This post's read time: 12 minutes
Hi friend,
I am faltering.
It is just after 9AM on Sunday and I’m meant to be taking the lift up Black Mountain of Maine for deep powder runs through spectacular glades. Instead, a series of judgement errors has led to a day of exhaustion, hard labor, and possibly, a loss of a few thousand dollars.
I am writing this to procrastinate. Scroll down if you want to read about the series I just binge watched as therapy “The Playlist” – sadder than Halt And Catch Fire, but very interesting.
Keep reading if you want a play-by-play of my stupidity. I believe in learning and sharing mistakes.
“Mistakes have been made, as all can see, and I admit it.” – Ulysses S Grant
The moral of all this is be very careful if you use those rope ladder recovery straps they advertise on Instagram, pay attention to your emotional state and energy level.
Here’s how it all went down.
I have been pushing for a while now, and it has felt pretty good. I was in a slump last summer, unmotivated, directionless, insecure – it felt good to feel purposeful when autumn rolled in. I had a number of wins – working on the property, starting the tower work, throwing a successful Halloween party.
Then, I went on this latest deployment, rushed home, and had a wonderful time skiing with limited expectations. Just to be on skis, with Chloe, in the mountains – that was a win.
Coming back from that, I was tired. I ate way too many sweets, and drank more than I had in several weeks. It was a ski weekend! I felt great, just a normal sort of tired.
I fell back into my routine last week, working to make firewood, to apply to grad school, to plan HR strategy for my company and editing documents for my town. I am so fulfilled!
But I started to feel increasing friction. Finally, Friday, I scrapped my to-do list, sent two work emails and a few text messages for work and weekend plans, and devoted the rest of the day to snuggling with Sammy, cooking real food, reading, and spending hours on end binge watching TV.
Saturday, I was hesitantly optimistic. I had work to catch up on in the morning, and after coffee and stretching I was able to focus, to be productive, to feel like there was some gas in the tank. J called, thinking he couldn’t go skiing, and I decided I’d go with Sammy anyway.
He called again later, and we were on. This is when I should have realized I was still in a depleted state. I was not particularly enthusiastic or unenthusiastic about these dramatic changes in plans on an epic powder day. It was logically obvious that I’m supposed to be excited about the biggest powder cover on the coast in five years, so I behaved accordingly, even if my feelings didn’t match.
I was too emotionally depleted to even register that I was depleted. At age 18 I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, and although I didn’t actually meet the diagnostic criteria at that time, this is what happens: the bottom drops out of my energy levels and my emotional state flatlines, and finally, if I ignore it too long, my intellect and decision making go out the window too.
I should have known things weren’t right when I felt ambivalent about my upcoming ski trip to Colorado, too. I’m just going through the motions, because sitting around in the cabin watching TV and eating junk food is not an option.
But I digress. We went skiing, it was more exhausting than I realized but generally a success, and I think we had a pretty good time even if I was a little out of it. It was the most insane powder I have ever had at my spot, too much actually, and the ski down was more like riding an escalator than it was a thrill.
I think it was a little more stressful than I am used to because I was constantly monitoring Sammy, making sure he was warm, not missing, not wandering where he’d get hit by a car, etc. But it was absolutely gorgeous.
Then, I was headed home with Sammy, planning for yet another day of skiing, feeling exhausted to my core, famished, ready to relax, go to bed early for an early start.
I decided to try driving up the driveway to where I had been parked, on the theory that I had made it down and should probably be able to get back up. I had a shovel anyway so if I got stuck I could just clear that part of the driveway for momentum and carry on.
The drive went fine up to the last 20 feet, when I lost some control around a corner, and trying to maintain momentum up a small hill, fishtailed off of my hardpack track and into 3 feet of heavy snow.
I tried to rock the truck back and forth to get purchase, and the snow layer under the tires glazed into ice.
For the first time all year, I was proper stuck in the snow with the truck.
I tried to dig out with a shovel, twice, and was unsuccessful. Meanwhile, when Sammy is nervous, he backs up into me ass first. So I have this dog butt interfering with my shifting when I’m trying to get unstuck.
Now, historically, I carry snow chains, traction boards, and a winch for just such an emergency. The truck is in such chaos with the new bed system and all of my travel, however, that I only had chains, which were buried under piles of crap and which might dig in, creating deep ruts which would really get me stuck.
So I went to grab a tool I’d never used before, a rope ladder you use to create a recovery winch out of your wheels. I laid it out only to discover that one of the two ladders, meant to be used as a pair, was missing.
Ok. Well the rear diff was already locked, so I figured why not winch backward a bit and at least try for a running start out of the dip I’m stuck in.
I set it up, and it worked like a charm. I went backwards, with control, about 10 feet.
So far so good. But now I have this pile of nylon wrapped around my tire. How do I get it off?
This is where I would normally consult youtube, manufacturers instructions, etc. But I was tired. All of this was because I was too lazy to just park at the bottom of the driveway.
If I’d parked at the bottom, I’d be home already.
So I figured it’s just some flimsy nylon, and it’s wrapped around the tire, so if anything it should aid in traction, right?
I failed to consider that it was wrapped in reverse, and I was about to drive forward.
At first, it worked well, and I got almost up the small rise I’d been battling for a half hour already. But then I spun out, fishtailed again, and was suddenly confronted by a technicolor of warming lights on my dashboard. Service triangle, brake light, check ABS, check brake system, 2wd/4wd system failure.
I wrapped the crappy nylon around the tire and axle so tightly, the tire looked like a balloon animal.
So the rest of the night was cutting all of that off bare-handed, calming Sammy, skiing up the hill to get a mechanical winch, winching and digging snow, and finally giving up and going home to make a fire.
The truck is definitely not driving right. It is even more stuck now that I have wounded it.
I broke more than one thing, and I’m just praying it’s as simple as a brake line and a sensor wire or two, and not an axle or 4wd mechanism.
All this after sliding into a tiny sapling the last time I was pushing it on the driveway, only a little over a month ago. That one put a good dent in the door and sacrificed some paint to a 1″ birch.
So now I have to dig the Tacoma out, try chains, try winching, get it someplace clear of snow and relatively level and survey the damage.
Then I have to dig out Chloe’s car and pray that doesn’t break down on me, as it has been notoriously unreliable for her.
All to save four minutes of skiing up a hill.
So last night I realized, slowly, that I wasn’t going to enjoy Black even if I did dig Chloe’s car out and leave the truck as a later problem. I was spent. I was beaten.
My Corrective and Preventative remedy? (Known as a CAPA report. Also check out “The five whys”.)
- prevent further damage
- fix what I broke
- stop using the driveway when in doubt
- structure some real downtime instead of reflexive downtime
- continue to improve my diet & sleep hygeine
- get new tires for the truck
- plan for mud season
- laugh at myself
It is all but certain, by Murphy’s Law, that the truck will need parts or repair which will last until mud season and the driveway is impassable.
So I was feeling very low, very defeated, and decided I’d watch some TV. I needed to unplug, to shut down.
Unfortunately, after two episodes of “The Playlist” my heart was racing, and I could not sleep to save my life. So I meditated a little and went back to binge watching.
Maybe it was the stress and exhaustion, maybe it was the nearly full moon, maybe it was the TV or the late dinner or the green tea I drank when I first got stuck. Regardless, my whole body was sore and restless and my mind refused sleep until after 1AM.
The Playlist has a very nice Rashomon-style focus to it. Each episode is centered on a different protagonist within the same story: the creation and growth of Spotify as the world’s premier streaming app.
Each lead sees things differently. It manages to make all of them the hero, although most of the real-life characters appear to be battered by forces beyond their control and come out worse for the wear. The fictional characters seem to do a little better. At the end, you really question if Spotify is providing any real value to society.
Unfortunately, the story views this as a music industry problem, and the show writers moralize the need for a regulatory solution. A law for protecting musician’s incomes.
I am very uncertain about making an intuitive, emotional appeal for resolution of a complex problem. We need to get more comfortable at listening to one another and finding solutions collaboratively.
This is a show about individuality and capitalism. It is bizarre, considering is is Swedish and has socialism woven throughout, that there are no worthwhile role models. In the show, everything is broken.
Well, if everything is broken, it is not Spotify’s fault. This is Ek’s argument, and it is a good one, but we become totally blinded by his wasteful extravagant flaunting of wealth while artists starve. Stealing from the rich will not fix this, even if it might help a little. My big take away was not that Ek, Spotify founder and CEO, was evil or naive, but that he just has terrible taste and judgement.
He has surrounds himself with trappings of wealth, one can only assume to assuage his insecurities and unhappiness. Money cannot buy happiness, but it does give you power, and it is absurd how weak and powerless, and how afraid of losing everything, Ek is.
He is not candid. If I am ever powerful, I want to be able to be candid when it happens. It is part of why I have written such a long and personal post. Openness is the only long-run policy.
But back to this idea of regulation, which Ek hates so much. In an imagined testimony before US Congress, Ek talks about how Spotify is a small part of the music industry. This is obviously untrue. But Spotify is certainly part of the ecosystem of big business, and viewed as a ‘large corporation’ Spotify clearly is small and weak.
If you’re going to pick a fight, pick it with Capitalism as an end as opposed to a means. This is why I admire the Zebra Company Movement – we need more companies using capital as a tool and not as a purpose.
Spotify cannot fight the recording industry, shareholders, big banks, and artists. They must play within certain lines and clearly in that mix the big banks and the recording industry have some of the most power, and probably the most myopic perspective.
This begs the question: why hasn’t Spotify made any of myriad reforms to improve the pay of artists? It would be so fucking simple to use an equation to regulate artist’s pay:
When you are below the threshold to support yourself, you are doing music as a hobby, or are earning your place. You get paid less in the very beginning.
When you reach the point of professional musician, that should be subsidized by the handful of super wealthy artists who don’t need to be making millions of dollars off of streaming – they are already successful and making plenty of money elsewhere.
The issue here is that what artists make is a limited pool, and I think Ek’s issue is that the pool isn’t big enough to support a million musicians no matter how you divide it up. If you try to take income from Spotify (which isn’t really profitable, by the way) or from the labels, then the industry will eat you alive protecting their interests.
The show harps on this protection mechanism, but doesn’t actually point out the flaws in the logic. An existential threat the the RIAA is probably a good thing. If we were to wipe all of these special interests off the face of the earth and start over from scratch trying to connect musicians with people who listen to music, we could probably do a much better job. This is a failure of democracy.
Spotify could start negotiating with musicians directly and using an algorithm promoting the ones who aren’t being bled by the vampires of industry. But again, that pisses off the recording industry.
Maybe instead of buying houses and tearing them down and splurging on restaurants and cars, Ek could use his wealth to start a new Spotify, one which only works with independent artists. Maybe someone like him could get acts like Radiohead and Taylor Swift to use a new, digitally-based form of rights management?
What if listeners effectively “invested” in artists? A bit like the collective art investing schemes going on nowadays – it would incentivize people to discover new music and commit small amounts of money to the creators.
All this is a little creative brainstorming. I’m sure Ek and his people could have a hundred of these ideas, and the show completely fails to explore why he doesn’t execute on any of them. That makes the show a lot more boring than it could be. Despite good direction, script, and actors, the series outcries many social philosophies without taking the time to actually explore or understand them.
Spotify’s HR philosophy is also quite bizarre – and was not addressed in the series except in the very beginning days of Spotify, when an unusual org structure was basically expected.
But the bottom line, in my mind, is that we need to find ways of providing the basics of life to all people, not just musicians. This is hardcore socialism. People shouldn’t have to struggle for rent or food – these things can be a universal right.
If an artist isn’t afraid for their children’s healthcare and education, then they’ll make music as a purpose and not as a means to an end. All kind of creativities will flourish. Without a gun to their heads, more people will become interested in giving back, in finding their niche in the social ecosystem, in making things better. We will be far more productive as a civilization, and more interesting.
To say that a streaming service needs to provide housing and food for people seems perverse. To promote people who believe in capital as an end and not a means is perverse.
We must put a cap on capital and material wealth. We must move away from zero-sum to collaboration and value creation.
And unfortunately, in so many ways, we must ignore Audre Lourde and we must use the master’s tools: capital, social media, etc.
But we must be extremely careful how we view tools, and how we use them. They are only tools, like keys – they can open opportunities or close them, and they can protect us or imprison us.
Things are melting here. Time to go work on the truck.
Love,
Brad