Dinner topics

Yesterday I had dinner with my boss lady. Things at work have been a bit crazy and weird over the last year and everything came to a head about a month ago. The bullying finally came to an end with a warning to the bully to step up or step out. Nothing like being the slacker that you accuse others of being. Problem is no one was as blind to what was going on as the bully thought. So she got busted. And the fact that I have been working my ass off while the bully has been ducking out this that and the other thing with no thought as to how her shifts are supposed to get covered... well. It was a gloriously understated eruption. I expected Vesuvian devastation and we had something less than Mount Saint Helen.
Since I was the object of derision, I was really looking forward to spectacular plumes of fall out. The fizzle was least satisfying to me. And I have been stewing about it. I really wanted someone to let her have it. Its been miserable this past year. I've been pretending to like her. I've done an Academy Award Winning performance of being happy and joyful about working under the cloud of her affliction. And it was wearing me out. I wanted to do the whole Holmesian endgame analysis and get her to confess her ill conceived plans by designed accident to someone higher up than the Boss Lady. I wanted her to know that evaluating your opponents skill is the opening maneuver in any chess game and NOT the moving of the first piece. But nothing happened. She just went underground with her griping.
So there is no more overt attempt at sabotage. And I have a grand network of irregulars in my employ. She has no idea what she is setting herself up for. But it makes Reichenbach look like a slip-n-slide. And I hope that my being awarded Employee of the Month grates her teeth.

I know it is silly. I do not plan on being here for ever. I will not be a Lifer, as we like to say in the mines. But I do not want to spend a miserable 6 months or whenever at work. And we talked about that too. I think the Boss Lady almost cried. I wanted to. I do not want to leave. But I have no choice. If I am to make something of a success I must have more education... and not the education of a passionate student that I have given myself.

And we talked about endings, beginnings and mulligans. So I will share some of her words that make for some good generic advice:
be careful about second chances... when you have been given one don't force things. Because that is the quickest way to lose that chance. When you are giving the second chance you have to be more responsible for understanding yourself 1. so you don't lose your resolve, 2. so that you don't give false hope, 3. so that you avoid the temptation to appease at your own expense.

Sometimes when you move forward you will get resistance from people who can not move forward with you either for their maturity of because of circumstance. So no matter how things shake out you have to look at these kinds of changes as though you are going off to college.... some of your friends are going to college with you, some to another college and some are gonna stay home and work in the family business. Of course some are doing 12th grade over again but we won't talk about them.

I guess the thing is this: when you move forward in your life, especially down the path of further education, it is to be expected that you are going to outpace those who are not making the same kinds of changes and there will have to be a shift in those relationships. I love all of my friends for who they are. But the friends that I have that are no different today than we were when we were in high school are not the  same people that I can hang out with now. I am easily bored by the mundane parts of their life. And they are disinterested in the things that I am passionate about. We change tribes. I will always be a geek and be part of Geekdom. But the kinds of geeks I hang out with may change and I have to be okay with that. And they have to be okay with that.

It was a good conversation.