Category: work

Shusshing the demons

I have made it no secret here on these pages that there have been tumultuous times in my life recently. Work. Personal. Mental. Emotional. Physical. You name it, I’m tweaked out on it.

I’ve been sort of at a white knuckle, nail biting, not sleeping place lately which kicks off lots of crazy internal demons. Old stuff, way back machine stuff.

But I refuse to let the demons win, so I’m fighting the valiant fight to put da monstas back in da cage.

In the past, I’ve fought all of this alone. I’m sort of used to doing this myself. I’ve not had much in the way of supportive partners in my life, to be honest.

Until now. The Cute Boy™ is here. And he’s a good man.

Yesterday he told me he had a surprise. I was too tired, weak and demoralized to fight very hard. “Okay,” I said and went along for the ride.

The Cute Boy™ had a good surprise up his sleeve.

See, I’ve studied a lot of “woo woo” stuff in my life, from one extreme to the other with varying degrees of success. Several years ago I took a Learning Annex class on walking a labyrinth. It’s a form of walking meditation that I really liked.

When I can get my monkey mind to meditate, it usually helps. A lot. I’ve been talking at starting meditation again for a long while but not doing anything about it.

So The Cute Boy™, either tired of me flapping my lips at meditation and not really doing it, or because he’s worried about my freaked out ass, took me up to San Francisco yesterday to Grace Cathedral. They have not one but two labyrinths there, one inside and one outside.

Walking in I was unsure if I was in the right mental state to do this thing. Walking out two and a half hours later after three walks and much thoughts, I realized some good thinking had been done.

I slept better last night. My sister called this morning. She’s worried about me. She said, quite surprised, “wow, you sound MUCH better”.

Those crazy ancients might really have been on to something….

And it’s confirmed…The Cute Boy™ is a keeper.

(this is the Native American “man in the maze”, which is also a labrynth)

The times, they are a changin’

Just because it’s time, almost over due, doesn’t mean there isn’t some sense of disbelief that an era is over.

According to the ABQjournal, Senator Pete Domenici will announce his retirement later today. He has been Senator for 36 years, just a few years less than my lifetime. Growing up in New Mexico, Domenici’s name was always in the news. He went from a “who is that” to a fairly powerful guy on Capitol Hill. I was always happy for a New Mexico guy to make good, make a name, so people knew we had smart folks from New Mexico over there.

I know lately he’s fallen out of favor for a variety of misdeeds. I’m not much of a political person, honestly. I can’t talk articulately about Domenici’s career, the high points, the low points. I’ll leave more of that to my friends Avelino at his Live From Silver City blog and of course former Mayor of Albuquerque Jim Baca at his Only in New Mexico blog.

My lament today is how much things in my world seem to be changing. Today we have a lunch to see off one of my best and favorite employees. She’s moving on to a great job and we’re all really happy for her. It’s a big blow to our team. But change must happen.

There are a lot of huge changes going on in my personal life too, most changes for the better, but changes nonetheless.

My “woo woo” teachers would say that’s the hallmark of Fall. The days shorten up, the ground goes cold. Circle of life. Death and rebirth. All of that.

Give me time, I’ll be philosophical later. For today I’m just sad. Ok, not that I’m all broke up about Domenici leaving office, just the huge change it brings (just skeered as hell that Wilson might get that seat).

I remember my days working at Sandia where we called him “Saint Pete” because he was always able to finagle funds to keep Sandia rolling, despite all the protests to reduce funding to the nuclear labs. How far he’s fallen…

Anyhow, I guess it’s owing to my sign of Taurus that change is troublesome. I’ll follow my family tradition and worry myself sick about it. Then, I’ll rebound, get perspective, and be fine.

I’m always fine, eventually.

*sigh*

Well…off to the going away lunch…..

It’s going away, isn’t it?

My friend. My companion. That comfort at the end of a long day’s work, driving home, watching the sun go down, laughing, cheering, listening. It’s leaving me again, just as the world turns cold. It always leaves me just when the sun starts setting sooner, when the chill rolls in, when the leaves turn. Just when I need it the most, it’s gone.

My old friend and joy, baseball, is leaving me again this weekend.

The San Francisco Giants played their last home game of 2007 last night, made all the more bittersweet as, after fifteen crazy years, it was the last game Barry Bonds will play in a Giants uniform.

It was year of agony and ecstasy.

Ecstasy: The San Jose Giants, the Minor League Single A affiliate, and a group of young ‘uns near and dear to my heart performed a miracle. Coming on strong in the first half and falling off hard in the second half, they still earned their way into the playoffs and prevailed. They are the 2007 California League Champions. They played an amazing post season and just brutalized Lake Elsinore in game 5, the deciding game. I get goose bumps just thinking about it. This was a hard working team of guys who learned how to win, and a tip of the cap to manager Lenn Sakata for taking yet another team to the post season.

Agony: Their big brothers to the North, however, didn’t fare so well. With three games left, they’ve lost 89 games and are a gut-turning 18.5 games out of first place.

This was the season that Bonds broke the all-time homerun record, walloping 756 over the walls and into the history books. But all the media glare, both positive and negative, had an impact on the other 24 guys on the roster. Starting pitching was ok (I won’t “go there” about the pitiful year Barry Zito had…I just…can’t…), the bullpen was ridiculous and hitting was lame. They went up there with sad and tired bats. And our star catcher bitched about it to the press.

It was not a glorious year. It’s the latest in all the depressing seasons we’ve endured after the joys (and pain) of the 2002 World Series.

Ownership says 2008 is a “rebuilding” year. That means some young kids, some no names, and no hope of a post season for at least a couple more years.

But even in the agony of this terrible season, it was there. Baseball was on the radio every night, 162 games a year. The bases were still 90 feet apart and it was still 60 feet, six inches from mound to plate. The Umps still missed calls, players were plunked, miracles were performed and for me, all was all right with the world.

I had a day yesterday for the record books, and as I drove home, looking into the setting sun, sad, mad, exhausted, apathetic, beat down, and depressed as hell, I reached out and touched the “power” button on my radio, and suddenly Jon Miller’s voice boomed out from my radio speakers, “a called strike one!” and I left behind my troubles. My sorrow. My bone wearying exhaustion and I listened to the game. Smiling at strikes, frowning at balls and batting my hand on the steering wheel when the boys in orange and black got a hit and cheering loudly in my car.

I don’t give a rip about any of the teams in the post-season, although I may watch a few games. It’s not the same when it isn’t your team fighting it out.

*sigh* Now what? My baseball friend becomes a hockey fan in the off-season. I like hockey, but not with that fever reserved for baseball.

Guess instead, it’s time to start thinking about what in the hell I’m going to write 50,000 words about for the annual NaNoWriMo.

Heh…three years ago I wrote a baseball book……

Stress

It’s a gas, innit?

I mean, all the magazines tell you that it’s bad, bad, bad. Your doctor will say don’t have it. You know it’s not good. And yet, there it sits, on your chest, choking you in the middle of the night.

And stress brings all its friends to come play, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, achy joints, chronic back pain, illness, pain, suffering, blight, famine, hoards of locusts.

It’s one of those really cool biological things that helped us a ton when being chased by a saber toothed tiger or avoiding trampling from a woolly mammoth. It’s what got us through the rough, less industrial, times and into what we have today.

What do we have today?

Made up stress. Adrenaline pumps through my veins giving me that wild “flight or fight” rush. Really, I’m a flight kind of girl. That seems best for all. But nooooo, I have to stay and fight, which stresses me out more…ain’t that a fun twist?

And what am I fighting? Words on a piece of paper. I am not making this up.

Everything I am doing today, all these things that stress me out, give me heart palpitations, make me aspirate my own stomach acid in the middle of the night, cause me to lose sleep and be a terrible partner to the man I love more than anything is something that matters only in the four walls of this gray cubicled office where I earn my paycheck. Sure, all this agony and no ecstasy means I continue to get paid and am in line for a measly (and I do mean measly) raise this year. I should be thankful, right?

I’m not.

I’m angry. Perhaps being angry is just an acceptable way to mitigate what I’m really feeling. No wait, what I’m really feeling is anger. For a lot of reasons.

Mainly, I’m tired. Real tired. Perhaps a good night’s sleep (which probably won’t come for at least another week) might better my outlook. I don’t know.

Ok, back to it.

Hope you all are having a much less stressful day.

/rant

Walk to the theme song of your life

I was watching the new Tim Gunn show on Bravo this evening. If you don’t know who Tim Gunn is, then you haven’t been watching Project Runway.

Mr. Gunn is known for his quiet understatement and has become one of heroes, best known for his catch phrase “make it work”.

A phrase I’ve adopted and use liberally at work. To the point my staff is tired of hearing it. I decided if they were going to come into my office multiple times a day with all manner of whining, I’d lob it back.

“My clients won’t tell me what the budget is for this project!”

“Make it work”

“The supplier is being unreasonable, we can’t get this done by quarter end!”

“Make it work”

“Management hasn’t given us any knowledge about this secret squirrel project! I can’t support it!”

“Make it work”

They usually give me a dirty look and stomp out.

Anyhoo….while watching an episode of “Tim Gunn’s Guide to Style”, he took one of his victims to a “lifestyle coach” to help her feel more confident. The theory being if you are more confident you’ll dress more confident, I guess.

The lifestyle coach told this meek young lady that she should always “walk to the theme song of your life” and made her walk back and forth around the room. Poor thing couldn’t manage a hip swing to save her life, but she did manage to loosen up a bit during the course of the show.

I sat here on my red couch and tried to decide what, exactly, is the theme song of my life. I guess it’s never really just one, right? It changes based on what’s going on.

Then I remembered earlier today. I walked over to a meeting in another building with the buds to my iPod shuffle jammed deeply into my ears. A bit of music helps me huff it across a quite busy street and get to meetings on time.

I’ve got a mind blowing change about to occur at work. Mind blowing in a very, very bad way. My boss dropped this incendiary bit of news on Tuesday and I’ve not recovered.

Discretion being the better part of valor, and god knows who reads blogs these days, I shan’t go into details. But suffice to say, it ain’t good.

So with my Shuffle set to…er…shuffle, I was walking determinedly and muttering under my breath when the song came on. The song I think is the theme of my life for right now.

The tune is “Headstrong” by Trapt.

Sample lyrics:
“Back off I’ll take you on/headstrong to take on anyone/I know that you are wrong and this is not where you belong”

I started walking with strong footfalls. Head up, eyes roving looking for someone who might dare to take me on. I almost punched the air.

Yeah. This will work for today. Without even knowing it I’d “walked my theme song”.

Maybe I’ll start dressing better too?

What’s YOUR theme song?