From my horoscope in the SMH today:
"The thing to keep sharply in focus over the coming months is that what you have or have not is not who you are. Who you are comes from deep within; the way you love, the way you care and how pure you feel your spirit is. "
Good message for someone who's about to put all her belongings on a boat...
And maybe where you are is not who you are neither.
Saturday, September 29, 2007
Friday, September 28, 2007
I Stayed
Today at work we nearly had four big projects that all had to be live by COB, before the long weekend (Close Of Business - do you Yanks use the term as well?). It turns out one didn't actually have to be live today, in fact it doesn't have to be live until November 1, and it was quite embarassing that I was the one who had misread the terms and conditions and made a big overarching schedule and got it wrong. But now most of that project is done, anyway, and we can take some time doing testing and refinement.
Still we had three big projects that all had to be live by the end of the day. Everyone has been in a flap about them for weeks, but no one would cooperate - the clients would take days to answer emails, and one only sent a purchase order for half of the quote; the other suppliers gave us things three days late with only a few hours to process; yet other suppliers started getting their own bossy ideas about how things should be done, or gave us briefs that made no sense whatsoever and then changed them anyway right at the end. It was constant, all week, and I was just thinking the thought that all our clients seemed to have brain damage when I realised my mistake about October 1/November 1 and realised I must have brain damage as well.
But the worst thing was that none of my colleagues took any ownership of these projects at all. They all went vague, and lazy, and spent all day talking on the phone or IM'ing or laughing with each other, and nothing was getting done. I delegated a couple of things to someone else to manage, and the ball was just thoroughly dropped. Maybe he thought I just wanted him to do the initial briefs and I would follow everything else up with the clients. Maybe he never heard back from the designer that the task was done. Maybe he didn't realise what the deadline was. But just at the time he was supposed to be sending an email to the client and getting signoff, he was faffing around setting up a new desk and putting his new bike together. (New bike, you are thinking? We do lots of work for a company that sells Italian bicyles, and they pay us in "contra". So everyone who wants a new bike can get one, on the boss.) I was outraged at this colleague, but didn't say anything to him, I just found out from the designer myself the work was done, and contacted the client myself to get approval, and even did all the HTML changes MYSELF, using notepad and completely hacking around our version control system. But they're done, and live.
At many points during the day I felt like just walking out of there. I kept announcing that I felt like just walking out of there. When they pulled one of the cables out of one of our most important servers, just to see what would happen and to change a setting for the people at the new desks, they timed that little activity to be just exactly when the other supplier was supposed to be busy putting content in to the site that had to be live within a half hour. She had to go make a cup of tea instead. I yelled at them in exasperation, "Why are you doing this right NOW?" I threatened to just get up and walk out of there.
One designer left at 5 - he always leaves at 5, since he gets in at precisely 8 sharp every day, and also he's going away for two weeks to get married. One programmer left at 6, later than usual because he'd stayed to chat with the boss about the cable thing they were doing. One designer was there pretty late but she was working on a project separate from what I was working on. What I was working on, only the senior developer and I stayed. He kept working and testing and publishing and looking into my error messages and coming up with clever solutions, and kept his sense of humor, and when the boss came in a flap and asked him to do something else altogether he just calmly said, "Yep," and kept on doing five things at once and making sure they were all right.
We were the only two, plus the boss, who you'd expect to care if things got done or not. We were the only two that stayed to make sure the job was done properly and the deadlines were met and the customers would not have bad experiences. We were there until 7:30, on the Friday night of a long weekend. I really didn't want to be there at all, starting from about 11 o'clock in the morning, I could see what kind of day it was going to be. And I've already resigned! I'm only going to work there for three more weeks. I have nothing at stake any more, I could be slacking off, I could even start telling off the clients who've been making my life miserable for two years. (Actually it's never a good idea to do that, you never know which bridge you're going to have to turn and run back across one day.) But I did none of these things, I instead took personal responsibility that all the things got done, properly and on time.
Personal responsibility. I just accepted it. I was the only one who was going to make sure it all got done, and communicated to everyone who needed to know. I wasn't panicky, I didn't stress the designers out (I made them proud that they had gone the extra mile and finished the impossible task in time - two of them strutted over to my desk with chests out, to tell me!). I took command, I managed, I stayed back until 7:30, I checked everything, I made sure everything was live that needed to be live. Why do some people take personal responsibility, and others do not?
I suppose it makes me employable. I think it would make me a good mother, if it came to that. But it does make me frustrated with other people. And it makes me very tired!
Still we had three big projects that all had to be live by the end of the day. Everyone has been in a flap about them for weeks, but no one would cooperate - the clients would take days to answer emails, and one only sent a purchase order for half of the quote; the other suppliers gave us things three days late with only a few hours to process; yet other suppliers started getting their own bossy ideas about how things should be done, or gave us briefs that made no sense whatsoever and then changed them anyway right at the end. It was constant, all week, and I was just thinking the thought that all our clients seemed to have brain damage when I realised my mistake about October 1/November 1 and realised I must have brain damage as well.
But the worst thing was that none of my colleagues took any ownership of these projects at all. They all went vague, and lazy, and spent all day talking on the phone or IM'ing or laughing with each other, and nothing was getting done. I delegated a couple of things to someone else to manage, and the ball was just thoroughly dropped. Maybe he thought I just wanted him to do the initial briefs and I would follow everything else up with the clients. Maybe he never heard back from the designer that the task was done. Maybe he didn't realise what the deadline was. But just at the time he was supposed to be sending an email to the client and getting signoff, he was faffing around setting up a new desk and putting his new bike together. (New bike, you are thinking? We do lots of work for a company that sells Italian bicyles, and they pay us in "contra". So everyone who wants a new bike can get one, on the boss.) I was outraged at this colleague, but didn't say anything to him, I just found out from the designer myself the work was done, and contacted the client myself to get approval, and even did all the HTML changes MYSELF, using notepad and completely hacking around our version control system. But they're done, and live.
At many points during the day I felt like just walking out of there. I kept announcing that I felt like just walking out of there. When they pulled one of the cables out of one of our most important servers, just to see what would happen and to change a setting for the people at the new desks, they timed that little activity to be just exactly when the other supplier was supposed to be busy putting content in to the site that had to be live within a half hour. She had to go make a cup of tea instead. I yelled at them in exasperation, "Why are you doing this right NOW?" I threatened to just get up and walk out of there.
One designer left at 5 - he always leaves at 5, since he gets in at precisely 8 sharp every day, and also he's going away for two weeks to get married. One programmer left at 6, later than usual because he'd stayed to chat with the boss about the cable thing they were doing. One designer was there pretty late but she was working on a project separate from what I was working on. What I was working on, only the senior developer and I stayed. He kept working and testing and publishing and looking into my error messages and coming up with clever solutions, and kept his sense of humor, and when the boss came in a flap and asked him to do something else altogether he just calmly said, "Yep," and kept on doing five things at once and making sure they were all right.
We were the only two, plus the boss, who you'd expect to care if things got done or not. We were the only two that stayed to make sure the job was done properly and the deadlines were met and the customers would not have bad experiences. We were there until 7:30, on the Friday night of a long weekend. I really didn't want to be there at all, starting from about 11 o'clock in the morning, I could see what kind of day it was going to be. And I've already resigned! I'm only going to work there for three more weeks. I have nothing at stake any more, I could be slacking off, I could even start telling off the clients who've been making my life miserable for two years. (Actually it's never a good idea to do that, you never know which bridge you're going to have to turn and run back across one day.) But I did none of these things, I instead took personal responsibility that all the things got done, properly and on time.
Personal responsibility. I just accepted it. I was the only one who was going to make sure it all got done, and communicated to everyone who needed to know. I wasn't panicky, I didn't stress the designers out (I made them proud that they had gone the extra mile and finished the impossible task in time - two of them strutted over to my desk with chests out, to tell me!). I took command, I managed, I stayed back until 7:30, I checked everything, I made sure everything was live that needed to be live. Why do some people take personal responsibility, and others do not?
I suppose it makes me employable. I think it would make me a good mother, if it came to that. But it does make me frustrated with other people. And it makes me very tired!
Monday, September 24, 2007
effusion vs craft
Was thinking (and talking to someone else) on the weekend about the old dilemma of effusion vs craft. What's easy for me and what I couldn't cease doing and still breathe is things like this - burbling things out as they come to me.
But should I be spending time/applying myself/setting a goal to/making it my life's project to actually work hard and craft something? Should I spend time trying to hone a written project to give it more value?
Probably.
Astrobarry said something like it a few weeks ago - something like I should hold some things back and work them until they're really good, rather than just saying everything.
And on the weekend I was thinking I would have to stop doing this do start doing the discplined thing.
But I just found my post in Part 2 about buying a new Moleskine notebook (one page full to date, not really doing its job yet), and now I realise I'm being stupid - you of course have to do both. The burbled outpourings are the notes and the drafts. They are the finger exercises, the études, the barre work. And the crafted final thing comes out of it - is not a replacement for it. Is not some higher thing, some detached thing.
I should not feel bad about blogging, it's all part of the swirling journey to whatever good thing it is I'm supposed to write. (Supposed to? Gonna, how 'bout?)
But should I be spending time/applying myself/setting a goal to/making it my life's project to actually work hard and craft something? Should I spend time trying to hone a written project to give it more value?
Probably.
Astrobarry said something like it a few weeks ago - something like I should hold some things back and work them until they're really good, rather than just saying everything.
And on the weekend I was thinking I would have to stop doing this do start doing the discplined thing.
But I just found my post in Part 2 about buying a new Moleskine notebook (one page full to date, not really doing its job yet), and now I realise I'm being stupid - you of course have to do both. The burbled outpourings are the notes and the drafts. They are the finger exercises, the études, the barre work. And the crafted final thing comes out of it - is not a replacement for it. Is not some higher thing, some detached thing.
I should not feel bad about blogging, it's all part of the swirling journey to whatever good thing it is I'm supposed to write. (Supposed to? Gonna, how 'bout?)
three kinds of love
A while ago my favourite professional blogger, Sam De Brito, quoted a theory about how there are three types of love based on different sorts of brain chemicals:
http://blogs.smh.com.au/lifestyle/allmenareliars/archives/2007/09/is_prozac_killing_romantic_lov.html
Here's the relevant quote from Anthropologist Helen Fisher:
'"I believe that homo sapiens has evolved (at least) three primary, distinct yet overlapping neural systems for reproduction. The sex drive evolved to motivate ancestral men and women to seek sexual union with a range of partners; romantic love evolved to enable them to focus their courtship energy on a preferred mate, thereby conserving mating time and energy; attachment evolved to enable them to rear a child through infancy together," she said.'
I Googled Dr Fisher and found her web site and synopses of her books. Given my propensity to start any philosophical speculation by finding out the relevant neurophysiological facts, I'm willing to give her ideas a run, and I have at least one philosopher friend who says he's been using her taxonomy to understand his own experiences for a few years now, with great success.
Romanic love is supposed to be an excess of dopamine, and she describes it as more of a drive than an emotion.
So which one is this? An oceany feeling all inside. All oceany. It makes me stop and stare blankly for minutes at a time. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of opiate, and I definitely have a craving to feel it more and more the more I do, but it's not a druggy kind of opiate, doesn't have that underlying menacing buzz to it like beer or excessive tiredness or the post-operative morphine injections I've had in the hospital on occasion. I think it does impair the cognitive faculties, because I'm not even believing that my moving away could do anything to change it. And while stopping and staring I sort of don't get my taxes done, which is my main task tonight.
I'm not sure which one it is, and I don't really care. It started during the week of wanting things, and I just let it start, and that was when I was living in the now and didn't know if I'd move or not, and so it exists in the now.
Some kind of benign opiate, altering cognition but not resulting in sinister drugginess, generating cravings but hopefully not dependancy, and administered via email.
http://blogs.smh.com.au/lifestyle/allmenareliars/archives/2007/09/is_prozac_killing_romantic_lov.html
Here's the relevant quote from Anthropologist Helen Fisher:
'"I believe that homo sapiens has evolved (at least) three primary, distinct yet overlapping neural systems for reproduction. The sex drive evolved to motivate ancestral men and women to seek sexual union with a range of partners; romantic love evolved to enable them to focus their courtship energy on a preferred mate, thereby conserving mating time and energy; attachment evolved to enable them to rear a child through infancy together," she said.'
I Googled Dr Fisher and found her web site and synopses of her books. Given my propensity to start any philosophical speculation by finding out the relevant neurophysiological facts, I'm willing to give her ideas a run, and I have at least one philosopher friend who says he's been using her taxonomy to understand his own experiences for a few years now, with great success.
Romanic love is supposed to be an excess of dopamine, and she describes it as more of a drive than an emotion.
So which one is this? An oceany feeling all inside. All oceany. It makes me stop and stare blankly for minutes at a time. I'm pretty sure it's some kind of opiate, and I definitely have a craving to feel it more and more the more I do, but it's not a druggy kind of opiate, doesn't have that underlying menacing buzz to it like beer or excessive tiredness or the post-operative morphine injections I've had in the hospital on occasion. I think it does impair the cognitive faculties, because I'm not even believing that my moving away could do anything to change it. And while stopping and staring I sort of don't get my taxes done, which is my main task tonight.
I'm not sure which one it is, and I don't really care. It started during the week of wanting things, and I just let it start, and that was when I was living in the now and didn't know if I'd move or not, and so it exists in the now.
Some kind of benign opiate, altering cognition but not resulting in sinister drugginess, generating cravings but hopefully not dependancy, and administered via email.
Sunday, September 23, 2007
harder than the last time
The last time I picked up and moved countries I was only 28 years old, so that might be one reason why it was easier - when you're young it seems you can just go out, cast everything off and head out into the wide world to explore. Whereas it seems harder now.
But another big reason I realised today is that when I moved that time, it wasn't a choice between continuing the status quo and doing something new. There was no status quo. I was done with my Ph.D. and the university had cast us out - we all had to do something new, it was just a matter of what. This time I could perfectly well have stayed on here, doing the same things forever in the same settled way. This time my choice was between a status quo and a new unknown.
And this might why the people are so much more upset this time. In rejecting my settled status quo for this unknown thing, I am rejecting them. "Anything but this," my choice might be saying to them, "Even the snowy culturally barren midwest that I don't even know would be better than hanging around you people."
It's not like that at all, but maybe because there is a status quo this time it would seem like that to the people I'm leaving.
But another big reason I realised today is that when I moved that time, it wasn't a choice between continuing the status quo and doing something new. There was no status quo. I was done with my Ph.D. and the university had cast us out - we all had to do something new, it was just a matter of what. This time I could perfectly well have stayed on here, doing the same things forever in the same settled way. This time my choice was between a status quo and a new unknown.
And this might why the people are so much more upset this time. In rejecting my settled status quo for this unknown thing, I am rejecting them. "Anything but this," my choice might be saying to them, "Even the snowy culturally barren midwest that I don't even know would be better than hanging around you people."
It's not like that at all, but maybe because there is a status quo this time it would seem like that to the people I'm leaving.
Friday, September 21, 2007
the real reason
When I've been telling people I'm moving, I guess I've been spinning the reasons differently depending on who I'm talking to. At work it's been all about my aging parents, and how I need to be closer to them, because how could I leave a job I'm so well suited to for another job? It has to be something other than career, it must be family.
But anyone who knows anything about US geography knows that I am moving nowhere near my parents, I am going back to the midwest which is my home but it is a two-hour flight to get to Mom and Dad, who live in the West, in a place where I have lived before but that is not my home. So for those people I sometimes focus on the career opportunity angle, more than the family angle.
For the cousins, the family angle is no problem because they in fact do live quite close to where I'm going to be, and they understand how it's our ancestral home, even though I've never actually been to Appleton before.
But tonight, finally, someone really got it, and really understood why. Perhaps because she's known me since a few months after I moved to Sydney. She has known me during the hope and promise of my move here with my ex with our Terrace House dreams, the dot com collapse of my career, the fun but also disappointment and frustration of my unemployment, then his retreat into his office so that he would no longer leave his computer screen for anyone or anything. She stayed with me during the pain and absurdity of the break-up, and was right beside me doing every new thing I explored to rebuild my identity - came along to my talks at the Philosophy group, met up at the Art Gallery, traded DVDs and books, invited me to take the poetry class. She's met all my funny new liaisons, my new friends. She's been right through the narrative with me, and so she understands how this makes sense.
It's not for my career. It's not for my parents, altogether. It's kind of just a happy coincidence that so many cousins happen to live nearby. She described my real reason back to me tonight, with real insight - it's because of what I've been through here, and that Sydney still has a tinge of pain, and I need to start clean and be in my own place, and start something new all of my own.
She's a writer, and a life-long studier of narrative. Of course she would get it. Of course she would be able to tell the story in a way that makes sense of it. She's the only one, so far. But I'm so glad I've been able to see this move reflected back as it makes narrative sense in her eyes. It makes it seem much more right, now, and hopefully will ease some of the heaviness I've been feeling for the last few weeks.
But anyone who knows anything about US geography knows that I am moving nowhere near my parents, I am going back to the midwest which is my home but it is a two-hour flight to get to Mom and Dad, who live in the West, in a place where I have lived before but that is not my home. So for those people I sometimes focus on the career opportunity angle, more than the family angle.
For the cousins, the family angle is no problem because they in fact do live quite close to where I'm going to be, and they understand how it's our ancestral home, even though I've never actually been to Appleton before.
But tonight, finally, someone really got it, and really understood why. Perhaps because she's known me since a few months after I moved to Sydney. She has known me during the hope and promise of my move here with my ex with our Terrace House dreams, the dot com collapse of my career, the fun but also disappointment and frustration of my unemployment, then his retreat into his office so that he would no longer leave his computer screen for anyone or anything. She stayed with me during the pain and absurdity of the break-up, and was right beside me doing every new thing I explored to rebuild my identity - came along to my talks at the Philosophy group, met up at the Art Gallery, traded DVDs and books, invited me to take the poetry class. She's met all my funny new liaisons, my new friends. She's been right through the narrative with me, and so she understands how this makes sense.
It's not for my career. It's not for my parents, altogether. It's kind of just a happy coincidence that so many cousins happen to live nearby. She described my real reason back to me tonight, with real insight - it's because of what I've been through here, and that Sydney still has a tinge of pain, and I need to start clean and be in my own place, and start something new all of my own.
She's a writer, and a life-long studier of narrative. Of course she would get it. Of course she would be able to tell the story in a way that makes sense of it. She's the only one, so far. But I'm so glad I've been able to see this move reflected back as it makes narrative sense in her eyes. It makes it seem much more right, now, and hopefully will ease some of the heaviness I've been feeling for the last few weeks.