BACK AGAIN!

My last post was called "Final"--HA!
On June 4th, I made a list of what I would do if faced with “creative unemployment,” The following Monday, SunPower calls, and invites me back for (another) year to work on the next Fab in Malaysia. Wow.
That was Monday. By Friday, the deal was done, and the following Monday, I was off to Malaysia.
In order to make the decision, I made the usual lists: pros and cons for going, pros and cons for staying, and the effect on my values.
So—I decided to go. Having just gotten back from a year overseas, it was tremendously difficult to get my head around the idea of being gone again for that long. Hell, I’d just gotten reacquainted at home, just really gotten back into the swing of things.
Being back in Malaysia again was like waking in a nightmare I thought was over. Things are progressing on the first factory, but slowly—very slowly. It’s a disaster. And tho I’m here to work on the next fab, it’s disheartening.
Now it was good to see the people again. It seems one of the real lessons I’m learning is that the people are essentially good. The work may be difficult, tedious, and disappointing—but the people are decent, hard-working, and very well-intended. It was nice to be so heartily welcomed back.
But still, it was walking, of my own volition, back into the fire I just got out of.
I think a good part of the problem is that I was just getting acclimated back home and BOOM--gone again. Things probably would have been better if I'd been extended here all the way thru and just come home to visit a couple of times--I'd still be used to it.
And before I had built myself a little life over here--fish pond, satellite TV, cat, condo--now I'm in a hotel room, living out of a suitcase. And tho I made this decision, and nobody forced me to come, I kinda feel like I was forced into it by circumstances: come back to hell or get laid off. Nice set of choices. I feel a bit railroaded.
Work has been awful since I got here. Just awful. A complete lack of direction, huge expectations, and a schedule that is patently impossible.
Yet, part of me can start to see a path thru this where I don’t really do much. The EPCM team from Fluor will do most everything—that’s there job. All I have to do is monitor their progress, do weekly reports, and go mountain biking. Ok, no problem.
This place is just nuts. Meetings scheduled where presenters don’t show. Meetings starting late and later—up to a half hour late. No support from the engineering company from the first building because it takes time, and every moment spent is money lost for them—they’ve been just hemorrhaging for a long, long time. And all the information from the first factory is on the server, but the server is just chaos—no organization at all. People who are too busy to do a decent job of anything. And will I be empowered to actually make any sort of difference, have any sort of positive effect? I doubt it.
It’s really frustrating, and I really miss my family! That's the worst of it.
So I travel half a world away from home, and find myself full of fear and uncertainty.
Work sucks and I hate it and it’s a complete waste of my time. SunPower just wants it done, and doesn’t want it better or “right” or anything but faster and cheaper. But what do I do, quit? (A voice in my head screams “I am not a quitter!!”) Or do I just sit quietly and “pull a paycheck?”
And do I really feel that bad, that awful? No. It’s more like resignation—resigned to the inevitability of a life without vision, without inspiration. I’m bored. I’m bored with this stupid useless job.
I am completely ineffectual. Whatever I do, it’s just a spin on cheap carnival ride. Up and down and round and round--and for what? Nothing. I feel I’ve sold my soul to the devil.
So--I try to relax and stay calm and be open to inspiration or imagination and make this experience somehow worthwhile, worth doing. I’ve decided I’ll keep my big mouth shut, nibble away at the edges, and see what happens. Draw the paycheck. Ride my bike. Chill out.
I’m being tested. I certainly don’t see “the reason” for this current bit of “testing.” I’m filled with doubt.
But I’ve been taught that from doubt comes growth. I sure hope so. Cuz doubt is the issue right now. I doubt that there is any real meaning in what I’m doing. I doubt the value of being here. And I am a bit ashamed of my doubts. I can hardly talk to anyone about them. I can hardly see past or by them. On the other hand, I can handle it--this too shall pass--and I gain nothing by wallowing in self-pity and negative thinking.
I am learning and growing. If growth is enlargement, it means enduring the pain of expansion: expansion of my mind, my abilities, and my understandings. Yet as I go thru it, the pain trumps my ability to see what is happening, and I lose all perspective. Couldn’t I learn whatever this lesson is by some other way? Why is pain the touchstone of growth? Why is it a requirement? So I’ will remember the lesson? Gee, nice system!
What contribution can I, am I, making? I just can’t say, I just can’t see it….
Yet I’d bet that the people I work with and see each day, to whom I smile and offer encouragement, would say they think I’m doing well, and am a positive force in the workplace. Again, this is the old trick of hiding my fear behind a façade of joy.
I decided to try to be open and willing. To try to put on a happy face., to have a more positive attitude.
I will try and find the lesson, learn the lesson.
Meanwhile, the angry little boy in me just doesn’t want to play. It is taking a huge effort to calm him down, to try and be a good boy and not run away. To try to keep my mouth shut. To try to trust.
And even as I write this, part of me does trust, or at least wants to. Part of me seems to have come to believe that no matter what, everything will be ok. Part of me knows that my pain is self-inflicted, and that my sitting alone in my room at night dwelling on my self-center worry and anxiety IS the problem. Let it go. There is no pay off.
Again in life, I find myself of two minds. I really can’t even muster the steam to get really and truly bummed out. Part of me knows this too shall pass—it always does. Part of me knows there is no pay off. And part of me actually seems to want to wallow in self pity, as if it’s fun—in a perverse sort of way. I still love strong emotion—good or bad.
I need to reach out to my friends back home, but I’m actually afraid. Afraid of “bothering” them with my petty insecurities, my “problems.” As if I shouldn’t be havings these problems. Rather unrealistic. Setting a level of expectation for myself that is a bit super-human. Or that denies my mere humanity. I need to remember that my look good can kill me. I need to allow myself some humanity
It used to be that if I couldn’t stand it, I wouldn’t. Now, even tho I can’t stand it, I do. Is that maturity?
If so, maturity has ruined my ability to get good and angry....
I feel like “everybody” is asking too damned much of me. I feel that I keep hearing that I gotta do it. Gotta make that money. Gotta be a good boy. Gotta do it and do it well. You SHOULD be able to do it. And I SHOULD be able to relax, chill out. I SHOULD be able to have emotions and not let them have me.
Now, experience tells me that when this occurs, it is usually just “me” asking too much of me. I do this--I perpetuate this line of thinking.
I need to keep suiting up and showing up to work no matter my fears and emotional state. I need to let go the catastrophizing. I need to be calm in the face of my own, self-generated, upsets. I need to trust that things will be ok.
There is that key word—trust. It is sorely under-developed in me. And of course my first reaction, my first thought is to wonder “Why?” But that hardly matters. And I doubt I will ever truly know the reason. Whatever the reason, the fact remains—I am slow to trust, guarded and cautious. And if I knew why, in my heart, soul, and deep within my conscious brain, would that change anything? I doubt it. The thing to do, instead on wondering about the source of my distrust, is to start trusting.
I can do this. I can drop my guard. I can relax. I can open up and trust. Nothing terrible is going to happen. The success or failure of this project is not my sole responsibility. It will be what it will be. All my efforts to control the outcome, all my worries, will not change the results. Oh, things could be better, of that there is no doubt. But if I get involved, suggest and model and encourage a better way, a better method, then I have done what I can. If those suggestions fall on deaf ears, and nothing changes, that is not my fault. And in the meantime, I need to relax, enjoy the ride
I always want quick answers. I want all the problems at SunPower fixed, and right now. Maybe they are being worked out at a pace that allows everyone to see that there can be a better way, there must be a better way. And in the meantime, I can relax, I can trust.
And maybe it’s not just me that’s being “worked-on.” Maybe it’s SunPower’s entire organization. These problems are not just my own.
I recently read:
In the midst of grief, transition, transformation, learning, healing, or discipline - it's difficult to have perspective.
That's because we have not learned the lesson yet. We are in the midst of it. The gift of clarity has not yet arrived.
We are not always clear about what we are experiencing, or why.
Our need to control can manifest itself as a need to know exactly what's going on. We cannot always know. Sometimes, we need to let ourselves be and trust that clarity will come later, in retrospect.
If we are confused, that is what we are supposed to be. The confusion is temporary. The lesson, the purpose, shall reveal itself - in time.
It will all make perfect sense - later.
That describes my current situation to a tee. It’s just ridiculous to get upset about this situation—because the situation itself is ridiculous, absurd. But it is incredibly upsetting, and it is painful, and I do lose all perspective. But pain may be the only way a stubborn son of a bitch like me can internalize, can truly take to heart, the lesson. And at these times I simply do not trust that the lesson will be revealed.
I am going thru a change, and one that, if I could, I would not chose for myself. I’d much rather be home. Much.
And that change has been painful.
I will learn a lesson. Right now, the lesson seems to be that getting emotionally caught up, and distraught, about circumstances that are wholly beyond my control, and patently absurd, is not worth the trouble. There is no pay off in being miserable about a situation that I cannot influence, and that is utterly ridiculous. I need to let it go, move beyond it.
I wish I was better able, while it was happening, to trust that something is being worked out in me, something I need to learn. Yet I do not trust, not much, and not well. Both the quantity and the quality of my ability to trust are weak. And in passing thru the pain, which seems to be ending (thank god!), I do not fall back on trusting the process of life, on being reassured that there is a reason for this pain. How do other people do that? I just struggle, fight, stomp around rehearsing my rage …and wait. I do not wait patiently or expectantly. It is a waiting so full of fear, self obsession, and hopelessness that it practically unbearable.
Again I am amazed that I stayed sober, that I didn’t lash out, verbally or physically, at the situations and people that I find unacceptable, even unbearable. And when I am going thru it, I truly feel in the depths of my soul, that it will not end. But it does, at first it becomes bearable, and finally it passes. At least I can gain enough perspective to see that it’s just stupid—ridiculous, absurd, almost comedic (that is, if you like the blackest of comedy). And now, as in times past, it seems to be passing.
Still, given my druthers, I’d leave in a second. Every day since I arrived in Malaysia, until just these last few, I honestly considered just packing up and leaving.

I’ve learned these lessons:
cope with the pain of change as best you can, and trust that all will be well.