Crushing Krisis

Comic Books, Drag Race, & Life in New Zealand

self-critique

Bad Teenage Poetry Blogging Day

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Yesterday Rabi pointed out that Superlagirl had declared today to be bad teenage poetry blogging day, and issued a challenge for other bloggers to join her in participating.

Alright then, Rabi. I’ll see your four pieces of (debatably) bad teenage poetry and – against my better judgment – raise you my (less-debateably) bad teenage poetry website preserved in all of its framed glory, directly imported from Geocities.

Behold: Synonyms for Damage. Even the name is bad teenage poetry!

Honestly, I only reinstated it for the novelty of having it there – I wouldn’t encourage you to surf through it, as I will share the chief passages of note below.

[Read more…] about Bad Teenage Poetry Blogging Day

Taking a pass at success.

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Earlier this week Lifehack ran a thought-provoking article about the 10 skills you need to succeed (at almost anything).

Usually when I happen upon these sorts of articles I expect zeitgeist-y skills like “learn to recognize a tipping point,” or soon-to-be-obsolete accomplishments such as “cultivate a good Google-rank.”

This article was intriguing in that it featured neither; many of the skills it lists I would nearly label as traits:

1. Public Speaking
2. Writing
3. Self-Management
4. Networking
5. Critical Thinking
6. Decision-Making
7. Math
8. Research
9. Relaxation
10. Basic Accounting

At first glance at this list I thought, Wow, I must be pretty damn successful, because I am awesome at all of these things! However, upon further reading and reflection I realized that I’m not equally awesome across the board, and my various lacks of success in life can be easily attributed to my weaker points on the list.

I graded myself on each attribute on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 representing the pinnacle of that trait in anyone I’ve ever met, with the 3-5 area representing the skillset of the average, unskilled populace.

1. Public Speaking – 8
2. Writing – 9
3. Self-Management – 7
4. Networking – 6
5. Critical Thinking – 8
6. Decision-Making – 5
7. Math (capacity-for, not knowledge-of) – 7
8. Research – 6
9. Relaxation – 3
10. Basic Accounting – 8

I wound up with a grand total of 67% – barely passing at success.

Of course, not every one of those traits has to do with every endeavor in my life, and I’m successful in a lot of areas.

My job, for example, is mostly reliant on 3-5-6-8, in which I score 26/40 – decidedly above the 12-20 average range. Being a singer-songwriter relies on a straight 1-2-3-4 dash, where I notch a weighty 30/40.

Still, it’s easy to see how each trait impacts the rest, and how a deficit in one is the detriment of others. I know for certain that my lack of Relaxation hamstrings my slightly above-average Self-Management, which means I churn out less of my quality Writing. And, my relatively meager Decision-Making and Research abilities can frequently hamper my most significant Critical Thinking.

It is possible to increase your ability in one area without losing ground in another? If our lives were D&D, would this system be more like rolling a character, or using a points-based allocation system? Will my Relaxation increase naturally with age?

Does anyone score much higher than 2/3? Are the Bill Gates and Richard Bransons of the world successful because they are higher than 80% on this scale?

How would you rate yourself?

Humbling Critique v. Humble Critic

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It seems that my attendance of concerts varies inversely with my enjoyment, and as I become more ubiquitous at local open mics and active in the local music scene I am increasingly unable to enjoy the music of anyone else unless they are completely flawless.

(Recently, Ani DiFranco, but locally Alexandra Day.)

Other than those bastions of perfection, everything is open to critique – whether I’m trying to be critical or not.

Last month I saw an indie musician who could not get his physical and vocal tics under control long enough to simply sing one of his strong songs. A few weeks ago we saw Regina Spektor open for Ani DiFranco, and I criticized her enunciation and her poor setlist compilation abilities.

Last week at an open mic I rolled my eyes at a hapless guy who played three songs all in the same position. Last night we saw a local band, and I didn’t think anything was in the right key for the singer, and their bassist was useless.

I was a critic to begin with, but now that I’ve been playing more actively I’m all-too-cognizant of all the ways a performer can go wrong, and as soon as I spot one I can’t help but be cruelly unforgiving of its performer.

Critiquing Regina is one thing – she’s a major label hit that ought to know how to open for an audience of strangers by now. It’s the other examples that are more dangerous. If I can’t appreciate and complement other independent and local performers then I am always going to be that asshole with the ego, and people will judge me even harsher for it.

I know I’m not perfect – I’m brutally cognizant of my many flaws as a performer, and they’re the primary reason I don’t perform or record more often. I suppose I just expect every artist that have the same ruthless urge to self-censor until improvements can be made. And, when I do it on their behalf it makes it hard to make connections or friends, and you need both to get noticed as a local musician.

If I was Regina I would have started with one of my crunchy pop hits and followed it with something alliterate and obscure to catch the less mainstream Ani fans. But, maybe that’s not how she’s gotten this far, so who am I to correct her?

But, if I was an indie on my first tour, grasping for new audience members, I’d play in the mirror more often. If I was that hapless guy I would have found a different position to play my song in, or played something in a different key for my middle song. And, if I was the lead singer last night I would have taken voice lessons, tuned down a few of my songs, and backed off the mic.

I have shared all of those flaws, and because I am me I have enacted each of those solutions – because I am ruthlessly eliminating anything anyone could dislike about me until the until reason left to dislike me is me myself.

But, I can’t afford to be so ruthless towards everybody else, or I’ll never have any one receptive in an audience to appreciate all my betterment, and to spread the words to their friends.

Or, via the Larry Sanders Show:

What have we learned here? When you’re vulnerable and humble, people like you. When you act like an asshole, people tend to think of you as an asshole.

pee ess

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Okay, so, forgive my meta-ness for a second here, but we need to chat.

We are now at the halfway mark of the month, and I must confess I am not really feeling the NaBloPoMo love this year.

I’m quite sure the NaBloPoMo Ning site is mostly at fault. Last year there were over two thousand of us scrambling to post before midnight every day, and the only way for us to communicate and commiserate was to read each other’s blogs and leave a trail of comments in our wake.

This year there are six thousand of us, all amiably mingling on a social networking site, and our blogs would seem to have become secondary to our networking.

Or maybe it’s just me and my busyness, which is even more meta, because the whole point of NaBloPoMo was supposed to be talking about how great it is to be busy all of the time, as opposed to last year when I spent the entire month in my room reading blogs, drinking martinis, and cultivating my carpal tunnel syndrome.

I had quite a schedule plotted out to cut through the busyness with posts and Trios and links, but these days weeks go by so quickly that I don’t have time to figure out what to do with them. That, combined with some of the less amusing chapters of the engagement story and a Trio that doesn’t seem to want to be recorded, are a veritable blogging blockade.

Or, maybe I’m just taking this all a little too seriously, as is my wont. So, I’m looking to you, gentle readers, to tell me what’s what. Are there some NaBloPoMo blogs that I seriously need to be reading? Is there a type of post you’ve been dying to see from me? Or, for the more well-versed of you, is there a song I’ve been neglecting?

Speak now, or your next fifteen days will most likely mirror the last. Which, honestly, were fifteen days of fairly quality blogging, but I’m nothing if not an overachiever.

Don’t Play That Song (A Trio of Links)

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You were supposed to receive the second Influences Trio tonight, but it took six hours last night to get one song right, and we are leaving on our T-Day expedition to NJ in a few hours.

This exemplifies why Trio did not typically include cover songs back when it was a weekly feature (and why it started taking so damned long when it did start including cover songs): i’m a huge music fan, and in almost every case i have an obsessive fascination with the original, which leads me to go through this horrific Sophie’s Choice drama about every little flaw and if i can really give them up to the oppressive, fascist listening public.

So, rather than my still-incubating Trio, here’s a trio of quick-hit weblinks for you:

#1 Yeti Ornament from HungerSite. Dude, if we get a tree i am buying this in a hot second.

Plus, it totally jives with the holiday competition i have with my mother about buying farm animals for each other.

#2 PhotoJunkie’s “One Million Giveaway”. No, not a million dollars. PhotoJunkie is a fantastic blogger who was on the forefront of Photoblogging a few scant years ago. I think i know him from Blogathon (?). In any event, to celebrate his upcoming 1,000,000th website hit he’s giving away all sorts of stuff to anyone who comments on or links to his blog.

I should be seeing my millionth hit sometime before i turn 40, thanks for asking.

#3 Want a seasonal job in Philly? Be a newspaper scab! Our two big (collectively owned) papers are heading for strike, and they’re already fishing for temporary staff. $17-$20 an hour, 60hrs a week, minimal experience required. I say, go for it.

In closing, i feel that you should know that i am eating raw cookie-dough for dinner, and that after a content-lite day for T-Give i’ll be closing out NaBloPoMo with several more Trios and more NaBloPoMo site reviews.

Oh, right, and more blogging.

Edit: Every time i see the title of this post i hear the same thing in my head. In the interests of you hearing it too, here it is: Kelly Clarkson singing “Don’t Play That Song” from Season 1 of American Idol.