The Morning After

We watched a portion of last night's debate, then had to turn it off. It was just too depressing. Trump transcends evil and Biden is not the best debater from the selection of Democrats on offer from our last crazy round of primaries. But he is our candidate and a good man.

Trump is in essence the metastasis of Reagan's famous catchphrase about the nine most terrifying words in the English language, "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." Like Trump, Reagan was a brilliant showman, but he wasn't as straight-up nasty. The Republicans took this idea (which had a deeper backstory, Jill Lepore's These Truths gives a good accounting) and ran with it, and Trump is the logical conclusion. He aims apparently to destroy the Federal Government's credibility lock, stock and barrel. The legislative branch had already greatly eroded its own credibility over the years, due to a number of factors about which many books have been written: ideological hardening, propensity for corruption and capture by lobbyists, etc. We all share fault in this story.

Trump, through his tragi-comic executive overreach and disdain for everything that has come before him has taken a wrecking ball to the Executive Branch. Now, by Ruthlessly (oh, a terrible pun) seeking to jam a nominee onto the Supreme Court before the election following the untimely demise of RBG, he seeks to further weaken the judicial branch. We saw this coming when Matthew Whittaker -- Acting AG between Sessions and Barr -- questioned the wisdom of judicial review going back to Marbury vs. Madison (see here). 

The project is to take it all down, and he is succeeding. But only if we let him.

Keeping "the sabbath"

One thing I struggle with is not working, carving out time for myself. There are so many things to do pushing in on me from all sides all the time: work, non-profit commitments, family, reading, home maintenance. Hell, even my blog, to which I feel a certain responsibility.

Saturdays I try to keep clean, for the most part. This morning, literally at 9:30, just when my AA meeting was coming to an end, I heard my laptop chime twice, letting me know two emails had come in. One was from a prospect, coming in over the horn from the one instance in which I've ever bought leads, another from a client, someone I have known for many years and love dearly. I will read his email shortly and probably respond, because he is a special situation.

But in some sense it is all special situations, because all situations are special and unique in their own way, even though they must have enough in common for me to be able to add value when I respond to them. I have to have the discipline to triage and respond only when I have adequate energy and focus to do so well. 

Storytelling now

In the course of calling around to talk to friends from throughout my life about my upcoming fundraiser for Josh Stein on Tuesday, October 6 at 7 pm (if you haven't signed up, here's the link), I got into a conversation about community and storytelling in the post-COVID world. He works in cultural production -- theater, dance, film, whatnot -- so he thinks about this stuff more than I do.

The next day I was reading in one of the many issues of Bloomberg Businessweek that pile up unread on the island in our kitchen an article about how Bollywood is dramatically changing how movies are made in India, how the big dance numbers at weddings and in streets are out and how small scenes are in, just because of constraints on production. No surprise, the production of new content is constrained everywhere by the logistics of production, which is hard on the producers and sort of hard on consumers too to the extent that we are locked in to our habitual viewing patterns and starved for diversion.

But for newly produced filmed and even staged content, the reduction in the number of people on stage may have a profound effect on the content itself: more people are alone and in small groups, therefore the focus and the themes must get smaller and focus more on the individual and her/his relationship to the whole. We are in a new age of chamber content. Just as Ian Watt, in his classic The Rise of the Novel, catalogs how the rise of broader literacy and broad distribution of printed content including via serialized publication of novels gives rise to a new type of bourgeois subject, a person who views herself as discrete and independent in the world and identified with others (the narrators of novels) across space and time.

Something similar could happen to people's received perception of subjectivity as the type of content being produced and consumed changes.

Of course there is the countervailing force of the ecstatic merging of subjectivities through the endless imitation and repetition encouraged by TikTok, SnapChat etc., as well as the crushing force of peer pressure imposed by Facebook and Instagram.

And then there is the lonely blogger, like the Japanese soldier hiding out on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific, still fighting the second World War.

Keeping it going

Throughout lockdown, I've seen lots of posts about how people have been going through basements, attics, closets, whatnots, and cleaning things out. We haven't done a lot of it through the warm season.

But maybe as the days grow shorter it will be a good thing for us to do. I was talking to Mary the other day about how she wants more storage space in her studio, but how she needs a place to put the vacuum cleaner, blah blah blah. You don't need to hear all the details, but I started having some ideas about how we could clean up over here, maybe add some of the built ins that we deferred when we did our renovation a decade or so over there... and so on. It would be a natural tie in to doing some other things upstairs that I'd like to do and would be good for our relationship, so why not?

There's also the issue of the bikes in the basement that we don't use. I hear on the street that there is a shortage of bikes out there in the world, and that there are places in both Chapel Hill and Durham that will take old bikes and fix them up and give them away or sell them at minimal cost to someone who can use them. And then there's all this old computer stuff that I could take to Larry Herst over at Triangle Ecycling.  It's always nice to stop in over there.

In short, there's lots of stuff to do.

The other night I was out with friends and one of them started to lament the arrival of the shorter, colder days of fall and winter. I get that. I exhorted her to not get dragged down by it beforehand, but just keep rolling for now. I think the real problem is one of underemployment and underengagement. Her restaurant is closed and I'm not sure she is firing on all cylinders. She is a natural hostess, she loves bringing people together for parties, and it's hard to do that now. But not impossible. I will call her.

When I'm free. For now, it's time to get ready for tennis.

Exterminating Angel 2.020

The other day I set to thinking, and it occurred to me that the political impasse in which the United States finds itself, namely, that the two sides can't talk to one another, might be likened to Bunuel's 1962 film Angel Exterminador, which I had always thought had been made in 1939, I guess because it's black and white.

In the film, a bunch of rich Madrilenos go to a dinner party in a mansion, then at the end of the evening don't leave. Instead, they lie down and sleep where they are. Over days they eat and drink all the food in the house, as the situation devolves into chaos. People die. Others commit suicide. They break into the house's walls to find water, burn furniture, etc. At one point in time, they realize that they are seated in the same place where they were when it all started, and everybody gets up and walks out.

Our divide has been escalating over time in a similar way. Because of elections and the Overton window and deep tribal loyalties, it's difficult for leaders to admit in public that anything the other side says makes any sense, because to do so would be perceived as weakness. Each side must be tarred with the worst excesses of its extremists. To lean Republican makes you responsible for running people over on the streets of Charlottesville. All Democrats burn police stations and loot small businesses willy nilly. And so on. It is silly and ultimately destructive. People know it and talk about it amongst themselves quietly, but of course only when huddling with one's own. At some point in time someone has to stand up and exit.

Gear and Process

As my volume of tennis and biking has risen, I have become ever more a gearhead, something I've resisted through the years. I have been pushing my body harder, so it needs more support to keep rising to the task. Things I've upgraded or need to include: wristbands, socks, shirts, shorts, shoes, helmet, beverages, snacks, racket grip, and so on. There are more things I can do. Much of this is to alleviate and/or manage against the risk of physical pain, acute injury, or cramping, or to facilitate faster recovery.

There is a similar transition in my work. As the size of my business has risen, I need to continually get better at time management so as to not have my time and energy sucked down into stupid little chores like manually entering stuff into systems, doing simple analysis, tracking down records of conversations across multiple platforms (email, text, notebooks, CRM, spreadsheets). If I maintain a more or less standard process, I can do more. More importantly, it frees me up to focus on higher-value add tasks like staying abreast of what's going on in the various worlds (markets, tax, insurance, estate planning, etc) by reading and talking to counterparts, and then talking to clients and prospects about things that will benefit them.

What we need in the business is a new employee who can take on both doing and improving how we do some of the lower-level stuff so I can focus more on the higher. Working on it.  

Routine and variation

Somehow last year at a dinner around Thanksgiving, the topic of routine came up, and Leslie asked me about my routines. As I listed them out, I was astounded at the degree to which my life was run through routines.

On weekdays I do certain things, in rather rigid and predictable order, on weekends the same. I won't bore you with all of the detail. What I will say is that it all provides a tremendous degree of comfort and stability to my life.

Sometimes it ossifies into a rigidity that can stifle thought and creativity, which is where variety comes in, which I think of as providing "oxygen" to one's life. When I worked with software developers, I seem to recall the notion of a "perturbation element" flowing into discussions, which I imagine is kind of similar. In the normal flow of my life, I get the variation, or oxygen, that I need from travel and from events that happen outside of my routine: social events, business events, etc, which bring new people and experiences into my sphere. Plus new restaurants, books, musicians, soccer players, etc., rising and falling as they do. I get enough variation to keep it real.

Just now, in the middle of the pandemic, it's getting a little harder. Very little travel, restaurants are closing more than they are opening. The outside world is producing less fresh content. But it's not that bad. I have a huge backlog of unread books, am learning new songs and techniques on guitar. And there are new athletes, including Billy Gilmour of Chelsea and Jennifer Brady, who just lost in the semis of the US Open but is flat out fierce. And we are digging back into the archives. Last night as a family we started Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder. Not his best work, but still it's good to get Graham checking out the classics.

I am not, however, looking forward to the fall and winter, mostly because the shortening of the days cannot be offset by the ramp up in social activity that we normally see this time of year. But we'll get through it.

History repeats itself

After a very disappointing rain out, Thursday morning found me and Z back out on the court. I jumped out to a quick 4-0 lead, then he came back and beat me 7-6 (7-5). A chance glance at my post from August 26 shows that more or less the exact same thing happened then.  

This time there was a distinct moment after I was up 4-0 and was about to serve. I had this adrenaline surge and I thought to myself that I had to allow myself to beat him and to be better than him. I have always had an odd relationship with competition. I am, on the one hand, competitive as fuck. But I don't care that much about winning, which puts me at a distinct disadvantage when competing with people who really do.

It must go back to childhood, when I was a much worse athlete and didn't win much. I must have convinced myself that losing was OK (and it kind of is) and got this idea that I was worse than the other guys baked into my brain. Which was fine, because, after all, I was clearly intellectually superior to them, except maybe Konanc, but there was never any conflict between us. Praise the Lord, because he would have kicked my ass.

Then there's also just wanting to not have an imbalance with friends. When David and I were playing a lot of tennis in Princeton back in the late aughts, we would swing back and forth from day to day, and there was a clear benefit to our friendship to maintaining equilibrium, which disincented each of us from progressing too much.

Josh, Crabill and I were hanging out the other day talking about stuff and I mentioned my ongoing tennis war with Z and Robert wistfully mentioned that he didn't have much competition in his life just then, and kind of missed it. One thing is clear, both Z and I and raising our games and getting fitter. I have in fact been beating him more, I am just too polite to write much about the wins.

A world of work

Much hand-wringing continues to be done about the future of work in a world in which more and more tasks and roles are automated, and it is not all bullshit. There are sound arguments around universal basic income flowing out from them.

Then again, there is much in them that is fluff, because people need to feel a sense of purpose, which means they need to feel that the things they do between lifting their head from their pillow (should they be so fortunate as to have one) and laying it back down to sleep at night are aligned with some greater mission. Or, at least, that's how things work best.

This sense of purpose, then, is the ultimate requirement for work, not the production of economic value, which is instead an ancillary function which flows from the former. And, as I have written before, there's a lot of stuff that needs doing on this planet.

One key intermediate challenge is matching supply (of labor) and demand (for the same), which is what markets are supposed to be so good at. But it is so hard to bend our brains around the possibility of change that people get all caught up in maintaining the status quo and preserving the jobs we see people doing today. The cashiers, the truck drivers, the factory workers, what will they do when their jobs are automated? Oh no. And what's worse, the radiologists, the sportswriters, the entry-level lawyers, what about them?

Here's an idea: we'll figure it out. We just need to stay aligned in our goals, the things we believe in, the things we want. Which is -- as I have said before -- a problem of a deficit of leadership. And I don't just mean the Trumps and the Phil Bergers, it's all of our fault if we go running after the swankest SUV or the most lavish outdoor grill instead of focusing on more important things. We ourselves lead poorly.

One over-riding narrative around the disappearance of work is that everything will be automated, therefore everybody needs to be a programmer -- but however could a burger-flipper or truck driver become a programmer or entrepreneur? Easy. They just need to be educated, to have adequate support, incentive and encouragement to do so. Public schools won't do it all, but they are an important place to start. The gig economy, for all of the meanness inherent in its regulatory arbitraging of the employee/independent contractor distinction, nudges people towards getting out on their own and trying things, and thereby helps them build new muscles. The main thing is, people can learn things. There are no inherently stupid or incapable people, just a system that tells them that they are that, that they are useless, and demoralizes them.

Lordy lordy, give the boy a keyboard and he can ramble. This all started from my reading a daunting survey of the role of viruses in evolution and biology in The Economist, in which a proposed $4 billion 10-year Global Virome project was mentioned, and I got to thinking about all the different types of jobs that could come out of that, and how they're not all for PhDs, but there are a variety of different roles in labs, in infrastructure maintenance (HVAC for lab buildings, for one thing) that are necessary to support it. How different people can staff those roles and learn things incrementally over the course of their lives and convey their learnings to their kids.... The world is infinitely complex, there is so much work to do, we just need for more of it to point in the right direction, which means finding a way to build and maintain consensus about what that is. 

A book

A friend of mine recently suggested that I turn my blog into a book. I thought about his suggestion some more while out riding yesterday in Chatham County (36 miles, at about 12 mph on average -- in answer to your query, Z). I started thinking in terms of how I could break it down into chapters on finance, health -- physical and mental, blah blah blah blah blah. And how it all interrelates as a whole. My whole philosophy of life!

It could be... fascinating. Or, it could be the most pompous and unbearable piece of shit ever. Mansplaining the universe at scale. We'll have to see if it happens. Right now I need to go change the sheets on the bed and then take a buzzer to my head, then I've got to try to track down some Soda Stream CO2 cartridges (apparently they are in short supply, which might force me to go to the store to buy bottles of seltzer, gasp!). Many other chores to do, plus reading, swimming, phone calls, perhaps a nap.

Do I have time for a book?

Shifting up

 After a quick gander back, I'm surprised to see that it's been a full week since I last posted, but what are you going to do? I've been busy.

What with new clients coming in the door, political season heating up (ramping up for my upcoming and still-evolving Zoom fundraiser for Josh Stein -- sign up here , my ever-intensifying tennis war ith my man Z, and the keep up a disciplined schedule of watching TV with Graham and start re-reading The Brother Karamazov (in the Pevear/Volokhonsky translation for the first time) after a 35-year hiatus, I have been staying out of trouble.

I continue to spend as much time out on the screened-in porch as possible. My whole being seems to appreciate the fresh air. This morning it actually seemed a little chilly out there, which makes me on the one hand excited to get on my bike and ride, but also slightly apprehensive about the cold weather and the adjustments I'll need to make to my biking then. It's not just the wind chill, but the shortening days that make riding harder in winter. When the son is out till 8, it's much easier to justify spending 3 hours of sunlight on a bike. I know I'm going to have to do more running, which is much easier when it's colder, but lacks the sense of adventure and exploration that biking provides. It's just so much harder to range further on foot. Then again, I know that there are in fact neighborhoods that I haven't explored all that well while running, ones that aren't that far away, I just have to remember to get out and explore them.