Outrunning My Idiot Complex

I’m intimidated by my trainees.

They are educated in ways I hope to attain one day–a degree in physics (physics!), a degree in finance, and possibly degrees in business administration.  They’re well traveled, and they’re much older than I am.

But neither of them know how to coat pharmaceuticals, so they’re stuck with me.  I know coating, at least.  I know it quite well.

Calculus = Smart?

I’ve always desired to be the smartest one in the room.  When I was a preteen my Dad told me how much he’d struggled with trigonometry in school.  I resolved to master it.  In high school I did, indeed, become competent in low-level trigonometry and pushed myself to study the highest maths I could.

I can’t tell you how much time and tears I expended on the subject.  Why?  Because Calculus = smart.  I studied advanced physics.  Why? Physics = smart.

All the while, I was destined to be a… writer.  Woe is me.  If only I’d thought classic literature, poetry and writing classes were the thing for smart people to do!

Recreational IQ Testing

I’ve also been known to take online IQ tests for the fun of it.  I’ve been told they only count if they’re administered by a professional, but I still like to be reassured that my IQ is just a little higher than the average Jane’s.  I may in fact be ‘gifted’.

Never mind how many derelict genius’s there are out there.

I don’t know why intelligence matters so much to me.  I don’t know why I have to be “smart”.  Logically, I believe that IQ helps, but hard work trumps talent every time.  In fact, I have this coworker who I’m certain has a high IQ and is technically “smarter” than I am.  But I outwork him every day, and soon I’m going to pass him.  I don’t believe in saying “Oh, I’m just not smart.”

So why the heck do I have to be a genius?

The Book has a Silver Lining

You can’t choose your IQ, but fortunately there are no limits on the knowledge you may absorb.  So since I’m never smart enough, I keep on reading.  Oh yeah, I love to read, but mostly I’m outrunning my idiot status.  Must know more!  Must read classic novels.  Must read books on leadership.  Must read books on history.  Must read Plato.

I can’t tell you how satisfying it is to sit in a waiting room, reading Plato while everyone else is reading tabloids.  If that doesn’t swell my head, I don’t know what will.

If only they gave PhD’s to people who read enough books.

Close Enough?

Nevertheless, I am now a professor of pharmaceutical coating.  I’ve always wanted to be a professor of something.  I asked MY coach if she feels like an idiot the whole time she is coaching trainees.

“Pretty much,” she said.

Well, then I’m on the right track.

 

 

The Week Without Running

This week I took my second sick day of the year, and the third of my lifetime.  Yes, I consider myself to be indestructible, and when I do get sick I go to work anyway.

Last Saturday I woke up with burning lungs, like the feeling you get after you’ve inhaled caustic cleaner (been there, done that).  “No!” I said, “I can’t be sick.  I have a 5K.”  Cue browsing articles on ‘should you run while sick,’ of which there was no unanimous conclusion.  So, I said ‘to heck with it,’ went to the drugstore and bought the highest-powered lozenges I could find.  Back in the car, I popped one in my mouth.

My tongue went numb.

“What the heck is in these things?”  I flipped over the box.  Hmm, Benzocaine.  Isn’t that what they use to freeze your mouth at the dentist?

Well, you don’t need to feel your tongue to run.  So off I went to the race.

I almost burned out in the last mile.  My lungs hurt so bad, and I had to force my oxygen-deprived muscles to keep firing.  My time was lackluster, but I made it.

Monday, I went running again.  Tuesday I was still sick, and on Wednesday I was dragging myself around work like a zombie.  I decided to call it a day and go to the walk-in clinic.  Chest X-rays and EKG’s and blood work couldn’t tell the doctor what was wrong with me.  “You have a virus,” he said.

I could have told myself that.  At least I wasn’t dying.  I’d already been imagining the end of my running ‘career’ because I had scarring of the lungs, or a hole in my heart, or something (just making up stuff, here).

So this week has been one of extra sleep, extra writing, and extra Harry Potter watching.  After much self-lecturing, I’ve decided I’m sick.  No speed-work midweek.  No long run on the weekend.  I’m getting antsy.  Based on the way my chest feels right now, I might collapse midway.  But it’s autumn in Manitoba, and that means six months of winter are almost here, and if I don’t enjoy the snow-free roads now, I won’t get to!

Argh.

Someone tie me down, or hide my sneakers.

What if We Asked These Questions?

Does anyone ask you the questions you desperately want to answer?

People ask me all kinds of things, but rarely am I asked about what really matters to me.  These are the things I want to talk about, and truly be listened to.  In the presence of my friends and family I talk about them, unasked.  But I feel that they don’t want to hear about it.

Do you feel this way too?

I want to be asked.

I want to be asked “What have you been doing at work lately?”

Silly, right?  People ask “how is work?” all the time.  But that’s the sort of question you’re required to answer ‘fine’ to, or ‘busy’.  Maybe they’d accept a long answer, but I get the distinct feeling that if I went on a five minute rant about the product I was coating that week, and what went wrong, and about how I nailed that one coat to the exact percentage, their eyes would glaze over.

I want to be asked “How were your runs this week?”

I’d love you forever if you’d listen to me talk about running Abe’s Hill for the first time, and my 5k on the weekend–and then ask “then what happened?” like you mean it.

I want to be asked “What are you reading these days?”

Plato–The Republic, and Lord of the Rings.  Ask me about Plato, and why I’d even pick it up.  Ask me about what I’m learning from those books.  Gosh, look at the size of the three-in-one volume of Lord of the Rings.  Doesn’t it just beg to start a conversation?

Ask me about my writing projects and don’t look too shocked when my eyes light up and I expound on clones, and the archetypal city, and the righteous poor, and the adventures of some ‘made up’ character.

The problem is…

The problem is that I don’t ask the right questions either.  If I were observant, and not all wrapped up in myself like I tend to be, I might know the right questions to ask YOU.  The questions that make your face light up like a Christmas tree.  The ones you can deliver a spontaneous fifteen minute lecture on.

I stumbled across one of these questions by accident, this summer.  I’d had difficulty connecting with a coworker, a gentleman from Bangladesh, until one day I asked him “Are you following the FIFA World Cup?”

Yes!  Yes he was.  He was following Argentina.  He’d followed Messi since the soccer star was a much younger man.  He (my coworker) had actually played soccer in college.  And off we went–because college led to discussions about our families, and once you start talking about your families you have lots to go on.

I began checking the World Cup stats every morning so I’d have something to say to him when we passed in the hall.

Doubtless, asking a good question won’t always have the same success.  But I’ll warrant that if I’d regularly pose purposeful questions, I’d often stumble on good answers, perhaps even on a new friend.  But this won’t happen if I’m not looking, using Sherlock Holmes powers of observation to discover what makes people tick.

I’m not good at that, I admit.  But I realize now that I can’t make people take a genuine interest in me.  All I can do is provide that loving courtesy to others, because I truly believe that to listen is to grant deep respect and honour to another.  We need to be listened to.  It is psychological oxygen, to borrow from Dale Carnegie.

What to ask?

So tell me.  What do you want to be asked?  What is that thing, buried deep in your chest, that you NEED to talk about?

I WANT to ask.  Forgive me if I forget to look.

 

 

 

Not a Moment to Waste!

“I’m afraid to die before I’ve really lived,” he said.

Funny the things you talk about on late shifts.  We stood over our tank of coating suspension, the peristaltic pump chugging the soupy, white mixture from one tank to the other.  I don’t know why we were talking about death–death by drowning, death by fire.

I paused.  In my hand, the hose bucked and splattered goop on the shiny steel receiving tank.  “Yeah, I know what you mean.”  But in my head I thought, but how do you know that you’ve really lived?  As I thought over my twenty-four years, I realized that I’d packed lots into them.  I’ve travelled, I’ve graduated from college, I’ve written a book.  But had I really lived?

A couple weeks later, a school friend’s nineteen year old brother died in a drowning accident, and it brought the subject back to my mind.  My own brothers were going out to the lake, and inwardly I shouted don’t go!  I want to keep you here!

I suspect that the years we have are never enough once they’re gone.  I had twelve happy years with my Grandma (Mom’s mom) before she died of cancer.  But when I think about her I remember that, the last day I saw her healthy and alert, I spent playing video games.  Would that one more day have been enough?  No.

It annoys me that people say “Two more days until Friday.”  When I catch myself saying “My shift is half over,” I rebuke myself.  Heck, we spend tens of thousands of hours at our jobs, but we’re so eager to just get them over with.  My Grandma (Dad’s mom) told me, today, that the older you get, the faster they go.  It’s like being pinned to a railway car, flying downhill toward a brick wall (she didn’t say that–I did).  But we are unmindful.  We try to make our railcar go faster!

What are the chances we get to the end of our lives and decide we’ve ‘really lived’?

I’m realizing that I need to be a heck of a lot more deliberate with my time.  I’ve got to dream, then make goals, and then work my butt off before my railcar reaches the bottom of the hill.

Dan Waldschidmt said “We all want that extra 6.25 years of conquest.  But when we have a zillion minute by minute considerations just to decide whether to stay in bed or get up and ‘conquer,’ most of us choose comfort.  It seems small at the time–after all, it’s just one hour.  But the results are life changing.  Literally.  The decisions that you make hundreds of times a day build your future.  They all count.”

I’m not doing well in this area right now.  After the release of We are the Living, I hit a big-time slump.  I’ve yet to pull out entirely.  My blogging has been sporadic.  I have little interest in social networking.  I don’t feel like writing.  My new project has been neglected for days at a time.

It’s time to kick my own butt.  If I can make myself go running after an exhausting workday, when my knees hurt, or when it’s cold and raining, I guess I can make myself write (do what I love!).

There isn’t a moment to waste, is there?

 

3 Videos to Lighten up your Tuesday

I don’t feel like being serious today.  I am being serious.  But I don’t feel like it.

Face it, it’s been a long week and it’s only Tuesday.  I’m in the thick of publishing my first novel, We are the Living, and this is only one tiny problem in the sea of troubles this world is in.  I’m not here to discount those.  I’m just hoping to give you fifteen minutes of relief.  Here are three videos that give me the giggles.

1. Thunderstruck, Redneck Edition.

Admit it, you’ve always wondered what AC/DC would sound like with banjos.

2. I’m My Own Grandpa

And speaking of rednecks… one of the most convoluted family wreaths… er, trees you’ve ever seen.  This song has entertained my family for hours.

3. Seth MacFarlane does the ‘Taken’ phone call as Kermit the Frog

“I don’t have any money, but what I do have are a specific set of skills…”  This makes me giggle like a maniac every time!  Kermit starts around 5 min, but the first half includes other voices, including Tom Cruise imitating Donald Duck.

And there you go.  I hope this gladdened your heart.  I’m always looking for hilarious YouTube videos.  If you have ideas for me, please comment.  Keep them clean please!

Have a wonderful day.

Must We All Grow Up to be Humbugs? 5 Fun Things Challenge Wrap-Up.

Will I eventually become a boring adult?

I fear it is inevitable.

You know the ones.  They spend 80% of their lives on their butts.  The other 20% is spent shopping or mowing their front lawn.  They go to work via the Tim Horton’s drive through, and then come home through the same coffee-filled avenue.  They spend the evening in front of the TV, or on better days, at their son’s hockey game.  They’d never lift a finger to play a game.  They’d rather die than run.

They probably would die if they tried to run.

They talk about their deteriorating health and bash their bosses, and they think Tim Horton’s makes good coffee because they haven’t had anything else in two years.

I’m painting with a brush as wide as a football field.  I know.  But that is who I fear becoming.

When I was a kid, it bewildered me why the adults I knew only wanted to sit around and visit with each other.  Why would they never, ever participate in the fun game that we had going?  I realize now that adults are tired folk.  And why not?  Many work a minimum of forty hours a week and then come home, cook dinner, and do laundry.  Most of them eat absolute garbage, and don’t have time to exercise, and can’t sleep because they’ve had too much Tim Horton’s.  They spend every evening taxiing their kids to soccer and ballet and piano lessons.  I know this is because they want to give their kids the best shot at life, but I fear they’re living their lives vicariously through their kids because they gave up on their dreams long ago.

If that’s what it means to grow up, I don’t want to do it.

I’ve come to the end of my 5 Fun Things Challenge.  I ended the challenge on an 11 hour work day, which admittedly makes fun a little more difficult.  It’s fitting.  Most of my days are work days, so I need to learn to make them fun.  I’m a grown-up now.

Day 3, Monday:

I went to Folklorama and visited the Chilean pavilion.  I enjoyed lively music, sublime singing, and dancing that was a mix of courtly and all-out love for life.  The empanadas and drinks were good too. 🙂

Day 4, Tuesday:

I had to wear a respirator to spray caustic cleaner, so I breathed like Darth Vader.  Disclaimer: laughing under a half-mask respirator may break the seal.

I caught a ride on a pallet as it went by.  Then I got scared and jumped off.

I watched this video and giggled like a maniac in McDonalds.  If you don’t have time to watch the whole thing, skip to about 5 minutes in and see Seth McFarlane do Liam Neeson’s Taken phone call in Kermit the Frog’s voice!

To sum up the experience…

Why end now?  Tomorrow I’m going to try to make it a fun day.  I know that tomorrow will have just as many adult experiences–a work day, important business stuff, cooking dinner, and going for a run.  But I’m grown-up, not dead.

And I’ve got a dream, and thus, a lot to live for.  Why not have fun–BE fun while doing it?

Will You Tolerate What You’ve Created?

“Never be satisfied as a drone worker, just showing up and going through the conveyor-belt routines you’re taught. In any position, always be looking for things to improve. And never, ever compromise your moral standards in the name of ‘Everyone is doing it.’

Are you uncomfortable with anything you see at your workplace or in any other position in which you serve? What should you do about it? Why do you think so many people just go along with wrongs they see happening every day?” –From Wavemakers, by LIFE Leadership.

This passage troubles me. In fact, the sheer weight of it makes me want to curl into a ball in the corner. Don’t put this on me! Don’t saddle my integrity with this! Don’t you see I’m doing the best I can?

There’s a lot that goes on in my workplace that I don’t agree with—from teasing that goes beyond friendliness to signing for work that hasn’t been done.

It actually takes work to work an honest eight-hour day because the culture is to waste the first and last fifteen minutes in visiting.  You mean we actually work at a factory? It’s not a social club? It takes concerted effort to do a good job because people are so accustomed to accepting ‘good enough’. I should never have to ask the question “did you actually do this, or are you just saying that?” But I do.

I’m not saying I’m perfect—far from it. This week I’m nowhere near my usual cheerful self, and holding tight to my integrity is a daunting task. I’m struggling to stand. How hard can I push for excellence without breaking relationships? I don’t want to be a legalistic taskmaster. I just want to do a good job.

This really bothers me because I am weak right now and I wish my coworkers wouldn’t make things harder for me—unintentional though it is. I don’t have the energy to pick a side in their political games, or discern whether they really calibrated the scale or they just filled in the numbers.

Do I say ‘No, I will do right,’ or be washed away by the current?

This quote offers some insight.  It’s not exactly on topic, but read it through the lens of your workplace and I think it will make sense.  Edward Snowden said:

“If living unfreely [sic] but comfortably is something you’re willing to accept—and I think many of us are because it’s human nature—you can get up every day, go to work, you can collect your large paycheck [sic] for relatively little work against the public interest, and go to sleep at night after watching your shows.

But if you realize that that’s the world you helped create and it’s gonna get worse with the next generation who extend the capabilities of this sort of architecture of oppression, you realize that you might be willing to accept any risk and it doesn’t matter what the outcome is so long as the public gets to make their own decisions about how that’s applied”–as quoted in Wavemakers.

He was talking about national freedom. I’m talking about personal freedom, job quality and heck, the jobs we wish we could work at. The job we have—the culture, conditions and general attitude—is what we have helped to create.  Whether by commission or omission, our workplace is what we’ve made it.

We want a supportive, inspiring, positive environment. We want fulfillment and advancement. We want freedom. But who will create that if we don’t?

Who will shine bright if I won’t?

“It is the greatest of all mistakes to do nothing because you can only do a little. Do what you can,”—Sir Sidney Smith.

Why Christians Should Make the Best Employees

As a Christian, realizing your coworker has the same faith can be like finding a fellow countryman in a strange land—an instant connection.

But sometimes a coworker claimed to believe as I and hoped no one else knew. I remember one young guy I worked with who was often late, disappeared once for a few days (he said later he was sick), and was laughed at behind his back because he was lazy, stupid, and couldn’t be relied on to do his job well.

And then I found out he was quitting to go work at a Christian camp. I cringed.

Another time, a coworker was telling me a humorous story about another guy who used to work there who, while out in the field, would hide his vehicle and take a nap. My coworker caught him because he forgot to turn off the flashing beacon on the vehicle. He told me his name and my heart sank. I’d gone to Bible School with him.

Neither of these are isolated incidents in my short career.

It shouldn’t be this way. Christians should be the best employees. Why?

We are Ambassadors of Christ

“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us” (1 Corinthians 5:20 NIV).

I’ve been drilled since childhood: we need to share the Gospel with our friends. But if we do not display the results of the Gospel in our lives, why should they listen to us?

Excuse me, but the fruit of the spirit is not laziness, tardiness, abrasiveness and irresponsibility. If we cannot be trusted, if the supervisor has to correct us constantly, if we take longer breaks than is our due, if we gossip and engage in political games, what proof of the Gospel is there? Faith without works is dead.

By being the example of an excellent employee, we build our platform for witness.

Work is our Divine Mission

Paul said to the slaves in Ephesus (a position more like the typical employee of our day and less like the North American slavery we are accustomed to reading about) that they should obey their earthy masters with respect and with sincerity of heart, “Not only to win their favour when their eye is on your, but like slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord,” (Ephesians 6:5-8 NIV).

Do you see what he says? “Doing the will of God from your heart.” Your work—God’s will. We serve wholeheartedly, because God has given us a job to do, and he is our true master. Even before the fall of mankind, Adam was given work to do. Work is not a punishment, but a mission.

God is leading me to see my job as a sacred calling: yes, manufacturing pharmaceuticals, a divine appointment. Every day when I walk into production and look at the board for my assignment, it isn’t just my supervisor who has given me that task, but God—my true master. Whatever I am doing, I must do it well. Whoever I am working with, I must bless.

I like calling it an assignment.  It makes me feel like a secret agent.

It’s far harder to do than to say, because by definition, excellence requires going against the current. And the current sure is strong in my workplace.  It seems I’ve failed just as many times as I’ve succeeded.  But it is fulfilling to know that my job in manufacturing is just as important as my job as a Sunday school teacher.

Your work is your mission field.

I hope to flesh this topic out further in the next couple of weeks, with the intention to write a more comprehensive ‘theology of work’. Dorothy Sayers wrote an essay on the subject, called “Why Work.” It is challenging, but incredibly affirming for those of us who don’t work in traditional Christian ‘ministries.’