Today's Decisions and Resolutions

While yesterday's post was all bright lights and sunshine, today finds me a bit more ambivalent. None of the facts have changed certainly but the balance of my optimism has shifted more in favor of the non-work aspects of life. I find more and more that the bits of myself that bother me, are in fact utterly irrelevant or totally unnoticed by others. I suspect the most annoying bit of me is probably the bit that worries and frets endlessly about absolutely nothing.

As always, it's hard to pin down the cause of any feeling but I think my personal paranoia may have something to do with simply having too much time on my hands for introspection. Every action and every word is analyzed and re-analyzed for how it could have been improved or how it might have caused offense. Situations are mentally played back in slow motion to distinguish friendship from disdain and mirth from mockery. At some point one has to stop gazing into the limpid pool of one's own soul, put aside the tapes and just go outside and play ball with the other kids. I need to push myself and my interests outside my own skin more often and in more obvious ways; the current plan to do this has a few key points:

• Ask more questions about people and when you get the answers write them down. I've heard this a million times from a million sources but never really taken it to heart. People love to know that you're listening to them. This is going to be one of the harder things to repair as I have a horrible memory and it's going to be a hell of a challenge trying to collect the vitals of everyone I know without making it obvious that I failed to remember the first time but as painful as this exercise will be it may help me to be more attentive in the future.
  
• Remember and celebrate important moments in people's lives. I have a friend from three workplaces ago who still remembers my birthday. Every year I get an email wishing me a happy day despite the fact that we see each other only two or three times a year. It's a small thing but it really makes me take notice. Women seem to do this sort of thing automatically but it's relatively rare among those of the male gender. I think it's a quality worth mimicking.
• Give gifts often and widely but only if they're truly meaningful. Case in point: my wife's friend had her second child in February so we got them this book. Then my wife had the idea to take sea creatures from the book, cut them out of plywood, paint them match and make a wooden growth chart. I hate to toot our own horns here but if I got a gift with that much thought and effort put into it I'd be pretty impressed. And thinking back on it making it was one of the most enjoyable projects I've ever done simply because it was a gift. That is not to say that I don't wonder from time to time what it's doing at 'right this minute'.
  
• Get the hell back to work. I have at least verbal approval from the wife to actually go into work a couple of days a week but I wonder how this will really turn out. She's managed to rule out every work day for the next 2 weeks on one technicality or another but hopefully that will improve after the holidays. Truth be told, I am starting to go just a smidge insane in this box all the time.
  

Well, there sits the plan. We shall see what twists fate throws in my way to aid or thwart its completion. The silly thing, of course, is that this all comes across as so fake and artificial. Why would you have to 'try' to appear to care about people? If you really care about them won't that be obvious? Sadly, apparently not. The stupid thing is that I find people utterly fascinating and would like to get to know everyone on the planet. But, because of some silly quirk of personality (and a decent dose of my own stupidity) I come across as someone "who clearly just has other things to do besides talk to me" as I've been told. Ironically, this is exactly the same incorrect perception I have of other people.

But anyway, if you should find yourself on the business end of one of these points, please do take it personally.

Mysteriously Great Day

I've found lately that sometimes the hardest thing to understand is oneself. Today was punctuated by brief periods of unexplained jubilance. Was it too much caffeine? Perhaps something in the air? It's impossible to know for sure but I have the usual theories.

Over the years I've noticed that I tend to move the opposite direction emotionally from those around me. Just when my wife is about to go berserk with the kids screaming all around her, I slip into a calm and entertaining mood and take the kids off to play a game of "You're too little to push me over!!" When she's absolutely in a rage and ready to tear my head off because of some stupid thing I've done, I move effortlessly into the role of ruthless logician and explain to her why she shouldn't really be mad in a calm measured voice (this REALLY does not help, by the way). Similarly, when people at work are at their lowest ebb of doubt and pessimism I tend to move the other direction. Today was such a day; multiple people in my virtual vicinity were obviously frustrated and perhaps that was enough to push me towards more effervescent side. Pity I was not in the office for any of it to flake off on anyone else. [Side note: This can actually be a fun game if you play your cards right. When I see an obviously sad person I do some of the craziest shit that I'd never THINK of doing under any normal circumstances. For the most part it's utterly beyond my control but obviously I can't realize you're doing it or it breaks the spell. No explanation really; some visceral part of me wants to cheer people up. *shrug*]

Alternatively, maybe today I was just smart enough to take my own advice from yesterday. I'm unusually far ahead in my work hours for the week so I started work late after picking up the house a bit, cleaning the toilets and wrapping a few Christmas presents. In a word, I was relaxed. No panic. No huge queue of mega-important tasks. No thoughts of "I have to put in X hours today or I'll have to work over tomorrow." Just calm, measured performance of my job. We tend to get so wound up over metrics and hours and performance that we stress ourselves into crappy performance. We freak out and screw up that causes us to get behind which causes us to stress out which causes us to freak out and screw up that causes... well, you get the idea. Take a deep breath once in a while. If all else fails, do those LaMaze breaths from the Cosby Show... you know the ones. You can't deny it.

Lastly, and perhaps related to the first theory, I feel needed. I'm not really sure WHY; nothing whatsoever has changed to indicate I'm any more necessary than I was before. Perhaps it's some unfounded optimism about our impending structural changes. If pressed, I'd say there's a 75% chance my job gets significantly better in the next 90-120 days. That's not to say that the transition will be at all pleasant but most of the scenarios to which I assign non-zero probabilities do turn out to be real, tangible improvements over the status quo. I'm not sure what better reason one could have for jubilance... well, perhaps if I had some way to substantiate my 75% estimate.

But whatever the real reason I just felt I got my parking on this planet happily and properly validated today. From random comments from the field of my acquaintance to my wife's breathless, "You know, you really are just the best husband ever!" this afternoon on the phone all the lights of my life were green today. Almost makes a person want to go to bed early to see how tomorrow's going to turn out.

Lessons Learned: 12/19/07b

As I sat here on the computer doing actual company work (for reasons that will be explained later) a few more dry and dusty ideas blew through my mind.

Thinking back about my comments on the 'enigma' person earlier it occurred to me that it might be a bad idea to broadcast my innermost thoughts to everyone on the planet. I mean seriously, someone could take my "Smells like the Holy Spirit" song idea and make a boatload of money. OK, more seriously, you could take someone's blog and use it to manipulate them. I don't mean in the sense of saying, "On 11/12/06 you said you hated the color pink and now you claim to LIKE the color pink. I think that makes you a LIAR, Mr Sullivan!" but in the more subtle sense that this thing is a very sensitive barometer of my attitudes about work and life and ... well, almost everything else. But then I think that it would be a stupid amount of effort to go to because I'm easily manipulable. You don't have to deviously trick me into doing much of anything; it's in my nature to just do what I think is in a person's best interest and generally that starts with servicing your direct requests. I don't know... clearly on one hand writing this much stuff down could be a REALLY bad idea. I could find out later that Publisher's Clearing House decided to skip my house because I made an off-color comment about Ed McMahon, for example.

Closely related to that is the idea that somebody's going to read themselves into something I write and get really cranked off about it. Some day my mother's going figure out how to get on the internet and read about the day Grandpa died and she's going to be completely fricking mortified. Now is that because I chose to do something to intentionally piss her off? No, of course not. My goal is to represent the truth as I see it before a couple of days pass and suddenly I can't remember it anymore. So if you see yourself echoed in these posts somewhere then take that as the compliment that it's intended to be. You were important enough to stick in my mind long enough for me to find my way back to the computer and interesting enough that I found it worthwhile to write about you. If you find yourself on here and you're not pleased by what you see then consider yourself incredibly, INCREDIBLY lucky. In today's world of half-truths and white lies it's impossible to get an accurate picture of how you really look to the outside world. I'd give anything to know the utterly candid truth about my own life, all the way from the people I accidentally cut off in traffic to the people who think I'm an ass because I don't come to their holiday parties.

Tonight between the hours of 9pm and about 11pm I did some work for one of our clients. Why, might you ask, did I do this at such an hour? Would not 9 in the morning have been just as effective? Why would I blow my entire evening doing work for a client? Well, I'll tell ya why in a simple concise nutshell: The customer was pleasant. Yup. That's it. When we met with them today, they had taken the time to review what we'd given them and they'd prepared their feedback and they delivered it to us politely and respectfully and there was no bickering about the sales process or dissension about what was wanted and what wasn't. They just told us in clear and distinct terms what they wanted and frankly that was such a refreshing circumstance that it was a joy to help them. Yeah, you heard me. Even though the work itself was utter tedium, work that a well-trained chimpanzee could have done it was still a happy experience because one had the keen sense that the customer would get it, be grateful and we'd all be happy. One tends, I think to forget about the importance of clear and achievable goals in work. It's all very well to say, "This department needs to bill $500,000 this month" but if that's as clear as the goals get then how do you achieve them? What do you put on your TODO list each morning to produce your share of $500,000? "Collect $10,000 in aluminum cans for recycling"?

Lessons Learned: 12/19/07

Alright well today was an amusing day to be certain. I went into the office, had lunch with one of my esteemed colleagues, talked to a mind-boggling friendly customer and then... well, who's to say what's next. In this short span I wound my mind around some wisdom.

OK, this first bit. Well, it's pretty damn obvious but it's probably the most important lesson I've learned in a REALLY long time. And the funny thing is that at the time of learning it I didn't really realize I was learning it. The whole thing can be summed up in one simple word. One word, five letters: relax. Yeah, I know... that's it though. It's not something I do well but I think it's the key to actually enjoying ANYTHING and you all know how important enjoyment is this to me this week. In the past I've tried to enjoy by planning... and fretting... and worrying... and making contingency plans... and carefully measuring each word I ever utter... That's all bullshit. You don't plan enjoyment. Enjoyment is sitting down and turning off exterior concerns and just letting things happen. Whether this is wandering in the woods enjoying nature or reading a book to a group of children in your best "Mama bear, papa bear, baby bear" voice the result of simply letting yourself simply be in the moment and go with the flow of what's going on around you is just simple, teary-eyed, euphoria. It's the difference between nervously worrying about what the other adults will think if you read "...and somebody's been sleeping in my bed and they're still there!" in falsetto in a crowded library... and just doing it with as much gusto as you can to impress your tiny audience. The words are the same but by relaxing and showing people who you are with sincerity and honestly you take what might be a mundane task and turn it into real enjoyment. If there's one unalterable directive I could brand across my being this would be it.

When I was in the office on Friday the atmosphere was almost festive. People were out and about chattering away with abandon. It reminded me of my first job out of college where we operated like one big party every day... Today when I went in the company had returned to its normal sepulchral state. I was only actually in the office for half an hour or so but the whole time I expected a half-decomposed corpse to amble around the corner at any moment and start eating people's brains. Perhaps the tension was internally created but the place had a strong aura of "leave me alone I'm friggin' workin' hea!" No doubt at least half of that is generated in my own psyche but it's hard to talk to anyone in a place where 20 cubicle occupants are working away in dead silence.

Lastly, an unnamed but high-ranking company official called me an 'enigma'. I can't help but laugh at that. Of all the people you know (if you're reading this) I have to be the LEAST enigmatic. For Lord's sake, I've published a detailed and intensely personal autobiography for any yahoo with a browser to read. This is the 207th blog entry I've posted about random crap in my life and it's not like my entries are about celebrigossip crap. You've got the innermost workings of my mind floating around on here. So if you want to, you can call me lots of things... but enigmatic... that's not one of them. I'm an open book.

Better Better Better Worse Worse Worse

After 10 hours abed we're feeling much better, thank you. Before the workday begins it seems I should put down some random thoughts for the day.

As proposals swirl around the company to reorganize the department in which I work I'm becoming increasingly interested to see how things will work out and in what perverse way I can get screwed over by it. My initial and unfounded optimism is starting to fade as I see the competing schemes.

The one proposal I know the most about I cannot make any reasonable objection to. It is the most inclusive of the four and seems to be the most compatible with my own. It stresses the need to dedicate a non-billable resource to maintaining our baseline products and at least hints at keeping our programmers from having to do many of the non-technical tasks they do today. If these two objectives are realized then I'll be happy (and a bit surprised).

The second proposal I've heard vague rumblings about scares me a bit. Its focus seems to be more concerned with realigning positions by their functions within the company. If this happens I'll be annoyed, perhaps terminally so. It will be an extreme disappointment if this theme leaks over into the others and our new product developers are moved into a department with schedule and other considerations totally unrelated to the part of the company they're supposed to be servicing.

The last person with a say is also the most influential and we've discussed strategic goals for the department for so long that I've long since lost a good sense for where his opinion ends and mine begins. We seem to agree on all the major points but differ only in the degree to which we're willing to do things. His view seems to be to blur the roles of positions in the department a bit more while I'm determined to let people focus on specific tasks. He's probably more closely aligned with reality but I'm determined that I'm more optimal.

So in summary, there actually isn't a whole lot of difference between any of the plans I've seen. Any one of them enacted as-is would be an improvement over what we have now. The pessimistic side of me though wonders how this can all come to naught. While I think it would be impossible to make things WORSE it's possible that the improvement will be so minor as to make it no longer worth the four years I've been waiting for things to change. It's also entirely possible that despite my somewhat selfish lobbying I could still get the short end of the stick and end up right where I am now. All this has pretty much rubbed the shiny optimism off my attitude at least for the moment.

Bored Bored Bored Sick Sick Sick

At the risk of being branded a valetudinarian I'm going to mention that I feel like crap. My stomach has been generally annoyed for at least four days. Nothing mega-violent but enough to make my head swim a bit and make life somewhat unpleasant from time to time. Let the record show that it is so.

In a similar vein I'm sitting here on my work computer and I'm bored bored bored. I heard through the grapevine that my company's CEO said that he expects people to be working a minimum of 50 hours a week. That's a bit of a surprise considering I've been logging exactly 40.00000 workweeks for a long time due to exceptional job-related ennui. I've even occasionally gone so far as to round down in places just to make a the point and keep from accidentally oozing over my self-imposed limit. Oops. I've been told, however, that change is in the air around the 'ole workplace so perhaps I'll have a whole new level of motivation here in the next... oh, 100 days or so.

I tried to live today in the spirit of the true sensualist but it was really hard. I was stuck home with a sick toddler who did something really rude to her diaper about once every 90 minutes. No doubt her stomach doesn't feel well either. This, I suppose, must be the evil drawback to living for the moment. Sometimes the moments suck and you're stuck with them. It was amusing talking to absolutely everyone I can think of about recent company events and realizing that we all seem to have the exact same opinion about what needs to change around here with the differences between schemes being merely a matter of degree. Now the fun begins and we get to see who wins (and who quits).

Just about out of words it seems.... Now the question is what does a person who lives merely for the pleasure of the moment do in the 20 minutes before he collapses, exhausted, into his bed? Old me would have crawled into bed to read "The Mysteries of Udolpho" because he'd read something about how the novel had influenced Jane Austen and he really wanted to know what made her tick. No more however! Now we live for pleasure and amusement! I think I'll go read "The Mysteries of Udolpho" because it sounds like a nice, creepy example of Gothic literature. *whoooo!!!!!* It's mind-boggling how quickly things can change!

Existential Quandary CXIXb

Before the workday officially begins, perhaps it would be a good time to finish defining this latest quandary.

Not so long ago I recall having a conversation like this one:

Co-Worker: "Why don't you do ?"
Me: "Why would I do that?"
Co-Worker: "Well, because it's fun! I did it and it was a blast!"
Me: "I don't really think that having fun is a valid reason for doing something. What's really accomplished after all?"

My version of reality stated simply that in order for something to be meaningful it had to accomplish something. If nothing else, the thing you're doing must improve you in some way so that you'll be better able to do some unspecified activity later.

The problem with this, of course, is that eventually you drop dead. Read all the books you want but eventually all that effort goes to waste unless you can put it to some practical use. The same goes for any activity no matter how relentlessly self-improving. My wife rails on about not being "the richest man in the graveyard" but the same idea can be applied to other forms of personal capital. There's similarly no point in being the "best read man in the graveyard" either unless that knowledge somehow leads you to a more lucrative or enjoyable profession.

So, six months ago I would have claimed that simply having fun was pointless but it seems clear now that perhaps having fun is really the ONLY point to anything. All the unpleasantness in life is suffered merely to enable us to have fun later. One studies in childhood to get a job later. One works today to earn money to have enjoyment and leisure later. Ultimately then, the highest purpose of life is to increase the enjoyment of ourselves and others. This, of course, can take a hundred different forms from doing your job in such a way that it helps others do theirs to simply complimenting a stranger in the grocery store because she chose your favorite color of nail polish. A million trivially easy acts can add to the sum total of human pleasure. As long as personal pleasure is not gained at the expense of others I'd judge that an act is inherently 'good'.

My primary complaint, if any is to be had, is that nobody bothered to tell me this secret of life before. Enough people have received the speech above that at least one must have been capable of revealing the obvious flaw in my logic. I've labored away under a self-delusion that cost me years of possible enjoyment. This is not to say, of course, that I plan from now on to lead a life of total dissipation but it tends to reorder one's priorities significantly.

Existential Quandary CXIX

After thirty five years of life I think that the events of Friday may have convinced me that I'm doing it all wrong.

See, for my entire life I've lived pretty abstemiously. I don't drink; I don't smoke; I don't eat to excess (well, not lately); I don't sleep around (hell, I turn an amusing color of crimson just talking to women even today) and I spend my free time doing things like brushing up on useless mathematical skills and reading novels that nobody else I've ever known bothers to read (at least when they had the choice to read anything else).

If you look back in the history of this blog you'll see all sorts of half-ass explanations for this pointless self-flagellation. I wanted to learn Latin, I argued, because I just enjoyed the learning process and Latin was handy. To read all the classics, I crooned, to know the human spirit and psyche in all its variety. Modern novels, I sagely noted, would be jumping off points for discussions with others who might have also read them.

Well, that's all a bunch of bullshit. Sure, learn Latin if you want to carry about a panoply of new words but be damned if anyone else is going to understand what the hell you're saying. And certainly, read the classic novels of yesteryear to get to know how people acted and felt 200 years ago; disregard the fact that you can get the same information from having a 10-minute conversation with any wino on the street. And let me tell you, I've had exactly 0 conversations spawned because of some modern novel I read.

No, as usual with most of the things I look back on this is a bunch of crap contrived to hide a key problem. See, by 'not fitting in' with others, by altering my realm of experience to exclude television and most other popular pastimes I justify my own cowardice towards other people. I don't have to approach anyone at work and have a non-work conversation, for example, because, well, they're obviously not interested in the same things as I am and so won't want to talk to me anyway. I subconsciously exclude myself from common human experience and then hide behind that difference because at heart I'm a chickenshit when it comes to people. What's even more amusing is that at the exact same time I woefully observe that I don't have enough contact with people and that I'm about to go insane because of it. So I simultaneously create and lament my own problem.

I propose that my great labor of self should be to strive in all things to act the true sensualist, to live by the creed that there is no greater good than the happiness of others and self. To do always that which feels right and best and yet still respects the feelings of others. For 35 years I have trodden the road of the frightened child, trying desperately to take up as little space in the lives of others as possible, always following my father's oft-repeated motto of childhood: "Children are to be seen and not heard." At 35, I may qualify as no longer a child, I think and perhaps it is time for me to be heard.

Mansfield Park - Jane Austen

After spending several months roaming around in modern literature the last two weeks back in the classics have seemed by comparison exceptionally laborious. As my wife, who is reading the same novel, will point out to you, reading Austen is more work than pleasure at times. It is not so much that she uses words unfamiliar to us or that the situations she paints are beyond our immediate experience. Truly, the themes of Austen's novels are as familiar as any made-for-TV movie. Instead it is her language which can tend to wear one out. Austen crafts sentences that are so winding and twisting at times that one imagines taking them from the book and wrapping them several times around the Christmas tree. Anyone who has read Austen with care even once should be credited for having passed eyes over the words at least twice in repeated answer to the question, "What did she just say exactly?"

Prolixity aside, Austen's descriptions of the inner workings of the human mind and its motivations are enthralling. Austen gives an almost Dickensian level of attention to her characters and at the end of Mansfield Park one feels like one knows Fanny Price like a sister. Among all of Austen's characters I find Fanny the most personally relatable. Her simultaneous self-doubt and self-assurance are hallmarks of the human experience and I can see myself in exactly her position. It is with regret that I found in the literary criticism the consistent theme that Fanny is a character to be disliked. Her virtue is seen as a pall over the actions of the other characters. Her adherence to social norms is an impediment to the enjoyment of those around her. How sad it is to find that the face in the mirror is not the same seen by society.

In summary, I consider MP one of Austen's finest while the majority of commentators seem to agree on exactly the opposite. Austen's other novels paint life in a sort of blissful haze while MP is frankly and honestly realistic about all the foibles of humanity. Of course in characteristic style her final chapter wraps everything tidily up in happiness for all concerned but the reader must forgive those 10 pages out of 320 which serve to give her readers of the time (and today) what they expect for their heroine.

Existential Quandary CXVIII

Yes indeed.... we find ourselves back here again. Wondering what the hell the point of anything is. Here's what we know so far:

Work:
Simply put, as of late work has become simply laughable. Luckily, I'm detached enough from the situation that 40.00 hours under one chain of command is largely the same as another. I regret only that not everyone in the situation has that luxury.

Family:
I'm not sure what caused it but my wife and I are, to be utterly honest, as happy as I can imagine being. For some unknown reason over the past six months we have appreciated each other like never before. The little ones in the house are giddy as never before. I'm not sure what I could improve on though perhaps if Isabella would learn to put her books back on the shelf.

Other:
The other bits of me are pretty much as usual. I have a wealth of intellectual and physical energy and nowhere to put it. I've tried to insinuate myself into a project or two without success and I'm certainly not going to waste more than 40.00 hours a week on work so that leaves me at a loose end. I've had a few random, crappy ideas for tying up some of these loose ends though.

As usual I think I need to put all this reading to some purpose. As I was perusing Wikipedia I realized that a decent percentage of the books I've read lately don't even HAVE Wikipedia entries. Looking at the larger web nobody has bothered to do much of anything with them and if I bothered then that would be a marginally useful and unique contribution to the web at large. It would also give me an excuse to look up all manner of obscure random tidbits and put them down in text. My only question in that vein would be whether to bother doing this in Wikipedia or starting a website of my own. Wikipedia's formatting overhead seems to be nontrivial.

I have pretty completely decided that Geocaching is stupid and that it's high time I got back to woodworking. My "Honey Do" list is a mile long and filled with unique and interesting challenges. The fact is that I've ignored it in favor of chasing after waterproof containers for much too long. Still valid as a bit of exercise but not really a proper and productive hobby.

Lastly, there's always that thing that hangs over my head like a 16-ton weight. I still feel this silly need to learn another language. For what purpose? None at all of course. Same as any of these other projects.

Clearly, I think this all boils down to just having too much time on my hands. Yet another example of the wasted leisure of the American middle class. This would be so much easier if I just watched more TV. I wonder if Burns and Allen is still on...