Writer, Agilist, Elder Geek
Steven Savage (This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr. Find out more at my newsletter.)
It’s out! My updated resume guide, Epic Resume Go! has been updated for 2018! It’s got a new introduction (naturally), updated advice, new focuses on publications, and an added section on keeping multiple resumes and electronic ones. It’s everything you need to make resume creation actually interesting!
If you want to review it, let me know! Otherwise, spread the word!
– Steve
(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr. Find out more at my newsletter.)
Following up my various thoughts about the Parkland students, I noticed a few things:
This made me realize something about modern politics. We don’t often realize what actual *activism* looks like.
We’ve confused activism with arguing. With spewing pundists. With internet comment battles. With silly memes. We’re used to yelling and arguing, but for the sake of yelling and arguing. We’re often too trained to look for a “win” or stay inside an echo chamber.
When we do engage, then we’re often dragged down by the lowest common denominator in a debate – and there’s plenty of that to go around. Most conservative pundits do not debate in good faith, most conservative “intellectuals” are clearly disingenuous. Their goal is not nuance or communication or convincing, it’s to win a screaming match.
Now, what if we step back from this and ask what happens when *we ignore engaging with people who aren’t interested in discussion.*
Reach out to people that do want to talk. Demonstrate in ways that do get attention. Engage in causes that actually bring people together and *do shit.* Let actions speak for themselves, and when you do speak don’t let yourself be dragged down but take action.
Most of all, don’t get dragged into the battle of pundits and provocateurs rolling in shit.
This is a lot of what I see happening now in politics. People engaging, getting active, getting involved. There’s assorted lists to give you ideas of how to actually do stuff, teams trying to flip districts, more folks running for office. A lot of it flies under radar as it’s not spectacular and yelly and in the news by people trying to sell advertising.
This kind of activism is immensely frustrating to the people whose livelihood and jollies rely on pointless bad faith argument and mud-slinging. When you’re the one screaming until people worry you’re going to wet yourself, you look bad. When you’re busy screaming obscenities and claiming High Schoolers are a secret Deep State Cult, you look sort of dumb.
We need more of this. More real activism. Less mud-slinging. Even if it’s just donating money or marching – or just making sure you post relevant news articles to your social media.
If those of us really concerned with society move forward, do the right thing, engage less with the people acting with no good faith, we’ll get a lot more done. Best of all the various liars and decievers and screamers will just get more frustrated and further undermine themselves.
Me, I know I can do better at this. But when I see what you can do when you stop and focus on doing the right thing first, it certainly tells me what I have to do.
And what I don’t.
How are you going to do the right thing?
– Steve
(This column is posted at www.StevenSavage.com and Steve’s Tumblr)
I was thinking about this recent tumblr post about moves to an even shorter workweek. This got me thinking about the benefits of an even shorter workweek.
I wanted to discuss that one of the problems is how much we define ourselves by work, that is, what we do for pay. In America, it’s become a problem.
How much of our lives are consumed by work and by overtime? By preparing for work and recovering from stress and too-long days? By searching in an ever-uncertain economy? Work often dominates our lives.
How many of our conversations are about work? Do you ever introduce yourself by a modified version of your job title? Is the job the first thing we discuss socially?
How much of our news is about the economy and jobs, while at the same time abstractly missing how shitty work is for so many people?
Work dominates our lives, and we don’t seem all the better for it. It seems to be literally killing us.
Work also limits our focus on what matters. When we boil things down to hours work, money paid, company profits we miss that there are many other things that matter or matter more. Life is more than DJIA returns but we don’t make any effort to measure it as we think in terms of *work*
It doesn’t take much effort to find out that, in America, a lot of stuff is messed up. Obesety rates, health issues, etc. But how much effort goes into asking how dollars flow around abstractly (and rarely flowing to people that NEED it).
Now let me confess what I am about to say is stuff I am guilty of. We can make work into a vortex that sucks everything up. How are we eating so we work better. How are we learning so we can work better. Can our hobbies pay off? We think about work so often we miss that some stuff just doesn’t involve work.
Me, I’m guilty of this in my own way due to my big thing about geeky careers. Now, I don’t think the idea of hobbies-used-for-careers is BAD, but I’m realizing I need more emphasis on fun, social bonding, etc. I don’t want to be part of the problem.
Work distracts us from other issues. We’re burnt out from the day, trying to get a training session in, and are doing a job search on the side to get a less crappy job. This time could be spent socially bonding, in our community, doing stuff that’s not our jobs that benefits others. But we focus on the job.
How many of our political choices relate to that job and not to the larger picture (which might make our jobs easier)? How many of them are worried about having work the next year?
We need to rethink Work while also being realistic. Yeah, we work – we all have to work, its part of contributing to society, making stuff happen, and earning our keep. I am PRO-WORK – I’m just not so sure our current idea of jobs is helping.
First, I think we have to reclaim “work” from “job.” There’s a “job” that you do and then there’s “work” you do. A job may pay you, working at a church social is “work” but has other benefits.
A few things:
Me, going forward, I’m going to try to think of myself as more than my job and about work. Oh, I still intend to focus on being a geek job guru, but I need to emphasize more thats just a thing *I* do, and to learn to focus on larger issues. I also need to ask when something is “work”, a job, and both.
Any feedback is appreciated.
– Steve