Have a Smoke and a Smile

Some may say it’s perverse to quit you career when it appears that you’re on the cusp of hitting the next big step. The problem is, I don’t know how to make that step. I mean, I guess I do, but I don’t want to. So after stepping up the ladder, stepping sideways on the ladder, getting stepped upon, I didn’t just step off the plank, I swan dived. And I don’t care. But somehow I have to get from here to the end goal,

You know you need a manicure when typing the above paragraph took way too long due to typos. That and I’m really tired, so it’s all inanities today.

I could spend the next four years looking at Rahm Emanuel. He’s so good looking. Oh yeah, I get to!

I’m watching an entertainment tonight-type special about the election. Anyone remember Fred Thompson? Without the da dumb?! But seriously, this is on CNN, and it is totally playing like a Entertainment Tonight! episode. Wait, there went Kucinich and the UFO. This brings back memories.

There’s something quite contemplative about just sitting and relaxing in a hotel room. I took a red-eye from Seattle to Philadelphia last night. I will endeavor never to do a red-eye that isn’t a non-stop flight again. I normally do red-eyes to the East Coast ‘cause I can sleep through it (gotta love xanax) and bypass the whole time change. But when you have to layover, it disrupts the whole process. So rather than wandering around Philly today, I stayed in the room waiting for my gal friend to arrive. Nice room, and I can smoke and drink wine and write. That’s something you don’t get to do in many places anymore, all at the same time. I need to do this periodically, with knowledge aforethought, just to write and think. Not that this post is a good example of that, but like I said, knowledge aforethought.

Now they’re talking, on CNN, about stabilizing consumption. I have really dropped the ball on this one. I used to be highly consumptive (that does not mean I have TB) and obviously since I’m not working, I can’t buy as much as I used to. Which I’m very fine with, surprisingly. Own one Von Furstenburg coat and you own them all? Nah, not really, but one has turned out to be plenty.

Ooh ooh, up comes Palin’s return attack on the McCain campaign. Wait, I’m already done talking about her. I hope. There’s a reason my political blog is called Pandora’s Politics.

Krugman! On CNN now. With Tivo there is little to stumble across. So I would have missed this at home. I love Krugman.

BTW, for anyone who sends me the little people things rather than plants on Facebook’s Lil Green Patch, I turn around and sell them. So thanks for the greenbucks! What a useless but addictive app.

Ew, Arnold is talking about getting expelled from the bedroom with Maria. TMI!

So how do I get from my mini-retirement to a driveway moment on NPR? Updates to come.

Look Ma! No Politics!

Do you live to work or do you work to live? There’s nothing inherently wrong with either concept, just as long as you know what you’re doing and why. Living to work should only be for those who are in a field that they are passionate about. The geeks I know and work with (and live with) love technology and love working with it. My friend the radio talk show host loves what she does. My teacher friend is passionate about education.

It’s certainly fine to work to live as well. People who do that, and do that well, have other higher priorities and their work is merely a means to that end. But what if you’re a live to work person in a work to live job? That’s where the priorities get screwed up. You end up working working working with the only real reward being a big paycheck so you constantly look to find new and creative ways to spend it. In the end, if you are living to work but work isn’t what you want to live for, you (actually I) end up with a lot of shoes, and not a lot of fun.

Don’t get me wrong, I love pretty shoes and I don’t regret a single thing I’ve been able to buy. But once you hit a certain pay scale and accumulate a certain amount of stuff, it gets boring. So you look around and realize, I don’t particularly care about what I do but it’s such a demanding job that I don’t have time left over to pursue what I really enjoy doing. And when you’re someone like me who doesn’t have or want children (which I am given to understand is highly motivating to work to live rather than the other way around), you realize you’re throwing away valuable time for high-priced goodies that you don’t even have the time to properly use!

I realize that in the current economic clime it’s pretty perverse—even stupid on the surface–to risk a solid respectable pay check. But I can’t care. That’s the type of thinking that kept me from doing what I wanted, whatever in the world that is. Obama winning isn’t the magic bullet that makes this less risky (though I don’t know that I’d be feeling so risky under a McCain/Palin administration). But change is good, productive, and now a slogan and way of life. I don’t want to miss this ideological band wagon. You talk about a guy that lives to work!

I almost made it through a whole post without politics. Sue me, I’m going to have to wean off that slowly.

From the How-Did-I-Have-the-Time Files

I just finished a very simple task that took four hours.

A few years ago I went on the hunt for my perfect duvet cover. Long story short, couldn’t find it even when I made price no option. It simply didn’t exist. So I went fabric hunting, found precisely what I wanted, and had my seamstress sorceress whip it up. It was fabulous in almost every detail. Only thing wrong was that the comforter still poked out of the bottom. Easy fix, just needed Velcro strips to seal it down. So easy I wasn’t even going to bother the seamstress sorceress. Even I could handle a simple task like that.

The only problem was time. When I was working, I had a few hours in the evening (you see, I insist on actually making dinners, not take out) and the weekends to cram in all household tasks/projects, time with the fiancé, socializing with friends, TV/movies, reading, and relaxing. When you figure I worked usually minimum 10 hour days and I’m one of those people that need 7-8 hours of sleep a night, that literally left ~40 hours a week to cram in all non-work things. Oh, and those 50 hour weeks were slow weeks. So I would have paid to have it done thereby keeping up the cycle of working to pay for the things I don’t have time to do and with little to no time left over to utilize the rest of the salary. Don’t get me wrong, I know I’ll end up going back to that cycle in some aspect. I’m just hoping I won’t let it get so bad again.

So I finally tackle the minor but long task today. Four hours to glue and iron on 10 strips of Velcro to a duvet cover. It’s perfect, went exactly as expected. Just takes that long to measure the strips, position them, carefully iron each side, and check and double check your work so it doesn’t fall apart. At least it’s something that can be done in front of the television, but only watching something you either don’t care about or have seen at least once so your attention can be diverted.

I seriously don’t know how people do it. Am I just a perfectionist? Or are all working people’s lives messes in some aspect? Maybe that’s what I’ll figure out during my sabbatical. Which part of my life I’m willing to have consistently fall apart.

2 ½ Months Down, 4 Months to Go

2 ½ months ago was my last day on my job of 11 years. I left for several reasons, which I will not go into here. I don’t believe it’s professional or advantageous to discuss my previous company in any way. So that means I will leave out copious amounts of praise as well as avoid any negative feedback. That’s what HR departments are for and I utilized it quite well. I must say my exit interview was one of the most enjoyable and productive conversations I had at that company. And I’ve had many!

So aside from any reasons directly related to the company (including a lot of angst about leaving it), I left for the following personal reasons:

• I had been there 11 years. 2 years in a contract/consultant role, 9 as a salaried employee. That’s a long time in any one job, particularly in the software development/IT field. I realize doctors, teachers, artists, etc. stay in the same field for their entire lives, but it’s different in my most current field. You need to move around a bit, experience other aspects of the industry (assuming I want to stay in this industry; which I’m not sure of yet), in order to move ahead and grow your skillset. So after 11 years, time to move on.
• My life became too much Expedia. My fiancé works there (we met there though we didn’t work together the whole time; ‘nother story); the majority of my day-to-day friends work(ed) there. The fiancé and I spent tons of time discussing Expedia, our careers, our strategy about our careers, our problems with Expedia and our careers, etc. We still discuss it, but with less immersion as before.
• I was just plain tired. Physically and mentally. The longest I hadn’t worked my ass off was for 4 months when I first moved to Seattle. And during that period I worked my ass off finding a job (which happened to be Microsoft which led to Expedia a year later). I worked my ass off from the time I got my first hostess job at Church St. Station, all through the bartending years, and on to Seattle. Hell, when I did get the job at Microsoft I also shortly got a second job bartending for six months. I’m tired I tell you!

So that’s why I quit my job and committed to six months off from formal “work” of any kind. So, figured it was time—now that summer is over—that I document what I intend to do so I can at least look back and figure out if I did OK, or most importantly, were there reasons I didn’t do what I said I would. That will all come in subsequent posts.

I got a phone call from a dear friend in Florida today. She asked if I was looking for a job. I was aghast, I told her of course not. She laughed (in joy). She was so afraid that I was going to be bored that I couldn’t last the full six months. I was quite honest in my response that not only could I last the six months, I don’t think 4 more months is going to be enough to get everything I want done!

Next post will be about what I want to get done. But a recap of what I’ve done so far:

• Went to my 20^th high school reunion.
• Visisted my dearest three girlfriends in Florida and most of their husbands/boyfriends (I say most because one was off doing good works for FEMA so we missed him this time around).
• Finally got our house back in shape after the extensive remodel. The remodel finished in December so I hope my work life is evidenced by the fact that it took 6 months to finish moving back in and decorating. Thankfully, my sister and BIS (that’s brother-in-sin for anyone not up on that acronym) were planning on arriving in early August which gave me a deadline to work against. How quickly artificial deadlines slip in importance when you are not working.
• Weeded the garden. You’d have to see my garden and know how much I hate yard work to understand what a phenomenal accomplishment that was. Took two weeks and my hands were crippled for an additional two as a result.
• Got to visit with my sister and BIS for almost a whole week before we took off (and huge thanks to them for using our house as their vacation home while we were gone). While we do get to visit about once a year, it’s not enough.
• Traveled throughout England with the fiancé for a lovely two weeks, with no set itinerary. Got to visit long lost and now newfound friends as well as ones we don’t want to lose touch with.

As an aside to the house redecorating, it was during that process that I discovered all the journals I had kept in the early ‘90s. Trust me that I was terrified to open those up and read them. They’d been safely forgotten in an old trunk, that trunk serving no other purpose than to allow my old cat Gypsy to get up on the bed. But I opened them, read them, and was equally pleased and embarrassed by my 20-something self. What really shook me up though, was this: I documented my life in extreme detail back then. Then I started focusing on my job. I will not be so angsty and grandiose to say I stopped focusing on my life; that’s simply not true as evidenced by my quite wonderful life. But I stopped documenting it. I don’t have pictures for significant events or handwritten notations to myself to remind me how I felt from about ’98 on. When reading the earlier journals, I realized I had documented my life so well I was able to have instant recall as to how I had felt. And that was all hand written! No excuse now with today’s technology.

So that’s 2 ½ months. Not too bad considering I essentially gave myself the summer off. This week is back to the yard to finish up some work before fall sets in and the monthly bills. Also back to Pilates which I haven’t been to for a month because of travel. Oh, and restock the fridge. Food is a big thing with me and a monthly Costco/Whole Foods restock is actually one of my favourite things to do. More on the whole “you buy your toilet paper at the grocery store?!?” issue later.

Do it all? Good god! I can't believe I ever thought I could.

So as mentioned in an earlier post, I quit my job of 11 years and am taking a 6 month sabbatical from working. I don’t want to trash my previous company, it was very very good to me in many ways and there are many reasons I could have stayed and continued to do well. I was just tired, exhausted really, and unable to concentrate on any of the fun stuff in life.

And in the three weeks that I’ve been off so far, I already am amazed at how much stuff there is to get done and how the hours fly by. How in the hell did I do it all? I mean just think about all the stuff a person is supposed to get accomplished to have a “full” life. Even forgetting the stupid magazine-type articles that state impossible criteria for having a fulfilled life, the basics (disclaimer: this is my list of the basics that are necessary for a fulfilled life) are overwhelming:
• Be in a relationship and actually have fun in it
• Have some hobby that is mentally stimulating (reading/writing count)
• Have some hobby/program that provides physical exercise
• Have a relatively neat/clean house and yard
• Be conscious of the food you purchase and consume and what it does to the environment as well as your body
• Be politically aware enough to make intelligent choices in both your purchase choices and your votes
• Be culturally aware enough to have entertaining and intelligent conversations with a wide-variety of people.
• Be handy enough to take care of basic household tasks
• Have well-cared for and happy cats
• Keep abreast of existing and upcoming technologies to take advantage of them
• Simply relax and get enough sleep and mental downtime

That’s pretty basic stuff, right? But it’s an exhausting list to accomplish when you’re working 10-11 hour days, being constantly conscious of what’s going on at work, and always think about the next step. And what about personal projects? Where does that fit in? Anything from simply cleaning out a basement to learning a new and challenging skill. Where does that fit in? It can be done, I am determined, but not without stopping now and again and ensuring you are covering the non-work stuff. But I definitely am getting to know why most powerful people have either a stay at home spouse, or the equivalent hired assistant. When I go back to the workforce, given my tendency to bury myself in my work, the fiancé and I are going to look into hiring an assistant!

That’s what the six months off is about. Figuring out what I like to do, what I want to do, both work and non-work, and what’s worth spending time on.

Starting week three of my “sabbatical.” I left my job of 11 years on June, 13, 2008. I’ll go into details of why later. In the process of deciding whether to leave it, or the company, I realized I’ve worked, really worked, since 1992 without any kind of a break.

Now, I had jobs prior to 1992. But they were just jobs. They weren’t jobs I really worked at. My first job at 12 for the Secretary of the Volusia County Medical Society (favour of a family friend); first waitressing job at 16 at Friendly Restaurant for the sole purpose of earning enough to replace the AC in my aging 1976 Buick Regal (I lived in Ormond Beach, Florida; AC is critical!); a job at a bookstore in college. But it wasn’t until I got my first adult restaurant job that I started what I call working which entails planning, advancing, being goal-driven, etc.

1. March, 1992: Hostess at Crackers restaurant in Church St. Station, Orlando, Florida. Realized quickly I wasn’t going to make any money until I started waiting tables.

2. Late spring/early summer, 1992: started waiting tables in Crackers. Realized just as quickly I wasn’t going to make any money until I started bartending.

3. Same time period, 1992: Church Street’s bartending school.
Now, before you scoff that this isn’t in any way challenging or has nothing to do with career goals and work ethics, you must understand something about Church Street. They were quite chauvinistic. Female bartenders were rare, and the waitresses wore the skimpiest outfits you can imagine and worked 4-6 hour shifts in high heels. One cocktail waitress outfit was fishnets, briefs, and coattails. So getting behind a decent bar in the complex was tough enough for a female, you had to be first in class. Also note I was in my Senior year of college trying to finish by the end of the year. I was determined to be perfect. And I was.

4. 1992 - 1994: Bartending at Church St. Station, sometimes at two or more clubs, plus throw in the odd waitressing shifts. Graduated college at the end of 1992. Proceeded to make up for all the partying I didn’t do in college.

5. 1994 – 1995: More bartending, this time at Church St and Sloppy Joes. Throw in an arrest for serving a minor (at Sloppy’s; bogus!), being fired, winning unemployment insurance arbitration, trial, acquittal, and finding a new job.

6. 1995 – 1996: Back at Church Street and throwing in Kelly Temps to find that “real” job as we used to call it (a real job was anything that wasn’t part of the bar/restaurant world). Then a Career Marketing Specialist (blech; resume writing for a firm designed to rip people off).
7. 1996 – 1997: Moved to Seattle and tripped into Microsoft on a permatemp contract. For Trip Planner.

8. 1997 – 1999: Permatemp to full time Microsoft via Trip Planner to Expedia.
1999 – 2008: FTE Microsoft/Expedia to Expedia. Much more on my Expedia progression later.

9. 2008 - … : Sabbatical. Much more on this to come.

There will at some point be some post about what this blog is supposed to represent. But I haven't finished that yet. So I'm just going to start and do the intro later.