I never pictured myself being the type of person who'd agree with Arianna Huffington.  She's quite a bit right of me by a long chalk.

But there it is, she's right.  The poor are getting poorer, and we're not paying any attention.  We're too wrapped up in politicos' sleight of hand, being manipulated for optimum number of pageviews on the issue of choice, on non-issues.

Interestingly, I've noticed a traffic trend -- volume is low whenever I write about poverty or inequity.  But if I've posted something utterly rant-y about anything from a b*tchy-*ssed point of view, traffic booms.  (Well, relatively speaking -- 100+ hits when I'm a crab, 20+ when I'm writing about poverty and inequity.  Not a good ratio.)

Is there a correlation?  Does this mean I've gotta' get b*tchy about it before any one pays attention to poverty and inequity? 

I've also noticed that teenage girls and alcohol are topics that command a lot of attention.  Should I sprinkle a few of them in here to help things along?

<sigh>  Maybe she's right:  let them eat cake...with their Court TV.

3:04:59 PM    comment []

I’m wondering if I should change this section to “Birth of a Corporation”…but I guess my dharma isn’t limited to that.  At least I’m pretty certain my dharma is bigger than that…

In case you’ve not already noticed from my previous blog entries, jobs are thin here in the MidWestern Rustbelt-Industrial Corridor where I reside.  There’s never been a wealth of entertainment and attractions here, and now, even fewer jobs.  Pathetic.  This area never really recovered from the low ebb of the late 70’s and early 80’s; there just wasn’t enough money and education, corporate goodwill or intestinal fortitude to rebuild.  Many people moved out of the area, leaving blight in its place.  The blight was and is persistent; no one’s building over the blight or even building near it, leaving it like a cancer to eat away at the flesh.  A unending downward death spiral.

Try suggesting anything around here that Professor Richard Florida recommends in The Rise of the Creative Class as solutions to blight, and you’ll be treated like some sort of sick pervert.  The lack of open mindedness is extremely pathetic.

This is symptomatic of the biggest disease in this area: a pervasive lack of tolerance, part and parcel of a larger excessive homogeneity.  The lack of diversity breeds a corresponding inability to develop new ideas, new approaches to blight.

But that’s where I’m at, faced with the incredibly pathetic in an even worse state of denial.  I’m up against the kind of stuff that killed Detroit.

That’s where I find myself.   This blog shouldn’t be the only outlet my creativity has for expression.  I’m trying to find my dharma, a proverbial needle in this musty, moldy haystack.  The challenge isn’t that the needle is small, but who the hell wants to dig through this mess to find it?  There aren’t enough gloves, goggles, gas masks, disinfectant to make this sanitary enough to compel anyone to dig.  But dig I must, ‘cause it’s mine, my dharma, my dig.

So, when an equally bright friend recently unemployed suggested starting a business, I piped up, hey, why not a minority-owned business?  At first I’m sure he was thinking, golly, where do we get a minority owner…?  We’ve known each other for years, long enough that it’s probably like dust on the TV that I’m of minority status.  It’s there, but we don’t pay it any attention – we’re too busy and too engrossed to give it the time of day.  It doesn’t occlude our vision.

Over the last couple of months, we’ve joked about it.  Me, owning a nice white boy.  Or he, suggesting we call our new company “Cracker Technologies”.  What a joke, a minority business called “Cracker Tech”…bwa-hahahahahaha…(hey, I didn’t say it would be politically correct, our joking over a few beers on personal time rarely is…).

Now it’s taken a turn for the serious.  We need to build something ‘cause there is simply nothing for us.  Not for the educated, experienced white man from manufacturing, not for the educated, experienced mixed-race woman from technology/consulting.  Zilch.  Nada.  Zippo.  Neither of us can leave this area, because of our love-based obligations -- in his case by his kids from a first marriage, me by the decent job my spouse has that I simply can’t mess with.  I’ve got a few more financial resources and business management skills than he has, he’s got industry knowledge and a sales skill set that complements mine.  Guess it’s time we mixed these assets up to build a better mousetrap.

It’s not much of a joking matter to us now – my prospective partner has needs to meet, like a mortgage and his kids’ support and their college educations.  I need to find a way to do something more than be a soccer mom; I’m simply not the kind of person who thrives on keeping a super-squeaky-clean home and children clamoring for more homemade cookies.  (Argh, even the description fills me with trepidation.  I whole-heartedly relate to Hillary Clinton’s comment about cookie-baking, I understood it even if conservative housewives couldn’t.)  More funds for better health care benefits and my kids’ college savings would be nice, too.

He’s not entirely in the same place I’m at, this partner-to-be.  He’s immersed in the immediacy of his needs, lower on the Maslow hierarchy than mine.  He needs the safety and security stuff addressed while I’m looking for some self-actualization, and an opportunity to do a little self-actualization for others.  There aren’t enough opportunities around here for minority members to learn about starting a business; maybe I could provide an opportunity, in addition to getting partner’s safety-security stuff met.  There’s a lot of potential here.

And there’s a niche, waiting to be filled.  There’s a demand for the services we can provide, but there’s no one to fill it.  No one there except us, the truly desperate – each of us desperate in our own ways.  Here we are, taking those initial tentative steps, exploring, probing the waters a toe, two toes, wading in one foot at a time.  My partner is no longer “prospective”, in the sense that we pretty much agree it’s us.  He’s still “prospective”, in the sense that he’s actually prospecting the niche for the size of the opportunity to be had.  He can see it, smell it, taste it, now we need size, quantification.  And I’m no longer “prospective”, in the sense that I’m drafting an operating agreement and articles of incorporation as we get closer to Day One, birth of a corporation.

In some ways, it’s like being pregnant.  We’ve moved from the IDEA of the baby, to conceiving the baby…we can still abort this, stop right now, but the CONCEPT is beginning to take on a life of its own, it’s speaking to us.  I’m getting a little more excited about it every day, looking forward with a little trepidation to the first time I can answer the phone, XYZ Corp., on the phone, like being able to hold that new baby in my arms and call it by its name.  Like a pregnancy, I wake up thinking about it in the middle of the night, rolling around with a little discomfort as it rolls around in my head.  I feel it beckoning me, feel the growing responsibility, awareness of it as a new and separate entity waiting to come forward into its own.

I’m guessing there will be a few false alarms and some labor pains, this incorporation stuff isn’t that easy.  (Editing a 38-page operating agreement is no picnic, believe me!)

At least there won’t be 36 hours of labor followed by a C-Section this time.

Or so I think…

1:03:55 PM    comment []