Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. One of history's most annoying prodigies.

I was 7 years old.

It was my piano recital. Before an audience of parents and bored-to-death siblings, I tried not to butcher Beethoven’s Für Elise. I trembled on the stool, feeling all eyes on me, tiny fingers stumbling over the ivories. Polite applause afterwards. Huge hug from beaming Mommy. Flowers from proud Daddy.

Then, a pretty little girl my age with long brown curls stood up, strode toward the piano and played… the entirety of Chopin’s Etude Opus 25 No. 2 in F Minor. Without a SINGLE mistake.

A hush fell over the audience. Baby brothers and sisters stopped crying. Grown-ups were agape, goggling the magical creature with notes flying effortlessly from under her fingers. Most extraordinary of all, everything in the sway of her body, the precision of her fingers and her furrowed brow exuded ‘Adult!’. A miniature concert pianist.

When she finished, the tiny Marriott ballroom shook with thunderous applause.

“Remarkable!” said the grown-ups. “A whiz kid!” “A living prodigy!”

“Shit.” said 7 year old me.

Talk about trumped. Showbiz dream = shattered.

(Although, to be fair, it wasn’t a very well-thought-out dream. Mostly my face on Mariah Carey’s body. Adoring fans. A solid gold house. A rocket car. You know—famous people stuff.)

I recognized on that day that some people are just disgustingly lucky enough to blow minds from birth. They grasp the inner workings of their craft instinctively, while the rest of us are still struggling to read the manual. It’s in their blood. They crackle with brilliance and shimmer with genius.

We ‘normal’ people have to get through life the plebeian way: blood, toil, sweat and tears.

Ew, gradually cultivating talent. Boring. No fair.

But chins up, fellow normal people. No matter how strongly others may stink of talent, there’s one crucial rule that escapes NO ONE:

Without discipline, you got nothin’.

(Ever met a genius without a work ethic? Tragic, isn’t it? All that fancy brain power, and nothing to funnel it into. I always ask them if I can borrow their frontal lobe, just for a little while. They always say no. Annoying.)

And more soothing still: just because you’re not a prodigy doesn’t mean you lack skills or talent.

Potential perma-second-fiddling was a sore spot for me. Why try if the #1 spot is filled? Why even bother if someone else is born to do it anyway? I’ll be forever benched. Invisible. Lame.

I wanted to make a creative living. ‘So does everybody,’ mewled my brain. ‘Don’t even waste your time. Too much competition. Acquire safe, boring job. Lie down. Dream in your sleep. Survive.’

But you know what, brain? That’s a bunch of bologna. (brainlogna?)

Sure, I haven’t written the next Great American Novel. Yet. But not everybody has multiple bookshelves sagging under the weight of journals filled with thoughts, poems and stories that span 2 decades. Not every child kept a detailed travel diary every family vacation. Not every kid made LiveJournal icons on a bootlegged version of Photoshop and wrote fan fiction instead of doing their homework (my bad, Mom).

But I did. Does that count for something? Turns out, it does.

Prodigies are rare. Prodigies that give a crap about their skills after a ‘trick-pony’ childhood? Even more rare. If something comes easily to you, it’ll get boring after a while.

And besides, most fields require more than just talent. It’s about innovation. Hard work. Proving yourself. Pushing yourself. It’s about the connections you make with the people you work with.

So next time you’re down on yourself for being ‘average’, remember:

You have gifts to offer the world. Don’t hide them away just because you’re worried someone might trump you.

Repeat after me: I am great.

Now go get ‘em, tiger.

So here I am, 2 months graduated from college with a head full of ideas. I’m hard at work with a PR agency here in Miami, I have a ton of projects lined up, I’ve teamed up with a dear friend and have started working with a few great clients of my own. I have an awesome partner and a fabulous mentor to guide me. I’m on top of the world, a budding flower, a fledgling eagle. It’s happening. I got this.

Ah, bliss.

Bliss, that is, until feedback’s sharp needle of truth suddenly burst my continually swelling bubble. I was served up a fat slice of humble pie.

Ah, reality.

Mind you, it was a very nice slice of humble pie from a friendly source. It was calm and straightforward, served warm, with a carefully-crafted crust of honest feedback, filled with patience and topped off with a generous glob of sweet understanding. My submission needed a little [*cough* lot of] extra tailoring, which I was certainly capable of doing, so could I finish it, please?

Earth-shattering pie.

Oh my god. I screwed up. Even with the option of redemption, this fledgling just wanted to crawl back into the nest and pull the eggshells over my head. I had let someone down. I couldn’t believe it. How could I have done that? How could I have assumed that? Blegh.

I retreated into my little cave of personal frustration for a wallow session. ‘Why hadn’t I been more careful?’  I wailed to myself. ‘Why did I ever think something like that should be submitted?’ It was terrible. I was terrible. Boo hoo hoo.

But obviously, yelling at myself wasn’t exactly fixing the problem. With some effort I restrained the steel-toed boot of my inner drill sergeant and began to examine the facts as I saw them. Yes, there was an issue with it and it didn’t necessarily align with my personal standards *wince*… but the point was, it was there in black and white and now I could see it clearly.

In other words: band-aid speedily removed. Pie eaten. Message received.

I realized that instead of curling up in my cozy pit of despair… I would fix it. I would make it better, as she knew I could and I would never, ever make the same mistake again. Ever.

So I immediately got to work and crafted a submission that was 150% better than my initial one. In other words, um, in line with my own abilities. I hacked away at it, still occasionally grumbling humbling things to myself about myself, but at least the healing had begun. I worked through it. I fixed the problem. I produced work the work that I should have submitted originally. Joy!

So the moraI of the story is this. I would put this experience, this criticism, this hot poker of personal frustration into my memory bank and save it forever. 150% percent effort and perfection at all times is the standard I set, so why would I provide anything less? I would live and I would learn (and probably blog) and I would never repeat the same mistake.

It was a crucial lesson.

1. Finishing copy for Young Blood Collective (hell yeah!)
2. Finishing reading the TMF Project ‘You Don’t Need a Job You Need Guts’
3. Reading Undeclared for Life from Puttylike.
4. Find some manual or other on how to reformat my hard drive, and then doing it.
5. Downloading the copy of Photoshop CS 5 Design Suite that I just bought off warezstore.com which is kind of ‘Holy shit’ amazing.
6. Posting randomly to my tumblr over study breaks.
7. Working on blog topics for the next few weeks.
8. Dance break.
9. More recipe finding & posting.
10. Going home to Miami to enjoy the 4th with my love and my friends.

The results of this list of 10 are still to come. Stay tuned, bebes.

Hello friends!

Here is today’s #trust30

Keeping with the sea theme.

One Strong Belief by Buster Benson

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude. - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

The world is powered by passionate people, powerful ideas, and fearless action. What’s one strong belief you possess that isn’t shared by your closest friends or family? What inspires this belief, and what have you done to actively live it?

This question sent me in a spiral today.

My first instinct was to pick it apart, so I sat and discussed the difference between thought and belief with myself. I think a lot of things. I think a first impression isn’t necessarily everything. I think I am open to new people and new ideas. I think I appreciate my surroundings and how fortunate I am. I think I would be a good pet owner. I think that white chocolate is a waste of time. But what do I believe?

Belief… I tossed it around a bit. I believe in miracles—where you from you sexy thing? I believe in a thing called love. Now I’m a believer.

I was two stepping around my room, halfway into the second chorus of Simian Mobile Disco’s ‘I Believe’  when I suddenly I latched onto a thought. Strong  beliefs are much like knowledge. What did I know about? What are the outlines of my personal philosophy? What was something that was so strong it propelled me to action? What knowledge do I keep?

And then it came to me.

I believe in the pursuit of euphoria. Fearless, unadulterated happiness is the ultimate goal.

I believe that ridicule is envy.

I believe that no one is ever completely alone with their struggles—not in this day and age. I believe that happiness should come back into vogue. I am tired of hearing people say gloomily “No one understands me, I’m just a **cked up person.” Based on what comparison, I ask you? I don’t believe there has been a single report of an individual who managed to completely sidestep embarrassment, shame, frustration, anger, depression or awkwardness and achieve a perfect point of stability and contentment. While it may seem like you and Holden Caufield against the world, just remember: you loved the book because it was a reflection of yourself. That’s what Salinger was trying to point out—we are more united in our struggles (in Holden’s case, as in all of ours– the particularly bizarre experience that is adolescence) than we are in our success. I believe in the pursuit of untamable, blissful happiness.

Now that that’s clarified, I’ve realized that I’ve been keeping that focus all to myself. Certainly smiling, dancing and laughing often, are symptoms of my belief, but I have not been applying them directly.

I do believe it’s time to shift focus again!

Until next time.

Enjoy? Follow me on Twitter @hcweiss! I’d love to read your story too!

That Nearly Impossible First Step

So it has been a while since my last post. I know, I know, this is like my third post that’s started like this but LISTEN UP. It’s for real this time. And here’s why:

April. Ok, well April just kind of got away from me. As I moved further and further away from the date of my last post, I went through the usual stages of postcrastination. Denial (I’ll get to it!), frustration, (Man, why can’t I think of anything to write about?) shame (Everything I write is stupid!) to acceptance (Well, I’ll get to it eventually.) Then May happened.

May started in a blast of Hellfire. Exams, internships, work and the last goodbyes of Senior Year came all at once and I did my best to keep it all going seamlessly. Life was rushing forward and at risk of being up shit’s creek without an oar I was paddling so quickly I almost missed the fact I’d finally hit the ocean. And then, out of nowhere: a brick wall. I came down with a raging fever. Weeks of pushing myself to juggle too many things at once, too little sleep and too much work came to a head. What can I say, I kind of deserved it.

I was bedridden just in time to finish my last exams and stayed out of commission through graduation. I became my own ball and chain, stuck in a sick room. I had nothing to do but lay back and reflect on the last four years. Everything that I had learned about the world, about myself. Things about people, things about cooking, things about books, things about monkeys, things about coffee, things about music, things about art and things about determination… How with every new piece of knowledge I acquired, I realized how little I actually knew. I was finished with school. I had secured a job and my own apartment. My life was about to begin. I had made my choices and there was no turning back now. I had done it.

But instead of feeling like I was ready to start kicking ass and taking names, I realized I felt like a newly hatched fish in a vast, perilous sea.

The useful thing about that imagery was: I’d to keep swimming either way.

Thankfully, May took a turn for the better very quickly. I took a vacation that didn’t entail work, extra academic pursuits or furthering my career, which was much needed. A three day car ride with my wonderful best Bear, reveling in the joy of graduation and ignoring the impending deluge of reality that was about to set in. It was just what I needed. I distanced myself from work and for what felt like the first time in a long time, I took a deep breath and had enough time to exhale slowly. I learned to slow down at Hostel in the Forest. I watched the highway stretch for miles. I drifted off to sleep. I remembered that having a best Bear means I’m allowed to ramble to her and empty whatever’s in my head so she can help me sort it out. I was reunited with my second family. I wore a traditional Indian outfit and witnessed a Sacred Thread Ceremony. I got my liver whupped by the Lower East Side. I met my awesome boss for the first time. I danced all night long. It was wonderful.

However, this journey was not without its serious moments of self-reflection. I was reunited with the beloved city I had sworn I would return to as soon as my diploma was in my hand. New York. The Big Apple. The City That Doesn’t Sleep. The Empire State. My soul city. It was as if I was reliving the summer before, re-learning to love the pigeons, the subway, the stench of urine and hot asphalt in the sweltering heat.  There was such an ache in my heart delving back into the concrete jungle for only a single day, it was as though I had betrayed her.

I wrestled with the feeling that I had let myself down somehow. That by taking on not one, but two great jobs and staying put in the city I went to college in, I was somehow sucking the sparkle out of my future. Though my career may be lucrative, what if I was doomed to become a boring, pasty, ankle-sock-and-visor suburbanite? Is that what happens? Do people give up the glitter for pastels and golf carts because they prefer it, or because they felt like they didn’t deserve the glitz either? The feeling that there were no sequins left for me, that all the disco balls had been taken, the city lights had been repossessed and the road to success was bottlenecked.

So suddenly I, H “I have a job and a plan since March” Weiss realized… I might not have what I really wanted.

So I thought about things I would want… and I realized I didn’t have that defined either.

That’s so annoying, isn’t it? Sometimes, when you’re so busy getting upset about being upset, you miss the big picture. Step back, take a deep breath, and clarify.

So I made a list… and I immediately calmed down.

The list was as follows:

I WANT:

1. To write.
2. To work.
3. To learn.

I took a breath and realized that I had set myself to learn and work in two wonderfully different realms, but I would need time develop myself professionally. I have so much to learn, and even after I’ve absorbed it, it will still incubate, morph and change. I will discover where I should be going, because I have positioned myself for discovery. At this point, it is a matter of perseverance. Gotta keep on swimming.

Writing is another matter, and one I’ve been kicking my own ass about taking more seriously. I’ve been putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard, I suppose) for a very, very long time. Writing my thoughts down has always been a release for me, and revisiting old journals reminds me how important writing down your own life experience can be. It’s time to put those writings some place where they can eventually manifest into something that is (hopefully) useful and relevant.

So… the let the journey begin. Right now.

My first step in this process involved taking the Ralph Waldo Emerson pledge.

Here are the details from the website:

The Inspiration

To celebrate Emerson’s 208th birthday, The Domino Project is republishing a work of art that’s especially relevant today. Self-Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson urges readers to trust their intuition rather than conforming to the will of the majority.

The Pledge Details

1. The #Trust30 challenge starts at 6am ET on May 31st and runs for 30 days.
2. Each day we’ll post a prompt from an original thinker and doer on RalphWaldoEmerson.me. You can also sign-up for daily emails.
3. Fill out the short form below to commit to participating in the #trust30 online initiative.
4. Blog, journal, or create something on each of the 30 days.
5. Tweet using the hashtag #trust30 to show your support and involvement.

–

Although I joined 1 day late, this is going to be my personal writing boot camp.

Today’s prompt is this:

Today by Liz Danzico

Your genuine action will explain itself, and will explain your other genuine actions. Your conformity explains nothing. The force of character is cumulative. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance

If ‘the voyage of the best ship is a zigzag line of a hundred tacks,’ then it is more genuine to be present today than to recount yesterdays. How would you describe today using only one sentence? Tell today’s sentence to one other person. Repeat each day.

–

So… Day 1:

Today is about taking that very first delve into this wide and extraordinary sea.

THANK YOU #trust30

Follow me on twitter at @hcweiss where my other prompts may show up as well.

Here we go!

I’m going to take this opportunity to introduce my first love: reading. I’ve gained more accidentally-useful-trivia-knowledge from books I read for fun than from any History Channel special, Modern Marvels or Mythbusters episode combined. For this reason, I have a hard time associating with people who are proud to announce they have never read a book in their life. These imbeciles are sad shells of people with no idea how much they are missing because the inconvenience of moving their eyes from left to right across a black and white sheet of paper they hold in their hand is so outrageous that they deem it ‘hard’. Stop whining and open a book like your ancestors did, you poor excuse for a hominid.

Invisible Man: Ralph Ellison’s greatest work. Happy sigh. On the outside, it would seem to be another finely written account of the struggle of the African-American male in the first half of the 20^th century.  The contradictions of the American Dream in the pre-Brown vs. Board of Education nation were certainly laid out for reader’s examination, (I’m a poet and I didn’t know it!) but Ellison’s work sneaks by you. He’s not simply talking about the issue of racial oppression, but the issue of all individuals being lost to whatever society/culture/belief system they subscribe to. Period. The narrator refers to himself  as the ‘invisible man’ not just because he is barred from white/communist/revolutionary society, but because everyone, white, black or purple, operates under the same principles: what you surround yourself by tells you who you are. Ellison’s character only becomes ‘invisible’ after he secures an absolute sense of self and goes underground to live in a room lit with hundreds of light bulbs. He plans to hibernate until he can sort out how to emerge as a complete individual. In short: what a masterpiece.

“All my life I had been looking for something, and everywhere I turned someone tried to tell me what it was. I accepted their answers too, though they were often in contradiction and even self-contradictory. I was naïve. I was looking for myself and asking everyone except myself questions which I, and only I, could answer. It took me a long time and much painful boomeranging of my expectations to achieve a realization everyone else appears to have been born with: that I am nobody but myself.”

(Ralph Ellison: Invisible Man)

Beloved: I love Toni Morrison’s style, what can I say. She works with a really jazzy, rich narrative. I’ve read Beloved twice, once in high school and once in college, and I enjoyed it both times. It’s a tribute to human goodness exploited as weakness by guilt, the applied duties of love and the unending cycles people find themselves trapped within.

“She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It’s good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind.”

(Toni Morrison: Beloved)

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close/ Everything is Illuminated: These are two of my favorite novels of all time, not only for the original concepts and Foer’s flawless immersion in his works, but for the more-than-three-dimensional characters he creates.

I was so sad the day I finished these books, because the lives of his characters were finished. The older characters  in particular are bowed figures of humanity nearly defeated by their flaws. Whereas I’d normally find that to be an element of an unreadable sob story written exclusively for fortysomething-all-female book club members looking for something to sigh over, Foer walks you through every step of how they got there. Each character holds tight to fears, beliefs or values that go unspoken or unrecognized by most of us out here in the real world, and all of a sudden Safran-Foer pulls it out of you and puts it there on the page, in back and white.

No, I did not watch the movie.

“What about a teakettle? What if the spout opened and closed when the steam came out, so it would become a mouth, and it could whistle pretty melodies, or do Shakespeare, or just 
crack up with me? I could invent a teakettle that reads in Dad’s voice, so I could fall asleep, or maybe a set of kettles that sings the chorus of “Yellow Submarine,” which is a song by the Beatles, who I love, because entomology is one of my raisons d’être, which 
is a French expression that I know. Another good thing is that I could train my anus to talk when I farted. If I wanted to be extremely hilarious, I’d train it to say, “Wasn’t me!” every time I made an incredibly bad fart. And if I ever made an incredibly bad fart in the Hall of Mirrors, which is in Versailles, which is outside of Paris, which is in France, obviously, my anus would say, “Ce n’étais pas moi!” 
What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboard down the street at night you could hear everyone’s heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone’s hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don’t really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn’t have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war.”

(Jonathan Safran Foer- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)

“I have reflected many times upon our rigid search. It has shown me that everything is illuminated in the light of the past. It is always along the side of us, on the inside, looking out. Like you say, inside out. Jonathan, in this way, I will always be along the side of your life. And you will always be along the side of mine.”

(Everything is Illuminated)

The World At Night: I just finished this – a historical-fiction spy novel, which was a really fun read. Alan Furst is an author of ‘near  history’ incredibly accurate and well written fictional historical accounts. This particular tale follows the crumbling life of Jean-Claude Casson, a French film producer living in Paris at the start of World War II. It is incredibly atmospheric novel. Paris is one of my favorite cities in Europe and with Furst’s narrative I was transported back to the City of Lights, heart and soul.

“One is what one has the nerve to pretend to be.”

(Alan Furst- The World at Night)

Shantaram: An incredibly long, satisfying novel that took me about a year and a half to get through. Roberts’ atmosphere is just as strong as Furst’s, but in this work you’re taken through the winding streets, spices and heat of Bombay. It’s a semi-autobiographical account of a New Zealand convict who escaped a maximum security prison and flees to Bombay where runs from the law, meets a woman,  sets up a hospital in a slum, joins the mafia overlord of the slum who has mastered the idea of ‘morally gray’ and goes to war in Afghanistan. It’s a great adventure book if you’re going to be sitting on a lot of planes/tour busses this summer. Spoiler Alert: Shantaram means ‘Man of Peace’. See what they did htere?

“The truth is a bully we all pretend to like.”

(Gregory David Roberts- Shantaram)

7. I am not the only one with a social media addiction!

Yes, it’s true. I remember going into my first internship (a brief stint with the Palm Beach Post, for those who are wondering) certain that I would be facing the same Big Brother mentality as my high school: firewalls and restrictions at every turn– easily jumpable for we the people of the techy generation– and a great Frowning and Finger Wagging for those caught red handed. Every time I heard footsteps by my cubicle my heart would pound. I went through that internship entirely terrified of being caught looking at something other than my work, which mostly involved copying birth announcements and obituaries. It was glamorous, stimulating work that convinced me journalism may not be the right career path for me.

I discovered instead that social media has appealed to the personalities and news-junkie mentalities of almost nearly every one of my bosses since then. I’d imagine that’s what’s to be expected in PR, just another sign that I’ve gotten myself into the right industry (hopefully). I’m by no means supporting the distraction of employees from their work (unpaid interns, I feel your pain), but in this industry social media is a tool to get ahead and learn more about our craft every day. It just so happens to be incredibly addictive and fun.

6. Figure out the bathroom situation pronto and avoid poor planning.

This is one thing I’ve learned not to be shy about in the workplace or in life in general: bathroom protocol is vital to your survival sitting in a cubicle for eight hour days. I have been put in more confusing bathroom situations than I can count. I’ve gotten completely lost in buildings, forgotten important codes and locked vital keys within the restrooms they open. This tendency has put me in a number of embarrassing situations but has ensured I have a number of ‘Plan B’ options for the moments when nature calls and I’ve already screwed it up.

When you learn the bathroom situation in your workplace, imagine all possible scenarios for idiocy, and plan accordingly. For example, if you lock the only ladies room key in the ladies room, knock on the strange door to your left, it might contain a Graphic Design firm with a key of their own. Don’t be shy, everyone will just smile and nod at you and remind you that they’ve all been there. It’s a nice faith-in-humanity moment.

5. Anyone who can ticket you, will. Know your enemy/parking situation.

Oh man. I’ve only had a car for a few months and I have already racked up 3 parking tickets and have been towed once. Yeesh. Why, you ask? Well, i’ve been caught up in some interesting parking policies. 1) At the building I work in, I’d have to pay for a garage spot (as I am a part-time employee) and 2) The front where I could park is a ‘VIP’ parking area… Very Important People with Very Important Cars only. I like to think my car is important but apparently the Mighty Parking Deity (the guy that sits in the box) does not agree. Fiddlesticks.

So, what were my options? I parked in the lot next to it, which is a little plaza with a Fridays, European Wax Center, a mattress store and a few other shops. One would assume that parking is entirely public and I was convinced I was clever. This went on for a couple of weeks until one day I returned to my car to see it had… vanished. Completely. After a few moments of disbelief I looked up to notice a ‘Tow Away Zone’ sign on the far side of the lot. As it was only on one side of the lot, I’d assumed it only applied to that certain area which i’d imagined I’d avoided. Upon calling the towing company about the status of my vehicle , they informed me tow away zones only have to be posted at hte entrances to the lot. The ransom was $104.00. Typical, Miami.

4. If you’re quiet and bored, that’s how you’ll stay.

One particularly frustrating thing as an intern is the feeling that sometimes, the higher-ups can get so wrapped up in their work that they forget you’re there. It is always wise to personally approach the team you work with to see if you can be of any assistance. It’s a great way to learn new skills and test old ones you may not have exercised– I learned Final Cut Pro, basic HTML and Sporcle game design  this way and recently re-discovered the organizing power of post-its. If they have nothing for you to do, sit down and take care of your own business, like your recently resuscitated blog.

3. Your boss has good advice.

Seriously. Talk to them. If you’re anything like me, you intern where you do because you’re looking to be behind their desk in the next five years. Talking with your employer can really give you a window into the process of furthering your career, and remind you that the track you have in mind may not be the right one, but enjoy the ride!

2. Don’t sweat the technical problems… Google has the answer! 

Every once in a while the intern will be approached to handle some nagging technical difficulty that has been plaguing the higher-ups. They approach you in a frustrated manner and seek either explanation or miracle. As someone under the age of 30, it is assumed we have a higher understanding of computers and common glitches. In a way they’re right, thanks to the power of Google. Entering those little key phrases can provide you with a wealth of solutions, although some might be harder to understand than others. Take the time to read the reasons for and the solution to the problem– you can learn a lot about computers this way.

1. Smile 

Every day, do this. Keeping a positive attitude is the best office politics– it’ll brighten up your office and make sure you stay focused and upbeat throughout the day.