NO PROMOTION, AND WHY THAT’S GOOD

You get no promotion if you compare yourself to the wrong thing.

If you feel the need, aim your comps higher than a jumpy sheep.

I’ve got a dog who does the same thing and I know how happy she is.

Remember the last time you tried to be happy?

Chances are you tried too hard. Why did you do that?

 

Imagine a visit to an older couple who live a two hour drive away.

One of them is having a bad day to the point of moaning and groaning, but still game for company.

The other gives reassurance about a doctor’s appointment next week, which suggests an ongoing condition.

You push back on a big-ass recliner with your feet up and settle in; the older couple sit on smaller matching recliners with their feet up.

Your pensive partner sits perched on the edge of a couch like a baseball catcher giving hand signals and pointing to the door.

Finally you can’t ignore the next signal, the coughing.

 

You: I need to get something out of the car.

Them: I’ll help.

 

Outside:

 

You: What’s with with the hand signals. Are you calling for an inside fastball over the plate? You want me to steal a base? What?

Them: Stop with all the baseball talk. You heard it in there.

You: We’re having a nice visit. Then we’ll go home.

Them: I can’t take it.

You: Take what?

Them: The pain.

You: Pain? What pain. Where does it hurt? Point to it.

Them: One of them is in pain, the other is in denial.

You: We’re here for a visit, not to fix everything. 

Them: I can’t go back in there.

You: If there’s a promotion list, and a no promotion list, you’re going back in there.

Them: I don’t want your promotion. They need help.

You: Help is coming tomorrow, and everybody wants a promotion. Let’s go.

Them: You need to help.

You: Let’s go back inside.

Them: You need to help. Tell me you’ll help and I’ll go.

You:

 

The Over-Helping Hand At Work

I had a job with a company that worked around a particular schedule, the Break Schedule.

There were smoke breaks, coffee breaks, plug the parking meter breaks, along with a lunch break and the usual morning and afternoon breaks.

If you pushed it you could get four hours of work done in a seven hour day.

It was a strict schedule. Follow it and get promoted.

Hustle too much for no promotion.

The way they explained it was, “This is a non-profit.”

 

“We have a pace of work and we report our progress at the weekly department meeting. At our current pace we exceed expectations. Don’t make the other guys look bad.”

 

It was the dignified pace of late-middle aged men looking at common objects and finding new meaning, new value.

In other words, it was a museum staffed with museum people. I was the young blood.

We eventually adapted and picked up the ‘no promotion’ pace.

New people came in over the years for museum collection training.

 

 

We were a unified group.

I still got a promotion.

 

No Promotion In The Neighborhood

Everybody has ‘The Neighbor.’

It’s the one you trust to pick up the mail if you’re out of town, check for deliveries, call for a second opinion on common sense.

You have the neighbor whether you live in a dorm, a barracks, an apartment house, a flat, a duplex, a house jammed next to others, or the luxury of open space with horse fence boundaries.

I’m that guy for one neighbor and I work at it.

What kind of work?

Neighbor relations can be a one-way street. You do for them and that’s it.

No promotion, and here’s why:

You never know how someone was raised, the kind of culture, the way of doing things they brought with them.

A neighbor seems friendly at first, then they start borrowing things short term that goes too long.

They borrow and break and don’t say anything about it.

They borrow without asking and you think it’s lost until you see them using your gear.

 

 

Say something about it and they swear a blood oath against you, your family, and every descendant not born.

Consider the consequences when you move to a new neighborhood.

Think of the shortest timeline possible before borrowing anything.

What about the neighbor who offers to lend anything they have?

You tell me what that’s all about.

I lent a neighbor a narrow bladed shovel he didn’t ask for while he dug out his broken irrigation controls.

It was broken by my tree roots, so it was the right thing.

No promotion for me.

 

My Promotion Is In The Mail?

I went out for a haircut and a shave and came back with a new dog?

Looks ready for a game of fetch to me.

We all make mistakes, and we all think we’re too smart to make the same mistakes other dipshits make.

Why would you think that?

Everyday I’m shocked, stunned, bewildered, by the latest revelations about people who ought to know better.

I’m not looking for celebrity malfunctions, wrong people in the wrong places, or the pain and suffering in the world.

But it’s there for anyone who dares scroll online, in your face if you open a page, and in your heart when you see the futility.

Hardship hits with devastation the closer you are to the source.

Tightrope: Americans Reaching For Hope by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn is a book about the hardships in their backyard.

Social conditions and drug availability are not confined to the big city where shooters and sniffers and drinkers and smokers all worship the local kingpin for their next hit, the next fix, their next high.

Sometimes they are the people you went to high school with, sometimes they are your old neighbors.

 

 

The authors tell this story, in part, through the lives of some of the children with whom Kristof grew up, in rural Yamhill, Oregon, an area that prospered for much of the twentieth century but has been devastated in the last few decades as blue-collar jobs disappeared.

About one-quarter of the children on Kristof’s old school bus died in adulthood from drugs, alcohol, suicide, or reckless accidents.

 

If you want a good comparison, compare yourself to who you were yesterday.

Do it early enough in the day and you’ll still have time to get on the right track.

If you’re reading boomerpdx, and got this far, you are doing fine.

PS: Stay focused, organized, and ready for the next thing.

PSS: That’s who you are and that’s what you look for in others.

 

Say it again.