Safety in Numbers

I never considered myself a numbers person.

Oh, I dabbled in all the college prep math classes, and took all form of giddy pleasure in the One Right Answer phenomenon. In college though, I took a calculus class from a NASA brainiac who couldn't teach. Being the quitter I was, I abandoned math and turned to liberal arts for comfort.

The numbers bug stuck with me. I managed to sneak in a statistics classes and a few ‘business math’ classes to round out my sociology degree. The classes, while difficult, stirred a pure satisfaction in me. Those long pages of pencil scratches, the proofs and their logic, and always, the marvel of the One Right Number at the end.

In an attempt to put the analytical back into my life, I have tried at several points to earn an MBA. This has largely been a disaster. Cleveland State proved too hard to navigate the bureaucracy, and Webster University was too far touchy-feely for my hard numbers desire. DePaul proved promising, but it was an MFA in Writing. You’d think that a writing degree could hold my interest for 48 credit hours, but alas, the program was for those who wanted to teach others to write. I really don’t get how someone could teach writing rather than do it, and anyway, teaching is not for me, so off my plate it fell.

Time passed and I found myself in a great job with some realistic upward potential. I decided, yet again, to pursue a second degree. This time, with DS and Howard in the picture, I opted for the on-line route. In the end, I returned to Webster. They gave me full credit for the classes I took back in 1995 (and I love them for that), which was reason enough to return. And they had put a whole new section into the program--numbers. MBA in Finance, here I come.

The first two classes, marketing and organizational behavior, floored me with their work load. I did well, but I longed for a quantitative class. I had 100 pages to read every week, and reams of reports to write. All I wanted was something where I can do the problem and come up with the One Right Answer. Wasn't this a finance degree? Didn't I do my ucky core classes already? Enough with the yakkety-yak on the papers, the citations and referenceson topics I’m only marginally interested in. Please, get me to the numbers. I want to stretch my left brain.

Ah, grasshopper. Be careful what you wish for.

I’m taking Principles of Financial Accounting this term. This class is kicking my arse up and down the street, let me tell you. The paltry PowerPoint presentations that serve as 'lectures' do nothing but turn the textbook material into animated drivel. I work until my brain wires cross and I can’t understand even my own notes, and then I hang it up. I wouldn’t say that I’m now longing for the right-brained classes, but sometimes I question whether I’m a numbers person.

I want to be, and to think I am, but sometimes when I’m elbows-deep in Bond Discount Rates and my shoulders ache from hunching over my notebook, I wonder.

I used to say that college was great except for the classes. I learned so much more about life in 4 years than I ever could have absorbed from the hours in lecture halls. Well, if that’s true for undergrad, it goes double for MBA school. I’m learning a ton, and most of it is happening outside the college-ruled e-papers I’m stuffing into my professor’s In Box.

In deference to that adage, and to my longing for a numbers-centered mind, here’s a small (numbered!) list of things I’m discovering about Me along the route to higher education:

1. I do not know how to learn.

I’ve never really had to study for anything. I took books home in high school because that’s what people did, but I never used them. College, apart from the Calc fiasco, was more or less a breeze. All around me, engineers ate the early shift in the dining commons, hit their desks by 5pm and stayed up into the small hours of the morning, solving problems, checking take-home exams and studying until their eyes glazed. Not me. I spent 2 years hanging out with Howard and cramming for exams by reading the entire textbook in a day. Halleluiah for my photographic memory, otherwise I might still be an undergrad in Cleveland.

Anyway, I never learned to study, and it's proving problematic for me, because...

2. I will not necessarily ‘get’ something the first time I’m exposed to it.

Because of my history with school, I expect to understand something the first time it’s explained to me. That is not how accounting is going. I have to read the chapters at least twice. I do all the self-study material offered, all my homework, and most of the problems posed in the textbook’s web-enabled tutorial. Even then, sometimes I’m just barely skating on the edge of understanding. Howard says it’s because I have to learn everything on my own. Maybe. I admit, some days I long for a dull, monotonous lecture, or for a classroom full of the dumb looks I give my computer every night. At least then I could raise my hand, ask a helpful-to-me question and get in answered in real time. I can e-mail my instructor and he’s pretty good about answering me. But usually by the time he responds, I’ve either figured it out or decided that I just won’t get it this time. This leads me to the nadir of this experience, which is recognizing that.....

3. I will make mistakes.

Wow, is this one tough to swallow. I got 100% on every assignment in all my classes up until now. Even that inane paper I had to write for Professor DumbAss managed to get a perfect score on the rewrite. Not so with accounting. I’m still carrying an A average, but I’m making mistakes in the homework. I have not accepted this, and I think it’s hampering my ability to learn. This leads me right back to Problem #1.

Or really, it’s all part of the same problem. I never learned to study, I am impatient with myself, and I abhor the idea of imperfection. Sucks, sucks, sucks.

It occurred to me this week that my issues with weight loss are identical to my issues with this class. I have really struggled with my weight since Christmas. I think it’s part of the reason I haven’t been writing as frequently lately. The other part is this dog-level homework, but still, I could probably sneak out an hour a week to put a short post up. Of course there’s another ‘problem’, succinct speech. I’m pretty sure that’s why I never wrote poems or short stories—I can’t be brief! There’s too much to say, and way too much to complain about! What if I missed something?

Okay, anyway. So I ate too much at Christmas and I waited too long to admit that the weight gain was real, and so this week, I finally accepted that I’d have to go back into loss mode. I had several false starts, but this week seems to be sticking. I haven’t digressed at all this week, and the scale is tipping back downward. I’m still hovering near the 150 mark, but the octopus has receded, and people at work are asking me if I’ve lost more weight, so it’s working.

I see now that I didn’t really overcome my eating problems when I lost the weight last year. I fixed the issue, but I didn’t solve the problem. I think I was so jacked to start the program and so determined to get the weight off of me that I didn’t bother paying attention to the ‘happily ever after’ part.

I’m still tempted by everything chocolate and I’m not to be trusted alone in a room with a pantry. So when temptation hit, I folded like a peanut butter sandwich on white bread. Oh, save me….

This week I managed to get through gymnastics by downing a non-fat cappuccino and the Wednesday night Boys Out Climbing by staying at work and refusing to go grazing. It was hard, hard stuff, but I made it, and today I’m wearing my size 3 jeans with no dunlap on the belly. I even had to cinch a belt on to keep my knickers from showing.

I expect that I still have 2 weeks more in loss mode before I can return to true maintenance. I’m working on accepting the fact that I’ll have to learn that, too. Lucky for me (?) I’ll be in a week-long break between classes, so I can really think about how to experiment with adding points without pumping back up.

My hope is that this time will be different for me. It is already, really. I stopped the gain at 7 pounds and I got it under control while I was still in my current size. I do have a lot of history and good habits that I can use to help me through this, and of course I have Howard. I won’t ever have lost ‘more’ weight, or even done anything other than remove the pounds I’d gained while I wasn’t on guard. But pounds off is pounds off, even if it’s a reprise.

It’s hard to accept this, because it feels like recovering from a failure, rather than learning a lesson. But 147 is 147, even if I have to hit it twice to make it stick. You might say it's my One Right Answer.

A the C(runching My Way Back Down)

My Fat Trap

Keep it Simple.

Or in my case, Keep it Simple, Stupid. I should have that tattooed on my hands, so I could see it all day long. My life gets painful whenever I forget to keep it simple. And almost always, when my life starts to convolute, it’s because of my big yap.

I had a mentor a while back whoI admired for his fast-track success and his straight-talking style. I remarked about this once, and his response surprised me. ‘I’ll tell you, I’d have gone much further, and much faster, if I’d learned to keep my mouth shut.’

I share that affliction. To quote the comedienne Ron White, I have the right to remain silent, but not the ability.

All my life I’ve struggled with the troubles my mouth has created. My anger in my youth destroyed many (ex-) friendships, and my anxious chatter ruined most of my adult love affairs. Later on, my drive to rise up the ranks of Corporate America helped me to develop a biting sarcasm that got me fired 4 times. To give you an idea of who I once was, my first boss told me I had all the sensitivity of a chainsaw. I took that as a compliment.

I wonder at times if I’m like incapable of sentiment or empathy. No, that’s not right—I do have empathy. My problem is not a lack of emotion or care. I feel everything. I just disregard it, in favor of speaking my mind.

One of the characters in Atlas Shrugged noted, “Nothing is more important than how well you do your work.” I believe that, and I live that, and I wonder sometimes if it’s this very drive that sabotages my efforts to improve.

I had my review yesterday. It was a relatively short conversation, as it should have been. SuperBoss knows what I’m doing, he inserts his opinion when I ask, and otherwise he leaves me to my job. So the review and his comments held no surprises. He was more effusive than I’d expected, but the comments were things I had heard for months. He gave one caveat: since I’d been here less than a full year, he could not rank me Outstanding. It’s how he felt, but we couldn’t have that. We would have to settle for Exceeds Expectations.

Fine by me, but still, when it came right down to it, I was disappointed in the review. SuperBoss had been talking about working toward promoting me. He’d been repeating himself and encouraging me to think about the impact of this for so long, that I had started to think of myself in the new spot. He’d been very careful not to commit to a date or even that he could do it, but I carefully ignored that—I was getting promoted! I had almost put myself into that space, imagining myself in a real office, and working at the higher level, and on the first rung of upper management at last.

Promotions here occur throughout the year, and I’ve never seen one happen at a review, but still, I’d been anticipating it for a while, and I thought that the review would be a terrific time to do it, especially for an associate who was (almost) rated as outstanding. Instead, he started talking about waiting until this next set of responsibilities goes through, which is at least a year from now. I don’t know what’s happened that I could be doing so well and earning so much praise, and now a promotion that seemed almost imminent is now something for next year’s review—maybe.

What happened? I brooded about it all night, and then this morning it occurred to me. It’s my mouth. Again.

After we finished the review, SB mentioned, in a rather roundabout way, that I would do myself a lot of good if I could be gentler in correspondence and communication. He emphasized that I have a terrific reputation here, and that I’m known for my sense of urgency and my results, but that I could make that even better if I were kinder to people.

I’m paraphrasing here—he really was subtle about it. But I know him well enough to realize that his ‘just think about it’ way means that people have said things about this to him. It’s what is keeping me from my next job.

So here I am again, with my mouth is keeping me from getting ahead. It’s not budget, it’s not opportunity, and it’s not space at the top—it is me.

I’m comforting myself with the knowledge that the ability to fix this and remove the last obstacle lies squarely within my power. Still, we’re talking about a problem I’ve had since I was 10, and one that I thought I’d fixed. And I really thought I had overcome this problem. I am so careful about my language. I don’t use sarcasm at all anymore. I try very hard to insert an ‘unfortunately’ into e-mails that carry bad news. In fact, I thought I had overcompensated to such a place that I was something of a pushover in certain ways.

Clearly I’m not, though it still feels this way, and now I’m going to have to dial it down even more, because if I don’t, I’ll be stuck at this High Man in a Cubicle level forever….or until someone gets sick of my trap and has me fired.

I’m working on it. I’ve spent the last 3 weeks pulling back on my ‘straight speak’ at home. In an effort to reduce the explosive incidents, I’m inserting bubble baths into my evenings, even when I have so much to do that I could stay up all night and not get it done. I think this will help, but really, I won't know until I'm faced with something stressful. Will I stay or will I blow?

My propensity to see things in their extreme form, and my drive to keep things from getting disastrous by refusing to let anything happen at all is keeping me from getting ahead. I am keeping me from getting ahead. Me and only me. Sucks, sucks, sucks.

Work isn’t the only place where my mouth gets me into trouble. I’ve been bouncing around the low 150s since mid-December, and I can’t seem to find the focus I need to get me back to my goal weight. I have a few days of perfection, and I start to get that “thin” feeling of the Below 150 club. Then I go to DS’s gymnastics on Monday night and I snack on something outside of the program, and then I have dinner on top of it, because of course natty snacks don’t satisfy.

Then Wednesday night comes and the boys are out climbing until 7:30 and I’m in the house, starving. I don’t want to have dinner without them, and I don’t want to eat anything that will ruin my week (Monday did that already), so I pick and whittle at the no-point junk foods until I’m sick. Then I’m cranky because I ate wrong and I’m still hungry, and the evening is ruined. Mostly because I’m sick and irritable, and so I start shooting off of my mouth.

I did discover something this week that could really help. I’m PMSing, which always challenges those in striking distance. But I’d been calmer than usual and so I was able to monitor my emotional decline. Things begin for me around Day 18 and continue for 9 stormy days until my cycle ends. On Tuesday, I had too much fat free Reddi-Whip and when it layered itself on top of my degenerating progesterone, I felt jumpy all night. Then on Wednesday, I had some chocolate at work. Dumbo me decided to stay at the office instead of going home and scavenging for Dinner #1. All I managed to do was move my binging from home to office. I had a headache and I felt dizzy, and then I snapped at Howard over nothing.

Yesterday, I was sugar-free. Let me point out at this juncture that ALL days should be sugar-free: this is how far I’ve removed myself from the daily WW regimen. Anyway, I felt better then I had for the previous 2 days UNTIL I got home and downed a sugar-free jello with fat-free Reddi-Whip (which has sugar in it). DS also got drugged by the Valentine’s Day extravaganza, and we had a preview of the Teenager All Out War right after dinner. He slept it off, I cried in guilt, and today we’re all better, but I would give my right arm not to repeat that. Once again, my mouth got me into trouble, this time with my darling boy.

I believe that this is fixable, and not something so deeply ingrained into my psyche that there’s no workaround. I have to believe that, because otherwise I’ll wind up alone and angry. Speaking from years of previous experience, I guarantee that this is not what I want. The problem I have now is that I don’t know how to fix it. I don’t know how to be an effective executive (wannabe) or even an assertive, pleasant person without throwing my weight around. I know that this is so, since I’m doing all this while simultaneously thinking I’m a pushover. I have a perception problem, and it manifests itself right in the middle of my face.

SuperBoss started taking yoga about a month ago. He was pretty even before, but I can tell that he’s far more relaxed now, and he seems more centered and relaxed. Maybe I should do that. Maybe I should find my Zen or my ohm or whatever it is that makes the Type B folks around me just as effective (or moreso) than me, while keeping their friends and family intact.

Intact. In tact. There’s a thought. Maybe if I just waited to speak or e-mail, much of this would go away. It wouldn't take long-just a few minutes, or a day at the most for something really incendiary. Or maybe I should think through all the possible conflict scenarios and craft diplomatic responses ahead of time, so I’m not left to determine the right answer when I’m sitting on the spot.

Or maybe I should treat others with the respect and courtesy that I’d like to have. Be nice and stay out of the candy aisle. Those two things could solve everything.

Keep it Simple. I’ll omit the ‘stupid’, in the interest of creating better communications. Let’s see how it goes.

A the T(rending toward tact)