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Anticipation Deficit

Random thoughts February 12, 2014 Comments: 3

Ten years ago this month much of my extended family was eagerly awaiting a planned trip to Ireland. Mom would travel with the boys and I, we would meet my brother and sister-in-law in Dublin. It was a wonderful trip and we still bring up highlights today, particularly poignant because mom died later that year.

Mom did most of the actual planning – she had been to Ireland twice already herself and she had more time. I didn’t really care too terribly about specifics, I had just always wanted to go. I did want to see a castle (and saw the outside of several, but we went in off season and most were closed, so a reason to plan a follow up trip one of these days).

There is plenty of research that gets touted that tells us anticipation is better for us than the actual event. Planning and preparing, imagining how it will be, having something other than or regular routine to capture our minds – this is powerful stuff.

I have been so busy slogging through the every day, and trying to catch up to a to-do list that is overfull that I haven’t given my anticipation deficit any thought until today. At Christmas my sister-in-law asked if this was the year for a family weekend at Wisconsin Dells since we have tried to plan one every couple of years. I had to nix it due to finances, darn it all. (There is something to be said for extending yourself for an experience, but also something to be said about getting yourself to a certain financial stability, too.)

I am good at planning for the practical both personally and professionally, but I am woeful at planning for enjoyable future activities. I get the idea to go somewhere and will start to read about the place, or I hear about an event that I probably would like; but then I get bogged down in the logistics or something else comes up to claim the money I would have put toward the experience.

When I do manage to get out of my regular routine, I am rarely sorry. But it is often last minute, therefore no boost from anticipation. Any suggestions to push through my planning barrier would be highly welcome.

Cures for the Bromidic in Deep Winter White

Random thoughts February 10, 2014 Comments: 3

Winter and increasing mounds of snow appear to have taken permanent hold on my part of the world as I dream of green and balmy breezes. Snow and ice are here for one season, thankfully since I find the incessant white and cold, the blanket of snow to be a blanket on my creativity. I know that I am not alone, plenty of arts facilities and events are reporting lower than expected attendance due to the weather.

I have been lucky enough to arrange little breaks from the winter bromide for the last three weekends and it has helped in a small way. I have met with three different friends once each weekend for either a meal and a movie or a trip to the symphony to listen to a tone poem that described warmer weather.

My urge to hibernate through most of January just fueled my winter grumpiness each time I had to venture out for work or errands. Hibernation meant that entertainment choices were limited to what is at hand at home. Same stuff, same four walls. Bleh.

I know that other people like to plan trips to warm places for a week or two while home is locked in cold and ice. I don’t know whether that would work for me, part of my thoughts would be focused on the required return to Nordic weather. Now, if I could figure out how to live somewhere else for this one season every year that would be ideal.

Ah, at least I have thawed my creativity enough to dredge up and dust off this old word, bromide, and use it in a non-pharmaceutical manner. I only recently realized that the word had alternate meanings.

public domain image, FDA

Another mental exercise that several of us have taken up is how we would be happy to box up all of this snow and send it off to the areas on the West coast that are in the midst of an exceptional drought. We have plenty to share. Each of our regions needing a bit of what the other has, each sighing ‘enough’ to the weather pattern we are in. Sadly, it doesn’t appear feasible.

I hope that everyone is able to find a cure or two for bromidic winter.

It’s on a Loop

Random thoughts February 7, 2014 Leave a comment

Recently, I went to go see August: Osage County with a friend and there are moments from the film that are still with me. The main one that is looping around in my head is about trying to find a generous place in the heart for another person. It feels as though Tracy Letts is speaking to me.

Couldn’t we all benefit from a bit more generosity of feeling toward each other? Both offering it and hoping to receive it.

Valentine’s Day is looming – a time to think of love in all its various forms, though the day seems to be mostly devoted to romantic love. Love and a generosity of heart can be one and the same or not related at all except stemming from feelings. It is possible to love someone and yet not have generous feelings toward that person – think of sibling relationships in childhood particularly.

public domain image

I’ve ascribed this idea of a generous place in the heart as benefit of the doubt, but I like this more poetic and visual notion much better. Am I open to another person, are others open to me – do we identify with each other as fellow humans and not just a means to an end. We are each certainly aware when we feel that our own needs, our own humanity are overlooked or ignored. How often do we look into our own hearts to measure the generosity that we hold there – even what steps to we take to replenish it?

This is one of those things, like mindfulness, that can hold great benefit but require vigilance to review and maintain. Or at least periodic thought, no recriminations with a slip into a stingier mode, but a redoubling of energy toward generosity.

The fine thing about enacting generosity in this manner is that it is easy to start. I can let the person with fewer items in front of me in a checkout line. Or send empathetic thoughts toward the parent with the unruly child in a restaurant. I can ask someone I know to explain their reasoning before I assign one to them. And so on.

There is a great deal about relationships in this movie that I will continue to think about while I test out this idea of a generous place in the heart.

Asking the Wrong Thing of Someone

Personal Growth, Work Life February 5, 2014 Comments: 2

Is a person failing at a task when they simply do not have the right temperament to do the task? (I’m not talking about skill here.) Or did the person who set them to the task set them up to fail? Granted in the all too frequent situation of job insecurity these days, many people stretch in one way or another because any job that brings in a paycheck is better than the alternative. But we’ll set that aside too.

There are people who pick up rather easily on tasks, even someone complex ones, and others who will be great at the task but must be given time to learn it at what would seem to be a glacial pace to that fast learner, but is just right. Both of these temperaments will excel at the task once the training is done – but if the more deliberate learner isn’t given the time to make the task his or her own they will probably fail.

public domain image

Most people work better when they know their boundaries – my job starts here, covers this area, and ends here; anything outside that area belongs to someone else. A person with a collaborative mindset will fit perfectly into a job with overlapping responsibilities, while a person who is best when working entirely independently will struggle. A person who likes narrow boundaries will implode in a situation with nebulous boundaries – particularly if they are also cautious.

When I’m interviewing a candidate, I like to ask them what sort of student they are – not were, but are. This will tell me a lot about their temperament. Will they ask me to better define the parameters of the question – do I mean back when they were in school? What do I mean by student? Or will they dive in with a canned answer that they are up for anything and love to learn? This isn’t a trick question on my part (I don’t like trick questions.) No, I want to make sure that I won’t be asking the wrong thing of anyone. I don’t like to be set up to fail, and I will make every effort not to do so to anyone else.

Failure is a part of life, and can be useful sometimes. But we don’t need regular and unceasing doses of it with no end in sight. Being in a job where you are asked to do something counter to your temperament regularly is quite wearing.

Have you been there, what was your solution?

Favorite Ways to While Away a Winter Day

Random thoughts January 29, 2014 Comments: 2

I think that my brain might be freezing up this long winter. I’ve tried to start a few new posts and they are all now waiting for me to find a way to finish the ones that are worthy and dispose of the ones that aren’t.

So perhaps I can at least conjure up a list of pleasant things to while (or wile, if you prefer) away some hours rather than wishing them away for some better weather:

A good book, a mug of tea, and my cozy fleece throw (in a fine shade of green to remind me of seasons to come)
A marathon session of Sherlock on Netflix
A leisurely soup and sandwich lunch with a friend
Slowly and calmly putting a space to rights (and not thinking about how long it may stay that way)
Learning something new, or getting better at something
Perusing a map or atlas – to remember a trip, plan one or trace a historical event
A game with my sons and daughter-in-law, perhaps Settlers of Catan
A hot as I can stand it bath with great scents, some music and a good book or magazine
Normally, writing would fit on this list…
A look through old photo albums

Wikipedia snip-it of Sherlock

I think that I need to add a new craft to this list perhaps, or revisit an old one. Maybe getting some ideas from people in the blogosphere will help me out. What would go on your list? If you put any outdoor activity on the list, do give a compelling argument why, please.

In the Grip of Winter Exhaustion

Random thoughts January 25, 2014 Comments: 8

When I was about 12 and enamored with the idea of love, my mom told me about a book that she had enjoyed which had a love story but so much more. The book was Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freedman and I still remember the depictions of isolation in winter. That feeling struck me when I read the Little House series by Laura Ingles Wilder, too.

Most of us humans weren’t built for winter endurance – mentally or physically. Oh, we smile about how pretty and sparkly the snow and ice is around Christmas because its new and fresh and we’ve had ages to forget that there will be months of the stuff to slog through. And some people have a passion for skiing, skating, or snowboarding; perhaps sledding and a bit of snowman building that gives them reason to hope for the stuff. Not to mention school-child wishes for snow days.

The majority of us just push through and try not to give in to winter exhaustion. The simplest task – an errand to the store, say – becomes a greater chore and drains more energy than necessary after wrapping up in layers, scraping the car, fighting through all the other drivers who’ve forgotten how to navigate this white stuff, finding one of the few remaining parking spots that hasn’t become a snow mountain, only to find that the items that you need are among the new shipment that is stuck on a truck up some impassable mountain pass or other and due who-knows-when.

Quite a distance from that isolation that I read in those books, but still in our modern way greatly affected by the elements. We control so much in our modern world, but nature rules in these months and we humans find our way through. And we fight to keep our schedule the same regardless of the season or weather, where those earlier folk adjusted their activities to accommodate the calendar.

The objective of this Daily Prompt was to teach, but sometimes the most important aspect of teaching is to get us to stop and think. Why do we do what we do?

This post is written in response to The Daily Prompt: Teaching.

Return to Doodling

Personal Growth, Work Life January 24, 2014 Comments: 3

I used to doodle. Mindless scribbles in my school notebooks. Once I hit the working world, I made myself stop because I didn’t want to be seen in a meeting with my doodles – I didn’t think that it would enhance any image of professionalism. So I’ve taken to twirling my pen (and trying really hard not to click it repeatedly) in meetings instead.

Now seeing this news clip, CBS News Sunday Morning: The Higher Purpose of Doodling I might just go back to my doodling habits. Perhaps this will keep my mind present in the room when a meeting goes on. I have found that even when I am interested in the topic, or it is in some way pertinent to me I have a terrible time keeping my thoughts in the room after about 20 minutes or so – which bears out research that I’ve read about adult attention spans.

How will I balance this return to doodling experiment with perceptions of professional behaviors? Hmm, not sure just at the moment. Hunching over my paper so that no one can see doesn’t seem like a viable solution. Why, exactly, any of us feels that we would have to explain our note taking habits in the work world is an entirely different blog post. Regardless of any of my actions, I cannot direct, control, or shape someone else’s perceptions of me.

Perceptions of doodlers is a main theme in the hyperlinked video clip – and how we should reconsider them. Why do we perceive doodling to be such a bad thing other than we can all probably recall a moment or two in our school days when a teacher called out someone for doodling instead of paying attention? Engagement takes on many forms, as does disengagement.

The other main theme is the point that doodling serves a purpose beyond occupying your hand. I find it very intriguing that researchers found better detail retention in the doodling group when playing a tedious voicemail.

How about you, do you doodle?

‘We Already Tried That’

Personal Growth, Work Life January 22, 2014 Comments: 2

I fear that these words have passed my lips at some point in the past and I imagine that they fell on the ears of the listener about the same way they fall on me when I hear them. Shut down, denied, rejected. Unintended enthusiasm killer.

I got together for brunch recently with some friends, we used to be co-workers, but now all work in other places. This phrase came up and stuck with me because it is a common thing to hear in many offices. New people mean new opportunities to examine old process and tasks in a new way. New people could be new to the company or new to the team with prior experience at the company in a different role.

When I first heard ‘we already tried that’ in response to something that I said, I was rather crestfallen and rolled the rest of my comment back up, folded my hands and clammed up. Now, I redouble my efforts to find a way to introduce the idea in a manner that will be palatable to the listener. Or if I overhear someone else get shot down, I try to help them get an opening to complete their thought.

My thought isn’t so much that we should take action on the idea itself as much as it is about giving people the opportunity to speak up and participate in solutions. Or the process for developing solutions. Maybe we really did try exactly that and it didn’t work at that time, in that manner. But that isn’t the point (plus this is a new time and maybe with a couple of tweaks the idea is valid again.) Maybe it didn’t work the first time for some sub reason that would no longer affect the outcome.

Imagine if we hadn’t allowed any new versions of Edison’s inventions? (public domain image)

The objective, purportedly, is to have engaged employees – ones who participate actively in creating solutions to the situations that invariably come up. This phrase is high on the list of reasons why employees stop participating and just trudge along. It is in my DNA to keep putting forth new suggestions, but this isn’t true for many people. Who knows how hard someone had to screw up their courage to put forth an idea to be told ‘we already tried that’ before the whole idea was out of their mouth?

We already tried to shoot down ideas with ‘we already tried that’ and it failed miserably.

A Highly Developed Sense of Duty

Personal Growth, Work Life January 17, 2014 Leave a comment

I came home from work last night with a blog post idea floating around in my head. This isn’t it, I hope to retrieve it later and have it show up on this site at some point. No, I walked in thinking I would just start in on the computer but the dishes called out, and a load of laundry too. Once those things were no longer disturbing my sensibilities, I didn’t have it in me to write that other post.

This post is about the sense of duty that drove me to work on the chores first. Is it a gene, a cluster of brain cells, or something else entirely? Why do some people have this sense practically oozing out of their pores and others wouldn’t recognize duty if their existence depended upon it? And then there are the majority of people who have just enough to keep them from scampering off to Tahiti and instead make a life which includes a considerable dose of responsibility.

I believe that I’ve written about this before. And I will certainly write about it again. Dad was big on fulfilling duty first. His words and actions showed us daily. I wish that I had more of this trait when it comes to keeping my house in good shape, but I have plenty of ways that I relentlessly apply my energy to duty first.

“Let’s have faith that right makes might; and in that faith let us, to the end, dare to do our duty as we understand it.”
~ Abraham Lincoln
(public domain image)

A sense of duty is a very helpful thing to develop and maintain – I am thankful to have it. However, I have spent the last few years seeking to balance this duty with other important things too. Time with people that mean something to me, opportunity to gain new experience, pleasant pastimes.

Now that duty has been met, I need to get my head back into the right frame for that other post. First I will wish for you a nice balance of duty and leisure in your weekend.

Show Me the Way to Catch Up

Personal Growth, Work Life January 15, 2014 Comments: 2

Fourteen or so years ago I remember talking to someone and telling her that I couldn’t shake the uneasy feeling that I was forgetting something. She helped me to talk through general things with my house, job, and kids so that we figured that there wasn’t anything glaring. We were operating on the assumption that my feeling must be based on something concrete – an actually overdue or nearly due to-do.

This conversation sticks in my mind because it marks the start of my current stage when I have learned to live with this feeling as a constant companion. Because I am forgetting things, those little things like all the personal, car, house maintenance that we should do to keep things tip top and running smoothly. And all the little things at work that would make other things less reactive.

We imagine that past generations had it a bit easier – indeed they didn’t have things like 401k accounts to rebalance, or HSA accounts for that matter. The types of insurance constituted a shorter list, and so lessened the bewildering amount of paperwork, rules and the like to track and decide upon. Working on the car didn’t require specialized skills or tools – diagnostics was what the doctor did when he depressed your tongue.

Public domain image, Bay Bridge

No matter, I would just like to break this feeling of falling behind. Knowing that I am not alone in this is some comfort, but not relief. And hiring an assistant would be amazing, but not in my budget. Friends and I often compare areas where we are ahead or behind each other – a little competition to spice up the endless race not to fall further behind.

(The title is hummed to the tune of “Show me the way to go home”… I’m tired and I want to go to bed…)