So on the passive voice, I think it is part of me trying not to cause more conflict or appear assertive/aggressive. There is one colleague who is very direct and appears to never get in trouble, she follows up every conversation with her supervisor with an email and says it is for documentation. I do follow up the important things, and when it relates to the expertise of his supervisor include her, but am also aware of how the tone is. I also wonder about saying things as 'I put the donations in the trash per our conversation (on X date or by email)'. It feels defensive or blaming? I would most likely at work simply say I did something, rather than I was told to. If I was questioned on it then I would bring up how or by who I was told to do it.
The smart thing, honestly I just notice when people seem to be put off by me. It isn't something I try to do, in fact I try to be aware of when I put people off, but I also just talk the way I talk. We have all kinds of smart, sports smart, memorizing things smart (I am terrible at that), artistic smart. I do not consider myself better than other people, just really tired and lonely at times. The conversations I feel are important to getting my job done (looking over the details of camp budget, asking for staffing hours allotted instead of number of staff, sounding out new ideas) are at odds with the simply following what they want me to do all the time. I am guessing the new administration will start to reach out to our level of employees about mid-year or end of year and ask us what has been done before or what is successful. It takes 1-2 years to get our voices back with new administration.
In any case thank you all for having this conversation with me, now off to clean the desk and make the lists!