And Now For Something... Completely Different

  Because of my extremely heavy and complaint-ridden negative-downer post yesterday, I thought I'd go through a few of the positive things going on to balance things out.
    First of all, I'm on to a new book I'm working on--completely opposite of the last one--about international intrigue and scientific discoveries and maybe a strong female love interest. It's going slow. I haven't written something that required so much research in a while, and I'm a little out of practice. But I think having an outline is going to work to my advantage. I can't be creative when it comes to stuff like because I'll get lost in all the stuff I made up. Having a map ahead of time will help, I hope.
    Second of all, the Giants won the Superbowl. Burn a thousand times, burn, on New England. Cocky bastards. I'm not a big football fan--I actually consider myself a Cardinals fan just because Jerry Maguire is my favorite movie--but I am a fan of New York things in general, so I don't feel like it's a betrayal. And some of the commercials were actually pretty good.
These were some of my favorites:

• Ferris Bueller=Classic
• Darth Vader. Nuff said.
• French bulldog racing greyhounds.
• Will Arnett: Funniest Man Ever. Come on!
• Dog Covering Up a Murder
• Ha ha ha Twihards
• This is just hilarious. Uberburn on the white knight.
• Here Wego!
• Danny Devito is funny in almost anything.
• Darth is still funnier.

    We got free lunch, sort of, yesterday at work because apparently it was Jimmy John's Customer Appreciation Day. I got a free small sandwich and we went to Chick-Fil-A to get a couple extra sides (yogurt and granola for me :)
    In addition to my positivity journal, I'm trying to take better care of myself. I'm back on LiveStrong.com this year to try to lose a little weight and eat healthier. I have new exercise DVDs, and I'm trying to cut out some of the eating out. I'm taking vitamins for the first time in YEARS (i.e. they are no longer in gummy or chewable form).
    I am trying to be nicer to myself, which is always hard. I'm setting aside a few bucks out of each paycheck to buy myself something off my Amazon wishlist. Partly because I like getting things in the mail, and partly because at this rate, I'm going to need to have like six birthdays a year to whittle that list down to a reasonable size. 
    I'm trying to commit myself to doing more good, for myself, the people I'm close to, and the world as a whole. It's going to be a long process, but I think it will be worth it.
    I've realized that a lot of my negativity comes from dwelling on stuff. While some it is sort of reasonable to dwell on because it affects me on a day-to-day basis, some of it isn't. I've also realized that I probably wouldn't be so negative if I didn't have that grass-is-always-greener mentality. Things aren't going to magically get better because one thing changes--usually something that is out of your control.
    The Greeks had a word for this: deus ex machina (this is one of my favorite phrases to pull on non-liberal arts people), which means god from the machine". It's usually used in theater, when one of the gods would come down and fix things so that the story, which had gotten far too complex and tangled up for the humans to fix things in three acts, could end. There is no magic wand that's going to give you a better boss or more money or lose weight. You have to effect the changes you want to see in your life, and that's what I'm trying to do now. I suck at it, but I'm hoping I'll get better with time and practice.

Who thought I'd be optimistic in the year the world is supposed to end?

What do you think about optimism? Is it the same as idealism? Is it unrealistic?

Tell me what you think in the comments.

The Times They Are A Changin

  Truer words were never spoken. However, despite my desire to blog and share everything that's been going on, I've been a little afraid to do it because of who might be reading... Remember last year when I was like, oh, I think I'll leave grad school to go to work full time because I like my job? Yeah. The tides have turned a bit. I don't regret leaving grad school, and I don't regret starting work full-time, but it is taking a toll.
    My physical health is not terrible, but it's definitely affected by working at a computer all day. Sitting at a desk with a gigantic monitor (that always seems too bright no matter how low I turn the brightness control down--I think it's at 35 right now out of 100) for 8 hours a day is bad for your health. Period. I get up, walk around, grab a snack, chat to my coworkers, but then I have to go back to my desk and work after a few minutes of break time.
    I know I have eyestrain. I know my posture's not great anyway, and looking at a computer all day doesn't help. I have started to get a little twinge in my lower back sometimes from my desk chair, even though it's probably more comfortable than some of the office chairs we have. I get tingles in my hand sometimes from using my mouse if I have to do the exact same task for too long in one day (there's a name for this I read the other day, but I can't remember what it is right now). I even have a trackball mouse, which is supposed to be more ergonomic and easier on your hand and wrist, and most of the time, it is, but you do anything for too long and you're bound to get some carpal tunnel symptoms. Not only are these things I could tell my doctor, but I'm also stressed. Eight hours is just a long day. And I always feel out of the loop or behind on my work which stresses me out.
    We currently have an influx of interns at our office which is causing me more stress. Our new three year plan is to have a company "fueled by interns." Now, they're all nice people and I don't begrudge them coming in to get job experience, and I certainly didn't go to business school to say whether or not this is a sound business plan. But I have to admit, it makes me a little nervous. I'm not afraid that one of them will come in and take my job. I'm more afraid that interns won't be enough to keep up with the workload we have because they aren't trained well enough or aren't there enough hours in the week.
    I was hoping they would arrive to relieve some of my workload so that I didn't have to worry as much as I do about how much stuff needs to get done. I find that lately, I've been a little more forgetful than usual about some things, which makes me think I might spread a little too thin between doing my administrative and assistant work (aka my job title) and my more time-consuming and more job title fitting duties of managing and editing the content for our websites.
    It's really hard to switch back and forth between playing the admin role and the editor role, and I have to do it several times during the day. I have brought it up to the boss about being shifted into a job title that fits my duties more accurately, but that would mean they would need to find another assistant, and with the intern plan they are running on now, they seem reluctant (if not downright adverse) to the idea of actually hiring someone for pay.
    On the one hand, the intern plan makes a little sense to me. They sell it as, we want to make sure the person likes to be here and likes the work here before we hire them, and we want to make sure we like the person and they fit in and do good work before we decide to hire them. But on the other hand, these are all kids. They are college students who don't see our little college town as the end of the road in terms of career options. I don't blame them. So it's hard to find an intern that is not only good at what they do but wants to stay here for longer than their 3 month internship requires. There are plenty of talented, smart, hard-working kids that are coming in, but that also means that they are talented enough to find a job somewhere else where they can make more money and live where they want to live.
    I'm not going to complain too much about the money, because it's not my main complaint to make, but technically, I should be making three times as much as my rent, and right now, I'm only making about two times as much, not including all the damn utilities. And, technically, a competitive wage for the type of job I do is quite a bit higher than what I'm currently making. I currently fit into about 10 different job descriptions--no, I'm not exaggerating--and some of those jobs are supposed to pay three times as much as I do, based on current industry trends. Even though I don't have ten years of experience, I am still doing a job that someone with ten years of experience would be doing, and I think I'm not doing too bad at it either.
    But my main focus, as I said, is this intern thing. What I think is not being said, or unfortunately, perhaps not realized, is that more interns will go than stay. It is not only somewhat inefficient to have to interview so many new people because you're always looking for replacements and people to fill new, previously unfilled positions, but it is also inefficient because a lot of these interns need to be trained and acclimated to how our company works. That takes time that an intern who's there for maybe 8 to 10 hours a week doesn't really have.
    Again, I have liked all the interns we've had so far. They're all nice people and most of them are doing a good job at what they've been assigned. But I know most of them are not going to stay past their internships. They're going to graduate and move somewhere else. The incentive to stay here is just not high enough. While they may enjoy the work, they don't enjoy it enough to stay in town. Or, they may enjoy the work, but they don't enjoy it enough to get paid what we pay.
    I have stayed because it was enough. I like the work. I like living here. But they're raising my rent when my lease ends in April, which is going to spread me even thinner than I already am. I budget like a champ, but this is going to be a little rough without another raise. And with all these changes that are happening, I'm not entirely confident the company will still be here in three years if the intern plan fails.
    Although this new plan is the major cause of my concern for my job security, there is also the fact that they fired one my coworkers a week before Christmas. I haven't quite gotten over that. Not because it was right before Christmas, and not because we were friends. It's the principle of the thing. He worked harder than all of us did, stressed out more than the rest of us did, and was pushed and judged harder than the rest of us are. He didn't deserve it, even though he is probably better off not being here anymore because I know he is way less stressed now than he was.
    What it comes down to is that without him, we are down to two full-time employees, including myself, and with all the new work and new clients and stuff that we are planning on adding, we are extremely, perhaps dangerously, understaffed, no matter how many interns we bring on.
    All in all, I'm worried. I'm stressed out from working forty hours a week, I'm too tired at the end of the day to take care of myself as well as I'd like, I'm worried that I might be on a sinking ship, and I'm worried that I might have to move in with my parents again if things do go south. (Yes, I'm mixing my metaphors. Deal with it.)
    As much as I complain here, I have started a "positivity journal", thanks to a handy-dandy free app that I got for my Kindle (my over-budget Christmas present to myself). I have been told I'm too negative and complain too much, so I started trying to track some of the good things that happen to me during the day so that I have some of the good to balance out the bad. I think it's helping. But it's not going to stop me from sharing my thoughts here because they always come out so much more cohesively when I write them than when I tell them to someone else.

Late night, come home, work sucks. I know. 

What do you think of this 3 year plan? Or my poor health? Or life in general?

Tell me about it in the comments!

It's A Keeper

  I am currently in the process of revising my novel (different from editing, as you should know based on this post), and it's a little rough. The novel looks great. But as I go through it line by line, sentence by sentence, word by word at times, I look at it and go WTF was I thinking? Why did I use this word or have this character say that? What purpose does this nonsense serve? But if I stand back, and look at the whole paragraph, the whole page, or the whole chapter, I say, wow, I wrote that, look how well it turned out!
    Revision is painful because you have to tear out beautiful phrases or funny bits of dialogue because they don't move the story along in some way or another. It's painful because you have to let that internal editor out--the one you tied up and locked in a closet while you were writing--and let him stand there and mark up your beautiful prose with ugly red ink, with that sniveling, condescending look on his face while he does it. And at the end, you're left with pages and pages covered in red marks like they got in a fight with a tiger and lost. That internal editor is one mean bastard. But, in the end, your writing is more cohesive, more interesting, and more of what it should be.
    I finished editing it last week--fixed all the typos I found, corrected a few formatting and syntactical errors, and set out to print it out again to revise. Unfortunately, my printer is dangerously low on ink at the moment, so I think it's amazing I've managed to print out over 130 pages twice without any black ink.
    Printing job 1: navy blue ink.
    Printing job 2: maroon ink.
Amazingly enough, I succeeded. I didn't even run out of red ink by the time it was done! The only issue is editing in red ink on a print-out made in red ink. The shades are just different enough to tell, but I'm having to be much more careful as I read through the print-out to make changes to my digital document so I don't miss anything.
    What makes this process all the more difficult is that my head has been bothering me lately after using the computer all day at work. I have been having a hard time looking at screens again when I get home, which makes things a little challenging. I can work on the print-out copy ok, but when I have to go back to the computer to add those fixes to the digital version, I have to take a break every few minutes so I don't get a headache.
    I have glasses, but it's not a matter of seeing and not seeing the screen. I think it's just the extended amount of time using the computer has caught up with me and I need more rest in between usage. In any case, I have a few solutions yet to try to fix that problem, so we'll see whether I can overcome it or not.
    I will be hammering through the rest of the novel revisions over the next couple weeks, I hope, but after that, I think I should have a little more time on my hands to blog. Unless lightning strikes again and I get another idea to start writing. But I won't be under a 30 day deadline this time, so I should theoretically still have more time for other things.

Right. Write. Rite. Revision: The rite of writing right. Or something like that.

Does anybody have any revision tips, comments, or gripes?
Share in the comments!

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Delightful

  Hello Dear Readers! I had to take a bit of a break for a while, and if you are wondering why you couldn't get in to read Insistent and Persistent the past couple weeks, I temporarily changed my privacy settings due to a breach. (Post coming soon: 10 Reasons Not To Friend Your Mother On Facebook--just kidding. But seriously, don't do that. Even if you get along well with your mother.)
    Without further ado, this is why I opened the blog back up and wanted to write today: I've been dreaming of a white Christmas since about July, and in Colorado, we rarely get a real white Christmas. "Real" being defined as snowing on the day or the day before, preferably overnight. This year, once again, it looks like I will be robbed of that dream once again, but on the plus side, IT'S SNOWING!! I wasn't sure if it was actually going to happen--but almost the minute the winter storm watch went into effect up here, it started snowing on my drive home from work.
    Funnily enough, it smelled like rain rather than snow, but there was also a smell of static electricity in the air. I never listen to the weather people when it comes to precipitation in Colorado--they have a nasty tendency to disappoint in terms of accumulation. But sometimes, they underestimate the storm and it dumps a few inches more than expected. As much as I hate scraping car windows and driving near so many crazy people (most of whom are from out of state and have never driven in snow before or just suck at it), I still love the snow.
    My cat (affectionately known as "the furball" received his Christmas present in the mail today--a catnip toy squirrel--another furball. He doesn't love it as much as I'd hoped, but he does like it, so that's good. (I'm hoping this might give him something to do during the day so he will consider leaving the furniture alone.)
    I got most of my shopping done online this year, for the first time. It is quite convenient. And I expect to still have money left over from what I budgeted, which means I may buy myself a rather sizable Christmas present... Or early birthday present. Or early anniversary present. Whatever. It seems like everyone is being a little lean this Christmas, compared with last year, but I think I've spent more than ever.
    I also get to go up skiing this weekend--hopefully this time I will not fall on my face again. Hoping to make great strides in my ski skills so that I won't have to stay on the Bunny Hill for the rest of the season.
    Aside from my blog, I have been getting the opportunity to write for real at work (real this time means I am actually credited!). I cannot tell you how positively tickled I am to be able to do that. I am probably spending way more time on it than i should be, but it's important to me. I want the stuff I'm writing to be good, worthy, sort of. All the other writers on the site are professional writers or journalists and have been for several years, so I feel like I need to write well enough so that I seem like I belong among that group. If you know me, you can find that stuff on Facebook. If you don't, you'll just have to wait until I decide to use my real name around here.
    Remember how I once said bad things happen in threes? I had one of those this past week. My brother got some bad news which meant I got some bad news; I got my FIRST EVER speeding ticket which I am still super-pissed about; and one of my co-workers was let go earlier this week. That one hit hardest. We're a small company, and whenever something like that happens, it affects everyone because we're all pretty close. I think what bothered me most about it was that it happened one week before Christmas.
    Not to put a damper on the holiday spirit, I discovered a new cocktail: gin and ginger ale. I received an excellent bottle of gin from a local craft distillery a couple weeks ago, and I was amazed at how clearly I could still taste the flavors through the ginger ale.
    I am also currently editing my novel that I abandoned the blog for during November. I made all the edits by hand, so now I am transferring all those changes to the document on my computer. Next step will be to revise it. What's the difference, you say? Editing: typos, spelling, grammar, syntax, vocabulary--the nuts and bolts of the writing. Revision: rewriting scenes, adding scenes, deleting scenes, removing or adding characters, etc--the heart of the story. I'm hoping not to do too much revision, because I think after going through it once now, it actually turned out quite well. But, we'll what happens when I really look at it with that in mind.
    Sorry for being out of the loop. I just had to recover a bit from my privacy scare before I was ready to come back here and start sharing again. I welcome you back, and I hope I didn't scare everyone away by changing the security settings for a couple weeks.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

And Now, A Tap Dance

This is probably just me being weird and noticing this, but have you ever noticed how much live sports look like dancing? It is entirely possible that I have been watching too many musicals lately (Christmas musicals at that), and I am transferring the music that's playing in my head onto the new programming that I'm watching so it seems that the hockey players are tapping their sticks and zig-zagging through each other to the tune of a jazzy tap dance song. But maybe they've always looked like they were dancing and it just took a few consecutive hours of Christmas movie musicals for me to realize that that's what they were doing.
    I think basketball players do the same thing, and football players too. They might be dancing to a different tune, that's all, because they're on their feet and not on skates, so they don't move as fast.

And for something relatively different.

    Nothing gets you in the mood for the holidays like Christmas movies, especially ones with singing in them. One of my favorite parts about Christmas is watching the movies. While it seems more engaging and fun to watch them on television where there are Christmas commercial breaks to get you even more psyched up for the holidays, the Christmas movies they play on television are either a) bad, or b) good, but all the good ones are on different channels at the exact same time. So, I have compiled my own Christmas movie collection (with a little help from my dad's movie collection) to enjoy whenever I want.
  Highlights: 

• Home Alone
• Holiday Inn
• The Family Stone
• The Holiday
• Serendipity
• While You Were Sleeping
• It's a Wonderful Life
• Meet Me In St. Louis
• Love Actually
• How the Grinch Stole Christmas
• Ratatouille (I know that one's not a real "Christmas" movie, but I love it so it's in here too.)

    The ones that are not on the list I do watch on TV because I don't own them (Elf, Christmas Vacation, The Santa Clause--Amazingly enough, I do not own these, but they're all on the list this year ;)
    These movies all remind me of some of the best parts about Christmas--family, love, lights, music, and presents. It's not actually the opening and receiving presents that I enjoy, but the wrapping of them. I am a rather excellent and--when the situation calls for it--creative gift wrapper, so that's one of my favorite parts.
    It's been snowing a bit lately too, so that makes it seem closer and closer to Christmas!

I'm dreaming of a white Christmas...

I know I digressed a little from sports to Christmas movies, but what are your favorite things about Christmas? Or your favorite Christmas movies (especially if they're not on this list!)?

Share in the comments.

Sweet Exhaustion - Er, Victory

  What a rough month! Writing this novel was like pulling teeth! Truly a labor of love, I guess. Novel completed just a short while ago, with the final word count at: 50,748, based on Nano's word counter (MS Word is about a hundred or so words extra--though I have no idea where it could possibly be pulling them from...). Winner's badge now on the sidebar, and doesn't it look so snazzy ;)
    Surprises: My main character got married--something I never thought she'd do. She also ended up with the guy I didn't think she was going to end up with. I managed to make the best friend pregnant, instead of the main character like I usually do for whatever reason--it is an excellent word count padding technique when used appropriately, though. And I finished! This was the first year I doubted finishing, just a little, though I was determined to finish anyway, come hell or high water. I'm just a little surprised i finished because I had to write the last 25 thousand words within the last week alone because I had fallen so far behind during the earlier part of the month.
    In other news, work just got really busy! I felt like I've been hit with something new to add to my to-do list almost by the hour, and the to-dos I had at the beginning of the week are now being pushed further and further down the list. But, I'm always glad to be busy than unbusy! My boss hesitated to ask me to write a 1400 word piece (or rather, several of them) yesterday, and I was like, 1400 words? No sweat. I'm about to reach 50k on a novel. Now that I have, I no longer fear word count. I never really was bothered by it before--I only hesitated if it was a topic I wasn't too familiar with. But now, I really have no fear of it. 1000 words? Five? Ten, you say? Let me at 'em!
    I feel like I've become inordinately cheesy, and I'm going to blame some of the people I've been dealing with at work recently. Cheesy and clever are not the same thing, and I hope that because I'm able to recognize the difference, I will be able to strike the cheesy element down and continue with my previous quippy, sarcastic, and hopefully occasionally humorous tone.
    While I'm not counting my chickens on new winner's goodies from Nano this year, I'm hoping for something new that I will actually put to use this time. Free stuff is always best, but discounts are ok if it's on something I really want. I have not taken advantage of my winner's goodies too much in the past, and I'd like to do so this year, but only if it doesn't make me feel poor or irresponsible for buying something I don't really need...
    Also, getting better at skiing. I've been twice, and despite the cold and wind, I think I'm improving. I've been told I'm improving. However, I may have been told a few too many times, because the first day I went up, I did so great on the bunny hill, that I thought I was ready for a regular hill. Unfortunately I was taken up the highest damn hill they had open, and my overconfidence and decreased fear of falling got me going WAY too fast and I couldn't stop. I wiped out hard, broke my goggles, and got a nosebleed. I didn't break my nose or my leg or anything, and didn't get a concussion, I don't think, but that was terrifying. I think I better stick to the bunny hill a few more days before I take on another hill. (Also, icy conditions plus me as a beginner do not mix.) In any case, I don't think my fall ruined me. Just humbled me. It's the boyfriend/teacher's fault--he kept saying how good I was doing. And picked the large hill with the never ending chair lift ride.
    Anyway, Happy End of November to All, and to all a good night! And if you participated in no shave November this year, shave!

My eyes are killing me. 

A nap, perchance... 

Then again, hockey's on! 

What else is new with you? Did you participate in Nano? Did you win? 

Have you had unseasonally early snowfall in your neck of the woods? 

Whatever. Comments are open!

Why Writing A Novel (In 30 Days) Kicks Your Butt

  Nano's been rough this year. I've never had such a hard time getting the words to come out. I'm about 6300 words shy of the average word count goal. Usually, I'm quite prolific, which makes this even rougher. I don't know if it's the topic I picked or the fact that I'm doing full-time work, writing, and trying to watch all my television shows (probably the last one...), but I am really struggling to get anything written. Except that. And that. And that. Just kidding. It just seems like every time I look at my word count, I've only gotten another hundred words instead of another thousand. I'm writing this post while I'm watching Psych, so I'm not really sacrificing any noveling time I wouldn't be sacrificing otherwise. So, no reprimands, please.
    There's plenty of it left to write. I have a pretty thorough outline (one of my other suspicions as to the reason for my inability to crank those pages out...), and there are lots of scenes and twists and dramas to play out still. But, for some reason, I can't seem to get the words to come out.
    While I still have no doubt at this point that I will be able to finish--there are still weekends and Thanksgiving break to give me time to catch up, after all--it's going to be a real war if the writing keeps going as slow as it has so far.

Constant Writer Vs. Nano: Nano-1, Constant Writer-0.
To be continued...

Are any of you working on NaNoWriMo at the moment?
How are you finding the writing this year?
If not, any tips on writer's block? Besides 'just keep writing'?
Share in the comments below.

Warning: Psychosis Impending

  As we all remember, unless you were drunk when you read that post, dear reader, I mentioned a couple weeks ago that National Novel Writing Month begins November 1 (i.e. approximately 4 hours MT from now! Eek!). Because I will be busting my fingers and my brain to type out 50 thousand words by midnight, November 30th, my blog posts will be fewer in number, but hopefully just as entertaining, or perhaps laughable, as usual.
    If you haven't signed up for Nano yet, and you still want to, there's still time (depending on your time zone, that is)! If it's not midnight yet where you live, jump on Nanowrimo.org and register to begin the madness that is noveling.
    It's not goodbye, dear readers, just good night, and good luck, and apologies for not posting as much over the next month or so. If I'm feeling brave, I may even share a little bit about the noveling process and whether my story is panning out or not. I'm already anticipating lots of conflict and perhaps a death or two. I have outlined it to oblivion, and since that tends to do me more harm than good, I may have to resort to drastic measures to keep that word count going!

Just keep writing, just keep writing :)

The Holiday Spirit Appears Early

  I used to insist on waiting until Thanksgiving was over before I even started thinking about Christmas. I even skipped Christmas one year (i.e. did not buy presents or ask for any or put up a tree or anything--though not everyone listened when I said I didn't want anything) to protest the level of commercialism it had attained.
    However, sometimes after you go without something for long enough, the next time it comes around makes you appreciate it even more. (One case in point, the NHL lockout a few years ago made me realize how much I enjoyed watching hockey, even though I had not watched too much of it in the previous couple of seasons.) Case in point two: I really missed Christmas after I skipped it that year.
    I enjoy shopping for Christmas presents and making cookies and putting up the tree and singing Christmas music. Even the people who are hard to shop for, I don't mind as much because I enjoy the season. The lights and the colors and especially the movies. I know there aren't too many people who get to have a happy ending Hollywood version of Christmas anymore, and it has become overly commercialized over the past few decades, but it's still a lovely thought. Thinking about children believing in Santa, families coming together, forgetting all your misanthropy and cynicism and giving in to the holiday spirit, and spreading good cheer and good will towards men (PC term=humanity).
    I already started searching for Christmas presents, as I plan to do a lot of my shopping online this year. I'm hoping that 1) this will save me a little bit of money, 2) I can find things for the hard-to-shop-for people a little easier, 3) this will help me get most of my shopping done earlier rather than last minute, and 4) this will allow me to find a few things that you just can't find at a Target or a JC Penney's.
    I blame this recent surfacing of Christmas spirit on the huge snowstorm we had in my neck of the woods this week. I woke up on Thursday and said, wow, it looks just like Christmas! While most of it's melted already, as the temperatures shot back up into the fifties again, it doesn't change the fact that I'm already dreaming of a white Christmas (despite that we maybe get one every ten years here because it refuses to snow ON Christmas--it always snows too early or too late and it's all melted by the Christmas day arrives).

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

What are your thoughts on this (somewhat) impending holiday? 

Love it? Hate it? (FYI: If you say you hate it, you will henceforth be known as the Grinch.) 

What's your favorite, or least favorite, part about it?
Share in the comments.

Nostalgia Strikes Again

  Nostalgia, from the Greek, means a sense of pain, sadness or yearning to return to times gone by. It's not just homesickness or recalling fond memories, though it is often used in that sense. And although not everyone uses it in this way, I tend to use it to embody an entire era, one in which I had not even been born, rather than just memories contained within my own life.
    Sometimes I say I'm old-fashioned or conventional (more in my taste than in my actual ideas and opinions--in that case, vintage might be a more appropriate word), but mostly, or perhaps more accurately, I am nostalgic. I watch old movies and old television shows, and new movies and television shows that take place in that particular period of time, and I wonder why we thought it was necessary to evolve certain aspects of that culture into what we have today. Because today's culture is lacking some parts, parts that should have persisted, from that era. This has nothing to do with the technology overload or anything like that--I'm talking about our communication, interaction and the overall way in which we present ourselves on a day to day basis.
    I'll admit, I may be whistling dixie, and you can chalk a lot of this up to me having seen way too many episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show and Mad Men, but there's something I really love about the fact that everything seemed so much more orderly and comme il faut about American life fifty or sixty years ago. These examples may have you scratching your head, wondering how I could call Dick Van Dyke in any way orderly and organized, or any of the characters' personal lives in Mad Men normal and as they should be, but there are things that exist in those shows that no longer exist.
    Today, everything is about comfort. We wear jeans to work (or we do where I work), nobody carries a proper hat or an overcoat, we all have sweatshirts and stocking hats when the weather calls for them, and we yell down the hall rather than politely phone someone in their office (though in my situation, not all of our phones are hooked up, so that one wouldn't be possible anyway).
    But it's not just what they wore. They had a certain way of acting--a politesse, at least outwardly, that has all but disappeared from the modern world. Some people might call it disingenuous, or phony, but it was correct--tactful, polite, and appropriate. It was being respectful and treating other people like they were people--not good or bad people, or well-liked people or disliked people, just human beings. There are things you can say in certain company, and there are things you absolutely don't say in certain company.  People held umbrellas for strangers and walked them to their cars. They held doors and elevators and didn't panic at the idea of saying "hello, how are you," to someone they happened to be stuck riding 10 floors up with.
    Back then, you kept your thoughts or opinions to yourself when it wasn't your place to speak up, and you addressed certain people with respect whether you liked them or not. While some of this propriety has managed to survive, at least in certain circles or for certain people, a lot of it has disintegrated. Lots of people now say whatever they want whenever, wherever, and to whomever they happen to be in the vicinity of.
    While this may seem more real and honest--qualities which have become more valuable over the years as politeness and respect have become less valuable for whatever reason--I still feel like there is a line somewhere that's being crossed. It's just that so many years have passed, and so many people have stepped on that line, that we can't quite see where it is anymore.
    Call me sentimental, but i think it'd be nice if everyone still wore suits and high heels and pencil skirts. The world would seem to me more civilized, less cutthroat and ugly, as the news inevitably portrays it. On the other hand, then I'd have to learn how to do my hair so it looked perfect all day. Maybe sweatpants, cursing like a sailor, and instant messaging are not so bad after all.

We're going back--back to the future, man!

Are there some customs or mannerisms you'd like to see make a comeback, 

or do I just need to get over the fact that I was born in the wrong part of the century?

Share in the comments.

PS: NaNoWriMo starts in eight days. Have you picked your topic yet?

Being A Little OCD Sucks Sometimes

  I spent the last couple days sorting through 410 articles for our new site at work, trying to sort them into categories and find relevant tags for all of them. It covers a lot of ground, so the lists got pretty long. I think I put together a pretty decent one though, one that was comprehensive but not exhaustive. I took it upon myself to put it together because it was starting to look like the alternative was another brainstorming session that probably wouldn't yield too many finalized results. And I guess it went over well, for the most part.
    The problem with this one is that there are too many cooks in the kitchen, I think, and everyone has their own idea of how to sort the content out. But, being that I'm the one who's going to be managing the content and probably the one who will have to go through and categorize and tag a lot of the content we currently have, My idea makes the most sense. I don't think that's immodest or stubborn, I think it's just realistic. I have a good overall understanding of how the content stands currently, and I think the way I've planned the organization of it makes the most sense for what we have on hand, as well as being a good place for us to move forward when we get new content in.
    I'm not saying my way or the highway, but kind of. When you have a website of this magnitude, there needs to be a process in place for handling certain areas, like content, as we move forward. If I create a process, I know I can stick to it. All that's left is making sure whoever comes in at any point to help with the content knows how I do it and does it the same way so that everything on the site is uniform and nothing gets confused or messed up because somebody didn't follow procedure.
    I am aware of how neurotic and OCD this sounds, but I am a little neurotic and OCD. When I have a job, I find a way to do it the best, most efficient and most organized way possible. It's one thing for the articles themselves to have different content--of course they would--they're written by a bunch of different people with different writing styles. It's quite another for them to be SEO'd and formatted differently because the people we have in-house are not all doing it the same way. I think that looks sloppy. And if I'm in charge of the content, you better believe it won't look sloppy for long.
    So, I may be compulsive and excessively organized, but it pays off from time to time. My high school psych teacher always used to tell us there was a method to her madness, which I always found terribly amusing because a psych teacher talking about madness is pretty funny/ironic, and I completely agree. I may do things the hard way and I may dot every single I and cross every last T, but there is always a reason for everything I do when it comes to this stuff. I don't do things without thinking, and while maybe my solutions or processes aren't perfect every time, I always have a very reasonable explanation for having done things that way. I don't think this makes me inflexible, it just keeps me organized.

One more person says "a whole nother" and I think I'll scream.

What are your little pet peeves, idiosyncrasies and neuroses? 

Or are you so easy-going that nothing bothers you?

Explain in the comments. ;)

Batman - Superhero With No Superpowers

  While I probably should chalk my affinity for the Caped Crusader up to the fact that I grew up in the nineties and that's when a lot of the Batman movies were in circulation, not to mention all the animated series, I can't attribute it entirely to that. 

    Yes, Batman has the cool gear, the cool house, the cool cars, and the really attractive dates, but there's more to the Batman than his toys (the dates, of course, are excluded from this category). While I continue to defend Batman against Superman lovers and even Spiderman, Hulk, or other superheroes, I do understand why they prefer those guys to Batman. Bruce Wayne is one wealthy dude. We'd all be superheroes if we had unlimited means and resources to create Batsuits and utility belts and Batmobiles. But I don't think that's the whole story. 

    While those things are incredibly handy (citywide sonar, anyone?), Batman can hold his own without them. The reason he has these things is because he doesn't have a superpower. If Batman was impervious to bullets like the Man of Steel, he wouldn't have to spend all that money on a fancy Batsuit. If Batman could repel down buildings and swing through them like Spiderman without his suit or anchors, he could leave those things in the car. But the thing is, Batman didn't come from an alien planet. He didn't get bit by a radioactive spider. He wasn't born with any genetic mutations that gave him a new ability. And he isn't a bad science experiment that turns green and huge when he gets pissed off. Batman is a regular man. He just happens to have a lot of money. 

Taken from NY Times Online

     But in spite of that, he still finds it necessary to fight evil in Gotham City, however hazardous to his health it may be. He could be one of those wealthy guys that just holes up in his mansion, afraid to go out with so much funky shit going down in the city, worried he might get blood on his $3000 shoes. But he isn't. He is the only guy in that whole city brave enough to go out there, and lucky enough to have the resources to combat people who are hurting Gotham's citizens with noxious gases, mind-control devices, or just a general bad attitude. 

    So, say what you want about the Dark Knight, but you have to admit, where would we be if we didn't have Batman? We'd be bored out of our minds criticizing the old Superman movies (and the new ones) and wondering why they bothered to make 4 Spiderman movies, not to mention a musical. Batman is just a better conversation piece, and the movies aren't bad either (movies meaning Tim Burton's Batman films and Christopher Nolan's films--the other ones sort of fail, on so many levels). 

Kapow!

How about you? Which were your favorite superheroes? Or did you have any favorites?

Share in the comments.

5 Reasons To Do NaNoWriMo Next Month

  For anyone who even remotely considers themselves a writer, and who doesn't know already, November is National Novel Writing Month. This means that for 30 days, crazy people all over the world will be fiendishly writing into the wee hours of the morning to finish 50 thousand words by midnight on the thirtieth.
    I have done this, twice now (and won, I might add), and it's a lot of fun. Not the way that going to the movies is fun or playing pool is fun, but it's fun in that it's a challenge. It breaks down to about 1,667 words every day. When you think about it, that's not that much. It's like 5 double spaced pages of whatever you want. It doesn't have to be Shakespeare, and it doesn't even have to have all the commas. (You won't find me as Constant Writer on the Nano website, though. I was doing Nano long before I was doing Insistent and Persistent ;)

    The purpose of all this writing is to crank out a draft of a novel that you've been thinking about without worrying so much about getting it perfect. No first draft is perfect (you may know this as pretty much anyone who's taken a writing class will have read "Shitty First Drafts" or parts of it), but for some reason, we all manage to convince ourselves that it has to be. And this fear of writing something that isn't totally mind-blowing and amazing right out of the gate is what prevents us from actually writing something.
    So, what keeps you motivated for thirty days to actually keep writing? Stats. If you have any competitive streak, you can make friends through the forums and battle each other with your word count. One of the important things to the process is that word count matters, not page count. So it doesn't matter how big you make your font or how wide you make your margins, it's the number of words that count.
    This isn't just a numbers game, though. There comes a satisfaction that is indescribable when you cross the 50k mark. Even if you have more to say, once you hit that point, the pressure is off and you have such a wonderful sense of accomplishment.
    If you like to write, or if you're just feeling a little crazy, check out the Nano website and sign up (they help you track your stats) and get ready for one wordy month!

Word Nerds Live Here.

**UPDATE** SOOOO I totally forgot that I had put "5 Reasons" at the top of this when I started it and realized driving home that there may or may not be 5 separate reasons. I will try to enumerate them in the comments, but it wasn't a completely thought out plan, so, apologies, dear readers ;)

Have you written a novel? A short story? Some piece of writing that you're proud of?
What's your favorite part about writing?
Share in the comments below.

Talking Bout My Generation

  I read an article today that made me think about my generation. People in their mid to late twenties, and sometimes even early thirties, have had to put their lives on hold because of the economy. Fifty years ago, people were getting married at my age, buying houses, having babies, and starting that grown-up life before they had even fully grown up. Now, people my age are prolonging their youth, not entirely by choice but by situation. We are largely unemployed, homeless (meaning, without our own homes or apartments), and we are often broke, or damn near. [Thanks, Pete Townshend for a good lyric to put in my blog title ;) ]
    While I am the exception--I have a job, and as you read recently, I just hit the one-year mark (*hooray again*); I have an apartment that I am paying for all by myself; and I am extremely frugal and meticulous about my money, so I am never really broke. I may not have any cash on me sometimes, but I always have some money somewhere. On the other hand, I know that many people in my generation are broke, don't have their own place, and can't find a job. This was all my life before I found my job. I was unemployed for nine months after graduating college, I had moved back in with my dad, and even after I found work, I was still living with my mom for a few months until I could find an apartment.
    Moving forward in life has become overly complicated for people my age. I personally feel like I've hit the peak of adulthood. I don't have those same goals as firm, set-in-stone goals. If my life moves in a certain direction, yes, I might eventually want to buy a house. If my life moved in another direction, I might consider getting married. And if my life moved in a really different direction, several years from now, mind you, I also might consider kids. But right now, all of those possibilities seem so distant, not only financially, but in terms of my own maturity. I can't even imagine having any of those things right now. Five years from now though, who knows?
    Still, I can't help wondering about the other people my age who are broke and want to take those next steps in their lives and just can't. It's not pity, but frustration I feel about this whole thing. Why are we the ones denied what many of us consider to be rights of passage and a natural progression of life when our forebears had full access? Why did these people in control of the economy and the economic future of this country not think about how their decisions would affect their children? (Make no mistake, we are at about the age that those people's children would be--just because their kids have trust funds doesn't mean we're not part of the same generation.) Why, if they did think of our futures, did they not care enough to stop what they were doing?
    The Almighty Dollar wins again. Greed was good twenty five years ago, but the "free market" economy has spiraled out of control in such a way that the rich cling desperately to their wealth, while the poor, or the working and middle classes, must cling desperately to their next paychecks, knowing they may still have to rely on credit to meet all their financial responsibilities.
    I am, by no means, an economist--in fact, I have no idea how I even passed my high school economics class with an A because I don't remember a thing--but some of these things seem so simple that I can't understand how how people could have screwed it up so badly as to leave my generation in the position to try to move forward and clean up their mess without the means to do it.

Greed sucks. Unemployment sucks worse.

Have you been unemployed? How did you deal with it? 

What do you think about the economy and its effect on Generation Y 

(i.e. people born between about 1985 and 1995, if that)?

Discuss it in the comments below.

Overwhelmed But Flattered

  I was taken to an almost impromptu lunch yesterday (meaning I didn't know about it until that morning) and offered what might be considered a promotion. Good news, right? I was scared shitless the entire time they were talking about it. It felt kind of like an ambush, as I had no idea that that's what the lunch would be about. My coworker and I were both taken out and offered a similar position, added responsiblity, added stress, and a pay increase, though no mention was made as to how much that would be.
    My one year review was today, it was positive, and I did get a raise (yay!). But my concern was not even really how much the raise would have been for. It was more the added stress and added responsiblity that I was not sure I was ready for. It would be additional content management for our new site, which I was expecting, and the possibility of training an intern and supervising them directly, both of which I know I can handle. The thing I was wavering on had to do with the "project management" thing, which was the title that came with the promotion. Part of this position would have included me having to manage my coworkers' tasks and check on their progress on those tasks and projects, on top of doing my own task and time management. I don't mind checking in with people when my bosses are out of town, but I wouldn't want to do it as part of my regular job. I can't bug people about their jobs. I can't be the nag. I can't write on the whiteboard what they're supposed to do. And I can't sit there and tell them it has to be done by Friday because, honestly, who am I? Unless I can fire them if it's not done, who am I? Their coworker, who is younger than most of them, that is trying to keep them on track? I'm fairly certain that at least two of them would feel extremely pissed off about me in that position, not jealous, necessarily, but angry that a person of my age and experience--which is still pretty limited if you measure it by time--was put into a position of this caliber.
    We're a small company, and I've known for a long time that they've wanted to put somebody else in a semi-supervisory position to free up my bosses' time. I've had a job for one year. All the experince I have, the majority has come during this one year. I just don't feel ready to do all the work that that new position would have required. I don't feel like I have the personality to manage that many people's tasks. I can manage myself, and maybe one other person who would be doing the same kind of work as me, but five additional people? Plus my own workload managing content? It was just too overwhelming.
    Don't get me wrong, I was flattered as hell, but intimidated more. I know how much confidence my bosses have in me, and while it's appreciated, I know that a job like that would not just put me close to a mental breakdown, it might actually CAUSE one. So, without mental health benefits, or general wellness benefits (anti-stress benefits, to be precise, massages and the like), I cannot sign on for a job where I have no idea what the workload or stress load is going to be, only that it will be more. I am already stressed and I already work hard. More seems like I might be setting myself up to fail at this point. And maybe in a few months, once I get my bearing with this new site, I might feel up to taking on a little more, but until then, I'd like to have some idea of what I'm getting into. And in the meantime, I'm very happy with what I'm doing now, and I look forward to taking on the new challenges within that particular aspect of my job.
    I did get a positive review, which I was very pleased about. In light of the fact that it was my one year review, I went out of my way to put together a list of all the major projects, tasks, and writing assignments I've completed over the past year. There were a lot. Even I was surprised. I have written so much, and completed a fair number of major projects as well, and it was kind of cool to see them all in one place, rather than spread out over so many weekly activity reports. It was sort of as a defense against any poor performance things that might have come up, though thankfully, none did.
    It's strange to think I've been at the same company, and to think about how far I've come from what I was doing this time last year to now, but it's cool. I've never had a job this long, and I'm looking forward to seeing what else I can accomplish in the next year.

Happy work birthday to me... Happy work birthday to me... :)

What are some of your accomplishments in the past year? Either work-related or in your personal life.

Do you have any goals for the next 12 months?

Tell me about it in the comments below.

Commute or Telecommute - That Is The Question

  If you haven't noticed, and the only way you couldn't have is if you read Insistent and Persistent in an RSS reader rather than directly on the site (though I hope if you do that, you at least visit the site occasionally...), I put a new header at the top of the home page.
    I know the design quality is poor, but what do you expect from a philosophy major with only MS Paint as a tool instead of Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator? My hope is that it will bring a little color to the page :)
    In other news, I got to thinking about working from home today after I read an article on Thought Catalog about the topic. I don't think I'd want to work 40 hours a week from home, because, honestly, I would start buying cookies and ice cream and I'd probably gain another five pounds every month or so. But the thought of working a few hours a week from home is appealing. Maybe two half days or one full day. I wouldn't be interrupted with meetings or drama or crises, and I wouldn't have to drown out my coworkers with my Walkman.
    On the other hand, I wonder whether that is really a good solution to whatever stress or overwhelmed feelings I have, and I know that it probably isn't. Working from home might help relieve some stress, but there are other, better ways to deal with it.
    One is to stop eating so much crap. We eat out so often at work that the only motivation I have to eat out less is financial. I am desperately trying to either eat yesterday's leftovers for lunch or to bring a sandwich and fruit for lunch at least two or three times a week. Also, I really need to quit drinking so much soda, and probably stop having more than the occasional beer (though after the infamous tequila shots incident, I've been damn near abstinent with almost all alcohol).
    The main thing I need to do is stop interneting so much! Of course, I wouldn't cut back on my blogging, but I spend way too much time reading and researching online when I get home, especially considering I spend a lot of my workday online doing the exact same thing. TV is a de-stressor, and reading books are a de-stressor, and writing is a de-stressor for me, but reading news and ads and polls online are all probably doing my mental state more harm than good.
    The last thing I need to do to help my stress levels is to be more active. I'm not a runner or a bicyclist or a tennis player or even a stairmaster user. Because those suck. They're painful, they're not fun, and they make me feel worse, not better, about myself after. Usually because my lung capacity fails me almost immediately. Yoga is the only form of exercise I can stand, but I always give up on it after a while, usually due to time constraints (or since I left school, financial constraints for going to classes). I just have to keep reminding myself that I don't hate it and then make time to do it, which is always hard. Especially with all the interneting.
    My eventual goal was always to be a writer, one that makes money from her writing and can actually make a living at it. But working from home seems to me right now to be just another way to become a recluse. And I like people. Some of them, anyway.

Write More. Read More. Plan More. Critique Less.

Would you work from home if you could? Would you miss anything about going to a workplace?

Discuss it in the comments below! 

Working for the Weekend

  For the first time, I was asked to work this weekend. I didn't have to go in to the office or get anything done by a weekend deadline, but it's more the why I had to work this weekend than the fact that I had to at all that bothers me.
    I work hard, and I put a large part of myself into the company. I get stress headaches, my eyes get dry and bloodshot, I get back pain sitting in a chair all day, and I strain my brain staring at a computer screen for 8 hours a day. I'm not complaining. I'm just saying: I put a lot of time, effort, and both mental and physical strain on myself at my job. I do this willingly. I work hard, and I take pride in the work that I do. I don't half-ass it, and I don't cut corners because that's just not how I was raised to do things.
    So when I am asked to work over the weekend to redo an assignment that was originally assigned to someone else, I get a little perturbed. The assignment was completed by this person, who shall remain nameless, but it was not up to snuff. I will leave the reason for why it was not up to snuff out of this, because it is a really poor excuse for poor work, but I will say that, not only should someone not turn in work like this in the first place, but they shouldn't be in such a state as to turn in work like this.
    If you are not able to do what is assigned to you, you probably should take the day off until you are ready to come back and adequately do your job. I do my job. I don't like doing other people's jobs for them. I will do it when asked, because I figure, if I'm asked to do it, that makes it part of my job. But I also figure that if I have to do someone else's job for them, that makes them a liability rather than an asset.
    It's one thing if someone has pneumonia or has a relative in the hospital--those are reasonable, good excuses. And in those cases, I'm fine stepping up and taking on a little extra work while they're out. But poor work quality while you should be in fine working capacity, leading to someone else having to fix your mistakes, is not ok.
    This is a job, not a class. You don't get to take it over if you fail a paper or test. Separate your personal life from your work life. Don't air your dirty laundry in public. And if you can't do your job, don't do it badly and leave it to someone else to fix it. I'm telling this to you, dear readers, because unfortunately, my aversion to confrontation will prevent me from telling it to the person whose job I had to do this weekend.

Welcome to Adulthood. Failures Will Be Shot. Or maybe just fired.

Have you ever cleaned up somebody else's mess at work? Did you confront them about it? 

Leave a comment, and feel free to use phony names to retain anonymity.

Why Google+ Will Still Overtake Facebook

  It's official. Google+ is public. And it's spreading like wildfire. People are ready for a new option to socialize online, and Google+ is the answer. They have combined elements from Facebook and Twitter and made them more accessible, user-friendly and interesting for people to use. You know what's really cool? I joined Google+ with my Blogger username and I already have 4 complete strangers who have added me to their circles within a week, which is actually much faster than my other Google username got people adding me to my circles and I know those people offline. (Sorry, complete strangers if you've been following my blog and I just haven't realized it. Try connecting with Insistent and Persistent using Google Friend Connect. Hint hint.)
    You can also share your circles with people on Google+ so everyone else can see who you're stalking, I mean following. (Sidenote: Thanks, Mashable, for doing all this research so I don't have to.)
    The public grand opening, so to speak, of Google+ just happens to coincide with Facebook releasing a whole slew of new features trying to keep up with, er, compete, with Google+. They rearranged the news feed, meant to look a little more like Twitter and the Stream that you can narrow down with Google+ Circles, and they also created new "lists", obviously meant to imitate Google+ Circles, so you can organize your Facebook friends by location, favoritism, and work, or whatever you want, basically. However, it's still not as easy as Google+ Circles. There are way too many steps in the process. The lists thing is also only visible on the home page of Facebook, and it would be much more useful and practical if it were in the navigation menu so it could be easily accessed.
    With a little help from the social media team at work, I have also seen firsthand the new Facebook timeline thing that all profile pages are going to be converted to in short order. It is pretty snazzy, but only if you want your entire life history on Facebook. I can see the benefits of it, but I just don't care to share that much of my life with the online community, even my limited pool of Facebook friends. It's supposed to be like a scrapbook thing, but considering that I sort of suck at taking pictures, I don't see that this new format will benefit me that much. It actually makes your Facebook profile look a little like the old MySpace pages or a personal blog.
    Facebook knew that Google+ was coming after them, which is why all these changes have sprung up. (Memo to Facebook/Mark Zuckerberg: A little warning might've been nice. An email, perhaps...) But I think they may be pissing people off more than making them want to stick with Facebook rather than try Google+. We shall see.

Why does "Google" sound like a dirty word?

Check out Constant Writer on Google+, and join, if you haven't already! 

I will be sharing my blog posts, and some others that I find interesting or relevant there. 

So, dear readers, what do you think of the new Google+? 

Is it better, worse, or about the same as other social media mediums like Facebook and Twitter?

The Worst Kinds of People

  I read an article today about the worst kinds of coworkers to have, the loud mouth, the bad influence, the rival, the downer, etc., and it got me thinking about people I know who are like this. Not necessarily coworkers, as I have pretty awesome coworkers, but just people I've known or that I know now who are people I probably shouldn't know.
    As far as someone who talks too much, I'm probably guilty of that one. I don't blab other people's secrets. Not secrets. I do have a tendency to overshare my own thoughts, and sometimes, when it's really good news or really juicy gossip, I have a really hard time not sharing it. Sometimes it's just with my boyfriend, and he doesn't really count because he doesn't talk about anything I tell him to other people, but sometimes it's sharing with my coworkers, and I probably shouldn't share all the stuff I do with them. There are some things that, because we work together, probably should be kept to myself.
    Bad influences, I know a few of those people. The ones that tell you to skip class to go to the brewery, the ones that talk you into coming to that party you didn't want to go to because it was going to be nothing but a bunch of people you don't know drinking stuff you don't want to drink, the ones that convince you to hang out or go do things that you don't have the money to do just because it sounds like so much fun. I think we all have this bone in our bodies--we all do a little peer pressuring from time to time, whether it's something little or something big. The difference is that we aren't the pusher all the time. Some people are always going to dare you to do the thing you know you shouldn't be doing because they have a little danger streak that they want to share.
    Overly competitive people--I was in IB in high school. I didn't finish, but I knew my fair share of overly competitive people. The ones that will always ask what you got on your test and caw happily when they find out they got one point better. (I did enjoy doing better than other people, I just didn't say it out loud that I got the better grade or that I was proud of myself for having gotten it.) The people who will always turn in the paper a week early and stick their hand up first to get their answer in. The only person I think I've ever really competed with is myself. I'll admit, I am a little competitive at work. I want to get my good idea in first, and I want my creativity to shine over everyone else's when I get the chance to. But I'm not the most creative person there, and I don't have the experience with certain aspects of the job that other people do, which limits me in some respects, and it means that that chance to shine doesn't come around as often as it used to when I was in school, getting grades.
    The downer is that person that can always find something negative to say about whatever happens or whatever else is said. I have DEFINITELY known people like this. It's really unfortunate because they're usually decent people, they just have an overly pessimistic outlook on life and people and the world. I have days where everything sucks--I think you'd have to be an automaton if you didn't have days like that at least sometimes, however infrequent. But some people are just distrustful, angry, regretful, and unhappy people that live by the adage misery loves company. These are probably the worst ones on this list because they bring everyone else down too, whether they mean to or not.
    I guess the point here is that while we all may be a little bit like these personalities from time to time, the point is not to be any one of them ALL the time. And maybe to be more like a few other personalities some of the time too--the encourager, the shoulder to lean on, the back-up, the giver--to balance everything out. (Sidenote: Using the new Blogger Interface right now. It's clean, and I like the posting part, LOVE the posting part, but the dashboard is weird. Too clean, too few buttons. Hard to find what you want.)

Be ambitious but not a shark. 

Be realistic not pessimistic. 

Be honest but not tactless. 

What kind of person do YOU think is the worst? 

Or... are you secretly one of them?

Share in the comments.