Escape From Pianosa

So Dwight has overcome his struggles with the self-aware computer and focused his energies on ‘agrotourism’? Really, agrotourism? Ok. Tell me more Dwight.. Agrotourism is a lot more than you think… “it consists of tourist coming to a farm, showing them around, giving them a bed, giving them breakfast.”

And Hey, Micheal is doing improv! Back to his roots. “You can do a scene where you pretend you have a car” like when I used to do scenes where I pretended I had a job. Or that I didn’t live with my parents.

“In the Shrute family, we have a tradition where when the male has sex with another woman, he is awarded with a bag of wild oats.” I’m so on board with you Dwight.

Ok and what’s with the squirrelly Amish type running around?

And no…not telemarketing Micheal. You sell out. I so wanted to see him doing improv, or nonimprov. An improviser pretending to be a nonimproviser, improvising. If that makes any sense. Seriously, how much will it take to see this? I’m pledging $50.

Apparently the squirrelly Amish type likes to throw shit around! Mose!

Dwight’s reading Harry Potter to Jim and Pam. Mose likes the hobittses, they have his ring, yes?

Poor Dwight, moaning in the night. Can we get him his oats already?

I see Ryan is now actively attempting to be a complete douche bag. “Hey guys, how’s my favorite branch!?”

And up pops the toolbar. That’s what she said.

If I had money problems, would I do this? Hm, not a credible signal Michael.

“But you need to access your uncrazy side.” God he’s so smooth. “Slow down. Think it over.” So smooth.

“Lord Rupert Everton. A shipping merchant who raises fancy dogs. That’s the life.” Indeed!

Runaway train never coming back… and it ends a bit slowly but good to see Dwight refinds himself. And I just found his blog…

These are the contents of 1985 Dwight’s Time Capsule:

1. A dehydrated beet sculpture of myself holding a very small metal box meant to represent a miniature version of the time capsule. I was very much into beet miniatures when I was teenager. I did not, however, know my “BeetDwight” would shrivel into dehydration. That occurred because of science, not intention.

I agree with Jackie. Meetings with agendas and objectives suck.

I’m very thankful that my current work situation doesn’t involve endless meetings. It does involve a lot of creative collaboration and ad hoc discussions, but nothing of the “sit in the conference room with 15 other people and watch PowerPoint” variety.

When I worked for the government I sometimes spent hours a day in long, boring, and mostly pointless meetings where two people would take up 90% of the conversation while everyone else sat around trying to stave off sleep. Some days I would be in meetings for four hours out of the day.

I used to think of a girl I had a class with in college. On the first day of class she told the professor that she was narcoleptic, so hey if I fall asleep, it’s just my condition. She never fell asleep in class and I don’t know if she was really narcoleptic but it seemed like a brilliant ploy at the time. And I would sit there at the one-hour mark of some status meeting thinking oh God why didn’t I use that narcolepsy bit when I started working here.

So why not unmeetings? Just send off an email and say “hey, a few of us are going to talk about the marketing strategy for the client at 10am. Stop by if you have something you’d like to share.”

I love these Seinfeld commercials. I don’t understand why advertisers don’t use these story commercials more often… stories that are three short episodes shown during a TV show. People love stories. Maybe they’re worried about channel-flipping? I don’t know who could tune in to The Office and turn off the TV before it’s over.

Dwight vs. the self-aware computer. I love it. The singularity will not be televised, it will be IM’d to your desk.  God this show is great.

Good news and bad. The good news is that I won my fantasy baseball league (finally!) and there are sweet sweet prizes involved.

Congratulations! Your outstanding performance in this season’s Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Baseball PLUS competition has made you the potential recipient of one of our League Winner Prizes — a championship bobblehead or t-shirt commemorating your achievement.

The bad news is that Maryland state law prevents me from claiming my prize…

As stated in the Official Contest Rules, to be eligible to receive a prize in this contest you must be…a U.S. resident NOT living in a jurisdiction where the contest is void (Arizona, Florida, Maryland, Vermont, Montana, Louisiana, New Jersey, Arkansas, Tennessee, overseas U.S. territories, possessions, commonwealths and military installations, and where otherwise prohibited by law…

If I wasn’t a libertarian before, this would’ve convinced me. I want my bobblehead!

Being in a high-paying but miserable job is a nasty combination. Really really nasty. It’s easy to leave a bad job that pays poorly. What do you have to lose? Worst-case scenario, you’re back in another miserable job.

But being in a miserable job that pays well; that’s really tough. Because every day your mind is wondering why you are here, in this boring office, surrounded by people you can’t stand, doing meaningless work. Why would you, logical you, subject yourself to such torture? Because the money’s good, your mind thinks..it must be. It must be amazing and magical if you’re willing to sacrifice your happiness for it, right?

So you become obsessed with the money and start to place irrational value on it.  And it gets really hard to leave because your mind’s convinced that the pain is worth it. And you start looking around for something new, and oh doesn’t that look interesting!

But you’re entry level and you’re not going to make as much. And what if the new job is even worse? What if you’re just as miserable, except now you’re only making half of what you made before. Wouldn’t that make me look like a big idiot?

Yeah, it’s a vicious cycle. So be careful what job you take for the money. Unless of course it’s “fuck you” money. You should probably take the fuck you money.

I just started watching The Office and I’m kicking myself for missing the past three seasons. Michael is a brilliant character and he’s already taught me something about online marketing:

Michael: “Business to business. The old fashion way. No blackberries. No websites. I would like to see a website deliver baskets of food to people.”

Indeed!

Thank you Nora, you said some very nice things about me. My run as a freelancer (which included a lot of real estate and some dabbling in writing among other things) has come to an end, at least for the foreseeable future. My first job is at a small online marketing firm in Baltimore and I’ll be working on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is something I enjoy immensely–although I didn’t really realize it until about a month ago.

I’d fallen into the habit of taking my friends’ websites and finding a dozen or so things that they could be doing better. Like, hey you need to have a blog so you can interact with your customers and you need to be building links to your site and you need to improve your layout so it’s more user friendly, and all sorts of other ideas for building up traffic–things that I’ve learned and implemented with my various web properties over the last few years. Well lo and behold, you can get paid to do that! It’s a natural fit for me.

My other job is more of an internship with a nonprofit in the DC area, where I’ll be working part-time for the next few months. That allows me to pursue one of my other passions in life, which is spreading the message of freedom; a brand evangelist for liberty if you will.

And don’t worry Nora, I plan to keep my entrepreneurial approach to life and work.

Do you like crunchy leaves? Will you go out of your way to step on them? Well you’re in good company. Finally, a social networking site where I can meet people just like me! In fact Facebook has at least 20 groups related to stepping on crunchy leaves:

• I Will Go Slightly Out of My Way To Step On That Crunchy-looking Leaf
• I Go Slightly Out of My Way To Step on a Leaf That is Particularly Crunchy
• If I step on a leaf that looks crunchy and it isn’t crunchy, I get sad
• I Will Go SIGNIFICANTLY Out Of My Way to Step On That Crunchy Looking Leaf

And for the contrarians:

• I avoid the crunchy leaves in an attempt to be more stealthy and ninja-like
• i will go slightly out of my way to step on that crunchy looking squirrel
• I WILL GO OUT OF THE WAY TO STEP ON ICE THAT LOOKS PARTICULARLY CRUNCHY
• Fuck crunchy leaves, it’s all about the pine cones.

And when times get tough, there’s always…

• Soggy Leaves Mock My Existence!

This is an idea I hear a lot from people that until recently, I took for granted. “Writers are in high demand” or “it’s so hard to find people who can write well.” Anecdotally, this rings true for me, but when I went looking for jobs as a writer, I found that the market wasn’t so hot. Go to Craigslist and you’ll find that many of the listings for writers don’t pay anything. Most writing jobs have starting salaries in the 30 to 35k range, if you can find one.

And so I think that writing is an excellent skill to have, but in the job market it’s more valuable as a secondary skill. A good manager is very valuable, and a good manager with excellent writing skills is marginally better. Same for engineers or software developers or any other profession. But from my limited experience on the job hunt, I don’t think writers per se are in high demand.

When I shifted my job search from writing to marketing/web/technology, I really started getting interviews, call-backs, and interest.

This season of Curb has been a little slow but that was a great line.