Restructuring

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It’s one of those sad days where your company takes a different direction, which results in many of your colleagues involuntarily leaving. I can honestly say that I’ve been through a lot of layoffs over the last nine-plus years, one of which directly affected me, but I’ve never felt as sad as I felt today, probably because I never cared as much as I do now — both about the people and the company. We let go of some extremely smart and talented people in our office today.

And because our office in New York is already so small compared to San Francisco, it’ll be a drastically different place to come to work to tomorrow.

Workplace

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Last week while having a Cuban dinner in Miami, one of my colleagues and I got into an argument. We weren’t yelling or raising our voices, but it was obvious we were having a huge disagreement around roles and responsibilities, and who should be speaking about what during our scheduled Friday meeting with a customer. I tried really hard to be controlled and not to make this a personal issue, and in the end, we eventually did come to a semi consensus and let the meeting go where it went. Today, he called me to discuss follow-up items from the meeting, who should take charge of what, and also… to apologize for arguing with me. He said he wasn’t in a good head space, was having some personal issues (I recently learned that one of his best friends died from cancer), and that he was a bit scatter brained as a result and inadvertently took it out on me and didn’t mean to.

I’ve had a couple heated arguments at my last job, a company and job I never truly respected, and they were always hostile, rooted in sexism, probably racism, and hierarchical bullshit that I’ll never quite agree with. They never, ever ended in an apology, not even the slightest, even when the other person was clearly out of line and overstepped his bounds (and even got called into HR for a formal talk). The people, particularly the men in inflated roles, never really had any self-awareness, and they refused to admit they were wrong.

I will probably have many more disagreements with colleagues while I am here… because I am not a doormat, and that’s okay as long as everyone is still smart, ambitious, respectful, and driven to do the right thing, and wants the best for this business. I kind of believe that really is the case here. I never believed that to be the case where I left. It’s almost like I’m so much more grateful for what I have now because I always had to deal with so much garbage at the last place. When I get mad at work now, it’s rarely because I think people are stupid. It’s never because I think they are sexist (I have yet to feel even an inkling of that). This feels like a good place.

Preparing food

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Even though Chris would be leaving for a work trip today, I still wanted to make use of the leftover potatoes I had from a few weeks ago and make an egg curry, but I felt it was probably going to be too much food for just me to eat on my own. So I decided to invite two of my friends over to join me. Since I had more company, there were more things I could make, like the garam-masala roasted broccoli and cauliflower dish using my own mixed and roasted garam masala, and the Indian-style roasted eggplant that turned out really good and super spicy. The more people you have, the more variety you can have because more mouths will eat it. Otherwise, I’d be eating egg curry every single day this week.

We’ve been discussing flight plans at work, which also asks questions about what you’re generally passionate about outside of the “work place.” I love preparing food for people, and I really like seeing their reactions to my cooking. I get a kick out of their facial expressions, and oftentimes, even with my closest friends, I’m surprised by what they really really love vs. like. One of my friends who came over tonight said his favorite thing on the table was the mashed eggplant. I wasn’t expecting that at all from him, but I think he said it was because of how many spices there were in it, and how hot it was (it used fresh chilies and chili powder).

What We’re Up Against

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Tonight, we went with some friends to see a show at the Women’s Project Theater called What We’re Up Against, which is about the blatant sexism faced by the two women at a small architectural firm in the 1990s. The most enraging part of it is the “bro culture” and the blatant sexism that gets swept under the rug. The most disturbing part of it is that today, that’s still tolerated, and the most passive and subtle forms of sexism are so hard to define, but we just know it when we experience it. Like the sexism I faced at my last company, when you write it down on paper, it doesn’t seem so glaring. It’s very subtle. It’s like the time when my ex company’s former female legal counsel left (because of sexism), and she got replaced by a male friend and lawyer of the company’s president, my (male) colleague said to me that our ex-female legal counsel “just didn’t get it. She just didn’t know what she was doing. But (new male legal counsel) just gets it. He’s a dude (I kid you not — there was real emphasis on this word in his speech)! He just knows how to do this!” Oh, really? She just didn’t get it? But this man does, not only because he’s “bros” with the president, but also because… he’s a “dude“?

You try proving in a court of law that that was an example of sexism. You’d probably lose. But we both know that was sexism. This is one of many problems we face today even when we have it so much better than the many generations of women before us who got us to this “privileged” state.

Stressful

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I’ve been a little stressed this week because I had two meetings scheduled today with customers that we were ill prepared for, primarily because a colleague on my end didn’t really do his part in organizing the content, so I went to sleep last night feeling very uneasy.  In the end, both meetings went well, but I woke up this morning from a nightmare that really put me in a worse mood.

I dreamt that I was at my parents’ house, and we were all having a family meal together. Ed came home with a guy… who he announced was actually his boyfriend. I suppose this was his way of “coming out” to us. My parents were shocked and angry, and basically ignored the presence of Ed’s boyfriend. And the little bits of interaction they had with him, they were extremely rude and passive aggressive. It was not a fun meal.

Once he left, the screaming began. My mom screamed louder than I could remember, saying that he was already a screwup, but now he’s gay and bringing home men? My dad’s heard in the background, name-calling Ed. And Ed yelled back until he couldn’t take it anymore and ran into the bedroom and slammed the door. I followed him and comforted him as he sobbed in my chest. “It’s okay,” I soothed him, rubbing his back and holding his head. “We’re going to get you out of here. I won’t let them hurt you anymore. Fuck them. You’re going to survive this. We’re moving you out of here.” We started to pack his bags, and since we locked the door, our mom tried to enter the room but couldn’t. She banged on the door over and over, and we refused to let her in. “I’m not letting you in here to destroy Ed!” I screamed through the door. “I’m getting him out of here, and you can scream all you want! You can’t do anything! LEAVE ED ALONE!”

I think I’m going to have dreams like this until the end of my life. They will never end for me.

Delusional expectations

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I was on the phone with my mom, and she asked if Chris had any upcoming work travel given I’ve been traveling this week. I told her that he’s going to be in San Francisco all week next week for his company’s annual conference. Her voice lit up. She said, “Oh, he is? Well if he is, we should get together for dinner at least one night. Tell him.” I told her that he won’t have time to see her because he’ll be consumed with conference events. But what I really wanted to say, which I held back by literally holding my breath a few times, was, “Dinner together? You want to have dinner together with the man whose house you recently threw knives in, and who you said you didn’t have to respect because he’s ‘black’?”

Not all of us have amnesia and just forget stupid shit that she says. Ed never got over the hurtful words she and our dad used to say to him repeatedly over and over, throughout the course of his entire short life. And now he’s dead, and she’s wondering what went wrong. REALLY? YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED????

I don’t want him seeing them.

Seasonal blues

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For 18 years of my life, I had no idea what the changing four seasons meant. The weather never shifted dramatically in San Francisco, save for the few-day mini heat waves we’d experience, or the slightly elevated temperatures during our Indian summer between September and October every year. As I have spent more and more time on the East Coast, having just surpassed nine years living in New York and 13 years living on the East Coast, I think every time the weather starts turning from summer to autumn, I start becoming a little bit gloomier and more resistant to getting out of bed every day. I hate the cooling temperatures, the impending knowledge that right around the corner, the snow will be coming and the all the disgusting ice and muddy slush that follows it. I feel like either hibernating in my apartment under my covers, or taking every opportunity I can to run off to the warmer climates of the Southern Hemisphere at this time of year.

Genetically, some people are supposedly more predisposed to getting “seasonal depression” or seasonal affective disorder. Their bodies just don’t adjust as readily to the changes in temperature and weather. It’s not totally a mental block; it’s also partly physical, too. Your body starts physically rejecting the changes by making you more tired, eat a lot more or a lot less, sleep more. I feel like that this week. I wonder if there’s a way to test for that via our genetic testing that we’ve participated in. I wonder how predisposed I am?

AFSP fundraising update

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I sent out my fundraising update email this past weekend. I think it’s a good thing to do, to update your donors to let them know if you met your goal, and by how much. Most people don’t respond, which is fine, but it’s nice to know that the people who do read the updates care.

Two of my colleagues emailed me to let me know how moved they were by my fundraising update. One said that he reached out to a dear friend of his who he knew was struggling with depression. Another said he was struggling himself and found it inspiring that I would “bear your soul.” He said he found it so shocking how brutally honest I was.

I’m just being myself. We spend so much of our time trying to be a certain way around certain groups of people in our lives. When it comes to the way I grew up and my experiences with my brother, I can’t be bothered to mask anything or spend time fabricating stories. I rather just say what I want to say. I’m settled in my thoughts and emotions. If other people can’t handle it, then it’s really their problem to deal with and confront.

Glamping

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Our team is going to unite with our San Francisco counterparts the last week of November for a “glamping” team-bonding retreat. What this means is that we will all be driving about 1.5 hours south of the city to a retreat camp, and sharing bedrooms with about four beds each.

As soon as all three of us learned this in the New York office, we looked over our monitors at each other and grimaced a bit. We’re city people. We like our own spaces, the limited amounts that we have. The idea of sharing a room with anyone not a close friend or Chris makes me a bit uneasy, especially now that I am in my thirties. I embrace my alone time and my time away from “outside people,” as my mother says.

This just means that in my single night hotel stays between the glamping outing, I will be savoring my room even more now.

Body aches

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And the day after having our friends over for dinner and too much drinking, I have woken up with massive body aches. This is just a sign I am getting older and cannot recover the way I used to.

Or maybe this is a sign that I should have followed my doctor’s instructions to stay away from alcohol, especially in the evenings, two weeks after I stopped taking antacids and Tums for my laryngopharyngeal reflux. My body is rebelling against all this alcohol, and now it’s making me feel decrepit and achy everywhere.