Life Tips Daily

As the years go by (far too swiftly) I am noticing more and more of my female friends are finding boyfriends, which are morphing into fiancés and eventually to husbands. As the years pass, the number of weddings that I am invited to increases. For someone who always expected to be married by this age, attending weddings and hearing about newly engaged couples manages to scrape at my heart and make my heart smile at the same time. I’m left feeling happy for the couple yet so sad for myself and how I have seemingly missed out on something special.

I am generally optimistic about finding that special someone but every so often, I get down about the whole situation and all the platitudes in the world from well meaning friends do not help to make things better. I get sick of wishing everyone else best wishes, hearing “how we met” stories and getting excited about other people’s weddings. I want to be excited, and I am excited, it’s just that there’s a little voice that keeps asking “what about me?” and I can’t always answer it with positivity and optimism.

As happy as I am for my friends who have managed to find love, I can’t deny that being at times the only uncoupled one at events can be quite ego deflating. I do a good job of faking that everything’s ok but it does hurt. It hurts so much that after a while of attending events where I’m the only uncoupled on, I take a break.

So my question to you is this: are you going through a similar situation? Have you ever felt like you’re behind all your friends in certain areas of life? How did you deal with the feelings?
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If you have a real life dilemma that you’d like to be featured on the Friday feature, please send it to jummy.lifetipsdaily@gmail.com.

friends, couples, friends in couples, coupled up, single

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A friend of mine mentioned an issue that I have been experiencing at work lately too.

When a coworker gets a new job, has a baby or gets married, it is natural to want to celebrate. This involves some people (in the case of my office it is the group responsible for social events) requesting that staff members donate whatever they wish to buy a gift for the celebrant.

In my first month at my current job, I was asked for two donations and while I was happy to donate, a part of me thought it was a bit presumptuous to ask somebody who hasn’t even gotten to know her coworkers, and who is starting her first real career job since graduating from university, for a donation. It put me in a strange situation: as a new employee who is trying to impress, I did not want my coworkers to think I was uncaring or cheap so even had I not wanted to contribute, I would have.

While it has been stressed, especially lately, that everybody should donate only what they want and if they want, there is a feeling (perhaps only within me?) that I must give every time.

How do you handle the office collections and the politics of giving to a collection?
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If you have a real life dilemma that you’d like to be featured on the Friday feature, please send it to jummy.lifetipsdaily@gmail.com.

coworker gift giving, work, donating cash, donating money

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If you are somebody that had a small group of close friends in highschool, and kept to yourself in college or university, and lost touch with your highschool friends, it is very possible to find yourself in a situation where you are a university graduate and have no close friends. Sure, you have work colleagues, or former classmates or highschool friends that you could call up for coffee or to go shopping, but who do you call when you just want to talk? Who do you turn to when you want to talk to someone who knows your history?

Siblings and parents might be your only bet.

Today’s question is simple: If you are a shy person who finds themself friendless, how do you go about making new friends? My instinctive reply is to suggest volunteering or going back to school (to pursue a new degree/diploma) as a way of meeting new people who hopefully share similar interests, or going online to meet people who share similar interests, but unfortunately the latter option is not one that my friend is willing to consider.

What would you suggest?

friendless, no friends, making friends

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I have a friend who has a tendency to say yes to several events that are all set to occur at the same time. Once she realizes it, she ends up trying to attend all events and somehow manages to pull it off. I have been one of the events she had to squeeze into her busy schedule and I must admit knowing that you were just one of several stops does absolutely nothing to make you feel special.

Sometimes double booking is completely accidental and unavoidable because you have an equal desire to attend two events. In cases where both events are important, I think the involved parties would be understanding if they were told why you will be arriving late or leaving early.

My general rule is when I agree to a plan and a better plan comes along, it’s a case of “too bad” for me, unless the event is a once in a lifetime opportunity or an opportunity deemed Important with a capital I. In that case I tell the person that I will be cancelling on why I am cancelling, apologize for the inconvenience, and ask if s/he would be willing to reschedule. I really think it’s important to let the original person know why you have decided to change your plans with them, rather than having them wonder at your rudeness, or marvel that you picked a bowling tournament over their baby shower (not knowing that the tournament will raise money for a cause dear to your heart, or you will be receiving recognition at the event). People are generally understanding. I recently had to cancel plans to window shop with a friend when I discovered that the date of a birthday party for another friend had been switched and this new date was the only date that worked for everybody involved. My window shopping friend understood and all was well.

How about you? Have you ever double (triple, quadruple…) booked yourself for events? How did you manage it/them? What criteria do you use to determine how to handle the situation?
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If you have a real life dilemma that you’d like to be discussed on the Friday feature, please send it to jummy.lifetipsdaily@gmail.com.

double book, over booked, overbooked, doublebooked, plans, change of plan

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This might be one more suited for Wedding Tactics but I thought I’d share it here.

My best friend had a (years) long engagement, but asked people to be in her wedding soon after she got engaged. Soon after her engagement, she realized that her friendship with one bridesmaid was completely one sided: she (bride to be) was the one always calling her (bridesmaid to be) to hang out. As she realized this, my friend also realized that there was one woman who she was becoming closer to, with whom she had a more normal friendship of give and take. So she did something that I don’t think I would have been able to do: she asked the first girl to step down and invited the other girl to join her wedding party. It wasn’t an easy thing to do but my friend’s rationale is that she wants everyone standing up for her to be someone who is important and special in her life. She didn’t want to ask someoen to be her bridesmaid then lose touch with them shortly thereafter.

This leads to my somewhat related questions:
• What is/are your rule(s) when it comes to asking someone to be your bridesmaid/groomsman?
• What if they asked you to be in their wedding? Is the polite thing to ask the people who have asked you?
• If you don’t, do you think there is a large chance that they will decline the invitation to your wedding altogether?
• Have you ever had to change your attendant list after selecting your bridesmaids/groomsmen?
• Have you ever been asked to be in somebody’s wedding and declined?

I’d love to hear your stories!

Welcome to a new week! Here are some quotes to think upon today:

And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.
-Abraham Lincoln

I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived. Curiosity must be kept alive. One must never, for whatever reason, turn his back on life.
-Eleanor Roosevelt

And we should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once. And we should call every truth false which was not accompanied by at least one laugh.
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
-John Lennon

Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.
-Mark Twain

The image this last quotation puts in my mind, that of an undertaker mourning my death so much even though it is his livelihood made me smile. I want to have the kind of life that I enjoy that much!

How about you? What quotations get you through life when you think about them?

life quotes, life quotations, life sayings

My part time job is wonderful: I work with a bunch of fun, friendly females in the retail sector. As long as the work gets done and the customers are served, I see nothing wrong with enjoying some banter and converstion with coworkers while at work. However, there are only three or four coworkers with whom I can work and talk to at the same time: the other coworkers either do the bare minimum to get by, or stand there yakking away while I work–and they don’t feel bad watching me run around the store trying to tidy things as they stand there, leaning on the counter, chewing gum, talking or sending and receiving text messages on their cell phones.

Oh, and complaining: “the day is going by so slowly”…”I’m bored”…”there are no customers”. Any attempts on my part to stop the litany of boredom by pointing out that even without customers we have a lot to do is ignored (there is always tidying, cleaning, filling of products to be done). My dilemma in a (rather large) nutshell: some of my coworkers stand around doing nothing and refuse to pull their own weight, resulting in me rushing around trying to get work meant for two people done. A side complaint is that since this is shift work, it often turns out that people working the earlier shift, for no good reason at all, didn’t accomplish their tasks and these tasks get passed on to the evening shift (of which I am a part) and I have three hours to finish work that the day shifters have 8 hours to complete.

What would you do? Would you tell the manager that these people are not pulling their own weight? I don’t mind being a tattletale but I think it’s ridiculous to even have to contemplate such a thing and so I basically refuse to. Instead, I’d love suggestions on how I can reach out to these coworkers. I want people to come to work and…work! I’d like complaints to be left at home and a willingness to work brought instead. It’s not hard or stressful work and time goes by so much faster if one is working rather than standing around whining about how slow the day or evening is going.

Please speak up!

coworkers, lazy, coworker dispute, pulling your own weight, lazy coworkers, how to motivate

What would you do in this situation:

You loan something to a friend, no terms for the return of the item are discussed. Although you see the friend a few times, you forget to ask for the item you loaned, and the friend also forgets to give it back to you. When you finally remember that your friend has the item and you ask for it back, you come up against resistance on the friend’s part to return the item, and you can’t figure out why this is the case. You ask if anything has happened to the item and are assured that the item is fine. You offer to pick the item up and that option is rejected, as are options for the friend to drop the item off, to have a third party pick the item up from the friend, or for the friend to mail it to you.

You have emailed and called numerous times, and both are generally ignored. You also notice that you have been removed from your (former?) friend’s instant messenger and another social networking tool.

What do you do? Would you keep trying to get the item back as a matter of principle, or chalk it up as a good lesson on friendships and loaning items of sentimental value out?

If you agonize over writing emails and worry that you’re not saying what you mean to say the moment you click “send”, I urge you to save your emails in draft form until Monday. That’s right: on Monday May 21, I will be sharing an interview with an expert in the area of business etiquette, especially as it relates to emails and online communication.

In the meantime, I’d like you to tell me what email blunders cause you to grit your teeth.

Mine include:

• Being addressed by an incorrectly spelled name by somebody replying to an email I sent where my name is spelled out
• Misleading/unclear subject titles
• Emails riddled with incorrect spelling and grammar
• A constant stream of forwards from someone without any real emails from them to break things up

And don’t get me started on spam!

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We have all done something that was out of line, unexpected and that required an apology from us. An apology is an expression of regret for an occurrence, usually caused by the person apologizing. Apologies also involve an admission of some sort to go along wtih the expression of regret.

I have given good and bad apologies in my life and have received the same. Here are some things to keep in mind when apologizing:

Be genuine
Nothing rankles more than an apology that is not meant, that is thrown out because it was ordered. I hesitate to say “don’t apologize unless you mean it” since that means a lot of people would be waiting for a long time to hear an apology. Instead, if an apology is being “forced” or requested, think about it: if you really do not think you can apologize without the insincereity of your words slapping them in the face, don’t apologize. Save it for when tempers have cooled.

Remove ‘but’ from your apology vocabulary
Do not ever include the word “but” in an apology, especially after the apology: “I’m sorry I called you fat and ugly, but did you have to wear that pink mumu to work today?” is NOT an apology (see the first tip). If you you can’t state what you are apologizing for without implicating the person you’re apologizing to, then you may not ready to apologize. In a lot of cases, an apology with a “but” is just enough fuel to get a fight going again: “Wait, because you don’t like the way I dress you think that gives you a right to call me fat and ugly? Wow, you are really a piece of work. When you came to work last Thursday dressed like a stripper did I say anything? Nope, because I have respect for people unlike you, you…”

Offer to make amends, if possible
In some cases, you may want to ask the person you are apologizing to if there is anything you can do to make things better, or if you know what is required, you can offer to do it. This goes one step further and serves to prove the genuineness of the apology.

Do your part to avoid a repeat of the the circumstance leading to the need for an apology
Once your apology has been said and hopefully accepted, do what you can to ensure that you do not repeat the actions that led to the need for an apology in the first place. If you keep having to apologize for the same thing, no matter how genuine each apology is, it’s going to grow old and you’ll quickly lose credibility as a person of their word.
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What do you do when you want a conflict resolved but don’t want to apologize because you were honestly not at fault? Try apologizing for a part that you feel you were responsible for. For example, if you were fighting with somebody who was wrongly accusing you, and in your fervour to prove yourself right you raised your voice in anger, you can apologize for that. Sometimes your apology will bring reciprocal (yet hopefully genuine!) apologies in return.

What is your apology style?

sorry, apologize, apologise, how to apologize

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We all have pet words that we can’t spell correctly for the life of us. Please find below words that I seen spelled incorrectly by friends and words that I regularly misspell. I challenge you to select the correct spelling of each of the words below (no cheating!). Please leave your answers in the comments:

definitely or definately
calender or calendar
seperate or separate
fuchsia or fuschia
maintainance or maintenance
receive or recieve
jewlery or jewellery or jewelry
restraunt or restaurant
committee or comittee or commitee
diffrent or different

If you find my list pretty wimpy, here is a fantastic list of 100 commonly mispelled misspelled words. Enjoy!

Which words are the bane of your existence?

Answers below:
(more…)

The popularity of books such as Lynne Truss’ Eats, Shoots and Leaves convince me that I am not the only person who is strongly thrilled at the thought of ensuring that everything I write is grammatically correct. This includes emails, letters, anything that will be up for public consumption. Since a lasting impression of a website will be based on the site’s content, I encourage you to make sure that none of your valuable written work is marred by the following grammatical errors, where apostrophized words are used instead of their apostrophe-free version:

Its/it’s
It’s is only to be used when you mean it is or it has. Any other time, its is the correct form of the word to use. And its’? Does not exist!

There/their/they’re
There can be a pronoun, noun or adverb (describes a verb) and can be used to introduce a clause. Their is used to express the idea of belonging; it is strictly an adjective. Our abbreviated friend, they’re, should only be used if you are trying to say they are. If not, you should be using one of the previous forms.

Your and you’re
Similar to the above, your denotes belonging and is used as an adjective only; you’re is an abbreviation and used to mean you are.

Apostrophes seem to make people nervous and I notice that apostrophized versions of words are used incorrectly more often , while the correct version sits by the wayside, neglected. Some people simply add an apostrophe to a word that ends in an ’s’ as a sort of insurance that this will cover both the situation where an ’s’ is required and the situation where it is not. Instead, I recommend you learn these rules and read Ms. Truss’ book or the books of other experts on grammar and enjoy the addition of polish to your writing.

What grammatical errors drive you crazy? What grammatical errors can’t you stop making?

I’m elbow and calf deep in papers, clothing, unused small kitchen appliances, purses, shoes and garbage bags.

No, I’m not moving, nor am I preparing for a garage sale. I’m simply cleaning my room.

My packrat tendencies are legendary; I hold on to everything. Although I graduated from university three years ago, I still have nearly every sheet of paper I ever wrote on and all of my textbooks. I tried earlier in the month to sell them back to the university for a fraction of their original value (and they were in mint condition too!) but nobody wanted them. I am now torn between keeping them for interest’s sake or donating them. In the meantime, before I go with option 2 (since decluttering is the ultimate goal), I will see if I have better luck selling the textbooks in the fall.

After hours of cleaning, this is what my closet currently looks like (do not judge me quite yet; the rest of the room is much worse):

There is much left to do.

Your Turn: What room/area of your home is most resistant to staying clean and/or organized?

Yesterday, I provided three detailed tips on how to make your houseguests never want to leave. Granted, this might not be your intention at all but today we’ll continue with four more guest-pleasing tips.

Find out about food allergies or other potential hazards beforehand
This is fairly straightforward: make sure that your houseguest will not suffer needlessly. If you have a pet that your guest may not know about, take the time to inform your potential guest of this, as this may determine whether or not they (your guest, not your pet!) can stay with you. Food allergies are also important: if you cannot guarantee that the food offered and prepared will be free of foods that your guests are allergic to, it is important to let your potential guest know this. If you can easily avoid these foods and products during your guests’ stay, you may want to consider living without it (them) for a while. If your guest has some other condition that you should prepare for (limited mobility, for example) make sure that you can accomodate her needs. If you can’t, there is no shame in admitting this right away and offering to help your guest find alternate accomodations. The last thing you want is for your guest to go home in worse condition than when he arrives!

Research your city - put on your tourist’s shoes
You live there day in and day out, so your city may not seem very exciting, but there’s undoubtedly something that your guests will love to see or do. I suggest you consider who your guests are, what they enjoy doing, and see if your city offers activities that would serve these needs. If you’re not sure, ask–ask the coordinators of certain activities what kind of people enjoy them, ask your guests what they enjoy doing! Museums, plays, sports games, unique restaurants, flea markets, concerts, and festivals are only a short list of things that your guests may enjoy. You can do a lot of planning and select which activities you will do together, even before your guests arrive.

In cases where you will not be able to spend much time each day with your guests, you may want to provide this information to them so they can explore your city on their own.

Be the information centre
This ties in with the last point. You know those handy informtation centres that are usually located around bus terminals, train stations and airports, providing car rental options, maps and answering other questions? You can be that service for your housguests! If you can’t drive your friends or family to every sight they want to see, or take part in every activity they want to do, provide them some options for transportation: you can loan them a spare car (if you have one), or give them the contact information for car rental places, or provide them with bus tickets/tokens (or bus fare information) and a bus route map; if they are walkers or cyclists, an appropriate map, with an indication of areas where good bike/walking paths are, might be handy. If you know know the directions to the various places your guest will want to see, use a highlighter to mark the directions clearly for your guest. If you don’t know how to get there, provide them with contact information (perhaps to your city’s information centre) so they can find this information themselves (although if you know beforehand where they want to go and what they want to do, providing them this info would be very nice).

Don’t foget the (not so) little things
Depending on how comfortable you are, you may want to provide your guests with a key to your house so they can come and go as they wish. You might also want to offer them the use of your laundry facilities and encourage them to ask you for any items they may have forgotten or might need. Some houseguests will also want to know what sorts of “house rules” you’d like them to abide by, including how late they can be noisy till, whether or not they can use your phone without asking (and how you want to handle long-distance phone calls) and which bathroom you prefer they use, for example. These may be small things but to a guest staying in a home they are not accustomed to, spelling out some of these things might be helpful. Encourage your guests to ask you questions if they are not sure.

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This is by no means an exhaustive list; by thinking of what would make your stay at a friend or family member’s home pleasant, and applying these ideas from the point of view of your specific guest, you’re sure to be a popular stop this summer among houseguests, although whether or not this is a good thing might be in question!

What is your houseguest-pleasing tip?

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houseguests, entertaining, visitors, summer guests, host, hostess, home

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Plenty of companies are making millions of dollars by convincing the fair consumer to purchase their product in order to better organize their lives. From daily planners to PDAs, Blackberrys and other gadgets available, to using a paper calendar or the one that comes with your email program, there are a lot of different ways to stay on top of the many tasks you have to do.

I came across some neat and free (or inexpensive) ways to keep track of what you need to do, from the very basic, to web-based ideas:

Paper to do lists

• Weekly to do list: Traylor Papers
  I like the pretty colours of this pad of paper, but I’d prefer a daily rather than weekly to do list.
• Sticky to do list: Post It Action Notes have room to write items, and afterwards, you can stick the list wherever works best for you-on the fridge, on your forehead, or on the dashboard of the car. The stickiness makes it easy to actually keep the list with you, which is important if crossing tasks off your list is a priority (and it should be!).

Web-based to do lists

• Ta-da Lists
  This site was easy to set up and once you have created a list, you have the option of emailing it to yourself, to others or allowing it to be posted publicly. It took about 30 seconds to sign up and does not require the installation of anything. (Tudu Lists is similar, and just as easy to sign up for, but it doesn’t operate as smoothly as Ta-da does in my opinion).
• Remember the milk
  This is a more robust version than the two web-based to do lists. It’s fun to use and I recommend you try it out! You can include a due date for your tasks, which the other two programs do not allow, and it allows you to transfer your list to your cell phone, several email programs and even to skype! You can print a weekly planner from your to do lists, and you’re provided with an email addresss whereby any emails you send to this address get added to your to do list. It is available in over 10 languages, including Spanish, Italian and French. I have a lot more explorations of this program to do, to see if it works for me and my lifestyle.

And of course, that last part is the key: there are a lot of ways to keep track of the things you want to do. In addition to the ways mentioned, some people record their list (into a recording device) and replay it during the day; others simply give themselves a mental reminder and keep track of all the things they need to do on any given day without the use of paper or other gadgets.

As for me? I use a little planner but I don’t always remember to consult it. So for items I absolutely don’t want to forget I have taken to using post it notes, in different colours to remind me of things. I sit at my computer desk every day and my eyes are drawn frequently to the brightly coloured notes:

Whatever works is the right method for you.

How do you keep track of your to do items?

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organize, to do, to do lists, priorities, tasks