Welcome to Spring. Finally. It's starting to get warmer, the grass is getting greener, and, despite the fact that my friends in California have taken great pains to rub it in incessantly about how warm and sunny it is on the left coast (mid 50's, biking at Big Sur, ugh..we still have snow banks), there is still a sense of New Englander/Puritan style optimism in the air here in New York. Something about Spring in the northeast, a sense of relief, the belief that winter has finally let up and we can have a life again...can come out of the cold and breathe once more.
I have come out of a long, cold winter, one filled with lots of doubt and a chilling sense of locked rigidity. But thaws happen, inevitably, and with the thaw, comes the new growth and new life of Spring. New shoots growing out of the old life, new possibilities from the frozen ground.
A life of hope and joy. Ah, the possibilities...
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Sunday, March 15, 2009
New Beginnings
Here's to hoping that this week will be better than the last. If tonight is any indication, I'm not so sure, but it's early...
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Communication
Lately I've been enmeshed in lots of meetings at work, on lots of varied subjects, and have left those meetings with a great sense of being overwhelmed by the amount of information that has been tossed at me. Great gushing torrents of factoids barreling down the proverbial pike at me and then just settling, and I have to make some kind of sense of it all. It's downright disconcerting.
The thing that bothers me the most, though, is the fractured nature of the data being thrown at me. You get it full barrel in the noggin, and then you're on to the next meeting with a whole new set of facts. I've never been good at multi-tasking, so this should come as no surprise to those who know me that this type of life (the last week has been particularly odious--three different committees and normal departmental politics add up to headaches galore) doesn't suit me. I suppose I could make it in this one meeting per week and I'll see you next week world if there was follow through, but it just seems that some of the meetings I attend are so esoteric and convoluted in nature, or are just squeezed into a slot so we can say we're accountable, that I end up frazzled and frustrated, and the recovery time is so long that I'm often bitter and angry and not able to concentrate. Oh what I would do for follow-up of some kind. Anything: a call or email just to recap or rehash the meeting.
Now some people are good at this, but lately I've been noticing a change and a real withdrawing of communication: this makes it difficult to maintain enthusiasm for the project. Seems sometimes that others have lost interest, or are like me, so tapped out that we're like zombies dancing through the day. I promised that I would never let myself get there, so this is particularly frustrating.
Despite the Anne Tyler quote on the home page of this site, I really do have trouble with too many fractured elements of my life. Yes, I know that's how it goes sometimes, and as a professional I need to figure out how to handle it, but I get into trouble when all of my life seems like a shatterd mirror, complete with tiny shards of glass scattered about the floor. I would like consistency- at least with communication- but I'm not sure if that's too much to ask. I mean, really, can't I connect with anyone or anything in my life that welcomes the connection? And can sustain it over more than a meeting per week or two? Whiny? Probably. But I've spent too many meetings that serve as stages for people to hear their own voices so they can be said to have spoken up, or listening to others talk about the project at hand in abstract terms and never volunteer a new direction, only to be forced into silence for another week before I get the chance to speak again. Without communication, there is no growth after all.
Doesn't seem the best way to run things- whether it be a personal life or a professional one.
The thing that bothers me the most, though, is the fractured nature of the data being thrown at me. You get it full barrel in the noggin, and then you're on to the next meeting with a whole new set of facts. I've never been good at multi-tasking, so this should come as no surprise to those who know me that this type of life (the last week has been particularly odious--three different committees and normal departmental politics add up to headaches galore) doesn't suit me. I suppose I could make it in this one meeting per week and I'll see you next week world if there was follow through, but it just seems that some of the meetings I attend are so esoteric and convoluted in nature, or are just squeezed into a slot so we can say we're accountable, that I end up frazzled and frustrated, and the recovery time is so long that I'm often bitter and angry and not able to concentrate. Oh what I would do for follow-up of some kind. Anything: a call or email just to recap or rehash the meeting.
Now some people are good at this, but lately I've been noticing a change and a real withdrawing of communication: this makes it difficult to maintain enthusiasm for the project. Seems sometimes that others have lost interest, or are like me, so tapped out that we're like zombies dancing through the day. I promised that I would never let myself get there, so this is particularly frustrating.
Despite the Anne Tyler quote on the home page of this site, I really do have trouble with too many fractured elements of my life. Yes, I know that's how it goes sometimes, and as a professional I need to figure out how to handle it, but I get into trouble when all of my life seems like a shatterd mirror, complete with tiny shards of glass scattered about the floor. I would like consistency- at least with communication- but I'm not sure if that's too much to ask. I mean, really, can't I connect with anyone or anything in my life that welcomes the connection? And can sustain it over more than a meeting per week or two? Whiny? Probably. But I've spent too many meetings that serve as stages for people to hear their own voices so they can be said to have spoken up, or listening to others talk about the project at hand in abstract terms and never volunteer a new direction, only to be forced into silence for another week before I get the chance to speak again. Without communication, there is no growth after all.
Doesn't seem the best way to run things- whether it be a personal life or a professional one.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)