Tag Archives: goals

That which I don’t want to do…

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After some thought today it occurs to me that I spend upwards of 60 hours a week doing things that by definition I don’t want to do. How do I know I don’t want to do them? Well, because someone has to pay me reasonably well to convince me that it’s how I should spend my time.

That thought leads to the corollary that I’m so completely resistant to doing things that I don’t want to do in the 44 or so waking hours that I haven’t sold off because I spend so much time doing shit that I really don’t want to do in the first place.

When you spend 60 hours a week doing that which you do not naturally want to do, the calls of “you should go to the gym,” or “you should stop eating red meat,” or “do you really need that second whiskey sour” tend to fall on deaf ears. Honest to God, I don’t even hear “you’re cutting years off your life” anymore because I just assuming a good portion of what I’m cutting off are the years at the end when you sit around a nursing home shitting yourself. That’s way up there on the list of things that I don’t want to do.

The 40 or so hours that I’m awake and not being paid, are for the things that I want to do. It’s a freedom that certain life decisions have afforded me and I intend to take advantage. I’m going to drink the good whiskey. I’m going to eat the steak. I’m going to sit in the comfy chair with a book. I’m not going to spend what is currently my most limited resource on the damned stair master or learning how to make tofu “taste good.”

I just don’t want to… and that’s not a statement I get to use nearly often enough.

What do you want?

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Six months ago as part of the annual mandatory evaluation process that pretty much everyone who has ever had a job goes through, I got asked a variation of the most common question ever put to an employee – What do you want out of your career / What are your goals? When faced with that question most people give the stock answer about gaining more experience, growing their position, and taking on more responsibility. That’s the answer everyone expects to hear when they ask that question. The call and response of that question are so ingrained in the professional world that they’re practically boilerplate.

I guess sticking to a script was never one of my strong points. When an idea pops into my head, there’s always a good chance it’s going to come flying out of my mouth in the form of words. The ones that came hurtling out of my face in response to what should have been an no-brainer kind of question still make me smile six months later. That’s probably because they formed the most honest answer I’ve ever given to that kind of question. The look on my interlocutor’s face made veering wildly off the party line all the more worthwhile.

So if you’re asking yourself by this point what is it I want out of my career or what my goals are, the answer is surprisingly simple. As best I remember, it went a little something like this:

I want to stash enough cash away to buy up 20 or 30 acres of West Virginia; a little property, maybe with a stream running through it, with lots of trees, seclusion, and a strong gate at the end of the driveway. A little cabin, a wood stove, solar panels, and not much reason to come down out of my own personal Walden. I want to spend the days writing and the long summer evenings sitting with the dogs on the porch with my feet up watching the sun drop behind the mountains. When it snows I want to not care how long it takes to melt or how long it will be until I can leave. I want to not be driven by a relentless morning alarm, six meetings a day, and an inbox that never empties. I want to balance the scale a lot more towards life and way less towards work. Those are my goals, since you asked.

Trust me, that’s not the kind of answer your boss is looking for when they ask the question. It’s not the answer I should have given and it’s certainly not the one I’d recommend anyone else giving. It does however, have the virtue of being the first time in almost two decades of work that I answered that question honestly. I still feel kind of good about that.

Variations on a theme…

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The week to date has been all about variations on a theme. Unfortunately, the theme of the week has been “everything is going to turn to a giant steaming pile of shit in your hands.” Today’s example comes in the form of a not inconsequential event in the life of a typical big government organization. It’s not uncommon to start planning for something like this many months in advance. HellBy the time you get down to the few days before the thing actually kicks off, you should mostly be down to making sure the details are covered.

What you shouldn’t be doing three days before the big show is deciding that while the plan to do everything indoors has been well and good for the last two months, what we really should do is throw most of those plans over the side and instead plan on doing it outside, open to the weather, and subject to whatever nature decides to throw at you that day. That’s a fine enough approach if you’ve had months to do all the extra planning that goes into having an outdoor event, but it rarely leads to good things when it’s sprung on you with way, way less than a week to go. What you end up with under those circumstances is a Frankenstein’s monster tossed together with whatever parts and pieces you’re able to get your hands on without prior notice. Those pieces are generally not ideal.

So, we spent most of the day today inventing Plan B as we implemented it, making up details up as we went along, and having a vague hope that it all might hold together just long enough to get through the next few days. If history is any guide, the wheels will come flying off sometime late Friday afternoon, so there’s that on the horizon. It would certainly be in keeping with the week’s theme.

The only up side that I can see is that by this time next week it’s all going to be over no matter how badly we botch the implementation. Many years ago, one of my fellow teachers was fond of saying “the important part is setting your goals low and achieving them.” If his advice doesn’t apply here, it doesn’t apply anywhere.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Big Brother Knows Best. His distinguished honor the Mayor of New York City said earlier this week that “…our obligation first and foremost is to keep our kids safe in the schools; first and foremost, to keep you safe if you go to a sporting event; first and foremost is to keep you safe if you walk down the streets or go into our parks.” He went on to say “We cannot let the terrorists put us in a situation where we can’t do those things. And the ways to do that is to provide what we think is an appropriate level of protection.” Public safety is a key critical function of government, I agree, but we shouldn’t buy it at the expense of our other liberties. Whether they’re lost to a terrorist’s bomb to to the government trying to stop the terrorists, once those rights are gone, they’re never, ever coming back. If we let cowards change the way we live or lives, if we let government tell us how much privacy we should have or how much of other essential freedoms we need to have or how much we should be willing to surrender, well, I’m not sure I know what we’re fighting for anyway.

2. Moving the Goal Posts. I’m a tiny cog in a vast machine. As such, I’m cognizant that I have almost no control over my own schedule and even less influence over setting the agenda… but honest to God, I’ve had the same meeting scheduled and cancelled three times over the course of two days. Priorities shift, sometimes on short notice. That’s fine. I’m all for improvising, adapting, and overcoming. The hurry up and wait mentality is as old as the institution I serve – far older really. I have a suspicion that the Greek and Roman bureaucracies were not strangers to WTF moments. Expecting a schedule that everyone can agree to and stick with is a pipe dream… but that doesn’t make the constant moving goal posts any less obnoxious.

3. Thursday. Screw you, Thursday. You use to be cool. You use to be thirsty. You use to have dime drafts. Now you’re just as much a crank as any of the other weekdays – just another work-a-day trudging towards the weekend. Not even your neighbor Friday is good for much of anything these days. He’s in a pissy mood until the middle of the afternoon, so I don’t really have much use for him either. The only thing that makes either one of your tolerable is that the path to Saturday runs right through you. That’s the only reason you’re not dead to me.

The way ahead…

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If New Year’s Eve is our annual opportunity to look back on the year that was, then New Year’s Day seems to be the natural counterpoint – a day to look at the 364 days ahead and try to discern the way ahead. Since I’m not psychic, the best I can do is assume that 2013 is going to look fairly similar to 2012 in some ways… and bear no resemblance to it in many others. History, at best, is an inexact guide to what might happen in the future. Like the stock market, past performance is no guarantee of future returns. Still, the year that was sets the starting point and the foundations of the year to come. That means you ignore it at your peril.

So what does 2013 hold? For me, I like to think it holds more time to focus on writing and less time being annoyed by work. I hope it means less money spent fixing rental property and more time spent enjoying the fruits of my labor. Optimistically, I would love it to mean that the blog finally breaks through the 10,000 visits per year mark. As a reach goal, I’m still holding out hope of becoming a professional lottery winner and finding some nice out of the way island to call home. Yeah, so some of that wish list is more practical than other bits. Even so, most of it seems to be in reach and that’s a comforting thought.

Come on, you guys weren’t expecting some batshit crazy idea like find the love of my life, move into the house with a picket fence, and raise 2.5 kids and an airedale, right? I said history is an inexact guide, not that I was going to throw it over the side and charge off in the opposite direction. I’m feeling a touch nostalgic, not suffering from head trauma after all.

I hope this little note has helped set the tone for 2013. It’s a brave new year with more snark, less tolerance of stupid, and even better writing than ever before… so stick around. I have a feeling that 2013 is going to be a real trip.

The place to be…

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In case you’ve missed it, Sundays are special here at jeffreytharp.com. They’re the day I get to mostly turn my brain off and post some of the gems from a bygone era rather than try dredging up new material. I like to think of it as being like a TV show in syndication, except for the part where people get residuals when those old episodes show up again. Here’s it’s mostly just a good way to get all of my posts back under one roof.

While I was tinkering around with a few settings this weekend, I gave my metrics a good hard look and was surprised to see the total number of posts here steadily creeping towards the 1000 mark. After looking at the number of old MySpace posts that still need to make an appearance and doing some back of the napkin math, I’m pretty sure I’m actually already past that milestone. Nevertheless, I don’t feel right about making that official until I see the official WordPress post-counter roll over that third zero. Even with my five-every-Sunday posts, it’s going to be a few months before we cross that bridge. Don’t worry, though, I’ll be sure you let y’all know when we get there.

Like your average nine-year old, I like having something to look forward to almost as much as I enjoy actually experiencing or getting the thing itself. Since it doesn’t seem like there are any exotic trips or new toys in the immediate future, I’m pretty much throwing my lasso around 1000 as the next big thing. I know Thanksgiving and Christmas are coming, but those show up every year around this time, but how many times can you look back at six years of misspent time on the Internet and be truly amazed that you managed to come up with 1000 snarky, petulant, vaguely inappropriate, and occasionally heartfelt things to say. And it all started because MySpace use to be the place to be…

Making it…

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I’ve been setting goals for myself for as long as I can remember. When I first started working, I figured I would have “made it” in life when I could started eating lunch every afternoon without bringing it in a brown bag. Checked that box back in 2003. Having reached that point, I knew I would really “make it” when I could walk into a car dealership, point to the car I wanted and drive off without worrying about the price. That box was checked last year. So far, 2007 has been a year of “making it.” Buying my first real house after years of condo and apartment living was a landmark, no question about it, but that’s not really what let me know that I’d “made it” one more time. I knew I’d “made it” in 2007 when the crew of Mexicans showed up at 7:30 this morning and mowed my lawn.

Little Miss Can’t Be Wrong… or The Big Picture

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Let me give you the set up on this one… I am leaving for Italy next Tuesday and will be missing all of the last week of my current grad class. Not a problem. The instructor knows I’ll be gone, blessed it, and even gave me some delightfully evil ideas about how to subvert the electronic attendance tracking system, so I could still get credit for the week.

Knowing that I would be missing the final team assignment, I made a proposal to my teammates last night that I would be willing to take on this week’s assignment solo and post a rough draft for everyone to edit as a way to compensate the group for not contributing to the product next week. Fine. Great. Everyone loved the idea to more or less balance the workload over the next two weeks… That is everyone by the one chick who thinks the purpose of an MBA is to “actually learn something.”

Personally, I see the purpose of the course and the overall MBA program as much more fundamental: Pass. Simply put, it’s a resume line I need to move on with the next steps of my career. Sure, I am learning a good deal along the way, but at the same time, I live in a world where the phrase of the day is “go along to get along.” Honestly, if any of us were really all that serious, we’d be at Wharton or Tuck… not at the damned University of Phoenix… and online to boot. So before you get all high and mighty about diminishing your educational opportunities, let’s consider the big picture for a bit… bitch.