Where slacking is a sport, reading an addiction, and underachievement a birthright
Archive for March, 2007
March 29, 2007 at 4:43 pm · Filed under Banging My Head Against A Wall, Better Living Through Chemistry, Random Musings
Hi, I’m Sarah, and I’m a drug addict. I like to think of myself as a ‘legitimate junky,’ because what brought me down were indeed opiates, but the prettier packaged, controlled ones rather than their street cousins. I did those too, of course, but those were generally reserved for ’special occasions.’ They’re all the same in my opinion, but I’ve seen a hell of a lot of people delude themselves into thinking they didn’t have a problem because ‘at least it’s not heroin.’ In my mind, it’s ALL heroin.
Realistically, I should have died years ago. I have done just about every mind-altering substance known to humankind, and usually in large quantities. So called gateway drugs, uppers, downers, psychedelics, natural things, very chemical things, you name it, and I have probably done it, and a lot of it too. Over the years, I have watched some substances attach themselves to receptors in my friends’ brains a little too strongly, and down they’d go. For some reason, I had this ability where I could walk all the way up to the fire, play with it for a little while, and turn around and walk away without getting burned.
I’ve lost friends to varying drugs. At one time, a lot of my friends were having problems with opiates. Rather than learn from what I was seeing them go through, I jumped right in with them. My reasoning was, if I had been able to walk away from everything else, why would this be any different? Well, in this case, I was wrong. Quite wrong.
My parents (who lived on the other side of the country) rescued me. I was in a pretty bad state. They moved me back to the hometown I despised and couldn’t wait to leave when I was younger. I got hooked up with a doctor, went through detox (detox sucks in its own right, but going through it in front of your parents takes it to a whole new level), and I was placed in a rehab program that involved a new drug they’ve been testing as a substitute to methadone. A doctor has to go through a DEA program in order to be able to prescribe it, and the DEA closely monitors it. The addict has to fill out all sorts of forms and agreements, and one of the main ones was a contract promising “at least three meetings a week.” You were given a slip for the meeting’s leader to sign to prove your attendance.
When I speak of meetings, I’m talking about Alcoholics or Narcotics Anonymous, the world renowned 12 step programs. I’m sure you’ve heard of them; maybe you’ve even been to one as its format has been modified to include every malady from gambling to sex addiction to codependency. It’s based on a 12 step program developed by Bill Wilson (who got much of his material from The Oxford Group) and Dr. Bob. The details on the formation of AA is very well documented, so I won’t go into it here, but just in case you’ve been living in a cave and are completely baffled, here, at least, are the 12 Steps:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol-that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all people we had harmed. and became willing to make amends with them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would harm them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understood Him, praying only for the knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
I’ve had ‘issues’ with AA/NA well before ever attending a meeting. The biggest one was their take that it’s not their fault because they have a ‘disease.’ I thought that was ridiculous. No one has ever forced anything down my throat; everything I’ve drunk, smoked, snorted, and ingested has been of my own free will. To say ‘I have a disease’ always seemed like a cop out to me. I also wasn’t a big fan of the program because it seemed like it ws an excuse to sit around and talk about the glory days. People who hadn’t touched a drink or a pill in 20 years still regarding themselves as alcoholics-is this useful or self defeating? If you follow the notion that your thoughts create your reality, then constantly thinking about yourself as this negative person doesn’t seem very productive. Plus, it seemed like an excuse to re-hash the good old days of how wasted they were, even if it WAS 20+ years ago. As long as a person ended with something like ’but things are much better now that I’m sober and I love AA,’ the moments of their debaucheries could be continuously re-lived. Their eyes would light up as they told their stories, and you could feel that given the chance, they’d be back out in a heartbeat if there weren’t any consequences. In my time with the program, many did, which was sad.
So this is what I was walking into-a program that I not only did not believe in but was actively opposed to. But when you’re eaten down and are looking at death like it would be a nice vacation, and your parents just shelled out a ton of money to get you clean, you don’t have a lot of choices. I’ll tell you how it went next time…
March 28, 2007 at 4:29 pm · Filed under Random Musings, Work
As I’ve mentioned before, my job is a less than satisfying situation. Being responsible for cheery phone delivery is not my strong suit, I’m not a huge fan of having candy around, let alone being responsible for it, and the work, in general, is almost insultingly tedious. But that’s not the worst of it.
I seem to have a nemesis.
A lot of people mistake the term ‘nemesis’ for ‘enemy.’ However, this is false. Nemesis is something altogether.
According to Dictionary.com, nemesis is defined as:
1. something that a person cannot conquer, achieve, etc.: The performance test proved to be my nemesis.
2. an opponent or rival whom a person cannot best or overcome.
This is an interesting, albeit annoying situation. She’s in her mid 20’s, quite outgoing, and poses a chipmunk like sense of pseudo-friendliness to everyone. Or at least that’s what it seems. This girl, we’ll call her ‘Amy’, was hired about three months before me. I was under the impression it was her job for which I was applying because she had recently been promoted to a different department. We won’t get into that, because we all know I’m sitting here answering phones instead.
Within a month of Amy’s promotion (to a completely different group), the woman who had served as my (and formerly her) boss announced she was transferring. It was a sad departure for the entire office because she was a genuinely nice person who kept the office afloat in more ways than one. Her absence also meant that unless someone was hired immediately, there was suddenly a lot of work that was going to have to be taken care of. I was actually happy about the prospect of a bigger workload. As fun as it may sound, being paid ‘because they need someone in that chair to greet visitors and answer phones,’ gets old quickly, especially when it’s a relatively quiet office to begin with.
My soon-to-be former boss told the other admin girl and me that leaving could be a great opportunity for both of us in admin-the former boss’s work could be split into sections, and we each would be given one of her responsibilities, and if that worked, there would be no need to hire a replacement.
I was really excited about this prospect. Since starting here, I’ve spent most of my time taking online training modules. I’ve taken copious notes on every one and have received high test scores. Many of these modules have had absolutely nothing to do with my present job and probably never would given I’m not an engineer, but I had little else to do, and this way, I got to at least learn about the company and safety procedures for operating heavy machinery. I wanted to show the people here that I really wanted to succeed in this company. I made my accomplishments known to my boss, her boss, and just about every project manager who would listen of what I was doing when the phones weren’t ringing. From most managers and ‘higher people’, I received accolades and was told that my acquired skills could definitely be put to use. Unfortunately, this was not to be.
When the ‘chores’ got divvied up, suddenly, there was Amy and the other admin person. I was totally passed over! I wasn’t even contacted! Amy had stepped in, and even though she had a full time’s job worth of work from her new job, she ended up taking over everything I thought I was going to be doing.
My take on this is she’s this mid-20s kind of go-getter, and she’s trying to advance in ‘her career’ or whatever, and when I came in with more age and experience, she sees this as a threat. The thing is, if you’re really wanting to be focused on a career that’s administrative related, you know, the whole climb the ladder and get into middle management only to have the company reorganize and kick you out, WHY would you choose to work at an engineering firm? This place has a whole ‘career building’ thing on its system where it shows different paths one can take, and while there are many directions for engineers, the same is not true for desk jockeys.
The thing is, now she comes up to me and gives me orders. I have done the “oops, guess I overlooked that one,” or “oh, you’re right, I did miss that,’ and I have perfected and used the flat out blank stare so often that she must believe me mentally challenged. Hey darling, you wanted this. Be careful of what you wish for.
I don’t think my nemesis realized that she’ll never be able to ‘best or overcome’ me because I DON’T CARE. You want to take on all the work because you’re afraid people might notice me? Be my guest. It’s like the ‘it takes two to tango’ line. You want to win? OK, you win. Oh, by the way, I’ll be leaving for home at exactly 5pm this evening; how many extra hours did you say you’ll be staying? Have fun, my cheerful office nemesis…
March 22, 2007 at 4:14 pm · Filed under Banging My Head Against A Wall, Books I've Read, Random Musings
Lately, I’ve been reading a number of books that are related to finances/investing, etc. This all started because one night at a friend’s house, we were playing this game called Cashflow, which is like an updated, more realistic version of Monopoly. This game was designed by Richard Kiyosaki, the central figure of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad empire. The game was fun, fast paced, and a lot of fun. The next day, I woke up at the crack of dawn (which was 2 pm, but come on, it was the weekend), and raced to the nearest Borders Books to purchase the related book: Rich Dad Poor Dad. It was a book that through a thinly veiled ‘Richest Man in Babylon’ story format talked about finances with the ultimate message that there are those who work for money (ie most of us fools who work at jobs), and those who make their money work for them. Their money didn’t just work, it worked HARD. Overall, it was one of those books that was an interesting and motivating quick read.Â
Dale and I got all fired up of the things we would do and the riches we would make and the lives we would lead by getting our money to work for us. All sorts of ideas started rushing in of what we were going to do, how we’d do it, and how quickly we’d become financially independent just like them. It was exciting to think of being considered ‘well off,’ given that I’m 35 , I live with my parents because rents/housing prices are out of control, and I work in a state where the jobs generally pay less than what they did in San Francisco 12 YEARS AGO. Regardless, we were going to do this, and we were going to succeed!
The problem was, the buzz from the game and book wore off. Soon, I found myself buying Rich Woman and Who Took My Money soon after. It was somewhere during reading Rich Woman that I started getting this vague feeling of being sucked into an infomercial. The book said much of the same as Rich Dad, and she (this one was written by the wife) did a lot of the same talking about how they started from nothing, and now they can do whatever they want because their money is working so hard for them. It, too, had a flimsy plot of four or five best high school girlfriends who get together for a reunion and end up having her teach them how she became so successful. In this book, I started looking for actual DETAILS on how she did this (like leveraging a bank when you have no money or credit), and I wasn’t very successful in finding any. While each of her ‘friends’ had a strategy of what they would do by the end, they were pretty ill-defined (’I'm going to research stocks!’ or ‘I’m going to look into real estate!’).
By now, I was prety convinced I was pursuing ‘how to make the Kiyosaki’s rich’, but I needed ‘just one more book’ to make sure. I picked up a copy of Who Took My Money?, already basically knowing the storyline, and it wasn’t very different from the other two. I don’t know what it is, but there is something about these books that sucks you in, gives you the sense that ‘it’s just around the corner, we’re just about to tell you…’ that keeps gullible people like me buying them.
I believe I helped make Barnes and Noble rich with those two books.
To say I got nothing out of these books would be a lie, because I am more of a novice at finances than I am at web development, and I do feel more informed now. I learned that, just like with so many writers, they write one book, and it’s great. People love it, it sells well, maybe even becomes one of those household name books that EVERYONE has read. Unfortunately with this scenario, the writer spends the rest of his/her life writing variations from the one that made them famous. I thought this was largely reserved for the New Age community (and Dan Millman in particular), but I guess if you can write one, you can write a ton (see Rich Dad’s Catelog if you don’t believe me).
And don’t buy the game. I got it for Christmas after begging and pleading for it. I would rather have the $200 in hindsight.
March 19, 2007 at 4:12 pm · Filed under Random Musings
As I was going through my reader, half filled with either blogging or finance tips, half filled with stories from slackers like me, I came across a posting My Comment Policy which changed the way I look at this whole blogging world and everything in it.
I write what I want, what comes up, what comes out, and to no one in particular. However, it is my hope that what I do read will be written, and being shy in commenting has not gotten me much traffic. On occasion, this bothers me, especially as I see others’ success come in droves. It could also do with the ‘I go to bed at 9, while they stay up till 2′ sleep schedules.
My main partner in crime in this world tells me relentlessly how “it’s all about content, baby,” and I feel like in that area I can hold my own. My god, I’d better, an English major not being able to write? O the travesty that would be!
However, reading Chris’s policy on his blog, keeping in mind first and foremost that it is HIS and he can do damn well with whatever he wants, was something I needed to hear today. True, Chris has hundreds of readers and I’m still hoping for maybe one someday, but it was a good reminder that the moment I start to play to an audience in hopes of getting people to like (and link) to me is the moment that I lose why I started this in the first place-as a place where I can rid my mind of some thoughts and stories of my life today and my former genX glory. Until next time…
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