Three Strikes and I'm Getting Better

Failure can wrap itself in a cloak of many colors. Unexpected job loss and life-changing events can become pivotal points in one’s life. It’s that water-shed moment where what was once present is now past and the future is nothing more than a dim hope or vapid expectation on the horizon.

In her new book entitled: ‘The Up Side of Down,’ author Megan McArdle says that: “Getting to the upside of down often means letting go of your instincts, ignoring conventional wisdom and leaping for something no one has done before.” It’s changing course in mid-stream and forging ahead despite the uncertainty of what might lie ahead.

Ed Catmull was one of the founders of Pixar along with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter. In his book ‘Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration’ Catmull says that the ultimate goal here is to uncouple fear and failure. It’s changing that stigma that failure is bad and a sign of weakness. We must recognize that mistakes aren’t necessary evil. Instead, they are an inevitable consequence of doing something new. Echoing the mantra of many forward-thinking ventures: “If you aren’t making mistakes, you aren’t taking enough risks.”

I’ve been there several times in my life; three in particular stand out. Yet in each instance I never knew just how fortuitous my failure would turn out to be. I never anticipated to fail so there was never some grand plan to deal with my stumble. Instead, some innate survival instinct kicked in and pushed me forward. At the time, I didn’t see it as a failure as much as a minor distraction like a foot-stumble off the starting line.

My first failure was running out of money at a private college and transferring to the University of Minnesota. While a large University may work for a lot of students, it was an unmitigated disaster for me. Beginning with 2500 students in the Introduction to Psychology class to the smallest class of 300 in Economics, I was lost before I stepped one foot on campus. I lasted two quarters and was politely asked to ‘take a break’ by the Admissions Office.

Two weeks after dropping out, I got my draft notice and spent the next two years in this man’s army. In retrospect, I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way. It was two years of learning to live on my own, continuing my focus on education, writing, travel and the beginning of collecting a lifetime of writing material (only I didn’t know it at the time).

My second failure came in my boss’s office at precisely 8:34 a.m. on July 23^rd, 1993…but who’s counting. It began with the usual pleasantries and then quickly evolved into “…(bla-bla-bla)…so we’re going to have to let you go.” And with that non-descriptive lame-ass explanation I was out of a job after thirteen years in public television.

It was the best thing that could have happened to me. In reality, it became a clean break from a mundane and political jungle to a forced self-reliance on my own skills to survive in the marketplace. It made me focus on my business, Sharden Productions, and my real estate ventures. And again, I never looked back.

My third and final failure came in the form of an obnoxious e-mail from an ego-inflated anal-retentive individual who didn’t like the video programs I was producing for local community television broadcast. His criticisms were ripe with subjective opinions and self-induced visions of grander. It was at that point that I declared to my computer that “I don’t need this _____ anymore” and with that eloquent announcement, I folded up my video production and distribution business and focused my fulltime energies on writing.

In retrospect, each stumble, loss, rejection, distraction, and life-changing event in my past has nudged me toward this stage of my life where story-telling in multiple disciplines has become my new passion. Catmull reminds us that: ‘we must think of the cost of failure as an investment in the future.’

Some folks are much quicker at failing their way to success. It took me sixty plus years and a life-time of learning just to get where I am now. I’d love to say it’s all part of some grand plan but it’s not. Just one more attempt at doing what I love best and stumbling every couple of steps on the way.

Each failure was a step in the right direction for me. I just didn’t know it at the time. Life stumbles can be that way sometimes.

An Evil Wind Blows

One of the rude jokes among residents of the Coachella Valley concerns the aroma sometimes pushing up from the South. Once again, it’s another fish die-off at the Salton Sea. Over the years, there have been enough newspaper articles about the fish kills, rank odors and morbid housing scene along its shores that no one would want to venture down there at any time.

That’s too bad because the Salton Sea is a fascinating area teaming with wild life and tired old relics of a bygone era of oceanic fun. It’s well worth a trip south from the refined communities that make up the greater Coachella Valley area. Of course, speaking like a native, in the twenty-four years we’ve been coming to Palm Springs, I hadn’t ventured down there myself for the first ten years. Ignorance was bliss and I was blissful…and wrong.

The Salton Sea is California’s largest lake measuring more than 35 miles long and 15 miles wide in spots. It has a surface area of over 380 square miles and sits at 332 feet below sea level. The sea was created back in 1905 as the result of an accidental break in a canal cut into the Colorado River. For 16 months, the river ran unchecked into the lowest area around; the salt basin which became the Salton Sea.

But it wasn’t the first time that the area had seen a large body of water. Thousands of years earlier, Cahuilla and other California Indians occupied those lands. When they first arrived, the Salton Sink held a much larger body of water – ancient Lake Cahuilla. Geologists estimate the sea has appeared and then disappeared about every 400-500 years.

After the Indians, came the first settlers and railroad men who built a line of the Southern Pacific Railroad through a part of the sea. Nearby agriculture began to grow in what is now the communities of Coachella, Thermal and Mecca.

By the mid-fifties, the Salton Sea had become a major recreational water resort area for Southern California. But two hurricanes; Kathleen in 1976 and Doreen in 1977, caused such wide-spread damage to neighboring farm lands that the runoff caused a major increase in the salinity of the sea. That, in turn, caused major fish-kills and bird-kills and created such a major issue with noxious odors that residential development came to a stop.

Today the salinity level of the sea stands at 45 ppt. Only the tilapia fish is able to survive in such waters. While fishing is still good for the tilapia, fish kills continue to plague the area with their harsh smells.

Along the northeastern edge of the Salton Sea lies one of the world’s most important winter stops for migrating birds traveling the Pacific Flyway. The migration begins in October and by January more than 400 species of migrating birds fill the skies above the sea. By the end of May, the birds have moved on.

Like any other large natural area in California, there is much more than just the sea in the Salton Sea area. Over the centuries the fragile ecosystem of the area has provided sanctuary to an extremely diverse collection of wildlife and the critical habitats that support and nurture them.

For example, the sea holds millions of fish that feed the masses of wintering birds, including herons, egrets, brown and white pelicans, and kingfishers. In the fall, birds of prey arrive. Among them are peregrine falcons, osprey, and ferruginous hawks.

The fields and wetlands adjacent to the sea support huge flocks of snow geese, ducks, sandhill cranes and California’s largest population of burrowing owls.

Plans to reclaim the sea and turn it back into a major recreational area have begun and stalled dozens of times over the years. But in 1998, Congress finally passed the Salton Sea Reclamation Act directing the Secretary of the Interior to prepare a feasibility study on restoration of the Salton Sea. Slowly but surely, progress is being made to turn the tide in that direction.

The Salton Sea and its immediate vicinity have many recreational activities to offer, including: camping, bird watching, fishing, hiking, boating; use of personal watercraft; hunting and off-roading.

It will take years, perhaps decades before the sea might possibly return to its past glory. More feasibility studies are being made, more funding is being sought and grand schemes hatched. The possibilities for commerce, recreation and development are enormous. Talk of Lithium fields suddenly discovered have a lot of politicians licking their lips. Time will tell.

Until then the Salton Sea is a magical place for walk the shoreline, observe the birds, and time your visit to avoid the smell. A small price for a wonderful watery treasure in the middle of the desert.

Ranches, Rowhouses, and Railroad Flats

Apartment living is back in vogue now. Actually it never went out of style. It just changed and evolved along with changing mores and lifestyles and current economic trends. Apartment living, just like city living, is especially in fashion among millennials. Of course, it doesn’t help that the starting price for a starter home now hovers between $400,000 to $500,000 in many parts of the country.

Major, mid-sized and even smaller cities are now being peppered with apartment projects where once condos held supreme. San Francisco seems to be leading the charge with its infusion of the ‘creative class’ and escapees from Silicon Valley.

Even though apartment living ebbed and flowed with evolving lifestyle choices and tastes, it has always been a part of the American lexicon ever since its inception before the 1700s. Actually, it was even before that period in American history with the pueblos of the southwest and Mayan cities further down south.

It’s no different around the world. Until recently in Europe, apartment living had been the norm for centuries. Multiple generations often lived in the same building. When I was hanging around Amsterdam in the mid-60’s, my good friend lived with his parents and girlfriend in first floor apartment, his grandparents occupied the second floor and an aunt and uncle were on the third floor.

For the most part, America had been a country of apartment dwellers up until the end of World War II. In her book entitled: Ranches, Rowhouses and Railroad Flats, author Christine Hunter chronicled the evolution of various American housing forms and the ways they shaped and limited the neighborhoods surrounding them.

After World War Two and for almost sixty years, home ownership was the zenith of success that many families strived to achieve. Burning their mortgage papers after the last final payment became a ritual that many of our parents and grandparents enjoyed. But the recession of 2008 and a different attitude among millennials changed the perception of home ownership and shifted desires toward more freedom of movement, downtown living and less perceived value in home ownership.

Like most cyclical trends, apartment ownership has grown and, in turn, waned over the decades. There was a period in the early 80’s when apartment buildings in the Twin Cities were apprecia-ting at a very fast rate. Then tax changes by the Regan Administration eliminated many tax exemptions and other lucrative benefits of investment properties. Values plummeted and real estate was no longer a foolproof way to make money.

Yet the basics of apartment management never changed. In fact, I even wrote a book about just that fact. Aside from the financial matters, managing apartment units really boils down to observing another person’s life under the microscope. It’s like studying the socio-economic behavior of subjects who pay you for your efforts. You can’t help but notice their living conditions, eating habits, mating habits and general lifestyle.

For an introvert like myself, thrust into the lives of other people, there seemed to be just one business model that would work. It was driven by one simple philosophy. The idea that the owner of the building was not dealing with rental property or investment property or apartments for that matter. To my way of thinking, the obligation of a landlord is one of providing safe and clean homes for the residents. Semantics aside, it was an important differentiation.  In the same light, it meant thinking of the folks living in those units as residents instead of renters or tenants.

But business is still business. Both parties understood their respective responsibilities. The landlord-renter agreement wasn’t a benevolent relationship. Residents paid the landlord for a place to live. The landlord’s part of the bargain was to provide a safe and clean living environment. He wasn’t their boss but he wasn’t their pal either. Hopefully they saw him as a nice guy who was fair but firm and one who responded quickly to their relevant concerns.

I was in the rental business for more than thirty years. Over that period of time and because of the transient nature of young folks, I dealt with more than several hundred renters. Ninety-eight percent of them were fantastic folks whom I’d rent to again in a heartbeat. In fact, there are several that still exchange Christmas cards with us each year.

                                    

What I learned over the years can be reduced to one simple sentence. ‘Treat your residents and their units with respect and not as rental property.’ If you do that, 98% of your folks will respond in kind. It was a philosophy that served me well.

While I’ve moved on with my life, that philosophy has served me well in a myriad of other exchanges with my readers, business clients, friends, associates and family. They are simply good words to live by.