My friend who lives by the river says now that she's started [reflecting on her relationship to her world] it is hard to stop. My interpolation. It may not be precisely accurate.
I know just what she means. I know her bent is a little more toward social justice. Mine might have been. I have had my moments of rage against the machine. But this is more introspective. Still once you get started it is hard to stop.
I'll tell you a small secret. I'm banking these a bit. I write when something comes to mind that I want to write about and then queue it up to post a couple of days after the last one in the list. Gives me time to reread and reflect, which may be the most useful part of the exercise.
A few friends read them and send me a note about their own reactions, sharing themselves. I can't begin to say how much I appreciate that. It seems to take this out of the realm of mental masturbation.
I have no idea how long these will run. There's not an end state to the inquiry. So anyway, thank you for reading these posts.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
You Make Mistakes
A long long time ago when I was just beginning my professional life in the career I have pursued for the last 35 years or so, a group of fellow professionals got started that I heard about and I asked a colleague about it and he hemmed and hawed for a bit and then said something like "Betty doesn't want you in the group. She says you make mistakes." The name is changed to protect the guilty.
Betty was a colleague I had done a little work with who I had not been particularly impressed with. She had seemed to put a lot of focus on how her clients viewed her and seemed, dare I say, neurotically concerned whether she was liked or not. I tried to talk with her about my exclusion, clear up the question, and she put me off because she "had a headache." That was that. Though the guy who was the message carrier later apologized and said that the incident had convinced him never to "play exclusion games again." One good outcome anyway.
Brings up two things: rejection and this business about making mistakes.
Rejection happens. And it does hurt. I think there is a cognitive thing going on. You take a dislike without really thinking about it and then you just look for things to prove you right, and because everyone makes mistakes it is easy to find things to make you right, Funny how the idea of being wrong so terrorizes us... okay, terrorizes me.
I won't say that what Betty said didn't hurt. It did.
And yes, I make mistakes. I make a lot of them. Some every day. There have been times that I thought I had a specialty in awkward moments. I've had some hurtfully serious lapses in judgment that I regret much more than any perceived injury from the Bettys of the world. None of that is going to get made right. It is what it was and isn't anymore.
Two things for this nqog: I'm wondering why my reflections are going to these "rejections" and "layoffs;" and I'm wondering how much it has to do with my current unease about where I am. There is some hurt there, and probably not about the events coming to mind. I think those things are just echoes. And I don't think catharsis is in the offing.
I want to be of use, and I don't want to be frantic about it. So I guess what I think I will do is try to be of use in the moment with whatever happens to be in front of me. Don't think I can do more than that.
Betty was a colleague I had done a little work with who I had not been particularly impressed with. She had seemed to put a lot of focus on how her clients viewed her and seemed, dare I say, neurotically concerned whether she was liked or not. I tried to talk with her about my exclusion, clear up the question, and she put me off because she "had a headache." That was that. Though the guy who was the message carrier later apologized and said that the incident had convinced him never to "play exclusion games again." One good outcome anyway.
Brings up two things: rejection and this business about making mistakes.
Rejection happens. And it does hurt. I think there is a cognitive thing going on. You take a dislike without really thinking about it and then you just look for things to prove you right, and because everyone makes mistakes it is easy to find things to make you right, Funny how the idea of being wrong so terrorizes us... okay, terrorizes me.
I won't say that what Betty said didn't hurt. It did.
And yes, I make mistakes. I make a lot of them. Some every day. There have been times that I thought I had a specialty in awkward moments. I've had some hurtfully serious lapses in judgment that I regret much more than any perceived injury from the Bettys of the world. None of that is going to get made right. It is what it was and isn't anymore.
Two things for this nqog: I'm wondering why my reflections are going to these "rejections" and "layoffs;" and I'm wondering how much it has to do with my current unease about where I am. There is some hurt there, and probably not about the events coming to mind. I think those things are just echoes. And I don't think catharsis is in the offing.
I want to be of use, and I don't want to be frantic about it. So I guess what I think I will do is try to be of use in the moment with whatever happens to be in front of me. Don't think I can do more than that.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Me? A Curmudgeon?
I have to recognize a curmudgeonly streak in me. Truth? More than a streak. I think I justify it in the name of past injuries and various reasons not to trust. It runs against what I think I am and what I aspire to, but it is there.
I think a big piece of it has to do with my relationships with women. From my mother onward I have always felt at the effect of women and not known what to do with them. I haven't felt that I fit well with the traditonal masculine ways of being either, so maybe it's just my introversion at root.
When I began my working life the workplace was primarily male and where there were women it was a caste system. The women were secretaries. That word isn't PC anymore except for a few senior ones who are very proud of the role. One worked for me in one place I worked. Early on in my career I did some writing and editing work for a research group, and after I had accepted the job "oh, by the way, you'll be managing the clerical staff." Five women. The researchers were all men.
More recently I have worked in two different groups that were predominantly women and where my immediate superior was a woman. I've had something like half a dozen women bosses in my working career. On the whole I have liked them better than the men I have worked for with a notable exception or two.
One of those exceptions managed a group of 17 of which three were men. When the inevitable reorganization came, none of the men were going to retain their jobs. The Director was one who pursued every opportunity to increase her title and compensation and never stopped complaining about the men she worked with as peers and superiors, or the other two who were her subordinates. I'm quite sure she had words about me behind my back. Oddly enough there was one other job to be eliminated, held by a woman, who was undergoing cancer treatment. Much was made of this and she was found a job.
At the time I was able to bounce and landed in a better spot with the same company working for a great woman boss. Alas I was on a list and still dotted line to the old department, and when the opportunity came I was laid off despite my own cancer treatments beginning at the same time.
So, life isn't fair. What was that book that was big in the seventies, made into a country song, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden?" And sexism is ugly no matter which gender is at the pointy end of the stick. I think probably I can actually choose whether to be cranky about it or not. And I can be really glad that I'm not starting out a career now. For guys it has to be The Exciting Game Without Any Rules. [Check out Mark Harris's "Bang the Drum Slowly."]
Curmudgeonly? Moi? I guess it has some entertainment value as long as it doesn't get out of hand.
I think a big piece of it has to do with my relationships with women. From my mother onward I have always felt at the effect of women and not known what to do with them. I haven't felt that I fit well with the traditonal masculine ways of being either, so maybe it's just my introversion at root.
When I began my working life the workplace was primarily male and where there were women it was a caste system. The women were secretaries. That word isn't PC anymore except for a few senior ones who are very proud of the role. One worked for me in one place I worked. Early on in my career I did some writing and editing work for a research group, and after I had accepted the job "oh, by the way, you'll be managing the clerical staff." Five women. The researchers were all men.
More recently I have worked in two different groups that were predominantly women and where my immediate superior was a woman. I've had something like half a dozen women bosses in my working career. On the whole I have liked them better than the men I have worked for with a notable exception or two.
One of those exceptions managed a group of 17 of which three were men. When the inevitable reorganization came, none of the men were going to retain their jobs. The Director was one who pursued every opportunity to increase her title and compensation and never stopped complaining about the men she worked with as peers and superiors, or the other two who were her subordinates. I'm quite sure she had words about me behind my back. Oddly enough there was one other job to be eliminated, held by a woman, who was undergoing cancer treatment. Much was made of this and she was found a job.
At the time I was able to bounce and landed in a better spot with the same company working for a great woman boss. Alas I was on a list and still dotted line to the old department, and when the opportunity came I was laid off despite my own cancer treatments beginning at the same time.
So, life isn't fair. What was that book that was big in the seventies, made into a country song, "I Never Promised You a Rose Garden?" And sexism is ugly no matter which gender is at the pointy end of the stick. I think probably I can actually choose whether to be cranky about it or not. And I can be really glad that I'm not starting out a career now. For guys it has to be The Exciting Game Without Any Rules. [Check out Mark Harris's "Bang the Drum Slowly."]
Curmudgeonly? Moi? I guess it has some entertainment value as long as it doesn't get out of hand.
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
The Boxer
It's the Simon and Garfunkel song with the verse: "In the clearing stands the Boxer... and he carries the reminders, etc."
Getting reflective about who and where I am in life and I find the mind does turn to old injuries. Get over it, you say? Well, yeah. Getting over it and not remembering are two different things. I remember a workshop I took once where one of the things the workshop leader talked about was injuries to the body, and how in most cases unless we do some pretty careful physical therapy, the compensation we do for the injury incorporates it more or less permanently in our bodies.
I suspect it is not much different for our mental processes. We do forget and we do let go, but we compensate and it changes the ways we react when we encounter situations that are reminiscent of the original injury. The mind as well as the body protects itself. Sometimes the way it does that doesn't help us a lot.
I went to a 50th high school reunion last year, despite having attended 4 different high schools. I picked the one that had been the best year, and probably in the long run made the biggest difference in my life. It was a good thing to do even though there were less than 3 or 4 people who I remembered and none who remembered me. I got a little tired of explaining that I had only been there for my junior year. I did talk with a woman who I am pretty sure I had one movie date to a French film with. She didn't remember, but curiously the man she had married who was there had been in my graduating high school class in a different school in a city a thousand miles distant. The best thing that happened was making friends with a man who shared work acquaintances from later in my life, and listening to him gripe that some of our classmates "didn't listen much when they were in high school, and still didn't."
I think he was carrying a little of the baggage I'm talking about. Those not so pleasant intereactions, like the patronizing forty-something manager laying me off at 61, along with two other incredibly competent colleagues, so he could take our jobs or hand them out to his friends. Okay, that one is a little hard to let go of. I guess the ones that fall into that category are the ones where the other is acting from something other than disinterest and clean motives and gets away with it.
It's Durocher's "Nice guys finish last," but it makes me ask myself a couple of questions. Did I really "finish last?' No. "Am I really a "nice guy?" Not always.
I think I need to go away and think about this a bit more.
Getting reflective about who and where I am in life and I find the mind does turn to old injuries. Get over it, you say? Well, yeah. Getting over it and not remembering are two different things. I remember a workshop I took once where one of the things the workshop leader talked about was injuries to the body, and how in most cases unless we do some pretty careful physical therapy, the compensation we do for the injury incorporates it more or less permanently in our bodies.
I suspect it is not much different for our mental processes. We do forget and we do let go, but we compensate and it changes the ways we react when we encounter situations that are reminiscent of the original injury. The mind as well as the body protects itself. Sometimes the way it does that doesn't help us a lot.
I went to a 50th high school reunion last year, despite having attended 4 different high schools. I picked the one that had been the best year, and probably in the long run made the biggest difference in my life. It was a good thing to do even though there were less than 3 or 4 people who I remembered and none who remembered me. I got a little tired of explaining that I had only been there for my junior year. I did talk with a woman who I am pretty sure I had one movie date to a French film with. She didn't remember, but curiously the man she had married who was there had been in my graduating high school class in a different school in a city a thousand miles distant. The best thing that happened was making friends with a man who shared work acquaintances from later in my life, and listening to him gripe that some of our classmates "didn't listen much when they were in high school, and still didn't."
I think he was carrying a little of the baggage I'm talking about. Those not so pleasant intereactions, like the patronizing forty-something manager laying me off at 61, along with two other incredibly competent colleagues, so he could take our jobs or hand them out to his friends. Okay, that one is a little hard to let go of. I guess the ones that fall into that category are the ones where the other is acting from something other than disinterest and clean motives and gets away with it.
It's Durocher's "Nice guys finish last," but it makes me ask myself a couple of questions. Did I really "finish last?' No. "Am I really a "nice guy?" Not always.
I think I need to go away and think about this a bit more.
Sunday, June 19, 2011
Father's Day Reflections
At least I was a better dad than my father.
Easy to say. My father, dead forty years now of complications of his disease, was an alcoholic who destroyed his own life and did a fair amount of damage to a few others on the way. I don't know if I loved him, just as right now I don't know if my sons love me. I know very clearly and well that he was one of the victims in his own family, a well-to-do upper middle class toxic stew of over-controlling mother, somewhat absent and possibly alcoholic father, which followed the ancient practice of primogeniture--the oldest son got all the goodies. My father was the youngest son and the twin of the princess of the family, the youngest of two girls.
Just for the record they are all dead. I can talk about them now.
Older brother pretty much seized everything including the virginity of his younger sister, but not the princess's--never the princess's. Three of the four grew up to be alcoholics, and I'm not entirely sure of the fourth. It was after all the era of the two martini evening drink. My uncle got his karma payback in the rudest of ways. His only son, a cousin only one year younger than me, used his father's shotgun to end his life at 26 in the living room of their newly built house. Twenty some years ago his daughter, his older child by a dozen years, told me about fighting her father off when she was fifteen. The raped sister became a promiscuous adult. The princess snagged one of her seven sisters college professors.
So you can guess Father's Day is interesting for me.
My own relationship with my sons is benign by comparison. I'm fairly close to the second one, and okay with the oldest who has become pretty conservative in his politics since he married. We've actually had a pretty nice recent visit and I received what is I think the very first father's day gift either of my sons has given me as adults. I usually don't even get a card, and seldom a call; but sometimes now there is a facebook post. I'll take what I can get. It's not like our family ritualized any brithdays or holidays when I was growing up, or with them when they were growing up. Getting divorced from their mother when they were 11 and 14 didn't help.
But thinking of my father... I have a picture of him as a man of about 28 or so at the helm of a sailboat, sheet running through his left hand, his right on the tiller, his eyes cast upward as if looking at the set of the sails. It may have been taken before I was born, certainly not long after. It's a way I like to remember him. A therapist I worked with once made an interesting suggestion after we had spent some time rooting through all of this family stuff, or at least what of it I knew at the time. She said "So who do you think taught you about love? It surely wasn't your mother." [We'll save Mother for another day. Let's just say she was on the tightly wired side.]
The question smacked me like a hammer between the eyes. It was true. One of the gifts from my father, amid all of the drunken and crazy chaos that he made of our lives, was his sensitive loving spirit.
I guess that's worth remembering him for.
[Note: I seem to be having trouble replying to comments so until I get that sorted out, please know that I appreciate your comments and will reply when I can figure out how to do it.]
Easy to say. My father, dead forty years now of complications of his disease, was an alcoholic who destroyed his own life and did a fair amount of damage to a few others on the way. I don't know if I loved him, just as right now I don't know if my sons love me. I know very clearly and well that he was one of the victims in his own family, a well-to-do upper middle class toxic stew of over-controlling mother, somewhat absent and possibly alcoholic father, which followed the ancient practice of primogeniture--the oldest son got all the goodies. My father was the youngest son and the twin of the princess of the family, the youngest of two girls.
Just for the record they are all dead. I can talk about them now.
Older brother pretty much seized everything including the virginity of his younger sister, but not the princess's--never the princess's. Three of the four grew up to be alcoholics, and I'm not entirely sure of the fourth. It was after all the era of the two martini evening drink. My uncle got his karma payback in the rudest of ways. His only son, a cousin only one year younger than me, used his father's shotgun to end his life at 26 in the living room of their newly built house. Twenty some years ago his daughter, his older child by a dozen years, told me about fighting her father off when she was fifteen. The raped sister became a promiscuous adult. The princess snagged one of her seven sisters college professors.
So you can guess Father's Day is interesting for me.
My own relationship with my sons is benign by comparison. I'm fairly close to the second one, and okay with the oldest who has become pretty conservative in his politics since he married. We've actually had a pretty nice recent visit and I received what is I think the very first father's day gift either of my sons has given me as adults. I usually don't even get a card, and seldom a call; but sometimes now there is a facebook post. I'll take what I can get. It's not like our family ritualized any brithdays or holidays when I was growing up, or with them when they were growing up. Getting divorced from their mother when they were 11 and 14 didn't help.
But thinking of my father... I have a picture of him as a man of about 28 or so at the helm of a sailboat, sheet running through his left hand, his right on the tiller, his eyes cast upward as if looking at the set of the sails. It may have been taken before I was born, certainly not long after. It's a way I like to remember him. A therapist I worked with once made an interesting suggestion after we had spent some time rooting through all of this family stuff, or at least what of it I knew at the time. She said "So who do you think taught you about love? It surely wasn't your mother." [We'll save Mother for another day. Let's just say she was on the tightly wired side.]
The question smacked me like a hammer between the eyes. It was true. One of the gifts from my father, amid all of the drunken and crazy chaos that he made of our lives, was his sensitive loving spirit.
I guess that's worth remembering him for.
[Note: I seem to be having trouble replying to comments so until I get that sorted out, please know that I appreciate your comments and will reply when I can figure out how to do it.]
Saturday, June 18, 2011
So What's the Problem?
I've been kind of indefinite about this age thing. You know I'm older than 65 since baby boomers start around 1945. I'll be 69 in two and a half months. Makes me feel really old to say it that way. I don't feel that old. Yet I know when my resume floats by a thirty-something recruiter even though it doesn't have sharp age markers, she probably puts it into the "no" pile. Not sure I blame her for anything.
When I was a thirty-something I could hardly wait for those fifty and sixty-somethings who seemed to run the world to get out of my way. I wonder if they felt like they ran the world. I sure don't, never have. Now it feels like the thirty-somethings run the world.
That downer Thoreau quote keeps floating through my consciousness--"the great mass of men lead quiet lives of desperation." I get it but it doesn't quite fit. Out of some rude beginnings I think I have had a rich life. Certainly I was blessed to have grown up at a time when things were getting markedly better for someone fortunate enough to be a middle class American. Nothing I could have or did want to do would have been enabled in any significant way by getting a winning ticket in the parent lottery or any other lottery. So the extent to which I feel the desperation Henry David talks about, it is about that general helplessness against the larger world which seems to be in the control of forces much bigger than me. And that can be an experience of any age.
I think part of the problem is that there are few road maps for this state of age. The rest of life is ritualized and time marked so that choice is lessened to some degree. I think I used to smoke to mark time as much as anything. Now it feels as if I have to create it all. The closest thing to a demand on my schedule is the class I have to teach two days a week and that will be over in a couple of weeks. It's not that I don't have things to do. My schedule isn't nine to five, but there is something almost every day and there's still the dog to walk.
Enough! This is beginning to float all over the place.
When I was a thirty-something I could hardly wait for those fifty and sixty-somethings who seemed to run the world to get out of my way. I wonder if they felt like they ran the world. I sure don't, never have. Now it feels like the thirty-somethings run the world.
That downer Thoreau quote keeps floating through my consciousness--"the great mass of men lead quiet lives of desperation." I get it but it doesn't quite fit. Out of some rude beginnings I think I have had a rich life. Certainly I was blessed to have grown up at a time when things were getting markedly better for someone fortunate enough to be a middle class American. Nothing I could have or did want to do would have been enabled in any significant way by getting a winning ticket in the parent lottery or any other lottery. So the extent to which I feel the desperation Henry David talks about, it is about that general helplessness against the larger world which seems to be in the control of forces much bigger than me. And that can be an experience of any age.
I think part of the problem is that there are few road maps for this state of age. The rest of life is ritualized and time marked so that choice is lessened to some degree. I think I used to smoke to mark time as much as anything. Now it feels as if I have to create it all. The closest thing to a demand on my schedule is the class I have to teach two days a week and that will be over in a couple of weeks. It's not that I don't have things to do. My schedule isn't nine to five, but there is something almost every day and there's still the dog to walk.
Enough! This is beginning to float all over the place.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
So What Have You Done Lately?
So I've always been told I write well, despite a split infinitive here and there. And, truth be said, I've been vain about that, still am. But I've never produced much substantive, or at least that I think of as substantive. I've had a parody speech printed in a small professional Journal, and another more serious article and an interview in the same journal, I've had two pieces of erotica published—one in a zine and another in a self-published (by a writing group) collection, I've had a series of short pieces published in a gaming zine, and a co-written article in a professional journal. I've gotten paid for copywriting and editing. Adding all that up it doesn't seem like much.
I'd had the thought that writing might be a good end of career or third act vocation. You know, make some money at it to make the retirement (???) richer. Well it's not quite worked out that way except maybe for the copy for funeral home voice overs. Trust me, it won't make me richer.
About seven years ago, laid off in a political cleansing at 61, I took a short hiatus after some surgery to take an intensive writing program on screenwriting. Most of my classmates were much younger, though a couple were around my age. It seemed like a bit of a flyer. Do you have any idea how many people are or claim to be screenwriters, and how few have actually had a film made? There is a substantial cottage and not so cottage industry that supplies to their aspirations. I know. I'm on all of their email lists.
But it appealed. I love good films and it is the medium of the age. What the novel was to the 19th century, the film is to our era. And I do like to write. Besides I've always had this on again off again relationship with the theatre, a sometime community thespian.
So now I am two completed screenplays later, and three or four other projects in some stage of writing, all needing work, especially the "completed" ones. And truth once again be said, I can't seem to write a lick except this damn blog. I'd sort of hate to think that this is it. I don't mind, but it feels a little like another pffft!
I'd had the thought that writing might be a good end of career or third act vocation. You know, make some money at it to make the retirement (???) richer. Well it's not quite worked out that way except maybe for the copy for funeral home voice overs. Trust me, it won't make me richer.
About seven years ago, laid off in a political cleansing at 61, I took a short hiatus after some surgery to take an intensive writing program on screenwriting. Most of my classmates were much younger, though a couple were around my age. It seemed like a bit of a flyer. Do you have any idea how many people are or claim to be screenwriters, and how few have actually had a film made? There is a substantial cottage and not so cottage industry that supplies to their aspirations. I know. I'm on all of their email lists.
But it appealed. I love good films and it is the medium of the age. What the novel was to the 19th century, the film is to our era. And I do like to write. Besides I've always had this on again off again relationship with the theatre, a sometime community thespian.
So now I am two completed screenplays later, and three or four other projects in some stage of writing, all needing work, especially the "completed" ones. And truth once again be said, I can't seem to write a lick except this damn blog. I'd sort of hate to think that this is it. I don't mind, but it feels a little like another pffft!
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
As the kids would say, "OMG!"
So here I am turning this journal into a blog.
What's with the title? It's what I could think of right now. Part of the reason for doing this is to put into words and reflect on the passage I'm making. A "not quite" baby boomer--no the other end, a pre-baby boomer--I'll probably not do a fulltime corporate gig again, but I want to work, want to be engaged, and probably never will be ready for the rocking chair.
There isn't a category for us. I'm a so-called "senior citizen," but I've never liked the term and don't feel particularly "senior" to anyone. Damn straight I'll take the discounts though.
There's life and talent left, but I'm pretty sure that I am beyond "having potential." Funny that. You seem to spend your life getting ready to "realize your potential" and then pffft! you're suddenly past that and you start to wonder what the hell you did. So I'm the "not quite" old guy now.
I've outlived both parents by a lot, but I'm still only a half dozen years or so younger than their now deceased siblings when they died. So I'm still flailing around inside of the question about who I am now. It's different than what I do, which right now is some pro-bono consulting work with a couple of non-profits, a little teaching, and writing copy for, of all things, independent funeral homes.
So, if you care to follow this, that's where I'll be going with it. Musing on making this passage.
What's with the title? It's what I could think of right now. Part of the reason for doing this is to put into words and reflect on the passage I'm making. A "not quite" baby boomer--no the other end, a pre-baby boomer--I'll probably not do a fulltime corporate gig again, but I want to work, want to be engaged, and probably never will be ready for the rocking chair.
There isn't a category for us. I'm a so-called "senior citizen," but I've never liked the term and don't feel particularly "senior" to anyone. Damn straight I'll take the discounts though.
There's life and talent left, but I'm pretty sure that I am beyond "having potential." Funny that. You seem to spend your life getting ready to "realize your potential" and then pffft! you're suddenly past that and you start to wonder what the hell you did. So I'm the "not quite" old guy now.
I've outlived both parents by a lot, but I'm still only a half dozen years or so younger than their now deceased siblings when they died. So I'm still flailing around inside of the question about who I am now. It's different than what I do, which right now is some pro-bono consulting work with a couple of non-profits, a little teaching, and writing copy for, of all things, independent funeral homes.
So, if you care to follow this, that's where I'll be going with it. Musing on making this passage.
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