I um… don’t. Like, ever.

Part of the price I pay for being such a shy, timid, delicate creature. Even the thought of reaching out to contact someone makes me tremble and retract like the mimosa I am.

And I can describe the proximate causes in the usual way. Talk about how hard it is to imagine anyone actually wanting to hear from me. How I always feel like I will interrupting them with my entirely unwelcome and irritating intrusion into their far more important and meaningful life and I will undoubtedly come away from the experience feeling deep and abiding shame for ever having been so foolish as to think I had the right to force my repellent presence on anyone, let alone someone I like.

I swear, all that shit is packed away in my head, and plenty more besides, just waiting to spring into action and poison my mind at a moment’s notice.

Boiled down, I don’t reach out because I am sure – emotionally – that I will get hurt. The idea that someone will actually be truly and sincerely happy to see me can barely cross my mind as a theoretical let alone as something that can actually happen.

And I know that’s wrong. Lots of people love to hear from me. And why not? I am a lot of fun to be around. I’m a funny, sweet, unique individual with a genuinely gentle and sensitive soul and a brilliant, shiny mind as well as excellent conversational skills.

So really, I have no sensible reason to feel like I do.

But feel it I do.

So I never reach out to people, no matter how much I miss them or how much they might even miss ME (imagine that),

And if those people also have trouble reaching out to people, well then, shit just plain dies, and for no goddamned good reason.

And I am not necessarily as easy to approach as you (or I) might think. Sure, I am friendly and receptive… at first.

But then that goddamned worm turns and against my will, I start looking for the exit. But I keep my happy smiley face on, partially due to being in denial and/or conflict about wanting to escape a perfectly pleasant situation and partly as camouflage to cover my eventual dash to “freedom”.

And even before that, I can be hard to approach because I put off a strange combination of “friendly” and “fuck off” vibes.

Even for people who know me and know that I am a sweetie once I know you well enough to be calm around you, I can be hard to reach. Always off on my own little planet and on my own strange frequency, so you can never be sure you are truly getting through to me.

But I am going to get better. It’s becoming increasingly clear to me that I am a far happier person when I am being social and open and around people, and I want there to be more of that in my future.

And to hell with the Trog’s whining and clutching and hiding and scurrying away.

It knows nothing of the world and all its predictions are wrong, wrong, wrong.

When it says “don’t do that socially stimulating thing, we’ll be sad” it is WRONG.

When it says “hide from the light, it’s safe in the dark!”, it is WRONG.

When it says, “flee the warmth of human connection for it will melt us”, it is RIGHT…. but it’s wrong that it melting is a bad thing.

Melt away… and set me free.

More after the break.

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New workplace philosophy : Management Plus

All right, hear me out.

Problem : Management seems useless (or worse) to workers.

Workers looks at what their immediate level of management does all day and sees a lot of just sitting around doing next to nothing. They’re either just sitting there in their offices, or having useless meetings, or otherwise seemingly wasting time and doing nothing to earn their superior salaries, let alone anything to justify their authority.

Problem : Management tends to get up to “mischief”

Deep down, everyone in management know in their heart that they are, in fact, useless. The hard truth is that most of management is mostly useless most of the time, and only exists to make upper management feel more important by having more people between them and the worker.

See : the Yertle the Turtle Effect.

That means that everyone in middle management is desperate to justify their place in the food chain by any means necessary, and that leads them to meddle with things.

Brave new (stupid) policies, re-organizations, workflow analyses, and other harebrained scheme with no chance of working result because whether or not they work or are even a good idea in the first place is completely irrelevant,.

What matters is that people look like they are doing something to justify their existence.

These two problems are joined at the hip. Luckily, that means one solution fits both.

Introducing Management Plus, a system in which all worker-facing levels of management are assigned a secondary “worker” role to fulfill when their management role is not keeping them busy.

This should be a low status, low demand worker role so that the workers never feel like management is taking the “good” jobs and also so that said job can be dropped at a moment’s notice when their management duties call.

Anyone who objects that such work is “beneath” them should try unemployment.

Besides, if you absolutely cannot stand the thought of working as a cashier for a couple of hours here and there, you can always look for other actually useful things to do.

The point is to be visibly contributing. The payoff is better relationships with the workers as well as a marked decline in boredom for you.

And as a bonus, you will remain closer to what your workers actually do all day, which will lead to more effective policy decisions for everyone.

Most importantly from the lower management tier’s point of view, no matter when higher management looks in on you, you will be doing something productive, and therefore need never worry about inventing nonsense busywork in order to justify your bloated salary ever again.

And won’t that be nice?

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.