I'm Still Looking For the Snowman

The endless quest for . . . something . . . this post is a wild ride.

The title reference is to this GREAT Jake Johannsen bit about fixing the toaster. He had no reason to believe it would be so easy to solve. There was no snowman. And yet . . . (As an aside, I still stare into the toaster until the coils get orange, which is a silly distraction.)

Life is full of distractions. Some of these are wonderful journeys of spontaneous joy. Most are near-pointless dead ends that AT BEST serve to have us fulfill them as ends in themselves giving no regard to the opportunity cost of where else we could be hunting for meaning.

I notice that the supply of toilet paper in the bathroom cabinet is down to the last roll. So I go to the cabinet in the utility room where we keep the larger stock.

Upon opening the doors I notice the doors are too close together when closed—they are rubbing at the top; a common problem with our European hinges. So I go to the garage to fetch a Phillips head screwdriver and the small ladder since this cabinet is over the refrigerator.

As I'm getting the ladder I consider if I should get the taller A-frame ladder and add to my chore activity changing the lightbulb in the kitchen that has gone out. I decline sticking with the smaller ladder.

Cabinet doors fixed I nearly forget the original purpose I'm even here. I grab a resupply of TP setting it in what will be my return path after replacing the ladder and the screwdriver. My risk of forgetfulness or distraction requires techniques like this. I could return from the garage with a totally new thought on where to go next fully forgetting the minor task of resupplying the bathroom.

Consider the analogous distraction how when writing this post I spent two minutes researching if “Phillips” in Phillips head screwdriver should be capitalized . . . notice the answer. It seems like every sentence in this post could be a parenthetical, which is kind of the point. Incidentally, I spelled parenthetical wrong (or is it wrongly? . . .) when typing this. Thank goodness for spellcheck. There is no way I could be a hobbyist-writer without it. I am a horrible speller.

I wonder how my career path would have been different in an earlier era—before tools like spellcheck (How did bloggers in the 1980s do it? . . . ). I would at the very least be relegated to slower productivity since I would need to be my own and sole editor. Perhaps I would have leaned more toward oral/in-person communication. Perhaps that would have led me more to a sales route, which might have been more lucrative.

Alternatively, I might have been forced to delegate more, which could actually push me toward leadership. Alternatively again, I might have been mired in self-doubt/censorship for sake of avoiding mistakes. So many contingent pathways . . .

But of course almost no one was their own and sole editor in their regular job. Before their was an app for that, there was a person (people) for that.

I can see how the era of secretaries was VERY helpful for men (it was almost always men back then) helping them to look better than they actually were. The secretary would polish up the boss's many flaws making them ready for showtime. This could be everything from straightening a tie to, yes, spell checking their correspondence. And how better to do that than to cut out the middleman of the boss first drafting it. Better to dictate it.

From a purely economic analysis point of view, it occurs to me that the introduction of women in the workplace (including how they might have found a comparative advantage opportunity) might have been due to a couple of factors. First, there is something to “a woman's touch/perspective”, and second, it might be easier for a man (especially in a male-dominated business society like it was in that era) to take constructive criticism from a woman—he would be earning her admiration versus being challenged by a potential rival.

At the same time this would serve to hold females back as they would be pigeonholed into the support role never seen as a potential manager. For all his flaws, Don Draper didn't allow himself to fall into this trap with Peggy. Many did, and it took a longer than desirable but arguably necessary amount of time to change it.

So eventually and unevenly the workforce began to see women as potential equals in the job market. Sometimes this was by fully bypassing the secretary route: Go to college pursuing the same degree as the men. Apply for the same job (the boss in our story above). Sometimes get it. Usually not. At least at first. Then finally more and more.

Still, there were lots of real-world Dons who allowed themselves to find and accept the Peggys of the world well before that long evolution played out—giving openings for women to start at an entry level that was not a hard-capped opportunity set (before it was glass, the ceiling was fully opaque).

That was obviously good. It opened up opportunities for both employers and employees. It was an increase in specialization by way of extension of the market.

So did technology set us back by ending the secretary job as we knew it? Set us back is the wrong framework, a bad question at its heart. Technology changed the world. Change is tough. This was undoubtedly a rough adjustment. But there were net gains to be had—just as there will be as AI will take away some roles and create others as it develops. Some of these roles can be somewhat foreseen, predicted. Many others will hit us like a ton of bricks. Creative destruction working its magic yet again.

Okay, I'm back. Yeah, I know how publishing works and that you didn’t know I was gone. It is just that I had reached a dead end (. . . or was it a desirable destination brought about through emergent exploration?). Regardless, I took the opportunity to take out the trash.

That isn’t a metaphor. I was literally taking the trash out, which means from the kitchen through the garage with all of its many distractions (some desirable projects . . . not right now want-to-dos . . . and tedious need-to-dos) and then out to the alley.

In my yard I have a bad habit of looking down too much. I’m looking for weeds, things out of place or needing tending, and other distractions. It is “too much” because I am not doing gardening right now. I’m taking trash to the alley and then trying to get back to what I was doing.

Sure enough I find quite a few. I see some early shoots of the amazingly aggressive trumpet vine that I fight constantly. (Yes, I felt compelled to look that up. I was wondering if that name was correct and if it should be capitalized. Thinking back to the editor tangent above, Hildy would have known.¹)

So I pluck the vines. Both of them in the alley and two more in the back of the yard. BTW, I’m proud of myself for getting better at overcoming pedantic obstacles like a need to always write proper sentences. There are several in this post that lack the necessary subject-verb completion. I thank David Friedman for this as he has always made effective use of it.

My need to look up more is a metaphor as well as a literal desire. This time somehow I pulled myself out of the yard and back inside, upstairs to the computer. I’m not always so successful.

Looking up while in the garden or elsewhere will keep me from distractions, but it will also help me see the forest for the trees. And to not get caught stepping over dollars to pick up pennies (an aphorism I realize now doesn’t quite work for my point about looking up). “Raise your gaze” is a very worthwhile maxim. It works for everything from focus on the big picture to take the high road.

And it challenges me in my garden and elsewhere to think about outsourcing. “But I like tending to my garden,” I hear myself protest. Yes, but, do you like it enough to sacrifice what else you could be doing? Like always, the question is: at what cost?

Well, it is hard to say. I am definitely not wealthy enough to hire a daily gardener who would keep the grounds in tip-top condition. At some point I either raise my gaze above the weeds ignoring them or I settle for the occasional distraction dealing with them brings . . . more likely a combination.

Still, here we are paragraphs in from my return to the computer, and I cannot stop thinking about the outdoor projects I want to do, need to do, and am supposed to be doing this weekend. How to break out of the funk?

The bigger picture as I raise my gaze is to make meta to-do item for when I’m actually outside today . . . or tomorrow . . .

I need to ask myself is it worth it? Not life itself—this is not that kind of post. Also I don’t mean having a well-kept outside garden and yard in and of itself, although I must be open to where this open line of questioning might lead. Just is this project worth it—for each specific project. (e.g., Having a rock fountain—I have four—that requires maintenance. And doing that work myself versus outsourcing.)

Who should trim the hedges and pluck those weeds in the flowerbeds? I already wisely outsource mowing the yard with all that it entails. I am very fortunate to have found dependable, affordable, and quality help for those tasks. If not for that crew, I would have to consider my options, which might (should?) include converting the damn thing into a more easily maintained rock/plant garden.

Swimming pools are great, but the joys of swimming and aesthetic appeal has to cover the cost of ownership. That cost is steep. They dependably break. The meter is always running. Electricity to power pumps. Water to refill. Gas/electricity to heat/cool. And there is the need to clean them. Some of this maintenance is gross. All of it costs time even if you outsource.

Pool owners face make/buy decisions: use a service or do it yourself. Look up one day and you realize how little actual swimming goes on anymore and how few Instagram shots you’ve posted of your envious backyard. So you fill it in with dirt and move on. Or at least you should.

I don’t have a pool. I’d like to have one (I think), and someday maybe I will. If I do, I hope I don’t eventually need to fill it in. But if I do need to fill it in, I hope to have the good judgement to bite the bullet and do so . . . including hiring someone else to run the excavator.

The decision to have a pool along with the consequent decisions of how to maintain it as with the yard and as with so many things well beyond the homeownership realm are all pathway decisions. They are forks in the road.

With pathway decisions there are direct and often big implications for your life in choosing to go one way or the other. These decisions require planning, which always fails, but is nonetheless necessary.

Distractions in life are bumps along the road. They are frictions, but they can also lead to serendipitous (yep, needed spellcheck again) new opportunities opening up new pathways or simply improving existing ones.

From a programing standpoint spellcheck is a distraction. It both uses computer processing bandwidth and steals away the thought process of the writer when it is activated—that little red squiggle screams, “STOP THINKING, YOU MADE A MISTAKE, THIS IS WRONG!!!” But that little distraction cost comes with a giant benefit—it allows us to look smarter and more effectively communicate all without the more expensive help of an editor/secretary.

Where distraction cost is most destructive is when we behave as if the distractions are ends in themselves letting them lead the way. The purpose of replacing the toilet paper is not to fix the cabinet doors to see the full trashcan on the way back with the toilet paper to pick the weeds to . . . where was I?

In the extreme this pathway of running around finding/doing to-dos eventually is just rearranging the deck chairs—pointless and ultimately deadly (get to a lifeboat! or better yet steer the ship before the danger).

There is another, lesser, but still important cost. Behaving as if we can/should fix every problem leaves many problems, important problems, unsolved and others not fully fixed.

Some problems need to wait their turn. This is tough since “the problem is right here and I am here right now”.

Some problems need to be outsourced. This too is tough—Jake is bigger than the toaster after all.

Some problems should be ignored—perhaps toughest, I know. Not all problems are worth fixing. And some “problems” aren’t problems at all—none of us are impeccable problem diagnosticians.

Refilling the toilet paper and taking out the trash are necessary problems to solve, but they are just frictions. Bumps along the pathway. If I spend too much time on them, I’ll never see past their endless call. I will fall victim to their pursuit. And often I will fruitlessly chase down solutions I cannot reach seeking ends not worthy of reaching.

I’ve got to quit looking for the snowman.

1. Yes, for those REALLY paying attention, that is a reversal in the roles since Hildy is not the editor . . . but she would have known and Walter would not have.