Realizations

I don't view retirement as the end of something, but rather as the beginning of something else--a new adventure. I like where it is leading me. I am rediscovering parts of myself that I loved when I was a teenager and young adult. Interests that have been suppressed because there was little to no time to pursue them. 

When I'm at parties and social events, some people ask me why I retired early. I tell them that I got tired of the bullshit spouted at the departmental/management level. I got tired of listening to it and having to defend it. I got tired of talking about the same issues and problems ad nauseam. I got tired of no solutions, only talk. Talk, talk, and more talk. And having to go to meetings to talk about everything just a bit more. Meetings make the days go round. But not for me. I just wanted to get off the merry-go-round. So, I did. I was in my late fifties when I got tired of the bullshit. There are a few people who have commented that I could have kept on working until retirement age. My answer? I could have, but I didn't want to. I did what I wanted to do--leave. I left behind a work world that no longer suited me or me it; I left behind a work world that did nothing for me anymore. I got tired of giving my all (and more) and watching those who gave half as much get ahead or get the same rewards (salaries and perks) as those who worked much harder. I got tired of incompetent leaders telling us all what to do and draining the annual budgets with their bloated salaries. My former public sector workplace could have gotten rid of at least three levels of leadership, and then they would have had the long-sought after money to do some of the things they need and want to do. But that won't ever happen. Not in Norway, and not in public sector workplaces, which are top-heavy with administrative positions. 

Once you see through something or someone, it is very difficult to go back to pretending that all is fine. And yet we do that for so much of our lives, live on the surface and act 'as if', in order for things to function smoothly, especially at work. And that's ok, until it isn't. By the time one reaches a certain age, the desire for a more honest way of living is something that can no longer be suppressed, at any cost. 

I keep in touch and socialize with my former colleagues several times a year. Some will remain in my life, and some will not. That's ok. Some older colleagues need to keep pretending that they are happy working. And some few are happy working, so more power to them. I want the younger ones to be happy in their jobs. It's no fun to want to retire when you are in your late forties/early fifties and still have twenty-some odd years to go. Best to love your work for as long as you can. The problems start when you no longer love it and when you can no longer 'cover' over or suppress your unhappiness and dissatisfaction. 

I like my free time, and I like having alone time. I like being able to choose when I want to socialize and when I want to be by myself. I like not having to be 'on' all the time. 

My happy place is my garden. God gave me that gift right at the point when I got tired of most everything else. It reinvigorated me in a way that nothing else has or could. I am forever grateful for what my garden has given me--grace in all forms. 

I love being outdoors. I love to go out walking, be out in nature. When I am in New York, my friends and I usually end up visiting one or another garden or park. There are plenty of them in Tarrytown and the Hudson Valley where I grew up. Here in Oslo, I walk along the Akerselva river or along the city streets until I find a small park. It doesn't matter for the most part where I end up, just that I am outdoors. 

I've decided to take some online courses in horticulture and plant science via the New York Botanical Garden, for no other reason than to learn. To learn. Not to compete with anyone else, not to win a medal, not to be the best at anything. Simply to learn. 

I am relearning Spanish using the online program Duolingo. It's free and it's good. It all depends on how much time you put into it. I started last December and use half an hour each day to learn and relearn Spanish. I have six years of Spanish between high school and college. I got so far in college that I could write long term papers about Spanish poets (Antonio Machado comes to mind). When I read what I wrote then, I marvel at how much Spanish I actually understood. But I need to get better at speaking the language. Because I want to visit Spain with my husband at some point, and I want to be able to converse simply with the Spanish people. 

I love the New York Times crossword puzzles and games, specifically the daily crossword puzzle, Wordle, and Spelling Bee. They keep me on my toes from an English language point of view. They challenge my brain and that's a good thing. Living in another country can wreak havoc with your retention of English language vocabulary. Wordle and Spelling Bee challenge me to remember my English vocabulary. 

I'm reading different authors and understanding that some authors that have been pushed as excellent are authors I find average at best--Joan Didion and Alice Munro come to mind. Didion does little for me (I've written about her before), and Munro is frustrating to read. Her short stories always end in an odd way; odd doesn't have to be a bad thing, but in her case, it is, because the stories rarely offer any resolution. Some few do, but most don't. Some people may say that's life, that there's no resolution for most of what involves us. Maybe it is, but I don't want to read a lot of stories that end in an ambiguous or frustrating way. Winning the Nobel Prize in Literature (Munro) is no guarantee that you will like the author's writing. So much I've realized. 

H.P. Lovecraft comes to mind as a very good author. Imaginative writing, eerie settings, a feeling of sinisterness. He's a horror and fantasy writer, a very sophisticated one. Not a lot of blood and gore. More the suggestion of the nasty things that can or will happen, the creepy things in dark corners of one's mind or room, or the appearance of monsters that will make your blood run cold. He isn't big on conversation in his stories, but the moods he creates are intense and memorable. His writing gets under your skin; at least it got under mine. I think he is a far better writer than either Didion or Munro, who have not gotten under my skin at all, but literary pundits will tell me that I can't compare genres. I'm doing so anyway. I think he is a very good writer. 

Random reflections on this autumn day

• I'm one year retired. No regrets. I love my free time and am enjoying life in a whole new way. 
• Since I retired, I've published three books: a poetry collection (Movements Through the Landscape); a memoir about growing up in Tarrytown, New York (A Town and a Valley. Growing Up in Tarrytown and the Hudson Valley); and a meditative book about gardening (The Gifts of a Garden). All of them are available for purchase on Amazon. I am working very hard to market the latter book, although I'd like all of the books to sell a bit if possible. Sending prayers into the universe for support.
• Marketing books is a job unto itself. I wonder how well other authors do this job.
• Forty years ago, I started working at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. A wonderful workplace, one I will never forget. It changed my life in all good ways and showed me what good leadership really is (professional generosity and wishing others well). 
• I think about those friends and colleagues who are no longer with us. I wish they were still here--Liza, Thu, Debby. You left us too soon. 
• I think about friends who are ill and what they go through every day, living with anxiety and the knowledge that they cannot do what they once could do. 
• Enjoyed visiting the new Munch Museum: Munchmuseet in Oslo today with my husband. We visited the old Munch Museum at Tøyen when I first came to Oslo; I was only vaguely aware then of Edvard Munch's paintings. Over the years I've developed an appreciation of his works. The museum is worth visiting. 
• We ate dinner at Villa Paradiso (Italian restaurant) afterward. I thought how nice it was to do this together, go out on a Saturday afternoon, and I mentioned to him that we should do things like this more often. He agreed. He will be retiring soon, so it will be interesting to see what life will be like then when we have more time together. 
• Munch was preoccupied with sickness, death, mortality (his mother and sister died of tuberculosis when he was young). Illness in general, including mental illness. His was not a very happy life. But he was an amazing artist. The acknowledgment of our mortality. Some say it becomes more acute once one turns sixty. All I know is that I've been living with this knowledge since I was a teenager and watched my father experience heart attacks and strokes. His first heart attack occurred when I was twelve years old; he died when I was twenty-nine. Mortality became real to me as well once I read Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem 'Spring and Fall--to a young child' as a teenager. Perhaps I shouldn't have read it and internalized it. But I did, and it has stuck with me since then, especially the last two lines: 'It is the blight man was born for, it is Margaret you mourn for'. Do we mourn for ourselves, for the knowledge that our lives will eventually merge into the river of time that sweeps us all onward?
• Everyone ages. Some are more afraid of it than others. Some feel the need to change their faces and looks in order to stay young-looking. But it doesn't really work. It changes how you look even if it may make you look younger, and if you are a celebrity, everyone comments. If it changes how you look, does that change who you are? Do you really believe that you are younger? I don't judge others if they want to go down this road, but I think it is probably easier to just accept the gradual changes associated with aging. Look in the mirror. Or don't. My mother would have said 'just live your life. Get on with it'. She was right about so many things. 
• Does having faith make it easier to deal with one's mortality? Perhaps. I'd rather have faith than not have it. But no one knows what life is like after death, since no one has come back to tell us about it, except Christ. And one must accept his words about eternity, in faith. 
• Faith is defined as 'complete trust or confidence in someone or something'; also 'a strong belief in the doctrines of a religion, based on spiritual conviction rather than proof'. Our society requires proof, evidence, hard facts. Hard to come by where the afterlife is concerned. If someone we once knew and loved rose from the dead before our eyes, I think we would freak out completely. 
• I am now a gardener. That is my identity for at least six months of the year. I am happy in that knowledge. Working with the earth completes me. I don't need much else when I am in my garden. My soul is happy there. It's where I find God. That's all that matters to me. 
• I share my garden photos with others, and they tell me that I am a master gardener. It's nice to hear, but it's not why I share the photos. I want to share the beauty that my soul 'sees'. I hope that others find peace and serenity the way I have found it. That's why I wrote 'The Gifts of a Garden'. 
• I think about so many things when I am working in my garden. There is something about weeding that encourages reflection. I connect with my garden in a silent communion; we talk without the actual utterance of words, but they are uttered in my head. I've learned that if you treat living things well, they will shine. They will do their best to be the best versions of themselves that they can be. If it's true for flowers and plants, it's true for humans (and animals) too.
• As a country (the USA), we need less emphasis on what divides us, and more emphasis on what unites us. The media have had far too much to say about what divides us. But we can choose to listen to it, or to not listen to it. I choose the latter, most of the time. Many women I know have done the same. There is no point in becoming an angry person if that anger does not lead you in the right direction, toward something positive--changing yourself or the situations that infuriate you. If you are constantly angry at everything, your anger is not rational or logical. 
• The orange-haired man appears to be imploding. It had to happen at one point. He's an old man now and he looks it. His behavior borders on deranged. How he's kept up the facade for this long is anyone's guess. 
• As Tania Tetlow--the new president (first woman president) of Fordham University--states, 'we build a common good with ethics, empathy, and faith'. Not with amorality, hardness of heart, and lack of faith. Humans must have hope in order to go on. Our job as Christians is to appeal to that hope in every person we meet. 

Pauses, trial runs, and life lessons

Nearly three months working from home, and I’ve learned more about myself. The learning never really ends. One of the biggest surprises was that I don’t miss going to an actual place of work. I’ve gone into work about four times since lockdown started, to update files and directories on the hospital network that I don’t have access to from home, and to water the plants. I thought I would miss whatever little social interactions there are, but I don’t. They are so few these days anyway that they no longer really matter—a short conversation in the hallway, but mostly just greeting co-workers when I run into them in the hallways. No long conversations, no lunches, no after-work get-togethers. These are things of the past, my distant past. Like most other things relegated to the past, you can miss them or not. It won’t make too much difference. The river of life carries us ever onward, toward new and unexplored destinations to which I look forward.

I view this time as a trial run for retirement. I’ve discovered that I’ll be fine. I enjoy having control over my time, my plans, and my daily schedule. I won’t miss meetings (virtual or otherwise), and I won’t miss deadlines, filing reports, waiting for answers to emails (that rarely come), or the perpetual babble about new visions and new ways to solve problems that no one really wants to solve, or that no one has the budgets to solve. Because in the final analysis, what would solve so many problems is to have the manpower to really effect change. But we cannot have that. So we go on pretending that problems that require manpower, are solvable without it. It’s a catch-22 and I’m tired of playing the game. I won’t anymore. I’ve also discovered that I’m practically-oriented; if I see a solution to a problem, I want to implement it. That’s not always allowed, for some of the reasons mentioned above.

I’ve also discovered that I’m not a particularly loyal person anymore in a work context. I was, once upon a time, but circumstances change and you come to realize that loyalty is often viewed by management as blind obedience. I can’t do that—be blindly obedient. I wasn’t raised that way; additionally, Catholic education encouraged us to think for ourselves, look at both sides, and make reasoned decisions accordingly. Facts were important, and truth was something to be aimed at. I cannot pretend that ‘the emperor is wearing new clothes’ when he or she is in fact naked. I am not loyal in that way, and never will be. It’s one of the reasons that I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican; I grew up in a bipartisan family and plan on remaining bipartisan. There are good reasons for that, which I’ll write about in another post. Suffice it to say that trying to see both sides is something that more leaders should add to their skills toolbox. Being honest about specific situations is another one.

I’ve also discovered that for all the different ways we have to communicate, we don’t really communicate effectively in a work context. We’ve lost the ability to listen well; I am not saying people don’t listen to each other, but they come to most encounters with their own agenda (myself included), and it’s very hard to catch oneself while behaving that way. It mostly amounts to learning to shut up. One can start there and move forward. I think our current political leaders could learn to do the same. Because once you learn to shut up, empathy starts to rear its head. There is no empathy without real listening. ‘Listen unto others as you would have them listen unto you’. Learning to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes is a question of training, and it’s hard work. I have two friends with debilitating neurological illnesses, and what they complain about the most is the lack of empathy they deal with every day. They do not feel ‘seen’ or listened to, and that is a complaint that many elderly in our society also have. My mother used to say that she felt invisible the older she got. She was not an aggressive person; had she been so, outcomes might have been different. My mother and those in her generation grew up differently. Society at present is harsh, dog-eat-dog, intent on measuring how young, successful, beautiful, handsome, or wealthy you are, at all costs. If you don’t measure up, you’re not worth much. Old age is viewed as your own fault, about which you should do something. It’s viewed as an illness or a problem, not as a natural evolution. And yet, all living persons will get old and die one day. That’s just life. No amount of wishful thinking or plastic surgery will prevent that.

I’ve also realized that I’m ‘so over’ much that strikes me as stupid or inane. I have no patience for listening to bullshit, and no patience for people who do not use their intelligence. I have no patience for unkind people; if you want to be in my circle, kindness is one of the keys for entrance. I won’t be unkind toward unkind people; I just simply walk away from them. I won’t give them the opportunity to unleash their rage or frustration on me or others. I am not interested in what they have to say. I have given such people more leeway in my life previously, but no more. If you are unhappy with your life, stay away from me, unless you want me to list up all of the things in your life for which you should be grateful. Go out and take a walk in nature, do volunteer work, or stop watching the inanity on television and social media. Change your life. It can be done.

My last post for this month, in line with my previous post......a good article on the Clicktime blog about motivating your team. It has some good tips, and as is often the case with this particular blog, is a well-written and common-sense article.


https://clicktime.com/blog/motivating-your-team-how-to-make-work-matter/

Questions I have for those who appoint leaders

• Why is it that so many current leaders seem to have risen to the level of their incompetence?
• Why are cowardice, silence in the face of tangible problems, and lack of honesty rewarded with appointments to key leadership positions?
• Why are employees who tell the truth, give feedback, and inform about potential problems often pushed to the side, ignored or frozen out of the leadership pack?
• Why is it necessary to resort to embarrassing lazy incompetent leaders in front of others in order to get them to do their jobs and to take responsibility?
• Why is it necessary in 2017 to have to explain to leadership that infrastructure is important? That without a well-functioning IT infrastructure, you may as well work at home where the IT infrastructure is optimal (of course it is—you cannot keep up in society without updating your computers, software, phones, TVs). That without an annual stipend from one’s workplace to purchase consumables, little will get done because there is no money to buy necessary items.
• Why is it necessary in 2017 to have to explain to research leadership that technical positions (research assistants) are alpha and omega in terms of getting things done in the lab? Why isn’t this a given, that a research group has automatic access to a full-time permanently-employed technician? Does leadership really think that senior research personnel are going to do all the lab work themselves, do all the procedures required for research projects, summarize all the data, perform statistical analyses, write articles, write grants, review others’ articles for journals (for free), review grants for national and international funding agencies (often for free or for a nominal payment), attend a plethora of (mostly pointless) meetings, act as mentors for PhD and Masters students, teach junior personnel, hold lectures, travel to conferences, etc.? Excuse me for saying so, but if they think this, they are just plain stupid. I have a colleague (over fifty years old) who told me that some of her worst work weeks have involved attending eighteen hours’ worth of meetings (that works out to almost 2.5 days a week devoted to meetings). It stands to reason that she will not have any time whatsoever to do routine work or lab work. 
• Why is it considered ok for leadership to not inform employees about important matters, but not ok if employees ignore the regulations stating that they must file periodic progress reports and account for every penny they spend?
• How did it get to the point where a research career can end literally overnight when funding dries up, and more to the point, who thinks this is a good system or a good approach? Many of those careers belong to highly-competent and efficient scientists who just don’t happen to be doing trendy research. 
• How can one honestly encourage young people to stay in academic research when the prospect of them attaining a permanent research job/steady funding/tenure is slim to none? Is it ok to essentially lie to them, to tell them that it will work out for them (it won’t in most cases)? 
• And finally: why do we older scientists even entertain the possibility that we have a snowball's chance in hell of getting research funding? Of writing a fundable grant? If I have learned anything these past five years, it’s that even though I managed to write good grant applications that got me external funding to work as a post-doc and junior scientist during a ten-year period from 1999-2008, that’s not good enough anymore. And it will never be good enough. The past does not count. Realism is what counts. Luckily I have a permanent staff scientist position so I cannot be fired because I am older, but there is no funding for consumables. It's a strange situation to be in. But I now focus on other things that give me satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment. None of them have to do with my career. 

Thinking about the future and retirement when you are young

I’m always a bit surprised by what people respond to on social media sites. I am a rather infrequent commenter myself on social media; it takes a lot to get me to write a pithy response to an online article that I found provocative, timely or interesting. If something strikes me as inherently kind or compassionate, I may write a short note praising the writer for his or her insights and empathy. This past week I read a very short but good article on the Care2 website that dispensed some good advice on how to stop wasting money and to think about the future (http://www.care2.com/greenliving/top-6-ways-we-all-waste-money-and-how-to-stop.html). I thought the article was well-written enough to comment on, and this is what I wrote:

Very good tips. If I could emphasize one thing, it would be this. Think about retirement when you are young and starting out in the work world. It's never too soon to start saving your own money toward retirement.

The Care2 community likes to deal out what it calls Green Stars of Appreciation, and I got quite a few for this little comment (notification by email). All well and good. What struck me was that this way of thinking is perhaps not so widespread as you might think. When I worked at different American workplaces in the 1980s, there was always the requisite orientation day that included presentations of 401K plans and IRAs and that sort of thing, so we were in fact briefly introduced to the topic of retirement. But it wasn’t ‘emphasized’ to think ahead, to sock away as much as possible so that you had a good nest egg for when you were older. And when you’re young, you think you’ll be young forever, so you don’t save as much as you should toward retirement. I asked several people, all of whom are middle-aged like me, whether they had been encouraged to save for retirement when they were young and starting out in the work world. The answer was unanimously ‘no’, and that’s true for me as well. Several of those I talked to wished that it had been hammered into them—save for retirement no matter what.

I make it a point to tell the young people I know to save a lot toward retirement when they’re young. Think income, promotions and salary raises. Look out for yourself. I say this to young women especially, but the advice is relevant for young men as well. Why? When you are young, work matters a lot, in fact, identity becomes wrapped up in one’s work. You love your job and you think you will want to work forever. You don’t consider any other possibility. And the world around you is telling you ‘don't play it safe, take risks, live for now’. But mindsets change as we grow older--gradually for some people, abruptly for others, depending upon how you are treated by your workplaces in many cases when you reach middle-age. Suddenly you may find yourself thinking about retiring early in order to pursue a new career, course of study, hobbies, volunteer work—but you don’t have the funds to retire. You don’t have the freedom to change your life. This might not seem like a big deal to some people, but it is a big deal. It is no fun to be stuck in a job or a way of life you are weary of until you are 70 years of age in order to have enough money to retire. I think it might also be smart to tell young people that they don’t have to have the biggest homes, multiple cars, expensive vacations, and all the rest, at the expense of a good retirement account. You don't have to achieve the materialistic dreams that society deems important. Enjoy life, enjoy material pursuits (to a point), pursue your work dreams and goals, but be smart about the future. One day you will retire and you may want to do it sooner than later.   

Weighing in on women and leadership

There is a new book out called Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg. I have not read the book; I may do so at some point. I did read the recent Time magazine article about her and her book; she graced the front cover of the magazine and the headline accompanying her picture read ‘Don’t hate her because she’s successful’. The article about her was well-written, but points out some of the anomalies that one will always find in the lives of the truly successful. I agree with much of what Ms. Sandberg says about being efficient and ‘ruthlessly prioritizing’ in terms of dealing with the many challenges the workplace throws at you; I disagree with her on other points. No matter. She is a good example of a successful woman leader in the business world, and more power to her. But she got to that place with help; as she says herself in the article, ‘I was hugely lucky, and that explains most of my success.......just like every man'. Indeed she was, to know some of the enlightened men she knows, who were not afraid to head-hunt her to specific jobs or use their clout to get her on board. And therein lies the rub, at least for me. You don’t get anywhere in life without support and help from others. Call them whatever you want—sponsors, mentors, advisers. You need them in order to rise in whatever hierarchical workplace or organization you find yourself. Unfortunately there are not enough of them to go around; even if there were, the current way of doing things focuses on finding the best candidate in any branch and grooming him (or her—perhaps less often) for a top position. I would argue that this perpetuates an elitist system; I am not necessarily opposed to that. However, the ramifications of this type of system are that not everyone can be a leader. Even those who are qualified to be leaders may find that they are pushed aside in favor of another; that happens to both qualified men and women. I know just as many men as women who were pushed aside or ignored in favor of ‘better’ candidates. You can of course question whether those other candidates are ‘better’. Much of the time it’s ‘who you know’, not ‘what you know’ that gets you ahead. And the 'who you know' is what comes from networking, which not all qualified candidates master.

Sandberg argues in the article that women prepare for other things in life—getting married and raising a family—and thus do not follow (or choose to not follow) opportunities to move vertically, thus narrowing their chances of getting closer to the boardroom. So that by the time they actually have children, they are not even in the running for consideration for a leadership position. When I was younger, I used to wonder about this too, except that my generation grew up thinking we could have it all, that we could find time for it all, and that we would have complete lives in the process. It was a myth and it was painful to let go of it. Men and women compromise and make choices all the time not to pursue specific avenues in order to make their lives work; we cannot have it all. But it is no surprise to me that self-help books about how to have it all are still best-sellers. We want to believe the hype. Reality is something else altogether.

That is one consideration. The other considerations have to do with how women are treated in the workforce. I know many women who followed the opportunities that came their way, only to encounter unenlightened male leaders who held them down, ignored them, or pushed them aside in favor of male candidates. Gender bias is nothing new. I remember an interesting story reported in the media from a few years ago about a Swedish man who held a high position in a personnel department in a big company. He admitted that he tossed most of the resumes from female applicants into the waste basket, and had done so for most of his work life. He was married with a family. When he reached middle-age, it suddenly dawned on him that his daughter, who was now in her early twenties and entering the workforce, might encounter the same type of treatment that he had been dishing out to other women for years. Bing—a light went on in his head, and he became an enlightened man, but only when he understood that if his daughter encountered his type of behavior in her own attempts to rise in her career, that it would harm her chances of succeeding in the work world. I have tried to find the story online but failed. But the long-term effects of this type of behavior may be what we may be seeing now in the business world, as Ms. Sandberg points out—many women assume that they will only come so far and no further, so they reach a certain level and stop there. They resign themselves to (without necessarily accepting it) the (often covert) gender bias in the work world in order to be able to do their work well and to have some modicum of peace in their lives. It is very stressful to try to fight or to change unfairness; more power to those who try. It is my contention that change comes via example, and that perhaps it is best to start small. The only way to get women interested in taking leadership positions is to set an example for them as a woman leader; if you actually maneuver your way through the system and manage to get to the top, you should mentor and/or sponsor other women. Women should be helping other women at the top levels; I haven’t seen much of this, unfortunately, at least in academia.

But perhaps there are other aspects that must be considered in these discussions. Perhaps younger women (and men) are re-evaluating what they want out of life, searching for new definitions of success, and looking for ways to live simpler, less stressful lives. Because that is one thing I noticed in the article about Sandberg; she goes home each day from Facebook (where she works) at 5:30 pm to be with her family—to eat dinner and such—and then returns to the office later that evening. This is simply not possible for most employees, many of whom commute long distances to and from work; and even if it was, is it desirable? There are so many articles about employees who must be constantly available to their workplaces via computer and smart phones. Aren’t they allowed to have a life outside of work, whether or not they have families? If you are single, you also need down-time from work. Are you a better employee if you are always working? Is it so important to be available 24/7? I think the answer is no, but it is unpopular to say so. 

Some good quotes about work

There are few, if any, jobs in which ability alone is sufficient. Needed, also, are loyalty, sincerity, enthusiasm and team play. --William B. Given, Jr.

When people go to work, they shouldn't have to leave their hearts at home. --Betty Bender

One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important. --Bertrand Russell

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing. --Thomas A. Edison

The world is full of willing people, some willing to work, the rest willing to let them. --Robert Frost

People might not get all they work for in this world, but they must certainly work for all they get. --Frederick Douglass

In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it. --John Ruskin

So much of what we call management consists in making it difficult for people to work. --Peter Drucker

Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else. --James M. Barrie

Real success is finding your lifework in the work that you love. --David McCullough

The more I want to get something done, the less I call it work. --Richard Bach

The important work of moving the world forward does not wait to be done by perfect men. --George Eliot

I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it. --Thomas Jefferson

You've achieved success in your field when you don't know whether what you're doing is work or play. --Warren Beatty

The secret of joy in work is contained in one word - excellence. To know how to do something well is to enjoy it. --Pearl Buck

Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you're not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were. --David Rockefeller

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man. --Elbert Hubbard

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. --Thomas A. Edison

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing. --Theodore Roosevelt

Warm weather musings and updates

Summer has finally come to Norway, at least to Oslo and the surrounding area. And it’s not even officially summertime yet according to the calendar. So guess who’s happy? It’s my favorite season, summertime. It brings with it no work or very little work, vacation, sun, warmth, travel, long lazy days, boat trips, bicycle rides, a lot of fresh fruit and vegetables on a daily basis, salads, enjoying a few hours with friends or my husband at outdoor cafes—the list is endless. My plants are happy; it’s just to take one good look at them. Their leaves seem greener and they just seem to be healthier. Just like us, how we respond to the sun. Everyone seems happier, more patient, less aggressive and more open. I wish it could be like that all year long. Summer always seems to be the time when new beginnings blossom, for me at least. More than spring, although you might say that spring is where those new beginnings take root.

I haven’t written too much about work lately, I guess because I’ve moved into a new phase now at my workplace—the ‘wait and see’ phase. For the time being, my work life seems to have evened out a bit. All that means is that I have found a new research group to settle into and so far, so good. It feels good to be a part of something to which I can contribute. I just hope this new group is allowed to grow and flourish. One year ago, the other ‘new group’ that I was a part of was just getting onto its feet and learning to get to know one another. And then the end of 2011 came and that group went ‘poof’ and was no more. Management decided to move the pawns around on the chess board once again, and came up with new suggestions for new constellations. And of course they know best. The uplifting part of these political scenarios is that they happen now in public for all to see, so that it is no longer possible for my friends and colleagues to say that they don’t believe me when I tell them how it is. They’re now experiencing some of this personally and they don’t like the treatment either. I’m a couple of years ahead of them, having graduated from anger to depression to cynicism to healthy skepticism. ‘Trust no one’ as the main characters on the X-Files used to say. In a work-related context, I’d say that’s where I am now. Still like the research work I do, though. I just hate work politics, but they’re part and parcel of the whole arena, in fact of most business arenas.

Mostly, I’ve floated myself back into the world that I love the most after science—the world of the creative arts--literature, movies, art, and music. That world always fills me with hope and the feeling that I am being renewed—new beginnings within myself. I’m reading again, listening to new music, appreciating art where I find it, and going to the movies as often as I manage. Or renting DVDs to catch up on the movies I’ve missed. I just read Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad and enjoyed it; he describes evil behavior in mankind in a way that can chill you to the bone, and he does it in a way that seems so ordinary. I’m currently reading Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout and enjoying it immensely; Olive is a prickly middle-aged woman but her life is so worth reading about—all the different people who cross her path and who interact with her. I recommend it. I got tickets to see Deadmau5 at Oslo Spektrum concert stadium next week as I wrote about in my previous post; in a few weeks I will see Sting at the Norwegian Wood music festival in Frogner Park. I recently went to see the movies Dark Shadows, Hunger Games and Martha Marcy May Marlene, and I got tickets today for the opening night of Prometheus (can’t wait!) next week. I’ve rented The Rum Diary with Johnny Depp, and watched Source Code and Another Earth (another film I wrote about recently). All of them were good films, and all of them inspire me in a way that no other art form can. I’m hooked on movies—always have been and always will be. Some of you may ask where I find the time to do these things—yes, I know and feel the time constraints all the time. The answer is that I am making the time now. Again I ask, if not now, when? Academia can eat up every spare minute of life including evenings and weekends, and I don’t want that. So yes, I am choosing the creative world of the arts any chance I get, as I’ve written about here in this blog many times before. It helps to balance out the administrative, political and other demands of academia. The actual research and experiments though are the creative part of science, when we are actually permitted to pursue them. There is a lot of creativity in the world of science research; the trick is to not get buried by all of the other demands that eat up that creative time.

Jumping hurdles

It’s been a while since I last wrote for my blog; I have been very busy with work-related things. My work life has changed yet again, perhaps for the better. Time will tell. I am now part of a large research group that has a new leader and he seems to be up for the job. He has the qualities needed to run a research group, and for now, that’s all I care about. My workplace remains a study in transition; I doubt the dust will settle any time soon. Several of my friends and colleagues are now dealing with the depression and uncertainty that haunted my life up until the end of 2011. It’s their turn now. I let go, gave in, and resigned myself to constant change, change for change’s sake, to frustration, to disappointment, to bad behavior. In the end, you get used to change and all its accoutrements. What seemed like such an impossible hurdle to overcome, dealing with constant change, has at least become a hurdle of lower height. It is possible to jump it at times without falling. It is even possible sometimes to soar over it; that’s happened at least a few times since the new year started. The associated hurdles of questionable leadership and boredom are harder to soar over, but I will. I no longer look at work in the same way anymore though; it’s a job, albeit well-paying and interesting, but a job nonetheless, and when it’s time to go home, I close the door on it—a big change for me. I doubt I will go in reverse and become the workaholic I once was. It’s hard to let go of an identity that was comfortable, one that defined me for many years. It’s finding a new identity that’s the tough challenge now; I alternate between scientist and writer/photographer. Both make equal claims on my time now. And I let them. Because in truth, I want to let them. I want both of them in my life. I no longer choose one at the expense of the other. I don’t want to give up my creative interests, and if I give up the time needed to pursue them, I will be unhappy, that I know.

Home office day

I love my one day a week when I can work at home. ‘Hjemmekontor’ as it’s called in Norwegian—literally, ‘home office’. Home office day. Has a nice ring to it. I usually work at home on Wednesdays these days. All I know is that it seems to be a lot more common now than it was ten years ago. I started working at home around eight years ago; I was one of the first employees at my hospital to take advantage of the opportunity. I get so much work done at home. I am disciplined and structured enough to make it work; I know people who are not and who shudder at the very idea of working at home. I love it because I am not distracted by telephones, knocks on my door, or other interruptions that make up the daily life of the workplace. And I am not complaining about those interruptions—they are part and parcel of the work world. But if I want to think, write or be creative, home is the place I need to be.

I work at home the way I do at my workplace, from 9am until noon with a break for lunch, and then the rest of the day until around 5pm. Today I did some food shopping at lunchtime, and on my way upstairs to our apartment with my two grocery bags, I ran into two other people who live in our building. They were also working at home. It struck me that more people may end up working from home in the next ten years than will be working in a formal workplace. And wouldn’t that be ok? I would welcome it. With computers, smart phones, fax machines, webcams and pagers, aren’t we well-connected to our workplaces? Aren’t we sufficiently connected? We are on an honor system, yes, that’s true. If we say we will be at home to those who work for us, we have to honor our promise. I want to honor it, because I want my co-workers to know that I am available to help them whenever they need me during work hours. After hours is another story. After hours—those are my hours, and they are ‘do not disturb unless it is a crisis’ hours.

There are a lot of advantages to working at home. There is no formal dress code; pajamas are quite ok, as are tattered jeans. Makeup is unimportant. Additionally I can take a five-minute break from time to time to find my camera to take photos of the pigeons who sit outside my kitchen window—my camera is in the next room a few feet away. If I was at work, I would miss those shots because I don’t carry my camera with me to work. Perhaps I should start to do so. In any case, I cannot come up with one disadvantage to working at home, unless of course one brings up the loss of social contact. But being a scientist, I am alone a good portion of my day anyway, so I don’t normally experience an overabundance of daily social interaction at work. And I’m fine with that. I know others who would miss having their daily group around them, and who would not enjoy being at home. I also look at working at home as preparation for retirement. And since I’ve been doing this for eight years, I am used to it and I know I'll be fine the day I no longer have a formal workplace to go to. 

Another day in the life of a scientist

Long day in the lab yesterday. One of those days that leave you dead-tired, so that when you get home you just want to find the couch, turn the TV on and just do nothing. Got my morning coffee first. Workday started off with me doing a procedure called western blotting—104 cell samples loaded manually (by me) onto four plastic-like gels and pushed through them by electricity. Point of procedure? To separate proteins in the samples according to their molecular weights. Just the sample loading took over an hour. Have to pay attention--very easy to make a mistake and load the wrong sample in the wrong place. Made buffers after that. Found all the accessories needed to complete the procedure. Lunchtime in my office. Knock on my office door. Impromptu visit from the big boss. Shoveled in my salad while talking about my future—lab frock on and thoroughly harried. Thought about that. In my younger days I wouldn’t have eaten a bite while talking to the boss. Would have been too nervous. Now I do. No longer nervous. Getting used to all these conversations. Back in the lab. Two more hours of finishing up this gel procedure. Nice results. A reward for the hard work and long hours. Not always that way. A quick coffee break. Meeting with my student--discussed results. Hers and mine—she does the same procedure to get data so we can discuss what’s happening in her cells. Interesting project. She will get her thesis done. Hope there will be an article out of it. Cannot predict that when you first start the work. Do all this work for several months and suddenly a dead-end. That’s research. Used to disappointments—makes success all the more enjoyable. Scanned in some data, transferred it to the computer, sent it on to my student. Finished up paperwork before heading for home. Bought a grilled chicken, fried up some mushrooms, made broccoli—voila—dinner on my own. Hubby out with his lab group for dinner. TV night for once—not often that happens! The King’s Speech, Game of Thrones, The Way We Were—well-worth the watching time. Monday starts another week, more long days in the lab. Wonder how I did this when I was younger—long long hours in the lab, sometimes twelve per day. Dead-tired a lot of the time. Like being in the lab though. Will probably be doing that till I retire--white frock on, in front of the lab bench, alone. Not a bad way to work given the new workplace propensity for long unsatisfying meetings these days. Would rather be in the lab, all things considered. 

Be careful what you wish for

Whenever I look at the statistics for the blog posts I’ve written, I find that posts about modern workplaces are among the most popular. I guess this shouldn’t surprise me, because we spend a good portion of our lives in our workplaces, so it’s not strange that we want to both understand and feel a part of them. I’ve spoken to many different people lately, both here in Norway and in the USA, and the thoughts, complaints, and experiences they share mirror my own. There have been huge changes in our workplaces just during the past ten years. It seems to me as though they have happened gradually, but the overall effect has been jarring. And if I am honest, I know that with each change that occurs in my own workplace, I am pushed out of my comfort zone yet again. The time allotted for engaging in and experiencing a new comfort zone gets shorter and shorter. The idea I suppose is that we’re not supposed to ‘get comfortable’—the new way of thinking is that it’s bad for productivity and efficiency. Modern workplaces are about change—change at any cost, change for change’s sake, change for the sake of modernization, change to meet the needs of the future, change to improve the quality of workplace life for employees, change to deal with an aging employee population—there may be many reasons for change. After having been pushed and prodded for the past several years, I am finally awake to what is going on around me, and I find that I am beginning to get some kind of overview, a bird’s eye view as it were, on the whole thing. But I am a long way from understanding it.

What I can surmise from all the changes is that many of them are about control—controlling huge organizations, be they universities, hospitals, corporations—it doesn’t matter. The growth of administration to effect this control has led to micromanagement and dissection of all that we took for granted before, all that functioned without us really knowing how or why. And since it functioned, we really didn’t have to know how or why it did. We trusted that this or that particular system (ordering, accounting, invoicing, archiving) was run by people who knew what they were doing, just as we knew what we were doing in our own spheres. It was fine to ‘take each other for granted’, respect each other’s differences, and go on about our daily work lives. Since the ultra-business people with their new management trends have taken over, we are forced to acknowledge their presence, forced to interact with them on a daily basis. They want us to know they are there—not that they are there to serve us; rather that we are there to serve them. They want to be acknowledged for all they do and they want us to know that they are in charge. So now we know. Now we know the answer to the old joke—how many people does it take to screw in a light bulb? How many people does it take to order a computer, or three items needed for work, or to create an invoice, or to create and fill out a work order so that eventual work can be planned? An easy answer is now six or more people, if you’re lucky. Administration grows exponentially. I’m guessing that the jobs of the future are in business administration. Young people should take notice.

Many of the changes are also about creating a lack of accountability. What do I mean by this? You can no longer relate personally to one individual who might be able to help you. The impersonal shield as I call it goes up the minute you ask to speak to one person who might know the answer to your question. You must rather deal with six or more people whose names you will never remember. And that’s the point. Or if you get an email from one of the six, it is with a cc: to the other five, so that you will never know with certainty that the person who wrote to you is the person you should deal with in the future. In this way, no one person is accountable; no one person can be blamed if a problem should arise. But this also means that no one person can receive the honor for a job well-done. They must all share it communally, like it and keep quiet if they don’t.

This lack of accountability is also part of what I call the dilution effect. Call it spreading out the blame, the praise, the responsibility, the actual job tasks—whatever may be involved. No one person can be responsible for one specific job anymore—that would be tantamount to giving full control to one individual, and that cannot be tolerated in modern workplaces, because that would give one person autonomy and a sense of well-being. So the job is diluted out, which leads to a thinning-out of its effectiveness, much like what happens if you dilute the concentration of a medicine that might help you—if it’s too dilute, it loses its effectiveness. I don’t blame the people who sit in these positions—they are told what to do by their superiors. But it’s a sorry state of affairs we’ve reached when high levels of competence and expertise are no longer encouraged. What’s rather encouraged is team-playing , sharing the expertise and diluting out one’s competence and accepting that it should be this way. What happens to a company or to a society when competence is diluted out in this way? Can we trust that teams of people with limited information about their individual jobs can fly, drive or manage the planes, trains, or companies of the future, respectively? Personally, I want to fly in a plane that I know is in the hands of fully-competent individuals, so that if something happened to two of the three pilots, the remaining one would be fully-competent to tackle the situation alone. Ditto for a train. Ditto for a company.  

What is our role in creating the current situation? I wonder. The old adage ‘be careful what you wish for, you might get it’ comes to mind. Have we wished for some of this? I think the answer is yes. I think unwittingly, every time we said that we wished there was a more defined system for this or that, every time we worshipped on the altars of productivity and efficiency, every time we wanted to give up some autonomy because it was too tiring to think or do for ourselves---we were wishing for someone to come along and take control for us. Call it a collective wishing. We may have bought into the business philosophies that talked about how much more effective everything would be after a huge merger. We wished for that effectiveness. It seemed like a real solution, even when we were already productive—we wanted more. But nothing that gets to be the size of a bloated whale or a huge lumbering dinosaur can be effective. Bigger is not always better. Is it always wanting more, better, bigger that will destroy us? Or turn us into bloated whales and lumbering dinosaurs? We are not meeting the needs of the future in this format, that’s for sure. 

The 'homework' cloud

It occurred to me recently that certain aspects of my work life remind me very much of how I felt in grammar school. I live with what I call the ‘homework’ cloud over me. I cannot seem to shake the nagging feeling that I have homework to do after a full day at my job (and how many years have I been working?), and that when I get home I need to be focusing on some work-related project in addition to everything else that awaits me when I come home—shopping for dinner, making dinner, cleaning up. The reality is that I don’t have homework and that there is no one waiting for me at work the next day to evaluate what I did last night for work. It’s just that the habit of homework became a lifelong affair along the road of my life, and I don’t really think it is a good thing, because it also occurred to me that this is one of the reasons I never feel completely relaxed at home. It hasn’t helped that we have taken our work home with us throughout the 1990s and even into the new century. I stopped doing this about four or five years ago, but the guilt about not doing so still rides me. So that when I do find myself relaxing at home, reading a book or article for pure pleasure or puttering around my kitchen, the thought suddenly strikes me—do I have something to do for work that I have forgotten about? The answer is usually no these days, but it jars me nonetheless. I never feel like this when I am on vacation. I manage to put work in a box and store it away someplace until I’m ready to open the box again. I don’t know if other people my age feel this way. Do more women than men feel this way about their jobs? Are we overly-driven, and if so, why? Is it because we were the homework generation? We should be able to leave work at the door. We should be able to relax at home. And yet, how many people really do? I know many people who work the whole weekend long. The teachers I know have to work on the weekends—it’s the only time they have to prepare their lesson plans. Academicians don’t have to work on the weekends, but they often do because that is the time they use to read articles and update themselves on what is going on in their respective fields. My husband and I have done this for years; he still does occasionally, but I no longer do.

You would think that weekends would be like little mini-vacations for most people, vacations from work. Indeed they should be. My parents’ generation was better at relaxing on the weekends, better at leaving work at the door. Sometimes I manage to make my weekends feel like mini-vacations; other times I just feel like I have a list of things that need to get done. The list includes housework and other house-related things that are also ‘work’. Perhaps that is when I stop relaxing—when I am living my life according to my list and not according to what would be most relaxing. We should also be able to free ourselves from a chore-driven life so that we don’t continually berate ourselves for not doing this or that chore or project. I think the problem is that we work too much and have worked too much, and that carries over into the home environment. My generation grew up with a strong work ethic, and it stuck. And that’s fine, except that somewhere along the way it turned into this—that too many hours of our lives went to our jobs, and not enough hours to our homes and families. I don’t believe in the concept of quality time. I just want enough time to live in harmony with myself and the people around me. Five days a week, ten or more hours a day devoted to work is too much, and it detracts from a harmonious life. And yet it’s expected of us. So why then do I feel guilty for not giving my workplace my nights and weekends too? I think it’s part of our generation too—to feel that we would like to do it all, have time for everything, but we know deep down that we will never achieve that. It’s not possible. If we use fifty or more hours a week at work, then we don’t have a lot of extra time to do everything else we would like to or have to do. That’s life. Perhaps the best thing would be to start letting go of ‘having’ to do something every weekend—letting go of the lists that make us feel guilty when we don’t achieve the tasks listed there. I don’t know the answer; I only know that I would like to reach a state of harmony inside myself—where I can truly enjoy living in the present without worrying about what I have to do, either at work or at home. And I want the guilt to disappear.