Quote of the Day (still lazy)

"Sometimes adversity makes you closer. Sometimes you've got to have faith that everything will work out.  You're either going to roll over and die and quit, or keep fighting and fighting." - Dusty Baker

Quote of the Day (because I'm generaly lazy)

“Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” ~Nelson Mandela

The New Job

One of the problems that I've been having at work lately is that I'm trying very hard to prove myself.  Trying a little too hard, I think.  It's only been 4 1/2 weeks and that doesn't include the craziness around the holidays.  And I think I should be up and completely running.

Sorry, I am good, but not that good.

Batman quote, possibly twice

“Why do we fall? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”

No one reaches their deathbed and says, “Gosh, I wish I’d spent more time working.”

Just saying.

Leading the leaders

First of all, I was in a bad place for a few months.  It goes like this: No job=Bad, Have job=Good.  Let's just say that things are good now and leave it at that.

I've come to find myself working at a small company.  For this company I am a very good fit.  What the people here need is someone that can bring a calmness to their work.  Someone who listens to their problems.  Someone who has enthusiasm, someone who can motivate all of us to get the job done.

I'm not the best chemist.  I'm not even a perfect person.  But I am right now what people need me to be.

Elevator Speech testing zone

My name is Joe Petryka and I am an adaptation expert.  I have over 15 years experience in chemical process development, drug discovery, and chemical outsourcing.  I have learned in my experiences that most companies value people who can respond to the demands of the moment.  Someone who knows how to remain productive when being pulled in different directions.  Someone who can anticipate unforeseen detours and adapt to the situation.  This is where I live; in the dance that we call chemistry.

What I've learned being unemployed. Part 1

When you are first let go from your job a good amount of panic forms.  You start thinking about where your income is going to come from.  You get onto the job hunt as soon as you get home.  I would be willing to be that some people will end up getting a new job right away.  But I would be willing to be that a lot of people end up taking more time than they first imagined.

I'm not sure where I am.  At least not right now.  I've had the panic for the last few weeks.  I've been working with some recruiters and getting a lot of new information.  I've got a new resume, I have a new outlook, and I have a lot of support from my friends and family.  But there is something else that I've just recently discovered.

I am broken.

The panic can cause so many more problems.  There is when you start blaming yourself.  You start thinking that you'll never get a new job.  You start thinking that your family will be eating out of dumpsters.  And you end up spending a lot of time with senior citizens (they're the only other people with nothing to do all day).

But I've noticed more than ever that I need the time to heal.  I can feel bad for taking a nap in the middle of the day.  I can't stress over not having any job leads right now.  I have to take the advice that I give my son all the time.

Do your best and no one can ask any more of you.

I've got to be able to get a better picture

The unknown

I was just checking on my blog this morning when I looked over at the tag line that I put next to my profile.  It says:

In the end, a pause requires courage.  The courage to let go of our security, hesitation, and doubt and engage the unknown directly.

I don't remember where I pulled this quote from but it seems to be relevant to me today.  I am nothing if I am not floating in the unknown.

Sometimes it feels like I'm falling.  Other times I feel like this is the beginning of the Great Adventure.  Most of the time I just feel hungry.

Why do we fear the unknown?

I get very nervous when I have to go to the dentist.  It's another one of my (many) irrational fears.  Once I sit down in the chair I'm perfectly fine.  All of my stress flows out of my body and onto the floor.  I know what is going to happen.  Mainly they're going to say I need to floss more.  But there is a chance that something out of the ordinary will happen.  And moire than the pain I might feel from the drill I fear the unknown.

Now is the time to embrace it.  Now is my time.  Time to figure out who I am and where I really want to be.  There can be no better opportunity that what I have right now.  And I need the courage to face the Great Unknown.

I'll figure out the title later

The situation I was in was more than just toxic.  I think down deep it was truly killing me.  Too much pressure to get things done and too much blame.  There has to be a limit on the amount of work one department can do.  And when you're over that limit projects will not get done on time.  Simple as that.

When I was first let go I was in shock.  How do you go about doing everything that is asked of you and still get terminated?  I took about a week for me to understand what had really happened.  The truth is that being fired saved me when I couldn't save myself.

For someone who is considered a bully, the abuse they dish out is based on a distorted way of dealing with their own sense of low self-esteem.  In large corporations you're bound to find someone with a narcissistic personality disorder.  My only regret is that I couldn't save everyone else.

I've started to heal.  And no I'm not healing from the pain of being let go, I am healing from living in a toxic environment for so long.  Today I know that I am finally free from that pain.

Broken by seether

I wanted you to know that I love the way you laugh
I wanna hold you high and steal your pain away
I keep your photograph and I know it serves me well
I wanna hold you high and steal your pain

Because I'm broken when I'm lonesome
And I don't feel right when you're gone away

You've gone away, you don't feel me here, anymore

The worst is over now and we can breathe again
I wanna hold you high, you steal my pain away
There's so much left to learn and no one left to fight
I wanna hold you high and steal your pain

'Cause I'm broken when I'm open
And I don't feel like I am strong enough
'Cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome
And I don't feel right when you're gone away

'Cause I'm broken when I'm open
And I don't feel like I am strong enough
'Cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome
And I don't feel right when you're gone away

'Cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome
And I don't feel right when you're gone away

You've gone away, you don't feel me here, anymore

The worst is over now and we can breathe again
I wanna hold you high and steal my pain away
There's so much left to learn and no more left to fight
I wanna hold you high and steal your pain

'Cause I'm broken when I'm open
And I don't feel like I am strong enough
'Cause I'm broke when I'm lonesome
And I don't feel right when you're gone away

Working modus operandi

I will not be ashamed of who I am.
I will work hard at becoming a better person.
I make mistakes, I am after all human.
But I will not be talked into believing I am something I am not.

Start

“Know thyself” – Some dead Greek guy.

Maybe it was Plato or Socrates who first use it to refer to a long-established wisdom.  Or maybe it was Plato talking about something Socrates told him once.  I don’t know.  But it’s mine now and I’m stealing it.  I’m gonna call it a Universal truth.  Oh yeah, I’m gonna steal that one too.  I don’t know where it comes from so if you want to know go look it up.  I digress…

So there’s this depression thing I got going for me.  And I have to take a lot of medicine for it.  But you can’t base everything on meds.  At least I can’t.  So I need to look into the eyes of the monster.  Where I come from and what it is that made my life what it is.  And there were a lot of problems growing up. 

People treated me wrong.  My parents weren’t blah, blah, blah.  That’s a longer story for later.  But you have to be able to move on from that.  You have to be able to forgive the people who have done you wrong in the past.  It’s not the easiest thing to do but you have to go as far as you can.  The way that I was able to do that was to take an honest look at myself and say, I’m not all that bad of a person. 

I have faults just like everyone else.  I’m overweight.  I don’t have a very outgoing personality.  I have depression.  I don’t work overly hard and I generally don’t put in 40 hours a week at work.  I don’t have a lot of confidence in my abilities.

But there’s a lot of good to me too.  I try to be a good person.  I try to help other people.  I want to set an example for my son and for that matter an example for everyone.

So I’m okay with myself (mostly).  And that helps a lot when I get to my low points.  I’ve had to switch my medicines lately and it makes me angry.  I know I’m not an angry person so I know it’s the meds.

Motivation

How is it that a person gets themselves motivated?  Growing up I had goals.  I wanted to go to college, get married, have a good job and have a family of my own.  So in my blessed life I have all of that.  Then the question to me becomes; what's next?

Money has never really meant a whole lot to me.  I'm not the richest person in the world but I'm well fed and things are just things (if that makes any sense). 

I've got a great family.  My psychiatrist who also sees my son one day said to me "I really like your family" to which I replied "Thanks, I made them myself".

My bills are (usually) paid on time.  I've got more channels on my TV that anyone could ever need (I guess that would really be want because no one really needs TV).

I guess the question that I have is what happens after happily ever after?

I guess there are things that I want.  I want to be a writer.  I want to make sure my son gets to go to college.  I want the yard to look better (okay I couldn't come up with anything else).  But when you get back down from the top of the mountain don't you say "I ain't doing that again"?  I don't know if I want to go up that hill again.

Father's Day

Today would be my dad's 73rd birthday.  It makes me want to say something about him.

My dad drove a truck for a living.

So on to other things.

The thing is, I never knew my dad.  I've got bits and pieces of memories but I'm not sure that's really what a father is suppose to be.  I remember being real young and getting excited when he came home from being on the road for weeks.  For a few years in high school I lived with him and my step-mom.  That being said, my dad was still a truck driver so really I just lived with my step-mom.  I can remember living with him and us both being home when the Challenger blew up.  I remember when we would see him on the weekends when I was younger that I would watch football games and then run into the kitchen to tell him when something happened.

I know that my dad cared for me.  But for most of my life it felt like "keep the kids in the other room, us adults are doing stuff".  Even when I was an adult I didn't know how to deal with him.  I felt like I was overstepping my boundaries even though I was an adult.

There is so much stuff about my relationship with my dad that scares me when dealing with my son.  I don't ever want to feel like a stranger in his life like my dad was in mine.  I don't want my son to feel like he's in a different class of people from me.  I want my son to know that when he needs to talk to me, when he needs a friend, I can be there.

I say the same thing all the time and it makes me feel guilty.  But the fact of the matter is that it is true.  Everything I know about being a father I learned from my dad.  I learned what not to do.

Positive

People want to connect on a humane level in the office; the alternative is a sterile environment with low productivity.  So, the more you demonstrate these avilities, the faster your career will advance.  An ounce of people sensitivity is worth a pound of cure when it comes to daily human interaction and mitigating conflict.  By developing these skills, you'll reduce bad behaviour in the office, and your positive approach will be contagious.

Just me

Introduction:

I’ve lived a very unspectacular life.  Well, maybe that’s not fair.  I’ve lived the same life that everyone else leads.  I’m just like everyone else.  At least this is how I see it some of the time.  I guess just like most people I suffer from low self-esteem.

In my life I think I’ve always known I wanted to be a writer.  I took classes in college on creative writing.  In fact, coming out of high school I think that’s what I wanted to do.  But I didn’t.

At one point I was going to write a book about leadership.  I have always been the type of person who is and believes in leadership without authority.  The idea that you can set yourself up as an example and people will follow.  I practice what I preach and I’ve got a lot to say.  I would always get stuck.  I’m too much of a perfectionist I guess.  Or maybe it’s that I’ve never believed in myself.

I’ve tried to write a book about my life; blog stuff that I’ve written over the years, past experiences, that kind of stuff.  But if you don’t have the confidence in writing a book about leadership, something someone might want to read about, nobody is going to want to read about my crappy life.  Besides most of it has to do with the crappy things that I have a hard time dealing with.  Some of the things that sometimes I blame for screwing up my life.

I think I also would like to write a book about depression.  I’ve been diagnosed with clinical depression for umpteen years.  I’ve been down in holes that I never thought I would get out of.  But life has been going good for me lately and I think I would like to use some of the ideas that have helped me to help other people.

Then I thought, let’s put it all together and see where that gets us.  The leadership, my life, and the depression I’ve gone through.  I’ll think to myself “I’m just too disorganized to put it all together”.  Again, I’m thinking too hard about it and trying to be perfect.

One thing that I’ve discovered over the (many) years is that the story of me, the depression I have, and the leadership skills that I’ve acquired all have a connection.  I couldn’t see it in the beginning but now I think I’ve figured it out.  It all comes out to being able to understand yourself.

In the process of dealing with my depression I’ve had to go through some self-discovery.  I’ve had to get to the place where I first learned how to like myself.  And I’ve had to do this by looking at my past and maybe try to analyze things in a different light.  Oh, it’s not as easy as it sounds.  But when you have depression sometimes you’ll do whatever you can to dig yourself out of a hole.

I also believe that self-discovery is very important in being a great leader.  You have to know yourself and you need your true self to come out so that others will learn to trust you.  No games.   

So now I think I’ve got it.  I know how I’m going to put it all together. 

A small little idea

Today, I want to be happy.  And no one can do anything about it except me.