Orleans is a dynamic place right now and since he had already spent about a fourth of his life in evacuation/gypsy mode, we decided we would try to give him a rest. So we arbitrarily chose Austin off the map. It was a reasonably short drive away from New Orleans. It was the only really progressive city in Texas. Much like New Orleans, it's a blue island in a sea of...
1 comment
Read more