Fred Aiken Writing

Category: Blog

May 26, 2024

Good-ish on a Good Day

Daily writing prompt
What are you good at?
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Not much. But I also have a somewhat self-deprecating personality.

If I’m being honest, then I guess I have a handful of skills and hobbies that I’m good at. I play a lot of chess, so I suppose you could say I’m good at that. Not great. I don’t have the patience or intelligence to be a grandmaster or anything close to that, like an international master or candidate master. But I can hold my own in bullet and blitz matches.

Then there’s also sewing tote bags from coffee burlap jute. I started making tote bags from the coffee burlap a year or so ago because I like some of the designs on the coffee jute bags that the company I work for was getting in, so I figured I could make tote bags for myself to use for grocery shopping, since I’m not a huge fan of using the plastic grocery store bags. And I’ve gotten pretty good and efficient at making them to the point where I’m even able to sell them on etsy.

Now, I’m not all that good at sewing in general. Outside of sewing tote bags, I have never sewn anything else, though I have patched a few holes in some socks and pants. But in terms of making elaborate costumes or clothing by sewing them myself, I wouldn’t know where to start. I’d probably just watch a series of youtube videos and give up if the process took longer than a couple of hours.

I used to be a lot better at writing. I even won a few contests back in college. But when I started working, especially working 10-12 hour days, I sort of stopped. I mean, I’ve finally gotten to a point in my life where I’m only working 8 hours at most, which has allotted me the free time to pick up writing again. But I know I’m not nearly as proficient or good as I used to be. Perhaps it’s just my style changing. At first I thought I needed to recapture the type of voice I had when I was younger. But I’ve come to realize that I’m not that same person, so I don’t write in that same fashion. Though overall, I like to think that I can still write pretty well.

And because I was a barista for so long, I’m actually pretty good at latte art and making a nice cup of coffee in pretty much any format, from percolation to aeropress to espresso. I competed in a couple of latte throw downs in a few Specialty Coffee Association events. I certainly was never the best there, but I could hold my own.

I’m also really good at not spending money. I feel like that might not seem like much of a skill, but when I read articles saying how a large portion of the population is living paycheck to paycheck, I think economic literacy is one of those underrated skill sets that sometimes gets overlooked because our society values debt so much. I personally really dislike owing anyone any amount of money, but I also don’t like giving companies my money when they so rarely deserve it.

I don’t think I’d describe any of my talents or skills as being the best out there, but in a way, well, I guess I’m not all that bad at a handful of things.

Though of all the things I’m good at, I think the list of things I’m either so-so or bad at is much, much larger. But hey, maybe that’s another skill that I’m good at; acknowledging my limitations.

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May 18, 2024

Some Work Song Thrown in the Back of the Truck

Daily writing prompt
How do you balance work and home life?
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I’ve gone through several iterations of work-home balances. Unfortunately, growing up in the States, it was ingrained within me that in order to achieve some semblance of happiness and worth within society that I needed to accumulate things, e.g. cars, house, phone, random stuff in storage that only comes out once every year or so, and the only way to accumulate these coveted things was by working. Or so the theory goes.

So, throughout my twenties when I got out of college I worked incredibly hard. I worked multiple jobs, sometimes 3 or 4 at a time. I used to work from 5am till well past 10pm. I had little to no social life, which wasn’t all that bad because even if I hadn’t been working, I doubt I would have been all that social since I’m incredibly introverted and do not like conversing with people generally. But I was constantly stressed. I felt like I wasn’t doing anything right.

But the goal was to always reach a point where I would work incredibly long, but hopefully efficient, amount of time, and then I would get to retire, or at least reach a point of financial independence where money was something of an afterthought. And if all went well, then I would be able to retire much sooner than my mid-to-late sixties. Ideally, maybe even in my forties, but I wasn’t completely unrealistic and was at least shooting for my late fifties so I could enjoy the last 20-30 years of remaining of my life to do whatever I pleased.

Though, like I said, I was always stressed. I was miserable. I pulled away from my wife, from my parents, from my siblings, and anyone and everyone that cared for me. I told myself that I was working so hard and so much in order to improve my station in life. I was at the brink of completely losing everyone around me before I realized that my constant state of working all of the time and never taking time to actually live was destroying whatever sort of future I imagine I could lead at the end of the working rainbow.

So, I pulled back. I took one job with regular hours doing something that I don’t need to stress about (a common mantra in the coffee industry from barista to roaster to importer is ‘it’s just coffee‘), and I’ve rediscovered hobbies and interests I once had, like reading, writing, and playing chess, along with a handful of interests I didn’t know I had, like sewing and learning a new language.

I think the biggest challenge and realization that I needed to make about developing a healthy work-life balance was understanding that jobs and careers and anything to do with making money, unless it’s a passion, is not the end-all be-all of life. It’s just a way of sustaining oneself, and as long as what I do at work provides enough for me to live off of and save a little bit for when I do reach a point where I no longer need to work, then I’m good. I don’t need to overexert myself to the point of exhaustion because the only thing that will lead to is failing relationships and a deteriorating mental state.

Some of the biggest regrets I’ve made in life were confusing working with living, and listening to individual and societal voices that rewarded that mentality of constantly pushing myself to physical and mental exhaustion rather than taking time off and reorienting my priorities around the people and activities that I enjoy doing.

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May 15, 2024

Follow Something or Rather

Daily writing prompt
Are you a leader or a follower?
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I suppose this depends on one’s definition of leaders and followers. From what I’ve read and come to understand, I’m not entirely convinced that there is such a thing. I mean, sure, there’s certainly a pragmatic difference between a CEO of a company and the people that stock the shelves or flip the burgers. Each role serves a purpose in the organization, the latter more important than the former, since there are plenty of instances in which a company goes without a CEO or sometimes an entire C-suite for weeks or months, but the moment the “essential” workers are taken out of the equation, either because of a strike or illness or interruption to a store’s ability to function, the business crumples. It just happens that most companies, and society at large, does not pay people based on their importance within a company, but rather how far removed they are from actual, well, work.

So I guess I would argue more so that society isn’t organized around the concept of leaders and followers, but more so around authority and subordination. Of which, everyone exhibits characteristics of both, it’s just some more than others.

I have authority over my person, and the actions and thoughts that I do and think. But I would not classify myself as someone that has, or wants (for that matter), the authority over any other person. I have authority over all the things that I do on a daily basis, along with actions and consequences that affect my future self as well. Whether those actions affect others, well, I suppose that’s conditional.

Whether or not I do a good or bad job at work will affect my coworkers and customers, as does my coworkers ability or inability to do their job affects my job. So, in a work setting, I’d say there’s always a counterplay of authority and subordination at play in everything we do. Even someone that works by themselves, such as a writer or painter or photographer, have the authority and ability to affect their own work, and as such it affects those that look and/or consume their various forms of media.

I think this dynamic can probably be applied to many different organizations and interpersonal relationships, from the romantic to platonic to anything and everything between. I think the idea of there being leaders and followers is a myth we tell each other, but usually it’s just individuals with varying degrees of confidence at a particular thing. For example, a lot of people see the president of any country as the ultimate leader within that country, but when it’s closely examined, various countries’ presidents are representative figureheads with authority over specific functions within their government that can, and usually do, affect huge chunks of their population. And sure, we assign the moniker of leader and leadership to presidents of countries and companies, but outside of their various functions and responsibilities to their role, they don’t have all that much authority outside of what society and the people they represent give them.

Those that hold various titles and roles that seem important are given the assumption that they are leaders, but ultimately they, as with everyone, is subordinate to someone or something other than themselves. Even sovereign citizens and their whacky and crazy ways. They answer to an authority that both not fully in their control, yet still affected and influenced by them too. I find that there always tends to be a dichotomy of motion playing between how we perceive authority and how we perceive subordination, and it’s sometimes easy to throw around titles like leader and follower, but at the end of the day, those ideas seem kinda antiquated and too narrow in scope to fully define the dynamics of relationships people form.

Granted, I’m also open to the idea that this is just my convoluted way of skirting around the possibility that I’m more of a follower than a leader as defined by most people, probably because, while generally it’s agreed upon that leaders and followers are both necessary for a functioning and healthy society, it’s typically agreed by general consensus that being a leader is better and good, whereas being a follower tends to be looked down on. This is probably why, as I mentioned at the beginning of this little diatribe, CEO’s and executives of a company are paid exorbitantly more than the employees beneath them, despite how most companies tend to not really need a CEO outside of just having a figurehead that appears to be making decisions, but really relies on a whole team of assistants, corporate caretakers, and actual workers to babysit the CEO from truly and utterly fucking up the business.

In the end, I hardly think it matters. But personally, I think I’d probably rather live in a world that consistently strives to improve and progress upon how it treats everyone rather than allowing a small fraction of ruthless, probably sociopathic, “leaders” control how and why society organizes itself.

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