A tired single mother in a boring kitchen

A tired woman in a boring kitchen who is being interviewed about her problematic teenagers. That's my picture of a single mother.

I never wanted to become a single mother in a boring kitchen. It wasn't my plan. But now I'm there. My face looks tired in the mirror. Any problem of my children is my fault. I am not kidding. If they do well they have good genes.

Everything I do is wrong. But I actually do remember what it was like to be a teenager. It was pretty awful. What can I do to help? Do I do the right things?

No, I don't. Because I'm living my own life, with my own issues.

Now I can replace the picture of the single mother in the boring kitchen with a picture of myself, a tired mother who has gotten used to take own decisions and to get all the blame.

Hanging in the air

Sometimes I prefer writing to talking. Especially when the person I'd like to communicate with isn't around. But if you meet someone face to face and ask a question, you usually get some sort of answer.
There is nothing I hate more than writing to someone in an important matter and not getting any answer.

It is hard to read people's minds. Especially at a distance. It is very difficult to guess what someone was thinking when they have read my mail and decided not to answer. Didn't they know the answer, didn't they think it was a relevant question, didn't I express myself clear enough, did they think the question was stupid or do they think I'm insane? Or did they just not prioritize to answer? When it comes to everyday issues I might forget what I was writing about. But sometimes it feels like my question is hanging in the air, unanswered.

I do hate when managers don't bother to answer questions that are important to me. Guess I have too high expectations.

A bitch or a girl?

Of course I know women and men are treated differently. But this is the first time in my life I work with men who don't bother to hide how they count women's work completely different from men's work.

A fairly young man who expresses "oh, I'm in a meeting with only women" and afterwards to a male colleague "you should have heard them, those women how they went on" has he only been working with men before? Another man is talking about a couple of women having responsibility as "the girls" while he respectfully uses the name of the man in the same organization who has got less responsibility.

It's a feeling. I am meeting an attitude that I'm not used to meet. Am I really not used to it? Maybe I'm just older and notices details. Maybe I just want some respect.

What their attitude does to me? I get focused. I play their game. I try to be a man in their world.

I'm rather a bitch than a girl.

My life as an e-consumer

It seems 2012 is the year when I'm seriously becoming an e-citizen. I've a using an internet bank for ages, but earlier I bought things in stores, talking to a sales person and touching the goods. These are my surprising experiences so far.

Going to stores and ask for particular books is a waste of time nowadays. Since most people order books online they don't keep a large selection in the stores any longer. The other day, when I ordered two packages of books made of papers in a famous online store, I realized that the delivery of the books was completely different. The large package was quickly delivered to a tobacco, and I received an SMS when I could fetch it. The smaller package was sent by snailmail and I first received an SMS when the post received the package. It took five more days before I received another SMS telling me that the package had arrived. I guess the postman had to bring it out to my door and to find out that the package was too large to get through my door. I rather get my stuff quickly delivered somewhere I can fetch it.

I also needed to upgrade some of my whitegoods for the kitchen. After looking around I knew what functionality I wanted and also what particular brands I preferred. Asking for those items in the stores gave me funny answers. Two different chains they told me one item wasn't possible to buy in that particular combination of brand and features, and the other item would be terrible expensive and not as good as the stuff they had in the store. 

The truth was that the first item was possible to buy online and it was even a sales success in an online store. The other item I found in one of the chains online store, and it turned out not to be at all that expensive (30% of the price they told me) and to have better technical features than the stuff they tried to sell me in both stores. 

The conclusion is that it is safer to buy things online, where you can compare functionality, prices and availability than in old fashioned stores where sales people just try to sell whatever they have. I feel sorry for the old people who still go to stores and for the innocent consumers who trust sales people to tell the truth. 

How to speed up long meetings

Today I was invited to a two hour meeting to discuss something I'm interested in. Something I've been driving, without having the formal authority to actually make it happen. However I didn't want to discuss it for two hours. I knew the questions that would be raised, and I knew exactly what the outcome should be; some decisions. So I prepared and asked if I could run the meeting.

We need to take a few decisions, I said. This is the first thing we need to decide upon and here are the alternatives... Do you know what happened? Were people happy for my preparation, so they didn't sit around and discuss for hours?

Guess...
One person objected "first we need to define the words, what do we mean with... ".
There is nothing I hate more than people who want to define the words. Most of the time everybody know very well the meaning of normal words.

The same person didn't want to take a simple decision without claiming "we don't have a strategy for this". A strategy means that consensus is needed which usually includes other people who aren't present.

Well, the meeting took less than an hour.
Next time I'll make sure to bring Swedish Academy's Dictionary, if someone feels like discussing the meaning of words...

Networking...??

Today I've found out that networking isn't really my bag. A person I know from a women's network asked me out for lunch. It was pretty nice, but when I think about it she actually managed to explain that she didn't want to be my friend, and she didn't appreciate my ways. She still thought I should help her to increase her business! It seems nowadays people want to see me because I've got a job. I rather meet with those who tried to help me when I was looking for an employment.