Silicon Valley Zeitgeist

My friend Joe made a great journal entry here about the Silicon Valley Zeitgeist and the malaise that grips even those of us who have secure jobs during a downturn.

I've been through two, but this is the first one that's really kicked my butt. Financially, I'm feeling the pinch. My company believes in noncompetitive salaries and lots of stock; said stock is down 85%. But I don't think the financial picture is the biggest part of my malaise.

I'm seeing how enormous and pervasive are the effects of luck. I see it in who got laid off in my office -- not that the choice wasn't inevitable when the time came, but that it was all timing, and that if the ax had fallen earlier or later it would have been different people. I see it in who doesn't ever need to work again: I have two friends who got big buckets of stock from the same company near the top of the bubble, and one got his certificate from the transfer agent noticeably earlier than the other did, so he doesn't ever need to work again and the other guy might maybe buy a car with his stock some day. I have friends who worked very hard for the wrong companies, or for the right companies at the wrong time. I could go on. Most of us could, I suspect.

Luck.

We don't like to think about luck having such a big effect. Successful people would prefer to credit their success to hard work, intelligence, or persistence. Our culture tends to say that people with those qualities are "good people" and they "deserve" success. We wouldn't put the word "luck" in the same sentence with "deserve". On the flip side, I'm sure not-so-successful people would like to think that if they just keep working hard, they'll get a commensurate reward. It's better than hopeless fatalism, right?

And, to be fair, success is definitely influenced by hard work, intelligence, gumption, and a whole host of other qualities. But luck seems to outvote them all. It's almost taboo to mention it, but that doesn't change the situation.

So that's a big part of my malaise.

There's also some survivor guilt in there, I'm sure. And there's some anger at the revisionist history I see going on in my office: the people who got laid off are being talked about as if they were really poor performers, and I know in some cases that's just not true. Perhaps the people who stayed are trying to feel good about having escaped the cuts. Whatever the motivation, it still bothers me.

But the big part is me whining, yet again, as I have been whining since I was little: LIFE SHOULD BE FAIR!

Photo finish!

Well, ok, more like photo middle. :-)

All my photos from 1985 to 1999 are now artfully arranged in a big long line of envelopes IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER. Phew! That took RESEARCH. It is amazing the clues you can get to date a roll of film. ("Let's see, that's Critter, so it's before October 1995, and that's the silver Saturn, but wait, it's at the new apartment...") Yes, I did get out my vet records to find out some of the dates!

Some of the ordering is circumstantial. ("This one was developed February 92, and this one was developed March 92, but as for when they were taken, well, the one developed May 92 shows the car Rob purchased in April 92, so I conclude that in early 1992 I was developing them close to when they were taken, so February probably really does come before March.") Fortunately, for most of those, it doesn't matter a whole lot. The majority of those photos are things like my beloved cat licking her toes.

I never thought I'd be grateful for the rock climbing goof that broke my 35mm point-and-shoot camera, but that is directly responsible for the dearth of photos during 1996 and 1997. All I had was the SLR, and I didn't take too many silly shots with that. That camera is the only one I've ever owned that took photos in reverse numerical order (it would wind out the whole roll upon loading, and expose it "backwards") so as soon as rolls started having picture 12 clearly AFTER picture 11, I knew they'd all be that way from that point on.

All the 35mm negatives up to 1997 are in sleeves, and the photo envelopes are labeled to correspond to the negatives. Now I have to sleeve 1998 and 99, find sleeves to fit 110 film and do those, label the back of each photo (here is where I may get lazy), and I'll be ready for albums!

Much to my horror I find I need not only 3x5 AND 4x6 AND some European size, but I have ONE roll of APS. Bought the wrong kind of insta-camera one day. They're not very good pictures anyway. I am so tempted to chuck it. 1/2 :-)

I still have to "chronologize" 2000 and 2001. I have taken an awful lot of pictures in the past two years. I keep going hiking to picturesque places! E-mail archives will probably be a good help in getting those straightened out.

What a project. I knew it would take longer than I thought, and it's taking longer even than that. Still, it feels really good to be making progress like this.