Failure

What do you do when you fail like this?

All the pressure is on and everyone is counting on you, the task seems easy enough, it's something you do almost daily... then you choke? Epically? Especially when you're part of a team and you let them down. You feel worthless, like the silent 'P' in raspberry or like the random usage of 'U' in English english (eg. behaviour - ya, we don't really need you after all U).

So, two things come to light with this:
1. Sometimes the easiest skills are taken for granted thus increasing chance of failure. It's when you take your focus off the task at hand or think "I got this, psht" that things go awry. Even the simplest of tasks require our thought and devotion.

2. Humans become dogs when in groups. Psychology Today explains that the need for status drives humans and that we all strive to achieve status. Competition, then, becomes a constant struggle to achieve the top status (or the Alpha dog). This is why packs get energized at the win, and individual members get frantically melancholy at their flubs. Losing our status threatens the innermost part of our being.

How do we avoid failure then? Focus up. You never have to struggle over power if you take small careful steps to insure your success (even in the mundane things you do!). :)

Economics for the Eco-nomics

Today a man asked me to rate his cologne. This was a bad move on his part not knowing 1 - I have a freakishly excellent sense of smell and 2 - am brutally honest. It was Abercrombie cologne. He was a grown man. I told him it registered about a 2 on my scale of pleasing smells and reminded me of teenage boys (at least I was honest?). I told him that few things are as irritatingly intoxicating as Abercrombie cologne. It doesn't smell bad, it's just noxious... like gasoline or paint, which is why you always leave that store a little lightheaded. He proceeded to ask for my phone number anyway. (In case you saw through his ploy like I did and were wondering...)

Back to smells. On the other end of the scale, however, are French fries, quite possibly one of the best smells/foods on earth (or at least they rank high in my meager, yet hungry opinion). French fries were in the news today. A story about Wendy's recreating their french fries to appeal to an increasingly "naturally" inclined food market.

"Natural," as they call it, simply means ingredients (more) resembling food - like the little plastic fruits they use for photographs and kids toys. It doesn't mean 'coming from earth'....

Unfortunately, the common consumer is fooled by this ploy, kind of like people who eat bagels and drink juice and think they are being healthy - I digress - that is a whole other blog in itself.

Well, what did Wendy's change you ask? They left the skins on (cha-ching$), cut the fries smaller (cha-ching$$), and started using sea salt (cha-chingering$$$). Not only did the marketing team finally catch on to the "natural" foods craze (Jack in the Box started this natural cut fry phenomenon a few years back...), but they found a way to make it profitable for them. Skins on means less production pealing them, smaller fries means more volume at a lower cost, and using sea salt means they get the same salt just with a fancier (and thus more valuable in the consumers mind) title. They are in no way healthier (in fact, they have even more calories and sodium than before), yet will be marketed as they are.

What Wendy's didn't think about is how the average Wendy's customer (inset left... is that bad? you know I'm right) probably isn't sitting in the drive thru thinking about whole foods and what type of vegetables are really in vegetable oil... (fyi, it's usually soybean) - which really just renders their entire campaign moot.

However, the silver lining is in the fact that the fast food companies are finally noticing the trend toward healthier, more wholesome foods. It may be one small step for profits - but its one giant leap for Skinny Bitches (like me). I've recently taken to the hype/common sense of eating food that is organic, humanely treated, and wholesome. A tricky predicament in our syrup laden culture... but lucky for me, and lucky for us, the green machine has been rearing to go for nearly two decades and in light of America's dim health outlook, the foundation has been put into place:

People want healthier food (demand) and it is profitable to cater to them (supply).

I've hit another all time low...

From time to time Yahoo snoops in on what I'm searching for or browsing on the internet and tailors the ads that appear in my mail screen to my "interests"... today I searched 'Geek' and here is what just appeared today (right side banner of image below):


Awesome.

He's a Shoe In

There are two type of people in this world: ones that keep their converse clean and ones that trudge through the mud in them at Coachella and wear them again the next day.

The way I see it people with dirty Converse take pride in their own practicality and their liking of shoes as shoes rather than a fashion trend (or they're like me and just too lazy to clean shoes). People who keep their Chucks clean use their shoes as a message to the world that they can color coordinate their clothes and shoes (or maybe they're new) (or maybe they never do anything fun). Or so it seems.

So then I assert, the old talk about how a person's shoes are telling of details about them, holds true.

Case in Point (A): The girl with heels on - all the time. I'm not talking the nice dinner out with modest sling backs or stillettos for for a night on the town. I'm talking the girl who wears pumps and platforms to baseball games, the grocery store, and places like the zoo. The girl who doesn't even own sneakers, flip flops, or (the unspeakable) ballet flats. Chances are this girl is a girly girl, is really short, or is just purely impractical. I might even go as far as to say high maintenance...[insert objection here]. On the positive side, at least you get to watch her fall more often than the average person. And everyone agrees, falling = funny.

Case in Point (B): The guy who wears house shoes, slippers, Vans, Toms, or flip flops to places other than the beach or inside his house. The guy with a shirt on that looks like he's slept in it for 2 weeks and a mustard stain on his left knee. He's sloppy, doesn't think shoes matter, or is too lazy to shop for "real shoes." Ok, yes, they're probably more comfortable and the slip on saves you 113 minutes a year the average person spends tying shoe laces... but don't you care that people are judging you? Unless you're Hugh Hefner, put a proper sneaker on son.

Case in Point (C): Crocs. These abominations of the shoe race are acceptable in 2 (read: 2 only) situations - kids under 6 and people that are gardening. One step above jelly sandals of the 1990s, Crocs are the hippie love child of Teva "active" shoes and neon foam tourist shop flip flops. I cringe when I see these things out in public and can't imagine how a shoe so distasteful could become such an epidemic (channeling Malcom Gladwell's The Tipping Point).

Anyway, it all makes no difference to me what shoes you're wearing. The point is, people notice and make assumptions about you by your shoes. So take the time to ponder what your shoes say about you...

Old lady velcro sneaks out.

Things I Don't Understand

I've compiled a short list of things I just have trouble understanding:

1. Kaleidoscopes. Clearly a fruit of the 1970's psychedelic time warp, but seriously, what the heck are these things? I once met a lady and her husband who's sole job is to create kaleidoscopes and stained glass. How can there be a business in this? If someone put that much time and effort into producing something practical, the world would certainly be a much better place. Third world countries are in need of clean water and shoes, and here are the Americans making intricate toys out of multi-colored glass. It just doesn't seem right...

2. Negative dispositions. Some people are just the stereotypical "glass is half empty" type of people. They wake up on rainy days and grumble about the rain. They get their coats stuck in the door and furrow their brow and sigh whilst violently tugging at it. They wonder why bad things always happen to them. They complain. Constantly. To their defense, most of them were raised that way and learned the behavior from their parents. Plus, their place in the world helps others to prepare for the worst and I admit, there is some value to that. However, as the half empties can probably attest, it is a terrible way to go through life - always focusing on the negative. It brings the positive people down, slowly draining them of all things happy (like Dementors). I just don't understand it. Unnecessary.

3. Leashes for children. I know, at least one of you out there reading this is a leash kid. You know what I mean, the fluffy, animal-shaped backpack looking things that are cleverly disguised vehicles of shame. Not only are these embarrassments to the establishment of parenthood, but they shed light on a deeper issue of Americanism: laziness. In my opinion, if you can't keep track of your kid, then you shouldn't take them to places where you might lose them. These are children people, not pets, and should be raised accordingly. Maybe eventually they'll make a Baby Bjorn big enough for toddlers...

4. The allure of pine cologne. While driving on the freeway today I smelled the unmistakable pungency of pine. I have no idea where it was coming from, but as it seeped into my car's interior, I couldn't help but think of how unappealing it is. I just can't explain it. About the only time I am okay with this scent is when they are packaging up my Christmas tree at the tree lot. What possesses some men to spray this all over themselves? This phenomenon is quite similar to the women's perfumes and accessories that smell like baked goods - just completely unnecessary.

Memory and Emotion

I always wonder why I remember seemingly unimportant things - like the Miss Mary Mack patty cake rhyme from when I was 7 - and forget very important things - like that I had a mandatory meeting at 8AM and it's now 8:25. As a psychology major I've learned that the best memories are linked to emotions.

Like one of my favorite quotes from Maya Angelou: "...People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." Whether it's embarrassment, love, anger, humility, pain, joy, sadness, etc, if an emotion touches us deep enough, it's going to stick with us forever.

I remember my 8th grade teacher Mr. K was my favorite middle school teacher. Not because he gave easy grades or let us out of class early, but because he was kind when he didn't have to be. For example, at the time I was in his class I was a vegetarian and knowing how much it disheartened me to dissect a frog - he cleverly planned the dissection for a day when I was on vacation and he let me write a make-up essay. (Mr. K also saved me from a devastating typo on my science project... but that's another blog).

Kindness makes you fond of people. And kindness makes people remember you. It's the same reason we can't stop thinking about that attractive someone we met, how bad the board meeting went today when you couldn't answer any questions, how much it hurt breaking your arm when you were 3 years old, an old coworker you always hated talking behind your back, the glory of winning a little league trophy, falling in front of a big crowd, or how the smell of butterscotch reminds you of growing up...

So before you get angry at the overseas customer service rep on the phone, the driver that cut you off on the freeway, your significant other that came home late, or your best friend who made you feel stupid, remember that interaction may become a bad memory emblazoned in their brain like a branding on a cattle.

Just save yourself the effort and be happy; give them something good to think about. Practice random acts of kindness and smile, because after all, isn't that how you'd want to be remembered? :)

Crumbs Make a Pie

Currently, I'm struggling with borders. More specifically, who draws the border and where. I read the book The 4 Hour Workweek and it got me to thinking - what is holding me back from dropping everything and doing what I really want?

I'll tell you.

It's figuring out what I really want to do. In the short-term it's no problem. I want to drink coffee and catch up on my favorite blogs. Play with my dog and sunbathe at the pool. Eat cheeseburgers and go bowling.

In the next few years I want to travel more of the world and learn random facts. I want to meet new people and laugh more often. I want to marry a man and learn to cook.

It's all peripheral really. I know the events I want to take place in my life and the general specifics surrounding them, but after that - your guess is probably better than mine.

Fortunately, I've come to terms with this and I've agreed with myself that this is fine. Crumbs make a pie, right? All the small things I like to do will eventually add up to a larger whole to form more complete satisfaction.

Yet, I just can't help but think that some piece is missing. Kind of like when you put together an old puzzle with 499 pieces? Yes, you can see the bigger picture and it looks great - but it's still so annoying that the one piece is missing, holding Entirety on the line with boring elevator music.

I'm on the border. Stay on my current path of satisfactory, or risk it all for greatness. But if we are the ones that draw our own borders, why do I keep erasing mine and moving it farther away?

"You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes.
You can steer yourself in any direction you choose.
You're on your own.
And you know what you know.
You are the guy who'll decide where to go."
~Dr. Seuss