Hedgehog in the Blog

Last week I listened to a report on KUOW on foreclosures in the Seattle area. In the first quarter of this year Washington state reported the highest number of foreclosures in the country. During the  program Richard Hagar, a real estate guru and Marc Cote, the director of Washington Homeownership Resource Center answered callers’ foreclosure, refinancing, and federal aid questions. The Washington Homeownership Resource Center is a nonprofit running the Washington Homeownership hotline,  an information line for future or current homeowners.

The callers on the program revealed the extent lending banks are disorganized and ill-equipped to handle customers facing refinancing and foreclosure inquiries. At many, particularly larger banks, it’s almost impossible to access a live representative. Federal aid,  loan adjustment, and refinancing options and procedures are difficult to navigate and require expert guidance. The Washington Homeownership hotline has stepped in to help people navigate options and best approaches to dealing with banks.

Yesterday morning I caught the tail end of Foreclosures Hit Home In The Northwest. It confirmed the chaos in the foreclosure system relayed on the previous show. Unlike the previous show, this time there was a representative from a bank, J.P. Morgan Chase. In response to the service problems and the high foreclosure rate in the state, Chase is opening a Homeownership Center in Tukwila, a service center staffed with service representatives equipped to deal with their customers’ foreclosure and mortgage questions and proceedings. Their PR guys must have caught last week’s program.

The United States is not perfect, far from it. Recently there has been an abundance of evidence of imperfection. The KUOW broadcasts reassured me that civil society remains a powerful force for bringing corrective action.

I hope the BP blokes are listening.

Links:

Washington Homeownership Resource Center

Support KUOW Programming

Only for a select few do the arts pay enough to make it a full time endeavor. This doesn’t stop those with a creative bend to mull over projects and ideas. However, the demands of a full time job, combined with other personal obligations, often keep the idea just that. At a time when 8-10 percent of unemployed Americans face uninspiring job prospects, there is a positive side effect among the bad news. If used productively unemployment provides the opportunity to engage in artistic projects.

Losing a job can be scary and disorienting in large part because one is suddenly confronted with a sizable infusion of unstructured time. The free time previously yearned for may become a burden once abundant. Creative projects provide an outlet and intrinsic satisfaction. For the recently unemployed, creative projects that were simmering on the back burner lose their coat of excuses: lack of time or energy.

Local musician Ross Kirshenbaum of the band Osito used a period between jobs and the cushion of unemployment benefits to write, record, and perform on his solo album Lullaby Oxen. He completed every step of the album on his own from composing, playing, singing, recording, distributing, to cutting up cereal boxes for album covers.

Kirshenbaum began playing guitar in seventh grade and was previously a member of the band Beestings. Recording his creations on a four-track tape machine while playing several instruments, introduced challenges and opportunities to learn. Musically inclined friends provided recording tips and a microphone.

“This album was completely motivated by wanting to learn how to do it… I’ve been writing songs a lot collectively in Beestings. There’s three other people and we are all involved in the song writing process. That was another challenge writing a song by myself, recording it and listening to it. Different things move the song differently when the basis is an acoustic track instead of three other people,” said Kirshenbaum

If given the opportunity to do music full time, Kirshenbaum would seize it, but his satisfaction comes from the process of creating the album and learning more about music. Having extra time to devote to music also enabled Kirshenbaum to attend local shows and generally enjoy music.

“Once [recording] is done there will be another step of feeling really great about it. I’m not too sure what else I’d want out of it,” said Kirshenbaum.

Kirshenbaum plans to go back to school and continue working alongside making music. Regardless of employment, Lullaby Oxen is unlikely the last from Osito.

Osito’s Lullaby Oxen album is available online at http://beestingsmusic.com/osito/

The next generation of workers will demand more flexibility, freedom to express themselves, and support for personal development- yes, this may include a six month sabbatical in the Andes for Spanish immersion courses or a summer in Antarctica. We’ve heard this. Echo bummers are a pain in the ass. They are so, particularly if they are confused with themselves. Blame technology, heightened expectations, rising per capital GDP, longer life expectancy, and birth control pills – all of which allow for extended dicking around. It’s a closet half filled with wrinkle free oxfords and half shlepwear. Brooks Brothers and American Apparel coexist in harmony.

HR folks have an understandably hard time with us. I wouldn’t want to deal with all this drama when I’m trying to run a business that requires diligence and execution of unglamorous but critical duties.

Welcome to the battle, one I’ve been waging since graduating high school. There’s nothing particularly special about me going through this, but it has been ugly and excruciating at times. I record the following ten points because I hope not to repeat them, at least not willingly, and to show solidarity to anyone struggling.

1. Distinguish brain candy from contentment

I find economics incredibly interesting, but not the clean cut stuff, the messy, unexpected behavioral stuff that explores why we don’t behave logically and are paralyzed by choice. Many of these thinkers show how the freedom to choose is the enemy of happiness. Read Barry Schwartz for more. When ambition is constrained, there is more joy in work. That constraint is quite difficult to impose on ourselves especially if we have a candy hungry brain. Using the brain to solve problems makes the brain happy, but are these problems worth focusing on? There is more to a human than just a brain. And as is with anything, if you leave parts ignored, they atrophy.

I spent a good part of my life trying to prove my competency to teachers, professors, and bosses. I adopted their language, followed their rules, keeping my head box busy. Unfortunately, proving you’re smart can often turn into really unsatisfying theater. My friend Mark looked over my graduate school essay and said I was trying to hard to prove to the school that I’m smart. My first clue I was completely lost.

A brain running on candy may have trouble pausing and asking whether it’s on track to make someone’s life richer. Focusing on how I feel only makes me feel worse. Unfortunately, it’s a necessary exercise if I want to change thinking habits. It’s hard in light of the realization that many of the best best moments in life involved frontal brain bits the least.

2. Building a life instead of a career

Ok, so I’ll do this because it will look good on my resume and open doors. Wait! What doors am I hoping to open? Thinking that I sell out for a bit to make some cash and then do something creative/fun/entrepreneurial/non-profitish didn’t happen as smoothly as I imagined. You get attached and adapt. Think of a break up with someone you didn’t see yourself sharing a tombstone with but had been with for at least a year. You’re entrenched and breaking it off will feel like a loss. Doing something for the short term, cashing in, and then following something you are passionate about DOES NOT WORK. Worst of all it will make you hopeless for the things you are probably better suited for. The familiarity and security of the reliable cash cow becomes a major stumbling block in the “thi$ then that” plan.

You are smart and know that big rewards require forfeiting your time and energy, and worst of all your autonomy. Self determination theory states there are three innate psychological needs 1) competence 2) autonomy 3) relatedness. A huge price has to be paid for taking that from you. Companies that take the most of these know this and smartly offer hard to resist rewards.

3. It’s a very quiet whisper

It’s really a tickle in a primordial part of your brain that tells you something is interesting, but don’t expect to know why. It tends to come to you when you are feeling good, maybe after a nice solitary beer, or as you stare out a window on a long car ride. “Something that breaks a polite routine and for a brief period and allows us to witness things with the heightened sensitivity afforded us by novelty, danger or beauty” (Alain de Botton). It may have even come to you when you were a kid exposed to the subject or medium for the first time. Not all of us are that lucky. In many cases it comes when life gets tough and your spirit or body needs sutures. It may never come unless it’s fought for. And honestly if it comes, it may not be as great as you thought.

Epiphanies don’t exist. There are faint whispers, and they require a still mind to catch. Trial and error more often than not ends with error. Errors are painful in ways you often can’t imagine. They are also paralyzing. They will also repeat, if they don’t change you.

Despite this, you can’t fight your nature by being an impostor: “If you drive nature out of the door with a pitchfork, she will creep around and climb in at the windows.” (Robertson Davies) I was never going to be a corporate jet setter, or a smooth talking bureaucrat.  I’m a nervous, scatterbrained slouch on bad days. And on good days I’m about the same, but make more jokes.

4. Stop asking for advice

Anyone close to me has been asked, “So, what do you think I should do?” When you do this, isn’t there an answer you’re really hoping to hear. Come on be honest.

You have to live it. For the person you ask it’s just a thought exercise. How sound is their judgment? Everyone is slightly prejudiced by his or her own experiences and decisions. What sounds like advice may be validation for their own chosen philosophies/path. It may be envy or a misguided impulse to protect you. Mostly, don’t expect them to do the work you have to do for yourself. They have done the internal aerobics to get them where they are, and if it’s a good place, they probably don’t want to jeopardize it by really sympathizing with you.

5. Physics always win. An object at rest tends to stay at rest, and an object in motion tends to stay in motion.

It’s almost impossible to think your way out of it. I’ve heard thousand of times that you have to think positively, believe in it, and want it bad. No. You have to act and fail a few times and have some crappy periods, and then when you get sick of making the same mistakes, you might stand a chance of changing. But, you might not change and have to accept and learn to appreciate your nature and go from there.  I’m notorious for researching and brooding over what to do next or how to mentally approach something, when really I should just do something and find some folks who might want to do it with me.

From Steppenwolf: “What I needed was not knowledge and understanding. What I longed for in my despair was life and resolution, action and reaction, impulse and impetus.” Read the rest of this entry »

The 2009 Recovery and Reconstruction Act aimed at stimulating the floundering economy includes a $29 billion allocation for improving federal surface transportation.  $8 billion is reserved for high-speed passenger trains. Today the Acela, connecting New York and Washington DC, is the only high-speed train capable of reaching speeds found in Europe and Japan. Although it can reach 150mph, the Acela on average travels at 88mph because tunnels and sections of rail along the route do not support it. Population density outside the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic limits investment in high speed trains elsewhere in the US. Car culture and suburban sprawl have made it difficult to get people out of their cars and into public transportation.

For the moment, any suggestion that a railroad revival in America might be a good thing is generally greeted as laughable for reasons ranging from the incompetence of Amtrak, to the sprawling layout of our suburbs, to our immense investment in cars, trucks and highways–motoring culture now overshadowing all other aspects of our national identity – James McCommons (Waiting on a Train, the Embattled Future of Passenger Rail Service)

Despite preference for air and car travel, there are reasons for the US to expand high-speed train service. The biggest one being fuel efficiency.  Today’s shipping industry transports containers using 1/3 the fuel of trucks. An average freight train takes more than 280 trucks off the highways.  Well-positioned rail service could take planes out of the air and cars off the roads. Competition from high-speed trains could discipline car and airplane manufacturers to produce more fuel efficient models.

According to U.S. Department of Commerce data, every dollar spent on investments on freight railroads  (tracks, equipment, locomotives, bridges) yields $3 in output. Each $1 billion of rail investment creates 20,000 jobs. The railways, particularly freight lines in the US, are privately owned and should continue operating independent of government. This includes Amtrak. Currently Amtrak operates as a government owned corporation. In the last 40 years it has consistently reported losses. Trains in the US need a PR and infrastrucutre boost. Perhaps even more significant than the dollar allocation, the Recovery Act brings the economic and green benefits of railroads into popular consideration.

The experience of traveling by rail has its poetic advantages. Many advocates of expanding passenger rail service in American explicitly hold back their sentimentality and nostalgia for train travel. I see no point in that; it’s a great selling point. The shared experience of travel by rail allows for enjoyable people watching and mingling. There is ample opportunity to nap, read, and absorb the landscape. Personally the deepest sleep I have ever experienced was on sleeper cars, the best daydreams, too. My dislike for flying and childhood riding trains in the Ukraine and Russia- my father and grandfather were both railroad engineers- excite me for the possibility of riding trains in the US.