Category — life

Sometimes, I have delusions of grandeur and I convince myself that I am a fabulous baker.

Those chocolate chip cookies I made that were burned on the bottom and runny on the top? Crappy flour, bad recipe and the oven malfunctioned. Hardly my fault.

The birthday cake that had a rock hard centre? Faulty batter courtesy of Duncan Hines, and the worst cake pan in the universe.

Anyway, Joe just started a new job, so I went to the market and bought us something a little extravagant for dinner:  a whole chicken brought up and hand fed by monks, fresh vegetables picked by angels and a box of Betty Crocker angel-food cake mix. With rainbow sprinkles.

How hard could angel food cake be?

As it turns out, not only can I not be trusted with cake mix or baking, but I am capable of making a mess that would terrify even the most hardened Molly Maid crew.

I blame the electric beater I used.

I turned it on and mixed up a rainbow bit batter that would make Martha Stewart envious – but then to clear the beaters, I turned up the beater and splattered batter all over everything ever;

Walls? Check.

The grill, knife block and wall? Check.

My clothes, face and hair? Check.

The counter, floor and oven door? check, checkity, check!

But, the batter that was left over made a very decent cake which I then collapsed by decorating it in very heavy butter cream icing.

However, Joe, the best husband ever, ate my mostly collapsed cake with great enjoyment. In fact, I had only one piece of it (just to be polite to myself) and could often find Joe cutting himself a generous piece and sneaking off with it.

I have no idea what I’ve learned from this except that angel food cake batter in the eye is very fizzy and hurts.

One of the tasks I set for myself at the most recent Emotus Operandi meeting was to visualize and write about my ideal office/work space.

So I sat down this morning and started looking at pictures from the online Restoration Hardware catalogue. I had some lovely fantasies of me sitting down in my Madeleine Side Chair to work at my beautiful Portuguese Desk, a cozy Scrollwork Tibetan Rug beneath my feet and a cup of fragrant green tea within easy reach. Once in awhile, as I was immersed in the creation of my incredibly brilliant first novel, I would look out the generously sized windows towards the sea and maybe get up to throw another log on the fire – after stepping over my irish wolfhound dogs, Heathcliff and Boris.

How’s that for ideal?

Then I realized the chances of me ever having such an office were pretty slim and I’d never get any work done in there anyway. I’d be too distracted by all the first edition books in my Grand French Casement Oak Cabinets and probably fritter the day away playing with my dogs on the seashore.

I took a good look at the work space I have at home and realized that aside from the fact that it’s pretty much in my living room, it’s actually not a bad space for a home office. The less than ideal aspects about my current space were all the office supplies cluttering up the lovely 1930′s dining table I use as my desk.

I figured if I couldn’t have my office by the sea, I could have a good work space here at home. So I cleaned the table off – and ruthlessly threw everything that was superfluous onto a huge pile that I will donate to a school-supplies drive come September.

So, now I’m sitting at my newly cleaned up desk and having another realization: I still haven’t fulfilled the object of the exercise. I’ve made my home office more or less ideal – but I’ve done nothing to envision what my office/work life might be like if I were get a more regular job outside of my home office.

If I’m being honest, I suppose I don’t care so much about the office space as I do about the work I’m doing and the people I’m doing it with, but I’ll give it a shot anyway:

The work should be interesting and meaningful.

Ideally, I want to work on something that means something to me personally – something I’d use, buy or want for myself. I’ve worked on projects and at places that were never more than a means to a paycheque. Lots of people do this and it’s considered normal. I don’t want that kind of normal. I want to want more than just the paycheque.

I would also prefer work that doesn’t cause me to go home feeling stressed out and annoyed with the universe – I don’t want to become my work, I want my work to simply be a natural extension of something I like anyway (and then I want to be paid a reasonable salary for doing it).

My work environment should be reasonably pleasant.

When I say “work environment” I mean the people in the work place. Ideally, I would work at a smallish company with (or for) like-minded people and we will create a work environment that is nice to be in. When I’m at work, I want to actually do work. I want to create and produce things. I want to know that my colleagues and I are working together toward a common goal, but I also want a relaxed atmosphere that is friendly. My dream job has an ROWE policy anyway, so the rest should follow. I also want the people I work for to be available and have an open door policy.

I’ve had many managers, and they were nearly always busy with paperwork or in meetings so it was rare that I could use them as a resource for the work I was doing. Of course, they always made time (eventually) for performance reviews and when they discovered I’d been struggling along and improvising a little they’d inevitably ask, “Why didn’t you come to me about this? That’s what I get paid for.”

The work space should be set up for the results I’m supposed to produce.

Most places don’t give their employees a say in how their work space is set up. I suppose all I would ask is that I have some measure of privacy, one of those metal locker things for my coat and personal belongings, and equipment that works, with the software I need set up and ready to go.

I can’t count how many times I’ve started at an office with an empty desk, or a PC that doesn’t work, a broken chair and two cheap pens that leak in a dusty holder. Please, if you want good things from me, treat me like I matter. Have this stuff set up and tested, don’t give me the chair no one else will sit in, and clean the desk.

If there could also be some sort of cleaning schedule in place for the kitchen – that would be awesome. Communal fridges/microwaves/sinks are generally disgusting and I hate having to clean random goo off the counter before I can use it.

Looking over what I’ve just written here, I don’t think my ideals are very demanding or unrealistic. Ultimately, I want to be happy in my work. I want to know that I am doing something useful with and for people with whom I have a good and honest working relationship. I will give a lot to the place that can provide these things.

Now that I have a picture in my head of my ideal office, I just need to start looking for a place that fits these criteria!

Title: The five secrets you must discover before you die
Author: John Izzo, Ph.D.
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
Pages: 167 (not including index)
ISBN: 978-1-57675-475-7
Price: $16.76 CDN

I don’t normally buy anything from the self help section of bookstores. I’ve always considered the fiction and literature sections to be all the self help I could need or want. I bought this book since it was the selection of the month for the book club I just joined. I opened it with the expectation that it would be full of new-agey, cheesy sort of talk about becoming one with the flow of the universe and eating more vegetables or something.

As it turns out, this book was actually not too bad.

The author, along with a team of people, interviewed over 200 people over the age of 60 (screened from a much larger pool of candidates) to find out the secret of their happiness. The interviewees were chosen by their friends and loved ones because they seemed to have a knack for being happy, and can look at their lives and say “I have no regrets and I am happy.”

The book is organized so that there is one secret per chapter so I found it very easy to read. I was also able to skip around a little in the book when I wanted to without worrying about keeping a storyline straight (or spoiling a storyline).

Speaking of spoilers, here comes one now: I’m showing you the man behind the curtain and revealing the five secrets (you’ve been adequately warned):

1. Be true to yourself.
2. Leave no regrets.
3. Become love.
4. Live the moment.
5. Give more than you take.

Not exactly mind-bending stuff.

These are all things anyone could have figured out on their own. However, there is something to be said for having them all collected in a book. I think the real difficulty of these “secrets” is incorporating them into your own life – especially as that generally involves a blunt self-appraisal of how you live and who you are and a lot of courage.

I did find parts of the book very repetitive – these secrets are really hammered home – and the third secret made me roll my eyes a little. The phrase  “become love” is a little saccharine for my taste, but I do agree with its meaning: acting like a self-absorbed jackass will ultimately lead to unhappiness (and probably a lot of loneliness since no one will want your company) so you should be nicer.

This book made me feel kind of guilty somehow though – like how I feel when I walk past people canvasing for charities downtown (“No thanks, just out for bus tickets!”), but I’m not sure this feeling is a point against the book. Maybe that little feeling of uncomfortableness is the point of the book.

The best part of the book (for me) was not Dr. Izzo’s explanations about what he means by these secrets. What stood out as I read and flitted from chapter to chapter were the direct quotes from the interviewees. The people Dr. Izzo and his team interviewed weren’t a bunch of young 30-somethings like myself who are only just starting to glimpse what it might be like to have some wisdom one day. These are people who have 30+ years on me and make me look like a silly kid – and what they have to say is valuable.

Their messages, in my opinion, were summed up best by the woman who said she always tried to think ahead to when she’d be old and grey and sitting in a rocking chair: would that woman look back at this moment with happiness or regret. If the answer was happiness, it was the right path.

Will I think that for myself when making decisions about my life? Probably not as often as I ought to, but at least it’ll be there in my head and I have the option of having a moment of wisdom.

I still stand by my opinion that the best self-help is found in the literature section, but Dr. Izzo’s book exceeded my expectations and gave me some food for thought.