Category Archives: Life

in praise of flexibility

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Lately, I have been astounded at the power of adaptability. Planning has it’s place, undoubtedly, but my life over the past few months has really called for me to just be able to go with the flow. Interviews, job hunting, part-time work: all require broad vision and a willingness to journey where the work is, regardless of whether or not that’s where I pictured myself going. Living at home, having all kinds of people in and out with the accompanying noise of having all kinds of people in and out: flexibility and a very robust sense of humor.

Unexpected car repairs, layoffs, relationships, family needs, health issues. Really, life has made it abundantly clear that it doesn’t care what I planned on. So why not stop worrying about making plans in the first place, expect the bumps in the road, and enjoy life as it comes?

Upon reflection, there is only one area of my recent life where planning outweighs winging it: the purchase of toilet paper.

and so it goes

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I haven’t written a blog post in about a month (actually, that’s a lie. I wrote one and wordpress deleted it before it was published it and I was too irritated to rewrite it…) and have written a grand total of three posts since April. Usually, I would offer some kind of apology and a promise to be more diligent in the future. I’m not feeling that today. I’ve been thinking a lot lately about unproductive emotions and I’ve realized that my self-imposed guilt is one thing that needs to go. So no guilt, just an update about how I’ve lived my life outside of the internet realm.

Something slightly less than employment

I spent most of April and all of May putting in some major hours at work. That’s the old news. The new news is that my company informed me in mid-June that they’ve decided to close down their Denver branch. When people ask me how I’m doing, my automatic response is usually along the lines of “it took me a bit to get over the shock, but now I’m fine.” This is partially a lie. I am fine, but the shock still hits me every morning on the way into work. It has largely turned from a self-centered “I can’t believe they dropped me the day after we finished our project, of which I poured heart and soul and about 500 of hours into” to “I can’t believe how incredibly gracious, composed, and wonderful my co-workers have been throughout this process.” By comparison, I have it easy. I have no family to take care of, I have no major fixed expenses (this is one of the few times in life one can feel smug about their decision to live at home… :) , entry level jobs are still an option for me, and I’ve only been with the company for 10 months as opposed to 20+ years. I still have moments when I get a little indignant, but it’s now on behalf of other people who deserved better. But deserve is another one of those unproductive emotions because it’s a perspective that’s rarely reciprocated.

And while I am excited to try something new, I am terribly overwhelmed by the prospect of job hunting. I’m looking forward to finding a job I am more passionate about and preferably an employer that is not so exacting in its required hours. I still have a month or so to figure out what I’m doing next. There is some fear. There is frustration – I hate doing things on other people’s terms, and it turns out leaving a company is no exception. There is relief and a sense of possibility. Above all, there is change. And no matter what I feel or want, it is this that I’ve come to accept. Everything else will come with time.

Family Vacation

I had already planned a vacation for the week of the 4th of July and it seemed the trip would be a much-needed escape from ‘reality.’ I was fortunate enough to spend a fantastic week clearing my head and remembering what’s supposed to be important. Things like sunrises, the ocean lapping at your feet, sandcastles, family dinners, and a kayaking misadventure that will certainly become our family’s epic vacation story for years to come. Being in love with life, drinking in the scenery, and spending time with the people you love – why was I excluding these things from my daily version of ‘reality’? I realized that ever since college graduation, I have associated ‘the real world’ with drudgery. How sad is that? I think this is the very definition of an unproductive emotion, or at least an unproductive perspective. I refuse to accept that my life will be long, draining days, and I’m changing my reality. I am looking forward to a real world full of happiness, love, and daily adventures.

Best of all, I got to feel my first little niece kick. If that doesn’t put things in perspective, I don’t know what does.

sunrise

One Year Anniversary

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I was going to mark my college graduation anniversary with a post celebrating the major changes that have occurred the past year. However, work has once again gotten the best of me and so far I’ve only written about 1/12 of my year. But I think it’s okay because you’d probably kill me if I crammed the other 11/12 into one post anyway. So without further ado, here’s part 1 of my reminiscent series documenting my first year out of school.

May 2007:

Elation and and overpowering sense of loss dominate the days.  You turn 22 on the day of your last college final.  You laugh and cry and celebrate all at once because you have never been very good at change.  You are especially bad at leaving things behind.

And that’s what graduating is.  It’s leaving behind friends and roommates and those random kids from class that you don’t actually talk to but you’ve heard them ask enough dumb questions to feel like you know them.  It’s parting ways with droning professors that taught you to love crosswords and with amazing professors that taught you to love so many different subjects simply because of the passion that comes from learning interesting new things.  It’s saying goodbye to long days on campus, moving from class to class, job to job, building to building.  You used to dread these long days, but nostalgia at the end makes you realize that there are fewer places more beautiful to spend an endless day.  Graduation also marks the end of your three day weekends, you late morning classes and even later nights, and the last time until 65 that you can legitimately consider going on The Price Is Right.  It’s the end of the way of life you’ve known for the past 16 years: school.  And as the big day approaches, you think that maybe you should get a second major and start all over because you’re really not ready to graduate.

It’s scary, but it’s exciting.  Because you are also saying goodbye to tests and textbooks and all-night cram sessions and procrastinated papers.  Your family comes in from around the country to celebrate with you.  There are dinners and awards banquets and more pictures than you could imagine.  And you realize that maybe this dreaded graduation is actually a big accomplishment.  And you smile though you fear the unknown. It starts to feel like the world is at your fingertips, and you hope that perhaps someone out in that waiting world wants to give you a job.

Uncle!

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I got back from a weekend in LA only to wake up to snow this morning. All the budget drafts thoughtfully piled up for me on Friday, so I came back to an inbox full of death. I was assigned to help do stop-gap work in the middle of someone else’s project while they’re out of town. I closed a spreadsheet without saving accidentally. I ate my lunch before 10:30 and am now really hungry but without sustenance (okay, that actually happens a lot so I probably shouldn’t add that to my list of woes…).

Sometimes I wish there was a way to just cry uncle and say, “that’s okay Monday – I give up! you win!” And then Monday would gloat triumphantly but would leave me alone and pick on someone else. Yeah, that would be nice.

people mocking, the less advertised form of people watching

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I’ve been trying to lift weights during my lunch break. (Please don’t ask me how or why this exercise kick has started, just go with it. I promise I’ll be back to my normal chocolate eating ways soon enough.) The building gym is hot and tiny, but it has two redeeming qualities. 1) It was a $50 lifetime membership. 2) I have found someone to laugh at. Okay that sounded really awful. I didn’t mean it. Yes, I did. I’m a bad person.

You see, there are two ladies that are apparently also attempting the lunchtime workout routine. One of those ladies is sheer entertainment. So far, she has:

  • shown up without shoes and proceeded to ‘work out’ anyway
  • made half-hearted attempts on the elliptical machine, only to give up after about two minutes and switch to the lesser known exercise of rocking back and forth with both shoeless feet on one pedal (I wonder how that rocking compared to just spending her lunch eating and reading a book or something? If I forget a hairtie, I don’t go. Why even bother with no shoes?)
  • spent about 20 minutes sitting on the bike watching tv (read: not pedaling on the bike…just sitting. with shoes this time.)
  • listened to her ipod in such a way that every time her coworker would lean over to say something, she would literally yell “What?!” before taking out an earbud. Every time.  Did I mention it was a small gym?  She echoed.

Seriously, my few brief encounters have left me wondering what her motivation to spend her lunch hour this way could possibly be.  My guess is that she is that she doesn’t care about the exercise so much as making sure she is amortizing that $50 fee as much as possible. Oh wait, that’s me. Man, I lose: I’m a bad person and I’m lame…

why I miss Europe

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I studied abroad in Brussels two years ago and there are still days that I miss it terribly. Some times in life are more suited for reminiscing than others, and this is one of them. And so I will immerse myself in pictures and bad europop and mourn the fact that life has changed. I miss the places, I miss the people, but mostly I miss who I got to be for those short 6 months. This is something I wrote right after I got back and the sentiments have not changed.

Being in Brussels was liberating because the entire experience was an adventure. In the beginning, especially when I was sick (note: I had mono when I left, spent the first month as sick as a dog and had a solid exploration of the Brussels health care system while there), the whole concept of being in country where I didn’t know anyone was somewhat terrifying, and the language barriers were overwhelming and impassible. But eventually that became my favorite part about it. Every single day became this grand journey, and the experiences typically classified as mundane chores at home were exciting. A successful trip to the grocery store became a victory, and was often enough to make the day feel like an accomplishment. I fell in love with exploring, with finding new ways to get where I needed to be, and discovering new places. Exploration was an everyday occurrence; the process of just getting by was always novel. I felt like the entire city of Brussels was mine for the taking.

But it was even more than that, because the whole continent was at my fingertips. I never would have imagined that it was possible to book a last minute trip in broken French, only to arrive in a completely new country where I again didn’t speak the language. Gone were the days of getting to the airport 2 hours early—I had to run to catch trains more times than I could count. And once I got off the train, more often than not I had no idea how to get where I was going or how to even speak to someone to ask. The sheer excitement that came from trying to figure it all out was exhilarating. For me, Europe largely came without itineraries, and I liked the freedom of being able to experience things instead of rigorously scheduling everything. Never before have I been able to just be – at least not quite like this.

I did make friends with people from school, people I would probably never get to know ordinarily. But largely the trip was about me. I traveled with friends and I would go out with other people, but I still spent the majority of my time with myself. And I liked that that was okay. I encountered a lot of things in Europe, but most importantly, I encountered myself.

by their fruits ye shall know them

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I’m working late tonight and need to print out parts of my projects to get them done. The color copier is “out of consummables.” The black and white had a paper jam. My options are limited because everyone who knows how to fix the copier left at least 3 hours ago.

I don’t know what consummables are (unless they are talking about chocolate, of which I am sorely lacking) so I decided to tackle the jam. 25 mintues later, I am covered in toner but I think I have removed all the paper from the SIX places it was jammed in the vast internal organs of the beast. I am elated. I have conquered the foe! I can get back to work.

Except not. Because the door of the copier no longer closes. Somehow in the process of attempting to unjam this hulk of plastic, I have angered the mass production gods. The help button says that all the machine parts must be in the correct position for the door to close. Some quick math tells me that there are about 40 million combinations of the way those knobs and levers could possibly be arranged and it was my job to find the correct one if I wanted to use the machine.

It was then that I realized the SPAWN OF SATAN resides in our copy room.

I left a note for whoever is lucky enough to come in tomorrow morning and decided to call it quits. I’m leaving now. And I will be plotting my Office Space-esque revenge the entire way home.

Copy machines: 2 , Rachel: 0

Thursday

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I can’t tell whether my hands are cold or my head is feverish.

Also, budgets never die.  Never.  They are the undead of the financial world, hoping to help the zombie population proliferate by taking you out.  They are ghosts that haunt you forever.    They are vampires that suck your blood.  And there is nothing you can do about it.

I think it’s a fever.

Haircut Optimization

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Email from me to my mom, earlier this week:

I’m getting my haircut today after work. Want to hear some of my ideas about the whole thing? Yes? Oh good.

Years of experience has shown that the amount of times between haircuts for me is fairly constant, meaning that time has demonstrated that good haircut or bad, too short and hard to deal with or too long and annoying, I still only get it cut about twice, maybe three times a year. So I spend a little while loving my haircut, most of my time tolerating it, and some time hating it.

So if you think of your optimal hair length as a bell curve, the perfect haircut would be at the top, the tolerating would be one standard deviation out, the hating another deviation after that, and then just disgusting would be the tails.

Thus this begs the question: why do I get my hair cut to the optimal length?! If I consistently wait about a deviation and a half to cut my hair, why do I cut it so that I’m guaranteed to spend time in the “hating deviation.” Logic says that I should cut it too short so that I can spend all of my time in the “tolerating deviations” that surround the optimal length.

Now I recognize that maybe there is a flaw. Maybe too short hair is less tolerable than too long hair? But what is the ratio of irritation? I don’t know. But I’m hypothesizing that as long as the too short still fits in a ponytail that the difference is minimal. Let’s say it’s twice as irritating. In which case I should get my haircut maybe a half deviation below optimal to try to keep my level of satisfaction relatively consistent on both sides of the perfect haircut.

My Mom’s response:

Just another thought — more frequent haircuts? It really is a rather pleasant experience, especially if you see Michael….

Me:

More frequent??? Pish posh. That just seems like a waste of money when you can get effective results with some statistical reasoning…

Mom:

It may not be a bell curve. Given the fact that your haircut schedule is a rare event and unpredictable, we may be Poisson territory here. So think about that. And if it is bell, narrowing the interval with more frequent cuts is reasonable.

Conclusions:

  1. Isn’t my mom awesome?! Seroiusly, throwing out Poisson distributions…it still makes me ridiculously happy. Yay for statistics!
  2. I am a nerd.  (the apple didn’t fall far from the tree?)
  3. I hate doing my hair.

It turns out that I decided to chop it all off, not so much of statistics but because I feel like I’ve had the same haircut for about 5 years and I wanted a change. It doesn’t fit in a ponytail anymore and I am STRUGGLING. But I do like it a lot, even if I now have to blowdry every day.