Category: Uncategorized (Page 153 of 188)

right now i’m really enjoying my job. i haven’t said that in a while, but it’s true. i’ve even been placed on an account that has been quite messy, but thanks to a great team and account manager(s), i have only hated about 2 days of it. not bad out of 2+ months! it helps that i’ve been getting some positive feedback from the client i’ve been working with… you can try to act like it doesn’t matter, but when you do something well and others acknowledge it, it really does mean something. it feeds the fire, even if it’s just flickering at the moment.

some things are changing at the company and i think we’ll see some huge improvements on the initiatives to create a better work/life balance. nothing is ever perfect and clearly there will be times to work more, but i do see change coming. so there have been several danglings of full-time carrots in front of me, which has led to a lot of soul searching.

the past few years have caused me to need to work more. but now we’re on the brink of jj’s graduation and a full time job, so it becomes a question less of needing and more of wanting. for a little while i haven’t really thought about what i wanted career-wise, other than stable health insurance. i’ll likely take my time getting back into work after #2 arrives simply because we can spend lots of quality time together as a family this summer before jj starts the teaching life. but come fall, then what?

prior to about 2 months ago, i figured i would resume working about 2 days a week – enough to supplement the income a little (perhaps enough for a Y membership?!) and get me out of the house. i know i’m not built for 24/7 mommy-at-home life. and now that i’m enjoying work, i’m prone to wonder if i could really enjoy working like i do on a regular basis.

however, working as a full time staffing associate has never been my aspiration. i’ve started to ask myself the bigger questions, like “where do i want to be in 5 years?”. could i be happy doing what i’m doing now in 5 years? perhaps. is it what i feel called to? not necessarily.

i do have several things on my list that i’d love to get cooking. this year i will dive into the 30-and-over pool and i don’t know if i want to spend that much time swimming in my current role. maybe it’s time to take a few steps that would get a what-if rolling into a ball of could-be.

i feel almost caught in a limbo of safe vs wow. i could do what i’m doing and be safe. it’d be a nice income, it would be enjoyable, i could be good at it. then there’s the other stuff… the dreams. they could be disasterous. i could find out i’m no good and that i don’t know what i’m doing. it could pan out into nothingness, both in terms of “success” and income. and i wouldn’t be one bit suprised. and honestly, there’s nothing wrong with safe. if you know me, that’s where i usually live. i’m happy with safe, comfortable. i know it well.

or it could be something wow. it could light a spark in me much brighter than what’s been burning the past 3 years. it could fulfill me and put life and energy into parts of myself that i didn’t know existed.

or it could even end up about as inspiring and exciting as working a 40-hour/week job that i’m good at. i could look back at it and say, “all that work, and i could’ve been just as happy doing what i started with.” but i’m sure miley would chime right in with some crecendo about it always looking for another mountain.

i think there probably needs to be some reflection, along with discussion with my counterpart. we’ll need to think of big pictures, family goals, and the greater good. it’s just a lot to consider right now. i still have 3 loooong months of being pregnant left, so there’s plenty of time to weigh the options. but it’s something that can begin to feel kind of heavy if you let it weigh you down.

thanks to a 2-day training and a feedback “roundtable”, i’ve been thinking a lot about the nature of my current job, and in vocations where you deal with people in general. i think i narrowed it down to 2 basic principles. these have been adapted from youth ministry, believe it or not, but i have yet to find a service position where they’re not true.

1. repeat yourself at least 3 times if you want them to think you mean it.

2. they have to know you care.

i’m trying to decide if there’s really anything else out there that could make you more successful, but i haven’t come up with anything. seriously. give clear communication and a lot of it, and help people realize that you do it because you care: this has greater impact than checking a box off a to-do list.

i sat through 16 hours of training (albeit helpful) but those hours could be narrowed down to the 2 rules.

did i miss anything?

i suppose i can blame the books i’ve been reading. i’ve been doing a lot of reading, even more so than usual it seems – i’ll get a couple of books in between book club monthly reads. i’ve done several with story lines surrounding not just nazi germany but post WWs. i highly recommend The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein, which probably laid the foundation for the thoughts that emerged tonight as i continued with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

the invisible wall as a love story between a christian boy and a jewish girl that was quite forbidden. quite literally, one side of the street was jewish and the other side christian. throughout the entire book you see the seperation the groups maintained and the many mechanisms they employeed to keep it that way.

a tree grows in brooklyn is a story of a young family growing up in poverty in (you guessed it) brooklyn. tonight there was a story of the 7-year-old girl going to the doctor, sans mother because she was working a janitor job, and the distaste of a doctor and nurse talking of her dirtiness and disgust while not understanding that she could hear them. in the dialogue of medical personnel, over and over it was “they” or “them”. “can’t they at least wash?” he says.

wow, 3 paragraphs, and i’m not even close to getting to the point. but at least you got 2 free book summaries and recommendations.

how many people, or even groups of people, have been hurt by the words they, them or their? and what makes them they? why aren’t they we? the 2 sides of the street shared a street. how was it not “our street”? the nurse grew up in the same neighborhood as the dirty girl. how was that not “our children”?

it seems these words antagonize differences. go to any sporting event involving kids or teenagers and you hear how the other team, they [started practices before it was allowed] [use kids of illegal age] [brought the referees on their bus]. we’re brutal in the way we yell and discuss the actions of one of the players, yet somewhere on the other bleachers sits his mother. to her, he’s not “they”. he’s “we”.

for a while at work i noticed a lot of “they” language being used. they, the decision makers, don’t care. they, the ones doing a different type of work than me, got better hours. i can attest that life at work wasn’t as good. but once we start thinking in terms of we, things get a little better. we are hoping things turn around. we are looking for ways to make it better.

i was watching oprah one day when she was interviewing women around the world, and because it was a hot topic then, oprah asked a quesiton about universal health care to each woman in each area (all of the countries had universal health care). one woman was a doctor and made an interesting statement, no matter of your politic – she said, “it’s not an industry to us to take care of our sick.” the industry part is another post. but “our sick”? when’s the last time that our country acknowledged those who were ill or needed medical attention as our own and not as a they, those with health problems, those that need to find ways to get care they need?

there are lots of theys in my life, i’m sure. i remember, when i served as a youth director, it was quite clear. i’ve never had a natural gravitation toward teenagers. i wasn’t one of those youth directors who just had a great teenager-connection device. i’d go to cluster with other youth directors and hear stories and generally be annoyed with kids. but my kids? no way. sure they did things at time that would keep me up at night, but because they were “mine” there was a little more grace to be given, a little more effort to be made to make things better. somehow, when at cluster events, i felt like mine were different, they were better.

i just wonder, what it would be like if i found ways to make all my they’s into we’s? (and how exactly does one use proper puctuation to pluralize plural pronouns?! without apostrophes, it’s “wes”.) i wonder how i might treat people differently if they were (see! there i go!) part of my we. i mean, we all have a common we. we’re just people, trying to make it. we all want the best of things and are doing what we know as best to try to make that happen. we were all made in the image of a God who loves us all. God loves that they just as much as he loves this we. so maybe we should too.