Been a while...

 Well.

This morning began with an email announcing a deal with the union at one of our locations. Great news, and something I wanted to see amplified.

As it worked out, I had a working session today with the SharePoint guy who's been helping me build our new site. While we were talking, I mentioned the deal; he clearly hadn't heard - an interesting look at the way a piece of news that hugely affects our entire organization only really gets in front of those people who've been boots-on-the-ground. He and I talked about unions for a minute, and he mentioned a doc on Netflix he said was incredibly good.

After we finished our sandbox session, I edited the morning's announcement, and put it in the news web part.

And, after work, I turned on the doc.

It's hard for me to truly convey how watching this feels. Ambivalent, absolutely; but that barely touches the experience. I've watched a zillion documentaries in my life, but I've never before been anything remotely like the subject; here - at my age - with my career - 9 to 5 draws some blood.

One irony about this movie is that it focuses on SECRETARIES, uniting and becoming a force.

For an awful lot of my career - I am just enough years behind the women featured here - women's professional organizations have overlooked secretaries.

It is the irony of my age, that ten years before me, the center of gravity of women in offices was in the secretarial and clerical pool. So to organize women office workers was to organize clerical and secretarial workers.

By the time I came along... secretaries were "administrative assistants" - and anyone (any woman) who chose to do that job was sort of being pretended away. Women wanted business degrees and "real" jobs, and it was juuuuussst about time to call it old-fashioned to type for a living.

So women's professional orgs became focused on "real" professional women.

Admins became that bubble off to one side on the org chart, and became invisible.

My career marks the beginning of the "Except the admin" era. At the 1:14:30 mark of the documentary, there's one of those tonal shifts as we move toward the final chapter of the story - and the sound bite is: "Secretaries disappeared."

Which they did. Pushed downward into titles explicitly making us subservient, now admin "assistants" - pushed out and up, to do *anything* but typing memos, because that became shameful, not enough, for the peasants. The number of times I have endured people telling me I could basically "do better" - because, of course, what I choose to do is embarrassing, it's peon stuff. That one time a manager, with no malice intended, asked me about admin work because his wife was bored and she should be able to get an admin job easily.

I haven't apologized for the work I chose to do, for at least fifteen years. In my current job (nearly ten years), I am PROUD beyond expressing it, of the service I provide to each and every one of you in America. I literally feed you. Without what I do, it would not happen. What I do now is more important, even, than my work with the Federal Reserve Bank was, affects more of you, and is more deeply fundamental.

My career is neither trivial nor dismissable, yet it is routinely dismissed, and constantly, merely for its nature. I am not Mary Tyler Moore, nor Lily Tomlin. I belong to no union, because I'm that bubble on the side of the org chart. I blazed no trails, just have tucked in and made my way through several of the worst economies of the past 50 years - and covered myself in no glory at all. My activism is for other people, not myself. I am except the admin personified. And what once was Secretaries' Day, a celebration of professionals, is now Administrative Professionals day/week/month, an occasion of lip service par excellence which frequently is focused on flowers and gendered pap. (I hasten to say that my company has a highly creative and thoughtful person who manages our recognition. But the occasion itself does absolutely beg for lip service, and it gets it.)

9 to 5, the organization, is notable for being a women's movement that embraced intersectionality from its start. That is more than most white feminism of its time ever did.

It's also why I never heard of it, even having seen that movie with the same name. I was a WHITE feminist, until at least 2020 really. I didn't realize it, but the changes of the past several years are clear to me. I embrace that. And I recognize this: I was not intersectional because I didn't "get it". At all.

And so, this intersectional organization, that saw secretaries "disappear" at the 1:14:30 mark of the documentary... stopped being about me. It shifted focus to child care, it got its ass out of the office - indeed, out of typical "9 to 5" focus.

There is a woman in the doc who says at 1:17:38 or so, "By the time I came in as a young woman" things were different, nobody calls me their girl, etc. I can't tell whether she may be close to my age (55) or quite a lot younger, but I can say - by the time I came in, it was only *getting* different. I still made my share of coffee, for a lot of years - and I never, ever drank coffee. It was explicitly a job thing, and always a STUPID job thing. I never had sexual harassment issues with a manager, but I certainly had an unbelievable idiot or two. I never DIDN'T have anyone who thought my work was "less-than", for decades there. So, good for her.

But I am glad 9 to 5/925 did look away, did seek to get out of corporate office. I'm insulated and privileged, working in a cube or from home, in my side-bubble.

Like Ray-ye-yain On Your Admin Day!

"They" always say to be careful what you wish for. Let us add to that the codicil, perhaps, to be careful what you're thankful for.

Today was Administrative Professionals Day, or if you prefer, this week is AP week. I, of course, prefer "secretary", but that has been done to death on this blog. For now, anyway. Let it be said, the memories are still kind, regarding the one guy I ever worked with who found a Secretaries' Day card. That's thoughtfulness, right there.

And today I said to a couple people how much I like where I work now - how they don't fiddle away excessive funds on expensive dead flowers, but give us things we are likely to use/enjoy/appreciate. Last year, enormous live potted plant arrangements, in my case a big geranium mingled with the spiky fronds of a grass of some sort. It is still with me, just went outside this morning for the new spring. Year before that, it was Harry & David gift boxes - nice fruits and not all sorts of fattening things.

Given the past year and a half or so of working on that waistline and so forth, I particularly treasure the latter point, the absence of waist-busting shows of appreciation.

Naturally, putting too fine a point on that item was poor thinking on my part. This year's gift came from clients. Translation: a Taste of Chicago box, filled with such goodies as a cheesecake sampler (four kinds) and a true Chicago pizza from a famed place I actually have been to.

Thank heavens for family. I have a handy-dandy mom and stepfather close by, and keep them around for just such occasions. And it turned out almost too perfectly, in fact - our usual Friday family night looks bad, as my stepfather has a procedure Friday which will leave him either out of it and/or in pain. And mom had been planning pizza for supper, too.

And, you know, with his ongoing health issues and my mom's extended commitments as caregiver, it doesn't feel awful to show up now and then with a really good treat like that. It seems to break up the grind for her sometimes, and of course an enjoyable meal doesn't go amiss with him.


The title above refers to the amused chagrin you can feel, bragging that your employer - even while so massively involved with almost every variety of food on the continent - doesn't fatten you up ... and the happiness that when they ruin your brag, you can turn around and dent the caloric damage by celebrating family night a couple days early.

When your stepfather can enjoy eating, and your mom was planning for pizza.

EXPOSURE

It's not always a good thing for your writing to be seen. Janet Reid's post today somewhat touches on this theme - in a classic example of the old "How can you know my writing isn't good enough!?" rant which exemplifies where the writing is weak.

My own example today was at work. In an interoffice envelope from some other quarter of the company, I received a letter forwarded along to my boss, but actually addressed to "Mr. Contact Unknown, Owner" (incorrect company name).

Rest assured that my boss will see this letter, and its envelope - both identically incorrect - but not for the reasons hoped-for. I shared the thing all over my corner of the world, because everybody needs a laugh. The consensus was twofold: one, that we NEED TO DO BUSINESS with these folks as quickly as possible. And two, that my planned response of "Actually, it's Ms. Contact Unknown" is the best possible one.

Best. Mail merge. Ever.

Also, nice putting your best foot forward, company.

Image: Wikimedia

All this has only the most cursory relation to writing, or even to Janet's post, linked above. Mostly, I'm sharing it because it's funny, and I hear humor is a good way to prevent blog readers' boredom. And I care about y'all. I really do. I don't want you coming here getting bored.

So you're welcome. Mr. and Ms. Anonymous Reader. Happy Monday.

Breathless

I went to a new doctor not long ago, and the immediate result is that I’m collecting a whole new raft of doctors. Most likely, I expect this is an indication I chose well in the new guy, but of course the whole thing comes with a raft of administrivia and the inevitable fear doctors strike into many of us.

Like a lot of little kids, I was afraid of Going to the Doctor, because the extreme ritual of it all, the rigidity of my mother’s discipline leading up to the visit, and the smell of alcohol were in no way really reduced by the presence of the biggest fish aquarium I’d ever seen in my life, and I really never got to go nose-up to the tank anyway (mom, that) and get out of my head by contemplating the undulating peace and beauty in that water.

Once the sheer unknowable-ness and mystery went out of the experience, I “outgrew the fear” and got over it, and an increasing understanding of the medical likelihoods of my family lines became, over time, a bit of a dulled litany that went from not meaning anything because as a healthy child those things didn’t touch me to not having any meaning because, frankly, in my family (on the maternal side, anyway), illness and decrepitization are something of a cottage industry, if not an obsession.

Okay, they’re an obsession.

When  I was a liddle-LIDDLE kid, as we used to say, my cousin/best friend and I used to get into competitions whenever we saw each other: “My mother had NURSE’S TRAINING.” “MY mother FINISHED nurse’s training.” We were steeped in medical expectations and the fact that injury yielded that pinnacle experience of life: attention. Doing anything that resulted in getting a band-aid was great stuff; and the time we were walking barefoot and I stepped on a bee (the only time I’ve ever been stung by one, unless we count the time I mowed over the yellowjacket nest and half of them flew up my pants) was epic attention time for me. I believe I was actually jealous of that other cousin, whose foot got caught in the spokes of the bicycle when he was riding on the back.

Yeah.

Once adulthood undoubtedly got its way and had me all independent and working for a living and surviving that experience, I began to consider myself generally too busy, and too healthy, for doctor visits. And I have also been surrounded by those who actually “need” to go to them, which makes me sad. Of my two oldest friends, one has had a chronic, incurable disease since we were like twenty-five, and she’s endured multiple surgeries to remove significant portions of herself in treatment thereof. The other came upon difficulties much more recently, but very profoundly, now enduring a laundry list of exotic and also incurable conditions, as well as some hearing loss, rheumatoid arthritis, the odd blood clot or mini stroke – oh, and the supposedly-rare disease which killed not only my father and my grandmother, but has got hold of her and someone else in my family by now.


So it has come to be that recently, aged forty-seven, not having been unaware that I seem hardly ever to be in a doctor’s office as often as … well, ANYONE I know, I had to put a face on it, and admit, I hate doctors.

I had one several years back who, knowing my father died of lung disease, prescribed me a really good migraine medicine, which I loved and refilled … until the time it came from the pharmacy with the giant yellow label that said MAY CAUSE SEVERE BREATHING PROBLEMS on it. Where that label had been previously, I have no idea, but I can tell you this: I did endure horiffic sleep apnea every damned time after I got rid of a migraine.

So … that explained THAT problem. (*)

This doctor also (knowing about the migraine thing, y’see) decided it’d be a nice idea to force me to wear a giant, bright-blue, traffic-stoppingly-huge heart monitor in front of everyone 24/7 (as if that is not humiliating and therefore high-blood-pressure-inducing) because I had high BP once in her office. The fact that I explained to her I HAD a migraine that day, and had also had a fight with Mr. X, already living some 4000 miles away by then and therefore extra-stressy to fight with, between time differences and so on, made no odds to her. Into a BP monitor I must go, all context and stress notwithstanding.

I’ve had a hideous case of White Coat Syndrome ever since then, that stressed me out so much. My dad had the same problem, and I never thought I would (ask any phlebotomist who’s taken my whole blood or platelet donations over the past THIRTY years now). But no matter how I try to overcome it, a DOCTOR’S office BP test is invariably going to come off badly. Gosh dammit.

That doc  pulled the same heart monitor trick on my sister in law, too. It stressed my very young NIECE out, that stunt – imagine how conducive that was to S-I-L’s BP coming off well.

I never went to her again.

The one I replaced her with was indifferent in the extreme, which meant I thought he was a great fit on the rare occasion I ever bothered to go see him.

But last time I did bother, he shrugged off a very real patient concern I had, and decided to make a flip remark to go with the (literal, thanks) shrug.



And so we have a new doctor.

He’s treating my eczema by sending me to my mom’s dermatologist, whom I know she loves (this may or may not bode well for my loving the doctor herself, but at least I have something to do about the incresingly ugly situation on my arms).

And he’s responding to the fact that I have a history of sleep apnea (*) and my father and grandmother both died of (non smoking-related) lung disease by sending me to a pulmonologist.

This, for me, is a bit of an added area of White Coat Syndrome, because, though I count myself whole and healthy and have so much to be grateful for when I look at the health of so many around me, I actually do have significant trouble breathing sometimes. It began about a year or two after dad died, and also about the time Mr. X went so far away. It’s been a stable problem, and not associated with other symptoms – and I had a sleep study done once which was inconclusive of anything scary – and I have a deviated septum (the only useful thing that first doc ever told me, not that she ever DID anything about it) – and eczema is actually associated with breathing issues – and I’m only forty-seven – and this visit, as New Doc is kind enough to say, is just to establish the baseline (… “just in case” being left unsaid …).

In case the theme of “and’s” above is not clear, with all these years of not going to doctors like I’m a crank about the whole thing, I’ve been able to sustain the narrative that “there’s nothing wrong, really” (i.e., I am not dying of lung disease).

But you know. It’s no less uncomfortable, not being able to breathe, folks. It’s always embarrassing.

And … the sleep apnea.


It doesn’t happen every night; only several times a year, sometimes with long stretches of not at all. Sometimes with weeks-long stretches of every night, though.

I know enough to know this much. My apnea is autonomic, not mechanical. My BRAIN stops the breathing, not my body; not my weight and conformation.

I’ve had this problem since I was a liddle-LIDDLE kid.

I can remember, from an extremely early age, the nightmares. Nightmares from childhood can be particularly vivid; memorable even into adulthood.

Nightmares that could kill you – that literally stop your breathing – and that you never outgrow, though you outgrow all the other nightmares …


Yeah, those are doozies.

*

The nightmare is that I’m at the pool. It’s the same friendly pool I knew all my childhood, often, though I’ve been under other water in the odd dream over the years.

I’m at the pool and underwater, my hand over my face, and – miracle! – there is the tiniest bubble of air inside my hand.

This is all I have to breathe.

I have to conserve it.

So I have to breathe really. Really. Shallow.

And then my brain gets the idea. I can’t breathe at all.

And so I don’t.

And I stop for what seems like must be a pretty long time. Not just a few seconds.

I stop for so long my body’s repressed state stills. Becomes almost perfect.

Until I am unable to hold on any longer. And I explode into consciousness. Gasping. Clawing at the air, the air that is not just a tiny little bubble I am holding in my hand, but wide and open and free, unsupressed by water, all mine, all mine. And I need it all.



So. Yeah. I got a new doctor, and almost instantly had three.

Vacation this year was a lot more fun to set up.

Oo-waw

Today was a good day.

In addition to buying a couple rugs for the house on an outing with my mon on Saturday, and some much needed sneakers and other shoes on an outing with Cute Shoes (of course!) and her son on Sunday, there was a great deal to get done this weekend. So taking four days of it worked out nicely. I went to a new doctor and cleaned house on Friday, and on Monday I stayed in alone and did some email and computer housekeeping, as well as a LOT of cooking.

Just in time for the holiday, I had received a bill for property tax on the car I’d sold almost exactly a year ago. *Sigh* Dealing with the County and DMV come in at the top of exactly nobody’s favorite things, so I’ll admit that’s the two-sided task I didn’t get done before the holiday was over. (Oh, and I couldn’t install my printer on my dumbstupidiot stupid dumb Dell, because Dell and/or Windows 8 apparently do not believe that printers should be printers, ohhh no – they have to be integrated online, so don’t even try to just do a device install, because: Windows account logins! And Tigers! And Bears! Oh my!)

So last night, I dug up the appropriate paperwork to show I traded The Godforsaken Car in just a bit over one year ago now, and today I scanned the pages at work and emailed them to myself at home.

Weirdly, it appears the County will take an email of these copies – and they mention no further hoops to jump through, apart from the gentle reminder I must make sure DMV knocks The GC off my list. Again: *sigh*

What’s fascinating to me is … I fully anticipated a chaming lunch hour (and then some) wrangling on the phone, but took a shot and did a little getting online just to see.

And had DMV wrapped up in about five minutes.

!!!!

I even re-upped my registration for two years. Easy as pie.

The DMV website was so easy to use, I was left with the anticlimactic feeling it could NOT have been that simple, and surely I didn’t actually do a thing. You know that feeling, when because you manage something online, some corner of your brain maintains suspicion nothing’s actually done? Perhaps a feeling held mainly by those of us of A Certain Age … (?)

On top of all this, last night, in and cooling off after a good walk with Pen-Pen, I got a truly unexpected message, via the contact form on this blog. I mean – who uses the contact form on a blog?

A neighbor had found my debit card on the street; it had fallen out of my pocket, and I had no idea. YOIKS! So she reached out the only way she could find – and bless her for it. I picked it up safe and sound after work today.

It was a good day.
I didn’t even hafta use my A. K.



Annnnnnnd - yeah, here's a geriatric white chick using Ice Cube in a post like THIS one. I know. I do, I know. But you know - this song has always made me groove. Consider the privilege-apologetic caveat entered. And just dig the oo-waa-o.

Things I Need to Accomplish Tonight ...

• Trim my hair
• Update my incoming mail server
• Sort mail
• Order heartworm pills
• Glue a couple pair of shoes with loose bits
• Call my mom - hopefully share a crossword puzzle
• Catch RuPaul's Drag Race at 9:00

Things I have accomplished: trimming my hair. Woot.

I think I'll go for the heartworm pills next.  YUM.

Big Job, Little Job - Soft Nights and Soft Cats

Today was one of those days with The Big Job to do.  In this case, that was a fairly sophisticated and elaborately-constructed confection of Excel and PowerPoint, balancing across the chasm of (thank goodness I have these) two large monitor screens, and basically both sticking out their tongues at me, taunting me.  Unfortunately for these particular Excel and PPT data, I appear to be a reasonably quick study, and the were unable to daunt me entirely.  Four or five pithy and specific questions fell out of the job - but, considering its scope and importance (and the urgency for it - all this was before eleven a.m.), that's pretty good brevity in the unanswered-questions-about-incredibly-involved-numbers department.  Better still, I'm very definitely gaining comfort with a process and with information that, only three weeks ago, I had never seen before.

As old as I am, it appears I am still capable of learning, and it's gratifying not only to "get it" but also to know that my coming to understand these things *makes me more valuable*.

A week or so ago, in one of those hallway-chats with another admin, she said to me, "They have you working on things that are way beyond your job description."  She wasn't pooh-pooh'ing it nor complaining on my behalf, the way we kind of do with office friends, she was just expressing surprise at how much I'm taking on.

I've been part of a slow-starting project which will cross not only all of the business lines at our employer, but also includes a number of departments participating in an initiative.  Not a great deal has happened there, but it's already introduced me to folks and groups I wouldn't know (yet anyway) otherwise, and it's showing me to those people.  Never a bad thing - for me individually, nor for my boss and my group, whom I represent.

I'm also working on this sophisticated update work, which will be a regular task going forward.  Less visible, but ongoing - and so, just as valuable and in (usefully) different ways.

There have been times since leaving my last job, one of a significant majority within my career which was focused on financial services, that I've thought about the opinions Certain People might have about my move.  The industry I've come to is heavily populated with regular guys - you don't see a lot of suits, you don't hear so much self-conscious corporate-speak.  We distribute stuff.  One of the areas of greatest focus in my work now is the fleet.

It's impossible for me not to believe that some of my acquaintances see this move as being downward in a way that doesn't answer to the actual content of my job, my satisfaction with it, the people, or the executive-ness of those I support.  There is this culture in the US, that “white collar” is superior to … well, anything else, in some ineffable (indefensible) way, but:  I just don’t see that.  Not least, because – frankly, how many people even WEAR white collars anymore?  The only people I’ve seen in that old standard, “professional dress” for the past fifteen years have been women.  Oh, we had ‘em at That One Place – but it wasn’t as ubiquitous a conformity of suitedness as you might have found just a few years before I worked at “the second-highest administrative tier of one of the largest financial services firms in the nation.”  Not by a heck of a shot.  It’s all Polos all the time almost anwhere you work now, and if grey flannel was drab, lord deliver me from khakis …  Heh.  (It’s a mighty fine thing I do not go man-shopping when I am at work.)

Anyway – as to the content of my job, which I would consider to be a pretty important factor in any job, let it be said that I see no kind of diminishment in the fact that the information I work with is about trucks instead of servers.  There is nothing intrinsically elite about the hardware of a computer - and, though the computers for which I supported a team to mess with 'em were destined to move our nation's economy ... well, now the trucks I work with have a bit to do with our economy as well, frankly - and I'm much more deeply involved in their particulars than I ever could be in those humming bits of hardware I never even saw.

I see "my" trucks now.  All the time.  Not twenty-four hours ago, I was eyeing one of our drivers on the freeway, making sure he was behaving.  It gratifies me that my favorite places to eat are supplied by people I know, with products I can get behind, that I get to eat well every day at work, that sometimes I'm the real, human voice a person gets when they call our company with a problem or a question.

Yet there is zero doubt in my mind there are people (both those I have worked with, one or two I share blood with, and some I just "know" to one degree or another) who imagine I've moved down in the world.

Yeah, well, this "down" and crucial set of duties I've enjoyed digging into more deeply over the past five months.  It comes with people I respect every bit as much as anywhere else I've ever been, and intriguing little perks too.  There's an aspect of comedy at my office not available anywhere else I've *ever* worked (how many cubes in your cube farm house gigantic glass jugs of wine sitting alongside big jars of minced garlic and giant cans of anchovies, all of which are funny enough - but have recently been befriended by a few pretty sizeable cans of what looks like butane? Party!).  There are the occasional treats left for us to enjoy - not just catering after a meeting, but that one day it was a full crate of breads, or the more-hazelnut-than-cocoa-version-of-Nutella stuff someone had at their desk with a generous supply of sampling spoons.

There is the fact that, seriously, the meat where I work now is easily twenty times better than the stuff at my last job that, even when they tried so hard to make it palatable, seriously was like enough to make the Baby Jesus cry.

That's not small potatoes, kids - you should pardon the expression (not like you get any choice, right?).

Even the fact that the toilets don't flush at me before I've even had the chance to get in the dadgum stall, and I now don't have the tiny, momentary psychic stress EVERY SINGLE DAY of wondering whether the idiot things would do it again - that's one less constant, tiny damned stressor in my life.  All to the good, thank you very much.

I have no more to apologize for in where I work today than I ever had to apologize for in being a secretary at all, is what I am saying.

Not the only point on my mind, though (inevitably).


I haven't taken a lot of time to just REVEL in this job change.  At first – well, it was the holidays and I felt bad about leaving my last job (that was so hard) and I’d been in the habit of lying about even looking for a job for so long maybe the stealth just clung to me.  I know I didn't want to go all gooey and "oh I have this shiny new thing in my life" (again).

But ... I haven't really reveled in a lot of the shiny new things in my life, over the past two years.

Gossamer was easy, and I still revel in his shiny little pearl-grey butt.  Penelope, as everybody knows, didn't kick off a period of easy-as-pie New Puppy Love.  As much as I love her, our honeymoon period was perfumed with poop more than pina coladas, or whatever it is The Kids Today enjoy on their honeymoons (I never really did one of those).  So - the new job, I didn't want to get too excited.  The whiff, in particular, of being a complete snot to my former coworkers, whom I still miss very much, seemed very much inappropriate, professionally.  So I kept the teenage-girl-with-a-new-crush thing tamped down.

I've kept a lot of excitement tamped down, is what I'm saying.  Not wanting to jinx things, or concentrating on other things, or just not wanting to be an insufferable braggart about insert-my-blessing-here.

Seems to me, though there are still and always reasons not to be a shrill little LOOKIT ME drama queen about it, I should perhaps review this policy of constraint on those causes for jubilation I am blessed with.  It's not natural for me, and ... well, you know, three years and counting without a vacation proper – two years of stress and fear since Sweet Siddy La’s death – Mr. X being squillions of miles away.

I could use some reason to get happy.


Pharell, of course, is all very well - but that song only lasts a couple of minutes, and I am no Lupita Nyongo and I know it.  I just need a little seat-dancing.   A little open-windows-going-down-the-road-with-good-driving-music.  Eine kleine nachtmusik, even.  The year has finally realized it's time to provide what my dad always joyously described as "soft nights" (I can hear his satisfied, deep intake of breath now, his low, gruff voice filled with a warm smile).  With luck - I'll get to those unbearably lovely nights in June with more reason to be thankful than I deserve.

We'll see.

For now, moment by moment.  With my great job.  My headache-inducing chart data.  And one non-poopy puppy and a pearl grey cat.

Vacation

Yesterday was my final day at the job I've spent three years loving and learning, and I am taking a few days off.  The new job will begin on Monday.

Though I've taken bits and bobs here and there, and my friend Zuba came to visit for Thanksgiving, I haven't had a "real vacation" (as we Americans like to put it) for something like two and a half years.  Though I'm not traveling to see my family on the West coast, nor taking a small fantasy respite in Savannah or the like, this will be the closest thing I'll get for some time.

My lunch date fell through today, and I'm fine with staying home to do laundry and work on revisions.  It's a nasty day out again (we've had a few, and though it's not cold, every driver in this city turns moron at the merest hint of rain, so not getting out amongst them has its charm), and I'm running perilously low on spare towels.  It's one of those days I'd sit in the office thinking how nice it'd be if I could be home, perhaps reading or getting things done.

I feel an almost guilty bliss:  I get to do that today.  *Off for the first load of clothes!*

Grape Pay

The question becomes:  whose monkey do you want to be ... and ... do you want to carry the rocks for the guys who PAY in grapes?





It's an important question.  Even when so many of us monkeys are told to make do with the grape stems.

Not the Mommy ... Not the Work-Wife Either

On the one hand, I suppose by today’s standards and expectations, “it’s attention” – and any attention, all attention, is supposed to be good.  On the hand I want to tweak people's noses with, though, this little pat on the head is pretty backhanded.  It actually includes the phrase ‘behind every leader’ ... because, as everyone “knows”, a secretary is not a leader (and, apparently, the WSJ mug who got stuck with this article does not understand that in fact admins stand well in front of the leaders for whom we work, because that's the only sensible place for a gatekeeper to be).

My job these days doesn't involve anniversaries and pets – because I am a professional, and my bosses are not celebrities lacking boundaries.  I am anything BUT a stage mommy, as the article sneers, nor the nose-wiping housekeeper for my team.  Indeed, this article’s position that an executive admin’s job takes a huge toll on their personal life demonstrates exactly the sort of extracurricular expectations that twenty-seven years as an admin have removed from my plate.  I’m an admin precisely because when I leave, I get to *leave* my job.

Of course there are those admins who hold their bosses hands as discussed in this piece – but those are not the rule, they are the people who work for those rare and special snowflakes who consider that they have a relevant need for a 24-hour secretary on call.  I plan my bosses’ travel and events such that they don’t need me at seven p.m. nor at four a.m.  They’re grownups too – and I don’t just mean the current ones, I mean all the executives I have worked for over the past fifteen years since I got out of the clerical trenches and upped the professional game for myself.  The one boss I've ever had who called me off-hours was the guy who once asked me one day for a tortuously detailed daily call log, and who, when I delivered it the next day, looked at me like I'd lost my mind and asked me what that was and why I'd wasted time on such a thing.  Sigh.


I’ve described before the wobbling sine wave of my resume, which has been almost a case study in the 20th/21st-century administrative career.  I have worked at very high levels, but the past five years and some change have not been the most vertigo-inducing of those.  I’m secure, grateful, and very fortunate, but as sensitive as my employment still is, it’s not one with the kind of access I had when I worked in Risk Management at one of the largest securities firms in the country.  I worked with the people who suggested that perhaps offering credit to every toddler, puppy, and inanimate object in the country was perhaps a poor idea ... just before The Whole Thing Crashed, and the discovery was made that credit for toddlers, puppies, and pet rocks was a poor idea.  Sigh.

Some giddy heights, it's easier to live without, truthfully.  But access is always an issue for the admin.  I was a little astonished, in one position, when  people asked me pointblank what my boss might be interviewing for when there was a period of executive flux.  It may be part of my job to know such things, but I never even discussed that with the executive, and it is the most important part of my job not to do so with anyone else.  Good gracious.



As it happens ...  Most recently, the “knowing” in our office finally had to go the other way.  This week, I came out of the closet to management that I am, as the classic phrase goes, “considering my options.”  There was a moment of fear and concern some months ago - and, as the HR wheels turn slowly, now have unexpectedly scored an interview out of an application I submitted more out of a need for control than what I felt was realistic expectation.  Huh.

Obviously, it was no insult to get the call – and I have management who are explicitly supportive, even though they did say don’t want to lose me.  If this particular interview were the direction my career goes (and I hold no breath where this is concerned), the access would return me to a position of exposure to the most sensitive information.  It can be exhausting, but exciting too.

Fortunately, the entity I ultimately work for isn’t populated by execs of the sort who’ll devolve me to hoodie-wearing nor feeding their cats – but then, it isn’t a place from which I would expect to retire at 44 and spend a few months deciding what I feel like doing next either.  As they say at my office, you don’t get rich working for our employer.

The good news is – really, you don’t get poor either.

Nesting

With the exception of last weekend, which was the JRW Conference, for the past several weeks my weekends seem to have been spent on redecorations.  In my case, this does not include designers or contractors, but a singlehanded puzzle game of furniture shoving and redeploying of my existing assets.

One weekend, it was Time to Bring Up the Big Rug.  I have a huge living room rug, something like a hundred pounds of wool, which spends the warmer months lying on the basement steps not needing vacuuming.  When the rug comes upstairs, the furniture circles closer in the living room, creating a cozy living space around the soft, thick rug where Penelope can lie down and enjoy softness and warmth instead of the hardwood floor.

Then it was time to fiddle around in the bedroom.  I was sick of the order of things, and did some shifting up there.

This weekend, it's the guest room.  My mom and I have been toying for some weeks with the idea of taking out the twin bed (there have been both a twin and a double in there for years, and while it's plenty large enough, the room had just become a parking lot for too many things) and putting my grandmother's bedroom suite up there to make it look a little more coherent.  So today I dismantled the twin, put its frame in a corner, brought the mattress and box spring downstairs (mom will probably come get them for her own use soon), moved the bed, dresser, and chest of drawers around into a new configuration, and vacuumed and dusted.  I also pulled out two el-cheapo little white cabinets which started their lives as a linen closet in a bathroom which had none, and which since being in this home have stood in as toyboxes of sorts both for my nieces, and for the theoretical possible visits of Mr. X's kids, back when we thought that could happen.  Three out of four of these kids are in double digits now, and the youngest has no need of Barbies at my house, so those things will probably go to Goodwill in the near future.  The cabinets, I found, fit one on top of the other in a corner of my closet; and now they are a great overflow for my bulky sweaters and for a lot of knit and sweater dresses which have been in a trickier corner of the closet.

All these projects, as gratifying as they are, do mean my usual Saturday housecleaning time is significantly invaded by other activity.  Today, having accomplished everything I have already, I still have not *begun* the routine dusting, scrubbing, and vacuuming - and I want to do those things too.

This may call for takeout.  And a longer evening than expected.

Work

The days continue to be pretty challenging, but today seems to have been a turning point, or at least one among many which was less painfully out of my control.  For a couple of months, things have been at a level of busy the word only glancingly begins to evoke.  For the past two and a half weeks. the volume's been turned up to eleven - ten and a half hour days, keeping my online status at "busy" constantly, battling a dizzying array of priorities, feeling good just to manage adequacy.

I kicked today's BUTT, though.  Today I scratched off some other people's priorities, as well as a *nicely* significant whack of MY urgent to-do's.  Review of points of contact - done.  Security review - done.  Transactions reconciled - done.  You wanted a meeting?  Done, my friends.  Initial forays into The Next Big Things coming down the pike - done.  Final confirmations for the imminent monster of a big thing already breathing down my neck?  So done, done, done, done, done, done, and done - and updates send to everybody too.  And, to top those things, a nice little "done" checklist for the top boss.  I even dang near managed to take on a print shop job - had it licked by the time ... one of my partners in crime said she was taking it off of my plate.  I almost felt "darn" about losing the thing, having nailed it upon some trial and error.

One of the best things about today was not only getting out on time (no lunch, but no late hour either), but also getting to reach out to a number of my favorite, and most reliable partners.  One of the best, who is coordinating a massive video conference event.  Two of the nicest to work with, for those Next Big Things, through the rest of 2013.  And another arm out, reaching for guidance on how to manage something I've been asking to take on for some months now.  Think we've got the right contact at last, and she even answered my initial entre' before I left the office.

This time next week, I will still be quite exhausted, but it won't be a bad thing.  I'm grateful it's gotten to the turning point now.  And looking forward to the day off I've given myself when the looming thing is finally over.  SHEW.

Progress, Then Off to Bed

An update for those who (astoundingly!) claim to find this sort of thing interesting (hi, Cute Shoes!) ... querying still going well.  After nothing but eliminations last night, found a good one tonight, and got that off a little while ago.  One query in a night may not be much - perhaps other authors do more at a time - but I start with a pretty large list as a rule, research carefully, and eliminate based on a fairly well-educated-at-this-point set of criteria.

I don't query in hard copy.  This made me feel guilty for a bit - what if I am missing out? - but in this day and age, it's the rarer agency who won't accept electronic than who will, and I look at this as a business consideration.  If even a Luddite such as myself finds email etc. a convenience, the refusal of the practical advance using it represents (not to mention the affront to trees; what a wasteful practice, even with recycling) and the excesses of time it requires are, valid or not, a deal-breaker for me.  We're coming to a time when refusal to go electronic almost looks like pointless posturing - whether to intimidate or just look snobbishly elite - and I don't need that noise.  (Yes, it has occurred to me that sticking with hard copy reduces the slush pile flow.  But I have to draw my personal lines somewhere.  Your lines may vary!)

If an agent's idea of historical fiction is undefined, and their website is predominantly pink and precious, I won't query.  It's my guess you're looking for romance-in-a-corset, and that's great stuff, but I'm writing ahead of the (European) invention of that bodice-heaving accessory, and my work is passionate, not romantic.  It also involves an awful lot of blood and blades ...

... but, muscular as my work may be, I'm also not quite Bernard Cornwell, Conn Iggulden, nor even (and I love this guy!) Ben Kane.  If I think the cover designs for your histfic would work as well for genre video games, I might not query there either.  Or I will be pretty careful about it.

I'm even getting so I want to eliminate agents who don't clearly state their taste profile on their website, or at Agent Query, QueryTracker, or another such clearinghouse listing site.  Yes:  the need to research agents and read interviews is understood; but, if I have to open three or more pages to get to the meat of the matter, you're fatiguing me unnecessarily.  It's almost as wasteful of my time as snail-mail querying.  And wears authors out.  Have a page on your agency website with a blurb for each agent, and IN THAT BLURB please tell me what you want to see - genre, taste preference, authors on your list - I don't care which way you do it, but give me some sort of an indication.  With everything we have to do to appeal to you guys, coyness is just a cruel return on our quest to attract literary (publishing industry) attention.

So only one query out tonight.  For me, given the grumpy exclusions above - that's not a bad night at all.

It doesn't stop me querying extensively.  I just don't blanket-spam every member of the AAR without any consideration.

What Would Coworkers Think?

Day Al-Mohamed asks, what do your colleagues think of your writing fiction?

In my case, there are a lot of answers, and it occurs to me they're sort of interesting.  I can admit, I've found myself censoring my impulses to talk about the work many times - sometimes, just so as not to bore people on topics which overexcite me personally.  Often, though, it's a similar dynamic to what Day discusses - the way people suddenly get ideas about the person you are, perhaps based on your subjects, or just because you're a frowzy artsy type in a perhaps staid environment.

I happen to work in an area and amongst people who only appreciate me the more once they discover my nerdleries.  Even so, it's still atypical for the secretary to have raging Barbarians trotting around in our brains.

When I first began work on Ax, I was still in the mainstream financial services industry.  I worked with the guys who suggested perhaps it wasn't such a handy idea to give credit out to everyone, their dog, and that one cool arrangement of decorative grasses on the corner - but it was very much the executive atmosphere you might expect.  I loved the guys who ran the place, and still respect them all - but they were the suited types, conservative, career-driven, largely (not all!) the well-off and corporate white men we all know run in such circles.

One of them (one of those not-all I allude to) once accused my writing of being "elegant".  Considering he's someone I still chat with on odd occasion, and he's been a Communications executive for many years now - and he's hilarious, creative, and personally delightful - this is on the order of a Very High Compliment.  And the piece he was reading wasn't work:  it was MY work - my first page, which I was submitting that year for JRW's First Pages Critique.

Another one, and this is a guy I will never forget, was nothing more (nor LESS) than genuinely encouraging.  He was a big, brash, funny and friendly guy.  He used to call me Angelina Jolie, and we all called him George Clooney.  When he learned I was starting a novel, he asked me about it.  And he never stopped doing that.  He would buzz down the hallway where the Executive Admins all sat in a row, say hello to everybody - and, for me, he *always* had the question, "How's that novel coming, Jolie?"

It seems such a small thing, but it was a memorably fundamental part of the work, back then.  I am grateful for his enthusiasm and his pushing, and he may never know just how important he was back in those early stages, when I was researching and trying to teach myself what it was to be a writer.  He's part of the reason I have become an author, and enthusiasm like his is what bouys people enough to become published ones, at that.

Nowadays, I have a team replete with nerds such as myself, and they don't think a great deal about my writing, though they know about it.  They may be a little surprised when it sells, but will be wonderful about it. One of my coworkers is also a very dear friend, and she is unfailingly supportive and generous.  A new one is also a writer, I found out yesterday.

My executives like the value-add my creativity brings to the job.  They seem to like TALKING with me, which doesn't hurt.  One - himself formidably well educated and formidably intelligent - I think rather likes the idea of having an author on the team.  I was told once that helped put me over the top when he interviewed two candidates of relatively similar experience.  Whether that is true or not, I do know we discussed the way querying and the work of a writer was helping me to maintain discipline at the time of my (blessedly brief) unemployment.  He is interested in history, and may even be a reader someday.

The other officer I support is an especially interesting balance of nice guy and extremely good manager.  He's the one I am training to have an admin (and spoiling remorselessly - he's going to be ruined for all other secretaries!), and has a friendly interest.  His wife once found my blog, though - and, through it, the Sarcastic Broads, and I understand loved these wonderful friends of mine.  And why not?  Heh.

I know a few of my coworkers have found my own blog, and a couple I am close enough to, I've even directed them to my excerpts, posted here.  Having a thick enough skin to make myself public as an author is part of what I hope will be the endgame in any case, and sometimes it's helpful to share with those you feel safe opening up to.  It is just possible, in fact, that one of my followers happens to be someone I work with, but I have never asked and don't intend to.

So - no, I don't play my writing close to the vest anymore, by any stretch.  When I was unemployed, I fully expected to be Googled.  When I was querying, I hoped for it.  I may be still in a backwater of the internet - but the plan is that someday THIS will be a part of my public platform, and there's little sense left in being precious about my work, particularly when I hope I am getting closer to ITS being public as well.

It does make me wonder, though - what would *your* coworkers do?

Friday

Work has been fine lately, but a certain intensity of the fire in my belly seems to have been wanting lately, for no particularly good or bad reason; sometimes, you just feel more motivated than others.  I haven't been exceptionally bad, but I do notice in myself that the sense of satisfaction I sometimes get in ticking off a day's accomplishments gives way at other times to a more baseline practicality, which isn't such a bad thing really.  Today, though - maybe it was the fact I allowed myself caffeine (I've given it up almost entirely, which I don't think has hurt a bit in the "I'd have guessed twenty" department when I see a good friend for the first time in a while and she's guessing how much weight I have lost) - maybe it is just because Fridays are my half days, nobody was around (this can be so good for getting a lot of administrivia done), and it's bloody beautiful and not hot outside - maybe I just got sick of myself and threw off self-indulgence for a more constructive indulgence.  I always DO like the way it feels when I can cross off a lot of to-do's in a day, and Fridays are hardly exempt from this spirit and attitude, short though they may be.

At home I'm having a similar outlook.  This weekend's expected plans - since I still haven't found the correct Briggs & Stratton oil cap for my mower online, I'm going to otherwise cover that aperture, and frankly quite enjoy mowing the grass on what is after all a really beautiful, golden, crisp, and breezy day out.  If I can find a utility knife, I will cut the rug Siddy has peed into ruin in half, deposit it in my giant trash thingo, and thumb my nose at the mean sanitation collectors who seem to have a personal grudge against my garbage and its containers, who left the rug this week, and threw the can halfway into traffic, on its nose.  I may even contact the county to report the incessant occurrence of this, which I never see at my neighbors' homes, which is a danger for traffic frankly, and which has given me a complex that somehow these guys actually have it in for me for reasons I cannot begin to fathom.

Also, I'm going to finally make The Call to Verizon, about their craptacularly idiotic billing practices, regarding my FIOS, which may by the end of such call be canceled outright.  They set up a $79.99 package deal which has yet to come in anywhere near $79.99, their customer service is for sh**, and I am sick of the silliness for the sake of cable I didn't especially want in the first place, and can joyously live without in the second place, if they can't get their package deal billing together.  /*grump*

Also on tap this weekend:  deleting that bastard brother (heh) and perhaps some work on Tetrada's subplot, to be sure the continuity maintains.  It would be joy to delete at least 2K more words!  Maybe more than that!  (... readers ... ?  Bueller?)

I am ready, I am caffeinated, and it is the weekend.  Woot and more woot!

Back to Work

Having been out of my office for two days, I was of course duly punished by my inbox, but though it put me to an hour and a half OT today, the smack on my hands was not too dire.  At least, in terms of consequences for my *team*.  There was a pretty spectacular fire drill late in the morning, which thank heavens (a) came up 24 hours in advance of a point where it would simply have been a disaster, and (b) worked out (did I mention thank heavens?).  Shew.  But for the most part, surprisingly, I  dug through a lot of work in decent time during the first half of the day.

I caught up some dropped travel which fell through the cracks of my being gone and our Travel Goddess being gone, but without ugliness.  Caught calendars up, had a pointless meeting, responded, responded, resolved, got on top, and got ready.  For that fire drill-inducing event (coming tomorrow), I got some final prep in good shape, not least of which was that (b) part mentioned above.  Never took lunch, but I was savvy enough to order pizza yesterday, so I had leftovers, and had a piece for breakfast, a piece a few hours after that, a piece for a later lunch/snack as well.

Parceling the slices out between parceling out the accomplishments, I parceled in some of my little at-the-desk calesthenics, and managed to both clear my inbox VERY nicely, but even the outbox as well, and (astoundingly) my hard copy "work in progress" file.  For a while there, the remainder was just filing, which is almost endearingly quaint of me to even indulge in 2012 - but I like being endearingly quaint, of course.

Speaking of which, one of my bosses sent me a package last week (a good admin would have had it in my hands on-the-day, hah) for Admin's day.  Being a good sort, he worked hard to find a card that said something about a wonderful SECRETARY instead of an admin, and I grinned, because I knew he'd done that on purpose.  Per my suspicions on that point, he did mention finding one that said "secretary" on it wasn't easy.  Heh.  Stupid Hallmark.

By early afternoon, realizing I wasn't so much fighting uphill as really just having a decent day's work of it.  AND enjoying some nice cold pizza (and laughing because my dad would just cringe - he always winced and said "don't you want to heat that up?" when we were kids ...).

Of course, it did not last - though my afternoon did, until about quarter after six.  Ah well.  In at seven a.m., worked through lunch - shoot, it was a 12-hour day.  And tomorrow, I expect will be a bear, with a major event I am pretty much singlehandedly responsible for cruise directing.

If I can get through tomorrow, things will look good for the rest of this week ...

AP Day

Today has been Administrative Professionals' Day (one of my managers, wise to my ways, IM'd me to say Happy Secretaries' Day - and earned yet more points thereby, heh), and I feel like I should say something, but there isn't a great deal leaping to mind.  In a career widely envied by my peers, I've been fortunate to work for people I respect and like more often than otherwise - but, even out of a crop of bosses I've been enormously grateful for, right now my two officers are *remarkable* people.  I get to work for these guys.

Since the exit of the sexual harasser (not worthy of my time to go back and link posts about that), I also get to say - I really like my whole team.

This is among the blessings of my life.  I work for an entity which won't move away, merging with some other entity, which will then merge with another, degrading my career with every move along the way.  I can feel how valued I am, every day.  It gets frustrating, yeah.  Every job does.  This is why they pay us to do them.  But ... the frustration isn't dark and creepy.  The frustration isn't coming from within, it's not a sense I am wasting my time.  It's just the nature of having any job, of working with hundreds of people across multiple time zones, of things going wrong, or happening at the wrong time, or just my own having a headache and being cranky.

As much as I tell my management and colleagues how grateful I am every single day - they tell me it's mutual every day, too.  And, as I think about it, "every day" may really be a literal figure.  I am thanked, I am high-fived virtually and in person, I *know* what I add to my team, and they know too, and we are all pretty damned happy about it.

My job, when I took it, was partially to make myself a hub - to create not only an effective network of support for our group, but also to provide certain aspects of our identity.  I've done that both interpersonally and literally, taking ownership of our recognition program, taking ownership of our newsletter, being heard, reaching out.


***


All this is to say:  I love my job - and, what is more, I am grateful to have it.  Not merely grateful to be working in this economy.  Not merely hopeful, and even secure.  But incredibly, consistently, completely grateful.  I pray, for all the children of G-d, that everyone should be so blessed.  Should have such fulfillment, and the gladness in it.

Happy Secretaries' Day indeed.  And Happy Admins Day, to all!!  Heh.  G-d bless us, every one ...

Axing the Ax!

I was struck and amused at some of the ideas I'm bouncing off my SBC readers, and thought it was worth sharing, if only for the realization I came to in the final line of my note to these wonderful ladies ...

By the way, if you don't like having opening chapters of a novel "spoilered" - well, then, this contains spoilers. However, nothing of substance beyond the first few dozen pages will be ruined by this post.  If you're interested in "process", though - read on, because this is full-on authorial sausage-making!  (Note:  "Cloti" is my nickname for Queen Clotilde.  Other characters named are a mix of historical and fictional, mostly the latter.)


***



Kristi, to catch you up on brainstorming last weekend, Leila helped me to see that I could cut the character of Clovis’ older sister, Lanthechild (and her traitor husband, Gaianus) out of the novel.  Just because she existed doesn't mean she needs to exist in this novel!  This weekend, I decided I probably need to ditch Clovis’ own mini battle with trichinosis, too.  That thread doesn’t do anything but demonstrate Cloti’s administrative expertise, and I don’t think evidence of that is so short those scenes and their aftermath are worth preserving.  Your thoughts?

I’m also shifting the opening progression to move straight from Evochilde’s death to the battle with Syagrius, eliminating all the talk of horse breeds and cousin Wedelphus, and prep for five years, to tighten the progression of events.  It’ll be coronation, mother’s banishment, death of Evochilde, big battle, with very little exposition and blah-blah in between.  Any character I can eliminate, I need to - so if you think the little scribe boy, Merochar, needs to go, for instance, tell me.  For now, I’ve kept Mero since he does provide an ongoing thread through the novel - but he may not be essential, so throw ideas around there, too.

Pharamond’s parents may get to keep their names, but I may also eliminate the scenes where their deaths occur; it doesn’t add anything to the action, nor Clovis’ character (their deaths don’t even do much for Pharamond’s character, textually speaking!), so that will probably go.

Funny, how I can feel so “fertile” as a writer, coming up with so many darlings to kill!!

I Can Actually Deny ...

... that I do ANY writing at work (anymore).  If I tried plugging in a flash drive to pull up my novel, The Lord on High would get a security alert.  I wanna keep my job, because I don't expect those fantasies about movie deals and all that to come true, and because it is, frankly, a bitchin' position.  I LOVE my job, and (most of) my team.

I can remember, though, jobs with a little smidge more time for things like that.  (Not at all) sadly, I haven't had one since starting on Ax.  Poor me.


The piece is pretty good, though, and *does* remind me of those days before I actually really was a writer - or author ...

In Celebration

Four weeks ago today I was rear-ended, and today I am celebrating by again using my half-day off work to deal with the accident.  Last week it was doctor's visits, week before it was picking up the car (over and over) - this week I'm throwing in a little variety by chasing down medical adjusters and maybe even topping it off with a call to the county where the incident took place, and asking them where the heck the subpoena is for this hearing supposedly set for April 9.  Of course, I have no card for the sheriff who took my information and cited the other driver - just a scrap of paper with his name and the incident number.  So I get to go web surfing to even find a number for the county, then get shuttled around most likely.

I'm also celebrating by having my back hurt like gangbusters.  Most excellent, that.  Blah.

This investment of my time, for a month now, has been FUN.

Wheeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

*Insert snarking, eyebrow-up expression of sarcasm here.