Anyone who knows me, follows me or has had the pleasure of engaging with me in the odd Twitter chat or two knows that I hate – nay, despise – buzzwords. Business speak. That gobbledy gook of catchphrases and say nothing terminology that some organizations even have an in house dictionary for. You know, if you need an in house dictionary for your staff…..you might have communication problems.
Anyhow, as I’ve been know to say a time or two (or ten)…… Continue reading
December’s a funny month. While we’re all “G’ah!! Winter!!” we’re also all “Uh. What?? Christmas is here already!?” December might be the only month of the year where we spend the *entire* month focussed on one event. For some of you, that focus starts even earlier (who *are* you people!?). Those of us who’ve been around the block a few times know this same focus happens in the business world. What starts in a mad scramble of end of year reports, wrapping up projects and planning for 2012, ends with Secret Santas, in-office parties and out of office parties. Lots of parties. Basically, if you’re on the job hunt at this time of the year, you’re screwed. Continue reading
I don’t use this space to rant and rave about products or companies. Well, I haven’t yet, anyhow. Until today.
Let me preface by saying I have no professional affiliation whatsoever with this product. Beyond being – ahem – intimately familiar with its invaluable contribution to the lives of women everywhere. Every month. That’s right my friends I’m talking about tampons! Say it loud and say it proud!
More specifically, I’m talking about OB tampons, the great “disappearing tampon mystery of 2011”, and one of the funniest ‘I’m sorry’ campaigns I’ve seen in awhile. Continue reading
Lately I’ve been thinking about my love/hate relationship with rules. And ‘love/hate’ might not be the best turn of phrase for how I feel about them. More like ‘follower/who cares’er’.
The follower part is simple. I was raised to be a contributing member of society. To work hard and earn my own way. And to respect my elders/authority figures. I’ve never scammed the government. I don’t damage other people’s property. And I would never – ever – take something that wasn’t mine. Not a lie, to this *day* I’ve never been pulled over by the cops. If I was? I think I would wet myself. Don’t even ask me how stressed I get when traveling and crossing borders. And when I get stressed I use humour. At the most inopportune moments. Like when I told the TSA people at Boston Logan that had I known I would be passing through a full body scanner, I would have gone on a diet. Heh. Hindenburg. Continue reading
It’s Friday. I should be sharing my early angst’y writing from back in the day with you. But I can’t. My head is all over the place today. Trying to settle, and won’t. Thinking about our times, these days, and how everything’s changed. Watched my son chatting with his friend on Facebook last night, and an image – a memory – from my childhood popped into my brain. Dragging the phone which was very much attached to the wall into my bedroom. Continue reading
My good friend and fellow blogger Jason Konopinski wrote a post last week that seriously got me fired up. In a good way. Titled “The Paper Tigers of Online Influence”, even the image he used made me stop and think (origami is insanely complicated but the outcome is really cool – like statistics – hmmmm.) “Paper Tiger” is an english translation of an ancient Chinese phrase. It means something as threatening as a tiger, but actually quite quite harmless. Kinda like “its bark is worse than it’s bite”. It’s fitting that Jason was talking about online influence and social scoring. Continue reading
Lucky you, it’s Friday and time for another instalment of “crap I wrote a loooong time ago!” Clappity clap clap.
This series was inspired by the question Why do I write? These last few fridays I’ve laid out reasons why we all write: to exorcise demons, to memorialize a time or place, to hopefully connect with people. But why do I still write today?
I’ve been lucky to meet some incredible people lately through my writing. And since I’m only ageist when it comes to my own sweet self (Jesus, Mary and Joseph *when* did I get this old!!??) – I often engage with some talented and inspiring young thangs. One such young thang – a truly inspirational and all around lovely young woman – reached out to me this week to help round out an idea she had for her own blog. Continue reading
Well, it’s Friday again. Time for another installment of Canadian Gothic – Weekly Writing From The ’80′s and ’90′s.
Mortgages Bite
I’ve been a bad blogger this week. Life, as it sometimes does, got in the way of writing. And this was important life stuff. As many of you know I’m currently a free agent, and while I’ve been doing a bit of freelance’y stuff here and there, I have an amazing son and a not so amazing mortgage to attend to. So, the job hunt has seriously ramped up. Continue reading
Yesterday was the ‘National Day on Writing’, a project that, according to the press release, ”…aspired to create a national discussion about the importance of writing by collecting essays from people, interviewing authors, collecting student essays and spreading the word throughout the country..” – and naturally there was a hashtag, #whyiwrite.
The hashtag inspired some amazing personal revelations, like this one by Jo Hart “Because my head is so full of stories and ideas if I didn’t let them out onto paper I’d probably go crazy.” And this one by Nova Ren Suma “Because I used to be too shy to say it out loud. And now I’d rather not say it any other way.” Continue reading
I’ve written before about how the people I follow and engage with daily on Twitter never cease to amaze and inspire me. And today, whammo! It happened again.
Demolition
Those who’ve been following my stream are aware that “Operation Finish Son’s Bedroom” has been in hyper drive since Friday. What began as “Hey, we should re-do Gorgeous Boy’s room!” back on August 1st quickly deteriorated (no pun intended) into full re-wiring plus a wall and a half *and* the ceiling demo’ed to the studs, drywalled and mudded. Continue reading
