I am alive and well in 2007! I have been laying a bit low since the New Year rolled over the smashed corpse of 2006. I have been thinking, reading, ordering crap online (new computer stuff to make damn sure I have a solid backup system in place for everything, plus a wine rack for my miniscule collection), and sleeping. I brew espresso almost every day with my shiny new stovetop apparatus. I love it. I mix it with milk, chocolate syrup and some ice cubes.

I bid farewell to a couple of my friends, who are heading off to do great and mighty things in the world. Anthony, who is embarking upon his final semester at the U.S. Naval Academy; Rebeckah, who is studying abroad in France; and my brother, Ian, who is moving to a podunk town known as Van Wert, OH. He has a new, highly-paid internship down there. He’s the businessman, after all. Justin is off to Alaska (already?), Stuart returns to Colorado in a few days, while Maria and Simon ought to be returned from New Mexico by now.

I begin 2007 with a dream in sight: moving to California. Will it happen? God knows. And everything is thankfully placed in His hands. I have no ability to control the best laid plans of mice and men (which gang aft agley). I know that I would love to do a lot of things this year. From taking trips to Annapolis again, to a family facation in Virginia Beach, to attending graduation in Annapolis (again), to a road trip somewhere out west in the early summer, to a camping trip somewhere up north in mid summer. I know I ought to write. I ought to read and write more. I ought to get into the habit, as I did at the onset of 2006, of a regular intake of good reading. I still have some of the books that Michael lent me around that time! A year! And I haven’t totally read some of them, yet.

I ought to write for pay, too. There is an opportunity… but as with all opportunities… I have trouble living passionately and gripping the moment firmly when it comes. Why? Well… I surmise that I am just human, and sometimes withdrawn and rather selfish in my pursuits. Hmmm… and at the same time I would pretty much knife my own best laid plans if it meant I could be of aide to a friend of mine. Now that I’m out of college… I don’t have the luxury of “waiting” around for things to drift my way. On purpose, that is what I need to be. Again, I have been in this place before. I have been on the peak and felt the rush and known that I am fully capable of doing these things. The threshold is passed. It can be passed again. But still… I tarry sometimes on the brink of decisions.

I suppose that is why I am still taking my sweet time compiling the Year in Review… which I started a month ago. Soon enough, once I have thoroughly dredged up everything I can remember happening in 2006 and putting it in perspective… thorugh the relatively murky 20/20 vision that is obtained over time, I will post it here.

To a Mouse
by Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796)

The best-laid plans o’ mice an’ men
Gang aft a-gley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain
For promised joy.

Also, this is an article review I wrote in the summer of 2006, when I was taking VCT Synthesis online:

A Portfolio of Equity from Art Kleiner’s book Who Really Matters: The Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success

Mr. Art Kleiner is very succinct on the point of this article, derived from Chapter 16 of his book on Core Group Theory. The point is that, in the commercial world, building on many kinds of ‘equity’ will help establish an individual as a contributor to that world in a very tangible and unassailable way. These sorts of equities are broken up into various terminological categories, a few of them are elucidated: Fungible Financial Equity, Rainmaking Equity, Credential Equity, Reputation Equity, and Relationship Equity.

The first form is merely based upon the sorts of financial moves a person can make to prove his long-term willingness to be committed to the firm, but more importantly, it provides a financial base for the individual should the need arise to leave the firm.

The second form is based upon the skill of an individual in gathering support, financial and otherwise, for various initiatives or programs… a lá working with non-profit firms or for the establishement of new technology specs.

The third form is basically this: how many letters can you have after your name? And how many paragraphs can be filled with the credentials applied to your name, should your name be mentioned in a magazine, newspaper, book, etc? This kind of equity is generated primarily by seeking out those credentials.

The fourth form is, like all of the others, slowly accrued over time. However, it can grow in leaps and bounds, and also shrink by them. Doing the kind of work (’extra’ from the job at a firm) that will grow this equity is a very popular method for future expansion and further substantiation of one’s role in that firm.

The fifth form is, quite possibly, the most vertically beneficial. Making friends, contacts, networking, being generally well-liked by a great many people- these are all aspects of a kind of equity built upon the famous colloquialism “It’s all who you know.”

That colloquialism sums up how I feel about treating such aspects of life and work as boxed up categories. Like a game of Monopoly, In the end, it all goes back in the box, and in the end, it’s all who you know. However, Mr. Kleiner provides the beneficial basis for his line of thinking (organizing, structuring, categorizing, analyzing, rationalizing everything) towards the end of the article. That is by asserting that each one of these Equities has two thresholds: confidence and sustainability. This opened up, to me, a great new realm of thought when it comes to managing all of these ‘equities’ in my life. There is a point at which something you were once unable to do becomes as regular as second nature, and you’ve crossed a threshold. There is another point, then, when the equity has been nurtured and grown to the point where the interest it earns can sustain you for the rest of your days, without being added to. Merely because a deficiency in one of these areas exists, I can look forward to gaining confidence and then build up towards sustainability. It’s no use being discouraged and giving up on the whole endeavor because of a deficiency (due to my relatively young age, more likely); rather, plugging away at building, rather than breaking even, on an equity, can bring me closer to the threshold where the rubber meets the road at long last.

The article also mentions Capability Equity, something that seems to materialize in the VCT program more and more over time… and it is a beguilding materialization… because it never feels like being a virtuoso… only like being a better liar. But skills build over time, experience, and through tutorials and books and classes and example projects. The more interested an individual is in developing certain capabilities… the better equity they will have in this department.