Well consider this: there are pre-set ways to do this already out there in life. Tested and proven ways that will provide you with answers to life’s most difficult questions: how to fit in to society, how to treat your parents, how to date, what to do for work. These pre-set methods are provided by culture or society, by religion, or by your parents. If you just accept one of these, its tenets or guidance will enable you to balance the complexities of life — and be happy!

But what about those of us that are caught at the edges? At a time when culture is shifting or religions are battling? At a time when there are so many religions to choose from and belief in religion is being challenged by a belief in cold, hard science. What about those of us that see the future as being guided by something tangibly different from the past? Are we doomed to live unhappy – always searching for new ways of doing things? Always trying to figure out how to balance our own lives, with no one to turn to that can provide useful or functional answers?

What about those that see our current culture as broken and want to do something about it? Want to forge new trails of work and love to provide new answers, new methods – a new culture for others to follow.

I suppose the harsh realities of life dictate that some of us will be successful and happy and others will not. Some of us will find a path that works for us, and others will toil our entire lives, seeking comfort and happiness — seeking a balance that brings our hearts and minds together and puts them at ease.

What to do?

So let’s consider what this might take to accomplish. I’ve heard that there are three areas of life: work, play, and love (I believe this came originally from a quote by Lady Bird Johnson – Lyndon Johnson’s wife). Let’s start by considering if these cover all areas of life:

• Work: This could be construed as everything that is required for survival: food, clothing, shelter and whatever it takes to ensure your continued ability to acquire these things. In our culture today, this primarily means money. How do you get it? How do you hold on to it? How do you keep it coming?
• Play: All work and no play make Jack a dull boy. What rejuvenates you? What feeds your heart and soul? What makes it worth getting up in the morning or staying up late at night? What do you live for?
• Love: Family – the one you’re born into and the one you form on your own, relationships, community, friends, and lovers. When I think about love in this context, I don’t see it as being about romantic love or passion, it’s more about how you relate to the people around you. It’s about love for your fellow man, compassion perhaps. To put it another way, it’s about furthering the human race. It’s about ensuring that “we” continue to get better — and by better, I mean more capable of surviving. This may include having children, being nice to people, or doing community service. It also may include creating art that inspires others, or books that educate, or science that furthers technological advancement.

In retrospect, I don’t know that my three initial terms are accurate. Let’s choose another three based on the descriptions I gave for the first three:

• Survival
• Passion
• Community

I think these terms better capture the descriptions that I wrote above, although they’re not quite as catchy. I suppose either will work.

But that still leaves the question: is that everything? If you balance survival, passion, and community in your life; have you done it? Are you happy? Is that all there is to it?

Another way to consider this from would be our need to satisfy our intellect, our emotions, and our spiritual side. Is that included in this balance? Where does religion fall in my proposal?

I would argue that our intellect’s job is to solve problems, and their is a great problem laid out here – balancing these things. So the intellect should be kept busy and happy. Emotions are a direct driver of the Passion element, and therefore should also be taken care of. This only leaves spirituality – and what is that anyway? I find it very difficult to define in words in our Western culture. My feeling is that it falls somewhere between and amongst Passion and Community, although Survival (and challenges to it) seem to put us in direct contact with our own spirituality. I believe we should be passionate about our spirituality, but our spirituality also connects us with others, and is therefore a big factor in the community that we build around us.

Close

I’m not going to pretend that I’ve solved any of the world’s problems here, but maybe I’ve at least helped myself. I understand that what I’ve laid out is my perception of how to balance my own life. It’s funny isn’t it? I set out to figure out a fundamental explanation of what is required to balance one’s life and be happy. If I was successful, any religion or culture could be described and compared based on how it guides its followers or members to fulfill on these three areas of their lives: Survival, Passion, and Community.

Whether I have accomplished that or not, I would like you to tell me. Perhaps all I’ve done is create another means by which to determine how to fulfill those areas for yourself – a competing culture or religion, if you will.

Let me know what you think, and specifically let me know if you think I’ve correctly identified the three areas:

If you balance Survival, Passion, and Community, will you be happy?

One

My first answer would be to use logic. Figure out what the problem is. Determine a solution. Rationally lay out a plan of action. Implement it.

The problem with this is that I don’t follow plans well – let me rephrase. Plans do not approximate reality well. They don’t take into account:

• The fact that when you make the plan, you don’t know everything you’re going to encounter. You can’t fully understand the situation until you’re in the middle of it.
• Often times you have to deal with other people, and they may not fit neatly into your plan.
• You are more efficient at certain times than others and this seems to be sporadic (at least for me). With a solid plan, you often have to do things even when you’re not being very efficient at them, eg you have a headache or are distracted by a fight with a friend or spouse.

Two

The next possibility is emotion. You know, just feel it out and go with what seems like the right thing to do. This has its share of benefits (more action, less thinking, more efficiency of activity because you’re in the moment dealing with things as they come up), but it can also create problems:

• This isn’t so good with deadlines.
• It’s easy to ignore other people and their problems.
• If the problem is complex or requires several steps, you may miss something critical and then have to deal with in a “putting out the fire” method.

Three

Doesn’t it seem like there should be a 3rd way? Something that provides the best of the other options while minimizing their difficulties? Let’s try this:

1. Identify the problem.
2. Lay out a plan to solve the problem. This may or may not be written down, but think it through as best you can. If you do write it down, realize that this is a rough guide, not a rulebook. You don’t actually have to do anything that you write down. This is very important.
3. Do whatever feels right. This is most likely the first thing on your list (if you made one) since you just did it, but the second thing you do may or may not be.

Now you may be asking, how is this different from any other system of problem solving? Well, it’s not really. I mean, it does create a sort of logical structure around emotional efficiency, which is nice but let’s be honest – that’s what most of us do anyway, isn’t it?

I think what I’m really looking for here is something that is not yet defined. Let’s try this:

Three (part the Deux)

What if you could live your life with an awareness of “what needs to be done” (logic), how you’re feeling (emotion), and how anyone else affected by the problem is feeling? What if you could hold that in your head, balance it, and then automatically determine your actions based on it? Now that’s what I’m talking about.

Sound impossible? Sound easy? Maybe you already do this – or think you do. I think I used to do this, but I know that I don’t now. I wonder if I can again?

Listening to Obama’s acceptance speech last night, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between Lincoln (which he talked about), FDR, and him. I suppose to leave out Washington is historically inaccurate, but I don’t know enough to draw those conclusions. This is not to say that I have decided that Obama is a great president and that history is already decided – there are many issues that he must confront and his challenge is much more in the leadership and organization vein than any other. Will he be able to break the US reputation for only being capable of handling one major issue at a time? We shall see, but I digress…

The point I was headed for is based on the generational political cycles discussed in the book Millennial Makeover. In brief, there are four main types of generations in Anglo-Saxon culture (including the US), and these cycle through in order. The current generation – the Millennials, or Gen Y – are an example of a civic generation. Civic generations also fought the revolution, the civil war, and world war II. Thus, when Obama referenced Lincoln in his speech last night, and the commentators referenced FDR in 1932, the association rang particularly true through that perspective.

Yes we can

“Yes we can,” he said. This is the first presidential campaign slogan that I have heard in my life that seems to reach out and inspire people on a massive scale, a scale on par with the stories that we read about in history books growing up. I guess so much of this will be written by history, but Obama’s climb to power is an impressive feat in a short period of time, and one that does ride on hope for change.

So DC erupted last night. As I lay in bed at 2 or 3 in the morning, I was awakened repeatedly by honking, yelling, and probably gun fire (although I wouldn’t swear to it) above the dull, continuous roar of a crowd all along U street. I have seen so many quotes from black Americans that for the first time, they feel like real Americans – that they are no longer second class citizens. Jesse Jackson crying in the crowd in Chicago. I will not even pretend to understand the relief that seems to have come from Obama’s election in this regard, but it certainly seems to be cathartic on a cultural level for race relations in our country. That is not to say that we are all done with that part of our history, but as Obama said in his speech, this is the beginning of a change that will be significant for our country.

No fear

If you’re like me, you’re wondering how all of this babbling relates to the title of the post. I guess I would have to say that Obama’s hope for change has successfully moved the US in many ways from a culture of fear. So much of the racial difficulties derive from fear – historic fear and guilt bred from centuries of abuse and mistrust and violence. 9/11 and the politics of fear that ensued from that. Fear is crippling. It promotes decisions based not on reason, but rather on emotion. It creates a world run by reactive response, instead of proactive leadership. It is my belief that it is fear that has led the US to fall from our leadership position in the world. To be pursuing the elimination of danger instead of the creation of safety. To be so busy protecting our interests that there is no room to promote our ideals. If you’re going to lead you have to be in front. No one likes a backseat driver, but that is where we’ve been – all the while sitting in the driver’s seat!

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” said Roosevelt in his first inaugural address in 1933. He wasn’t talking about confronting enemies in a war. He was talking about the Great Depression. He was talking about confronting ourselves. Now, as then, there are enemies out in the world, but the way to defeating them is not through protectionism, it’s through engagement with the rest of the world and confronting our own issues.

Life is for the Living.

As I lay awake last night listening to the crowds celebrate and thinking about fear, I realized something: I have been operating my personal life out of fear. My work life is great, but I continue to struggle in the arenas of play and love. What do I want? What do I enjoy? Am I happy? What do I need in order to be happy? I couldn’t answer these questions. Why? Fear. Fear of losing a friendship. Fear of ending a relationship. Fear of insulting or hurting people around me – the people I love (family and friends), the people I know (acquaintances), the people I meet on the street, the people I just pass and never even speak with. This was not a debilitating fear, it was a very functional fear. Most people would not even recognize it as fear, but rather as a sort of niceness. And in fact, this fear has given me wonderful diplomatic skills. I can’t complain about that, given my current location and goals in life.

The difficulty is that I have been so concerned with avoiding danger (instead of creating safety), that all I have seen is danger. I have known that in fact I am surrounded by love and support (and yes – safety), but unable to really enjoy it, to take advantage of it, to relax, to revel in life and all that it has to offer.

I can’t say that the curse is fully broken, time will tell if that is true. But I’ve made a big step in this regard. And I’m really excited about it.

Several years ago, I was doing some therapy and my final realization was “Life is for the living.” I continue to understand that more and more as I grow up (I know I’m 37), but I think the important part for me today is to take advantage of every opportunity presented to you and don’t spend time worrying about the ones you miss. There are so many opportunities every day, it’s not possible to explore all of them.

And if you think this isn’t true, then your eyes are also shut like mine sometimes are.

Life IS for the living. So get out there! If you’re reading this, tell me what new thing you’re going to take up that you’ve always wanted to do in the comments below.

Wayne

As I told you before, I think I over did it on my first day. The second day I wore my new glasses for an hour and even that was pushing it, so I back off for awhile – I think my eyes were strained by the first day and really need to recover, so I gave them time until they felt okay again.

Then I started back on the following schedule:

And with the exception of yesterday, where I fell off the train (I think I was just tired). They have felt fine. No serious headaches like before. It takes some concentration to see, but it improves with time.

I even have moments where I can suddenly see REALLY WELL. It’s a little eery, frankly.

So I’m going to keep building slowly and see how it goes. I think there are really two things I’m getting used to here. One is the fact that the world is shaped differently, ie no astigmatism correction. I think this is where the headaches came from. The other is strengthening my eyes so that I can see well with the glasses on.

Since I’m extremely sensitive to not being able to see, I am constantly trying to see better whenever I’m wearing the new glasses, and as they become my regular glasses, I think it will just become easier and easier to see like I’m used to seeing.

Thanks for listening!

“We need to stop trying to be, and just spend our time being.”

I think that I changed my prescription too much, frankly. This is what I did and what it means:

My current prescription:

Pupillary Distance = 65mm

Isn’t it cool that the left eye is the sinister one – it’s so true, isn’t it????

Anyway, the Spherical measurement is how far you have to be corrected all around to bring your eyes back to 20/20. Reading glasses are +1, +2 or whatever, and those of us that are near-sighted get negative numbers (to go with our sinister eye).

Cylindrical and Axis work together to correct astigmatism. Astigmatism means that you need a different prescription in different directions within your eye – it’s also called wonky eye (I made that up). It’s easiest to think of in terms of you things can be blurry up/down or left/right, and so it needs different corrections for each. So, the Cylindrical number represents the amount of additional correction needed along a different axis, and the axis tells what degree angle that other axis runs along. The axis is measured from the 0 degree line in a polar graph – that is, from the right side horizontal line going anti-clockwise. The Cylindrical number actually gets added to the Spherical number to get the full adjustment.

Pupillary Distance (PD) is the distance between your pupils in mm. I guess 63 is normal – I’m close.

Wikipedia has all the ugly details.

So, that’s where I started. I then thought to myself, “Self,” I thought… I don’t seem to have any problems when I don’t wear my glasses (headaches and the like), why don’t I immediately drop the astigmatism component. “That sounds like a fine place to start,” I agreed.

And then I made it worse. I was thinking about how the larger the jumps that I take, the fewer pairs of glasses I’ll have to buy before I can do away with them completely and thought I’d just drop a .25 off the prescription. I mean, it’s a quarter! What’s that doin’? Nothing! Or close to it. You can’t even buy gum for a quarter anymore…

So that’s how I ended up here:

The prescription of my new glasses:

Pupillary Distance = 65mm

Looks bad, right? Well, I guess we’ll find out.

Like I said, yesterday was a little rough. But I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve realized that when I used to get new contacts, they would make the world funny shaped and me a little dizzy for a couple of days. In addition, I’d have to work up to wearing them full time. So that’s what I’m doing now.

An hour a day until it feels good, then we’ll go from there.

On the bright side, I do have to say that as I wear them, it gets easier to see. Also, when I go back to my old glasses, I can see incredibly clearly. I don’t think this is just in comparison to having been blind for 2 1/2 hours, but legitimately better eyesight. Of course, it’s all subjective, right? Well, for now. If I can wear these new glasses full time, I’ll know that I’ve accomplished something.

In the meantime, the world is a little blurry around the edges.

I just ordered new glasses from an online seller. Infathomably, they were $19 (plus shipping). To keep it interesting, I ordered them with a weaker prescription than I probably should have to work on improving my sight and hopefully do away with my glasses altogether over time. Is this a good idea? Tell me what you think.The reason I’m doing this however is that I’ve had success with improving my vision in the past. I first noticed that things got better in college while I was delivering Chinese food for Ho Lee Chow (do you believe it? Anyway…). Within a month of squinting at house numbers in the dark, I found that I became better able to read them. My contacts at the time didn’t quite match my prescription (early contact technology, I guess) and at night, all lights would blur into a long thin streak – it was a pain. However, after a little delivery-driving-sight-therapy, I discovered that I could make the streak go away and vastly improve my night vision.

So, a couple of years later I’d switched to glasses and was driving home on the backroads of Michigan a little bored. (I don’t recommend anyone do this, of course…) I got to thinking about my vision, and decided to try a little experiment. I took off my glasses (keeping them in my right hand and ready to put back on immediately) and tried to focus on the passing road signs. Within ten minutes, I noticed a significant difference in my vision and was excited about it. However, ten minutes also seemed to wear out my eyes, so I put my glasses back on and headed for home (keep in mind, there was noone else on the road, the road was perfectly straight, and I knew it really well – I was being a little incautious, but not much in terms of becoming some form of automotive statistic).

This was fabulous, so I would take my glasses off at different points during the day for short periods of time to ‘exercise’ my eyes. What did I learn? My vision continued to improve. So much so that a couple days into this (literally), I was driving home from work at night and in the seven minutes that it took (glasses on), I had acquired a splitting headache – to the extent that I literally crawled up the stairs to my apartment and went straight to bed without dinner.

The next day, I decided that this was due to the improvement in my vision and began focusing on making my eyesight perfect for the glasses that I was wearing. From that day forward, my prescription has not changed and my eyesight has been perfect. Every once in a while, it will start to blur a little, and I’ll have to focus to bring it back to perfection, but that’s worked great for eight or ten years (I know it was the 90s, but I don’t remember when).

So, when I was practicing hypnotherapy, I did some personal work around my lack of vision and the emotional causes that created it and maintain it that way today. This was very effective and interesting, but didn’t really change how well I can see (incidentally, if it seems a little presumptuous or just downright silly that vision can be improved by resolving some sort of underlying emotional causes for it, I’m with you in spirit. How about we view it from the perspective that whether or not those emotional issues created the visual inacuity that I experience, the therapy still results in the resolution of issues that were affecting my life an a number of ways).

It seemed to me however, that a direct leap from impaired vision to perfect vision was just too much for my brain and/or eyes to handle. That is, I couldn’t function without my glasses even though I fully believed that I could improve my vision over time sufficiently to stop wearing them.

… time passed …

And now I’ve finally done something about it. I ordered these glasses with a weaker prescription. For $19, how can you beat it! I stand to lose very little – I can always just go back to my old glasses and move on with my life, knowing that I’ve failed. But if I succeed, I’m well on the road to no glasses whatsoever, and how exciting would that be?

Anyway, thanks for reading – let me know if you’ve done anything similar or if you just think I’m completely nutso!

Now I’m not a big fan of the Buddhist framing of concepts. I find karma to make a little of sense, but to be a somewhat circuitous route to arrive at concepts that could be arrived at many other ways. This is not to say that I find it invalid in any way and I suppose there is something to be said for having multiple ways to look at the same problem. This is just such an example.

If I may summarize in my own words and perspective:

The purpose of a relationship is to work together to serve the greater good or community or some similar thing. Consequently, you should be with someone who shares your goals and ideologies (what this means will vary depending upon who you are).

Happiness comes from serving others. If you devote your life to serving other people, you will be happy. In a relationship, this means that you focus completely on meeting every want or need that the other person has.

You create your own reality. While the Buddhist perspective takes this quite literally, the points that they make using it remain valid even if you back it off a bit to say that you control your perspective of reality. This becomes important in terms of creating a relationship that you are fully satisfied with.

Don’t talk to your partner. Okay, maybe they wouldn’t quite say that, but in effect they are. The point is that you can create the type of relationship that you want by working on who you are — by changing your expectations and desires and by working to fully satisfy your partner at the same time. And you can’t TELL your partner that they have to do the same thing! They have to come to it of their own volition – otherwise, they won’t be doing it for themselves, and their commitment will not be sufficient to handle all the suckiness that is involved in self-introspection.

The third party solution is fascinating. Basically (using the karmic perspective), if you are experiencing unhappiness from something your partner is doing that’s because you have caused that same type of unhappiness on others in the past. So what you have to do is satisfy the karma by bringing happiness of the same type to other people. It doesn’t have to happen within your relationship. Example: if you want your partner to be more affectionate, you should be more friendly to people at work. Talk to that guy that no one likes. Buy someone a coffee next time you pick one up, etc… In this way, you will reverse your karma and your partner will change.

Seems a little fantastical, right? Well consider this: if you spend your time doing nice things for people, you will become someone who does nice things (simple enough?). A person that does nice things draws less enmity and more niceness (aka affection) from others. In addition, this person begins to attract other people who do nice things thus moving towards a different social circle and a completely different perspective of how the world operates.

In this way, you can “create” you perfect partner by being a perfect partner and continuing to work on improving yourself. Basically, you use your partner as a mirror to see what it is that you need to work on.

Is this the one? Finally, and this is the part I haven’t fully worked out. How do you know when you meet the right person? Well, first of all, there is no right person. This seems to make sense – I mean, maybe you luck out and meet someone who is at the same place in life as you and wants all the same things on the same time scale. But come one, what are the chances that the two of you will continue to want the same things for the next 50 or 100 years? It must happen, but the odds are significantly against it. Even in this idyllic situation however, all of the above advice still functions.

The difficult part of what they say is that if you start working on you and “creating you perfect partner” (you know, in your mind), that if the one you’re with now isn’t right, that will resolve itself and you will be open and ready to meet the one that will fit into your vision. The example they used for this had to with a woman whose boyfriend was having trouble committing. They recommended that if she fully commit, not just in the relationship but in other areas of her life as well, that he would either commit to her or move on, leaving her free to meet someone who is ready to commit.

You you you. I guess that’s really the point. If you don’t know who you are or what you want, how can you be open to it. Especially in big cities today, you meet so many people every day. How you find someone to spend your life with if you’re looking for that person to make you happy? You need to bring your own happiness to the table and take the opportunities provided by a relationship to even better understand what you need to be happy. All the while, doing your best to give them everything they need so they have the opportunity to do the same.

Ah, relationships – how confusing! How simple! How natural! How complex! How terrible! How wonderful! And yet so important to life.

If you listen to the audio, let me know what you think in the comments below,
Wayne

No. Seriously. What is that about? We all talk about it and want it and chase after it, but what is it? What is it really? Bear with me, I’ve been working on this…

I read an article recently – ok, an excerpt from a book – by a professor of literature that talked about how her life has been harmed by her excessive reading during the all-critical, socialization stage of her life. Instead of learning about relationships and how to make friends, she learned about love from Wuthering Heights, which has left her seeking love that is more important than life and outlives death – to what end? Not a happy one, in her estimation.

So here’s what I think. First of all, there are several types of love and by having only one word, we confuse ourselves. Where do you draw the lines between the love a mother has for her child, a brother and sister share, love between friends, the love that grows from having great respect for someone, that deep and abiding love that never fades, romantic love, and even universal love for all humanity? We all experience these, or some subset of them but use the same word – how confusing! So first, let’s be specific about what we’re talking about – this will help everyone out.

Naturally, the real complexity is in relationships – serious, long-term, committed relationships. I keep trying to rationalize and logically understand what romantic love is all about and I’ve decided (logically) that that is exactly where I’ve gone awry – you can’t. At the end of the day, love simply is. That’s it. Love – romantic, fall down breathless love – just is. It’s now – and it’s not tomorrow (or at least not until you get there). “I’ll love you forever” is only in this moment. Although that moment contains forever within it (funny, isn’t it? The great ironies of life – where the opposites meet? Wonderful).

So my current theory is that romantic love is only in the moment. But this isn’t bad, because that’s all that we have to work with anyway? When tomorrow comes, it will be now. You can’t plan on love, you can’t rationalize it, you can’t keep it, you can’t hold it. All you can do is enjoy it, and be with it, and live every minute as it comes to you. If you have love in your heart right now, enjoy it for the gift that it is, and if you have lost it or it has left you, enjoy it for what it was but let it go and clear your life and soul so that you may be available for next time that it comes. And in the meanwhile, enjoy the path. Without the bad, how would we know the good? Life is lived on a spectrum. We need difficult times in order to recognize the great times.

In the end, the journey is the reward and there are no right or wrong answers.

Let me know if you agree or not in the comments below.

I have been pondering this question recently as I have been evaluating my success in finding the perfect job in Washington, DC — ie, I haven’t had much luck and wonder why.

This is to say nothing about POMED – they are a wonderful organization that is doing everything right and will most likely have a significant impact on the way that the US deals with the countries of the Middle East. It’s just that the position that I hold with them is part time, and the pay is as much promise as performance. If it was possible to live on promise, believe me, I would be happy to do it, but as it is, I continue to pursue that elusive ideal occupation as my debts increase.

What am I doing about it? Well, networking and job hunting, the former of which I specifically want to discuss in this post (thus the title). I attend events relevant to my interests. I ask questions that seem pertinent to me. I hang around with all the people that I don’t know, and am generally friendly and (while I may be biased) interesting. I listen to other’s perspectives and respond with my own when I feel there is an opportunity.

I set up and engage in that tentative dance called the informational interview. I have met and spoken with a number of people that seem to be doing well enough for themselves in the world of DC politics. I attempt to glean their understanding of how the system works and what I should be doing, and who else I should be talking to in order to pursue my specific career interests. I even came to DC with a list of connections from my well-meaning professors and friends in New York. But alas, all of these trails seem to have led to nowhere.

Why is this?

Is there something wrong with me? Again, I must acknowledge my personal bias, but seriously, everyone I know has higher hopes and expectations than even I do. I jokingly say I have them all fooled, but the fooled include a fair number of people that have accomplished impressive things in life and have understood the system well enough to have made a life for themselves within it. People in business or academia or even the international system. They’re all glad that I’ve decided to move to DC and devote my life to making a difference in US foreign policy – they trust me, they think I stand a good chance of actually accomplishing something — that I have a unique ability to walk the fine line between being able to understand the system as it is and holding on to my ideals.

So here I am, sitting in DC, “pursuing my dreams” to little effect. Why?

I think I may be coming up with some answers. Tell me what you think of them:

1. I’m not clear.I have not specified what I’m hear to do. I have wrestled with this – should I be specific or general to help widen the net that I’m casting for jobs. I think in DC, I need to be specific. I have been told that everyone in DC is an idealist. Everyone is here to try to bring their vision of ideal governance to fruition. There is certainly an element of this, but it’s not the whole picture. There are those who are here for many other, ‘human’ reasons – to earn money, because they need a job, maybe they’re part of the bureaucracy, and there is always an element of organizational momentum. That is, a lot of people are here working to preserve the system as it is. And while an argument could be made that there is an idealism in that, I think it’s a bit of a stretch.

   So, first of all I need to clarify what I want to be doing in more pragmatic terms that I can relate to whomever I’m talking to. Let them correct my terminology for local parlance, but I need to be more definite in where I’m headed so that the path can become more clear.

2. I am not forward enough in my networking tactics.I tend to focus on what the other person is trying to say and allow the conversation to unfold naturally. I think this is great if you are trying to make friends or generically enlarge your network, but I think I’ve somewhat missed the boat in terms of job hunting. I have always felt somewhat self-conscious about being so direct about my wants and needs, but truly – if I’m not telling people what I need, how are they to know? And even more importantly, how are they to help?

All of that aside, I don’t believe my networking time has been wasted. I have met some wonderful people; begun to learn about the culture of foreign policy – language, timing, inter-relationships; and continued to increase my understanding of complex topics because of the events that I attend.

One final note: I attended a conference last week on politics and the internet and during a panel discussion focused on the value of social networking websites (eg, Facebook, change.org) for advocacy, one of the panelists made the point that these sites primarily build awareness. If used correctly, they can also be utilized for engagement and to encourage action, but these things are not automatically built into the system.

I contend that this same logic applies to plain old, face-to-face networking. I’ve met people, so they are now aware that I exist. It could even be argued that I have engaged them, depending upon the content of our discussion, but if I don’t give them enough information or sufficient motivation to actually take action on my behalf, I haven’t utilized the value of the network that I’m spending so much time building.

I suppose this is really just a restatement of the points that I made above, but somehow I find the different perspective immensely helpful.

Hmmm… It will be interesting to see how this all plays out.

Best,
Wayne