It's not every day

So I met this really interesting person the other day.

I was helping my work-friend, Jenny, who is a recruiter (employment kind, not army kind). She asked me to do a first interview with a candidate for employment, because his application showed he was from India and she's not particularly culturally-diverse-comfortable, so wanted me to meet with him first. She thinks I'm more patient with accents.

This man wasn't applying for any position in particular - he knows he has a language barrier, so he's looking for any job that would have him. So I asked him the most open-ended job related question I know: what kind of work do you really like to do? In a zillion years I would never had been prepared for the answer.

This kind gentleman asked me how much time I had to meet with him. When I invited him to take as long as he liked, he began to explain to me his lifelong goal - he wants to create a worldwide organization to, as he put it, "spread humanism all around the world." He drew the organizational chart for me -explaining the three types of help (physical help, financial help and knowledge help), and how he intended to get all this to happen. He then explained that he comes from a family that thinks his goal means he is lazy and doesn't want to do real work, so he'd like to work for our housekeeping department, please.

As we ended our meeting, he thanked me graciously for listening to him and told me that, whether we offered him employment or not, I should feel welcome to stay in touch with him, in case I ever needed help from him.

I'm glad Jenny asked me to cover this one for her. She might have thought he was nuts. It's possible that he is a little... but he's going to be great for our organization. He starts Monday.

Serendipity

So you know how the planets line up sometimes and point us to something wonderful? Here's todays wonderful thing (but there's a bunch of stuff leading up to it - bear with me):

A dozen years ago, we met Fred because of NRBQ and he introduced us to The Chandler Travis Philharmonic and gave us our first recording of the Incredible Casuals at the Wellfleet Beachcomber. Ok, so fast forward a bunch of years to last summer, when we saw signs around Wellfleet about praying for Caleb Potter and I searched the internet to try to find out what that was about and discovered Susan's blog and coincidentally, Susan is a friend of Fred's. Still with me? So Susan also blogs for the beachcomber and recently posted about this bridge in Wellfleet that was going to be torn down and rebuilt.

So, remember when I told you about buying this really cool condo (except that it's in a gated community and I have a hang up about that). Anyway, when we met the seller at the closing in May (she was really super nice) and she told us a bit about our neighbors and mentioned Mike who lives downstairs. When we were moving in, Mike offered to help us carry stuff and mentioned this neat thrift shop in Orleans that has furniture and said we might find bargains there. Still hanging in? O.k. so we're still furnishing and decorating our new place and today, I went into that thrift shop on a whim and found this beautiful photo, all wrapped and matted, of the very same Uncle Tim's bridge in Wellfleet, taken by the "Wellfleetian" fisherman and photographer Walter Baron. Clearly, I was meant to have this picture, especially because I had no reason to even know what Uncle Tim's bridge is if it hadn't been for these wonderful people I've been introduced to, plus it had been marked down twice and was truly a bargain. Here's the icing on the whole thing - Jeff mentioned (a couple of times this week) that it would be nice if we had a wine rack, preferably a black wrought iron one (there's a lot of wrought iron in the condo) and they also had one of those for ten bucks.

All of this leads me to feel very blessed - not just by the bargain, but all it represents. It came to us by way of a lot of good fortune, wonderful people, exceptional musicians who bring us joy, and a little help from the planets. I will treasure it all and, I hope, never take it for granted.

Math Challenged

So I only had five things in my list of six things about myself...
Thank you to those polite enough to not point that out (my husband was not one of you).

And to think I'm expected to take graduate-level microeconomics in a few weeks. This could be a problem.

I've Been Meme'd

I hate chain things, but I love the person who did this to me. (Fred!) So, a compromise.

Here are six random things about me:

• I remember the words to almost every song I've ever heard (but somehow can't remember important stuff, like the date the Declaration of Independence was signed or statistics formulas)
• My second toe on each foot is longer than my big toe, which my mother told me is a sign of intelligence (flawed theory - see above)
• Sometimes when I bake a really good pie, and people think I made the crust too, I don't correct them
• Victoria Principal and I went to the same high school (though not at the same time; she's much older than I am)
• I have a past...
  

So the rules for this meme business are:

• Link to the person who tagged you.
• Post the rules on your blog.
• Write six random things about yourself.
• Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.
• Let each person know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their website.
• Let your tagger know when your blog entry is up.

I don't like rules, but I like messing with people. Plus, I don't know six other people with blogs, except the people already tagged in this chain-meme-thing. So the one person who has yet to be tagged, and whose six random things I'd really like to know is:

• Golf In The Berkshires

You're it!
Love, Lis

Recommitted

So I was reading a comment my friend Fred posted on someone else's blog today and I felt bad because he said he would have a hard time finding six other people's blogs to refer to in his post (it's a complicated scenario - this is the best I can do).

So, I've decided to recommit myself to my blog. Just in case.

Here's today's theme: Being mean.

I work in healthcare and my job involves helping our employees feel good about their job. Here's all the ways working in the healthcare industry makes people not feel good:

• Low pay for people who work really hard
• A culture that allows (encourages, rewards) being mean to those above
• Patients who are sick or aging and don't feel well that are in a place they'd rather not be
• Family members who have unrealistic expectations and voice their complaints in unkind ways
• Family members who are truly grateful and recognize good care but keep it to themselves
  

O.k., there are others, but that's a good start.

I'm constantly amazed at the lengths people will go to when trying to make others feel bad. We really have belligerent people to deal with throughout our day and I just don't understand why people want to use up all that energy in such a harmful way. And to make it worse, the common language I hear at work involves phrases like "eat their young" and "throw under the bus" and we all act like that's normal.

Here's my commitment (besides promising to post in my blog more often) - I'm never going to let all that junk be normal. I'm swimming upstream as hard as I can and confronting the mean people and celebrating those wonderful, kind, gentle souls who make a marginal living in service to others. People who help people for a living are not treated like rock stars, but they should be. They make a greater contribution. If you know anyone who is a helper, say something nice to them - no one else probably has today. And expand that out: overtip your waitress, send some chocolates to your kids' teacher, change your mind about your presumptions of people who don't choose money as their first consideration in their career. And just be kind. Give people the benefit of the doubt.

O.k. - that's the sermon for today. I'll be back to my smart-ass self tomorrow.

Life Lessons

So, smart people learn from their mistakes and really smart people learn from other people's mistakes.

My friend and co-worker lost his job yesterday and I saw it coming. For about two years.
My job is to help people be successful in their jobs, but I'm not anyone's boss, so my influence has to be subtle. Subtle didn't work with my friend. I was supportive, coached, suggested, occasionally became cross, but I didn't get the chance to tell him if he didn't get his stuff together, he'd be fired. Then he was.

I couldn't help but reflect on my own mistakes - it was so familiar watching his self-destruction. We're a lot alike, he and I - and even shared the same birthday. He worked for my company for a really long time - clearly too long - and he knew his strengths, but refused to work on his weaknesses. I think in the back of his mind, he believed that if he just didn't do a good job on certain tasks, they would be reassigned and he wouldn't have to do them anymore. He acted like a victim, got lazy, had righteous indignation and didn't believe it would happen.

So what is this about us, that we do this to ourselves. I have an amazing capacity for convincing myself I'm right when I'm wrong (though I'm working on being better about that) and my friend did too. But what he didn't do was face his challenges and deal with them. He would rather duck and cover rather than confront someone face-to-face and he risked and lost his job because of it.

I want to learn something from this. I wanted to be a better support to him, but he needed to decide for himself. I want to learn to be brave and confront challenges even when my whole body resists. I usually know what the right thing is - but I don't always make myself do it. I want to. And I want my friend to, too.

He's not returning my phone call -
I so hope he does.

Having Stuff

So this whole buying a condo thing has taken over our life - thinking, dreaming, shopping... Especially shopping.
While I've acknowledged being uncomfortable with the whole flaunting-our-own-privilege aspect of buying a vacation property, it hasn't inhibited my desire for nice stuff to go in it. In all fairness, the stuff is all being bought at discount stores, but we're really determined to have the really nice sheets and stemmed glasses in every shape imaginable.
Got Jeff to shop today, but only because it involved a large flat-screen tv (I sprung for a new really wide ironing board which I'm embarrassed to say makes me very happy). The big problem will be how to fit all the stuff in one car when we drive to the Cape for the closing on Friday.
Still - we're so looking forward to being so close to the ocean and having a place to just be still - we can't do that so much at home because there's always yardwork, laundry, dust, clutter, etc. I guess driving three hours to our other house somehow excuses us from that responsibility.
Our friends keep telling us we deserve it.
It is awfully nice to have spring finally here and the perfume of the lilacs in our front yard. We'll soon have the most wonderful balance between the beautiful views of the Berkshire Hills and an escape to the ocean surf and salt-kissed air. We are blessed.
We are blessed indeed.