Ubuntu
My cats have given up on me and gone to bed. I still have to enter my time for the day, something I ask my employees to do but am having a hard time doing myself. I have spent the last few months having very painful conversations with people I love and almost have lost myself and my reasons for moving forward in it. I knew this was going to happen before I took this position, this coveted, vexing, unasked for position. This is management.
I like learning for learning's sake. School was my favorite subject, while recess was a hated past time. I can't remember not being this way. I have been asking, "What next?" my whole life. I didn't have any aspirations for school other than mastery. Something about doing a task well, efficiently, and solving the puzzle in front of me was enough. I found it engrossing.
Management scares me. At my first job, Adam, my manager told me I would make a good manager one day. I was 15. I quit before I turned 16. I could see where this was going, and I wasn't excited. I stumbled my way into my first management position by accident. I was just trying to keep me and my ex alive in Oklahoma. I almost lost that job a couple of times, and I was demoted once. They thought I would leave. I was hungry. (Like, I-am-making-tortillas hungry because all we had was flour and oil left in the cupboards.) Still, I found making the numbers satisfying. I loved my co-workers, and I learned as much as I could about every position in the company, doing things above my pay grade to show my loyalty to the company. (Actually reminds me of a few people who work for me right now, people I am so thankful for.)
But when I was asked to step into this position, I didn't want it. I don't have the ability, or maybe the inclination?, to learn every person's job in my organization. I cannot do what they do. Without their help, I am sunk, and I know it. Still, I must ask them to do these things. I must ask them to perform small miracles in a language that I can't speak all the while trying to advocate for their best interests and the best interests of the company as a whole. I must stand between worlds and try to decipher the next right choice, sometimes without all the information, to make that choice. And I must learn to do it with impeccable decorum, something I have yet to master.
Why am I doing this? Because two people I love are in pain and the only way I can help is to go through this with them. Because they asked me to. Because I want to see what they built survive. Because something in me wants to make it alright, worth it. And because I wish I could give every goofy kid who didn't quite fit in a safe place. Because they get my sense of humor, and if they don't, they have their own quirk that makes mine not feel so awkward. Because I have a very unique skill set that involves being there in transition and weathering storms. And because I would rather be working and spending my life with my family than with strangers, dreaming about the day when I will finally be able to make awkward little Christmases.
So I do it for me. I do it for them. I do it for us. "I am what I am because of who we all are."
I like learning for learning's sake. School was my favorite subject, while recess was a hated past time. I can't remember not being this way. I have been asking, "What next?" my whole life. I didn't have any aspirations for school other than mastery. Something about doing a task well, efficiently, and solving the puzzle in front of me was enough. I found it engrossing.
Management scares me. At my first job, Adam, my manager told me I would make a good manager one day. I was 15. I quit before I turned 16. I could see where this was going, and I wasn't excited. I stumbled my way into my first management position by accident. I was just trying to keep me and my ex alive in Oklahoma. I almost lost that job a couple of times, and I was demoted once. They thought I would leave. I was hungry. (Like, I-am-making-tortillas hungry because all we had was flour and oil left in the cupboards.) Still, I found making the numbers satisfying. I loved my co-workers, and I learned as much as I could about every position in the company, doing things above my pay grade to show my loyalty to the company. (Actually reminds me of a few people who work for me right now, people I am so thankful for.)
But when I was asked to step into this position, I didn't want it. I don't have the ability, or maybe the inclination?, to learn every person's job in my organization. I cannot do what they do. Without their help, I am sunk, and I know it. Still, I must ask them to do these things. I must ask them to perform small miracles in a language that I can't speak all the while trying to advocate for their best interests and the best interests of the company as a whole. I must stand between worlds and try to decipher the next right choice, sometimes without all the information, to make that choice. And I must learn to do it with impeccable decorum, something I have yet to master.
Why am I doing this? Because two people I love are in pain and the only way I can help is to go through this with them. Because they asked me to. Because I want to see what they built survive. Because something in me wants to make it alright, worth it. And because I wish I could give every goofy kid who didn't quite fit in a safe place. Because they get my sense of humor, and if they don't, they have their own quirk that makes mine not feel so awkward. Because I have a very unique skill set that involves being there in transition and weathering storms. And because I would rather be working and spending my life with my family than with strangers, dreaming about the day when I will finally be able to make awkward little Christmases.
So I do it for me. I do it for them. I do it for us. "I am what I am because of who we all are."
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