The word of the week is renewal.
Jan 2 - Searching
As my 'career change' will happen in less than a month, I've been compiling all sorts of job-related articles to read - I have been for over a year, really. From ones like The 50 Best Careers of 2011 to Canada's Top 100 Employers to Pay Attention to What You Envy to Discover Work That You Love ( that's a long title! ), I'm going all-out to keep myself thinking ahead... while I still wonder if I'll get EI to help prolong my job search beyond a month or two. Ideally, I'd be able to take the next six months off to decompress. I'd be able to really dig into my writing while looking for jobs that will fit ME, not the other way around. Not to mention getting a lot of my To Do List done, with things like developing an exercise routine and getting a handle on my massive book collection( ie. document what titles I have, what to sell, what to keep )among other things. Six months - sounds like a pipe dream, yet I can but try; I've done a lot of what I've set out to do ten years ago, so this isn't much different, I just have to work on a tighter schedule of months, not years...
Jan 3 - Gotye
Quirky music and I go back a long way, to when I listened to songs from the old Doctor Demento Show. Songs such as 'Star Trekkin' and 'Wolf Creek Pass' were purposely funny ballads, designed to make you smile as you sung along( or hummed, in my case ). I like those sorts of songs FAR more than I should admit, though I also have an enduring love of deeper-layered works such as Sound Of Silence - it's a weird mix, but then so am I, some days. So when a work friend said this was her favourite song, I listened for a bit and was hooked; the video is quirky too. Have a gander and enjoy the mix of the quirky AND the sad that Gotye brings to their work in this song:
There's already a great acoustic cover of the song here by Walk Off The Earth, though minus the cool visual art sequence of the original.
Jan 4 - Oops, missed!
The misfortunes of others are a rife source for comedy, sadly speaking about the human ability to laugh at another's pain. Yet we all do it, to various degrees; I myself draw the line at intentional violence, but the unintended nutshot so often featured on America's Funniest Home Videos will still get me to chuckle. As will mishaps of all kinds, such as this one:
And yes, the cat lived, in case you wondered - it's in the video comments!
Jan 5 - Zombie Trail game?
Many years ago, I remember playing a basic pioneer-adventure game called Oregon Trail, which teachers loved as it taught history at the same time. I just remember that it really sucked to be a pioneer in this game, as you usually died - but it was still fun to play to see if you COULD survive to win. Now I've found a spiritual successor to that game, a parody if you will: Organ Trail. It's built along the same very basic lines: get a station wagon full of survivors across a devastated America full of radiation and zombies by balancing your dwindling supplies with taking risks. It's the first game of it's kind that I can recall that captures the full breadth of the 'zombie apocalypse' in trying to reach a distant 'safe haven' by your wits alone. Try it out; it takes about an hour to play, so see if you can make it to the end with all five of your survivors alive and intact.
Jan 6 - A week to go
I thought about saving these few thoughts until after I left MMart, but they've been popping up in my head fairly regularly for the last year. In the main, I've been thinking on how I've been regularly employed for the last twenty years; sure, 17 of those were at 3 jobs, plus a few years as a party clown and my first job at the long-defunct Canadian arm of Rax Restaurants. So more than twenty years, with probably no more than 2 weeks of work missed due to illness or other serious problems in all that time - not a bad record. A week from now, I'm going to be putting MYSELF out of work on purpose, to avoid serious illness or other problems - hows' that for irony? Yet it's long overdue; even typing this paragraph, I'm making mistakes that didn't happen years ago, due to my mental exhaustion and desire to do ANYTHING else other than continue at my current job.
If I can't even summon the desire and ability write, which is my passion, then there's absolutely no point in continuing as things are. I need to leave for a new path, wherever it takes me, no matter how unknown a future that is.
Jan 7 - Best of 2011
2012 is here, so the inevitable looking-back-on-2011 articles are flooding the web. Thankfully, there doesn't seem to be a lot of schmaltz out there, at least not at the sites I frequent. Lifehacker.com has a great Best Of 2011 article that contains a metric ton of interesting and useful articles from the last year. There's also Metacritic's Best of 2011, plus TechSpot's Best Gadgets of 2011 and even Publisher's Weekly Best Books of 2011, in many different categories.
And: 2012 has already seen a stellar gadget, The OLPC tablet... for roughly $100! Tech keeps advancing - sweet! Next thing you know, they'll be erecting skyscrapers in less than a month - oh, wait, China just DID that:
Jan 8 - Washing My Mind Out
Today was a bit of a wash, in some ways. I rose a little later than usual, ready to hop online and game for a bit on Xbox... but my controller batteries were both dead and refused to hold a charge. After a bit of fiddling, I managed to get one working, but it didn't charge fully so I've left it for the day - a quick search online showed they're no longer for sale most places, so that's bad. I also tried to get into NWN, but the blasted program's decided to endlessly max-and-minimize itself( ?? )in a loop when I start it under Win7. So again I tried to solve that little mystery, yet had to leave it unsolved by late afternoon; grrrr. Which left me with getting rid of the moderate headache I've had since Friday; short naps and Advils throughout the day have led me to the evening with only a few things done, but at least I've had a second day off to deal with such things, right? As an exciting close for the day, I dug into writing up a 'Departure Document' for work, an objective somewhat-brief summary of all the things that have caused me to leave, be they small, large or seemingly inconsequential. I'll be giving a copy of this to my DM and his boss, to do with as they will - most likely most of it will be ignored, yet I can't just let things go without documenting why I'm leaving in as non-bitter a way as I can manage. I'm being honest, and it also lets me express for myself the many, many reasons WHY I'm leaving, so I can clearly see why it's right for me to go.
I think that's the best part of the whole exercise for me, mentally. Writing down all the things that have driven close to crazy over the years, so I can let them all go.
Yes, I make up all my haiku's myself, as I find my creativity returning the closer I draw to my last day at MMart. From there, I can only grow and thrive in a new life... as I intended to do 4 years ago when I moved to BC. A little delayed, but I am finally getting there!
Jan 2 - Searching
As my 'career change' will happen in less than a month, I've been compiling all sorts of job-related articles to read - I have been for over a year, really. From ones like The 50 Best Careers of 2011 to Canada's Top 100 Employers to Pay Attention to What You Envy to Discover Work That You Love ( that's a long title! ), I'm going all-out to keep myself thinking ahead... while I still wonder if I'll get EI to help prolong my job search beyond a month or two. Ideally, I'd be able to take the next six months off to decompress. I'd be able to really dig into my writing while looking for jobs that will fit ME, not the other way around. Not to mention getting a lot of my To Do List done, with things like developing an exercise routine and getting a handle on my massive book collection( ie. document what titles I have, what to sell, what to keep )among other things. Six months - sounds like a pipe dream, yet I can but try; I've done a lot of what I've set out to do ten years ago, so this isn't much different, I just have to work on a tighter schedule of months, not years...
Jan 3 - Gotye
Quirky music and I go back a long way, to when I listened to songs from the old Doctor Demento Show. Songs such as 'Star Trekkin' and 'Wolf Creek Pass' were purposely funny ballads, designed to make you smile as you sung along( or hummed, in my case ). I like those sorts of songs FAR more than I should admit, though I also have an enduring love of deeper-layered works such as Sound Of Silence - it's a weird mix, but then so am I, some days. So when a work friend said this was her favourite song, I listened for a bit and was hooked; the video is quirky too. Have a gander and enjoy the mix of the quirky AND the sad that Gotye brings to their work in this song:
There's already a great acoustic cover of the song here by Walk Off The Earth, though minus the cool visual art sequence of the original.
Jan 4 - Oops, missed!
The misfortunes of others are a rife source for comedy, sadly speaking about the human ability to laugh at another's pain. Yet we all do it, to various degrees; I myself draw the line at intentional violence, but the unintended nutshot so often featured on America's Funniest Home Videos will still get me to chuckle. As will mishaps of all kinds, such as this one:
And yes, the cat lived, in case you wondered - it's in the video comments!
Jan 5 - Zombie Trail game?
Many years ago, I remember playing a basic pioneer-adventure game called Oregon Trail, which teachers loved as it taught history at the same time. I just remember that it really sucked to be a pioneer in this game, as you usually died - but it was still fun to play to see if you COULD survive to win. Now I've found a spiritual successor to that game, a parody if you will: Organ Trail. It's built along the same very basic lines: get a station wagon full of survivors across a devastated America full of radiation and zombies by balancing your dwindling supplies with taking risks. It's the first game of it's kind that I can recall that captures the full breadth of the 'zombie apocalypse' in trying to reach a distant 'safe haven' by your wits alone. Try it out; it takes about an hour to play, so see if you can make it to the end with all five of your survivors alive and intact.
Jan 6 - A week to go
I thought about saving these few thoughts until after I left MMart, but they've been popping up in my head fairly regularly for the last year. In the main, I've been thinking on how I've been regularly employed for the last twenty years; sure, 17 of those were at 3 jobs, plus a few years as a party clown and my first job at the long-defunct Canadian arm of Rax Restaurants. So more than twenty years, with probably no more than 2 weeks of work missed due to illness or other serious problems in all that time - not a bad record. A week from now, I'm going to be putting MYSELF out of work on purpose, to avoid serious illness or other problems - hows' that for irony? Yet it's long overdue; even typing this paragraph, I'm making mistakes that didn't happen years ago, due to my mental exhaustion and desire to do ANYTHING else other than continue at my current job.
If I can't even summon the desire and ability write, which is my passion, then there's absolutely no point in continuing as things are. I need to leave for a new path, wherever it takes me, no matter how unknown a future that is.
Jan 7 - Best of 2011
2012 is here, so the inevitable looking-back-on-2011 articles are flooding the web. Thankfully, there doesn't seem to be a lot of schmaltz out there, at least not at the sites I frequent. Lifehacker.com has a great Best Of 2011 article that contains a metric ton of interesting and useful articles from the last year. There's also Metacritic's Best of 2011, plus TechSpot's Best Gadgets of 2011 and even Publisher's Weekly Best Books of 2011, in many different categories.
And: 2012 has already seen a stellar gadget, The OLPC tablet... for roughly $100! Tech keeps advancing - sweet! Next thing you know, they'll be erecting skyscrapers in less than a month - oh, wait, China just DID that:
Jan 8 - Washing My Mind Out
Today was a bit of a wash, in some ways. I rose a little later than usual, ready to hop online and game for a bit on Xbox... but my controller batteries were both dead and refused to hold a charge. After a bit of fiddling, I managed to get one working, but it didn't charge fully so I've left it for the day - a quick search online showed they're no longer for sale most places, so that's bad. I also tried to get into NWN, but the blasted program's decided to endlessly max-and-minimize itself( ?? )in a loop when I start it under Win7. So again I tried to solve that little mystery, yet had to leave it unsolved by late afternoon; grrrr. Which left me with getting rid of the moderate headache I've had since Friday; short naps and Advils throughout the day have led me to the evening with only a few things done, but at least I've had a second day off to deal with such things, right? As an exciting close for the day, I dug into writing up a 'Departure Document' for work, an objective somewhat-brief summary of all the things that have caused me to leave, be they small, large or seemingly inconsequential. I'll be giving a copy of this to my DM and his boss, to do with as they will - most likely most of it will be ignored, yet I can't just let things go without documenting why I'm leaving in as non-bitter a way as I can manage. I'm being honest, and it also lets me express for myself the many, many reasons WHY I'm leaving, so I can clearly see why it's right for me to go.
I think that's the best part of the whole exercise for me, mentally. Writing down all the things that have driven close to crazy over the years, so I can let them all go.
Yes, I make up all my haiku's myself, as I find my creativity returning the closer I draw to my last day at MMart. From there, I can only grow and thrive in a new life... as I intended to do 4 years ago when I moved to BC. A little delayed, but I am finally getting there!
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