I Really Doubt You're a Bootstrapper

I read an article in Gawker today, “When People Write for Free, Who Pays?”, and it got me thinking, again, about how growing up working class (at times working poor was a more appropriate classification of our situation) has continually affected my life. This article explains how a high cost of entry creates a lack of diverse voices within the writing industry. It also mentioned the bootstrapping myth. You know how it goes – “I was a struggling artist/college student/business intern eating Top Ramen and ketchup soup.”

I’d like to share my experience as a child of the working class trying to pursue his dreams in a middle and upper class niche industries. 

You see, I’ve always been a dreamer, an Icarus rising far above my working class roots because I set goals beyond my socioeconomic legacy and pay grade. For close to fifteen years I've been part of three industries - writing, photography, and snowboarding.

All these industries expect you to invest heavily in education, training and gear and then expect you to give your work and talent away for free or super cheap while building your network and portfolio. Their justification for this exploitation is usually something like, "Exposure!" or "Portfolio!" or "Free Beer!" The last justification usually works, but the other two are played out and I’m very particular about my “portfolio” or “exposure” these days. Frankly, I need to see how this “exposure” will lead to a new skill or a check. 

Between degrees, CEU’s, personal study, networking, marketing, and capital investment (tools of the trade), I’ve easily invested $75k (time, materials, education) just for writing and photography industries.

Real bootstrapping is as rare as a two headed cow - it's a mutation, relying more on random chance and dumb luck than hard work and recognition. Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell, is a great look into American Bootstrapping mythos. 

Bootstrapping is an adyaton, an exaggeration so great it is impossible - e.g. pulling oneself up by their bootstraps (the straps on a shoe used to pull it on and off). Visualize this, or better yet, try it for a moment by grabbing the bootstrap on each shoe at the same time and pull up, trying to lift both feet at the same time. Nothing happens. Unless you get some sort of assistance gravity will always win.

  

I first noticed the impact of the social class divide as a snowbum in Jackson, WY, where I spent five glorious years “livin’ the dream” – teaching snowboarding, hiking and climbing mountains. During this time I also worked two or three jobs at a time and still got into serious financial trouble because of gaps in work and medical bills.

What I noticed during my time in Jackson was that my middle class and upper class colleagues, even the ones without trust funds, had it pretty easy. Sure most were working the same two or three jobs that I was, but they also had a new snowboard every year, wore puffy coats, listened to mp3 players, skied in $500 mountaineering pants, drove a three year old hand-me-down Subaru, and flew to South America once a year during offseason (“offseason” is the time between seasons, usually Oct-Nov and April-May, when most tourist based jobs, and pretty much every job in Jackson, layoff all their staff and close.

I, on the other hand, still had to pay rent, so would find odd jobs during the offseason like sheet-rocking someone’s house or washing windows and cleaning carpets for rich people’s third homes (incidentally, if you own a home in Wyoming, even if it’s your third, you don’t have to pay state employment taxes). For the longest time I envied how stress free and relaxed other skibums were, the great trips they would take, and the gear they would buy and was pretty baffled how they financed their lives so easily.

Then, one day I realized my skibum colleagues were getting help - a rent check from mom, a new piece of gear for Christmas, a plane ticket home. However little, it all adds up over time, creating not only material wealth but also, and more importantly, a sense of stability and confidance emanating from the knowledge that someone has your financial and emotional back. 

I didn’t even realize that this, getting handouts that make life easier, could be a way of life for some people. This realization was disheartening and reassuring at the same time. Disheartening because I saw how I was constantly getting my ass kicked financially with nobody there to help or listen. I was living life without a safety net - a trapeze act without an audience. Reassuring because now I understood why all the people surrounding were always mellow and I was always stressed out – they were cheating, gaming the system. While I was constantly getting hit with setbacks, their lives were slowly inching forward, following their cheery little plan - college, skibum, master's degree, marriage, kids, house.  

I’ve seen this pattern repeated in school while getting my bachelor’s degree (guess who got to do internships while I went to work) and within the writing and photography industries. Yes. I’ve had some successes – a photo published in Outside Magazine (for which they didn’t pay me and exposure was implied) and a snowboarding sponsorship for a couple seasons. I networked my ass off for those opportunities and every single one of my publishing credits.

But, mostly I’ve seen those around me leverage their middle class stability to get another degree, land a good job or launch a freelance career. And, I'm pretty sure the lack of financial and emotional support has impacted my level of success in each field and subsequent paycheck. Every five years or so I become exhausted I have to crawl into a hole for year to recover, where I think about the lessons learned, reassess my path and ask myself if pursuing my dreams is really worth the trouble.

I am just now coming out of one of those holes. And, as always the answer is – "Yes. It’s worth the trouble." What all these cycles and observation have taught me is that a) I’m stubborn, and b) I don’t know my place.

I refuse to give up on my dreams just because others have an advantage. I may occasionally lay down, demoralized and exhausted, but I will always get back in the game. I have an important story to tell and a unique experience to share. I’m going to keep living life on my terms, even if most people don’t understand me or my terms.

Now, back up for a second while I try this bootstrapping move one more time. I could crash, breaking a table or chair, but I don’t really care as long as you give me a high score for form.

My favorite summer writing spot, where I contemplate life's deeper issues. (Mostly, I just listen to the wind and water.)

Free Writing About Barns

I write just about every day and most of it is garbage, but this selection is interesting to me so I though I'd post it. It was written during a workshop free-write. Our exercise was to describe an old barn through an emotional lens. I might make this into prose poem or poem someday:

Not a picture of a barn, I know - it's all I had.

The old barn leaned to the side. A drunken giant had tripped once, using the barn to catch his fall. Now there was a pucker in the snow-covered roof, cedar shingles shattered or missing, where he had put his hand down to steady himself. Other giants had been more purposeful, smashing in doors, stripping off chunks of pine siding. Inside the barn was dark, a canvas or a hole, waiting to take the blame for something else, a vessel for aggression and redemption. Occasionally a gust of wind would blow the snow up one side of the roof, to hang in the air, swirling, not sure which way to go. But, the giants were long gone and this snowstorm one of many. The old growth timber framing, beams the size of refrigerators, bolts the size of diner plates, would keep its soul intact.

What do you think? Should I keep it as a prose poem or rework it into a poem? I think it might be a fun idea fiddle with.

Guns Are Made for Killing - Nonviolence Essay #2

A few days ago a neighbor new to our block (we’ll call him Joe) threatened to shoot my other neighbor (we’ll call him Sam) because Sam's dog pooped in the parking strip - the part owned by the city between the sidewalk and curb. What's darkly ironic, considering the recent events in Newtown, Connecticut, Sam is an elementary school teacher.

As dog owners Sam, his wife, my wife and myself regularly pick up the dog poop left in our neighborhood by other dogs, but Joe doesn't know this because he's new. Sam and I have lived on this block for over 2 years and are friends with all the other neighbors. Joe doesn't know this either because he's new.

Joe is bigger than Sam and makes five times the money. I am not sure what's so intimidating about a schoolteacher that Joe needs to bring guns into the conversation.

I grew up hunting and my father in-law took me to the gun range the day before I got married. I have no problem with gun ownership (as I stated in an earlier post, I own two). My problem is when guns are used to bully and intimidate innocent people through the threat of violence and death. Guns are created for killing. It seems that some gun owners do not respect this absolute power - the power to take life.

A schoolteacher, or any law-abiding citizen, is quite a bit different from a burglar, rapist, or despotic regime trying to enslave a population. It’s disturbing that these renegade gun owners feel the need to threaten passive, liberal-minded American citizens who are only dangerous to the chicken they dice up for Thursday night stir-fry.

In a Slate interview, Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California, said that, "the president of one of the largest handgun manufacturers in the country once told me, face to face, how much money he had committed to an intimidation effort and advised me to keep my life insurance paid up. There was a time when federal law enforcement agents recommended that I wear a ballistic vest.” (The bold is my edit.)

Intimidation effort? Against preventing deaths by studying the causes and effects of gun deaths in this country? Federal law enforcement agents knew about this? Really? This is mind blowing. Somehow the passive, peace lovers of this country, the ones who only want to make the world a better, safer place, have been lumped into the same group as the dangerous criminals - a threat to be countered by violence. This makes me question who American citizens really need to be protected against.

In an Washington Post op-ed, former Rep. Jay Dickey (R-Ark.) said, "one of us served as the NRA’s point person in Congress and submitted an amendment to an appropriations bill that removed $2.6million from the CDC’s budget, the amount the agency’s injury center had spent on firearms-related research the previous year. This amendment, together with a stipulation that “None of the funds made available for injury prevention and control at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention may be used to advocate or promote gun control,” sent a chilling message.

Since the legislation passed in 1996, the United States has spent about $240million a year on traffic safety research, but there has been almost no publicly funded research on firearm injuries."

What’s sad is when I posted the origin of this essay on Facebook one of my friends told me to “be safe” in the comments. Fear of Joe’s threatened violence has rippled beyond our little neighborhood and into my broader community of friends. Threatening violence towards someone is intimidation and bullying, and this is the reason stricter regulation of guns is finally gaining steam in America. Of course, these irresponsible gun owners will be unable to take responsibility for their action and will instead continue to blame the hippies and liberals for the erosion of their second amendment rights.

Never forget - guns are created for killing. Unless someone (including the CEO’s of gun manufacturing companies and the NRA) fully respects this fact, they don't deserve to own a gun, even for recreational purposes.

Violence is a valid response when someone is trying to kill you. Violence, or even threatening violence, is not appropriate when you are having a dispute about dog poop.

Essay on Nonviolence #1, We All Have a Choice

"It's about how we treat each other and care for one another." ~ John DeStefano, Mayor of New Haven. I was listening to an interview of the mayor today and this quote stuck out.

What he’s talking about is kindness and compassion. We all have a choice to solve problems without violence. Nonviolence might seem like it's for those hippies and liberals who lack the courage to defend themselves properly, but it takes more courage to choose nonviolenence over violence because hate and violence are easy. Hate and violence are quick. Hate and violence breed more hate and violence. I do not want to live in that kind of world.

I grew up in a home punctuated with violence and was bullied in high school. Recently, three days in a row, three separate angry, white men threatened to ram me with their vehicles while I was commuting home from work on my bicycle. I had the right of way but, of course, they would have won. They are encased in 6,000lbs of steel and I am essentially naked, a skid mark waiting to happen. As a bearded, liberal, Portlander on a bicycle I am a focus of right-wing hate-radio and stand guilty as charged of trying to make the world a better place. But, they are cowards and bullies. They are spineless. They don’t have the guts to face me man to man.

I understand why these men are angry, why they want to run over bicycle-riding hippies. There's nothing "...more dangerous in the U.S.A. than an unemployed white man," says Leslie Marmon Silko in her essay In the Combat Zone. As a carpenter I have not had well paying, long-term employment in four years. We are a month late on the rent and three months behind on everything else. I feel powerless and gutted and I am pissed about it.

I also do not like bullies and these encounters made me very angry, made me want to carry a handgun to protect myself. I can handle myself in a fight and I grew up on a farm with guns. Fist or gun, I am very accurate. These men threatened me with a deadly weapon and I have right to defend myself. Imagine that, a bicyclist packing heat. The power of this vision was intoxicating.

After the last encounter, I chased that coward through Portland. I could have confronted him when he stopped at a light, but I stopped short. I wondered what it would actually accomplish. It would have felt very good to drag that person out of his car and beat him, mash his face until it looked like expired hamburger. He had threatened to kill me. In my rage he would either be hurt very badly, or I would get hurt as he defended himself. I was faced with a choice. I decided, right then and there, to strengthen my resolve AGAINST violence as a solution.

The day after I made my decision, children were brutally massacred in New Haven. This atrocity makes me sick to my stomach. It also made me harden my resolve against violence as a solution. It also made me want to speak out, voicing my private stance on nonviolence.

Nonviolence may feel like it costs more and takes longer, but the payoffs, economically and socially, are complete, permanent and stable. When people choose nonviolence they use compassion instead of violence, taking the time to see each other as fellow humans. Most importantly, nonviolence as a choice allows everybody to reach their full potential because they aren’t crippled by fear or hatred and they stay alive and make good decisions. As citizens, we have a duty that goes beyond our clan, immediate family or party affiliation - we have a duty to all Americans and the world.

I am not interested in the gun debate (I own two). It is a time suck, a black hole created by people who use fear to generate profit and power. I’m interested in a cultural shift in thought. That shift means solving problems through compassion, dialogue and nonviolence. It means seeing our similarities, not our differences.

It means that each person needs to decide against hate and violence, decide against feeding on fear. It means we need to educate our children (I’m including political leaders in this category) to use compassion and kindness. Whether we feel like it or not, we all have more power than we know. We have the power to choose nonviolence.

Look Heroic

10:32:54 am, day two. We have been traversing through the headwaters of Mount Hood’s southeastern drainages for about 2 hours. Snow field, boulder field, snow field, boulder field and so on.

Except for some scrappy white pine and a random purple flower, nothing grows here. I can feel the late summer sun beginning to drape over my neck and carve out my shadow. It is desolate and beautiful.

“Look heroic,” I said to Damon before this shot. With a waning gibbous sitting over the right shoulder of a volcano, all the picture needed was a hero.

A panorama of Mount Jefferson.

Last September, I hiked the Timberline Trail around Mount Hood. With 75 degree days and minimal wild fires, the conditions couldn't have been better.
 

Composed of two photos, this photo is the first of a couple fantastic panoramas I was able to create from the trip.

I believe we are less than a mile from the lodge at this point.

Please follow our journey at Facebook, Flickr or Picassa.

Timberline Trail Photo Essay

Mount Jefferson panorama from the Timberline Trail on Mount Hood.

I few weeks ago hiked the Timberline trail. I'll blog about the ones I think are the best but I'll also be the uploading the photos (and captions describing my trip) to my Google+ album over the next few weeks. Please check them out!