Kern Carter's Blog, page 172

Don’t Rush Your Writing

A lot of people message me randomly asking for advice about writing. While my answers are always specific to their questions, one thing I find myself repeating often is “take your time.” Writing is easy, writing well isn’t. It takes patience and rounds of editing to make sure your message is connecting.

I know there’s something to being prolific and it’s OK to strive for higher output, but don’t do that at the expense of quality.

Here’s where I find most people struggle — whether it’s an article, short story, or novel:

Titles — For whatever reason, far too many writers don’t put enough emphasis on their titles. This is a huge misstep. Titles largely determine if a reader will give your piece the time of day. It’s your first impression. Take the time to make sure it accurately describes what they can expect and that it also has some kind of cleverness or personality.

Your idea isn’t fully thought out — When trying to connect with your reader, ideas must be clear. If there’s any ambiguity in what you’re trying to say, or if you really haven’t taken the time to articulate your thoughts concisely, then readers will be disengaged. As a rule, you shouldn’t be releasing anything the same day you write it.

Just some food for thought. Happy hump day!

C.R.Y

Don’t Rush Your Writing was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Thomas Edison’s Theorem for Success

In the 1920s, a journalist asked Thomas Edison how it felt to fail 1000 times in his attempt to invent the incandescent lightbulb.

He replied, “I didn’t fail 1000 times. The lightbulb was an invention with 1000 steps.”

Humphry Davy actually invented the first electric lamp. Cool, nerdy information in case you have an argument with someone about lightbulbs.

Thomas Edison was relentless in his pursuit of inventing the incandescent lightbulb. He worked 10-hour days in his lab and an additional 5-hours a day on problem-solving.

That’s dedication.

Of course, not everyone back then had Edison’s willpower and brainpower to pursue something.

But he was on to something. He realized the potential for something and worked tirelessly to achieve it.

He formed incredibly strong willpower to succeed in his invention. His success was formed with habits, not just passion.

A century later, everything has changed, especially when it comes to forming habits & how we think of progress.

Our culture wants instant success. We demand it.

We see successful social media gurus and entrepreneurs like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg, and we believe we can be just like them.

It’s true, we can. It just so happens we give up after step 5 instead of step 1000.

We blame technology aka Google and Apple for making us lazy. When anything can be found in the click of a button we now call it “research.”

Instead of blaming technology for corrupting us, we should relearn the process of what makes anyone successful, specifically what made Edison successful.

I call it the Thomas Edison Theorem.

Forming habits

It takes 66 days to form a habit before your new behavior becomes an automatic habit.

And if you are trying to form a new habit, you’re going to have to break some old ones. Studies show that to successfully break a habit requires the strongest motivation.

Studies indicate that these habits are essential to success:

· Read about your market. And read in general.

· Keep a journal of your what you’ve read, from quotes to lists.

· Wake up early (not as easy as it sounds).

· Exercise. Not just mental exercise, physical exercise.

· Prioritizing.

· Don’t wait for the ideal conditions to work.

· Minimize distractions — social media & emails.

This list isn’t the end all be all to forming habits, but it’s a start toward finding success as an entrepreneur or a freelancer.

I’ll be the first to admit, I struggle with each one of these habits. Yet I know I’m more productive when I wake up, go on an early morning jog & then start work, rather than sleeping in and starting work.

I’m now more used to the habit of waking up early. It’s made me more productive to what I’m trying to achieve.

How many of us when we first wake up check our social media, our email, play a quick game of Words with Friends, and then realize 30 minutes have gone by?

Admit it, you know this is you because I know this used to be me.

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur or freelancer, it requires habit forming.

If you’re an entrepreneur, it’s because you have a vision. Nobody, however, will see you as a visionary unless you actually do the work, which requires forming habits that will determine your success.

Redefining Progresshttps://medium.com/media/800a8fda766db517063ba686a75c3312/href

C.S. Lewis defined progress as getting nearer to the place you want to be, even if it means taking a wrong turn and turning back.

You may feel like giving up, that you’ve made no progress. Fret not. Also, ignore the fact that I actually said fret not.

What I mean is, don’t worry about your mis-steps. It could be the financial setbacks, the clients you’ve lost, pursuing the wrong career, saying fret not, or something else.

If you realize these mistakes and learn from them, it’s progress toward your ultimate goal.

Edison didn’t think of every mis-calculation as a failure. He perceived it as a learning step toward creating something visionary.

What are you doing to pursue your goal?

Anyone can be satisfied in the 9–5 job, with an annual salary of 50k with benefits. It doesn’t require getting up early, exercising, or even reading.

If you don’t want that, and you have a passion to create something that makes you either an expert in your field or an entrepreneur, then it takes something much more.

Here’s an example:

You may want to open a coffee shop in your city because you like making coffee and people like drinking coffee.

That simple? Not quite.

You will have to understand market trends, pricing, average population age of coffee drinkers in your city, finances, hiring employees, and basically anything else that comes with running a coffee shop.

This all requires becoming an expert in your craft. That requires breaking habits and forming habits, and understanding every mis-step you make is only a step toward progress.

This is the Thomas Edison Theorem.

Thomas Edison’s Theorem for Success was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

“You Can Only Listen To A Live Album Once”

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.” –Jack Kerouac

In 1975, I walked away from a free ride in college to be a professional musician. I moved back to KC from New York, got married, and started to wedge my way into the local music scene. In those days, a guy could make a living playing six-night-a-week gigs around the metro area; you just had to figure a way to break in to the clique of players who had the jobs.

Your dues got paid in local jam sessions until somebody picked you up for a gig. By 1977, the only successful “wedging” I’d done into the business had landed me a modest schedule of students at a strip mall music store and a guitar player’s chair in a dart-board-band hired out by a local agent. (You called them dart-board-bands because you’d get these one-nighters where you’d swear the agent had found the gig by throwing a dart at a map of the local region.)

The other challenge that had grown and festered had everything to do with my musical skills. In retrospect, ‘paltry’ is the most charitable description of my playing. I could cop most records… kinda… but copying guitar licks from disco hits didn’t feed the musical aspirations that took me out of school. Luckily, I hooked up with a teacher in the spring of ’77 and I ended up studying with him for the next 17 years.

“People copy me so much. I even hear them play my mistakes better than me.” –Jimi Hendrix

John Elliott was a KC legend of sorts. When friends heard I’d gotten on his waiting list they’d always tell me to stick with it if I got on with him. “John Elliott taught Pat Metheny!” That’s what they said. Later, when I asked him about it, he assured me that he had only helped Pat. John said: “I helped as best I could, Pat DIDN’T need a teacher.” Funniest thing about John and the Metheny legend… and the line of guitar players on his waiting list because of it… he didn’t play guitar. John played piano, composed, and arranged big band charts. He’d been the music director for the Playboy Club. Sexist anachronism that it was even then, music director for the Playboy Club was a big deal if not THE biggest deal for a residency gig in KC.

Musical goals for John appeared deceptively simple. He showed me a lead sheet one day and said: “You’re trying to learn how to read and play this solo. You need to know how to improvise a solo over this lead sheet, or any lead sheet, solo… by yourself. If you can’t ‘realize’ a tune in all of its creative potential by yourself, other players, the ones that can really blow, ain’t gonna be that interested in playing with you.”

I kept our weekly appointments. I diligently internalized all of the theoretical components of his instruction as best I could. Finally, after several months of digesting his framework, we’d begun to work with the harmonic structures of actual tunes. At the end of one of my lessons, he started comping a blues in C and nodded at me to take a few choruses. Playing blues had been my entry into this whole music thang, so I felt unshackled to let him see what I could do. Halfway through the second chorus, he started doubling my lines with me as I played them. He continued to shadow my solo through the next chorus deviating only when particular quirks in my chops surfaced. He continued to come close to doubling my lines through the next chorus and then we stopped for the lesson. He didn’t have much to say except: “See you next week.”

Several weeks passed and, finally, I had to talk to him about my ‘solo’ and several other confusing realities that had surfaced because of what he had me listening to on the side. I’d learned to play for the most part by shedding along with BB King records; spent a lot of time with one album: LA Midnight because I could tune my guitar to one song where BB called out the key. It’s not that John didn’t like BB King, but he had insisted that I listen to other players to get a sense of where we were going. I had slowly accumulated a collection of LPs by the usual suspects: Kenny Burrell, Barney Kessel, Herb Ellis. John had a special affection for Joe Pass because of some duo albums with Ella, but the hands-down-you-better-listen-to-this-guy-until-you-get-it player was Jim Hall.

When you are a refugee from Electric Ladyland, Jim Hall can sound a bit understated, to say the least, but listen I did. I wore out one particular live album, a trio recording, that I initially heard with bored ears. But, over time, as I reapplied myself to listening with each drop of the needle to the turntable, it turned into a spectacular display of musicianship and understated technique.

Finally, I got the courage to ask what he had thought of my soloing. “Hey, I was wondering.” Like the thought had just spontaneously surfaced. “How was my solo when we played together a few weeks ago?”

He sat at the piano finishing some notations for my lesson: “Oh, I didn’t think to listen that way.” As he continued writing, “I was just trying to assess if you had any lyrical skills with solo melodies.” He turned with a kind smile. “You had enough ah…inoffensivenese. We have something to work with AND we have a lot of work to do.”

“How were you copping my lines with me in real time? I didn’t know what I was gonna play until I started.”

Now he had a big smile. “As predictable as you were, I would have assumed that you’d played those lines a thousand times.”

“Ha ha.” I gave a mock laugh as I remembered the roadblock of the same-licks-a-thousand-times that had brought me to him.

He put down his pencil and turned to me. “Let me give you a big picture lesson today. First thing, let’s look at these labels that you got all over your music: rock, blues, country, jazz, fusion, classical… whatever. I’m giving you the only two labels you need today: there’s good music and there’s bad music. Yeah, it’s a matter of taste, but most people don’t have good taste in music. The only ‘taste’ they have is the one they’ve been told to like.”

“I’m hip to what you’re saying about the audience in general. But there is music called jazz, or blues… or whatever.”

“In your world, any label you put on the music is a marketing term. Before recordings, the only label, well… those labels didn’t exist before recordings. The context dictated the musical expression. If you’re in the backwoods of 19th Century Missouri, you ain’t listening to baroque music on a pipe organ. You’re noodling out shit on a banjo to rattle your inner muse.”

He looked at me and paused for thought, then continued. “The road you’ve begun to walk down is most easily described as jazz at this point in musical history. But a bigger view is: you’re not trying to be a jazz musician. You want to be an IMPROVISING musician. The other option as a player is to become an interpretive player…what you think of as a highly skilled classical musician. In this huge world of musical phenomena, the most highly skilled interpretive players are in the classical arena. A case could be made that some stone-cold studio players bring an equal level of interpretive skill to the table, but the material doesn’t rise to the challenge of the classical repertoire.

“The best improvisers are in the jazz arena.” He looked at me just begging for a retort. I continued to listen. “I sometimes get these rock dogs that want to argue about it. They seem bound and determined to prove that you can make a sow’s ear out of a silk purse.”

The opening for my Jim Hall question had surfaced: “I’ve been wearing my stylus out listening to albums you recommend. That Jim Hall Trio thing he did in… ah, Toronto, I think. I listen to it over and over. I’ve noticed something: I have quite a few moments on the two sides where I anticipate hearing again a ‘good part’. There’s a run on the last solo chorus for Angel Eyes that I especially focus on. It took a couple of weeks and a hundred plays to hear it. I wouldn’t have caught 90% of what he did that night if I’d been there.”

“90% sounds a bit optimistic.” He winked. “First problem you would have had that night if you approached it like the first time you heard the album is this: you were trying to ‘understand’ what you heard. Somewhere around listen #50, or so, you ceased with the cognitive bullshit. You let the music in, unfiltered, to work its evocative emotional magic that is at the root of musical experience. Chaps my ass when I hear people say: ‘I don’t like jazz… I don’t understand it.’ What in hell are they trying to UNDERSTAND?”

He looked at me for my answer. I just shrugged. I didn’t know what I had been trying to understand before listen #51.

“You need to understand something else about your audience and yourself. Because of recordings and radio and all the other in-your-control listening opportunities, your musical development has been culturally stunted. It’s so easy to tune that dial to the lowest common denominator. Before you know it, you’re tapping your foot to The Monster Mash. If you had been lucky enough to catch the opening night for Beethoven’s Fifth, you would have had no previous performance to measure it against. After that night, it is unlikely that you would have ever heard it again. But a listener from ‘then’ would’ve ‘gotten’ it. We can read the performance reviews. They got it with one listen. Some of the reviewers became quite eloquent in their condemnations of his… ah, symphonic vision. But even the bad reviews are detailed and specific about what happened that night. But like it or not, if you weren’t there, it didn’t happen.”

He looked at the keyboard gathering his thoughts. “To enter into this discipline of improvisatory music; jazz, if you like, you and I have a lot of things we need to do at a cognitive level. But as long as the theory I teach is processed cognitively as you perform, you can’t really blow. As long as the technical demands of the instrument limit your ability to express, you can’t blow.”

He let the silence settle for a moment. “You can see the attraction of drugs or alcohol. Some players fall into substance abuse because it turns off that cognitive thing. Unfortunately, some of these pop jackasses forgot to learn how to play before they got high. More unfortunately, some master improvisers got high to throw the learning to the wind so they could really cut loose with ferocious musicality. Tragically, many found a double-edged sword in that choice.”

As our time that week drew to a close, he left me with this truth: “Most people in that club in Toronto didn’t get it either. Most people in a concert hall only serve as seat-warmers.” He could get really cynical about the audience. A residency gig at the Playboy Club’ll do that to you. “Funniest thing, if Jim was really on that night, and it sounds to me like he was, Jim was just an available conduit for the music. He played in a groove of musical availability that he’d spent a lifetime channelling. If you like New Age process labels. Anyway, I’m pretty sure Jim didn’t ‘get’ any of it… at all… until he heard the playback later on the bus. Oh yeah, one more thing: you can only listen to a live album once, after that you’re just listening to reinforce an echo of something that you probably already missed the first time. Don’t waste a ‘first listen’ again by trying to understand what you’re hearing.”

In the twenty-some years since my last lesson with John, I still find myself working on what he called my ‘stunted cultural growth’. Unless I’m working on a tune, I try to only listen to music I’ve never heard before and probably won’t hear again. An easy resource for that in my life has been jazz radio stations, but to suggest that to others gets me back into that argument about labels. But I can suggest an easier alternative that leaves the choice of musical label if you’re still into that. Up to you:

GO SEE LIVE MUSIC!

I’m not talking about your big arena shows. Don’t miss a good one, if you’re a fan of musical spectacle (I am), but search out the local club scene. Play 19th century once a month; go get the air in your ear vibrated by a real human. Live music offers a tender caress to your ear that can rival the touch of a lover’s tongue.

“At some point in life the world’s beauty becomes enough. You don’t need to photograph, paint or even remember it. It is enough.” –Toni Morrison

Copyright Richard Gibbins, 2019. All Rights Reserved.

“You Can Only Listen To A Live Album Once” was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

12 Things Every Freelancer Should Know

Here are a few things every freelancer should know. Unfortunately, I learned these lessons the hard way in nearly 20 years of freelancing.

In fact, I wish I had known a few of these things before I started freelancing. However, I can will and pass them onto others trying to make a living as a freelancer.

Here some of the things every freelancer should know.

1. Do the math. In particular, do the math about pay and time spent before you start the job.

For example, $100 for 10,000 words sounds great until you realize that you are being paid one cent a word. Unfortunately, there are lots of clients out there that will try to pay such rates. Hence, get a calculator and do the math before you take freelance jobs.

2. Have fun. Generally, whenever I do a freelance job that is boring, frustrating, tedious, etc. I do a terrible job.

For example, I make more mistakes and often do hack jobs on work I hate. On the other hand, I do good work when I am having fun. Thus, try to find freelance jobs you will enjoy so you will do good work and make more money.

3. Be honest. I have found the worst conflicts and miscommunication occur when unrealistic promises are made. Therefore, be honest, and tell clients what you can and cannot do.

4. Never stop searching for work. I make it a rule to try and search for jobs and apply to at least one new freelance job every day.

I do this because I have found no freelance job is reliable and I must usually apply to 50 to 100 jobs before I get hired. Hence, the more applications the greater likelihood of work.

5. No client is reliable. My experience is that even the best clients can suddenly drop off the face of the Earth. Therefore, you need others to fall back upon.

6. Learn to say no to clients. Trying to meet unreasonable, unrealistic, or stupid demands from clients will lead to disaster.

If you cannot meet the client’s demand or deadline tell them so. In addition, if the client asks for something you cannot do, say no to them. Generally, I have found that good clients will listen and accommodate you if you are honest with them. See number seven for how to deal with clients that cannot take no for an answer.

7. Learn how to fire clients. As a freelancer, you will encounter clients that are abusive, irrational, unresponsive, stupid, rude, arrogant etc.

Working with such clients is a waste of time. Hence, you should learn how to fire such clients by telling them you will not fill their order.

8. Learn how to be patient. The world of freelancing is full of delays. In particular, clients will respond to you and pay you when they feel like it. Thus, learn to wait for them.

9. Do the highest paying work first. Remember, as a freelancer you are working for the money.

Thus, you should concentrate on the highest paying work and put lower-paying work on the backburner. If clients complain, explain they will have to increase your pay to get faster service.

10. Concentrate on one job at a time. I have found that multitasking leads to mistakes. Hence, completing job A and moving onto Job B is the best way to get work done.

11. Learn to take breaks and shut down for the day. If you start feeling sick, tired, angry, frustrated, etc. take a break.

Moreover, if you feel bad or tired quit and start again tomorrow. Remember, being tired or sick leads to bad work which will cost you clients and money.

12. Be prepared for boredom, frustration, and slack periods. In particular, have something to do such as writing your novel, lower paying work, or blogging during downtime. In addition, try to have some extra sources of income such as a side hustle or part-time job to fill your time.

These are just a few of the things every freelancer should know. In fact, you will learn more every day if you work at it.

I have found that freelancing is a very rewarding career path, but it will be frustrating. However, you can avoid a lot of the frustration if you keep what I reveal above in mind.

12 Things Every Freelancer Should Know was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Being a Parent Changes Your Perspective on Life and a Career

Being a Parent Changes Your Perspective on Life & Career

If you asked me to pick an ice cream flavor from the store, you’ll find it takes me about 20 minutes to finally pick one out.

I really love ice cream.

I’m also a millennial. One of those people born after 1982. Millennials and generations born after are known to be very indecisive. I also love ice cream. I love it so much I said it twice.

Millennials and the generations after want options. We were born with options, and we want them instantly. We believe we can be anyone because that is what modern culture tells us. Yet nobody ever tells us how hard it is to choose a career, especially as you grow older and your life changes.

We want career options that make us happy in every possible way — a ping pong room, catered lunches, a comfy workspace. Did I miss anything? If we don’t get these luxuries, we aren’t afraid to leave that career to pursue another one.

We live in an age where we believe we should be happy with any career choice and have the motivation to succeed in it. Those are two very hard things to find, at least for me.

Career Option 1: TeachingTeaching was not for me, neither was this classroom.

My first career choice was teaching, and it just happened to be teaching middle school. Despite all the negativity of middle school teaching, I actually didn’t like it. But I was happy with my first real career paycheck — a whopping $2500 a month. I was happy earning that much back then, living at my parents’ home, no expenses, and pocketing most of it.

Then I found the love of my life, married her, and had a child 16 months after we were married. Now $2500 a month didn’t seem like a lot, especially when you’re living in California.

I know people make a living from teaching. They make it work.

I did too. Except it wasn’t what I wanted. I’m glad I realized that after the first few years of teaching, rather than figuring it out ten years into teaching.

“Making it work” didn’t appeal to me and how I wanted my life to be. It hit me harder when my wife and I had our first child.

What parenthood does to you. Or what it should do to you.

When you have a child, there’s this feeling that should exist in every parent — you want to provide for them. It should be engrained in your mind as a parent the moment you have a child.

As a teacher, I couldn’t buy my son nice things all the time, but I wanted that option. Teaching made me realize that I didn’t just want to provide for him, I wanted to buy him nice toys and clothes, go on nice vacations and have a nice house.

If you’ve ever experienced being a parent, you understand this feeling of wanting to provide for your child. It doesn’t mean spoil, it means buying them nice presents for their birthday, for Christmas, and on any random day.

Teaching wasn’t for me. I didn’t like the pay and I wasn’t willing to wait 10–15 years to appreciate the pay that other jobs were paying employees in their first year.

Career Option 2: Nursing

I chose to pursue nursing because:

1. I enjoy helping people.

2. The pay isn’t half bad (if you’re in California).

As my son grew older, there was this overwhelming urgency to provide more. Obviously, kids eat more and need more clothes, yet there was a different sense of urgency. An urgency to move out of an apartment to a house with more space. At least a backyard. An urgency to give my son more.

What killed me was that I couldn’t afford any of this.

While I waited and prayed to get into nursing school, I substitute taught, worked as an EMT, and wrote for pennies to make extra on the side.

I waited, waited & waited. For two years I waited. Nothing. No acceptance letters. I didn’t want sympathy, I wanted an acceptance letter. I had the grades and recommendation letters. Sometimes things just don’t work in your favor, and it may take forever before they work in your favor, especially if you keep waiting on the same people to see your value.

I eventually realized that.

So, after another and final rejection letter, I decided I wasn’t going to wait for someone to see my value. I was going to create my value. I had the motivation as a father and a husband.

Career Option 3: Entrepreneur

Starting a business was an opportunity to show my value. I knew how to write and research. I knew what I could learn with my motivation and my skillset.

Being a parent gives you a drive. It should. That drive and that passion to work harder and smarter. It showed in my pursuit to be an entrepreneur.

I’ve known people to work 50 hours a week at minimum paying jobs. They chose to work more to pay for their luxuries. But I believe it’s about working smarter, not harder.

Writing content was an opportunity to prove my worth.

Eventually I learned to create value that people value, such as drip email campaigns & social media management.

I chose my career, I didn’t let a career or person choose one for me based on what they determined my value to be.

Fatherhood motivated me. It changed me. My motivation became more than just about me, it was about what I could provide for my family.

Some people choose the right career the first time. For other people, it can take years of finding that career. For me, it was finding that motivation, that happiness, and a willingness to realize what I’m working for and how to achieve it.

Being a Parent Changes Your Perspective on Life and a Career was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

I Don’t Know What I’m Doing

I really don’t. Everything I do is based on instinct until it becomes an experience.

I have no mentors.

No one guiding me through steps.

I feel through situations. Plan as far ahead as I can and try my best to execute.

My best quality right now is my vision. I see everything.

I know what my next home looks like. I can describe the room where all my writing gets done. I see the people around me, know how much money’s in my bank account.

I see these things.

I see myself waking up and writing books. See these books on shelves, in people’s hands on the subway, in windows of indie bookstores. These things I know.

What I don’t know is how I’ll get there. Or when I’ll get there. I only know I’ll be there, maybe sooner than I think, although it’s already been such a long journey.

I don’t know what I’m doing, but I know who I am, which means I know what I’ll be.

C.R.Y

I Don’t Know What I’m Doing was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Love Letters

Photo by Alexander Krivitskiy

Hey…its me again. I know it has been a while but I wanted to let you know that I miss you. I see you’ve been keeping busy while I was gone. You’ve been doing really well academically, financially, emotionally, and mentally. It’s impressive that you’ve been able to keep me away for so long. You even started to smile more and enjoy life and to be honest…it was fun to watch. But all the fun and games are over because I’m back. Back to remind you that you will NEVER get rid of me. It's cute that you thought you could run, and kudos to you for trying. But I’m back now; back to remind you that you will NEVER be anything. To remind you that you will NEVER get rid of this voice, of me. You belong to me and that won’t ever change. You will forever be a mental prisoner and when you cry for help, no one will be able to hear you. Your only option will be to do as I tell you. As old self-inflicted wounds become scars and fade, new ones will be made. I think it’s time for another relapse, don’t you think? It’s time you took another plunge into a wave of suicidal thoughts and self-harm. It’s been too long, my love. I think its time we caught up, it’s time for you to come back to me. Back to the darkness.

Xoxo

Yours Truly

Love Letters was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

What About Diversity of Thought and Experience?

The practice of diversity shouldn’t just be a workplace thing.

Photo by JD Mason

I met my friend’s girlfriend for the first time. We’re sitting in her two-story condo streaming the NBA All-Star game, drinking gin and tequila and eating bits of seasoned octopus. The conversation steers towards Gucci and she talks about how happy she is they’ve created all these positions to better understand culture, inclusion, and diversity.

I tell her I understand where she’s coming from, but for me, the most important aspect of diversity is diversity of experience and diversity of thought.

Here’s how I see it: The true goal of diversity should be empathy. Once you’re able to empathize with a certain group, you’re much better able to serve them. The very best way to empathize with anyone or anything is to have real experiences with that group. It changes the way you think, the way you behave, and the way you create.

If employers focused on finding individuals with unique experiences, then it naturally leads to an inclusive environment. There shouldn’t be a need to create all these new “roles” with these euphemistic titles to make sure diversity is understood. Diversity is something that should be infused into the lifeblood of an organization, not some top-down, structured approach paired with employee training programs. I don’t see how that makes any sense.

Diversity Shouldn’t Just be a Workplace Thing

More specifically, diversity of thought and experience shouldn’t just be a workplace thing. It’s something we should practice in our everyday lives. It’s so easy today to get stuck in the same thought process. Social media does a good job of reaffirming our beliefs and making us feel like our opinion is the only right opinion. That’s dangerous.

Your goal is not to agree, it’s to empathize.

It’s important we use this powerful tool to broaden our perspectives. Search for opinions that differ from yours and try to understand why people who hold those opinions feel the way they do. Get rid of any judgement or biases. Enter those spaces and discussions with an open mind and truly listen to the reasoning. Your goal is not to agree, it’s to empathize.

Do the same in real life. Speak to people who don’t look like you. Expose yourself to people you know don’t share your opinion. You can’t possibly understand something if you’re only looking at it from one direction. And if you’re only looking at things from a singular perspective, then you can’t go screaming about lack of inclusivity because you’re just as much a part of the problem. You don’t need to be leading a fortune 500 company to practice diversity of thought.

We need to make ourselves better people

We need to make ourselves better people. That’s how things change. We need to care about the people we disagree with. We need to respect people who don’t share our beliefs and be comfortable with the fact you may not agree. Who we are will be reflected in the platforms we create. Better people means better platforms, better platforms means better communities. All of this starts with diversifying our thoughts and experiences.

C.R.Y

What About Diversity of Thought and Experience? was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Fear and hope during a career roadblock

An optimistic look at an uncertain futurePhoto by Ezra Comeau-Jeffrey on Unsplash

I’ve recently taken steps to go back to post-secondary education.

It’s been almost a full year since I graduated from the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology with a diploma of journalism under my belt and in that time my career, if you can really call it that, has been a roller coaster that saw me unemployed, twice. Four months of the last year saw me without employment.

Frustrating? Absolutely. Harrowing? I’m still recovering from the sleepless nights.

There is a positive spin to this story. All of the time I spent without regular work gave me a lot of time to think. It gave me a lot of time to investigate those thoughts.

My journalism training paid off well in that regard. I’m very good at finding things out.

After talking about my experiences and my feelings to some of my closest friends and family, I heard all kinds of suggestions for what should be The Next Thing.

After hearing them out, and doing my own reading and investigating, I made a decision.

Yesterday, I applied to the University of Calgary.

As a younger man, I was certain that university wouldn’t be an option for me. I wasn’t a poor student by any means, but intense self-doubt has been my travelling companion for as long as I can remember.

Am I scared of this choice?

I suppose, in a small measure, yeah.

More than anything, I feel like I have a sense of direction again. This last year, I felt hopeless and directionless, cast away in the wind.

It’s going to be a challenge, anything worthwhile is, but it’s one that I feel strangely calm about. I’m squaring off with this and I’m ready to take it on.

I’d be lying if I said I’m feeling all peaches and rainbows. In truth, I feel like a failure. Going to SAIT felt like stepping up for a race, and once I graduated, I fell flat on my face. I have colleagues who are working in the industry, and I’m very happy for them. They were able to pursue opportunities that, due to my circumstances, I’m unwilling and unable to.

Still, I had been so certain I would be gainfully employed by now. Instead, I’m looking at another 5 years of academia, maybe more.

I’m trying to stay positive. This is a direction, and any movement is better than no movement. Pursuing my education is better than resigning myself to the dead-end retail jobs I’ve had.

My heart feels heavy with a feeling of failure, but my head feels optimistic and excited for what the future holds.

Fear and hope during a career roadblock was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

You can’t skip change, this is how the beautiful universe works

You can’t skip change — this is how the beautiful universe works

There are many kinds of fears, but as I grow older I have reached the conclusion that fear is not the problem. People are not separated into people who fear and those who don’t. People are separated into those who avoid fear and the brave butterflies that get used to feeling their hearts burn. Dead people don’t fear.

I have three main fears with which I deal almost every day. The fear of time, the fear someone I love dies and the fear of change. Basically, all these three can be concluded in the last one. The fear of change.

The fear of change

I am the queen of this section. I can stay for months even years to a dead situation just because I can’t face the fact that it has gone, it has changed. It has simply grown like a beautiful kid that has grown old and doesn’t exist anymore.

The only ways to play the game and dig deeper is to learn the rules and get the tools. As I investigated deep inside, I understood that my brain had translated change into death. I dug farther and learned how our brain works. Our brain doesn’t care if we are happy or healthy. Our brain’s only job is to keep us alive, no matter what. If it translates from an early age another factor as death, we will be avoiding it as death through our lifetime, unless we work on it.

This is a manmade illusion like thousands of others. As humans created their first communities, they started sharing their fears too. Most of these fears became traditions that were even celebrated! Fears became gods and altogether felt comfort in the safety of the community. This necessity of comfort made people have the helpless need to feel that everything around us is stable. Nothing changes and it doesn’t need to change. Stability means safety. Everything remains unchanged as the years go by, like the universe.

The universes changes. The universe expands and moves. New scientific theories and researches open our eyes and broaden our possibilities. There are laws that tell us that the universe changes with time. If we know how the universe is at any certain time, these physical laws can tell us how it will be at any later time. Whatever applies to the universe, it can be translated for ourselves, like everything around us.

A scientific theory exists only in our minds and does not have any other reality, like most of the things that exist in our minds. It is just a way for human beings to comprehend the place they live in. Theories have changed since the 6th century BC, when philosophers and astronomers in Ancient Ionia (Ancient Greece) made the first observations and formed their first theories. Now we know that not only theories change, but also the universe changes itself, so why I and only I have the illusion that I can remain the same?

This leads to another way of thinking and the beginning of the neutral observer wondering.

Whatever you observe around you is a miniature of the whole picture. You are a miniature of the whole picture. Remember that Newton pictured the planets’ gravity from the way the apple was gravitated by the Earth. Now that we have opened our eyes and saw that everything around us is conscious, scientists have started to research whether the whole universe is conscious too.

Stability is a trick which if taken seriously can cause the death of the mind. A mind that does not change dies before the body.

Civilizations before today had this connection and curiosity for the interaction with the universe. They had knowledge we had ignored for centuries and we may never learn about. We feel separated from the universe, but the truth is that we are part of it. The more we understand the way the whole thing works, the more beneficial it will be for each one of us separately and then us as a whole.

My happiness depends on your happiness and then the wellbeing of all of us as a whole. If you change some others will change too, they will follow and then the law of attraction will be in favor of our huge community. The environment in which we grow defines a great part of our attitude and growth.

Let’s build a huge community of humble learners and generous givers who choose change and are happy for the fellow humans’ change too.

You can’t skip change, this is how the beautiful universe works was originally published in C.R.Y on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.