Relax

Back when I worked for EDS, I had a period when I didn't react well to pressure.

It was shortly after the new data center manager had correctly observed that when it came to pushing people, I wasn't very good. I didn't like doing it, and I would look for ways to avoid doing it. I liked to think that I was simply giving them the opportunity to do the job their way, but his feeling was that I was there to get the job done, and if I couldn't do that, or wouldn't, then I ought not to be doing it. So I went from being a first-level manager to being a grunt technician again. There had been things that I liked about being a manager - mostly, the office, and participating in 'management discussions' (they were mostly him telling us what we were going to do; they'd be sprinkled with requests for our opinions, but we noticed that he didn't care for opinions that weren't supportive), and one or two other things. On the other hand, I hated doing evaluations, and feeling as if I had no way to help people along their careers. I couldn't get them training, I couldn't swap jobs for them with someone else. I couldn't even give them a day off without getting some grief for it from my direct manager. So, not being a manager wasn't terrible. And it did get to mean that I worked entirely on tech stuff, which was (and is) my preference.

But what I didn't realize was that inside, I was simmering. I wasn't happy about the change, mostly because the guy that they picked to replace me was someone that I viewed as a crude bozo. He'd been an Operations manager, and he really didn't understand tech types, so he treated them as if they were brand-new tape operations people, not too bright and requiring direction without latitude. He inadvertently did me a favor, refusing to let me take two Fridays off a month so that I could attend a Masters program in system analysis (it was a favor because I'd never have used the knowledge, and it would have cost me $50,000, with absolutely no financial support from EDS), but that favor at the time rubbed me the wrong way.

I didn't know that I was having a -- well, I won't call it a 'rage' problem, because it doesn't feel that way, even now, but I suppose it's as good a description as any -- a rage problem until one of the technicians from another area came to ask me a question when I was feeling more put-upon than normal. He wanted an answer right away; I told him that I had no time for it or him then, and that he should come back in an hour or so. He pushed; I said Come. Back. Later. And I stared at him, apparently so fiercely that he went away and told one of my coworkers that he wasn't coming back to my cubicle unless he had a stick.

I had an extended conversation with his manager, where words like 'fire' were used. The upshot was that I got to spend some time talking with a local psychologist service about anger and the workplace. The psychologist was a nice enough person, but here's the only thing I got out of it: at one point, she asked me what I did to relax, and I had to think about it. Well, I said, I like to read. Oh, she replied dryly, I can just hear the joy in your voice. Which is pretty much when I realized that I didn't know how to relax. Even now, I don't know. For me, it's like falling asleep. I put myself in a position where I have been known to feel relaxed, afterward, and I hope that I become relaxed. I can't do something -- can't, for example, start building a model or talking a walk or counting stars -- because those are all doing, and once done, they're done. They don't bring relaxation.

But sometimes, without warning, relaxation falls upon me, anyway.

I think that this, in a way, is why I don't get Facebook. Like 'relaxing', I understand the concept, but it's theory. I don't see how to put it into practice. The idea of social networks intended to link people together makes me feel the way that I did when I was a kid and came across an apple corer in my grandmother's kitchen. I knew that it had a purpose, I knew that it was useful in some way, but I couldn't see how it might be useful to or used by me. That's not to say that I haven't joined Facebook; I have. But if it's supposed to assist me in hooking up with others, finding people of similar tastes, predilections, interests, friends of my friends with whom I will find surprising connections - then it's not working. I'm not entirely sure why. Other people like it, apparently quite a lot. Me, not so much. Got about 19 friends, mostly people I've worked with or my family. I hear of people who make extended connections,got hundreds of people they've friended. I can't imagine how. Are they simply way more social than me? Perhaps the 'ability to make friends on Facebook' is contained in a gene that skipped my generation. I should start a group on Facebook for people who don't get much out of Facebook. We could be like those London clubs composed of people so solitary that they never come to the club. Want to join?