Monthly Archives: November 2022

Being A Word Nerd (or A More Normal Halloween Celebration)

Posted on November 2, 2022 | Comments Off on Being A Word Nerd (or A More Normal Halloween Celebration)

For almost as long as I’ve lived in LA, I have celebrated Halloween at my friend Marie’s party. It’s a tradition for me and I look forward to it every year. Of course, we had to skip the normal party for 2020, but we had a virtual party that year. And last year, it was a much smaller party than normal because it was mainly for people who have been in the same pandemic bubble together. All of the in-person parties since the pandemic have been that way, so they’ve been smaller groups. But even with fewer people at the parties, they have been so much fun and we all love hanging out together.

But this year, they did a more open party and it was the biggest party I’ve been to in a long time. There were still people wearing masks, which I think might be the way things go for a while, but since the party was held outside I felt pretty safe. And even though I didn’t know everyone there, I knew most of the people and the new people were friends of friends. So it was much more comfortable than being at a party where I didn’t know too many people or if I was at a party that was held inside.

I loved getting to be around so many people and even though I can be overwhelmed in crowds, I know that I was craving this social interaction. And I was so excited before the party to see what costumes everyone would come up with. I know that everyone is so creative and that I would be in awe over what crazy ideas people would come up with. For my costume, I went with something simple which is what I tend to do. I like to have costumes that I don’t have to necessarily drive in since my drive to the party can be an hour if there is some traffic. So having things that can be added to my outfit are the best option.

I didn’t have an idea for the longest time and I was worried as the party was getting closer if I would have some inspiration for a costume. But as it usually happens, I was inspired and knew immediately what my costume would be as soon as I saw it. This time, I saw it through TikTok, and I was so excited to make it as soon as I saw it.

I love playing different word games, including playing Wordle. I play it every day and have a text group with my family to share our scores each day. And I loved the idea of going as a game of Wordle to the party. I picked the words I put on there carefully because I didn’t want to have to make a ton of extra letters. So I figured out something that would make it super easy to guess, but I had little velcro strips on the extra letters and spaces to the costume so it would be interactive. I didn’t end up using any of the extra letters I made up since everyone was able to guess it on the first try, and I didn’t want to keep taking them on and off the costume. But I think people had fun with it even if they don’t normally play. But in the costume contest, I wasn’t even close to the top ones. The best costume was someone as Madame Leota from the Haunted Mansion. They made a tabletop that went on their shoulders and had a plastic bowl over their head to make it look like a crystal ball. It was so impressive and they easily won first place.

I was at the party later than I normally would be, but I knew the next day I could sleep in a bit and didn’t have to worry about getting too much done in my day. I wanted to spend enough time hanging out with my friends and getting to know the new people at the party since they probably will be at future parties as well. It was really a great time and felt like the old normal for a brief moment of time. I know all of us are still being careful with Covid and making sure we don’t take too many unnecessary risks, but it is also nice to be able to put down my guard and just relax with my friends.

And now, I have only a few months until the Oscar party and I know I want to think of a good costume for that one too! It might not be too elaborate, but I like having something fun and clever and I want to start planning for it as soon as I can!

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Working On Being More Efficient (or Learning Not To Do Everything Myself)

Posted on November 1, 2022 | Comments Off on Working On Being More Efficient (or Learning Not To Do Everything Myself)

Happy November! It’s so crazy that we are almost at the end of this year, but as always the months are flying by! I feel like October was even faster than most months, but I think I say that every month. But this time, I felt like the month was just getting started as the month ended. But even though the month felt like it went by too fast, I still made an effort to get as much as I could with my monthly challenge.

I challenged myself in October to get out of the rut that I’ve been in and to try to say yes to doing more stuff. I did try to say yes to things that fit into my schedule. I couldn’t say yes to everything because I had plans or other things I had to get done, but I tried. I hung out with friends when I could, but it wasn’t as often as I would like. I said yes to dates even if I wasn’t totally sure about the guy (I never agreed to a date if I felt like it would be unsafe, but if I felt like I would be safe I gave guys a chance). When I saw things come into my inbox, I tried to see if I could make plans to do something. It wasn’t as successful as I would have liked it to be, but I think that was because I was dependent on other people inviting me to things and I didn’t do enough outreach on my own.

I’m hoping to be a bit better about reaching out to friends to go do things moving forward. I do know how important it is to continue to try to be social because it’s so easy to not do that. And just considering going to my workouts isn’t enough to really have a social life. For a while, that was all I did and I know I need to do more than that. So I hope that I can continue to work on making plans and not just be lazy every day after work or spend the weekends recovering from my week.

For this month, my challenge might be more related to my work than anything else but I also might find ways to incorporate it into my regular life. I want to find more ways to be more efficient in my work and to be ok with asking for help more often. I have realized with some recent work tasks that there are things that I didn’t have to spend as much time doing if I had asked someone if there was a better way to do them. I haven’t had a lot of tasks I couldn’t do, but there’s no need for me to spend days working on something if someone else can help me do them in minutes or hours.

A good example is how we tag our clients in our database. I was working on updating and adding specific tags which were taking me a lot of time. It wasn’t something that was difficult, but it was time-consuming. Someone mentioned that there might be a way to do mass tagging in our system, so I set up a meeting to talk to a member of the executive team to ask about it and they were able to get all the work done for me in minutes. I also learned how to do what they were doing, but there were some tasks that they needed to do since I don’t have full editing permissions in our database. But it was so great to see something that I was expecting to work on all week be done in a single meeting.

A lot of the work I’ve been doing lately are things that take up time and are very repetitive. And I know that for some of this work, there isn’t a shortcut or easier way to do them. They just have to be done one at a time and there’s no way around that. But it never hurts to ask if there is a better way even if I feel sure that there isn’t because I might be surprised. So I want to focus this month on asking for this type of help so I can make sure I’m using my time the best way I can.

It’s hard for me to ask for help because I don’t want people to think I can’t do my work. But I also know that asking for help doesn’t mean I can’t do it, it just means I’m making sure I’m not missing something that might make my life easier. And this could be applied to other areas of my life such as hiring someone to clean my place every so often. I can clean my house on my own, but it’s nice to have someone else to do it too if I’m too busy. Of course, things like hiring cleaners also involve money, so it’s not as simple as asking for help at work.

But I hope that even if it’s just about my work stuff, I can make sure I’m asking to check that I’m doing things as efficiently as possible so I’m maximizing my time each day. And hopefully doing this during November will help me find better ways to organize my work day and really get the most out of my time so I’m not worried about what I didn’t finish when I step away from my computer at the end of the day.

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