More things about project management

I've been so scared and so hesitant in the last month or so. So nervous of actually committing to this whole project management deal, because if I start actually committing to it, then I'd actually have to start caring, and start doing, and start BEING a project manager. So I've been a little gun shy.

This week has been a good week. The pieces are starting to come together, and I'm starting to see the bigger picture. And I'm committing a bit more - I'm putting my name to things, and making decisions, and am willing to see them through. And I have staff, and I want them to do well. And I care about this department, and I want it to do well, and not run out of money.

And slowly but surely other bridges around me are burning, because it turns out there are reshuffles and rearrangements in the works that means that even if I do occasionally think wistfully about the job I left behind, that job mostly doesn't exist anymore. So I can ruefully look forward and give myself permission to immerse myself in this new deal.

But I reserve the right to whinge about my job, and worry come July about what will happen with my future.

How we get wrinkles

I want to ask about your day
before your day begins
not “How was it?”
... but rather
“How will it be?
What will you do?
What will you want or need?
How can I help?”
I want your day to unfold
like origami in reverse
un-creasing itself
loosing its shape
and flattening back
into beautiful possibilities
one day
you will be what you become
in the meantime
your life will bend and fold
as you see fit
each choice is a part of the becoming
we
all of us
bend
fold
and crease
we create ourselves over and over
until we become
what we are
and that ends up becoming
who we are
I want to ask about your day
because
I want to know who you will be
I want to ask before your day begins
so that you will know
I already revere who you are.

by Shane Koyczan

Another iPod 10-track experiment

After I spent far too much time on a recent roadtrip just skipping song after song on my iPod, I realised that it's time for a clearout and reshuffle of the playlist. But before I get that far, I'm doing another 10-track experiment.

1) My Apology - Great Big Sea (Favourite line: 'Probably best to forget and begin again, can't you see, that I'm sorry'.)

2) A and B Song - Tom McCrae (Favourite line: 'Here we are together, let's roll the dice just one more time, odd number says we walk away now, even says we die'.)

3) Legal Man - Belle and Sebastian (Favourite line: 'Not withstanding provisions of clauses 1, 2, 3 and 4, Extend contractual period, me and you for evermore'.)

4) Stars - Simply Red (Favourite line: 'A lover's promise never came with a maybe'.)

5) New Slang - The Shins (Favourite line: 'Never should have called, But my head's to the wall and I'm lonely'.)

6) What Difference Does it Make? - The Smiths (Favourite line: 'Heavy words are so lightly thrown,
But still I'd leap in front of a flying bullet for you'.)

7) Desperado - Johnny Cash (Favourite line: 'It may be rainin', but there's a rainbow above you'.) 

8) My Life Would Suck Without You - Kelly Clarkson (Favourite line: 'My life would suck without you'.)

9) God Bless the Broken Road - Rascal Flatts (Favourite line: 'I'd like to have the time I lost and give it back to you, But you just smile and take my hand, You've been there you understand'.)

10) St Robinson in His Cadillac Dream - Counting Crows (Favourite line: 'And I keep thinking tomorrow is coming today, So I am endlessly waiting'.)

I should challenge myself to narrow down my favourite lines more often. It's a pretty sound way to realise that most of these songs are absolute shite.

Having a Coke with You

Having a Coke with You

is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne
or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona
partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian
partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt
partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches
partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary
it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still
as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it
in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth
between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint
you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them

I look
at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world
except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick
which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time
and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism
just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or
at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me
and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them
when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank
or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully
as the horse

it seems they were all cheated of some marvelous experience
which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I am telling you about it”

by Frank O'Hara

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose

or if your wish be to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully ,suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility:whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens;only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain,has such small hands

by E. E. Cummings

Things about project management

- Spreadsheets are fun.
- Running off reports is fun.
- Meetings are not fun.
- The state of my inbox has become a constant preoccupation.
- I have ceased wearing jeans, ever, because I seem to get yanked into important meetings when I'm at my scruffiest.
- Managing people is fun, as long as it's the right people.
- Nothing is more fun than being in the know.
- I have to make these lists more often, because I'm apt to focus on the negatives too much, and the negatives are only temporary.
- I'll feel better once a clearer pattern emerges from my work, and I can see the bigger picture.