Blue Collar thoughts.

Maybe I just don't feel like writing about yesterday's election. Or living in a country where Congress has approval ratings in the single digits yet returns more than 3/4 of its incumbents. I don't need that agita this morning.

I was thinking this morning as I rode the bus to work.

When it's not crowded, about one day a week, I open my Mac, get online by tethering my iPhone and do a little work. Either for myself or for my clients.

This morning I scanned Linked In.

I'm working full-time but I'm always looking for something more fulfilling.

I saw a friend who's a managing director (whatever that means) at a small creative shop is looking for a designer.

I sent him a note about a friend of mine who recently lost his job. Then I sent my friend a note.

All this happened between 57th Street and 42nd Street on the M15 Select bus.

My friend wrote to him, he wrote to my friend. Wheels started turning.

I started thinking about this approach to work.

It's a blue-collar approach if you ask me.

You see a problem or an opportunity and you jump at it. No meetings are convened. No Hamlet crap is ruminated. You do shit. You do your best to make things happen. You throw something at the wall and see what sticks.

Along the way many of us have gotten too smart for our own goods.

Even something that should be simple, like say, baseball, has more data today than a rocket launch had when we went to the moon.

Man oh man. Just send Rodriguez up and tell him to get ahold of one. Fuck "Sabermetrics." Hit the fucking ball.

We are all so smart.

All so pensive.

All so deliberate.

That we lay there like a lox.

We are soul-less.

Emotionless.

We are abstract.

The other day I saw an internet meme about how well the nation has done under Barack Obama's leadership. Inflation has stayed microscopic. We're experiencing net gains in employment of one-million jobs a month. The deficit is shrinking. Taxes are lower.

We're doing well but we're allowed to think everything stinks.

I wondered what the results would have been last night if the Democrats in 2014 stole a song sheet from FDR and blanketed the airwaves with "Happy Days Are Here Again" as FDR did during each of his first three campaigns.

No.

We analyzed the shit out of humanity.