The life and times of an uncertain blogger

I told myself last week that I wouldn’t cry when I left. I steeled myself to prepare for it. I just knew I had conquered it.

This week, though, was another story. I blubbered like a baby. I don’t do goodbyes well, even though I know it’s not like we won’t see each other again. We can have lunches, we can meet for dinners, there’s the phone.

Never-the-less, I’m a crybaby.

And the thing is…I look really bad when I cry. I mean it’s seriously ugly. And I don’t just cry a little; I weep, my breath hitches, and the more I do this the worse it gets until I just can’t hold on to it anymore. So, as I’m sure you can guess, I hate to cry in front of people.

I’m convinced that my mirror synapses are just really strong. Our mirror synapses are the cells in our brain that allow us to learn from watching others and to feel what we think they must be feeling. We call this empathy. The original words from which the word empathy was derived literally mean passionate feeling.* And those words truly describe why I cried this week. Life was nothing but a big ball of passionate feelings.

Passionate feelings, while driven by mirror synapses, cause certain chemicals to be released in our bodies. Crying is the necessary release of those chemicals. With that in mind, I’d say that my brain and body are just working as designed when I cry. In fact, I’d say that my body is incredibly efficient in the way it handles these processes.

So, now all you folks who were with me when I started to cry this week know the truth. (And I guess if you read last night’s blog below, it makes the situation even clearer.) Being with you and knowing that I won’t get to be with you on a day-to-day basis made me passionately sad this week.

I can blame it on the mirror synapses and the chemicals that were aching to be released, but even though science can explain it, it’s the heart that understands it.

I just wish I could look a little better when I do it.

*1903, translation of Ger. Einfühlung (from ein “in” + Fühlung “feeling”), coined 1858 by Ger. philosopher Rudolf Lotze (1817-81) from Gk. empatheia “passion,” from en- “in” + pathos “feeling”

Stumble It!

I‘ve never been a social person - no one in my family is. We’re more the “family first” types, and so we don’t go out with friends very often. Because of that, friendships at work become even more important than they might otherwise. Work itself becomes more important - because I love my friends, I love my work, and I put more of myself into it.

After four years at my current job, I’m pretty invested. The people there who I call friends mean more to me than I can possibly put into words. I’ve learned so much from each of them, and I’ve received so much more than I ever expected I would. They have blessed my life in a thousand ways.

As I look back at my time at Dobson, it has been punctuated by so many memories…

My initial experiences on the phones with no training, except for a couple of days listening to and watching Micah, one of the most talented phone professionals I’ve ever known.

My time as a team lead when I took over 100 escalated calls a day, did a ton of my supervisor’s paperwork, took incoming calls and did all the cancellations for our region. If it hadn’t been for one sassy little girl named Andrion, I’d have never survived. As different as we are in age and culture and experience, I grew to love that smart, funny, talented young lady, and I couldn’t care for her more if she were my own daughter.

My time as a sales trainer when I was lucky enough to get to travel to so many small towns in Oklahoma, Kansas, Texas and Missouri and meet so many wonderful people. I will always think of Kristi, Danny, Stormy, Kelly, Steve, Keith and so many other wonderful sales gurus with great affection. With such difficult jobs to do, they are all great successes, and I know no one with bigger hearts.

My time as Project Manager of Internal Communications when I had the indescribable pleasure of working with the most talented people I know - Kathy, my friend and shoulder, who works harder than just about anyone I know; Kathleen, who has entertained me with her quick wit, buoyed me when I was down and wowed me with her amazing speaking skills; Ken, who has engaged me in some of the best conversations I’ve ever had; Jarred, who is mature beyond his years, funny and talented to no end and has a heart of gold; Shannon, who let me boss her around and saved me from myself a hundred times; Amanda, who’s tough as nails and an extremely talented communicator; Diane, who has taught me that even Yankees can be lovable; Michael, who shares my love of Jedi mind tricks; Joyce, who amazes me with her amazing wit, strength and courage; and Lori, who’s sharp as a tack and shares my love for the Beatles. Heather, Dan, Court, Heidi and the other wonderful trainers…awesome people who have done so much for me.

Getting to work with my wonderful son, Michael, who is talented beyond measurement and doesn’t even know it.

And there are so many other people there who have come to mean so much to me - the HR gang (such funny, sweet amazing women)…Cindy, Justin, Russell, Braxton, Bill, Thom, Terry, Miriam, Danny, Jason, Lori, Jackie, Rick, Andrea, Frank, April, Karla, Sara, Crystal, Nick and so many more of you. If I named you all, I’d never be able to get through this. You know who you are.

You have all made such an impression on me. You all mean SO much to me.

So, it should be no surprise that leaving you is so hard for me to do. I am filled with truly mixed emotions - excitement that I don’t have to search for months to find a decent job and sadness that I can’t be with you and just go on doing the great work we’ve been doing for all these years. I desperately want to take you all with me - to start something new and wonderful and show the world what we’re truly worth. We could so wow them!

But that is not possible, and so tomorrow I bid you all my fondest adieu. I know each of you will come out of this on top, carving out even better niches for yourself one by one. I just wish I could be there to see it.

I love you guys.

I miss you already. Thanks for being my friends.

Stumble It!

This was my Sunday…

It actually all started on Saturday afternoon. Our normally hot August was unseasonably cool - it was 85 instead of 105 - and it was sprinkling. It sprinkled all day, as a matter of fact.

Sometime after midnight, a message buzzed across the Food Network screen: “There is an emergency in your area. Tune to channel 7 for life details.” I tuned to channel 7 and, surprise, the sprinkles had been coming from just the outer edge of a tightly revolving, very slow moving tropical storm. That’s right, weather buffs; it was the remnants of Erin. But, really, remnants isn’t a good word, because for the first time in my lifetime, a tropical storm made it all the way up to Oklahoma City.

I watched the weather for the next couple of hours. There was a tornado warning in Union City, where my step son lives. (It never touched the ground; thank God.) I finally drifted off to sleep. And, oh, what an awesome sleep it was - probably one of the best I’ve had in months. (At least there’s that.) When I woke up at 7:30, the eye was over us.

So, think about this. When I went to sleep around 2:30am, the storm was just hitting us. Five hours later, we were in the eye. That’s a slow moving storm.

We got almost six inches of rain during that five hours. I went back to sleep and didn’t get up until 11am. (It was an awesome sleep.)

It wasn’t until I woke up this second time that I realized that my house was probably flooded. The storm was still overhead, though luckily it was doing what it should have done before it got here - it was losing intensity and becoming disorganized.

The garage had about 5 inches of standing water in it, the front yard was a lake and my laundry room was soaked - all the clothes in the hamper, waiting to be washed were soaked, the carpet and padding were soaked. So, I had to do twice as much laundry as I’d intended. Plus a load of towels. This was not fun for three reasons.

1. The carpet was squishy wet, and I was barefooted. It was cold and gross.

2. The carpet was squishy wet, and I was barefooted. With the electrical appliances (washer/dryer) running, I was afraid I’d be electrocuted.

3. The carpet was squishy wet, and the dryer made the room hot. The humidity the wet carpet created made the room unbearable to be in.

(See what I mean? Not fun.)

After all that work was done, I sat down to prepare dinner. We were having shish kabob and home fries. Delish! I started the potatoes and onions and was in the livingroom cutting up the steak and onions when I heard a huge crash in the kitchen, followed by the breaking of glass.

As I ran into the kitchen, I heard a number of things being knocked over inside my cabinet, and as I rounded the corner, I saw one of the cats jump out of the cabinet where the olive oil had been stored.

The olive oil was all over the floor. A new bottle. Lots of shards of glass. Oil EVERYWHERE. And I’ve got potatoes and onions frying on the stove.

So I have to stop what I’m doing and go mop up the kitchen floor, (Holy cow.) pick up the glass, turn the potatoes, don’t get killed falling on the oil and the glass, mop some more, pick up more glass, mop some more and some more and some more. Then I put the shish kabob on. We ate the potatoes long before it was done.

The whole day sucked.

First tropical storm Erin. Then, hurricane Pelix.

Stumble It!