who am I today?

Who I am, my identity, is something I've tried to understand and write about over the years. Clearly, it hasn't been something I've made a priority, as it seems like so many posts start out this exact same way.

So, who am I today?  Well, it's a Saturday.  So I'm a coffee drinker and my Pandora station of the day is Saturday Morning Coffee. With the wife and daughter off seeing the latest Avengers movie, I've been at home with my son.  He's had a chill day of watching acapella groups on YouTube and hanging out outside.  At the moment, he's gone over to visit his grandma, so I've grabbed the laptop, gone out to the patio and thought I'd just write a little bit.  The skies are blue, there's a breeze, the sun is out and the palm trees are rustling and the birds are chirping.  Going to sit down at the table, I scared a squirrel who was hanging out on the table.  Beautiful Southern California day.  I've shaved, gotten some things done off my to do list and also not been stressed out or anxious about all the stuff I think I need to do.  Have knocked a few things off my list that have been there since we moved.  The list will always exceed what I can do, but I'm not going to stress about it.

So, who am I today?  I'm chill.  I'm going to get some stuff done, but I'm not going to make my whole Saturday into a crush of self-imposed busyness.  I'm going to stop eating cookies and banana bread, have some carrots and veggies and drink my water and take my vitamins.  And prepare for the noise that will herald the return of Lori and Ellie so that it doesn't feel like an interruption or disruption to my plans.

Happy weekend, friends!

identity

I've been thinking about people who have to go somewhere to find out who they are.  To me, that kind of suggests they've been neglecting themselves.  We can get busy, but why are we letting ourselves get lost?  But I guess it's probably quite easy to do.  Sometimes we're just trying to survive, the flow of life pushing us along until one day a rare moment of margin, buffer, pause... and we take stock and realize we don't like what we see.  And so then we run away to try to figure out a better picture for ourselves.

I don't want that to happen to me.  I have to admit I'm not always being true to who I am, but I think I know who I am.  I wrote it down at some point in the front of my current EDC notebook and occasionally I look at it, but I don't spend any time really thinking about it.  I'd like to think about it more in the future.

Here's what I wrote down.

simplify

husband/father/son

email and social marketer

christian

compassionate/intelligent/organized/healthy

resident of burbank, los angeles, california

And before you say... wait... you're not (pick one)... maybe I'm not.  Maybe they're aspirational.  Maybe they're reminders of where I want to be going, where I want to aim.  If I'm not, it is at least my ideal self.  

Or maybe you're saying... don't you want to be something else?  Political? Verbose? Thoughtful? Generous? Thrifty? Brave? Joyful? Patient? Kind? To be sure, there are plenty of other things I could aspire to, but for the moment, I'm pretty happy with this list.  Now the key is to keep these fresh in my mind to help me course-correct.

And what does "simplify" mean?  That one's not new, that word has resonated with me for years.  I just haven't always applied it.  But I need to get back to it.  It's the elimination of stuff, whether it's literal stuff or mental clutter or wasted pursuits that are neither productive or enjoyable or necessary.

This post is tagged so you can read some of my other thoughts on the subject if you're curious to see what I said last time I posted on the topic.

Wow... two posts in one day.  

entertainment

The most recent in my identity series.

I love entertaining. Well, sort of. I love it when I can make others laugh. I'm only sort of good at it because of my dry wit and sometimes using the wrong medium (something that takes too long to explain) or I misread the room (it's funny to me but not others).

I love being entertained. Or at least I wrote down "entertainment" when I first created this identity series. But the more I think about this tonight, the more I think it's about being mentally stimulated. My brain is often moving at a high speed and I allow myself to get bored easily.  Call it entertainment, or call it distraction.

I will usually add music wherever I can to whatever I'm doing. Or I'll carry around the iPad while I'm doing chores, watching something on Netflix. (Now that I have Netflix, I rarely watch TED Talks. I'm still coming to grips with what I think of that.) Or I can't stop checking my email. Or I'm reading Feedly while watching TV. Or reading a book while I walk. Or before I go to bed. Most nights I'll squeeze the equivalent of at least two hours of TV in (minus commercials) and still get 30-60 minutes of reading in, plus reading before work. And while I'm driving, I must have Waze running and either music or on the way home from work, the weather forecast, latest tech, business and general news and the stock quotes for a bunch of companies thanks to Sync. I must constantly have external stimulus.  Before I get out of bed, I'll check my email, the latest headlines from MSNBC and Feedly. I usually have 1 or 2 books in progress and at least one magazine.  While I'm shaving I'm playing a video game or watching Netflix on my iPad.

technology & architecture

The latest in my neglected identity series.

I think when I put "technology & architecture" together as a single item so long ago, it was a cheat to get them both in and still keep the list shorter. If I were truly going to revise history, I'd probably go and change it because originally I separated them by a comma. But to sit down and write about them, today it feels more natural to join them with "and."

Because when I look at those two words today, I immediately think of the small space. Not the grand gesture, the big all Frank Gehry museum, but the spaces we live and work in and the technology we use to complement those spaces.  I love looking at those spaces and trying to figure out how to use them more effectively for what we're doing.

architecture

The latest in my identity series.

I love architecture.  More specifically, homes.  I love home improvement shows, I love looking at homes when I run, I love tours of homes, as long as they're not overly elaborate well beyond what I could ever imagine owning.

Office buildings don't hold the same appeal for me, because usually they're just big boxes and occasionally someone lops off a corner or tries to be quirky.  But I do love mixed use properties, to see a design that smartly incorporates retail and then office or housing as well as parking.

But houses... I love to see them being built, I love to see new ideas and designs, I love to see spaces reimagined.  I've designed a number of houses, but it's been a long time.  Most of my designs were back when I was in high school and college.  Now that I am a homeowner and am broke, a lot of the passion to make new designs is gone.  Now I try to imagine on a smaller scale... what could I do to improve the home I'm in, to give it a better aesthetic or to make it more functional?  And technologically speaking, how could I make it cooler, more automated, easier to maintain?

I have enjoyed the "Not So Big" books that teach mixed use and smaller spaces with richer materials.  I have yet to try any of the concepts, but this house is just begging for an overhaul if we ever have the cash and decide it's a worthwhile investment.  TwistedSifter and WebUrbanist give me inspiration for cool architecture as well.

First would be even more light.  We didn't realize it until we were looking at homes, but our realtor (contact me for a referral - he's awesome and has sold homes to three of my friends and coworkers families now) observed that we seemed drawn to homes that were open, airy and light.  And if we thought about it, that was true.  Our first apartment was partially open and airy, our second was really open and airy with cathedral ceilings and then our first home was dark with low ceilings and trees out front blocking the light.  Our current home is airy and open, but there are dark spots.  I would love to bring more light into the hall and bathrooms, probably through solar tubes.  We'd also like to add a bathroom downstairs to make the downstairs more functional.  And also build a little hideaway underneath the house, a small room with a stereo, an easy chair, a footrest and some soft lighting where Lori or I can escape to read a book.  From there the ideas get more crazy... knock down the wall between the dining room and the kitchen, put a desk in the kitchen, put upper and lower cabinets on the blank wall in the kitchen, or blow up the entire center section and move the bathoom and put in a massive island and turn the kitchen, dining and living rooms into a big great room.  That would certainly be cool for small group and entertaining.

We'll see.  One idea that wouldn't necessarily give us more space (though it could make room for a loft above part of the living room) would be to refactor the outside (we could also extend the bedrooms out over the garage further) to make it look more Craftsman like.  That would be awesome.  Here's a quick sketch I did a few years ago that would give us a deck and a more welcoming front entrance.  I'm hoping we can do even at least part of this in the next 5-6 years, maybe the entryway.  Why?  To make it our own.

technology

It's been a long time since I've written about my identity series.

I actually wrote "technology, architecture" but I'm not sure why, unless I was trying to cheat and keep the list short.

Technology fascinates me.  It scares me a little (those quadrocopters from the GRASP lab, the Terminators from those Terminator movies) at times, but we also have some pretty neat stuff.  I can talk to my car and it plays music or gives me stock quotes.  Unless my daughter's in the car, then it just repeatedly says it can't understand me.

My phone tracks my sleeping, maps my walks and runs, helps me count my calories.  And we're on the cusp of some pretty interesting stuff, from autonomous cars to augmented reality to 3D printing all becoming commonplace technologies.  Social media, email and instant messaging keep us connected. DVRs and the internet make it possible to find nearly any non-CBS show to watch whenever we want.  Friends of mine have published books and made money.  Pandora (or iTunes when running) means never having to listen to terrestrial radio again.  Sure, I get ads for car dealerships in the mid-Wyoming area, but they're of such low production values that even they are entertaining.

It's such a far cry from the olden days when we were growing up.  We were technical laggards, with rotary dial-up phones leased from the phone company in industrial olive green and no VCR until we won one.  I remember my first portable CD player - it took 10 AA batteries.  Even today, we still have CRT non-HD TVs, but that will eventually change when they die and we're forced to upgrade.  By then they'll be super-thin OLEDs you tape to the wall or something.

Right now I aspire more to the technologically cutting edge than I am.  I'd love to be messing around with a pair of Google Glass(es?) but it's not the right move financially.  It seems like more and more, though, it's less about the hardware and more about the software.  Which also makes me a little sad that I'm no longer a proficient programmer.  I'd love to get an Arduino and start making stuff, but who has the time?  Maybe in a few years.

In the meantime, I follow a few blogs, am excited at the types of creativity people come up with and one day hope that I can string a few things together to automate my house more and simplify my life by putting more on autopilot.  In the meantime, Remember the Milk and Evernote will augment my brain so long as I remember my passwords.

knowledge

Part of my identity series.

To say I love knowledge is a weird one. Sometimes it's hard separating data from information. (Data = facts, information = facts with a context, facts with a use).

I can get lost on Wikipedia and I can get lost on MSNBC just reading more and more, following interesting trails.

Sometimes I want to know stuff so I can tell Lori about it before she tells me. Sometimes it's because I'm impatient want to know about something before it happens, like on TV or the latest Apple/Google/Microsoft offering. Fortunately, in the case of TV, our recent habit of Netflixing (sort of) everything has helped curb that. But as far as information and knowledge, it translates into a lot of RSS feeds from Engadget to TwistedSifter to Crosscut to the Seattle Transit Blog.

It also means I'm reading, but with the iPad there's always the lure of games. Knowledge does not always win out saving sheep from aliens or using my UFO to throw cars at unsuspecting cows. Not to mention paper tree books and a stack of magazines that is growing. I've tried before to let some lapse but then they keep offering deals that make it silly not to keep subscribing.

My coolest favorite right now is my car. When I get in to head home, I press a button, it chimes and I saw "Services" - a few seconds later the voice asks me what I'd like and I say "Favorites" and it launches into a weather forecast, tech, business and national news followed by Google and Apple's closing stock prices.

And then there's the TED Talks.

I think if I were on a deserted island I'd go crazy from being disconnected. Unless I had a very full solar-powered Kindle.

family

It's been a few months since I worked on my identity series.

I've covered the roles and values, high time I moved onto the passions - the things I love about my life.

I love my family.

Multiple people want to talk to me and Sesame Street videos are playing which isn't conducive to writing.  I'm going to try to stay out here, though, and be a part of the family because it's pretty cool - Rachel's working on mazes (I'm going to need to make some that are as difficult to work backwards as forwards as she's convinced it's easier to do mazes backwards and that it's not cheating), Lori's emptying the dishwasher and thinking about dinner and Ben's sitting on a chair murmuring along to Cookie Monster singing "Share it Maybe."   The curtains are still open and it's starting to get dark so we have a number of lights on.  I know if I were outside passing the house I know it would have that warm yellow/orange glow that I love seeing in homes when I'm running, walking or driving in the evenings.

Currently, my family is my wife, two children and a cat.

Extending out further, locally, mom and dad and mother-in-law.

Widening further, my brother and his wife and their three children, my grandma and my wife's brothers and their families.

And then of course, there are some close family friends, some of whom are in our small group, others at church and some we only see anymore on Facebook.

And then there is people at work whom I've grown rather close with.

I'm surrounded by a lot of family.

I'm not sure what else to write on the subject.

cheap

The latest in this.

People often confuse cheap with inexpensive.  Or use it to describe someone who tries to hold on too tightly to money.  But cheap, as I mean it here, speaks to something that's of poor quality.   Something made by someone who doesn't give a, well, you know.  A mass-produced object designed (not really, design implies intentionality) to simply break the minute you get it some.  A flimsy, rough, unpleasant thing that makes you feel sad just to be near.

A steering wheel that's too small or too thin.  Panels that don't match, things that flex where they shouldn't.  Sharp edges, hard corners, modeled plastic with little burrs.  It's a poorly written book, a website with error messages that at best insult you and at worst do nothing to help you resolve an issue.

Not everything must be expensive, but I try to avoid too many things where no attention is paid to detail, where stuff is good enough (far below what should count as good enough) or where the sole purpose is to get you to part with your money with no effort made to hoping for future purchases or an ongoing relationship with a brand.

Show me you care.  Help me understand why I should care as well.  Don't just bid something out to China hoping I'll buy it and forget about you before it breaks. (You'd think with all their nationalist pride, China would be wary of these tactics, but just shows you how much they're following the money when they're perfectly happy to be the source of the world's shoddy garbage.)

ugly

Attempting to work on this series some more after another long break.

Ugly actually takes some work.  Often, you're faced with bland or soulless, but ugly takes work.  Of course, in the physical world, it's hard to move beyond suggestive.  The first thing that comes to mind are cars.  I can name a few cars on the road today that I find ugly, but there are people driving them and it's not simply because they were the cheapest.  Well, maybe the Ford Pinto and the Pontiac Aztek.  Those two seemed to be universally reviled.  

So I've struggled with how to write this one.  I've actually written quite a bit and then already erased it.

If I say "What is ugly?" it's not just enough to say "Well, it's things that aren't beautiful" because that's not helpful.

Ugly is...

- a lack of attention to detail

- ugly is not caring

- ugly is harsh, clashing, overwhelming and complicated.

- ugly is stupidity and ignorance.

- ugly is neglect.

- clutter is ugly.

So I aspire not to be ugly.  I aspire to not to open my mouth and let ugly things come out.  I aspire not to be surrounded by ugliness.  Unfortunately, my work is in a cubicle with gray walls.  I have a few pieces of art made by my daughter on the wall but I make sure when I leave each night any papers on my desk are stacked in a single pile.   I have blandness as well as ugliness in piles of dirt or scary pokey weeds at my house, but that's more of a lack of time and money than anything.  Over time, we are working on the most egregious areas to make them more pleasing, to eliminate the pockets of neglect and blandness.

Clutter is also something we're fighting, especially at home.  We've made some great strides.  It'll be years (decades?) before we're clutter-free, but we have children, so a little clutter, a little chaos, a little overwhelming will have to be excused.  But I won't let myself get an ugly attitude about it.

chaos

The break from this series was both ironic and way too long.

 I admire people who can wade right into chaos.  Not me.  When chaos strikes, I need to step back.  I need information, I need time to process it.  Otherwise, I'm overwhelmed and can become indecisive or unable to act.  This can even be as simple as being asked to make a simple choice about where I'd like to have lunch.  I've learned some coping mechanisms, such responding with a request for a finite (preferably 2) set of choices.

I've really seen this play out rather dramatically in my son who has autism - too much of anything can overwhelm him.  Noise, motion, light.  His hands go to his ears, or he'll bury his face in your leg or he may just lay down and refuse to move.

I can also be overwhelmed by chaos represented by clutter. Sometimes it manifests itself as claustrophobia and I feel an immediate need to escape and other times, it becomes a compulsive need to bring over from the chaos, regardless of how much more important some other thing is.  Other coping mechanisms can be the "dirty room" where everything goes until I'm in a better mind to deal with it.

During a session with our daughter's neurobehavioralist, my wife and I learned a lot about each other.  She does not see the clutter as a problem like I do and is a "spreader" - if she can see it, she can find it again.  I would frustrate her no end when I would move stuff from the kitchen to the dining room table in an effort to clean the kitchen.  It turned out that it wasn't the moving, but the piling and re-sorting I did as I moved, believing I was helping.  My wife's still not 100% happy that I move stuff, but now I keep things the way they were when I relocate and her stress level's gone way down.  (I move because the goal is always to then move on to the dining room next, though I'm rarely as successful there because there's no next place to move things that I don't know what to do with.  Except the family room, but we've already done that too many times and agreed not to put more in there until we've dealt with what's already in there.)

My anxiety around clutter and chaos fits so perfectly with my desire for simplicity.  There will always be chaos I can't control, but there's no sense in me adding my own, or adding complexity that can become chaos.  Remember the Milk and Evernote are two tools I use to keep my life straight in this regard, using principles from Getting Things Done - get it out of my head and confidently know it's stored where I can find it again.

opacity

Hey, did you hear?  I'm doing a series on identity.

Opacity in the most simplest definition is when light isn't permitted to pass through something.  So when I say that opacity is a trait that I am opposed to, I think it means that I value transparency.  I don't like it when I can't understand motives or reasons.  To me, opacity means a lack of information and therefore, a hinderence to the ability to truly make an informed decision.

Opacity is when motives aren't clear (and therefore suspect), or when directions are given without explanation as to why.

Some of these negative traits end up being difficult to write about because I don't know how much to say about them except that I don't aspire to them.

dishonesty

Back to the series, finally.

I think we all know have a good idea about what dishonesty is, probably one of those things most of learned in kindergarten but then tested the limits of, at least in the simplest form of lying.

Dishonesty is the intentional intent to provide false information, either by lying or by failing to provide accurate information in situations where it's called for, where volunteering it is the right thing.

I know it's not black and white, I know that there are times when I lie, but it is rare.  I'm probably more guilty of failure to offer up information.

Why did I put this one on the list?  I think because it's contrary to something I believe strongly in, the freedom of information.  And disinformation can be worse than the absence of information.  I think I'm looking at dishonesty from the perspective of selfishness.  We tell lies because we want to make it easier on ourselves, we want to get away with something we shouldn't, because we want something that for our own personal gains that would not be accessible truthfully.

So, yeah, not something I aspire to, not something I desire in those I keep close in my life.

busy

I'll get back to the series soon. Just when I thought it couldn't get any busier... It may have. I think we're on the other side, but yeah, craziness around here. It's meant that by the time I came down here for my nightly exercise, I've not wanted to post, just wanted to watch TV and maybe do some Google Reader.

I had a brief period without reading, but I've picked it back up at night with a leadership book my wife grabbed from the "new arrivals" section of the library and I've started using the time after the morning podcast the last few mornings to read some back issues of Fast Company from the stack. I also read more of Tale of Two Cities on my Kindle while I walked at lunch today. Crazy weather (monsoon or heat wave) has made exercise unappealing but I'm trying to get back to running and walking. Several parties this past weekend saw really bad diet failures and I'm paying for it now with my weigh-ins, probably set myself back at least a week. But I am starting to notice that my clothes really really don't fit anymore. Before too long I'm going to need to donate most of my wardrobe. It's starting to actuslly look bad - I'm swimming in some of my shirts and pants to the point that shirts won't stay tucked in. It's cool butit's another thing to think about and budget for.

We sat down at work and listed everything I'm doing and then crossed out a bunch. The hard part is that everyone else is so busy that we haven't told people about some of the cross outs yet because it will mean some things are no longer being done and some things are now going to fall to them. And I don't think this is the end of the changes. There's one more thing looming at work that I'm waiting to see the impact of.

But right now things are good. Starting to get back on track. I'll feel more on track when laundry's caught up, back lawns are mowed (mowed the front lawns tonight - so stinking tall) and I'm able to start doing new work in the yard again. And a car wash. Way overdue. And an oil change. It's time to get that done but I'm worried it'll turn into other stuff that needs to get done. I might just rent a car when I drop it off and just plan on them having it a few days and charging me a lot of money.

But, yeah, things are good. Fat and happy. Less fat, more happy.

simplicity

Onward, the series continues.

My last entry bugged me for awhile but I had trouble figuring out why. Finally, I realized that it was because it was more of a list (and probably incomplete) than any sort of examination. Oh well. Perhaps it was one that's harder for me to pin down.

Anyhow... Today's is a good one, though one I won't spend a lot of time on because it's a variant on this Year's motto of "simplify" -- simplicity.

To me, simplicity is the opposite of mentally taxing. That's something that just works, that's the absence of stress, it's a calmness of being exactly what's needed and nothing more. It's not dumbed down, but it's also not veiled, hinted or obtuse. I realize that to get there is actually more work, but it's a place I want to be.

beauty

Another in the series - collect the whole set!

Beauty, eh?

Beauty feels like an easy one. Whereas richness dealt with what went into something, I think beauty is the outcome. I see beauty everywhere, both in nature and in made things, in people and in objects.

Often when I leave work, I can look up at blue sky, fluffy clouds and tall trees. Beautiful.

A fine automobile with graceful lines that evoke speed even when standing still. Beautiful.

The laughter of my children. Beautiful.

My wife. Beautiful.

richness

Moving on to the values section of the series.

Sometimes I have a difficult time describing richness.  Sometimes I feel like it's something that I appreciate but don't do enough to cultivate or exhibit in my own life.  It can treat one or more senses, but richness is something you can feel.

When I speak of richness, I'm not talking about money in any way - I'm talking about a craftsmanship, texture, layers, depth.  I'm talking about walls that aren't white, gray or beige, crown molding and recessed lighting, a song that makes excellent use of a symphony or orchestra.  It's a garden full of color, plants of differing heights and colors mixed together carefully to produce a pleasing display.

Richness, to me, is careful cultivation.  It's planning.  You can see that effort that was made.  It may not always be to my taste, but it's something I can look at and see that careful thought went into the effort.  

politician

The first NOT of the series.

This turned out to actually be the most difficult one I've written so far.  I thought Christian would be.  My perceptions of how people would receive it, both those who are resistant to Christianity and religion, but also those who also believe like me but might wonder if I was missing something or getting something wrong.

But this is more difficult.  To define what I'm not, I have to first define what I think it is, and then say that I can't relate to, or more accurately, do not like those traits, do not aspire to those traits, wish to live a life in which I exhibit those traits as infrequently as possible.

My first attempt at this started with my perception of politics and all that I find wrong with them and then quickly veered into what I was worried was far too much an indictment of my workplace and co-workers. I felt uneasy about it, asked my confidant (and a much smarter person) -- my wife -- to read it over and it didn't sit well with her.  Though her first comment was "Wait... now you're claiming undiagnosed Asperger's as well?"  Well, we all knew I am, if not a hypochondriac, at least extremely suggestible.

I'm probably not, but there's a lot to like about Abed, who says what he thinks, is straightforward, someone whose intentions and thoughts and motivations are easy to understand.  If you don't know who Abed is, that's sad.

Christian

The latest in this series.

I am a Christian. That is, I believe God exists, I believe Jesus Christ is also somehow God but distinct. I can't explain it, but it's not a polytheistic thing and I'm not here to try to convince you or debate the issue. This is my blog and this is about me exploring my me-ness in all its facets as a precursor to developing a mission or vision statement or whatever. I kind of hate this disclaimer, but I feel it's necessary. I've encountered way too many people who feel that I am delusional or confused or stupid because of my faith and I'm not always confident in my ability to respond and so it can be frustrating.

I was raised in a home that alternated weekly between my Mother's Catholic church and my Father's Lutheran church. In high school I moved to a different church and in college I mostly avoided church except when I could get home to "my" church or when someone of the female persuasion told me I was accompanying them to church. The college had Lutheran in the name, but it was hard to find God on that campus. There wad church services and Campus Crusade, but while I was attending, there was also a proposed new mission statement that no longer included Jesus. After college, I found another church, Lutheran, because that's what I knew. We married at a Presbyterian church because it was more attractive than the Lutheran church and as we moved further east into that other valley, we stumbled into a non-denominational church. This is where I first really understood the concept of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ and where I decided that I would never again claim allegiance to any denomination. The fact that this personal relationship concept was new to me after so many years in the church, acknowledging my own complicity, is an alarming, if not worse, indictment on these churches. I wouldn't say I was memorizing scripture, but I attended church weekly, sang the worship songs, read my Bible, attended Bible studies but yet somehow this concept alluded me. I believed in heaven, I believed I would be going there when I died, I believed accepting Jesus into my heart was the key, but then it was like it stopped there - grace was enough.

But, not a church does a Christian make, nor religiosity and its trappings salvation bring.

employee

Part 3 in a series.

I've been working for what seems like forever. I filed my first income tax return when I was 14. As kids, my brother and i had a gag gift shop and we collected aluminum from neighbors on garbage day (there was no recycling collection back then).

I've found that it's the least risky way to get someone to give me money, to show up somewhere and help out.

In most cases, things have worked out well for me. I've been laid off a few times, fired a time or two. (I still say that one company fired and rehired me multiple times, but they say I might have been misinterpreting my reasons for temporarily not needing to show up for work and also not receiving money. A couple of times people have begged me to help them and then turned around and begged me to take their money. I have been employed in as many as four part-time jobs simultaneously.