Monthly Archives: October 2014
These are the days of my Silver Linings Playbook
Day 30: Your Highs and Lows of this month.
Since this is technically the last post of this month’s blog challenge, I would like to keep things on the positive side.
As we know, there are a lot of things that have been bothering me lately, most of which I can do something about- so there’s the silver lining. Do I dislike my job? Yes. BUT, I am employed. And these schmucks continue to keep me on staff, despite my attitude problem and snarky commentary. Besides, nothing is forever and I will eventually get another job. Because I have skills and shit.
Do I hate where I live? Yes, again. BUT, I live there for free so this gives me the opportunity to do fun things with my money (like island vacations) that I otherwise wouldn’t be able to experience. And won’t be able to experience for a very long time once I finally move out. AND I WILL MOVE OUT. I’m determined to get the feck out of dodge in 2015, all my other bills be damned. Eventually things will even out, especially once I get that shiny new job.
I’m not talking about my health issues.
And as always, I have a great group of friends who stand by me and help me get through life. These people make me laugh every single day, and never judge me for being the hot mess that I am.
Hopefully I’ll have more positive things to say in a month!
Happy All Hallows Eve!!!!
Go forth, and do something fun!
-Yes, this is my real face. lol.
Always, Satan.
Office Supplies for the Savvy Administrative Professional
From: http://memebinge.com/
I believe I can touch the sky, if on the right drugs…
Day 29: Goals for the next 30 days.
As always, my only true goal in life is to remain sane. I spend so much of my time just managing my emotions, it hardly leaves room for real goals and plans. But here is a list of stuff I plan to accomplish next month:
1. Lose 10 lbs.
2. Catch up on my reading challenge on Goodreads (I’m supposed to be reading 110 books this year, and I’m only on 70).
3. Create and complete another Blog Challenge (I’m currently accepting and drafting ideas).
4. Pay off the remainder of my credit card debt from the Summer.
5. Start fiction writing again.
I think these are pretty reasonable. My former therapist told me it’s important to first set small goals for myself, accomplish them, and it will build up my confidence. We’ll see if she was right.
Yet another article I wish I wrote myself- Step Into Your Weakness
**This article wasn’t written by me or anyone I know. I actually read this on my Linked In Profile and since not everyone has Linked In- I figured I’d copy /paste it here so everyone can read it. I thought it was really good and made a lot of valid points about seeing your current situation or insecurity from a different, more positive perspective.**
Step Into Your Weakness
Here in the United States we love to poke and prod and measure everything.
We start holding kids up to imaginary yardsticks when they are tiny. Oh look, he’s walking ahead of schedule! Good boy!
We start measuring kids’ performance in kindergarten or first grade. Measurement is an addiction for us, and a sickness. It’s not just in the business world. We love to evaluate and assess everything, including the people around us. We need to compare them to ourselves. If someone appears to be exceptional, we need to cut them down to size.
We say “She’s pretty, but not as pretty as she thinks she is” or “That guy is smart enough, but it’s his dad who paved his way by bringing him into the family business.”
We love to size people up, and down, and up and down again a few more times.
Over time we notice that the people who honestly, truly couldn’t care less what other people think are always the happiest people.
We have an idea handed down to us from our religious-fanatic Puritan forebears, and the idea is still going strong today. It’s the idea that people come to earth with weaknesses that they must correct.
You’ll run into the ‘weakness’ dogma if you go on a job interview and someone asks you “What’s your greatest weakness?”
When I was working with folks in Europe in the early nineties, they were often puzzled by this question. “Why would you ask someone about his inner thoughts and concerns on a job interview?” they asked.
Now the intrusive American interview style has taken hold in many international workplaces. Now we think it’s normal to ask perfect strangers about their failings. We don’t see the impoliteness in it.
If you were honest and didn’t care about getting the job you could say “I don’t have weaknesses, and neither do you.
“Why do you assume that people have weaknesses – because they aren’t good at every single thing that it’s possible to be good at?
“Why would that matter? Who says which capabilities and talents a functional adult should have, and why would I care about that person’s standards, anyway?”
The weakness dogma is a curse and a negative influence, because it gets us to focus energy on things we don’t do well (and don’t care about) rather than investing the talent God or the universe gave us in doing what we were put down here to do.
I don’t believe that people have weaknesses, but I know that people think they do. They have things to hide. Most of us walk around with a soft spot that we’d rather not talk about.
For some of us, it’s our physical appearance. We wish we were skinnier or taller or didn’t have that bald spot. We wish we were smarter or sexier than we are.
We might worry about our age or the fact that we don’t have a college degree. These soft spots hurt us, because our focus on not talking about them or dwelling on them gives them energetic weight they don’t deserve.
We have a client who is a brilliant strategist and manager. She was a corporate director for years. She sent aPain Letter and got an interview for a plum job. A not-for-profit organization was looking for a new Executive Director.
“I feel very confident about every aspect of the role,” Melissa told us, “apart from the fund-raising part.”
“You’ve done plenty of fund-raising in your corporate life,” we told her. “You got executives to part with millions. You got money from vendors in negotiations. You know how to build relationships at varying levels of depth, whatever the situation requires.
“Fund-raising has to do with mission and connection, and you are the queen of those two things.”
“Thanks for saying that,” said Melissa. “That’s my one Achilles’ heel on this upcoming interview.”
“Let’s practice an answer, then, to the question ‘What kind of fund-raising have you done?'”
Together we constructed Melissa’s answer and practiced it with her. She was set. She was ready to go. She was stoked to talk about how she’d done fund-raising for years in her corporate career.
The interview day came and Melissa was rocking and rolling. The interviewer asked Melissa “What about fund-raising?”
Melissa said “I haven’t done any fund-raising yet.”
“I panicked,” she said. “I forgot what we practiced.”
Melissa got the job anyway.
Why did Melissa panic? The fund-raising ‘weakness’ was still very real to her. It was the one question she was hoping the interviewer wouldn’t ask. She gave the fund-raising topic more weight than it deserved, and when the dreaded question came, her rational mind shut down and her fear spoke up.
Melissa had practiced her answer to the interview question, but in her heart of hearts she still believed that she was no fund-raiser.
Most of us have soft spots that we hope no one notices. They hurt us at work and on the job hunt. We give them power over us that they don’t deserve, because we fear that we are defective or wanting somehow.
There might be something you’d rather not focus on and very much prefer that other people not notice. It might be your ‘checkered’ background or your age.
It might be the fact that you took three years off the conveyor belt to try something different in your life — God forbid! — and you worry that someone won’t let you back on the conveyor belt now.
The soft spot will be tender until you look at it closely and soften your attitude toward it. When you give yourself a break, stop beating up on yourself and finally believe that your age, your waistline, your educational credentials, your crappy car or your termination from your last job are all fine, whole and worthy, the soft spot won’t be tender anymore.
How do you shift your view of your own so-called weakness? It takes courage, because the easiest thing to do is to ignore your soft spot. The easiest thing to do is to build a wall around it. If you don’t get a job you wanted, you can always say “Well, it’s because I’m too old” or “It’s because I don’t have a degree.”
Our own soft spot, the one we tiptoe around, becomes a crutch, because we can blame our problems on it. We don’t have to look at it or shift our view about it.
Our client Amy was a VP at a bank for decades. She quit her job when her mother needed Amy’s help as she declined in her later years. Amy took care of her mom until her mom passed away.
When she began job-hunting six months after her mom died, Amy said “I can’t get to first base in my job search.
“Every time I go on an interview, they ask me why I took time off with my mom, and they don’t ask in a pleasant way. They’re critical. Some people are horrified that I took a two-year break from my career. Now they don’t want to let me back in.”
But Amy, we asked, how do YOU feel about your sabbatical? “I feel fine about it,” said Amy. “Other people need to stop judging.”
When we start to believe that our problems are created by other people, and that therefore those other people have power over us and control whether we can be happy or not or have the things we want in life or not, that’s a big obstacle! We said “Amy, can we give you a new frame for the two-year gap on your resume?”
“Sure,” she said.
“One frame says that it’s bad and unprofessional to take time off the conveyor belt.” we told her. “Through that lens, you are defective. Undoubtedly you lost touch with banking systems and forgot everything you learned throughout your career, when you took those two years off. You aren’t as sharp now, or as capable as you were. Why should anyone hire you?”
“That’s how I feel that people are thinking about me,” said Amy.
“And maybe you are feeling just a tad the same way about your step out of the paid workforce and your attempts to step back in now,” we said.
“Here is a new frame. You worked hard in banking for twenty years and rose to the VP level. Your track record is unblemished.
“You left your career at a high point to do the one thing that deserved your time and energy more than your work did. Your mom needed you and you were privileged to have been successful enough in your career to take two years off from it without worrying about money.
“That’s the American dream. You got to control your priorities. You got to make your own choices as we all hope to do, and you chose to tend to your mom in her final years. That’s was the right choice.You know that as strongly as you know anything.
“You have nothing to apologize for. You’d be amazed and disappointed that anyone would think you should grovel and beg to come back into the workforce when you are obviously very competent and powerful. You’d feel sorry for a person like that, rather than be afraid of him or her.
“You don’t have time to waste with anyone who would question or criticize your sabbatical. To you it’s obvious that anyone in your situation would have done the same thing and helped an aging parent.
“You’re going to sail right past the people who can’t understand your choices, and keep looking for the leader who is thrilled to see you coming.”
“I wish,” said Amy. “I wish people would see it that way.”
The next afternoon Amy sent us an email message. “I got it!” she said.
“I got the message. I got it all at once in a visceral way. When you ran down that alternate frame, you were talking to me. That’s the view I need to adopt.
“Why am I apologizing for having had the means and the wherewithal to take two years off from my career after twenty-five years in it? I got the message myself, in my body, while I was gardening this morning.Why did I worry about what some interviewer thinks? If someone really can’t see what I bring, my job is to move on.”
Hurrah, Amy!
Amy got a great job seven weeks later. It wasn’t that other people were in her way. Amy was in her own way until she turned the crystal to see her precious two-year time with her mom as a positive instead of a negative.
You can do the same thing. You can look closely at whatever blemish or embarrassment you feel is holding you back in the eyes of other people.
You can bravely face it and see your ‘weakness’ in a new light. When you realize that you are fine with all the quirks and complications you bring, your muscles will grow.
Then your soft spot won’t be soft anymore. Its power will be neutralized. It can’t hurt you any more.
Anyone who doesn’t like you the way you are can go jump in a lake, or live a long and happy life without you.
You’ll be delighted to talk about your so-called weakness then. Not everyone has to like your story. Anyone who doesn’t get you doesn’t deserve you anyway. There are seven billion people in the world. You need one manager who gets you, or several clients who see how awesome you are. That’s all.
You don’t have any weaknesses, but the first person who has to get that message is you.
Listen to the podcast Human Workplace Lunch Hour Episode Five, in which Liz and Molly talk about this topic!
Click on the blue link above to listen to the podcast.
Follow Liz Ryan’s columns here on LinkedIn!
Follow Human Workplace on Twitter: @humanworkplace
M.I.S.S. You Much…
Day 28: Something that you miss.
Ironically, surprisingly, physical intimacy. NOT sex, let me be clear about that. But there are a ton of other things you miss out on when you’re abstinent AND not going out on dates.
1. Hugs. I really love getting hugged. I ask for hugs all the time, actually. But there’s something about the arms of a guy I like, being wrapped around me that makes me give a happy sigh. It feels really nice. Or rather, it used to.
2. Hands on my hip. Obviously not my own hands. But you know that casual touch when you’re riding up an escalator, and your person is behind you, and puts their hand on your hip. It’s casual, but sweet, and speaks to a level of intimacy that you don’t have with everyone. Yet again, it feels really nice. Or rather, it used to.
3. Hand on my lower back. Don’t ask me why this shit always gets me. But you know when a guy ( or your person) puts their hand there to guide you in front of them or through a door? It used to drive me crazy for no damn reason. I can’t explain why I liked it, just that I did. That’s all.
These are really tiny things that I probably never would have noticed mattered so much, had it not been for those 6 years. Or maybe they don’t actually matter, and their importance has been magnified by their absence. I’m not sure. I have no intentions of doing anything about any of this- since we all know my aversion to dating has only tripled in the last few months, and eventually these cravings will pass. It’s all about waiting it out…
I actually don’t have 99 problems, just a few…
Day 27: A problem that you’ve had.
Actually I’m currently dealing with a shitload of problems. I am trying to do something about them though. So I guess I can detail below what’s going on.
Problem 1: My weight. Solution: I’ve been going to the gym every day for the past two weeks. I’ve lost 2 lbs so far. I’m pretty proud of myself for even going at all, because I haven’t had a consistent exercise regime in a long time. I’ve also cut back on a lot of starches and cheese. I didn’t realize how much of it I was eating, until I starting make the conscious decision to pick other food items during breakfast and lunch especially.
Problem 2: My stomach hernia & IBS-C. Solution: For the time being, I’m just trying to make sure I remember to take my Nexium prescription for the Acid Reflux, and I’ve also been paying close attention to which foods are still bothering me when I eat them, and then I try to avoid them if possible. I will eventually e-mail my doctor to see if he’s finally ready to perform that endoscopy. We’ll see.
Problem 3: My scalp condition. Solution: there isn’t much I can do about that but try to stay as stress free as possible,which is in fact proving to be impossible, so I try to at least avoid emotional triggers. The working out also is helping to alleviate some of the stress I’ve been feeling. I stopped taking the anti-inflammatory meds though, because they were making me sick. My hair isn’t falling out currently, there’s just a lot of itching, so I’ve been doing some essential oil treatments to minimize that. Apparently Lavender and Bay Leaf oil help with irritated scalp. I’m also taking some hair vitamins, in hopes that I can at least make whats left on my head a lot healthier. Fingers crossed.
Problem 4: Work. Solution: I’ve been on a few interviews. Nothing has happened yet, as I’m still at the Bank, but I have hope. Although currently I haven’t filled out any applications, due to my severe anxiety and panic attacks, I do plan to start applying again come January 2015. I’ve been really stressed out over the past few months, applying to jobs and interviewing and I think it kind of threw all my other illnesses into overdrive. So, I think a small break is in order.
Problem 5: Moving. Solution: Well all I can do is save up more money, right? Which is hard, but I’m managing to put a little to the side each time I get paid, while paying down some of my debt. Fuck you very much, Sallie Mae (now known as Navient). I’ve also applied to some Affordable Housing Units around the City- hopefully I get called in. We’ll see.
Problem 6: Dating. Solution: I hate it, therefore I’ve stopped. If it happens, it happens, but after that last situation I put myself in, I’m pretty sure I’m not cut out for any of that shit. #SingleFoEva
I guess when I break it down like this, my life isn’t a complete shit storm because I am doing something about the things that are bothering me. I try to be a woman of action as much as I can be, and I try to control what I can without getting bogged down by those things I can’t. It’s a struggle- but I’m doing it.
Always, G-Code.
On my Hulk Smash ish…
So…I had a moment this morning when it dawned on me that perhaps I still have some latent anger/resentment issues regarding my last attempt at dating…
The MTA isn’t always going my way, so this morning I took the D Train to work instead of the 4. Apparently there were horrible delays due to some trumped up bullshit on Northbound service, and everyone knows that will eventually effect Southbound (Downtown to Manhattan & Brooklyn) service- so I wanted to avoid all of that. So, I get on the D Train, and I head towards the front of the train, because that’s where my eventual exit will be. I have the brief thought that I hope I don’t run into Mr. Whacktastic himself, since that’s also the train he takes to work. But then I looked at the time, and was like, “Oh, he’s already almost there if he still leaves at the same time.”
Fast forward to a few stops into Manhattan, I’m on the express D train, I happen to look over at some seats and I see a guy sitting down that suspiciously looks like MR. W. My immediate thought was “I’m gonna go punch this motherfucker in the fucking face,” and actually went to go walk over there. Yet again, the person looked up just in time, and I was able to stop myself from assaulting an innocent person. Wait…why did I say “yet again”…well because not to bring up old stuff- but there was this one time I almost pushed someone onto the train tracks because I thought they were Kevin.
Clearly…I have some anger issues to work through. LOL
Happy Tuesday.
Always, G-Code.
Troublemaker is my name, instigation is my game…
Okay so…
One of my ex boyfriends is a mutual friend of one of my besties. Not a big deal, and also not a shock, because we all went to school together. And obviously I’m a huge forgiver, because I’m actually friends with one of HIS ex girlfriends- actually the girl he cheated on me with. So, I’d like to state for the record that what I’m about to say isn’t about still being angry or anything like that…
But, my dude. You CANNOT like pics regarding loyalty, being true to your girl, being all about “bae” when there is someone out there who can verify what a grimy motherfucker you are. Like it’s taking everything in me NOT to point out the proverbial elephant in the room on Instagram- not because i’m bitter, but because I think that shit is HILARIOUS. Like I have tears in my eyes right now from laughing so hard. Because I’m all like “is he serious? did he forget that one time at band camp though?” lmfao.
But true story, I’m happy that he finally found a girl he seems to be happy with. I hope he IS faithful and that he isn’t a dirty liar like he was with me and his other ex. Because that would be a damn shame. Funny as fuck, especially with all that hypocracy running rampant, but a damn shame. Okay, I’m done.
#StillLaughing #DudesAreHilarious #WhyDoesLifeDoThisToMe #JesusTakeTheWheel