Setting the sliders

Inspired by a cycle of eight "Setting the sliders" notes dated March 2011, by Michael.

Life is an endless quest for a balance. As part of the nature, humans naturally search for it. The most popular type of balance these days is the work-life balance, being a theoretical response to ruthless corporations exploiting their staff much longer than during customary nine-to-five cycles. The corporations claim to foster the work-life balance, but since their declarations are hollow, the EU institutions have attempted to regulate it. Then the corporations will aim to circumvent those laws. Well, it is a topic for a separate post...

In this one I struggle to find trade-offs in manifold areas of life.

Getting involved in a romantic relationship, one gives up on a part of their independence. Being with some means minding their feelings and needs and undertaking commitments towards a life companion. This takes striving, but should not take bending over backwards. People pair up since benefits of being together outweigh nuisances of making concessions. I believe one should strike a balance between their autonomy as an individual and some indispensable sacrifices.

A part of turning an adult is taking responsibility for one's deeds and life. Psychologists posit those contraventing such scheme are afflicted by Peter Pan syndrome, attributed usually to males who refuse to grow up and farewell the carefree days of childhood. For me being responsible is a crucial part of adulthood and proves a man's maturity. Nevertheless, carefree moments ought to be pursued in life and cherished, bearing in mind life is not a bed of roses.

The above brings to mind the idiom "business before pleasure", which sadly has no equivalent in Polish. As a child, not prompted by my parents, after coming from school I firstly did my homework and then played. An adult life involves duties and doing them with humility is a part of our existence. With affluence, people tend to work more to shift the most mundane duties to others. The growing popularity of farming out house cleaning or ordering food catering boxes instead of cooking confirms such trend. But is it just convenience and making use of one's money to enhance the comfort of life, or... shunning duties?

"Failing to prepare is preparing to fail" - some say. Preparing involves planning and planning clashes with spontainety. Spontainety symbolises carefree life, lack of limitations and boundaries. Should we give on spotainety altogether? Do not dare to do so, don't let your daily routine underwhelm you, let in the element of thrill to your life, but whatever you do, do it prudently and mind the outcome.

Unless your ancestors were wealthy and thrifty, you have to work to earn a livelihood. Your wage is usually a combination of education, skills, luck, but not only. A correlation between how hard you work and financial gains maybe is not very strong, yet apparently positive. Having spent over 13 years in the corporate reality, I observe the propensity to work harder than others declines with age. This is perfectly in line with the curve of earnings, increasing with years of experience, rising affluence (a marginal utility of each next unit of income is lower), human body's lower tolerance for intensive working, but particularly with priorities changing over lifetime. The more you have accumulated, the more you cherish the time spent with family, friends, physical activity or fostering hobbies.

If you earn little, most likely your have to watch every penny before spending and barely make ends meet. When your income rises, you might spend more, but not necessarily have to. Day-to-day survival gives way to planning and long-term goals. One has to make a choice what portion on the current income to consume and how much to aside for the future and with what purpose in mind. Saving for the very sake of saving and spending for a very sake of spending are both no good. Both spending and saving (which means not just putting aside money, but looking for ways for paying less for something) deserve a wise, emotion-free approach.

While interacting with other humans one makes mistakes. A noble man can admit their mistakes and, if possible, make up for them. A noble man's trait is modesty too. Boasting of one's accomplishments outside the corporate world is not the most commendable method of underlining one's presence. A prudent man also knows their limitations and does not overestimate their skills. Humility then is a great virtue I believe, the one which helps one attain long-term goals.

Lofty ideas of a perfect world are cruelly confronted with imperfect reality. Life involves compromising, yet it should have some limits, with moral principals (universal or subjective) setting boundary of how far can we give up on ideal solutions we long for. Not every price is worth paying, but freeriding as sneaking through life without effort is not worthwhile too.

No extreme is good. Keep it in mind when making your daily choices, but also when going to the polls in five weeks...

5 May 2017 – 18 July 2018

It’s over.

There’s no way back.

Members of former band ABBA interviewed about the lyrics of “The winner takes it all” said no one had been a winner in the divorce of Agnetha Faltskog and Bjorn Ulvaeus. They both had lost, along with their children.

For the posterity, my girlfriend and I split up four days ago. The last weeks had been an enormous struggle and though we both had tried hard, the what had torn us was far bigger that what we had had in common.

Actually the end could have been seen from the beginning as moments in which I had felt truly secure and comfortably in that relationship (with hindsight, if such foundation was a missing piece, it was bound to fall apart) were scarce. The relationship which was tainted in doubts, in which I considered breaking up several times, in which uncertainty was unrelenting.

Half a year ago, after actually the best period in our relationship which oddly enough coincided with the most acute phase of my depression episode, we decided to rent a flat together. Living under one roof has helped us get to know each other better, but also found ourselves tackling the daily grind we both thought we would share by the end of our days.

We had ups and downs, the latter being more frequent, but it all went downhill after our holidays in late May. In early July we nearly broke up but decided to have a long and sincere talk and gave ourselves one last chance. We tried hard and appreciated each other’s efforts, yet that struggle gave little comfort to both of us. Our “recovery plan” could have come in useful for a falling apart marriage, where children and other stuff would be valid points to stay together, but not for two people who have been together for just more than a year.

Burdened by downsides outshining upsides, ever-increasing doubts, uncertainty and discomfort, I resolved to let us both have a chance to find life companions having makings for a perfect match. Time has proven this was a grossly imperfect match.

Needless to say, breaking up has not restored any sense of comfort, certainty, I actually feel even more insecure, not like somebody who has broken free of what has brought them more sorrow than joy. Memories remain...

Enough musings for now. My moods since Wednesday evening have swung from moderate despair to relief and they will continue to do so for a week. Unfortunately, we still live in one flat, though I am intent on finding a flat to rent quickly and move out the next weekend. Yesterday I visited one, yet the impression (dirt in the kitchen, smells of 1980s inside) was awful. Lookout has to go on. In the meantime, I am heading for Wrocław in business, so evenings spent in the city I’m love with should heal my soul a bit.

Once I read if you decide to break up you exchange mediocre today for even worse tomorrow to avoid awful years ahead.

A heartfelt thank you to my dearest friends: Ola, Martyna and Marcin for keeping me company (for long phone calls and messenger conversation) since the first hours of the hapless moment I turned single, and to my parents who offered my support and understanding and have not attempted to assess my decision.

Stressed-out, but why?

Psychologists, also those home-grown, excel at compiling seemingly useless rankings of most stressful events in life. The lists are usually based on surveys and top picks such as spouse’s death, divorce of job loss tend to repeat on all of them.

Oddly enough, when you speak of stress factors, traumatic events, such as bereavement, break-up or some other manifestations of losses naturally spring to mind. As it turns out, both trauma and joy can bring about serious anxiety. Nearly all life events which rank among top10 most stressful situations have one common denominator – they entail a noticeable change in life, which might be either positive or negative. If your close relative passes away, if you divorce, if your offspring fly the nest, the change is (in most instances) irreversible and you have get over it. On the other hand, birth of a child, taking up new job, getting seriously involved in a relationship (especially after years of living on one’s own), or moving to a new place, are considered to be positive changes in life, yet for most people cause some degree of tension.

The rankings also contain nerve-fraying events one has to live through, such as family gatherings during Christmas, meeting girlfriend’s or boyfriend’s parents for the first time, public speeches (for individuals affected by stage fright), job interviews, visits to a dentist or just doing something for the first time (travelling abroad, etc.).

Definitely stress should be tamed, yet since humans vary between among one another, there is no suitable-to-all prescription for coping with it. Personally, I strive to rationalise what exactly can cause anxiety, i.e. dig down to reach the roots of my anxiety and overpower them directly. I cannot claim to be successful all the time, but I am proud to have brought under control stress at workplace and to have learnt to keep safe distance towards things which wind up but are beyond my control.

Finally, I posit people get stressed-out every time they walk out of their comfort zone, which leads to a foregone conclusion stress is in many situations positive and natural since it accompanies making your dreams come true. As my friends says, everything you dream of is on the other side of you fears, the fears you need to overcome. In other situations, i.e. those categorised as traumas, experiencing stress proves we are humans and cannot get over some events in life devoid of feelings. 

Off to Italy in business next Sunday, so the next posting (photo coverage of the trip) around 17 September.

Pokolenia Ikea - book review

Though the series of books by Piotr C., an anonymous (a coincidence?) writer has received some publicity a few years ago when they hit bookshops’ shelves, I somehow missed out on them. Then, in recent months, via links on fejsbuk I have run across the Pokolenie Ikea blog. Posts out there appear infrequently, yet when a note is posted you can be sure it will be lengthy, yet carefully-written, well-thought-out and will hit the nail in the head of the topic it cracks down on.

Reading of the blog has turned my attention into the series of books written by the same author, born in 1976, allegedly a lawyer in one of wicked offices of multinational corporations in Warsaw. So far I have read the first and shortest one “Pokolenie Ikea” and around one-third of “Pokolenie Ikea. Kobiety”. The third one, “Brud” is still ahead of me. The decision to get familiar with Mr Piotr C.’s literature was swift and spontaneous, so I came by books in pdf, but later on, as I shared my first impressions with one of my friends, it turned out she was in possession of paperbacks and keen to lend them to me.

My first impression after going through first chapters of the first book was that I was waddling in filth and that it must have been a mistake, since this could not have been written by the same guy who publishes sensible stuff on Pokolenie Ikea blog. Actually my impression was much shaped by lack of proper distance towards reality I had at the very moment of starting out to read. If you do not belong to the world depicted in the book, keeping your distance to characters and their misbehaviours is the only way to safely endure it from cover to cover.

I still wonder how many people’s everyday existences look akin to how characters of the book live like. How many corpo-workers instead of raising families sacrifice over 50 hours per week to toil away for their employers, get well-paid but spend all their money on partying, boozing, dating and focus their all attention on looking for opportunities to have an intercourse with a first-met chick in her mid-twenties. My friends and workmates do not live like this. They have families, their spouses and children are priorities for them, they claim to have never lived like this, even in their mid-twenties, let alone around the age of 35 as characters of Pokolenie Ikea. Then I took a broader look and found such people working somewhere at the New Factory. I had few chances to work on something in collaboration with them, yet enough to find out I would not like to have anything in common with them. With my rather orderly life, I feel a sort of contempt for people whose (hollow) lives revolve around corporate treadmill, wild partying, casual sex, drugs and alcohol. Apologies, I got the order wrong, their lives ooze with perverse sexual adventures, everything else is just an addition.

But all in all, taking the picture of crazy folks in their 30s with a pinch of salt, I have found the story amusing, though the broader picture is rather bitter. Looking at characters, you see immature men in their thirties who desperately try to avoid facing adultness and shun responsibility. On the other hand you see women either sex-starved and resembling four female individuals from “Sex and the City” or desperately trying to latch into a guy having all makings of an ideal husband and father before their biological clock tells them it is too late.

Had it not been for the fact the author has claimed to be one of such kidults, I would have pointed out the whole series had been intended to ridicule the immature generation who cannot see further then the ends of their noses. But had it not been for the fact I have shared with you some episodes from my life I cannot be entirely proud of, I might interpret the book as a catharsis, an attempt to make up for all silly deeds, a penance consisting in guiding others not to take that path.

Conceivably I am scratching beneath the surface and struggling to find something beyond the straightforward purport of the books. Conceivably in vain, yet despite occasional disdain, I will make it to the end cover of the last, just to satisfy my curiosity.

It takes two...

…unless you choose to go it alone, or there’s no other way but go to it alone…

A personal plea.

8 June 2015. I called my friend to wish her all the best on her birthday. Beforehand I noticed facebook did not remind me of her anniversary. I broached the topic in a conversation. She told me she had removed the date from her profile to get fewer, yet only sincere wishes and urged me to do the same. I followed her advice.

11 December 2015. The day I ran a reality check. I could do without several hollow birthday wishes posted on the wall, yet I expected a single-digit number people to remember about my anniversary, just because I had always remembered, without aid of technical remainders, about their birthdays. The outcome was kind of brutal – no one, except for my parents remembered, virtually no one. Had it not been for a fantastic party I attended in the evening, my memory of my 28^th birthday would have been bitter, yet I strive to remember mostly the good things, yet those worse not always can be filtered out.

That nasty day with pleasurable ending must have prompted a question why things had taken such course. It actually trigged the whole string of questions, many of which remain unanswered until today. The first one was relatively straightforward – had it been my fault or had it been just a coincidence? At first sight the situation looks simple – I care, other people do not reciprocate it. Actually, the circumstances were probably far more complex and my “forgotten birthday” was the aftermath of people being busy with their own affairs, pre-Christmas and pre-weekend rush and over-reliance on technical aids (facebook notifications I had turned off) fellow people got too accustomed too. Oddly enough, the friend who had persuaded me to switch off the birthday reminder, also did not call me.

As some time went by, I decided to look critically at my relationships with people, to find out whether they were reciprocal. Any relationship, no matter if between family members, spouses, friends, workmates, must be fostered by both people involved in it if it is to last. It simply takes two, if only one person cares and the other just follows, its is meant to break.

So over the course of my review I realised some facts I had not been aware of before: generally (in more than 80% of instances /not mistake for specific relationships/) my friendships had been nurtured by me – I had proposed and most often organised meetings, I had called first instead of waiting for another person to call me, in initiative to keep up relationships had been over 80% of time on my side. What about the other people then? How had they felt about it? Had it been convenient to them to have it mind sooner or later I would call them or ask to meet up? Or had they simply been indifferent about friendship with me? Had I been imposing myself on them and out of politeness they had not told me to f**k off?

So in early February I decided to run another reality check and carry out an experiment: wait until friends feel they need to get in touch with me. Needless to say I have not talked to most of them since then. And needless to say I gave in and called two of them to wish them happy Easter, such strong was my need to talk to somebody. This is turn prompts a question how much such relationship is worth… What should I tell them if they finally get in touch and ask why I was not calling?

Last weekend, I hit up on another idea. In less than a month ten years will have passed since high-school leaving exams – why not meet up with my former classmates to celebrate? I called two friends who were moderately fond of the idea, yet I offered to be in charge of organising the event. I created an event on facebook, suggested timing and venue, yet underlined openness to alternative ideas. Out of 21 people invited, 5 declared they would come, 3 clicked ‘maybe’, 13 remaining did not react at all, no one wrote a single message. Since then the event is idle, no one bothers to show any initiative. The bottom line is that chances of meeting up are tiny, yet I do not feel hurt much, since I treat this as an experiment, which at best could result in a nice social gathering, at worst could have a cognitive value.

I have also realised my perception of recent events is affected by past experience of two relationships with people who I thought were close friends.

My friend Mateusz (name not changed). We hit it off in middle school, had similar passions, interests, pastime activities, could have talked for hours, would meet at least twice a month, holidayed together, supporting each other when troubles emerged. In 2007 Mateusz headed off to Germany to take up studies there. Our friendship by dint of distance naturally loosened up, but we called each other regularly and met up each time he visited his family in Warsaw. In early 2011 I rang him a few times I row (it was quite natural, since it was cheaper for me to make an international voice call to Germany than the other way round for him, with his student budget constraints) and each time he promised he would call the next time. Once I gave him a chance to dial my number. This was my first distressing reality check. In 2012, as his father was dying, I gave in and visited him a few times before and after the decease, I also attended the funeral. Since then we once occasionally ran across each other in town, he would call me with birthday wishes once a year, I did the same. Last year I gave up on keeping up the pretended friendship, he did not call me as well. My father bumped into Mateusz in town last month. As he passed on to me, Matuesz’s behaviour has not changed, he still keeps up appearances of a well-behaved young man. That friendship (after many years I believe it was a true friendship) has instilled in me allergy to feigned politeness…

My girlfriend Ilona (name not changed). Nearly two years older than me. We first me accidentally on my first day at high school. After a few weeks we began to go out together. Teenage crush like many. As we parted on the last day on my first school year, nothing signalled the forthcoming end, even the last song we heard in the same pair of headphones (incidentally, 12 years later, I identify more with the lyrics than at that time). After that ordinary afternoon she did not answer phone calls from me, did not reply to my SMS and GG messages, did not open the door as I went to visit her. As the new school year kicked off, we pretended not to notice each other. After a few weeks she approached me and suggested to finish the childish game. I grudgingly agreed, yet after some three months again we were turning our eyes embarrassed as passed each other. Without a word of apology, nor explanation what had driven her behaviour, I could not forgive her.

I have no problem admitting my relationships with people have been driven to some extent by fear of rejection and fear of imposing myself to other people. The former, if not overwhelming and paralysing is natural, as rejection, as long as it does not strike too frequently, is a natural experience in inter-human relationships. Yet for me it matters how I am rejected. In simple terms, a few times I was told straight away to f**k off and… got over it. The moment I was dealt a blow was painful, yet the pain, though intense, was easier to cope with. When it hurt much more, I was rejected by means of silence, inaction and indifference. Maybe if your friend cheats on you, backbites you, harms you directly or shouts in your face they hate you, this helps rationalise the suffering and get over it…? I suppose most people prefer to avoid telling unwanted or getting too close friends to keep their distance, but the want to put it across in non-straightforward way. If they take such path because it is easier, shame on them. If they think they will hurt someone else less, shame on them twice as much!

Hardly ever friendships last forever. They come and go. But as one grows older, the friendships old go, while it gets harder for new ones to come. It is not about not meeting people having all makings of close friends. Over the recent two years I met many such people who I can call soulmates, yet in our relationships there is a distance hard to bridge. The reason is that those people have families or are in long-lasting relationships, they have family and household duties, are usually over-worked like me and their social needs are met by their families, boyfriends or girlfriends or small circles of close friends, the same since many years. So the new relationships, though I am thankful I have met those people, are shallow, though have potential to grow, but I feel the unbreakable barrier on the other side. I cannot hold it against them that their spouses or children are a priority for them and they want to spend their free time with them.

There is a strength in me. In realised it when I had two awful weeks while my father was at hospital (he has only one kidney and was taken there after urinating with blood) and my mother was nearly immobilised at home on account of severe radiculitis. I had to share my time between hospital, home and work (home office) and managed. With hindsight I realised apart from asking my uncle and aunt to look after grandpa (duty normally shared between my father and his brother) I did not tell anyone about my predicament, nor asked for help. OK, I have learnt not to share my troubles with anyone, this is bearable. As the old saying goes, “a friend in need is a friend indeed”, but what if there is no one with who you could share pleasures?

On Sunday morning two weeks ago, I spent over an hour ironing. The radio in the kitchen was tuned to PR1 and broadcasted a mass. A priest in a sermon spoke of Jesus showing has wounds, as a symbol of weakness. Though I am not religious, I interpreted this metaphor as an universal word of wisdom. The authentic intimacy consists in laying bare your fragility to a fellow man.

The confessions above may create false impression of a pitiable life I lead. Don’t get me wrong. There’s the bright side too! My job offers me self-fulfilment, broadens horizons is rewarding and though it is time-consuming, I draw lots of pleasure from what I do. If the work-life balance is not struck, work encroaches on life’s territory only because there is some empty space where life should be. Nevertheless, there is no boredom in my spare time. I go to the swimming pool, read, write, attend dancing classes, play volleyball, cycle, visit interesting places. Sometimes I wish I had any companion or had an emotional bond with my companion… I could enjoy it more…

You could only argue how many of these activities create opportunities not just to meet new people, but to build more than shallow relationships with them. Well, the more opportunities, the more chances :) Still, most situations in which I meet new people are work-related, but given how overloaded with work I am, I usually look like the grumpy cat and the first impression when somebody meets me must not be positive ;-)

So how about those relationships. They need to be taken care of, but not at any price. I want to feel they are reciprocal, I do not want to feel not holding on all the time would mean letting go instantly. So much and so little I am asking for…

Crisis?

We were on the other side of Vistula, Warsaw…

Girl: So which level are you taking?

Me: The third one.

Girl: The first attempt?

Me: Yes, and hopefully the last. I come to think regardless of the outcome…

Girl: Will keep my fingers crossed. I wonder why haven’t I got my act together to pursue it…

Me: Because it’s a waste of life…

It was the first time when I (spontaneously) indirectly admitted kind of regretting to sacrifice between 1,000 and 1,200 hours of my life poring over the curriculum and practice exams, while this time could have been spent more productively, I mean enhancing those realms of life which I neglected to study duly. To answer whether it was worth it, I would need to know what would have happened differently, hadn’t I stuck to the self-enforced study regime.

Truth be told, after the candid conversation quoted above which took place two weeks before the exam, I felt I was totally running out of fuel. It wasn’t just about pure laziness or learning fatigue. The crisis involved a question about a profound rationale for what the life had revolved around. Despite losing heart for a moment, I didn’t falter and resolved to drown out questions prompted by one casual talk and do my best to carry the day.

Now it doesn’t take IQ of 150 to hazard a guess love-life-wise there’s been no progress over the recent year…

It never ceases to fuck me up when people tell me what I know, i.e. “find yourself a girl(friend)”. The sentence sounds as if girls were lying on the streets and I were refusing to bow down to pick one up. The key reason why such comments incense me is that I see lots of fantastic girls around, yet they have one (let’s call it this way) drawback in common – they have boyfriends or husbands. I may be wrong, but I don’t blame the fate of bad lack, but perceive it as example of natural selection taking place in the nature. While I was climbing up the education and career ladders, other males have been chasing the most valuable females (not in terms of skin-deep beauty, but in terms of traits, character and other things that are sought and considered when choosing a lifetime companion), now I see single leftovers which broadly fall into three categories:

1) wacky girls scaring most men (including me) off – such as those which I tried to date in 2013 (oddly enough, girl 5 turned out to be really OK and until today we are good friends, while I have even no idea whether the other five girls are still alive),

2) single, far too independent women leading lifestyle totally different than mine, so for parties any relationship is a no-go-area, since both parties realise this would be a perfect mismatch,

3) valuable girls or women, however unsociable, shy, too often to clammed up in their shells to break out of many years of loneliness.

The very last group gives a glimmer of hope, yet approaching the unapproachable requires some determination, patience and care… Hope the hopes have not been dashed.

The question which quite naturally comes up in this reasoning is where to find that girl, if girls don’t lie on the street.

1. Accosting girls which catch a boy’s eye on the street, although some lads dare to do this, is, as I believe, not the advisable suggestion. It takes a lot of courage plus you risk being taken as a pervert or a desperate.

2. Getting to know friends of friends during parties has limited chances of success for two reasons: 1) number of people who are single declines as they age, 2) the people you meet are most often same people you have met via your friends along the way.

3. At work – I’d spare a thought on this one, might come into play only if your duties absolutely do not overlap, i.e. you don’t interact professionally. Otherwise don’t go there (tried out)…

4. Signing up for a language or other course with a purpose not to learn something, but to meet someone – saw some examples of people around 30 doing this and I don’t want to follow that path…

Plus there are many other occasions when you may run across that person out of the blue. One such incidence was the nuptials ceremony I attended three weekends ago. Outside the church I ran across a girl I’d known by sight. I felt like talking to somebody… Three hours later I was driving her home… After the dialogue quoted at the top of this post her telephone rang. Her boyfriend was calling to make sure she was alright, since she’d been supposed to get home some time earlier. Well, par for the course, to good to be single. Of course, some of you would argue this situation was not as straightforward as it should have been and you’d be right. I could also come up with a few comments on the whole situation, but if silence is golden, let it glitter.

I’ve heard advice to wait. Some relationships fall apart and this fact could be viewed as an opportunity. For some reason I see around very few pairs breaking up, so waiting for such miracle looms as dead-end street.

Only life-wise…

With friends I’ve learnt to keep my distance. Overwhelming majority of them are with their partners for a long time, some have got married, some even have offspring. Their privacy deserves respect; what was allowed some time ago no longer applies now. Upshot – loosened friendships, less frequent meetings and on top some ambiguous situations along the way I wish I had avoided…

At work – I’m sick of my closest colleagues being from a different planet. I can’t put up with people who are unsociable and treat fellow people with disdain. Spending 40+ hours per week with guys who you (reciprocally) dislike is unsustainable in the long term, no matter how much you enjoy what you do at your job.

Oddly enough, there is one person who I don’t feel affinity with, yet who has given me food for thought how not to end up. The boss of my boss, woman in her early 40s. Well-travelled, well-read, intelligent, good-looking, single, with no exorbitant expectations and off-putting attitude towards men, which decrease her tiny prospects of finding a partner to near zero. Obsessive working during evenings, weekends and days off are a hideout from emptiness and prospects of solitary old age. A serious warning to me, do anything not to end up like this…

Recently it occurred to me nothing I have is truly mine and there is no place where I actually belong. The missing piece is a sense of stability, a feeling somebody cares, a little confidence if something good happens, it will last longer than a moment. Since I finished studies I lived through several moments of happiness, the only problem they came and went, happiness virtually lacked sustainability. I could reach and grab it, I could make the most it, yet could not hold on to it…

Whoever thinks these are signs of depression, dead wrong you are. Depression is when it seems to you there’s no point in rolling out of bed. In turn I want to get up from bed and have more energy and lust for life, yet I miss making use of it in a way which makes sense, not jumping into the flames out of rush of adrenaline.

Hope the weather turns for the better. With this heat and humid air we had in Warsaw last Sunday and this weekend even a bike ride doesn’t give pleasure. This year my tolerance for heat severely dropped (yesterday and today I broke sweat even when sitting idle).

Next post in two weeks (off to Mazury for the next, for me longer, weekend).

Facing the music

In late-2014 moans on life, I avowed to wait until one year since taking up a new job passes by, before confronting benefits and drawbacks of the job change. Mere half a year into the New Factory (current employer) have gone by, but I feel overly tempted to get some matters off my chest, therefore I will indulge in sharing my thoughts on the blog…

Fully grasping why and wherefore I have decided to quit the job with the (previous) Employer involves going back in time and recalling the run-up to theday I handed in my notice. Then and now I can confess I drew a lot of pleasure from the previous job. I worked with wonderful people and although in the last months of my almost four-year stint there quite often people threw me off balance, from the current perspective I see there was really little to complain about… Just to quickly remind (also to myself) what drove my decision to move to the New Company:

(1) the Employer was in the phase of continuous downsizing – it kept losing good customers and kept laying off staff to cut by costs, however cost reduction failed to catch up with dwindling revenues,

(2) the Employer had no strategy and no ambition to grow; while competitors reported higher market share and profits, the Employer bucked that trend; I could not stand the lack of vision and motivation to outperform other players in the industry – how can a respectable CEO claim market will grow by 10% next year, but the company he is in charge of will shrink by 5% and feel comfortable with this…?,

(3) I feared if I would not have been redundant (with hindsight – I was on the informal list of employees to be retained), I would have been assigned repetitive tasks below my competencies,

(4) I totally did not identify with how the strategic investor and executives hired by it ran the company and (just like many other employees) considered with ill-running as mismanagement,

(5) given all the above, I felt my job was dead-end and despite hard work, my outcomes of my work had no chance to translate, in the long term, into my salary, in other words, money I was paid there was unsustainable.

For the next nine month the Employer has been drifting without direction (one announcement which appeared in the meantime is not meaningful in that context), but in the coming months, it should come to the crunch… Course of actions after 30 April 2014 proved had I stayed, I would not have been laid off, but tens of other employees, working in regional offices across Poland, were affected by the on-going downsizing. I pre-empted the prospective redundancy and decided to pursue my career outside the corporate structures of the Employer, having at the back of my mind the job change could be a nasty experience.

First weeks, or even months in the job are hardly ever a bed of roses. The worst shake-down period is gone, which means I do not need to rely on my colleagues’ support in getting around the new organisation. I believe it is also long enough for the first summary.

As for the upsides, no doubt there are plenty of them…

(+) Unlike the Employer, the New Factory has a clear strategy, ambition and vision how it wants develop and grow. Its senior executive are “right men for the job”. Whenever a problem is identified, solution to it is sought immediately.

(+) The New Factory is client-oriented and these are not only hollow words. Unlike most corporations whose employees can be busy all day doing presentations, analyses and reports, without having to focus on clients’ needs, the New Factory centres around its clients, who simply constitute its source of income, while reporting is whittled down to bare minimum.

(+) There is little tolerance for loafing about, incompetence, unreliability – in contrast to how the Employer put up with employees lazing away (this also contributed to me being worn down by that job), the New Factory enforces work efficiency.

(+) There is no culture of staying overtime – you are expected to work smart and efficiently during your working hours. Of course from time to time it is necessary to stay longer to close the deal, but this happens in every private company.

(+) The New Factory invests in its employees and their development – so far I have participated in more trainings than the Employer sent me to over almost four years.

(+) From financial perspective only, the improvement is visible. Not only earnings are above-market, but job security seems higher and perks are more generous.

Yet the benefits are counter-balanced by downsides…

(-) People…

(-) People…

(-) And once again people. To be fair it has to be stressed most people I work with are quite decent, but the atmosphere in the organisation is spoilt by the ‘less decent’ minority and the majority of decent folks re suppressed by overwhelming skurwienie (I have coined the term to describe with one word the state of mind of some employees and  relationships between people).

(-) Skurwienie can manifest itself in several ways:

- a new employee cannot reckon on much support from fellow colleagues and for sure not for voluntary support and I mean early days of new job, not to mention later,

- whenever you go on holiday or are sick do not expect someone will look after your stuff,

- if you generally are helpful to other people, colleagues perceive it as not as genuine help, but as an attempt to show your manager you can do something better than the person you want to lend a helping hand to,

- the atmosphere of rat race is devastating, one’s success is frequently pursued at the expense of other team members,

- your slip-up is a reason for your colleagues to be cheerful,

- all in all, end justifies the means,

- actually you can have a frank conversation with a person, but this only can be an eye-to-eye talk. If three people gather around, atmosphere of mistrust creeps in.

(-) The relationship with the boss is nowhere as good as with my boss at the Employer’s. With my previous boss, we were exactly on the same wavelength and I would not overstate if I said we understood each other without words. Here, it is exactly the other way round. Even if my boss and I communicate in plain Polish, communication is poor. The other story is that my boss is kind of dim-witted, she fails to comprehend many straightforward issues (other team members encounter the same problem) and whenever she does not understand something, she flies off the handle quickly and the situation gets only worse. If she has to deal with really intricate issues, I suppose she only pretends she understand what she is being told, since asking any question would only lay bare her glaring incompetence. Fortunately, since the beginning of February, a line manager has stepped in between my boss and me, so my interactions with the boss will be less frequent. I consider this change positive. The relationship with my line manager is even better than correct, however she still keeps her distance and seems to be wary of me.

(-) Overall contempt to other people displayed by my boss and some of team members. All other people are stupid, can do nothing right, their work is worth nothing, etc. Only their performance and outcomes of their work are superior.

What I described above does not afflict the whole New Factory. Skurwienie is characteristic to the team I have landed in. From my sounding ahead of the decision to change the job I learnt it would be nasty and it is. Since early August two people have left my team and continue their careers in other units of the New Factory. Efforts to hire new ones go in vain, since either candidates do not live up to my boss’ exorbitant expectations, or if they somehow pass muster, eventually they refuse to take up the new job, because it is known on the market this place (this team) ‘stinks’.

(-) Mutual control mechanism… Back at the Employer’s there was a unit dedicated to control the quality of your work. Once in a quarter they picked up sample of what has been produced by a specific team, put it under a microscope to look out for the tiniest errors employees made and produced merciless reports. Nobody liked them, but it was their function in the company. Here control and audit functions are kept within the team which means in regular time intervals you have to inspect what your colleagues do and pick over their mistakes. It is all done in order to ensure superior work quality. Needless to say such practices definitely enhance good atmosphere…

(-) The general disorder. Maybe it is because the strategic investor of the New Factory is from Southern Europe, maybe also because of people. There are details that wind up me such as lack of templates for frequently used documents, lack of neatness in document layouts, etc., too flexible procedures and inadequate enforcement of them. I try to combat this stuff and in my own work I have set myself higher standards and recently it has even been appreciated.

Despite more than getting by and with prospects of getting ahead, I do not see myself in the New Factory in the long-term. I can do my bit well, I will not fit in with the atmosphere of skurwienie, in which I will never feel comfortably. Being a misfit and working in unfriendly atmosphere, in unhealthy relationships lowers an employee’s motivation and leads to faster burnout. With thicker skin and having grown somewhat immune to skurwienie, I will soldier on here for a year or two more. What dissuades me from taking hasty decisions, apart from short stints looking bad in a CV, is that finding a satisfying job in the industry is a challenging task – people hold on to places where it is good, while job openings appear for positions in places where it stinks and staff turnover is high. Faced with a choice to stay in a shitty (in terms of atmosphere) place with which I am already familiar or swapping it for another place with a possibly shitty atmosphere, having to work overtime and for less money, I reasonably opt for the former…

To the ones for who I’m better off

At times when nothings turns out the way I would like to, when life seems and endless way uphill, when again I feel out of luck, I try to put my problems into a different perspective, to discern how trifling they are compared to other people’s predicaments. I am dedicating this post to (order totally random):

- the ones who have experienced any kind of material deprivation,
- the homeless,
- orphans, or semi-orphans, who have sold at least one of their parents in their childhood or youth,
- the disabled and their families,
- the blind, the deaf,
- the ones who have not had the luck to be born in a democratic country,
- the ones who have taken out a 100% LtV mortgage loan in CHF in first half of 2008 and are now stuck with outstanding debt twice as high as market value of their property (suckers…)
- culprits of traffic accidents,
- the ones who have to commute longer distances than me and travel in less convenient conditions,
- the ones who have never been abroad,
- the ones who haven’t been clever enough to get in to a renowned university,
- the ones who, despite their brightness could earn a university degree, but come from such poor families that it has been out of reach for them,
- the ones who have lost more than equivalent of their two monthly salaries on the stock market,
- the ones who have been through a bereavement after a departure of a close relative or friend for reasons other than old age,
- the ones who have suffered famine or, thirst,
- the ones who suffer from incurable diseases,
- senile old people the ones who are no longer self-supporting,
- the ones who have never experienced a reciprocated love,
- those who have hurt someone else really badly,
- the ones who have no savings,
- the ones who will never afford to buy their own property or a new car,
- the imprisoned,
- those forsaken or rejected by family and friends on account of being different,
- the mentally ill,
- those suffering from cancer,
- the ones who earn less than me (sounds absurdly, but it refers to over 80% of Poles employed under job contracts),
- the unemployed (especially graduates),
- those who will be fired in the coming year and have no financial resources to fall back on, or have financial liabilities to fulfil,
- students from poor families the ones who have to save on everything to pay for their education
- everyone who barely makes ends meet,
- live in countries where free speech is forbidden,
- the ones whose job does not bring them satisfaction,
- families of addicts,
- the ones who have lived through warfare,
- those who have run up debts they will be paying off till the end of their days,
- children bullied by their parents,
- the ones not capable of mastering a foreign language to a level of fluency,
- the ones who have to look after their ill relatives day and night,
- the ones who cannot have children, but want offspring like nothing on earth,
- who have lost all their belongings in a natural disaster,
- the obese,
- the (secondary) illiterate,
- those who cannot afford to go on holiday and spend it at home (more than 50% of working Poles),
- the ones who have been libelled or slandered,
- the ones whose mistakes led to irreparable losses (including human lives),
- the ones who have complexes on account of their appearance or cannot stand their own reflection in the mirror,
- blue-collar workers who have to plug away outside when in temperatures of –15C or +30C,
- exploited workers, underpaid for their job.

So every time when your life is not a bed of roses, think it could be much worse and think how much you can still lose. The list above could be longer, but based on the above, over 90% of people in my country have it worse than me. I keep it in mind and the awareness of this holds me back from griping about my fate. If your life is not ideal, judge, whether you have more to lose or to win. Be happy with what you have, take pleasure in everything you can, grasp every small joy, look at the bright side of life. Be aware there are billions of people worse-off and try to sympathise with them.