Swirling

There are so many things swirling around in my head that I want to get out, and to get out in an honest and vanity-free way. The exit pipes are clogged: it takes so much time to be honest, and to check the things I say against the Honesty Radar, that I can't focus on one at a time. Every new post I start to write becomes an amalgam of many. Intentions become mixed, and the writing stilted and incoherent. Of the many topics, I include:

• The state of my current long-term relationship
• The new direction of my career
• The desire for a social network
• A sense of regret for my shift from art, film, and literature to business and finance and the desire for the same passion for art that I had in my early 20s

So for now, I'm contenting myself with this list, and a few drafts outlining each to be published later.

The Experience Fantasy

Here's something that plagues me on and off: the vague desire to "go out and experience the city." It's the notion that there's a huge metropolis sprawling out before me--or whatever - it could be a mountain range or forest for all I care--that offers as much or more than any other city in the world, and I should grab that bull by its horns to Experience it.

Say you've been sitting at home for an entire day, and just as the sun starts to go down you feel a desire welling up inside you. You want to Experience Something. This is not stir craziness, but perhaps a related phenomenon I will label the Experience Fantasy. I don't mean going out for a few drinks. That's fun, but not what I'm talking about. I'm talking more about an On the Road-esque, intense, moving experience. An Adventure. An underground anarchist meeting. A party with a bunch of artists or writers. A great show that isn't your typical shit-ass indie band repeating cliches. Meeting a stranger and having a discussion about psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, or photography. Being moved by a piece of art at a museum. Participating in my generation's version of what makes New York City such an incredible place. Maybe leaving a mark? I don't think that's part of the Experience Fantasy. It's just a potential outcome.

Where do these desires come from? Really. Are they ingrained in us by the constant barrage of idealized images to which we're exposed? Is it an effect of anxiety - the ideas and images to which an anxious mind clings are those most readily available? We're certainly programmed to a large degree by our surroundings; there is no doubt in my mind. Surrounding people, images, sounds, smells. But these aren't necessarily mainstream experiences (or desires for experience) - the Experience Fantasy is focused more on fabled underground esoteric experiences. The epic intellectual battles between philosophers; the raucous, brilliant music; the avant-garde plays; the Woody Allen romances.

But try to hold on to an Experience Fantasy; try to grasp it, and to understand what that desire actually is. Are there core kernels of desire which you can understand? That you can act on? Or do attempts to grok a desire result in more vague desires, or vague ideas of what to do? Often mine are the latter, and when I act on the Experience Fantasy, I'm disappointed because I didn't quench that vague desire. It wasn't quenched because I didn't have a firm understanding of what it was in the first place. What must be done first is to have an understanding of the Experience Fantasy in question, and to act or not act only then.

Are these things others experience as well? I can't imagine I'm alone in the Experience Fantasy, but I would like to know the prevalence. I see a lot of deluded doofuses running around all over the place who must be acting on their own set of vague notions. But do they have the Experience Fantasy too?

Interviewing in New York

I'm in the process of interviewing for a new job in New York. I don't need another job. My current job is what some might describe as a perfect one: enough money to live in a loft in a doorman building in a hip neighborhood in Manhattan; working from home; 5 weeks of vacation; and great benefits for which I don't pay. So, why a new job?

I won't get into too many details so that the lone reader or two who stumbles upon this site doesn't bore more quickly than he or she otherwise would, but in short: there are many reasons. Mainly, that it's a dead end career-wise and having just turned the big three-oh, long-term options have become more serious. Not that I'm all about my career, but I won't get into rationalizing how EB's life is balanced in other ways.

Anyway.

There are two things that make New York stand out as a great place for software engineers: 1) tons of jobs, and 2) tons of competition for those jobs. Recruiters say they have a difficult time finding quality people to fill roles, but I really do have a hard time believing it; particularly during a recession. The great aspect, though, is with so many people and resources in this city, there are lots of Big Name firms. And that's the real subject of this post.

My initial draft of this got into too many specifics about company names, and while re-reading it after a few days, I realize that's not necessary and was more for vanity than to illustrate the point. So what are the points? Mainly, that New York is in its own class in terms of quality and market, and that this is really a new era for me.

So far, I've interviewed with 5 companies, most of which are household names with headquarters or major offices in NYC. The first one was a noname company, and I understood it to be more or less like my current consulting company: looks chic, says all the right things, but when it really comes down to it, there isn't much talent there. The interviews turned out to be harder, and caught me off-guard with a number of questions to which I had no good answers. They turned me down, saying that it "wasn't a good fit," which is code for, "you didn't do well on the technical phone screening."

Being turned down really affected me for a few days - my confidence (hence ego) was hit pretty hard. There are no cake walks in New York interviews like in Baltimore or Pennsylvania. No longer was I the talented young guy with the great future ahead of him: had I taken a misstep somewhere? I started doubting what I had always thought of as my success against the odds (*). As a result, I started reading more technical material to make sure I did well in subsequent interviews.

After about two months of interviews with a major investment bank, totaling 11 different 1-on-1 interviews, I landed what I hope will be a serious gig with good career advancement potential. I start March 1st, and it feels great.

* - plenty on why the odds of success coming from my family, psychological, and socio-economic up-bringing were low.

Breathe

Well! Here I am. I've meant to create a blog for quite some time, but as with many people, other things come up and priorities are shifted. Here I'd like to talk freely and openly about many topics that are relevant or important:

• Being a newcomer to New York City
  
• Photography
• Psychology
  
• Relationships, romantic and platonic
  
• Computer Science
• Job-related stuff

And, should this blog prove successful (whatever that means), probably more.