Today I was a passenger in an auto collision! Rob and I were going to lunch (mmm indian curry) when he rear-ended somebody who suddenly was at a dead stop in the middle of Anderson Lane. A good 40 m.p.h. lick, popped the airbags. I knew we were going to hit, I felt the impact, but interestingly I could smell the burned airbag propellant before I realized they had deployed. Rob received some burns on his hands from the airbags as he was holding onto the steering wheel. I tweaked my neck from the seatbelt like I slept on it wrong and can’t turn my head to the right.
In all we’ll all go to sleep tonight and awake to a new day tomorrow. Can’t say so for Rob’s CRV, the front received a heavy amount of damage. Amazingly it was still drivable enough to get off the street, but was making some pretty wicked noises. It’ll be in the shop for a long time. The F150 had like literally three short scrapes on the tailgate and a foot of the bumper was bent down. It clearly came out the winner and makes me glad I drive a truck.
I decided against going to Burning Man this year. With moving coming up, running the spreadsheet of what it’s going to cost, and none of my friends going, my heart just isn’t into it now. Instead one of my friends is flying down that weekend since she still has the week off. One last visitor before I move!
I really make a conscious effort in communications to mean what I say and say what I mean. This gets especially interesting when I “should” say something just to make somebody else feel better. A great example of this is “I’m sorry”. I won’t say it unless I really feel sorry. This obviously causes problems when it’s something intentional I’ve done; I just did it so generally of course I’m not sorry for having done it. I don’t want somebody to patronize me, so I’m not going to patronize others with things I don’t mean.
Along the same lines, I could care less about meaningless small talk. We all do it, asking things like “how do you do?” Really, who cares how me or you are doing, so we just answer “fine.” Then we’ll pretend to be friendly and come back with “you?” “fine.” I guess just there to ease into the actual meat of the discussion. Some might even say it’s being polite. Fortunately I’m a crude person. I suspect this is how I lasted so long at my old job, either having a tough skin or developing a tough skin. I’m beginning to feel my age, I’ve been realizing that I’m getting less and less afraid to say what I think.
Often I see work conversations start off with “how you doing?” immediately followed by some request. What I’ve noticed more than anything are the requests we occasionally receive from other departments to ‘reach out’ to somebody. This phrase annoys me to no end, in my mind I’ll always substitute it with ‘reach around’. In a fit of wiki reading tonight, I ran across ” Why we should remember Bill Lumbergh“. It specifically addresses all that is wrong with ‘reach out’ and “the emptiness of linguistic conventions at work.” I am glad nobody at work says things like “that’d be great”.
I don’t have any answers. I’m just some guy with a keyboard. I will do my part to eliminate empty linguistic convetions one day at a time. hooray!
