A Chronicle of my Changing Times.

Servicing the Account...

Over the next couple days I will be doing some organizational updates to my blog.  This especially relates to the My Links section.  Since, to be honest, I'm not all that sure of myself in working with the template of the blog I’m going to be posting a series of links as posts and then redirecting my links section to the links of these blog entries.  Bear with me for a day or so…  

In related news, I’m also going to be making attempts at getting pictures added to the blog.  Don’t know how well this will go, but supposedly it’s relatively easy once you get the hang of it.  We’ll see, but I want to be able to share more of Bulgaria with everyone – so I’ll go ahead and take one for the team.

And of course, there’s a lot going on to update – so be patient and keep checking back.

Yours,

The Management
(aka The Powers That Be, or TPTB)
(aka Me!)

Posted by: mjmarble at February 28, 2005 00:18 | link | comments

Resignation

On Thursday, my supervisor came up to me and asked for my resignation letter.  I guess they want to start the process for replacing me and couldn’t put in a requisition until they had formal notification from me that I was leaving.  So I resisted all urges to put “So long suckers” and typed up a two line letter making it official.  My last day of working will be March 31st. 

I think it’s a good idea to remember what it is that I detest about my job so much.  Maybe during my deepest darkest hours over in Bulgaria I can pull this entry up and recall why I have it so much better having left this place.  I’ve been warned by multiple sources that there will be very acute ups and downs whilst I’m there.  I think it’s good to know about before hand that way I can do things like this to try and prepare myself mentally for what lies ahead.

My day usually starts off with me running late (mostly due to my staying up late every night).  I usually give myself 15-20 minutes from when I get out of bed until I’m pulling out of my driveway.  The drive in is a 45 minute exercise in frustration with me doing my best to speed without getting caught and avoiding getting behind slow people.  Since the vast majority of my drive is on a freeway, it’s pretty mind numbing.

I get to work in time to sign in on my phone before my 8:00 start time, but usually don’t really make myself available to take calls until 8:10 when I’m finally fully logged onto my computer.  My computer seems to get progressively slower every day I’m at work.  Once upon a time it was the newest one on the floor.  The problem with that is that since all the other computers have since been replaced, it’s now the oldest on the floor.  That in and of itself wouldn’t be bad if being the oldest didn’t make it over 4 years old.  There’s things I know I could do to it to make it faster, but it’s a corporate computer and consequentially I can’t download any silly things like spyware protection. 

I have six systems I use on a daily basis for work.  Over the last year there’s been an increase in the powers that be forcing new passwords down my throat.  Now it seems like I have to create a new one every 6 weeks or so.  That’s probably one of my biggest pet peeves.  On a day to day basis I usually end up having about 5 additional web browsers opened in addition to those other programs.  One day my computer will just start smoking and I will be forced to chuck it across the floor.

The first hour is usually my favorite.  The people I sit around usually end up talking about one of two things – either sports (football or baseball), or a television show from the previous night.  Lately there’s a lot of talk about American Idol, Lost, The Apprentice, The Amazing Race, and The OC.  On Friday’s breakfast is brought in by some of the LFS’s.  This usually consists of bagels, which I tend to hate.  Sometimes doughnuts or muffins are included.

My job is to talk to people (aka participants) who had 401k’s through a previous employer.  I’m to explain options and tax consequences and send out paperwork as needed.  I also sell IRA’s to those people who are interested and qualify.  This is actually the major thrust of the department.  Now, when properly motivated and in a good frame of mind I do a very good job of this.  This is especially good considering that I get paid an commission based incentive on top of my base salary – so the more I sell the more I get paid.  Unfortunately, in all honesty, I long ago burnt out on being on the phones.

Of course, there’s also a huge customer service aspect to this job.  I check the status of distributions for people.  I take overnight information, resend paperwork, and key distributions for those whose 401k’s offer verbal requests for distributions.  Yes, after about 20 calls of customer service type issues – my mind tends to just go numb.

On busy days management will bring in lunches for us so that we can work without break.  It’s a wonderful concept – getting a free lunch along with the hour of overtime.  But when you’re already burned out the thought of being tied to your desk for an extra hour a day is it’s own special circle of hell.  I also partially blame my weight gain over the past 5 years to having phone attached to my ear 8 hours a day and limiting my movement to a 3 foot radius around my desk.

Now, you must understand that many call center representatives go through burn out.  Many times people can work through this burnout.  Some just are unable to do so.  There are people who quit after a week or so of training.  There are people who try to stick it out and after a year switch jobs to another part of the bank.  I had one friend who had ulcers and ended up in therapy due to the job.  Some are able to push through the burnout wall and keep working.

I originally started in the customer service side of my companies own 401k plan in order to get a series 6 & 63 license.  The hope was that I could quickly become a Financial Specialist and make big money.  Unfortunately for me my department got outsourced due to a merger.  I was lucky in that I was able to switch over to the customer service side that serviced external clients after being unable to secure another job with the bank.  There were some side issues involved that held me back.  After about 6 months I managed to be tapped to start a new department handling stock options.  After a year of this I moved over (and up) to my current position where I’ve been for the last 18 months.

Why tell all this?  Whilst I’ve moved around a bit, I have been with the greater department, and more importantly, on the phones for over four years now.  There is not a single person who has been there as long as I have.  Or at least been there and still answering the phones.  There’s a few who were in my current position until a little less than a year ago.  But they now are the ones I send IRA leads in order to open accounts.  Whilst the manager has remained the same jerk, almost all the supervisors have left.  I’ve worked through and pushed past more walls than I can count.

If all had worked out as I had planned from the start – I would have left the company last November.  But alas I’m still answering calls.  And it sucks hearing that beep when a new call comes in.  And it sucks having the same conversation for the 50th time in a given day.  And it sucks being stuck in a corporate environment where you’re a number and not a person.  And it sucks that I sometimes answer my cell phone, “Distribution Support, this is Michael, how may I help you?”

I actually have a fantasy where I walk along the bridge that connects my building and the parking deck on my last day.  I’ve imagined that day for years now.  The good news?  The sun rises every day.  I can see the end of my time at the bank now.

And the best part is that it’s not just an end to my time there, but the beginning of something wonderful and new…


 

Posted by: mjmarble at February 26, 2005 23:45 | link | comments (2)

 A wasted day in the life...

Today was the first of the lasts.  This was the last paid holiday off from my job.  So I decided to use it really poorly and made it an unproductive, but fun, day.  After being up to all hours typing up my previous post I slept in this morning.  I got up at noon, just in time to skidaddle over to the movie theater and see Constantine.  The movie wasn’t bad – but it wasn’t good either.  It was Keanu Reeves in a religious horror movie.  I liked it, but I’m a sucker for the genre.

I came home and was sucked into a chat with a PCV in Bulgaria.  I realized that the world doesn’t stop turning whilst I sleep, no matter when I sleep.   I’ve got a number of people I’m looking forward to meeting once I get over the pond.  It’ll be good to finally put faces and personalities with emails and online chats.

When I finally pulled myself away I realized I hadn’t eaten yet, and also had forgotten I scheduled a time with my best friend to call and catch up.   I totally missed his call – but we were able to talk for a bit, regardless whilst he walked to Yoga class.  And no, he’s not doing Yoga just to meet women.  He’s already got a wonderful woman.

As I hung up with him my sister called asking if I was on my way over for dinner or if I’d forgot.  Of course I hadn’t forgot dinner with my goddaughter.  Yeah.  So I managed to get my arse over there before Jenna wasted away.  I even got to spend some time watching PUPPIES! (ie. 101 Dalmatians) before helping to give her a bath.  Feel free to remind me should I ever have kids that bath time goes a lot smoother if you have those washable Crayola finger-paints for bathtime.

I then spent some quality time with my mom showing her fun things like AIM (so we can keep in contact when I’m in Bulgaria), Webshots, iTunes, Yahoo mail, and the wonders of Firefox instead of Internet Explorer.  I think I’ve got her up to 2002 technology – almost.  I also bought myself a LL Bean bookbag for daily use in Bulagaria and beyond.

I finally settle down to watch Medium and relax a bit when my friend Amy calls to chat.  Putting her off until 11, I finished up Medium (hey – I needed to relax).  After catching up with her, I tossed some button down shirts in the dryer to get rid of the wrinkles they got by me not hanging them up properly the first time.  Now I’m trying to finish up this blog before midnight so I can have it post to today.

Why am I writing this all out?  Just to have a record of a wasted day in the life.  It’s good to remember them sometimes.  No really, it is.

Posted by: mjmarble at February 21, 2005 23:58 | link | comments (3)

Following through on following through….

A few posts ago I spoke of what I saw as my greatest outward flaw.  I figured that in this season of introspection it might behoove me to talk about those detriments I’ve combated these last two years.  It’s rather apropos given that I can finally see one of the major benchmarks of my ‘master plan’ - as another friend recently jealously commented about it.

I’ve always been a big picture type of guy.  If you need to map out or plan something, I’m the person to call.  Whether it be a paper for a class, the possibilities for a website, the direction for a Youth Group, or quite simply my life I think big and shoot for the moon.  Now this isn’t always realistic or plausible, but I’m getting better on knowing what can and cannot be done.  I’ve also got a bit of that ‘why not’ to keep things fresh and allows for the occasional unexpected breakthrough.

The problem with my thinking big is that I’m usually called on to follow through on those ideas I’ve generated.  This is where I usually come crashing to earth.  It’s not that I tend to be lazy or don’t care – I just always seem to drop the ball.  Maybe it’s because I’ve long held (mistakenly, mind you) that I work best under pressure.  I over commit myself and put things off to the last minute.  Sometimes I can pull the task off, sometimes I fail miserably.

Take for instance my senior year of college.  I put off until my final semester of college a plethora of requirements and tasks.  Just to name a few, I started and finished my 30 hours of community service, I took a German placement exam that allowed me to test out of my foreign language requirement (after getting D’s in the actual class), took three 300 level writing intensive courses which required a total of over 120 pages of papers due and endless books to read, participate in departmental senior exams for my major, intern 10 hours a week at the local congressman’s office, etc.  All of this whilst attempting to juggle an increasing problematic girlfriend, sing in choir, and have my usual social life.  I still don’t know how I did it.  The pressure I put myself under made it impossible to actually do any work at times.  But I did it – with a lot of help from my friends.

So over time I’ve identified that I have a tendency to put things off and not follow through on them.  When I set out upon this trek to completely change my life I knew I could come up with a solid plan on how to get where I needed to go.  Still, I took great care to talk to as many people as I could to find any and all flaws with the plan I had laid out.  Much as I anticipated, the plan was solid.  The time frame was off by a year and details have changed a time or two – but I’m still on track with the overall plan to this day.

For those who don’t know the overall plan, let me detail it here for you.  (And for those who do know – just skip the next few paragraphs.)  Around three years ago I took stock of my life when I realized I was growing increasingly dissatisfied with it.  I looked at those things I loved – those that wound my clock.  And after a couple of months of soul searching I finally decided what I wanted to do when I grew up.

My problem was that I decided I wanted to go into the international relations arena vocationally but I was (and still am) completely afield of it.  My undergraduate grades were not nearly good enough to get me into any decent graduate program, and without speaking any foreign languages or even ever working abroad it became clear that getting in one would be a tall task indeed.  Toss into the equation a fair to debilitating amount of debt that would need to be overcome before I did anything.

So what I needed was a way to bridge the gap between the world I was (and still am) in & that world I wanted to be in. On top of that I needed to make myself as attractive as I could to those wonderful programs when I got to the other side of the bridge.  And while I was finding this bridge and preparing myself I also needed to right my floundering financial (and honestly, mental) ship.  First thing I did was to break up with the girlfriend I had at the time and start spending a lot of time in introspection.

One night, whilst talking with my sister, we came up with the idea of the Peace Corps.  The more I thought about it, the more this became my bridge.  I would be paid to live and work abroad, help others and learn a second language.  Next I made a list of those things for and beyond Peace Corps I would need to do to be successful.

Now given my acknowledged history of having problems following through on tasks I set out – a big part of this journal is to track my progress in overcoming this flaw of mine.  I made a list (I always make lists) of those tasks I needed to accomplish.  In writing this entry I’ve looked back at that list again.

Running through a few, I’ve succeeded at paying off my debt (sans a minor residual amount that will be gone in 3 weeks), in quitting smoking, acing a number of undergraduate classes at the local UNC, applying to Peace Corps, continuing to volunteer, and writing this blog.  I’ve been less successful at getting physically fit, taking the GRE, and putting things (papers, clothes, miscellaneous belongings, etc.) in order.  I’ve had mixed results in getting graduate school info pulled together since I have done it but there’s a lot more to organize (and more info to request) before I leave.

So in all honesty, I have to say I’ve done a pretty darn good job with the long-term goals.  Is there room for improvement?  Of course, but I’ve come a very long way in the last two years.  You’d think that I was satisfied with that ol’ flaw of mine being in check, right?

Not so fast.  What I haven’t mentioned are all those daily things at which I fail.  Even as I type this I have wrinkled laundry in baskets in my room, shirts to hang, a bathroom to clean, friends to email, a car that’s waited weeks to be cleaned, a bible study I’m days behind in, and a bed I haven’t made it to yet.  But this goes beyond the daily to do list I don’t finish.  Since last fall I’ve taught Sunday School.  I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve actually prepared a lesson.  I’ve almost always taught a lesson, but rarely prepared one.  I’m late more times than I’m on time.  This alone doesn’t bode well for my future teaching career in Bulgaria.

So this flaw and demon of mine is still alive and kicking in me.  My hope and faith resides in the ancient Greek truism of Gnôthi Sauton, or knowing thyself.  I need to fight and do my best every day to accomplish all I can.  Time certainly is not slowing down for me at this point and I have so very much to that if I don’t begin to make progress on all those tasks I list out almost daily, then I’ll begin the spiral of becoming overcome with the sheer amount of what I need to do immobilizing me.

In what I take as a good sign of Gnôthi Sauton, this past weekend I had some extended talks with the head of the Youth Board at church.  The group has been (and currently is) in a bit of a transition with regards to its leadership.  There are events to plan, work to be done, bible lessons to be taught, and yes some battles to be fought.  While talking with her I offered my services whilst I’m still here to come up and implement a larger mission and purpose for the group.  I want these kids I’ve come to love to not only have a good time, but also to form the friendships that I was able to enjoy at their age, to get a different & positive place to go, and most importantly to have a place to grow and mature in Christ.  Right now, the group is set up to entertain the kids.  

My personal growth was in my forthrightness in describing myself to the director and what I could offer her.  It felt good to be able to offer what I could and for that to be enough.  We’ll see if she calls me to actually make use of what I offered, but regardless it’s out there.

So the long and longer of this post is that I’m not a finished product by any stretch of imagination.  But I am working on my shortcomings and trying to make myself a better person.  I see progress and that gives me hope.  Three years ago I couldn’t have dreamt of accomplishing any of this.  Today a lot of it is reality.  

And that gives me hope of being able to see this whole thing through.

Posted by: mjmarble at February 20, 2005 23:44 | link | comments

 Compliments of a Lifetime

In the movie “As Good As It Gets” Carol, Helen Hunt’s character, is having dinner with Melvin, played by Jack Nicholson.  Melvin is being particularly antisocial and generally rude when Carol says, “Melvin, pay me a compliment... I need one and quick…” After much banter and a story Melvin finally comes up with, “You make me want to be a better man” which of course may be the best compliment of Carol's life.

Now, I don’t know that I’ve already received the best compliment of my life yet, but I have managed to get one or two truly wonderful ones.  The one that sticks out most in my head was given to me by a woman named Julie back at Wittenberg.

She was head of the little Democrats or whatever their silly nonsense was called.  I, of course, was a member of the Young Republicans.  Now she and I would jest back and forth about politics and current events on a regular basis – always in good fun.  And as many of you know, I’m always up for political discourse.

One night we were walking back up to the honors dorm after having a discussion and she turned to me and said, “You’re a Christian, right?  I can tell by the way you carry yourself and how you treat other people.”  It wasn’t part of a conversation or in reference to anything else.  It was just a statement between friends.  Now I had never talked religion with her, so this caught me completely, albeit pleasantly, off guard.  To this day, it’s one of the kindest compliments I’ve been paid since the ideals of Christianity are things I strive towards daily.

A day or so ago I received and email that will probably rank with some of the most wonderful letters I’ll ever get.  I hope the author doesn’t mind if paraphrase some of the things she shared with me.  This woman has considered starting a blog of her own (something I enthusiastically encourage her to do) but has concerns with placing herself out there for the world to see.  She mentions that my honesty and forthrightness has inspired her a bit to do this.

Ya’ll have to realize that I’m amazed that there are people out there who read my dribblings.  I fear them to be trite, tedious, slight on action, and overall boring to read.  ‘My Changing Times’ as I call them, have been static in action for a while now.  The changes I see, record and discuss are all internal whilst I prepare for the move to Bulgaria.

I’ve always been one to wear my heart on my sleeve.  I said many times that what you see with me is what you get.  But it’s one thing to do that in person and a whole different ball of wax to do it online where anyone, and everyone, can read your thoughts and feelings.  Honesty is much tougher to give here.  But I can’t imagine doing it any other way.  Of course there are things which most of you will never know – those old wounds I have which still have not healed.  But I share what I can – which I feel is most of me.  When writing a blog, each of us just needs to decide where that line is for themselves.

The author of this phenomenal letter mentions one of her goals is to sharing the good things she thinks.  One of my personal goals is to make sure to say thank you.  So thank you, oh one who has yet to be chosen, for the letter that means more than you can know.  And thank you to all the rest of you out there who read, comment and support me.  I know I’ll need it in the coming months.  

I promise to keep writing if you keep reading.

Posted by: mjmarble at February 19, 2005 00:36 | link | comments (1)