Unfiltered Thoughts: Prescription Drugs

Why hasn't someone named an ADD drug Settlein?

My Regular Coffee Order Just Changed

So Michael Jackson's dead. I don't know why everyone is so shocked. I'm certainly not. But this does rock my world in one significant way.

I guess it's now in poor taste to continue to order my coffee "black like Michael Jackson." (With cream).

Unfiltered Thoughts: Teenagers

So tonight after work I had to go to traffic school to obliterate from my record a speeding ticket. The traffic school was from 6-11 p.m. No joke. My other choice was to go on a Saturday morning, and I’ll be damned if I’m sacrificing half a day of my freedom for the man. But I did get something out of it, which I thought I would share.

Teenagers SUCK. Which makes me Officially Old™. They have this cooler-than-thou attitude, even though they haven’t been around long enough to have developed critical thinking skills enough to distinguish That Which is Cool from That Which is a Fad. They have a totally obnoxious inability to listen and follow instructions. And their oblivious self-absorbed nature fails to recognize that adults might have feelings and thoughts too.

Dude next to me couldn’t have been more than 17, and first thing he says is “How long does this thing last?” I replied, “It’s supposed to go til 11, but from what I hear, if people don’t ask a lot of questions, the instructor might let us out after 10.” So starting at 9:40, he starts packing up all of his shit and sighing loudly and dramatically every 30 seconds in between glancing at his cell phone. By 9:50 when it’s obvious that the instructor still has stuff to say and we haven’t even done our test yet, dude stage whispers, “JESUS! I thought this was supposed to end at 10.” Yeah, buddy. Cuz you’re the only one in this whole room who wishes they were somewhere else and has better things to do. I know I was perfectly happy when the section on school crossings would not end:

Student: “So what you’re saying about school crossings is that we have to slow down?”

Instructor: “Yes because, see, here’s the thing, is that there might be kids,”

Student: “But the sign says stop if Children in crosswalk. What if it’s an adult? I mean, if it’s just the crossing guard, that’s not a child. THEN can we go?”

Student 2: “Yeah, I mean, what if it’s three kids, a teenager, and an adult?”

Student 3: “What if it’s a black kid?”

Instructor: “[Blah blabbity blah]." (Sorry, I couldn’t focus on anything other than how retarded my fellow citizens are.)

Instructor: “Okay. So we answered question number one. Let’s move on to Question Number Two. It’s about the left turn lane.”

Student: “Wait, I have a question. Can we go back to the school crossing for a minute?”

Jesus F-ing Christ, kill me now. But at least I'm not subjecting my neighbors to an obnoxious display of narcissism.

Awkward

Note to Self: If I'm pretending not to eavesdrop on the conversation one cube away at work, I also don't get to LOL at what was just said. Oops!

Unfiltered Thoughts: Bathrooms

How come nobody ever puts the sink outside of the bathroom in a public place? Not only would you then not have to touch the door after you've washed your hands, but you also get the shame factor forcing those who would not otherwise wash their hands to do so.

Who's Your Googleganger?

So when I bought my domain many moons ago, I didn't expect it to be anything professional. I simply was looking for a creative outlet for self-expression, so I didn't think anything of having the word "ass" (or "monkey," for that matter) in a domain. Even if I wanted to use this site as a professional showcase of my wise-ass mind talents, I wouldn't worry about the domain name because a) I'd only be considering writing work that lets me be who I am anyway, and b) I'd really only be considering comedic writing gigs anyway.

But even if I were interested in having a "professional" domain, my googleganger has been sitting on our name as her domain for eons, so I wouldn't know what I would choose anyway. Go check out your googleganger - it's a fun little exercise.

In Which I Officially Become a Writer

So, it's real. The vision I created through career counseling to become a writer is happening. I just accepted a job as a writer! It's actually writing museum exhibits, which isn't exactly the kind of writing I want to be doing and I really wanted out of museum work, BUT it's a launching pad. And it's temporary - 18 months - so hopefully I'll have developed enough of a portfolio in the next 18 months to say buh-bye to museum work altogether and set my sails for writer-land.

The Trend-Followers

Museums strive to influence culture, to argue that they are a nexus, the ground zero of things like civic engagement, social responsibility, and visual learning. Ha! That is such bullshit. An example: the web. Museums are constantly looking at emerging technologies as in, How do we get in on that? Museums say “What’s with this Twitter thing? What is the need for social networking?” rather than sitting around thinking proactively about how to put these tools to use -- its all retroactive. It’s kind of like reading Snow Crash today and saying Wow! This Stephenson guy really took the avatar idea and ran with it, gave it life. (For those who don’t know, Stephenson invenvted the whole avatar thing.)
I mean when I started applying my writing skills to museum exhibits, the most exhibit experience I had was in doing online exhibits....as in on this thing called the interweb. This was no secret -- I made it completely clear that I had very little hands-on experience with making a “real” exhibit. And yet, my boss said something to me like "See, here's where we differ. I don't think online pictures can replace the real thing!" Let me be clear. Web exhibits are not supposed to "replace" the real thing. People come to museums to see stuff. But what we do online can help get people to come see stuff. And give them an unstructured space to explore what we're all about.

I taught myself a bit of HTML & CSS, I do a lot of database admin for my work, and have had to learn basic SQL, networking, etc. And yet I’m almost always the most knowledgeable about this tech-type stuff among my coworkers, except in places that have staffs large enough to hire *actual* IT folks. Which is scary, because I only know enough to be dangerous. I can figure out how something is put together, and it takes me a long time to break it down, recode it and put it back the way I want it. It can be done, I can do it, but it takes me awhile. I am self-taught in Photoshop, Illustrator, Dreamweaver, Access, Google Sketchup, and tons of other stuff, which means I can figure something out, but it takes me longer than folks who’ve had formal training in these things. But at least I recognized that for my future career, I would need to know these things and try to at least keep up with the curve, rather than falling hopelessly behind. Like the luddites with whom I seem to work. I mean I said something about how stupid it was for all of these Second Life museum classes I keep getting advertisements for, and these folks look at me like I’ve grown a second head: "What’s Second Life?"  OMG, ARE YOU SERIOUS?! I get “I don’t believe in Facebook” or “What's the point of Twitter?” I think my points are lost when trying to explain that Facebook can be an incredibly powerful marketing tool, and Twitter is just plain awesome. Especially for writers -- it helps me hone my skills of saying what I want to say in less than 140 characters several times a day. What better way to become more concise AND tell all of my followers about my thoughts on the a penis invasion on Second Life?

Not a Morning Person

I always struggle with mornings. I'm a natural night owl, and also I need a lot of sleep to be firing on all cylinders - a solid 8-9 hours. So let's set aside for the moment that it's bizarre to me that employers who would benefit from happy, well-rested employees instead insist on everyone being a cog for Taylorism and all arriving at 8 a.m., and instead focus on what is possibly the only thing in the world that might work in turning me into an on-time riser:

http://www.thinkgeek.com/stuff/41/snuznluz.shtml

Someone please buy this for me, if you want me somewhere before 10 a.m.

Career Counseling is Changing My Life

So I’m approaching the completion of my career counseling, and it has been an amazing experience. Just like the assessments I did for a job interview about a year ago, I’ve been surprised at how accurately and insightfully the assessments have pinpointed my skills and work style. Mostly, I’ve learned a lot about myself. Let’s review, shall we:

• I am a highly creative person, who needs to be doing work that is based in creativity. The work has to have variety, be challenging, team-oriented with the ability to direct my own tasks and be flexible.
  
  • Basically, confirming what I already knew. I should be a writer. But how a writer makes money working for herself, I still haven't figured out.

• I have been unhappy & dissatisfied with work thus far because I have been socialized (as many of us are) that a single, “traditional” career is best. That does not fit my personality style nor my talents, and I need to be able to construct work that has many different components, whether that means part-time at two jobs or project-based consulting or whatever. Staying in the same work environment and rising through the ranks doesn’t work for me.
  
  • This has been a big DUH finding for me. I was brought up with the expectation that you go to college, then you go to graduate or professional school and you embark upon that career. Ta-DAH! Success! But that didn't give me the opportunity to "play" with my interests and skills and led me to de-value the tasks and kinds of work that I enjoy because they weren't "demanding" or "high-skilled" enough. Example: my favorite job of all time was when I worked in a bagel shop. I loved everything about it, and was happy as a lark. But because of my socialization, I didn't question the assumption that of course this is just a part-time gig and why would anyone work in a bagel shop when they have other, more "professional" options available to them? Even if you take the financial argument that realistically, one probably cannot easily work in a low-wage food-service job long-term, let's compare it to how my bank account has done gangbusters in the nonprofit sector. Ahem.

• My MBTI Type is INFP. As an INFP, I have to do work I believe in (for projects or casues I care about), I need to work without a great deal of supervision (micromanagement stifles my creative flow), use my creativity to address problems, work among others, have the freedom and time to work on projects with plenty of reflection and quiet time to focus in depth, in a supportive work environment, and have the opportunity to continue to grow personally and professionally.
  
  • Breaking it down: Unlike what you may think, the I does not mean shy and reserved. The I means that I am focused on theories, ideas, thoughts, concepts. I reqiure the time to reflect and contemplate before I act and become renewed by solo time while social interaction takes energy & drains my focus. The N means I see the forest more than the trees, that I am able to generalize and interpret from facts to larger patterns and that I value insights and analogies. The F means I am empathetic, I seek to find what is most important and prioritize values, and lean towards acceptance and sympathy. The P means that I focus on options and possibilities, I enjoy starting (but not finishing!) projects (ahem), especially because I continually take in and consider new information (to the detriment of getting projects done!).

It explains a lot. I felt like crap about my work and work performance at the history museum becaues my personality type was discounted and not valued as a “legitimate” work style. I’m unhappy at my current job at this private art gallery because I do repretitive tasks that do not tap into my creativity and do not allow me to be balance out my quiet time with social projects and collaboration.
My Strong Interest Inventory indicates that I am best in lines of work that are artistic, social, and investigative. Museums could be a good fit for a work environment for me, but I've come out of this recognizing and reaffirming that writing is what I'd like to be doing.  How to get from here to there? I still don't know. But I'll start by marketing myself via a portfolio career that highlights my many talents & skills with the intention of creating my own work, either as a consultant or a writer, or balancing part-time work with poverty writing on my own. AKA poverty. At this point, I don't care how poor we will be, though. I think it's more important to do what makes you happy than what makes you rich slightly less impoverished.