Stress and the Fate of the Baked Potato: An Anecdotal Study

I am sitting down to a lunch of chicken breast and a baked potato, but this meal was nearly lost to me.

I have found myself cracking a little under the weight of the world. It occurred to me that I am caught in a financial Catch 22. Each month, I spend more money than I make. This is a problem. But it is not a problem of poor planning or lack of fiscal responsibility. This was, in fact, part of the plan... maybe it was poor planning. About 18 months ago I left behind the cozy paycheck I was receiving as a Driver's License Clerk for the State of Iowa for a new career at ACT. I took a $10,000/year pay cut so that I could do work that I hated less and go back to school with the hope of one day doing work that I didn't hate at all.

As the journey began, I was promised a new life full of opportunities and advancement potential. I never held back that I was not going to be a customer service representative forever. I managed to keep myself from telling my interviewers that I was destined for greatness, but I might have hinted at it a time or two. They reassured me again and again that I could move up the ranks within the organization and quickly recoup the salary difference. I'm sure that you can guess, given that I'm writing this now, that is not how this story ends. I faced constant scrutiny when I applied for higher paid positions. There were even elements of light sabotage against not only myself, but other go-getters in the department. When I applied for positions in the natural progression, I was turned down because I was overqualified. When I applied for more advanced positions, I wasn't taken seriously because of the low position I was in.

After a year of working full time, going to school, and making ends meet by taking out student loans, I finally advanced in the company. My salary was raised by a whopping $2000/year. "I would offer you more, but my hands are tied by company policy..." This is a line that I am getting familiar with quickly. Everybody would love to pay me enough to live off of, but the "company" just won't allow it. Meanwhile, I have racked up about $20,000 in student debt, and I'm running out of money to pay my tuition. I would stop going to school, but I realized that I would have to start repaying my loans, and that would actually be more expensive than covering the difference between the actual tuition and ACT's laughable reimbursement program.

For some time, I have chosen to handle this by whistling in the dark and just pretending that there was nothing scary out there. I realized that at some point, I would have to do the math. And then I did. Boy, do I wish I could turn the light back out. The situation is mathematically impossible to resolve. The outs exceed the ins. There seems to be not way to increase the ins, at least not in this company, and I'm locked into all the outs, as well. As there is still some student loan money in my account, I can pretend for a little while longer that everything will work itself out, but ultimately, the system will collapse. The money will be gone and the ins and outs will have remained the same.

Wait, wasn't I talking about a baked potato? Where am I going with all of this? Oh, now I remember. When my brains comes upon a problem, it cannot stop working until it finds the solution. This is usually one of my strengths, personally and professionally. But there is a catch. When a problem doesn't have a solution, my brain won't let it go. It continues to feed the same information in and hope for a better result or new breakthrough. This cycle happens again and again until my little neurological CPU shuts down and ceases to compute anything. You can recognize this state of being by my inability to finish sentences, my misidentification of common objects (i.e. calling a pencil a banana and then laughing until I cry), and my deeply furrowed brow.

So, this is the state in which I found myself last Friday evening while trying to prepare to leave for the weekend. I knew that I needed to start with dinner. It's one of my rules for prevention a complete mental breakdown. When you're not sure what you should do about anything and you don't know why and you're standing in the middle of the living room starting blankly, you should try to eat something. It helps. I made some chicken breasts and baked potatoes. I even had the foresight to make an extra of each for a lunch on a later day. Look at me go, I got this life thing down. I ate my little home-cooked meal, rinsed my dishes, and started to put away the leftovers.

Then something happened. A catatonic event. Perhaps, a wormhole or fold in the universe. Maybe even an alien abduction. I only know that was folding some laundry when I was struck with a feeling that I might not have finished a previous task. I walked back out to the kitchen and saw a lonely chicken breast on the counter. Yes, that was it. I was putting away the leftovers. I must have put away the potato and forgotten the chicken. I put the chicken in a container and put it in the fridge. But something looked strange. There was no metallic bundle sitting in there waiting to be reheated. The potato... was gone. Just gone.

Hrmph. Where could a potato go? I searched all 904 square feet of home sweet home and found nothing. I looked on all the counters and the coffee table. I thought I might have carried it with me into a bedroom, so I searched the side tables, the ironing board, the computer desk... bookshelves? Why not, I looked there, too. I was out of ideas, anxious to leave, and totally paralyzed. I stood in the unidentified space between the kitchen and living room staring blankly feeling like I was losing control over my life because of a single baked potato.

Then I saw it. Shining in the early evening sun. A foil-wrapped potato sat in the middle of the living room floor. I shook my head and fought the urge to scold the potato. I put it in its rightful place in the fridge and took a deep breath. I was free to live my life as planned. Free to leave for the weekend without fear of a potato rotting in some dark corner of my home. To top it all off, I was confident that I would have lunch for at least one more day.

So, here I am. Sitting at my desk, still making a ridiculously small amount of money, worrying about how I will keep going. Still trying to solve this problem with no solution. Wondering how I got here, how many wrong steps led to this place. But for today, I am grateful. For today, I have what I need and I am enjoying a satisfying meal of leftover chicken breast and a baked potato. I came so close to going without, but I dodged fate this time.

Sometimes when a problem has no solution, and you give up and stare blankly at the living room floor, you find exactly what you need. So, don't worry if your load is so heavy that you're cracking up, just go with it and be grateful for every single potato.

Heidi and the too small box

So, there’s this box. I’m not sure who determined its dimensions or why it has to be box and not a sphere or a freeform blob. But there it is. From the day that you were born, you were expected to fit into the box. As an infant, there was plenty of room. You could fit comfortably in the box along with all of your thoughts and actions. You could scream and cry and crap your pants and it was all ok, because it all fit in the box.

As you grew, there became less and less space in the box. Your body still fit, perhaps some occasional loud laughing or temper tantrums, but every day, someone expected you to reign in more and more of your behavior. Don’t run in the house. Use your inside voice. Keep your hands to yourself. Suck it up. Quit acting like a child. Be seen not heard. Stop crying or I’ll just keep spanking you. Maybe my box was smaller than some, larger than others, but we all knew we were supposed to pull our arms and legs in close, duck our heads and just fit in.

It became clear to me, that I was struggling to accomplish this task. I wondered if there was something wrong with my box, or if it was the wrong box entirely. I would wrap my arms around my bent legs and will myself to fit. Stay in the box, just stay in the box, if you do nothing else today, by God, just stay in the box!!!!

Boom.

It always happened like that. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep myself inside. I would lose my grip on my legs and they would shoot out the bottom of the box. Standing to collect myself, my head would pop out of the top. Frantic, scrambling to get back inside, my arms would flail out. Everyone would see. They all looked at me through their peep holes as they sat comfortably in their seemingly appropriately sized boxes. I could hear the murmur as they all wondered, “What is wrong with that girl? Doesn’t she know she’s outside of her box?”

A teacher, an aunt, a concerned adult would finally come over and say, “Honey, you need to get back in your box.”

“I know, I know, I know!! But it doesn’t fit!”

Eventually, I got stronger. I could hold myself in the box for longer periods of time. But there was even less extra room than before. All my thoughts echoed around and the volume increased exponentially. Then, as every muscle began to shake with fatigue, the vibrations of body and sound were too much for my ragged, little box. Unlike the slow unfurling of my youth, my quivering adult self would explode out the seams in every direction. There was no time, no hope that I could slink back into my box unnoticed. A radiant ball of energy would rip the box to shreds and I would stand naked, fully exposed, no doubt in anyone’s mind that I did not fit.

I keep piecing my box back together; wrapping it with duct tape, fortifying the seams with leather and steel. But the result is always the same. The longer I stay in the box, the bigger the explosion when I can’t contain myself anymore.

The question that strikes me now: how do I get rid of the box? How do I find a community of others who couldn’t stay confined to their boxes either? Is there a way that we can all live as beautiful, radiant balls of creative energy without the world around us telling us constantly that we need to get back in our boxes?

I think that modern society has made it extremely difficult to shed our boxes. I think that this is a tragedy. I think that if we were to come together and let our collective light shine, we could do something really beautiful. We could shine brighter and brighter until we became one with each other, one with nature, one with God… a perfect manifestation of the human spirit.

But for today, I will fold myself back up into my tiny box. I will sit quietly and try to quell the vibrations that threaten to burst out. For today, I live in this world of gainful employment and fiscal responsibility. Today, I live in a world where it is far more important to fit in than to see the infinite possibility of your unleashed potential.

Bring on the Braineaters

At some point, I promise to lay off the whole zombie thing, but I figured it was a good place to start. I have evaluated several scenarios for the demise of the human race, and I think Zombie Apocalypse might not be so bad. Think about it; do you really want to die slowly from starvation or disease? Do you want to descend into total violent chaos and watch people, with their souls intact, start to turn on each other? Do you want to see the energy crisis hit critical mass when people still refuse to give up their cars, their iPads, their single family homes?

I feel like zombies would be more efficient, and less spiritually devastating. The zombie perpetrators would just be soulless beings. It would not be at all surprising or depressing to see them turn on the unaffected human beings. The number of zombies would increase exponentially and, in fairly short order, there would be no more brains to eat. The Earth could go about rebuilding itself from all of the damage we have inflicted and evolution could bring about a new dominant species that, hopefully, is comprised of better stewards of the planet than our own.

You may find yourself wondering, "Why, Heidi? From whence comes this brilliant revelation?"

Good question, guys. You are, so far, a fantastic audience.

I quite recently returned from a trip to Brazil as a part of an MBA global learning opportunity. I expected an opportunity to see the economic parity between the rich and poor in Sao Paulo. But what I saw, went far beyond what I was prepared for. The streets were littered with the homeless. It didn't matter if you were in the wealthy part of town or the favelas, there were people slumped against the wall on every block. Sure, there was some evidence of drug and alcohol abuse, but many of the people were simply disabled and unable to do manual labor. How can a person with one arm and no college education make it without any assistance from the government or their community?

What's more, we were explicitly instructed not to give them any money and not to make eye contact. Isn't that my decision to make? If I have some money, very little money mind you, and I see someone who has nothing, is it not my right to tip the scales just a little bit toward balance? There is a square in front of a great cathedral in historic Sao Paulo. Homeless people gather there. Some to beg. Some to sell their crafts. Some, I suppose, just don't have anywhere else to be. As a man makes beautiful grasshoppers out of palm fronds, our group is rushed off the square by our guide because it is "too dangerous". I have a photo and a memory, but what does he have for his efforts? Nothing. He may starve in that very space with a palm frond still in his hand while tour guides tell North Americans and Europeans to just step over him and hurry back onto the bus.

So, clearly I saw the poor, but what of the rich? You can't really see it on the street. Nobody appears to have much money. A lot of young people are selling art or busking for money. Those in the middle class don't generally have cars or own decent houses. The city infrastructure cannot support the 17 million people who live there, so the plumbing backs up, the city stinks, and the roads are in a perpetual state of disrepair. So where is the money? Ah, this is where my affiliation with a business school comes into play. I visit the board rooms and factories of agribusiness companies, investment banks, insurance and oil companies. The money was just hiding. These people do not walk the streets of Sao Paulo like the rest of us. These people hide in their offices and meet with wealthy foreigners before driving to their homes outside of the city.

Brazil's largest oil company spends roughly $36 billion US dollars per quarter on operating costs. This generates a net profit that hovers around $2 billion US. Some quarters they experience net losses close to $1 billion US. In the grand scheme of things, they really aren't generating much profit. What they do generate goes to the government and a handful of high level executives while the losses are passed on to small investors and tax payers. In pursuit of these profits, the company is willing to devastate entire towns or areas of natural vegetation to establish massive refineries. They are willing to drill in theoretically "protected" off shore areas where humpback whales go specifically to breed. It's like a giant walking through a village and destroying everything in it's path to get to where it wants.

Clearly, this is not a sustainable model. This system will certainly outlive its usefulness and leave us, along with every other life form on the planet, in a state of total crisis. Competition for resources will reach a fever pitch. The peasants will surely revolt. Armies will lash out in final attempts to control the populace. People will die violent and painful deaths. They will turn on their fellow man to save their own lives because, as a people, that is all we know. If we don't change the system, if we don't embrace the power of collectivism, of cooperation, we will not know any solutions when the current system fails. We will all be sitting on the square with a palm frond in our hand wishing we had given dois reais (about a dollar) to the man who is about to kill us for our last loaf of bread.

So, bring on the zombies, I say. Take your final days with your loved ones in peace and comfort. And then let them eat your brain. Don't fight it, it might be the best we can do.