Tag: work

Posted on

Getting Shit Done: Ten for Today


I used to be addicted to productivity. My life worth was measured against what I accomplished during the day. And it wasn’t that I checked off a great big to-do list every night to inventory, but I did have a huge list of to-do’s. I wasn’t tallying my doings; I was just doing. 

My life was about doing this and that, getting things done: work, school, parenting, family, community, and even strangers absorbed my time. I went from morning til night getting shit done. Empowering energy drove me through brick walls to get to the other side.

But now, I don’t get as much done. I don’t have as much energy, though no less drive. I am determined but larger forces than my willpower overtake me most days. I don’t like to cook any more, me, who ground meat and vegetables to make my own baby food, who cooked and served 9 course meals to friends every New Years and Christmas Eve and other non-holiday days, and who still cooks Thanksgiving dinner for 30 each year. But the daily supper, I’ve lost my will to do so.

It started when the kids’ school and sports schedules became impossible. I was driving one down south 30 miles twice a week and the other 25 miles north another 2 days a week. No one was home at the same time, so we did a lot of ready-mades from TJ’s and grab and go food. I only cooked on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays. And then, as the kids got older and preferred eating out or with friends and soccer practices got later, I just gave it up altogether. I can live on hummus and pita chips. They could all fend for themselves.

I don’t cook, and I don’t clean as much any more either. I have limited energy reserves, and with a house with all adults, mostly, I keep my work space, bedroom and kitchen clean only. The rest I farm out to hired help and 15 minute team clean ups once a week, prompted by my yelling. 

So now, my productivity includes three, four or five paying jobs–still–but not the non-paid house upkeep, cleaning, cooking, shopping and dozens of other administrative and domestic chores. I’ve downsized. 

So today’s burst of getting shit done struck me nostalgic. I wrote (paid) for five hours, attended a virtual meeting, shopped for whatever I couldn’t cover through Amazon for holiday gifts, food shopped, prepared my contribution for tomorrow’s pot luck dinner, exercised the Husky pup and cleaned the kitchen and my room. That’s a lot for me. Felt like old times.

 
Image: busy bees: pixabay

Posted on

Ten Today: Buddha and the French

July 18, 2016
I doubt I have ten minutes uninterrupted, but I’ll give it a shot. I’m at my other other other job tonight. This one teaches me to love. I practice my little Buddha steps here, learning to appreciate every mundane, automatic movement with mindfulness, paying attention. In fact, if I don’t pay attention, let my mind wander as it is wont to do when nothing in particular stimulates it, I make money or cleaning mistakes, ones that make me feel like an incapable incompetent. After all, I’ve been at the job for years now (Obviously my self-judgment needs some work).
 
So this one teaches me patience and presence. The other one, writing, teaches me a different kind of little Buddha practice–patience and detaching from struggle. That one challenges me too much. I wrote all day on a subject that didn’t particularly interest me–under deadline. Tonight, after the store closes at 10, and I get home just before 11, I will return to the work. It isn’t quite right and it’s due no later than Monday. That’s today. I figure before midnight is still Monday.
 
A new client testing my skills to evaluate hiring me, I do indeed want to impress. Right now, my draft is not impressive. To my credit, I have faked my way into the door–partially. The job description called for fluency in French. Though I have been around French speakers for the last 35 years, coming and going, and I took a couple years in college, even wrote and orally presented a fairly competent 20 minute lesson on Montaigne in grad school, I’m not sure fluent and French should both be used in the same sentence to describe me.
 
However, with the help of my somewhat strong reading skills, a tip here and there from the Frenchman in the house and Google, I patched together a rather inexpert but passable draft of an article discussing the meaning and origin of 5 French sayings or proverbs or adages or aphorisms. I used all those words and more to keep it less mind-numbing.
 
What I will come home to is a stuffy draft that I needed to leave anyhow, though the impulse to go home and finish it is way stronger than my need to practice Buddhist patience and presence here at yogurt zombie Monday. I need to make it personable, friendly and fun. Oy, that should pull on every iota of craft I can muster.
 
Well, only one customer intruded on my ten. Good sign. Maybe the piece will magically gel tonight before my eyes turn to lidded gravel.

 

Image: Architectureofbuddhism.com

Posted on

Soccer College Showcase in Vegas

wp-1458420429132.jpg

The sun and wind, whistles and screams.
The engine roar of passing planes muted by vast, absorbent sky and grass,
dirt and plastic.
Baby chuckles and exasperated sighs,
“Oh God” and the like,
reactions to the terror of play,
a mother’s fear,
a father’s glory.
And the ice cream jingle floats atop the astro-turf swelter,
a complementary note to children at work.
The song sings of promises and earned rewards:
ice pop, pat on the back, handshake and a wink,
and maybe a letter, informing

“We accept your excellence this day,
this very warm, breezy winter day on the playground of risk and fortune.”

Posted on

Quote of the Day

  
I really have no idea what that means, but after reading this wonderfully packaged quotation by someone I know not, I considered that my day actually did struggle with me for control.

I awoke at 4 a.m. with a total of four hours sleep, after which I suffered in bed awaiting daylight. When I finally surrendered to the day, I went off to teach my 7:20 a.m. class only to discover I left the pile of essays I corrected til midnight the night before, on my dresser. The absurdity of that condition annoyed me but did not throw me into despair as it might have on any other day. Notable.

After my husband graciously agreed to deliver the papers to me, all seemed to be righted again, like tipping the corner of a crooked picture. My two cups of coffee were sustaining my teaching mind, and class went fairly well considering it was an unusual day of mostly grammar lessons. That is not what occurs on any other day of the semester. I preside over a writing class full of students assumed to be competent writers (assumed, anyhow).

But then I went home to write an article with a three hour deadline that was already on extension. My tired brain could not muster up the 1500 words in three hours, and I was about to miss the deadline or ask for yet another extension when I realized I had already missed the deadline 12 hours before. Oh shit! But wait, the missed deadline was somehow overlooked as my project was not automatically terminated as it would be on this site. Oh shit! okay.

So I asked for another extension, not actually caring whether I got it or not, pretty zen about it, and made my way to the DMV appointment to replace my lost license, expecting at least a couple hour wait. No sweat, since I had yet another batch of essays to correct for the next morning’s class with me. Amazingly, however, I filled out my application for my license, handed it to the gentleman behind the government issue desk, who promptly handed me a number I glanced at just as I heard that same number called to window 21. Wtf? Could it be? I completed my entire transaction in less than 9 minutes, a first in my five and a half decades. 

Then I worked my third job of the day, dreading the drudgery of holding up on my feet on four hours’ sleep until 11 p.m., ending a 19 hour day. But a surprise impromptu training session arose, and time swallowed up my shift with me none the wiser, even as I glanced at my phone every half hour waiting for it to be over.

Days are like that occasionally, pushing and pulling me along with fortunate and unfortunate events, or good turns from bad ones back into bad, then good again. Kind of like today. And all the while, I took it all pretty well, rather evenly, notable in itself. 

I think the above quote by the person about whom I am not curious enough to Google, should read, “Sometimes the day runs you and you run the day too.”

Posted on

The Last Night Shift?

  
It’s a Thursday night at the sugar shack, quiet 

for the 5 to 7 hours, slow enough for me to 

inventory, tidy and re-stock. 

The day shift rarely covers all.

Like a morsel left for Elijah, the day shift–

my daughter, in fact–left me chores to do

like cutting up strawberries, cleaning up

counters coated sticky caramel or fudge, cherry

juice or chopped Reese’s peanut butter cups

dust, among the other jobs of smiling, wiping,

re-filling, lifting, swiping, shifting, and money-

tending, motions threaded into my days and

nights lo these past two years, 20 to 40 hours

a week, after the class room or with the lap top.
 

Thursday night, like most other nights of the

week brings in the small, smartly dressed 

woman who does not like people, especially small

ones, their cackles and laughter reverberating

madly from tile floor to painted wood ceiling;

nor does she deign sanitary all those dotted

dried yogurt drips on the scale upon which

she weighs her nightly yogurt, always the same,

the half dozen or so rainbow pareils atop chocolate 

obsession (her froyo choice and aptly so)

a lid and a bag. I get it all ready for her once

I spy her entry. Anxiety riddles her face so 

that her smile forced comfort in my familiar 

face transforms her, cracking ice panes.

She warms to me; I know her tics and peeves.
 

Following nervous Nelly, affectionately dubbed,

enter the Thursday night family four just out of 

church (there are three nearby churches) who

each ask in turn, “Is there whipped cream tonight?”

We make it fresh here, liquid cream and the nitrous

oxide I am often tempted to inhale on especially

dreary nights of “what am I doing here and how 

will I bear another menial, meaningless night?”

Until mop dancing, when all seems to flow, tears

and motion, two-stepping and sludgery, the end

near, a night almost over, near complete.
 

When then arrives the female version of 

SpongeBob who plops down 16 dollars of

yogurt and toppings while complaining of 

stomach pains, a gone gallbladder and 

a boyfriend who does not even deserve the

two chocolate chip cookies she adds to her order.

“He’s so mean,” she says, shaking her head 

so that the just-put-it-up-any-which-way bun

flops side to side, loose and threatening to fall.
 

Her appearance sparks a laugh and a text to 

my day shift counterpart–my daughter–

who earlier remarked that she hadn’t seen quart-lady

lately and wondered if she was all right.

Quart lady once complained the tart machine freezes

up, protested so fervently about its unavailability

since tart was the only flavor she could eat, 

given her gall bladder problems, prompting me

to move tart two machines down, thinking of her ire,

and when I proudly showed her on her next visit

the new location, which she herself suggested, she

smiled and promptly filled her cup with dulce de leche.
 

“Remember that lady made such a stink and then 

didn’t even get tart after all?” my daughter laughed

just today, this afternoon, at our passing of the baton,

shift change. She too has loved and hated the job.
 

And just yesterday, the young, energetic blonde with

savings, ready to own something (his girlfriend aside),

with his queries and interrogations–“What is your favorite

flavor? And how do you like working here? And which is 

the most popular items in the store? And which machines

are your favorite?”–may be, perhaps, looks like, and so if

he really does want to buy the store, what then?
 

 This job, a helping hand and gift after a bad life trip and fall,

a stop on recovery’s road, for which I thank cousins and sweets

and sweet cousins, father and son, and daughters,

and all who seek comfort in colorful swirls and turrets, 

gems and decor, sugar coated and sugar free, reward and 

punishment for all those bodies small, square, squat, thin,

lanky, lean, old, young and in between that have passed

through and paved my practiced presence, order, patience 

and humility these last couple years, sometimes failing at all 

or some, sometimes succeeding at all, some or none.

These sentimental seeds I sprinkle like rainbow and chocolate

on a quiet Thursday night’s spurring these 

final thoughts, final words and future memories.

Posted on

Urge to Industry

 
 

With swollen feet exposed half inside her bathroom slippers, she pushes the lever and spins her wheelchair round to the trash can outside my window, sidles up close facing it and pulls out a long stemmed two-pronged mechanical finger–resembling forefinger and thumb–from a bag hanging on the back of her chair. She inserts the device into the trash can. With a smile, she pulls out a bottle and examines the glass closely, momentarily furrowing her brows to read the label through the confines of her square lensed teacher spectacles, most likely for deposit instructions or value.
 

Her hair is straight, collar bone length with bangs that fringe her pumpkin of a head, and she wears a light-weight black jacket, nearly professional looking but a bit worn from wear. Her candy cane striped dress underneath the jacket drapes just past her knees, baring the burnt red skin of her elephantine legs, square blocks immovable. Yet her torso twists readily as she reaches round to the bag on the other side of her chair and deposits the bottle inside. A quick glance inside the trash can opening, her lips an inch away from the rim of the can, she appears confirmed. Another pull on the lever, a quick pivot to avoid plowing over the can, and she moves on to the next trash can just out of view.
 

My sight range is restricted, paned in by store fronts, circumscribed by adjoining commerce and distant apartments, restaurants, banks and pharmacy. But even I can recognize the expansive urge to industry.

Blog at WordPress.com.