17

There's a part of me that wants to dislike you, to find fault, to be able to handily dismiss you, but I can't. I'm not sure why it wants that. It's more than just a reaction to 'pretty', though I can taste the bitterness of envy in it. It probably has something to do with how you seem to always get to be you, to not have to make compromises, to expect the world to bend for you, and it does. But in spite of this desire, I can't cast you aside, and I won't. You've been very kind to me at very difficult times, but it's not simple gratitude. It's that you didn't have to, you could have easily demurred or given appropriately dismissive responses, but you chose not to. When given the chance, you do stretch and expand, maybe even grow. I hope you can see what it does, or looks like it does, for you when you do take these chances, because it's so much than just what you can or choose to do for others. Realize it's mutual and affirming, and that it's youness that people seek when the come to you, and maybe do that for yourself.

work, life, reflection

I spent the early part of my evening sitting through a come to Jesus meeting at work, almost two hours of unbalanced and poorly exercised power meant to convey the vision of someone with no conception of depth. My manager is, to be blunt, an idiot, someone who presumably rose through the ranks due to his complete lack of interpersonal skills or facility with speech.

I work at a technical helpdesk for multiple clients, and until six months ago, I led one of the teams. Due to loss of clients, my moron of a boss wanted to consolidate, so I pitched in and made recommendations on what should go where, and why, only to be effectively demoted for my efforts. All my manager knows or values are technical certifications or cold metrics. Even though he pays lip service to the importance of “soft” skills, they’re always an afterthought and never rewarded. Interpersonally is where I excel, which only adds to my sense of being demeaned.

It’s not that I’m not technical; I think I pick it up pretty quickly and easily, and have been around this stuff for decades. It’s that it’s just a job, a vocation rather an avocation. I don’t go home and build networks or websites, or keep abreast of the technical specifics of cutting edge technology, because it’s not that important to me. One of the imposed new imperatives is for ‘self-improvement’, meaning study and certification on our own time, and I’m just not interested. I’m very good with people and make a damned fine manager, if I do say so myself, but I don’t think I’ll ever get the opportunity again working under this stooge unless I play his game by his rules.

I’ll expose some of my arrogance, but I think I’m smart, I mean really smart. It probably lets me coast without much effort in a lot of things, work being one of them. I know if I actually worked at it, I could be really good, but I just don’t want to. What I like most about my job is dealing with a wide variety of people and a wide variety of problems, and being able to help. I don’t want to be cut off from the human aspect and get deeper into the machine or application part. It makes me feel like a whiny privileged baby, that I don’t want to work to move up the standard path. I mean, Leibniz ground glass lenses by day so he could write philosophy and mathematics at night. Maybe the problem is that I don’t have the drive for math or philosophy? This has been a problem for me for a long time, this unwillingness to expend extra effort, to go from pretty good to really good, and was one of my problems with the academic world (my issues with authority combined dangerously to screw me over). I tend to valorize dilettantism, but is that because I think it really has value, or because it authorizes my approach? I’ve a sneaking suspicion that some of my gender issues are tied up in this unwillingness to commit (after all, I won’t even commit to man or woman), but again, I don’t think that’s all of it. Conventional wisdom seems to dictate that one must put aside generality and specialize, that it’s a sign of maturity to do so, but according to whom, and why? Is the choice always breadth or depth?

So seek another job, right? That seems to be the easiest thing. Only, it’s not easy. My gender issues are tied up pretty tightly in this, and it honestly feels like too much to bear, the idea of not only stepping into corporate drag, but boy corporate drag to try to pimp myself out. When I consider putting on a tie and trying to pass as one of them (conventional corporate stooges, not boys; the boy part only makes me a hypocrite on top of a sell out). Plus, my body continues to change; I continue to change my body, and it’s accelerating. This is going to have social consequences at some point, and I don’t want to be searching for work when it does. Of course, it’s not like I have an end in mind, a clear trajectory (there is a dark side to rejecting the trans narrative and structure), so presumably this will never be resolved, will always be an issue. Maybe by not thinking about it, I’ll magically awake into a world of difference? That seems unlikely.

So… no clarity, but plenty of description. I like the work I do, like most of my team mates, but have zero respect for my manager or what he embodies, and dislike the emerging corporate culture. I don’t want to work to get better by his standards (though I’m the best at aspects of the work by my standards), and I dread the deception that seems to be involved in looking for something else, even as I have no clear idea what I want to do. I’m tired of drifting, but feel no overriding pull to any specific thing or things.

God, I’m a T.S. Eliot poem. Kill me now.