Do You Have the Knack?

There is a narrative that says that the dawn of the 21st century has brought significant changes to our structures of work and economics. I won’t dispute that, but I’ll also say, the old way of doing things is still firmly entrenched and pushing against the status quo requires considerable effort and savvy. Even then, swimming upstream is hard.

Social media regularly serves as the 21st century’s equivalent of snake oil. Broad claims about the “new frontier” often reveal, when you look beneath the veneer that The Who were right; “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” Not always, but often enough to know that things still are oriented to a certain way of conducting business. Continue reading

Priming the Pump

[Note: Various reports and articles indicate that by 2020, as much as 50 percent of the U.S. workforce will be comprised of freelance workers. I’m already there.–jb]

I’ve been at this free agent game long enough that I should know the routine this time of year. It’s prospecting time. Almost all of my activities are devoted to getting new things into the JBE pipeline. Continue reading

Shifting Gears

I grew up during the heyday of classic rock. Of course, when I was coming up, the Stones, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles–none of them were sidled with that banner–this would come later, when Boomers had to find a way to commodify music just like everything else they touched.

Rock and roll, once thought of as dangerous, and/or overtly sexual, was sanitized and now, these classic tunes have become nothing more than a sound score for the latest luxury sedan commercial, or to sell some other hideous household consumer item. Continue reading

Baby, it’s cold outside!

Hovering slightly below 0 (Fahrenheit)

Hovering slightly below 0 (Fahrenheit)

We are in the midst of a good old-fashioned cold snap, common to those of us native to northern regions. January has always been the coldest month.

Oddly, the cold is now big news, at least if you watch local affiliate news. It’s part of my morning 5 AM routine that I can’t seem to shake. WMTW-8 sticks their second-string weatherizer out in some live location where this pale and shivering meteorologist tells us that “it’s cold outside.” Yes it is. Continue reading

Dialing while drunk

Last night was the second in a series of what will be nine contiguous nights chasing the moonlight as a seasonal employee on assignment. I’ve been doing this work just long enough now that I’m able to really focus on the callers, as well as my surroundings, and less on the technical components of navigating the order fulfillment system. It’s what I refer to as “being in the zone,” at least when it comes to being an order taker. Continue reading

Turning the page (and embracing the future)

I’m officially a free agent. The job that I poured my heart into for just short of six years (August 7 would have been anniversary #6) ended yesterday at 5:00 pm.

This transition has been in the works for awhile; yesterday was just one more step in that process. First, the governor began railing against the four LWIBs (my employer) threatening to phase them out by June 30 (this posturing began last September). By March of this year, my hours with the Central/Western Maine Workforce Investment Board had been reduced from 40 to 20. When I walked out the door of the Lewiston CareerCenter last night at 5:15, it was just another step along the reinvention path. Continue reading