Go Team Pandy!

I keep forgetting to mention that one of the funny things about this whole “project” of mine is that I can remember more than 10 years ago seeing a copy of What Color Is Your Parachute? on the coffee table when my dad was reading it. If I was a good kid that kept in better touch with his parents, I’d probably have a funny story about telling my dad that I’m reading this book now. Maybe I’ll call some time this week.

Anyway, with chapter seven the self-reflection questions begin to crop up. Yaeka offered to make me a special journal with a parachute on it for writing my answers, but I’ve decided to just post them here on the blog. I think it’ll help me get over my “cool complex” as I know I’ll need to be honest in order to get the most out of the exercises and by posting them here I’ll just have to become more comfortable with my own answers and sharing them. I’m not sure what other questions I’ll encounter in the future but for now it has to do with where I would like to live.

Where I’d Most Like to Live

1. Portland, OR
2. Seattle, WA
3. Austin, TX
4. Chicago, IL

This is actually pretty close to a list I would have come up with towards the end of my time at Colgate although a list made around 2002 wouldn’t have included Portland, OR (it’s a pretty new city that I’ve fallen in love with) and would have included Boston, MA; New York, NY; and probably San Francisco as well.

Okay I just did some reading into chapter eight and let me tell you, that is where the real exercises begin. I stopped reading because it’s time to wind down, but it looks like when I pick back up I’ll be drawing a picture of my “ideal life” and doing several other exercisese as well. Sounds like something I can do tomorrow during lunch. I can picture it now: “Hey, Phill, what are you working on?” Me: “It’s a drawing of my ideal life.” Co-worker: “Oh yeah? Does it include working here?” Me (w/ headphones on - that’s the way I show people I’m at lunch): “…” Headphones are great to use when you want to pretend you can’t hear someone. I feel like Yaeka is going to take that the wrong way.

http://www.sjica.org/exhibitions/Hair/hair.htm

I have been collecting my cut hair for 10 years with the intention of creating something beautiful and impressive. As a senior in college I did use quite a bit of it for my sculpture final. It was just a beginning and I had planned to continue work on the piece and have it grow over the years. Unfortunetly, it hasn’t been worked on…but I came across other artists also creating in the medium of hair.

I must admit that I have not been keeping up with my thirty minutes a day of reading What Color Is Your Parachute? as I had planned. I wanted to take a quick moment though to recap a few of the interesting facts and points that I have learned so far.

• The average job search lasts 19 weeks
• The key to a successful job search is having alternatives (over 50% of job seekers quit their search within two months if they only use one method)
• Of people that use the internet as their only job search method, only 4-10% were successful
• Seding resumes yielded a 7% success rate when used as the sole method

So how does this match up with my current efforts? Well I’d say that I’ve been in the market for approximately 10-12 weeks so I am still below average. I am, however, only using one method and if you read my post “So Bad for Team Phill“, you will know that it’s not going well. In fact, I’ve been pretty discourage almost to the point that my efforts had pretty much ceased. With that in mind, it should be a surprise that my one method was using the internet.

I think I’m about to get into the meat of the book now so hopefully this will result in some serious reflection and understanding of what it is I really am seeking and rejuvenate my search.

I don’t know if you Colgate alumni out there checked out this months online Colgate newsletter thing, but I was pleasantly surprised to see that the university has launched a couple of features on its website making use of Really Simple Syndication (RSS). For those of you not familiar with RSS or feeds, take a look at the next blog you visit for an orange “XML” button or maybe one that looks like sound waves heading in an up and to the right direction.

So if you want to keep up with what is going on in Hamilton, NY, subscribe to the Colgate RSS Feed or better yet, listen to the Colgate podcast. It’s exciting to see these technologies get adopted by organizations beyond the tech realm and hopefully everyone will be more aware of RSS and podcasts as time goes on. If you have any questions about this stuff, just leave a comment and I’ll do my best to help.

I’m not sure how it happened, but I’ve been on MoveOn.org’s email list for a few months now and while there are a few things they send out that I don’t necessarily support, they’re acting now to help stop AOL’s tiered email system. If this goes through it is definitely bad news. Maybe not as bad as a tiered internet would be, but still bad news. Instead of copying and pasting an email to all of you, I’m just going to copy the text here:

Subject: Stop AOL’s email scheme

Hi,

I just signed an important online petition because the very existence of online civic participation and the free Internet as we know it are under attack by America Online, and we need to fight back quickly.

The petition’s at:

http://civic.moveon.org/emailtax/

AOL recently announced what amounts to an “email tax.” Under this pay-to-send system, large emailers willing to pay an “email tax” can bypass spam filters and get guaranteed access to people’s inboxes–with their messages having a preferential high-priority designation.

Charities, small businesses, civic organizing groups, and even families with mailing lists will inevitably be left with inferior Internet service unless they are willing to pay the “email tax” to AOL.

The petition says: “AOL, don’t auction off preferential access to people’s inboxes to giant emailers, while leaving people’s friends, families, and favorite causes wondering if their emails are being delivered at all. The Internet is a force for democracy and economic innovation only because it is open to all Internet users equally–we must not let it become an unlevel playing field.”

AOL’s proposed pay-to-send system is the first step down the slippery slope toward dividing the Internet into two classes of users–those who get preferential treatment and those who are left behind. We must preserve the Internet for everybody.

Can you sign this emergency petition to America Online?

http://civic.moveon.org/emailtax/

Thanks!

So there you go, sign the petition.

So you may notice a new category of post in the sidebar called “Level Up”. This will be how I categorize all my personal development posts. If you’re wondering where the name came from, it’s basically making fun of the fact that I started playing D&D recently.

Last week or so I added a huge amount of feeds to my RSS agregator from the 9 Rules Network. Going through the posts, I came accross a post titled Power of the Comma. It’s not actually that big of a deal or a super in-depth look at the comma, but I found it interesting as I had picked up a copy of Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation when I was in Tennessee during the holidays. I just finished reading it and found the book to be a pretty fun, light-hearted overview of current trends in punctuation as well as its history and I have to admit that I learned a good amount. It doesn’t really make a great reference book to keep on your desk, but since I don’t have any other references of this type at the moment, I’ve been reaching for it recently to look up a couple of things while writing music reviews for The PhiLL(er).

Do you have any good writing reference books or websites that you recommend or maybe just some writing tips? Let me know in the comments as I am really working to improve my writing.

In preperation of selling the condo and buying a house I need to update my bathrooms to make my home more appealing. Since I have no idea what normal people in the world like I asked my mom’s designer friend to help me design both bathrooms. She is an award winning fancy pants designer and I figure she would know best of what is a classic sellable look is. What we ended up with is definitly not my taste but thats not who im designing for anyways. I am going to re-face bath vanities (instead of purchasing new vanities)one with a light maple the other with a dark Cordovan Maple, and the doors on both vanities will be in the Shaker style. The light maple will have a rich chocolatey counter and the dark maple will have a black counter. Both bathrooms will be painted in rich brown/green tones. I am also reflooring the full bathroom with a slightly higher end viynl floor. Nothing too fancy. If I get really ambitions I may be considering berber carpet.

Back in Nov/Dec I started “Team Phill”. What exactly is “Team Phill”? Well it was a brief (as in time of existence) wiki that I created to act as a central repository for my team (Yaeka, Amy, & Doug - although Yaeka was the only contributor) to list various job listings that may be of interest to me; this is why I had that whole “I’m doing this secret stuff” moment on my blog back then. Anyway, I still don’t have a new job, but decided that I might as well just post out in the open about things and if my boss finds my blog and learns of my ongoing “mission”, I figure it will just help facilitate some communication since I still act in an ultra-passive-aggressive manner.

So why so bad for Team Phill? Well as mentioned, I don’t have a new job. First, I should admit that I honestly didn’t try that hard; I did in the beginning when I was pretty upset with certain situations, but as I cooled off, so did my effort. I submitted my resume to about 7 or 8 postings (Craigslist acted as my main source) and only managed to get one response and this was from a hiring agency that had pretty much already filled the position and probably just wanted to add some more candidates to their pool or resources. I did eventually get a direct interview with the company, but shrugged off what could have been a job offer after deciding it wasn’t “right” for me.

That’s the background on where I am at now. I recently read a blog article titled How To Suck and Still Be On Top on the Life Coaches Blog and after telling Yaeka about it, she really nailed down my problem. I’ve been full of excuses/reasons why I should remain at my current position mostly out of a fear of change/uncercetainty/risk and even more because I am comfortable where I am at knowing that it would be really hard to fail. Going somewhere else with different rules and challenges leaves an enormous chance of failure. I know that I would be able to adapt and learn in most new situations, but still avoid even applying to places instead choosing to label myself as “underqualified”.

The ante has raised somewhat with Yaeka and I planning to purchase a home in the near future and even though I still carry the same doubts, I am moving into action. Last week Yaeka purchased a copy of What Color Is Your Parachute? for me and I promised to try and work through it at least 30 minutes a day. I plan on sharing what I learn from the book in future postings as a way of sharing what I hope will be a significant personal development.

PM Media Review revealed some great news last week that The Office has been extended through May instead of being scrapped in March. As a fan of the show I’m excited to learn that I’ll have a couple more months of watching the program. I guess after the series is over on NBC I’ll Netflix the British version of the show to get my Office fix.

If you’ve missed episodes of the office, you can always pick them up at iTunes: