Today is my fourth day passing out flyers on the busy pedestrian street of Istiklal.
The rules are a bit relaxed and I'm sure they won't miss me if I'm not not handing out flyers on Istiklal as of 1 pm.
I'm sure it will be just fine if I show up at 2 and tell Ana that I just didn't feel like showing up at 1.
I'm paid by the hour after all, and I keep an accurate log of my comings and goings.
The difference however between this job and others is that I don't feel a need of urgency to get started. I just don't find myself highly motivated and energized by the art of giving disinterested and hurried people things they don't want when they don't want them.
Its the Art of Bothering, and I'm not very good at it.
Only when I'm trying to entertain does it occur to me that bothering might be a good thing: As in the instance of getting people to smile on a particularly dismal day, or asking someone for directions instead of inquiring from my non-existent electronic GPS.
'Design & Attention'
It occured to me that I wasn't a very successful marketer. Thus far, in the past thirty minutes - this could be any block of time that I'm likely to experience throughout the day - it occured to me that I hadn't been able to successfully get one person to take a flyer.
"Am I really this unprofessional?" I asked myself, "Or is it the weather?" another thought suggested.
It turns out that its probably a combination of things.
Then, of course, I put myself into the shoes of a potential client: Would I take a flyer from this bundled up guy who's standing there handing them out?
The answer was no. Why?
I looked at the delivery: Here most people are on a busy street and how many of them actually want English lessons? How many of them need them? How many of them have the time for a three month course? The funds necessary?
Second: The Flyers themselves.
Picture a conservative looking flyer in Red, White and Blue, with a Brithish Union Jack flag in the corner.
Its by all standards well designed to its client's expectations: It delivers information about the services, it gives the address... everything we'd expect.
However, does it possess something that inspires in someone the desire to stop, look it over and actually take in the information?
The answer of course is no. The flyer gives almost too much information.
Further, it negates my presence by making all of the information - minus the costs of course - present in print.
So, there we have it: Delivery and design.
Clearly though, if this were not an effective delivery method, they wouldn't have us doing it right?
Well, it is effective, only insofar as going to the point of chasing people down who are bored or unsuspecting enough to take one of the flyers from us.
'Jem'
He's 28 and he's been doing this job for five years.
He likes grunge music and he especially likes me because I lived in Seattle, the starting place for the grunge rock legend Kurt Kobain.
He makes four liras an hour. That's approximately two dollars and fifty cents an hour... and I cringe at the thought that he insisted on paying for chai the other night.
He works seven hours a day, when its not raining.
He's tall and handsome and has a very friendly demeanor.
He speaks a fair amount of English and he loves 90's grunge rock.
He must be a Jedi Master, for he brings people in the door one after another.
Me, I didn't even manage to bring in one yesterday.
So, today I will surrender. I will quit. I will go to work and say goodbye to the temporary friends and aquaintances I made there, and I will look for something, anything new.
Its not that I don't like work. Ask anybody down in Yazikoy how I handle a 25 kilo bag of olives...
The truth is that I just find value in certain types of work.
I'd honestly rather shovel sand for half the pay for twice as long, than do what I'm doing now.
Its just what it is. I've always been a better mule than anything else.
In this world though, there's plenty of mules, many of them automated now and run by gas and electricity.
So, perhaps my usefulness has its limitations.
Luckily for me though, they still haven't found a cost effective way to deploy anatomically similar droids or cyborgs to do agricultural or building work.
So, it looks like there exists labor after all... in one form or another.
'Values'
I've always been incapable of turning off that part of my brain that looks at something and says, "Whoa, we could do this more efficiently and waste less time and resources."
Such is the case with handing out flyers, or moving boxes, or putting out a fire.
One of my many downfalls is my inability to do things inefficiently, even at the behest of my co-workers or superiors.
And that, may be my downfall...
Thursday, December 16, 2010
Saturday, December 11, 2010
The purposes of publishing & some words on 'Courage'
Its just easier that everyone can see this...
People will often ask me what I did for the last 12 months when I return back to the states... or then again, most of them probably won't.
If they do, then I can tell them that most of the time was spent not doing much of anything: reading, waiting, walking places, talking to people I'll never see again, randomly getting lost just because, informally meeting with people, browsing through markets, ect...
Most of it isn't that exciting.
'Oh, Really!'
Raised eyebrows always follow the hot words like "living in North Iraq" or "going to Mosul", but the truth is that most of it - the experience of it - and most importantly - the experience of the people that live there - is actually mundane and ordinary.
Sure, I lived in Egypt and North Iraq and a myriad of other places in between; but so have many other countless people from the novice like me to the expert in languages and customs. Lets not also forget the millions who were born and live each and everyday of there lives in those places.
The difference between them and me is that I'm trying to get in while they're desperately trying to get out. Some even go as far as to sell their own daughters or organs, if that means a better future for their family or themselves.
'Truth'
Anybody can do any of the unremarkable stuff that I did. In fact, I really didn't do anything. I just got on buses and had a bank account with which to fund my travels.
Just showing up is the biggest part, and I invite anyone who hasn't done it to do it at least once.
The 21st century's advances in technology have made it ridiculously easy as well: It took me a whole ten minutes to surf the internet and find a ticket to Istanbul from Seattle.
Stuff that years ago would have taken phone calls, office visits and hassling trips to the local consulate are now largely bypassed by the use of a debit card and some extra spare time.
'Courage'
I've often been patronized with phrases like "so much courage that you have."
While such comments are well meaning, they often don't do justice to the fact that real courage has nothing to do with getting on a plane and flying to another country.
Any douchebag or coward can get on a plane and fly to another piece of land. That's easy. It takes no courage and in fact might be an indication - in my case at least - of an underlying lack of courage and fear of commitment and patience.
So, that's what I want to emphasize here. I have no courage. I just had a good salary for three years that allowed me to stay abroad for long periods of time without having to return to contracted work/life commitments.
'The Real Courage'
I think courage is when people face the realities and situations before them in life and take them by the balls. It takes lots of courage to commit to something and see it through. It takes lots of courage to have patience, training for years and years, even if you don't see the result of all of your effort. It takes courage to do mundane things day in and day out, because without it, the economy wouldn't operate that allows people like me to travel in the first place. It takes courage to unconditionally love people and be there for them day in and day out. It takes courage to sacrifice personal endeavors in life in order to fulfill those commitments and responsibilities to the other relationships in your life.
That's what courage is.
Its not, and I repeat, not what I've been doing for the past 13 months.
People will often ask me what I did for the last 12 months when I return back to the states... or then again, most of them probably won't.
If they do, then I can tell them that most of the time was spent not doing much of anything: reading, waiting, walking places, talking to people I'll never see again, randomly getting lost just because, informally meeting with people, browsing through markets, ect...
Most of it isn't that exciting.
'Oh, Really!'
Raised eyebrows always follow the hot words like "living in North Iraq" or "going to Mosul", but the truth is that most of it - the experience of it - and most importantly - the experience of the people that live there - is actually mundane and ordinary.
Sure, I lived in Egypt and North Iraq and a myriad of other places in between; but so have many other countless people from the novice like me to the expert in languages and customs. Lets not also forget the millions who were born and live each and everyday of there lives in those places.
The difference between them and me is that I'm trying to get in while they're desperately trying to get out. Some even go as far as to sell their own daughters or organs, if that means a better future for their family or themselves.
'Truth'
Anybody can do any of the unremarkable stuff that I did. In fact, I really didn't do anything. I just got on buses and had a bank account with which to fund my travels.
Just showing up is the biggest part, and I invite anyone who hasn't done it to do it at least once.
The 21st century's advances in technology have made it ridiculously easy as well: It took me a whole ten minutes to surf the internet and find a ticket to Istanbul from Seattle.
Stuff that years ago would have taken phone calls, office visits and hassling trips to the local consulate are now largely bypassed by the use of a debit card and some extra spare time.
'Courage'
I've often been patronized with phrases like "so much courage that you have."
While such comments are well meaning, they often don't do justice to the fact that real courage has nothing to do with getting on a plane and flying to another country.
Any douchebag or coward can get on a plane and fly to another piece of land. That's easy. It takes no courage and in fact might be an indication - in my case at least - of an underlying lack of courage and fear of commitment and patience.
So, that's what I want to emphasize here. I have no courage. I just had a good salary for three years that allowed me to stay abroad for long periods of time without having to return to contracted work/life commitments.
'The Real Courage'
I think courage is when people face the realities and situations before them in life and take them by the balls. It takes lots of courage to commit to something and see it through. It takes lots of courage to have patience, training for years and years, even if you don't see the result of all of your effort. It takes courage to do mundane things day in and day out, because without it, the economy wouldn't operate that allows people like me to travel in the first place. It takes courage to unconditionally love people and be there for them day in and day out. It takes courage to sacrifice personal endeavors in life in order to fulfill those commitments and responsibilities to the other relationships in your life.
That's what courage is.
Its not, and I repeat, not what I've been doing for the past 13 months.
Flyers in Istiklal
Working the streets,
It's decent and I can't complain.
My counterparts only make about $2.50 an hour for the same job, but I get higher pay because I'm... white and European looking?
Until next time,
Logan
Istanbul, TK
I just got a job paying about $5/hour handing out brochures on the busy pedestrian street of Istiklal in the busy Beyoğlu district of Istanbul.
It's decent and I can't complain.
My counterparts only make about $2.50 an hour for the same job, but I get higher pay because I'm... white and European looking?
Regardless, its a job that will finance my stay here in Istanbul until I find the next destination of my unhealthy and commitment-free life.
Thanks to the Gods, or your Gods, or perhaps just thanks to Good Fortune, that I have something to do.
Again, I can't complain. Not when people cross deserts and hostile territory to even have the chance to look for something, anything that will allow them to send bread back to there families.
Until next time,
Logan
Istanbul, TK
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