How a life on the fringes of the music industry made me the freelance software developer that I am.
Lessons for the business world from the world of broken dreams.
Two Band Band
Every band is actually two bands. One band in a band is a groove machine. The other can be a scarey monster. The difference is a crazy thing called change.
The groove machine is the well-oiled band playing all the faves. It’s the jam band man. When the groove machine is on, every member of the band feels like he is a special cog in a magical machine that involves cogs.
The other band in a band is the band that is working on something new (let’s call it the working on something new band). Maybe the working on something new band is putting a fresh song in the set or changing up an old one or suggesting matching outfits or haircuts. Here’s where your differences of opinion are gonna pop out at you. Here’s where hidden animosities creep out of the practice space walls. This is the band that breaks up the band. Look out!
It’s no different in the world of business. Each office is really two offices. One office is the groove machine and the other office can be a frightening monster. In the business world we call the task of dealing with the monster change management.
First of all let’s think about why you need two bands in a band. Well the answer is that you don’t. You can be a one-set wonder band which in actuality most bands are. If this is the case then fine. Jam to your hearts’ content. Learn only enough songs to say “hey we got a set, we can get gigs.” Just don’t go out trying to play every Saturday night like most one-set wonder bands do because you will get boring real soon.
Now if you don’t want to be a boring band (or office) you’re gonna have to change things up from time to time and that means dealing with the monster.
The main trick is simple. Cut off the monster’s head. It’s easier than you think! Just recognize what the monster really is. It’s change people! People don’t deal with change cleanly. It’s a messy thing. Not a bad thing, just a messy thing but it can bring out the bad in people. It can bring about self re-appraisal and reveal talentlessness. Things that are tough enough to deal with on a personal level let alone a people level. So you have to remember that. Change is the beast that must be tamed and not killed. So whatever you do do not chop off its head people!
The main thing is to constantly ask yourself if you are an agent of change or are you only interested in the jam. If the latter holds true why not try open mic nights, blues jams or some other activity that doesn’t bum out the other people shelling out for the space rent and trying to write songs (so what if those songs sound like the Kinks’ rejects at least they are trying to write something new instead of coming here once a week to masturbate)?
If you are an office worker and you are not an agent of change maybe you’d like to be a janitor or a mailman. Those jobs don’t change much.
Finally think of change as a good thing – a fun creative form of expression. Make it the condition to strive for. Make it a game! Because change is not a monster despite what I said in the last several paragraphs. Change is what a diaper needs and it is what you need too. The sooner you do this in your little band world the sooner you’ll be a more confident player in the exciting world of freelance software development.
Nice post! I love how you brought the two together.
Change is good because otherwise there’s diaper rash. And that is no good.
Oh, and from what I’ve heard of freelance, every freelancer’s feelings get hurt at the end of the contract. Maybe knowing this, also helps in the change to the new freelance job.
Having problems with your band? at work?
Or have you just been reading Who Moved My Cheese? again?
I know for a fact that Kilian owns a copy of WMMC? so I’m guessing he is, in fact, reading it again. I think he should buy a copy for all his bandmates and then have them each read a section of it aloud just before practice. I think that will go down well. And so will the matching outfits.
They can also try play-acting the book with each band mate taking the role of one of the characters. Later they can share how they each felt being that character and whether the character fit their real personality.
Stacey – Now how does your advice for freelancers apply to the fringes of the music world? Let us know! You are a full member of the “Life on the Fringe” community. Welcome to the club!
And yes! You got it. Change is good because otherwise you have a smelly diaper and that’s only good if your band is called the Smelly Diapers
Doctor! Thank you. How AWESOME to be likened to my friend and peer Spencer Johnson. We have never met or anything but I consider him my closest friend in the business. You know, cheese changes all the time. It gets moldy and that’s a bad change sometimes. It can get so moldy that only the French will eat it. You have to be careful with change and that is a change to this post about change. In fact I gave somebody five dollars in change today at lunch so they could buy a pork chop plate.
The real fear of change is that it is not change at all, just the same shit moved to a fifth. So take some mind altering substances, let the singer jack you off for a change, or pick up a tuba instead of a drum stick. Then what one may think of as change is only to find that the coke was laced with rolaids, the orgasm came while fantasizing about the singer’s cock in your hand, and the way you play your tuba makes it sound like a damn snare drum.
The terms freelance, software, and developer seem just so cuddly, liberating and worthwhile. But it is just in the advertising, i.e. free lance : a mercenary soldier especially of the Middle Ages. Are you one step away from being a truck driver for Blackwater? How would you ‘manage’ that ‘change’? Fucking monster. I say kill it.
Anonymous! yesss. You get it.
And yes I am a middle aged mercenary and while I am not yet a truck driver for Blackwater I am inches away from shooting myself in the face!
Anyway thank you and I plan to incorporate your ideas into future posts, especially the use of drugs and sex in the music world and how they may benefit you in the exciting world of free lance middle aged software developement.
Justin! If you have an outfit idea in mind I think you should work on it. You could be the next Yves Saint Laurent! The change could lead to many changes and perhaps a better cheese.
A tool that describes any process of planned change, from the assumptions that guide its design to the to the long-term goals it seeks to achieve.
In my slightly tweaked definition, a theory of change can incorporate core values, a change management plan, a behavior modification plan, or any other type of improvement.
Change is something that presses us out of our comfort zone. It is destiny-filtered, heart grown, faith built. Change is inequitable; not a respecter of persons. Change is for the better or for the worst, depending on where you view it. Change has an adjustment period which varies on the individual. It is uncomfortable, for changing from one state to the next upsets our control over outcomes. Change has a ripping effect on those who won’t let go. Flex is the key. Even a roller coaster ride can be fun if you know when to lean and create new balance within the change. Change is needed when all the props and practices of the past no longer work. Change is not comforted by the statement ‘just hang in there’ but with the statement ‘you can make it’. We don’t grow in retreat, but through endurance. Change isn’t fixed by crying, worrying, or mental treadmilling. Change is won by victors not victims; and that choice is ours.
Change is awkward — at first. Change is a muscle that develops to abundantly enjoy the dynamics of the life set before us. Change calls own strength beyond anyone of us. Change pushes you to do your personal best. Change draws out those poised for a new way. Change isn’t for chickens. Change does have casualties of those defeated. Change will cause us to churn or to learn. Change changes the speed of time. Time is so slow for the reluctant, and yet it is a whirlwind for those who embrace it. Change is more fun to do than to be done to. Change seeks a better place at the end and is complete when you realize you are different.
Change is measured by its impact on all who are connected to it. Change is charged when you are dissatisfied with where you are. Change doesn’t look for a resting-place; just the next launching point. Change is only a waste to those who don’t learn from it. Change happens in the heart before it is proclaimed by our works. Change chaps those moving slower than the change itself. If you can change before you have to change, there will be less pain. Change can flow or jerk, depending on our resistance to it. Change uses the power invested in the unseen to reinvent what is seen. Change is like driving in a fog – you can’t see very far, but you can make the whole trip that way.
“Sustainability” is essentially just a euphemism for “survival.” In plain everyday English, when our situation is “nonsustainable,” that means that we must change or die.
Anon, was that a quote from some political speech? Only politicians can make truth so freaking boring. The real truth is that change, like everything else is relative. Trying to make it into something with special qualities above, say, the opposite of change, is exactly how change stops happening. What is the opposite of change anyways? in a life of constant change is no-change change? that may sound like a sophist argument, but there are plenty of people who live the way water flows, bending with every change of the terrain, change to us is a constant, not a variable, and the only way change will stop is in the grave. To us change is life and to see it used by politicians (like the ones now, or the ones 12 years ago, or 24 or whatever) or by you as if it was some great discovery they just made, it just leaves a bad taste in my mouth. like i’m being fed a bunch of bullshit, which is usually what it is. Fucking slogans.
Damn, that comment was even worse than what it attempted to comment on. I can’t believe the bs that comes out of my fingers sometimes if i let it. Sorry anon. I’m not trying to chill your opinions. Talk about change anyway you want.
Carlos! You sir are moved up IMMEDIATELY to level 16 – ***THE DUDE***.
I’ve never seen somebody make it so far so fast. You sir are just about ready to take your game out of the band room and into the board room!
How’s the corn?
Got me some squash, green beans, and watermelon gettin along in my backyard.
Oh yeah, change can be rough. I just put it in a jar. (should be a fuckin swear jar).
Baleen – Nap Label Corn is doing very well, about seven inches off the ground but we’re going for long players and forgo the singles so we are going to wait quite a while longer for our first release. I’m not working on getting photos up here but I should be. I’ll try for next week’s post (Rejection: It cuts like a knife but can you make it feel so right?).
since we’ve expanded off topic, can I ask if any of you have heard of a song that talks about this dance in like the 1880s, and then these people come in and kill everybody? I think ‘massacre’ may be in the title. Has anybody ever heard this song? I’m sure it relates to some real incident in the U.S.
Oh and I don’t have any real advice for freelancers. That’s just what I heard from a freelancer rather recently. I know it made her feel better to know this sort of ridiculous situation happened to everybody.
In the world of music, isn’t it that everybody gets mad and the whole thing goes up in a ball of fire, then people get drunk, bitch a lot, and probably to many people, then it takes like months to cool down, possibly years, meanwhile they’ve already formed another band most likely inspired by negative feelings? Or maybe that’s the first time it happens. Gradually gets less pathetic.
Hell, I don’t really know what goes on in that world, so couldn’t even hope to give advice there. Sorry.
Getting inspired by others’ music COULD help. I heard this crazy mexican music at a festival this past weekend where they made up some crazy instrument that I’m sure included a computer and so it was electronic old school tejano. Sounded really fun. They were from the border of Mexico and California and were at the Pachanga festival.
I’d like to offer this video about change management in the area of software development to ya all
http://haha.nu/interesting/office-worker-gone-insane/
stacey, i can’t think of a song, but if i’m remembering freshman u.s. history correctly, the army massacred the “ghost dancers” who were part of a (perceived?) rebellion at the wounded knee indian reservation. that was probably in the 1880′s.
*i think patti smith might have a song about this*
RE: the massacre song, I think it might be the Donnelly Massacre. There are a few songs about it out there and a tv show and what not.
wednesday – it’s not that one as there aren’t enough people dead. We’re talking about an entire barn full of people dead.
brian – I checked out that ghost dancer issue, but it wasn’t that one. Ah well.
Thank you, both, for your help, though.
See, on the cast next week I was going to do songs that were more spoken word or stories. I can’t really come up with a a lot and that was one I was hoping to find. If any of you can come up with something, please let me know.
Beyond the post proper, I can’t help but point out how foreboding you look in that photo, that brightly lit, sunny scene of joy and tranquility, baby in swing, dad with backpack, a lovely park, and somehow you come off as though you are moments from beating someone within inches of their pathetic life. Around your head rests a halo of darkest menace. Demon dad. I love it.
I think it’s in the composition. There’s shadow around your head, the baby has her back to us, your distance is just enough to suggest threat, the overwhelming color is brown. Etc… Brilliant piece. Do you have a magic camera?
Thanks John. I credit my photographer and the ability to capture limitless amounts of digital imagery.
I am glad somebody appreciated it. I was looking for a photo that let my patheticism shine. After I posted it I also dug that the swing set frames “two bands in a band” – a father and baby and in the distance a mother and daughter on a see saw.