Mishmash

I have some pretty healthy self-esteem that I believe I've earned. I'm smart, I'm funny, I'm attractive, and doggone it, people like me. Match makes me feel ugly and awkward and uncomfortable in my own skin. I didn't fight my way through adolescence and my early 20s to feel like this again. And I'm tired of people saying that I have to give it a chance, and that I'm not being fair, and that this is the way that people meet in 2008. I hate it.

I read The Last Lecture by Randy Pausch on my flight from Cleveland to Hartford today (there are NO DIRECT FLIGHTS between Houston and Hartford -- unbelievable). If you haven't heard of it, it's a book based on what was literally the last lecture of Professor Randy Pausch at Carnegie Mellon University (if you click the link, it'll take you to the lecture's page on the Carnegie Mellon site, where you can find more links to the lecture on YouTube). Professor Pausch is dying of metastatic pancreatic cancer, and his last lecture on life lessons is amazing. The book doesn't have quite the same punch as his actual lecture did, but that didn't stop me from leaking tears for the entire flight. It makes me feel like I should be doing something more valuable with my life instead of earning a good living at a company that professes to help other companies get better. The Fortune 1000 doesn't need me.

I know that there are a lot of organizations with which I could volunteer, and maybe that would make me feel better. I'll look into it when I get home. Between The Last Lecture and The World Is Flat, it seems like there must be a way for me to make money and sell out to the man AND make the world a better place at the same time.

The people in the room next to mine here in Hartford are LOUD. Not like that! At least, not yet. I could hear every word of their conversation like they were having about their nephew and random other stuff. They've gone to dinner, so it's blessedly quiet, but I'm dreading when they come back drunk and amorous. EW EW EW EW.

I read an article in Forbes or Business Week on the flight from Houston to Cleveland on the glass ceiling in Korea, and how men there don't think women have the chops to work in the corporate world. I'm very glad to have been born and reared in the US, where my parents told me I was the smartest kid in the class and so had to work much, much harder. There was no question I could be whatever I wanted, as long as whatever I wanted was white collar.

Ok, enough with this random post. This is what happens when I write without really thinking it through. It's been a while, though, and I had some stuff bouncing around in my head that I needed to get out.

I'll keep you updated on the people next door. Ugh.