Tyrant in the 80's

The early 1980's were good to me... unfortunately, I can't say the same for everyone around me. I knew it all - Really! I was not one of those geniuses that graduated from college at age 13 who went on to take the physics world by storm. No, I was one of those people that had the annoying ability to remember random facts especially if I read them; while I didn't have a photographic memory,  if I read it, I remembered it. Not exact wording, but the essence of the written word. Okay, not so annoying yet, right? But then, I could pull the book [for example] off the shelf and open it to about the right page (or at least reference the chapter) and remember approximately how far down the page my quoted reference was; then I could happily point it out to the person I was [usually] correcting. I was rarely wrong. Now THAT was annoying.

I started my first job when I was 17 as a bookkeeper. I have never been an accountant (although I have done "accounting" during my careers), realizing right away that I prefer the input and balancing of paperwork... financial statements were boring. I guess I wanted to do work I could control rather than bog my mind down in analysis of numbers that came from sources I didn't input myself. Control freak? Me? When I was in my early 20's (coincidentally in the early 1980's), I realized I had a head for patterns. I was really good at looking at something and knowing it was "off". So started my interest in auditing... usually auditing if there was a suspected problem. If the pattern looked "off" I could follow paperwork back to the hotel employee that was mis-posting cash receipts onto Comp ledgers (and pocketing the cash, of course). Or there was the audit I did on a casino in Carson City where I uncovered a keno runner and a supervisor paying out [to themselves I imagine] on losing keno tickets... the keno auditor I was temping for had been in on the scam too. These flashes of brilliance brought me to the attention of management. They were impressed with my technically ability and decided to make me a supervisor. How stupid is that?

I am lucky to have survived my early management career without being taken out by a sniper in a dark parking garage (please refer to paragraph 1 and my annoying habit of being right). All the smarts in  the world can never make up for lack of people skills. To this day, I still laugh at myself because the one class that dropped my A.A.degree GPA was Sociology (I got a C, can you imagine?). I was thinking "easy A" everyone says so. I studied. Cracked the spine on the textbook and actually did the homework. I didn't get it. People's behavior isn't logical. Sure, we do studies of why people do the things they do... but there is no logic to a lot of it - social behavior is based on a lot of emotional responses. Ohhh, shiny - I digress.

I was on paper the perfect person to be a supervisor. I excelled at my job [exceeds expectations], I could create a schedule, I could tell people what to do based on policies and procedures already put in place, I could enforce the rules and regulations with the full knowledge that I held an authority that comes with being right. When you walk into a job fully believing its "my way or the highway" without looking at people as people, you set yourself up for failure. Luckily for me, and the people that were working as my subordinates, my stint was short-lived. Until the next job, were it started all over again. The Peter Principle - promoted to my level of failure. Back in the 80's, there wasn't the same emphasis on employee satisfaction that we see in businesses today. Customer Service didn't really begin to be valued above speed and efficiency until the 1990's or so. Working for corporate America was brutal, and I was one of the brutes.

Change of Life - WTF?

Four Years ago life was on track. I finally finished my Gonzaga Masters degree in Organizational Leadership (what a GREAT program). I quit my job, which I loved, but the management had policies and objectives that didn't align with mine... it was time to do what I wanted to do. I had aspirations of working with Corporations that were trying to instigate change; finding a company that needed someone to help the people make that conversion- I have been successful in the past with start up companies/departments to get coworkers involved with the change, rather then leaving them adrift to be buffeted by changes they didn't understand and had no part of. So many companies don't take advantage of all the years of experience accumulated by staff - there are so many good ideas that management can make policies, procedures, and organizational restructures so much better with their input and cooperation. But, as always, I digress... it won't be the last time... Ohhhhh, Shiny.

I quit my nice cushy job and took a couple of months off to go fishin', an irony that will become apparent as the blog unfolds. When I rewrote my resume and started to submit it, I realized I was at the beginning of the recession that hit a lot of us.  There were no jobs - or, at least, no one was hiring a woman who had just turned 48. Thankfully, I had money in the bank, and a small 401K, so I was pretty confident I could ride it out for a couple more months until things stabilized. I was able to make my mortgage payments and luckily, I had just restructured my mortgage loan to get out of the ARM loan I had taken out (What a ripoff that is). I'm sure I'm not the only one that was mislead - who knew that at the end of the 3 years I would get 1.5 percent increases every few months (it was every three or every six, I don't remember anymore), and after awhile I was paying over 11 percent interest. House payments rose from $850 (including taxes and insurance) to over $1100 per month. Ooops, Shiny. See, I knew I would get off track again.

After six months, I was on unemployment. So much for that nice, new Masters degree. Did I mention the student loans? Sigh. Thank goodness for loan deferment. But really! Who thought that things would get this bad? Most average Americans probably didn't have any better an understanding than I did of the whole ARM loan debacle (or as I fondly call it, extortion), let alone had much awareness of what was being done by bankers and Wallstreet with the funds we had put aside for our retirement.I sure felt the impact. I watched my modest 401K dwindle as my unemployment benefits expired. So, you guessed it, I tapped the 401K to continue on with the mortgage and other living expenses. I was living with my Sweetie of 12+ years (at that time) and he made a great salary at his job, but our agreement was: The house was my responsibility (and in my name) and he would take care of the other bills. He was married, but had separated from his wife back in 1997 and we started living together at the time. He's a wonderful guy. I had never been happier. In the summer of 2009, things began to change-- or, more accurately, life changed.

In the Beginning, but sorta in the Middle

For some reason I always assumed I would be dead by 50.  As early as I can remember, it has always been in the back of my mind that I would die violently in a car crash... or more accurately, a fiery car crash. Its a weird feeling to go through so many years believing I would die by fire. I still jokingly tell people that I believe my last words will be "Oh Crap!" Those two words seem to encapsulate that helplessness we (as people) feel when we see the inevitability of a situation we have no control over. Such is my life - Oh Crap.

It wasn't always this way. Once I believed I was the captain of my ship; able to steer through rough seas and the petty squabbles of my fellow man. Not so. My life has been a constant education about myself and my abilities. Every so often I think about how smart I am, and a few years later look back on myself with mockery at how ignorant I really was. If you are any intelligent person, you will realize that our ongoing, daily challenges and triumphs will shape us into [hopefully] better people as we age.

I started this blog in the hopes of building up myself again. Somewhere along the line, I lost enough pieces of myself that I feel fractured. No longer whole. When I assumed I would die at 50, I had never imagined my fiery crash-and-burn would be metaphorical. I never imagined such a change in circumstances, outlook, peace within my self (or more accurately, a lack thereof), and feeling of loss. I never thought that once again, I would lose a large part of that "Something" that makes me, Me. This is not the first time I have felt my life has been altered in some huge, and drastic way. I can see it now- this is going to be a longgggggg blog.

Maybe by writing it all out, I can find those pieces that have been lost along the way. Hopefully at some point, I can regain my footing and take a few more steps forward in my life.