uncollected thoughts

Greetings from a muggy Sunday night in Atlanta. I just logged onto Blogger to see if I could remember my password, remember how to post. I feel like I've been in a creative drought lately. I'm ready to come out of it. Is that something one can do simply by intending it? Well, I'm here, and I'm trying.

I'm not here to write about anything in particular, just bits and pieces floating through my brain. Welcome to the blotter.

(1) I went to a funeral on Saturday for a young man I'd never met. Alex was the 22-year-old son of a woman I know through my contradance community. Alex's mother, Linda, is a petite Southern firecracker of a woman. Until Saturday, I don't think I had ever not seen her smiling. But the funeral was crushing. After a long struggle with addiction, Alex died of a drug overdose. I gather that his death was quite unexpected. He'd been in and out of recovery programs; I suppose he seemed to be making progress. And then he was gone. Linda sobbed and sobbed on Saturday. I didn't think I'd cry at the funeral, but I did, just because I hated to see Linda so sad. A mother should never have to bury a son.

(2) In a strange way, I feel oddly excited about the increase in the cost of gas. Yes, that sounds kind of sick. But being a good Socialist-hearted American, I find it interesting that we are finally starting to encounter some checks in our extravagant waste of fossil fuels. Wendell Berry wrote a splendid article in the May issue of Harper's that gets right to the issue, noting the psychological shifts that are accompanying the end of cheap oil:

…That human limitlessness is a fantasy means, obviously, that its life expectancy is limited. There is now a growing perception, and not just among a few experts, that we are entering a time of inescapable limits. We are not likely to be granted another world to plunder in compensation for our pillage of this one. Nor are we likely to believe much longer in our ability to outsmart, by means of science and technology, our economic stupidity. The hope that we can cure the ills of industrialism by the homeopathy of more technology seems at last to be losing status. We are, in short, coming under pressure to understand ourselves as limited creatures in a limited world.

I wonder sometimes what it would be like for American filling stations to sell gas at $10/gallon, like they already do in some parts of Europe. If we couldn't drive everywhere, would not our lives become significantly simpler, smaller and quieter? Yes, $10/gallon gas would necessitate some major life changes and some major inconveniences for most working Americans. But I think many of those shifts would be incredibly healthy for us in the long run.

(3) I've been working way too much lately. The financial freedom is nice. The disconnect I feel from my artistic life is not so great. I don't like who I become when I work too much. I become this machine, a hyper-productive, stressed, anxious, furious footsoldier. I continue to seek balance in this area. I miss taking photos a lot.

(4) I'm continuing to enjoy getting to know a couple of women neighbors in my apartment building. We went to Birdi's a couple of weeks ago and I had a "faketini" called the Christini Milkshake. $8.75 for vanilla vodka, white creme de cacao, Kahlua, and cream. I don't really care for elaborate drinks, but this thing was seriously delicious. I've been thinking about that drink for two weeks now. I'll try to steer the group back there and take photos next time.

(5) My older brother is spending the summer in Oregon and I miss him.

(6) I'm getting my hair cut on Tuesday and I can't wait. I haven't had it cut since March and I'm looking especially pitiful. I'm going back to the woman who did this to me — but this time we're going to have a Come To Jesus conversation before she picks up the scissors.

Thanks for reading this far. It's good to be back. Hopefully it won't be three months before I post here again.

the long apprenticeship

Whew. I had no intention of letting this blog go for so long. I've been getting adjusted to my new work schedule, and feeling more overwhelmed than usual.

What's funny about my new schedule is that I work way more than I used to. And I get paid less. If I wasn't enjoying the work so much, I think this would be called irony.

Tonight daylight saving is on my side, and I have an extra hour, and I'd like to just say hello, because I've missed writing here.

Work with my photographer friend Mark has been going pretty well. I'm looking at my time with him as a long apprenticeship where I get paid only a little -- but I get to ask a lot of questions.

I'm learning a lot. And not all of it is technical stuff. A lot of it is good life stuff.

When I started working with Mark last month, I felt pretty sure that he was a photography god. (Well, sure. I do have a tendency to idolize my creative heroes.) I was convinced that he was one of the lucky ones who was just born with a boatload of natural talent.

Now I'm changing my view. I still think he's a damned good photographer. But now I think that his success is due only in a small part to what he was born with. More of his success comes from how hard he has worked to build his craft, how he slaves away at making his photos really sparkle. The purity and clarity that I see in his finished photos isn't there straight out of the camera. It's a process, a secret sauce. He begins with strong composition. Then he makes thoughtful choices about editing, cropping, color balancing. And then things start to shine.

My work with Mark requires me to look at a lot of photos. Sometimes I have to sort through a couple thousand shots a day, making quick judgments about what stays and what goes. I have two things to say about this. First, I love getting paid to look at photos all day. Second, the editorial process is teaching me some good stuff about what makes a photo work. I can't quite verbalize what I am learning, but when you look at a couple thousand photos a day, you start to develop a pretty strong sense of what makes a photo successful. So I am tucking away good information about what I'm seeing each day. I'd like to try to start incorporating some of the ideas I'm picking up from my time at the studio in my own photography.

In the afternoon, we stop working and go downstairs to eat something. And we talk about photography. At his core, Mark is a people-watcher. He is a big fan of the work of Gary Winogrand (you may enjoy Winogrand's World's Fair, New York photo, or his spectacular 1969 image, Los Angeles, California).

We talk about Gary Winogrand a lot.

Gary Winogrand was a great photographer. Gary Winogrand also shot a ton of photos. According to this Wikipedia entry, he left behind more than 2, 500 undeveloped rolls of film when he died. That's a lot of film. He just shot all the time. If you shoot ten rolls of film a day and give the tiniest bit of attention to what you're doing, you're probably going to walk away with some very good shots over the course of your lifetime.

What I'd really like to do now is get over my fear of doing bad work. I have to remind myself that the only way to do something better is to do it badly for a while.

So much of my creative life the past couple of years has been about making a plan, hitting a wall, losing my way, falling apart for a while, and then starting over. This time around, I'm actually enjoying the process and yielding to the lessons as they come. This time I'm grateful to work my ass off for less money, grateful to learn, grateful to soak it all up like a sponge.

a few dark thoughts

Saturday again. I'm writing this from work right now, my last day of work at the photo store. I've been wanting to write more lately, but the best I can summon at the moment is a handful of disjointed thoughts.

- My job in the photography studio is going well. Of course, things go really well when I don't screw up. Yesterday, during a long day of work, I tossed a few important papers into the trash. I wasn't thinking about it. I was done with the papers, and was trying to eliminate clutter. This morning my photographer boss called me (here at work, at my other job) to ask where the papers were. I didn't know right off, and gave him a couple of places to look. He couldn't find them. I cringed over the phone as I suggested they might be in the garbage can in the kitchen, where I had tossed a few things yesterday in a flurry of activity. Of course they were there. Dripping with tomato juice, plastered with potato peels. He was angry. I felt terrible.

(Maybe this is the kind of mistake that will be funny to look back on in a year or so.)

I wonder, will be possible for me to not feel terrible for the rest of the day about this error? I'm still learning how to make mistakes responsibly. How to take ownership of my errors without beating myself up. Self-flagellation is the pattern I'm used to. Learning how to thoughtfully accept the mistake and move on does not come easily.

- A client of mine emailed me last week to ask if I could take a photo of a watercolor painting he wants to incorporate into a brochure we're developing. He emailed me just after I realized that I must stop accepting new projects -- my work hours are completely absurd. I wrote back and explained that I was overcommitted and wouldn't have time for at least the next couple of weeks to take a photo of the art. I suggested that he find another solution. He replied by pushing back harder, suggesting that the photography project wouldn't take very long -- maybe he could bring it by one of my part-time jobs on my lunch break so I could just fire off a quick shot or two while he waited?

Alas, there is no faster way to enrage me than to disregard my shaky grasp on my boundaries. I have stomped all over my own life with muddy shoes these past few weeks, rearranging my days and nights in order to accommodate the needs of my clients. I find it very frustrating when I finally work up the courage to say "no" and receive only push-back.

I'm not going to shoot the photo. (It's become a principle thing.)

- My relationship with my parents has never been better. Last week my mom and dad sent me one of those silly song cards, the kind that play a really loud, corny song when you open it. The audio track on the card was Gloria Estefan's "Conga," and I almost jumped out of my skin when I opened it -- the song was so loud. Mom's handwritten message inside offered congratulations for all the developments in my photography life over the past few months, congratulations on the new job in the photography studio. Then it said something like, "Just remember, when you get famous, please don't take pictures of us when we're dead" (a reference to Annie Leibovitz's tendency to photograph loved ones on their deathbed). That's just quality photographic humor.

Lately I have found myself calling my mom first when something good happens. She is a wonderful cheerleader for her kids. I have never been so grateful for her support.

- Tomorrow is my first day off in a while. It feels like forever since I've been totally irresponsible for a day (it's really only been three weeks) I plan to celebrate by turning my phone off completely! And of course I may be sacking out on the couch and catching up on Season 1 DVDs of Friday Night Lights, to which I have become completely addicted. Go Panthers!

bokeh like butter

This morning was the first meeting of my six-week "people photography" course that I am getting to take through my new job. I'm not getting paid to take this class or anything, but the course is free. Which rules.

I wasn't sure what to expect from the first class meeting. The director of the school where I am taking the course had asked me beforehand if I had a basic understanding of how my camera works. I'm not a technically strong photographer, but I have a general idea of how the camera works ("Just put it on P and press the shutter!"), so I said yes.

The instructor, Dave, invited each of us to introduce ourselves to the class. The class includes about a dozen people of all different skill levels. There were people who had just gotten a new digital camera and wanted to learn how to get satisfying photos of their kids. There were people who worked in photography professionally who wanted to learn some new compositional tricks.

The director fired up a slide show of some of his favorite portraits from celebrated and little-known photographers, and some students started asking questions. What was exciting is that I found myself nodding along to all of the answers he gave. I actually understood what he was saying, and I understood why he was giving those answers. I would have answered the questions the same way if I had been teaching the class.

Dave gave us our first photographic assignment, made a lens recommendation (the 50mm f1.8, for those of you playing along at home), and set us free to go take some great portraits. We report to next Wednesday's class with JPGs from this week's photographic assignment.

It was an encouraging class. It helped me see that I am slowly developing my skills and learning to trust my instincts about what works and what doesn't. Also, just being in the same room with a group of people who are excited about improving their craft is really energizing.

There's a lot of wonderful little stuff happening here, stuff that isn't earth-shattering but still lets me know that I am on a good path. I am waiting for some more of the details to unfold and then I hope to share some of those little stories here.

It looks like Wednesday is going to be one of my "weekend" days in this new schedule (Saturday is now a work day). The schedule is not as predictable as I would like, but it's doing work I really enjoy. So far, quitting the corporate game is proving to be a great decision.

bits and pieces

The wonderful Doug Plummer has a great entry in his blog about the unchronicled, unsung skills needed to be a good photographer. As someone who is still trying to grasp many of the technical elements of photography, I found his perspective refreshing:

"...The technical minutia of photography is the easy part. It's just a skill set. The crucial element is your ability to connect with the diversity of subjects and clients and situations that a professional photographic life is going to throw at you. The crucial quality is curiosity."

I just love that thought. The whole entry is wonderful.

This has been an interesting week for work and photography. For the first time, I'm going to be working part-time in a situation that allows me lots of exposure (heh) to photographers and photography. The job is definitely small potatoes right now, but I'm still really optimistic about getting to learn more, meet new people, and increase my skill set. I feel like I'm at a plateau photographically right now — perhaps one of many plateaus I will reach during my creative life — and I am looking forward to reaching beyond it.

Photography-related links I've been enjoying lately:
- Kathleen Connally's "A Walk through Durham Township, Pennsylvania" photoblog
- Photographer Jeremy Cowart's portraits tagged "experimental"
- Bill Wadman's incredible 365 Portraits project. This guy is amazing. One new portrait shot and posted each day. Thanks to Paulie for the link.

Don't tell anybody, but it's 3:00 pm and I'm about to go sack out on the couch and watch a movie. I divided the morning between yoga and some freelance work. Tonight I'm getting together with a friend for some wine and conversation (her email was titled "we should drink more").

Life is pretty good.

samba, sun, and feng shui

I'm sitting here in the kitchen with Stan Getz playing and the A/C going strong. I'm putting together a dish for tonight's movie potluck at Jean's house — we're going to watch Venus. Tomorrow I'm headed to Virginia with my boyfriend for a visit with his family. The trip is kind of last minute, and a happy reflection on the fact that I no longer need to sacrifice half of my accrued vacation hours for a spontaneous little road trip.

Yesterday was my last day of work at the Very Large Multinational Corporation, and I'm very glad to have that chapter behind me. Four of us on my team were leaving our jobs on the same day, the results of the restructuring process. We all went out to lunch, told some funny work stories, and turned in our badges to HR. I don't think any of us wrung our hands or shed any tears yesterday.

The photo above depicts my desk at the VLMC. My office was in a dark little cave, a room with bad ventilation and not much natural light. I'm glad to leave that space behind and to spend more time in my tiny little apartment, which I have always loved.

I've been unemployed for 24 hours! No regrets so far.

Okay, there is one final mystery lingering in my mind about the VLMC, and then I'll stop talking about it, I swear:

My co-worker Wendy had been with the Corporation for 8 years. She started her career as a Level 2 associate, then worked up to Level 3 Manager, and then, in February, was promoted to Level 4 Director. Wendy was terrific in this role, and was getting lots of kudos from her supervisors. She was a great employee because she knew how to play the game and speak the language of the Corporation convincingly. At the same time, she remained a real person, and not some sort of corporate robot who spoke only in acronyms. She enjoyed her work and brought real credibility to her role.

Anyhow, as she was going through the restructuring process with the rest of us, Wendy was told that she was going to be demoted from Level 4 back to Level 3. Then she was told that the VLMC was going to hire a new Level 4 Director, and that Wendy would be reporting to that person in the future.

Why would this happen? This news just stunned me. I must emphasize that Wendy was the perfect fit for her role at Level 4. She was incredibly smart, accomplished, and energetic. Does this just mean that someone at Level 5 had it in for her?

At any rate, the issue is moot. Wendy told the VLMC to go jump in a lake (I am paraphrasing a bit). She was one of the four employees who left the Corporation yesterday. When I heard that she was resigning, I went to her and threw my arms around her in a terribly unprofessional bear hug, because it was so nice to know that the bad guys were not going to get her. As of yesterday, Wendy had already interviewed a couple of times with a terrific company and was well on her way to a better job.

It feels funny to be in this place right now. At the kitchen table, with a Stan Getz samba coming through the speakers, fresh laundry tumbling in the dryer down the hall. I'm an unemployed, divorced 33-year-old woman with a big swirl of ideas in my head, a handful of half-baked ambitions and no real clout in the job market. Yet I couldn't be happier with my choices and where I am.

I have already started looking for other work — I don't intend to just be a hippie for the next ten years. But I feel enormously satisfied with the places my decisions have taken me. I plan to take the next few weeks off to soak in that feeling, swim around in it for a while. I ordered a copy of the book Sacred Space. Feng shui is kind of corny and passé these days, I suppose, but I still love the concept. When the book arrives I'm going to do some space-clearing rituals here at home, reset the energy for the next passage of life.

These small moments seem to be my happiest ones. Singing, loafing, cooking, cleaning up, sweeping, reading, shooting photos. None of them are mountaintop moments. But those are the moments when I experience a profound peace with who I am and who I am becoming.

Sayonara to the Money Factory

Well, it looks like my tenure at the Money Factory (also known as the Very Large Multinational Corporation or "VLMC") will be drawing to a tortured close at the end of the month. I've had eighteen months of blissful stability, plenty of money, amazing health benefits, meaningless work projects, an endlessly agitated bullshit sensor, and the knowledge that the gig wouldn't, shouldn't and couldn't last.

The decision to leave became much clearer and easier for me last week when the VLMC let go one of my good work friends in part of a massive re-organization. Before Andy was let go, I didn't fully realize that he was sort of a lifeline to me in the office. Without him around, work quickly shifted from tolerable to fairly unbearable.

The silver lining in this situation is that I am timing my exit during the same re-org that swept Andy out the door. Most of the people left behind in my department are getting "re-matched" to a new position, but since I'm choosing not to accept the new position, I'll get a nice severance package that will help keep me going through the summer. It will also help me pay off the new Canon D20 and the fantastic new lens I just bought. (I can't figure out if the timing of that major new camera purchase is amazingly terrible, or eerily good. I'm choosing to believe the latter. Now I'll have time to enjoy using the darned thing.)

After my last day of work, I'll burn some work materials in Lalah's fire pit. I plan to make a little ritual out of it. Seems like an appropriate use for those 250 business cards I never distributed. I hope to never see my name printed next to that company's logo again.

I am really not sure what comes after this, but I feel very positive about closing the books on this chapter. The lesson I learned at the VLMC is that it's not enough to just make good money and benefits. There must be something more. Some little seed that opens up new possibilities. Some opportunity for growth, or even some interesting relationship with a co-worker that provides a beam of light in the middle of the day. I'll probably never have an Amazingly Meaningful Job, the kind of job where I save babies from burning buildings or distribute protease inhibitors to AIDS-infected Africans, but I need to do more with myself than clock in every day to a job that leaves me half asleep. I suddenly find myself reminded of the words of Jesus, when he talked about how worthless it was to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. As far as I know, Jesus never worked a day in an office, but clearly he understood how crappy it feels when part of you goes dead inside, and how much better off you are when you fight back against that death. And this thought is oddly comforting.

Goal-setting

Somehow over the past few years, I've fallen out of the habit of regular goal-setting. Other friends have merrily plotted magnificent courses for themselves, saving money, paying off debts, improving their fitness and cleaning up their unfinished business. And I've just been sitting here on the couch eating tortilla chips and thanking God that I'm not one of those crazy goal-setting maniacs who's always pushing herself to improve. Because, you know, self-improvement is hard work. It's kind of a drag sometimes.

I mean, who needs goals? I've got serenity, and a bag of tortilla chips, and a remote control. Sweeeet.

So I've been drifting along, aimlessly bumping into jobs, friends, activities that happened to float my way. Did yesterday mark my 100,000th tortilla chip on the couch? Maybe it did, because I suddenly realized that I'm getting really tired of being so utterly rudderless.

At work we've been going through an excruciating cycle of "self-development and coaching." This cycle apparently comes up once a year, and sweet mother Mary, it is torture. You have to request written feedback from others who judge how well they think you're doing in the area of Change Agility™ or Communicating Impactfully™ or Building Meaningful Relationships.™ It feels awful, asking a co-worker to wax eloquent about how skillful I am at Change Agility. I would rather ask them to personally throw away my used dental floss.

I thought I was done with all of this, but then yesterday my Superboss came in and provided some On-the-Spot Coaching™ about this one final bit of development I need to take care of. It is a massive Self-Evaluation Form™ where I have to write a long, reflective essay about how I've done with my own work objectives over the past year. I have to write entire paragraphs about my skills in Sharing Knowledge Openly™ and Communicating Impactfully™.

"I usually spend four or five hours putting mine together," Superboss said. "It's good to spend some time on it, because it ends up getting put into in your permanent file."

I nodded thoughtfully and made a good Listening Attentively™ face, absorbing all the details about this massive crap-fest I cannot seem to extricate myself from. As soon as she left, I took out my journal and wrote an angry screed which contained so many swear words that I am too embarrassed to quote it here. The bottom line is that I am getting back into personal goal-setting, and the first goal to permanently eject myself from this company in the next year so that I never have to go through one of these ridiculous self-assessment cycles again. Change Agility that, Superboss.

Yes, I know I'm pretty much repeating myself a lot here lately. But this is where I go to process reality and concoct new plans. So bear with me.

(Deep breath.)

Yesterday I ran across this quote from Theodore Roosevelt. I keep reading it again and again:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man [or woman] who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs; who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat."

First, I wish this guy was still president.

Second, I love that final phrase: "those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." I know that when he wrote this, Roosevelt was probably talking about courageous soldiers who went into battle to give their lives for the cause of freedom, but from where I'm standing, I feel like that phrase is a good characterization of my attitude towards work over the past few years. All the upper-management shakeups at the office over the past few weeks have helped me clarify with unshakable certainty that sitting on the couch eating tortilla chips is not enough anymore.

mental health day

Today I called in sick to work. I'm not feeling unwell at all — quite the contrary. Just needing a break. I had told my boss yesterday that I might be coming down with a little something, you know, needing a sick day. He gave a little smile and said, "You know, sometimes people do get sore throats, and they really need to stay home." It was such a simple little thing he said, but there was so much gentleness and permission in it. I took him up on it by staying home today.

The past couple of weeks have involved a lot of tumultuous concerns about work. Yes, it looks like my job at the Very Large Multinational Corporation will be going away in the next six months or so (maybe the next six weeks — who knows?). The Very Large Multinational Corporation leaders have lots of colorful words for exactly what's happening. My department is not being downsized; it's being redesigned. Our work is not being off-shored; it's being centralized. The upshot is that about 20 people on our 80-member staff of artists across the country will be laid off, and the rest of us will probably be asked later in the year to "centralize" ourselves down to "central Florida." Or, to accept severance packages.

Getting fired has never sounded so lovely.

After feeling terribly conflicted about my job for months, this seems like perhaps some sort of divine push to get the hell out of the company and doing something else. I don't know precisely what that "something else" is yet. But I hope and believe that it will be a good thing.

So I'm asking myself lots of questions lately about what might be next. At the same time, I'm still worried about money and very unclear on whether I can go to grad school now, or if I should just shelve that idea for a while.

Last night I got together for a lovely dinner with Jean and Lalah, two of my favorite, most connected, most lively and authentic friends. Lalah was late but when she showed up she had three dozen roses in her arms, a dozen for each of us. We all looked like prom queens as we were seated at our booth. At one point during dinner, they asked me what was going on with my job. I'd been sharing the rumblings about potential layoffs for a while, and they wanted an update. I took a deep breath and said, "I don't know what is going on with my job, but I do know that I have too many skills and ideas to stay cooped up in this stupid job that has absolutely nothing to do with my values or personality!" And Lalah lifted her glass and said, "All right!" and then we drank to that, and I started to think that even if I don't know what else is around the corner, things are going to be OK.

cubicle rot

One of the things I've learned through the past few years of reading online journals is that it's a bad idea to talk about work on your blog.

But I figure that the vast majority of people at my company don't read this blog, so I'm free to talk about it openly. Right?

Really, this post isn't so much about my job itself as about the way that a 9-to-5 job can slowly kill your imagination.

I'm looking for advice here. I'd like to hear about how other "cubicle dwellers" manage to hang on to their sanity and their imagination in the workplace. This isn't an issue that I'm going to "solve" today, of course, but it's an area where I would really appreciate some fresh perspective.

So far in my career, my work as a graphic designer has presented a constant tension between two poles: interesting, challenging projects that paid poorly (or not at all), and "fat cat" projects that paid the bills. When I took this design job with the Very Large Multinational Corporation last year, it was a smart financial move. After a couple of bumpy years, I was delighted to have a job with bona fide health care, a 401(k), and a salary that would let me save a little.

But as with so many scenarios, there was a snake hiding in the garden. In this case, the snake was called Soul-Eating Boredom.

I could do this job in my sleep.

One of the issues with working at a giant corporation, of course, is that you are generally rewarded by honoring the many restraints the company puts on you. In a way, you're getting paid to be bored. You fill out your Periodic Self-Evaluation Forms (PSEFs) with rigorous care. You contribute to the annual United Way campaign with a smile. You learn what all the acronyms mean, and you use them correctly in sentences. Mediocrity is applauded. (So much that I sometimes find it crushing.)

All those limits that I carefully honor from 9-to-5 have started to leach into my 5-t0-9 life.

It makes me want to run away and join the circus. It makes me want to get a job driving a bus or planting trees or working as a trashy waitress at a trashy diner. (The dream of working at a trashy diner has been with me for years. Years!)

This is a hard place to acknowledge. I think I thought that by this point in my career, I'd be past the place where I felt like chucking everything in the nearest dumpster.

So. How would I start over? What is that work that I'm seeking? What is the job that will prevent me from losing that quiet little spark of creativity and imagination? Am I expecting too much from work? Maybe when you work in an office, a certain element of office rot is just to be expected.... right?

I don't know. Who ever knew that the thought of serving hash browns to deadbeats would one day sound kind of invigorating?