-=> Quoting Damon A. Getsman to Nancy Backus on 14-Jun-2015 17:38 <=-

 DAG> Re: Re: Misc and parents at another level (was  trying again)
 
 NB>> For sure... Had he had any management experience previously...?  One
 NB>> can hope that by now he's learned how to do the basics... or that
 NB>> they've figured out that he isn't going to work out...
 DAG> That was the bit that really surprised me.  He'd had plenty of
 DAG> experience as a manager, but it had obviously been his first gig. 
 DAG> Also, it was at a fast pizza joint, which is really not much like a
 DAG> fully organic convenience service atmosphere, except in that it is
 DAG> serving food.  Once you cross the threshold into the kitchen it's a
 DAG> very different matter from any place just slangin prepared and heavily
 DAG> preserved ingredients. 

Some aspects of being a manager would carry over from one to the other,
but moving from fast food to prepared food would take it up a notch or
two...  :)

 DAG> So I think what happened is that when he got to a place where he had
 DAG> at least 5x as many irons in the fire at once, it started affecting
 DAG> things in a detrimental fashion all around even the skill set that he
 DAG> did already have. 

A lot more mananging to keep track of...  so unless he was a natural
manager, there'd be a huge learning curve... 

 DAG> Either which way, I've well decided to go with
 DAG> different currents now; I am very much hoping that I don't have to do
 DAG> that kind of work to survive ever again.
 
From what I've seen so far, you don't need that sort of a
pressure-cooker environment...  :)

 NB>> Having had the experience, it's something that you can call up in
 NB>> memory to remind you of the perspective... volunteering in similar
 NB>> settings can do the same thing... :)
 DAG> I do miss some of the volunteer work that I did.  Most of it was for
 DAG> like $7 an hour (I wish I were making that up), but it did manage to

$7 an hour...?   That's $7 more than I ever got volunteering... ;)  All
my volunteering was for free, and largely not even recognized...  :)

 DAG> provide a bit of pride and conscience about the different things that I
 DAG> was accomplishing in my day, as well as the different issues that I
 DAG> could really have to be dealing with in my day.  It was funny, now that
 DAG> I look back at my primary stretch in that work I actually came upon
 DAG> that experience running from other things that I had to deal with.  I
 DAG> had come out of one of the longest, best, relationships that I'd had to
 DAG> that point, and my heart was thoroughly shattered.  I had been awaiting
 DAG> enlistment in the navy for almost a year, and then they turned me down
 DAG> just a few days before I was supposed to ship out.  I ended up
 DAG> snagging two jobs, one at a McDonald's, and one doing the work that I
 DAG> was talking about above, and I was working regularly 70+ hours a week
 DAG> in order to save up what I could for a new start and to keep myself
 DAG> distracted from the suffering at any cost.  Having that one job,
 DAG> working with people in much more dire circumstances than myself was,
 DAG> perhaps, one of the best things that could've happened to me at the
 DAG> time. 

Valuable experience, even if it didn't pay well... both jobs,
actually... ;)   But the one that gave you some perspective was indeed a
good thing for you there... one can so easily be so caught up in one's
own sufferings that they don't see that their own might not be the worst
possible thing in the world after all... 

 DAG> Well, I've got a little programming in my upbringing that I'm trying
 DAG> to work over as far as insecurities and the like.  I think I've done
 DAG> pretty well working to stretch into my 4th decade, though.  There is
 DAG> also the fact that I've turned around a great many personal habits that
 DAG> were valid points to be insecure about, as well.  While I may not be at
 DAG> a perfet spot yet, there would be a steep climb in my rate of
 DAG> improvement over the last 6-7 years from the background that I'd
 DAG> previously had.  It's something to be proud of, and I suspect that that
 DAG> rate is being kept high due to my son.  I guess what I'm trying to say
 DAG> is I don't know if I'll ever quash them and become the Buddha, but I'm
 DAG> doing my best at making sure that I can deal with my insecurities.

I doubt any of us would become the Buddha... but learning how to manage
the insecurities is probably useful enough... :)

 NB>> Thank you for the well wishings...  :)  She's continuing to do better,
 NB>> growing stronger and able to do more things independently again... we
 NB>> still have to be there just in case, and for the stabilizing hold now
 NB>> and then... so I'm still taking some shifts of care coverage.  When she
 NB>> went for her followup visit to the surgeon to get the staples removed,
 NB>> he was quite pleased with her progress, and pronounced it a success.
 DAG> I'm very glad to hear that all went as well as can be hoped for.  :)
 
Progress continues, though slowly...  She always has been slow at
bouncing back, anyway...  Now we just have to figure out how we are
going to manage her care when we go camping as an extended family...
some will be in tents, some in cabins, so at least we aren't going to
have to worry about how to deal with her in a tent...   But there are
a few other logistics still to work out... :)

 DAG> I used to spend a whole lot more time on some of those web-based
 DAG> networks. It's taken me multiple years, but as my priorities have
 DAG> changed I've really found that I don't want that time sink either.  I
 DAG> find often these days that I'll wake up, and when I first get bored
 DAG> I'll open some tabs to those different sites.  As a little bit of time
 DAG> passes, though, or once I scroll a screenful or three, I find that I
 DAG> could really care less about the content on there, and I don't really
 DAG> have the motivation to add content that I really find meaningful
 DAG> myself.  Those media seem to be the equivalent of background static to
 DAG> me these days.  I find more and more that I'm missing a day, or two, or
 DAG> even three, before I know it, in days that I have those tabs open and
 DAG> sitting and waiting. 

From what I've seen, there's not a lot of meaningful content... even
when meaningful things are being shared... 

 DAG> These kinds of forums, the text-based ones, I
 DAG> don't think I'll ever totally unplug from.  There's far too much depth
 DAG> of character and feeling that's expressed here that doesn't work its
 DAG> way into the different web-based social media as often.  I always have
 DAG> to love being able to jump to a different echo and get my 'cantankerous
 DAG> a-hole' quota of the day with just a couple of keystrokes, too.  ;)

As long as you do it in the appropriate echoes...  ;)

 DAG> My issue lately seems to be more dealing with the world as it has
 DAG> progressed in the decades where I've been too plugged in for too long. 
 DAG> I think back to different eras in my life, particularly when I was
 DAG> living on some urban property in Jersey, and I remember how easy it was
 DAG> to make an entire neighborhood full of aquaintences within a really
 DAG> short number of days.  You could just walk up the hill and spend an
 DAG> afternoon doing that, with or without a case of beer to share to lube
 DAG> the communication flow, and before you knew it it was nighttime and you
 DAG> still had half of a block unexplored going in the opposite direction
 DAG> for the next day.  Maybe I'm making up the reasons for this in my head,
 DAG> but I can't help but see social media as being somewhat responsible for
 DAG> this.  People think they're a million times more plugged in to the
 DAG> happenings in others lives and the like, but if you put them all in a
 DAG> room what do they do?  They all reach for the smartphone and start
 DAG> blogging about what's going on, instead of meeting new people IRL.

You might be just a bit cynical there... but I've seen the same thing,
actually...  :)  It's still possible to meet one's neighbors in person,
but it takes more effort, and people aren't nearly so much in evidence
as one walks down the street anymore, either... 

 DAG> Indeed.  Hence my lateness to reply to this.  Illness has been doing
 DAG> laps around the different people in this apartment, too, so it's been
 DAG> rougher than normal lately.  I really hope that my employer understands
 DAG> the illness bit when we're only hitting about 50% of the hours that
 DAG> we're authorized.  'Course, betting on the budget requirements of the
 DAG> client, there's a good chance that [at least the client] will be
 DAG> grateful for the easiness on their pocketbook. Still, I really like to
 DAG> be a bit more consistent with all of this. Unfortunately I'm not just
 DAG> at the mercy of whenever I can put hours in; there's also other people
 DAG> in the equation who don't exactly have the same drive to work as I do.

Just have to make sure that you keep the employer in the loop when
illness takes its toll...  I trust that the illness has finally run its
course and let you all be back to normal...?

ttyl       neb