My Expertise, Method, & Works

In Response to an Inquiry
by Eric Chaet

I'm not an expert!

Since what I created has generally been rejected or dismissed as unworthy of praise or payment, to survive I've had to keep learning to do one thing after another that I was not good at, at first, and studying what I understood least. This has been my method for many decades—in recent years, it has been how I have earned my living—though there were times when, overwhelmed, I wandered.

Often what I'd learned dawned on me only much later. (I'm hopeful of more such dawning!) I was often scared, hungry, didn't know where to go for shelter.

I found many individuals full of ingenuity, often very kind—but the society in which we were willingly or unwillingly enmeshed, deluded—and dangerous when aware I thought so, or showed unwillingness to join in.

I had small roles in civil rights and anti-Indochina War protests. I worked, generally in very subordinate roles, in offices, warehouses, and factories, and taught various subjects at several obscure schools, across the USA—sometimes barely managing to remember what I was doing.

Author of: People I Met Hitchhiking On USA Highways, 2001; How to Change the World Forever For Better, Second Edition, 1994; Old Buzzard of No-Man's Land, 1974; dozens of stories and poems published in periodicals in various states, nations, and languages, over several decades. (Though most I submitted were refused.) Wrote and performed original songs on Solid and Sound, a vinyl LP recording, 1977. Created the Into-Traffic "Signs" (posters I silk-screened on cloth) 1984-2000, and stapled 1,500 to utility poles across the USA.

Since it was clear that it would be rare that I would be able to get work into circulation, I tried to make each count, as if it was a precious new variety of seed, and the ripe fruits would be needed, in an inevitable time of transformation. Usually, I used obsolete equipment, that no one else cared to use any longer.

I operate a one-person consultancy, researching technologies and commercial practices, and organizing new enterprises for professionals, businesses, and people struggling to do what they haven't been able to do yet. I use what I thereby learn; and study history, political economy, the sciences, and the best of literature, the arts, philosophy, and religion; and apply ever more effective prioritization, planning, and implementation techniques—as though humanity had hired me to help it go sane, just, healthy, and successful.

Copyright © Eric Chaet 2004