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lukepayne380592 · 4 years

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Stay on Target

Targets, huh? What’s the deal with that? Supposedly, these things are meant to be sort of like goals, only you also have a plan to attain them. It also helps to keep these targets SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound) rather than VAPID (Vague, Amorphous, Pie-in-the-sky, Irrelevant, and Delayed). But why set targets?

Well my first reason would be to refer to an amazing CGP Gray video (so, refer to a CGP Gray video) called “7 Ways to Maximize Misery 😞” because he goes over the use of targets, and put simply, with a vapid targets, not only is there no urgency, which means no motivation, the targets are impossible to accomplish. This then leads to even more problems, because your brain wants to be productive, because that releases those sweet, sweet endorphins, but it’s method of facilitating this productivity is being subverted to make it unproductive, which is very not good.

To use Gray’s example, tidying an entire house is impossible, for there is always more to do, but washing a pile of dirty laundry is within the realms of possibility. Therefore, a SMART target would be “I am going to wash this pile of laundry, today, and then clean the living room whilst the washing machine is on” is a much better goal than “I am going to clean the entire house, some time in the future.” Pretty neat, huh?

So, all this talk of goals is good, but what are mine? After all, my tutor has asked me to come up with a one year, three year, five year, and ten year plan, and thankfully for myself, I already had three of the four laid out.

So the two quick ones to explain, the three and five year plans, the ones I have thought the most about, are to complete my college course with the level six one year top up, and to move in to a house I own (or at least have a mortgage on). Now if I am being honest, the three year plan is just part one of the five year plan. And the three year plan is going to have many, many mini plans with in it in the forms of all the assignments I will get, so to put it in terms of SMART, the three year plan is to complete my college course, by completing each assignment, for the sake of the piece of paper I will use to show future employers that I know what I am doing.

This then leads on to my five year plan, which I will achieve by using my college course to get a high paying job, and then saving my money earned for two years, at which point I will pay for a mortgage on a house, and use any money left over to buy appliances I will need for the house (like cooker, fridge etc.).

The other plan I have come up with is moving out of my parents house, which is the one year target. For this target, I will be moving in with my brother. That’s it. And this is still a SMART target, as I can measure the success of it (did I move in with my brother?) I can achieve it, it is specific, it is time bound, and is relevant to the five year target as it will allow me more independence in preparation for when I will live alone in five years.

So that just leaves me with a ten year plan. And honestly I can’t think of one. It’s too long of a time for an individual to plan for. Or if an individual can plan that long in advance, I can’t. The length of time means that there are too many things that could change in that time, and any goals I could set myself would be largely VAPID. Gray’s video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LO1mTELoj6o&t=265s

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maskydoo · 5 years

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Nightmare Neighbors 3

(I’m writing out scripts for upcoming storytime style youtube videos, and posting what I have here. Note that this is a true story. Feedback is welcome.)

I went through a period for a few years where I had a lot of stress in my life from just too many sources.

For one thing, my work schedule was insane. I worked full time, and often overtime, with unpredictable shifts. I’d often work first, second, and third shift all in the same week, sometimes with 12- hour-shifts with only 8 hours off in between, all subject to change without notice. At the same time, I was also a full-time student, trying get my bleary eyed self through some of the most difficult classes I’d ever taken in my life. And it absolutely assassinated my sleep schedule.

My dog got sick and needed enough she had to be hospitalized for several days, and then after she was home had a complicated medicine regime of half a dozen meds she had to take several times per day. Then just as I was getting a handle on that, it was my cat’s turn to get sick and she ended up having emergency surgery.

And then, my elderly rescue dog got so sick she suddenly she couldn’t even stand and couldn’t even eat or drink on her own, so I had to do it all by hand. I was hoping she would recover, but it didn’t happen and sadly needed to put down. And to top it all off, I got badly sick myself with an especially nasty sinus infection, that made my eyes hurt too much to keep open and had me sneezing blood.

Between being sick, exhausted, and overwhelmed, my concentration was shot. I knew I was in trouble on my exam when I struggled to concentrate enough to just to write my own name. That class was necessary for the career program I was in. And in the end, I failed.

And I had to deal with all of this pretty much alone.

My boyfriend had a job that had him out of the country for months at a time.

I didn’t have time to go out and do anything fun. No energy for hobbies I enjoyed. And my only regular social interactions were decidedly hostile, but more on that later.

I remember CGP Gray’s video on how to be miserable, and yeah, I was basically following all the instructions for sailing the saddo ship.

As I tell the rest of this story, with all these increasingly outrageous encounters with the Feckwads next door, remember that all of this is what’s going on in my life at the time. This is the background.

I didn’t sleep well at night when I was home alone. I was starting to have strange feelings I couldn’t shake. Odd feelings that there was someone just outside my house, or at my door.

My dogs acted up at odd hours, barking at nothing as far as I could tell. I’d never see anything.

I’d compulsive get up to check that the house alarm is armed.

I tried to brush it off as nothing. I told myself I was just being paranoid. I was stressed. I was tired. I wasn’t used to living alone. Of course I was imagining things.

But on this night I had a sinking feeling, stronger than normal, that something was wrong. It kept me awake. I tossed and turned, but got got no rest.

Finally, I pulled myself out of bed. I had to be at work at 3am, and I’d mostly given up on getting any sleep anyway.

I was always nervous when in my driveway. My motion-sensor light was broken and it was nearly pitch black out. On the way to my truck, I heard something, and I’m not sure what. I stopped in my tracks. The sound came from somewhere off to my left, in the direction of my neighbor’s house. I couldn't see anything. I didn’t see anything, and didn’t hear anything else.

When I got to work, it turned out I only wasted time and gas. The schedule changed, and no one bothered to tell me. My shift now started at 7am, not 3. I could have slept, or at least tried to sleep, a little longer.

When I got back home, I checked the area with the beam of my headlights, as I always did when parking anywhere at night. That isn’t even my suspicion, it’s good practice to be aware of your surroundings.

I saw nothing.

I took two steps towards my house, then suddenly I heard a man’s voice shout.

On instinct, I yelled, reached for my pepper spray, and… fell on my ass for no reason.

Yeah. Not really my finest moment there.

It could have been anyone in the dark. A mugger, a kidnapper, a murderer!

But it turned out it was the neighbor guy, Toony.

That’s a relief!

Oh wait, actually no it isn’t. What the hell is he doing out here at like 3am? And where was me when I was shining my headlights earlier?

Ok, guys? Seriously Never do this kind of thing. Have some awareness about the lives women lead. You may mean well, but we don’t necessarily know that. Catching a women alone, cornering her in an elevator, or on the street, or in the dark, yeah those are all incredibly threatening situations for women.

Toony: “Sorry” He wasn’t.

What was the problem now? Toony says he’s been finding trash in their unfenced front yard, and was certain it was my fault.

Seriously?

Apparently some stray rubbish was a much bigger offense, than, oh say, scaring the living daylights out of women alone at night.

Now, I have no problems with neighbors bringing issues to my attention, but seriously “hey, can you make sure your bins are secured?” is a quick enough thing to say. Or it should be. But he just kept going on and on about.

But I know the trash isn’t mine. It was windy lately, it often was. Bins were getting blown over all through the neighborhood. Everyone had trash in their yards. Even I did, on my corner lot.

It’s not a big deal. Just be an adult and pick it up. It’s part of home ownership.

I nod to keep the peace. Usually I find just agreeing with people ends conversations the fastest so they’ll stop talking and I can get on with my day. And I really just wanted to go back to bed. It wasn’t worth my time to argue, so I agreed to keep an eye on my bin, if only to end the exchange sooner.

But it didn’t work on this guy. I agreed with everything he said, leaving him nothing to respond to, yet he still would not shut up and let it go. He kept going round and round, not even saying much new, just repeating himself.

Then said something that sounded a bit like a threat, how it would be a shame if we were to stop getting along.

He was keeping me busy. I didn’t even notice Loony flank me. She appeared out of nowhere from the shadows of a tree.

She stopped when I noticed her.

Now Loony wanted to yell at me about some eggs.

A few weeks before, I found a carton of white eggs smashed on the ground, right in front of our shared mailbox. I assumed one of the Feckwads must have dropped it while checking the mail, and then just left it there like a slob.

I knew it couldn’t have been mine. I get my eggs and milk from a delivery service, and not to my mailbox. Also, my eggs brown and the company used a different carton. So again, it wasn’t me.

Later, I found the shells in my yard. I assumed it was the work of squirrels.

Loony insisted they were mine. And now, weeks later, she was mad about it.

She even admitted proudly that she was actually the one who threw the shells in my yard.

Sorry squirrels, I blamed you unfairly.

So the irony here is that these people are mad at me for getting trash in their yard, which I didn’t even do, while they were actually the ones intentionally throwing trash in my yard, which they saw absolutely no problem with.

I’d been surprisingly patient for someone in my situation, but my shock was wearing off and my brain was catching up. Now I was really thinking about how weird this all was.

Why did she suddenly want to complain about eggs now, not the weeks ago when this actually occurred. It didn’t make sense, but this was back when I was still trying to make sense of their behavior. I didn’t make the connection at the time, but it fit a pattern I noticed later. When the eggs were on the ground, my boyfriend was still home. Now he was gone.

And would they be bothering me about this now, as in, at 3 am? What were these people doing awake and outside at 3 am? These aren’t normal human hours.

I realized that I never heard their door open or close during this whole thing. They had to have been already outside when I got there. Why?

And what were they doing out here at my property line? Their front door and their car are on the other side of their property.

And why did Loony approach me from the side, leaping out from behind a tree? What was she doing there? If she came from her house I would have seen her coming, so she had to have already been behind the tree when I arrived.

And why couldn’t I see either of them in the beam of my headlights when I pulled in?

So what were they doing here, the both of them, lurking outside my house at 3am? It couldn’t have been to talk to me. I just left earlier that hour, and they had no reason to expect me back so soon.

And then I had a question for myself. Why the heck was I still listening to these people ranting, especially with the attitude they were giving me? I’d stood outside in the dark for going on 20 minutes, when I could have been in bed.

You know what? I don’t have to take with this. I cut them off.

“It’s 3AM. I’m going to bed. Good night.”

I heard Loony say something an angry tone to my back, but didn’t catch what it was. And I didn’t care what she had to say. Now, I was only thinking of what they were doing. And the more I thought, the more wrong it all seemed.

The dogs weren’t barking without reason, and I wasn’t imagining things. There really were people creeping around my house at night.

No surprise, I didn’t get any sleep.

I resolved to fix that motion light as soon as I could. I didn’t want to get ambushed again.

Join me next time when I get ambushed again.

#maskydoo #nightmare neighbors #storytime #script #feedback welcome

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