Discipline and production

My brother is a cook at the Willows Inn, a no-bullshit up-and-coming restaurant on Lummi Island, WA. This is fun for me, because it allows me to vicariously experience the world of high-end cuisine. I’ll relate a brief story he told me. 

To provide background, I’ll tell you it is frowned upon in these serious kitchens to make noise while working (I only just learned this). Absentmindedly letting a cupboard door slam shut or clanking a couple of pans together while hanging them is a no-no. My brother works with a guy who spent some time in the kitchen at Alinea, an absurdly inventive restaurant in Chicago. A little while ago, my brother let a cupboard door slam or something, and the former Alinea cook said, “Man, at Alinea you would have gotten fired for that.” 

“Fired?” my brother asked him skeptically.

“Yeah, man, you would have gotten fired,” he replied.  

When my brother told me this, I laughed in disbelief. How could they possibly be so strict? But as he and I talked about it a bit more, we decided it made sense in a way. It’s a discipline. Alinea is trying to be the best kitchen in the country, and in the best kitchen in the country, the cooks don’t make noise. The chefs instituting these rules don’t believe that quiet cupboards make the food taste better, but they do believe that the food they want to produce can only be made by highly focused, disciplined cooks. And they’re probably right.

All workplaces have some sort of discipline in place. In any organization of more than, say, 10 people, it’s pretty much impossible for the guy in charge to know each worker as an individual. And if he doesn’t know these individuals—their individual strengths and weaknesses, their capacity for independent work, their motivations—he has to find some best way to control them. It’s not malicious, only pragmatic. 

The most common way of keeping workers disciplined is also the simplest—time. Very rare is the organization that allows its employees genuine flexibility with time. In a restaurant this is natural. Service begins at a specific hour and ends at a specific hour. It’s natural also in a lot of manufacturing plants, where the shop is in operation for 16 or even 24 hours a day on different shifts. 

But in so many other fields—office work especially—the structured time is totally arbitrary. Almost never do I need to be in the building at any particular time. Most of my work is accomplished individually, and I could do it just as easily at 1:00 in the afternoon as at 1:00 in the morning. I could work 5 hours one week and 60 the next. Yet I’m required to adhere to an 8-hour daytime schedule. I’m allowed the flexibility to come it at 7:00 one day and 9:00 the next or to work 7 hours one day and 9 the next, but if I were to suggest that I pull a 24-hour, nonstop, coffee-fueled work marathon, I’d be laughed out of the room.

Yet from the standpoint of simply getting the work done, it shouldn’t make any difference. Working in events and publications means I have a lot of deadlines to adhere to, but it shouldn’t matter if I meet the deadline by working a steady 8 hours per day, Monday through Friday, or if I meet the deadline by putting everything off until the 11th hour and finishing it by working so feverishly that my hands start bleeding. Either way— deadline met, mission accomplished, value added to the organization.

But the average organization can’t allow its workers such idiosyncratic schedules. Doing so would leave discipline in shambles. Completing a certain task might take one worker 20 minutes and everyone else 2 hours. If the faster one were allowed to leave work upon completion of the task, it would raise all sorts of questions. “Did the fast guy really do a quality job?” “If it’s so easy for him, shouldn’t he be doing more work for the company?” “What the hell is wrong with the slow people?”

Questions like this would come up every day. Keeping everyone locked up for the same amount of time preserves the illusion that everyone is equal. It appears that everyone possesses the same ability. And with this difficult-to-penetrate appearance in place, fewer workers will question their positions or the things that get handed to them. Thus everyone stays in line, disciplined.   

No assholes in a second language

The other night I started English tutoring sessions with a Mexican immigrant woman. I’m  doing it through my local literacy council. I was immediately reminded of why I enjoy traveling in non–English speaking countries and interacting with people who don’t speak English as a first language. The reason is that it’s a lot harder for all of us to be assholes when we’re communicating in words other than those we think in. The foreigner speaking English is the more obvious one using words he doesn’t think in, but it happens to the English-speaker talking to him as well. If you’re going to communicate with non-native English-speakers—that is, if you’re going to do it with any success—you have to simplify your own words and speak in a more formal, schoolbookish way than you usually would. The words coming out of my mouth resemble my inner monologue far more closely when I’m speaking to friends and family than when I’m speaking to my Mexican student.

And it’s hard to be an asshole when you’re talking that way. Think of all the nasty things you thought about other people today (and maybe said). Think about the nasty things people have said to you. Chances are, these things required expressions that are colloquial and (to a foreigner) complex. We rarely insult each other in textbook English. It’s in subtle manipulations of words that we find ways to really hurt and offend one another. And it’s in these complex, colloquial words that we think.

When two people are speaking in words that don’t totally match up with the words ordinarily in their heads, they’re forced not to think in their customary colloquialisms. It’s harder to think mean things about the person speaking with you, because you can’t find the right words. 

It’s not that I imagine my Mexican student is especially nasty in her Spanish-speaking life (she seems authentically warm and friendly) or that I consider myself a particularly big asshole in my more informal English-speaking life. But I’m sure we both have mean thoughts go through our heads in our native tongues. When we’re talking in the necessarily awkward, tripped-up English typical of conversations involving non-native English-speakers, though, we just sort of have to be (and think) nice.

There are still plenty of rude things you can do to others independent of language. You can scowl at them, shove them, yell at them, spit in their faces, and more. But aside from these acts of open and even violent hostility, it’s usually with words that we try to hurt and embarrass people. And even if we don’t say them, just thinking them influences our attitude and interactions. 

When the words don’t come naturally, the power to be really vicious evaporates. We all become a bit more innocent. I’m always ready at a certain point to return to conversation with native English-speakers. Being a bit of an asshole can be fun. And too much innocence and smiling can be nauseating. But a little here and there can be very refreshing.

A non-fetishistic affection for feet

Barefoot running has gone out there and really achieved semimainstreamishness. This  makes me feel good inside. I got my FiveFingers a good two and a half years ago (before they were cool), and I’m well convinced that we all wear way too much shoe most of the time. I don’t go for runs, per se, but I do enjoy wearing my Fives for sets of sprints in the grass. I do some other outdoor workouts in them, too, and the increased sensation and control I have in my feet feel great. Plus, I think it’s probably healthier.

I haven’t gone quite as all-out as some of the FiveFingers crowd, who wear them even to weddings and funerals. I like the Fives, but I still recognize that they look ridiculous. I’ve worn them in non-workout settings (like going to the store) a few times, but I always feel mildly embarrassed. A stiff pair of dress shoes definitely trumps them for aesthetics.    

Still, I wish America had more of a barefoot culture. It’s one of my favorite things about traveling in Asia. In Korea in autumn (when I was there), they don’t go barefoot much, but they at least go in stocking feet in homes, temples, and most traditional restaurants. The stack of shoes in front of a popular lunch place is a sure sign you’ve found one of the real spots.

And in Southeast Asia, where no one ever wears more than flip-flops, you get the authentic barefoot culture. Shoes come off in restaurants, temples, mosques, homes, guesthouses, and other places. In just four months traveling there I probably saw more Asian feet than I will ever see American feet. Little children’s feet, strong men’s feet, dainty women’s feet, wizened old hags’ feet with stains from the betel nut juice dripping out of their appalling mouths. It was delightful.

I don’t know why I enjoy all that barefootism so much. My feelings for feet are neither sexual nor obsessive, but I’ll be damned if I don’t just like them an awful lot. Barefoot people always look somehow happy and carefree—the type of people who would just be good to have around.

Hi, pretty barefoot water maiden, would you like to marry me?

Hey, laid-back barefoot dude, want to play frisbee and listen to Built to Spill?

Hi, adorable barefoot children, would you like to join my family? I have a new barefoot wife who would love to be your adopted mother.

In seriousness, though, there’s definitely a greater intimacy among a group of barefooters than there is among others. In those Korean restaurants where everyone is sitting on the floor in their socks, you find a cozy familiarity that you’d never find in a Western establishment with everyone shoed up. You’re all just sitting there, hanging out, shoes off, having shed a little bit of that shell we wear in the outside world.

I never wear shoes at home. When I visit friends or family, I typically take my shoes off immediately. It has little to do with cleanliness and much more to do with that feeling of exhilarating freedom you get when ripping those things off your feet. When people wear shoes in my apartment—even immaculately clean ones—I really want to ask them to take them off. I just don’t feel like we’re truly hanging out and relaxing until we’re all foot-naked. 

But we’ll let George Clinton have the last word on this one:

There’s doctors and lawyers and business executives

Now that I’ve been out of school for a while, I’d like to see a survey showing where my fellow graduates ended up. It would probably be more instructive to take that survey five years after graduation (rather than 1.5 years), but the feeling remains the same. In the last year of college you begin hearing more and more people talking about their plans to continue with some sort of postgraduate work and to come out of it with a name-brand profession in hand. Doctor. Lawyer. MBA. CPA. If you spend any time in a math department, you’ll hear some kids talking about becoming actuaries.

They're so happy.

  I’d like to see how many of those kids are now on those paths (again, five years would be better), and more importantly, I’d like to see how many of the kids now on those paths are actually enjoying them. I noticed in my math classes that a lot of the kids talking about becoming actuaries had basically just stumbled onto the idea because they had nothing more inspired to pursue. Math majors can become actuaries, so that’s what they decided to do. But becoming an actuary is no joke. It takes years of hard work. I’m sure that at least one or two of these smart but aimless kids I knew will stick it out and become fully credentialed in this profession that means little to them.

I imagine this is also the case with many of the young people who go to law school and even with many who go to that holiest of holies, medical school. People fall into these professions, I’m convinced, in much the same way people fall into being sales managers. The main draw for young people to become lawyers, doctors, or accountants is that it’s easy. I don’t mean to say the day-to-day work of medical study or medical practice is easy. But finding the path is.

If a 22-year-old grad-to-be goes into his campus career services center and says he wants to be a lawyer, they’ll tell him what to do. He’ll have to take the LSAT and start looking at schools and write some application essays. Then when he starts law school he’ll have to show up to class and work really hard and do some internships and stuff. Then before he knows it he’ll have a J.D. But if that grad-to-be goes in saying he wants to direct documentaries, or that he wants to launch a ground shipping fleet that will utilize alternative fuels, specially engineered vehicles, and carefully calculated routes to turn huge profits, they won’t have a clue what to tell him.

The people in those high-paying, high-profile jobs undoubtedly bust ass. But because those jobs have become so institutionalized and structured, the most confusing and frustrating part (the first step) has already been figured out for them. Getting all the way from a Bachelor’s degree to a private medical practice surely takes some creativity and initiative, but entering that world doesn’t. Just get into medical school. For the kid who wants to write travel books, though, where does he even start? He’s got to figure out the first step himself.

I’m sure there are plenty of CPAs, doctors, and attorneys who love every minute of their jobs. But I’m equally sure there are more than a handful who feel just as miserable in their 9-to-5 (or, more likely, 7-to-6) grind as anyone else. Confused, ambitious young people begin down these career paths because they seem (before one considers student debt) to offer wealth, and also because they offer instant respectability and recognizability. At the family gatherings, you get to answer the question “So what are you up to these days, James?” with just one word: “Doctor.” None of that confused and embarrassing explication of climbing some nebulous ladder by way of bad jobs in pursuit of your dream of building the next great web service.

The idiosyncratic jobs that most people would probably find more fulfilling often have little to no respectability when one is on the lower rungs. Steve Jobs, God rest his soul, didn’t achieve mainstream respectability until fairly late in his life. If you pursue something genuinely in line with your desires, it’s likely a lot of the people close to you will either not understand or, worse, not care.

It’s a tough fear for college kids to shake. If you decide you want to do something outside the box, and you’re met with indifference, you might feel like a failure before you even get out of the gate. Better to go to law school and have the parents and family friends say “Ohhhhh. Law school.” The hard work involved and the recognition received make smart kids feel they’re reaching their potential.

The trouble is that these professions can be tough commitments to go back on. Let’s say you spend years talking about going to medical school, then spend years (and tens of thousands of dollars) working at a medical degree, then finish at age 26 (or later) to find that you don’t really want to be an M.D. It takes an enormous swallowing of pride to admit that to the people in your life. Plus, you’re a good four years (or more) behind the curve at getting started on some other pursuit.

Most of the smart kids with these sorts of plans would do better to just admit they don’t know what they want professionally. Virtually no 22-year-old does. Most of them probably have an idea what sort of processes and activities they enjoy, though, and the pursuit of those is likely where they’d find the most reward, even if the financial side of it isn’t totally clear. At least that way they wouldn’t be saddled with (even more) debt, wasted time, and a fancy degree they’re ashamed not to use.

Inhibiting the subconscious

Last night I had a lucid dream, the first real one I’ve ever had. I’d had a couple of experiences before where I realized I was dreaming, but I would wake up almost immediately. This was the first time I got to actually hang out for a while.

Here’s how I realized I was dreaming: I was with some friends back home in my parents’ house. We were planning to go on a short hike right in the area. I noticed that it was already about 4:00 pm, which meant we would be hiking in the dark. I made note of that, but it didn’t seem unusual to go on a December night hike. My friend who was sort of leading the pack started taking us on a shortcut over the fence and through my neighbor’s yard. Three of the group went, but one girl and I declined, because the neighbor is a psychopath (true in real life). It was already dark at this point.

I knew a different, slightly longer way to the trail, so I suggested to this girl that we go that way and catch up. We were walking down a familiar street in my neighborhood when I suddenly realized it was high noon—broad daylight. A moment before, it had been pitch dark. I looked around. “This is a dream,” I said. My companion was disbelieving. “Just a second ago it was dark,” I said. “We had been planning to do this whole hike in the dark, and now it’s light out.” The girl with me sort of disappeared as I explained this. It took an intense focus to explain to myself how this all didn’t add up. But eventually my explanation made sense, and I concluded that, yeah, I was in dreamland.

I had always thought that if I ever had a legitimate lucid dream, I would go nuts and do something wild (nearly always sexual in nature). I found last night this was hardly the case. The details of the dreamscape seemed at first too perfect. The neighborhood street I was walking down looked exactly the way it does in real life. I had read before that lucid dreamers often find they can’t read text in their dreams. I tried testing this out on the license plates of the parked cars on the side of the road. I could read every letter and digit clear as a bell. I could even read the text on the license plate frames. One of them just said “congress.org.”

Being able to read and pick out such intricate detail made me second-guess my conclusion that I was dreaming. I didn’t believe my mind could create a world so rich. Maybe I had lost my grip on reality altogether, and the earlier bit with the night hike was just a psychotic fabrication. After all, one of the hallmarks of having lost your mind is not knowing you’ve lost your mind, right? It was seriously unsettling.

I had a few more dreamland adventures, which seemed to last about two hours and which don’t warrant detailed recounting. I was able to do some things I wouldn’t ordinarily do, but there was far less gleeful psychic manipulation than I would have expected. I found that by bringing my conscious self into the dream, I was severely inhibited. I overanalyzed everything, and I didn’t trust my surroundings.

Even though I was able to do some dangerous things without getting hurt, I could tell that I was not in control of the dream. As in any other dream, I would suddenly and inexplicably find myself in strange locations. Realizing my lack of control over the course of the dream further inhibited my actions, because I couldn’t quite believe they would be without consequence. I knew that my actions wouldn’t have any consequences in the real world (If I told my dream boss to fuck himself, I wouldn’t have to face up to it the next day.), but it seemed like they could definitely have consequences in the dream world.

 

I wasn’t able to simply snap myself awake, and I wasn’t able to instantly transport myself to a happy place. If I took the wrong sort of action in the dream, might that not plunge me into a nightmare? You might think that you couldn’t have a nightmare if you knew it was a dream, but experiences don’t have to be real, per se, to affect us. You know horror movies aren’t real, but they still disturb you. And maybe the nightmare could itself be my lucidity, and an inability to wake. Anyway, I felt no more inclined to take risks than I do in my waking life.

Maybe this all comes from inexperience. Seasoned lucid dreamers claim to be able to manipulate everything in their dreams. As a first-timer, what could I expect? But I’d be curious to know if others haven’t had similar reservations and inhibitions in their lucid dreams. After all, we live in a world built on consequences. You’ve never taken any action that didn’t have a reaction of some kind (cliche, but true). Maybe it’s more difficult than we realize for our minds to create a consequence-free world.

All that being said, I’d gladly repeat the experience, and I look forward to what might course through my head tonight.

Interstate drive-by judgments

The other night I had to go from one side of my town (Bellingham, WA) to the other via the interstate. I tried to observe the scenery dispassionately, as someone who was just passing through and had never seen the town proper. I pretended I was some guy living in Vancouver, BC, but with family in Seattle—someone who would make frequent trips through the area but probably never have any reason to stop off in Bellingham and check it out. 

I found that the view of town from the interstate gave precious little to recommend it. I could see some of the green hillsides on the outskirts, but for the most part I was passing through malls, fast-food strips, car dealerships, and industrial parks. Bellingham is a town that residents and visitors generally like, but the things that make it worth living in—the interesting shops downtown, the trails by the bay, the parks and trees—were far out of sight.

Every town of moderate size has at least one interstate or major highway passing through it, and the areas they pass through are almost always nearly identical. It’s big box retailers and franchises that look like they were built entirely of plastic. When we pass through a town, we’re passing through probably just about the worst part of it, and certainly the least individual. This makes sense—the highway was first built in a relatively undeveloped part of town, then a bunch of crap was built up around it to serve or entice the people driving by.

There are long stretches of highway that I know very well from throughout my childhood.  Along these stretches are many towns I’ve passed through dozens of times without once actually seeing. And a lot of these towns I’ve judged to be boring shitholes. Having passed through them so many times makes me feel entitled to judge them. But now I see that my charming little home looks from the freeway to be as much of a boring shithole as any other of the anonymous towns along I-5.

If all towns look identically boring from our perspective passing through, what else are we missing in our lives? There are familiar people we pass by every day in much the same way we pass through familiar towns. We move fast and in narrowly prescribed paths. And around these paths we build up possibly the worst parts of ourselves, and almost certainly the least interesting. But because of familiarity, we feel entitled to judge these people, and we take little time to reflect on them. It’s just that guy at work John, in the same way that Ellensburg is just that strip of gas stations and burger places on the way back home.  

Disciplined nonlistening

Not too long ago (four or five years), I had a bad habit that’s probably familiar to most people my age. I would sit down at my laptop having made the decision that it was time to listen to music. The only problem was that I didn’t actually want to listen to anything. Nothing sounded good, but I wouldn’t let that dissuade me from the decision I had made. I would scroll down through the artists in my iTunes library. Then I would scroll back up. Then down again. Finally I would find an album that seemed adequate, and I’d press play.

I would usually only half-listen to the music while I did something else. I would take little joy from what I was hearing, because I had no real desire for it. It was just there. I wouldn’t sing along (or even lip sync), I wouldn’t do little spontaneous dances, I wouldn’t even smile. Sometimes I would wonder why I was listening to it, but I maintained the habit nevertheless.

Eventually I noticed the music for the pointless distraction that it was. What was it that I was trying to avoid? Silence, obviously. A silent room can be a scary place. It can also be a highly productive place. All the music was crowding out the thoughts that can only come in moments of lonely quiet, when uninterrupted monologues flow through your head. So I switched the music off. I told myself that I would only put music on when I wanted to listen to something specific. When a song had been running through my head all day at work or school, I would play it when I got home. When it spontaneously occurred to me that I hadn’t listened to a certain album in a while, I would play it. But I wouldn’t first make the choice to listen to music and then force myself to decide what it was going to be.

I’ve more or less stuck with this resolution since making it a few years ago. I now listen to a fraction of the music I did beforehand, but I enjoy it far more. I dance and sing along more often, because I actually had a bit of anticipation for it. It feels sort of special. I also think more. When no particular tunes strike my fancy, I’ll go about my business of cooking or cleaning (or even just sitting with a cup of tea) in thoughtful silence. And it’s okay.

As revelations go, this one wasn’t particularly huge. Cutting out a bit of the distraction in my life felt good, but it wasn’t revolutionary. I didn’t start making more money or attracting more women, and I didn’t regain the parts of my hairline that have receded. Still, it has larger implications for other parts of our lives. How much time do we spend consuming things we don’t really want? How much time do we spend absorbing trivia that hardly interests us? How much time do we spend with people we don’t really care to see? Most of the distractions in our lives, like music, are basically harmless. They don’t subtract from our character. But they don’t add, either. They stand out as a fat zero in the sum of our existence. For all the time I spent in my younger years constantly listening to music or aimlessly playing videogames or hanging out with poorly chosen friends, I don’t feel especially damaged. But I do feel a sense of lost opportunity.