Missing Work
I used to work. I left IBM at the end of 2015. I’d worked for them for about fifteen years. It’s about fifteen years because they included the time that I worked for other companies that IBM acquired. It’s like Matryoshka dolls. Inside my IBM career are my careers at ISS and Network ICE.
None were really careers. That’s the polite, modern terms for my employment episodes. I sort of miss the employment. If not missing it is zero and missing it is one hundred, I miss it about 27.6. I can assign percentages to that 27.6 rating.
60% of that number is missing the paycheck.
18% is missing the health benefits.
12% is missing the routines.
5% is missing the work.
5% is about missing the people and/or teamwork.
It’s sorry that it breaks down like this but my job had morphed into something bureaucratic, with few challenges, over five years ago. While a member of several teams, what that meant in practical terms was that I sat in on calls and listened 96% of the time, speaking 4% of the time on those calls. Calls accounted for about 30% of my work week, so I listened a lot, spoke little, and spent most of my time alone, reading and answering emails, analyzing problems, planning solutions, writing summaries, and entering information in various systems.
While working there, I no longer received pay raises, or miniscule raises, because I maxed out the amount for my band and geographic area years ago. I did receive a small bonus every year, and the reminder that I was fortunate to have a job in these tough economic times in America. Resource actions, where people’s employment was terminated, were regular, and it wasn’t surprising to find someone I worked with was no longer with the corporation. My morale wasn’t very high. 0-100, I’d put it at 11 when 2015 began. That’s where it stayed for my final year.
But I miss that routine, sometimes, of getting up early and calling into somewhere. I felt most connected then. I worked remotely, that is, from my house, almost three hundred miles from my campus. I visited ‘the old campus’, in Beaverton, Oregon, once. My team was based in Atlanta, Georgia, in the Eastern US time zone, while I’m in the Pacific time zone, a three hour difference. When they started the day at 8:30 AM, I had to call in at 5:30 AM, a dark and cold time in Oregon’s winter. I hadn’t seen any team members for a few years.
I enjoyed the routine of rising and plodding through the dark house, dressing, going into the office and turning on my equipment. Getting on the calls, I’d announce myself, check emails for critical matters, review my lists of things to do and my deadlines, and then listen to the call as I fed the cats, did things around the house, and made and ate breakfast.
It’s lighter now, on summer’s cusp, in the mornings. Because I’m an early riser, I find myself up at 5:30 on many days. It’s a hard habit to break, but I can accuse the cats for some of that early rising. And sometimes, I need to pause and remind myself, there is no work computer to turn on, no emails to check, no meetings to call into. There’s only me and the cats, and the day awakening outside.
Going Backwards
I dreamed I was going backwards last night.
It wasn’t a bad feeling, going backwards, although I was in a car, actually occupying the driver seat, and it wasn’t my car, but belonged to my late father-in-law, and it was a Prius, which I think is beyond what he would own. He was a Jeep man, fond of hunting and fishing.
But let’s step back to the dream.
I dream a lot. I don’t know the averages for people. Dreaming is a self-reported matter. According to people who study people, people aren’t reliable about self-reporting matters, and those are the people who would know.
My pa-in-law died in December of 1991, an intelligent, personable man from southern WV. A friend recently died, prompting me to think of friends, pets and relatives who have left one plane for another, but I don’t think that’s what this dream was about.
I was visiting him at his home, which, being a dream, wasn’t the home where he usually lives. I think dream experts tell us that dream houses represent ourselves. So do cars.
Which brings me to the car. Visiting my in-law, Jim, I gathered I was to drive his silver Prius (not the latest generation, but the last generation of car…an interesting side-bar, which could merit more inspection for its meaning in the dream), following a person driving another Prius that belonged to Jim (and, huh, also silver, it WAS the latest model). I thought we were going fishing. Fishing with Jim was a relaxing, meditative pastime, and a favorite. I miss fishing with Jim.
So I’m sitting in the Prius driver seat, waiting for the other fellow, when the car starts rolling backward. Jim and the others notice, frantically motioning for me to stop it. Of course, that’s what I want to do, but I’m unfamiliar with the car and don’t know where the brake is.
Can you believe that?
I think that confusion over something as simple as braking a modern car could be something to ponder.
Meanwhile, the car rolls down the driveway and into the street as I attempt to figure out what to do. Then, it stops.
That was enough for Jim. Like a TV sitcom, the next scene shows me being driven in the other Prius, indignant about being stripped of my right to drive another’s car. And then I arrive at a business and discover that I’m to intern there. Mildly astonished, I’m dressed in the sort of California Silicon Valley business cas that I wore for years so that’s not a problem. I also brought another pair of shoes, so I can take off my Nikes and put on something dressier, which I do. Wow, what strange forethought.
This isn’t a start up but a plush and modern office space. A guy is there, playing with a radio controlled electric car, racing it over the carpet. I watch him for a few moments before deciding I need to pee. Going to the first bathroom, I realize that their symbols for the bathroom’s sex are foreign to me (and they’re symbols, not letters). After looking at one, I go to the other restroom. There, I hear someone urinating. I think it sounds like a man so I begin entering. Two women exiting the restroom jokingly re-direct me. One knows who I am and why I’m there, and tells me she’ll inform HR that I’m there.
An HR woman arrives and tells me to go with her. But I can’t, I want to get my shoes, and also, where are my sunglasses? Ah, my shoes are on my feet and my sunglasses are in my hand.
A dream trend is developing.
I apologize for being there, explaining that I didn’t know that my father-in-law was going to set me up to intern, and get ready to tell my work history – twenty years in the USAF, a few years with different medical device start-ups, and then NetworkICE, ISS and IBM that culminates in another twenty years of work. The HR woman asks if my wife is coming. No, why would my wife be coming? She’s hoping she was because she liked her the last time. What? There’s discussion about my wife and her name and when she was there. That’s when the dream slides out of my awareness.
And now I see it all. The dream is about my confusion. What confusion? I’m not certain. See, the essence of being confused is that you’re unclear ’bout what’s going on.
I bet why I’m confused will come to me later, after I sleep on it.
Michael Seidel, writer 