Da Vinci

It's funny, on Tuesday I managed to write two entries, but since then, nothing. Nada. Zip. I have felt mentally spint and don't really have very many thoughts swimming in my brain at the moment. 

This must be what writer's block feels like. Ugh. It sucks.

Anyway, I've been toying around with an idea, but I haven't decided if I should do it or not. I was sitting in Barnes and Noble the other day reading this book on Da Vinci and discovered that he carried a notebook around with him everywhere he went, so he could write down all the little thoughts that occur to him. Sometimes they were deeply profound, sometimes they weren't, but he noted everything none the less. I'm wondering if this is something that I should do. I have a million thoughts in my head every single day and the vast, vast majority of them go nowhere. I don't know... maybe there is something very deep and profound in this vast wasteland that is my brain that is just dying to get out.

Good Bye for Real

I wrote a post, exactly two weeks ago from today, that I was going to be quitting my job at Hastings. What you guys should know, however, was that post was a partial lie. At the time it was, anyway. I wasn't really quitting Hastings at that time, rather, just taking a leave-of-absence while I sorted things out and let the two sides of my brain, the practical and the emotional, duke it out before I decided for sure.

Yesterday, however, I decided that I have stalled long enough. I gathered all the courage I could muster, and, as nicely as possible, walked in there and quit. I don't want to burn that bridge entirely, so I said that I would be interested in re-hire, but at the moment, I don't really know when or if I will be back.

Note that I used the word "stalled". It really was just that. I had made the decision in my mind that I was going to quit on the 10th, but I just didn't do anything about it until yesterday. The reason it took so long is simple: I still have an emotional attachment with that company. Some of the most interesting times of my life were spent there and the vast majority of my current friends were made while working there.

It's funny, however, in this instance that the practical reasons ended up outweighing the emotional ones. With me, it's usually just the opposite. From a time stand point, it didn't make sense to keep the job, from a financial stand point it didn't make sense to keep it and from a physical stand point, it didn't make sense to keep it either.

These two conflicting sides of the brain, the practical side that clearly favored me quitting and the emotional side that wanted to stay did fierce battle. Like I said, the practical side doesn't usually win, but I think it had some help with the fact that my emotional side was somewhat conflicted and not at full strength. Emotionally, I also had reasons for quitting. The people I was attached to and the job I liked were 400 miles away. Basically, I knew the good ol days of me and Hastings were over.

Maybe it takes a biased and strengthened practical side for it to finally win out, but all-in-all, it is for the best.

Weak Policy

I'm feeling very sluggish today. Last night was one of those nights where I woke up at 3am, my mind started racing, I was unable to get back to sleep. It used to be a regular occurrence, but thankfully, it now only seems to happen when something particularly pressing is on my mind.

The way I see, at least in theory, there should be relatively few issues that keep you up at night. Finances, perhaps, maybe job or relationship worries, that's about it. My issues, of course, are usually nothing like that so I always find myself hating myself more for the issues that keep me up.

Over the past few years, my sleep issues have been largely future related. What am I going to do next? In my saner moments, I have a very staunch policy of letting the future take care of itself and let me worry about the present. This view was an off-shoot of my new post-cancer mentality. But in my weaker moments, especially when something startles my emotional equilibrium, I start to think about it. Unfortunately, I usually start to think about it at 3 in the morning.

What caused my unrest last night? It was sort of a wicked chain of events: first, I got an exam back with a grade much lower than I had expected and with, frankly, some bullshit grading. This exacerbated the feelings of hate I had for that class that already existed (not so) deep within me. This got me thinking, "what if I lose initiative and slack off to such a degree that I mess up the class?" Granted, it probably won't happen, but still, that was my thinking. Second, with these thoughts still swimming in my brain, the professor delivered the most disorganized, god-awful lecture I'd ever had. Actually, it wasn't even really a lecture, he just gave us class work. This further sparked my feelings about that class because I hate, HATE, disorganization and lack of effort from the teacher and nothing is lazier than group work, especially in a graduate class. Third, the natural offspring of this FOF (fear of failure), is what will be the consequences if I don't do well in the class?

Now, the question of consequences is an interesting one. If I had stuck to my view of letting the future take care of itself, I shouldn't have worried to much about this question. I suspect what is going to happen next is going to happen regardless of if I get either a low B or a C (how I define not doing well). But when I weaken, like I did last night, and start to think about the future, grades matter more, hence, the reason I was up.

This is some life I live here haha.

Oscar Thoughts

* Penelope Cruz was probably my 3rd choice to win Supporting Actress. I would have easily taken Adams or Tomei over her, but I guess she was going to win one eventually (so will Adams, too, I think and Tomei already has), so might as well have been this year, right?

* Whatever little respect I had for the opinions of Bill Maher just went right out the window after his shameful display last night. Just because you have an opinion on a certain subject, and the constitutional right to say it, doesn't mean you should. Especially if millions of moviegoers could possibly be offended by it. He's just a smug bastard, that's all there is to it.

* Speaking of opinions, I didn't really think much of what Penn had to say for his acceptance speech. Yeah, it was your typical leftist claptrap, but that's what you expect from Penn and at least his was somewhat relevant to the movie he made, not just random trash like Maher.

* Ah yes, Sean Penn winning Best Actor. I was rooting for Rourke (who wasn't?), but I told myself going in that I would be OK with a Penn win. Despite his douche bag nature, he is in the top 5 greatest actors of our generation and Milk wasn't really such a bad movie anyway. But I guess I was more disappointed than I thought. Consider this, Penn has taken Oscars way from both Bill Murray and now Mickey Rourke, how much do you think the average movie goer will like him now? haha

* As for the musical numbers, well, some people liked them and some people hated them with fiery passion. I can't say that I really felt passionately either way as I never care for musical numbers, regardless of the "quality". Although I can't say that Jackman prancing around on stage would help the success of his new X-Men movie. Who wants to see their Wolverine dancing like a fairy?

* No surprise with Slumdog winning. I'm glad it did. We need more upbeat pictures winning Best Picture.

Screw Titles

I haven't written in here much lately because frankly, I haven't had much to say. For me to write anything interesting, I need to have a relatively uncluttered mind and lately, it has been anything but that. An exam piled on top of another exam and being eyeball deep in academic literature will suck the imagination out of any Peter Pan wanna be. But I guess it's ok. I spent a whole year in fantasy land and I guess I needed to get back to Earth a little bit.

But on to what I really wanted to say....

For the past several months, I've been making a lot of progress. My anxiety and OCD have been relatively under control and I haven't been slipping into periods of rabid depression like I used to. But lately, I've been getting sloppy and allowing myself to slip back into my old habits. It's hard to make lasting changes, but eventually, everybody has to make a choice. You can either move forward, or you can stay where you are. I felt pretty damn sick of being stalled, but was I sick enough?

Drained

Today I'm feeling physically and mentally spent. I've been on, essentially, a week long cram session for a macroeconomic theory exam tomorrow and, despite all the time put into it, I still don't feel confident about it. I also have an econometric exam looming around the corner and as soon as I finish with this exam, I have to start getting ready for that one. And then, of course, there is the RA job which hasn't been too bad for the last week, but will probably start picking up here again soon.

I'm not complaining. Everybody is busy and part of me believes that having stuff to do is good for the soul. But I feel that I'm not being as productive as I could be. My mind has been wandering a lot and I find myself wanting to do anything but school work. On my best days I have the attention span of a gnat, but when things start to pile up and I began to get worn down, the problem is magnified by 10 fold.

I want to be more productive. I want to get stuff done and not spend hours upon hours doing them. I want to be efficient with my time so that I have more of it to do the things that I want, but lately, I'm just lacking in focus and ambition.

I need some R&R time and its only a month into the semester!

Farewell Old Friend

After much though and lots of stalling, I think I have finally reached a conclusion... my days at Hastings are done. I've been mulling over quitting for several days now, and while I ultimately knew what needed to be done, I've had a hard time making the decision. Part of me feels bad about doing it because my old boss when out of his way a bit to get a transfer to a new store and the store director down here kind of had to squeeze me in, but I really don't see the alternative anymore. I can't keep up the pace of doing the RA job, school and Hastings. I don't have it in me. 

The fact that so many people went out of their way for me is certainly the main reason as to why it was a hard decision, but there are certainly others: first, my old store director seemed to think very highly of my leadership ability and not-so-subtly hinted that I could management material with the company. Nobody every spoke that highly of my ability before and it kind of stuck with me. Part of me thinks that by leaving, I could be giving up a big opportunity. But then I get back to reality, particularly my life in this current store, and realize that I'm not so great and even if I did have a shot at management, it would be further down the road than I'm perhaps willing to stick with. 

Second, the company was good to me, very good to me when I was sick and could only do a scattered work schedule. Because of this, I guess I feel a certain loyalty to it.  But again, snapping back to reality, perhaps it wasn't really the company that was good to me, rather, my old store director and my loyalty is really directed towards him and not Hastings in general. 

So, all-in-all, when I step back and look at the big picture, its not really Hastings that I will miss, rather, that one particular Hastings in Farmington, NM where I felt welcomed, where people respected my ability and where my boss liked having me around. I'm not so sure that it is so much the case anymore.

But I guess its on to bigger and better things.

But then I wake up and realize that it wasn't really 

RA

In a previous blog, I mentioned that I had the perfect work-school-free time balance. So naturally, what do I do, I go and ruin that balance by taking a research assitant job in addition to my school load and my work at Hastings. I'm still not 100% sure on the time commitment on this one yet, but whatever it is, I'm sure it is drastically going to cut down on my free time. I would have just quite the Hastings job, but the professor said that the time commitment wasn't too much.

Of course, people lie. If it gets too much, however, I can always quit Hastings. 

Knowing Your Limitations Pt 1

Today I'm going to start a new series on this blog, a series about my limitations as a person and knowing how to live within them.

Knowing ones limitations is not a matter of self-esteem. Regardless of how much we wish it to happen, certain things are just not meant to be and I think it is best that we recognize what the limitations are in ourselves and learn to live the best we can within them. We are all bad at something and while some things can get better with practice, many cannot. A 5'2 woman cannot play in the NBA, regardless of the amount of desire and practice that is put forth. The physical limitations are just too great. Limitations are, perhaps, also a sign from above. We can't do certain things because we might not have been meant to do them. Of course, God never fully reveals his plans and the possibility that we can be wrong is always there, but physical and mental limitations are always good indicators of where we are supposed to go in life.

That said, I jump to my first limitation, math. I stink at it, I've always stunk at it and I simply don't like it. I know it sounds funny coming from an economics graduate student, which is math heavy, but knowing this math limitation has made me realize how far I can reasonably expect to go in my economics education. Being bad at math, and not really caring for it, pretty much rules out Ph.d level economics. That's ok. I can live with that, especially if I know that limitation going in and plan accordingly. I'm not meant for Ph.d work in economics, that's ok. As an old CS professor once told me "you can live a perfectly full and content live without a Ph.d".

I know enough math to get by in my masters program, but think that's about as far as that can go. Practice certainly helps, but my mind has never fully been able to wrap itself around the subject. I can go through a lot of the motions, but rarely do I understand all the implications of what I'm doing or why I am doing them. Going through the motions works up to a certain point, but if I had really wanted to go further with my economics education, it's probably not enough.

Oh well, I accept it and am fine with it.

An Analysis on Work

I'm currently reading a facinating book by Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers. His previous book, Blink, was good, but I thought lacked a coherant point. This one, however, is crystal clear. Success isn't simply a matter of talent or inherant ability, rather, depends largely on outside cultural factors. I won't re-hash what he says because this isn't meant to be a book review, rather, one side point he made really got me thinking. In chapter 5 he talks about what three qualities a job has to have if it is to be satisfying. He says:

Those three things -autonomy, complexity and a connection between effort and reward- are, most people agree, the three qualities that work has to have if it is to be satisfying.

This makes perfect sense to me. When I read this I immediately started thinking about these three things in relation to my job in retail. In the first area, autonomy, it fails miserably. This, however, is just the nature of the retail game. I have a boss who has a boss who has a boss who has a boss and so on forever and ever. The hierarchy is a bit muddled, but little I do in my job is of my own choice. There is always some process, some procedure or some order that comes from some authority figure.

Now, complexity is a little bit of a complicated issue. It really depends on how you look at the idea of complexity and there are really two ways to look at it: intellecutally complex or physically/mentally complex. It isn't intellectually complex at all. Frankly, its a bit mindnumbing. Physical/mental complexity you might be able to make a case for. It's physical because you are on your feet the whole time and sometimes have to carry a lot of stuff (like I did yesterday and kinda tweaked my back). It's mentally complex because you have to keep your head and not lose it in front of a douchebag customer. 

Where the job really fails, however, is the effort to reward ratio. I could bust my ass and try to do a good job, but I'm still going to get paid the same as the guy who screws around the whole shift and does nothing. It's the classic Office Space problem, I would work hard and try to make the company more money, but I don't see a dime of that, so what's my incentive? It also has a long-run problem. I could try and have a good close, get my section good and clean and get all my stocking done, but the next day, everything will be back where it was and it was as if my efforts meant nothing.

So when you look at it, my job in retail is not at all satisfying. That's ok though. I don't plan to make it a career and at this stage in my life, I think having this job is good for me. At the very least it gives me fewer of those idle moments that aren't good for me.