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By kilax, January 26, 2012 5:34 am

• I started writing a blog post this weekend and was looking through some older posts of mine to reference.  I ended up finding this post from December 2010 saying “I see blogs posts of people attending wonderful holiday parties with their close friends, and I sometimes I think ‘I wish I had a wonderful holiday party to attend with close friends.’ “Geez, if that doesn’t support the social comparison theory I mentioned in this post, I don’t know what does. My, how things change in a year. 
• Related, I wanted to point out this study which says that seeing happy pictures of other people on Facebook makes you sad. Two interesting quotes from the article:

Facebook photos generally depict smiling, cheerful people having good times, conveying a sense of happiness. Of course everyone likes to smile for the camera, so that good cheer may be inflated or false. As others view the photos, they may believe this conveyed sense of  intense happiness is real, making them think that their friends are much happier than they are.

The study, which was published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, also found that people who spent less time socializing with friends in cyberspace and more time socializing with them in real life were less likely to report they were  unhappy.

• I stopped writing the blog post I mentioned in the first bullet, because as I was searching my archives, I realized that I was almost completely rewriting a post from the past. Has that happened to anyone else? You start writing something, think “Gee, this seems familiar…” to have it turn out that you have almost written the same thing earlier?
• I mentioned the other day that I have a really good memory for things that people have said to me. That’s true. But I seem to have no capacity for retaining actual useful information (things I learned in school, trivia, facts, blog posts I have already written, you get the idea). Are you better at remembering factual data, or people-related information?  (<– for lack of a better definition)
• Kelly was kind enough the other day to explain Pinterest to me. I was really not getting it. You all talk about how cool it is, and you could waste days on there, and I am the QUEEN of wasting time on the internet, but I just couldn’t figure it out. I guess I will give it another try. Who else is digging Pinterest? 
• I find it ironic that an announcement about my work position was made back in December and there has been no update about it. Ironic because I am so pushy, anxious and an instant gratification sort of gal – so making an announcement to someone before I know anything about it would be totally something I would do. A taste of my own medicine, I suppose.
• Thanks to everyone who is filling out the blog survey! There is a lot of great feedback on there. I kind of wish I could see who is saying what. I would like to know who wrote that the read my blog “Because I think Kim is super hot.” Ha ha. Do you guys want me to do a post talking about the results?

The winner of the RelaxReflect Giveaway is #18, Leah. Leah, please email me your mailing address (kilax@ilaxstudio.com) along with your choice of skull cap (material, style and color) and I will get the order in for you!

Thanks for participating!

Comments (31)

By kilax, January 25, 2012 4:38 am

Or both?

I feel like I am getting buried at work, and the more I do to dig a hole out for myself, the more I get piled on. It doesn’t seem to matter if I come in early, work on the weekends, or stay late – I can’t get caught up.

I feel stressed. I’ve been talking to my favorite coworker about it, my close friends, and of course, Steven. There is nothing I can do but go through tasks one by one. So I do. And I try not to spaz. In the long run, this all won’t matter. It’s just hard not to get worked up about it when I am in the moment. 

When I finally got a chance to look at google reader yesterday, I saw this article titled “When Stress is Good For You.” How appropriate! The article goes over what physically happens in our bodies when we are stressed.

The body has a standard reaction when it faces a task where performance really matters to goals or well-being: The sympathetic nervous system and the hypothalamus, pituitary and adrenal glands pump stress hormones, adrenaline and cortisol, into the bloodstream. Heartbeat and breathing speed up, and muscles tense.

How you react to that determines whether stress is harmful or helpful:

• If your blood vessels constrict, your blood pressure will rise, and may feel dizzy as your heart beats irratically (HARMFUL).
• If your blood vessels dilate, blood flow to the brain increases and you feel a surge of energy, similar to getting pumped when you work out (HELPFUL).

You know, I never thought of the physiological aspects of stress. I always just thought of my mental panic. I didn’t think that stress could actually be good for me. This article suggests that you can have some control over whether you feel harmful or helpful stress, by practicing thinking positively, deep breathing, meditating, and regulating your mental and physical states. You know, all those things you know you are supposed to do but forget about in the heat of the moment. 

The article even mentioned that:

Many workplace wellness programs have also begun coaching people to hit “the optimal performance zone”—with enough stress “to be stimulating, to focus you, to challenge you” without taking a physical toll.

Well, that sure sounds nice!

I keep bringing this up over and over (work stress), but it is my way of dealing with it. I hope I have a reason to quit talking about it soon.

Do you most often feel helpful or harmful stress?

Do you perform well when you stressed?

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By kilax, January 19, 2012 4:52 pm

Boy, do I ever need to. (Hey – didn’t I just write a post about getting a grip on reality and getting over myself?)

It’s been awhile since I had such a large workload and I am not handling it well. I am a planner and can plan to get things done, but I have so many interruptions that I feel like I am never getting anywhere. I spend my days at work feeling anxious and frantic. And people can tell. 

People can tell that I don’t work with too! I am not sure how many times I told Gina how stressed I was, but she sent me these flowers!

I came out of a 2.5 hour meeting to find missed phone calls, 10 new emails, texts on my phone… and these flowers. The flowers were the first thing I tended to. What a wonderful surprise in my crazy overbooked day.

I am the type of person who is not good at balancing a lot of to-dos at once. I like to get things done right away. I get an idea in my head and I have to do it right then. Kind of like instant gratification… I can’t wait. I get too anxious. I think I need to be easier on myself. I think I need to work on my natural tendency to worry. 

But I do think I will work this weekend to get caught up.

This post is very similar to my last confidence post, so, apologies. Just stressed and needed to write.

Anyone else a big stessball like me when they get overloaded?

Let’s lighten this up with a photo. I’ve been trying to make more of an effort to look nice at work lately. I am not sure why, to tell you the truth. I guess it makes me feel good? Anyway, Erin and I went shopping yesterday during lunch and I picked up this skirt (you can’t really tell in the picture, but it’s gray):

And I should mention – even though I am crazy busy I am still planning lunch dates and getting away from my desk at work. My sanity depends on it! I had lunch with my new kickboxing friend today, and it was a lot of fun! I am excited to meet up with her again. 

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By kilax, January 18, 2012 11:45 am

I’ve been given a lot of challenging tasks at work lately outside of my comfort zone. Mostly leadership and training roles. This is good for me.

But it makes me so, so, so very anxious.

I’ve been a ball of stress lately. Getting ready to lead (okay, not even lead, facilitate) a training. Trying to prepare to run meetings. Brainstorming, trying to be creative.

All of this time, I’ve been thinking, “What is my problem?! I am so confident in every other aspect of my life! What is it about these roles that are making me so nervous?

It’s that I’m outside of my comfort zone. It’s that it’s a change for me. It’s that while I may be outgoing and confident overall, I am more of a follower, than a leader.

Yesterday was the day of this training I had to run. I really prepped hard for it. Right before class, I was setting up with my helper (favorite coworker) and the head training coordinator was there. I was saying how nervous I was for class and how happy I was to have the training coordinator’s help in preparing. She said how organized and together I am, and favorite coworker said that too. I was kind of like “But I am so nervous!” (or something), and the training coordinator said – “The only one who does not have confidence in Kim, is Kim.”

Wow, that is so true. That’s what it is. All of these things have been tasked to me and I keep thinking “Why do they think I can do all of these things?”

I’m still struggling with the confidence, but I am going to keep this in mind:

If you only work on what you’re good at, you may get good. But if you work on what you’re not good at, and make that good too, you can become great.  – credit to Men’s Health, February issue. 

Britt has been encouraging me to keep inspiring messages around the house, and this is the first one I put up this week. I actually read it in an article from the February issue of Men’s Health. The article was about physical ability, but I think it applies to all aspects of life. Get outside of your comfort zone and improve on the things that don’t come naturally to you!

In what areas of your life is your confidence not the strongest?

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By kilax, December 1, 2011 7:05 am

Don’t forget to enter the Season of Giving Giveaway #2: FakeMeats.com!

• my work situation – remember that DC detail I was kind of excited about getting, even though I wasn’t sure if it was actually going to happen or how often I would travel to DC? Well, I was all set to start on Monday the 14th when I got back from NYC. I moved to a new desk and everything. Only to get a call that there’s been some restructuring of the program and the new office in charge is not sure if they can use me or not (because they are still trying to get a grasp on the entire project). And that my detail is canceled. I felt like an idiot. Even though I knew the detail could fall through, I had still let myself become excited, and jeez, I thought since I moved desks and all it might be official. I moved back to my old desk yesterday. I can’t explain in words how disappointed and discouraged I am (and I can’t really go in to a ton of details about work here), but… I am happy to have a steady job. 
• how clean our house is – my mom and dad are coming to visit tonight! And my mom confirmed yesterday that her mother is coming as well. Well, sh*t, I didn’t get the house grandma level clean! I just got it clean to parent level. And focused on putting up some holiday decorations. Oh well, we’ll still have a good time if there is dust on all the horizontal surfaces.
• my November running mileage – I have not had a running-friendly schedule lately, and I am disappointed I could not get more miles in in November (86.1, my second lowest month of the year). But really, who cares about this crap except for me? That would be… no one. And at this point, I’ve run over 500 more miles than last year, and started December off right with an early morning 8 mile run (Happy December!). Plus – I probably deserved a small break. 
• holiday gifts – I love picking out gifts for people and watching their reactions when opening them. I try really hard to get people thoughtful, interesting gifts, but I don’t always hit the mark. I just try my hardest. 
• how fast I lose weight – I just need to lose weight and keep it off. However slow that happens, I don’t care, as long as I can actually keep it off this time. Ha ha ha. Anyone want to bet on that?
• transit money – our work had to cut a lot out of our transit subsidy at the same time train ticket prices are being increased. It will amount to about $70 a month out of pocket, but hey, I am grateful work pays for any of my transit!
• the fact that there is no picture to go along with this post

Okay, I can provide a picture. Here is Ryan Gosling in Crazy Stupid Love, a movie Steven and I watched this week and really enjoyed. I recommend it!

Picture from here – that link is pretty funny if you want to click through!

What are you refusing to worry about?

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By kilax, September 1, 2011 12:26 pm

When I first started blogging I was still in architecture school, and blogged a lot more about design related stuff. Now it’s not as big a part of my life. Or rather, design is not my life. I don’t think I will ever be one of those architecture majors who is obsessed with design – I just don’t have it in me. I want a life outside of work.

Oops. That is not the intro I was going for. But I kind of like it because it’s honest, so I am going to stick with it. I guess what I am getting at is that I used to write about this sort of thing a lot more often.

Anyway, I had an opportunity* this week to tour a brand new building in Kansas City – the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts designed by Moshe Safdie. The center has a theater and a music hall, and the opens with its first performances in mid September. I didn’t get any outside pictures of my own, but there are some great photos here. Both the photos below are from that site.

Here are my brief thoughts on the building:

• This building is unique and stunning, but I feel like a lot of the styles are very borrowed – the Sydney Opera House, Frank Lloyd Wright’s Guggenheim in NYC (see below), Gehry’s Disney Concert Hall… that’s probably pretty typical though. You can’t re-invent the wheel every time around. And I know all my designs in school sucked (coupled with the fact that I don’t design now) so I really should shut my mouth.
• It was hard to be in the lobby on a sunny day. All glass with a white interior creates a lot of glare. And my sunglasses broke right before we got there. But it will probably be amazing to be in there at night and see the city.



• I didn’t really care for some of the lobby finishes and I thought the finishes in the theater were… different. Then again, I know nothing about finishes!
• But it was all made up for by the beautiful music hall (first photo below from the site I linked to above):

Photo I took, showing the organ installed:

The whole reason we were in Kansas City was to go to this “Meet Your Seat” gala at this center. Steven’s dad had a small plaque dedicated to Steven’s mom placed on one of the chairs in the second row of the music hall. Steven’s mom loved music, and played a lot of instruments, including the organ. I think she would have loved the music hall. Steven’s dad actually bought tickets to a few events, so we will get to go to some in the music hall. I bet the acoustics will be amazing.

We are nearing the one-year anniversary of Steven’s mom’s passing, and there is not much I want to say here, right now, about it, other than I have a very good memory for dates and events, and this week has been rough. I can remember exact details of what I was doing today and all of last week and the upcoming week and it’s just hard to remember all of the pain we were in. And the ups and downs of each day. The amazing thing I do remember is how supportive much of my family and many of my friends were. I thank you all again.

Maybe I will feel like talking about that more later, but for now I just wanted to share these pictures. And since I still love plans and sections and details**, here are some cool ones of the center from the same website I linked to above:

*Remember last week when I mentioned all of my work stress? A lot of it was related to this thing that came up last minute and meant I couldn’t go on this trip to KC… then the work stuff all got canceled last minute because of the hurricane, so I got on a last minute flight to KC. As you can tell, it was all very “last minute.”
**Erin, last week when I told you I couldn’t freehand sketch, but I could draw plans and sections, this is what I meant.

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By kilax, February 14, 2011 5:54 am

Goal: do not bring work stress home with me.

I used to think I was really good at “leaving work at work” – coming home and not having work on my mind AT ALL. But that has not been the case lately. Last week was awful. I felt frustrated every night. Which sucks. Because I really look forward to spending my evening with these guys:

And when I am feeling frustrated and stressed, I am not very fun to be around.

A lot of my stress is feeling like I have too much to do, even though I know that I don’t. So I constantly tell myself “You have enough time to get everything done.” And, “Not everything is urgent. It’s not a life or death situation.” How sad is it that I have to tell myself these things?

I hate how anxious I am. Hate it. Hate it. Hate it.

Are you able to leave work/school stress behind at the end of the day? What are your tricks?

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By kilax, November 18, 2010 11:48 am

The company I work for is really big on allowing employees to telework (work from home). In my particular group, most employees work from home at least one day a week. I will be eligible to participate in that program in the end of December! YAY!

This morning, I learned about a teleworking pilot program where an entire division (about 40 people) of an orgranization worked from home for 3 months, every day of the week. The pilot was a huge success, and my company’s leader wants to push for people to work from home more than one day a week.

Here is what I thought was really interesting about the pilot program – the employees were required to spend the time they weren’t commuting on a wellness initiative. That could be walking, yoga, biking, running… you get the idea – some sort of physical activity.

When I heard that, I thought “holy crap – that would be a lot of exercise for me!” My door-to-door one-way commute is an hour and 45 minutes. That is three and a half hours of commuting in a day! Imagine how much I could work out. Ha.

Metra, I love you and all, but we spend TOO much time together!

I think that is a really cool idea, to encourage wellness in employees. After I heard it though, it just reminded me how depressing it is that I spend that much time a day commuting. Blah.

How long is your commute (to school/work/wherever you go)? What would you do with that time if you didn’t have to spend it commuting?

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By kilax, November 17, 2010 6:03 am

Thank you for your interesting feedback on yesterday’s post! It seems most people don’t care what other people spend their money on… until they are bragging about it or complaining about how “poor” they are.

At work, I’m in a trainee program which requires periodic presentations of my work/progress for a two year period. Today is the end of that two-year period and my final presentation. If all goes well, I will be on my way to ending the trainee program and receiving a raise.

For each presentation (this is the last of 6), I’ve had to write a report detailing my projects and progress over the previous period of work. Theoretically, your audience reviews your report prior to the presentation, and you spend the presentation talking about the report and answering any questions they have.

You don’t need all of that detail. All I have wanted to say is that I am so happy the presentation is today. It’s been looming on the back of my mind, causing me to feel anxious and restless. I just want to get it over with.

I don’t get really nervous about presentations – but I don’t look forward to them. Does that make sense? My strategy for these has been to create a powerpoint with snippets from my report then expand on the snippets during my presentation. I rehearse a bit in my head, before the presentation, but kind of wing it.

How do you prepare for presentations? Do you like to present?

At least I have a cute outfit to wear!

My mom bought me this sweater ($11!) and scarf ($6!) she said, as a “repayment for the gas money for driving her around all weekend.” Thanks mom!

I realized something about myself this weekend, while shopping with my mom and sister – I am a bit of a clothing tomboy. My outfit is more likely to be like the one below than the one above:

Me and Mom at Red Robin… ymmmmmmmmmm!!!

While shopping this weekend, I only seemed to be interested in workout clothing. My mom and sister were the ones who wanted to look at pants, tops, sweaters, etc. We went in to the store where my mom picked out this sweater, and I just sat on a bench in the shoe section of the store, while my sister tried on a bunch of cute outfits. I didn’t look at the clothing for myself – my mom brought me this sweater to try on. And then she had to convince me it looked nice. It’s like I have to be prompted to look at “nice” (or work-appropriate) clothing. Anyway.

My sister ended up buying quite a few camisoles (“camis”) at that store for $4 each. She said she likes to wear them under most of her shirts.  I was reading Stephany’s blog yesterday, and she said the same thing! Her favorite clothing accessory is undershirts (camis) because she doesn’t like to wear shirts with nothing else next to her skin – it makes her uncomfortable.

I usually don’t wear a cami, unless it’s necessary under a sweater or something sheer but I know Steven wears an undershirt under EVERYTHING except his pajamas and workout clothes. So maybe this is more common than I think?

Do you wear an undershirt/cami under most of your tops? If not, when do you wear them?

Oops. This got a bit long and side-tracked. Wish me luck on my presentation. It’s at 10:00!

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By kilax, March 4, 2010 5:05 am

I am in a position at work in which I am often training a coworker how to do what I do. I explain procedures, processes, how our contracts work, how to do things in AutoCAD, how to handle certain situations… you get the idea.

I don’t mind training someone or explaining things to them. I actually look forward to how it serves as a refresher to me, and may even open my eyes to new ideas.

BUT, I don’t feel like I am a good trainer. I don’t feel like I explain things very well! I’ve really been struggling with being articulate lately. And by lately, I mean for most of my life. Sure, I am gregarious, but when you put me in front of a group, there might be a few extra words thrown in.

I was talking to my ex-neighbor* about how I don’t think I am good at training people, and he recommending asking people how they liked to be trained. Do they prefer hands on? Reading a document? Watching someone else perform the task first?

I thought that was really good advice. So I want to ask you to help me out as well:

What qualities should a good trainer have?

Whether it’s at work, or a coach, a teacher, or even a mentor, what have your favorite trainers been like? What did they do/not do that worked/didn’t work for you?

*Sniff sniff – they moved to New Mexico!