Employment Love Triangle...Or Hexagon

Okay, so my love life is simple. I love my fiance; he loves me. We're getting married in April.

My job situation, though, is like a love octagon from a bad, bad soap opera. It used to be easy to explain: I work for a publisher in Broomfield, doing CRM administration, a bit of copyediting, and a ton of administrative wizardry. You need an explanation of our e-book platform? Done. You want an e-book quote for 100 titles based on your university's full-time enrollment? You've come to the right place. You're desperate for typo-free advance book information tip sheets for all the titles set to publish in June of 2013? I'll have it to you in a jiffy, without letting the cover images drop out.

But then, strange things began to happen. Our entire Colorado sales team lost their jobs in September, but I was asked to stay. The caveat? I'd have to move to Santa Barbara. Unwilling to relocate, I was asked to stay on till mid-December. Then I was asked to stay on, well, until they find someone to replace me, or, until I find other employment. It kind of feels like I ended up in a surreal swinger-type employment relationship: they're looking for someone else; they know I'm looking for someone else, but in the meantime, we have an understanding, and I still show up for work.

And then I have suitors, I mean, recruiters, crooning to me on all sides. We have the clueless but persistent Careerbuilder, who shows up in my Inbox with the most ridiculous non-matched job opportunities on the planet. And then there's the slightly less persistent but very purple Monster.com, who keeps giving my number to employers who sell watches out of their metaphorical trench coats  and shamelessly cat-call me for my Salesforce.com administrator expertise. Can't a girl meet a decent guy anymore? All they're after is my Salesforce.

And then we have the seemingly more promising PublishingJobs.com, who sends four duplicate love letters every day, with yearnings for software engineers and technical analysts. I'm starting to believe that if I only had more VMWare (is that a kind of lingerie?), then I'd be good enough.

Love is a tough game sometimes. Here are all these hardworking suitor-recruiters, asking for my hand, but I won't give them the time of day. And the local publishers, the handsome ones who make me swoon with jobs like Editorial/Production Assistant, or Associate/Copy Editor, will not call me back, even though I douse my cover letters with perfume and seal the envelopes with a tear.

What to do? Do I become a trophy wife for the next big company that sees my exceptional sales experience and offers me the diamond-ring salary and Cadillac benefits, or do I wait it out for the employer of my dreams, that looks past the pretty face and sees my Adobe CS3 skills and flair for writing? Trying to flaunt an English degree in Corporate America is like using a hairnet to catch the eye of a GQ cover model. Oh God, help me.

Not so much a horrific head wound as an attempt at cuteness

I thought this morning, as my hair was getting in my face, that perhaps some bobby pins would help.  Or a headband of some sort.  "Oh look," I think, "I have this one right here...it doesn't really go with my casual attire, but oh well...maybe it's cute anyway?"

While I was getting coffee at work today, our Health and Wellness Editor looks at me with concern... "What's going on with your head?" he says.
I realize he might be talking about my maybe-cute-maybe-not headband.
"There's a flower on my headband," I say.

"Oh, I thought it was a bunch of gauze or something," Editor says.

There's nothing to dispel your notion of something being fashionable quite like the feedback of an educated adult who thinks your attempt at feminine cuteness is a horrific head wound.  At least it will stop the bleeding.

Flying in a Chair with John Hagee

Okay, so, years ago I had a dream wherein I was sitting on a flying throne of some sort with John Hagee, and we were of course, flying, and he asked me a very intriguing question.  He asked me what the Degree of Reciprocity would be for my life.  It was more of a challenge and less of a personal question.  I don't think I've ever heard anyone use the word "reciprocity" before; in fact, it might not be a real word.  I assumed it was from the word "reciprocal" or "reciprocate."

I was suddenly reminded of this dream a moment ago when I saw a quote by Albert Einstein that one of my customers tacked on to their email signature.  It says, "It is every man's obligation to put back into the world at least the equivalent of what he takes out of it."

This perfectly describes what John Hagee was talking about in my dream.  If someone were to give the world exactly what he took from it, his life score (his Degree of Reciprocity) would be zero.  After I had this dream, it made me think differently about life, and that there should be a human desire and privilege, if not requirement, to give more than one takes: a life score in the black.  Before, I had a more American Dream sort of perspective, where my main goal was to "do pretty well for myself" (as some people say in reference to rich people) and avoid discomfort of any kind.

My coworker Dan mentioned that he thought today was the anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination.  I like the fact that he was named after another great reformer--so prophetic.  Dr. King had a pretty impressive Degree of Reciprocity, as did the original Martin Luther, and so did figures like Gregor Mendel and Corrie Ten Boom.  I'm pretty sure that in our eternal bank account, all we'll have to keep from this life is the difference we made in the lives of others. Cha-ching.

Doe Snot

Okay, so, there was a very minor typo I came across today while reading a book proposal. It was a spacing issue, really. Y'know, I understand; you're typing away and the keys are clicking and things can get pretty outta control. One thing leads to another, and whoops! In sneaks a stowaway space that turns your typical phrase, "does not" into something that instead conjures up images of a female deer with a runny nose.

Which brings me to a minor and major issue of communication: it's all in the details. I myself still haven't learned how to communicate with another human being successfully. Here I thought, all these years, that all my incessant talking might have done the trick, sometime, for someone. But I'm starting to realize that communication is experience-based, and while I might find what I consider a fitting way to describe what I'm going through, it usually doesn't mean anything to whomever I'm trying to enlighten. More importantly, I'm beginning to realize that I simply don't care enough about people to listen to them; I simply enjoy hearing myself talk, because hey, at least that I can relate to. I'm shocked that people have relationships at all, because if everyone is at least half as self-absorbed as I am, the possibility of real communication is a lost cause, simply because it necessitates a skill called listening.

Perhaps this is why I blog. I know no one reads this, but re-reading it a few times myself is maybe what I was after all along. "Wow, that's just what I was thinking," I say to myself as I read.

I definitely enjoy reading, so perhaps I should limit all of my interpersonal communication to the written variety. If you write something for me, I'll definitely read it carefully, and cringe over typos. But if you say something, I probably won't listen to you.

So my sister and I are being good Messianic Christians and trying to celebrate Hanukah with our overly expensive and hip menorah. It went alright; last night I read aloud from a book titled something like, "A Prophetic Calendar: The Feasts of Israel," about how God-followers of today and times past celebrated this holiday. Even Jesus celebrated Hanukah, so I felt cool.

Then the cat was feeling really good about Hanukah, too, so good, in fact, that he got too close to the glory and caught his tail on fire. It smelled really bad.

Favorite Things

It's hard to express how I feel about music; I'd like to get lost in it and never find my way out. I like to try to create music by singing (most of the day you can hear me attempting this feat); however, I can't quite make it sound like it does in my head. I thought I always wanted to sing in a band, but when given the opportunity, like last Friday night at Collision, I find that it's quite terrifying, and I can't wait to get off the stage.

Is it possible that something you fear and dread can eventually become one of your favorite things?  Perhaps.  I have a lot of favorite things: sea turtles, cats, lizards, birds, expensive paint, exotic paintbrushes, tiny over-priced cubist canvases, coffee table books with glossy pages, the color of Theresa's beets that she made me eat, novels by George Eliot, leather journals from Barnes & Noble, songs by Thom Yorke, stories about how people found God, or how God found people, leather boots, good coffee after a good meal, cotton scarves, good friends crowded together in a small room, happy endings in real life, family members... All of those things, as far as I know, I loved from the start and didn't have to fear and dread first.  All of them except family members, of course.

I had a moment worthy of my favorites list today when a friend mentioned that, because the Bible says we ought to mourn over sin, he once threw dirt from the garden on his head in mourning over a foolish thing he'd done that caused someone pain.  I laughed hysterically when I heard it, but wouldn't you like to have a friend like that?  We'd all be better off if we mourned a little more, I think.  Perhaps they were right in canonizing Solomon's stuff after all.
Well, I have a lot of dirt to throw for my vocal performance on Friday.  Maybe with a little practice I can turn the whole affair into a joyous one for both me and those forced to listen.  Dave, please plug my monitor in next time.

Practically Joking

So the owner of our printing company made a big stink yesterday about how he hated the new order forms we designed for UV coating jobs. Basically, he didn't like the purple color, or so the story goes.  Too bad, because we had already printed a billion of them, or maybe just a few hundred thousand, hard to tell. "I never want to see these again, get them outta my sight!" he said, or something like that.

So, one of our own, to remain unnamed, decided to rally a dozen or so more employees to wallpaper the owner's entire office (desk, file cabinets, computer, chair, and every other imaginable surface) with said order forms. They brought tacos for all the willing wallpaperers.  It was a noisy, if not fairly speedy, affair.

Beautifully done, if I say so myself.  Be careful what you yell about; make sure it would make a bad wallpaper, or at least make sure that whoever you're yelling at doesn't have a key to your office.