Caterwauling

I completely forget what it’s like to be paid to NOT go into work on a bank holiday. As it were, though, I had an easy day as I only put in just a hair above 10 hours. In my world, that’s a bona fide vacation day!

Appropriately enough, I came home to find two e-mails from the same headhunter, looking for a warm body to fill a position. You know, that fries my shorts. I get that a lot — some frazzled H.R. rep, no doubt, who’s trying to contact as many people as possible in the hopes that one will call back.

You know, when I’m applying for a job, I research the company, tailor my resume, write a thoughtful cover letter and otherwise come up with the right strategy for pursuing said job. But what do these recruiters do? Fucking bombard me with multiple, GENERIC messages to invite me to apply for a job that they don’t actually describe in an environment that I’m only supposed to take a wild guess about.

It’s just annoying, really. It’s spam. Hell yes they’d be lucky if I gave them the time of day, but just like I wouldn’t interview (much less hire) someone who sent me a form letter, I don’t want to be approached by someone with that one-size-fits-all approach. I know, they’ve got to keep their company names confidential. I get that. But a simple “this is what we saw in your resume that intrigued us and hope would be a fit” would do wonders in me not outright hitting the “delete” key immediately.

But why are all the cool kids having big parties on the same freaking night?!?! Gah! I have no life. I admit it. And now I get to choose between driving to BFE to see old friends I’ve otherwise abandoned or waddling around the corner to meet mostly new (and some work) people.

Hmm, if I party closer to home, I get to drink more. But it would be nice to see my friend’s new house in the country.

Oh, hell — I know me. I’ll RSVP to both and find an excuse to avoid them both. AND I’ll drink at home. Problem solved!

Sure, time seems to fly when you’re having fun. But when you’re having one of those days in which driving your car off a cliff and/or blowing your brains out doesn’t seem like the worst idea you’ve ever had, time still manages to elude you as well.

Read: It flies when you ain’t havin’ any fun, either.

Especially when it’s 5 p.m. and the one thing on your to-do list that needs to get done today (that usually takes several hours) hasn’t even been started yet, you realize that time didn’t just fly; it’s on its way to winning the race and you haven’t even pulled on your tennis shoes yet.

Do yourself a favor and kick your own ass before you put those shoes on, and then get down on your knees and thank God that your version of a half-assed effort is probably better than most people’s 100% effort. 😉

Little pisses me off more than a weekend full of shitty weather. What’s the point of sunshine and light when you’re hidden away all week? It seems cruel on Mother Nature’s part to make it 80 degrees and gorgeous on a Tuesday but then make it 50 degrees and rainy on a Saturday, especially when there are fall street festivals of which to partake.

That said, we did the Taste of Bethesda festival Saturday. It was drizzly and cruddy, weatherwise, but for the opportunity to sample food from Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse, McCormick & Schmick’s and a whole slew of other local eateries, bakeries and coffeehouses, well, what’s a lil rain? Rain be damned — that ain’t enough to keep a fat girl away from food! 😉

Ruth’s had little steak sandwiches, with a medium-rare slice of meat on a tiny onion bun with a dollop of horseradish sauce. It was almost too pretty to eat. Almost, I said. 😉 M&S had a crabcake sandwich, but the bread wasn’t anything to brag about. And as we got there late and they wanted to close up, they were practically giving them away.

I was bummed to miss out on Morton’s and Jaleo, but really, I’ll live. The key to these festivals is scoping out the high-end restaurants first and then figuring out what else you want. (Like a cannoli from Cafe Europa. Yum.)

It was so freaking cold, I gladly waited in line for a half-hour to get a cuppa java from Quartermaine Coffee Roasters. It was quite tasty, and I’d never heard of them before but apparently the original founders of Starbucks established Q’s in Rockville in 1991.

If I’ve lost any weight recently, the Taste o’ Bethesda reversed it. It also inspired me to cook today. (*gasp*) I’d forgotten how much I like to cook — I tend to destroy the kitchen because I’m doing four things at once.

Speaking of the kitchen I’ve now cooked in exactly twice since I’ve moved, I bought a cute chandelier for it at IKEA today. I figure I should do red and black accents, as my mom sort of started collecting Southwestern shit for it. And as I’ve not even unpacked the rest of the house (and don’t plan to, quite honestly — I have a bad feeling about getting too comfortable here), it’s nice to have one room that might have a theme other than chaos. Although, I did forget that the kitchen is the only room with adequate lighting and I didn’t need the black wrought-iron thingn with red glass tealight holders after all!

In any event, ramble ramble ramble. Steelers at San Diego tonight. Kick some ass, Stillers!!! Seven-to-zip in the first quarter, baybee!

I struggle so much with this blog because it’s my primary creative outlet, yet for it to be really useful to me again, I’d need to be using it to work out all the things in my head. But because gainful employment is, oh, vital in this world, well, you know where this is going.

That said, I made a late-night trip to a bookstore for some new reading material. (I bought “Orbiting the Giant Hairball.”) But I read a whole bunch of others over a creme brulee latte and gleaned so many things from them. (One being that if these people can write books, why the hell can’t I?)

One book had a quote about stress, that it’s caused by knowing what you have to do and not doing it or doing something else.

Another book had an example of poor communication in an organization, in which an employee left for a “better opportunity” and everyone comes to find out that the same opportunity she was leaving for was actually available in her own department, yet no one ever mentioned it to her nor had she ever asked.

I string these thoughts together to produce a very big truth in my world.

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We laugh too much in my department. People might think we’re not actually working, but the thing is, the work is fun. That and sometimes you laugh because you’d light yourself on fire if you didn’t!

Case in point, I was on the phone having a PERFECTLY legitimate conversation about capitalizing the B and P in “SpongeBob SquarePants.” Thing is, as I was saying, “The P in Pants,” two otherwise-reserved guys from our research department poked their heads in and said, “You OK? We heard ‘Pee in Pants’ and we really don’t want to know, but we had to ask.”

Whereupon I started giggling and just couldn’t stop.

Oh, Christ on a cracker, some days I wonder why you brought me here. Other days, I can’t remember what it was like to be anywhere but. …

“Forget what you want to do, what you’re meant to do. This is what you have to do.” — my friend

I was having a discussion yesterday with some people about a fictional (can’t stress that word enough!) scenario in which a manager was frustrated with an overachieving employee who he was afraid wouldn’t have enough challenges and might want to find another job where he could stretch his imagination more. And it’s interesting to see what other people think, not to mention how much we would wither under each other’s management styles.

To me, the manager should be a leader and engage the employee and see what he’s liked that he’s achieved so far, what’s holding him back (the scenario seemed to inimate that routine tasks couldn’t hold his attention but he did them anyway, just without enthusiasm. Go figure), and where he’d like to envision his skill set/career in two to three years. I know because it’s ME — highly intelligent people like to work independently but need that reinforcement that what they’re doing matters or else they lose interest.

Someone made a very, um, biting comment that if he’s so smart and brilliant, then he needs to be filling up his time with more projects and finding ways to stay occupied and develop his own skill set. He shouldn’t need any intervention from his manager.

Someone else made a good point that the manager sounds frustrated because they’ve got this high-functioning guy (a threat to him, maybe) and is immobile as to how to retain him and seems resigned to losing him.

The point everyone missed is that the guy never indicated he’s leaving or going anywhere. He just throws himself into his projects and does his thing. I don’t think it’s possible to run out of challenges, but I know for a fact that it’s possible to run out of steam. You can’t expect a half-full helium balloon to be able to hold itself upright for very long, can you now?

I don’t know. I was sort of pissed at the intimation that “Well, he’s smart. Let him figure out how to motivate himself.” Guess what, that only works for so long. Most people do motivate themselves. Some people achieve in spite of their surroundings. But the whole point is to survive BECAUSE of your surroundings.

I guess as someone with a high IQ, low b.s. tolerance and no shortage of ideas to better myself, I was a bit tweaked at what I viewed as flagrant disregard for the care and nurturing of an employee that the class instructor suggested might even be a star that burns brightly and burns out.

!

There was such a “That’s me!” moment, it hurt. Is that all I ever was to those employers past — a star that burned out? So it was MY fault that I gave time and resources and energy (and in the case of furlough days, money) and all I was, was someone who gave them the best of me for a finite time and that was it? So I left when I got tired of not getting enough (or anything) in return — that’s the way the cookie crumbles, then? Let’s find someone else to burn out and keep repeating the cycle every couple of years?

I guess I was looking at someone as a new, hopeful, potentially influential person and seeing them becoming my last string of managers (pre-2005). The room was filled the the prospect of crushed dreams and tears cried behind closed office doors — not mine, but 20, 30 years down the road of people with shiny new degrees and a mind full of fresh new dreams get introduced to their real place in society.

I hope you caught the irony in the title of this — “shooting stars.” Not just the ones that burn and fizzle and fade, but the reality of taking a metaphorical gun and blowing the dreams straight out of their heads. It happens to the best of us. It happens to ALL of us. But the manager — nay, LEADER — has an exceptional role to play in filling the void with new dreams, new hopes, new things to look forward to.

I don’t mean to pick on any one person. I just see such an opportunity to shake everybody and pound it into their heads that just because it happened to you, doesn’t mean it’s a cycle you need to perpetuate. High-functioning people (oh, hell, ANYONE) needs the reality check that, sure, they need to hold up their end of the bargain. But if you as leader are in some sort of position to help that person who is struggling with who they are and what they want to get out of their career, put your own work down and focus on developing a teammate, not a minion or automaton.

I oftentimes call up an old Ani DiFranco song lyric — “Maybe you don’t like your job. Maybe you didn’t get enough sleep. Nobody likes their job. Nobody got enough sleep” (it’s from “Pixie”, off “Little Plastic Castles”) — hell, I used to play it every morning when I got to my old job. It was my way of saying so what if your ambitions are bigger than this — get over it. This is what you have to do now to (barely) pay the bills.

Going into/continuing into management/leadership is scary. You’re held to lots of standards you never asked for. If you say the wrong thing in an interview, a lawsuit can come against your company. If you date someone in your company, you end up sitting in H.R. for a fun-filled lecture. (Been there, done that. But where else might you meet people?) Etcetera etcetera.

BUT …

It’s the thing that maybe makes people want to be parents, what drives you to want to be a leader. It gives you a real opportunity to take care of people the way you wish you had been. It allows you to emulate the one or two people in your own career who did give a damn about you and to perpetuate the great things they taught you. It empowers you to build up a trusted network of people who will probably have your back and save your ass and cover for you so you can take a goddamned vacation without having to call the office a thousand times.

And when that employee achieves a milestone in their career, it’s because you did something to contribute to getting them there.

In any event, I say all this to say that sure, I have my moments of wanting to pat myself on the head with a brick, and days that I wake up and feel like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.” But having something and/or someone(s) to go in for and who might actually give a shit that I show up and care how I’m doing are sometimes the only reasons for throwing on the heels and pantyhose.

Creative people don’t do well in routines or holding patterns. So for the McManager in the case scenario who’s frustrated with an otherwise-fabulous employee, why not grow a set and engage said employee? You never know who has the million-dollar idea, and many of us won’t volunteer it unless we’re asked.

A friend of mine was clearly having a bad day, as she wrote up and sent me a series of about 100 “Demotivator”-type sayings that are 100% original.

While most I couldn’t post either due to confidentiality or need of explanation, I’m going to share one that I’m sure all us ladies can identify with:

“I don’t care about your dress code. You wear the pantyhose.”

That one makes a hell of a lot of sense. You don’t actually think a WOMAN designed your office dress code, do you now?

And one more, just because:

“There will always be too much to do. Go ahead and die trying to finish it.”

Her talent is SO being wasted in the corporate world. I mean, we have political pundits — why can’t we have corporate pundits? Oh, wait. Because those of us who’ve tried have ended up unemployed!

I had to make a late-night dash to the grocery store (why do these stores have to close the entrance I always manage to park by? Why can’t all entrances be open at 10 p.m. when I arrive?) and I’ll tell you, I didn’t realize it but I started grooving in the aisles when I heard Stevie Nicks come on over the loudspeaker. Damn, I forgot how good she can make a girl feel.

I have a history of grocery-store groovin’. Mom was dating a store owner/manager/pussy boy one time, and I hated him. He looked like something Buster Poindexter and Frankenstein had given birth to. He drove a little red Corvette, which he loved almost as much as he loved himself. Community members speculated that he’d probably be buried in it.

He was so cheap, a date with him would mean splitting a salad. Which is probably why he never invited me along on any dates with my mom, not that I could look at his bouffant with a straight face. I swear, he had bolts in his neck. His name was Bill — I always called him Buster, Billy Bouff(ant) and Billy Bolts. My grandmother used to just call him Cheap Motherfucker. That worked. 😉

Anyway, when we were in his store, I think the song was “Marry Me Bill” that came on over the loudspeaker. And I dropped everything (I might have been 16 or 18 at the time) from my hands and started doing fan kicks down the aisle in time to the song. All I know is that somewhere, there’s a videotape of me dancing, and everyone looked at me funny everytime I went in there.

Didn’t bother me a bit. Mom was mortified, but admittedly,
I’d never seen her laugh so hard. Hopefully the audio caught me singing, “DON’T Marry Her, Billllllllllll!!!!” because that was the best part!

I was going to start this entry off with “What a weird little day,” but that starts way too many entries. Not a bad day, not even a frustrating one. I’d say challenging but that would intimate achievement on some level.

After doing a whole lot of nothing important, I left for a late lunch dinner around 6 p.m. and felt so weird getting in my car during daylight hours. I probably could get out at a reasonable hour sometimes if only the muse (i.e., that bitch holding the deadline and the machete) would show up when I do.

In any event, one of today’s highlights was to sample the wedding soup at Ledo’s, on Nic’s suggestion. Mmm, yummy. As I always say, the little things to others ARE the big things to some of us!

I need to make that. Do any of you make wedding soup out there? I’m lookin’ for recipes. Thanks!

I just sat here and wrote an article (for work) I think I’m going to can. I have reasons for it. It’s sort of good and sort of blah. It’s hard to explain, but I don’t want to continue start a precedent. Besides, I’m still sort of under the radar and am not unhappy being there right this second. I hate being under said radar, but as it’s hopefully going to be for a short time, I might as well take advantage of it while I can.

Oh well, back to the salt mines. Have to be back in 13 hours for a training and still have a project I’ve put off (legitimately for other projects, but admittedly I haven’t been in a real rush to hop to it) for two weeks. I try to take it easy throughout the day so I have energy to get through them, but one day I’m going to walk out during daylight hours and it’s not just to be to bring dinner back to the desk. …