I use QuillBot, a paraphrasing tool, to improve some of the FP announcements and acknowledgement. QuillBot uses AI to rephrase sentences or paragraphs. I paste my text in the box and then keep clicking “Paraphrase”, sometimes, with a desperation like a mother showing picture after picture of prospective matches to a child not particularly interested in matrimony. : ) At times, I also paste my text in the Hemingway App which promises to make the writing clearer. Why so much effort and revision for a post announcing the FP or soliciting nominations? I guess it is to alleviate the anxiety that comes when writing something that has a due date and that is not just a response hidden far down in a thread. Such anxiety and fears are quite common and plague even the most confident of us at times. So, what does one do? Read on ... It is a singular pleasure, accompanied with no anxiety, to announce the Winner of the Finest Post Award: @MadhuRK for her response in Update On My New Job.. Madhu’s post has immediately implementable suggestions as well as arguments to counter that niggling, pesky inner voice that makes us doubt our abilities. Those who haven’t yet read it, should read the post in its entirety, but I just have to quote two parts that I like to read again and again for that calm feeling that comes after reading them: Fear of failure, fear of shame, fear of under-performance these are all common fears among humans and even animals, only the degree changes. Why am I saying all these things to you ? Just for you to internalize and accept that its ok to feel this way. … The divine cosmic energy which gave you two hands, two legs, 10 fingers, 10 toes, parents, husband and kid, 3 meals a day, a beautiful home, car and now this job knows how to take care of you at all times. Consider yourself a blessed divine child. What is there to fear ? Thank you @Laks09 for bringing this post to FP. Thank you @iyerviji and all for the nominations and Likes. It was great to see such an active FP thread! .
@Rihana you make me speechless with your announcements. I see how much effort goes behind your work. My favourite Wodehouse once wrote about the effort that he had to put in to get his stories right. I now understand how your announcements come out so beautifully
Congratulations @MadhuRK for winning the finest post for the month of February 2022. As soon as @Laks09 nominated your post, I rushed to read your response and it is wonderful written with clear thinking and practical suggestions as to how to overcome the tension that prevails in a new job. More than what others think of us, our concern about what impression we are creating with others bothers us the most. A lot of self-confidence, habit of just remaining who we are, asking questions without hesitation and communicating with colleague in a friendly manner are all important in a new job as muchas our own skills to perform the job. @Rihana, Thanks for sharing the apps that you use to perfect the announcements. I always learn something new from you. I will definitely look up those Apps.
Thank you everyone for the warmth and love. Truly humbled by this gesture. Life is not an easy hero-meets-X insert appropriately[Beautiful heroine, weepy sister, sentimental mother, passionate cause, celebration/recognition] and finally emerge where justice prevails and the protagonist wins successfully in the plot. But we may have been conditioned by many decades of bad-quality movie watching to believe that is so. What I have observed is that in reality, what we call as life, a.k.a our mind, is something that has to be managed, expectations have to be clarified, things get messy, no hero comes to our rescue, nobody gives to us anything on a platter, we have to work really hard, continuously and still accept that we don't control the outcomes, not even at the kitchen-sink level, let alone at the corporate level. Somewhere in this swirling tornado, we also have to anchor ourselves in some form of peace, comfort and stability. Life/Mind has to be endured or ignored and crossed over. I truly believe that mind-management is the greatest management problem people have not found an MBA specialization for. It is also the hardest because nobody can solve it for us. We have to solve it ourselves. I'm humbled that my life experiences have helped someone in some 2-cent way, like the squirrel's sand in building Rama's bridge. May we all be blessed with abiding peace.
