Dorie Morgan’s Rising Up

I have a lunch date with my mother tomorrow at a nice little restaurant near my office.  Its her mother’s day present.  I know there probably should have been something sentimental and wrapped but it just was not going to happen.

I have no idea what to buy for my mother.  She is the second most difficult person I have ever met when it comes to gift giving.

Who is the most difficult?  My mother’s mother.  Don’t laugh - she’ll never tell you what she wants for her birthday but she could publish a book on everything she doesn’t want.

I know I could probably go to Hallmark and find some sort of decoration that says “You’re not just my mother, your my friend” but I’d also be lying.  My mom isn’t my friend - she’s my mom.  I don’t need her to be my friend.  I need my mom to be the adult in the relationship and be sober just in case Brian and I ever end up in jail.  My friends are the people who help do the dumb things that get me in trouble.

The other downfall to the trinket idea is that it is just more stuff.  Sometimes stuff is nice.  Like when you get married or have a baby.  But my parents are talking about downsizing and I already went through that process twice with my grandparents.  The worst part of downsizing is that you discover that there is a house full of trinkets from Mother’s Day and anniversaries and just because gifts.  Three rows of stuff in the basement are boxes and boxes of items that my grandparents didn’t want to see thrown out or given away.  Now its sitting in the basement.  And it isn’t helping anyone.  Its just taking up space.

And really, all of that is stuff you don’t need.  You can’t take it with you when you die.  You also can’t take it all with you when you move into a retirement community.  And what happens to all that stuff?  It ends up in your kids’ basements until someone finally throws it out. 

I’ve been trying to give my mom gifts that are experiences.  And if I do go to the mall and purchase a gift, I take Brian with me.  I need to make sure that he’ll want the gift back when my parents downsize. 

Over the past week, I’ve been involved in the interview process for my replacement.  Its a tough process - on one hand, I want my replacement to have different things to offer to my organization than I do.  On the other hand, I want my replacement to be my mini-me. 

I am very conflicted.

I’ve tried to keep my interviews interesting.  Our interview process is fairly extensive and I don’t want to be remembered as the boring person.  I want to have interesting questions and an enjoyable conversation.

My favorite interview question to ask is “If money was not an issue, what would you do with your life?”. 

For me, this is the easiest question to answer.  And a great opportunity to showcase my passions.

For my potential replacement, I was hoping to hear excitment and passion.  I expected to hear about their hobbies or their dream job.

Instead, I heard confusion.

I heard an individual tell me that they only knew what they would want to do for about a week.

Another individual told me that they would travel.  They knew the first two countries that they would go to but wasn’t sure after that.

Another individual told me they had no idea.

I know what I would do.

I would start a contracting business with my husband where I could make people’s lives better one house at a time.  I would spend time recording all of my grandparents stories so I could share them with my children.  And my children’s children.  I would build a studio in my house and create beautiful things.  And when I was too tired to do anything else, I would find a beautiful beach and an amazing book and I would be still.

Know what you would do in an ideal world.  And be excited about it.  If you would want to be a stay at home mom or dad, say so!  But tell me why you would want to do that.  Tell me about your excitement for your family, your fascination with small children, your desire to make the world a better place.  If you would want to work at Disney as an actor, tell me.  Tell me why you always dreamed of working in an amusement park or your secret love of a Disney cartoon.  If you always dreamed of being a lawyer or a doctor or a teacher, speak up.

Have a passion.  I don’t care if that passion has anything to do with the industry or the job or your past experience.  I just want to see that you can be excited, that there is a spark in your life.

So let me throw the question out to you: If money was not an issue, what would you do with your life?  And is that what you are doing now?

Brian and I just spent our weekend in Granville, Ohio also known as the home of Dennison University.  My cousin, Liz, graduated on Sunday with a degree in Biology and a minor in Chemistry.  And since I’ve know taken it upon myself to market her resume, please email me if you think this bright young woman could be an asset to your team.

Of course when we arrived on campus, I got lots of questions along the lines of “Does this remind you of your college experience?” and in case you are curious, answering with a prompt “no” killed many conversations.  My cousin Pete, who is much better at relating to my parents than I am, responded yes and thereby took his place as the golden boy for the weekend.

The truth is Liz’s college experience had nothing to do with mine.  While the demographics for our respective institutions may appear to be very similar, our intents while in college were very different.

Liz was in college to succeed.

I was in college to learn.

I’m not saying that my cousin didn’t learn during her four years in school.  I know she did.  But she also made a lot of “right” decisions.  She worked hard.  She earned much better grades than I did.  She was an All-American Soccer player (sadly, I was unable to convince her to lick Jon Stewart, who was presenting, when we went to receive her award).  The most athletic thing I did in college was organize a streaking down academic row.

College served such different purposes for us.  In college, I needed to rebel.  In college, I needed to make really stupid decisions.  I needed to make my mistakes and do things on my terms. 

In college, I was able to embrace learning from my mistakes, whether those mistakes are academic or personal.  And I’ve been able to use those mistakes to set myself up for professional success.

At the end of the day, your GPA isn’t printed on your diploma.  No one has ever asked me in a job interview about what my grades looked like in statistics (I failed it twice).  I needed to learn how to survive without my parents to make choices for me. 

In college, the most important thing I learned was how to pick myself up from failure.  At this point in your life, if you don’t know how to fail what do you really know?

When Brian and I first decided to get married, I hated my job.  Actually, I probably hated 90% of my life but it was easier to focus that energy at hating my job.  But I felt stuck.  I needed the money too much to quit working but I didn’t really have the time to devote to a job search.  And my job made it next to impossible to take time off to interview.

I spent a lot of time crying because of it.  But crying didn’t help me at all.  It didn’t give me more money.  It didn’t help me find a new job.  All crying did was make me hate my job even more.

I was stuck.  And I got to the point of stuck where I didn’t know how to become unstuck.

But this is where marriage steps in.  I’ve been extremely blessed by the support and the liberation that my marriage has given me.  Brian picked up my bills so I could quit that god awful job and hunt for something I truly loved.  That might not seem like a big deal, but when Sallie Mae owns you to the tune of 1k+ each month, having a stretch of freedom is amazing.

A lot of times, we think of marriage as commitment and divorce as liberation from that commitment.  But what if we changed the way we look at marriage?  What if we start to think of marriage as opportunity?  What if marriage liberates you from your fears?  By changing our views of the institution of marriage, are we capable of changing its impact in our lives?

The fear of failure is still there for me but at the same time, its hold isn’t any where near as strong.  Brian’s support liberates me to make choices that would be just too risky if I was single.  And his support goes beyond financial.    The emotional support he provides during times of stress and challenges is far more than what my family is capable of providing to me on a regular basis.

At the end of the day, I’m left with this:  If your relationship does not uplift you and support you, why are you in that relationship?  And if you are not capable for providing that same support to your partner, why not? 

I’ve had workaholic tendencies for my entire life.  The idea of a three year old workaholic may seem a bit absurd but in my case, it is a little more accurate than you might imagine.  As a child, I could go ridiculous amounts of time without food as long as I felt compelled to keep working.  I also remember refusing to go to the bathroom in kindergarten.  I was working on a project and I convinced myself that I didn’t need to go to the bathroom until it was finished.  I also remember deciding that day that I didn’t want to ever feel shame again.

And for someone with workaholic tendencies not feeling shame is a good thing.  It makes it easier to be a workaholic.  You can do some pretty god awful things to yourself if you don’t feel shame when your body betrays you.

When I was puttering around some blogs last night, and promising my husband that I would only read one more post, I read something about alcoholism.  Of course that got my wheels churning and I googled “workaholic” to make sure I was spelling it correctly before I posted a comment.

What I really found was a twenty question quiz to determine if I was a workaholic.  Three or more “yes” answers meant you needed to get help.  I had twelve.

I was floored.  I may joke about workaholic tendencies but really, I just think of myself as driven and motivated.  I blame my ADD.  And if anyone asks, my elaborate organizational systems are really just a coping mechanism for hiding said ADD.

I told Brian.  Who was not floored.  Who responded with “I didn’t need you to take a quiz for me to know that”.

Then he tells me “You know I have to call your office to make sure you are coming home at night”. 

And it’s true.  Because he does have to call to get me to come home sometimes.  And I’m usually very confused if I only have worked 40 hours in a given week.  And if it was up to me, every lunch would be a working lunch. 

But instead of all of this urging me to think about getting help, it really leaves me questioning why Workaholics Anonymous implies this is a bad thing.  Because almost every question where I answered yes, I really truly believe that only a lazy person would answer no.  Call me a workaholic but I think I’d rather refer to it as a “Strong Protestant Work Ethic”.

At what point does motivation and a desire to succeed become a bad thing?  And why are we so committed to a forty hour work week as healthy and a sixty hour work week as a sign that there is no work life balance?  Is this a sign of an entrepreneurial spirit?

My advisor in college was a recovering alcoholic who was always concerned about me.  He thought I was crazy for working full time, going to school full time and being overly involved in my sorority.  He used to say that it was only a matter of time until my tendencies gave way to alcoholism.  At the time, I used to tell myself that he was just overly paranoid.

Last night I started wondering if he was wiser than I gave him credit for being.

I’ve been puttering at work for the last week or so.  There are plenty of projects I could be doing but for now I’m letting them fall to the wayside.  Why?  Well, on Monday I found out that I’ll be taking the new position that I recently interviewed for.  I have a month before I start the job.

My current supervisor has decided that I shouldn’t take on any new projects and I should spend the next month “procedurilizing” (yes, she made up that word) my job and training my replacement.  We still haven’t hired my replacement so that has to happen first.

In the meantime, I am a procedure writing machine.  But since I’m not taking on new projects, I putter.  Because writing a procedure doesn’t take any where near as long as everyone seems to think it does.  I’ve been turning it into a game for myself.

Downside is I’ve been spending a little too much time with online shopping.  FranklinCovey is like crack for me (fortunately for me, my company is filled with FranklinCovey enthusiasts so no one is really questioning the time I’m spending on their website).

Since I also have to interview my replacement, I’ve been searching the web for really unusual interview questions.  The poor soul that replaces me is going to have to sit through six hours of interviews.  The least I can do is make my hour mildly entertaining. 

Questions I think I want to ask include:

• Tell me about a time where you needed to manage up.  How did you accomplish this?
• How do you plan to become the office miracle worker?
• If I ran into your current boss, what would be the one sentence you would want to be said about you?
• How do you feel about working with scientists?

I’m still looking for more questions.  What are some of the best (and worst) questions you’ve been asked in an interview?

I’ve dabbled in and out of modeling for a few years now.  It has never been something that I have seriously pursued.  Most of my jobs are usually booked because I have a friend who is an artist and they need someone for figure studies or a particular project.  The rest of my jobs are booked because an artist knows some of my artist friends and then it just becomes an exercise in networking.  I don’t model very much anymore because I would rather spend time with Brian (I already spend enough time at the office).

It rarely is particularly challenging for me although sitting for a painting was brutal.  Usually, I just show up, do my thing and go home.  I earn some extra money or I help out a friend and I go home happy.

The Well is hosting its third annual Art Show and Fashion Show next weekend.  One of the things that draws me to this show is that it is all about social justice and helping local artists have a forum to show their work.  It is the community aspect of it that I really love more than anything.

Part of the fashion aspect is a runway show.  I’ve never been a runway model.  But I also know that the time in my life where I could be a runway model is quickly coming to an end. 

I signed up to model.  And quite frankly, I am scared out of my mind.

The dress rehearsal was on Saturday night and I think I was the largest model there.  I’m by no means a big girl but when the designer asks you what size you are and he responds with a weird face and a “ooh” and then more of a weird face… well, it can be a bit brutal on one’s self esteem.

I’m putting myself out there, good or bad.  I’d like to think I’m putting on a brave face but as I worked my way down the walk, one of the coordinators screamed out “STOP THINKING SO MUCH”.

There may be a distinct possibility that I will make a complete ass out of myself.

But I’m also okay with that.  Life is too short to not take risks.

And usually what we fear turns into something we enjoy.  Fear is a lot like change - it really isn’t all that permanent.  Yes, I could fall flat on my face as I walk (while wearing a miniskirt that barely covers my butt).  But I could also look fabulous.  And most likely, I will look back as an old woman and tell annoying stories to my grandkids about how I was a model.  And hopefully, I’ll jump start some desire in them to be scared.

At least this week, I have extra motivation to stay out of the company candy dish.

Brian, my husband, is much more tech savy than I am.  I tend to fumble my way through the internet with the enthusiasm of a five year old whereas Brian spends his evenings building his “super computer” and gaming. 

Brian knows I have been blogging for a while now.  I kept a blog over on Diaryland for years until we were engaged and then I let it fall by the wayside (it was one part scathing social commentary and one part “this is what I did today”).  When I started blogging again last May, he did get a bit paranoid (especially after he realized I wrote something about his boxers) but he never really brought it up again.  And I don’t think he’s looked at my blog since then.

Recently, the topic has come up again.  He thinks blogging is stupid.  He has the attitude that he spends enough time hearing about other people’s opinions to begin with so why should he go out of his way to read those opinion as well.  He also wonders what he would blog about (apparently, he believes that no one would be interested in his life as a carpenter).

I told him it was a very good thing that I didn’t write soley for him to read.

I tried to explain to him the idea of community.  The concept of being in conversation with other people who may not live where we live.  I told him about the ability to throw an idea out into the world and see what comes of it.

All of it left me wondering: Why do people start blogs anyway? I started writing because of my love for the written word. But why does everyone else start? I’m fairly certain that not all bloggers out there are posting because they have a physical need to write.

What I really want to know is this: Why did you decide that starting a blog was a good idea?  Is it something to fill the hours or is it something you are passionate about?

And if anyone has a better explaination of blogging, please let me know.  Brian is still waiting.

So far today, I’ve experienced three internal interviews that all started with the line “well, this is a bit odd since I work with you everyday”. Two of which also included the statement “I’m not really sure what to ask you since I already know you”. And my personal favorite: “I didn’t really you had a degree in small business!”

Apparently this isn’t just a first for me.

If you ever search online for advice about internal interviews, you’ll find that good information is hard to find and the information that is available is geared towards the mega corporations. I kept finding pages listing illegal interview questions and sneaky ways H.R. can get around it.

For example, they cannot ask me if I am married. Fair enough. But the interviewers are also the people who threw me a wedding shower at work.

They also cannot ask me if I have kids or if I plan to have kids. But some of the interviewers have gone out with me for drinks after work with my husband (where he told them we plan on waiting about four years).

Nothing illegal is being asked but could I still be discriminated against? These are people who already know more than they should. Like I said yesterday, maybe it isn’t a win-win.

Maybe what all of this is telling me is that I need to be more guarded about my personal life at work. Which then of course leads me to the problem of how can I have a blended life if I have to unblend for eight to nine hour chunks each day.

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