Working on Intellectual and Conversational Inspiration

HAPPY ABOUT SOME LIMITED INTELLECTUAL INSPIRATION

Woowee! I had a lot of opinions to get off my chest last night. An enjoyable experience, though, after 4 days of hard work Event Marketing and with the anticipation for more reprogramming tomorrow, this time with the whole department rather than just a a bunch of newbies. Working this Event Marketing gig, running around to do chores and not necessarily having much time doesn't really help with the free flow of thought in my mind.

Nonetheless, I wrote that entry last night, wrote about a page for my novel and have read a little bit more of Northrop Frye's Anatomy of Criticism. It has provided a little more help in providing some kind of formal way of writing about literary utopianism. I won't go much further into the topic in this entry other than to say that I started addressing the topic awhile ago while talking about Charlie Jade and the themes of utopianism.

MORE ABOUT WORK

Hearing from Dawn in a comment section a couple entries ago made me happy that some degree of blog marketing worked. Also, hearing her optimism about the company helped me think more positively about the situation.

Not to worry about you taking a week to finally come by. Trying to survive and flourish in our lives and vocations takes a lot of work and energy.

But yes, Dawn's entry helped send me down a good thought path. I realized that thinking of the big picture and the marketing strategies doesn't really help anyone. Sure, I have some ideas (some which are probably good ones) of ways the company could implement some good and interesting strategies that will attract people differently. I also have some criticism of ways that the aberrations of the current strategy may not necessarily work so well.

I'm not in a management position, nor have I had all that much experience in marketing. My ideas have some worth, but I don't necessarily have much positive real life experience to understand how my ideas would work in the vacation club field. Hopefully I can learn something about the real implementations of marketing strategies.

For now, though, I really do have this position on the line. If my performance doesn't improve in the near future, I better have some position ready for me or work on a good job search marketing strategy of my own. I shouldn't go off worrying about the big picture and criticizing management for their strategies while I've got a job on the line. At least, I should do such criticism unless I make some good success playing their game or persevere in some kind of other marketing capacity (my past promotional experience doesn't really count. . .too small time, in my opinion, even helping Aesthetik grow from a small town band to one that opened for Faith No More).

Fundamentally, however, this job challenges me to grow in a way that a lot of people have said I need to grow. The probably didn't think when they told me that I "need to stop thinking so much" that they addressed some kind of social confidence immaturity. I don't know any better way of describing the issue at hand.

In essence, I have an issue with my mind going blank in the middle of conversations. My boss and some other co-workers have said that it has a lot to do with my thinking too much, a similar criticism friends have given me. I usually react to such criticism by saying that I don't feel as if I'm thinking at all, in the first place. My mind just goes completely blank when I run into a topic that I know about (or dare I say strikes me as interesting). To me, my mind feels like it stops thinking rather than thinking too much.

I have a couple arguments in my head, one centered in neurobiology and the other, in my psychology. I can even blend the two arguments into one, which provides me with a good tactic on how to solve the issue at hand.

On the neurobiological edge, my ADHD can get in the way of holding a conversation with someone who has a whole set of different interests and well, plainly put, culture. I don't, and people with ADHD don't mean it, but we have a difficult time focusing on topics that don't interest them. I hope not to use this as some kind of excuse, but, seriously, the right chemicals simply don't go to the right place. And since I don't want to use it as an excuse, I need to do something about the issue.

In regards to the psychological side of the issue, I may have the instinct to think of certain cultures as uninteresting. Not the anthropological type of culture, but rather the organizational studies and sociology type of culture in fields that don't necessarily strike me as very interesting.

Frankly, I probably think of people in certain cultures as I do because I probably don't think of them as all that deep of people and having all that much interesting to talk about other than money, material things, small town gossipy politics and the lives of celebrities caught on photographic film by the paparazzi. I love The Soup, but I really can't get into conversation that takes the social lives of celebrities seriously. Long story short, I've got bad associations of people who have certain jobs and holding certain values as boring.

Then again, I run into "blank mind" a lot with people I know and like, too. I won't go down that slippery argument, though, because it could lead me down the using ADHD as an excuse for not performing on my job. If I buy into that excuse, then I'll just end up losing the job and/or not learning anything. If things ended up that way, not much good would come out of this whole relationship other than below acceptable results for the company and an unsatisfactory addition to my bank accounts.

Thus, I should really fall back on a social tactic that I've found useful in the past and have come to reasonably used to keep my attention in a conversation. I basically accept my ignorance then try to eliminate that ignorance. I accept that, along with Socrates, I know nothing.

From there, I can spark my interest because I have a sincere interest in how the world works, how things relate to each other, other people's perspectives and a multitude of things that can lead to a holistic understanding of the world. If I work from the base of my attempt at trying to understand in a deep manner, as I usually try, without boring the possible lead and showing sincere interest in them, I can probably find a good amount of success.

On Friday, I'll get to find out how useful my tactic will work. I've found some success at parties with it, but I'll have to see how much success I can find at events.

FOR NOW, THOUGH, I SHOULD WORK ON EATING AND LIVING LIFE