all good things...

my "good thing" in life is my independence, and i definitely embrace it to the fullest. i grew up in a single parent household without any brothers or sisters, so i had to find ways to entertain myself when my mom was at work and i was left home alone with the instructions to keep the house clean and refrain from burning it down. when my mom would take me to the beach for a day trip over the summer, i would happily play by myself rather than begging my mom to bring one of my friends with me. my mother was a very private person, and the idea that my business is my own business and my troubles were my own troubles permeated into every aspect of my life and remain with me today.
i feel that i am a very social person, but i do not depend on others to give me a feeling of worth. i dont need someone around to help me or give me advice all the time, because i have learned how to do that for myself. i realized, after a long and stupidly abusive relationship with a silly little boy in high school, that i am the only person that will be with me for my entire life, so i might as well learn to love and depend on myself. alot of people tell me i come off as cold or callous, but the truth is i just dont have the patience to deal with things that are outside my realm of control. i am sympathetic to people, but i dont understand when girls are completely reliant on their boyfriends and cry about it all the time, or people whine about their problems without any plans for a solution. its just how i was raised, to keep private things private and realize that you are the only person who can help YOU.

the prince and me

chapter nineteen: how one should avoid hatred and contempt

in machiavelli's eyes, it is absolutely important for the ruler to avoid becoming an object of disdain. i definitely see this connecting to my life in a million different ways. i know that most people out there do not enjoy having someone mad at them or talk badly of them, but i am the extreme in that example. if i even think that someone is pissed off at me, or disappointed in me, or even just a little annoyed, it drives me crazy. it is all i can think about.
the problem is, i am in no way a perfect person. i screw up and do and say wrong things almost all the time, which is probably why i am so paranoid about people being upset with me. i guess the simplest solution is to stop doing things that are wrong and that way i would never have to worry about someone hating or feeling contempt for me...but at the same time, in order to keep everyone around me happy that would entail lying once in a while or doing something that might cause another person to feel contempt for me.
machiavelli says "make every effort to ensure your actions suggest greatness and endurance, strength of character and of purpose." what strikes me in this sentence is the use of the word "suggest." does that mean leading people to falsely believe you are a certain kind of person and hoping like hell that they never find out? im not proud of it, but ive done that before and guess what...people find out you're not who you say you are, and you will become the object of their hatred and contempt.

my childhood...great.

my childhood was definitely not perfect. my grandmother, grandfather and father all died within a few years of each other, and on top of that i discovered i was adopted which made me feel even more lonely. but i believe that because i grew up with such adversity, and watched my mother single handedly provide a comfortable lifestyle for me, i learned the value of life, love, family and happiness. even though i experienced a lot of tragedy as a child, i learned that success does not come from the cards you are dealt. instead, success stems from how you mold and adapt to what exists in your life.
i was very bitter growing up because i didnt have the same things as my friends and peers. even though my mom worked to provide me with a very good private school education and nice things, i didnt have a dad to keep me from dating the wrong boys or grandparents to spoil me. however, i think that as i got older, i learned to appreciate what i did have more than my friends did. i learned that things can get taken from you at any time and it is more important to make yourself happy in your own way rather than comparing yourself to other people. i guess that's how i feel about my own success today. even though i am still not sure what i exactly want to do with my life, i am proud of what i have accomplished thus far. i dont look at what other people have and strive to achieve it; i focus on what i know i need and what i have to do to get it. being successful to me isnt having a lot of money or a million people worshipping you. its being satisfied and happy with what you have.

possible paper topic

i have been thinking alot about how the measure of success changes from decade to decade. i would like to research what was considered being successful in the past and whether or not it is the same in the present. for example, in the 50s having a family and career was what made people successful; today, i think basically the same thing is true but there is a much higher standard because there is so much more-- more appliances to be bought, more technology to be learned about...or is there? for my paper, i am interested in interviewing several people from different generations to see if there is a difference between success in the past and success in the present, if there is any difference at all. as far as the "book" research, i would like to find magazines and newspapers from different decades to see what peoples' values were. i am not quite sure how successful (no pun intended) my attempt at this subject will be, but i think it will be enlightening to discover whether our ideas of success have changed over the years and why that is.

i wish i hadnt done that

The biggest thing I have come to reget in the past few months is quitting my job at Cracker Barrel. Now, Cracker Barrel is the most god-awful place in the entire world to work, but I put up with it for almost two years just because I had developed a good relationship with my managers and co-workers and I made pretty decent money for working at a restaurant that doesn't serve any alcohol. One night about a month ago, I just snapped. I had been working 10-12 hour days for the past week, and they put me on a closing shift one Monday night. My manager (who is absolutely out of his mind and disappears for hours at a time when he is supposedly managing the restaurant) cut the floor down to just two servers at 8:30 pm (we dont close until 11.)
I felt like I was multitasking pretty well until we started to get our late night rush of bad tippers. I realized at some point that I had eight table while my co-worker only had two. When I asked him to take a table, he ignored me and went in the break room to smoke a cigarette. Then our grill cook let me know that we were out of meatloaf and chicken and dumplings. Now if you've ever been to Cracker Barrel, you know that those are about the only things that get ordered. I went to search for my manager and surprisingly, he was nowhere to be found. At that point, I had to leave; otherwise, I saw myself pouring a full pot of hot coffee all over the next customer who was rude to me and being involved in a major lawsuit. I calmly grabbed my keys and sunglasses, told the cashier that I was f-ing done with this place and walked out. That might not seem so bad in theory, but I had eight open tables, it was only 9:15 and there was only one other server in the restaurant.
Of course, as a result I lost my job for good, which is not exactly my regret because I had to quit that hellhole eventually. However, I regret that I lost my temper and acted out in such an immature manner. I destroyed everything I had built at my job over the past two years and pretty much ruined any chance of a good reference with just one little act. My regrets usually stem from an act of impulsiveness or flare-up in my already tempermental disposition. I say something or do something in the heat of the moment and almost immediately after kick myself for being so dumb. Looking back at my Cracker Barrel situation, there were so many other, probably more effective ways, to handle the situation. If only I was the type of person who thought things through maybe I would still be employed.

"where's the party?"

...is the first line of my personality test. that might be somewhat true, but i definitely wouldnt say it really describes me. apparently i am extraverted, sensing, feeling and perceiving. im guess i am kind of extraverted, but at the same time i sometimes need to be by myself. in the description of esfp's, they say we "jump from thought to thought in mid-sentence", which is actually one of my friend's complaints about me... interesting.
it also says we love to talk...true too.
i took the test again and got everything the same, except it said i was more intuitive than sensing, which i think is a little more on point.