Author: Abe Darais

Saturday was a bit of a rocky day at first, but I did have one of the nicest morning prayers I’d had in a while. Ammon has been acting insanely difficult. Perhaps it is due to all of the neglect because of my intense focus at work to get promoted and Lily’s intense focus on the move and getting the house set up. He whines, all the time, about everything it seems. When we tell him to stop whining, he says (in a whiny voice), “I’m a bad boy” so then we have to deal with both trying to get him to stop whining and helping to have some sort of positive self concept about himself. “Ammon, you are not a bad boy, you are a wonderful boy that needs to stop whining….” etc.  He’s also been getting into a lot of trouble. He had an epic meltdown at Trader Joes, he has not been listening to instructions, and it has just been really really hard.

Lily an I were both tired, and not only got upset with the kids, but even got a little upset with each other. I think we were all tired and cranky from all the exertion we’d recently had. Lily and I made up very quickly and I got to spend a lot of time with the kids, which meant a lot to me because I’d been wanting to give them more attention.

I had the kids Saturday from about noon to 4:00. We got a lot done! I did a run to the dump to get rid of tons of trash from our garage, cleaned the rugs of lentil soup at the car wash, vacuumed the car, went to Trader Joes (where Ammon completely tantrumed) and went to Harmon’s for fondue ingredients.

So, it was a bit of a long day (though still meaningful and productive) to that point, but then everything changed when I got home.  First, I moved the downstairs couch all around and vacuumed it and under it (under the couch was crazy! We found so much stuff, including a sandal from the previous house owners).

So the couch cleaning was actually super satisfying, but the main thing that was so happy was my brother Jere came over and we did a 1,000 piece Harry Potter puzzle together.

It wasn’t just that we did a puzzle together. We had Harry Potter playing in the background, number 5 (that the puzzle scene was from) and number 6 afterwords. Lydia was also helping with the puzzle and its so fun hanging out with her. We also had the most amazing fondue of my life. The cheese was unbelievably good. With the cheese we had pickles, jalapeno stuffed pickled onions, sourdough bread, apples, grapes, and bbq smoked turkey. I had been trying to focus on eating healthy (which may have also played into my grumpiness earlier in the day), but I cast off all restraint with this fondue. It was honestly one of the most enjoyable meals I’ve ever had, and it was so fun to enjoy it with everyone.  I also used canned heat for the first time, and that was a great discovery although I was a bit worried about the leftover can and lid spontaneously combusting in the trash I threw it in.

Puzzling was so fun.  Lily later reported she was giving me lovey signals, like touching my arm, or playing footsie, and she said I didn’t notice or reciprocate and that made her sad. I feel bad, but the truth is, I must have been so engrossed in the puzzle. I was super committed and kindof obsessed. Lily wanted to turn in, but I was addicted and announced I’d finish all thousand pieces even if I had to do it alone. Well, Jere and Lily hung with me until it was done. Conversation was great, and the puzzling was just so fun, and we finished around 2:40 AM.  Man what a good time. And Lily, I will try to be more aware of your sweet gestures next time!!! Also, I learned for future reference, that to get the number of pieces right for a puzzling evening, it is wise to only have about 200 pieces for every adult helping.

Today was my first round interview for my promotion. I didn’t know there was more than one round until the end of the interview when they told me I passed, but that I still had to meet with Dan.

It was such a relief to pass the interview though. I had done so much to prepare, and God had done so much to clear the path for this to promotion to even be possible. I’d like to recount a few of the miracles that made this possible:

• One of the requirements to promotion (non-negotiable) was that I needed to get a 80% or higher on the survey that is sent to my team asking how often I do one-on-ones, forecast reviews, coaching sessions, quadrant reviews, career planning etc etc with them.  I need to average 80% or higher across 2 surveys, and I was getting mid-70s. I had too many people on my team and it was hard to juggle everything, but there was no allowance in the survey for that fact. But, the survey broke, so they were temporarily not going to use it for promotion purposes.  That created a narrow window for me to interview without using results from that survey. The survey was re-instated two days after my final interview with Dan Watkins.
• For 5 years at Qualtrics, I had never hired anyone into Qualtrics. But amazingly, I hired 2 people within the last 12 months. I’m graded on how many people I hire, so it’s a major gift that I had recent success right before my performance interview.
• Two months ago it was announced that for people in the role 2 years and longer, one could pass the interview with a 3.6 instead of a 3.8. As of Jan 1, I would be in the team lead II role for two years, so that now applied to me.
• One month ago, it was announced that because they are needing to promote people so desperately into leadership positions, anyone interviewing for promotion would now only be graded against their peers, not their peers plus the level above them, as it had been in the past.
• All of these things happened at the exact time that my team was having the best billing quarter we had ever had. I had already blown past my quota when I interviewed today and that made me look very very good.
• Lucas (my boss two levels up) apparently had a need to promote me, and had put me as a sales manager in his organizational plan, and said we would need to go through the interview process, but that it should be fine and he was planning on having me as a sales manager. In other words, he wanted to promote me. Perhaps he got to that point of expecting to promote me after my boss, Andrew, did a practice interview with me, and said I was lined up to pass. He probably told Lucas I was looking good to pass, so that helped shape expectations for the interview.

It is hard to express how much these conditions and miracles mean to me.  At the beginning of the year, I called a dear friend Dean Richardson to tell him that I was afraid of the year ahead at work.  My job as a player coach was so demanding, and I was worried that the wheels would come off the cart in terms of my performance, or my health (from exertion) or perhaps both. The most important thing Dean said to me is something I hope to never forget. He told me that if everything went to pot, and I didn’t perform well and I had to find another job, that I could survive that.

I internalized that very deeply, and used his words to help me get to a point of not being afraid. The year ahead was uncertain. The mountain looked impossible, but largely thanks to his words, I was able to approach the year knowing that I could endure anything, come what may. The year before was rough, and I didn’t know how much longer the business would keep me in that role if things didn’t turn around.  I’m not exaggerating when I say things had been rough in 2018. That year I did a practice interview for promotion, and I got the lowest score across all team lead 2’s, meaning I was the lowest performing team lead 2 in Dan’s org. We had one quarter that year of billing under 50% of our team quota. I remember very difficult and stressful days. One day, I went on a walk, and the spirit of God whispered to me, “in you are fear and entitlement.” I was having my greatest experience with failure, and it forced me to confront and face how much fear and entitlement were in me. Then, at the beginning of 2019, I demonstrated just a little bit of growth. I wasn’t quite as fearful as I was in 2018.  After talking to Dean, I felt a little bit more able to confront whatever came. And I did my best to not spin narratives about how I deserved more or about how others had it better. I made big strides in both my fear and my entitlement, things which I was so blessed to discover about myself during my failure.

Still though, this seemed like it had two possible paths. Either I could destroy my health trying to be perfect at everything, trying to line everything up for my 15 point interview, or I could just say, “to heck with the promotion” and cut the corners I needed to cut in order to stay happy and balanced.

I’d tried the route where I focused doggedly on success at the expense of almost all else, and I ended up, tired, stressed, checked out and not as connected with my family and friends. So, in 2019, I essentially made the decision to live in a way that would be balanced and happy and if it wasn’t good enough for promotion, that was ok, I could find a way to be happy as a team lead 2, even if I had to be a team lead 2 forever (while all my peers promoted around me) or I could just eventually leave Qualtrics. But it just wasn’t worth my health to obsess on promotion any more.

That mindset turned out to be critical, especially because of all the other stressors, events and changes 2019 brought to me, but right around early October, I realized that my team was poised to double our quota or more, and that things were starting to align for me to make another promotion run. Then I heard about the dropping the bar from 3.8 to 3.6 for me since I was going to be a Team Lead for two years and I started to get very encouraged. So starting about mid-October, I got focused on promotion again. But it was a very targeted purposeful focus, because I felt like I really had a shot. I was extremely nervous about it, both because of how much I wanted it and because of how hard it was to get. Even with the bar dropping to 3.6 average out of 5, if you get a 2 in any category it is very hard to overcome. There seemed like there were so many landmines. My forecasting wasn’t great lately and that was an area that I might get a 2.  I also had a lot of work to do to prepare my deck presentation and make sure all of my metrics were perfectly presentable on the day of the interview. I drove my team to move right on the quadrant, button up their SNE rate, key in all their meddiccc notes, fix their flagged opportunities, be fully salesforce compliant, etc etc etc.  There were so many land-mines.  But as I focused on it, and spent about one evening per week as I got close to the interview to stay late and prepare my deck, things truly started to come together. When I then learned I would be graded against only my peers and not the level above me, I got even more courage. Then I hung out with Lucas when our families watched Frozen 2 together and he basically said he was planning on my being a Sales Manager before I even interviewed, so it all started to feel real even before the interview today, but I was still super nervous about it.

I got a 90 minute massage the day before the interview, and did multiple practice run-throughs. I was so prepared that my interview was like complete clockwork. I even scored a 3.8 with Lucas, which was .2 higher than what I needed. Still if I got even 2 points lower on any one of the 15 categories, that would be enough to knock me out, so it’s actually still a very narrow victory. Lucas was very complimentary in the interview and was especially impressed when I showed my last slide about the fact that after this quarter, I will have personally overseen 16 promotions as a team lead 2, which is an average of almost annual promotions for any rep who is on my team.

Just for the purpose of memory and a memorial to the body of work from when I was a team lead 2, I’m posting the slides to my interview here. These are actually the version that I used in Dan Watkin’s interview the following week, but they are only updated by a few business days:

A major tender mercy from God was that we had already scheduled a team ski day for the afternoon today. So after my interview with Lucas (and George, Andrew and Preston), I got to go blow off some steam while skiing. It was honestly a really great day.

 

 

Today my mom came over to do some tax planning with Georgia, and so we took the opportunity to have her over for dinner as well. Lily made stuffed pumpkins, so yummy!! Also, Lydia built a fun wall out of blocks.

Lily has been craving Thanksgiving food lately,  and even though we did a Trader Joe’s Thanks giving dinner just recently, we repeated tonight. It was soooo yummy! I love the Thanksgiving flavors!

Also, I spent time today working on the financing for the new home that we are now under contract for.

Today was a super fun Saturday. Early in the day, Clarissa was posing adorably on the counter so I took several pictures, and am just posting my favorite. I love her!

In the afternoon, we all drove to Anthony’s antique shop because they were displaying wonderful art from our beloved friend Paige Anderson and also because Lily wanted to see what they would give her for an antique vase and our secretary cabinet.  Lily was so sweet. She wanted to use the money to buy my a road bike so I wouldn’t have to borrow my friend’s bike when I go bike-riding with him.

Here is are some of Paige’s beautiful pieces:

Anthony’s Fine Arts and Antique shop was a major discovery for us. It is an awesome two story old building with giant columns in the front. It is a very majestic building on the outside and on the inside it is packed to the gills with beautiful art and cool antiques. Unfortunately, the antique market is in decline so there was very little that we could get (if anything) for our items, but browsing the shop and seeing Paige’s art was a wonderful experience.

s. 

After that we went up Emigration Canyon and went to Ruth’s diner. There is such a cool story behind the diner.  Ruth was at one point a cabaret dancer and then she flipped burgers across the street from an establishment of ill-repute and kept an eye on all the local gossip.  She then opened a restaurant and when the building was demolished, she moved her restaurant up the canyon. She was a high-spirited woman who knew how to take care of her self and cared very little for the law. She died at age 94 in the 80’s, but her restaurant lives on and is now the second oldest restaurant in Salt Lake. Here is the full history of her restaurant. I thought the food was a bit rich, but I think that is to be expected for a diner. All in all it was very very delicious.

Back at home, Lily read to Ammon and Clarissa before we put the kids to bed.

Lydia and Mary were invited to perform in a music recital being put on by Jill Freestone. Jill teaches music, but doesn’t have a lot of students so she wanted to invite others to perform with her students to make it a bigger event. It was so nice to be invited!

Clarissa promptly started misbehaving, so I spent the evening chasing her around the music store, outside from shop to shop in the strip mall, and all around the side-walk. It was exhausting, but I also admit that I feel sad when I think about not having a baby to chase anymore. She is just so adorable.

Also, a quick note on the Freestones. They have become such cherished friends. Lily and Jill have a wonderful friendship. I love chatting with Kenny whenever I see him, and their daughters have been so wonderful to our children. They let Ammon sit with them at church, and he behaves for them!

Emma (who is now on a mission), Katie and Eliza dote on our kids. They love them, babysit them, invite them to be in plays and art classes, walk home with them and in every way, just befriend them. The are such beautiful people, and again, such cherished friends.

I woke up early this morning to go to breakfast with Randy Blosil, my friend from the ward.  We were both so exhausted, but we still loved conversing. The ideas that he is most passionate are that Jesus is a God of Yes, and we should say yes in our own lives to the requests of others and also that God has infinite respect for our sacred right to make our own choices.

At home, Lily and I ran errands together and took Lydia to and from her harp rehearsal for the upcoming recital. Our errands consisted of Costco and Trader Joe’s.

At home we did a lot of cleaning and housework together while the kids played with friends.  I cleaned the minivan, Lily made soup and chili, and we both worked on cleaning the house.

I was soooooo tired. I stopped cleaning at two various junctures and each stop resulted in a mini-nap.  The bright spot throughout my day was how much I enjoyed my time with my sweet wife. We are really in love right now, and I just loved having so much time with her.  The regular hugs and loving comments between each other certainly brightened things for me while we were slogging away.

I was literally crawling at the end of the day as I finished working on the upstairs, but then something truly special happened, a moment that just lifted the whole day up and made it special.

The girls, Lydia and Mary, just started randomly singing a song about being able to fly. I think they had forgotten what it was or where they heard it. It was “I Can Fly” from the Brave soundtrack, and we last heard it only a handful of times on our New Mexico trip almost a month ago. It took me some time to figure out what song they were singing, but once I identified it, I thought, “what the heck!” and I bought it on itunes and cranked it up on our stereo and initiated a family dance party.  It was so fun and special. We all had such a blast, and for about 20 minutes, I felt like I was ten years old, and not three hundred years old like I felt the rest of the day. Thank You God for moments like these 🙂

Here are some pictures and a video of the dance party:

Everyone was in a super good mood after the dance party. Here is a video that Mary made with Lydia before they went to bed.

 

 

 

Friday was the first day I felt sort-of normal since getting sick, and it’s the first time in a while I put in what felt like a sort-of normal effort at work because I was in office and I had decent energy.

It was a fun day, because I continue to get lots and lots of good news. We will be way over our quota this quarter and that is a lot of fun.

At home, Lily and I enjoyed having a semi-normal evening together and we watched the first episode of Jack Ryan which was fun.

Lily and I slept in this morning, which was amazing. Lily suggested we stay home and catch up on things instead of go to Cedar Breaks, which turned out to be an amazing suggestion. We did a lot of cleaning on the house, put away the girls’ summer clothes, so there is room in their closets for winter clothes, and now we are catching up on blogging. More things will happen today sure, but now is when I’m blogging, so that’s all I’ll report!

Today was a good day. I have been quite sick, so I’ve been at about 50% capacity, but there has been so much to be happy about. First of all, work is going very well this quarter. We are in first place for a sales competition and if my team wins, we will get $15,000 for a team trip.  We have to hold the lead through December, but it is exciting to be in the running. After a very hard quarter last quarter, it is so nice that a lot of business seems to be coming through this quarter. Sales is certainly up and down. There is also starting to appear the chance that I would promote at the end of this quarter or next. The reason why that is significant (aside from the money), is that then I would no longer be working two jobs (sales rep and manager) because I would only be managing at that point and my team would not even get much bigger.

I went to my car to rest and read Richard Rohr partway through the day because I was feeling so whiped out and on the way out to the car, I couldn’t help, but to admire the beautiful trees in our work parking lot.

I made it through the day, but I really had to push hard to make it to the end. I have a new system at work that is really helping me. It is that at the beginning of each work day, I decide the three most important things that need to get done that day, and I make sure they happen, even if it means cancelling meetings, dropping other balls, postponing or neglecting e-mails and chats etc. I was very tired today and only did 2 of my 3 things, but it was a productive day.

At home, we all ate an incredible shepherd’s pie dinner that Lily made and then she left for a while to get her hair colored. It turned out so amazing! Here are the pictures!!

While Lily was gone, I was doing my best to parent while feeling incredibly exhausted. I think it was a combination of work stress, some hard things that happened at work, still feeling sick, overexerting at work, potential allergies and the weightiness of my faith issues right now.

It was probably an evening in which the kids could have gotten away with anything on me because I was just too tired to regulate the kids effectively.  Clarissa took full advantage of my state and jumped down from the top of the couch over and over and over (sorry Georgia). I did, however, have the presence of mind to grab a video!

After the kids went down, I napped for an hour from 8-9, then I lay in my bed delirious with fatigue. I was so tired that I didn’t want to get up, and I just reached for something on my bedside and I found myself reading Better Homes and Gardens….which is not really my cup of tea. Although I do love gardening. I finally compelled to get myself out of bed and I planned next years garden with the mistakes of this year all fresh in my head. I’m going to plant only one thing per box, give plants way more space, plant my carrots one at a time so I don’t need to worry about thinning, and hopefully be more intentional about soil nutrients.

When Lily made it home we finished the battle against the White Walkers in Game of Thrones.  I admit the series is a bit intense with its content, but the story-line, characters and execution have all been incredible, and it has been a very fun show to bond over with Lily.