First thought of the day:

The thing about having a blog, is that is requires you actually write one. It’s sort of like having a job. If you have a job, you have to do it. Whether you appreciate it or not can be another thing altogether.

Second, far more relevant thought of the day:

Do you have a job today? Do you appreciate it? What about it makes you crazy? What makes you happy? If you could change what you do, would you and why?

Calm yourself. Listen to the silence and listen to your heart before you answer this next question.

Are you doing what you should be doing with the gifts you have?

You know you have them…these things that make you special from everyone else. Call it the “You Factor” if you’d like. That sounds catchy enough. The point is, you have special talents and abilities that can only be delivered in your unique way.

When you respect those talents and abilities, when you use them in the way they should be used, then you come one step closer to genuine career satisfaction. 

When you deny those talents, shoving them far back in the recesses of your overloaded, underpaid and basically unappreciated mind, then that reality basically sucks.

The Final Analysis:

Career satisfaction = good.

Mind-numbing denial = not good.

 

 

        

It was a test of trust and faith not scheduled on the day’s agenda.

Bella and I were deep in the forest at our weekly obedience session with a respected animal psychologist and trainer.  We were practicing letting her off leash and calling her back, an important lesson for any dog.  She had successfully accomplished the task a number of times and I was feeling pretty proud of her.

Pride, however, can be a dangerous thing.

As fate would have it, another student and her beagle happened upon us. Sensing a learning opportunity at hand and knowing both dogs well, the trainer instructed me to let Bella off leash to play with Bruno the beagle. 

I hesitated at first because that’s what some people do when they’re a little afraid to let someone they love go places they’ve never gone before. 

And then I took a deep breath and unleashed my hound.

For a few minutes, the two pups jumped at and chased each other under our watchful eyes. It was a sweet moment that should have been captured with the cell phone camera before it turned into a lesson gone bad.

Bruno and Bella, it would appear, also sensed an opportunity at hand.

The co-conspirators stopped in their tracks, gave each other an “I’m in!” look before wildly sprinting off together in their own twisted canine version of The Amazing Race. 

They didn’t just run down the path we were on, they took off to places unknown leaving us in their dust with only the sound of chirping birds in their wake.

Panic set in. I wanted to yell out for Bella to come back, by my dog’s shrink advised against it.

Just stay where you are, she calmly advised. Bella will come back. I reluctantly agreed.

After realizing the escapees weren’t going to return on their own, the trainer finally decided it was OK to yell for the dogs. We all started hollering for Bella and Bruno to return and then we waited.

Bruno’s owner, the dog trainer and I stood in complete silence, holding our breath. A few minutes later, we could see Bruno at the trail’s end, tail between his legs, trotting back to his owner.

Bella, however, was nowhere to be seen.

I started the long trek back to my car, fighting back the tears and making a mental note to fire the shrink.  I started concocting my story for the two little girls at home who would want to know what had happened to the dog they had wanted for their entire lives and finally been given.

It was not a happy moment for me.

When my car was in sight, I found much to my relief that Bella was there.  Sitting at attention, she looked as if to say, ‘there you are; I’ve been waiting for you.’

Everyone has something to learn.

Some of us go to school, sit in a desk and let higher education have its way with us.

Some of us drag ourselves to the workplace, day in and day out, taking advantage of training opportunities designed to improve our efficiency and make us more likely to be promoted.

Some of us go to dog obedience school.

Wherever you spend the hours of your day, have the courage to let go even when you may be afraid to do so.  Have more faith and trust in those around you because they probably deserve it. And, every now and then, run freely and happily with the beagles yourself.

        

Personally or professionally, challenges can be, well challenging.

Keep at it. You will prevail.

        

The quilt has been sitting around for a couple of years now.  It should have been finished a long time ago. I started the patriotic red, white and blue project as a gift for my husband. He doesn’t believe I’ll ever finish it and he might be right.

 The top has finally been hand quilted. All I need to do now, to finish the job, is apply the binding. A couple more hours of hard work and yet I can’t seem to get there. I have it laid out nicely on top of my granite table, where by the way, it looks quite lovely even without its required binding. The corners have been squared and meet the 90-degree angle requirements. The excess batting lays crumbled on the floor and The Next Step is just waiting to be accomplished. Call it the elephant in the room if you’d like. I know it is there but I pretend that the end isn’t that close.

Why? Well, I have a theory and it is one that applies to all long-term work related projects and not just the creative ones.

We procrastinate the final leg of a tour de project because somewhere in the recesses of our brain cells, we just don’t want the project to end. Call if self-inflicted mental anguish if you’d like but there it is. Working on a lengthy assignment involves significant personal commitment. Like it or not, you’re in a relationship of sorts. You’ve become invested in each other. You’ve spent hours together.

 Closure means it’s over and when you peel back the layers on the matter, the process is the real fun of the thing. Wouldn’t you agree?

 

 

        

If you’ve ever been to Kelly Barracks in Stuttgart (home toU.S. AFRICOM), you know that you can get the best cappuccino at the BroadwayCafé inside the Stuttgart Theater Center. 

And that’s not all. 

 I'm sitting here with my laptop, waiting and writing for two hours because that's what moms sometimes do. A customer just ordered a latte, a large mocha and a smallblueberry bagel with cream cheese. On the counter you can choose from OtisSpunkmeyer chocolate chip cookies, carrot cake, cheesecake or Germanpastries.  They are all displayedquaintly in their own glass covered cake pans and remind me of the goods I’veseen displayed in the fine cafes in Vienna.

They will accept dollars or euros and the lines are longfirst thing in the morning. Maybe it is because the only other game in town isthe military dining facility across the parking lot. Or perhaps it is becausethis is the closet thing to a real Starbucks without fighting the traffic onB27 to the Konigstrasse downtown Stuttgart where you can buy your java at the original shop on any number of corners. 

Someone named Brian (he looks like a Brian anyway) worksbehind the counter, along with a young woman about his same age. I get thesense that they are both here on vacation from college in the States, visitingtheir parents for the summer, hoping to see a bit of Europe and trying to earna few bucks on the side. But I could be wrong.

Whatever their personal stories, clearly, they are havingway too much fun. They laugh. They smile. They exchange easy banter with eachand every customer. The customers appear to like it. 

In between serving up the intermittent long lines of caffeine seekers, they hug each other as Brian holds his cell phonecamera at arm’s length and snaps their happy smiling photos, capturing theKodak moment for prosperity.

I can't resist commenting. 

“You actually get paid to feel this way,” I ask from overthe top of my Apple MacBook Pro laptop and the oversized cup holding mycappuccino.

“I love my job. Yes, I get paid for this!” says Brian enthusiastically. His way too cheery colleague clearly feels the same way.

I return to my blank screen, sip my cup of inspiration and decide that I want to feel like that again about my job. You should too.

The average working person spends more time on the job thannot.   And I’m not justtalking about the type A individuals who we may know and who shall go unnamed here. I'm talking about the whole lot of us. 

So what do you think? Do you work in a job that makes youwant to smile and snap a photo to remember the moment by or do you reside in some place resembling Dante's Inferno?  What is stopping you from trading up emotionally?