Sometimes it’s how and when you say it. Sometimes it’s something that shouldn’t be said. But you’ve said it, and later you regret it. “Is it kind? Is it true? Is it necessary?” How do we learn to stop and ask these questions while spoiling for a fight, in a bad mood, out of hormonal …
Month: July 2022
Do you have to be serious to be professional? I sure hope not. Life is too short to keep a straight face for eight plus hours every workday. But there are ground rules: Keep it short, keep it consensual, don’t bother others, and know your environment. I brought in pool noodles at a previous job, …
Have you ever known someone who’s irritable or even downright nasty, but suddenly able to rein themselves in when someone who has power over them, or whom they want to impress, is around? Kissing up and kicking down is common, but also human nature. You hear the same story often enough – someone on their …
Today I slept an extra hour. I’m still groggy and not feeling top of my game, and I’m not feeling like writing. I committed myself to writing every morning for at least fifteen minutes, and I want to prove to myself that I can carry through on that. I’m not one to stick relentlessly to …
I know I’ve been focusing a little too hard on work when I start dreaming about work stuff. I was tiptoeing close to the edge of doing too much just before my vacation, working a half hour or an hour extra most days just to have a clean slate when I left, shortening my lunch …
I value what I can’t do more than what I can do. Of course I’m proud that I herded the llamas into their pen without letting any escape into the hills, but (my brain says to me) it was pretty easy, so clearly it wasn’t that hard, and anyone could have done it if they’d …
Where’s the line between being efficient, being lazy, and taking shortcuts which are inadvisable? A programmer looks for ways to make their own life easier. In the best case this means we write code to automate manual tasks and save ourselves time; we look for standard libraries instead of reinventing the wheel with each project; …
I overheard a conversation yesterday that set my teeth on edge. A couple guys were jump-starting a woman’s car, and bitching at her for standing around. “What are you doing? You have to get in the car and turn it on!” With an obvious message of “you stupid person, why are you wasting our time?” …