this seriously ended up longer than i thought it would. wow.
So, fully intending to get BACK into this, and keep up with it and all that, I logged myself in, realized that my old journal layout, which I loved so much I never changed it from when I started this thing in 2002, is now decrepit, and my formating was all off, so I picked out a new one, (you like?) and then, as if on cue, when I came to start a new post, I realized that I had nothing to say. *Blink blink* What was I going to say before? What was I going to write about? I have no idea.
I could write about what made me start thinking about lj again: The Social Network. The movie about the creation of facebook, and i realized that livejournal was there when facemash (the precursor to facebook) was created. I realized this bc it was in the movie. Anyway, it got me thinking. About how I do still have a lj account. And how I never use it. So i came on here tonight, read some of my old posts and then made a huge discovery: I haven't updated this thing in FOREVER. I mean, just a few posts down I was in glee of having just been promoted. That was before Tammy, Alison, Cotswold, work drama, hating my job, and getting yelled at by my dm (who is a personal hero of mine of course), finally getting out of Alison's lair, then finding out that that bitch got fired. That was before Matt. Oh man. What a year or so it has been.
I dont want to get all pretentious and junk and talk about how much I've grown, but, like, fo shizzle, I've grown up a lot. So not the same person I was a year ago, or hell even four months ago when I got to Mooresville. I can't wait to see what happens next.
In years past I set goals for myself, not resolutions. Because resolutions totally indicate that you're fixing something wrong, whereas a goal is something you hope to accomplish. I used to do goals of reading x number of books. (just scroll down a few posts, goal was fifty.) I've given that up really, because now Im focusing on something that i think is more relevant: get the fuck out of debt/ out of my parents house! By november this damn citi card better be paid off or else. By or else, I mean, or they'll charge me 14.5 percent interest and im so not having that. Other than that, I goal myself to be a better person, and a better manager. Even though my dm thinks that learning is only 10 percent through a book, I honestly think that for me that number is way way way low. Just the past couple of books i've read have completely opened my eyes.
For example: I finally got this book about positivity and junk. It's called "How Full is Your Bucket." (By Don Clifton and Tom Rath.) Here's the part that still is blowing my mind: In North Korean POW camps, the pow's suffered practically no physical abuse or torture or anything like that. BUT, those camps had the highest death rate of any pow camp in american military history. why? because of incessant negativity. How? Four strategies: (a) Informing, ie, informing your captors what someone else is doing, ratting them out: you get a prize like cigarettes. nothing happens to the person you snitched on, but that's not the goal. the goal was to break relationships and create hostility against comrades. (b) self criticism: so it's like reverse group therapy, you get together and you talk about all the bad things you've done as well as all the good things you could have done but didn't. enough said there. (c) breaking loyalty to leadership and country. best example: a colonel tells one of his men to not drink from a rice paddy field bc he knows of organisms in the water that may kill him. the man replies "Buddy, you ain't no colonel anymore. You're just a lousy prisoner like me. You take care of yourself, and I'll take care of me." That soldier? Dead a few days later. and finally, (d) withholding all positive emotional support while only supplying negative emotions. Ie, letters of support and love from home? withheld. Letters of bad news like death, financial hardship, or broken marriages bc of a soldier's long time away? Delivered immediately. Apparently captors would even deliver overdue bills. WTF?
It's a completely fascinating example of how much impact negativity can have on your wellbeing. So if we reverse that and create more positivity in our own lives and in the lives around us, how much happier will we be, and how much more can we accomplish? Ultimately that's what this book talks about: creating positivity for ourselves and for our teams so that productivity and engagement increases, which causes retention decreases. Fascinating. anyway, im trying to be more positive and whatnot. (which basically means I should totally move out of my parents house.)
Right now I'm working on "Go put your strengths to work," because I was all about the strengths based stuff, but there's very little out there on how to apply the strengths you've uncovered about yourself. but the writer is very clear that he's talking about different strengths. uhm, ok. only a few pages in so we'll see. either way, I do think that all of this junk will make me a better person, and definitely a better manager. if it dont, I want a refund!
right now im sitting here drinking the worst sweet tea i've ever had because morgan bought it for me and i dont want to waste her money even though i'm totally going to pay her back. it's only been four months but i think we're getting to some good stable ground. i think a lot of it has to do with her somewhat ice-y demeanor, but when i make jokes and whatnot she does crack a smile and i appreciate that she allows herself to be human. i was saddened to see how blugh today was. i hate to break it to the retail gods but mothers day and memorial day are not the shopping occassions that my company thinks they are. and god help us for the entire month of june.
we'll see. im going to go shave bc there is no way i can sleep with this much scruffy going on.
I could write about what made me start thinking about lj again: The Social Network. The movie about the creation of facebook, and i realized that livejournal was there when facemash (the precursor to facebook) was created. I realized this bc it was in the movie. Anyway, it got me thinking. About how I do still have a lj account. And how I never use it. So i came on here tonight, read some of my old posts and then made a huge discovery: I haven't updated this thing in FOREVER. I mean, just a few posts down I was in glee of having just been promoted. That was before Tammy, Alison, Cotswold, work drama, hating my job, and getting yelled at by my dm (who is a personal hero of mine of course), finally getting out of Alison's lair, then finding out that that bitch got fired. That was before Matt. Oh man. What a year or so it has been.
I dont want to get all pretentious and junk and talk about how much I've grown, but, like, fo shizzle, I've grown up a lot. So not the same person I was a year ago, or hell even four months ago when I got to Mooresville. I can't wait to see what happens next.
In years past I set goals for myself, not resolutions. Because resolutions totally indicate that you're fixing something wrong, whereas a goal is something you hope to accomplish. I used to do goals of reading x number of books. (just scroll down a few posts, goal was fifty.) I've given that up really, because now Im focusing on something that i think is more relevant: get the fuck out of debt/ out of my parents house! By november this damn citi card better be paid off or else. By or else, I mean, or they'll charge me 14.5 percent interest and im so not having that. Other than that, I goal myself to be a better person, and a better manager. Even though my dm thinks that learning is only 10 percent through a book, I honestly think that for me that number is way way way low. Just the past couple of books i've read have completely opened my eyes.
For example: I finally got this book about positivity and junk. It's called "How Full is Your Bucket." (By Don Clifton and Tom Rath.) Here's the part that still is blowing my mind: In North Korean POW camps, the pow's suffered practically no physical abuse or torture or anything like that. BUT, those camps had the highest death rate of any pow camp in american military history. why? because of incessant negativity. How? Four strategies: (a) Informing, ie, informing your captors what someone else is doing, ratting them out: you get a prize like cigarettes. nothing happens to the person you snitched on, but that's not the goal. the goal was to break relationships and create hostility against comrades. (b) self criticism: so it's like reverse group therapy, you get together and you talk about all the bad things you've done as well as all the good things you could have done but didn't. enough said there. (c) breaking loyalty to leadership and country. best example: a colonel tells one of his men to not drink from a rice paddy field bc he knows of organisms in the water that may kill him. the man replies "Buddy, you ain't no colonel anymore. You're just a lousy prisoner like me. You take care of yourself, and I'll take care of me." That soldier? Dead a few days later. and finally, (d) withholding all positive emotional support while only supplying negative emotions. Ie, letters of support and love from home? withheld. Letters of bad news like death, financial hardship, or broken marriages bc of a soldier's long time away? Delivered immediately. Apparently captors would even deliver overdue bills. WTF?
It's a completely fascinating example of how much impact negativity can have on your wellbeing. So if we reverse that and create more positivity in our own lives and in the lives around us, how much happier will we be, and how much more can we accomplish? Ultimately that's what this book talks about: creating positivity for ourselves and for our teams so that productivity and engagement increases, which causes retention decreases. Fascinating. anyway, im trying to be more positive and whatnot. (which basically means I should totally move out of my parents house.)
Right now I'm working on "Go put your strengths to work," because I was all about the strengths based stuff, but there's very little out there on how to apply the strengths you've uncovered about yourself. but the writer is very clear that he's talking about different strengths. uhm, ok. only a few pages in so we'll see. either way, I do think that all of this junk will make me a better person, and definitely a better manager. if it dont, I want a refund!
right now im sitting here drinking the worst sweet tea i've ever had because morgan bought it for me and i dont want to waste her money even though i'm totally going to pay her back. it's only been four months but i think we're getting to some good stable ground. i think a lot of it has to do with her somewhat ice-y demeanor, but when i make jokes and whatnot she does crack a smile and i appreciate that she allows herself to be human. i was saddened to see how blugh today was. i hate to break it to the retail gods but mothers day and memorial day are not the shopping occassions that my company thinks they are. and god help us for the entire month of june.
we'll see. im going to go shave bc there is no way i can sleep with this much scruffy going on.