Training story - sketch

      A while back, I had the opportunity to go to a very nice training that included a section on relevant case law. The teacher was amazing - super high energy, but not exhausting to introverts in the way that many high energy people can be - and actually got us excited about learning statutes and reading court decisions. At one point, they wanted to illustrate a couple cases that talked about communications privacy law, and asked for a volunteer to draw on the whiteboard at the front of class. Exactly zero people put their hands up, so, knowing I can at least draw a mean stick figure, I offered to give it a go. 

     The teacher asked for a simple house where you could see someone on the phone through a window, and then an old-fashioned phone booth down the street, and finally someone listening in on the call in the bushes nearby. Here's a reproduction of what I drew:

Calm down

      When I was young, one of my life goals was to be a calm, wise, old-soul type person who didn't panic when things went haywire - just assessed the situation and dealt with it, unruffled. Since that was a tall order for someone who was excitable and prone to overreaction back then, I broke it down into smaller bits like "take a deep breath first, then react," "consider your options, then react," and "consider that the worst option probably isn't the most likely, then react." By never taking out the "then react" part, I avoided feeling like I was not being true to myself, and (with some amount of backsliding now and then, of course) just kept working on it.

     I don't know that I had a time frame for that goal per se, other than a vague sense of "before I'm old and retired and don't have energy to do things;" it was just a "someday" idea. To my surprise, I realized recently that I seem to have attained it without even noticing. Work has been a little rough this year, starting with changing positions and feeling like an utter newbie where I had been the go-to person on the team, to finding out one of my goals would be delayed for a few years due to a pre-req I'd overlooked, to finally getting into a very rarely offered training and then falling sick the week before (I masked up and went anyway, because it's that infrequent). Each time, though, I realized that the urge to get angry and rant and rave or seethe about the injustice of it all just... never arose. After literally decades of internal work, my reaction was more a sigh of acknowledging the situation wasn't what I wanted, and then looking at how I could make it work.

     It is weird changing your image of yourself. You know, that quick boxed summary of yourself that you give when meeting someone new that you'll probably be around a lot. I knew I had a temper when I was younger; I knew that if something pushed me over the edge, I'd run the gamut of loudly angry, quietly angry, then simmering resentment until something overrode it, so I'd include that in my self-intro. It wasn't until someone on my new team pointed out that they'd never seen or heard of me being angry (it's not a huge office, so gossip gets around) that I realized they were right; I wasn't that person anymore. And while it's cool to see how years of work has paid off, and I'm a generally happier person overall, it's weird knowing there's a different you that no longer exists. 

Taking stock

     Over the past couple years, I have officially tested my skills in both French and Russian, and got a good enough score to officially use them for work. Two years ago, I started Japanese, because it's a fascinating culture that's very different from the other two, and someday I'd like to go visit without being a rude tourist. I'm nowhere near as fluent in Japanese as in the other languages (33 years studying French and 12 studying Russian), but I can pick things up when I watch anime or read manga. Each language is pretty heavily compartmented in my head, though, so I don't think about the aggregate of my skills, I just think "Oh, I speak other languages, a common thing." (Ironically, the word language is one I constantly mistype and need to use autocorrect for.)

     Due to conflicting schedules, I ended up taking two separate Japanese classes for two weeks recently, thankfully in the same book, but on different chapters. Inevitably, that meant I dropped the ball on one of them, since I knew I'd re-do that chapter in the other class in a month or two. To my great surprise, I still managed to pull off a decent grade on the final exam, and I mentioned this to a friend who also speaks other languages. Their response, while supportively over-the-top, made me pause and reassess where I am. (The next part may sound like bragging, but it's truly me being surprised at how my life looks from the outside.)

     I speak, with varying degrees of skill, four languages. FOUR (I tend to forget English because everyone speaks it, right?). Four wildly different cultures, grammars, and lexicons. I recently met someone who speaks three languages fluently and I was blown away at the idea, yet never once turned that lens inward. Add to that the other hobbies I dabble in, and I see why someone recently said "Of course you know how to do that. Is there anything you don't do?" And while the answer is yes, quite a huge number of things, it's probably good to stop and give yourself credit for what you do do every now and then. 

Staycation! (Long post)

      What do you do with an extra week or vacation and no burning desire to go anywhere? Clean, of course! Ok, ok, I know that's not everyone's answer, but that's what we decided to do. We have a 10'x10' storage unit that we've been saying for a while needs to be gone through, and over the winter, things had sort of piled up around the house, so we blocked off a random week to deal with it. 

     For once, I remembered to take before shots of the mess to be tackled, and it looks like a pretty typical storage unit, full of just stuff. 

     We packed for a full day excursion, and arrived Monday morning at 10am, set up a table, and started pulling stuff out. That weird thing in the middle that's wrapped in plastic is a weaving loom my mother got me quite a few years ago. It is absolutely my retirement/"when I have time and room" plan, but I'm not ready for it just yet, and we can't stack anything on top of it. 

Lesson learned

     Many years ago, I took a Russian 101 level class in spring, then immediately went to Russia that summer. Glossing over how that was a horrible idea, I was faced with two options for class in Russia: repeat the absolute beginner class, or skip the 102 level class to join the second year. Being the ambitious person I was, I chose the second option, and regretted it the whole time I was there. The 102 class I'd skipped had some incredibly vital lessons, such as how to conjugate verbs and noun/adjective declension - things you were (obviously) expected to have mastered by level 2, where they piled on the vocab to fill in that framework. Without that base knowledge, I struggled a lot with new concepts and just generally had a horrible time. 

     Fast forward a lot, and now I'm learning Japanese just for funsies. A local community college offered levels 101 and 102, but nothing past that. I looked around a bit and found a regional society that offers many, many more levels of instruction and even uses the same textbook for beginning levels as the community college classes. Sounds great, right? Naturally, there's a catch... the community college covers four chapters in the book per class, while the regional society only covers three. So my options for moving forward are:

• Review two chapters I've already done and have one new chapter in level 3; or
• Skip one chapter and move ahead with all-new material in level 4. 

     Ironically, the one new chapter in level 3 is... conjugating verbs, and noun/adjective agreement. And this time, I did not hesitate at all; I signed right up to repeat two chapters and give those verbs and adjectives all the attention they need. My dad has a saying he uses often - nothing you learn is ever wasted. I'd like to think I got more out of that horrible trip to Russia than just not repeating a language-learning mistake, but hey, if it helps me now, I won't complain too much. 

Silly sketch - Mooooood

      I miss making sketches; my perfectionism got in the way and made it a chore. So here, without excess fussiness or explanation, is a silly sketch. Enjoy.

Self-storage woes

    For a while, I worked for a self-storage company. One of the perks was a free 10x10 self-storage unit, which I very definitely took advantage of. The company was eventually bought out by another self-storage company, and we were told that the owners had negotiated some sort of deal where they couldn't immediately charge us full rate for our 10x10s, which was pretty nice of them. For the last several years, I have been paying less than $10/month for my space and trying to keep as low a profile as possible, so that no one noticed and did anything about it. Sadly, it seems my luck recently ran out. 

    In December, I got notice that my rent would be increasing to $60/month come May. Sucks, but in light of the heavy discount I'd been enjoying, I figured I'd just suck it up. Until I get a reminder that my February rent is due - I was pretty sure I'd paid a couple months ahead, because why not? I log in to check it and NOPE! I owe almost $100. What? They'd upped my rent to $117 without (I'd thought) giving me notice. 

   Naturally, I wanted some clarification here. I'd resigned myself to $60, but almost double that felt like a gut punch. Got on the website with their oh-so-helpful chat function and, after wading through the automated responses and getting assigned a real live person, was told that they couldn't do anything, I'd need to call this number. Which, of course, closed 7 minutes ago. Thank you, very helpful.

Intentional (plant) killing

      I have inadvertently killed a lot of plants in life. Sometimes it was hubris (see: orchids, cinnamon tree, etc.), sometimes it was neglect - ok, a lot of times it was neglect, because I'd get caught up in something else and forget about plants. A couple times, it was even legitimate disease/illness of the plant, like when a cherry tree contracted a fungal disease in the main trunk. Generally speaking though, I've tried to keep the plants in my care alive and thriving as much as possible.

     Last year, I met a woman at work who had a whole line of plants on the windowsill near her desk. She taught me a couple things about taking care of plants but the lesson that stuck the most was when one plant started really struggling despite no change in care, so she just picked it up and dumped the whole thing in the trash. I was floored. Seeing the expression on my face, she shrugged and said something like "It was old. It'd had a good life. Potted plants aren't forever."

     What a wild thought. It made me realize I have a tendency to want to hold onto things forever, even when it's pretty clear they should just go. 

     On a related note, I bought a houseplant a while ago that looked pretty, nice white and green streaked leaves, but was SO. DRAMATIC. Like if I was a day late watering it, it would literally droop all its stems over and act like it was horribly neglected, but then spring right back up once it was watered. Might be melodramatic of me, but I don't need that guilt in my life, so I made a conscious decision to kill it. I watered the plants around it, but not that one, and it slowly fell over and skeletonized without much fuss. 

     And you know what? I feel fine. I'll get something else to replace it eventually, but for now, it's just nice not having drama. 

Gratitude to myself

     I've debated writing here again so many times, and each time I thought how much work it took to write and draw each post here, and decided other things in life took priority. Also, looking back, I feel like a good chunk of this blog was trying to explain myself and/or write to make others happy, neither of which I want to do now. So to anyone reading this, or maybe just to myself, things before/after now have changed. Without further ado, here's what prompted me to resume:

     When I was young, I decided I wanted to grow old gracefully, and develop smile lines instead of frown lines. There are times I've fallen into fear of aging, fear of no longer being attractive, but the more I meet other older people with crows feet and big grins, the less I worry about those things. I am so grateful I made the decision to be happy, and worked hard to be where I am today. 

Plans

I wish there were a way to communicate the feeling when the words stop. When the constant turmoil of seeing, comparing, judging, assessing, planning, and noting for later just fades away, and nothing matters but the moment. Plans were made to bring me to this place. Obstacles arose, were assessed, and were overcome – or the plan was modified – so I could keep moving forward. Deviations from the plan were noted and accounted for. Research finished, knowledge assimilated, tweaks and redesigns slid into place. After interminable hours, weeks, years of constantly herding a million aspects of a plan into place – distractible cats that move at different speeds, or can only get started after other cats are done – the papers are signed, the hubbub is done, everyone leaves, and I want becomes I am. 

It doesn’t last long. Sometimes it’s interrupted by glee: that an impossible plan actually worked. Sometimes it morphs into space for long-denied emotions, releasing pent-up tears or pain so that healing can start. Sometimes it becomes a re-ordering of reality, fitting the new piece into a foundation that will support larger plans, and the brain is off again, making lists of new research, assessments, and things to consider. But the memory of that moment, that beautiful, silent, balanced moment when struggle unfolds quietly into accomplishment, is worth everything that went into it. 

Luck and Hard Work

      "Oh, they just got lucky, they didn't earn that."

      "That person put a lot of hard work in, they deserve it!"

Personal two cents, the truth is often somewhere in between. 

Thumbkin rhyme

      Randomly, my brain started singing the children's rhyme "Where is Thumbkin" the other day. There wasn't anything particularly pressing, so I sang it all the way through. If you don't remember it:

This is then repeated with the pointer, middle, ring, and pinkie fingers, each one bowing or nodding to each other on both hands.

     It occurred to me that this was more than just a children's rhyme to identify fingers - it was a story of how to properly check in on your introvert friends. The singer goes looking for their friends, says hello and how are you politely, and then leaves them alone because that's what introverts need! 

     Or maybe it's just a children's rhyme...

Peace

      She took a final look around the house and nodded, satisfied everything was in order. The laundry was done, folded, and tucked away. Every surface had been cleaned, and the trash bags put out on the curb. The fridge and cupboards were stocked with basic items, but nothing perishable was out. It had been a long, hard day of cleaning, and she was tired, but pleased. She stepped out the front door, locked it, and slipped the key under the doormat, then turned and walked to the road. She looked both ways before crossing, chuckling at herself for being so cautious on a quiet, residential street. 

     A five-minute walk brought her to the edge of the neighborhood, where the forest began. A walking trail, well-used, continued off the end of the cul-de-sac. She'd walked this trail many times, keeping fit as she aged, and she reminisced about the neighbors she'd met and gotten close to on the path. It was a popular route for introverts to wander, and she'd had many good, quiet conversations here with people who needed a non-judgmental ear to sort out their thoughts. 

In need of a break

Sabbatical, again

      As much as I complain about life being boring, one of the upside to boring phases is it gives one time and mental space to be creative. Life has become un-boring again, and I don't have the capacity to devote to sketching (which takes a ridiculous amount of time even for my simple sketches). Silliness will resume when life is no longer quite so "interesting." 

Mood

      Today's sketch was supposed to be about how other people view crickets (peaceful, calming) compared to how I view them (tiny, demented insects screaming nonstop (which is disturbing to anyone listening)). After six hours of finding absolutely anything to do other than try to sketch crickets shrieking, I decided to let it go and this came out instead:

Addendum to spring

 

Spring!

Weird times 2 - Thanks for nagging

      As noted in the previous post, we are going through the process of selling the company, and it's led to some weird situations. One such example is the grading permit for a site we recently built an expansion on. The building portion is open and operating, but the grading permit - particularly, the landscaping part of it - has not been finalized yet because, well, it's winter. It's very hard to prove to a county that yes, you did plant flowers in this spot when there's nothing there but bare dirt; they get a little suspicious and make you wait til things are blooming and demonstrably not dead. Unfortunately, our grading permit was set to expire in early April, and you have to submit a renewal request at least two weeks ahead of time. Part of my job as I-Dotter and T-Crosser is to put calendar reminders for my entire department when a permit is going to expire, so we have enough forewarning to decide if it needs renewal. 

     So two months ago before we knew about the potential company sale, I got the calendar reminder that the permit would expire. I don't actually go out to the construction sites, so I emailed my boss asking if we should renew. Silence. This is not terribly unusual, so I set a reminder for a week later. More silence. I set a reminder for three more days, silence; three more days, silence; you get the picture. By now, word of the sale had gotten around and I was very tempted to just kill the reminders and let whatever happens, happen... but that's not what my job is. So for three more weeks, I just copy/ pasted the "Do we need to renew this?" text into a new email and resent it to the boss every three days, figuring eventually, he'll get annoyed enough to give me a real answer. 

Weird times 1 - Open permits

      Our company is entertaining a purchase request - as in, selling the entire company to one of our competitors. Things have gotten a little odd as a result, because about 70% of the things that I and many of my coworkers do involve planning ahead for future projects or running reports on past numbers to anticipate how to change future numbers. With the understanding that we will likely not have to worry about that within the next month or two, it has left several people without much to do. Luckily for me, I suppose, my position as Paperwork and Executive Wrangler (not my official title) means that there is a whole tidal wave of other ducks that need wrangled in order for the sale to go through. One of my hats is I-Dotter and T-Crosser, and we have found literally decades of un-dotted and -crossed things that could heavily complicate the process. 

     One example that cropped up recently was that someone had applied for a sign permit at one of our sites back a few years ago but not closed it out. At first glance, this was not terribly out of the ordinary - our signage contractor has a habit of not finalizing permits, so we sent them a note to take care of it. After a bit, they replied that it was not them: they had called the county, who said it was a "cosmetic" permit, and gave the name of the person who'd applied. After some searching, we discovered it was a client who'd rented space from us at this location for all of one month, and whose internet presence revealed they are... a make-up artist.