I left my first husband because I was afraid he didn’t love me enough.  With distance and maturity, I’ve come to realize what an idiot I was to let the thought exist, much less define us.  But here I am, ten years later, worrying about the same thing again. 

Different man, same worry.  Different reasons, same fear.  Different me, same me.

Elizabeth Gilbert (she of “Eat, Pray, Love” fame) writes in “Committed” about trading personality deficit lists with her beloved in (my words here) a fcuked up version of a personality prenuptial. 

I get that.  I have crippling personality traits: I am inexplicably convinced I will someday prove my utter worthlessness despite evidence to the contrary.  I don’t like to feel.  I hide hurt and fear behind a thick wall of offensive protectiveness and anger.  I am a maximizer in every possible way.  And I live and breathe by words.

I was an early talker and early reader.  For close to three decades I have savored words.  I can’t remember lots of things but the spoken word isn’t one of them; long after a run-of-the-mill conversation has concluded, I turn the words over and over in my head, repeating them and their cadence, searching for meaning and trying to understand, well, everything.  I do all of this without thinking, without any active effort or interference, and if you asked me to repeat a conversation verbatim, I couldn’t do it, yet, I can feel every word in my mind, and I’m always looking back at something to figure out what happened.

I learn with my eyes on the rearview mirror – and most of the time, it works well.  My husband drives this way, always scanning around him to make sure he’s prepared to react to the crazies on the road.  It keeps him from being rear-ended, sure, but sometimes he misses what’s happening right in front of him.  Not so safe. 

That’s me.

In real-time, though I am at my most articulate, I don’t perceive accurately.  My argumentative mind becomes a liability, finding evidence of every unspoken fear and failure, and despite my hard-won maturity, I can’t always find a way out of the cycle. 

I try.  My therapist once said the only behavior that needs to happen to stop a downward cycle is to insert thought between feeling and action.  But what if, when you stop and think, you don’t know what to do next?  And what if, because of the way your brain works, the pause to think means you turn the ugly words over and over in your head, finding yourself stuck in the chasm of hurt?  Then what?

I like to think I’ve learned how to have a marital fight.  I stop and think.  I don’t interrupt.  I try to articulate my feelings without blame.  I show what I feel (hurt), not what is more comfortable to feel (anger). But I still don’t know how to prevent one.

Okay, that’s a lie.  I do know: you bring up hurts and frustrations, however ridiculous, before they blow up.  You ask for small doable actions the other person can do rather than puking out your fears and feelings and expecting them to make it all better.  You accept the intermittent and sometimes awkward cadence of marriage.  You stop giving too much of yourself and avoid any action that might cause resentment.

So I know, but I don’t do.  Starting Friday night, my husband did and said to me a series of relatively tiny things that added up into a seething pit of hurt.  This afternoon, it all blew up.

Because I don’t like to feel, I have to make myself show what I’d rather not be feeling, which is usually hurt.  Because I’m hyper-verbal, I have to hold back the stream of words flying through my mind while struggling to stop my mind from endlessly repeating the hurtful words he’s said.  Because I am a maximizer, I look for the best possible way to spend every minute, searching for an efficient way to move on from the argument while wishing we hadn’t wasted minutes on this.

And because I can’t manage to change myself from feeling that, ultimately, I am not really worthy of anything, when I can’t find immediate evidence of my worth through someone else, I become a big, pathetic puddle.

You can’t recover from that.  Not quickly and not well.

Why didn’t I say anything earlier?  Actually, I thought I did, but (as tends to happen) the depth of my discomfort isn’t clear when I try to handle things casually.  We, as a couple, aren’t there yet.  It would have taken recognition on each of our behalf to prevent this one, and neither of us saw it coming.

You know how when two dogs blow up at each other at a dog park, some people claim it was “out of nowhere” while others “saw it coming”?  Both are true, of course, based on the person’s experience with dogs in general and those dogs in particular.  If you’ve been around dogs long enough – or those particular dogs – you recognize the triggers before they blow up.

The same situation exists in relationships, though without the benefit of bystanders to validate the sequence that led to disaster.  If you’ve been around healthy relationships long enough, you recognize when to be careful; if you’ve been around a certain person long enough, you get the same spidey sense.  Felipe, Elizabeth’s beloved, recognized this:

“Let’s be careful,” Felipe had said then, out of the blue.

“Of what?” I’d asked.

“Let’s just be careful of what we say to each other for the next few hours,” he’d gone on. “These are the time, when people get tired like this, that fights can happen.  Let’s just choose our words very carefully until we find a place to rest.”

Once upon a time I would have fought the very idea of needing to be careful, believing the holding back of words to be a sin against the very idea of a relationship, but now, I get it.  I’m not as fired up at the idea of fighting it out anymore, don’t believe it’s the only way to clear the air.

So when Kasia writes this:

Me: You know, I’m really grateful for our relationship.

Him: Mmmm.

Me: I’ve been reading some blogs lately that talk about relationship problems people are having. It seems a lot of couples argue a lot. Did you know that? They argue or can’t come to decisions on things together or one of them is pouty and quiet and the other obsesses about why they’re being pouty and quiet. It seems so tiring.

Him: Mmmm.

Me: I feel really bad for them. It sounds like the kind of relationship angst I went through when I was younger, you know? All that worry and insecurity and heartache.

Him: Mmmm.

Me: I’m starting to think that there actually aren’t a lot of people out there like us. I mean, people who are just… I dunno… happy. Uncomplicated. Who laugh as much as we do and just… you know… enjoy each other.

… or when I consider that Ree never (ever!) speaks of her husband in any way other than adoring, I want to wish to be in a relationship like that. 

Then I remember, I probably am, but we’re in a very different place than they are.  So says Kasia, and I agree with her.  They’ve been together six years; we’ve known each other almost three.  My god, I’ve had most of my animals less time than that, and I’m fairly certain Huck wouldn’t consent to being the same room with me until more than three years had passed.

Penelope suffers from the same misconception – that some people have the great relationship and the rest of us have to work at it.  But I think everyone with a seemingly perfect relationship has put in the work, somehow, somewhere.  Maybe they married the person with whom they had their very first serious relationship.  That’s work.  Maybe they were mature enough (for any number of reasons that I wasn’t) not to hold their marriage responsible for everything they needed.  Growing up takes work too.  Maybe their parents were great role models.  I love my parents, but because they divorced, they weren’t great role models for how to be married.  They are each great role models for other traits I’m proud of, but you can’t successfully model something you don’t do.  I am not a role model for shutting up or being patient, for instance.

When I think of my neighbor, she of the “we never fight” comment, I recognize that not fighting doesn’t mean they are each free to be whomever they feel like being at any given moment, and yet, each is somehow more free, too.  Their process seems to involve much less heroic effort of the kind I appreciate from my husband (who cleaned the kitchen top to bottom just to be nice to me) and he of me (who likes to surprise him with just the perfect thing to make his life more enjoyable and shuts up as much as possible when he needs cave time) and the corresponding lack of heroic effort needed to appreciate appropriately and recover from really high expectations.

Does that make any sense?  Joey and I are a zen puzzle, one where the best way to get better is to do less.  We each try so hard.  {And hey, I’m not saying that Kasia or my neighbor aren’t putting in the effort, not at all.  My point is that, like learning to ride a motorcycle, just staying balanced takes every bit of skill you can muster at first.  The more hours you have on the bike, the more natural it becomes.  Only then can you start to play around.  There’s a learning curve.}

Relationships balance precariously upon a huge pile of past experiences; the fewer you have that you don’t share, the less you have to work to not topple over.  Or, as my therapist once told me, “At some point you’ll reach the point where the time you’ve spent together will be greater than the time you’ve spent apart, and things will get easier.”

Note to self: marrying after a solid decade of adulthood makes this a depressing thought, but a true one nonetheless.

All of this is to say that, yes, we still fight, much more often than I’d wish but only as often as we need to until we figure this whole marriage thing out.  I’m reminded of the saying that the future will only happen as it must (as always, paraphrased because I am an ENFP and I never get the words quite right).

And even though I’m hurt and seething, and he’s hurt and seething, we’ll be okay.  I can see progress and for now, that’s enough.

I got the job, well, mostly (I verbally accepted a verbal offer, which is pretty official in our organization)!  I knew I was going to get the job, but wasn’t sure about compensation.  I girded my loins for a negotiation, got a pep talk from a work friend, and asked for a HUGE increase in pay. 

While I can justify the request, I also kind of wanted to giggle, like I needed to prove I wasn’t so out there I thought my corporation would grant a 58% pay increase.  They didn’t, of course, so LET THIS BE A LESSON TO YOU WHO DON’T NEGOTIATE.  If I’d insisted on even a nominal increase in pay with my last two role changes, this would have been easier.  Because I didn’t, I had a bigger deficit to make up.

But, bright side: I got a relatively huge raise (18%) in a tough economy doing a job I like a whole lot more, all while refusing to move to headquarters.  Not bad!  So, despite managing to convince myself I was worth more and feeling some disappointment yesterday, I’m celebrating today!

~~~

Please try this recipe from Smitten Kitchen, please.  Please.  It literally has three ingredients, requires no chopping, and is so good my husband and I each confessed to wanting to lick our bowls.  Even with good tomatoes, your cost is like three bucks, and it is so good.  So good.  It took me less time to throw the ingredients in a saucepan than to refill my coffee, and after happily simmering all by itself for 45 minutes, I took another shortcut and just cooked the pasta in the sauce.  Yummy!

Is making the same thing for dinner you just had for lunch weird?  I’m seriously considering it.

~~~

I finally updated the links on my post about the best planner I’ve ever used.  Of course, I haven’t used it this week, and of course, I am feeling very lost and adrift, perhaps because my desk is actually adrift in a sea of paper?  Anyway, I’m on the road for the next two weeks (any of you peeps in Seattle?) so I’ll let you know how it works for people on the move.

~~~

Have you read this article in the NY Times about the perils of sitting too much?  I’m horrified… and wishing I was one of those people who pace.  Instead, I’m one of those people who sits.  Oy.

It doesn’t matter if you go running every morning, or you’re a regular at the gym. If you spend most of the rest of the day sitting — in your car, your office chair, on your sofa at home — you are putting yourself at increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, a variety of cancers and an early death. In other words, irrespective of whether you exercise vigorously, sitting for long periods is bad for you.

~~~

I now have a dog with a cardiologist and a cat with a dentistry specialist.  Huckleberry went in for a much-overdue dental, not because it was due, but because his mouth is stinky and I noticed it a long time ago.  Because he’s a scaredy cat, though, I put off vet visits because he regresses afterward.  They had a 20% off dental sale, though, so I bit the bullet.

 

Poor Huck.  His mouth was so bad – for a cat his age, and for any cat – that the tech called me before they were done to ask if I’d consent to bloodwork and a referral to a specialist so they could wrap it up without 100% finishing.  Some parts of his mouth were so sensitive that even under anesthesia he would twitch when they touched them. 

*sigh*  I got Frank in 2003 and Huck in 2004, and both have/ had horrible mouths.  Frank lost nine teeth when he went in for a dental a few years ago – NINE!  The only thing I can think of is that I fed them wet food out of those little foil packets for a couple of years early on.  If you feed those, please stop, or take your cats in for a cleaning immediately?  I feel so bad.

Another not-great discovery: without Huck here, the rest of the cats beat up on Snickers.  She’s my only girl kitty, and I knew that the black brothers were prone to harassing her, but I didn’t realize how much Huck protected her until he wasn’t here for the day.  ‘Twas not good.  I have three (neutered, wtf) boy cats in time outs throughout the house.  ARGH!

~~~

Also: got my first electric kettle, fell in love, cracked it.  But I think I can convince my hubby to join me on a trek across town to buy another.  Maybe we’ll even have a date night!

Rule #1: Be a people-person stuck working from home in a remote location, then business travel will be a fun! and exciting! way to be around people!

I’m half-kidding.

Years ago I traveled full-time and often scratched my head at people who considered business travel stressful.  But now that I don’t travel regularly, I find it stressful too.

Here’s why: when you travel regularly, you are better prepared. 

You know how long it takes to get through security on a Wednesday, mid-morning, when the weather is bad and you’re a week from a major holiday.  You know what clothing travels well and have long culled the shirts that make you go, “Ugh, I’m wearing that?” every time you pass a mirror.  You have a well-loved suitcase and know just how to fit enough clothes for a week and still have an inch to spare if you happen to accidentally buy a bunch of stuff while on the road.

When you travel regularly, traveling is your routine.

But I don’t travel that often anymore, so I can’t sleep the night before for fear of oversleeping and missing my flight.  I leave too early and spend thirty minutes waiting for Starbucks to open because it’s 5:30 am and I could have slept another hour but was worried my drive would take too long and I’d miss my flight.  I melt down while trying to pack because nothing quite goes together or fits well and I DON’T WANNA GO! *foot stomp*

Lately, though, I’m remembering how to travel well and I’m happy to share that with you.  Ready?

We’ll start with packing.

Pick one neutral and stick with it.  I have a black set and a brown set, and I never mix them.  With one neutral, you can pack one pair of shoes (and holy cow, shoes take space… this is also justification for buying really phenomenal shoes, by the way, because you’re going to wear them alot) and one type of underthings.

Remember that nobody notices your clothes as much as you do.  I start to stress that someone will notice that I will be wearing the same suit jacket two different days and the same pants three different days and think… what?  I don’t know, that I’m a big fat loser who doesn’t know how to dress like the cool kids?  Yea, like being in high school again.  Blegh.  But I’m a grown-up so I remind myself of every ridiculous outfit I’ve seen on executives (sparkly reindeer sweater, really?) and that nobody ever got fired for not looking perfect.

Roll, don’t fold.  You can smush a lot more stuff into a suitcase with fewer wrinkles if you roll your pants and shirts.  Fold in half, then roll from one end to the other.  Oh, and buy wrinkle-free shirts (I like Eddie Bauer’s).

Packing’s one thing; attitude’s another.  Mine totally sucks the night before I travel.  Every time.  EVERY time.  My poor husband!  So I’ve accepted that I’m miserable and poopy the night before I travel; it’s my process.  I don’t take it as a sign that I shouldn’t go or that my plane will crash, just that I’m a pre-travel stresser.  And I try to stick with a few outfits I know I feel good in – because my meltdowns often relate to how frumpy I feel while trying on clothes — figuring if I have to wear the same thing every day for a week, that’s okay.  (I haven’t.)

~~~

Once I’m on the road, I’m usually okay.  I really like my job, really like to be around people, really like the focused solitude I can only seem to find on a plane.  I also like making brief connections with people, so I make small talk with everyone, and it’s kind of fun (for me and for them.  Really.  Strike up small talk with a poor harried airline customer service person and see how much better the experience is for both of you!).

But these things help:

Kindle.  The only people I know who don’t like Kindle don’t have one.  Think about that for a moment.  Every Kindle owner I’ve ever met loves theirs, myself included.  Yes, I know it’s not the same experience as real book, but I’ll happily trade that for a bag that weighs 20 pounds less and has 100 times more reading material.  It’s fast to download, relatively inexpensive, and if I don’t feel like reading a business book and would rather read some empty calorie chick-lit, I can!  Love.  Only downside is I bought mine a month before they all came with international wireless; mine only works in the US.  Oh, well.

A big, semi-organized bag.  I used to carry a more professional looking business bag, but while it did have a spot for my usual stuff, I couldn’t also throw in a bag of popcorn, mug from Starbucks, and cardigan.  So I splurged on a buttery yellow leather bag from The Sak and I love it.  I use a little organizer inside to deal with the crap that I seem to collect (gum, allergy pills, etc, etc) and then everything else just gets stuffed in – laptop(!), notebook, papers, Kindle, cell phone, wallet.  As a bonus, it’s somewhat purse-like so if we go out to dinner, I dump the big stuff and throw it over my shoulder.

Socks.  I take my heels/ boots off on the plane and put on socks that only ever get worn on the plane while I’m in my seat.  They’re warm, comfy, and clean, plus I can fold my legs up on the seat and not feel weird.

A scarf.  Yes, even in the summer I travel with a scarf.  Mine’s really big so I can put it around my neck or wrap it around my shoulders.

Allergy pills and candied ginger.  I get nauseous when I’m a) tired, b) over-caffeinated, c) under-caffeinated, d) nervous, e) haven’t eaten, f) have eaten, or g) the day ends in Y.  So, an antihistamine minimizes the sinus drainage that happens on planes (yuck, I know) and the candied ginger settles my stomach if it’s really bad.  I also stopped chewing gum with Xylitol in it (because it’s toxic to dogs and mine like to steal gum and chew it) and noticed my stomach wasn’t upset as often. 

~~~

Maintaining a relationship when you travel is hard, but it can be done.  I know because I’ve studied my cohorts who have done it, and have found success doing some simple things.

I call my husband every night, even for just a moment, and I make sure to tell him I miss him and I love him.  I didn’t do this well when I was married before, instead getting caught up in being away and feeling independent… plus, it’s hard to have a real conversation when you’re on different time zones and it takes so much effort to speak the same language.  My husband and I are in completely different industries and work environments, so we have no shortcuts.  If I want him to enjoy my successes, I have to explain them first.  More than once.  But he’s the reason I can leave on a whim, so I make myself call him even if I don’t have time to tell the whole story, and I’ve never regretted it.  There’s no shame in, “Excuse me, I need to call my husband for a second” even when surrounded by corporate executives.  They do it too!  And while the stories can wait until I get home, asking about his day and how things are going for him, and sharing his frustration with the dogs and cats and weather and laundry, can’t wait.

Along those lines, I bring gifts home.  Frankly, it often feels like I do this for myself, but I still enjoy it.  Lately I bring those city/ state coffee mugs from Starbucks, because they’re huge and I love to drink out of them, and because even though it’s a joint gift, it’s nice to pull something out of my bag for my hubby.

When possible, we meet for a meal when I get home before I walk back into the bedlam. This is a big one for me.  Going from the controlled solitude of a plane trip into the craziness at home can be overwhelming and I get grumpy.  It’s hard to say hello to my husband and put my bag down and find my phone and take off my shoes and greet the dogs and pet the cats all at once, and I’m likely to snap at any or all of them.  So, meeting for a drink or a meal somewhere (anywhere!) between the airport and my house is my preference.  Then it feels like a date… and is a much smoother transition.

~~~

Do other folks have tips to offer?  I know at least one of you travels cross-country more often than I do, and someone else travels internationally more than I do, so I’m betting you have tips I haven’t thought of.  Please share!!

No, not via Formspring, which seems to be all the rage, but answers nonetheless.  In the past few posts you’ve asked me a couple of questions and I can’t sleep at night unless I know I’ve answered them (um, really, that’s really true).

I’m not sure why so many of you, my dear readers, are INFJ’s, but I have a few ideas.  Blogging is an internally-focused activity and my blog, in particular, leans toward the navel-gazing.  You value order; I strive for it.  You apparently know things intuitively “without being able to point out why”; in my posts, I tend to focus on figuring out why.  I put into words what we all feel; you are systematic and organized in a way that I wish I could be.  We complement each other!

~~~

I mentioned wishing I could ask candidates for my two open roles to take a personality test and some of you asked what I was looking for.  I’m looking for something different in each role.  First, I need an organizer with a meticulous nature who doesn’t mind creating order out of mountains of details.  We track software bugs at the most technically discrete level – and by customer – and I need someone who can keep track of our commitments, progress, and risks without wanting to crawl under a desk.  In a former job I did that, but I can’t do the forest and the trees at the same time (personal limitation), so I need someone responsible for the trees.  And I need that person to be able to run a quick query or build a quick pivot chart (shoot me) when I want to know the answer to questions like, “Is our incoming rate of bugs exceeding our fix-rate, and by how much, and why?”

Then I also need someone with a technical background who can make sense of both engineer-speak and customer-language and translate between them.  Again, I’ve done this in a former job, but I need someone better than me this time; I need someone with real engineering credibility.  Like the first role, they need to handle the trees, but they also need to see the impact on the forest.  I need an engineer who will take sides, have an opinion, communicate clearly (and gently) and still maintain respect.

So, at the risk of oversimplifying, I need an ESTJ, ISTJ, ISTP, ESTP… basically I need the S and the T to balance my N and F.  A J would be nice, too.  I’m less worried about the E versus I, figuring our jobs have a pretty good mix of internal/ external focus, but an E might be happier dealing with customers.  Worst case, customer management skills can be taught.

So there you go.  TMI?  Sorry… but this was helpful in thinking through precisely what I’m looking for, so thanks!

~~~

Anonymous asked if I could write a bit about how I keep business travel bearable, but I think I’m going to do that in a separate post, hopefully tomorrow.  For now, I need to get my stank-*ss off to the shower so I can get some stuff done today.

One last note: I love this planner system I’m using.  Can you believe this morning I actually got up and came into my office just to look at my plans for the day?  This is unheard of, people.  Usually I stay in my warm bed as long as possible (Blackberry and laptop make this possible for much longer than is strictly healthy, I think), but not this morning!  This morning I was looking forward to a day with no meetings – not so I could blow off the day and go shopping with my bff, but so I could get things done!  Make progress!  CHECK OFF A TASK!

{I’m feeling like you might not believe me because of the whole affiliate link thing, so here’s a link to the website without affiliate links, here’s a link to the free planners, and here’s a link to my original post.  I stand by my recommendation – this system is pretty awesome.  It even got me to make a decision and order pretty paper.}

~~~

Almost forgot: yes, I recommend the book I referenced in my personality types post, particularly if you’re at a career crossroads, but even if, like me, you like your job but want a bit more fulfillment.  Every job (okay, most) has room to be personalized, so knowing more about yourself makes it clearer what will make your job more fulfilling.  Along those lines, I also recommend anything by Marcus Buckingham and “Strengths Finder 2.0,” which I will add to my sidebar later today. 

This new job of mine is bewildering.  So many details, so many problems, so many requests for me to get involved with the unspoken assumption that I will then fix it.

I’m a fixer.  These are good requests.

But I’m also looking to make a difference in this role – a long-lasting, persistent, “Hey, look, I made that better!” kind of difference.  Chasing a myriad of quick fixes isn’t going to get me there. 

Looking at the bigger picture, though, makes me feel completely and utterly lost.

Funny how my professional and personal lives are one and the same anymore.  Once upon a time I could say, “My personal life is a horrid mess, but professionally I’m killing it.”  And it was true.  They were separate lives with separate skills.

That ended long ago and I’m thankful. 

Both at home and at work, I’m ready for lasting changes.  I want big fixes, the kind involving long-term plans and marching toward a goal and achieving it.  For good.  I want a house that is Dwell-worthy and to make a positive impact to the business.

So I asked my old boss for 30 minutes of her (very valuable and overscheduled) time and she (of course because she’s awesome) granted it.

~~~

About this boss: I worked for her for two years, the two most successful years of my career.  She’s absolutely completely without a doubt the best manager/ leader/ coach I’ve ever worked with.  Ever.  And though I am terribly jealous of her abilities, I’ve never found a reason to doubt them.  When people ask me about her, I tell them in all sincerity, “Yes, she really is that good.”

I left her organization because I found myself getting lazy.  She was so good and knew exactly what she wanted, I stopped trying to figure it out.  Why bother?  So I left, but not a day goes by that I don’t think, “What would Michelle do?”

~~~

So we talked and in those thirty minutes I got more clarity on what I need to be doing than I’ve had since I started.  I took three pages of notes, but more importantly, my perspective shifted. 

“Oh, NOW I get it.” 

God, how I love that feeling.

~~~

For months – years, in fact – I’ve wanted to write her a letter telling her how important her influence has been on my professional life.  Today I finally wrote the letter.  And put stamps on the envelope.  Despite feeling a bit silly, I’m mailing it.

Why do I think it’s silly?  Everyone appreciates being appreciated.  When you (dear readers) take the time to send me an email telling me I’ve touched your life, I’m stunned speechless every time.  I reread the words, show my husband, get choked up by the connection we all have to one another.

Who wouldn’t want to be appreciated?

So I’m sending it.  And I thought I’d make this a little challenge for all of us: who do you appreciate, and can you take the time to put it into words?  Email, letter, whatever.  Let’s make this a gratitude day. Bonus points for sending your note to someone who wouldn’t expect it.

I’ve been on a hunt for a decent organization system for, well, forever, because I’m an ENFP who knows I have to learn to follow through.  I’ve tried Franklin Covey (good but expensive and heavy), GTD (too cultish and overwhelming) and the single notebook strategy (what if it gets lost?).  Last year, I tried printing my own planner pages but couldn’t find any that weren’t cumbersome to print and carry…

… and ultimately, none of those systems helped me feel like I had a big-picture plan.

When I look back at the two years I spent in my last (current*) role, I’m stunned by how little I really accomplished.  I did a lot of stuff – enough to fill my days and weeks – but it sure didn’t seem to get me anywhere really amazing.

If I’m going to spend two years doing something, the end result had better be freaking awesome because, c’mon, that’s two years of my life.

Instead, email eats away at my hours, and in between doing things I can’t avoid, I’m a little lost.  And what happens when I’m lost?  I surf the ‘net until there’s no more ‘net to surf. 

Ridiculous.

I’m starting a new job that is big and exciting and has a whole lot of potential, but if growing up has taught me anything, it’s that I get lost easily when I’m in my work-from-home cave surrounded by sleeping cats and a shivering dog silence.  I thrive on interaction with people, get fired up being surrounded by hustle and bustle, love to wear heels and walk the halls and stay plugged in with everything.  But because I love my husband and we love this city and our house, I work from home.

I don’t want to get lost again, so I’m trying new strategies.

Enter this new thing I decided to try on a lark: Productive Flourishing’s premium planners.  I’m on my third week of using them, and I love them, but let me start at the beginning.

After reading the sales page for the premium planners, I was convinced to give the whole shebang a try, but I figured I’d start with the free planners (hi, I’m cheap).  I printed the daily action planner, weekly action planner, and productivity heatmap and dutifully followed the instructions.

But I was as frustrated as I’d been with every other system: I could check things off a task list, but at the end of the day/ week/ month/ year, was I moving in the right direction?  Without a big-picture plan, I still couldn’t tell if my efforts were getting me anywhere.

I need to get somewhere.

So I re-read the sales page for the premium planner and decided to fork over the (seriously minimal) amount for the premium planner because of this one sentence:

The Premium Planners help you keep those Big Ideas on the board since they come with the Annual Strategic Planner and the Monthly Objective Planner.

Call me a sucker, but I actually thought, “Yes, yes, I DO want to keep my Big Ideas on the board!”  And c’mon, it was $12.  A dollar a month.  I spend more than that on, well, lots of silly things.

But then I couldn’t decide between the Premium Action Planner or the Premium Freelancer Workweek.  See, like a freelancer, I generally dictate what gets done when.  Or at least, I have so far.  But because that’s likely to change in the new gig, I thought I might need to focus on actions over projects again.

Crap.

So, like the bad decision-maker I am, I bought them both.  And hey, I saved $6!  (This is a ridiculous amount of thought and drama over less than the cost of lunch, I know.)

The Premium Action Planner experience

I know, that title is a bit of a build-up, eh?  {Don’t ask me why, but I’m thinking with a British accent today.}

I printed out the Monthly Action Planner, Quarterly Objective Planner and Monthly Action Planner — the first two are available only with the premium set; the last is available for free – went to lunch, and stared at them in horror.

Crap.

This was feeling a lot like my yearly Goals & Objectives planning at work, except scarier, because there I only have to impress my boss.  Here I have to meet my own expectations.  I have very high expectations.

I know I want to be bad-ass at the new job, fix a bunch of broken things and make a bunch of people really happy… but breaking that down into quarterly and monthly goals?  Tough. So I ordered more coffee, settled into my corner booth, and got to work.

And people, it was fun!  Yes, I said fun.  Even more fun than updating my budget spreadsheet – and that involves dollars.

Fun and stressful, because – like with my budget spreadsheet – taking a big unspoken expectation and defining it is scary.  Is that the right thing?  Will that get me there?  What if I don’t get that done?  What if I do?  How does my action in this small period affect my overall success?

But those are the kinds of questions that grown-ups with real jobs (that affect other people) should be asking.  Big questions.  Strategic questions.  Questions about questions.

So I’m hooked.  I printed my Annual Strategic and Quarterly Objective planners on pretty stationery so I can find them quickly and am about to work on my second draft.  I use the Daily Action planner daily (um, duh) and print it on plain white paper.  I am currently lost in the sea of paper possibilities, trying to decide on a color scheme for more pretty stationery to get me through the rest of the year.

I’m hooked.

This week I’m adding the Freelancer Workweek to my system.  Though technically not a freelancer, I do (still) have a lot of control over what I work on and when.  If I’m not careful, I keep putting off big projects until the week gets away from me.  No bueno.  I am going to use both the Freelancer Workweek and Weekly Action planner and I’ll let you know how it goes.

You know how I know this is helping?  When I don’t use it, I don’t get anything done.  When I do, I get so much done my husband starts to feel like he’s losing his place as “the one in this relationship who gets things done.”  Score.

My recommendation

Look, I’ll be honest: the links on this page are all affiliate links, meaning if you buy, I get a cut, something I didn’t know until after I bought the thing.  And I think you know by now that I am way too cheap to pay for something in the hopes of making money off you.  I mean, really.  I don’t have to point you to the evidence if you’ve been reading this blog regularly (but if you want it, let me know in the comments and I’ll provide links).  At the same time, I’ve used products simply because a blogger I respect recommended them, in which case, I think that blogger should certainly get some benefit out of the whole deal.  I am happy to click an affiliate link.

And the only way to prove I’m not TRYING to make money off you is to NOT include the affiliate links, which would be stupid.

So the links are all affiliate links.  Shoot me.  If you really hate the idea, go directly to the website and buy.  I bought this because I had a hunch it might work for me, and if not, what the heck, it’s only the cost of a lunch out the door, and at least I wouldn’t be wasting paper like with the Franklin Covey systems I’ve bought and not used.

But if you struggle with keeping track of the forest while deep in the trees, do buy it.  And if you’re not sure whether you want the Action Planner (makes me feel like a superhero) or the Freelancer Workweek, try both. 

Or buy one or the other if your decisive nature allows you to do so.  I can’t, I’m an indecisive maximizer and I’m terribly jealous of your ability to choose. 

Either way, you get the Annual Strategic and Quarterly Objective planners, which are the key to this whole shebang.

Good luck.  Let me know how you like them (and if you have any similar recommendations for me).  Next week, I’ll report on my test of mind-mapping software (and Alice!)… and prove my honesty by telling you about a product that’s totally not worth your time (even though it’s free).

Now I need to get back to planning my week and day, something I neglected to do yesterday and so, of course, got nothing done.  Argh!

~~~

*The new job is still not official so I still feel like I have to knock on wood.  I am, however, doing the new job already; such is the internal transfer process at a major corporation.  I’m told I’ll be receiving an offer any day now.  I’m not holding my breath (though I am innocently and publicly assuming it’s retroactive while quietly building up serious resentment and outrage in the event they don’t meet my compensation requirements).

~~~

Later today: my thoughts on how crazy it is (crazy!) that eight of the twelve of you who commented on my “I’m an ENFP” post are INFJ’s and more on what I’m looking for in building my team at work.

~~~

Update: links have all been fixed. Thanks, Maggie, for reminding me!

Penelope is an ENTJ, something she mentions over and over (well, except when she says she’s an INTJ, which often happens in the same post). 

Honestly?  I didn’t get why until I discovered that I’m an ENFP, and now I want to say “Because I’m an ENFP!” all the time.

All the time.

Because holy hell, being an ENFP describes everything about me.  The procrastination, the indecisiveness, the love of possibility and fear of limitations, the muscle tension. 

Muscle tension?  Yup.

What stuck with me the most was that ENFP’s are great at ideas, but never follow through.  The book I was reading said something like, “Immature ENFP’s might have trouble in relationships because they haven’t learned to follow through or stick to the truth.”  With big ideas and gift for gab, one can easily be a lying flake.

Oh, so true. (Here’s a better link if you don’t trust my paraphrasing.  Note the use of the word “immature.”)

And while I think I’ve gotten past the lying part, I struggle to turn ideas into reality, and it’s time to grow up, so I’m focusing on learning to accomplish things rather than just dream of them – and I have a handful of tools I’ve tried so far because serendipitously, I’d already decided to focus on doing one little thing before reading the book, but now the words “haven’t learned to follow through” haunt me.

So true.  So scary.  Stay tuned.

If you don’t know what you are, here’s a quiz.  Please take it.  It’ll be fun!  (And seriously, I now want to ask for personality types in interviews, because I need some other letters to balance out my team, which currently consists of just me.)

I think it’s funny that the “nesting” instinct brings to mind the one animal we don’t seem to have!

I’ve been home for two weeks straight (yay!) and have been very, very, oh, so very busy… so of course I’m dying to clean up my trashed home office.  Anyone else only feel the need to clean as a form of procrastination?

{Tangent: apparently procrastination is a personality trait for those of us who are ENFP’s.  I know this because I read an eerily accurate portrait of myself in Do What You Are: Discover the Perfect Career for You Through the Secrets of Personality Type’>this book while hanging at B&N over the weekend.}

But I don’t have time to procrastinate, so things are actually getting done.  Woo, hoo.  And while I was on an interminable call surfing the net paying close attention, I realized that I want this:

Both from Making It Lovely

Okay, not the baby (yet), but the warm, comfy, girly rooms.  In fact, every day I hold back from moving our Saarinen dining table into my office.  And while my Tulip chair isn’t a rocker, it would be great in here.

Since my home office doubles as my sewing room, I think I’ll use her studio as a functional guide but the living room colors for overall feel.  The walls in here are the same color are her curtains (hence the ‘A, ha!” moment) so I think if I switch it up, I’ll get the same feeling. 

Can’t wait to get a free moment so I can make a cover for my icy cold office chair in bright pink polka dots!

Who knew I’d be so fired up about something so unapologetically girly? 

I finally bought The Happiness Project: Or, Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun, Gretchen Rubin’s book about a year spent trying to positively impact her happiness.  (Note: her blog is great, too, though I do really prefer the book.)  The chapter that intrigued me most related to money, because I’m (still) trying to get my money habits and feelings under control.

One of her resolutions is to “spend out,” meaning the use of spending to enhance her life and happiness.  In her research she finds that some people are maximizers, needing to make sure their purchases are the best possible options, while others are satisficers (yes, spelled just like that), who buy as soon as their requirements are met.

I’m a maximizer.  And like Gretchen, I tend to not buy things I need just because I don’t want to.  My husband, on the other hand, buys a ton of everything so that he’ll “never have to come back here again.” (Italics mean there’s some serious whining going on.)

The best solution for the money leak that happens every time we go to Walmart is to not go to Walmart. 

Enter Alice.com* – like FreshDirect for household stuff.  (Or, for non-NY’ers, like Amazon for household stuff… which makes me wonder if I could have just done this on Amazon.  Oh, well, too late.)  And while this next excerpt makes me feel like I’m on an infomercial, I want you to know what Alice.com is for the next part of my story:

Scratch Household Shopping off the To-Do-List

Alice provides you a better way to manage all of your household essentials online. You tell Alice what you buy—choosing from great deals on 1000’s of products—and Alice goes to work. We organize all of your products, find coupons and deals for you, remind you when you might be running low, and help you order just the items you need so you can avoid that trip to the corner drugstore or the big-box store. And all this convenience comes direct to your door with free shipping included.

Get Big Box Savings & Free Shipping

Best of all, you won’t over pay for the power and convenience of Alice. In addition to free shipping on every order, you’ll find great prices too. That’s because Alice isn’t your average retailer. You order from Alice just like you would a retailer, but behind the scenes we work like a marketplace, allowing participating manufacturers to sell directly to you.

The irony is that in order to avoid the dreaded Walmart, I just spent $150 on every possible household item we might need over the next month.  The only two I couldn’t get were peanut butter and cat litter, so I’ll probably still go once or twice, but I can sneak in the garden center and avoid taking my husband.

That’s the paradox: to eliminate the slow leak of money during many, many (too many) trips to buy supplies, you have to suck it up and hand over a big puddle of money all at once.  And maybe not get the best deal on an individual item.

It took me two days to build my order and another to actually submit it. This after weeks of debating over the idea.  I just hated spending that much, all at once, on two and three dollar items.  It kills me!  But I’m tired of running out to get toilet paper and spending $50, so this is the new plan.

On a neighbor’s recommendation we’ll also be trying A Dinner Afare this week.  You pay a ridiculous amount per meal (like $15, which is crazy for eating at home) and have to spend a couple of hours putting it all together, but then all you have to do is yank one out of the freezer in the morning to have for dinner that night.  I’m not sure we’ll continue, but I figure anything’s worth a try.  We spend very little per item (because I’m cheap) and yet we still spend a ton of money on food, never mind the messes we create while cooking.

And actually, I’m seriously debating going on a bricks-and-mortar store shopping fast.  I’m more meticulous when I shop online, make better decisions, and choose the things we really need – but I get overwhelmed by choices and never hit the trigger.  I wonder if refusing to go to a real store will force me to get over that AND get my budget back on track?

Spending more to spend less.  That’s today’s paradox.  Do you ever do it?

Time to seriously consider Netgrocer. 

*I need to point out that the link includes a referral code, so if you decide you want to try Alice.com, please follow the link and then I’ll get a referral bonus.  Lest you actually believe I spent $150 on some newfangled thing just to make money off you, I’ll remind you that I’m horribly cheap and also ‘fess up that I tweeted a request for someone to send me a referral link so they could take advantage of the bonus.

Martha Beck grouped Dr. Laura with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, noting that certain public personalities want only agreement, not real discussion.

I listen to Dr. Laura because she’s on talk radio during lunch hours and that’s when I’m usually in my car.  I’d prefer Dave Ramsey, but he’s not on, and I can’t handle music sometimes.  I think that’s the most dangerous kind of influence, actually – the kind that surrounds your consciousness rather than being invited in.

I listen to Dr. Laura but admire Martha Beck, so I had some soul-searching to do.

~~~

Over the past couple years, every assumption I had about my life and role as a wife has been tested.  My husband is not like my previous lovers – he was raised by a stay at home mom, grew up in the generally conservative South, had always been the primary earner and decider in his relationships.  And I’m not like his – I’m the primary earner in my life, have lived in big cities, alone, and have always made all my own decisions.  I was raised by a divorced mom and involved dad, never felt particularly maternal myself, and was only sure that I never wanted to be left without options.

I never ever for one moment considered being a stay-at-home-mom.  Not even once.  In fact, I was pretty convinced I’d fail, hating every minute and resenting my kids for trapping me in an endless cycle of tasks I hate.  My ex-husband declared early on that he’d love to be a stay-at-home-dad; our path was set.

Then I got divorced and married a Southern man.  He never explicitly said he thought I should stay at home to raise our kids, but he mentioned he always thought his wife would.  Once.  In the first six months we were dating.  But it stuck with me and I began to imagine he wanted me to be that kind of wife, whatever “that” was.  I never specifically decided to consider the option, but between my assumptions about his wishes and regular doses of Dr. Laura, I started to wonder.

~~~

Wondering is good.  Options are good.  Assuming your path is set for whatever is reason isn’t.  So I started to consider the benefits of staying home with my children, paying attention to the choices made by other women, looking again at my childhood and my mother’s choices. 

But more importantly, I got a better sense of myself.

When I first moved away from the home I’d shared with my ex-husband, I was surprised to learn new things about myself.  It was like getting to know myself all over again. I discovered that I liked to cook, couldn’t stand elaborate patterns, preferred blank walls to mismatched paintings.  Who knew?

Similarly, I was surprised to find that I liked the idea of staying home with my kids, at least for a little while.  I was bewilderingly unable to consider leaving my husband to parent alone, even for a week, and not because I didn’t want to, but because I couldn’t imagine it.  And the stuff that made me whimper in fear related to house-management, not child-raising.

Learning is good.  Paying attention is good.

~~~

I had a cushy stay-at-home job for the past few years, one where I decided what I worked on and how much progress I made on any given day.  I hated it.  Without external and somewhat objective evidence of my worth (both to my company and on a personal level), I floundered into self-consciousness and doubt.  Despite the best efforts of my husband, best friend, and even (the horror) my boss, I continued to feel useless and unnecessary.  I obsessed over paint colors and fireplaces and wedding plans because at least those tasks seemed clearly defined.

This was me, minus the large team:

And the more responsibility I had for running a large team, trying to hit many goals at once, the less work I did. Honestly, I just didn’t know what to do. I was outside my core strength.

And I know this:  the first sign that you are outside of your strengths is when you can’t make yourself do the work you need to do.

So I changed jobs.  Sort of. {Meaning I will be changing jobs if HR gets it together and gets me an offer, but I’m doing it already anyway.}

And now this is me:

I am great in that phase of a business–thinking, philosophizing, finding holes in markets, finding holes in ideas. I never give up. I always have another idea, and I don’t mind feeling lost day after day, week after week.

In any office, employees gravitate to the job each should be doing, no matter what the titles are. Sometimes we gravitate to a job and it’s not available, and we go nuts doing something we shouldn’t be doing. Sometimes we gravitate to that job and it’s such a good fit for us that we do it even without a title.

A lot of people say they should be doing a job they do not have the authority to do. Here’s some news, though: You’d be doing it already if you were great at it. Ryan Healy is now Chief Operating Officer at Brazen Careerist because he’s already shown he can do the job. That’s how you get serious promotions:  doing the job first, in an outstanding way.

And now I’m back to the me I knew – the kindly ass-kicking, embarrassingly confident, unflinchingly capable me – and I’m scared.  My husband only knew the cushy-job me and has already remarked on how different I seem when I come home from a work trip.

I knew this was going to happen.

Because I am different.  When I know what I’m doing, I know it – and I love it. 

~~~

My first semester in college, I took macro-economics with a professor known for chewing up and spitting out freshmen.  At the end of the semester, just before the final exam, I dropped by her office to find out my exam scores… for the entire semester.

“I’m here to find out my exam scores for the semester, please,” I said.

She sneered a bit, pulled up my paper file (1997, people!) and suddenly, her demeanor changed.

“Oh!  I didn’t expect this.  Most people who don’t know how they did are failing.  You got a 100, 100, and 98.  Why didn’t you know that?”

I didn’t know that because the only thing that happened during the 8:30 am class following an exam was that you got your test back. I preferred to sleep in, confident I’d done well.

~~~

I have this new job and I love it, but I don’t want to tank my relationship again.  I’m trying to be cognizant that other people don’t care as much about my job as I do, that my husband doesn’t yet recognize that my bluster is to counteract my worries, that I have to learn to leave work at work for the sake of home.

And I’m a little bit overwhelmed to be reminded how my preferences affect so many futures.  It’s the same sense of responsibility I feel when I hear the phrase, “Happy wife happy life,” – like, wait a minute, now my happiness has to carry the weight of everyone else’s?  Are you kidding me?

But I’m grown up now, or on my way there, so I remind myself that nothing is black and white.  I can want to stay home with my kids for a few years and still go back to work.  I can NOT want to stay home with my kids and still have a great relationship with them.  I can define my future however I want.

Or, to be more accurate, we can define our future however we want.  My husband and I had a chat about accepting each other’s influence, and contrary to our public personas, I seem to take too much influence and he might take too little.

I won’t be the wife he thought he would have, but neither is he the husband I thought I would have – nobody is.  We all discover somewhere along the way that reality isn’t quite like we’d expected…

… and that’s okay. 

~~~

So my next step is to challenge my assumptions about my husband.  Somewhere along the way I defined myself as the “keeper of all things household,” so I worried about hiring a housecleaner and dog walker and making freezer meals when my travel schedule got crazy.  I had this idea that things would fall apart because I’d be too busy to deal with them.

Turns out I didn’t “deal” as much as I “pondered,” so there wasn’t much left undone and my husband stepped in and took over what was.  We’re both happier that way, actually, because he’s much more the Doer and I’m much more the Stress Out and Worry While Not Doing-er.  (My truck insurance finally got moved and my tags are getting renewed and the dog’s medicines are all refilled.  In a week.)

And now I’m thinking about life with kids in a city far, far from my company’s headquarters.  We don’t want to move, so what does that mean for me, my career, my family, my husband, our children? 

What if I lived somewhere else for one week a month, leaving my husband to care for an infant full-time?  Why not? {His family is local so they could pitch in, and yet, I feel weird about that, even though I wouldn’t bat an eye if the situation was reversed.} What if we all lived somewhere else for half the month, packing up and moving cross-country every few weeks?  Why not? {Not sustainable past infancy, but in the short-term, maybe.}  What if we moved? {We like this area, my husband is starting a four-year degree program in the fall, and waaaaa, I don’t wanna!}

What if, what if, what if?

~~~

The best part about being a grown-up is seeing life clearly and still thinking it’s fantastically exciting.