He’s up there in front of his PowerPoint display, gesturing at the bullet points:

“In order to ask the boss for more resources to complete the project, you need to understand her ideals AND her values.”

This was the chapter meeting for the project management group I’ve been part of for years. I love being here. We all have experience with the same problems. When we got together it is safe to share war stories. Part of the meeting was listening to someone give a talk on their expertise.  And we are all able to ask the questions and challenge what is being said, really chew on it.

This speaker had a good opener, “How do you get the project sponsor to give more money to complete the project?”

Indeed. That comes up a lot.

Ideals and Values? Per his definition, Ideals are what we aspire to, what we say we aspire to. Values are what we actually choose and pay for.  He went on, being all logical and full of good ideas. Pay attention to all the people involved in the process, even to the organization as a whole. Ask! Don’t assume.

I thought about all the times I’d worked with companies and been blocked and couldn’t get traction. Maybe this was the golden ticket. Maybe if I could pay attention to the true values of the management, not just was they say they are their ideals…

After the meeting was over, an old friend was talking to me. He said, “I had this one project I was working on, and I asked the manager for their top priority. He told me that money wasn’t a problem and that it was most important that it be done right.

So I was giving him reports and charts of the progress. We were having a big meeting and I show him my reports, everyone around the table. He excuses himself.

Then he texts the number 2 guy in the meeting and asks him to meet him in the hall because he couldn’t come back in the meeting to talk to me. Come to find out, money was their most important priority after all.”

People are complicated. We don’t really know our own hearts. And inside of corporations, each individual has to shadow box with what they think their boss wants them to say.

For me, as I try to think of my ideals and values about what job I should have next, I know I’m a contradiction. I idealize self-sustenance and long for entrepreneurship. I talk myself into it until I break down at the foot of my deeply held value of being in a big safe corporate job.

Just like that manager who said he wanted the project done right but turned to jelly when the bill came. We all hide our clay feet in superhero boots.

It’s not that it’s impossible to say what we really want, but it’s pretty close.

This last year, I made a goal to try to listen to my heart and pay attention to what I truly love, what inspires me and makes me happy. It’s a still and small voice, my heart. I can’t hear it if I am not paying attention. To put a fine point on it, I also need to pay attention for more than a minute.

See, I believe I can cherish my ideals and pay attention to my values. The fear that gives power to small values can be calmed. I don’t intend to play small and give in to fears my whole life.

I have to water and tend my ideals so they overgrow the small values. That takes listening and persistence. As I learn to do it for myself, I can do it for the corporate projects too. The team needs to be heard and inspired. So does the manager who is asking for the whole thing in the first place.

I falter and fall. Everybody does. But getting up again and trying is the beautiful thing.

Veronica asks for Briarose as a bedtime story. So I’m reading it to her and she asks what a thorny ticket is. How do I explain?

I said that thorns are like pokey things that the plants grow a Bush of pokey things

Like a cactus she said

Of course like a cactus

Trying to sleep after the family reunion,

Remembering all the ones I’ve been to

Completely satisfied that my daughter is able to be part of this family and this family reunion

We start the road trip to the family reunion today. I have been selling it hard to Veronica as a visit with her cousins. She does not have any first cousins, but cousin is a very accomodating relationship. She is VERY excited to hear that Cousin Jane Lovig Kauffman has Barbies to share, although she does understand that Jane is a grownup. I have told her of cousin Rebecca Kauffman and her brother Andrew…And that it will be happening at cousin Claudia and Barry Courtney‘s house…I’ve told her about Aunt Pat…and Aunt Zelpha…She is VERY excited, and is now possessive. She doesn’t like that we have the same cousins…she said “I want a cousin that will love only me!”

I am throwing together the day’s lunch bag for school while my daughter slowly wakes to My Little Pony. I can’t believe I am packing Pringles, Kool-Aid and Oreos for my daughter’s lunch. I’m sure every other kid has fresh fruit and organic bread.

Probably other parents don’t let their kid watch as much TV either. I wonder what they do to get their kids out the door?

All alone in my home, my mind racing to compare every single thing I do to the superior efforts of all the other people in the world I know or only imagine.

As a mother, I am also on the lookout for how my daughter is doing. Is she doing better than the other kids? Is she behind? Should I be proud or worried?

It’s not like I think this is awesome. I kinda know better than to compare  myself and my daughter to other people’s standards. And I kinda don’t. Because if I don’t compare myself to other people, who else should I compare myself to?

The other day a friend said to me:  “Comparison is an act of violence against yourself.”

Fantastic. I’m even doing that wrong. Now I can laugh at myself.  Because I know the right sort of comparison and the wrong kind.

I struggle with accepting my daughter exactly the way she is, because it can embarrass, infuriate or inconvenience me. Yet I also do accept her, and love every infuriating bone in her body. She redefines perfect.

And the right sort of comparison is comparing how I regard my daughter and how I regard myself.

I want to love my daughter unconditionally. Not because someone said that I should but because it is my standard for myself. And my definition of unconditional is that she is perfect. Not that she’s never wrong. She will make mistakes and she will grow and learn and become different things throughout her life. All of which are well within the range of perfect.

I do not regard myself with that kind of love and mercy. And if I can’t give myself room to make mistakes and grow without condemning myself I can’t do it for her. Which is unacceptable.

Comparison of myself to some standard that others have placed on me, I can see how that takes me away from unconditional acceptance. If I beat myself up for not trying hard enough or not knowing enough, I use mental energy that could be used to do better.

I am thinking of a phrase: sui generis. It means one of a kind, and my college professors used it to describe a piece of art that was new under the sun. Like Joyce’s Ulysses, Pablo Picasso’s work, or Albert Einstein’s theories. Where did these original creations come from? Comparison is mostly a distraction to appreciation.

I think about that when I look at my child. She is her own creation, nobody else like her.

And we are all children. Every one of us is our unique. Truly a new thing on the earth. Striving to meet a standard of comparison is harmful to unique expression. I want to stop comparing myself to the wrong things.

For me, that is a far higher goal than the perfectly balanced lunch.

Seriously not having it this morning. It’s only July and it’s freaking hot. Daughter and I got up at. 630!!!

The only thing on the schedule today is church at ten

I am on the mom shift. Unpaid, inglorious boring and annoying.

And the next person who tells me to enjoy it because they grow up so fast gets an icepick in the ear

My life on unemployment: set goals.

My goal is to become mayor of my daughter’s preschool. In a world of meaningless yet achievable accomplishments this would make me feel ironically proud

Foursquare is not giving it up.
Now I feel passed over.

One of Michael’s today was to eat properly. What with all the everything that’s happening I have not been paying attention and eating. I haven’t had much appetite

But now it’s time for a treat

It’s summer. It’s hot.

This is the perfect time for ice cream. We just celebrated Independence Day last week, and I am sure that all over America there were ice cream cones, sundaes and floats. It makes me happy to think about it.

My home state, Alaska, is known to have the highest per capita ice cream consumption. That doesn’t make any kind of sense, because it is already cold there. We didn’t have a need to cool off.

Why then? Ice cream is a comfort. My oh my, what a good feeling it is to have a bit of ice cream. Or a whole carton.

When I was old enough to live on my own and choose my own serving size of ice cream, I felt so empowered. I was a grown up! I could have ice cream for breakfast if I wanted to!

And then there was a time I used to eat ice cream every day. I made a point of getting the healthiest kind I could, but I ate it every night: a great big bowl.

I got a full-body happiness when I ate that bowl of ice cream after a wretched day of work. No wonder I ate it every day. There was a lot of wretchedness at work.

At a certain point, I could feel the pleasure fill my body. I could feel my mood lighten and improve. Not forever, but at that moment and maybe a second bowl later, everything felt right. I started to wonder how out of balance I must be for this one thing to have such an affect on me.

In this day and age, we can get all the ice cream we want any time of day or night. I remember reading Farmer Boy from The Little House on the Prairie series, and the description of how the children made ice cream for themselves when their parents were out. It was hard work, taking all day and even longer to plan, anticipate and salivate.

If there is comfort in the food itself, and I swear there is, maybe there is a comfort in working to get that payoff.

Nineteen years old in Mirnyy, Yakutia Russia I had one friend: Masha. As I am finishing my manuscript The Russian American School of Tomorrow  I am closing out the story of our adventures. The cold, the isolation and the desperation of living in the ruins of every safe and confining institution that the world had to offer were the air we breathed.

There was nothing anyone could do.

But Masha and I? We had a mission. Somewhere in our town, there might be ice cream for sale. In the handful of cafes, ice cream might show up without warning. The supply would run out the same way it arrived, never lasting more than a day. So we prowled the streets to look for the possibility of a sweet creamy reward.

Fur hats and boots, scarves pulled up over our noses and mitten hands jammed in pockets or holding the elbow of the other’s arm as we walked and talked across the icy streets. One shop had no ice cream, and then off we went to another.

We knew that most days we would come up empty. Weeks went by with no ice cream. The search was the adventure. The comfort of the ice cream was real, but not as real and reliable as the comfort of our companionship.

The last time I saw Masha was sending her off to university in the big city. They had a reliable supply chain of ice cream. What with the advent of capitalism and the free market, whole square miles of the town center had become and open market. Every block we walked had several ice cream sandwich sellers eager for our custom.

We bought them all: life’s riches suddenly available for the taking. For Masha and I. For then. For that day and that time.

After I picked up my habit, ridiculously disguised in a fat free package, I realized ice cream was not the solution for me anymore. The problem needed a real solution. Like the song says “I know it’s not a party if it happens every night.”

I did give up the nightly ice cream party before I figured out I needed to give up the wretched job.  I had to change me and bind up some of the wounded emotional expectations.

Ice cream is a treat, that is for sure. It’s a kind of feel-good medicine that we can reach for. Just follow the directions and watch the dosage.

I think there are about 300 sentences I have to write to get to the end of my magnum opus.

that’s the last chapter of the book I’ve been writing for more than a decade. What the hell. When I finish it I will cease to be the person who is writing this story. I will have to be the person who is doing something else.

What am I doing? I am looking for a job. That happens–being in between jobs. I am sure I will find a job eventually. Or I will find something.

I should worry about that, I think. I am worrying a little. And then I think, “Stop worrying!”

because worrying doesn’t help anything.

So. I have to write 300 sentences. Or so.

It is hard to write those sentences. They are tricky.

And when they are done it gets even trickier.

ah damn. It’s a dangerous business, making your dreams come true