A new adventure.

Saturday, Jun. 27, 2015 - 1:13 a.m.

So. I have been asked to temporarily switch accounts to train to train on one of our new accounts that is doing a huge ramp up. I will be trained to train on an account I have never worked on. I will be trained to train agents to provide support for a product I do not care for. I will be trained to train agents to make sales when I hate selling.

This ought to be fun!

I could have said no. Why did I say yes? Because I love to train, and I love to learn. I don’t care what I learn. And I don’t care what I train.

I am capable of learning pretty much anything. And I am capable of teaching it so well to somebody else that they can do a better job of it than I ever could. I may not be the best trainer ever, but training is what I do best.

So how did a painfully shy introvert ever get into customer care, never mind training classes of complete strangers? I have no clue. All I can figure is, I grew up shy because I grew up socially inept because I had such limited contact with people. I was never purposely rude, but I was never taught to be polite because I was never in social situations where I had a chance to experience it. I never got a chance to learn the give and take of small talk. (And I still have no patience with it!) But I like people. I enjoy talking to them, interacting with them, learning about their lives. You can be shy and still like people. You can be an introvert and still like people. It’s just that we “recharge” by being alone, so we need more alone time.

A year ago I was living with my parents, struggling to get my trailer moved, and then habitable. It was not easy. I was just not comfortable. I was never, ever alone. I would gratefully escape to bed early and read in bed (something I never do) just to have some alone time. I don’t think I read three books the entire time I was living with them. I felt like I had to be “on,” be sociable, whenever I was up and not working. Actually, work was a relief. I was working overnights at the time, so I didn’t take many calls. It was the only alone time I got when I wasn’t sleeping, upstairs in Mom’s office/craft room. As soon as the trailer got moved, I took to coming over there every day. I would just sit in my reading chair with the cats, even when I had no electricity yet. It was my recovery time.

Now I live alone and walk over to the house every day on my lunch. One hour a day, and I still sometimes would rather not go. But a lot of that is it’s so hard to see the way Mom’s mind is slipping. She will tell me something and immediately forget she told me. She’ll tell me the same thing several times in the course of that hour. But that’s something for another time. I’m not sure how I got from my new training to Mom’s forgetfulness, but my happy mood just took a nose dive.

Think of something positive… Alfalfa. Yeah! The air is redolent with the scent of alfalfa. Did I mention my trailer is in an alfalfa field? It’s blooming now, and the air smells heavenly. My lilies are starting to bloom, but they are like half their usual size and height. But they’re blooming. Flowers make me happy.

OK, I feel better now. I’m going to read some and go to bed.