Happy (Re)Birthday

I'm at the dawn of a new cycle and the destruction is in full effect. Over the past couple of years, I've deliberately exposed myself to new experiences that have revealed new truths and understandings about myself and the world I inhabit. As I embark on the second half of this current decade in life, I'm taking stock of some of the lessons I've learned. Some have been covered in previous blog entries, but I've decided to bring them all together in this one post for future reference and guidance. Feel free to read some of the truths I've come across and share some of your own.

Lessons to Guide Continual Rebirth

Continue exposing yourself to new experiences and expand your knowledge and understanding of yourself and the world you inhabit.

Take calculated risks and reap the ensuing bounty.

Dare to make power moves in your career. Ambition and integrity need not be mutually exclusive as long as the altruistic pursuit of elevating your profession is your guiding principle.

Embrace leadership in all that it entails. Build upon successful strategies and learn from failures.

Stay positive at all costs, distance yourself from negative people, and maintain equanimity irrespective of your surroundings.

Express your opinions, assert your needs, and never go out of your way to reinforce tenuous relationships with fair-weather companions. True friends will remain in your corner unconditionally and will be more easy to detect once all the "pollution" is purged from your inner circle.

While separating the wheat from the chaff in your relationships, adopt the same ethos in your quest for truth. Be less reactionary to sensationalistic "illumination," while still remaining alert to conspicuous patterns and uncanny "coinkydinks."

Creativity is not limited to artistic endeavors. Take a fresh approach to tackling problems if the traditional way is ineffective. Embrace challenges where the solutions aren't readily apparent at the outset.

Rebirth is an eternal process where faltering may be commonplace. Don't beat yourself up for falling short of perfection. Make light of the situation, don't take yourself so seriously, and always be prepared to laugh at your inevitable "senior moments."

To maintain a positive outlook in spite of the setbacks and frustrations, enrich your life with enjoyment wherever you can find it. Because at the end of the day, you're only given one life--so celebrate it! Indulge in a favorite treat, spend quality time with your true friends, and every once in a while, give yourself permission to be corny and "lose control when the rubber band starts to jam."

Care to celebrate with me?

Smile

Through all the rain and the pain,
You gotta keep your sense of humor.
You gotta be able to smile through all this bull****.
...So keep ya head up.

--Tupac Shakur

I know when I'm being watched. I don't have to witness it with my eyes. All I need to do is to feel the onlooker's energy directed at me.

Today was a good day. It was a day of transcendence. One in which I conquered what I thought was an insurmountable shortcoming: I didn't let someone else's negativity get the better of me. I didn't know I had it in me to rise above the small-mindedness and pettiness, but there I was smiling effortlessly. In fact, I had to fight hard to keep myself from bursting into full-blown elation.

I mentioned before how much office chatter irritates me. Well unfortunately, I let the wrong person know this because she decided to use it against me today as a means of taking revenge out on me. Apparently, she cooked up a ploy to invite the office chatterbox over for a deliberately loud 45-minute discussion about work, followed by a completely unnecessary 30-minute conversation about non-work issues--all at her prompting and encouragement.

Apparently, the revenge was for my decision to give her her space after detecting a perpetually foul mood coming from her lately. What this has led to is a significant decrease in the cheerful greetings I offer her every single time one of us enters or exits our cubicles. I've basically decided to just focus on my work while seated at my desk and not greet every person that passes me by, and I'm extending this courtesy to others as I pass them by. It's not that I don't smile at people in the halls or in any other context. I still keep smiling regardless of their treatment towards me (for the most part). I just don't approach people for idle chit chat like I used to. Okay that, and maybe I don't answer social emails like I used to. If an email sent to a group of "friends" is work-related, I'll answer the sender back privately. But otherwise, I don't respond to the social stuff. I've been doing this for about six months now, but I guess it still comes off as rude (I guess?), and this has likely added fuel to the fire of her ire.

I'm just trying to keep it professional, and I wish I'd done this from the outset because now I feel like I'm expected to be some sort of jolly tap-dancing negress, always projecting a sunny disposition regardless of how others treat me. For many reasons, I've decided it's better to just keep things professional with these people. It could be interpreted as a change in my behavior. But to borrow an Isley Brothers lyric, when I don't have the strength, I'm just a mirror of what I see. Believe me, the change always comes from the other people first. They're just too wrapped up in their own supposed infallibility and victimhood to notice their complicity in the problem. Don't get me wrong; I know I have flaws. But other people do too. They're just not as interested in admitting to theirs as much as they're quick to point out mine. Go figure.

It's likely that the chatterbox came to her desk of his own volition, but I seriously doubt it. Maybe if her voice wasn't so deliberately loud as if she were putting on a show or maybe if she didn't follow up with questions about his personal life with a barely detectable (but I noticed it!) air of phoniness, I'd believe this conversation was initiated by him. No. This thinly veiled charade was just too obvious for me to believe that. But I guess the scheme wasn't so obvious to the chatterbox because the gullible pawn returned an hour later (after she'd already left for the day) looking for a follow-up conversation, which he never does. I guess he misinterpreted her uncharacteristic invitation to shoot the breeze as actual interest in him rather than as a ploy to distract and irritate me. Pobrecito.

I know this may all seem a bit paranoid, but trust me, if anyone is capable of being this petty and conniving, she is. I've seen the tit-for-tat between her and our own department manager. He denied her her preferred job position in favor of someone else and later denied her the pay increase she'd requested. She responded by colluding with other disgruntled employees in a plot to convince his boss to diminish his power by upending our department's organizational structure and shifting our work towards other units. Never mind how much chaos, frustration, and loss of productivity this unnecessary transformation will cause for everyone involved. Someone didn't get the pay raise and position she wanted so we all have to suffer. Trust me, a little ploy to invite unnecessary conversation that disrupts 75 minutes of my time, her time, the chatterbox's time, and everyone else's time is child's play to someone like her.

I know when I'm being tested and it's usually a trap. Someone I'm obviously upset with and wish not to talk to creates an outlandish scenario that forces me to engage in conversation with them. The trap comes in where I have to decide to either to play along and be cordial (which I don't want to do) or admit my anger and risk appearing immature (which I don't want to do). Either way, they win at my expense. Today's test was equally difficult. I usually have an impossibly hard time concentrating on work when there's background chatter. I always end up putting on my headphones and listening to music in order to block out the noise, but that only helps so much since the music is also distracting.

But today I was determined to win this test. I did everything in my power to concentrate and keep a smiling face. I was so determined to prevail that I even took off the headphones that I'd already worn prior to their conversation, just to show that the noise didn't bother me. And I don't know how I did it, but I managed to concentrate through it all. And since I know when I'm being watched, I know that she saw me. I could feel it. I was beating her at her own game and she knew it. And after a while, I just felt an energy that I never felt before.

Somehow the concentration that never before would've been possible was effortless. As the fat kept getting chewed in the neighboring cubicle, I received an email about a possible collaboration. This made me squirm (noticeably) because it meant someone had discovered my role in leading on something that was formerly her responsibility before she left our unit. How would she react to the news? Would she be receptive to the idea of collaborating with me? "Yes!" her enthusiastic reply affirmed. We soon engaged in a lively email exchange where we arranged a meeting to discuss our future plans, which genuinely lifted my spirits.

I live for conversations like this. I love my job and it's so difficult to find like-minded people in my department with the same enthusiasm for what they do. Almost everyone around me is either apathetic or negative. My apparent nemesis falls into the latter category. Because of her experiences, she hates her job and has finagled her way out of carrying out even the most basic responsibilities. She's even tried to discourage me from being productive--and thus outshining her--by feigning concern in my taking it easy and not working too hard. A lot of her failures, in my humble opinion, are a result of her negative actions along with my boss' attempt to neutralize the toxicity she and her partners-in-crime bring to our department. This leads me to another reason why I feel the need to distance myself from her. At the end of the day, I just want to do a good job, add value to the organization, and avoid the bad karma that negative people like her bring upon themselves. It's refreshing whenever I come across someone with the same work ethic as mine, so that email exchange with my future collaborator was right on time.

So I ended up having an engaging time with my work in spite of someone else's attempt to distract me. I had to smile at that. I also had to smile at the fact that my simple choice to not socialize and to focus on my work had unwittingly drove her to show her true colors and "tell on herself." I didn't play into her trap, but I did get a glimpse of how truly petty and unprofessional she can be. And I've now learned that I'm not exempt from being a potential target of hers should I ever decide to "get out of line" and "behave incorrectly" in her eyes. This confirmed my previous belief that I absolutely must distance myself from her at all costs.

So really, her negative behavior was more of a blessing in disguise. And by doing that unintentional act of kindness, she helped me smile. I also smiled at having noticed the volume of the conversation suddenly settle back down to an appropriate level, likely as a result of her realizing how ineffective her charade had been. Most of all, I smiled simply because I was able to smile so effortlessly, in spite of being so clearly targeted. For the first time ever, I had faith in my ability to rise above others' negativity, smile through all the bull****, and keep my head up.

All of these reasons just snowballed into a forward-feed mechanism that led to an eruption of elation that I had a hard time suppressing. And it only got better when I heard her rise from her desk (after the gabfest finally ended) and leave her cubicle. I know when I'm being watched, so I knew she saw the smile already beaming brightly on my face, confirming her failure to bring me down. And we know what expression that brings to my face, even hours later as I type this.

:)

	2Pac .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Truly It's Amazing, Amazing

I've been listening to a lot of Luther Vandross lately and I must say, I've become a veritable fan. It wasn't until very recently that I understood the "hype" of his music, which I'm not proud to admit, but I'll chalk it up to once being young, dumb, and incapable of recognizing amazing music when I heard it.

The phrase "grown folks' music" couldn't be more apropos than in reference to Vandross's repertoire. As a youngster, I could easily take to his uptempo cuts like "Never Too Much," "Stop to Love," "It's Over Now," "Power of Love," and my all-time favorite "Give Me the Reason." However, it took me much longer to finally get the "hype" of many of his other songs.

Songs like "The Night I Fell in Love," "For You to Love," and "Treat You Right." Brimming with layers of melodious instruments and intricate rhythms, these songs offer a mature sound that only now as an adult could I fully appreciate. Though unabashedly synthesized, the instrumentation in these songs exhibit the creativity and artistry that music producers of the 80's and 90's placed into music. Sadly, that level of thought and skill just doesn't go into music these days.

If a less synthesized sound is desired, Vandross had plenty of songs to satisfy that palate. Soulful renditions like "Wait for Love" and "I Can Make It Better" along with mellow grooves like "Any Love" and "Your Secret Love" all offer an equal complexity of musicianship with less of the "artificial" sound.

Vandross's mid- and uptempo songs convey an energy that can't help but imbue itself into the soul of the listener--even a hard-headed one like me some 20 years later. But, it's the magic of his ballads--which often ventured into the territory of being outright symphonies--that truly have me realizing the brilliance of this man's music. And "If Only for One Night" is the song from this subset that finally made me take notice.

Whether the composition swells to a wrenching crescendo or retracts to a delicate repose, Vandross's velvety vocals in "If Only for One Night" prance along with the orchestration in effortless euphony. Similarly, "Love Won't Let Me Wait," "A House Is not a Home," and the masterful "Superstar" all showcase fully orchestrated scores that skillfully complement the purity of his voice.

With the dreck that passes for music these days, it's hard to believe that premium music like this once permeated the urban airwaves regularly. I remember hearing most of these songs on the radio when I was younger, but I'd always change the station before giving them a chance to nurture my budding musical aesthetic. Lord knows how misguided I was. I mean if songs like "Don't You Know That" and "The Glow of Love" were good enough for Heavy D and Janet Jackson to sample, why weren't they good enough for me?

It's a shame I didn't appreciate the true greatness of Luther Vandross's music until recently. But now that I'm less young and (hopefully) less dumb, I'm a true believer. Here and now I have nothing but the utmost veneration for his supreme body of work. Truly amazing indeed.