I'm getting annoyed.
People keep thinking that my being nice to them, my compliments and by open-book personality is me hitting on them.
Puh-leeze. Stop thinking so high an mighty of yourself.
These kind of women are soo.. soo.. whats the word?
Sensitive?

Maybe I should just be the normal guy who:
- doesn't keep in touch with his friends (phone calls, texts, emails, fb, etc)
- who bottles his emotions in
- who is rather brash and insensitive
- who has many secrets and doesn't reveal any

I've been brought up to, and molded myself (through reading and work) to find something to compliment people about; for little things can mean very much.

I believe it is important to keep in touch with (what you think) are your friends frequently. If you don't, you lose relationships. I barely keep in touch with my oldest friend b/c I (we)failed to keep in touch when things got busy. Thankfully we're very tight and just pick up where we last were at, but you can't do that with all relationships. 

I don't know what made me an open-book kind of person. Maybe i'm not afraid of expressing my opinions. People just aren't used to this; guys that you can have a deep meaningful conversations with. I've met many guys who seem to be single-faceted; who has only one passion: sports or games.. I know when I listen to my polar opposite, Ghost, when he talks to women, they bite their lip and count ceiling tiles, just hoping he'd shutup with his low intelligence blather. 

I don't think ill ever change.. mm no, I will change; i'm constantly changing who I am. I just know that I don't want such people around me; people who don't have the balls to confront me and speak to me up straight. It really upsets me when I have to hear from it from a 3rd party. So they can expect a 180 in my attitude: don't expect an contact, meaningful conversations, or honest opinions. Thats one thing I don't think will change: I don't forgive easily & cut people out of my life at the drop of a hat.

My pool of comparisons is dwindling.. I should stop that though and just live life without worries and without regrets.
Comparing makes you:
1. Feel better at the expense of others
2. Makes you feel comfortable and makes you lazy

While trying to build good habits, we get busy and preoccupied and lose focus. Resulting in not following your plans. The good thing is that tomorrow/today is a new day to get back on the horse and try again. Eventually it will become habit, for now it is a struggle; something that we shouldn't detest.

Nothing much to write about.. sleeping in wayyy later b/c of my new game (Borderlands 2)

You will learn alot of helpful tools at work that you can apply later in life.
At work, we need to track our time off the phone to show that we are productive. We do this via an excel sheet that tracks what we do minute by minute.

Last week I was talking about feeling like I was in a rut, so I took a page out of work and made an excel sheet titled 'Life Plan.'
It tracks it by date, with categories such as "Money, Career, Photography, Exercise, etc" and below showing how many minutes I devoted to it.
I've found that doing tasks in small bite-sized chunks of 15-20 minutes is very manageable and easy to accomplish. And thats exactly what I do; I'll focus 100% of my attention to this one task; no talking to other people, no searching for food, no msn, no surfing, no texting: nothing. 
Just the task at hand.

I find if you have alot of categories, it kind of makes you feel like you're not accomplishing alot, but don't be discouraged.
Be proud of what you do, and keep it up. What you're doing is building a habit. A habit that will lead to success.

A normal person would say that I like this photo for the model..

I actually didn't really even give the model a second thought.. the reason why I have this photo saved is for the backdrop the photographer uses. Its really nice but also from my research, I know its probably grossly expensive; probably 200-300$ easily.

I don't understand how some people have such a good pulse on what you're feeling; they instinctively know something is wrong.

Thats pretty special.

Its interesting that our minds are fixed so that if someone tells you not to think of something, you actually will.
Like: "Don't think about apples!"

See you already did it, and its hard not to now.

"Don't let yourself get into a rut, J"

DAMMMIT!
B/c obviously now I feel like i'm in a rut; sleeping in so late.. in part from very sore muscles from working out too hard yesterday.

But maybe I am literally in a rut and its not in my head.
My company is downsizing and letting go of all of our temps; so starting october, many of us senior reps will be doing inbound again (something many of us don't do normally). I detest inbound, my brain is being wasted in this state; sure its easy and I do a great job, but that isn't rewarding. I was so close; I could have been the Technical Writer.. I could have been the Call Quality Reviewer.. part of the VOE team.. and even almost got Reporting. Then that bombshell news. Now Reporting has been pushed to November at the earliest. Another carrot for the donkey.

My dad suggests I invest in a rental property, but how can I move out and live my life if I invest such a huge chunk of my money on that? Because I have a 'safety net'? While there are worse environments to live in, I don't want to live at home anymore. I want my tiny little space that is truly my own, where I don't have to explain myself ever. Peace and quiet. Privacy instead of a curtain that can't even block light much less noise. Not having to share internet connections with people that suck it up all hours of the day. A b!tch of a sister & a poster boy of how-to-screw-up-your-life brother.

I don't know what to do with my photography. I think like everything, you need to take that leap. Or maybe you don't have to. I don't like the huge monetary investment; I was looking at specialty backdrops yesterday and they were a minimum 95$ on one site, 175$ on another. For the cheapest, smallest one. Then you need filters, pieces of glass to put infront your lens to give it a certain effect; pieces of glass the size of coasters, that cost over 100$. Then you look at lenses; needing to upgrade my wide angle and telephoto (not even thinking about macro).. which together can cost anywhere between 800$ to 1700$ easily.

All which are disappointing and (lets not kid ourself) stress inducing.
Cue the breakouts.

But J is never without a plan. Obstacle?
Lets figure out a solution. A game plan.

Its all about small steps. Small steps are easier to accomplish than big ones. Build that confidence. Create momentum. Then don't let anything stop you.

I would make an argument now that my biggest character flaw is not my temper, but actually my tongue.
Individually troubling, coupled together disastrous. 

I think sometimes that, once something has been said, its not a matter of going back and recanting. That is because it turns on a switch or better yet: a fuse. 

I have absolutely no more patience anymore to bother writing about this. 

I guess you put up with alot for people you love. And i'm not just talking about those you're romantically involved with, but friends and family.
My coworker had requested that I take photos of her and her daughter at some parks about a week ago and I put it in my calendar. 
For the longest time we had wanted to take photos, but she was always busy or couldn't make the time.
It was coming up to two days before the photoshoot and I looked into her eyes and I could tell something came up.
She came around to my desk and I knew it and said "Shapadish!" which is something in Portuegese that means "Bad!" or "you're in trouble."
One of her best friends had sprung her son's bday party last minute and it was right in the middle of the day making it hard to have an afternoon shoot.
I think normal photographers have a deposit they must charge to people to ensure it hurts a bit to cancel an appointment.
I don't particularly like what happened, but I guess today isn't a good day to take photos anyways as it is raining and wet and while good for lighting, bad for a child to run around in.

I had realized how lucky we are to live in an urban area. There are so many grocery stores, malls and businesses in our area.
There is 3 grocery stores if i go direct west (10 min max drive away), 3 directly north, about 2 to the East, and 1 south.
That is an incredible amount of grocery stores and options.
In my area, there are 3 large malls.. 2 are considered one of the biggest and best, possibly in Toronto.
I sometimes can't imagine living in a smaller city where there is only one of everything, or is missing certain amenities and you need to drive to the next closest city for.

Man, i'm tired.

At first when my manager asked to speak with me yesterday, I thought he'd be showing me some reporting tasks that I could work on. Instead he dropped a huge bomb instead: the expected portfolios that the company were supposed to land, didnt materialize and because of that, we need to let go all the temp workers. Now i'm safe b/c i'm a permanent worker at my company, but a significant portion of our department is temp; nearly one in 3or4. Its disappointing b/c these are great workers who don't deserve this kind of fate, especially after we have a monthly team meeting that says constantly said for the past 8 months "we're good, I feel confident." LIARS. Atleast thats what I think of my management team.. or the managers above them are liars: Money Men/women. People that only think about numbers and money, not about service and quality that our department outputs. 

--------------------------

I have a Gaming blog and even a Couple's blog, which is why entries here are a bit erratic. One thing I'd like to write here is about the people who write Gaming blogs. Its scary what people's goals are; alot of them put high emphasis on in-game goals. Make it to max level, max out crafting, have a max level character in each class etc. Maybe its the way that they write, but it seems like this is it; there is nothing more important than the game. Some people write what they did in-game on a daily basis. While interesting, its also very scary b/c you're playing 5 different games at a time, which take a minimum of 30 minutes atleast to do.. meaning you spend a minimum EACH DAY playing 2.5 hours.. and thats being super conservative. I believe unless a person has amazing willpower, most of these gamers play 1-3 hours a day per game. You do the math.

You may have friends that have started playing a new game called Guild Wars 2; its the next big thing for gamers. Something that I badly wanted to play a long time ago, but I realized how addicted I would get and how much time is wasted playing games. It is a fantastic way to relax and blow off steam, but becomes so addictive that you're over-playing instead of spending your time doing something more constructive. I have friends who are taking additional courses, getting degrees, kayaking, or just making themselves better. What are gamers doing? According to their blogs: not much. "Getting 100% of map completion and enjoying the journey." 

My gf and I had this conversation and hopefully I didn't come off as high and mighty.. but its true.. games is just that, games. They don't produce anything constructive. She did comment how I did change: i'm no longer the gamer guy, but the photographer guy. I'm proud of that comment; personal change. I don't look down at gamers, I just would emphasize to ensure we do not become consumed by it and that we step outside and ensure we are still challenging ourselves and "leveling ourselves" and not just our in-game character.

Life is being wasted otherwise.

Its really nice when I get to spend time with friends that I don't get to see very often; even better when its like you just saw them and pick up right where you last left off.

Had a great game night over the weekend; the people you wanted there was there. The annoying people and downers didn't come or made the briefest of appearances. I like being the host and can see myself having people over frequently when I have my own place. I love to welcome people and feed them.

My manager told me yesterday that I didn't get the Call Quality Reviewer position.. apparently I scored the calls too harshly while the other person was closer to the right score. I am not upset; I tried my best to get the position and the position puts you in an un-enviable position where people will resent you if you score them 'unfairly.' Best of all, my manager's 'consolation prize' was to ensure that I got to do some Reporting tasks; something I really wanted to do instead. I guess 4th good thing is that I have shown initiative which is good for my year end review.