Practice Makes Progress

(posted on LinkedIn on Sep 16, but the spiritual prequel to this channel)

There was something…fortuitous about this summer. Serendipitous? Je ne sais quoi. Following my first vacation to Nova Scotia, I learned two days later I was collateral damage to corporate restructuring. But as the expression goes, when life hands you lemons…

Boomers: …you make lemonade.

Gen X: …you create a startup to market lemon juice as a healthy, low-carb alternative.

Millennials: Lol, as if anyone would just “hand you” some lemons.

Zoomers: Six seven, bro!

Thankfully, I’m Gen X–part of a latchkey generation that had to fend for themselves as our collective parents were out helicoptering their second families. Those lessons in self reliance got us through the Pandemic of our adulthood, and they’ll get me through this phase of unemployment at present.

But first, reprogramming. I have to admit, I have not taken many vacations this past decade, and so I was not used to this much time off. Working for a startup that was successful enough to be bought by PE money means you get used to late nights and weekends, easily sacrificed when you have collaborators that care about delivering the product as much as you do. And the virtual office meant you did not trade kid time for commuting to prove commitment. I love road trips, but not traffic or parking.

So having a summer to spend with family and the freedom to ask “What now?” was a well-timed blessing to coincide with my youngest graduating middle school and preparing for the realities of ninth grade. He ended eighth grade on top. Some context: he developed an interest in soccer (football, futbol, what have you) during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. The next spring we found a rec program for his age with tryouts in May and a season that began September, 2023.

It was a tough autumn. Eight Saturdays home and away. Eight losses. He went back for the Spring 2024 season. Another eight Saturdays. Another eight losses. That group of middle schoolers played up and down the North Shore of Massachusetts and went completely defeated.

Undeterred, he went back for his eighth-grade year. Half were familiar faces. Half were new. And he had improved. By the Spring 2025 season they completely turned around their record: UNdefeated! They went to the playoffs. We didn’t even know they had playoffs! They made it to the finals! And after a brutal contest where a teammate got carted off the field in the last five minutes with a fractured wrist to start his summer, they lost their first game by one goal.

Does practice make perfect? Not in my experience. But it does make progress. From worst to second gives you the motivation (and experience) to compete. And they learned how to play as a team, which cosmically is better than a pee-wee trophy at the end (I tell myself).

My dismissal came 17 days later. With the ink of my son’s spiritual triumph still wet in the record book, how did I approach my own professional exit? Let me ask you a question:

Parlez-vous français?

After conquering Latin, and refreshing my Spanish, this summer I decided to learn French. Pourquoi? Because I’m super cool and have been reading a lot about the Norman Invasion. And if that weren’t enough I probably watched Brotherhood of the Wolf for the umpteenth time and said, “Pourquoi pas!”

Now it’s not immersive learning. One free lesson a day on Duolingo, and I own the Rosetta Stone app as well. Enough to push the boundaries of my linguistic limits, and like a stretch before the workout it gets me limber for the other daily activities.

But my days aren’t spent just mass producing résumés and cover letters. Gotta stay creative.

Comment créez-vous?

My soccer son doesn’t like to write things down. Thank touchscreens, autofill, and our beleaguered education system. During the Pandemic when I realized he had the crabbed penmanship of a serial killer, I paid him to transcribe words in workbooks. He likes money more than he hates shame, so he’s now proficient in print. It’s not cursive, but it’s better than a doctor (and most of his peers), and it reinforces his learning. Computers (or in his case Chromebooks) may make “life” easier, but not learning. Not experience. And what is life without experience?

So it goes for creation. Just pushing buttons just pushes my buttons! We can’t learn without our senses engaged. We can’t create without the experience of what we’ve learned: in the inspiration to reflect our experiences or in the artistic reaction informed by our attempts at expression.

I paint. I also draw. Every line and color a series of choices that I cannot necessarily delete or undo but must accommodate once committed. This takes time. This takes practice.

With more time to create I’ve dedicated part of it to new methods of creation. How do you paint without a brush? What makes a frame and how does it define the work? These sound like Zen koans (and maybe they are) but to attempt new methods of applying media to matrix challenges the quo in my creative status. Like learning French it makes for conflict, and there is no growth without conflict.

Où sont-ils allés?

Speaking of application…If the internet is one big haunted house, then those who are hiring must be the ghosts. I have had the bad luck but good fortune to network with many people around my age shown the corporate door and provided a common crossroads. We all need to find our next undiscovered country, but to quote Coleridge (and Iron Maiden):

Water, water, every where,

Nor any drop to drink.

The Urban Dictionary defines ghosting as “When a person cuts off all communication with their friends or the person they’re dating, with zero warning or notice before hand.” What was popular in online dating has now become a practice in business culture. Apply to a job. Interview. Interview again. You may go through several rounds of conversation for the same position, and then suddenly never hear from that company again.

I don’t want to qualify an entire category of business professional as spectral. I think we all understand that for every good experience, one person tells another. For every bad experience, one person tells ten. But I’ve talked to more than ten people, and they’re not all coming from the same bad experience, so…it’s a bigger problem.

Compounding the problem are too many talented people asked to provide fresh content built for free and the benefit of that possible employer, only to be forgotten and avoided when another candidate is chosen (and supplied all this great free content from their unwitting competitors).

It’s a sellers market. They set the terms, and the terms often require a downpayment from their applicants. Que será, será. But to then ghost those applicants? Quel dommage!

With all this talk about AI, one practical application could be a resource manager that provides updates and non-commital encouragement while keeping the applicant updated before gently informing the company went in a different direction. Such an application would be invaluable both for human resourcing and customer experience. No applicant wants to be haunted by a company. And no company wants to be exorcised on Glassdoor.

Qui voulez-vous gagner?

Being unemployed is a full-time job. The search, the composition, the submission, the conversation, the repetition. I am grateful for every lead and every follow up. Encouragement feeds optimism. After a six-week debate over my identity, Massachusetts finally authorized my unemployment benefits. Every step is a step forward, even if they often feel lateral or backward.

Tryouts for high school soccer began a week before school started. There were some familiar faces, but most were not yet known. The coaches did not know my son. He had to prove he wanted to be there, and they practice a lot more than the rec program. It was intimidating. It was effort. “They care about winning!” he said in a difficult moment. “So do you,” I said in return. He did not want to fail. He persisted, and made JV.

The World Cup comes to North America next year. Boston is one of the host cities. The call went out for volunteers who can speak multiple languages. Did I apply? Sí (recuerda que hablo Español tambien).

I am building out a lot of things: my network, my identity, my own content. Practice makes progress. But if nothing else comes from this exercise, look for me at the group stage next June. We can talk in at least three languages. À bientôt!