People Pleasing and Vegetarians

H'okay so.  

...man, it's been a minute since I heard that.  I should probably look that up....

Well, that just happened.

Where was I?  That's right.

So... Our office throws quarterly "Lunch & Learn" in which we provide the campus with an interesting guest speaker and a free lunch (as long as their within the first 30 people to sign up).  Sweet deal!  Who doesn't love a free lunch.  And now I am in charge of-- well, basically everything except for choosing the presenter.  I coordinate dates, reserve the space, coordinate the web stuffs, answer questions and-- order the food.  I hate this.  I hate this so much.

You see, I am a *sigh* people pleaser.  I just want everyone to be happy.  If I could send everyone the menu and have them choose specifically I would.  I would be SO much happier doing that.  But, that's not practical for how our system is set up.  And that's where my personality is at war within itself. I want to make people very happy-- but I also want to be practical.  Those two don't go hand in hand very well.  And it ends up with me being very conflicted and very unhappy.  (did you see that? I underlined it.  EMPHASIS!).

Anywho.  So I ordered a selection of deli sandwiches and also 5 chicken caesar salads.  Looking over our past records this is the first time in three years that this office has offered anything other than sandwiches.  I went with the chicken caesar for two reasons.  I'm sure you don't really care my thought process but I'm going to tell you anyways because this is my blog post. So there.  Reason Number 1.  The chicken on these salads come in large chunks.  There for if you don't want to eat chicken you can easily move the pieces to the side and still have a decent sized salad and will be full at the end of lunch.  Reason 2.  The croûtons are also easy to remove so if you're looking for a gluten free option- well, there you have it.  Is it perfect? No.  But I figured that it would be the most adaptable for crazy diets.  I feel as though I can say that because I'm one of those "choose to participate gluten free" wackos.

Well, can you guess what happened yet?  All the people trickle in to be WOW'd by our presenter (one of the cool kids who works at TaxSlayer- do you know them? Check them out!!) and then the dreaded question... "is there any vegetarian?"  I did my best to explain that we did have a chicken caesar salad option but apparently that was not good enough.  This was continued between her and her friend about how could it POSSIBLY be that there is not vegetarian option?  Fucking amazed.  Mind blown.  Really?  Reeeeaalllly?  You choose to have a specific diet and are surprised when you don't have any option to eat.  She went to a seat and sat glaring while everyone else ate.   My husband then explained that she may have been so morally opposed to killing animals for consumption that she could not bring herself to eat anything that had been touched  by dead flesh.  AAAAaaaaahhhhh. Morals.  Welp. Guess you're just going to be hungry then!!

I'm really not mad at her.  I'm really upset with the fact that I couldn't help her.  I know that I can't make everyone happy.  But I want to.  I don't want people to not each lunch because I didn't consider that maybe people don't want to eat food touched by meat.  Outwardly I'm pissed and annoyed but really I'm just disappointed.

On a slightly different note- today I was considering being a language arts teacher or a fitness instructor.

Have a good night!!

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The truth is...

I have a love hate relationship with blogging.  As is probably apparently by my scattered posts and various blogs over the years.

I love the idea of the blog.  A place to hold your thoughts.  A place to write and be read.  A place to share your experiences to help others.  It's also a place to hold yourself responsible.  Some of my friends are successful and inspirational bloggers, and my sister, though not a blogger is a beautiful writer.  And every now and then I think, you know what?  I can do this!  I pull up the old blog and I see the last post date.  Wow.  MONTHS ago.  That's rather disappointing and then the onslaught of negative thoughts start.  Why do you think you can do this? You're not consistent.  How hard is it to just post something on a regular basis? You don't even have anything to say.  Stop trying.

So to avoid all of those thoughts I decide to start up a new blog. A clean slate.  And that lasts for all of-- two posts.  I try to make a schedule.  "On Mondays I'm going to talk about restaurants in the area"  "On Saturday I'm going to talk about a craft". Oh. My. God. Why do I do this to myself?  After two posts that match up with my schedule I have nothing to post for a specific day and I get frustrated and I quit.  No wonder. That doesn't sound fun at all!

But no more!

From this point forward I am fully accepting that I am an erratic blogger.  And that's okay.  Some weeks I may have 1 post, some weeks I might have 2.  Then there may be months where I don't post at all.  And that's just how it's going to be.  I will not have a posting schedule.  I will not have a theme.  I will just post what I feel like when I feel like.  

One of the biggest problems I have with bloggers today is that everything is perfect.  They want to have a perfect finished product that they share with the world.  And it's just a little, tiny, shiny peek into their lives.  But who wants that?  I want to read the daily grind.  I want to see the not so pretty parts of life.  I want to see problems that other people are having and how they worked through them- and that might be helpful to me. So guess, what.  That's what I'm going to do.  If people were more open and honest about true daily life- people would be happier.  Just me?  I find it so easy to be so hard on myself when I can't compete with what other people post on facebook or their blog.

One of my friends- she's probably back in one of these older blog posts somewhere... she told me a saying her grandfather told her:

"You can't compare your insides with someone else's outsides."

Woah.  When I heard that I literally stopped.  How often do I do that?  ALL THE TIME.  And why?  What good does it do me?  Well, I tell myself that it gives me a goal.  I can work towards that.  But really it's just a comparison that makes me feel horrible about myself.

Alright. That's it. My cat wants to play.  So I guess this is the end of my new beginning.  See you in a few months when I post something else :)

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