Some people are good at just one thing. There’s nothing wrong with this. While you don’t want to over-emphasize specialization in any endeavor, as you never know when something outside of your specialization is going to come along and topple your entire plan, trying to be good at everything usually means you’re just mediocre in most ways and don’t excel in any way.

Most, however, aren’t. They have passions, talents and drive that go beyond normal expectations. A good deal of sane people dedicate themselves to a particular career path – “I want to be the best cheese salesman in the history of dairy products!” – but it’s a vary rare individual who’s capable of selling cheese for every hour of every day they happen to be conscious. Humans need to have a break now and again, to eat or rest or use the lavatory. Even if one is so wired for selling cheese that they want to sell cheese every waking minute, others might not be inclined to buy cheese meaning those cheese wheels will be spinning with no forward motion for that period of time. And what if the cheese salesman really doesn’t want to be selling cheese? They might have to, just to make ends meet, but what they really want to be doing is following in the footsteps of Hunter S. Thompson even when they stumble about the place because he was hopped up on something. Or several somethings.

My point is, what we do with our time on a daily basis isn’t necessarily what we want to be doing or what we love doing. I know some people who are blessed to be able to do what they love every day all day as their vocation, even when it’s a struggle to do so. It shouldn’t be a struggle, in a perfect world, but it is and I think I have an inkling as to why.

The world in which we live isn’t based on doing what we love, but rather what makes us useful. The corporate machine needs many, many cogs to continue operating smoothly. A corporate executive needs an expensive car to drive in order to show his status. The car salesman is happy to sell that car because his wife is concerned about her appearance and frequents the local spa. The owner of the spa wants to get more salesmen’s wives in and knows they spend time on the Internet. The spa owner’s Internet company helps him maintain his site, and so on and so forth. If the salesman’s wife were suddenly to take up painting rather than frequenting the spa, for example, the whole system might collapse.

It wouldn’t, but it might, and so the system rails against this creative desire by advertising more distracting and degrading things. It distracts with shiny objects geared to be of interest to the audience, and degrades by suggesting that not owning said things makes the viewer less of a person. “Do the trick you’re required to do,” they say, “and you’ll be rewarded with these things. Do something else and not only will you be unable to enjoy these rewards, but society itself will conspire against you in the form of rising gas prices, exorbitant communication fees and unforgiving landlords.”

It’s from here that the struggle arises. We are not one-trick ponies meant to cantor for the amusement of those holding the golden strings of corporate purses, yet those purses often remain closed to those who refuse to entirely conform. Some willful and determined animals are capable of breaking from the pack and running free despite being hunted by the wranglers of corporate greed and soul-grinding utility billing. Some give up and wander with the pack with no real idea of where they’re going. And some struggle against their restraints because freedom is too precious a commodity to be purchased with money, fear or a twisted and warped vision of the self sponsored by cosmetics companies and beer distributors.

I’m probably blowing things out of proportion. I’m given to hyperbole, after all, since I tend to think in terms of fiction involving space ships, wizards, steam-powered robots and vampires that don’t sparkle in the sunlight. Still, the point I’ve been hysterically gesticulating verbally at remains that we are not one-trick ponies. No matter what the advertisements, status quo or your boss might say, there’s no need to tread the same ground over and over again after the whistle blows. Find the seed of your passion, place it in fertile ground and shelter it from the elements. If it happens to grow into your daily life to shore up what you do for most of the daylight hours (or nighttime for you third-shifters), so much the better. If it grows if a different direction, let it. It might lead you someplace wonderful.

You’ll never know unless you try, and once you start trying, don’t stop. The greatest disservice you could ever do to yourself is letting the thing that makes you come alive starve to death while you’re totaling up your billable hours.

I’m taking a cue from Ye Olde Magick Speaking Beardface and just putting down some words about life in general at this point. I only have one real creative work in progress at the moment, which is more than enough considering everything that’s going on.

“Who’re you calling a program, program?”*

Right, first things first. The day job is keeping the roof over our heads (until we move to a new one in a couple months) and food in the pantry. I’m moving positions, shifting away from phone-answering bug-squishing troubleshooting to code-chomping cart-rolling Flash-AAHHHH-”savior of the universe”ing programming. It’s not a promotion, mind you, more of a lateral, semi-upwards shift in responsibilities and protocol. Still, it’s in improvement. I have a few things to square away in my current workload before the move is official, but it’s forward motion. By focusing on PHP, SQL and my already pretty extensive Flash skills, and leaving the ever-shifting environments of up-front client relations behind, I think I’ll not only become far more valuable to the company, but also start enjoying work a bit more overall.

The Project Marches On

I’m trying to crack open the manuscript for the Project and drop a few words in every day. Sometimes it’s more than a thousand, or even two or three. Others I’m lucky to get a couple dozen in there. But any motion is forward motion, and I’m trying to keep my spirits up. I know where I’m going with this plot, and I’m aware that some places might be a bit slower than others. If my setting had ninjas, I’d have them attack any time I was in doubt about what to have happen next. Ninjas are always cool.

“Did we just threaten someone with zombie rape?”

Tonight’s another session of the awesome Iron Kingdoms game being run by my wife. Our team (myself, David Hill and his lovely wife Filamena) have sort of become a steampunk version of Burn Notice. Dave’s noble never kills unless he has to, Mena’s gun mage is on the lookout for the next opportunity, and my rifleman sees violence as a direct solution to most enemy encounters. …Which pretty much makes me the Fiona.

Property of BioWare

I’m playing through Mass Effect again. Call me boring or easy to please if you like, but I have achievements to get, a whole other gender to experience (since Shepard can be either male or female) and situations to set up for future games. Once I get where I want in the first game, I’ll be playing the second again. And I also have things I want to do with Dragon Age, as well. Again, this probably points to me being dull, but in retrospect I feel this is a better way to spend my time than playing Star Trek Online for the time being. That and BioWare isn’t charging me $15 a month just to play their games.

And then there’s this stuff.

Taxes, bills, finding a new apartment that doesn’t suck, getting cats to a vet sometime in the near future… being a grown up sure is fun, isn’t it?

*If you know this reference you officially rock my socks.

So that idea I mentioned in yesterday’s IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! podcast? I got it off the ground. I actually got off my ass and tried something new. Basically, the idea goes something like this.

There are a lot of podcasts out there that get awfully boring awfully fast. I enjoy podcasting, but just because I enjoy talking about stuff that’s interesting to me doesn’t necessarily mean you’d be interested in listening to me talk about it. So why not open up the forum for people to contribute by sending me ideas? I mean, I don’t want to be boring and you don’t want to be bored. And you’re probably going to be more interested in what you’re hearing if you had a hand in making somebody talk about it. Give folks the keys to the city, so to speak, and let them vote on what’ll be discussed. One could even open up the possibility of having people donate to put weight behind their vote.

So I picked a song that’s freely available for some opening & closing music, brewed up a cup of tea, and blathered the first thing out. Oh, the other gimmick? Unscripted, unrehearsed, unedited. A little raw, as it were. Getting the creative goods directly from the source without worrying about little hiccups or snags. A more conversational experience, rather than me acting like a professional on a pedestal dispensing precious knowledge to you peons below.

Then this happened. Warning: Emo within.

Human beings, being mortal creatures, are bound to mess things up sooner or later. This is true in every endeavor an individual undertakes. And sometimes, it falls to others to inform us that we’re incorrect in the manner with which we’ve been proceeding.

In other words, sooner or later, you’re going to be told you’re doing it wrong.

Marital disagreements, family drama, storytelling, cheeseburger construction, you name it. It’s going to go pear shaped on you. It could be because of outside influence or because of your direct actions, but the bottom line is the end result is going to be a mess. In writing terms, maybe your protagonist is more annoying than you think. In family terms, you could have maybe timed or worded something a bit differently. Regardless of how you arrived at this point of failure, the question is not so much how you failed but how you recover from it.

First, of course, you need to realize you’ve failed. Sometimes this is obvious in the moment of value – those “oh shit” moments when your sphincter tightens as you brace for the physical or emotional impact that comes on as a result of the events that’ve been botched. Other times, you could be cruising along happy and content, and it’s pointed out to you that something isn’t working out the way you imagined. You might rail against the idea, but when you calm down and re-examine the situation, you’ll see what they’ve pointed out and agree with them.

But rather than dwelling on the failure itself, a more constructive goal is: how do you correct the failure?

Just like admitting you’re wrong, fixing the problem isn’t always easy. A workplace misstep can haunt you for quite a long time depending on the nature of the management. Some family members may be forgiving but others might have long memories that focus especially on slights. And finding a failing in a work may be as simple as excising a line or going back and doing a complete rewrite.

Funnily enough, this post is turning out to be something of a failure. It’s ambling a bit more than I expected and seems to be talking about things in a very broad sense rather than having the tight, narrow focus required for good writing. Hopefully upcoming posts will be a bit more cohesive.

In the meantime, here’s a parting bit of advice:

When I realize I’ve hit a wall of fail, at times I picture getting the bad news from Carla Gugino.

Somehow, that helps.

People want to get the most out of what they pay for. Companies and entire economies rise and fall based on customer confidence and loyalty. If a customer sees a solid, dependable product that delivers on its promises, they’ll use it continually and recommend it to others. Pretty simple concept, right?

Say your company manufactures widgets. If the widgets develop problems in the course of manufacture, most responsible companies will assume responsibility for the problems and get them fixed. After they leave the widget factory, however, it’s down to the customer not to abuse them. If you cram your widget between two sprockets the widget wasn’t designed to interact with, you’re going to have problems and you’ll call the manufacturer. This is where customer service comes into play.

You need to be able to understand the position your customer has found themselves in. That means letting them talk, rant, yell, even curse if necessary. Better to remind them that profanity won’t solve their problem than simply to hang up. You also can’t put a time limit on a customer service call. I worked for a company that did that, and it severely diminished the quality of the service delivered. The technicians on the phone were clearly more concerned about a quick, easy answer that ended the call before the cut-off time than they were discovering the root of the problem and solving it entirely, which would prevent future, more exasperated calls. But company policies are company policies, no matter how wrong they might seem, and when you go against them, you risk your job. I tried to stand up for my principles rather than kowtowing to an unrealistic expectation, and unsurprisingly I was fired for it.

It seems to me that a balance should be struck between the value of one’s employees, the quality of one’s product, and the experience of the customer. If you set out to hire good people, you’ll want to keep them happy in order to retain their services. If you have a product in mind with the intent to make it better than the competition’s offering, you should have the courage to stand behind it. When a customer comes to you with a request, they will respect you if you work with them to make their vision fit your product.

If you instead make your product fit their vision, all you’re really doing is bending over for them. You can only bend so far before something breaks. If you sacrifice the qualities of your products that make them unique, and instead do the same thing as everybody else out there, you won’t stand out, and your product will eventually be lost in the herd of bleating sheep that is the industry of your choice. Letting the customer bend you over and allowing your product to become someone else’s plaything isn’t very fair to your employees, either, and if you’re not taking care of them with things like competitive salaries and decent benefits, you will lose them.

Without good employees, the quality of your products will suffer. When the quality of your products suffer, your customers will be unsatisfied. Unsatisfied customers look for other places to spend their money. It certainly seems like a straightforward chain of causes and effects from the outside.

My point is, good customer service doesn’t begin with your customers, or your employees, or even your products. It begins with you.