An open letter to people who create drama

Dear (fill in name here):

I have some news for you. There are 7.036 billion people on Earth (that's what the US Census Bureau calculated according to the Wikipedia). Let's say you have 100 friends, that's about .0000000142% of the population. Which means that there are still OVER SEVEN BILLION people who don't give a shit about you. So the 2 or 3 people who are actually out to get you are less than a drop in the bucket. Don't waste your time dealing with them.


The only person your drama hurts is (get this) YOU. Making a stink about the one person who said something nasty to/about you only serves to keep those words in your mind. Fussing at people who care about you enough to try to help only serves to make them less patient and less willing to help you the next time. You may think to yourself "it's only one person, and they weren't my friend anyway", but that one friend quickly becomes two, then three. Soon you'll find that people you really want to have stick around are (either quietly or not so quietly) slipping away into the night.

You know who you are (actually, you probably don't, but we'll get into that in a moment). You one-up everyone's hard luck stories with one of your own. You always have a reason your life is so much worse. Your Facebook status is always something about how awful things are, or how much pain you're in, or wondering when things will get better. You insist that you don't need or want any drama in your life, but it somehow still finds you.

Remember how I said you know who you are? The truth is that you probably don't. You can see it in someone else, but not in yourself. When a friend gets sick of your crap and leaves you behind, it's always their fault and not yours. Never your fault. But it actually is your fault.

I'm not going to give you advice. You won't listen to it anyway. I'm just going to be one of the ones who quietly slips away into the night. You probably won't even notice that I've deleted you from my Facebook page. I'm sorry I couldn't feed your ego the way you needed. But there are seven billion other people on this planet. I'm sure I can find someone who wants to be a real friend to someone else instead of the center of the universe.

What's she going to do, fire me?

So, as you may or may not know, I have been offered (and subsequently accepted) a new job at a different company. I gave my two week notice last Friday (the 24th). This morning, my coworker was working at my desk today, and she hadn't turned the volume off on her phone yet. I said that I wasn't turning my phone to silent anymore because "what's she going to do, fire me?". We got a good chuckle about that. And it got me to thinking. When did I stop caring about my job? What was the turning point that made me go from content to discontent?

I can pinpoint some instances where I was frustrated by the office environment and my boss, but none of them really were enough to light a fire under me to go job hunting, or consider any offers for interviews that might be extended via LinkedIn. But something this summer made me open to the conversation with the recruiter who eventually was instrumental in getting this new job.

I still like what I do. I still find my assigned tasks interesting and occasionally challenging. But more and more I have found myself saying in my head "I won't miss doing this when I leave". Part of this comes from how many different things are part of my job. Doing everything was all well and good when I still felt like it would be recognized and appreciated. But such was not the case. The amount of feedback provided here is minimal at best, and then it generally only happens when you screw up. I've heard it said that there shouldn't be any surprises in your yearly performance review. Of course, this assumes you get a yearly performance review...

I did have a few surprises in the performance reviews over the years. But overall, my reviews were very very good and I am in a fairly good position in the company. That being said, I am also as far in the company as I think I'd ever be able to go. For all her talk of wanting to get out of day-to-day running of the company, my boss does not want to let go of those things. If I want to grow and learn new things, there's no choice but to leave.

And now I have two weeks left. My last day here will be Sept. 7. Then it is on to new and different things. But for two weeks, I have to show up to work and be present. Even though I've already checked out emotionally, I have a responsibility to do my assigned tasks until I walk out the door on Sept. 7. Turning my phone to silent though? Not happening.

Because, really, what's she going to do, fire me?

Kleenex: Mana from Heaven

I store Kleenex in my pockets like a squirrel hoarding nuts for winter. It is uncommon to see me without a puffed out pocket, because if I am caught without a Kleenex, the results are never pretty. This time of year is always bad, because the seasons are changing. Spring and fall are my worst times of years, allergy-wise. And on rainy days, I am miserable. I joke that people should buy stock in Kleenex, given how much of it I go through. There's a box in my nightstand, a box on the end table by my recliner and a box by my computer. At work, I store a box in my desk drawer (because the office-purchased tissues are the cheap generic kind that leave your hands covered in nose slime). When it comes to facial tissue, I've found that Kleenex are the best for me. Puffs leave lint/lotion in my nose which makes the congestion worse. I blow right through the cheap generic kind, which defeats the purpose of using a tissue. I would have to carry a bag full of handkerchiefs if I was going to go the "environmentally friendly" route, and I'd use a ton of water washing them.

Matt and I started playing Minecraft in cooperative mode on Sunday night. We've got a good system going. He goes off in his silly-looking iron armor and mines underground, while I cut down trees to make sure our supply of wood is sufficient, and then plant saplings so we have a basically neverending supply of wood. I also harvest and replant the wheat we are growing. Wheat is good because it can be used to make bread or cake or cookies, and you can use it to lure various critters (pigs, chickens, cows, sheep) into a pen for easy farming of meat and/or wool (sheeps don't drop meat, just wool). Once you have them penned, you can breed two animals by feeding them wheat. I started us with two pigs. Our current pig count is 5 or 6 (a couple got killed for meat). Then I got us a chicken by throwing eggs at the ground. Still trying to get chicken number two. Last night, I managed to wrangle us two cows. Cows are probably the best animal resource in the game. You get steaks, milk, and leather from them, all of which are high-value resources. I had a wolf that I tamed, but last night he got lost somehow, so I have to try and tame another because I want to go exploring and having a wolf for protection would be useful if I get stuck outside at night. We didn't get as much time to play last night as we would have liked because we got home late, and when we got home I had something that had to be done immediately (if I had known how late we were going to get home, I might have done it before leaving the office, but... whatever).

I just did the experience survey for Red Robin. Their boxes for open-ended responses did not have a very large character limit. What would I do if I was REALLY pissed off? Probably call them and bitch them out. I wasn't completely pissed off, just slightly annoyed that when it came time to leave, our waitress was nowhere to be found, and she walked past our table a couple times without stopping to see how we were, even when I had my wallet out and was fiddling with my credit card.

Did a whole bunch of work this morning only to have someone spaz out that the total number of completes was not right because she missed deleting a respondent she wanted to get rid of. It wouldn't be so bad, but this was the second time I had run this set of tables. We're just going to leave that respondent in the data set.

Calling back people who call you but don't leave a message is a waste of your time. I understand that you're screening your calls so the bill collectors can't find you, but I'm pretty sure they'll leave you a message. No message, no reason to call back. That's how I roll, makes my life so much easier.

I have never worked at a McDonald's, nor do I ever plan to.

A blog with no theme

Sup, yo.

With the downfall of Multiply, leaving me homeless on the internet, I realized that I haven't been blogging nearly as much these days as I have in the past and it led me to wonder why that might be. Maybe it's that I have nothing to say. Maybe it's concern about who might be reading what I post. However, in the past, neither of those things have stopped me. Let's hope that I can actually get back to blogging regularly.

In more exciting news, IT IS SHARK WEEK! In case you weren't aware of that. Shark Week is my favorite time of year. All shark shows on the telly, all the time. It does make me happy. I've always liked watching underwater nature shows on telly. Something about watching the fish is so relaxing. Sharks aren't necessarily relaxing, but they are so interesting. Especially the Air Jaws shows, with great whites breaching to catch seals. I would like to go and see that in person at some point. How to convince Matt that we need to take that trip...

We do have an upcoming trip in October out to Monterey, CA to go to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, which sits right on the bay. I'm really looking forward to it. I haven't decided if using the big zoom lens on the camera will be more hindrance than its worth. I've not tried using it on aquarium fish, even though I did take it to the MN Zoo earlier this summer. It requires more light than a smaller, more standard lens, and underwater exhibits aren't always terribly well-lit. I have read, however, that the Monterey Bay Aquarium exhibits are lit with photography in mind and they recommend learning how to turn the flash off on your camera before you visit.

Turning the flash off is one of the first things I figure out on any camera. My previous SLR camera (non-digital) didn't have a built in flash, so I had gotten used to taking pictures without flash. My first digital camera was a fairly simple point-and-shoot, and I turned the flash off as soon as I figured it out. Same thing with my digital SLR. I'm so used to taking pictures without a flash, I hardly ever turn it on. When I'm at the zoo, I see people with their little point-and-shoots, and they take pictures through the glass with the flash on, and it makes me cringe. And they take one picture and walk away without looking at the display. Are you kidding me? The first thing I do after I snap a picture is look at the display and see how it turned out, then I take another picture. I have my camera set to take pictures as long as I have the button pressed. The more options you have, the more likely you are to get an amazing picture.

Like this one (even though this was the first shot I took, I have 3 other versions of the exact same shot, just in case)

I could talk about photography for hours. If you want more of that, just let me know.