Category: Employment

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A Man in Himself

I read a post last year by a very angry man looking for work.

He was pissed because it seemed to him no one read his resume in detail or appreciated all of his achievements. They would contact him but then ask him what he considered to be a stupid question, that reflected the fact they had not read his resume.

His response to this was breathtaking.

He said he would end the conversation on the next person who did that! Wow! That’ll be sure to get you hired! He went on to say that anyone who wouldn’t take the time to examine all his marvellous achievements wasn’t worth talking to. That their opinions were irrelevant. He ended this rant with “don’t waste my time.”

What is more dazzling was that some people applauded his rant!

Okay. What I see is a very frustrated individual who needed to vent. Times are hard. We work so f’in hard and long and do wondrous, important things and no one notices or cares. We rack up achievement after achievement, plaster our walls with awards and certificates, and whoa. It means nothing.

Well, welcome to the real world.

We all have moments like this man. Where we are so incredibly immature and inwardly focused, vain and egoic and we lash out. I think however, a private journal would be more appropriate.

What he overlooked was the fact people were contacting him to find out more.

So obviously, something caught their interest. They wanted to talk to this person.

Do you know how many people can’t even get that? They get no response at all.

What an attitude!

Everyone comes searching for employment with the same package. Skills, experience, education, awards, references and a lot of external validations. There is more competition than ever for less work. So you can’t rely on your successes to sell yourself. People are not impressed by that, despite what you are led to believe. That is why we have interviews. To get to know the person. Truth be told, you can have no skill, experience, education, awards or a thousand other things and still get the job. Because you have the right personality. You can learn anything with the right attitude.

Case in point. I was visiting my brother in Texas and while I was browsing in a store that sold water fountains, something I know absolutely nothing about, the manager offered me a job there. The manager didn’t care about my life. She just liked me. Why, I have no idea.

So if someone can like me enough to hire me on the spot, shit, anyone can get hired!

Just be yourself.

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Piles

When I was working I accumulated piles.

No not, hemorrhoids!

Actual piles of ‘to do later’ stuff.

Piles of ‘I can’t deal with that now’ stuff.

And mental piles, virtual to do lists that clog up the brain like sludge.

Come to think of it, they are sort of like hemorrhoids. Ugh.

Piles destroy your quality of life. You cannot live well when you have piles, of any type.

I quite literally had decades of stuff piled up. The actual piles of stuff like paper etc. were annoying to clean up and time consuming but once all was sorted, trashed, cleaned and put away, I could start working on the mental piles.

Things that are stashed away in your mind are the things that make you exhausted and irritable and sometimes crazy. They are unfinished business, and your brain hates unfinished business. It will work 24/7 to solve your problems, to get what you want, to complete your lists whether you are conscious of them or not. This is what your brain is suppose to do; think, solve, plan, organize, be a manager of the rest of you. So mentally file something away and your brain is on it! And no, writing them down does not quiet your brain. It will work even harder on those because they are in writing

The tasks of finishing the unfinished, loving the unloved and the neglected is gut wrenching. From the simple things of sewing a bra strap back on, to finally writing a thank you note (it is never too late for either, your bra and friends understand) I gradually cleared all those mental to do lists out. In the process I discovered many things I’d forgotten about. Embarrassing stuff. Silly stuff. Oh, that would have been great to do stuff.

The great thing about being retired – no matter how short term this may prove to be (money!) is I seemingly have vast expanses of time to do more. Seemingly, because now I really don’t want to do more. I’ve stopped collecting piles, real and imagined and just live for the moment. If something catches my attention, well, if I don’t do it now, I probably will never do it. I will not file it away as a to do later, or sometime if I feel like it.

I am happy to be free of piles for the time being. Life gets so far ahead of you when you are working. Your life belongs to the office and everything else is neglected. So glad those days are OVER.

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Trust Not Hope

Now that I find myself in a situation where the future is a vast unknown, I am adrift and basically trying anything that comes my way to see if it fits, I have learned the difference between trust and hope.

Most of my life I have hoped for better. Hoping for things is merely wishing. Hope is limp. It is lame. It has no action attached to it. “Oh, I hope for the best.” Blah.

Trust however, is empowering. To trust in something is to have faith, and faith that is unshakeable can move mountains.

To trust that everything will work out means that I will put forth the effort necessary, safe in the knowing that the universe, the Divine, God, is not indifferent. I do not know what the results of my efforts will be, but I can trust that God has my back. No matter what happens, it will benefit my growth, or someone else. Something will happen.

Hope means I am looking for a certain outcome. Trust means whatever happens will be good in some way. Hope closes you off. Trust opens you up. Trust helps you get past fear.

Hope is to give up and do nothing. Trust is to plunge forward and do everything you can, God will direct your path.

Though the corona virus has severely curtailed what actions I can take in the outside world, it just means working a bit harder on the inside. I am discovering a lot of interesting things.

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Worthless

This is how I’ve felt for most of my adult life. Worthless.

I struggled so hard in my office jobs. I am inept at office work. I am incompetent as a secretary, receptionist and clerk.

So forever I have felt worthless just because I’ve been doing the wrong kind of work!

That has defined my entire adult life.

I wonder how many other people feel worthless just because they are in the wrong place, or with the wrong person, or in the wrong job.

Women of my generation had very few career choices unless they were prepared to fight hard. Most of us accepted our lot and trudged on.

So for 40 plus years I have felt needlessly worthless. It caused me to get nearly everything else wrong in my life too. Wrong partners. Wrong places to live. Wrong friends.

I am astonished by this revelation, that there was never anything wrong with me, I was just a square peg being squashed into a round hole.

Absolutely amazing.

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Get Out!

If you are in a job that ranges from mildly unsatisfactory to totally dysfunctional, get out!

Believe me, the longer you stay in an unhealthy situation, the greater the toll. You will not be aware of the damage over time as you numb yourself to constant pain, tell yourself lies and deceive yourself that everything is okay in a soul sucking job and/or with a psycho boss.

Pay attention to those red flags. They could save your life.

The more you excuse and tolerate a bad situation, the more contracted you become until you see no way out. You can see no options, no alternatives. You believe you can’t escape.

Until you do.

There is absolutely nothing worse than being in a place, or with a person, that preys on your insecurities, devalues you, or even just bores you out of your mind.

Get out!

Even if you have to take less pay, or be unemployed for a while, or do something totally out of your skill set and experiences, even at this time of record unemployment, it is far, far better than gritting your teeth and enduring something or someone who eats your soul. You will pay and the injuries may never heal.

And when you do get out, spend time with yourself and listen to your emotions without judgement. If you’re angry, sit with it, don’t act out, acknowledge that you have the right to be angry, that it is okay to be mad and truly feel it. You are NOT this anger. The anger is an emotion that needs to be seen and felt and loved. This is extremely important. Emotions have a lot of information to help you. If you have unresolved issues, you will leap from the frying pan into the fire. It happened to me, I went from bad to much much worse because I didn’t listen to myself.

A good book to read is, You Are Enough by Panache Desai.

Here is another truth worth sharing, people don’t quit jobs, they quit bosses.

Trust your instincts.

Believe in yourself.

Make your escape plan and get the hell out!

And love whatever you are feeling without acting it out.

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What a Dollar Can Do

Imagine if everyone in this world received a basic income.

For the want of a very small amount of money people cannot move forward in their lives.

It usually does not take much to have peace of mind. Enough to pay the rent. Enough to buy food. Enough to make a dream come true.

If everyone had enough money for their basic needs, what do you think this would mean?

No more poverty. It’d reduce crime.

Most people are not lazy. But most people are desperate and living on the edge. If they have a guaranteed income, it gives them freedom to become all that they can be. How could this not benefit the entire world?

The ones who do not want to work, this is totally okay. I mean, think about it. We already have that. What harm is in it? Most people want to have purpose and to be contributing to society. So most will continue to work. The ones that don’t, so what? They are in the minority.

I think this pandemic has exposed the huge flaws in capitalism. That the rich get insanely more rich, and the poor insanely more desperate.

The people who resist basic income are the uber rich because they want to enslave people. Their employees. There are very rare exceptions to this.

What if people could no longer be enslaved? What kind of revolution would we see in the working world? I envision a much safer, freer, compassionate working environment. Why do employers feel they must control their employees like they are children? If they have what they need, are treated like adults, and enjoy their work, and have respect for their bosses, a good job will be done.

What kind of revolution would we see in fixing the global messes we have of pollution, climate change, despots, dictators?

Before you dismiss universal basic income, give it a lot of thought how it would affect your life. What would you do with it? Make a dream come true? Go back to school? Quit your soul sucking job and do something you enjoy? Donate the money to charity? Volunteer? Work less hours and contribute more to friends, family time, strangers?

Obviously, the money has been there this whole time. It just hasn’t been used properly.

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It Is A Virus, People

I think many people don’t understand why we need to lockdown our cities and practice social distancing and wear masks and all of these cumbersome annoying things that have suddenly been foisted upon us.

If you live in a place with a population of 200,000 that has one hospital and 400 beds and a deadly virus comes and infects even half of the people, making even 1/8 of them in critical condition, requiring hospitalization, you are not going to have enough beds, supplies, personnel to handle the crisis. And many more people will die because they can’t be treated.

If you go outside and are near large numbers of people, the chances that one of them has the virus increases. Being close to others facilitates the spread. And a virus spreads fast.

If you don’t wear masks you can give this disease to innocent others without even knowing it.

And the biggie – you can DIE from this virus. Hello? If you don’t die, you may also suffer greatly while being attacked by it. Especially if there is no hospital equipment to help you.

The people you love can die from this.

These are just some of the reasons. I wish that the people giving time on television would make it more clear to their audience why it is necessary to close things down for a while.

It is not violating your rights. It is not political. These things are to SAVE your life. It is not a hoax. It doesn’t matter so much where it came from. It is not a plot for socialism. Lockdowns and social distancing have nothing to do with economics. What matters is how do we stop corona virus before it kills many people. It is a VIRUS people. We are trying to slow down its spread so we can cope with it. So we can save lives. So hopefully we can eradicate it without too many casualties. So we can buy time to find a cure or effective treatment so others won’t die. Get it?

When you get sick don’t you have to do things you don’t want to do to get well? You knew it was probably not forever, and you believed you would win if you followed doctors orders. So why is this different?

I think it would pay you to read about other pandemics and try to get an understanding of what is happening here, and realize this is not a personal attack. This is not a personal affront to your precious liberties.

Not being prepared, not doing the right thing is the affront. Not giving hospitals enough or correct PPE is the affront. Not caring is the affront.

Yes, there are profound repercussions to having to do this. But unlike what has been said by a politician, who claimed “there are more important things than living”, I happen to disagree with that statement. How about you? You want to die so the economy floats? Don’t you think that having millions of people die and be disabled from this disease is not going to affect the economy? Think about it.

This will be over. We will get our lives back. But the longer people act stupid, the longer we will have to fight this pandemic. This is a VIRUS, people.

I am also amazed at how many people can’t amuse themselves for a month. They go crazy.

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Explain To Me

Tell me how countries that pre-covid times professed to not have enough money for health care, education, pollution, the homeless, now suddenly have trillions of dollars to bail out corporations?

How is it there is no money for PPE and ventilators and beds and hospitals and . . .?

How is it they can barely give the people who work, who risk their lives daily to keep everything going, a few measly dollars a month?

How is it we could not have basic income and avoided all this mess, when clearly, clearly the money has always been there.

Explain to me.

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Home Alone

I go through phases when I’m at home any length of time. Right now I’ve reached the dreamy phase.

When I’m first confined to barracks, I feel a bit lost and it is hard to establish a new routine.

Then I go through periods of neglect, laziness and generally being a bitch to be around. When I can’t stand myself anymore I immediately leap into strip the apartment to the bones housecleaning, scrub myself till I’m raw, and up and at ’em with living room aerobics 1-2-3, stretch that body, you can do 20 more reps! There, done!

And in between all my moods, I do my creative stuff and the hours and days fly by. I am in bliss!

Admiring everything sparkling and clean, my projects all up to speed and running, my body toning up, I can now relax and start to dream. Dream about what I would have liked the past to have been, what I might like the future to be. The present I can’t do a whole heck of a lot about.

I recreate the past into fanciful stories. Not that my past was bad, in fact, my childhood was idyllic! It is the adult part that sucked. Let’s see that adds up to 40+ years of it. I can do a lot of recreating with that!

The future awaits!

Sell everything and buy a mobile home and explore the land with Sam my cat. I almost did that once. My friend and I had a beautiful little van and we took many trips . . . those were better days.

Maybe go and work at a farm this summer as they are predicting a shortage of workers this year because of the corona virus. Fresh air, sunshine, dreadfully hard labour. Could this old body take the punishment? My mind likes to thinks so, but I’ve had experience with this kind of wishful thinking. It doesn’t end well, for body or mind.

Oh, well, who am I kidding. I’ll just go back to the office once it is opened and begin where it ended, like nothing ever happened.

I don’t have the courage, but mostly, I don’t have the money.

But I can dream!