House Hunting

I have always loved looking for a new place to live.  When you grow up in the City of Pizza and Bagels moving is what you do.  There is always a bigger space in a better neighborhood to be found.  Somewhere out there is that amazing deal.

I am more than happy to go house (or apartment) hunting with a friend.  I love to see the insides of empty homes.  I love to imagine what it would be like to live there and can often come up with an entire alternate life after just stepping through the door.

I have a sister who shares this passion with me.  When Angel was little and I could no longer take living in a one-bedroom with him and my ex, my sister took me apartment hunting in her neighborhood. We were very excited at the thought of living near each other, especially since we both had boys a year apart.  While it was stressful, we had a blast looking at all the possibilities.  And then one day I walked through a doorway and knew that I found it.  My dream apartment and it was within my price range.

I lost the apartment in the divorce and miss it to this day.

My sister continues to live in that neighborhood and has taken her love of empty apartments a step further.  She now helps other people find their dream home and she blogs about it at Uptown Girl.  I love having another family member in the blogosphere and I get to read about my old neighborhood.

Touch Typing

I was thinking about the post I wrote last month where I listed the five most important decisions of my adult life. While these are certainly the monumental decisions, it feels like there have been dozens of small ones and each of those have ended up making a large impact in my life.  One such decision was to learn how to "touch type."

I had the opportunity to learn when I was in middle school.  It was one of the electives we were offered. I remember at the time thinking there was no way I'd want to type.  It was so secretarial. Instead I took sewing.  I'm not sure how that was any better but I ended up making a toy daschund, which I gave to my sister.

Fast forward a few years and I landed my first job.  It was in retail and I was a cashier.  I was only on a register for a few months when they promoted me to the "back office."  Most of my responsibilities revolved around counting money, making change and answering the phone.  Still it was fun.  I liked my colleagues, was usually pretty busy, and felt important.  There were some internal politics and I ended up getting highly offended.  I quit in a fit of righteous indignation.  The next day I realized I didn't have a job or the money to pay the bills.

So I found another job.  It was also in retail and I was again in the back office.  This time I wasn't counting money but doing even more meaningless tasks.  The owners were horribly racist and I was miserable.  I decided I needed a real job, which to me meant an office job out of retail.  However all of those jobs required I pass a typing test first.

This was still in the days before personal computers so typing as something you did on a typewriter. I had an old manual one I used to henpeck out my papers for college but that wasn't going to cut it. So I enrolled in a class at the local YMCA.  I remember sitting in a dingy room with banks of big clunky electric typewriters.  The instructor would have us type some inane sentence (the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog) and you would hear everybody's keys clacking away.  I tried hard to get a rhythm for it in the 4 weeks of the class.

By the time it was over I wasn't fast or particularly proficient but I did have the keyboard memorized.  I applied for many jobs, went on several interviews, and did really poorly on all the typing tests.  I finally did well enough to land a job in a manufacturing department of a publishing firm. Ironically, that job eventually opened the door for two of my sisters to get positions and each of them met their husbands in the company.

My boss was incredibly patient with me.  I typed all of 40 words a minute and most of the words contained an error.  The bulk of my job was to type up orders, which came in sevenplicate.  This meant that when I made a mistake I had to white out all seven copies.  My boss would look at my mangled orders, sigh and sign them. I was supposed to practice my typing during my down time and I usually did.  We had a lot of down time and I made friends with the woman across from me.  She was a writer and we would each type out long letters to one another (or she would type stories and I would type letters) since we were supposed to look busy and not talk too much.

Eventually I improved but by the time I did was promoted to a position that didn't require much typing. I kept it up anyway. When I finally left that job, my speed and proficiency at typing tests landed me several other administrative jobs.  In most of them my typing tasks were minimal but my accounting skills were well utilized.  I was now counting money on spreadsheets.  It is interesting that I never had to take a math test.  My bookkeeping skills were always assumed.

Of course now it is completely different.  Everyone has computers and everyone types.  All the typing I do know is straight from my head to my fingers (a far more efficient system to be sure).  But it was that silly typing class and overcoming the obstacle of the typing test that set me on my way.

From The Mixed-Up Files....

I was perusing my old self-assessment files again (a strange and dirty habit, I suppose) and found a mission statement from 2004. I think I was fantasizing about starting a business. I must have read about mission statements and decided I needed to write one for my life. Here it is:

Mission Statement

The mission of Brigindo is to nurture and develop loving relationships with friends, family members, and colleagues by actively listening to, participating in, and experiencing their daily lives; to pursue a personal lifestyle that is balanced with the needs of the environment and the needs of society; to continually seek out and engage in activities that enhance her own growth and wellness; and to enjoy the moments.

While I certainly could do better on all fronts (especially the environmental), overall I think I'm fulfilling my mission.