An Open Letter To Chuck Klosterman

Dear Chuck,

I am a big fan of your writings. I've practically memorized the essays in Sex, Drugs, & Cocoa Puffs and Eating the Dinosaur. They contain the kind of insight I sometimes have in conversations, but never have had the discipline to write them down. The way you deconstruct cereal commercials, rock tribute bands and teen sitcoms, I say to myself, Damn, he can put into words what I only vaguely sense.

So I've decided to give myself an exercise. Next month I will purchase a copy of your upcoming collection of essays, I Wear The Black Hat. Each week I will ready one essay and write a response letter to you for that essay. Your theme is villainy in fiction and real life, and how you've become fascinated by it. So I will look at the book from the opposite perspective. As my college technical writing (1) instructor taught us, it's not what's written that makes a point, it's what's not written.

I welcome you to view my blog answering your book. On August 1, get ready for the first entry in "Letters To A Pop Culture Columnist." (2)

http://letterstochuck.blogspot.com/

Sincerely,

Dan Wohl

(1) I majored in industrial engineering at Rutgers. See, I got the footnote thing down, too.

(2) I don't like to use words like "pundit" or "guru" when referring to you, since you provide more interesting answers then questions.

Reaching Out

One of the bad habits I've developed over my life is keeping things bottled up inside of me. Recently, however, I've been making an effort to share more. Here are some examples:

1. When cleaning out my apartment seemed like a grueling, daunting, overwhelming task, I reached out to my fraternity brothers. I posted on our Facebook group pictures of the pieces of furniture up for sale, and said that anyone who helped me move, I'd compensate.
2. When I felt tensions building up between my mother and I, I called a friend, told him how I felt, and told him I did so because I am willing to do whatever it takes to avoid another physical or mental relapse, meltdown, or breakdown.
3. With this interview, I reached out to a Rutgers classmate and current LinkedIn connection about his take on the company. His company is a customer of my interviewers.
4. When a Facebook friend said she was looking for a Napa wine recommendation, I commented that I know someone who runs a Napa vineyard, and I would share his FB page with her.

Not all of my reaching out efforts will produce desired results. But I am slowly moving towards a more open approach to life. For that, I believe that I deserve to be commended.

Interview

I got an interview with a company which, ironically, is in the same town that I just moved out of. I've inerviewed there before, and remain interested in working there. It will simply require me to drive from Central to North Jersey for work, and a thing I haven't done in years.

Another book I've been reading is Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman. Much of it discusses how our amygdalas hijack our frontal lobes, leading us to act in ways which may have been appropriate in dealing with sabre-toothed tigers millenia ago, but not appropriate in dealing with late customer orders or supplier deliveries today.

Class Review

My first day of the course went well. It was six hours, and the course will be sixty-three hours in all. My next session is Wednesday, and it will probably span five or six weeks. I have to read the next few chapters in the book before then.

Part of my search for meaning has to do with this course. If I'm going to work in manufacturing, I want to learn how to do my job better all the time, and be able to add value to the company. Sometime meaning can simply be found in doing a job the best way it can be done.

Back to School

Friday I start a class in Lean Six Sigma. For those not famaliar with those terms, Lean manufacturing is the practice of continually discovering and eliminating waste in manufacturing processes. Six Sigma is a method of quality assurance that seeks to reduce defects, and opportunities for defects. A "Six Sigma" process is one with less than 4 defects per 1 million opportunities.

I got a grant from the state to pay for the course. My first task Friday morning will be to make sure that all papers are in order and I truly am eligible for the grant. This course will earn me a certification that employers desire.

Steps So Far

I went back and looked over my previous entries in order to get ideas for this post. Here's my thoughts on those posts:

1. My search for meaning is the theme. Not my mother's search, not my sister's, not even Viktor Frankl's. Mine.

2. That needs to be what animates each post.

This blog was created by a person who was, at the time, dealing with physical and mental health issues in an unproductive matter. That does not make them less valid than anything I were to write now, or in a future state of more proper comparative functioning.

Two years ago, when I had my workplace meltdown and asked to be taken to a hospital, I was under no corecion to check myself into the Carrier Clinic. When I made the decision to do so, one of the personnel there smiled at me and said, "You are an educated man." I think she was happy that I was willing to give myself another chance to live.