Shhh, You Don't See Me Here

So I've completed the in-class training requirements and am now hiding in my office, wanting desperately to sneak out with the justification that the schedule said the class would go until 4pm which meant that you weren't expecting me to come back so you won't miss me now...right?

I have stumbled into a bushel of stuff that all suddenly need attention at once, all of which I am genuinely interested in doing and doing very well, and all of which demand more time than exists in this summer. This situation is compounded by people who enjoy playing games. I haven't found one work environment yet where politics doesn't slowly creep in, or quickly rush in. Through a series of other people's actions, I have found myself in the middle of a situation where the only loser could be me. In order to come out relatively unscathed, I'll need to get good quickly at reading between the lines, or guessing what someone really means.

I'm horrible at this game. I think this is why I have difficulty in the dating world. I try to state my intentions in a straight-forward manner. For instance, "do you want to come over for dinner?" actually means "would you like to come over to the geographical location of where my house is located and eat food", not "come over and you'll only see the bedroom after which I'll introduce you to my family so we can start the wedding plans and decide where we'll put the nursery." Okay, this is an extreme example stemming from the fact that I'm sensitive right now. A better example would be when I say that the policy states you cannot receive a reimbursement for an expense that does not benefit the University, I don't mean "I'm not processing your reimbursement because your not on my side." Trying to guess what people really mean is too distracting for me, I take it to extremes and come up with some guesses that are way off. This is why I really appreciate people who state exactly what they mean. This also comes from growing up in a passive/aggressive family where the only truth can be found in a brief moment of an unguarded facial expression.

So....what was my point? I don't remember anymore. I'm stuck in the "speak plainly" gear.

On another completely different note, I caught one segment of 60 Minutes this weekend which talked about how Denmark contains the happiest people on earth. Being that it was only a 20 minute segment, I feel that there were way too many factors not considered such as housing and food prices, the state of public transportation, and a few others needed before one could get an accurate picture of whether you could move to Denmark and become happy. But it did raise an interesting question of what it takes to be happy. Money didn't seem to be on the list. While 50% of Dane's incomes are taxed, they also get free health care, elder care, 6 weeks of vacation and on average, work 37 hours a week. They generally don't own big, expensive things like fancy cars or boats because they don't have a lot of disposable income left after taxes but then again, they don't seem to need it to be happy. If you don't have to worry about hospital stays or who'll take care of you when you get old, then I could see how you'd be a lot happier. I would. The main reason I want more money is to save for the day when I won't be able to work and will have to pay someone to take care of me. That and a house with an upstairs....I really want a house with more than one level. The idea of taking the stairs up to bed makes me happy. Also, the idea of carpeting the stairs and sliding down them makes me happy too.

I was thinking about what would make me happy as I was trying to scrounge my way through the weekend without going over my budget when I decided that a fire pit would really make me happy and budget be damned, I bought a fire pit. I haven't used it yet but just knowing it's there makes me happy. Now I just need to get my hands on a Korg and happiness will abound.