Each day provides an opportunity. My focus has been to move forward. What's behind me is known and tired. Moving forward is moving into the dark (for about fourteen hours a day this time of the year) but that is just fine.
Shoes...
My daughter is a shoe junkie. Yesterday she looked at my Columbia pseudo-hiking shoes and commented "those are the kind of shoes that South Minneapolis liberals wear...when they want to look cool. You know." After my blank look she added "well...you do chainsaw things and stuff like that so it's OK. They're nice."
When I was a kid we really did not have much. "We" was my mother and me. There was a good pair of shoes for school and perhaps church and shoes for play and buckle boots for winter. Whenever I buy shoes now I want to hold back. Two pair should be enough. About a decade ago when I started to post things on the web, probably before "blog" was common place I did a shoe inventory. My intent was to keep it up to date indefinitely. I failed. I did, when interviewing people, start to ask people how many pair of shoes they owned. Women easily were in the 50-100 pair range. Men topped out at a dozen. I'm not sure how many pair I own now, but I know that I have at least four new pair in boxes in my closet that may never be worn unless I go back to a formal job. My daughter made me think about my shoes. Today I'm wearing a really comfortable pair of Red Wing oxfords. They are pretty dorky. There is another new pair in the closet. I'm going to make sure that I can wear either Columbia shoes or Red Wing shoes at my next job. It would be interesting as the interviewee to ask what kinds of shoes were acceptable.
A few years ago our "operations management team" would meet monthly to discuss important issues about running the company. One memorable meeting of executives included a ninety minute discussion of how much cleavage was acceptable for women and whether flip flops were acceptable on "casual Fridays." At ninety minutes I interrupted and said that it had been the silliest meeting I had ever attended and stood up and walked out. Shortly thereafter a memo came out detailing the acceptable amount of cleavage and guidelines for acceptable and unacceptable flip flops. I concluded that not only were men obsessed about controlling women's lives they were more concerned about controlling the lives of those with cleavage than those without. Along with asking about shoes I'm going to ask if there are more detailed dress code details for women than there are for men.
you know this guy, right? an amazing story and good stuff. might be some ideas for you.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.jamesaltucher.com/
i liked how he went and read first, then wrote. when you live with no sense of time its easy to slip off course. a self imposed schedule is a good tool. also, i've never owned 100 pairs of shoes. and flip flops are not appropriate attire for the barnyard. come to think of it, i never wore them in my tech job either and we set the bar pretty low.
did you owe your son something for missing a day?