Over-50

Rational Suicide Enters Mainstream Thinking

From 2004 until late 2008, network television fictional series "Boston Legal" played out what actual human being Sandra Day O'Connor is enduring. That's the loss of a fine legal mind.

More comedy than drama, "Boston Legal" captured the eccentricities of a bunch of winner lawyers in a New England boutique firm.

Each is off in his or her own unique way. That's why even lawyers kept tuning in, despite knowing that the plot twists and turns didn't mirror accurate legal practice. 

The most compelling character had been Denny Crane.

His ego was beyond big.

But with that was a undertow of tragedy. He called his memory lapses his "Mad Cow Disease." Although the disease progressed, he frequently managed to win cases, usually through flamboyant gestures.

However, Crane was aware that he could be slipping totally into the abyss. That's why he asked his best friend at the firm Alan Shore to shoot him if and when he crossed that line.

During the last episode of the series it was obvious that Crane had crossed the line. Devoted fans were spared what the aftermath would be.

That was 10 years ago.

Today, a smart guy like Crane who was also a decent human being wouldn't have asked Shore to do his dirty work. Of course, what Shore would have done would have landed him in legal hot water, perhaps including prison.

Now what is entering the mainstream is the concept of "rational suicide." The subject is especially brought up in what the aging encounter.

At the top of the list of those maladies is the beginning of dementia. While the victims still have the cognitive ability to put together a self-deliverance plan, they can do that. Here is an article on all that in The New York Times section on The New Old Age.

Should the aging want to end their lives but lack the temperament to do it, there is help in other nations. Switzerland is among them.

Last May, 104-year-old scientist David Goodall went there for that purpose. He decided that aging had stolen from him his ability to enjoy life.

In his homeland of Australia, assisted suicide is not yet legal. When it becomes legal in Victoria in June 2019, only those who have six months to live are eligible. Goodall breathed his last listening to Beethoven.

 This blog does not suggest that former SCOTUS justice O'Connor should consider rational suicide. That option does not align with many people's value systems. Hers may be among them.

What this blog post on the agony of progressing dementia does intend to do is this: Raise awareness that even mainstream thinking is looking at suicide as a solution for dementia. The New York Times article explicitly mentions it. 

Last week, a blue-collar delivery man, in his early 60s, and I discussed just that. Several days before, his friend, after being diagnosed with a form of dementia, killed himself with a gun.

No, we didn't form a suicide pact but both committed ourselves to self-deliverance if memories transitioned from expected senior moments to losing major chunks of whatever. Of course, we wouldn't ask each other's help. Friends don't ask friends to kill them.

No, I am not optimistic that the state laws on assisted suicide in the U.S. for non-terminal people will be changed in time to preserve the dignity of members of my baby boomer generation.

On this one, we are on our own. Government won't pitch in and help.

I informed the delivery man I was already saving my pennies for "Suicide Tourism" to Switzerland. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

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Thank You for Not Sending Holiday Greetings

During the past several years, Bob Dilenschneider publishes his reflections on every major public holiday in third-party media.

The next will probably be a placement in establishment media for Thanksgiving. 

One would probably assume that the objective of so much effort is selling his services, at least partly. After all, resources are invested in that outreach. Resources represent a business expense.

However, Dilenschneider is not alone.

Beginning in mid-December, just about everyone I had purchased a car, house, or computer services from will be expressing holiday sentiments to me. Of course, more and more of us dread that glut of good wishes. 

In this over-communicated/media-surplus era, publishing anything is not often in the public interest. Neither are all those emails, phone calls, and texts.

Most of us need a hug rather than one more article on whatever or a message from any medium. In addition, if someone wants my business, rather than simply emailing a copy of a published article, attach a five-buck gift card for coffee and sweet. 

Anyway, in his 2017 reflections on Labor Day, Dilenschneider got a fact wrong. That was saluting America as having the most productive workforce. Actually, in 2017, according to the OECD, the U.S. ranked fifth. Lack of fact-checking does not help the public interest.

Dilenschneider founded public affairs firm The Dilenschneider Group. Given his expertise, the odds are he knows what he is doing in leveraging holiday greetings as possibly a selling platform.

But, my gut, seasoned by coaching sales, raises the question: Has the tactic of holiday greetings become a counterproductive kind of outreach in reaching and bonding with prospects? 

Here is what I know: A growing number of my clients, colleagues, and close friends have the fantasy of fleeing the rat race and taking up residence in a secluded cabin.

The only difference of opinion among them is whether that refuge should be on or off the grid. Those favoring the latter indicate they are willing to search the location for a hotspot to link to the internet. 

In short, America's new signature trait could be mutating from universal gregariousness to the status symbol of being able to be left alone. That could be the emerging meme in advertising: You can and will be left alone.

More of us who can't pull the plug on an over-communicated society, at least not yet, are making it our business to stock the moat with alligators and pull down the drawbridge. The technology of gmail, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter assists in that.

Often the epiphany comes that the more folks we block, unfriend, and delete the less bleak our little lives seem. Believe me, those wanting to purchase our services or products have no trouble finding us. And, aside from a few stimulating colleagues and caring friends, those are the only other humans I want to hear from. The film "Alpha" killed it because it created a sci-fi explanation of how wolves evolved into man's best friend. 

This holiday season, please remove my name from the emails, phone lists, and texts. I will be off the grid in a cottage near Lake Erie. Two two-legged friends and one four-legged one will help me snatch pure joy from the meaning of Christ's birth and the start of a new year.

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

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The Robots May or May Not Be Coming (dirty little secret is that no one knows)

Feminist Gloria Steinem noticed something.

That was that thinking in America tended to be binary. There were a right answer and a wrong answer.

In her book "My Life on the Road" she patiently explained that what the model missed was the existence of uncertainty. Most of the time, we plum don't know.

And that's exactly what Recode hammers about the number of jobs which will be lost by Artificial Intelligence (AI). No one knows.

Of course, there are many with estimates about that number. Citibank and the University of Oxford state that 57% of jobs in the OECD, are at risk. The OECD puts it at 14%.

The reasons we don't know, Recode points out, include:

Not all AI invented will be applied. Just because it's there doesn't mean the business community will incorporate it into operations.

Jobs in the future, just as now, will be configured as a mix of human and tech. Just consider the surge of online purchasing. However, each of those automated sites is backed up by humans at call centers managing everything from questions to botched orders. In southwestern Arizona I was a consultant to one such center serving a home-improvement brand.

There are limits on what we know. Put it this way: No human being and no machine can predict the future. Also, psychics have also been wrong because human beings can change the future they foresee. 

The demand for absolute certainty is what has made supposed expert opinion increasingly laughable. However, tragically, the joke is on those who make professional decisions based on those projections positioned and packaged with such seeming authority. 

Way back in the 20th century, when tech meant the wonderment of the Selectric typewriter, the numbers forecasted growth in demand for college humanities professors. Funding, such as the NDEA IV grants, was created.

I was among those awarded one to study for a Ph.D. in literature and linguistics. By time we - The Lost Generation of Intended College Professors - were completing our dissertations, the market, instead of growing, had collapsed. 

It took many of us about five years to retool for other career paths. Employers to whom we applied for non-academic jobs smirked. Some explicitly told us we were losers to have invested our youth in studying all that. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

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The Northeast - Yes, You Can Finally Flee the Scene and Still Have a Wonderful Career

" … getting the hell out of the Northeast" is part of the headline for Moneyish. Here is that article. 

Once the go-to place for a career, the Northeast is becoming a tarnished brand.

It's not unthinkable that BigLaw firms will have to shut down their headquarters there and establish a presence where folks are migrating. Those locations range from Texas to Florida.

United Van Lines found that the three Northeast states losing the most population are New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. 

As Catey Hill points out in the Moneyish article, there are three reasons for that:

Cost. To make ends meet for a growing number of people entails going into debt. So, common sense dictates that to exit debt means fleeing that scene.

For example, even a modest lifestyle in CT requires property taxes of about $21,000  on a house in Trumbull, ongoing property taxes on automobiles (a real ouch on newer cars), high car insurance, big nut to pony up for the commuter ticket to Manhattan on Metro North, and possible five-figure annual tuition for private schools. 

Horrendous Weather. The winters have been becoming colder - and with more snow. During one of the polar vortexes, it was tough to land a spot in the WalMart parking lot in New Haven, CT. What took most of the space were the several-foot piles of snow. In addition, just like parts of the southeast coastal areas, New Jersey has been hit over and over again with hurricanes such as Sandy. If climate change exists, there will be more of those.

Jobs Being Shipped to Lower-Cost Locations. Yes, the world of business is getting smaller, thanks to digital. Business owners and developers of startups have run the numbers. They get it that they can significantly lower the cost of doing business by heading west on I-95. That means the good jobs go with them.

For example, about 400 miles from New York is Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. It is evolving into a hub for tech. Although that is inching up the price of housing, overall that metro area remains affordable. 

In April 2014, after decades of operating several enterprises in the New York Metro area, I headed to the southwest. Do the math:

• Rent was one-half what I had paid in Central CT (not even part of the Gold Coast)
• No property tax on my relatively new car
• Car insurance was one-half
• Gasoline was a few bucks less a gallon
• Hair styling and coloring were one-third
• Only one-tenth the car washes needed (without snow no worries about getting rid of the salt on the undercarriage)
• Dental procedures were one-third through dental tourism to Northern Mexico
• Vet bills were about half (with no upselling).

In the 27 months I bunked there I paid off the car loan and credit card balances. Because there were so many jobs I picked up three part-time ones to learn the technology such as CRM "on the company." I even socked away enough to begin investing again. 

Business demanded I parachute into Eastern Ohio in September 2016. There, surprise surprise, the cost of living is even less than that of the southeast. 

Meanwhile a client who is a lawyer in CT has to put semi-retirement on-hold. Once GE announced it was pulling up roots in Fairfield, CT for Boston, houses in his suburb stopped selling, at least at the price he needs to cash out. He is dreading his energy bill this coming winter. He has a hunch it won't be his last in the northeast.

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

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"They" Really Did Cast Spells - From Polio Epidemics to Funding Retirement

There was no online WebMD.

As yet, the masses hadn't begun to become college-educated. So they were unable to think in a scientific manner about the causes of diseases. That was very different from the current analysis of acute flaccid myelitis - AFM - in Scientific American. 

Everywhere, from the elite boarding school the late newspaper editor Ben Bradlee attended to the hood where I grew up, the severe after effects of polio were obvious.

So, no surprise, superstition ran wild among parents in the 1940s and 1950s, concerned their children would develop polio. 

The brand of voodoo had been primitive. It reconfigured summertime, when most cases seemed to develop,  from funtime to a spreading list of restrictions. 

Don't go into a public pool, and you will be safe. Eventually not many public pools opened in those brutal summers before air-conditioning became standard. In the hood the "they" turned on the hydrants.

Stay indoors from noon to three P.M. when the heat was the worst.

Don't run. 

Despite those precautions, when school reopened there would be tales of classmates who had "caught" polio. Most we would never see again. They were "being treated." In St. Boniface Roman Catholic parish school in downtown Jersey City, New Jersey, for a few weeks the nuns would lead us in prayer. Then that would be that. 

Those who did return to the classroom, usually with a limp or even mobility contraptions, became grassroots celebrities. For those of us who craved attention, polio seemed a blessing. We hoped that we might become lucky next summer and also become stars.

Then one day we were told to go to the nurse's office for the Salk vaccine.

The collective consciousness shifted to how we would prepare to get into and succeed in college.

That was a whole different type of angst, but also permeated with superstition. Few of our parents had gone to college. The terror was more horrific than that which hung over the polio epidemics. 

The next rounds of voodoo for baby boomers were all the guidance inflicted on us about our white-collar careers by a new industry: the advice experts. Do this. Never do that. 

For most of us those spells cast in our youth and middle age have only be broken by the wild professional ride we have been on in a global economy driven by digital.

Any of us who didn't get it that we have to think for ourselves - and in a harsh capitalistic way - aren't working any more. Not working, just like polio, can be crippling. In America, the headquarters for capitalism, we are what we do to earn income. I actually tell off anyone who mandates I comply with the standard tribal beliefs about success and failure. 

The journey from the 1940s and 1950s to the 21st century could have been fun. But, as during the polio epidemics, that had been snatched away, at least for those who passively accepted what the self-appointed witch doctors were foisting on a new generation.

Reflection: Currently the witch doctors take the form of financial services pros who warn us that anything less than $5 million socked away for the days of semi-retirement or retirement will render us homeless.

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

We Baby Boomers Have Been Through This Before

The Internet has failed to live up to the early promise that it would create a level playing field in just about everything.

Instead, the Barbarians are at gate.

That everything the internet was suppose to usher in ranged from universal access to media attention to being able to succeed in business without a huge budget or even a gold-plated network. 

Like the leaders of the emerging counterculture in the late 1960s, the front lines of the internet - the Netizens - were positioned and packaged as spiritually, socially, and intellectually evolved. 

And, the obstacles of class, gender, language, and geography in connecting with other human beings would no longer exist. 

Little of that has come to pass.

In Vanity Fair, Maya Kosoff documents the failure.

Sure, all voices can be heard. But the loudest ones on the internet tend to promote hate or seek to confuse.

Businesses using supposedly low-cost Facebook advertising are now suing Facebook for allegedly inflating, up to 900%, the user metrics associated with video. The higher the metrics, the more Facebook billed. And, how many lawyers have been badly burned by web con artists? 

As in Orwell's  "Animal Farm," many of the Netizens considered themselves more equal that other Netizens.

Some of those more equal than others seem to have the darkness and myopia of human nature of William Shakespeare's classic characters like King Lear. 

Yeah, as the counterculture movement hardened it seemed to mutate into propaganda endorsing sex-on-demand, drug-taking, cult thinking, violence, and throwing away a career. 

The impediments to connecting seem to be increasing, not melting away like the Wicked Witch in "The Wizard of Oz."

Who hasn't been flamed on the internet because they were different from those who had figured out how to attract, hold, and grow followers?

The gang of earnest freelancers at Mediabistro.com put me under attack for two days.

The fans of Gawker explicitly tormented me for about four years. Included were weekly executions in which the decision would be made if I would be granted clemency. 

Unfortunately, being on the internet, both web and mobile, is a necessary evil. The snail mail mode of developing business is dead. Attending conferences in-person to network and job hunt has become too expensive at this time of stagnant wages and fees.

Yes, google has become the resume for individuals. That's what Richard Bolles hammers in the 2019 edition of "What Color Is Your Parachute?"

Google also has become the homepage for businesses. It overrides websites. And in his book "The Four," Scott Galloway predicts it will eliminate the concept of branding. Instead of sticking with brand choice Planet Fitness when we move to Ohio, we know to key in on google "fitness centers - Eastern OH." A lower-cost fit might pop up on the first page of google. 

Here's an analogy to the wonderous potential of the internet: baby boomers' access to a college education.

That seemed like the exit from being regulated to low-status, low-earning work.

Then, soon enough, it became obvious that not all school credentials were equal. That is exactly what the current trial "Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard" is about.

The stink that stuck on our realization that the game was still rigged hasn't diminished. But, we tell our grandchildren that they must go to college - and beyond in higher education. 

Likewise, we are locked into the internet. 

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

Wire Up! Pushing Back on Financial Services Players Who Are Using "Boo Marketing"

We received a 2.8% boost in our Social Security monthly payment, beginning in 2019.

Medicare only went up $1.50 a month.

At my apartment complex I get 25 bucks off a month because I am a senior.

At Regal Cinema I got to see "A Star Is Born" for peanuts.

Despite the gyrations in the stock market, my investment portfolio is holding up.

The concept of "rational suicide" is catching on. My friends and I candidly discuss how we will off ourselves if we find that we are sliding into dementia. 

And two out of my three businesses have caught fire. When in southwestern Arizona, I was able to pick up three part-time jobs to learn technology "on the company."

Probably no aging population in human history has had it better than my generation of those over-60.

Yet, the financial services types have become downright compulsive in figuring out new and better ways to scare us about tomorrow. I call it "Boo Marketing."

For instance, in MarketWatch, Paul Brandus headlines that "seniors are in trouble." Here is the article.

Essentially his message is that the future is uncertain. Smirk smirk. When was the future not uncertain?

So many in the financial services box trot out that Social Security could be cut back about 21% when I am 89. Mmnnnn. Should I really be in total angst about that now? Let me enjoy the Young Old Age.

For the now, my lifestyle is not only good. From my government entitlements, self-employment, and a side hustle working for someone else here and there I can even continue saving.

Watching my pennies has been fun, rather than emotionally and socially degrading. This month I knocked down my VISA credit card bill by $250 simply by shopping more wisely for groceries. 

The time is overdue for a regulatory agency or Congressional committee to ban the scary commercial messaging that the financial services folks are using. Boo Marketing has to be stopped.

Any individual financial planner or any financial services firm engaging in it should be fined $100,000 for each incident.

If government doesn't do its part on this one then on a grassroots level, we aging must create a version of Nader's Raiders from the late 1960s. Yeah, trap and catch the miscreants. You bet, wire up, fellow seniors.  

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

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It Isn't You - In 42 States in America Cost Of Living Higher than Media Income

It's official. 

GoBankRates documented that most of us can't afford to live where we are living.

In 42 states, it found, the cost of living was higher than the median income.

The two major reasons for that were stagnant wages and rising housing costs. Regarding the latter, as every renter has noticed, leasing isn't cheap any more. Landlord Nation can jack up the teaser first-year rate at lease renewal time.  Here are more details from the Daily Mail. 

So, no surprise, becoming an expat is increasingly attractive.

And not just to retirees.

Members of younger generations who can operate their own businesses in a foreign country or receive a work permit have also been researching leaving the U.S.

For some, though, this is nothing new.

Mexico, for example, has long been a magnet for those who wanted to live cheaply and flee the extreme success ethos of the U.S. The healthcare system, including dental, is high quality and low cost. Also, there are detailed reports of crime locations to avoid. 

When I was living in southern Arizona, I crossed the border to Mexico often for dental procedures (dental tourism). The fee for service was about one-third what it would have cost me, even with dental insurance, in the U.S. The waiting rooms were packed with American families. The staff spoke fluent English.

In addition, I discovered that there are thriving communities of diverse kinds of expats in Mexico. Just about anyone can find a group whose members are simpatico. 

Other low-cost locations becoming popular are Ecuador, Belize, Costa Rica, the Philippines, and parts of southern Europe.

International Living is a good source to begin researching migrating from the U.S.

The next step would be to use vacation time-off to visit in-person. That's essential. Clients of mine in their late 50s are making those visits at least annually. 

The film "The Best Marigold Hotel" plays out the horror which can happen when the relocation is done, site-unseen. 

Full Disclosure: I have been researching becoming an expat for six years. The number-one choice has shifted from Ecuador to Mexico. Spain, where I had lived and worked in my 20s, has become relatively expensive.

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

No, Baby Boomers, Words Aren't Dead

Initially, "LLE ONE, et al. v. Facebook" had been filed in U.S. District Court in Northern California in 2015.

On Tuesday, plaintiffs Crowd Siren, an ad firm, and Jonathan Murdough, who had purchased video ads, amended the complaint based on what they had learned during discovery. They are seeking damages and class action status.  Here is the coverage from the LA Times.

At the heart of the lawsuit is the allegation that Facebook misrepresented the amount of time users were spending viewing a video on the social platform. Originally it was believed that that figures were inflated 60% to 80%. The longer the user was supposedly viewing the video the more Facebook could charge advertisers.

Funny business was allegedly going on such as not counting in any video on which the user spent little time. 

Now, the plaintiffs contend the misrepresentation ranged from 150% to 900%. During that time period Facebook was telling advertisers to "pivot to video." Many advertisers did just that. As a result, many jobs were lost in textual communications. Now Facebook has backed off pushing the "pivot to video." 

Overall, in the communications industry, we content providers were hammered with the same message: Everything was going video. That shift didn't happen.

Sure, there is more video currently than there had been before. But there is also growing demand for textual material such as white papers, reports, print books, e-books, long-form articles, blogs, manuals, resumes, and cover letters. To get, hold, and grow attention, all organizations have to put more and more material out there. 

Question: What will it take for Facebook to regain its credibility? Alleged fraud aside, does it really know what engages? My hunch is that it won't be able to shake the stink.

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com

 

The Most Hardening Experience in Business

Among the most soul-wrenching experiences in professional services is this: Pulling out all stops to serve the client and then getting stiffed.

That could happen to law firms representing bankrupt coal companies Westmoreland, Mission Coal, and Tonawanda Coke.

As Brian Baxter reports in Law.com, as yet, those have not paid $2.1 million in legal fees to law firms Holland & Hart and Davis Graham. 

Among business people it is well known that litigation is a wild card. That's one of the reasons most lawsuits are settled before they reach a courtroom.

What those same businesspeople might not realize, though, is that the whole business of practicing law is, in itself, a wild card. Lawyers get stiffed just like many of the rest of us in professional services. They put in the all-nighters and then stare in to the abyss when those clients they worked so hard for don't pay.

That emotional blow can be worse than the one to the pocketbook. I know.

About 17 months ago, I was a contractor to Rodney Burrell's BMG in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Burrell's client was Romeo Spino's Stratas Corporation, Virginia Beach, Virginia. Here is the story. The experience of having to go through a collection agency for payment truly does seem to produce the unique form of PTSD. 

If I were teaching a course in Business 101, the first lesson module would contain:

• Be prepared to be stiffed
• Options for payment, including small claims court, department of labor, collection agencies, and litigation
• Strategies to prevent non-payment. 

Reflection: Not being paid for work well done is a brutal rite of passage in professional services.

Attention is the currency of the 21^st century. Jane Genova helps you get it for products, services, points of view, causes, branding, careers after-50, and college admission.

In addition, this blog welcomes sponsored content.

Free consultation janegenova374@gmail.com