Friday Frisson

{Some of you may remember the Friday Frisson from my previous blog incarnation. For those of you that don’t, this is a semi-regular thing: most Fridays, I will post about the things I’m loving and/or obsessing over that week.*}

Kena Kai Inter-Departmental Mail Laptop Sleeve. Other iterations abound, but the kooky kitsch juxtaposed with cool elegance in this one makes me weak in the knees.

Sleep All Summer. A gorgeous cover recorded by St. Vincent and The National. I don’t see myself getting tired of this one anytime soon.

Wallpaper from Totally Severe. This girl is awesome. I want her to land a big gig that will pay her loads of money to draw and needlepoint and be funny.

Dr. Scholl’s Arch Pain Relief Orthotics Shush, you guys, I’m totally serious: these have made my life just a little bit more awesome. See, prior to working from home, I wore heels nearly every day. The higher, the better–thusly both keeping my absurdly high arches happy and feeding my feverish delusion that I appeared a) taller and b) as though I had been born with long, graceful legs (and thanks for your concern, but I am really too busy for therapy. ). Working from home, I’ve been either barefoot or in sandals or some other uber-flat shoe. Turns out that the absurdly-high-arch thing, when ignored, causes amazing pain that eventually reaches most of one’s body. Le sigh! But these sweet babies are adjustable. Three different levels of support. I didn’t muck about, went straight for the highest level and for two days felt as though I were getting my feet massaged. Oh, and then my back and neck and head pain went away. I realize this is a bit of a banal overshare, but if I can help one delicate-footed soul out there…

Note: they are INSANELY EXPENSIVE on Amazon! What is that about?! Just buy them at your local drugstore, people.

Let’s Go Ride A Bike. A thoughtful, witty, fun, chick-biking blog. (That’s bicycle, not the other kind of bike.) My mister is a bike rider and I am about to become one myself, I can feel it. Let’s Go Ride A Bike is very encouraging.

Happy weekend, friends.

*Lead with your strengths, right?  Conveniently I am nothing  if not obsessive.

5 Things I’ll Do Differently Now

Last Friday’s group FireStarter session really did light a fire under me. (Never let it be said that there is no truth in advertising.) I’ve never before shared such an intimate space and purpose with so many inspiring people. It was as exhilarating as it was humbling, and one of the best things about it was that everyone else seemed to feel the same way. It’s no exaggeration to say that I’ve come away changed. Here are a few of the things I’ll be doing differently as a result.

1. Seek out my tribe. I spent the last five years in corporate America, being the odd one out. So much so that I didn’t even notice anymore my assumption that I will have very little in common with others when I find myself in a group. But patterns emerged as these brilliant, daring people shared their stories with one another. And one of the biggest for me was that nearly everyone had an extensively varied background. “I’m good at [career option], and I did it for a long time, but it didn’t really thrill me anymore…so I decided to become a [chef/assist international peace talks/head up a think tank/insert eyebrow-raising career option here]. And now I want to [insert equally eyebrow-raising career choice here] but I’m not really how to [make the money part work/get new clients/insert challenge here].” Um, yeah, I totally get that. As someone with a rabid interest in nearly everything and a past that includes film production, public relations, human resources, massage therapy, editorial, corporate communications and a host of other exciting items, I get that. It felt so good to feel so normal. [See part one of Assimilation is Futile.] Which dovetails nicely into…

2. Remember that with authenticity come ease and synchronicity. Meaning that when you’re doing what you’ve been created to do, there’s a very natural flow to life. It sounds simplistic, maybe, but its beauty never fails to amaze.

3. Exercise my requestus muscle more often. Danielle made reference to the requestus muscle and I made note of it. Some of us have a harder time than others when it comes to asking for what we need or want. But making those things known is helpful. To you, to the rest of the world. It’s not personal, when you really think about it. I decided to make use of my requestus muscle after the workshop. Although I was fairly terrified, I approached a well-known design guy who was there, handed him my card and said, “I want to work with you.” We’re having lunch in a few weeks.

4. For the love of Pete, stop tilting my head down in photos. What the heck? Why of all the unattractive..! So many photos from the weekend, rendered unusable. Le sigh!

And speaking of photos…

5. More photos. And some video. Watch this space.

The world needs more people who are on fire. Yes? Yes.

Marketers, take note.

The Lad:  Please look on YouTube for a little boy in a bear costume playing with a little kitten who’s playing with a little kitten car.  And the little boy speaks English with the little kitten who’s playing with the little kitten car.

My mom:  Did you just make all that up?

The Lad:  Yeah.

Assimilation is Futile (Part I)

It’s taken me a good long while to find my tribe. Next month I turn 34, which means it’s taken nearly 34 years. This occurred to me as I walked around a local beach town a couple of days ago, flooding with memories. Twelve years ago I had worked in that beach town, slinging coffee to high-strung older women with over-the-top plastic surgeries, arrogantly wealthy older men, and their narcissistic young counterparts. There was the odd nice person, obviously; but for the most part I spent my days immersed in a world that was completely alien to me–and vice versa, to be fair. (We are all guilty of preferring homogeneity, to some extent.)

Don’t get me wrong; the business of not fitting in was not new to me. I was a bicultural kid with one immigrant parent, grew up in a sketchy neighborhood and went to schools for gifted kids, which happened to be in pretty decent neighborhoods. At home, my interests were weird and highfalutin’, as were my grammar and lack of accented English. At school, my cultural knowledge was weird, period, as was my background and lack of American colloquialisms. Somewhat absurdly, I continued to hear the opposing refrains of Why you tryin’ to sound like a white girl? and Well, when I said that about Mexicans, I didn’t mean you, all the way through high school in the early 90s.

In college, I switched majors three times, going from English to Psych to Theater to English. I just couldn’t imagine wanting to do only one thing for the rest of my life, and the self-imposed pressure not to waste the tuition money was huge, resulting in, of course, a total lockdown on my cognitive thinking skills. I was wound pretty tightly by the time I hit 22 and was notified that I was about to be removed from my mother’s insurance. Given that I’m a type 1 diabetic, living on no insurance wasn’t exactly an option. And while my mom was more than willing to pay out of pocket for my meds and doctor’s visits, in retrospect I think it seemed like the perfect opportunity to avoid having to decide which box I would live in. My best friend at the time told me she could hire me as a receptionist at the film and TV production company where she worked, and I jumped at the chance. I explained my situation to my professors, who were kind enough to let me finish out the semester by writing a couple of papers, and I entered the world of entertainment.

It was pretty thrilling. I went to a few parties and movie screenings, met a few celebrities. Although I was the lowest on the rung, that company didn’t subscribe to the dog-eat-dog practices found most everywhere else in Hollywood, and so I was made to feel welcome and valued from the beginning–to say nothing of the ridiculous amounts of fun I had working with my best friend (one word:T-R-O-U-B-L-E.). In short order I became the publicity assistant, organizing parties and writing press releases. I enjoyed the production company and learned more than my fair share about Hollywood, business and life in general…but I was bored, frankly. I felt somehow that I was done, that I needed to move on. Within a year I had gone to work for the PR company that handled our account.

To be continued…

Photo by Alex Layzell

“Meme” and “me, me!” use the same letters. Coincidence?

Martha tagged me for this. Rather convenient, as I saw it on another blog and had been about to post it despite no formal invitation. Thanks for helping me  save face, Miss M.!

What is your current obsession?
Downsizing.  Gleefully working for myself. Organizational systems (it’s a very slow learning process, I must say).  Roxy Music.

What is your weirdest obsession?
They’re all kind of weird, no?

What are you wearing today?
Red and white polka-dotted tank over white tank. Black cardigan. Jeans. Camo flip-flops.  My game face.

What’s for dinner?
Spaghetti and meatballs and some kind of green vegetable.

What would you eat for your last meal?
A G&T, followed by some Brie on crackers. Then something made by my mom, not sure what. With a nice Chardonnay. And then my aunt Claudia’s cheesecake with cherry topping. The idea being that I would drift happily off into a food coma before shuffling off into an eternal coma.

What’s the last thing you bought?
Mr. Gibson’s archery club renewal package, an early Fathers Day gift.

What are you listening to right now?
The gurgling of the aquarium and the hum of the PC.

What do you think of the person who tagged you?
She inspires me more than she knows, what with the following her dreams, working hard, being an awesome mom–and then there’s the smart, funny, nice, etc. What a woman!

If you could have a house totally paid for, fully furnished anywhere in the world, where would you like it to be?
Right here in San Pedro.  Either in South Shores or in Vista De Oro.

If you could go anywhere in the world for the next hour, where would you go?
I’d go see my friend Kristen in North Carolina and meet her not-so-new-anymore baby, Lucy.

Which language do you want to learn?
I’d like to learn to properly pronounce things in French! My pronunciation is abominable, although I am pretty adept at reading it.

What is your favorite colour?
Deep reds, purples and greenish-blues.

What is your favorite piece of clothing in your own wardrobe?
My vintage faux-fur leopard coat is pretty great.

What is your dream job?
Creating kick-ass branding concepts and writing kick-ass copy for kick-ass people. Conveniently, this is what I do.

What’s your favourite magazine?
I am an avowed  magazine junkie, but with print pubs in such a bad place, most of my favorites have gone the way of the steam locomotive.
That said: Blueprint, Domino, Lucky and Glamour (oh the shame! As if I have any.).

If you had £100 now, what would you spend it on?
That’s a lot of American money these days (heh-heh, she types, nervously).
I would replace my ailing laptop, stat.

Describe your personal style.
How about I give you my style statement? Nostalgic Adventure.

What are you going to do after this?
Brainstorm for a client website.

What are your favourite films?
In My Father’s Den, Amelie, It Happened One Night, Escape From Alcatraz, Three Amigos!, Lost In Translation, Labyrinth, High Plains Drifter

What’s your favourite fruit?
Blueberries, oranges, figs and apples. I didn’t much care for apples until we started buying them from Mr. Ha of Ha’s Apple Farm at our farmers market. Now I find that sometimes they’re too sweet for me to finish. And I have a small breakdown at the end of apple season every year.

What inspires you?
Living by faith. People who are witty and kind and not driven by fear. The ocean

Do you collect anything?
Photos of unusual, beautiful, odd or funny signs.
Children’s literature, particularly antiques.
Miniature household items.
Ladies’ items and ephemera from days of yore.

Your favourite books?
Pattern Recognition
A Little Princess
Endurance
The Gospel of Luke
The English Patient
It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be

What are you currently reading?
I’m not. What would you recommend?

Go to your book shelf, take down the first book with a red spine you see, turn to page 26 and type out the first line.
An antique dressmaker’s dummy, now devoid of its stand and with its fabric worn away to reveal a sensual décolletage, is just the place to show off delicate trinkets.

By what criteria do you judge a person?
By the way they treat waiters.

What skill would you like to acquire immediately?
How not to get seasick.