Dividing My Attention

     It's possible to love two things, right? It has to be, because I'm doing my darnedest to make this work. I rededicate myself to work and comedy every day. And it occurred to me recently that I'm actually pretty damn lucky. There are way worse problems than having too many things to care about in your life.
     In an amazing and weird way, work and comedy are connected. In an ideal, perfect, dream world, comedy would be my work and they would be connected because they would literally be the same thing. That hasn't happened yet. And it may not and I have to be ok with that. I'm going to keep trying though. In the meantime, I have these two amazing things I enjoy and am passionate about and that's effing lucky.
    I was talking about invocation with a teammate of mine the other day. If you don't know, invocation is an opening for a Harold used to generate ideas for the scenes that will follow. I love doing an invocation. Sometimes, doing the invocation is the most fun bit of it for me. I separate myself and watch the team doing it from the outside and am in awe of how in 3 minutes we went from "flower" to "I Am the Cure for Childhood Cancer." (That's funny in context, really.) We got there as a team because we all worked together and built on one another's ideas and didn't deny or judge anything. And then when we look back at how we got there, we see the thread; we can find our roots from "childhood cancer cure" to "flowers." And we do all of this in about 45-seconds. It's amazing. I love it.
    I'm also reading "Onward" by Howard Schultz. He's an inspiring person; he must be, really, to get to where he is today. He talks a lot about connecting to our roots at the same time as looking forward. "Onward" talks about the struggles Starbucks went through in 2007 and the subsequent economic downturn. He didn't use the same words, but so much of what he described reminded me of an invocation. He had a vision to move the company forward while maintaining the thread that led him back to his roots.
     During the Harold, we rarely go back to just the suggestion. This isn't a hard and fast rule; we do do it. But in general, we build on all of those other things we created in 3 minutes. We don't just live in the past (the past here is 3 minutes ago at the initial suggestion), we move forward. We build using a few guiding principles  we've been taught in our improv courses. And that's what Howard Schultz was doing too. He didn't want to live in the past. He wanted to stay connected to the past (Pike Place Market and the whole lot) while building something using a few guiding principles that he put forth as a Mission Statement.
     Nurture the Human Spirit. The common thread through Starbucks' mission and through performing improv is that it nurtures the human spirit. It happens one cup and one game move at a time.

Goading

     Somewhere in the process of making our way in the world today, people have learned that complimenting someone and playing dumb will get them to do the work for you.  I will not fall for your traps.
     "You're good at Word.  How do I...?"  How many times have I heard this?  The answer they want is "just send it to me."  They don't think I'll actually teach them how to use Word.  But I will, because Word isn't hard.  I know they're just being asshats, so I stop what I'm doing, and I learn them some Microsoft Office Suite.
     Also, telling me I'm good at Word is not a compliment.  It's not something to be good at.  I don't get a bonus because I've learned how to use the commands that Microsoft put in their program.  I haven't manipulated code or written an add-on macro to specifically serve our purposes.  Really, I just know how to read.  When I need to insert a section break, I think Hmm, I wonder if Insert, followed by Section Break will get that job done.  It does.
     Stop trying to goad me into doing your work with fake compliments, playing dumb, and plain old taunts.  "I don't think you can get Word to do that."  Or "but when I do it, it doesn't work."  Well then, tough crap.  But I'm not doing it for you.  Also, there's a users manual, a help menu, and an entire Dummies series on this stuff.  And you probably passed 6th grade, so you should be able to figure it out anyway.

Cover Letters Are Hard

    A dear friend of mine (no really) has been job hunting recently.  It ain't easy.  I've had many conversations about this with several friends, actually.  It's such a grind, and at times, it can seem hopeless.  I blame part of this to the new way we find jobs.  When I was 15 looking for a job, I walked into McDonald's and asked for an application.  I was able to fill it out entirely, which put me at the head of the pack.
     Even a few years ago, I was looking for a part time job for some spending money and to get out of the house.  I was walking through my hometown and went into the movie theater.  There was an old crone standing behind the counter.  "Are you hiring any part time help?" I asked.  She then asked how old I was and what the deal was with my limp- two questions I know an employer is not allowed to ask.  But still, beside the point.  I just walked in and asked, and I got the job.
     Now, as adults, we have to write resumes and CVs and cover letters.  And we have to submit them over the internet.  We don't even get to mail it in, or look at the person we're submitting to.  Really, we don't know where the hell any of this stuff goes. 
     The resume or CV can be tricky, and it seems like the rules are always changing.  There are constantly Yahoo! articles about "What not to put on your resume."  The gist: never lie, but don't tell the truth. Make yourself sound good, but not too good or they'll think you're arrogant. Don't leave breaks in employment, but don't write down times you were unemployed.
     For my friend, the most daunting part has been the cover letter.  And I wholeheartedly agree.  You find a job you think you'd be perfect for.  Your skills line up to the desired qualifications listed.  Perfect.  "All I have to do is write this cover letter" you think to yourself.  And then twenty minutes passes and you're staring at a screen that reads "Dear Hiring Manager," on it.  Ugh.  What can you possibly say?  In the end, you play it safe; you write about your qualifications in a way that was not covered in your resume and you tailor it to the job at hand.  And when you don't get called back, you wonder if you should have played it so safe.
     For example, my friend applied for a job at Groupon.  She wrote these two same cover letters:

Dear Groupon,
     I'm ______ and I'm awesome. As you can see from my resume, I'm capable of putting up with as much bullshit as can possibly be thrown around. Seriously. The Navy? Government Contracting? The Government? It was bullshit city and I was the parade marshal for pride week.
     Also, I have excellent computer skills, such as forwarding emails and assembling power point presentations. I am a firm believer in your company because I too like to hang out with my friends but not have to pay full price for it.
     Given the opportunity, I'm sure I can excel with your company and together we can take it to the next level- global networking. That's not a thing yet, right?
Remember, I'm awesome.
Hearts, _____

Dear Groupon,
I want to work for you. Get me out of this place. Windy City! The Bears! I know a lot of words.
_____

She didn't send either of them, but you have to wonder what response you would get if you did.  
I had applied for a position at TWoP and considered using this:

I can be a bit of a cunt, but it looks like you would appreciate my cuntish, no bullshit kind of humor.
  Love,
  Nancy

A job opened up at Thomspon-Rueters.  I didn't apply, because I have no idea what they do.  But in the same vein:   

Dear Thompson-Rueters,
I'm a bit of a cunt, but I think my no bullshit attitude are just what you need. Yes, I will take a corner office, thank you.
Nancy

Professionals recommend always keeping your resume and cover letter up to date, just in case.  My just-in-case cover letter:

Dear Hiring Director,
     I would be awesome at this job.  Seriously.  I only require about 4 hours of sleep a day- the rest of the time I can be at work. 
     I am one of the only people in my current office who can construct a sentence.  I know the definition of a lot of words, and even more importantly, when I don't know the definition, I do not proceed to use them in high-level documents.
     My current boss frequently calls me into his office to help with tasks in Microsoft Word.  Tasks such as deleting a text box that falls outside of the margins and changing the default reading mode.  He doesn't ask anyone else- he specifically seeks me out for these Word emergencies.
     I've done a lot of different things before and all of these jobs make me great at any future job.  I listen really well; I take direction better than a 6-year-old on his (or her) dad's (or mom's) tee-ball team. 
     And also, not that I'm desperate, but I will DO ANYTHING.  Really.  Anything.  I have a very low moral code.  I mean, I won't steal, but there's not much else that's off limits.  Mostly, it's about the job though. 
     I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards, Nancy

 If I were a hiring manager, I would hire whomever it was that sent these to me.  This may be why I am not a hiring manager.  

Ugly Charts

Usually I like to leave my work out of Oliver, but today, something so awful happened I had to share it.  I made the ugliest histogram I've ever seen.  I've taken out the words so you can't piece it together, but here is that ugly ugly chart:

There are 16 different colors on it.  They are associated with 31 different bars.  There are trend lines.  There are labels as well, but I have spared you those.  Trust me, they're awful.  The information intended to be represented here is lost amongst the explosion of color and sadness.  Those pastel colors in the middle were a necessary evil because the other colors available in Excel 03 are bright neon colors that make it look like a histogram on the surface of the sun. 

     The worst part is that this is part of a series.  There are at least 8 other graphs that look very similar to this.  It looks like I murdered clowns and spread them all over my computer.  Remember the good old days when we just made histograms out of construction paper and marker representing how many times we flipped heads and how many times we flipped tails?  I long for that histogram.  If my high school statistics teacher saw this, surely he would unwind his handlebar mustache, walk straight to DC, and slap me across the face.  This is an ugly chart; it is a miscarriage of statistical representation.

UPDATE:
Now, this is the ugliest histogram I've ever had to make:

 18 colors over 42 bars.  I had to use gray on the last three.  It's terrible.  Just fucking awful.

Priorities

     What's the moment when you realize you have adjusted your priorities?  Sometimes this type of thing just happens.  I realized mine had changed sometime between 6:30 this morning and about 10am.  I'm doing my best to not judge myself.
     This morning I woke up in my groggy state not quite sure when the last time I showered was.  And here's the gross part- I decided I didn't care enough to just remedy the situation that take a damn shower.  I figured improv, drinking, and sleep were more important; those three things had taken precedent in my decision making last night and I gave up the idea of showering in favor of them. 
     Then a few hours later the office manager commented on my hair.  She noticed I got it cut and yammered on about not pushing it behind my ear and if I let it fall forward I would look younger.  I said I didn't want to look younger, but she insisted and then came over to me and, well, touched my hair.  She commented that it was soft.  Yes, it is soft, it is also unwashed. 
     I think I have to quit my job now. 

When The Cat's Away

     As a direct result from the all those awesome things I'm doing, I didn't get a lot of sleep last night.  As evidenced by my neck pain, I must have slept on my head.  To combat the sleepy-sleepies at work, I stopped at Starbucks on my way to the office for a triple tall americano.  The combination of low sleep and high caffeine pretty much makes me over-the-moon happy.  It might be a fake chemically induced happy, to be followed by a huge crash-and-burn later tonight, but for now, it's great. 
     I enjoyed my banana nut loaf and triple tall americano as jovially as I possibly could.  It's possible my coworkers didn't share in my delight.  I may have also been chair dancing to the awesome playlist I was listening to. 
     And then, uncontrollable laughter.  I did it to myself, so it was hard to explain to others what was so funny.  Plus, they didn't ask.  I wrote this email to Mary:

I needed you earlier when I read a headline too fast.  It read "DoD Says More War Funds Possible As Senators Eye Cuts."

I thought "Wow.  Eye cuts.  That would really hurt."  Then I thought it was a really bitchy thing for the DoD to say, and a really weird analogy.  Basically, I thought the DoD was saying that getting more war funds was as likely as senators getting eye cuts. 

And now I'm laughing uncontrollably about it.  It doesn't make any sense.  Obviously that's not what it means.  I can never explain this to anyone else.

Now I am trying to explain it.  Because it was a great moment.  I was laughing so hard, I was crying.  Basically, I was that asshole who laughs at their own joke, but then takes it even further, and laughs so hard at their own joke, they cry.  The fucking funniest joke ever, and I told it.  I was realizing this as it was happening, and it only fueled the fire, and created a vicious laughing cycle. 
      And my coworkers kept working, deliberately ignoring the laugh attack I was having in my cubicle. 

Things You Can't Talk About

     I was thinking about this idea all day yesterday, and then again this morning.  I considered just putting the title of the post up and leaving the post blank.  Ha!  The idea runs parallel to the words you don't hear anymore and the I forgot where I was for a second posts from a while back.   Because along with words you shouldn't say whilst at work, because it's work, there are just topics that you shouldn't talk about.  Most of them are obvious- the three taboos: politics, religion, and sex.  But then there are also things that are just off limits pretty much all of the time.  They're just too personal, too embarrassing, or too gross.  Or often all three.
     It could be something simple- maybe you finally blew your nose hard enough to get every last bit of bloody snot out of there.  You're clear and breathing better than ever.  It feels great.  But it's not really something you can talk about.  Maybe you can tell your partner, sig other, or very BFF.  A co-worker would be out of the question, and that type if info would probably kill a fledging relationship, romantic or otherwise.  So you feel great, but you can't really tell people why; that's sad.
     Also, on the flip side, sometimes you don't feel great, and people are concerned, but the thing that has brought about the not-greatness falls into that personal, gross, and/or embarrassing category.  Maybe you did something weird while shaving, your dinner consisted of Oreos and red wine, or you ran out of something you should never run out of and embarrassing hysterical hijinks ensued.  I'm mentioned a few tamer things to set the mood, but when you start ramping these things up, they quickly devolve into things you just cannot talk about.  I've often told close friends of my dinners of Oreos and red wine- that one isn't terrible, but the other two are just not great topics of conversation.  You can't be honest with concerned co-workers when they ask about your particularly haggard appearance.  You have to tell them "oh, I just woke up on the wrong side of the bed" rather than the truth- you woke up on the foot of your bed wrapped up like a mummy in blankets surrounded by empty wine bottles and covered in what you really hope is chocolate, but the details are hazy.  
     Sometimes I think about how liberating it would be to just be frank with people all of the time. 

Wow, you're in a good mood.
Yeah, I just had a BM the size of my arm.  I feel great. 

Then I consider how liberating it would be to lose my job and all of my friends over such frankness.  That's not the good kind of liberating.  There are just some things that, no matter how close you think you are to someone, you probably shouldn't talk about.

A Case of The Mondays

     I realize it's an unpopular thing to say, but it's also real.  Today, I have quite the case of the Mondays.  And for me, another aspect of the Mondays is that if Monday morning is bad, I don't have much a shot at the rest of the week.  Yes, this is a defeatist attitude, but I have 31 years of empirical data to back that up.
     I try to start Mondays off right if for no other reason than to offset the inevitable shit week ahead.  But if Monday morning is shit, well then, I should just pack it in now.  I actually woke up not late this morning.  I had a wonderful shower and performed the rest of the morning routine appropriately.   It was nice.  And then came the train.  Pardon the pun, but the train has derailed any possibility of a successful week.
     It was late, and jerky.  I mean that in a physical sense, though I suppose I would also call the train a jerk if I were to assign it personified behaviors.  The trains lateness of course caused my lateness, thereby completely negating waking up not late and everything I had done right earlier in the day.  I could have slept in, taken a Navy shower, and not worn make up, and I would have arrived at the same time.  I feel defeated.  This then leads to a general feeling of the Mondays.  My attention span is that of a gnat on crack, my tolerance for stupidity is dangerously low for the workplace, and I just want to stuff my face with nuts trail mix.
     Also, being late today means I'll be even later tomorrow, and the next day, because that's just how it goes.  It's how it always has gone, and I don't see how it could possibly go any other way.   A bad case of the Mondays leads to the testy Tuesdays, the  worked-up Wednesdays, the ticked-off  Thursdays, and the  finally-it's-fucking Fridays.  Ugh, the Mondays.  

The Sound of Silence

     Not the song, but actually the sound of silence, is completely awful.   Maybe it's a small ADD part of me that feels the need for constant stimulation, but frankly, I need constant stimulation.  There is such a thing as too quiet.   The two places I come across this most are at work and in my mother's house.  Also my mother's car.  Well, pretty much anywhere with my mother.
     I find the silence creepy.  And what's worse is that it makes every small sound made within the cone of silence grating.  The sound of the air conditioner/heater blowing through the vents provides just the right amount of white noise to try to lull me to sleep.  I hear every key stroke.  My eye lids make a sound as they scrape across my drying contact lenses.  It's terrifying.  I put my earbuds in sometimes, but then even at their lowest possible volume, they seem deafening.  Oh god, what if someone hears that?
     Mouse-click.  Backspace, backspace.  Mouse-click.  Chair squeak,  the door three offices over opened and closed, sneeze.  I always imagined offices to have more white noise.  On The Office there's lots.  People are talking, making copies, playing jokes.  Not here.  There's something about the silence that apparently promotes productivity.  It's the tension, I'm sure.
     And then there's the tension surrounding my mother.  She doesn't like music.  This can't really be true, but she never listens to it.  She doesn't play music in her house, and she doesn't play it in her car.  And if there were constant chatter or something, I would understand it.  But there isn't.  Instead there is just eerie silence.  So eerie it makes you afraid to say anything.   A simple question can get catapulted into an argument, just for breaking the silence. 
      We sit at the table finishing our lunch.  I start chewing an ice cube; I should know better, clearly.  I've cut the silence and hit her last nerve.  It's hard to relive, but let it suffice it to say, it is not a relaxing place to be.  Someone (me) usually storms out.  Often to be alone, where I can make noise.
     I do appreciate a certain level of silence for certain things, I'm not an animal.  At funerals, for example.  Other times though, the complete tension forming eerie silence drives me mad.  Completely insane.