Squidbits

Stupid performance reviews

Well, it's that time of year again. Time to dust off the ol' performance review plan my (old) boss and I put together early last year with all the lofty goals I would accomplish during the year. As a sales person, I'd say that pretty much if I didn't make my quota then I didn't "meet expectations" for the year. I had a crappy second quarter. I'm behind on my number. My customers screwed around and didn't do the upgrades I needed them to do. Does that mean I will get a "did not meet expectations"? Probably not, but I have to tell you that as I sat here tonight making comments to each of the "goals" that we put together last year I realized I accomplished a lot and yet nothing at the same time. Who knows what this will mean when I sit down with my boss for the final review. It is what it is and has to be done, but I still think it's bogus. On the plus side, I did stay the battery recycling lead for my office, so I have that going for me.

Counting my blessings

A lot of crap has been going on health-wise with some friends and family the last few months. Bad sh*t that makes me so sad just thinking about it. I have been grateful so many times over that right now my family is healthy and not having to deal with what these other families are going through. These mothers and fathers and grandparents deserve medals, but that still wouldn't make any of it go away. For those of you out there, and you know who you are, know that I think of you often, that I sometimes shed tears for you, and that I regularly send you prayers and hugs even if you don't know it. You're the reality check on a fast-paced life that makes me stop and hug my kids a little longer and drags me half-way around Houston chasing my marathoner.

Finding the time and space to think

This post is about two week overdue, but still worth a write. I was listening to the Diane Rehm show on 12/19 during which Diane had Pier Forni on to discuss his new book, "The Thinking Life" and on how to rediscover the art of thinking. That's right. Thinking. I mean, you're thinking right now as you read this. I was thinking when I wrote it. We think all day, right?

Wrong.

After listening to this interview, I would call what we do most of the time as information processing. My mind immediately went to work, where it's emails and meetings and trying to figure out how to deliver some kind of product or service. It also went to how I spend not a huge amount of time, but a pretty good amount of time, on digital devices doing things like checking Facebook, online shopping, and catching up on the news.

Forni postulates that these are really distractions. We are learning things for retrieval rather than learning to retain the information and to have deep, thoughtful discussions about them later. I couldn't help but remember the memoir writing class I took about three years ago and how at least once a week I really sat privately with my thoughts and wrote out something longer than a Facebook status update. It was the last time that I did that on a regular basis, and to be honest, the last year I have been yearning to do another creative writing class specifically for that reason but have not had the opportunity to do so due to other commitments. I resolve to change that after November and the leadership program I am in at work finishes.

So back to Thinking. What compelled me to write about this was what happened that evening after my band's dress rehearsal for Bayou City Performing Arts' Holiday Hoedown. A handful of us went to Cafe Express afterwards to grab a bite to eat and a drink. The conversations during our little post-rehearsal get togethers usually are about trivial things, but that night we got into a serious - THOUGHTFUL - discussion around the existence of God, or a God, or mutliple Gods, or no God at all. One of our friends told us he is an atheist and while I don't hold those same views and I don't think the others did either, it was really amazing listening to his thoughts on life and death and how clear he was in those beliefs, as well as the others in theirs. No one was messing around with their phones. It was a non-digital discussion with provocative questions. It made me love the band even more that we could be so open and affirming with each other even while disagreeing in certain beliefs, and even more importantly, sit around having a philosophical discussion that normally in our day-to-day lives doesn't happen. Well, at least for me it doesn't. It was in a word, awesome.

So as I type this with an hour to go in 2011, my resolution is to make more time every week to thinking. Whether that is thinking about long term account strategies at work or thinking about a particular relationship I have, I resolve to think.