2001-06-14 - 12:53 p.m.

Sleeves and Emotions

A number of people tend to say a few things about me and they are all the same things. (1) I need to lighten up. (2) I wear my emotions on my sleeve. (3) I need to be more assertive. (4) I need just a little bit of self confidence.

I talked not long ago about using a magic feather, like Dumbo, when I give public presentations. It is a cheat, but it helps.

Now today I think I actually handled a situation well. A co-worker called me in to question why I changed how he labeled his figures for the annual report that I'm the editor of (and I'm also an author / contributor). He said, "Removing the embedded figures is the stupidest thing I've every seen! What in the world would make you throw away all of that work!"

OK, he just didn't say this, he yelled it at me in front of Bronco. Not a pleasant situation at all.

A year ago, or even a month ago I would have been really upset and probably would have started to shake. I would either have tossed something back or cried. I hate rejection (and believe me, I've had a ton of it in 2001 all coming from a source very dear to me).

But today I just looked him in the eye and said, "Oh, don't tell me that this is the stupidest thing you've ever seen." I then very calmly went on to explain how and why I removed the embedded notations from his word document. I pointed out that I left his original files alone and it would take me 30 minutes tops to fix things to suit his needs. Bottom line, I was professional and didn't let another person's emotional state bother me.

And much to my surprise, an hour later he walked in to my office and apologized for being "a dickhead". His words, not mine. I laughed and said, "Oh, I just figured your dog pooped on your bedroom floor right when you were leaving this morning and just let it out." OK, really I didn't think his dog did that, but I do understand the emotional pressure he is on and I suspected he and his girlfriend may have had an argument and it just carried over to work.

Chill Pill

People in relationships or at work, need to realize that their SO or co-workers are people. Not only do they make mistakes, but they have independent lives and needs. Those needs can be physical (like my desire to actually have sex more than a few times a year ... and not always have to masturbate) or emotional (which includes venting when you think you are loosing control). And everybody needs to recognize when somebody is frustrated over these things -vs- when they are really attacking somebody. My co-worker wasn't mad at me, he just felt like he is loosing control.

In part this is because he knows I'm waiting to hear from that Bay Area water district and if I do, the chances are very good that I'll be leaving. I'm breaking up the family. While half of the office family / team is good, the other half is just plain lazy. And there will be some resement around here when I leave, but people who know me should know that if I go to the enemy camp that I'll work damn hard to mend any old wounds between the water district and my current office. I want the two groups to work together. Oh, we'll have differences and sometimes be at odds. That is a fact of life, and I'll count on my senior engineers at my new job *fingers crossed* to guide me through any transition.

Old Work / New Work

So I'm nearly ready to circulate the annual report for internal view. I know have a reputation within the state service for being verbose. The report I took two years ago was small. But now it is one of our flagship projects and gets a larger circulation. It actually is one of the tools that is bridging those gaps between our office and others that I talked about.

The internet is full of web pages and information, but so little of it is content rich. My goal here has been to put out real hard core content rich information in a format that people can make real decisions based on it. In other words, to bring science and political decisions closer to the people whom are affected by this stuff. Hell, I wrote a paper that won me $3000 and an all expense trip to Japan on this subject back in 1995. Ironically I'm now one of the many whom are making my dream from 5 years ago a reality.

It is nice to think that I'm finally skilled enough and in a position to do some good like this. Now I just need to find some people to hang out with to do some naughty stuff. ;) Oh I have ideas of things I'd like to do once to try them out ... and many of them involved naked people. *snicker*

-=-

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