Proactive

Times are tough for my company. Since I’m in charge of accounts receivable (the inflow of money owed to us), there is tremendous pressure on me to collect on unpaid past due (and sometimes not quite due) invoices. I’ve been trying to do a good job, but my big boss is getting stressed out by invoices that are even one day past due.

Today, my big boss called an impromptu accounting meeting, the majority of which was stressing how important it is to collect and explicitly showing how frustrated he is by my performance. Less than five minutes after the meeting, he sent me a strongly worded email saying how important my responsibility is to the company and that I need to be more proactive. He also said my job is very difficult, which tells me that my lack of results is all that much more disappointing. I’m paraphrasing the email (I don’t have it in front of me), but I was freaking out for the rest of the day. I really felt like I was going to get fired.

I talked to my old boss/friend about it after work, and he helped to calm me down a little. He knows that I have communication issues with my boss, but I should still ask for help when I need it. My boss is still there to help me (it’s just business, after all). He also said “if you can’t change others, change yourself,” which is an interesting thing to consider.

After I got home, my old work crush called me to see if I was okay. I hadn’t talked to him at all about what happened today. He said he knew that I’m under a lot of pressure right now, but he wanted to remind me that the reason why my bosses give me so much pressure is because they know I can handle it. They expect more out of me. If they didn’t expect so much, they wouldn’t be as demanding. This was a common topic when I was still in sales (since my old boss/friend had very high expectations of me and therefore yelled at me more than his whole sales team combined now), but I often lose sight of that fact these days. His minute-long phone call with me was short but encouraging.

I’m still freaking out a little bit, but talking to my two good friends at work helped a lot. I’m pretty sure tomorrow is not going to be a picnic, but at least I’m not as discouraged as I was initially.

I’ve been watching episodes of I Love Lucy tonight (Season Five, when she goes to Europe) to relax. Lucy is so funny.

Legacy

My mom is a librarian for a local university. She is retiring at the end of the year after 40 years of working at the same library. As she leaves, she will be donating a good sum of money to establish an endowment to further support the library where she has spent her entire career.

I’ve been helping my mom with a lot of the details. I came up with the title for the endowment, and I convinced my mom to use her own artwork from when she did Chinese painting as a hobby over 30 years ago as the bookplate for each book that is purchased using funding from her endowment. As a side note, I’m also desperately trying to convince her to pick up her brush again after she retires, because she’s actually a very good artist.

I also wrote a few short paragraphs about my mom and her career that will be put in a catalog which lists all of the endowments established for the library (I’m a good writer sometimes). My mom has seen and influenced so many changes in the library throughout her career, it’s amazing. I find the transition from card catalogs to online databases incredibly fascinating (I love looking back at technological advances and seeing how far we’ve come in such a short amount of time), and my mom played a big part of that change for her library.

Writing about my mom and seeing thank you notes/emails from people at my mom’s library helped me realize that my mom has made a major impact on her library. Her endowment serves as a way to perpetuate her legacy with the library, so that future visitors to the library can benefit from her contributions. They may not know her personally, but they will know her.

This is the kind of thing I want. Forty years from now, I want be able to say that I’ve done something that will benefit my community (local, national, global, who knows) in some way. I want to make a difference somehow. Donating to a library seems small compared to building houses/schools in third-world countries (I know someone who is doing that too), but it is still a way to make a positive difference in the world that has a lasting effect beyond our own lifetime.

As I continue my soul searching and journey for my inner passions, I want to keep this in mind. What will my legacy be?

Best Pseudo-Date Ever

Continuing my streak of great weekends, I had a fantastic Saturday with one of my best friends from college. We set a date (I’m her perpetual pseudo-boyfriend) to have brunch, and I drove to her apartment in LA (we take turns driving to each other’s places for our dates).

After we had brunch at a cute local French bakery cafe, we didn’t really have any plans, so we walked around my friend’s neighborhood admiring all the fancy houses. I love house watching (I really don’t know the proper term for this). I imagine owning and living in some of the houses, sort of like a kid fantasizing about being an adult (not even “sort of,” that’s exactly what I’m doing).

Once we sufficiently walked off our brunch, we relaxed at my friend’s apartment (of which I’m so jealous) for a little while before deciding to go see Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. I’ve been waiting to see it, and I knew that my friend is a huge Harry Potter fan (and has been one since before it was cool to be), so it was a perfect time to go (I feel like using a lot of parenthetical phrases today). I thought the movie was great; it sets up the scene for the last two movies. I’m anxious to see them!

By the time the movie was over, it was already the early evening. We walked across the street from the theatre to a nice Italian bar/restaurant. At first I thought we were just stopping in for gelato, but we ended up spending the next three hours having a long, leisurely dinner in the restaurant’s outdoor patio area. We did the date thing all the way (well, except for, you know…): we split a carafe of sangria, a pizza appetizer, and a lasagna entree. We got our own orders of gelato (yum), though, since there was no way that splitting one order of gelato would have been enough dessert for us.

Instead of calling it a night after dinner, my friend and I spread out on her couch and watched Under The Tuscan Sun on DVD. I hadn’t seen the movie in a long time, and I forgot how good it is. I also never knew/realized that Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development), Kate Walsh (Grey’s Anatomy/Private Practice), and David Sutcliffe (Gilmore Girls) all made cameos! I love it when I learn new things about old movies (In putting in all those hyperlinks, I found out David Sutcliffe was also on Private Practice with Kate Walsh. Crazy!).

Considering that all we had originally planned was brunch, playing the day by ear ended up being a fantastic day! Best pseudo-date ever!

Work Bestie

At the end of last week, my best friend at work (I call her my work bestie) told me that she is leaving the company because she’s been accepted to law school! She’s now working her last two weeks and interviewing potential replacements (we’re counting the hours she has left with our company). While this is great news for her, I’m sad. I’m going to be left without a lunch buddy! We also talk a lot throughout the day through instant messaging, so I won’t be able to vent about all my frustrations with work anymore.

More than just being sad, I’m also a bit jealous that she’s leaving our company and I’m not. I don’t know how much longer I can stand staying at this job, but I’m afraid it’s longer than I’m hoping (that’s already true, actually). I really need to come up with a game plan.

Big Bear Lake

After work on Friday, I drove nearly 150 miles to visit my best friend from elementary school at his house/cabin in Big Bear Lake (I mean the city; his house isn’t actually in the lake. English is funny sometimes.). The almost three-hour drive is twice as far as the farthest I had ever driven in one sitting before, and driving up a mountain is a little scarier than flat freeway driving, but I challenged myself (after debating all week) and drove it successfully! The drive wasn’t even as scary or as tiring as I thought it would be, but this is still a big step for me. I never would have even contemplated such a trip two years ago.

When I arrived at my friend’s house/cabin (it looks like a one-bedroom vacation home, I’m so jealous), my friend had dinner waiting for me! He’s a pretty good cook (cooking is one of his many hobbies), and he made slow-cooked ribs for me! Over the course of the weekend, he also made me waffles and homemade pizza! Healthy and economical.

Besides just visiting my friend, the other excuse for driving to Big Bear Lake this past weekend was to attend a chili cook-off put on for the city’s Old Miners’ Days. We went around to 25+ booths that each let us sample some of their amazing chili, and we got to vote for our favorite. I loved learning about the Gold Rush and California history back in elementary school, so this kind of event appealed to me. I don’t know what chili has to do with history, but joining in on a small town tradition is always fun. Also, I just love chili.

Of course, we also did some walking around the local shops and took in some views of the lake and the scenery. Basically, I had another amazing weekend (three weekends in a row of hanging out with my best friend from elementary school!). Spending a couple days in a secluded little town up in the mountains really felt like a mini-vacation. It’s so relaxing to escape reality, one weekend at a time.

“Ok”

My job situation is becoming unbearable. Working for this company was meant to be a stepping stone, a way to learn new things while I figure out what to do next. Lately, though, I feel like the learning has stopped and I’ve overstayed my welcome.

Yesterday, my company received payment on two invoices that I’ve been chasing since I moved to accounting in February. I sent proof of delivery at least four times. I sent my boss an instant message (my only interaction with her is via email or instant messaging) telling her all about it, saying “I just wanted to share the good news,” and her reply was “ok.” There was no “good,” no “thanks.” Just “ok.”

The sad part is that this “ok” is the most nonnegative thing my boss has said to me in nearly three months. Maybe I’m expecting too much to hope for any amount of positive feedback or encouragement. My workplace has become such a negative environment that even an apathetic, neutral response is the most I can ask for.

I need to get out of this, but I don’t have a plan. Do I want to willingly become one of the millions who are unemployed and have no health insurance? I can’t afford to quit. But can I afford not to?

Sign Of A Good Weekend

I’m really looking forward to the long weekend. The shortened workweek (did you know that workweek is one word?) is reason enough to celebrate, but I actually have plans too!

I’m going shopping at the Cabazon Outlets with one of my best friends from high school and his girlfriend tomorrow. I’ve never been to those outlets, and I don’t really know where Cabazon is, but who am I to turn down a day of shopping?

On Saturday (July 4th), I’m hanging out with my best friend from elementary school again (we have a lot of lost time to catch up on). We’re going to attend a barbecue at his mom’s place in Marina del Rey (it just sounds pretty). My friend said there will be a deck that overlooks the ocean and has a perfect view of the fireworks (I don’t know who’s putting on a fireworks show, not that it matters).

I’ll probably end up crashing at my friend’s mom’s place on Saturday (my friend suggested that I should). I’m not sure what my friend has planned for Sunday, but I’m hoping it’s something low-key. My weekends aren’t usually this packed. As much fun as the weekend is going to be, just thinking about it makes me feel tired. I’ll probably be more tired on Monday morning than I would be from a normal weekend, but maybe that’s a sign of a good weekend!