All posts by Micheal Hickerson

About Micheal Hickerson

Micheal is a writer and website manager who lives in Greater Cincinnati.

Vintage eyeglasses

Seeing the Person, Not Just the Money

Identity and Vocation, Missing Our Significance – and Others', , ,

In my first job after college, I wrote grant applications for a major orchestra. This work required me to stay knowledgeable about local philanthropy, so I once attended a panel discussion featuring several of the city’s leading donors, discussing their priorities for giving and their preferences for how to be approached for a gift. The room was filled with other grant writers, major gift officers, development directors, and others, waiting to discover how to tap into all that wealth.

Most of the panelists were in their fifties or sixties; their giving came after a successful career provided them with the means to give. One donor, however, was only a few years older than I was. The scion of an old and wealthy family, she had inherited millions in her early twenties, upon the unexpected death of her parents. While she spoke strongly about causes she supported, what jumped out most to me was her frustration with fundraisers who hadn’t done their homework, approaching her for gifts to organizations she would never support, ignoring the clear guidelines of her family’s foundation, and, worst of all, confusing her family with another local dynasty with a similar name:

“They don’t even know who I am!”

At the time, her comments struck me as incredibly arrogant. I couldn’t relate to her at all. I was on the opposite end of the ask, trying to get her to write a large check so that I could justify my low-paying, barely-making-ends-meet job, while she (I imagined) lived a carefree Scrooge McDuck-style life. She was right. I couldn’t care less who she was: I just wanted her money. Continue reading Seeing the Person, Not Just the Money →

Red Vineyards Near Arles by Vincent Van Gogh

Should We Consider Our Work a Form of Personal Expression?

Image and Call in Daily Life, Work and Vocation, , , ,

With the release of the movie Ender’s Game, many people have been asking whether the political and religious views of the book’s author, Orson Scott Card, should affect their opinion of the movie. Though I have not been following the debate closely, I understand that some people even called for a boycott of the film (which, evidently, was not successful). On the geek culture podcast The Incomparable, host Jason Snell used the occasion to speak more broadly about authors whose views, personality, or later writing caused him and his fellow panelists to reject their earlier, classic work. The podcast – entitled “I Assume Everyone Is Awful” – is quite good, and I recommend listening to it. They cover many of the same authors that I’ve given up on or struggled with myself.[1]

Throughout the podcast, though, I kept wondering about an assumption at the heart of the conversation. Would it have made sense for them to be discussing, say, accountants and plumbers in the same way? Even staying within the work of writing, should we care about the political or religious views of technology writers? Since the Romantics, art[2] has been regarded differently than other kind of work. Art has been considered to be a form of personal expression different in quality than other forms of work, and the artist has been considered the kind of person whose expressions matter more than other persons.

I’m not convinced that art should be considered as a different category of work, which led me to wonder:

Should our work be considered a form of personal expression?

There are at least three valid answers to this question. Continue reading Should We Consider Our Work a Form of Personal Expression? →

A display of masks

What Roles Do You Play at Work?

Challenges and Frustrations, Image and Call in Daily Life, ,

Last week, I wrote about the how the roles we play at work can influence our self-identity, focusing on a couple of “bad guy” roles like the one played by Wreck-It Ralph. But that’s not the only role that can have a negative influence on our self-image.

Roles We Play

The Drone: Doing the same thing, over and over, day after day, can drain you of energy and creativity, especially when you have little control over the details of your work. Your mental and physical exhaustion can spill over into the rest of your life, and your attitude can become one of simply enduring the time you have left. Once, while working a particular difficult and tedious one summer in college, I kept myself entertained – if you can call it that – by mentally calculating how much money I was making every minute I worked and keeping a running tab on my pay. Maybe that’s fine for a summer job, but what happens when you’ve been doing that for years?

The Doormat: Like the Drone, the Doormat has little power over his work – at least, any power to say “no” about any part of his work. When any conflict arises, the Doormat expects to simply roll over and allow the other side to win. It might be the boss, customers, coworkers, clients – it doesn’t really matter. If the Doormat has any opinions, he’s expected to keep them to himself and say “yes” to whatever is being proposed. Continue reading What Roles Do You Play at Work? →