Big Lessons From My Little Job

August 23, 2013 //

I have been at my little job for slightly more than a year and a half now. After a month or two of wondering if I was in the right place, I’m comfortable and happy there. The job was probably just demanding enough to keep me from being swallowed by the bad things that were happening in my life when I took it. In retrospect, it is probably just as well I wasn’t trying to establish myself in a full-time, “serious” position while I was dealing with the death of my mother, my dog, and various family health issues. I suspect that my current restlessness is a good sign: my life is calm and stable enough to seriously pursue something bigger.

Here are a few things I’ve learned that I am sure will help me going forward:

I can succeed at something new: I’ve mastered the infernal computer/register/inventory system, and learned to navigate all four channels of our business. I am producing results comparable to those of two senior colleagues, both of whom have design degrees and have run their own design businesses.

I am not motivated by money: I earn a fraction (a very small fraction) of what I used to. I would make the same amount of money just by showing up, but every day, I put forth my best effort, and continue to challenge myself. The proof of this is that despite having been momentarily stunned and disgusted by my insignificant first “raise” I am still working hard.

I can simultaneously accept my reality and change it: I had hoped that I might be able to eventually meet all of my needs in this job. My first review and wage increase showed me that I couldn’t. It’s just not that kind of job, and I might have known it, had I asked the right questions when I interviewed. After some reflection, I realized that I enjoyed the job too much to quit, and that I could alleviate my resentment by simply reducing my availability to four days a week from seven. Saving Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays for myself gave me a sense of control and needed structure in my schedule.

I am most successful when I forget myself: Fully focusing on my customers and meeting their needs allows no room for self-consciousness and insecurity, and produces excellent results.

I am not my job title, or my paycheck: I knew that, but it’s good to remember.

Tags identity, job search, lessons, money, paycheck, self-conciousness, success, work

Categories Uncategorized

It Feels So Good When it Stops

August 21, 2013 //

We can get used to anything. For the past five years or so, I have gotten used to chronic, severe pain in my neck and shoulders. It’s not constant, but it is something I have been waking up with almost every day, and noticing off and on while I am awake. I’ve attributed it to many things: “stress,” aging, too much computer time, and most recently, tensing up over the low computer/cash registers at my little job. I was resigned to the prospect of life with this pain.

And then…

I went to a new dentist. “Do you clench or grind your teeth?” she asked. I didn’t think so. She asked a few more questions, poked around a little more, had me open and close my mouth a few times. She was pretty sure I was a clencher, and that this habit was responsible for the current sorry state of my teeth. No cavities, but vertical fractures.

Since I don’t eat rocks or use my mouth on household projects, I had to consider her suggestion seriously. I promised to be mindful of how I held my mouth (always a good practice, really.)

My upper and lower teeth were hitting each other in all the wrong places. By resting my tongue against the roof of my mouth, I could maintain my bite properly. I paid particular attention to this when I went to bed that night.

I woke up pain-free yesterday morning, and again today. I am elated.

I share this because it might be helpful to someone else, and also as an example of how we harm ourselves, obliviously and unintentionally. If only it was always so easy to find and fix.

Tags aging, dentists, mindfulness, pain, pain management, stress

Categories Uncategorized

Shame, Shame, Shame

August 19, 2013 //

It starts so early. Several years ago, I identified an undercurrent of shame as one factor that seems to hold me back. Trying to unravel its source has been tricky, and uncomfortable.

I can’t really remember a time in my life when I did not feel shame about something. My father died when I was very young, and I felt shame about being in a family that was so different than my friends’. Irrational, I know, but rationality is not a characteristic possessed by most kindergarteners.

My mother and her mother compounded my feelings. Mom and her sister had different fathers, and there was some suggestion that my grandmother had not been married to one of these men. ( I will never know, because the involved parties have all gone to their graves with their secrets.)

I got older, and taller than almost everyone else. And my hair was wildly curly. Different again, and shameful, in my mind. I was repeatedly ridiculed in elementary school for being singled out by my teachers for being smart. And on it went; right up to my current under-employed present- just another reason to feel shame. Shame was a magnet for other reasons to feel it. I never stopped to question whether my feelings were valid.

Shame can be useful. Applied properly, it helps us function as a society. We should feel shame when we harm one another by lying, cheating and stealing, or worse.

Shame that only hurts ourselves is no shame, just waste. The real shame of this shame is that it is also very context-specific. Had my grandmother lived her same life in another time and place, right now, for instance, no one would blink at her less than conventional family life. It pains me to think of all of the emotional suffering that would have spared her, my mother and my aunt.

That kind of shame keeps us from taking our rightful place in the world; I know I dialed down my efforts in school to fit in with my classmates, (a real shame with permanent effect.) More recently, ashamed of my lack of employment-related identity, I have hesitated to make social overtures, an obvious waste of free time I will never have again, not to mention opportunities to make connections that might help me find work!

Going forward, I promise this:

1) When I feel ashamed, I will ask myself whether I have caused anyone actual harm. If so, I will do my best to right the wrong. If no, I will get over myself, and move forward.

2) When I see anyone around me feeling self-harming shame, I will do my best to comfort and encourage them.

Imagine a world where we all felt shame only when we should, and never when we shouldn’t. We’d hardly recognize the place.

Tags anxiety, baggage, curly hair, depression, family, procrastination, shame, smart girls

Categories Baggage

Little Kitty Feet

August 18, 2013 //

Don’t ask whether I’m a Dog Person or a Cat Person. I will steadfastly reply “Both.” In my view, a home is incomplete without (at minimum) one of each. For the first time in nearly nine long years, my home is complete, in that sense at least.

The yang of our big boy Waldo has been balanced by the yin of petite Willow. He is all energy and action, and can’t for the life of him fathom why his bouncing invitations to play are being rejected. He does not see what Willow sees clearly: he is eight times her size.

Both of our pets came from the same shelter, where they received their coincidentally symmetrical names. Adopted a little over a year apart, they have been adapting to one another for about three months.

I didn’t intend it, but they “match.” Both of them have white socks on their feet, and seem to be wearing white turtleneck “dickies” (some of you will remember those. Weren’t they ridiculous?) Willow is a tortie/calico, and Waldo seems to be German Shepard based, in color and markings at least.

Waldo’s feet are long and narrow, with big webbed toes. Hound feet, although when he was a pup, they made him seem part wombat to me. He’s grown into them now, and they are just part of his general handsomeness.

Willow’s feet are another thing altogether. I love them. Her front paws are just slightly larger than my thumb, and she has little pink toes! Those little toes pad after me down the hall along with Waldo’s clackety gallumphing. They swat at Waldo when he gets too frisky, and gently explore the space on the couch when she squeezes in between Waldo and me to curl up for a nap.

I dearly love my dog, but I have longed for a cat. Willow does not disappoint. She is just friendly enough. At night, she happily sleeps in a basket in the laundry room, but will curl up with me for an afternoon nap. She purrs freely, and will rub her face against mine in greeting. She has an almost silent “meow,” which she rarely utters. She is lovely to look at, with an almost cartoonishly sweet face.

Fog is not the only thing that creeps in on little cat feet; happiness does too.

Tags Carl Sandberg, cats, dogs, happiness, home, pets

Categories Uncategorized

Unpacking My Baggage

August 18, 2013 //

Don’t worry, I’m not going to do it all in this post. But I have spent a good portion of this year considering the impediments to what I want and need to do. Now I will address them in writing.

I will occasionally be dragging one out, holding it up to the light, examining it, and describing it before I decide how to dispose of it.

These musings will be posted under the category of “Baggage” so consider yourself warned if you would like to avoid the navel-gazing.

Tags anxiety, baggage, fear, grief, indecision, love and loss, procrastination

Categories Baggage

Fear Itself

August 17, 2013 //

I was raised by an anxious and depressed mother. She came by it honestly; her life was hard in ways I can only guess. In the manner of her generation, she did not share many details. I do know that she dearly loved my father. She lost him suddenly when he was killed in a car accident on his way home from work. I was five.

I can’t count the number of times I heard “Your father didn’t come home one night” as I tried to weasel my way out of curfew during my high school years. At the time, I felt it was her effort to repress me. I get it now. It was her expression of the painful truth that at any time, anything can go horribly, catastrophically wrong.

I have, perhaps predictably, lived a fearful life. I have been afraid to be hurt, afraid to be disappointed, afraid to be afraid.

As a result, I have missed opportunities. And fun. (Probably lots of fun.) And I have been hurt, disappointed and afraid anyway.

None of the worrying or avoidance protected me. And I have been gobsmacked by things I never dreamed of worrying about. And survived it all, so far.

The last five years have been particularly challenging. There were the three years of bi-coastal marriage. The Kid went to college, and came back early. There were health issues. Our darling Maggie dog died. My mother died, and my brother and his family were cruel and deceitful. I have been under-employed, and uncertain about what to do about it.

There is not that much left to be afraid of. Rather, there is not much to be afraid of that I can control.

I am afraid that I will regret not taking more chances from now on. And I can do something about that.

Tags anxiety, family, fear, grief, love and loss

Categories Baggage

Considered Consumerism

July 10, 2013 //

My aspiration to high-mindedness and my love of nice things have co-existed in constant tension for as long as I can remember.

I trace these early twin drivers to the following sources:

1) The life and work of Louisa May Alcott (Little Women! all those Transcendentalists she grew up with!)

2) My mother (glamorous black and white photos of her life in Los Angeles and San Francisco in the ’40s and ’50s! drawers full of cashmere sweaters! caviar and smoked oysters!)

The influences are entwined; my mom shared her stories of growing up during the Great Depression. She had two sweaters and one skirt to wear for school. Period. I can easily understand why she drifted to over-shopping later in her life- she could.

I over-shopped too, in my young adulthood. I was unrealistic and undisciplined for a while, and I suffered for it.

As I dug out from under debt (with the help of my mother, it is only fair to say) I developed a new strategy: I would buy less, but I would buy the best I could afford when I had the money, so that I would not feel poor when I did not.

This strategy is best applied to things that last. I am still happily using the pots and pans I purchased 25 years or so ago. I fretted about the expense at the time, but that cobalt enamel looks as good to me now as it did in nineteen-eighty-whenever.

The amount of time spent anguishing over a prospective purchase tends to be balanced by my resulting satisfaction. In the last year and a half, I have anguished over a new sofa, a side table and an area rug for the family room, a dresser for The Kid, and a bed and bedside table for the master bedroom. That sounds like a lot, and it is, but not so much when one considers that the sofa and bedside table are replacements for Craigslist stand ins, the wooden bed and headboard replace a basic metal frame, and the other pieces should have been there long ago. ( I also took considerable advantage of sale prices and/or my employee discount.)

And now I am ready to put on the brakes, thanks to some sort of inner equilibrium that shifts my attitude about spending from exhilaration to queasiness at just the right time. After a certain amount of consumption, I am driven to get back to work, and produce something.

I feel contented and supported when I see and use the things I’ve bought. They serve my family and me, and will for a long time, leaving me mental space to worry about bigger things.

Tags cashmere, Caviar, consumerism, Little Women, Louisa May Alcott, shopping, spending

Categories Uncategorized

Deck Chairs

July 8, 2013 //

This aging but not old house of mine needs work- large-scale stuff: the slab needs jacked, the spare room ceiling leaks, the flooring is shot. Ideally, both bathrooms would be gutted and re-done. Every summer, we cross our fingers that the (original) air conditioner will crank away for one more year. We’re working on it; the jackers will be here next Monday to finish what they started on a too-rainy day a while back, and then we will turn our attention to whatever is next on the list.

In the meantime, I do what I can on my own, a step at a time. If the house itself is the Titanic, I am rearranging the deck chairs.

I sometimes ask myself whether cosmetic things like fresh paint on a wall and new lamps are justifiable use of my limited resources considering the larger challenges we face around here, but I always come back to yes: the “To Do” list is long, but the “Done” list is growing. As I look around after two years of chipping away at small changes, I can see results, and it energizes and encourages me.

The beauty of my “Done” list is that the items, once attained, stay done, leaving me more time to focus on new goals, like actual deck chairs. They’re on the list too, right at the end.

Tags deck chairs, home improvement, slap-happy homemaker, Titanic

Categories Uncategorized

Help Me Help

July 3, 2013 //

I spent the first 45 years of my life trying to please my mother, and will doubtless spend the next 45 mourning my decision to stop. My mother was a deeply unhappy woman, tender-hearted but narcissistic, and unable to relinquish her identity as a victim. I was well into middle age before I fully realized the futility of trying to help someone feel better when they don’t want to.

It is no coincidence that I have always derived the most satisfaction in my life from aiding others, in any way I can. (This is not to suggest that I spend all of my time helping people. I’m not that kind of saint.) In a professional context, my life as a Public Defender investigator was about as good as it gets: I helped my clients, obviously, but also their families, and case witnesses. Being involved in a criminal proceeding is confusing and scary to “normal” people- there was a lot of fear and anxiety to calm, and I was happy to do it. If I have a passion for anything in life, it is for making people feel better.

Yesterday, in the course of my part-time job, I was at a customer’s home as the “support” half of a design team. We were there to offer advice on furniture and decor in several rooms, including that of her teen-aged daughter, who was present during part of our visit.

Mom was clearly feeling stressed, and the daughter, who had not expected to see us, was at best, less than fully engaged with the process. After a fairly unremarkable exchange between the two of them, the daughter left for lunch with a friend, and the mother returned to our project, clearly distracted and almost distraught.

My colleague and I are both mothers of daughters. Hers is the age of the customer’s girl; mine is “grown.” We commiserated over the drama inherent in living with a female teen, and I took it upon myself to assure her that the friction is usually temporary, and absolutely typical.

I did not really expect to spend so much of our time addressing the dynamics of our customer’s relationship with her kids, but it seemed right, because she was in such distress. This very attractive, perfectly groomed woman, in her beautiful home, emanated emotions I could recognize and relate to: isolation and shame. Isolation in the sense of thinking that the rest of the world isn’t challenged by what she was dealing with, and shame that she wasn’t handling it better.

As a human being, I couldn’t ignore what I saw. We talked for quite a while, and I allowed her to vent, carefully offering observations and suggestions. My colleague shared some of her experiences with her own daughter, and eventually we were able to return to our initial purpose.

In my resumed role as designer support, I listened to the consultation and took notes, thinking of the horror management might feel at the time we spent off -task. I dismissed my worry; had we not spent the time addressing the customer’s immediate concerns, we would have never had her attention.

I realized yesterday afternoon that as much as I enjoy my part-time work, I will never be completely satisfied by helping at just a superficial level. Choosing throw pillows is a daunting burden for some people, and it’s fun to turn someone’s dread to enthusiasm as she feels empowered to develop and exert her taste. But there are bigger problems out there, and more pain. I won’t be satisfied until I can tackle some of that again.

Tags mother-daughter relationships

Categories Uncategorized

I’m Too Old

July 2, 2013 //

I honestly go for days, weeks, and sometimes even months without giving too much thought to my age. And then something happens that makes me think about it, and I feel old. In the bad way. The “Everything is Headed South and it is Too Late to DO Anything About it” way. Fortunately, that really doesn’t happen all that often. (Good thing, because it really hurts when it does.)

Lately, I’ve been feeling too old.

In the right way.

I’m too old to keep on operating under assumptions, that if they were ever true, are certainly outdated.

I’m too old to wear cheap shoes. Unless I want to. If they’re cute. And comfortable.

I’m too old to hope that things will happen simply because I wish they would.

I’m too old not to try.

I’m too old not to give myself credit.

I’m too old to save the good stuff for later.

I’m too old not to take care of myself and my family.

I’m too old to wait for approval. Or permission.

I’m too old not to sing in the car.

I’m too old to ignore or deny my power.

I’m too old not to appreciate what I have, what I am, and what I can still be.

Tags age, age appropriate behavior, shoes

Categories Uncategorized

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