Ain't nobody got time for that!

Here we go. I'm once again moaning about how I can never find time to do this but here we are.
I had a rubbish day at work today. In fact, it wasn't rubbish, it just proved to be one of those days that highlights my inadequacies. It's happened a few times in the new job and well when you swap out the environment and the people this stuff becomes apparent.

The big inadequacy is I'm not very good at talking to people.

That may seem a shock if you are one of the "elite" I guess that know me quite well, and find me to be a but of a loudmouth goofball.
I think the thing that I find the most annoying is that if you were to make the binary decision then you would label me introvert and that means that you are happy enough to just be quiet in the corner. It almost certainly is not the same for introverts but I like the social interaction - I believe we are hardwired to crave social contact. Perhaps habit can suppress this and to some extent it has in me - I find it very awkward sharing close quarters with other people like in the kitchen when making tea. I have lived on my own for so long now that while the idea of living with someone else (a lodger in the new place perhaps) sounds cool but I fear or rather expect that I would get annoyed at sharing the space with them.
I do want to be involved in the conversation, believe me. I've said this on the last two work outings, Christmas last year and Neil and Jim's leaving do, I feel the layout of the office and where I am in relation to others mean it's easy for me to remain quiet but please listen to my quips!
On the work outings, Lesley has said both times that she loves when "I come out of my shell" but that person that they see after a couple of brews is much closer to what I feel is the real me. Lesley's comments, bless her are probably said during her famed "blackouts", make me feel good. I, for the most part, quite like myself but it's an area of my life which I would love to improve.
I did a little digging round the Internet and there is a Shropshire Speakers event that happens once a month for those that want to improve public speaking. I'm not sure if it's what we're after or if it would be any help but might be worth a look?

I've also been toying with the idea of doing video diary things in lieu of the blog. I figure it may improve my speaking and who doesn't like a good monologue?

I was thinking of wearing a hat for the lolz...

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Unnerving smile

Not quite the work post that I hinted at earlier, or you were screaming for, but we're getting closer.
Now I don't strictly work in a customer-facing job so it's not something I have to worry about, but there are people at my workplace, the company HQ, that do speak with outsiders, with tenants (I work for a housing association). I may have mentioned this before when I went into the bank to get a loan and after sitting down with a lady to do the application, fill out all the paperwork, I went to leave and we shook hands and she said "It was nice to meet you" and I was literally disarmed, I stopped in my tracks and didn't know how to react (although not unusual for me).

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The posts that never were ( = Content!)

Along with digging through old posts, I found some old drafts that I started but never flourished, never matured into full-fledged posts. As mentioned in the previous post, I found it fascinating to read the kind of stuff I was writing a couple years back so I'm going to post them here for analysis. Some were particularly time specific, so don't make any sense here, although interesting my F1 post going on about Lewis Hamilton outshadowing Jenson and how now he will never get a chance to challenge for the world title, can't always be right :)

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The archives are interesting

That's true I think. For some reason I found myself looking at Google Analytics for this blog - it's always interesting to see how people stumble here and what they decide to look at. That being said I believe most people that go here are people I know in the real world, or fans of Bottom and drinking. Yes, that's right, one of my most popular posts is my Bottom Drinking Game - a game of drinking to the British TV Show Bottom (it is literally middle-aged Young Ones).
Anyways, I fell down the rabbit-hole revisiting some old posts which others had been checking out and it's made me want to blog again, so I shall try!

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Using Spotify more...

The title says it all really. I've known about Spotify for a long time but I haven't been a bigger user of the service. I personally struggle to force myself to spend time crafting playlists - I much prefer to stick the iPod on the overall shuffle and go with the large hopper of songs.
That being said, I'm slowly coming round to the use of Spotify and believe it's only a matter of time before I end going for the subscription and removing the annoying ads (oh and allowing more plays of individual songs and being able to play more songs in a month of course!). To that end I've set myself a challenge to use Spotify more proactively - a lot of the times I will create playlists which are simply whole albums of artists.

Satisfying the DJ inside me, I've decided to put together (at least for now) one playlist a month with the aim of approx CD length i.e max 74 mins so if someone wanted to rip to a CD they totally could. Another restriction is an artist only appears once in the playlist (a golden rule of a good DJ set) plus I like there to be some kind of a flow through the songs.
To which I present you my May 2012 playlist - enjoy!

I'm also going to impose an extra restriction and that an artist can't appear in my monthly playlists in consecutive months. Maybe a little harsh if I'm going through a particular band phase but hey, variety is the spice of life!

I appreciate any feedback and look out for next month's playlist.

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Jonny plays Draw Something

Just in case you've been living under a rock these last couple of months, there's a cool mobile game called "Draw Something" which has come out and simply blown up.
A very simply asynchronous game which is perfect for the mobile platforms (Apple, Android) where you have to draw something (geddit?!) from a small list of words, submit the drawing and then have your mate try and guess it. Swap over and repeat. Lots of times.
So, I'm pretty addicted to this and with the latest update, it makes it easy to export your drawings. So that's what I've been doing and then sticking up on the tumblr I set up linked below.
The cool thing with tumblr is you can queue up posts so check back often - I currently have enough sketches to last up until Thursday!

Jonny plays Draw Something.

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