Wednesday, November 05, 2014

NaBloPoMo: Day 5

I got homework at work today, which is fun because I don’t get homework anymore AND it involves very little effort on my end, which is my favorite kind of task.

My homework was to take this Myers Briggs personality test, something I’ve taken multiple times in the past, but took it again JUST IN CASE my personality had slightly shifted in the past couple of years. Or in case another personality had taken over, slowly and subtly, and I didn’t even notice. I was interested to see which Harry Potter character my new personality is.

As suspected, I am still Draco Malfoy, though percentage-wise I’m almost tied with Remus Lupin. I’ve taken a million and a half of these tests (thanks, Buzzfeed!) and am always either INTJ or INFJ. I like to say I’m an INTJ most of the time because fictional INTJs are always evil. Mr. Burns. Walter White. Tywin Lannister. Louise Belcher.

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Yep.
INFJs are much nicer. Lisa Simpson. Kermit. Elizabeth Bennett. JK ROWLING. They’re also the rarest of personality types, unless you bring gender into the equation, in which case female INTJs are the rarest, tied with female ENTJ and male INFJ (going by my really extensive research that was basically Googling “rarest myers briggs types by gender”). SCIENCE.

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GOB is an ESTP, apparently.

Why am I still talking about this? IDK BECAUSE I LOVE TALKING ABOUT MYSELF OK? Welcome to blogging.

Anyway. I think being tied between INTJ and INFJ means I get to pick whichever side I want. There are positives and negatives about both, but the INTJs have Mr. Darcy. So. I think you know who I’ll choose. Always.

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Suck it, Cumberbatch.

Tuesday, November 04, 2014

NaBloPoMo: Day 4

Today I was singing in the shower, like you do, and, as is so often the case, my songs of choice hailed from the Joss Whedon oeuvre. I haven’t tested this theory officially but I’m pretty sure I could sing “Once More with Feeling” all the way through ALL BY MYSELF YES ALL THE PARTS ALL OF THEM.

I’m not really what one would call a “good singer,” but I do enjoy it, even if it’s just singing along to the radio or making up dumb songs to sing to my pets, or playing Rock Band a million years ago. Remember Rock Band? We have the entire set that sits in a closet in our house because it’s not fun to play just the two of us and we are hermit people who never invite anyone over to our house and the dogs haven’t learned how to play guitar OR drums yet. Slackers.

(Why doesn’t anyone play Rock Band anymore? We played it so much a few years ago and then just stopped but I don’t think anything took its place. Anyway. Whatever.)

I was in choir in school and I loved it, especially the time in fifth grade when we went to McDonald’s in our fancy robes to sing Christmas carols and I got to stand on a table and it was AWESOME until I went to the bathroom to take my robe off and one of the snaps on it got stuck in my hair and I for real thought I was going to have to shave my head to get it out. I didn’t, though. GOOD STORY.

The only thing I ever really miss about church is all the singing in unison. Which is weird because whenever I was the acolyte, I never wanted to sing along to the songs, I think because I was sitting in the front of the church, where everyone could see me, and the last thing I wanted was to be seen PARTICIPATING EARNESTLY in something. PERISH THE THOUGHT. 

(Did your church have children as acolytes? I don’t know if it’s just a Lutheran thing. I think maybe it’s like being a choirboy in the Catholic church. Basically, I lit the candles at the front of the church when the service started, staring at the flame as I carried it, hoping and praying (appropriate) that it wouldn’t go out because THEN WHAT WOULD I DO? Would I have to go to the back and start over? What would people think? What would GOD think? Anyway, I also was in charge of holding the dish where people put empty glasses when they were finished taking communion. It was really a lot of responsibility for a 12-year-old.)

If I wasn’t acolyting, though, I really enjoyed the singing part of the services. Especially at Christmas, because I actually knew those songs, except for the weird extra verses of songs like Silent Night that no one on solemn Christmas episodes of TV shows ever sings so why do they even exist?

 A couple of years ago (um, ok, four years ago, yikes), I went to a Sound of Music sing-a-long at the movie theater and it was magical. A couple years before THAT, Joe and I went to a Dr. Horrible sing-a-long at ANOTHER movie theater and THAT WAS ALSO MAGICAL. I haven’t really seen anything else like that around here recently, other than a Frozen sing-a-long last year that I was afraid to go to because I thought I might get irrationally angry at any kids butchering the words. So. I guess what I’m saying is, I really need a non-church, non-solo, adult outlet for singing. MORE OPPORTUNITIES FOR SECULAR SING-A-LONGS.

Until then, I guess I’ll just dig out Rock Band. How hard is it to teach a dog to hold some drum sticks, do you think?

Monday, November 03, 2014

NaBloPoMo: Day 3

I doubt anyone noticed, because this blog has become a bit like speaking into the void (I’m not complaining, it’s kind of nice, like it was when I first started it and just rambled on and on like I was writing in my diary), but I forgot to post yesterday.

Well. No, that’s not entirely true. I didn’t forget. I knew perfectly well I needed to write something, I just...didn’t. There were two reasons for this:

1. I spent much of yesterday preparing for our annual volunteer appreciation banquet.

2. I spent all my time not preparing for the banquet watching many, many episodes of Gilmore Girls with Joe.

And you know what? NO REGRETS.

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I put pressure on myself a lot of the time for just SUPER dumb reasons. Like, I don’t even know, that I was five minutes late for work and now the day doesn’t count anymore? That’s a bad example. I can’t really be late because I can get there whenever I want. But we’re going with that right now because I can’t think of any other examples and it’s my blog and I do what I want.

My point is (and I do have one) that, even for something that means nothing to anyone but me, like National Blog Posting Month, I tend to be very hard on myself if I feel like I’m, I don’t know, “cheating.” So if I post a video instead of actual words or GOD FORBID don’t post one day, it negates anything else I’ve done for the month.

This is stupid, flawed logic and it’s something I hate about myself so I purposefully sabotaged myself early on in the month and now NOTHING ELSE MATTERS.

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Anyway. Bye.

Saturday, November 01, 2014

NaBloPoMo: Day 1

Willow: Carpe diem. You told me that once.
Buffy: Fish of the day?
Willow: Not carp. Carpe. It means “seize the day.”


Hey, so remember last year when I quit my nice HR job to work part-time at an animal shelter? And how most of my family (and probably my friends) thought I had lost my mind? At the time, I knew it was the right decision, even if others in my life didn’t understand it. Still. I’m not going to pretend it was always easy. Money was tight, my schedule was erratic, and I had no idea if this part-time position would ever lead to anything more.

A few months ago, while working with potential adopters, I met someone at the perfect time. Don’t you love how that happens? I’m sure it’s entirely coincidental, the pure happenstance of meeting someone who passes along a lesson you really need to hear, or it’s something our TV-addled brains just put together for us, wanting to turn our lives into a story with a satisfying narrative. But I don’t care. It’s the greatest feeling, meeting someone who turns out to be the exact person you were supposed to talk to that day.

It was a busy day at work, like always. I had been meeting with people all day, was in fact outside in one of the yards introducing some dogs to each other (you know, normal stuff), when someone came to tell me another person was waiting. I went inside to meet him and, through the course of his interview, realized I was talking to one of the nicest people I’d ever met. Like Heather Anne Hogan nice. (Psst, that’s really nice.)

He was there to meet a few dogs, as his dog had died a few months prior. He wasn’t sure he was ready to adopt another dog and was, in fact, still going to a grief support group for the loss of his pet. We talked a bit about Oak Tree Corner then, and how so many people are uncomfortable talking about grief, or even the idea of grief, and how certainly there are people out there who just don’t understand how hard it can be to lose a pet.

He didn’t end up adopting a dog that day, but during our conversation, he asked me how I ended up working there. I explained that I’d been working in HR for a long time but wanted a change, to do something where I felt like I was making a difference in the world.

In all honesty, in the days and weeks before I met this man, I’d begun to wonder if I’d made a mistake leaving HR. It hadn’t really been so bad, had it? It was a nice enough job. The money was better. The hours were better. I’d been thinking, you know, that maybe I should go back. I felt like I wasn’t contributing enough to the household. I wasn’t making as much money as I had been. My hours, I’m sure, were hard on Joe, since I worked most weekends, and often late-ish on Saturdays and, once I got home, I was usually exhausted. Good exhausted, but still exhausted.

Still, I couldn’t imagine going back to HR. It felt like giving up every time I thought about it. And when I mentioned it to this man, this near-stranger I’d met twenty or so minutes before, he said, “Oh, god, no, never go back.” You see, he, too, had once worked in HR, for more years than I had, and he also hated it, so he left and started his own business and never looked back.

“Don’t do it,” he said, looking me right in the eye. “You’ll regret it.”

I don’t know why I accepted this advice. Unsolicited advice usually makes me go homicidal and, in fact, want to do the exact opposite of whatever I’d been told, because apparently I’m still a child. But I think I was able to take it because it was exactly what I needed to hear, exactly when I needed to hear it. It’s what I knew to be true, deep down, under all the fear and doubt.

A month later, I interviewed for the job I currently hold, a full-time position (at the same company) that I love. The money and the schedule are better, much more in line with my previous full-time position. The difference now is, I’m so much happier when I’m at work. The days are so busy. There’s so much to do. But I’m EXCITED to be there. I love going to work and there are days when I accidentally stay late because I’ve gotten so distracted by whatever I’m working on that I didn’t realize how much time had passed. AND EVERYONE IS SO NICE. Plus, you know, if I ever need a break, there are plenty of fluffy animals around to distract me.

I used to come home from work full of complaints about the day. It was exhausting, and I’m sure not super fun for Joe to listen to. Now I come home and can’t wait to talk about the wonderful people I work with and the animals I work for. So Joe is still sick of hearing me babble, just for different reasons.

I guess my point is follow your dreams or whatever? Even if you’re scared? I don’t know. I still feel like I’m faking my way through this whole “being an adult” thing most of the time, but I think I’m getting better at it. So there’s hope for anyone, I suppose.