[Today is July 18, 2013.]
I was just looking through my blog, and I found an old draft from May 10, 2011. All that was here is a title: Demotivation. Body text? No, nothing at all.
Was I too demotivated to finish [start] a blog post about demotivation? Apparently.
I hope to be more helpful than our old friend, Clippy.
I’ve recently found myself in the situation of trying to find housing for the fall semester. Communication issues found me lacking my previously envisioned spot, so I’m on the hunt once more. Perusing Craigslist and KSL are difficult because most listings lack decorum and consistency. I intend to lay down a few hard-and-fast rules to make it easier to sell your contract.
1. I am the customer. You must make me like you.
If I like you, I’ll want to work with you and take your contract off your hands. This is the primary function of our interaction, so it is of paramount importance.
2. More information is good information.
I’m so tired of seeing Facebook ads saying “hey, I have a Fall contract for sale. It’s cheap and close to campus. Message me for more details if you’re interested.” NO. Do not make me do more work than I have to. People often search online so they can avoid needless human interactions. Tell me what I want, what I really really want.
3. Vague information is unhelpful.
The previous point fabricated a listing that said “the apartment is close to campus.” In Provo, everybody says that on every single apartment ad. That’s a given. Ever since 2007 and BYU’s instigation of a 2-mile radius housing requirement, single undergraduate students have been crammed like sardines around the university. “Close to campus” is a given. “South of campus” isn’t much better; I reckon a solid 70% of apartments meet that description, considering that anything south of 900 N and between 600 W and 1300 E fit the bill.
4. Give me the exact address.
I’m about 30x more likely to press Back on your ad when you don’t explicitly give me the address or name of your complex. It’s as if you’re ashamed of its location and don’t want me to know how far away it is from campus. KSL and Craigslist both have a Location field: use it properly. “650 N 100 W, Provo” is much more effective than the complex’s name, “Provo”, “84604”, “Utah Valley”, or “United States”.
5. Tell me the sex of the occupants.
I’ve sent out “I’m interested” emails to far too many landlords who fail to specify that their amazing, close, cheap, and nice apartment is -SURPRISE!- for women only. It took you only two days to reply to my email; thanks Greg. Including this info in the body text for the ad makes everything easier for everyone. Sometimes I can use context clues like “this is a totes super cute house”, “me n my bros love this place”, and “velociraptor roommates; herbivore roommates will be eaten” that give me an inkling whether my roommates are dateable [do not recommend], share my chromosomes, or died 65 million years ago.
6. CAPITALIZING EVERY WORD IN THE SUBJECT MAKES YOU LOOK DESPERATE AND UNDESIRABLE – $285 – (THE BRANBURY) pic map
From a social view, all caps is akin to yelling and is frowned upon. From a designer view, words written in all caps are harder to read. On Craigslist, it makes you look like you’re craving attention and trying to allure people to rent at your far-away and heavily stigma’d apartment. I like to refer to you as “a complex with a complex.”
7. Properly identify the number of people in a room and apartment.
Is the room private? Do I share it with a roommate? Do I live in a basement apartment with a 7-foot high ceiling? Some people prefer cheaper rates and a roommate; other people [*cough*notme*cough*]have a myriad of stuff and boxes that necessitate a private room with more space.
8. Specify the time period for the contract.
Provo apartments function primarily on BYU’s and UVU’s semesters. BYU’s nomenclature usually takes precedence over UVU’s, so Fall, Winter, Spring, and Summer are the usual time periods. Clearly state the time frame so no one is confused. “Wow, is that close-to-campus condo really only $300 for the fall? I’ll definitely live there! . . . Great googly moogly, that’s $300 for the summer term! Heck no, I’m not living there. [On that note, someone was selling his contract for one of the new south-campus monstrosities. He was dropping the rent down $50 to a much more affordable $515 a month for the condo. Seriously? Were you born in a river of gold? Do you sweat diamonds?]
9. Answer the FAQs.
How much are utilities? Do I need a parking sticker? What’s the guy-to-girl ratio in the ward? Am I statistically likely to get married here? Three of these questions are good and common and normal. I’ll let you decide which.
10. Let me know how to best reach you.
Provide adequate contact information for the manager/landlord/person selling the contract. Should I email you? Text you? Call you up at 4 AM asking inane questions about if I’ll get married if I move there? Let me know which times are best; I don’t like calling someone and not being able to get the information I desire.
There you have it, folks: 10 ways to be more effective in marketing and selling your housing contract. Make life easier for everyone involved. Your efforts will be appreciated.
Of myself, that is. The blog has always been here, to my undying shame.
You see that next blog post? The one about the 365-day blog challenge? The one I never did? Oops.
I thought about deleting it, hiding my dishonour, and moving on with my life and my blog. But how does that help me? Does running away from the issue dispel the fact that it happened, that I said I was going to do something, and instead did nothing?
No.
I can’t hide behind my words. I must stand in front of them; I must let my words support me. I must be a man of my words. That is how I progress and move on.
And with this oddly poetically spaced post, I hereby reopen the activity and posting on my blog. I’m trying, once more.
[And while you think about that, this about this too! This is one single picture created by rearranging items in an apartment. Photograph by Bela Borsodi.]
My Twitter/Facebook/Have-not-yet-met buddy Joshua Dance decided to start an epic project: “Right here, right now, I am publicly committing to writing a blog post about something I learned everyday. For a year. Why? I am sick and tired of having ideas and not being able to make them become real. I will learn something new everyday.”
I’m tempted to follow suit, so this is my blog post admitting that this is something I shall try. However, I make no promise to be successful at it –when I arrive in Alaska, it is likely that I will not have daily internet access, so I might not be able to post every single day. One day might have multiple days’ worth of posts; oh well. That’s how things will go.
Hooray!
Awesome. As you can tell, I’ve been slacking. I failed to blog days 3 and 4, but things were going well. Then over the weekend, I started an important conversation with a friend, so I switched back to QWERTY so I don’t take fooooreeeeveeeeerrrr.
And then relapse happened. And oh was it infinitely easier to use QWERTY, what I’m used to! So today I repented. I’m using Dvorak again, and I’m blogging about it.
I’m fairly certain this post took 15 minutes to type. Shameful.
I’m the kind of person who uses the mouse only when necessary — I deal in keyboard shortcuts whenever possible. And THAT has been the hardest part of my adjustment.
Copy, paste, cut, undo, refresh, new tab, new window, and close tab have all moved to the right side of the keyboard, which is messing with my brain. But I’m getting used to it.
One website recommended not practicing for more than an hour a day, so I switched back to QWERTY, but it was so much harder after typing with Dvorak, so I’m back, and I’m still at around 10 WPM. Yay!
http://www.powertyping.com/dvorak/typing.html is a great practice site, if you’re interested [but I know you’re not].
So I recently discovered the Dvorak keyboard, and I’m trying to teach myself while going cold turkey on QWERTY. I will blog daily on my frustrations and progress.
I was practicing tonight in class, and when the lecture finished, I packed up and went home. Upon returning to my apartment, my password wasn’t worki– NO, MY KEYBOARD IS STILL DVORAK!
I had a good laugh at that. “Who locks themselves out of their own computer?” I knew my password; I just didn’t know where the keys were. Awesome.
Getting used to home row is hard, but it pays off.
It’s hard to adapt to having all vowels in one row for one hand.
On that note, it’s annoying that the vowels are in AOEUI order, not AEIOU.
Punctuation is now in the top left corner — so strange!
I don’t use my pinkies well at all.
I type about 11 words per minute now.
I kind of hate this. For now.
"Ohh look, that's me as a baby!"
Since I’m conveniently at my grandma’s house over the break, I decided to take advantage of her extensive photo albums and dig out some old pictures of me. I was so cute! I don’t know why I’m not anymore… oh well.
Mandatory childhood photo messily devouring food. Here in Exhibit A, I am spreading mushed carrots across my face.
My maternal grandfather Morgan and me. Two studs.
I learned at a young age that I was a superhero. I can fly! ... Right?
I discovered at a young age that I can sleep in any position at any time. My roommates can all attest to this eternal truth.
My pops and me. D'awwww... (2 years old)
21 years ago, my mom wrote on the back of this picture, "Dream on, David!" I can't tell if that's supposed to inspire me or to remind me of reality.
From left: li'l ol' me (4), oldest sister Krista (9), younger brother Scott (2), cousin Sara (9 months), older sister Erika (7), youngest brother Ryan (3 months)
Clearly the 90s were good to me, fashionistically speaking. Grandpa Morgan, Scott (2), and me (4)
Family ski trip in 1992 to Snowbasin. Adult all-day lift ticket costs $23.
4-year-old David has no idea what he's doing. (And I haven't been skiing since. Though I plan to, of course. Also, my fascination with a variety of colors began early. Thank you, 90s.)
I don't know when this is, but I like this picture. Maybe first grade, circa 1994?
And there you have it, photographic evidence that I once was adorable. Awwww… Memory Lane… actually I don’t remember most of these ever happening, with the exception of skiing.
Well, I just changed it, so now my blog title actually has meaning. I’ll explain in a second, but first, a riddle.
What is greater than God,
more evil than the Devil,
The poor have it
The rich need it
And if you eat it, you’ll die?
You’ve probably heard it before. The answer is, if you give up and have’t guessed or pondered sufficiently, is nothing . How is this related?
What is important to God?
And what is evil to schoolwork?
David has the latter
David needs the former
And if you eat cyanide, you’ll die.
While the last line is true, I couldn’t think of a related line to mirror the original riddle. Sorry. I find that the struggle to establish a balance between patience and procrastination accurately defines my life. Patience is important, and I definitely need more of it. Procrastination is the bane of my school life, especially this past semester. I have plenty of it. I don’t want it.
And yet you may notice I struggle to establish a balance between the two. Not to say that the two are opposites and that I can only have one; that’s certainly untrue. I do, however, need the right amounts of each.
Patience: There is no end goal available, no maximum quantity attainable. The “right amount” of patience is more. I can never perfect this; I can only improve.
Procrastination: There are times when procrastination can be beneficial. We all need breaks from things that preoccupy our free time in any way. Procrastination inherently isn’t bad; in excess, however, it can be scholastically lethal.
I wish that my blog reflected more lighthearted carefree samples that my life is full of random happiness and enjoyable spontaneity. This is what my life is, but it’s not the essence of my blog. My thoughts usually grace [infest?] this blog, which makes its overall feel slightly odder and louder.
Nevertheless, my thoughts are welcome. Why? Because my thoughts continue to make me who I am. And I like it.
Yes. It’s true. I’m so bad at blogging I have to force myself to blog by doing that 30-day blog challenge thing. [Does that count as the first point?]
Day 1 –
Recent picture of you and 15 interesting facts about yourself
My friend and coworker Aimee and I at the Green Panda Cafe. Delicious.
[I’m going to use the adjective “interesting” selectively when choosing these facts.]
1. When walking on tiles, I walk like a knight in chess — two steps forward, one step sideways.
2. Making people happy is one of my favorite hobbies.
3. I make a lot of weird sounds.
4. I like British spellings of words like aluminium, baptise, Saviour, etc.
5. I have eight different colours of the same style of watch; I wear a different one to match my outfit.
6. I know a song for the countries of the world. Gotta love Animaniacs.
7. I don’t step on sidewalk cracks.
8. I love Jones Soda. Most flavours.
9. I spend a bit too much time online. I’m trying to reallocate that time into semi-productive things like blogging. [Oxymoron?]
10. I have roughly 65 digits of pi memorized.
11. I still love Pokémon. Generation 1, though. None of these new whippersnappers.
12. I had a paper route when I was 12. I made $30 a month, yeeeeaaaaaah.
13. I put things in the microwave for only a prime number of seconds.
14. I took BYU’s Floral Design class last winter semester. It was rad. I’m kind of a design nerd. And I like flowers.
15. I love music. I listen to music all the time, and I sing quite often too.
16. I could keep going. But I won’t. I actually have a list of 60 things on Facebook. If you feel so inclined as to continue stalking me.
Patience and Procrastination 