Deliberate Digressions

Well, things did not go as planned during the visit to NYC, and I only got to meet up with a few old friends. The meeting that I was most looking forward to (with a junior high school friend that I had once had a crush on) didn’t happen, but I did manage to meet up with friends for high school, college and my old writing workshop days.

Interestingly, it was my old high school friends who seemed the least changed. It could be that this particular group had stayed in touch with each other and continued to see each other regularly, but it seemed to me that except for the addition of a couple of kids, they still acted the same as they had nearly 20 years ago when I knew them in high school. They still told the same kinds of jokes, their provincial viewpoints, even their interaction with each other seemed unchanged. Conversations with them revolved around what fun activity they could plan for the coming weekend.

In contrast, my college and writing friends seemed to have mellowed with age and seemed much more reflective. Our conversations centered around how we had changed over the years, the decisions we faced in raising our kids, and reflections on our job/life choices and the impact that those choices have had on our careers/lives.

I recently started a Facebook account and managed to reconnect with some long-lost friends/acquaintances.  I will actually be seeing some of them when I visit New York City for the holidays this year.  It will be interesting to see how these reunions will go.  Will we reconnect as if not time has passed, or will our encounters be hindered by an an insurmountable barrier created by long years of absence?

More to follow after the holidays…

It’s November, and that means it’s NaNoWriMo time again. NaNoWriMo, for those who are not familiar with it, is National Novel Writing Month. The challenge is to write a first draft of a novel (50,000 words) in a month. For details, visit the website (http://www.nanowrimo.org/).

This will be my third year participating, and hopefully the third time will be the charm. My previous two attempts were pretty weak. The first year, I was hopelessly stuck in writer’s block, with no idea what to write about. I think I had a grand total of about 50 words.

Last year, I had a good idea for a story, but spent to bulk of the month doing background research on mythology, magic and the occult. I had a great time, but ultimately only committed about 5,000 words to the cause.

This year, I’m ready to try again… with a new and novel approach… just start typing stream of conscious and see what comes out. I’ve prepped for it by re-reading (or rather re-listening) to Stephen King’s On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft.

And off we go…

11/27/2007 Update - I regret to report that my participation in NaNoWriMo this year was pre-empted by a strange case of carpal tunnel syndrome which lasted for most of this month, and daddy daycare duties during the final push week. 

My earliest career goal was to build the world’s first bionic man. When I was growing up, I remember watching the Six Million Dollar Man on television. While most other kids wanted to be Steve Austin, the bionic man, I wanted to be Dr. Rudy Wells, the man who creates the bionic man.

My plan was to go study mechanical and electrical engineering as an undergraduate, and then to go to medical school afterwards. It was a good plan, and probably would have worked. The only problem was that I wasn’t up to the challenge. I overloaded myself trying to double-major and my GPA took a big hit in my junior year.

I took a reality check and figured I probably wouldn’t make it in to medical school, and probably wouldn’t be building the world’s first bionic man. Instead, I dropped the double-major and opted instead to get a single degree in mechanical engineering.

When I finished college, I looked for a job for several months before landing a job with the Environmental Protection Agency as an environmental engineer. At the EPA, I worked in Air, and later Hazardous Waste Compliance. I was responsible for visiting various manufacturing facilities and ensuring that they were in compliance with environmental regulations.

What I found most disappointing was that the work did not involve any engineering at all. While it did take some technical knowledge to understand the mechanics of the various manufacturing processes and pollution control equipment, the bulk of the job entailed reviewing records to ensure that companies had filed and renewed their permits on time, that they maintained records of their pollution monitoring equipment, etc.

I became disillusioned with my work at the EPA. One incident that I recall in particular involved a company that had installed newer, more effective pollution control equipment, but had failed to file their permit on time. My position was that the permit-pending equipment was better environmentally, and that at worst, the company should receive a “slap on the wrist.”

My supervisor, however, was eager to file a complaint and press for the maximum penalty, accruing fines for each day that they operated the equipment while it was still not permitted. At that point, I realized that my supervisor wasn’t really interested in protecting the environment, but in collecting a large penalty from the company, and improving his own performance rating.

While working at the EPA, I got involved with an effort called Total Quality Management (TQM). TQM advocates improving the overall quality of a product by having all levels of the corporation/organization cognizant of quality rather than relegating it to a single quality control group.

I was one of the early adopters of TQM at the EPA and subsequently became a “facilitator”. In that role, I was responsible for leading training classes in various management concepts and problem-solving techniques. As a facilitator, I also had the opportunity to lead Quality Action Teams that were tasked to discover gaps in processes and finding solutions to make the processes more efficient. I found that I liked my work as a TQM facilitator more fulfilling than my regular work as an environmental engineer and decided to pursue an MBA in Management.

After getting my MBA, I had a hell of a time finding work. As with most job hunting, jobs fell into two categories: ones I didn’t have enough experience for, and ones I was over-qualified for. In the end, it amounts to the same thing… no job offers.

I ended up working at various odd jobs, including working at the local supermarket deli, waitering, temp jobs doing data entry, spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations, etc. It was pretty disappointing and disheartening for someone with an engineering degree and an MBA.

My then girlfriend (and now wife) decided to move out west (mainly to escape the New York winters) and try our luck in California. She got offered the first job that she interviewed for and we took it as a “sign” that we were meant to move.

We relocated to California, and I started doing temp work again, eventually landing a somewhat regular job at a banking firm reconciling sales commissions until they started down-sizing.

Fortunately, before I was down-sized, I was able to apply for and land a job as a detail “engineer” with the Pacific Bell, the regional phone company. I was once again in an “engineering” job, and earning a somewhat decent salary.

Again, I was disappointed that my “engineering” job seemed to entail no engineering whatsoever. Instead, my job seemed to consist of mainly of measuring out distances for cable runs and creating a materials list of items that would be needed to support the cables and installation of various telecommunications equipment.

Within a year of my landing this job, the department was eliminated because the company had been bought up by SBC (although it was officially called a merger). Fortunately, now that I was in the company, I was able to find look for internal jobs and was able to land a job as a “project manager”.

My new job consisted of managing equipment roll-out to support a regional push to support our company’s DSL product. This job was unique in that it was the first time that I was actually able to use some of my management training.

I was only in this job for about nine months, when the department I was in was hit by reorganization. I then found myself responsible for managing collocation compliance. Apparently, due to my past work at the EPA doing environmental compliance work, someone thought I would be good at doing telecom compliance work.

After a couple of years, I was reorganized again, and found myself assigned to do process development work supporting a new technology introduction group.

Another year and another reorganization later, and I actually became a project manager in the new technology introduction group, doing both process development and project managing new products through our new technology introduction testing process.

After yet another merger and reorganization (are we sensing a pattern here yet?), I am now only doing project management work (different technology, but same type of work).

After reading my friend’s blog for a few months, I’ve decided to try my own hand at blogging.

This friend and I co-facilitated a creative writing workshop in New York City nearly 15 years ago. We dreamt of writing the next great American novel, or becoming great poets. As of today, neither of us have published much beyond what we self-published back in those workshop days. Our literary dreams took a backseat to the more mundane tasks of building a career, starting a family and creeping towards middle age.

I have since finished graduate school, gotten married, and moved cross-country to California, and only see my friend once every couple of years when I get a chance to visit NYC.

We hadn’t spoken of writing in years. But then, about a year ago, I was browsing the catalog at my local library and noticed that a mutual workshop friend of ours had actually gotten published, and further, that his book had been made into a film. This got us pining for our old workshop days, and brought up our regrets at allowing our writing dreams to falter.

My friend started blogging, and occasionally, I’ve been reading his blogs. He’s written some blogs that have really struck a chord with me. They have been timely, poignant, and humorous.

After reading them, I’ve been tempted to start blogging a few times myself, but have always made the excuse that I’m too busy with work and the kids. I think the truth is really that I’ve been afraid to blog because my writing skills have grown rusty with disuse, and I’m embarrassed at the drivel that I may produce.

After the past few hellish weeks/months at my job, I got an e-mail this week accusing me of not doing enough to move the project forward. It forced me to evaluating possible job and career changes and realized that I can’t see myself staying in the stressful, micromanaging environment that passes for project management in corporate America for much longer.

I also realized that deep down, I still long to write and to be read. It’s time for me to get past my fears and get back in the writing saddle again.