Dell Does Not Have Fruit Sacks
I don’t ever want to become one of those people who starts working in a cubicle and gets her sense of humor sucked into the black hole that is office humor. I also need to be careful not to post anything about work that would compromise my position or the company’s position. So while I readjust back into a mainstream life of duality, I probably won’t be writing as much until I settle in.
News to report are that things have been going well at work. It has just felt like the right time and place for me to apply myself to the company, my sibling rivalry archnemesis. I really feel I’m finally in a place where I can contribute to it, and also test myself with all that I’ve built of myself in the last few years. I hit the ground running, and while I still have so much to learn on the technical side, I’ve been finding ways to contribute in terms of leadership, organization, team motivation and improving overall communication on both interpersonal and departmental levels. We’ve been looking to hire a Marcom person, who will be my counterpart in marketing, so I’ve been doing the interviewing and working closely with HR. I want someone good, someone who knows more than us about marketing so they can bring us up, rather than us bringing that person up to our speed. I want someone who can help us grow. I was talking to HR that we don’t want someone who is as good as our idea of the position. We want someone who comes in and exceeds our expectations of the position. That way, the company has room to grow behind this person’s ideas and experience, and they will have an exciting position of seeing his or her ideas bring tangible results. I want someone who shows initiative and will create. It’s exciting to see us putting together the team for the push to the next level. But it’s the same as agreeing on a relationship. It has to benefit and be exciting to both parties.
The most satisfying aspect of the new job has been applying my attitude of looking for how to make things happen, rather than dwelling on why things aren’t happening. It’s like being a positive catalyst, trying to change the way people approach tasks, their jobs and pushing the company as a whole through a change in attitude and perspective. Came back from Siggraph and feedback was great. They said it was the company’s most productive trade show to date, and that was a huge compliment since I’d worked so hard on it, and wanted it to be a tangible marker of my ability to make a positive difference. My last job involved a lot of trade shows, so I’d been in this situation before, but the only thing that concerned me was the fact I don’t know the technical details of our products yet. But it all worked out, I figured if I was going to fail, I was going to fail having made an honest effort, so I dove in and did my best talking with people, just being confident and trying to sell the advantage of working with our company. I got really encouraging feedback when I ran into a guy who was working in the booth across from us at our hotel, and when I told him I’d only been with the company for 3 weeks, he was surprised and said he’d been watching me and the way I instantly connected with people and talked to them, he thought I’d been with the company for years. And that he could tell I was a powerful person with a lot of self-discipline. Later, he also asked me if I believed in past lives, because he had this strange, unexplainable feeling from the moment he saw me that he somehow knew me and needed to talk to me, but I’m not going to get into that because that’s a different story. As a friend of mine likes to say, “You just have one of those faces where people see you and they instantly think you’re a soulmate.” I can tell I’m on a different track now, because this was the lead-in to the same conversation I’d been having with strangers for the last 2 years, especially when after more conversation he told me that he was at a place in his life where he felt a strong urge that he needed to make a change in his life, but he just wasn’t doing it. I was nice and we talked about a lot of stuff, and I told him he should follow his intuition, but at the end of the day, I’ve got my focus on something else now, so I can’t spend too much time immersed in those kinds of conversations anymore. It’s like I’ve found my meaning, and I can shake hands with people who are on my way and give them some positive encouragement, but I can’t really stop for anyone unless they’re coming with me.
Got back, closed escrow so I can finally move out of my parents’ guest room. Picked up the keys this Saturday and stepped into my new home. It’s the first 11 home I’ve had, and I hope it takes me to new heights. It’ll probably take me a couple of weeks to have time on a weekend to move in. Hope to get back to more writing in my off hours when I do. I’m working 10+ hour days, but I’m getting more used to it, so hopefully I’ll have more energy to do it when I have my own space to focus on it.
I made a silly little video for my coworkers. Background–every morning my parents’ housekeeper prepares a fruit salad for my mom to bring to work. She puts it in a plastic ziplock bag for her, all plump and colorful, and it’s always sitting on my mom’s desk. Everyone in the office recognizes it. Since I’m living at home for now and working at the same place, the housekeeper makes me a bag of fruit as well. One day, I had my bag of fruit sitting on my desk and my boss came up and said, “Hey, you have the same fruit sack as Jean.” We all laughed because “fruit sack” just sounded…wrong. We also call my mom “The Jean” at the office because she once wanted to steal a bit of wisdom from my blog to use as a motivational tool in a sales meeting, so I said she could only claim it if she authored the quote on the powerpoint presentation under “The Jean,” and because she’s our war general and it’s a name that’s as definitive and final as her decisions. Dell is a competitor we often go up against in bids.
By the way, I went into The Jean’s office on Friday after telling her I’d closed escrow, and found her reading a red book in Chinese. It was an almanac of lucky and unlucky days, and she was looking up when would be a good day for me to move into my new place. I asked her what it said, and she said she didn’t know because there were both good days and bad days interspersed, but it did say I was supposed to meet someone I had a destiny connection with in August. I laughed and said, I’ve been saying that since last September.
Then again, relationships and partnerships are defined so loosely. I would be happy with either a good romantic or business match. Even if the person I’ve been waiting for is this Marcom person who will be the integral piece to helping me fulfill my goals with this company, I would be very, very happy.
August. I’ve been waiting a long time for you. Let’s kick some ass.