Las Vegas MyOptic

I received an email from my friend Bryn today in which she said, “I hear from Becka that you’re in the process of writing a book about your experiences here in New Mexico.  Excellent!  Don’t forget the great water cooler episode (just kidding)!!  I can’t wait to read it, and I hope you make a mint…  ”

Bryn, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your giving me permission to tell that story.  Indeed, you may have contributed the primary theme to the book by your courageous openness.  I can’t thank you enough for giving me the kick that got me off that stuck place that we writers sometimes get into.  In other words, your message, in a muse-like kind of way, inspired me.

Let me tell you how by relating the incident you gave me permission to tell to those one or two others who might come across this page.

I don’t remember the exact date, and the date doesn’t matter, but early one morning last year, while she was trying to hoist a new water bottle atop the water cooler at the office, my friend Bryn did a magnificent job of giving me the perfect opportunity to test the merits of the ShamWOW(TM) (whose advertisements and extravagant claims I’d seen on television and to which I’d basically said, yeah, right!)  and, as a result, to come to appreciate what a really useful product it can be, particularly under some rather unique circumstances, and I’ve been a fan ever since, both of the ShamWOW and of Bryn’s creativity teaching me about it.  Again, Bryn, thank you for being so clever.

Now back to what else you’ve given me by allowing me to tell that story.  I realize, in part because of your message, and to a degree because of having read a book called “Learning to Dance in the Rain” that the folks at Duke gave me when the call center closed, anyway I realize that the primary lesson I learned during my year in Las Vegas was to be thankful for what I was given.

Just like the water cooler story, I am grateful for every experience that came my way last year, even though I cursed some of them under my breath, and at times out loud, as I was going through them, I will admit.  But I know that there is always more than one way to tell a story.  And if you choose to look at them through the eyes of gratitude, the story becomes one of triumph and achievement.  I’ve been looking for a way to make clear that the experience there in Las Vegas last year was the success I felt, and continue to feel, it was, and this, it seems to me, is one way to do that.  To see the experience through the eyes of gratitude …

Am I crazy or does that make a crazy kind of sense to you too?

I enjoyed receiving your message today Bryn and I’m grateful that last year gave us the chance to begin our friendship.

Few things give me more pleasure than hearing an old friend’s voice after we’ve been separated for too long.

Tonight I had a chance to talk with an old friend that I hadn’t spoken to in a while.  I was ecstatic to connect with him again, since even though I had called him more than once, I hadn’t been able to leave him a message.  He had called me before too, and he had left a message expressing his sympathy about my recent loss of my ex-wife to cancer, but I hadn’t been able to connect with him directly yet.  Tonight we succeeded.

Though it had been only a couple of months since we had spoken, it was obvious to us both how much we enjoyed and missed talking with each other.

A lot of music is sweet, but there are few refrains sweeter than hearing an old friend say “hello” again after too long an absence.

A young friend of mine in Las Vegas asked me to pray for him today.

He and those he loves are going through an ordeal they shouldn’t have to face, with a young woman who is waging a mighty battle against cancer, a formidable opponent, as my own recent experience has shown me.  The stresses on everyone concerned are immense.  Even though he acknowledged he knew that I didn’t believe in God, he asked me to pray for him.

By IM, I told my him this:

If prayer is holding nothing but  the most positive possible thoughts in your mind and harboring only the fondest wishes for someone in your heart, then you can be assured that I am praying for you with all of my heart.

It is a pain to see a loved one suffer.  Whatever your definition of prayer or your doctrinal beliefs about it, please find it in your heart to make a little room for these friends of mine.  Their names don’t matter.  Caring about them does, and thinking of their plight will benefit you.  The world can never be filled with too much good will and empathy.

My friends, and you know who you are, all of Las Vegas sends you its most positive thoughts and its fondest hopes for the best possible outcome for you all.  And I from my remote perch just far enough over the horizon to see things perfectly clearly (some might even say MyOpticly), I send you my love too.

The Author

What is it with Las Vegas and call centers?

I was surprised to learn from Donna N. that the Results call center has closed "for now," or so says the May 29th edition of The Optic.  This is of course close on the heels of our closing on Uno de Mayo, and only a year or so after The Connection got disconnected.  It seems that Call Center managers, like me, tend to leave this so-called "Wildest town in the Old Wild West" boots first at an alarming frequency.  Three call centers down in the span of three years, for a town this size?  Boy that seems perilously close to being an economic epidemic.  And what’s worse it seems like the mortality rate is 100%.

I’d be interested in your take on this question.  What is it about Las Vegas that accounts for a failure rate that high for businesses of this type?  I may be too close to this situation to actually see the answer clearly, but I’m surely far away enough to ask the question!  I have no ax to grind or hill to defend about the answer.  I’m just curious.  I’m sure someone like Sharon V. must have asked herself that question many times since that falls sort of under her area of concern.

Back in the Tarzan movies of my youth, they used to refer to "the elephant’s burial ground." Remember that? Well, I guess the basic question is whether Las Vegas is the call center burial ground or did the town just have a 3 year run of bad luck?

Feel free to comment below.  And since this is the first time I’ve mentioned commenting, let me explain that your comment will show up only after your first comment has been approved.  Thereafter, there will be no delay in posting any comments you make subsequently.

On a personal note, I lost my ex-wife to cancer on Sunday night. I must leave for her funeral tomorrow at 11. But I put together a tribute to her that I’d like to share with you below before I go.

You know me, even if you don’t know that you know me.

You’ve probably seen me stuffing my face at Wendy’s, Dick’s, Charlie’s Spic and Span, or K-Bobs, maybe even at Kosina de Raphael. I am the old guy with a gray beard and a pot belly who wore jeans and Tennessee paraphernalia and tennis shoes and had a Tennessee tag on his Dodge Intrepid. You know, the one that ran the call center over on 11th street on the NMHU campus.

I am the guy who replaced the original dynamo, Mike T., who came to Vegas and set things up in 2007. Maybe I should avoid last names to protect any who may think of themselves as innocent. Anyway when Mr. T left Las Vegas, I began to try to put up or shut up. For all those years in consulting, I had had the luxury of telling others how to manage people. This year as call center manager gave me a chance to see whether any of that worked and even whether I could put it into practice. But that was another life in another galaxy, far far away, not necessary detail for this initial message to you. It is, however, a part of what I hope to draw conclusions about in my book.

I spent the year, from February 1, 2008 until “Uno de Mayo” (i.e., May 1, 2009) in Las Vegas as a Tennessean in New Mexico. But the moment I pulled my old ass up into the cab of that U-Haul truck to drive back the roughly 1500 miles to Knoxville, I knew in my heart that I was a New Mexican going back to Tennessee … temporarily. If it hadn’t been for the failing health of my ex-wife who lives within a half a day’s drive of Knoxville, I might have stayed in Las Vegas rather than returning to Knoxville. However, perhaps this year will be a blessing since I’ll have the chance to be with her during her final days.

I have decided that I am going to devote the next year, until “Uno de Mayo” 2010, to the task of writing a book that summarizes what I learned, discovered, or began to believe during the last year. I know that a year in your fair city (“The Wildest City in the Old Wild West”) made a significant impact on me, so I now write to you as if I were a local reporter on the culture and zeitgeist of your (and now my) town. I realize I might not know a thing about what is really going on out there, but who needs facts in order to have opinions or even to see transformational visions for that matter.

As I was preparing for my move back to Tennessee, I told Donna Nathan that I had “come to the land of Manaña and caught it.” I suppose a more romantic way of saying it would be that I came to the Land of Enchantment and became enchanted by it. I allowed myself to consider the possibility of actually living there. And what’s more I think I know the exact moment when that happened. Fairly early in my time there but some time after I’d made a trip to Taos over the Fourth of July of 08, someone came up to me in the line at Wendy’s on 7th Street and asked me, “Do you live here?” The question caught me off guard, and I paused for a moment but finally said, “yeah, I guess I do.” He then rewarded me with a softball question, “can you tell me how to get to Mora?” Thanks to my previous trip to Taos (up Hwy 518), I could tell him “sure; follow this road.” When the words, “yeah, I guess I do,” rolled off my tongue, it was at that moment that I planted my heart in this dusty little town in the highlands of New Mexico.

Coming back to the luxury of my condo here in Knoxville has a lot to commend it, but so does driving East about 10 miles out of town on Hwy 104 toward Trujillo on a dark summer night when there is no moon in the sky and no ambient light to drown them out, the spectacular array of stars that are there all the time, but obscured by conditions have a way of humbling you and cleansing you of any sense of self-importance.

There is a lot to be said for elbow room.

Here’s the countdown clock for Uno de Mayo of 2010 as it stood at some point today.

Update the countdown.

This post is the standard first post for a WordPress blog.  So I’ll leave it because I’m just getting this one going.  I’ll create a new login for the Author of this column in a moment so he can get started doing his thing.