Love, Life and Lady Gaga

A friend recently quoted my fellow former fighting violet on facebook:

“Some women choose to follow men, and some women choose to follow their dreams. If you’re wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn’t love you anymore.”

-Lady Gaga, Cosmopolitan, April 2010

I found it interesting, because I've been pondering this balance recently. No, no, I have no desire to leave Mr., nor do I fear he will wake up to tell me he doesn't love me anymore. I don't want to sacrifice Mr. for my career dreams, but how much am I willing to sacrifice my career dreams for Mr.?

In one week (1 week!!), we will find out where we'll be moving 3 months from now, whether its halfway across the borough or halfway across the country. And I can't help but wonder what I'll do if we're not in New York City.

Last summer, I discovered something about myself that most have known about me for years. I love law. I want to be a lawyer. I want to lock myself in a room full of contracts picking apart the tiniest discrepancies that could have the largest impact all night until it's time to shower and come back into work again. What drudgery, right? I mean, I'm the girl who quotes Dead Poet's Society:

We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

Law is merely a noble pursuit. My passion should be theatre or fashion, right? I greatly enjoy both of those. I even love both of those. But ultimately, I'm passionate about boring old law. My father's career. The predictable career. That's why I was 25 before I figured it out / caved in and admitted as much. And yes, I know that's still young, but kids in Germany more or less figure this stuff out at 12.

So, here I am in the somewhat unique predicament of discovering my passion years after getting married. Married to a med student entering a highly competitive specialty. The feminist in me wants to say, "you need to go to the best law school you can regardless of the impact on your relationship"... but the feminist in me also made Mr. move certain programs down on the list for their lack of law school. He's making sacrifices, and I should be expected to do the same if necessary.

I think we often try to paint things in black and white. We want everything to make sense, to fit into a package of quotes about passion and dreams. But ultimately, people are important. Even Lady Gaga, ambitious as she is, offers in her song "Speechless" to stop singing if that's what it will take for her father to get a potentially life-saving surgery. At the end of the day, I'll go with my gut with what feels right in terms of law and Mr., to find the balance between doing what is best for my career and doing what is best for my family.

I'd really like to have my cake and eat it, too. After all, what good is having cake if you don't get to eat it?


04 days until Black Monday
07 days until Match Day
84 days until Mr.'s Graduation

Meritocracy

Yesterday afternoon, I saw my boss get a call from the HR manager. A little while later she asked me to stop by her office. Our firm recently laid off a number of support staffers, so I was a little nervous as I made the 30 second walk to her office.

Turns out I was right and wrong. I was right in that her calling me into her office was related to the call she received from HR, but wrong to be worried. It was time for my review, and my boss gave me a lot of positive feedback.

No raises are being offered this year, but they are still awarding merit bonuses. The bonuses are smaller than they've been in the past, but that's to be expected in this economic climate. My boss, happy with the work I've been doing, secured the top bonus for me and seemed apologetic that it couldn't be more.

Here's how I feel about it, though - I'm glad I have a job. I'm especially glad I have a job where my work is appreciated and my efforts rewarded. I understand the budget is tight, so I don't mind the amount. What matters to me is working for an employer that tries to encourage hard work by offering merit-based rewards.
Last year I worked at one of those "too big to fail" banks. After all of the reviews were submitted and evaluated, my boss called me into her office. Everyone on support staff was getting a 2% raise. Everyone. ...Okay, so it doesn't matter that these people gave far more to the company and far out performed those people? The only reward is the self-satisfaction of a job well done? I mean, don't get me wrong, that self-satisfaction can be pretty rewarding, but I was annoyed with the message this was sending us. To me, this says that the company doesn't respect what the support staff does enough to recognize top performers. It then, in essence, encourages laziness and "just getting by". Which in turn makes the entire company run poorly.
That is one of many reasons I lost respect for my former employer and opted to return to my current one.
My bonus this year is only 1/3 the amount of my annual raise at the bank, but the latter felt like a slap in the face whereas this one feels like a generous reward. The difference is the reason for them.

I think it's awful that layoffs are taking place here, but I truly see them as a reflection of the time. Bonuses aside, this firm is well run with priorities in the right places. I'm proud to work in a meritocracy. And if there's any confusion, I'd still be proud even if I hadn't earned the top bonus. If American companies hope to survive this recession, they need to focus more on rewarding good work. A little incentive will go a long way.

Bad Day Cliché

Today started alright. I think I got close to the 7 hours of sleep I had hoped to have. STM let me know about service changes on the train so that I was able to alter my route accordingly.

However, today has been decidedly bad.

It's been busy at work, which is sometimes a good thing, but not today. A file we needed was corrupt, and after going back to the original email and pulling it back from the archives, I discovered that it, too, was corrupt.

A room for a presentation today that had been moved twice already was moved, yet again, unbeknownst to me or my boss. So, she sent the wrong room number to the distribution group of 800 or so attorneys only to be corrected by one of the girls in attorney training (who actually hadn't been notified of the 2nd or 3rd change but luckily the 3rd change was to the same room as the 1st change had been). Point of story - my boss looked bad, and she doesn't like that. This was not my fault but still not good.

Then, a couple attorneys couldn't open the documents links from that same email. Must have been some technical glitch, so still not my fault but still not good.

However, shortly thereafter I did screw up by not calling someone I was supposed to. This is a minor slip but it was not my only one of the day.

Lunch came and went, and I only had time to eat the sandwiches I had packed, unable to get any chips as I had intended.

Then, my bigger slip came from not changing the sharepoint calendar for this training that was switched last Thursday. The frustrating part is I could have sworn I changed it. I know to update the calendars. There have been lots of changes lately, so I've made a deliberate effort to be more on top of these changes. So I was shocked to see that that particular change hadn't been made. Of course, this came to light because my boss emailed 4 or 5 attorneys reminding them of this date (better than 800 attorneys but still not good).

On top of work stuff, my iphone's touch screen just decided to stop working today. I slid to open it, and then couldn't type my password. I turned it off and couldn't even slide it on. I tried turning it off to see if it was just the bottom of the screen that was broken, and I can't slide the top bar to power off. wtf. And, of course the genius bar doesn't have any appointments until like, tomorrow at midnight.

However, to top off this already bad day, when I went to the vending machine to get some cheetos for my now starving stomach--10 minutes after my shift had ended but with work still left to do--they got stuck in the machine. We have really nice machines here. Stuff like that never happens. But of course it happened to me. today. I'd take a picture to show you my sad cheetos stuck in a crevice at the bottom of the shelf above them, but I can't. My phone (also my camera) is broken. Boo.

Next thing I know some one will accuse me of having a case of the Mondays.

Update: I just tried the vending machine again in hopes that the second bag of Cheetos would push the first bag out. Now they are both stuck. Really?

Back to the Grind

I usually get to work roughly 20 minutes early, but about once every month or so, there's some sort of train delay that has me rushing to my office in order to swipe in by 7 minutes past the time I'm supposed to arrive (to avoid having my personal time docked).
By some cruel twist of fate, this always seems to happen on the morning of this monthly meeting that my boss hosts. The morning of this meeting, I always need to take care of a number of issues, including compiling all of the handouts and sending out the invitation to remind everyone. The meeting starts 90 minutes after the start of my day. It would be a bit of a race if it weren't for my train delays.
Even though my personal time won't be docked as I swiped in 6 minutes past, I still spent much of the morning running around like a crazy person. No easing into the day today.

Luckily, I was passed along this hilarious video, which I think will be appreciated by anyone who has worked in or with IT (You may have seen the original Norwegian version, but I like this one better.):

Monday: Back to the Grind

I have a fairly long commute, roughly 70 minutes one-way plus an extra 15 minutes to be safe. Like most non-driving commuters, I have a number of ways to keep myself amused: magazine, book, sudoku puzzles, and of course, the beloved ipod.

With a long commute, I like to listen to soundtracks because they're most likely to be over an hour in length. This morning I had an odd desire to listen to the soundtrack of Floyd Collins, an off-broadway musical written by the musical chameleon, Adam Guettel (Light in the Piazza). Set in 1920s Kentucky, the music is folksy with bluegrass influences. It's a great piece ...but probably not the best soundtrack to listen to when your subway train is stuck underground between stops for 10+ minutes. For those of you unfamiliar with Floyd Collins, the man or the musical, he was a cave explorer who got trapped trying to find a new entrance to his family's 'Great Crystal Cave' and ultimately perished there. Yep, real cheery stuff and not at all spooky when 'trapped' underground.  Luckily I wasn't trapped so long to be late for work.

This morning we had a monthly internal video conference which my boss hosts. I thought everything was set until it was T minus 20 minutes when the girl with the handouts was nowhere to be found and the tech guy was MIA.  At least the video was working.  I paced back and forth between the meeting location and my office, calling the girl with the handouts every so often, making every attorney entering the video conference nervous when I thought they were her coming through the door.

Finally, with 5 minutes before the start, one of the mail guys arrived with the handouts, and 2 minutes prior the girl showed up with the sign-up sheets. She had been in a meeting that had run late.
Stressful, and I wish I'd gone down to her desk in the first place to get the handouts, but not the end of the world.

Then, during the conference, my boss emails me to let me know there was a voice coming over the phone, some guy talking about the lake. So, I send a firmwide email to tell everyone invited to the call to turn the mute on their phone, but I guess it kept going. How embarrassing. Today we actually had an external presenter as well, a big deal in restructuring. Stupid conferencing service.

With all of that, though, today hasn't been so bad. You see, I have something very priceless here at work.

That's right. I can close my door. The only door I can close at home is to the bathroom, and the only place to sit there is on the toilet! So yes, it's nice to have a door I can close, and to have something to sit on other than a toilet. Small joys. :)