Victory! One whole day without complaining!
Posted: Thursday, April 05, 2007 8:30 AM by Jaclyn Levin
Today Producer Stephanie Becker is blogging about her 21-day quest to quit complaining. She’s in her second week. Her assignment came after a Today Show Story about a Missouri Pastor’s mission to get his parishioners to quit complaining. He’s given out purple rubber bracelets as a reminder. Break the vow and switch the wrist the bracelet is on.
(From Stephanie..)
Good news! I completed my first full day of absolutely no complaining. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Not one single solitary whiny word. It only took ten days. I didn’t even have to duct tape my mouth shut. All that carpal tunnel-vision of a world without grousing finally paid off. That and I just cowered in my office most of Sunday, refusing to talk to anyone or to answer the phone. You’ve got to the respect the streak. Especially here at the Today Show as we enter 590 weeks of being number one.
I was expecting a lightness-of-being endorphin-charged nirvana-like feeling of calm. Instead I felt like a tightly wound chain smoker on the first day of cold turkey. No matter. It was 24 hours and counting.
I have to confess a chemical dependency helped me reach this point. Ever since starting my quest I have been addicted to a combination of sorbitol, mannitol, malic acid and Blue 1 Lake. Mixed together it all adds up to sugar free green apple gum.
I’ve probably gnawed off at least one coat of enamel. Lucky for me the bureau chief keeps a bountiful supply in the top draw next to her computer. I have made more trips to that stash than Cheech and Chong did to any of their stash in the 1970s.
I was on a roll. Then disaster struck. Total gum depletion at the positively worst time. I couldn’t get my computer to work, I’d just realized I’d left my ATM card in the machine and the Queen of Crankiness herself gal pal Roselyn was pre-emptively ranting about a blind date. I desperately needed a fix. But the cupboard was bare. There was nothing but a couple of packs of bubble gum, which taste like old socks to me. Oh the humanity!
I slammed the drawer shut, not noticing the Vice President of News Coverage sitting on the couch. He’s about 354 rungs above my head. That means he can fire me 355 times.
“How can she be out of my flavor?!?” I moaned.
To which Mr. Veep suggests cheerfully, “Better switch that bracelet.”
To which I say, “I’m so sick of people telling me to change my bracelet.”
To which Mr. Veep replies. “Better switch it back now.”
The 36-hour streak comes to a grinding halt.
In fact there is an entire posse of people who have no trouble pointing out my lapses. I have a real beef about their threshold for my bellyaching. It’s way too low. Doesn’t anyone know the difference between a question and a complaint? For instance: “Do they have to keep my office as cold as a meat locker?” IS a question. And my sincere HOPE and WISH that I not feel like a human popsicle at my desk, does not constitute kvetching. It is just a statement of desire. Like my desire to have Pierce Brosnan give up his wife for me. As if.
And while we’re at it, sometimes a fact is just a fact and not a complaint. Here’s a quick list for my colleagues.
1. It is a fact that my office is frigid.
2. It is a fact that the parking spaces at work are too small to accommodate both my open car door and my butt.
3. It is a fact that working the night-writer shift on the show IS grueling. You get about a billion stories. That’s right, one for every person in China. Okay, that’s not the truth. But it’s not a complaint either. It’s hyperbole. I found it in the hyperbole-olic chamber. It’s where they send producers to decompress.
After I got caught in my great gum meltdown the floodgates opened wide. Everything bottled up for those long hours spewed forth. Which got me wondering: was it just one long rant so I only had to make one bracelet change? Or does each sentence constitute its own transgression?
I finally snapped out of my gripe session when I got assigned a couple of stories about Elizabeth Edwards’ breast cancer. What really jolted me was the story about NBC’s Chief Financial Correspondent Anne Thompson. You might have read her blog or saw her on the show talking about her breast cancer. To me she’s not just a correspondent, she’s a friend who I respect, love working with and adore.
Like most of us here at NBC, I had no idea about her condition. While interviewing her to prep Meredith for her appearance on the show, Anne had me in stitches. It’s embarrassing to say, but I snort-laughed at least twice on the phone.
Anne’s not the only breast cancer survivor at NBC. Here in the Burbank Bureau Editor Ann Shannon (left) is our most recent cancer patient. She’s bouncing back after a second bout that included full-on chemo. Now that it’s over she’s documenting her hair re-growth with a pretty funny photo journal.
Ann and Anne’s upbeat outlook on life is making me ashamed of getting grouchy about the little things, since they’re joking about the big bad one. But, hey, if they chilled out in my freezing office for a few minutes, I know they’d be cranky in no time. That’s not a complaint, that’s just a fact.
