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Thoughts on “The question”
It’s the question that plagues every newlywed couple. The first time we heard it was at the Salt Lake Temple—we’d been married for all of 15 minutes.
“When are you two going to have kids?”
Before Ryan and I were married, we discussed having kids, and it felt right to wait at least two years before adding another person to the mix. Well, at this point there’s just June, July, and August looming between me and that two-year deadline. And we all know how fast the summers pass by. It’s unreal. The closer it gets, the more I find myself thinking about it—names we like, the clothes we’ll buy, how we’ll rearrange the house, etc. But what looms largest in my mind is how completely our lives will change.
It’s both exciting and terrifying.
Don’t get me wrong—I love kids. I adore my calling in Primary, and I have so much fun with my nieces. My friends’ kids are some of my favorite people on the planet. I can see how having kids has enriched the lives of both family and friends.
And yet…
Having a baby encompasses so many huge lifestyle changes. The current plan is for me to be a stay-at-home mom, a goal Ryan and I believe in strongly and are willing to sacrifice to attain. However, this change will represent a seismic shift in how we have to budget, in what we can do for entertainment, and in the pace at which we live our lives. For me, going from a 9-to-5 life to a 24/7 life seems particularly daunting. Especially when it requires me to do something I’ve never really done (mom-stuff) with someone I hardly know (the baby).
And then there’s what the kids do when they stop being babies—recently family and family friends have been dealing with kids who are sneaking friends over and doing significant drunken damage to the house or stealing from grandma to pay for drug habits. What?! I mean, even with all the good teaching and good examples, these kids still get to choose who they want to be and what they want to do. Am I ready to sign up for this? I know, I know… I realize that there’s a literal lifetime between now and when I’ll have to worry about those things. Does that mean I don’t worry about it? Of course not—you all know me and my distinguished worrying capabilities. Thinking about everything that could go wrong means I’ll be ready when something does. Right? Of course right. I have to be prepared in my worrying and the future ahead of us holds some real “meat and potatoes” living.
But I think that’s exactly what’s compelling me forward. Despite all the future frustrations, craziness, and disappointments (which I know are inevitable), the future seems to hold the promise of so many tiny joys—first laughs, funny sayings, and quiet moments. Somehow, when I hold on to that promise, the excitement of the future helps to calm my many, many nerves. These changes are what we want and they will be a good thing. And so somehow we’ll be able to both adapt and thrive.
But still, for the moment I’m glad that everything is still at least few months away. My time with Ryan has been the happiest part of my life, and I relish in the fact that I get to keep this status quo for a little longer.
Post-Celebration Celebration!
So I’ve just returned home from my work’s centennial celebration party. I cannot believe that it’s finally here and done with. For at least the last six months—and the last two months in particular—this party has dominated my life. At work, I’d be running in and out of meetings, taking short lunches and working long hours, and basically running around spinning plates. Projects that I’d usually spend a few days on I had to finish up in a few hours.
Looking back, I have no idea how I did it.
Over the course of two months I ended up redesigning our entire brand, then creating a centennial branding scheme and applying it to everything. I worked with a publisher in New York on a magazine piece, working on everything from structuring the article, editing and rewriting text, securing advertising, setting up the design to meet specifications, and proofing the finished layout (and believe me, this piece needed a lot of proof work and editing). I also coordinated two other magazine pieces in Salt Lake, including managing management—making sure they got to their photo shoots and video conferences well prepared. I designed ads for newspapers, magazines, and websites. Met with printers and foil stampers. Folded and stuffed and labeled invitation after invitation. Created and proofed billboards, banners, and displays. Met deadline after deadline after deadline.
Most days I’d come home so tightly wound and ready to break that Ryan would dedicate his evening to tactfully helping me unwind, de-stress, and relax. He has been my rock throughout this whole adventure, and believe me, I’ve had to lean on him through a number rough patches—bursting into stress-related tears in front of the company president, his wife, and entire executive team comes to mind. (Yeah, that was awkward.) Or the week where, after a 10-hour stressful day at the job, I’d come home and spend another few hours at work on a BYU manuscript and then more hours on a sharing time. It was as exhausting as it sounds.
Really, though, I think that’s why tonight felt as nice as it did: I put a lot of hard work into this thing. It was really gratifying to see this hard work printed 5 feet tall and in a place that really could only be described as classy. And, of course, I loved having people stop me and give sincere, positive feedback about my work. Which happened a lot, actually.
I feel a sense of real accomplishment—almost more for surviving it all than anything else, even though I realize I’ve done and learned a lot.
So here’s to enjoying the moment! Even though I’m sure work will continue to be crazy and ridiculous, things feel pretty good right now.
It was an egg-cident!
So…like M&Ms, Cadbury Mini Eggs melt in your mouth, but not in your hand.
They also happen to melt in your pocket. All over your cell phone.
You’d think that’d be a bad thing. However, the phone still works and—BONUS—smells like Cadbury chocolate! WIN!
What was I thinking when I put that Cadbury Mini Egg into my pocket?
That, my friends, is the million dollar question.
And I’d like to thank…
Note: The majority of this was written on Thursday after the big meeting; however, I’m a little late in publishing it because, long story short, early on Friday I got a call from a big-wig saying, “I’ve been on vacation for the past two weeks, and I have these two 5+ hour projects I have to have before Monday. Can you come in over the long weekend?” (Yup. That’s my job.) So I spent all of Friday cramming 10 hours of work into a 7-hour workday. That said…
IT’S FINISHED!!! All the stress, bad dreams, daily frustrations, unsolicited comments, and tears over this project—all done (for now). And, I’ll admit, even though it didn’t turn out anything like I’d hoped, I think it’s rather nice.
So the big-wigs have (finally) chosen their logo. We presented them with three versions—a conservative version that changed up the typography, a moderate version that added a new logo mark, and a radical version that significantly changed up the look. Guess which one they chose.*
I know I’ve been a bit of a basketcase these past few weeks, and I definitely owe some people a major thank you—my friends who supported me throughout this adventure. You guys are my real friends.
Nate, in particular, deserves a HUGE thank you for periodically checking in on me at work to make sure I wasn’t hyperventilating. I do that a lot, lately. I also owe him for helping me craft my meeting strategy (being unyieldingly upbeat, generously dispensing praise, and only focusing on the positive—basically the opposite of everything the other girl did at our first meeting).
Also, believe it or not, I should probably thank the girl I worked with on this project for being surprisingly nice. Even though we still don’t see eye-to-eye on our design preferences, it was nice to finally be able to talk without me crying for weeks afterwards. She put in a lot of effort, came up with something that was quite nice, and figured out how to put together a classy presentation. (Also, she ended up having to stay home on the day of the big meeting, which really relieved an awful amount of stress I had going in. I did feel bad she wasn’t there, since she worked hard on the project, but it really made everything much easier for me. Is that bad to say? Probably, huh?)
Of course, the biggest thank you goes to my husband. Throughout this adventure, he has done far more than his fair share of listening, empathizing, and comforting. He knows and provides—even sometimes without me telling him—the kind of feedback I need (which varies from “his honest opinion” to “tell me what I want to hear”). Also, he has a superhuman amount of patience, which has come in really handy with the amount of obsessing I do. He is a huge source of strength and support, and I appreciate him to pieces.
Really, I am so lucky to have such wonderful support from friends and family. It’s nice to know I have people I can rely on for the little things like this. It makes a difference.
A Post about Post Post Season Depression—And Post Raisin Bran
Ok, well first of all, this post doesn’t have anything to do with Post Raisin Bran. I just added it because I wanted to make an excuse to put “Post” in the title one more time.
Now that we have that out of the way, I would like to write about a serious epidemic that is about to plague this country. If you couldn’t guess by the title, the epidemic I am referring to is officially known as “Post Post Season Depression.” You might be thinking to yourself, “Why would anyone have post post season depression? It’s the middle of the NBA season, it just doesn’t make sense.” If you thought that, you would be wrong—dead wrong.
Post post season depression isn’t just about having sports on TV that are deemed watchable (and, no, baseball, golf, and NASCAR do not count—I’d rather scratch my eyes out), it’s about the end to a way of life. Football season is a life unto itself. There aren’t 340,000 regular season games like in baseball, or even 82 like in the NBA; there are only 12 regular season games in college and 16 in the pros. That means that every game matters. The hype around every game creates a lot of excitement. Also, having only one game a week, gives you 7 days to think about the next game, study out all the things you think your team needs to do to win, and, most importantly, have adequate time to trash talk.
All of this adds up to make football season the best season of the year. It is a time of year when you spend time outside with family and 45,016 of your best friends in the whole wide world.
But now it is all over. There are still 204 days until kick-off. So I’ve included my list of things to hold any football fan over.
- Watch games that you have recorded and saved over the years (may I recommend the 2009 Sugar Bowl?)
- Watch highlights from past years’ games.
- Go to espn.com/collegefootball at least once daily and read all updates about college football. (Hint: the best stuff is in the blog section.)
- Talk to family or friends about your favorite memories from last season.
- Review pictures that you took of all the games you attended.
- Work on perfecting new tailgate BBQing techniques.
- Watch all the scouting videos posted online of the new recruits coming in.
- Make a paper chain counting down to next football season.
These are just a few of my best ideas, many of which I rely on to get me through the worst part of the year—the part often referred to as “non-football season.” So if you have any friends or family that are showing signs of depression, please step in before it’s too late.
Hey, great! Thanks for the feedback.
I started out this morning like any other day at work—come in, check my email, browse the internets, and get to work. About an hour after I got in, the big boss came to my desk and unceremoniously dropped some sheets of paper on my desk. “Look over these and find a consensus,” he told me. Then walked away.
I picked up the papers and saw my initial drafts for the new logo. The drafts that I’d given him last week, that I’d emphasized were “only the first drafts and not the final product,” that I only let him take because he asked for them and what was I going to say? Me: “No, you cannot have the drafts. We’re presenting the finished designs on Thursday.” Him: “You’re fired.” Of course I gave him the drafts, with the understanding that he was “just going to show his dad.” That made sense. His dad, the former big boss, rarely came in the office and the big boss wanted to ask permission to make changes.
Apparently, though, I didn’t translate “just going to show my dad” into big boss speak. Because the big boss had a meeting today with the big shots of the company—aka everyone in the company who makes more per month than I make per year—and he totally showed them my drafts.
In fact, not only did he show everyone my drafts, he passed them around for feedback. So when I got my drafts back today, they were covered in this:
Wait, what? Did the president of my company REALLY just pass around my initial designs for the entire company’s comments?? Yep. He did.
He could have waited two days, gotten the final versions of the logos, heard our views about the strengths of each, and had two or three good candidates to choose from. But did he wait? No, no he didn’t. Instead, he took my sketches and initial designs—and I had about 40 to 50 counting all the minor variations that I’d printed out just because the change in perspective makes it easier to spot problems in the design—and he presented them to a group of people with a -10 design experience.
These people were seeing my thought processes and my experiments—the good and the bad—and they put it under a microscope and ripped it apart. I feel kind of like I would if he’d read out of my journal.
Seriously, with everything on display like this, it’s trial and error with no room to err. They’re liking things that I tried out but think are awful and are hating things that I think make for a really strong design. And for the rest of the day it’s been, “Hey Jenn, I saw your logos today. I have a few graphic design friends/clients that we could get to work on this….” Me: “Sorry, guys, the big boss doesn’t want to pay for your graphic designer friends/clients with their snooty PhDs. Thanks for thinking about how I felt about this, though. You guys are great.”
As for a consensus? There really isn’t one—there were 30 big shots in that room and 30 different opinions. At this point, however, I’m pretty burnt out, so it just seems really, really funny. Which is probably a good thing for my continued employment.
Again, wish me luck. The big meeting has been moved to Thursday afternoon. And then, even if it’s terrible, I’ll at least be moving forward. I’m looking forward to Friday.
Fishes for Disneyland
It was the first time that either of us had ever been to the aquarium, and I have to say that we totally judged it by its “used to be a craft store” exterior. However, when we stepped inside, we were really impressed—it was actually pretty cool! They pretty much had me with the Finding Nemo shark on the ceiling. And the octopus. And the fact that I didn’t have to go fishing to see a Rainbow Trout up close.
Anyway, we got there, signed in, and were directed to the theater room. People had spread out on all of the chairs, busily folding brochures, cutting papers, and stuffing envelopes. They turned on this educational film about Utah Lake, which, even though it sounds really nerdy, was pretty interesting. (Did you know there used to be a party boat and boat races on the lake?) So we just watched and folded for about an hour and a half, which passed relatively quickly.
At that point, the lady in charge of the volunteers took us on a tour of the aquarium. For free. She took us from exhibit to exhibit and told us about the different animals and how the aquarium acquired them. (For instance, they had an anaconda that was donated because it had become too big for someone’s bathtub. It has since doubled in size. Seriously, who is even crazy enough to want that thing in their bathtub?)
Am I sounding like a commercial? I don’t mean to be. I really was impressed. We got a free aquarium tour AND a free ticket to Disneyland. For two hours’ worth of work.
So awesome.
Wait, what? No, seriously, what??
So. About today.
We finally had the big meeting at work, the one to determine—once and for all—what we planned to do with our logo, branding, and company image going forward. Realize this comes after nearly two months of deliberations in less-effective meetings, so this is kind of a big deal. Now when these meetings first started in November, I had big dreams about working with a really respectable design firm. Then, the big boss mentioned that he was going to give our business to his buddy who runs a two-bit design firm that actually outsources all of their work to the Philippines. Wait, what?
Needless to say, my big, lovely dreams were quickly diminished to hoping that something decent would come out of this mess.
Lucky for me, the Filipino designers struck out big time, so no green umbrellas or power buttons in our logo. (Not joking.) Unlucky for me, the owner of this two-bit design firm thoroughly convinced the big boss that the respectable design firm was comprised of people my age and experience level who have advanced degrees in design because they couldn’t get a real job and who overcharge their clients for fluff and don’t have any real value.
A full rebuttal of this idea will have to wait for a later post because GUESS WHAT HAPPENED NEXT…
He put me in charge* of the logo design, the branding, all of it. And he wants me to have it to him in T-minus one week. ONE week. The professional design firm wanted four weeks. I get four-and-a-half working days. What??
The rest of the committee applauded me, saying what a great compliment it was that the big boss would trust me with the identity of the firm. And, certainly, they’re right. It is a big compliment—the big boss trusts very few people and he said he was impressed enough with my previous work that he trusted me with this. I really feel like I should be excited. However, there’s this very cynical part of me—formed through previous work experience—that worries that I’m getting set up to fail. That I’ll invest all this time and energy into making the logo as aesthetically pleasing as I can, while simultaneously pleasing the different personalities on the committee, only to have it scrapped because of some off-hand comment by a random employee. (It’s happened before.)
And are you wondering what the * was for? Well, remember this? Remember the replacement who, on her very first day of work, deliberately insulted my designs in front of the big bosses, complimented my work in private, made me cry for weeks, and got me removed from the project I’d been working on for six months. Yeah, her? Well I’ve been told to work with her again on this project. Seriously, what??
Wish me luck on this one, folks. I’m gonna need it.
Jenn vs. The Silent Treatment
I have this coworker who has been giving me the silent treatment for over a year and a half. Because I’m friends with a guy she had a crush on. Because this is middle school, and that’s how these things work.
When I pass her in the hall, on the stairs, or in the lunchroom, I’ll almost always say “Hi Jen!” (We have the same name, did I mention that?) Without fail, she just puts her head down like she can’t see me and walks very quickly past me. Not a word, no head bob, no acknowledgment at all of my presence.
Which is fine, I guess. It doesn’t really have much of an impact on my day-to-day. But apparently it’s getting to me subconsciously.
For the last few months, after one of these events, I’ve found my mind wandering to ways I can get to her at least acknowledge me. Like “accidentally” tripping with a glass full of ice water, which would then send my cup of ice water directly into her face. Or making faces at her while saying hi her, just to see if she notices. Again, because this is middle school and that’s how we do things.
Is this a bad thing? It’s not really a conscious decision to plot against her. Just a natural reaction to a frustrating situation. Apparently, this is becoming another one of my reoccurring daydreams at work, along with telling off the opinionated financial lady and crawling under my desk and hiding from all my coworkers who don’t get it.
Maybe I should just resolve the whole thing by passing her a note.
There’s a reason it’s not in the top 100.
Family Rule #6: No matter what, we will never, ever name any of our babies “Raptor.” Not even as a middle name. Not even as a “secret middle name.”
This shouldn’t even have to be a family rule. Common sense should completely disqualify “Raptor” as a potential baby name. But someone in this family needs to have everything spelled out.
(However, I would be willing to make an exception to this family rule if we can get BYU to agree that this baby will be appointed head football coach in the tradition of LaVell and Bronco.)
