Is the Juice Worth the Squeeze?

 

Well here we are, one week into the blogosphere.  Finding what anti-gravity feels like where no one knows we exist -- it’s actually quite refreshing.  Seeing that we both have “had a week” (we mean that with every sense of eye rolls, mouth open lions-breath attitude) and it’s not even over.

Here we are landing on some not so shocking truths in our lives…

We are in our 30’s.  We’ve been working since we couldn’t drive.   We work weekends, holidays, nights, and early mornings.  We worked to make money to pay for things we needed and to save.  We are very frugal.  We also have a fear that we won’t have enough money to pay bills.  We don’t do vacations. We have to have an amazing reason to buy anything solely for ourselves AND it better last through a lifetime.  We will support most everything for family and friends.  We get the “full cup” feeling when giving to others but have negative, physical reactions to accepting gifts.  

This “giving” we speak of is time, money, items, etc.  ALSO, this giving isn’t only for the people we’ve seen naked, know their birthday, cry in front of, or trust my small human with (to name a few).  This is for colleagues.  This is for teachers.  This is for service providers.  This is for grumpy neighbors.  Really anyone that might know our name and gives us a smile, and it doesn’t need to be both.  We act like we are extremely wealthy when it comes to withdrawing from our bank of kindness.

The biggest culprit of our depletion is TIME. 

Father-time.  Time waits for no one.  Time Heals.  Time is money.  Time Time Time.

We are like Oprah - You get time, you get some time, and YOU GET ALL OF MY TIME!

Like Flava-Flave with a fucking clock around our necks.

Captain Hooks terrorizing nemesis the Crocodile with the Goddamn swallowed clock,

forever giving away its position.

Even Cher - she’s been wanting to turn back time since 1999

(we swear we won’t talk about her in every post).

We know this is just how we are.   There are so many times we think, “we just need to find another place to work / live and we’ll have better balance.  We’ll establish boundaries.  We will stop saying 'yes' to everything.  We will get what we deserve. We will have more time”

The grass is not greener.  We have discovered it literally is us.  It’s our luggage, we take it everywhere we decide to go... maybe you feel the same or haven't uncovered that yet?

Why talk about all this?  Well it’s on the heels of an all-nighter pulled for work (yes, both Liz and Syd burned the midnight oil several times the past week).  We worked, independently unconnected, on reports, profiles, details, and requests of colleagues.  We were successful in our tasks given with zero advanced warning or time, with a good chunk of it being other people's responsibilities, but we digress.  We tend to do best under pressure, unfortunately.  We are deadline workers.  We hate it.  We’ve also picked a field that is always running on caffeine and a dream.

In our 30’s, time feels like it’s whipping by, and we get to see it through the experiences of so many others.  Freaks us the hell out.  Also kicks us in the ass (all the time) as to why we continue to torture ourselves for the miniscule hit of a ‘thank you’.  

Please don’t read that we don’t appreciate or think the words “thank you” are unimportant.   

Syd, is someone who has a strong love-language in affirmations (which spills into her professional world which is wildly unhealthy); she not only needs to hear she has done well, she needs to understand WHAT she did well for her to get the juice of fulfillment.

And for Liz, she goes on a sidewinder with the fear of disappointing others as her motivation to excel, give, create, deplete and wreak havoc on her life and wellbeing. (Liz's rollercoaster will be a separate post that Liz will write in the not too distant future… Don’t worry this will be unpacked)

Today when we talked over our 7.25 minutes of non-meeting time we talked about this.  We talked about the recent/current all-nighters we both have separately shared like we are cramming for a test. These all-nighters in your 30’s spent doing other people’s work is just bull-shit.  We’ve found that busy people find other busy people to get things done.  They sure as shit don’t go over to homeboy / homegirl who clocks in at 8:05 and is out by 4:47.  Those damn brilliant humans that draw the perfect line around their time and hold it sacred without an apology.  

All this being said… right now, in our live/work/teach/parent/dog walk/home-own/love from the comfort of our home sofa’s, Syd literally and figuratively cut open a lime and wondered if the juice was worth the squeeze tonight, which led to this wild goose chase of some golden egg of how to create balance (and a good drink).  And guess what?  On a Thursday night after 8pm - it sure the hell isn’t (because there isn’t any tequila in the freezer and Syd only has a drink on Friday’s - we will get there on another day).  But bonus answer… it wouldn’t make a fuck-ton of difference what day it was.  We have trained ourselves how to treat ourselves - just like we have trained others how to treat us.

Let’s unpack this for a minute and see how it feels on you.

You train people (and yourself) how to treat you...AND...people train you how to treat them.

((mind bend, explosion, what the???, holy shitballs))

You subconsciously, and consciously, give all the indicators to people around you as to what respect to get, how to speak, what to ask.  And furthermore, with that training you get one shot.  It’s the first impression moment.  It’s how you handle yourself.  It’s the cues.  It’s your reaction and reaction time.  It’s how to address conversation, conflict and collaboration. And 1 billion other micro things within 1 minute that defines the course of a relationship (personal or professional).  And, unfortunately, there isn’t a timeline on any of it.  There isn’t a memo that goes out and has instructions on how to handle “you” if it’s raining, if you have a left eye twitch, if you’re dressed up or down, if your hair is parted differently or if you have earbuds in.  How you have trained is now a muscle memory and if you want change - YOU have to flex a muscle.  YOU need to get present with your projection.  You have to be conscious about everything over and over and over again to un-train the bad habit YOU established with others.  No, it doesn’t work to have a sit down and say “hey you know how 4 years ago I was happy to help and give all my time and stay late, be in early, answer every single email within 5 minutes of receiving?  Yea, I’m just not doing that anymore and I look forward to our continued collaboration.”  NOPE. Shit won’t be shifting in your favor.  An ominous cloud will follow you… very similar to Linus’ filth cloud.  Your character is already known by the field you have set up from the very moment you introduced yourself.

Data Source: nypost article " This is exactly how long you have to make a good first impression." Dec. 2018

So, you have to be thinking about the lime juice for your tequila on a Tuesday mid-morning to know if it will be worth it come Friday at 5pm… is that Tuesday “squeeze” worth it in the future?

virtual chest bump -