Tag: life

Plans and Connections

Carl Setzer
I spent the morning going through my contacts, cleaning out and updating things. There were so many folks in there who I had for some random project, many from my time in Real Estate, who I haven’t contacted in years. I felt puzzled by the number of contacts with limited information and no memory of them. One nice thing in Google: looking at the email threads. For many of these folks, there was simply nothing. I spent many years as a chronic collector of contacts. Here’s the end result.
My intent: get my list down to those I know, and build a plan to maintain connection. There are so many great people I’ve met over the years who I really wish I was still in contact with. I intend to fix that.
I understand that many contacts I’ve kept are people who have moved on from me. And that they may have no interest in reconnecting. I’m good with that, though I’ll be a bit disappointed. However, I recognize that none of us can do everything. All of us need to focus.
Also in my plans are to use this site to communicate better, too. Post more regularly and with those life updates. Multiple channels for connection and all of that.
I hope all is well with you during this time of COVID. What are you up to? What are you most proud of? I’d love to hear.

Om Malik: How Do We Look At The Present?

Carl Setzer

I always appreciate the wit and wisdom of Om Malik. Today he tweeted this, which gives me great pause:

2020, a year of havoc and confusion, of transition and destruction, forcing to face our histories against our deepest resistance. Such a dramatic and violent reaction? Will we survive?

Half done or half over? Perhaps a question of optimism: half-full vs half-empty? In this time of pandemic, optimism seems myopic. But, I believe the opposite. Humanity holds what it needs to overcome our destructive tendencies. So I hold on to hope.

Seattle’s Grown, As Have I

Carl Setzer3 Comments
Photo by Eric Hammett on Pexels.com

Ok, this is not a haiku nor a poem. I hope you can forgive the deviation from my norm. Today I read a piece by Seattle writer Angela Garbes. It resonated deeply with me, so I wanted to share with you, my friends.

Published in the Seattle Met, “As Seattle Grew, I grew Up” mirrors my own experience. I, too, spent my ‘feral 20s’ wandering Capitol Hill, where I lived the better part of 10 years of my life. Seeking the urban as a cyclist seeking a car-free life, and the vibrancy I imagined coming with concrete. Years making mostly minimum wage, yet able to survive. Gentrification just starting to squeeze. I being able to rise up the wage rungs quickly enough to stay above the flood waters of economic calamity.

My revisits come filled with memories. Oh, “this was here”, and “that was there”. Then “what WAS here”? Memories combine with memory’s absence; strange feelings, ones that I’m not quite used to.

“Cities are meant to change”. Seattle’s changed, quite a bit. Driving home how time has passed, how much older I’ve become. Things I’m not quite ready to accept, so they keep rearing up. Such is the way of things I guess.

Well, I’ll finish with a haiku: it’s what my soul wants.

these old concrete walks
echoing my youth’s footsteps
urban memories

Why I’m starting a new career into Web Development

Carl Setzer1 Comment

Just over a month ago, I learned I was being let go from my current role. I’ve wandered this path before, so I, initially, wasn’t terribly concerned. However, the more I thought about it, the more concerned I became. Mainly, I’d been laid off twice in less than a year. Thinking further, since 2009, I’d been laid off 4 times. I’m a bit tired of that. Yeah, even being a tech-savvy executive assistant/project coordinator, that work is too easy to outsource. Plus, with digital assistant growth, the lessening of friction for scheduling, the ease at which most folks can book their own travel, and you see the recipe for a dying career. I’m ready to be, shall we say, more essential.

Pretty much all of my life I’ve had a fascination with technology. As a young boy, my love of robots and radios (I had a particular fascination with shortwave radios), evolved into space and aviation, then into computers. Early PC games and BBSs then morphed into a vocational certificate in Information Processing (mainly databases and spreadsheets). Looking back, my biggest contribution to most of my past roles has been digitally based. Whether it’s my ability to fix a copier, 90% of PC issues, set up and manage a network, use things like Photoshop and AutoCAD, or build a website, those were the things that added the most value to the world around me.

I believe that the web holds our future. We will interact with most systems and data with web tools. SaaS models are already driving there…in the fast lane. Web development is a fast-growing path (projected 27% growth over the next 10 years), with decent salaries to boot.

So, it looks like fun, and there’s a need, which seems like a great combination. Thus, off I go.

Music’s Place In My Soul

Carl Setzer

Listening to Rufus Du Sol, reminded how much I enjoy electronic music and one of my regrets: when I had the chance to study music formally, I opted not to. Insecurities spoke too loudly, drowning out passion. I loved studying music theory, exploring the way audio elevations interact with each other. Memories of improvisation workshops, and the compliments I received for my commitment to rhythm.

Now, though, my poetry echos my musical tastes. Symmetry, rich harmonies, layers, textures, all blending into something far greater than the sum of the parts.

The difference between music and poetry: in poetry words flow in single streams. Together, yet alone; they can’t interact. Several words flowing together at the same time create a pile of textual vomit. Music allows multiple people singing multiple lines simultaneously with their interaction making them greater. Much the way different colors blend into new colors, different feelings, telling a story with each dab.

I often play with the idea of restarting this path. Of exploring all that can be done with today’s computers, today’s sampling gear, today’s synthesizers. I could create words, sung, standing upon each other, blurring, blending into something greater, into something beyond whatever could be imagined. Words building upon words, interweaving with tones, textures and rhythms, pushing through feelings, ideas, the power of souls intermixing and exploding with something more powerful than any human element could be, do, express on it’s own.

With all this, when I was younger I listened to music deeply, richly. I listened to the chords, the words, exploring what the composer communicates with that interplay. Did the pleasant, kind words take on irony with the minor or diminished chord interwoven? Words stacked with changing chords, showing tension, motion, landing on a major chord, resolution, release.

Then there’s the blending of older music, ancient music, such as Enigma, taking ancient chant, interweaving new tones and auditory textures, creating something linking the ancient with the rising sun, with a newness of being, something that both exists from antiquity and yet is brand new.

Lesson: passions drive live, make it beautiful. Explore them fully, deeply, richly. Humanity needs no more bitter business people, soul’s stripped of joy. No, we need more passion, joy, aliveness.

Bring that into being, my friends.

Here is the song by Rufus Del Sol that got me going. Enjoy!

The Past, The Future, Focus

Carl Setzer

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Met a really cool guy today. A former Navy nuclear power program sailor, just like me. Though he is quite a bit younger. 

Swapped stories of our respective experiences, which I enjoyed. Yet I often worry in those moments that I’ll become like the subject of Bruce Springsteen’s “Glory Days”, a relic, trapped in the past. Grave fate, for me, at least.