The ironing board faileth

Tuesday morning last week was an interesting one, made even more interesting by the purchases I’d made on Monday night. But first, a little backstory:

In January, as we moved from the temporary housing that we had spent the last three months in, I found myself in sudden need of an ironing board…and an iron. I guess I could have just gotten an iron and relied on the old kitchen-counter standby, but I wanted to go whole hog, especially because I had to iron my clothes everyday. Now, I’m not so much a fan of buying things new when there are perfectly good used versions out there waiting to be had. So I popped down to my local Breast Cancer Support thrift store and picked up a perfectly respectable ironing board and iron. Or at least I thought they were perfectly respectable.

The iron was the first to give me trouble, and it did so with evil glee. On the first day. I filled it with water, I plugged it in, it warmed up nicely, and as soon as I touched it to my shirt it glued a lurid greyish streak of accumulated minerals all the way down the front.

Scratch one shirt.

Through trial and error I found that if I paid near-constant attention to the surface I could scrape off the accumulated gunk before it left its mark on my defenseless clothing. I figured that after a few weeks the accumulated gunk would clear out and I wouldn’t have to mind it any more.

After a year I gave up. I decided to buy a new iron, and while I was at it I would also by a new cover for the ironing board, because the cover I was using had grown so threadbare that I had recently resorted to putting a towel beneath it.

Back from Target with a new iron for the heart-stopping price of $5. (I paid the same amount for the thrift store Super Gunker). I also had a new cover, which I fitted over the board in place of the tattered old—very likely original—cover. I was feeling pretty stylish…for about 5 seconds, because just as I snapped the last corner of the cover on…wait for it…

…the leg broke. Yep, both of the rivets that joined the back leg to the board just decided they couldn’t take it anymore and let go.

I figured it best to sleep on the whole thing.

When I got up the next morning I plugged in my new iron and tried to iron my clothes on the board…as it rested on the floor. Yeah, not so much. So back to the old standby: the kitchen counter. All that and only ten minutes late is a win in my book any day.

When I got home and had a little more time to think about it, I discovered that I could wedge the broken leg up against the support and voila! I had a functioning ironing board again. It’s the little miracles that make me happy. Someday, if I’m lucky, I’ll go out and get a whole shiny new ironing board. Maybe. If this one really breaks.

Quick question: why is it that something like this can make me laugh while it makes others cry, or tear their collective hair out, or curse the gods? It’s a serious question. Mostly.

Origami

I have thought about posting here for months, but I was finally motivated to do it by this post from Chris McCann. A few weeks back we had coffee and a lively conversation about the subject of sustainability. The conversation brought up some nagging issues I’ve been trying to work through recently. Namely, how do I square my talent management consulting with my passion for building a sustainable world?

Over the past year I’ve become deeply involved in the sustainability movement, a return to my roots, really. And with each passing day the gap between my “work” and my passion has grown wider.

This is one of the major reasons I’ve been finding it so difficult to write here. Every time I started a post about traditional recruiting/talent management dilemmas I ended up trying to respond from a traditional corporate capitalist perspective, and every time the content rang false. A traditional corporate capitalist I am not. But I have been acting like one for a number of reasons, bifurcating my professional and personal identities to avoid the inescapable clash of cultures and philosophies. In retrospect none of those reasons seem compelling, but they may have been necessary for me to get here.

And here is where I stand now, firmly embracing my personal convictions as they relate to business in general and “talent management” in particular. The time for a new approach is come. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go water my garden.

Crystalization

When I arrive home from a day of meetings in LA and a four hour drive, and when I look up at the carpet of stars and feel the cool, fresh air on my face, when I hear the frogs in full song and sense my connection to all things visceral, immediate, and real, my resolution crystallizes: I will not continue to waste my time inside.

I’m a Eurasiatic

Fareed Zakaria says this in his shiny new book The Post-American World:

Americans may admire beauty, but they are truly dazzled by bigness…. Europeans prefer complexity, the Japanese revere minimalism. But Americans like size, preferably supersize.

Okay, so I am decidedly NOT American. Which makes me wonder about where my parents are really from. Maybe I’m adopted? Because my brother loves supersized. Me, however, I prefer complexity, and I love minimalism.

Is that even really possible? Can something be complex and minimal? What is that? Minimally complex? Complexly minimalistic? Minimalisitically complexificated?

Whatever. I know I like my arguments, my furniture, my friends, and my worldviews complex, and I like my technology, my clothing, my relationships, and my finances beautifully streamlined and simple.

Maybe this is why my dream home is a straw bale Japanese Mexi-Mediterranean adobe fusion. I’m drawing the plans up right now.