Dorie Morgan’s Rising Up
Navigating Twenty-Something Suburban Life
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Archive for July, 2008
Don’t be crippled by your stupid ideas
Last night I was fortunate to be on a conference call about blogging with Penelope Trunk and Alex Fisher (from Young Profession Finance). And I should confess that I was a huge mess of excitement yesterday as I contemplated questions to ask or comments I thought I might want to make.
It was slightly overwhelming as I dialed in last night. It reminded me of high school when you realized that you were about to spend time with someone much cooler than yourself.
When I started blogging, I got this idea in my head that Penelope Trunk would not be interested in answering questions from me because I was convinced that nothing I could say would be interesting enough for a response. And I’ve carried this idea in my head for the last two years. It was a very stupid idea too.
The problem with a stupid idea is that it cripples you. Especially when you keep the idea to yourself. If an idea lurks solely in your head, no one will be able to correct you when it’s horrible or guide you to success when you are on the right path.
When you keep that stupid idea inside, you might be temporarily saved from judgment but ultimately, you are only stopping yourself from being brilliant later.
I’m not really afraid of doing stupid things either. Stupid things can always be corrected later. I know this to be true because I do stupid things all of the time. And I have yet to do something so stupid that I can’t recover from it.
Still, I am afraid of having (and sharing) stupid ideas.
Back to the conference call – I received some great advice last night and heard some things that changed the way I looked at blogging. Advice that I could have been using for the last year but I wasn’t using it. Why? Because that stupid idea living in my head made it physically impossible for me to hear it any sooner.
In the end, I only held myself back.
Let’s face it: the people who inspire you are not going to track you down to tell you something brilliant or give you that swift kick you need to get yourself out of neutral. But they will be sharing those moments of wisdom with the person who took a few minutes to ask for it.
In the long run, building relationships allows you to be stupid and recover from it. Because when you are not only having the conversation but growing from it, other people will want to see past your prior mistakes. Your community will want you to succeed.
When did I get so old?
Lately the signs that I am actually an adult seem to surprise me. It doesn’t faze me that I’ve been out of college for three years, that I am buying a house or that I’ve held down a real job for two years. Even the huge bills that come every month to the mailbox with my name printed on them aren’t really a sign that I’m an adult. My friends are all married or have babies. Some of them are divorced. And some of them are working on the PhD’s.
But those are not the signs of adulthood that disturb me.
The signs of adulthood that disturb me are along the lines of my therapist is the same age as me.
I think I always knew that someday I would be an adult. Someday, I would have a “real” job. Someday, people would give me money for my services and refer their friends and family to me.
I forgot about the part of it where people my age would grow with me though. I forgot that they too would have real jobs and be paid for their services. And I forgot about the part where I would be paying those people for their services.
It isn’t weird that I’m telling my therapist about my mommy issues and talking about my ability methodically and thoroughly reason away my inner child. It’s weird that I’m paying a therapist who is my age to talk about those things.
But from here on out, it is only going to get stranger. Because eventually, the cute little kids that I once babysat for are going to have graduate degrees and real jobs and I’m going to start paying them for their services. And eventually, I’ll have kids and my kids will grow up and I’ll pay people who are the same age as my offspring for their skills.
And I’ll look at them the same way a Baby Boomer looks at a Millennial and I’ll wonder, “When did I get so old?”
Falling in love with fiction
Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children; life is the other way around. ~David Lodge
I haven’t been blogging as frequently as I want to because I fell deeply in love with Twilight last week. Translation: In the last eight days, I’ve read the first three books twice. And flagged my favorite sections with post-it notes and gone back and reread those sections.
It’s like book crack and now I need rehab.
I should have realized I had a problem when I tried to convince my husband to drive me to all of the places I needed to go so I could read. But I didn’t realize it then. No, it wasn’t until I was sitting an exceptionally long red light thinking about getting the books from the back seat that I realized I had a problem.
I’m okay with my obsessive book tendencies. This isn’t so different from when I was a kid – I realized when I was about 7 years old that I could hide in the bathroom to read because no one would bother me there (my mother must have been convinced that I had intestinal problems for years when really, I was sitting behind the bathroom door with my nose in a book). I also kept a night light in my room until I was twelve so I could read at night when everyone thought I was asleep. It was a sad night when it was finally discovered that I was always so tired from reading well into the early morning hours.
So last week, I let my whole life fall by the wayside so I could read Twilight with desperate need. My husband was confused by it. He’s not a reader. The more I consumed of each book, the more annoyed he became (the ride to Sam’s club may have pushed him over the edge). And the more annoyed he became, the more I grew in love with the characters.
It was so easy to fall in love with the characters too. Why? Losing yourself in the fantasy of a fictional man is effortless. Books don’t write about how he leaves dishes in the sink, the toilet seat up or that he thought it was a great idea to start making fun of your mother’s cooking at the last family reunion. Books are about the desire, the urges, the emotions that are not dirtied by day to day living.
In a book, we never get to the part of the story where the woman loses interest in sex and the man can’t get it up in a moment’s notice. Or if we do get to that point in the story, it’s because we started there and we then discover how something sparked passion again. In a book, we feel the initial passion for the first time and we remember the passion that may have waned in our own lives.
All of this got me thinking: If someone were to write about my life with Brian, where would be the part where our “story” would be “over”? The beginning part of our story is easy. We meet. I avoid him. I realize I’m falling for him. We go on one date. His mother dies. We court. We decide to get married. My parents flip out. I cry. Nine months later, I finally become Mrs. Morgan.
But from there, what happens to the story? Does the story go on to talk about my own cancer scare from last year, which ended anticlimactically? (Thank God, there was no tumor.) Or does the story go on to tell about me making sandwiches in the mornings and doing laundry at night? Does the story go on to weave words of how we sit around playing World of Warcraft together while passing a bottle of wine back and forth?
When we fall in love with fiction, whether that is movies, books or any other type of fantasy, do we set expectations for our mates that can never be reached?
There is a very fine line between high expectations and the impossible.
You were a jerk. Let’s fix it.
So maybe after reading last week’s post, you have realized that you are, in fact, the office asshole. Maybe you had no clue before. Maybe you didn’t care before. But now you know and now, you want to do something to fix it.
As I said last time, I’m not sure you can fix it. I wish it was that simple. But every office has at least one person (or more) with the memory of an elephant. Some people will want to forgive and forget and move on with their workday. Other people will remember and be wary. And either way is okay. Much like they could not change the fact that you are/were the office jerk, you can not change how they chose to deal with it.
Step 1: Stop talking about yourself. Adopt a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with your personal life. If they don’t ask, you don’t tell. It really is that simple. You are not as interesting to your cube mate as you are to yourself.
Step 2: Start talking (or at least asking) about other people. Please don’t interpret that as start gossiping though. You’ve spent enough time talking about yourself, now its time to hear about someone else. Ask about what someone’s plans are for the weekend. And then, here’s the hard part, wait until they ask about your plans. If they don’t ask, then refer to Step 1. Mostly likely, the person who is most interesting to the person you are talking to is them self.
Step 3: Take an interest. Sometimes, you have to look out for yourself first. For some of us, that’s next to impossible to learn. But other times, you have to look out for your time first. And for the rest of us, that’s next to impossible to learn. If you have been the office jerk, chances are, you were only looking out for Number 1. So now, you learn how to listen to what projects are on the horizon for your team. And if your team is stuck or struggling, take an interest and offer to help. Don’t offer to help to be the hero and save the day. You are offering to help by saving your team from the tedious. You are showing your team/department/office that you realize you need them.
Step 4: Remember those interns. Maybe you weren’t so nice to those interns before. Now, you have to be. I’ll be honest, I secretly judge most of my coworkers based on how they treat the interns. So take an intern under your wing. Teach that intern something they may not have learned elsewhere. Maybe even pull an intern onto a choice assignment. It will never hurt you to help the low man on the totem pole.
Step 5: Do something nice. Maybe that looks like bringing cupcakes to the office or picking up breakfast for the team. Maybe being nice looks like remembering that someone loves jazz and then letting them know about a music festival they might enjoy. Maybe it is treating someone to lunch. I’m not suggesting you try to buy love (and if you are a jerk, this will only make things worse) but people love to feel like they have been remembered.
Step 6: Apologize. Maybe this is a step reserved for the truly heinous of office assholes but if you are making no progress in improving your office relationships, you may need to acknowledge your previous behavior. It doesn’t need to be anything over the top but it does need to be sincere and to the point. An example: “I realize that for a long time I did not treat the team properly and I need to correct that. What do you think I can do to make the situation better?”
Step 7: Dust off your resume. You may have done too much damage at your place of current employment to correct it. But don’t just hop to a new job and hope everything will be better. You will need to be making an active effort not to repeat the mistakes you made previously. Figure out why you were such a jerk before and then avoid those situations/triggers/whatever that set you off.
What do your coworkers really think of you?
One of the men in my office is a real asshole. He seems to think he’s an authority on everything, even though he complains constantly that he doesn’t know how things work. I’m fairly certain he’s not doing any of the work he’s being paid to complete himself (I keep catching other people’s interns completing his work), but he will always tell you why you are doing your job incorrectly. He’s demeaning to women and treads very closely to the sexual harassment line. Wait a minute, he’s demeaning to everyone. I just have no respect for him.
At first, I tried to chalk it up to the fact that he’s a baby boomer and I’m a millennial and we just don’t see eye to eye and it must be a communication problem and so on. But then I hit me: He really is just an asshole.
And the rest of the Boomers in the office think he’s an asshole too. And since I really respect and trust those coworkers, I’m okay with writing the guy off all together.
The worst part of it: he doesn’t seem to know that he’s an asshole. Like many other aspects of his work life, he just has no clue. But he can’t be the only one in that boat.
In case you were curious if your co-workers think you’re an asshole, here are a few clues.
You enter conversations that don’t pertain to you. If I’m discussing a situation in a department meeting, and you walk by the room and enter uninvited to tell me your opinion, there’s something wrong. People will ask for your opinion if they think you have some insights or ideas that could help the situation. And if no one asks, you can find a better venue to share your ideas than bursting into a meeting.
You frequently find yourself eating alone. If you are taking lunch at noon and no one else is in the break room with you, there is a problem. Especially if noon used to be the peak lunch hour. Let’s face it: your lunch break is valuable time because it is your time. And when your coworkers start showing that you aren’t wanted during their time, its time to make a change in your behavior.
You tell your coworkers all about you – but you rarely ask your coworkers about them. I work at a small company with a family atmosphere. As a result, I hear a lot about my coworkers personal lives, which is great. It helps me to work more efficiently with my coworkers because I have a greater understanding of where people are coming from. For example, the girl next to me ran a 5k last night and she didn’t do as well as she would have liked. But after telling me about the 5k experience, she asked me about how my night class went last night. Relationships are give and take – no one wants to just hear about how great you are, they want you to ask as well. People will start to avoid you if they think you are only interested in yourself.
You bully the interns. Interns are here to be treated like a second class citizen. Interns are here to learn, to gain work experience and hopefully, make some money. And really, when you treat my intern with a lack of respect, I lose even more respect for you. Why? I don’t want to be around you if you make yourself feel good by treating others poorly and certainly do not want my team to be around you either. And let’s not even get into the fact that I would not want you anywhere near my clients.
Is there anyway to bounce back from this behavior? I’m still not sure. Part of me thinks it just isn’t possible.
Politics at Home: Just don’t say a word
About a week before the Pennsylvania Primaries, there was a message on the answering machine from my husband’s grandmother. I was excited to know she called – most of Brian’s family lives in Florida and as a result, we don’t get to hear from them very often.
But when we listened to the message, we deleted it. She called to tell us how important it is for us to vote for Barack Obama.
It isn’t that we weren’t interested in hearing from his family. It’s just that Brian and I don’t talk about politics at home.
Why? Three reasons:
- By and large, Brian’s family is made up of very liberal, Democrat types. None of them are quite so bad as my neighbor down the street who built a shrine to Hilary Clinton on his front yard (and still has part of it up, apparently he never got the phone call about Barack Obama) but at the end of the day, they are Democrats.
- My husband is not a registered voter. He never has been. He never will be. I told him I found men that were not registered to vote sexually unattractive but he didn’t care. He refuses to take part in what he identifies as a corrupt system. He also tells me that it is because he does not like the idea of being controlled and therefore does not like the idea of selecting who is going to control him.
- I am a registered Republican. I registered as soon as the paperwork arrived in the mail and I have stayed true to my beliefs despite living in a township that is 98% Democrat.
Clearly, we don’t agree on politics in my household. And for a while, this was a source of stress and arguments. So we decided no more politics. It was better for us that way. We were tired of arguing, I was tired of being ganged up on by Brian’s friends and family and everyone was tired of me threatening to stop feeding them for attacking my belief system. At one point, it felt like a verbal political gang bang and I did not like being on the receiving end of that train.
Eventually we realized it wasn’t politics that we had a problem with discussing. We talked about abortion, gay marriage, separation of church and state, tax policy, polygamy, etc. on a regular basis. The problem came when we put the names on those things. When we left the “Democrat” or “Republican” words away from the conversation, we were able to really discuss what was at the heart of the issue and leave our charged emotions at the door. We were able to have a rational discussion and truly learn about where the other person was coming from.
I’ve had my opinion changed on a few things as a result. Brian still has not registered to vote but I’m becoming increasingly okay with that. And I did tell him that if felt so inclined to register, I would not say a word if he registered as a Democrat.
At this point, is it worth it?
My friend Erica is a lawyer. More specifically, she works in patent law for a firm in NYC. She has two secretaries, she’ll make partner in eight years and she makes at least three times as much money as I do. She has a fabulous boyfriend and she’s thinking about buying a condo in the city.
She also works at least 65 hours a week. And that’s a conservative estimate on my part. She tells me its only sixty hours a week but I lived with this girl in college and I know Erica has no sense of time when she’s working. I also know that her secretaries think she is working too much as well.
When you think about all of the things you need to do during the week, just as basic aspects of life, how is it possible to consistently work 65 hours a week? And when a case gets hectic, is it possible to have any hope of a home life available to you?
At what point is the money just not enough?
I’ve read that statistic about 40k being the magic number, but Erica brought up a really good point that I tend to forget about: the difference between making forty thousand dollars annually in, let’s say, Fairport Harbor, Ohio and New York City is monumental. Even the difference between Levittown, PA (where I live) and NYC is monumental. But so what?
What makes the money worth it?
I have mixed feelings about all of this.
On one hand, I kind of like the idea of working as hard as you can until you are ready/want to reproduce and then cut back. But realistically, that’s not going to happen. You’ll either put off kids because the time is just “not right” or you’ll pay a fortune for childcare because you won’t want to give up your career and you can’t get more than six weeks maternity leave without losing your job.
On the other hand, I know myself. If I don’t work hard at finding balance, I never will. If I don’t set clear boundaries for myself, I’ll neglect my own basic needs. And while that could benefit me in my career (depending on where I was working), it would not benefit me in ensuring my husband would be in my bed when I came home at night.
I’d be lying if I didn’t say that the money she makes doesn’t tempt me. And when I hear her tell me that I could easily do the work she does, it makes it even more tempting. But since I know I can’t really have it all and still have my sanity, what are the pieces that I really care about?
Adventures in First Time Home Buying: Could you please tell me more about the dead body in the room?
There was a dead body in my new house.
Granted, the house isn’t really mine yet. The house won’t be mine until August 15th. But it feels like mine. Our realtor may tell us that the current home owner is emotionally invested in the house and we are emotionally invested in our money but that isn’t entirely true. We wouldn’t be spending all of this money on a property if we couldn’t see ourselves emotionally invested.
On Friday night, when Brian and I went to initial the changes to the contract, we found a certificate of death included in the bottom of the paperwork. And immediately, I start telling Brian about how we were right, how it was either a divorce or a death that put this house on the market, how sad it was, etc. I have to admit, I was feeling quite proud of my powers of observation.
And then I kept reading the certificate.
And then I noticed that the guy had committed suicide. In the house. With a gun to his head. With a rifle.
And then I started freaking out.
First off, the guy had a family. Four other people lived in the house with him. And one day, they came home and he was dead. Two of those people were his children. How in the world are they ever going to recover from this?
Second, I am amazed at the level of violence involved. It wasn’t like someone would walk in the room and be scared that there was their loved one laying unresponsive on the floor. They walked into blood and violence. Just thinking about that leaves me shell shocked.
Third, as per the certificate of death, the time of the accident was unknown. He could have been there for quite some time with no one noticing. No neighbors heard a shot being fired and thought “maybe something happened, maybe I should call the police”.
Finally, there was a dead guy in my dream home!
Now, I understand that this is a ninety year old home and there have probably been plenty of dead bodies in the house. After all, dying in a hospital or hospice wasn’t always the standard operating procedure that it is now. But the level of violence kind of freaks me out.
So now, Brian and I have been trying to figure out where the suicide took place. Because we don’t want to renovate that room ourselves, we want to pay someone to renovate it for us. It’s turned into a game of Clue but real and therefore a bit creepy.
Brian thinks it happened in my dream bedroom, I think it happened in the basement. I’m still waiting for the police department to call me back with information from the police report.
At least now we understand why the home was being sold at such a great price.
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