Why I never get anything done: Adulting gets in the way

I am so ready for some utter nonsense.

I work for a company that is pretty flexible in allowing people to work from home, or at least my manager is. Which is a good thing because I needed to be home to wait for the installation of our new washing machine. It would be even better if the washing machine was now washing part of the mountain of laundry in the garage, but it's not. Because the installation guys aren't allowed to work with corroded pipes, and evidently the pipes in my garage are corroded. (I feel like this is the beginning of a dirty joke, but it's not. It's just my life today.)

So I called our plumber ("where did you find this guy?" Captain America asks me. "From the business card on the fridge," I tell him. "It's going to cost us an arm and a leg," Captain America tells me.). The plumber cheerfully offers to come over tomorrow at 4:30. It's not perfect, but then this whole thing isn't perfect. But I can make 4:30 work because I have a flexible and understanding manager.

I open up outlook to send my manager a calendar notification telling her that I'll be working from home again tomorrow afternoon due to this plumbing debacle only to find that my internet is no longer working. I go into the office (I've currently taken over the dining room table for work because we've recently had a heat wave and the dining room has a ceiling fan but the office doesn't) to restart the router, and I press the restart button. And nothing happens. The lights don't blink on and off, there's no clicky sound of a button being pressed. Nothing.

I decide to use our old wireless router (we've very recently changed wireless service providers), which for some reason is still plugged in and working just fine, despite Captain America's cancelling the service. The old router is working just fine on my phone, but not on my laptop. It wants some sort of 8-digit all-numeric pin that the laptop is claiming is on the router. There is no 8-digit all numeric anything on my router.

So I unplug all of the routers, plug them back in, and track down about 95 different passcodes, Meanwhile, I've checked that we don't actually have a laundry emergency (Captain America has exactly one clean uniform left, so we don't need to go to a laundromat tomorrow), and I go to text him this information. And there's some sort of weird voice text bar sitting over my text box. So I can't actually see the words I'm texting. Which of course would be fine if the words I'm writing actually ended up in the text, but as autocorrect can be quite the bitch, I really can't rely on that. Fortunately, I'm just texting my husband and he already thinks I'm nuts.

I give up and call Captain America. Captain America asks me to reschedule the installation of the washing machine for Friday, and to call our internet guy to see if he can figure out what the problem is. Then some garble comes over the radio and he says "I'm at work. I have to go." I'M AT WORK, TOO, I want to shout. But of course, by this point, he's off saving the world and I'm only yelling at a bunch of uncooperative technology.

Fortunately, by this point the internet is working again, and I'm able to google my iPhone problem. And the solution is to power off my phone. Of course it is.

While my phone is powering on/off I email my manager to explain to her a) why I haven't actually accomplished a single thing since I left the office, despite being on line for 5 hours, and b) why I'll need to work from home again tomorrow afternoon. She writes back and says, "Oh. I forgot about you."

Clearly my job is impactful.

Career Change: It is hard

Another post, that, for one reason or another, I stored away as a draft.

About six years ago, I graduated from a private university with an MBA in Finance. That I have not used. You see, prior to that I had been an accountant. Being an accountant is very boring, but I liked working with numbers, so I thought finance was a natural transition.

As it turns out, it is much, much harder to move from the world of accounting to the world of finance than really makes any sense at all.

So, I started reaching out to people in finance at my company. They offered the normal suggestions--networking, informational interviews, and taking on project work to gain experience. I've done all of those things. Okay, technically, I have not taken on project work--I've offered my time to a variety of groups, but no one has accepted.

I joined the women's network at my company, the Lean In-style circles offered by my company, and I've participated in a mentor program, all to try to gain exposure to different people, different career options, different options for how I should proceed.

Then, I reached out to someone at my company who has successfully made the transition from accounting to finance. And he had the same advice--namely, informational interviews, project work, and the like. All of the same stuff that hasn't been working for me. He did, however, have some ideas as to what "additional experience" I would need, as well as some of the non-technical barriers to entry. It was actually the most useful conversation I've had on the topic.

While I would like to stay at the company where I'm currently working, I've realized that staying might not take my career in the direction I want to go. I've set up a meeting with a recruiter to see what sort of outside next steps I can take, or what other career options there are for me.

A few weeks ago, I googled how to leave a career in accounting, but most of the advise was directed at people who wanted to leave public accounting--and nearly all of it focused on getting a job in the private sector.

In a conversation with a self-employed friend, she pointed out that women are more likely to say things like "I was very lucky..." and men are more likely to say "I did this..." when talking about how they shaped their career. My company really pushes employees to "own their careers" but it's a little bit of a trap. I've discovered that what they really mean, but don't say, is that they want employees to own their careers within the parameters management prefers.

Unfortunately, I think luck plays a very big part in successful career change. A lot of it seems to be being in the right place at the right time with the right people. I'm still trying to figure out how to make my own luck, but I've stopped working so hard at doing all of the things I'm "supposed" to do--it was too much effort with little payback.

I do have some feelers out there for different prospects, and I've been thinking way more outside the box about what I want to do. I'm trying to make some big changes in my life, which is a little scary, but I also know that I'm more scared of staying put.

You don't have to be crazy to work here, but it helps!

I just found this from a few months ago, and it still amuses me. 

Jennifer: Wait...so who do you work for now? I should have taken a pic of the org chart!

Virginia: I now work for Marisa

Jennifer: Okay. Frank kicked you and Aaron to the curb!

Virginia: It's like kids at a party...any grown up will do to pour the juice or whatever...any manager will do.

Jennifer: LOL! That's true. Marisa seems like a good manager for career development

Virginia: Yes. And that's what I need, because I am bored to tears. A well-trained monkey in a diaper could do my job. Hell, we could potty train a well-trained monkey!

Jennifer: Thanks for thinking of the carpet.

Virginia: Well, we just had the carpet replaced! And, there'd be the added bonus that the monkey could demonstrate Frank's banana-opening theory. 

Jennifer: We'd have to lock the peanut M&Ms up. I hope the monkey likes donuts. The monkey could also eat the rotting leftovers.

Virginia: Do monkeys eat leftovers? I know pigs do, but they don't have opposable thumbs.

Jennifer: We could make a pig pen as part of space planning.

Virginia: All of the zoo animals that interact with the public have a companion animal...my monkey could have a companion pig to eat the leftovers! And when the pig gets old...instant bacon! Or did I just cross a line?

Jennifer: We could bury it in the volleyball court and have a luau.

Virginia: OMG! YOU ARE SO RIGHT! Best idea ever! Let me tell Marisa we need to hire a monkey in a diaper so it can have a companion pig so we can have a luau! And we'll have revenge on the product team that didn't invite us to their party!

Jennifer: Yes!

Virginia: Nothing tastes better than sweet revenge...except when that revenge tastes like pork!

Jennifer: Haha!

Virginia: OMG! why aren't WE running this company yet?

Jennifer: Right?! Give us a little more time and there will be piglets roaming these halls!

Virginia: I totally went to grad school to run shit. I did NOT go to grad school to accrue severance.

Jennifer: Fact!

Virginia: We live in California...people seem to think they can take their dogs everywhere with them. It's only a matter of time before people take their monkeys and companion pigs with them everywhere, too. We just want to be on the front end of that trend.

Not enough experience

This is a picture of Cape Disappointment Lighthouse

In the past week, I've had two different sets of disappointing news at work. The first is that I will not be going to India to teach business skills to women in rural villages (how awesome is that opportunity!), and the second is that I'm not being considered for a position in our Finance department because they are looking for someone with more experience.

I understand. I really do. They want someone with 5 years finance experience. I have about a decade of accounting experience. That sounds like the same thing to someone not in the field, but it's really not. It's really actually a fundamentally different way of looking at data.

There are a few things about this decision that trouble me. The first is that when I looked over the job description and talked with the managers, everything sounded like stuff I can do. Because I'm smart. And I have a degree in Finance. And because the accounting work at my last company was both more complex and more analytic-based than what I'm currently doing.

This is a picture of a disappointed boy. I think it looks like Sad Christopher Robin. 

The second troubling thing is that I really want out of accounting. Accounting is dull. (I'm sure people in finance might argue that finance is dull, but that's not the point.) The point is, I never meant to become an accountant. I meant to use accounting as a way of getting a job after college, and as a way of getting into a good company so I could eventually do something useful. Well, I've had no problems getting jobs. I'm at a good company. It's apparently the next step that I'm struggling with.

To be fair, I've been at my current company less than two years. It's just that I've been an accountant FOREVER. When I went to grad school, I had no idea that almost 5 years after graduating, I would still have the exact same title on my resume than I did before grad school. Somehow that seems to miss the point of all of those classes (and all of that  money we spent).

As I understand it, the people who don't want to hire me for their finance roles do want to use me for some project work, which is both good and bad. The good side is that they'll get to see how amazing I am and that will hopefully make them more inclined to hire me when another role opens. The bad side is that I'll essentially be doing finance work for free. Sure my hours and my salary will stay the same, but there is a definite pay jump between my level in accounting and the equivalent level in finance.

On the bright side, until they decide what to do with me, I have time to blog at work.

My lifelong fear of being in trouble

So I just finished reading The Rights of the Reader by Daniel Pennac, and chapter 24 got me thinking about something that happened to me in 5th grade. The chapter is only two paragraphs, so I'm just going to quote them here:

You'll never make a boy in the middle of a gripping story understand--you'll never get him to understand through a demonstration intended for him alone--why he must stop reading and go to bed.

It was Kafka who said that, little Franz, whose father wanted him to spend every night counting.

As a child, I never understood why I had to stop reading, but one incident is forever branded in my mind. I was in 5th grade, and every morning, students gave a little presentation on any books they had finished reading. One morning, a boy named Matt Bagley, who was gawky and tall (for a 5th grader), and had what seemed like huge hands to me, was discussing the book Bridge to Terebithia by Katherine Patterson, which was one of my favorite books, by one of my favorite authors. He was tapping the book during his presentation, which is probably why I noticed his hands. AND HE WAS GETTING IT WRONG! It was clear to me that he had not read the book, or if he had, that he had so obviously not understood what was going on, or what made it such a GOOD book. It was incredible how inaccurate his description of it was.

I don't remember exactly what he said, but I remember thinking, I've already read that book, and besides, he's getting it wrong, so I'll just go back to reading what I was reading before he started his report.

But despite the fact that Matt was so clearly in the wrong, I got in trouble FOR READING. And I wasn't even expecting it.

On the first day of school, Ms. Rottenberg (yes, that really was her name), told us the classroom rules, and what the penalties were. The first penalty was your name on the board. I don't remember what the second one was, but the third one was being sent to the principal and so on. Somehow, I missed the part where you'd start anew the next day, and so I thought as soon as you got your name on the board once, you were totally screwed (it didn't occur to me how irrational this was, if for no other reason than it can be really difficult for elementary-aged kids to always behave).

Anyway, reading during Matt's atrocious presentation got me my name on the board. I was told I wasn't paying attention. I was so dumbfounded that I didn't even bother to point out that it didn't make sense for me to pay attention to someone who clearly was talking about a book they hadn't read. And besides, I'm not sure my 5th-grade mind could articulate such a sentiment.

At any rate, my name was on the board, and I was convinced that if I stuck a toe out of line the rest of the year, whatever the second thing was would happen, and the world would come to an end. My parents would disown me, I'd be kicked out of school and become a drug addict and get pregnant and never go to college (okay, and while we're on the subject, why is this always the series of events presented to kids? I mean, every time we discussed drugs and/or sex in school, it seemed like we were all doomed if we ever did either of those things. It was like God was hovering over our health classes ready to send in a wrath of locusts or something). I apparently never noticed if my name was removed the next day or not. It was etched on the chalkboard in my mind's eye, and that was all that mattered to me.

So, little 5th-grade Virginia was terrified of getting in trouble, and the worst part was, I really didn't understand what I had done wrong. I mean, I was READING in SCHOOL! So, more accurately, my fear was, I'd get in trouble for something I couldn't predict would get me in trouble. It would have been one thing if I had known what I was doing was wrong, and was doing it anyway, like the kids who got in trouble for writing on their desks (why would they ever think such a thing was appropriate?). But the fact that I didn't even expect to get in trouble was unnerving.

This is actually a fear that has followed me to this day. I'm a grown-up with legitimate, employable skill sets, and every time my boss calls me into his office, I'm afraid that I'm going to be in trouble. Not that I'm going to be fired, but that that unnamed second thing is going to happen. That somehow, I've done something wrong that I didn't even realize was the wrong thing to do. Chapter 24 was an epiphany for me, and realizing my habit has been instrumental in helping me change it. It makes no sense for me to be so nervous at work. I'm not a brain surgeon--no one is going to die if I make a mistake, and furthermore, it's my boss's job to help me if I do make a mistake.

I'm saddened by the amount of time and energy I've wasted being scared of getting in trouble when I don't expect to, but I'm glad I've finally named that fear. It's a fear of the unknown, a fear of not knowing the rules of the game, a fear I'm still not able to articulate to the depths that it has shaped my life. It was an unexpected find in a book about reading.

Stuff I discuss at work

Or, how yoga leads to world domination

My friend: I am so sore. Yoga works!
Me: I know.
My friend: But I might try the 'gentle' yoga next time
Me: Gentle yoga is after spin on Friday
My friend: Haha. Although I am totally fine with not knowing what I am doing.
Me: There will be no stealth ninjas in gentle yoga. That alone might be worth sticking with power yoga. Of course, you could do both, like me
My friend: Haha! I did enjoy the ninjas. Well, watching others be ninjas.
Me: Yes. I dream of the day I become a ninja. It's a goal.
My friend: Yes, indeed. In the meantime I'll work on trying to touch my toes.
Me: I was supremely unflexible last night. Usually I can touch my toes. When I got to Pilates, my trainer told me my back was all jacked up. That might also explain my un-ninja-ness.
My friend: Haha! I am extremely inflexible. This is why I'm interested in yoga. I am so inflexible I'm not sure how I get around sometimes.
Me: Haha! my sister is totally unflexible, too and she exercises like crazy. Her idea of flexibility is as long as someone can touch her toes, it's all good.
My friend: Same here. It really is something you have to practice. You and Bob [another coworker...names have been changed to protect the innocent] are definitely on your way to ninja-ness!
Me: Usually that someone is the person giving her a pedicure.
My friend: Hahahaha!
Me: I don't touch her toes...she totally has runner's feet.
My friend: Well, one step at a time I guess. 1) touch toes 2) do ninja stuff
Me: That sounds incredibly similar to an outline for world domination!
My friend: Haha! You're right!

Neo

I've recently been officially hired on by my company, so I've had to go through new employee orientation, despite the fact that I've been working here for two and a half months. The acronym for "new employee orientation" is, of course, NEO. So of course, this is what I think of:

Sadly, this is totally not what I've been hired to do.

Psychologically speaking, it's the pits

When I was in middle school-ish, I had this How To Host a Murder party called Archaeologically Speaking, it's the Pits, which has nothing to do with this blog post at all except for the title of the post. I feel better having cleared that up.

For the past week, I have been waking up with terrible panic attacks. What happens is, I wake up and my heart starts racing, and I say to myself, just get up and get going, and my blood turns to lead and I can't get out of bed (and I realize that if my heart's racing, you'd think my blood would be moving a lot faster than lead in my veins, but that's just not how panic attacks work), and then I think I don't have time for this, and if you get up, you can get the shit you need to get done done, and then there'll be nothing to panic about, but I still can't get up. And then, because I'm neurotic, I think, great, you're probably giving yourself ulcers and gray hairs, and stress causes zits, and all this adrenalin that you're pumping into your body for NO REASON WHATSOEVER is just going to cause you more problems, and then you'll really have something to worry about. Because that's productive.

For the past week, Captain America has been in New Mexico learning how to drive like a movie stuntman. Okay, not really. He's been learning offensive driving, and no, that's not what happens when you take driver's ed in New Jersey and learn to drive with your knees so you can flip someone off with your right hand while you lean out your window shaking your left fist at someone else, all while swearing, preferably in Yiddish. That's also not what he was learning how to do.

Last night, we went to my company's holiday party. So of course Captain America's flight was delayed. Conveniently the party was running on California time, so it didn't really matter at all that we were late. And of course, because we haven't seen each other all week, there was an immediate need to have an argument in the car on the way to the party. Captain America was grumpy because he had just flown and his flight was delayed and he was hungry and this party fell in the middle of a 10 day work week for him and finally I just blurted out, I can't do this right now. I've been waking up with panic attacks all week and I really need you to be charming and delightful like you usually are at these things because I work with really nice people and they all want to meet you and I want them to like me. (As an aside, my official start date with the company is tomorrow.)

And Captain America said, thank you for telling me you've been having panic attacks.

He didn't ask me why I was having panic attacks. He didn't suggest I go to the doctor, or make any suggestions at all, or pry for details or anything.

Yup, I'm married to a super hero.

Who needs angels when you have Captain America?

Do we all just live in a perpetual state of anguish?

This isn't Cicero.

Sometimes I do what I want to do. The rest of the time, I do what I have to. --the character Cicero in the movie Gladiator.

I was on the phone with Captain America the other night, complaining about how busy I am when it occurred to me that it's all my own fault that I'm busy. The problem, in a nutshell, is that there are so many things I'd like to be doing, or doing a lot more of. 

For instance, I love to read. Probably more than I like to do anything else. And I read a lot, but not nearly as much as I'd like to. I feel like I am so far behind on what I want to be reading that it's actually stressful trying to figure out when I could fit more of it in. But I also feel like I'm so close to getting to a point where I could read as much as I want...like if I could just get caught up, I could stay caught up. 

I feel the same way about exercising. When I'm unemployed, a trip to the gym can take me four hours, door-to-door. That allows me 15 minutes of driving each way, an hour of ellipticalling, 40 minutes of running, 40 minutes of lifting weights, 40 minutes of stretching and the like, 20 minutes in the sauna, and 10 minutes to deal with things like peeing and filling up my water bottle and changing my shoes to use said sauna (don't get me started on how stupid I think that rule is). I get that four hours is a lot of time at the gym, and obviously this would be the long day (the short workout is the alternative days when I don't lift). In real life, I do get to spend about two hours a day at the gym, but then I have days where there is no way I can fit in 30 minutes of cardio. Which, for me, is a stupid amount of time. I have to spend the same amount of time wrangling myself into my sports bra, and the same amount of time stretching, for a whole lot less exercise. I realize this sounds like an excuse, but somehow 30 minutes is just where I say, I have better things to do with my time. If I know I can get in 45 minutes, though, it's worth it. 

So, I'm perpetually feeling frustrated because there are SO MANY THINGS I WANT TO DO, and instead, I have to spend my time at work, or even worse, commuting to and from work. (I am aware that all of my problems are first world problems. As I was discussing with a friend the other day, isn't that sort of the goal? I mean, how awesome would it be if everyone's problems were first world problems?) Don't get me wrong, there is absolutely nothing wrong with my job. The pay is good, the company is good, the people are nice, the hours are even reasonable. It's just not nearly as enjoyable as reading or exercising.

What I was wondering aloud to Captain America the other night, though, is whether or not everyone else lives in this same perpetual state of anguish that I'm in that I'm not doing what I want with my life, or if everyone else has managed to grow up and accept it and I'm still the teenager raging against the world. 

Good Lord, I hope not. 

On raising children, part two

So yesterday my company had this crazy Halloween party for the employee's kids. We have this sort of grassy park-like area on campus, and my company hired a party company who came and set up a bunch of Halloween decorations and games, craft stations, a photo booth (complete with green-screen so you could pick your appropriate background, presumably depending on your costume), and there was even a buffet of snacks.

It was a really great party. My boss told me I was welcome to come, even though I didn't have any kids. I thanked her, but explained that one of the reasons I don't have kids is that the kind of chaos that ensues at Halloween parties sort of terrifies me. But I did go check it out. And it really was a pretty awesome party. And I was terrified by the millions of children. Or 100. Even though they were adorable in their costumes, there were about 98 more children than I can handle at any given time. Ninety-seven if they're sleeping.

After work, I went to the gym. There was a mom (Pocahontas, actually) in the dressing room trying to get her kid changed. And he was being difficult. He was probably four or five and he wasn't throwing a full-blown tantrum, but he certainly wasn't cooperating. And from the way he was speaking, I'm pretty sure he was autistic, although he also sounded like he may have had a hearing problem. I tried to look at the kid to see if there was something wrong with him (and by using the word "wrong," I realize I sound like a total asshole), but it was hard to tell because he had blue paint all around his mouth. Or maybe blue frosting.

Pocahontas was trying to keep him on the other side of the partition in the bathroom from where I was. I wasn't sure if she thought I'd think it was weird to change in front of a boy, or if she didn't want her son watching me change. On the former, I really don't care. I change pretty quickly, and if the kid's in the locker room, chances are he's been in other locker rooms with women changing. If it was the latter, though, that's Pocahontas's prerogative  I decided to just change in a stall, figuring that would sort of solve for either scenario. Except the kid tried to crawl under the door to my stall. This wasn't particularly bothersome to me, but I sort of felt like, lady, I've helped you out here as much as I could.

Apparently, Pocahontas wanted her son to change his shirt, and so they were waiting for Dad to bring the clothes. And the kid wanted a brown shirt (he kept shouting "brown shirt, brown shirt"), but his option was a red one. Whatever. Pocahontas did a great job of remaining calm, and honestly, I didn't think the kid was being that terrible. I mean, he had just been to an over-stimulating Halloween party with a bunch of games and sweets and it was almost dinner time. It sounds like a lot of fun until it becomes a meltdown. Even if the kid wasn't autistic, which I still think this was.

I really feel like there should be a code for this sort of thing. Like I could say a magic phrase like "purple monkeys" and the mom would know that I knew she was doing the best she could and I wasn't judging her or anything, and really, it wasn't a problem to me at all.

I don't want kids because I don't want to deal with meltdowns (among many other reasons), but I know that even good kids with good parents are going to have a meltdown at some point. I just want a way to communicate that I understand all of this, if that would help ease the pressure to get your kid under control. I mean, no parent wants to be the parent who's kid is throwing a fit. I just want a way to let you know that I know that, so you can carry on the business of tending to your kid without worrying that your kid is making me mad. Because he or she isn't. Because it's better you than me.

So many different things, I don't know where to begin

I have such an unbelievable amount of stuff to say today that I've actually begun five different posts.

First of all, somehow the rest of my life is so much more interesting than what I do at work. I'm actually quite glad of that because I'm an accountant. For the most part, I don't mind being an accountant. The pay is good, I know what I'm doing, I work in a nice climate-controlled office; all-in-all, I can't really complain. Except that today there was a brown grasshopper dying in the corner of my cube. I'm pretty sure it was a grasshopper, although I always thought they were green, but it had that body type. I didn't want to touch it in case it was more alive than I thought and jumped down my shirt or something. I didn't think that kind of hysterics was appropriate on my second week at work.

Anyway, this post is not supposed to be about grasshoppers. It's supposed to be about how much more interesting my life is outside of the office. However, I do have one other office related story. While I usually attempt to keep other people's internet profiles low, I really don't know how to tell this story without revealing this person. So I work with a woman who's first name starts with an S and who's last name is Slover, which means that her login is sslover. Like a boat. When I saw her type that in, I almost told her that's what she HAD to name her yacht. But I caught myself before saying anything because I wasn't convinced that she'd appreciate that kind of thing. I mean, if that were my name, I'd tell everyone to call me S.S. Lover, but that's just me.

So back to my interesting life.

As you may or may not recall, I've been training to run a marathon. I've developed my marathon training program partially from a program I used years ago and partially from trial and error. However, just for fun, my running partner and I like to mix things up a little bit. Last weekend, we added in some cetaceanus fun. (How do you like that adjectification?)

Last weekend, Running Buddy (whom I shall now refer to by her Jersey Shore name, Mo-Scream, which, further paranthetically, is a tool she told me about because for father's day she renamed her dad G-Train. How cool is that!?!?). Anyway, Mo-Scream and I were on our final long run before we begin our taper. We were doing 22 miles and had started running at around 5:45 am because it was supposed to be balls-ass-hot out by about 9am. This run was intentionally designed to be suckier, albeit shorter, than the actual marathon.

On our return trip, we stopped at a bathroom in a park to refill our water bottles. I was reading our stats off on my watch: we'd been running for 3 hours and 22 minutes, we'd traveled 16.9 miles, and we had burnt 1543 calories. At this declaration, a fellow park-attending dude whipped his head around and proclaimed, "You just burned 15-hundred calories?" I'm still shocked that he didn't get whip-lash from his sudden interest in our athletic prowess.

Yes, I responded, we bench-pressed a whale.

If you Google an image of that, you get 152,000 image results, and yet, no one took a picture of ME doing it!

Park-dude looked both astonished and baffled, but I had another 5.1 miles to run, so I couldn't really hang out explaining all of the details involved in accomplishing such a feat, but it looks something like this:

Oh, adulthood, how you vex me sometimes!

So I'm trying really hard to be a mature, responsible grown-up. It's not easy, people.

I started a new job. At a pretty awesome company. The catch is, they want me to change the dates I'm in Portland for the marathon. I was originally scheduled to be in Portland from Wednesday-Monday, but they want me in the office on Wednesday-Friday. For some meeting. And that's really all I know about that. I have a meeting with two of my bosses on Friday to sort that one out.

As you may recall, I became a really bitter person at my last job (okay, I've actually had three jobs since my last job, but they were short-term consulting affairs. Except one. Which was a mistake, but not because of anything I did...the position was presented as one thing and ended up being another. Anyway.). One of the things that really bothered me is that we were NEVER ALLOWED TO TAKE VACATION. There was always something going on at work that was more important than anything anyone on my team could possibly have going on in our personal lives. It really sucked. Big, hairy monkey balls. Yes, that much.

So, this job asked, before I started, if I could move my trip. I explained that I could change my flights, but that I couldn't move a marathon. So yes, I agreed to all of this before I started. Because it's a good company. A really good company. And I didn't want something like a few days in a city I've lived and visit at least once a year in to be a reason I couldn't get a job with a good company. But I'm still not very happy about it.


But because of my experience at my old company, I have this niggling feeling that I'll never be able to take a vacation when I want to. Which is totally not fair because it's not like the two companies have anything to do with each other or anything. I'm just projecting. At least those years of therapy have been put to good use--I can now identify my emotional behavior. Go me!


I'm trying to be accepting of my feelings that I'm not happy about moving my flight, while at the same time, accepting that I've also agreed to this, and that I shouldn't let it make me bitter. (I'm trying not to make "good" the opposite of "perfect"--It's still a good company to work for, and I'll still have a good time in Portland, it would just be perfect if I could have my proverbial cake and eat it, too, but wouldn't we all like that?)

And if you write good enough times, it starts to seem like a funny word...I mean why isn't is said with the oo-ee sound like gooey?

Further proof...

that my life is a little more stressful than normal right now.

Today I went to the DMV because we couldn't find my registration. Mind you, we had the stickers on the plates, and when I called, the guy confirmed that my transaction had been processed. Captain America thought he must have thrown out the registration. I thought we just never got it. It's not the kind of thing we would have thrown out or lost.

And there's an $18 fee for replacing a lost registration card. Because as the lady at the DMV office told me, the stickers come stapled to the card. I told her that I know that that's what's supposed to happen but we're not the sort of people to lose things like that. She charged me $18 anyway. You're welcome, California.

As it turns out, I've just been losing my mind because my registration card was in the same envelope where I keep all of my other important documents. I found it because I was getting out my passport. Sadly, I'm not going anywhere, but I'll be starting a new job on Monday and I need it for my paperwork.

*Sigh*

I've got to get it together soon!

I've had a day, and it somehow disintegrates from there

I am having one of those days/weeks/months/quarters (yes, I'm an accountant...I think in quarters) where I just can't seem to get things to happen. My April was totally disorganized, my May was insanely busy, and my June has somehow managed to be both disorganized and busy. I have no idea how this happened.

Don't get me wrong. I have a great life.

I'm just going through a period in it where I keep asking myself how did THIS become my life?

I'm feeling very much like I can't MAKE things happen, and this worries me. In addition to the fact that I'm not actually getting anything done, I'm worried about the language I'm using to express my feelings. Whenever I feel like I can't MAKE things happen, it is inevitably tied to my chronic depression. For anyone who's not in the know about chronic depression, it's a lot like any other mental disorder...you always have it...you just learn coping skills to deal with it/keep it under control. And for me, medication helps a lot. I have a physical chemical imbalance in my brain. I'm not imagining I'm sad and I'm not a hypochondriac. You wouldn't tell someone with high blood pressure not to take their medication, would you? Also running and reading help a lot. For me. I'm not a doctor, so I can't prescribe this combination for you.

So anyway, today I tried to go to a massage appointment. Except I could not get there. I'm not kidding. I left work in plenty of time. But then the gas light came on in my car. I have no idea how far I can actually drive with the light on because I've never tested it (and I don't plan to), and while I thought I had enough gas to get there if I was driving, as it turns out, I was driving in SoCal, so I was mostly sitting. In a shit-ton of traffic (Hey, Voracious, I know you love this magical measurement, so I threw it in just for you!). And I wasn't convinced I had enough gas for an hour of sitting. (As it turns out, I probably did). And just for fun, my gas light came on in the only 10 mile stretch of I-5 that doesn't have a gas station you can actually get to before you run out of gas because...wait for it...the fair is going so the traffic situation in SoCal is exponentially bad!


So, I got off the freeway, pulled over, and just waited for traffic to die down enough for me to actually get SOMEWHERE USEFUL.

So in the process of delivering this rant, I found this blog post that made me laugh out loud a lot. And of course, I facebooked it. Yup, I'm verbing facebook and verb. It's been that kind of day. Who knows what wild and crazy thing I'll do next, so watch out.

So anyway, back in my world where I'm not managing to get anything done...which of course is not actually true. I get a lot of stuff done. I just never get to the point where I feel like, aahhh, I've gotten a bunch of stuff done today and now I can relax BECAUSE THERE'S STILL MORE STUFF TO DO!! Which is sounding an awful lot like this amusing blog. So maybe that's the real problem. Not that I'm not getting anything done, but that there is so much to get done.

And then I got distracted by showing Captain America the words with friends game in which I beat the Professor by 7 points in the last move, causing me to text him (the Professor) Boo-ya! in my excitement. Because the Professor blew a 50 point lead. Because I'm awesome. And clearly in the Double Unicorn Success Club.

So it seems like now is a good time to have some hot chocolate and read about women in jail.

P.S. I realize that this blog post sounds a lot like I have ADD. I don't. Seriously. I've had that tested. (I'm also not schizophrenic or manic depressive, in case you're curious.) This whole ADD-thing is another manifestation of my chronic depression. Really. This is one of those things that acts up before I really feel like I'm losing control and go into a full depressive state. And for those of you who are now beginning to get worried about my mental health, relax. I'm really not to go off the deep end...I don't suffer migraines, but from what I understand, for a lot of people, there are signs that they are going to get one...and if they get rest or hydrate or whatever their migraine trigger is, they can cut it off before it happens. The feeling like I can't get anything done and the ADD-like behavior are both signs for me. But unlike when you're about to get a migraine and should probably do something ASAP, this state for me is fine for a while. (Obviously, since it's been going on for three months). My prediction is, given the events and tasks in my immediate future, that this state will exist for about another month and then it will resolve itself and I'll go back to being my more normal self.

Don't balance, juggle

This is the advice on the sign in the bathroom at my work--part of an advertising campaign to get employees to update their career development plans.

I'm not actually sure this is advice, though.  Personally, if I were the business, I'd rather my employees balance things: their daily tasks with long-term goals, their personal lives with their professional ones, their diets, to name a few.  I admit, life is, in actuality, more about juggling than balancing, at least for the vast majority of us.  Or maybe just for me. I'd like my life to be balanced, but it frequently feels more like I'm juggling a number of obligations.  Sometimes it even feels like juggling stuff I enjoy: do I go out with my friends, or stay home and read a book? If I give up x amount of sleep, can I do both?

Wow, and when I started this post, I had a whole lot more to say on the topic, like a well thought out tangent on how if my company wants me to juggle and I want to balance, maybe I shouldn't be working there.  But it's been a busy week and I'm about to get on a red-eye, and technically I'm a contingent worker, so I'm paid by the hour regardless if I'm a balancer or a juggler, and the internet is such a weird place that when I googled images of tightrope walking, this actually came up.  It's like steampunk met Water for Elephants and then had a baby with Lewis Carroll. And I thought my imagination was a strange place!

Buying art from children?

I started this back when I worked at my old job...I guess I saved it because I thought I'd have more to say, but I really don't.  This is it.

We have this thing at work (wow, that's a brilliant way to start a post)...let me try again...there's a guy at my company is also an artist, and he has a relationship with an art school in San Diego...I think it's an actual school for artistically gifted children.  Anyway, we have a bunch of their art hanging in one of the halls at work.  It's a little sad because it's in the facilities hall, and not one everyone walks down all of the time, but I pass the art on my way to the gym. 

There's this really cool, what I am going to call, pictorial map of Africa.  It's not a real map at all because it doesn't have anything labeled on it, but it has drawings of things that represent parts of Africa on it.  I think it's really cool because it tells more of a story than a regular map.  In fact, I guess the best image I can use to explain it is a treasure map where they show the sharks that you have to avoid, and the strong winds or whatever. 

So like I said, it's really cool.  So I asked the guy at work if the art was for sale, or if the school sold prints of it, like greeting card sets and what have you.  He said they could talk to the student and see if the student wanted to sell the piece.  As you know, I'm all about owning original art.  But this isn't exactly what I had in mind.  Not because it's not good, and not because it's done by some random kid I don't know, but I have some sort of issue I can't quite articulate about buying art from a kid.  Like maybe I'm validating them too soon, or maybe the kid won't do something productive with the money, or maybe the success will go to the kid's head, or I'm really not sure.  Something in my gut just says not to buy it from the student.

But I don't think I'd have any of these qualms if I was buying it from the school as part of a fundraiser or something.  Am I nuts here, or do I just lack the vocabulary to explain my feelings?

Performance reviews

Clearly I've been busy doing other things with my life than blogging.  Like planning a trip to Aspen.  It's amazing how much less rantier I feel now that I don't hate what I'm doing for 40+ hours a week!

I love that my friends send me articles of things they think are related to my life.  Here's another example.  While I am no longer at that job that I hated, I still think this article is true. 

I've long thought that performance reviews are about as useful as the end-of-term evaluations of professors.  I've had very few poor professors; even still, what's the likelihood that they care what I think?  They've been doing this for years, and are tenured, so it's not as though a negative review has any weight now. 

The position I am no longer in, I held for 2.5 years.  I had three different managers, and went through 4 review periods.  The first three, each with a different manager were good, and the last one was poor.  I'm pretty sure I haven't changed.  But what did change were some of the expectations.  Except that wasn't communicated. 

I'm a no-news-is-good-news sort of employee.  It would never occur to me to change how I'm doing something unless my manager tells me there's a problem with it.  But it makes no sense to wait until the end of the review period to speak up about something.  It's confusing to me, the employee, and it just aggravates the manager. 

My company did try to be forward-thinking and also included goal-setting as part of the performance review process.  But I felt like that step was flawed, too.  The goals were only reviewed twice a year, so it was possible to lose sight of them, especially in the wake of other emergencies that cropped up.  Also, we were to set goals, but management didn't necessarily provide the time or support to carry them through.  For example, a number of people in my department felt we needed more cross-training, but whenever my coworkers and I set up time to do this, our manager would tell us something else was a bigger priority.  Why wouldn't training your employees be a priority?

If I ever get into a management position (which I think is unlikely, given that I think I might actually be qualified to do it), I would of course do employee reviews, but I would not only complete what my company thought was important, I would also work to make the reviews useful to both me and my employees.  I mean, who really needs another meeting where NOTHING is accomplished? 

Resolution Update: March

Do you see how on top of things I've suddenly become?  It's April 1 and this is NOT A JOKE.  I am actually going to tell you how my resolutions are going.  March was my most successful month to date, with a 47% success rate, but that is mostly because I discounted my exercise and stretching for the 13 days post-surgery when I wasn't allowed to do anything, and I cut out 10 and 11 days, respectively, of diet improvement and finding a writing job. 

My new plan for diet improvement is to simply not buy anything while at work.  No snacks, no sodas, no Starbucks.  That should save my waist and money.  And I'm taking a hiatus from looking for a writing job because it's a tedious process and right now the pay rate for the work I'd get isn't worth the time I spend looking.  Don't think I've given up my dream of writing; it's just that writing articles and proofreading essays, while definitely in many ways better than my current job, isn't actually my writing dream. 

I was most successful this month at reading (big surprise!), with an 87% success rate, next at flossing, at, I'm embarrassed to say, a 55% success rate, followed by blogging (did  you notice?) at a 52% success rate.  I totally flopped at stretching and writing a novel.  But I think the stretching will come back when I can start running again (ON MONDAY!!!!!) and the novel writing when I'm not living at work.

Finally, one new resolution was formed for April: find a new job.  In case you hadn't been paying attention (and you're really better off if you haven't been), it is just time for me to close the chapter on my current job and move on.  Even if things with my boss miraculously improved, I just don't think the company is one I can get behind any more.  And I am in the incredibly fortunate position where my husband loves me and trusts me enough to go out and find new work, and hates that I'm miserable at my current work, and that we have enough saved up to pay the mortgage for a few months, that I can just quit my job if I want to. 

And you know, I'll be sure to keep you posted!

*Shocking* mid-month resolution update and a shout-out to a friend

I've already spent way too much time at work this week because I'm having a really random train of thought that will probably only make sense to me, but as the first step towards conquering any problem is to identify said problem, I figure I'm ahead of the game just by acknowledging that it's a random train of thought.  Hopefully it's not so random that it's not worth the few minutes you're spending reading this blog.

Anyway, today I decided to remove two items from my resolution list.  The first is "Find a Writing Job."  Yes, I would love to be a writer, but the problem is, I already have a job.  A job that consumes way too  much of my time.  And while I'd never consider myself lazy, I've been doing mental cost-benefit analyses of this particular resolution for a while, and I've come to the conclusion that to make a standard of living even up to 50% of what I'm making right now would take way more work than doing my current job.  And while I'd have more free time to travel and do other things I love if I were a writer, I'd have less money with which to enjoy them.  And, (we're going to see how many sentences I can start with "and;" I know all sorts of fun games) what I'd like to do is be a novelist (I think), so if I'm going to spend my precious free time doing writing related things, I may as well be doing novel-writing related things. 

The second thing I've decided to remove from my resolutions list is "No Coffee/Soda (change/improve diet)."  It's not so much that I don't need to improve my diet, or that I'm not going to try, but I've decided to remove this from my resolutions list because I'm going to go about a different way of doing it.  Here's my shout-out to my friend, Tiffany, The Budgetnista.  Seriously, you should check out her site, her facebook page and buy her book. 

Anyway, she has this philosophy that there are four general categories of things you spend your money on: things you want, things you like, things you love, and things you need.  She wants you to ask yourself if you want it, like it, love it, or need it before you buy something.  Because, if you stop buying things you want or like, you'll have more money for the things you love or need.  Her example is that she likes watching TV and eating out, but she LOVES traveling.  So she cancelled her cable and stopped eating out (okay, I can't say ever here, but she at least cut back).  And last year she was able to travel to something fantastic like 14 countries. 

So, here's where this ties into my resolutions.  Before I eat something not useful, I'm going to ask myself if I want it, like it, love it, or need it.  Today I was craving a Coke.  But I decided I just wanted it.  So I ate my clementine.  I LOVE Entenmann's crumb cake, but I can't find it in California, so when I go home to New Jersey, my mom buys me one for myself.  And I eat the entire thing.  And I don't feel any regret.  But since I haven't been home in over a year, I think I'm entitled.  But I drink Coke more than once a year.

And now I've come to the end of my random train of thought and have completely lost steam and have spent the last 15 minutes looking at friends' facebook pages, so I have no conclusion tonight.   

Treating your employees like your customer base

It was recently mentioned to me that one of the problems with my company may be that leadership communicates with the corporate employees as if we were their customer base.  This idea has me thinking, because I certainly do not fall into the demographic my company targets. 

The demographic my company targets are people who make less than $50K a year.  I'm not sure if that's on an individual basis, in which case it would probably be $100K per household, or if it's $50K per household, but either way, that's not me. 

I feel like leadership frequently communicates with corporate employees as if we were naughty children, and the only way to get us to behave is to be forceful and demanding, much like saying you WILL sit still at dinner, rather than saying, if you sit still at dinner we'll know you're grown up enough to eat in a nice restaurant.  Not that I'm advocating bribing children to behave well, but the second way makes it the child's choice, offers a semblance of a compliment, and lets the child know that good behavior will not go unnoticed.  And of course, with children, you need to explain what you're looking for, and model the behavior.  It's just dumb to yell at them the first time they don't do what you want if you haven't told them what it is they're expected to do. 

So, this got me to wondering if my company was making a series of assumptions about both their customer base and their employees.  For one thing, a salary of less than $50K in California may indicate that you're less educated, but elsewhere in the country it might be quite normal.  Additionally, if you assume that people who make less than $50K are less educated, but you treat them like naughty children, then you're confusing the issue.  Not being rich does not equal being dumb. 

Sometimes I feel substantially underpaid at my job.  San Diego suffers from this confusion about the cost of living.  In other expensive places in the country, like New York, generally the salary is increased to adjust for the cost of living.  But in San Diego, we pay the "sunshine tax." Our salaries are not increased to compensate for the high cost of living.  If my company knows they're underpaying employees, does that make them think they can walk all over us in other ways, and we won't complain?  It's like taking advantage of someone because you think you can.

And if our corporate leadership treats the employees as if we were the customers, and this is how they treat the employees, does it stand to reason that they're treating the customers poorly, too.  Does the correlation go both ways?