Help Wanted: Dumb Sheep Needs Shepherd

He is stuck and he knew it...

But what is so difficult about writing his account? After all, he recognizes one when he hears or reads one and he surely knows that everyone loves to hear or browse through a plain good story. It is all too simple, really. Just let the tale be told, as it happened... Sounds like the advice you would often hear on teevee, “Just be yourself and you would be fine...” Fine, but when everybody else is just trying to be themselves, would it not make sense if you sort of highlight whatever it is that would make you stand out and different from all the others?

It is not that he cannot write nor lacked the skill to do so. Playing up with words to express what he either feels or thinks or intends to do, though not really like a walk in the park for him, is not something he particularly loathes to do either. Selling newspapers as a kid has it advantages, you know, getting to read daily all the excess copies and thereby enhancing his ability to exactly form what he meant from among the choicest words he has accummulated. He has done a lot of writing many times in the past, at least some of which he got an acknowledgement, but at most times merely an eerie, dreerie silence, he does not really know if it even reached the intended recipient or got trapped inside a black hole of layers upon layers of bureaucratic mess that which we oftentimes call fondly, even affectionately, as the “red tape”.

He remembers the time when he sent an email to the NTC. After several phone calls of follow up, he actually ended up proposing that they change their name to NTD – as in National Telecommunications Decommission, which, of all government offices, should be the very first and the quickest one in responding to emails. Instead, they denied ever receiving his letter and were asking if he would be so nice as to resend it. He did after begging them to please just not blame this incident to those overseas hackers from the Orient? But alas, still no luck and no reply at all until he called them up once more again. It occurred to him that they must all be really busy helping the CIA to listen to all our phone calls as what Edward Snowden had helped to establish and then hoped to untangle in a sudden change of heart later on...

It is not for lack of tools. He has got enough of it. More than enough, for sure. His laptop maybe three years old but it is still better than a typewriter though he sometimes wish he still had one of those clunky yet sturdy, Made-in-America – the land of the free but indebted – writing machine. Though it is not as intelligent as SJ’s or BG’s invention (or innovation may be more suitable), he loves the steady clicks of it as he types as if validating his every word, every dictum, every idea he churns out. Then it speaks in silence when he is done, as if giving him as much breathing space as he needs but eagerly awaiting for the next set of ideas which he would create in partnership with those keys.

But with the laptop, he has done less thinking than he ought to be doing with a typewriter. A typewriter does not spot a typo, does not suggest synonyms, would not do cut and paste, could not even tolerate more than a couple of errors, yes, but it does not need to be plugged in to that powered outlet on the wall either. It likewise does not suddenly turn all blue on you! Laptops on the other hand does not mind how many errors you make. It may be that it even actually prefers that you make those errors just so as to show off that it has become more intelligent than you presently are or ever will be...

But then, in his even deeper consideration of all those things, he asked himself “How come we would like to innovate ourselves to obsolescence?” In not so distant future, he is afraid that this typewriter-killer would soon do all the thinking for him.

The Big Blue’s Watson, even at this present period may prove to be better in writing that which he still has been just contemplating in his mind for the longest time.

He has got it all mixed up whether it is a good thing? But how could that be a darn good thing, thinking nothing when it is his all, his everything, it is all that he has ever been good at?

He would like to believe he is good at analysis and fares much better at synthesis. But it is one thing to buy carton piles of 2000-piece puzzles and actually re-creating what they are supposed to be representing. But then purchasing and taking them home, at least, puts him past the intending and closer to the doing. Best of all, it feels a lot of good, owning those houses planted on that magnificent scenery even if it’s only on paper. At least up until the credit card bill arrives.

So how does one stay relevant given this stream of constant onslaught of technological conundrum? How does one figure out the value he needs to keep or develop and then give out to stay relevant, desirable, wanted, and needed long enough up until maybe his retirement? What sort of education, training and re-training would it take to make a difference? Or perhaps there is one who could give a hint as to how to re-create and re-invent yourself, totally re-direct your carreer and unequivocally re-brand your name? Somebody please come out with an answer? Soon enough, if you please?