Beware the Ides of March!

It’s the Ides of March today. That really doesn’t mean much in our society. The only reason I even remember it is because we studied Shakespeare’s “Julius Ceasar” in high school and it stuck with me.

When you study something in high school, you don’t just casually read it. You read it and then discuss it. Then you analyze it. Then you have to read it again because you’re taking a test on it. Then you have to write a paper on it.

The upside is that often, it stays with you as in the case of the literature we had to read that I enjoyed. I liked Shakespeare. I can still recite most of Hamlet’s soliloquy. I cannot, however, really tell you what happened in Moby Dick other than it’s about a man obsessed with a whale because, well, I never read Moby Dick. I tried really hard to read it but I could not get passed the first place. Each time I tried, it was like this curtain came down in my brain and everything in the world was more interesting. Still, somehow I managed to get an A on my paper in class. I’m still amazed at the fact that there is a way to construct sentences so you sound like you’re saying something really important but really, you’re saying nothing.

Anyway, long story short, I still have March 15 bookmarked in my brain as a day to ‘beware’. (“Beware the Ides of March"- Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2,)

Fortunately, so far the only thing I’ve had to beware is trying to avoid a bird as it flew perilously close to my car this morning and, also, getting wet since it’s raining. Work was pretty quiet but nicely productive and no cause for beware-ing so that was a good thing.

It’s a pretty typical March day out there, Ides of March or no. It’s wet and soggy and even the daffodils that have bloomed early are hanging their heads to avoid the rain.

Yet, the nice thing about March in the Midwest is that while it’s chilly and damp today, tomorrow, it’s supposed to be warm and sunny. Thursday is supposed to be positively lovely with 70 degrees and sun.

It’s going to be hard to work on Thursday. It’s always hard to work when it’s nice outside but I find on the first truly nice days of the year, work is something that one must be talked into doing. I’m not the only one who feels this way. In my old job, it was a day when all of those with laptops (read: Everyone BUT me) got to go outside and “work” while I, chained to my large old desktop PC, got to see them laughing and chatting from the window. My boss used to go outside too without so much of a “hey, sorry you’re stuck inside” to me. This is one of the many reasons he’s my ex-boss.

My current boss is much nicer. On nice days, he doesn’t mind if we leave a little early. One of my coworkers is an avid golfer and on nice, balmy, dry days he leaves the office to go hit the golf course.

Once again, I have to say, I like my job. I’m thankful that I escaped from the old one and landed here. I actually was talking to a candidate yesterday who is stuck in a job that makes her miserable. She said that it’s hard to talk herself into getting up in the morning and not calling in sick. I know how she feels. Truth-be-told, at my last job, that’s where I was when I decided to solve the problem by finding another job. I’m glad she came to me. I’ve made her my #1 priority- no one should be stuck in a job that makes them miserable.

Yet, I try not to look back to much on my old job. It’s hard sometimes because I’m still friends with a couple of my old coworkers and it’s easy to get sucked back into the gossip and news in the office. It’s just simply nice to know I work now for a place who not only makes me feel appreciated but also makes me feel respected. That’s a huge thing that doesn’t seem important until you realize how much of a difference that makes.

Sometimes when I talk to my old coworkers, I wonder if things would be any different if I stayed. Yet when I hear the stories of backstabbing, passive-agressiveness and office-politics, once again that amazing flood of relief washes over me and I am eternally grateful I got out of there.

But, the beautiful thing is that most of the time, I don’t need those reminders to make me appreciate my new job. It’s the small things such as not having to pay 35 cents for a Diet Coke but having it provided for the small cost of occasionally having to stock the fridge. It’s the “thanks for your hard work” I get from my boss at least once a week. It’s the fact that my boss buys a 24 pack of beer and brings it into the office so we can all hang out in the break area for a while.

It’s the fact that a bad day at this job has yet to send me outside my building to place an emergency venting call to my mother or my friend because I’m on the verge of either throwing a heavy object at my boss or I’m going to do something worse- go cry in the bathroom because I’m so frustrated and angry.

Really, bad days at work are relative to how much you like your job. Mondays, rainy days and the Ides of March really don’t seem so bad after all when, in the grand scheme of things, you’re simply grateful to be where you are.

And, in my case, I truly am- in all aspects of my life.

Happy Wednesday!