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poems instead of name tags..........I like it
Tuesday, November 5, 2002
Location: Dell
Description: ADPi long sleeve t-shirt and brown pants
Emotion: nostalgic
So evidently I never wear my hair down at work. Except today of course, today I wore my hair down with a headband – I call it my 12-year-old style. It really does make me look at least 10 years younger, but this morning it just seemed like the thing to do. The people at work really noticed, “Allyson, I really like your hair down” and “Allyson I never noticed how long your hair was” – by the way I go by Allyson at work. Anyway, all the compliments were from normal people, creepy guy didn’t say a word, and they where all very nice. I guess I should wear my hair down more often, but honestly I don’t even realize when it’s up. I’ll start the day with it long and flowing around my shoulders and without even noticing I’ll twist it up into a bun and secure it with the closest clip, or pencil, or whatever does the job. I have been thinking about cutting it recently, but those thoughts are fleeting, much like the thoughts I have of going to med school. They always seem to occur during the commercial breaks of ER, but then by the time the next show is on I’ve totally forgotten about being a doctor. I guess I’m easily influenced. I wouldn’t say gullible – I’m just open to new ideas. My newest idea is fresh flowers; I really want to have fresh flowers in my apartment. There are two problems with this. 1 – I don’t have any vases or flower holding containers 2 – I don’t pass a florist on the way home from work. Of course these are little problems, and easily fixed, however I can’t commit to solving them because before I know it I’m off on another new idea, like maybe a dinner party tonight, or maybe I should re-organize my room and really clean off those shelves. The ideas that race through my head would amaze most people; the millions of plans I make daily are enough to keep a small country busy. Unfortunately I rarely seem to get anything done. I plan and plan and make lists in my head – very detailed lists, lists with sub-lists and references to other lists. My head is the only place where I can be organized. These ideas get even those most minute details planned out, but rarely do they ever amount to more than an idea in my head. I really wish I had a bit more drive and motivation, but then I think I probably wouldn’t be able to handle all the ideas that my brain cooks up. If I felt like I had to bring each of my ideas to fruition then I would definitely wilt under the pressure of it all. Luckily every so often my initiative will meet up with my brain and then great things happen. So I guess I shouldn’t bemoan the ideas that never become tangible – instead I’m going to be delighted in the fact that when I do get motivated I’ll have a million directions to go in.
Ally signed off at 06:23 p.m.
"I'm constantly straddling the line between confidence and arrogance"
Monday, November 4, 2002
Location: Dell
Description: favorite plaid button up shirt
Emotion: pleased
If you had attended Mike and Mary’s Halloween party last Saturday you probably would have seen my dad there. He was the one in a cowboy hat, boots and a black windbreaker with a big NASA emblem on the back. Now if you were at this party you probably would have wondered exactly what he was supposed to be, so if you were brave – or didn’t know my dad very well you would have approached him and said something to the affect of,
--- “So what are you supposed to be?” to which my dad would have responded,
--- “some people call me the space cowboy” - then he would have unzipped his windbreaker revealing a shirt with a heart that said gangster
--- “some call me the gangster of love” – then your attention would have been directed to the nametag on his windbreaker. It reads Maurice.
--- “some people call me Maurice, but here’s my card” – my dad would then have handed you his business card and walked away, as you stared after him in respectful awe you would have glanced down and seen that in your hand you held the joker from a deck of cards.
Just one more reason my dad is my PFH
Ally signed off at 03:07 p.m.
no sleep till Brooklyn
Friday, November 1, 2002
Location: Dell
Description: same jeans as yesterday different shirt
Emotion: exhausted
Asleep at the wheel does not even begin to describe how I’m feeling right now. For some reason I decided that the only way I would make it into work on time today would be to stay up all night. I can only assume that I am absolutely certifiably insane, and my friends could do nothing to dissuade me from this path of insanity. So I stayed up all night, I’m now going on my 30th hour of being awake, if you can call this state that I’m in awake. Even though I wish I was in my bed right now covered up with my warm down comforter and my amazingly soft sheets; I had a great time last night. And like pat says, “you can handle anything for a day”
Ally signed off at 01:10 p.m.
i think this site has a point
Thursday, October 31, 2002
Location: Dell
Description: jeans, red long sleeve t-shirt - i'm about as un-halloween as it gets
Emotion: mentally drained and frustrated, physically sick to my stomache
Why is it that most customers assume I am personally responsible for the errors or problems they are having with Dell? I have very little power or control in this company, and I’m learning more and more everyday how little I matter even to my closest superior. It’s not important that I am working for dell it’s just important that someone answers the phone and handles at least 60 customer issues. The fact that I always handle at least 100 or that I actually try and resolve problems rather than sending them on to someone else doesn’t even enter the equation. They could easily replace me and even if the person they replace me with is barely competent dell will make more money than they pay me or this other person. This doesn’t upset me; I understand that there is no reason for the company as a whole to care about me at all. However, it is because of this that I know I will not be able to work here much longer. I have got to find something new, some sort of job that I go to everyday because people depend on me, not because they’ll fire me if I don’t.
The only reason I can find to apply myself at work is so that I will feel like an upstanding, essentially good person, but I’m finding that more and more often, keeping up my moral character is not enough of a reason to take the abuse that these customers dish out. I get hung up on several times a day. I don’t deserve that. Yes, I have personal issues against getting hung up on, so probably this affects me more than most. Even with my personal hang-ups (nice little pun there if I do say so myself) I’m not an unreasonable person. When a customer has a problem I honestly try and help them with their issue. There are obviously some things I cannot do; some things happen in this huge corporation that is dell that I have no control over. I’m not saying that customers don’t have a right to be upset when something goes wrong, or that they shouldn’t get some sort of reparation for their troubles, but that reparation does not come in the form of me accepting cruel treatment. I usually say, I don’t expect common courtesy just basic human decency. Now I’m starting to wonder why I should be able to expect common courtesy as well. How can someone possibly expect me to help them order a computer when they are yelling obscenities at me? Am I really supposed to keep a calm and subservient demeanor as a customer hurls insults at me personally and dell? I guess my manager would say, “yes, Allyson, you should keep calm and poised at all times, that’s what we pay you for”. To this I don’t have a response, at least not one that makes me feel any better about myself. I want to stomp my feet like a six year old and say, “but it’s not fair! They get to be as mean as they want and I have to be nice to them! It’s not fair! It’s not fair! It’s not fair!” and honestly I don’t think it’s fair for these customers to treat me with absolute disrespect, when they know that I won’t respond. It’s like hitting someone who can’t hit back. I guess I’m just really tired of getting hit.
Ally signed off at 06:52 p.m.
What would you have done differently?
Wednesday, October 30, 2002
Location: Dell
Description: jeans
Emotion: tired
I've discovered a very cool website, it's called textism . The question on the website is what would you have done differently? There are more than 200 responses. I’m number 207 if you check it out. It wasn’t just this site that has gotten me thinking about second chances and regret and all of that. This morning on my way to work I was listening to country music – not something I do often but I’ve found that the country radio station seem to have a better music to talk ratio, and as long as my cd’s are in the house rather than the car, I’ll take what I can get. Anyway – this morning I heard “I would have loved you anyway” and “The Dance” right in a row. For you non-country people, these songs are both about falling in love even if it’s not going to last forever. Here are some key lines -
Even if I’d known my heart would break, I’d have loved you anyway
and
I could have missed the pain but I’d of had to miss the dance
basically both of these songs are supporting the “no regrets” policy, live life to the fullest, don’t worry about getting hurt – because if you’re always worried about the pain you won’t get to enjoy the dance. Up until today I have not ever questioned that notion. Ideas like the things in your past have made you who you are today and “forget regret or life is yours to miss” ( a rent reference for those that know the show ) were almost mantras for me when I left for college. However, I wonder if I’ve always held to these thoughts because it’s easier to look back and say, “this is what I’ve done”, rather than to feel the disappoint of “this is what I wish I had done”. You can’t change the past so why think about the way it could have been? Well, if you don’t learn from it than I guess you’re destined to repeat it – and that’s where I think real regret happens. It’s like the old cliché, if someone wrongs you once it’s his or her fault, but twice is your fault. If I pretend like I wouldn’t change anything in my past, then when the situations roll around again, will I act the same way? Will I make the same mistakes? Even if I’ve convinced myself that those mistakes had to happen to make me who I am, do I want to go through those experiences again? Absolutely not. So now I have to find some way to learn from the past without regretting the decisions I made. There’s definitely more to this, but for tonight I’ll just have to be content with the realizations I’m making and not stress too much about the ones I didn’t make before.
Ally signed off at 05:33 p.m.
an interesting take on last wishes
Tuesday, October 29, 2002
Location: Dell
Description: t-shirt and jeans (i overslept)
Emotion: antsy
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, of course I love Christmas and thanksgiving and Easter as well, but Halloween is only two days away so right now it’s my favorite. As far as costumes go I’m deciding between two: a devil with a blue dress on, or the devil in disguise – both songs that I can turn into costumes. I usually like to do something creative and witty. Last year I was a Freudian Slip, I wore a slip and a red beauty queen like sash that said FREUDIAN. Some people got it, and some really didn’t, but it was fun to see the look on people’s faces when they put together Freudian and slip and suddenly they understood.
Someday I hope to have a house that I can decorate for holidays. I picture my abode filled with really cool creative decorations, nothing paper or plastick-y, decorations that you don’t really notice but totally change the feeling of the room. Unfortunately I have grand thoughts but a lazy personality. Right now the only Halloween decorations in my apartment are pumpkins, however they are amazing pumpkins. We had somewhat of a carving party last night and the results are really amazing. I’ve been carving pumpkins since before I could walk, but I’m always amazed at the change that happens when you put a candle in the jack-o-lantern and turn off all the lights. What once was a sort of sad looking face turns into a menacing grimace and the carver who was standing back sort of sheepishly when the lights were on is suddenly grinning with pride. Carving pumpkins has been a tradition in my family for a long time. My entire family and another family from the neighborhood (the Hall’s) would get together a few days before Halloween and carve pumpkins for hours. The kids would always get tired of working and end up playing video games, but my parents and the Hall’s parents would sit out in the garage or the kitchen – depending on who’s house we were at – and carve pumpkins until they all looked amazing, then we’d turn off all the lights and congratulate each other on our amazing talents as pumpkin carvers. Every year we were just as surprised and amazed when the pumpkins all turned out magnificent. As the years went by our families couldn’t always get together, but even without the Halls my family would carve pumpkins, it got to be a night long process, my younger sister and brother would start cleaning out there pumpkins around 7, then when Lauren and I got home from dance at 9 we’d get started on our pumpkins and IV and Rose would hang out until in between doing there home work and taking baths and getting ready for school the next day. Carving pumpkins with my family is one of those memories where all the years get scrambled together and even though each pumpkin carving was separated by a year it feels like they all happened at the same time. It’s all one big squished-up, warm, fuzzy memory that spans more than 20 years.
Ally signed off at 07:51 p.m.
an update! yippee!
Monday, October 28, 2002
Location: Dell
Description: old navy rugby shirt and jeans
Emotion: restless
I’ve become obsessed with falling in love and I don’t have a clue when it happened. I swear, 3 weeks ago I was perfectly content with my life – where it was, where it was going. Everything was marvelous, and now I can’t get love out of my head, and it’s especially frustrating because I’m not one of those girls who always has to have a boy friend. I’m very content being on my own. Even when I had a boyfriend I wasn’t seen as part of a pair because my boyfriend was in another country most of the time. I fully support the bumper sticker that says, a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. I truly believe that you don’t need a man to be happy.
All of this said, I can’t stop thinking about falling in love. I’ve been desperately trying to turn my guy friends into crushes so that the possibility of love will be in my life, but I don’t really have crushes on any of my guy friends. I’m trying to convince myself that I’m captivated by the things they say and do, but in all honesty I would expect much more from any guy that I dated. I don’t want my guy friends to fall in love with me, in fact it would probably cause a ton of problems if any of them did, but right now I can’t get thoughts about passion and romance out of my head. I want someone to share my opinions with, not argue about them. It seems like my friends and I always end up in heated debates rather than thought provoking discussions, I don’t remember it being like that with Barrett. But what I really want, and as the most well balanced feminist I know, I’m having a hard time even typing this - What I really want is someone to gaze at me when I’m not looking, to simply be aware of me more than the other people in the room. And I want someone to gaze at, to consider when I make decisions. I guess these are all normal thoughts and wants, but I’m not used to needing things like this. I never thought the time would come when I would spend time thinking, “my life would be better if I had a boyfriend”. That thought creeps into my head on a semi-regular basis and I’ve been having a hard time reconciling it with the rest of my thoughts. I don’t feel as if being in love would validate me as a person any more than not being in love. Is it possible to be comfortable with whom you are as a person and still need someone to love? Being the optimistic, silver lining kind of girl that I am – I have to say yes. i just can't explain how yet.
Ally signed off at 07:54 p.m.
new awesome page
Tuesday, October 22, 2002
Location: Dell
Description: white shirt, brown pants, adidas
Emotion: peaceful
well, i've decided not to bite off more than i can chew, so there will not be any amazing layout changes to this site until i get an internet connection at home that can move beyond a snail's pace. i've also decided that just because this site is not exactly what i want right now, that doesn't mean i shouldn't still keep it updated. so for my few but dedicated fans, i'm back.
so what's been up with me? well life has been good; barring a few basic freak outs - which everyone is entitled to once in awhile -i can't really complain. there will be more to say later today, but right now there are 79 calls in the small business online sales queue at dell, and i'm feeling kind of like a slacker.
Ally signed off at 10:53 a.m.
movin on up!
Friday, October 18, 2002
Location: Dell
Description: new skirt and soft black t-shirt
Emotion: rejuvenated
it's been awhile since i've updated, there's lots of reasons for this, the main one being that i really want to change up this site - i want to do a new layout, and change up the content, i read a weblog called the f-train and it sort of inspired me. so anyways - that's the story on the lack of updates, and as soon as my motivation catches up with my inspiration we should see some great updates. until then here's some fun sites to visit.
the new york city anti-hipster forum
monstrous meandering
fark.com - crazy news
Ally signed off at 10:43 a.m.
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