i'm making a podcast at work

you guys, i'm making a podcast at work. it's about danish design. and it totally fulfills my desire, at this stage of my life, to just make cool shit. you can find it on spotify and apple podcasts and probably also where ever you listen to podcasts. i'd love to know what you think, so please listen! 

sigh...some days just steal your energy

i love when the canola fields are at peak buzz - a yellow so vibrant it almost hurts your eyes, making them feel like they're buzzing, even on a cloudy day. it's even more intense when the sun shines. i ended up taking some back roads today, trying to get to a meeting on time in a town that's not exactly on my usual route. 

it's been a very busy time at work. the kind where you have so much to do that your tasks - done and undone, invade your dreams. the nearly penultimate step of a big project came today and somehow that's always a bit of a letdown. you've been pushing towards a deadline, making it, then it comes and happens and the wind is taken a little bit out of your sails. and you can't even really feel happy about it because it's not quite finished yet, just a big milestone was reached, but there still another stretch to go. 

plus, i didn't sleep all that well last night, knowing i'd have to get up early to make it to the office in time for today's big presentation. so in all, it was the kind of day that just steals your energy. 

it wasn't helped at all by having to rush to a board meeting that was timed perfectly so that i got to enjoy the worst rush hour traffic in three cities along the way. at least i had a good podcast to listen to and those back roads with their gorgeous yellow fields. i made it, about 10 minutes late. we toured another creative group's ceramics workshop at their local kulturhus, as we'd like to have one in ours and we wanted to see how they had set it all up. that part was inspiring and it's not so far away that i couldn't go down there are do some ceramics once in awhile, though preferably not at 5 p.m. on a work day. 

but then we had our actual board meeting and it was especially energy-draining. maybe because my energy was already low and i didn't have much left. there's one member who especially sapped what energy i had left. first, with a too long (though probably actually short) discussion of whether everything we post on instagram has to be posted identically on facebook) - i do not think so. they are two different platforms. and while i agree that if it's something with a sign-up date that everyone needs to know about it, it should go on both platforms, a reel on instagram and a carousel post on facebook should be fine. they don't need to be identical. 

then she ended the meeting with a petulant diatribe about how i bought too many beers the night we hung up our exhibition. when i was reluctantly sent to buy the beers for everyone, there were 14 people there helping, so i bought 22 beers/hard seltzers. one of them was a 12 pack of mini rosé wheat beers, which she thought were weird. they weren't all used that evening, but we agreed we would sell them at our exhibition the next day. then no one put them out and so they weren't sold and she was mad about that, so i agreed that i would go get them and pay creagive back. and perhaps all that was fair enough, but it was presented in such a judging, whiny and petty way that it just drained what little energy i had left. it really makes me wonder if i even want to be on the board at all anymore. i can participate without being on the board. and if not now, when will i ever learn to protect my own energy when i can. 

doing hard things

a moment of serenity in the greenhouse when i got home.

dang, today was hard. a very long project is about to come to fruition. a year and a half of work. and weirdly, today, one day before launch, we found ourselves in a holding pattern. there was a major bug and the development team was working frantically, and the rest of us just had to wait. finally, the decision was made to just roll back, without really figuring out what the hell caused the bug. and although most of the day was spent waiting and not really doing all that much, damn, it takes a psychological toll. i swear, we're all going to need therapy after this. i am completely wrung out this evening. i was going to keep editing and checking pages, but instead, i'm telling myself that no one will actually read all. the. pages. tomorrow when we launch in the first two languages, so, as the danes say, "det skal nok gå." (it'll be all right) and i'm taking myself off to bed after a long, hot shower and a rather large glass of wine. i'll put a cozy mystery (this time, the royal spyness series by rhys bowen), curl up with a cat and fall asleep. the hard part isn't over yet, but it will all be easier after a good night's sleep. and thank odin for good colleagues. 

bittersweet ending

i made a short journey yesterday in a truck. it's the last journey that "my" lego ship will ever make. after three long years, thousands of kilometers traveled on the wheels of the curtain-side trailer beneath her, she's going to be dismantled, her bricks going to a good cause. when she wasn't being pulled by a truck, she traveled by ferry and rail. she visited the far corners of europe, from istanbul and italy in the south, to estonia, latvia and lithuania in the east to norway in the north. she was seen by crowds of people on trafalgar square in london, in front of the european parliament in brussels and near the brandenburg gate in berlin. and i was with her pretty much the whole way. probably the crowd i remember best was on a glorious, sunny autumn day in klaipeda - there were balloons, music playing and children looking on in wonder. that was just over three years ago.

but even as i write this, she's being broken down. i don't have the heart to go down and witness it. the fans at the lego fan weekend in the little town of skærbæk will have the chance to buy her bricks that aren't glued, by the kilo, and some of the cars and one of the lifeboats will be auctioned for a good cause - fairy bricks - an organization that gives lego sets to children who are hospitalized. the bricks that are glued, which is about half of them, will be recycled by lego themselves, and turned back into lego bricks that will go into sets and have a new life with children all over the world. that makes me happy.

this is probably the project i'm most proud to have been part of in my working life. the seed of the idea was one i presented in my job interview and it became so much more in collaboration with the ideas of the amazing creative people i worked with. and it was such a privilege to see it come to fruition beyond my wildest dreams. so i feel sad that it's really truly over now, but so happy that the ending is such a worthy one that will bring joy to so many, who may not even know the source of the joy, but who will undoubtedly feel it. goodbye, jubilee, you were amazing.

august wanes and the season changes

what a month it's been! planes, trains, ships and cars. edinburgh, london, dover, hamburg and copenhagen. the culmination of a very big and very healing (for my wounded soul) project that resulted in a world record. a couple of days away with all of my co-workers. we sent the child off to the states for her year of high school. a bit of time in the garden here and there. as the garden produces its abundance, all of the other more metaphorical seeds that were sown over the past year have also come to fruition. i feel sated by the bounty of it all.

we've had the best weather of the whole summer in the past couple of days but right now, it's raining with biblical intensity. husband is helping the child with her algebra in the other room, via facetime. there are two teenage cats racing back and forth, playing a bit too rough. we had a roast chicken for dinner. i served it with a squash gratin (i'm using squash in everything, since the plants are going like gangbusters in the garden) and a broad bean mash (also from the garden). a simple salad of plum tomatoes and cucumbers from the greenhouse rounded it out. it's so satisfying that most of the meal came from our own garden.

i made it to yoga entirely too little during august. i saw friends too little. but on the whole, it's been a very exciting and happy month. it feels like i'm entering a new season of happiness, just as autumn, which is always my favorite season, comes around. a balance has come, an equilibrium. it's borne of spending my weeks doing work that makes me happy and being home on the weekends in this place in the countryside that makes me happy. it's the best of both worlds. long, deep conversations with husband make us both appreciate the time we do have together. meals eaten together, a glass of something cold in the garden in the late afternoon, musings about garden designs. life is full and good as august comes to a close.

summer in dry dock

i got to spend a good chunk of my summer at a shipyard. i know it sounds weird, but i love shipyards. ships on an ordinary day are cool, but in a dry dock, when you can stand underneath and take in the immensity of them, that's the best. in a dry dock those over-dimensioned hunks of steel are somehow just....well....sexy. even when they're cut in half, covered in scaffolding and exuding the acrid scent of welding. even in the rain. even at 4:30 a.m.

you can see what i was working on at the shipyard here and here.  and there's more to come, so why don't you subscribe while you're over there? and watch this video too, it's a really cool time lapse (that was made before my time). we'll have to arrange a new one now that the ship will be 30 meters longer.

a to å challenge: e is for energy

this one was easy. i’ve had reason of late to ponder energy, as i’ve felt mine returning after too long a hiatus. and i’ve also thought about where energy comes from for me. it comes from having a job in which i travel. it also comes from having people around me who inspire me. people who take my ideas and have ideas of their own, which makes everyone’s ideas grow and multiply. it comes from meeting interesting people (see travel above), who give me new perspectives and new experiences. it gives me energy to be seen for who i am. for my talents to be recognised and utilised and respected and yes, even liked.

when energy returns to me, i have so much more to give to everyone and everything around me. i have energy to read, to listen, to engage, to be alone, to go to yoga, to contribute at work. i am more open, more engaged, more forgiving, kinder, more inspired. i am so much more who i want to be.

i don't want to be my job, but whether i like it or not, i'm much more energetic when i’m working at a job that gives me energy rather than taking it away. i’ve simply had too many jobs that robbed me of energy instead of giving it to me. but now, that i’m once again a place that charges my batteries, rather than depleting them, i hope that i will finally learn the lesson. i fought it for a long time, but perhaps here in the so-called first world, we are what we do for a living. but also so much more than that.

taking pictures of ships

did i mention that my molecules are humming in alignment these days? i think it's probably mostly because i get to take pictures of ships. for a living. is there anything more a girl from the prairie could ask?

more soon. it's been busy and i'm spending the evening eating sushi with sabin and watching a webinar with lea thau (of the fabulous podcast strangers) about storytelling.

what does a creative workspace look like?

i've been pondering what makes the physical surroundings of a workspace creative. because it strikes me that just filling it with creative people doesn't necessarily do the trick. i've been pondering this for awhile and have collected quite a lot of inspiration on a couple of pinterest boards - kulturhus and stationen (co-working). interestingly, some of the first photos i pinned were of a workspace in LEGO's project house, several years before i ever started working there. the space looks amazing - with light, open spaces, bright colors and even includes a slide.

it's a light, bright open space and you can look down upon it from above. but even in most of the photos, there aren't any people working in the space (that could, i grant, be because the photos were purposely taken when hardly anyone was around). the photos represent a common area, and what they don't show is that they are surrounded by a traditional open workspace filled with normal office desks (which can raise and lower, of course). they also don't show the noise factor and the fact that if anyone actually uses the slide, it's quite disturbing to those working around it.

there are small meeting rooms overlooking the space. this meeting room, while colorful and (of course) filled with danish designer furniture (arne jacobsen 7 chairs and a peit hein super ellipse table), looks pretty small and cramped to me. and what about the distraction of looking down on the bustling workspace below or having those below be able to look up? does that promote or hinder creativity?

the cabinets there are filled with LEGO in all sorts of shapes, colors and sizes where the designers go to get the materials of their creativity. these cabinets are found in many areas around the company and there is something delightful about having all of those creative materials at hand.

this couch looks inviting and like a great place for an informal sparring session or impromptu chat. however, it's right above the big space below and it feels like everyone would be able to hear your conversation. this could be bad if you're discussing something confidential, but it could just also be quite disturbing to those trying to work below. especially as conversations in LEGO can take place in many different languages.

and stepping back a little bit, you can see that there's another informal workspace, just beside this couch, where it's even more obvious that the spaces are potentially more disruptive to work than facilitating it.

interestingly, every aspect of this area was thoroughly thought-through and deemed to be very creative and to promote creativity. all of the intentions were in place. but, in my opinion, it just doesn't work. it's too open, too many desk-laden areas are adjacent and it's too disruptive to getting work done. but i don't necessarily have any answers as to what would be better. i have an intuition that it involves getting rid of outlook and powerpoint as the main tools of people's work. and i also have an idea that it doesn't involve big, open spaces, but little, enclosed cavelike ones, to which people can retreat and do solitary, intensive work and then re-emerge and engage with others. i'm not sure precisely what that looks like. but i'm pretty sure it doesn't involve noise-canceling headphones for the entire department.

i suspect similar amazing-looking, well-intentioned spaces at google and various co-working places are equally not conducive to creativity.

i've got this book, on the evolution of workspaces, on my order list.  and after i published this, i came across this article on how etsy tackles the problem. and then i came across this one, which i think has some great ideas.

what do you think an ideal creative workspace would look like?

tho' it's totally unlike me to use someone else's photos, i did in this post. all photos came from here. 

it's official!

it's official! i've known for a month, but i signed my contract today! i'll officially start working at LEGO on february 3! and i'm so very excited. it's really a dream job for me - working together with all kinds of creative people who have great ideas, to bring their ideas to life as LEGO products or projects. for someone who loves ideas and loves floating them out in the world to see what happens, it's pretty much perfect. i also think it will be good for my minifigure collection.

of bullying and dead squirrels

in the past month or so, we've been developing a new concept and some new projects in my little company. part of it has been to look a bit more deeply into bullying. there's a new program on television that is following an actor who is trying to make a difference on the atmosphere in an ordinary public school. his interest in bullying (which is called mobning in danish and seems to me to resonate so much more in danish than it does in english) arose when his own son was attacked twice inside of three weeks by a group of neighborhood boys. since then, he's had countless speaking engagements in schools, bringing attention to the problem of bullying.

of course, looking into this topic got me thinking about my own experiences bullying and being bullied (the whole miss king bitch shit incident). i imagine i did my share of making fun of particular people and of freezing others out of some or other group - i think we probably all did and to an extent, i think it's a natural part of the process of growing up and finding your position in the scheme of things. but i only very clearly remember one incident where i was just truly mean and horrible to someone (tho' i'll admit there were probably others).

there was a girl who was very dorky and unpopular. she had none of the right clothes, right glasses, right haircut. she wasn't smart or pretty or funny. tho' i don't think i realized it or thought about it at the time, i think her family didn't have much money (which probably explained the clothes/glasses/haircut thing). she was the butt of many jokes and probably doesn't look fondly back on her years in school.

i was driving one afternoon with a friend and although for some reason i didn't have my glasses on, i was behind the wheel. i must have been 14-15 and my eyes were pretty bad and i definitely needed glasses or contacts in order to drive. so basically, there i was, driving along a quiet city street in our little town, pretty much totally unable to see. suddenly my friend shouted, horrified, because i ran over a squirrel.  she looked at me incredulously, thinking i'd actually tried to hit it, but in truth i hadn't seen it at all, since i wasn't wearing glasses.

we stopped the car and jumped out to check on it. it was dead, but strangely unharmed - it wasn't flat or openly bleeding - possibly the car going over it had scared it death. well, the whole incident occurred in front of this dorky, unpopular girl's house. so we got it in our heads that we'd toss that dead squirrel into her bicycle basket, which was parked out front. it was done in a careless, thoughtless way - not at all premeditated - the idea arose just because we were stupid teenagers and happened to be in front of her house with a dead squirrel at our disposal. if it hadn't happened right there, we wouldn't have gone out of our way to drive by her house and put the dead squirrel in her basket, we actually had nothing against her per se, so there was really no ground for this rather shockingly malicious act.

i never knew how she felt about it, but can you imagine how horrified you'd be if you came out and found a dead squirrel in your bicycle basket? i think i'd be traumatized for life. you wouldn't be able to help wondering who hated you that much and would be so evil.

and yet, as horrible as it sounds, it wasn't really an evil act - more of a highly thoughtless, stupid one, brought on by a particular collusion of circumstances and not so much by ill will. it was just dumb kids, doing a dumb thing. and i wonder how much of bullying starts that way and ends up totally wrong.

i don't have an answer to that question, but i do feel a rather odd urge to look up that girl from back then and tell her i'm sorry about the dead squirrel in her bicycle basket.

on kindness (or a lack thereof)

upside down and double exposed

yesterday was world kindness day. the lovely sel'ah gathered a whole lot of bloggy souls together to do a random act of kindness in their world, myself included.  it was slightly problematic that i didn't actually leave the house yesterday, so i still owe a random act of kindness. but that seems like a good thing to have in one's future, so i'm on the lookout now for my opportunity.

of course, i couldn't help but think about what kindness is and whether i'm particularly good at it. i suspect i'm not. as one of the less patient people in the world, i think that sometimes i strike people as abrupt and hurried and not all that kind. it seems like kindness has something to do with taking time and noticing others and i fear i do that far too little. it feels like i'm always in a hurry, dashing on to the next thing.

i could probably be much kinder at work. i have a tendency, probably from a number of years of moving around in the man's world that is shipping, to be bold and a little too aggressive and very, very impatient. i don't tend to wait for people and if they don't get it (whatever it is) right away, i am openly exasperated. and that's just not very kind.  if it's any consolation, it's not just others, i'm not all that kind to myself either.

i think i'll take the opportunity afforded by sel'ah and try to think a whole lot more about kindness this week...

* * *

my sister, the seldom blogger, blogged some very interesting thoughts about her son and struggling with the possibility of getting him some medication for a possible case of ADD. if you have any experience with this or thoughts to share, please read what she had to say and leave a comment over on just know where you are.

things i learned in norway

i'm sitting in the lounge, my flt should have been in 20 minutes, but instead it's in 50. however, i'm content because i love airports, there's free internet and yes, free wine (albiet italian not south african) and free coffee (strangely can feel the effects of the coffee more than the wine, which is perhaps something i should ponder on another occasion).

but i've learned a few things sitting here:

• if you are a bit chubby totally fat, but wearing a suit and think no one is watching, you should look around and see if anyone is in fact watching before straightening your skirt in a way which would make people who were watching glancing up curl up their toes.
• some british guy's wells (we're talking oil here not water) are showing very encouraging results.
• someone's competitor is laying up five ships (he wouldn't say who that competitor was, tho' the wife on the other end of the phone really tried).
• people have some weird notion that b/c they're in a foreign country no one will speak english.
• they are wrong.
• they've changed out the south african white for an italian one. 
• it's not bad.
• i just saw a guy with a red wine glass full of bailey's.
  
• if you wear some seriously cool high heels, wolford black stockings with some kind of tattoo-like patterns on them (yes, they are worth the $47 you must pay), flat-iron your hair and wear eyeliner that borders on night-time makeup along with your big hoop earrings and molly's fabulous beads, boys in shipping will tell you anything.

life is good here in the lounge.

she's at it again

remember the last time i came to oslo (i'm talking to all of my pre-BoN lovelies) how some moron apparently packed my suitcase, leaving out essential items like clean underwear and deodorant and footwear one could be seen in in public, but including things like knitting needles (when i don't even know how to knit) and three different kinds of perfume (that at least we understand)? well, apparently, she's been at work again...

1. she failed to pack my toothbrush, which i didn't discover until after the big-ass mall next door had closed and i was forced to brush my teeth with my finger and some toothpaste (which thankfully WAS in the makeup bag as usual--and i'd really like to know where my travel toothbrush is).
2. she ordered my tickets home for late friday afternoon, not realizing that friday is a HOLIDAY and therefore a day off in norway. and then, when i tried to change my ticket today, i discovered that on a holiday, norwegians apparently choose to flee norway via copenhagen, as there was NO WAY to move the flight up. not a flight to be had outta here tomorrow evening or friday morning, so i'll be the ONLY ONE IN NORWAY until 16:20 on friday.
3. that moron keeps insisting on speaking danish to clerks in shops (double lattes are allowed during austerity april) and waiters (so is dinner). this leads the norwegians to think that i have a prayer of understanding their response. which i don't.
4. she ordered a double latte after 4 p.m. this will not be good after restless swine-flu ridden sleep last night (coughing, couldn't breathe--ok, it might be the birch pollen, not the swine flu), but i need some beauty sleep!
5. she broke austerity april and impulse-purchased an album called little things (thinking perhaps it wouldn't count against the austerity april thing if it was just a little thing) by hanne hukkelberg . it's a bit weird (in a good, tori amos/regina spektor/marie frank kinda way) and although i think she's norwegian, she largely sings in english and swears in danish. which, on the whole, i like. and it was a nice price album at only 89.90NOK, which is close to free, so it didn't break austerity april THAT badly, or wouldn't have had she not also authorized the purchase of the new whitest boy alive. she apparently knows we like norwegian music.

lastly, she made me get a brownie with my coffee after 4 p.m., tho' arguably that might have been molly's fault.

on why i'm all about the lower case

my guest post is now up at turning*turning. i'd like to thank mal* very much for giving me the opportunity to share my thoughts on my creative space with her readers. and i urge you to all go check it out and do stay to read her blog as well, there's lots of good stuff there!

one interesting thing that happened to me while i was working with mal on polishing the post, was that for the first time, i put some thought into why i don't use traditional capital letters in my blog writing. these days, i find that i'm so accustomed to NOT capitalizing (except for dramatic effect), it's actually a bit difficult for me in my work-related writing to use proper capitals.

i found myself explaining to mal why i didn't use capital letters and what came out was interesting, even to myself, because until i typed it out, i honestly hadn't thought about it before. i had completely unconsciously decided not to use capitals and as it turns out, it was for a very good reason. it was actually the first step in my healing process after leaving my job.

you see, the company, which religiously uses personality profiling and a logic test in their recruitment process, uses those scores as part of their plot to build you into a little ego machine..flattering you that only the best of the best get in to work for them...and you become this very Me Me Me I Am So Great person. it's actually a diabolical part of how they convince you to work 60 hours a week and travel 200 days a year and more than a little ironic in light of the fact that one of the company values is supposedly "humbleness." i realized that i abandoned the capital letters when i began blogging because it felt like a way to step away from that over-inflated ego/sense of importance i had acquired working there.

so that's why although you may still see plenty of traces of ego here on moments of perfect clarity, you don't see that many capital letters.

a new world dawns

just a quick post while my new work laptop does its installation thang in the background. it's a dell latitude E4200 and while i'm normally morally opposed to dell (them being evil thanks to michael dell being a huge contributor to bush-cheney campaigns), this computer is so tiny and so light that it almost (but not quite) makes up for it not being a mac. and i do so love the technology and gadgets. it's so tiny it's practically gadget sized. but enough about that.

you can look forward to a lot of new terminology here on MPC in the foreseeable future. there will probably be a lot more talk about longitudinal bulkheads and hatch coamings, ballast tanks and water ingress detectors, maximum sailing draughts, propulsion, starboard, port and aft. so many fun new words.

but now i'm off to the graphics department to see the new designs of my magazine (that's so exciting!), so i'll catch ya this evening.

a long hair day

i woke up freakishly early because i was worried about whether margie of resurrection fern had listed any more merfish. that's how cool they are. i have one and i want need more! i haven't gotten at exactly what it is, but these little guys just totally speak to me. and i'm a little obsessed. but i have found merfish meds, so this too shall pass....

mine is the one one the left

then, i got home and this beauty was waiting for me. i think if the D300 will move over, i'll snuggle up to this one too when i go to sleep tonight. there's another one too, that i'll photograph tomorrow and share. it's unspeakably wonderful.

this and the previous picture are margie's

 

the good part about waking up so early was that i noticed that i was having a long hair day. so i tried to make up with my D60 (after the neglect caused by the D300) by letting it be the one to take my morning self-portraits-in-hotel-room-on-a-long-hair-day. i think it forgave me.

i love the motion of the earring and my shutter finger on this one. 

in all, it's been a couple of great days. i feel a little guilty being so giddy and so fortunate when there's a GEC going on. so i'm trying to restrain myself and not be too obnoxious. but i have to admit that i want to shout for joy from the rooftops. i can feel a return of energy that is more than just impending spring. there is of course relief in having a job at all but there's also a sense of elation that it's a great new job, one that seems to be everything i could have wished for. and in light of all that's going on in the world, i promise not to go on and on about it (like i did with the inspiration thing). because i am humbly, profoundly grateful to whatever fates may have intervened and brought me into this situation and i by no means want to rub that good fortune in anyone's face.

do you ever have long hair days?

does sunshine make you sneeze?

these are the questions to ponder as the weekend is upon us...have a lovely, inspired, laughter-filled one, wherever you are!

emancipation day

it's appropriate that i was awakened this morning by an earthquake that was 4.7 on the richter scale, centered across the sound in southern sweden. as strange as it sounds (and no offense to my dear san franciscan, who i realize faces true danger from earthquakes on a daily basis) but i really like earthquakes. that shifting of the earth, shaking me out of slumber and making me feel immediately alert is somehow delicious and life-affirming for me. and no one was hurt. so in more than one way today feels like a day of celebration....

i survived an early morning earthquake and it's been one year since i realized that i couldn't work for someone who looked like uncle fester but behaved with less manners and compassion. someone who would make decisions--harsh, life-changing decisions--without knowing the whole story and then not be man enough to be able to say he'd made a mistake. this despicable person actually fired several hundred people without looking into whether there would be a union issue--made a big proud announcement of the act to the newspapers about the fantastic (and fictional) sums he was going to save and then, when it had to be retracted because it was a HUGE union issue with major repercussions, didn't bother to even send a press release about the reversed decision. i knew i couldn't continue to get up in the morning and look myself in the eye as i brushed my teeth if i continued to work for this man. so i decided not to on this day one year ago.

it has proven to be one of the best decisions i've ever made. i had a conversation with someone last week who said i looked five years younger (at my age, that's pretty significant!) and i can see that my life is immeasurably better. there were great things about the job that i had, but four bosses in three and a half years was exhausting, especially as each one came in and decided that anything the last guy had approved was automatically bad. there was no continuity and no one with an over-all big picture view. each guy waltzed in and wanted to make his mark and then walk out again on to the next job within the company. looking back, it was mind-numbing, the constant battle state one was in. and my mind was numb.  it took me nearly this entire year to be well and truly over it.

i have been so fortunate to have the opportunity to have a job that perfectly enabled me to get over it and i'll always be grateful for that...some amazing planetary alignment clicked into place and i found exactly the situation i needed. to be mostly at home and there to pick up sabin so she didn't have to spend such long days at school and her after school program. to work with people who it felt good and comfortable to be around. to travel enough to stay gold (i know, i'm shallow, but this is strangely important to me) and to get the outside input i needed. it's been a marvelous year.

we should really be more grateful to the monsters we come across in our lives, because they do have a way of making us look in another direction, one that we might not have otherwise seen. so in a way, i'm grateful to uncle fester for being such a monumental ass, because it forced me to see the situation i was in for what it was. and it wasn't good. i was run down, i had seemingly forgotten how to sleep, i didn't do anything creative, my laughter had become forced and i didn't have enough time for the things that are important in my life--in fact, i had sort of forgotten what those things were in the haze i was stumbling through. it was no way to live. and now, one year later, thankfully i don't live that way anymore.

now i'm able to separate the great experiences i had in that job--seeing parts of the world i'd never seen, some of the truly wonderful people i worked with and who are still in my life, the network i built, the things i built up which couldn't be undone by uncle fester--e.g. my reputation, the time i spent with smart, creative people who furthered my thinking and helped me push borders. i can look back on all of that fondly now. and be grateful for those people and those experiences.

sometimes the earth moves under our feet and our world subtly shifts, we are shaken into awareness and find our way back to ourselves. that feels worth celebrating.

taking stock

it's that time of year for stocktaking. last year at this time, i realized that i was answering to my fourth boss in three and a half years and that i didn't have the energy for the starting all over that that promised. each one came in and wanted to undo everything the previous one had thought was ok in order to leave his mark, so it was an endless cycle of defending the projects one was already doing. and i realized it was no longer worth it to my sanity. and so i'm no longer there. and it has taken me nearly this entire year to recover psychologically, but i do feel that i have at last recovered and found my way back to myself, strong and whole and probably better and stronger and more sure of what makes me tick than i was before.

so that makes stocktaking feel like a good and worthy activity, so although i'm not really a big advocate of new year's resolutions, it seems worthwhile to think about what one wants going forward into the new year.

yesterday, i had a two hour brainstorming session with two very brilliant and wacky minds. these two people get more ideas every minute than you can imagine and i am always in awe when i'm around them. i feel that i am also a person who gets a lot of ideas, but i could tell that spending a couple of hours brainstorming with them yesterday was the most productive and energizing time i've spent in ages. and i realize that although working mostly from home over the past year has been a true luxury, it has been a bit isolating at times and isolation can be stifling to ideas. you need other people around who stimulate you creatively. your own ideas become better when you bounce them off of the ideas of others. so one of the things i resolve to do in 2009 is to regularly spend time with creative minds who push my thinking in new and exciting directions.

this morning, i sat with my newspapers and a cup of tea and read headline upon headline about the financial crisis and how it's starting to impact businesses and individuals. when i walk around on the pedestrian shopping zone in my little town, i see little evidence of any christmas slowdown. people appear to be hurrying around, shopping their little brains out, with that slightly panicked glazed-over look in their eyes, grabbing another and another and another gift. and i realize that i really don't want to do that anymore. it doesn't make us feel good, so why is it that we are driven to consume?

last night, i downloaded and read from cover to cover the latest issue of mankind mag. it's a free download from design for mankind and i thought it was so awesome that i went back and donated to it. completely in tune with the zeitgeist, it's the consumption issue. erin talks to artists all over the world about consumption. even before i opened it, i thought of an artist i'd seen on etsy who made daily drawings of the things she bought. and i was delighted to find that she was there in this issue--kate bingaman burt. and because i'd lost track of her after stumbling onto her on etsy months ago, i have now bookmarked her blog.

so i hereby resolve to document my purchases, on a daily basis, for at least the whole month of january. perhaps it will be so much fun (or so shocking) that i will continue. but i've been talking about off and on during 2008 that i want to be more conscious about my consumption and now it's time to do something about it.  i actually tried keeping a food journal at the beginning of the year, in order to be more conscious about what i was eating, but somehow it didn't catch on with me and it's lying mostly empty by my bedside.  the cover above features a drawing of purchases by UK artist gemma correll that's amazing and inspiring as well, so i think i'll be able to stick with this resolution this time around.

one other thing i've been thinking about in addition to spending my money more wisely is spending my time more wisely as well. some of the first blogs i discovered at the beginning of the year, when i began spending time in the blogosphere in earnest just don't fit me anymore. and it took me awhile to realize it. there are a couple in particular which have been daily reads for me, which i have come to realize are really quite empty and false and pretty much annoy the hell out of me. so i resolve, actually already now, as of this minute, to un-favorite them and not spend any more time there. some people, "rad" as they fancy themselves to be (seriously, who says that?), really aren't worth it. and besides they never reciprocated by reading me, so who cares? my time is too precious. (EDITED:  please note that i do not mean any of you guys who visit me regularly...these were people whose blogs i visited, but who never visited me!!!)

and, i'll leave you with erin's challenge from her editor's note in mankind mag--"every time you spend money, you are casting a vote for the kind of world you want." --anna lappe.  then erin asks, "have you checked your vote lately?" i for one will be checking my vote a lot more often.

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just stumbled onto an interesting blog entry and song demo by suzanne vega on the NYT website. check out her song, it's very timely (tho' completely unrelated to what i've written above, just had to share because it was cool).

a bit more balderdash

will someone please remind me why i have a job which requires that i fly to get there? oh wait, it's because it's a fantastic opportunity and i get to work on interesting things together with people who are motivated and who i really like to be around (all of which i really mean and am not trying to be sarcastic)...but still, i have to fly to get to it. commercial no less. and getting to the airport involves almost exactly an hour on a train from where i live. but that gave me plenty of time this morning to write a few more definitions for those verification words:

aquallar - that luminous, transparent turquoise blue of the sea off boracay.

subedi - pockets of no cellular service when the metro goes underground.

vemputis - an uncontrollable tendency to wear black or nearly-black nail polish.

terysol - a spray which should be used to freshen the air outside of office buildings where smokers gather now that smoking inside isn't allowed.

epoide - the portion of a t.v. program that's shown between commercials.

pedinges - the small splashes of nail polish that get on the cuticle by mistake and must be removed with a brush wetted with nail polish remover by the nice nail girl.

jibist - one who makes out as if they had no idea what their underlings were doing. example: ken lay was the very epitome of a jibist in the enron scandal.

i think i'm kind of on a roll here, but now i'm running out of words, so i'd better go comment on some blogs at collect some more.

i wish you all a wonderful thanksgiving. i'll be working tomorrow, since people on this side of the planet are curiously oblivious to the best holiday of all. i'm doing a turkey and all the fixins on friday tho', together with our very best friends. and for that, i am thankful.