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.

interviews and Italy

Too much on my mind lately.

I'm struggling with motivating low-wage employees. Too much supervision and they push back or, worse, they turn off their brains and become zombies, passionless and sleepy, uncaring about either the customers or their problems since they have no room to be creative problem-solvers, and then complain behind my back. Too little supervision, and they act like children, watching you tube videos, shopping, generally wasting time, though they are much happier and more tuned-in when a customer calls. I have one employee who thrives either way because he's driven to do a good job no matter what job is given him. The others all seem to just want work to accommodate or, at the least, not bother them.

So obviously I've hired some folks I shouldn't have. I'm going through another round of interviews later this week, to see if I can find some more self-starter types, but I'm having trouble coming up with interview questions that will gauge this for me:

Describe a work-related goal you've recently set for yourself. What was the outcome?


Can you tell me three things you've done in the past year to improve yourself, either professionally or personally?


What is your first reaction when your manager assigns a task you think is impossible?

How would you react if I told you your interview so far was terrible?

I'm not sure if these will help or not, but I suppose asking is better than not asking. What I really want to do is just look them in the eye and say, "Look, what I need are people who are going to come in here, work hard, not bitch about stupid stuff, but put their nose to the grindstone and try. I don't need lallygaggers or time-wasters or people who want to just fade into the background, get a steady paycheck, and not try to rock the boat. I want you to rock the boat, I want you to be a leader. Can you do that? If you can't, I will know in the first month and I will let you go, so you might as well tell me the truth now." I want to scare them into knowing that this job isn't for everyone, so if you're not ready to fight and fight hard, look elsewhere. But in reality, most people would just tell me what I want to hear anyway, hence the trickery in the questions instead of the outright truth.

How would you do in this interview? Would you squirm under the pressure of those questions? What if I told you the dirty truth about what I really need, would you come clean or would you placate me? I suppose it depends on how badly you need the job.

*****

We will be leaving for Italy in two weeks, for two weeks. I would be more excited except that we just got hit with about $2000 of unexpected expenses this week. First, my brakes finally got to the point of no return, and replacing those was not cheap. Then we discovered that my former bookkeeper screwed up my withholding all last year, so we owed a lot to the federal government. When we returned from our accountant's office, our garage door refused to go up-- the rotten cherry on top. While we have enough in savings to cover all that and still pay for the trip, it makes me uncomfortable. The extra padding is gone now. That's life, though, isn't it.

I don't think it's totally sunk in yet that we're going. Every time I see a friend lately that I haven't seen in a week or two, I get asked, "Aren't you getting so excited?" and yes, I am, but I'd classify it more as nervous and anxious than excited. I'm worried I haven't planned enough, I'm worried that we won't understand something or we'll get lost or confused or taken advantage of somehow, I'm worried there will be a problem with our hotel or with getting on the trains or buses, I'm worried about flying and getting to carry on all our stuff or if they'll make us check, I'm worried about the food and getting sick and not understanding everything.

But we survived London for a year, Paris for several days, Mexico for several days. It's not like we've never been anywhere or done anything. This just feels different for some reason. We will be alone, that's why. No friends or anyone to turn to if/when in need. Last time we were like that was the first month of our marriage, the first month in London, when we knew no one and understood nothing, had no money, struggled every day just to figure out what we were doing and survive. It made us so strong as a couple, to have survived that, but I still label it as the worst month of my life. I have to remind myself that Italy will not be like that. I will not be finding apartments or buying furniture or opening bank accounts. All I need is someone to point me in the direction of the nearest museum and the nearest bar, and I'll be just fine.

minimum wage, minimum motivation -- dream analysis

I try to remember what it was like to make minimum wage. I held several jobs throughout school and after where I was paid the legal minimum, including a video rental store. The motto there was "If you can lean, you can clean," meaning that no one was allowed to lean (or, God forbid, sit) on the counter, even at 10 a.m. when no one was in the store. You had to keep yourself busy; if all you could find to do was cleaning, you did it. We got around it every now and then, devising games of finding the spots where the cameras couldn't see you and taking a break there, or seeing who could count their change the fastest and most accurately, etc.-- it was a boring place sometimes. But usually we kept to the motto.

It's stuck with me over the years, too. Later on, when I changed employment but had only bumped myself up a dollar or two in pay, I realized that the days I kept busy and actually accomplished something were so much more rewarding and less boring than the days where I did a crossword puzzle or played Pop It all day. Unfortunately one of those years was at a university, and when you work for a big state-run facility where no one cares and is just trying to skate by unnoticed, doing extra work is sometimes frowned upon. I didn't do well in that environment.

That's why I do so well here. If nothing else, I am industrious. Sure, I have days where I am more idle than others, where I may read a news article or two to break up the otherwise busy day, where I may take twenty minutes and write a blog post like this one. But for the most part, I stay busy, even if busy means just reading chat logs from our call center to make sure they're doing a good job. When I get home, that's when I'm lazy (just ask my husband), but no one accuses me of being a sloth at work.

So I guess that's why I get so frustrated with our call center workers. They make between $8 and $10 an hour on average, but they act like we're paying them in peanuts. Peanuts they don't even want. I walked by earlier, and one had his feet up on his desk, literally twiddling his thumbs. I sit with my feet up a lot, too, but my fingers are always crazy dancing over this keyboard, my right hand swinging the mouse around, my shoulder holding the phone to my ear. I'm struggling trying to do my work and also find things to keep them busy. I need them to keep themselves busy, so I'm trying to motivate them to do so, but something is missing. Maybe I just need a big poster-- IF YOU CAN LEAN, YOU CAN CLEAN-- in bold letters right over their desks. Sure it doesn't really apply here as I don't them them to clean, just actively reach out to customers or troubleshoot some issues. But the message gets across. I guess I'm not doing a good job hiring leaders either. I wish I could put my finger on the resolution.

------

I had a weird dream last night. I wish I could remember more of it now; my dreams fade so quickly. In high school, my best friend was a guy. Actually he was my friend starting in 7th grade. He went away to boarding school, but we kept in touch while he was gone, and he came back in 11th. I always wanted more from him, and I still consider him my first love though nothing was ever acted upon. He has never confirmed it to me, but I think he may be gay. He doesn't have girlfriends, and he just sometimes gives off an air of... difference. His parents are very conservative, and we came from a very gossip-prone town, so I don't blame him for keeping it quiet if it's true. I talk to him now once every six months or so, and we always seem to pick up like we were never apart. That's true for all my best friends. It must be some sort of subconscious requirement I place on anyone labeled a "best" for me, that ability to pick up where we left off no matter the time that has past, because it's true of the four that I have.

I digress. I dream about him a lot. Last night I know we were walking in a garden, we were young again, I could tell by the way we looked, and we were holding hands. It wasn't a romantic dream, though, more like we had just been apart for a while and were so happy to see each other. We went swimming-- I remember my red two-piece suit, but when we came up from the water, he wasn't my friend anymore, he was my ex-boyfriend.

My high school/early college boyfriend drove me and my friend apart. He and my friend did not get along, enemies from boarding school, and when the boyfriend came around, the friend took a backseat. I shouldn't have let it happen, but I was a kid, a mess up kid, a messed up kid in what I thought was love but really turns out was probably only pity and commiseration. We never were able to get back to what we were, even after the ex was out of the picture, because we had both moved off to college and started our own lives. But he has somehow wedged himself into my subconscious. I hear that sometimes people have strong dreams like this about loved ones who have died, and every time I have a dream about him, they are strong and lifelike, and I worry about him. I told him one time that I dream about him, and he said he dreams about me too, so I guess we're just somehow linked in that way.

I wasn't unhappy to see my ex in the dream, but I did feel a loss that it was no longer my friend. The ex and I did not end on good terms. We dated four years, the last year was made up mostly of fighting and me trying to cut him loose. He was suicidal and depressed, and I was always afraid he'd jump off the deep end, but I finally decided I had to take care of myself. It took me too long to come to that conclusion, looking back. But in the end, those decisions led me to my husband, and that's all that matters now.

When I got to work this morning, I realized it's my ex's birthday today. I wonder if this all wasn't my subconscious playing with me. I get updates on him from time to time-- he still lives in my hometown and waits tables at a restaurant my parents go to often. Mom says she always makes him speak to her even though she can tell he'd rather avoid them. They thank goodness every day I didn't end up with him. I do too. The only part of our relationship I regret, though, is losing touch with my friend over it. Maybe my brain is trying to tell me to reach out to him again.

clique mongering

I have to get this out of my head.

One day last week, I had a disciplinary conversation with an employee. Her performance has dropped off, she's spending too much time talking about non-work happenings at work, especially with a newer hire who has become a close friend, and her attitude has slipped far into a negative space. According to her, she feels unappreciated because she hasn't had a raise in a year while others are getting raises. As I explained, the people who are getting raises are minimum wage workers. She's on a much higher salary already. Finances are too tight. Then she said she thought (and others in her department think too, by the way) that there's a clique that she can't break into. I asked her to name the people in the click, and the people she named were the first 6 employees of the company.

The whole thing just leaves me so frustrated. I found out today they have a name for us, the order of protection, and they talk about it like it's an actual thing that we planned out and are perpetrating on purpose. Like we want to exclude people and make decisions that only benefit us. Like we're blind to everything else going on. The funny thing is, two of those six I hardly even talk to anymore, and one of them is on my permanent shit list until she starts acting like an adult and not a child who thinks she can come and go any time she wants and make all the trouble she wants just because she was employee #2. Of course no one outside of management knows about this. Why would I spread my disdain for her actions around? To everyone else, it must look like business as usual. I thought that would be the best way to continue.

Good grief, I'm only human. I'm trying to make the best decisions I can for the company as a whole, and I advise our management team to do the same. The management team is made up of a completely different group of 5 people, only my boss and I seem to be in both "groups." When we see potential in someone, we recognize it and give them a promotion. I guess this employee and her cronies are pissed because we don't recognize any of them as stellar performers? But they haven't done anything to deserve it. One of them does really good work, actually, and will be moving to a new department soon, but she's also a gossip so I'm not surprised at her new alignment. They all sit together, which will soon be put to an end, but even with that done, they still can talk on skype.

This negativity seems to be infiltrating this department, a department I happen to be responsible for managing, and I'm getting fed up. I don't know how to stop it. It's three girls and two guys in the department, though one of the guys is too new to be involved. The three girls have ganged up on the one guy, and the guy happens to be the one who is doing the best and the one that we're promoting most quickly. Chicken or the egg-- are they mean to him because he's doing good work and making them look lazy? Or do we just think he's doing better work and also feel sorry for him because he's somehow managed to stay out of this clique who is picking on him? Either way, the clique is not helping.

They accuse us of having a clique, but I would argue it's the other way around. My initial reaction is to shake them, ask them why in the world they think we would do things and make decisions that aren't in the best interest of the company. Maybe it's because they don't care about the company, maybe they only care about their own little worlds. I'm tired of babysitting them, though-- when an email or a phone call comes in, it's like I'm a mother hen pecking at them until one of them finally, reluctantly, picks it up. Just DO YOUR WORK. That's all I want. Maybe if you spent less time gossiping on skype about how much you hate that your coworker is getting promoted, even if you think it's unjust, and about how much you don't like things that are going on, maybe if you spent more time actually doing real work you would be the one getting promoted to a position where you could change the things you don't like instead. I need an attitude change around here, quick.

last day

I have a lot on my mind this morning. Here's a breakdown of my last 15 hours:

8 pm-- eating dinner with several girlfriends at one of their houses, the subject of religion comes up, and one of them looks directly at me, the girl who has suddenly gone quiet, and says, "So what are you?" As if that's an easy question to answer, like I can give one word (Presbyterian, Methodist, something) and have this question go away. But I'm truthful to myself and say the word that I then have to spend 10 minutes explaining while I get looks of disdain and confusion and replies of "well I figure it's better to believe than not believe, since I have a choice" (you're so not getting it, I think). Agnostic is my reply. Nothing, the meaning.

9:30 pm-- sitting on the couch after dinner, my inquisitor having already left to go take care of her babies and husband who can't be without her for longer than a couple hours, I check the weather on my phone and notice I have three emails, all voicemail-to-text emails from my coworker's wife to my boss (I get his emails too). She sounds... desperate. Something has happened. I call my boss, no answer, so I call his partner, who is crying. Dead. My coworker is dead. He was playing tennis, had a massive heart attack, and they couldn't revive him.

10 pm-- I'm finally together enough to have left my friend's house and call my husband, who is at a bar with his buddies. I meet him there. I can't bring myself to order a drink, because the only drink I can think of is my coworker's favorite, a salty dog, and I hate grapefruit juice. But to drink anything else seems wrong.

11 pm-- Finally in bed, I start sobbing. Why am I sobbing? Where did he go keeps playing in my mind, and I think about my grandfather and my aunt and the people I know and loved that are gone, but gone where? Husband rubs my back and comforts me, and I feel stupid because it's a loss for me but no great loss, and I'm mad at myself for thinking about the money the company is saving not having him (he was expensive) and how we didn't really need him anyway so this saves us the trouble of the phase-out we were about to do with him, and I fall asleep thinking about what a horrible person I am.

4 am-- A bad dream where I was at a funeral and people were whispering that the departed went to Hell, and I found myself believing it and being scared even though I don't believe in Hell, and I can't reconcile it all and wake up confused and very hot. I have been grinding my teeth, I can tell, and have a hard time moving my neck as I get up to get some water. Luckily it doesn't take too long to fall back to sleep.

6:50 am-- My alarms sounds and rips me from another uncomfortable dream. This time I'm at a doctor's office getting a vaccination, but for some reason the shot has to go in my lip, and it's bloody and gross, like a collagen injection gone wrong. Getting up and out of bed is even harder than it was at 4 am.

8:30 am-- Now at work, I stand in the hallway whispering with my boss, his partner, and our bookkeeper. Who knows? Who doesn't know yet? We need to make an announcement.

9 am-- Everyone is gathered now, my boss starts to weep, I cry, everyone cries. Again I feel like I'm crying over a bad dream, spilled milk. Nothing seems real. It's more like shock than grief. Who am I to grieve anyway, I think. I'm just a coworker, a coworker conspiring against him until his last minutes. "He was a nice guy, a caring guy," everyone says. He was, and I know I will miss our non-work conversations. Sniffles, and we go back to our desks, hearts heavy.

11 am-- The insurance agent has been called, our clients have been contacted, we've had a meeting about gathering up his projects. We're going to be ok, we all know it, but it's so quiet in here I can't stand it anymore. I make myself a massage appointment at 5:30 this afternoon. I make plans for Thai for dinner and Subway for lunch. Anything to take my mind off of it. Then I start this post because maybe, maybe if I get these thoughts out of my head I can have some peace. I'm not a terrible person. We all have crazy thoughts at crazy times. He was a funny, warm, engaging, and dedicated guy who will be missed severely by his friends and family and everyone here too. It's still not real, though, and I keep expecting my phone to ring for my daily check-in call. It probably won't be real til Monday when our extended management board gets together and he is glaringly absent.

12 noon-- Post done. I have to get out of here.

sharing of pain/rules and regulations/the choice

1.
On occasion, I come across someone I want to collect. It could be a friend, a coworker, random acquaintance, a one-time interaction, a person passed on the street, or someone I have never met. There will be something about this person that makes me believe they belong in my life, something that draws me to them, leads me to want to keep them always. Attitude is a big draw-- I'm pulled toward people with a laid-back, calm, positive outlook on life, the kind of people that could weather a storm and come out on the other side with a determined smile. I also tend to feel a pull toward independent types, the ones that walk or talk or dress or act in an original way, not affected or fake, but just fully themselves. Another draw, I have discovered, seems to be common pain, crippling pain, like a migraine. People who have true migraines know the meaning of hurt, and when we find someone else who shares this, we tend to want to swap and compare sympathy, tips, and war stories, but we also feel drawn to keep these in a special place in our hearts and minds. I recently discovered that John Mayer, the musician, has a type of migraine similar to mine-- with aura, brought on by weather changes-- and though I have always enjoyed his music, I now feel a kind of kinship that I didn't think was really possible with someone I don't actually know. I feel like we should be friends on that basis alone. Because of our shared pain, a pain that no one else can really understand, I'd like to add him to my collection of similar souls.

2.
People need rules to survive, not to mention succeed. How many times and what type of food to eat every day. Share. Bathe frequently. How to tie your shoes. Look before you cross the street. Etc. It makes sense, then, that at work most people need rules and regulations to follow to ensure that they meet the goals and objectives of the company. Unfortunately, we've been lackadaisical thus far in creating these processes for people, relying solely on good will and trust for work to be done. No longer. Without rules, people get lazy. Apparently most people, if they don't think anyone's watching, will test the boundaries, and when they don't get in trouble, they stop work altogether. We tried to motivate by inspiration, saying Look! We'll be a great company, we'll all have great success if we work hard together, but for most people, all they really care about is the paycheck. This is simply a bump in a long road, not a lifetime commitment like it is for those of us who started it. If we want them to succeed, we must give them the means. The means can also cause failure, which for some of them may be more likely. This is my life lately.

3.
A month or so ago, I made a conscious choice to be happy. I looked despair and frustration and worry straight in the face, and I said no. I forced a smile on my face and added a bounce to my step, and after a couple minutes, I felt a release. I wondered why I was ever unhappy in the first place. Now when I feel myself brooding, that process of choosing to be happy takes a lot less time. I remember that it's possible, and a contented, peaceful feeling spreads over me. It's almost like knowing that I have a choice whether or not to be happy makes me happy in itself, and thus the choice is made for me. I suppose it sounds too good to be true, that the secret to happiness is just to choose it. The first couple of times there was more of a process, a train of thought I had to follow, about how all the terrible things happening were, in a grand view, not that terrible, and even if they were, there was nothing I could do to fix them. All I can change is my reaction to them. I choose my reaction now, and my reaction is to smile, laugh knowing that this too will pass, and move on to better thoughts. It's a trick I want to teach every unhappy person I know, but unfortunately it seems too many people are making conscious choices for unhappiness. I would worry about them... but I choose not to.

follow up

There's a line that I've formed somewhere in some sand, a line that once crossed can not be uncrossed. I never know what will cause someone to trip over or even run past that line, but once it's done no one can undo it, make that feeling go away, not them and not even me, no matter how quickly they come back to my side and stay there. It's like a stain that won't fade, even with the strongest bleach.

You have to do something pretty drastic to be marked like this. For one girl, it was getting so drunk that I had to carry her around all night, she stole something from a bar, and then she yelled at me. For one guy, it was returning a dog he had adopted from the shelter because of an issue that would have been easily trained away. For my brother, it took years worth of mental abuse. For the latest additions, it was being so dumb as to fall into bed with a coworker when you know one of you is married, then gossip about it at work.

It's a loss of respect, I suppose. I hold people to a high standard, but it's nothing I don't ask of myself. Once it's lost, I tend to hold people at a distance, sometimes a larger distance than others, but I never fully let down my guard and open up again. It's been years since some of these transgressions, but I still feel it, that steeling of my heart when their name is mentioned or I see their face. I'm usually very normal and casual with them, though I'm sure they can sense my hesitancy, at least in part.

So what if lots of people cheat on their spouses. I expect more from the people that I allow into my life and my heart. If you make a promise, you keep it. If you know someone else has made a promise, you don't help them break it. If you love someone, you treat them with honesty and respect. Am I really asking too much of people?