Angry belly

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Alien” with Sigourney Weaver, you know exactly what an angry belly looks like. Bruno had the sound version at 4am today. And it was cursing in a language I’d never heard before. Why? Who knows? He hadn’t been to doggie daycare. He had eaten all of his dinner the night before. He hadn’t shown any signs of illness before bedtime. He had gone to bed and to sleep as usual. So when I first woke up to the sounds from his belly, I thought it was our cat, Lily, hunting down a mouse or perhaps, killing it slowly. Cats do that. But this yowling sounded more extraterrestrial and it was coming from my side of the bed. So as the cursing became louder and more frequent, at 5am I finally asked Bruno if he would like his walk now instead of 6:30am. With a very green, “Yes,” Bruno extricated himself from the warmth of his bed on the floor and slowly shuffled to the back door. Once we were both dressed (Bruno goes to bed naked – without a collar – and getting dressed means to putting his collar on), we set out into the pre-dawn darkness.

I’ve mentioned before that walking in the early morning darkness isn’t my favorite thing in the world. The streetlights were on, which helped. I decided to stick to Memorial Drive and head toward Bruno’s favorite spot…the gas station/convenience store. So many smells. So little time. I thought this route would keep me comfortable and perk him up. It did both. We got home just before 6am as the first few streaks of sun stretched across the sky. Bruno was happy to be home but his belly was still angry. He climbed into his favorite chair in the library next to the fireplace, without having breakfast. I turned the gas fireplace on to warm the room and heard his heavy sigh. Even though angry belly was still pitching a fit, the rest of my Bruno was ready to have his early morning nap.

I didn’t go back to bed. My day needed to get started. I had an 8am meeting to attend. I wish I could say that it was an interview but it wasn’t. It was a meeting of Lean Consortium NEW. This group was formed by participants of the Lean Lead Facilitator certification class. In August, Workforce Development found funding to offer the class. All we had to do was qualify for funding from WIA, Wisconsin Investment Act, and be unemployed and our tuition for this 120 hour, intense 3 week course was paid in full. I qualified. Becoming Lean certified is a big deal. It has helped several of my classmates become employed and it perked interest in me by more employers. I’ll explain more about Lean in another post. I want to get to what happened at our meeting.

I was in the charter group and we welcomed a second graduating class about a month ago. The melded group is very large now – more than 30 people – and is about to grow larger as we decided to extend an invitation to join to the third graduating class. Recently, we’ve experienced, well, let’s call it growing pains. There is a tremendous amount of talent in the group, all of whom are eager to find a new career and equally eager to gain experience using the new skills gained in the class. When the group grew, the pains increased. At our last meeting two weeks ago (my first with the newly formed, bigger group), I experienced a discomfort that I couldn’t ignore and I think I knew why. I’ve been unemployed for longer than most people in the group and I’ve been through the complete and deluxe cycle of grief over the loss of my job. I see pain on the faces of some of my classmates that’s hard to define but easy to see. Everyone in the group is at a different phase of grief. As we proceeded through today’s agenda and dynamics, I found it time to point out that we all have hot buttons that are easy to push and we don’t always know which ones they are until someone touches it. It’s like going to the dentist with a toothache. Until that metal probe touches the spot, it’s hard to know exactly where the pain is. Except, some of the folks don’t even know they have a toothache, but when that probe finds the spot… OUCH!

I hurt for them. It took me a few months to get a grip on my situation and decide how I wanted to go forward. I can’t fix it for them but I can try lead by example and show them that this isn’t fatal, there isn’t a gallon of blood. By self-assessing on a regular basis, you stay in touch with the phase you’re in and are able to manage it rather than it managing you. I consider myself “self-employed” and my business is that of selling myself and my brand. Who wants to buy emotionally damaged or worse, self-destructive goods? No one. My customers want confidence, talent, collaboration and focus. They don’t want baggage.

Every night before I go to sleep, I self-assess: have I used my day as productively and positively as I can? Am I in a good place, a healthy state of mind? Have I controlled what I can and put the rest into God’s hands? I do it because I want to help myself and I want to help those who need it, get through this process. It helps to keep me from waking up with my own angry belly.