Motivation Revisited

 

Motivation is a recurring theme in this blog.  How to rev it up?  How to sustain it?  How to take advantage when it peaks.  How to compensate for the inevitable valleys.

Sure, there are motivational quotes, aphorisms, allegories, and any number of thesauric synonyms for quotes.  These can be put on wall posters or cards you can carry around in your wallet.  The can be kilned onto coffee mugs or etched onto any number of desktop tchotchkes.  We can look at them every day.  We can make a ritual of reading a favorite one or several of these each morning over a first cup.

Of course, not all these quotes and aphorisms appeal to everyone.  It is personal.  I know there are probably people who don’t need such things to fuel their motivation.  These lucky folks are naturally centered, rooted, and their motivation is embedded in their philosophy and lifestyle.  Are they everywhere?  Or are they unicorns?  It matters not.  I can say with great certainty that I am not one of these folks.  My motivation flows from peaks to valleys of random heights and depths with the duration of each peak, valley, and the times between them being even more random. 

Motivation and procrastination, at least for me, go hand in hand.  I have developed a deep rooted well-refined habit of procrastination, putting things off, and postponement.  I want to say that I am really good at it.  My motivation comes from waiting until as late as possible to get something done.  When is the last possible moment I can start a task or assignment, work furiously, and get it done on-time.  I see the same in most of my students.  We have trained ourselves to get stuff done with the intense focus and adrenalated frenzy of organized chaos that is bred from chronic procrastination. 

This modus operandi works for most work-related tasks; the short term kind that with deadlines of a few days, a few weeks, or even a month or two.  It is not good for long-term, multi-year, tasks, or projects.  This explains in part why project management is not for everyone.

I recently ran across a great motivational quote on Facebook.  It was not attributed to anyone.  It really resonated with me. 

In 6 months, you will have 6 months of excuses, or 6 months of progress.  The choice is yours!

 It is so… obvious.  It is a huge duh!  It is the Nike slogan:  Just do it.  It is a sort a rephrasing of the well-known Yoda adage, “Do or do not. There is no try.”  It is self-determination.  It is dedication.  It goes hand in hand with another core belief of mine, “Knowing never equals doing.”  I am, after all, a way better knower than doer.

Will this new motto or tenet, this 6 month challenge thing, be the motivational catalyst that helps me master long term planning and achievement of goals?  It makes me think of another core belief:

The chief cause of failure and unhappiness is trading what we want for what we want at the moment. - Suprina Berenyi

 I am not sure another quote will result in the transformation.  It does add to the knowledge base… but there is still the doing.  We will see at the end of 6 months and in day-to-day increments until then.

The Ever-Changing Climate Change Conundrum

 

Global warming is often in the news.  While it seems to me that most folks now believe it is a real thing, there are still deniers around.  The scientific perspective, to the chagrin of many, keeps evolving and seemingly towards the more dire.

This summer, the Midwest and Northeast of the US, and of course Eastern Canada, suffered from the poor air quality, haziness, and the faint odor of burning wood or leaves.  This was due to the huge fires raging in the Eastern Provinces of Canada.  Depending on the wind direction, the fires have made the air quality in American cities, from New York to Chicago, amongst the worst in the world.

For years, we have been hearing about global warming, climate change, the thirty year drought in the Western US, and their role in the increase in frequency and intensity of wildfires.  It was easy for anyone paying attention to attribute the two month long Canadian wildfires to climate change. 

On June 13 2023, The Wall Street Journal had an article:  Canadian Fires Signal New Frontier in Climate Change.  From the article:

“The pattern of a rapid onset of drought, considerable wildfire and then air quality impacts associated with it are all consistent with global warming,” said Justin Mankin, a climate scientist at Dartmouth College, and co-lead of the drought task force at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “This is a pattern we’ve seen in the West.” 

On the same was another article, Canadian Wildfires Came From Rotten Luck, Not Climate Change:  Canadian Wildfires Came From Rotten Luck, Not Climate Change.  Rotten luck?  Not climate change?  The author of this article, Clifford Mass is a professor of atmosphere sciences at the University of Washington.  He acknowledged Quebec has experienced a 2 degree Fahrenheit increase over the past fifty years.  His perspective is the following:

The recent intense New York smoke event is a good illustration of the underlying origins of many extreme environmental and weather events. The atmosphere is a chaotic system, dominated by random natural variability. Such variability is like a game of cards—rarely, by the luck of the draw, one is dealt a full house or a straight flush. Climate change’s effects on weather are relatively small compared to random variations inherent in a hugely complex system.

How could both of these articles, with headlines that give somewhat opposite messages, be in the same newspaper on the same day?  No wonder people are confused by the science of climate change.  We experienced the same thing during the Covid Pandemic.  People wanted simple answers that explain what is going on and what should be done.  We needed more ventilators at the onset.  Then we learned that ventilators increased deaths rather than reduce them.  Science learned and adapted.  Many people were confused.  The void from the confusion was easily filled by the  pseudo-science and wishful thinking of politicians and social media influencers. 

Professors Mankin and Mass both make excellent points.  They agree on the temperature change of 2 degrees Fahrenheit.  The are both looking at patterns.  The article in which Mankin was quoted noted that “an expanding range of insect pests that are making forests more susceptible to fire…”  This makes sense and no doubt a contributor to the fires.  The question is how much of a contributor percentage wise?  Mass’s conclusion appeals to me even more.  There is a lot of variables in the complex system that is geography, ecology, and climate.  These variables are mostly stochastic which complicate any models even more.

 

Addendum:  I could have just stopped with the last paragraph.  But, there was another article I read this week in Scientific American:  Rampant Groundwater Pumping Has Changed the Tilt of Earth’s Axis.  The subtitle of the article is “Human depletion of groundwater has shifted the global distribution of water so much that the North Pole has drifted by more than four centimeters per year.”

This passage in the article illustrates a bit how scientific thought evolves:

Shifts in water masses can cause smaller but still measurable changes in the tilt of Earth’s axis. Until recently, researchers thought that these water-driven effects would be caused mainly by the melting of glaciers and ice caps. But when Seo and his collaborators tried to model the Earth’s water content to account for how much the axis has tilted, they could not fully explain the data. Adding the effects of changes in surface reservoirs did not help, says Seo, “so I just scratched my head and said, ‘probably one effect is groundwater’”.

Note that quotes are from Ki-Weon Seo, a geophysicist at Seoul National University.

While fires are not as prevelant in the Western US this year due to the voluminous snows in the Rockies this past winter.  But, if the growth in population and farming in the west consumed more water than was being replenished… um… wouldn’t it make sense that ground water was depleted creating a drought and conditions for higher frequencies of wildfires.  It turns out it also contributes to axis tilt of the earth.  Is this tilting of the earth temporary or permanent?  What are the positive or negatives consequences of this?  Basically, we don’t quite know yet.  But, we are learning.

It is clear that the scientific method alive, well, and in-play here.  There was one theory supported by evidence and analysis.  New data and analysis had an expert in geophysics scratching his head and provided evidence that the prevailing theory might not sufficiently explain the physical phenomena.  As a result, the theory is revised and will be vetted through the collection of even more data and analysis. 

The more complex the system, the more often this problem happens.  We learn by bits and bytes and thus are continually cycling through the scientific method. 

Everyone is exposed to this in like 5^th grade but I have a theory that most of us never really full learn how it is works in practice. 

It is just a theory.

Hokas - Pocus

 

For my recent birthday, my sister, Nancy, gave me a gift card for the express purpose of buying a pair of Hoka shoes.  Being a renown track coach at the college level, she was an aficionado of the famed brand that began in France.  She believed that their Gaviota model was perfect for me to help alleviate the pain from my arthritic knees, improve my gait, and help with my overpronation (inward roll).  Per the Hoka website, “The Gaviota 4 contains our J-Frame(TM) technology designed to prevent excessive inward roll, or overpronation, without overcorrecting your gait.”

People that wear Hokas really love them.  They really love them.  They will tell you so with minimal to no prompting.  They say they are the most comfortable shoes they have ever worn and may even say it over and over again using different superlative adjectives and imagery.  A significant number brag that they have more than one pair.  They wear them for running, walking, recovery (from running), and casually.  It is almost as if their lives revolve around their Hokas.  I am certain when I post this, there will certainly have people raving about their Hokas in the comments.

I mostly see people wearing them casually.  They are very easy to notice.  The have very thick, spongy, soles in all white or white and pastels.  Like Nike before it, the distinctive Hoka logo is very visible and immediately recognizable.  The shoes come in a variety of colors trendy and cool colors. 

Other shoe companies now offer models that are Hoka like.  I have seen Nikes, Addidas, New Balance, Merrill, and others.  I even bought a pair of Merrells because they were on sale and had a Hoka like look about them.  They were good shoes nothing like the Hoka testimonials I had been hearing about. 

I went to the Deerfield location of Fleet Feet to get fitted and purchase my Hoka Gaviotas.  The store, as evident by their name, caters to serious runners.  Everyone that works there looks as if they may have run a marathon in the past few weeks or about to run one in the next month.  They were with wearing Hokas or the Nike equivalents.  The young sales associates working there for the summer are all college students who are on the track or cross-country teams.  My guy was one of the summer workers. We related more that he was a business major and that I was a professor of business more.

As it turns out, they did not have any Gaviotas in my large shoe size.  Like many chain stores today, we were able to place and order online and have them mailed to my house.  I was not at all daring in the color scheme and went with the simple black and white which were exactly the same colors of the aforementioned Merrells.

A few days later the shoes arrived.  I open the shipping carton and then the shoe box.  I held my new Hokas.  I might have even raised them to the sky like Mufasa raised the newborn Simba to the sky in the Lion King.  I then, finally, tried them on.  I tied the laces and took my first Hoka steps.  Frankly, I was a little let down.  They were certainly cushy and comfortable.  But based on all the hype and hyperbole of all the Hoka fans who have raved of their life changing transformative Hoka experiences, I expected something… well… more than I experienced.  I thought I might hear a fanfare of angelic trumpets as I took my first step.  I thought I might be overcome with a surge of enlightenment and insight into the mysteries of life.

Oh well.  I was still happy to have them.

After wearing them for a few weeks, I have noticed a difference.  There has been a modest improvement in both gait and ease of walking.  I like my Hokas.  I will wear them often and give a positive review if asked about them.  Rest assured though that I will not promise they are anything more than a good, comfortable, well cushioned, and supportive lightweight pair of shoes.

This Side of Seventy?

 

My very cool DC Birthday Cake

On June 25^th, I turned 70 years old.

The festivities began in Washington, DC with our family there the weekend of June 10^th (Coat of Arms).

My actual birthday fell on a Sunday this year and we celebrated over four days with family.  My aunt and uncle flew in from Boston.  It was their anniversary and we celebrated that.  My mother, aunt, and sister drove in from Detroit.  It was special having them here for the festivities.  There were like five other June birthdays.  We celebrated those as well.   We were at a Greek restaurant on Friday evening, at our house on Saturday night, at an Armenian Picnic in Wisconsin on Sunday, and on Monday we wrapped it Chicago style by gathering for dinner at Portillo’s. 

The relatives that could not be here all called me.  There were hundreds of texts, posts, and messages on social media.  I was overwhelmed and felt very blessed by the outpouring of well wishes and birthday greetings.

Thanks to everyone who reached out.  I greatly appreciate it.

The conception of this blog and the title of it, This Side of Fifty, is tied to my 50th birthday. 

I began writing on a daily basis on June 25, 2002 when I turned 49.  I expected to document my 50^th year with wit, humor, and wisdom.  The goal was to pen a best seller and become a full-time writer. 

That did not happen.  The writing only had scant moments of wit and humor.  As for wisdom?  I didn’t detect any.  Needless to say, there was no book.  But I got into the habit of writing each and every day.  I have enjoyed the daily writing and it has been most fulfilling.

In January 2003, I learned about Aram Kevorkian, a renowned lawyer in Paris, and his brilliant Kevorkian Newsletter.  Aram had passed on December 20, 2003.  A friend of mine who was a childhood friend of Aram’s, sent me a few examples of his Newsletter.  Immediately, I knew that this is what I was going to do with my writing.  I was going to write a monthly letter.  There was no intention to take over where Aram left off or no assumption that my monthly letter was going to measure up to his in terms of quality or intellect.  I just loved the idea of a monthly letter to friends and family.  The content and style of the letter was my own.  In my own way, I wanted to emulate and pay homage to Aram Kevorkian a fellow I wish I could have met.

A commuter friend of mine, with a good measure of marketing acumen, suggested the name of the letter - This Side of Fifty:  A Monthly Letter of Musings and Meanderings.  I sent the letter out by email on a monthly basis until January 2009, when I transformed the monthly letter into a blog.  I kept the name and subtitle even though it is no longer a letter and I post more than once a month.  I am in my 20^th year of musing and meandering.  It has been a most rewarding project.

When I turned 60, I thought that I might rename the blog as This Side of Sixty.  That thought lasted only a fast second.  There was no need for rebranding, and I was still on the same side of fifty after all anyway.  The same applies to turning 70; I am still on the same side of fifty.

Thanks again to one and all for the wonderful birthday wishes!

Memoirs

 

I know of at least four people, around my age, that have written or are currently writing their memoirs.  I have already read one of them and look forward to the second that is currently in production.

Memoirs… hmmm… is this a trend?

I Googled “boomers writing memoirs.”  There is some buzz about folks my age writing memoirs.  Most of the websites talking about it were vanity presses that all seemed to be encouraging the trend.  They provided tips on what to do, how to do, and what rabbit holes to avoid.  Mostly, the vanity presses were most certainly offering to help publish the memoirs of a generation.

Why not write a memoir? Recording one’s thoughts for some small familial audience is a good thing.  There is no doubt some satisfaction in recording one's special memories, people who were major influences, a nemesis here and there, career achievements, hobbies, dreams achieved, and those that weren’t quite realized.  There would be reflections on one’s parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, favorite teachers, and mentors.  How does one view their own life?

Photos?  Sure.  Black and white snapshots from our youth must be included.  Our high school graduation photos are also a must.  Work photos?  Awards and achievements?  College, wedding, children, their weddings, grandchildren photos?  Absolutely.  All of the above.

As memoirs are crafted and published, everyone can sing their own version of Sinatra’s “I did it my way.”  We are each unique snowflakes after all.

Here are some questions I would address and like to see how others respond and reflect on our times.

Were we hippies?  Hippie wannabes?  Defiant preppies during those weird and turbulent times?  Did we go to Vietnam or did fate, luck, or whatever you want to call have other plans for us.  How did we navigate the generation gap, the sexual revolution, and all the movements from civil rights and women’s rights to gay liberation?  Is our music really that much better as we all profess than any generation since or before?

Did we change as we aged?  Did we sell out and become the man?  Did we become the establishment accumulating more things than any generation that ever lived?  What do we think about the crazy political polarization?  Climate change? 

I did try to get my peers to reflect on these questions in a spinoff of this blog.  I called it, Songs to Aging Children in homage to Joni Mitchell.  The idea for this came from this blog piece:  Was it the Weirdest of Times? I was very excited and truly believed it could be something special with people writing their own stories, their min-memoirs.  Alas and alack, the project was still born.  Only two friends wrote their stories.  I was a little disappointed.  Truth be told, it failed because I had no real marketing plan, probably because I have no marketing acumen. 

It might have just been a premature idea.

After realizing the writing of memoirs by my generation has become a trend, I had a nanosecond of wondering if I was missing out.  Maybe I should be writing a memoir myself.  Then, there was a big resounding “duh” in my head and realized that at least a third of this blog I have been writing for twenty years is a memoir. 

Some Really Good Writing

      I read two pieces this week in the Wall Street Journal in which the writing really impressed me.  One was in the Saturday, June 17 paper, by Dan Neil the automotive critic in a weekly column called the Rumble Seat.  His article, Maserati Mounts a Comeback, Modestly.  The second article, Trump’s Indictment May Pull Us Back From the Brink, June 13^th was a June 13^th Op-Ed piece in a column titled Free Expression by Gerard Baker. 

At times, I get to think that I am a pretty good writer.  When I get too full of myself, the universe has ways of tempering the ego swell.  One certain way is to have a phone call with Ara.  He has a masterful, yet caring, way of bringing me down to earth or even lower.  Another sure fire way to deflate the ego balloon is to read masterful writers.

One that I read often is Dan Neil.  I try to read every one of his columns.  I find his reviews very entertaining.  His use of language is sophisticated and most impressive.  Here is an example from the review of the Maserati Grecale Modena.  In the paragraph before this one, he noted that the Grecale, a compact crossover, is the priciest in its class that includes “the Porsche Macan, Mercedes-Benz GLC and BMW X3, among others.”

Why, you may wonder? Call it the vowel tax. Just about everybody who comes this way has marveled at the weird stickiness of Maserati—a one-word tone poem, energized by those sizzling consonants. This phonetic pixie dust still casts a spell, despite decades of failed commerce. All most people know is that it sounds expensive. Maserati charges accordingly. 

 Neil deftly filets Maserati without any gore or blood.  The reason I am a devoted reader of his is because of gems like this.  I often read passages of his over a few times because they are so cleverly delicious or because it takes a few readings for me to fully process the subtle richness of his jabs or praise.  I tend to like the jabs more.

Neil has been an auto columnist since 1991.  He has been an auto critic for The News & Observer in Raleigh, North Carolina, the Los Angeles Times, and now the Wall Street Journal.  He is the only auto columnist to win the Pulitzer Prize for criticism.  The Pulitzer folks made note of his “one-of-a-kind reviews of automobiles, blending technical expertise with offbeat humor and astute cultural criticism.”

I am not nearly as devoted to Gerard Baker as I am to Neil.  He has been in the editorial ranks of the Wall Street Journal since 2009.  He was Editor in Chief from 2013-2018.  Since then, he has been an Editor at Large.  He is educated at Corpus Christi College of Oxford University.  Here is the paragraph that most impressed me from his column on Trump’s Indictment

If you perused Twitter, sampled a cross-section of our leading newspapers, or dipped randomly in and out of the ever-rising tower of Babel on cable, talk radio and podcasts in the past few days, you were given a vivid demonstration of the binary principle on which our political discourse now operates. You have the impression that approximately half the people of this country regard the federal indictment of Donald Trump as the greatest affirmation of republican democracy since the surrender at Appomattox, while the other half view it as the greatest abuse of power since George III tried to levy a stamp tax on his colonial subjects.

In my view, Baker brilliantly sums up, in one sentence, the polarization in our politics. 

Both these examples come from a daily, albeit international, newspaper.   I admire Journal’s coverage of the world of commerce.  As for the Op Eds, whether I agree or disagree with the views of the paper, it is always well written and thought provoking.

Worrying About America

Knight Foundation

     During the Great Recession, I had written a fair amount the “new normal” and how coming out of the recession the United States was going to be a different country.  By different, I meant something lesser.  If the 20^th Century was the American Century, I was saying that in the 21^st Century, which looked like it was going to be the Chinese Century, we would be more like the United Kingdom (the 19^th Century was theirs) or maybe even Spain or Italy.

I am not sure if that prophecy will manifest in terms of the countries, I thought we might evolve into.  I am sure that we are something lesser than we were.  At a minimum, we are something less than what i believed was our potential.

There are many reasons for this.  My go-to theory was that after World War II, we were the only major industrial country whose manufacturing infrastructure was still intact.  As a result, our economy thrived and the middle class grew and was living so well the idea of the American Dream became more of right than an idea.  The recession from those prosperous times began, in my little mind, with the civil unrest of the 1960s, the Vietnam War, and the return to manufacturing competitiveness of Germany and Japan in the 60s and 70s.  Later in the 80s and 90s, we exported a lot of manufacturing to China.  The US is now a country the is polarized between the coastal states and the interior states, urban and rural areas, conservatives and progressives.  We furthermore are immersed in endless arguments about abortion, gender affirming health care of minors, and other issues that are mostly rooted in basic beliefs where one side will never convince the other to change their point of view.

There are theories floated around about us being manipulated by the deep state that just wants to control us or foreign governments that want to undermine our democracy.

As a result, the middle class was squeezed economically.  Through this all, we held on the American Dream.  The Great Recession and then Covid squeezed the middle class more to the point where in the polarized state where ex-presidents are being indicted and the Capital Building was stormed and breeched by a mob upset with results of the last presidential election. 

On the Trump arrest and arraignment for the document in the classified document case, Senator Ted Cruz stated:

I believe it was an abuse of power, and it continues the pattern of weaponizing the Department of Justice and the FBI that has been so brazen under the Biden administration. You know, in the history of our nation, 230 years, we have never seen one administration trying to prosecute and put in jail their predecessor. This has never happened. This is something that banana republics do. It’s something that dictatorships do. It’s not something that America does.

I am not a fan of Ted Cruz, but he is right when he talks about us behaving the way banana republics and dictatorships do.  He is right about weaponizing or politicizing institution government departments and institutions.  Both sides have weaponized governmental institutions.  Given our polarization, this precedent could easily become the norm when a President from the other party is elected.  If the Republics win in 2024, they will undoubtedly prosecute Hunter Biden and maybe Joe if they can make a connection.  It is a worrisome precedent we are starting. 

While we are not colluding or unified in these efforts, the result is that we are essentially working together to become something lesser.

A Coat of Arms

 

I had a project either for school or Cub Scouts way back when I was around 9 or 10 years old.  It was to create a coat of arms or family crest.  I was not really sure what to do.  I was not sure what to put on it.  I recall asking my Mother for ideas, she thought it was a exciting project and we ended it up doing it together.  Mom’s guidance was perfect and provided a great little lesson in family history and lore.   

She suggested we use the same shield as on the Armenian Youth Federation (AYF) logo because of the importance of organization in our family. The AYF is where my parents met and fell in love.  We used a ruler and a pencil to create the shield which included three horizontal stripes to bear the red, blue, and orange of the Armenian flag thus hammering home the importance of our Armenian heritage.  Preparing that coat of arms was one of the seminal moment in my being tied to and proud of my Armenian heritage. 

Instead of swords or arms, we crossed a pen in an ink bottle with a shovel.  The shovel represented our farming past.  The last real farmer in the family was my Father’s maternal grandfather, Nishan Asoian, who had a farm in Andover, MA in a community with his wife’s, Elmas nee Loosigian, brothers.  The pen was for the family love of education and writing as exemplified by the aforementioned Nishan, my paternal grandfather Aram, and his brother Rouben.  We had Mount Ararat behind in the top part of the shield between the pen and the shovel.

I was proud of the work we did on that project.

Over the years, I am not sure what became of that Coat of Arms.  I thought I saved it but with the passage of time, I am not sure where it might be and have assumed that it is lost.  The memory of creating it and the impact that simple project on me as lasted.  I am very grateful for that which in retrospect is more important than the piece of paper.

This in itself could have sufficed as a blog post, but it only serves as background for this one.  At the time of this writing, my birthday is a week away.  It is a milestone birthday as it ends in a zero.  Given this is the twentieth year of writing This Side of Fifty, well, you can guess my age.

This past weekend, we were in Washington, DC visit my son, daughter in-law, and their three children, three of my five grandchildren.  We celebrated four birthdays:  Mine (June 25^th), my daughter in-law’s father (June 25^th), my eldest grandson (June 26^th), and my only granddaughter (June 27^th).  It is a very nice cluster of four birthdays, and it is always a joy to celebrate them together.  This year we did it two weeks early as it was the only time that fit all our schedules.

My son and daughter in-law presented me with a unique and most valued gift:  a new Coat of Arms.  They put it on note cards, table top flags, and a couple of banners.  It is perfect gift for me, and I greatly appreciate it.

There is a shield with an Armenian eternity symbol in the center.  The gears in the top quadrant represent my engineering background and career as well as my hometown, Detroit, the Motor City.  There is an oud in the bottom quadrant.  There is a pomegranate tree in the left quadrant, another symbol of fertility, abundance, and luck in our Armenian Heritage.  There is a book, a pen, and ruler in the right quadrant.  The pen because I write, the book represents my academic side and being a life-long learner, and the ruler is for my mathematics education.  To the left of the shield is the lion of Armenia.  Asiatic or Persian lions once inhabited Armenia and is one of our national symbols.  The flower is the Armenian Poppy (Papaver lateritium) which is native to the Armenian Highlands.  The other side of the shield is a Michigan Wolverine and the state flowers of the states I have lived in: Massachusetts, Michigan, Connecticut, and Illinois.  Above the shield is, of course, Ararat but as viewed from the West.  Below the shield is our name in a stylized Armenian script.

I couldn’t have asked or even conceived of a more meaningful and so very thoughtful gift.

I am feeling heraldic. 

Vegas Wins the Stanley Cup

     On May 25^th, I posted the following on Facebook:

It is 2023 and I have not fully processed that:

1. It is May 25th and I am watching the Stanly Cup Semi-Finals

2. The two teams in vying for the Cup are Dallas and Las Vegas

Just feeling my age.

It is now June 13^th, and I am watching Game 5 of the Finals.  It is the Las Vegas Golden Knights vs Florida Panthers.  They are playing in Las Vegas where it is 91 degrees Fahrenheit.

Hockey in mid-June.  Las Vegas vs Florida in the Stanley Cup finals.  The temperature is 91.

It is safe to say that the nineteen days since my Facebook post have not helped me fully process this phenomenon.  My mind is still in the days when there were only six teams in the NHL:  Montreal, Toronto, Boston, New York, Detroit, and Chicago.  If I think back to the 1965-66 season when I lived and died Red Wing Hockey, the regular season was only 70 games and four teams made the playoffs.  They had a semi-final and finals to determine the winner of the Stanley Cup.  The season began on October 25, 1965 and ended on May 5, 1966.  The playoffs were basically a month long from April 7^th to May 5^th.  Montreal beat my Red Wings 4-2 in games to win a second consecutive Stanley Cup Final. 

I remember the last few games of the Finals that year.  The commentators were concerned about the higher ambient temperature in the arena playing a bit of havoc with the quality of ice.  There was nary a word about the ice quality in tonight’s broadcast.  It is clear the arena HVAC and ice refrigeration technology has advanced quite nicely in 75 years.

This season, there are 32 teams in the league.  They play 82 games.  16 Teams make the playoffs.  The regular season began October 7, 2022 and ended on April 14, 2023.  The playoffs, which should conclude this evening, was two months long.

The first NHL expansion was in the 1967-68 season when the NHL doubled in size.  They added six teams:  Los Angeles, Oakland, Minnesota, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis.  Eight teams made the playoff.  I did not like the expansion, and bear in mind that I was only 14 years old.  I didn’t like the change.  I liked the “original six” team league and all the tradition that went with it.  I clearly did not understand the business side of the sporting world.  It should be noted that I was equally unhappy with baseball free agency and the merging of the NFL and AFL.

These days, as I have mentioned in other posts, I tend to watch professional sports, if I watch it all, during the playoffs.  In baseball, basketball, and hockey, that is when you really see the highest quality and most spirited play.  The long regular season, in my view, is just to pay the bills and salaries.  I am happy with a really good one to two month season.

I knew nothing about the Las Vegas Golden Knights nor the Florida Panthers.  The only player I had even heard of was Matthew Tkachuk of Florida.  As good as he is, I might have confused him with his father Keith Tkachuk.  It mattered not, I watched all five games of the Finals and they did not disappoint.  The hockey was very good and most spirited.  Vegas dominated the series but Florida fought them every inch of the way.  Tonight, Vegas was on fire and jumped to a 6-1 lead, eventually winning 9-3.  Mark Stone, the Vegas captain, scored a hat trick himself.  His first goal was a shorthanded beauty to give Vegas a 1-0 lead.  Kelly McCrimmon, the GM of Vegas, played hockey at the University of Michigan and was captain in his senior year.

Just before presenting the trophies tonight, NHL Commissioner, Gary Bettmen, spoke about what a great hockey town Las Vegas is… given the enthusiasm of the fans inside and even more outside the arena, I am inclined to agree whether I have fully processed this or not.

Once the Toothpaste is Out of the Tube

 

Because of the Pandemic, many workers, the white collar workers that could, were forced to work from home.  It was a shock at first to be certain.  There were issues with parents who had to work and also had to manage their children and their remote chaos.  Slowly, chaos of the first days subsided, the children returned to in-person school, and workers invested in better and more comfortable home offices.  People got over the “zoom fatique,” appreciated not having to commute, and began to enjoy the new normal of working from home. 

As we have declared the Pandemic over, the workers that got used to working from home actually prefer to work from home.  As some corporate leaders are trying to get people back into the office, they are finding push back from their employees.  People have adjusted their lives and lifestyles around remote working.  We all know people who have moved to more scenic, rural, or lower cost of living locales because they can and still effectively do their jobs.

I remember in the last days of my corporate life in 2007 when I would be in our division president’s office with the VP of HR and our CFO for a morning meeting.  Now and then, we would look out his window over the parking lot and they would all comment on who was coming in at 8:30, 9:00, or even 9:30.  They thought people were slacking off if they weren’t at their desks right at 8.  They were adamantly against anyone working from home.  I once raised the notion, “Wouldn’t it be OK to work from home now and then if the work still got done?”  The reaction from the rest of the leadership team was short, adamant, and a most resounding “NO!”  I never brought it up again.

It wasn’t only the company I was working at then, it was true of everyplace I ever worked.  Management wanted people in the office, at their desks, under their watchful eyes, and at their beck and call.  This made a lot of sense in the days before everyone had a laptop.  It progressively made less sense with the popularity of the internet, remote access via the cloud to the everything anyone needed to do their job, and texting/video meeting platforms.  Remote working has been possible for at least ten years, but management was not.  The Pandemic changed all that.

Now management is having a tough time reversing the trend.  Part of this is due to the employment market.  Workers can push back on management because there is still low unemployment.  They can and will find other employment if they need or choose to.  Management will have more leverage If and when unemployment increases.

There are advantages to working in an office with everyone.  The advantages are beyond just getting the job done.   There is the comradery and informal team building from people just being together all day.  It is the informal conversations, having lunch or coffee, or hanging out after work.  Trust and alliances facilitated by such interactions.  Even when socializing, work is still somehow discussed.  Younger folk that only know remote work may be missing out on this important aspect of work life.

Basically, I see a mix of work; a split between the office and working remotely.  It would be the best of both worlds.  It is not easy to put the toothpaste back in the tube.