Upon discovering this month’s NaBloPoMo theme, I gathered a few of my favorite quotes, song lyrics and popular phrases for inspiration.
“If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.” – General Eric Shinseki
Is that a great quote or what? It is very meaningful to me personally on a couple of points.
First, in my accidental career. I took a job as a typesetter right around the time that the printing industry was almost done switching over from hot type to cold type. If you didn’t make the effort to learn how to use the computerized cold type machines, you were in danger of becoming irrelevant. If you did, the old-timers still didn’t think you were a “real” typesetter. Better a fake typesetter than an irrelevant one.
Ten years later, we did it again, only this time the move was from dedicated typesetting computers to Apple Macintosh computers. Once again, change happened, and my company and I did not become irrelevant. If my blog lens was working properly, I’d be able to say that I’m typing this on my Mac iBook. But it wasn’t, so I’ll just have to miss out on that segue.
Truthfully, my prepress production company, and I personally, have been lucky to make it relatively unscathed through the last few change/irrelevance cycles in our industry. They seem to be coming more quickly now, but thankfully, we’re not irrelevant yet!
Back to the quote. It’s a quote from a Japanese-American from Hawaii. I can totally relate to that, because I am one, too.
Now I don’t really consider myself an Asian-American blogger. I do sometimes write about experiences where my ethnicity was a factor in some way, or more often, about traditions which are specific to my heritage. And I am often heard to say “Don’t belittle my people, you f*****” a la “South Park” upon hearing bad Asian jokes. But most of what I write isn’t about the “Asian-American experience,” whatever that is.
However. Despite that fact, and the fact that I still have lingering doubts about Barack Obama, I am more than a little bit pleased to see two Asian-Americans – General Shinseki as Secretary of Veteran Affairs and Nobel prize winner Dr. Steven Chu as Energy Secretary – named to positions in his administration.
I wonder though, if in my lifetime I will ever see an Asian-American elected to our highest office?