Chilling effects.

It’s been awhile.  I have not been without ideas or thoughts, or the need to express them… but I have felt stifled… The need to write perfectly trumped the perfect need to write.

And then I wrote the previous post.  I thought: “Cool.  Got that out of the way… you can now write about topics of substance…”   The joke is, as you can tell from the dates, it didn’t help.  Busy with work?  Check.,  Tired and stressed?  Check.  Writer’s block?  Check.    I wrote three other false starts, and then, as you can tell, let it lie again,.

A few months ago, I had some ideas I wanted to write about .. thoughts about where we’ve come from..thoughts about the world..and the politics… the tech and the software… the internet deserts… a feeling that I was spinning my wheels, and wasting my talent…and turning 40, and then 41…and still not knowing what the F I’m doing with my life.

So.. Stops and starts.  So, Chilling effects?  Yeah.  That’s what came next.  Thinking about how 41 made me realize I’m 40, and all that.  Thinking about what comes next, where the road leads…how to add purpose back into my art.  Ready to write.   And then the ice water.

And, you’ve read this far.  There’s an object lesson which follows.

Or a parable.

Or something.

A colleague gets called into a meeting with the manager.

He works from home.

A lot.

He can’t do that anymore, he’s told.  He needs to “focus”, he’s told.  They don’t feel his dedication anymore, they want him to be in the office to get more done.  You name it, that’s the stuff they said, paraphrased, more or less.  A short while later, he meets again, and is finally told “what this all is about”.  A site he registered when he was 13 … some other site claims it makes him 76k a year.  You see?  He must be moonlighting, and making money doing that at home while *not* doing what he should be at work.

Only problem?  He’s actually kicking ass at work.  He’s been.  He’s in touch with his art, and he is good at it.   Can’t work from home anymore, and why?  Because some site claims he’s making money on a website which is basically a parked domain.  Unbuilt.  Maybe it hosts his email, or whatever.  No income.  But, you see… management is scouring the web…  Unearthing tidbits.

Ice water.  Well, this is my blow torch.  More to follow.