Crafty Bliss

There is something about making something with your own two hands that is magickal, it's like alchemy to take several things, blend them together, and create something new. My day job is working with computers and theories and I don't often get the opportunity to create something with my own two hands so it's always a treat when I get the opportunity to get my hands dirty and make something.

I was especially inspired this week because I found a lot of really cool ideas for things to make and unlike years past where I would have taken the idea and file it away into a the looks cool file and never take action to bring the idea to fruition. This year, I've decided that when I see those cool things, I'm going to take action and actually sit down and make them.

Things I've Made this Week

When we were at the Farmer's Market out in Mount Carroll a few weeks ago, I purchased a couple of bags of tumbled stones and wasn't sure what I'd do with them. I got the idea of making a mosaic with them so I went out and purchased an old picture frame at Goodwill, a hot glue gun,, and some grout and set to work creating a tray. It was a lot of fun to figure out how to place each stone so that it looked random, yet still fit together with a minimum of wasted space. Once I got it put together, I grouted it so that the spaces that were left were filled in. Then I clear glossed it so it was nice and shiny. It looks amazing and is unlike everything I've made before.

As you all know, my son Sean is a Batfiend from the word go and I was blog surfing and I found this really really cool batman soap that I could made. We rushed out and got all the stuff to make the soap and I came home and made it last night. It didn't turn out perfectly because we had some excess bubbles in the soap, but it was really cool and unique and our Batfiend loved it.

I'd used up all the Triple Goddess Body Butter that I'd made so another batch of Body Butter, but I tweaked the recipe a little so it was a little thinner and not quite so thick. It smells heavenly and I feel so incredibly special when I layer it on my skin. I layer it on before bed and then head to bed and wake up in the morning with smooth and soft skin.

There is something incredible about making things yourself because everytime you use them you feel another rush of bliss remembering the fun you had making it.

Empowering Bliss

One of my very favorite things to do in the entire world is to empower other people and to help them become their best. There is such an incredible bliss in seeing other people get jazzed about the possibilities of something that it fills me with a wonderfully warm fuzzy feeling all day. Today was one of those days where I got to empower people and support them as they shared their knowledge with the world.

We've launched a new lunch and learn training program at work called Technovations and one of my responsibilities is to work with the speakers to make sure they have their presentations done and that they're prepped to do their speech. Technovations isn't part of anyone's job description so the presentations sometimes get hurried if we get busy with other things and don't have time to do the prep work we'd like to. We also have varying levels of speaking experience, so it's a mixed bag and sometimes difficult to predict how things we'll work out. I worked with the guys this week on their presentation and helped them out as much as I could.

Our help desk guys presented today and I could tell they were really nervous starting out and they were reading their slides, but as they got in it and gathered confidence in what they were doing, they started doing better and better and connecting with the crowd. I stepped in a few times at the beginning to coach them and help get the material back on track, but by the end of the presentation, they were interacting with the audience like pros and starting to really get into sharing their knowledge with the audience.

The energy in the room became palpable because the more our presenters got into the material, the more interested in the topic. It was incredible to watch the "Ah Ha" moments as people learned something new and to watch the confidence on our presenter's faces as they realized that the folks they were presenting to were people just like them and everyone wanted them to succeed

Truly cool and blissful stuff when you get to empower other people to better themselves.

Blissful Friendships

I had lunch with an old friend from my prior company today and it was an awesome respite from the insanity that is sometimes my life. We worked together for four years and have been friends since the day he found me crying in the warehouse and comforted me, even though I was probably not making a lot of sense. Ever since whenever I've needed a shoulder to cry on over anything work related, PMPM (don't ask, it is one of those really stupid nicknames that people end up with when they work together too long) was always there for me. In fact, our other friend always tells me I have to go find PMPM when he thinks I'm ready to turn on the water works.

The four years we worked together were incredibly intense. We first met when he was the project manager (PM) of a labeling project and I was a total novice who knew absolutely nothing about project management, requirements gathering, test scripts or any of the geeky stuff that's now my life. He patiently coached me through writing my very first test script (my mom was so proud she framed it, just kidding) and read the many iterations of my requirements documents. We also snuck out to Starbucks (I mean went to an offsite meeting) at least once a week to dissect work, life, and dish on all the great gossip.

PMPM kept our team together when internal and external forces threatened to blow us apart. He kept his cool when dealing with a very uncool engineer who believed everyone in IT was his personal was monkey and when, in the time before I'd embraced my inner b*tch, our ABAPer called me one and I took offense. He managed to get us all calmed back down and sometimes we even sat around the campfire and sang kumbaya (okay, not really...but we did get drunk together if that counts).

I ended up working for PMPM again on my my very first SAP implementation and that's when I figured out what I wanted to be when I grew up. I watched, observed, and learned from a master and now I can do it almost as well as he can. He saw me through some of the worst times in my professional life when my boss was demanding more than I could give and life on the home front wasn't so rosy because I was traveling all the time. He was one of the people who told me in no uncertain terms that I needed to get some balance in my life.

More than my PM, PMPM has been my friend and wise counsel over the past six years. Although I'll never profess to be as wise as he is, I've done my share of listening to his complaints ranging from our rogue team member in Germany to his struggles at his last gig, which were remarkably similar to my struggles. What was really cool about seeing PMPM today is that he looked happier than he's looked in a long time. The last few times we'd met for lunch, he'd looked like a man under a tremendous burden and today he was happy. I told him I'd trade places with him and I'd take hanging out at home and working on home improvement projects and he could go back and deal with my insanity. For some reason, he didn't think that was a great trade.

Even though we haven't worked together for more than two years, he's still able to make me smile and convince me that everything really will be all right. The bliss of old friends who understand you, understand your history, and can make everything better is priceless.

PS: I had two nicknames: PM Jr and DB (domineering b*tch)

Familiary New Bliss

The leaves are turning, the days are getting shorter, and the temperature is dropping, in other words, it's autumn. You'd think that after forty some years on the planet, I'd be used to the turning of the wheel of the year and wouldn't get so excited about the chill in the air and the bouquets of leaves, but no, I'm just as excited about fall this year as ever.

Despite the similarities, each year the fall is slightly different: the leaves turn sooner or later, the colors are more or less brilliant, the weather is warmer or cooler. In many years, the return of autumn is like visiting an old friend that you haven't seen in awhile: the subtle differences accentuate the familiarity. Autumn is a scientific process, but all the variables combine to make each fall blissfully different.

It's not only the leaves and weather that are different each year either, we're different because we're at different places in our lives. Marriage, divorce, job changes, kids born, kids gone to college, parents moved away or passed away. As I look back through the Halloween pictures of past years, I remember where we were and realize how far we've come. There's the earliest photos of Caitlin as Barney the dinosaur, Sean as a pirate (this was before he discovered Batman) through the years of Sean as Batman and Caitlin as a mummy and a hippy alien. Then there was the year that Sean bucked tradition and wore a Cubs outfit his dad had crafted for him.

The costumes aren't the only things that change, this is the first autumn that Sean's not living at home, although he's just a train ride away in downtown Chicago. Caitlin's a senior in High School and learning to drive. I'm not traveling this year so I'm home to enjoy all the autumnal festivities and John's discovered an online game and is making plans for his own personal vacation, his first trip alone in all the years we've been married.

All the changes in our life aren't positive. This is the first year in quite a few years that when Halloween rolls around a family members name will top our annual "Dead List." My father passed away last Thanksgiving and it's hard to realize that it's been almost a year since he's gone. The world has also lost a few shining luminaries this year: Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and more. As I work to compile the Dead List in the next few weeks, I'll remember again how many talented people the world has lost.

However, with loss comes gain and just have talented people have lost their lives, babies have been born, kids have graduated from high school or college, and we've celebrated victories both national and personal. The turning of the wheel is always different, always personal, yet always familiarly blissful.

Accepting Bliss

I asked the gods to help me find my bliss, but when it came to me and wasn't neatly packaged exactly the way I was expecting, I got cranky and complained constantly about exactly how it came into my life instead of accepting the bliss I'd been gifted with.

My life was out of balance and there wasn't a whole lot of bliss for a few years as I was juggling travel, two kids, too much work, and not enough time to do the stuff I really want to do. I knew I needed bliss and balance, but wasn't making much of an effort to get it.

Our company embarked on a major initiative in March and there was a piece of the program I really wanted to manage, but instead of letting me take it and run with it, my management team decided to bring in a decidedly less qualified consultant (the opinion of multiple people and not just me) due to the old boy's network. I then ended up working for this decidedly less qualified consultant. Suffice to say this did not sit well with me and things came to a head in July and I ended up off the project and managing a less complicated project.

Unfortunately, I've spent way too much time since July complaining to a few key folks who I know are sympathetic about the situation, how unfair it is, how I'm better qualified, blah, blah blah. Some days, I even think I sound like a broken record and I really believe in what I'm saying. The bottom line is that my boss was wrong, I was wrong, and it is what it is. There are a lot of different ways it could have worked out differently, but I've been struggling to accept that it is what it is. I've been spending so much time focused on the negative, that I haven't even taken the time to think about the good things the situation has brought into my life and there have been a lot:

• I had an amazing four day vacation with my daughter in the south. If this hadn't happened, I would have been half working and half vacationing and she wouldn't have gotten the attention she deserved. As it turns out, we spent time driving through the Blue Ridge Mountains and enjoying time with each other.


• I've gotten to spend a lot more time at home hanging out with my family because I'm not traveling so much. That means that I can get into routines, I can cook dinner at home most nights, I have time to be with the people I love.
  
• I'm writing again and spending a lot of time working on polishing two books that have been sitting in my virtual drawer for a while languishing because I haven't had time to work on them. I'm also working on a script about finding bliss (gee I wonder where I got the inspiration for that). It is amazing how blissful finding time to work on my passion really makes me.
  
• I've got time to read brain candy and just spend time chilling out on the sofa with a cold drink and a good book.
  
• I've been making the time to exercise most days. I take time to go for a walk with the dog or by myself. I've been feeling a lot better since I've been making exercise a priority.
  
• My house is getting cleaner. Granted I still have my moments, but I've been trying to get organized, get rid of clutter, and get into cleaning routines so the housework doesn't get so overwhelming.




• I've been getting craftier. I got some pure Shea butter at the Maxwell Street Flea Market a few weeks ago and made some body butter with Triple Goddess Oil. It smelled heavenly and felt so good. It also felt good to know I'd mixed it myself. I also made a mosaic tray and one of these days I'm going to start crocheting again.
  
• I'm learning about the infrastructure side of the house. I've always been an "apps girl" who really didn't care about all those mysterious boxes that made the programs I love run. But now, I'm learning about servers, virtualization, and the stuff under the hood of IT.


• I'm spending more time with my son. Last year, I would just go and get him and bring him home. This year, I'm taking time to spend time with him downtown in the environment he's chosen as his own. I'm also taking time to really listen to him and understand why he loves it so much.
  
• I'm learning how to play the corporate game. One of my friends who has spent hours listening to me whine and complain, pointed out to me multiple times that I needed to look for the positive and I needed to learn from the situation. Unfortnuately, I was so caught up in wanting to get my own way that I didn't take the time to really listen and to be objective about the situation and what positives could come out of it. Although, I have to say I don't like the corporate game and probably never will, but knowing the roles helps.

The world works in mysterious ways sometimes and when I stood in the rain in China and asked the heavens to help me find my bliss, I could have never known the twists and turns life would take to get me to a place where I have more bliss in my life. Chances are I will never agree that the decisions made that landed me where I am were right, I did end up in the right place.