Friday Night Musings

Hi friend! Happy Friday. I just put banana bread in the oven, Gregory Alan Isakov is serenading me, and the dusk light is fringing the mountainous horizon*. I'm eating pizza from Whole Foods. I love their pizza, and since it's from Whole Foods, I tell myself it's healthy. I'm not sure if that's true, but it's definitely expensive. Seriously, I just spent $118 on a slice of pizza and ingredients for banana bread. Maybe some wine. Of course, I opted to bake the paleo banana bread which reminded me why I stopped eating paleo. It's not economically practical. The best part was that after I learned my total was $118, the cashier put my items into two bags with no handles. "Is two bags okay?" he asked. "Well, that depends. Are you walking half a mile back to your home, and did you just pay your day's wages for a slice of pizza? I think I've earned two bags with handles, please." "Of course. Sorry, we've run out of stock, but I'll find you a couple." Looks like Amazon's efficient operations still has some work to do with Whole Foods.

Speaking of Amazon - I'm still working there. In fact, the highlight of my time was probably this morning when I turned on my computer to this image:

As one would expect, I especially kicked ass today.

My ping pong game's improving. At RKG, I was a straight singles player, but my doubles game is developing, and I think I'm coming into my own as a partner. I need to bring a pair of ping pong shoes to work, because my mobility is extremely limited in my boots. It's Q4, so the response de jour is, "I'm really slammed with Q4." I sometimes wonder the root of the stress as I'm simultaneously wondering what song we should lip sync to win the office battle. Is it real, is it manufactured, is it necessary, is it group think? This happened a lot in business school. Everyone around you was stressed, so you were stressed, sometimes warranted, but most of the time because you had FOMO if you weren't stressed. I'm very grateful to say that work is not stressful for me. Part of that is my nature, but a bigger part of that is the team and the leadership. At any company, the team dictates your experience, and when I came to Amazon, the only thing I prayed for was a team with great leadership. There will come a time when my work will necessarily cause me stress, and I will be grateful for that stress, but between you and me, I don't think it will be in retail. Chassis can only stress me out so much. That's right, folks, I know what a chassis is. Well, I don't really know what a chassis is, but I know how to pronounce it, and I know it exists. I've also decided to name my first born chassis, which is, I believe, gender neutral. Very progressive of me. I know, I know, I need a date first.

A number of people have asked me for a dating update, but I need to be clear. I can't disclose every date on my blog, otherwise, suitors will be terrified to go on a date with me. Of course, if they read my blog, they may not be pursuing me for other reasons - like the fear I'd make them take my last name. I love my last name and pseudo-Polish heritage, but I wouldn't put anyone through the nuisance of spelling Navatsyk to a stranger. Mr. Smith, you can rest easy and ask me out, I will happily take your name.

All that said, I did get asked out tonight. A good friend of mine, Armin, once told me at a bar, that all I needed to do to pick up guys was sit at the bar and stare off into space, looking a little lost and confused. He's not wrong. I accepted the experiment. Within five minutes, I had three guys approach me and try to spark a conversation. However, I think an even better way to pick up guys is to go to a bar alone on a Sunday to watch football. Don't be mistaken; I don't go to pick up guys. I go to watch all three mediocre fantasy lineups perform below expectation and occasionally argue if OBJ is worth his asinine contract. Then, somewhere in the middle of this, I get someone's life story. Like two weeks ago, when the guy next to me told me that two of his closest friends had passed away in the past year under the age of forty - one from falling down a crevice while skiing Mount Rainier, and the other from a brain aneurism. We passed way beyond OBJ at this point, and, frankly, the fact that the bartender kept refilling my mimosa without me asking left me ill-equipped to engage in this level of conversation.

Anyways... the date. I didn't go. With so much newness, it's sometimes hard to convince yourself you want to adjust to something else that's new. Even if it's only on a Friday night, because that Friday night is sacred, and it's no one else's but your own. Plus, I have to wake up at 8 am tomorrow to watch the Michigan/MSU game and drink mimosas. Ahh the struggles of the West Coast sports viewing.

Dating's tricky. Because sometimes you're on that side of it, and sometimes, you're on the other. I guess, the hope is, eventually, you meet someone who's on the same side. Or you start recording the stories of everyone you meet sitting at a bar on a Sunday.

Football, not as tricky. It's pure, especially in high school. I just sat on the edge of my seat, reading my mother's texts, recounting the Chardon/Kenston matchup. Kenston was ranked number one in the state. My brother-in-law, Mitch, is the head coach of Chardon football, and my dad has helped coach for as long as I can remember - I believe 24 years at this point. This game was huge. If they won, they made the playoffs after a rocky start, and if they lost, they were out. Mitch is intense. I've always loved his intensity. He talks about softness a lot. He hates softness. At the beginning of this year, he was interviewed, and he referenced war. "I want to find the guys who I can take to battle, who I want with me in the trenches." Of course, war may be a bit of an exaggeration, because there have been wars, and these boys aren't in a war. But if you've ever seen a young team win THAT game, you get it. You feel that passion, that grit, that leadership, that camaraderie, and that community that stands behind them. Maybe it's just because I grew up in this town where football was king, but that moment is so special.

O, that town. I'll never stop missing it. I'll never stop missing my nieces and nephews, Sunday dinners, my parents and siblings, the Midwest spirit. But three months into my new home, I'm feeling mostly settled. I'm figuring out the people I want with me in the trenches*. I'm figuring out the balance between the different facets of my life, though my screaming triceps would argue I still have some work to do. I'm figuring out how to confront my flaws and improve. Mostly, I'm continually learning that all of this takes time, and I need to be patient.

It's funny. Sometimes you think you're an adult. You think you're getting it together. Then you get back from Whole Foods, sit on the toilet, and realize the one thing that wasn't included in your $118 bill was toilet paper.

* I don't know if fringing is the right term, or if it's a verb, but I like it.

* I was going to say in my trenches, but I feel like that's inappropriate.

My Brunch Alone

Last Sunday, I went to brunch by myself. Brunch was such a ritual in Charlottesville. Sunday wasn't a day to work. It was a day to go to brunch, hit up a winery or two, take a nap, and then wake up ready to conquer the week, but somehow, I haven't found a brunch crew in Seattle yet. People run errands, watch Netflix all day, or do work. Weird - although I do get the Netflix. It will happen - I hope - but until then, I love going by myself, because there is no mood a mimosa, breakfast tacos, oldies, and people watching can't improve.

The bar at my favorite spot was full. Last time I had brunch, I sat next to two industry folks and had a great conversation about katen, or some supplement that acts as an upper in small doses but depressant comparable to heroine in large doses. Perhaps I should do errands, but I decided to wait. It only took a couple minutes, and I sat next to a woman who was also alone. She was returning from a women's conference in Houston and was about to begin a new role at Microsoft.

I asked about her transition. She talked about her new boss - how much she wanted to learn from her, how she inspired her. She talked about her old boss. She had heard she was aggressive, and she wondered if it was just because she was a woman, but after working for her, she realized the perception wasn't simply because she was a woman. She learned a lot, but she also learned what she didn't want to be as a leader.

I asked about her career, and she spoke about her experience in Africa. How going to another culture can make you learn so much more about your own, in all its strengths and weaknesses. The people in Africa, even with so little, were so happy because they were together, and because they had community. I always relate to that, because no matter how far I am from home, I think about the happiness of Grandma, who, not having much, has so much love for and from her family. I've never been driven by money or success - I've been driven by wanting to be the best version of myself and getting to a position I can give the most that I am able. That's taken me further from home than I would have liked, but I still carry those roots with me, and I'm so grateful I have them. America's amazing, but I think it's easy to get lost in the race and forget about those who have been with you from the beginning, or even not have people with you from the beginning, which is unfortunate.

I asked about her family on the east coast and if she missed them. She did, and she said if she didn't find someone here in the next couple years, she would move back, because there comes a point when you just have to decide to be close to family. I'm not at that point in my life, yet, but I understand that, too.

I asked about diversity. I loved how she spoke about it, because so often, you get a canned response that goes something like this: "We really want to emphasize not only diversity, but also inclusion. We want more women, more under-represented minorities, more members of the LBGTQ community." But the way she talked about it was so much more real and impactful. She said - and I'm paraphrasing, and probably inadvertantly inserting a bit of my own opinion - that's an easy place to start because it's obvious, but diversity is so much more. We want blue collar, and white collar, we want diversity of thought. Because you don't speak for every white, Christian female, and I don't speak for every black female, and if we simply leave it at that, we're selling ourselves short. She said they hadn't figured out, but they were working on it.

I asked about dating in Seattle. She laughed and said it's terrible. She talked about her date with a man who had a foot fettish. Or the one who had no drive to be anything beyond what he currently was. She told me it was going to be particularly hard if I wanted to find a fellow Christian. I chuckled.

I asked about work life balance, and if people, especially women, found it difficult to move up in the company once they had children. That answer was a little harder to interpret, but I believe the essence of her answer was that if they wanted to move up, they weren't inhibited.

Earlier that day, I had gone to church. I'm a greeter, because I figure it's a good way to keep me accountable and potentially meet some people. The ice breaker that was asked was what are we passionate about. I thought about it until it was my turn, and my answer was, I'm passionate about people. All of them. Because people are so interesting and so insightful in different ways.

I don't like consuming a lot of media. I think it's often hopeless and focused on the negative, because that's sensational. But I love going to brunch, because of all the times I've gone to brunch alone, I haven't met one person who has left me hopeless. Instead, the fascinating people, those I will likely never see again, give me hope that people care about something. That they sincerely desire to improve the state of those aspects they can impact. That drives me to try the same.