Category: work

Quietude

by Bart Leahy, posted in careers, Personal, Politics, work, Writing

This has been a tumultuous year. In fact, there’s been so much going on, I haven’t had a lot of time to think through all that’s happened or how I feel about it. This post is that attempt.

Sobriety
Much to my surprise, I’ve now gone 1,400+ days without alcohol. That lack of depressant and inhibition eliminator has done a lot to help my emotions level off. No massive euphoria, no crushing depression. Still possibly the best choice I’ve made for myself in my 50s.

Creativity
Somewhere along the line, I Iost my creative voice. I wrote my last bit of short fiction a year ago, my last novel three years ago. Now that could be a side-effect of my not wanting to share my political views because there are too many people willing to engage in mob violence for any reason. It also might be the result of being sober. Alcohol fueled my emotional imbalances, and fiction was my primary coping mechanism (when I wasn’t drinking…or sometimes when I was). I’ve had to find other methods for dealing with what bothers me, and fiction has no longer been that outlet. While I do miss writing fiction for fun, a whole bunch of inhibitions creep up and stop me. My younger self might’ve been a drunk, but he was at least fearless about expressing himself in story form.

Employment
I started the year earning my living from two freelance contracts. In January, I was told the contract that had been my primary source of income for eight years was coming to an end. I started looking for work I could acquire quickly and turned to my network in Huntsville. That resulted in a short but lucrative space contract that caused my other customer to ask me cease employment with them as they saw that as a conflict of interest even if the work did not overlap with their part of the space business at all. Fine.

After the temporary space contract ended, for the first time in ten years, I accepted full-time work as an employee rather than a contractor. This was mostly the result of laziness–I didn’t want to spend a lot of time constantly looking for the next gig–and partly opportunity (i.e., a former freelancing customer asked if he could hire me outright rather than just take me on as a consultant). Not going to lie: that’s been pretty remarkable…the steady income and savings on healthcare costs alone make the change worth it.

And for the first time in ten years, I have only ONE paying job and ONE volunteer commitment. I’m going to go wild with all the free time, you betcha.

Living Situation
In addition to getting engaged and married (first time for everything, even in your mid-50s), I moved into a single-family house instead of an apartment or condo. The back yard has a fence to contain a couple of dogs–something else I’ve never lived with before.

Finances
The sale of my previous home allowed me to pay off my credit card debt for the first time in seven years. That’s been pretty magical.

Attitudes Toward My Livelihood
I don’t blog about technical writing at the moment. I decreased my posts from twice a week in 2021 to once a week in 2022 to once a month in 2023 to…no more after August 31. Part of that reduction was a side effect of not having enough time. Part of it is laziness. That’s a LOT of writing! Plus, as with my creative writing, I was running out of things to say. I’ve dispensed most of the wisdom I think I have to share (you can always buy the book if you want the highlights).

As for the industry I work in, I learned early on not to overshare what’s going on with my employer or customers. I would say that a recent talk by former NASA Administrator Mike Griffin made a big impression on me. I think he’s right about this: NASA is a national security program run under civilian auspices. We do big things in space to show others that we’re better than them in some technological/economic sense. That hasn’t changed much since the agency was formed, we just don’t talk about it much. Which is to say we still need NASA and still need them capable of building huge, audacious space projects (like SLS).

Education
For a while, I kept toying with getting another academic credential of some kind to make myself more marketable (and keep myself employed/fed). The ideas varied over the years, from engineering to instructional design to a Ph.D. in technical writing. Now I have to face the hard fact that it would take me a lot longer to finish another degree…and I’m 11 years from the current-standard retirement age (go ahead and do the math, I’ll wait). Plus, I’m pretty confident that my work history, experience, and self-discipline can now keep me employed more than a flashy degree. Does my ego require me to be called Doctor Leahy? Not really.

Travel & Reading
With my trusty wife at my side, I’ve been taking direct action on buying and reading the books I’ve wanted to read and traveling where I wanted to travel. Those are my primary intellectual pursuits now, and they suffice. I’ve got plenty filling my brain at the moment–still learning the new job as well as how to be a good husband and dog father.

That enough for one year? I think so.

Impressions from AIAA Space 2018, Part 3

by Bart Leahy, posted in better future, careers, Personal, space exploration, Technology, work

This is my third of three summaries of what I observed at the AIAA Space 2018 Forum (the other posts can be found here and here). This isn’t necessarily the last posting on this conference…I might write later about my overall impressions of the space business in a separate entry in a week or two. However, these entries are long enough (this entry runs over 3,300 words, my apologies), so let’s get to it. Continue reading “Impressions from AIAA Space 2018, Part 3” →

Impressions from AIAA Space 2018, Part 1

by Bart Leahy, posted in better future, careers, Personal, space exploration, Technology, work

It’s been around 10 years since I last attended a conference for the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the professional association for aerospace engineers. I attended the AIAA Space 2018 Forum this week, and it felt like a different experience from when I was a NASA contractor 2006-2012. I also wasn’t attending as a reporter or for a job, just Bart Leahy, AIAA Member and interested space geek. Part of that could be my age, part of it was a reflection of what’s happening in the space business now. Exciting times to be in the business or just observing it as an interested member of the public. What follows are some of my notes from the various sessions for your reference. Continue reading “Impressions from AIAA Space 2018, Part 1” →

The Abundance Mentality and Helping Others

by Bart Leahy, posted in careers, Personal, space exploration, work

My professional blog, Heroic Technical Writing, is a public education service. My goal was and is to honestly help people seeking advice about the business of technical writing. I’m not interested in putting up a pay wall, though I might write a book at some point. That’s about as far as my selfishness goes here.

Most of the time, I write blogs for a generalized technical writing community of students and professionals who check out my writing from all over the world. Every month or two, a reader contacts me directly asking for specific advice about their particular situation. What’s amusing to me is that a lot of the people who contact me directly all have the same intention: they want my job!

I understand that passion–I had it for years and it took me nearly 25 years to finally achieve it, so I appreciate that people think I have some magic formula for helping them reach the same destination.

Irony

There are a couple of ironic twists to the advice I release out into the world like a kid blowing soap bubbles in the park. The first amusing part is that I no longer earn my living as a space writer, and haven’t since I was downsized out of my full-time job (through no fault of mine or my employer’s, I hasten to add) in 2013. I do some space work, but that’s not my primary source of income. The other thing that amuses me is that as I offer advice or even suggest points of contact, it occurs to me that I am creating a cadre of potential competitors for future work.

I still offer the help. Part of it is because I genuinely want to help. Also, I suppose I’m confident enough in my abilities that I feel I could get specific work if I pursued it (I’m on a contract right now, so there hasn’t been a big rush). And the last reason why I keep helping is that I’m trying to develop what some folks call an “abundance mentality,” as opposed to a scarcity mentality.

Scarcity vs. abundance 

A person with a scarcity mentality sees the world as a zero-sum game: if I get a job, someone else will not get it. Or they think, as I suggested above, that helping others get a job in my field creates my pool of competitors and reduces my chances. There are, in fact, only so many full-time “space writers” out there–and I know or have met many of the best in the business. Surely I can’t afford to flood the market with proteges who might take the food out of my rice bowl! The scarcity mindset says, “I need to protect what’s mine!”

That’s one perspective. The abundance mindset, however, says that people can create their own jobs and careers. People thinking this way believe that the economic pie can and will continue to expand and that people can create their own special niches as the professional ecosystem diversifies and grows. The abundance mindset says, “There will always be more opportunity!”

And space is an expanding field (no pun intended). It isn’t just NASA or the Defense Department anymore. There is now a small but steadily growing entrepreneurial sector with companies starting to compete not just for launch vehicles but also satellites, space stations, asteroid-mining equipment, and other types of hardware. The sooner those private-sector companies reach and expand their respective customer bases, the sooner we’ll see additional start-ups to support the markets that the primary space companies create. And as the space market expands, there will also be more opportunities for government to settle in along the edges, should you wish to work in the civil service.

Thinking differently about your path

The point being, to be a writer in the space industry, you don’t have to be working directly for NASA or one of its contractors, though that’s still a good option when the jobs are available. Likewise, if you’re not a space enthusiast but care deeply about animals, hunger, or nuclear power, there are alternative ways to support those causes that don’t require you to be right on the front lines. I also know people whose actual job descriptions are nowhere close to scientist or engineer, but because they work at NASA, they take immense pride in “doing their part” for the space program.

No one needs to follow the exact path I did to get a job as a space writer–in fact, I highly recommend that you don’t: chose an easier route! However, there are many ways to serve a cause that you believe in, and having an abundance mentality allows you to be open to multiple possibilities and multiple ways of reaching your preferred destination. And you might find something along the way toward your goal that you like even better.

So if you are a seeker of advice, fear not: I will continue to give whatever wisdom I can offer. If you manage to get the same type of job I have, fantastic! Space is a difficult business and it could use all the good communicators it can find. Just remember to say thank you if I helped and to pay it forward if you get to a point where you’re able to help others. Think abundantly!

Eating My Salad Upside Down and Other Reflections on Adulthood

by Bart Leahy, posted in Personal, work

Sometime in the last year I decided to start making my salads upside down.

Some of you might get this immediately, especially if you’re not a huge fan of lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula, or any of those other leafy greens that always seem to form the base of any salad you’ve seen. That bed of green stuff is covered with cucumbers or tomatoes or something mildly interesting, and then those items are garnished with cheese, olives, peppers, and things that actually stimulate your taste buds.

I frickin’ hate salad because eventually, once I get through the interesting stuff on top, I’m left with lettuce. And like I said, I’m not a fan.

So earlier this year, being the only grownup in my home, I made the unilateral decision to put the interesting stuff into the salad bowl first: cheese, peppers, olives, marinated artichokes, what have you. Then the tomatoes go in, then cucumbers and, occasionally, the stupid lettuce. No, it won’t win any aesthetic or culinary awards, but it’s finally in a form I don’t mind eating because the good stuff comes at the end.

I work and pay my bills this way, too, so I guess that’s where it started. I try to do the big, ugly, un-fun projects (editing or re-editing large documents, for example) first so I can savor the time doing things that I enjoy, like creative copy or maybe even fiction. I pay the big, scary bills (rent, credit card, utilities, car payment) before I set aside money to go out later in the week.

The logic to this approach, is that I need to do the boring, unglamorous stuff first so I have something to look forward to at the end of it. Consume all that interesting stuff up front and you’re left with a long, hard slog afterward.

Next step: eating ice cream sundaes upside down. Anyone with me?