[ g.i. joe-ing ] I'm sporadically available. sometimes here, sometimes gone, and I'm not just talking about my mental faculties. know that if I don't respond, or if you don't see posts, it's not because I've lost any love for you.. it's just because I'm not exactly working a nine to five anymore.
that being said, I've missed you all--though I must admit I've missed writing even more. (:
welcome back, self.
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I have been truly challenged in my workplace. I have been tested and found wanting, lacking, deficient. I harbor such animosity toward my coworker that I can’t bear to see her in the morning. She’s this ball of dark, grimy hate that infests my day to day activities and it’s eating me alive.
Something has to change.
It started out as a personality I didn’t necessarily get along with all the time, but someone I could generally tolerate. Then as her life started going downhill, she became less and less tolerable.
Then after a few catalyst events in which she treated me and my likeable coworker like stupid minions/scum, I could officially no longer stay quiet about it. I brought it up to my superiors, it became a big thing, she screwed me over, and I still had to work with her.
Fast forward and the same thing happened again, except this time all my supervisors know she’s in the wrong.. and yet she’s still not getting punished. And I still have to work with her in the tension of her knowing I dislike her a large amount. We’ve even yelled at each other about it. I feel the injustice thick around me like mud. Stress strangles me before work and during work and anger ties me up after. I have to stop.
I don’t want to pray about it. I don’t want to pray for her. I don’t want to pray for my hate and anger to go away, I want to hold tight to it like it’s a life vest. But I can’t anymore; this day to day, endless stress is too much.
They say they’re going to move me to another section soon, but that’s a promise they’ve been making for months. Until then, I guess I’ll try prayer.
Hate the sin, not the sinner. That’s an easy concept when it’s a generally good person performing some sort of temporary sin.
But what about when sin has corrupted someone so much they’ve become an ugly, festering, semblance of a human being? How do you separate the sin and the sinner then? When they’re fused and there’s no telling where the sin ends and the sinner begins?
Or when the sin is more thought than action, so that their mind is fully corrupted. Damn it’s hard to separate someone from their mind. How are we supposed to love this hypothetical little spark inside someone that we’ve never seen in spite of all we’ve seen?
Hate is so much easier. In that case, so is disbelief. And yet somehow, empathy won’t let me just hate. And this unfounded, many times shaken, still-standing faith won’t let me just stop believing.
I read a LOT when I was younger. My favorite genres are science fiction and fantasy, and I particularly enjoy teen & young adult/children’s books. (not picture books, but classified children’s.. as in, Harry Potter for example.) As awesome as it was that I read tons of books when I was younger, I’m now rereading some of those books and realizing that my enjoyment of them back then was totally different and more shallow than my enjoyment of them now. It’s not a bad thing.. I was young, my literary appreciation just wasn’t very advanced. And that’s totally ok. It allowed me to appreciate the actual story and avoid getting hung up on how well-written the story is, or whether the author did a good job with his foreshadowing or plot twists or character introduction.
The good news is that it also sometimes means that a book I previously thought was ok or good ends up being so much more fantastic than I ever remembered.
Like Sabriel by Garth Nix. Holy mess, how did I not remember how freaking fabulous this book was?! It’s part of a trilogy, Abhorsen’s Trilogy, and in always see it on the shelf in the teen section when I go looking for new books. I would always say to myself, “Oh yeah, that was a pretty okay book. Don’t remember too much about it… maybe I should get it again.” Then I always found another new book. Well, turns out Sabriel was recently on Amazon Kindle for only 2.99, so I downloaded it.
If it’s still 2.99 and you have any semblance of interest in fantasy, you need to read this book. It’s not so hardcore fantasy that it’s weird and uninteresting, and it’s so well thought out and written. Man, it’s just so interesting! Here’s Amazon’s plot summary:
Since childhood, Sabriel has lived outside the walls of the Old Kingdom, away from the power of Free Magic, and away from the Dead who refuse to stay dead. But now her father, the Mage Abhorson, is missing, and Sabriel must cross into that world to find him. With Mogget, whose feline form hides a powerful, perhaps malevolent spirit, and Touchstone, a young Charter Mage, Sabriel travels deep into the Old Kingdom. There she confronts an evil that threatens much more than her life’and comes face to face with her own hidden destiny.
Good read. I’m only a third of the way in, so I don’t remember how it goes from here, but so far, REAL GOOD. (:
I had a small procedure done today to check if my stomach ulcers have healed. Oddly enough, my ulcers have indeed healed, but they found something new they want to biopsy. Sigh. I’m still crazy nauseous in the mornings and while my nightly stomach cramps have tapered down (thanks to some of my meds), I’m starting to experience some ugly symptoms of GERD. I’m not sure at what point my stomach and throat decided to start hating me, but I wish I could time travel back and tell them I’m sorry and I love them.
So this crap, plus a few numbers on the scale I’m not quite happy with make me think it might be time to do something radical with my meals. I keep halfway committing to doing things the right way, and I just need to commit fully. For once.
Sigh. The after effects of the anesthesia is making me super sleepy, so.. off to a nap I go!
My dad was always supportive of my introversion when I was a kid, telling me that it was okay to prefer the company of books over people sometimes and that quiet was sometimes better than hustle and bustle. He’s done it again, (the supportiveness), by recommending (and buying it for me, cause that’s what dads do) a book called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking by Susan Cain.
The book really is empowering. All my life, people have made me feel inadequate and fundamentally wrong when it came to social interactions.. because I didn’t crave a hundred friends or want to woo everyone in the room with my charm, among many things. Even now when I’m faced with the decision to go out or stay home I have a mental dilemma (well, more like 3 or 4). I weigh pros and cons and it’s not an easy decision for me.
I’ve known I was an introvert for years and years, but somehow, hearing someone else write about my exact feelings and thought processes with such deliberation and scientific concentration makes me feel so damn affirmed. It’s like the author is reaching out of the pages and saying “I know how you feel and you’re right to feel that way. Screw those people who said introverts were the crappy breed in the world. We’re actually fantastic.”
Of course she doesn’t say that. Exactly. But pretty close.
I’ll probably be bringing up a few of the book’s points in the near future, because they’re so freaking fantastic. Like there’s this one part that talks about how the church caters to extroverts and kinda leaves introverts out in the cold. **That** was a freakin gem.
I’ll tell you one thing.. as much as I would hate to hear that “there’s a time for everything” speech at the funeral of someone I loved, it seriously applies to my life.
Looking back, I’m starting to realize that it would’ve been bad news bears if I’d experienced things in my life in a different order than I did. For example, my Africa internship.
I spent a year in South Africa interning with a Christian missions organization, and while that was one of the best experiences of my life, if you were to send me there now with how jaded and salty I am, things wouldn’t have gone quite so smooth. I’m not saying anything bad against the organization or the program, I just know I wouldn’t have been as receptive to the super Christian bubble atmosphere nowadays. And I probably would have spent so much time turned off to the environment that I wouldn’t have gained the experience and learned the lessons that I did.
As for my current job, well that’s taken that bright, shiny newness off of life and I’m not convinced that’s a bad thing. Most days. I think it’s setting me up for the next phase of my life, whatever that is. I think I’m headed towards being able to sympathize with the disillusioned and jaded, not the bright and peppy. And I’m ok with that.
after a relaxingly routine trip to the bookstore, I added 4 more books to my want-to-read list. one I bought, the rest I held off on. I’ll buy them on amazon or half.com for cheaper. but c’mon, I had to buy one book to read in the interim. (:
I bought Shadow and Bone by Leigh Bardugo. Out of the four books I sat with and read the first 20 pages from, it intrigued me the most.
my books on tap are…
The Archived by Victoria Schwab (this one REALLY intrigued me. go read the description here!)
Under the Never Sky by Veronica Rossi (I’ve wanted to read this for a while and now I’m nervous it won’t deliver. pah, oh well, I have to read it now.. otherwise it’ll get stuck in my head like one of those 80′s songs I get stuck in my head until I take the time to listen to the whole song.)
Scarlet by Marissa Meyer (the follow-up book to Cinder, also a great book)
also, I made cheesecake for the first time just a few days ago. it was AWESOME. win!
“do not judge, or you too will be judged. 2: for in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you. 3: “why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? 4: how can you say to your brother, ‘let me take the speck out of your eye,’ when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? 5: you hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.”
- matthew 7:1-5 -
I think people use the first verse of this section for their own gratification. the whole, do not judge or you too will be judged part. because not only have I heard it thrown around that way before, but I’ve even considered using it myself when I feel particularly spineless. that’s actually what prompted me to look up the context of the verse, because long ago I learned that understanding context is essential to understanding a verse.
for me the most important parts of the section are:
for in the same way you judge others, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.
and
first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother’s eye.
for one, you’ll be judged by the same standard you judge others. secondly, it doesn’t say to ignore the speck in your brother’s eye. it just says that you should take the plank out of your own eye first. then, help your brother remove the speck (or plank) from his. I’m gonna ruminate on that.
I worked on my resume today. blech. That’s the least fun kind of writing, but oftentimes the most necessary. For me, resume-writing is about to be really necessary. So far I’ve been lucky.. I haven’t had to write one, except for an overzealous English assignment once upon a time, but in the near-ish future, I’m definitely going to need one. Knowing my tendency to procrastinate, I’ve made an actual effort at getting started early. I know, I’m just as shocked as you are.
I just hate quantifying myself. Always have. I don’t really know of anyone who enjoys writing about themselves. Why is that?
Oh, and if anyone has any great resume-writing tips, send them my way!
 YUM.
I have dreams all the time that I think should be novels. Then I wake up and can’t remember enough details to write down. It’s infuriating.
I’ve taken to keeping a scrap of paper and pencil by my bed for this very purpose.. in case my mind manages to keep hold of a fragment large enough to commit to paper. But I’m constantly disappointed. So I’m starting to wonder if maybe my dreams just seem a lot cooler while I’m in them and then my conscious mind does this sort of filtering thing where it’s saying, “Nope, that’s a load of rubbish, I’m not letting you remember that long enough to write it down.”
Or maybe my mind is also telling me that it’s already given me enough ideas that I should be working on!
I wish writing was easier. Then again, I suppose it would be less rewarding and fantastic when it all comes together in the end.
Ugh, frustrating.
 Gorgeous. Breathtaking. I want. BADLY.
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