Farewell.

Posted on June 6th, 2011

I’ve decided to take my blog in a different direction. I started this blog about 6 months ago as a way to work out my frustrations about moving back home. I guess for it’s initial purpose, this blog has fulfilled my needs. Living at home and adjusting to the new relationship I have with my parents has been very eye opening and has taught me a lot about what it means to be a responsible adult. As a tribute to that, I feel that my blog should be a reflection of my growth and my new outlook on life.

I realized that my blog can more than just a place where I lament about all the woes that is my life. My blog can also be a tool that can help me get a job; or at least move me in the direction of a more fulfilling job (sorry SB, pulling shots of coffee doesn’t quite do it for me).

I was on Twitter the other day and @Marian Schembari shared a link about how blogging can get you a job. I read a lot of things like this on Twitter, you know tweets with links that offer some kind of advise about writing or publishing or editing or blogging and to be honest, it can be a tad overwhelming, not to mention nearly impossible to read every article and absorb all the information that’s out there. But like the info junkie that I am, I click on every link and skim every article because every once in awhile, I find a gem and I am so moved by it that I resolve to change my ways because I believe that I’ve finally find the secret to success. That feeling lasts for about a day before I move on realizing that before I can implement said strategy, I need to get organized and before you know it, not only am I not doing the thing that I thought was so earth shattering that I found via Twitter, I’m also not organized and I’m back to my same old, same old ways. Perhaps it’s because I’ve never taken the time to formulate a plan, a clear, concise, goal driven plan, that nothing has ever worked out. This time is different; this little gem from Twitter is going to work. I know what I want from my blog thus giving it a focus and an overall theme. I’ve also found an interest that I want to pursue, one that can hopefully lead to meaningful places and things.

So I bid farewell to Confessions of a Boomerang Chick and I will reemerge like a Phoenix rising from the ashes, reborn anew to live again; except not so dramatic. My new blog will focus on writing: my writing, other people’s writing, how to’s of writing (including but not limited to every one’s favorite: grammar!), writing styles, publishing writing, listening to writing, and everything under the sun relating to writing.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

To know or not to know….

Posted on May 10th, 2011

This week’s episode of This American Life called This Week , focused on 7 major events that happened from May 01 to May 07. It started with the reaction of so called Millennialists; young, loyal Americans who were just children when 9-11 happened, who are now in their late teens to early twenties and discovering they have a very vocal and passionate reaction to hearing the news about the death of Osama Bin Laden. The program ends with the story of Laura Hucke who graduated from college on Saturday and moved back home to live with her parents the very next day. As she travels home she is conflicted with what her reality is and what was expected of her; and in comparing the two, Laura feels like a failure. But she feels like a failure because her whole life people told her that she was smart, that she would make something of her life, that she was destined for great things and in being told that, she believed that she would achieve and to fall short is beyond failure, it amounts to defeat.

I totally know how Laura feels because I too have been told that I was smart and destined for greatness, but looking around things don’t seem that way. And I began to wonder what the difference is between building a child’s self esteem and giving them false hope. I know parents are supposed to encourage and praise their child and make them feel all warm and fuzzy inside, but is that the best thing? Like yesterday, my manager was telling me that her kid made her a ceramic mug for Mother’s Day. I was about to oooh and ahhh at how cute that was, but she went on to say that she didn’t like it, but she couldn’t tell her kid that.

“It’s this pink square mug. He said he made it because I like to drink coffee,” Lisa said as she sucked hard on her plastic green straw. Her drink of choice is a Venti Iced Coffee with whatever flavor she feels like; today it was Hazelnut. “I mean yeah I like drinking coffee,” she emphasized, really drawing out the phrase, “but seriously, you cannot DRINK out of this mug. I told him I would bring it here and use it as my work cup, but it’ll probably just collect dust in the back office.”

“LISA! I can’t believe you! This is your son we are talking about; what is he like 10 or something? It’s cute,” I responded, really flabbergasted that she could truly despise something her son had made for her. I remember my mother beaming and praising my hard work whenever I made her something. “You didn’t tell him that did you??”

“Are you kidding me?! First of all, I told him I loved it! And second of all, don’t think that your mother didn’t say the same thing about some little macaroni necklace or other nick-nacky things they make grade schooler made around holidays.”

I was seriously thinking, NO EFFIN way! Do you think most parent’s feel this way? I was seriously heartbroken to hear that maybe, just maybe, my mother didn’t genuinely love everything I made for her. But maybe my boss is just a meanie, either way, I’m afraid to ask my mom about the Popsicle picture frame that I made her in the fourth grade. I’m afraid she’s going to tell me the truth now that I’m a grown up. But I wonder what would have happened if she told me the truth when I was 10, that she really didn’t like it, that was work was sloppy and my color coordination offensive. Would that have given me a tougher skin to brave the real world with? Would I be able to take criticism more constructively and not so personally? Would I have made her an even better Popsicle picture frame the next year? Who knows, but for right now, I still have feelings and maybe something things are best not knowing…

Posted in TAL, podcasts | Leave a comment

Spend a dollar, Change a life

Posted on May 9th, 2011

Hey guys! The Love Drop team is at it again! Last month they gave over $6,000 worth of cash and goods to their recipient, the Kahlen family, who had been going through a financially hard time due to the economy (and whose daughter is currently battling Tuberous Sclerosis). They focused on their love of spending time together, and brought them over 8 pairs of tickets to a whole bunch of local events. It was awesome, and you can watch how it all went down here.

This month they rally behind the Stalnakers – a family who, along with thousands of others along the gulf coast, are still reeling from the effects of the BP oil spill. Our goal is to get them a reliable used car this month as their previous two have died, and it’s getting harder and harder for them to manage w/ the one they’re currently borrowing. They’ve been giving back to their community since they moved in, and now it’s time for US to help them!

Want to help? Here are three ways you can participate:
1. Help them get a car! – Our #1 goal is to give them a reliable used car in decent working order. If you have any leads, discounts, or connections in this area, please email Love Drop and let them know.
2. Give $1.00 – This money will help get them back on their feet, and relieve some financial burden. Every dollar counts!
3. Give a gift or service – Gift cards are always helpful. Places like Target, Wal-mart, restaurants, etc would definitely help them out. Services too – especially those you can offer yourselves, or from your company.

Posted in Love Drop | Leave a comment

Voxer, here to stay?

Posted on May 6th, 2011

I discovered a fantastic app today thanks to my brother.

So I get this txt in the middle of the night from ‘jacruz’; it’s the nickname I have for my brother because he used to say he was jacruzing, cruising in the jacuzzi. I thought it was hilarious. Anyways, this morning when I woke up and saw the text, it said ‘Sent u a msg on Voxer. It’s a Walkie Talkie for iPhone.’ I thought great, more gimmicky apps. My brother is always sending me stuff like that and of course I always dl them and then realize I’ll never use it because it usually requires other people to have iPhone and hardly anyone I know has one. I mean my friends do have smartphones, but they have the knock off kind from Samsung, and even then, they don’t use their smartphone to it’s fullest potential like I do. So these social apps are not really fun for me.

Even though, I signed up for Voxer and sent my brother a ‘hello’ message . An hour later I checked my phone and he responded saying that this is going to be better than Beluga, an app that he told me about a month ago that is basically a free txt message app, but you can make groups and send everyone in the group a message or something like that. I’m not really sure because after the first hello message on Beluga I basically stopped using it. I was pretty confident that Voxer would be the same. But when I asked him why it’s better, he responded with a voice message saying exactly that, that you can leave voice message. And then it clicked; hence the walkie talkie reference.

We started sending voice messages back and forth throughout the day. In addition to txt and voice messages, you can also send picture message. It’s a fantastic way to communicate with my brother. If you have a brother, you know that boys aren’t as chatty as girls. I can’t just call my brother up and have one point fives hours go back like that. This provides a bit more of an intimate conversation then txt or email because you can hear the other person’s voice, but it doesn’t require the commitment of a phone call because you don’t have to be talking constantly. That being said, I felt that, throughout the day, I had a long conversation with my brother and it was nice. Perhaps the novelty will wear off and in two weeks it’ll be just another app that goes untouched on my phone or maybe, hopefully even, it will be the best communication system ever!

Posted in Family | 4 Comments

Medical Marijuana

Posted on May 5th, 2011

There has been a vacancy in the building I work in since the beginning of the year. Before I left for Italy, it looked like someone was moving in and my coworkers and I were speculating what the new business might be. None of our wildest guesses could have prepared us for what actually opened there: a medical marijuana dispensary. Although, it wasn’t immediately apparent that that’s what it was because the store front is completely blocked from view with this florescent green covering so you can’t see inside and the sign on the front door simply says ‘Members Only’. Also, the front door is locked and you need a secret password to get in. I know this because I picked the shortest green straw so I was the one that had to go over there and see what was up. Like an idiot, I yanked on the front door and kept pulling it trying to get in, then thinking that I had to push to open, heaved my body into the door, against the words ‘Members Only’ which apparently wasn’t there when I first tried opening the door, because if it was, obviously I would have seen it and not tried barging in. Besides having their door locked, they also have a video camera and a speaker because as I was slamming my body into the door, a voice came booming out of seemingly nowhere,

“Excuse me, Ma’am. Please don’t bang on our door.”

I froze, then whipped around; first looking left, then right, trying to find out where the sound came from. My eyes were super wide, bug eyes, almost popping out of my head, as if opening my eyes bigger would help me locate the sound.

“Ma’am? Up here.”

My eyes darted up, first right, then left, then back to the right and wedged between a corner was a security camera. My face softened into a sheepish grin and I waved at the camera.

“Ma’am, what business do you have here?

“I uh, I work down the way, at the Starbucks,” and I grabbed the chest part of my apron with the double tailed mermaid and angled it towards the camera so they would know I wasn’t lying. “I just wanted to let you know that we offer a 10% discount to other businesses in the building, so uh, if you ever need coffee, please come and see us, thanks!”

After that, I booked it out of there super fast. I got back to my store and everyone was laughing at me. Apparently, they knew the door was locked because someone already tried going over there when I was out of town. Thanks team, really funny.

Posted in work | Leave a comment

Who Controls You?

Posted on May 3rd, 2011

I sometimes wonder how I ended up where I am. I mean I know that I’m in a transition period in my life and I won’t be living at home forever, but it’s more than that; I want to understand what lead me to this specific place in my life. I want to know if one minor change in a decision that I made years ago could have affected where I am right now.

I wonder where I would be if I decided to join marching band instead of write for my high school newspaper. Would I have gone on to be a music major instead of an English major? Would I still have been drawn to the contemplative Pacific Northwest for college or would I have opted for sunshine and joined the infamous USC Trojan Marching band? I’d like to think that no matter what my extra curricular activities were in high school, I would still have wound up loving to write and training for marathons and obsessed with reading and podcasts. I want to believe that I am in control of my own destiny, but does fate ever take the wheel? Even when I try desperately to steer my own course??

It reminds me of this interesting conversation I had with my co-worker Marvin. Marvin is a psych major and just ended his junior year at the university. He told me that our self control is key to everything we do in life and this self control is set by the time we are four years old. He said that if you don’t have it by then, well basically you’re screwed. Marvin asked me if I had self control and if I could delay gratification and if I was patient. Check, check, and check. But then when I really thought about it, I had to uncheck all those boxes because the truth is I don’t have self control, I want what I want and I want it now. Marvin told me about this psychologist that did a marshmallow test on a bunch of four year olds which predicted their success, or lack there of, later in life.

It basically went like this: you put a four year old kid in a room with a table and a chair. On the table there is a marshmallow. The kid is told to sit in the chair and given the following instruction: they can sit in the room and eat ONE marshmallow or sit in the room and waiting for a period of time and then get TWO marshmallows. Now this presents an interesting choice for the kid, IF he or she can wait for 5, 10, 12 minutes then they will be rewarded with double the amount, but what four year old can sit, for what seems like an eternity for them, without touching the delicious treat in front of them. I guess it all comes down to self control. Years later, the psychologist followed up with the kids he tested and found that the ones that were able to resist the temptation and delay their immediate desire, were more successful in their careers, their family life, even their weight.

Does anyone believe that this is true? I hate to think that so much of who we are is set in stone when we are four years old! I want to believe that I’ve learned a thing or two about myself as I’ve aged, that I and consciously make the decisions that affect my life, that I’m not destined to fail just because I couldn’t keep my four year old fingers off a sweet and tasty marshmallow.

Posted in work | Leave a comment

Bring it.

Posted on April 29th, 2011

After 10 plus days of gluttonous indulgence in Italy, I decided that I needed to get back on the fitness track. Even though I gorged myself on perfectly cooked pasta, so delicious I could have eaten just the noodles for every single meal and had a brief, but passionate love affair with vine ripen tomatoes, I did walk about 15 miles a day, so I wasn’t just stuffing my face all week. Despite all the ‘exercise’ I did on my vacation, I still knew that I had to get back into the routine of working out or else all my hard work doing p90x would be for naught. I had planned on running more after I came back from Italy in preparation for my upcoming half marathon, but I decided to be a little extreme. I decided to do p90x. Again. From the beginning. Except this time, I would do the classic version. You see last time, I did the lean version, which is more cardio workouts and less resistance exercises. I wasn’t ready to jump into p90x full on, because my upper body is, or was, pretty weak. Now, that I have some upper body strength, I’m ready to bring it!!

On, Sunday I started Phase one with Chest and Back. Now this is a routine that I did only in Phase Three last time and it alternated, every other week, so I only did the exercise twice. But I thought, ‘no big deal’ right? WRONG! I seriously I got my ass kicked doing dive bomb push ups…if you don’t know what they are, there’s a video below showing the craziness that had my chest hurting all week. I didn’t think a two week hiatus mattered so much but by Thursday, every inch of my body was sore and achy, every step I took was agony, every cough or laugh would send ripples of pain coursing through my stomach, sitting down or standing up wreaked havoc on my legs and booty, even the palms of my hands hurt from doing weights. Oh, woe is me. I’m glad it’s Friday and I get to rest tomorrow. Hopefully, my body will recover by Sunday when I start the madness all over again, plus I have to do some runs during the week…oh my….what did I get myself into? Am I being too hardcore?

I should get a bracelet that says WWTD: What Would Tony Do as my motivation to keep lacing up and keep pressing play.

Posted in Travel, p90x | Leave a comment

Digg This!

Posted on April 29th, 2011

If you never heard or watched Diggnation, you must do it immediately. My ex boyfriend was fanatic about this show and for a long time, I thought it was super dumb; it was just another online video podcast with two guys sitting on a couch talking about shit. Whatever! But because Peter had very unique listening habits and only picked up the things he wanted to hear, he somehow never got the message and continued to watch this show on a weekly basis. I’m actually glad he didn’t listen to me because little by little Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht, the hosts of Diggnation, were seeping into my brain and piquing my interest. To be clear, it wasn’t their show, which showcases the top stories on the social bookmarking news site digg.com, that I was interested in, it was them, although now I really enjoy the topics they talk about. At first it was just Alex whom I found absolutely hilarious! And then Kevin grew on me too, so much so, that til this day I have a celebrity crush on him, if you would consider him a celebrity, which I do because he’s been on The Tonight Show and has a podcast. Anyways, their banter is often fueled by booze and testosterone, but you can always count on it being witty, frank, and intelligent. I ROTFL at least once in every episode as well as think very seriously about issues that I may or may not have considered before.

In their latest episode, Episode 304 aka Alex the Cheerleader, Kevin finds out that Alex was a male cheerleader in college, something that he didn’t know until the taping of that episode. I find it interesting that after doing over 300 episodes of this show and hanging out and traveling together, they still learn new things about each other, it’s refreshing and true to life as well. Anyway, they were talking about an article that claimed one in three people want to quit their job and how people are just staying with their current job because the unemployment rate is so bad, but once things start to look up, the people who are unsatisfied with their jobs will probably try and find new jobs. This starts a discussion about the difference between how people view jobs now and how it was for our parent’s generation which I found incredibly interesting because even though I didn’t know it until I saw this video, this was exactly the ideals that my parents promoted about life after college which, I’ve always found pretty hard to swallow, and perhaps, thanks to Kevin and Alex, now I know why.

Perhaps my subconscious understood before I did, that things are moving faster today than it did when my parent’s were finishing college. We have information at our fingertips and we can know things instantly and because of that our interests and pursuits can change dramatically as we get more knowledge about the world around us and what is possible. I don’t know about you, bu personally I think it’s fantastic that people now have the means to have multiple careers in one life time by taking advantage of the entrepreneurial spirit that defines our generation.

Posted in podcasts | Leave a comment

Pinocchio

Posted on April 26th, 2011

I would be lying if I said I’ve only left US soil twice in my life because I have been to Canada numerous times. I would also be lying if I said I never went to Europe before last week because I did go to London. Another lie would be if I said that my 10 day European vacation didn’t changed me in a way that no other international travel has and has made me more content to be an American, because it might be true. I say this very hesitantly because I have become very disenchanted with the country that I pledge my allegiance to. I went from believing that I was lucky to live in the best country in the world to becoming so incredibly disgusted with not just the governing bodies of my city, state, and country, but the culture which I am a part of and even more so a part of if I try to dissent. I can’t win and I can’t get away from the very fabric that weaves the foundation of the only life I know. So instead I think running away is the answer. My head is filled with vague notions and exotic fantasies of what living in another country might be like, everything is vastly superior to the United States of America, because even in its name it lies; nothing unites us together except our derisive attitude.

A friend of mine spent the last year studying abroad in Florence and I went to visit her a couple of weeks ago. My friend, who’s a couple of years behind me in school, shares my sentiments about our country; the same apathetic, disillusioned attitude, the understanding that our future is basically a joke, I mean how serious can we take our education, our preparation for life after college, if the people who run our country takes generous liberties for selfish reasons so everything they do they can do it big. Leaving college hasn’t changed my mind much about how the world works, and I expected to fall into the same diatribe against life that my friend and I are famous for, but I was met with something very different. Spending nine consecutive months away from home and traveling around Europe, turned my friend into a red, white, and blue flag waving patriot, I kid you not. One of the first things she said to me was, ‘I miss America.’ I thought she was trying to be funny, but when I looked into her eyes, I realized that she was not lying.

Perhaps it was my ridiculously high expectations of what it means to live in Europe, or being totally caught off guard by my friend’s pro-America sentiments, but I returned to the US very grateful to be where I’m from. Don’t get me wrong, I had a fantastic time in Italy! I saw some of the most beautiful artwork ever created and it was breathtaking in it’s size and detail. I ate the best food in my entire life and became a self proclaimed wine connoisseur in a mere two weeks. It was an experience that enriched my life and while I knew I would be changed, my travels opened my eyes in a way that allows me to see myself and the world around me exactly as it is.

Thanks @omgconor!

Posted in Travel | Leave a comment

Here’s to another month of doing good

Posted on April 21st, 2011

Hey guys! The Love Drop team is at it again! Last month they gave over $5,000 worth of cash and goods to their recipient, Katie, who had been battling a couple of brain tumors over the years, and it culminated with a surprise gift of 15+ friends showing up at her house to celebrate with her. It was awesome. You can watch how it all went down here.

This month they start all over again and grow support for the Kahlen’s – a family who has been hit hard by the economy, and by their daughter’s serious medical condition, tuberous sclerosis. In addition to financial assistance, they’re planning to unite the artistic community to help support Kent’s glassmaking work.

Want to help? Here are two ways you can participate:
1. Give $1.00 – This is the best way to help out and join their team at the same time.
2. Donate a piece of art – They will be hosting an auction this month, and would love to feature your artwork in it. Proceeds go to help the Kahlen’s this month, and is a great way to promote your work :)

Posted in Love Drop | Leave a comment