CSotD: Brought to you in glorious Technophobia
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So I'm pretty much okay with growing old, and, no, not "older" in the chipper, gray-haired Peter-Pan jogger sense but in the sweaty, foam-flecked "past the clubhouse turn and into the stretch" sense.
I was taking a shortcut through the cemetery yesterday and noted that there are people there who were kids for the War of 1812, adults for the Mexican War and then were old folks during the Civil War and I realized that, with a decent span, you get to see a fair amount of stuff which does not qualify as "history" at the moment but later seems to have added up to just that.
My grandfather, for instance, marveled that he got to see his first automobile when he was old enough to remember it, and then lived long enough to also see man walk on the moon. And I'm beginning to understand what he was saying.
Which means that today's "Between Friends" hit me in a good moment, because, yeah, I don't want to be overwhelmed with options. In fact, I only use my phone for making phone calls. I pack a camera for taking pictures (and videos). I check my email on my computer.
And, like Kim, I may make my living hunched over a keyboard, but I'd still just as soon things didn't become so complex that I have to wade through a bunch of options to get where I want to be, or, gawdhelpus, touch the wrong thing, launch an option I didn't want and have to back all the way out again.
And the older I get, the more often and more readily I give myself permission not to want things.
And yet …
… and yet one of the reasons I don't want a smartphone (smart phone? Smart phone? SmartPhone? Whatever.) is that I might like the goddam thing. And I'd really hate that.
And, unlike Liz in today's Freshly Squeezed, I don't have enough time left in the workforce to have to worry about it.
She's only just barely joking. I think. Hey, check the ads yourself: She's not joking.
Yesterday, an artist was saying on Facebook that she's in a position where she needs to learn InDesign (a layout program) and is fretting over it, and it reminded me of a job I had back in the '90s, where I was being pressured to quit so they could hire a part-timer.
They didn't want to pay me unemployment, so they added irrelevant intern-level duties to piss me off, which included designing ads and laying out the weekly TV supplement (My actual job being to run the educational program).
One element of this policy of harassment was that they forced me to learn Quark, as well as Photoshop and Corel, which outfitted me with some really useful job skills, bless their wicked, scheming, toxic little hearts.
I wish they'd made me learn web design as well, because, as Liz says, everyone demands it, plus I could use it myself.
But the social media crap? Keep it. If my current job ended tomorrow (which it could; I'm an independent contractor), I'd only have to tap dance for four years before Social Security would kick in.
I'd rather eat dog food than spend those four years tricking people into clicking on useless, deceptive crap they don't want and certainly don't need.
Otherwise known in employment circles as "social networking."
Case in point, today's "On the Fastrack":
There was a point at which I signed up for LinkedIn because, um, well, because everyone said you need to sign up for LinkedIn.
The main result was that my much younger, much hipper cousin dropped me an email asking if I was thinking of quitting my job, which — despite the hype — is pretty much why people create a profile on LinkedIn.
The difference between LinkedIn and Match.com is that LinkedIn has convinced people who don't need it that they need it. Match.com doesn't actively recruit married people, but LinkedIn sells a lot of balloon juice to the already-employed about the importance of "networking."
And, just as some people really do find love on Match.com, I guess there are people who find really do find work at LinkedIn. And I'll bet at just about the same rate.
My only forays into Match.com produced a couple of pretty funny disaster stories and not a scintilla of sweet romance. That came in the usual places — people I met through work or church or somewhere in three dimensions.
And, simularly, when I was well and truly out of work, the jobs I got came from people I had already worked with, and who knew I needed a new gig because word spreads fast. It was called "earning a reputation" long before it involved "creating a platform" or "networking."
LinkedIn didn't invent networking. They just invented a way to monetize it.
I once questioned the value of LinkedIn in a public forum and there were several people who immediately told me how wrong I was and how valuable it is.
A little closer look revealed that they were the sort of people who make money by giving motivational speeches at rubber-egg breakfasts and by getting people to pay them to write the kinds of buzz-phrasey, fancy-pants, pre-packaged, ivory-paper resumes that, as an editor, I used to roundfile upon receipt.
Though sometimes I kept the glossy, die-cut folders.
But here's a difference between Match.com and LinkedIn: Match.com will let you go.
I deleted my LinkedIn account four or five years ago, and then, when I continued to get invitations from people, wrote to the company and demanded they scrub my information, which they then claimed to have done.
My spam folder begs to differ.
It may be that all this is, indeed, the stuff of the current job market. In which case, so what?
Because it may also be that I'm an old fogey who can remember the War of 1812, was of service age during the Mexican War and is now sitting here complaining about the Civil War and will eventually have his name on a stone past which some guy will walk and say, "That old dude must have seen a lot of history!"
In which case also "So what?"
Look: I'm not sleeping in my coffin at night for practice, and I haven't chosen a suit to be laid out in.
I'm hoping, in fact, to stick around long enough to see a lot more history, and, if it were up to me, we'd head down the home stretch and then take another lap of the track.
But perhaps not at full speed. As the philosopher wrote, "All this fussing and fighting, man, you know I sure can't stay."
That's not being old. That's being smart.
"Being old" is when you quit laughing at stuff like today's "That Is Priceless."
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