I Contemplate Attachment

I was contemplating attachment today. Attachment is a sticky thing (bad pun intended). We attach ourselves to things, to objects, to conditions, without being conscious that the attachment is forming.  One moment we are not attached.  The next moment we are attached. In yet another moment we are no longer attached.  It is a continual testimony to the transitory nature of life.

I’ve been wrestling with work attachment here in 2013.  I really find myself torn.  I enjoy my work (the substance of it), I enjoy my co-workers (with the rare exception). I even like the work I do in the greater strategic and metaphysical sense. I happen to have a very bad director, who may or may not be reflective of very bad VP’s above her. Inside of this world, I find myself measuring my attachment to my job.  When I step back, when I take a deep breath, when I settle in I realize that I should not be attached to it.  I realize that the attachments I have to it are very tenuous. But when I am in the moment, when I am right inside the hurly-burly of a working day I sure react as if I am attached.  Physically, psychologically and emotionally I am attached and when those strings get pulled, I dance. It is almost involuntary. It is such a strange thing.

We’re currently going through our performance appraisal cycle and the company recently adopted a new process and that new process is pretty much a dismal failure, lacking transparency, furthering distrust, and serving to demotivate and divide employees.

I guess one of the things that always amazes me is how people can make such terrible mistakes.  How they can start out with good intentions and then go so terribly awry.  Our system has two components - absolute performance (did you attain your objectives, how did you get there, etc.) and relative performance (how did you perform against other employees is similar positions).  It is the relative performance that they have so badly mangled.  Process wise, the employees provide input on their absolute performance, which is them supplemented and bolstered by their manager. Then, the whole thing goes to the Director level for the directors to sit down and determine the relative performance factors. It is this later part that is entirely opaque to the individual contributor.  We have no idea what goes into the decision, or how other people we are compared to are rated and why - we simply are told our rating.  We don’t even know what the rating criteria is.  It is an amazing disaster of a system.

I Am Human and Attached

I watched the season finales of Dexter and Homeland today. Both of them are awesome television - it is pretty amazing what can be done with the medium these days.  However, I always say that with the immediate caveat of - whatever you like on TV, rest assured that for someone else it's the stupidest thing they've ever seen.  For what it is worth though, for my money, Dexter and Homeland are as good as it gets though.

It was  typical Monday at work - I managed to get some things accomplished and then lost the bubble of the day to unfolding events.  One of the skill-sets I possess is complex data retrieval and analysis for legal investigations.  It is an interesting skill set and I enjoy the investigative aspect of it.  I do find it frustrating that it is always "oh my god, we need to know the answer to this right away" - so, it is complex requests on short lead time. I lost a good part of the day to that sort of event today.

Dinner was a simple cheeseburger and onion rings, in large part because I was too lazy to cook when I got home tonight.  Then, I ended up spending most of the evening on family phone calls.  Two under my belt, my nephew in the hospital and my step-dad out at the ranch. I am going to try one more in a couple of minutes - my mom was napping when my step-dad called earlier, so I promised to try and call back a little later.

My nephew is starting the slow approach to the runway to get out of the hospital and the question is rising up where he is going to land as an initial destination.  That is a discussion that has the chance to become heated, in part because, like most family things, it is one thing layered on top of many layers of other things. That is going to make some stressful days ahead, so I am going to have to practice compassion for all beings. I have to keep practicing it because I am definitely not good at it.  I am human and attached.