Micah MacAlien

cliff dwellings of the mole people

I know it's been a while since the last post, but I have a good excuse.

I had to return to my home planet to see if anyone else had survived the supernova. Nobody did, aside some from foul smelling mole people, so I came back to Colorado.

I've only been gone about a week, but all this traveling at relativistic speeds, makes about a week for me equivalent to over a year for earth bound mortals.

Did you miss me?

Delicious Denver Daydreams and Delightful Delusions

It's been a while since I last blogged, and much has happened so I've got a lot to recap. When last I wrote I was living in Colorado desperately looking for work I could believe in. Much has happened since then, so I've got a lot to catch this blog up on.

I made it back to paradise. Last night I was lounging in a hammock on the north coast of Colombia, sipping a warm beer and chatting in my near-perfect Spanish with a lovely bikini-clad Argentinean. Looking for work up in Colorado was entirely too stressful. It turns out unemployment is more work than work but pays a lot less.

Having gotten fed up, I went back to Parque Tayrona, a coastal rainforest with unbelievable beaches that Tyler and I visited way back in October. Through some outrageous good fortune, several characters from the trip were there. Andy and Io were kicking up their tired feet after the long hike in, Ben was smoking rollies, and Wim figured out some way to make Beef Medallions in the tiny beach kitchen. Patricia made the long trek north across all of Brazil to be there for my vacation from unemployment.

Last night, while watching the lighting across the Carribean Patricia motioned, with a smile, to come a little closer. I slid close enough enough to smell the salt water drying from her hair. She leaned over to whisper in my ear, winked, and said,

"BRAA-BRAAA-BRAA-BRAAA-BRAA-BRAAA,"

...in that obnoxiously electronic way she has. Really loud. Right in my ear. As I blearily blinked my eyes awake all I could think was: "that isn't very adorable at all."

Home under a pool table

It was my cell phone screaming at a painfully early hour. And I wasn't in a hammock being gently swung by a Caribbean breeze. I was waking up on a mattress under a half a pool table in my aunt and uncles basement in Colorado. But thats only part of it; the alarm clock was going off because, get this, I had to go to WORK!
So, which life is real? And which is the fantasy? Truth be told, it's not entirely clear to me. While in Colombia Tyler and I spoke a lot about what we wanted out of life. Although thouroughly enjoying our time in paradise, we also fantisized about our ideal life after the trip was over. We imagined ideal jobs, ideal living situations, and ideal lifestyles. With little to limit our daydreams we'd spend entire days chatting about any life we could imagine. Tyler imagined himself leaping into an entirely different career path. I imagined a career of using technology to mitigate the damage due to technology. We talked about businesses we wanted to start, political campaigns we wanted to run, and how we'd both get in Mr. Universe shape. We both wanted to live in Colorado, a fanciful place we both left as children. We daydreamed about getting a kickass apartment, downtown, together. It all felt vaguely outrageous, ridiculous daydreams for a couple homeless drifters.

And it is still anticipation, but now it is wobbling on the precipice of plunging into full reality. Last June Tyler and I gave up nearly everything stable in our lives for a broad lifechanging experience, of which the trip to Latin America was only a part of. We wanted to restart everything, to find entirely new anchors to build brand new lives around. And now, over the past two months we've been building the context that will define what new chapters of our lives will be written about. We moved to Colorado, inserted ourselves into a large family network, both got jobs BETTER than we daydreamed about, and are due to move into our kickass downtown Denver apartment in one week.

So which is the dream? Hanging out in a hammock looking out at the Carribean with dear travel buddies or living well while watching outrageous daydreams turn into reality in front of my eyes?

PS Speaking of daydreams turning into reality, does anyone out there ever imagine living in the fantasically cool city of Buenos Aires, Argentina? You could study tango, learn Spanish, or just live in a city that everyone who visits loves? I'm asking because Patricia lives in a cozy apartment in heart of the city and she is looking for a housemate. She is really friendly, has lived in BA for most of her life, is well-travelled, internationally minded, speaks fluent English and would be an all-around great person to live with (I wish I could!). It's a great deal at $200/month so if you are curious at all check out some some pictures and then write to me (MicahMacAllen@LiveDeliberately.org) so I can put you in touch.
PPS She also promises to never wake up her new housemate by screaming "BRAA-BRAAA-BRAA-BRAAA-BRAA-BRAAA" in their ear. If only I was so lucky

Naturally Networking

    There is a lot of information out there about how to go about getting a cool job. There are tons of books, thousands of websites, and billions of people with jobs that could clue me in as to how to go about it. Now that I'm in this game, I've been sampling enough of those resources to discover that 99% of them share one piece of advice that I didn't want to hear. They almost universally say the most important thing is "networking." I hate that term. It sounds so cold and calculating, like you're treating people as opportunities rather than humans. I want my dream job, of course, but I worry that I don't have it in me to be like that term sounds.

    After the trip I went to Massachusetts to visit with my former boss and friend, who started asking about what I wanted to do now. After I talked a bit, he mentioned that he had a few friends that were doing cool related stuff in Colorado and asked if I'd like to speak with them. Hell yeah! This can't be networking though, it is just taking up a good friend on the offer of a favor, right?

    Speaking of friends, last weekend, I had a chance to connect with a couple old pals. Shawn came out from California to visit Tim and I, and we had a long merry weekend. It started with a visit to the Coors brewery in Golden Colorado, proceeded through a couple wild nights, and finally ended up on a pleasant Sunday afternoon in the park; Shawn teaching me a little Cappoeria while Tim sprinted continuously for an hour and half in his amateur soccer league.

    I've known Tim for longer than almost any non-family member. He has been living in Denver for most of this millennium. The two of us have some remarkable similarities. We were both: born in Colorado, moved to Guilderland, NY in time for middle school (where we met), love cycling, love the outdoors, are handy with math/science stuff and care about environmental issues. We even kind of look alike, a description of one of us given to the police would get us both in the lineup. It's no wonder we ended up friends. The similarities, however, don't end there. Tim is graduating this weekend with a degree in building systems engineering, his focus on sustainable design and energy efficiency. This, oddly enough, is almost exactly what I did in school. So now we are both looking for the same sort of job in the same region at the same time.

    If I really was a cold hearted networking machine I suppose it'd be a good time to end the friendship and engage in a ruthless competition. But, we're just too good of friends, so instead we've decided to use eachother as respective resources towards our common goals. It is, thus far, the coolest thing that's happened to me in this whole job search. I studied what I did in school because I earnestly believe that it'll be up to my generation of engineers to use appropriate technology to save us from ecological woes. The fact that someone whose intelligence and passion I've respected since middle school came to the identical conclusion is profoundly validating. And, honestly, I'm sure there will be jobs for us both. The earth needs all the help she can get right now.

    So, job hunting is no longer as lonely as it was a couple weeks ago. Now I've got someone to swap leads with, read over resumes, and empathize with the ups and downs of the search. And one day, hopefully soon, we'll both be hired somewhere spiffy and each have the other as an ally doing something related nearby.

Wait a gosh darn second.
Is "Networking" just a fancy word for friends?