You say you want a resolution

It's that time of year again. The time when we all resolve to improve ourselves. This year I've actually put a bit of thought into it and have come up with 10 resolutions. (I love me a top 10 list, if you haven't noticed by now.) Without further ado ...

1. Do at least one thing every day to find a job. Okay, it's now been six weeks and change since I got laid off. I have applied for one job so far. And it wasn't even really a job. It was one of those things where they didn't have an opening at the time, but the company sounded cool and they had a link where you could upload your resume for "future openings." All through December I used the excuse that no one hires during Christmas time because they're too busy with holiday and year-end stuff. No more excuses. Time to get cracking. I have 10 weeks left until my severance runs dry. I vow to do something every day to move my search forward, whether it's applying for a job, updating my resume, researching a new company, etc. Monday through Friday that will be my job. I'll allow myself weekends off. And I'll start Wednesday, because tomorrow's a national holiday.

2. Read at least 50 books in 2019. Back in high school this would have been on the low side. I've slacked since those days. I can't have read more than 20 books this year. 25 tops. Somewhere along the line I got hooked on Mahjong Titans. What an absolute timesuck. This is a two-part resolution: stop wasting time on computer games and pick up a book. (Clarification: This doesn't include legitimate video games on the PS4, which are still allowed. This resolution is only about time-filler games on the computer. If somewhere someone over the age of 70 is playing that same game, that's the kind I'm talking about.)

Diafol 1, Christmas tree 0

Diafol has a new hobby. I'm sure he's not alone among his feline compatriots in wanting to scale the Christmas tree. I've seen enough cat videos over the years to know they love to climb stuff. He is a cat, therefore, he will claw his way up whatever obstacle presents itself, be it a living room curtain, my pant leg, or the Christmas tree.

It started off with him batting at the ornaments on the lower branches. Then he progressed to leaping up to smack things or grab at the light cords. And about a week ago he decided he would attempt to summit the entire 7 1/2 foot tree.

Drew's girlfriend Olivia suggested I get a spray bottle and blast Diafol every time he started on the tree. That works, sort of. If you do happen to catch him in the act, a spritz or two will cause him to jump down and run away from the scene of the crime. But he quickly learned that if none of us were in the room to guard the tree, it was all his.

Which was bad enough when he was only knocking ornaments off. He's a lot bigger now than when we put the tree up. We keep feeding him, he keeps growing. Given enough attempts, it was only a matter of time until he toppled the tree. Which he did this afternoon when I was in the kitchen preparing lunch. I ran in just in time to see him riding it down to the floor. I'm no artist, but it looked a bit like this:

Let's call that the Pounce per Ounce graph. As the number of attempts (Pounces) piled up, and the weight of the cat (Ounces) increased, it was inevitable the tree would come down.

It is back up now, with two support ropes anchoring it to the nearby walls. Most of the remaining ornaments are near the top of the tree. He's broken four glass balls. The others have all been removed. I try to tell him Santa won't come if he keeps it up, but as Olivia points out, he's only living up to his name.

It's a wonderful tradition

I've earned some converts. I can't go as far as "disciples." I may lack the natural charisma and leadership presence for disciples. But people are coming around on It's a Wonderful Life.

We went last night. Alec and Val, Laurel and I--and Shane. He saw my post Tuesday and wanted in. Or maybe just wanted out of the house for a night. Whatever his reasons, we were 2 1/2 couples. Might have been three couples if he'd had more time to work up the nerve to ask a certain someone in his class out. Then again, that's a heck of a first date, to triple with a bunch of old people (to them; we're not actually old), so he would have had a nearly impossible sales job on his hands.

What a turnout at the Grand Illusion. I knew they'd been running It's a Wonderful Life every Christmas for a long time, but I didn't realize quite how long. This is their 48th year of doing it. Some of the people there last night seemed like they might have been there for all 48. It's a good thing we got there early, or we'd have never found five seats together.

Watching a movie I haven't seen in years is sort of like re-reading a favorite book. Certain details pop out at me in such a way that I begin to wonder if I noticed them before and forgot them or if this is the first time I picked up on them. Like when George tells that kid to stop annoying people as he steals Mary away from him at Harry's graduation party. There is a lot more humor in this movie than it seems to get credit for, probably because it tugs so hard at the ol' heartstrings in other places.

And, yeah, I cried at the end. Again. Laurel didn't seem to notice. Maybe because she was crying too. (I noticed.)

We went out for kebabs afterward and discussed the movie. Everyone had different favorite parts. And everyone voted to go again next year. I'll just pencil that one in for now, considering tonight was only my sixth date with Laurel. If we do wind up there for the 49th annual showing, we can look back on last night as the start of a nice tradition.

Bedford Falls, here we come

Quick, name the five longest movies you've ever watched.

Did It's a Wonderful Life show up? I was at Olaf's last night with Laurel and her neighbors, Alec and Val (a nice couple slightly older than us), and we got talking about Christmas movies. None of the three of them had ever watched It's a Wonderful Life all the way through. Laurel and Alec both have seen parts, but said it was too long to sit through the entire thing. Val has never seen any of it. I tried to explain that it's not that much longer than most movies, but most people think that because they only ever see it on cable, and the commercial breaks make it run for three hours, sometimes longer.

It's kind of unfair what cable has done to It's a Wonderful Life. On the one hand, having it on some channel somewhere almost every day from Thanksgiving through New Year's means that everyone has had a chance to see it, multiple times. On the other, it's almost turned it into a punch line. Which it doesn't deserve. It's a great movie, and it fully deserves the tremendous audience it's garnered over the past 70 years. And I, despite being the only one who wasn't imbibing, may have gotten a little obnoxious about not letting that go.

But I prevailed in the end. Sometimes persistence pays off. Laurel and I and Alec and Val are going to see It's a Wonderful Life tomorrow night at the Grand Illusion, uncut and uninterrupted, the way Frank Capra intended it when it was first released back in 1946. They run it at the Grand Illusion as a regular feature every December, and have for years. I've seen it there twice, though not in years. I haven't actually seen it on TV in at least 5-6 years.

So I'm jacked. I only hope no one notices if/when I start crying. Because I always do. Usually it's the part where Mary doesn't recognize George that sets me off. Plus or minus five minutes of that scene, anyway. Shhhhh.

It really is a small world after all

So I walk into Conagliatelli's for my date with Laurel last night, and she's sitting there in the booth Drew and I always pick, grinning at me like she has a secret she can't hold in for another second. Before I even get my coat off, she says, "Your mom wants you to call her." I'd never noticed her dimples before, but they were impossible to miss with her cheeks so swollen in that smile.

I was racking my brain for any relevant conversation we might have had last Friday. All I could think of was how I told her never knew what to get Janice for Christmas and always wound up at the liquor store on Christmas Eve, which Laurel found ironic since I don't drink. But there hadn't been any mention of calling her, or her calling me, or anything else that would account for the 100-watt grin I was enduring.

Next she points to her teeth, smiling even more exaggeratedly so I can get a good look at how shiny they are. I'm still mystified. Finally she says, "I just had my annual cleaning."

Janice is her dental hygienist. And has been since Laurel was about 16. She's been hearing stories about me, every six months, for the last 12 years. Some of which do not match up to my recollection of what actually happened. Like apparently Janice told her I wanted to move to Cuba and become a communist after college.

How to ruin Thanksgiving dinner without even showing up

One of my favorite things about my old job was the two hours of volunteer time we were allotted every month, which I spent with my kid brother under the cover of "mentoring troubled youth." I may have been laid off, but I'm sticking to routine, at least for now. Yesterday I met Shane at Java Joan's at the usual time. I saw my first Christmas tree of the year there, though I couldn't tell if they were done decorating it. There were only seven ornaments on it, and the lights didn't seem to work. Maybe Joan is making some kind of political statement.

We got our coffee and sat in our usual booth. Only this time when I asked Shane what was going on, instead of his usual initial response of "nothing," he launched straight into an impression of Rob bitching about how I portrayed him in the book. Rob claims he never drinks in the driveway like I said. "Never" is a matter of timing. He finished off part of the garage when I was in college and set up a card table and two chairs behind an old shower curtain so he couldn't be seen from the house. That was in response to Stephanie complaining about Shane always wanting to go outside to be with Daddy because he could see him out the kitchen window. Shane was 3 then. Please note in my book, Shane wasn't born yet. Stephanie was nowhere to be seen yet. Nothing Rob complained about was actually untrue. He just has a shit memory.

So while I was uninvited to Thanksgiving dinner, I was present as some kind of invisible guest, pilloried in absentia by Rob and his partner-in-moronity Pat Donovan at subsequently louder and louder volumes as the day progressed until Stephanie finally lost it. She slammed a wooden spoon against the table, snapping it in half and then tossed the handle on Rob's plate. Shortly after that, he and Donovan relocated to the gentlemen's lounge out in the garage. Apparently Donovan didn't find any of my descriptions of him flattering, either. (They weren't meant to be.)

Tis the season to be thankful

Every Thanksgiving at dinner, Drew's mom asks everyone to say one thing they're thankful for. Usually I can't think of anything, so I just say them, for inviting me. And everyone laughs, because it's the same thing I said last time. Seeing how I just lost my job and my book sales aren't exactly looking like they'll make up for the lost income (reminder, it's only a mere $3.99), I'm sure they'll understand if I fall back on the old gag once again tomorrow. But I've spent the last hour or so thinking about it, and I've come up with a few things that legitimately deserve mention.

Here's what I'm thankful for:

1. Yesterday outside Safeway, a woman and her daughter were giving away kittens. There were four in the box on my way in, and three left on my way out. I never had a pet when I was a kid. Rob never wanted one in the house. I don't think Janice did, either, but she would have caved if I had asked. Rob, not so much. I stopped and peered in the box just long enough to lock eyes with the mouthiest one. Black all over, with white paws and a white stripe on his nose. I needed someone, and he needed a home. I had to ask the woman to save him for me while I went back in the store and bought food, bowls, litter, a litter pan, and a little toy mouse. Free kittens are expensive. I'm not sure Drew was 100 percent in support of it, judging by his perplexed expression when he came home from work. But he knows me enough to know I'll clean up after it, so all he said was, "What's its name?" As it was literally biting and scratching me simultaneously at that moment, I went with Diafol, Welsh for Devil. It's not as mean to call someone the devil in another language. He is a little devil, but he's so cute, and he really seems to like me. So I'm thankful for Diafol.

One angry man, and a Thanksgiving dinner un-invite

My first free weekday since the layoff, and I went to bed early last night because I wasn't feeling well. I thought I felt a cold coming on, but I seem to have dodged it. Whew. I woke up to an interesting voicemail, though. It's been a while since I've scored a drunken screed from Rob. This one was quite the ramble. Give it a listen.


Here's what he said, if you couldn't make it all out:

"Jason, come on, man, I know you're there. I know you're there cause it's a cell phone. You just saw it was me, you don't pick up. I don't think I'd pick up if I was you either. Yeah, I saw the book. Ray Donovan had a copy on his iPad in the store. I saw it. He showed me the, all the parts. You know, you said when I asked you, you said there's nothing bad. You know there was nothing good. I didn't see one good thing about me in that entire book. Not the parts that I saw. You never appreciated anything I ever did for you, Jason. Nothing. Nothing. I hope some day, you know what I think would be funny, your kid writes a book about you, someday, and you'll get to see what he really thinks about you, and I bet you it won't be good. It won't be good at all. I'll laugh my ass off. I'll buy a copy of that book, that's for sure. I'm not buying yours. Ray wasted his money on it. You can thank him. You know, don't come over here on Thursday. You're obviously not thankful for anything, anything I've ever done for you, all the things I've ever done for you. No, not thankful. And don't bother apologizing. I know you won't mean it. I thought I knew you better than that. Ah, fuck it. I'm disappointed."

Finding hope among the Unlucky 7

Today was my last day at McGlothlin-Zilch. Yes, that's the real actual name of the company I've been employed by for the last eight years and four months. I no longer fear getting fired for identifying it, as I've already been kicked to the curb. The separation agreement I signed prohibits me from "disparaging or holding up to ridicule the name of the Company, its current and former officers, agents, and employees." Reporting that I was laid off does not violate that clause. (Also, I don't think making fun of the name "Zilch" is what they mean by "holding up to ridicule," but since I'm not a lawyer, I'll let you make up your own Zilch jokes and I'll leave that one alone. Though don't imagine for a minute that you'll hit on any my co-workers haven't already shared.)

And share they did this afternoon. All afternoon. We were walked out, one by one (there are only two security officers in our building and one had to man the front desk), starting at 10:30. Which would have been a long time already to sit around doing nothing if I had arrived at 8:30 like usual, but my boss (a true humanitarian, and I don't mean that in any sarcastic, severance-agreement-defying way) told us all to not bother coming in until 10:00.

So one-by-one the Unlucky 7 were debriefed in the most perfunctory and pointless of exit interviews (actual question: "Would you recommend McGlothlin-Zilch as an employer to a friend?") then relieved of our employee ID badges and marched to the front door. One-by-one we gathered in the Four Norsemen down the street. Sunil and Courtney got there first. I was third. The others trickled in as I nursed my ginger ale. I was the only non-drinker, which is why I never made a habit out of joining them on post-work outings. I do go to bars, but usually to see a band or for some other specific reason.

Ten ways to run out the clock after you've been laid off

If you've ever had problems getting motivated at work, try doing it after you've been laid off. Seven more days of this. I'm not alone, either. I can see it in the other "choppeds," as we refer to ourselves. Or "The Unlucky 7." That's literally half the team in the Seattle office that do what I do. What I did. I'm not doing it anymore, not even for the next seven days. Let the Mumbai crew get used to it. They'll be the ones taking on our work. For pennies on the dollar.

While I'm showing up and counting down the days/hours/minutes, here are some things I've been doing to keep occupied.

1. Scrubbing my personal data from my work computer. Any document, email, downloaded file, you name it, that I've saved over the past eight years is being reviewed and removed. Anything worth keeping goes onto a thumb drive. Most of it's not worth the space. Man, it's amazing how much crap you save on the off chance you might ever want to look at it again.

2. Shredding. Same general principle as scrubbing the hard drive, only you can physically see the progress. Our company has shredders in every printer alcove, which are meant for business sensitive information to be destroyed. I've found it's also an effective way to get rid of anything that might be incriminating or embarrassing, like cartoons I may have drawn of former co-workers and the Bullshit Bingo scoresheets this guy Benj and I used to mark up during team meetings. No sense taking the chance on someone mining that gold out of the recycle bin.

Slashed by the corporate reaper

If you think Halloween is scary, you should experience November in Corporate America. No treats, but plenty of tricks, all played on the employees. The cruelest part is you don't even see the Grim Reaper coming, because they're never wearing a hooded cloak or carrying a sickle. Just a wool blazer and a laptop.

The first sign is the hastily announced, mandatory staff meeting. When you get invited to an all-hands meeting that begins within the next half hour, rest assured, someone's getting laid off. Multiple someones, most likely. I was caught offguard the first time, four years ago. I thought something had happened to my boss's husband, because he'd been in the hospital the week before and she seemed suddenly so upset. He was fine. Four of my co-workers, not so much. That one came the week before Thanksgiving. Very festive. Every year since, the meetings have crept closer and closer to the start of the month. Almost like they never want us to be too sure when gallows-humor season officially opens.

This year's opened today. We got the meeting invite at 9:06. By 9:30, we were all gathered in the large conference room wondering who the unlucky bastards would be this time around. Things kicked off per usual, with a video presentation from our CEO Ed Slauss, or Slash, as we call him. From his cushy office in the Kansas City HQ, he small-talked us about all the trick-or-treaters they had in his neighborhood last night, how many Fortnite characters and Star Wars costumes he saw. Just a regular guy, connecting at the human level, like they taught in MBA school.

Half-truths and non-truths

I picked up on two things last night when I dropped my kid brother off at the house. First, Rob is jealous of my relationship with Shane, which only exists because there was such a void for a male role model in his life that I felt obligated to step in and fill it. How different things might have been for me if someone had done the same when I was his age. Second, Rob is dying to know what I said about him in the book. He may even be desperate enough to read it. If I'd had enough money to make an audio version, he'd give it a listen, no doubt.

He was out in the driveway with his partner-in-moronity Pat Donovan. In a sense, nothing has changed since I was Shane's age. Well, there's one significant difference. Nowadays they smoke the occasional blunt while knocking back their Olympias. Donovan's kid runs the High and Tight Dispensary over in West Seattle. Donovan helps out by sampling the merchandise. When Shane got out of the car, Rob came up to my window and said, "Shane tells me you wrote a book." I was caught a little off guard. I mean, I never asked Shane to keep it a secret, but it would have been nice if he'd warned me. I didn't figure the odds were too great Rob would ever stumble onto it on his own, considering he hasn't done much reading since his Dick & Jane days.

While I was still mulling over my best response, Rob asked, "Am I in it?" Again I paused to think before responding. "Well," I finally said, "it would be kind of hard to write a memoir without mentioning my family." Through his glassy eyes, I could see the wheels of his tiny mouse brain spinning. After about 15 seconds, he blew out a cloud of skunk and said, "Only good stuff, right?" Perhaps I should have warned him when I was in kindergarten that some day I'd write a book. If he cared so much about being immortalized in the printed page (okay, on the ebook page), maybe he would have gone about things differently. "Yeah," I said. "It's nothing big. Don't worry about it." Judging by the way he glared at me as I backed out, that didn't satisfy him.

The big day is here at last!

Wake up, America. It's a brand new day. Yeah, I still have to go to work and suffer through the fallout of certain co-workers being promoted. (Maximum Smug Level will undoubtedly be achieved.) But at least I get to celebrate the release of my new book. Yeah, the one I've been telling you and telling you about. It's here at last. And if you enjoy this blog, well, you're going to love the book.

So, get on it. Please. Fire up those ereaders and download away. (And the brilliant part is, if you read on a phone, you can probably do it right at your desk and  your boss won't even notice, as long as you don't laugh out loud too much.)

Kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07JDPQ154

Nook: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-first-world-problems-of-jason-van-otterloo-james-bailey/1129736330?ean=2940161919613

Everything else (Apple, Kobo, more): https://www.books2read.com/b/3L0X7w

The rise of the incompetents

Remember last week's post about the Facebook incident at work? The woman who caused all that trouble, Helen Figgins-Crabbe (again, I'll reiterate that that's not her real name, because she's the kind of person that would either sue me for libel or for the profits off this blog (zero) just for mentioning her) got promoted today. Yep, we got an email just before lunch announcing that she and another woman (let's call her Sally Sue Smith, even though she doesn't seem all that litigious) got bumped up from Senior Content Specialist to Content Analyst. For perspective, I'm the same job title/level they were, and I have worked circles around both of them since about two days after I started. (This is not meant to be boastful. Everyone else has too. And if you knew how boring my job was, you'd know that's nothing to brag about.)

My company has a policy where they won't promote anyone who hasn't been in their current position for at least 12 months. I got promoted on the one-year anniversary of my hire date. As did about half the people who were hired that summer. Helen and Sally Sue, who are both in their mid-50s, I'll guess, got promoted to Senior Content Specialists after the wave of all of us younger generation, because my boss took pity on them and wanted to reward their loyalty. They are the ones who are always befuddled every time we have to implement a new procedure or install new software, etc. At least Sally Sue isn't annoying about it. She seems to try, it just takes her a while to pick up on certain things. Helen's the one who wanders the cube farm lamenting change and wondering what was wrong with the old system, on and on, ad infinitum. She needs hand-holding and reassurance on everything. Though I should give her some credit, because she wrote a nice email to my boss once after I wrote up some documentation to help her learn how to create a fillable PDF. That helped me get my promotion. So she did serve a purpose at least once.

Happy 20th Anniversary to The Royle Family

Here's an anniversary that might have passed you by yesterday. Of course, maybe the entire series passed you by. The final episode of the first season of The Royle Family ran on October 19, 1998. I was 10 at the time, so I missed out on it the first time around. Then again, so did everyone else around here, because it was on BBC Two in England. But that's the beauty of streaming television. Everything that ever played on TV anywhere is available now. There's no excuse not to catch up.

Still, I might never have found it if not for Drew's girlfriend having spent her gap year in Manchester, England. She introduced us to the Royles. Made me feel kind of like I had a blind spot I didn't even know about. Hence it being a blind spot, I guess. But me, having grown up in such a dysfunctional environment, I should have been all over this show. Then again, without some kind of super spy satellite dish I would have had to have had some fine-tuned international messed-up family radar or something.

They could never have made a show about us like The Royle Family. We were hardly ever all in the same room. Maybe if they did a split screen they could have showed Rob out in the garage downing tall boys while Janice and I ate our mac and cheese. That would have been some riveting entertainment right there.

Anyway, for those of you who aren't familiar with it, here's a little taste of life with the Royles. And for those of you who are, this just never gets old, does it?

Looking out for the next generation

My employer is big on volunteering. The cynical side of me says they just want to look good to the wider community, but it's hard to knock a program that benefits the world around us, even if most of my co-workers use their time at their own kid's school, chaperoning field trips or whatever parents do in schools. I wouldn't know. Rob and Janice weren't the volunteery type.

We're allowed up to 24 hours of paid volunteer time per year, to be broken down however we want. You could do three 8-hour days, or mix in some half-days, or whatever works with your chosen project. I take mine in 2-hour blocks. One afternoon every month, I pick Shane up from school and we spend a couple of hours talking about life, big picture and small picture stuff, depending on what's on his mind. I told my boss I mentor troubled youth. I left out the part about it being my brother. But he's just as entitled to clear his head as any other random kid, right?

We'll usually grab a bite to eat or go shopping or fire up the PS4 at my apartment. Yesterday we did Java Joan's. It's not my favorite coffee shop, but it's close and it's never very crowded, especially right after school. He didn't believe me that it used to be a massage parlor when I was his age. The happy-ending kind. I bet Rob hit it once or twice. It got closed down a year or two after I graduated high school. One too many raids. The building sat vacant forever after that. About five years ago they finally renovated it, and it became a calzone takeout joint. There wasn't much market for calzone takeout, though. When that failed, Joan moved in, and brought a very different clientele to the neighborhood. Like most of her regulars, Joan's a lesbian. Like most of her regulars, she looks like she could whup my ass with one hand while not spilling a drop from the espresso macchiato she's holding in the other.

Adios, Mrs. Cabbage Patch

If nothing else comes out of this book, it did at least spark a reunion last night with my old friend Bick, whom I hadn’t seen in seven years. We lost touch after he got married, or more specifically, after he overheard me tell Drew I thought his wife resembled a Cabbage Patch Kid. To be fair, she did. But it still wasn’t the nicest thing to say. I thought he was in the men’s room, but it turned out someone had thrown up in the hall outside the restrooms, so he abandoned his urinal quest and was standing right behind me when I said it.

Imagine this doll with green eyes and it's
almost a dead ringer for Bick's ex-wife.

Anyway, I wanted to ask Bick’s permission before including his email replies in the book, so first I had to track him down. Which would have been easier if I hadn’t deleted Facebook. The only other social media he does is LinkedIn, and his bio there was three years out of date. I finally had to call his mom, who, judging by the change in her tone of voice after I identified myself, still blames me for Bick not getting into med school. (He’s the programming director for a Christian radio station, so you judge for yourself just how far he missed his calling in the surgical world.) It took me three days to finally work up the nerve to call him. Well, most of that time I was trying to talk Drew into doing it for me, just in case Bick was still hacked off about the Cabbage Patch comment. Even after I washed dishes three nights in a row, Drew refused. He just kept saying, “Grow up, dude.”

So I finally dialed the number … and Bick couldn’t have been more pleasant. He sounded genuinely happy to hear from me. Turns out he and Mrs. Cabbage Patch got divorced last year. She had an emotional affair with a guy in her office. Which turned physical. So a standard affair, with the emotional and the physical and the sneaking and plus a whopping lie about a business trip to San Jose, for which Bick even drove her to the airport. In the end, he found out about it on Facebook. Someone she worked with posted a picture of her and her work hubby getting chummy at the office Christmas party. Bick was already suspicious by then. When he confronted her, she didn’t even try to deny it. So he no longer minds that I insulted her, and we actually shared a laugh over it.

We (Drew and I) met him up at Conagliatelli’s in Greenwood. Not a lot has changed there since we were in high school. The video games have been updated, but the pizza is as good as ever. We sat in the same corner booth we always used to sit at. Bick had to run after a couple of hours, because he’s got a brand new puppy at home. His wife got the dog in the split, which hardly seems fair. Bick’s too nice. He should have hired a tougher lawyer to win the custody fight. At least there were no human kids to mess up. I bet their dog will come through it all without too much long-term emotional damage.

The Facebook incident

Hello again, everyone. Okay, Drew pointed something out from my post the other day. He said it was a cheap trick to mention this big Facebook episode and then not explain it. So today I’m going to explain, for the first time, why, exactly, I quit Facebook. And, no, it has nothing to do with them stealing all our data. Though that probably should have been a good enough reason on its own, the more I read about it.

No, the real reason was all about something that happened at work. And I’m going to change names here, and it probably won’t even help, because if one of my fine colleagues somehow finds this blog, they’ll more than likely rehash it all again just because they feed on drama. But, whatever; life’s full of risks, right? I could get shit on by a seagull just walking to the bus stop, but I can't just stay in my apartment all day.

What happened was my boss started this name game thing on the white board in the alcove off the kitchenette. She does these things that are supposed to be motivational team builders, but two-thirds of them devolve into sniping and negativity. She should have learned before now that most of my co-workers just like to bitch about stuff. If you offered everyone there a 10 percent raise with the stipulation they could never complain about anything ever again, they’d rather take the 1.7 percent raise we all got last spring and maintain the right to whinge nonstop. Anyway, the name game thing was just meant to be fun and spark some creative thinking. She kicked it off with Pete Moss and Sandy Beach, and other people added their own. There were a few decent ones, like Rick O’Shea and Noah Fence. Then we worked our way down to the tier C stuff, like Sue Mee and June Bugg.

I’m back, and other breaking news

Hello, Internet. Or should I say, hello again? Yes, I’m back. It’s been a while. What’d I miss?

Okay, it’s not exactly accurate to say I’ve been away from the web all this time. I’ve surfed, I’ve lurked, I’ve Facebooked (regrettably). I was content lingering on the fringes of cyberspace. Then something my therapist said (yeah, I’ll get to that bit, give me a moment) started the wheels spinning a couple months ago. Spinning in mud, really, until last weekend. She said, and I’m paraphrasing, we’re all social beings, and deep down we all need to connect, but the way most of us do is so unhealthy we’d be better off unplugging and staring at our toenails. Social media should come with warnings about all the side effects, just like medications you see advertised on television. “May cause paranoia, rage, and suicidal thoughts.” She was speaking generally, not about my reactions specifically. My side effects could better be summed up as disdain for my fellow man. You’ve probably been there.

Her advice was to never seek connection in short soundbites. Facebook and Twitter have robbed us of the ways we used to communicate, in long form. We try to be witty and sharp and wind up missing the mark more often than not. We obsess over how many Likes and Retweets we get, instead of sharing our authentic selves. This all came up after an incident at work over the summer. A stupid, inconsequential incident that blew up into a four-alarm inferno, thanks to a comment I posted on Facebook. My last ever FB comment, actually. I deleted my account the next day. I haven’t missed it for a second.

But I have missed … this. Stringing thoughts together into paragraphs, and paragraphs into posts. I loved blogging once upon a time, even if it did feel mildly narcissistic on occasion. I still have them all. The night I killed my blog, I archived it all—every post, every picture—on a thumb drive. Just in case I changed my mind. I honestly thought I would. I figured I could just repost it all and not say anything and no one would even notice it had been missing.