GRIZZLY PEAR
I’ve started playing around with one-sentence stories. I’ll push it through the end of the month and reassess from there. Who knows where this experiment might lead (most likely nowhere), but this is what grizzlypear is for.
Hope you also had a good breakfast this morning.
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One big perk of this job is the privilege of awarding someone a project. Beyond the personal ego, there is excitement on both sides of the phone call. It’s exciting to create teams and the prospect of a fresh project is intoxicating.
Even more so for the big projects. Technically, I don’t announce the information – that comes from the Administrator when he emails the competing firms who interviewed for the project. But a bloodless email is an inauspicious way to start a journey, so I follow up as quickly as possible with a personal phone call.
This year, I had the privilege of making two calls, one to a contractor who won a fellow PM’s project and to the contractor who won my main project for the next four years.
On the first call, it was exciting to reminisce about what went well on our previous project and wish him all the best with my colleague. And then I followed it up with the next call to discuss the next steps on my own project with the new contractor.
A great way to close out a Friday evening.
Except.
In the middle of the second call, I received a text. One of our administrative staff lost their spouse after a long fight at the hospital, right as their health seemed to turn for the better.
It was a crushing reminder amidst the adrenaline that life is much more than the games we play at work.
The real world always has the final say.
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How do you keep rooted?
Hit reply and let’s chat.
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Zen Pencils illustrates a great quote by Jack Kirby about learning from the past and then sitting down to do the work.
… and a photo.
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Thanks for reading the OPM letter! I’d love to have a conversation if you have any feedback. I hope you found some prompts to stretch your craft and relationships as a curious Owner PM. See you soon!
Justus Pang, RA
Hinduism was the last of the great religions that I knew nothing about.
I was raised Christian, which rhymes with the Abrahamic religions, aided by listening to a couple of books about Judaism and Islam. I’ve also dabbled with eastern philosophy over the past decade. My forays with Tai Chi have led to reading Daoist, Buddhist, and Confucian texts. I’ve enjoyed those readings, though I reject all of their elaborate heavenly cosmologies.
Twelve hours is a long period of time and a vanishingly short time limit to survey a great religion. Not knowing any better, I would this course did its job. It provided a rough overview of the religion, addressed some of its excesses, and provided some avenues for further exploration. It covered a wide variety of topics and dispelled the foreign exoticness of Hinduism. This course shows that all of us are trying to take care of ourselves and our own while feeling some sense of fulfillment.
It is not easy for an atheist raised as a monotheist to relate to a polytheistic worldview. However, this course makes such a mindset more understandable. I don’t agree with the tenets that have created a rigid caste system, but I have a better sense of the overall system as a coherent whole.
As a materialist, I reject the intricate cosmologies from all of the world’s great religions. However, raw materialism is thin gruel as a life philosophy – the 20th century created some terrible cults after rejecting the old ones. At least the great religions have stood the test of time, so a seeker might be well served by following one of those schools of thought.
I’m not endorsing it, but if Indian polytheism floats your boat, this course seems like a reasonable start for such a journey.
After writing the initial draft, I read a few translations of the Bhagavad Gita, which is an epic poem – in both the classic and modern sense of the term. Highly recommended.
Everyone should read the Gita.
But for the year after that, I never got around to reading the Vedas and Upanishads. One day, I’d love to dig into these texts as well, but I have too many other books in my backlog.
Another former intern just found a new job.
And a lot of other folks too.
My crowd isn’t wealthy, so resignation isn’t an option.
But the Great Reshuffle is in full effect.
Good on them.
For everyone looking, I hope they find something different.
Maybe they’ll like it. Maybe they won’t.
You won’t know until you do.
If you think its time for a change, then a change is long overdue.
Get out of the comfort zone.
Life is too short to be comfortably miserable.
As the year of the Ox transitions into the year of the Tiger, my bread has settled into another steady state. So here’s worth another update.
As for the past couple of years, I’m happily using the cast iron loaf pan, which gives a nice crust all around. Towards the end of 2021, I tried cooking two loaves at a time, but our stainless steel loaf pan doesn’t pop out the bread nearly so easily.
My recent return to the basics has continued to bear fruit with consistent success, even though the process takes a little more time.
I start by refreshing the starter. Mix 20g starter, 20g flour, 20g water and let it sit all day until happy and bubbly. Repeat again if the original starter is looking grouchy.
On to the main dough!
60g starter (previously mixed)
(a ratio of 20:80:100:2)
240g water
300g flour (currently organic brand from Costco)
6g salt
As always, I mix the first three ingredients to autolyze for half an hour and add the salt before the first fold.
Lately, I’ve started adding 40g of raisins (non-soaked). It adds a sweet tartness and makes for an out-of-this-world butter toast.
My baking tends to settle into a steady-state before something comes out of the blue to mess it all up (again). But at some point, things must finally settle down, right? Maybe this is the apotheosis of my sourdough baking?
I guess I just have to wait (and bake) to find out.
Three nights ago, I had a dream where I conducted a performance art piece airbrushing a continuous line throughout two rooms in a coffee shop. It was a strangely emotional dream as a crumpled to the floor at the end of the performance.
Two nights ago, I dreamed about ordering an espresso at a coffee shop. I was worried about how the caffeine might affect me (I haven’t had any since the pandemic started), and I contemplated whether I should wait till March because I could then claim that I had gone a full two years of eating only homemade (or frozen) means prepared by family members.
Last night, I dreamt about taxing a B-1 bomber around time trying to find the tarmac so we could take off.
I wonder if logging the dreams on this blog post is making me more likely to remember them. Is the vividness of the dreams related to a practice of recording them?
The brain is weird. Worry not, these footnotes have nothing to do with bread.
Happy New Years!
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Nonya Grenader retired at the end of last semester. The news made me contemplate my good luck with the professors I’ve come across in academia.
Colleges and grad schools are full of kids who think they are adults, so it must be a strange experience to be a real adult in this environment. On paper, the professors’ job is to cram information into these developing minds, but their best work is pointing students towards the wide richness of life.
I studied under three great professors from Berkeley. Joe Slusky attacked life and art with unapologetic exuberence. Chip Sullivan exhorted us to pursue our idiosyncratic interests. Ray Lifchez introduced us to the world of literature that I am still exploring. Those lessons have enriched my life for the past twenty years.
In Houston, I studied under Nonya in my first semester with Rice Building Workshop and in the last semester as my thesis advisor. Even though I am proud of the work we did in for this big last project, it was her bearing that left a lasting imprint after school.
Nonya carried herself with warmth and dignity, rare traits to be found in architecture programs. Her example has been a beacon as I have navigated through my career. Watching her success spared me from the temptation of trying to become someone foreign to myself. She proved that one can succeed without acquiescing to the norms of the prevailing culture.
The last time I read my thesis was when I submitted it in 2008. The glow of a previous project stays only a moment. Technical knowledge is already out of date by the time you learn it. However, managing oneself (and others) with grace is a practice to be honed every day.
I am excited that Professor Grenader will be starting a new chapter in her life. However, it is a shame that new students at Rice will not have the opportunity to work with her.
Here’s to the next woman up!
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How have your professors left a lasting imprint in life and work?
Hit reply and let’s chat!
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While scheduling this post, Petronas has not yet uploaded their 2022 Chinese New Years advertisement. Hopefully they’ll get a great one up by the time this post is published on CNY Eve.
If you’re looking for an architect for your home in Houston, you’d be well served to give Nonya a call, maybe she’ll have some free time to help out.
… and a photo.
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Thanks for reading the OPM letter! I’d love to have a conversation if you have any feedback. I hope you found some prompts to stretch your craft and relationships as a curious Owner PM.
Happy year of the Tiger!
Justus Pang, RAwwwr!
The algorithm me fed this 80th birthday celebration for Aaron Copeland at the Kennedy Center in 1980.
For 80, the dude is spry, I can’t imagine being on stage at that age. I don’t care if the adulation of the crowd is addictive. I don’t think I’ll have the energy to get out there and put up a show.
It’s also wild to remember that this event happened more than forty years ago. At the time, our elites were not shy about patting themselves on their backs in highbrow fashion. This was more than a birthday concert, it was a celebration of the century of American ascendance.
The program was properly populated his classics: the Fanfare for the Common Man, an excerpt from a concerto that sampled jazz, Appalachian Spring, and Lincoln’s Portrait. I’ve listened to them all in the past (as background music) and it was good to just sit and focus on the music for once.
However, I must admit that I watched this concert over the course of the month, one piece at a time. I can easily consume a feature-length action flick in one sitting, but I couldn’t properly ingest serious fare in one sitting.
One might blame the instant gratification of this internet age for such weakness, but I don’t think I would have ever thought to watch this concert when I was younger, pre-internet. I never disliked classical music; I just never had the patience for it. So I guess it’s a sign I can now watch a long program (piecemeal).
But let’s not get carried away – I don’t think I would ever pay real cash to sit through a concert, whether classical or contemporary. Music is good for background noise, but I don’t value it enough for attention or money – especially now that everything is on Spotify for free.
We live in wondrous times.
Unfortunately, everything somehow ties into culture war politics nowadays. One of the surprising highlights of the program came at the start of the concert when the cameras highlighted Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter in attendance. The date of the concert was November 12, 1980, one week after he had lost his reelection campaign. What a contrast from the most recent election. Maybe some great music will do us all some good.
I had a short email exchange with a young architect about planning a career and finding the elusive work-life balance in our notoriously brutal profession. Here is an edited version.
Yeah, it’s good to think about a long-term career trajectory. However, my career experienced a few twists and turns – none that I could have guessed a couple of years in advance. As such, I’ve learned that the value of planning is in doing the exercise. Even though the final result will not match the pre-vision, a practice of regularly contemplating “next steps” has prepared me to quickly grab new opportunities and pursue new desires that come up.
And yes, you’re correct to worry about work-life balance. My career was supercharged when I joined a corporate firm and worked two years of regular 50+ hour weeks. The more you work, the more you learn – it’s a compounding investment in yourself.
However, this textbook career path can become a long-term trap. Study hard in your off time to pass the tests quickly. Push extra hours to get promoted to associate. Once you’ve level set long hours, the team needs you to keep it up. And it doesn’t get easier once you’re principal – now you have to make payroll.
A hard push for the first few years might be a good jumpstart for a young pro without a family, but completely devoting yourself to architecture is corrosive to your sense of self and your long-term relationships. Career success is nice, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to a better life.
So how did I avoid getting stuck on this hamster wheel? Good luck and low expectations.
Have fun sorting out your career. Who knows where your career will go! Just remember that everything (good and bad) comes with an opportunity cost. Plan regularly and stay flexible.
Every few months, I rummage through my boxes of books looking for a specific volume. I usually come out with several books to reread, which is what happened last year (even though I didn’t find the book I was searching for).
This photo book takes a journey through North America, photographing the food and waitresses (all women) along his extended road trip, taken over three separate legs.
The early 2000s was a tenuous time, having just dealt with the upheaval of 9/11 and the Iraq war. But our lives had not been infected by the smartphone and its ubiquitous internet in the pocket.
As such, Stephan foretold the incoming future. He just barely beat the trend of uploading sexy photographs of one’s meal and sharing it with the digital world.
Not that he was searching for sexy. It’s a damn shame to travel 13,000 miles in a big loop around this large continent and just eat diner food. But that’s what he signed up to do.
Sixteen years after publication, reading the book felt like entering a time capsule. Twice. Both for my initial page turn and slowly reviewing each photograph over the period of a week, reliving communal scenes from my early adulthood.
As a fan of shoddy diners, the settings are intimately familiar. However, it is strange to think that I am now older than many of the ladies whose portraits are frozen in time. I wonder what they are doing these days. I wonder if they ever ponder what happened to that strange photographer who took a portrait of the meal and of them, almost two decades ago.
After a while, it felt a bit voyeuristic (especially since the German edition is titled “Cuties and Calories”). Even so, I’ll posit this is a good book. It was definitely a great deal as a deeply discounted remainder item at Half Price Books, even worth moving across the continent for its own road trip from Houston to Las Vegas.
The book is an interesting concept, a well-executed portrait of our nation. Well worth a read.
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I’m also not very big on New Year’s resolutions. I don’t have a problem with them, but I’ve found that goal setting is an ineffectual exercise for how I work.
However, a few mantras have anchored into my brain over the past couple of weeks (to add to my growing list of mottos).
Viscously Focused
As a worker, my skills and my usage of time define my output.
Now that I’ve been at the Division for more than three years, I have the necessary knowledge to do my job. Unfortunately, I can’t create infinite time, so the next frontier is managing my time better.
Time management comes in two parts – management and execution. I’m happy with my task management system (immediate capture in my physical notebook, overall task organization in Microsoft Outlook Tasks). So the final frontier is to optimize execution, squeezing as much productivity out of my time at work.
In that endeavor, I need to increase my ability to focus. Project Managers are pulled in many directions, so whenever I get that rare clean block of time, I need to exploit it to the fullest. The colorful mantra has been reminding me to stay on track whenever my brain starts to wander.
Twenty-Thirty
With another election year coming up, I’m susceptible to getting caught up with the news. I’ll do my duty and vote, but I’m not a politician, so why waste my focus on the minutia of the political entertainment complex? Same for all the other types of news.
After spending four months sucked into the vortex of an online game, I’ve finally regained my equilibrium. Through the detox, I’ve realized that it is best to be extremely focused on the present while keeping an eye out for the distant future.
This mantra reminds me to think of the distant (but not too remote) future. Eight years is far enough to avoid capture in the ephemeral but still close enough to still feel imminent.
Stillness
On a practical note, both of the previous two mottos are pushing me to address my greatest distraction – podcasts.
Growing up, I would listen to sermons on cassette tape. When I started my career, I would listen to sports talk all day, punctuated by Thursday afternoon baseball with the San Francisco Giants. Now I’ve got the entire world in my pocket. It is too much of a good thing – especially as my work requires more and more hard thought.
Just like I culled Twitter down to elected politicians in my home district and Official State Agencies, I need to clean up my audio feed. I’m paid to pay attention, so I need to give my work my full attention.
The hard part is that I need to become comfortable with silence.
If I pull that off in 2022, then this will be a pretty damn good year.
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Have you picked up any themes, resolutions, or mantras for the new year?
Hit reply and let’s chat!
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David Epstein wrote a newsletter extolling the virtues of well-timed resolutions. As with most productivity advice, it all depends on the personality quirks of the individual.
In 2018, CGP Grey went on a drastic media fast that ultimately lasted well past a year. I’m not ready to go that far, but I find his quixotic “Project Cyclops” inspiring.
We celebrated New Year’s Eve by watching the Times Square ball drop on the Roku TV while simultaneously streaming the Smithsonian Panda Cam Live Stream on the iPad. Once it was over, 9 pm Pacific was the perfect time to usher the kids to bed.
… and a photo.
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Thanks for reading the OPM letter! I’d love to have a conversation if you have any feedback. I hope you found some prompts to stretch your craft and relationships as a curious Owner PM. See you soon!
Justus Pang, RA