After reading countless such new stories over the past few months, I cannot help but feel a little bit of amusement by the current outrage against bonuses.  Not because the ridiculous salary resentment isn’t justified, of course.  It’s because many people are misinterpreting the problem.

In corporate America, bonuses have never truly been bonuses to begin with.  We hear the word “bonus” and we think of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation, where Clark hopes desperately for the end-of-year “gift” that he so clearly deserves.  In the eyes of many of us, this is exactly what a bonus is (and should be).

However, most of us are not corporate executives.

In the world of private jets and multi-million dollar incomes, bonuses are often not bonuses at all, but a planned part of salary dispensation.  The executive almost always expects a certain amount that he or she will receive at the end of the year, and it is part of the package offered upon accepting the position in the first place.  As we are seeing now, it is incredible that these bonuses are awarded even in the leanest of times, as the company lays off ordinary workers and faces record deficits.  But for the first time, this structure is suffering a stress-test across all corporations, and thus has exposed itself for what it truly is.

Why are they called bonuses, then, and not simply included as part of salary?  The largest reason may be that it gives the company a false sense of choice.  Salary is very permanent, after all, and cannot be drastically altered without considerable effort.  Calling it a “bonus” creates a sense that the company isn’t truly committed to the total amount, when in practice such bonuses are almost never denied.  As is so often the case, it’s just the way that it has always been done.

So when the headlines repeatedly relay outrage about company bonuses, I am shocked to see many people avoid the heart of the matter:  that this problem is systemic.  It has nothing to do with bonuses in our traditional sense, but is instead a problem of compensation. In other words, no one should care how big a “bonus” an executive receives, but how much money they make to begin with.  How the company chooses to structure this compensation is largely irrelevant, because if they want to channel the “bonus” money to other means of compensation, I think we’d all agree that they’ll find a way to do it.  They’re no doubt doing it already.

Now, with the lid blown off of this payment structure, and public outrage continuing to grow, will we have the courage (and means) to demand true change in this system?  Will we see increased fiscal and ethical responsibility out of the companies that we pour our money into?

Only time will tell.

Since the beginning of mankind, chivalry has held its head high as one of great traditions of society.  I’ve little doubt that if we could travel back through time, we’d see cavemen placing their companions closest to the fire, or Roman emperors ensuring that their wives had every luxury.  In many men, there is something of a genetic disposition to take care of the woman next to us, whether it’s opening her car door or (in dire situations) ensuring that she’s the first one onto the lifeboat in an emergency.  And so, as a society, we still embrace these traditions wholeheartedly, and the most chivalrous of men are our roles models for graciousness.

But there is a darker side to this story.

Being subject to human nature, we are also bound by the psychological implications of what we do.  We are a society that has long kept women at a position inferior to men, and even today salary analysis has unquestionably shown a sizable gap between the two.  We have also never had a female president, and the one candidate that came close rose to power in the shadow of her husband.  Constantly, we are reminded of the “glass ceiling” that exists in corporate America and beyond.  And most incredibly of all, there are men and women alive today that saw their own mothers unable to vote in elections.

Publicly, no one is foolish enough to admit keeping women at bay.  Privately, however, it is very much an open question.  I think the assumption has long been that blatant sexism continues to lurk silently throughout our families and board rooms, but in practice I have found that this is not as black and white as it seems.  As always, I think the answer lies a little more deeply than that.

The question is:  deep down, as men, do we truly believe that women are our equals?  Do they share our capability for intelligent decisions?  Do they possess the strength to do what needs to be done, regardless of the situation or emotions involved?  Do they deserve the benefit of doubt that we constantly give ourselves, even amidst the notable failures of men in leadership?

My answer is an emphatic yes.  But the solution to this problem is not as easy as it seems.  In addition to changing our beliefs, as we’ve done slowly over time, we must also increasingly change our actions.  And in this case, alongside the more obvious actions, we must also begin to wind down the longstanding tradition of chivalry.

This will surely provoke some negative reactions among readers here.  Why, then, would I believe it?  Because for every case in which a man takes care of a woman, there is an implicit belief that a woman needs to be taken care of.  By its very purpose, chivalry is drawing the line between the provider and the dependent…and in the dependent role, I’d argue that a woman can never truly be a man’s equal.  If you still find this hard to believe, think about it a moment:  why is chivalry an embraced tradition?  As men, we embrace it because it is the “nice” thing to do.  Why, then, is it not acceptable for women to do the same?  And wouldn’t we, as men, feel hurt if this right was taken away from us?  The answer to these questions are quite revealing.

Of course, it’s entirely possible (as we continue to tell ourselves) that such generosity does not come with strings attached.  But again, we are subject to human nature, and I simply do not believe that a man does not feel empowered when he holds the door for a woman, makes more money than she does, or allows her to go first in line.  I think that, buried within our subconscience, men perform these roles because they feel it is the duty of the more powerful sex…and thus by doing so they become the more powerful sex.  As a result, for this and other reasons, the glass ceiling continues to exist all around us.

As part of a new generation of men and women, I hope that we continue to see our paths merge together.  I hope that when we glance across the board room table, men and women increasingly see each other across a level playing field.  And perhaps most of all, I’d like to see us arrive at a place where men no longer feel like they have to take care of women.

For when the glass does finally shatter, I expect it won’t matter who takes the first step over it.

If you know me at all, then the odds are quite high that you’ve teased me about my odd sleeping habits. I certainly share in these laughs, because I know that I am not exactly normal in this regard.

But I certainly don’t place a lot of value in being “normal.” You probably know that, too.

Often, though, my tendency is stay up late at night is completely misunderstood. There are many of you that likely think I’m a horrible morning person, which isn’t true. I am never grumpy or angry in the morning, although I wouldn’t advise crashing into my bedroom at 6:00 a.m. It’s not that I have trouble sleeping, which my college professors can readily attest to. Nor do I have a creepy internet side business that I have to hide from the world (you’ll just have to take my word for this one). I think we’re all wired differently, and I just happened to be wired for the end of my day as opposed to the beginning of it.

As I write this post, it’s 12:51 a.m. The far majority of the east coast is fast asleep, hurtling unconsciously toward another work day. I am not. Perhaps the part of myself that I treasure most is the creative side, and that side–like a vampire in the night–loves to come out when the moon is high over the world below. It can be summoned at other times, but it never comes as willingly as it does now.

What does this mean? I honestly don’t know. But the late evening is the best time to watch thought-provoking movies or TV shows, their images drifting through my mind as it fades away to sleep. It is the time when all things seem possible: that if you look hard enough, in between the lines, there just might be a trace of magic in the night air. When the next day comes, with its strikingly bright sun, these things seem silly and foolish to everyone–certainly to me as well.

But I think that within many of us, there still exists a child that hasn’t been completely defeated by the realities of the world around us. A child that reads the adventures of Harry Potter and still thinks that there’s a slight chance that this world isn’t immune to such things. Of course, using the ever-present rational mind, no one actually believes this. I certainly don’t.

Sitting here, however, with the clock striking one, I inevitably start to wonder.  I think about all of the things in the world that still remain unexplained, and I think that it would be far too egotistical to believe that we know everything there is to know.  And I think that maybe–just maybe–there’s something there worth holding onto.

At least for one more hour.

There’s a gorilla in the room.

Perhaps you can’t see it, but he’s there.  He’s looming over everything:  my life, this blog, my friendships, my career.  Everything.  His breath is awful because he has a strange diet:  he eats taxpayer dollars.  His name consists of three letters, but I won’t say them here.  Mostly because of the wild tantrum he’ll unleash if I do.

This blog has been quiet, but on those occasions when I sat down to write, it was hard not to see anything but the giant gorilla, grinning at me with those crooked teeth of his.  In spite of everything, he seemed to be having fun, as if this was a game to him.  I didn’t back down, necessarily, but I saw the glances he threw at my wife, as if he wanted to eat her dollars, too.  And thus we ended up at a stalemate each day, casting one intimidating glance after another at each other.  Things escalated when I started making fun of him for the giant patch of fur he was missing on his ass, and he taunted me for slaving away in a cubicle all day.

But each day I continued to show up.  I really didn’t want this gorilla to win.

And so it went for a while, this stalemate, until a few months ago, when he learned a new but devastating trick.  Perhaps he’d gotten bored, or perhaps he’d started playing old video games each night, but whatever the reason, he showed up one morning with a large, unwieldy barrel.  Oil leaked down one side, its contents coming from who-knows-where.  Grinning still, the gorilla climbed up the stairs and, with a violent yell, hurtled the barrel downward.  Having retained some athletic skill from my college days, I just managed to dodge it…but I heard the scream below as an innocent victim suffered the blow, then grew quiet.  Deathly quiet.  And before I knew it the gorilla had run up to get another barrel, thus beginning a new and far more malevolent cycle.  A cycle that hasn’t stopped for a few months now.

After a while, one inevitably grows tired of dodging his doom.  I continue to leap out of the way with each throw, but I always cringe as the inevitable scream replaces the silence of the stairwell on the floors below.  More victims.  There are certainly a growing number of times that I just want to leave this place, to run down the stairwell, crash through the door into open sunlight, and leave my old life behind.  After all, there cannot possibly be anything good remaining at the top of these stairs.

The reason I know this is because no one has come from the top of the stairwell to help those of us below.

But I haven’t given in.  Not yet.  I have my wife to think about, and my choice must stand for both of us.  And so the onslaught continues.  Sometimes, while the gorilla is off retrieving yet another of his endless supply of barrels, I look around at the walls of the stairwell, remembering what they looked like before madness set in.  There was a time when these walls echoed nothing but the sounds of success, and virtue, and progress.  Their integrity was strong.  Sometimes I am still lost in thought when I hear the yell from above, and I have just enough time to evade fate once more.

It’s hard to say when this stalemate will end, or if such a large gorilla will ever truly grow tired.  His eyes never betray weakness, and I have to wonder if somehow, the gorilla knows he has an ace up his sleeve, just waiting to be used when the time is right.  He certainly exhibits no fear…but after staring into those eyes for so long, I think I finally know why.

Some gorillas are simply too big to fail.

So for those that are not aware, I am currently in Dayton, Ohio, competing in the National Scrabble Championship.  I’m not at all competing for the National Scrabble Championship, of course; I’ve only started playing in tournaments six months ago and am playing in a much lower division.  But it’s been some terrific competition, and more than anything it’s a great chance to play my favorite game against people that are clearly very good at it.

A few people have asked me what it’s like here, and my first response is usually something along the lines of, “It’s big.”  There are 495 registered participants in the tournament, and they have rented out an entire floor of the Dayton Conference Center.  Every game is one-on-one, so that’s nearly 250 games of Scrabble going on at once, all under one roof.  It’s a sight to see.

Almost everyone has played Scrabble at various points in his or her life.  It’s one of those games that is well-loved around the world, mostly because every single game is uniquely different.  With twenty-six letters and a hundred tiles, the combinations and words are seemingly endless…and this is expanded to the extreme by the usage of the official Scrabble dictionary.  Looking within, most people cry foul when they see words like AA (a type of lava) or XI (a Chinese spiritual force).  These words aren’t actually made up; what Hasbro did was build a large collection of words from several major unabridged dictionaries.  I’m sure you remember that 400-pound dictionary from the local library…those are the ones they used.

Therefore, when you play Scrabble with the official dictionary, the game really opens up as soon as you learn all of the two- and three-letter words.  There are so many more plays available.  From there, it gets crazier as people try to earn the big fifty-point bonus for using all seven of their letters in one turn.

There are a lot of common words in play, but even in Division 5 (where I’m playing) you see some incredible plays being made.  I’m trying hard to study to catch up, and frankly I don’t think I’ve played a single person that doesn’t know more words than I do.  I think I’m just a little better at the game itself:  doing the math per turn, leaving better tiles on the rack for next time, making defensive plays, etc.  So that’s by far the hardest part for me:  knowing which words are genuine, and which words are phony.  In Scrabble, the responsibility is completely up to the opposing player to know the difference; if someone plays a word and I don’t challenge it, it counts anyway.  And if I challenge incorrectly, I lose my turn and they get to go again, racking up more points.  For me, I’m simply trying to play detective and make educated guesses, for the most part.  Because a lot of the time I don’t know if they’re bluffing or not.

Some example of words that have been played against me in the first 2 1/2 days here:  SILEX, INERTIAE, AFREET, APERY, and TENRECS (all of which are good).  I’ve managed to play others like ISATINE and RETINUE, but the amusing part is that I have not had a single word challenged in eighteen games so far.

It’s because everyone I play already knows all of the words I know.

But somehow, I have managed to scratch and claw out wins.  I try to sense out the players that take too much time, playing faster myself to put more pressure on them at the end of the game (they only have 25 minutes total).  I try to bait them with smaller potential plays to distract them from looking for the big ones.  I play the few fancier words I know whenever I can to bluff them into thinking I know a ton of words (when I don’t, relatively speaking).  Sometimes I win games, only to look back and wonder how the hell I ever got away with that one.  And of course I’ve gotten clobbered a few times, serving a good reminder that all in all, I’m over my head at the moment.

Luck finds its way to you sometimes, though.  In one game this morning I was losing the entire game, including being down by 70 and on my last seven tiles…then found MOTIONS and WEEN (adding on to WEE) to win the game in one turn.  Staring at the tiles, I couldn’t remember how WEAN was spelled, and simply got lucky that WEEN was also good.  In another very amusing moment, I could have won the game with a bingo (using all seven tiles), and I found the word FLATTER, thinking  of the common definition “more flat.”  I had an S to lay down FLATTERS, but my mind dismissed FLATTERS as not being a word and I lost the game because I couldn’t find anything in time.  It’s very funny how the mind works, particularly when it is working overtime.

We’re about to head back into the afternoon session, during which I lost all three games yesterday afternoon.  This morning, however, I returned to win all four games and jump back into the heat of things.  It’s always a roller coaster, but at the moment I’m truly not caring much about where I finish or what my record is.

I’m just enjoying playing Scrabble.

I’ve always wanted to be a web designer.

“Always” here actually means since college graduation, which is just past the point where you can actually get a degree for that purpose.  Timing is everything.  But at heart I have loved the web since it first came out, particularly because of its one most alluring characteristic:  it’s the only real medium in which one person can say something to the entire world with very little effort (by the way, hello to all of my friends in Bangladesh!).  That is incredibly fascinating.

Aside from that, though, the process of web design is the perfect combination of my two selves.  There is the creative self, which loves graphics, music, art, and writing (like this very blog).  On the other side is the analytical self, which aspires to solving great math problems, programming computers, and organizing my storage boxes for quicker access. 

You might guess which self Kelly fell in love with, but that’s a bit off-topic.

At any rate, building a web site is an exhilirating convergence of these two selves, in that it has nearly everything packaged into one final product.  And as with most creative endeavors, you start with nothing and end up with something far more than that.  You can help a friend generate more business, or a company get its grassroots start, or an acquaintance figure out a way to showcase her photography to the world.  The possibilities are nearly endless.

Of course, my career turned slightly away from that direction, given that I had a computer programming background.  I’ve always been okay with that; everyone has to start somewhere.  But as I’ve delved into far too many hobbies in the evenings, I never quite wanted to commit myself to a second job:  starting my own web design business.  I am realizing that it’s never too late to chase a dream, however, and as much as we don’t like to think about it, the clock is always ticking.

And so I have decided, at long last, to take a shot at this.  I’m going to officially make a run at building web sites for additional income.  I have a company name, licensed software, an energetic vision, and a good foundational skill set to start with.  I’ve already gotten started filling in some gaps on the technical side as well.  Over the next few months, I plan to really gain some momentum and make this happen.

It probably comes as no surprise that the key to a web design firm is an excellent portfolio, so my immediate focus is to identify a few projects which I can take on at low cost (to clients), simply to get some work established.  These projects will take a little longer, of course, as I continue to round out my skill set.  But I believe it will be a win-win situation for everyone involved.  So if you happen to know of any potential clients looking for a quality web site (particularly small scale at first), please let me know.  I obviously cannot handle but a select few initially, but my ability to deliver them will quickly grow with repetition.

There will definitely be a lot of work involved, particularly with a full-time day job (while it lasts, given the unsteady waters there right now).  But I am very excited to finally take a shot at this. 

I hope you will follow along with me.

I am not a fan of leadership.

This is probably something that startles most people.  Everything we’ve been taught states that leaders are desperately needed to provide direction, and to set people down the right path.  The greatest companies on Earth excel because of their leadership, after all.  In religion, leadership is tremendously vital, as spiritual direction comes directly from a higher power.  Both of these examples are absolutely right, of course, and their clear advantages cannot be ignored.

But this principle fails largely because it is far too optimistic.  When we do come across a great leader, it is an incredible blessing.  Far more often, though, our leaders fall into a gray area–one that makes it much more difficult to tell right from wrong.  In many cases we don’t know them very well (such as in politics, where American distrust of Congress is soaring), and in others we follow those that were appointed leaders through some process we had nothing to do with.  We simply accept this as fact because it is the status quo.

More than anything, we know we badly need leaders because we’re told we badly need leaders.

I’d argue that this is far from the truth.  In too many situations we create a leader when one is not actually needed, and this almost always results in one individual becoming overpowered and everyone else becoming underpowered.  This in turn can cause resentment, and far too often it causes us to stop actively thinking for ourselves.  Trusting someone else to do the work is, unfortunately, vastly easier than actually doing the work.  This may be vital for hospitals and restaurants, but not for our day-to-day lives.

In contrast, the best leaders do not set direction, nor do they assume that they know more than everyone around them.  They listen. Instead of pushing down those “beneath” them, they elevate them upwards, and in doing so gain the tremendous power of collective thinking.  Let’s look at a hypothetical example:  two teams of twenty people, out in the wilderness, with only the goal of beating the other team to the finish line.  By and large, two types of scenarios can take place:

1. One to three members of each team are elected as leaders, and the rest of the team follows. I believe this is by far the most common model, and of course it makes sense.  Someone has to step up and take control in order to get everyone moving in the same direction.  The clock is ticking.  Often these leaders are charismatic, and almost immediately they are looked upon to find the right path.  Their suggestions carry a great deal of weight, and in order to keep moving it becomes uncomfortable to openly contradict them.  Most people find themselves victims of “group think”, where ideas seem better just because everyone else is nodding along.  And the downside of this style, of course, is that a caste system inevitably emerges.  The group is split between leaders (the few) and non-leaders (the many), and regret and frustration quickly escalate—most of all among the more talented of those not leading.  Friendships also rarely cross this divide because of perceived inferiority.
2. The twenty members of the team are considered equal, and a coordinator is assigned to facilitate discussions and organize group decisions. A rarer model, to be sure.  There are times when it is agreed upon, but dominant personalities inevitably stretch it at the seams in order to turn it into the leadership-first scenario (#1).  Not only will there always be people who think they are better than everyone else, but by definition there always are one or two people that are better than everyone else, and it is ever so tempting to turn leadership over to those that know the most.  But in this model, you have to stay the course—the biggest reason being that knowing more is far from knowing everything.  Even if the most talented members know best a remarkable 75% of the time, ignoring others’ input on the remaining 25% is a fatal mistake.  And so the leader in this case must absolutely be someone without ego.  It must be someone who excels in bringing out the best in everyone around them, not for their personal gain but solely for the gain of the entire group.

I have chosen recently to do everything in my power to pursue the second model, and to discourage leadership in its “usual” form whenever possible.  Whether it is a two-team race or a church group or a Fortune 500 company, we cannot continue to blindly trust the abilities of a select few.  This does not mean that we should ignore or berate our current leaders, though, which is another tragic mistake.  More often than not, these leaders are truly talented.  Instead, we have to stop taking things on faith and really listen.

We have to start thinking for ourselves.

In other words, it’s time to ignore the rhetoric, gossip and rumors that are inevitably going on around us.  We have to stop taking others’ opinions for our own.  I think you can imagine the results if everyone came to his or her own conclusions independently, and then a leader coordinated the results before working to bring the group to a consensus.   Even in those situations where the path is clouded with doubt, we would still retain the ability to look back and learn from our mistakes.

Because they’ll be our mistakes.