Process: A particular method of doing something, generally involving a number of steps or operations.
One of my tasks as The Technical Guy for my company is to support the distributors who actually sell our product, which is quite technical. SuperK doesn't think too much of a company that uses me as tech support. "You can't turn on your computer without screaming for help," she says. "That's a hell of an organization they're running over there." I don't pay attention to her criticisms any more, especially when they're right and pretty funny to boot.
I used to call directly on the end-user which I liked because it meant I was IN CONTROL of the entire process. I qualified the prospect, ran the presentation, and followed up to try to close the deal. I like being in control. Everything works better when I'm making ALL OF THE DECISIONS. Everybody can see that. Everybody concurs. The arc of my life demonstrates that this is a fact.
Now I have to babysit distributors who handle the details with the end-user. Some of them are good at this and some of them really suck. None of them, of course, are AS GOOD AS I AM. Here's where that leaves me: I do as much as I can without being too annoying -- no small task -- and then let go of the process. I need to repeat that for my own sake. Let go of the process. Let go and let god. Let go and let distributor.
I let go of the process like I let go of everything: the process has claw marks and teeth marks and tire tracks all over it.
A few weeks ago a salesman at one of my distributors asked me to accompany him on what I thought was a dubious appointment. Apparently, I didn't respond with enough alacrity so he called my regional manager, whose entire purpose in life is to make the simplest process complicated and ponderous, copying everyone in the world while adding nothing to the conversation. He just gums up the works. Throws a wrench in the machinery, all the while protecting himself.
After much to-do about nothing, I show up at the distributor at the appointed time only to find out that the bitching salesman in question is off that day. His manager is going to pinch hit but can't leave the branch until some help shows up, which they do not do. So this dude complicated my life for no good reason and then doesn't show up, which leaves an unimaginably important person like me to stew in my own irritation juices, which are quite caustic and deadly to most organic life matter.
Guess what? I went out to the car, in some nice morning sunshine, and called some buddies in A.A.. Then I pulled out a notebook and did some writing.
How hard was that? How unpleasant was that?
Friday, June 19, 2009
The B-Man: Leprechaun or Urban Legend?
Legend: A story of some wonderful event, handed down for generations among a people and popularly believed to have a historical basis, although not verifiable.
Legend has it -- Irish legend, not urban legend -- that a leprechaun sits at the end of the rainbow, hammering on a shoe. We don't think that he is somewhere over the rainbow, either. And no one has been able to explain the difference between the end of the rainbow and the start of the rainbow. Maybe he's at the start of it. That would make more sense unless it doesn't.
It isn't clear why he's hammering on the shoe -- the legend doesn't go into detail as to why the leprechaun is preoccupied with cobbling. Maybe it does. It's not like I look anything up. I think that I'm completely comfortable with total leprechaun speculation.
Anyway, the point is that if you find this creature, it's rumored that he reveals where he has hidden his pot of gold. I can't imagine that he would just volunteer the location of a whole pot of gold. Maybe it's a very small pot. Maybe it's fool's gold. Maybe you have to beat him up. Seems this would be easy to do because he's pretty small, but Irish leprechauns have a reputation for being tough. Still, two feet tall is two feet tall. Me, personally, I would be more worried about a troll or a hobgoblin but, as they don't have riches to divulge and live under bridges and the like, I would have no reason to fuck with one of them, besides meanness or spite.
The point of all this is that you can't ever get to the end of the rainbow, according to the scientists, because it's an optical illusion. If you try to reach the end, it just seems to move farther away. Very frustrating. Leprechauns are said to enjoy mischievous pranks and this one is a real ace in the hole for them.
That's why it's not very bright to chase that pot of gold, because you can't get to it, which is what I'm driving at. I like the imagery, the constant striving to get to something which is always just out of reach. That's me: I want what I can't get at. And usually the stuff I get doesn't make me any happier than the stuff I already have.
Which is the point.
Legend has it -- Irish legend, not urban legend -- that a leprechaun sits at the end of the rainbow, hammering on a shoe. We don't think that he is somewhere over the rainbow, either. And no one has been able to explain the difference between the end of the rainbow and the start of the rainbow. Maybe he's at the start of it. That would make more sense unless it doesn't.
It isn't clear why he's hammering on the shoe -- the legend doesn't go into detail as to why the leprechaun is preoccupied with cobbling. Maybe it does. It's not like I look anything up. I think that I'm completely comfortable with total leprechaun speculation.
Anyway, the point is that if you find this creature, it's rumored that he reveals where he has hidden his pot of gold. I can't imagine that he would just volunteer the location of a whole pot of gold. Maybe it's a very small pot. Maybe it's fool's gold. Maybe you have to beat him up. Seems this would be easy to do because he's pretty small, but Irish leprechauns have a reputation for being tough. Still, two feet tall is two feet tall. Me, personally, I would be more worried about a troll or a hobgoblin but, as they don't have riches to divulge and live under bridges and the like, I would have no reason to fuck with one of them, besides meanness or spite.
The point of all this is that you can't ever get to the end of the rainbow, according to the scientists, because it's an optical illusion. If you try to reach the end, it just seems to move farther away. Very frustrating. Leprechauns are said to enjoy mischievous pranks and this one is a real ace in the hole for them.
That's why it's not very bright to chase that pot of gold, because you can't get to it, which is what I'm driving at. I like the imagery, the constant striving to get to something which is always just out of reach. That's me: I want what I can't get at. And usually the stuff I get doesn't make me any happier than the stuff I already have.
Which is the point.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009
Perfection, Not Progress
Let's talk some more about me, The B-Man. I can only assume that everyone is as fascinated by me as I am.
I am by nature, nurture, and inclination a clean freak and obsessive organizer. Some people would call me a little fussy. Well, all people actually, but what do I care? Wait, I'm a people pleaser. I do care! I do care! My good friends, however, call me prissy, not being overly concerned with hurting my feelings.
I think I've gotten better at releasing my iron grip on my environment, but not much. I think I've progressed from a state of dangerous mental pathology and been reborn as a mild obsessive. And just because I think I've gotten better doesn't mean I have actually gotten better. I think many thoughts and wear reality like a loose garment.
SuperK, always the normal one in our relationship, tolerates this, sometimes. She is more of a Chaos Manager. Consider our offices. Mine appears to have been sanitized then abandoned for many years. No one could possibly work in that sterile space. SuperK apparently likes to host violent demonstrations in her office. Strangely enough, she can find things more quickly in her chaos than I can in my clean room. I make a file, label it, file it away, then forget where I put it. I fall back on my favorite excuse: Too much LSD in college. She rummages through one of her teetering piles and quickly retrieves whatever it is that she's looking for.
When I enter our house, I head for the closet and hang up my coat. Sometimes I organize the closet. SuperK drops her coat on the closest available surface, as quickly as possible. This annoys me, so I put her coat away, which annoys her, especially since I often forget where I put it, a problem that I recently alluded to. She can't seem to put things where I want her to put them and I can't seem to stop hiding them from both of us. Sometimes I put things away before she has a chance to use them. She'll take some pickles out of the fridge and I'll put them away when she turns her back to get a fork. I don't even know I'm doing it.
I experimented with all kinds of techniques to get her to change to my specifications. Back to the coat conundrum. For a long time, I grabbed her coat and hung it up, muttering in annoyance. Then I migrated to my favorite state of mind: passive aggressive. I still hung up the coat but tried my best through various swearing and huffings and defensive body postures to will her to see how irritated I was. Sometimes I'd throw her coat on the floor of the closet. None of these methods worked for long.
Finally, I decided to just ask her to hang up her coat instead of requiring that she read my mind. Even I don't know what's going on up there, and it's my mind. It's in an ancient language long vanished from this veil of tears. She listened sympathetically and, for a while, hung up her coat, sometimes, which was almost as bad as never hanging it up. It's not that important to her and it's not my right to ask other people to adopt my standards of behavior.
You know what? Who gives a shit, really? Why would I spend all of my precious irritation time on a coat on a chair? There are so many people and institutions and circumstances that irritate me. I need to save my energy for them.
Perfection, not progress.
I am by nature, nurture, and inclination a clean freak and obsessive organizer. Some people would call me a little fussy. Well, all people actually, but what do I care? Wait, I'm a people pleaser. I do care! I do care! My good friends, however, call me prissy, not being overly concerned with hurting my feelings.
I think I've gotten better at releasing my iron grip on my environment, but not much. I think I've progressed from a state of dangerous mental pathology and been reborn as a mild obsessive. And just because I think I've gotten better doesn't mean I have actually gotten better. I think many thoughts and wear reality like a loose garment.
SuperK, always the normal one in our relationship, tolerates this, sometimes. She is more of a Chaos Manager. Consider our offices. Mine appears to have been sanitized then abandoned for many years. No one could possibly work in that sterile space. SuperK apparently likes to host violent demonstrations in her office. Strangely enough, she can find things more quickly in her chaos than I can in my clean room. I make a file, label it, file it away, then forget where I put it. I fall back on my favorite excuse: Too much LSD in college. She rummages through one of her teetering piles and quickly retrieves whatever it is that she's looking for.
When I enter our house, I head for the closet and hang up my coat. Sometimes I organize the closet. SuperK drops her coat on the closest available surface, as quickly as possible. This annoys me, so I put her coat away, which annoys her, especially since I often forget where I put it, a problem that I recently alluded to. She can't seem to put things where I want her to put them and I can't seem to stop hiding them from both of us. Sometimes I put things away before she has a chance to use them. She'll take some pickles out of the fridge and I'll put them away when she turns her back to get a fork. I don't even know I'm doing it.
I experimented with all kinds of techniques to get her to change to my specifications. Back to the coat conundrum. For a long time, I grabbed her coat and hung it up, muttering in annoyance. Then I migrated to my favorite state of mind: passive aggressive. I still hung up the coat but tried my best through various swearing and huffings and defensive body postures to will her to see how irritated I was. Sometimes I'd throw her coat on the floor of the closet. None of these methods worked for long.
Finally, I decided to just ask her to hang up her coat instead of requiring that she read my mind. Even I don't know what's going on up there, and it's my mind. It's in an ancient language long vanished from this veil of tears. She listened sympathetically and, for a while, hung up her coat, sometimes, which was almost as bad as never hanging it up. It's not that important to her and it's not my right to ask other people to adopt my standards of behavior.
You know what? Who gives a shit, really? Why would I spend all of my precious irritation time on a coat on a chair? There are so many people and institutions and circumstances that irritate me. I need to save my energy for them.
Perfection, not progress.
Monday, June 15, 2009
Into the Valley of Death Rode the Five Hundred
One of the main benefits of The Program is that it teaches us how to manage our relationships better. In some respects this isn't that complicated a task because we're so self-centered and have behaved so badly that it's not hard to make a few changes. There's a lot to fix. We don't have to dig too deeply to find flaws. It's like we have ten rifles and one machine gun and we're blasting away at anyone who comes into our path -- we don't think, we just shoot -- and The Program takes away the machine gun. That's the good news. The machine gun has been doing a lot of damage.
But, of course, there's some bad news. Isn't there usually some bad news? Doesn't it usually involve hard work? God, I hate hard work. Anyway, we're so impressed that we're not killing people at a fearsome clip that we think we don't have to do anything else. Our sponsor points out that we may have to do something about the remaining rifles. We start taking them down, one by one. Some of them aren't too hard to give up. Some of them are hard to give up. And most of us keep a secret stash of rifles and the odd rocket propelled grenade launcher in our secret arms cache. Just in case.
I'm not adverse to firing up the machine gun from time to time.
But, of course, there's some bad news. Isn't there usually some bad news? Doesn't it usually involve hard work? God, I hate hard work. Anyway, we're so impressed that we're not killing people at a fearsome clip that we think we don't have to do anything else. Our sponsor points out that we may have to do something about the remaining rifles. We start taking them down, one by one. Some of them aren't too hard to give up. Some of them are hard to give up. And most of us keep a secret stash of rifles and the odd rocket propelled grenade launcher in our secret arms cache. Just in case.
I'm not adverse to firing up the machine gun from time to time.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
Helpful Gossip Only
Gossip: A person who chatters or repeats idle talk and rumors about others.
Shorty gave me a call the other day to ask my advice -- which should give you some idea about the quality of his sobriety -- about some advice a guy we know was giving to another guy we know. I don't think that we were gossiping, although that is something we like to do. We're pretty good at it. We practice a lot. And we know that the only way to make this type of defect any more enjoyable is to congratulate ourselves for never gossiping. We do that, too, with a beautiful sense of self-righteous oblivion.
One of the really cool things about gossip is that you can just make stuff up. It's like blogging in that regard. For instance, does anyone really believe that someone as improbable as Shorty could really exist? And if someone like that did haunt this earth, would I have anything to do with him? I'm better than that. I exist on a higher plane.
No doubt about it -- when engaging in gossip the truth is not required. If you can make yourself feel better by soiling the good name of another, then I say why bother with the facts? Make the person despicable so that you'll really feel like a Big Man or Big Woman, depending on your own personal circumstances. Hey, if I want, when I'm gossiping, I can dress up in women's clothes and feel like a Big Man in women's clothes. As long as you don't really care about personal integrity or living a spiritual life gossiping can be quite enjoyable.
I wanted to write about something else. I only have a vague recollection of what.
Shorty gave me a call the other day to ask my advice -- which should give you some idea about the quality of his sobriety -- about some advice a guy we know was giving to another guy we know. I don't think that we were gossiping, although that is something we like to do. We're pretty good at it. We practice a lot. And we know that the only way to make this type of defect any more enjoyable is to congratulate ourselves for never gossiping. We do that, too, with a beautiful sense of self-righteous oblivion.
One of the really cool things about gossip is that you can just make stuff up. It's like blogging in that regard. For instance, does anyone really believe that someone as improbable as Shorty could really exist? And if someone like that did haunt this earth, would I have anything to do with him? I'm better than that. I exist on a higher plane.
No doubt about it -- when engaging in gossip the truth is not required. If you can make yourself feel better by soiling the good name of another, then I say why bother with the facts? Make the person despicable so that you'll really feel like a Big Man or Big Woman, depending on your own personal circumstances. Hey, if I want, when I'm gossiping, I can dress up in women's clothes and feel like a Big Man in women's clothes. As long as you don't really care about personal integrity or living a spiritual life gossiping can be quite enjoyable.
I wanted to write about something else. I only have a vague recollection of what.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Baaaaaaalance.
Balance: Mental or emotional equilibrium.
We talked about balance in our meeting last night. I had to look the word up this morning because I have no idea what it means. For me, balance is what occurs when I spend an equal amount of time at the extreme ends of whatever spectrum I'm currently navigating. For instance, exercise compulsively or take a month off. Work 60 hours or disappear for a while. Dessert tonight? A prune or 47 Oreos buried in chocolate chip ice cream.
I always joke that I have two speeds: off or full acceleration. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to do something. I'm completely engaged. You got all of my attention. In some weird regard this can be OK. I get a lot done. But I've had to learn how to step out of the wildly spinning machinery and take a breath. If my knee is swollen to the size of a watermelon and is oozing blood and is throbbing with sharp pain, maybe I can skip the daily run. Nah, come to think of it, maybe I'll take tomorrow off.
A.A. has taught me how to strike a balance . . . sometimes.
We talked about balance in our meeting last night. I had to look the word up this morning because I have no idea what it means. For me, balance is what occurs when I spend an equal amount of time at the extreme ends of whatever spectrum I'm currently navigating. For instance, exercise compulsively or take a month off. Work 60 hours or disappear for a while. Dessert tonight? A prune or 47 Oreos buried in chocolate chip ice cream.
I always joke that I have two speeds: off or full acceleration. If I'm going to do something, I'm going to do something. I'm completely engaged. You got all of my attention. In some weird regard this can be OK. I get a lot done. But I've had to learn how to step out of the wildly spinning machinery and take a breath. If my knee is swollen to the size of a watermelon and is oozing blood and is throbbing with sharp pain, maybe I can skip the daily run. Nah, come to think of it, maybe I'll take tomorrow off.
A.A. has taught me how to strike a balance . . . sometimes.
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
More Rhetoric
Rhetorical Question: A question asked, as in oratory or writing, only for rhetorical effect, to emphasize a point, introduce a topic, etc., no answer being expected.
One of the rhetorical questions we hear in A.A. all of the time is: "Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" I guess this doesn't really qualify as a rhetorical question because we are expected to give an actual answer. We are expected, in fact, to give the correct answer.
I think the answer is simple: I want to be RIGHT! Being a hyper-active, hyper-competitive Type A personality I go right into Winner Take All mode whenever there is a contest of the wills. I want to win. I want to vanquish my opponent. I want this success even if I don't care a whit about what I win. I just want to win. Winner take all! King of the Hill!
SuperK calls me a Street Fighter and I don't think she's using this term in a complimentary fashion. She knows that, in a fight, I don't maintain very high standards. I pull hair, poke eyes, groin stuff, whatever it takes to end up on top, even if The Prize is a box of agitated scorpions.
This is an understandable point of view for someone with my amazing vision of How The World Should Work. I see far into the future. I know what's best for everyone. I can predict how everything is going to work out. I don't want to take one step back to gain two steps forward. I want to be moving forward with grim purpose and turbulent determination.
Don't you hate it when you cede just a little bit, and things work out better than you could have expected?
P.S.: I'm happily married.
One of the rhetorical questions we hear in A.A. all of the time is: "Do you want to be right or do you want to be happy?" I guess this doesn't really qualify as a rhetorical question because we are expected to give an actual answer. We are expected, in fact, to give the correct answer.
I think the answer is simple: I want to be RIGHT! Being a hyper-active, hyper-competitive Type A personality I go right into Winner Take All mode whenever there is a contest of the wills. I want to win. I want to vanquish my opponent. I want this success even if I don't care a whit about what I win. I just want to win. Winner take all! King of the Hill!
SuperK calls me a Street Fighter and I don't think she's using this term in a complimentary fashion. She knows that, in a fight, I don't maintain very high standards. I pull hair, poke eyes, groin stuff, whatever it takes to end up on top, even if The Prize is a box of agitated scorpions.
This is an understandable point of view for someone with my amazing vision of How The World Should Work. I see far into the future. I know what's best for everyone. I can predict how everything is going to work out. I don't want to take one step back to gain two steps forward. I want to be moving forward with grim purpose and turbulent determination.
Don't you hate it when you cede just a little bit, and things work out better than you could have expected?
P.S.: I'm happily married.
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