Caterwauling

Going with the “It’s a Small World After All” theme that defines Orlando, I ran into a couple of guys I met in Chicago last fall.

We laughed and talked and pontificated on the markets and the dying breed of customers we serve. We talked about how it’s a good thing we grew up in the field when we did — pre-Great Recession — because we actually had a chance to learn about the markets.

Now that we’re all too busy to breathe doing 40 jobs apiece, like my friend said, “It would be nice to do something different — you know, like learn what’s going on in the markets.”

Figures that the thing we love most is the thing we do least.

Good to know I’m not the only one with that complaint. For the past two years I dedicated at least one solid hour every night to catching up on what I missed.

Then two weeks ago I got so busy/behind/burned out that I decided to try to take that hour to relax.

I don’t know how to get back into that habit. I like that hour to myself. I think it’s a shame I can’t fit that hour into the workday part of my day … not without lengthening the day into that precious “hour to myself” that I’ve come to cherish so much.

The irony is so very high that a field that is dedicated to helping people to make money so they can better enjoy their lives, is famous for not giving its workers the time to enjoy theirs.

In any event, in more “Small World” news, they just hired my very first editor to work for them. I was so thrilled to hear that. He was my favorite, even after all these years. I like when great people get together. That’s when magic happens.

Of course, like I teased the boys, “Oh hey, more work! JUST what you needed!”

I think the reason I like to go to conferences isn’t what I learn about my field. It’s what I learn about the people in it. And that keeps me going, I think. The moral to this story is that letting Cinderella out of the castle every now and again is what helps her to return to it.

But I spent the last five days in a silent hotel room, no cat and no mom, and I LOVED IT.

Home again and understanding how people snap and murder their loved ones just for talking.

Remember that job that put me on the street for no good reason?

They did it to a friend of mine today.

As I said, welcome to the club. Most of us who are hiring managers in the field think MORE highly of people who have been exiled from that dump. That generally means they have real talent.

I find the timing curious, as the new publisher is up here in conference-land with me this week … and not there to protest or question it.

I’m hoping this is their last hurrah. Because I respect the hell out of the new guy. And shit is gonna change.

In the meantime, I need help. But I have the position occupied by someone who tries hard but isn’t a perfect fit. But as I’ve seen throughout the years, many organizational leaders (and perhaps I can count the shrew who let my friend go today) have a soft spot for those who have no business being in the jobs they are in.

Then you get someone like me or any of my friends (and you know I don’t hang out with losers) and we’re the ones who get put on the street for not reading an Ayn Rand novel fast enough, or not finding time in a 70-hour workweek to do a performance review, or making a high-level decision that doesn’t pan out.

Basically, the more talented you are, the more anxiety you should have that your current rent payment may be your last.

I got the call right after I attended a really good workshop on social demographics and investing trends. Interestingly enough.

I love the speaker. I will follow him anywhere. I’m on his mailing list. I would love to hire him to be a columnist. You know. If I had salary money to spare.

In any event, the speaker was saying how Americans are working fewer hours per week. That pre-World War II, most men worked Saturdays. Now with two incomes in the house, “Fridays are the new Saturdays” and you can’t find someone to answer the phone after 2 p.m.

Who the fuck ARE these people who are averaging 22-hour workweeks?

Another attendee said really? Her kids are working 60-hour weeks on the low end A) because staffs are small and B) employers will run your ass out of town if they can get cheaper labor that will outwork you.

DING DING DING.

The good news, if there is any, is that robots will be doing our jobs eventually anyway. So there is hope that I can see a workweek below 70 hours in my lifetime!

I should probably start writing this sort of stuff as financial guidance rather than stream-of-consciousness bullshit. Because I’ve been analyzing the jobs data today and I seriously don’t know how anybody is bullish on the economy.

At least, when not one of us in my group of friends — again, the overachievers — can say with 100% certainty that performance and dedication are the top factors in continued employment.

I mean, is it possible my friend deserved to be canned? Sure. Why not. I’ll allow for it. I don’t believe it for one second. Not when I suffered the same fate and still to this day assume that the idiot minions have a better shot at being promoted and running the company than someone who actually deserves to.

I have so much boiling rage right now. This ripped open the wound I barely stitched together after it happened to me.

Granted, that company has about a 110% turnover rate, so my friend will find — like I did — that nobody gives an actual shit what the reason for the termination was when we all know BITCHES BE CRAY in that company.

But when you’re the only one putting food on the table, and your livelihood depends on people who be cray, it really sucks.

It reminds me of my experience, too, in that I worked hard. And long. And often. And to what end?

I wish my friend well. I wish I could help. And I wish I never ever find myself in that position again. Because even though you KNOW bitches be cray, that doesn’t stop you from wondering — even if just for a moment — whether those nutty fuckers might actually have been right to do what they did to you.

And then when you return to your senses, you wonder in what kind of a fair world those cray bitches don’t get burned at the stake so they can’t destroy another human being again.

No context needed.

I wasn’t going to come up to Orlando for this awesome conference. But boy am I glad I did.

There are probably 100 people in the room. I have worked with more than half of them at some point in my career. Like one of my recent Chicago trips, it’s become a family reunion.

This is why I love the field. For no other reason than the truly remarkable people I’ve encountered amidst all the shitheads.

Of course, one of the guys kept Facebooking me the whole time because he was hot for my friend. He wanted to take her out to dinner last night. She said no thanks and then this guy spent the rest of the event nagging me to reveal that he’s the one asking (I didn’t tell him I had) and then he waited for her to leave the event.

He FB’d me later to say she somehow managed to get past him because he waited for her to leave. I said glad to know that all his visiting me and catching up with me was total bullshit. Thanks a bunch.

So, other than that, not a bad show.

He shocked me when he let me know he’s separated. And then two of my guy friends I went out partying with last night
said they were getting divorced too.

I have a friend I thought of, who really should get divorced, but who seems to want to save the woman, if not the marriage. And it just annoyed me in a way that here are three men who are 100% happier that they decided to end the fighting and tension (and they all have kids too) but other people will stick with an ice queen like it’s some mission from God or punishment for breathing.

Speaking of punishment for breathing, I should probably check my inbox. Who only knows what I missed while I was busy enjoying a weekday for a marvelous change.

I left “on time” today. Nevermind the 6 a.m. start time. 🙂

I left “on time” last Monday too, for apartment-hunting purposes.

And I had a revelation the first time that holds true again.

That is, I can have a perfectly horrific day. But knowing that this portion of my day is over by 6 p.m., I can handle it a lot better.

It’s this “dragging into ‘my’ time” business that makes me a boiling pile of pus that needs to be lanced and *splort* it will put your eye out when it oozes out.

I realize now that I could have a reasonable week. Or I could haul ass up to Orlando and do back-to-back conferences in addition to the full-time-plus load.

I’m 50/50 right now. Because the uncertainty of arrival on time, the nerves of not having Internet access on command, and the general “please don’t let the place burn down and destroy my empire” prayers … not to mention bad news about the car … are enough to make me nuts.

Of course, as my friend said, suck it up and pack your shit and get the fuck on the road and do one goddamned thing for yourself.

Sure there will be chaos, he said to me. But that chaos is work-related. NOT going because I’m worried about that work chaos means the chaos will be in MY head and heart instead.

I know smart people don’t I?

I just wish I knew where the hell I would even be staying while I’m up there.

I guess now’s as good a time as any to figure that out …

Apparently anything you do to attempt to preserve your fragile emotional health can and will be used against you in a court of law.

I got my project done that was supposed to be done, just in time to hop on my other projects.

But what I’m proudest of is telling my special-needs students that class is NOT going to be in session this week. We can spitball next week. Momma’s got to lie down and rest and will call you individually to administer spankings.

I’d still trade my mother for a bottle of Klonopin, though. But when it comes to chipping away at my newfound anxiety, this is a good start.

I figured I’d try to salvage an edit the kid did on the big project that continues to haunt me.

Kid seems to think the sanctions imposed against a big, meanie of a country are meant to help its economy.

Kid also thinks people can have rising bottom trendlines. Which, in a porn I like to watch, I can see where that is conceivable.

But generally replacing “we” with the writer’s name when the writer was talking about an industry doesn’t make any sense.

I’m sure writing that (insert name) is “at an all-time high” is probably a fair statement. But the only worse thing than editing something so blatantly incorrectly is rewriting the whole article based on bad assumptions that Google could have easily busted in the first place. Or, not even Google. Reading the original text works too.

Redrum. REDRUM!!!!

Saw some butt-ugly apartments today. Which, as friends reminded me, you don’t sign a lease during retrograde. Which, trust me, we are in NO danger of that!

My anxiety is through the roof. Between home and work and mom and the ceasing of a second source of income and oh yeah typing my thoughts on this blog when people who control the clearing of my paychecks read it, I’ve been a little touchy.

I did tone down my last post. Didn’t delete it. Just rethought some word choices. I am an editor, after all. If everyone wants to say the original wording was hyperbole, sure, let’s go with that.

I left work at 4:45 on Friday. Which normal people do. I was so chicken-fried burned-out that I couldn’t function for another second. I met a friend for a drink or three and felt like I was human again.

And now at 7:30 p.m. on Sunday, I have to do the big honkin’ project I couldn’t bear to do Friday. To be published by early tomorrow morning. My anxiety all day has been around “OMG have to do this” — even more so than Everything Else.

I had wanted to get up to Orlando for a couple of conferences this week. At this point I think it would take less than a straw to send this camel into traction. I think a kitty whisker is all it would take.

So I’m sticking close and lying low.

Here’s to hoping everyone LETS me stay in my fragile little corner.