Month: May 2018

Making friends versus being professional

~ afledglingadult ~ Leave a comment

I and, I think many people, have a pathological need for people to like me. Partially, I think because my natural instinct is to assume that no one on earth likes me and it’s a miracle when people do. I try, really hard. However, I also am attempting to be a working professional. I really want to be productive and work with people to reach a common goal. However, when I work with others I often get distracted by wanting to become friends with who ever I was working with.

You know when you are working in a group project and often end up hating those who can’t hold their weight in a project. It’s so easy to let professional feelings mess with personal feelings and vice versa. Just because a person isn’t your favorite doesn’t mean they aren’t good at their job.

Sometimes I feel like I take that mindset with me into my work life. I take on more work than is fair so people will like me more. It’s hard to find a balance between effectively doing my job and befriending those in my new job. It is a lot harder than I had initially anticipated. I want to balance my life, but being liked in my job is important cause you know politics and stuff.

Wish me luck.

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I burn bridges and it’s a good idea

~ afledglingadult ~ Leave a comment

Ending any relationship with those close to you is hard, even if it’s for the best. Closure is harder. I find that burning bridges is the best way to achieve closure because it doesn’t let you go back, there is no temptation of the grass being greener behind you. I have a bad habit of going back on my decision, treating myself like a doormat because I prefer to be friends with someone. Even if they are TERRIBLE friends.

I don’t know that I had ever actually experienced closure until recently. Mostly because I am a super fan of quitting people cold turkey, because of the reasons mentioned above. However in the past 2 months I have a had to see a couple people that I had thought, hoped, prayed, I would never see again. This time, instead of feeling crazy and stressed, I felt good.

I felt so satisfied with my decisions and like oh yeah, my life is better without these humans. My pushing them away after the relationship needed to end, keeps them away and keeps me from going back. Anyway closure is a wonderful feeling and for me burning the bridges really helped me get there.

Thanks.

Best Short Lived TV Shows

~ afledglingadult ~ Leave a comment

Happy mostly Summer, but technically Spring or as my still in college friends call it: Finals Season. What I always like during the summer season is to watch a lot of short TV Shows that I can binge in a weekend and then move on.

1. Terra Nova: I am still upset that this got cancelled but it’s an excellent story and the first season is a good and complete arc. It is the story of the family that goes back to a colony in the Jurassic Period because the Earth is dying. The CGI holds up especially since it was made for TV and it’s just beautiful to watch. Also I really like family shows and dinosaurs.

2. Firefly: Probably the most classic unjustly cancelled TV show of all-time. Space Pirates. The cutest characters of all time: Kaylee and River.

3. Middleman: Think Torchwood by goofier and American (maybe implied). A young woman is recruited to be the assistant to the ONE man to defend humanity from all things alien in weird. It was hilarious and there was an Android assistant.

4. The Secret Circle: It was one season but once again for the most part the initial story arc felt complete. About a coven of witches and teenagers who make bad decisions and are honest about it, which is refreshing.

5. No Ordinary Family: This one we needed more from but it was so good. It was about a family that had suddenly acquired superpowers during a plane crash. It’s really sweet and has my favorite trope of accidentally working for the antagonist .

6. Dark Angel: Jessica Alba’s best role to-date no questions, she plays a woman who as a child was genetically modified and escaped a military compound as a child and tries to be a superhero. It’s two seasons and the best decision you can make.

7. Life Unexpected: Two seasons. The first show I remember making me cry. It is about a girl who is trying to be emancipated from foster care and finds that her birth parents never signed adoption papers and must find them.

Honorary Mention: Heroes because only two seasons are actually good and Star Trek: OG because in skipping the bad episodes you only have about a season worth of TV.

Happy watching.

Monthly Recommendations: Mental Illness

~ afledglingadult ~ Leave a comment

This month’s topic for Monthly Recommendations, a Goodreads group, is Mental Illness Rep. A big problem today is the stigma against mental illness and those who suffer from it. I am only choosing to include fictional books on this list although there are some excellent non-fiction and reference books on the subject.

The most current that I’ve read and probably one of the most popular is Turtles All the Way Down by John Green. The main character in this has OCD or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, which John Green also has. It’s really fun mystery but the anxiety representation is really well done. It also deals really well with grief.

Wintergirls by Laurie Anderson Hale is also one of the most reference but for a reason. CW: anorexia, bulimia, self-harm. It was the one of the first books I read that shows eating disorders as a form of self-harm and didn’t pull punches in the consequence that follow.

Another classic is Go Ask Alice by Anonymous. It is an diary by a real person from the 80s I believe that chronicles a teen girl’s spiral into addiction. Addiction is a serious public health problem as well as mental health. It is very gritty but it is a true story and a fast read as it is journal entries. It is a CW: rape, self-harm.

Something that needs to be addressed in the book community is mental health in fantasy books. Two books that start to address it are A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J Maas and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix by J K Rowling. Both main characters Feyre and Harry, respectively, suffer from symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. They relive their trauma, through dreams and panic attacks, and experience increase in aggressive and anxious behaviors after these experiences.

My top recommendations for general mental health books are She’s Come Undone by Wally Lamb and Impulse by Ellen Hopkins. She’s Come Undone follows the story of a young women’s life from her early life to her late 30s. CW: rape, binge eating, sexual abuse. A large portion of this story takes place in a mental hospital and emphasizes the important of therapy, medication, and the myriad of ways to cope. Impulse takes place in a mental hospital following three characters that have recently tried to commit suicide. CW: self-harm, sexual abuse.

If you are struggling with any of these issues, there is always help.

National Suicide Prevention Hotline: (800)273-8255

National Alliance on Mental Illness Crisis Text Line: Text NAMI to 741-741