I love my twisty brain.
I love that it’s quick and quirky and clever. I love coming up with twisted little ideas that lead down wild unpredictable mazes and open up whole worlds of possibility and wonder. Or humor. Or something. Anyway, it’s fun.
I have a three-day weekend ahead of me. I have a stack of books to read and several ideas to play with. I have a cookout with friends on Monday. I may adopt a cat this weekend. I may go to the Phoenix Comicon. Life is good.
Here’s what I’ve been reading lately, in case you’re curious. (Yes, this is basically filler while I think more about what I really want to say. But who knows, maybe something will come of it.)
The Happiest Man in the World – Alec Wilkinson: An interesting book about a man who makes the whole wide world his home and roams the roads and oceans looking for adventure and novelty. There’s a part of me that envies Poppa Neutrino his freedom, even at the high price he’s paid.
Cronopios and Famas – Julio Cortazar: I read a few excerpts from this book when I was in college, and it had a huge influence on my style. Still does. Funny, inventive, and surreal.
War – Sebastian Junger: I have to give Junger a LOT of credit for getting out there and facing combat with our soldiers in the very toughest corner of Afghanistan. That takes some serious commitment not just to journalism, but to the men he observed. The book is highly evocative and engaging.
Einstein’s Dreams – Alan Lightman: Ever wonder what the world would be like if time behaved very differently? Then this is the book for you. Beautiful and poetic.
Dangerous Laughter – Stephen Millhauser: I’m a big Millhauser fan. He creates these beautifully odd dreamscapes – he’s been an influence on me, too. But this one’s leaving me a little cold. Too many stories on the theme of “weird idea expanded to ever-weirder lengths until it collapses”, I think.
Beat the Reaper – Josh Bazell: I want to love this book. I really do. But so far it’s too heavy on the exposition and backstory for my taste. I’m trying to be patient with it.
Choke – Chuck Pahlaniuk: I wanted to try something a little more modern and edgy. Several people I know love Pahlaniuk, and I really enjoyed the movie version of Fight Club. Pahlaniuk has a great style – very energetic and engaged. The story and characters weren’t my cup of tea, but I enjoyed it anyway. I may read some of his other work.
OK, so there’s not much there. But maybe it gave you some ideas of stuff to read (or avoid). Enjoy your weekend!
New stuff next door at OneDraft and Xyganthomorphism!
I made big strides in my performance last week. I was pretty psyched, up until I stumbled back again this week. Then I brought it back up for a couple of days, and fell back down again Friday. But I brought it back up again all three days this week, and now it’s become easy for me – it’s a habit to do it the right way, the way that works.
Consistency is a problem for me, and not just at work. I always relied on my test-taking abilities to get through school with a minimum of work. I figured if I could prove on the test that I knew what had been taught, what was the point in all that practice?
I was wrong. Being able to give the right answers on the test isn’t the same as actually having mastered a skill or a body of knowledge. Doing it once is great, but if you can’t do it again and again and again at need then you’re really just relying on a good memory to game the system. And that’s not a game you can really win in the long term.
I’m starting to see that it’s a lot easier to say or even think the right things and a lot harder to actually do them. Walking the path starts with a single step. You eat an elephant one bite at a time.
I remember watching one of my sisters test for her black belt a couple of years ago. I couldn’t tell you anything about all the forms and techniques she demonstrated, but it was amazing to watch her. She’s actually a good deal smarter than I am, so my guess is that if she wanted to she could have memorized all those techniques in a couple of weeks (or less) and demonstrated them if she liked.
And then the minute she had to combine them or use them out of context she’d have been no more a warrior than Mel Gibson. It’s one thing to repeat what you’ve been shown and another to actually understand it and make it a part of yourself. And you’re not really respecting your teacher or what you’re trying to learn if you just learn it for the test. You’re taking all the value out of what you’re trying to accomplish and reducing it to a checked-off “to do” item. You reduce your diploma to the bare fact of a piece of paper you’ve only nominally earned the right to hold. You’re cheating yourself out of something very valuable.
This falls in the category of “things I wish I’d realized sooner”. At forty, I’m finding I have an uncomfortable number of regrets: relationships I botched, friends I let go, opportunities I let myself be too lazy to pursue. And I’m finding it hard to look away from all that and look forward. It’s one thing to say “no more regrets” and quite another to actually make it happen.
It can be a little tricky coming into a new environment as a supervisor.
When you work your way up through the ranks, you earn some credibility. You’ve been there, you’ve done that, you’ve got the same sweaty, worn-to-transparency t-shirt everyone else has. Your prospective staff know what you can do, and more importantly they know you have the experience and skills to help them do their jobs better.
But when you come in from outside, you have to earn all that. You have to show that you can do what they do as well as they can. You have to show that you’re not just some chump who’s come in from outside who doesn’t know a TP-40 from a TR-15.
That’s what I’ve been working on lately. My new job requires me to sell. I’m supposed to spend four weeks on the phone before I commence my supervisor training. It’s not hard – it’s a pretty straightforward product, and their sales process is both simple and highly effective. But even though I’ve successfully managed sales teams in the past, I’ve never been a seller myself. I had the opportunity to become one very early on in my call center career, but I didn’t take it because I had a different path in mind. So all of my time on the phones has been doing customer service or tech support, and even then most of that was taking escalated calls – the ones that ask for a supervisor. The angriest, most frustrated, and often most unreasonable of all customers.
None of this really prepared me for selling. My thought process when a call comes in was always to identify and resolve their issue as quickly and efficiently as possible. That’s worked very well for me in customer service – I always had great handling time and excellent quality scores.
But in sales you want to take more time. You have to build a connection with your customers and get them to like and trust you. That’s hard for me, partly because I’m focused on being efficient and partly because I’m pretty introverted. I figure these people I’ve never met have no particular interest in talking to me per se – they’re calling because my company has something they want, and they want to talk to someone about that. I figure someone who calls a business has business in mind and wants to get it done so they can get on with their lives. I do. But just because someone is hungry doesn’t mean they just want to scarf down a protein bar and some Gatorade.
So my sales haven’t been where they should be. The people there have been very kind and patient. They’ve given me lots of great pointers. I’ve tried to be very receptive and to implement them all. And for a couple of weeks there it just wasn’t happening for me. My boss was very concerned that I wouldn’t be able to supervise a team for him if I couldn’t do the job myself. I spent a good part of last night tossing and turning and fighting the urge to worry about getting fired.
But something clicked for me today. I stopped looking at the calls as something to get through (years of getting yelled at can do that to you) and started looking at them as a fun chance to talk to people. And damned if it didn’t work. My sales were up about 50% today, which puts them right about where they needed to be. I had a great time doing it, too. I talked to some interesting people around the country, and they enjoyed talking to me. I stopped worrying about losing my job and I stopped watching the clock tick slowly past.
A big part of what I enjoy about supervising is watching that lightbulb come on over someone’s head. Suddenly it makes sense – the pieces fall into place, and they’re doing something they couldn’t do before. Maybe even something they never thought they could do. It’s very satisfying and it’s the source of some of my proudest moments as a supervisor. Today someone gave me a lightbulb moment, and I’m grateful.
I’m a writer. That’s not just a hobby, or an aspiration, or a job description. It’s a core part of who I am. It’s how I process my world and my life. Putting thoughts and experiences into words makes them more real to me.
When I see something funny or interesting, I start thinking of how I’d share it with someone else. What’s its appeal for me? What does it mean? What are the telling details that bring it to life and make it work? How do I word all that?
So I’m writing this about Gizmo. My grief at losing him is larger than I expected. I’m not someone who thinks of his pets as “furbabies”- I loved him very much, but Gizmo was a cat, a pet. I don’t say that to minimize my feelings for him or to diminish what others feel for their pets. But as much as I realize that I loved my cat, I’m still a little surprised how much his absence hurts.
I keep saying it like that. His absence. Losing him. He’s gone. Part of me still expects him to come back. When I wrapped him in a towel and set him in a shoebox to take to the vet, I all but begged him to move just a little. I woke up the next morning hoping so hard it would all have been a bad dream, and that the world would give my precious little guy back to me. But he’s dead. Gizmo is dead. And no matter how much I long to hear him meowing through the door when I come up the stairs to my apartment, he won’t.
I guess that’s one drawback of being an atheist: there’s no one to bargain with. There’s no God to plead with for another chance with my little friend. I can’t pick up my lyre and charm him out of the underworld. Does that mean I skip that step of the grieving process? I don’t know.
I’ve spent this weekend alternately thinking about it and trying not to think about it. My parents called to offer support and condolences. My brother did, too. I spent a lot of time with my friend J: we had pizza, we had drinks, we had breakfast, we saw Date Night, we ate frozen yogurt. I got emails and messages and an outpouring of support from friends literally all over the world. I want each of you to know how much that meant to me, how much that helped me. Thank you.
The loss hits me at unexpected times. Breaking down at the vet’s office when I took him in to be cremated was not unexpected. And it doesn’t surprise me that I sigh and feel a little twinge every time I start up the stairs to my apartment and I don’t hear him through the door. It’s surprising when I’m shopping for household stuff and I remind myself not to let him chew on the packaging. It’s surprising when I’m reading and I think I hear him in the next room, or wonder why he hasn’t jumped up in my lap. It’s surprising when I catch myself checking to make sure I don’t shut him in the closet when I’m done.
Some of that’s just habit, and some of it’s a kind of denial. Sometimes I feel like he’s not really gone, not forever – he’s just away for a while, and I’ll see him again soon. But I remember him lying on the floor of my bedroom trying so hard to breathe. I remember petting him, telling him I loved him, telling him it was okay to let go. And I remember checking again and again because I didn’t want to believe my sweet little cat was dead.
Pets aren’t people. This doesn’t make them any less a part of our lives. We don’t love them less because they can’t talk or text or drive. They’re these beautiful creatures who share our homes and our lives for a little while. They love us and all they ask is that we return that love. And we do. I built my life around us, Gizmo and me.
I’m learning more about risk lately. I took a risk finding a new job. I didn’t see it that way at the time, but I took a risk bringing Gizmo into my life – the risk of all the hurt and grief that comes with losing a beloved friend. I knew he wasn’t going to be with me forever. As much as I’d like everyone in my life to be with me forever, they won’t be. And that’s okay. You open yourself up to others, you let them become a part of your life, and each one enriches you for a time. Yes, you might get hurt. But you’ll live, and you’ll live a better life for having let them into it.
