School of hard knocks

For those of you who have been following this blog since May, I just want to say that many of the recent posts have had a lot to do with my work situation. My focus these past few months has been on trying to understand what the hell happened this year at work, to me and to those around me and to the work environment. I apologize for my work focus but I am finding it so hard to believe (and to accept) that the merger of four hospitals could have the impact it has had on us, but it has. The only word that comes to mind these days is implosion—I just feel that everything around us is imploding, despite everyone’s best efforts (presumably) to prevent it. Or is it just a gut feeling that doesn’t have to come true? Am I just glooming and dooming? I hope so. All I know is that whatever happens to ‘little me’ has got to be happening to others—accounting mishaps and gross errors, an ordering system that defies logic, a leadership structure that also defies logic (no one knows who their real boss is and even the bosses are not sure who they are responsible for—I report to three people but I try to limit it to one person to keep my sanity). We are expected to inform the chain of command about most things, so I do, in order not to cause problems. There has been a large loss of ‘freedom’, which bothers me because I have never abused any of the freedoms I have had before as a scientist. We have office managers who force us to deal with problems that we are not trained for or equipped to handle, e.g., complicated accounting practices that we as scientists have no chance in hell of understanding. We are expected to be administrators and to like it. I don’t mind office work but it wasn’t exactly what I signed on for when I decided I was going to do science. But I’m moving in the direction of more office work. It’s easier to give in so as not to make waves.

This year I was offered the same leadership position twice and twice it was retracted. The reason given was that I could not officially report to my husband, which would have been the case had I become leader. Ok, I can accept that. What I cannot understand is why the whole idea of offering it to me was ok at the beginning of January but not by the end of April. So I let go of wanting that to happen. I was told that my staff scientist job had to be ‘defended’ to the clinic leaders so it was obviously in danger of being phased out. Luckily it wasn’t. I got my PhD student through this past year and was told that I could not receive any money for this (as is usually the case) because I was not a professor at the university. This seems strange to me. I am professor competent but that was apparently not good enough. I have eighty-four peer-reviewed scientific publications, I review grants for external international institutes, and I am a peer reviewer for over eight journals. My boss told me that I should be happy with the articles that my student and I have published together—that this was reward enough. That’s fine except that if the same happened to him he would be pretty pissed off about it. But it will never happen to him. I was told that my job was to be re-defined back in May, but as of this date it has not been. So I wait. Inertia rules.

I shifted my focus toward doing some secretarial work for my union board and helping them with salary negotiations during this autumn. And so began other problems. My union leader, a man with very little respect for professional women, began to cause problems for the board. Then he began to cause problems for me. I am still dealing with the repercussions of his unprofessional and idiotic behavior. I decided I had to blow the whistle on some of his behavior and I did. It is not easy to do this and I know now why people would rather avoid sticking their head up or their neck out. You don’t know what you’re in for before it happens. And then it takes on a life of its own. Inertia rules.

The final straw for this year was finding out that my salary has been coming from the wrong account and that this account has incurred a deficit of over 120,000 USD since I was hired as a permanent full-time employee by my hospital in January 2008. Another boss refers to this money as Excel money because the accountants just shift money around like they were playing Monopoly, but whatever the case, this makes me nervous. I reported the situation to this boss almost two years ago and he reported it further to the accounting department and nothing has happened, just that the deficit grows larger since they don’t seem to understand the problem. I find it hard to believe that this can go on and that this can bode well for the future of an enterprise. People around me tell me not to take it personally (I don’t) but the level of incompetence I see around me bothers me. For every person who is trying to make sense of his or her job, there are five administrators who are just complicating everything exponentially.

So this is the school of hard knocks. I haven’t taken any courses at any university this year but I have learned an incredible amount about incompetence, unprofessional behavior, lack of a work ethic, avoidance of responsibility, shifting the blame onto others as often as possible, not doing anything about a problem or a conflict, not leaving a paper trail (no emails), not showing up at important meetings and covering your ass in case it’s necessary to do so. I have learned that passive-aggressive behavior in workplace leaders is fairly commonplace. At present I am fairly black and blue from all the pummeling that has been going on. But I have learned that I need to get better at punching back. I need to learn to become a better fighter. 2011 will be an interesting year in such regard.  

Last day in November

The last day in November—here we are less than four weeks from Christmas and on the verge of a new year. I wonder what the New Year will bring. I certainly had no inklings whatsoever that 2010 would turn out to be one of the more difficult years in my recent past. But it was and I know I need to learn from it, if only to preserve my peace of mind. If I listed up all of the things that have gone awry this year, you might not believe me. So I won’t. I’ll leave them be and let them go. I want to enjoy the Christmas season and I cannot do that in a state of constant anxiety and uncertainty.

I am looking forward to Christmas this year and to all the preparations for it—putting up the tree, decorating, making gingerbread cookies as well as other cookies and cakes, going to some Christmas choir concerts, attending the Nutcracker (our annual tradition), and paying attention to the true meaning of Advent and of Christmas. It’s the gifts of peace, joy, stillness, and kindness that mean the most to me. Just to receive and give kindness are treasured gifts for the soul. There is so little real kindness and the world needs more of it. 

A positive outlook

"If you focus on the possible when you experience difficult situations, YOU CAN positively change your outlook, reduce your stress, and concentrate on achieving things that otherwise may not have been possible."


Catherine Pulsifer

The lowly pawns

I played two games of chess with my computer last week and I actually won one game, surprisingly enough. It was my pawns that gave me the advantage, and it got me thinking about life and how it can surprise you at times. Pawns have the lowest value compared to the other chess pieces, and it was somehow fitting that it was the pawns that helped me win. I couldn’t help but find some symbolism in this little achievement. The pawns can advance only one square at a time and they can be used to capture your opponent’s pieces on the diagonal. If you are so lucky as to have your pawns reach the farthest rank of the board, they can be exchanged for your captured pieces. So a pawn can become your queen that was captured, and so on. Slow and steady wins the race, at least sometimes.

I used to play chess with my father a lot when I was a teenager. I think it was he who taught me the game. It must be said that he was not a good loser. But that didn’t stop us from playing chess together. I learned so much from chess, and my rediscovery of how interesting the game really is made me think about why I like it. It is very cool to be able to ‘see’ ahead in terms of planning your moves. There is a cold hard logic involved that I like. And that has absolute relevance to life too. It is essential to be able to see the repercussions of a decision one makes, or to evaluate several options and to wander down the mental roads that each option could lead to. There is certainty and lack of certainty contained within each option, and that is the feeling I feel when I play chess. You can plan your moves and anticipate how your opponent may move, but you may overlook something and your opponent may surprise you. Thus the excitement and the anxiety of the game—it feels like high stakes are involved—even if you are a lowly amateur to the game.

There are so many plays for power and control around me these days, especially at work. The words of a former colleague ring in my ears at times—'your work environment is mostly characterized by ruthless power struggles'. Naïve as I am, I don’t think I ever really totally internalized this fact. Or perhaps I thought I was outside the realm of power so that it would never affect me. Little me—who would have thought I would be a threat to anyone? But apparently I am, just because I have opinions and because I open my mouth and state them. You shouldn’t do that these days—you should keep your mouth shut and your head down and do as you’re told.

The word ‘checkmate’ has been popping into my head here and there the past few weeks. Not surprising perhaps, because during the past two weeks I have been witness to some of the most ruthless power struggles in my work life thus far and for some reason that has triggered the chess symbolism. Because some of those power struggles involve me indirectly (roundabout efforts to keep me from gaining any power whatsoever), I feel like a pawn that keeps advancing slowly, one step at a time. Most of the time the pawns get pushed out of the way, but every now and then one of them can make it possible for the other pieces to corner the king. Checkmate. It’s about seeing the moves your opponents may make and acting accordingly. I realize that I have been pushed out of the way for a while now. I haven’t understood the game until now. I’m keeping my cool and planning my moves, one step at a time, and who knows how it will turn out. 

Musings on a Sunday night

We celebrated Thanksgiving tonight—with turkey, gravy, bread stuffing, corn bread, mashed white and sweet potatoes, tyttebær sauce instead of cranberry sauce (tyttebær are similar to cranberries), broccoli, and pumpkin pie. Caroline and Marius were together with us and it was a very enjoyable evening. I used the entire day and part of last night to prepare the meal, and it’s always worth it. I love doing it and as long as I do I’ll continue to do it each year. Thanksgiving is my holiday as an American abroad, and for each year that passes that I am not in America, it means more to me. I am always reminded of my mother and father when the holidays arrive. My mother spent most of Thanksgiving Day in the kitchen—we had to force her to sit down and eat with the rest of us, as she was always busy serving us. My parents would make some pies together at Christmas time. My father would sit and roll out dough that my mother used to make the latticework on her Italian ricotta cheese pie (which I can promise you is out of this world—delicious).

It has been snowing the whole day, but there hasn’t been much accumulation. It wasn’t heavy snow. It is bitter cold and windy, so when I have opened the windows to air out the kitchen, the arctic air permeates the room immediately. Winter is definitely here and has made its annual entrance with a vengeance.

Earlier today, I heard bells ringing from, of all things, an ice cream truck that usually drives around the city during the summertime. When I looked out the window, sure enough, there it was--the blue ice cream truck. I had to laugh—somehow the incongruity of its being there was almost sweet. Here we are, in the midst of a freezing cold winter, and I wondered who would buy freezing cold ice cream. I also wondered if he had any takers. I almost felt sorry for the driver and considered going down to buy some ice cream, but of course common sense took over. We don’t need ice cream since both of us cannot really eat it anymore due to health reasons, but mainly, what would we do with it on a freezing winter day? Or during a freezing winter generally?

Today is also the first Sunday in Advent. I set up my Advent candle holder with four purple candles. I always like to decorate the house in preparation for Christmas. I do it gradually, so that the house slowly begins to look Christmas-y. I look forward to putting the tree up and decorating it. Trond and I usually go down to the local Christmas tree store—a temporary affair that they set up in a vacant field each year—and pick out a tree. I always want a taller one than Trond wants, and we always end up compromising. Each year the tree is always just perfect. I have a hard time picking just the right tree, because I usually want to take home the ones that don’t make it to #1, like Charlie Brown. I feel sorry for the trees that are left behind. I would be impossible in an animal rescue shelter—I’d want to take all the animals home. I’d probably be the same in an orphanage. I cannot even imagine how one could choose just one child and leave the rest behind.

It makes me wish I had so much money that I could own a big piece of land where I could build as many houses as were needed to take in stray people and stray animals. Of course there would be enough money to hire kind people to help take care of them. I wish it could be so.

I wish there was more kindness in the world. Just plain kindness. More listening, more caring, less arrogance, less unfriendliness, less rudeness. That’s my wish for Christmas and for the New Year. I’ll do my part to help make it happen, I promise.

What Eleanor Roosevelt said

·         No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.

·         You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing which you think you cannot do.

·         Remember always that you not only have the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one.

·         The word liberal comes from the word free. We must cherish and honor the word free or it will cease to apply to us.

·         When you know to laugh and when to look upon things as too absurd to take seriously, the other person is ashamed to carry through even if he was serious about it.

·         It is not fair to ask of others what you are not willing to do yourself.

·         What is to give light must endure the burning.

·         Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

·         When will our consciences grow so tender that we will act to prevent human misery rather than avenge it?

·         Too often the great decisions are originated and given form in bodies made up wholly of men, or so completely dominated by them that whatever of special value women have to offer is shunted aside without expression.

·         It was a wife's duty to be interested in whatever interested her husband, whether it was politics, books, or a particular dish for dinner.

·         Friendship with oneself is all important because without it one cannot be friends with anybody else in the world.

·         The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

To thine own self be true

This year will go down in my personal history book as one of the most disappointing but probably one of the most challenging as well. I guess the major challenge has been to learn how to deal with disappointments because they are definitely a part of (my) life and definitely here to stay. Most of them have to do with my workplace and I have to say, hand across my heart, that I never thought I would be in this position. I never thought I would come to the point where the disappointments of work life would be so crushing that sometimes it felt too overwhelming to rise up again. But I always do. And it seems as though I have a guardian angel, because something always happens to make my life better or richer. Out of the major disappointments in my regular job during the first part of this year came the consulting job at the library and meeting a group of women who believe in something besides budgets, accounting sheets, power and ego trips, and who have a vision and a burning desire to achieve it.

I also witnessed something today that showed me that sometimes ‘nice people do finish first’. A scientist (a woman) at another hospital won a prize for her research—a considerable sum of money—and she deserved to win. She’s done a great job under some difficult circumstances the past few years and she made the best of it. So that was encouraging to see.

Otherwise, I made a good decision for myself last week that I’ve been mulling over for some weeks now. I rarely regret my decisions, and this one will be no exception. It means not having to be around a person who became intolerable to me, who triggered in me feelings of fear and of anger that I have not had in over thirty years. So it was good to be rid of him. A lot of people will tell you to hang in there, don’t let him get to you, don’t let him win. But in truth, he won a long time ago—the rest of the people who work with him just don’t see it. They will spend a lot of time mopping up his messes and his ill treatment of others (and of themselves). I don’t want to be treated like crap anymore, not by anyone. So I rather think I won—because I said goodbye to him and his idiocy. I will not miss him. He will crash and burn one day, and perhaps I will be happy if he does. If that makes me a bad person or a vindictive one, then it does.

I think I’ve changed considerably in the past two years. I guess change is inevitable. But I’m glad for it. Things are much more crystal clear for me now than ever before. I cannot lie to myself anymore and I certainly don’t want to waste time lying to others. Life is short. Some people I know are slowly leaving this life due to illness. It puts my own life in perspective. We don’t have forever to waste on things and people that give us nothing in return. It does not matter that other people tell us to be patient and hang in there. It is my experience that the few times I have cut the cord and left (bad relationships, friendships, jobs, etc.) that my life has moved in a much better direction and that I have experienced happiness because I was true to myself and not to the falsities around me. To thine own self be true—Shakespeare said it best. It is what we are asked to do on this earth. It is the biggest challenge we face—to remain true to ourselves.

“This above all: to thine own self be true,
And it must follow, as the night the day,
Thou canst not then be false to any man.
Farewell, my blessing season this in thee!”

(William Shakespeare)

A day of gratitude

I am glad that Thanksgiving Day is here. It is a good reminder that I have a lot to be thankful for. I realized today that I live in a country that has become so extraordinarily wealthy in the space of such a short time, due to the natural resource of oil. That wealth is not always a good thing, however, because some people, who really have so little to complain about, have begun to complain about the littlest things, because they need something to complain about. I don’t want to follow suit.

I looked up the definition of thanksgiving. It means ‘prayer of thanks’ or a ‘giving of thanks’. I am thankful for being alive, living in the present, for all the opportunities God has sent my way, for ALL the wonderful women and men in my life—family and friends. I am thankful to my parents who were more than just that—they were my friends and I miss them. I thank my husband for the years we have had together and hope there are many more to come. I complain about my job, but I am thankful for a good income. I am thankful for the roof over my head and a warm apartment especially today since it was windy and bitter cold in Oslo. I am thankful for the nature outside my window and the birds and animals without which life would be much poorer. We are privileged on this planet and we should be thankful that it has provided us with so much. We should then take care of it out of gratitude for what it has given us.

I am thankful for being an American, for the fact that my country, despite its many faults, has done so much for the world and that its history reflects that. The USA is going through a tough struggle now, but I have faith that it will emerge a better and stronger country. And when I look around at those people who are working silently and tirelessly to make the world a better place, I am ashamed of my own passivity sometimes. But I know too that I am working in my own way to make the world a more just place. I am preoccupied with justice for all. I am trying to light a candle in the darkness. I get discouraged at times, but I get up again and keep at it. I am thankful for being able to do that, because I live in a free country. We should not take our freedoms for granted. They could so easily disappear tomorrow. We have been given many opportunities and privileges. I hope we make good use of them—that what we do helps others and does not just promote ourselves. There has been too much of the latter in the world lately. We need to find our way back to a spirit of gratitude and humility. We need the reminder to be grateful that Thanksgiving Day gives us.

Have a wonderful celebration, all my family and friends in America (and those of you who are living overseas like me)! I wish we could all be together. I love you all. 

Wake me when it's time to retire!

Just thought I'd share a comic with you today that kind of describes how I feel most days about working........Thank God for humor, for irony, for self-irony, for the ability to laugh. Without it, I'd be sunk.......

http://www.gocomics.com/getalife/2010/11/19/

A 'great new life'

I went to see the new Woody Allen film—‘You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger’—last week with some friends. We enjoyed it and I think it is one of his best films even though it really doesn’t cover so much new ground. He is always focused on personal relationships in one form or another and this film was no exception. The actors and actresses did excellent jobs, especially Anthony Hopkins and Gemma Watson as an older married couple who divorce when he finds her boring and resistant to the changes he wants to make to keep himself young; he falls in love with and marries a prostitute much younger than himself. His ex-wife flounders about trying to figure out her life, visiting a fortune teller who keeps telling her that it will all work out as well as getting her to believe that she has lived before. As might be expected, it goes to hell for Anthony Hopkins and his new wife when he discovers that she is still sleeping around, preferably with hunky younger men. She ends up pregnant but he knows deep down that it’s not his baby. He realizes he’s made a huge mistake at the end of the film. At some point during the film, before he finds out that he is going to be a father again, he asks his ex-wife for another chance, and she refuses. She has also met someone, an older widower who is a spiritualist. Their daughter’s marriage has also fallen apart; she is in love with her boss at the art gallery where she works, and her husband is in love with the neighbor woman that he watches from his window. There is more to the plot, but it is worth watching the film to find this out. I recommend it.

Strangely enough, my friends and I actually felt a bit sorry for Anthony Hopkins’ character. Yes he was stupid, yes he was vain, but his desire to stay young and to think young was not so strange and actually made him seem quite human. He made the typical mistakes that men his age make when they think they are going to have a wonderful new life without their old wives dragging them down. The problem is that they do enjoy that new life for a while; then reality hits—the younger women they’re with want children, a house, money, material goods, a good life, and they want these wealthy older men to provide it for them. And these men step up to the plate. I am always surprised by the eagerness with which older men leave their older wives for younger women; they start new families with these women when they are in their sixties and seventies. I cannot see the appeal in this. I couldn’t imagine wanting to take care of a screaming baby or babies again after I had done it once when I was younger and had more patience. These men don’t look ahead and see what they’re getting themselves into. They don’t really get their new and improved life after all—freedom, lots of sex, no responsibilities. They may get a new and eager sex partner for a while, and then they end up sharing her with her young children or not having much sex at all after the eager young thing discovers how exhausting it is to be a mother. So how is this new life so much different from the ‘boring old married life’ they left? Go figure.

But even if one understands this, still, growing old doesn’t seem to be an attractive thing, especially in today’s world where the emphasis is on being young and staying young forever. There doesn’t seem to be a point to growing old anymore. Years ago, the elderly were revered for their life experience and wisdom. Now they are considered bothersome in a social and in a work context—you are old at 53 and it’s difficult to find a new job if you are over that age. That has been researched in Norway and found to be true. So why would anyone think that turning 70 would be something to look forward to? It’s got to explain the craze for plastic surgery that turns women’s faces into feline-looking catastrophes or the mini-skirts on women who are over sixty, or the overuse of makeup and perfume. Or men’s obsessions with the gym and looking toned, with comb-overs to hide the bald spots and with hair implants, and all the rest. We want to look our best and that’s a good thing. But it’s not a good thing when we try to look thirty years younger than we are.

It’s a tough world we live in these days. Some women experience a double whammy of rejection. They have to deal with not being wanted in their workplaces because they are ‘too old’ or outdated as well as with husbands who are eyeing every young thing they see. Some younger women (married or not) have no respect for marriage whatsoever—they think nothing of going after older married men to have some fun. Texting, sexting, flirtatious comments, risqué photos, emails—they use all means at their disposal to get what they want. They may also provide these men with a shoulder to cry on (‘my wife doesn’t understand me’) or they provide them with a sense of virility if they cry on these men’s shoulders (‘my boss is mean to me or my boss is harassing me’) that leads to these men trying to help them. Either way, it is so clichéd and banal to witness, and I’ve seen it happen several times now. Some of them even inform the wives of these men that their husbands are interested in them in a desperate ploy to sow doubt and trouble in the marriage. I wonder if these women ever look ahead (at least the ones who are married) and realize that they will be facing the exact same threat from younger women when they themselves have reached middle and old age. I guess they don’t, because if they did, they would behave more respectfully. These types of situations help to reinforce my personal views about women and financial independence, especially if I am asked for advice. Love is love, and finances are finances. My advice to women is to make sure you can take care of yourself and to make sure you have plenty of money by the time you reach old age. That way, no matter what happens--your life will not go to ruin if your husband leaves you for some sweet young thing. If that’s feminism, so be it. I call it being smart and taking care of oneself as a woman. So many women seem to have forgotten this, and so few women seem to look ahead, and that seems strange to me given the fact that nearly one in two marriages still ends in divorce these days. Men always seem to land on their feet financially. Most of the women I know who have been ‘left’ for younger women do not. And without that financial cushion, there is no great new life for them.

No Soul Unsung

No soul unsung.

Sing out your light

Into the shadows.

Into the corners of life

Where the shades slink silently,

Waiting for life to begin.

No great things are born of hiding one’s light

Under a bushel basket.

Christ said, ‘Do not be afraid.

I am with you always’.

Do not wait to start tomorrow

Since today

Is all one has.

Start today.

Find your voice.

Live.

Breathe.

Shine.

Honor your soul.

copyright 2010 Parables and Voices 

Paula M. De Angelis

Finding and using my voice in 2010

I’m not going to wait until New Year’s Eve to sum up 2010. I’d like to say it’s been a great year overall, but I cannot. It definitely had its high points; I’d have to say most of them on the creative front. Starting this blog was one of the high points of this year, and it is a labor of love. I write for free, I love doing it, and I hope to continue. So many ideas pop into my head each day and as long as there are things to write about, I’ll continue writing.  

I wish my daily work life was as inspiring and creative, but it’s not. After over twenty years in academic research science, I have finally reached the point where I can say, it’s just a job. I do it for the money, and it feels ok to say that now. During the 1980s and 1990s I lived for my work. Now I work to live, and any free time I have I want to spend on my creative projects. I finally found my voice and started using it in earnest in 2010, so that is another high point of the year. I’ve been stumbling over using my voice—it’s been there, it’s been waiting to be used, but I’ve always tried to still it for one reason or another. It defied me and jumped out earlier this year. It knew what was best for me. And I’m following its lead, because it is forcing me to be honest with myself in a way that I have never been before. It forces me to face my life each day and ask the question—is this or that working for you? If the answer is no, my inner voice is saying, why are you using time on these things? Why are you wasting your time? And believe me, that’s a powerful inspiration. It means the difference between three hours wasted on the couch watching TV, versus three hours spent immersed in discovering new inroads into my creative self. Sometimes I cannot believe I’ve wasted so much time.

Some of that wasted time has been on stupidities at work, on impossible projects and impossible people. I have to wonder why I did it, and I guess the answer is that I loved my work for so long, and then suddenly I didn’t anymore. How did I get to that point? I guess enough disappointments, bad behavior and lack of professionalism on the part of workplace leaders has gotten to me. I’ve had enough of being treated like a non-entity at work. I am invisible to my workplace—all my competence, training, expertise and wisdom go largely unnoticed. I find that sad. I don’t understand why this is the case, but perhaps the fact that I am not a political animal has played a big role. My work place has been described by the husband of a colleague (who used to work at my hospital) as a ‘merciless power struggle’. I never really understood quite what he meant until 2010. Workplace leaders are primarily concerned with what’s in it for them—in terms of power, positions, salaries and prestige. The fallout of the merger hit us for real this year. With the exception of the leaders who sit at the top like God and make decisions for the rest of us, no one was spared and there was nowhere to hide. Budgets were cut. Strategies were re-written. Projects were not funded. There were no new students. The current infrastructure is imploding and no one can do a thing to stop it. It will crash and burn and I will stand by and watch it happen. I may even rejoice. Nothing works at work anymore—I mean nothing. It is typified in the new copy machine that sits in the room outside the secretaries’ offices. It is a copier, scanner and fax machine in one. It cost easily 20-30,000 USD. No one knows how to use it. If you try to get one copy, you get two even if you only want one. Scan to email? Sure—just follow the instructions—it doesn’t work. No one knows how to use it as a fax machine either; and the old fax machine has been disabled so that we can no longer send or receive faxes. I have a printer/scanner/copier/fax machine at home. I paid 100 USD for it. It works. I just don’t get it—how stupidity took over at work. People are demoralized and it shows on their faces. I’m sure it shows on mine.

This past week was the last straw for me. I ended my membership in the scientists’ union that I have been a member of for many years now. For the past three years I have been a board member of the local union chapter, and this past year I have served as secretary for the new board of the local union chapter that now serves Oslo University Hospital (a merger of four city hospitals). This chapter is headed by a man who is essentially a male chauvinist and a bully. I don’t suffer fools and I definitely don’t suffer male chauvinists. Anyone who knows me knows that. So suffice it to say that we have butted heads. I was evaluated as professor-competent a few years ago together with another colleague at my workplace. This union leader does not believe that we are professor-competent and refuses to accept this fact. He goes around telling people that we are ‘sneaking our way’ through the system and he refuses to back off. It is harassment, pure and simple. He has unilaterally decided that he will be the judge of whether we are worthy of this professor-competent designation or not. With ‘friends’ like this in my union (that exists to protect the interests of its members), who needs enemies? I just add this to the list of crap that I have had to endure, not only this year but in previous years. The problem with the union leader stems from the fact that I refused to badmouth a woman whom this man does not like. This woman has helped me in previous years, and the union leader does not like this fact nor does he like her. I was ordered by him to stop talking to her in a union capacity and I refused. So his ‘punishment’ of me was to try to destroy my professional credibility.  So it was easier to withdraw my membership. I have been in Norway for twenty-one years, and I have done nothing but fight for my rights and for my professional credibility since I arrived here. When I first started at my hospital, my Master’s degree from New York University was deemed to be less worth than the Norwegian Master’s degree--fight #1. This led to a reduction in salary for the job that I took over from a woman who had the same education as me (she is Norwegian), and I spent nearly a year trying to get the salary restored to its original level—fight #2. Getting a salary raise each year? Forget it—fight #3. No one would take responsibility for being my ‘boss’ (supporting my salary requests) when it came to this type of thing—but when they wanted the fruit of my hard work—data and results to write their papers---hey, then I was worth talking to. This has gone on for years. I finally got my PhD in 1999, did my three-year post-doc stint, and set out to establish my independent research profile as a scientist. I worked together with three other women and we were a great team. I’ve written about this before. Suffice it to say that we were productive in terms of publications, and I managed to get two of them through Master’s and PhD programs without any major problems. If you ask either one of them, they’ll tell you that I am a good and fair leader. I know this because they’ve told me to my face. How was I rewarded for this? I was told by my leaders that I could not establish my own research group officially. I ignored them and did it unofficially. It ended up not mattering either way because small research groups are not rewarded financially in Norway. This past year I was offered a leadership position (that I was ready for and should have been offered ten years ago but was denied it then when I asked for it) only to have it retracted, then offered again, and finally retracted over a period of three months before my workplace leadership finally figured out what they really wanted, and that was to cut my position, but they ended up not being legally able to do this. We have now reached the point where all the NOs that I have gotten over the past twenty years have led to the current situation—that had they said YES to most of the things I asked for in the context of my professional advancement, they would be enjoying the benefits of my loyalty and hard work. Instead they are trying to figure out what to do with me because I no longer really know which way to turn anymore. When you get told NO long enough, you give up and give in. There have been no mentors, no advisors, no supporters, no career guides---nothing. All my decisions have been made in a vacuum. I have turned to my husband for advice and help and have gotten them, but he is not my boss. He could not pull the strings that should have been pulled for me a long time ago. Simply put, I was a fool to stay so long in one workplace. I should have left after I finished my PhD. But there were so few other places to go to ten years ago. And now, I am done fighting.  

A song by Sivert Høyem--Moon Landing

This is a fantastic song, for all those people who are making changes in their lives and who need to feel like 'their universe is expanding'. He certainly has captured in the lyrics and the music how it feels to be getting ready for the next change in life. You can find the song on YouTube--here's the link to it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6zug2U__TE

Moon Landing 

Hold on my enemy!
If you got it in for me
It's just fog and fantasy
We'll come to some understanding

(CHORUS))
I'm going to make this my own moon landing
I'm going to give this the best that I've got
You see right from the start we've been drifting apart
It's our actual standing
I'm going to make this my own ..

I don't need no enemy
to keep me awake at night
No one 's gonna go for free
We'll travel very light

For now I've had enough from you
I'm done and so are you
go see what you can do
The universe is expanding

(CHORUS)

I'm going to make this my own moon landing
I'm going to give this the best that I've got
You see right from the start we've been drifting apart
It's our actual standing
I'm going to make this my own ..


I don't need no enemy
to keep me awake at night
No one 's gonna go for free
We'll travel very light

For now I've had enough from you
I'm done and so are you
Go see what you can do
The universe is expanding
The silence is commanding ..

I'm going to make this my own moon landing
I'm going to give this the best that I've got
You see right from the start we've been drifting apart
It's our actual standing
I'm going to make this my own ..

Questions I don’t have the answers to, but still I ask them

·         Why isn’t there more justice in the world?

·         Why aren’t women treated as men’s equals in the world?

·         Why does it feel so impossible sometimes to get a break?

·         Why don’t we demand better behavior from ourselves and others?

·         Why do we continue to do things we know are not good for us?

·         Why do we stay in jobs that we know we have outgrown?

·         Why do we stay in relationships with people who do not really care about us?

·         Why do we tolerate bad behavior from others over and over again?

·         Why do we allow harassment and bullying in social situations to occur without trying to stop them?

·         Why is it so hard to ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you?’

·         Why do we stay silent when we know we should have spoken up?

·         Why do we choose to be cowards rather than to be brave?

·         Why is it so difficult to stand alone against the crowd, especially as we get older?

·         Why don’t we take care of our hearts and souls and minds as much as we take care of our bodies?

·         Why isn’t a spiritual life important to more people?

·         Why is it so difficult for people to talk about spiritual things?

·         Why is it so difficult to believe in God?

·         Why do we trust human beings, but not God, with our hearts and souls?

·         Why is adult life full of disappointments?

·         Why are we often so unprepared to deal with disappointments?

·         Why can’t we let ourselves really follow the advice ‘let go and let God?’

·         Why can’t we live in the moment and enjoy it for all it is worth?

·         Why can’t we seize today and make the most of it, and not worry about what will happen tomorrow?

Good conversations

Good conversations are worth their weight in gold. To know and feel that you really connect with another human being--friend, family member or colleague--is to know that you have reached a level of communication that touches the very heart of you. It is a healing experience to know that you and your feelings and thoughts are valued by another human being. I believe that good conversations can help us feel better about ourselves and our surroundings, and it is my opinion at least that there are far too few good conversations. Perhaps this is due to that we are always rushing about, or always ‘tuned in and tuned out’ on our cell phones or I-pods or computers, so that we don’t have time to pay attention to and to listen to others who may want to connect with us. All I know is that each time I experience a good conversation with someone; I want more of them, not less. I want to connect with others around me, but I want to do it in a way that makes us both feel valued. I know it’s not possible to have good conversations all the time. I accept that. But I don’t want to reach a point where they are the exception rather than the rule. There are ways of having a good conversation as well--certain behaviors such as eye contact and empathy and interest in others-- that shine through in people who are good conversationalists. They are interested in getting to know others and they communicate this in a way that says they have the time and inclination to do so. They are not interested in dominating, belittling, or hurting others. There can be no good conversation with people who enjoy dominating, belittling or hurting others when they open their mouths to talk with others. In a work context, dealing with such people can be a demoralizing experience.

I have become more aware of the importance of good conversations recently because I have been witness to the opposite on more than one occasion in the past week or two in a work context. The overall feeling at the end of them has been disappointment, even anger at having wasted my time. This has occurred mostly in settings (meetings) where the aim was to have a constructive dialog about one thing or another, but which ended up with one person dominating the meeting in an unhealthy, bullying way. I mostly just want to run from such people and such meetings. There is no conversation with such people, no dialog, no mutual understanding, just someone shouting or being aggressive and telling you how you should think or feel. And if that person is not telling you how to think or feel, then he is telling you how HE thinks or feels, and of course how he thinks or feels is paramount. I am thinking of one person in particular, a man whom I have to deal with in a work-related capacity—a man I would rather not have much to do with. He is a destructive force. That is my dilemma these days-- how to deal with his bullying and childish tactics. He destroys the good conversations that go on around him (and mostly without him) because he is not caring or kind enough to hold good conversations with others, thus he envies and resents others’ abilities to do so. He has been given ample opportunity to participate, to connect, to share his thoughts and feelings. No one has been unkind to him. Yet he has chosen to treat his colleagues as chattel, and if he cannot ‘own’ them, he tries to destroy them. But first he threatens them with something that he can hurt them with, because he has the power to do so as a leader. If this does not work, then he moves in for the kill. I watch him from a distance and wonder when he will crash and burn, because he will crash and burn eventually.

It is because of him that I value good conversations and good behavior so much more now. I want to be around people who elevate me and themselves with their talk, their behavior, their thoughts and feelings. If nothing but garbage comes out of your mouth—insults, threats, and curses—then you have become garbage. We get to choose in this life how we want to be towards ourselves and others. It was said by a much wiser person than me—‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you’. This is applicable for how one speaks to others as well as to how one behaves toward others. I think more people should have someone tape their conversations with others, so that they can learn from them before it is too late, before they are claimed by the garbage heap to which they end up in after years of treating others like garbage with their filthy mouths and bad behavior.