At this point in the year, baseball serves as the anchor for me. Partly due to the odd climate in San Francisco during summer (our coldest time of the year, offset by occasional periods of sun and heat), it gets disorienting. It's easy to forget what month it is, or even what day of the week it is. Everything just flows together as if swirling past in the ever-present fog.
But baseball helps bind the days and weeks into useful patterns. Our team, the Giants, are locked in a gripping pennant race wit their arch-rivals, the Dodgers. Tonight, the boys and I watched the Giants win a big game and retake first place. They also welcomed a new slugger to the team, Hunter Pence, just acquired in a trade.
He'll be in the lineup tomorrow.
Baseball is a game of ups and downs and endless numbers. It is a statistician's dream. You can love the sport without its numbers, but you'd probably never really understand it very well. Math majors need point no further than baseball to convince kids that math matters.
That even works in some cases.
Another thing about summer is the kids are off school, so today we did one of our favorite things and went to a local place for brunch. They've been lobbying heavily for me to adopt a cat, and they drove themselves to distraction imagining what we would name such a creature -- assuming I ever agreed to get one.
Some of the names they came up with were pretty funny, to be sure. Mostly I just love seeing them happy and enjoying each other's company.
***
I had a major misunderstanding with somebody recently. It bothers me. It was mainly miscommunication, but the underlying issue was a sense of fairness.
I help people all the time -- I love helping people. I give my time and expertise, such as it may be, away freely. Virtually anyone who shows up and asks for writing or editing help gets a friendly reception from me.
But when money is involved, I can become touchy. I've prided myself on being a pretty good negotiator when a salary or contract is involved. One time, when my boss offered me a certain salary figure, I countered that it might not be viewed by the executives I was supposed to manage as high enough to command their respect.
My boss thought about it and offered me 27.3 percent more, on the spot.
That was a figure I could not refuse.
In this recent situation, I casually agreed to help someone raise money, and with one email, I connected him with someone who immediately agreed to invest in his company. He said "I owe you big time," which was true.
So I articulated what "big time" would mean in this context.
Others have compensated me generously when I helped them raise money. That is a very different field than writing or editing. This particular beneficiary took offense, acting as if I had had "ulterior motives" all along.
The whole thing blew up into a big mess until I told him I would not accept anything back from him even if he offered it.
After all, all I have is my reputation as a person of high ethical standards -- once someone casts aspersions on that, my ability to function narrows considerably in the highly competitive world of advising tech startups in the Bay Area.
I'm still reeling from this experience, and trying to figure out what it means. Maybe I just trust people too easily?
Probably. And that has often been my undoing.
My new ebook has led many old friends to contact me and send their best wishes, which I appreciate. Some of them are even ordering the book and reading it.
I hope a lot of people do. It would take many tens of thousands of people to buy the book before I would receive any meaningful compensation (at 75 cents per book) but however many read it will at least get a sense of how I view the technological revolution reshaping life in our time.
This story is bigger than I can capture, so far. It is enormous. I struggle week after week to make the best sense of it I can. The latest book is my first attempt to articulate some major patterns, but in that regard I have much work to do going forward.
In the way that one thing affects everything else, and on and on, the fate of the Giants this fall will likely help define my creative work.
If that is strange to some, then all I can offer is it's all there in the numbers...
-30-
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