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Comments on this blog have been broken for some time. I have now acquired the wherewithall to start the correction process. It does not seem to be as easy as people think. So stay tuned. Send me e-mail, I will try to post e-mail comments once comments come onboard again. Fair enough?
I had a major revelation this morning, as usual. The Solution training that I am working through has expectations at the core of the philosophy. By Kit 3, which is where I am, the concept progresses to something called Basic Expectations. These are expectations that come underneath ones you already have. For example, you might have an expectation that used cars tend to break down, and that you need to buy new. A basic expectation underneath that, is that you are unlucky.
To change your expectations, one must identify the old basic expectations, and then move towards the new basic expectations which you have also identified. Doing this identification is hard work, and even once you are there, the movement is hard as well. New basic expectations have an awkward feel, at least in my experience, and tend to have a bizarre and untenable quality. I have a short list of my own new basic expectations which I will list here. The revelation of this morning is, they seem suddenly far more tenable and the bizarreness has been replaced by familiarity and cameraderie. (Can you have cameraderie with a concept? I sure hope so).
Basic Expectation List
* Stability is a method of going about things. Stability is unseen.
* I need to provide a foundation of support to withstand the attacks of age, frailty, and overindulgence. I am sensitive and need support.
* I deserve respect.
* I am human, mortal, and there will only be time in this life to do my true work if I choose to make it happen.
* My capabilities are unique.
* I am always visible.
* My survival depends on hoe much I honor the information I get from myself (a trusted source).
The nifty thing about these new basic expectations is they each have a history. Just as you would invert the lie to find the truth, the old basic expectations are the inverted state of each of the concepts above.
I am so happy to be able to share the above and feel such confidence in the truth of it, which was not the case even just last night.
This rant and rave of Chris's is so funny. SO FUNNY! Yet you can't help feel sorry for the presenter who hadn't updated his slides since 1997. This, undoubtedly, is why they serve liquor on airlines.
In a completely rash act of fiscal irresponsibility, my dh and I purchased a night in a hotel room in the sweet little town of La Conner, WA. The room, the best the hotel had to offer, was slightly less expensive than the babysitter we paid to spend the night with the kids back at home. King bed, jacuzzi tub, suite layout, breakfast, the works. It was perfect and so easy.
It is very odd getting off the track of your daily life. For me, the first thing I noticed was the sound. Specifically, the lack of noise. No whining, no city noise, nothing. I listened to the coffee maker tick off how long it was going to keep the warmer on before automatically shutting off. I listened to plumbing. I could hear my bare feet against the carpet as I walked. Placing the bathrobe on the hook made a sound. It is amazing how much presence sound has, and when the backdrop disappears the effect is eerie.
Another thing I noticed is I don't really have any threads going. I don't currently have a rich intellectual life or engaging hobbies that occupy my mind throughout any blank stretches. This is a natural response to there not being any blank stretches. The way I noticed this absence of threads was that I certainly did not want to spend money on anything, and I felt a sort of loneliness for the thing I would be doing instead.
Certainly the town was filled with people spending money. Specifically, it was filled with retired, white people who look-like or actually-do own boats. Couples. Attire towards the term "jaunty." Stores sell bags, imported italian hand blown glass chickens for your floor, wire champagne carafes. Children would be welcome if well behaved, but we saw few. The ice cream cones are loaded and mandatory. There is a candy store, several cafes and restaurants, and some fried choices from stands. It is a lovely town, one of my favorites. And yet this time I saw only consumption, things to buy for kids but not with the kids. I saw distractions from the loneliness of reaching retirement without developing engaging hobbies.
One night is perfect for a vacation without any sort of a mission. We followed the hotel's recommendation for dinner (the hotel was the Channel Lodge and the dinner place started with the word Nell). We were treated, but not oppressed, by the quality of the food. A treat to have something besides crab stuffed shrimp or vice versa. We talked about what it means to have a piece of music be catchy, and what might the "new catchy" be. Tried not to talk about the kids too much, or the job.
The next day we decided to walk out to the suspension bridge. A little dog decided to do this too, leading the way for us, license tags and all. The dog knew all the trails and pointed them out, then rushed on ahead of us once he realized we were going to stay on the road. The bridge was a little scary, we only walked out partway. Then we walked back to town and eventually the dog left us.
Having avoided fried food for 2 meals, we succumbed at lunch. We were instantly surrounded by father's day obligatory lunchers. They spoke loud to their dads and the dads spoke even louder back. One son explained to his dad what a fork was. Not sure what that was all about.
How wonderful to get home in only 2 hours, kiss the boys, and not have to unpack for more than two people. I'm not ready for retirement yet, nor do I have enough engaging hobbies to sustain more than one night "out there." But I can have the life just for one night. I can get it to quiet down just for a short time.
My readers: so smart, so connected, so... um... PATIENT! With me they are patient, anyway.
And although I am in a position only to give, having received so much, here I am in a position to ask again:
Based on your knowledge, either anecdotal, or first-hand, what small software companies are out there in the Seattle-Greater Eastside area? The goal is not an exhaustive list but a hopefully more narrow one. The hope is the companies would have the following characteristics:
- Be expanding their team, more engineers, more program and product managers
- Require their team members to wear many hats
- Perhaps currently staffed, one could say "seeded," by veterans of other larger companies and products
- Be looking to do things right, including all methodologies and priorities that would support that effort
If you have a short list, even a short list of one, please leave it here in comments or trackback.
Peace, out.
One terrible few months when our oldest was a baby, we were moving out of a rental house and into our own. The landlord went nuts on us, the baby wasn't eating, we had just written some very large checks and there was no sense of safety and security in the world. Baby's weight had dropped 3 pounds since birth. We were beside ourselves.
One particular way the landlord went nuts was to become obsessive in every case where we had fixed something. The thermostat, which we replaced because the old one was broken. He wanted us to bring back the old one, put it on the wall, and called us thieves for not doing so. We didn't even tell him of the thousand dollars of work underneath his lawn to keep his bamboo from spreading into the grass. But the worst thing was the mug rack. This is a typical 1970s era mug rack, accordion style, with little pegs that you hang the mugs on. The pegs were weak from much use, and we brashly threw it away when it failed on us and broke several dishes (because it hung right above the dishwasher). The landlord would not accept money for these infractions. He would not name his price. He wanted his mug rack back. Only then could we be free of the property. We sent our family on crusades to full price retail as well as thrift stores. We went online. I hired the company concierge to find one. It had to be exact. We could not replace the mug rack, due to inherent design problems a mug rack such as that could not be found, as they disintegrate over time. We wept, for this and other things we were trapped with, lost all perspective, and clung to the resolution of this problem as the thing that would restore safety to our world.
I would like to say I am grownup enough that this would never happen to me again, but every transaction has a risk of someone going nuts. Even getting in your car and driving is a transaction of source, between the triangular points of insurance, car payment, and the law. However, now when something happens that is small, yet rocks our world out of its axis of security, we say "that's a total mug rack." And people overhearing us would certainly wonder, but we don't.
Today I link to this article on stress. In the Solution method I am following, there is a technique called lifestyle surgery which allows people to lower their threshold of need for the skill of providing for yourself and setting reasonable limits for what you will take from others. Reading this article will give lots of fuel for thought in this regard... or at least evidence for why a certain change is required.