Dear Celeste: Moving On

I have a feeling that the Dear Celeste column in Bay Currents isn't going to continue much longer. It seems no one has taken the opportunity to write in a question. Maybe the demographics in my area are just plain wrong. In a way, I wish the publisher had picked another topic that I suggested for us to try out.

If Dear Celeste folds after the third time, I will try to sell the idea somewhere else. I still think I could be a "Dear Abby" type, because so many people come to me in real life looking for advice. Maybe in a newspaper that has a better circulation and attracts more attention, Dear Celeste will find her niche.

BHC Program on Journaling

Last Sunday we had a BHC program on journaling. Roger gave it, with his desultory storytelling style. Sometimes he digressed off the topic but he was speaking of his own memories, some of which very definitely should end up in a journal of some kind.

I mentioned that journaling has been shown to help women with metastatic breast cancer survive longer, and that it can be helpful in all kinds of ways. I also mentioned blogs and the ease of keeping a journal online, protected by passwords or other types of privacy if necessary. What I like about online blogs is that they can be embellished by photos and links to other websites, and now even videos (though, I don't anticipate putting videos on this blog anytime soon).

I mentioned also the most famous diary in the world, Anne Frank's. It was Anne Frank's diary that introduced me to the concept and gave me the idea to keep my own. Her diary shed light on the Holocaust, even if there are some anti-semitic liars who want to deny it ever happened. It also showed me that in other times and places, and even under the most difficult of circumstances, a teenage girl was a teenage girl. She fought with her mother and favored her father, and had her first (and only) love affair with the boy upstairs.

I've kept diaries on and off since I was 11 years old, and I've destroyed quite a few of them. A few years ago I destroyed hundreds and hundreds of pages, ripping them up in a Burger King, because I was afraid someone would find them and read them someday. Now I keep a blog that is open to the public, go figure!

Sometimes I've kept specialized journals, a travel journal for instance. Another example would be the journal I kept when I was pregnant, for a psychology experiment. The purpose was to explore bonding between the mother and unborn child, and whether a difficult pregnancy would interfere with it. I did have a difficult pregnancy so maybe I didn't bond optimally with Jason before he was born but I feel I bonded with him just fine afterwards.

I have so many memories and should probably try to put them into a book. Or, I could write them as separate articles and try to publish them, like "Mom's Egg Creams." That's another thing on my to-do list, write my memoirs. I think everyone should journal, because we've all got a story to tell.

Leaving a Job

Last week I left my old job and started working at a temp job instead. The old job was going south rapidly. As far as I can see, I bailed out just in time.

I had misgivings from the start. First, at the initial interview, I was interviewed by two women, one of whom was going to be my immediate boss. She said almost nothing throughout the entire interview. Wouldn't you think that the person who was going to work most closely with you would speak up, ask questions, and try to get to know you better? She didn't.

Then it took them a month to get back to me and offer me the job. I had given up and was looking elsewhere, convinced they had hired someone else and hadn't yet gotten around to telling me. I wonder now whether their front runners hadn't dropped out of the race and left me as the winner by default. In any case, they certainly took their time about hiring me, which was quite surprising given the volume of work they were facing and their desperate need to reduce it.

When I started, I wasn't in the best of shape. Jason was leaving for school the following week. I had tummy trouble that forced me to bring food into the office for breakfast rather than eat at home, because otherwise I would have to dash off the subway in search of a bathroom. These symptoms continued for a couple of weeks around the time that Jason went away.

They let me read old proposals for a day or two, which I devoured in the mistaken belief that what was written in these proposals was similar to the kind of text they would be looking for. Little did I know, these proposals were written by other grant writers before these two came along and re-did everything their own way. Thus, much of the language in these older proposals (a year or so old) was considered antiquated and "wrong."

Maybe that's how things got off base so quickly. I was assigned to write a proposal and right away, the endless rewriting started. As I always say, I am not in love with my own words, and I am always willing to revise or incorporate other people's suggestions. Very quickly, though, the revisions and revisions of revisions undermined my confidence and made me feel that no matter what I did I could not write to these young women's satisfaction.

And young they are, and rather too convinced that they know the only right way to do things. Yes, they may have more experience at writing grants, but they do not have the life experience I have, and they are totally unable to compromise or accept ideas that do not jive with their own. That's going to catch up with them. They may be good fundraisers, but they are lousy managers.

Mistakes? Yes, I made mistakes. As my confidence fell because of the endless nitpicking, I became rattled and missed details I normally would have picked up on. I was shocked at my own inability to spot mistakes. Then again, something very odd happened on my last day there that convinced me that at least some of my "mistakes" hadn't been my fault. I made certain changes to an application and saved them. (If you don't save them, as anyone with a computer knows, you will get a reminder asking if you want to save your changes). I knew I'd done that. Yet when my boss opened the file to look at it, only some of my changes were there, and others weren't. So something was up with the computer, perhaps, that had contributed to my puzzlement and my apparently huge collection of errors.

The nitpicking became close to unbearable just before Christmas. I'd made an error with a report, yes, but I also was subjected to nonsensical changes like substituting text for a bullet list. This is so picayune and unimportant. I am sure that no one ever got a grant or lost a grant, strictly on the strength of the presence versus the absence of a bullet list, especially in a report rather than in the proposal. But here I was at odds with my boss, arguing over whether a bullet list was "wrong" in the context of this report.

Then her boss, too, sat me down and chewed me out over exactly the same issues. One of the complaints they had about me was that I "made" them duplicate their work. In this instance and others it was certainly their own choice! When I was asked what I could do to make the situation better, I could not see a solution. I'd suggested fixing up the electronic files so that they would be more logically arranged and I'd be able to find what I needed faster. This plan was rejected because the head of the department supposedly preferred the filing system as it was. In fact, any suggestions I made were shot down. So I suggested that I be allowed to send my proposals out the door without these two reviewing them. Of course they said no because they "couldn't trust my writing." But it certainly would have cut back on their workload, and it also would have provided a clear test of whether my writing standing on its own could bring in grants, as it has in other organizations.

While my immediate boss was away, I worked diligently and tried to be on top of everything, hoping that this would convince her boss that I was a good worker and that my immediate boss was the one who was micromanaging me. But when we finally talked, 3 weeks later, this young woman also took the attitude that my work was still not up to par, I wasn't familiar enough with the programs, and that I was not saving the two of them any time.

How that's possible I don't know. I pointed out an instance where I was told first to remove some paragraphs from a letter, and later told by the same person to put them back in plus a little bit more. But she refused to see that my boss was the one who was inconsistent, and blamed it on me for not "calling my boss's attention" to the guidelines. The fact is, though, the guidelines were open to some interpretation, and she chose to interpret them one way first and another way a few hours later. And somehow that's my fault!

Then I heard there would be another meeting to discuss my ideas for improving my work the following week, and a review of how things were going. I knew that just giving it a week wasn't a good sign, and I debated whether to resign or to try and hold out for another month to be eligible for unemployment. Fortunately, just at that time, I received a call from my temp agency and an offer for a temp job that pays less but is more diverse, and represented a face-saving way to get out of this no-win situation.

There's a joke about a man who is drowning, and he calls out to God for a miracle to save him. First some men paddle by in a rowboat and they offer to pick him up, but he refuses, saying God will save him. The rowboat leaves. Then a motorboat comes by and the owner offers to save him. Again he turns it down saying God is going to work a miracle on his behalf. The motorboat leaves too. Then, as he's going down for the last time, a helicopter shows up and lowers a ladder to him. The co-pilot shouts to him to grab the ladder and climb up. But no, he puts all his trust in God, and the helicopter flies away, leaving the man to drown.

When he gets to Heaven, he says to God, "Why didn't you save me with a miracle? I trusted in you and look what happened!" And God answered, "Whom did you think sent the rowboat, the motorboat and the helicopter?"

I felt a little like that man because one of my old jobs contacted me while I was working at this place and asked me to come back twice. Both times I turned them down, before things really got bad. A week or so later, when the writing was on the wall, I called the old company back and asked if the job was still open, but it was already taken. So when the temp job came along, let's just say I recognized it as the helicopter!

I was so excited and happy when that temp job came through. For whatever reason, this was the first time in my life that I left a job with another one lined up. Even if this only lasts 2 months at least I had somewhere to go. It was so much better than having to leave with nothing -- which was going to happen if a miracle of sorts hadn't come along. It was great to go to that meeting the next day and tell them I was leaving before they had a chance to rip into me again. I don't know what they were planning to say, and I couldn't care less.

I hope, as they sit up till midnight writing grants, they remember telling me that I wasn't saving them any time.

The Ugly Tax?

Yesterday I read that one proposal for NYC to raise more money from its citizens was to impose a tax on cosmetic surgery. Since it is largely optional except for those unfortunate cases where a person is brutalized by an accident or a mugging, or a child is born with a deformity such as a harelip, I can't disagree with the idea. So many people run out and get their faces tucked and nipped, their wrinkles ironed out, their noses bobbed to look Irish Catholic when they were born Semitic, etc. Why shouldn't vanity have a tax on it?

Maybe looking into the mirror and buying into society's dictates that everyone must look bright eyed, bushy tailed, and under 30 years old is a flaw that should be taxed. But then shouldn't we also impose a tax on the advertising industry that convinces us we aren't up to par? It seems to me our concept has become: if you don't look like Brad Pitt or Paris Hilton (name your celebrity flavor of the week here), you're downright ugly and your face and body need fixing. Oh, maybe working out excessively should be taxed also. Anyone who works out more than the recommended amount might have to pay a tax on it too. But just how would we find that out? Checking on people's gym attendance? We've got enough Big Brother watching us as it is.

So yes, let's tax cosmetic surgery when it isn't warranted because of unusual circumstances like an accident or an obvious deformity. If you want it just to cover up the fact that -- gasp!! you're getting old..or you just feel plain butt-ugly...yes, you ought to pay a tax to the city for being so vain. Do I hear Carly Simon singing?

Bet you think this song is about you.

Another Great Evening with the BHC

Last night we had another great evening with our friends from the Brooklyn Humanist Community. We met at Robin and Michael's apartment in Kensington. It's one of those great old buildings, probably dates back to the 1930's, with some lovely detail in the rooms that you never see nowadays. Archways, glass doorknobs, etc. Robin and Michael have two beautiful cats, an orange one and a dark silver tabby with quite a voice. They are both adorable but Falstaff (the tabby) is a real lover.

We got underway a bit late since a few people had a hard time getting there. The potluck dinner was terrific: a huge salad, vegetable lasagne, and a yummy pasta salad with roasted pine nuts on top. For dessert we had strawberry shortcake with a heart shaped cookie in honor of Valentine's Day.

The topic was "Moral Ideals," and the discussion as usual was broad-ranging. Because we started late and spent a good deal of time on the first six paragraphs of the chapter, Kurt decided we would finish up the discussion on the rest of the chapter at next month's Reflection.

It wasn't so much the words that were said but the warmth that was felt in that room. We are so fortunate to have stayed friends through all that happened, when some other friends were lost because they cast their lot in with the other side at BSEC.

At the final go-around everyone mentioned that warm feeling and how much we care for one another. I'd like to see us grow and expand but if we never do, we'll still have each other. And that's wonderful.