Over the holiday break I spent a lot of time thinking about my job and more specific to that, my performance at my job.  A year ago I received a performance review that I was far from happy with, and to this point I’m honestly surprised I wasn’t one of the many in my industry who lost their jobs for one reason or another.  It was bad enough that in a subsequent meeting with my supervisor to clarify some of the things we discussed, I mentioned an “air of inevitability” about my position.  I was lucky, however.  Very lucky, I think.

My problem wasn’t with the quality of my work.  I was told that I did my job as well as anybody else, but I wasn’t as assertive as I should be.  I didn’t disagree with this evaluation at all.  I’ve always been a wallflower, more or less, and if I could sit in my corner, crank out quality parts in a timely fashion and never turn work away, then I was golden.  This wasn’t enough, though.  Right or wrong, I was giving the impression that I didn’t understand the severity of information delays and timing issues as they came up, which was often.

In evaluating myself for 2009, I felt good about the progress I’d made in fixing this, and while I was given some indication that I had improved, it still wasn’t enough and again my review wasn’t as good as I’d hoped.  Fixing this will require a fairly drastic change in myself, and I’m ready and willing to do all I can to make that happen, however, I can’t help but admit that I feel a little overwhelmed by it.  In the few days since, I think I’ve already done well, but it’s been hard.  For ten years I was told that everything I was doing was fantastic, but this snuck up on me.  Again, I don’t disagree.  I just hope I can overcome it and become a better worker.

——–

Now I’m thinking I’d like to learn something new.  Not work-related, but in my spare time.  I used to come home, get on the computer, talk with the boys, play the Playstation, and generally do pretty much nothing before going to bed and doing it all over again the next day.  I took a programming class and I was burned out halfway through the semester.  I don’t think that was the path I wanted to take.

Today my six-year-old and I watched a show about the earth’s climate on The History Channel.  It was awesome.  It measured and highlighted major climatic changes over the last few million years and gave strong theories explaining why these changes occurred and what resulted from them.  11,500 years ago a drastic climatic change occurred that raised the earth’s average temperature by 18 degrees over a decade.  Our current average temperature has increased one degree since 1900.  One.  Look how worked up we are about it.  Can you imagine 18 degrees in a decade?  Holy hell!

Global Warming is a little more of a hot-button issue than I’d like to get into, but it got me thinking.  My son is really interested in science and space right now, so why not something like that?  Maybe the Large Hadron Collider or something.  Maybe find something simple to study, like the sun.  We made a date for the library for Saturday to dig deeper and find something cool to learn about.

I’m open to any suggestions as well.  Hopefully this gets me out of the funk I’ve been in for the last couple of weeks.

I decided during lunch today to crank up the music and focus on getting a task done that’s been pushed aside for just over a week now.  Not that I’ve been procrastinating about it, but rather it’s gotten prioritized behind numerous other assignments that have come across my desk since; assignments of much greater importance than this one.

Anyway, I plugged in the headphones into my iPhone, tapped iPod, then Shuffle Songs.  I was greeted by Radiohead, which was followed by Kings of Leon.  I couldn’t have thanked my phone enough for that, really.  It’s turning into one of those days.  As I’m typing this, the third song comes on – “Wake Up” by Rage Against The Machine.  My phone must like the new shirt pocket I put it in earlier today.

You may be wondering if there’s a point here.  I guess so, I just haven’t gotten to it yet.  A Twitter follower asked me today how I could not accept a friend request from relatives.  It’s actually pretty easy, but made me think a little deeper.  First of all, my family is nuts, but whose family isn’t?  It’s not that I don’t want to include them in my life or anything like that, it’s just that, oddly enough, a place like Facebook is my cave, so to speak.  I love my family, I really do, and I’m sure I bring upon myself many of the impressions they get of me.  At the same time, however, I wish they’d recognize that I’ve always been a quiet, self-contained person and let something like Facebook go as just that.  That’s all it is. 

It’s easier said than done.  It’s inevitable that I’ll get “the call” asking if I’m mad at someone.  I get up in the morning, I go to work, I come home and hang with my wife and kids, I go to bed and get up the next morning to do it all over again.  Last night at 6:30 I decided I wanted to go buy some new clothes.  I fly by the seat of my pants a lot but hardly ever to anywhere exciting.  I love my life and the people who are part of it.  But I also love my time and space, and those closest to me realize that and give me that.  I’m no different than I was 30 years ago.  Just see that.  Accept that.

Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

Regards,

phenom

I don’t know.

It’s like my eyes are being pulled into my head while a frying pan is simultaneously smacking my brain.  It’s strain and pain and frustration and irritation and it just doesn’t. Fucking. Go. Away.  It’s meds that mess with me so I change them and the new ones bring a whole new level of medieval on my ass. 

Worrying about my kids and money and house and trips and my health and my job and did I fuck up when I rejected an escrow account and the mortgage is only nine days late.  It’s I just got home and I’m hungry and I should be outside with the boys but all I want to do is lie on the couch and close my eyes and bask in the silence. 

It’s having to walk through a supernova of flourescent lights to get to the john because design quality moved next to us a year ago.  A 30-inch LCD that has the brightness turned down to a point where shadows are all I work with and holy crap that helped a little bit. 

It’s the break from all that that cool breezes and warm fresh air provide.

It’s the fact that the cool breezes and warm fresh air didn’t help at all at last night’s tee ball game.

It’s that sleep is my only respite and jobs and money and house and kids and cats and plastic keep me from enjoying it as much as I can.

It’s that I can’t fucking do the things I enjoy doing every day.

It’s that my doctor hasn’t called me back. 

I don’t know.

I’ve decided to start over here.  Right now, however, it’s time to get the boys pj’d and toothbrushed.  My old stuff is still around, but it’s over at http://blog.phenomsworld.com

So yeah, I’ll be back shortly.  Stay tuned.