You know the business cliches: “It was a bad fit” and “it was a mutual decision”? I used to think those cliches were bullshit. Now I see those two brief statements are the best way to sum up my experience on that job.

I’ve already got a couple of promising leads on full-time jobs, one ongoing freelance assignment, and am looking for more.

I posted the following to LinkedIn this morning:

I’m available for writing and editing work in marketing and journalism, specializing in enterprise and telco cloud infrastructure, networking and applications. I’m available for both full-time and freelance work.

My focus is on showcasing the intersection of technology and business—how organizations can use technology to deliver business value, using tech to find new revenue, reduce cost, and eliminate the hassles of keeping their technology infrastructure running (or, translated into marketing language: innovation, digital transformation, and reducing CAPEX and OPEX for overall reduced TCO).

I have more than 30 years of experience. Contact me at mitch@mitchwagner.com and let’s talk about how I can bring that rich expertise to your business.

View my writing portfolio: <authory.com/mitchwagn…>

From my journal, this day in 2014:

A group of teenagers rang the doorbell last night. I went down the stairs to answer. The leader, a girl about 15, explained they were a group from the Baptist church down the street. They were playing a kind of scavenger hunt. The object was to go door-to-door looking to trade an object for another object. Did we have anything better than a keychain?

I thought about it. Nothing came to mind. Hold on I’ll check, I said. I went back up the stairs.

I looked in the basket by the front door. A tube of suntan lotion? No, Julie said that was some kind of boutique suntan lotion. A reflector armband that did not actually reflect? No.

I looked on the coffee table. There was a mini-USB cable from a recent electronics purchase, still neatly bundled. I have a million of those from various gadgets. They’re nearly worthless. To me. Maybe a non-geek wouldn’t think so?

I went out the front door and called down the front stairs. “Is a mini-USB cable better than a keychain?”

“Yes!” said the girl. I went down the stairs and made the trade.

I asked them if they’d heard about the guy who played a similar game and ended up eventually trading from a paperclip to a house. The girl said no. I asked how I would find out how everything came out. The girl said, well, if I heard shrieks of delight coming from the church I’d know they won.

I never did find out how it came out.

I’m in the process of relearning how to read books, particularly novels. I’ve gotten so accustomed to reading articles and essays online that my skill at reading books has atrophied.

Yesterday I found myself effortlessly reading a novel for a few hours, and it was a breakthrough. That’s how I would often spend a day as a teenager, but I’ve lost the knack for it.

The novel, by the way, was “Concrete Blonde,” the third Bosch novel, by Michael Connelly. I loved the TV series and hear the actors' voices in my head when I’m reading.

I finished reading “Black Ice,” the second Harry Bosch novel, by Michael Connelly. Good at the beginning and end, drags a bit in the middle. I did not find the action set-piece at the climax compelling, though the attack on the helicopter was cool. The characters and dialogue are well done, as are the LA locations.

I would have liked the book more if I’d cared about the murder victims. But I didn’t, and neither did any of the characters. I find that essential in a crime story—do I actually care whether the murderer is caught? Are there any emotional stakes?

In the first Bosch novel, Connelly seems to be finding the character, but now Harry Bosch is fully formed, and very much like the character in the tv show, which we love.

Read another? Sure, why not? Connelly has written 37 crime novels, all in the same universe, so that will keep me busy a little while.