The Therapeutic Benefits of a Proper Fish & Chips

Last week could have gone better. There were Internet problems, wire transfer problems and a more than usual set of small business fires to be extinguished - but throughout the week there were two major issues that helped me to understand my true dyspepsia:


#1) I want to be spending more time with quality, intelligent, dedicated people who are doing their best to be the best at what they do.

#2) I need to be spending more time with people who are being honest with me and in the end, honest with themselves.

And that's what my week boiled down to - two essential problems that I needed to work better through to help me avoid disappointment and associated depression - because when I'm not sleeping well or sleeping too much, I know something is not right.

Issue #1) That I need to be spending more time with passionate, intelligent people who are making a difference in their business - came up in a response to a blog post I did regarding Vietnamese advertising agencies not winning awards. One person actually wrote a response to my post almost defending, and then in the end making excuses for why his agency didn't even bother to enter the industry award shows. "We don't see the point" - he quoted his management as saying. And that made me sad. "Why even try to be better", it said to me. And that I thought was a very sad comment coming from a man who is actually in charge of a creative business here. Other contributors to my feeling along these lines were an old acquaintance in a bar insulting another guy for seemingly no reason, except to maybe make himself feel more superior and another person just chasing small money instead of looking at the bigger picture. Are my standards too high? Or do I just need to be spending more time with people who have similar standards? That seems to be my question.

Issue #2) That I need to be spending more time with people who are honest with me and in the end, honest with themselves - started with a personal relationship last year in which someone had been fabricating almost an entire lifetime for me. The psychological reasons a person would do this are varied and complicated and as of yet, unsolved, but suffice to say it shook my trust - more my trust in myself in being able to feel I could judge people well. A job I was offered recently lasted only two weeks because the people with the business had neglected to write a business plan and obtain the proper licenses to do what they told me they wanted to do. They weren't being honest with themselves and that in-turn caused them to not be honest with me. Should I have seen it? Should I have vetted them better? Yes. But I did my best and gained a new understanding into exactly how unplanned, idealistic and poorly researched people can be when starting a business. Nobody should expect it to be easy, especially if there is a lot of money involved.

So with these two reasons for general unhappiness, I ended a week. But how to solve? Saigon is full of bars but I have found them as of late to be less than inspiring for anything outside of football and girls - so I settled on fish and chips.

Ones favourite foreign meal can take on a special feeling when it comes to hard times and big issues. People call these meals comfort food. And that's exactly what I needed. A meal served as I perceived it, at a proper price and with all the associated accoutrements - this fish & chips, served at Sheridan's Irish Pub in Saigon came with cole slaw and mushy peas, and was plump and fried and exactly what needed - with a Coke to wash it all down. Funny how simple things can wash away larger doubts. Funny how familiarity breeds comfort as opposed to contempt in a foreign land.

The week would end in my meeting Barry - a man who, of all things, builds concrete buildings with a large Vietnamese construction company - not a very creative business at all you might say? But Barry addressed his subject with a passion and professionalism seldom seen in many businesses. He impressed upon me elements of design, engineering, quality and style that only a man at the top of his craft could do. Thank you Barry. I needed to meet a person with that positive attitude at the end of last week.

The following week would bring a truly unprofessional lawyer who would cause me to just scratch my head and say WTF? - but it would also bring an interview with Sandrine Lloquet, a French/Vietnamese visual artist and VJ who brings a more than interesting history and passion to her work. Surrounding ourselves with people who inspire and help us to do better is not always such an easy job. Last week reminded me that it is a job though and one that needs constant tending - something we should never forget.

Joy, shit, art and inspiration: How much of one not to take to get the others.

After almost two weeks of work straight, say 12 hrs a day+ with just short breaks, I finally came up for air. I got to a point at the end of the stint where I wouldn't even have the TV on or listen to music because I was so concerned with getting everything I needed to get done for a publication that had a rotating deadline and a constantly shifting list of "things to do". In a world where change is the only constant, this work played true and the only thing that wasn't changing was my fee.

As an employee one can do little about this syndrome and when one's employer guarantees a certain level of security and hopefully fair pay it is really our responsibility to just suffer the work and get it done with as few complaints as possible. But as an independent contractor the rules change a bit. We do our best to estimate the time involved, the work to be done, our competence at said work and a reasonable rate of pay. And then the nose goes to the grindstone. If one has been briefed relatively well by the client, then one's estimate should be fairly close. But if not, one of two things will be true: Either you've estimated poorly, or the client has not been completely honest with you. In my case recently, it turned out to be the latter - and that doesn't necessarily mean the client was not honest - more logically it seemed as if the client was not particularly good at estimating himself. In any case, the job swung wildly out of control in a way that I hadn't seen since the very beginning of my career. Nothing at my company in Korea had ever become this far gone, nor at Leo Burnett or any of the major agencies I have ever worked for, so it fell back to my early career experience to figure out what to do.

Concern, issue, problem.

In order to let people know what level of severity a job might be it, the above diplomatic language was explained to me to describe just how deep the shit is in any crucial work situation. It works like this: When the boss says he has a 'concern', that's the first red flag - something has been brought up and it's your job to address it. But concerns, if not addressed becomes 'issues', the second red flag - And issues, if not resolved become 'problems', usually the third and final red flag, - and that usually means that something is now costing somebody money - maybe a lot of money.

When you're an employee this system needs to be understood from the top down - meaning that if your boss uses this graduating scale of severity to impress upon you, your responsibilities, you better hop to it. But if you're working as an independent contractor and the client requests become well outside the original agreement, this scale can be reversed, and used to let the client know that things are getting squirrely. 'Concern, issue, problem'. Don't use it at your own peril and you'll loose a ton of sleep and money.

I used it for a week this last week and made sure that people were aware of a situation getting worse. It didn't effect their behavior much, they were still late and disorganized, but at least it made me feel better and put me in a position to say, "I told-ja-so", later. CYA. It reminded me how much I dislike a lot of the defense mechanisms I learned in a corporate culture

Having finished a bit of a 'a few weeks in hell', I set about understanding my home again - not the bunker I has established for my month-long+ writing war. The place with a full ashtray everyday, a grimy computer, tons of magazines and books and notes and rubbish all around. The place that looks like a war room. So I cleaned the fridge.

There's something so thrillingly liberating about remedial tasks. I remember having a job at Avis Rent-A-Car when I was paid to sweep a large garage every week on Saturday. It took four hours. And took all my cares away. In four hours, sweeping mostly in one direction, around antique cars under shrouds, with one rolling garage door up and the sunlight shafting through and casting a wide dusty widening stripe across the oil stained concrete floor, I was able to daydream and think and create and put my problems into the background for the afternoon. I loved it. And that's what cleaning the fridge, washing the dishes, cleaning nasty surfaces and making an actual meal did for me today. It helped me think. It helped me clear out my email. It helped me remember what is important in life - and that, I remembered, was balance. And I seem to have been out of balance for quite some time now. Out of understanding that the reason we work is not just to pay the bills, but to get to spend our money in a way that is enjoyable and meaningful to us every day. Isn't that why you work? Having music around makes me feel this way.

And so, in my shuffley, scroungy, no program cleaning day, I stumbled across this illustration by Seth Godin. (above) This illustration that juxtaposes graphs on joy, hassle (shit) and the inverse reaction one has on the other. Going through Seth Godin's stuff is sometimes difficult because he explains things too much. But this one is simple. The less shit you get, the happier you will be. And this, I needed to remember. The thing that told me that when the stress of the job outweighed the joy that job gave me, that maybe it was time to do another job. Or simplify the one I had and let the client know that things had become, a problem.And so I did, and tomorrow I will find out if that argument hit any paydirt with the client.

In Seth's writings I also found the following quote, which I like very much. is says: "A is for Artist: An artist is someone who brings humanity to a problem, who changes someone else for the better, who does work that can't be written down in a manual. Art is not about oil painting, it's about bringing creativity and insight to work, instead of choosing to be a compliant cog." (from Linchpin). And I accompany this quote with a drawing from Hugh MacLeod. A drawing that exemplifies what we all should be working towards. Inspiration. - In my life I have gone above and beyond the call of duty for different reasons at different times but always in pursuit of something that was well above average. Yes, I have done it for money, and certainly I have done it for love but it's far more important to do it for art and inspiration. Stan Richards said to me once, "Do what you love, and the money will follow." I just keep believing that every day, and that way, I do something I love every day, and sometimes, get paid very well for it.