Saturday 19 November 2011

Interviews and dating - similarities

I've noticed this before and it's fresh in my mind after a couple of days of interviewing.

The employer wants the candidate to be the one.
The candidate wants the employer to be the one.
The employer wants the candidate but the candidate picks another job or doesn't like the employer and turns them down.
The candidate was just checking out the employer.
The employer was testing the market as they didn't really know what they wanted.
The candidate wants the job and thinks the employer likes them but they don't.
The chemistry in the room can be palpable and misleading.
The employer persuades themself to employ someone who doesn't quite fit because they need to fill the role.
The candidate needs a job so takes one they don't really like.
Compromising on key values rarely works out.

I think that's enough, you get the point.
  

Wednesday 16 November 2011

Touch and space invaders

On Monday I helped out with host training for Nightstop.  We talked about how to be with vulnerable young people.  The trainer walked over to one of the trainee hosts, touched her on the leg and said, "When I touch you, something changes.  I become your friend'.  A boundary is crossed.

Last week I touched a man on the arm when I asked him a question.  I thought I was being friendly but really I was flirting.  I wanted to touch him, to test the water.

Today a woman fell in the road in front of me.  She held up her bare hand for help.  I took it, pulled her to her feet and held it until she was ready to let go.

Touch.

Tuesday 15 November 2011

This seems to be a month about endings

and false starts.  I've said goodbye to a lovely friend who died far too young.  The sadness keeps welling up in me.  It's a bitter sweet sadness that reminds me how precious life is and how much I have to be grateful for.  How life is for living and taking our opportunities, for asking for what we want.  For asking in hope without demanding.  Around me I see others trapped in their wanting and I'm not immune. Unable to sleep last night I listened to a This American Life podcast about Break Ups and torch songs, about that aching pain we feel when we are left by someone we love.  In all its painful wallowing unprotected grief.  So familiar.  And so uncomfortable when we know we have given that pain to someone we used to love.

The thing about seizing the moment is that you have to get the timing absolutely right.  It's exciting and there's no way to know when that right moment is.  Timing timing timing.  I've never been patient and I've spent a lot of time living with the consequences of some bad choices so it's hard to let things come to me now.

Other endings...my job will be finished soon.  We're interviewing this week.  It's right to leave and I'm pleased by the prospect of a new project in 2012.  Yet there's always that knowledge of what I'm giving up and so I'm enjoying the last few weeks of the good parts.  The clouds of starlings swooping over the pier in the late afternoon light.  The people I've come to know and like that are part of my day.

I hope December will be about beginnings.  I hope and I intend December to be about rest, then new beginnings.

        

Sunday 13 November 2011

Some words on Love

Love seems to have been a theme this week.  Friends around me are enjoying it, falling into it, pining for it, wishing it were reciprocated.  At a literary evening a Caribbean poet complained that we overused the word and cheapened it in the process.  I understood what he was saying but disagree.  Too much energy is spent on witholding or not expressing love.

Giving and receiving love are what it's all about.