Skip to main content

In the Moment

I fell asleep in the living room watching TV last night, but I was pleased because at least I made myself sit down and watch TV. 

I was in meetings with my boss and with overseas managers all morning, straight through until 1 PM. Eri made another delicious lunch and then I went for a good long walk. It was a perfectly beautiful spring Sendai day. I had that feeling that I could just keep walking and walking for hours on end. 

I’m developing a better relationship with my boss. Before he became the department head we had our disagreements about things over the years and he’s been openly displeased with my views on many of our company and department issues, as well as my lack of basic understanding about how business works. Even just a few months ago when I announced in a manager meeting that making sales isn't the goal, it's the result, oh man he called me right after and asked me what I knew about sales and was pretty annoyed with me.

I stand by my statement though. As an unashamed idealist, I truly believe that the goal of our business is making the world better with our product, and if we adhere to our values and effectively carry out our mission, then the result will be revenue.

I feel a great sense of satisfaction in knowing that through my strategy of engaging with him through humble inquiry, we are arriving at a place of mutual respect and effective communication. Yesterday when I talked with him and I brought up my health issues related to anxiety and the medication I have to take for that and the obsessive compulsive disorder he was very sympathetic. When we talk about business-related issues these days, I get the feeling that he doesn't look down on me like he used to. 

Maybe he never did, but it felt like it. 

I'm sure I remain a constant headache for him with my non-Japanese ways and my unfettered idealism and my attempts at humor during manager meetings.


Kenzo’s obsession with catching lizards is manifesting itself through his recent artwork.


Osamu likes to spend these warm spring afternoons while Kenzo is at Friends Club out in the garden sitting on the grass and playing with water and his toy cars. He likes to announce that when Kenzo is away he is free to play with all of Kenzo‘s toys as well.


I love dinner time. Not just because I’m really hungry, but because even though the boys are in that stage where it’s difficult to get them to concentrate on finishing their dinner, I am making sure to treasure every second. I know that before too long they’re going to get busy with school and their friends and there will be more and more days when we don’t all have dinner together. 


Live in the moment. Past and future don’t exist. Most of the time that’s easier said than done. I see it as a process.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

lookin tired/feelin good

I can't even read the clock right. Eri: "You're going to soccer, right? Aren't you a bit early?" Me: "Yeah! We usually leave at this time and get there right on time. We gotta go! Let's go guys!" Soccer club starts at 10 a.m. The boys know that when the long hand on the clock gets to the 8 (9:40) it's time to go to the bathroom and get our socks and shoes on and head down to the car. The big hand was on 8. The problem that Eri saw was the short hand. It was 8:40, not 9:40. I'm going nuts. Slowly . Rapidly. An hour later, after I slowly enjoyed my coffee and disposed of the last beetle (yes, all four beetles have now gone back to the earth) and cleaned his bug box to make room for new bug acquisitions and the boys chilled out on the sofa watching TV, we set off. While the boys played soccer I headed across the parking lot to grab them some juice boxes for a job well done. This is not standard procedure, but Kenzo made his comeback today after ...
1 comment
Read more

Experiences I Will Never Know About

Eri and I were checking out one of Kenzo's school notebooks tonight. This page has so much going on, and I love all of it. It made me realize something that I can easily forget - he's a person. He has a life separate from mine, lives each day having experiences that I will never know about, and has thoughts and ideas that I can't nor should get in the way of. "Thank you for doing everything," she said. Eri walked with me this morning as I went around the neighborhood and delivered planter box maintenance information and schedules to various folks.  We stopped at the first house and I rang the doorbell and handed the old lady the three-page information sheet I had made and copied and we exchanged greetings and then I realized this is going to take forever if I ring every single person’s doorbell and chit-chat with them. I’ve got 20+ more of these to hand out.  So we started just sticking them in people's mailboxes and made better time. Most folks aren’t home an...
Post a Comment
Read more

Certain Luxuries

I work from home. My office is in Osamu's future bedroom, though he doesn't know it yet. At some point a few years down the line he will probably start to yearn for his own space. For the time being he and Kenzo share the room next door and sleep in a bunk bed and have a grand time playing, roughhousing, and quarreling. As brothers are prone to do. I started the day with a two-hour meeting with an esteemed co-worker who is based in a city far away. He manages a team associated with mine, and I value our developing relationship. We're both in management positions where people depend on us, and for my part as a relatively new manager I respect and try as often as possible to seek out his advice and perspectives.  We're very different, though. We dance around the topic, but it's pretty clear that one of our differences is that I embrace ambiguity and he does not. I think that it's okay if meetings don't end with a clear solution, as long as the relationship be...
Post a Comment
Read more