Out of Context and into Change

Posted on October 26, 2013 by joegergen

do i know you

The other day at the gym I saw someone on the treadmill. I’m like I know that person from somewhere, but where? I couldn’t bring the connection together.

Ends up she works at the front desk of the gym where I’m sure I’ve seen her many times. But move her 100 feet and put her in workout clothes and she’s all of a sudden familiar but not distinct.

I’m sure this happens to all of us. Encounter someone someplace unexpected and not make a connection. Seems like a fairly normal thing.

Then I’m thinking this misconnection thing has to go beyond people and faces. Place something, anything into a different context and it’s familiar but hard to pin down. Things like ideas and behaviors.

Context. Or environment. How important is the environment in which we experience ideas and behaviors?

I think huge. How much is my reaction to an idea or a situation or event influenced by who I am and how much is influenced by the environment I am in at that moment? How free thinking am I, really?

I think we see part of that answer in things like mob mentality. But is it more subtle than that? Not sure. But is certainly ubiquitous in its application. Advertising and marketing leverage this to the hilt. I’m always hearing about how important the smell of a house is when trying to sell it.

I think about this in context of work I do. Trying to get people to change behaviors. Do you have to change the environment before you change the thinking? Yes.

So if you are struggling with new ideas change your environment. Not sure what will work. That’s OK. Start with something.

Change the lighting around you. Go somewhere different. Try a new schedule. Rearrange the furniture. Put yourself in a place where the new ideas might resonate.

You never know what alchemy might come. There are too many variables to know what might work so be liberal in your application. Some possible change might be obviously bad enough to skip, and that’s OK. Trust your intuition.

Don’t underestimate the power of context. Use it to your advantage, for you and for others.

Change your context. Change your world.

 

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If the Glove Fits

Posted on October 25, 2013 by joegergen

glove2

 

Baby’s butt. That’s how soft my hands usually are. Especially since I took a break from making furniture. No callouses. Nothing.

Gloves. I don’t wear work gloves. Never have. Except when raking or it’s cold.

So when tiling last week and handling and cutting tiles, working with mortar and grout I pretty much destroyed my hands. The sharp tile nicked the crap out of them and the mortar and grout sanded them raw.

This wasn’t really an issue until I cut up some hot chili peppers. Even that wasn’t a problem until I decided to scrape the seeds out of the peppers with my fingers. Did I mention that I don’t wear gloves?

Ouch! Now that’s a pain that lingered. No amount of after the fact counter-measures could reverse that genius decision.

Multiple opportunities have offered themselves up in this tale that would afford me the chance to learn a lesson.

But will I? I think probably not. You have to want to learn a lesson. I don’t want to learn to wear gloves. So there.

I did learn something though. I learned just leave the fucking seeds in the peppers. The best lessons are the ones you don’t expect to learn.

Maybe I’m just being stubborn about the gloves. Obviously I’d rather be idiosyncratic than intelligent. Crap! That sounds like the definition of a hipster: following a pattern of behavior that sounds cool but when analyzed doesn’t make any sense but following it anyway.

Though to be fair to myself I think everyone follows this pattern of behavior in some fashion. It’s that seemingly infinite human capacity to rationalize. Maybe it’s a self-preservation mechanism. It allows us to live without being in a constant state of contradiction between our rational thought processing and our emotional needs and desires. And in fact not only do we not feel contradiction we feel unique.

Maybe this is part of maintaining positive self-worth. Or maybe this is just more rationalizing. If I don’t try the glove on though, I can at least claim ignorance to whether it fits or not.

 

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The Curious Little Drop of Blood

Posted on October 23, 2013 by joegergen

blood-drop2

 

Don’t you hate it when you find a drop of blood on your hand and you can’t figure out where it came from?

It wasn’t a lot of blood, just a drop. Not surprising either. I’ve been tiling and have lots of little nicks on my hands that could start bleeding if bumped or scratched. But none of those seemed to be the source. Wasn’t my nose. Not my arms or face or ears. Typical places I might have scratched. Checked the mirror for clues.

Nothing. Ponder, ponder, ponder. Nope. Did not solve that one. Hmm.

I usually don’t dive that deep into unexplained conditions or curiosities. I wouldn’t get anything done. I give most inexplicities a good shoulder shrug and move on. Good thing my house isn’t haunted. I would definitely deep dive on that, but fortunately that is just a hypothetical scenario.

Good thing I’m not a detective too. I would totally shoulder shrug too many things.  Because however observant and analytical I might be I have little affinity for details (which may seem like a contradiction but I assure you it is not). And sometimes that would be really handy. Probably why I love Sherlock Holmes. He sees the details and makes the connections. Brilliant!

But there are certain things I get hooked on solving more than others:  failed memories of books or actors or movies especially. And I never know when it will happen. Because it doesn’t happen often considering all the things I have forgotten.

Like this Polish-Czech move I saw at a film festival years ago. It was totally bizarre and surreal. I loved it (though someone claims I only loved it because she hated it and fell asleep). I have only the vaguest idea what the name was, which obviously happened to be in Polish so that doesn’t help. It’s that tip of the tongue feeling. But I can’t spit it out.

About a year ago I tried to track it down with the help of the Google, that wonderful memory booster. Nothing. I tried again the other day. Couldn’t find diddly. Now I question my memory even more. Thanks Google, ya jerk. Now I’m not certain it was even Polish.

My favorite obsession was a mix of a book and an actor. It came from reading Charles Dickens’ “Old Curiosity Shop,” which has a character called Quilp, who is described as this scruffy, dwarvish character. And I am totally envisioning him as this character actor I know I have seen. But I can’t figure out who he is. I just know I have seen him in some British period piece. Again the Google is not helping. I even scoured IMDB. Nothing. But I can’t let it go. One day I will see this character actor and yell “That’s him.”

A totally useless obsession. I need to figure out how to translate that random curiosity into more useful pursuits. Like where did that drop of blood come from?

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The More Things Stay the Same the More They Change

Posted on October 16, 2013 by joegergen

change1

“No sense in complaining because nothing ever changes.”

I heard in a conversation the other day. At first I thought it was at just some harmless, despondent fatalism. A “That’s life” kind of quip.

Then I thought, that’s just wrong. Wrong in the “not a very positive or helpful attitude” wrong, but also wrong in the “nothing ever changes” category.

Not to put myself in the overly optimistic, Pollyanna, motivational speaker arena, because that can be pretty annoying. But believing that things can’t change is a pretty good way to put some barriers up to it happening, whether that is in your own life or in society or at work or wherever. Not that you can’t be fatalistic and still be the beneficiary of some good luck that changes thing for the better. Luck is good.

I know. It’s easy to become jaded and cynical and fatalistic with experience. You see the thing you want to change as a minefield and you see the minefield so well and see so many booby traps that the logical conclusion is to not try to cross the minefield at all. We’ll come back to this.

minefield

Back to the “nothing ever changes” quip. That’s crap. Things are changing all the time. In fact things now change at a pace that’s staggering. So it’s not whether it will change but how quickly and to what.

Now, I might have a hard time with arguing the idea of human nature changing. People are capable of changing but often don’t. I suspect we’ll continue to be motivated by some very basic emotions (love, fear, anger, sadness, joy, etc.).

I might argue though that maybe our basic driving emotions manifest themselves differently in the ever changing social, technical, cultural environments they must exist in. It’s like a chemical reaction. Different chemicals. Different reaction. Like Papa John’s.

Back to the minefield. Say the minefield is the environment you need to interact with. The minefield is then ever changing. So your vision of what the minefield looks like 100 yards out will more than likely be wrong by the time you get there.

So take your minesweeper and scan that first step. Take the first step. Now look around again. The minefield looks different because you have moved. In fact as you are standing there a squirrel runs across the minefield and gets blown up.  I guess you don’t need to worry about that mine. In fact you never needed to worry about it. Just worry about the next step. Change the world one step at a time, one action at a time, one interaction at a time.

I guess there is no sense in complaining.

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In Denial We Trust

Posted on October 14, 2013 by joegergen

denial1

Denial. I suppose we all practice it here and again. Sometimes it’s more costly than others.

Not surprisingly there are denials assessments and self-help books on dealing with denial. For more serious cases, counseling is even necessary.

But what if there was like a get-out-of-jail free card for cases of denial (I don’t mean like drugs and shit).

Like denial insurance: just the right kind of insurance for when your denial starts to take a nasty turn.

Like when you are denial about ocean levels rising and your beach house keeps getting flooded out. You’re covered.

Or like when your waist is slowly expanding and you still believe it’s a 32 when it’s actually now 36 and you have to replace your entire wardrobe. Denial insurance covers new wardrobe or spot on the Biggest Loser.

When you’re in denial that you’re girlfriend dumped you and you are stalking her and she gets a restraining order. Need a lawyer to straighten out the “misunderstanding?” You’re covered.

Or you’re in denial about losing your job right before going on an expensive vacation. No worries. Just go. Denial insurance will cover it.

I scoured my brain for some way to justify the idea of healthy denial. Maybe denial is OK sometimes like when you go into shock because your body can’t handle the trauma and it does it to save you from something you can’t handle at the moment (you ever notice when you try to rationalize something your sentences get all run-ony).

Situational denial. You know, just for a little while until I come to grips with this or I cool down. But once you get in how do you get out? It’s like stepping into a vortex and losing perspective and objectivity.

You need a way back out. Like a hook back to non-denial world. So before you jump into your situation denial you put a sticky note on your fridge that says “Hey remember, you’re in denial about your girlfriend dumping you. You need to leave denial land by six Sunday evening so you can get ready for work tomorrow.” Then you send a text to yourself that is delivered at six on Sunday that says “Your girlfriend dumped you Friday.”

Badda bing. You’re back to reality.

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Curious George will not be Paralyzed

Posted on October 11, 2013 by joegergen

 

 

A good little monkey.

george1e

A very curious monkey. A monkey who got into lots of trouble.

I have always struggled with the lessons of curious George. George was curious. He created a lot of havoc. And yet we are told he was a good little monkey. The man in the yellow hat was apparently a Zen master capable of controlling his emotions in the face of very frustrating events. He believes George is a good monkey. So then will I.

Curiosity is good. Acting on that curiosity is even better. Finding something new and uncertain and digging into it. Rewards come for the curious. We all probably know that.

george2e

George gets reward.

(Here’s a cool link on nurturing curiosity:  http://experiencelife.com/article/the-power-of-curiosity/)

We now live in a world where access to knowledge about almost anything is right at your fingertips. And I’m not just talking about the Google. Even if the Google doesn’t know it will lead you to someone or place that does. You can really explore as much as you want. Your options are almost limitless. A great sense of liberation and independence should come from this limitless access. You can explore whatever you want.

But maybe this access is too limitless.  You know and can see that you have been freed from your chains but you see so many desirable options you can’t choose. For every option you choose there are a thousand that must wait. What if you pick the wrong one?

So with all this information available you try to analyze and make the right choice. But there is so much information and so many conflicting opinions. Analyze, choose, rethink, analyze some more. Yikes!

Wait a minute! That’s not liberation. That’s paralysis. And it’s not just paralysis caused by the options. Once you choose, the information about your new passion is overwhelming.

The other day I looked into tutoring. You know, helping people with their studies. Holy crap! I was like I’m going to have to study for years before I can even start tutoring. It’d be easier to go back to school and get a teaching license. I was overwhelmed and down on the whole thing after I looked into it. And I’m sure I just scratched the surface.

So, that doesn’t sound very encouraging if you are thinking about pursuing new things, working that curiosity, does it?

So what’s the trick? I am sure there are plenty of psychological theories on how to tackle this but I wouldn’t go there (just a lot more information to try and ingest when you are already overwhelmed).

My trick is to grab a cup of coffee and relax. Don’t over think it. Grab one of your curiosities and run with it. Focus on the emotional and intellectual reward. Remember it’s not a competition. You’re curiosity is about you. And Curious George, of course.

george4e

You will never know everything. I mean, isn’t that why you’re curious to begin with?

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The Good Old Days Shall Not Return

Posted on October 9, 2013 by joegergen

toycar2a

I found an old toy car in ceiling while renovating the basement bathroom. I showed my nephew, who said “They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.”

True. And they never will. And then I wondered, Does it really matter?

I mean, they still make toy cars. Granted I assume out of cheap plastic and some hitherto unheard of metal that for sure isn’t lead. Probably breaks easily. But no matter how well built those old toys were we managed to break them too.

We look at these new toys and make a contextual comparison. Not as good. A child does not do that. Cannot do that. They have no context, even if you explain it to them.

The child’s imagination makes the car real whether well-made or not. And when the car breaks they move on or improvise.

So yes, sometimes our nostalgia has a tendency to place judgment on the present. I think it is necessary at times. Sometimes things do get worse and for reasons perhaps we can address.

I don’t think we are so judicious in our nostalgic judgments though. We like to slapdash it on everything. We yearn for the good ole days of television and music and political parties and kids’ behavior in public and so many other things.

We inherently know for many of these things that culture and technology and society and historical events have created an environment where they wouldn’t thrive. It might be picturesque to have thousands of hansoms driving around New York City but hardly practical.

HansomCab

Perhaps it’s an ego thing. Perhaps in judging (negatively) the present we elevate the past, a past we are more connected to, and thus raise our feelings of self-worth. My past is better than your present. The present  that belongs to the next generation who are all messed up. Kids these days.

I think nostalgia is good. I think you should share your nostalgia with others, especially anyone younger (however old you are). Share it with pride. Share it because it makes you feel good. And share it because it helps those you share it with understand who you are.

You may need to judge the present but don’t do it because it’s not the past.

The good old days are gone. Love today.

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Shoeless Joe

Posted on October 7, 2013 by joegergen

shoes2

Oh, that distinct smell of a pile of shoes. You know what I am talking about. Leather, rubber, laces, all mingled together.

I am very intimate with that smell. Deep, inhaling breath through the nose. Ah, that’s it. Always brings me back to my childhood. Now why on Earth would it do that, you ask?

Well you see, I grew up in a moderate-sized house with 13 people. Thirteen people in the house meant you were never alone. Also I am very introverted. Never alone and introverted is a bad combination.

Now I didn’t know I was introverted when I was little. I presume no one else ever got quite got that either. But not knowing the name of my condition didn’t make me less aware of it.

That’s where the shoes come in. We had a closet in the house that stored miscellaneous house things, like sheets, blankets, some old coats. And shoes. Shoes no longer worn on any regular basis but in too good of shape to just be thrown out. They were all thrown in a jumble on the floor of the closet.

Another thing about me. I was the runt of the family. Very small. I could fit places others couldn’t. So into the closet on top of the shoes I went and closed the door.

Ah, freedom. The freedom of being alone. Of it being quiet and peaceful. And the smells of shoes. Leather, rubber, laces. Not the first place I would have looked for nostalgic connections.

Reminds me of the time I couldn’t find my one pair of shoes. I looked for hours and then gave it up. Who needed shoes? It took several days before I told Mom I couldn’t find them. No recollection if we ever found them.

Of course sometimes too many people would be mulling about and if they saw me crawl into the shoe closet I would be pestered. So the alternate refuge was behind the furnace in the basement next to the water heater. It was pretty ideal. In the winter it was warm. In the summer it was cool. No one accidentally walked by.

Sometimes I would hear people looking for me. But I wouldn’t come out. Not until I was ready.

And even today. Sometimes I am ready and sometimes I am not. I’m just no longer hiding in the shoe closet.

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I Love Your Mother

Posted on October 5, 2013 by joegergen

earth

I just saw a bumper sticker that read “Love Your Mother” with a picture of Earth next to it.

I thought it read “I love Your Mother.” I was like WTF? You don’t even know my mother (who I am sure is imminently loveable but nonetheless).

I suppose it could have read “I love your brother.” Like in the union brother kind of way. Or just a plain brotherly love kind of thing

Or “I love your dog.” I think I would have been pretty comfortable with “I love your dog.” I don’t even have a dog, but I am sure it would be a super lovable dog.

I mean, I know “I love your mother (or my brother or whatever)” would not explicitly be about me.

But the whole idea seems a little invasive or presumptive. I do have some boundaries, even if I know they’re there to be broken. I mean, I don’t even know you and here you are loving someone close to me. I’m a little taken back to tell the truth.

I love you. I would be much more comfortable with just “I love you” period. At least I am in control of the situation. I can accept your love or not. I can return it or not. I don’t have to bring any third parties into the equation. Third parties make things complicated.

Yes, I know it could be some unconditional love being thrown out there. But unconditional love is usually reserved for babies and dogs as far as I am concerned. So keep your unconditional love to your self. I want to earn the love I get.

I mean, what’s a good emotion really given unconditionally? Respect? No, you have to earn that too. Hate? Definitely shouldn’t be unconditionally dishing that out.

How about trust? Hmm. Maybe not a great idea, but perhaps you would only be putting yourself at risk, so maybe there’s not much harm in that.  Hmm.

“I trust you.” That might be a good bumper sticker. I might even be comfortable with “I Trust your mother.”

Or maybe “Trust Your Mother” next to a picture of Earth. I can unconditionally do that.

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Naked Productivity

Posted on October 1, 2013 by joegergen

naked2

I once told a boss that the less clothing I wear the more productive I am. The statement was a reaction against a very formal dress code and uttered when bizarrely enough the company instituted a casual day that allowed shorts on Fridays during the summer.

I’ve never really put my belief to the ultimate test. I’ve worn shorts and t-shirt and when working at home I have perhaps worked without shoes and socks. But that’s as far as I’ve gone. I suppose I’ve worked in the yard without a shirt but that’s not what I meant.  When I was down on the commune I did see some folks mowing the lawn in the nude. I applauded the liberation but was a bit nervous about flying debris.

So imagine me sitting here naked being uber productive. I can sense a little jealousy. That’s understandable. You can envision yourself naked if that helps.

But the point here is not that I’m naked but that I’m being productive and efficient. Finding that optimal environment for the best work. Being unclothed may not be yours. It may be having a beer or being in a bar or lots of caffeine or your pets at your feet. Our environment is so important and yet so many of our working environments are just the opposite. Stifling, restrictive, marginalizing and all other manner of bad words.

We need to take back our work places. Bring your dogs, your beer, your scrap booking, leave your clothes at home. Whatever it takes. That is initiative people.

Then we need to take this spirit of productivity to our government. If the government agencies were just a little more efficient they could do more with less. More with less. Hmm. There’s a novel concept. Might even avoid shutdowns and the like.

Imagine mail delivered by your nude mail carrier. If it’s more efficient, hell yes. Or the mail carrier with their friendly dog. Right on.

Imagine the IRS auditor having a beer before an audit. Much friendlier audit, I am sure. If it’s more efficient, hell yes.

Nude analysts at the NSA trolling your personal text messages. How much more personal does it get. And imagine the efficiencies of the liberated worker.

OK now, I want you all to find liberation in your work environment. You can do it!

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