Life, Work & Wonder

Tag: personal-growth

  • The Beauty Of Sunday Work

    We worked yesterday, on a Sunday. Because Larissa and I are real estate agents and working on a Sunday is just part of the job. Which honestly makes me grateful.

    I’m thinking of 2019. I was working on a $4 million opportunity for my company, and on the Wednesday before Easter Sunday I got a call from the Executive Sponsor. They’d decided to go with us, he told me, but before they signed the deal the CEO wanted to meet with our CEO. Could our team (including my boss and CEO) meet with the CEO’s team (including the entire Executive team) in two weeks? Of course we could!

    But here’s the problem. Here we were, on the cusp on a $4 million contract that would make my boss’s team numbers for the year, and he was just so afraid that what was technically a formality (CEO handshakes) would somehow go awry. So he insisted we work over the weekend preparing.

    So Easter weekend that year was spent working on a lengthy word document that we could give to our CEO. Among all the standard details about the opportunity and the company, the document included long profile descriptions (including links) for every executive who may attend the meeting. Want to know where they went to college? Where else they worked at? What hobbies they partake in? Their spouse’s background? It was aaaaaalllllll there. It took hours and hours to put this document together, and that was before we started formatting it, which my boss was obsessive compulsive about in the best of times.

    Oh my gawd.

    It was so frustrating, so maddening, such a waste, to work that Sunday. And I had no control over it since I knew to refuse would probably cost me my job since that was the type of company it was. Of course we won the opportunity, but it had nothing to do at all with that document or its formatting or its creepy detail that we invested an entire weekend in compiling or even with the work of my CEO who was actually painstakingly and shockingly quiet and awkward in that CEO handshake meeting.

    That memory created some pain for me for a long time for reasons that go beyond Sunday work.

    But yesterday was different. Yesterday — and working yesterday — was in a strange way redemption seven years later.  Because yesterday I felt sooooo grateful looking back on that frustrating Sunday in 2019. Because the work I was doing was important for our client(s), who were regular people, and more importantly the work was essential and I was doing it not because of a micromanaging detail-obsessed-on-a-pathological-level boss but instead because I myself was choosing to do it. And there is beauty and tremendous satisfaction when we work 100% by choice.

    So yesterday was Sunday. Much of America was off, especially in lieu that it was a holiday weekend. But Larissa and I worked. And I didn’t mind at all and fact it helped me come to peace (redeem) that weekend in 2019 because I realized how much of a better place I’m in today.

  • Life Is Growth Of The Sole (AKA Yesterday’s Perfect Shoes Are Not Today’s Perfect Shoes)

    Tell us about your favorite pair of shoes, and where they’ve taken you.

    In 1997 I found the perfect pair of shoes.

    They were in the window of a small shoe boutique, and for me they were perfect at the time: not too expensive, very comfortable, very fashion forward, and could work with slacks or jeans. I purchased the shoes and wore them nearly every day for two years. I got lots of compliments on them and I loved them.

    In 2003 I found a different pair of shoes that I loved. They were Kenneth Coles and pretty tame in comparison to the shoes I wore in the 1990s. But at the time I was working in Corporate America, in a job that required many hours and my wearing slacks and a dress shirt during those hours, walking many many miles through airports and business centers while working those hours, and my Kenneth Coles were so comfortable they were almost like tennis shoes in a time before people wore tennis shoes with suits. Plus these shoes were easy to polish while watching TV on a Sunday, and had thick soles that made me appear on the north side of six feet (before I lost an inch or two to back issues 🙂 ), and I just loved those shoes so much.

    Today the shoes I love are my tennis shoes. I have a pair of bright Keehus that I loved, and a pair of Chlae Bradley high tops that I also love. Just like my beloved shoes from 1997, I wear them with jeans and I wear them with suits and they are very very comfortable to walk in. And since I have a pair of cloth overshoes I wear in the house, I rarely have to take them off during the day even though our house is a shoeless house (be gone, sidewalk germs!).

    Anyway, for me a good life is a life with personal growth. One where we are continuously evolving, learning, adapting, trying to get better (kinder and wiser). Normally, I strive for growth in the soul. But in this case, it’s growth of the sole 🙂

    I love shoes. I love comfortable shoes, I love fun shoes, I love adaptable shoes, and I love stylish shoes. I’m grateful for the fun (and affordable) shoes I’ve owned over the years.

  • An Average Home (AKA My Dream Home)

    Write about your dream home.

    There was a time when I daydreamed a LOT about my perfect home. Oh my gosh I wanted a perfect home.

    My perfect home was large, of course, with a large yard, of course. It was on a quiet street with a view of the mountains and water. And there was a spacious swimming pool and a sport court complete with a basketball hoop. And everything (!!!) was in perfect condition, not because I was a relentless do-it-myselfer but because I had a staff of people to keep everything in perfect condition for me.

    How much I yearned for all this. Sometimes that yearning hurt my heart. A lot.

    That was then.

    All those things are less important to me now. I’ve learned that I have a lot of friends with perfect houses who I can visit. And that since I have a visual imagination (I’m not a visual person but I have a visual imagination) that I can image living in a perfect home. And that a massive perfect house with an attending staff headspace and energy. And would cost a lot of ongoing money.

    For me, now, my perfect house is an average house. A smaller house. It has a few bedrooms, a couple of bathrooms, an artificial yard that stays green and needs no mowing. It’s large enough that the kids can crash when they need to.

    I love our house now. It has all these things. Plus a lot of trees. Right in the heart of Seattle. It’s Larissa’s house, not my house. But in my lifetime I’ve owned two homes and a fourplex: that is a lot of homes (seven, technically) to manage. So I’m okay sharing Larissa’s house with her, sharing the upkeep with her while allowing her to reap the financial benefits of homeownership (while I myself am invested in stocks and bonds to cover our living costs in retirement). That’s okay with me.

    I really am grateful that life can change us. That once I yearned for bigger things, but now I’m okay with simpler things while also admiring/helping people who want/need bigger things. There’s no perfect answer to a dream home, it’s what works for the person. For me, I’m right where I want to be.

  • A Night Of “Sunset Boulevard” And “Breakfast At Tiffany’s” (AKA The Risk Of Being Kept. Or Suckered)

    Last night, for the first time in maybe five years, we walked two movies back-to-back. It just so happened that both were classics.

    The first was Sunset Boulevard, picked for the primary reasons that we haven’t seen it in a long time, we love it, and it was free. The second was Breakfast At Tiffany’s, which I’ve seen twice (not in a long time) and couldn’t recall either of it other than it was two young kept people who develop a friendship. It was surprisingly good.

    It was interesting that we watched both movies on the same night because there is a similar string in a way. In essence, all the main characters are younger people struggling to pay bills who are at risk of (or dream of) becoming kept people by people with means.

    It is an interesting dynamic in a romantic relationship, a financially struggling person and financially comfortable person. Both people have to be totally grounded (I believe) and noble for it to work. The risks otherwise of course, is that one person takes advantage of the other. This can work how we might expect it to work, wherein the wealthy person exploits the poor person; in Sunset Boulevard, the struggling “hero” as consumed by the wealthy older person until he loses his independence and identity and becomes a virtual prisoner. But it can work the other way too, where the struggling person wraps their tentacles around the poor person.  In my own instance, I think of how I was 20-something with work ethic and a college degree and a savings account who met a high school dropout with bad credit and literally nothing to her name. I feel like she latched on to me and drove me to get what she wanted in life until such time 30 years later that I was no longer capable or needed and so was put to pasture, all the while gaslighting me. I was duped. I should have been wiser. Smarter. I became a victim. It worked out for me in the end (I was free!!!) but I lost 25 years of my life and my health in the process.

    So it definitely can be where a person-in-need becomes entrapped, but so too can it work the other way. So it’s very important always that we enter a relationship with our eyes wide open, and we are aware of the potential dynamics, and we work to stay on sound footing, whether financially or otherwise. Anyway, that was my take.

    I loved watching those movies last night. It was a fun way to relax on a stormy evening. And I liked Breakfast At Tiffany’s a lot more than I thought I would. And how much I wish I’d been wiser about relationship dynamics when I was 23.