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Improving. Day 7

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I just went with my friend, Kristin, to a speaker event hosted by our shared alma mater, Wake Forest University.  Carla Harris, a Vice Chairman at Morgan Stanley and Chair of the National Women’s Business Council, delivered a talk on her “Pearls of Wisdom”.  Her talk was excellent, and she was very motivating.  She had several career suggestions that I am going to try.  She seems like she has it all figured out.

Then there is me.  Who doesn’t have it all figured out.

Which leads me to tonight’s faux Rosh Hashanah question.

Question:  How would you like to improve yourself and your life next year? Is there a piece of advice or counsel you received in the past year that could guide you?

 

I would like to spend more time in prayer, studying the Bible and communicating with God. While I have conversations with God in my head all the time, I don’t put a lot of time aside for prayer — deliberate praising, deliberate worship and deliberate asking for specific help. I have been much more actively engaged in our relationship in the past, and I know that I felt myself to be more calm, more relaxed and even more confident when I did.

This year, I feel like I have been in survival mode most of the year. My prayers have all been about “help me”, “comfort me”, “relieve me”, and “guide me”. I would like to spend more time praying about other people, other problems, about learning, about growing, about next adventures, about how I can help others instead of others helping me.

I love this picture. It hung over the dining table in my grandparents’ house, where we ate every Sunday lunch. Seeing it will always make me think of being with them and my family.

The best advice that I received this year that will guide me in my journey is not new and is not complicated. It was simply, “Cristy, you don’t have to have everything figured out right now.” It took a little while for that to sink in.  My first instinct when faced with my crisis (getting separated) was triage:  Stop the immediate bleeding and then see how to return everything to as close to normal as possible.

For me, that meant moving out quickly, buying a house quickly, asking myself questions about where I thought I would be in 3 years, 5 years, and trying to get everything situated just so as fast as possible.  I was working myself into a tail spin.  And then a couple of people gave me this really good advice.  “Cristy, you don’t have to have everything figured out right now.”  And when it did sink in, I was so relieved.

The plan that I had for my life was gone.  It was going to be different by necessity.  But, it was ok if I didn’t have that plan sketched out now.  Now, when my knees are still a little wobbly.  Now, when I’m still learning my options.  Now, when I’ve got more options than I had before.

I can accept that having some questions left unanswered is ok, and it means that I spend less time calling on God to help me figure out my situation and more time enjoying what I have and those around me.

A rose by any other name is called my old lady

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Matt and I had a conversation about rednecks last night and it eventually went something like this:

matt:  We need to be careful what we say about rednecks because we live among a bunch of them.

me:  I’m not saying anything bad because we have a bunch of them in our families.

(pause)

me:  But I don’t consider you a redneck.

matt:  You don’t?

me:  Why should I?

matt:  I like to ride four-wheelers, and that’s something rednecks do.

me:  Yeah.  But you like to drink import beer.

matt:  But I also like Budweiser.  And that’s a redneck beer.

me:  You don’t hunt.

matt:  True.

me:  You’re not a redneck.

(silence)

me:  You know, I have heard you call me “my old lady.”  That’s rednecky.  I wish you didn’t call me that.

matt:  You don’t like that?  I hear that all that time.  That’s how guys refer to their wives.

me:  They don’t just say “my wife”?  Like “My wife wants me to come home?” instead of “My old lady wants me to come home?”

matt:  Yes, but there is no bad meaning behind it.  They don’t mean it with any disrespect.

(silence)

me:  I guess it’s more important what you say about “your old lady” than the fact that you call me ” my old lady.”

matt:  Exactly.

(pause)

me:  Like, “Hey, my old lady has taught me how to love again!”

matt:  I have never said that.

me:  Well, maybe you should.

matt:  Could you write it down so I could say it correctly?

I so dislike it when I hear people talking badly about their spouses.  I am surprised, actually, by how often I hear it happen.  I overhear it in the elevator, standing in line in the cafeteria, as part of the chit-chat that takes place before a meeting starts.  You know what I’m talking about:  “My husband is driving me crazy.  He never helps me with the kids.  I have to do everything by myself.  He’s awful.”  Or “My wife is bitching me out about buying a new car.  It’s always something with her.  Buy this.  Buy that.  It never stops.”  I have heard each of these statements more than once from people.  And worse.

I had a co-worker once that used to call his wife the “fun Nazi”.  I always used to think to myself that I would hate to be his wife and find out that he was using such a derogatory term to describe me.  I would have to call foul.

from: quotes-lover.com

Here’s some unsolicited advice.  Speak nicely about your spouse — it only calls into question your judgment in marrying them when you don’t.  Matt can call me his old lady all day long, but I know he doesn’t say anything bad about me when he does.  And my old man is pretty special, too.

Hospital

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Missed me?  Well, I was in the hospital recently for 6 days and 5 nights.

After I heard the words (the scariest words that I have ever heard) “You have a blood clot in your lung” and after the trip in the ambulance to the hospital, the learning experience about our health care system began.  And here are some of the things that I learned:

  • In a panic, don’t overstate your weight by 100 lbs because it may affect your meds dosage
  • Leave modesty at the door  — they’ve seen it a million times
  • Until you’re “in the system”, do not expect to be fed.  Quarters and vending machines are life’s sustenance
  • Looking for your next stop?  Look no further than the paper that is delivered every morning.

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  • Don’t suspect a porno movie when you hear someone yelling in another room “Swallow it!  Swallow it!”.  It’s just a nurse trying to get a patient to take their medicine.
  • Expect food when it’s delivered to you, not at the same time every day.  Expect some feelings of intense hunger.
  • Eat peas even when you hate peas.  See learning above.
  • No one cares how you smell but you

Now, I could comment on how the doctors and nurses treated me, how I never saw the same therapist or laboratory person twice, how out of the loop of their own care a patient feels, or how isolating a trip to the hospital can be.  But I purposefully chose to concentrate on the positive and the ridiculous during my stay.  (And besides, there are plenty of well researched, cited and professionally written articles and books on our health care system without me trying to act like an expert.  All I can write about is my stay.)

The positive and the ridiculous helped me keep my calm.  Helped me to combat the fear that came to me along with the understanding that I could have died.  I have had another moment in my life in which I will now begin to measure events:  things that happened before my embolism and things that happened after my embolism.  I have a feeling that I may be one of those schmucks that decides to live life a little differently as a result.

Here’s the best part:  I have a wonderful memento of my stay.  It’s the most expensive piece of jewelry I’ve ever owned:

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Matt and I are estimating that it will cost $50K.  Luckily, we don’t have to pay “retail” since we have insurance.  I want to buy a bedazzling machine and bling it up.  I think I can dress it up or down.

Finally, in the spirit of not taking myself to seriously, here’s a conversation Matt and I had at breakfast this morning.  We were talking about his cold and how he was feeling better today than yesterday.

matt:  Freaking hospital.  That’s where I got this cold.

me:  Well, at least you can’t catch a clot.

(pause)

me:  Even though I can throw one!!

(major laughing on my part)

matt:  Much funnier in your head than said out loud.

I’m failing, and I will get up

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I am failing.  At least I feel like I am failing, so the end result is the same.  Stress and anxiety.

The good news is that I feel like I am failing in my professional life, not my personal life.  Plus, I am aware that I am failing.  I have had some instances in the past where I thought I was doing a good job, but those around me didn’t.  I would rather be “in the know” on this topic and not surprised at the end.

Feeling like a failure is no fun.  It really sucks, actually.  My confidence is tested, I question my judgement about most everything, my nerves are stretched, and I may, just may, have a small touch of paranoia.  (Now, I’ll be concerned that you all are talking about me behind my back after reading this post.  Hmmm….maybe should rethink posting this.)

While I am not enjoying this interlude, I am not fearful of it.  Some of the most important milestones and turning points in my life have happened as a result of a failure.

I have recently heard a lot of people around me say things like, “I refuse to fail” or “I will do anything to keep from failing” or the old standby “Failure is not an option” and I think “That’s unrealistic.”  And it’s a lost opportunity to grow.

I have learned more from my past failures than from any of my successes.  No lie.  As painful as they were when I was going through them, I know that I am a better person because of those failures.

I used to interview up to around 100 people per year for a training program.  One of my favorite questions to ask was “Tell me about a time when things didn’t go the way that you planned.”  A very open-ended question.  Most of the candidates that I interviewed were just out of college, looking for their first “real” job, so I heard lots of stories about group projects that weren’t smooth, or summer jobs that weren’t all that were promised and so forth.  I was interested in hearing how their project had gone awry and how they tried to mitigate, but I was always most interested and impressed by those who ended the answer by then saying, “And what that experience taught me was…..”  Yes, I used to think, someone who learned from adversity.

So, I’m in a super-sucky place right now.  I wonder what I’ll learn.  I’m really looking for a bright side here, and learning is it.  Smile at me, people, when you see me walking by, and just know–my brain cells are expanding from all the learning going on.

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Completely and totally changing topics, I mentioned in my last post that I was going to start spicing up my tweets.

Did It.  By Accident.

My friend, Nikki, and I had dinner last night and we discussed how we didn’t understand all the selfies girls took these days where they were pooching out their lips, like duck lips.  So, today I tweeted Nikki a selfie of me doing the duck lip thing:

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Then I quickly had to tweet:

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I hate when I get my “d”s and “f”s confused.  It causes all kinds of issues.  Eh, in this case, however, it was probably ok either way.

 

When it’s time to write my biography

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I was listening to Marketplace News on my local public radio on the way home tonight, and I heard an interview with Nick Bilton about his new book, Hatching Twitter:  A True Store of Money, Power, Friendship and Betrayal.

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It was an interesting interview and it made me want to read the book.  Apparently, the creation and building of Twitter had been nothing less than chaotic (I mean, check out the subtitle).

The interviewer asked Bilton if he got full cooperation from the principal characters while writing the book, and Bilton made a comment that really got my attention.  He said that he went back and reviewed the four Twitter founders’ Facebook status updates, their Tweets, their posts to Flickr and to YouTube, and in many instances these didn’t match their memories.  He used their social media posts to help verify, clarify and, I would assume, prompt recall of events.

Ok, so I may late coming to this realization, but we are daily contributing to our biographies via social media.   With pictures.  And videos.  And often snarky one-liners.

Ignore that I am stupid and late to this game.  But I don’t think that my contributions to social media have been good enough to use in my biography (to any future biography writers out there).  I have always been cognizant of the “rules” of social media, the rules according to me.

  • Rule 1.  Assume that everything that you post could end up being seen by anyone in the world
  • Rule 2.  Assume that you can’t make everyone happy, but you shouldn’t try to piss everyone off
  • Rule 3.  Follow the advice of your mother–don’t talk politics or religion in someone else’s house
  • Rule 4.  Your mother has already seen you nude as a child, and she doesn’t want to see you that way as an adult (refer back to Rule 1)
  • Rule 5.  If you can’t say something nice about someone, don’t say anything at all.  (I don’t always follow this rule.)

When you follow these rules, your social media contributions are pretty bland.  And I’m pretty private, as well.

I think that I’m going to have to SPICE UP MY TWEETING!  Bam.  It’s on.  Cause I want it to be a good story.

(Should also have a good story….but that’s beside the point on social media, right?  It’s just about telling a good story, right?)

Measuring tape and hula hoops

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Here are the things that have been on my mind a lot recently:

  1. My job
  2. My future
  3. The government
  4. Random crap

I’m tired of thinking about my job and my future, so let’s talk about the government.

My friend, Paula, and I used to say that we wanted to go into every meeting with a measuring tape and ask all the men to take out their penises and let us measure.  Once we knew who had the biggest one, we could get on with the business at hand.  By measuring, we could skip all the chest pounding, the braggadocio, and the metaphorical circling of each other that would normally take place for the first 20 minutes of the meeting as they worked out who was the “big dog” in the room.  I thought it was an excellent efficiency idea.

I want to do the same thing with our government.  Let’s just measure them and move on.  Yes, John Boehner, yours is huge.  We’re all impressed.  Now, let’s get this government open.  Oh, Harry Reid, how do you find pants that fit?  You surely make all men weep with envy.  Now, let’s start negotiating some deals.  And Mr. President, of course yours is beyond compare.  We all know that the President gets an implant on inauguration day — so you shouldn’t feel threatened at all.  You, above all else, should be helping those less blessed than you find a way to work together.

STOP WORRYING ABOUT HOW BIG YOU ARE AND START THINKING ABOUT THE NATION AND ITS CITIZENS.  Your desire to come out “on top” ensures that many of us feel like “bottom-dwelling people.”

Ok, that’s my rant on government.  What else can you say that we’re not all thinking?

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So, for random crap.  My friend, Kristin, and I ate lunch in Davidson the other day.  It’s a really neat little college town.  I love the creativity of college kids:

photo-42

Hula Hoop on, People.  Hula Hoop on.

Lending a hand on Labor Day

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I worked today on Labor Day.  It was a uncrowded commute, a park-anywhere, infrequent email-kind of day.  And at the end of the work day, I was reminded of why I am glad that I am a laborer and have a paycheck

I pulled into the gas station and put the nozzle into the fuel tank.  I was walking around to the other side of my car to gather my little car trash container to empty it when I heard someone ask me, “Ma’am, do you know where Camden Avenue is?”

I looked to the car parked beside me, and there was a man and a woman in the front seat and a small girl in the back seat.  The man was shirtless and the little girl was very quiet and seemed sad.

“No,” I said, “I don’t know where that is.”

The man continued to describe to me that they were out of gas and had spent the night in their car last night.  He had a job and was expecting to get a paycheck the next day, but didn’t have enough for a hotel room last night or today.  He said that there was a church on Camden Avenue and the people at that church had said that they could provide him with some money if he could get to the church.

I dug around in my purse and found $5 (I never carry cash — it’s a bad habit of mine to be cash-less) and gave it to him.  I mentioned another church just down the street that I felt would surely offer them some help.

He told me over and over again that he hated to ask for money, but he couldn’t bear to spend another night in his car, especially since his wife was also pregnant.  He said that his pride was out the window at the moment.

I found the directions to Camden Avenue on my phone and wrote them down for him.  The whole time that this is happening, I am looking at the sad little eyes of the small girl sitting in the back seat, thinking, “I am so blessed.  I have food.  I have shelter.  I have more than I need.  Thank You, God, for my blessings.”

He said that he was going to ask a few more people for money in order to put some gas in his car, because he was on empty and couldn’t drive any further.  But he thanked me for the $5 and the instructions and I drove away.

A few seconds out of the parking lot, I realized, “DUH!  I could use my debit card to put $10 or $15 of gas in his car!”  So, I turned around to do that.

And met him just pulling out of the gas station…right after he had said that he didn’t have enough gas to go anywhere.

I think, maybe, just maybe, I got scammed.

So, the question is:  Did they deserve my help?

No, probably not.  But if we only helped people who deserved our help, there wouldn’t be a whole lot of helping go on, would there?  I can think of numerous times in the past week alone where people helped me and I didn’t particularly deserve it, either because it was my job to do it in the first place or because I had a bad attitude about a specific issue.

And how do we measure someone’s “deserved-ness”?  Is it due to the Rule of Reciprocity? i.e. if they help me, then I can help them?  If that’s the case, then the first one that helps is taking a chance that the reciprocity is going to kick in at some unknown point in the future.  And if it doesn’t, are there take backs?

Is it based on the moral character of the persons involved?  “He is so nice that I should help him.”  Again, what happens when he isn’t so nice, because at some point, he is going to have a bad day and show his ass.  Or make a comment that I don’t like.  Or not laugh at one of my (hilarious) jokes.  No more help?

Do they have to earn it?  I think the guy from today really sold me a story.  He earned the $5 just with his story about sleeping in cars, a pregnant wife (she didn’t look pregnant, but she could have been), a paycheck to be delivered tomorrow, a car almost out of gas.  It was a really good story and very well delivered.

But these examples rely on the actions of others and I would rather base my willingness to help, my willingness to give, on me, on my decisions, on my character.

It makes me think of God.  He helps me, blesses me, saves me not because I deserve it or act in any way to earn it.  Because I don’t.  He does it because He is God and He chooses to.  (I am not claiming to be like God, but I am trying to be more Christ-like.)

So, I’m not mad at myself or at Mr. Slept-in-the-Car-All-Night.  He needed something and maybe the only way he could see to get it was to lie.  And while I may have unknowingly participated in his potential lie (do you like my disclaimers in case the guy ever reads this blog and wants to sue?), I helped my fellow-man.

Happy Labor Day, y’all.

Let’s be lovers, not judgers

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I ate dinner with two of my friends the other night and, as always, a good dose of laughter helped to restore a feeling of equilibrium to a work-induced stressful week.

I was talking to my mom later about one of the conversations that my girlfriends and I had at dinner that night:

me: Wendy’s parents were in town a couple of weeks ago. She was telling us that her parents were pretty critical of everyone around. You know, like saying, “Look at that tattooed freak!” and “He looks like a bum.” And “So-and-so is acting stupid.” Wendy said that she said to them, “You two are so critical. You are always judging. You remember those children books about The Stupids?”

Mom: What? The stupids? There were books about stupids?

me: Yes, a family called The Stupids. I don’t remember them. I never read those books. I told Wendy that you wouldn’t have let us read anything like that because we weren’t allowed to use the word “stupid”, but she said, “They were in the library!”

Mom: Well, you still shouldn’t be reading everything in the library.

me: Ok, not the story. Anyway, she was telling her parents, “Remember the books about the Stupids? If we had books named after our family, it would be The Assholes! Cause we’re Assholes! Cause you judge everyone!”

[Laughter]

Mom: And we’d be the “Love Everyone and Get Along With Everyone” Family

me: No, we would be the “Repress All Your Feelings” Family. The Repressors. We would be the “Swallow All Your Emotions” Family. The Swallowers.

[pause]

me: Yeah, the Swallowers doesn’t sound so good, so let’s go back to Repressors.

Regardless of what you call our family, I have noticed a trend in the general population to be very judge-y and unkind. I have a Pinterest account and when I browse, I always see at least a couple of pins that are very “anti-my-fellow-man-I-am-better-than-you” themed pins, like these:

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I am as guilty as the next person (whom on Wednesday night was my friend Wendy, and we all know that she is an Asshole) to be judgmental, but it really bothers me how casually we fling out insults and criticisms about other people, often (mostly) when we don’t have the slightest idea about what they are really going through. Our immature attempt to make ourselves feel better is by telling ourselves that we are better, but at the expense of someone else.

The ironic and twisted thing about this method of self-soothing is this: Who is using me as their yardstick to make themselves feel better? Who is out there saying, “Well, I know that I blow, but at least I am not as bad as Cristy.” OUCH.

Because I’m sure that happens. (Double ouch, you asshole.)

I am going to make a concerted effort to leaving my yardstick in storage. Can you? If not, I’ll try not to judge.