Needle, Meet Haystack

A while back, some friends encouraged me to try to grow out my facial hair.  Whether this is due to their own proclivity for hirsuteness, their interest in the strength of my dad’s genetic gift of beard power, or as a random thing to do, I don’t know.  But regardless, I wound up allowing my usually clean-shaven face to get its follicular freak on.  And during that time, I learned a few things.

I went to work, ran errands, exercised, hung out on weekends, went on dates, and kept the same routine as usual.  the only difference was that my face was sprouting like a Chia Pet.  And that one change threw everything out of whack.  People looked at me differently, responded differently, and acted differently around me.  Whether they were friends, family, acquaintances or strangers, our interactions were markedly different from my usual experiences.

Over the course of the month, I tried out several facial hairstyles.  Here’s what I discovered:

• The “full” beard drew the fewest reactions.  People might have assumed that I was a bit of a hipster, a faux-intellectual, or even a hobo.  Regardless, interactions were mostly the same, though a number of people did ask if they could touch the beard.
• The 19th Century inventor look drew a lot of odd looks.  It’s not like some passers-by might have crossed the street to get away from me, but it felt that way.  Occasionally, someone would come up to me to compliment my stylistic choice, but for the most part, it seemed to draw confused silences.
• The handlebar ‘stache happened to coincide with a visit to the campus of Arizona Sate University.  Whether it was an appreciation for the “ironic” style, morbid interest, or genuine enjoyment, a lot of random people wanted to talk to me.  However, doing business was difficult; no one seemed to take me that seriously.
• The Wooderson (self-explanatory) made a lot of people uneasy around me.  I felt uncomfortable with this one myself, and got rid of it pretty quickly.

Besides a clear case of the appearance bias, it seems like facial hair on a dude can have a profound effect on how he’s perceived.  In fact, a study recently determined that women consider men with light stubble to be the most attractive and have the best genes.  Even a couple days’ worth of face moss growth can help make a guy look better.

Little tweaks to one’s appearance or personality, while not really that big of a deal to the person doing the altering, can radically shift the image that others might have of them.  The changes may have the unintended effect of undermining efforts at legitimacy, decreasing overall social interactions, or distracting people’s attention.  When the name of the game is change, innovation or development, things can have a tendency to fall flat on their face instead of coasting along like they used to.

Over time, the effects of the adjustment will become more apparent; judging success by immediate and short-term results can mitigate the true effects of whatever you’re setting out to do.  So if you’ve made a small tweak to your normal routine, stick with it for a while to gather enough info to make the best decision possible.

After I shaved off the last remnants of my facial hair, most responses went along the lines of, “I’m glad you shaved,” or “Some of those styles looked really strange.”  My social interactions returned to normal, perhaps even enhanced by people having seen me with other styles on my visage.

This seemed to work in the way of the oversell-normal sell trick used in sales; the salesperson will start out with an unreasonably high number, so when they give the actual price, the client finds it more attractive.  By tweaking my features, people suddenly realized that my old day-to-day look was what they preferred.  So when things went back to the status quo (face-wise), they were more appreciative of what they saw.

Then again, most of the designs for my fuzz were mustache-based.  Maybe if the adjustments were more chin-based…

What’s your dream job?  Do you wish you were an astronaut?  Or a pirate?  Maybe you have a secret desire to be a chef, or to try your hand at politics.  Are your dreams a bit more altruistic, like speaking to thousands as a motivational speaker?  Hell, maybe your dream job is winning the lottery and having no job at all.

My ideal employment situation is a bit different.

I want people to buy shares of me.  Like with a corporation, you purchase stock in Andrew.  You hedge your bets on my future success, and your investments go towards an ROI based on my career, education and life paths.  Maybe I’ll turn out to be some super-genius inventor, or a keen analytical mind.  Maybe I’ll sit on the couch and eat cheez doodles all day.  Basically, I want people to pay me to be myself and do what I want to do.

Like, let’s say I want to take piano lessons so I can work on music production.  Stock in Andrew will appropriately rise or fall depending on how smart or stupid they feel that this goal is.  Market forces may drive some of my decisions, leading to a more positive outcome overall.  I’ll be crowd-sourcing my future.  Financially.

If this seems far-fetched, consider how scholarships and employment are given out.  A prospective student will receive financial aid based on their previous performance in hopes that they will (at least) replicate that success on campus.  Universities bank on these students bringing the school more rave reviews, boosting some of its student population stats, and maybe even getting them some news coverage, all of which serves to bring in more students.  An office will hire someone and pay for them to work on the hope that they will increase office productivity, deliver more results, and contribute to the corporate culture in a positive way.

So this is really just an extension of that – investing directly in a person, with payouts given based on their success.  Or, to look at it another way, it’s a non-artistic, non-political patronage.  Heck, I could even get the government in on the action and apply for a grant.

Maybe your dream is like mine, to have a whole mess of people paying you boatloads of money to look at stupid stuff on the Internet all day.  But maybe there’s already some people paying you to do your own thing, having invested in you because they believe that you’re capable of great things.

Or maybe they just want to watch you sit on your couch eat cheez doodles all day.

In my early college days, I spent a lot of my free time writing short stories and essays.  Here’s one of the first ones I did, which still seems to hold up pretty well, especially as a quick weekend read.

My dad has this old typewriter that was made years before I was a twinkle in his eye. It’s a heavy, lumbering brick of a machine, a metal monstrosity that drags your arm down when you grab hold of the handle on its cover and take it anywhere. The thing is large and unwieldy; you have to pound the keys so hard that it makes your fingertips hurt after just a line. There’s an old ribbon of ink that’s probably older than me. I wonder if they even make those ribbons for it anymore.

When you try to type on it, you have to be careful. If you tap too soft, nothing comes out on the page. Too hard and you tear through the paper. None of the letters seem quite level with each other, and when the bell dings and it’s time for the next line, the spacing seems to vary. I look at this thing and think about the laptop on my desk and wonder how Dad ever made it through college without being able to correct his mistakes before he printed, much less without the Internet.

I remember when I hadn’t even thought of heading off from home, more concerned with a book report and trying to do stuff with my friends on the weekend, when he showed it to me. “I bought this before I started college. It was top of the line,” he said. “All the newspaper reporters used it. You haul it anywhere, and you just needed some paper to make it go.”

We didn’t have a computer back then, but we had a more recent model with two fonts and built-in white-out. It was the size of a small briefcase and roared with power. Thinking of this, I gave him this weird look and said, “We’ve got an electric one. Why would I bother to use this one?”

He looked at me with that look that dads give you when they’re about to impart some great advice or wisdom. “Sometimes, you can’t get to electricity.”

Dad went to college a long time ago. Or what seems like that to me. He told me stories of his youth, back when so much of what’s now the buildings and streets of civilization were still nature, just a wide open space ripe for exploring. He’d speak of adventures beyond the border of the country over long weekends with friends, before the world became close-knit. They would explore. Go on adventures. This was a time when there was still a world to explore, unknowns all around if one just knows where to look.

He spent summer days working at a ranch that’s now an upper-middle class shopping center. Long roads once surrounded by nature are now blocked up with houses so high that they spill onto the mountains. He’d always say to me, “I remember when there was nothing here, when you could find a perfect view of the sunset no matter which way you looked.” He remembers climbing around in ruins before the government made people stand and look at them from a distance.

When I was eleven, we went to one of these places. “Do you know why today is special?” he asked me. “They’re letting people walk around in the ruins again. Just like I did when I was a kid. You’ll probably never get a chance like this again.” I don’t remember much about that day, but I remember my sneakers smearing the dusty earth with an imprint, and wondering if it would still be there years from now. The aged walls of the building seemed to speak to Dad. It was like he was remembering what it was like when he walked through them years ago, taking the same steps that he had in his memories.

After a few months at the university, I thought that I had a good grasp of what college life was like. The underage drinking, the tight clothes of the sorority girls, the sleeping in and missing early classes, the pranks. I wondered why Dad never said anything about all of this. This was the fun stuff that made it interesting. The small details of partying and debauchery that I had never thought would exist. I wondered if there was a mental reset button that hits people when they leave college that makes them forget about how much fun it can be. How wild and crazy and free you can feel.

It wasn’t long before I started feeling that reset button coming on. Bouts with alcohol poisoning, bad hook-ups, worse grades, and security reports began to take their toll. I wondered if I was missing something from the experience. Everything around me was so urbanized. There was no place to explore. Capitalism and progress had pushed forward so much since my father’s day that there were no unknowns. The mystery of life seemed to disappear.

While home over the summer, I found the old typewriter again, holding onto its last ribbon, sturdy and faithful as ever. When no one was home, I took off the green shell that covered the keys and put in a piece of paper. I pressed the keys, at first too soft, then too hard. It took me a while to get it right, but once I realized how the letters fit together, how the small rods darted out and pressed ink to the page, it started to make sense. This typewriter wasn’t a tool for my father during college, it was college. Like it is for me.

There are common experiences that we all share in our youth, but over time, the lessons we learn from them are all that remain, not the stories behind them. The tales we tell are from our friends, from once-in-a-lifetime chances that pass by if you blink. They’re a chance to see a sunset, or leave a footprint in the dirt. There are still adventures among the unknown and mysterious, but sometimes they’re harder to see than just looking around an open space.

And sometimes they’re right in front of you.

The other day, I was rummaging through my DVD collection and came across a few of my James Bond box sets.  Having nothing else to really do at the time, I proceeded to have a mini-marathon of Cold War-era spy goodness.  And during this time, I noticed a trend with the Bond villains: they were one of two types when it came to their plots, schemes, and attempts to kill Agent 007.

Some of the villains would leave too early; they would assume that things went to plan, and would go about their nefarious schemes, leaving Bond time to escape and defeat them (best summarized by Dr. Evil in the first Austin Powers), while others would hang around for too long, becoming distracted and embroiled in torturing Bond enough so that they would slip up and lose to the titular hero.  In both cases, the villains were missing one vital ingredient in their plans: having a solid exit strategy.

In super-villainy, as in life, one must know when it’s time to leave.

Much has been said about how loyalty isn’t what it used to be.  Gone are the days of the gold watch and the plaque commemorating 50 years of service to a company.  Employee retention rates are low, with turnover rates that might have seemed unfathomable to our grandparents, or even our parents.  But with the evolving structure of the workplace and the capricious economy, one must be prepared to move on as necessary.

The reasons for leaving a company are the same reasons that would attract someone to work there in the first place: professional growth, gaining experience and skills, increased pay, good location, preferable hours, a solid benefits package and nice co-workers are all factors in the decision.  But regardless of whether you are complacent or restless with your current employer, you must have an exit strategy prepared.

Maybe you want to start a company, turn a hobby into a career, or want to set out on an adventure.  Whatever it is that you want to do with your life, plan it out!  Find a way to achieve those goals before you’ve compromised your motivations and driving principles to become a soulless automaton who works a 9-5 with no life or hopes or dreams beyond the office.  A good way to get on the right path is to see what other professional options you have.

It helps to gauge your preparedness for anything from sudden unemployment to unforeseen circumstances to wanderlust or any other cause that might leave you jobless by sending out a few job applications every once in a while, even if you have a job.  In this way, you can gauge the “buying temperature” for you and your skills with other companies, and can find out what you need to do to keep yourself competitive and at the top of your game around your own office.  You don’t need to always be looking for a new job, but it’s a good idea to see how you’d fare as a job-seeker.  Plus, this helps to keep your resumé up to date.*

If a company or recruiter approaches you, however, it may be worth your time to weigh the pros and cons of the decision.  Does it benefit you more to take the new offer or stay where you are?  If the decision isn’t an easy one to make, talk to your manager or HR rep about what you’ve been offered – sometimes, this can work as leverage for a raise or promotion that you didn’t know you could get.

But if you hate going to work every day, dread your life, and find yourself depressed and miserable, don’t hesitate to try something new.  The grass might not be greener, but isn’t it worth your well-being and sanity to give it a shot?  If you think you should go, go!

Some people have an open-ended exit plan: when they feel like it’s time to leave, they just go for it, without preparing or testing the waters for another career possibility.  Sometimes, this risk can pay off.  But if you’re thinking about jumping without a net, make sure you’ve got enough money saved up (a financial parachute, if you will) to float you for a few months while you fly by the seat of your pants.  A couple extra months of humdrum work for a solid paycheck could save you years of bills and loan payments.

Any business plan worth its salt will have an exit plan, too.  The entrepreneurs behind it know that the market is a fickle place, and being prepared to get while the getting’s good is the key to real success.  No one is guaranteed to stay anywhere forever; even if you only consider what you might do in the case of an exit, it’s worth your time.

When it comes to making the exit itself, it’s best to leave on a high and positive note; you never know when or how your experiences might come back to help or hurt you.  But if you must go the dramatic route, make sure that you have your work done.  No one likes the douchey jackass who leaves a mess for the next guy to clean up, or the idiot who wears out their welcome.  Say your piece and move on; you have another step to take, and there’s no sense in prolonging it.

Whether you’re looking to move up the corporate ladder, fulfill a lifelong dream, or eliminate a British super-spy who’s trying to stop your moon laser from firing, it’s always a good idea to have a backup plan and an exit strategy.  All it takes is a decent sense of timing to save a world-conquering genius from becoming a failed megalomaniac hoisted by their own petard (or exploding island), and that’s all it takes to make an unhappy employee into a professional success.

*I hope this goes without saying, but don’t put your boss or co-workers as references. The only thing that will do is speed up the necessity for finding a new job.

At some point, I read and/or heard about that old metaphor where we’re all the stars of our personal TV shows, with a core cast, some recurring roles, occasional guest stars, extras, and so on.  It’s interesting to consider that this is more of a reflexive statement about life imitating art (a la the Post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy), although it does raise one of those “I think about this in the back of my head but rarely say it and it turns out other people might too” issues that certain bloggers are able to speak about quite well:

Other people have their own lives when you’re not around.

Weird, right?  I mean, you talk to people about their vacation or weekend, but it can seem like character exposition; their side-plots are being filled in to cover time they weren’t on set.  But there are entire lives that are going on behind the scenes that you might not be privy to.  They might be hidden from you.

It’s impossible to know what’s going on with everyone at any time (despite what some websites would have you believe) – there are going to be knowledge gaps.  So people might be upset, or pissed off, or in a good mood for reasons that you are unaware of, and they might not want to tell you what those are.  Continuing the TV metaphor, everyone has their own show, but all of us are locked in on our own channels.  There might be character and plot crossover, but you can’t change to a different network.

We don’t always know what’s been happening with everyone else, or the full context of the situations that they’re in.  So take a few minutes to sit down to talk with them and find out.  It can make a big difference – and not in the “minor role gets bumped to recurring status like Urkel” kind of way.