Accountability

Why is it unreasonable to expect that the job I have hired you to do is in fact done to agreed parameters before I pay you?  If I hire you to do a job within a certain time frame with clear guidelines and specs and you not only agree to them, but assure me that they are easy and attainable...plenty of time, no problem. Until we are close to deadline and the deliverables are not there or they are not what I asked for or fill in the blanks here because the end result and accompanying excuses get to be pretty wild.  So wild that I think this topic could make a great coffee table book. The title could be, “The dog ate my code.”
I have been thinking about the lack of accountability and personal responsibility a lot lately. I have run up against this quite a bit as a business owner and certainly just in the every day living of life.  I wonder if it is more prevalent in our society as a whole or I am just running up against part of the world where it is more the norm. If it is more prevalent why? Is it a lowering of standards/expectations?  Do we care less about the jobs we hold and how we do them. Is it generalized societal apathy?  Whatever it is, I find it disheartening and at times, when given a substandard product and told it is industry standards (I hate that one) and just down right shocking. And I do believe that is in fact apathy, pure and simple, just not caring.
I have always been accused of having standards that are too high. I remember my grandmother telling me I was going to be disappointed a lot in life if I expected to hold others to the standards I hold for myself (for the most part I have not been disappointed, Gran). That statement of hers made quite an impact on me, so I have been very careful to make sure I am being reasonable with what I am looking for in a job well done. I do believe that if you ask the Blue Moon team, you will find that I have done a fair job with this goal. (Do me a favor though, and wait to ask them until we are a few more weeks from the summit.)
What is wrong with having high standards and feeling good about the work you produce? Whatever you do—whether it is cleaning toilets ( I have done my fair share of this), growing things, building, programming, caring for children, tending the sick—does it not help and feed everyone involved if you do it well with all of you.
If you feel good about what you do does it not then go into what you are doing and does it not then come to me your customer, and I in turn feel good about what I hired you to do and then again it goes out into the world to all of the end-users, which in my business, are knitters who use yarn and computers, and they feel good and pass the word.  A full complete circle of quality workmanship that supports the whole. I will hire you again and again tell others to hire you. We both will feel good about working together, which will enrich who we are and how we walk the planet.
Since the Sock Summit we have been asked a lot about our business model and why we thought this was so successful.  There are many reasons why the Sock Summit was successful but underlining them all is accountability, to the project, to ourselves, to each other, to everyone we worked with and to our customers.
It is has been pointed out to us that this is not the easy way to go and we agree.  This week we resolved a working relationship that in fact was not...working, to our standards. I feel we were as accountable and responsible as we could be in this situation. I am working my way through feeling that this is in fact resolved for me. I am having a hard time processing this.
Maybe a walk on the beach will help.

Dear Router

I am sorry. I am so very sorry. I am sorry that I got frustrated and angry and took it out on you, an obvious innocent router. Poor little router all you were trying to do was your job of community service, and I was all impatient and sarcastic and certainly unappreciative. As a mother and a business owner, you would think I would have a little more empathy for you as the hub that is all.  Oh no. I even threatened to bury you in the backyard. I know, how rude. I am surprised you have not just shut the whole works down here.

I am begging for your understanding. See, when you do not work, not only do I not have internet or email I also have no phone. You know how I feel about not having a phone.
It has been a trying few days with a server migration and all that entails when you have two blogs and a merchant service account and a sock club subscription service and 10 different emails and a ticket system and ... all the bugs that pop up and bring everything to a grinding halt and just when you think you have worked through the very last one and all is well...then BOOM nothing not a damn thing will print.
I am not proud, truly I am not. But you must be able to see that it just might have been a little too much in one day. Especially when (and I hate to admit this but it is true) it is not a language I speak well. I can understand the basics but I am certainly not fluent and when things get this hairy one really needs more understanding then a simple “Type your IP here ma’am.”
I am so sorry. I had a lot to do today, and should have realized that you needed to be my top priority and that none of this ill will would have been expressed had I read the code on the wall.
Please forgive me. I do learn and will do much better next time. I promise tomorrow will be a better routed day.

Dearest Steph

The word thank you, although an excellent word, simply cannot express all that I feel about the love filled gift you gave me on Friday.  My dearest friend, every time I look at these lovely dream socks you made for me or think of them and all the thoughtfulness and intention, my eyes brim over with tears. And if I go back and read your post, well… I am just done in, done completely in, a veritable puddle with a heart so full it feels like it just might burst.
There is so much I love here from the color on, and what touches me the deepest is how they embody what we created, together every single stitch of it, but most especially the heart. The heart and soul...you and I.
Look what we have done Steph. I am so proud of the growth that we both had to go through in order to pull this off in the heart-filled, well-intentioned way we envisioned in the beginning. Not once did either one of us back down or give up. Not even when we were so exhausted or scared we did not know how to take that next step we did. We held each other up, supported and fed what was good and right and worked through and let go of what was not.
What I am even more proud of is that we stayed on track with each other. I thinks it speaks volumes about our friendship that it not only endured something so grand and powerful, but was deepened and enriched by it. All those things you said about me Steph are true about you. I love your strength, the strength that comes from an honest self awareness and willingness to grow especially in the middle of the fire. You are the sister of my heart and I am grateful beyond measure for you.  I am glad that you are safely home now with Joe and the girls but I miss you already.

I also have pictures of you and the Dream Sock.  Again us working together. Even though I had not a clue (and I do believe there were quite a few of these little clues) you would misplace your project bag with said dream sock and I would find it.  So funny.
I should have picked up on the distress when you kept misplacing them. I just thought it was how you were grounding yourself and now that I think on it it you were. You were grounding us both in those socks.  Holy shit woman, these are one powerful pair of socks.
That Barbara Walker and Judith and Anna and all of those wonderful knitters in our community adding stitches to these warms the cockles of my knitterly heart. That you asked them to do this for me and that you took the sock with us everywhere as a talisman of sorts, well that is the part that leaves me speechless.
As you know I am usually the one that does this sort of gifting and Steph not ever have I received a gift like this...not ever.  Just so cherished.

In class even though you are not knitting on it at the time it is there waiting patiently. We searched and searched and found it in the lost and found.

Yes I do also have a picture of you and sock at the opening night reception.

And the luminary panel.

And then at our retreat where everyone knit on them and I took photos of this and still did not catch on.  Seriously doubting my powers of observation here. Blaming the tired. Although I was a little suspicious and concerned a few times when I approached a group of our friends and it would get quiet. I just chalked it up to tired and sensitive.

I love that last picture in this row of you sitting there knitting happily away, you look so relaxed and peaceful.

dearest friend, partner in crime and sister of my heart,
Thank you. I like you a lot also!

p.s.  I think Betsy is wonderful too, love that Cat knit on dpn’s and that Lucy added her signature hole and that you and Anna got a long visit and that our lovely friends got to shine...just shine.