Tag Archives: Introspective

Hello, My Name Is…

Ever since I can remember, I’ve had an issue with name tags.

It may have started in high school, when I had a summer job in a fast food place. You know: hot, lousy job, tacky uniform, managers who breathe down your neck, that sort of thing. Your name tags had to always be visible. That’s where it started, I’m guessing. I remember hearing a comedian somewhere around my senior year of high school doing a routine, and he said that, if you’re thirty and your job still involves wearing a name tag, you’ve made a serious error somewhere.

I don’t think that last part is true (many civil servants prove it to be incorrect), but his saying that reinforced my feelings somehow. My passionate distaste for name tags has continued to present day. On the rare occasion that I’ve had to wear an ID badge for work because I’m in a different building than usual, or when I’m attending a conference or that sort of thing, I practically tear it away as soon as I possibly can. I’ve been known to take my name tag from the registration table, shove it in my pocket, and be the only person in the room without one. I really do hate them that much.

Why, though? It’s difficult to believe that one or two bad jobs in high school and college turned me against name tags altogether. Besides, they’re such a common fixture in today’s workforce that it’s difficult to avoid them…although I’ll find a way if it is to be found. It’s sort of a small thing with which to have such a big problem. I mean, I’m picky, but not that picky.

Then, last weekend, I realized part of the reason. I was attending a welcome luncheon on Sunday afternoon, and I was sitting at our table with our daughter in my lap while Karen went through the serving line. There was one other guy who had returned from the line, and sat opposite of me at the table. I wanted to initiate conversation with him, but let’s face it…while I’ve been taught all of the social appropriateness necessary, I’m still a significant introvert, so finding conversation starters isn’t really a finely tuned skill set for me. My leading question is usually, “So, what’s your name?” And I go from there.

There was no point in that, though, because a quick glance down provided me with my table-mate’s name. Asking him was pointless. I already knew that he was “Kevin.” My strategy had been derailed, and I was left to improvise…which is far more energy than an introvert is typically prepared to expend.

I think that the underlying reason that I dislike name tags so much is because they make it that much more difficult for me to socialize. The underlying reason for that, I think, is because they remove natural conversation between two people. That, in it’s attempt to make it easier to get to know those around us, actually makes it more difficult to do so. Names, after all, are highly significant and powerful. Learning someone’s name and speaking that name is a profoundly spiritual, if everyday, experience. I think that having our names pinned to our chests rob us of that somehow…transforms the act of connecting two people into a mechanical experience.

There’s my reason for disliking name tags revealed. So, if I meet you at a conference or something like that, and I intentionally ignore your name tag and ask your name any way, it means I really want to meet you and know your name. And I really want to do that myself without annoying badges coming between us.

The Right Tool for the Right Job

I had design professor in college for several different theatre courses. I have no idea what happened to him, as attempts to re-establish contact in recent years has been unsuccessful for me. What I will always remember him for, though, is a phrase that he used to toss around the scene shop: “You have to have the right tool for the right job!”

It’s a phrase that I’ve found myself repeating many times since then.

I think that we’ve always been fascinated with our tools. My father’s “man cave” was a wood shop that he kept in a separate, detached building from our home. He would retreat there to work on his various projects. I actually never understood why he didn’t sell them on a larger scale, because he could certainly have made some income with his talent. His shop, though, was loaded: saws, drills, hammers…all of the fun tools that you would expect in a shop, and not at all dissimilar from when I would be constructing sets in the scene shop. It goes without saying, I think, that when my dad had disposable income laying around for his hobby, it went to tools.

While I’m not in any way gifted at sculpting things out of wood as my father did, I need various tools with which to craft words, or write code. Whenever Karen and I have a disagreement over disposable income (including whether or not such a category exists for us on a given month), it frequently arises over my desire for a new tool: a new iPad, the most recent operating system, a new piece of software, etc. These tools consistently make my work easier and more productive, but my tastes frequently are bigger than our bank account.

The issue with tools is that, if I’m to generalize any sort of example from myself, we can often become caught up in the shiny news toys to the point of distracting ourselves from the project that we might be using them to accomplish.

Don’t tell her I said this, but I think that Karen’s reluctance to try new tools because the learning curve for them actually distracts from her productivity more than staying with an older system that she already knows, may be wise.

When I remember my dad’s wood shop, I can remember at least two or three items knocking around out there that received minimal use. I’m sure my bag of technological toys has a couple of those as well. Certainly, I’ve even loaded up our kitchen in the past with gifts for Karen’s culinary genius that have gone largely un-used.

Perhaps there’s a lot to be said for creatively finding ways to accomplish the task at hand, rather than over-equipping our arsenal of tricks with which to accomplish them. Perhaps we can accelerate our productivity to the point of being unproductive.

What do you think?

Time Passages

I hope that I can keep track of what’s important.

That is, I find myself concerned a bit as, even while things go according to plan, I become anxious about the plan sometimes. This move has been different than previous moves for me…much different. Obviously, there’s the fact that I’m now moving a family of three, which is logistically an undertaking comparable to any traveling concert production, I’m convinced. Practically, this is also the biggest move I’ve ever done in regards to distance.

Also, though, this has been the biggest move in regards to emotional repercussions. I became extremely sad at one point during the process, and it lingered for days. I’m still not entirely certain why, but it was almost like I was grieving something. Maybe I’ll have an epiphany later.

As I’ve experienced this dramatic change in place, I’ve also experienced a profound shift in perspective on permanence. That is, I’ve began to recognize that certain things that felt permanent to me are in fact hopelessly temporary, and that what is critically important is, in fact, permanent. The career that I’m changing from was unduly stressful in its own right, but I had come to regard its daily schedule with a sense of permanence because of the comfortable income that it provided. Although we lived in an apartment that, by definition, is not a permanent home, I had come to regard the little routines and patterns there with a sense of permanence that not only belies my distaste for routine, but were also a practical way of staving off the chaos. I think that part of my struggle with this move has been trying to stay on top of being a parent and writer and (once again a) student in the midst of a set of systems that no longer work and have to be re-vamped or entirely replaced. Those systems, which allowed me to keep track of what had to be done and kept mine and Karen’s sanity, though, were very, very temporary things, designed for a temporary place that served us during temporary conditions.

For years, we were in holding pattern, wondering “what next?” in our lives.

And, now that we’re moving forward at long last, I’ve had an irrational difficulty letting go of the temporary. That is, the physical has been threatening to overwhelm the spiritual. What placed this into unyielding perspective, though, was two days ago in the back yard, as I pushed our daughter in a swing. As she giggled with delight and glided to and fro, she made extended eye contact with me, all smiles, her deep eyes communicating a wealth of information.

What they told me that afternoon was, “I trust you, Daddy.”

That’s permanent. Very, very permanent. Whatever transient circumstances and events rotate through our lives, my wife and daughter, and the responsibilities that I have to them, are permanent. They are persistent. They are pervasive.

And I wouldn’t have it any other way.

More Moving Thoughts

Thursday of this week was the last day of the day job that I’ve held for the last five years. I experienced an odd bout of sentimentality, which really was the last thing I was expecting. I took this position five years ago when freelancing wasn’t making the ends meet, Karen and I hadn’t been married that long, and we needed my income to be more consistent. I was just beginning to stir up dreams of doing a doctoral degree or an MFA at the time, and accepted the position thinking that I would stay there for one year.

Five years, accomplished financial goals, and one daughter later, I walked out of that office on a quiet Thursday afternoon, into a parking lot that has often found me thinking “it’s Friday!!“, and drove away just as I have hundreds of other times, though now to never return. It’s a given that I will miss my colleagues, because I have been honored to work with a great team there. And, although I’m not sure I can truly say that I will miss the place, or the position itself, I found myself appreciating it in a way that I wouldn’t have had I merely stayed for the year that I had initially planned. Again, evidence that my wanderlust can occasionally be a bad thing.

I suppose that longevity has its rewards. Who knew?

Moving: A Lament

Things like packing your apartment to move your life up the East coast have a strange way of causing sentimentality. That is, the process of packing, of knowing that the apartment we’ve lived in for four years won’t be our home any longer. Of course, you know that when you move into an apartment, and it’s not like I’m feeling any sort of overwhelming separation anxiety or anything, but…

When Karen and I moved into our current apartment from the first one we rented together, I had odd moments of sentimentality. More so this time, though, because there have been some really incredible things that have happened in this one. Foremost on that list is that this is the apartment to which we brought our daughter home after the miraculous event of her birth. I think what concerns me the most about this is that she’s showing some anxiety as the familiar melts away and is replaced by ever-growing stacks of boxes in preparation for this weekend.

The last two weeks have been the process of saying goodbyes for both of us. Last week I was struck quite profoundly by the appreciation shown to me by my colleagues as they treated me to a goodbye lunch for work. The process of making arrangements to stay in touch with others (I’ve even caught myself using Facebook more frequently…and I never thought that would happen), and bidding farewell to places we frequent and to our faith community, have been a strange mix of liberating and sad for me.

Oddly, I’ve felt disconnected at times. That disconnection has made me think that, had I the opportunity to do some things over from the past four years, that I would. Karen and I made the decision to distance ourselves from the faith community that had been our home for some time because we found ourselves in a different season of life. During our previous move, we were overwhelmed with friends giving us assistance. Now, we’re working to get people to come help us. That’s quite a difference. We drifted away from the group of friends with which we were close due, in large part, to my wanderlust. I have a good case of it, and it has both served me well and brought me grief in the past.

I have images that I can recall too quickly of those that I’ve alienated because of the pressing, almost illogical need I feel at times to move on to a different place geographically. I don’t always regret moving forward, but I regret the way I’ve handled that movement with certain people. I’ve been left without people that I think would have become great friends or colleagues, and I’ve grown hopelessly distant from friends that were close at one time, but are no longer in contact with me.

I hope that I’m not so old that I can’t change that tendency. I don’t think I’ll ever change my wanderlust, and I’m honestly not certain that I want to. I can change the level of intentionality with which I approach keeping in contact with others, though, certainly now that carrying out that intention is easier than ever before.

There are things that are simultaneously exhilarating and frightening about the fact that we will live in a different state next week. I can’t wait to experience the different culture in a new way, because, although we’ve frequently visited the area to which we’re moving and I already know it well, I’ve never lived there, and that is a much more intimate knowledge of a place. Changes in place are a welcome, wonderful thing for me. I hope that it is for my family, also.

And I hope that I manage to stay in touch with the friends we leave in this place, as well.