I can’t say for certain that my advice would be entirely worthwhile to anyone starting a new job, if only because company cultures are so variable, but I’d like to think that what I have to offer is still useful. This isn’t just about starting at my job, either, because I would hope that people are good enough for some measure of patience and empathy.
Don’t be afraid or too prideful to ask for help, nor to admit you don’t know something. You can only do the job “to the best of your ability” for so long by yourself before you’re no longer succeeding.
I’m going to keep this simple. What I’m about to describe definitely bugs me, but I’ve given up trying to correct people because in the grand scheme of things, it’s pointless and almost entirely harmless.
Something that bugs me, quite a bit, is when people can’t seem to spell certain words.
Definitely being spelled defiantly.
Rogue being spelled rouge.
Peek and peak being used interchangeably and incorrectly.
I can’t think of any others off the top of my head (these are just the worst offenders) but things like that bug me. Now, granted, I’m not a perfect spelling machine and I have found mistakes in my old blog posts from years back, but I’ve left them because, like I said before, I’ve basically given up.
Seeing when other people do it is annoying, though.
The world needs people to be more understanding, compassionate, empathetic, and patient. It needs people to be less selfish and greedy.
We don’t have Mars, or even the moon. We just have Earth, and we all share it. The same land. The same sky. While there may be finite resources, we still have plenty to go around.
The world just needs us, ALL of us, to be better and actually care and be kind.
First off, I didn’t really use a planner or journal in the traditional sense. I guess you could say I used the Tasks app on my phone like a planner since it helped me keep an eye on my daily to-do’s (like taking my meds) while also using it as a grocery list because I can have multiple unique task lists going simultaneously by just flipping through them as needed. Sadly, one of the ones I had originally deemed as an important reminder kept being forgotten. Oops.
On the journal side of things, I guess you could say I’ve been treating my blog here as a journal? I’ve been primarily using it as a thought outlet for daily writing prompts, answering all kinds of questions (like this one) and only sort of using it to talk about my creative writing endeavors.
So, looking back through the year, had I not done either of those things, how WOULD my life have been different?
I suppose it’s possible that if the journal/blogging aspect of my time had been missing I may have fallen into a different kind of mental slump. I’d have just filled that time with gaming or staring at my monitor not knowing what to do with myself.
For the planner aspect, I suppose I would have tried to adjust my routine and habits for taking my meds on time, but not by much, and everything else in my daily planner-style to-do lists would have probably gone on sticky notes that would get ignored (because I have a habit of doing that.)
That’s how I see it having gone, at least. I could be wrong.
2025 might be a different year for planning/journaling, though, so we’ll see if I do better or worse.
It’s hard for me to really say which events are considered global, because sometimes there are things that happen domestically that have global impacts, but I don’t know if those would qualify?
If they do, I’d probably say 9/11. I was only in middle school when it happened but I recall watching the news coverage live from my school library.
Honestly, this is something I’ve never fully understood, in general, about people’s behavior toward one another.
I don’t believe I’ve ever caused a customer service person grief, and that’s because of personal experience. I’ve been in that role multiple times in my life. From the video game store to food service. I know what they have to deal with on a daily basis, and I wouldn’t wish grief or anything of the sort upon them. The vast majority of times they’re just trying to do their job and get through their day. They aren’t out to get you or your family, and they aren’t trying to get in your way. Why treat them like they’re less than human over any of it?
Just be nice to each other out there. Especially this time of year.
Simply put, a lot of things I could do boil down to the same kind of solution.
Have someone else guide and motivate me through my problems.
At work? To make things easier, I need to educate myself on a system, and all of my searching online isn’t yielding results lately, so I’m asking for outside assistance from someone my company works with currently.
At home or in private? Well, for starters, I could make my life easier if I had a personal trainer, but that costs money. Having that personal trainer would make me obligated to actually stick with something because I wouldn’t want to waste their time (or my money) and I could learn a lot from them outside of just exercise routines. I would need to eat better to fuel the workouts, and they could provide guidance in that department.
I’m sure there are other areas of my life that I could go into detail about, but the solution I’m seeing for them all still seems to be that external source of guidance and motivation.
I’ve stopped buying quite as much Magic: The Gathering cards in the last year or so, so I guess I HAVE made some progress in doing less of something, but all the rest on the list most definitely still apply.
Okay, so maybe I’ve gotten a little better about giving into those feelings of impostor syndrome and self-doubt. Instead, it’s been replaced by allowing myself to be spontaneously distracted. Perhaps I need to speak with my doctor about the change in medication we did a few months ago, because my attention span for things is all over the place. I’m fortunate that I’ve been able to maintain my daily writing habit as much as I have since then.
So, there’s an update to my previous answer. I could do less of being spontaneously distracted.
Just as I titled my post, I don’t believe it is possible to have a truly perfect day.
Something is bound to go wrong, even in the smallest way possible, and that would automatically disqualify the day from being perfect. That being said, you can still have a really good day, especially if you have a good mental state/approach to everything.
That’s what I believe, and anyways it’s all subjective so it’s not like it matters. Just worry about the things you have control over and make the most of the day.
Sometimes, when I’m having a conversation with people, I feel the need to relate to others in the conversation when they share something that makes them feel insecure or less about themselves in some way. This leads to me sharing a personal experience in hopes that we can connect and they don’t have to feel alone.
Unfortunately, these conversations are usually text-based through services like Discord, and I feel like my responses are often followed by silence from the other person and this makes me feel insecure in a way that says “they feel like you’re trying to one-up them”.
Because of this feeling, I sometimes just don’t share anything anymore and internalize feelings that MAYBE I shouldn’t, because then it starts eating away at me.
The Dragon's Grove 