Johnny Appleseed and Grandpa's Orchard

I remember seeing this cartoon in school as a kid in Ohio.  Johnny Appleseed was actually a real guy, and he wandered the general area of Ohio I lived in from 4th to 8th grades.  Once when I was about 12, a friend took me deep into the woods.  Normally this meant an afternoon of fishing or playing army.  But on that particular occasion, he wanted to show me something he found.  It was an old gnarled apple tree that was still producing apples, the only apple tree anywhere in that patch of woods.  He thought it was so old, and in such a weird spot, that Johnny Appleseed himself might have planted it.  He could have been right.  We both ate part of an apple, even though there were pretty green, just to say we'd eaten an apple off a tree planted by Johnny Appleseed himself.

When I was a little kid in Ohio, My grandpa and grandma on my mom's side lived in a pink duplex in Mansfield, Ohio.  Mansfield was the actual area where a guy named John Chapman went around planting apple trees in the pioneer days, earning himself the nickname "Johnny Appleseed," and spawning a legend.  All of us kids in northern Ohio heard the tale of Johnny Appleseed.  My grandpa Mayer was many things.  He was a German immigrant who'd come to the U.S. as a kid, worked his way through college, and went on to be a pharmacist who never made a single mistake at work his entire life.  He was also an avid gardener, and was usually out working in his huge garden when we'd show up on the weekends.  Unfortunately, these aspects of Grandpa were overshadowed by the fact that he was a really mean drunk.  My memories of him as a kid were this big guy with no shirt working in his garden.  Then he'd take a break inside, watch golf on TV, and drink a quart of Stroh's beer.  Then he'd go back out into the garden and repeat the process.  I've seen him drink five quarts of beer on a Saturday, and he'd get meaner and meaner after each one.  That sucked, because he could be a really cool guy... when he was sober.

In addition to the huge garden, grandpa started planting fruit trees in the backyard when I was four or five.  He planted apples, pears, plums, peaches, and a walnut tree, along with a lot of berry bushes.  For the next few years he pruned and fertilized and nurtured those scrawny little trees, which seemed like a lot of wasted work to my little brain.  But on a good day, he'd show off each tree and tell us how, if he took care of them for the first few years, those trees would grow hundreds of fruits in the coming years.  Sure enough, those first scrawny trees started yielding fruit.  By the time was was about ten, every trip to grandma and grandpa's house in the summer or fall would end with a big basket of fruits and vegetables to take home.  In a similar fashion, grandpa rented out the other side of the duplex, and wound up buying the duplex next door and renting that one out as well.  He ultimately took back half of the backyard of the second duplex, and planted a bunch more trees.  Those trees, as well as the duplexes, returned huge bounties for the rest of the time they lived there.

So what does my grandpa's orchard have to do with anything, not to mention Johnny Appleseed, who planted apple trees in Ohio 200 years ago?  Starting a business is a lot like planting a garden or orchard.  In the early days and years, you do a lot of work that you don't get paid for.  But if you plant the right seeds and fertilize and nurture them, then can return an amazing bounty in later years.  As I start my little business around art and writing, I keep grandpa's orchard in mind.  Today I was reading a book about business and social media in today's world, and even these guys immersed in tech used the apple tree metaphor.  I'm not just drawing pictures to make a few bucks.  I'm trying to invest a lot of time and effort in building a business that will not only allow me to do a lot of creative projects in coming years, but will hopefully have a long term positive impact, a little like Johnny Appleseed's  and grandpa's fruit trees.

But I live in a household where I'm the only one who does any long term thinking.  I'm continually harassed about not making enough money in my first few months of starting a business with absolutely no money.  In effect, every single day I'm encouraged to "chop down my apple trees" and buy a single apple. This is frustrating as fuck.  But I'm not in a position to move to any other situation at this point, so I just have to grin and bear the onslaught of negativity.  The point here?  Keep planting your apple trees and guard them against anything that might destroy them, especially the people who don't think about the future bounty those trees will bring.

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Achieving Your Goals

This clip of Jim Carrey shows the most extreme example of visualization and goal setting that I'm aware of.  It worked for him... it can work for you.

When I was in high school in Boise, Idaho in the mid 80's, I used to joke with my dad that I didn't really need to go to college.  I told him I wanted to start my own business, and that I didn't need a degree to hire myself.  We laughed and didn't think much about it then.  Well, I know he definitely wanted me to get a degree, but he didn't push the idea too hard.  I really did want to own my own business.  But I was incredibly shy then, and didn't have the personality to pull it off, though I tried a few times.  Now, three decades later, I am finally committing to building my own business.  Much to my surprise, I'm starting it with artwork, which seems one of the sketchiest possible ways to start a business.  I didn't even think of myself as a visual artist when I started this six months ago.  I was desperate in one sense, despite a wide variety of job experience over 30+ years, I could not get hired for ANYTHING here in this small North Carolina town where I wound up.  There are many reasons why this might be.  Maybe employers think I'm too old, too fat, too sketchy (since my last career was as a taxi driver) or something else.  But it became very clear I wasn't going to find a job here, let alone a well paying job.  Most other people in this area, facing the same prospect, would double down on applying for jobs, or try to get on Social Security Disability, which is seen as a career path in this part of the country.

But I spent most of my life in and around the actions sports and entertainment industries.  I've seen dozens and dozens of people start businesses and do projects starting with very little.  With that background, I simply made a decision last November to create my own job.  It was as simple as that.  My artwork was the only thing I'd made money at in the past years, though very little money.  I realized I had to step up my game artistically, and I started my business with absolutely no money.  I did a couple of drawings for my sister to earn my first little bit of cash, and I kept going from there.  I was living for free with my mom, in an quiet little apartment, so I had that going for me.  But we're always in financial crisis, which has been a big challenge.  I had no phone, no money, very few art supplies to start, a tired old laptop, and a background in blogging.  No one, not one single person, thought drawing pictures was a good idea.  Some of you realize that means I did have one more thing.  A belief I could actually do this.  I'd made my dreams happen, some of them, anyhow, decades ago as a BMX freestyler.  I know from experience that the "impossible" is actually possible.  That is the biggest thing I had going for me.  Then my laptop broke.  It didn't crash, the hinge literally broke.  So I was starting a internet based art business... with no computer.  My next few drawings paid for an old, but functional (barely) refurbished laptop.

As 2016 was starting, I realized I needed to raise money to really get this idea going.  I decided to go with a crowdfunding campaign, specifically, a Go Fund Me page.  I built the page and set a goal of raising $1,000.  I'll be honest, that seemed absurd four months ago.  I had no idea whatsoever if anyone would contribute.  For the first few days, they didn't.  Then my mom's best friend Linda took pity on me and donated $20.  It was a start, but would anyone else follow? I didn't know.

I looked at my approach, and revised it.  Instead of asking for donations, I raised my asking amount to $25, and offered to do a 12" X 18" original drawing for anyone who contributed, or a larger drawing for $50.  Like Jim Carrey in the video above, I started visualizing drawing pictures as well, though not near as intensely as I should have.  I started getting orders for drawings.  They started coming from people I hadn't talked to in years or from people I only knew through Facebook.  Now, about 31/2 months later, I've reached my goal when I include the drawings now ordered.  Officially on my Go Fund Me page, I'm $110 short, but I have orders to cover that.  I achieved what initially seemed like a ridiculous goal.  So I'm successful, right?

Yes and no.  I reached my monetary goal, that's true.  But it took me much longer than I'd hoped.  I wanted to earn that $1,000 in a few weeks, and buy a shelving unit to store my supplies, stock up on the Sharpies and paper and other supplies I use, have a couple hundred bucks in my checking account, and most of all, buy a good digital camera so I can start shooting my own photos to draw pictures from.  Well, I have a small stockpile of art supplies, but I'm low on certain colors of Sharpies.  My checking account in running on empty at the moment, mostly because I had to spend much more than I hoped on basic household stuff, like food and prescriptions and all that.  The good digital camera is still sitting in a store waiting for me, I haven't even come close to buying it yet.

The lessons here?  Goals need to be specific.  Visualization does work, but you have to actually do the work after you visualize it.  There are always other, unforseen expenses when starting a small business.  There are always aspects to the goal we don't think of.  For example, I visualized achieving my goal to earn $1,000 with my art, but I didn't get around to visualizing buying and using that digital camera.  Most importantly, goals are about building a belief that something will actually happen.  Also, goals are an ongoing process.  In six months, starting with literally no money, I can now call myself a "self-employed artist/writer."  But I'm not truly making a living yet.  So it's time to ponder on the goals I just achieved, and use what I learned to set the next set of goals to raise me to the next level.

Generally speaking... I'm stoked.  Things didn't turn out quite how I wanted them to, but then, they never do.  I'm off to a slow but solid start to building my own business, and that's what it's all about for me right now.

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The Job Creation Disconnect

The Greensboro (NC) News and Record newspaper had a huge article the Sunday before last stating that this area has lost tens of thousands of good paying factory jobs in the last 15 years or so.  And if you're from this area, or much of the country, you're reply is probably, "Duh."  For those of you not in this area, the "Piedmont Triad" is the marketing name for this area in central North Carolina comprising the three main cities of Greensboro, Winston-Salem, and Highpoint, and the surrounding small towns.  This area traditionally was big in tobacco, textiles, and furniture making.  Guess what, many of those jobs have been outsourced to other countries.  In the tobacco world, the anti-smoking fervor also helped reduce that industry.  Like the article said, this area, like so many others, has lost over a hundred thousand jobs over the last 25 years or so.  We all know that.

As a recovering taxi driver, I'm one of the millions of people who hasn't been able to find a good paying job.  I've written for magazines, worked on the crews of TV shows, and done many other things over the years.  But none of that helps me get a job in today's work force here in North Carolina.  Unlike millions of unemployed people out there, though, I've been reading and educating myself on the big picture and macro-economic situation in our rapidly changing, tech-laden world.  Unfortunately, most of the people actually running our cities, counties, states and federal government have not read the books or listened to the dozens of lectures I have.  I know I'm a geek in this area, but it still baffles me how clueless so many people in power are to the big picture.  So here are some of the main issues in job creation today.  These aren't my conclusions, but the findings of experts in various areas.  This is why we're having such an issue finding good jobs today.

Robots:  I don't have exact figures, but industrial robots and other forms of technology have probably taken more former human manufacturing jobs than out sourcing.  ATM machines, for example, killed off hundreds of thousands of bank teller jobs.  We've all seen the TV commercials of the robot arms welding cars and other things.  That's where a huge number of jobs have gone.  Those jobs aren't coming back.

Outsourcing:  This started a lot earlier than many people today think.  When I was a kid in rural Ohio, people were complaining of a few companies shutting down factories and moving to the American South.  Some years later, big corporations started moving jobs into Mexico and Taiwan.  Then jobs went to Japan.  Then came Southeast Asia and China.  Again, those high paying manufacturing jobs aren't coming back.  Period.  Stop whining about this.  Those jobs existed for a couple of generations because of the labor unions and because industry was nation-oriented.  Once the business world got more global, American workers were just too expensive.

High Technology:  Technology has completely changed our world in my lifetime, and most of our industrial age organizations, and thinking, have not caught up with that.  One by one, our industries and institutions are crumbling in the wake of new societal norms and the way tech has changed the working world.  Today's high-paying jobs are largely in tech, computer science, engineering, and similar fields.  We don't have enough workers to fill many of these jobs in the U.S.  This is a huge part of the disconnect, on one hand, 30 million people, including me, can't find decent jobs, but there are thousands of jobs employers can't fill because we don't have the right skills.

Clustering and the brain drain:  No one in politics (that I've see) even has a clue about this huge trend.  The cutting edge tech companies have spent the last 25 years clustering in a handful of regions in this country.  Why?  According to professor Richard Florida (who wrote The Rise of the Creative Class), this happens because now the top companies are going to where the talented people live, rather than workers moving to where the big companies are.  In addition, many of the best and brightest people in our country are going to work in these few regions.  The San Francisco Bay Area (aka Silicon Valley), Seattle, the Boston/New York City/Washington D.C corridor, Southern California and Austin, Texas are the main spots where tech is clustering.  This creates a couple of big issues:  These areas are where venture capital and money are focusing and pouring into.  On the other hand, with the smartest people in these few areas, the rest of the counttry is not only struggling to create jobs, but they're stuck with the people of 2nd and 3rd rate intelligence trying to figure out how to create more jobs.  Pure and simple, most of this country is slowly dying economically, and they don't even realize it.  The area where I live is one of those regions.

Changes in communication:  Personal computers, the internet/world wide web, smart phones, tablets, social media and other advances in technology have completely changed the work world.  While most people use these devices and tech in their personal lives, they don't take full advantage of these technologies in the workplace.  In this area where I live, many people in their 50's and older avoid computers all together.  The civic leaders in most of the country don't fully understand how this tech is affecting society, and they're still trying to bring back the lost factory jobs.  The mayors, city councils, state legislators and governors are all fighting the wrong battle.  They're stuck in the mentality of the industrial world they grew up in, and simply don't have a clue how to create new jobs for the millions of unemployed people in these cities across the country.

This is just a brief look  at why we have so many decent people without good paying jobs, and why we have so many high-paying jobs that can't be filled at the same time.  I'll go into more detail on these issues in further posts.  My advice to the chronically unemployed:  Create your own job if you possibly can.  That's what I'm doing.

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Jobs Worse Than The One Youre Applying For

Uh... if you haven't figured out by the still shot, this is a big NSFW.  NOT SAFE FOR WORK, just in case any of you aren't familiar with that acronym. 

I've had some weird jobs over the past three decades.  I spent one day unloading coffins on a TV set.  I got pummeled as a crew guy on American Gladiators.  I've cleaned up the puke of strangers as a taxi driver.  But.. these jobs are all worse.  Somehow animal renderer didn't make the list. 

Panhandling or Guerilla Marketing

I'm not homeless like I was a few years ago.  But I'm not making a good living yet, either.  Why shoot a photo like this?  It's funny.  In today's social media world, funny can go a long way.  This photo will get a few shares.  Heck, it might wind up getting a lot of shares.  If it brings some people to my blog, this piece of cardboard with hand lettering has done its job.  If it makes you chuckle, then it has really done its job.