Path to Enlightened Insanity

So the arrival into Seattle on Sunday night didn’t quite go as planned. That morning I had arranged a hotel to stay at, and written out directions. I arrived to the hotel with no problems, but through a mistake on my/Orbitz’s part, I wound up at the wrong hotel and ended up having to go do some more driving and getting lost.

During this time one of the cats became increasingly unhappy, deciding that it was his mission in life to see how many times he could meow in a row.

One thing that annoys my boys is when they start incessantly meowing. Its alright if I can do something to calm them, but sometimes they’re just of the opinion that they’re unhappy and despite my best efforts there is no way I can address the root cause of their meowing.

I at this point was tired, frustrated and attempted dealing with the meowing cat in a number of ways, putting him in the back seat, petting him, and holding him. When these palliative measures didn’t work I resorted to utilizing the scruff on his neck and reminding him that my hand happened to be able to reach completely around his neck.

None of these methods worked, and they only increased the cat’s discontent and we spiraled into an ever escalating tit for cat, which I expected to end in either the cat putting his paws in his ears and going “meow, meow, meow”, developing some new dexterity and discovering that he could give me the middle finger with both paws at the same time, or both. In response to this I’d either have to get an insanely perturbed look on my face, debate about strangling him, or run off to my supervisor in a pissed rage. (Which oddly enough, given that I was the one driving and thus legally responsible for the car, I would’ve been my own supervisor, which would’ve just lead to an insanely schizophrenic argument.)

So you can understand when I arrived to the hotel I was extremely pleased to be there. I checked in, then parked and began unloading my stuff onto the luggage cart. Not thinking too clearly I left the doors wide open while I unloaded the car and both cats ran off.

I recovered one of the cats, and put him in the car for safekeeping, then went searching for the other one. I must have examined every bush and shadow pattern in the area and determined that it was a cat only to be stymied when I got closer. I must have spent about forty minutes that night looking around for the cat until I gave up and went to bed.

I got up in the morning and did some checking for him, didn’t find him, and deciding that I was in Seattle, I should go to a Starbucks. (no, not The Starbucks.)

So that night not having yet found the cat, I got a can of tuna out and opened in on the trunk, half expecting to have to wait for a good twenty minutes for the escaped convict to arrive.

Not even before the can was completely open, one errant miscreant came trotting towards my car, I not wanting to scare him off just acknowledged him, but continued opening the can. He in some insanity went and jumped in the car, completely avoiding the tuna.

So, my little hellian spent his first night in the Seattle area, wandering the streets of Renton.

sigh, and I thought I was the insane one.

So one of the things people have expressed is why did I throw away everything I had at Chiquita?

First, its an inaccurate statement. I didn’t throw away the knowledge, skills, or experience I had. And I honestly didn’t throw away the reference either, people have just assumed that I’m going to skin the cat in the normal way, which I’m not going to do.

Second, I’d rather be poor, destitute, and happy, than rich, comfortable, and unhappy. On the drive out I role-played a conversation where Dave, the director over my group, called and offered me more money to come back, I was going to say “You could offer me as much as Fernando (the CEO) but I’ll still say no.” (Mind you at $1.5 million a year, he makes my old annual salary every 9.1 days.)

I think one of the things that drove me nuts about Chiquita was the insidious pessimism that infests the place. To be fair the people that have been around for a while have earned their badge to be pessimistic, after being dragged through a bankruptcy and bunch of management changes and half baked initiatives, those that survived have had to develop certain defense mechanisms. Its my firm belief that this portion of the culture, was one of the driving reasons behind Fernando’s desire to relocate the headquarters to Atlanta or Miami and work to change the culture.

If you look at it I’m not the only talented one to leave the place. (Talented is how others at Chiquita have described me.) You could list anyone who has left the controllers group, or the people who’ve left the Walmart team, or even people who’ve left the Chiquita-to-Go team. I won’t get started on outside consultants, but suffice to say Deloitte Touche’s name is far too close sounding to Douche for their comfort.

Its ironic that I was scheduled to receive my first review the week I left. I think part of my sub-consious had put together that I was finding myself on a road of advancement within a company I’m not sure I wanted to be a part of.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Chiquita has great plans and the assets to execute them, I’m just not sure they have the culture or the personnel to execute them.

I just pulled up my portfolio, I own 15.8408 shares of Chiquita, which represents 22.143% of the current value of my portfolio as of 21 July 2006, and 40.280% of the purchase price of all my shares. I honestly don’t know what to do with these shares. Part of me wants to be a backseat cheerleader and hold onto them and watch Chiquita get their act together and execute on their plans, and part of me wants to just say “Screw it.” and sell off the shares.

One final thought about the culture of Chiquita. The stated mission is to build a high performance organization, part of which in my mind is building a diverse pool of people with different strengths and talents to drive the needs of the organization. So in some ways I’m amazed at the fact that when I bleached my hair a month or two ago, there was a bit of a concern going around for my potential future in the company. But what is a culture that is supposed to be a high performance organization doing worrying about what color one of the member’s hair color is? Its a bullshit waste of time, and the shareholders should be pissed. What does it matter if someone who doesn’t meet customers or venders in person changes their hair color?

I’ll leave you with one thought as to why I moved to Seattle: Today I saw a guy downtown today wearing a dress shirt, a tie, dress pants, a belt, and flip flops… It doesn’t matter what you’re wearing, it matters what you contribute.

I’m in Wyoming right now.

On Monday, I didn’t plan on being in Wyoming or anywhere near it.

I just watched a beautiful sunset over the mountains, and watched my boys enjoy themselves wandering around the foliage.

Four days ago I made what many people would call an irrational decision. I was at starbucks in downtown Cincinnati, essentially playing hooky from work. (Okay, I don’t quite view it that way most of the time. I get what I need to get done at work.)

But to the point. I was sitting there, coming to the realization that I was miserable in so many aspects of my life. Fundamentally I kept repeating to myself that “I can’t do this anymore.” Realistically, when someone is at this juncture there are two options: 1. Suicide. 2. Drastic change. So I made the decision then and there to move to Seattle, and I went about carrying out that objective immediately.

And I mean immediately. I went picked up a prescription, went back to work, cleaned out my desk of some important things, wrote an email that would only be delivered in 30 minutes, to my supervisors and coworkers that I was leaving, and I left. I went to AAA requested a Triptik, then went to Kroger and bought some necessary items, went home and packed some necessary items, loaded the cats in the car, dropped off my DSL modem, picked up my Triptik and left. From decision, to leaving: 5.5 hours.

Many people are surprised at what they see as an irrational decision. They’re right. It was an irrational decision. But there is the falsehood that people somehow expect others to be rational especially with the big decisions in one’s life.

People aren’t rational. If you go back and read the beginning of my blog, you’ll see me struggling with trying to rationalize love and loss of love. I’ve come to the conclusion that love isn’t rational. You can’t and shouldn’t attempt to rationalize it.

In the same way happiness is irrational. You can back rationalize it, but ultimately happiness is a mysterious concept that isn’t rational and cannot be rationalized.

So, I’m taking a leap, a leap of faith. I’m scared shitless. There is so much risk that I just assumed, but I have faith that I’m making the right decision, I have faith that things will find their way towards what they’re supposed to be, I have faith in my ability to understand and surmount the challenges that I’ve brought upon myself.

To the coworker who is pissing me off:

I’m sorry I ever gave a fuck about helping you.

I’m sorry I invested time in helping you do your job more quickly.

I’m sorry we started a ritual of sharing coffee every morning that crassly got stopped when we had a stupid argument.

I’m sorry you’re not mature enough to want to discuss it, despite my pleadings to the contrary.

I’m sorry you’re infatuated with the latest trick to come around, enjoy him for the couple of weeks he has left.

I’m sorry I even give enough of a crap to get annoyed by the fact that you won’t have a discussion with me about it.

To others:

I’m sorry to myself for dwelling over such bullshit when there is a childish bitch at the other end who can’t stop being so self centered to actually try to improve something.

I’m sorry for dragging others into this bullshit and wasting their time.

I’m going to be done with this in a minute.

I need to be done with this.

I’m done with it.

I think its horrendously ironic that the two people that I feel the most intimate with are people who I cannot be physically intimate with.

The first person is someone who I’ve known longer than anyone under the age of 30 should know someone they’re not related to. We’ve been there for each other. We each understand each other better than we understand ourselves. The time we’ve spent talking together is measured in months if not years. But, well she’s a she. And married.

The second person is someone who in comparison to the first I’ve only known for a blink of an eye. We met at a time we were both searching for something more in life. While we never spent a whole lot of time together before he moved a vacation where he was my host solidified our relationship in my mind.

I was reading Leave Myself Behind by Bart Yates and he has this beautiful passage on intimacy (p 56):

What can you say about loneliness except that it sucks? Most of the time I’m okay, but every once in a while I wake up in the morning and I’m so lonely I can’t stand it. I can hug Hoover till hell freezes over and it helps some but it doesn’t take away the ache of wanting another human being to hold.

…

Maybe physical intimacy isn’t always about touching. Maybe it’s also about being able to sit next to someone at dinner and not care if he takes something off your plate or reaches across you for the salt. Maybe it’s about being able to sprawl out on the floor and read a book in the same room with someone who’s grading papers and muttering about ‘incompetent boobs who couldn’t write a good paper if their lives depended on it.’ Maybe it’s about sharing the same space with another person and not going fucking crazy because you can’t get away from them.

That’s it. I guess: true intimacy is really just the run of the mill, day to day stuff that happens without thinking — thousands of simple, meaningless, comfortable ways you can be close to someone never dreaming how shitty you’ll feel when you wake up one morning with all of it gone.

That is the closest description I can find about how I feel when I’m with him. But for reasons that I wish were inconsequential we’ll have to stop.

So one of the things that really sucks about being at work and being tired is every coworker becomes that much more attractive. I’m about this ” close to just asking my friendly straight catholic coworker, if he would like a blow job — as just friends.

Hell, and this is from the guy who almost (?) made a scene calling an annoying co-op out on sexual harassment…

But, more to the point, instead of dancing around it.

But I got to thinking about what makes someone attractive to me, and I really think I’m attracted to people who are competent — smart, intelligent, know what they’re doing.

Somehow I don’t feel like I’m one of those people.. So much self doubt and
I’m attracted to arrogant-less competence. The more competent and less arrogant someone is the more likely I am to want to jump his bones…

Okay, so this is a random, mostly pointless rambling entry that will end here.

Succinct, able to convey volumes.

Volumes unexplainable by prose.

A way I should express myself more often.

I think I watch really sad television/plays so I remind myself that I can feel.

Its not that I can’t feel, but I strive for balance, and in some ways I strive for not overreacting on individual situations.

I’m a lazy student of Buddhism, and to a greater extent Stoicism. Life happens. It just is.

The guttural cries of emotional pain.

Remind me of the necessity, rarity of life.

That it is limited, finite.

So at this juncture I must consider two things.

1. Why I have difficulty brainstorming at a computer.
2. Why I have a nasty habit of working till all hours of the day.

Item one. Not quite sure why exactly this one is, but I find if I need to brainstorm about anything, be it a story, procedures, a blog entry, what to write in a paper, or even computer code! It very possible my brainstorming difficulties come from the tools that I am using on the computer. For the most part I don’t usually use the computer with the artistic tools. I know when I get into Photoshop I can get into a creative zone, but even photoshop elicits certain analytical tendencies. When I’m working with art there I’m thinking of developing art in a procedural computer based manner. I’m not feeling the art. For me photoshop isn’t about creating art than it is about translating vision. The art is already done, it just needs to be codified. Photoshop is the final tool that I manipulate for it to fit my inner vision. But it is unlike a paintbrush is to a painter. I find the tool disconnects me from art, it doesn’t connect me to art.

Item two. Which is ironic that I’m considering writing this here while I’m still at work. I think part of stems from I have difficulty from either cutting myself off from the work world, or stopping what I’m working on then restarting it. When I program I program in long stretches often lasting over eight or nine hours. (Mind you I’ve never programmed for pay.) I just finished this reasonably sized project for work that involved writing a bunch of procedures. Its odd but one of the things I needed to do while writing the procedures was to give myself time to just let the procedure stew in my head. I spent some time tonight at a restaurant, staring at the television screen working through the procedures in my head and the different requirements and possibilities that could meet the requirements. If I had gotten a phone call during that time I would’ve been derailed.

My mother once said I was always thinking. I’m not quite sure that’s true. I think it would be more accurate to say when I had a nice chunk of time I stopped and used it to think deeply. When I need to think deeply I need to have a nice chunk of time set aside. Otherwise I might as well not even try.

I had one of the oddest experiences this morning.

My landlady is having work done in the back yard, which is where I usually enter the building. Due to the construction I cannot leave that way, so last week my landlady gave me keys to her apartment and told me to walk through her apartment until the work is done.

Its been a bit weird walking through their apartment at all hours, but its become sort of normal. I just try to keep quiet and be respectful. If they’re around I just say hello, and continue on my way.

This morning I came downstairs and heard crying. As I walked through I saw my landlady sitting on the floor sobbing. I wasn’t sure what had happened.

Her sister had died of cancer.

After hearing this I needed to be there for her. I don’t think I provided anything substantial, an ear to listen, an offer for a glass of water, and a hug or two.

As selfish as it sounds it was helpful for me to be there for her, to fill a need, to share a small piece of raw human emotion. Being there has helped me feel, to remember what life is about.

I feel guilty that I’ve have gained something on someone else’s loss. But, I am thankful she allowed me to share the moment with her.