I enjoyed a few long walks round the central Maine coast during the last leg of our Bar Harbor trip. There’s this palpable sort of Stephen-King vibe in the cold, dark, isolated patches of Northern wilderness. The low-lying stretches are colder, windier, steeped with some sort of sweetly-rotting aroma that could be moss, could be rich loam, could be something else. The leafless trees creak and clack, rubbing against one another like cricket-chirps, like rattling bones. The Pet-Sematary deadfalls and never-completely-silent wetlands impart the sensation of watching eyes. I was scared witless the first time I ventured out in the dark — but, so help me, the very next night I went out again, pushed myself further, learned to love the stark moonlit expanse. Have lost ~37 lbs (with some fluctuation) and ~20 mmHg (118/64 this week) thanks to some dietary discipline. Am trying to savor new experiences for what they are, to observe and appreciate a new/different thing every time I go walking, order dinner, strike up a conversation.

        — Bullets Over Broadway. Over-the-top farce. Not Woody’s best work.
        — Everything’s Eventual. Four of these fourteen stories are really good.
        — Mansfield Park. Basically Sense and Sensibility, diluted and retold.
        — Rose Madder. Battered wives; otherworldly Portrait of Dorian Gray.
        — The Journeyman. Spaghetti-western wannabe, heroin-addict villain.
        — The Take. Brutal 1980s British-underworld series. Violent and dark.

Parenthood overflows with surprises and metamorphic transitions. Ulrika (who will be four years old tomorrow) has taken unexpectedly well to her very first skiing lessons, continues to spark from-the-hip existential discourse: Daddy, who is the Baby Jesus, where was he born, Daddy, I don’t want to get fuzzies on my parts when I grow up, Daddy, who do you get as your new Mommy and Daddy when you go to be with the stars, who will *I* get to be *my* new Mommy and Daddy when you go to be with the stars, etc. Little Lars is getting stronger (starting and sometimes winning tugs of war), figuring various things out (‘poose’ = please, ‘occam’ = ice cream, ‘hootah’ = Rudolph), pushing kitchen chairs around to climb onto countertops, into the sink, lifting the lid and standing shin-deep in the toilet bowl. For my part, I find (modest) satisfaction in closer-to-home adventures: Gin’s chicken enchiladas, the Green Papaya’s surprisingly-good ka pow kai, the discovery of a second bubbling brook abutting our property.

Everyone’s talking about the Return of the Light. Am looking forward to it myself.

As a consultant (specifically, an IBM consultant), I am required to maintain a certain number of billable hours each year. This is a mix between BILLABLE WORK (actual work for customers that generates revenue) and NON-BILLABLE WORK (non-profit-bearing investment activities, such as sales-proposal writing or new-customer meetings, that yield no revenue, but will theoretically pave the way for future revenues). The required mix varies from year to year. It could be 85% one year, or 93% the next year, etc. Though missing one’s “target” is not an immediate death sentence, it can lead to future he/she-didn’t-make-enough-money-for-us staff cuts.

My remote geographic status (living in New England, some 500 miles from my DC-based security brethren) has some influence over the type of work I can and cannot do. Certain customer projects are not easily accessible. This tends to slant me more strongly in the direction of non-billable work (sales proposals, consultations for prospective new customers, etc.). Sensing this trend as a cause for potential future problems (i.e., Sven doesn’t work enough billable hours to justify his continued employment), I have steadily made inroads with various commercial-side projects (non-federal, non-govt), which tend not to be so Washington-centric.

Against prevailing odds, I have made this new mix succeed. My work for human-resource shops, insurance firms, software juggernauts, toy companies, and wireless providers has been well received. My commercial “reputation” is now sufficient to guarantee me 100% billable coverage in a calendar year. (In fact, it’s more like 150% or 160%, surpassing my capacity to do it all, but that’s a separate issue.) I am becoming a popular tech specialist; I have several peers and superiors who ask for me by name.

My old mix used to look like 47% BILLABLE, 53% NON-BILLABLE.
My new mix is 75% COMMERCIAL BILLABLE, 30% FEDERAL BILLABLE, 45% NON-BILLABLE.

As with any 150% or 160% situation, numerous overload conditions are happening. A certain number of collisions take place (federal and commercial projects each getting in the other’s way). Worse still, ridiculous situations are arising where Boss and Super-Boss will chime in “Hey, we know you’re busy working on those BILLABLE projects which make us money, but we really need someone to work on this NON-BILLABLE thing, nobody else here has the skills, please shift priorities around to get right on it.” In theory, the IBM mantra is “billable work takes precedence, always” — but this discipline seems to break down when your director and/or your executive partner are the ones asking, because, of course, your billable work isn’t of higher priority to *them*.

And so the problem becomes one of numbers, and governing metrics. I have found a way through which I can meet (and exceed) my hourly targets year after year — but my management, driven by their own priorities, are dictating different divisions of labor. (“No, Sven, we realize you have 100% BILLABLE work, but we need you to pull back and do this 30% NON-BILLABLE stuff for us.”) All of this notwithstanding, when my numbers are rolled up at year-end, my 50/50 or 60/40 or 70/30 split doesn’t look very good in comparison to the other DC-local consultants, meaning my advancement (and, eventually, my job) are at considerable risk. Surprisingly (maybe unsurprisingly), those same managers who asked “Please work on this NON-BILLABLE thing” either don’t speak up at year-end review time, or they do speak up, and their colorful prose doesn’t hold weight against the cold hard numbers.

There is no easy way out of this mess. I have spent the past year-and-a-half lobbying for different utilization targets (“Hey, guys, if you really *do* value my NON-BILLABLE work, and if I’m *really* the only guy who can do it, then we should adjust my 80/20 or 90/10 expectations to a more realistic 50/50 or 60/40.”) This has yielded no constructive action. Having an ‘exception’ made at end-of-year review time would be an almost-as-acceptable compromise (“Hey, we know Sven didn’t make his numbers, but it was because we dumped a whole bunch of NON-BILLABLE work on him, he did great so we shouldn’t penalize him”), but this doesn’t happen either. Repeatedly refusing managerial taskers (“No, I won’t work on that NON-BILLABLE thing”) is an unwise course of action. Sitting on my duff, status quo, will result in the situation mushrooming until my name appears on a 2012 or 2013 layoff list.

Probably a good idea to stop talking numbers and briefly consider the underlying root causes. Lack of support from (lack of trust in) management is a big problem here. My boss is well-meaning, but seems unempowered to make changes. His boss (my Super-Boss) is an unapologetic slave to the financial numbers (“Nothing I can do, the organization is maniacally focused on billable hours”), and doesn’t appear to be very emotionally invested. The how-many-hours metric is badly broken, and out of touch with reality. You can’t expect your staff to work 100% on existing business (eating up your stockpiled grain reserves) without cultivating some new business (planting seeds to grow new grain), or your existing business will eventually die. Similarly, explicitly ordering your employees to work LESS-THAN-TARGET billable hours while still measuring them against the same TARGET required-hours metric is just plain unfair. Compounding and worsening all of the aforementioned factors, the US federal sector is getting progressively weaker (more cash-starved) with each passing quarter, meaning there is less government work out there, meaning the billable targets are progressively harder to make. I may have contributed, myself, to this situation by shoehorning myself into a job which was not a perfect fit (geographic distance, not-fully-supportive management, successively-weakening government sector).

Though, as I reference above, there is no immediate “danger,” a move probably needs to happen. One option would be commercial security consulting (in effect, leaving all this federal government stuff behind to focus on the insurance and toy-company and wireless-provider programs I went out and found on my own). Another option is sales-engineering (doing the consult-with-new-customers stuff full time, maybe mixing in some sale-proposal writing and solutions architecture); this gets away from the how-many-hours-did-you-work measurement, but introduces other constraints, such as minimum-quota-per-quarter and how well (or poorly) the entire sales team is doing. A third option (less palatable, but still viable) would be going back to my previous research/scientific employer… this is cushy and comfortable, but feels like a step backwards. Jumping to yet another external company (e.g., becoming the Director/VP of Security for one of those healthcare/wireless companies that so admired my work) constitutes a fourth alternative, if one is willing to accept the downsides of constant job-jumping in a recessed economy.

Et voila. Am I making this too complicated? Inflating molehills into mountains? Missing some should-be-obvious recourse? Some of this could be termed “internal entrepreneurship” — defining your own job, finding your own work (including new opportunities for work, and/or new ways of doing business) within an existing structure. As problems go, this could be worse. If left unchecked, however, it will prove the death of my IBM career no later than 2013 (at which time my current boss retires).

I welcome any/all advice.

Certain good things *did* happen. I flourished (or at least survived) in a remote teleworker job after my two executive champions jumped ship. I gathered promising contacts in adjacent companies and divisions. I renovated our household computing infrastructure (including my basement office) into a sleeker, more cost-effective system. (I even got (back) on the Macintosh bandwagon.) I traveled to a number of interesting places, including coastal California, the Pacific Northwest, and, oddly, mainland China. I (re)visited some favorite haunts — Carolina Pit BBQ, San Francisco Soup Company, the odd suburban-Chinatown stretch known as Milpitas Square. I lost thirty-five pounds, the aforementioned diversions notwithstanding. I qualified for two valuable industry certifications, singlehandedly won half a million dollars in new IBM business, and watched (continue to watch) my kids growing up into little people.

I gave better than I got, barely. Hopeful for karmic payback in 2012.

Holiday festivities have come and gone, largely successfully. (Neat watching little Uli getting *really* whipped up with excitement, moreso than has been true in the past.) Had a December-24th hospital scare with Dad; nothing life-threatening, more like a severe middle/inner ear ailment, but geez it wasn’t fun seeing him stumbling from side to side, violently retching, unable to walk straight or even keep his balance. Enjoyed a Saturday-Sunday sleepover with Chelmsford family (exchanging the usual gratifying spate of electronics, experiential gift-certificates, wardrobe accouterments) before heading northward to winter at the in-laws’ cabin overlooking Bar Harbor. The bleak-but-beautiful tableau painted by these water-bounded woods is three parts Grizzly Adams, two parts Morannon Marshes. (Don’t follow the lights, Bagginses.) I find myself wanting to dig a solitary hobbit-hole, to squirrel myself away from onlookers’ eyes for a while, remain apart.

I sense that I am slipping (back) into restlessness. I stop at gas stations, plotting out various distances-till-empty, one gallon, yes, 24 miles, I can get to the mall and back, two gallons, Nashoba Winery, three, a round-trip to the airport, four, possibly Amherst but no farther. My subconcious Professor Moriarty keeps churning through figures like 225 townhouses (30% with unattended packages) x $40 average package resale value = $2,700 per season. Some possibility exists (not overwhelming, but certainly greater than I might like) of my falling prey to mid-January layoffs, due to my mix of billable consulting hours not lining up just so with departmental projections; I find that too ludicrous to prepare for or even consider overlong. Was this what the Lithuanian fortuneteller meant by “coming into my power in the 36th year, no later,” I wonder? Will try sticking to a loosely-plotted course this time, rather than lashing out randomly.

The Finger Lakes, the Nile, the Orient Express, the Antarctic. The corner office.
New adventures are coming.

Fun family time interspersed throughout backbreaking workweeks. Edaville Railroad Festival of Lights with the kids and grandparents last weekend (thank you, Mom, Dad); live theater at Boston City Hall Plaza this weekend. Lars is developing a comic presence, grunting “Ahh-ahh” as a sort of euphemism for Yes, Okay, Uh-Huh, I Want That, sweetly crooning “Rock-A-BYYYE, Da-da” as bedtime draws near, wailing “NOOO” whenever his parents ask for a bite of his dinner (save for broccoli, which he silently hands over). Ulrika, not to be outdone, grows ever more quick-witted at the tender age of 3 yrs 11 mos. (Daddy, Mama can’t come to the phone, but she said I could stay home with you while she went to the grocery store. (Mama said nothing of the sort.) Mama, the boys and girls who don’t have anything for Christmas, we should get them IBUPROFEN. Nana, don’t tell anyone, but I don’t think Cookie Monster is very smart.) I finally took my winter coat out of the closet. My neighborhood walks are 0.43 mi and 0.68 mi per loop, respectively.

        — Inside Job. Mortgage-crash documentary. It *skewers* the analysts.
        — Peter Pan 360. Average show. Clever projectors, puppetry, wire work.
        — Pillars of the Earth. Decent medieval tale; gets preachy + religious.
        — State of Play. Thinly-veiled anecdote of Blackwater-military-collusion.

IBM work is flooding in literally faster than I can get it done. The past three months’ 150% isn’t quite cutting it; to do everything ‘on time,’ I estimate double-shifts (80 hrs/wk) will be necessary, but I won’t do that. I have, somewhere over the intervening decade, established myself as security thought leader — I can’t do elliptic crypto off the top of my head or anything, but I can patch together complex solutions (both familiar and untried) from available components, hold my own against chief executives, rival hackers, three-star generals, win $550K of new business from four customers in a single quarter — and am now gathering my own slavish We-Need-Sven-To-Close-This-Deal entourage. There may be no practical ceiling to what I can accomplish here, no limit to the holdings and/or reputation I can accumulate. I was wholly unprepared for this; it is simultaneously gratifying and terrifying. One final $80 gambit of mine (a managerial dinner-and-drinks investment, made in pursuit of still-greater gains) remains outstanding. Will see how that plays out.

Peak Foliage. Peak Oil. When, do you suppose, is Peak Life? Peak Fulfillment?

Settling in for the coming winter. Had three sportcoats tailored, salvaging two (the third is still baggy through the shoulders). Have been taking smartphone-pictures of my ‘good’ haircuts, and bringing those pictures to my stylist(s), improving results considerably. I lost Fountain Pen #3 (my ivory-white model, which was getting old and leaky anyway), but hodgepodged a reasonable facsimile from spare nibs and barrels. Perusing this blog’s quantitative content, I can see that Lars is roughly where his sister was at the same age, development-wise (possibly a month or two ahead, which could be attributed to older-sibling example), that my all-time ‘worst’ career-doldrums happened ~2.5 yrs back (say, March 2008 to October 2008). After ten months of my complaining, the condo maintenance crew has (finally) discovered gutter leakage and resultant siding/plywood water damage from roof to basement. My firsthand empirical trials suggest that brisk walks while talking on a cell-phone make for pretty good aerobic exercise.

        — Curse of Jade Scorpion. Schmaltzy 1940s hypnotist whodunnit. C+.
        — Kiss of Death (1995). Half-decent remake of a legendary noir classic.
        — Manhattan Murder Mystery. The unused Annie Hall plot. Sort of blah.
        — Towers of Midnight (WoT XIII). Plot starts moving(!) halfway through.
        — Vampire Diaries. More True Blood than Twilight. Superb soundtrack.

Similar penny-ante minutiae for the remainder. Noting that my day-after tolerance for alcoholic indulgence is steadily diminishing with age (upset stomach/bowel, etc.). Grappling with a recurring workplace problem (fifth or sixth time this has happened to me since 1999 or thereabouts). For simplicity, we will term it “intellectual infidelity” — some mix of multidisciplinary talent (and/or overambition, and/or toe-tapping wanderlust) such that, time and time again, I get stuck between organizations, reporting to Dept #1 while slowly discovering that my work for Dept #2 is more exciting, rewarding, more highly valued. There are things I enjoy: anchovy Caesar salads, blue-black ink, driving long distances with audiobooks, lobster bisque, paying with pocket change, sauteed mushrooms, typed sentences that fit perfectly between margins on a single line, whiskey cocktails, women wearing thigh-high stockings and nothing else. I take comfort in the solidity of At Least I Know, At Least I Tried It, I Won’t Wonder What If Anymore.

Ulrika is like this when she dances, loses herself in the music. I love that about her.

Jam-packed workweek, sandwiched between equally-busy weekends. Enjoyed a sumptuous Thanksgiving feast with relatives at the Gibbet Hill Grill before heading north to the in-laws’ cabin overlooking Bar Harbor. Took the kids down to Walden Pond for one last autumnal excursion. Hit up my 20-year high school reunion, reconnecting with humble ignominious locals, finding my fellow honors-laureate peers unexpectedly disaffected and distant. Dealt myself a cruel mid-digital wound in the kitchen (via paring knife), and have been marveling at just how much one uses the middle finger of one’s left hand. Helped Gin-the-domestic-dynamo with a couple of household renovations (new faucet, new light fixtures). Am comparing health-plan coverage details and cultivating an appreciation for spicy lentil soup. Will close out the year with a week’s unspent vacation, but I figure I took nine or ten slower-paced ‘mental health days’ in 2011, so that’s okay. I hear surreal snippets of David Byrne and the Talking Heads everywhere.

        — Broadway Danny Rose. Good-natured romcom farce. Just average.
        — Love and a .45. Offbeat True Romance + Raising Arizona mashup.
        — Nights in Rodanthe. Even as a sappy chick flick, this failed utterly.
        — Sweet and Lowdown. Faux jazz biopic. Story is sad, sweet, pitiable.
        — The Kennedys. I actually found the series to be a shallow depiction.
        — The Walking Dead. Smaller-scale WWZ. More char-based nihilism.

Trying to dump out a double-armful of old baggage as I decompress. Nine or ten years back, an old buddy of mine, emboldened by newfound pious fervor, cheerfully told me that his spouse found me “devious, sketchy, generally untrustworthy.” (Yes, I’ve held onto that for a decade. I can’t say what behaviors might or might not befit a Christian life; I guess we all slog along as best and for as long as we can.) Taking stock at this, my 18-month IBM anniversary, I observe that our team will probably go 0 for 10 in competitive million-dollar proposals, and that the four projects I “won” came through different (non-competitive) channels. (Reminds me of Scott Adams’ wry admonition… the day you realize your outcomes have no relation to the efforts you put into them is the most liberating moment of your life. Hmm.) I am preparing a modernized version of Onegin’s Sermon for use in an unpleasant future conversation. And I need to find ways of (re)connecting with my father, now that we no longer share a common employer.

Buy yourself a new car, a coat, the Greeks say. It is why we get up in the morning.

Aside from these, however — atop them, somehow — I am appreciative of the hand I was dealt. I harbor more than my share of foibles (fears of my little boy suffocating, or falling to mortal injury, fears of my daughter being scarred by daycare, or by Daddy’s too-harsh admonitions, fears that divorce and/or illness will consign me to solitude in the final years of my life, that my career will sputter into an unemployable cul-de-sac, that I waited too long to give my parents grandchildren, that some sinister presence will cut off my escape route and corner me in the basement, garage, backyard); I am perilously moody, impatient to a fault, I take everything personally, I can’t charm or schmooze my way out of a wet paper bag, beyond a handful of quippy pre-rehearsed lines.

When the chips are down, however, I am quick — cat-quick — analytical, broadly-versed, possessed of a florid, expressive intellect which has carried me a very long way. I realize and continue to indulge my passions through innumerable adventures. I am doubly blessed, having yoked my wagon to a similar and complementary talent, having lived to see my spark breed true not once, but twice. I am fundamentally flawed; I cannot hold myself forth as a paragon of any sort of virtue. But I have enough. More than enough. And, despite my stubborn insistence to the contrary, it all seems to work out more often than it goes off the rails.

And I hope your good fortunes will rival if not surpass my own.
Happy Thanksgiving, Readers.

Coming home from a client security-assessment in San Jose. Poignant revelations during this trip. The servers in question are hosted with my former employer, whose sprawling complex is now a 40-man skeleton with constantly churning hires. (Really took me back, sitting in that freezing-cold data center, blasting classic Rush through my earbuds…) The executive for whom I am working, a near-agemate (42, 45ish), retains an impressive technical repertoire. We share an unspoken understanding that, in a different time, each of us could be doing the other’s job… but, observing his ~25% bigger salary, his ~55% longer workweek, and his I-get-paged-every-90-min, I-didn’t-see-my-kid-for-a-year anecdotes, I don’t necessarily want his life, do I? This is my second such realization in two months (Sven works alongside similarly-aged powerbrokers, Sven realizes he doesn’t have it so bad by comparison). Seems like I’m headed for some less-ambitious/more-satisfied plateau, these days, a multivariate saddle-point where 8% yearly growth is ‘good enough,’ where my marketable commodities are still valued, where the fire’s not burning quite so bright or hot as it used to. Or maybe I’m just getting old. That would have bothered me (it all would have bothered me) not so very long ago.

        — Harry Potter VII(b). Worth it just for the 7-min Pensieve scene. Wow.
        — Hell on Wheels. Far too slow. Everyone wants to remake Deadwood.
        — King of the Corner. Mid-life crisis, transition; a semi-serious Seinfeld.
        — The Descent. Cave-monsters. Suspenseful. Director’s ending rocks.
        — Tree of Life. Job-esque. Malick’s films are poems to Nature, Divinity.

My diet is yielding promising results (20 lbs, 25 lbs) as I continue to explore alternatives (salads and soups, sparing use of potassium salt-substitutes, sliced jalapenos as seasoning, water instead of soda). I got to play solo dad for a night and a day, and, though I’m not very good at it, we pulled through more or less unscathed. I had the most wonderfully vivid, recursive, and self-referential dream of my young life this past Tuesday. Rough calculations suggest that I won $600K in new deals this year (that’s only four deals in a short Sept-to-Dec timeframe, mind you), and recouped ~30 otherwise-unworkable hours ($60K) during the power outage. (Thank you, VZW modem.) Am trying to amass these modest successes into a gratifying sort of foundation, stocking up granaries for the inevitable winter, rather than growing entitled or overinflated. Because I swear, sometimes, I can feel the Svens I could have been lingering like half-shed snakeskins. The concert musician. The conceited chemist. The desperate, lovesick tech-support wannabe following his gal to some workaday Tri-State hell. The listless, unmotivated programmer. The shell-shocked young manager seeking validation. The vainglorious survivalist. The dope fiend. The drunkard. The dropout.

Health over wealth. Adventure, not ambition. Satisfaction, then success. I’m learning.

Housebound for the past 10-12 days. Soaped up our dog-towels in the shower so as not to befoul laundry or the washing machine. Used our Liquid Plumber before it ate (further) through its plastic bottle. Enjoying Nestea’s flavored water-additives (like Crystal Light, but tastier and more substantial somehow). Acclimating to the Mac OS X experience. Cranking out a goodly sum of billable consulting hours, with no end in sight. Getting 3.5 hrs’ additional juice out of my 9-cell laptop battery. Having loopy, stressful dreams every night — not ‘nightmares’ in the typical sense of the word, but, rather, a missing suit-jacket without which I can’t travel, an unwinnable wrestling match I was peer pressured into somehow, a three-credit class I haven’t attended for most of the semester, hours spent scavenging for firewood only to find that my fellow campers have gotten a blaze going in my absence. Makes me wonder, not for the first time, if I’m finally rounding the bend from ‘neurotic’ to something deeper and more serious.

        — 30 Days of Night II. Exact rip of Aliens, scene-for-scene. Middling.
        — Boss. Kelsey Grammer is good. Rest is flat, contrived, oversexed.
        — Interiors. Unusually bleak for Woody Allen. Powerful char portraits.
        — Sorcerer’s Apprentice. Not terrible; a kid-friendly John Constantine.
        — The Lady, Chef, Courtesan. Latina Bridges of Madison County. B+.
        — The Spirit. Sin-City-style superhero. So bad I couldn’t watch it all.

Which is not to say that the humdrum day-to-day stuff isn’t also enjoyable. We received a delicious home-baked rye loaf from the Dziengeleski household, and found it thick, hearty, ideal for soup. (Many thanks, Seth.) Lars fell out of his crib in the early hours of the morning this week, but his big sister brought him back to her bed, comforting and cuddling him until the rest of the family woke up. (I am very proud of her.) I defused a difficult professional situation by keeping my cool and uttering seven words (“Perhaps we’ll discuss this in the morning”). My cinematic/literary appetites are shifting subtly toward abstract presentations and character pieces. I seem to have a good thing going work-wise (you could call it ‘restless intellectual infidelity’ or ‘gleaning intel and opportunities with parallel divisions,’ depending on your viewpoint). I find myself getting a real charge out of doing the right thing, lately, finishing a job well done, a sensation I haven’t experienced for a long time.

Is this Book Three? Smaller conquests? Enjoying the now? Will give it a shot.