June 23, 2012
Anne-Marie Slaughter’s article in the Atlantic, Why Women Still Can’t Have It All, comes at a poignant time for me. Warning: long read.
I mentioned that I’m struggling with some increased stresses in life, mainly to do with work, and it’s got my health in the tank. Or my health was in a death spiral and the stress means I can’t pull up out of it. Chicken, egg.
In any case. Slaughter argues that even she eventually, to her surprise, found herself making the choice to give up the high-powered government position to go back to (let’s point out still highly placed) job to be with her family because the juggle, despite the full support of her academic husband, wasn’t sufficient for their needs, in her estimation. So she can’t imagine how, short of being truly superwomen, women would be able maintain powerful positions and families and whatever else they wanted.
I felt a twinge: why does this argument have to be gender specific? Do not men also suffer sacrifices or the loss of being with their families when they’re off pursuing high-powered careers?
Not a few months, my feminist soul would have risen up out of my body in extra-normal outrage at the suggestion women couldn’t have what we wanted. But realistically? I don’t always think everyone and anyone can have this “everything” business if it actually assumes that everything means everything. I think it’s highly unusual for any single person to have a “whole” package unless they are hideously wealthy and genuinely blessed.
On the other hand, “everything” is bandied about very cavalierly as though we all want the same generic packages. Some of us are happy with messy homes, a pack of half mad pets and decent jobs that make us money whilst others need picture perfect roosts, don’t care about the job thing and whatever other combination of pieces and still others, well, just add water.
I did appreciate the fact that she went on to reframe the discussion to view the problem from the sociocultural standpoint: the fact that the (American) workplace isn’t family-friendly, that we don’t respect family or simply life outside of work. That our usual current business practice is the assumption that employees who are childless may be more reliable than (typically newer) parents, but that’s got to be recognized as a red herring. That in our political arena, the euphemism for being fired is to “spend time with the family”, and that is a demonstration of how devalued is the coin of the role of the family.
I always knew when I was in the wrong workplace when it came to these matters, even though I had no intention of becoming a mother any time soon. When employers pried about my plans to have kids, it was really easy to tell when they were simply making conversation or trying to determine whether I was a maternity risk; and their attitudes about performance and merit were equally shoddy.
My truly personal twinges are that I’m already feeling the pains of limitations. We haven’t yet made the decision about whether or not to have a family, and I had far greater ambitions for my career than where I am now. And yet, at this stage, just reaching into what might be called senior management, I find myself burning out.
My health is refusing to cooperate with any grand plans to be a high powered anything.
There are aspects of my job that I do really well and quite enjoy, but the new stresses of the growing pains haven’t settled yet. And even newer stresses that may or may not be permanent changes were recently piled on unexpectedly that ate up all my happy life balance, eating into any ability to take care of myself at a time I desperately need it most.
For all that I work to protect my staff and fight for their work-life balance, their salaries, their promotions, and I win, dammit, I have no shelter of my own in the face of adversity at the moment. And that lack is wearing on me.
I’ve accomplished a few things, in my time here. But it’s just a handful of things. Educated a few people a bit, brought some people up a few ladders, sent some to their next dream. But have I made a difference yet? I really don’t think so.
I find myself wondering: for so many years, I climbed and leapt the ladders and toiled for experience to rise to this level. It feels like I have achieved next to nothing, compared to where I’d really like to be. And now? Will I have to give up now? So far from having accomplished something real?
Is this it for me?
I’m not sure which targets I want to hit in life precisely.
To help. To make a difference. To secure freedom, security. To educate. To improve. To leave things better than I found them. To achieve. To “wear the white hat” if I can quote “Scandal.” To be happy. To live a good and true life. Maybe to have a family, which I would then need to support.
It doesn’t have to be at this job that I do most of those things. I do need to make a living somehow. But right now, it’s feeling like I’m going to be lucky if I can walk to the grocery store most days of the week. And that’s not particularly conducive to having anything at all, much less having it. And All.
—
Cloud of Wandering Scientist has a great discussion going on this very topic.
June 13, 2012
With every successive job, the people I work with drink more than the last group.
Socially, generally.
Some, sportingly.
A few, competitively.
I long ago realized I was never going to evolve some genetic mutation that would enhance my alcohol tolerance. Since I never much cared what people thought, I generally order my favorite non alcoholic bevvy when out with friends. I’ll try a glass of wine on the company dime if I’m feeling experimental (if I pick badly, the wine tastes like regret) and call it a night. After two, I’d call it a night in the middle of the day.
But this week has been a week to end all weeks in drinking. Alcohol has happened every single day for business reasons, and I’m grateful that this isn’t my chosen vice. This could add up to some real money if I had a tipple of something every night.
Wine country: some tastings free, a bottle of wine to share: $30
Glass of wine: $10
Glass of sparkling wine: $5 (thanks, Happy Hour)
Cocktail: $13
That’s all before tax and tip, so we’re horking up nearly $70 on beverages mostly for one alone. Then again, I’ve watched those professional drinkers knock back a bottle and a half of wine each so I might be wildly underestimating a normal person’s drinking habits and expenses.
I took PiC out for a really nice dinner for that, and we could have done it on half if it weren’t a restaurant on the Embarcadero.
I’m not saying drinking is bad and therefore choosing to spend on drink is bad, mind. I choose to spend on other things, like ceviche, french fries and oysters, when I do splash out rather than drinking because it’s not something I enjoy nearly as much as food.. Or books.. Or having a few really nice things or trips or money in the bank.
I’d just never done the math on a drinking tab before. And lots of people I know very much enjoy sitting over a few glasses and whining their hearts out. There’s nothing wrong with that. But I sure am glad I can be happy with one drink, and don’t care when someone teases me for “not keeping up”.
Is it your norm to go out for drinks with friends or colleagues when you want to catch up or unwind?
Has it ever been or become a financial issue or does something/anything else get cut first?
June 11, 2012
Doggle gets his own oversized water bottle for long road trips.
I started using it to refill his water bowl because carrying his water bowl to the sink while he tried to weave around my legs was dangerous, and the shoving his head in the bowl while I put it down bit was just annoying. A big thirsty dog is a pest. With the water bottle, I can very easily fill it, distract him with a treat (or the fake-out of a treat) in one hand, and pour water with the other, and voila! No accidents, jostling or cursing.
It’s worked too well. He now assumes that any bottle of water is his and follows random bottles like a bloodhound. It’s amazing how easy it was to change his behavior. Next up: drinking straight from the bottle!
Psychologically thwarting myself
If only we humans were so easy…. (though maybe if someone else were training me, it would be. And according to Sheldon Cooper, we are.)
Back in March, I’d made a few tiny changes to my regimen, slipping in small changes that would be easy, and set me up to make better choices because I was already making good ones.
The next steps though, aren’t so easy to get around and I’m thinking that it’d help if I weren’t such an annoying pain in my own patoot.
For example: I need to start seeing various health professionals, start physical therapy and trying
other kinds of health-related therapies on a
regular basis to deal with my pain problems. What do I do? Nothing. For weeks. PiC’s the one who schedules the massages for me because he knows I won’t have time to, much less deal with the actual medical stuff.
It took months to make a few minutes to pick up the phone to schedule a few starter appointments with new people and then I had to reschedule three times. I still haven’t gotten in to see them yet. *sigh* Next week.
The new strategy is to set my work schedule to be at home one day per week and block off a set time that’s not available for meetings or work. It’s just for me and appointments. Then I have to work around that.
I just know that I’m going to disrespect that time and let work bleed into it.
My problem, really, is that I function in two modes: 100% on work or off work. If I set aside an afternoon block, then I’m going to have trouble disconnecting at the right time. If it’s a morning block, then I’m going to have trouble disengaging from Lazy (I’m doing real life) Mode and going to work starting in the afternoon. Equally, I’ll hate having to work straight through the evening or I’ll just do it because I won’t be able to stop.
These things I know because I’ve had to do this on an irregular basis and it’s a struggle either way.
Honestly, is it so much to ask for one to get out of one’s own way?
I never have to trick or manipulate myself when it comes to money, but every single time, health or life stuff requires a monumental effort to manage my peculiarities. Is that the case for anyone else?
June 7, 2012
Of all the annoying …
My car was up for a smog check this year and we were starting to cut it closer and closer to the deadline as we ran out of weekends to take the car in. That drives me nuts. But what’s worse? The fact that I was pretty certain that I’d paid for the registration itself months in advance of the smog check. Once PiC took care of the smog check, I mentally filed it away as: wait for the new registration.
That was over a month ago. I should have received the new stickers a long time ago but I’d completely forgotten about it in the flurry of recent events.
And I didn’t actually submit the payment.
ARGH.
The State of CA was kind enough to wait until the last tier of lateness was past to send me a reminder that they hadn’t received my payment!
I was so sure I’d already paid! And if I’d checked anytime after he did the smog check the late fee would have been lower.
It’s going to cost me an extra $89 to register my car this year. This makes me a few kinds of grouchy.
*****
I had some not-insignificant income that had gone astray last year and I’d jumped through so many hoops trying to resolve the issue with no result.
It was so twisty and frustrating that I couldn’t think of another person to call or another avenue to pursue. But the idea of that much money just sitting there was so frustrating that I was literally waking up at night every so often thinking about it. $3000 is no small beans! And I’d already paid taxes on it.
It was for the stupidest of reasons, really, the check was misaddressed, but I couldn’t get through to anyone to get the check re-addressed. And for the silliest of reasons, I was reinspired to try to resolve it again: watching a tv show, one of the characters started calling to request that companies reissue old checks.
The very next business day, I tackled it again: starting with the phone number on the check and working my way through every single contact phone number I had in my emails for the company’s Accounts Payable. It took a couple hours but I made contact with a real person who actually processed a real reissue!
*****
I came home later that day to a surprise check for a hundred dollars from a product I’d paid too much for. What a good mail day.
June 5, 2012
Andrea at So Over Debt spent $4 on packing materials to get back $460 by selling back textbooks using Amazon’s trade-in store.
I used to sell back my books to the bookstore right after the final, literally in some cases, but there were texts that I held onto out of sheer, stupid sentimentality. And then some books were classics, so I held on to those, but eventually realized I’d not picked them up in years so I went through a variety of textbook buy back sites to sell to the highest bidder – always with prepaid shipping. Those paid cash back, not store credit, so that was always a boon to my checking account.
Katherine at Feather Factor interviewed Patrick Rothfuss.
I’ve actually known more about him as a person/ality than as an author (though, as a personality, it was probably as an authorial personality because how do you distinguish?) because I hadn’t had a chance to pick up his books. I did recently and devoured the Kingkiller Chronicles. And am sulking around waiting for the third installment because I have no patience whatsoever.
I particularly love that he threw in the bit about having 1 pair of pants and the subsequent lack of reaction to it. Or was my favorite the part about his moment of self-actualization, such as it was? Whatever, please, have a read of the interview, I <3 Patrick Rothfuss.
I also need to hit up that reading list again and keep myself busy while I wait. But I am loathe to spend more money on ebooks so I might go the library route while there’s no need for me to be highly portable.
Eemusings is asking what’s more motivating: paying down debt or saving up sums?
Same same for me. Can’t hoard if I have a hole in the ground, though, must fill it first, then pave it over, then build a house atop the hole.
Bella at One Sister’s Rant shares one possible reason not having Facebook is probably healthier.
I should keep on staying off Facebook. I’m too evil to be stalkerating.
May 31, 2012
My favorite thing to do while sitting at the airport is observe people over my book or while chitchatting on Twitter. Idly guess who is going to be on which flight and who might be on a layover or whether it’ll be a full flight and other mundane things like that.
On our outbound to Hawaii, though, there wasn’t much to see. Everyone in our area was destined for Hawaii and we all looked a little bored.
A woman behind me snapped her phone shut and said tersely, “Well, that’s it. There’s nothing else I can do.”
I heard an older male voice ask, “What? What’s wrong?”
She snapped, “He didn’t register for his AP tests in time. He can’t take them next month so now he can’t start school as a sophomore, he won’t get priority registration, and I’m going to have to pay $20,000 more for college.
I stifled a laugh and settled in.
The man turned away and asked, in a softer voice, “What happened?”
A teenage boy, voice clearly adolescent, sullen and resigned, “I just forgot.”
A flurry of wretchedness from Mom: “I can’t believe you! This is so typical, and I’ve had to run round making calls to all the administrators and the teachers for weeks to see if there was anything we could do and they can’t get him in so now I’m going to have to pay all this money because you won’t get those classes waived because those were class credits for every exam you passed and you won’t get priority registration because you’ll be starting school as a freshman, not a sophomore like your brother, and you’ll be fighting for classes just like every other kid.”
Kid attempts to defend: “My school doesn’t work like that!” Dad: “You’re missing the point!” Mom, again: “I have to do everything in this family and you guys just sit there and let everything happen to you.”
I had a few immediate reaction points:
* Kid, what do you mean your school doesn’t work like that? High school or college? Does your college not accept more than a few units from AP classes or does your high school do something weird? If the former you really might want to say something more clearly on that point because I know that happens (mine used to only accept 3 classes’ worth of AP units). If the latter, you might be mistaken. Either way, speak up with your actual words. Not with that slump-shouldered, vaguely formed defense that doesn’t really say much to anyone about your mental competence or your follow-through.
* Mom, quit being such a martyr.
* Dad, actual involvement might have been helpful, not that weird mediation thing you were doing.
* Kid might not have been missing the point at all.
* Sister, which planet are you wishing you were on right now? Poor kid.
Soon after, our flight started boarding, and this family was in the first group to board. We were the last so I had a few minutes to share the drama and quick chortle with PiC over the flight that kid was destined to have.
But seriously, after we came back, I thought: Wow, that was all kinds of dysfunctional.
To expand:
Mom – helicopter parenting much? If you “do everything” in the family, especially when things go wrong, no wonder your kids “do nothing” (if that’s even accurate) if they’re in the least bit inclined to be extrinsically motivated or are easily steamrollered. Just because one kid managed to get it “right” doesn’t mean all the others will, or do it the same way and I can’t imagine that doing it for them does anything but teach them that when they fail, you will fix it. And pitch a fit about it while trying to fix it. They won’t learn how to deal with failure and mistakes.
And then rewarding him with a trip to Hawaii when you had this situation brewing? Clearly from her comments, she’d been running around trying to fix this for weeks. It’s been years since I had to deal with this but I know AP registration had to be months before March. So, really? I don’t know about anyone else but no 17 year old kid of mine would be getting a lovely trip to a tropical island after being irresponsible enough to make mistake that big, not if I cared that much about it, family vacation or not. It clearly displays a misalignment in priorities: you can screw up that big but I will still give you these luxuries. Therefore, it doesn’t matter.
If that situation presented itself to me, my kiddo would be responsible for finding a way to late register and to earn the money for the community college he/she may be attending for a year instead, if not for the extra year in tuition and expenses now expected. And I would try to find a responsible adult for him or her to stay with under restriction, for the duration of our vacation, he or she would not be going on vacation. Because a teenager should be learning at that point I am not obliged to pay for your mistakes.
Nothing is terribly simple in parenting, I know, but basic attitudes wherein all the parents’ mistakes are their mistakes and all the kids’ mistakes are also the parents’ responsibility without ever bothering to teach kids culpability and agency seems to be a terrible thing.
***
I was made aware from a very early age that we didn’t have much money and even though my parents expected to pay for college, I needed to defray the costs. My parents had no clue AP tests existed; my brother was a poor academic so he didn’t take them but I found out about them as soon as I started high school and I assumed I would take them. I also sought and applied for low income grants to help lower test fees because we didn’t have the money for that either.
They didn’t have the knowledge, nor the time or inclination, to pick up after my mistakes. And I would have paid the price for them in the end when I had to pay for college. As it turned out, I saved myself a number of classes via taking AP exams. I wasn’t the highest scorer nor the most prolific. The most classes one could take and test was around fourteen by graduation, I think. But I did manage to eliminate a few basic classes that I would otherwise have wasted time and money taking.
***
The attitude reflected in that family dynamic is one I see repeated in the five or ten percent of the young people I deal with professionally. They expect to be prioritized and taken care of and anything that isn’t done for them within their timeframe is simply outrageous.
One staff sniped at me for not answering or then returning her call within twenty minutes because she wanted to get on the road, never you mind I was in back to back meetings. And the reason she needed to reach me so urgently was the result of not making the appropriate arrangements in the first place.
The same population also demonstrate they can’t conduct their own professional affairs, make their own decisions like whether and how to apply for promotions they’re not qualified for or mature enough for, yet are proactive enough to create rumors about not landing them because of one or another imagined slight, and heap all possible responsibility on others. These limited visionaries are gems.
The other ninety percent are, due to careful selection, pretty great and even care about protecting their jobs but we have to spend an inordinate amount of time to find those candidates. And even then, we have to teach basic sense.
It’s very much the opposite of these kids I could be proud of all day long. Look! Past performance IS an indicator of future performance!
Ed Note: This observational anecdote was simply a superficial people watching. My comment about the dysfunctionality, above, was in reference to the specific interactions that I observed and the effects I know to stem from that in my personal experience, no more, no less. Of course I know I don’t know these people outside of those interactions. I don’t presume to, nor am I suggesting that I understand any or everything about their lives beyond what they loudly paraded in front of me and everyone else. But I was interested by a slice of the extremely detailed life that was relevant to my personal and professional interests and commented on that.
If I were inclined to pass actual judgement on a family, I’d do that based on a longitudinal, anthropological study much like that of the members of my own family who have earned the nod of disapproval for a lifetime of poor behavior. But having lived with abuse, manipulation, and severe dysfunction, the circumstances of which have been discussed, dissected and understood from every possible means, I don’t judge easily or lightly.
May 30, 2012
I had forgotten what a difference a tailor makes.
Poking around an Ann Taylor sale, there was a blazer with great bones that seemed like it could fill out a hole in my professional wardrobe really nicely so I added it to my order, mostly to try on and hit the free shipping quota.
It was boxy and bulky. I was a bit shocked that, even sized as far down as possible, it still made me look completely frumpy, like a beanpole wrapping herself in a sackcloth.
My eye for fit and fashion remains unhoned, but it was such a terrible fit that I had to go back and check whether I had imagined how well a jacket should fit. Comparing the difference between the $100 tailoring on the jacket I wear now and this off the rack jacket is night and day.
I’m still mulling over whether this jacket is worth spending the money on at all, or whether I should keep looking for better base material. Either way, I am reminded once again of the value of a great tailor on things like this.
The rest of the box was a bit of a disappointment.
A much needed pair of black pants: 2 inches too long, saggy around the waist and probably too long in the crotch.
Decision: On the fence but I’ve been grumpy about alteration experiences with pants of late. Or perhaps mainly with the fact that I can’t get into my altered pants which has less to do with them than me.
A medium-interesting poly blouse: too wide, the armholes too large. Not sure that can be remedied.
Decision: It’ll go back, it’s not worth $40 plus alterations.
Bright green cardigan:
Surprise and a half, the cardigan actually fit well; that never happens. I’ve already worn it a few times. It went with me, experimentally, on a work trip, and cheered up my (as it turned out unnecessarily) wintry gear quite well. My only concern is that it might not be a long-wearing material.
Decision: Probably a keeper.
While the additional 50% off made most of the order seem nearly reasonable, the total still makes me pale and I’m pretty sure I’d feel better returning at least half.
This reluctance to spend is why I struggle with having a variety of good clothes but I’m also striving not to hoard too much Stuff either – I get closet claustrophobia. The claustrophobia isn’t necessarily a bad thing, it limits careless spending and mindless accumulation. But it is a bit of a toughie getting dressed of a morning as clothes wear thin. Seems like they just don’t make things to last anymore.
