Last week, while I languished at home in front of the tv with a spectacular summer cold, one of my coworkers complained to another that she had too many tv shows to catch up on.

This prompted (I imagine) my other coworkers to make fun of her and then devise a plan to cut back on the amount of griping they/we do over the course of a work day.

To that end, for the next week, for every complaint we make, we have to sacrifice a quarter to the whine jar. The rules, which I was appraised of today, are as follows:

1. No complaining about the weather.

2. No complaining about being tired/hungry/thirsty/otherwise mildly uncomfortable.

3. No complaining about work, including annoying calls!

4. No complaining about money (or lack thereof).

5. No complaining about people of any kind.

6. No complaining about first world problems such as getting champagne on one’s cashmere or having too many TV shows to watch.

7. Occasional sarcasm is allowed as long as it is funny and could not be misconstrued as a complaint.

8. No complaining about not being allowed to complain.

9. No complaining about the printer.

10. No complaining about Rob Ford (Toronto’s mayor).

11. Basically no complaining about anything!!

I don’t know if I’m convinced yet that this little experiment will be anything more than one more thing to complain about, (which incidentally is against the rules) or that my brain won’t implode from a lack of ventilation, but one of my coworkers swears she already feels like cutting back on the complaints has made her days a little brighter. “It’s like a diet, but for your attitude!” she claims.

And really, I’m already a fairly positive person at the worst of times, so how much can this really set me back, change-wise? I figure, why(n) not?

Heh.

I might have to add “No complaining about Sarah’s awesome old man puns/jokes” to the list.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress at the end of the week, but meanwhile, what do you guys think? Is it better to try to keep grousing to a minimum, or to air out your complaints regularly and make sure you’re not bottling things up? And how do you determine if something is worth complaining about?

It’s that time of the month again! No, not that time of the month. The wonderful time of the month when it’s my turn to post a little something for the fantastic collaborative blog, Pooping Rainbows.

“HI!”

A bright voice sliced through my morning daze as I stood waiting for the light to change on my way to work.

“Hello,” I responded, taking out my ear buds and rejoining the world as I turned towards the source of the voice, a young man with a backpack, ball cap and Down syndrome.

I smiled uncertainly as he looked at me appraisingly, eyes finally settling on the bright teal tights I had managed to wrangle up over the unsightly, blistering compression stocking I wear every day, an external reminder of the constant danger lurking in my own veins. Was the damned thing showing through the tights?

“Imagine if your whole body was that colour.”

I laughed. “That would be…something all right.”

Click here to read the rest and check out some of the other great bloggers involved while you’re at it!

When I moved to Toronto I brought a world of uncertainty with me. I had been downsized out of my small-town reporter gig, and as much as I tried not to take it personally, my confidence took a knock out hit.

And it stayed down.

It stayed down for a good five months in fact, the time it took me to find a job here. Looking back, it shouldn’t have been a shock that my self-esteem was so tied up in work.

While it lacked a certain glamour, I loved being a reporter. I loved listening to and sharing people’s stories and I felt proud and lucky to be working in the field I had trained for.

Combine that with the severely limited social life I was barely able to cobble together while living in relative isolation, (I got REAL good at crocheting, y’all.)

And I had an excellent recipe for winding up at a loss for what on earth to do with myself.

Without my deadlines, I was adrift.

Fortunately I already had some wonderful friends in place here who helped me occupy my time and eventually find work. With a couple of ugly bumps along the way, it’s pretty much been uphill from there.

But those five long, unemployed months are still fresh enough in my memory that now, with plans for another even bigger move on the horizon, I’m determined to do things differently.

I just don’t want to let that blanket of depressed inactivity snuggle up and settle over me until I’m all but suffocating on it. I’m determined not to spend my days sitting around waiting for my fella to get home and entertain me, resenting him for my boredom all the while.

So. This time I’ll go with a plan.

A plan to make friends, stay active, and make the best of whatever free (ahem, unemployed) time I have.

I think one of the biggest mistakes I made last time was that when I stopped writing professionally, I stopped writing. Period. While I knew rationally that my competence as a writer had nothing to do with losing my job, there was part of me that was just utterly squelched by the whole experience.

This time I am determined to keep writing and blogging. Because I love it, and it’s good for me. It keeps my brain sharper and has been known to help with the friend-making as well.

Last time around, my hobbies were fairly solitary (by necessity really, but still), and it took me a while to develop any that might lead to meeting new people and feeling a part of a community.

This time, luckily, I’ll be moving from city to city, so my Barreworks and rock-climbing will barely need to miss a beat.

Last time I kept putting off volunteering for various causes and activities in the hope that I might soon have steady work and wouldn’t have time for whatever I might have volunteered for. Well. Five months later, that fear appeared to have been pretty unfounded.

This time I will not make that mistake.

Plus, it’s unlikely that I’ll be downsized out of my current position (knock wood). So this time won’t be such a mad scramble.

This time I’ll go with a plan.

This time I’ll go on my own terms.

And until then, Toronto? I’m going to enjoy the heck out of you.

Into most of our professional and/or scholastic lives, a few meetings/presentations must fall.

Some of these meetings will be highly relevant to you and your work.

Some of them will be lively and interactive.

Some of them will be scintillatingly (or at least not un)interesting.

Then there is the other kind of meeting.

This kind typically takes place about an hour after lunch, around the time when I imagine everyone in a truly civilized society would close up shop and lie down for a well-earned siesta.

It’s the kind of meeting  where you quickly start to wonder if the addition of your name to the list of attendees was a cruel, cruel accident.

Said meeting will undoubtedly be held in either the absolute hottest or absolute coldest room of whatever building you happen to be in. The individual making his or her presentation has spent years honing the most soothing monotone ever to buzz by your ears.

And while you have the best of intentions to try and glean at least some small portion of helpful information, no matter how obscure or well-hidden it might be, eventually the last earnest spark of interest is extinguished from your left pupil.

Your focus gets a little…slippery.

Your spine rounds, your breathing slows and your shoe finally gives up its tenuous grasp on your big toe and crashes, screaming to the floor, prompting your eyes to snap open. You wonder how long they were closed.

Multiple office jobs and my time spent as a reporter in many an 8-hour town council meeting has given me time to come up with a number of coping mechanisms for this kind of deadly meeting ennui.

1. Drink water. A splash of cold water can do wonders to wake up the brain. HOWEVER, do not overdo it. The one thing that can make time crawl by just a bit more slowly is if you are clenching every muscle in your body and praying for a natural disaster to strike so you can just go ahead and pee your pants already.

2. Determine what kind of animal each person in the room most closely resembles.

3. Take notes. It’s harder to fall asleep when you are actively engaged in putting words on paper. Plus it looks like you are paying SO MUCH attention, even if you’re really just on autopilot.

4. Create your own crossword.

5. Perfect your ability to sketch a dragon.

6. List all of the countries in Africa.

7. Decide who would win if the meeting suddenly turned into the hunger games

8. Couldn’t hurt to draw another dragon.

And hey, if all else fails, write a blog post.

What about you? Any other foolproof staying-awake through extreme boredom tips?