Just Around the Corner

This will be the first in what I hope will be a series of three blog posts chronicling an important transition in my life.

A few years ago, I befriended a /Filmcast listener from across the pond. What began as a series of harsh disagreements on our interpretations of specific films ended up blossoming into a really meaningful friendship. At the time, I had just come off a pretty bad breakup, and I found this person to be a constant source of comfort. She was and is an amazing person, someone whose kindness and understanding helped me to weather an extraordinarily rough patch in my life. Our friendship took the form of frequent Skype calls, during which I would lament the state of my existence and she would find it in herself to constantly encourage me, and embolden me to make interesting choices that I would typically shy away from.

The thing is, her life wasn’t exactly all sunshine and lollipops either. She also suffered from occasional bouts of loneliness and struggled with her career. I think we found a connection in these shared experiences. She always had a saying she was fond of repeating to me:

You never know what is just around the corner.

I really appreciated this expression. There’s the obvious implication of hope there, but what I like most is it’s trying to tell you that sometimes you don’t have the whole picture. You don’t have a full understanding of the forces at work in your life. Sometimes, a long period of darkness and despair has an abrupt ending (and soon) that you might not be able to see or even conceive of. So don’t give up. In life, you never know what is just around the corner.

Fortunately for her, this saying proved to be true. Within two years after I made first contact with her, she’d found an amazing man, her career was taking off, and she soon became pregnant with what is today a beautiful baby girl. The demands of a relationship and of motherhood have made it difficult for us to chat that much these days. But she is one of those people whose impact on my life was so profound and edifying that I’m grateful to have had her in my life, if just for a little while.

***

Three months ago, I was not in a great place.  A significant job offer had fallen through this past fall, which led me to a seemingly endless series of humiliating rejections (of all different varieties). I’d spent years completing my Master’s degree, but I was coming to its conclusion with no significantly improved career prospects. My contract at my current job was rapidly coming to an end and I didn’t know what I was going to do. In fact, I’d pretty much resigned myself to the idea that there was no longer any possibility for me to work in an exciting, growing field that I was passionate about. Those of you who know me and support me may think it’s pretty ridiculous for me to have given up hope at this stage, but the fact of the matter is, when you hear “No” enough times, you start to wonder if “Yes” is even possible.

Then came a phone call.

And another one.

And another.

And still one more.

Within a period of two weeks in early March 2012, several job opportunities appeared out of nowhere, each from a different person I’ve been fortunate enough to meet over the years. (Perhaps one of the biggest blessings of being down-and-out on your luck is that you are given the opportunity to witness the kindness of friends and colleagues). Within a 10-day period, I’d flown 12,000 miles to job interviews and back to Boston, a whirlwind of self-examination and intense questioning that brutalized the body and the soul, but which was nevertheless filled with excitement. My friend Rachell once expressed to me the truism, “After the final ‘no,’ there’s a ‘yes.'”

Yesterday, I received my first full-time job offer in over 5 years.

In the days to come, I’ll be telling you all about what i’ll be doing with my life for the foreseeable future. In the meantime, I just wanted to share my story — one of mild success borne out of reaching out, making connections, and finding that those connections have led to my salvation. If it could happen to a schmuck like me, certainly it could happen to any of you. Sometimes, you never know what is just around the corner.

Software Patents Strike Again

Leigh Beadon details the case of Speak for Yourself, a relatively cheap augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) app that’s now under legal fire:

Dana points out that PRC’s mission statement begins “We Believe Everyone Deserves A Voice” and that their refusal to create an affordable iPad app, and now their attempts to crush a competitor who did, clearly runs counter to that mission. For her, that’s basically where the discussion ends: a company is trying to take away the only thing that has been able to give her daughter a voice, and she couldn’t care less whether or not they have the legal right to do so.

Quality vs. Quantity

Andrew Phelps has some cool analysis of Gawker’s new editorial guidelines that are geared towards garnering more page views:

The key to the balance probably doesn’t lie in raw numbers, though. A Gawker that was only weird Chinese goats would likely, over time, bore its readers. The more substantive stories serve as tentpoles for the entire site; once in a while, they’ll blow up huge, and they’re probably more appealing to the kind of brand advertisers Gawker seeks. […]

It also at least has the potential to lead to happier writers who know when they need to chase pageviews and when they don’t.

The Life of a Chinese Immigrant

As an Asian immigrant whose parents owned a Chinese restaurant, Kevin Heldman’s story for Capital New York story about the perils of being an Asian delivery person in the Bronx really hit home with me. For immigrants, so little separates us between prosperity and poverty. The line is difficult to contemplate:

You go to that drawer full of menus with dragons or pandas or bamboo on them, and the random Chinese characters, and the obligatory promise of fast and free delivery. And in 25 minutes or so a Chinese man on a bike will come to your door and you’ll maybe drop him a xie xie with your tip and he’ll give you a bye bye and he’s gone. End of story.

But there’s a different version of that story that goes on in many parts of this city. And that version is about money, class, race, and education. And in that version people are robbed, assaulted and killed, and people live in fear, constantly on guard and under threat over Chinese food.

Sci-Fi and Reproductive Rights

Annalee Newitz from io9 is so damn smart. Here’s a recent piece by her in which she describes what science fiction tells us about our fears and hopes about the future of human reproduction:

If everything from technology to politics will be different in the future, then so will human reproduction. That’s why so much science fiction deals with the question of how humans make babies — or don’t make them — in alternate worlds that are often quite close to our own. It’s also why reproduction is a political issue. After all, a political campaign represents the promise of a new kind of future.

Fascinating and insightful.

Anatomy of a Joke

From the New York Times comes a detailed analysis and evolution of a joke by comedian Myq Kaplan:

Looking back at the joke’s various incarnations, Mr. Kaplan said it was heartening to see improvement. Yet nothing was more fun than the first time. “When you introduce a joke into the world, and the audience laughs,” he said, “it’s the most invigorating, thrilling thing.”

What If ‘The Sopranos’ And ‘Seinfeld’ Had Switched Endings?

I enjoyed this brief profile of Mad Men creator Matt Weiner in The New York Times, but the best line in it comes from Sopranos creator David Chase, who reflected on how his show ended:

It’s just very difficult to end a series. For example, ‘Seinfeld,’ they ended it with them all going to jail. Now that’s the ending we should have had. And they should have had ours, where it blacked out in a diner.

I can’t tell if Chase is speaking tongue-in-cheek here, or if he actually has regrets about the maddening final scene from The Sopranos.

Either way, I think he’s right.