How About a Different Job Each Week?

When I received an opportunity to review The One-Week Job Project: One Man, One Year, 52 Jobs, I was thrilled. The book was about a familiar soul – a young person with a passion, curiosity and the balls to take action. In his book, Sean Aiken takes the readers on a year-long journey across cities, provinces and even countries, in search of the career he will like.

The idea is simple: To try out a different job for a week, 52 times, in order to truly discover what Sean needed in a career, what made him happy and what didn’t. He traveled all over Canada and the United States, donating his wages to ONE campaign. During the journey, he met a wide variety of people from all walks of life. Sean Aiken should be an inspiration to all who want to follow their passion; to all who want to change their life for the better; to all who don’t know where to start and to all who need that extra push. Besides the above, it’s also an entertaining and unique tale.

Each chapter starts with that week’s city, job description, approximate wages, some facts about the industry/job and lessons learned. Sean then describes his adventures, not forgetting to highlight any valuable advice he received from his employer/colleague. Not every chapter contains a gem of wisdom, but each describes unique situations and (mostly) unusual environments. I definitely wouldn’t have learned about so many careers in such a short time if I hadn’t read the book.

One Week Job project is not a self-help guide on how to pinpoint the best job for you. It’s a fun tale about one way of doing it. It’s also a colorful retelling of an individual experience. It is hopefully an interesting and inspiring read for young students, whether in high school or university. Or anyone looking to discover their true passion.

I personally loved the book because I respect and identify with the kind of a person who wrote it. Sean is a kindred spirit. I feel that in my life I, too, sprung into the unknown, took risks and followed my heart. I can relate. And I am glad there are more of us to tell the tale!

Bonus points for great insights in some chapters of the book. I highlighted interesting quotes from some of Sean’s employers; I circled some lessons that Sean learned from his own mistakes or insights. My favorite is from week 16 where Sean learns that “every person who comes into our life, no matter how briefly, we have the ability to affect – through a kind word, a smile, a door held open. Each one of these simple interactions leave us altered in some way – whether it’s positive or negative change is up to us to decide.”

It’s a fun read! Check out Sean’s website (there’s more goodies there!). Since completing his journey Sean produced a documentary, launched the One Week Job program and spoke about his adventures in front of a variety of audiences.

Thanks to Penguin Canada for sending me a copy!

Year-Long Personal Project

On Sunday my friend and the talented photographer Eugen Sakhnenko updated his Twitter with “Working on Atlas – I love this project! I recommend everyone take-on a consistent longterm personal project.” And I thought, Damn Straight!

Then I thought about what my year-long project was. I mean, I had the 2010 strategy lined up and I get back to it every month and review. So that’s a project. In fact, to make sure that I follow my personal goals, I take advantage of the “Future planning” section in my analog planner (that’s right, I don’t use neither Calendar nor notes on my iPhone). Every month has 4-5 lines on which I can write my monthly goals. So far I have achieved every goal, except one. That’s been 14 things that I did. Some are simple, some are literally month-long (like my growing “Go to the gym _ times this month”) and so on. The point is, I set a goal OR a project and worked on that for a month. There are some improvements I could make, but give me a break, I’m learning and already doing a whole truckload of stuff.

But what about the creative side? To my defense, four of my friends and I have started a Photo Club where we disperse assignments to each other and come back a month later with prints of our work. That’s going well, albeit slow at times since we need to accommodate everyone’s schedule.

Then I realized that my creative ish project is the 3-books-a-month. I set out to read three books a month.Why? I like reading, I’ve always done it. Back in high school I’d read a book a week, but university killed that ambition. Now is my chance to read what I missed, to learn more and to improve my own writing. JUST LISTEN TO DR SEUSS: “The more that you read, the more things you will know / The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”

I’m at 7 books right now, and have 100 pages to go in my current reading material. Plus, I’ve almost finished another book. So that will be 9 by March 31 (or a few days into April. Don’t be afraid to spill into a new month).

In 3 months I will update with my list of 18 and, hopefully, more Look at me and my S.M.A.R.T. goals. Priceless.

What are your year-long projects, if any? You can start at any time, you know.

Books I Read This Year

December is for summaries and lists. I’m not doing any music selections (yet?), but I’ve been keeping track of books I’ve read. I had to recreate the list from memory this November, so I am sure I am missing a 2 – 3 books that I forgot about (not memorable enough? Too much information to remember?)

• Economics of Strategy was definitely for the Industry Analysis class I was taking in January. Again, this book features a picture of a pretty painting on its cover. Reminds me of the times I took a statistics class and each chapter in the textbook featured a fragment of this or that modern art work.

• -(Clickable image) Bukowski’s. Way too repetitive, sad and overflowing with erotic scenes. Got boring halfway through.

• – Ghosts, not a bad book by Cesar Aira. A poignant story about young and impressionable hearts, lots of magic, ghosts and hardships.
• I wish Someone Had Told Me That – girls were making fun of the author photo, and I  understand them. The author seems like a solid square, but his publisher and people he interviewed for the book, have both been helpful. Great kernels of experience.
• Housekeeper and the Professor – great book, a lot of math and humanity. I wrote a review.
• A Whole New Mind – positively inspiring, set me on a quest to find a masters program with the perfect blend of art and business. Daniel H Pink is really good, supports his ideas with references, and is an all around fun and important non-fiction writer.
• – DeNiro’s Game was not bad, mostly a boys’ book about badass youngsters in a struggling part of the world, salvaging what they can.
• The Sleeper Awakes – the classic. Interesting vision of 2100. What the heck, Wells was great.
• – Bonjour Tristesse was a little self-indulgent, but an important book nevertheless. It’s like an overpoweringly cliche French movie you watch on a Sunday afternoon in bed
• Pride & Prejudice & Zombies – hilarity!! I wolfed the book down, especially because I couldn’t be bothered to read the original Pride & Prejudice. Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters are next on the list.
• the medium is the massage – confirms my belief that McLuhan was seriously ahead of his cohort by many, many decades. His statements still ring true. Amazing.
• Choice Theory: A very short introduction – purchased at the Harvard store with the intention of learning to make better, rational choices. I make more rational choices now, but can’t 100% say they’re much better or worse. They’re just rational choice. (Which probably implies that they are indeed “better” than the irrational ones)
• Pnin – and thus my love affair with Vladimir Nabokov started.
• Lolita – serious lust, for little girls, for language. Best written book, ever. Nothing can compete. I felt all kinds of emotions when reading it, deeply, painfully and ecstatically. I’ve yet to write an actual post about it. and I will.
• The Eye – not the best work of Nabokov, but luckily it is short.
• Lunar Park – Bret Easton Ellis did really well in this one. If I read it in 2005, when it came out, I’d probably feel like everyone else who read it then and expected yet another repetitive party story (like his other books); or worse, expected something of an American Psycho saga (since so many people only read that book by him and know nothing more). There is an American Psycho presence there, btw, but also a good blend of real and unreal, of true and false. An intense and rapidly evolving downward spiral that gave me nightmares and even made me terrified of a potential toy in my hallway. Lulz, I told you I was an emotional reader.
• Miro: A life of passion – wrote a blog post about this. An inspiring story.
• Meditations in an Emergency – I can’t believe I let Frank O’Hara slide by for this long. He’s inspired me to write a new series of poems.
• How to talk about books you haven’t read – Pierre Bayard treatise for those who actually love reading. It makes a great gift for someone who loves reading and has a sense of humor. I also felt like I read a lot more books than just one because each chapter explores a particular literary issue in the context of this or that novel.
• Crush It – Gary Vaynerchuk’s high pitched to-do list for a successful persona-driven online enterprise. I was pleased to know that I already knew or did 75% of the things listed here. Learned about new services that I could employ and felt energized. Good guy. Fellow USSR-born import.
• White Out, pt 1 – Consumed this in 1 hour on a plane. I wish I brought part 2 with me, because I spent 3 hours watching TV on a plane instead of exercising my reading muscles. Dang. And on that note:
• White Out, pt 2 - Will read it before the year is over. Just an hour of my life, right
• Speak, Memory – Nabokov’s autobiography. Masterful renewal of Russia lost, of innocence gone, of the society that will never appear again. I love it. I fell deeply into it, and don’t want to raise my head and blink at bleak reality right here. I’ve 40 more pages to go, but I’m positive I’ll complete the tale before the clock hits 12 on Dec 31.
• Eating Animals – hurrying to finish this startling, well-supported case by Jonathan Safran Foer (fiction writer, eh), before the year is over (100 pages left), so that I could dismiss meat in the new year. In fact,  this Christmas I’ve been dealing with agonies over cruelty-full turkeys and cows. Bah. An illuminating read.

Note 1: I am utterly terrified that I haven’t read anything in Russian last year (besides e-mails). Really? This cannot be. I’ve half a shelf of Russian classics in my home, and I better get to them come new year.

Note 2: I may be missing a book or two, because I forgot I read it this year. Some books aren’t as memorable as others, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something.

What have you read this year?

Attitudes Toward Sleep

It occurs to me that many brilliant individuals had trouble sleeping, or simply slept less. Or, perhaps, were tainted by insomnia as an affliction and became really vocal about it. Vladimir Nabokov offers his startling confession about sleep (from Speak, Memory):

All my life I have been a poor go-t0-sleeper. People in trains, who lay their newspaper aside, fold their silly arms, and immediately, with an offensive familiarity of demeanor, start snoring, amaze me as much as the uninhibited chap who cozily defecates in the presence of a chatty tubber, or participates in huge demonstrations, or joins some union in order to dissolve in it. (Love the jabs here! – KA) Sleep is the most moronic fraternity in the world, with the heaviest dues and the crudest rituals. It is a mental torture I find debasing. The strain and drain of composition often force me, alas, to swallow a strong pill that gives me an hour or two of frightful nightmares or even to accept the comic relief of a midday snooze, the way a senile rake might totter to the nearest euthanasium; but I simply cannot get used to the nightly betrayal of reason, humanity, genius. No matter how great my weariness, the wrench of parting with consciousness is unspeakably repulsive to me.

Food for thought indeed.

Chapters and Facebook

Last week Chapters Indigo offered an interesting offer – 25% off your next in-store purchase, all the way up to December 24. You go to their Facebook fan page, become a fan, then print out their unique coupon. Check out the screenshots. This is what you see when you follow the Facebook fan page link I provided two sentences ago.

When you click the “click here” button, an option to share with friends will appear. Of course you don’t have to share, but why would you not, given the holiday spirit and the ease of information dissemination via one simple click?

The moment you hit “Publish” or “Skip” your coupon appears. Notice the “Print” button, which automatically sends the coupon to nearest available printer.I really like the use of social media here!

1. Chapters can measure the success of this campaign simply by monitoring coupon scans, which I’m sure have a special “from Facebook” code on them.
2. Chapters Indigo Facebook fanbase will grow, obviously
3. Chapters minimized the number of steps required in coupon acquisition (I’m always annoyed, but accepting of “Fill out this form…”, “Check your e-mail”, open e-mail, print the e-mail, etc)
4. …And embedded a simple viral factor

Brings thoughts about what Meteor Solutions calls earned media. Those that share the deal with their Facebook friends are effectively participating in the According to them, it’s your content, shared by your customers through email, blogs, and the social web. You can buy as many banner ads as you want, but when your visitors share your message for you… that’s earned media. It’s powerful, it’s growing, and it’s everywhere.

There we go. Maybe I’m so into it because I love reading and Chapters is better at delivering books than Amazon. Oh, and it’s Canadian. Didn’t think I’d ever get to this, but I’m heavy into Canadiana lately. But that’s for another blog post.

Self-Made Miró

Recently I read a fantastic biography of Joan Miró, “Miró: The Life of a Passion” by Lluis Permanyer. During my visit to the Miró Foundation in Barcelona’s Parc de Montjuïc I discovered a lot about Miró. I never knew he produced some of the works that I found. In my 2008 notes I wrote “check out his hair pursued by two planets AND letters and numbers attracted by a spark”. I remember the wonderful balance between objects in the paintings, between tension and sweet resolve. And the blinding building, the white mixing into unbearable starlight piercing the eyes. Sunglasses futile.

To get back to the book. I am amazed by his determination, willpower, and confidence in self. Many people didn’t believe in him, including his own father. He struggled with poverty, with unacceptance, but ultimately, he remain loyal to himself, true to heart and never stopping.

Miró had a vigorous routine, he was not a social animal, he worshipped work, he was with the same woman throughout his whole life, he always did the right thing. I understand it’s difficult, and I know it’s some paralyzing. I’m in awe. You can and should build yourself. Make yourself. There is only one life, why not stick to your guns. If Joan could get through all the hardships, wars and persecution, so can we get ahead in our comfortable lives.

Look. Miró’s routine around 1934:

At six o’clock he got up, washed and had coffee and a few slices of bread for breakfast; at seven he went into the studio and worked non-stop until twelve, when he stopped to do an hour of energetic exercise, like boxing or running; at one o’clock he sat down for a frugal but well-prepared lunch, which he finished off with a coffee and three cigarettes, neither more nor less; then he practised his ‘Mediterranean yoga’, a nap, but for just five minutes; at two he would receive a friend, deal with business matters or write letters; at three he returned to the studio, where he stayed until dinner time at eight o’clock; after dinner he would read for a while or listen to music. All told, an inflexible routine which he imposed on himself faultlessly and recognized as necessary to ‘keep fit’ as a painter.

From the same book:

“Miró told me that he used to go to bed very early, and never without meditating conscientiously on what he was to do the next day: this helped him to concentrate his attention and to attack his work with dizzying vitality early the next morning.”

Absence and Literature

For the n-th time, I am back in a Terminator-like fashion. There’s been a lot of exciting developments and changes; as always! In my modest experience, people stop writing in blogs when life becomes a whirlwind of excitement or enchanting and intimate events that are better kept secret. Or they stop writing when life gets so rough and tough that the only modes of expression are profanities in a personal diary or one’s mind. Maybe Twitter.

Point is, there are several new things that are on my mind. For example, I’ve become seriously obsessed with Vladimir Nabokov and am on a mission to read all of his books, in English or Russian. The love affair started with one of those bluesy days courtesy of my sprained ankle (I enthusiastically jumped up and down the stairs in my house, and slipped), when, after having finished dinner with Vaneska, I wandered into a BMV Bookstore in the Annex. There lay Pnin. The Literary Encyclopedia considers Pnin to be the most accessible of Nabokov’s works. “It is a campus novel that concerns the misadventures of Timofey Pavlovich Pnin, a Russian émigré whose struggles with America and its language make him a figure of fun at Waindell, the (fictitious) university were he teaches Russian.”

As a Russian myself, I was very curious to read about the professor; and then there is an issue of memory, and language barriers, and foreigner’s view on the American life. Basically, everything about Pninian adventures breathed excitement, humour, sadness and vibrant imagery. Not once but at least a dozen times have I burst out laughing in public places while reading Pnin. Nabokov’s descriptions of professor’s English pronunciation, his excellent memory, phenomenal knowledge of literature and history, and the grouchy relations with some of his university colleagues all contribute to an engrossing read. Do yourself a favor, GO GET THE BOOK!

And now I’m reading Lolita. I find that, among those who read, this book signifies some rite of passage, coming of age type of a thing, on par with having a puppy, participating in beer gardens in university, backpacking across Europe, having a long distance relationship and possibly failing your first university midterm. The novel evokes the “Aaah, hehe” response from those who are familiar with it. But more on Lolita in the next installment of my blog saga

Update: Wow, I totally made a spelling mistake in the blog title. I wrote “abscence”, not absence. Yikes! Fixed now.

Spring Words and Prime Numbers

I’ve never looked forward to spring as much as I have this year. Using the left side of my brain, I can deduce that it has something to do with my age. Most of my older friends always rejoiced about spring when I couldn’t care less what season it was; now I feel their joy. It’s sort of like the feeling you get when you’re about to write all your exams and burst into summer vacation.

The book I read last week reminded me of the more subdued version of that feeling – the quiet joy, the fleeting happiness you feel when noticing the most beautiful details of our lives. The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa is about memory and math. It’s about kindness and perseverance, family and understanding. What got my attention, of course, was the role mathematics played in telling this poignant story. Set in 1992, it is about a new housekeeper assigned to the brilliant professor whose short-term memory lasts only 80 minutes as a result of a serious car crash that happened in1975. His memory stops at that time, and he resorts to writing notes and attaching them to his suit. The housekeeper is a patient and kind woman who finds professor’s math trivia interesting. So does her son. I won’t jump into details of the novel, but I highly recommend this book for your spring reading list. It is the kind of story that makes one’s heart clench at the sight of tiny, unnoticable things of our daily lives; it makes you appreciate the present moment (try imagining only having 80 minutes of memory!); and it may even cause you to entertain the thought of eternal love.

Literary Escapades

“Equal parts biting satire on neo-Russian consumerism, drug-fuelled muckabout, sci-fi adventure, love story, literary in-joke and mystico-shamanic treatise on the nature of enlightenment. Disruptive, transporting and very funny, it’s one of his best.” – The Daily Telegraph

I started reading Victor Pelevin’s (more about the author) “The Sacred Book of the Werewolf” (NY Times review, read if you don’t speak Russian). I wolfed down 330 pages in two days, and I am sad to say that the book will be over today by 1pm PST. Not only is the main character a red-haired fox-woman (who looks like me on the cover of my edition), there is also an irresistible wolf, and myriad other crazy events all over Moscow and the north, from ketamine-taking guards to howling at the skull of a cow to discover oil, from thousand year old foxes hunting occult-loving English aristocrats to silver bullets. I suppose by an apt stretch of imagination, I can say it’s the 21st century Bulgakov on LSD. Something like that. The book is engrossing not only because of its characters, but also because of a healthy dose of political discussions, social issues in Russia and in the capitalist pigsty, as well as a handful of Eastern influences. Pelevin at Amazon, take a look please.

The next book I will be tackling is Dostoevsky’s “Demons”. I cannot wait. Reading Russian literature, as well as reading anything in Russian, makes me so much more susceptible to learning and taking the work seriously. It’s funny, whenever I read something in English, I take it half-heartedly, as if it was a comical thing, reading in English. To me, English is such a technical language that I cannot believe I can enjoy Jane Eyre in the original (I read it in Russian). Hence reading marketing texts and Michael Porter’s Competitive Strategy is very educational, but only in English.

Russian language is so poetic. I find the best poetry is written in that language, as well as the most obscure linguistic acrobatics are possible in that language. Love it. Reading Russian literature makes me feel so much more alive, much more… thinking. I think I understood that this April when I was reading Dostoevsky’s Humiliated and Insulted and really felt the author’s love for the less fortunate people in this world, as well as his healtfelt kindness for them. Same way with reading Pelevin these past couple of days, I felt sadder for my mother land, for my fellow Russians trapped in there, for this dirty world in general. Sigh.

My Life in a Literary Nutshell

What I do:

Confessions of an Advertising Man

What I have done:

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

What I’d like to do:

A Moveable Feast