Early January Photos

Just a few recent pics.

Moon and Venus, 7AM, Jan. 6, 2016

Sunrise over Farksolia, Jan. 6, 2016. The roads were total ice, so traffic was doing about 20mph through this stretch.

And without the wires

Snow earlier in the week (January 3) so I got to work from home that Monday (Jan. 4). It didn’t amount to much, only about an inch and a half, but it stuck around in my area for several days. My backyard was still snowy on Thursday (the 7th) when it was gone from just about everywhere else in the area. The hills of course had it worse.

 

 

Daffodils aren’t afraid of a little snow.

 

 

 

Survival Mode

So here we are, the last week of November, with that-holiday-that-shall-not-be-named right around the corner. Here comes the panic, and the racing around, and the fretting over money we can’t really afford to spend, and ‘To-Do’ lists growing exponentially even though time is speeding up.

Yeah, I really look forward to the holidays.

I gave up on NaNo a couple weeks back when my day-job took a nasty turn and I was too distraught and succumbing to panic attacks to even think about writing. Luckily, the panic attacks have subsided so I can sleep again, an unexpected pleasant surprise on the job front (no, not a new job) gave it an interesting wrinkle. But I’m so far behind on NaNo now there’s just no way to catch up. I can’t possibly crank out 40k words by Saturday at midnight. Oh well, no biggie. I have other things of far greater significance to which to devote my attention.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter have no doubt seen me griping about a co-worker I variously referred to as Ms. Amherst, or Ms. A, or most recently, Princess. She is a suck-up to end all suck-ups, like I have never seen. She got the two top dogs in my department so completely wrapped around her little finger, and they had no idea. People are so susceptible to flattery and schmoozing, it almost made me feel dirty to watch it happen. It still boggles my brain that they couldn’t see through her. Everyone else could. People outside our department would comment that they felt sorry for anyone who had to work with her. (I say this so you know it’s not just me. She had even bragged about how much others outside our department who had to deal with her hated her. I’m sure she assumed they were jealous of her fabulousness).

So here’s the thing: She took another job at our company, and gave notice a couple days ago. After all the cozying up to the department head and office manager, she’s bailing for what she sees as a more ‘important’ position. She just loves to feel important. I could tell our office manager was a bit shell-shocked, and was reeling trying to figure out how this could happen and how she’s going to cope with the loss of Princess. I wonder when (if ever) it will dawn on her that Princess only does what Princess wants to do to advance her own career, and all the brown-nosing and schmoozing were just to ingratiate herself while she had to? But, this is the kind of person that management always loves. Toss out enough buzzwords and jargon and spend as much time as possible hanging around chatting with the higher-ups, and you’re in like Flint. Competence plays no part in career success. And I wonder how long her new boss will put up with her showing up when she pleases, and taking 8 15-minute bathroom breaks a day, along with two trips out for food, and an hour lunch break? But, maybe like my manager, they won’t notice.

I guess going in to my boss and saying “I told you so” wouldn’t be the best strategy here.

I’m still looking for a new job. I suppose I should learn to schmooze but the idea makes my skin crawl. I guess I’m just not corporate material.  What I am doing is looking into finding work doing freelance writing, with an eye to leaving the corporate world behind for good.

In the meantime, I have a short 2-day workweek this week. THAT will be fabulous. With that, I wish you all a lovely Thanksgiving, however you choose to spend it. Enjoy your turkey, or Tofurkey. Chin up, we’ll survive the holidays yet. Click the picture below for a Thanksgiving ecard from me, to you.

A Little Follow-Up on the Helium discussion

A few weeks ago I talked about a blog here on WordPress that was basically a sales pitch for the article mill, Helium.com. Surfing through blogs again this morning, I ran across Freelance Writing Income Home who has actually tried writing for them, and has broken down the numbers.

Just in case anybody was wondering they’re not good, although I don’t expect there was much suspense there, was there? I just read this Freelance Writing Income blog this morning, but he seems to be making a living doing this stuff so it seems be worth checking out further. Darren Rowse of Problogger.net has been making a tidy income (reportedly in six figures) for some time now blogging. While blogging as a career has not been my main ambition, it is fun, it’s something I really do enjoy doing, and if I could make some money from doing it that would not be such a bad thing. Darren freely shares what he’s learned about blogging as a business so if you’re interested he’s a great resource although you’d have to get a blog somewhere else to do it as WordPress doesn’t allow that.

That said, writing articles for these article mill sites doesn’t seem to be of any value whatsoever. And don’t even get me started on term paper mills.