Unable to Compete

I have realized that in a lot of ways I am unable to compete.

Oh, not in Highland Athletics or Running or Iaijustu or any of the other activities I do.  There, I will continue to compete, even if I am always destined to be in the rear of the pack.  No, my inability to compete lies largely with much of the world.

I am not as exciting as a TV program.  I am not as interesting as Pintrest.  I am not as riveting as a sporting event.

I confess that for years this bothered me - after all, I am a person and therefore by default should be of more interest.  But what I've come to realize is that by forcing such interest, one accomplishes nothing.

It was very much like this when I was in high school and even college trying date.  The lengths I would go to so that I was interesting, the amount of effort I would spend constantly be in the world of the person I was pursuing - all so that I would be seen as someone interesting and desirable and worthy of attention.

It never quite worked out, of course - the problem with trying to generate interest in one's self is that unless real interest is there, the whole structure falls apart as soon as attention is distracted from it.  It is an interest that has to be constantly maintained to be active, which becomes not an interest at all but rather almost a marketing campaign which will fail as soon as the next model comes along.

And thus, the simple acceptance that I am unable to compete.

Am I worried?  Surely not - I have plenty to occupy my time and plenty of people around me who grace me with their friendship not because of anything I inherently have or can do but simply because we are kindred spirits.  And surely at some point the interest will turn:  the show will run out of seasons, the website will get old, the season will end. 

And I will still be here - perhaps  not as flashy as the rest but secure in the fact instead of wasting my time and energy competing, I have simply continued on in being and doing.

Pause

Feeling a little lost this October morning.

My life feels....lost. In translation. Or maybe in transition.  I am not really sure how to regard it.

I am not sure who I feel like.  Certainly not myself - or the way I perceive myself.  Sure, I go through all the motions of the life that I lead.  I do the things that I have always done.  I interact with the family that I have interacted.  And yet there seems to be a disconnect between these activities and me.

Maybe interacting with high school students more has me thinking - thinking about when I was in school and how the world was a blank canvas ready to be painted on, where in so many ways I did not realize or accept the concept of things I could and could not do.  When possibilities seemed endless.  When things such as honor and romance still seemed alive - the old style, as in the High Middle Ages or the great sagas of Japan.. 

When the people I enjoyed spending time with - my friends - were the ones I spent almost all my time with, not snippets of phone conversations and short electronic posts wedged into our lives.

I understand we cannot go back in time and in many ways I would not want to.  Still, that enthusiasm and the possibilities that lay before us tantalize me with the phantom-like appearance that comes to me through association.  It almost becomes a longing as I go through my essentially pre-programmed day of activities and items I need to do.

Is this it?  Is this all there really is to being where I am today?  If not, where does the renewed promise of such enthusiasm and zest and belief come from?

Manuscript

So my manuscript is essentially edited.

This has been a long uphill battle - not the writing so much (that was completed in November of last year) as the editing. Part of my reluctance has been the initial comments that I received and the subsequent doubts that I had about what I wrote; some of it was simply an output of the fact that editing is not something I have done a great deal of and so I am slow at.

Either way, the task is done.

I will make my corrections and upload the manuscript and order the physical proof. Assuming there is nothing that is significantly wrong that cannot be corrected via word processing, the book will be ready to release.

How do I feel about it?  More of a sense of relief than anything else.  This has been nagging at my mind for almost a year now, wanting to get completed so I can mentally move on to the next project. There is something to the quote "Artists ship" by Steve Jobs - not only from the idea that things need to be moved to completion and out the door, but that we need to complete our projects so that we can mentally and spiritually move on to the next one.

Nanowrimo is coming.  I want to be writing.

Hit

So yesterday I got rear-ended.  Complete stop.  The very nice (and very embarrassed) lady behind me saw the green light and reacted.  The front of her car is smashed.  My bumper is beaten (but I beat it back on for the time being) and muffler is at angle that is probably not right.  No-one was injured - all in all a pretty minor incident.

What surprised me about it was her reaction.  We got out, looked at the damage, and exchanged information.  She was a little shaken (unsurprisingly).  I was more concerned about her than the car.  Her response to the incident was something along the lines of being surprised and grateful that I was taking things so well.  

I shrugged it off at the time but thought about it later.  I truly wasn't all that concerned.  The biggest issue - her health and my own - seemed intact.  Accidents happen - and we usually don't intend them to, that is why we call them accidents - so it is not as if we plan them to.  The cars, although nice, are simply things.  They can be repaired or totaled - and I don't get to control that process at all.

I carried on until, driving later, I passed three cars pulling off the road.  Looked like a small rear end accident.  The damage to the car did not seem to be near that of the one that hit me and the car that was "hit" had no visible damage.  But you could tell the driver that had been hit - her body language and her short conversation to the driver of the other car indicated that such a thing was a very big deal.  It was going to be an unpleasant incident - and the police would undoubtedly show up for this one.

Is this what we've become?  A society that is so concerned about our things and our place in them that we expect people to explode when things like accidents occur?  Where we believe that we have a right to our anger for our inconvenience?  Where we have blurred the lines of importance to where things truly are seen as equal to individuals?  Where worrying about the impact on our lives overshadows the other individual involved?

I was in an accident yesterday.  My car will need to be repaired.  No-one was injured. 

There really are more crucial things to my life - and to all of our lives.

Collapsed Cheese

So cheese making occurred this weekend.

This has been something which I have had to temporarily suspend due to our impending move, and then our move, and then our unpacking.  The situation with cheese making is not so much that it requires a lot of time - it does not - as much as it requires focused attention at certain points in the process:  hold for this long, slowly stir for this long, press for this long, etc.  It requires focus which can happen as an adjunct to other activities but they need to be able to be dropped at a moment.

I was making English Farmhouse Cheese, a relatively simple cheese that I have often made:  hold 75 minutes, cut the curds, drain into molds and flip.  The first three steps went perfectly.  The last was a bit of a problem, as it often seems to be.

The nature of the cheese draining is that it is accomplished by gravity:  as the whey settles out, the curds are pressed together.  At some point one turns over the mold to get the cheese out.  Herein lies the difficulty:  wait too long and the cheese will not drop consistently but rather in pieces, wait too short and the cheese will loose its shape as there is still too much whey in the curds.

This was one of the too short days:  the cheese either collapsed or completely lost its shape.  It is initially very disappointing of course, as the cheese looks terrible.  I started mentally kicking myself and reminding myself of how I cannot do anything.

And then I tasted it.  Still tasted the same.

I took a moment to reflect - the cheese is going nowhere but in our house.  The Ravishing Mrs. TB and Na Clann do not care how the cheese looks, just how it tastes.  Yes, it would be better if it was visually attractive - but for the purpose for which it was to be used it was just fine.

It was good reminder to myself not only of how sometimes the end result is not as important as the process. It was also a good accountability as to continuing to do something - to often I fail in executing and then suddenly retreat from an activity, decreeing that I am not good enough - and never will be.

The reality is this:  sometimes it looks good, sometimes it does not.  The cheese, however, will still taste the same.

Freedom

Out of their cages,
the rabbits speed over grass,
heads into the wind.

The Last Good Day

I remember the last good day.

It was Halloween last year.  We were still located in the old back area, with its ghosts of the previous employees still haunting the cubes.  Fear Mor had decided that we were going to enter the pumpkin carving contest so he had procured a pumpkin and set of tools.  An Ghearmannaich went one better: find a dremel tool, he began carving a quail into the side of the pumpkin.  Fear Beag was on the sidelines making commentary, and The Other was in the corner, watching. 

I call it the last good day because it is the last time I can remember us as a department having a good time together.  We were all getting along, we were all located near each other and there was a genuine sense that we were meshed as a unit.  There was laughter and jokes and sarcasm and probably some off-color comments as well.  It felt like everything that a good work team environment should be.

Nothing, of course, lasts forever.

Relationships frayed (as they always do) to the point some would not talk with others.  People left - first Fear Mor, then The Other, and finally An Ghearmannaich.  The space has changed as well - perceived as being too far away (and taking up too much space), we were relocated in the building: 3 of us crammed up together in a space for 2 and the 2 others put halfway across the building (until they too both left, leaving us as a small appendix in a larger building). 

That space has become doubly haunted now - not just by the ghosts of previous employees but by the ghosts of us, wandering through the file cabinets with their documents that scarcely anyone will review again.  When I am back there I occasionally hear the laughter in the depths of the solitude.

This almost Halloween - scarcely a year later - it will be myself and Fear Beag to celebrate the holiday.  I doubt we will be carving a pumpkin this year, or even thinking about going to the general celebrations.  There's something about a real life haunting - a haunting of the soul - that leaves one somewhat chary of engaging in a party pretending to celebrate the same thing.

Oscillation

I find myself oscillating  between extremes.

I find myself either excited or frustrated, angry or relatively satisfied.  I suppose the oscillation  itself is something one can learn to live with.  What bothers me is the unbalance between these two states:  I find myself far more frustrated and angry than excited and relatively satisfied.

Where does the anger and frustration come from?  Lately (as you may have gleaned from my writings) it is largely stemming from my work:  not so much the work per se, but the great extent to which I feel powerless to impact or change things in any meaningful way.  Instead, the ability to do anything other than tasks - i.e. change policy or make significant tasks - is extraordinarily limited.

Maybe it has been this way everywhere else I have been.  Memory is always faulty of course, and I may very well be wrong on this.  But with one exception in which the circumstances were similar, I can scarcely recall a time that I have felt so unable to do more than simply execute work.

And maybe that is the core of the problem.  I want to do more.  I want to be able to set policy, to a make a difference, to impact people's lives.  Too often in my current role my ability to do all of these seems extraordinarily limited.

A couple of things have come out of this experience which I need to capitalize on:

1)  The choice of who is above you is critical.  A bad manager completely makes the difference between a bearable job and a prison.

2)  I have limited patience in and stomach for personnel related issues.  I enjoy working with people in my group as primus inter pares, or first among equals.  I do not do well in hierarchies.

3)  I want to be able to make a difference in people's lives and impact them - not just necessarily in ways to just make them feel better but in ways that make a difference in the lives.

I am not sure what to do with information.  I am relatively sure none of this can be implemented in my current role in a way that would truly satisfy these longings.  Perhaps there is nothing more to take away than to remember that, as someone has said, your next decision is your best decision.

Moments of Clarity

A moment of true, unaltered clarity can be one of the most elusive things in life.  We can have epiphanies, we can have ideas, we can have understandings but a true moment of clarity - that piercing instant when something something suddenly becomes completely clear.

Such a thing happened to me yesterday.

It was a meeting that many who work in the corporate world will be familiar with:  the HR meeting, where the process of dealing with employee difficulties (opportunities for improvement, if you will) was being reviewed.  The presentation was more entertaining than most but much of the content still the same from any HR presentation one would recognize.  And then, suddenly tucked away in time midst of a discussion of supervisors came the following statement:  "If employees don't like their supervisors, they're free to vote with their feet."

It just hung there for a moment, floating in air.  Someone apparently did not understand it and questioned it again and the same words came out:  "If employees don't like their supervisors, they're free to vote with their feet.  They can leave."

The world became piercingly sharp in its clarity for a moment.

The implications were obvious.  After all of the discussion we had just had concerning how supervisors were to help guide their employees and deal with issues, the equivalent relationship - that of how employees deal with their supervisors - was summarily addressed: "If employees don't like their supervisors, they're free to vote with their feet."

All of a sudden much of my consternation melted away.

Why?  Because there was no longer any need to bear it.  There was no need to be hopeful or even concerned that such things would change - because as a matter of policy, they would not.  Management would not - except, I assume, in extreme circumstances - hold supervisors to the same process and program that they would hold employees.  The relationships above are less relationships than they are religious relationships:  take what is given to you, and like it.  If not, find a new religion.

Or new workplace.

Things did not change other things, of course.  My job will be the same this morning as it was  yesterday.  But I go to work this morning with a clarity of understanding that I did not have yesterday.  We are often taught that we can - and should - change things if they are incorrect or wrong.  What I realized yesterday is that this is simply not only true. The only thing you can truly change is yourself.  And if changing yourself does not resolve the issue, perhaps it is best to realize that voting with your feet is the best path towards making a better tomorrow for yourself.

Release

Moving through kata,
I see my troubles dissolve
with the flowing blade.

Struggling

I am struggling this week.

I feel powerless to change anything.  My life seems completely overtaken by events beyond my ability to change them.

Work is slowly devolving into a long list of things that simply needs to be done - and not enough people to do them.  The impending departure of An Ghearmannich  and the absence of Fear Beag has given me a taste of what life will be like from here on out:  too much work, too much quiet, no spirit.  In other words, a typical office environment.

The triumph of the status quo has not helped either.  Within two weeks we will be right back where we were, sacrificing another period of time to do another update meeting for another set of people who won't be doing any of the work.  The changes I kept hoping would come - daring I use the word fantasizing would come? - have not arrived.  I am reminded, yet again, that I am merely someone to do the work that others command - and make it ridiculously easy for them to do in the process.

More help?  Unknown.  The appropriate paperwork was filed.  That said, the filing of paperwork is scarcely a guarantee of anything, let alone of actually getting the help one needs.  And that is just the listing of the position - there is still the culling, the interviewing, the realization that you will probably not get what you had. 

All the time grappling with the concept that your department has one of the most critical roles in the company - as defined by law - and yet it has the least of people to carry them out.

Home feels little better.  Our lives have devolved into a series of schedules, transporting one here and another there and making sure things happen on time.  Add to this the daily things that simply need to be done in life - dishes washed, clothes put away, general picking up - and suddenly the time has simply been whisked away. 

I try to convince myself that my feelings are deriving from a lack of sleep so I try to go to bed earlier.  I am unsuccessful in my effort as I still seem to wake up the same amounts of time - and everything that has to be done is still there.

I am trying to find some shred of encouragement, so sign that all of this is leading to some greater end that I simply cannot see right now.  All I seem to keep coming back to is a list of e-mails in the in-box of my life, all bearing tasks to do or requests to do things which have not been done.

There are times, I suppose, I dreamed of being a leader.  I find I am simply a doer of tasks.

Asserting One's Self

So we made a sort of breakthrough this week:  we figured out that 1) I can be assertive; and 2) that I am best at being assertive where such behavior can actually create change.

Assertive:  Disposed to or characterized by bold or confident statements and behavior

It has shown itself in a plethora of small ways:  deciding to sell the car - and then deciding to ask twice what I was going to, and getting it.  Making the decision I was going to go to the Highland Games - and going.  Making decisions about what will be prioritized at work instead of patiently waiting for others to decide.  Deciding what and when will be used for a gardening area.

All good.  All empowering.

But we discovered a second thing as well:  that assertiveness practiced in an atmosphere of hierarchy is counterproductive.

There is nothing more discouraging than making a decision or planning a course only to be overruled by someone else - especially when that someone has little idea of what is actually being discussed or is completely disconnected from the matter at hand.  It turns assertiveness into a cauldron filled with resentment and anger as one's decision is unable to be acted upon - instead, one has to follow the dictates of someone that may have other knowledge (but never shares it) or is completely disconnected but feels the need to be "in control".

The solution?  Simple yet difficult.  If one does best in circumstances where one can act assertively, be in those situations.  If the situation you are in does not allow you to do that, change your situation.

As I said, simple yet difficult.  But is the difficulty really more than that which I currently endure:  the crushing weight of being unable to make decisions (but having to execute everyone else's) and yet being expected to "take the initiative"?

If I can be assertive - and if I need to be assertive to move forward in my own life - then I simply need to accept that, ultimately, I need to put myself in those sorts of situations.  My ability to grow may very well depend on it.

Yay Bogha Frois!

So Bogha Frois, one of the greatest voices of sanity and encouragement in my life, is launching her jewelry business on etsy.  She is a very talented artist and I am sure that someone in your life would benefit greatly by purchasing something from her store.  You should go there right now: 

http://www.etsy.com/shop/vesnasspringmix

No.  Seriously. Go look right now.

Assets

Part of the the depression I sure I am feel about my current position is simply the fact that I feel like there is no "out" here.  No matter what plans I try to come up with, they also circle back to the fact that it feels like I have no time to do anything.

Bogha Frois has been encouraging me for some time now to do one thing a day to get started.  There are days where this seems impossible but every day she keeps encouraging me:  one thing.  Do one thing.

So I decided to make a list of my assets.

The list started simply enough:  in digging through a desk drawer I found a headpiece for the computer that was still in the bag - the sort you can use for online calls or learning.  Internet, of course.  My laptop.

But as I continued I found the list expanding:  hand tools.  Gardening Tools.  Library of books on specific subjects.  Garden area.  A small pad in my back yard one could put an open outbuilding on.  A harp.  Bokutos.  Cheese making equipment.  Before I realized it, I had constructed a list - not so much of things that were just around, but things that had the potential to be used for something.

My intention is to expand this list to other areas:  skills and abilities and expertise.  From here, my hope is that I can use this to begin to generate ideas for some sort of alternate plan.

Is it likely that my hand tools or even my small pad will help me generate income?  Not necessarily.  But what I did find is that it generated a great deal of thought about how I could use these items. 

And figuring how one can use something is the first step in one learning to use something.

Cog

There is nothing more dispiriting than being reminded that you are a cog in a machine.

Such a reminder came crashing down on me yesterday as I went to my day.  Being 25% reduced in effective labor status (with no real end in sight) means that work has rapidly begun piling up and suddenly the concept of "working manager" becomes all too clear:  what to do first (five things, of course) and what to let slip.  It all has to be done, of course - nobody particular cares how or where it is done or truly how much more there is to do than what is there - but that is not their problem, of course.  It is yours.  You are the cog that makes it happen.

Then, of course, one gets smacked with the politics of office.  No matter how carefully I have attempted to cultivate changes in how reporting structures work I continue to discover that mine remains the same.  My job, in my reporting structure, is essentially to be responsible for all aspects of what my department is while being carefully denied the title and recognition of actually being responsible for it all - in other words, "Set everything up, make sure you come by to bow at the altar of Senior Management to bask in the warm glow of their ideas, and then go off and do the work.  And oh - please be sure that you credit the Great Manager with all that has gone well and direct all credit our way.  If you fail, of course, you are own your own."

I have diligently worked to try to find to do what was asked, to make things better, to get over that hump of doing all but not being the person recognized for it.  Instead, I find that although so many people are sympathetic to the problem, no-one really wants to do anything.  The cost of challenging the status quo - the thing that employees are so often enjoined to do to move companies forward - does not pan out when you reach a higher playing field. 

And so I find myself exactly where I have told recruiters two years ago, three years ago that I would be:  doing the same thing again and again with little chance for advancement or growth - or even a change in how thing work.  Because ultimate the concern is simply that the work gets done - and the work, theoretically, could be done by anyone.

As long as they understand that they are simply a cog.

Frustrated

Frustrated I watch
the bats return at pre-dawn:
Oh that I might soar.

Best Effort

"If (you) wait for a job to be good enough to deserve (your) best shot, it's unlikely (you'll) ever have that job." - Seth Godin, Linchpin

I struggle with this.

I struggle with this because so many of jobs - this one included - seem precisely opposite of this.  The world so often seems opposite of this.  The sense that no matter what I do my effort does not matter - in fact, it is eaten up and dispersed into a nether region of space.  I hear the tramp of "responsibility" and "authority" tramp down the halls with no relation to any sort of goal or reward. 

What would my best shot look like?  That is the part that both concerns me and makes me wonder.  What would unbridled effort at being the best at my job truly look like?  And would it be recognized as such?  Or would it just fade into the background noise of what is expected from everyone, leaving me that much farther behind the curve?

Or is my focus all wrong?

Perhaps it is what it does to us that is the real point of the exercise.  Ultimately the job has multiple factors which we cannot control:  financing, management, failed projects, acquisitions, layoffs.  It is what we become in spite of these things that is the true benefit of giving our best effort.  If I think about it, I am forced to admit that I have seldom carried a job out with me.  What I have carried out is myself and everything I did and became during that time.

If self development is the goal and the path to getting to job we ultimately want, why are we not giving more of our best effort - not for the job, but for ourselves?

The Bitters

I post quotes.

I have been doing it for a number of years, an outgrowth of one of the authors (Brian Tracy) that I read:  "Find a useful quote.  Send it to fifty people."  And so, over the years, I have been collecting quotes from everywhere:  literature, audio books, business books, the internet itself.  Over time my planners have filled up in the back - and rolled to the front - with the quotes I have gotten.

Thanks to the wonder of Facebook and Twitter, I have the mechanism for the outreach of quotes:  every day Monday through Friday I post one or two.   I post one around general life or achievement and one that tends to be around some aspect of business.  The pleasure comes from seeing people "like" them - an indication that they have found something significant quote.  It is a small way for me to feel like I am contributing to the life and achievements of others.

Except.

Some time ago - maybe a year? - I posted a quote (I do not recall what one now) to which someone posted a snarky answer.  It surprised me a bit, both because of who did it and the fact that they did it publicly.  It depressed me because I always want to encourage, not upset - so much so that I stopped posting them for a while.  Time passed of course, and I started posting them again - with the same sort of general "likes" in a day. 

Then it happened again.

It rocked me back on my heels again - not just because of who did it but that they did it publicly.  I fought the initial response of deleting the post - after all, I think that a third party reading it will find it as jarring as I did and I suppose that is not a bad thing - but I had to circle back and review what I was doing again.

Fortunately this morning I was reading Linchpin by Seth Godin and came across the following quote:

"You can spend your time on stage pleasing the heckler in back, or you can devote it to the audience that came to hear you perform".

Of course.  I can pay attention to the 1% that seem intent on voicing their opinion (if you do not agree with somebody, just do not comment or even ignore them), or I can focus on the 99% that seem to be garnering some value out of my daily activity.  Where is the correct focus?

Some people just seem to have a case of the bitters.  The trick is not to let them dominate your life or ruin your attempts to better it.

Stuck

I suppose that it is silly to think
that I trapped in one place,
that all forward motion has ceased.
But that is how I feel.

Stuck.

The world seems to rush on around me:
People moving forward, lives moving forward -
a blur of motion that goes on the periphery
while I simply stand.

Stuck.

I keep telling myself that things will change,
that the motion is invisible now,
but that invisible
is not the same as not moving
at all.

Stuck.

Or am I fooling myself,
thinking that the point of life is moving forward,
when speeding through life means simply
speeding by life?

Stuck.

Stepping Out

I find that I am stepping out more and more at work, taking charge, perhaps acting almost leader-like.

It is a little terrifying.  I do not know that I am doing everything correctly.  Sometimes it feels like I am simply adding more work to my life.

But at the same time it is invigorating.  It is an interesting feeling when one feels that one has some sense that one is charting one's own course rather than simply walking down a path that others set before you. 

One significant change that I have found is that I find myself asking for permission a great deal less.  If I understand what needs to be achieved, I will make a plan and go do it.  What I am no longer doing - at least not in the formal way - is going and asking for permission prior to asking.  I will consult, I will seek opinions - but I will not seek permission.  I will act.

I am not quite sure where all of this ends.  There is only a finite range to one's leadership at any one company of course; at some point the ability to lead becomes constrained by size and circumstances.

But that is it may be.  Right know I am doing - and learning.

Leadership may be a skill to be learned after all.  Who knew.