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‘Spent’ Poetry in Music by Amy Speace & Nielson Hubbard

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Amy Speace is a songwriter. A graduate of Amherst College and a former touring member of the National Shakespeare Company she now lives in East Nashville, Tennessee. In The New York Times article, ‘A Singer-Songwriter, Just Trying to Make Do’, she describes the economic impact of gentrification on the lives of artists and the inspiration for her new song, ‘Spent’.

“…many of us working-class musicians, painters, artists and writers live a precarious financial existence of our own choosing. When I got together with Neilson Hubbard, a writer and producer, to write a song about a financial turning point, it was easy for us to look around at ourselves and find our subject matter.”

Spent

Come take my hand let’s walk to the end of this rainbow

Do you think that we’ll ever know

Where to find all that gold

Once I heard someone singing a dream we could have and hold

Something of our own

A place to call home

We’re head over heels

In over our heads

We borrow and steal to pay the rent

How we gonna save any money when it’s already spent

Years keep rolling the houses keep falling like dominoes

They’re throwing up condos

The for the old

It’s not enough to hear your own song on the radio

When your credit is far below

What they need for a loan

We’re head over heels

In over our heads

We borrow and steal to pay the rent

How we gonna save any money when it’s already spent

Can we stay or do we have to go

Could this be the end of the road

How we gonna save any money…

We’re head over heels

In over our heads

We borrow and steal to pay the rent

How we gonna save any money when it’s already spent

Amy Speace/Nielson Hubbard 2015

What your surroundings tell you about what you really want to do with your life.

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You go to work every day. You engage in the work, interact with colleagues, manage your social network and maybe check your ranking in your NCAA bracket. At the end of the day you head to the gym, a class or home for dinner. You are so immersed in the dance of work/life balance that you may be ignoring clues ‘close to home’ that hint at your next career move.

I was following one of those compulsive tangents the other day, you know the one where you read a classic novel and then you check IMDB to see if there was a film and then you are looking at trailers and watching interviews with directors and cast. Before you know it, time has passed, but you really have come away with a nugget of valuable information.

The book I was reading was ‘A Passage to India’ written by EM Forster in 1924 and I found that the movie had been released in 1984, which then brought me to an interview broadcast on the TODAY show in the early 90s with the film’s director, David Lean.

He describes his father’s ambitions for him to be an accountant. But a visit from an aunt and her observations changed his life. “I went back to visit my mother and an aunt who was visiting commented,”I see heaps of film books here, but no accountancy books. Why doesn’t he go in for the movies?” Why not? It was a tremendous barrier broken. And I went to my father and I said, “I’d like to go into the movies.”He was shocked. I just wasn’t done in those days.”

David Lean viewed his career in film as “a secret magic place”. It took an outside observer to connect the dots to his dream career. And it provided him with the courage to overcome his father’s objections.

Look around. Invite a guest in to describe what they see in your home or office.

Allow yourself time to follow a tangent and pay attention to your surroundings. Here lies the hint of your future.

Knowing when to leave…

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

One of the most difficult workplace decisions is choosing to leave a job you love.

This past week, Chris Borland, an American football player with the San Francisco 49ers announced his decision to leave the sport he loves after his first year in the NFL. This was probably the most public resignation from a dream job in recent memory. It reminds us that even if we love what we do, we need to constantly monitor workplace reality to maintain ownership of our career.

In an interview with CBS’s ‘Face the Nation’ program on Sunday, Mr. Borland said, “The decision was simple after I had done a lot of research and it was personal. I was concerned about neurological diseases down the road if I continued to play football, so I did a lot of research and gathered a lot of information and to me the decision made sense.”

For some of us, dangers in the workplace to both our health and our well being are the catalyst for change.

Former QVC host, Lisa Robertson, appearing on Good Morning America, shared her history at the shopping network and her decision to leave after 20 years. Her visibility and celebrity resulted in multiple stalkers threatening her life outside her workplace. “I would just lock myself in my house and then go to work.” There was no quality of life outside work.

For most of us, it starts as a doubt, an observation, a sense that something is not quite right.

Financial guru, Suze Orman in a Linkedin ‘Pulse’ interview described her decision:

“About a year ago, something started to change. I woke up one morning, and I knew that it was time to end the Suze Orman Show. There was no external trigger; just a feeling that I had shifted, not the workplace.

Could I have ignored that feeling and just keep on keeping on? Sure. But that would have been so disrespectful. To myself, and most of all to the viewers. I never wanted to give less than 100 percent. And let’s face it, if you stay on for the wrong reasons, your eventual exit will likely not be on your own terms. I wasn’t going to fall into that trap.”

Something had ‘shifted’. As we mature along our career paths, we are changing as the workplace changes. We revise our definition of success and dream fulfillment over time. If we are true to ourselves and ‘respect’ our calling, we have to know when to leave.

External realities can erode the dream until you arrive on a Monday and find you are living in a career nightmare. For Chris Borland and Lisa Robertson the consequences of pursuing their dream jobs far outweighed the benefits. For Ms. Orman, her experience reflects a process of transition that resonates with many. It was just time to go.

Her advice to trust your gut and let go offers the promise of transition.

“I can think of no more important career advice than to listen to your gut and to own the power to control your future.”

I am so excited to see what the future brings — I almost cannot wait to go to sleep at night just so I can wake up the next morning to see what gifts lie ahead.”

You may love your job. You may love what’s next even more.

The week @ work March 16 – 22

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This week@work invited us to broaden our thinking with ideas from TED and SXSW, a suggested reading list from Mark Zuckerberg and a David Remnick pick from The New Yorker archive on the creative life. Using a variety of online resources and social networks we can construct an individualized professional development curriculum based on our interests and career aspirations.

On Friday The New York Times included a continuing education ‘special section’ in their print edition. In the lead article ‘That’s Edutainment’ reporter Greg Beato described the growing phenomenon of “the academization of leisure: casual learning propelled by web culture, a new economy and boomers with money.”

In a companion article, Peder Zane asked the question, “If you can know it all, how come you don’t?” He goes on to report on Jonathan Haber, a “52 year old from Lexington, Massachusetts” who is attempting to “meet all the standard requirements for a bachelor of arts degree in a single year.” And he is doing it by selecting from a menu of online offerings from Harvard, Yale and Stanford, chronicling his experience in a book and of course, online.

This past week folks came together to discuss ideas at the annual TED conference and celebrate music, film and interactive at SXSW.

You may categorize all these formal and informal experiences as ‘edutainment’, but I would suggest that lifelong learning, often promised, is finally here. And the topics discussed are widely relevant to today’s workplace.

Visit the TED website and access presentations recorded at the conference. One of the most compelling, Monica Lewinsky on our ‘culture of humiliation’. The Washington Post political reporter Chris Cillizza summarized the key point of her talk: “For nearly two decades now, we have slowly been sowing the seeds of shame and public humiliation in our cultural soil. Gossip Web sites, paparazzi, reality programming, politics, news outlets and sometimes hackers traffic in shame. Public humiliation as a blood sport has to stop. We need to return to a long-held value of compassion and empathy.”

And on the SXSW site, you can view film maker Ava DuVernay encouraging her audience to pay attention to their intention. She takes the audience on a narrative of her early success and then cautions from experience: “The dreams were too small. If your dream only includes you, its too small. If that dream is just about the thing you want to accomplish and you don’t even know why you want it…it’s to small…When you win awards and the light is on you, that’s not gonna be enough. If we limit our visions to those things outside of us to validate us, we’re making an intentional error that might very well bring the outside thing you want, but will bring hollow in the end.”

Online, lifelong learning allows us to make connections beyond our comfort zone, sparking new ideas and important conversations.

The availability of a variety of content online in a global economy where the majority does not have access to the innovators and great thinkers is a good thing. It’s a source of career inspiration for the young, professional development for the worker and sustained intellectual engagement for the retired.

Closing the week, David Remnick in his ‘Sunday with the New Yorker’ email recommends a selection of stories from The New Yorker archive on ‘The Creative Life’ including a 2007 profile of the British graffiti artist Banksy.

Mark Zuckerberg’s Year of Reading Dangerously

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Most of us have given up on our New Year’s resolution as the calendar turns to spring. But Mark Zuckerberg is well on his way to keep his promise to read a book every two weeks with the announcement of the sixth book in ‘A Year of Books’: ‘The Structure of Scientific Revolutions’ by Thomas Kuhn. This is not Oprah’s Book Club. Aspiring entrepreneurs who one day hope to achieve Mr. Zuckerberg’s success are quickly learning that the content of his choices is not for the faint of heart.

Professor Kuhn argues in his book “that transformative ideas don’t arise from the day-to-day, gradual process of experimentation and data accumulation but that the revolutions in science, those breakthrough moments that disrupt accepted thinking and offer unanticipated ideas, occur outside of normal science.” 

Disruption? Didn’t a couple of Harvard professors invent that idea a few years ago? This is why we read books written 53 years ago. It humbles us with the realization that we are not the inventors, but actors in a greater historical narrative.

The other books picks have been published more recently and are thoughtful meditations on our humanity, creativity and change. I’m sure many are attempting to decode a pattern in the book selection rather than accepting that Mr. Zuckerberg is seeking a better understanding, as a reader, of the challenges we face, and as a leader, understanding the broader context of the global community that is his customer.

The first five books selected:

‘Creativity’  Ed Catmull with Amy Wallace

‘On Immunity’  Eula Bliss

‘Gang Leader for a Day’  Sudhir Venkatesh

‘The Better Angels of Our Nature’  Steven Pinker

‘The End of Power’  Moises Naim

Why do we read books recommended by leaders and celebrities? Maybe to get a sense of how their reading habits led to their success. That’s where we start. But it’s where we go from there that personalizes a reading list to expand our understanding of the world beyond our community.

Follow the tangents, the annotations you make in the margins to discover both the old and new in your world and your profession.

 

 

 

 

‘The Workforce’ – A Poem by James Tate

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How often do you find yourself in negotiation with management and suppliers to acquire the resources necessary to meet your objectives?

In the poem ‘The Workforce’, Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winning poet, James Tate creates a dialog about the ‘resources’ needed to complete a job. It’s up to your imagination to visualize what these workers are trying to accomplish. To perform their task they need a variety of supplies…and women. We are left with the question: Are the women motivation to work or are the women workers who will help complete the task?

In a 2006 Paris Review interview Tate described his process: “I love to take a poem, for instance that starts with something seemingly frivolous or inconsequential and then grows in gravity until by the end it’s something very serious.”

The Workforce

Do you have adequate oxen for the job?
No, my oxen are inadequate.
Well, how many oxen would it take to do an adequate job?
I would need ten more oxen to do the job adequately.
I’ll see if I can get them for you.
I’d be obliged if you could do that for me.
Certainly. And do you have sufficient fishcakes for the men?
We have fifty fishcakes, which is less than sufficient.
I’ll have them delivered on the morrow.
Do you need maps of the mountains and the underworld?
We have maps of the mountains but we lack maps of the underworld.
Of course you lack maps of the underworld,
there are no maps of the underworld.
And, besides, you don’t want to go there, it’s stuffy.
I had no intention of going there, or anywhere for that matter.
It’s just that you asked me if I needed maps. . . .
Yes, yes, it’s my fault, I got carried away.
What do you need, then, you tell me?
We need seeds, we need plows, we need scythes, chickens,
pigs, cows, buckets and women.
Women?
We have no women.
You’re a sorry lot, then.
We are a sorry lot, sir.
Well, I can’t get you women.
I assumed as much, sir.
What are you going to do without women, then?
We will suffer, sir. And then we’ll die out one by one.
Can any of you sing?
Yes, sir, we have many fine singers among us.
Order them to begin singing immediately.
Either women will find you this way or you will die
comforted. Meanwhile busy yourselves
with the meaningful tasks you have set for yourselves.
Sir, we will not rest until the babes arrive.

James Tate, “The Workforce” from Memoir of the Hawk: Poems. Copyright © 2001 by James Tate

SXSW – Creativity and Convergence

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This week Austin, Texas is the vortex of the worlds of interactive, film and music. SXSW organizers have created an event that should encourage those who believe the arts are endangered. And for those whose dream job fits into the artistic, entrepreneurial and creative, the Texas state capital is the place to be.

This year Jimmy Kimmel is broadcasting his late night show from Austin and Rand Paul has been showing up at meet ups and receptions.

SXSW was originally staged as a music festival in 1987 and as the Austin economy grew to embrace film and technology companies, SXSW broadened its’ mission adding the interactive and film conferences in 1994. SXSWedu joined the program in 2011 and this year has grown to a four day conference for educators to connect and drive innovation in how we teach and learn.

In an interview with The New York Times, festival director Hugh Forrest described the essence of the festival:“South by Southwest is always about up-and-coming talent, be it a band or filmmaker or technology developer, and that holds true in 2015.”

‘Convergence Day’ provides an opportunity for all attendees to mix at meet ups and panels and discuss cross disciplinary topics including the topic of “Music As Personalized Medicine”.  Using research findings that 18 hours of music a week can have a significant effect on physiology and well-being, “This session will pilot a new technology and begin the largest living experiment to analyze how the music you’re listening to impacts your health.”

There are also practical conversations. Tom Sachs, the internationally-acclaimed contemporary artist and Carter Cleveland, CEO of Artsy discussed ‘Is Good Business the Best Art?’ on Sunday. Their discussion wrestled with the question many face; Can you be successful and not sell your soul?

Current hot industry topics also find a platform with panels on ‘Content, Copyright and Commerce’ and ‘Compensating College Athletes for Their Likeness’.

SXSW is a visible demonstration of barriers collapsing. We live in a multidisciplinary world where imaginative connections create new business opportunities.

While TED in Vancouver is the tightly scripted corporate event, SXSW is organized ‘happenstance’. By bringing together innovators in a variety of creative enterprises, the event captures boundless energy with a soundtrack for the future. It’s March Madness without the brackets.

 

 

 

 

The value of TED in a distracted workplace

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

The sold-out TED Conference began yesterday in Vancouver. If your invite was lost in the mail, for $500 you can follow the entire conference on the live stream.

This year’s theme, ‘Truth and Dare’ challenges attendees to join a “quest to magnify the world as it might be. We will seek to challenge and reshape our core beliefs about today’s reality, but also to celebrate the thinkers, dreamers and mavericks who offer bold new alternatives.”

For critics who have likened TED to a revival meeting complete with evangelical speakers, this statement of purpose does seem to support their observations.

Before TED I thought ‘curators’ worked in museums and ‘thought leaders’ guided religious cults. But now my view has been broadened and I realize almost any experience worthwhile is ‘curated’ and ‘thought leaders’ are just folks whose publicists were more aggressive than the competition.

Criticism aside, TED provides a snapshot of where we are as a global culture, shining a spotlight on global issues in technology, entertainment and design. In 18 minute presentations, experts communicate an issue, suggest a solution and issue a call to action. Each video is professionally produced, with each speaker receiving coaching on image and delivery. Has the life been produced out of the presenters? Possibly.

For me, I view TED as a platform for online learning, a place to start research before delving more deeply into a topic.

It’s the rare employer who provides professional development programming in-house today. TED offers an introduction to important topics in ‘sound bursts’ that fit neatly into a workplace of distraction. This is where you can maintain your currency with trends and events. The TED Talks are one source to supplement your ability to talk for five minutes on a topic as you engage in conversations with colleagues and clients.

Here are three of my favorites:

Sherry Turkle: Connected, but alone?

Elizabeth Gilbert: Success, failure and the drive to keep creating.

Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts

 

Bracketology for the job search procrastinator

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

It’s that time of year, ‘March Madness’, when everyone, including the President is selecting who they believe will advance to the final four in the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball championships. With a little imagination and humor, you can apply the bracket concept as a way to narrow down your career interests and begin to identify potential employers.

Let’s say you are totally confused and quickly losing your confidence in the process. Everyone you know seems to have this ‘career thing’ mastered while you’re still floundering.  Where do you begin? Try categorizing your interests using the bracket system. Instead of four regions, fill in four career fields that might interest you. Identify sixteen possible employers in each field. Go to each organization’s website and get a sense of how they describe what they do and the culture that enables their employees to succeed. Utilize social networking sites to identify folks you may know who are employees in your selected organizations or have contacts that could be of help.

Your goal in this first phase is to access a basic level of information for comparison.

As you progress with your research, you will begin to eliminate some organizations in favor of others. Once you get to your ‘elite eight’, schedule your information interviews. As you talk to people you will begin to establish a realistic assessment of your chances for success in an organization.

This ‘elite eight’ forms your target list. By the time you have narrowed your selection to eight, you should feel comfortable that each employer presents a realistic next step in your career.

As with any selection process, you don’t have complete control of the outcome. The employer extends the offer and you have the choice to accept or continue to explore other options.

The NCAA tournament lasts three weeks. If you start filling in your career fields now, you will advance the exploration process at a pace to be ready for interviews by ‘tip-off’ in the championship game.

 

 

The week @ work March 9 – 15

Eileen Kohan Leave a comment

It’s amazing how many people cede their career decisions to the whims of others: high school students who select a college based on prestige vs. fit, college students who choose a major considering only the return on investment and mid career professionals who take residence in their comfort zone and lose connection with their network outside the organization.

There are many things in life where we have no control, but our career success is a result of the effort we apply to setting our goals and making them happen. Read any profile of an individual who has achieved their dream and you will learn of hard work, determination, failure, resilience and a bit of luck. These are folks who ‘own’ their career despite skeptics and critics, building a support system to enable their success.

This past week we suggested some ideas to jump start your decision process, reclaim ownership of your career.

First, write a letter to your younger self. What have you learned from your experience to this point? What is important to you? What were the ‘big’ things that seemed to matter at the time, that now, in retrospect, had no impact on your future.

Next, create a collage. Visualize your life in photos. Include all the things that describe you, and then broaden the picture to include the social influences and finally the reality of the workplace. Here is the narrative at the starting point. Who you are, who is influencing your decisions and how your goals will play out in the world.

Reflect on your experiences with a journal of life and work. Record your experience in real time and select intervals to go back and review: after a month, six months, a year. We are so consumed by the urgency of the present that we often miss patterns over time.

Clarify your ideas in conversation with others. Get feedback without abdicating ownership. Many have charted their career path before you and there is wisdom to gain from the stories of others.

Outline your plan and set it in motion.