Thursday, August 5, 2010

The Tickler

I was reading a blog/webpage thing today called 43 Folders that is a blog but is so much more than a blog.  It's about how to make the most of your time and to get shiza done.  So of course it's going to be more than a blog, this dude knows how to do things! 

I was reading his post on what he thinks makes good blog.  He's upfront about how it's all his opinion and we are free to disagree with him...and I like that.  I hope you, my following, feel the same way.  You can always disagree with me.  Becker, the 90's sitcom that is either funny or uncomfortable with Ted Danson, precursor to House, is a lot like that too.  Full of opinions and he don't care if people agree with him or not, he's just going to spew what he thinks.  Anyways, what makes a good blog, or part of what he says, is that the blogger is obsessed with something.  That they have all these thoughts and words inside of them that just spills out and that's why they write in a blog.  Well, that's how I feel, sometimes I have so many words inside of me they just have to come out.  Sometimes I don't have enough people to talk to, and after I call my mom for 45 min., write pages long emails to my friends, to my siblings, to my other family members, and talk to all my coworkers, I still have more and more and more and more to say.  But what am I obsessed with?  All I can come up with is my own thoughts.  Or my own life.  Or just life in general and everyone in it.  I like that answer the best, but I don't know if it's true or not.  I'd have to go through all my posts and categorize them and then do some sort of statistical curve with it and find the mean, median and average.  Maybe there'd even be a derivative or two.  Yeah right...I've never understood derivatives!  A derivative has no unit, and I have a very hard time comprehending the point of unitless numbers.

Did you know I've been blogging for 6 yrs?  This is my third format and the first truly public one.  It's a sign of me growing older and more mature.  Yeah, I'm holding things back now...just imagine what it was like before!  Mostly I used to use other peoples names and complain about different people a lot.  Now I don't complain about people unless they are true strangers or belong to this list:
1.  Kathy Griffen
2.  Al Roker
3.  Woody Allen

They are my three least favorite people of all time.  I have a hard time deciding who I dislike more, Al Roker or Kathy Griffen.

Do you know where the term 43 Folders comes from?  It's a filing/organization system where there is a flat folder thing with a file for each month and then a file for 31 days which is 43 files total.  It's called a Tickler.  I own one now for work.  A tickler!  Because you put papers and reminders in it for the correct month, and then when it's that month you move the reminders to the correct days (1 through 31 files), then you look at the correct day file everyday and it tickles you to remember what you need to do.  Or something like that.  It just reminds me of a professor I had at CMU where he had nightmares as a young child where a monster that I suspect looked like a banana with arms would tickle his feet when he was in bed and he called it the Tickler.  I'm actually apart of a facebook group about that.

The last thing the guy said in his post about good blogs is that it's okay to break your rules every once in a while, and he proved it by making that post a list, and apparently he doesn't like list posts.  Which I, of course, disagree with.  But in the spirit of things, I broke my rule with this post.  I don't like it when bloggers discuss their own blog in their post!  I read their blog not to hear about their blog but to hear about their life...but sometimes they just sort of intersect.

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