Alex Shippee

I've been living, and working, in New York City for almost a year now. New York City, and the streets especially, have a kind of unguarded significance to them. Everything that happens here could be the ultimate conclusion of whatever events are taking place. There's no grand authority figure or reliable order. It accepts what is put into it. That's why corruption is so feasible and opportunity so endless.

When I wrote about this eighteen months ago, I  said that, despite coming from a small town that I "...enjoyed the busyness of it all." Since then, I can honestly say that the busyness is one of the most pointlessly seductive things about life in Manhattan.

The guy dressed in a power suit, ordering an extra-large coffee, and talking on the phone the whole time...

The high-powered executive championing a series of  ambitious projects...

The young go-getter burning the midnight oil to keep bosses and clients happy...

What are they actually trying to accomplish? Can they even articulate it anymore? Or have they distanced themselves so far from legitimate work that they're just in a constant state of shuffling papers?

Everybody's busy all the time. Busy with phone calls, emails, giving updates, running around, putting out fires, talking and explaining things in an exciting way. It goes on forever. The sad part is that this becomes the focus - moving and staying active. It gets to the point where you're working yourself to exhaustion just so you can BE exhausted. Insanity.

One time, towards the end of a meeting, someone asked if I was from New York originally:

"No," I said. "I'm from Connecticut actually."

"I thought so," she replied. "You don't seem stressed enough."

"Thanks. I try not to stress myself out."

In retrospect, I probably should have phrased that differently. The point I was trying to make, that might not have come across at the time, is that freaking out and working yourself into a tizzy accomplishes nothing. If anything, being able to stay calm when everyone else is losing their mind should be an asset. You avoid overreaching and making easily avoidable mistakes.

But the thing is, I like being busy. I like starting early and ending late. I like being able to contribute something to so many different projects and groups. It's a feeling very similar to being needed. But at some point, being needed and having people fight to talk to you loses its appeal. It's a shallow pleasure.

There's so much more to New York City than the churning mobs and being so stressed out that you can't even feel it anymore. Stay away from the people who idolize that lifestyle. They're much more likely to take the boundless opportunity and corrupt it into a pointless collection of low-hanging fruit. Just so they can keep moving.

Over the last couple of days, I've been emailing with Dr. Rob Dobrenski (Dr. Rob) and he was nice enough to agree to do an informal email interview. For those of you who don't know, Dr. Rob is a practicing psychologist turned author who writes on ShrinkTalk.net. He explores what the life of a psychologist is like whether he's interacting with his patients, his peers, or even his mother. It's a frequently funny and a very honest look into his profession.

That began in 2007. In May 2010, after 3+ years of steady blogging he had gotten a book deal and took that leap to published author. In the interview below, we talk about what that process looked like and what helped him along the way.

Definitely check out his website (start here) and, if you like it, don't forget to take a look at his book, Crazy: Notes On and Off the Couch. 
 
1. You started your blog in 2007 with a completed manuscript already in hand. How did it feel bringing your content to the web for the first time?

Wherever there's a potential for hype or misunderstanding, a few different kind of people are always nearby - Hipsters, Luddites, and Hypocrites. It's the wide-spread attention that attracts and repels them in unique ways:

Hipsters - they shirk anything widely popular and congregate around the niche.

Luddites - they distrust advancements (particularly in technology) and downplay their capabilities.

Hypocrites - they celebrate the genuine benefits of something new while failing to execute it in their actions.

All three lifestyles feed on the momentum created by something new and exciting. It causes them to react in ways that have very real effects on how they impact (or don't impact) the world around them.

With Hipsters, it's easy to take everything they say with a grain of salt. Shying excessively away from the mainstream can lead them to the strange and impractical.

Luddites, in a similar way, aren't the most trustworthy either, but they can be a source of much needed skepticism. After all, in an increasingly technical culture, it can be easy to forget that it's ultimately people that facilitate change.

Hypocrites are above and beyond the worst. They have all the dressings of upright and competent people and will, appropriately, speak against the stupid ideas of charlatans and frauds. But when your back is turned, or they are in a room with only themselves, they will run immediately to the techniques of the people they claim to deplore. They're harder to spot, but their ugliness can be much farther reaching. Their flowery words and speeches disguise their inability to accomplish anything. It'll seep into your head and leave you in the same place as them - with nothing valuable except for baseless words.