{"id":378,"date":"2005-05-24T07:07:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-24T12:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lawrencem94.sg-host.com\/?p=378"},"modified":"2005-05-24T07:07:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-24T12:07:00","slug":"welcome-to-crazytown-an-ongoing-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/?p=378","title":{"rendered":"Welcome to Crazytown, an Ongoing Story"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I had my one &#038; only employee quit last week; it was a blessing for her and an opportunity for me; fortunately, a friend of mine was already pursuing something here with my bosses, and it all fell into place at the speed of light. So now, Miss K is coming here this week, and life will be even better! <\/p>\n<p>When we were discussing her future (the girl who quit), she said how she had liked working with me, and felt like she&#8217;d learned a lot, and that she would always associate &#8220;crazytown&#8221; with me.<br \/>Immediately backpedalling, as I was hooting and saying things like, &#8220;GEE! THANKS!&#8221; she said, &#8220;No, no! It&#8217;s just your phrase!&#8221; Because I use it all the time, and at the new job it&#8217;s mostly to refer to processes or systems that aren&#8217;t in place and the helter-skelter manner in which stuff around here gets done.  The cool thing is, I at least get to exercise the chance to CREATE the processes and forms and whatnots. My thing is, you have to have a level of organization and some systems in place, but they shouldn&#8217;t vine up and get a stranglehold around your neck. <\/p>\n<p>The last place I worked tended to get choked by the philosophy of &#8220;must adhere to The Way&#8221;. One of the things that made the last place Crazytown was how my boss would snap at me for being &#8220;too creative&#8221; and dismissive of any alternative ideas I had, but then in department meetings would say over and over, &#8220;Don&#8217;t do it the way it&#8217;s always been done! Think creatively! We need to push our vendors to really come up with creative solutions!&#8221; Uh, yeah. In a home environment being forensically examined by a psychologist, I think that&#8217;s called &#8220;Mixed Messages&#8221;. And as I look back on my time there, I see that it&#8217;s incredibly logical what happened to me in the final couple of years: I got paralyzed. Fear of doing too much, saying the wrong thing, fear of doing it differently, fear of losing my job. One of the things that saved me, albeit just a month before I quit, was the decision I made: I would quit before October 1. (Some dreaded, dreaded work happens in the fall.) The day I said, out loud, &#8220;I&#8217;m not going through (dreaded work) again,&#8221; I felt like half a ton of bricks had been taken off my body. Then, four weeks later I got to say, &#8220;YO, I&#8217;m not only leaving, I&#8217;m gonna be the director at the new gig! hah!&#8221; Karma? Luck? Divine Intervention? I dunno. I know I was due.<\/p>\n<p>I left Crazytown with some baggage. I don&#8217;t plan on having this baggage in four months, but I know I have it now, I own it, it&#8217;s got my name on it, it all matches, and I know exactly where it came from &#038; how it came to be. I still get angry when I think about particular situations and people, I want the karma bus to gas up, hit full speed and drive right over a couple people there. It&#8217;s not good to be obsessed with commeuppence, I know. I&#8217;m giving myself six months to be rid of the anger and resentments &#8211; I figure it took over two years to create, it won&#8217;t be gone in a week &#8211; and I&#8217;m gonna keep squawking periodically to get it out of my system. The good news is, I&#8217;ve already seen and felt the difference in me, as I&#8217;m way more relaxed, I don&#8217;t have headaches every day, and my jaw isn&#8217;t clenched from the moment I start my workday. <\/p>\n<p>So I chalk some of my penchant for frothiness up to that crusader inside me, who wants to fix the world and make everything &#8220;right&#8221; and &#8220;fair&#8221;. Because there are a lot of good people working at the old place who are renting living space in Crazytown (as opposed to those who&#8217;ve bought property &#038; changed their drivers&#8217; licenses and everything &#8211; &#8220;lifers&#8221; who&#8217;ve bought the program and drink the kool-aid). The renters, they deserve better, and it honks me off that the &#8220;powers-that-be&#8221; there don&#8217;t feel compelled to really dig in and fix it. Fixing things usually requires a lot of change. Change can be good, but it usually isn&#8217;t simple or comfortable.  I see it at my new job &#8211; people are craving change, but they don&#8217;t want to go THROUGH change. <\/p>\n<p>In the end, you can only control so much &#038; you just have to decide &#8211; do you wanna live in Crazytown? Or in Hopeville? I was grateful to find a bus out of Crazytown before I had to start hitchhiking.<\/p>\n<p>Smart dude observation for the day:<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.&#8221; ~Benjamin Franklin<\/p>\n<p>My mantra:<br \/>Be the change you want to see in the world.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I had my one &#038; only employee quit last week; it was a blessing for her and an opportunity for me; fortunately, a friend of mine was already pursuing something here with my bosses, and it all fell into place at the speed of light. So now, Miss K is coming here this week, and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/plazajen.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}