A couple weeks ago, I read a job description for a Vice President of Business Intelligence. I immediately knew that I could do the job. So I went to Forbes or some such place to find out what a top officer might make in a position like that. I was extraordinarily comforted to find a chart with VP of IT making somewhere around 213k in a market like Los Angeles. I thought to myself, finally, I can get paid like an orthodontist.
Of my four professional desires, one of them is CIO. I had this ambition before such an office existed, but everything has gone fairly nicely in my industry. The attraction of computer mediated communication is astoundingly broad and deep. As late as 1999, I didn't believe it would continue to grow. I figured after the Y2K jobs were gone, very little else would come of the industry. The company I worked for then was worth about 600 million. This month Oracle bought them for 3 Billion. Today, I am very confident that every industry in the globe is going Bloomberg's Way, which I'll describe at length later. Suffice it to say for now that if you can get Bubba to track baseball scores and NASCAR telemetry, you can bet he'll pay for stats at his job no matter what industry it's in. Once upon a time, only Wall Street and guys like Michael Bloomberg cared. Now everyone does. The IT industry will keep growing, even beyond the limits of Moore's Law. My future is bright.
Why should I care to make more than $150k per year? I tell you honestly that it doesn't seem like a lot to me. Despite all of the work that I do, I still feel that I could do much more. Despite all the money I make, I know I could make much more. And I've been thinking about what a difference it makes in my life, as I relate what I think of my future to what I might seem to be to others who don't know what I can do. Everybody understands orthodontists. Nobody questions that they should make a quarter million a year. Nobody understands BI architects. I think about such things in airport security lines as I compare my watch to the man in front of me, as I walk past the people in first class. I feel so very close to that, and I am frustrated.
Several months ago I started writing a post entitled 'How it feels to become unblack'. I never quite got it right, but here's an excerpt:
I've lived in Prospect Heights Brooklyn, around 125th & Broadway Uptown, at Florence & Crenshaw in LA. Those are black communities. I've lived near the Galleria in Houston, in Back Bay in Boston, in Cobb County in Atlanta. Those are not black communities. Today I live in Redondo Beach, Ca going on five years, which for me is pretty much the longest I've lived anywhere since leaving the house I grew up in. I've noticed over the years that this town has gotten blacker, but that's the difference between maybe 3% and 5% black. A couple years ago I was prepared to move my family to Beijing. I think that maybe Michael Jordan, Oprah and Tiger Woods have been there.
But seriously, representations of blackfolks are curiosities to me. I know what my family is like, and I know what my friends are like, but I do not keep up with black popular culture any more than I keep up with mainstream popular culture. I am reverting to the more classic forms. I'm convinced that my impatience is a sign of age if not wisdom. I'm cutting down the number of versions of the truth and applying strict judgments from older paradigms. I don't have the time nor the inclination to get bogged down in the wide-eyed fascination with variety. So there are 50 episodes of Def Comedy Jam I'll never see, but I still know what's funny and I've had plenty to laugh about without it. There are new singers being compared to Marvin Gaye, but I'm not trying to hear them. So I'm not guessing nor studying what blackfolks are doing to keep themselves tight with black communities. I know what I'd do if it were a priority, and I'd pretty well know what to expect.
What I expect is to hookup with Jack and Jill, maybe. 100 Black Men, maybe. The Links, perhaps. Those would be very nice to haves, because really all I need is another old head with a library with the same dimensions as mine, and we could crank up the dozens over Mount Gay and Cohibas. The Spousal Unit will connect with the right church. I'll meet the local Scoutmaster. We'll find the front row families at the recitals and the cookie sales. I'll hookup with my some other folks I know, including my childhood buddy whose daughter just made homecoming queen. The family business will be handled, this I guarantee.
It was after the November election. I was feeling a kind of disappointment I couldn't describe and yet I know it was something I felt I could share in common with Michael Steele, who lost. I think it is entirely reasonable for the overwhelming majority of folks to feel no sympathy for the man who fails to reach the ultimate peak and yet rests on a very high plateau. Plenty of people mocked Steele, and of course you can see me ridiculed in the pages of Cobb.
Something inside me burns brightly, a fire I can't quite quench. It waxes and wanes every few years. I get itchy. And so now I'm considering my four professional arrows. Which will I choose for the next 15 years I work? Maybe my cousin will sell his business and we'll work a joint venture. Maybe my buddy and I will build something from scratch. When I bought my lottery ticket I kept thinking how cool it would be to buy interests in all of the businesses of my professional friends who own businesses.
But lately I've been walking the streets of Philadelphia and noticing how blue collar I am not and how different the blackfolks are there from us in California. I got off the plane this morning and was moved to comment, Hey the janitors aren't black over here, Yay Mexicans. Hey look, Asians again. I got to drive the Transporter again, my BMW 740. I saw the ocean. I made duplicate copies of the remaining expense receipts for the first quarter over at Kinko's today. I made a payment of $3500 to handle some of those expenses. When I think about the title of my black autobio, which I've been doing lately. the title finally came to me. "Up From Freedom", playing off Booker T. Washington. What does it feel like to be moving up? What does it feel to be entitled to American success? What does it feel like to know you can work, and move and earn like a top dog?
It feels like Cobb.
And if I were a different kind of person, I would feel very lonely. But I'm the sort who can sit up to 3am in the morning in a studio apartment 3000 miles from home excited to learn about the capitalization of the American textile industry. And I know Ed Cone, and I know we could hang out and be buddies. And I wonder about what that would mean over in Greensboro, NC.
I don't feel particularly alienated to anyone by my upward mobility. In fact I feel more and more relaxed and comfortable with people the wealthier I get. It is a process of kicking off the fetters of relative penury. That's why I can't stand the humorlessness of John Perkins. I've got soul and I get more magnanimous as I get more money - closer to the Kung Fu Santa Claus. It's why I love Jim Cramer.
I've been in the hole of humility and I'm always prepared for it. I'm reading Martin Amis again and this time he isn't making me cry. I understand man's capacity for monstrosity. Amis writes that the flies were dying like humans. He writes of the battles between the bitches and the brutes. They say you cannot cheat an honest man. So I pray to remain honest. All I have to do is focus and focus and focus. I have come to regularly thank God that I exist at all. I prepare for death. I prepare to die well. I prepare to die doing myself honor in the silly niche of human endeavor I have chosen.
I am true to my origins. That is what I have in common with my generation and with the people that call themselves black and Old School. Born free. Moving up from freedom. This is how, these are the steps. Inheriting the West. Inheriting America. Walking in the invisible footsteps and guided by my own dreams, stopping every once in a while to ask what it feels like to move beyond. So I stop this evening and look at American Class. I draw breath. I exhale. I keep my eyes on a prize that keeps rising. How dare I? Is this what Barack Obama calls the Audacity of Hope? I don't know. I'm not sure I even hope. I just work all the angles I can afford. I've got the audacity alright.
Darius raised his son Xerxes to be a Warrior-King. I'm raising my son to be a Scholar-Athlete. It's a matter of degree. I've got my eye on a long life, long enough to get some wisdom. Long enough to fulfill the dreams beyond the fulfilled dreams beyond those of my childhood, beyond those of my grandfather's prayers in the days of the breadline. Audacity. Or maybe not. Maybe destiny.
I just need to avoid getting hit by a bus.
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