I Am Who I Am...

One of my bosses is really pissing me off. I almost quit. But then Alpha asked me to stay. And those stupid glorious kids with all their dreams of changing the world and pioneering something great keep working their asses off.
So I stay.
The thing is...The boss wants me to be something I'm not. He's trying to fit me into one of the boxes he has been able to apply to everyone else he has ever dealt with.
But I don't. I'm not. And I'm far too tired for any new forms of evolution beyond trying desperately not to fall off the very steep learning curve.

In marketing and business, there's always a hook. People have currency--money, success, fame, etc. I don't care about those things. And having a hook in everyone is very important to him. So he tries different approaches with me, and each one is successively worse than the one before. It went from ego stroking (also not good currency for me) to the power play of reminding me of my place in the food chain and putting me squarely in it. Followed with some irritating ego stroking. It was not well received.

I have never made and claims about being driven, about being a business woman, about being successful, about wanting to pioneer new pathways in any industry.
I said, yes--I'm good at this. Yes you need someone to do it. Sure, I'll do it to the best of my ability, but I'm trying to figure this shit out as I go.

I am who I am. Regardless of what you make or who you think you own, who you know or what successes you have had.
I have more respect for the people I run than I do for the random millionaire or politician who trots through--he's sure as hell not working until 10:00 at night with me, and some of these kids will crawl through the trenches with me until they can't even see straight. Because respect is earned.

I have changed a lot over the course of the last year. But I will not compromise who I am for money or recognition, or other people.
I don't quit because Alpha asks me to stay. Because I can't abandon my crew. Because I help to ensure that those kids have a job to come back to every day. Because Alpha asks me to stay.

But I would rather be fired than become, or pretend to become, something I am not. Because I am who I am, and in the end? That is all any of us really gets to say that we have.

Really? I just want to go home and sleep for a hundred years. Home home, not this house we live in home. Home where the stars whisper in your ears and the moon caresses your skin. Where the trees know your name and none of the people are ever trying to be the same.

It has taken me a ridiculously long time to define my currency.
My currency is love and loyalty. They cannot be bought or sold, they cannot be quantified by numbers on a spreadsheet, or defined only by measurable output.
It is there when Alpha asks me to give this thing one more genuine shot. It is there with the girl who puts her head down, never complaining, and works with me until long after the sun goes down. It is in the kid running out the door after a ten hour shift on his way to his second job. It is there when my crew tells me I should go home and get some sleep--not because they want to go home early, but because they know that after their ten hours in a day, I'm already in fourteen.

Why Are You Mine?

It was an inopportune moment for a quiz. Well, for me anyways--he seemed to think that the timing was quite appropriate.
I hate answering questions in the middle of sex. I mean, I'm no good at it during a whipping or other such event, but it doesn't kick me out of my head-space the same as it does during sex.

Why are you mine?

It was a valid question. It is a valid question.

I flailed. If it was a graded test I would have bombed it with flying colors.

The truth, the obvious reason, was there floating on the edges, so close that I couldn't see it.

Because I need to be.

Of course, this becomes 21 questions terribly fast and "Why are you mine?" would morph into "Why do you need to be mine?"

Because of who you are, because of who I am, because of who we are. Because of what we need to be.

That' a slippery slope--each and every one of those answers could easily lead to another question.

Once upon a time, the answer might have been because I didn't know how to be anything else. I have recently learned how to be something else, and I'm not loving it.
That woman who sets a crew down in front of a whiteboard and walks them through compliant logging, that woman who spends hours on inventory, who people seem to think has answers, who spends hours of overtime every week trying to get out the door and back home (I'm an employers dream for salaried employees. Not so great for me).
I have learned to be the woman who runs around plugging the holes of need and compliance in a desperate attempt to stop the hemorrhaging of a multi-million dollar business, on a salary that, while good, is laughable given the position. And I watch him do the same.

I have learned how to be something else.
I know how to be something else. I am still unsure of what that something is, but it is there and it is all-consuming, leaves no room for breathing, no space for simply being.

Simply put, the answer to, "Why are you mine?" is that being his is what makes me happy. The one thing in this world that makes me complete.

To Be Great...

I want to be great again.
With him. I want us to be great.

I no longer care about being great at what we do--after more than a month of 60 plus hour weeks with no end in sight, I'll settle for mere survival.

We're okay. But when you know what it is to be truly mind-blowingly great, "okay" is a poor substitute.

I am not who I was. If you asked our employees, all of them would say they think I sleep at work. Some might even claim that I never existed outside of that place--that I was created in those rooms, and am as much a part of the facility as the walls themselves.

Maybe I am, but I was not. And I want to be great again.

People are the pulse of any facility, and you can feel them as they go about their daily duties.
Survival.
I am part of the heartbeat which keeps the pulse going, part of the brain which coordinates all of the moving parts, molecules of blood in the veins through which the pulse is felt. Every day, the goal is survival.

Perhaps one day that crazy organism will be great. Perhaps it will not.

Yet still...

With him. I want us to be great. Him and I.