Kicked aside.
Left by the side of the road.
Sidelined.
Side against.
Not as shiny as that thing over there.
Out of sight. Off to the side.
Something on the side.
Side dish.
Sidetrack.
Brushed aside.
A side note.
That’s my life.
Side
COVID-19 and Corporate Life
I hope you’re all doing well out there. I haven’t been moved to write a blog post in a very long time, but the topic of this post keeps coming into my line-of-sight and I have a few thoughts on it.
For most of my adult life, I have been a cube dweller in Corporate America. At first, it feels like your cube is your personal domain, and most people decorate with family photos, artwork, a houseplant or two, cute desktop accessories and so on. All this to mask the soul-crushing banality of the jobs themselves. Pumping out reports via spreadsheet or written analysis, endless Powerpoint presentations presenting facts in graphic form… lots of data-crunching consuming our lives. For decades people have bemoaned this existence and tried to escape from the office and its regimentation of punching the clock to sit at a desk, staring at a computer screen for eight or more hours each day. Over the years, cubes have become smaller and smaller, or you have to share with a co-worker, or it’s an “open floor plan” with no assigned desks (cubes are so 1970s) where first come, first served, so if you show up late you have nowhere to sit.
To quote from the movie Office Space:
“Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles, staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements.”
And then there’s the office politics, and the enforced socializing with co-workers who pry into every area of your personal life, then gossip about anything you tell them to everyone who will listen. I like to draw a line between my work life and my personal life, although this is a concept that seems to be lost on most people today. I tend to be a trusting person, and stupidly expect things I confide to be held in confidence. I’m also apparently a slow learner, because several times I’ve had to relearn the lesson that whatever you tell a co-worker will be spread around the company like wildfire.
Let’s face it: most of us are just drones making other people rich. We’ve been taught to feel grateful for every crumb tossed to us. For almost as long as corporate America has existed, people have dreamed of escaping the mind-numbing grind, and finally in the last decade or so more of us have been given the option to work from home, perhaps once a week, sparing us a long commute where we’re stuck in traffic for hours every day. Those of us who were not gifted this little luxury watched those who were with great envy. Even one day a week freed from this exhausting routine of racing out the door at 6AM and returning at 7PM seemed like a mini-vacation. My commutes have varied over the years; some were short when I was able to find work close to home, but more often I had hour-long drives each way, lengthening my day by at least two hours in no meaningful way. The gas, the traffic, the wear and tear on the car, road rage, or avoiding creeps on mass transit did not add to my quality of life. Working from home was a privilege extended only to upper management.
Until now.
Now with the COVID-19 virus, a lot more of us are working from home. In the age of high-speed internet and a lot of work being done on computers there’s been little valid reason to clog the highways every single day, except for tradition. You would think people would be relishing this new set up of a 5-second commute. I know I am. If I never had to set foot in the office again, it would be too soon.
But… I keep seeing articles on how much people are missing the office environment. They’re not just griping about not being able to go out drinking; they actually miss the office. Why? Because they miss the socializing.
Really?
I do not miss any of my co-workers one little bit. None of them. I do not miss shallow, superficial conversations with people I have no desire to know more deeply. I don’t miss listening to them clip their nails. I don’t miss the backstabbing, the misplaced anger from bosses who get irate because the airline canceled their favorite commuter flight and I can’t make them bring it back.
There’s a novel by Joshua Ferris called “Then We Came to the End,” about a Chicago ad agency, in which he says the employees showed up for work, not because they loved their jobs, but because it “presented challenges to overcome.” I think we convince ourselves to believe our jobs are meaningful because it’s the only way we can survive them, and I believe the majority of us show up because we need the paycheck, not because our jobs make our lives meaningful. It’s a bleak outlook, but the majority of workers are treated in a bleak fashion. The only people who want to go back are the upper echelons who are trying to climb the corporate ladder.
Companies have been encouraging video conferencing over physical travel for years, yet when that’s all their left with, suddenly it’s insufficient.
Personally, I am content to work from home for the rest of my career.
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Author Interview – Karissa Laurel, “Touch of Smoke”
Today I am honored to interview Karissa Laurel on the release of her latest book Touch of Smoke, a paranormal romance available as both e-book and paper book.
Tell me about your book, and is it a standalone or part of a series?
Touch of Smoke is a paranormal romance that takes place in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina. If the romance were taken out, the book would likely fall apart, and there is a happy ending, as required by the genre. However, the plot is heavily centered on solving a mystery (the death of the main character’s best friend), so there’s a lot more to it than whether the main couple end up together or not. There’s also a paranormal element that I hope readers find unique and original—but I don’t want to give anything away because it factors into the plot’s main mystery.
Touch of Smoke was written with every intention of being a standalone. I had just finished writing the final books in two different series, and I wanted a break (writing series takes a lot of energy and dedication for me!). However, after it went through editing, it ended up with a less definitive ending than the original version. The new ending finishes the story but also leaves several plot threads untied just enough to allow for a sequel. Several early reviewers have said they’d like to have sequel, but I haven’t made up my mind about it yet.
What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?
Research varies by book and genre. My first urban fantasy series was about Norse mythology. I did a lot of research for that, though it’s difficult to quantify how much or for how long exactly. I read a lot of the original Norse myths from several sources, and I spent a lot of time researching details on many, many, many different websites. While I read a lot of the original myths before starting, much of my research and fact checking took place as I was writing. I referred back to the original myths often.
For Touch of Smoke, however, there was less of a definitive body of knowledge to pull from for the mythology I used in this story (I don’t want to give too much away) so I found a few useful online sources, and I also read a few novels and anthology books focused on similar mythology to see how other authors had handled it. While I was writing, I also frequently depended on the internet to provide details, particularly about language and culture, and I asked a few people with specialized knowledge to verify if I got those things correct.
What’s the most difficult thing about writing characters from the opposite sex?
In my personal life, I’m the only woman in a houseful of guys (a teenage son, a husband, a father-in-law, and a brother-in-law who lives across the street), so I feel like I have a pretty good grip on what men are like. But the main thing I try to remember is to check myself for stereotypes and assumptions and to rely on feedback from my beta readers and editors when they say something doesn’t work. Sometimes I ask my son: “What would you do in this situation” so I can have a guy’s perspective. He loves helping me write. Of course, romantic heroes tend to be a bit more idealized than the average real-life guy, so some things work in romance novels that might not work in other genres.
What did you edit out of this book?
Other than a drastic change in the ending, not much was edited out. A couple of new scenes were edited in, though, when my editor and I agreed that the relationship between the main couple needed more fleshing out and needed to take place over a longer period. It’s hard to say what I edited out of the ending without giving away spoilers, but let’s say that I had made the original ending too easy. My betas and content editors all pushed me to make things harder on my characters and not to tie up things so neatly.
Do you hide any secrets in your books that only a few people will find?
Oh that’s a great question! I wouldn’t say I put any “Easter eggs” in Touch of Smoke, although I have put them in other books before. The town that is the main setting in Touch of Smoke is fictional, but it’s heavily based on a real town in the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, and I think anyone from that area will recognize several of the landmarks I mentioned.
What was your hardest scene to write?
Fight scenes and love scenes are always the hardest for me, and this book had quite a few of both. Fight scenes are hard because it’s easy to see in my head what the characters are doing but getting those details onto the page without being too repetitive, technical, or just plain boring is challenging. Love scenes are hard because intimacy can be uncomfortable and finding a balance between what is necessary and what is gratuitous takes a certain finesse. Although, anyone who knows me would say that I tend to be too cautions. My beta readers urged me to put in more details when I wouldn’t have, otherwise.
Do you hear from your readers much? What kinds of things do they say?
I have a few very dedicated readers who reach out to me often on social media and if it weren’t for them, it would be hard to keep going sometimes. They are super encouraging and supporting and generally ask me how soon I’ll have another book ready. I particularly like when they talk about my characters like they’re real people. While I have had my share of negative reviews on Amazon and Goodreads (as does every author), I’ve been fortunate to never have received any negative comments directed at me personally.
How many books have you written? Which is your favorite?
I have written many more books than I’ve published. I’ve published seven full novels, one novella, and a smattering of short stories. I’ve written at least four novels that will probably never see the light of day and many short stories that were rejected and eventually abandoned when I realized they were beyond redemption. My favorite is hard to choose. I have ones I like less than others, but I think my favorite tends to be my latest release, until I have a new book to focus on.
What’s next for you? (i.e., another in this series, or something new?)
Next, I have a short romantic historical fiction story, featuring a highway woman and a French blockade runner during the American Revolution, appearing in a pulp fiction anthology from Crazy 8 Press that should be released sometime this summer.
I’m currently working on a YA contemporary fantasy novel set near Asheville, North Carolina focused on bluegrass and traditional music. It was inspired by a random idea to gender-flip the Lost Boys movie from the 80s and substitute sirens for the vampires.
Where can readers find your book?
Thanks, Karissa! And best of luck with the new book.!
You can find Karissa’s website here and follow her on Twitter @KarissaLaurel
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Thoughts on Mortality
I’m inspired to put some thoughts down by a video Katey Flowers posted on YouTube of her year with the “Death” card from the Tarot, and her musings on aging and life and death. I decided to post this here rather than on my Tarot blog because this isn’t necessarily a Tarot post (maybe I’ll cross-post it).
I’m at the age where I spend a great deal of time thinking about death (a great deal) and how much closer I am to my own end than to my beginning. I have far more days behind me than ahead of me. I’ve started planning out what sort of instructions I want to leave for my heirs, make sure they have access to all my accounts, both online and offline. I think about how much crap I have that I need to get rid of to spare my kids having to clean it all out. I think about people I’ve lost so often. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wished my dad was still alive to see some new technology (he was an electronics engineer) or a movie or show I think he would have liked. He died when he wasn’t much older than I am now.
Of course everyone dies, it’s not that I expected to live forever. I don’t actually think about how I might die, that’s not the part that concerns me. It’s the idea of winking out of existence, passing into oblivion, that disturbs me because I have no belief in an afterlife. This is it, here and now. Please spare me any platitudes about the inevitability of dying and accepting with grace. Maybe the day will come when I can, but not now. Right now I feel no more ready to accept that than a teenager. Intellectually I am perfectly aware that the day will come, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. I’ve lost both of my parents, all my aunts and uncles, a cousin, friends so it’s not like I’ve never experienced losing someone. I know it happens, but that doesn’t change my frustration.
Part of my raging against death may stem from the feeling that I haven’t accomplished anything with my life, that I will never feel done, ready to die. There are so many things I would have liked to have been and done and learned in this life that I will never have the chance for. Maybe that’s why I’m so fascinated with Tarot. I look to the cards for a deeper understanding of the nature of existence, some reason to believe this isn’t all there is. How can we live, exist, breathe, think, be self-aware, and not be able to somehow do something about the terminal nature of life? It seems cruel for the universe to give us the capacity to understand we will cease to exist, doesn’t it? And yes, I understand the contradiction embodied in the idea of seeking a spiritual understanding if I don’t have any belief in an afterlife.
I know I’m not alone in this dread, and that it’s why some people cling to religion, or a belief in ghosts. We’re hoping to find some proof of something beyond this world, that physical death is not really the end. I’ve had unexplained occurrences that seemed ghostly, but they’re not definitive proof. Not yet. I need more.
I guess for now I will continue to search. I’ll let you know if I find enlightenment, or at least acceptance.
I did feel compelled to pull a card from the Druid Plant Oracle, and interestingly got the Celtic Bean, which is associated with death, reincarnation, the ancestors, and the Otherworld. A message?
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Welcoming the Doldrums
Now that the holidays are over, we coast into the doldrums of January, February, and March, that long stretch with no holidays or long weekends (well, some of you get Presidents Day, and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day) that feel like they go on for six months, rather than three. Spring break looms for those with kids. For those without, life will go on pretty much as usual.
And I’m so there for it.
I have a complicated relationship with the end-of-year holidays: Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s. There’s a melancholy to them threading through the mirth. People who had happy childhoods have unhappy adulthoods, forever trying to recapture the joy of those happier years.
I had a large-ish family: Mom, Dad, and four sisters. In general, Christmas was a magical time, as indeed all of winter was for me. What child doesn’t love playing in the snow? And we got a lot of it. Holidays in our home were exciting and fun, even though for most of my childhood years we were quite poor. Mostly I remember Christmas lights glowing warmly on snowy evenings, electric candles in each window of the house. In those days nobody was doing those garish, hideous displays with tens of thousands of lights, trying to rival Disney’s Electrical Parade. There was one house in town that put up a homemade animated tableaus of large, 3-foot-tall elf dolls in working ski lifts, riding around on a carousel (elf-sized), working in Santa’s workshop, and all manner of things. It was a wonder, and it was charming. People came from all over to see it. It was written up in the local paper year after year.
But mostly I remember the warmth of Christmas, a child’s memories of it as magic. We always decorated the tree as a family on Christmas Eve (a tradition of my mother’s Norwegian upbringing), my dad singing “O Tannenbaum” in his baritone voice as he put tinsel and ornaments on the branches my sisters and I were too small to reach; Dad pulling out the old reel-to-reel tape player and cueing up the Christmas music. I will forever associate “The Troika” with my dad. One night when putting the youngest 3 of us to bed, my second-eldest sister (who has an incredible voice) sang “Silent Night”. Even then it made me cry.
I have moments when the music helps. My local classical music station does a 4-day “Festival of Carols” full of ancient music, familiar tunes done well, carols from around the world (the Finnish are some of my favorites), and it’s just glorious to listen to. Shame it’s only 4 days on the regular broadcast frequency (they have a new HD station that starts earlier, but I don’t have an HD radio). Now even the music has lost its spell. It’s been the one thing I’ve looked forward to over the years, the main thing that I could take solace in now that both of my parents are long dead, I’m estranged from most of my sisters, and all my aunts and uncles are gone. I’ve spent many Christmas Eves alone, put up and decorated trees by myself, because even though there was no one else to do it with, it was still a link to those happy days. This year the tree was put up without me, and taken down without me.
Christmas lights no longer cheer me; in fact they leave me cold. Maybe they’re just too pre-packaged and processed for my taste (don’t get me started on the inflatables). As I writer this, there are still a few folks who have their lights up and on even now, after the new year. I see them as I drive to work in the morning, and come home at night. The season just seems to have moved so far away from the gentle family celebration it once was I start to wonder if we’ve simply outgrown the spirit of it in the 21st century. It feels like if you didn’t get a new car for Christmas you’re doing it wrong. Maybe I just want to be a child again. I miss my mom and dad so much, even after all these years. There’s so much family drama and stress now, and most family traditions have gone by the wayside.
So I, at least, am glad the holidays are over, and I welcome the looming doldrums.
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New Year, New Focus
So the new year is approaching and while I don’t make New Year’s resolutions anymore, the timing coincides with a resolve to stop wasting time and get more writing done and submissions sent out, as well as work on the sequel to Revenants Abroad, and finish the romance I started and have been posting at a glacial pace on Wattpad.
My problem (ok, one problem) is I have too many interests, but not the time to indulge in them. There’s a Star Trek:TNG episode in which an alien woman named Kamala (played by Famke Janssen) wows Capt. Picard with her knowledge of archaeology (a passion of his). He expresses surprise and admiration at this, and she tells him that she tries to stay informed on a wide range of topics. I envy people who can do that. I’ve always tried to read widely and learn as much as I could about whatever piqued my interest. Lately I’ve had to be realistic and acknowledge that I don’t have the luxury of time Kamala did. I can either spend tiny bits of time on a million things or I can focus more on my writing, which I’ve let slide to some degree while being distracted by politics and other things on Twitter. Oh my god I waste time on Twitter. My Craft studies have ground almost to a complete halt, with the one exception being my Tarot collecting. But collecting isn’t studying. I have a number of Tarot books that have been waiting for longer than I can say for me to get around to reading. And for Christmas I received a lovely new book on herbs which I’ve added to the TBR pile, Blackthorn’s Botanical Magic
While Twitter opened a wider world to me, and indeed can be a great help for writers with all the practical advice and wisdom, resources, and moral support, I have to learn how to put the brakes on. Maybe a time limit per day, or per week.
My aim this year is to devote the majority of my free time to writing, and things that help me along that path: reading more for pleasure and books on the craft of writing. Let’s hope I can stick to it.
Wishing you all a very Happy 2019. May you all prosper and reach your goals in the coming year.
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A Little Help
I know things are tight for most of us these days, and all you goodhearted people are probably stretching to help out some of the victims of the fires in California, or other worthy causes, and bless you all for that.
Now my friend Abby is in pretty dire straits financially. Abby worked at the same company where I work, although she was a contractor and for reasons I’m not real clear on had to be let go for a 3-month period. She also has a second part-time job. She’ll be coming back (again as a contractor with no benefits) in January, but until then she’s really struggling. As luck would have it, shortly (like, within a week) of being let go from where we worked together she had an emergency appendectomy, followed by complications necessitating a second hospital stay. She was about 3 days into another contract position when this hit. She was unable to work most of October because of all the medical issues. Making matters worse, she has fluid in her lungs, and one collapsed lung, a by-product of the surgeries. Consequently she was very limited on what she could do, and couldn’t work at either of her jobs during the initial recovery. She’s still walking with a cane.
She’s back at the new contract position now, but it’s a rough commute (she has no car) and much farther away.
In short, she needs help getting through the next couple of months. She set up a GoFundMe today, for a very modest amount.
https://www.gofundme.com/help-recovering-from-2-surgeries
If you can spare a few bucks, Abby would be incredibly grateful, as would I. I know it’s hard with the holidays coming up to try to find extra cash. If you can’t contribute, please consider signal boosting on your social media accounts. Thanks a million for reading.
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When Door Knobs Attack
My house is old.
It was built in 1957, and has had precious little updating since. With an old house you expect things to go out and need repairs/replacement. It’s had lots of plumbing issues over the years (although the worst turned out not to be anything specifically to do with the pipes in the house, but something called orange pipe that connected the house line to the city sewer lines. The city actually fixed that a few years back, but before they did boy howdy every flush of the toilet or load of laundry made me hold my breath to see if it was going to back up into the bathtub. Good times.) along with other issues, like the roof, gutters, water heater, furnace… but I digress.
Now, if you’ve ever had to pee at 2:30 in the morning, you know you don’t get out of bed until you really need to, and the last thing you want is to find yourself effectively locked into your own bedroom, as I was last night. So not amusing.
The old doorknob had been tough to open for a while now when the door is fully shut. The knob could only turn one way to retract the latch (that’s the part that generally goes into the strikeplate on the door frame, which is what keeps it closed.) Like so:
So at 2:30 I had to use the bathroom, and wouldn’t ya know it, that latch wasn’t playing. Ten minutes I stood there, trying to wrangle that thing open to no avail. By then I was starting to get a little panicky. Clearly something had failed inside the latch assembly, and with the screws to remove the door knob on the outside of the room I couldn’t even try to remove the knob or take the thing apart.
My next idea was to take the door off the hinges. The top hinge pin slid up and out just fine like it was waiting to be relieved of duty, but the bottom hinge wasn’t budging, clearly in league with the door knob. I tried to find something, anything, in my bedroom that I could use to try to pry the hinge pin up and out and remove the door. The first thing I found that was strong enough to use as a lever was an incense burner, one of those long, flat brass ones for holding joss sticks (am I the only one who doesn’t keep tools in the bedroom?). Good thought, but no dice. Somehow there was too much space between the top of the hinge pin and the knuckles (that’s what those things are called that the pin sits in) that hold it to get enough leverage.
It finally occurred to me that the latch was retracting most of the way, so I pulled it back as far as I could, then jammed the incense burner into the slight space between the door and the the door frame, and managed to push the latch the rest of the way in and open the door. FREEDOM!
So I now have a shiny new door knob that works the way it’s supposed to. I guess the moral of the story is to burn incense, or maybe fix things before they completely break? Something like that.
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Spirit of Halloweentown 2018
Fans of the Disney series of movies “Halloweentown” are surely familiar with the filming location in St. Helens, Oregon. We heard tell of someone who had come out from Boston specifically for this event. Admittedly, I’m not as huge a fan as some (not that I don’t love the movies) so this was my first trip out to St. Helens for the annual celebration. The town goes all out for this. I don’t know how much of a money-maker it is for them, but I’m sure it’s a much-needed infusion of cash for the local businesses.
We had perfect weather, which is always touch-and-go around here. It rained all day Friday, and is raining again today as I write this, but yesterday (October 6) was sunny and warm, with a little breeze. We couldn’t have asked for more. I got the “All Access Pass” ($35) which gets you into the Festival of the Fairies, Museum of Oddities, the Alien Landscape. I didn’t make it to the Alien Landscape, the tractor that tows the shuttle broke down at one point in the middle of the road where the parade was going to come through later, but luckily they got it running again later and out of the street in time for the parade
This pumpkin is not as big as the one in the movie, although it does light up at night.
The city hosts a scarecrow contest for the local businesses, so they almost all have some kind of scarecrow outside. The driver of the shuttle that took us out to the Museum of Oddities was filling us in on some of the nuts and bolts of where the money goes from the All Access tickets (not to the city coffers, apparently, but to scholarships sponsored by the Rotary Club and other organizations).
The gargoyle in the pics above was being playful and obliged me by posing menacingly for pictures. At first he looked like part of the display, but started creeping up on another kid looking at the skeleton. He was clearly having a lot of fun.
A lot of people were dressed up in costumes, but not as many as I’d hoped. I had planned to dress as a witch myself, but didn’t finish my cloak in time. Next time…
The parade for some reason was very late getting down to the Plaza. It was supposed to run from 6-7, but didn’t even get going (at least didn’t reach the plaza) until very late, nearly 8:00. By then the crowd on the sidewalks was spilling into the street where cars are typically parked, leaving a relatively narrow route for the parade to move through when it finally arrived. A couple of small children almost got trampled by a horse, but their mother managed to pull them back in time.
In the fairy garden 
Fairy guarding Stonehenge 
Frank and the missus 
Museum of Oddities 
Businessman with a wild streak 
Odd mummy
Stonehenge in the Fairy Garden 
Dragon eggs 
Everyone was in a good mood and friendly and cheerfully taking pics for others while they posed in various places. There was a line to get a photo with the big Jack pumpkin most of the day, so I was very lucky to get a shot of it with no one standing next to it.
We didn’t see any of the actors from the films, but I understand several of them were around somewhere.
The paving stones pictured above run all through the plaza park. Some are plain, but many have snippets from the diaries of Lewis and Clark.
While waiting for the parade, my party and I took up a spot on the sidewalk in front of the local repertory theater, and were lucky enough to be standing next to one of the people involved in it, who was telling us about some upcoming performances. They’re called The ShoeString Community Players. They’ll be doing a re-enactment of Orson Welles’ broadcast of “War of the Worlds” in a couple of weeks that we hope to go back for. I’m not sure how that’s going to be done, but sounded like fun and affordable at $5 a ticket.
It was a fun day, and there’s lots you can do and see for free. More info on their Facebook page. I plan to go back and explore St. Helens a little more, it’s a nice little town.
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Belonging
I’m still trying to settle in to my new job. I started in late October, and it really took awhile to even begin to feel like I was “one of them.” I’m still paranoid about everything I do. There have been some shakeups in the upper echelons already just since I’ve been there (one right before I started resulted in me working for a different person than I was originally going to), which makes me a little uneasy. My boss assured me that we’re fine, there won’t be lay-offs, but my PTSD after the last couple places I was at have me ready to polish up my resume again, just in case.
Just getting to know my new co-workers feels so odd. I didn’t expect to be starting over again at this point in my career. I usually make friends pretty quickly, generally find one or two ladies that I hit it off with quickly, but I’m not finding that here. Everyone has been very nice, though I’m missing that sort of instant connection, if you know what I mean. For the first time I feel very alone at work, out of my element. I realize I haven’t been there long, and the older we get the harder it becomes to make friends. Maybe I’m expecting too much.
At the same time, the senior admin has organized a half-day off for the admin team on Administrative Professional’s Day (sometime in April) which frankly I could do without. We’re going to lunch, then to some craft shop to make signs with the initial of our name, and “date established.” For most people that would be their wedding day, when their ‘family’ was established. I jokingly suggested 1692 (the date of the start of the witch trials in Salem). Nobody got the joke. One of the other ladies poked me in the arm and said, “When did you get married?”
“I’m not married.”
“Oh.”
I must be the only single person here.
So now I have to go out and make this thing that will likely go straight in the garbage when I get home. It should look something like this:
I was hoping we could have gone to a movie instead. Oh well.
I don’t seem to have much in common with anyone here, or really anywhere else for that matter. There’s a younger woman who recently started, 30-years-old, who told me she feels very comfortable with me and has confided things about herself to me already that quite frankly I could have lived with not knowing. I’m not sure if it’s her age, but I hope she calms down a little. She seems to have this intense desire to prove herself to everyone here (not a bad trait, necessarily) but I think she’s going to alienate others because she’s trying so hard to be right about everything, rather than listen and learn. Although she does frequently ask me for help with things. She keeps telling me she’s an “over-achiever.” Well, we’ll see. She doesn’t consider herself a “millennial” because she hates millennials, and thinks them very stupid and selfish and lacking in manners. She’s awfully opinionated for someone so young. Is that a trait of youth? Was I like that at her age, I wonder? I probably was, to some degree. Makes me cringe now to think of it.
Anyway, this non-millennial millennial may yet end up in my novel.
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