Greetings, friends. (II)

Greetings, friends. First things first — it is entirely characteristic of me to write a first journal entry, and then, in the immediately subsequent entry, have to publish several factual corrections. Michelle ran a 10k, not a 5k, and I mixed up Kimmie’s Morning Pages practice with Kellianne’s 750words.com writing tool. The latter are similar in premise but not the same! My apologies to all three brilliant people whom I admire. Also, I will never not think of Kellianne as “Moon”.

Speaking of Moon, she posted yesterday her own journal entry, and credited me alongside Rick with inspiring her to journal more publicly. I love it when friends bring out the best in each other. I hope Moon and I both keep it up the way Rick has. Someone commented that it’s like 2003 all over again. I eagerly await the widespread resurgence of cheese sandwich blog posting.

The layoffs yesterday… could have been worse. No one on my team was affected and our current goals and scope of responsibility remain unchanged, for which I am truly grateful. I got to hand-pick the team of five engineers I supervise, and as I told them this morning, I am grateful every day when I sit down to work that I get to collaborate with such talented people. I always feel good after giving a pep talk. I don’t know if I do it for them or for me.

About 15% of the company was laid off, including, somewhat surprisingly to me, that same proportion of the Engineering department. To digress a moment, the company leadership unfailingly refers to the event as a RIF, which is shorthand for a “reduction in force”. While not technically inaccurate, the term to me smacks of a kind of disingenuous doublespeak. The more prosaic and commonly-used “layoffs” seems too tawdry, too indelicate, and therefore we must apply a more technical and impersonal euphemism, which we further euphemize by reducing to a three-letter acronym, which we pronounce as riff, like the guitar lick.

Maybe there is some legal reason for this, but I hope not, because I can’t help but call it what it is, a layoff, and it sucks no matter how you shellac it and sand it down. A riff. Almost like a rift. A rift in time and space, separating us from our former comrades in capitalist labor. Separating us from who “we” were and who we are now. Stay in touch and let us know where you land. Best of luck. Let me know if you need a recommendation. Don’t forget to add me on LinkedIn. See you never, probably.

Writing daily has become something I started looking forward to almost instantly. I realized that there are three things I want to accomplish here.

First is that writing like all true skills takes practice to be good at, and while I love having written, I am a lazy man and not gifted with a propensity to do anything regularly beyond taking forever to get out of bed in the morning. The thing that always holds me back is that I too easily fall in love with my own words, and find myself editing at the same time I write, revising and honing the exact turn of phrase, like the artisanal wordsmith I wish to be. I get bogged down with the weight of what I wish I were writing that I eventually get overwhelmed and wander away. Therefore I intend to treat this as an opportunity to disentangle writing from editing, and treat them as the two different practices they probably ought to be. That said, I have already made about four or five changes to this paragraph.

I also ran 1.5 miles this morning at about a 14:00 pace. Whomst among us is ever yet quite where we aspire to be. 15 minutes in and only 600 words drafted.

The second thing is that I kind of can’t believe how eager Substack is to monetize content even knowing the service is a for-profit enterprise. I left the “accept pledges for future subscriptions” unchecked and was horrified to realize that, if you followed the link to this journal, you were immediately presented with the opportunity to promise me money in the future. I turned this off right away. I am almost 30 years past fantasizing I could making a living off of writing. If you’re reading this, I regard it as you doing me a favor, not the other way around.

I forget what the third thing was.

Also, if you’re still reading this, I send you my love. Ceterum censeo pro vigilum imperdiet cessandam est. I hope you have a wonderful day.