- One nice thing about my job is that there's a lot of variety. On my first week almost ten years ago, one of my main tasks was taking screenshots of myself playing Minecraft. (I've never deleted a single email from my work inbox, so they're probably still in there somewhere.)
Honestly, it was all downhill from there. This week I spent far too much time reading about sexual dimorphism in dung beetles. The ideal amount of time I'd spend on this subject is decidedly none. But I ended up stuck on it for much longer than anticipated.
I blame Google. I'm amazed at how awful Google has gotten at returning relevant results for what I would consider a simple search. It makes my job so much harder.
Obviously, the reason is AI. AI and greed. There's nothing to say about this subject that someone smarter than me hasn't already said.
So I'm just going to say that I think it sucks. It makes me more likely to have to read scholarly papers about sexual dimorphism in dung beetles, which is not something I ever want to do. I need Google to return good results for laypeople.
(It's also possible that this topic just isn't covered by more approachable sites. Which, fair. But things are still worse than they ever were before. I didn't have this much trouble a few years ago when I was researching, like, the 1970s uniforms of Peruvian flight attendants.)
- While I don't delete work emails, my personal account is another matter. I never delete emails that I read. But advertisements and other junk are deleted regularly. My number of unread emails is a barometer for how much of a mess I am. Things are going well? My inbox is clean. Important messages are dealt with, irrelevant ads are deleted.
But these days I've been letting hundreds of unread messages pile up, which just makes me avoid it more, which leads to more messages piling up. I feel weird lately.
It's also been a weird week. I've been trying to pay more attention to how I handle social interactions lately. The universe must have noticed and decided to test me, because Monday was rife with them. One in particular was... yikes.
Now that it's a few days later, I'm slightly less horrified. But my initial reaction to my reaction was also brow-raising. Sorry to speak in riddles. I'm figuring shit out, to say the least.
- My first job out of college was in the marketing department of a company that did basement renovations. I hated it. So I spent my time at work writing extremely stupid "poems" to email my friends. I believe I hold the world record for largest body of work of poems that mention egress window wells.
You know where this is going. I never delete emails. So the poems are still floating around my inbox, waiting to embarrass me.
I could share them. But no one's asking for that (for good reason).
Instead, I'm gonna share my favorite poem by Mindy, the only one of my friends who wrote poems back. From April 9, 2014, here is "Impatient" by Mindy (shared with permission):
I have been refreshing my page since two AM
That is midnight in California
Your site should have updated hours ago
My anxiety is killing me
Please just update your site
No more waiting
I just want to see what I got
in my April Ipsy makeup bag
Eleven years later, I still find this hilarious. The heightened anxiety increases with every line, making it sound like the speaker is looking for the results of a worrying health scan or checking their bank account after a financial fiasco. But no, the big reveal is that she's waiting to discover the contents of a damn monthly subscription makeup bag. I love it so much, lmfao.
- OK here's something unrelated to my emails: have you ever made a gingerbread house?
I have not, and frankly the idea of it stresses me out. It seems like such a production. A messy production, and for a result that is fine at best and kind of gross at worst.
My partner recently expressed interest in making one, though. So we might do it. I'm not a Scrooge. But I really don't understand the appeal. Gingerbread house enthusiasts, what am I missing here?
