Happy New Year!
Not a bad year overall. Pretty good, really.
Good: Got a new kitchen, got a regular date, work went okay, Prop 4 failed to pass, and the big one: Obama got elected president.
Cursed: Online book club blew up and is still reforming; Prop 8 got passed but has started more supportive activism; sleep is increasingly wonky but nose surgery might help, economy is tanking but it's the same everywhere and people are still buying cell phones.
Looking forward to: Better sleep resulting in better work and more time to spend doing things outside work including dating and maintaining friendships (that means you!). By the end of the year, I'd like to have plans in place and prep work done to start on a master's degree... in something or other. I'd like to have the major work finished on the condo - all floors and walls patched and repainted, all shelving where I need to have shelving, all plumbing sound and attractive, and all light fixtures where they need to be. I think if my space is settled, I can be more organized and productive. And have more time to post pictures to the blog.
What are you looking forward to in the coming year?
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5 comments:
Cursed: Online book club blew up and is still reforming ... you choose a very interesting word there :)
What did you mean exactly or were you purposely vague? Undergoing reformation, more like reformatting, changing, evolving ... this afternoon I'm meeting a friend from the board, Miss Thought Went Up My Mind Today ... I'll have to pick her brains.
BREAK
EVERYONE loves the gorgeous tropical ornaments you created: thank you for your artistry!
Hey!!!! Just how close did that stealth bomber come to your vantage point at the Rose Parade today??? Tom and I have had the pleasure of having one fly over the football stadium --- those things are eerily silent for something so BIG ...
As for the re-forming --- gotta wonder at the shape we'll see in the future. A lot of the personality is missing. The saddest part is that the new will have to reform/rebuild around a couple of huge holes made when a large contingent of international posters left --- odd that they had positively no stake in the election or the props and suffered the explosion to the same degree as the voters.
But --- this is a new year --- and hopes are high that it will be at least a little better than the last year has been!
Happy New Year!!!
Happy New Year to you as well! May it bring only good things your way.
Happy New Year to my favorite cranky otter out there!
reform can sometimes be good, and I suppose change is inevitable. Luckily many of your friendships stay intact.. a true testament to your fabulousness!
hopefully 2009 will bring all the things you want, need, desire-- and a visit up north!
hugs,
hellcat
Happy New Year all!
Glad the ornaments went over well, I was really pleased with how they turned out too.
Gail - the stealth bomber flew right over the parade route, I have a picture looking straight up. But instead of posting pictures today, I read a book and napped a lot.
As to the reforming - In a teamwork class I took we learned how groups go through 4 phases - "Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing". We had been in the 'performing' stage for a long time, but every time a new member shows up, it can throw things back to forming or storming. And when new members become very vocal and contentious, it's very much storming until we figure out how to deal with each other or decide not to do so.
I'm still not sure who all is gone for good or just hiding out for a while. A lot of the posters who have been showing up lately are either very new or never used to post much. It's not the same group and the group dynamics are necessarily changed because of that. I'm missing some of the voices we used to have, but if they've decided they don't want to spend their time with me anymore, that's their choice.
I've been doing more reading on this kind of thing, and what happened on the board is so classic and predictable, it's practically cliche in organizational terms - if you know about these things. It's just that internet relationships are so new that there's not of casual knowledge out there yet about how best to keep boards like this going without blowing up. The knowledge is out there though. As it becomes more part of everyone's experience, hopefully we'll learn better how to nip problems in the bud before they become disasters with fallout that hurts people's feelings as much as this has seemed to. I also wish people would just realize that there are unpleasant people out there and that one person's good friend can be someone else's worst nightmare and it's ok to not like some people. It's not ok to go on a rampage and rip them apart behind their back just because you don't like them, but it's fine to not read their posts. With any large group, there will be some people you like and some you don't. As long as they positive content outweights the negative for me, I'll be sticking around. When I first started participating on the board, I expected I would quit before too long. Now it has been years. Some people come, some go. This time was more of an explosion than usual and we lost a bunch of people at once. I'm still not sure what has motivated everyone to stay away - I'm sure everyone has their own reason. But for me now, it's kind of like family and worth the effort to rebuild, even if it shrinks sometimes instead of always getting bigger.
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