I have found the most ridiculously-addictive thing in the entire universe, even more addictive than the little shortbread cookies with a dollop of fudge frosting that they sell at the Dominick's by my Saturday office--and that's saying something.
I'm sure you have all heard of Sudoku; this is sort of Sudoku-like, except it involves actual math. Now, for those of you who think that sounds like as much fun as a root canal...well, yeah, I guess there are math-phobes among us, and I suppose I can't blame them, but this isn't like, DIFFICULT math; it's little addition/subtraction/basic multiplication/division stuff, and...
I'm going to stop trying to justify this, and just throw the link out there.
Meet...the Kenken.
If anyone needs me, I'll be working on the 9x9 grid.
Wednesday, February 25, 2009
Cognitive Dissonance, or Why I'm Updating My Resume
Every day I talk to people who are my friends, my family, whatever--people in my real, non-work life. Many of these people think I'm smart, or talented, or capable, or creative, or independent, or clear-thinking, or whatever. Some people even think I'm more than one of the above. They know me as the person who, faced with a problem, will come up with a solution; the person who can cook anything, find information on the Web, build furniture, fix broken things, write an awesome letter of complaint. They know me as the person who will generally come up with new ways to accomplish some goal, when the old ways aren't feasible. Most of my friends, at least once in a while, look to me for help or advice or something--they think I have a clue of how to get through life.
But every morning at 10:00, I walk into my office, and immediately I am surrounded by people who remember my every mistake, my every flub, my every flaw; people who think I'm incompetent, a liability, a joke. If you listen to these people, I'm the most remedial person in the department; my mistakes are used as punch-lines, and my personality flaws are fodder for the office wag. Even when I -do- manage to say something insightful or useful, my boss credits the idea to someone else--someone less-stupid than I apparently am--and when I object, or say "Actually, I was the one who said that," he laughs it off and encourages the rest of the gang to play along. Other people are given extra tasks and projects, letting them display their capabilities; I, on the other hand, am left out of even the simplest projects, and when I ask why, I'm either accused of being "angry" or "touchy" or "whiny", or I'm reminded of assorted past mistakes. Apparently I am the only one, of the six people in the department, who has ever made a mistake; or perhaps the other ones' mistakes are forgivable, where mine are evidently not.
Somewhere there's a middle ground, between my away-from-the-office self, with the giant "S" stitched across her chest; and my at-work self, sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on her head while all the other children laugh and point. One side is more-right about me than the other; one side doesn't know me very well.
Tonight, though, I don't know which side is closer to the real truth.
But every morning at 10:00, I walk into my office, and immediately I am surrounded by people who remember my every mistake, my every flub, my every flaw; people who think I'm incompetent, a liability, a joke. If you listen to these people, I'm the most remedial person in the department; my mistakes are used as punch-lines, and my personality flaws are fodder for the office wag. Even when I -do- manage to say something insightful or useful, my boss credits the idea to someone else--someone less-stupid than I apparently am--and when I object, or say "Actually, I was the one who said that," he laughs it off and encourages the rest of the gang to play along. Other people are given extra tasks and projects, letting them display their capabilities; I, on the other hand, am left out of even the simplest projects, and when I ask why, I'm either accused of being "angry" or "touchy" or "whiny", or I'm reminded of assorted past mistakes. Apparently I am the only one, of the six people in the department, who has ever made a mistake; or perhaps the other ones' mistakes are forgivable, where mine are evidently not.
Somewhere there's a middle ground, between my away-from-the-office self, with the giant "S" stitched across her chest; and my at-work self, sitting in the corner with a dunce cap on her head while all the other children laugh and point. One side is more-right about me than the other; one side doesn't know me very well.
Tonight, though, I don't know which side is closer to the real truth.
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Mid-Winter
You know spring is coming when the countdown calendar on NASCAR.com says "14 days to Daytona!!!" I'm going to have to say: things are...improving. Not "good" yet, exactly, but improving.
I've had some major realizations recently--I've had plenty of time for major realizations, since I was at home sick for two days with the evil cold that has been circulating around my office. (It's somewhat better now, with the exception of the tendency to periodically launch into a high-speed machine-gunning of sneezes. As in, aCHOO!aCHOO!aCHOO!aCHOO! with no time to take a breath between them, in some cases; the sort of sneezing which practically guarantees the eventual loss of a contact lens.) Anyhow--major realizations.
First: I've been putting wayyyy too much expectations on the medication. There is not a pill in the world that's going to fix the main things that trouble me--one, JP's continued absence; two, the growing sense that I've missed a HUGE chunk of my life, which is not coming back either; three, the sudden understanding that I will never be 24 again, and that all the experiences and discoveries of that part of my life are behind me. There's not really much NEW from now on, and that's hard for me to take; and meanwhile, I feel like I would imagine a coma patient feels, waking up after fourteen years to all the changes that have taken place, to a world that's moved on while they have stood completely still. I miss JP; I miss the idea of him--the little details particular to only him, which no one else will ever be able to replicate even if I wanted them to--and I miss myself, as well. I miss who I was before JP died, before CR came along and smashed my self-image and my confidence to pieces, before LJ finished the job with his years of indifference. I consider going out into the world and trying to meet someone new, someone I could have a relationship with, and there's an enormous disconnect in my mind; as an abstract thought, I can see it, but when I actually put myself in that picture as the object of attention or affection, it becomes a "yeah, right."
And yet underneath it all I want to be ME again; want music in my life, want to wear my hair down with long braids in it, and string bracelets, and hi-tops, and to get a tattoo, or another piercing. I want to wake up in the morning full of ideas and plans; or to play hooky because it's a beautiful day and I can't bear the thought of wasting it at work, instead of because I can't bear the thought of leaving my nice safe bed. I want to have the energy level and the motivation I had when I was in college, and the confidence in my own ideas. I want all the "I can'ts" to go away, and all the memories of the things that created them in the first place. I want to stop being all self-effacing, pretending I don't know something so that the other person feels superior to me even if we're just equal.
Don't get me wrong: it's getting better, I think. Today, for the first time in can't-remember-when, my day off did not involve sleeping all day; I got up at 8, went to the clinic, went to the grocery store, went for a long walk, cleaned up the apartment a bit, helped Tim with the online portion of his cell-phone account, did Squeaky's taxes for her, then did my own because why the hell not, and then did laundry while making spaghetti sauce. Mind you, I'm freakin' EXHAUSTED; the anti-d's are apparently screwing with my sleep cycle a bit, because I haven't slept well for nearly a week now, since my dose went up; I'm just hoping it's a temporary thing, something I need to get used to.
Work...Okay, look. I love my job, okay? But right at the moment it SUCK SUCK SUCKS. The Crazy drove away a new employee after only four days, by humiliating her for not knowing The Crazy's last name yet; then, after that, there was The Big Post-Budget-Meeting Come-To-Jeebus Talk, in which we were informed that overtime will no longer be paid, our on-call hours will no longer be paid, there will be no more travel, much less training, and we will be stretching out the lifespan of the computers to five years instead of the original three--even though at least half the computers in question were found to have a fatal flaw which causes the motherboards to melt down, and even though every solitary one of these flawed machines is now out of warranty. Meanwhile, my immediate boss--despite his total lack of a spine--had a Come-To-Jeebus talk with ME, about how I wasn't doing enough work tickets. The reason my numbers were screwed was because I was not counting the things I did on Saturdays--clearing paper jams, helping students with tiny trivial problems--simply BECAUSE they were tiny, trivial problems, and I thought they were beneath notice. Well, once that convo had ended, I started tracking my Saturdays as well; my numbers are now toward the TOP of the pack, rather than the bottom. But there are things that could be done that would make ALL of us more efficient, and management flatly refuses to consider them--and now, if there's money involved, even just $10, now they've got a watertight excuse for WHY they refuse.
Meanwhile, the Circus has left town.
Squeaky found a place to live--a place with a family, a father, daughter, and her kids, where Squeaky gets a room of her own and can keep the cats, in exchange for a minor amount of rent and light babysitting chores. (I don't know if I blogged about the big catastrophe; basically, they had a place to stay til Tim's hospitalization, at which point their roommate--a 61-yr-old friend of Squeaky's, remember--said Tim was no longer welcome there. Shortly thereafter, he reconsidered, and one night Tim was there when he and Squeaky got into a fight and Squeaky had one of her screaming, violent meltdowns--Tim was trying to walk out the door to cool down and get away from the argument, but Squeaky wouldn't let him go and physically blocked his way, and when he pushed past her and walked out the door, she ran after him into the ice and snow--barefoot, which ended up causing frostbite--and directly into a small knot of police officers, who had been called by the neighbors. Tim came here, and when I went to bed that night it was with the information that they were "done"--that Tim had finally had enough, that he was through dealing with her.
The next morning I woke up and she was asleep on my floor with him.
Apparently the 61-yr-old had told her that SHE was no longer welcome either, and that if either of them wanted their belongings, she could either take them with her or they'd need the police to get them. Anyway, they stayed for two weeks or so; Tim worked on getting a storage space for his stuff, and Squeaky worked on getting a place to stay (for herself only, and the cats). Finally she found a place with a family--father, daughter, daughter's two kids--and went to get her and Tim's belongings on the day she was to move in.
Her stuff was all there. Tim's stuff--his more-expensive clothes, his video camera, the laptop I'd given him, and a bunch of other stuff as well--was gone. Apparently the 61-year-old's twentysomething "friends" had taken it and hocked it or something.
I'll get to the rest of this story in the next post.....
I've had some major realizations recently--I've had plenty of time for major realizations, since I was at home sick for two days with the evil cold that has been circulating around my office. (It's somewhat better now, with the exception of the tendency to periodically launch into a high-speed machine-gunning of sneezes. As in, aCHOO!aCHOO!aCHOO!aCHOO! with no time to take a breath between them, in some cases; the sort of sneezing which practically guarantees the eventual loss of a contact lens.) Anyhow--major realizations.
First: I've been putting wayyyy too much expectations on the medication. There is not a pill in the world that's going to fix the main things that trouble me--one, JP's continued absence; two, the growing sense that I've missed a HUGE chunk of my life, which is not coming back either; three, the sudden understanding that I will never be 24 again, and that all the experiences and discoveries of that part of my life are behind me. There's not really much NEW from now on, and that's hard for me to take; and meanwhile, I feel like I would imagine a coma patient feels, waking up after fourteen years to all the changes that have taken place, to a world that's moved on while they have stood completely still. I miss JP; I miss the idea of him--the little details particular to only him, which no one else will ever be able to replicate even if I wanted them to--and I miss myself, as well. I miss who I was before JP died, before CR came along and smashed my self-image and my confidence to pieces, before LJ finished the job with his years of indifference. I consider going out into the world and trying to meet someone new, someone I could have a relationship with, and there's an enormous disconnect in my mind; as an abstract thought, I can see it, but when I actually put myself in that picture as the object of attention or affection, it becomes a "yeah, right."
And yet underneath it all I want to be ME again; want music in my life, want to wear my hair down with long braids in it, and string bracelets, and hi-tops, and to get a tattoo, or another piercing. I want to wake up in the morning full of ideas and plans; or to play hooky because it's a beautiful day and I can't bear the thought of wasting it at work, instead of because I can't bear the thought of leaving my nice safe bed. I want to have the energy level and the motivation I had when I was in college, and the confidence in my own ideas. I want all the "I can'ts" to go away, and all the memories of the things that created them in the first place. I want to stop being all self-effacing, pretending I don't know something so that the other person feels superior to me even if we're just equal.
Don't get me wrong: it's getting better, I think. Today, for the first time in can't-remember-when, my day off did not involve sleeping all day; I got up at 8, went to the clinic, went to the grocery store, went for a long walk, cleaned up the apartment a bit, helped Tim with the online portion of his cell-phone account, did Squeaky's taxes for her, then did my own because why the hell not, and then did laundry while making spaghetti sauce. Mind you, I'm freakin' EXHAUSTED; the anti-d's are apparently screwing with my sleep cycle a bit, because I haven't slept well for nearly a week now, since my dose went up; I'm just hoping it's a temporary thing, something I need to get used to.
Work...Okay, look. I love my job, okay? But right at the moment it SUCK SUCK SUCKS. The Crazy drove away a new employee after only four days, by humiliating her for not knowing The Crazy's last name yet; then, after that, there was The Big Post-Budget-Meeting Come-To-Jeebus Talk, in which we were informed that overtime will no longer be paid, our on-call hours will no longer be paid, there will be no more travel, much less training, and we will be stretching out the lifespan of the computers to five years instead of the original three--even though at least half the computers in question were found to have a fatal flaw which causes the motherboards to melt down, and even though every solitary one of these flawed machines is now out of warranty. Meanwhile, my immediate boss--despite his total lack of a spine--had a Come-To-Jeebus talk with ME, about how I wasn't doing enough work tickets. The reason my numbers were screwed was because I was not counting the things I did on Saturdays--clearing paper jams, helping students with tiny trivial problems--simply BECAUSE they were tiny, trivial problems, and I thought they were beneath notice. Well, once that convo had ended, I started tracking my Saturdays as well; my numbers are now toward the TOP of the pack, rather than the bottom. But there are things that could be done that would make ALL of us more efficient, and management flatly refuses to consider them--and now, if there's money involved, even just $10, now they've got a watertight excuse for WHY they refuse.
Meanwhile, the Circus has left town.
Squeaky found a place to live--a place with a family, a father, daughter, and her kids, where Squeaky gets a room of her own and can keep the cats, in exchange for a minor amount of rent and light babysitting chores. (I don't know if I blogged about the big catastrophe; basically, they had a place to stay til Tim's hospitalization, at which point their roommate--a 61-yr-old friend of Squeaky's, remember--said Tim was no longer welcome there. Shortly thereafter, he reconsidered, and one night Tim was there when he and Squeaky got into a fight and Squeaky had one of her screaming, violent meltdowns--Tim was trying to walk out the door to cool down and get away from the argument, but Squeaky wouldn't let him go and physically blocked his way, and when he pushed past her and walked out the door, she ran after him into the ice and snow--barefoot, which ended up causing frostbite--and directly into a small knot of police officers, who had been called by the neighbors. Tim came here, and when I went to bed that night it was with the information that they were "done"--that Tim had finally had enough, that he was through dealing with her.
The next morning I woke up and she was asleep on my floor with him.
Apparently the 61-yr-old had told her that SHE was no longer welcome either, and that if either of them wanted their belongings, she could either take them with her or they'd need the police to get them. Anyway, they stayed for two weeks or so; Tim worked on getting a storage space for his stuff, and Squeaky worked on getting a place to stay (for herself only, and the cats). Finally she found a place with a family--father, daughter, daughter's two kids--and went to get her and Tim's belongings on the day she was to move in.
Her stuff was all there. Tim's stuff--his more-expensive clothes, his video camera, the laptop I'd given him, and a bunch of other stuff as well--was gone. Apparently the 61-year-old's twentysomething "friends" had taken it and hocked it or something.
I'll get to the rest of this story in the next post.....
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