I spent a big chunk of the weekend digging into the Wordpress software.

As a result, the site has a new theme, some reworked pages (including some new graphics), and a horde of widgets.  I had a good time, and it took my mind off the cold that I fought most of last week.  Now it’s early Monday morning so I’m late to bed, but I sure feel better than I have in many days.  I’m actually looking forward to going in to work tomorrow, and I’m looking forward to blogging more on the redesigned site.

We were vacationing at the beach with some friends a few years ago when I learned the truth about economics.  Sure, I’d had Micro and Macro and Monetarist Theory classes in college, but this lesson was something else entirely.  My friend Dane, who is one of the smartest people I know, was the co-instructor.  The other teacher was my own experience with nature.

The point of the lesson was simple: there is no escaping nature’s cycles.  For the past few decades, the public has been told that the stock market will never crash again.  In these modern times, there are too many safeguards built into the financial markets and overall economic ecosystem to allow that.  Bull!  Or, more appropriately, Bear!

Perhaps it was being at the beach that week and seeing the wind, the waves, and the tides in action:  all three forces operating with unimaginable power, just as they have for millenia.  But listening to Dane’s analysis of the world economic system–plus seeing nature’s powerful cycles in action right before my eyes–led to a resounding certainty:  we were on the verge of a major economic “event.”

As Dane explained, there were a lot of technical and fundamental analyses to back this up, but the real reason is simple: it’s all part of the cycle.  The stock market is the ultimate confidence game: literally, if investors are confident that there are good times ahead, stocks go up; but if the future isn’t so bright, the markets will go down.  And, on a particular cycle of about four generations (i.e., 80 years or so), certain cyclical conditions align that make a decline in the public’s mood a near certainty.  If the public ain’t happy, then ain’t nobody happy.

If we go back 80 years from today, it was October 9, 1929.  Although the roaring twenties were still roaring, there were plenty of dark clouds on the horizon and later that month…well, we know what happened.  By the way, about 10 years later there would be a war.  Roll back 160 years ago and it’s about 1850.  In 1850, the US was expanding rapidly and the economy seemed to have entered a never-ending growth stage.  As with 1929, 10 years later would see a devastating war nearly split the country politically and destroy half of it economically.  Flash another 80 years and you’re in the decade of the 1770’s and the American Revolution.

My point is that we’re due for a drop in public confidence and, considering the precarious position of the world economy in terms of debt, energy prices, debt, home mortgage problems, debt, corporate greed, and DEBT–it’s likely going to be a major adjustment.  Today the Dow Jones Industrials closed at its lowest value in over 5 years.  My prediction, and I hope I’m wrong, is that this is going to get worse before it gets better.

I’ve much more to say on this topic in future entries.

One of the best things about slowing down, even a little, is regaining the ability to say “Yes.”  Today I was scheduled to assist with a training session for a half-hour or so, until a student worker would be available to take over my role.  When she bowed out due to illness, I was asked to stay for the entire 3 hour session.

At HP, this would have been out of the question; with insufficient time to keep up with core, assigned tasks, how on earth can one give up 2.5 hours of prime, morning “real estate”?  That’s why it felt so good to look at my schedule and say, “Yeah, I can do that.”  It was good teamwork, and training is an important part of what we do in my group, so it made sense.

As it turned out, we had nearly a full class and it was a lively and productive session.  I was very glad that I had said “Yes”.  Best of all, I feasted on the positive energy all afternoon: I only had one unchecked “to do” left on my list at day’s end and that was a stretch goal anyway.

Life is not meant to be lived under the gun.  Time is a precious commodity, for sure–but we all need to learn to slide gracefully from task to task, and to keep some open spaces on our dance cards.  This will allow us the option to say “Yes” every so often, and the clearer perspective afforded by slowing down will allow us to choose our dance partners wisely.

Today was the worst day that I’ve had at my new job.  It’s been about six weeks since I started and it’s been a blast!  I’ve thrown myself into learning the technical, interpersonal, and political components of my new role and it’s been wonderful.  In retrospect, the nearly two months off that I took over the summer were incredibly therapeutic and really helped me store up some creative energy to bring to the new job.

Today was the worst day because something went wrong late last week, I didn’t know to check it, and I had to write an email to the user community and tell them we wouldn’t have an update today.  That’s it!  The problem should correct itself tonight and we’ll be back on track.  Yes, I was being sarcastic–it was a comparatively tough day, but that’s because the rest have been pretty darned good.

The way I think of “slowing down” does not, in any way, preclude hard work.  But work, to paraphrase Shakespeare, “makes a good servant and a poor master.”  Working at HP had become physically painful.  It seemed that I was expected to work more or less any time of the day or night, and–to have any hope of keeping up–all the in-between time, as well.  We joked that “work/life balance” had gotten much simpler: 100% versus 0%.  The work, for the most part, wasn’t even something I enjoyed or even felt qualified to do.

This was hard work to a destructive degree (see my earlier post, “Hopes and Fears” for more info on the destruction).  I submit that hard work can also be healthy work, if we acknowledge certain truths.  Chief among these truths is this:

“Work has a point of diminishing returns, where an hour’s investment returns only a few minutes of productivity.”

My curve of productivity, relative to time invested, falls off sharply after 8 hours.  What would be a low-productivity time outlay at work can turn into a great, and restorative, experience by going home, working in the yard, authoring a blog, or exercising.  Work can be as psychologically addictive as food, or booze, or CSI:Miami.  It’s often tempting to just stay another hour or two and “wrap things up.”  In my experience, this is a seductive mirage.  Too often I’ve found myself doggedly staying on some task, feeling my mental acuity and physical stamina ebbing, and knowing that I’d accomplished very little in the past hour.  Staying until 7 turned into staying until 9:30 and, worse yet, all too often the clear light of morning revealed that last night’s work was unnecessary or fatally flawed.

Instead, I am trying to learn to do a productive wind-down at a specific time.  This involves bringing the work to a logical stopping place, leaving myself “flow notes” to help ramp up into a productive pace quickly the next day, saying goodnight to my co-workers, and then still making the bus without running.  I’m only a C student where this practice is concerned, but I’m staying at it.  And that “staying at it” is how I hope to slow down in what seems to be an ever-accelerating world.

A phone call last week changed my life. At 9:04 a.m. on August 18, 2008 I got a job offer from Oregon State University! This was the job that I’d been pursuing since Memorial Day, the same one that I interviewed for in late July.

The bad news about the offer–the only bad news–is that the starting salary is less than half what I was making at HP. But Amy and I can live frugally and both kids’ college expenses are already taken care of for the year. Plus, the pay raises can come very fast if the work is good, so there’s considerable incentive.

Other than the salary, everything else looks great! The job, the team, the manager, her manager, the location, etcetera, etcetera… I’m really thrilled with the possibilities.

There’s also some interesting psychological ramifications to the new job and especially to the environment at OSU versus that of HP. More on this later, as it’s a topic that merits some deeper consideration and perspective.

Suffice it to say that, for now, I’m very content with the situation and optimistic about the future. Those two basic things are all I need for the moment.

“Hope is a good thing–maybe the best of things–and no good thing ever dies.”

So goes my favorite quote fromThe Shawshank Redemption. As much as anything, my recent departure from HP was due to my fear greatly outweighing my hope–as it had for several months. But in my case, Red was right, thank the Great Spirit!

What was I afraid of?  A number of things, I think, but the biggest was that I did not believe that I could do the job assigned me and, despite all indications to the contrary, I feared that I would be found incompetent.

I fear being thought incompetent more than I fear death.  Really.

QBQ*: Why did I feel so incompetent?  Because even though I had been in my support lead role for over a year, I did not feel as though I had made any progress in gaining deep understanding of the applications that I supported.  Considering the hundreds of emails, instant messages, and todo list items on my plate, there wasn’t time–and I felt that there never would be. This situation provided perfect growing conditions for what became a truly noxious weed.  The seed was my particular set of insecurities, the light was provided by the innumerable transformational changes going on at all levels of HP, and the nourishment was the certain knowledge that my job would relocate to Texas next year–with or without me.

(Insecurity+workload) * transformational change * impending job loss = FEAR

Fear begets stress.  Not the healthy stress of being challenged or stretched, but the unhealthy stress of feeling vulnerable before the world and unable to make progress or even defend oneself.  It’s a credit to my boss that she kept me propped up for months, believing that I’d turn a corner to find I could afford the time to learn, to grow, to gain the expertise whose absence was the root of my problem.  When the anxiety attacks, headaches, and nausea (my trifecta of stress symptoms) made work inherently unhealthy, I knew I had to do something drastic.  So after 23 mostly good years with HP, I quit.

I wondered, as my end date approached, if I was just fooling myself.  Perhaps I had just become so stodgy and irrelevant that I couldn’t cope with work and life at the same time, no matter where I went or what I did.  In fact, could I even cope with being “between assignments” (a.k.a., unemployed)?  For better or for worse, I packed a few boxes, handed in my ID, and drove home.  It was a sunny midafternoon.

Enter hope.  It’s been two weeks now, and I feel great!  Lately I’ve been focused on doing well in an upcoming job interview with the local university–a job that I want very much.  More on that later.  But even in the first couple of days, the fear drained away and hope rushed in.  Hope…and something else.  Call it ‘resolve’, or even ‘confidence’.  I began to believe that I could find a new job and that I still have a lot to contribute.

Within the first 24 hours after I pulled out of the employee parking lot for the last time, the color returned to my sight.  I could hear the birds singing.  I could feel the sunshine of my family’s love.  And it all felt very, very good.  This good feeling served as a stark contrast to where I must have been, if these sensations felt new to me.

Now, I not only have that good feeling, but I’m challenged and stretched to do everything I can to earn this job at OSU.  They want someone that knows their way around data warehouses, someone that can do analysis, design, coding, and support.  Someone to provide training.  Someone to listen to the end users and show them how they might do things better–and take back their good suggestions to the technical team for future development.  Now, this is the kind of work that I love!

Wanting something that is out of one’s control is risky business.  It’s all too easy to convince yourself that it’s yours for the taking–and then, too often, comes the bitter reality that it was never really yours.  Then again, if we do not want, if we do not work toward fulfilling that want, what is life?  The drive to reach for the next great thing is, I believe, the major reason we are human.

I want the life that will be made possible through this new job.  I want it for myself, for my family, and for all of my friends at HP that are in pain similar to mine.  Life is good, and can be even better.  I will try for this job with everything I have and if I succeed, it will be great.  If I fail, I will do something else.

My hope towers immeasurably over my fear–and hope, which may be the best of things, lives.

* "QBQ" = "Question Behind the Question"

Leaving HP has been a whirlwind, from several perspectives. First, there’s the wonderful feeling of freedom!! Second, the feeling of floating along without anyone to help and support you. Third, there’s work on the nuts-and-bolts stuff like COBRA that needs doing. I’ve gotten caught up in all of it, so learning Wordpress has had to take a back seat. I’ll try to blog more as I get the chance and work through some of this stuff. Overall, though, I’m enjoying this summer tremendously–even when it feels like I’ve jumped off a bridge into freezing water.

Today is July 4, Independence Day in the United States.  Yesterday was my last at Hewlett-Packard (HP) after 23 years of service, mostly in the Information Technology (IT) arena.  There’s been a lot of ups and downs, as you might expect in that timespan, and I’ll probably write about both.  For now, though, my main focus is on finding a new job–not a simple feat in a small (~50,000 population), northwest US college town.

Considering the conditions of the job I’m leaving (a big part of which is how I feel about the company and my role in it), this is a move I need to make right now.  My goal is to find success at a slower pace than I’ve been expected to keep up at HP.  Something will turn up, I’m sure of it.  I don’t know why I’m so confident about this, but I truly am.  And, while I am sure that there will come a time when any job looks pretty good, I’ve got to admit that taking a few days or weeks to mostly unwind is looking pretty darn smart right at the moment.

Ah, summer!