While I was away at Fun Fun Fun Fest, my pup, Noodles, stayed with a coworker who is, inarguably, her favorite of all the coworkers. However, even her love for him was not enough as she missed me so hard, she made herself sick. Like, we all got super nervous about it sick. The vet waved off the alarming symptoms as anxiety, gave her some pills and special food, and we’ve all been keeping a watchful eye on her. And, like magic, she’s back to being a happy, playful pup 24 hours later. That’s not to say I didn’t wake up several times last night, clapping and snapping from her from slumber, making sure she was still breathing. I really don’t know how people deal with real babies.

Also, Noodles made it into the newspaper. Actually, my company, Swash Labs, was highlighted in our local paper, and Noodles was named and made it into the cover photo. The closest you get to finding me is spotting my Chucks in the corner of another, much smaller, photo. The article was pretty rad and I’ll have to admit, it’s rad working for a company that is getting a little bit of hype right now. However, that means I want to step up my game and stepping up my game requires rest. Which is what I’m going to do now.

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1. “We’ve only just begun…”
2. 2011 35C Thursday Review, Pt. II
3. On discontent and moving forward.

Like many Thursday nights, I spent tonight unwinding, comfortably watching hours of television on my couch. There is something comforting about a good television show – the recurring characters, the inevitable cycle of a story in less than an hour, and the reassurance that they’ll all come back again next week. Well, okay, these things are also comforting about mediocre and terrible shows, too (re: America’s Next Top Model, Jersey Shore, etc), huh?

So, I’m watching Grey’s Anatomy, halfway disinterested and wondering if I’ll ever stop watching it, when a character asks another character if she had pictures of her baby. There are tears of joy in each others’ eyes and within a matter of seconds, a picture of a baby appears. On a phone. Yes, this is television but this is something that happens everyday. IRL, if you will. I realize I am stating the obvious but I’m old enough to have lived more than half of my life on photographic film that took at least an hour to develop, save the occasional Polaroid shot. My high school memories fit in a few photo albums, small enough for a shoebox. But, by the end of my five-year college career, I had hundreds of pictures of me and my friends online, easily accessible, easily shareable.

I realize this transition was probably less shocking than the invention of the automobile and black-and-white television but I still find myself pausing, thinking, “This is incredible. How did we live before this?”

Just last night, I was “window shopping” through the App Store and took a look at the featured educational apps. I couldn’t help but think about how different my life would have been if I had those apps when I was in high school. Digital flashcards? Geography lessons at a touch of a finger? The circulatory and respiratory system, labeled and interactive, on a 3.5″ screen?

But, after my imagination came back down from taking young Nina to national spelling bees, UIL state competitions, and a perfect 4.0 GPA, I’m back in reality. I’m back, lying in bed, twenty-nine years old, with most of my formal education learned through outdated textbooks, burned through hundreds of pens and pencils, and researched through the Dewey Decimal System.

Would I be better had I been born in the late ’90s? Would I be smarter? How would my life be now if technology did not move at such a rapid pace today? What would I do without search engines, instant communication, and the hive mind of the internet?

These questions I cannot Google so I move on.

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Stop by any bar after five o’clock and you’ll find someone who hates their job. Who am I kidding, you’ll find tables full of men and women, pint in hand, either griping about their clueless boss or wanting to talk about everything except their job. Imagine, people spending almost half of their time awake doing something that is not fulfilling them. It’s maddening. I know because I’ve been there.

I’ve held seven jobs in my lifetime. I’ll admit, I’ve drawn lucky hands almost every time, enjoying my stay until I’ve moved or found better opportunities. But, three of those seven riled me up so bad, I buckled down and did something I don’t normally enjoy doing. I quit.

It’s a tired cliché but it’s true: Life’s too damn short. Life is too damn short to spend most of it hating what you are doing. Also, that is idiocy. If you find yourself unhappy about what you’re doing and you are not doing anything to change the situation, that is foolishness. And, as much as I hate quitting, I hate being a fool even more.

But, sometimes, the timing isn’t right. I know. Sometimes, you have to stick with your unreasonable boss because you need the company’s sweet, sweet benefits. This is another thing I know because I’ve been there. So, if you can’t quit and you’re frustrated, what should you do?

Think about your skill set. Think about others. And find a way to marry the two together. Then, make it happen.

For me, that meant doing a lot of random things outside of work. And during work. While at my last unsatisfying job, I started blogging, creating websites and projects that used my talents in ways my job did not utilize, and unknowingly, I networked. I used Facebook and Twitter to engage and observe the community around me. And, I shared my side projects with this connected community. To me, at the time, it was a way of passing the time, to keep sane, but in the end, these activities I did to keep my mind sharp and my spirits high were what finally gave me the opportunity to finally quit.

Now I am content. Actually, I am beyond content as I am now at a company that shares the same vision as I do, doesn’t settle for mediocrity, embraces creativity, and values my knowledge more than any previous employer. I am beyond content because we are a company that cares.

I would have never found a company that cares if I didn’t care in the first place. Thank you, discontentment.

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1. Countdown to 35 Conferette 2011: 12 days ’til you look forward to darkness

November is here and lots of things have happened that I haven’t documented on this here blog. I thought I’d recap a few of those things but turns out, an internal server error has been greeting my blog visitors for who knows how long. So, instead of recapping, I had to figure out why this here blog was broken. And, now I have fifteen minutes left to post today.

See, it’s National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo, as it’s lovingly and confusingly called) but I’m not a writer. I’ve never considered myself one. I have the utmost respect for the English language and my vocabulary ain’t so bad but a extravagant storyteller I am not.

So, NaBloPoMo.

I haven’t forgotten my 101 in 1,001 days list. For some crazy reason, my past self thought it’d be good for future me to participate in National Blog Posting Month. NaBloPoMo. The lazy man’s NaNoWriMo, if you will. So, this is the resurrection of theneener.net. Long live the blog.

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Noodles says, "Hi"

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I think part of the reason I stopped updating this blog is due to the fact that I somehow became a “music blog” and understandably so, since I wrote about NX35 for fifty days in a row. But I never really wrote about music before that. I wrote about myself and various other things I enjoy like TV, food, naps, and baby animals doing silly things on YouTube. I thought perhaps I could abandon all that and learn the ways of becoming a snarky, obscure music-lovin’, hipster blogger but snark gets old and deconstructive, and to be honest, a lot of obscure music remains obscure for a reason. (Wait, was that snark?)

With that said, I’ll be posting again and will leave you with what’s been playing through my headphones this morning:

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As an added bonus, my friend Aaron Allen (formerly of Valeyra and Spanish For Valerie) helped record a remake of “Tik Tok” with his boys, Game 7. Aside from the cheesy slideshow, the guys changed the hook to “Drink, Drink” and whipped up some clever lines. It’s worth a once over listen but you can download it for free if you’d like!

Either way you listen to it… you gotta admit, it’s ridiculously catchy. You’re welcome.

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The future is now, as DayBowBow.net, SubservientExperiment.com, and TheNeener.net have joined forces to become GOLION. We hope our loyal fanbases will understand our new directions as we aim to better serve the DFW music-loving community. Our mission statement is as follows:

The ever-changing environment of online music coverage makes it all but impossible for any one entity to survive on its own. So with this in mind, we’ve decided that the best plan was for each of our entities to combine into something more than we could be on our own. By becoming something bigger than the sum of our parts, we hope to provide the area with the best in local and national coverage while still keeping the voices that we worked so hard cultivate with our other projects. We thank you for your prior support and hope that you stay with us as we grow.

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http://trololololololololololo.com

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