L.A.nticipation

I'm a big believer in working and hoping. Working hard (and selling cleverly) and hoping to be the person who gets the surprising break. So I'm writing screenplays. One drama done. One comedy in the early outline stage. So far it's like trying to learn the craft as if it had never been practiced before.

Next week I go to Screenwriters' Expo to mingle with hundreds of other strivers, hope-junkies, delusional types, and some real, skilled - hell, employed - writers. Could change my life. More likely, I'll meet some good company and learn stuff. That's great. And California, I'll be making a small contribution - but only by some measures - to your economy. Throw me a bone, will ya?

My Wildest Dreams: to return from L.A. with a mentor in the person of a known, working writer. Realistic goal: meet a bunch of people more advanced than me who are willing to use the web to keep on meeting and teaching each other through good criticism.

As in an earlier year, Jay Leno and the Tonight Show will tape story pitches by Expo participants (It's "Toy Story" meets "Romeo is Dying"). Word is, the studio audience votes on whether the story is sold or not. And then the sale/no sale is revealed. I'll keep you informed about where and when to see this segment, but do not - I repeat - do not look for this guy on-camera.

In the meantime, it's great to be home. The Woman I Love (TWIL) is even happier than me. Does it have to do with my compulsive tidiness, my cooking skills, my svelte form? Doubtful. She unaccountably likes me; it's the core of her considerable charm.

[Swiped the photo from a Hollywood fan. Click on the title to go to the source. Apologies/thanks.]

Case Closed

What's that? The state capital building, an erection of Huey Long, as I understandt it. Farewell Baton Rouge!

What's the verdict? Well, it's the wrong question. The question is whether you have any regrets, whether you wasted your time, whether you worked hard and well but accomplished nothing. No. To all three. I paid with frustration and missed opportunities by being away from The Woman I Love (TWIL) for the greatest part of the last ten months. I have come to dismay over miserable cellphone service that interrupts us twice each evening. I have come to appreciate how greatthe effect of her love and respect is. And I'm grateful for her patience. I've also recalled how much I enjoy an evening to myself, a Saturday without plans, a day filled with movies.

I rewrote a movie script of my own creation, I shot part of a DV movie that may yet acquire a story to go with that footage, I gave what advice I had to the trainer I worked with most closely, I played well with others. And I'm exhausted with the effort of leaving.

I suffer leaving as if it were a physical wound. That's why I did not visit home more often. TWIL was always glad to have me visit, for however short a time. But between the fatigue of arriving (six hours aloft) and the distress of leaving, it offered me real frustration in the 40 hours I was home. I know what you're thinking. I mean psychic frustration.

Even leaving Louisiana was not easy. People were warm and I was appreciated. I will miss is the daily sense of direction and progress that work offers, the pleasure of reliable human contact on a wider scope than home, and the opportunity to influence people.

I will not miss C.M. (See a previous post.) Finally, at the urging of the project leader, I talked with C.M. about our disagreements. We made a lot of progress, but I'd be a simpleton to think it changed her, or me. It comes down to this, in my biased interpretation: C.M. wielded the authority of her office to engineer the perception of success in everything she does. The effect is poor, but the story it allows her to tell is a good one.

Like a camel through the eye of a needle, so are the days of our lives

What's a training pilot look like? Or first, what is it? You take the course materials you've been creating and improving and you teach them to the audience they're intended for.

What it looks like is three weeks of standing in a windowless room for eight hours a day, fielding questions that you may or may not know the answer to. It nearly always requires four to six hours of preparation between 6:00 p.m. and 7:00 a.m. I'm not complaining, just reporting. As to what happens, you aim to hit the target: participants grow confident using new skills and generally have a good feeling about the experience. You want to know how close to center of the target you struck. The first requires learning objectives (for you training types out there). The second requires evaluation.

In practice, the success of a pilot depends to some extent on the facilitator. When materials aren't quite right, the pace is slow, the activity crashes and burns, you want someone in front of the room who can pull a rabbit out of his or her ... hat. Our pilot went well. We saw our share of rabbits. Most lived through the experience of being yanked by the ears.

I mentioned internal political ructions in my last post. They continued, but aren't worth mentioning now. On that note, a truism: everyone chooses to involve themselves with co-workers based on a set of pre-requisites: commitment (how much do I respect this person), pragmatism (how will this help or hurt a relationship that may be tested in similar ways in the future), and neurosis (You can't push me around, I'm afraid of conflict, She got this attitude, etc. Insert yours here.). Here's my litmus-test question before giving feedback: Are we going to work together again and do I want it to work better next time? And that's all I need to say about that.

With one week left to go before my Rapture-by-jetliner, one thing I feel strongly as I look back over ten months is that people have been individually very warm to me. I'm grateful. Working with the same people all the time provides a lot of social support, even when it leads to conflict. And once you've earned a little respect, you begin to have the power of influence. Always less than you'd hope. But it's real. I have an undying hope to do good, make people better for having had to do with me. It's a little crazy (See above, re: neurosis). I'm very grateful for genuine kindness I've been offered here. I hope that my influence and the genuine kindness I returned totes up in the "good effect" column.

The End is Near

The end, that is, of two things. My stint in Louisiana, which ends October 29. I began working here last December (2004) on a four-month contract. Project problems - or challenges or opportunities - postponed the first big deadline twice. I agreed to stay on. But I made it clear that after Halloween I had other commitments that I could not change.

That first big deadline is changing again. Rumors have one or two months from the most recently agreed upon date. The rationale lies entirely on the technical side: getting software to address business issues as desired, anticipated, and needed. Training can always be ready, almost whenever the starting gun fires. And training can always be made better. We serve at the pleasure of the business.

Also at an end is the preparation for training. We have materials, policies, a training system (a model of the working system), and we nearly have an instructional design. We could use a lot more examples and exercises. We're training experienced employees. In other classes for other business units, they're learning quickly. They're getting it. This is likely to mean that we start training well before participants will begin to use new skills, and that we'll wrap up early.

Today, the plan is to deliver the four weeks of training, wait three to eight weeks, provide a largely unstructured refresher, and drop people into the hot water of the new job. I think it's irresponsible. I'm going to argue that the training design must be changed to keep participants learning from any given starting point until production begins. The horse-pill of new policies can be swallowed, but only if live ammo drill and practice follow the hothouse practice in the classroom. And I bet I'll lose the argument. But as I said weeks ago, you hope to show clients new ways of doing things and enable them to succeed. You try to tell them the truth.

Finally, my consultant manager has been virtually AWOL. Let's call her the C.M. You try to tell the truth. We'll see where that gets me.

Low and dry

I fled Baton Rouge on Friday in spite of having planned to stay the weekend. That is, a few days ago I was unwilling to spring an extra $600 to change my ticket from Boston to NYC, where my girlfriend has been working for the past four days. But as the women I work with tracked Rita, it moved North, slowed down, got stronger, and generally looked like the source of a week of electric-free living. That means food gets scarce, except for what you grill, which is in too great a supply - where do you keep it when the fire goes out? And a cheaper ticket popped up on my travel site. So I took off.

New York had perfect weather for walking the city. We did. Between fits of TV watching and web surfing to find out whether the South central US would shut down again for a few days. I'm glad that so few people were hurt during Rita and that it didn't hit property harder. But I'd have been very glad for a couple of days working from a NY hotel room. Besides the kind of typical incompetence one expects from airlines, the return at o'dark thirty Sunday morning was uneventful.

Baton Rouge gasped with traffic. And like Katrina, God's own leaf bag was shaken out everywhere. Here and there a downed tree. From those who stayed, the report comes that power was on and off for a twelve-hour period. The freezer stayed cold. Humidity soared yesterday afternoon, or maybe that's just the contrast to the Northeast. By five it felt normal again.

This week I relocate my cubicle to the building about six miles down the highway where the training rooms and staff are located. One week until the start of classroom training.