August 2012 Goals

I love arbitrary dates, and this means that each and every month on the first, I feel like life is opening up to me as much as it does on a January 1st.  So here we go. I'm allowing myself 10, which statistically is 9 too many to really stick with something, but alas. Goals.

Look. Listen. Learn.

This weekend I ran face to face with my past. Not that I'm running from anything in particular, and I've never been one of those people who holds high school up to some pillar of greatness. But I do have to say it's strange to suddenly discover that you are selling $1 candy to your favorite childhood English teacher.

We feel the gentle tug of the daily ups and the daily downs and how smooth that all seems when held side by side to the face plant of your 18 year old self. I walked away from the experience completely torn. It was really lovely to see a man I so admired. He said some really nice things to me. I got to meet his family. But on the other hand, I was selling him candy. He asked me what I was doing with myself and there was no good way to answer. I didn't want to disparage the theater when I really do enjoy my job. I didn't want to talk about my bigger goals because they won't happen in that particular place no matter how great it is.

It's too easy to hold yourself up against what you thought you could be, but it's a false act. Life is harder in ways we never imagined. Childhood is easy. Childhood is easy and no child knows it. And it's from only that place of comfort and naiveté can you hold these ideals up and say, "I want to be great." To a child, greatness is a thin thin line. And that line is cartoonish to an adult.

Carving Out Our Own Space

When you grow up with one family you think all families for the good and for the not good, are like yours. Then you step out into the real world and discover it is not so.

It's the same for your place of work.

I worked for a company for seven years. It had its ups and it had its downs. I could chart both but only within the context of what I knew. As I've made small steps out into the world beyond our family business, I've started to see the bigger reasons why those good and bad things existed as they did.

I volunteer at an arts organization and I work part time at another. Let's call them Arts Org and Theater Org respectfully. The longer I've volunteered at the Arts Org the more I've come to understand just how dysfunctional it is. The organization works really hard and does amazing work but the people within the organization are overworked and hate their office life. There is a pettiness and passive aggressiveness and a defensiveness that reflects a bit of what I felt at my old job.

The Theater Org on the other hand doesn't have that. Or at least not enough to become aware of in the first few months. Sure, it's still a group of overworked, underpaid, passive people, but the way they talk isn't passive aggressive. There isn't a culture of blame and defensiveness. I find it startling but I think I've also begun to figure out how the two evolved.

Well, This is Embarassing

We're in Play Month so I have been dead to the world and those in it for May weekends.

As part of my job, sometimes I get House Assistants from the Intern Program at the organization. Interns are a mixed bag. Most of them are kind of amazing. So tonight, I had a great intern. His name was C. And C like some of the teens I've met is really agreeable. He spends a lot of energy trying to make sure people feel included and welcomed and more importantly agreed with. (The latter being a teenager trait I'm beginning to see.)

C is talking with one of the staff (who I don't know very well at all). I'll call the staff guy T. T makes a joke that C seems to be really getting the hang of his House Assistant duties. (This is all going on while I'm setting up some last minute concessions and sort of laughing at what they're saying. You know when you're a part of a conversation even though you're not necessarily one of the speakers.)

C says, "I guess I am."

T says, "In no time you'll be up for the head job." (Referring to, well, my job.)

C laughs a bit uncomfortably and says, "I think that would be awhile. Also it seems to be in pretty good hands." (Or something trying to be nice to me..who is just continuing to work at the stand where they are.)

To which T says laughing and saying sarcastically, "Yeah, like your big dream is to grow up and be a house manager for a living. That's your big dream."

At this point C had no idea what to say. *I* had no idea what to say. And I don't know how long it took T to realize that he basically just 100% insulted a person who is standing RIGHT THERE. He may not have. And at this point I realized that this wasn't my problem and I turned around and left their conversation.

I'm rarely in situations that are so awkward that they actually become funny. It could have felt really damaging to me and the big self worth questions. But because it was a situation I'd never actually found myself in before, it felt oddly hilarious.

Reflections and Lessons from My First Weeks

Yesterday, as in all days when I finish a house job, I come home giddy and exhausted. My fingernails are so destroyed that I have trouble popping gum out of its case. My feet arches groan under the pressure of one more step. But my brain is on fire. I want to share every single little interaction and undertaking. I can tell Z braces for impact when the apt door swings open wide.

But the last 2.5 weeks has taught me a lot of things. I think I'm fortunate that I'm incredibly different than my predecessor. I'm not a bad version of her. I'm no version of her at all.

Nine Things This Week

This week at my new job:
1. Cleaned up vomit in TWO places in a theater. (Note: Coffee grounds are amaaaazing.) My co-workers think of this as my deflowering as a House Manager. I'm official.

2. I unclogged a toilet. (Seriously double flush!)

3. A 4-year old named Stella has learned my name and shouts it as I come in to give my House Speech.

4. I've sung happy birthday in front of a packed house to a little boy named Brett. The house sang with me and Ruth, the audio guru, made good on her promise to cut my mic half way in.

5. I've worked 37 hours in 4 days. (30 in three.)

6. I've learned about 40 names.

7. Met 3 people who get my sense of humor. (Two are teenagers.)

8. Learned I like young kids. (Although I still don't want any.)

9. Met two parents I totally adore. (And they are hosting a slumber party tonight with the females from the cast.)

Tomorrow at 5:30 is the end of my 6 days of work preceded by 4 days of work (with one day off). I am giddy at the prospect of sleeping in and cooking and pulling pants from the attic that fit my I've-been-running-up-and-down-stairs-and-had-no-time-to-eat butt.(Although tonight I ate so much so quickly I actually had to stop eating a cookie b/c I thought I'd puke. Oh! I know a trick for that!)

Wait, what?! So excited for sleep.

True Story

When I was giving my house speech tonight, someone from the audience recognized me as my father's daughter BECAUSE OF MY CHEEKS. This person knew my paternal grandparents from when they lived in Oregon. She knew my Dad and had met me as a child. MY CHEEKS!

And that, kids, is the power of genetics.