Sometimes You Need a Vacation

For now that means squeezing three tiny get-away weekends into February. Silence on this blog brought to you by Philadelphia, Glastonbury, and Charlottesville.Writing will resume in March.

Status Update

After reading this article in the Washington Post I started to pay more attention to the life events and proclamations made back and forth between friends on Facebook. Individuals merely commenting on their daily state of being becomes in aggregate an accounting of a friend's pregnancy or continued search for employment.

Valentine's Day of course brought a spike in the professions of love and affection and I began to wonder about how a perceived instant audience of FB is altering our behavior to share personal details. Do we more readily share or express our ups and downs because the personal, yet impersonal nature of Facebook? Does the cattle call news need just make it easier to share big life news? Allowing us to include more people in our joy and sorrows, and therefore by extension actually bringing us closer together?

I'm thrilled when I see a friend announce they are expecting that I might otherwise never have heard about. And there's always a few go to friends for pithy comments and clever commentary on their life experiences. I've carved out time in my schedule to regularly check FB. Does this enhance my overall well being? Make me more connected to my fellow man? To a certain degree, yes. I am not one to advocate for the extraction of technology from our lives as a means of communication.

However, I certainly believe the line between public and private lives is more readily blurring. One of the more honest comments I've read in recent months about work life balance is that you can't separate the two. The balance is in the blending of them. By creating strict hierarchies of separation and punishing yourself when you fail to adhere, no one wins and more unnecessary is created. Balance yes, but full separation is highly unlikely. So how does this same logic potentially apply to blurring our public and private personas?
 
For my own consideration because I work in communications, interacting with new media channels in a closed a protected manner is largely against the very idea of exploring a mediums potential. If I tweeted and blogged to myself, I wouldn't gain greater understanding of information flow and user behavior. Yet, the risk is higher. I'm creating a permanent digital paper trail of my writing, my ideas, myself as an individual.

But fundamentally I return to the larger question of relationships and personal information sharing. Are we extracting a greater benefit out of now sharing more information about our feelings, our life changes? Are we creating a new set of expectations about relationship success and failure? Do you show your relationship status or not? Do you post personal pictures or not?

Inevitably age introduces a level of comfort or seamless integration of technology into how one expresses their thoughts and feelings about big events and relationships. So, isolating emerging users and fluent users (basically everyone under 27 or so) and focusing on the late 20s to 40s crowd, have we enhanced our lives or the quality of our relationships by documenting it on FB?

I would put forth a qualified yes. And yet, I find myself limiting my information on the site more and more. Deleting and removing images that seem extraneously archived there. And I wonder how the next ruminations of the machine will alter our behavior in 24, 36 months and beyond.

A Valentine from ee cummings

User Rating: 9.5 /10 (833 votes) - vote - 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10   Print friendly version   E-mail this poem to e friend   Send this poem as eCard   Add this poem to MyPoemList

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Couldn't Pull the Trigger

There was a brief moment this weekend where we almost bought a townhouse. We even had them hold the lot as we contemplated whether we were ready to jump in feet first. Then our carefully honed financial consciousness kicked in and we walked away.

Many of our friends and family have scoffed that we're more willing as a couple to go live in remote regions of the world than actually own something, but it's true we're still not quite there yet.

Brass tacks, we're still working on a saving for a down payment that's worth something. But we know the tide is finally starting to turn in DC where the market is showing signs of recovery, but finally you can get more for your money by buying not renting. So we'll get there, likely in the next year, but not today.

At least we know we love DC, we'll always call it home. Even if we wander far, our roots are here, they just don't have a mortgage.

We've worked so hard at achieving financial stability that we don't want to take on more than we're ready to do too soon. And yes, I still have moments where I think, well maybe we should pay off all of those student loans before we buy a house. And then I laugh, and think about how ridiculous that actually is, I mean seriously, we'd be nearing retirement before that would happen.

So, mindful fiscal living wins another round.

Making It Up

One of the first items that prompted me to consider documents/blogging about a more mindful life were the products I use on a daily basis. Inspired by my friend Sarah, makeup was on my list of items to reevaluate. So for the past year I've been trying to get through my existing product so I could replace them. After a few false starts, I finally reached a point where I realized a few things.

1. I can't completely run out of everything at the same time

2. I really need to start wearing make up like a grown up, you know a "real" professional.

3. I am completely intimidated by make up, skin care and the women who work at stores that sell them, e.g. MAC.

So I started searching for a consultant that wasn't affiliated with a specific brand. I wanted a translator for the vast world of product. This should have been an easy endeavor, but lacking any direct referrals I had reached a dead end. Then I randomly came across the handy Washingtonian Reader Deals, and voilà Princess Street. 

Megan, the brains behind Princess Street, offers a straightforward service. She'll come to your place and evaluate your current products; make a list based on what you're looking for; go shopping with you to pick out the products; and come back to your place to teach you how to use it all. It's fun and idiot proof. Perfect. Flat fee for her expertise and you buy the products selected based on the budget you set out.

So this past Saturday, I spent my afternoon shopping with my new personal makeup expert for a whole new look. The headline? I really have no idea about make up, but M was super friendly and helpful. Most importantly, she answered the questions that elude me. What's worth a splurge, and what can you just pick up at the drugstore?

So armed with the goal of getting more natural, professional make up we headed out. In retrospect, I was ill equipped to really know if the products we finally selected really fall low enough on the Skin Deep scale to be a true improvement, but I'm going to go through the process of typing the products (the ones not in the database yet) to get an overall rating. Another post for another day.

We hit four stores: MAC, Sephora, CVS and Blue Mercury. I'm also heading to Target to pick up a couple things we couldn't find. 

The list of new products (photos later):

• Laura Mercier Tinted Moisturizer spf 20 (porcelain)
• Make Up Forever Palette 5 Cremes de Camouflage No. 1
• MAC Mineralize Satinfinish spf 15 Foundation (NC20)
• MAC Mineralize Skinfinish Natural (medium light)
• MAC Powder Blush (Dame)
• MAC Powder Blush (Prism)
• MAC Eyeshadow Four Palette (need to look up the color names) 
• MAC Technakohl Liner Eye-Liner Kajal (earthline)
• MAC VivaGlam 6 Lipstick
• MAC Mystic Satin Lipstick
• Urban Decay Eyeshadow Primer Potion (eden)
• Cover Girl Lash Blast Mascara (very black)We also picked up brushes, more later, as well as a few skin care basics. Day two of trying out the new scheme-- referencing the handy face guides M made for about what to use in what order-- I am slowly thinking I might eventually get this down. But, since I'm starting with a steep learning curve, this could take awhile. So not sure if I hit it out of the park on the natural side, but hopefully I've not purchased a make up bag full of toxins and I might look a bit more put together in the weeks ahead. Well, at least from the neck up.

Urban Camping Gives Way to Cairo

Complaining about a 2.5 day power outage seems fairly trivial as the events in Egypt unfold. I couldn't access this blog, twitter, or facebook regularly because of a power outage-- not because my government had shut down access.

Lebanon. Tunisia. Egypt. Jordan. These are countries and a region in transition. So many sources out there.

Hashtags of interest: #egypt, #jan25
Latest from the U.S. @StateDept
Wire feeds from Reuters, AP, BBC, 
TIME summary of Egypt situation

An Extra Hour

If there were only more than 24 hours in a day. Ah, the sentiment we've all uttered seriously or fleeting from time to time as we rush from task to task. After grad school, I can remember basking in luxurious open evenings. Spacious Sundays uninterrupted by a forced eight hour march at the library. Coming back to Washington work-life balance was at the heart of my career choice. Less on-call, less frenetic pace. All conscious choices.

A survey of the past three years back in our hometown, shows a splattered mix of the use of my new found free time. Nothing cemented with conviction and discipline the way grad school forces you to divide your days.

An hour for the gym.

An hour for writing.

An hour for cooking a more involved meal.

An hour for art/gift/photo projects.

Sure they've all made an appearance in the repertoire, but some how none has carved out firm time. So when DH travels for several weeks at a time I'm presented with an interesting opportunity that I've often squandered. Massive chunks of time that I can fill with anything at all. An ideal opportunity to form new habits, healthy habits.

So I'd like to be able to report that with the start of 2011 the latest sojourn brought on by his travel has set me on the right path. Specifically with reestablishing a five day-a-week gym schedule. That would be a no.

Rather, I've rediscovered a mean case of insomnia; tried out a few new recipes (yummy pork loin and pizza recipes will be shared later); caught up on a disproportionate amount of reality TV; and merely dappled in the gym.

Well, tomorrow is a new day. Maybe the extra hour I need to fit in the gym will be there.