How to Tackle a Project That Seems Impossible
I was the receptionist at an office where everyone had to fill out a specific form every day. Almost nobody did it. The person in charge made it my responsibility to make sure everyone filled out their form.
Of course, I was the lowest person on the totem pole in that office, so I couldn’t use fear of punishment to make them fill out the form. Instead, I had to rely on charm and their respect for me and my opinion of them.
I’d bet that you can predict how well that worked.
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How to Explain Yourself
A mutual friend once asked Ric how someone gets through my shell to know “the real Meyer.” Ric told them that there is no shell, and what they thought was a shell was “the real Meyer.” Ric told me that later, and I found it funny. He also told me that the person he was talking to looked horrified at that idea, which I found hilarious.
Which, now that I think about it, might be part of the problem.
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How to Be Yourself
There have been times when I’ve been afraid, and I have muttered the following to myself:
I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
Many of you probably recognize that’s a quote from Dune. Obviously, I wasn’t afraid of looking like a dork.
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How to Compare and Contrast
I worked at the juice bar at a health club. The sales staff used to come sit at the bar and talk about their work. I would listen to them. I have never even considered signing up for a membership at a health club since.
Also, the lifeguard used to come hang out at the juice bar. Note: I did not say that he did this when he was “off duty.” He would often be the only lifeguard on duty when he was at my bar instead of in his super-tall chair by the pool. I asked him how he could see people drowning in the pool in another room while watching the TV at the juice bar. His answer was, “Someone’ll come get me. There’s plenty of time. The human brain can last four minutes without oxygen.”
Like I said, I haven’t even considered joining a health club since I worked at that place.
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How to Plan a Group Vacation
In a group vacation, it doesn’t matter how many members of the party are planners, how much thought they’ve all put into the plan, or how enthusiastically everyone agrees to the plan. It only takes one member of the group to be a play-it-by-ear type to completely derail the plan and force everyone else to play it by ear with them.
Want to see this in action? Go to the Target store near the main entrance to Walt Disney World some morning at about the time the parks open. You will see multiple clusters of frustrated looking people with one member of their group saying that they’re “just popping in” for sunscreen, ponchos, and “while I’m here, I’ll take a quick look at the sweatshirts.”
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How to Accept a Difference of Opinion
When I was a kid, my mother thought video games were a complete waste of time and money. She maintained that opinion until my younger brother’s best friend brought over his Gameboy, and she got her first taste of Tetris. Within a month she bought herself a Gameboy and a Tetris cartridge. That cartridge never left the cartridge slot, and that Game Boy never left the vicinity of her easy chair for a good decade at least, until it stopped working. She played Tetris every chance she got.
Don’t worry, though. As far as she was concerned, every other video game was still a waste of time and money.
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How to React When Someone Surprises You by Being Right
I’m not all that proud of this comic now. At the time, I saw no harm in it, but now I don’t feel good about kink-shaming people. Enjoy what you’re into. As long as everybody is a consenting adult, it’s not my place to judge, nor any of my business to begin with.
The point remains that Fifty Shades of Gray works as a fantasy because the guy involved is wealthy, handsome, and willing to change for the woman he loves. My understanding is that it’s much harder to find those three attributes in one man that it is to find a guy who wants to tie you up and smack you with a ping-pong paddle.
Note from Missy: This gets into one of the main points of romance novels in general. A lot of people are snotty about romance (only the most popular genre fiction category in the world) because it’s often so “unbelievable” and “unrealistic. ”What are those “unrealistic” elements? Usually that someone would [a] treat a lead character like a thinking, feeling, intelligent human being; and [b] that the other person often realizes they’re being a jerk, apologizes and makes amends, and make a concerted, visible effort to change their behavior and/or opinions. It’s a sad commentary on our world that this is the kind of weird and improbable stuff we fantasize about.
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How to Maximize a Learning Opportunity
Here’s a detail of my former office job I’ve never mentioned. The office we occupied was in a building in downtown Seattle. The space had been extensively renovated by a cash-flush dot-com for use as their corporate headquarters. They had a game room, a conference table shaped like a surf board, and a full screening room with raised theater seats and a little stage in front of the screen. Building the place out must have cost their backers a fortune. It looked great.
I believe they were in the office for about a year before they got bought out and absorbed by a bigger dot-com.
Then the company I worked for rented the office. The first thing they did was pay for extensive renovations. Mainly, they had all of the risers, the seats, and the projector, the screen, and the stage removed from the screening room, restoring the floor to a flat, level state with thin cheap carpeting. It must have cost a fortune. It looked cheap and lazy.
What did we use that room for, you may ask? Mostly client presentations and corporate training seminars.
I used to think about how much money they spent pulling out the theater seating whenever we’d host an event, and I’d set up the folding chairs, all pointed at a make-shift stage in the corner.
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