It’s been too long since I posted because I’ve been preoccupied. I am moving to yet another apartment and preparations are tedious and time consuming, however the topic of moving always makes for good blog fodder. I have lived in 6 apartments since I stopped living (regularly)with my family. I can honestly say that I’ve been disappointed by each one of them in one way or another, regardless of roommate issues (when I had roommates).

The older I get I think the more see the value of community amenities. When I was in college I couldn’t afford the fancy schmancy apartment communities that had pools, workout rooms, and game rooms. I always went for the best (cleanest, safest, newest) apartment I could afford and didn’t stop to worry about extras not knowing how they could’ve changed my experience for just a few dollars a month. Recently I’ve come to realize the value of community amenities and discounts.

The average gym membership is about $30-50 a month regardless of the length of the contract. The vast majority of gym contracts are impossible to break and usually end up costing people a lot more money than they intended to spend. I discovered that if you find a community with a workout room and a pool, hot tub, or sauna, you might pay 5-10 dollars more on rent per month but it is worth it for the convenience and the lack of an unbreakable never expiring contract.

I don’t have to get up get dressed in street clothes and drive to the gym to change into workout clothes and vice versa to come home. I also don’t have to use a public restroom populated by stinky and sweaty women of all ages when my apartment is a two minute walk away. I’ll be more inclined to get up and go to the gym at 5 or 6 in the morning because it won’t be a big production and require me to be awake enough to drive. This particular gym does not have free weights, so the chances that there will be a lot of men there is slim. The competition for the equipment will mostly be with other ladies which I’m used to at the gym anyway. I’m not seeing the downside to this yet. I guess I’ll have to report back on what it’s really like when I move in early next week.

Other amenities which I think should be in every rental community (if possible) are a dog park, a playground for kids, and picnic areas. My current rental community has no amenities. That means that parents let their kids run in the parking lot to play, there are doggie doodles at random places, and there is no sense of community because there is no hangout area (not that I am social or would socialize with some of the folk around here). It just makes for a very boring and depressing rental experience. There are other reasons that I am leaving, but I think that if the community had more to offer I would be more reluctant to leave.

I’ve visited friends who have spent exorbitant amounts of money to live in apartments the size of a closet to be closer to a city or a university campus. I never understood why anyone would do that to themselves, but everyone has different ideas about convenience. I am interested in finding out what you look for in an apartment community. What makes you love your apartment and what makes you hesitant to sign a lease?

It’s been a terribly long time since I made any updates to the site. A lot of things happened including a trip, an impending move to a new apartment (which implies lots of packing), a decent spot of work, and a major theme crisis. I wasn’t just lazy I was busy and because this is a one chick show, I had no one to pinch it.

The good news is that the theme crisis is over. I have found a great theme called xMark. My old theme was nice but there were a few things that bothered me about it after I had some time to spend with it. It wasn’t fluid and did not degrade gracefully when placed in a very small or oddly sized window. These things just make a theme less usable. I’m not a usability freak by any means but if it bothered me it’s going to drive people with sensory differences absolutely nuts. I also got tired of the header image thing even though I had one of my own up there. I wanted a theme that was lighter and loaded quicker. xMark accomplishes both of these things.

If you see a lot of layout changes over a very short period of time, do not freak out. It’s just me mucking with the CSS which I tend to do. Expect slight changes to the look and feel and expect more posts in the near future.

The worst part about suffering Insomnia is waking up after you have actually gotten some restful sleep. It like being dragged from the depths of the ocean to the surface and if it happens too quickly it can ruin your day.

I know that some people use the snooze function on their alarm clocks regularly and it works for them. They wake up gradually at their own pace and I can see how that would be attractive. Unfortunately I had some snooze button mishaps in college that make me less inclined to use the snooze function on my alarm clock. Furthermore, the whole stop-and-go idea of using the snooze button to get a few minutes of sleep is not attractive to me because it is not restful sleep which I am lacking right now. A few minutes
of light snoozing while anticipating the alarm to go off again is just not something I need.

I bought an iHome iH5B alarm clock that i use with my iPod to wake me up. The good thing about it is that the volume on the music or alarm increases gradually over a short period of time so I don’t get jolted awake (which sometimes causes a headache of enormous proportion). I have also considered the Progressive Wake Alarm Clock which wakes
you slowly using lights and aromatherapy. The only reason I didn’t get it is because it’s not iPod friendly yet. The idea is wonderful and I will always be on the lookout for an alarm clock that uses light and sound together to reduce wakeup shock.

The older I get the harder I find it to go to sleep at night. My brain won’t shut down. In fact I think about more stuff when I’m trying to go to bed than I do working and piddling around all day. I have had several serious bouts with insomnia as an adult. Some of these have been the result of my heart arrhythmia which was misdiagnosed as depression and anxiety for several years. It turns out that I have a Magnesium deficiency and have to take Magnesium Oxide supplements to quell that issue. Since moving to Raleigh I had problems sleeping in my new apartment at first, especially after my new furniture came. You would think that an air mattress would strike fear in the heart of an insomniac before a big old Sealy Posturepedic would. At any rate, I have consulted a few web sites and read a lot of blogs to help me in my quest to re-gain my natural sleeping habits. I think part of my problem is that I am used to having a TV in my bedroom which always lulled me into a coma at night. I don’t have that luxury right now and my body is giving me hell for it. Here’s what I have done so far to try to ease myself to sleep:

• Eliminated caffeine after 6pm
• Re-oriented my bed so my bedroom reflects the layout of my old bedroom
• Purchased a memory foam mattress topper
• Purchased luxury (hotel quality) sheets
• Placed scented candles in my bedroom with relaxing aromas (don’t worry I don’t burn them when I’m trying to fall asleep)
• Purchased an iHome iH5B iPod compatible Alarm Clock Radio which I listen to before going to sleep (the headphones got painful)
• Worked on my GTD To Do List (on Tracks Train) to unload some stray thoughts
• Completed repetitive and boring tasks
• Read books and blogs
• Called and spoke with friends and family on the phone to the point of exhaustion
• Counted sheep (I am not lying)
• Kept a handwritten journal where I unload emotionally before bed
• Taken Melatonin and OTC Sleep Aids (sparingly)

The combination of these things has earned me a few nice nights of sleep, however I cannot seem to sleep more than 6 hours at a time with any consistency. I have had less than 7 total hours of sleep since this time last week and it is obviously frustrating. This sleep deprivation is also having a negative effect on my attention span when I work, and my drive to write and be creative. I have been woken up in the middle of the night and headed the computer because I have discovered that I had something to journal
or blog about, but being up for such long periods of time and not being able to create anything is crippling me.

People are quick to give advice and say that maybe I am indeed depressed or having bouts of anxiety, but I don’t feel either at all. I have been happier since I moved to Raleigh than I was the entire time I was in Florida. I miss my family but it’s no different than when I was in college. I do not experience any bouts of panic or nervousness. I would almost feel relieved if I could pick out what exactly is keeping me from resting even if it was depression or anxiety.

I plan on attempting the following to see if it will help me change my sleeping habits:

• Shower before bed
• Listen to Jazz (which can aid in creativity too)
• Read more books
• Schedule specific times for writing and working on my blog
• Journal every night even if it’s only a sentence or two
• Start a regular exercise plan (even if it’s only simple things I can do at home)
• Move to an apartment complex that was built more recently (these buildings have thin walls and the floors make too much noise)
• Drink warm milk or herbal tea before bed

If you are reading this and have any suggestions I would appreciate all the help you can give. Sleep deprivation is worse than water torture and I don’t wish it on anyone. I seem to have had more than my fair share over the past 6 or 7 years.

As you can see, my site seems to have experienced some technical difficulties. What had happened was I upgraded to Wordpress 2.1 and was having problems with categories (namely I couldn’t create new ones or save anything to existing categories, and forget about the list of category names on the writing page). There were also problems with UTW and various other plugins which the individual authors are working to resolve. Anyway, I posted my issues in the Wordpress Support Forum and waited a couple of days but got no potential fixes so I decided to blow everything away and start on a fresh install. When I re-imported my posts everything was placed into a generic Uncategorized category so now I have to go back and re-file them. I was planning on adding some new categories and trimming down some of them that had become too general so this incident has given me a great chance to do just that. I am a little disappointed at this Wordpress update. I know it fixed over 500 bugs but it seems to have generated a couple hundred new ones. We’ll see how this all pans out. Overall I like the changes that have been implemented.

I have recently renamed both my content and comments feeds (I know it’s bad webmastering but it’s part of my grand scheme). Please update your subscriptions!

Full Content Feed is now: http://feeds.feedburner.com/itsreallyjustme_fullcontent
Comments Feed is is now: http://feeds.feedburner.com/itsreallyjustme_comments

I recently switched my contact form over to the Secure and Accessible PHP Contact Form that will deter Spam. Comment spam was bad enough but I got hammered by over 50 emails in one day just from the comment form alone. All of this just drives a wedge between people who want to communicate with each other which is unfortunate. At any rate, use the new form which is at the same place.

I hate to say it but the friend game doesn’t get any better the older you get. You get to a point where you think that the group of friends you have surrounded yourself with is beyond all of the petty drama and bull you dealt with in HS and in college. You think that because they’re all intelligent people who you admire for different reasons that they are above the puerile bickering and selfishness that you have tried so hard to distance yourself from for so long. You think that the people you invest the most energy in and that you come to trust the most will actually be there for you when you need it. If you think these things at some point in time you will realize that you are sorely mistaken.

In the long run it won’t matter if you gave your “friend” more than anyone’s fair share of attention and support. It won’t matter if you stood behind them through bad relationships, police reports, job woes, and family trauma. Their promises to call, write, and send smoke signals are all for naught. You will be let down. I just hope that your “friend” actually gives you a reason for dropping you on your ass. A lame excuse is better than none at all.

Lately I have been struggling to find inspiration. There are a lot of things I want to write about but I have problems getting started and not enough time to sit and think about what I’d really like to say. I think that I also need to develop more patience for sitting around and thinking about what I want to write. I have a tendency to get sucked into other things like TV and reading the bajillion articles aggregated into Google Reader every hour or so during the day (darn you bloggers for having so much to say). I know that I need to spend some time with no outside interruptions each day. Lifehacker mentioned an application called Darkroom for Windows which allows you to write without interruption from other programs. i am going to give it a shot and see if it improves my productivity.

As blogging becomes more prominent in online culture, it is having an incredible impact on society in general. Everyone can be a journalist and report on events as they happen without waiting for the “media” to arrive. Average citizens can help expose corruption in big business, the media, and in our country’s political structure. All of these are great things. This new power is unfortunately coming back to haunt some bloggers.

Over the past few years, several bloggers have been fired from companies both big and small. The claims range from divulging corporate secrets on the web to taking inappropriate pictures in company issued uniforms. Several of the bloggers who were dismissed have taken their former employers to court to battle it out. I think that some of them have a chance of winning, especially if their company has no written policy on blogging or no written policy that could be applied to blogging. The vast majority, however, don’t have any chance of winning at all as this current political administration has allowed big business to run amok and do whatever it wants. There are virtually no protections for the employee and companies can fire you at will without giving you a reason.

All of this has prompted me to start researching these situations to avoid them moving forward with my blog. I am also trying to find more information on how blogs have negatively impacted an individual’s candidacy for employment. Obviously the easiest way to protect yourself would be to avoid mentioning your employer, your job duties, or your coworkers. If you are a whistle-blower, you should always inform the proper agencies and authority at your workplace before attempting to blog about it. If you find it
necessary to get specific about your job or your employer it may be necessary to do everything anonymously to protect your privacy. The EFF has posted an article about blogging safely about your workplace along with a legal guide for bloggers which I am in the process of thoroughly reading.

So far I have tried my best to separate the workplace from my blog. I am curious about how potential employers have viewed my blog and whether or not it has kept me from getting hired. I know that in the case of web development positions or technical and creative writing positions it has almost always worked in my favor. I have heard from other bloggers that they have been passed over for specific positions because of their blog or even because of specific posts on their blog. I hope that I have not been the victim of that kind of prejudice.

Have any of you been rejected from a position due to the content of your blog? If so I’d love to hear about your experience.