What would be a mark of true genius? I'm not shy in referring to myself as a measure of “smart.” But I consistently talk a very large game about the very large game I consider life. I don't know if me making a certain amount of money or raising a certain number of buildings would be a good measure. Idiots make money. The laziest way to conceive of someone as genius is to watch the consequences of their power loosely slung. Trump isn't a genius, nor is anyone riding his crazy coattails or whispering in his ear. No one tagging along rises above opportunist. That's tagging along in the environment provided by your wealth, or benefiting in the wake of chaos.
If I were an ignorant mystical type, I would start to believe that any one moment in time was somehow something I was “destined” for. Like life was conspiring to put me at DCS, meet my band of coworkers, put me through the different stressors related to different clients and “leadership.” It would pair my inability to ever let things go with pushing 900 blogs of self-indulgent flame stoking indignation and motivation attempting to justify a degree of self-awareness and angst best embodied in the world of folklore.
Today, I was told I gave someone hope for the/their future at DCS. I was told by another person that they believe in me and are relieved that I said I might actually have a reason that makes me want to come to work. When another employee tried to phrase me as “cornering” another coworker, she clapped back and said no, I think he has a lot of really good ideas and I'd love to help. We talked for an hour this morning about what the trickling of changing hearts and minds mind look like in the crafting of an elite team to prove just how much can be done with the right process, paycheck, and mindset.
Would it be a measure of true genius to corral 18 different personalities under of higher-than-average functioning people with the capacity to embody and juggle the lives of dozens of people at once under one umbrella? Would I have made a dramatic and incalculable impact on the world if I forced the standard of behavior and direction from supervisors to match what's proven most effective for me? If I bent the hand back of a classically immovable and rotten institutional mindset, where would I sit then? It's a problem worth tackling. It's a problem worth taking the time. It's a problem that, having gone unaddressed for so long, literally, when we mess up in easy yet profound ways, we fuck children.
Who else can say that? If you don't do a background check, a child might get placed in a home where they literally get fucked. This has happened! If you don't answer your phone, a women in crisis is about to attempt suicide. That happened last weekend. If you don't leave to photograph a severe injury, a child can get murdered the next day. Of the 5 dead children cases one of our assessors has, 4 are murders. (Thankfully, not because we failed to act.)
Don't you want rockstars doing this kind of work? Don't you want people who feel like they're paid enough to not have to worry about the rent or car breaking down? Don't you want them to move fast, focus on the people over wasting hours smoothing out the kinks of bad software and lazily translated calls? Shouldn't the organization tasked with removing your children have a large and informative relationship with the community in which it operates? Do you want the person examining your life and relationships to hate every minute you're relaying your story for the 13th time because they can't process your trauma in real time having never addressed their own?
Realistically, I could work from sun up till sun down every day, handle 40-50 assessments, not resent being on-call, and collect all of the surrounding pieces which constitute a 360 degree holistic view of your family. I can't do that for $1200 a paycheck. I can do it for $2000 + overtime, and without the “place filler to up the numbers” person you hired to fuck things up before I get there. The people who attempt to belabor just how much you really really need to love helping the children try to hide the reality that this isn't so much a job as it is a lifestyle. When you're dealing with people, you are embodying, empathizing, and processing whatever random emotions they want to hit you with. Whether you got to eat at lunch, enough sleep, or have addressed the longstanding issue a dozen times or not, you're the plug that fits all holes. And you're paid less than a manager of an Arby's.
I have to build the template for turning a regional State institution into my bitch. I have two most experienced workers, an informed and enthusiastic dorky millennial, and my direct supervisor who want to see me swing as hard and as fast as I can at the edifice. I need to condense the pitch to something that can be tailored to every person in the chain. I need to codify the policy-compliant floor of expectations. I need to continue to insert myself as the standard by which people are trained to do the job, and build the wall between the lazy judgmental onlookers and the people I routinely make fall in love with me. I need to do it with the soft power of my jokes, smile, listening skills, and persistent help I've offered and engaged in towards damn near everyone in the building. I need to find ways for people to buy in, show them their place in the long-term vision, and begin to draw out the resentful shame of those who know they won't make the cut. I need to set traps for the State to trip over their own dick. I need to have a backup escalation plan for when they show their teeth. Most importantly, I need it to remain fun. No one wants to seriously consider the impact of what I'm doing, they want to move one easy step at a time and feel better about themselves each day.
If I were an ignorant mystical type, I would start to believe that any one moment in time was somehow something I was “destined” for. Like life was conspiring to put me at DCS, meet my band of coworkers, put me through the different stressors related to different clients and “leadership.” It would pair my inability to ever let things go with pushing 900 blogs of self-indulgent flame stoking indignation and motivation attempting to justify a degree of self-awareness and angst best embodied in the world of folklore.
Today, I was told I gave someone hope for the/their future at DCS. I was told by another person that they believe in me and are relieved that I said I might actually have a reason that makes me want to come to work. When another employee tried to phrase me as “cornering” another coworker, she clapped back and said no, I think he has a lot of really good ideas and I'd love to help. We talked for an hour this morning about what the trickling of changing hearts and minds mind look like in the crafting of an elite team to prove just how much can be done with the right process, paycheck, and mindset.
Would it be a measure of true genius to corral 18 different personalities under of higher-than-average functioning people with the capacity to embody and juggle the lives of dozens of people at once under one umbrella? Would I have made a dramatic and incalculable impact on the world if I forced the standard of behavior and direction from supervisors to match what's proven most effective for me? If I bent the hand back of a classically immovable and rotten institutional mindset, where would I sit then? It's a problem worth tackling. It's a problem worth taking the time. It's a problem that, having gone unaddressed for so long, literally, when we mess up in easy yet profound ways, we fuck children.
Who else can say that? If you don't do a background check, a child might get placed in a home where they literally get fucked. This has happened! If you don't answer your phone, a women in crisis is about to attempt suicide. That happened last weekend. If you don't leave to photograph a severe injury, a child can get murdered the next day. Of the 5 dead children cases one of our assessors has, 4 are murders. (Thankfully, not because we failed to act.)
Don't you want rockstars doing this kind of work? Don't you want people who feel like they're paid enough to not have to worry about the rent or car breaking down? Don't you want them to move fast, focus on the people over wasting hours smoothing out the kinks of bad software and lazily translated calls? Shouldn't the organization tasked with removing your children have a large and informative relationship with the community in which it operates? Do you want the person examining your life and relationships to hate every minute you're relaying your story for the 13th time because they can't process your trauma in real time having never addressed their own?
Realistically, I could work from sun up till sun down every day, handle 40-50 assessments, not resent being on-call, and collect all of the surrounding pieces which constitute a 360 degree holistic view of your family. I can't do that for $1200 a paycheck. I can do it for $2000 + overtime, and without the “place filler to up the numbers” person you hired to fuck things up before I get there. The people who attempt to belabor just how much you really really need to love helping the children try to hide the reality that this isn't so much a job as it is a lifestyle. When you're dealing with people, you are embodying, empathizing, and processing whatever random emotions they want to hit you with. Whether you got to eat at lunch, enough sleep, or have addressed the longstanding issue a dozen times or not, you're the plug that fits all holes. And you're paid less than a manager of an Arby's.
I have to build the template for turning a regional State institution into my bitch. I have two most experienced workers, an informed and enthusiastic dorky millennial, and my direct supervisor who want to see me swing as hard and as fast as I can at the edifice. I need to condense the pitch to something that can be tailored to every person in the chain. I need to codify the policy-compliant floor of expectations. I need to continue to insert myself as the standard by which people are trained to do the job, and build the wall between the lazy judgmental onlookers and the people I routinely make fall in love with me. I need to do it with the soft power of my jokes, smile, listening skills, and persistent help I've offered and engaged in towards damn near everyone in the building. I need to find ways for people to buy in, show them their place in the long-term vision, and begin to draw out the resentful shame of those who know they won't make the cut. I need to set traps for the State to trip over their own dick. I need to have a backup escalation plan for when they show their teeth. Most importantly, I need it to remain fun. No one wants to seriously consider the impact of what I'm doing, they want to move one easy step at a time and feel better about themselves each day.
I'm not exactly ambivalent about the prospect of hijacking a place like DCS for the better. I don't know that I'd have much of an opportunity to be more actively involved in the kind of grassroots organizing it takes to civilize any place and time for even half a generation. People never saw parties like mine, they can’t conceive of what I have planned for the land, so doesn't it sort of follow that I should have my own agency? Just think of the fun/fallout when it goes wrong. We're juicy drama target number one. Think I won't pay, with my hood-rich status, to have a series of Youtube videos artfully crafted to tell our struggle to SAVE THE CHILDREN!? Think I can't go viral? Or, more wisely, someone I cultivate without the online baggage? Shame is an incredibly powerful motivator, and if my experience in life has taught me anything, it's that my presence alone seems to conjure your shame. I actually believe in myself and the things we can accomplish together. I think I'll find support from everyone who persistently hides from their responsibility to rise up.
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