The Kindness of Strangers

One of the things I actually love about my job is how it can sometimes pleasantly surprise me on any given day. Friday was one of those days.

Maintaining a Twitter page for our company is one of my job responsibilities. I retweet what others post and I comment and have conversations with people from time to time. There’s one person I interact with mainly because I find him interesting and entertaining. He drives across the country doing something he really loves for a living, and you can see it on his website and in his tweets. One of the things he tweeted Friday morning included a picture of a popular burger chain out west called In-N-Out. Since I’m from that side of the country and love that burger joint, I tweeted back, “I’m so jealous.”

From that point on we were engaged in a bunch of direct messages. Long story short, he basically asked for our company address and before I knew it a delivery guy from the deli around the corner was handing me a box full of cupcakes:

This virtual stranger I had exchanged pleasantries with a few times online had a dozen cupcakes sent to our company from across the country. What was his reason? It was very simple; he wanted to thank us for being so kind to him and thought we at least deserved cupcakes for working so hard. Sure, there could have been an ulterior motive—some strange marketing ploy, I don’t know—but my gut tells me this was just an act of pure kindness. Well, at least that’s what I choose to believe. There are so many things in this world that make me lose my faith in humanity, but it only takes one small ray of sunshine to erase it all and give me hope.

Let the Creative Juices Flow

I'm feeling motivated and I hope it lasts long enough for me to accomplish something. After enduring one bad work week after another for the past few months, I've decided to pick myself up and do something about it. Work sucks? I updated my resume this weekend and my Monster.com account and sent out resumes. I'm also looking into a freelance editing gig to earn some extra bucks. Personal life sucks? I teamed up with a co-worker to write a crappy screenplay about how our lives should have turned out. When it's finished, we're hoping that some production company that produces cheesy TV movies will buy it. Bank account depleted? Stay at home and write, write, write so we can finish the cheesy TV-movie screenplay and make some money.

I also have three ideas for a novel bouncing around in my head. They're all very different from each other, but I think each one has potential. As long as we're still on the whole writing thing, I'm trying to make a conscious effort to keep up the blogs, especially the TV one now that I have a Twitter account. BTW...10 random followers already. Woohoo!

My last two projects involve editing a comic...er...graphic novel and a story my friend has been working on, which is actually pretty interesting and has me wanting to know what's going to happen.

Yeah, when I decide to go full steam ahead it's pretty much all or nothing. The abnormal amounts (at least for me) of iced coffee I've been drinking lately might have something to do with all this hyperactivity. I used to feel this way about work, but I think it would be better for me to use this energy for my own projects.

So what exactly triggered this frenzy of activity, you ask? My boss will be adding another person to our tiny team, probably next week, and I'm not too happy about the new hire. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure this person is absolutely lovely, but I already don't like her because she's basically going to be me. Instead of hiring a full-time, on-site developer that we desperately asked for and need, she's hiring a person who has the skills to do my job and is asking for a salary that's $20k more than mine. This means I'm never going to get my 10% back and I'll probably be forced to be the go-to technical person while she gets the creative projects I wanted. So, to avoid getting sucked into this drama and becoming a raging ball of fury, I've already asked for my own office (which was offered to me before but I declined because I didn't see the point) to help keep me sane and I've started looking for a new job. I got a call from a recruiter today about a pretty kick-ass job, so fingers crossed that the hiring manager thinks I'm worth interviewing and hiring.

Anyway, that's what's been going on with me lately. Time to get back to work. I have some notes to incorporate into our screenplay outline that I want to get done before bed. Night!

If You Can't Beat Them, Follow Them

I can't believe I'm saying this, but I now have a Twitter account. I know, gasp. It's not a "personal" account with my name and this blog on it, but it is linked to my TV blog. So why did I sell out? I did it for a job...well, a job that I really want. If you read this job description, I guarantee you would think it was created for me. Unfortunately, one of the job requirements is: Significant personal presence on a variety of social media sites.

While I do maintain our social media sites at work, I don't have my own. So I decided to jump on the bandwagon and start one. Although, the chances of me actually getting this job are pretty much the same as my chances of winning the lottery. I'm sure a million people have already applied during the four days the ad has been up on the site. Even if the economy were in good shape, there would still be a ton of people applying simply because the job is for an entertainment site.

Anyway, the point to this post is that I'm on Twitter now so it's only a matter of time before it completely consumes me. Could Facebook be next? Possibly, but I wouldn't hold my breath if I were you.

What’s in a Dream?

Last week was the week of anxiety dreams. I’m not sure exactly what triggered them, but they were very vivid and made me wake up way before my alarm.

In one of them my teeth were falling out. I was talking to someone, I believe I was trying to help a guy who looked like one of the football players on Friday Night Lights, when my teeth just started falling out. At first my tongue pushed against my bottom teeth and shifted them. I tried to push them back into place, but I was just pushing them more out of position. Before I knew it my teeth were falling into my hands, but my hands didn’t look like my hands. They were these old, wrinkled hands with bony fingers, which were basically skin and bone. The minute I woke up I checked to see if my teeth were still in my mouth. It seemed way too real.

Then on another night I had a dream that a married guy, who looked like Tom Welling at times and some guy I knew in high school named George Park at other times, kept trying to get me to go out with him. Sadly, even in my dreams it’s impossible for me to be the bad girl. No matter how much I wanted him, the only thought that kept running through my head was that he was married. I woke up feeling annoyed with myself for not just going for what I wanted, even in a dream.

I can no longer remember the other dreams that plagued me last week, but I suppose that’s a good thing. Even in sleep I seem to be feeling restless, which is really annoying since I really love and value my sleep. I’ve taken advantage of this three-day weekend and spent most of my time trying to clear my mind. Of course, my mind will never be totally clear, but I did my best, got some rest and am hoping this week will be much better.

Beauty

I've never really been a big fan of musicians. Hmmm, let me re-phrase that...I've never followed the career of any particular musicians from beginning to end. Sure, I like listening to music and I respect the talent it takes to write songs and perform them, but I've never been that person who has favorite artists and goes to all their concerts and buys every one of their CDs. I have a lot of friends who do and I think it's awesome that they know every word of every song and have collections of ticket stubs and cool T-shirts. I guess I just never connected with an artist like they did. Sure, there are songs that have spoken to me and conveyed everything I've ever wanted to say, but those were one-shots. I found that the rest of the songs on the album didn't really say much to me at all even though it was fun to listen to them.

However, there is one musician I've been following regularly since I heard her song on an episode of Smallville two years ago: Marié Digby. The minute her first album came out I knew I had to have it, because every song I'd heard on her MySpace page touched something in me. The album definitely didn't disappoint--it was on heavy rotation on my iPod for a very long time. In fact, the song on Smallville has a permanent spot on my "Songs I Listen to on the Commute" playlist because I smile every time I hear it. I also began reading her blog posts, watching her videos and checking her Twitter updates. I even went to one of her concerts in NYC. I guess you could say I became a fan.

The only reason I'm mentioning her now is because I read something she posted today about beauty and I thought the message itself was, well, beautiful. She obviously isn't the only artist out there who feels this way and this is by no means an original idea (Christina Aguilera's "Beautiful" is the anthem for this topic), but I think what I like about it is how she explains it all--with a good story.

Anyway, if you want to read it, you can check it out here: "What is beauty to you?"