When I start getting early morning insomnia, then I know things are a mess. Generally, all my life, I've had trouble getting myself to sleep at night, and getting myself up in the morning. If I wake up at night and can't get back to sleep, that means things are really, really bothering me.
And, not surprisingly, it's my job that's really really bothering me now. It's just so inappropriate, and I just can't ever imagine being very good at it. I'm adequate, but being adequate at a job is not terribly satisfying, especially when being adequate means doing some things well, and doing other things badly. Doing things badly just does not sit well with me, not at all.
So, it's time for a change. And actually today I have lunch plans with my boss's boss, and we are surely going to talk about me and my job. And today's the day when I'm going to tell him that I can't last all that long in this job, that I have to make a change, and probably a big change.
This is a hard thing to do, to walk away from a job that pays 140k per year, with a substantial bonus. Just walk away. Now, I might find another job at the bank, I'm sure they'd like to keep me, but the area where I'm most valuable is the area that I'm least interested in. Treasury Services. I've taken to describing it to people as those banking services used by accounts receivable and accounts payable departments. Really, could anything be more boring?
I am really sick of thinking about this, but think about it I must. This is taking up such a chunk of my life, and especially of my psychic energy. And I guess this is normal, lots and lots of people are wiped out by their jobs, that's why television is so popular, after all. But, eh, don't have to be like lots of people, right? Especially as I have absolutely no responsibilities, and a chunk of money in the bank.
It's such a thing, I don't have time to express it thoroughly this morning, but it basically comes down to the battle between your inner self, your inner desires and motivations, and what society needs out of you; i.e. what they will pay you for. Very few people are lucky enough to match those two well, to find something well-paying that's also inwardly satisfying. Like I always said about teaching, they don't have to pay teachers much, because it's intrinsically rewarding. Being a middle manager at a giant bank, that's not intrinsically rewarding at all, but it's more remunerative for that very reason.
So, you whore yourself out, we all have to do it. But for how long, and to what extent? Where do you draw the lines. That's what I'm going through now, the process of figuring out where that line lies. Not a fun process.
Wednesday, September 12, 2012
Friday, September 07, 2012
Friday blues
So, now it's the Friday blues. This is a bad sign. OK, Monday blues, that's normal, the work week in front of you and all. Wednesday maybe, you wish you were further along. But friday, still, the idea of one more day being a challenge, this is a bad sign.
I always thought the "working for the weekend" thing was the saddest thing ever. People on the elevator on a thursday morning or wednesday evening saying, hey, how's it going, only two more days. Like the workweek, five-sevenths of your life, is just something to endure rather than something to approach with relish. But I've definitely reached that point with this job.
Perhaps it's just too idealistic to think that everyone should be able to find some paying work that they can approach with relish, something that provides an opportunity to achieve a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. After all, one's sense of accomplishment and satisfaction is very, very personal, and what somebody's willing to pay you for, well, that's usually someone else's idea of what's important. Or in the case of a giant bank or other giant entity, that's the institution's idea of what's important. And a giant institution probably doesn't have the same values as you do.
I keep thinking about "values" as one of the keys to understanding life, what makes a good and satisfying life. Unfortunately, the word has been just utterly destroyed by political types. But on a basic level, "values" just means "what's important to you, as an individual". What do you value, what do you think is important, what gives you that sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment? Take me and my utterly misfit job, for instance. I just don't value "closing the deal" or "achieving the targets" or whatever it is that's supposed to be important to a Sales Manager. To me, "closing the deal" just means you talked someone out of their money, which I find ethically suspect. Literally, which is a real problem for a sales person. Now, I know this is ridiculous, that for the world to go around, for commerce to happen, deals need to be closed, people and companies need to buy things. This is not ethically suspect at all. But the more selling that's involved, the more persuasion and influence the sales person manages to exert, the more likely the purchase decision is to be less than ideal for the purchaser. And at its core, this seems to be somehow unethical, since after all, ethics at its most basic is treating other people's interests as just as important as yours.
Isn't this funny? -- (a) the extent to which something so utterly normal and such a basic part of commercial life as 'selling' gives me ethical misgivings; and (b) how somehow I found myself in a sales manager job, something I find about as unsuitable for me as anything I can imagine. (except maybe an actual sales person!)
Let's see -- (a) I think is sort of OK, it's like my little quirk, some kind of exaggerated ethical sensitivity. I attribute this to some kind of exaggerated sense of empathy, which is actually a nice thing, and it's one of the reasons why people like me and why I have a lot of good friends. So (a) I can live with. But (b), finding myself in this utterly inappropriate job, this is what kills me. And this is more a result of my own passivity and I suspect insecurities. I appear to be just unable to take the fucking bull by the fucking horns and pursue more suitable work. Much as I am unable to pursue other things, female things, eh? This is what really brings me down.
Is this something changeable, this passivity? Doesn't seem so -- I am 51 now, and I am no better at being "pursuitful" than I ever was. Actually I appear to have gotten worse. And so I don't expect this character flaw to go away, or to improve much.
Later, I will have to think some about this inability to pursue my own interests, and how it relates to general anxiety or over-sensitivity. And maybe I'll do some thinkin' about how anxiety and over-sensitivity are related, but not necessarily the same thing.
I always thought the "working for the weekend" thing was the saddest thing ever. People on the elevator on a thursday morning or wednesday evening saying, hey, how's it going, only two more days. Like the workweek, five-sevenths of your life, is just something to endure rather than something to approach with relish. But I've definitely reached that point with this job.
Perhaps it's just too idealistic to think that everyone should be able to find some paying work that they can approach with relish, something that provides an opportunity to achieve a sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. After all, one's sense of accomplishment and satisfaction is very, very personal, and what somebody's willing to pay you for, well, that's usually someone else's idea of what's important. Or in the case of a giant bank or other giant entity, that's the institution's idea of what's important. And a giant institution probably doesn't have the same values as you do.
I keep thinking about "values" as one of the keys to understanding life, what makes a good and satisfying life. Unfortunately, the word has been just utterly destroyed by political types. But on a basic level, "values" just means "what's important to you, as an individual". What do you value, what do you think is important, what gives you that sense of satisfaction, of accomplishment? Take me and my utterly misfit job, for instance. I just don't value "closing the deal" or "achieving the targets" or whatever it is that's supposed to be important to a Sales Manager. To me, "closing the deal" just means you talked someone out of their money, which I find ethically suspect. Literally, which is a real problem for a sales person. Now, I know this is ridiculous, that for the world to go around, for commerce to happen, deals need to be closed, people and companies need to buy things. This is not ethically suspect at all. But the more selling that's involved, the more persuasion and influence the sales person manages to exert, the more likely the purchase decision is to be less than ideal for the purchaser. And at its core, this seems to be somehow unethical, since after all, ethics at its most basic is treating other people's interests as just as important as yours.
Isn't this funny? -- (a) the extent to which something so utterly normal and such a basic part of commercial life as 'selling' gives me ethical misgivings; and (b) how somehow I found myself in a sales manager job, something I find about as unsuitable for me as anything I can imagine. (except maybe an actual sales person!)
Let's see -- (a) I think is sort of OK, it's like my little quirk, some kind of exaggerated ethical sensitivity. I attribute this to some kind of exaggerated sense of empathy, which is actually a nice thing, and it's one of the reasons why people like me and why I have a lot of good friends. So (a) I can live with. But (b), finding myself in this utterly inappropriate job, this is what kills me. And this is more a result of my own passivity and I suspect insecurities. I appear to be just unable to take the fucking bull by the fucking horns and pursue more suitable work. Much as I am unable to pursue other things, female things, eh? This is what really brings me down.
Is this something changeable, this passivity? Doesn't seem so -- I am 51 now, and I am no better at being "pursuitful" than I ever was. Actually I appear to have gotten worse. And so I don't expect this character flaw to go away, or to improve much.
Later, I will have to think some about this inability to pursue my own interests, and how it relates to general anxiety or over-sensitivity. And maybe I'll do some thinkin' about how anxiety and over-sensitivity are related, but not necessarily the same thing.
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
mental health diary sept. 4, 2012
Frequently, when I have tried to journalize, keep a journal, that is, it turns into a giant rant, Dan and his problems with Life and The World. And that gets pretty depressing, pretty quickly. What has especially made this depressing is when I realize that the problems I'm detailing are exactly the same problems that I've always had, the same problems I tried to journalize about 5 years earlier, 10 years earlier, whenever. This can really bring you down, when you see what limited progress you've made in your life.
But such is Life, right? We all have our strengths and our weaknesses, and our weaknesses will dog us throughout. This was best put in perspective by Ram Dass in a book I read by him, I don't remember what. He said that he always had many psychological issues and demons, and that despite thirty years of therapy and meditation and yoga and whatever else he did, he never fully resolved any of those issues. But rather, what all that work did was make the issues less threatening, less of a problem. Earlier in his life, he would be overwhelmed by these issues, but after doing all his work, he was more comfortable with them. They would arise, and be a problem, still, but he could just face them and say playfully, there you are, you little devil, trying to slow me down again.
I basically agree with this, that your issues you will always have with you. It's how you face them that matters. I always spoke of "meta-issues", that is, issues-about-your-issues. Like getting upset because you're too passive or fearful or indecisive. It's not the passivity or fear or indecision that's the problem, it's that you let these get to you, you let them corrupt your self-image or whatever. But we're all human, we've all got weaknesses and fears.
Issues, we've all got issues. The sooner you face this, the better.
I've been inspired me to start this journal again by a book I'm reading now, Winter's Journal, by Paul Auster. It's a kind of reflective late-in-life autobiography, kind of a journal actually. And it's just lovely. And he's quite frank about his Issues. He has had really debilitating panic attacks, and he's quite frank that after the first, his life kind of changed, he became more cautious, less arrogant. And it's inspiring how he discusses this, with such frankness and acceptance.
Of course, now, most of his life is going pretty well -- he's successful, famous even, with a wife of thirty years that he clearly still loves, and two healthy children, not to mention a brownstone in Park Slope. But if he was less successful, you wouldn't be reading this book, now, would you?
Haha, he also writes the whole book in the second person -- e.g. "You remember going into the store with your mother..." And it kind of makes sense, given the subject matter -- older guy reflecting on his life. So I will probably slip into the second person in this here online journal, assuming I keep it up. About that, only time will tell.
But such is Life, right? We all have our strengths and our weaknesses, and our weaknesses will dog us throughout. This was best put in perspective by Ram Dass in a book I read by him, I don't remember what. He said that he always had many psychological issues and demons, and that despite thirty years of therapy and meditation and yoga and whatever else he did, he never fully resolved any of those issues. But rather, what all that work did was make the issues less threatening, less of a problem. Earlier in his life, he would be overwhelmed by these issues, but after doing all his work, he was more comfortable with them. They would arise, and be a problem, still, but he could just face them and say playfully, there you are, you little devil, trying to slow me down again.
I basically agree with this, that your issues you will always have with you. It's how you face them that matters. I always spoke of "meta-issues", that is, issues-about-your-issues. Like getting upset because you're too passive or fearful or indecisive. It's not the passivity or fear or indecision that's the problem, it's that you let these get to you, you let them corrupt your self-image or whatever. But we're all human, we've all got weaknesses and fears.
Issues, we've all got issues. The sooner you face this, the better.
I've been inspired me to start this journal again by a book I'm reading now, Winter's Journal, by Paul Auster. It's a kind of reflective late-in-life autobiography, kind of a journal actually. And it's just lovely. And he's quite frank about his Issues. He has had really debilitating panic attacks, and he's quite frank that after the first, his life kind of changed, he became more cautious, less arrogant. And it's inspiring how he discusses this, with such frankness and acceptance.
Of course, now, most of his life is going pretty well -- he's successful, famous even, with a wife of thirty years that he clearly still loves, and two healthy children, not to mention a brownstone in Park Slope. But if he was less successful, you wouldn't be reading this book, now, would you?
Haha, he also writes the whole book in the second person -- e.g. "You remember going into the store with your mother..." And it kind of makes sense, given the subject matter -- older guy reflecting on his life. So I will probably slip into the second person in this here online journal, assuming I keep it up. About that, only time will tell.
Monday, January 12, 2009
Plusses and minuses of freelancing
Three worst things about being a freelancer, in order
1. Getting up in the morning
2. Wearing shoes all day
3. Strong disincentive to take vacation
Three best things, in order:
1. Get to call yourself a 'consultant'
2. Can maintain a semblance of the 'devil may care' attitude
3. Cash money, honey
1. Getting up in the morning
2. Wearing shoes all day
3. Strong disincentive to take vacation
Three best things, in order:
1. Get to call yourself a 'consultant'
2. Can maintain a semblance of the 'devil may care' attitude
3. Cash money, honey
Wednesday, January 07, 2009
New Keyboard
Ha, usually my entries are about Big Ideas, vague conceptual sort of stuff I think about. But today I will write about something very mundane and practical, like most bloggers do. My new keyboard. These are actually the first sentences I have typed with it, and so far I am very, very pleased. It's a Unicomp.
Who the hell is Unicomp, you ask? They're a small company in Kentucky who bought the patents and designs to the old IBM Model M keyboard, which I understand was a total mainstay of computing in the 70's and 80's. The keys go clickety-clack, and there's a very nice tactile feedback to it. You totally know whether or not you hit that key, which is not the case with the majority of modern keys. This keyboard actually has mechanical switches in the keys, with little springs that "buckle" at some point, so it's called a "buckling spring" mechanism in the keys.
I have always hated the mushy keyboards, but I dealt with it because I'm a good typist and it wasn't that big of a deal. But I started reading about these and I wanted one. And for at least a day or two, hopefully it will inspire me to write in my blogs more frequently. I mean, I have to type something, right?
Thursday, January 01, 2009
New Year's Resolutions
I'm not a big believer in New Year's resolutions. I think I am hard enough on myself all year, every day, that I do not need to set the height of any bars at the start of the year. And more importantly, I'm the sort of person who thinks that the journey is more important than the destination. Some of the most goal-oriented people I've met are also the unhappiest.
Maybe this is because setting goals often puts us in a competitive, comparative orientation, comparing ourselves to those around us. I'm going to be as skinny as x, as successful as y, write a book like z. Then we do these things, and, oila', we're no happier than we were before. Maybe there's an a that's way hotter than x, a b that's way more successful than z, and a c who's a better-loved author than z. So we compare ourselves to them. It's like what everyone always says about New York, the tough thing about living here is that there are always tons of people who are more successful, better-looking, richer, whatever, than you. "Keeping up with the Joneses" it used to be called in the 50's -- it's a treadmill sort of thing that you have to watch out for. Who gives a fuck what the Joneses have?
On the other hand of course some degree of striving is important for happiness, I think. But I think the right kind of striving is in the doing, not in the achieving. We want to feel competent, accomplished. And sure, an accomplishment sure sounds like a goal to me. So, I'm not completely against goals. I just think that we should be wise enough to realize that the satisfaction comes from whatever it is that took us to the goal, not the goal itself.
Now, that little bit of confused, if not circular reasoning stated, here are my new year's resolutions for this year, starting with my all-time-favorite, every-year-it's-at-the-top-of-the-list resolution:
1. Eat more vegetables
2. Eat less sugar
3. Try to moderate the coffee a bit
4. Try to commit several small random acts of kindness every day
5. Try to keep the apartment a little cleaner
6. Get in touch with some old friends
7. Save some money
8. Try to get a girlfriend
9. Try to stay focused at work, even though it's incredibly boring
10. Do more yoga at home
11. Keep taking lots of pictures and making lots of prints
12. Try to be a bit more social in general
13. Sleep a lot
14. Try to restrain inspecific spending impulses
15. Try to restrain specific spending impulses
16. Read lots of books
17. Don't watch so much junk TV (hello, family guy reruns)
18. Try to resist the hoarding instinct a bit more -- i.e. get rid of stuff a little faster
19. Have more dinner parties
20. Take opportunities to mentor, at work, in yoga, and elsewhere
21. Keep working on my spanish
22. Do more long-distance cycling than last year
23. Keep swimming regularly
24. Try to make some new friends
25. Try to get closer to all my friends
Maybe this is because setting goals often puts us in a competitive, comparative orientation, comparing ourselves to those around us. I'm going to be as skinny as x, as successful as y, write a book like z. Then we do these things, and, oila', we're no happier than we were before. Maybe there's an a that's way hotter than x, a b that's way more successful than z, and a c who's a better-loved author than z. So we compare ourselves to them. It's like what everyone always says about New York, the tough thing about living here is that there are always tons of people who are more successful, better-looking, richer, whatever, than you. "Keeping up with the Joneses" it used to be called in the 50's -- it's a treadmill sort of thing that you have to watch out for. Who gives a fuck what the Joneses have?
On the other hand of course some degree of striving is important for happiness, I think. But I think the right kind of striving is in the doing, not in the achieving. We want to feel competent, accomplished. And sure, an accomplishment sure sounds like a goal to me. So, I'm not completely against goals. I just think that we should be wise enough to realize that the satisfaction comes from whatever it is that took us to the goal, not the goal itself.
Now, that little bit of confused, if not circular reasoning stated, here are my new year's resolutions for this year, starting with my all-time-favorite, every-year-it's-at-the-top-of-the-list resolution:
1. Eat more vegetables
2. Eat less sugar
3. Try to moderate the coffee a bit
4. Try to commit several small random acts of kindness every day
5. Try to keep the apartment a little cleaner
6. Get in touch with some old friends
7. Save some money
8. Try to get a girlfriend
9. Try to stay focused at work, even though it's incredibly boring
10. Do more yoga at home
11. Keep taking lots of pictures and making lots of prints
12. Try to be a bit more social in general
13. Sleep a lot
14. Try to restrain inspecific spending impulses
15. Try to restrain specific spending impulses
16. Read lots of books
17. Don't watch so much junk TV (hello, family guy reruns)
18. Try to resist the hoarding instinct a bit more -- i.e. get rid of stuff a little faster
19. Have more dinner parties
20. Take opportunities to mentor, at work, in yoga, and elsewhere
21. Keep working on my spanish
22. Do more long-distance cycling than last year
23. Keep swimming regularly
24. Try to make some new friends
25. Try to get closer to all my friends
Sunday, January 06, 2008
My reality-warp dream
I have a dream, if I can call it that, that I've had on and off for years. At first, it was just sort of comforting -- I'd wake up and think, oh what a nice dream. I found some relief in the dream and that was it. Now, like last night, once in a while I wake up not so much remembering a dream, but just kind of confused about reality, about what I've actually spent my time doing in my life. And generally I am very, very grounded and in touch with reality. So this is very strange for me, and a little disturbing.
This series of recurring dreams is about going back to college, my old college, as an adult. I'd say I started having these dreams in my late twenties. And I always loved these dreams. I always felt great relief in the dream -- it was always like liberating myself of a burden, leaving the nasty "real world" behind and going back to the cocoon of the small liberal arts college. Nothing to do but learn, eat, go to the gym, hang out with people. No pressures about success or other nasty real-world concerns about rent, insurance, promotions, dates, etc. Lovely. There were many variants of this dream, but they always pretty much cheered me up. I think I felt they provided some perspective on life, what I find difficult and challenging in life, that sort of thing.
But now, once or twice a year, I wake up not so much remembering a dream about going back to Reed College, but instead I wake up somehow being convinced that I actually did go back to college for a full year, as an adult. Like, I don't know, in my late twenties, early thirties? I actually wake up as if I was remembering a real period in my life, a whole year or nine months or whatever. So it's not a moment-in-time kind of dream like most of them seem to be. It's like a crazy upheaval of my own real-world memories. It's one of the strangest sensations I've ever had. (And I have had some strange sensations back when I had bad habits!)
What's really weird is that on waking up, it takes me a long time to sort out reality. Even though I have had this weird dream (if a dream it is) before, it took me a good half hour this morning to convince myself that no, I never went back to college as an adult. I had to kind of walk through all the periods of adult life and convince myself that no, I never took a year and went back to Reed College. Even now, as I'm typing this, there's a part of me that doesn't really believe it, that wants to sort through every year of my life and make really-really sure that there isn't some 'lost year' there when I went back to Portland Oregon to escape the real world and think some more.
I have been sleeping a ton since I got to buenos aires, and I might be a little sick too, so maybe that has something to do with it. My dreams are always more intense when I find myself in a new country, and also when I'm sick. But this dream is weird in a different way, in its very nature, like it's affecting a different part of my brain or something. Maybe because this recurring dream has happened so many times, I'm sort of dreaming about the old dreams, as if I were dreaming about real experiences that I had had. And so the subject matter of the dream seems like reality.
Freaky, huh? I don't like it, it does make me feel less grounded, but it's an interesting experience, lord knows, and we should savor our interesting experiences, right? So let's just say this -- dreams, and brains, are just fucking amazing.
This series of recurring dreams is about going back to college, my old college, as an adult. I'd say I started having these dreams in my late twenties. And I always loved these dreams. I always felt great relief in the dream -- it was always like liberating myself of a burden, leaving the nasty "real world" behind and going back to the cocoon of the small liberal arts college. Nothing to do but learn, eat, go to the gym, hang out with people. No pressures about success or other nasty real-world concerns about rent, insurance, promotions, dates, etc. Lovely. There were many variants of this dream, but they always pretty much cheered me up. I think I felt they provided some perspective on life, what I find difficult and challenging in life, that sort of thing.
But now, once or twice a year, I wake up not so much remembering a dream about going back to Reed College, but instead I wake up somehow being convinced that I actually did go back to college for a full year, as an adult. Like, I don't know, in my late twenties, early thirties? I actually wake up as if I was remembering a real period in my life, a whole year or nine months or whatever. So it's not a moment-in-time kind of dream like most of them seem to be. It's like a crazy upheaval of my own real-world memories. It's one of the strangest sensations I've ever had. (And I have had some strange sensations back when I had bad habits!)
What's really weird is that on waking up, it takes me a long time to sort out reality. Even though I have had this weird dream (if a dream it is) before, it took me a good half hour this morning to convince myself that no, I never went back to college as an adult. I had to kind of walk through all the periods of adult life and convince myself that no, I never took a year and went back to Reed College. Even now, as I'm typing this, there's a part of me that doesn't really believe it, that wants to sort through every year of my life and make really-really sure that there isn't some 'lost year' there when I went back to Portland Oregon to escape the real world and think some more.
I have been sleeping a ton since I got to buenos aires, and I might be a little sick too, so maybe that has something to do with it. My dreams are always more intense when I find myself in a new country, and also when I'm sick. But this dream is weird in a different way, in its very nature, like it's affecting a different part of my brain or something. Maybe because this recurring dream has happened so many times, I'm sort of dreaming about the old dreams, as if I were dreaming about real experiences that I had had. And so the subject matter of the dream seems like reality.
Freaky, huh? I don't like it, it does make me feel less grounded, but it's an interesting experience, lord knows, and we should savor our interesting experiences, right? So let's just say this -- dreams, and brains, are just fucking amazing.
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