Make Your Own Rules

Many pints of ice cream and successful lottery tickets ago (I’m just kidding…about the second thing) I wrote about giving myself a nickname. One of society’s unwritten rules holds that Thou Shalt Not Apply Thine Own Nickname, so giving myself a nickname was unusual.

Why did my peers go along with it? I’m not sure. Hypotheses include (in descending order of likelihood):

• No one noticed my nickname was different from my regular name
• Johnny Roboto was too catchy and could not topped
• My peers had been looking to make an ironic statement on man’s approach towards the singularity, and finally found a way to do it
• My charisma as a monotonous accountant was overpoweringly persuasive

What is a Boogaloo?

Enter Nickname Part 2: Electric Boogaloo.

(Note: I don’t know what a Boogaloo is, or the difference between an electric and acoustic one. I just know it was a subtitle to some movie no one’s ever seen that now gets appended to ill-advised sequels.)

(Note 2 – Electric Boogaloo: Quick research has shown that the sequel in question was Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo, a break-dancing movie featuring Ice-T, America’s greatest actor whose name is also a beverage.)

Emotional responses have been getting more frequent in my brain, from zero to at least one confirmed response. This is a percentage increase of infinity, which I have been told is a lot.

As a result, the Johnny Roboto nickname doesn’t really work anymore (unless I need a stage name if I ever join a punk band).

J Curve

Enter… J Curve! Not as catchy as Johnny Roboto, but more functional (see below). And boy, do accountants prefer function over style!

Just in case someone reads this, and just in case that person does useful things in life instead of studying financial graphs, I’ll explain the J Curve.

Most people have heard the Biblical phrase, “You gotta spend money to make money.” The J Curve is a graph of that phrase. The X-Axis is time, the Y-Axis is profitability/cash flow/your favorite buzzword.

Let’s say you borrow money to start a business. Initially, profitability is negative as you spend money to get started. Over time, if you spend money on the right things and start making sales, your income becomes positive.  Your spending pays off.

On a graph, you get a curve that looks like a J: it drops and then goes up.

Metaphor Alert

So perhaps I can nickname myself the J Curve. I’m hoping to match the shape of the J Curve with the trajectory of my life. I’ve made mistakes and had setbacks (that’s a job interview translation for “turned my life into a flaming wreckage”). But lessons have been learned, and profits can be earned if I have the guts to keep moving forward.

Sometimes I don’t want to move forward, but it’d be a shame to quit now. Who quits a business after the lean years are over and it’s prime time to grow? Or gets tonsils removed but turns down ice cream? Who (does something else that’s painful) and then (turns down a benefit)?

Monkey Mind is still around and tries to goad me into self-criticism. Luckily, I’ve got people around me that I can trust to tell me if I’m doing:

1. Right Things, or
2. Dumb Things

I worked long and hard on that categorical framework. As I write this, reports from the front are positive. We’ve moved from B to A.

Maybe one day the monkey will be quiet …that’s a blog post for later!