Social Engineering - Part 2

Here is Part 1, in case you missed it.

Things change over time. People change. Adapt. Evolve. In high school my goal was to be friends with everyone in the school, but a decade and a half later it's far more important to build closer, more intimate connections with a much smaller group of people. Trouble is, the more time you spend with people and really get to know them, you either discover there's a solid foundation of common ground on which to continue to build the friendship, or you realize that the relationship just keeps turning in tight circles, with limited hope for developing into anything richer and more meaningful.

That's where I've figured out I stand a better chance of success with a little social "engineering" on my part. After all the good times and all the wasted time, I'm actively analyzing the foundations my relationships are built on, calculating what I put into them versus what I'm getting out of them, and then I do the same but from the other person's perspective. "If I put less ______ into this relationship, will the relationship dwindle? Is there equal active participation?" I question myself. Recently I've noticed that I may have let feelings get in the way of being honest with myself about the quality of certain relationships. It's in my nature to be loyal, often fiercely so, and I let myself be taken advantage of. Well no more! Slowly I'm becoming more comfortable in addressing those unhealthy relationships and helping them evaporate sooner rather than later, hopefully withou hurting anyone in the end. Aside from mentioning it here, I try to remove myself from the situation in a way that the other party won't really even notice. And how sad that they usually don't notice.

Since everyone's life is following a different course, and we're all moving at different speeds, is it inevitable that relationships will fizzle out eventually? What's the component of the relationship that can prevent that from happening? Or has the notion of the relationship changed so much in our modern world that life-long friendships are becoming a thing of the past, forever lost to our ever shortening attention spans? My mom still regularly keeps in touch with her friends and roommates from college (the ones that are still alive, anyway), an impressive time span of almost 50 years! Seriously, is that even possible nowadays, even with so many forms of immediate communication readily available?

During one of my silent drives I came to the conclusion that the average length of my non-family relationships is about 4 years, after which time we all just drift apart. Most often it's a great distance that sets the comradeship drift in motion, but it's the local and lost connections that trouble me. The ones that have dissolved into the continuous torrent of work and private life that I find myself thinking about, and analyzing hoping to find out why it happened so that I can break the cycle before it happens to my current relationships that I've found value and possible balance in. And, like I mentioned before, all of my non-family relationships are found in current and (recent) former coworkers. Probably not the best formula for success, huh?

I know I should probably start striking out and looking to build relationships with people outside of work. It's just so much easier to bond with the people you work with because work is a huge common denominator and you're never without something to talk about. I'll admit I feel intimidated at the thought of trying to build a friendship from scratch, and I don't know if I'm at a point in my life where I have the confidence to do it.

So for now, I'm just going to make sure that I'm being the best person I can and offering the best friendship I can to the people who mean the most to me, even though I know that history is working against us. And I'll continue to keep reevaluating the balances of the relationships, looks for ways to make minor adjustments to keep things in balance when necessary. It take two people to make a relationship work, but it only takes one to make it not. I'll just have to cut my losses from the one-sided relationships, move on, and hope that seeing these people around the campus and town from time to time won't be an issue.

Kenny Rogers sang, "You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em. Know when to walk away and know when to run." That's a pretty good metaphor for relationships, every one is a gamble. But unlike poker, you really only win when it's a draw.

Social Engineering - Part 1

Over the past many weeks, I've been thinking a lot about relationships. Friends. Family. Friends that are more like family… The connections with people I have now. The ones I want to have. The ones that have faded away. And the ones I've chosen to move past.

But I guess I've always been interested in the how relationships and friendships work and can evolve/devolve over time. My freshman year was as exciting as it was intimidating. By that point in my life I had known for years that I was attracted to guys and in elementary school and even junior high it had been easy to hide from letting those feelings because dating anyone wasn't really an option. But high school, well that's when dating, going steady, making out, and awkward sex is pretty much expected to occur and because my high school was made up of about 150 students max—it was a church school—chances of finding a boy friend were slim to none. And coming out in high school, well that just wasn't an option. And to make matters worse for my homo hormones, the upper class guys were hot. They were also pricks and seemed very content to make this socially awkward teen feel all the more so. Except for one.

His name was Greg, a senior. He had an electric smile to compliment his friendly demeanor. He wasn't a jock, though he was athletic. He wasn't a geek, though I think he was smarter than he let on. He wasn't the BMOC (big man on campus) though he was well loved and could be seen frequently getting and giving hugs to everyone on campus. While too much time has passed to recall any specific moments, I do fondly remember a few times he would flash me a smile or a wink after I had endured the requisite taunting from his classmates letting me know no to worry about it. I vowed that during my next 4 years I would become the Greg of my tenure.

Squiggle dissolve a la Wayne's World to my senior year. I managed to reach graduation day without having to have a girlfriend, and obviously no boyfriend either, but I achieved my goal of being generally well liked by the student body and even the teachers. Looking back I realize now that such a goal had an unforeseen consequence, I ultimately didn't have any close/intimate relationships to show for my time there, not even after having some of the same classmates all the way back to first grade. Don't feel bad for me, I don't. I was happy—more or less—at the time even if I can't say I really miss those years now. While many people wish they could relive their high school days, I'm not one of them, I have no desire to relive the past or reconnect with those people now. I'm not the person they knew then.

So why the high school flashback? Well after putting in nearly five years of corporate office work, I'm able to confirm that aside from being paid to show up every day, it's more like high school than not. There's the same politics, cliques, rumors, backstabbing, a brain, a jock, a princess…I'm so Anthony Michael Hall (if he had a mullet) but this ain't no Breakfast Club. The stakes are much higher. Which is why it is sad that perceptions still rule over fact. I guess somethings will never change.

One of the perceptions that has me worried is how my relationships with others in the company are seen. Some of my coworkers are more than just coworkers, they're my friends. Right now I'm at a point in my life where the people who I'm closest to are coworkers, or previous coworkers. And that has me in a quandary. There's a lot of politics and social structure where I work, like high school. But unlike high school, this time it's not my goal to be friends with everyone. These days I'd rather just keep developing my current friendships so that when the inevitable change of department, company, or location occurs, those connections will still be there even if the actual people aren't. I find myself analyzing how these friendships are being viewed by other people, and I'm worried that they're being taken out of context. What sucks is that there's little that can be done about it, because people also see what they want to see. And then there's the people who use you to bolster their own careers. I really don't like the cut throat side of working in a corporate environment, but I'm not sure one can ever escape it.

Where does that leave me? On edge. Questioning my actions around the people I call friends, and the ones that aren't, and how each with view the other. Of course the workplace is meant for work, not social interaction, but humans are social beings by nature so eliminating the social element of working with people is just unnatural. Are developing personal friendships in the workplace a bad idea? Is it wrong to maintain a social relationship outside of work?

More to come… but in the mean time, leave your 2¢ in the comments.

The Driving Silence

I love music. I've got months of music in my iTunes library. I love audio books. I've got weeks worth from Audible.com. I love This American Life. I've got days worth split up between various computers and iPods. And I love news radio—actual news radio, this time, not Newsradio the fantastically under appreciated TV sitcom from the late 90s—and listen to it in the car and streaming at the office…when I'm not listening to any of the other previous forms of audio distraction. Wait, did I mention podcasts? Add those to the list, too.

At work I'm surrounded by layers upon layers of sounds—noise, really—so I wear my headphones. In the car, I use the radio to mask the noise of the rough and ragged asphalt blurring underneath me. The louder the better. If you can't feel it, it's not loud enough, but I'm always conscious to make sure my audio is not infringing on the environment of other people.

It's been this way as long as I can remember. That is until recently. My car has become a sanctuary for thought and reflection in the past couple months. You know the saying, "I can't even hear myself think!" Well, it turns out it's true. All the sonic submersion was taking time away from brain cycles that needed to be spent confronting issues and challenges in my life.

One day on the way home from work I plugged my iPod into the car dock like I've done every time I've planted my tuckus in the bucket seats, but after starting my car, I paused and then turned off the car's stereo. I put the car in gear and then set out for 40 odd minutes of commuting and contemplation. By the time I pulled into my driveway, it felt as though some of my synapses had been dusted off, and while I had far from figured out how to resolve the issues weighing on my conscious, the progress was evident. The next morning I repeated the mute commute.

Now it's a common practice that anytime I'm feeling bogged down with work or relationship uncertainties, I turn off the radio and tune into my inner voice and get to work finding the hard to hear answers that have been lost under the white noise of life.

These days, I drive in silence a lot.

That's some trunk you're packing

Guys, now that you know what not to wear, take a look at the vintage fashion Style Dash found up for grabs to the highest bidder on eBay. Like the great pachyderm , you're not likely to forget them any time soon. I wonder if the winner would be up to model such a fashion(?) statement.

***

I was originally going to post this last night, but out of nowhere I got smacked down with a headache that through me for a loop. This is the second time this month that I've been laid out with a headache like that. Hopefully it's just stress related and will not come around again. Could it be allergy related??

Put down the collar and back away slowly

The funny folks over at Arabian Monkey have posted a handy flowchart to help you make sure you're not dressed like a, well, a douchebag. Just in time to help you plan your spring wardrobe! And now if you'll excuse me, I have to go pick up my suede ensemble from the cleaners.

What was she thinking?

As promised, here's the non-kitty post… and while it's not exactly breaking news, you'd better have a seat, this is going to be a long one anyway.

What year is it? Oh that's right, it's 1958. Which is why the following is presented as fact rather than misguided opinion:

"Studies show that no society that has totally embraced homosexuality has lasted more than, you know, a few decades. So it’s the death knell of this country. I honestly think it’s the biggest threat our nation has, even more so than terrorism or Islam - which I think is a big threat, OK?"

Wha??? Was I in a coma for the better part of a century when a gay civilization came to power and then disintegrated?! I sorry I missed out on hearing about those gay-friendly countries that have gone the way of the dinosaur. Death knell?! Really? Really?? Wait a minute, in 1958 politicians weren't throwing around words like "terrorism" and "Islam" so it can't be 1958. The way those words are being thrown around, I'm tempted to say it feels like sometime in the early 2000s, when those FUD words were being thrown around to scare people into believing what was being said. Maybe this next quote will clear up the confusion.

"Cause what's happening now is they are going after, in schools, two-year olds...And this stuff is deadly, and it’s spreading, and it will destroy our young people, it will destroy this nation."

Hold on a second, let me check a calendar. Holy cow! It's 2008! I'm sorry I was thrown off by Oklahoma Republican House Representative Sally Kern's horrific candid remarks to a small audience earlier this year that I didn't believe she, or anyone, could possibly have said that in this day and age. Her vile words were recorded by someone who is not gay, lesbian, bi, or trans—in other words they're straight—but who is supportive of the LGBT community. Have a listen.



I know what you're thinking…maybe what she said has been taken out of context. Apparently not. As an openly gay man who just celebrated being 10 years of being "out" last year, hearing this kind of talk from our elected officials doesn't just worry me. It's chills me to the core. (She's not apologizing for what she said, either.) I've had to deal with teasing, insults, threats, and rejection before and after coming out. But that was just family and friends, and they only have a limited impact on my ability to live a good and happy life. Hearing this from a stranger, a stranger in a position of power, now that grabs my attention. And listening to her spread untruths, misinformation, and what basically amounts to fear mongering, well now I'm not sleeping well at night.

Now, I've never understood why a pretty large segment of the population that identify as heterosexual are so frightened by any who does not identify as hetero. So frightened that they engage in hate speech, aggressive behavior, and violence. And what really boggles my mind is that so many of them also call themselves Christians. Excuse me, but I was raised Christian, I read the same Bible as everyone else, and I don't seem to recall Jesus ever killing someone because they were gay. Or for any other reason, actually. I don't remember Jesus ever preaching that violence was ever the answer. If I'm missed a chapter or a verse, please let me know. Instead people apply their own interpretations to the Bible (which, by the way was written by men and not God) to serve their own purpose and agenda. As far as I know, we gays do not have an agenda. Like other groups of people seeking equality in the past, we just want to be allowed to live on the same terms as straight people can.

Wow! This might be one of the deepest and most depressing posts in the history of this blog. On the bright side, if you look hard enough, you can find humor hidden in just about any sad story. And in this situation, I found Ellen Degeneres' response to Ms. Kern to be just that little bit of funny I needed. Thank you, Ellen, for helping keep it all in perspective and positive.



I have such an amazing group of friends right now (mostly straight believe it or now), and a family that is, more or less, accepting that I sometimes take for granted that there are still a lot of people out there in the world that hate gay people. I'm just glad that I still live in a country that doesn't imprison or kill you for being gay. But if Ms. Kern had her way, that might be the case for long. Why should straight people care? Because even though you are straight, there's a good chance you belong to another segment of the population that could be singled out for being "different." Just pray that society doesn't wake up one day and realize how much money could be saved in not having to make products for left-handed people. Or overweight people. Or female people. Um, oh yeah, been there, done that last one already. Thank goodness history never repeats itself, right? Right?

*Sigh*