Rainey Blogs on Some Days

Today, I am feeling “off” in an “everything is fine but I still don’t feel right kind of way.” It went on for a few days until I finally became so desperate that I needed to go and sit on a boulder next to the constant roar of the swooshing brook at Flat Rock Brook Nature Center. I'm trying to let the sounds of the water drown out all of the oppressive thoughts in my head. Sometimes it takes a while. This is the view of where I station myself, and I think the video captures the sound. (I know some people use this kind of soundscape for sleeping, but I use it today to combat oppressive thoughts.) However, one unoppressive thought is conflicting with the rest in my head, a quote I used in the class I'm teaching this semester: “A man whose hands are full of parcels cannot receive a gift. " C. S. Lewis Lewis said this about spiritual dryness, and I guess this is a good description of where I am right now: spiritually dry. And my hands are full of parcels, which resonates wi...

We were given a choice whether or not those of us who were having a milestone service year wanted to speak on Founders Day in our department meeting. Since the one consistent feedback I have gotten during my entire 25-year career at UPS was that I don’t speak up enough in meetings, I thought I would make up for the whole thing here today. No one intends to have a long career at UPS. You come to work at UPS as a temporary thing while you are planning your life. Those plans do not include UPS. We come for the benefits, the tuition assistance, the non-standard hours that don’t interfere with classes or our other real jobs. Parents don’t envision their kids growing up and working for UPS. I think these are just the basic realities of life. I worked the majority of my career in Information Services Learning & Development or Corp HR Learning & Development. I would have never lasted 25 years had I been in Operations. I know exactly how long I would have lasted in Operations had I wo...

Today I ordered my coffee at the Starbucks at 78th and Lexington on my lunch hour from training a new seasonal package helper. It's expensive on the Upper East Side , so each day I'm bringing my lunch, which I eat along with a coffee at Starbucks while I sit and look out the window at the people passing by. Today no seats were available in the store when I ordered—which I'm finding is quite common in Manhattan--but as I walked toward the rear of the store not knowing what to do, a woman with a baby in a stroller got up and left. We made eye contact and smiled, a mutual understanding of my good fortune of being at the right place at the right time. I went right over and took the seat, a nice leather bench against the wall. A job interview was in progress on my right—a twenty-something professional Jamaican man was being interviewed by a twenty-something American woman. He looks like a young Forest Whitaker , whom I had recently seen in the movie The Last King of Scotland . I...

On Wednesday, I sat down next to a woman in the Starbucks at 78 th and Lexington facing the window looking out. The Manhattan Starbucks are all so crowded that you have to sit next to someone. I took the one seat that was left at the window, grateful to get a seat because earlier in the week I had spent one lunch period squatting down leaning against a wall in another Starbucks, waiting for a seat while my feet fell asleep and tingled like crazy. The woman was feverishly journaling in a notebook, exactly the thing I had also intended to do during my lunch hour there too. I journal on a black steno pad that I carry around with me most of the time. I was wearing UPS browns, taking a break from training a new helper on how to deliver packages. Since it is New York, no one seemed to think it strange that a UPS guy was journaling on his steno pad. I can't remember ever seeing a man journaling anywhere , let alone a man wearing a UPS uniform as I was. But everyone just pretty much leav...