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Crafting Things and Quiet Time

Random thoughts, Writing January 27, 2015 Comments: 2

I have been trying to find my way back to writer mode. Kitten is now 13 weeks old and the current challenges are normal kittenly concerns – don’t chew that electrical cord, not a good idea to pounce on a sleeping dog, unrolling the entire toilet paper roll is a bad idea. (He has particular trouble with that last one as the unrolling makes him so gleeful.) Now the vigilance is similar to parental, but not quite so intense. Still, I am struggling with getting my mind into a fertile writing groove.

I have had time to think about creativity. I always find it interesting to steer a conversation onto a person’s impression of their own creativity, especially if I consider that person to be creative in some manner. It is rare for the person to define themselves as creative. “Oh, no I am (fill in the blank with any number of adjectives)…” Creative seems to be something reserved for the application of lofty projects and considerable talent.

Crafty is often the chosen adjective, more likely if my conversation companion is female. Crafty seems to fall within the realm of hobbyist, putterer, occasional participant. Somehow people are more comfortable identifying themselves as crafty – or some word that directly identifies their chosen mode of creative expression such as knitter, woodworker – than claiming to be creative.

Both of my parents were creative, crafty – dad with woodworking and mom with sewing. I spent hours quietly watching each work on projects as a child. Dad also painted, made models, and drew. Mom also wrote, played the piano, and learned dozens of crafts over her lifetime. I grew up expecting creativity to be a part of life. Not only to admire what others did, but to participate in something creative of my own.

It takes time for quiet thought, this ability to create. Melville said that a writer needs to be in a ‘quiet, grass growing’ mood to write and I think that applies to almost any other creative endeavor. Time must be carved out of an overfull schedule, understanding of when the mind is most fertile for ideas to grow. It should be a block of uninterrupted time. Which is hard to arrange with a small creature in the house.

I am eager to get my writing muscles back into shape, but fear I will not be a regular poster for some time unfortunately.

So, what about you – do you consider yourself creative?

Number Stories

Job Search, Work Life October 28, 2014 Leave a comment

(Originally posted on 9/25/14 to a shared blog – http://blogtowork.wordpress.com/2014/09/25/number-stories/)

photo credit: Huffington Post

Math and numbers have never resonated for me the way that words do. I understand that they have a practical use – at least basic math – and appreciate knowing how to use them for things like balancing my checkbook. And I’ve always been happy to know people who really get numbers so I can ask them for help when things get beyond basic. It has only been in recent years that I have discovered an area of numbers that really is fascinating – statistics.

Statistics are stories told with numbers. Why didn’t anyone ever tell me? Not story problems like why did the train go faster from station a to station b or whatever nonsense. No, number stories – data meets the story arc. Very intriguing.

Why am I bringing this up here? Because job search is loaded with statistics, some of them quite contrary, and all of it worthy of some attention by job seekers. We all know about the unemployment rate, at least the national one that is regularly reported on the evening news. But there are state and regional unemployment rates. Rates based on ethnicity and age group, level of education and industry segment (healthcare, manufacturing, service, etc.). Oh and make sure that you know how it is calculated because that is a whole other facet of the story for this number.

What about the workforce participation rate? I don’t remember ever hearing about this one until the Great Recession. This one is the percentage of adults who are working for pay. This number is also at an all-time (read since this has been tracked, I believe starting somewhere in the 1970s) low and seems to be dropping. The story is in understanding better why it is dropping. And in comparing this data to the unemployment rate – if the unemployment rate is dropping, why is the workforce participation rate also dropping?

Then there is the job opening ratio – the number of posted open positions juxtaposed with the number of qualified applicants who are actively looking. This seems to be coming down a bit, there aren’t quite so many qualified applicants for each open position, but still too many for the comfort of each job seeker. This is the number that directly affects another number – the average number of weeks or months it can take someone to land their new position. Last year I know that this average was hovering around eight months.

There are plenty of other statistics, but you get the idea. These numbers aren’t just for the media and politicians to bandy about – there are lives behind each one. Stories of individuals affected, but also of how the information is collected and applied. The statistic isn’t the end of the story, but the beginning.

It comes down to your number story, which is quite simple. Back to basic math; one person who needs one suitable position. At least knowing some of these number stories can give you discussion points with Aunt Betty the next time she asks you again why you don’t have a job.

Things I did Instead

Random thoughts, Writing August 26, 2014 Comments: 2

I have a post that I have been working on for the past couple of days, but it isn’t ready to show yet. I have other half done posts that aren’t even that close and time says it is up, post time is at hand. Crap.

How many others have sat down to write today’s blog post and noodled on one thing until it petered out, and then fiddled with another until it seemed garbled? How often have you stared at the screen for a little bit and thought about how you got farther today than yesterday when you didn’t even bother to open up a new post and stare at the screen?

public domain image

When writing isn’t happening, eventually I stand up and wander about the house and:

Clean the tracks on the shower stall and the tracks on the sliding door
Water the indoor plants
Take inventory of the kitchen and bathroom for a grocery list
Pull out the lambswool tool and get rid of cobwebs
Go for a walk (and I’m even nice enough to bring my son’s dog along)
Collect quotes cut out from various magazines that have appealed to me and put them in the book that I keep for that purpose
Go through the pile of mail, flyers and papers that breed on the table
Ponder what to make to use up the 2 overripe bananas on the counter
Watch Sneakers or other dated, but still entertaining movies
Thought about going out to get plants for my 2 hanging baskets but then realized that wouldn’t appear to be writing in the slightest

And this is the post that you get today. What do you get done when you are ‘writing’?

Here You Go

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

Problem solving has been an important part of my job description for as long as I can remember. I like to put on the detective hat and sift through things to find the parts that are important, put them together in the right configuration and arrive at a solution. Sometimes it’s pretty straightforward to figure out and sometimes plenty about the situation is a bit ambiguous.

There is one thing about problem solving that got old a long time ago, but is part and parcel of the problem solver’s lot in my experience. It is the person who makes it a habit to hand over partial information, or fragments here and there in multiple email or phone messages. They want you to solve it, but they can’t be bothered to try to put anything together in any sort of cohesive single place.

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I’ll take the person who isn’t sure what they want or need kind of problem over the person who dumps a mess every time. Most times. Every once in a while I use the big mess as an excuse to be left alone to puzzle it all into something coherent. But mostly I see it as a different facet of rude. That person’s time is more important than mine. (Though I concede that there may be other ways of looking at it…)

Sigh. Focus on the boost that I hope to get upon resolution and not on the drudgery of slogging through the junk. This is why there are stories of the really good stuff one can find hidden in junk. Think of ways to prevent the junk dump from repeat offenders. Get caught up in the chase for the best solution.

Don’t be a here you go, dump and run person. Please.

A Subjective, Conditional Experience

Random thoughts July 8, 2014 Leave a comment

Surveys in women’s magazines have such strong allure because they can tell us, once we calculate the results, where we fall on the unique but still comfortably in good company range. Of course we want to be seen as a valuable and distinct individual, while not in any way too out-of-the-ordinary. We need concrete, objective definitions for the boundaries then.

But life doesn’t work that way. Plenty of us will do the normal things as we progress through adulthood – find a steady job, pair up and create our own family, settle down with a house and within a community. But the details will vary wildly and so those concrete definitions of the boundaries get complicated.

We don’t want to be ‘wrong’ – not make the wrong decision, or somehow not right and therefore not fit in. Except that survey is just based on someone else’s opinion of what is right, on conjecture. Or on an agglomeration of averages – a high percentage of people picked this school or that profession which must make them more right. But right for whom?

My mom came across Margaret Mead as she experienced college in her 30s and 40s – when I was in grade school and high school. She became enamored of Mead’s assertion that one should have a different spouse for the different stages of adulthood (Margaret’s way of proving her own path as the right one, perhaps?) all the while being proud of keeping her own long term marriage intact as she set about increasing her intellectual range.

Mom admired a lot about the unconventional choices of others, but she stuck to the conventional ones. Dad was conventional through and through. And they raised us to think for ourselves, with a high awareness of rules, mores and convention.

These ideas are much bigger than a single blog post, and this post has wandered in a direction that I didn’t originally intend. I keep coming back to these themes – value, self-definition, individuality – because they are rich and varied. I am fascinated by the conflict inherit between the draw of conventionality (and acceptance) and the determination of each person to be unique.

Fragmented Experience

Work Life May 16, 2014 Leave a comment

I was recently at the Salesforce1 World Tour in Chicago (they had Buddy guy play, which was awesome) and they used this marketing term while discussing customer experience and a light bulb went on for me. Fragmented experience – that got tucked away for future mulling.

Having spent a few years in customer service/care/experience (whatever the current lingo), I am sensitive to providing clear, accurate and timely information and assistance to customers in a cohesive manner. As a consumer for even longer, I am well aware of how many companies fall far short of this goal and I have had way too many fragmented experiences from the customer perspective.

(ATT – take heed! A couple of months ago I called them to ask a question and the automated message said to contact them through their website for faster service. When I hung up and tried that, the website told me to call them. Yes, really. Maybe not a fragmented experience per se, but I thought for a minute that I was in one of Dante’s circles of hell.)

So, what is a fragmented experience? Any time when you get only bits and pieces of what you are after using one method of contact and you have to expend a lot of effort to achieve your goal of all the information or service that you are after. Too many companies seem to do this on purpose to make people give up, which often results in a disgruntled customer who is paying more than they probably should.

I probably shouldn’t single out ATT for my fragmented experiences, but that is the one that is coming to mind just at this moment. I’m sure that I could gather plenty more with a quick poll of my friends. Sadly.

Plenty of companies in recent years have ignored the percentage of their employees who felt disengaged because the company saw no compelling need to address the issue. Some of the same companies have allowed fragmented customer experiences to be the norm because they knew inertia would allow them to retain a large portion of these disgruntled customers. What if that starts to change? What if younger, hungry companies start to show customers a truly better experience?

What is your most egregious fragmented experience?

I Can’t Make Me

Random thoughts March 17, 2014 Comments: 2

That moment when you realize that you are really an adult might just have something to do with motivating yourself to do an unpleasant task. We think of being an adult as finally getting to do all of the things that we were prevented from doing as kids. If I thought at all about all of the things that require prompting to do, I assumed that adults didn’t need that external push. I found out soon enough that I was wrong.

This topic is coming to mind because I’m trying to get up the energy to do my taxes. Bleh. There are some chores that I don’t like I have come to a neutral place on – I just do them and as long as things go smoothly, I don’t think too much about it. But taxes never seem to go smoothly. Just the act of gathering all the right paperwork is so tedious that it brings out the obstinate little pouty kid who shouts ‘you can’t make me’ over and over.

My sister used to have a friend who went to the trouble to run the vacuum throughout the house without turning it on in an act of defiant compliance. Even as a kid I thought that defied logic – if you are going to go to the trouble to run it over the carpet, how hard is it to turn it on? But I also get the defiance, the dig your heels in contrariness of the act.

Sometimes even as adults we need to have someone else make us do something – hence the need for many laws – things that will give us great benefit like eating healthy, saving for retirement, getting our teeth cleaned.

There must be a solid evolutionary reason why we are so obstreperous at times. I have found myself splitting into two minds – one is being terribly unruly and the other is consternated not only by the childish stand but also by the choice of the fit. Why-ever have I chosen to cling to this particular cliff?

How about you, what was the oddest situation where you dug your heels in?

Patterns, Collections & Repetition

Random thoughts, Work Life March 12, 2014 Comments: 2

What is it about a certain thing that makes us want more? It makes sense that we want to categorize things, like solving a puzzle by snapping the pieces into place, we know what we need to go and find based on the items that surround the missing piece. But most of us want to create combinations of things that are pleasing. Either by shape, size, color, texture, sound, usefulness – what have you.

Patterns can also tell us when something goes wrong and help us to figure out how to set it right again. When one customer tells a company that they are having a problem with a product, it might be assumed that it was an anomaly but when the same complaint comes up again and again then the company better get busy on that pattern.

I used to watch my mom sew clothes when I was little. There was a pattern to her whole effort; deciding what was going to be made, going to the fabric store to pick out all the needed items – which included the pattern to make the piece of clothing – preparing and cutting and then finally sewing. Some of the pattern pieces made sense right away – you could see it was going to be a sleeve or other recognizable part. But some of the pattern pieces looked quite random, they only made sense when combined with other pieces.

Collections can be useful or informative, say tools, or aesthetically pleasing. My dad had quite a few tools, some had been his father’s before him. The hand tools were made to last, worn smooth by years of use. My grandfather’s power tools were a bit scary since they were produced long before safety features had come into being. Belts and other moving parts were all open and ready to snag a finger or worse, not hidden behind plates and covers as they are now.

I think that I am in the majority in finding comfort in my collections and something soothing in repetition.

Chasing a Thought

Random thoughts, Work Life March 10, 2014 Leave a comment

I was driving a distance recently, which gives me plenty of thinking time. I brought my little recorder with me to capture any ideas for blog posts. And then, in the moment, I told myself that this one is so good I am bound to remember it. Ha.

I knew better. I really, really did. I would be well off if I had a dollar for every time in the past I wound up wanting to kick myself for not making some note about an idea worth pursuing later. Now I’m just sitting here trying to draw the right memory back out and not get tangled in the regret of what I should have done.

There is no excuse, the recorder was inches from me, easily accessible.

Sometimes I wonder if we do this to ourselves on purpose, set ourselves up in small ways to get tangled in foolish regrets? To prove the old saying that ‘to err is human’, to keep ourselves vigilant when the bigger opportunities come along – what do you think, I’m just spinning here?

Now I am left chasing the idea of a thought. Trying to play word association – sounded like, what CD was I playing… Not even a hint at the moment. Maybe I can get it back by pushing the quest to the back of my mind. I often get solutions that way, if I can distract myself with something else. I know that pushing too hard to remember something just pushes that something farther out of reach.

It feels like this happens to me all too often. I can be in one room and think of a couple of things that we need at the store and by the time I get to the kitchen where I keep the list, the things that came to mind have kept on going. So I find myself chanting them with every step.

How about you, what thought did you recently misplace?

The Unintended Time Commitment

Personal Growth, Random thoughts, Work Life February 28, 2014 Leave a comment

Do you know how long it takes you to do all the little things that you do through the course of a regular day? I think that most of us would probably be surprised at the time that can accumulate when we do incidental tasks. And the time that we spend on nothing activities while busy feeling harried and like we have no time to ourselves.

Back in my childhood my mom would have a habit of asking my dad to stop at the store – just for a minute – when we would be on our way home from a family activity. Groan. Mom would ‘run in’ and we would be trapped in the car waiting. If she ever really did come out with just the one thing that she originally went in for, I can’t recall. What I do remember would be the agonizing moment when she would come out with 2 or 3 bags of other things she realized we could use. She saw it as time saving, while we lost ages from our lives that we could never recover.

The TV is an old standby for unintended time commitments, and it has been joined by the internet. We never have to be alone with our own thoughts now, thanks to smart phones – but this also means that we might not ever be present in the moment with the person across from us at the table. But I digress.

I got the idea for this post when I had a run of mornings recently that the time on the car’s clock surprised me. I have a set time that I want to leave the bedroom, I thought I had hit that time but then somehow lost minutes between the bedroom and pulling the car out of the garage. What the?? In my thinking I left the bedroom, picked up my purse, put on my coat and went to the garage – about a minute of time. But, no, I was picking up and putting away things, looking for other things – eating bits of time here and there that I didn’t mean to do.

Famous words, “I’m just going to… before I do…”; suddenly that unintended time commitment, which was going to be a momentary distraction or a little filler, is something much larger. And dangerous.