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:

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. 

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. 

Inadvertent life lessons

      My 10th grade Biology teacher, Mr. Ofsiani (more commonly called Mr. O), was one of those neat teachers that stick out in your memory. His entire classroom was covered in interesting things, from comics clipped from newspapers and hung on the walls to a skeleton hanging from the ceiling to the live iguana in the back of the room. He loved his subject and got excited about doing hands-on experiments instead of just going through the textbook and running tests. He was short, bearded, and completely bald, but he was also vibrantly engaged with life.

     The first quarter of his class was devoted to plant identification. Looking back, I'm not sure how he got this past the school board, but we essentially spent the first two and a half months of school filing into the classroom, taking roll, and then filing out again and going for walks in the woods next to the school. We did, technically, learn plant identification and I believe there was even a test at the end that gave you leaf shapes or bark pictures and had you give the name of the plant, but I learned more than just plants.

Sketches from 2019

      For stupid cat reasons, I have not slept more than an hour at a time for the last two days. I do not have the patience right now to make a full sketch, so here are two little doodles I did for a drawing class back in 2019. The first one was an assignment to play with texturing; I started at the edges but then got bored as I worked my way in, and turned it into a basket. Which of course then needs something looking in at you. Are they friendly humongous sloths that will free you from the trap you fell into, or horribly cute monsters that have come to feast on their catch? Who knows? 

Paranoid or cautious?

      In the past, I've had my fair share of catcalls, harassment, and being followed while out in public. I've learned to deal with it and present myself as not-a-target, to the point where I feel fairly confident walking around on my own, even after dark. The neighborhood we're in now has always felt safe, so as the days grow shorter, I've just kept walking at my usual time, despite it being definitely nighttime. Three events have happened in the last couple months that make me wonder if I'm being paranoid, or justifiable cautious, and if I need to do research on what sort of personal protection items are legal in this area. 

     The first event seems fairly innocuous, and I didn't really pay it much mind at first. I saw another person walking along the sidewalk I'd turned onto, so I popped out into the street to pass them; they were in regular clothes and clearly having a nice stroll and I was in workout gear clearly getting my cardio in. Parking along the curb is very common here, so I didn't really keep an eye on the person as I passed. For safety reasons, I don't have headphones or music playing while I walk, so I clearly heard the "hey, excuse me, are you working out?" when I'd gotten about 6 feet past them. I turned my head and politely answered in the affirmative, and the guy replied something along the lines of, "I thought so, 'cause of your outfit. It's clearly doing your body well, keep it up!" 

The Undead Amaryllis

We're making some changes to how things are stored at work, so I figured it would be a good time to get some of the personal stuff I'd stored there back home where it belongs. I pulled all the folders out, dumped them in a zip drive, and started unpacking them at home, where my filing system is a bit more involved than just by year. Ran across the below blurb I wrote for a friend/(now ex-)coworker's blog, and figured I'd share, because it still amuses me.

My erstwhile and enthusiastic coworker has, I think, a bit of an elevated opinion about my gardening skills, which tend more toward the “let’s see what happens… hey, it worked!” side of things than the “I know what I’m doing, and it worked because of that” end of the spectrum. Still, I will admit that things do tend to work out for the most part, such as when we received an amaryllis bulb at work. 

Typically, when contractors or consultants send us Christmas gifts, it’s along the lines of chocolate, cookies, or treats – consumables and temporary items. For whatever reason, one of them gave us an amaryllis bulb in a pot two Christmases ago [2015]. I claimed it for my desk (logical, since I’m the only one not sitting next to a window, very smart), and we got a month or two of lovely red flowers out of it. 

Self-awareness

     One of my first memories of being aware of how other people perceived me was in second grade. Our class was going to do a recording on a poem to put in some larger school project (I don't recall those details), and we all put in a good amount of time memorizing this short poem and wanting to be the one who'd record it. I remember thinking I should definitely be chosen, and was rather disappointed when I wasn't. I asked why not, and the teacher decided to show me instead of just brushing me off. She recorded me reciting the poem, and played it back... and I discovered I could not properly say the letter R - it came out as W every time.

     I remember instantly going from pride at reciting the poem perfectly to chagrin that I couldn't speak properly and somehow had been utterly ignorant of the fact. I honestly had no idea - my speaking sounded exactly like everyone else's to me in my head, but the mistakes were patently, painfully obvious on the recording. Thankfully, I don't recall anyone being mean about it, but I was still aware of everyone looking at me and definitely did not like it.

     I found myself going to the school's speech therapist once a week after that. I recall walking down huge (to me), empty hallways on my own, partly proud I was being trusted to find my own way there and back, and partly ashamed that I had to go do this thing that no one else did. I don't recall how long it took, but I was determined not to be held back by this, so I read sentence after sentence and poem after poem about rowdy red roosters and rolled my Rs (because hey, at least that was better than saying W) until I finally figured it out. I got some little certificate of completion from the therapist and was told I didn't have to come back the next week.

     It's a minor memory, but it was the first time I realized that other people might not see me the same way I see myself. Every so often, I check in with myself and see if my actions (and others' reactions to me) match what I want to be. Sometimes that involves being okay with others thinking I'm odd - ok, often it does - but every now and then I realize something is out of whack and I need to re-examine those little habits you tend not to notice. Often enough that I'll keep doing it, just in case. 

Drafts - Work training

     As the year/ decade gets closer to the end, a lot of people are doing a 10 year look-back, mostly on Facebook and with pictures, comparing where they are now to where they were in 2010. While I'm not particularly interested in how I've physically changed, I decided to look back through old drafts that I started but never posted. Here's one from when I started my current job, in 2014 (updated to current time).

     Let me preface this with the insight that I had a LOT of jobs when I was teens/20s. I worked various roles at a couple Renaissance Faires, did temping/ office work in a wide variety of fields and locations, drove a range of trucks from pickups to 18 wheelers, food service, IT, customer service... basically I wasn't 100% sure what I wanted to do, so I just tried everything. Most of those jobs were entry level/ low skill, so training was on-the-job if at all. Every single job, barring trucking, went like this at the beginning:

Scaring myself

     For those of you who are familiar with the Meyers-Briggs test, I am an INTJ, though a number of the criteria are close to balanced. For those of you not familiar with it, that means I tend to be introverted, intuit things and see the big picture, value objectivity, and plan things well in advance. One of the habits of INTJs is that we tend to have only a few close friends, who are often INTJs themselves.  So it came as no surprise to me that, when I took a job that required making collection calls (phone communication being typically anathema to INTJ folk), the response was overwhelmingly along the lines of "Holy crap, WHY would you do that???"

     For what it's worth, I even asked the same question of myself, because I hate talking on the phone.  It's impossible to use or gauge reactions to nonverbal communication, such as body language, facial expressions, gestures, and the like. Instead you have to rely on tonal inflections, which are very easy to fake. There is also the problem of communication lag, or feedback, or bad connections, which make conversations awkward and halting, situations that INTJs typically avoid like the plague. Last but not least, you're talking to people you don't know (awkward), about fairly personal issues (money and medical history), and there's a good chance that, once they figure out who you are and why you're calling, they're going to hate your guts and be rude just to get rid of you. Why would someone choose to do that?

Attempt #1

     I've been trying to write something a little longer than blog posts over the past month or so. And while I usually like to keep things to myself until I feel I've perfected them, I'd also like to make sure I'm on the right path (or at least, not making too many huge mistakes) before I get too far. If you've got some time (since the story is already over 23 pages), please read and give feedback on what I've got so far, posted here. Thank you!

Keep it short?

     One of my French teachers once told me that, as a graduate student, she was given a very specific writing assignment. First, the prof had them write a five-page paper about a topic of their choice. After being turned in and graded, they were given back their papers and told to condense it into a 3-page paper. The same thing happened again: break it down into a one-page paper. Then three paragraphs, one paragraph, five sentences, and one sentence. The last stages of the assignment were to get the ideas conveyed in the original five-page paper across in five words, three words, two words, and finally a single word. What an incredible challenge.
 
     That story has stuck with me since, and I finally realized the importance of it this week while (where else?) in the shower. I've been wanting to get back to writing stories again for a while- not these blog posts, but actual "make up a world and everyone in it" stories- but I'm having troubles writing. Remembering my teacher's story made the light go off in my head: Our society has trained us to be as succinct as brief as possible. Granted, many people are not effective at it, but we all still strive for it. Hurry, hurry, be brief, get to the point, stop beating around the bush, summarize, use abbreviations, shortcuts, text speak, hashtags, keep it less than 160 characters.

Best friends, for 15 minutes.

     A couple months back, my gentleman and I bought an automatic laser kitty toy to keep his cat busy. She is decidedly of the portly persuasion, and we figured that we'd be able to turn the toy on while we were busy, and she could chase the laser around for exercise. There was a bit of a problem at first with getting it to sit correctly so it didn't either go all over the wall and furniture (where she'd either ignore it or claw the furniture to pieces), but a convenient roll of duct tape serves to keep the thing balanced nicely. While it's a little loud, it's nice to know that kitty can play on her own while we get things done.

     Kitty has learned that the "click!" of it starting means there's a red dot to play with, and comes running. She's oddly shy about batting after it when we're around, but since the toy has a 15 minute timer on it, we just turn it on, walk away, and let her at it.

     The other day, I happened to be just one room away while the toy was working its magic on kitty, and I'd tuned out the noise it makes. I was pretty engrossed in what I was doing, and was slightly disoriented when the noise suddenly stopped. It took me a second to realize the timer had been tripped, and the toy was turned off. I was about to get back to work when I heard a single, soft, sad little "meow…" of kitty realizing her playmate had vanished again.

     Who knew an automated laser could have such an affect? I went and turned it back on, and she promptly ignored both it and me. At least until I left the room. 

Testing a style

     I've been working on something in my off time, and while it's still in its infancy, I'd be interested in getting some feedback. Click here (it's a blog post, safe for work, no popups or noises) to check it out. Thanks!

Pictures vs words

     A gentleman came in to where I work recently, and struck up a conversation while he was waiting. After a while, it turned to the fact that I used to drive tow trucks, which means I try to drive more safely, having seen the results of reckless (i.e., wrecked) diving. That, of course, set off a chain reaction in my head which lasted most of the way home and ended up here.

     They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and while that may be true, I would argue that those thousand words are neither cohesive nor compelling. Consider this picture:

Looks ugly, huh? You can tell it was a pretty bad accident, and people probably got hurt. If you have enough time, you could probably tell the picture was taken in a dirt lot where other wrecked cars have been bought and stored. If you're a connoisseur of tow trucks, you might even be able to tell how it's hooked up to the truck that's dragging it. BUT. There's a huge story that you're missing out on, and that's where the human element comes in.

Job search, part 3 - Interviews

     I suspect that I am not alone when saying that interviews are stressful. You have a limited amount of time, sitting in a room with strangers, to explain how you work and how you can directly benefit them while trying not to sound like a braggart or a liar. While there is some prep work that you can (and definitely should) do, such as researching the company website and re-reading the job posting before you go so you know what, specifically, they're looking for, it's still being put on the spot.

     For the longest time, I approached interviews as one would an interrogation: prepared to answer any question, and slightly suspicious of ulterior motives help by those in charge. It wasn't until I moved out to Colorado and went to an interview while tired and jet-lagged that I realized I was doing myself a disservice by approaching it thusly. In that interview, I just acted like myself, said what crossed my mind, and actually took one of the interviewers to task for asking insulting questions in a snide tone of voice. I was later informed that he did that to everyone, and only people who stood up to him and didn't take his crap were hired. I don't think that's a particularly great way to conduct an interview, but it helped me realize I needed to change my view.

FTP 55 - Weird

     Remember Disney's version of Alice in Wonderland? While it wasn't quite faithful to the book (what movie ever is?), I remember being amazed at how many little details of weirdness they put in it, and wondering why Alice didn't want to stop and check them all out.

But realistically, when life gets weird, sometimes all you can do is keep going, try to keep your head above water, and hope that you reach the end before your ability to deal with it all runs out. Accept that life is bizarre, shake your head that it's happening to you, and keep going. Eventually, things will return to normal, and you'll have some fantastic stories to tell. 

FTP 51 - Home

     Finally getting things together, but even when it's not finished, a home means a lot to the people living in it. What stories are you making, wherever you are now?

Still moving in

     Still moving in and getting settled; my computer is standing in the middle of a room full of boxes,  running on a wireless internet connection. I'll get things sorted and get back to writing eventually, promise...

     In the meantime, a short story: when I was working at the tax office this past spring, we had a temp worker in who would try to guess what I was humming (I tend to sing or hum when I'm doing menial tasks in order to keep my brain occupied). I started humming a familiar tune, and he finished it off with "POP, goes the turtle!" I stared at him, confused, and he said, "what, that's not how it goes?" In order to commemorate the moment when this guy finally caught up with the rest of the world, I drew this on his whiteboard:

Cheers!