Weekday ritual

About once per day at approximately 7am, five days per week, I utter a loud exclamation that contains an effing expletive. Yeah, that one.


No one else hears it since I’m in the car.


But I think I’ve been doing it for a while. I caught myself this morning and wondered why the foul language?


Truth is, maybe I’m not the best driver in the world. The freeway entrance ramp for my route brings me into a heavily traveled junction point where two exit-only lanes are departing for two separate destinations nowhere near the vicinity of my office. So I have about a half mile, in busy traffic, to enter the freeway and move two lanes to the left, dodging cars with more, shall we say, aggressive drivers.


The whole episode transpires in less than 30 seconds, but it scrapes my nerves raw in that short amount of time. And without fail, I unload the tension with some real nice profanity.

Riddle me this

One of my colleagues, an accountant in our department, is also a well-known practical jokester along with being a truly wonderful human being with a heart full of kindness.

But, back to the practical joking side. If he happens to pop his head into the doorway of your office, there’s a high likelihood that some sort of amusement is about to follow.

Not so long ago, he made the rounds through the office asking a riddle. I didn’t get the answer right, but much to his astonishment, no one did.

To set the stage, I work in a professional industry where the workforce is predominantly female at all levels of the organization. Our VP-Operations is female and has been in this industry for the entire duration of her career.

Here’s the riddle.

*****
A man and his young son were in a serious automobile accident. By the time the ambulance arrived, it was too late for the paramedics to save the man, but the child was still alive. The ambulance rushed him to the hospital and in the emergency room, the medical team quickly determined that surgery was necessary to save his life. They wheeled the child into the operating room and called a doctor in to perform the emergency operation. The doctor raced downstairs, prepped and stepped into the operating room, but after taking one look at the patient, said to the medical team: “I cannot operate on this patient.”

One of the nurses asked, “But doctor, why not?”

The doctor answered, “Because this patient is my son.”

Who is the doctor?
*****

As I mentioned, my guess was incorrect. I guessed that the doctor was the child’s grandfather. Didn’t sound right to me at the time, but I was grasping.

My coworker shook his head and said, the doctor is the child’s mother.

So obvious.

That’s what he said too.

But he had asked a half dozen college educated women to answer the riddle and not one got the answer right. Every single person assumed that the doctor’s gender was male.

We are a forward thinking group that supports the advancement of women. So why did this very basic assumption eclipse our consideration?

I don’t have the answer to that riddle.

Gratitude at work

Eight years ago I decided to change my career and I left my job in the private sector to become involved, as a volunteer, in the world of nonprofit. I was not sure what I was going to end up doing by way of a permanent career change, but I knew I wanted to immerse myself, meet people and learn about this unfamiliar segment of the business world as quickly as possible.

Eventually, I wound up working at an organization for which I have great respect. I believe in the mission and admire the brilliant scientists here that make contributions to our world. I am grateful to be a small part of this organization. It is something much bigger than me and it stands for something good. It touches lives and sometimes even saves lives.

Today, one of the scientists here was named in Time magazine’s annual list of the world’s 100 most influential people. He is a professor and chair of the Department of Lymphoma and Myeloma. His field of research involves harnessing the human immune system to develop a cancer vaccine and this important work is gaining attention. Congratulations to Larry Kwak, M.D., Ph.D.

Burned

What happens when you put a group of people together in a room? Someone will invariably observe that the temperature of the room is not quite comfortable; it’s either too hot or too cold. The first observation serves to open a general discussion about the less-than-comfortable conditions.

Guilty! I’m one of those people. My personal comfort zone tends to accommodate temperatures that are slightly above normal rather than temperatures slightly below normal. I don’t like being cold while I’m at work. But just two offices away, my colleague almost always has a fan blowing in her office – she’d prefer the temperature much cooler than the normal setting.

I work in an old building and have learned that while the HVAC system is tuned as much as possible to accommodate the changes to the internal space layout through the 20 or so years since it was first built, it’s just hard for the building engineers to regulate even airflow.

OK. I get it.

So I don’t complain about the temperature in my office because I realize they can’t really do that much more. Instead, I sit on a heating pad.

It’s warm. Sort of like those wonderful seat warmers that some lucky people have in their cars to keep them warm in winter. But with a twist. It is an electric appliance, and if I’m not careful the heating pad can burn my skin. Yes, there is a fabric cover over the heating pad and yes, I wear completely adequate clothing, so the heating element is not coming into actual contact with my skin.

Nonetheless, last Friday I noticed that my derriere was just particularly sensitive. So after work, when I got home, I checked it out. To my dismay, there were two bright red burn spots on my very own butt. A startling discovery.

I’m struggling to figure out the metaphor here…

ENJF

I have to admit that I don’t know what these initials mean exactly, but I do know it has something to do with a personality profile, in the Myers-Briggs vernacular. It’s a label, and humans love to label things, people and places. I attended a presentation today and the speaker touched on the topic of introverts and extraverts. Many people in the room gave an audible acknowledgement that they were intricately aware of this distinction and strongly identified with one of the two personality types.

I was sitting at the front of the room closest to the speaker and had been paying close attention throughout the presentation. She was making eye contact with many people in the room but had not made eye contact with me until this precise moment. She looked at me directly and said: you are the introvert, right?

Uh, well apparently so.

The extroverts in the room voiced their agreement with this hypothesis.

The speaker resumed her presentation, acknowledging that extroverts are often guilty of interrupting others when they are speaking, but don’t much seem to mind when they themselves are interrupted.

I try not to interrupt others. I try to listen and respond as appropriate. Sometimes I find myself waiting, waiting, waiting for a break in the conversation so that I may broach a new subject, ask a question or introduce an idea. I would consider it rude to interrupt a conversation in progress to serve my own needs. But sometimes conversations have their own momentum and the lulls I seek just don’t present themselves. The extrovert speakers keep talking and other extroverts keep interrupting in a swirling cycle.

I was talking with my brother yesterday. He is an extrovert and I hold him in high esteem. But when we talk on the phone it is a difficult experience for me. Yesterday I had wanted to ask him something in particular. But as I was listening to my brother talk, the story he was telling, as is typical, kept getting longer by the minute. Eventually, he had to interrupt himself in order to cut our conversation short and answer a call from a client.

I never got a chance to interrupt him and ask my question.

I know that I am an introvert. I work well in a quiet atmosphere and don’t need to interact with others to keep my creative energy engaged. I prefer to minimize my time in meetings unless they are well structured. I have fun in social situations, but I am never the life of the party. I prefer to take a supporting role.

But this word, introvert, this label, seems to convey other information. As though we introverts seek to limit our interaction with others or hide from the world. Today’s presenter did not use these precise words, but she did paint a picture of introverts in similar broad-brush terms.

And I begin to think that being an introvert, governed by this part of my DNA, inhibits me from living a richer, happier life.

On the other hand, I would not wish to be one of those people who chronically interrupt others when they are speaking or verbally arm-wrestles others for the microphone.

So excuse me while I send my brother an email to ask him my question. It is not the quickest way to get a reply, but at least I can use this strategy to communicate a complete sentence.

Fool for love

Google is my preferred search engine at work and in life too. I love Google. I've been giving it a workout lately at the office. And today I kept noticing the word Topeka on the landing page instead of the regular word Google. The very wierd thing was that I was just doing a little bit of research on a couple of constituents that were originally from Topeka, KS. That was a surprise to me because their last known address was in Florida.

Often, Google seems to read my mind. If I enter one or two letters of a word or phrase, the search engine intuitively fills in the rest, making my job quicker and easier. Sometimes this ESP is more than a little startling, especially when I begin to search for something that falls outside the normal parameters I typically use. How does Google know what I am thinking?

But back to Topeka. I thought this word was just another improvement on the ESP feature package, but then my curiosity got the best of me. I clicked on the word and opened a silly and funy article about Google changing its name. Clearly an April fool's day joke. But clever and well executed.

I love Topeka!

The elusive handyman

I was in a colleague’s office a few months back; there were several female homeowners present and the anxious topic of discussion focused on finding a capable, reliable, affordable handyman. None of the homeowners had husbands, but that is somewhat inconsequential since I don't happen to believe that husband and handyman are synonymous. (And don’t go thinking that I’m a misandrist, guys, it’s just that some jobs require a person with a proper set of tools and experience.)

I have been working with contractors on residential projects, large and small, for over a year now, and I am nearly certain that the handyman is on the endangered species list. There are no shortage of painters, landscaping crews, carpenters, tiling installers, electricians and fence builders. And we’re not afraid to get our hands dirty either: we both have done a remarkable amount of work that could have been outsourced to a handyman or other contractor. Last spring I used a chisel and hammer to remove hundreds of pounds of ceramic tile from the floor of my old house. Cristy built a fence for a protected dog-run in our backyard. We have changed locks, doorknobs, air filters and garage door codes. Hung book shelves, shoe shelves, curtain rods and plastic bag dispensers.

But so much of the routine maintenance of home ownership is beyond our skill and experience. As a result, we joined the pursuit to find a handyman. This is not as easy as we first believed it would be. The first hurdle is to get someone to return my call when I happen to locate an individual that appears to be in the true handyman business (rather than a sheetrock/painting contractor). And when they do return the call, it is hard to get them agree to show up.

We’ve gone through three so far. All have performed some services, but it is a long list and after crossing off a few tasks, and going home with a handful of cash in their pocket, they just seem to lose interest.

I found the website for a possible fourth contender and clicked on the “Contact Us” button to send our list of tasks to see if they might be interested. Just wanted to be very upfront – it is a random list of carpentry-type chores, not a glamorous kitchen remodeling project. But someone called me the next day to say they wanted the job. Wow, I thought that was great. He wanted to come by and look at the particulars so we could agree on a price. Even better.

I proposed Saturday.

He hesitated. Said there wasn’t anything booked, but he just wasn’t quite sure. He’d get back with me.

Right.

Finding a metaphor in the mundane

The correct tool for the job turned out to be steel wool. Worked like a charm. Scrubbing that burned-on residue from the bottom of the soup kettle was relatively quick work once I got the steel wool engaged.

Yesterday I made corn chowder and started by boiling pearled barley with some onion and celery. Barley gives the soup texture and makes it taste chowdery. But in my poorly managed multi-tasking frame of mind, I neglected to keep watch on the barley and consequently the water boiled out too quickly leaving the starchy grain to burn. And stick to the bottom of the kettle.

After discarding the contents, I tried an old remedy that has always proved successful for me in the past – boiling soapy water in the kettle. I think I read it years ago in a newspaper column. Probably Hints from Heloise.

But it didn’t work. Usually that technique makes the job of cleaning so much easier. No scrubbing even required. Not this time.

So this morning, as I was physically scrubbing the pan with my steel wool, I found my brain casting about searching for someone, something to accept the blame for the situation I was in. I landed on Heloise. Damn that tips column. Load of baloney!

Then the scrubbing was over and I almost had to laugh. So ridiculous that I would be trying to escape responsibility for something so insignificant, a minor inconvenience. But I was. Yeah, I’m human. Give my idiot card a punch.

Coincidentally, this is precisely the topic that one of my favorite bloggers recently presented in a very humorous way. Karal, at the orange chair. Check it out.

Tricks of the trade

A busy week of juggling flaming knives, and assembling a mountain of data into a visually appealing format, palatable for the average consumer.

This part of my job makes me think of myself as a sleight-of-hand artist. Figuring out how to disguise information into a candy-coated morsel so that meeting participants will gobble it up rather than glazing over and looking at it in utter disgust.

That’s how it usually is with purveyors of numbers. Dry reports. An endless list of numerals that only someone like myself could find remotely appealing.

Maybe, in some respects, this part of my job is sort of like being a parent and getting kids to eat vegetables in a loving and creative way. Mixing them in with something they already like, maybe macaroni and cheese or pizza.

It works with my dogs.

Oh, but wait, my dogs will eat anything. So no, not really.

Every silver lining has a grey cloud

I attended a personal relationship workshop once and one of the topics addressed resolving conflicts productively. It is such a happy set of circumstances that I sometimes recall these bits of minutiae from years ago because it gives me pause to consider how to process circumstances that trouble me now. As I have gotten older, I’m more at peace with taking my time around suboptimal circumstances. There’s always more to the picture than my view permits, but often, even within my view, there are probably things I don’t see because I fail to look closely enough. Taking extra time helps me focus more clearly.

Often, when faced with a conflict, I am tempted to focus largely on the perceived failings of the other individual in the conflict: the things that they are neglecting to do or say, the things that are inaccurate, unrelated, perhaps even fictitious. I am likely to take personal offense, and unfortunately, adopt a slightly (dare I say it?) rigid attitude as a result. My skills of perception start to shut down as the flashing-red-light-buzzer begins sounding in my head, a warning that conflict is approaching.

Back to the workshop. The relevant lesson is: how many of the perceived failings, of which I am quick to assign to the other party, are also true about me? Probably more than I care to admit.

I’m having a bit of a conflict with my boss at the moment. Actually not so much of a conflict as a falling-out. We are communicating less and less. She is busy-busy-busy. I perceive that her lack of attention to my work indicates that its importance has diminished in her opinion, and even worse, in the opinion of the rest of the organization. She praises the quality of my work but doesn’t read it, doesn’t provide the substantive feedback and direction that I need to make progress in this highly conceptual task.

I am having a difficult time seeing the larger picture since my inclination is to focus on my perceptions of her negligent management skills, where my personal job is concerned. Because, naturally, it's all about me, right?

Is her busy-busy-busy schedule affecting the other staff members that report to her? Well, yes.

Is there anything about my behavior that might be contributing to the circumstances? Well, maybe.

Is there anything that I could be doing that could possibly lead to improvements? Well, probably.

But I don’t know exactly what. Yet. I need to go back and reflect on that question from the workshop.

Science of the survey

I participated in an employee survey today. Advance notice encouraging my participation arrived in my email inbox last week. And I received another reminder on the daily Employee News link too. So I went ahead and opened the link first thing this morning with the best intentions of contributing to the collective knowledge that is our institutional workforce, at least, in terms of this survey.

Truth is, I’m more than a bit dubious about surveys. Most surveys provide an answer array to allow respondents to shade their answers from middle-of-the-road, to extreme. I tend to be a middle-of-the-road girl, regardless of the relative width of the survey’s answer array. I figure that even if I had a single isolated negative experience pertaining to a certain question, I’ve also had at least one good experience, so in the end, it pretty much all averages out. But some people like to click the extreme buttons. So I am not sure how the answers are compiled in a way that recognizes and accommodates the variations in the answering style of the respondents. I can't help wondering about things like this.

I’m also curious about what the survey is attempting to accomplish. I know there is a method to survey design such that the assembled responses boil down to a set of basic feedback indicators. If the indicator is below expectations, then the framework of the survey will also isolate the offending problem area. The science of survey building is as mysterious as it is interesting, at least from my own perspective.

Today’s survey seemed to be about employee satisfaction and retention. Half the questions seemed to be lifted from the standard employee satisfaction survey menu, but the other half were new. They came from the exotic Dim Sum style menu of hypothetical HR benefits, programs and compensation packages. More than a little complex and more than a little tiresome to wade through. This was, after all, purely hypothetical. I found myself clicking, clicking, clicking, wondering if I had stumbled into an endless survey loop or if they were merely trick questions.

Then, just like that, it was over. Until next year.

RTT

For the past couple of days I have had the unmistakably bizarre experience of riding in a rather full elevator with one or more people conducting a conversation, in a natural tone of voice, on their mobile phones. Perhaps this is not unusual. It just happens to be outside of my realm of personal experience. I think I would be hyper-conscious of stepping into an enclosed box in the close proximity of a few other individuals while conducting a personal conversation. But maybe that’s just me. Odd? Or not odd?

Blackout blues

At 6:26 this morning, I was running just a tad bit late. Still needed to get dressed, so I dashed into my closet to pull out a suitable outfit for this chilly morning. As I quickly contemplated my choices, the lights went out. I’m standing in the closet in complete and total darkness.

I found my robe and slippers, then felt my way through the dressing room, around the dogs still sleeping on the floor, to the nearest window to make a quick assessment. Was the blackout affecting any neighbors or did the condition appear to be isolated to our own house? Hmmm. Thankfully, the half moon was visible in the sky and cast a fair amount of light over the yard and beyond. Seemed rather quiet in the neighborhood, there were two visible lights in other yards, but most appeared to be without lights.

Decided to skip any interaction with the circuit panel and made my way through the interior of the house to the kitchen. Last time I checked, there was a flashlight in one of these drawers...one of them...somewhere. Sure would be handy if I could just switch on the lights to find it. Found it, thank heavens, and it still works. Cristy is such a genius to keep working flashlights in the utility drawers! That is one of the reasons I love her so - I would NEVER think of this.

Next, over to the pantry to pull out some candles and light a path from the exit door back to the dressing room. This circumstantial change made dressing so much easier. I just pulled out the first warm jacket I saw and added black pants and loafers. Nothing too fashionable today. A quick comb through the hair and spritz. Oh wait, is it safe to use hairspray around candles? Not sure.

Following the illuminated path, I tracked back to the door leading to the garage. The next task was to disengage the overhead garage door so I could get the car out. Being the technophobe that I am, I absolutely despise having to make a configuration change to any electro-mechanical device. What if I break it? But I cobbled together some fortitude, pulled the red cord, and tugged at the garage door until I got it open. Success!

Back indoors. 7:48am, 18 minutes late, darn! The house is already beginning to get cooler. Pour my thermos of coffee, deliver the flashlight to Cristy, say goodbye, pull on my gloves, get keys, backpack and make my exit.

I love having electricity. Note to self – send a thank-you note to HL&P tonight (assuming the power is restored when I return home).

RTT

I’ve been wearing gloves in the office for two days now. It’s freaking cold. Brrrr. And I’m sitting on a heating pad too. But that’s normal for this time of year. Gives me mild burns on my skin, but that is a lot more comfortable than freezing my tushie off every single day.

Back to the gloves.

They’re knitted woolen gloves and don’t really do a great job of keeping my fingers toasty warm. I have to sit on my hands every once in a while, place them next to the heating pad to transfer some quick warmth.

Sometimes I wish I could bring a dog to work to keep me warm. Seems to work when I sleep. They’re like little heaters. There I am huddled up all cold and then a teensy 10-pound dog snuggles in nearby. Before I know it, hot flash city. But we have this policy, a new policy apparently, that prohibits employees from bringing animals to work. Dogs, cats, mice, goldfish. Has something to do with laboratory animals. I’m teetering on a very slippery slope here: this is a place where science is conducted. I just accept it the way it is and go on about my own vegetarian business in the meantime.

So, you may be thinking, what is the point here? Well, nothing really. To borrow from other, far more brilliant bloggers, I’ll just chalk this up to Random Tuesday Thoughts.

Counting sheep

Sleep has been a topic of conversation around the office lately. My boss underwent a professional sleep analysis a week or so ago to determine if she has sleep apnea, and if so, what she might need to do about it. So just before getting started with a meeting last week, those gathered around the conference table listened to her story and entered into the discussion about sleep. Seems that everyone had some sort of sleep aberration, either not getting restful sleep, falling asleep too quickly, or breathing (polite way of saying snoring) problems.

I think I could check off a few of those from the list. Through the years I’ve had all sorts of cycles that seemed to interfere with restful sleep. I just read an essay by an inspired blogger over at f8hasit regarding sleep deprivation and it reminded me of a time when I found it very difficult to fall asleep. Seems that I could just not stop thinking, planning, worrying, listing.

Back in those days, I had been to some exercise and yoga classes that ended with a few minutes of facilitated relaxation. It was nice. It went something like this:

Imagine yourself lying on a tropical, warm beach.
The tide softly washes up to your ankles and you feel your feet and ankles relax.
The tide continues to wash up to your legs, torso, arms, etc….bringing relaxation to your entire body.

So when I was having insomnia problems, I decided to try this out for myself. It went something like this:

Imagine yourself lying on a tropical warm beach.
The tide softly washes up to your ankles and you feel your feet and ankles relax.
The tide washes up to your legs, torso, arms. Soon you are floating, weightless in the warm water, fully relaxed.
Beneath the surface of the water there are dozens of sharks, jellyfish and scratchy seaweed. Yikes! Get out of there!

OK, so I figured out how to sabotage my own relaxation process. Typical. I'll probably not going to try that method again. Back to counting sheep.

Five

I work in a professional environment in the healthcare sector. So it makes sense that one of our institutional core values is caring. In my office, one of the ways that we demonstrate caring is to recognize each other’s personal accomplishments and little celebrations, like birthdays, promotions and employment anniversaries. Once per month we set aside a half hour to get together in a conference room, read out all the happiness announcements for the month, sing a little birthday song for the collective birthday celebrants, and adjourn with a slice of some sinfully delicious goodie. It sounds contrived, but is in fact, sincere.

Of late, I have been omitting to attend the monthly gathering, primarily due to laziness because it is on another floor. Occasionally I have a schedule conflict, but for the most part, I can offer no legitimate reason for my absence.

But this month, I attended, at the urging of my manager. And discovered that my own employment anniversary was on the happiness agenda. 5 years. I can remember the day of my job interview, just like it was a couple of months ago. I remember the employee Christmas party my second year. Dozens of incidents that collectively weave into the familiar texture of my daily workday life. I can look back on the moments in a mere instant. Five years have elapsed.

From time to time I check in on a blog by inspired author, Gretchen Rubin. One of the things that she often says that resonates with my anniversary is this: the days are long, but the years are short.

It's the truth.

Back on the chain gang

I work in a fairly professional environment. It is an organization under the umbrella of the great State of Texas, therefore, we pay a rigorous amount of attention to matters concerning human resources. Good old HR. In all fairness, I’d have to say that it is the most professional environment in which I have ever worked and in my experience, everyone is treated with equity and respect. Right down to job titles and the descriptions we use to describe those jobs.

Which brings me to an essay I read by inspired blogger Blogget Jones the other day, in which she discussed her professional status in the organization where she works as a peon. I had to laugh. Really. I am among them, the multitude of peons that commute to work, attend meetings, crunch numbers, draft reports and write executive summaries. The spotlight does not often shine in our direction, but that is OK with us, because we do not so much seek it. We seek the camaraderie of our colleagues, the creative challenges lurking within the layers of our assigned projects and the opportunity to make a contribution without a whole lot of drama or fanfare.

But still, we sort of bristle at the word peon. It seems, well, so menial. I have to tell you, and this is the honest truth, I was in a client’s office (years ago, not in my present place of employment) and my boss actually used the term “underling” in his conversation with the client, in reference to me and my team. Yes! I could not believe my ears. I felt the red sting of humiliation, as though I had been instantly diminished. Transported to a chain gang and sentenced to hard labor under severe conditions.

Maybe I was the only one who noticed. The meeting continued without remark or incident.

In another example, much more recently, a friend used the word “minion” when referring to a member of his team in a serious professional conversation. He did not say it disparagingly or in an attempt to be funny. The staff member took grave offense and promptly issued a complaint. My friend was sternly instructed not to use that term again. He thought the staff member’s reaction was an overreaction.

I don’t happen to think so. We are peons, hear us roar!

The mentoring dilemma

As I was walking into the office this morning, I met up with a colleague in the elevator lobby and we rode up to our floor together. She mentioned that she saw me pull into the parking garage and thought to herself that I was someone she really looked up to professionally. She said she admired the way that I was handling my career and considered me a mentor. I, of course, returned the compliment with some supportive words of encouragement, acknowledging how wonderful she is and what an important contribution she makes.

This exchange gives me pause to consider. How important is it for us to have professional mentors or role models with whom we can personally identify? Does it contribute in a meaningful way to job satisfaction? What are the behaviors or characteristics of those individuals most often identified as mentors or professional role models?

A number of years ago I worked for a large professional consulting organization that implemented a mentoring program specifically for mid-career females. It was structured as a group, with a designated senior professional as the group leader. The premise was to provide a network of peer contacts plus a senior mentoring contact for each female in the group. The idea behind this premise was splendid, but the only drawback for me, was that I had no relationship with any of the members of this network because I worked in a different business unit. The level of effort required to build the trusting individual relationships that would make this network a solid resource for me, personally, was not on my short list of things to do. I already invested plenty of time in my job and every spare nanosecond I was able to detach from it was precious. So while on the one hand the mentoring network was something I felt I wanted, the investment-versus-payoff balance was out of whack.

Earlier this year, I attended an industry lunch meeting and was surprised beyond belief when one of the speakers, a rather senior female executive in another organization, spoke quite frankly about gender disparities. Our field is dominated by females, yet there are few females in senior executive roles. This is true. The speaker took it a step further, suggesting that we, females, do ourselves a disservice by not supporting each other. She suggested, in fact, that our behaviors actually undermine our opportunities to succeed.

If my own response was a barometer for the rest of the audience, I would have to say that we were startled, and perhaps even uncomfortable by her frankness. The subject seemed taboo. No one ventured to ask a question. But the truth is that I would have liked to have delved into the conversation further. In a different, safer forum.

I often feel a nonspecific subliminal tension with my own manager. She is very smart and I respect her. I do not know why the tension exists and I do not know how to replace it with something that is healthier and stronger for us both.

The only thing that comes to mind, in light of this morning’s exchange, is to turn her into a mentor. What if I made an effort to let her know that I valued her professional accomplishments and considered her an amazing role model? What if she wants to know that I value her and my behavior is just not confirming my feelings? Perhaps I can influence the transformation of this relationship into something better and I have nothing to lose from trying.

Being straight

Straight, as in truthful, not as in hetero. For the record I’m gay. Gay as in rainbow flag, not as in happy-go-lucky.

I don’t fly the flag at work, but I do have a photo of Cristy and me holding hands on my cork-board. A handful of colleagues, including my boss, have met Cristy and a fair number of other colleagues know that I am gay and that she and I are involved in a loving, committed relationship.

Last week, as I was having a casual conversation with a co-worker in our office-kitchenette, it occurred to me that he thought that I was straight (as in hetero). In my mind, I had at least a few options: (a) immediately set the record straight (as in truthful), (b) ignore it – his assumptions are his business or (c) worry about it later. My preference would have been option (a), however a variety of work-related scheduling considerations prevented me from entering into what undoubtedly would have become a somewhat lengthy and personal conversation. I defaulted to option (c).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a firm believer in option (b) as well – allowing everyone the opportunity to form their own opinions. But there comes a time in the formation of human relationships when trust and honesty trumps the “don’t ask-don’t tell” approach. My relationship with this coworker, while not personally close, is genuinely respectful and affectionate. I like to talk with him and enjoy hearing stories about his family. I appreciate him as an individual and as a professional. He is one of the many, many reasons that I love my job. So in my mind, not setting the record straight with him about being gay is lying. I cannot envision myself lying to this individual under any other set of circumstances, so why would I lie about this?

The truth is, I won’t. I will find an appropriate opportunity to fill him in on the missing information that will assemble a complete representation of my reality. I respect his ability as a mature human to adjust to the new information and reshape his opinions about me, if that is what he might choose to do. But I don’t think he will. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt about managing gay-out news. I think of it as little more than a slice of information that doesn’t affect anyone else personally. Oh, she has 5 dogs. Oh, she’s moving to a new house. Oh, she sent out that report with all those cool graphs last week. Oh, she’s involved in a committed relationship with another female.

Am I oversimplifying this perhaps just a tad? OK, possibly, but only to the extent that I'm not accounting for the element of surprise. Other than that, I don’t think so. I’m being straight here.

DIY (postscript)

The chandelier project is nearly complete, but the results were not quite as expected. While I did meticulously follow the directions for the Valspar porcelain crackle effect product, no crackles appeared. None. What I do have, however, is a chandelier with a pretty painted finish - white with a grey patina. It will do fine for now.

Kudos to Lowe's for making the Valspar product return completely effortless. Easy, done.

Next up on the list of DIY projects is painting two cute little tables that will go in one of the guest rooms. Primer and first coat has already been applied to the first table. I wll begin sanding the second table this afternoon and look into replacing the drawer pull too.

And the countdown continues...9 days to go.