Day 24 in NoJoMo 2013

It's Sunday. It's early. I fell asleep way early last night, and missed Drunk Uncle on SNL (who favorited my tweet wondering whether he'd be on; it is Thanksgiving, after all).

My idea about how to fix a broken spring in the recliner didn't work. I would have messed with it longer, but my legs just weren't letting me hunch over and work.

Wonder what will be on TV football-wise this afternoon. The Saints kept the Failcons from doing what they od Thursday, and the Redskins play in SF tomorrow night. Going to guess we'll get the Stilluhrs-Browns, Bucs-Lions, then Colts-Cards.

The NBC game is Manning v. Brady for the umpteenth time.

What are the 5 biggest fears you have? Have you overcome any of them? 1. My body embarrassing me in public Even when I was young, I was always worried about being that kid, you know, the one who puked in the classroom, wet his pants, etc.. I haven't necessarily gotten over it, but there's little I can do anymore. My body does what it wants, despite my protests.

1. Death See the letter to thirteen year-old me a few entries back. It happens. Live life like you're gonna die. Because you are.

2. Girls Given that I sleep with one nearly every night, I'd say that I've overcome this one. It's still a little unsettling to find one giving me the once-over, though. That didn't used to happen. I tend not to subscribe to the everything-is-driven-by-sex worldview, but I find communicating easier now that it's not even a consideration for me. Yeah, she's kinda cute. And? (That's when my vision works well enough to let me notice, whihc is kind of a rarity these days.)

3. Public transportation. Traceable back to number one, really. Airplanes still bother me. Trains I'm okay. Buses, all depends. I'm still uncomfortable riding in other people's cars, though.

4. Writing. Sometimes I'll stumble across something I wrote long ago. "Wow. This is really bad." Then I'll read others' new stuff, and I feel better.
   It's incredible how scared some people are of putting down a concise thought. I get that you don't have to do it at point-and-click.edu to buy letters after your name that'll be recognized by someone outside your industry. Just for the store-bought letters after your name, you're more concerned with passing a multiple-choice test than actually understanding the material. With letters properly perched in your seventeen-line email signature, you boldly embark into the wild world of business development where you fill space with meaningless blather just to hit the page limit. Yes, I've dealt with folks who believe that if there's a page limit on a proposal, that means you have to write exactly that many pages.
   You look smart wearing a tie. You think that people like you. Then you're asked to actually apply what you've learned, and it all falls apart. You're so concerned with fit-and-finish that you don't actually pay attention to the content. Newsflash: The content is what really matters. I've been trying to get back to basics with my writing. That entails concise, complete sentences in active voice. It also entails paragraphs with only one topic sentence. (This is something that really tends to get lots in Proposalville.) Finally, it means never writing, "as per." I admit I also get hung up on things that rubbed certain professors the wrong way. "Impact," instead of "affect," and "effect." A "negative impact" is a vacuum; it sucks. "In-depth," instead of "thorough." Numerals instead of writing out the number for values less than twenty, etc.