Tuesday, August 17, 2010

The Ramblings of a Woman in Need of Something

It's been quite a day, quite a week actually. Ah, hell the past six weeks have been interesting.

So I sit here at my desk at the office and am fielding emails from an alarming number of colleagues across several government agencies still working at 8pm - your federal government never sleeps! And I need to take a mental break.

I give you my Top Ten Things About Me That Are Not Important Enough To Actually Take Up Someone's Time To Share Them With So I'll Blog About Them ---

10. My podiatrist actually recommended I wear heels to even out my hips. He said two inches but I pretend he meant three inches.

9. I sweat profusely on public transportation - buses and subways - even when I am one of three people on said bus or train car - it is alarming but it is how I justify taking cabs.

8. I rarely try clothes on before buying them.

7. I would love to wear flip flops as commuter shoes but fear the scorn of fellow women / fashionistas.

6. I think Ira Glass's voice is depressing.

5. I am terribly jealous of Crown Princess Mary of Denmark. (Yep, I admit to childishness here.)

4. When I say something is "interesting", that is not a good thing.

3. I am obsessed with stories of tragedies and will Google for more and more details.

2. I feel guilty that I did not do more to acclimate our family dog to condo living.

1. When I am home by myself I hold whole fake, soap opera-y dialogues with myself -- including the other people.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

The Promise of a Lifetime

Here is the poem I wrote for my husband and read to him at our wedding reception ten years ago today. No other words could be truer today. Happy Anniversary to the love of my life!!

This Promise

There is a silence
Broken
When a word
Is born -

Who could foretell
Who dared to dream
Yet here we are

What spinning universe
Fell out of sync
What power
Knotted in its own deceit
What desire
Quenched its enduring flame

And written song
Left unheard
Waiting still
For that voice
To make
The right touch upon our ear

The greatest pillars
Of history
Shook
With a mighty roar
I am sure
That foundations will falter -

That trees
Will sweep their stately
Boughs
To the ground
In prayer

On my soul
I swear
The sands
Will drink the overflow
of the ocean's tears

Because we loved.

Game Day

My senior year of college I played rugby - I needed something new - and during one game while I cradled the covetous ball, I was slammed on both sides by two of Amherst's finest. I am pretty sure the whole of Pioneer Valley heard the breaking of the four bones attaching my fingers to my wrist. As I lay on the ground where I had dropped to allow play to continue, I remember feeling stunned. Not physical pain stunned but stunned at how easily and purposefully the premeditated, brute force of the tackle had been delivered. I have been a tentative dancer ever since.

Somewhere in the middle of my career path I received a similar tackle. It was purposeful. It was forceful. It was premeditated and it left me stunned.

To be honest, it changed the way I work. The way I view the workplace. Now, the office is a pitch and the game is on. And I have learned to tackle.

I am not the wunderkind who flew up the career ladder, rather, I have zipped around like a tipsy bumblebee. While I have stayed consistent regarding the arenas within which I worked, my focus areas have been dizzyingly different. Truly. I skidded from education and youth to hospice and end-of-life care with a dog leg through international law.

Each punch, stumble, accolade, and day's end shows the world that I may be down, but I will never be out. The ball may not be cradled in my arms but it will...even if it means I have to do the tackling.

Through it all, I have felt the brightest light of commendation and the darkest cloak of betrayal and in between the slippery silk of disingenuosness. I have fired people, taken pay cuts, developed national resources, taken short cuts in my work, experienced negative treatment as a working mother, held colleagues and direct reports to impossibly high standards, taken personal days, worked through lunch with a sickening regularity and pretty much fought the good fight just like everyone else.

Lately the good fight has taken me on a longer daily tour of duty and so the blog has fallen by the wayside while I navigate this new phase of my flight of the bumblebee. You see, it would appear that I am in another rugby game.

I am cradling my ulcer and my career goals in my arms.

Tackled, I refuse to fall to the ground waiting for play to continue.