A More Complicated Petition

Well, it should be no surprise to anyone who read my post yesterday that I didn’t make it to the lode last night as I was recovering from my second serious car accident in the past ten days. However, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t been working on a few things for the lodge. In fact, I have been working on a rather interesting petition as of late that has been an ongoing project since the last stated meeting. While most petitions are pretty straightforward, this one in particular has had a number of details that have made it a great learning process both for the petitioner and also for me.

The situation is rather simple in that the candidate already petitioned another lodge which presented said petition at their last stated meeting. Following dinner last month at my lodge, he expressed a desire to join our lodge which is more convenient for a multitude of reasons. Following that meeting and after confirming his intentions, I circled back with the original lodge in possession of his petition. This is when things really got interesting as having not found myself in this position previously, I made sure to copy both District Deputy Grand Masters. After all, I always want to make sure that decisions such as this are by the book and as transparent as possible.  

Fast forward and I now find myself in a friendly back and forth trying to confirm many of the details of the process and double checking the conclusions with both my District Deputy Grand Master and the petitioner. It has been a process to say the least but it has also been a great learning experience and we will have a solution to the situation in short order now that the broad strokes have been taken care of. However, the most important thing that I have made sure not to lose sight of is the simple fact that a good man has shown a desire to become a mason.

In the end, it doesn’t really matter where he receives his degrees (although I have my preferences), the important things is that the fraternity is gaining a solid member. Too often lodges lose sight of this fact and focus on what is best for their lodge. While the betterment of your home lodge is hugely important, we can all agree on that fact, the growth of our fraternity, of Freemasonry as a whole, needs to take precedence. We have to keep in mind what is best for the brotherhood and for the man who desires to become a brother. If we do right by these two, things have a way of coming back to us both as a lodge and as a mason. We must do what is right.

Sunday Search: Moving Our Archives

As we are slowly getting settled into our new house, all the boxes that I spent packing long into the night are starting to get cut open and the contents roughly organized. Not only are we having to put clothes away, line the books neatly on the shelves, organize the boxes of toys, and get the kitchen put together, we are also having to get all of our binder and boxes of photos and figuring out a system for storing as well as a place to put all of them. Of course, now that we have a home and we are not anticipating any further moves, we are taking things a bit slower this time around and really figuring out a system that works for each of us.

Thankfully, we have enough room in our house that we each have an office to go along with an abundance of storage options. However, with options and wanting to take things slowly this time around, we are falling a bit behind in getting things to a place where we can readily pull out images or information. And with things previously so scattered it was a bit overwhelming when we realized just how much we have… we knew we had a lot but we didn’t fully grasp the sheer volume of research and images that we have collected over the past several years.

With a few more storage options, and more boxes, my wife has figured out her own system. While I have a few less places where I can hide the disarray, I have figured out a way to get organized and have started putting thing in an order that will allow me to pull out information I want fairly easily. Of course, this is only half of it as much of my information is still in a digital format. While there are certain advantages to this I still prefer to have hard copies and many times find it easier to pull up information rather than rummaging through files on my computer.

While there have been many attempts in the past to get all the family information and history organized, we are finally in a place when we can get it done and not worry about what would happen if we had to pack it all up and move it into a completely different space. So, for now, we are going to take a quick break from researching and focusing on the archiving of our legacies. In the end, this can be just as important as finding that next new piece of information.

My Solution For Disappearing Pens

A few weeks ago I got a package left on my desk at the office. Just like every other item that I have delivered to me at work, someone inevitably asked what I had ordered. This is especially true when the items arrive from overseas and most of the writing on the envelope, with the exception of the address, is in another language. However, this time, when I responded to the query I received a somewhat blank stare followed by another question of “what is that?”

For much of my working life, I would do to the supply area and pull out a pen or two to keep at my desk… not everything is done on the computer contrary to what some people may say or the younger generation thinks. This has pretty much been a weekly routine as I would either run out of ink or, what was more common, I would leave it in the conference room where someone would inevitably pick it up and bring it back to their own office. These are just disposable pens so it was no big deal to just go get another one from the supply drawer.

However, I have always been one that enjoyed a good pen while at the same time, I don’t want to spend a lot of money on something that I could easily lose. Those aforementioned packages contained something to solve a large part of my problem of going through so many writing instruments (while also saving my hand). What I found out in those simple questions from a younger colleague was that many people are unfamiliar with fountain pens.

I have always been a proponent of fountain pens as I can write almost all day without my hand getting tired and it is easy to replace the ink cartridge in something that I have become used to. What I am finding now is that if I do leave it somewhere, it is brought right back to me. Some of those returns are because people are unfamiliar or uncomfortable using them. It is actually quite amusing when you see someone use a fountain pen for the first time… it is almost like they are learning to write for the first time.

It is a unique pen to carry these days but, for me, it is completely functional as my hands are no longer sore after a long day of taking notes or writing and I know that it will always come back to me should I leave it on the conference room table. And, frankly, I am rather surprised with the quality that I received in these shipments from China given that I spent about two or three dollars (including shipping) on each pen (under a dollar for the disposable ones)… especially when you consider that the prices for the ballpoint and rollerball pens of similar quality are about five times higher. It is nice to enjoy the practicality of the fountain pen even though many may wrongly believe that it is an absurdly outdated writing instrument.

Not In The Job Description

 

Most of the people we work with on a daily basis understand the parameters of our job. However, there are a few people that we come across that really have no idea what it is that we do. Every once in a while I check my email only to find request after request for things do be done that do not fall under my job description nor does it fall under the services that my company provides. This is an all too common (usually from the same people over and over again)... we are seen as he corporate catch all when there is a shift in the in house marketing staff. Usually, when there is a vacuum in the marketing and sometimes sales side, we are for some reason the ones that they turn to.

As is probably clear by some of the things that I have written over the past year, I am not one to shy away from work. Frankly, I enjoy working and I am always looking for something that is a bit of a challenge, something that I may have never worked on before. But those are the things that I do in my free time. When a client is paying us for the work that we do, it is not in anyone’s best interest for us to attempt to complete a project, taking away time from the things that we are paid to do, without assurance that we would do the best job at it.

We know what we are good at and we know what we have much less experience with. This seems to keep getting lost in the communication no matter how clearly or bluntly it is stated. It just goes to show that sometimes communication is only as good as how much someone listens. We are all guilty of not listening and letting assumptions dictate our perceptions. Let me put it a different way…

We have all made calls to customer service for one reason or another. But, let’s be honest, usually it is because we have a complaint. The majority of the time we begin losing a little reality and assign authority or jobs to the person on the other line. We don’t really stop to think if they will be able to rectify the problem. We decide what their job description is without asking what they are able to do.

However, there are times when we call, listen, and have a conversation knowing full well that they may not be able to answer all our question or find a solution on the spot. And you know what… when you don’t make assumptions you might be surprised at the results. Comcast did that last week when I called to clarify my bill. Basically, I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t going to go up any more and, if need be, see if I could lock in the current rate. By the end of the call, after a nice conversation with Deb, I hung up with my bill reduced by about 40%.

So, before you call or email, be ready to listen to the response. Don’t assume the job description of the person on the other end. And even when someone us unable to get the project done, think about where there efforts will be focused and the results that will come from concentrating their efforts on what they are paid to do. When you work toward your strengths, maintaining within the prevue of your job description, your efforts will match the outcome.

Playing Catch Up

The past couple of weeks have provided me with a seemingly endless stream of work. The kind of heavy flow that leave you searching for the cut off valve. While nothing that needs to be done is of any significant size, the volume of the work is what keeps growing.

The greatest hindrance to the whole thing really isn’t the things that I know that need to be done it is the collection of all the things that I keep forgetting about. The tasks and projects that have been put aside temporarily in order to take care of the faux urgent. Today was a perfect example of this as I was knocking things out at a pretty steady pace with what looked like an end point in site. Then my mind began churning and bringing to the forefront items that had been blocked out for days.

This really isn’t anything new. Sometimes it is what needs to be done in order to focus on more pressing matters. Sometimes it is because my mind is wandering about while I am typing. On the rare occasion, it is because I just zone out and things evaporate. Of course, there are the occasion where all of these fun things come into play as they play tetherball with my gray matter allowing me to catch a quick glimpse of a thought before sending it back to the forgotten files in the corner.

Is this a problem? No, not really. It doesn’t get in the way of getting things done on time. Maybe the occasional lapse of time between communications but nothing that would entail missing a deadline. In fact, it is my minds way of making sure that things get done. Even the best juggler has limits as to how many things they can keep afloat. Yes, it’s a cliché and I used it. If I tried to keep everything going on within easy mental reach it would be impossible to get things done. Even simple things would be a chore and choked with the thoughts of other unrelated projects. It would be like Bill Clinton at a sorority house slumber party… at some point you just freeze up and not be able to function even though you know what to do.

Basically, in order for some people to remain productive, you have to become stupid. I am talking about a liberal dose of stupidity that ensures you mind has a singular, however ridiculous, purpose. You have to do this while maintaining a damn good mental hard drive to pull things back up when needed. One project at a time because even the best computer can crash if you let it overheat (usually if you open up too many programs at the same time).

If needed, don’t be afraid to shut it down and smack the crap out of it… old school IT support is sometimes the best solution. With that said, time to revisit the land of the simple minded where liberal doses of stupidity are the norm and everything has a blue tint to it. Without all that pesky thinking I should be able to catch up sooner than I thought possible.