Organizer

Judy hired me as the Circulation Manager, but I functioned as the office administrator.  When I arrived at Heuthig Publishing, Ltd., the entire Accounts Receivable system consisted of one pile on her desk.  On a good day.  She knew where everything was, or at least what pile it was in, but file retreival was cumbersome at best.  Finally, I went into her office and asked her for all the billing and receiving files and papers.  Of course, she wanted to know why, and I told her to just trust me.  By the end of the week I'd set up one drawer in the filing cabinet with folders for each of our advertisers and vendors with both accounts payable and accounts receivable sections.  We were never late paying a bill again or unable to know within a minute or two which advertisers owed us and how much they owed.  When the company grew large enough to hire a bookkeeper, she told me I'd made her job easier because of my files.

The Pitney Bowes Office of Workforce Diversity Programs, among other things, responded to discrimination charges filed with state and federal agencies.  We had drawers of case files, both open and closed, although most open case files sat in the cubicle of the investigating staff officer.  The filing system was fairly easy to navigate, but there was no way to easily see case status or detect patterns.  I set up a fairly simple database in Excel that allowed us to see cases by region, type of case, response deadlines, open/closed status, etc.  Eventually, the management team assigned one of the staff attorneys to assist us in the investigation and response process.  One of the first things she wanted to do was implement a tracking system.  To her surprise, I handed her the one we already had in place.  She was even more surpised that she didn't need to make any changes to it.

At the Episcopal Church Center we learned procedures for many things by trial and error.  Often we wouldn't learn that a procedure had changed until we got paperwork back with a note telling us we'd used the wrong form or submitted the wrong documentation.  I started making notes and updating them every time we learned of a new change.  I gave copies of my notes to any new hire I worked with during the course of my job.  After a large reorganization, my new director asked me to head a committee to put together a procedures handbook for the new center.  The committee used my notes as the basis for the new handbook, which the other centers asked for, too.  Once we completed the handbook, I went on to develop a set of shortcut cards for the most used procedures such as Travel Requests, Check Requisitions, and Expense Reports that were used by both officers and administrative staff across the organization.

In our rapidly changing environment at the Church Center, I tracked projects from the idea phase through completion using an 11" x 17" white board and small PostIt notes.  This allowed me to quickly assess priorities, see upcoming deadlines, and change things as needed.  I'd originally done this on the computer, but even when I put the tracking document on the shared drive, coworkers would forget to look there.  They could always find the white board on my desk even when I was out of the office. 

And when they eliminated my position of Children's Ministries Officer, I used my last eight weeks at the Church Center to document all of my projects, social media accounts, and files, both electronic and paper.  I also worked with the archivist to make sure that important historical files were maintained that might otherwise have been lost, especially electronic files.  I left her, and the Formation Ministries team lead, with a complete map of my files both on my hard drive and on the shared drive. 

Even my endings are organized.

What He Said

On his blog Anchorhold David Townsend pretty much sums up my feelings about Ash Wednesday and Lent.  Read Dust.

It's Been A Long Time

In the middle of packing and running around trying to get things done before leaving tomorrow for the NAECED Tapestry 2012 Conference I went down to church to attend the Music Skills class our Director of Music holds on Monday nights at 6:00 p.m. It's only the second one I've been to in the two years or so that he's been running them. He asked me if I'd come last week and play for this past Sunday's bilingual service.

Sunday was the first time in a very long time--years--since I've played my flute for church. It's a good bet that I'll be doing so again. Even though I felt a bit nervous, I enjoyed playing with others again.

This evening we didn't have any service music to practice. Richard wants to put together a couple of hours of dance music for some evening in the future. Since it was just the two of us for the first part of the session, we worked through a couple of songs. At one point he asked me to play an F scale, and I went totally blank. "How many sharps in F?" I thought to myself. Ummm... try one flat. Once I showed him I could play the scale, he told me to try improvising while he played the melody of the piece we'd been working on.

Improvise? ME?? AAAAAAAA!

But I did. It wasn't perfect, but it wasn't awful either. No judgment, just encouragement.

Richard also asked me about my knowledge of chords. Having not been a music major or minor, I never reached the point of taking any music theory classes. I picked up bits and pieces here and there, but there's a whole lot I never learned. It looks like I'll be learning some now!

I'm looking forward to being part of the music program at church again. It will be nice to play regularly with other musicians again, something I haven't done in a long time.

Another Vanishing Skill

Last Sunday at the parish annual meeting I was elected to be Clerk of the Vestry. I've been taking notes at Vestry meetings for the past few months as well as some other parish-wide meetings. I'm also the secretary of the National Association for Episcopal Christian Education Directors board.

These days I take notes on my laptop because I type quickly enough to capture most of the conversation. I'm able to do this because I learned touch typing in 9th grade. At one time I typed 100 words per minute accurately, and it took some time for me to learn to just type and not worry about typos and other mistakes while taking notes at meetings. The purpose is to capture the conversation and important actions. The notes themselves can be edited after the meeting.

Over the years my typing, along with my other administrative and organizational skills, are what often got my foot in the door when looking for a job. As I've been involved in my current job hunt I've been noticing that some organizations no longer require a typing test, even for administrative jobs. However, there are still many that do. Given how many executives and managers do their own typing, it isn't typing skills so much as editing skills that assistants need. And with the growing prevalence of tablet computers, not to mention smart phones and electronic readers, touch typing is rapidly becoming a lost art. You really can't touch type on a touch screen "keyboard." So why does any organization really need to give typing tests to applicants these days?

Schools stopped teaching shorthand years ago. And the teaching of handwriting is also falling by the wayside in this era of new technology. So how does one take notes in classes or meetings?

Maybe we need a touch screen shorthand. Or maybe a simplified version of the court stenography system for touch screens.

I'd be particularly interested in hearing from folks from younger generations about how they take notes. I may not be an early adopter, but I'm always ready to learn new ways of doing things as technology changes and adapts.

The Bible Challenge

So Bishop Douglas decided to participate in the Bible Challenge and invited Bishop Curry, Bishop Ahrens, and the Diocesan staff to join with him. Then an invitation went out to the entire Diocese via their Weekly eNews. You can read more about the background of the Challenge in the diocesan article.

Lois, our priest, brought the Challenge to the congregation, first to Holy Needles, our prayer shawl ministry, and to the monthly Practicing Prayer group. She then sent an email to the parish, which we posted on our Being Community blog to provide a place for conversation. Some of our members have undertaken the challenge. After looking at the various options, I chose the Chronological Reading Plan from One Year Bible Online, one of the resources recommended by The Center for Biblical Studies.

The movement in the Episcopal Church seems to have begun with the Rev. Marek P. Zabriskie, rector of St. Thomas Episcopal Church, Fort Washington, PA. Its roots, however, are deeply entrenched in the Evangelical/Fundamentalist streams of Christianity. The One Year Bible originated with Tyndale House Publishers, and the One Year Bible Online site uses that name with permission from Tyndale.

I've provided lots of links here, so you can go peruse all of this for yourself.

I have mixed feelings about participating in this whole enterprise, but it has been a long time since I read through most of the Bible as a participant in Education for Ministry(EfM). I chose the chronological plan in part because of my experience in EfM. And I find it really interesting that an organization that appears to be fairly Evangelical/Fundamentalist in its outlook provides a plan for reading the Bible that doesn't follow it strictly from the traditionally accepted order of books. It seems even some of the more conservative Christians are engaging in a bit of one or more of the historical critical methods of looking at the Bible.

So I guess we'll see where this goes.

Now We Are Two and Fifty

This is not where I thought I would be today. On my last birthday I didn't think I would still be unemployed a year later. Of course, there was a point in time when I didn't think I'd live to see 40, let alone 52. So I am definitely ahead of the game.

This evening was the first of four celebrations--a quiet dinner with a good friend. Sunday I'll gather with a group of friends to celebrate two of our birthdays. The following weekend another gathering of friends for my birthday will not also be for Christmas, Hanukkah, and the Solstice. And I look forward to a quiet dinner with family.

I have been, and continue to be, incredibly blessed by my friends and family. With them, I face my 53rd year with hope and confidence.

Mom and The Solar Oven

I've often told stories about Mom wanting to know about something and then heading off to the local library to find every book she could on the topic. I'm sure family members can tell similar stories about me. Now of course, we all turn to the Internet.

Solar energy was a big topic in the late 60's and early 70's. Mom was intrigued by the thought of cooking using solar energy. She found information about making a solar oven. I remember paper patterns, thick Styrofoam, cardboard, and aluminum foil. I don't remember if she ever got it to work. I tried again a couple of years later for a 9th grade science project. I don't remember if I got it to work either.

Another project attempted and half forgotten.

So imagine my surprise to see today's post on The Tiny House Blog: Global Sun Oven an Option for Tiny Houses? Somebody actually manufactures them, and they look very similar to the ones Mom put together almost 40 years ago. However, at a retail price of about $300, I don't think I'll be running out to buy one tomorrow.