My Top Three Terrible Traits? Is That Even Possible?

Blog Every Day in May  Prompt 24. Your top three worst traits.

I asked My-Heck-of-A Guy (MyHog) what my three worst qualities were, and at first he hemmed and hawed, and then he pleaded the Fifth Amendment. You don’t think he was afraid of starting a little tiff a big fight a friendly conversation, do you?

Humph.

I guess I’ll have to answer this prompt on my own. You have to know one thing though: I have an innate ability to see the bright side of every negative. It may sound like I am avoiding the subject talking around the topic, but really, I’m not. You believe me, don’t you?

Terrible Trait One: Procrastination.

To some, this may mean being late with assignments, like posting a day late, or something minor like that. I do pay my taxes on time. That’s good isn’t it? And I am always ready on time when MyHOG wants to go out to dinner. So really, I don’t see procrastination as a big problem for me. So what if it takes me a teeny bit longer to get a few bitty things completed. I take my time to evaluate all possibilities before selecting the most obvious one. MyHOG calls this “analysis paralysis,” but I call it “exploring my options.”  Sometimes I nap take my time so I don’t make rash decisions and major mistakes.

Procrastination (which is a teeny problem for me, I admit that) connects with negative quality number 2, perfectionism.

Terrible Trait Two: Perfectionism.

I have discovered that errors creep into my blog posts while I sleep at night, so I have to be extra vigilant to guard against them. MyHog helps me root them out, but even so, if I even touch a post after it is polished off, the irksome pesty typos sneak in on their mission of havoc and destruction. That means that I have to read and reread and reread my posts before I post them. Perfectionism is tedious and dampens the creative spirit.

Terrible Trait Three: Poor Housekeeper Problem

My perfectionism does not apply to my housekeeping, which is, ummm, sort of a problem. I would rather write blog posts than clean house. I would rather look for cute kitty pictures on Internet than clean house. In fact, I would rather do anything rather than clean house. I was very clear with MyHOG before we married: “I do not vacuum.” I hate vacuum cleaners, and they hold me in similar contempt. I dust, but only when the sneezing gets out of control. So that’s our deal. He vacuums. I dust if I feel like it.

MyHog is also perfectionistic  obsessive-compulsive helpful in ways that assist me with my Poor Housekeeping Problem. He has Rules for Loading The Dishwasher, and somehow I have not mastered those rules (hahaha sorry about that, not), so therefore, he loads the dishwasher. Really, I don’t want to cause pain extra work for him by having to move cereal bowls to the top rack (Rule 1) after I put them on the bottom rack. And  heavens, what if I mix up the silver flatwear and break Rule 2, Keep eating utensils in like groups. No, it really is easier if he loads the dishwasher. He might as well unload it, too, since he knows how he loaded it.

I do clean house though, but definitely under pressure, like when I invite company for dinner, and the house is a wreck. We both go at it in a blitz and get it cleaned up. Yes, I dust. We try to have company over again within the next few days after this first dinner while the house is relatively neat. A week later is too late.

Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to go on and on with my top three terrible traits. I’ll do better next time. At least I’m not blowing my own horn.

The Last Meow.

Ah-choo. Ah-choo.  Bleh to housework! I mean, Meow for now. =<*;*>=  Bring on the weekend! Ah-choo.

Life Learnings Gleaned through The Passage of Time

Blog Every Day in May. Prompt 23: Things you’ve learned that school won’t teach you.

Primary school, elementary school, junior high, high school. Twelve, maybe thirteen years in school. Add two more if you went to preschool.  Add more if you went to college.  Our formal schooling took a lot of time, and we learned a lot of capital letter stuff and crossword puzzle stuff: the periodic table, the presidents of the United States, the state capitols, great battles in history, the amendments to the constitution, vocabulary lists, and more.

But life has taught me so much more.

I went to my 50-Year Golden Reunion at Gordon College this past weekend, driving from New Jersey to Wenham, Massachusetts (north of Boston) with my classmate, Judith Krom.  In chapel, we sat next to each other for four years in alphabetical order in numbered rows, class by class. Judith and I were both “Kro. . . . .”

On our road trip, we talked nonstop, and I do mean nonstop, about life and what we have learned in the 50 years since we graduated from Gordon. Here are a few of our highlights.

1. Learning is lifelong.

School is a nice, safe cocoon, but when you jump feet first into your chosen vocation, that’s when you start learning. In fact, we learned more on our first jobs than we ever learned in school.  We hustled in these jobs, working long hours just to make it through, learning to manage our time wisely, trying to do the best job we could do before going home exhausted.

Both Judith and I went on to earn higher education degrees, but we used our everyday work experiences as examples in our written class assignments. By day, we learned from supervisors and work associates; by night we learned how and why these associates worked the way they did. The extra courses and degrees? Those are all extras, refinements of our knowledge and essential to our personal and professional growth. The classroom learning polished off some of our rough edges and hopefully made us wiser.

Then when we retired and finished our work requirements, we both went back to school again. Learning is lifelong.

2. People are important. Nurture relationships.

We learned more from interactions with other people than we learned from our textbooks. Work associates, friends, and family members all gave assistance along the way. When we were willing to listen to their cogent advice, they helped us avoid physical, emotional, even financial disaster; they opened doors to other experiences and opportunities; they encouraged us in hard times; and they carried us (or covered for us) when we couldn’t quite make it on our own.

Our relationships grew deeper over time as we experienced together successes, sorrows, embarrassments, troubles, accidents, and mistakes. Our true friends stuck with us through it all.

3. Laugh a lot. Petty things don’t matter in the long run.

We talked about our insecurities of our early working days.  The old “If I knew then what I know now, my life would be different” entered the conversation. It’s true. But learning is a process, and it takes time. In hindsight, we can laugh about our mistakes. We acknowledged that we learned from our mistakes as well. Mistakes brought a deeper awareness of factors in situations that we had overlooked.

Our advice to others: Don’t get caught in absurdities or petty cricisms, or even self-imposed limitations.

4. Read, but do more than that, think. Think about what you read.

Read broadly and deeply. Pursue those interests you could not develop in school when you had to take the prescribed courses for your degree. Compare other disciplines with your own. I was lucky enough to enroll in a master’s degree program at the College of Notre Dame in Belmont, California where the administrators and professors emphasized an interdisciplinary approach. Although I was seeking a degree in educational administration, I worked through the master’s program in public administration, meeting with health care workers, fire workers, postal workers, city administrative officials, and others in public service. This led to an awareness that our problems in educational administration were not unique; others faced these or simiar problems. By teaming on class projects, we broadened our ideas and developed a greater appreciation for our public servants.

5.  Write. You do have a voice. Write.

Part of my lifelong learning plan is to read more and to write more. The form of reading for me has changed a great deal. While I used to read more fiction and nonfiction books, now I read more fiction and nonfiction posts. When I do read novels, I tend to read them on my Kindle, although I do love holding a hardback book in my hands when I read.

I started my blog on a lark, just to see if I could do it. At first, I felt a bit intimidated by the sheer numbers of blogs written by such good writers. But I have kept with it, and I have gotten some positive comments on my efforts.

6. You can do anything you want…just set your mind to it and do it.

Posts I have read today:

Sometimes we don’t write because we fear what others might say.  August McLaughlin responds to that fear in “Smash the Tomatoes: Dealing with Bad Reviews.”
Kristen Lamb, WANA guru, writes about Steve Jobs and 5 Tips for Being a Successful Author in her may 23, 2013 post.
Here’s the article that Kristen refers to in her post. “Wisdom for Writers from Steve Jobs Yes! THAT Steve Jobs.”

The Last Meow

Things I Learned in Catergarten:

1. Wake owner up early.

2. Start the day with a good catfeast.

3. Nap often, on owner’s computer keyboard preferably.

4. Act cute and get treats.

5. Be annoying and get treats.

6. Nap on the windowsill in the sun.

7. Eat dinner, and then get ready for bed.

Meow for now. =<^b^>=

Want to Join a New Blog Challenge?

I just survived the A to Z Challenge, and here’s my official badge to prove it.

So today, I’m reading around on my WordPress Reader and Sock Zone pops up with this new challenge she found on the Internet.

Story of My Life: Blog Every Day In May Challenge

I met Sock Zone at letter Z of the A to Z, then went back and read more of her earlier posts. Wish I had met her earlier. Now she’s signed up for this Story of My Life Challenge: Blog Every Day in May (short posts, 250 words, using 31 brief prompts). I thought she was a little nuts. But then I thought, why not?

So here I am. Jumping in with two feet, two days after the start. Don’t worry. I’ll catch up. The posts are short.

***Prompt 1. Wednesday. The story of your life in 250 words or less.

I’m a small town girl, born on a farm in Southern New Jersey. I grew up with  five older sisters, two older brothers, and one younger brother. The household, which included a dozen cats at any given time, with perhaps a dog or two and even a duck, was obviously noisy. But big families can be fun, a lot of work for Mom and Daddy, but fun.

Photo: My big sisters and me. I am the littlest one.

Being “number eight,” I followed in the footsteps of everyone else and wore all their hand-me-downs. It didn’t matter. Nobody really cared about that back then. Well mostly they didn’t. A few lah-de-dahs in my class teased me about my clothes, but I pretended not to care. But, I did, a lot.

I excelled at school, was the first in my family to go to college, and became a special education teacher so I could look out for all those kids who were teased and mistreated on the playground. After a number of years teaching, I got a master’s degree in administration and got a job as a principal in an elementary school in Alaska. How I got there is another story.

After ten years in Alaska, I moved on to Hong Kong International School for seven years as an early childhood administrator–720 children ages four to eight. I loved that job and the travel that went with it, but my husband got quite ill (cancer) and passed away (now thirteen years ago). I needed to take a break from everything, so I retired and moved back to New Jersey to be near my family.

Eight years ago, I married a guy I dated fifty years ago. (He finally got it right!) And now it is My Turn to Write, which is the name of my blog.

Story of My Life: Blog Every Day in May Prompts

Here are the rest of the May questions in case you want to tag along. Let me know in my comment section if you do, and I will try to read your posts.

Day 1, Wednesday: The story of your life in 250 words or less (or one paragraph… no one will be counting your words… probably)

Day 2, Thursday: Educate us on something you know alot about or are good at. Take any approach you’d like (serious and educational or funny and sarcastic)

Day 3, Friday: Things that make you uncomfortable

Day 4, Saturday: Favorite quote (from a person, from a book, etc) and why you love it

Day 5, Sunday: Publicly profess your love and devotion for one of your blogger friends. What makes them great? Why do you love them? If you don’t have blogger friends, talk about a real-life friend or even a family member

Day 6, Monday: If you couldn’t answer with your job, how would you answer the question, ‘what do you do’?

Day 7, Tuesday: The thing(s) you’re most afraid of

Day 8, Wednesday: A piece of advice you have for others. Anything at all.

Day 9, Thursday: A moment in your day (this can be just a photo or both a photo and words)

Day 10, Friday: Most embarrassing moment (s). Spill.

Day 11, Saturday: Sell yourself in 10 words or less

Day 12, Sunday: What do you miss? (a person, a thing, a place, a time of your life…)

Day 13, Monday: Issue a public apology. This can be as funny or as serious or as creative as you want it to be.

Day 14, Tuesday: Ten things that make you really happy

Day 15, Wednesday: A Day in the life (include photos from throughout your typical day – this could be “a photo an hour” if you’d like)

Day 16, Thursday: Something difficult about your “lot in life” and how you’re working to overcome it

Day 17, Friday: A favorite photo of yourself and why

Day 18, Saturday: Tell a story from your childhood. Dig deep and try to be descriptive about what you remember and how you felt.

Day 19, Sunday: Five of your favorite blogs and what you love about them

Day 20, Monday: Get real. Share something you’re struggling with right now.

Day 21, Tuesday: A list of links to your favorite posts in your archives

Day 22, Wednesday: Rant about something. Get up on your soapbox and tell us how you really feel. (a pet peeve, a current event, a controversial topic, something your husband or roommate or neighbor or boss does that really ticks you off)

Day 23, Thursday: Things you’ve learned that school won’t teach you

Day 24, Friday: Your top 3 worst traits

Day 25, Saturday: Something someone told you about yourself that you’ll never forget (good or bad)

Day 26, Sunday: Something you read online. Leave a link and discuss, if you’d like.

Day 27, Monday: A letter to your readers

Day 28, Tuesday: Only pictures

Day 29, Wednesday: Five songs or pieces of music that speak to you or bring back memories. Use Grooveshark or YouTube to include them in the post

Day 30, Thursday: React to this term: Letting Go

Day 31, Friday: A vivid memory

Meow for now. =<^;^>=