Awesome job fair and polar bears.

Yesterday I ran a booth for Idea School at the Jobs/Volunteer Fair and the outcome was fantastic. I made a lot of awesome connections, both student related and community related.

At first, I was pretty nervous, but my old sales skills kicked in and I was on fire for the whole day. Met a lot of interesting and cool individuals who will hopefully spread the word about our work.

Really should do more events like this. Anybody who says event marketing doesn't work is wrong. Really just comes down to how much will it cost me and what is the audience. Pretty simple.

As a side note: going to Alaska the day after tomorrow. Came up quick. I'll be back on the 5th. Cross your fingers that I don't get eaten by a polar bear.

Just came across this book:

Class Warfare: Inside the Fight to Fix America's Schools

In a reporting tour de force, award-winning journalist Steven Brill takes an uncompromising look at the adults who are fighting over America’s failure to educate its children and points the way to reversing that failure...  -Publisher's Summary

Disappointing... no, wait. It's more than that. It's actually upsetting. 

I'm not knocking what the author has done. We need initiatives like these to help move that movement forward. What I'm upset with is that year after year, week after week, it seems that the public is mostly bent on helping only children have a better education. Granted, this is a real issue. Children don't really get a choice in life.

But there is a big failure that everybody ignores. That failure manifests itself in the children already grown. The young adults of our country who grew up being told that everything would be okay. They would graduate and get a job and have a happy life. Maybe get married and have kids. Become a millionaire and get the chance to travel extensively. 

*Sirens going off*

What's that?! Oh wait, it's the bullshit alarm. Let me turn that off for you. Sorry about that.

Here's the reality:

The truth is hard to swallow. The reason nobody is setting out to 'rescue' the young adult, college kid crowd is pretty obvious. It's hard.  A lot harder than helping kids in elementary school. Children have to go to school. 

Try convincing a college kid to try something new, work hard, be creative, accept criticism and blame, and be generous. Schools are going to continue teaching us the same old things because its easier than trying to get us to actually give a shit, confront inevitable failure, and make a difference.

Here's even more reality:

It's not actually their job to get us to do those things. It's ours. We have to make the choice to care about our art, our work. We have to choose to make a difference and find our own purposes.

The troubling part is nobody wants to help us. The encouraging part is it will make us stronger. Would you have it any other way?



This could have been a book about that. It could have been a book about what to do when you graduate and there are no jobs. It could have been a heartfelt book about creating your own career, starting an initiative, and making your art, while overcoming resistance.

Instead: read The War of Art

Great City Weekly Article by Beth Clifford about higher ed.

This article about what to do after graduating hits it right on the head:

http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/article-405-14511-the-backup-plan.html

Enjoy.

Genres Are Vehicles, Not Content

I realized something interesting today. There are a lot of similarities between books of different genres. Seriously, way more than you think. I hope this post will convince you to search outside your traditional genre for something you didn't know was there. The results will surprise you. Read on...



For a long time I've read pretty much exclusively non-fiction, business books. I read a lot about personal development and the exploits of others. I also have read a lot of philosophical fiction, my favorite being Paulo Coelho, a brilliant Brazilian author. (He wrote The Alchemist).

A favorite business author of mine is Seth Godin, author of Tribes, The Dip, and Purple Cow, among many others. He also happens to have the most widely read business blog in the world.

What I noticed astonished me. The entire premise of The Dip, which is about getting through the tough parts to make it to the wonderful success at the end, was very similar to a lot of the things Paulo Coelho talks about in his books.

Here's an example:

Coelho writes about Beginner's Luck in The Alchemist. Basically he describes it as the Universe wetting your appetite with success. What usually follows are incredibly tough times and heartache. (I know this, I've been there personally). Eventually, if a person perseveres long enough he/she will fulfill their Personal Legend.

Now, lets get away from Coelho's spiritual and somewhat cryptic speech and move toward more pragmatic language.

Godin, in his short book The Dip, writes passionately about starting something new, whether a new project, career, business, or skill. At the beginning, things seem to be fun and awesome and moving along smoothly. Then, you hit a wall and the fun goes away and suddenly everything becomes difficult. The part that makes everybody else quit. This seems to get more impossibly difficult until finally, you're on a rapid upswing. The persistence pays off, and you have your success.

Both are simply different formats for telling the same story. I know I've noticed this before, yet now it's flooding me.

A genre is merely a vehicle for understanding, not the content itself. Remember that.

The alternative to failure

How many times did I fail at making gnocchi dough before it came out right?

The answer really doesn't matter, the point is that I failed the first few times before getting it right. Each failure was a lesson, but most people don't really look at it that way. In fact, let's scratch out the word failure.

Failure is a bad word. A lot of writing these days has been devoted to reinventing the way we look at failure, though perhaps the use of the word itself is the source of the problem. Next time you find yourself using the word failure, replace it with something else.

Here are some suggestions (some are made up): I explored, I insighted, I poked, I learned, I experimented...

(by the way the answer is 2)

Green Urban Lunchbox

Idea School posted a new blog post today about Shawn Petersen's Green Urban Lunchbox project. You should go over and check it out: http://www.theideaschool.org/blog/

True Freedom

In a recent conversation I spoke about the decision to sell my car. The conversation proceeded like this:

"[Walking] is actually pretty nice. Plus there's always the bus"

"Yeah and trax. Idk that would probably be a good financial decision but I feel like I'd lose freedom"

This got me thinking. What exactly is freedom? And is the freedom that you think you have really freedom at all? I'm going to turn this one upside down.

I propose that most of us live with the illusion of freedom. You think because you have a car and the freedom of mobility that you actually have freedom?

(sorry for using you as an example friend, I'll cook you dinner to make up?? =D)

The friend I had this conversation with is afraid of losing her overall freedom, but really by selling her car she could be expanding it. I know, because I've lived it.

Before I sold my car last August, I was spending about $240/month on payments and $160/month on insurance, plus gas and maintenance.

Here's the facts:

• Owning a car meant a car payment, which meant I had to work more hours just to own the car
• suddenly my decisions about my time are being dictated by how much money I have
• It also meant having to pay insurance, which meant more working, and thus less time.
• As a side bonus, driving was a huge crutch activity for me. I could drive around for hours, subsequently wasting gas and time while accomplishing nothing.

The elimination of all these things amounted to the expected $240 car payment and the $160 in insurance, but there was an extra $200, which came as a huge surprise. I realized that by owning a convenience good (a car in this case) I actually allowed myself to waste more time, thus netting less overall productivity.

The decision to sell prompted me to move downtown, closer to work in order to make my commute negligible. Finally, I reached a balance: limited, but free mobility. I'd learned new skills, such as using the public transit system, cabs, and re-learning to ride a bike. The latter of which has great physical implications. Also, I now have tons of extra money because I've allowed myself to work more, I never get parking tickets, I'm usually early to things, and I spend all my extra time on Idea School and my extra money on it as well.

Were I not to sell my car and limit my mobility, it would not have forced me to focus and define activities that were actually important.

If you're stuck, try making life a little less convenient. It will at least get you thinking.