Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Upcoming Changes (to this Blog)

Namely due to work (testing for the next 3 weeks) and schoolwork (finals are next week), it has been fairly crappy week thus far. I haven't been sleeping much and I definitely have been feeling its effects. The heavy rain this morning also did not help, as I normally very much enjoy the morning bicycle commute to work. But sometimes it's about sucking it up and taking things in stride -- and in the process being mindful of the many blessings in our lives.

The above being said, I have been considering changing the content of this blog lately. This blog has thus far mainly functioned as a personal daily of sorts, in addition as a means to verbalize my streams of consciousness. Not that the aforementioned is bad, yet I think it deviates from the main purpose behind this blog. The main reason I started this blog was, as its title implies, chronicling the ups and downs of being a young professional in the Washington D.C. area. Although the location isn't important (I have only posted once about something specific to the D.C. area), so the point is to share my experiences with the (imaginary?) readers.

Anyway, here is a list (along with an elaboration) of changes I foresee making:
  • More frequent postings. This is an Achilles' heel for me as I often go on for weeks without posting a single entry. It's not that I do not have things to blog about -- contrary to popular belief, I lead a very interesting life -- but I think most of the topics I blog are redundant. They centered mainly on personal issues (aka Mandy). My hope is to post about once a day, if not more.
  • Revelations about experiences in the working world. True to the title of this blog, I am an employee for a sizable consulting company after all. This being the case, I have much insight to offer, such as interactions with coworkers and with the boss, workload fluctuations, career planning, etc.
  • More (helpful?) discussions on other important topics, like personal finance. I already started doing this, but the goal here is to transform random postings into a series with a beginning and an end.
  • Label blog entries better. I must admit that I just create whatever labels come to mind right now. This will change as I hope to streamline the labels into something more useful.
  • Including multimedia onto the blog posts. Currently it's just a bunch of words from a newbie writer like myself. My writing can be humorous but it needs additional visualizations like pictures and videos to capture interest. Otherwise it's just another mundane blog full of streams-of-consciousness essays.
So that pretty much wraps it up. I have formulated a plan and shall, in good faith, execute the plan as best of possible. Not sure when the start date is (final exams are coming up) but definitely within the next two weeks.

In parting, I want to leave with a stream of consciousness (only fitting, right?). I have a friend from college who is an illegal immigrant currently working for a software company in Washington state. He's a nice person overall and was baptized as a Christian before graduation. Another friend told me that this person just received a substantial raise and now makes close to 100k a year -- not bad at all for a fresh college graduate! However, he seems to be dealing with some sort of personal issue that resembles a depression. At least his blog entries have become much darker and he just posted an alarming status update on facebook (something about someone should take a knife to him...). I bring this up because it seems contradicting to profess a Christian faith, make a (very) decent living, and fall into some kind of depression. I am going to try to reach out to him of course, yet psychological depressions confuse me overall.

While I understand it is a legitimate disease, I think that in most cases, it occurs due to unrealistic expectations, having goals but unwilling to work toward them, or just not maintaining perspective. Most of us overlook the "little things" like having good health, living in a peaceful environment, and comforts like public libraries and running water. Most others in the world do not have these conveniences -- can you imagine not having both your arms, or perhaps living in a war-ravaged country? At least for me, remembering how blessed I am to have these "little things" keeps me from dwelling on the negatives. In other words, this is how I "suck it up".

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