Honesty is the Best Policy, Right?

Honesty is the best policy, right?

You meet someone. You hit it off. First, just a night of a couple drinks. Next, a real date. A good one too. Better than you would have imagined, given your track record. A second, real date is scheduled before the first date concludes. A few nights later, the second date. Schedules don’t align for a week or so, and while trying to schedule that seemingly elusive third date, a response: I’d like to keep hanging out with you, but only as friends, is that okay?

Honesty is the best policy, right?

We’re all adults. We’re all friends. When things don’t go according to plan, we offer up half-hearted but not required explanations. After all, we’re all adults. There’s no hard feelings, and we all move on. More so, we understand each other. There aren’t really any secrets, even if we think there are. After all, we’re all friends, and there’s no hard feelings.

Honesty is the best policy, right?

I had a hard time getting my car back last week. Supposed to be a one day job. They ordered the wrong part. It took an extra day from the manufacturer. The one technician that can do the job had an emergency and had to leave early. I asked to have it done by three on Friday. They hadn’t started on it by 11am. Finished at 5pm. I was already gone. A 3-hour job. My car sat from Monday, 8:15am, until Friday, 9pm.

Honesty is the best policy, right?

I don’t have a lot of drama in my life. I don’t have many overtly serious conversations that carry weight farther than the people in the room. I’ve lived my life, for the most part, and as best as I know how, as honestly as I can. Is there information that I’ve withheld? Sure. Have I told a lie in the last week? You betcha. Does it make my hands sweat to know I have to face the truth and tell people what I feel, to tell someone I care about, what I’m thinking? I wouldn’t be human if I didn’t. But for the majority of my life, that’s just what I believed. If you can’t face the truth, then you deserve what you get. It might make you reconsider some decisions if you know that you’ll never be able to cover it up. I guess I believe that if you tell the truth, that’s forgivable. If you lie to cover it up, the same thing, whatever it is, and get caught, that’s unforgivable. Is that fair? Maybe not. But it sounds right in my head. Or at least it did.

Recently I’ve been on the receiving end of what I believe to be interactions that I would classify as less than honest. And while I’ve nearly unintentionally spent an unreasonable amount of time kneading and plodding over those interactions, eliciting the opinions of others, attempting to draw out the truth in future interactions, I’m not entirely sure, regardless of my previous convictions, that knowing the truth, whether it aligns with my predictions or not, would be satisfying. What happens if I’m right? I get no reward. I just get the truth, which was most likely withheld for a reason. What if I’m wrong? Then I just feel like an asshole. But I hate the fact that I just justified lying.

Honesty is the best policy, right? I don’t know. Maybe.

Healthy Optimism

So, from the day I owned it, my car has given me issues. I bought it used, but under warranty, so my twenty two year old mind was convinced that regardless if it took a literal shit in the middle of the road, at least it was free to fix. Well, a half dozen trips to Arlington Nissan later, I thought I was in the clear. But another half dozen trips to Ashland Tire, a few trips to Tiger’s Body Shop, a few trips to Gerber Collision and Glass, and now a trip to Pep Boys has left me nearly regretting the purchase. Granted, if I had to go back and do it again, I don’t. But after just crossing my 4 year anniversary with her, and putting on 50,000 miles, I couldn’t imagine myself driving another car, at least not any time soon. So for me, the effort, the cost, the patience, the frustration, it’s worth it. Sink a couple hundred in now to save me from settling on a car I don’t love. Whatever, it’s a testing theory, but it’s worked out for me so far. You never know what tomorrow brings.

That brings me to today. I dropped my car off Monday morning at a neighborhood Pep Boys in order to get the master and slave (right?!) cylinder replaced on my clutch, which, if you’ve ever been in my car with me for more than 30 minutes, becomes a constant place of my frustration, until, you know, 15 minutes later, when it magically fixes itself and drives itself like it just rolled out of the plant. Then I get in my car and the clutch is on the floor.

We’ve had our ups and downs.

So this master and slave cylinder replacement is a two hour job for a qualified mechanic. They had already ordered the parts, all I had to do was drop it off at 8am, walk two miles back home, spend the day working from home, wait until the hopefully early afternoon call, walk two miles back to Pep Boys, and drive home, happily ever after, assuming, of course, I remember to stop next door to exchange a recently purchased pair of shorts that I swear were either improperly marked as a 32” or Merona has some cross-eyed factory workers. That’s all I had to do. Well, I did that. Until I received a phone call telling me that the part they ordered doesn’t match the part they took off my car.

‘Well, we’ll check in the morning, but we might have to go back to the manufacturer.’ Awesome. I guess I’ll wait another day.

Tuesday afternoon: We couldn’t find an aftermarket master cylinder that matches yours, so we went to the manufacturer, but there isn’t one close, so we have to order it. Hope to have it tomorrow (Wednesday), but might not be ready until Thursday.

Wednesday, no communication. Nothing until I got a ride from my roommate so I could pick up my softball cleats and glove from the trunk on my way to a game. Didn’t even have time to yell at them for keeping me in the dark.

It’s Thursday now. Mind you, this week I’ve been taking public transit into work each day since Monday. For those of you out there that have lengthy public commutes, you can sympathize. For those who don’t… My morning consisted of leaving at 6:20am, walking .5 miles, taking a purple line train, transferring to a yellow line “Skokie Swift” train, jumping on the 626 Pace bus all the way up to Northbrook, getting off at the Lake Cook Metra stop, and walking just a hair under a mile to my building, arriving to my desk between 7:45am and 7:50am. Reverse that and add a few minutes for my afternoon commute home. So it’s Thursday, the last day they are allowed to have my call, and 3:30pm rolls around.

‘We got the part in, but the technician working on your car had an emergency and left early.’ Apparently no one else in the shop can complete the task at hand and finish the job, so I now wait until some time on Friday to pick up my car, praying what they did actually fixes the damn problem.

I have every right to be upset. The inconvenience of not having a car to someone who usually has a car and drives it on average six days a week is relatively substantial. I turned back to my work, trying my best to focus and stop the overheating that swarmed me. Before I hung up, my Pep Boys contact promised he’d take care of me for this, hopefully rewarding my patience with some sort of percentage discount, which, for the price of this job, would be nice, but possibly weaseling his way into a 25% off your next purchase or some shit like that. We’ll see what he can do. In the meantime, what do I do?

Well, in the three days of public commuting, I’ve saved $3 a day over what it would cost in gas. There’s $10. And if I can get maybe 10% off my bill, there’s another $60. And while on the two trains and a bus, I managed to knock a decent chunk out of the weighty block of pages I call the book I’m currently reading, which, considering how long it has taken me to get this far, is a big deal if I ever want to start a new book. And I’m lucky enough to have a boss nice enough to give me the chance to work from home Friday, ensuring my plans don’t get postponed, since I have to be in the loop by 4:30.

I guess the point of this shitastic story is, shockingly, everything can be shitty in shitty light. But if you can find the time to look at what positives have emerged because of this shiterific series of events, it goes a long way to live a less stressed life. I’m not saying I’m pleased with how it all went down, nor am I pleased that I bought a car that most assuredly should have had a carfax report run, but at the end of the day, I’m probably a better, strong person. Not just because I endured the shitty end of something to make me appreciate and learn for the future, but because every shitazing moment along the way has taught me patience, balance, and a generally optimistic outlook, which, as much as physical health, goes a long way to living a healthy life. 

 Picture comment: just a random picture of 'optimism'

Rainbows and Butterflies

Yesterday, I had a shitty day. If this was the kind of blog that everybody assumes it is when I tell people I write a blog, I’d probably spend the next few paragraphs explaining the details of the shitty day in melodramatic, self-centered prose, hoping that anyone reading might be willing to feel sorry for me and I would feel justified, united by relatable circumstances. But I don’t write one of those, so I’ll spare you the details. It was one of those days where, aside from the always entertaining episode of Game of Thrones I watched, the bad shit just kind of kept piling on top of itself in different iterations, culminating in a night of sleep so poor, I can’t remember the last time I experienced anything like it. I literally couldn’t stop my mind from wandering back over the parts of my day that left me in such a weary state. That’s not a good place to be. Especially considering how well everything in my life has been going for so long, now. Sometimes, when the cards keep coming up aces, you convince yourself that it’s never going to stop. So when the shit card gets flipped, its way more of a surprise than it should be. Consider this my fault. It rains in paradise, too.

So this morning I was faced with a decision. Not just ‘how much longer can I stay in bed to make up for the abbreviated segments of unrewarding pauses that we’ll call sleep while still making it to work in time to squeeze in 8 hours and a workout before the gym closes at 7,’ although that crossed my mind. No what I had to do was decide how to react. Bad news happens. Bad things happen. And while continuing to write in vague details, let’s just say I had the choice of dwelling on the past or moving on to the future. I can assure you, it would have been very easy to dwell on the past. To delve into each or any of the less than fortunate situations that I find myself in and break it or them down with more depth than an NBA on TNT halftime show. The opportunity to feel bad for myself was laid out like a fleece blanket on a cold night. More than just available, but tempting, inviting, alluring.

I’ve spared you the details of why I had a shitty day not only because I’m almost positive no one wants to read them, but to write about them now would reinforce my inability to let them go. Instead, I’m writing to prove that I can, in fact, let them go. And that’s what is keeping me happy today. Well, at least part of it.

It’s easy to have people tell you to focus on the positives, the silver linings, the glass-half-full side. It’s easy for people to tell you to focus on other stuff, big stuff, like health, a job, friends. It’s easy to get caught up in American Beautyisms like ‘I need to remember… sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world…’ in order to maintain your sanity. But being thankful for my health isn’t enough to pull me away from something right here, now, that just rocked my world. The only way to do that is to make a decision. Making that decision isn’t easy. It is not the path of least resistance. But once you’re able to flick that switch, and decide, not hope, not plan on, not try to, but decide that what’s done is done, and the future will be brighter than the past, then that’s it. It’s black and white. There’s no second guessing. There’s no regret. There’s what happened, and what will happen. And your eyes are only looking at one of them.

I’m not saying that what I endured yesterday was catastrophic. In fact, writing the word ‘endured’ makes it seem much loftier than reality. Maybe I can say that because I’ve moved on (last night, ‘endure’ was the only thing on my mind), or maybe I’m just being dramatic. It’s hard to say for sure. And the same way that no one will ever get to feel someone else’s pain, no one will know what it was like in my head under the covers last night. Which is a good thing. But I’m a believer in what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and only the strong survive, so where would I be today if I rolled back over, closed my eyes, and replayed everything I did or didn’t do that lead me here? I’m not all rainbows and butterflies today, but let’s be honest, that’s a pretty elevated goal.

Being happy isn’t a result, it’s a choice. You’ve just got to have the will power to make it. 

Picture comment: I literally found this picture AFTER I wrote the above line. Fate?

Spinning My Network

This week marked my first experience attending an industry conference and expo, the American Society of Training and Development’s International Conference and Exposition, chalk full of keynote speakers, over-decorated, over-energized booths, almost 400 topic-specific sessions spanning three days, and somewhere around eight thousand attendees meandering the monstrosity that is the Colorado Convention Center in the lovely city of Denver, Colorado.

I flew out Sunday evening, after being delayed over two hours, and didn’t arrive to my hotel until around 11pm. No time for fun, the first keynote was 8am, Monday morning. I walked two blocks to the CCC and checked in, got my little name tag, and followed the masses to the Wells Fargo Theater located as far as you could walk while still being inside. I didn’t have much of a plan for my three days, so the fact that I could just walk the same direction as everyone else made it easier. The featured speaker was great, a fellow by the name of Jim Collins, and feeling mildly inspired, I was ready to take on the conference.

Still imitating a lemming, I ended up at the expo, freshly opened and ready to invade your personal space. I made my way down every single aisle, wide-eyed first day of school style, managing to exchange words with no one. Which means, since I had left my apartment at 5pm the night before, I hadn’t said much more than ‘thanks’ and the address of the hotel to the cab driver in about 16 hours. I was beginning to feel like an outcast walking among that many people with no one to talk to. Everyone else chatting, hugging, connecting and reconnecting, me, not. “Because nothing sucks more than feeling all alone, no matter how many people are around” (J.D., Scrubs, S2E18, My T.C.W.). This continued all the way through the generously provided lunch. I say generously provided, but when I realized how much a ticket to this event cost, I guess it made sense. Full, I stood in back to avoid being harassed by the invasive booth workers, creating my game plan of booths that I needed to stop by to minimize the amount of unnecessary contact, considering there were over 200 booths and about 10% actually applied to me. It was in this phase of my journey that I randomly bumped into three coworkers on their way to an early afternoon session. It was nice to talk to people.

The topic-specific sessions varied in their format, from 200 person lecture hall types, to round tables set up for frequent group interactivity, to cleverly disguised sales pitches. I attended two of these sessions Monday afternoon, the first offering not much more than a cool demonstration that was inapplicable to my profession, the second offering quite an eye-opening reconstruction of my entire professional processes. The second one was worth my time. That was the essence.

I had dinner with my coworkers that night, which included a bacon potato pesto soup and encrusted pork tenderloin on top of elk jalapeno-cheddar sausage hash and spicy sweet potato mash; yup. I then spent the rest of the evening in the hotel bar, networking, the focus of the trip, and this post.

Somewhere in between the giant theater speeches about innovation and inspiration, the crop fields of booths with their most ‘talented’ assets front and center, and the dozens on dozens on dozens of private sessions, you spend your ‘down time’ doing everything possible to meet and greet anyone that sparks your interest, on any level. My first iteration of this took place while I waited for my afternoon smoothie, a tasty treat doubling as filler until dinner. My first three preferences were unavailable (out of mango, strawberry banana, and strawberry), so I settled on peach, while the screwy, unreadable credit card of the young woman behind me rewarded her with a free chai. Alas, a conversation was born, and ‘networking’ commenced. Later that night, at the hotel bar, you know, the hotel that was about 90% conference-goers, ‘networking’ continued. Whether out of desperation (only one other person in the bar at 8pm), proximity (an interesting person grabbing a seat nearby), or interest (mutual recognition of personality and conversation), I met, chatted with, discussed industry specific ideas, learned about parts of the field that I never gave much thought to, and generally, realized the scope of the profession that I find myself attached to, along with a laugh or two.

Throughout the next two days, I listened to lectures that were so elementary, I probably could have taught it myself, I sat through keynote speakers that used music as much as language to get a message across, and gathered information from booths that were actually relevant, all while keeping my ears and eyes open for those I had already met, strengthening something so recently ignited, or seeking new networking opportunities to pack on like pounds for the winter.

Networking, as I’ve come to know it, is fascinating; so many angles, so many outputs. Me, I had a few things on my mind. I was looking to meet people in the industry (which was everyone), just to help understand the field that I find myself under-educated in. The more you talk about it, the more others talk about their side of it, the clearer the landscape of the training world is painted. As a young professional, understanding the landscape is as important as perfecting your craft. I was also looking for anyone doing what I’m doing, instructional design, to once again, talk the business. Just being in a room full of 200 instructional designers was an uplifting experience, knowing that there are more out there, just like me, dealing with the same issues, and surviving. I was looking for personal connections too, for various reasons. Reason one, in case I no longer find myself employed by this wonderful company and need to reach out to some similar-industried people. Reason two, in case one of these similarly-industried people finds themselves out of a job and could be an asset to my team. Reason three, because I needed company. Humans weren’t meant to be alone, and it was nice to grab a drink, meet up for a lunch, stop at a booth for a chat, or enjoy a cross-convention walk with those I had met; made the trip worthwhile.

So, I hope this wasn’t the last time I get to be so immersed in my professional field that you forget you still have a job. I learned a lot, ate a lot, walked a ton, and met some folks that hopefully won’t be strangers. I think I like networking.

Action Expresses Priorities

I watched a video today that was quite inspiring. The premise was that Nike gave this guy some money to shoot a commercial, tag-lined ‘life is a sport, make it count.’ So what this guy did was grab a buddy, travel around the world, and do as much as possible, go as far as possible, see as much as possible with the sponsor money he received. This lasted him ten days and he documented the entire thing, cut it, edited it, and made a pretty awesome four and a half minute video. Dispersed throughout the video are little sayings and quotations meant to reflect the mood of the video. One of which was “action expresses priorities.” Not surprising this one stuck, given it's a quote from Gandhi.

During the course of a day, there are literally countless actions that we perform. For me, like most people, this begins when my day begins. Whether it’s twenty minutes before Going the Distance from Rocky plays to wake me up, or whether that damn song has been playing thirty second loops for several minutes, I’m immediately pressed with a decision: snooze or get up. More often than not, this decision is simple. Snooze at least once, then it’s back with the decision making. From there it only adds on. Do I want to eat cereal before I shower or just grab a granola bar to eat when I get to the office? Should I bring my workout bag or should is there something I need to get home for? It’s 7:15am, should I hope that the Edens won’t be too bad, or should I back-road it and know that I’m committed to a 50+ minute commute, albeit far less frustrating?

And then I get to work, where my decisions actually matter. Sometimes. So now I’m reading emails and responding to messages while my screen stays filled with more windows than that person who shouldn’t throw rocks. And now I’m letting one conversation lead into another at a different cube when I walked away with a short-minded, immediate answer intention.

This surface-level explanation is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the amount of decisions that we make on a daily, hourly, even minutely basis. And I guess it seems kind of obvious that the actions you take, the decisions you make, the options you choose, would represent your priorities. But I wouldn’t say that’s the most common belief.

I think people, including myself, will try to justify their actions with excuses when it doesn’t mesh with their preconceived notions about their own priorities. So if you were thinking about meeting up with a friend to catch up, and when the time comes, you fall back on something like ‘I’m too tired,’ or ‘I’m trying to save money,’ or any other non-emergency excuse, you can sit in your apartment all day believing ‘oh I really did want to meet them, but it’s Tuesday, and I have so much work to do tomorrow, it just would have been silly,’ but the reality is you chose something else because that thing is more important.

This concept can be a bit complicated when it comes to work. For example, I might not always choose the highest priority when it comes to the work on my desk. Some of the projects that I work on are long-term, while the rest are relatively immediate. So if I have a couple projects that have been going on for a month or two and are only 50% complete, but I have a dozen or so tiny projects that pop up and only take an hour or two, there’s a much higher percentage that I’ll choose those small projects. At the end of the day, it’s just nice to get something accomplished. If the two projects I’m choosing between differ by 100 hours in ‘amount of time left to complete,’ it’s really challenging to keep that big fish on your plate. With a fish that size, there’s no room for side dishes. So what I’m basically choosing is selfish. I’m choosing to feel a sense of accomplishment, to make a few people really happy (with such a fast turn-around time) while constantly pushing off people that will understand (well this is a big project, a few setbacks were expected).

This concept appears less complicated when it comes to personal life. Every time you talk to someone, every time you make plans with someone, every time you tell somebody no you’re showing your hand. Sure, there might be some underlying reasons, if, say, you have a crush and you’re being shy, but most of the time, the priority is clear.

You make exceptions for the people that are a priority in your life. You make excuses for the people that aren’t.