work

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Choices

Sometimes I am struggling to get the lid on the food storage containers and not so successful. Maybe it’s the incorrect lid for this bottom; maybe it’s the correct one and I’m trying desperately to jam it on there upside-down.

And I think back to how my high school aptitude testing results said I should be an airplane mechanic. Professionally speaking, I have been: a mall elf. a study skills instructor. a children’s theater performer. a tour guide. a button store cashier. an IT call center rep. an instructional designer. a piano teacher.

But I have not been: an airplane mechanic. Determinedly trying to jam those lids on, I think, perhaps, that following that suggested career path might not have ended well for any us.

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Agenda item: bee training

I dreamt I was at a meeting about a software implementation project.  It had many phases, which grew increasingly more complex.

Notably, the phase being discussed would require team members to jump on a trampoline while wearing a large beard of bees.  I had some concerns about this, but chose to embrace it for the time being. Even in dreams there can be pressure to be a team player, you know?

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Six LinkedIn Recommendations that Never Got Approved for Publishing on Recipients’ Profiles

Six LinkedIn Recommendations that Never Got Approved for Publishing on Recipients’ Profiles:

1) If this is the Randy Jones I worked with in Accounting? Uh, total d-bag. He made a LOT of people in my department cry, and I caught him stealing out of other people’s lunches on more than one occasion. If this is the other Randy Jones – in Purchasing I think? – seems like a pretty nice kid.   Doesn’t talk much.

 

2) I’m writing an “addendum” because “apparently” there are no recommendation “takebacks” on LinkedIn, and I wrote my recommendation for Deedee, “BITD” (back in the day). Like, when she was still showing up regularly and stuff. It sucks, because this was the only recommendation I’ve written here and it was from when she was a whole different person. So now I look like some ass with poor judgement or maybe a big liar. That’s the thanks you get for putting yourself out there.

Anyhoosie . . . does anyone know how to get just the digest emails from the LinkedIn groups? Cuz I’m getting a ton of stupid posts about job openings I don’t care about. I tried looking at the FAQ page but IMHO there was nothing helpful there. Maybe they should call it IAQs. L-O-freakin-L!! Thx for any tipz or trix you have about this – just send to bubblz88@frinklmail.huh.

 

3) I advised Chad on multiple occasions that he has neither the stamina, patience, nor skill to be a chef. He always had an aptitude with numbers, so I encouraged him to perhaps pursue a career in Finance or Business Administration. Though Chad frequently requests my input on his career path, he rarely acts on my suggestions, at times inexplicably seeming to make a choice simply because it was in opposition to what I recommended.

So. Who was correct about Chad’s prospects, and who was not? You be the judge.

 

4) Dear Sirs. I worked with Lisa for 4 months at the Dubuque branch. I don’t remember much about her except that I know she’s very fond of Precious Moments merchandise. Oh, and she is very into her Bible study group. Actually she was always inviting me to go, but I never went, primarily because they met on Must See TV night.

 

5) This guy . . . seriously! I’ve been, like, totally trying to get someone to sue me ever since this guy passed the bar. Seems like someone’s always trying to sue you except for when ya want them to, am I right? Prolly I should first find out if he’s one of those defends-you kind of lawyers though. I’d give my life for this guy, I seriously would, not that you asked. I’m totally offering this up on my own free will. I’ll tell you something – this guy, he’s the only person I’m still on speaking terms with from our pissant home town. Including my folks.

MA IF YOU HAVEN’T FIGURED OUT WHY BY NOW, I AINT TELLING YOU.

Remind me the question?
 

6) Meh

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Working stiff

I often dream about work.

Thus, by the time I arrive at my awake-time workplace, it typically feels like I’ve already been there for hours.  Maybe if I took a nap on my lunch break, I’d dream about being at home.  That would be nice.

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Rabbit Hole

It’s too easy to go down the rabbit holes in my mind these days.  My imagination leaps about like an….an…undisciplined terrier.  Which can be a good thing (can delight children; can help me put myself in others’ shoes to accomplish small talk; fodder for creative pursuits) –

or, a bad thing.

Example from this morning: I had to set up a new monitor at work.  A large, awesome new fancypants monitor that I love.  Anyhow, these days, hardware is no longer just a matter of plugging in a couple of things.  There are quite a few cables, accessories and shprockets.  So I did indeed consult the Product Information Guide to make sure I had addressed all of the important things.  The Guide is a thin sheet folded about 9 times, written in 3 pt font.  I squinted at that mofo trying to find a reference to the driver files on that came on CD – do I need to install them or not? – when I came across a large notice (large in this context being roughly 6 pt font) saying that there is a certain icon in the instructions that will alert the consumer to “a potential for property damage, personal injury, or death.”

And off we go…I started trying to think of the various scenarios in which my gorgeous new monitor, or the process of setting it up, could kill me.  There’s the more common and banal – for example, it overheats and starts a fire.  It has crazy frayed cables that give me an electric shock.

But then I challenge my mind to think of more imaginative scenarios:

  • Ok, I am setting it up and I drop the monitor on my exposed pinky toe.  This causes an abrasion which gets infected with some rare staph infection and I die.
  • An intruder comes into the office looking to steal the nicest and newest equipment on the floor.  S/he spots my beautiful monitor and begins to mentally calculate the resale value.  I have already become too attached to the monitor to let it go without a fight.  The intruder tases me, then hits me over the head with the monitor, one fatal blow.
  • A poisonous lizard has become a stowaway in the monitor box.  It leaps at me and latches onto my neck, releasing its crazy jungle toxins into my bloodstream.
  • It turns out that this monitor had been used once before by a peanut butter sandwich fiend.  They didn’t like it and returned it and it looked so new the company fiendishly decided to sell it as brand new.  Too bad you can’t see peanut molecules CROUCHING ON THE SURFACE of the monitor, waiting to make me rashy and puffy.  I should not have patted and caressed the monitor with such glee, for it is a deadly histamine weapon.

Before you know it, I am staring into space, running down the rabbit hole, instead of demonstrating how much more productive you can be with a larger monitor screen.

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Fire Truck’s Still Squeaky Clean

There should be a new verb coined for when you have written an email response and it’s ready to go but you wait to send it b/c you don’t want to seem like some loser who has nothing better to do than fire off immediate responses, even if at that moment, that’s what you are.

Come on, people, you know you do this too.

Are you E-mulling? E-laying your response?

Hmm, those just don’t catch the spirit.  Your thought?

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Be Here Now

In college, my work study job for 2 years was peer academic counseling/study skills instruction, through the college’s Academic Resource center.  I adored it.  I loved the work, I loved my supervisors, and I loved my fellow counselors and learned so much from them.  My own study skills and grades improved remarkably based on my training there.

One fellow peer counselor was a year older than me and just  seemed wise beyond her years.  Once we had a group discussion on the topic of test anxiety.  Many students we worked with prepared well for tests but then choked in the big moment, so this was something we always tried to strategize around with them.

T, the above-noted wise colleague, said she found it often came down to focus.  Often, students with a great deal of test anxiety have minds that interfere with their progress because they get preoccupied with worries of failure instead of staying focused on the task (probably also interferes with recall).

“I recommend to the students I work with to write ‘Be here now’ at the top of their test,” she said.  It was simple, tangible, easily remembered.  If their mind began to go elsewhere they can look at it as a reminder.  I borrowed this idea and often suggested it to the students I worked with as well.  And somehow that mantra leaked into my life in general.  This conversation took place in 1993 yet I remember it plain as day.  I wonder, does she have any clue how much her thought impacted me (and likely others)?

I do sometimes suspect I have a bit of adult ADD.  There are times when I know there is a special moment happening and yet I’m not really there, I’m worrying about the next thing, the never-ending list to be completed.  I want to be there but my thoughts are like a wily ball of yarn, rolling here and there and just out of reach.  So when this starts my mind will shout, “Be here now!  Be Here Now.”

Last Friday, we were in my daughter’s room.  She put the radio on and was playing her new birthday bongos artfully to the song.  She wanted me to come in and dance along.  Sure, what the hell.  I climbed on her stepstool and danced and swayed in my long twirly skirt.  It was quite a scene.

Then, thoughts of “I should be,” and “Next, we can” started to creep in.

“Be here now!” my mind answered.  And I stayed there as long as I could, dancing and swaying, extending my arms to the imaginary hippie crowd around us, inviting them to join the moment.  Be here now, everyone.

Be with me and my little girl, a little one who mothers everywhere look at wistfully and scare me with their intense eyes as they say, “They grow up before you know it.  You’ll see.”  Like some scary prophetess.  Like a rueful parent who wished they had been there more.