touché, productivity nazi

"It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: 'Busy!' 'So busy.' 'Crazy busy.' It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint."

My wise and well-missed friend, Rich, posted this New York Times article The ‘Busy’ Trap by Tim Kreider to the ubiquitous facebook. Like he was reading my mind (or my blog).

"Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets."

Self imposed and unexamined busyness. The Importance of What I Do. The Meaning Endless Meetings provide.

"The Puritans turned work into a virtue, evidently forgetting that God invented it as a punishment." 

This busyness I've recently become immersed in is a mindset that is fundamentally false, a "boast disguised as a complaint." I guess I am not so self-aware that I don't need to be reminded of simple, common-sense things. Thank you.

imbalance

What triggers anger? Fear? Arrogance? Impotence? My anger is a rich blend of all three and something deeper and more primal. No, it's more about my inner child. My history.

Many smart, capable female friends have been posting on Facebook about getting old. And fat. And not being pretty. I see decades of creativity sucked dry by bullshit. And I got angry.

"Why do you waste your energy puling about aging? All you have is time and you're pissing it away. There's a million more fascinating, enriching and amusing things to do out there than moan than something you can't change. I am 53. I don't give a rat's ass about getting older. Get on with your lives and stop this ridiculous, first-world whiny shit.
You are smart and I love you but you are wasting your precious time. The End."

It probably won't make a bit of difference and I'll offend people and make them defensive. I should just block them so I don't have to read it. 

Who do I think I am, telling people that they're full of shit? 
Who do I think I am, telling them I know better than they do? 

This goes back to power. And balance and imbalance. 

Do I have the right? 
Do I have the obligation? 
Do I see clearly?

Well, I guess I think I do. I think I have the right and obligation to say that the Emperor is stark naked. I am pretty sure, however, that it falls on deaf ears and I want to be okay with exorcising cultural demons even if it seems I'm the only one witnessing the act.

balance

I've been thinking a lot about leadership.
About the balance between being strong and ruthless.
About the balance between being über egalitarian and ineffectual.
Of course, it doesn't have to be one or the other.
But it is rarely clearly, cleanly one or the other.

As a woman, claiming power is the sound of cymbals crashing in my head.
At once, invigorating and terrifying.
I jump up in excitement and recoil.
Such figurative schizophrenia makes me angry.
But anger is a stupid response because this is about balance.
Which is never simple and never clear.
Even for men. I don't know.
I've been thinking a lot about leadership.

the things people say, part 2

We've been interviewing tenants for our garage apartment. We almost rented it to the biggest asshat ever...let's call him Biff or Skip or something equally bourgeois, pretentious and upper middle classless. So Biff comes to see the apartment, fills out the application and since I don't have to be in love with the tenant*, I figure he will do. His credit rating, which he spouted off during our first doomed meeting, (red flag noted) was good, he was gainfully employed and spoke in full sentences.

Well, long story short, Biff began to send me bulleted emails about changes he wanted made to the very standard rental contract we'd sent him. Next, he challenged the move-in schedule like he had just been put in charge of Epiphenita's Franklin Planner (no, I don't). Then, fatefully, he began enumerating what he wanted cleaned and how. Finally, god help his fucktarded polished penny loafers, he requested a lease change so there was "some sort of option to sublet or re-lease the place, given the quality of tenant is no less than myself..."

I'd say what balls he has if I thought he was the least bit conscious of how insufferable an asshole he was. "...the quality of tenant...no less than myself" Are you fucking serious? I am not a violent woman. But if I had to spend any time at all around Biff, I swear on everything demonic, I would haul off and pummel his neatly coiffed arrogance into a pile of whimpering apology.

Most of the other applicants have been flakey or unable to grasp the stated square footage limitations inherent in 1950 garage apartments. We are showing it again this weekend. To a guy whose screen name is "Dirty Doodles." I ask you, does that alias seem like a great idea when you have no idea if your potential landlord is skittish or a sociopath? I don't really care...it just doesn't bode well.

Have I mentioned that the last time we advertised for a tenant, I made a comment on the neatness of one applicant's printing (I'm old-school drafting-lettering trained; so zip it.) and he chuckled and said, "Yeah, it's like a serial killer's handwriting!" Wow. I like good psychotic murderer humor as much as the next girl, but we've only just met. Let's see how fast I can scratch your name off the list of potential renters, okay?

*I tried to resist this. Really. It's been days since this post and in my compulsive re-editing mode I keep wanting to add alternatives to the descriptor: since I don't have to be in love with the tenant. Here goes and my apologies to those that don't enjoy a good dead horse beating:

• since I don't have to wipe the tenant's ass
• since I don't have to clean the tenant's ears
• since I don't have to hold the tenant's inner child
• since I don't have to read the tenant's palm
• since I don't have to pray with the tenant
• since I don't have to tuck the tenant in
• since I don't have to pay the tenant's porn bills
• since I don't have to entertain the tenant's mother
• since I don't have to trim the tenant's cuticles
• since I don't have to suck the tenant's dick

I only wish that I were done with this.

the things people say, part 1

First off, people, you need to know I've been taking hits off a flask of Haterade® all afternoon. This was one of the those weeks that you take out behind the building at 5pm on Friday and beat to death. That's all the disclaimer I've got.

You know that fabulous website overheadinnewyork.com? Well, it's possible that some of those quotes are the product of a few creative minds. I don't know. If they're funny, I don't really care. Point is, the quotes I'm slinging here, are ones that I have heard with my own disbelieving ears. If ears have beliefs.

Evidently I was in rare form this afternoon. My coworker made a remark insinuating that I had something in common with the snarky audience in Mystery Science Theater. A metaphor: I like percussion instruments as much as the next music lover but on Friday afternoon at 4pm I don't want to hear a fucking cymbal solo in the next cube. It's jarring and sucks out what little remains of my soul...troglodytes.

Earlier today, one of the relentlessly enthusiastic sales types said about the same successful transaction: "You really boxed him in!" [Breath.] "Man, you squeezed him out!" Okay, which is it? Boxed in or Squeezed out? Because if you do both, you need to see a digestive specialist. Or you're in labor.

In the same vein, I was in church some months ago. [Pause.] Yes, I go to church for weddings, funerals and whatever inane rites my loved ones choose to celebrate with invitations. I go to church but trust me, I always breathe a sigh of relief that I am leaving as me and not a zaftig pillar of salt. Anyway, I was listening to the preacher wax folksy about one thing or other when he read a passage from the bible and said of the quote, "when I first heard this scripture, as a human..." Seriously. He referred to himself in the past tense as being a human, as if something transpired since then to change his status.

I hear this shit and look around at the placid, unaffected faces of the people around me and just know that I am either hyper-aware or demonic. (Why am I so black and white about it? I could very easily be demonically hyper-aware.)