I’m Dan Oshinsky, and I run Inbox Collective, an email consultancy. I'm here to share what I've learned about doing great work and building amazing teams.
I just finished giving a presentation to my Spanish class. It wasn’t anything fancy; five or seven minutes of blabbering in Spanish about Peruvian poet Cesar Vallejo. That wasn’t the strange part.
No, the part that scared me — literally, to the point where I probably botched more multisyllabic Spanish words than usual — came halfway through my presentation, when I realized that everyone in the class was looking at me.
To another generation, this might not seems strange. I was standing up in front of a class of 15 or so in a small room, talking loudly. You’d probably expect that anyone who’d bother to show up for that kind of class would be paying attention.
But I wasn’t expecting that at all.
In fact, I’d completely forgotten that occasionally, speakers receive the attention of those they’re speaking to. See, most of my presentations have been to journalism classes. And journalism students aren’t like normal human beings. No, journalism students are preternaturally distractible, and even more so now that wireless internet is omnipresent on college campuses. We journalism students sit behind our laptops, Facebooking and Googling, occasionally about the topic at hand but usually not. Just this morning, I sat in the back of the room during a two hour lecture just to watch the rest of the class log onto Twitter and complain to other students about the lecture they weren’t listening to. (Naturally, I grew bored of watching other people complain, so logged on to Twitter and did the exact same thing.)
It’s been a while since I’d actually talked to a group of students who weren’t trying to decide what was more interesting: me, or TMZ. So when I realized in Spanish class that people were looking at me, I started to sweat. I thought that something was visibly wrong with me. Maybe my fly was unzipped. Maybe my hair had blown askew in the wind. Maybe I had blacked out and accidentally started speaking Cantonese.
I kept going, through the presentation, trying not to make any obvious motions toward the hair or groin. I knew something was wrong; I just didn’t know what.
Then I finished my bumbling explanation of Vallejo’s “El momento más grave de la vida.” And the class did what classes usually do at the end of a presentation: they clapped. But they did so in a way that showed this weird sense of appreciation for what I’d just told them, as though I’d presented ideas that might possibly be useful or thoughtful or even applicable to their own lives.
And that’s when I realized what had been weirding me out the whole time: they’d actually been listening.
I am not particularly good at following directions.
Or perhaps I should say: it’s not that I’m bad at following directions. It’s that I tend to follow them too seriously.
I mention this because my professors seem to think that these introductory letters shouldn’t be about what I’ve done; they should be about who I am. Right about here, I’m supposed to say that if you’d like to know more about my experiences – about the time I spent as the Rocky Mountain News’ multimedia man-about-town in Beijing for the Olympics; or the summer I produced radio stories for CBS News; or the months covering pro baseball for the Washington Examiner – well, you should just turn to my résumé.
This, instead, is what my professors would like me to tell you:
I am a 6’5’’ Jewish kid from Bethesda, Md. I have the wingspan of someone who is 6’9’’. To answer your questions in advance: I do not play basketball, and I do not know what the weather is like up here.
After a lifetime of air guitaring, I started playing for real three years ago, though I haven’t given up on the occasional air soloing. I put Old Bay and garlic into nearly everything I cook. Two years ago, I spent the better part of a month training for a pizza eating competition that was later canceled when the restaurant ran out of oven space to cook the needed amount of pizzas. One year, I ordered the ESPN Full Court package, watched hundreds of college basketball games, developed an encyclopedic knowledge of every NCAA Tournament team, and still finished in the bottom third in my office pool.
I’m not particularly fashion-conscious, though I am the proud owner of a yellow, pinstriped jacket that I’ve worn to every University of Missouri football game since my sophomore year. I’ve never used the afro pick that came with the jacket.
I come from a large, lovable family of well-to-do Washingtonians who, for lack of a better term, are crazy. My grandparents used to paint their lawn green in the winter. We used to have a nanny who walked her pet guinea pig outside on a leash. My father has been known to bring back stacks of Waffle House waffles as his “personal item” on flights.
Which brings me to the jewel of my family: my mother.
My mother once wrote an essay explaining that her favorite Jewish moment involved the time Noah led the Jews out of Egypt. Once, upon my return from a semester abroad in Spain, she waited for me at the airport with a sign for me that read, “Hola, Dan, mí puta grande,” mistakenly believing that the words were a standard Spanish greeting. Recently, my mother fulfilled her lifelong dream of riding around on a fire truck dressed as Mrs. Claus. She is also a lover of animals, which is why this elephant currently resides on the front steps of my house.
I’ll cut this letter short now; I wouldn’t want to spoil any stories for future psychiatric visits. I do hope this letter gives you a more personal look into who I really am. And if for whatever reason any of this makes me more desirable as a candidate for this job, then I must say: journalism is clearly in worse shape than I’d ever imagined.
So I’m at D.C.’s Dulles Airport tonight, waiting for my late-night flight to St. Louis and looking for an airport bar to watch the first half of the U.S.-Mexico World Cup qualifier. The bar near my gate is full and showing CNN, so I keep moving, down Dulles’ interminable Terminal B, an inexplicably long tunnel of white that may or may not explain the title of the new U2 album. The next bar is down at the other end of the terminal, about a 5k away. If I’m going to catch any of the game and make it back for my flight, I’ve got to hurry.
So I’m in full stride, pushing past the B gates when I notice a bald, Irish-looking fellow on the steps near one gate. He’s got a standard carry-on upright in front of him; he’s thumbing through something on his iPhone. And as I cruise past him at Olympic-qualifying speed, I start to recognize something in his face. Maybe it’s the jut in his chin, or maybe it’s the way the top of his forehead slopes forward with all the slickness of an Augusta National green. I’m not sure what it is, exactly, that’s so familiar.
About five steps later, I realize that I may have just walked past Ben Bailey.
For those who don’t flip anywhere north of MTV on their TV guides, Ben Bailey is the cab driver-cum-host of Discovery Channel’s “Cash Cab,” which is basically Trivial Pursuit on wheels. Contestants enter his New York City cab, ambushed by a disco’s worth of lights to discover that they’re on a mobile game show. They’re given a series of questions to answer during the ride to their destination. Miss three questions and Bailey tosses you out on the street. Keep answering right and you might end up with a few hundred dollars in winnings.
I come from a game show obsessed family. We were huge “Supermarket Sweeps” fans as kids. We were that family watching Regis each night on “Millionaire.” We’re the ones who plan our runs on the treadmill around “Price is Right” or “Wheel of Fortune.” “Cash Cab” is one of my most recent finds, and it’s quickly become one of my favorites. There’s just something about seeing New Yorkers struggling to remember what a quadratic equation is, all while fearing that they’ll be booted out in the rain 15 blocks too soon.
I watch the show casually, maybe once or twice a week in the early afternoon, but enough that I’m certain that the guy I’ve just passed at Dulles is Bailey. I stop and look back at him. He’s wearing a blue shirt with the word “STAFF” in huge, white block letters. It looks like the kind of shirt that you’d see TV tech guys wear.
I walk a bit farther up the terminal to a monitor with gate information. I scan for his gate number. A few columns over, I find it: a JetBlue flight direct to New York’s JFK International Airport. I’m no Clouseau, but I’m feeling confident so far that that guy really is Bailey.
Now, I should explain something here: for the last week or so, one of my closest relatives was in the hospital. On Monday night, she died. So I’ve spent much of the last week shuttling amongst Columbia, Mo., St. Louis and Washington, D.C. I’ve spent enough time in the air that I can probably recite line-for-line this month’s American Airlines in-flight magazine. (The profile of the gritty, resilient, never-say-die Paula Abdul is particularly nauseating.) I haven’t been sleeping much at all. So I’m slower than Don Adams to realize most obvious sign that Ben Bailey is sitting in Terminal B:
Three days ago, my parents – also huge “Cash Cab” fans – went to see Bailey’s stand-up set at the D.C. Improv. He was at the Improv all weekend.
I spin around. I know that Bailey’s coming to Columbia in about a month to do stand up. Suddenly, I’m struck by the urge to schedule an interview with him. So I come up with a plan. I’ll walk up to him and casually ask if he knows where I can find a bar to watch the game. And then, just before I walk away, I’ll do a little double take, play dumb and ask, “Hey, do I know you from a TV game show somewhere?”
It’s a flawless plan. I’m thrilled with my brilliance, even in the face of sleep deprivation. And then I turn around and realize that he’s on the phone with somebody else.
So I get take out my phone, call anyone who’ll pick up and explain that I’m basically stalking the “Cash Cab” guy, all while occasionally glancing back down the terminal to see if he’s done chatting. Soon, we’re essentially pacing in simultaneous loops around the concourse, Bailey just a hundred yards away from me, an unknowing partner in the evening’s cell phone walkabout pairs competition.
I keep circling, twenty minutes worth, waiting for Bailey to hang up. The gate agent for JetBlue starts to board the JFK flight. I make my move, down the hall, just idling while idly hoping that whoever Bailey’s on the phone with disconnects. I pass him, still waiting. I stall near the TVs showing CNN, only half watching whatever wall of monitors Wolf Blitzer’s standing in front of.
I stand and I wait, and wait. I wait as Bailey switches his phone from his right hand to his left, as he reaches for his carry on, as he wheels it toward the gate, as he hands the gate agent his ticket, as he boards the plane, phone still in hand.
I wait as Bailey disappears down the jetway, wondering how the $100 question I wanted to ask got away.
I was walking around the mall last Sunday, as thousands watched the “We Are One” concert at the Lincoln Memorial, but I couldn’t get anywhere close to the main stage. Then I noticed that the Tidal Basin and the Jefferson Memorial were empty. Naturally, I thought of a line from The Simpsons:
Lisa: Mr. Jefferson, my name is Lisa Simpson, and I have a problem.
Jefferson: I know your problem. The Lincoln Memorial was too crowded.
Lisa: Sorry, sir. It’s just…
Jefferson: No one ever comes to see me. I don’t blame them. I never did anything important. Just the Declaration of Independence, the Louisiana Purchase, the dumbwaiter…
Lisa: Uh, maybe I should be going. I’ve caught you at a bad time…
Jefferson: Wait! Please don’t go. I get so lonely…
Sam Oshinsky snapped this image of a bird straddling two watermelons atop the Arenal Volcano on a recent vacation to Costa Rica. Here’s to hoping that the country can rebuild after last week’s earthquake and get back to pura vida.
It’s only gotten weirder in the last 24 hours. The Zimbabwean government has blamed the cholera outbreak in their country on the British, claiming the U.K. dropped some sort of “biological chemical weapon” on the African country. [Cholera, I should note, is caused by consuming food or water that’s been contaminated with feces.] The country is building mass graves for the bodies of those killed by the nation’s army. The country also introduced a 500 million Zimbabwean dollar today, even though a 100m and 200m note were introduced in the last week (but hyperinflation made those bills irrelevant within hours of distribution).
More than 100 countries — including 18 of our NATO allies — signed a new ban on cluster bombs today. The United States was not among those agreeing to the treaty. But in a last-minute move, Afghanistan decided to sign the ban. I produced a story for Newsy.com today about the controversy:
The decline in newspaper advertising has been well documented, but here’s an equally large reason for shrinking print profits: the decline in classified ads sold. Craigslist has all but eliminated the need for paid personal advertisements.
But as I read about yet another Craigslist scam today, I wonder: why can’t newspapers convince readers that they’re a trustworthy place to sell their stuff? Wouldn’t you pay a little more to advertise in a place that keeps out con artists?
A very strange thing just happened to me: