I'm no Lord of the Dance

I've been taking lindy hop dance lessons. I'm not doing too badly, but I'm not great either... and it'll take a while before I develop the confidenced that I need to really do this well. What a bummer.

I really, really wish that I was more of a natural dancer. I also wish that I had a more natural sense of rhythm, and that I could feel the beat of the music accurately. This is very frustrating indeed.

I've got the body strength needed to perform some fancy dance moves, and I've got plenty of stamina. I can engage in energetic moves all night long without tiring. Having said that, I wish I had more style and grace.

Maybe there's some hope. I remember when this one nice nurse gal attended a swing dance for the first time. Toward the end of the night, I asked her to dance, and after a few steps, she asked me if I was an instructor. She also said that I was the best dancer she had met that night, and asked if I could teach her more. Having said that, I do know that I'm not that great. I realize that the really good dancers must not have gotten around to inviting her to dance -- or perhaps they were so caught up amongst themselves that they failed to make her feel welcome. That happens now and then.

Dang, I wish I was better. I'd so love to master balboa, charleston, lindy, and a variety of ballroom styles. And I'll confess... I would appreciate the admiration that comes with being a great dancer. It'd make me more popular with a lot of these social dancers, for example. (Some of them think I'm very good, but I can tell that others think I'm pretty much a big goof.)

Fostering creativity

I've been reading this book, The Manager's Pocket Guide to Creativity. Among other things, this little tome discusses various factors that can hinder creativity in the workplace. Here is one of the factors that he mentioned:

"Supervisors discourage individual contemplation and creative thinking because they are not 'physical activities' (people who do them look like they are goofing off)."

Ain't that the truth! My current employer values and fosters creativity, but not all companies do the same. It's important to engage in contemplation and let ideas percolate; however, based on past experiences, I've learned that this can easily be misconstrued. Some managers just don't like that sort of thing, as it can look too much like goofing off.

My current boss knows better, of course. He knows that I'm his go-to guy for a lot of tasks, thag I work hard, and that I often step in to revitalize projects that have crawled to a standstill. Nevertheless, I also believe that it's important to avoid giving the illusion of mere goofing off, lest anybody misconstrue such behavior.

The H-1B controversy

Time and time again, I hear people complaining about how H-1B work visa applicants are stealing jobs away from hardworking Americans. They say that there are plenty of programmers and engineers who can do the job, so we don't need to be importing all these foreigners.

I think that's a naive view, though. There are plenty of programmers to go around, but there is a lack of good progammers. The problem is probably less severe in engineering, but I'm sure that it's there as well. (Why is this a problem in programming? Because people can easily convince themselves that they know how to program without realizing the need for proper software design and coding elegance. I don't have time to discuss this in great detail, but suffice to say that it's harder to develop that kind of overconfidence when it comes to circuit design or mechanical construction.)

Many also say that H-1B workers drag wage levels down. I think there's some truth to that, but that these claims are also vastly overblown. Moreover, these claims treat jobs and wage levels as though they were part of a zero sum game, which they aren't. No economist would claim that they are.

The stock market and other stuff

Man, I wish the stock market was doing better right now. Some of my investments have taken a hit, and I really wish that they were doing better.

A friend of mine invested a lot of money in a mortgage firm, and that decision proved to be overly risky. Her reasoning seemed to make sense, as it looked like this company would weather the mortgage crisis -- but it looks like that prediction will be wrong. I feel so bad for her.

I also wish that I had invested in my 401(k) account back at my old job in California. I was very much worried about my future there though, and so I held off on that. I knew that if I had to tap into those savings prematurely, I'd be taking a big hit. As it turns out though, I should have probably invested a bit more at the time.

I'd like to get more reading done. To cut a long story short though, I'm getting pressure from someone to get certain marginally productive things done. I'll spare you the details; suffice to say that it's a frustrating situation.

I'm also trying to master lindy. I'm having a hard time with this, though. I was really off my game tonight.

I got to learn more about this illumination system recently. Very slick.

Oh, and I got to meet some really nifty people tonight. That was a pleasure.

So I've got to get up really early in a couple of days. I'm already quite sleep-deprived. How am I supposed to manage this?

I wish I had a laboratory of my own. That'd be really nice. There are so many ideas that I'd like to work on. Oh, and I'd like to teach a bunch of ex-coworkers about creativity. These were the types of people who simply suppressed innovation on the grounds that it's not how they were used to doing things. Sigh.