FUCKING FACT-CHECK, PEOPLE.
Jesus CHRIST you all have higher educations and more experience than I have years on this earth.
But by all means, I am THRILLED to be here at something-past-six-o’clock, fact-checking and reassembling the Jenga tower you built based on FANTASY.
No Love,
Goddess
This time last year, a friend gave birth to a baby girl on the same day that a friend’s little girl got killed crossing the street in front of her school.
Today a friend is having donor eggs implanted so she can finally finally finally after years of trying have a successful pregnancy. And on this same day, another friend’s son was stillborn.
Remind me, when I want to light my own world on fire, of this post. That when there is something wonderful, there is also something terrible.
Either that means things aren’t that bad and and at least something truly terrible hasn’t happened. Or else things suck and maybe something magical is on its way.
‘Twas the last day of Mercury Retrograde (this cycle, anyway) and I’m not going to publish the post I wrote in a very heightened emotional state yesterday.
In any event, I had an epiphany on the drive in.
It occurred to me that, while I am very good at releasing rage and fear from my heart, sometimes all that gook gets clogged in my bloodstream. So, it never really leaves my body and travels back to my heart, where the cycle begins anew.
I had another epiphany as I continued to talk myself off the anxiety ledge.
I have no qualms or worries or fears about my massive workload. I know I’ll do it to the best of my ability. And I’ll do as much of it as I physically can before exhaustion or delirium sets in.
What I worry about is others.
I’m not going to qualify that. You can figure it out from my last 15 years’ worth of posts.
But honestly, without others disturbing me while I’m riding my melt … without others being honored or promoted or paid outside a level I may or may not personally believe they deserve … I’m not destroyed from the outside in.
The thing is, when I feel adequately loved, compensated and left alone to do my thing, that’s when I’m happy.
Trust me, I got this. Get out of the way and let the magic happen.
So, I’m going to focus on that. I will never have balance. But as long as I can have what’s rightfully mine, the body count can remain below 1.
I hope it says something about my character that the days when I SHOULD walk out in protest, are the days I stay the latest.
If I didn’t have a permanently puzzled reactionary look on my face, people probably wouldn’t recognize me.
Newman is Monday’s new name. Hello, Monday. *sneer*
It’s not a bad day. It’s just that everything in my home and personal life is up in flames, so really, any work-related stress is like a picnic in comparison right now.
I made a couple of proofreading oversights in a weekend edition. Now, nobody realized that I completely rewrote the weekend edition the week before or that I am the reason behind what I thought were some wonderful edits in this weekend’s. But I overlooked a couple of boneheaded mistakes, and that annoys the poop out of me.
But, for every fail, there is always the opportunity to rack up a win. Like when I just corrected a 30-year industry veteran’s ramblings because he insisted on using the letter C in an 18-digit mystery code when it needed to be a P. Twice.
There are days when I say I wish I were dumber so I’d automatically be more successful. But the truth is, I’d rather be brilliant. Or at least marginally observant so that I can still appreciate me even when half the rest of the world doesn’t.
Going with the “It’s a Small World After All” theme that defines Orlando, I ran into a couple of guys I met in Chicago last fall.
We laughed and talked and pontificated on the markets and the dying breed of customers we serve. We talked about how it’s a good thing we grew up in the field when we did — pre-Great Recession — because we actually had a chance to learn about the markets.
Now that we’re all too busy to breathe doing 40 jobs apiece, like my friend said, “It would be nice to do something different — you know, like learn what’s going on in the markets.”
Figures that the thing we love most is the thing we do least.
Good to know I’m not the only one with that complaint. For the past two years I dedicated at least one solid hour every night to catching up on what I missed.
Then two weeks ago I got so busy/behind/burned out that I decided to try to take that hour to relax.
I don’t know how to get back into that habit. I like that hour to myself. I think it’s a shame I can’t fit that hour into the workday part of my day … not without lengthening the day into that precious “hour to myself” that I’ve come to cherish so much.
The irony is so very high that a field that is dedicated to helping people to make money so they can better enjoy their lives, is famous for not giving its workers the time to enjoy theirs.
In any event, in more “Small World” news, they just hired my very first editor to work for them. I was so thrilled to hear that. He was my favorite, even after all these years. I like when great people get together. That’s when magic happens.
Of course, like I teased the boys, “Oh hey, more work! JUST what you needed!”
I think the reason I like to go to conferences isn’t what I learn about my field. It’s what I learn about the people in it. And that keeps me going, I think. The moral to this story is that letting Cinderella out of the castle every now and again is what helps her to return to it.
But I spent the last five days in a silent hotel room, no cat and no mom, and I LOVED IT.
Home again and understanding how people snap and murder their loved ones just for talking.
Remember that job that put me on the street for no good reason?
They did it to a friend of mine today.
As I said, welcome to the club. Most of us who are hiring managers in the field think MORE highly of people who have been exiled from that dump. That generally means they have real talent.
I find the timing curious, as the new publisher is up here in conference-land with me this week … and not there to protest or question it.
I’m hoping this is their last hurrah. Because I respect the hell out of the new guy. And shit is gonna change.
In the meantime, I need help. But I have the position occupied by someone who tries hard but isn’t a perfect fit. But as I’ve seen throughout the years, many organizational leaders (and perhaps I can count the shrew who let my friend go today) have a soft spot for those who have no business being in the jobs they are in.
Then you get someone like me or any of my friends (and you know I don’t hang out with losers) and we’re the ones who get put on the street for not reading an Ayn Rand novel fast enough, or not finding time in a 70-hour workweek to do a performance review, or making a high-level decision that doesn’t pan out.
Basically, the more talented you are, the more anxiety you should have that your current rent payment may be your last.
I got the call right after I attended a really good workshop on social demographics and investing trends. Interestingly enough.
I love the speaker. I will follow him anywhere. I’m on his mailing list. I would love to hire him to be a columnist. You know. If I had salary money to spare.
In any event, the speaker was saying how Americans are working fewer hours per week. That pre-World War II, most men worked Saturdays. Now with two incomes in the house, “Fridays are the new Saturdays” and you can’t find someone to answer the phone after 2 p.m.
Who the fuck ARE these people who are averaging 22-hour workweeks?
Another attendee said really? Her kids are working 60-hour weeks on the low end A) because staffs are small and B) employers will run your ass out of town if they can get cheaper labor that will outwork you.
DING DING DING.
The good news, if there is any, is that robots will be doing our jobs eventually anyway. So there is hope that I can see a workweek below 70 hours in my lifetime!
I should probably start writing this sort of stuff as financial guidance rather than stream-of-consciousness bullshit. Because I’ve been analyzing the jobs data today and I seriously don’t know how anybody is bullish on the economy.
At least, when not one of us in my group of friends — again, the overachievers — can say with 100% certainty that performance and dedication are the top factors in continued employment.
I mean, is it possible my friend deserved to be canned? Sure. Why not. I’ll allow for it. I don’t believe it for one second. Not when I suffered the same fate and still to this day assume that the idiot minions have a better shot at being promoted and running the company than someone who actually deserves to.
I have so much boiling rage right now. This ripped open the wound I barely stitched together after it happened to me.
Granted, that company has about a 110% turnover rate, so my friend will find — like I did — that nobody gives an actual shit what the reason for the termination was when we all know BITCHES BE CRAY in that company.
But when you’re the only one putting food on the table, and your livelihood depends on people who be cray, it really sucks.
It reminds me of my experience, too, in that I worked hard. And long. And often. And to what end?
I wish my friend well. I wish I could help. And I wish I never ever find myself in that position again. Because even though you KNOW bitches be cray, that doesn’t stop you from wondering — even if just for a moment — whether those nutty fuckers might actually have been right to do what they did to you.
And then when you return to your senses, you wonder in what kind of a fair world those cray bitches don’t get burned at the stake so they can’t destroy another human being again.
