I'm catching up on Grey's Anatomy -- don't talk to me about it yet because I'm three episodes behind.

I'm not looking forward to doing my taxes and am pretty much putting it off but at least I'm doing a better job of taking care of my apartment.

I've noticed a few things lately: I never seem to allow myself to sit in silence and that I can't want anything more until I can take care of what I have.

To speak the first thing, I always have sound around me. I used to think this was because was comforting but now I'm realizing more and more that I use sound as a way to distract myself. When I'm driving, there is always music on or the radio or a tap of a lecture. When I'm at home, even if I'm not watching television, it is virtually always on in one room or the other either tuning in to regular television or with something on DVD that I am "watching" by listening to it as I go around my apartment doing God knows what. Certainly not often cleaning it, as my friends can attest. It's not so much that I'm dirty as I don't seem to put anything away. Things sit in places, sometimes for months, because I don't know where to put them and while I wish they had a place, I'm not particularly motivated to actually find them one. Also, the sound sort of helps to drown out the neighbor who lives below me who seems to have a rather nice subwoofer (see previous entry about neighbors.) But even watching Grey's Anatomy at top volume right now doesn't drown out the sound of the base....

I want an office. I want a place where all I have is a desk and books and things that make me happy. I want a tranquil room. I don't want to have to hook up my laptop in my bedroom or at my kitchen table. I want a place to think. But I can recognize that I can't handle anything more right now than this one bedroom apartment. I can't keep it organized, I have trouble remembering to clean on a consistent basis, etc. And while I would like for it to be better, I can't seem to accomplish that. But I'm working on it. I'm not giving up. And hopefully when I get that figured out, there will be an office waiting for me....

It's 11 PM -- Do You Know Where Your Children Are?

...I'm someone's child and I'm still at work. I think we've finally come almost to the end but I'm still here waiting it out. We were almost done and I was about to leave to meet Sarah for coffee and then possibly see Coraline with her and the guys but.... then we discovered that we were missing something. An entire stack of client originals still needed to be scanned and turned into graphics. A few hours worth of work, proofing included. Denise, Joel, and I all stared at each other in horror. You could feel the curse words lingering in the air but no one had uttered them...yet.

I've been following Denise around, almost like a puppy, because I do not enjoy hanging around in my office at night when almost no one else is here. I crave company after a while. I've been sitting in here all day getting work done with my only contact with the outside world talking to other people in the company about whatever problem I'm helping them with. But now I'm back in here, sitting alone and waiting, listening to as many versions of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah I can find on YouTube. I mean, sometimes you need comfort music the way you need comfort food or a good hug. If you're bored, go google "Mieka Pauley Hallelujah" and take a listen. Beautiful. Even better in person....

It's time to shut off my computer and head home. Hallelujah! =)

Connect Four and (Semi) Cold Calling

TrialGraphix is having a company-wide Connect Four competition. How cool is that? (I know, right?) Everyone was given the option of signing up for a few weeks and then we were paired off with people in our respective offices for first round matches. Now that the first round of play is over, the matches switch to inter-office play. They found a version online where two players can connect and play each other in real time.

I had no idea that I was such a wizard at Connect Four. Greg, the new workflow coordinator, was practicing before the tournament to beef up his skills. He and I started practicing together and playing against a computer online. We both felt solid but not experts. Greg went out and bought a Connect Four game for the office and we started playing while we were bored. Yusaf heard us talking about it. Before I knew it, trash talk turned into putting my money where my mouth was and Yusaf and I were off to the conference room to settle the score. I beat him unmercilessly. Next thing I know, everyone around the office is buzzing about my mad Connect Four skills. I didn't even have to do my own trash talking -- Yusaf did it for me! =)

Today, Sam and I played our first round match in the conference room: best two out of three. Erica, the President of the Company, happens to be visiting from the Miami office for a few days and she along with the VP and half the office were in the conference room to watch our match; talk about pressure. Sam and I played forever, me winning the first match and him the second. Our third game was a draw.... I barely won the fourth game with a little strategy and a little luck, as Sam had nowhere else to go but a place that would give me the win.

Other office excitement today including Greg's birthday (which equals cake) and I'm helping out the sales dept. by calling attorneys to see if they want to come to our CLE in March. No matter how you slice it, it's really not that much fun talking to people you don't know on the phone, particularly if they don't want to talk to you....

Madeleine L'engle: Glimpses of Grace

I'm now starting to read Glimpses of Grace: Daily Thoughts and Reflections by Madeleine L'engle. I'm not entirely certain what it is, for it seems to be sort of part journal part excerpts from books but I suppose I will figure it out along the way.

I'm reminded again of how I failed to travel to New York to meet her before her death this past year. I wanted so terribly to meet her, to speak with her, to listen to the ideas I love matched with a face and a handshake and the sound of her voice. Not that I worship her but that I admire her and what she did. From reading some of her autobiographical works, I discovered that she struggled to be a mother and an author but accomplished both with tender success. Everyone knows her for her children's books but she's written so many novels and I love everything I've ever read by her.

I suppose I never made it there to see her, a writer in residence at an Episcopal church, because it seemed arrogant to go to her. It was claiming to be among her ranks. What could I possibly say that would be worth the visit to her? Now I wish I'd been strong enough to go. Coward that I am, I wish I had been courageous and just gone despite my awkward floundering.

Sometimes when people don't understand me, I wish they could just try to see past the awkwardness. Surely it is not this natural to be so awkward. Surely it is only a barrier to break through, as I and others have done time and time again with all my walls and self-consciousness. For years altogether the walls have vanished, only to be hastily built again at different times in my life. It makes me sad when people only know me as self-conscious and awkward -- because they think that's all I am. They don't know any better, it's not their fault, but it's still saddening that they don't see the potential or what used to be. They don't know to look for anything more.

And so, I try again. I tear down walls. I read more books, consider new ideas. Make new friends. I fall and get back up again. For, as the Chinese proverb says, the glory lies not in never falling but in rising each time you fall.

I wish I was better

I look at my life and I wish I was better. This is not a passing thought but a continual one. I do not suffer from lack of self worth or the idea that I am a bad person. I just wish I was better. I wish I could handle the pile of details of life better.

Lyndsey once told me something about how we're both similar in that we expect more of ourselves than we expect of others. And that in doing so, we will always fail to meet those expectations. In other words, we try to be supermen (or superwomen, if you will) and accomplish superhuman feats.

I don't want x-ray vision or the ability to fly (I mean, I do want to fly but I don't have any honest expectation) but I still feel that I can do better.

Lately I seem to be unable to keep things in balance. I focus on details for small things instead of the bigger picture. I get bogged down in details. I worry. I get caught up in memories of the past and things I wish had occurred differently. I'm holding on to hold thoughts and emotions more than I had realized. I bury them but lately everything seems to be coming to the surface. Have I run out of land to bury them? Has my landfill filled up?

Now I'm focusing on my own discontentment at my inability to focus, which is itself both redundant and amusing.

I can at least realize that I need more discipline in so many more things. And while I genuinely want to enact change and be more disciplined, day after day, month after month goes by with little to no change except that I noticed that change has been at a habitual standstill.

I think I write about it now only because if I keep everything to myself, all these details and my sense of failing and my guilt at failing and my guilt at not being disciplined and the desire for more discipline and so on and so forth, it only perpetuates an endless cycle of mild chaos.

At the end of the day, I wish I did more for other people. I suppose the question to ask myself is what am I getting out of the things that I do? And is it enough?

One-Minute Writer: Economy

If you could personally do one thing to improve the economy, what would it be?

I know that I already continue to tip generously. Word on the street is that people don't tip like they used to to save money, which is sad. People who rely on tips to get by still rely on tips to get by. If you can't afford to tip, then perhaps eating out just isn't for you....

I know that there is the argument that if people stop eating out then there won't be waiting jobs to wait on the people who used to eat out, but.... I'm ignoring that sentiment at the moment.

If I could do anything for the economy, it would be to help others. To be aware. To buy products that help stimulate the economy and make smart choices about my own finances so that I do not find myself living in a hole these next few months. Taking three different trips in three months seems to not be the best choice to follow that example but...it makes me happy. People are important to me. I haven't been to visit my sister in three years since she moved to Boston -- it's time. I cannot think of a better excuse to visit Lyndsey in DC than to go hear Elizabeth Gilbert talk (our unofficial guru, if you will). Plus, Brandi Carlile is not going to be anywhere closer to the state of Georgia than Kentucky and so to Louisville we shall.

There's a good start for research, though. What can I do to help the economy?

He's Just Not That Into You

He's just not that into you (he's into me).

Just kidding. Sarah and the boys were kind enough to invite me to see He's Just Not That Into You on Saturday, which was exciting on multiple levels. I had high expectations for this movie and it didn't disappoint. It did, however, disappoint the critics.

What were they expecting? I saw a wonderful comedic movie that was both honest, introspective, and touching. It was a perfect ensemble of well-known actors and actresses that I had never seen together on the stage. None of them outshined the other in terms of stardom or lead character. It wasn't a movie about Jennifer Anniston or Ben Afleck or Scarlett Johansson or Jennifer Goodwin or whoever. It was a collaboration. It was well-written and funny and entertaining. I want to know what the critics felt was missing or wrong....

I am a person who gets easily bored in movies that other people enjoy. Let's take for example the first Spiderman movie. Love Toby Maguire and Kirsten Dunst. Love the idea of Spiderman. Bored to tears during the first 2/3 of the movie while Toby learns all about his amazing new spider-like superpowers. But we all knew it was coming. And it was all predictable -- gee, it's fun to jump across the roof on a building. I wonder if I can do it again. And again. And again. I wonder if I can swing from building to building. I wonder if....

Two thirds of this movie with just discovering what's going on with his body. It's not that I begrudge him his learning experience -- it's just not that interesting.

But He's Just Not That Into You didn't bore me at all and with over two hours of film on the reel, no less.

Loved it, would consider buying it when it comes out on DVD in three months (because now everything's practically straight to video there's so little time between theater release and DVD lease -- though you can hardly blame movie makers because they can cash in on all that movie theater advertising for the DVD sales, which account for 2/3 of movie profit these days).

Maybe people didn't like it because it's not an oscar winner. It doesn't have a revolutionary or ground-breaking subject: relationships. It has people we've all seen in movies before. But it was funny. The actors meshed well. They were believable as couples. It was a girly romance comedy. And there are so few good ones these days....

What Other People Think

So often I find myself surprised at how as human beings we obsess about how much other people think about us. We think that other people are always plotting against us or doing something drastic in their own lives that affects us only for the purpose of affecting us in a negative way. I can't tell you how many times people have told me that someone did something just to be mean or to make them feel self-conscious or to exclude them or.... whatever. Whatever it is, these people are insistent, completely sure that these people acted with the sole purpose of causing them pain or harm.

It makes me wonder how many people think I'm out to get them when I'm just living my life with really no thought about them. It's amazing how much I don't think about other people in terms of doing something that will affect them unless it's someone I love or am good friends with and I want to enact some sort of positive change.

I suppose it's hard not to take anything personally -- it's your life, after all. It's what you have. It's the vision you see of the world. And when other people come into your world or change it in unexpected or negative ways, it feels like surely they must have done it purposefully or calculatingly.

I'm always shocked to discover that I have said or done things that could have offended others or affected them and I had no idea at the time. I was just...talking about something and I made a comment that had nothing to do with what the person interpreted. But looking back, I completely stuck my foot and my ankle and half my leg in my mouth.

I wish I could post the particulars of some of these stories but surely the people who are the subjects of these stories would read them and then they would be convinced that I was out to sabotage them through my blog and then it's just an endless cycle....

One-Minute Writer: Flip Side

Write about the negative side of something positive that happened in your life.

Hmm, that's an interesting twist.

I could do both, both the positive of a negative and a negative of the positive.

Except, I can't really think of the negative of something positive at the moment. Perhaps I could do it later, but I initially misread this statement and started thinking about all the good things that have happened as the result of something seemingly negative....


Even though my dad had looked at my tires and they looked thin, he let me drive to Athens and back before we replaced them. The result? My tire exploded. I was in the middle of nowhere on 316. Almost immediately, someone stopped on the side of the road to help me. The result of that meeting? The next person I fell in love with and one of my close friends today. That flat tire was life-changing for me in the best possible way.

The New Media certificate program was going to potentially lose its funding and it was because I took several New Media Classes (including intro to new media and website design) that I had to take an extra semester of classes to graduate with my two degrees. The result of staying that seemed awful at the time? Being VP of the sorority, taking the review class, and being able to copy edit at the Red & Black. The ultimate result? The job I have now. If I had graduated on time, I would likely have been working my first year in my entry-level post-college job and not job searching at all in January of 2006. My three-year anniversary is at the end of March. I am so grateful for having a job I love and a company that I love to work for (and that's not me brown-nosing either, it's true).

Philip was getting married an entire year earlier than he said he would and I had to pay for a trip to Alaska. I thought it would be diffficult but it turned into such a great trip. I got to be better friends with Lyndsey and Jordan and have a little mini college reunion with Phil and Rob (and Philip of course). My stimulus check financed a great deal of the trip. That's right, I helped stimulate the airline industry, baby. And I'm about to do it again: Boston on Thursday and Washington, D.C. in March.

Hey, I'm going to Boston on Thursday! Laura, here I come!
(random, I know)