On being the boss, part 2

I've been looking through the blog history for somewhere else that I have talked about Father's struggles with authority. I'm sure I must have written about these things before but I can't find them. Have they been all in my head?

So in this post I talk about how hard it was for him to be a Boss, how genuinely terrible he was at it. And at one point I remember reflecting on Peter Drucker's observation that Thinkers and Deciders are two different kinds of people. Those who are good at thinking are in general bad at deciding; and those who are good at deciding are bad at thinking. I noticed that this certainly applied to me: it took me years to learn how to make basic decisions. And then I looked at my dad's long history of disastrous business decisions ... and realized ... you know? When he was just spinning out his own ideas -- not playing conversational games, and not playing a role, but just (too rarely) actually thinking on his own ... he was really good at it. For all the other things I have told you about my dad, I forget if I ever mentioned that he was really smart ... even though sometimes he talked himself into supporting (or pretending to support) some foolish opinions. I remember years ago, when the news was obsessed by the tryst between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky, that there were thousands of editorials around the country churning out what seemed to be the exact same talking points: it was as if there were really only two editorial positions -- Democratic and Republican -- and everybody who had something to say picked one side or the other and rehashed the same old points in new words. Except my dad. He sent me an email that he asked me not to share with anyone else because his thoughts were still evolving -- and it was clear, insightful, and (above all!) totally original. He agreed with the Democrats on one or two points, and with the Republicans on one or two points, and thought each of them was spouting nonsense equally often.

The consequence of Drucker's point, though, is that Thinkers should be employees, not bosses. The Boss has to decide. He should have an intellectual working on staff who thinks through all the possibilities and organizes them for him, but then he has to pick one. And while I have sometimes held a managerial role in my own career, I have always wanted to work for somebody else, for a company that could handle all the entrepreneurship and all the paperwork and leave me to do what I'm good at. At least this far, I have aligned my career with Drucker's insight.

Not my dad. After ten disastrous years pretending to be a businessman, he dropped into and out of a lot of other ventures. But always he had to be The Guy In Charge. And of course they never worked out, partly because he was terrible at being The Guy In Charge.

Why did he do it? I think it's because he hated and feared Authority. Partly that meant that he couldn't bear to be an Authority in his own right; but also it meant that he was (I think) afraid of having a Boss. He was afraid of being in a dependent or subordinate position. And so he put himself, time and again, into a position where he was sure to fail, because it called upon his weaknesses and not his strengths.

I asked Mother about this at one point, whether she saw things the same way and she strongly agreed. She said that back when he was a college professor he was almost a philosopher -- he could think profoundly and creatively about the subject and find new insights in it that lit up the room. But the first time he got an actual three-year contract, it was at a department that didn't want that. They wanted something else out of their professors, a kind of belligerent aggressiveness (that would put this new university on the map) rather than deep and dreamy insight. She said at one point someone actually came up to him in the hallway (maybe it was a Dean, or somebody) and told him "We don't want your kind here." And when his first tenure review came up after three years they dropped him as fast as they could. He never held another teaching job, and never ... now I think about it ... worked for Anybody Else again, after that. 

Except that, as an actor, he would always listen to his Director and do what the Director said. But nobody else.

It's sad. Of course he really wanted a career as an actor. But if that wasn't going to work out -- and it only ever kind of worked out -- I think he would have had more success doing what I do, working for someone else so that he could have spent his time Thinking and not Deciding. In some ways he would have been a lot happier.

But he hated and feared Authority. He hated and feared Bosses. That always got in his way.

It's sad.
       

On being the boss

I had a thought the other day ... something that pulled together for me two isolated insights that I have had for years now.

Being the boss -- I mean at work, functioning as a manager -- is hard for me. And it was hard for my dad.

That's it, the insight: the conjunction of those two statements. I have long known each of them in isolation. But that they fit together so neatly is at once obvious, and totally natural, and really interesting.

For me the problem had a couple of sources. One was my natural shyness. Another was my overcompensating for what I knew to be my own brilliance. I didn't want to look arrogant, or like I had a "swelled head," or anything like that. So I spent a huge amount of effort beating down my own ego and undercutting my own self-assurance, trying to fade into the woodwork, so that I couldn't be accused of being a glory-hog. And it was an absolutely consistent strategy ... right up until I was 33, and my boss suddenly quit from the small start-up where I was working, and I was offered his position. And accepted it. It was a very disorienting experience. Suddenly I couldn't undercut my own status or position because I damned well needed that position to be able to do my job! 

I really didn't know how to do this, and for a long time I struggled at it. Fortunately the work my department did was controlled by a number of well-defined procedures; so when I didn't know how to manage the people, I compensated by managing the procedure. Instead of "Go do this today" I could say "We've just finished stage 3 so now we have to do stage 4 (where the employee I'm talking to is the only one who can do stage 4), and it has to be done by the end of the day." It wasn't perfect, but it was something I could hang onto until I got my feet under me. The first time I had to write annual reviews I had huge trouble because I had spent so many years forcing myself not to judge other people -- because I thought it would be unfair to hold someone else to the standards I set for myself, because they couldn't help not being brilliant, don't you see? (Yes, I recognize that beneath the showy humility that attitude is tremendously arrogant, patronizing, condescending ... call it what you will. It also didn't serve me very well, especially when I extended it from intellectual standards to moral ones. That didn't stop me from holding it.) I discussed the problem with a mentor at work who talked me out of it, but I sweated for hours over those reviews!

My dad was just as bad. 

As a father he sometimes said that he didn't want to "lay some big authority trip on you," which I think means that he hated and feared authority and couldn't bear to be seen as one. Or, in other words, that he wanted to undercut his own natural authority as my father -- and, like it or not, there is a certain natural authority which comes with that role if you are present in your children's lives, and even regardless whether you are biologically their father -- in the same way that I spent so many years trying to undercut my natural authority as a Smart Person.

As a business owner he was a catastrophe. Partly this is because he made bad decisions. A lot of bad decisions. Partly it's because he was playing the role of a business owner rather than understanding that it was Real Life. And in the very first years he wasn't even playing that role, but actively undercutting it!

He had inherited the business from his parents, when they retired. They had run it for twenty years as thrifty, conscientious business-people, conservative Republicans in the mold of the 1930's or the 1950's. (Think of Alf Landon -- whom his mother voted for in 1936 -- and definitively not Donald Trump.) During all that time, as he finished out his late teens and his twenties and into his mid-thirties, my dad defined himself oppositionally, in rebellion against them, as the liberal Democratic Ph.D. college professor, who stood in line for hours at the American consulate one night in 1972 so he could cast a ballot for George McGovern. (We lived abroad at the time.) And when he inherited the business, he didn't know how to switch it off. He was only a few years older than I was when faced with the same challenge -- 37 or 38, instead of 33 -- but he tried to run the business as President and Owner without being an authority. I never learned many of the stories, but one I remember him telling me (one night years later, when he was really drunk) was that when he discovered that a few of his employees smoked pot (which was of course illegal everywhere in the country at that point), he would get together with them after work and they'd all toke up together. So naturally his employees didn't take him seriously as a boss, and figured they could goof off on the job. Who cares, right? Besides, was he seriously going to risk firing any of them, when the disgruntled employee could turn him in for drug offenses?

As I say, as a business owner he was a catastrophe.

Of course in the end all these guys had to be fired anyway. And he had to stop lighting up with employees. And my mother had to come in and rescue him (so far as she could) from many of the messes he had made. He was angry at having to make the change, bitterly hurt that the Real World didn't turn out the way he had fantasized it, and resented the whole ball of wax: the business, and his own failures in it. What is more, I think this anger and resentment fueled his self-redefinition from Liberal Intellectual to Dittohead. I remember many, many arguments between him and my mom while I was a teenager, that always followed the exact same script. (Usually these came at the end of dinner, after they had both had something to drink -- in my dad's case usually more than just "something." Brother and I would clear our dishes silently and disappear back to our rooms to do our homework, but could still hear every word.)

Mother: You need to spend more time at the office -or- take the business more seriously -or- focus more on these problems we are having (-or- whatever it was that time).

Father: But I hate it! Why do I have to do this? You're always nagging me about this, but why do I have to?

Mother: Because if you don't we will go broke and could lose everything.

Father: But why does it have to be me? You're better at all this stuff than I am. You do it! [Note that my mom didn't start off being better at running a business. But unlike my dad, she worked hard at it and learned on the job.]

Mother: You are the Owner. You have to show up.

Father: I have to? What if I died? Then I couldn't show up! What would you do then? And whatever you'd do then, why can't you do it now without me?

Mother: Then at least I'd be in charge. But for a lot of these issues, only the Owner can solve them. Our creditors don't want to talk to me, they want to talk to you.

Father: You want to be in charge? Fine! I'll sell it to you for a dollar! Then you'll be in charge and can do whatever you want, and I'll be free of it.

Mother: I don't want to buy the goddamned business from you. I don't want it either. I just want you to own up to your goddamned responsibilities!

Father: I can't keep hearing this! If I keep hearing this I'll just ...! 

My father never had a good way to end the sentence. I don't believe he ever threatened to kill himself. But he dearly wished for the whole problem to go away by magic, so he didn't have to grow up and deal with it. (Oh dear, did I say that part out loud? Sorry. Please forgive the editorializing.)

It is true that this specific argument repeated itself, almost word for word, over many nights for years.

__________

Gosh, what was my point in all of this? Just that Father and I have a lot in common. We both struggled very hard with Being the Boss. We both spent many years of our lives acting in a way designed to undercut any authority we might ever have accrued. To the extent that I didn't end up the same way, it was by watching and learning from his example, ... and from trying hard to be more like my mother: to plug away at it, day in and day out, and try to learn.

It's an interesting thought.

What about Brother? Same thing, I think, although the details and flavor are different. He's the rock musician in the family, the one who actually got together with a group and produced a couple of CDs. They sank like a stone, of course. He makes his living as a temporary worker, proofreading for companies in the advertising business. And I suspect (though I'm not certain) that he gets handouts from my mom, from time to time. But an authority? A boss? Someone who can tell others what to do -- and that also means someone strong enough to stand as a barrier that shelters his employees when storms sweep through the organization? Not a chance. (He also has no kids, for whatever that is worth.)

__________

And all this makes me wonder, ... what about Son 1 and Son 2? There, actually, I am hopeful. In one way or another, I think they each have a strong sense of self and also an ability to lead. Maybe it's because they went away to boarding school in their high-school years. Maybe they are just naturally more gifted along those lines than I am. Or maybe they have learned from my failures and deficiencies the way I learned (something, at least) from Father's.

It would be nice to think I'd been useful to them in that way.

           

Is this a problem?

Sometimes I worry that I drink too much. 

How much? Qualitatively I think it averages out to four drinks a night ... maybe sometimes five. (Like tonight.) But I have never compared the exact volumes to the technical definition of "one drink" that is used in those official pronouncements that say it is OK for men to drink two drinks a night, and women one. So am I overcounting? Yeah , right. Nice try. I'm probably undercounting. It's probably more. 

I do not drink so much that it becomes a problem in daily life. I still hold my job just fine (knock wood). It's true that in an age of COVID-19 I don't have to go into the office. But I always wait till dinner (or almost) and I never miss a [remote] meeting at work. So far as it concerns anyone I interact with, I'm perfectly sober. 

But then the evening comes (while I'm all alone) and ... well ... I'm not so sober any more. 

Is this a problem?

The advice I read is inconsistent. On the one hand I see advice that says if you drink more than two a day (as a man) you are about to die any minute now. On the other hand I see advice that says, as a good citizen, all I have to do is watch my habit so it doesn't get worse and doesn't have a bad effect on those around me. 

What do I do? God knows I'm not eager to give over to any designated "experts" the right to decide whether or how much I should drink. On the other hand, I don't want to shorten my lifespan so that it ends next week. 

So probably it would be best if I decided to cut back on my own.

Sure. Maybe next week.

Sent from my iPhone    

    

Tehanu on death

"I think," Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, "that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed." 

— Tehanu in Ursula LeGuin's The Other Wind, chapter 5, "Rejoining."

And gosh, it would be really nice to believe that all those things – all those infinite but unrealized possibilities – don't just go to waste. Artistically it's a little hard to believe that a woman as young as Tehanu has spent so much time thinking about death (and has come up with a doctrine so comfortable to old farts like me) ... but what the hell? I'll take it.

    

Sent from my iPhone

2020 is crazy and I give up trying to guess what will come next

You may have seen this picture already. It comes from the protests last night in Portland. Twitter is calling her "naked Athena" and she appears to be the one who got the military policing to disperse for the night. Because they were baffled? Because they couldn't possibly say she was threatening? Your guess is as good as mine, but apparently it worked.

Last time I was in Portland was years and years and years ago. I had fun while I was there, but it was nothing like this interesting. Maybe all's mad but me and thee ....

Remind Me Next April

NOTE: I am posting this in February 2023, almost three years late. But I just found (or re-found) the poem on my hard drive, and I want to record it before I lose it again. I am back-dating it to the date I received it.

Debbie and I were talking on the phone, and I mentioned that I had written a poem based on the COVID-19 lockdowns. (Of course I mean this one here.) She remarked that she had written one too, a few months before. We agreed to exchange poems so I sent her mine and she sent me this one.

Remind Me Next April

Next April,
When my being is lazy and torpid
After the long Midwest winter
And all I want to do is
Stay in my pajamas
And read or knit,
Remind me how much 
I enjoy preparing my garden beds 
for planting.

Next April,
When my spirit is heavy
Because the coronavirus 
Is still with us
And there is not yet a vaccine
And many have died,
Remind me how my soul
Is healed when I turn
The earth over with a pitchfork
And break up a dirt clod 
With my hands, 
Amazed at the rich black soil,
Teaming with eager earthworms. 

Next April,
If I am not here,
As indeed I might not be,
Know how much joy
I felt on this
April day,
Standing in my garden
With the sun on my back,
The sounds of lawn mowers
And children playing
In my ears,
Black dirt and earthworms
In my hands.

Next April,
If I am here or if I am not,
Know how much I love this precious life
And how much 
I love you.

[Debbie]
April 19, 2020
[Her city and state].

     

July 5, 2020

It's very cozy here inside my shell,
While outside the Coronavirus rages.
If you get sick, I hear it hurts like Hell.

It's quiet here -- I like it, truth to tell.
I'll make some tea, a snack, and turn the pages
Of some delightful book here in my shell.

I've taken care to stock my larder well.
It's lucky that I still can draw my wages,
Though unshowered and uncombed I look like Hell.

For those with other jobs this shutdown fell
Like a ton of bricks, as no-one them engages.
That leaves their pocketbooks an empty shell.

And elsewhere crowds of angry people yell,
"Police do murder!" "They lock kids in cages!"
Then tear gas answers. And it burns like Hell.

I wonder if this year will sound the knell
For our Republic, with its hopes courageous.
It's very cozy here inside my shell,
But outside all the world is going to Hell.

    

Foolish cooking

This afternoon I baked a big batch of cookies and made a huge pot of soup. The soup will feed me for a long time, relieving the need to go out shopping (unless, say, I run out of alcohol). But there is one question I wonder about.

What on earth possessed me to do so much cooking on an afternoon in the middle of summer?  

Another year, another Fourth

Last year I spent the Fourth of July in New Zealand, vacationing with Marie and parts of her family. The year before I spent it at my mother's house, where Brother and SIL were also visiting.

That's where I was this year, though the visit was a lot shorter. I spent about five hours there, plus about four hours total driving back and forth. (That's 2 1/2 hours going, but only about 1 1/2 hours coming back home. I got lucky with the traffic this evening.) It's funny because I left before we actually ate. But I think it was fine, and that I liked it better that way.

Apparently Brother and SIL have gotten together with my mother a few times since the outbreak of the pandemic. Of course they live a lot closer, and in normal times they certainly see her more often than I do. They say they have been scrupulous about social distancing. Certainly not long after I arrived, Brother gave all of us a stern little talk about how we should behave to reduce the risk of infection. He seemed particularly concerned by my cough, which I suppose is not surprising (even though I know it has nothing to do with COVID-19).

It was a hot day and we sat around outside and talked. Brother and SIL peeled homegrown apples to go into a pie. (My mother makes the best pies in the world, and I refuse to hear anyone say anything to the contrary.) They were also going to grill hot dogs for us all.

Nobody said anything about when we were supposed to eat, any more than I said anything about how long I was going to stay. I hadn't thought about it much. But I knew I wasn't going to stay the night, because how hard must it be to disinfect a whole house? Anyway, Brother and SIL spent a lot of time in their own little world, making cute faces back and forth and snapping pictures of each other on their phones. And some time after 5:00 they started fiddling with the grill. Around the same time I decided I'd leave about 6:00.

It was a propane grill that my dad had used for years before he died. I don't know if it has been used since. Everything they said was to the effect that once they turned it on, we'd eat within minutes. But they fiddled and fiddled some more and couldn't get it to start. Maybe it was out of fuel, or maybe it was something else. Anyway, by 6:00 they were starting to think about what else to use instead, and I figured it was a good time to hit the road. There was considerable surprise ("You're leaving? Before we eat?") but I was gracious and cheerful about it and then took off.

Do I wish we had eaten before I left? Maybe a little bit but not strongly. It really was hot. Eating hot grilled food on top of that would have made it feel even hotter. And I'd had a big breakfast, so I wasn't terribly hungry. Also my mother had put out little individual dishes of nuts, and I'd had some of those. And I'm pretty sure Brother will have felt more comfortable eating without listening to me cough: he had already expressed deep discomfort at my coughing (into my mask!) within a couple of feet of the table where the dishes of nuts sat.

Also ... how much do we have to talk about? Brother is a wannabe rock musician (even now, in his fifties) who does proofreading for ad agencies as a contractor. I work for a big company, in an office. (Or, well, I used to work in an office before the pandemic and lockdown, and I still do the kind of work that one associates with big companies and offices.) I suppose I could have talked about getting an article in print in the professional journal for people in my line of work -- the June issue, a mere 18 months after they accepted it! (Grin.) Or I could have talked about the time I've spent on the side during the pandemic, expanding that article (and some related topics) into a short book. (I have 92 pages now and I think it's basically done, but I have no idea what to do next.) But I hate self-promoting like that.

I don't know.

It's funny: I don't feel anything like this ambivalence about spending time with my uncle and aunt, or with my cousins (except for one first-cousin-one-removed, who looks to me like a demon of Pure Id -- Stan, of course, from this post). I enjoy time spent with them. But I don't seem to have anything to say to Brother or SIL.

I suppose that's too bad and I should regret it. But it's just how it is. I don't understand why it turned out that way. But it did. Shit happens, I guess.    

Pro monachismo

(For the Latin-impaired, the title means "For [or in favor of] monasticism.")

Back in 2018 I posted a piece I had written Marie in 2016, about my tangled feelings towards the academic life. I couched it in terms of a reflection on monasticism, and therefore called it "Contra monachismum."

Just now, scrolling through some old emails, I found a link to an article I had found in the same year (2016) in favor of monasticism, which I obviously intended as a counterpoint. You can find it here.

I don't have a quick-and-easy synthesis of these two opinions just at the moment. But I hold both of them, in different degrees and at different times. It's a puzzle.