elainegrey

Clarity!

Discernment is so hard: it requires the sorting out of fears and all the messages the world hands to you to actually find the real nugget of authentic response.

I found some clarity on Saturday. I'd spent the morning at the aging workshop, listening deeply, and, by noon feeling overwhelmed. I went home and began wrapping my Dad's birthday gift.

Dad's birthday gift is a mini cannon: his grandkids believe he is a retired pirate, and no one is dissuading them of that misconception. Not only are we giving him the cannon, but we are also including lego pirate minifigs (including a girl pirate for our niece, his granddaughter). We have a cake tin from a rum cake from Pirate's Alley that seemed like it would make the right container. I had some cheap gold tone chain for jewelry making that had been too cheap for any use, and i had a small luggage lock that is no longer TSA compatible (as well as fairly easy to pick). Wrapping chain around a round tin doesn't actually introduce any security, so i decided to punch holes in the tin and thread the chain through. The gift will be chained and locked, no key provided.

Christine asked, "How do you open it?"

I responded, "How would a pirate open it?"

Honestly, the chain is so cheap, it's easier to pull apart than some gift wrap and tape combinations i remember. Definitely easier to break than curling ribbon!

As i pulled out the dremmel to punch the holes in the tin, clarity hit me.

What i NEED is more time making and creating. Not more leadership and management responsibilities. I have already recognized that part of the problem with my current job is that i have so many folks to whom i delegate the creative problem solving. I need to be looking for a new role that gives me more opportunities to *create* and not manage.

Exhale.

I don't know how to get there, but at least i see the direction i want to go.

--==∞==--

Meanwhile, i checked email yesterday evening and found i needed to be in a meeting in less than twelve hours, a 5:30 am meeting. Today i have 23 hours notice before the Tuesday 5:30 am meeting. Also, it's better than the 2:30 am call i had Sunday morning to include me in troubleshooting the install.

Sunday I did significant household carpet cleaning including the second full cleaning of the vacuum's filters after the job was done. I think that should make regular floor maintenance possible again. We definitely lost the habit while we had the roomba, and then the vacuum cleaner failures after the roomba failures didn't help us get back into any habit. I hope that some standard maintenance behavior can return to our practice after this.

I hate carpets.

Sweet Saturday morning, sleeping in, windows open with no worry of roofers ascending just outside, no fumes from the tar pot billowing in noxious clouds up. I have a bit of Christine's cornbread with my tea -- her corn bread is delicious and tender and -- yes, sweet. Yankee cornbread is what i was raised to call it. Would i rather she made cornbread like my mother? Um, ....

i can haz fifth?

Christine took care of the cats, made the tea and is now back asleep beside me. Tomorrow she will be at the airport on her way to a conference. A week from now, my sister will be here and she and i will no doubt be chattering away, some where, some how.

With the clarity that comes from working with my therapist, and reflection the rest of this week, i think i can now articulate just which work dysfunction is the one that is so damaging. It's good to know with more precision where the poison is. Any place that makes you feel like Cassandra, where you are trying to warn of danger and "no one" is listening, is damaging.

So i can name the poison, why it's poisonous, why it's unreasonable. Perhaps i can build up some barriers, perhaps i will be able to name for myself, "Ah, that's the Cassandra Poison at work," and rebuild my self esteem and confidence.

And i do recognize there are barriers to the poison: i was able to enjoy the "Palo Alto Moonlight Walk" last night with a retired colleague, watching the lightning begin far across the bay and enjoying the waxing moon high in the twilit sky. By the time i was home, the lightning storm had crossed the bay and arrived. We went out to sit on the deck and watch and then big fat wet raindrops began an occasional splat. We retreated, and the rain came down for a few more moments, the ozone scent and the summer-rain coolness so memorable and strange. It is not a common Bay Area weather event. We heard a child screaming and screaming, and a raised parental voice: i wondered whether the lightning and thunder was the cause, while Christine surmised the child found itself alone and had been surprised.

Of all the feline reactions to the weather, most entertaining was Greycie Loo when a scattering of hail hit the deck. She rushed over to the deck door, like the black and white police cruiser she resembles. "Hey! Who's doing that? Who's throwing stuff on that deck? Cut it out!" At alert and indignant, she listened for the culprit.

I think i need to write a resume for Evernote today.

I suppose it's a task to timebox and get out the door. Just Do It.

Thank you for those of you who responded to my post about my work-situational depression. I find i am more easily able to tell myself that some ways of thinking aren't authentic but are depression-triggered when i write them down. It's one of my distinct memories of going on prozac years and years ago. I had lived in a constant wash of self harm ideation and prozac was like an umbrella opening sheltering me slightly from those thoughts -- but not all thoughts. There was a distinct sense of some thoughts being not-me, after all.

The failure thought feels like a not-me thought, but like being wet in a rainstorm, it's hard to hold the constant and authentic "I am" separate from the momentary "I am wet." And unlike a rainstorm, the cascade of depression thoughts are both closer to the "I am" while being less objectively real than the "I am wet." ( more writing therapy and strategizing )

In intriguing news, my colleague recommended that i would make a great business analyst for our project. We have an opening (in O hi O). There is an issue of not knowing whether the opening requires moving to O hi O (or flying once a month) and the pay grade, some discomfort around whether i'd be accepted in the role (not enough library experience?), and the whole thing of leaving the crap in my boss' lap to go do the fun stuff.

Also, i really want to dump a great deal in the business analyst's lap. I know how much work lurks there.

On the other hand, this is what i've been talking about: i miss that work. But there is a full time job there ... and then there's the question of who would manage my team (and me) if i went to that role. Would they hire to fill that?

I'm trying to figure out how to discuss with my boss.
--==∞==--

I'm currently skipping a seminar that looked really interesting, but yesterday was exhausting. I was home well after 9 pm.

I haven't written much about my therapy this round: i've been learning a great deal. I think in the past week i had actually been practicing praising myself and giving my self approval. This is ... amazing. We tapped into the "controlling voice" (the critic) towards the end of the session, and i found the voice in myself that thinks i've gotten too giddy with being able to say "That went well," and that i'm manipulating myself, and probably going to get far to full of myself. It's the same voice that criticizes me any time i try stopping listening to the Song of Need. Christine laughed when i described it to her, "N-- meet Ma--," she said, introducing my therapist to my mother. ( Read more... )

I suppose all self growth happens in cycles. I think of the work i did, motivated by the need to finish my dissertation. That was work that identified me and not me aspects of my interior life. Depression was Not Me. Certain "Must Do" issues were Not Me, and in the end, it was clear that the physics degree was motivated by a strong need for approval, not because i found any joy in the physics community.

So here i am again, listening to fragments. This time though, most of these fragments of divided self seem authentically me. Indeed, i'm creating a new fragment of self, a self-voice that can praise and affirm.

--==∞==--

I hope i can use Joy to help me balance my response to a few places where i have needs and i have responsibilities to others. Mr Stood Me Up on Wednesday gets a very narrow chance. Then there is someone from Meeting who i had been caring for, who i thought i'd passed on into someone else's care, and that someone had a brother become very ill. I need to reconnect and my guilt is looming: i will need to deal with a similar bundle of guilt that i'm supposed to be doing Everything when i try and find what i can do.

For my work around friends and family? My aunt's and brother in law's birthday fast approaches and i have some missed birthdays of the nephices.

Also, i've been thinking about going to the Meeting's workday tomorrow morning. (I miss that community.) But i think i should take Saturday morning and connect with that particular meeting member and the other meeting member support i need to do from last night's committee meeting.

So Facebook gets all the press about exposing news about you, but LinkedIn seems just as problematic. ( Read more... )

This description of a very profitable grocery store in Spain makes my eyes well up with tears: http://hbswk.hbs.edu/rss/6440.html . Yes, i would grumble if Safeway was closed on Sunday, but would i miss all the "choice"? I'm not sure. I wonder if Mercadona has private label foods: that's what we often end up buying (after trying others to find the right match of quality to cost). The act of making employee's work life stable is so impressive: i've read others who have been jerked around by retail scheduling enough to know how disruptive and difficult that can be. I come back around to being closed on Sunday, though, and my thoughts in late 2008 as the economy limped along. What if places in these suburban sprawl zones closed more? It's not just the employees who benefit: public transit could be more efficient, traffic could reduce significantly, and if it were a cultural thing i wonder what patterns might develop.

I suppose i wonder what the larger cultural and societal costs are for a grocery store to be open to get that late night grocery run. I know it's can seem a godsend to the sick: having a place to get certain foodstuffs when one is not well is useful.

Anyhow. It's odd i was so receptive to the business description, although the management for long term stability instead of beating quarterly projections seems to be obvious and feed my hope that eventually MBAs will discover that their (great?)grandparents had sensible business practices. How long will it take to shift management away from a Olympian central control to putting it back in the hands of the folks doing the work?

Is there a Medievalist here? Did the feudal lords dictate much in the way of operations? Or did the peasants choose when to sow and how to breed their critters and so on?

--==∞==--

So back to work. Things i didn't do this vacation from a list in my phone: visit the De Young (Christine proposed that but then retracted her desire), clip Greycie Loo's claws (the creature is made of boing, she is Maid of Boing, but she's too often snagged by her talons), and i did walks some. I also "swam" a little. I didn't have on this list plan the next four months.

While i think my plan to write the twelve essays about my work life is a good plan (despite being many months behind), i think i need to move away from past to possibility to address the anxieties that really hit me. I think i should begin correspondence with people in the meeting in tech jobs -- slowly, one person at time -- and write briefly about my ten years working for the same manager/mentor and that the organizations i work for seems unique enough that i fear that it's hard to translate that ten years of work into a language that would be broadly understood. As my role has shifted and changed, it has been in the context of a need and people who knew me, so the fit was easy to understand. I realize if i needed to begin a job hunt, i'd not know what to look for nor how to explain myself. I'd like a chance to have a conversation about other tech companies in the area to understand how they're managed and structured before i'm under pressure.

That seems a reasonable outline. My second motive is to understand if the things that discomfit me at times are frying pan, fire, pot, kettle, or if it's just generally being in the kitchen. Objectively, i believe the things that bother me are to be expected in any organization larger than the hundred-person scale of the Minnow, and are likely more intense in those organizations when for profit. My suspicion is that other hundred-person scale companies in the valley are likely to be more volatile than the Minnow and have a higher risk and intensity than i'm likely to find.

Unfortunately, i don't know any folks who are at smaller tech firms. Well, maybe one person -- but i don't feel i know him. And as i tick off the names of folks i should target for this, it is entirely male.

I think we'll do baby steps though and first address large companies where i know folks in Meeting.

And PS, if you think i might find it useful to talk to someone you know or to you, please let me know.

--==∞==--

I've posted a regrets and invitation to my SIL and hope to see the nephews later in the week. Last night i posted very belated thanks to artist SG. (She has sent more gifts. After the two dozen yellow roses, a VHS movie and, for Christine, a bunch of lobster pastries. I hope the thanks will stop the gifts.) I sent apologies for not attending a potluck last night. I do have this lingering sense of "bad troglodyte," or perhaps that i am too good at being a troglodyte.

Must face day. Meeting stuff tonight, i guess. I'll dash off two quick notes before i go to hold a place for three of the four things (DE's cmte, wedding cmte, opening meeting -- leaving the laydown of the whatsit committee for R).