There is too much TV now.

There, I've said it. Gone are the days when there were only a few channels and everyone grew up watching the same dozen or so shows. Those shared collective entertainment experiences of the early TV generations helped to make the super-referential pop culture we all enjoy now. Back in the day, we all knew who shot JR, but now we can't answer the question, did Glenn just die on the Walking Dead? No, because I haven't seen it yet, and SPOILERS! Glenn, who's Glenn? What show again? No I'm not caught up, I stopped watching it in season four, I don't watch TWD, I don't like scary shows, I watch OITNB instead. Sigh.

Because there were so few channels and shows back then, you could go into work or school the next day and bank on the fact that everyone had watched the latest episode, because there were no repeats! There was no catching it again tomorrow night on Hulu, or saving it to your DVR, or whatever. In the 80s you might have 'taped' your show but that was cumbersome. If you missed it, that episode was GONE until maybe it possibly popped up again in reruns over the summer. So we all planned our schedules around our favorite shows and watched faithfully week to week.

You would think in this era with so much repeat access to a set of episodes, that you can still bet that your coworkers will be as caught up as you, even if it takes them a week or so to get there. Not so. Like the microwave, on-demand tv technology didn't free up our time, it just created more time for us to do other things with, like watch more tv. So, we're too busy to watch live tv, and because there is too much tv, we can't possibly have time to watch it all. And because there is too much good tv, any random set of 10 people will likely all be watching different tv shows. You can watch and re-watch selected episodes of the Wire, Rick and Morty, or binge-watch whole seasons of shows from the 90s. What's current to you isn't necessarily current to others in your peer group. Just think, future generations will have grown up watching whatever they want whenever they want with no reference to a calendar or sequence of events. There will be fewer shows that become shows that EVERYONE watches, and therefore fewer puns and shared references that unite us in pop culture and friendship.

Sometimes in order to bolster work relationships I confess I've tuned into a show that my peers were watching just to be part of the conversation and see what all the fuss was about. We all use tv as a social currency, something to fall back on in conversation when we've run out of small talk. When it works, it works great; many conversations can be had about tv before you realize you've really spent an hour talking about nothing with an acquaintance. But when you can't find a show in common with someone it is the worst. There is literally nothing left to talk about!

Vegas for the 6th Time

Last month I was in Vegas for work, again, and I wrote down these thoughts near the end of my trip. I think it about sums it up.

People everywhere all the time, with children! Babies! Multiples!  Less porn card flicking on the streets than I remember. I wonder if these two things are connected. Less dinging noises overall when in the casinos—from the slot machines that is. Am I imagining that or is it a fact? Vegas needs to recycle, but I’m sure people don’t want to be bothered with real-world problems like that when in the MOST UNNATURAL PLACE ON EARTH. You only need to eat twice a day: breakfast and dinner. And eating eventually begets ennui. Flip-flops are not the best for walking. Everything is farther away than it seems. Even white women can get ashy. Eye drops are a necessity. Water is a precious resource; hey let’s waste it in a fountain that shoots off daily every half hour! Some people really don’t care what they look like in public. How do these street hawkers end up in those jobs? More people in character costumes on the streets, working for photos and tips. Spotted: Wolverine, Minion, Olaf everywhere, Elsa, showgirls, Captain America, Iron Man, scary Chewbacca. Endless flow of people means endless flow of money. The service workers look tired. Roulette is an easy game you can play for an hour. Even the old, thick cocktail waitresses have to wear boob- and ass-bearing costumes. They blatantly stick ‘le’ in front of words just so they sound French to the average person. I’m ready to go home.

Something has got to change

 I think I'm in the middle of some kind of life crisis. I just turned 39, I've been in the same job for 10 1/2 years, I hate where I live, don't want to move back to where I came from. In a word, I'm stuck. I have the sort of job that is difficult to explain to people outside the industry--and I've never worked anywhere else professionally. And every day lately I dread going to work, because it never stops. It's like if you opened a fire hydrant and had to stand there and let the water blast you full-force in the face. Everyday. And I'm tired. So tired. 

What is my next move? So many options of things to change, but I'm stymied by choice, and the chain of events those choices will start. Yet I've got to move myself forward out of this downward spiral, somehow. Gone are the days when I could just quit a job and move. And fuck expectation--the only people I want to consider in my choices are my husband and my child; no one else matters. I have fewer friends these days, I watch as everyone around me gets older and FUCK it means I'm getting older too, much too fast. The weekdays slowly drift by and I drink wine and watch TV at night, because the weekends are over before they start and I can't ever relax, I just want to be in a cocoon sometimes. I just don't want to go back to work! I can't take a day off, much less a real vacation; it's very much expected that you are tied to your job, and I fight that as much as possible, but it's not always possible. I'm tired of the problems and bullshit, tired of feeling like everyone's dog. Tired, tired, tired.

Man it's horrible to keep living the same life once you've decided you're done with it. But baby steps and I'll get there...

Do you know what it means? Watching Treme, the Final Season

Just finished watching the final season of Treme. Man, that show gets so much right. The power of the entire thing kinda snuck up on me during these last five episodes, and I was literally in tears during the last episode over the tragic beauty of it all. (Ok maybe I'd also had too much wine during Episode 5.)

It's that tension between having an authentic culture, and having that culture also be a tourist attraction, and needing that culture to be who you are and for your livelihood. That tension between wanting to live your life in a city, and having happy moments torn open by random violence at a parade. Between trying to do good work in a place infested with corruption; being a part of a culture that is simultaneously enveloping and familial, yet dismissed as niche and quaint from a national perspective.

David Simon may be a commercial failure in terms of his ability to attract viewership, but IMO he is a fucking genius. The Wire is a work of art, and Treme is amazing for many of the same reasons. He has this ability to see the nuances at play when these kinds of tensions are acting upon us, infecting our culture, our cities, our families, our identities. Maybe Treme is more relate-able for me because I spent my formative years in New Orleans; maybe the references are too 'in', the struggles too specific, the music too loose for the show to have mass appeal. But therein lies the genius of Treme. David Simon was never going to create a show about New Orleans in the aftermath of Katrina that was going to be popular, y'all.

I was going to post a video but it came in upside down, so I'll end with a direct quote from DJ Davis:

"Do you know how sometimes you hear a song that you've heard a million times before, and maybe you're even tired of hearing it, but this time, maybe because of something you've been through, or maybe because of something you now understand, you hear that song again. Maybe it's a new version; maybe not. But you realize there's a fresh world in there to be heard? Yeah, me too."

Thank you, David Simon, for the love letter you wrote for New Orleans, that city I used to love to hate, and now I hate to love.

Is Cinderella going to eat my daughter? If so, when?

I've been reading the book, Cinderella Ate My Daughter, off and on during my work travels. My daughter recently turned 2.5, and at the moment, she seems very far away from identifying with the girlie/pink/princess phenomenon that seems to claim everyone's daughters (more or less) by the time they turn three. In fact, she's inordinately obsessed with PURPLE. So, I await the coming transformation with trepidation. I am eternally grateful that this book exists, because like the author (Peggy Orenstein), I wasn't raised on Pretty Pink Princess bullshit because it didn't exist until the 1990s. My sister, who is nearly 10 years my junior, came into being during the height of the PPP bullshit, however, so I feel like I lived through it, even if it wasn't my childhood. I remember watching The Little Mermaid with her until we both had the lines memorized; ditto Beauty and the Beast. But even back then, you didn't walk into a store and have all of the 'girl' stuff so readily segregated by color.

I reject and resent the pink fascism that pervades today, but because I don't want my daughter to become obsessed with it because of my rejection, I try to be neutral about the whole thing. At the local yogurt shop, they have a choice--green or pink spoons--and our little girl has picked the GREEN SPOON countless times, which I am secretly proud of. She even carries it around with her like some sort of totemic object, and rejects the pink spoons out of hand. GREEN SPOON is in the fist on the way to daycare, with her all day long, and then in the bath and bed with her at night. The pink spoons? They live a largely cloistered life inside of her PINK kitchen set (a gift from my PPP mother).

Do little girls really prefer pink or is it now stuffed down their throats? I'm afraid all evidence points to the latter, my friends. Pink as a color was originally more identified with infant boys because of its close link to red, a dominant color. However even in our modern, open-minded times, the color-coded messages and behaviors associated to your gender are ever-restrictive in the aisles of Target: blue is for boys, pink is for girls. End of discussion.

By accident of birth and circumstance, my angelic daughter has found herself the only girl in her daycare classroom. I read in the book that girls and boys self-segregate around this time, and even when they would play together, teachers don't recognize/promote this behavior, and so it doesn't really develop. But my daughter is the only girl in a class of 4 boys; does this phase her? No. She immediately starts racing cars with the boys in the morning, or running races back and forth across the classroom; or instructing them on how to use the potty ("Up?" she said as a fellow playmate stepped up to the potty, referring to the lid).

Will being the only girl in a class of boys stave off the PPP phenomenon for a time? Probably. I think a lot of that shit is actually started by girls' parents, who want their daughters to participate in it. And then other girls pick it up from their PPP classmates...and the cycle continues. I'm not saying my daughter is immune to the PPP, and it may even be good for her to go through a girly phase...but if and when that does occur, it's going to be hard for me to stomach. I just want her to explore whatever she likes, and I don't want her imagination to be quashed by being submitted to too many pre-determined playbooks via stories, movies, etc. I want her to invent her own!

The bigger thing to fear in this day and age, perhaps, is the INTERNET and the social media within and around it. I've been a member of Facebook for many years now, but I was raised and came to adulthood in an environment before Facebook existed. I worry that the artificial construct of the psyche that Facebook creates in all of us is going to be the downfall of polite society, period. Or, if handled properly, maybe the future will be full of savvy internet types who are able to communicate their hopes and dreams more eloquently than mine ever could...maybe. Here is one quote that stood out for me from the aforementioned book:

"The self...becomes a brand, something to be marketed to others rather than developed from within. Instead of intimates with whom you interact for the sake of the exchange, friends become your consumers, an audience for whom you perform."

Yeah, that shit's scary, and it's happening now, to all of us. Just imagine how it will affect our babies and toddlers in the coming years.

Busyness, or how my job is giving me ADD

Since I got promoted last year, I am very, very, very busy. Busier than I've ever been before at work. So busy in fact that I don't know how I stay afloat half the time. This is a typical day:

8:45-9:00: arrive at work (after wrangling a toddler in to daycare)
9-12: deal with emails that accumulated overnight/meetings/drop-bys
12-1: lunch outside the office (if no one has scheduled a meeting over it)
1-4: more emails/meetings
4-5: get some actual work done
8-10: more email management (2-3 times/week)

You know there's a problem when you find you have to make fake meetings with yourself just so you can have a block of time to get something important done. (OMG! I have a 2-hour block of time tomorrow--I'd better block it or someone will take it!). And when your director calls to see if time you've blocked out is vacation time or work travel--because if it's the latter, you're expected to be on that webex/conference call, motherfucker! Work travel does NOT excuse you from conference calls! No one cares that you're boarding a plane!

I liken this busyness to what I imagine standing chest-deep in the middle of a rapid river would feel like, foamy water just gushing over you, filling your mouth, your nose, making your eyes close. You can't move, can barely breathe; you just have to deal with the constant onslaught of water in your face. Day after day.

All I can think about is what it might be like to not be so busy. I remember the days when I had the time to surf the internet a little, read articles, etc--it seems like a distant memory now. I daydream too about what it might be like for me if my coworkers could own their own work and I didn't have to micromanage them, and if everyone didn't seem to come to me for every little thing and could help themselves and look something up once in a while. But that will never happen. The buck starts and stops with me now, the more helpful you are the more you're called on to help. Man does that suck for my stress levels.

I am not the kind of person who generally takes stress to bed with them. At least until this week I wasn't. This week I woke up at 4:30 am two nights in a row, thinking about work! I often will wake up before my alarm these days, and my brain will immediately start sorting through some problem at work. Sometimes, it's shit I didn't even know was bothering me. Often, it's productive, and I realize a solution that I might not have otherwise; but mostly it's bothersome and steals sleep from me AND I NEED MY SEVEN HOURS. I don't dream, I problem solve: the saddest bumper sticker ever.

I will admit that a part of me likes this busyness, it makes me feel integral to the organization, important, yadda yadda. I like making decisions, having knowledge, finding solutions to problems, helping people if I can. But I'm doing the work of at least two people (and not making as much as either one of them did), and in general the people I am dependent on to get my products done (but don't have direct management of) continue to underwhelm and disappoint. Occasionally when I step back and get a look at what I manage to accomplish despite the constant onslaught of shit, I'm amazed, and concerned for the future, because surely no one can be expected to maintain this insane pace against such odds for a sustained period of time? I see myself burning out in two years, tops.

Work to live or live to work? I used to resist the idea of work controlling my life, but I think I've not so much given in as given up on the idea of having a separate life from work. Who has time for a separate life when you can be expected to take a phone call even on vacation, or when the payback for taking a vacation is almost not worth the vacation? Who I am is what I do, what I do is who I am. The snake eats itself, the end.

50%

Lately I've been traveling a lot more than usual for work. A colleague of mine recently vacated her position, and the description they posted of her job now reads '50% travel during high sales season.' What the fuck does that mean? Every season is high sales season. Due to the random class starts at career schools, it's always adoption decision time somewhere. 

I have 6 trips in 6 weeks. Some are a couple of days, others are three plus. It seems a tad excessive for someone who's job is to develop products, not sell them.

And yet this is now what my job has become. It's fine for now, but I do not see myself doing this next year. I'm a mother, but that's meaningless in the corporate world. You're not allowed to complain, you have to pretend you have no attachments, no one who cares if you're home or not. If I mention that I'd like to travel less, I'll get invisibly, insidiously black-balled. We are all busy, no one cares.

That is, no one cares but me. It is up to me to start saying no, and come up with reasons that sound valid, you know, other than, 'I feel like I'm missing out on large chunks of my daughter's development.' I have 8 trips a year for conferences alone, before any additional sales travel. I need to somehow emphasize that my time spent working in products is just as valid as traveling to sell those products. Either that, or become an actual sales rep and make some real money.