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?

I'm Trying

  "I'm trying" is one of the weakest phrases in the English language. I feel pathetic for even repeating it here. Twice. And yet it seems so fitting for so many situations. Falling behind in your work--hey, I'm trying. Can't quite make dinner and go to the gym in the same night--I'm trying. Keeping a straight face (or worse, a smiling face) when everything around you seems to be crumbling--I'm trying. Trying is useless. Either you do something, or you don't. You succeed, or you fail. You win, or you lose. Don't mistake this for making things black and white. They're not. They never are, even though things would be so much easier if they were. But when it comes to doing things, either you catch up with your work, or you don't. You find time to go to the gym and get dinner for the family, or you don't. You smile through the pain, or you make a sour face and grumble every time anyone speaks to you.
    I suck at hiding things, so on the last one, depending on who I have to smile for, I will fail more often than not. I also suck at multi-tasking. We are all much more efficient when our minds only have to focus on one thing. Right now, I'm writing. My writing would not be coming out quite so coherently were I also trying to check my social media, read other people's blogs, and eat dinner at the same time. With that, I fail quite a bit. And generally, I'm ok with it. We all fail from time to time. I prefer failing when no one's looking, and the only one to judge my failure is me, but it's not a perfect world. I also succeed a fair amount of the time. I get something done sooner than I anticipated. I managed to keep everyone ignorant of the fact that I'm totally full of shit. I finished a blog post. There are plenty of things I succeed at every day.
    But these little successes are almost never enough to carry you through the failures. When we fail, we fail big. Or at least, it always seems a lot bigger when it happens. The guilt comes up and the criticism starts, and the derogation sets in, and then someone else says something about it. One small criticism from someone else, even if they said it in good faith or to be constructive, can hurt and shock our confidence a lot worse than any of the horrible, self-deprecating things we can come up with to chastise ourselves. We are our own worst enemy when it comes to failure, because sometimes, a lot of times, it turns out to be a self-fulfilling prophecy, but all the hurtful things we say to ourselves when we catch a mistake or when we fail to do something are flesh wounds compared to the hemorrhaging killshots other people can fire at us. "I'm such an idiot, you say to to yourself, how could I forget to do that?" pales in comparison to "You didn't do that? All right, who wants to do that instead?"
    The best we can do is not let other people get to us. Easier said than done, I know. Boy, do I know it. But if we're going to end up in therapy, it should be because we're crazy, we're complicated, we're off our rockers; not because someone else drove us crazy, complicated us, or snatched the rockers out from under us (no idea if that is the correct contextual use of rocker here, but, moving on). Everything always seems like a big deal when it first happens. But the part that we control is how quickly it shrinks into something forgettable. We just need to learn to accelerate the forgetting process so we get over stuff quicker. The impact of the incident will increase the time it takes to forget it, but self-analysis and self-awareness are always helpful.
    PS: I MAYBE finally found an apartment. I agreed to sublet it, but I still have to sign papers and write checks and what-not. But agreeing and setting a move-in date seems reasonable to start honestly hoping. Thanks, Universe. I needed that one today. :)

Do, or do not. There is no try.

5 Reasons Why George Lucas Sucks

  Oh, George Lucas, how do I loathe thee? Let me count the ways. On the one hand, I must congratulate you for putting together the original 3 Star Wars films that I and so many others around the world love so much, but on the other hand, I really wish someone had put a leash on you about fifteen years ago.
    Reason 1: We could have avoided those horrible "prequels" where Yoda is CGI and Samuel L. Jackson is a Jedi. And I don't think I need to get into everything wrong with the decision to cast Hayden Christiansen as Anakin. Seriously. But I could.
    Reason 2: You wouldn't have rereleased the original films in special edition three packs (or four-packs) in which you digitally remastered and added extra scenes, including a brand new CGI Jabba the Hut--scenes that weren't necessary in the first place.
    Reason 3: We wouldn't have an animated version of Attack of the Clones.
    Reason 4: Jar Jar Binks. 
And I'm just getting warmed up. As much as I'd love to give you a free pass on the original Star Wars films, I really wish you'd gotten someone else to write them. (Reason 5) When you can't come up with another way to say: "I've got a bad feeling about this" (count how many times they say this or a strikingly similar term in the original 3 films--go on, I dare you), I think it's time to bring in another creative head.
    I could go on, but I'll leave it at that. The story and the characters in Star Wars are too enjoyable for me to tear the entire empire apart (pun intended). The trilogy has some of the best qualities a good film (or set of films) ought to have, a love story--even a love triangle (however incestuous that one may be--thanks for that one, GL), action, terror, an excellent villain, good triumphing over evil, suspense, and some excellent twists. Darth is Luke's father?? I don't know anyone who saw that one coming.
    So, it's really a love-hate relationship. If we could only get you to stop trying to milk this idea for all it's worth, Mr. Lucas, I think we might actually be able to get along someday. I can watch my DVDs in peace and ignore the CGI scenes interjected into them. (I also hope you have a sense of humor about some constructive criticism.)

Pleeeeease don't deactivate me!

When Writing Gets Ugly

  Everyone has had a moment where they looked back over something they wrote and went, what the hell was that supposed to be? Sometimes it was just gibberish; other times you just ended up with a completely ungrammatical sentence; and still other times, you managed to mangle a word so badly with your 120 WPM skills that the auto-correct didn't even know what to do with it. I do that last one frequently due to the dyslexia my brain seems to pick up when it's trying to get something written in a hurry. Except my WPM is far from 120.
    But ugly writing, though it may seem useless and frustrating, considering you have to go back and fix it later, is not a bad thing. It's a start, and for those who write compulsively or regularly (and not compulsively), a start composed of crappy writing is WAY better than a blank page/screen. But that ugly writing isn't going to get pretty on its own, and revision, for some writers, is almost a dirty word.

"What? I didn't write it perfect the first time? 

You've got to be kidding. 

That is 100% quality prose right there." 

    Once we put our egos in check, however, there's a rare occasion when everything comes out brilliant and with no revision necessary the first time around. So while I love editing, I love it only as long as it's not my writing. I am pretty good at giving constructive criticism on other people's work. But when it comes to my own writing, I procrastinate to an obscene amount. If it's shorter, like an essay or a poem, or a blog post, I can do it because I know it will be quick and relatively painless. Every blog post is at least a second draft. And every 2 or more page paper I've written in the past eight years has been a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th draft.
    But the truth is, it can always be better. The question we must ask ourselves is: how much time do we want to/are we able to commit to making it better? To this end, I'm currently enacting a new strategy in my creative writing project, though I didn't set out to do things this way. I wrote--a good 2500 words or so in a day--and then steadily tacked on a few hundred words a day until I got blocked. I suddenly found myself writing the story into a corner (forgive the mixed metaphor) and I stopped. I thought about where I had gone wrong and made notes about where to fix it. And then I did. It took me about two weeks, off and on, to do the rewrites and the make the changes, but I think it's improved. And it's put me back on track. On a track I didn't realize I was going on, but a forward moving track that is not headed for a corner, or dead end.
    Revising 3500 hundred words or so is a lot easier than writing upwards of 30 or 40 thousand words first and then trying to go back and revise all of it. It's a lot of ground to cover, so much ground that it seems impossible not only to try to reread all of it, but to do more than fix a couple commas here and there.
    So, whenever writer's block sets in, going back and revising (and revisiting) what you've written can get your brain unblocked. It may not be pretty, looking at how far off topic you've gone or how ridiculous that string of dialogue sounds (people don't talk like that, do they?), but it helps. It is one day, or one set of however many pages/words you typically write in a day, at a time. Get through it and you can move on in a direction that may be even better than the one you originally had in mind.

Even the ugly duckling turned into a swan.

Yes, You're Still In the Right Place!

This is what happens when I have too much time on my hands. The site looks a little different, no? Well, it should. Because it is. I didn't take anything away (I don't think...), but everything is definitely in a different place. I was going to do this redesign a couple months ago, but I was worried people wouldn't recognize it. As there are so few returning visitors, I think (hope) you'll find your way around again.
    So, at the very least, you may want to check out the About Me page. I added on to what was originally in the About the Author box. (I hope that link isn't broken. The URL didn't change after I changed the title of the page.
    I hope you like it. Those of you who knew what it looked like before. Comments?

I hope new means improved. This time, anyway.

Rejection Can Be Good

    Rejection is hard--at first. You feel like you've been punched in the stomach, and the wind's been knocked out of you. Whether you submitted a story to a magazine and got a curt, succinct rejection letter, or asked someone new out on a date and they said they "aren't dating right now", or simply gave your poem to a friend to read and they hated it, I know that rejection is no fun. But it can be helpful. Maybe your story could use some more work. Maybe the person you asked out just got out of a bad relationship. And maybe your friend needs to learn how to give constructive criticism. That, or your poem really is bad.
    Learning to deal with rejection takes time, and it takes a lot of behavior modification. You have to learn that rejection isn't always personal. Sometimes it's just business. Other times, you can never know the whole story of what's going on in someone else's life to know whether their reasons for rejecting you are because of something having to do with them or something having to do with you.
    Dealing with rejection means you have to steel yourself, prepare for it. You have a 50-50 chance your story will be rejected; you have a 50-50 chance of getting the date, or not; and you have a 50-50 chance your friend will hate the poem. You have to recognize the situations in which you may possibly experience rejection as an outcome, and then prepare for it. Maybe it will turn out fine in the end, but knowing it may not, and preparing yourself for that, helps in coping with the rejection and not taking it personally (even if it is actually personal). 
    So, how is rejection good? It hurts. Steeled or not, it still hurts. It still shocks. It still sucks. But--you can learn from it. For anything that happens, if you can learn from it, then it wasn't completely pointless; it wasn't a complete waste of time; it wasn't all for nothing. What you may learn from that rejection will depend on the situation. You may learn you're a terrible poet, and you'll have to accept that. You could learn that you shouldn't ask people out who are of that personality type, no matter how much you like them.
    You could learn any number of things, but in order to do so, you cannot mope. You can't bitch and complain that nothing ever goes right. You can't beat yourself up about it. I've said it before, dear readers, and I'll say it again: shit happens. Rejection is just one of those shit things that happens sometimes.
    But if you never put yourself out there, if you never take some risks--you don't have to invest your life savings in the stock market or skydive out of an airplane at 20,000 feet to take risks--you'll never experience the rewards that do occasionally follow. Your story may get published. The person will say yes to dinner. Your friend thinks your poem is reminiscent of an early Robert Frost. Whatever the case may be, risks are a part of life, a part of humanity. Greatness was never achieved by playing it safe.

"Sometimes, you just have to say, 'What the fuck.' " (Joel-Risky Business)

"But I'm Not Wrong"

Everyone always thinks they've got it together more than someone else they know. "That friend of mine is always getting lost"; "Man, I am such a better driver than she is"; "I think I'd go nuts if I was as disorganized as that woman is"; "I could write a better headline than that in my sleep", and so on. Are we just being condescending and self-important? Maybe sometimes. But most of the time: we're not wrong. We do have a good sense of direction, we are organized to the point of being nicknamed OCD, we do have a better sense of what sounds good and what doesn't. It doesn't mean we're great at everything and better than everyone else. We're just right about this. [Note: Headline taken from Bill Maher's stand-up show. We must give credit where credit is due, and sometimes when it's not.]
    Should we tolerate others' faults or should we try to correct them? That's a tricky question. Some people are so set in their ways that it would take a meteor through the middle of their house to get them to change anything. Others might respond to a little gentle constructive criticism. Trying to correct people is something that often comes into play either in a relationship or between teacher and student (and I mean the latter to be in a very broad sense--parent and child, mentor and mentee, elder and younger, etc). While this isn't always a good tactic, often resulting in hurt feelings and insecurities, if it's a serious issue, like fire hazard or risk of life kind of serious, of course it should be addressed. In all other cases, you pick your battles, I suppose.
    Consider: Why do we get so upset when other people aren't as good at something as we are? For me, it's usually because they're interfering with my ability to fulfill my obligations and responsibilities. For example, X's disorganization is causing me problems because she procrastinates, so I can't do what I'm supposed to do until X does her part first. It's frustrating, certainly. We hate being put on hold, getting there on time when everyone else is running late, being ready to do step 5 when everyone else is still working on step 3, or feeling like we have to fix other people's mistakes because we can do it better. It's exhausting feeling like the person who's always on the ball when everyone else seems to be sleepwalking or slacking off.
    While I'd like to say, in the spirit of being neighborly, that we should be a little more forgiving of these people. Sometimes, WE'RE the ones who are running late, or falling behind in our work, or making a mistake that someone else has to fix. But we have excuses, and because we find them more valid than those that others give to us, it's easy to forgive ourselves doing for something wrong.

Is that hypocritical? Probably.

    Still, if we are on the ball 90 percent of the time, compared to other people having it together only 20 percent of the time, it's fair to feel better about yourself for not being like them, those underachievers. Just because we slip up from time to time doesn't make it wrong for us to accuse them of the same thing, because unlike us, they do it all the time.
Nothing enlightening today. Just a little outburst. Even though we do the same thing sometimes, it doesn't make us wrong to point out that the underachiever does it all the time. It's OK to let your ego swell a little bit in cases like this. A boost in ego may prevent you from voicing your frustrations in a less than subtle way. Just don't let Ego take over.

You think I'm harsh? Fine. But I'm not wrong.