Appreciate: An Action Verb

My blogfriend Roma once challenged me to write a post about pronouns and I responded.  The post was  silly, but I had fun writing it.  Today I want to write about verbs...certain verbs.

"Appreciate" is one of them--it's a transitive verb.  And if I remember correctly (I did accounting homework during English class, so I could easily be wrong), a transitive verb is an action verb.  But how often have you heard someone say things like "I appreciate your help."; "I respect your work.'"; or even "I love you" and then thought (or perhaps said), "yeah, sure you do!"???  It happens when one of those action verbs sounds like just a word.

It's possible the person meant what they said, but was distracted by the 12,000 things going on in his/her life.  "Isn't it enough that I said it???"  Sometimes it is.  But not always and actions speak louder than words.

Sometimes it's important to show it.  It can be as simple as how you treat the person, writing a thank you note, buying someone lunch or a giving them a bonus.  LOL, sorry, thinking about work for a second there--because work is what inspired this post.

I've been doing 3 jobs for nearly 10.5 months.  During the first 9 months, our organization's director often said, "Rick, I really apreciate what you're doing."  At first that was nice.  Over time it started to bother me.  At the 6 month mark I asked him to stop because it seemed he was taking the work for granted.  There's a long story behind that, but I'll just say that even monkeys object to unequal treatment (unlike the monkeys, I didn't throw anything).  He resigned at the end of June and, to his credit, he included me among only 5 people (out of 1,800 in our org.) that he thanked.

Since our new director started 6 weeks ago, she has put me in for a temporary promotion, a bonus, and as of next Monday, a permanent promotion.  I joked that if it was possible for me to work harder, I would.  She laughed and suggested I take some time off instead.  After having stayed in jobs for an average of 3 years up until now, I think I may have found a home.  We'll see--in about 3 years!   :)


PS - I need to do better at showing appreciation myself and letting my friends know I'm thinking of them.  The holiday cards I meant to send out last year are still sitting in a drawer.  I'm not even sure which one.  On the bright side, I'm one step ahead for the 2012 holidays (assuming I can find the cards).  lol