Life, Work & Wonder

Tag: writing

  • 34 years later, email still uses most of my screen time

    WRITING PROMPT: What app uses most of your screen time, and do you feel bad about it?

    I was 24 — in 1992 — the first time I ever saw email.

    I was working as a teller at a local national bank branch, and one day they installed email on our branch’s shared computer. It was pretty mystical, really. Suddenly, you could go into a black dos based screen, type in someone’s email address, send them that email, and they’d receive it. We didn’t have to send a memo versus interoffice mail, or call the person on the phone, we could quickly type up something, hit send, know that they’d receive it instantly and when they could they could get back to us. It was pretty surreal, actually. Almost magical.

    Very few of us actually needed to send emails, but one day I thought it would be fun to email the CEO of our 50,000 employee company. So I searched and found his email address, then typed a polite email along the lines of, “Hi, I recently graduated college, I’m an employee at one of the bank’s branches, I really enjoy working here and I really love the email access we’ve been given.” I remember word spreading around my six colleagues and they gathered around and watched as I finished the email then hit “Send.” Whoosh.

    Maybe because my dad’s career was always fast tracked and at the time he was an executive at a Fortune 500 company, but I wasn’t intimidated at all by this endeavor. I was on employee at the company, he was in charge of the company, why wouldn’t he want to hear how much I appreciated working for the bank and the email he’d probably authorized? Still, people were amazed (or maybe stupefied) that I’d sent that off, and for the next few hours people would ask, “Did you get a response?”

    Then a response came in. He replied that he appreciated hearing from me, that he appreciated that I chose that bank as my first after-college job, and what were the long term ambitions for my career because maybe he could introduce me to that department? It was a minor celebration among all of us that I’d gotten an encouraging response.

    Except our Branch Manager From Hell didn’t see it that way. Not one bit. I was young at the time, so didn’t quite realize that there were some good bosses, a lot of less-than-stellar bosses, and a handful of spectacularly toxic bosses in this world. 34 years later, I can honestly say she was one of the latter. She was spectacularly bad on morale (for too many reasons to list here). And when word trickled through the branch that I’d received a response from the CEO, she marched up to the front of the branch and asked to speak with me. To make a long story short, she was irritated that I’d sent an email to the CEO. She felt like it reflected poorly on her branch because it showed that maybe we had too much time on our hands, that it was a misuse of company resources, that I’d gone around the chain of command (which wasn’t my intention), and that it was borderline insubordinate. I was instructed to delete the CEO’s email with no response, had a formal notice of unsatisfactory deposited in my HR Records, and was suspended from unsupervised computer usage for 30 days. This might seem like an extreme response, and it was; maybe her only justification was at the time email was still so new people were trying to figure it out and perhaps to her it was a little too much like witchcraft so reacted in kind?

    I learned something from that experience.

    I learned that most people are innately fearful of superiors who are many rungs up on the ladder, and that to be unafraid (confident) around them is actually a potential career booster. I learned that there are a million different unsuspecting ways to trigger a terrible leader. And that email was actually a pretty powerful and awesome real-time tool.

    Over the next 15 years I would use email extensively. To reach out to friends, negotiate contracts, and even to expand my network. I loved that email was instant, that I could put details in emails that most people will read, and just found it to be an amazing communication tool that was actually superior to phone call, meeting or (later) text.

    At a glance, I would say I use other applications more frequently than email. But if I drill down into it that’s not really true for me. I still spend an hour each morning scrolling through my email, reading through the day’s news (including great newsletters by the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Morning Brew, Apple News and The Seattle Times). And I still use it to send and receive detailed responses from people I need to have detailed interactions with.

    So I remember that first time using email in 1992. And how magical it seemed to be. And 34 years later I can still say it’s the application I use most and I have no regrets about using it.

  • My Love Of Mondays

    For much of my life, I’ve felt genuine relief on Mondays.

    When I was a kid, weekends could be exhausting. Mom and dad were tireless do-it-yourselfers and socializers, and weekends often meant going store to store to store (before Home Depot was a thing) and then night time was often going to their friends’ house for dinner. So Mondays — ESPECIALLY during the summer — I just felt the strongest sense of relief.

    Then at some point I became a parent, and weekends meant play dates, or birthday parties, or various school or kid functions. It was a privilege to spend weekends this way, but also so very demanding in a variety of ways.  So when Monday came I just felt the strongest sense of relief to drop the kids off at school then to just focus on work.

    In recent years, weekends haven’t meant insane schedules so Mondays are less meaningful. Except this past weekend we were so busy (with mostly fun things) going from event to event to event, and today it just felt so wonderful to wake up knowing that it was Monday, the chaos of the weekend is over, and I can start rolling up my sleeves and focus on work while taking a break here and there.

    So (perhaps?) much of the working world dread Mondays. But for me, for much of my life, the irony of Mondays is that yes they mean school or work but in a strange way they also mean freedom. The escape of chaos and back-to-back events and to just focus on the job at hand. Which now that I think about it is why I’ve always strived for careers that provide some level of autonomy, and why I detest workplaces that over schedule internal status meetings. I guess ultimately I just crave some control of my calendar during the weekdays in general and Monday in particular as a mental break of sorts

    So here are to jobs that provide us with some level of autonomy and control. And to weekends. But also to Mondays, when maybe just maybe we regain some control of our lives after hectic weekends.

    Note: Filed happily away in the First World Problems file. How blessed I am to have first world problems like over-scheduled weekends.

  • Travels By Michael Creighton

    PROMPT: One is one book that inspired you to travel

    I was never a Michael Creighton reader. Nothing against his writing, but his kinds of books just weren’t my highest priority in the finite amount of time I have in life.

    Until I discovered “Travels,” which some librarian in the Seattle Public Librarian system had decided to put out on a table as a recommended reading.

    How much I loved that book, with its short chapters documenting his travels one trip at a time. Of course, Creighton was a busy individual, what with being a best selling novelist, A-list director and a producer. And after each project he liked to unwind by traveling, usually to an off-the-trail non-touristy place that his travel agent would book for him.

    There were all kinds of travels he took, including scuba diving, venturing through the jungles of Southeast Asia, and my personal favorite of climbing Mount Kilamajoro. I thought these essays were interesting, efficient, honest and vulnerable, and also just captivating in the places they went.

    I will never be Michael Creighton. I’m not smart enough, driven enough, and organized enough to write best-selling commercial novels in my spare time. And I have no interest in being a movie producer or director. But how much fun it was to spend a few days dipping into the travels of his life, and I just love so much the unique way he chose to tell his story/memoir. And truth be told, it inspired me in my own way to travel a little bit off the beaten path when traveling and to not be afraid to try to blend in with the locals without worrying about the touristy-stuff. I’m on a five year break from these kinds of travels, but I expect that Larissa and I will pick it back up again in a different phase of our life.

  • I Never Ever Thought I’d Experience Divorce (1st of a series)

    The one thing I thought would never happen to me was divorce. Turns out, I was wrong.

    I met my future ex-wife when I was 23, we moved in together when I was 24, and we married when I was 26. For five years the marriage was nice, then for 15 years it was sometimes okay and sometimes frustrating, but always seemed pretty much rock solid. 

    It wasn’t a perfect marriage. My ex wife and I didn’t always align on things like money and aspirations. And we didn’t really align on important things like romance and intimacy. But I always thought we were friends, and for the most part it was a good enough marriage and sometimes a really fun marriage (my ex could plan a fun vacation with the best of them). 

    I remember volunteering for the crisis line in the late 2010s, before I realized my marriage was going to end. I had a few callers who were fretting about a failed marriage or a pending divorce, and to be honest it bothered me that I couldn’t really identify with them on that piece, because after all I myself would never be divorced. I’d experienced a lot in my life, including my own near death, but divorce wasn’t going to be one of them, so I felt like that was a gap in my ability to fully help those callers whose desperation stemmed from divorce. So I read a book then two about divorce, so I could have a better feeling of what my callers were experiencing and thus maybe be in a better place of helping them. That was in 2019.  

    Then almost overnight my marriage just fell apart. 

    Like most things that come to an end, it was a gradual then sudden process. It began with some yelling (her yelling at me) then apologizing, yelling then apologizing. In the beginning this would happen about once every week or two. Within a few months it seems like every single day she was just so angry at me about one thing or another. Along the way there were other signs: she started spending less and less time at home, more and more time with friends or focused on her career path, and increasingly she was just ignoring me when we were at home. She started questioning me all the time, usually on the theme of why hadn’t I been more successful in life, with success being defined here as making exorbitant amounts of money and commanding exorbitant amounts of prestige. It was like she’d decided at age 50 that I was a total failure because I wasn’t a roaring success, and she resented me for that. 

    Still, even after 11 months of this, I still didn’t think that divorce was a possibility. It was just a rough patch. It would pass. I even asked if she would be interested in marriage counseling, which she didn’t appreciate at all: “Don’t you see how busy I am??? Why would you ask me that when you know I’m so busy!”

    The moment I realized that divorce was a possibility was the rainy evening she was hollering at me, and then she said, “We’ve been together for 25 years. I don’t want to get a divorce!” Huh?? Clearly divorce was on her mind. 

    To summarize what was maybe the longest month of my life, a few weeks later she asked if we could talk. And she said, “I can’t accomplish what I want to accomplish and be married to you.” And just like that the marriage was over. Something (divorce) a year earlier that I thought was something I’d never experience was suddenly very certainly happening to me.

    I remember the Frasier episode where he says, “My wife left me, and that was painful. Then she came back, and that was excruciating.” The end of my marriage was painful, sooooo very painful, and shocking to live through. And it was a very stressful two year process to get divorced that witnessed me age 15 years in that time (I’d been 51 and looked maybe 40, and then suddenly I was 52 and looked every bit of 52). But ultimately, my life is so much better now that I’m divorced, and it would have been a lot more excruciating in life had my ex wife stayed with me or tried to come back to me (not that either one of us would have allowed that to happen by that point).

    So I never expected to get divorced. But of course life doesn’t listen to me. And then it was so painful, first the very long process of divorce and then the even longer process of healing. Of truly moving on. The bad news is I had to go through that, but the good news is that a) I’m in a much much much better place now than I was during my first marriage and b) I can honestly empathize with and maybe even help anyone who is going through the unthinkable: the premature end of what was supposed to have been a lifetime together. 

    It has been five years. For the most part I’ve moved on, although I still harbor some hard feelings at times. And there is no question that I’m better off. So I am beginning the journey of writing down my process in case it benefits someone else in the mist of a divorce or a failing marriage. This is the first of a series of posts I’ll be making about my failed marriage, the divorce, the healing process, and ultimately redemption as I discovered a much better life for myself in the years after the divorce.

  • I Miss File Clerks

    PROMPT: What technology do you miss and why?

    My first white collar job was at a mortgage company in 1986. I was an assistant to the Quality Control Manager, meaning my job was to organize and prepare loan files for her to audit to ensure the company was following proper loan procedures.

    Every day my boss would give me a list of four loan files she wanted to review, and my job was to get the files, make copies of those files, then organize them in the way she preferred so that she could efficiently review them.

    It was, in a word, a tedious job. I had to wear a tie, worked from 8:00am (not 8:05 but 8:00) to 5:00pm (not 4:55, but 5:00) with exactly a one hour lunch and two fifteen minute breaks, and the job itself was just drudgery. But there were two things I liked about the job: my manager, who was skilled and compassionate, and the file clerk.

    The file clerk was the best piece of technology I ever used in a role.

    When we needed a file, I simply filled out a brief quarter-page form in ink, walked it over to her desk, dropped it in her “in box,” and then when she had retrieved the file she dropped it on my desk with a “hello” and a smile. That was it.

    There was no searching. No trying to remember what the file was named. No use of any kind of editor to reorder the pages. I simply filled out the form, the file magically appeared on my desk, and then I could get to work by simply sifting through papers.

    My job back then was tedious. But so is the modern world. Trying to remember passwords, and application names, and file names. Have to search emails for links, and dual authentication, and trying to find things on a tiny screen. Back then, the file clerk did all of that for me. The hardest part of my job besides the drudgery was clearing out the occasional paper jams when I had to make copies. And never — not once — did I have to work overtime. No one I knew worked overtime. Partially because at 5pm the file clerk and all other clerks hit the road, and there was no one available to process any work that we completed anyway.

    So yes, my job was drudgery, but the convenience of the file clerk was amazing. We don’t live in a world of convenience. We live in a world where the inconvenience was just redistributed, and ultimately are required to work more hours.

    So when I’m asked what technology I miss most of all, that’s an easy one. I miss the file clerk. Patty, wherever you are 40 years later, I miss your skillset!

  • If I could live anywhere in the world, it would be in Seattle

    Writing Prompt: If I Could Live Anywhere In The World, Where Would It Be?

    With the exception of two years away in college and part of year lived in Oregon, I’ve lived my entire life — five decades and counting(!) — in Seattle. My parents too have lived their entire lives in Seattle. My mom’s mom? Lived her entire life in Seattle. My other three grandparents? Lived their entire adult lives in Seattle, too. Clearly, Seattle is in my blood and has been for generations. 

    The irony is, although I love Seattle, I also dislike Seattle. 

    I don’t love the over six months per year in drizzly gloom. I don’t love the dysfunction of our city government that has always been true for virtually my entire lifetime. And I wish that Seattle as a whole was more extroverted. 

    Still, five decades later, and despite the ability to arguably live anywhere in the US and maybe a lot of places in the world, I’ve always lived here. I doubt I’ll ever leave unless we relocate to California to be closer to Larissa’s family. 

    Why? 

    Because it’s where my roots are settled and it’s where my family is. Because I’ve learned in life that no matter what we think about our current situation it can always be worse, and all things being considered I’d rather deal with what I know rather than undertake the tremendous hassle of changing cities. But more than that, there must be something about the city I love. 

    I do love that we are close to mountains. And creeks. With bountiful water. And mostly mild temperatures. 

    I love that we are a metropolis with a healthy job market and lots of eating options that mostly don’t include large national restaurant chains. 

    I love that there are libraries and theaters and universities, and public transportation, and no shortage of things to do, all the while being very close to one of my favorite things to do in the world — embark on day hikes. 

    So clearly there is something I love about Seattle that is deep in my soul.

    So, if I could live anywhere in the world where would it be? The answer is obvious. It’s Seattle. Because we are what we do, and I CAN live anywhere and yet here I am. And because wherever we go there we are, and I believe that happiness should come from within and not from exterior forces, so why not try my best to be happy here, where my parents and sister are, where my kids are, where there is so much to like, and where I’m lived most of my life. 

    Maybe that’s the real answer. If I can’t be happy in a city with mountains, forests, salt water, bookstores, libraries, great restaurants, and the people I love, then changing my ZIP code probably isn’t going to solve much. Wherever I go, I’ll still be taking myself with me.

    So if I could live anywhere in the world? I’d choose Seattle. Not because it’s perfect—it certainly isn’t—but because it’s home. And after all these years, I think I’ve finally realized there’s a difference.

    #Seattle #Home #Place #Family #Happiness #Reflection #Life #Pacific Northwest #Identity #Contentment #WritingPrompt #Writing

  • I’m Grateful That Online Chess Is A Mirror For me

    I love playing online blitz chess.

    Sometimes in life we need a mirror.

    To tell us how we’re doing, how we’re coping, because sometimes even the best of us need a little outside perspective to keep us grounded. For me, that’s occasionally my spouse, who thankfully isn’t afraid to point out my bullshit in real-time when it happens. But a spouse shouldn’t also have to always be our mirror.

    Which is why I’m so grateful I have chess.

    When I have a few minutes and only a few minutes to kill, I play online blitz chess. I like that it’s quick (a maximum of 20 minutes but often less than 5 or 10 minutes), forces me to think, and also provides some competition against strangers (I don’t like competing against friends and loved ones since I feel guilty when I win).

    Despite my chronic fatigue I am restless and impatient by nature, so I want a quick unpredictable game and so play aggressively since it creates a faster game with fewer moments of predictable sloggery. Sometimes playing aggressively means I win quickly, and just as often it means I end up looking pretty silly.

    This is where the mirror is.

    When my head is clear and I’m feeling okay with my current daily life, I win a lot more often than I lose. I beat some pretty good players, often by checkmate, and my score climbs to the 1000s (which isn’t great for a serious player but is okay for a hack like me). When I’m tired or stressed or pre-occupied with something in life? My score plummets. Today it was in the 800s and sinking fast, and I am making some pretty foolish errors.

    This means I have some things going on in my life. Or in my mind. Which in fact I do since I’ve had a busy week of commitments while also trying to send our youngest off to camp for three weeks which created some chaos in our house as we got her ready. I’ve also been working a lot for not a lot of money (a risk of my career).

    When life gets stressful, and my chess score plummets, this means I need to be extra mindful. It probably means my cortisol levels are up, and heart rate is a little higher than average. Which means I need to fight coping techniques. Maybe take some perspective that this too will pass. Or take a night to order some pizza and chill. Or take a nice walk next to the creek near our house. Or to just take some deep breaths.

    I think a part of being a healthy human being for working persons like me (I have no clue at all what life is like to be luxuriously rich and/or entitled), is being self aware. Of knowing when we’re under stress during a particular day or week or even month. Then doing what we can to take extra steps to bring the stress levels down.

    Sometimes (like this week) I’m not aware that I’m feeling more than average stress. In those weeks I’m grateful for a mirror. Sometimes that’s my awesome spouse. But thankfully — like today — it also is online blitz chess.

  • If I Had One Wish For A Single Skill, It Would Be Drawing/Sketching

    If you could instantly master any skill, what would it be and why?

    How much I admire people who can sketch or draw.

    My friend Jon growing up was an amazing sketcher. While we all talked, he was often sketching on scratch paper. Maybe it was a character he’d imagined, or the view outside the window, or a memory, but he was always sketching something to perfection and we always admired what he sketched.

    I also remember reading the autobiography of the great 1950s independent filmmaker Samuel Fuller. In his diaries he often sketched, and his notebook from his tour in Europe during World War II was filled with little drawings to document his days that really captured my interest and I thought really quickly expressed to me what his experiences were.

    How much I admired this.

    I’m not a drawer. I’m that person who can’t draw a stick figure well, and can’t even really draw a straight line, and was often teased in art class for the (lack thereof) quality of my work although being teased about that didn’t bother me since I couldn’t help it. Luckily I can write okay, but it takes “a thousand words” (wink wink) to cover a picture and it’s easier I think to listen and draw then it is to listen and write, which means a person can be a part of a conversation while drawing.

    I also admire those people who can sketch out the vision they’re trying to convey. Maybe plans for the garden. Or a particular door. Or a place that they visited. Me? I have to describe it in words which is harder to convey in every day life.

    I have many weaknesses but I’m a faster than average sprinter (not the fastest sprinter, just faster than the average weekend athlete). I can’t take credit for it, I was just made that way. And just like the average person can’t will or train themselves to sprint as fast as me, I know from experience that I can’t train or will myself to draw as well as the average person let alone to become a gifted drawer. How much I wish that I could train myself to sketch things well and to sketch them quickly.

    Anyway. That would be my wish. Everything else that I’m not good at I’ve made peace with. But I do wish I could draw well.

  • The Quietly Perfect Holiday: Is There Any Better Holiday Than Labor Day?

    What is your favorite holiday? Why is it your favorite?

    For much of my life, I’d have to list Thanksgiving or Christmas Eve as my favorite holidays. But in recent years I think my penchant for Labor Day has exceeded my historical love of Thanksgiving and Christmas.

    Labor Day is a guilt-free holiday that is placed in one of the most beautiful times of year in the Seattle area.

    So many of our holidays (Thanksgiving, President’s Day) fall in the gloom of Seattle’s rainy season. Or they (Christmas, July 4th) have expectations or are just plain loud and overbearing. Or they (Memorial Day, Martin Luther King Day) have some guilt associated with them. Or (New Year’s Eve) I’m just plain exhausted from the demands of the previous month.

    But Labor Day is different.

    Families and Friends don’t expect us on Labor Day. Budgets aren’t destroyed shopping for food and buying presents. It is a day to reward us for our hard work and not to remind us of someone else’s sacrifice. It’s quiet. And September is usually perfect weather in Seattle what with the continued sun and 70 degree days.

    Childhood and parenthood can taint Labor Day, since it usually commemorates the beginning of a long school year ahead. But my kids are older. And my own school experience was decades ago. So that particular emotional taint of Labor Day is over. In fact, for me, Labor Day has just become the perfect expectation-free holiday.

    There aren’t carols written or sung about Labor Day. Labor Day doesn’t usually conjure strong memories of past times and places. But it’s a special day nonetheless. And it has become in my older and wiser years my very favorite holiday of the year.

  • Three Objects I Couldn’t Live Without (AKA: I See You Oxygen, Food and Water)

    What are three objects you couldn’t live without?

    As humans, we take things for granted.

    Heck, maybe all creatures take things for granted (the kitties seemed to get awfully bored with their toys and food after a short period of time unless there is variety).

    I’ve taken things for granted. And I sure as heck have been taken for granted (my high school girlfriend, college girlfriend and ex wife come to mind).

    So when I’m asked to name three objects I can’t live without, of course my mind goes to:

    1. Coffee. My life would be a lot more empty without coffee.

    2. iPhone. Not because of the doom scrolling or being accessible all the time, but because I just love sooooooooo much how I can fit every song and book and credit card I own along with a camera and notepad in my pocket all the time. I’ll never forget the first time I owned an iPhone in late 2011 — I couldn’t believe how much I could fit in my pocket!!!

    3. Money. It’s pretty hard to live without money. I don’t need a private jet or fancy house or a McLaren or an 8-figure investment portfolio, but it’s pretty hard to feed my family and keep our shelter serviceable without at least some money.

    But do I really need these things to live? Will I fold up and die without my morning and afternoon cups of coffee? Can I live without my music, albeit at a much less satisfying level.

    But wow oh wow it’s hard to live without food, water and (most of all) oxygen. Maybe someone could argue those aren’t objects, but they are physical so therefore I’d label them as objects. And I could not possibly live without them.

    We take things for granted. But I think if someone has lived with lung disease (like I have) where they’ve learned we can’t do much without lungs, been extremely thirsty where we’d do anything for a drink of water, or lived through a famine (so grateful I haven’t!) where we’re just so miserably hungry, then we’re certainly less likely to take oxygen, water and food for granted.

    Here’s to Oxygen. And water. And food. In that order. I will not take you for granted. And I’m just so grateful for you.