Saturday, February 21, 2009

The Cynical Career Counselor Explains Your Future as a

Motivational Speaker

Hi kid--nice job on that assembly last month. You guys must be pretty popular blowing the money that was supposed to pay for a Valentine's dance on some washed up football player telling kids to stay in school and off drugs. Too bad you couldn't have known he'd get busted the next day for that coke stash.

Really? I thought you'd have been put off the whole motivational speaker thing after that. From what I've seen you up to around the school, I doubt you'll be some druggie hypocrite; no, you'll be much more sincere, and it will go something like this:

You'll join Toastmasters or some other public speaking organization to hone your oratorical skills. You'll watch hours of real motivational speakers on youtube, paying particular attention to the most successful ones like Tony Robbins, Deepak Chopra and especially the tragic, poignant yet heartwarming messages of that professor who knew he was terminal with cancer.

You'll start off small--speaking to boy scout troops and 4-H clubs. You won't get paid, but you'll feel you're making a difference. Some suggest maybe you should consider some sort of religious affiliation--churches are one of the few places that people actually will voluntarily sit and listen to someone tell them how to live their lives--but you are clear in your desire to get people to look within themselves for inspiration.

Your career stagnates fairly quickly, and you take a few jobs you don't enjoy just to make ends meet. One of these brings you into contact with an older fellow employee who shares his frustration with you as he plans his wife's funeral. He is an atheist, as was his wife, and he wants to organize some sort of inspiring celebration of her life, but there aren't many agencies offering that alternative.

You sit down and craft your best speech and share it with him at work the next day. His eyes tear up and he breaks down a little as he thanks you and begs you to deliver your talk at his wife's ceremony.

It goes well, and some of the man's friends from his atheist society ask for your card; fortunately you have some left from a more optimistic time in your budding speaking career. It's not long before you're asked to come and participate in another funeral, and after that a wedding. A Jewish couple who've abandoned their faith then call you to help with their daughter's secular alternative to a Bat Mitzvah, and the contacts you make there soon allow you to quit your crappy job and begin your motivational speaking career in earnest.

After a few months you realize you need to take the next step; you want to move from small local events to a broader audience, and to do this you need to go beyond simply being a piece of special celebrations in people's lives. You need to be perceived as having a message that is of such worth that people will want to listen to that message for it's own sake.

The problem is finding an angle. So many of the catch phrases you type into google keep coming up under some already successful speaker's name. So many of the insights and approaches you think of have already been attached to someone else's publications or television programs.

Then it happens. You are approached by a terminally-ill man who wants you to help him prepare his own funeral, and as he helps you prepare this speech which means so much, he gives you some powerful insights about the nature of life and death. The crux of the message you create together is that one should be living life prepared for death--having said the right things to those you love, not leaving those important plans until too late, and seeing the final end of this life as not something to be feared, but as the "next great adventure".

That last phrase irks your atheistic sensibilities a little, but the man explains that while he doesn't embrace any faith group's particular approach to what lies beyond this world, he believes there is too much positive energy in a life well-lived for him to think that some spark, in some way, does not go on afterwards.

You get the chance to deliver this powerful message only a few weeks later, and the effect is immediate. A couple of dozen mourners stay afterward to gush about your profound words, and one of them hands you a card and asks you to drop by her office the next week. She has already made some phone calls by the time you meet with her and she's booked you as workshop speaker at a conference for school counselors. (Not that I'll be anywhere near that kind of snoozefest, you can be sure.)

It goes well, and after a few more such events, your name is out there and it's no surprise when a large high school invites you to come and address their student body. Seems there was a tragic accident when a bus carrying one of their sports teams went off the road and three students were killed.

You come and give your best variation of the message you helped create for your terminally-ill friend. The students are in the right place, emotionally, to listen to you, and you see tears throughout the gymnasium as you scan the crowd to judge the impact of your words. After your talk is over, dozens of emotional kids stay behind to meet you and talk about how your speech touched them. It's a weird feeling for one such as yourself, whose earnestness has put you at odds with so many of your peers here in high school--not to mention the hostility about the whole Valentine's dance fiasco.

There were news cameras at the school assembly, and they stick around to catch footage of tear-streaked faces crowded around you afterwards; it's a powerful image, and it solidifies your status as an up-and-coming motivational speaker. The woman who who booked your first engagements after seeing you at the funeral quietly steps aside as your agent--not without getting a decent "finder's fee"--and a more established talent representative adds you to her stable of speakers.

Soon you're featured at nationwide conferences, but you also make time for high school visits, which pay surprisingly well. Additionally, you're brought in to speak at several colleges, and you cautiously accept a few phone numbers after those speeches from coeds who were deeply impacted by your words. You realize that for your message of balance and wellness to be seen as authentic, you must live a life that avoids excess or scandal.

Things keep going well, for several months, and you're pleased when your agent calls with news that you've been invited to speak on the Oprah show--by this time she's older but after a few "retirements" she keeps coming back to earn larger and larger television contracts.

The bad news, when it comes, is delivered by your agent. She calls you into her office and shows you letters from three different high schools where students who were significantly impacted by your words have committed suicide. More letters and phone calls follow; within two months there are eight deaths which may be linked to your "inspiration".

Oprah's people call and cancel, citing a "scheduling conflict", but by that time the writing is on the wall. News crews begin shadowing you, and more and more engagements are being cancelled. Clips of your speeches are edited together, and out of context your words seem to almost encourage embracing of death as seas of eager high school faces look on.

Emo kids all rush to your defence, which doesn't help your case at all. Not since "pro-ana" sites has the internet created such a youth-oriented controversy. Dark, troubled youth post videos of you speaking on youtube and their myspace pages. Some are featured on sites of kids who then go on to take their own lives.

You become a nationwide target of angry and hurt parents. One tabloid dubs you "Dr. Bye-Bye", in spite of your not having any kind of doctorate or medical training. A late-night talk host jokes that you're as welcome at most schools as Salman Rushdie at the Al-Queda company picnic.

It's an ironic joke, because the next day the FBI comes to you with their concerns about the number of mailed and emailed death threats you've received. They suggest you go into hiding, and they're willing to place you in the witness protection program, but because you're not actually a witness, you'll have to pay for the privilege of disappearing.

You resist, but after two firebombs and several shots through your living room window you agree. You aren't married or even seriously involved with anyone, so your relocation is relatively simple. Because you need a job for your cover story, and you have few other marketable skills, the FBI place you in a job similar to what you hated prior to your speaking career. It doesn't pay well, and you start burning through the savings from your speaking career, at least until they are frozen by the courts as part of the proceedings of a large class action lawsuit by a group of parents of kids who killed themselves. You and the school districts who booked you to speak are named as co-respondents in these very publicized cases, and the media follows with interest, since it is hoped you will surface to face the charges.

Through your lawyer you buy your way out of having to testify by sacrificing what is left of your savings. At that point your financial position becomes almost untenable. The Bureau is still charging you to help keep you safe from those who would gladly go to prison in return for seeing you dead.

When the money pressure becomes almost too much to bear, they approach you with a suggestion: The sad and lonely inmates of the witness protection program need something to give their pathetic fake lives some sort of meaning. You pay for your spot in the program by giving motivational workshops for ex-paramilitary white supremacists and gang snitches.

You wonder how your words impact these isolated souls, but the only hint comes when a semi-sober field agent investigating a break-in at your home mentions cynically that a few suicides in the program just saves the feds a bit of money and trouble.

I guess I won't be seeing you at the reunion--good luck.

Monday, February 09, 2009

next of kin in a facebook age

I won't go into details here; check the other place if you're part of that club.

Just a weird thing that's probably only come up in the last couple of years that happened yesterday. I ended up having to inform a number of people of a death in the family, and had to warn them "don't put anything on facebook" to avoid someone finding out about it that way before we'd had a chance to contact them.

Unfortunately, my son wasn't up yet when I left the house and my daughter didn't pass the message along to him... Luckily by the time he did post something we'd gotten to most of the ones who I was worried about.

Friday, February 06, 2009

Poetry By Dythandra

My Secret Superpower

Despite my revulsion for the corporate,
In a weak moment I acquiesced
To fulfill a parental dream.

My father's office--
Valued only for the hours
It kept him from
Our humble abode.

Now, piercings reduced, makeup subdued
And wardrobe... I can't even describe,
I play the role
Of dutiful office peon.

Apparently one of the perks of Great Central Insurance,
They "take care of their own"--the orientation day mantra
I hurt myself trying to suppress the giggles.

Placement is always a challenge,
Especially when the neophyte gofer
Has so little motivation.

First there was the coffee cart.
Going from one floor to the next
Doling out stale pastries and cheap java.

It was here I first showed my surprising entrepreneurial skill
When a few with finer tastes signed up for my "bonus" service--
(I'd walk across the street and buy them the good espresso.)

That went fine, aside from a few important documents
My clumsiness soaked beyond repair.
Apparently important clients don't like being asked
To sign things twice.

Next came answering phones--that was short-lived.
It seems the CEO's wife doesn't quite agree
That Marilyn Manson makes good on-hold music.

My assumption that freedom would be my next assignment
Was sadly off the mark.

What a collection of screw-ups and sociopaths must have preceded me
To make this nepotistic staffing program
So very tolerant.

Third time proved strangely lucky.
Mail room--I start my day in the basement,
And no one minds if I wear my headphones
While dropping missives on their desks.

My job seemed an archaic throwback
To pre-email days, but it seems
Some companies still like a paper trail.

Then, one fateful day, I forgot to charge my player,
So I am fully alert as I drift between the cubicles, almost invisible.

A claims manager is chatting with an older couple,
The woman quiet, the man demanding his immediate due.
I overhear enough, and pause until they leave.

"Yes?" the manager looks impatient.
Perhaps he was one of my earlier coffee victims.

"Fire claim?" I ask. He nods.
"I bet she started it--did you smell her breath?"

Two things I learned from my father--the smell of booze
And what voids a policy.
The latter only from waiting impatiently for his calls to end
Back when we were saddled with dialup internet.

"Yeah--it was a fire claim. Why do you think she started it?"
I didn't answer right away, but grabbed the policy from his desk.

"Right here," I pointed. "Non-smokers' discount."

"So?"

"Get them back up here and look at the cigarette burns on her jacket yourself.
She drinks, she passes out, her smokes burn things."

His eyes light up. He calls the investigators, gives them the info, and is thrilled,
When they call back to validate my theory.

I have no quarrel with anyone, but I also don't listen to what people say--
Everyone lies.
I observe; the truth is usually right there, easy to see.

I spend two more months there, arriving when my pager calls me,
Observing what isn't said,
Revealing the truth.

Two frauds, one embezzlement and three affairs
Revealed without much work.

Today I was back where I'd vowed to not return,
Flipping burgers. I shrug when anyone asks.

Truth is, I heard a little more about my first 'catch'.
At least now if I overcook the onions,
Nobody wraps their mouth around the barrel of a gun.