Tag Archives: life

Reverb10 Day 3: Moment

Posted on by
1

Note: This is the third in a month-long exercise called Reverb10, where bloggers reflect on the year before and think towards the year ahead. The idea is to post daily, based on the day’s prompts; let’s see how well I do.

December 3 – Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors).

The week before my wedding, I was a complete wreck. I hadn’t been sleeping, had barely been able to focus on anything, and we were still dealing with logistical issues between the camp and making sure our families could figure out where the camp was. Up until the moment I walked down the aisle, my nerves were shot. It wasn’t until I got down there, and saw the eyes of my husband, that I finally realized I was going to be fine.

The weather was more perfect than we could have imagined; a soft breeze, unseasonably warm, but not so hot that we were all sweating bullets. The ceremony space was set up in a huge ampitheatre with a view of the lake, with a bit of music (frantically put together on a CD the night before we left for camp) playing softly as guests sat down. I was in peacock blue, with bright red shoes and a dark orange flower in my hair; Nick was in a blue suit with a peacock blue paisley tie. Both of us started crying almost as soon as I got down there. Our officiant and friend Joanna read a beautiful ceremony that she’d created just for us, and I could see the look of incredible pride in my parents’ eyes from the moment we started the procession to the end of the wedding.

I can honestly say, in my entire life, that I never thought I’d have a day like that day. A child of divorce, it wasn’t until I actually met Nick and had been with him for a while that I’d even considered myself the marrying kind. Now that the day is over, and Nick and I have happily settled into our married life, I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Reverb10 Day 2: Writing

Posted on by
Reply

Note: This is the second in a month-long exercise called Reverb10, where bloggers reflect on the year before and think towards the year ahead. The idea is to post daily, based on the day’s prompts; let’s see how well I do.

December 2 – Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

I have to adjust this prompt to “creativity” rather than “writing.” On any given day, I could be writing, doing design or strategy, or creating things with my hands. All of it ends up in my work in some way or another. In terms of a daily thing that interrupts that flow, my gut tells me that it has something to do with being chronically over-scheduled. On my least productive days, I feel like I’m frantically moving on from thing to thing, without the ability to give each thing the care it deserves.

I’ve developed strategies to help; small rituals, using the Action Method, and taking a few minutes each morning to write and get my head ready for what I have to do that day, to name a few. But if there’s one thing that I want to take more care with in 2011, it’s organizing my schedule so that each ball I have to juggle gets the attention it deserves.

Part of this means employing new strategies. For a start, I’m trying out this strategy outlined in a recent 99 percent post – which calls for prioritizing projects, and blocking out specific 2-3 hour blocks in your calendar for hard thinking. But the larger part, and the one I’ll likely find hardest, is going to be dropping some of the commitments I’ve accumulated in my “old life” in order to make room for the new commitments I’ve made. Either way, it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out.

Reverb10 Day 1: One Word

Posted on by
Reply

Note: This is the first in a month-long exercise called Reverb10, where bloggers reflect on the year before and think towards the year ahead. The idea is to post daily, based on the day’s prompts; let’s see how well I do.

Prompt: Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?

If I had to choose one word to encapsulate 2010, it would be change. I got married this year, to the man I’ve loved for over 5 years. I also came to the incredibly difficult realization that the business I’ve had for over 5 years no longer reflects the work I really want to be doing, and I’ve spent the last half of this year figuring out what that means, and making steps towards finding the work I *do* want.

All of this has felt, to be honest, a bit insane. What started as a desire to find a business partner to allow me to take a more strategic role has turned into a complete change of direction in my career. I’m moving more towards design strategy and user experience, and further away from branding and design implementation – which has been scary, but great in its own way.

Given all of this, the word for 2011 will be: landing. All of this change has left me feeling ungrounded, moving quickly towards the next thing. I’m ready to land, and to adjust into whatever the next step is. The first step is done; I was accepted into the program I wanted at Lesley University, and I’ll be working on a degree in Design and Business. The next step is finding a position that lets me take the knowledge I learn in class and apply it to real-world client situations. Keep an eye out for me, won’t you?

Update on life and stuff

Posted on by
Reply

I have to admit that exploring full-time opportunities is incredibly frustrating at times. And doing so in the middle of planning a wedding that’s coming in two weeks? Well, that’s just plain masochistic.

Still, there’s a lot of interesting activity going on of late. Most notably, in terms of career activity, I’ve seen a lot of very promising things taking shape, especially in terms of meeting the right people in the places I wanted to explore opportunities with. I don’t expect anything to take shape now, but there’s quite a bit of movement to be expected when I return from Italy, which was rather the point.

On the wedding front, oh the wedding! Now is the time for the annoying last-minute shuffle to get things done. I had the brilliant (which here means “incredibly masochistic, but also quite adorable”) idea to repurpose wine and craft beer bottles for wedding decor, water, etc. Nick has been hard at work cleaning off the labels and sanitizing them, while my friends and I attack them with craft glaze, rubber stamps and brushes in an attempt to make them beautiful. The results have been… less than perfect, but still quite beautiful, which was the point. The challenge now is that there’s still about 2 dozen left to do, with 2 weeks left to the wedding.

I also have about 2 more liters of flavored syrups to make, thanks to my brilliant (see prior definition) idea to have a homemade Italian Soda Bar at the wedding, along with syrups that I made myself. The first, ginger, lemon and cinnamon, was finished last night. Tonight, if I have time, I’ll attempt to make a red grapefruit and chocolate mint syrup.

There’s no such thing as “bad” food.

Posted on by
Reply

This morning while I was in line for my morning iced coffee, I watched a woman in front of me, who had obviously come in from a strenuous bike ride, order a Snickers latte. All the while, she kept asking the waitress “it’s not full of calories, is it?” and, after finally settling on getting the latte, she repeated “I’m being bad, I’m being so bad” in a nervous giggle to her friend for about 30 seconds. Despite the fact that she was not visibly overweight in any way, and was in the middle of getting exercise, this woman was obsessed with the idea that she was somehow being naughty by ordering a latte.

I don’t even know how to start here, except to say that this frustrates me. When did it become okay in our culture to make food the enemy?

Why do we, especially women, waste so much of our time and energy worrying about what people will think of us if we have a bit of dessert now and again?

I can’t say that I don’t have my own struggles with food. I’ve always been an emotional eater, and I can certainly point to my own experience as a prime example of what happens when you spend your life obsessing about what goes into your body. In middle school, I skipped lunch, convinced that eating in front of my classmates would only reinforce their opinion of me as a fat slob – only to gorge on everything I could find once I got home. In high school, after I tired of worrying about what my classmates thought of me, I lost 65 pounds in a summer when I discovered, through my gym class, how fun exercise actually was. It didn’t hurt that I became a vegetarian that summer.

During 20+ years of dealing with consistent weight issues, and finally reaching a comfort level with the body that I have (which settles quite nicely at somewhere between a size 12 and 14 most of the time), I’ve realized a few very important things about food:

  1. If you don’t love it, don’t swallow. This one piece of “advice” comes from the evil food critic in Ratatouille, and it’s the most concise way I know of describing how I prefer to interact with food.
  2. If you stop and think about eating a slice of pizza, or cake, or drinking a can of soda – or you notice the way you feel after consuming them – you’ll eventually realize that you don’t love them nearly as much as you think you do. Eating sugar in the middle of the day almost invariably makes me fall asleep, and I get sick from eating pizza. Soda gives me a headache. So, as much as I used to think I enjoyed them – and while I still do occasionally – I rarely eat them.
  3. There is no such thing as “being bad” – and the more of you think about eating something you enjoy as “being bad,” the more likely you are to gain back all the weight you lose “being good.” Take it from someone who’s lost and gained and lost again 50+ pounds at a time 3 times over the last two decades – the more you judge yourself, the more likely you are to backslide.

My new approach, which I’ve been working on over the last couple of years, is to eat what I want to eat when I’m hungry, and to stop when I’m not hungry anymore. It doesn’t always work – there are still a few times a month when I’m particularly stressed and let my blood sugar go out of whack, and that often leads me to gravitate towards the so-called “bad” foods. But I don’t judge myself anymore for it – and as a result, despite an injury that has kept me from keeping up any exercise program other than walking for almost a year now, my weight’s been stable for two years. I’d call that a victory.