Lost Things

It was a shitty day today.

It’s not widely known, yet, but last week I came to an agreement with my employer that I have the rest of the year to find a new job. As of 2010, I will be unemployed, unless I find something. This knowledge is not public, and it has not been shared past him and I. Of course, my boss has not throttled back on the verbal floggings, and, if anything, has only become more intensely abusive, and more frequently. Emotionally, it has not been hitting me as hard, but the fact getting told you’re an idiot on a regular basis by someone who clearly resents paying you always does something.

Today there was another mistake that floated through when some people in the front office made a change, and it turned out weird in the results. So, there was another mess, and I was getting yelled at. Again. I went back and talked to my guys, explained the mistake, and starting doing the writeups. As I was getting ready do the writeup, I kept Lucy in my office. Lucy is my assistant. She is a smart, young Mexican, who works hard and does great work. Since I started working here, I have turned her career around and really raised her up, and she is amazingly loyal to me. After sending the other miscreants out of my office, I looked a Lucy helplessly.

“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just know that at this rate, I won’t be long for this company.” Suddenly she got very emotional.

“Don’t give up!” Tears were welling up in her eyes. (Of course, she is unaware that my fate is sealed.) We spent more time talking about what had happened in my department since I took over. Two years ago, morale was sky-high, productivity was way up, and people were getting better. I had people in my department passing on avenues for advancement because they wanted to keep working for me. But slowly I started getting heat from above, that people in my department thought it was a party. When a mistake came through, I would get clear instructions that I was to “shove a baseball bat up someone’s ass till comes out their mouth.” I started taking more and more heat for not being tough enough. So I started getting tougher. As Lucy pointed out, “They were trying to turn you into another Harold.”

Harold, who runs our shop across the hall. His shop is amazing operation: efficient, precise, and reliable. And, all of these processes are as reliable as the sunrise. But he runs it like an army, and is brutal on his employees. Harold is also a prima donna and gets treated like one, but since he runs a daaaaaaaaamned good shop, he’s earned that right. (No argument here. His shop is that fucking good.) But the positive relationships I had built over the months were now poisoned. People don’t give a crap anymore, and why should they? Just like me, they go from ass-kicking to ass-kicking. In Lucy’s artless honesty, I knew why I was failing as a manager: I had let someone else tell me how to manage.

It would take a long time to rebuild these relationships, and I don’t think people will soon forget the asshole. But I won’t have that much time, in any case. I see the pattern from my boss infecting a lot of my interactions: his sarcastic, combative dismissals; the refusals to admit anything; the casual insults. He always says “don’t take it personally,” but then levels an avalanche of inescapably personal criticism. And I can see what that poison has done.

But he never will.

—

My heart’s not in it at work any more. I’m like Jake Gittes back when he worked in Chinatown. At home, it’s been, complicated, as we sort through our differing experiences in the wake of our encounter with Don and Amy. I am slowly coming around to understanding her point of view, but for a long time this morning I truthfully felt very foolish, as my post about the experience sat at the top of our blog, getting happy comments, but I knew what Mina’s post held in the near future. As Mina added her postscript to it all, which helped bring some clarity to it, I was able to find some peace. At the same time, Mina is also flirting with two guys whom I have been considering adding to our bedroom in a very different context, for a very different purpose. For those who think the foursome was “all for me” (and there have been several) then this is something “all for her.” Of course, neither one really works out that way. Nothing would happen if weren’t both getting something from it, even if it isn’t the exact same thing. However, as I am running aground in very shallow waters at work, an unexpected stream of naughty photos of Mina appearing CC’d in my email for another guy just didn’t quite hit the right note at that point.

—

This afternoon, there was a very near disaster in my life. Winds in Los Angeles went soaring into gale force today. As Mina was finishing her walk with our pup, a tree began to crack. She jammed herself in the small alcove by our front door as the tree gave way, collapsing against our house, scraping the mailbox off the front. The branches whipped inches past her face and the dog. You can see how close the tree landed here. (that’s the threshhold at the bottom of the picture) Amazingly, the mailbox was the only damage, though our entire driveway and front yard are covered in downed tree. I brought a reciprocating saw home, and hacked off most of the branches, clearing footpaths to the front and back, but leaving the trunk, which was too big for my saw to handle, blocking the driveway for the city to dispose of. Until the tree is cleared, Mina can’t use her car.

I’m exhausted from the combination of emotional journey, professional abuse, near tragedy, and physical labor. I reflect a lot of what has been lost, and what was nearly lost. Had Mina been less alert, or less than her usually-observant self, I might be in a hospital right now, hoping for the best. The truth is that I live a very privileged life. I make more money than parents ever did, I went to college (which they never did), I have a master’s, I have a very colorful and exotic sex life, I have enjoying some of the most amazing food on the planet, and been in some of the most exclusive places in the world. It’s easy to focus on all the things I have lost that I would rather still have. I could make myself very sad or very angry if I wanted to do that.At the end of the day, though, I want to be happy. Most nights I can simply enjoy the peace of holding my wife and letting my mind slowly exhaust itself, under the thoughts dwindle away.

But not all nights.