distractions, and gratefulness

There is way too much going on in my head lately. I feel like a jekyll/hyde creature, happy one minute and raging the next, peaceful and quiet and then suddenly crying in the kitchen floor.

Work has been stressful. We're at such a make-it-or-break-it point. Payroll has just barely eked through the bank account the last couple months, and probably wouldn't have if a couple of the managers (me included) hadn't held their paychecks until a few things came in. We need more sales, and the salespeople are trying so hard, but for some reason it's just not coming in as quickly as we want. We have a big deal on the horizon, so close yet so far out of reach. We've cut everything we can cut, even our staff, so that we can survive. I feel like we've been in survival for three years, and I'm ready to thrive instead. We're smarter now, and if we could start over we'd be in a better position than we are now, but you can't retroactively apply the lessons you learn from your mistakes. We need just one more big break.

Meanwhile, my family life, other than my husband, has taken an odd turn. My parents finally bought a house here. My husband and I were overjoyed that they would no longer be staying with us every other weekend when they came to town. But then my good-for-nothing manipulative older brother lost his job and my dad told him to come live in their house rent free. After living there a couple weeks, he then told my parents the house (a two bedroom, one bath) was too small for them to stay there too. So my parents are staying with us again. What can I do, though? I can't be a bitch and say no, can I? It's annoying and frustrating that I can see what he's doing, but for some reason my dad in particular is blind to it.

All this political nonsense has my brain reeling too. I don't know whether to pay attention, get angry, organize, protest, and rage rage rage, or turn it all off and just try to live my life and vote how I should when I can. When I was in college, I was the former. I was angry all the time and the tiniest injustices would cause me to go into a tailspin. I felt like a madwoman sometimes, but I was single and had madwomen friends, so it felt like it was what I was supposed to do. When I met my husband, I slowly but surely settled down. Different things became important. I found myself feeling actually contented with my life, and I stopped paying attention to all the little irritants in the world and just lived my life.

Those little irritants now seem to have grown exponentially, are everywhere, and are constantly bombarding me. It started this past fall when my state tried to pass an enormously outrageous anti-woman law. It ultimately failed, but it got me paying attention again, and now I see this bullshit everywhere. Calling people sluts for taking birth control, making laws saying it's ok for doctors to lie to pregnant women, dictating that girls who want an abortion can't cross state lines without a parent even if that parent is absent or abusive, forcing women to undergo painful and unnecessary medical procedures, defunding important health programs for women, reversing anti-discriminatory laws that were already on the books and doing good for women... it's just too much.

None of it affects me, though, in the sense that I could probably live my life and never be adversely affected by any of the above. But I feel a compulsion to speak out about it and worry about it because it affects women in general, and I've always felt a kinship to women. I was born a feminist at my core. All I want is to be treated fairly and equally and not have lady parts become fodder for overzealous conservative politicians. We just want to be left alone in peace.

It's all making me crazy. Last night, after reading a story about how Arizona has proposed a law that would allow employers to fire women for taking birth control, I lost it. I ended up in the dark kitchen sobbing in front of the sink. I don't really know what cracked, but I have felt so much lately like some kind of crazy person and a second-class citizen. I know work will be fine, that my parents problems aren't my problems and that having them stay with me isn't the worst thing ever, and that these new proposed laws are probably just the death throes of a party who has completely lost touch with the normal, average American, but it just feels like too much to take in, and I'm struggling with which me I want to be in response: raging? or quiet?

This morning I'm going with quiet. I want to stay informed, but I'm not going to spend an hour every day reading the news like I was. I'm going to pay attention to work details and see if I can change some things here for the better. I'm going to skip the protest march coming up in a couple weeks-- no one will notice me, there or not, but I know for my own sanity I need to back off. I'm going to give my parents some grace and put some positive thought toward my brother figuring it out and moving on.

So I'm going to do things that make me happy. I listened to loud, happy music on the way to work instead of the news. I'm going to take Friday afternoon off and go sit in the sun with a cocktail. This weekend I will plant some flowers on my back deck and get some bird seed to attract that little bluebird I've seen flitting around. These things make me happy, these things make me grateful to be here, to be alive, so these are the things that are going to fill my life right now.

I had a beautiful, relaxing weekend. I needed it. Friday night I went to a college baseball game (we are season ticket holders), and though it was cold, as long as I was wrapped up in my coat I was fine. It was nice to sit and chat with friends about really unimportant things. Saturday I ran errands and did chores around the house, then had a quiet night at home with my husband, tuna hibachi take out, and a movie. Sunday was beautiful, so we went again to the ballpark, sat in the glorious sun, and drank a couple beers before heading home to bed before 9 p.m.

Today I've been fighting a bit of a migraine, probably brought on by the changing seasons. I feel like my right eyebrow is drooping. I recognize this face in the mirror, not because it's mine, but because it's my mother's, looking out at me like somehow no time has passed and I'm still a child, tiptoeing around her bedroom door, trying my best not to disturb her sleep. Her eyebrow used to droop, too, when she had a migraine, and the pained look on my face reminds me so much of what I saw in hers.

They have moved my grandmother to my hometown, in preparation of their own move here this summer, and I am ashamed that I have not been to visit her since her move. She doesn't know it, of course-- she doesn't know anything about the current time and space. But I know it. Somehow that alone hasn't compelled me to go see her, that guilt, because seeing her causes pain of its own that is most of the time worse than the guilt. Her face doesn't remind me of anything anymore; it's so changed simply by the look of knowing that's gone from her eyes. But I will go see her today, after work.

once again...

It's probably a good thing my boss works from his home and not from our main corporate office. Today would have been his last on earth otherwise. I have worked for him for three and a half years now, and when I say he's the best boss I've ever had, I mean it. (But I haven't had great bosses either... one called me stupid to my face, one was complacent with the fact that her business was losing money since it was just "fun" to her, and another was so micromanaging that she couldn't keep employees longer than three months at a time before they ran away screaming.)

My current boss has problems of his own. He is a shiny-ball-chaser, meaning whatever captures his interest most at any given time is #1 priority. Tomorrow he may not care at all, there's no way to tell. He can't be anywhere on time, ever, and he can't finish anything on time, ever. He never finishes a project, a byproduct of the shiny-ball syndrome and the perpetually late problem both. He cancels and moves meetings for no good reason all the time, regardless of the strain it puts on me, who controls his calendar, or anyone else involved. Working with him, you are living in his world, and it's a wild, crazy ride.

He's also full of really great ideas, he's a lot of fun to be around, he cares so much about people, almost to a fault, and he would never do anything intentional to hurt me or anyone else. He's always giving positive feedback and wants everyone here to grow, learn, and succeed.

BUT. I have been begging and pleading for him to lead an internal training session (or two or three) for months to try to get some new team members up to speed on his area of knowledge. It's not something I can do myself, I'm a different department. He finally agreed last week so I set it up for today. Everyone was SO excited. We were going to do it after hours so they could all really pay attention, we had popcorn ready, people told their families not to expect them, etc.

An hour before the start time, he canceled it saying he had lost his voice.

It's ALWAYS something. Always. Something else always comes up. Maybe he lost his voice, maybe, but with his history of canceling everything I don't even care the reason anymore. The mood in the office was immediately brought down when I announced that we had to reschedule, but of course he didn't see it. I can't count on him to finish anything, and there are days I want to get up and walk out because I'm so frustrated by it.

There have been a few times I've tried to go into this with him, but seeing his face get all sad and mopey when he realizes he's made me mad is always enough for me to lay off a bit. Plus he is still my boss so I don't feel like I can totally ream him out with no consequences. I can't change him though. It's something I'm going to have to continue to live with, I suppose. Today was just particularly maddening.

ahhhhhhhhh

I AM SO FRUSTRATED.

Why is this country talking about the right to get birth control covered by insurance? Since when did someone else's religious belief become more important than my right to be able to afford the medicine that my doctor prescribed to me?

People are so mean! A woman, a mother of two of my high school friends, was just ranting on facebook about how we shouldn't have to pay for college girls to get their birth control cheaply. SERIOUSLY? I am NOT a college girl, I am a married woman, and I take birth control too, and I don't want to have to pay an arm and a leg for it every month! There are a ton of responsible, married, stable women out there who take it for reasons well beyond not getting pregnant, and you know what, even if that is their only reason, it's THIER CHOICE because it's THEIR BODY! There have been times in my life where I wouldn't have been able to afford my birth control without insurance coverage, and I need it to control a medical issue, not just so I can have sex without getting pregnant. Why do people not understand this?

Why is no one talking about viagra? Why does that not offend anyone's religious beliefs? Its sole purpose is to make it so men can have sex. Nothing else. Are they just assuming because these men are old, they are married, and hey they "might" be trying to have more kids, so it's cool. But birth control? Hell no, right? These women are just sluts out there having a good time, I'm not paying for that!

I responded to her post with something similar to above and now I'm afraid to go back to facebook. I know no one on her thread will listen to me. I just can't abide the stupidity anymore. I can't take it!

You know, I think the worst part of this is that I respected her and looked up to her as a kid. I never knew she was so closed-minded. It makes me sad. I thought I was going to inherit a world where women were treated as equal, where I didn't have to fight for basic freaking rights, but instead everything is a mess.

I came out of the womb a feminist, kicking and screaming against the patriarchy from the start. No one puts me down or pushes me aside, especially not just because I'm a woman. I will stand and I will fight. I'm sick to death of being a second class citizen.

Here I am

I've decided I need to come back and write again. I was frustrated last year with my blog. I think I got tied up trying to entertain and forgot the original purpose, which was to get my frustrations and my thoughts out of my own way and to open up some room to move inside my brain. So I've changed my look here and will start fresh again. I wish there was a way to archive old posts, but I suppose they'll be moved out quickly enough.

There are probably a lot of things about which I could write, a lot of frustrations and deeply felt questions brought up over the last several months, but the last straw today, what finally brought me back here, was a work interaction. It's silly, really, but I don't have anyone I feel like I can discuss this with other than my husband, and hopefully he's busy with his own work.

I have an employee who drives me to pull my hair out with her lack of attention to detail and her ability to turn the simplest of issues into a confusing, drawn-out conversation. Just today I asked her if a file she had opened for a client had been open "for more than a week." I ask yes or no questions for a reason-- most of the time I want a short answer so that I can move on with my life. I don't necessarily always need all the details. Details bog me down. I need the big picture. She answered "I opened it on the 21st," which leaves me to look up what today is and count back. I said, "does that mean yes or no?" to force her to give me what I wanted, and I'm sure she thought "what a bitch" but I don't care. I have so many things going on in one day that when someone can't give me straight answers, even after I've had several conversations with them about what I need in my time-sensitive job, I can't help but be aggravated.

She told me I'm tougher on female employees than I am on male. I suppose that could be true, but I also have a male employee on a 60-day probation right now, and I have several objective ways in which I judge employees' work (like a report that our internal contact manager software pulls to show me mistakes created in the system). She consistently falls well behind all her coworkers in these reports. She can't seem to manage to get customer interaction entered correctly, whether that's completely forgetting to log something, leaving fields blank, or putting information under the entirely wrong person. Her inactions with customers often seem confused and circular except when it's a straight-forward known issue.

You know, the more I think about it, I actually think I'm easier on her than I am on the others. It's taken me longer to get to this point with her than it has with some others. That may have more to do with her personality in general than her being a female-- she tends to cry, and I hate to see anyone cry, not because I feel sympathy, but because it annoys me and makes me feel uncomfortable so I avoid it. And I also take her excuses more often than I would from a guy. She's one of very few women on a mostly-male technical team, so I really think I give her more slack than the others because I want some diversity.

She's an entry-level employee, so I've been trying to give time and guidance to help her find her groove, but I'm getting fed up. I asked her to fill out her personal development plan, and she told me she thinks she can be the department manager in "3 to 6 months," meaning she thinks she can out maneuver the reigning department lead who's also vying for that open manager spot and who has a full year of training on her. She obviously hasn't been listening to my criticisms and had her opinion of her work suffer for it. It's time to get tough, I think, give her one last 60-day shot at it too, and then let her go if she can't perform. I don't have the luxury of time to waste, and all she seems capable of doing correctly and consistently is wasting my time. The good news is since she was hired I have developed a new way to source people for this position, and the new hires seem to be much more suitable and capable.

Running a department like this is not something I ever thought I would be doing, and I feel like I play chess with people's lives on a regular basis, but my ultimate responsibility lies with protecting the health of the company overall because a healthy company means we all get paid. I can't let a bad apple spoil the bunch, as painful as it is sometimes to pick it and throw it away.

my life

It's been an interesting couple of months.

My dad has always joked that one day, when we were ready to upgrade, they'd just buy our house from us. Their schedule got shifted, however, when he suddenly decided to retire earlier this year and they made plans to move here this coming spring. There just happened to be a house on the market-- 7.5 acres with a pond, 3000 square feet, in need of some tlc inside but nothing we couldn't handle-- so husband and I decided to take a look, just out of curiosity, with the plan of my parents buying our house from us. One thing led to another, and suddenly we were meeting with a mortgage lender to figure out numbers.

But, as life goes sometimes, we missed it by a day. It had been on the market for two years, and all the sudden two couples were interested at the same time, and they won.

I was heartbroken. I was already decorating it in my head, already living in it. Though it was going to be a financial stretch, I thought that's what we needed to do. One afternoon, feeling heartbroken but almost kind of relieved, I was looking around our house and had a revelation: if we actually tried, our house could be nice. If we got rid of the college furniture and cleaned up the deck a little and saved some money to redo the kitchen, we'd have a nice house. And what in the world would we do with 3000 square feet anyway? It's just the two of us and will only be the two of us for quite a while, if not forever. I like our house. I like the colors, the layout, the bathroom, the large yard, the neighborhood. Why go anywhere, really?

I think we were trying to keep up with the Jones'. Several of our friends have moved recently, and I think we were feeling left behind in our 1500 square foot "starter" home. What I forgot is that we are not just another Jones, we are us. We are different, we do things differently, think differently, and have different wants and plans for our lives. We don't need a bigger house, we need a bigger life, and buying an expensive house is only going to keep us tied down instead of out actually living.

So we're going to live. Monday we went up to Memphis furniture shopping, and this week we have given away both the college-era TV stand and the cheap torn-up couch. We have a new couch, rug, and tv cabinet, all very stylish in our own tastes, not anyone else's, and we're waiting on husband's new Stickley recliner bow-arm chair to be made and delivered. We are then going to start planning our new kitchen to be installed in the late spring, probably with concrete counters and a large wine rack. We've also decided to start saving for another trip. We're thinking Vienna this time.

We have good jobs and freedom, so we might as well enjoy it. Yes, there is a balance, and retirement saving is also happening. But I'm not going to hoard every dollar only to get hit by a bus at age 60, never having actually lived my life. My mother's best friend died last week, a stroke at 60. Last time I spoke to her, she was talking about our Italy trip and how much she wanted to go and how she'd get there eventually. Eventually is a luxury that we're not all going to get. Some people, like my friend's wife who was killed in the car wreck earlier this year, or a former coworker who died last month from pneumonia of all things, don't even get to see middle-age.

I think it's a sickness that people have, especially women, to live for someone else. We let other people make our decisions for us, push us down a certain path, toward marriage then children then retirement then, eventually, if you're lucky, some free time, then death. What if my path looks more like college, marriage, travel, adventure, career growth, exploration, charity work, possibly children while the rest is still going on, then, eventually, death. My eventually becomes death itself and not the life I want to live.

All of this has led me to the realization that I want to live every day. I already knew that, but the things that have happened this year have solidified it for me in a way that will affect my decisions from now on. I'm not going to do what other people think I should do, what is normal, what everyone else does, just because they say so. I'm going to make my own decisions and walk my own path. I don't want to live anyone else's life. I don't want to adhere to anyone else's standards. I only get this one life, and I might as well be happy in it. When I'm my parent's age, I don't want to look back and regret the things I never did; instead I want to look back and think, "Wow. Look at the life we have lived," while looking forward to more.

chaos

There is chaos all around me lately. I started to say "I feel like there is chaos," but no, there definitely is; it's not just a feeling. I'm beginning to wonder if it's some world-wide trend, that the summer of 2011 has been particularly insane for everyone, and if it's a sign of the end of the world or the world as we know it, because it just keeps coming, relentlessly.

Two weeks ago a friend's wife died in a car crash. Snap, just like that, she's gone, head first into a tree, leaving her husband and toddler son on their own. This past weekend a newlywed coworker tried to kill himself, downing two and a half bottles of assorted pills and running out into the woods at midnight. He was found wandering down the road early the next morning, disoriented, and is still in the hospital though no longer in ICU. Another coworker and good friend's wife had a stroke today, out of the blue. She's in her 40s. They say she'll be ok but she's in the ICU now too.

My husband's new promotion means he can't take a day off work until they find the replacement for his former positions, so he's working Monday through Saturday without a break, leaving me to run all errands and do everything that he used to help out with, but also bringing in a significant raise. We also signed a new franchise deal at work which has greatly increased my workload and are about to sign another; these deals get us so much closer to success but also make my day-to-day so much more intense. My father retired officially last week, and now they are talking about selling the house and moving here. Two friends got pregnant and are moving away all in one fell swoop.

So much change all at once. Up and down, really great then really, really terrible. I am trying my best to take it all in, absorb it and feel it and then let it go, let it pass through me, but I can't process all of this so quickly. I need time. I need status quo. I need to go sit on a chair, stare at nothing, hear nothing, think about nothing, just sit and be and breathe, for a day at least, not five minutes, though I'm lucky to get five minutes. This is my five minutes today. In a minute, husband will be home wanting dinner, then we'll wash up, walk the dogs, fold some laundry, maybe watch one show, and head to bed. Tomorrow I'll be up at the crack of dawn again to start it all over.

I need a break but one isn't coming any time soon, especially with husband not able to take a day off. I need perspective. I am not my friend or my coworkers, and their situations are so much worse than anything going on for me. Husband will find help, work will ease up, my father and mother will figure it out on their own, and my friends will come visit. This can't last forever. No feeling is final.

who I am

I am mischaracterized entirely too often. Who is the real me? I guess I don't let many people know. My husband does; my parents do. My boss does. A couple coworkers, those that have taken the time, do. A couple close friends do as well. I am guarded otherwise, protecting my too-soft core from the pokes and prods I think I would feel if I didn't put up this wall. There's constant activity behind my blank stares. I'm thinking, analyzing my next word or move, calculating your motive, plotting my response.

It's not coldness, and it's not that I don't care. It takes me a while, sometimes, to come up with what I feel is an appropriate reaction. It takes a while, sometimes, for the actuality of a situation to settle on me, for my feelings to get into alignment about it. I over-analyze more than necessary, causing problems for myself by cherry-picking words into oblivion, losing their original and ultimate meaning somewhere in the fray. I have seen the damage reacting without thinking can cause, and I over correct. I need to let go, I suppose, but I have no idea how.

I do know some things. I am not passive aggressive. Aggressive, maybe, when I believe in something, but I'm never passive about my opinions. I am not a bitch. I am truthful, honest, sometimes to the point where it hurts, but it always comes from a place of caring; if I didn't care, I wouldn't bother in the first place. I am not an ice queen. I feel too much, I pull everything in. I let everything happen to me, beauty and terror, and it sticks to my soul. I am not a closed book. If you just try, I'll open up, but I'm not the kind to blurt out my innermost thoughts to people who haven't proven themselves to me. I am not black and white. There is an unlimited range inside me, the ability to flex and grow and change with the tides, as long as those tides work with me and not against me. I am me. I am wholly myself.

I am struggling against a couple coworkers. I say a couple and they are in fact a couple: they have started to date each other. We put out an "employee satisfaction" survey last month, and while there was a fair amount of criticism from everyone, most was constructive except for what we received from those two. Everything is wrong, from the way we run payroll to the way we discipline to the office lighting. We were told they were freshening up their resumes and hated coming to work. The surveys were supposed to be anonymous but neither did a good job camouflaging themselves in their answers. I, in particular, am a lazy passive aggressive bitch who gets off on making rules and coming down on people who don't follow them and on making people's lives miserable by not buying ashtrays or starting direct deposit.

I'm trying to get over it. They don't know me. The people here who know me know that when I discipline or call someone out, it's because I know in my heart they can do better, not just for me but for themselves and for this company. I believe in them. My ultimate goal is the health and success of this company and thus the success of everyone who works here. I do my best to watch our cash flow and maintain stability. I have to keep people in line because chaos here begets chaos for our customers, and we would fail in chaos. If we fail, we're all sunk, and then we wouldn't even have the luxury of our complaints. It would all be gone.

I carry this all with me, the worry of an entire company, and I do my best with it. So it hurts to be unjustly characterized. My boss talked to them about their attitude and thought he got through, explaining that I have a job to do and to give me a little grace. Maybe it worked for a while, but I don't feel like they will ever be able to fully come back into the fold. I have thought about talking to them myself, but I can't seem to come up with the right words. I go back and forth between wanting to scream and wanting to be understanding, so I have left it alone and continue to go about my business as I normally would. If they want to think of me as they do without trying to get to know the real me, it's their loss.

Wow, look at me go

I now have my twitter feed here on my blog, over there on the right. Fun stuff. Maybe I'll start blogging some again too. I'm trying to reinsert the fun in my life. Been too stressed out lately with work. I found about 15 comedians on twitter to follow right away, and that's about all I've found on it so far. It's a confusing system, what with all the # and @ and re-tweets, etc. Honestly the only reason I started it was because of this phone call:

Dad: Hey punk, it's Dad
Me: Hey, what number are you calling from?
Dad: My new phone. It's one of these new-fangled touch screen ones so if my faces hangs up on you, I'm sorry.
Me: I don't think it will do that. So are you all set up on it? Can you check email and stuff too?
Dad: Nah, I didn't get any of that. I only got this phone because your mom wanted one and they were buy one, get one free.
Me: Oh, so can she check her facebook and stuff now?
Dad: Yeah, she's getting there. She gets texts now too.
Me: Well, welcome her to the 20th century for me. Can you text now too? It's so much easier.
Dad: Nah, didn't want that either. Guess you'll just have to pick up the phone and call me.
Me: There are worse things in the world....

I'm scared of being resistant and ignorant of new technologies. Things change so fast now, I can't imagine what the world will look like in 30 years when I'm my parents age. Someone asked me the other day what I thought was an appropriate age for a kid to get a cell phone or a facebook account. I don't know? When I was growing up, we didn't have that stuff. My parents had to worry about me dialing up on our AOL account and sending emails to my friends. Didn't have a cell til my senior year, and all it did was make calls on a black and white screen. Time flies, gotta keep up.

Twits or tweets or whatever they're called

So I decided a blog is too big for me. There is too much going on in my world to sit down and write 5 paragraphs musing on this and that. Three years ago was different; now if I get 140 characters to myself I feel blessed. I'm trying twitter. I say "trying" because at this point I'm only following 10 people, none of which I personally know, and I haven't actually tweeted anything. It feels pointless to tweet with no followers, but then how do people know you exist unless you tweet? That may be my first one right there.

Anyway, follow me if you want-- @scarlethue42.