THE DRAMA OF THE ONION AND THE CARROT

My vice is TV.  I love books and movies, too, but those don't seem to be considered vices.  Maybe because they are more artsy or have learning value  ~ sometimes.  Most of the reading I do is fictional, but not all.  I am really not a big documentary fan.  Of course, none of that is relevant because this blog is about my vice of television.

This world is a hard place.  All it takes is a couple of solid hits to the heart and pretty soon you're a master at not letting anyone in.  That makes for a fascinating character... complex, challenging, layered. It's like peeling an onion.  It is no fun at all in real life if you are the person doing the peeling or the person being peeled.  It's frustrating or scary respectively.  The kicker is that the person doing the peeling is convinced that they're going to be rewarded for all their hard work once they get to the center.  What if they don't like what they see?  Do they blame the onion?  The peeler now carries around a whole new "issue" in their arsenal and the onion has doubled the amount of peeling that needs to be done for anyone to ever get to their center again!  The irony is that the onion's center might have been beautiful to another onion.  It was an unfortunate circumstance that a carrot was doing the peeling.  However, from the onion's perspective it's whole heart was revealed and rejected and it was enormously painful and not something that onion wants to relive anytime soon, so bring on the layers.  Protect. Protect. Protect.

In a TV show, the viewing audience gets to see and process all of this.  We get it all.  We get to know the onion before meeting the carrot and vice versa.  We get to experience that first meeting.  Many of us understand right away that this is a relationship that will not work out because it is an onion and a carrot and the onion should be looking for another onion and the carrot should be seeking out another carrot.  We forsee the heartache in their futures way before they do.  We know this story will not end well.  We watch the carrot try to warm up the onion and the onion likes the carrot but senses what we already know and shies away.  The carrot is persistent.  The onion goes against its better judgment and allows the carrot access and the peeling begins.  All the while, we are thinking, "Stop, it's a wonderful onion, but not like you.  You are going to want to change the onion into a carrot and it cannot be done.  All of the peeling in the world will not make the onion a carrot.  Please stop." 

Of course, the beauty of watching this play out on TV is this: it goes on for weeks, possibly years, and we get to see our carrot and onion move on to other relationships that turn out maybe better, maybe worse, certainly differently.  But the best part is that we get to know what they think (what they truly think) and what they want (what they truly want).  And that is why I love TV.  It is the one place I get a long-term relationship with people (okay, characters)  and actually understand why they do the things that they do.  I know that with the last onion I truly loved I never did peel away enough layers to get to his heart and I never understood what he thought or wanted.

I'M LISTENING

Where do you do your best thinking?  I do some of my best thinking in the shower.  Of course, I went in there today with the intent to ponder what to say to an old friend in an email and came out with an idea for this blog.  Hmmmm.  Life works in mysterious ways.  I'm still stuck on the email, but I remembered this great life lesson I got at St. Martin's Press.  I started working there right out of college and I pretty much knew nothing.  You're thinking, "Yeah right."  No, I had a degree in English but in terms of workability I was fairly useless. We were still using typewriters for the most part.  We had computers but they were NOTHING like what we have now.  There is also a very long story about the publicity department that I got hired into but that isn't the point of this blog.  Let's just say the entire department had quit but for four people and I was the first new hire so it was empty in there.  I was working for the director of the department.  First day she asks me to type a letter and I walk back to my desk and think, "Oh crap, now what?"  I had no idea how to format a letter.  That's what I mean when I say useless.  I snagged a senior publicist into helping me format the dumb thing, kept a copy in my top drawer for future reference, and somehow managed to bumble my way through.  Again, none of this is my life lesson.  Now, you're thinking, "Seriously????"  Yes.  Seriously.  That was just me being a kid.

Here is the good part.  We got calls all the time on the phone.  We fielded all of the calls from the general public as well the media calls plus internal stuff.  That is a lot of phone time.  Now, throw all of that at someone who can't format a letter but who has a good heart and really wants to help.  Sometimes very angry people call.  I can't remember the details of why this woman was angry.  What I do remember is that she was a volcano on the verge of explosion.  She was not general public.  She was inside our building.  She was an internal call.  She could press a button and be on my floor.  I didn't have the answers she wanted.  I was a peon person.  I was a nobody.  And I only understood about a quarter of what she saying because she was speaking New York on the phone very fast, and I knew that if I told her that I couldn't understand her that she might hunt me down and kill me.  I think she hung up on me, and I said a prayer of thanksgiving.  I also took a message for my boss, Claudia, and hand delivered it when she came in.  Claudia was only 5 feet tall and about 90 pounds soaking wet, and I feared this woman could crush her without even trying hard.  She was very scary.

I told Claudia about the phone call, and she told me to sit down.  She then said that she would tell me the secret to handling all irate people in the future.  She said I might want to write this down.  Indeed I did.  I pulled out my notepad and pen.  She said, "I'm listening."  I waited.  When she said nothing else, I looked up.  "That's it.  You can cushion it with other stuff if you want but that's all you really need.  All people need is to know that they are being heard.  Many times they know that you can't solve their problem.  They just need to share it.  Other times they just need someone to actually listen to them so that they can be pointed to the person who can solve their problem.  The thing is that people don't listen anymore.  You can turn a lion into a kittycat just by using those two words.  It's magic.  Try it."

She was right.  It works like a charm.  Everyone who deals with the general public will make their own lives so much easier just by saying, "I'm listening," and then doing it.  That ranting, crazy person will turn into your sweet aunt or grandma or sister.  If you find yourself turning into a raving maniac, stop talking and start thinking about who is not listening to you that you need to have listen to you.  I hate those automated machines that make you press a gadzillion numbers before you can talk to a live voice, because by the time I get to a live person I am that volcano that is ready to blow.  I know it, and I can't seem to help myself.  To top it off I get to hear the recording that my call might be recorded....egads.

There is a reason that so many people are in therapy.  We all just want to be heard.  So,  the next time you are lucky enough to be on the other end of someone else's rant you now have access to those magic words, "I'm listening."

THE THINGS WE SELL OURSELVES

Do you know how to make a long story short and still make it good?  I don't.  I try.  I tell myself that I am going to be concise and I still end up with a Dickens novel.  Seriously.  I promise to try.  Maybe I will just use key words and phrases instead of full sentences and abort punctuation altogether.   Wouldn't that make it more confusing rather than less?  I think I hear a clock ticking.

I moved to FL and in with my parents in 2006 because of bad migraines.  Really bad migraines.  Doctor said 2-3 years of no-stress/low stress along with meds and vitamins and I could be back in business.  I didn't believe her.  Kept doing and bringing stressful things into my life, wouldn't quit my job and didn't get better.  Hmmmmm.  Eventually it started to sink in.  So I traded one for the other.  And then back again.  I never could quite get the hang of it.  When my parents decided to move back to GA I was working a part-time no-stress/low stress job and doing okay with that.  It was four days on, three off.  The first three were good.  The last day I was dragging.  I never have been a morning person.  Never.  And that last day kicked my butt every week.  I got a call out of the blue from a sales company looking to hire an outside sales person in their GA territory, same business I was in before I moved.  I am thinking this is fate.  It is meant to be.  I am ready for a full-time sales job.  I am ready to reclaim my life.  I am ready to actually have money again.  Praise be to God.  The buy on the house fell through.  However, someone else bought the house a few months later.  When I got to GA the company had just hired someone else that morning.  But they were going to need more people soon.  All was not lost.

All of my belongings were still here in storage since I always planned on coming back to GA, so we pulled my mattress and box spring out and set me up.  A month and a half later and I was down.  Way down.  I was in migraine hell.  It was like I never left.  Any ground I gained in Florida was gone.  Any thoughts of full-time employment were gone.  Even part-time employment was out of the question.  Each day it was an effort just to get out of bed.  Never does the thought even occur to me that I am sleeping on dust and mold galore.  Fortunately someone in my house has their brain plugged in and suggests that maybe the bed is full of dust and mold (lightbulb).  I am highly allergic to dust and mold.  I guess that explains the previously unexplainable rash that has taken over my entire body, too.  I did see a doctor about that one and it went away until the medicine ran out.  Bye bye mattress and box spring.  New mattress, new box spring.  Mild improvement on migraines.  You heard me.  Mild improvement on migraines.  That mattress/box spring incident was the equivalent of a nuclear bomb to my immune system.

The thing you should be asking is this:  if you were so healthy how could you be compromised so easily?  That, ladies and gentlman, is the million dollar question.  I posted my resume on monster.com right after the job I thought I was going to get fell through.  I received a call four days ago requesting an interview.  I explained that I was ill and needed to remove my resume and apologized, but it got me to thinking.  Before I left Flordia, I sold myself on the idea that I could work a full-time sales job knowing full well what that meant (more than 40 hours a week) when I could barely work a 32 hour/wk no stress/low stress part time job.  Then I thought about the medications I was taking in FL at the time of the move... Rx anxiety meds, anti-depressants, pain killers, nausea meds, and I supplemented all of that regularly with over-the-counter Excedrin Tension Headache because it works better than Excedrin Migraine.  What was I thinking?  Not only did I sell I myself on this clearly delusional idea of a full-time sales job, but I sold both of my parents on it!  Is this how people become liars?  They just want something to be true so badly that they convince themselves that it is true and, therefore, it becomes true in their own mind?