I stupidly biked to work on a day when i had to go out to New Jersey to see my mom. So i had to leave my bicycle on the street overnight inmidtown. I decided to go with the theory that safety could be found with numbers, that is, a lot of eyeballs. So i dragged mybike out to the intersection, away from scaffolding. I wasn’t sure what would happen, but the next night i got back and there was my bike, safe and sound.

This is my longest stretch of office work. Between 2 jobs, I have worked in an office for 14 months now. The lifestyle is uncomfortable in many ways, but it does have moments that are special, and moments where I stop and think “Wow, I am now one of those people who work in a tall building in Manhattan.” Here are some views from the office:

I love that there are so many murals down the quiet streets of Brooklyn. This one was on Kent.

I went to the Renegade Crafts Fair. I saw some amazing work. I fell in love with some wood and leather watches. I saw some innovative textiles. There was some beautiful pottery. Also jewelry.

My friend Lark was there. She shared a booth with her childhood friend Vanessa (on the left in the photos). Also visiting was Jenine (on right) who is a very talented artist herself.

My current employer was nice enough to buy me a ticket to the MongoDb conference. It was held in a church which is unusual for a tech conference. This is the Desmond Tutu Center. I learned some interesting things, the technology being new to me.

I love where I live in Brooklyn! I love the building and the people in it. Several apartments have opened up in the building. I want really cool people to move in. Do you know of anyone who might be interested?

I was leaving Atlas Cafe. Traffic caused me to go down a side street that I had never been down before. It was a quiet little residential street but it had this amazing mural, a sort of sexy retelling of the Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse myth. This is one thing I like about Brooklyn: there are surprises down almost every street.

My dear friend Doctor Angelica Perry came to New York City. She is doing a raw food tour with her boyfriend, so we hit a lot of the organic raw food places, mostly in the Lower East Side. We stopped outside the restaurant Angelica’s Kitchen since it has the name as my friend. If you look closely you can see my reflection in the window.

The New York City tech boom. This is real, but it has some odd aspects to it. If you are a computer programmer, right now it is wonderful to be in the city — there is no recession. And yet, the startups that are growing have to deal with some real limits in the tech scene, especially the lack of skills. Instead, the startups are here for other reasons, such as NYC’s history as an art and fashion capitol:

They opened for business in February 2010, ultimately setting up shop in New York because they saw themselves as a fashion brand first and an ecommerce company second. “We found ourselves having more meetings with designers, photographers and editors in New York,” Mr. Gilboa said. “We think it is pretty hard to establish a fashion brand in the Bay Area.”

And yet, today my boss said that we had to build our next big software project in PHP, because it was too hard to find good programmers who knew other languages. He listed several languages and suggested the market for programmers was limited in all of them. For instance:

Ruby — this I’ll rule out simply because I’ve tried hiring ruby people and they don’t exist. Any future hiring would require hiring PHP guys and training them up. I’m a big fan of ruby but am skeptical of running a ruby shop in NYC at this time.

It’s amazing, really, that such a tech boom can happen with such a shortage of programmers.

All the same, things are changing. I bet that 3 years from now, it will be a lot easier to get fantastic programmers in NYC.

I’m unsure how to fit all the things I want this year. I want to finish my novel. I want to go to Germany I want to build my business. I want to work a lot to raise money for my business and my trip to Germany. I want to build a social life. I want, I want. In the end, I prioritize work above all else. I should probably try to go on more dates, but instead most of my weekends are given over to work, except when I have friends visiting.

I want to learn some Germany before I go to Germany, but how will I find the time?

Really not sure. In particular, when I am in Germany, should I write code, or should I write fiction? That is a really tough one for me.

Is it possible that the economy could come back strongly? I doubt it. But Brad Delong makes the case:

In the mid-2000’s, the United States had a construction boom. From 2003-2006, annual construction spending rose to a level well above its long-run trend. Thus, by the start of 2007, the US was, in essence, overbuilt: about $300 billion in excess of the long-run trend in construction spending.

When these buildings were constructed, they were expected to more than pay for themselves. But their profitability depended on two shaky foundations: a permanent fall in long-term risky real interest rates, and permanent optimism about real estate as an asset class. Both foundations collapsed.

By 2007, therefore, it was reasonable to expect that construction spending in the US would be depressed for some time to come. Since cumulative construction spending was $300 billion above trend, it would have to run $300 billion below trend over a number of years in order to return to balance.

So, in 2007, everyone expected a construction-led slowdown. And, starting that year, construction spending did indeed fall below trend. But we were expecting a minor decline: a fall in construction spending below trend of $150 billion a year for two years or $100 billion a year for three years or $75 billion a year for four years. Instead, spending fell $300 billion below trend in 2007 alone, and has remained depressed for four years. Moreover, there is no prospect of anything like a rapid return to normal levels.

Therefore, when this construction cycle has run its course, the US will first have spent an excess $300 billion, and then fallen short of trend by a cumulative $2 trillion of spending not undertaken. The net effect will be a construction shortfall in the US of at least $1.7 trillion. That is a lot of unbuilt houses, apartment buildings, offices, and stores – and it is a truly radical disconnect between the size of the recent construction boom and the size of the current construction bust.

Indeed, this radical disproportion makes nonsense of all arguments that the current distressed state of the overall US economy is in some sense necessary, deserved, or an inevitable consequence of over-exuberant building in the desert between Los Angeles, California and Albuquerque, New Mexico in the mid-2000’s. Otherwise, the construction-led economic slowdown would not be today’s $1 trillion in annual lost production. The slowdown would be one-tenth the size of the one the US is now enduring, and it would be largely confined to the construction sector. And, in that alternative universe, having worked off the entire burden of overbuilding, we would by now have returned to trend levels of production, employment, and demand.

His argument is a rehash of the “pent up demand” theory. I’ve been reading Brad Delong on and off since 1996 (we were both on the Left Business Observer mailist). I think sometimes he is over-optimistic. I think this is one of those times. He does not seem to be taking into account the large amount of debt that now hangs over the public. And he seems to be talking about some kind of utopia that ignore all of the political factors that he (elsewhere) talks about repeatedly.

I have seen millions of dollars wasted on bad startup ideas. I felt a great deal of frustration when I saw good ideas go to hell, because of the rotten execution of the entrepreneur in charge. There is an excitement to working hard on a project that has a chance of success, and that feeling turns to something hollow when you realize mismanagement will undo one’s hard work.

I find I’m very excited about my current startup. Even though the money is trivial. But people care about it. When I post some ideas for changes, I get an honest debate among the people who will be effected. For me, this is the highest form of motivation that exists. To have people care about my creation.

Here at work they have a Nintendo Wii. I only played on a Wii once before, back in 2006. I’m not big into video games, but here at work its become standard for me and one of the other computer programmers to take a 20 or 30 minute break and go play one of the sports games, usually tennis. Now I find that my elbow is sore.

People want you to be who they think you are:

People want you to be who they think you are. I think of the straightjacket we all wear when we try to live up to (or down to) the expectations of the people in our lives. We waste so much energy trying to be who they want us to be and act the way they want us to act.

I’ll admit that I have never been good at shaking free of this stuff. Of telling people to fuck off. Instead, I’ve spent much of my life trying to please others. My family, people at work, men… Maybe even you, my readers. It’s just something that I do, as second nature. Try to be the person that people think I am (or want me to be).

I’ve done this too, of course, in terms of having expectations of others. Sometimes it seems unavoidable to me:

1.) a friend who is one of the most talented musicians I’ve ever known, and who has a serious drug problem that keeps him from doing anything with his talent.

2.) a friend whose self-doubt keeps her from ever pursuing anything, as she convinces herself she will fail, so she never really tries

3.) a computer programmer of rare talents who alienates everyone by his tendency to argue about everything — he is unable to get the help he needs on his projects, because he drives everyone away

4.) a man who inherited millions and had the chance to build a successful startup, but who instead spent all of the money on a long series of failed ideas — he never stuck with any one idea long enough for it to do well. The nearest he came to success was when his girlfriend insisted they build a web site focused on the yoga community. This was an instant hit, and he was so bitter that his girlfriend had an idea more successful than his, that he sabotage the project.

I’ve a number of friends who are very talented. I want to see them do well. Many of them have some internal block that keeps them from moving forward. I do not wish to burden them with my expectations of them, and yet, I find it difficult not to think about how amazing they are, and how they undermine themselves.

My friend Lark has an Etsy store. I was lucky enough to get some photos as she worked her magic - transforming glass and metal into art.

I was very lucky to have my friends Misty and Emma come stay with me for a week. Among other things, we went up to the top of the Empire State Building. We also went for a walk around the DUMBO neighborhood wherein Emma reminded us of her great skills as an actress.

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Funny:

“The literati sent out their minions to do their bidding,” Tyler wrote. “Washington cannot tolerate threats from outsiders who might disrupt their comfortable world. The firefight started when the cowardly sensed weakness. They fired timidly at first, then the sheep not wanting to be dropped from the establishment’s cocktail party invite list unloaded their entire clip, firing without taking aim their distortions and falsehoods. Now they are left exposed by their bylines and handles. But surely they had killed him off. This is the way it always worked. A lesser person could not have survived the first few minutes of the onslaught. But out of the billowing smoke and dust of tweets and trivia emerged Gingrich, once again ready to lead those who won’t be intimated by the political elite and are ready to take on the challenges America faces.”

One of the beautiful thongs about a city like this is the ability to see it change in different weather. Last week I posted photos of the view south from work, and those photos were taken on a sunny day. Today I take the same photos on a foggy day.

My friend Jess was visiting New York City. I took this photo as we stood on the sidewalk of Flushing, near my apartment. She was bringing up the camera on her phone so she could take a photo of me.

My mom called today while I was at work. We are meeting in the city tomorrow for lunch and she wanted to be sure our plans were straight. While talking to her on the phone I wandered down the hallway looking for a private place to talk to her. I discovered that the office on the south side of the building was empty and the door was unlocked. I went in and discovered that it had a great view looking south. After I was done talking to my mom I took these photos.

I’ve read that when someone dies the mourning tends to be straightforward if the relationship was a happy one. If the relationship was not a happy one, then the mourning tends to be complicated. By dad died in 2007. I had a great relationship with my dad. I miss him very much and often have dreams where he is alive and I often wake up in the morning thinking he is still alive or hoping that he is still alive. But mourning him has been straightfoward — I have been very sad.

Not close to a parent.

My mom and I had a complicated relationship. When new(er) people to my life ask about her, I say that we weren’t close. But that’s not entirely true.  Saying that you’re not close with your mother conjures up images of people who don’t talk. Whereas mymom and I talked several times a week. We just weren’t emotionally close.

Like many women, my relationship with my mother was complicated by the fact that she didn’t understand the life I chose or the choices I made. Didn’t understand, and as far as I could tell, didn’t approve of it. And while she did her best to be supportive when she could be, she also didn’t hide her disappointment that I didn’t live a different life, the one she would have chosen for me. Not a conversation passed that I didn’t hear about it…

So this weekend when other people were celebrating Mother’s Day, or mourning their mom’s, I was having a little pity party. Thinking of how much I disappointed her, and how much I resented her constantly putting me down and how sad it makes me.

My good friend, the very talented Lark Isadora, has put up of jewelry at Etsy. I love the photography she’s managed to do of her work:

Lark writes:

I have started working on some new glass pendants these days, and I am selling them on Etsy. They are clear Pyrex pendants that are hollow and filled with steel wool. Most of them are quite small, from 5cm to 8cm in length. I have paired them together to create a cluster of multi-sized pendants as well as solo pendants.

The very talented Kristy Caldwell shows us what the first 2 promotional postcards for Flux Theater’s current season look like when put together. It’s an extremely clever way to show the season for a theater company: all on one stage, every play is its own scene, holding its own space.

Kristy writes:

The primary focus on this card is, again, the main character and, in particular, the eyes. Flux’s Season Four slogan is “Don’t Look Away,” broken down this way on their site: “Our fourth season explores the cost of a society remaining always vigilant. In our see-something, say-something world, what happens when we’re always on guard? What is our responsibility to those keeping watch? And what happens when our defenses are breached?”

In my view, this language takes an internalized look at a post-9/11 but present-”Patriot Act” world, focusing on the individual struggles of characters whose lives operate within black-and-white structures. For a static image, this puts the brunt of the heavy lifting on the emotional link between the subject and the viewer. The main character of Ajax in Iraq—certainly the most vulnerable character—is AJ, an American, female soldier currently deployed in Iraq. It was important to make her face the first and last stop for a viewer seeking the emotional message. I made use of shadowing to enhance the light that falls across her, and kept the area behind her free of distractions.

Later this summer I will probably end up doing some work at one of the companies that is working to reinvent publishing. I’ve spoken with the CEO and we seem in agreement on many things. I’ll post more details when appropriate. Suffice it for now to say this is one of the firms that is trying to find new ways to funnel money to writers, and this does not involve my co-developer-of-wpquestions, Darren Hoyt.

One thing the CEO said to me is that they were having big uptake among mommy bloggers. I’ve run into this before, and I’ve wondered at it. Why does this demographic have such an online presence? Simone Grant makes the argument for why mommy bloggers should not get so much attention from advertisers, relative to other demographic niches:

As a single blogger, the only advertisers who seem interested in me and my audience are in the dating (online dating, speed dating, dating experts) and sex industries (condoms, sex toys). And while (I guess) I should be flattered by the non-stop invites to speed dating events, this fact is a constant frustration.

We singles make up a huge segment of the US consumer market. We spend $2.2 trillion annually and 60% of us are homeowners. But advertisers continue to treat us like second class citizens.

Especially in the blogosphere, where mommy bloggers hold court.

Over the years I’ve considered a number of theories, all of them with weaknesses:

1.) Mommy bloggers get a lot of attention because they spend a lot of time online. I’ve had several female friends who almost went insane with the loneliness of having a 1-year-old. It is draining to have a 1 year old. Also, all the patterns of friendship of the new mom might get disrupted. So women with young children spend a lot of time online, looking for community and support.

The counter-argument: lots of single people are also online all day long.

2.) Single people do not self-identify the way married people do (or unmarried people with kids). Depending on how it is measured, “single people” can mean a lot of things. If it is defined as “Over the age of 18 and has no romantic partner” then it includes the 87 year old widower and the 38 year old paraplegic and the 20 year old who is deferring major life decisions until they are older. In other words, defined that way, it is too vague a demographic for marketers to target, unlike “married” or “has a young child” both of which imply an identity that can be targeted in a reliable way.

The counter-argument: technology should allow marketers to target ads to each visitor to a website, regardless of what their current demographic status is.

3.) New mothers are beset with fears, which makes them easy targets for marketers. And they are desperate for information, so they go online and congregate in ways that make it easy for marketers to pitch them.

The counter-argument: other demographics also have fears that can be easily targeted.

At a general level, in publishing there is a move away from general purpose information. This was actually going on long before the rise of the Internet. In the 1980s, the magazine world already saw the rise of niche publications. They heyday of general purpose magazines like Look and Life was back in the era 1920s-1970s. Most online publishing sites that do well have a specific focus: tech, dating, motherhood, politics, etc.

On a related note, back in 2009 I wrote, Online systems are hostile to niche markets, even if they expand individual experience, which surely applies here. The point may seem a contradiction, but it is not — the Internet allows each of us to get more news, of any type, than we ever got before, at the cost of widening the gap in popularity between the most popular and the least popular.

I’m not saying any of this is good or bad. I’m just thinking out loud about why marketers might fund mommy bloggers, but not other kinds of bloggers.

At the end of the day, each of us has a limited amount of time, and our current identity is shaped by how we spend that time. “Mommies” have the advantage/disadvantage that marketers can make easy predictions about how they will be spending their time for the next 5 or 6 years. Single people have the advantage/disadvantage that they can reinvent their lives whenever they like, which make them a less reliable target for marketers. I do think marketers target single people, but not while they are identifying as single people. Instead, such people get targeted when they show an interest in tech, or politics, or fishing, or travel. Or dating.

My friend Lark has knitted some amazing mittens:

I am thrilled to see her blog back in action.