Protect

Steve Harvey says that a good dude does three things for his lady: Provide, Profess (hi love), and Protect. I can certainly provide. And we know that my professing is perhaps a bit too profess-ional. So what about protecting? I don't think anyone sees me as a good protector. I mean that on both the physical and emotional level. Physically, I'm a skinny guy, let's be honest. No, I'm not a towering giant, and I will probably never be taller than I am right now. What is in my control is my weight and strength. I do not have to be a skinny punk.

On a less physical sense, I am not a defender of much. I like to play the moderator role. I like to see other people happy. I don't take sides, I don't stand up very often. When I do, I don't have any experience fighting for it. I can see how that's not very desirable. I can dig in, I can make a stand. I can be a guy that makes you feel safe that you'll always been defended.

Change. Direction. Ah the good Will-Read-life.

The Wisdom of the GD

I wrote recently a post that got Matt Dickerson and I wondering what struggles brought us together as friends. True, we did share a dorm floor together freshman year, and arguably college is a struggle for anyone, but we didn't share many of the struggles. He was an engineer, I was in the school of science. I think a big part of it was that Matt always listened to me, and he engaged me when I had unanswerable questions like, "should I keep seeing this girl?" He asked me his own questions that made me pick apart my own value system and come to my own conclusions after better understanding myself.

So while I was trying to answer the question of what common struggle we shared, I realized that I've gleaned a lot of wisdom from Matt over the years.

1. Brush your teeth. Aside from the health benefits, it's a good way to make friends.


2. "If a woman throws herself at you, make sure you catch her." I assume this policy no longer is applicable directly to him since he's now married, but it certainly got me to open up my eyes and let myself get involved and have experiences I would have otherwise passed up.


3. There's nothing to worry about if you have a hot wife. Matt knows he's got a great spouse in all categories that he loves deeply. He knows she loves him, and their marriage is a promise of that love. So even though Matt knows other guys may want to steal away his wife, he doesn't worry about them, and can just focus on being a great husband to Lauren.


4. Run. Matt is a marathon runner, and I think a certain amount of his identity is wrapped up in running. The real Matt wisdom is probably something more along the lines of "Tie 'who you are' into a healthy activity".


5. Fiscal sensibility is a way of life. Matt loves doing taxes, to the point where I think he looks forward to the day where he also gets to do his kids' taxes. Beyond April, Matt loves understanding his spending habits and making trade-offs and adjustments so that he can afford the things he wants. I wouldn't say "Matt loves money", but he certainly loves making money work for him.

Such is the wisdom I've garnered form him over the years. I'm certain there is more that I've just absorbed, but he's one fo those people that helps me set the bar higher for Will Read.

Appearances

If you're going to be a security guard, you got to at least give me the impression that you might be physically capable of giving chase. I know it probably isn't the "safe" thing to do, and that if you are faced with a real criminal, your training probably just tells you to phone it in. However, if you can't walk down the isle on BART without being out of breath, I'm not sure you can really deter any crime.

Brainstorm: Struggles

Something I believe is that relationships are forged through shared "struggles" - times we step out of our comfort zone and do something out of the ordinary. When I was a kid, things like church lock ins, running props backstage, and going to late night coffee shops qualified. As I got older it was things like spending a week sleeping on a gym floor in the Appalachian mountains repairing homes for people in need. In college fencing supplied all the struggles I could possibly need - leadership, budget concerns, teaching, learning, more teaching, travel, competition. I held on to that brand of struggle after college when I was running my own fencing club which presented the same challenges.

Now, life is easier. I go to work, the bills get paid, I go to sleep knowing that my bed will still be there tomorrow and that I won't be stranded in some other state. My life is safe. I think this is the reason why I haven't found any lasting relationships here in SF. So I need to risk something. I need something that I might fail at. I need something that I might succeed at with the help of others.

I could volunteer again. Maybe Habitat is better out here. Maybe there's something I can do at a local high school, or college. I don't want to fence again. I'm not a fencer. I could go sky diving. Or I could take up a gambling addiction. Race car driving. Stunt double/devil. But this works better when I risk my pride and not necessarily my body. My pride. THis works when I'm scared, or humble, or weak.

Leadership also seems important. I need something to lead. Something to lead... And teach... And humbling... And preferably doesn't cut in to work hours...

I know it doesn't answer the points above, but I think I need to go to school. Night classes. Pottery? Woodworking? Automotive repair? Business Management? Economics? Marketing? Psychology? Pysch lends itself to being a Lifecoach. Getting a MBA would be handy if I do ever form a start-up. At school I would meet people too. School...

More About Her

I recently wrote about the impossible woman, and I wanted to add two things to the list. The first is that she'll be the kind of woman who is a teacher on her way to being a CEO (there's no "career path" for that). The second is that I'll know her as she will feel like "home" to me.

I've been watching Battle Star Galactica, which makes me a big nerd, but we're getting to the end and there's a lot of talk about what "home" means to the characters. Four years ago, it was the planet they lived on, but now it's the ships they reside in. And it isn't so much the ships, but the people, the experiences they have had on those ships. The things that bind them together, their common struggles, their memories - all that makes it a home.

What that really says is that I need to find a way to struggle with someone. Not fight, but to go through a hardship or challenge or something and come out on our feet together. Dinner and a movie isn't something one bonds over. It's just food. Getting stuck in the rain is something you can bond over. High school is something you can bond over. Conquering a fear of heights or snakes is something you can bond over. I hate snakes.

Opinionated About Web Usability

I walked out of work forty minutes early today. I was beaten, and shaky, and out of my element.

Just earlier, I had decided that I am not confrontational enough. That I don't know how to argue, stand up for anything, or be passionate. Today was designed to reinforce that realization. The background is that we've built a mostly stand-alone app that will serve up tasks for people to do on Amazon's Mechanical Turk. It was supposed to be a [Ruby on] Rails application, as opposed to the core of Remix, which is really just a Ruby application and only kind of takes advantage of the Rails part.And there's no UI, just XML and JSON is all we expose to the rest of the world.

I love Mechanical Turk. I love the things that Rails supplies. So I love what this app could be. Today, block by block, all that got torn down. With each assault on the app, I was there, defending, but it didn't matter. It isn't that I wasn't heard, it was that it didn't matter. First, it was a dumbing down of the search engine, to the point where it borders on hard to use. That resulted in going from a one-click task to a multiple click-copy-paste task. The last conversation was in the context of removing all JavaScript - further reducing the ease of use.

I think part of it is that I empathize with Turkers somehow. Like they really are my employees, that we need to treat them well. I'm also the only guy on the team who has done more than a few minutes of turking. When Steve decided that last time that we needed to do something else, and Mike backed him up, and Glenn and Colin sat silent, I was alone. I was fighting a fight that may have been totally crazy, and I knew that. I am not yet the guy who fights for the crazy thing. Or rather, I'm no longer the man who fights for crazy things. Arguably, I was that man back in high school. Arguably, it caused me a lot more trouble at work than it was worth.

Now, I'm the guy who runs away with tears in his eyes because he doesn't want to produce crap.