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athelindUpon awakening this morning, Your Obedient Serpent had one of those epiphanies that keep expanding his mind these days.
For the last couple of days at work, I've been in and out of training. Training at my new job leans toward the casual and conversational. They take it seriously, but they want to know that you're engaged.
I've found that, when discussions of safety, odd technology, and strange experiences lean toward the conversational .... I frequently have A Relevant Amusing Anecdote.
And they all start differently.
When you're clinically depressed, one of the things that gets into your head is the idea that "I haven't done anything with my life." And that's a hard one to dislodge.
But ... by GAD, sir! I've done all manner of things with my life.
I am ... INTERESTING.
You may have noticed that, over the last year or so, a phrase I've used more than once is 'I don't want to be That Guy. "Nobody wants to be That Guy."
Well, I think that I might be This Guy:
... and I think I'm good with that.
Pity poor![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kohai_tiger, who, in the course of two to three hours of daily commute, occasionally gets stuck in the role of Hapless Gentleman's Club Member Buttonholed by Pompous Windbag McBragg ...
For the last couple of days at work, I've been in and out of training. Training at my new job leans toward the casual and conversational. They take it seriously, but they want to know that you're engaged.
I've found that, when discussions of safety, odd technology, and strange experiences lean toward the conversational .... I frequently have A Relevant Amusing Anecdote.
When I was in the Coast Guard ...
When I worked in the hospital ...
When I was at Cal State, doing Seafloor Mapping ...
When I was in the comic book store ...
When you're clinically depressed, one of the things that gets into your head is the idea that "I haven't done anything with my life." And that's a hard one to dislodge.
But ... by GAD, sir! I've done all manner of things with my life.
I am ... INTERESTING.
You may have noticed that, over the last year or so, a phrase I've used more than once is 'I don't want to be That Guy. "Nobody wants to be That Guy."
... and I think I'm good with that.
Pity poor
kohai_tiger, who, in the course of two to three hours of daily commute, occasionally gets stuck in the role of Hapless Gentleman's Club Member Buttonholed by Pompous Windbag McBragg ...
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Date: 2011-02-20 03:45 pm (UTC)Yes indeed you are at very minimum INTERESTING! (It's why I like the conversations you and your friends have here.) You are also very well educated, intelligent, and have a pithy humor (in and among your other styles of humor, I suspect.) If the Icon of Dragon is correct you are also swift to anger but happily slow to act upon it (though once critical mass is attained, boy howdy, look out!)
As to not wanting to be "that guy" well, i dont know enough about it, except that the image is of an elderly man, who smokes, whose body is in need of tai chi or other physical exertion, and judging on appearance might have some money. Whether that dude is a kind patriarch or an asshole, I have no idea, but the notion occurs that if I live long enough I may start to resemble outwardly That Guy, so will pray for that guy as well.
As to the Company's Need To Know whether one is engaged or not, or what one's handwriting looks like (Europe) or one's fat to muscle ratio (some U.S. companies) or one's footprint (I made that one up, and dear lord let me know if that one's true), to quote one of online friends "I'll stop calling it Orwellian when it stops looking like "1984"."
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Date: 2011-02-21 02:03 am (UTC)As for "being engaged", I meant that in the sense of "actively participating in the assimilation of information that they readily acknowledge is dry and tedious". When I say that our training tends toward the conversational, I mean that we do it in small groups (three or four people), and our trainer (whose colorful career includes being a lighting technician for a movie studio) has a touch of the McBragg himself, frequently segueing into his OWN anecdotes, generally involving the inappropriate application of high voltage.
It's quite entertaining, really; I do have to avoid the temptation to let things devolve into Dueling Anecdotes, though.
I may have to hit Happy Hour with our trainer at some point, just so we CAN have an evening of Dueling Anecdotes.
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Date: 2011-02-22 10:12 am (UTC)LOL, re: my quite over the top erroneous understanding of the company's "need to know" of one's engagement (vis-a-vis a personal romantic relationship) rather than engagement in one's education. I am happy the training course educator is able to make a dry, tedious topic sufficiently interesting to be learned.
Re: Dueling Anecdotes, sounds like great fun! Friends and I once upon a time used to "bludgeon one another with our rapier-like wits" as Shannon put it. Happy times!
Many thanks for your detailed reply! :D