npower Corporate Tax Avoidance Response

npower has been caught avoiding taxes, thanks to a campaign by 38 Degrees. They sent me an email, asking me to write a letter to the npower CEO, demanding that they pay their taxes in the UK, rather than funnel them through Malta, as they appear to be doing. That's the frame for this conversation.

I wrote a letter to npower's CEO, Paul Massara, which you can read below. But first, an observation, backed by numerous studies, written about by mediators, marriage counselors, therapists, and understood by any parent that has ever tried to get a child to do what they're told: when you demand that somebody do something, you rarely get the result you want. Instead, you either get defensiveness, rebellion, spite, or resentment. You may get temporary obedience, but it rarely lasts, and it never results in the change that you really want. In this case, what we want is for npower to want to pay taxes in the UK. Because that is my end goal, I took a slightly different approach in my letter to Mr. Massara.

If you want to express yourself to npower, but don't think making demands will help, feel free to use as much of my text as you like.

America's housing crisis (Systems Thinking approach)

For 150 years, banks acted as a balance when people asked if they could afford a house. The same way you go to a doctor when you think you need help with your health, people went to banks asking for help with their finances. In this case, they were asking if they could afford a house.
For 150 years, banks had a vested interest in getting that assessment right - a loss for the owner and a loss for the bank were the same thing, so banks genuinely did their best to only loan to people who could afford it.
One day (though the dismantling of Glass-Steagall, among other things), banks realized that they could package and sell those mortgages to other banks, and other people. They also realized they could get the risk on those packages misassessed, so they got paid more than they were worth, as the risk was underappreciated. This resulted in a new incentive for the bank that bank customers weren't aware of.
For 150 years, banks interests regarding mortgages were aligned with their customers. Suddenly, banks stood to earn a lot more money through selling bad loans than in keeping good ones. So, when people came to ask if they could afford a house, the bank was no longer on their side. Instead, they had an incentive to make bad loans. And they stood to earn more money the worse the loan was.
In short, the system that had been depended on for many years was broken, and only one 1/2 of the borrower-lender pair knew that. The result was entirely predictable.
Had both sides been aware that the bank was aiming to make bad loans, things may (or may not) have turned out differently.

I have heard claims that the people asking for home loans are the ones to blame, because they shouldn't have taken on a responsibility they couldn't afford. But, I think saying that people who have been acting in a stable system are responsible when one party surreptitiously destabilizes it shows a misunderstanding of systems. There was literally NO way for most people requesting home loans to know that their interests and bank interests were no longer aligned. Those people were acting as responsibly as they knew how, and they got fleeced.
If you go to your mechanic, and he tells you that you (for example) need a new cam shaft, but doesn't tell you that he suddenly realized he can make a lot more money on cam shafts than he can on routine maintenance, then how can you make an informed decision, or even be aware of his motivation?
However, I don't think banks are solely responsible, or even majority responsible for the problem. The banks, and the people in them, are actors in a system. Only by changing the system does behavior change (you can see it with the way banks are doing the same things that got them into trouble in the first place, now).
And the only way to change this particular system is with government intervention. Glass-Steagall made the system work in the past, and it can make it work again in the future. Government (and the people that elect that government) are ultimately responsible for the shape of the system, and the regulations that create it. But even then, you haven't found the root of the problem, because Glass-Steagall would be chipped away by officials, as banks ask them to do it, again. History has shown that repeatedly - people forget the lessons of the past, unless they're constantly confronted with them.
Government officials seek reelection. Election campaigns cost a lost of money. It's hard to raise that money from individuals. It's easier to raise it from corporations. Therefore, government officials work to keep corporations happy, since they provide the money necessary to elect them. That means doing what they want, and giving them an ear. Even if they don't talk to the officials directly, money influences people. It creates an inherent conflict of interest to have officials elected by players in a system they are regulating.
If you want to fix the problem, at its root, you have to start with the money in politics.
Force government to provide public funds for all election campaigns, and no private funding, whatsoever. Use whatever criteria are appropriate to select the candidate. Once you have the money out of politics, you can start working on doing what's right for the people, instead of corporations. From that 1 fix, you can start to address the entire system. Until you fix that, you're suturing the skin over an open fracture -- it might make the problem appear to go away, but it only makes things worse in the end.

What's wrong with targets?

Targets are a very popular tool in senior management circles. They're frequently used as a proxy for how well a company is doing. If it hits targets, it's OK, and if it misses them, something is wrong. As with all KPIs, people who like targets, really like them. Here are the reasons why, at a glance (if you have others, I'd be happy to hear about them).

Strengths:
1. Quick indicator about whether the company is doing as expected
2. Gives people something to aim for

Let's take a look at those 2 things, quickly.
1. The problem with assuming that your KPI (target vs. achievement) indicates how your business is doing, is that it excuses you from understanding how your business is doing. If the KPI is what you think it should be, then you can walk away from it, without understanding the underlying reasons.
2. Almost nobody in the company has direct influence on your numbers. Sales people can only sell to people that want to buy. Some items stop being attractive during a recession. Some markets suffer (or grow) when the sun comes out. Since nobody can actually influence those things, it's silly to put the target there as something to aim for. People will do the best job they can, and if externalities remain relatively stable, you might hit those targets. But externalities are never predictably stable.

For example, let's take a comparison site which allows people to compare prices in a market which is controlled by a few vendors, many of whom are simply distributors for a single company. At the beginning of the fiscal year (we'll use a year for simplicity's sake), we set our annual targets. We don't know what's coming up over the next 12 months, but we make an educated guess and set our targets based on our assumptions.
What happens when several months into the year, the single company raises prices (due to their production lines being flooded, for example), vendors raise prices to maintain margins, and our site suddenly looks more attractive to users? We do better. Our business improves. We almost certainly meet our targets, and there's a good chance we exceed them. But how much of that is due to things we have control over? Did we improve the site? Perhaps. Did we make things more effective? Perhaps. But the single biggest change that affected us was something completely outside our control.
If you're only looking at the targets, it looks like we've done an awesome job. But since we can't separate the impact of the change in prices from the work we were doing anyway, it's impossible to say where credit is due (other than the majority being due to increasing prices).
Now, let's set targets for the next year. We review the previous year, and we do our best to keep in mind that the last year saw price increases. Prices have now stabilized (the flood damage has been taken care of, and new factories, in drier regions, have been opened). However, as the manager of a company, I don't think I can go back to my board and tell them that last year was a fluke. This year will be much worse. All expectations indicate that. We may improve our processes or site in such a way that we can increase business by 30%, if we're extremely lucky, but the odds of making significantly more than 2 years ago is really hard to see. So, if I'm a typical manager, I set targets where I think the board wants to see them, knowing that they'll be almost impossible to hit, without external intervention.A month into the year, it's clear the targets are set too high. 2 months in, and it's really clear.

Now we're in the position of knowing that our KPI is useless, but we've agreed to be held to our own numbers, so we feel stuck. This puts in the position of thinking about the targets, when we should be thinking about growing the business. And if you've ever read Drive, you'll understand that putting numbers in front of people on a regular basis increases their focus (on those numbers), but decreases creativity, productivity, and motivation. It also tends to make us risk averse, as we see bonuses, kudos, and promotions going down the drain. And lastly, it tends to kill our long term view. After all, if we don't meet short term goals, we won't be here to meet long term ones. The end result is that during a time where creativity and risk are most needed, they are least likely to be utilized.

In the end, by setting targets, we set ourselves up for failure.

What's the alternative?

If you can't bring yourself to get rid of targets, start by not holding people to them. They're an indicator of our ideas of success at the time of setting them, not a definition of it.

Even better, however, is removing them completely.

When running a price comparison site, there are lots of other ways you can indicate success:

1. Conversion. When people click out is it to buy, or to escape?

2. As you roll out new features, do your numbers improve? Do you get new traffic? Does a higher percentage of your existing traffic convert?

3. If you use SEO, are you ranking better? Is it driving up traffic? If it's driving up traffic, do those users tend to commit?

4. If you use PPC, are you getting value for money?

5. Are people finding it easy to get through your site? Is the average time per page going down, or up? Which direction should it be going (if you want commitment to your site, it should be going up. If you want people to come to your site and leave to buy something, it should be going down).

6. Are you capturing more and more of the people who left your site? Why did they leave? Have you resolved their problems?

7. How do you compare to the rest of the market? Are you leading? Following? Are you increasing your slice of the pie?

8. Can you increase the size of the market? Are you improving market penetration? Finding new markets? Finding new products? Experimenting?

etc.

Understanding your business cannot be done with a single number. It takes time, and effort. And managing by targets doesn't allow for either.

General response to Atlas Shrugged

Disclaimer: I just finished Atlas Shrugged.

Short version: Atlas Shrugged is deeply flawed, in numerous ways. It ignores reality in favor of fantasy land, pretends that human emotion can be, at all times, subservient to reason and rationality, and is poorly written.

Long version:

It's written as if the world and humans could be completely rational beings, if only we wanted to.
It's written as if all rational beings will want the same things she thinks we should want.
It's written as if everybody who isn't a capitalist is a waste of space.
It's written as if everybody in a company, other than the current owner is a parasite.
It promises that hard work and diligence will pay off, without addressing the times when it won't.
It promises that opportunity exists for everybody, while ignoring the fact that opportunity is nearly always determined by parental wealth.
It implies that being successful is a sign of deserving success.
It says that organized labor can never be a good thing.
It says that if you work for a capitalist they will do right by you by doing right by them.
It says that entrepreneurs would never act unscrupulously to get ahead, or to prevent someone else from challenging their dominant position.
It says that all regulation is bad.
It says the people are either complete idiots who are lying to themselves, or heroic entrepreneurs.
It says that people who start companies are the only people that drive the economy.
It says that there's nothing good about taxes (including fire departments, garbage collection, and police)

It ignores that regulation helped end the Great Depression.
It ignores that government provided services for everybody
It ignores the fact that any business, left sufficiently long, and grown sufficiently dominant, will use their position to their advantage
It ignores the benefits of the Clean Air Act
It ignores what happened before she was born -- the fact that the Wild West was largely lawless, and robber barons worked people to death and threw them aside.
It ignores thousands of years of evidence which states that if you let a company (or before companies, a merchant) behave however they want, you will end up with despots, murderers and tyrants, even if that's not what you start with.
It ignores the fact that entrepreneurs are human. Everybody is human.

There's a lot of talk in Atlas Shrugged about how the world would work if everybody behaved like the entrepreneurs, largely ignoring the fact that they don't. That there are thousands of reasons people don't behave that way. She writes as if her image of the perfect person is what we should all aspire to be, while ignoring the fact that we live in a world where we can choose what we want, and that choosing our aspirations is as important as choosing how to get there.

In short, it's fantasy. It ignores reality in favor of wishful thinking. Since it's supposed to be a warning on what not to do, or a treatise on how to behave, the fact that it's based on flawed logic, incorrect assumptions, and lies, makes it a complete failure. It does not, in any way, do what it sets out to.


The truth is, if you live in America, the government gave you your home. Whether it was the English in New England, the Spanish on first landing, or the American government during the days of Manifest Destiny, there isn't a single inch of American soil that wasn't taken from another people, through force, by people of the government, or directly supported by them.


Ayn Rand states at the end of the book that she was never given anything. She ignores (at a minimum): roads, police, fire departments, schools (for herself and her children), garbage collection (imagine if it was paid for on an individual basis. Now imagine your neighbor can't afford it, or doesn't want to pay for it), emergency care, military, subsidized corn (which allowed her to live on all the cheap American food), railroads (laws passed and property taken from existing owners), western expansion over territory that belonged to another people first (and who the government forcibly dislodged).
In other words, she is either lying about what she has been given, or takes for granted all the government programs that do work, while demonizing government in general. She was, whether she intended it or not, a hypocrite.

Deployment to dynamic EC2 instances (or, Origins of Capify-EC2)

It all started with a talk by Tom Hall, where he opined that there should be only 1 authoritative source for information about a system. The idea resonated with me, but I found that basic deployment requirements made such a setup impossible.

I work with Capistrano, a lot, particularly in the context of EC2. I build servers regularly, and deploy projects to them multiple times per day. I frequently house multiple projects on a single server. Both EC2 and Capistrano hold authoritative information about my servers. At EC2, it's information like hostname, IP address, server specs, etc. In Capistrano, it's more application specific -- server roles, which projects are deployed to which server, how to configure them, etc. Combining these two authorities into one would simplify my life considerably and make it easier to manage new projects and new servers, both.

In addition to the philosophical reasons for merging authority into one place, I had a practical reason as well. EC2 provides no permanence. If your instance dies, it's lost. At any moment, any of my servers could disappear due to a glitch, a mistake, or malice. Our software architecture had been designed to handle these sorts of things, but we had no tools to ensure our latest code was being deployed to all our servers, and if you've used Capistrano, you know that in order to deploy to a new server you need to update your deploy.rb with your new server's IP address. This slows down DR, scale-out, new projects, and virtually everything else that's good about both Capistrano and EC2.

Problem:

EC2 holds authoritative information about the server itself:

master

eu-west-1a

m1.small

running

Capistrano holds duplicate authoritative information about how/where to access the application:

task :master do
  set :server_address, ["ec2-XXX-XXX-XXX-XXX.eu-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com"]
  role :web, *server_address
end

Creating a new server requires adding a block similar to the above to every project before I can deploy it. If I have 6 projects on 1 server type (6 websites on a  single web server, for example), I have to check out, update, and check in deployment files for all 6 projects whenever a new instance is rolled out.

Solution:

I looked at this and decided the easiest way to fix this problem would be to extend Capistrano and move the information about individual tasks and roles into EC2, then query the information when deploying with Capistrano. This would do 2 things:

1. It would make EC2 the authority for all deployment information

2. It would make it possible to add new servers to my web server pool without changing a single line of code, since all deployments would be dynamic

3. It would allow me to clean up my deploy.rb files so they're clearer, more concise, and only contain application logic, rather than server logic.

To do this, I tagged each EC2 instance referenced in server_address with a new key called 'role' and a value of 'web' and replaced this:

  role :web, *server_address

with this:

  ec2_roles :web

I then did some work (with the help of Siddharth Dawara) in Capistrano to make it possible to dynamically create tasks for application deployment:

  def ec2_roles(*roles)
    roles.each {|role| ec2_role(role)}
  end
  def ec2_role(role_name, server_type)
    role = role_name
    instances = CapifyEc2.get_instances_by_role(role)  
    define_instance_roles(role, instances)  
    define_role_roles(role, instances)
  end  

CapifyEc2 is an adapter that processes information retrieved from AWS (via Fog), and turns it into useful data:

  def self.get_instances_by_role(role, server_type)
    filter_instances_by_role(running_instances, role, server_type)
  end

This process retrieves all running instances and filters them by the type of role they fulfil (web, app, db, etc). The next step was tying it into Capistrano, which is fairly simple. An entry in my Gemfile:

  gem "capify-ec2"

Inclusion in my deploy.rb:

  require "capify-ec2/capistrano"

and an ec2.yml in each project:

  :aws_access_key_id: "ACCESS_KEY_ID"
  :aws_secret_access_key: "SECRET_ACCESS_KEY"
  :aws_params:
    :region: 'REGION'

This now means that all servers tagged 'web' in EC2 will be deployed to whenever I do 'cap web deploy.' The next step is allowing deployments to individual instances:

  def ec2_roles(*roles)
    server_type = variables[:logger].instance_variable_get("@options")[:actions].first unless variables[:logger].instance_variable_get("@options")[:actions][1].nil? 
    named_instance = CapifyEc2.get_instance_by_name(server_type)
    task named_instance.name.to_sym do
      named_instance.roles.each do |role|
        define_role({:name => role, :options => {}}, named_instance)
      end
    end unless named_instance.nil?

The server_type is a guard clause, which ensures that if you only have a single command after your deployment, we don't try to get any instance information for it (e.g. cap deploy). We then retrieve the named instance and all its roles, and define a task for them.

At this point, I can now enter 'cap master deploy' and the server named 'master' will be deployed to, which is exactly what I need. In addition, if I now destroy and recreate the master, or its DHCP lease expires, I won't have to change a thing. I also don't have to redefine master in every project that deploys to it.

Conclusion:

Extending Capistrano allowed me to change the classic Capistrano architecture to more reliably fit the modern cloud architecture, where servers, roles, and projects can change at a moment's notice. Creating this gem allowed me to make better use of a number of EC2's features, and has made it much simpler for new people working in my development team to get up to speed. It is undergoing constant modification/updating/improvement, so if you have ideas, let me know.

The last thing I did with the project was make it open source, and deploy it to rubygems.

What makes a good salesperson?

There are lots of different types of people, each of which brings a unique perspective to sales.

What makes a good salesperson? Is it sales figures alone? What about the salesperson who makes his colleagues lives miserable, but hits all his targets? What about the salesperson who focuses on big deals every few months, bringing in more revenue, but missing monthly sales targets? What about the salesperson who can't work with his team? Who is so focused on hitting his numbers that he doesn't recognise that other people exist? What about the salesperson who misses his targets every month but helps his colleagues bring in more sales than they would otherwise get?

A lot of sales organisations put their focus on the numbers. How many sales? How much revenue? How long are the customers likely to stay with us? They call these targets. And they use them instead of management. By producing targets, they say, they can motivate their employees to do well. The next step is to say that their staff development plan is their targets -- if they do well, they get more money and bigger targets. There are a few things wrong with this scenario, as highlighted by the examples above:

• Rewards ignore reasons. If somebody works on a deal that takes a few months, and nails it, we congratulate them. If they put in the same quality work and external factors, such as markets collapsing, or the customer being bought, mean they can't make the sale, they are held accountable, and punished for their lack of results.
• Individual targets increase competitiveness. If there's a reward for being the best (recognition, more money, prestige), then most people will strive to be the best. This is how management sees it, and it's where the analysis tends to stop. Unfortunately, the law of unintended consequences indicates that there are more likely actions happening in the background. First of all, when you increase competition between teammates, you decrease teamwork. Creating competition breeds competitiveness. The teamwork that you've put so much time into producing will slowly disappear as people realise that the biggest hurdle to them being on the top of the pile isn't their customers, it's their coworkers. The salesperson who used to assist everybody so they could bring in their sales is more likely to focus on himself, to the detriment of the company. Individual revenue figures may go up while company figures go down. In addition, in order for their to be a winner, everybody else has to be losers. And the more focus you put on winning, the more focus will appear on losing. Your sales team will eventually end up with 1 winner and lots of losers.
• Targets are a form of control. Everybody understands that there's something wrong with the micromanager; that's why it's an epithet. Nobody wants to be micromanaged, but managers frequently don't see similar problems in putting so many restraints on their employees' actions that they can't think for themselves. If you tell people the only thing that matters are the numbers, then they'll behave that way. If you tie their pay to the numbers, but tell them to focus on personal development, they'll focus on the numbers. That's because your actions are much louder than your words.
• Rewards negatively affect relationships. If an employee's pay, month to month, is based on their making you happy, they're going to focus on making you happy, and be tempted to hide anything which might negatively affect your view of them. If they're in over their head, they will be far less likely to tell you, if you're in a position to reward them for not being in over their head. Your staff should be happy to come to you any time to talk about any problems they're having, whether it's personal development, professional development, making sales, or meeting their potential.

What's the solution?

Let's start with the basics: management isn't objective. There's no metric you can put in place which will fully manage an employee's performance. If there was, MDs would simply use calculators instead of managers, and the employment structure would be pretty flat. Good management is hard. It involves subjective measures, and judgement. That's why you were hired. You weren't hired to put a system in place that takes away all volition from your employees. If you were, you'd be a consultant, and you would now need a new job. What's more, the consultants who do those jobs frequently find themselves being called to the same companies, either that they've been to, or that their competitors have been to. What does that say about the methods they're using?
So, scrap the numbers. You know if your salespeople are doing well. You can tell. Some of it is the numbers, some of it is office banter, some of it is customer relationships, some of it is teamwork, some of it is their relationship with you, and some of it is their personal development. In other words, it's not the numbers, so putting their focus on the numbers is going to come at a cost.

There are a number of things that need to be considered in order to get the best from your employees.*

First of all, what motivates them? Why are they in the office? Why do they work with you and not with somebody else? Why do they get out of bed in the morning. When surveyed, most supervisors think their employees are motivated by money. And most supervisors say they aren't. The results of surveys of their employees indicates that money isn't in the top 5 reasons they work, and it's frequently not in the top 10. Find a good salesperson in your office. Ask him why he came to work for you. For some, it will be money. For most, they will probably state job satisfaction, challenges, new opportunities, career progression, or something else which has nothing to do with money. That's not to say that money isn't important, but it's also not everything. You can probably find someone in your organisation, or even your team, who is unhappy because they don't earn what they think is enough money. The interesting thing is that for each person, 'enough' is relative. It's not subjective, but it is relative. Once people have enough money to pay their bills, their rent/mortgage, and any of their other real expenses without worrying about it, money stops having a motivational effect on them. To that end, money can only be a demotivator, because not having enough is demotivating, but having twice what you need doesn't provide any increase in motivation, work quality, quantity, or creativity.

Therefore, it should be our goal to take as much focus as possible away from money. And there are a few simple steps (though psychologically challenging, especially in a traditional sales organisation) which we can implement to minimise focus on money.

• Pay people fairly -- pay must be egalitarian. People talk. If there's a huge discrepancy between what 2 salespeople make, they'll figure it out. And if they can't figure out why, there will be a sense of unfairness about the pay structure. Therefore, pay structures should be transparent. Employees know which of their coworkers are the best in the team. They know which ones provide the biggest value to the team. And if pay doesn't reflect that, there will be tension in the team. That's not to say that you can quantify exactly what it takes to move from one pay scale to another. Again, management isn't a calculator. But if somebody asks why a coworker is making more than them, you need to be able to tell them. Therefore, it is important to pay people fairly in the organisation, and pay them market rates or better, so they don't think they're being undervalued.
• Don't make pay contingent on performance. Everybody knows they have a job to do. They're paid to do that job. But you don't want them to constantly focus on whether they're going to be paid this month. You want them to focus on the job at hand. If someone isn't performing, there are ways to address that which don't threaten their well-being. If you are at a point where your salespeople's performance doesn't match your expectations, you will both know it.  The less focus you put on the consequences of that discrepancy, the easier it will be to address it constructively. The most important part of underperforming salespeople isn't the fact that they're not hitting their numbers. That's just a fact. The important thing is to figure out why. Is the economy in the wrong place? Are your expectations unrealistic? Are they having trouble at home? Do they need more training? Are they failing to recognise opportunities, or spending time on what are obviously closed doors? Each of these things has a different solution, but without identifying the problem, how can you find it?
• If you want to give bonuses, separate them from feedback. And don't make them dependent on performance. When you tell someone, you're getting 90% of your bonus because of X, Y, and Z, they hear 'You're not getting your full bonus.' They stop listening. And they're less likely to talk to you about things that might affect their bonus negatively than you would like. Give people their full bonus, if they're employed by you at the time of their bonus. If they're not performing, you should be working with them to address the performance problems, separately. If they're on their way out of the company because they don't fit, they know it. Hitting them with a decreased bonus is psychologically equivalent to punishing them, even if you don't intend it to be. The very best you can do with a performance bonus is to meet people's expectations. Giving people more money than they think they deserve won't make them better employees, but giving them less will almost certainly make them worse.

The 3 things mentioned above are difficult for many sales managers, and many managers in general, to accept. Many of them have had years of training that says contingent pay is the way to make things work, and have spent countless hours working in organisations which implement contingent pay. The higher in an organisation one looks, the more likely you are to find these opinions. My thoughts here are simple. If you have trouble believing what I've written, try it. Talk to your employees about what makes them tick. About why they left their previous job, and about what makes them want to get out of bed in the morning. It's a harmless place to start and requires no financial investment. If you find all your employees are motivated by money, then perhaps your organisation can't make use of the information above. But I'm confident you won't actually find that.

*I have a problem with this phrasing. I'll talk about why, later.

Introduction

In an ideal world, everybody would enjoy working. They would do something they love, or they would learn to love what they do. Instead of dreading Monday, people would look forward to it. Instead of struggling through the day, they would look up at the end of the day and wonder where it's gone. This is the world I want to live in. It's the world I live in, now. But not everybody does. And I think I know why.

Let me say, right now, that I find my work fascinating. I get to work with interesting people, interesting problems, and find creative solutions to them, every day. And it's not because of what I do. I work in IT. For a lot of people, that would be enough for their eyes to glaze over before I said another word. And I understand that. It doesn't interest them. But it does interest me. What's more, I chose to work in IT. I was at an excellent university, working toward becoming a computer science major, or a linguistics major, or some other type of major, when I realised that I wasn't all that interested in school. I loved the social activities around school; I loved living in a college town; I loved every aspect of what I was doing, except the bit that was supposed to be my primary reason for being in a college town. My entire life, I had know where I was going to university. But when I got there, I didn't know what to do with myself. So, after a year and a half of trying to want to go to class, and wanting to try harder, I left. I worked in security for a little while, temped for a little while, thought about returning to school, and then, through a friend, found a job that let me turn my hobby, playing with computers, into a profession. It hasn't always been easy, but it's always been what I wanted.

Not everybody is lucky enough to find their passions first thing out of school. My writing, at the moment, will largely be about them.