Retirement: Keeping the Cogs Turning

Have you noticed that I keep putting the word retirement in quotation marks? There are a couple of reasons for that:

1. It wasn't a planned - or therefore celebrated - event. Frankly, it felt like I simply quit my job in desperation, with no plan for the future. Which is a pretty accurate description, actually.
2. Because I haven't worked at one place for a significant chunk of time, I don't feel entitled to a retirement. In fact, Steve's retirement this summer will be more of a joint retirement. He's earned the celebration and, since I was along for the vast majority of the ride, I'll share in rejoicing.

So I've taken to calling this "pre-retirement."

Mantras

There's more meandering than usual with this post, but bear with me. It'll all tie up into a pretty bow at the end. Or a bow, at least.

---

"You is kind. You is smart. You is important." Aibileen to Mae Mobley in Kathryn Stockett's The Help

---

As a self-centred adolescent, I directed all of my judgmental angst at my mother. "Stupidfatlazyslobofabitch," I sobbed into my pillow.

In late March 1990, my father died. In early June of the same year, I graduated with two degrees. The following day, I gave birth to my second child.

By fall of that year, I was a grief-stricken, miserable puddle.

I'd gone from the academic world to the realm of the stay-at-home mother. My body was soft from childbirth. Exhausted from dealing with a toddler and a colicky infant, it was all I could do to put the kids into a stroller for a walk; I lived in sweat pants. Poor Steve bore the brunt of my irritability.

Stupidfatlazyslobofabitch

I'd come full circle. In dark times, those words would weave through my mind, but lately a new string of words has come to the fore: fucketyfuckfuckfuckfuckfuck.

Nice, eh? The powerless little rant, of a toddler stomping her foot.

I know I'm not the first or loudest to say it, but I do believe that the words we say only to ourselves, the words that no one else hears, are disproportionately powerful.

Precioussssss

Unspoken words insinuate themselves into our psyches. Kathryn Stockett knew this.

But we can't simply delete the old track; we need to over-write it. So the challenge, now, is to rewrite the mantra, the "sound, syllable, word, or group of words that is considered capable of  'creating transformation'," according to Wikipedia.

I wonder what would happen if I took my favourite Bible verse and turned it into a mantra? 

"Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable--if anything is excellent or praiseworthy -- think about such things." Philippians 4:8

truenoblerightpure
lovelyadmirable
excellentpraiseworthy

I'll let you know how it goes. Or maybe you'll see for yourself.

Off his meds? Or off his rocker?

Don't you sometimes wish you could invoke call screening after you've picked up the phone?

When you work in public relations or public affairs as I do, you sometimes get phone calls that are difficult to deal with. Of course, there are the expected calls from journalists who may or may not be sympathetic to your point of view. But I'm thinking more of the phone calls from ... people. Who are, perhaps, working in a different reality.

At a previous job, I had a colleague who had the patience of a saint. She had a frequent caller who would talk her ear off about his concerns and how urgent it was that senior leaders in our organization react immediately. He managed to track her even when her phone number changed. He was never rude or threatening, but his concerns were always just a little unhinged.

In his military career, Steve has dealt with calls from "tin-foil hat wearers" who were convinced that the military was doing things that caused strange things to occur. [Undoubtedly, the military has done such things, but not under Steve's purview.]

I've had those calls, too. They upset me in the same way that street people do: they are unpredictable, they don't follow the conventions in which I find comfort. They don't seem to take hints, they don't listen, and they will talk endlessly!

I feel torn between wanting to say, "You are delusional, dude," and treating them like any other [sane] person on the planet.

Over the years, I've gotten better at confidently interrupting and saying things like, "I'm just going to interject ..."

My objective is to be kind but also clear that our conversation has reached its max potential; we are done. I'm not above giving false assurances. ("I'll be sure to let so-and-so know.") But I also don't want to imply that we are developing a relationship.

How do you handle these interactions? Do you ever pretend that you're Mulder and that there really is a conspiracy and that this caller has the "truth" that is "out there"?

Caveat Emptor



Aren't these adorable little USB sticks?



We ordered 1,000 of them as promotional items, with our logo and web URL on the top. While USB sticks aren't that novel (especially in the high-tech sector), they are still popular and the funky design of these ones, along with a really good price, had us sold. They arrived yesterday, and I droppped one on the CEO's desk and handed handfuls out like an evangelist with leaflets or Paris Hilton with herpes. 

Well, things are not always as they seem. Turns out these little USB spheres do nothing more than launch a web browser and go to our website. (On Macs they just went to iTunes!) WTF? I've never SEEN such a thing! Have you? Why on earth would anyone buy such a thing? Frankly, if I got one of these at a conference and plugged it in, I would be unimpressed with the company that gave it to me.

Even the CEO of our company (the C-freaking-EO!) stopped by my desk to ask me what it was supposed to be. When I sadly told him, he brought his back and dropped it on my desk. He wasn't rude or angry, he just wasn't impressed. The salesperson was shocked when I finally reached her, though she wouldn't make any noises about replacing the order or not invoicing us.

Turns out these things are called "web keys" - and they look like memory sticks, slide into your computer like a memory stick, but they are programmed as, get this, keyboards. Yup. The computer thinks it is a keyboard, and it runs a program that launches a command to open the browser and go to a website. About 5 KB of data for that, maybe 10 KB if you include the drivers. But I was told they had 2 GB capacity. Somehow I think that's a big fat fib.

And since they're "keyboards" you can't perform many of the device options you would be able to on a standard USB: you can't reformat them and you can't "see" them in the Windows Explorer window. It also wouldn't let me install new drivers or delete the existing drivers.

For reference, here is what the actual USB memory sticks look like. The 2 GB ones cost about twice what we paid for ours. That should have been a tip-off, but I never saw these when I did my search.


Um, identical.

I hate feeling ripped off. Sure hope the vendor makes things right.

Conscious Incompetence

Pileated Woodpecker

At a conference I attended recently, one of the presenters introduced me to the expression "conscious incompetence." It's that psychologically painful stage when you realize just how incompetent you are at a new skill. It comes from the so-called four stages of competence.
Here's the Wikipedia explanation:

1. Unconscious Incompetence
The individual neither understands nor knows how to do something, nor recognizes the deficit, nor has a desire to address it.

2. Conscious Incompetence
Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, without yet addressing it.

3. Conscious Competence
The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires a great deal of consciousness or concentration.

4. Unconscious Competence
The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it becomes "second nature" and can be performed easily (often without concentrating too deeply). He or she may or may not be able to teach it to others, depending upon how and when it was learned.

Looking at these, it occurs to me that not only is conscious incompetence the most uncomfortable stage, it is probably the only stage that doesn't actually make you feel good. Here's my synopsis (much pithier than Wikipedia's):

Unconscious Incompetence => Ignorance is bliss
Conscious Incompetence => OMG, I totally suck!
Conscious Competence => Dayum, I'm good!
Unconscious Competence => Gretzky on skates

I am currently at the "OMG, I totally suck!" stage when it comes to Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, and it is kind of driving me nuts. I know just enough to do some really cool stuff, but also enough to get into trouble.

For example, I did some subtle (I think) but good things to Brian's picture at the top of this post, using Photoshop. Here's the original picture, at right. It's a good picture: high resolution, good shot of the woodpecker, decent exposure. But the few tweaks I did (not just cropping) make it stronger, I think.

On the other hand, in trying to do those few simple things, there was still a lot of trial and error (and undoing).

And one of the larger projects I had at work this week involved Illustrator. The design itself was relatively simple, so I didn't think we would need to hire a professional designer (famous last words, eh?).

Well, I uploaded the final artwork to the production company yesterday and got a "Please call us first thing in the morning" message from them last night. Turns out that, while the design itself was fine, I hadn't integrated all the files the way the printer needs them. (Just how DOES one convert text to "outlines"?) It was easily solved by uploading a couple of extra files.

I need to be patient and keep on plugging away. I just don't like this in-between stage of "OMG, I totally suck!" I am, however, looking forward to feeling like I rock.

A Product of Silence

The following is a work of fiction. (I know. Such a stretch for me. I'm dreading it, even before I start writing.) I'm doing it because Kristine at Wait in the Van (a truly HI-larious blog) has a monthly-or-so meme where she stretches her writing muscles. It is, she writes, "an exercise, one of discovery and confidence-building."

Her latest prompt is "depression." Since I have a well known interest in mental health and a personal history of depression, I figure I should take up the challenge. Who knows where it will go? Wish me luck! 

---

The Long Dark of Night

Jim's snoring filled the room comfortingly as Cheryl, lying beside him, curled into a fetal position and sobbed quietly. A refrain of "Make it stop" was running through her mind. She moved closer to Jim and, without fully waking, he curled himself around her, grunting, "Mm-hm," as his hand cupped her breast and he drifted back to a light snore.

She let her tears fall onto her pillow. Why isn't this enough? she thought. Why isn't his love enough to lift the darkness that drags me down?

Part of her wished he would sense her crying and wake up to comfort her. It was that magical thinking again, the wishing that someone - anyone - would just know that something was wrong and would reach out and make everything better.

Cheryl remembered sitting in class one day and trying to telepathically communicate to the teacher that she, Cheryl, was hopeless and helpless, that she was failing the course because her mind was consumed by depression. She tried to make her eyes as pathetic as possible.

What a crock. It's the distorted thinking of mental illness, she thought, that supremely self-centred thinking. Psychotic, really: out of touch with reality, highly distorted.

But then, while it was unrealistic to expect her teacher to sense her telepathic messages, Jim had no such impediment. She'd told him how she was feeling. So how could he just sleep peacefully while she struggled? She became angry at him; it felt like rejection. She shrugged him off of her.

For a moment, the anger stopped her tears, but then they resumed as she felt the impotence of her anger: there was nothing she could do about it, or with it.

And perhaps that was the essential struggle of this depression: she was trapped in it. Even if she ran away (and where was there to go, after all?), the depression would stay with her like a blood-borne disease. It was part of her, a parasite sucking her life, her joy, turning everything grey.

Source

Grabbing her pillow, Cheryl got out of bed and walked toward her cramped closet. On the floor, a stack of blankets formed a nest. She stepped inside and, pulling the door almost closed, curled into that soft cloud.

There, she was a child again. She pictured her small self: a needy waif ready to be loved, crying over a lost toy or a bruised knee. She reached out and lifted the weightless girl. She imagined herself spooning the youngster. Her breathing slowed, the tears stopped, and she slept.

New Year's Resolutions

I think that I may, once upon a time, have made some New Year's Resolutions. Not sure what ever became of them, but I've never done them again.

Because the point of NYRs -- and all goals and objectives, really -- is that you have to refer back to them and ask yourself, "Well, how did I do?" If you're not going to do that, then the whole exercise is kind of futile.

Or is it?

I've often said that the most important part of a communication strategy is not the tactics or slogan or schedule (though that is what the client really wants to see), but the process. Thinking about the current situation, the reason behind the need to communicate, what your point is. Working with the other members of the communication team - especially the client - to ensure that everyone is rowing in the same direction with the same dock in view. If you get those right, then there will be less fussing over changing "good" to "nice."

So, thinking aloud here, what if I were to approach this NYR as a strategy, not a list of tactics? Hmmm. It might look something like this [I'm not sure how personal this will get, so it may never end up being published]:

Current Situation/Background

• Current weight is holding steady, but is still more than I would like. More to the point, I don't mind my weight so much as I mind how my weight LOOKS in clothing.
• I have mild diabetes, currently diet-controlled. Don't want it to require drugs or insulin.
• I have a family history of heart disease, Alzheimers, and depression.
• Line of credit (used to build the pool) needs to be paid down.
• I am contented in my closest relationships, but would like to spend more 1:1 time with each of my kids.
• I am lazy.
• We are planning a trip to California in March.
• I am holding judgment on whether the job I'm in now is where I want to be.
• I drive the car to work at least three times per week, which is expensive, bad for the environment and lazy of me. (The best bus stop is about a 10-minute walk from my front door.)

Issues

• Steve would be delighted if I increased my activity level (and coincidentally lost some weight). [He's exceptionally discreet in how he expresses this, and always does so with my own best interests at heart. He could be a diplomat.]
• I really like driving to work, rather than taking the bus, mostly because I don't have to watch the clock.
• Regular exercise is known to combat diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimers and depression. Plus, the Queen says we should do it.

Strategy

• Gently proactive approach.

Tactics

• Stop driving the car to work so often. (Limit to once per week.)
• Reduce $ spent on parking - more to put toward line of credit.
• Walk at least 10 minutes a day [baby steps, people, baby steps!]
• Set up an automatic transfer to line of credit.
• Make a "date" with each kid for a Saturday brunch, one kid per week.
• Go for at least one walk per week with Steve. Increase to three or more times per week over the year.

Evaluation/Results (because you KNOW that any strategy has to have measurable results)

• Greater stamina
• Weight loss (rather than gain)
• Swift reduction of line of credit --> greater disposable income
• Strengthened relationships with kids

Well, it's a pretty cursory strategy, but it does hit the main points - and the reasons for them.

While January first may be an arbitrary day to review one's life and goals, just as Valentine's Day is an arbitrary date to affirm one's love, it's as good a time as any to take stock and, maybe, make some changes for the better. Just as February 14th is as good a date as any to let someone know how special he or she is in your life.

The curse of the flashing cursor

In the world of the writer or communicator, is there anything worse than that flashing cursor that seems to pulse, "Well? Spit it out!" like an incessant nag? As it is doing now. (Pulse. Pulse.) In my case, it's pulsing in two windows: the one here as I write my blog, and the one in Word where I am writing the cover letter to accompany my résumé as I put myself out there for a job.

The cover letter, of course, is the tougher one, the one in which the cursor has been flashing longest and most haranguingly. ("Haranguingly," by the way, is not an actual word, according to my spelling checker. But it should be. With all of my word-anointing powers, I hereby dub it a word. Bam!) I've been encouraged by the person who told me about the possible job (it isn't even an actual solicitation yet) to send my résumé and "probably a cover wouldn't hurt either, to show off your dazzling writing skills." So there's pressure. And it's not that I don't know how to start my letter - I do. In fact, I just have too many ways to start my letter. Well, okay, two ways, but neither is good.

I could start with a straightforward, "I am writing to you because I am
interested - very interested - in becoming part of the team...blah, blah, blah."

or

I could start by saying, quite honestly, "Let me begin by telling you that I am
a huge fan of [________] and that I truly would be honoured to work for
[organization]."

The former is, well, boring. Expected. The latter? A little over-the-top. Okay, a lot. They might think I'm a stalker. Certainly, they would doubt my credibility. Obviously, I need something more moderate, that conveys my enthusiasm without making me seem pathetic. Something that shows creativity and dazzling writing skills without being laughable. (Pulse. Pulse.)

I'm sure it'll come to me. You may return to your previous programming.

Feeling excited about my career

For the past three days I've attended a Public Affairs workshop put on by NORAD and USNORTHCOM. The first day-and-a-half were interesting enough, but it's the last day-and-a-half that have really pumped me up.

Eric Schwartzman led all of us on a "Social Media Boot-Camp." I've learned so much! And I feel reinvigorated in my chosen career field of communication/public relations. This isn't the first workshop or webcast I've attended on the subject, but this is the first one that got into some of the nitty-gritty about how to make these tools really work. In fact, it's the Social Media Boot-Camp that inspired me to get off the fence and actually start writing this blog. (I'm still not sure where this blog is going or whether anyone other than myself will read it, but at least I made a move.)

One message came through loud and clear, and that is the importance of being authentic when using social media. What that means is that if your stuff looks or sounds too much like a polished PR product (without adding any real value or content) or ignores an issue that is a hot topic on the Web, you are dead in the water: your credibility is in the toilet. I believe this applies to all our PR/corporate communications activities. People sense when they're being lied to or when the message doesn't jibe with reality.

He also drove home the point that these are social media -- they are about social exchange, back-and-forth, dialogue. That's why some corporate blogs (ones that are clearly written by the PR or marketing department) fall so flat: they are impersonal, cold, too packaged, and they don't have any give-and-take.

One less prominent point he made is one that I've felt strongly about for a long time, and that is that your internal audience is perhaps your most important one. They are the subject-matter experts who can be quick to debunk misinformation about your company -- if they are empowered to do so. And they are a far more credible source than your "official spokesperson" will ever be.

All in all, the session left me feeling pumped as I haven't felt in a long, long time. Visit his blog at http://www.spinfluencer.com/

On a personal note, Steve spent the day at a briefing concerning our move back to Canada - all the things we need to do before we leave. Can't wait to hear his debrief!