Think For Success

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

Recently husband and older son were having one of their financial planning discussions. This is fairly normal.

If you’ve read “Rich dad, poor dad” — I haven’t, but I’ve heard enough about it second and third hand to know what’s in it — the idea is that there are “rich” mindsets and “poor” mindsets.

Broadly speaking it is correct. “Poor” people — who might temporarily have lots of money — have habits that involve short term gratification, avoidance of risk etc. But I’m not a 100% sure those are all in the brain. I like Terry Pratchett’s theory of the boots because it makes more sense. Sure, poor people know they can buy these super expensive boots that last forever and they can will to their kids. The problem is that they can’t afford them. So you have to solve the physical poverty before you solve the mental glitch. I will however admit that the mental glitch often follows the physical one, and can in fact cause the “having money” condition to be temporary.

The men were discussing it, because our entire family has “mental glitches” of very poor people, though we haven’t been that for a while. Dan and I get it from our mothers (even though his mother was not raised poor, but her parents were) and we passed them on. Our glitches are also covalent with ADD though, making one wonder which came first. Yesterday, during my epic fight with the gazebo (I won, which I think makes me a legendary D & D fighter. I’d like some songs about my prowess as a barbarian warrior, honestly!) Dan came out to ask me a question and looked down in dismay at six garden shears on the ground. “Why do we have six?” “Because I threw the seventh away. It was really really dull and rusty.” (I wasn’t cutting the metal gazebo with those. I was cutting the wisteria that was interlaced all through it. We’ll see if the wisteria can be moved (I plan to roll for son with shovel) to new gazebo’s place. If it can’t, I’ll just put a trellis up there. The gazebo whose screws had rusted, forming a less fragile bond than the REST OF IT had to be dismantled with hatchet, tin snips and the big hammer. Yes, you’re getting this post late because I hurt. All over.)

The truth is that’s the ADD tax. Over the last ten years we’ve moved…. a lot. And those shears ended up in boxes and the boxes in places not even G-d himself could have guessed. The end result is that I bought another one. Which is fine. What isn’t fine is that I kept them all. And this has happened with clothes. Dishes. Cooking pots (I need to replace all of mine, honestly. With ONE coherent set.) implements. Office stuff (I have no idea where the keyboard for the remarkable went, and I must find it.) Etc. etc. etc. Which means our household holds about 10x what it should. Everywhere. Which in turn costs us money both in mortgage and in time consumed cleaning and organizing and– And yes, that is totally a neurological problem made financial drain. (I am, at least after the garden stuff and painting outdoor stuff is done) turning my hand to getting rid of stuff. The local Good Will should be happy. Because if we move again (we should really. For one this yard is not acceptable for someone who has a lot of books to finish) I want to make sure we’re not buying a house for stuff we never use and can’t find.

Which brings us back to their conversation and one conversation I had last night with a fan.

Older son said something like “There are a lot of rich people with no money, and a lot of poor people with a lot of cash, but it all resets, inevitably, because of what’s in the head.”

And I thought “that’s true” then made the leap to other things. What other things? Well, last night I had a conversation with a young fan who said there were a number of times in his career when he was set up to fail so they could “get rid of him.” This is a young man who is fairly successful for his generation. (Yes, he is looking. Any of you young women out there who are looking also, drop me a line, okay?)

But it was his experience that made me go “uh.” Let’s say he’s not in the type of profession where you’d expect that. But I think it’s an absolutely universal experience for us, Odds and Weirdlings who “think too much.” All of us were so setup at least once sometimes more. I think some of them I completely ignored simply because I’m that oblivious mentally.

I’d already been thinking about that, from husband and son’s discussion. About the fact that mental habits influence a lot of things, not all of them financial. And sometimes we need to be aware our mental habits are detrimental.

Most of you — most of me — had/have careers that falls short of our potential. Now, that could be said of everyone, and a lot of us also suffer from gifted child syndrome. Because we were identified as exceptional early we feel we should have achieved MORE. But that’s not the way the world works and “If you’re so smart why ain’t you rich” is a cliche for a reason. There are lots of things that go into being successful, and they’re not just “potential.”

But a lot of us fall short of ability and DEMONSTRATED ability, too. How come?

Well some of it, speaking for self, is inability in some parts of our would-be job. Like, I suck at self-promotion, which, yes, was important even in the days everyone was trad-pub.

But there is more to it. Oh, yes there is…..

Look, guys, most of us make people uncomfortable. No. Sorry. It’s a fact. Part of it is because we don’t read the “monkey signals.” No, I’m not talking about other people as being monkeys. In this sense we ALL are. Humans are actually great apes (or at least pretty good ones) but I’m referring to us as monkeys because it’s clearer. Humans are apes/monkeys. We’re primates. And the brain doesn’t override everything. There are signals at a non verbal level, that range from gestures to other physical attributes. Dave Freer once explained to me why men love women with long hair even when it annoys the women. He said it’s a social signal from before there were clothes. Or really humans. Long, clean hair means high status, because it means you have enough “subordinate monkeys” to pick your hair clean of parasites for you. Of course that no longer applies, but the back brain doesn’t know that, and so guys go gah gah for women with long, well groomed tresses, because it means no more dominant female will kill the babies they sire on that woman.

Our people — Odds — tend to be blind to that stuff. Oh, we have some of it, not all. And we’re utterly incapable of knowing when someone is doing monkey-aggression or monkey-dominance at us. It’s not that we’re not one of the species, it’s that we’re usually so far inside our own heads we’d need a seeing eye dog to find our way out. So we ignore the signal. And the other person interprets it as either aggression or insubordination. And then the war is on. And we are completely oblivious to it, and wondering why this person is so bent out of shape, because we were doing the thing and thinking about the thing.

And then, being us, when we find ourselves in a situation where we were setup to fail, we assume this is because we’re not good at the thing. Not that we were setup to fail and the problem was that we weren’t doing the monkey-dance right.

Look, in the eighties there were a lot of books like “dress for success” and yeah, we probably need those too. Because most of us just throw clothes on to cover everything. Took me years — years — to realize that dressing from thrift stores was fine, but I should prioritize things that were or looked new. Because people absolutely judge you at the subconscious level of you wear older clothes. I.e. they immediately assume you’re not that successful.

So, there are books out there on how to dress. Dress the best you can and usually a level above your work.

Behavior? Well, I know you’re there to do the thing. But you know? You still need to play the monkey games. You just do.

You’re not going to do it well absent a whole brain transplant, but I find a lot of books on how to succeed like “seven habits” are highly effective in telling you how to pretend to play the monkey game.

Let me explain, the seven habits type of thing never work for me. Actually trying to live by those “how to be highly successful” things completely short circuits what I do well and the other stuff doesn’t work for me for various reasons.

However, PRETENDING to follow the seven habits signals to your co-workers and bosses that you’re a very serious, very competent monkey who should be advanced with all possible expediency.

Ultimately I’ve noticed, by watching husband’s career, the people who get the highly valuable player treatment aren’t usually even that competent. (Some are okay. The vast majority would be better as plant food. I killed some of them under deeply hidden names in my books, because they annoyed me that much.) But they are very good at stuff like: be seen to come in early. Be seen to stay late. (Even if you do f*ck all of consequence in the middle.) Dress well. Speak well. Act like you know everything.

The last one is where our people fail, by and large. Because we tend to love our fields and be so deep in them that we’re aware of all our flaws.

For that, I need to advise you to look at how the people around you perform. What we told Bob last week about “Yes, you’re highly verbally fluent and language competent. Have you met the rest of humanity, much less the rest of humanity in the sciences?” Like that. Don’t make excuses for your colleagues. Don’t go “Yeah, Ezechiel is an idiot about this, but he’s the exception.”

Because of the obsessive nature of this group, I’d bet you you’re HIGHLY competent. Compared to everyone around you, including your bosses, always accounting for experience differentials.

Yes, you see every mistake you make. Sure. But again, you’re human. That desire for perfection is why you’re highly competent. But no one is ever PERFECT.

Keep things in perspective. Because being highly competent while acting nervous and insecure is how you get to the point that other people’s monkey brain marks you as not just a threat, but one that can be easily taken out.

Save yourself from that. ACT like what you are: highly competent. Because you are. And if you have to study some of the poseurs at work, or books on success to figure out how to do that? Fine.

Inside, you’re allowed to be as trembly as you wish. But on the outside?

Well, there’s that other saying from the eighties: Fake it till you make it.

I’m here to tell you that eventually your internals catch up with the fake facade. It finally happened five years or so ago.

BUT until it happens? Fake it till you make it, my friends, fake it till you make it.

You might not speak monkey-brain, but you can at least learn to translate.

Go.

221 thoughts on “Think For Success”

  1. “Make your bed every morning” is, in my opinion, one of the dumbest “do for success” things ever. In some sort of communal/barracks environment, it _perhaps_ makes sense (but as long as all the pieces/parts are on the bed, as opposed to around the bed, it’s still just OCD). As a “if nothing else, you’ve accomplished something” thing it is just plain stupid.

    If one insists on that sort of thing, “brush your teeth every morning” or “clean your stove after every meal” is at least hygienic and practical. No one cares if my bed is made. There is no harm done if I never make my bed – although changing the sheets without making the bed would be strange.

    I’m not totally against barracks inspections. I learned to keep refrigerator seals cleaned from that – and I still do because it makes a difference to the life of the seals and how well they function. I even get the foot-locker layout thing: You can find everything in the dark.

    If you can’t tell, that one is a bit of a pet peeve.

    Liked by 4 people

    2. For me, making my bed is an easy way to make something look tidy.

      Which is critically important in my place, given how not-tidy everything else is.

      If nothing else, at least that one place looks restful and kept.

      Liked by 3 people

      1. Which is a good life-hack, and might even be what that dang officer was actually responding to, on a gut level.

        An “it mattered to that one” type event that gives you a boost.

        To quote a famous book, made for man, not man made for it. :D

        Liked by 3 people

        1. It teaches a mindset.

          Attention to details

          Don’t cut corners.

          Don’t put things off.

          Maintain your gear.

          The little details -matter-.

          Liked by 3 people

              1. Objectively true, as even a few moments of consideration of the parameters would make clear.

                But that would require bothering to recognize that rules you do not understand can and will kill people due to that lack of understanding.

                Which is a thing that space-wasting officers are notoriously bad at.

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                1. That attention to detail is part of the very high success level of such units as the Ranger regiment. Marines also trend to be a bit picky about details, and they also seem quite successful.

                  I was also skeptical, until you track who consistently achieves high results, and who does not.

                  Making the bed may seem like a waste of time. You are free to do as you wish. Believe as you wish. But the folks who take the time to do the right thing every time on the small things, very much often do the right things every time on the big things.

                  As habit. reliably.

                  -That- is why the military is so fussy on attention to detail, and the elites moreso. All that barracks/parade fussing is to make sure that when you go into the hellscape of combat, you are hard wired to keep that rifle working, and your boots serviceable. Or that complex radio/radar/helicopter/gadget.

                  Because when the crap hits the fan, it is -way- too late to start learning that mindset.

                  Sure, we all draw the line somewhere “enough fuss”. Your approach was probably good enough for your life. “Success!” and all that.

                  Folks are free to think whatever they want. Do as you please. But don’t try to tell folks, like say me, that I am wrong on this point that has saved my own butt repeatedly over a long life, and is 100% validated by folks who have far more on their “got it done” list than me.

                  Resent it all you want, but “more slovenly” or “less attention to detail” is very, very rarely an improvement, unless one has jumped the shark into neurosis.

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                  1. The ‘eathen in ‘is blindness bows down to wood an’ stone;
                    ‘E don’t obey no orders unless they is ‘is own.
                    The ‘eathen in ‘is blindness must end where ‘e began,
                    But the backbone of the Army is the Non-commissioned Man!
                    .
                    Keep away from dirtiness – keep away from mess,
                    Don’t get into doin’ things rather-more-or-less
                    Let’s ha’ done with abby-nay, kul, and hazar-ho;
                    Mind you keep your rifle an’ yourself jus’ so!

                    https://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poem/poems_eathen.htm

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                    1. Amen, and Huzzah! (I quotes Dane-geld rather often. Leslie Fish has done a wonderful job of setting quite a bit of Kipling to music. An ‘anarchist’ who appreciates such a mind? Must certainly boggle some!)

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                    4. Other than her bizarre belief that males and females are exactly the same except for…

                      Founding a dynasty takes one type a minimum of nine long, increasingly vulnerable and uncomfortable months, plus a REAL rough day, plus–assuming they both survive it–whatever effort it costs to cuckoo the kid off. The output is rarely more than one per year.

                      The other type can bang out a dozen on spring break, one happy minute each.

                      Anyone who believes that those two types “are exactly the same except for” ANYTHING is most likely in a social environment that will brutally punish believing otherwise.

                      The “neurologically cheapest” way to store such beliefs is to just BELIEVE–profess it loud and often, internalize it, and recoil from thinking it through. Crimestop, or else.

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                    5. No. She had a big argument in the comments here, because she thought the reason women were weaker then men is that women were told to be slim while men were told to “eat hearty” while growing up.
                      Besides ignoring the fact that NO ONE in my generation — male or female — was told to “eat hearty” this is a total contravention of the effect of hormones on FETAL DEVELOPMENT. So, it was bizarre and annoying.
                      But…. woman of her generation.

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                    6. This American Boomer* heard “be a plate-cleaner” a lot. I’d guess it was the 1950s version of a don’t-waste-food meme from the Puritans. Nobody mentioned “…just the boys” that I recall.

                      We may be “in heated agreement” about why anyone as obviously outlier-bright as Leslie Fish would cling to ANY obviously irrational belief: It would be ruinously costly–family? friends? income? torches&pitchforks?–for her to question it.

                      I never saw the thread, but the “because they eat different” thing sounds like it jibes with Orwell’s description of Crimestop. Even bright people will dive into any rhetorical foxhole–no matter what absurd ick it’s full of–to avoid a direct hit by a thought that will be psychologically/socially ruinous if it marks them.

                      The “So”-tell–“So you’re saying !!!1!” (h/t Scott Adams)–is a typical symptom.

                      The PTB are reassured when they hear their Mandated Beliefs–the crazier the better–professed and defended in public. “Anybody who “believes” that is too scared of us not to.”

                      * IMO it would be useful to divide the 1946-1964 “Baby Boom” into Boom I and Boom II at 1955–the year the damn brain-rotting TV hit 50% of American homes.

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                    7. Yeah, twenty years later both husband and I destroyed even our sense of EATING (which has proven an issue for weight gain in later life) by NOT eating for days on end, because everyone was obsessed wtih being thin. But it was both of us.
                      I was born in 62. I am not a boomer, and no one considered us boomers till the nineties. My brother, born in 54 (early) used to be one of the ‘youngest boomers.’.

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              3. I put that effort into maintaining my tools, always putting them away in the proper places when I’m done with them, and keeping bits and bobs at least mostly sorted.

                Things that make my life easier, as well as “accomplishment.”

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            2. Sometimes the thing is not the thing. Making one’s bed is not an accomplishment in itself. It’s objectively a low-effort thing…and whether it’s BS or a productive mindset hack is all in the subjective effect that it has on the doer.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. This.

                My diligent research has determined that even a simple, specific activity potentially has more than one psychological effect.

                Honestly, I don’t understand why I don’t have more Nobel Prizes.

                Liked by 1 person

              2. it is -practice-. It is -training- a -mindset-.

                It is something that may -seem- worthless, to remind you that the -habit- is the thing.

                You do -not- know the detail that will save your ass. Make the bed and you may notice something, like say a smear of blood, oddly placed, that means “go get that skin tumor removed from where you couldn’t even see it”.

                Thus I get to stick around longer, and annoy folks with commentary.

                Liked by 2 people

          2. Absolutely. And the specific task of making the bed isn’t critical… but the mindset that doing it trains you into doing is.

            There are a thousand tasks he could have picked, but very few of them would have applied to his entire intended audience, or gotten the entire point across. However, starting the day by getting out of bed is one of the very few universal tasks – and by picking immediately turning around and making your bed, he was meeting the audience where they were at.

            Christ didn’t speak in parables to confuse people 2,000 years later who have no idea of the worth of a silver talent or denarii, and even if they know that wheat grows in fields, have no clue what species a tare is. The exact worth of the coinage and its economics, and the exact species of plant, weren’t the point. The mindset conveyed by the imagery to an audience that could relate was the point… He met his audience where they were at.

            Liked by 1 person

                1. Since someone is usually still in the bed when I get up to let the dog out … I wait.

                  I make the bed, eventually, to keep pets, cats and dog, off the sheets. Especially when wet outside either because raining, like now, or sprinklers. Also, the sheets and blankets need to be put back in properly distributed balance. Someone, not me, tends to keep them when I end up throwing them off because hot, then cold, but um, can’t get all of my side back … Now when I change the sheets, I keep the mattress cover open for airing out a bit.

                  Liked by 1 person

              2. Air out while everyone prepares to for the day, then ensure it’s cat-covered, is our method. (sometimes takes going back several times because toddler came in to steal the warm spot)

                Because the purpose is the purpose, not to create a box for me to check.

                Because the mental-hack that works on you? Actively damages me.

                I wasn’t just aviation– as TXRed points out, the details actually matter–I was a calibration technician.

                Which is why my shop got stuck cleaning out the personal belongings locker for the guys killed when their helo didn’t know how high they were off the ground. Because someone followed the ritual, but violated the meaning.

                Was the one who got stuck going through all the papers to figure out what individual had stolen calibration stickers to make sure all their stuff had the correct dates on it– but wasn’t actually calibrated.

                And of course the FOD walkdowns after the FOD walkdowns due to someone following the ritual of the walk…but neglecting to adjust for the scheduled delivery which meant vehicles driving on gravel and then on the flight line.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. Now you are digging to actively cover taking my meaning -way- off. You are better than -that-.

                  Folks -didnt- do the right thing. They -didnt- do the attention to detail. They -pretended-. they -faked-.

                  Do it -right-.

                  I never, not once, not -ever- had a live ammo jam with an issue M-16A1. because I inspected the frellign magazines, and made sure mine were OK. I used the goobered up ones with blanks, to practice jam clearing. Also to fix the damn things where feasible.

                  The counter example of the bedmaking to your deceased folks is the guy who just does the blankets CMFM.

                  I had “attention to detail will save your ass” hammered into my mind. And found it true and works. Cheating can win. (aint cheating aint trying) It can also kill you when you need the bandage and you stuffed the carrier with TP and pogey bait instead.

                  Your deceased comrades prove my point. They “didn’t have time for this crap” to do it -right-. Now they have all the time in the universe.

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                  1. Now you are digging to actively cover taking my meaning -way- off.

                    Stop blaming others for your choice of conflict turning out other than as you desired.

                    You chose to anoint yourself the champion of bed-making for “if nothing else, you’ve accomplished something”.

                    You chose to attempt to employ the big dick energy you don’t have to shut the discussion when your powers of rational debate couldn’t cash the check your mouth wrote.

                    You then decide to go off to a completely different comment — where someone who gets value from the ritual is engaging like a mature adult with someone who recognizes the value of the ritual as a self-guided mental hack— and throw little girl tizzy.

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                  2. “That chronic pain in the ass is probably keeping a bigger one away.” –G.K. Chesterton, if he wrote good.

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        2. Exactly.

          What’s important to (or important for) someone, varies by person or stage of life or environment or any number of other factors.

          Liked by 2 people

      2. FeatherBlade; like YOU said. I no longer do ‘hospital corners’ or ‘bounce a quarter off it’. But when I get up, the sheet and blanket are at least reasonably flat and in proper location. If I were to TRY and make sharp corners, my wife has a fit, because apparently HER mom did it that way, and she is still rebelling against that. She seems to intentionally leave the bed as big a mess as possible. And then complains when it’s bed time, because she doesn’t want to get INTO a messy bed. I get annoyed, because I fold the clothes on the bed, and want a flat place to work. I still fold my briefs ‘the Navy way’ out of habit. They do fit in the dresser drawer neatly that way! And now that I wear support ‘hose’ (calf socks?), they get folded so they lay neatly next to them. For her stuff, I have to do a compromise; I’m sorry, I just CANNOT throw them in a wad next to the dresser. I will shake them out and fold in half. And she still complains that ‘You don’t have to fold my undies!’. Likewise her pants and tops; not what >I< would consider folded, but at least something approaching neat. When she does her pants, it’s more like ‘sort of folded in half, regardless of shape’. The rest of the house is supposed to have NO ‘clutter’, but in the bedroom, clutter is ENFORCED. I don’t get it. (well, then there is ‘her’ bathroom, but men everywhere apparently complain about that…)

        Liked by 1 person

      3. I was a bed maker for quite a while. I’ve recently given it up – when I realized that no matter what, within a half-hour or so, there would be a lump in the middle of the covers. And a cat that glared at me when she came out to eat (litter box, brushing, etc.), for making it more difficult for her to burrow into.

        Liked by 2 people

    3. Counterpoint: I thrash around alot in my sleep, and I like my blankies layered in a particular way when I crawl under them. Trying to remember to make the bed shortly after I get up (or, on a commuting day, shortly after I get home) is my way of making sure blankets are how I like them at bedtime.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. I get up and ‘make the bed’ every morning – it’s just a mark of “normal” for me as I start the day. Did it with wife for over three decades and so it now feels like it just needs to be done. When I finish up (takes less than a minute) it still feels ‘good’ so I do it.

        Liked by 3 people

    4. The intent is to develop an obsession with detail. You will detail make the bed, the same as you detail maintain any other gear: weapon, self, radio, vehicle, whatever. Because then those things -work-, and you -maintain- them.

      To this day, I still tape/band the straps on rucksacks, including my daily carry. You put things in the pack the same way, so that anyone can know where to pull out the thing needed.

      It is -useful- to pay close attention to detail in all things. Which thing makes a life or death matter? Can one predict the future?

      I am not by nature such detail minded, but can easily flip the switch for such environments. Chaos doesn’t bother me, but tidy is more tranquil, and life has -plenty- of chaos for that part of me that flourishes in it.

      Making the bed is also prepping the mind to be orderly and attentive for the day. Also, it teaches ” get it done now, and don’t put things off”, another important lesson.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Routine and detail are fine, but I am also a firm believer in prominent notes (it’s hard to forget an appointment when you’re shaving with a note stuck to the middle of the bathroom mirror) and especially checklists. Among other things, I watch a neighbor’s house during the winter and have a list of every item to check to make sure I don’t overlook or forget anything. Paid off. Their water heater developed a slow leak and I spotted it before the trickle reached the floor drain – because one item was “check if basement is dry”.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. My computer monitors can look like rectangular sunflowers with all the post it notes.

          I switched to an app “kanban board” for task memory instead of post-its, for portability when I use multiple systems. But I still keep the things handy.

          Liked by 1 person

      2. I’m glad it taught you how to be detail-minded. But your evidence is anecdotal, and personal to you, so its not actually demonstrably a good thing.

        You know what happens when I make the bed beyond simply pulling up the covers? I waste a half hour or more going over every little thing to make sure the angle is right or the length is the same on both sides, etc. Time that could have been spent on something more productive. And then I feel bad because I wasted all of that time.

        It drove me nuts having to make the bed in a specific way when I was in the Navy, but at least that had an actual purpose beyond making me feel better about myself.

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        1. I didnt say “hospital corners” did I? no.

          I don’t particularly care if yours is “remove cat, verify fitted sheet, toss pillows at head, toss top sheet over all, toss folded blanket at feet”. That is a standard one can habituate in about 2 minutes each morning. (depending on cat. Mine is more like a five minute pouncemonster)

          Do these work better?

          Without fail, change the oil in your vehicle every 3000 miles, + or – 100. (car lasts much longer)

          Do the dishes after every meal, all of them, within 30 minutes +/- 10. (you will have fewer “unexplained” GI events) Could mean prewash and load the machine, and run machine to sterilize daily. varies by size of your meal mess, but easy to define a standard.

          Scrub down the bathroom periodically, great attention to the toilet. set your reasonable here.

          Do you carry a gun, or keep one beside the bed for ready use? Scheduled cleaning and ammo unload/inspect/reload. Range time. Dry fire. Spring replacement.

          Pick something common and trivial. and easy to do, or -not- do not. Habituate it. Next thing. Next.

          -habit- is the lesson

          -attention to detail- is the lesson.

          Set whatever standard works for -you-. Set it just a bit hard, just enough to tempt you to slack off. then -dont slack-

          Bed is just a super-common thing to pick.

          Try it with something you -do- care about. Then try it with something you -dont- much care about. Objectively, which developed the harder habit? Which changed you more?

          I am telling folks, truthfully with myriad other folks as examples if you like, you can make your lives a crapload better with this stuff.

          I certainly have. And still work on it because this isn’t my -nature-. Chaos doesn’t bother me much at all.

          I still do better with orderly.

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          1. Except that wasn’t the argument you made at the start. You argued about the sense of accomplishment, *then* brought in attention to detail. The sense of accomplishment thing is individual dependent, and there are to details to simply pulling up the covers. Plus the individual you quoted was talking about a specific type of making the bed, implied by who he was talking to.

            Those details are nonsense, it is button pushing that gets *some* people in the mindset of doing the trivial stuff and get that little rush of endorphins from accomplishing something. Meanwhile those of us who work get stuck dealing with their job because they got focused on little things that don’t matter in the long run.

            If it works for you, cool. Doesn’t work for everyone and so you can’t claim the act produces a demonstrable good like it is some ultimate truth. My jobs for the last 30 years have required attention to detail, and I constantly notice s- other people do not. The same kind of people who follow your advice. Focus on details is good, focus on the trivial and appearances is not.

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        2. :laughs:

          Oh, one of my “favorite” things was when we had a hard-charging “detail oriented” guy making sure our berthing had really, really pretty beds for the big inspection. Because if you pay attention to the details, you’ll pass!

          We failed. A serious failure, too, not “some little BS hit so you have something to fix,” because it was a safety violation.

          See, what the details he demanded violated Navy regulations designed to make it easy to get water out of the berthing. but dang if they didn’t look pretty.

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    5. For some young people, being able to point to several small accomplishments, like making the bed, helps ease anxiety and stress about getting other work done. YMMV.

      And details matter. Aviation is unforgiving of people who miss important details.

      Liked by 4 people

      1. Indeed.

        People sometimes accuse me of being judgemental. My usual reply is something along the lines of, Yep. For a good chunk of my working life (as an aircraft mechanic), thousands of people’s lives depended on my school trained and work experienced judgement to help keep them safe.

        Liked by 2 people

      2. Ayup. When you’re fresh out of college, looking for a decent job that’s hopefully in your field instead of the one you could fit around classes, under the gun of impending loans, losing your support network as your friends scatter across the country (or world) to pick up whatever job they can get… and running face-first into all the ways that the real world is NOT like they told you in college, and finding out you’re not only unprepared, but maliciously set up to fail…

        Being able to recognize what is under your control, and to actively control that, and make your world better with what accomplishments you can do, is a very important part of creating mental stability and a resilient mindset to take on the rest of the world.

        Heck, on the worst days, I still turn the to-do list over, pull out a fresh pad, and start making a done-list instead. Because I don’t have the energy or pain tolerance to make a significant dent in the mass or urgent/critical/non-gent/non-critical things to do… but if I can look around and manage to fill the page with the things I can do, then I can end the day with a bit of satisfaction that I got things done, instead of the despair at all I couldn’t do.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. “running face-first into all the ways that the real world is NOT like they told you in college, and finding out you’re not only unprepared, but maliciously set up to fail…“

          –

          In spades. At least with the second degree I, and other older classmates, were a tad more practical on what we were there to achieve. Been there done that. Even if it was just to add a few letters after our signatures because the boss wanted them there (stupid, but hey, boss was paying for it). If nothing else, the classmate drama was gutted or ignored. For the most part knew most weren’t going to be competitors on the local market. They were going places by golly. Have no idea if they did or not.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. To be fair to more ambitious classmates to where my head space was those last two quarters.

            Got asked “how can you get pregnant just before graduation?”

            Answer: “Been trying 10 years.” I went back to school because it wasn’t happening, the community college. The university additional 4 year bachelors was a boss willing to pay for the degree (until the company moved out of town).

            I didn’t even look for work for 6 months after graduation. Found a job in less than 2 months. Kid was 9 months.

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      1. I never made the bed until I came home one day, my mom had moved the bed, and everything that was under the bed went on the bed.

        I slept that night in scratchy sheets from all the dirt they brought with them.

        So I learned to at least straighten the sheets up. Mind you, you’re supposed to air the bed, or “turn the bedclothes down”, so that all the night funk airs out, but with cats… yeah, that doesn’t happen.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. I get up in the wee hours, while $SPOUSE prefers that the sun actually be up. She gets the bedding out of the way so the mattress pad dries out if necessary. When I’m ready to do my teeth and such in the morning, I (or both of us–it varies) make the bed.

          By nature, I’m really messy, but as other people noted, it’s a detail that gets things in a known state for later. When it’s critical, I (try to) keep things neat. Success varies, though it’s higher when criticality rises.

          Liked by 1 person

    7. Replying to myself to get this at the bottom of the vigorous debate I kicked off…

      If “attention to detail” is what you want, then SAY THAT.

      “Attention to detail is important. It begins first thing in the morning: Make your bed. It doesn’t end until you get into bed – with the next day’s clothing laid out beside it.”

      THAT makes sense. That adds value. There is no inherent value in making one’s bed. There is no reason to pretend there is. If attention to detail is the goal, make it explicit and don’t expect your audience to make conceptual leaps that only exist in your own head.

      Note that keeping cats off, dirt out of the sheets, using it to fold laundry, etc… are also secondary effects; one is not making the bed for its own sake. “It makes me happy to have a tidy bedroom” is also a good reason, but doesn’t extrapolate to the general population.

      Liked by 2 people

  2. My problem is thinking too much. The dress for success people tended to be the type who plugged a power strip into itself and wondered why the computer doesn’t work. This made my back brain associate it with stupidity.

    This was particularly demonstrated by an ambassador calling me directly, skipping the duty list, to come in because his computer didn’t work. His monitor was shut off.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I made myself unpopular with a business machine repairman by commenting, “You know, it works a lot better when the power’s turned on.”

      Mind you, we worked that poor little machine half to death. And that’s not counting the coworkers who thought he was mechanically inclined and stuck a screwdriver in it…..while the power was turned on. Sparks. Lots and lots of sparks….

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      1. Oh, yeah, the printer didn’t work. On account of — remember 89 — the cable not connecting to the computer. on the basis of these two things they thought I was a “computer expert” as well as a translator….

        Liked by 2 people

        1. I was a graphic designer. Part of my job was to make the literally film slides for internal PowerPoint presentations.

          one of my clients.came to me, frantic because the projector wasn’t advancing properly. The forward button went backwards, the backward button forwards.

          [painfully obvious solution was just lying there, but she’d obviously come for help, so I went to take a look at it.]

          Wired remote. 6 prongs, arranged symmetrically. I put it back upside down, problem solved.

          They thought I was a geeeenius. 🙄

          Liked by 2 people

        2. The boss’s wife’s printer/scanner/copier/fax machine wasn’t working after moving their home office and getting a ‘professional’ to set it up. After a bit of poking around I found the P/S/C/F machine’s USB cable was stuck into the computer’s Ethernet port. Fortunately, neither was damaged. Half-hour trip, 5 minutes to find the problem, 5 seconds to fix, and another minute marveling at the sheer creative stupidity I’d uncovered.
          ———————————
          It is so much easier to check credentials and victim group status than to evaluate competence and ability.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Ah yes, I remember a story of a help desk call to a PC manufacturer. Customer stated that the coffee mug holder on his computer had broken and he needed a replacement. The baffled customer service rep. finally asked him to tell him where the coffee mug holder was on his computer. He had to mute the call for several seconds when he couldn’t help from laughing. The customer had been using the CD drive as a coffee mug holder.

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            2. He had to mute the call for several seconds when he couldn’t help from laughing.

              Whoever make an app that can do that in face-to-face meatspace is gonna buy Elon and make him wash and wax their cars.

              Liked by 1 person

        3. I have made a name for myself at several jobs by keeping the copiers running. It’s landed me gigs that were Very Interesting, because everybody staffing a conference wants the one that can keep the copier unjammed and the coffeepot full. The last Giant Corporation I worked for, I had 4 industrial printers under my care and feeding – even though they technically weren’t my bailiwick, they were right next to my workstation – and if I performed regular preventive maintenance, as well as keeping paper and toner fed, they rarely jammed, and were easy to unjam.

          This also meant that whenever I called IT, the worthies in that department hustled out like their hair was on fire… because they knew I wasn’t going to call them unless it was serious.

          On the other hand, I accidentally dressed for success at the same job. That is, one day I was giving the daily briefing to upper management / the heads of the departments on what our department was doing… only to notice that the General Manager’s right-hand man was staring at my chest. Given the man was generally reputed to display all the warmth and humanity of your average Great White Shark, this was… disconcerting. Not just to me, but to all the upper management.

          Finally, when I concluded the briefing, the GM burst out, “What are you looking at?”
          Right-hand Shark replied with the oddest smile, that started at his eyes and had crept down to twitch at the corners of his lips, “Her shirt, sir.”
          GM: “Her shirt??”
          I looked down, as everyone else stared at my shirt, too. It had been the top of the clean stack. It wasn’t stained. It had a very simple abstract design of a circle with a line through the bottom in black on dark green…
          Right-hand Shark replied almost dreamily, “I’ve spent so many thousands of hours staring through that…”
          The GM looked from my chest to my face, silently demanding answers.
          I replied a little uncomfortably, “It’s the front sight of an M-16, sir. Sort of an in-joke, but subtle enough not to upset anyone who doesn’t recognize it.”
          The very civilian GM continued to look blankly at me, clearly not understanding what an M-16 was. Most of the department heads looked blank, but two of the gents with ramrod straight spines and close-cropped greying hair nodded. He looked at their nods, and made the decision to nod himself. “Oh, some sort of video gaming thing?”
          I decided this was NOT the time to contradict him. “Something like that, sir.”
          He relaxed, having clearly made up his mind that he now knew what was going on. “Right, good work. Next department meeting is in five minutes…”

          And that’s how I suddenly had the attention of the #2 in the building, for good and for ill, and could jump a number of steps on the chain of command when I really needed to. (And vice versa, when he didn’t trust the reports he was getting.) …turns out, he did have plenty of humanity. He also had a very dry and sneaky sense of humour, but that’s a story for another day.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. “… that’s a story for another day.”

            Noted. I’ll pester you for it in a couple weeks if you haven’t posted the story before then. I have a feeling I’d like the gentleman.

            Liked by 1 person

      2. Brag on my husband a bit–

        he got called to the bridge by his division officer (whose major was IN BEING A CHEERLEADER) because a computer was failing to work.

        They even thought to check it was plugged in!

        Got down… discovered it was unplugged at the back of the machine when he was down unplugging it to pull out and look inside.

        DID NOT say this.

        Pulled it out, checked each point, then took the video card out and carefully put it back in.

        Plugged the machine back in, and it started back up.

        Very seriously stated that sometimes things just vibrate loose.

        Didn’t tell a soul until after he’d transferred.

        Liked by 6 people

      2. Reposting since first reply apparently did not go through; please delete duplicate if this appears twice.

        Similar effect but on purpose, there’s a CD image you can download called “Disk Boot and Nuke”. (Which apparently hasn’t been updated in over a decade, so other software is probably better, but at the time I looked into it, DBAN was the way to go). I have… heard… about places where there’s a danger of your office being attacked by hostile forces looking to extract info from your computers. (And from any personnel they might capture if the evac order doesn’t go out in time). In such places, I have heard that each desktop computer (this was roughly 20 years ago) would have a CD taped to the side of the computer loaded with a copy of Disc Boot and Nuke. The data-destruction process in case an evac was ordered was (or so I have heard) “Put the CD in the drive, reboot, head to the evac vehicles.” As long as this happens at least 30 minutes before the hostile forces arrive, they wouldn’t be recovering any information from that computer.

        Never heard about anyone having to use it, but it was nice (or so I have heard) to have such protections in place.

        Will neither confirm nor deny any personal involvement, nor answer questions about details such as place. Hostile forces would be assumed to be motivated by religion, so you may be able to make some guesses as to place, but I will neither confirm nor deny any particular guesses.

        Liked by 4 people

        1. Only vaguely related … might be apocryphal, since I can’t find anything on the web just now.

          Seems some USN shipboard fire control computers were DEC PDP11/44. As with All Good Computers, it could detect an overheat condition, and shut itself down to preserve the hardware. There was an over-ride for that behavior; evidently someone thought that preserving the ship for another minute or two was more important than the computer saving itself, only to become involuntarily water-cooled shortly after shutting down.

          What’s the Star Trek line? “The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.” IIRC.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. The ‘Battle Short’ switch. For when the computer has to work or the enemy will sink your ship. Most military electrical equipment has some equivalent.
            ———————————
            When police arrest violent criminals to protect innocent people, they are condemned as Jackbooted Fascist Stormtroopers.

            When police arrest innocent people at the behest of corrupt politicians, they are hailed as National Heroes.

            Liked by 2 people

        2. Takes longer than that to repeatedly overwrite reasonably large spinning platter disks. You wipe out the master table of “where is everything” first, but you can rebuild from the data which is sitting right where it was.

          now, you start at location 1 and write a zero. 2 = 0, 3=0. And so on. At the end you go back to 1 and write 1. When done, pick a random ascii character other than 1 or 0 and write it to each.

          -now- recovery is harder.

          But some remains, in the “wiggle” of the mechanical head, some stuff gets what seems like “written in the margins”. Fron that wobble path you may catch something recoverable.

          So you wipe more random stuff, and make the wobble work for you to get it.

          but until you slag it in a furnace, or grind off the magnetic stuff, some bits and bytes remain.

          punching holes in the disk make recovery hard, but entirely still possible, minus the stuff removed by holes.

          Solid-state is another matter, but there you can analyze the tendency for some bits to be a bit sticky. And some other math/physics stuff.

          Crush to bits in a gravel maker, or incinerate in a furnace. Note that burning drives makes all sorts of very toxic gasses.

          You folks are secure-disposing phones, old PC drives, and other storage, yes?

          Liked by 2 people

          1. encrypting disks helps, but even that isn’t fool proof.

            if it was uncrackable, could it be sold to normies?

            “Theoretically unbreakable” is dang near an oxymoron.

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            1. if it was uncrackable, could it be sold to normies?

              Yes.

              The spooks get their claws in stuff wherever they can, but they don’t actually have that level of power, and other branches of the government have an interest in citizens having real security so they provide internal pushback.

              Also I don’t care how powerful you think the spooks might be: they cannot control a planet’s worth of open source development.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. They don’t have to. They regulate and sue a handful of manufacturers.

                They quit hassling PGP folks back in the 90s when they broke PGP.

                Theoretically unbreakable is an oxymoron, because it just drives new theories. Same lesson as in tanks or battleships. Shell/warhead/attack always wins over armor/shield/defense in the long run. Always.

                Not going to go on here. Believe whatever you want.

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          2. Yes, if the attackers reach the location fast and are computer-savvy enough to unplug the power then the magnetic surface of the disk may still yield up recoverable data: if only 0’s have been written and 1’s have not yet been written, for example, you may get a series of values that are, essentially, 0.000, 0.002, 0.000, 0.002, 0.000, 0.000, 0.002, 0.002. A sufficiently sensitive reader (such as get used in data-recovery centers) can reconstruct that to say “Ah ha, the capital letter S was stored in this location”.

            But as for “reasonably large” spinning platters, keep in mind that this hypothetical may or may not have been 20 years ago. An average/typical disk size in 2005 was 80 gigabytes, and if you had 160 or 320 gigabytes of disk in your computer then you were spending a lot of money on your storage. So it would have taken a lot less time to write 80 gigabytes of random bit patterns, as compared to the 4 TB SSD in my laptop or the 8 TB spinning-platter disk in my home server. (SSDs need a different data-destruction method, which I’m not familiar enough with to explain the details of).

            And even if all you got was five minutes’ warning, “they’ve been spotted on the highway heading this direction. Get out NOW!”, then you’d still slap the disk into the drive and reboot before heading out, because even a small amount of data destruction is better than nothing, and you might get lucky and have the first guys in through the door be grunts who don’t know how important it is to pull the power, giving you the extra time needed for the disc to complete its job of data destruction.

            At my current place of work, a few years back when the IT guys had a bunch of old hard drives to destroy, they put together a backyard smelter with some clay pots (one overturned on top of the other one), some coals for heat, and a hair dryer blowing into a tube pushing air into the otherwise-sealed smelter. Got it hot enough inside to melt the aluminum platters. They then took some wet sand, pressed plastic refrigerator-magnet letters into it to form a sand casting, and cast the words “COMPUTING SERVICES” in molten aluminum made from old hard drive platters. (In one single piece of aluminum because they had also drawn a line across the bottom of the cast to connect all the letters and provide a baseline for it to stand on). That cast-aluminum sign no longer stands at the door to the office — I forget what happened to it — but it stood there for several years; the guys were quite proud of how it came out.

            Liked by 2 people

            1. It would be Inconvenient if it were to activate prematurely, but it seems that a purpose-built disk drive with a self-destruct thermite charge strategically located within would wipe it MUCH faster and more securely than a garbage-overwrite.

              There might be more fire than strictly necessary, but that might be a Feature in a GTFO situation like you describe.

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              1. The particular hypothetical instance I was thinking about was civilian, not military or gov’t, so thermite charges would not have been readily available through legal means (and extra-legal means would not have been considered by this hypothetical organization).

                I wouldn’t be surprised if US embassies in sensitive locations did have thermite charges in such places, though I have no knowledge. (And I also wouldn’t be surprised if they didn’t have them, because the amount of incompetence to be found the State Department knows no bounds).

                But in the scenario I was talking about, the idea would be to protect locals who were working with the civilian org and would be made targets if the hostile forces could learn their names from computers left behind. The risk of such attacks springing up with no warning would be low (typical expected scenario would be hours, likely days, of warning) and the risk of accidental fire would be higher (you may have already guessed the climate in the area would often be hot and dry). To the best of the knowledge I may or may not have, burning down the building as people left was not an option ever considered.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. …thermite charges would not have been readily available through legal means…

                  Good point. That stuff’s Bad News.

                  I anticipate the BATF regulating its precursor components sometime early in the next Administration.

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                  1. Not posting recipes, but the very basic thermite components are so stupidly common you cannot possibly prevent someone from making it. And there are a bunch of recipes.

                    It generally takes more than a match to light it off.

                    it is a common chem lab activity, used to make small samples of near-pure material. Also at great heat. Its the fuel of “volcano” demonstrators.

                    And the above post about destroying disks with it is -spot on- provided you can control the resultant metal fire results. Arson is a major felony, for good reason.

                    I have worked with data recovery companies on a number of occasions, to recover data from disks ,and some other things.

                    A prior employer offered a bit under $50k if anyone could find some missing sets of manufacturing instructions for electronic products.

                    I found the felling things. “floptical disks” with a locally made controller and encryptor. The key components, especially encryption, had been removed and destroyed.

                    We were able to crack the disks and recover data. The key to success turned out to be … amusing. And taught me the “better theory” bit.

                    Liked by 1 person

          3. I have a Pentium 4 (Y2K special!) machine that’s patiently waiting for the round tuit to get trashed.

            In the days of 5.25″ hard drives, I’d disassemble them and deal with the platters separately. I now have some 3.5″ hard drives that need to be dealt with, as well as a 2.5″ one that came out of the #1 laptop. (It was frequently used for travel, so it didn’t have the critical information in the first place.)

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    3. We called it the “executive polarity test”. Never ask if something is plugged in. No one checks, they just say “yes”.

      “Sometimes, computer power cords become polarized. It’s rare and no one really knows why. Would you please unplug the cord, flip the plug over, then plug it in again?”

      Amazing how often that worked – with polarized or grounded plugs that one cannot flip over and plug in.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. “There could be an intermittent short in the power cable, unplug it, look it over, and plug it back in” is also good.

        If that fixes it, then tell them to make sure to mention that if it happens again, and to watch out for hot spots.

        We actually had a bad power cable that didn’t have visible damage anywhere, once!

        Liked by 2 people

  3. I have, “Rich Dad, Poor Dad,” and the reasoning behind it is simple.

    Poor mindset: easy come, easy go. No effort to save, impulse buying, and so on.

    Middle-class mindset: earnest, tries to pay bills, puts a little away steadily in a savings account or maybe, if they’re daring, a short-term CD. And as soon as they pile a bit up, a financial emergency hits and the savings are gone, so they start over.

    Rich. Pays bills, may have a savings account, but also puts money regularly in riskier investments. If all goes well, eventually his money is making money for him.

    That’s more or less my beloved and so far it’s worked for us.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. I’ve been close to two people in my life who were terrible at saving money. Both had been taught to save by their middle class families and told they would need it for college (in my time still considered the essential step to success beyond their own families), then their families fell on hard times and emptied their child’s “college funds.” It taught both that money in the bank is not real and can be taken away without regard to your consent or effort to accumulate it. Sometimes life teaches perverse lessons.

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      2. Not always a rhyme or reason. $OLDEST_BROTHER is careful with money, though he got clobbered when he helped $NEPHEW buy a house for flipping as the market died (then $NEPHEW got eventually-terminal cancer), doing a bad number on $OLDEST’s budget and no-longer retirement plan.

        $OLDER_BROTHER’s spending habits would embarrass a drunken sailor or perhaps a Democrat politician. (Well, some of the latter, maybe. That is a very high bar.)

        I learned, and try to emulate $OLDEST while staying clear of $OLDER’s grubby paws.

        Our parents were quite responsible with money. Go figure.

        Liked by 2 people

      3. My folks were the opposite. I had the aptitude, and Dad really wanted me to go to college. When the economy went south for a while and he was laid off, I was FORBIDDEN to contribute financially from any funds that were to go to the college savings. So I would stop for groceries on the way home from work on payday (I didn’t get laid off, but also didn’t get the promised raise; you take what you can get) and then fail to put that amount into saving. Damn sure wasn’t going to at least contribute SOMETHING! Mom never pointed this out to Dad, but from the look I got when I brought home the groceries, she KNEW what I was doing, and understood, even if she also didn’t exactly approve.

        But the economic hit also took out two of the scholarships I had qualified for. With my background and life experience at that point, I couldn’t imagine taking out a sufficiently large loan to cover the difference. So, I joined the Navy and bought a rather nice used car. (Dad approved of the car choice.) The education I got from that route was not as broad, academically, as Widener University might have provided, but the breadth of LIFE education was far broader. And it may have even incidentally goaded my youngest brother into joining the Marines, which set him on the path of actually growing up that he had been rather avoiding up to that point. Could I have “done better’ with an engineering degree? Perhaps. Or I might have gotten tempted by the poor choices of friends, and ended up doing far worse. College wasn’t quite the cesspool back then that it has become, but the direction was being affected even in the 70s.

        Liked by 3 people

        1. “Or I might have gotten tempted by the poor choices of friends, and ended up doing far worse. College wasn’t quite the cesspool back then that it has become, but the direction was being affected even in the 70s.”

          Yep, I went to UC Riverside which was not known as either a party school or a den of iniquity school. Still, beer and pot were available to anyone who wanted to indulge. UCR was known, at the time, for its focus on undergraduate education, and most of my classes were taught by knowledgeable full professors. Also in 1969 it was tuition-free to qualifying California residents! I did have a friend who went to UCSD. He was a chemistry savant–scored a perfect 800 on the Chemistry SAT. Within a year he had fried his brain on drugs and went to work in a quarry with his father for the rest of his days.

          Liked by 2 people

        2. “College wasn’t quite the cesspool back then that it has become, but the direction was being affected even in the 70s.“

          –

          Oh there were definitely the party dorms back then. The socialist recruitment indoctrination? Not in my field. Or I was oblivious to it. Probably both.

          Our HS valedictorian went to the same college. Flunked out through the party path. Parents pulled him from college. He joined the army. About our 15th class reunion, still army, working on 4th phd. Didn’t hear anything this last reunion. Presume he is retired, our 50th class reunion, classmates ages were 68 – 70.

          Liked by 1 person

    2. I would disagree with you politely that the point of the rich mindset he was trying to teach wasn’t just to put money into riskier investments, but to approach the world with a mindset looking for opportunities to make those investments, or to create income streams.

      I once sat down and passed some time with folks who had Significant Money in real estate – and they were quite curious about my husband and I being writers, and how that worked financially. When they translated it into terms they knew and understood, having stories generating income in paper and ebook form became “multiple streams of passive income”, and they were quite pleased that each “investment vehicle” (story) could be sold twice (ebook and paper) and licensed through KU “making sure you meet the demand curve of every segment of the market.”

      I noted ruefully that there was a lot of work up front for uncertain reward, and not much passive about maintaining the discoverability… and that caused a lot of mirth. They were quick to assure me that Real Estate wasn’t any different, whether residential or commercial! The numbers were bigger, the timelines longer, the number of customers fewer, but the concepts hold true.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. Agreed. Your formulation is more accurate.

        Which is why we’re currently losing money on a Huddle House my beloved decided looked like it had potential as well as a job opportunity for our son.

        But we’re hopeful it will turn the corner. It’s certainly busy on the weekends. And it serves decent, plain food at reasonable prices.

        Liked by 1 person

  4. I think it was Dickens that had an essay disguised as a short story that was basically Pratchett’s boots theory. Instead of boots, Dickens used food. It was two reasonably well-off men discussing the money wasted over the long-term by the poor man that they see buying a meal (a mincemeat pie, iirc).

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  5. On the rest of it, well, it hit kind of hard. Because, “not seeing, hearing or noticing the social ape signals,” pretty well sums up my childhood. I figured I was an Odd, but that settles it.

    I have no idea if I was ever set up to fail, but the frustrating period where every attempt to improve my position in the bureaucracy hit the wall makes me wonder. I finally got one school by ignoring the official review procedure and applying directly to the school. (The overarching organization wanted final control on who went, ostensibly to keep lazy sods from going and wasting the slot. But in practice it worked out to, “You can’t go unless you need it to qualify for your upcoming promotion,” rather than my, “I can’t qualify for a promotion without more training.”)

    Liked by 1 person

  6. Not to be difficult here–I’m just like that–buuuut:

    The problem with “fake it ’til you make it” is that humans are very sensitive to fakes. The fakery that feels, to the faker, like it’s indistinguishable from the Real Thing… isn’t.

    E.g. one reason I can’t stand Sean Hannity’s show is his rhetorical laughter: “Oh, those wacky liberalsaahHAhahahaha!” He Tries! So! HARD! to make it sound spontaneous.

    The Uncanny Valley sounds like Hannity’s staged laugh.

    Laughs, smiles, warm&friendly tones of voice, “open” body-language… should ANYTHING make your skin crawl more than a human acting non-threatening?

    Sure, a young Alec Guinness could probably make that work, but being mocked as a “try-hard”–at first, anyway–is the best outcome most of us can hope for.

    Best I ever managed was to be up-front about it: I’m good enough at doing The Job that clients and co-workers (“cow-irkers”) will tolerate me doing it.

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    2. Laughs, smiles, warm&friendly tones of voice, “open” body-language… should ANYTHING make your skin crawl more than a human acting non-threatening?

      It’s like makeup.

      I’ve been told by folks that they don’t like women who wear makeup. It looks fake.

      Some of them have told me that my makeup is bad, and I need to get someone to show me how to do a better job of it.

      ….I haven’t worn anything more than glorified lipgloss in 20 years.

      Sometimes, what folks think they’re pinging off of, and what they’re actually pinging off of, aren’t the same.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. When I was still working – we had classes for the new folks on detecting aggression and reading body language looking for fight/assault behavior. We also tried to teach how to project a ‘command presence’ and act like you own the place as a way of avoiding actual confrontation. Sometimes it was all for naught and the fight was on. It still worked rather well for ‘de-escalation’ on many occasions. Down deep there is still a whole lot of basic animal in a human being.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. “SouthNarc” had some very handy quick “tells” for “you are about to get your head busted”. he spent time pretending to be a con in prison to learn signs and test theories.

          Kinda hardcore, eh?

          Very short version of opponent tells:

          1. grooming behavior, wiping hair for example.
          2. Quick lookaround, left-right head movement
          3. extend/plant the back foot

          #3 is the moment before the sucker punch or all out attack. Very few people learn to throw a -hard- punch without a planted back foot.

          Grossly oversimplified, but useful.

          Liked by 4 people

      2. “Sometimes, what folks think they’re pinging off of, and what they’re actually pinging off of, aren’t the same.”

        And that is the best advice for the authors/artists among us to take to heart about what folks say about our work. Readers are extremely perceptive when they spot something wrong, and extremely incompetent at suggesting why it’s wrong or how to fix it.

        Liked by 4 people

        1. First rule of engineering: the customer is the only one who can tell you where it hurts.

          You’re job is to figure out why, and ways to fix it, but you must start from their pain point, not one you make up in your head.

          Liked by 3 people

          1. On those occasions when I actually got to talk to the end user, I usually asked, “What do you spend most of your day doing?” then, “What do you think you should spend most of your day doing?” That told me how a software engineer could help them add value.

            Liked by 3 people

            1. I used “What do you need produced?” followed by “What do you use to create?” Which always gave me what I needed for the between “miracle happens here” pieces. Added value was producing a small piece of what was needed a lot faster. Also depended on who was the actual end client. The one using the new program? Or *someone/thing else.

              I almost always got direct access to the client, most of my career. Even if access was only over the phone.

              (*) Um. The software that did not change what was done. Just changed how fast it was done. Eliminating the overtime needed to get it done on time. Yea, that was fun (not). Someone got “retired”. It wasn’t me. Luckily I knew the “client” wasn’t the one doing the work, but that person’s manager. Also wasn’t the first time I’d done new from scratch program for this manager. Also having worked with me before, the manager knew my method of “This is what I’m running into. Tell me where I am wrong.” When I know I am 1000% not wrong (but hey always possible, right?)

              Liked by 1 person

        2. Yep. With my writers group I quickly learned that what they thought was wrong was seldom the actual problem. The critique simply means “there’s a problem here.”

          Taking it as anything else quickly led to my story being re-written in their image.

          Liked by 3 people

            1. I’ve gotten to be an early reader on a couple of projects. I can’t (usually) address, world geography, history, foreign language quips, can catch some popular fiction references/easter-eggs but not most, etc. But I can ask “I noticed XYZ. I thought it would be referenced later? Did I miss that?” As well as, “ABC situation was a bit confusing, what am I missing?” Then when work is released and I read it again see that those have been addressed. Only a few lines, or paragraphs.

              Liked by 2 people

              2. One of the things I utterly hated as a freelance editor was pointing out egregious errors (such as a door being opened three times) and then reading the “finished” work and the changes weren’t made.

                Why did I bother?

                Liked by 1 person

      3. Same.

        I don’t even use lipgloss. I use chapstick, sunscreen, and hand cream, when needed (Wyoming/Montana, Cascades). But that is it.

        I don’t use make up. I can’t. I put on make up and I want to scratch my face off. Even chapstick, sunscreen, and hand creams, unless the environment requires it, is a stretch. Hint, Yellowstone and the Tetons, are environments that require them. Apparently the cabins of airplanes too, as I learned recently.

        I also do not wear perfume. I can’t. Give it < 30 minutes and I will have a full blown migraine. I can tolerate others wearing perfume, usually, most the time.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. I’ve got two aunts that always wear makeup– one because she got tired of folks thinking she was ill (translucent redhead), the other because she has horrible skin conditions if she doesn’t.

          But put a nice liquid foundation on? All her skin issues vanish. No itching.

          Like

          1. 100%

            It varies individual to individual. Which is why, I use “I”. It has been recommended that I go to a specialist to learn how to use cream foundation because of the rosesa. Because of my experiences with makeup, I didn’t bother. There is a reason behind my reaction, it isn’t the makeup itself.

            I do occasionally get comments (“are you okay?”) when the rosea flares (excessively red with current medication). I respond “I’m fine. It is the rosea … stupid genetics.” Because I also generally get “But you don’t drink!” (That they’ve ever seen.) Which is responded to with “It isn’t fair. Getting the punishment without the supposed fun.” Full disclosure, I do *drink alcohol, just don’t drink often or to excess.

            (*) The annual medical updates. “Do you drink?” Yes. “Once a day.” No. “Once a week.” No. “Once a month.” No. All 3 are correct. Just not accurate. Now if they add. “A few times a year.” Yes – that is both correct and accurate.

            Liked by 2 people

        2. I have that same problem with foundation.

          I need to ask my mother what foundation she uses. It’s some kind of super expensive, ostensibly “healthy” foundation “Without all the toxins in normal makeup”.

          It also takes a very tiny amount to fully cover the face and doesn’t produce that “GET IT OFF” feeling that you average drugstore cosmetics do. It was more like putting on lotion.

          (I tried it when we needed to get dolled up for a “Prohibition Party”.)

          Like

      4. So commenting only as an observer, there’s a continuum – from nothing and does not need it to touch-up and cover a bit all the way up to the insane face spackle twelve coat paint jobs that are apparently the “standard that is to be lived up to” per the soshul meedeeuh young female hive mind.

        From my personal perspective as a heteronormative guy, the full spackle thing does not work for me. And I contend it is much more obvious than the wearers think it is most times it is done, if only from skin tones changing radically somewhere around the neck. If you have hollywood trained makeup team and a makeup trailer to follow you around and touch you up as needed you can probably look “natural” while spackled, but I would think only the most artistically gifted and trowel-and-spackle experienced and trained can diy it at that level.

        I have been told that the objective after doing all that work is to look like no work was done at all. All I can say is the general results were closer to that outcome in previous decades that it is now.

        Liked by 1 person

    3. It depends. Really a lot of ‘faking it until you make it’ depends on remaining calm in crises.

      We had what could have been a very serious incident recently. I certainly wasn’t an expert in it, and I was supposed to manage things without stuff going bang.

      Well, most of that came down to remaining calm, going to find the experts to talk to, and keeping things moving without rushing them. It ends up being about keeping your head, even when you’re in over it.

      Liked by 3 people

  8. re: long hair

    You can predict women’s high fashion/beauty by looking at whatever takes the most effort.

    long flowing hair takes a lot of time to maintain. at one time, long hair was kept mostly in a bun and short hair was more effort as it required frequent trimming guess what the fashion was then.

    look at anything (weight, level of tanning, fabric choice, cut of clothing, etc) and you will find a pretty tight correlation between being inconvenient and being considered fashionable.

    Is it “this person is rich enough to not work outside where they would get a tan/to not work inside so they can get a tan” (depending on the year)? Or is it just competition and whatever makes the most exclusive club wins?

    Liked by 3 people

    1. This goes to luxury beliefs, as well.

      (Female fashion is just slightly simpler, with a lot more visual aspects where you can go “wow, that’s a dumb idea…oh, that’s why, it’s fashion.”)

      Liked by 1 person

        1. You ain’t the only one. I wore long nails for a costume once, and NEVER AGAIN. I couldn’t even *cough* “use bathroom facilities properly” *cough*. Honestly, it looks like spike heels and hobble skirts, only attached to your fingers so you can never take them off.

          Liked by 2 people

          1. Note the “heroine” of the skinsuited Wizard of Oz is: a proudly non-binary Woman of Color; has six inch, at least, nails and a shaved head. And the Hollywood PTB seem to be trying to make her a Thing.

            The actress/singer playing Glinda looks like walking anorexia. They are being portrayed as, “great friends.”

            Liked by 1 person

          2. Receptionist where I used to work had talons about 3 inches long. I wondered how she managed to wipe her ass without doing herself serious damage.

            She had to poke at keyboards and phones with an awkwardly gripped pencil.
            ———————————
            Natural selection — making the world a better place, one idiot at a time.

            Like

          1. I could understand long nails as a sign of being fashionable (for which read: rich) a couple centuries (or more) ago. It would mean “Look at me, I’m so rich I don’t have to do any work at all with my hands! I have servants to do all that for me.” But these days? When nearly everyone has “servants” called dishwashing machines and laundry machines in their houses, what’s the appeal? I’m with you, I don’t understand it either.

            Like

              1. One can buy a touch screen stylus. I needed one while recovering from an injury. Employer, via our helpdesk, hooked me up with several.

                Liked by 1 person

        3. I see someone with long nails typing I cringe. I immediately look at mine and go “needs trim”. Seriously I think mine are too long if they white tips are 1/4″ or longer; has to be something to trim back to 1/8″.

          Putting fake nails on top of my nails? My nails hurt at the thought. Polish? No. Just NO.

          Like

    2. I once heard a definition of “trophy wife” as being correlated to the time spent on one’s appearance. I then quipped, “If it’s related to taking the time on one’s appearance, I must be a booby prize!”

      And then I thought about what I’d said…

      Liked by 3 people

      3. Sarah Hoyt, Beautiful But Evil Space Princess, Vanquisher of the Dread Gazebo. Might need two lines to fit that on the business card.

        Liked by 1 person

            1. Not quite sure why clanker thinks her head should briefly burst into flames partway through while she’s laughing. And of course she magics away the blaster.

              But the laugh is great.

              Liked by 2 people

              1. Summon/Store spell for the blaster. Very dangerous magic indeed.

                But does provide a way for the character in skintight to “draw” the .44 mag.

                And hair on fire laughter isn’t a thing?

                Liked by 1 person

                1. This is actually the second one I generated – the first I prompted “she laughs as the gazebo burns” and both the gazebo and her body burst into flames simultaneously, with the flames destroying the gazebo while she just stood there laughing covered in flames.

                  Clanker has… issues.

                  Like

                  1. That image reminds me of this filk: Keylor’s Rage.

                    “Keylor’s Rage,” sung by Heather Alexander, based on lyrics in Andre Norton’s Witch World novels.  Full lyrics under the cut.

                    Keylor’s rage is burning for all her slaughtered kin
                    Pray gods we reach the back door while she’s still coming in
                    She spares no man or woman, her eyes blaze like the sun
                    She moves like nothing human – good gods, what has she done?

                    https://filkyeahfilk.com/2018/06/25/keylors-rage-heather-alexander/#more-7749

                    Liked by 1 person

              1. Both of your images have red eyes, so I imagine that’s the primary indicator this clanker thinks designates evil, but yeah, horns too. I note without conclusion that the outfit is skimpier when it includes the horns.

                Like

  10. Funny thing about fashion: It tends to go in circles.

    “What’s the matter with the clothes I’m wearing?”

    “Can’t you tell that your tie’s too wide?”

    Who cares. Be happy that I’m *wearing* a tie.

    I call my Sunday go to meeting suit my $20 Saver’s (thrift store) suit – $8 for the jacket, $6 for the pants, $4 for the shirt, $2 for the tie. Still fits, looks fine, does the job. Bought back after the fire when things were tight. Would probably be more like $30 now, but oh, well . . .

    Liked by 2 people

    1. A high school buddy found an antique -green velvet tux- with black trim in our church rummage sale. Perfect fit. Prom outfit, and worn for certain dates. Chicks loved to pet him in that Emerald City Disco outfit.

      Frikkin Kraut Leprechaun. (grin)

      Like

      1. I’d think we have the same friend except the guy I’m thinking of is too young to be your high school buddy. Son of a friend of mine, dressed up as a leprechaun for his high school prom. Went into the Navy, met his wife there, they now have… I forget how many kids, two or three I think.

        Like

        1. Nah. “K” couldn’t get through basic if we tranqued him. Way too much the mouthoff. We called him a rottweiler, but -ours-.

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Didn’t think it was the same guy, of course. Also, I should have mentioned that my friend’s son is redheaded and short, so he could really pull the leprechaun costume off in style.

            Like

  11. When I flew for a living, I did my best to blend in so long as people were around. Now, my employer is fairly tolerant of my eccentricities. Being good at what I do helps a great deal, as does not complaining until I can also propose a solution.

    Like

    1. Interviewing with the hiring manager for a job years ago; I already had the offer but I was told quite explicitly that, if I identified A Problem, I needed to have A Solution in mind. Sometimes my solutions were sub-optimal for Corporate direction, but I didn’t always know about Higher Powers.

      Like

  12. There is an environmental and contextual side too. There was a discussion of how the crash of Detroit made people less willing to invest in their own neighborhoods. I’d noticed that upper class Mexicans tended to be similar: they aspire to renting in nice complexes with guards and in-complex amenities, because and fixed or unguarded asset it vulnerable to theft or destruction.

    Better to pay now for comfort than invest in a future that will be taken from you.

    Like

  13. Think for success? I barely even think for survival. Just marking time until I die, more or less. Along the way, take care of the fam that’s getting old, look out for the godkids and the ducklings I have been training and mentoring, see the fuzzmonsters fed, scritched, exercised, and healthy. Look after my little patch of Creation, maybe make it a little better for the next guy.
    That’s more or less what all men do, far as I can tell. Success? That’s nebulous to me. The houses I’ve built, the vehicles I have maintained and repaired, the processes I’ve hammered out and refined, the facilities still running without flaw, those are the little things that still Just Work, so those are individual bits of pride and memory. Tangible things.
    Stories, well, some of them have praise and followers. Behold for I hath entertained! Eh, a little bit, maybe. There will be more chapters, more stories, more cliffhangers before the ultimate and final cliffhanger (when ashes, worm food, pushing up the daises, or the dead parrot sketch are in the future, me).
    Success I tend to associate with attention, fame, and all that rot. A pox on such nonsense. Comfort instead. Bills paid, house and life maintained in good working order, that’s where it’s at. Extra money? Probably be spent on some foolishness or whatnot. More land. Bigger range. More old things to restore. More privacy. Maybe even a wife and kids, if I had stupid FU money. Heh.
    But even the little things matter. Doing at least one thing every day that you don’t want to do, but needs to be done anyway? Yep. Little things are easier to get a handle on. Making the bed might work for you. Or keeping the walk swept out to the road. Or keeping the kitchen sink clean and empty. Or making sure the fuzzball doesn’t get caught in the ductwork (what the skunk, Doofus?). Or burying the kills from the local embodiment of Death for All that is Small(er than Neighborcat).
    Let success look after itself, maybe. In ye Grande Scheme of Things, that is.
    Some folk see me as that guy, though. Dress well, act well, come in early, stay late, get the sh!t done, act like you know all and be competent. It’s an act, but at the same time it’s not.
    I’m comfortable in button up and slacks, but wear work boots because getting dirty isn’t something I shy from. I show up early and stay late because there are things that need doing, and driving forward to the objective gets it done. Act like you know everything is because I’m curious as all get out about bloody everything. And all that because I want those I mentor and lead to be better at everything I do than I am.
    The fact that laziness is my preferred modus operandi ain’t always visible, the remnants of Gen-X youth “whatever, man” apathy and general cynicism driven by regular depression is also not for public consumption. That stuff is for leisure time. On the clock is different.
    Now if there were time for a full, uninterrupted eight hours of restful slumber, that’d be a win. Call it a success and a reward all in one.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. I have one skirt (black, long, so no one sees my shoes or socks), one pair of jeans, several shirts I rotate through until they fall apart.

    I wear my hair long in the winter, then chop it off for the summer.

    The chickens don’t care what I wear, as long as I bring treats.

    Somewhere in my closet I have a pair of nice slacks for interviews and such. I sincerely hope they stay in the closet.

    I was once firmly mired in the monkey world, until a Higher Power told me in no uncertain terms that I had to leave it behind. I left the monkey suits behind, and left the monkey brain in the bottom drawer of my desk, since it contained 10 years worth of work drek and whoever they hired to replace me would need it.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. A story from cubical-land, back in the days when I was an inmate thereto (actually of what ultimately became my escape therefrom):

    So I was the guy that knew where the light switch for the part of the building where my cubical was because the easiest way to beat traffic for me was beat it early, early enough that the lights were still off. And similarly I left late, since that skipped past the worst of silivalley traffic on the way home. I was an employee that could drop out of a PowerPoint into the underlying spreadsheet and find and show the answer to the weird question from on high, live in real time, then pop back in so I could finish my set of slides, so I was regarded as “technically adept” for technical marketing. My stuff got done, and my coworkers stuff as well, even when the subcontinental tech “writer” actually performed no such verb, so we just finished it ourselves, with no complaints to higher. And our “manager” at that time was remote and often unreachable, so we pretty much self managed. We even got stuff done that was nominally other group’s responsibility, because it needed doing.

    But Monkey Games did intervene. My previous managers had all been appreciative of quiet and done. But the last one had some sort of “if I review my reports down I look better” thing, so after many years of top reviews, I was getting “needs improvement” a lot the last year or so. But the actual people pretty much knew who was not dead weight, across lots of groups.

    So one day, hey, big news, the board has sold off the company (my low opinion of “activist investor” scumbags comes from their getting two seats on the board within the year prior).

    And guess what? The new owners HR did not even talk to the old HR, who was on the chopping block themselves as a redundancy, they just read the reviews. The last year of reviews, beacuse anything more would be too much work.

    They acquisition-RIFed my managers entire group, including me, save one, and that one got reorg’d away, so my manager, who was retained, had zero reports. But I got the acquisition package, my stock and options got bought out at the acquisition price, and I bid a fond farewell to the hallowed halls of that job.

    So even if you Do The Things, and Appear Early, and Depart Late, and Be Seen To Be Good At Technical Arcana, and Play The Monkey Games You Can See, you can still get the chop when Monkey Games Which You Can’t See intervene.

    No skin off my nose, I eventually got a much nicer higher paying job, so good riddance.

    But a postscript note: Monkey Games can even continue when you have been ejected from the tribe – I was trying for a job at a related company, went through several round of interviews and things were going well, when that one just stopped. The grapevine eventually intimated that the sudden screeching halt was thanks to “someone” at the old cubicals having blackballed me, my suspicion being the same Monkey Gamer was continuing to so Game.

    As noted, got a better job, F them and their horses, but I am glad my nicer job is so completely orthogonal to the semiconductor industry that the tribes don’t even know each other exists, let alone play cross tribe Monkey Games.

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Note “related company” was part supplier part customer, thanks to semiconductor licensing and IP things, not a company under the same or related ownership, so the Monkey Games were very cross-tribal-boundaries.

      Like

  16. Pratchett’s boots is very close to what my da used to tell me.

    I was very successful by most standards but walked away from it all about 20 years ago. Took a massive cut in pay and had to adjust life style and expectations. “More to life than money” was the wife’s comment. “you’d be dead” is her answer to what would have happened had II kept at it. No regrets.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. I retired early (and took a hit in pension) because my beloved said I was getting bitter and I realized the frustration was eating me. Yes, Federal employees can get burn-out, from the stress of wanting to do things right and knowing how to make the better, but not being allowed to.

        Once I got competent at it (which took more than one tax season), I enjoyed being receptionist much more than life in the cubicle. And now I’m trying to learn it’s OK to play at my hobbies.

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Even I didn’t expect how much writing No Man’s Land did for my psychological well being. And I have NO idea why, other than I couldn’t/wasn’t allowed to for so long.
          BUT I do feel better now. Hobbies…. not yet, but I’m trying.

          Like

  17. My monkey brain is just broken. Even when I know the rules I’m breaking and why the other monkeys are pointing and laughing at me, something inside me is incapable of fixing my behavior and playing by the rules. My shoes are unfashionable? Well, they’re comfortable, they’re easy and quick to put on, and they don’t leave me with cuts and blisters on my feet. My shirt is looking kind of ratty, with the seams coming apart? I like that shirt. I don’t want a new shirt that’s kind of like it; I want the shirt I already have ratty or not. And don’t get me started on the subject of jeans; they may let me fit in, but I’ll spend every second wondering how long it will be until I can go home and change.

    Sometimes I try to play the game and fit in, but inevitably I fall back into my old habits within a month. I can know the rules, but I can’t force myself to believe they’re worth doing.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. I am personally an example of what I think applies to most male work-force people: if I want, say, a ‘new suit’, I am not looking for a different style or color. I’m looking for as close as possible to an exact replacement for a now un-serviceable garment.

      Retired, well, it’s cargo pants and t-shirts almost all the time.

      Like

      1. Cargo pants are for going to town. At home or around $TINY_TOWN, Key(tm) overalls for the win. If I don’t plan to go out of the gate, I have a few pairs that cover my body but are banished to the shop/barn when not in use.

        Liked by 1 person

    3. Oh. Boy. Let’s see.

      I’ve rarely worn dresses for work. First because working outside. Um, no. Did have to wear long pants, no shorts. In the winter I looked like a stuffed bear in raingear (it was wet and cold). Once transitioned into office, i.e. computer work, I still didn’t wear dresses, or suits. Could be on the floor doing computer stuff (cables, whatever). I didn’t even have interview suits. Had interview clothing, but not suits, pants suits or otherwise.

      Which brought up an interesting recent problem. Mom and I went to a long weekend function requiring packing. Three days plus two days of travel. Hot location. I was taking jeans and shorts; not allowed … I had to repack. Slacks and dresses/skirts. Folks I only own one dress, and two slacks, period. Made do. Yes, I reused them, even on the traveling side. Technically even when not at “official functions”, shorts were frowned on … That came under “too bad”. Not changing. FWIW, next year (going because mom needs one of us to go, not fair to ask her friends at this point, even when they are going and willing; for reasons, I’m it), it will be the same skirt and same two pants (might find same pants at Costco this year again, as they make great traveling pants for our trips too). Or not. Might need smaller sizes (officially down 30#s, more to go). Oh the additional kicker? I own 2 pairs of hiking boots, one pair of sandals, and two pair of tennis shoes (one sketcher slip on that are the “good shoes”). Not one fancy heal (what trying to kill me?) or flat (also … Ouch!). Fantasia? Not me.

      Formals? Had them. I was in Job’s Daughters. Grew up with parents and grandparents in Easter Star. It didn’t take (ironically not with any of the 3 of us girls, although sisters are more fashion conscious than I am).

      Like

    3. Maybe Sarah could please go into the comment and EDIT to remove the bolding – it is some text (I think) right at the start of the paragraph and at the end…

      Like

          1. It hates everyone.

            It tries to disguise it by doing things at random as if it hated particular people, because that makes it look personal.

            Liked by 2 people

      1. Retired now. Thank the good lord. You couldn’t pay me enough to go back into the job market. (Okay live or die … but you all get the point.)

        I despised looking for work. Or why I never ever could do consulting, except under the umbrella of a business. Either within the business itself, or guise of my last job. Technically “consultant” for the software produced with all the client requests. But I wasn’t the one selling anything. The thing is, I’m not that bad at doing what is needed. Every initial phone interview got me the next step. Got called back number of times. Just rarely got past the “your our second choice”. Obviously I did, twice. (Three times, actually, but the third was while I was working the last job, 5 years in. Didn’t make sense to make a lateral move. No better pay or benefits.)

        Like

        1. Exactly why I liked being an employee. I could do my job, work on the widgets, and somebody else took care of all the taxes, regulations, insurance, accounting, sales, inventory, scheduling…AAARRRGGHHH!!! Spare me! 😧

          Like

      2. THIS. I make enough for Em and myself, get good benefits, and my salary is in the middle range for H1Bs according to most charts. There’s no real incentive to fire me and lose my knowledge.

        Liked by 1 person

  20. “Because being highly competent while acting nervous and insecure is how you get to the point that other people’s monkey brain marks you as not just a threat, but one that can be easily taken out.”

    Holly Hannah in a green-painted hand-basket with decorative daisy-patterns…

    That’s a hell of an insight.

    Liked by 1 person

  21. “Yesterday, during my epic fight with the gazebo (I won, which I think makes me a legendary D & D fighter.”

    I did battle with a rolled-over 1,000 gallon propane tank the other day and defeated it. Heavy weapons were needed, but thanks to me pack-ratting for 40 years, all was in readiness. I even had gravel.

    Boss-level preparedness! ~:D

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Don’t know in his case. I do know last year Hurricane Helene tore a lot of propane tanks loose. The volunteers and staff at Lake Junaluska pulled around 100 propane tanks and water heaters out of the lake. I gather the 500-food pedestrian bridge (an old friend, we’ve painted and repaired that puppy more than once) caught a lot of them.

        Really wish we could have been there. But we’d already been turned back from our last project of the year because of the I-40 washout and getting there would have been difficult to impossible.

        Like

        1. Floods eh? I had never considered that. But it makes sense, hydrocarbons float, and the tanks aren’t usually full.

          Collecting them would be pretty sketchy. Time for your brass tools, no sparks please.

          Like

      2. Short answer, rain.

        Longer answer, the dewd who installed the tank tossed some gravel on the grass, put two patio stones on top and called it good. I’d never owned a propane tank at the time, I thought that was normal. And to be fair, it was fine for like ten years.

        So last winter we had a sudden thaw, with rain. She sank into the clay, then rolled over. 5,000lbs when full, clay deforms when wet. Oops.

        Now there’s a -bunch- of gravel in there, like a bucket full for each end. If it rolls again I’ll haul it out and pour some concrete.

        Liked by 1 person

  22. Sarah – can we use this as my comment and delete the other one?

    Sarah, I enjoyed your post so much today. The boots example was new for me – and made a lot of sense on how the poor end up paying more. It frustrates me that interests rates are in the favor of the rich too – and how higher interest rates are assigned to those who NEED the lower one. Sad!
    I recently wrote about how in my experience i see folks inn the workplace with “over confidence” syndrome (and way less of imposter syndrome!) where they really think they are all that when their skills are average or they have so much more to learn – and take on roles that they are not qualified for – and this sort of tied in to how you said “the people who get the highly valuable player treatment aren’t usually even that competent.” So true
    You post here reminded me of the 1936 book, How to Win Friends and Influence People – and I recently heard an old Chuck Swindoll radio show talking about the book with ideas you have here
Oh and my hubs read the book, Rich dad Poor dad, decades ago and I skimmed it. The problem we had with the ideas is that he left out meaning and doing work that brings flow and purpose. There are times in life when we are so intrinsically motivated that we make choices that defy logic or what seems like worldly success. My spouse had a dad who went for money – left a music teaching job and being a conductor to go into insurance and make money while on the hedonistic treadmill – and so the early choices with my spouse was to be opposite of that. And so in sum, I think there are some wise ideas in that book and others, but at the end of the day, like you noted, we have to do what is right for us.
    Glad your gazebo project is done – happy recovering~!

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  23. As I’ve told more than one freshly out of training subordinate – imposter syndrome is not a bad thing at all. When you’ve just barely been deemed good enough to be on your own – or at least not intensely supervised by a trainer – you really aren’t very competent, and you’re wildly inexperienced compared to everybody else around you. It’d be more worrisome if you didn’t feel like an imposter.

    Be confident anyway. You may not have confidence in yourself, but you can borrow our confidence in the answers, and you can fake it til you make it. A lot of what customers respond to is the perceived confidence in our voice – the less confident you are, the more they try to dig in to figure out what’s wrong. The better you get at it, the more your confidence will grow, and the easier it will get – because the more they hear your confidence, the more they trust you.

    It usually takes several months before the subordinate really groks that when a conversation’s gone rodeo and they transfer the upset, irate person me, it’s not what I say – that’s almost the same as what they said – but how I say it that puts the customer at ease.

    I can take a pissed-off ranting dude and make him leave laughing and enthusiastic. It’s not because I’m an extrovert (I’m a screaming introvert). It’s because I’ve put a lot of thought and research and practice into How To People, and Conversation Management.

    Don’t worry about being caught out as a fake – the worry will show, and that’s what people pick up on. Besides, most people are too caught up in worrying about what other people think of them to really delve deep into what they think of you.

    And most of all, keep practicing. Fake it til you make it implies that you’ll get better and better, and finally make it!

    Liked by 2 people

    1. Service dog handlers. Especially those with invisible disabilities. If the handler has one of the “golden” four breeds or not. If they have an organization or certified trainer trained dog or self trained; especially self trained. Imposter syndrome is a huge identified problem.

      OTOH when self trained the handler knows that if a situation comes up that there is one person who didn’t train to that situation. So there is that.

      Only way to handle this? Get people around engaged, talking and get them involved to “help” with the sudden onsite training required. Double bonus if there are children who can help. While this is happening slip in education on why.

      I’ve even done this without mine with me (she’s now retired for her medical reasons) when overhearing other customers complain about allowing “so called service dogs” when a dog was heard to “*bark” in another section of the store. One it was one bark, so either the handler handled it, or two the dog issued or escalated an alert and alert acknowledged. Either way, not considered out of control barking unless continues. Even then it is up to staff to determine what is going on. I said something. Nice little discussion on the topic. Changed their perception with the friendly education.

      (*) Barking is frowned on as an alert, but allowed by ADA. In addition it is recommended to use barking to bring attention to a handler needing assistance instead of “find help” (also acceptable, but adds danger to the service dog if done in public and not to get a specific person, and leaves the handler unattended). FYI, if overhearing something like this and check it out, there is nothing wrong with either self or having someone get staff to get appropriate assistance, if warranted.

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    2. Working disaster rebuild years ago, my beloved was acting as “shop foreman,” leading a team that had been sent off to work on a particular house. There we are, figuring out what we need, when a car pulls up and a big, hairy guy with a can of beer in one hand and a cigar in the other hauls out and comes over. “What are you all doing here! This isn’t your property! Get out! Get out now!”

      My beloved takes him aside and explains we’re the volunteers that are going to finish fixing the place up. Don’t know exactly what he said, but the guy apologized five times, shook our hands and turned into our biggest fan.

      Just keeping calm works wonders sometimes.

      Liked by 1 person

    3. Afirm, educate, re-direct, provide waypoints to show progress, encourage and send on the way to succeed. And some people aren’t going to listen to you until they get their mad out first so get used to it and don’t take it personally.

      Then you have three minutes to document the call so the next poor agent can pick the threads up the next call.

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  24. Humans will still be humans 300 years from now, even if we make it to Rigel… And the lusts for wealth and power will be just as strong…

    “The Call of the Aurelion Shard”

    In the sky above Novus Aster, where the blue-white starlight bleeds,
    The Novus Grande hovers silent, keeping secrets no one reads.
    Through its halls drift whispered stories, masked in silver, masked in gold—
    Of a gem that sings in starlight, and a truth no heart can hold.

    And the long night hums with graviton winds,
    Calling out to the brave—or the damned.
    Every shadow on a floating deck
    Holds the hand of a fate already planned…

    Oh, the stars burn bright on Rigel Five,
    But the darkness walks beside you.
    In the glare of a thousand neon lights,
    The truth may slice—or hide you.
    And the Novus Grande keeps its watch
    In a shimmer of cosmic blue…
    For the Aurelion Shard sings soft and strange,
    And it’s calling out to you.

    There’s a girl with eyes of starlight, chasing ghosts of days long gone,
    And a diplomat who trembles as he dares to carry on.
    There’s a hunter in the void who sees your guilt before you speak,
    And an actor with a crimson smile, hiding ruin ‘neath the sleek.

    Oh, the city breathes in luminous tides,
    Where the artists dance with crime.
    Every oath is a fragile tether—
    Every choice a step through time…

    Oh, the stars burn bright on Rigel Five,
    But the darkness walks beside you.
    In the glare of a thousand neon lights,
    The truth may slice—or hide you.
    And the Novus Grande keeps its watch
    In a shimmer of cosmic blue…
    For the Aurelion Shard sings soft and strange,
    And it’s calling out to you.

    Father, are you somewhere in the starlit deep?
    Courage, just a breath—though it’s more than I can keep.
    In the silence, in the shimmer, truth begins to speak…
    Light bends… hearts break… destinies awake!

    In the catwalks of the theater, where illusions rule the night,
    The cartel’s mask is slipping in the glow of stolen light.
    And the chase across the skyways sends the city spinning fast—
    Till the shadows break to sunrise and the lies are burned at last.

    Oh, the stars burn bright on Rigel Five,
    And the dawn flows wild to meet you.
    When the web of silver secrets breaks,
    Your own truth rises to greet you.
    And the Novus Grande lifts its crown
    Through the nebula’s newborn hue…
    For the Aurelion Shard no longer calls—
    Now your fate calls to you.

    Liked by 1 person

  25. I am by no means a young person — but I badly needed this essay, and I needed it right now. A reminder. Thank you. Please keep writing things like this.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. I needed this column right this minute. Thank you. And if the good fairy of finance would bless you with the amount of money you deserved for how much good you do with your columns you would be rich enough to snub Bill Gates.

    Liked by 2 people

  28. For those looking for a better way to get out of debt, and even save some money or invest, as per your choice, the best instruction I’ve found has come from the VANNtastic YT channel. Go back to her older stuff to start with, because she gives lots of examples broken down very simply so that you understand the vocabulary and what she is doing by the repetition of the various cases. At first, it was very weird, because “that’s not the way I was taught!” But, as you let it soak in, it makes more and more sense. WAY better than the snowball stuff. You don’t have to buy anything from her or anyone else, you just follow along with the videos till you can apply it to your own finances.

    As for manifesting and such, it is about SEEING the opportunities around you and then taking the step to accept the opportunity instead of negating it. Does it always work? No, but it has a good opportunity to work because you are practicing it. It’s like seeing a rubber duck. If you spend a minute or two thinking about seeing a rubber duck. Put a sticky note in a couple of places with “Rubber Duck” on it, then in a short time, you will actually start seeing rubber ducks, maybe in the back of a photo, or a meme, or someone will talk about it on your feed, or you will go out and see one in a store…And once you notice one and recognize that you have seen one, then you will see more and more.

    Now a rubber duck is pretty useless (unless you are looking for one), but then you can apply the same thing to other items and situations that you would like to encounter. And then remember gratitude, because it’s the icing on every cake.

    Liked by 1 person

  29. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » UNFORTUNATELY, THE WORLD IS NOT A MERITOCRACY. NOT REALLY:   Think For Success.

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