Once, when I was about 11 years old, my dad told me to clean the garage. So I picked up a few things in the garage, and told him I was done. He then proceeded to read me the riot act -- and gave me a list of about a dozen things that I should have cleaned up, but I didn't. How could I have been so stupid to miss all that?

The thing is, our garage growing up was never clean. My dad was suddenly asking me to bring the garage to a state of cleanliness that it never was in before or since. I had no way of knowing that was what he wanted. He could have told me what to do before hand, but he didn't; he was setting me up so that he could have an excuse to humiliate me. This was his typical MO.

To this day, I hate being in situations where I don't know what's expected of me. I start to believe that people are deliberately setting me up for failure.

Damn, Tom. We had some seriously similar seriously badbadbad childhoods.

To this day, I hate being in situations where I don't know what's expected of me.

I don't venture outside my comfort zone for this very reason. I cannot abide "failing" in front of other people (even if "failing" means "hasn't roller-skated in 30 years and thought tonight was a good time to try it again despite being out of shape," which perhaps healthier people would not consider "failing" but would just consider "hey, it's 42-year-old on roller skates"!).

I have definitely been in work situations where I was being set up via not getting all of the information I needed, but I try to assume that everyone is working in good faith and not doing that, until I see otherwise....

I cannot abide "failing" in front of other people

Like appearing to not know precisely where you're going when driving around town. I keep thinking people are going "That idiot is lost"--because I've certainly done that to other people.

I'm trying to force myself to think about the end goal, not the process, so as not to overthink how the process looks to the absolutely no one around me who cares.

Hi all! Amyth, I will definitely let you know when (or if, the Belgian postal service being so reliable) your postcard arrives. She got the first of the masses of promised mail today and she was so very excited!

I had some friends over today for lunch and cards/dice. It was a good way to perk up another grey, dreary day.

My flossing streak is still going strong, though, so I'm succeeding at something (even if I'm failing at reading the minds of the people who pay me to work). Yay teeth!

Low motivation morning.

I didn't get much sleep last night, so I'm gronky, and all I want to do is avoid responsibility and job search. But I'm only working three days this week, so I'm forcing myself to get things done. I'm flying to Richmond on Thursday for a long weekend.

I decided to call email in sick to work today. It's a good think I glanced at it before I hit send. Even though the subject line was "sick day" I managed to have "suck day" in the text of the email.

In random news of the day, it seems WWE fans are complaining about the writing. Huh.

Yay streak!

I'm starting to think I may actually be sick and not just have a case of the Mondays, as it were. Hm.

I had a manager who, I'm pretty sure, set me up to fail a lot. She did this to a number of people (I think she wanted to be seen as "saving" the department by rescuing it from our "mistakes"), and got two of my coworkers fired in the process. She was encouraged to move on years before my layoff, but it sure did a number on my self confidence. In spite of getting paid to edit and write for years, I'm having trouble applying to positions where that's a major part of the job because, what if she's right? What if I'm just to stupid to even recognize the way my writing fails? And then I slap myself upside the head and apply anyway.

Anyway, I'm currently watching Finding Bigfoot. This episode is especially fun because they're teaming up with ghost hunters, leading to such gems as, "I can't say for sure if that was a ghost, so I'm going to focus on something I know exists--Bigfoot!"