I feel good and affirmed, but I really should be in bed now. Goofed off a little too much, but I got some good preparation done for some competitive goofing off later. In other words, when I play Magic with the guys.
Now I have to get away from this computer, empty the litter boxes, clean up then slip into bed. Yay!
I just hope that I wake up easy enough tomorrow.
SOMETHING SUBSTANTIAL ABOUT FOOLISH TECHNOLOGY AND PLAY
From an e-mail that I wrote to the fiancee:
On topic of play, I just read an essay about using play as a form of finding values, hypotheses and stuff like that. I think, in a somewhat dramatic way, all those times that I get frustrated about my thesis and despair over cover letters/resume and stuff, my mind is playing in its #%$#%#$ up kind of way. Really sucks that play, for my mind, comes out as despair and frustration. I will just need to find a way to play without all that emotion.
- In reference to J.G. March, "The Technology of Foolish," as printed in _Organization_Theory_:_Selected_Readings_ ed. by D.S. Pugh, Penguin Books (Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England 1985): 224-37.
Maybe I'll ramble a little more on this one later. And for those people who keep telling me to "just do it" with my Plan/thesis, I think this concept of "Technology of Foolish" and "Gathering Intelligence/Design Solution/Follow through on Solution" fits into my retort -- my mind likes to play and acts as a piece of "Foolish Technology."
Nonetheless, I think my mind gets influenced through affirmations/suggestions that I give it.
The human mind really does prove quite fascinating, if you ask me.
Egh.
I've always that we choose to be happy.
I've always chosen happiness, or so I thought.
Lately, I've learned that you don't choose happiness, you have to work at staying happy.
Darnit! Life just has to be difficult, huh?
I meant to make an entry last night.
Unfortunately, it took an hour or so to make another new resume in Monster.com. Every time I tried to make some kind of edit to it I would get some kind of crazy error, so I would have had to reload the page, go backward or forward and once even closed the browser then signed in again.
But I guess Monster.com is one of the bigger job site to post resumes and such.
In that time, though, I had a pretty good IM chat with someone from college that I haven't seen in years. He offered to keep an eye out for editorial assistant, copy writing or literary agent assistant jobs for me. Thanks, old college acquaintence!
And I have nothing against people keeping their eye out for me, either.
The fiancee and I also had our first couples counselling appointment straight out of work. We decided to do it as something of a maintenance issue and also because of the stress of moving, job searching, etc.
Not much to say about it. We mostly talked about ourselves, listed some of our complaints about ourselves and stylistic differences. The two of us heard it all before, so there wasn't any tension or surprises or anything.
It would be nice if we could find some quick fixes, though, but I doubt a good productive one will present itself. . .ever.
Now to get back to work.
I've really fallen out of my Blog writing routine, huh?
I think I've got a good excuse, though. Thursday night, I decided that I would send out a resume and a cover letter. I sent a resume to an editor friend that I met with the night before but never sent out the cover letter. I didn't have one made.
Mind you, I originally intended to send them to a company I wanted to work for. After a couple hours of working on the resume and frying my brain, I decided I needed sleep. I couldn't not send anything out, though, so I just sent the resume to the editor friend.
Friday, I took a hack at the cover letter after spending the day unconsciously brainstorming what I would write. I come home, take a couple hours to write, realize that we have a lot of cleaning to do around the house then melt down because I can't write a cover letter about myself, let alone help clean the house.
I wake up freaking out the next morning, so I grab a bite to eat, go into my office then watch 7 episodes of Charlie Jade on my computer. Last Saturday, The Philosopher Queen (who doesn't really philosophize too much on her Blog) gave me some DVDs with the show on it and got me addicted.
Too bad they don't show it in the US. I really would love to get a bunch of geeks into the show then campaign the Sci-Fi channel to pick it up. They've only produced one season, so we wouldn't get too far behind if we caught on now. But it's the Sci-Fi channel. I guess they can only have one cool show on at a time.
Maybe I should give Battlestar Galactica a chance. I've heard a lot of good things about the show, even though the fiancee and I hated the first couple minutes of the pilot.
So anyway, I holed myself up in my office, wearing my bathrobe all day, in my office, not wanting to think about the job search or anything real life serious. I just wanted to watch the intrigue between three parallel universes.
I originally didn't want to go to the birthday party that night. I thought I would bring it down. For some reason, though, I ended up going. Something just clicked in my head.
The party turned out enjoyable. Had some good drinks and mexican food at a mexican restaurant then went over to the birthday boy's place for coffee, tea and whatever tickled people's fancy. No big exciting discussions or anything, just some good light, relaxing conversation. Even with coffee, I think the socializing helped me to calm down.
Next day, Sunday, I finish up watching the episodes of Charlie Jade that I have then go at the cover letter again.
The two of us feinted, thrusted, swung and just had an intense melee with each other until I tamed the beast. The fiancee had given me a good tip the day or night before. I had the cover letter the career counselor I saw made for me (it had some good parts and some bad parts). I had the Cool Careers for Dummies book.
My original idea and all these other things just blended together to formulate this cover letter that didn't say it all but probably said enough to get an interviewer to look at my cover letter.
I sent it off to McGraw-Hill then when the fiancee came home, we went grocery shopping.
So that's why I've gotten out of the Blog writing habit.
Not much more to say on that topic. I have a lot of it to sift through and not much time dedicated to doing so. Fun, fun, fun. . ..
Even though my thinking about climate change, the environment and our (spiritual) place in the world hasn't change, I've come up with a new way to phrase it.
The universe, the galaxy, the solar system, the world, the ecosystem, the region, the environment, the climate, all of that (and God) has given us a flexible lease on the right to live. With the rapid increase in climate change by our hands, we have begun reaching the end of our lease and have shortened the lease of other entities that depend on a certain type of climate. So basically, our lease on the right to life runs short because we destroy the elements that allows this lease to exist.
DANG IT!!!!
On the good note, while chatting with a friend last night, I came up with my professional purpose. It will provide me with a foundation for my job search and doing interviews. I will now have confidence in this endeavor of mine without thinking, "I'm want this kind of job because hey, it feels right."
Because honestly, what happens when that jobs feels wrong and it will most certainly feel wrong eventually if I just follow my feelings. Feelings don't stay the same. They become very vulnerable to every factor that we observe, from internal thoughts and conditions to our outside environment. Without a solid principle that guides me, my feelings would act as a tyrant over me, and I don't want my will bowed to a tyrant.
So my professional purpose, at least for the short term: "I want to practice communicating concepts in appealing language and rhetoric." The details of it may change with some more thought and reactions from other people. I'd actually like you, my readers, to provide some reaction so that I can refine this purpose and possibly make it easier to understand.
But alas, even though I've got this great purpose, I still face frustration. I want to lay down in bed about an hour and fifteen minutes ago. Instead, I ended researching more on the whole Tradable Renewable Certificate product that ClimateSave sells so I can write some great copy for them.
From what I've read, the certificate just says that someone should be using the money used to buy it for pretty much funding renewable energy generation. Sounds pretty good, but I just feel that something's missing, especially since the certificates have expiration dates and are called 'Tradable Renewable Certificates' within the industry. Why call them that when once bought, a consumer really can't do much with it?
So to try understanding the whole thing better than just what I believe the customer service people and the marketing materials would reiterate (I even checked with the marketing materials for the organization that acts as the certifier for the certificates. . .and they don't really say much other than what I've said above), I have asked the Conservation Services Group to supply me with the agreement or contract that they have with their customers upon the sale of the certificate.
If anything, should be an interesting venture.
And yet, an interesting venture won't provide me consolation tomorrow when I'm feeling exhausted, tired and slow in the head because I didn't get the sleep I wanted.
I feel like I should learn a lesson here. If only I knew what it was other than go to bed earlier.
Well, if I say so myself, I've done well today.
I woke up early enough to read a chapter in one my job/career search books, did some e-mail networking with people and worked a small bit on the copy for ClimateSAVE.
Before entering the evening activities of getting ready for a party and heading out to the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, I'll do a little research on McGraw-Hill to see how compatible we could be.
Unfortunately, no exciting developments for my audience except that I've realized that I'm unprepared for informational interviews. I'll have to work on that tomorrow night because I sent an e-mail to someone for one such interview Monday night.
Ulp!
I've had a pretty typical but annoying last 48 hours.
Two days in a row, I was late to work. Yesterday, I just plain woke up late. I kept on wanting to stay in the dream in which my cat got resurrected. I even took the car and got to work fifteen minutes late.
This morning, I woke up at a relatively good time. I just had to shave and using the funky new between teeth brush takes a little work. With some elbow grease, though, it doesn't a great bang up job cleaning up and making my mouth healthier.
Not much happening at work. I've spent the last couple weeks mostly doing ad hoc tasks prompted by callers and walk-ins, following up on tasks that take, at the most, an hour or two, cleaning up my Internet e-mail and cleaning up and associating my database e-mail. None of it really has to do with productivity, but it's a slow time of year and will free me up when things get a little more hectic.
Next on the task list includes: filing and organizing a bunch of miscellaneous paperwork that my mom gave me, offering my services to a co-worker or two who have gotten backed up on their work then if nothing comes up by then, I'll ask my mom if she can come up with some work for me.
I'll be the first to admit that my days don't really have much excitement to them.
The last 24 hours gave me a little distress, though. Last night, I started doing some work on the volunteer copy writing project that I've taken on for ClimateSAVE. It got me frustrated because the design for their Website feels inefficient and their copy doesn't do a great job explaining their product.
I guess another person's bad copy gives me a good opportunity to make good copy.
Last night, I didn't get too much work on that project done, one reason being that I had to put some effort, in addition to the work from about a month ago, into figuring out the idea behind their product and the vehicle that it takes. I will hopefully come up with good copy that will explain these two factors, even though I feel like I'll have to go up against some industry and company entrenchment on this one.
You'll probably hear more about this one later.
I mainly didn't get work done last night because I go hyperfocused on this wooden cube puzzle. You take it apart. It has magnets in different parts of it. The goal is to put it back together without any magnets facing out and all the magnets attached to another magnet.
I thought I would just take a break from the job search and projects, but I ended up staying up to midnight or one working on the thing. I worked on it for three hours, dang it! And I wanted to get to bed at a good time.
Getting so focused on the puzzle and staying up so late infuriated me, combined with all the other distractions in which I have indulged over the last few months when I hsould have been doing other things. I ranted, I raved, I felt frustrated with myself and wondered how I could get myself to do all this stuff. In Biblical times, I probably would have ripped my clothes off.
I woke up, still frustrated, so when I got to work, I looked up Procrastination on Wikipedia.
The fiancee and I also had a good rant at each other through text messaging, e-mail and in person. It provided some good catharsis and helped us to address some emotional issues with our projects, future plans and the meaning of things to us. I regret the feelings that I got her to feel, but I'm happy that we could communicate a couple things that we had under the radar.
We had a fun little spontaneous date. Picked up a couple more puzzles for her collection then had some Thai food at Duk Boa in Brookline. For you Boston people out there, if you haven't eaten there yet, go. It's on Harvard St., between the intersection of Harvard and Comm in Allston and Coolidge Corner in Brookline, across from Buddha's Delight, a pretty good vegan restaurant.
Then we came home, and I did some good job search work. I kept up some communication with a guy who has become something of a copy writing mentor for me, I e-mailed a thank you memo to the Web designer at ClimateSAVE then did some research on McGraw-Hill. The fiancee found an editorial assistant job posting for McGraw-Hill.
Tomorrow, I'll do a little more research on McGraw-Hill then send off a resume. I'll also try to work on some of the ClimateSAVE copy. Hopefully I'll remember and have time to read some job searching books.
Then off to the border of Massachusetts and New Hampshire to hang out with the old crew that has stayed loyal to the undefined cause before one of us heads back to LA. Bastard. . ..
Now, though, I will romance the fiancee and get some Zzzzzz's.
While being brought up with my parents, we've had three cats. The first one was put to sleep because it got sick.
The second one, Mrs. Kitty, died of natural causes under our porch.
Binky was put to sleep because she got a hit by a car very late in life. She had osteoprosis, so her bones wouldn't heal, and she'd be in tons of pain. In her life, she had gotten hit three times by cars, so it's strangely fitting.
So, last night I dreamt that Mrs. Kitty came back to life, whole and everything.
Even stranger, she gets along with Binky. In real life, Mrs. Kitty couldn't stand Binky. She would hiss at Binky all the time and sometimes take swats at her.
In the dream, Binky has never died.
We have Max and Miriya around, but they're pretty mean to Binky and Mrs. Kitty. I think Binky and Mrs. Kitty form a defensive alliance against Max and Miriya.
The main crux of the dream focuses around the miracle of Mrs. Kitty rising from the dead and how happy it made me to have her back.
I wish I had the same feeling about Binky, but for some reason, in the dream, I forget that she died.
The dream really gave me some joy, though, and made waking up difficult because I could just keep going back to dream. . ..
=/
I overslept this morning. I get to drive into work. Good thing I won't be late.
Last night, a friend from out of town stayed the night. The fiancee and I drive just outside of the other side of Boston (Malden) yesterday to eat at a steakhouse.
I'm an ovo vegetarian, practically vegan. I had three options on the menu, if really that many. I had to adapt.
My friend chose the restaurant. It's just like him. Even one of his friends who I hardly know felt bad for me. What a bastard of a friend of mine. . ..
He's great, though.
We got home late. I brushed my teeth with a new brush the dentist gave me yesterday. It allows me to get in between my teeth in ways that floss and regular brush never can. My mouth even feels cleaner after about seven hours of sleep.
WHERE'S THE MEANING?
Other than hanging out with my friend and fixing up my favorite Magic deck a little nicer, I kind of had that wasted time feeling. I would have rather spent my time working on my projects.
Having that feeling kind of annoys me, since the friend is a pretty close friend.
Nonetheless, I guess the just going out for a bite to eat with him, my fiancee and a couple of people I hardly know didn't provide me with tons of meaning. Nothing against them. . .I just think I'm in the midst of all these projects and searching for work when I get to Chicago and such. . ..
I find it annoying when I don't allow myself to enjoy my friends and getting to know new people more. It kind of encourages me to feel like a jerk or something.
Oh well. . .same crap, different day.
Having and making meaning has a profound influence on us. It creates ethnic and national ties. It pushes people to blow themselves up and sacrifice themselves for what they believe is the greater good. It also pushes people to commit suicide and sometimes to accept Jesus into their lives in reaction to the despair of lacking meaning.
I've lately felt a little despair from my lack of meaning. I can't say that I've found some kind of universal ever present meaning other than to promote life and the ever increasing search for meaning. It sounds circular to me, but life has something of a circular cycle to it and circles have a great tendency of continuing into infinity.
Sometime later, I may say some more. It's late now, though. I'm tired. I should get to bed soon.
Goodnight.
Yeah, I'm feeling a little better now.
I had a pretty good New Year's weekend. Went out with a bunch of people Friday night for Italian food, had some friends from out of town stay the weekend, went to an interesting party on Saturday at an artist friend's loft then had a bunch of people over for brunch in our pajamas, hanging out and movie watching.
I had a pretty good conversation with an out of town friend (who got pretty excited that I called him "a friend from PA" on this Blog previously. . .immortalizing him on the Internet) about bitterness, work, etc. etc. Along with an e-mail thread going on with someone else who plans on a career search sometime, I realized that I have expected too much of myself and the meaning of this job for myself.
I also realized that I expect too much from customers at work. As much as I'd like them to look out for their own finances and such, I really need to accept that I can do only so much. Once I pass that line, they won't do it and they won't like our agency anymore and another agency may not show as much responsibility as mine. I just need to take a more passive aggressive approach when I try to take care of them.
I really need to just see the new job in Chicago as a flow of income until I get my writing career going. If the job ends up in a field that I enjoy, awesome. Otherwise, though, if I get that income and I can be myself at work, I'm good.
On another note, my friend from PA has dome cool points to make about stuff. I'd love to hear him commenting about stuff in the future. =D
BOOKS
I finished reading The Ender's Quartet. Awesome series.
I recommend everyone read the series. The last two books go a little slower, but I still read them quicker than the first two books. I kind of felt an obligation.
Finishing all four of them in three weeks also helps me to believe that I haven't lost my reading edge.
THE KITTENS
The two of them now get along. Woohoo!
Now they ignore the fiancee and us, though, and don't get off the bed. . .lazy kids.
Oh well. . .they just started getting along last night. And with all the people we had over the weekend, they probably got a little stressed out.
CONCLUSION
Go back to work tomorrow. Hopefully I can take my lessons to heart and don't have such a bad week.
I also hope that I can take the expecting too much with the job search lesson to heart and get some stuff done on it.
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