"It's just going to be the same somewhere else."
Have you ever read John Updike's short story "A&P"? (*Gulp*...I hate to ask, but do you remember what the A&P was?) The story is about a young man who quits his job to impress girls--sorry, John, but that's the best summary. Ok, ok,
here's a better telling.
I was thinking about this story when I thought about this post early last week. I left my last employer at probably the strangest possible time that could be chosen, but, as the Airman said, "There is no good time." For four years I had put off vacations, dentist appointments, doctors appointments, bloodwork, and holidays so that it would be a "good time" for everyone else. (God help me if I ever would have gotten pregnant. "Now's not a good time." Oh, ok, I'll just have an abortion. No problem.) There was no way that my leaving would be convenient. I wasn't intentionally trying to sabotage (to do that would have meant giving my notice the same day that my boss got his new job--I at least waited a week after he left to give my notice, a three-week difference), but I'm sure that any date would have looked that way.
For four years I had thought about other opportunities, particularly those that were more to my expertise and less about taking care of my employees. I had this incredible notion that if you were an adult you were supposed to act like one, no spoon-feeding, but with this company it felt like spoon-feeding was the prerequisite to employee retention. I was a hard-ass in Missouri (I'm talking of my time as a teacher at Bass Pro) and 75 people a week loved me for it because they knew that there would be no bullshit involved in my leadership. They knew me to be fair and that I had equally high expectations of everyone. But at this job as a manager I was told to soften it up, or, since I had no idea of how to do that, I became their mother. First in San Francisco, and then in San Leandro. You want a drill sergeant? I can do that. You want a kindergarten teacher? I can do that. But a manager? With soft lines? What the...
As I grew older and older with the company, I looked for ways out. But everyone, everywhere, told me it would be the same. "You can't get away from that," they said. "It's just going to be the same wherever you go." These statements more often than not came from other employees, not mine, but other employees in other buildings and not from managers. Was that what was keeping them there? These are the types of people that I felt I was working FOR, and yet by traditional definition they were supposed to be working for managers like me, and they wouldn't leave because it was just the same anywhere else.
To me, that made as much sense as comparing my high school education to my university education. I loved some of my high school teachers, but I detested high school in general. I loved my university experience, and that was with the hatred of some of my college professors (mostly from the history side, sadly). When I left high school I swore that I would never go back in an academic setting to learn how to write--it's just going to keep being like high school, right? But luckily enough for me someone came along who loved their professor at a community college and I was hooked for life--the cliques and popularity contests were gone, and being smart made me popular, despite my shyness. To sit forever with an employer because the next one could be a continuation of this one--that's pretty narrow-minded. And it also means that I don't have much faith in myself as a contributor to society. My best-laid plans are not to let the next employer take over my work/life balance. I'll see, at the end of this sabbatical, if I can do that.
*****
Knee-deep in Month Two, here are my latest accomplishments, learned from the time out of water:
- The Giants still have the ability to surprise the crap out of me. Regardless of who's on the DL. I guess you could say that means we're all expendable, but I'd like to think it teaches us to make the absent person proud should they return. Or should they be watching. The day after Crawford's grand slam, Posey sent him a text: "You're my new favorite player." I know I would try to match that from now on, regardless of whether or not the guy's expendable. That's called "legacy" in my book.
- Unless I accomplish everything that I want to in that particular day, I still panic. I have this delusional impression that I should be more prolific than Virginia Woolf. After about 20 minutes of the nonsense I usually remember what the Healer taught me: "Take the black and turn it to blue." In my case I was shooting for aquamarine, but it's more along the principle of meditating all that dark color out of the mind. Works pretty well, too.
- I believe in M&M's: Meditation and Melatonin (see above bullet point). My brain seems to think that I will sleep when I'm dead, and my body insists that if I don't sleep I will be dead. Meditation and Melatonin help.
- I've given up Facebook, as a rule. No one's checking it, or the people who do check it can't see me because of the popularity contest they have for a friend list, and I'm just the nerdy reader/movie critic/art nut in the corner. I'm checking in once a week so folks don't think I'm dead. The rest of the time I'm writing or working the web in other ways.
- I'm still not in shape. Damn it. Working on changing that.
P.S. -
This is where the title for this post of Life For Rent comes from.
