Personal

Complementary Compliments

January 9, 2007 by krisis

If I’m having even the most decentest of days I tend to be very complimentary – especially to co-workers. For a little while in college I was sure I was meant to go into PR, because I love to spin people in a positive way.

(That was nixed, at least for the time being, because I don’t usually find products to be quite so spinnable.)

If a designer whips up a cool brochure in record time, or if one of my friends sings a song really well, or if someone just makes me happy, i don’t hesitate to let it be known – not only to the person, but to anyone else in earshot or who I see later that day.

What’s funny is that I don’t really think about the impact of my compliments – whether they brighten someone’s day or seem routine and vacuous – I just make them because people seem to deserve them. I am an indiscriminate complimenter.

Work today was as frenetic as ever, peaking in the seemingly impossible task of providing final sign-off on multiple 100+ page books that are due to mail in a week.

As I was leaving I bumped into a particularly beleaguered co-worker in the hall who had been proofreading the books all day, and said, “Last call for Peter. Speak now or hold your proofreading until the morning.” She laughed and said she was fine for the night.

“Are you sure,” i queried, “because I can stay if you need help.”

From the other side of the hall someone from another team chimed in. “Isn’t Peter great that way? He always offers to help, and he really means it, even if he’s on his way out. That’s pretty awesome.”

In the wake of that five seconds of honest, unsolicited compliment I felt as if someone just told me I got a promotion to CEO. I truly love my job, and I don’t offer to help people to get complimented or so I’ll be well-reviewed, but it was really nice to know that someone else appreciated it.

My dear reader, have you been offering praise where praise is due? If not, try it for a day or two. And, if you wind up making someone’s day as much as my co-worker made mine, leave a comment to tell me about it.

Pack Ratting Red Red Sharpener

January 2, 2007 by krisis

To ring in 2007 I undertook some major home-office/recording-studio cleaning last night in the hopes of stemming the frequent avalanches of stuff that occur whenever I place anything on or walk past my desk. Because, gosh darn it, if my work desk can be organized, so can my home desk.

My desk cleaning reminded me of just how much of a pack rat I truly am. Behold: Tiny boxes that held small Christmas presents four years ago. The extra buttons to every Express shirt I’ve ever bought (and that’s a lot of buttons). Six year old pens.

Think about that. I had pens from 2000! Six year old pens that I refused to throw away because they’re from the time VW set up a tent on campus and they gave me a bag of shwag for standing on a table in the middle of the event and singing I’m a little teapot (as if that was a challenge for me; I probably would have done it naked).

My desk cleaning also lead me to a moment of reflection on my red Panasonic pencil sharpener.

You see, my red Panasonic pencil sharpener has been with me since third grade. It used to sit next to the dining room table in my childhood home. It came with me to college, and survived all three of my apartments.

It might not be very sexy, it might be as heavy as a brick, but after seventeen years of use the darn thing still works perfectly. By contrast, I’ve been through three separate sharpeners in the past year at the office.

I guess they don’t make them like they used to.

(Yes, you do see Rogue in the foreground of that shot. She’s not quite as old as the Panasonic, but she’s survived all the same locales – in fact, when I first got my webcam in 2001 I believe she spent a day on-camera perched outside of my window, searching for injustice to fight.)

Resolving to be more resolved actually made me more resolute.

January 1, 2007 by krisis

I’m not a big fan of New Year’s resolutions, mostly because I’m only average at keeping promises to myself the rest of the year.

Or, at least, I used to be average. In 2004 I graduated to “decent” when I made three very broad resolutions – to be aware of my money, my diet, and my time. They didn’t mean I had to pinch pennies every day, avoid eating junk, and be productive 24/7 – they just meant I had to be conscious about when I wasn’t doing those things.

Three years to the day and these general promises to self are still in place and thriving, and I’m a much happier person for the effort. Why? Because even if I went on a bender of money or time wasting, or food devouring, at least I knew it was just a bender. At least I knew where I was coming from, and where I would be where I wound up.

In 2006 I think I might have eeked up the scale from “decent” to almost “good,” because, in 2006 I finally figured out how to do stuff. I saved for a new guitar. I traveled. I performed. I got a new job. I look back on a year full of milestones and accomplishments rather than a lump of time that just passed me by.

Part of the way I did that is by taking my general resolutions and making them macro. I resolved to achieve things in tiny bursts – two months of hanging out with my friends more often, or a season of blogging more. The more specific the goal – like jogging three-to-five times a week – the more prone I was to miss it.

As such, I don’t have any big resolutions for 2007. I do have a few general goals. I hope you do to.

What’s In My Wallet?

December 28, 2006 by krisis

Capital One not only boasts commercials with various vikings and other barbarians, but also a strong claim of fraud protection. It was with that in mind that i rang them up last night, as i was about to drop some major expense onto my Capital One card, including a purchase from a new website that would be shipping to an alternate address. AKA, recipe for a declined charge.

Calmly and with the air of one resigned to the large amount of money he was about to spend i explained my predicament to the phone rep. She told me never-to-fear, that we would add the alternate address as a note on my file so that any questions about the validity of my purchase from vendors or the fraud department would be headed off at the pass.

Having found a rare phone rep who sounded as if she knew what she was talking about, i let her do her thing. I think i almost offered to send her flowers, but settled for passing my complements along to her supervisor.

Fast forward to today, twelve-hours post buying binge, when i check my email to discover that one of my transactions had declined. Not the special, weird transaction, but a normal one with Amazon.

And, a few minutes later, so did another. And a third. And a fourth.

None of the transactions to the new address declined. Neither did those paid in Pounds or Euros. Just the standard American purchases that probably comprise half of my credit card statements from 2006 – sheet music.

Because, clearly, someone had stolen my card and was using it to buy obscure Madonna sheet music to send to my house. Oh my god, please save me from the fraudulent horror of rare, out-of-print Madonna sheet music. In two of the declined cases we’re talking about a single copy of a piece of sheet music out of the entire internet, verified via approximately six hours of hunting.

On this phone call i was much less calm, and i spoke to a much less confident phone rep. His name had a ‘v’ in the middle of it. He, uh, thought that, um, maybe my card had been flagged for fraud? Possibly. Because, ahhh, because of the amount of online transactions I made on the card over the past week.

“Levine,” i said, “I think every purchase on the card in 2006 was made online. From the same stores that are being declined.”

Devon “ahhed” in agreement.

“So, why is it declining now that I’m relying on it to pay for twenty-year-old, nearly one-of-a-kind sheet music?”

Irvin “ummed” in confusion.

“Howabout we just put a note on my file that says, ‘Book purchases will never be fraudulent?'” I resisted the urge to add, “or any itemized charge including the word Madonna.”

Slevin “uhhed” for a moment before agreeing that this was doable.

The upshot of that story is that fourteen days from now I will have in my possession sheet music for all but a dozen of Madonna songs (not counting Evita tunes), and of the ones I’ll be missing most people have only heard three.

At that time my office will be officially dubbed the International Madonna Sheet Music Library.

(In case you’re interested, the three common tunes are “Burning Up,” which inexplicably doesn’t exist as sheet music, “Beautiful Stranger,” and “American Pie.” Though, if you’re a connoisseur you will probably also know the trio of “Physical Attraction,” “I Know It,” and “Think of Me” from her first LP. However, I’d be surprised if anyone would really miss my ability to play “Gambler,” “Spotlight,” or “Time Stood Still,” and would be outright shocked if many people have heard b-sides “Cyberraga,” “Your Honesty,” or the crazy-obscure “Supernatural.”)

five years stuck on my eyes

December 23, 2006 by krisis

You don’t date a photographer for nearly five years without picking up something – a certain vernacular – but that something is entirely different when you finally have a camera of your own, and nearly unlimited space to store hundreds of indiscriminately snapped digital shots over the course of a day.

Two days into my spree of snapshots and I can’t decide if digital cameras accelerate a photographer’s novice phase or distend it. Sure, it helps to be able to bracket the same shot at every possible exposure and film speed to see the difference in action. Yet, it’s easy to slip into the habit of continuous clicking – shoot now, sort it out later.

I don’t know why I feel I have to master each little thing I lay my hands upon. Just when I was getting decent at theatre I started playing guitar, and I interrupted that to be the best at blogging, and in the middle at being the best at blogging I decided I needed to make a sporting try at singing. I just can’t pick something up with the goal of being mediocre.

Will I ever be as good a photographer as Elise? Will I ever be as good a songwriter as David Bowie? Both aspirations are irrelevant to the reality – the tools of producing pictures and songs and web essays have been democratized, and each tool is a weapon if you hold it right.

I have a new weapon in my arsenal. While I’m futzing with my Flickr account, here’s my favorites from my first forty-eight hours as a photographer.