Mental loose ends

I have a confession. I actually enjoy television advertising, at least some of it. I've worked in sales long enough to appreciate a really well done pitch. Then there are the ads that make me wonder what were they thinking. I love Starbursts candy, but their new ads are just ridiculous. One features two guys who drop their candy accidentally into a vat of acid. One guy reaches in to retrieve his candy and comes back with no arm. He then reaches in with the other arm. Then the other guy does. Yeah, that really sells me. Starbursts -- the candy that makes you totally stupid. I think I'll buy Jolly Ranchers instead.

I enjoy selling. I enjoy the challenge of finding out why my customers really need and then getting it for them. I like meeting people, and if gas were actually affordable, I'd enjoy the travel in my job a whole lot more. However, I'm truly an introvert, and I have to prepare myself to sell. I have to marshall my energy and focus it outward. I have to be very alert. I imagine that my mental preparations for a heavy sales day are similar to an actor getting into character. I'm not creating a false persona. I'm just tapping into a very specific mode of myself. In preparing myself, I know I can prepare myself for somethings, and others are just not going to work. Yesterday, on a cold call, I stepped out of my car and got hit with a wave of nausea so intense that I dropped to my aching knees and immediately spewed in the parking lot. Something like that is one of those things which just can't be overcome. You just can't talk your way around that. It was one of the few times in my life I've appreciated SUVs. They're great when you need something to hide behind, and my mid-sized car slipped out of that parking lot as quickly and hopefully as unobtrusively as it slipped in. I've got a print in my home office that says, "Blessed are we who can laugh at ourselves for we shall never cease to be amused." I know it's true.

I think I've fallen in love with a gadget. The Palm handheld and I have had a longstanding thing going on, but I think it's being edged out by my new phone. I changed mobile phone providers and the womanchild and I both have the same phone now (a two for one deal). It's a camera phone that will take short videos with sound, and it has an mp3 player. My husband got a more basic model. In all honesty, he'd be happier if we had only one wall mount landline phone. While the womanchild cannot stop text messaging her friends, I can't stop downloading music. My playlist changes daily, and I wonder what it says about me that both Rockapella's Amazing Grace and Rob Zombie's Dragula have their place today. This moment though, I'm soundly back in the musical arms of Van. Into the Mystic is absolutely perfect for me now.

It's been a beautiful, cloudy, misty, rainy day, and it's good to be home now, with my hair down, my bra off, a cat knocking me in the head with her tail, and a candle burning. I've dropped the emotional tool belt which helps me sell, and I'm mellow and relaxed. I might not have a weekly list of ten good things, but I know that I've had my share, and I'm feeling them right now...even without a xanax. 'Tis good.