Showing Appreciation for the Good Things in Life

Today has been an interesting day even though it’s been rather quiet at work.

For one thing, I received my official notification that I had made the ‘elite’ group who will be rewarded for my efforts with a trip to London at work. I knew it was coming but it was still a thrill to get the email that congratulated me and made it ‘official’.

It makes me appreciate my job and my company even more than I do already. While I do think that good workers shouldn’t need incentives dangled in front of their faces like a greyhound at a racetrack, I do think that they make things more fun. I’d like to think that I’d do my job just as well with the incentives but it definitely makes the stakes a little higher.

The interesting thing about incentives is that they play a dual role. Certainly, they give us something to work towards. You dangle a free trip to London in front of me and I’m going to bloody well make sure I get to go. Yet there’s another side to it. It creates a huge sense of loyalty and pride in my company that they actually want to reward us like this and that they actually do. Compared to my last company whose main rewards included awkward bagels and even more awkward organized social events, the differences are glaring. Even on my worst days here, I don’t have to talk myself into getting out of bed and going to work. I don’t have to blast rebellious music as I drive in order to psych myself up to face another day. I don’t have any overwhelming urges to throttle my boss with a yoga strap. Nor do I have to retreat to The Most Optimistic Bathroom in the World in order to make myself giggle at the absurdity of it all.

No, even without the rewards, I like this job because they make me feel appreciated. Even without the trip to London or the occasional cash bonuses we get, the fact that my boss tells me that I’m doing a good job does wonders. Our company CEO makes sure he comes to our branch from the main office in Chicago once in a while just to see us all and make sure he knows that our work is appreciated.

So, even though the rewards and incentives are nice, I find that I want to do a good job because I don’t want to disappoint any one. It’s amazing how much of a difference it makes to like and respect your boss because he actually knows what you do on a daily basis. Yes, there’s a little bitterness still there towards my old boss but it’s slowly dissipating in response to my current boss.

I think appreciation goes a long, long way with most human beings. Because there have been times when I’ve done things without so much of a thank you and been hurt, I do try very hard to make sure I thank people when they’ve done something good or nice for me. I try to be a good tipper in a restaurant. I try to make sure people know when what they’ve done means a lot to me. It’s one of those small things that goes a very long way.

Like most humans, I respond well to appreciation. Granted, when the appreciation comes in the form of being granted a free trip to London, I tend to respond rather more excitedly than, for example, with a free leftover promotional favour from a past conference. My old boss once gave me a coaster he found in his office. Sad to say, I was extremely grateful. Needless to say, I’ve made a step up I think.

Another reason my day was rather interesting was because I received another form of appreciation: Fan mail. Now that I’ve made The Reluctant Demon free for e-book download, I’m finding that my “sales” have literally doubled. I’ve had two rather lovely emails already telling me how much the reader has enjoyed my book and demanding to know when the sequel comes out.

It’s a very humbling feeling, I admit. I may not ever make the bestselling lists but to know that people are out there, reading my book and actually liking it is a pretty amazing thing. It’s exciting. My lovely friend, Ms. P, is a librarian and she’s actually put The Reluctant Demon on their library’s “hot summer reading list”. I’m in the company of George R.R. Martin and Jane Austin. I’m slightly awestruck by this but I think it’s pretty fabulous of her. Thanks, Ms. P!

All in all this email is pretty much my way of saying how nice it is to be appreciated. There are times in life when I feel quite the opposite and I do a lot of venting so I thought it would be nice to write about the flipside. I find that one of my flaws is that I’m quick enough to complain and vent but I don’t always remember to be grateful and happy about the things that are good in life. It’s too easy to see the bad sometimes and not so easy to see the good.

So, today, I’m seeing all of the good and appreciating every moment of it. And, to top it all off, tomorrow is Friday and weekends are something else to be truly appreciated, no matter how much we enjoy our jobs.

Happy Friday and thanks for reading!

It Doesn't Matter Where You Live..

I’m still constantly surprised by Midwestern weather. Last week, we were struggling with near 100 degrees and high humidity. Today, it’s rainy, grey and a was around 64 degrees all day.

I’m not complaining. In fact, even though I’ve lived here for almost 3 years now, it still delights me that the weather can change that much. As I’ve said before, it’s nice to have variety and for the eight years I lived in L.A., I certainly got tired of those sunny days. I even got tired of the days that started out gloomy and finally got sunny later on because there was never any real promise of rain: There was only the empty tease.

There are a lot of differences living in the Midwest to California. Not all of them are good but I still wouldn’t move back for anything. I do miss the ocean being within a 45 minute drive. I miss seeing the mountains that were tinged purple on clear sunny mornings. I miss the rosemary that grows wild everywhere and the fact that, even in December, there are flowers blooming.

What I don’t miss is the traffic. When I talk to candidates who are looking for new jobs, many of them find themselves job seeking because they have to commute downtown to Cincinnati and as soon as I hear that, they immediately have my sympathies. I’m lucky enough to live six minutes from work nowadays but for the time I lived in L.A., my commute being little over 14 miles took me at least an hour each way and that was when traffic was actually moving.

I also don’t miss the expense. I’m still constantly amazed that my mortgage payment is still less than that which I paid for rent. In fact, in 2001, what I paid for my first little studio apartment in North Hollywood is approximately the same as my house payment now.

I could spend this entire blog on the good and bad differences I find between L.A. and the Midwest but, really, I don’t want to because I’m content where I am. The only thing I really miss is the more open, single culture of L.A. As I’ve said before, being in my mid-thirties in the Midwest makes me a bit of a weirdo and, gasp, bordering on spinster territory. In L.A., it was, dare I say it, very normal.

This doesn’t make the Midwest bad- it’s just different. I know someone from high school who is a grandmother at my age. Here, it’s very traditional to get married and have a family at a much younger age than in big cities. It doesn’t bother me except when it comes to making friends. When I first moved here, two of my similar-aged, married coworkers used to invite me to their houses to hang out with them, their spouses and another member of their ‘gang’- a single woman who, like me, wasn’t married. It was nice, at first until I realized that I was being invited so that the other single woman didn’t feel like a third wheel and she had ‘a buddy’. I know this because I accidentally overheard it one day.

It bothered me just a little. I wanted to make friends because they liked me, not because I made an even number of people. Over time, I stopped getting invited and, in time, I was treated like an ‘outsider’ at work when the three women got together. Because it felt like a high school mentality, it irritated me for a long time. It was clearly a clique and I wasn’t ‘cool’ enough to belong. Fortunately, since they all acted a little like children who had decided they were the Coolest Gang on the plant, I got bored.

As such, I ended up actually making friends with two of my other coworkers. They were both a little older than me- one married, one divorced…both great women. It took a little trial and error but, with patience, I got it right in the end.

Now I’ve been here a while, it doesn’t really bother me that I’m single. It’s interesting- in my current office, only two of my seven coworkers are actually married. Two of the others live with significant others and three of us are single. It’s just a different environment.

Granted, it still doesn’t make me ‘normal’ according the median age of married couples around here but it still helps.

In truth, what I’ve figured out and what it took me years to figure out was, in truth, where you live isn’t as important as being happy where you live. I fit in more in L.A. I liked the geography. I miss my friends. There are even occasional days during weeks of nothing but rain, I miss the sun of L.A.

Yet, despite all that, I never felt as content and happy there as I have in the time I’ve lived back in Ohio. It’s not just being a homeowner. It’s not just having two fantastic pups. It’s not even having my family within a decent driving distance.

It’s just that I feel like I’ve found myself here. I’ve never felt as relaxed and content with myself and where I live than I have in the past two years.

And no matter how great L.A. is/was…nothing and nowhere can replace that feeling.

Happy Thursday

Day 2: The Polar Opposite of My Last "Day 2"

Today was Day 2 of my new job. If life were like a video game or, even an episode of a TV show, I'd have had that fact depicted over my head in the form of a chyron that said "DAY 2."

It's interesting. My last "Day 2" was the second day after I'd turned in my resignation. It was horrible. My boss was in his stage of our 'breakup' that was a cross between depression and anger. It was a horrible day. It was the day where I finally cried because my boss had been so mean and the fallout of my decision to leave my last job was intense.

This "Day 2" was about as opposite as you can imagine. For one thing, I didn't feel a sense of depression and gloom as I went about getting ready to go into the office. When I did get to the office, there was a pleasant atmosphere. I wasn't being called into impromptu meetings in which I was forced to explain my decision.

Instead, as a pleasant diversion, I was, instead, treated to a good day in which I felt that my decision was explained for me by the powers of the universe. For one, I received more training. This, in itself, is different from my last job. My new boss is nice. He's not just the type of nice you get when you're new. I think he's just...nice. When we finished our training session, he assigned me some tasks but told me no pressure. I thought I had an idea of what to do so...I did it.

Truth be told, actually doing stuff at a new job is nervewracking. I tend to like my hand to be held until the very last minute. As a child, I was painfully shy. As an adult, I'm much less so but the recumbant gene of youth makes me feel shy and nervous when confronted with the idea that I have to talk to strangers. Fortunately, with adulthood comes maturity and while my instinct is to shy away from making phonecalls, the reality is that that once I've dialed a few numbers, it's quite easy to babble to strangers.

As a result, I had a rather successful day. What iIdidn't realize is that my boss didn't actually expect anything. This is not to say he's treating me like I'm special...as in the type of special that rides a special bus and that he didn't expect anything because he knew I would be able to do it. It's just that he's normal and he knows I'm new. Thus, he didn't expect me to do very much.

Nevertheless, I gave it a go and it turned out to be quite fun. I had a productive day. I'm already getting the hang of the job. I already love it or, at least, the idea of it. It's a lovely feeling to know that the people I'm calling to interview for a potential job may not not have a job at all and that they may be glad of my phone call. It's nice to know that even though I'm having to interrupt people's days, it's for a good cause.

Most of all, it's nice to have results. It's nice to see that the work I'm doing is yielding something.

This may sound dramatic. Yet, when you've been in a job for two years where the yield of your work is measured in the fact that you don't get fired, it's ok to be dramatic.

What's more dramatic is when your boss leaves for the day and makes a point of coming by your office and actually saying, "You did a great job today," that for a split second, you suddenly want to a) either hug him in gratitude, b) have a brief cry because you're simply not used to any type of feedback and even the small stuff is overwhelming at this point in time or, more likely c) where your mouth falls open with shock for a split second because you're simply not used to praise. Yes, this is dramatic for a job. I get that. It shouldn't be dramatic, that's the point. Instead, this is how a good company/manager/boss operates. You should always know when you do well.

For me, today, it was a start. More than that, it was an affirmation that, if there was any doubt at all that leaving the familiar cocoon of my last job, regardless of the problems, that doubt is assuaged and I have, in fact, done the right thing in leaving.

I'm hoping that as time passes and my job suddenly feels familiar rather than slightly foreign as it does currently, none of these positive things will strike me as odd. Instead, I'll get comfortable with the fact that they are, actually, quite normal.

At the very least, I'm hoping my job becomes normal in that it becomes the way I earn money and that I do it well but it's not the focal point of my life. While I know my job supports my writing, my writing has been there to define me and who I am. Lately, with my past job, I felt like my writing fell short because my soul was being sucked dry. Slowly, but surely, my soul will come back to me. I can feel that now and it's nice to have hope again.

It's also nice to have a little bit of praise and feedback because, sometimes, that's all it takes in jobs, in life and in everything else.

Happy Wednesday!