Old School

Every year my company has a year-end meeting, where we showcase the work that we’ve done so that everyone in the company can see what everyone else has been working on.

This year they are doing things a little differently, and I have been asked to “help out” with the presentation. And by “help out”, they mean come up with a theme, organize all of the materials, and write the presentation. And this “helping out” must be done on top of all my other work.

Good times.

I’ve chosen a high school yearbook theme (lame, I know), which works as an easy way to showcase the work we’ve done for each “club” (client), plus it’s a good way to recognize outstanding “students” (coworkers) and “class trips” (company outings).

So I brought my high school yearbook in to give me some inspiration to create the presentation. Everyone got a good laugh at the funny hairstyles of the early 90s, as well as how little and goofy Yours Truly looked.

I started thinking about how my look has totally changed from high school (thankfully!); and wondering if who I was as a person had changed at all.

So I analyzed my yearbook profile to see how much I really have changed over the years:

NICKNAME: “K” (I’ve matured, so I’ve added a second “K”); Happy (yep), vivacious (hell yeah!), sincere (to the end);
LIKES: the beach at night (well, I can’t tell you the last time I was at the beach at night, except to maybe watch fireworks, but I suppose I would like it, when I wasn’t freaking out that a mass murder was lurking in the shadows to kill me – for more on this, see "being scared" below); red roses (probably my least favorite flower; KK’s favorite: gerber daisies and hydrangeas); sunsets (yes); going out to dinner (who knew I was a food snob way back when?);
DISLIKES: bad moods (check), rainy weekends (check); spiders (double check, especially when they find solace from the elements IN MY HOUSE); embarrassment (sure – who doesn’t? Not many people who would put this in the “LIKES” category); being scared (this is definitely still true. I torture myself when I’m home alone, freaking out about locked doors and home invasions); poppy seeds (I don’t mind them anymore, especially after Seinfeld made such a big deal about them);
SUPPRESSED DESIRE: to win the Good Housekeeping Award and live in the cleanest house in America with Dimitri (first of all, if you knew my attitude towards cleaning, you would know that there is no way in hell that I would ever win the GHA, let alone be a runner-up. It’s just not happening. Second, this was a shot at my mom, who is a clean freak, and tried to rub her cleaning madness off on me ((didn’t work)). And Dimitri was my stuffed animal, with whom I slept every night. I still have him. He sleeps in a drawer with my blankie)
((Don’t judge me)).

Hey – dig out YOUR high school yearbook – how much have YOU changed???