what nobody ever says about networking

Well, dear readers, life gets in the way again. Or, life sidetracks. I have had this post about Meeting People in my Idea Bank for months, and was inspired to write it this week by a really great fleeting romantic encounter involving one of my friends... But then tonight happened and I have to switch tack. Keep an eye out for the Romantic Encounters post in the near future, though. (Also, I have been trying for years now -- plural! -- to get someone to write a guest post about online dating and for the life of me I can't get anyone to write it! So, dear readers, if any of you would like to take a stab at it I will love you forever.

...Speaking of romantic encounters.)

On to my story for this evening.

A week or two ago, I saw a Facebook post from an old family friend from the Upstate New York days, the mother of a girl I studied abroad with in high school saying she was going to be working at Winterthur for a few days. I commented that Winterthur happens to be just a few minutes up the road from where I am currently situated, and she messaged me right away and gave me her phone number and said she would love to meet up while she is in town.

So after work today she met my mom and me at Nirvana, an Indian restaurant in Independence Mall (fitting, since the circumstance of our meeting was the study abroad program in India).

Sidenote: Positive dining experience at Nirvana. We had a lovely combination of dishes: chicken madras, dal bukhara, and malai kofta with rice and raita; also the veg pakora were delicious. I would say it's on the underspiced side, especially compared to the fiery Maharaja Palace in Newark. The decor was also nice, and we got some joy out of the music. In the two hours we were there, I think there were only two other tables so it was pretty quiet on a Wednesday night. And now, back to the main event.

It was fabulous, to catch up after what has easily been seven or eight years, to share and to hear what we have all been up to, and to get a fresh perspective on things from what feels like another time and place. You know that feeling of introducing a high school friend to a college friend, like two versions of yourself are sliding together at least for a moment? Or the feeling of explaining a current situation to someone you knew very well in middle school, as if they can tell you how your middle school self would react to what is happening now, and reveal some sort of truth or wisdom you have since lost sight of? It's affirming.

Meeting up with this friend was also an opportunity to share updates on the lives of mutual friends, particularly a lot of the girls I went to school with on this program. That part was a little sad to me, because I have done a terrible job of staying in touch with most of them, and have mostly watched from afar as they all graduated together and visited each other around the world and traveled together. I will say that I am inspired now to drop a few notes to say hi and I hope you are well. Because I do. This is something I have never quite come to terms with: how can I ever express how often I think of people that have crossed my path throughout my life, and how important they are to me even if I have nothing really to say to them at this point in my life. I don't know. Staying in touch is a bit foreign to me. But I think I'm getting at least a little better at it over time.

I have, in fact, been in touch with at least one of these mutual friends in the past week or two, and I have been very happy to exchange a few words (and snapchats) with her.

Also in the last week I have exchanged messages with two really important people from my college days. And I've written some letters too. And all of these exchanges mean more to me than I can even comprehend or explain to myself.

So this all brings me to something I think about on a pretty regular basis, being a contributing member of society and spending so much of my time engaging with the working world: networking.

It's like a dirty word. It's what you have to do if you want career success. There is a right way and a wrong way to do it. The general feeling about it is reluctant and everybody has anxiety about it and to be honest I always associate the word with slimy and/or pretentious behavior and, at the very least, some fibbing and embellishment.

Which is really sort of silly, because I actually "network" all the time and I do legitimately enjoy making interesting connections with people. I like staying in touch with old friends who are doing interesting things; I like meeting new people who are doing interesting things and talking to them about it, and catching up with them later to find out what has changed and how the whole thing is going.

I met this woman on the plane coming back from MSP two weeks ago, who is an organizational change officer for her company. That means she travels around helping different branches of the company transition smoothly into using new systems and incorporating new policies into their basic operations, and making sure everybody is on board with what's going on. She talked a lot about the "people side of change."

I loved that! I wanted to ask about a billion questions, and I wanted to know how things turned out for her in the latest round of changes, and I wanted to talk to her about the impact of social media on organizational change and about the perspectives she gained from her studies in communications, in the context of what she was doing for work. I almost asked her if she had a card, or for some contact information, but I liked her so much I didn't want her to think I was being opportunistic, so I didn't ask. And I have been kicking myself ever since.

And I really think the reason I didn't ask is because that is a pretty standard "networking" technique and it seems opportunistic and not genuine and like just what I'm supposed to do. (We all know how I feel about things I'm just supposed to do.)

That may be more of a side effect of my stubborn beat-of-my-own-drum attitudes than the social stigma of networking, but I still think it's worth mentioning. Why can't I just think someone is cool and maybe want to talk to them about work, especially if we both like what we do and can inform each other's perspectives, without having it tainted by the veneer of corporate traditions? And why does something so pure, like an interesting conversation or a potential future friend or mentor or colleague, have to be cheapened by a term that carries so much weight of self-interest and personal gain?

I would love to hear other thoughts about the whole networking thing; I am pretty open to the idea that my resistance could easily be a byproduct of nervousness about putting myself out there, but I have always felt the whole "you have to do this to be successful" dialogue to cheapen connections between people that might otherwise be effortless and mutually enriching.

And to bring it back around to my original thought: I love catching up with you, classmates, friends, relatives and other readers. If I get around to sending you a personal message, it means I'm thinking about you and that I think you are probably doing something interesting and that I have respect and admiration and fond memories of you.

And if I don't get around to actually sending a message... I'm probably still thinking a lot of those same things.

Be well, readers; and be real.

posted from Bloggeroid

30 weird things we never would have thought to prepare for before "growing up"

This week's lunch break phone date covered a lot of really important topics, starting out about as sad-serious as you can get and ending on a much more lighthearted note. Still, though, the things we have to talk about are big. Important. Of consequence.

I want to take a moment (before I dive into topics I am actually equipped to tackle) to pay homage -- one of the sad starting topics for those Oles who read the blog. First, I must make tribute to Professor Jim Farrell, who I just learned passed away almost a month ago. This man made a huge impact on the St. Olaf community at large, and more specifically on my immediate circles, of which most members at least dabbled in environmental studies, campus ecology, the impact we make on our surroundings. To a man who knew the great extent of what that means: cheers.

You may also know that Pastor Jennifer Koenig has resigned since we left Olaf, due to illness. I must also pay tribute to her, the woman who taught so many of us how to communicate, how to smile, how to find peace. This week has brought some heartbreaking updates on her status, posted on CaringBridge. This is an uncomfortable thing to mourn at this stage, and yet we are in mourning. Please keep her and her family and the huge number of her supporters in your hearts in the coming weeks and months.

Now, I realize, this post can't be lighthearted in any universe. But I must take this, as I said, to a dimension where I can process it.

One of the amazing things about both of these people is how wide are the ripples of this news. Both of them taught my peers and me far more than could ever be encapsulated in a textbook or thesis paper. Or in two years of blogs. The things they have left us with clarified who we are and how we understand our lives, and continue to emerge to this day as we work through things like relationships and grief on the phone more than two years after our last class, our last coffee bought with FlexDollars in the Cage during senior week.

After Monday's phone conversation, which finished with a bittersweet acknowledgement of "the weird shit we have had to deal with since graduating," I read an article on BuzzFeed called "12 Things Our Parents Forgot To Teach Us."

(Since I am in the social media marketing field, I can't gloss over this prime example of native advertising: posts with some degree of actual substance, designed and paid for to promote a company or service. The topic of a future post, I'm sure... But back to the meat of the issue.)

My parents luckily at least mentioned once or twice that credit cards are not free money (number one), and that lending money to people must be done with extreme caution, if ever (number four), and they've definitely given me a crash course or 11 about how to read a paper map (number eight). But even if they did give me lessons in some of the others I still have stumbled over them once or twice. For example:

5. You never really stop feeling like a kid.
7. How to get along with your roommates.
9. How you feel after too much coffee.
10. How to deal with your first heartbreak.

And to be fair, a lot of this stuff would be pretty dang hard if not impossible to teach. I'm not sure whether the history of anthropological theory and the forced downtime and the infamous Project Without Parameters were intentional cover-ups for daily life lessons, but some of them sure served that purpose in the long run.

So, without further ado, a partial list of Weird Shit We Would Never Have Thought To Prepare For, But Kinda Wish We Would Have Known About In Advance. (Also known as, A Preview Of What Life Will Be Like From Here On Out.)

Disclaimer: Some of these are drawn from personal experience, and some of them are borrowed from undisclosed sources. You know who you are.

1. That we have food allergies, and spent all of college feeling really gross all the time and not knowing why.
2. Along similar lines, how to cook (and drink) gluten-/lactose-/meat-free...
3. Speaking of drinking, that we get more hungover, even if we drink less, higher-quality booze.
4. In other news, how to drink with bosses and coworkers without accidentally saying anything you shouldn't. Plus, what if everyone else is just hammered?
5. Also, how do you grocery shop in general?
6. What it's like really not having any money, but also not having a cafeteria that we, our parents, our grandparents, and/or our student loans already paid for.
7. How great it is to live somewhere that has laundry included.
8. How to meet our significant others' parents.
9. That we might want to move in with somebody before we marry them, and
10. How to talk to our parents about it, or
11. How to pretend like we are not living together so our parents or other important institutions don't find out about it.
12. How to work a job that didn't exist when we went to college, or even when we graduated college, or even when we got called in for the interview.
13. How to find something new to do if what we thought we wanted to do as a career turned out not to be the right thing.
14. How to leave a job properly. Is that a thing?
15. Deciding whether to sign our souls away to make monthly car payments on a new(er) car, or whether we would rather figure out how to get our old car into the shop every other month to get repairs done on it and parts replaced, and then how to get to work after that, and how to pay for it.
16. Or, whether it's worth it to live and work where you don't need a car. Really, there aren't that many options!
17. Facebook friends who get married and then change their names, and you have to look through half their pictures to figure out who they are and how you know them.
18. And then when your news feed is suddenly full of babies. Babies everywhere. Where did they all come from?! No, wait... I don't actually want to know.
19. Realizing that every conversation and relationship we have is a cross-cultural one and that you can never assume anybody is on the same page as you.
20. How to handle getting mugged, or robbed.
21. Is it ok to move away to get over somebody?
22. Or, if you move away for any reason, how do you meet new people you might like to spend time with? How do you meet anybody?
23. Also, how do you make friends in a new place if you know that you, or they, are going to be leaving after their gig is up?
24. How to get up and go to work when we really just don't feel like it.
25. How to grieve when life goes on and nobody around you knows about it.
26. How to wear black, brown, navy, taupe, or anything conservative without getting super bored.
27. That people make up responses and solutions to a lot of questions they don't know how to answer.
28. How to reconcile spiritual needs and personal faith, disillusionment with organized religion, and family expectations.
29. How to go on a cheap date without feeling cheap, or, if it is a first date, without making a big deal about it so the other person doesn't think you're high-strung.

And finally, number 30:
How to do all this stuff when your closest friends, the ones who know what you're dealing with and how you deal with things... When those people are who-knows-where, but they're definitely not up the hall, they may be in the same city if we're lucky but sometimes aren't even reachable by phone?

This is the really tough part. I have been fortunate to know that I am not alone in dealing with super weird stuff, and fortunate to be able to share it with people close to me and also with people who are really far away. (I must admit, I love Facebook and smartphones and text messaging for this reason...even though they are apparently causing the breakdown of our society.)

And I have been incredibly blessed to share it with all of you. Read on, dear friends. Live on!


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Like second set of baby steps on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theBabyStepsSaga! New posts show up there first, plus other articles about post-grad life, plus teasers and other important information. Thanks for reading! Tune in on Sunday night for this week's All Good Things list, and next Wednesday for more reflections on being a "new adult."

all good things: sun and sea and good food

All Good Things is a weekly feature on the blog. It started as a one-hour Sunday night radio show on KSTO St. Olaf radio, featuring feel-good music and 10 highlights from the past week. The show, and its current written form, is brought to you by Clara, Second Set of Baby Steps creator, and her radio co-host Cassie.

1. Song of the week: 2am by Slightly Stoopid. Not my favorite band name ever, but the song has been our Zumba cool down song for the past few weeks and it's got a good groove.

2. Patron XO. Jason's parents recently went to Mexico and brought back bottles of this delicious coffee tequila for their sons. Fortunately Jason has been generous enough to share it with me. My favorite way to imbibe it is over ice cream. Yummm!

3. Deep fried Oreos. The best Boardwalk dessert; the kind of thing you look forward to all day long. 

4. The Casual Vacancy, J.K. Rowlings' first adult novel. It's about a tiny town in England and all the political and social drama among its inhabitants. I've talked to a few people who started reading this and gave up when it became clear that there is no magic in it. But I stuck with it, charmed by the details (always a forte of hers in Harry Potter) and, now somewhere around page 300, I'm having a hard time putting it down.

5. Chicken madras. On Wednesday Jason and I ended up going to Maharaja for dinner. Last time we went there we got the entrees with hot spice and I couldn't even eat the food-- impressive, when most Indian restaurants stateside tone it down incredibly. Anyway, we learned our lesson and had recovered enough to go back. And we had mango lassi, garlic naan, aloo palak, and chicken madras, which wins dinner this week especially since I wasn't convinced at first that I even wanted it. Another lesson learned.

6. Wildwood. As I write this I am on my way back from the Jersey Shore with my "roommates." We just spent Saturday and Sunday on the beach, napping and swimming and eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and trying not to let the seagulls at 'em. So relaxing, and good girl time. Also, the sand there is so much finer than the sand at the Delaware beaches... Which is good in some ways ( it doesn't get quite as churned up in the waves, for example) but that also means it clings to things and silts into cracks and crevices.

7. Zumba! Katy and I went to zumba twice this week with our favorite instructor. And on Thursday we found out that she will no longer be teaching at the Y! That part is not a good thing, but it does make me not take it for granted. It's just such a fun reason to be super sweaty!

8. Wawa. Stopping at Wawa for breakfast to kick off a road trip has become a bit of a tradition lately. The bagels are just so good! So are most things at Wawa, actually. Hoagiefest is something I am a huge fan of as well. 12-inch subs for $4.79? Yes please!

9. How I Met Your Mother (a.k.a. HIMYM). The modern version of Friends. So funny. So current and relatable. Jason and I are currently in the middle of rewatching the whole series while we wait for season 8 to come out on DVD/Netflix. I just bought season 3 (since we don't actually have internet at home).

10. Good conversations with interesting people. I went out for happy hour on Friday with Jason and a bunch of people he used to work with, all of whom I liked a lot. Good people, warm and welcoming. I also love how my horizons are expanded every time I meet someone new.

Like second set of baby steps on Facebook at www.facebook.com/theBabyStepsSaga! New posts show up there first, plus other articles about post-grad life, plus teasers and other important information. Thanks for reading! And have a good week!

a conversation about the weather

Conversations about the weather have a bad rap.

Related conversations with a bad rap include: "How 'bout them Yankees?" which I will never be able to replace in my mind no matter how irrelevant it is in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Delaware, Ohio, or any other place I've lived or -ites I've lived among. There will be no "How 'bout them Twins?" or "Go Packs!" or "Da Bears!" for me, no sirree. Not that any of these openers would really whip me into a verbal frenzy. I can't really carry a conversation about sports.

But I can talk about the weather for quite some time. When I was a hall receptionist back at St. Olaf, our collegiate habitat formed the basis for my conversations with most passersby: "Little cold?" "Is it nice out? I might go lay out in the Quad later."

Now, as a young adult (new adult?), it still provides fodder for conversation, even with people I see and talk to on a daily basis and people I have a deeper relationship with. And as it turns out, the weather is actually central to a lot of facets of my life as a young adult. Thus its rampant appearances in small talk, and its centrality in conversation in general. Observe.

***

For the past few days in Delaware we've had temperatures in the mid-80s. That's right. I remember last week leaving for work in 29-degree weather. To me this kind of weather turnaround is somewhat alarming, but according to my Maryland-native coworker this is normal in these parts.

When I ran those 4 miles on Saturday morning, it was probably around 40° when we started running and maybe had reached 50° by the end; yesterday, I did about 3.5 miles around the Newark Reservoir after work at 85° and I will tell you that I felt the difference. It worries me a little to think about the Spartan race in July... But as Jason constantly reminds me, "The mud will help!" I sure hope so! 5 miles in the heat of summer sounds pretty daunting right about now.

Meanwhile, while I'm stealing moments to slip out of my sweater at work, my friends and relatives in Minnesota are wading through several inches of snow. Typical. A friend of mine who now lives in D.C. posted on Facebook this morning: "My facebook feed is alternating pictures of snow in MN and cherry blossoms in DC. Glad I am on the warmer side of things." Hear, hear.

Still, I can't help wondering if these strange weather events have been happening throughout my lifetime or if they are happening more and more as I get older; and if it is the latter, I can't help but worry a little that climate change is happening a lot faster than they told me it would when I learned about it in science class back in fifth grade. I swear I remember having gorgeous spring days, weeks on end, in fact, in March, right in between winter and summer. Am I hallucinating? At this rate, I predict that by the time I have kids, hurricanes will be hitting the eastern seaboard, as far north as Nova Scotia, every fall; most of the U.S. won't get any snow until about March, when we will all get dumped on -- repeatedly; most waterfront towns (rivers and oceans, mostly, but potentially also lakes) will have been chased to higher ground; and Manhattan will be underwater. Not quite The Day After Tomorrow; maybe more like The Decade After This One. Or The Year After Next.

On a personal level, the greatest immediate effect of the sudden weather change is on my mood. I am much, much happier lately. I can attribute this state of mind to a few factors, but I know for a fact a lot of it has to do with the amount of sunshine I have seen in the past few weeks, and the amount of fresh air I breathe on our lunchtime walks at work. Seasonal affect disorder has been on my list of things to blog about for a few weeks now, and now that I feel more steady on my proverbial feet I would like to make a resolution, my readers as witness: next year I will find a way to keep the cold and the shortness of the days from affecting the people around me. I can get through the winter, because I am aware of what's happening throughout the dark months, and I can see the light at the end of the tunnel; but it upset me this year how much my cold, dark mood affected my interpersonal relationships. So my resolution for next winter is to raise my mood for the sake of the people I love.

So I am in a much better mood now, but I know the heat gets a lot less fun when summer really gets rolling. For a few reasons.

You remember that summer in St. Croix Falls and the naked days at Sunny V? Well, my house in Wilmington also isn't the most optimal as far as temperature goes. Lots of cracks and drafts. Poorly ventilated. Incredibly inefficient at holding or circulating any ideal temperature. (This also means that the weather has a pretty substantial impact on my utility bill. Now tell me the weather has no impact on our lives.) And, because of the cats, we keep all the doors closed in the house, which cuts off the air circulation even more. My room was already stifling this morning after 3 days of heat. I'm debating whether it would be worse to not be able to breathe when I'm sleeping because of the heat, or because my respiratory tract is full of cat hair. The answer still isn't clear.

And neither are my bronchioles.

Speaking of naked days, I have already realized that my professional wardrobe is not hot weather-optimized. I have about two dresses that are appropriate for work, and one of them is black and has 3/4 sleeves. The other one requires me to wear a sweater, and I wore that yesterday. I'm now stretching my remaining sundresses to their professional limit, by covering them up with sweaters and blazers, and wearing camis underneath them, and wearing flats to make it look like there is less leg sticking out the bottom. This is not sustainable. There is also the dilemma presented by air conditioning, and the fact that I will no doubt contract hypothermia at some point this summer, since there is a vent right under my desk and certain decision makers like to keep the office at least 30 degrees in the opposite direction from the outside temperature. SO, do I dress for the weather outside and freeze to death during the day? Or do I die of heat stroke on my way to and from work and then achieve some semblance of comfort while I work.

There is no end to heat-related dilemmas in my life.

Arguably the most serious of heat-related dilemmas was brought up at a neighborhood association meeting I attended the other night: crime. A few of our local legislators spoke at the meeting and warned us of the correlation between poverty and crime; and I know there is also a strong direct correlation between ice cream sales and crime -- sorry, heat and crime. So if poverty is rising, and the mercury is rising, then crime is likely to rise as well. I'm expecting this to affect me on some level, since I live in the city, just a block off the "bad part of town."

***

Now that I've graced all of your web browsers with some solid weather-related conversation topics, I'd better go soak up what is left of this lovely warm day. For my readers in climes not yet in the throes of spring/summer, I'll enjoy it for you ;)

mediation meditation

This post is about anger, and about positive communication. Just an FYI, because as I'm starting to write this I'm realizing it's taking me awhile to get the core topic.

I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few months, and after last week's apparently very controversial post I have been thinking even harder about it. After last week's post about my struggles with "feminism" as a falsely all-encompassing entity I am left feeling that I might not have the temperament to put myself out there on the internet or in any of those volatile public forums (like politics or activism, for example). Not when it comes to controversial topics, anyway. I don't have the temperament for arguments either, or even for particularly heated discussion.

Here's why: I am stubborn as all get-out, but I am easily persuaded to seriously consider and even adopt a contradicting viewpoint -- if it's presented properly. If it's not... I'm like a shark. Or a bee (my most feared adversary). Or a skunk, or a... platypus? What's the thing that rolls up into a ball if you poke it? An armadillo?

ANYWAY. What I am getting at is this: if I feel like I am being attacked, or if I feel that you are telling me the ground I'm standing on isn't sound, then I am very likely to either snap, or retreat into an icy silence. And I'm not the only one. But I do know certain people who like to argue, or be incendiary, or fight. With one exception I can think of, I don't like to be around those people.

When I was little, I used to fight with my brother and sisters just as often as the next kid. When a fight broke out, we were usually separated and not allowed to look at each other for a slow count of ten. We had to take a breath in between each number. And then we were forced to go back and face each other and work it out. We were not allowed to speak to each other until we had let the initial anger pass.

As I've gotten older and had more of my own experiences, the benefits (or perhaps the results) of this parenting technique become more and more clear. Thanks to a few encounters in which I didn't take ten deep breaths before speaking, I now remind myself sternly (with mixed success) never to have a conversation with anyone who is already yelling or angry; never rise to the occasion of false accusations or implications; always consider someone's motivations for saying what they say and respond to those, not to their actual words and phrasing.

Because if we are yelling or lashing out, we are not listening. We feel threatened. Our first instinct is self-defense, whether or not there is anything truly at stake. You can't have a conversation with someone who's not listening or receptive to what you're saying.

It seems like there has been a lot of arguing lately in the public sphere; and with good reason, because there are a lot of very important issues on the national table right now. But I don't think many of you would argue if I said that we're not really making much progress on any of them.

I was excited to hear on NPR this week Chris Satullo promoting the Bernard Wolfman Civil Discourse Project, where he will be helping "two top experts on health care have a lively but respectful conversation about where they disagree, and as importantly, where they agree about what's not working with the nation's health care system — and what we should do about that." If we could all sit down and start from our common ground, and then talk through our respective solutions, and listen carefully to our opponents' questions and challenges, then maybe one of us could propose a solution that covers more of the bases, and makes less of us feel personally attacked. But the first step is actually listening.

What if the national conversation on gun control turned into a conversation about controlling gun violence? That conversation could consist of all sides offering solutions to the problem we all agree needs a solution -- and the solution we eventually come up with would be that much stronger and more appealing. What if we could address all the issues on the table starting from the most basic, most common good and go from there? We'll start with things like breathing and eating, and when we come up against a conflicting interest we'll figure out a way to work it out so no one feels threatened.

The other day I was hanging out with J. and he got up to leave for work half an hour early. I asked what was wrong and he said, "Nothing, I'm just gonna get into work a little early today." And I said, "Well why don't you come sit with me for awhile first? You've got time. You seem like you're mad at me or something." So he came and cuddled up with me and said he was frustrated and told me why, and after a moment of silence he said, "Wow... It's amazing how much better it feels just talking about it." And then we got around to actually addressing the issue.

I know this is idealistic and seems impossible. But I'm working on doing this every day on a small scale, and it seems to be working. I'm looking at human motivations and the root causes of anger: shame, fear, pain. People do unbelievable things when we are in pain, and we are in pain a lot of the time. It is a painful world we live in. I'm working actively these days to address the root causes of anger and lashing out, to take ten deep breaths before I look someone in the eye again, to resist responding to or prodding a scared or hungry shark. And I've realized that half the time, when someone lashes out at me, it has so little to do with what I've actually done or said it's almost funny. My job then is not to respond in kind, and to carefully defuse the potential explosion.

I can't say that I've mastered this art or that I succeed even a majority of the time, but I'm really, really trying and I wish that we could have some constructive conversation on a grander, more global scale. I wish we could give each other the time of day and realize that our actions and attitudes have an effect on the other people around us -- and, in the meantime, remember that the people around us often forget that this is true. Don't take it personally. Take 10 deep breaths. Try to make magic.

maintaining friendships

I'm going to try and make this quick, because I'm heading out to hang out with some local friends.

The distinction is only important because of the topic of this post.  And I can't believe it's taken me so long to write about this.

I think I have mentioned before that I could not have predicted my post-grad long-distance social network, and the varying degrees of keeping-in-touch.  Some people I talk to most now I never, or rarely, talked to while we were at school together.  Some of the people I have the most important conversations with, too.

Granted, these conversations tend to happen on Facebook chat, but that doesn't make the subject matter less important.

That being said, I would like to reiterate Kyle's (incredibly salient) point that a 10-word text message can be enough to maintain a relationship with a good friend you haven't seen or talked to in awhile.  This can make all the difference in the world.  I was inexplicably happy to get a text from J the other day that read, "I'm finding that people really like it when you reach out to them via text."  And a minute later: "You taught me that."

One of my favorite ways to stay in touch regularly is with my famed #LunchBreakPhoneDates.  I have 30 minutes for lunch most days, which is by no means long enough for a satisfying long-distance conversation, but I am the queen of working healthy activities into my daily or weekly routine.  If we keep waiting until we have enough time to have a satisfying conversation, we will never have any conversation, and eventually we'll just stop trying.  There is no way I will let that happen.

Now, the 30-minute time limit also means we can't waste time worrying about what to talk about.  I don't care to talk about "what's new in my life" because it's just another day to me.  But, as you may have noticed, I ALWAYS have something on my mind.  So what do I talk about on a typical #LunchBreakPhoneDate?  Here is a brief sampling and synopsis of topics.

1. Hair care and no 'poo.  Yes, this is some hippie shit.  But you all know I love it.  Also, I have a lot of hair, so there's a lot to talk about.  This particular #LunchBreakPhoneDate also has quite a lot of hair, so between the two of us, we're set for AT LEAST 30 minutes.  If not 30 hours, or 30 days.  Or 30 years.  I'm sure we'll still be talking about hair when we're 50.
2. Objectification, to-be-or-not-to-be a feminist, and Take Back the Night/sexual assault.  This, of course, is part of an ongoing conversation, which I have been meaning to write about, but it's an armful to take on.  I'm not sure yet what approach I want to take.  But here's a teaser: I promise to consider the complexity of these issues, every time I consider them.  Which, as a woman, is pretty much every day.
3. Relationships, theoretical and otherwise.  Yeah, pretty much every conversation I have has something to do with relationship theory, but since most of my friends are negotiating the minefield of post-college relationships, our specific experiences come up a LOT.  Also the weird number of our peers who are suddenly engaged, married, or popping out babies.
4. Work.  Sometimes this topic has a "what-do-I-want-to-do-with-my-life" kind of spin on it, but in my case, I like my job and I'm happy here at least for now.  And most of my friends are at least somewhat satisfied with their current status.  So we also talk about how much money we make, and where we see ourselves going, and what we're passionate about that we'd like to push more into our work now or in the future.  (Work.  Is this what adult life is all about?!  It often seems that way.)

Obviously this is not a comprehensive list, but none of you care about my day-to-day conversations anyway, unless you're having them with me.  Or you only care about them to the extent that they often inspire me to write about some topic or another right here on the blog.

I know I don't have to tell you this, but every conversation and every relationship is different.  Some relationships need more careful curation than others, more time and energy and demonstration.  I thought of this yesterday when I was (as usual) chillin' on Facebook and someone I haven't touched base with in awhile popped up in my top 6 friends.  I am not a habitual Facebook stalker, but I read my news feed, and every once in awhile I give someone's timeline a skim just to make sure they're apparently alive and happy.  And usually I'll drop a line.  In this case, the line I thought to drop was a simple "<3".  But right before I hit "Post," I remembered what a mutual friend said about her once: "You really have to reach out to her, because she likes to do things, but she doesn't like to call.  She feels like she's imposing."

And so I sat there debating whether I should feel guilty for not writing something more substantial, until the most obvious epiphany hit me like a water balloon: That's how Mutual Friend is friends with Her.  My friendship with Her is not that way.  My friendship with Her is incredibly comfortable with a <3 from time to time, and in fact, is more comfortable with that than with obligatory extensions and "catching up."


That may have been a little obscure, but the thesis of my story is that each friendship, and even each individual friendship within trios and groups, is different.  Some of my best friends (as much as I cringe to use that word, there isn't really any use denying it) are people I don't feel the need to have big catching-up conversations with every day.  Because our friendships depend on the fact that we each lead our own separate and active life, and that's something we like and respect about each other.  It makes the time we do spend together that much richer and more worthwhile.

Now, speaking of spending time together, I'm off to curate my present relationships: it's ladies' night!  (By the way, if you were wondering, my love language is Quality Time.  You don't have to act surprised.)

Thanks for tuning in, as always!  Each of your comments continues and enriches my conversations with you, and that's why I keep writing.  So keep writing back :)

5 ways to banish anxiety

This week feels like a boulder strapped to my ankles, dragging along behind me no matter how frantically I try to shake it off.  It's just driving my heart rate up, and not in a good way: I sit at my desk feeling anxious, triggered by dumb little issues I can't fix right away.

Which is a problem, because I am a problem solver.  I like to fix things.  I hate sitting around and watching things malfunction or dysfunction and not doing anything about it.  And although this sounds like a useful personality trait, it isn't always that constructive.

Today, for example.  And yesterday, for that matter.  It leaves me at an uncomfortable and incredibly frustrating impasse.

And now you, dear readers, are most likely getting sucked into the maddening conundrum.  So I'll tell you what Problem-Solving Clara has come up with to counteract the anxiety.

1. This video:

Top 10 on YouTube yesterday, I clicked it once in the morning in my routine scan of the trends...  And couldn't STOP clicking.  Seriously.  I hit replay probably literally 50 times in the past 2 days.  I would feel myself falling into a slump and hit replay and BOOM!  There I go, smiling like Tour Guide Barbie from Toy Story 2, for at least 3 minutes and 25 seconds.  The video is really just delightful.  Don't pretend like you don't think so.

More inclusively, if you're here for answers, just play some tunes you like.  My friend Steve plays Van Morrison when he needs some soothing.  Whatever floats your boat.

2. One of my die-hard anti-anxiety tactics is gum-chewing.  This was particularly true before some litigious asshat decided to sue Wrigley for making unproven claims about cardamom on the package of my all-time favorite flavor of gum.  I've settled for Orbit Sweet Mint flavor now, but I'm still fuming.

Anyway, some people are pack-a-day cigarette people?  During finals week, or on the last day for grades to be turned in maybe ever in my life when I had a 16-page research paper and 8 hours to write it in, I am at least a pack-a-day gum chewer, and also avid techno listener.  This is how I get things done.  It also keeps my head from blowing off or my heart from bursting out of my chest and running across the street without looking both ways first.

3. I also have spent some time recently clearing out my email inbox.  You see, I have never been one of those "28,975 unread messages" people, like certain professors I could name, or my dad.  It bugs the shit out of me.  Unfortunately, I am not the most technologically adept person to ever live, so I merged my .edu email with my gmail.com email in the wrong order and ended up, the summer after graduation, with several thousand unread messages, that in fact I have read at least one time each, that just need to be processed.  And I never want to do it.

Anyway, I was running through some of them and stumbled upon an email I wrote to my counselor almost exactly a year ago, with the subject line "bad night--just a heads up."  This is interesting, as I don't remember having a night that bad just a year ago, but I certainly remembered that night when reminded of it.  Anyway, her response was the bomb as always.  "Just allow yourself the leisure of feeling what you feel about this situation, so you can process.  Also, don't forget you can talk it out with somebody you trust."

On top of the satisfaction of zapping my "unread" messages to under 2,000 (finally), her characteristically insightful advice brings me to #4.

4. I like to commiserate.  Or, put more delicately, connect with other people I like.  These days I do this most often in the form of a barrage of text messages directed toward my girl Ann in the faraway land of Minnesota, but anyone who happens to send me a Facebook message is also in danger of being thoroughly whined to.  Fortunately today my messaging partner was also struggling to some degree so the bitching was mutual.  I like it best that way.

5. The cherry on top today was the sudden discovery that it just so happens to be National Chili Day!  You have no idea how excited I was to discover a.) that there IS such thing as National Chili Day, and b.) that it is, in fact, TODAY!!!  It could not be better timed.  Chili is probably one of my top 3 foods, definitely a comfort food.  Plus, the world's best chili can be found a mere 3 minute drive from my place of work.  And when you can find the world's best chili and a boy that you kind of like in the same place, within 5 minutes, you can kind of consider yourself a very lucky girl.

There is nothing like a holiday to pull me out of anxiety.  Even the most depressing Valentine's Days have been pick-me-ups for me.  Because merely having something to celebrate is sometimes all I need to remember that the world isn't necessarily such a terrible place after all.  And while there are things to mourn and things to stress about, and that is all well and legitimate, there are at least as many reasons to party.

And speaking of partying, I must go to Zumba.  (Bonus banisher!  Boom.)

a not particularly cohesive, but perhaps somewhat enlightening, post.

I am continually amazed at the resilience of certain relationships in my odd and scattered life.  Some, too, surprise me.

You would not be surprised if I told you that, although I no longer live in the same room, suite, building, town or even state as most of my mainstays, I still manage to stay in fairly good touch with most of them via a mindblowing number of mediums.

But you might be surprised to hear that the bulk of my daily conversation, outside of the people I see on a regular basis, happens with classmates I graduated with but barely talked to while we were at school together.  A lot of this is witty banter, small talk, or sharing funny stories, but we hit on a really fulfilling amount of serious shit together.  Like relationships.  Vocation.  Philosophy.  Social issues.  Life goals, greatest fears, and daily struggles.  These are really important conversations, and I am continually amused at the fact that they are happening now, now that we are 1000 miles apart.

One thing I've been doing quite a bit is workshopping, which is cool because one of the top 3 things I'd like to really do with my life is coach writing.  Workshop.  So I've been working with a friend on a lot of different kinds of stuff, and working through a lot of hangups in the process.  Today we brushed the surface of a potentially heated discussion about an element of a piece he wrote.  We disagreed, but while I try not to do the passive-aggressive thing, I don't find outright disagreement the most constructive way to work through an issue  like that.  When I alluded to this philosophy, he responded, "I'm continually amazed at how openminded you are."

I laughed out loud.  Open-minded?  Me?!  I am one of the more impatient, stubborn people I know.  While I don't do a whole lot of broadcasting, I have some pretty rigid ideas about how the world works and what I think about it, and I don't feel very receptive to the idea of change most of the time.  I reacted pretty strongly against my friend's stance on the issue at hand, I just didn't come out that strongly to him with it because I wasn't prepared to make a case.

The amazing thing is, I'd call him at least a little stubborn too; but we can talk for hours and hours, coming at an issue from very different sides, and verrrry gradually I can see these sides shifting, a little farther into the grey area, looking a little more alike.  I think it's safe to say we both enjoy learning from each other.  And it's a fascinating, fulfilling example of how we (people) change each other's lives.

Because despite all our disagreements, I'd most likely catch a grenade for that guy without thinking too hard about it.

Not to mention some of the people I bear closest to my heart, who have some key things in common with me but by and large rub my sensitivities in completely the wrong direction.  Which, now that they are scattered and flung, is actually a little soothing.

Here is a returning theme: Resilience.

I am finding myself lately struggling not to approach situations too cerebrally, but to give myself a moment to step back and say, "What is my stance on this, really?"  And I check in with myself, try to just talk it out, and then chill out.

I am learning so many new things it's a wonder my brain hasn't reached capacity.  Isn't learning supposed to slow down as we start getting old?  I'm faced every single day with a situation in which my instinctual or original approach needs to shift to make room for other input or adjustments.  This is difficult.  But I am finding that ideas have incredible elasticity.

This is a bit of a rant -- my thoughts are disorganized lately, or too organized, perhaps.  There are things I'd love to talk about that I'd feel weird writing about here.  Like the awesome ob-gyn I saw today.  For example.

Anyway, speaking of resilience, the longest, slowest train in the world sometimes likes to cross my morning commute.  Not on a schedule at all, mind you.  But more than once I have spent longer waiting for it to pass, or waiting while it comes to a full stop in the railroad crossing, than it normally takes me to get to work in the morning.  I was wildly unamused, and even more unamused at how unamused I was about it.  Trying the entire time to just let myself roll with the punches.  Speaking also of the cerebral vs. holistic dilemma.

On another note, happy Groundhog Day!  Let's be honest, has there ever not been 6 more weeks of winter?  I'm as superstitious as the next guy, but let's be real.  It's February.  And it seems to me Groundhog Day is just an excuse for every weather-manipulating deity to get together and laugh at our folly.  It's like the Super Bowl of the gods.  Maybe global warming will change things next year, give those suckers a challenge.  Make winter hard for once.

Minnesota has a hard winter every year.

I want to tell you what I'm most excited about right now, regardless of how relevant it is to any of the aforementioned topics.  It is: red velvet cupcakes with lime green frosting.  I'm going to make them tomorrow and I could not be more pumped.  And the reason I want to make this particular kind is because I got stuck (after the train) behind a magenta landscaping truck with lime green accents.  And for some reason it made me want cupcakes in that color scheme.

Makes sense, right?