Friends – Tech in the Trenches

Journey of the Intern Therapist

On December 12, 2017

I have a friend who is a therapist-in-training in the Bay Area who just started writing. I’m loving her posts. She’s working to be a therapist and is going to start working with a middle school population which brings back memories for all of us. Her latest post resonates deeply with me. She’s going to be working with middle schoolers.

Crap…” I thought, “not middle school… anything but middle school.” I immediately flashed back to my own middle-school experience. I entered 7th grade with a terrible hair-cut, glasses, braces, and skinny like an awkward string bean. My hand-me-down, decade-old clothes made me stand out from my wealthier peers who always had fresh, new clothes and great hair. I remember getting bullied on the bus mercilessly by 8th graders day in and day out. I remember holding back my tears on the bus, trying to look reassured while older girls would tease me and older boys would harass me. Suddenly, things I had necessarily forgotten were staring at me in the face. I didn’t want to work with adolescents… especially middle-schoolers.

Middle school brings back vivid memories for me too. Some good but many fearful and anxious. She closes with an honest bit of writing that I feel could have been written by anyone I know, myself included.

So how do I “adult” from here? Honestly? I have no idea. I’m guessing at it every day. I’m working on a website, I’m writing a blog, I’m networking, I’m taking risks at disappointing people with my career choices, I’m taking some time for my family and accepting financial hardship as a present, unavoidable (but hopefully temporary) reality. I’m trying to take criticism and uninformed advice in stride but hey – I’m not made of metal. I’m making poor choices and good choices, not having any idea which is which at any real-time moment. I’m open to advice, feedback, and opportunity. As a wonderful professor of mine once said, “the ego must be strong enough to allow itself to be defeated.” This is the making of the intern therapist… I think.

So… how do I adult from here?

I don’t know any more than she does, but I encourage you to follow along with her journey to figure it all out…

Follow along at Journey of the Intern Therapist

Man sitting with a stylus and holding an iPad with graphs on it. From Unsplash.com - https://unsplash.com/photos/unRkg2jH1j0

Your co-workers are not your friends

By Carl

On April 12, 2016

In Links and Quotes

You may love your job and all the people you work with, but at the end of the day you are in a business environment where the goals of the organization are driven by business decisions.

Where I work, I am cordial and friendly with my co-workers. But I keep my outside life mostly out of work. I don’t invite them to my social media profiles. I don’t tell them about my blog. We are not friends. We are not going to get dinner or go see a movie. I keep them at arm’s length because we aren’t friends. We’re co-workers. We’re thrown together in work just as we all went through school with a random collection of people who just happened to be of similar ages.

I don’t wall them off because I want to talk smack about them online. I don’t talk about my co-workers online. I don’t blog about them. I don’t tweet about them. I don’t talk about them. It’s best practice not to because you never know who will find what you’ve said or will look you up. It’s a small world out there and you never know who’s reading or searching what you say. So be safe and don’t say it.

One of my favorite quotes from Maya Angelou is, “When people reveal themselves, believe them.”

I believe there is a division between work life and personal life. You may be friendly with co-workers. But they may have different goals and expectations as you. Be ready to always look out for yourself first. No one will take care of you like you.

Reinforcements have arrived

By Carl

On January 19, 2016

In Destiny, Observations

There is nothing better than unexpected help coming when you’re struggling.

This is just as true in life as it is in video games. When I started playing Destiny, there’s a lot of patrolling Earth and the Moon. I spent a lot of time and bullets trying to bring down the same level enemies as I was. It was hard and I struggled.

There are some public events in those patrol areas where players have to take down a much stronger foe. Or need to defend a certain point on the map or even chase a band of enemies across the map and take them out at a few separate points.

These public events were very hard starting out. It was a big struggle to be successful. Which brings me to my favorite parts of Destiny.

Higher level players would show up and help!

Reinforcements have arrived

One of the things I love about Destiny is how you can run into strangers and all work together. When I started out, I would meet players 10 or even 20 levels higher. And even though we never spoke, they would help kill enemies and complete public events.

We would point and wave and dance together. And it made me feel so good when someone would show up to help and then run off again.

It is those small interactions that really makes Destiny a special game.

Paying it Forward

Later on, when I was a higher level player, I always go out of my way to help out lower level players. It is very important to me to pay forward the kindness of those strangers when I was first starting out.

I try to always be a friendly and helpful player online. I want to have a good time and help others have a good time too. That’s what games are for. Fun!

Recently, my Fr0zen clan and I were running a friend through Vault of Glass for the first time. It was an easy run because it’s an old raid and we’re now overpowered for it.

The raid starts on Venus, in an area that’s also part of the open Patrol. As we began the raid, we were a person short of a full team and we saw a random person around us. He hung around as we started to play it and we decided to toss him an invite to chat with us.

He accepted and we asked if he wanted to join us. He did and we invited him into our group. Just like that, we were running with a full team of six. And we got to meet another player and help him make it through the raid.

He was a nice guy and we had a good time. Destiny is great for the random encounters you can create or stumble into.

We’ve invited people to our team in the Crucible (a player-vs-player game type). Just like in Vault of Glass, we had an almost-full team and we played a few matches with the same random person. So we sent him an invite and he joined us.

This all came to mind as I was listening to an episode of Guardian Radio. There was a comment from BrutalGear about making Public Events better.

The idea was to add the ability to send a distress beacon out to your friends and ask them to come help you in an event. The events could be made bigger and involve getting through multiple rounds of enemies and then a mini-boss at the end of it.

I love this idea because the enemies always get to call for help. I would love to be able to put the call out for allies to come to my aid. But since I can’t, I’ll continue to help other players out and make new friends.

Friendships aren’t portable.

By Carl

On January 10, 2016

In Observations

There’s a new social network out. It doesn’t offer anything out of the box that I’m not getting already.

If I move there, I have to bring my friends with me. And they’re not going to move. They’re happy with using, or not using a social network already.

I have people I already follow online. They’re on Twitter. Or they’re on Facebook. Or they hang out in Slack channels.

But they’re not going to join something new without the most compelling feature. Friends.

App.net was first. It promised an ad-free experience.

Ello showed up with its black & white palette.

Peach is the new kid on the block. It has magic words and this week’s attention.

These places are the malls of today. If my friends are there, I’ll hang out with them. But if I go and there’s nobody I know, I’m not going to stick around.

Destiny is a lifestyle

By Carl

On October 27, 2015

In Destiny, Observations

Ever since Destiny came out, it’s all I’ve played on the Xbox. I could get into why and what has captured my attention about the game. But it’s simple.
It’s about community. It’s about friendship. I’ve made a lot of great friends online (and one I knew in real life.)

And we have fun together.

The story of Destiny is a mess. The new expansion, The Taken King is a new game more than an expansion.

Michael Lopp, aka Rands is still playing Destiny. He also wrote a post that I immediately related to. Be Unfailingly Kind is a love letter to Destiny and the friends he plays with. He talks about DJ. The leader of their raid group. In a raid, you need teamwork, communication and most of all patience.

Everyone screws up. Everyone shoots a rocket into the back of a teammate or spends a little too long before running for cover. Rands talks about DJ and I see a lot of my clanmates in his praise.

Rands says this about DJ:
* He clearly explains the situation. As many times as possible. Calmly.
* He has an insightful answer ready to any question. He’s done his research to become an expert in his field.
* Once the raid has begun, he monitors the situation, provides real-time feedback, and updates to the other players in a helpful and educational manner.
* In the face of disaster, he never loses composure.

We all have our own DJ. Our group leader that keeps us together and helps us through. Destiny is not just a grind. Destiny is about friendship and teamwork. I’ve played the same mission countless times. But each time with a different team of people who needed help getting through it. And I knew when it was time for me to run through it, they would be just as willing to help me out.

As of this morning, the Destiny iPhone app tells me I’ve spent 21 days, 16 hours and 36 minutes of my life playing it. I play because I have fun. I play because of the people I can have fun with and that will always keep me coming back.

Games should be fun and not take themselves too seriously. For Halloween, the Tower, where Guardians hang out, dance, shop and access their vaults was turned into a creepy wonderland with a series of quests to complete wearing masks. We’ve been collecting candy to fill bags to exchange for masks and other items. It’s fun. And hilarious.

We are the Fr0zen Clan. Our motto is Let It Go!

Remember when I said games are meant to be fun. Here is our clan description:

Are you an orphaned princess who likes to sing her emotional status? Do you have super powers that should terrify your local serfs and merchants? Are you unaware of the number of plates in your house? Can you build an ice castle and create life (both terrifying and wildly annoying) from snow???? THEN THIS CLAN IS FOR YOU!!!!! We’ll also accept whalers from the moon, cannon fodder, bullet sponges and anyone that throws panic grenades.

We play on the Xbox One and are always looking for new friends. If you understand life comes before games, children exist and need to be cared for and like laughing and having a good time. Look us up.

Carl T. Holscher fights for the customers.

Tag: Friends Page 1 of 2

Journey of the Intern Therapist

Your co-workers are not your friends

Reinforcements have arrived

Reinforcements have arrived

Paying it Forward

Destiny is a lifestyle