Happy Times Analyzed

If I look back on some of the happiest periods of my life, what do I see?  I do remember stretches of time when I bounced out of bed in the morning eager to greet the day. Here are some of the things I found:

A sense of community -

This time last year I was participating in an online group working through FInding Water together.  I would ride my bike Uptown and sit in my favourite spot in the Princess Cafe, spread out my pen and notebook in the sunny window and order a tea from Marc. I would ask him, “is the new issue of your zine out yet?”

I was a member of Grand River Intentional Communities. There were dreams of creating a co-housing village similar to the one in Ithaca.

A feeling of being needed at work, a sense that my contribution is important -

Often when I was feeling a bit under the weather, I would go to work anyway because I was the sole person who could provide tech support for one of our applications used by about 25 companies across Canada.  If one of “my” clients needed to close off her monthly statement that day and called for help, nobody else would be able to help her.  The marketing people often called me in a panic when one of their brokers wanted a special job done.  They relied on me and I always came to the rescue. I enjoyed this very much.

Pets help me enjoy daily existence. I remember days when I didn’t want to get out of bed until I remembered my darling ratties would be wanting their breakfast soon.  I looked forward to sharing my oatmeal with the little clowns, seeing what silliness or cleverness they would come up with next.  Again, this is a sense of being needed but it’s not an overwhelming one. Feeding rats, playing with them and cleaning a cage or two once a week is just about as much family responsibility as I can handle. (Did I mention that I feel overwhelmed easily?)

Using my talents -

Last summer before I found work was the hardest time I can remember. Then came that plea from my friend in the Green Party of Arkansas to translate a stack of flyers to Spanish. Suddenly I was bouncing out of bed again. I was needed AND I had a tough project to which to apply my brain power.  Oh, I love brain challenges!

Taking care of myself -

Another happy period I can look back on is the time when I lived in a building with a heated pool. I started swimming a few times a week. I got toned and was suddenly able to run after the bus without getting so winded. I lost weight.  This was also the time when I found a sense of community with my Iranian neighbours. As soon as I signed up for Farsi classes, it was as if I had been adopted by the parents of all my small classmates and their friends and neighbours. I was invited to all the earth-based festivals at each equinox and solstice. I learned to prepare traditional Iranian dishes.

These are not “problems.” I am not writing this because I am asking for solutions. I am just reflecting … while trying to keep an open mind and open heart about the current transition.

Not-A-Victim Dreams

I had another intriguing dream last night.  I dreamed I was walking around outside with my cat Prozac, who has been dead since 1999.  This fellow Bruce whom I used to date was stalking us and trying to shoot us. I was carrying her and trying to find a good hiding place, trying to keep ahead of him. He was using a scooter, though I don’t know why. It seemed normal in the dream.  I thought I really had outfoxed him when I ran a few extra blocks in one direction and hunkered down behind a low wall in some leaves near a big tree. I had Prozie with me and I thought we were safe.

But then Bruce, who was going up one street and down another, coming ever closer, entered the street where we were hiding. I knew it was just a matter of time before he shined a light our way and saw us there.

Suddenly clarity came down upon me like Grace and I realize what I had to do. I don’t have to cower there like a silly victim.  I pick up Prozac, stand straight up and I just start walking home. I don’t care if he sees us. I walk past him.  He tries to shoot us but misses and I make it back to our old house in Little Rock where I lived from age 8 to adult. Suddenly the person following us isn’t Bruce on the scooter but my brother Mike in his wheelchair.  I am angry with him for intimidating me and I grab him down below and stare into his eyes. Clenching my teeth, I say in a very low and menacing voice: Do not do that again.  Then, just to drive my point home, I grab the hair on his head in my fist near the scalp so it hurts. I just grip it like that for two seconds.

I then turn and walk away toward the house.

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I’m starting to see a pattern in these new dreams.  In the beginning of each dream, there is something or someone menacing. That someone or something would wield power over me, take something from me or harm me or those I need to protect. In each dream there is a turning point when I realize I need not be a victim at all. I am only a victim if I let myself be.  If I choose, I can take the power back.  And I do.

I thought about this dream for quite a while after waking this morning.  I can very clearly see situations in my life right now where I allow myself to feel victimized. I frame things in such a way that I don’t see choices for myself. I see traps.

After this dream, I stopped to realize that the doors on the traps are standing wide open. I can walk out of them any time I please.

I know there are two ways I can leave what I have come to see as traps.  One: I can physically leave, as in when one quits a job.  Or two: I can initiate a shift inside myself so that where I am is where I choose to be.

Neither Here Nor There

Everything in my life right now seems to be neither here nor there. I have moved into a place called limbo. I don’t yet like it here but I’m not so sure it’s worse than where I was. Once an audience member approached Tolle after a talk and said, “I don’t know who I am anymore.” Eckhart replied, “congratulations.”

My once satisfying job is now riding through a period of chaos while new middle management tries to introduce structure and common sense. You may wonder how I could be so happy before. My outgoing supervisor was masking a lot of the problems. I was blissfully unaware of the shit that would hit the fan as soon as he was no longer there to sweep it under the carpet.

Some days I can still find enjoyment, some days are pure hell. The day I was supposed to sign for the condo lease (Sylvain blogged about that) was the most hellish day of all. I ended up locking myself in a bathroom stall to cry off the stress. I realized I didn’t want to commit to a 12-month lease that night. No, there is too great a psychological advantage to knowing that if the BS gets to be too much to bear, I can tell them what to do with their crazy work environment.

There is a glimmer of hope that my new supervisor, teamed with the process gurus in the parent company, can turn things around. I could end up very glad I didn’t jump ship. In fact, I have been known to find process re-engineering loads of fun. I am what is known as an early buy-in. Nevertheless, I am passively scanning the job ads.

It is yet another area of my life where I’m currently not happy but am not entirely invested in the idea of leaving. Yet.

Wait and see. Wait and see. Be here now, even though here doesn’t feel like anywhere.

I am no longer miserable trying to live in a house with four other humans, but I’m not exactly happy, either. With ego taming, the OCD calms down. Fantasies of my own place appointed with only the bare essentials in order to render an orderly, zen-like space less frequently kidnap my mind. I am still surrounded by other people’s clutter, but it has stopped making me quite so crazy.

Even this blog is an example. I no longer feel motivated to write or read a lot, but I don’t want to abandon it altogether, either.

Every morning I still awaken with a sense of dread. Why exactly am I here? What was the point of this again, can you remind me? I do my best to ease into the day being tender with myself. I take my Omega-3 fish oil caps. I put a drop of Clary Sage oil on my pulse points. I remind myself to breathe, to be and just to be. To show up, just show up. And to TRUST the wisdom of the Universe. By late afternoon I’m usually feeling okay and by evening I may even be smiling. Then it starts all over again the next morning.

Dyer’s book Manifest Your Destiny is helping me remember throughout the day that I am not, as ego would like me to believe, separate from my environment. I am the grass and the clouds. When I have a judging thought about a co-worker who strikes me as lazy, I remember we are one. We are humanity. In judging her, I am judging myself.

Dyer himself says that once you realize what comes from ego, you are faced with a quagmire of paradoxes. I can catch myself turning up my nose at something and say, “likes and dislikes are of the ego.” But even that labelling of something in myself as “of the ego” is also of the ego. More categorizing, more labelling, more judging.

Oddly enough, my dreams are good. I have a long, long history of nomad dreams in which I am travelling from place to place with nowhere to lay my head, no money in my pocket for a meal, no car. Buses keep passing by without stopping to pick me up.

A few nights ago I dreamed I inherited a huge, beautiful house. It was like a California house where 50-something ex hippies had once lived. The kitchen was half open air and lead up to a big, rain-bleached deck. The former owners had left behind a beautiful big driftwood and fiber arts sculpture that adorned the wall high over the kitchen/living room. They also had left an ancient plant whose vines extended for yards up near the skylights. I noticed it had not been watered for a while but was still alive. My heart swelled with joy when I realized this.

Two nights ago I dreamed I was living in a mansion and there were some classy looking criminals outside who I knew wanted to come in and steal something. One rang the bell. I pondered whether to open the door and become vulnerable to his pushing his way inside. I opted to take the risk and used the opportunity to say to him, “I know you plan to break in and I probably can’t stop you. Take whatever you’re after. Take the diamonds if you want them. I would appreciate it if you would not take the Djembe, though. It’s only worth $200. Leave me that.”

This is so odd for me to have a dream in which I am in control, so confident, calling the shots.

Again last night, a good dream. I am outside at a water park and children are everywhere. I notice an alligator loose in the place and so I get all the children to come over into another pool. The gator starts to crawl out of the enclosure where it is now alone and join the children on my side, but I fend it off with a lawn chair or something. Then a large, muscular male staff member comes and takes over the situation.

I ponder these good dreams. My subconscious is signalling to me that although my life may feel to me to be sad and without aim, things are actually headed in the right direction. My ego certainly can’t see it that way, as so many things dear to ego have been stripped away.

But there is something good coming of it. Dreams don’t lie.

TAKING A BREAK

I’m feeling a dire need for a break from blogging. I put in 58 hours at work last week, which is too much computer screen time.

When I get off work, I want to be outside now that it’s nice…washing the car ( I soap, Sylvain rinses ) or taking long walks down to the Marina. My life has gotten far too sedentary and indoor. It’s time to feel soil under my fingernails again, balmy air on my face, earth under my bare feet.

I want to read my two library books, a Wayne Dyer book and How Doctors Think. Maybe I’ll read while sitting on the deck or under a tree in the park.

Sylvain and I have started to look for a place for me to live close by… a place with a pool, as I yearn to get in shape again.  This weekend we’ll take my bike down off the garage wall.

I apologize… I feel a pang of guilt already for not keeping up with all your blogs for the next while.  This just feels like something I need to do right now.

Love, K

All Work No Play

Yes, I can be given to working a bit too much. I’ve just been assigned 600 cases (a normal case load is 150 to 250) and I am jazzed, knowing I can rise to the occasion. So the past couple of days I’ve been putting in overtime, working from home after supper doing “triage” as I call it on this huge backlog of cases.

I really enjoy this. I have to take a look into each case and see at what stage it is.

• If there is some follow up needed, like a call made or a letter written, or we’re just waiting on something already requested, I assign it to the Fast Track desk’s administrative assistant.
• If I see over $500 in bills already in or on their way, then I know this case doesn’t belong with the Fast Track desk. It got assigned there by mistake because the reserves were not updated as the costs ended up higher than originally expected. So I go in and update the reserves and push that case back into the Over $500 category.
• If the claim has been processed and we are just waiting for the cheque to be cut, I assign it to another category; it’s no longer in my pile.
• If the claim was paid a while back but the claims manager forgot to close it, I close it. Off my pile.
• Finally we are left with some that look ready to pay. I spend half to 2/3 of my day working on those and am able to assign a few to a new adjudicator who is going to help me plough through these Fast Track claims.

The whole process appeals very much to my OCD. I love cleaning things up, tying up loose ends, putting things in order. So where have I been instead of blogging? I’ve been working, working, working.

When I first started reviewing these cases, starting with the oldest first, I was appalled to see how one examiner in particular had let her caseload get out of control. She just isn’t a naturally organized person and had not developed any workaround to allow her to keep track of things. The result is that I’m running across case after case where we should have called back in January to ask if the client received the claim forms in the mail. But no call was made. Or bills came back in late February or early March and nothing has been touched yet. Shudder.

I have to admit, little ego voice woke right up and started doing its judging thing. Tut tut, shaking his head. Aarrgh, another one! I was starting to get ticked off at this adjudicator for the mess she’d let things get into at her desk.

But then I thought about the Course in Miracles lesson for today and realized how I was putting toxic thought energy into the universe and into me and into the MeUniverse with that ego crap.

No, I had to forgive her. So I prayed. God, I said, please show me how to forgive her for being unorganized. Please fill my heart with love and compassion and understanding instead of that judging voice.

I saw the chaos in her work style like the chaos of all of life…which really isn’t chaos at all, but beauty. There is order and there is meaning. There is a reason for all of it…for the backlog of follow-up going back to January, for the file folders helter skelter on her desk. It’s O K A Y.

I smiled. I breathed.

I’ve had some nice things happen in the last few days.

I had a woman call me who was searching for the company that sold her daughter her travel insurance and has a claim open for her. The daughter is still abroad and asked her mum to handle the claim for her, as it’s hard to make the long-distance calls from where she is. I tried finding her in our system but name, date of birth, case number and policy number searches came up blank. I told her I was sorry, we weren’t the company that had her daughter’s claim. She sounded so desperate and so tired of calling around; she hesitated rather than hanging up. “Tell you what,” I said. “Let me do an internet search for you.” I came up with a plan name and a Toronto phone number. She said she would try it and hung up. About 15 minutes later, she called me back just to thank me for finding the right people who had her daughter’s claim. “Some people are just so helpful! I just had to call you back and thank you.”

For a few days I thought one of my coworkers really hated me. See, she is a very bubbly person whose constant joking made it hard for me to concentrate on my work. AND she was about to be moved to a desk right by me. So I emailed the woman who is standing in as our manager for now and warned her that if she put Jolly Woman next to me, my productivity would go down by about 30%. I never dreamed I should have to add “treat this email as confidential.” Next team meeting? Loud surrogate manager warns Jolly Woman that if she drives me crazy, I have her permission to tell her to shut up. Yeah. That led to a few days of scowling and no joking and not looking me in the eye. Note to self: do not tell Loud Surrogate Manager anything you don’t want everyone to know.

I wanted Jolly to know I didn’t dislike her, I just need people to keep it down. So I kept smiling at her every time we passed by one another coming and going to the filing cabinet. Finally today she started consulting me on things…bonding stuff, you know. Whew.

Another coworker had her nose out of joint because it hurt her feelings when I was whisked off to that meeting with Big Dog and she wasn’t. So I was very relieved when today she whispered to me that there was something she had never figured out how to do and would I show her. So I showed her quietly without letting our supervisor see that I was teaching her how to do it. Another whew! I really did not want to lose her as a (budding) friend.

Neither Sylvain nor I feel quite energetic enough to venture out for Folk Music night tonight, so I think I’ll just sit here with my laptop and put in an hour or so of work.

Eep! It’s not a CRIME, you know…enjoying ones job.

There, Kat, I posted. Happy now? :)

All in a Day’s Work

What an interesting day.  We are trying something new where all the claims under $500 go to one examiner. I showed an interest in being that examiner, even though that means 74% of all claims will come to me. It also means I get a dedicated administrative assistant who helps me, only me, with calling and following up for missing items.  All denials will now go to the supervisor, so all I’m left with are the payable small claims that I can bang out one after the other.  I can’t tell you how relieved I am to be rid of the big complicated cases, as I don’t feel I was ever given enough training to deal with them comfortably.  Maybe one day, but not yet.

Yesterday the VP’s right hand man came to me for some help understanding our processes, which he is documenting with a cute Visio flowchart. As soon as he approached me, I felt a pang of awkwardness. See, I happen to know he’d already showed the flowchart to someone I’ll call Senior Examiner and she’d said it was okay.  When he said, “I’m just making the rounds, asking everyone for help with this,” I could hear it in his voice.  He didn’t trust the feedback he’d gotten from Senior. He was second guessing her…and within earshot of her, to boot.

As I was showing him some screens, he asked me, “how do you know when it’s time to do that?”   I admitted that I’ve been doing double data entry and keeping track of my 150-200 cases with an Excel spreadsheet. I have to do that because our system is still in development and lacks a proper screen where I can track the status of my cases, when it’s time to make a follow-up call, when it’s time to assess a claim because all the documents are in.  He asked if everyone uses a spreadsheet like that or just me.

“Just me,” I said.

He looked at my spreadsheet, asked me to explain my drop-down categories and so forth, then asked me to send it to him so he can see what fields I find necessary to have in this tracking tool.  It could serve as a prototype for the screen IT needs to build us.

“What do the people who aren’t as smart as you do?”  Wince. I know what he meant, but I hope none of my coworkers overheard it. Does he know how hard it is for someone like me to remain likable instead of resented? Didn’t YOU hate the teacher’s pet (unless you were the teacher’s pet)?

“I guess they go into each case to look at the last few notes, to jog their memories what needs to be done next. Or they wait until someone complains that something is late or was missed. I’m not sure exactly how they handle that.”

By the end of the day, one of the assistant VPs had come to my desk, whispered for me to come with her and then whisked me off to a meeting with a big dog. Big dog wanted to run a new process idea past me and see if I thought it would work.

Things are in transition.  My supervisor has accepted a job in the Middle East and flew there last week for some preliminary stuff. In his absence, all the #$%& hit the fan.  His boss found out all the ways he was mismanaging the department.  I’ve become so mellow of late, I really wasn’t letting any of it bother me.  I respected his medical judgement and he’s cute, what more did I want? I was just doing my best every day, letting the rest work itself out in time.

They are furiously trying to find someone to replace him ASAP, but in the meantime his boss is trying to be our manager. She is an ultra extroverted, loud person who LOVES the sound of her own voice (i.e. every meeting runs over by 45 minutes), asks for input then doesn’t let you finish a sentence, has a million new ideas a minute and gets us all working in five directions at once and then changes her mind about three of them before noon the next day.

Did I mention it’s getting interesting?

What would this all be like for me (once a highly stressed perfectionist who easily succumbed to ANXIETY when every ducky wasn’t in a row) if I weren’t on day 155 of a year of mindful breathing whenever I can remember to do so?