Monday, February 25, 2013

But Isn't It Really All About the Benjamins, Baby?

They say that money doesn't buy you happiness, and while this may mean I'm shallower than I think, I may have to disagree.

First off, it's easy to say that when you have money. When you don't have it, or at least a steady flow of it, you realize how the absence of it takes away some of the things in life that make you happy. For example, I'm currently missing my weekly manicures and bi-weekly workouts with a trainer.  (I know, I know -- I sound like a Kardashian. I even kind of hate myself right now.) I know these are material things, but I'd be lying if I said they didn't add to my level of happiness, and only now do I realize how badly I took both for granted. (Now to be fair to myself, my money-to-happiness ratio is not all about me: I miss feeling okay with giving a generous tip to a waiter or waitress, and even dropping a dollar or two to a really talented subway musician.)

The other thing money provides that makes me happy is security. Before I lost my job, we were looking at buying an apartment. Now that money earmarked for a down payment has become our safety net, which helps me feel at ease, if not entirely happy. But much like happiness, I know that money won't last forever, and that in turn makes me worry, which doesn't make me happy. You following?

It's okay -- I'm not sure I do either. I just know that I'm more worried than happy right now. But that doesn't mean I haven't been happy ever in the past month. (Thank you gratitude journal!)

Now some people would tell me the best things in life are free, and I believe this is true, too. I didn't have to pay for my husband, family and friends, which ties into the follow-up rebuttal that money can't buy you love. Though I'm not sure I agree with that one either. And I'm pretty sure a Kardashian would agree with me.

Photo: Wikipedia

I wonder: Do you think it's shallow to associate money with happiness?


Sunday, February 24, 2013

My Happy Place Is for the Birds

I've come to realize I have a bit of an obsession with birds. I'm not sure what this means, though I'm sure some therapist could tell me.

I know different birds symbolize different things, but I don't have a particular fondness for any one bird. Instead, I simply enjoy the sound of their voice. Their tweets are comforting to me, so much so that I occasionally crave the sound. In fact, birds are part of the reason I enjoy early mornings so much -- before the rest of the world is awake, it can feel like it's just me and them, and they could care less about me eavesdropping on their conversation.

Still, I don't think I could ever keep a bird as a pet. We had a few finches when I was a kid and -- besides the fact that they never lived long -- I always found it sad that they had to be caged up, unable to use their wings, like a human confined to a wheelchair. It seemed to me no way to live life, no matter how tiny your brain might be.

And so when I'm feeling stressed, the birds have become my form of meditation where I run to a park near my apartment, sans headphones. The fact that to start, I have to run an overpass of a major highway that parallels a loud, above-ground subway line only makes the moment I hit the park that much sweeter -- finally, quiet, and the sounds of the birds chirping, my breath, and my feet hitting the pavement always quiets my mind. When I can't run, I switch on the music of this composer I discovered, who often incorporates the sounds of birds in his music. It's totally the kind of music you'd hear at a spa (truth be told, that's where I first heard it) and makes me feel like a bit of a new age hippie who should be in New Paltz instead of New York City, but whatever, it does the trick in a pinch.

Lately, I've trying to find meaning in this obsession, which is something I do a lot -- try to find the meaning in things good or bad. So I have been thinking about this bird-mania for a while now, which seems to have intensified as of late, and it just dawned on me that yes, I enjoy it -- can't that be the meaning? 

Photo: Watch the Birds

I wonder: What inexplicable sound soothes you?

Saturday, February 23, 2013

If You Mess With the Bull...

The other day, I came up with what I think is simply the best simile for my life as it is now. (I am of course, biased at its awesomeness.)

For various reasons, my current state of existence is on shaky ground. Things are uncertain (but aren't they always?), unusually challenging, and fraught with frequent doubt.

I feel like I keep making strides and then Life intervenes and says, "Oh, that? Yeah, no, that's not happening," without even so much as a "sorry," or even an explanation for why. It's like when I was kid and would whine to my father about how his denial of whatever thing it was I wanted at the time was soooooo unfair. "Well, life's not fair," he would reply, which I never found to be a valid explanation. It would just leave me feeling frustrated, angry and dejected, much like I tend to feel these days.

But unlike when I was kid, I am choosing to be defiant. No, you say? Well, I'm going to ignore that and continue on as planned.

And so I feel like I'm taunting a bull, which is either going to huff at me through its nostrils and walk away or completely ram me, possibly gutting me in the process.

Graphic, sure, but good one, no?

Photo: Drawing In

Thursday, February 21, 2013

Oh, Hello Again

So a week in and I've already reneged on my promise to write every day. (Which I've thought about multiple times editing to "almost" every day.)

Truth be told, I've been surprisingly busy for being unemployed. (In fact, I'm trying to finish this blog post in the 12 minutes it's taking to hard-boil some eggs.) Here's what I have been doing:
  • Freelancing 
  • Applying for jobs 
  • Meeting up with old colleagues for coffee and clarity 
Here's what I haven't been doing:
  • Blogging 
  • Keeping up with my gratitude journal 
  • Cooking for my husband like I had hoped when this extra time was bestowed upon me 
(Yeah, I know. I'm bummed about the gratitude journal, too, because I heard how it inspired so many of you. But I plan to get back to it tonight. That I promise.)

What I'm realizing (and what I'm currently struggling with) is that I have to make a decision. Spending four hours each morning job hunting, customizing cover letters and sending out resumes followed by eight hours of sending out pitches and working on freelance assignments has me working like I'm back at a startup. And I don't like it. So I need to choose: Am I going to pursue a full-time job, or am I going to pursue freelance? Freelance is appealing because of the flexibility, and the fact that it would truly afford me the chance to get back to basics, like I'm so badly claiming to want. A full-time job, on the other hand, will afford me a steady salary which would inevitably put me at ease.

So, I wonder: What say you?

Thursday, February 14, 2013

How to Make Love (Bars) at Home

Happy Valentine's Day!

The hubs and I don't really celebrate this day, mostly because we're that annoying couple who believes we don't need a day to remind us that we love each other. (Go ahead, barf. I won't watch.)

To that end, and with all this time on my hands, I decided to cook dinner and dessert last night as a bit of a pre-V Day surprise. Dinner was meh, but dessert saved the evening. Thanks to a relatively new-found obsession with dates, I decided to make date and almond bars from the always-winning cookbook, Fat Witch: Brownies, Blondies, and Bars. (If you've never had a Fat Witch brownie, you are seriously missing out. They are guaranteed to change your life, and I can't believe she gives away her recipe in the book because the end result is spot-on in texture and flavor.)

I'm usually not one to alter a recipe, but I thought the addition of coconut to this dish would make the bar even more amazing, and it turns out, I was right (for once). This seemingly simple add essentially re-creates the taste of Pret a Manger's famous Love bars but somehow with completely different ingredients. For extra indulgence, we topped ours with some Grater's vanilla chocolate-chip ice cream.

Please don't be dismayed by the amount of butter and sugar in this recipe. These bars are well worth the splurge.



Date and Almond Bars from the Fat Witch (with an addition so slight it's not worth calling an adaptation)

Ingredients
For the filling:
    1 3/4 cup pitted and coarsely chopped dried dates
    3/4 cup fresh squeezed orange juice
   1/4 cup sugar
   3/4 cup blanched slivered almonds
For the batter:
    1 cup +2 tablespoons unbleached flour
    1 1/4 cups quick cooking oats
    1/2 cup packed light brown sugar
    1/4 teaspoons salt
    1 1/2 sticks (12 tablespoons) unsalted butter almost at room temperature, cut into pieces
    1/4 cup shredded coconut 


Directions:
Grease a 9 x 9-inch baking pan with butter. Dust with flour and tap out the excess. Preheat the oven to 350.

To make the filling, bring the dates, orange juice, and sugar to a boil in a medium pan over high heat. Reduce the heat to low and simmer for three minutes, stirring occasionally. The mixture should be thick. Remove from heat, stir in the almonds and set aside.

To make the batter, measure and then sift the flour into a large bowl or mixer. Stir in the oats, brown sugar and salt. Add the butter pieces one at a time and mix well. The dough will be crumbly. Finish mixing until you get a smooth consistency.

Press the oat mixture evenly into baking pan. Using a spatula, spread the date mixture evenly on top of the oat mixture in the pan. Sprinkle the top with oats and coconut.

Bake for 30 minutes until light brown on top and the edges are browned and pulling away from the sides of the pan.

Remove from the oven and cool on a rack for one hour. Cut just before serving. Makes 12 to 16 bars.

(Not-So-Great iPhone) Photo: Me!

What are you dining on for Valentine's Day? 

Wednesday, February 13, 2013

It Ain't All Bad

I woke up this morning and had this thought about how the tagline of my blog is "Because life should be about beauty and comfort," and so far every post I've written is full of complaints or bad news. So in an effort to not feel like I'm baiting-and-switching my readers (all 164 of you so far!) today's post is going to be all about the good stuff that's happened recently.

A week or so ago, I read an article in my favorite newspaper, the banner of fine journalism that is the free Metro, about how you can train your brain to think positively by writing in a gratitude journal at the end of each day. A little corny? Sure, but I decided to try it, and I'll admit I'm enjoying the ritual each night.

Now to me, keeping a journal means rambling on about your day for at least a few pages, but this article simply recommended identifying at least two things from your day that you are thankful happened, plus the day's best moment in a sentence or two. (I further streamlined by resorting to fragments.) I've been keeping the journal for about a week now, and this morning decided to share a sampling of some of my moments so far (names have been abbreviated to protect the innocent):

Feb. 6 
Grateful for:
A's career advice
The nice guy from Time Warner Cable who slashed our bill

Best moment: 
Dinner with my best friend

Feb. 8 
Grateful for:
Y's generosity in the job hunt and in life
Dumb luck with subway train timing

Best moment: 
Passion Pit's "Sleepyhead" encore

Feb. 12
Grateful for: 
C's good news
My thoughtful MIL

Best moment: 
Submitting my swan song piece for L

As you can see, some of the moments are seemingly small but still significant to me, while others are just small. (Consider how "taking a nap" has actually made an appearance.) The only rule for the journal outlined in the article is that you cannot repeat your gratitude, which has occasionally made it hard to complete. I won't lie, there are days when I really have to think about the day's best moment and what I'm thankful for because I can only put down "my husband cooking for me" just once. Still, it's a good reminder that even on the worst or most boring of days, there is always something to appreciate.

So with that in mind...

I wonder: What moment--big or small--are you grateful for so far today?

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Stop Giving It Away for Free, People

This is my open letter to all of you who "write for free": 

In short, quit it.

Stop giving away your writing talent -- and I use that term loosely -- because every time you do, you diminish the profession, and my already blackened heart dies a little more inside.

Why the rant? Because today was the third time in as many weeks that I heard, "I won't pay for content." (A word I despise, for the record. Articles! The written word! Please, anything but content.) I've heard this from web entrepreneurs and high-level directors of large media corporations alike, who see how crowd sourcing content (ugh) works for traffic giants like HuffPo and Forbes, brand image be damned. And sure, it makes sense from a business standpoint: why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

But every time they say it, I take it as personal as if they just insulted my mother. Because I wanted this career for as long as I can remember. I trained for it. I studied and practiced it. I deserve to have that commitment respected and rewarded. Because right now, it feels like I trained my whole life to be an Olympic wrestler to only have someone tell me, "Yeah... We're not really doing that anymore."

Look, I get it: A lot of people harbor dreams of being a "writer" and go to any means necessary to be called one. And I don't want to discourage anyone from that dream because some of you are probably (maybe) even good at it. But for the love of god and my student loan payments that saddled me with this now seemingly worthless journalism degree, please stop saying you'll write for free just for the sake of getting published and having a few clips. Any editor worth his salt knows that it ain't hard to get published on Huffington Post and likely won't take those clips seriously anyway. You're better off starting your own blog and monetizing that -- because by doing it any other way you're just ruining it for the rest of us, and ultimately, yourself.

I mean, even prostitutes get paid, don't they? 

Photo: Pacific Ties

Monday, February 11, 2013

What Your Email Address Says About You

Mine, evidently, says that I'm old. 

I remember way back when, not quite at the dawn of the Internet but close enough, spending a good amount of time crafting what I thought was the perfect email address. This email couldn't just be my name, because that is boring. And I'm a writer. And it couldn't involve numbers, because I at least had the foresight to know that cementing my age or graduation year in my email address was something I would one day regret. No -- my email address needed to be clever, and so it was.

I envisioned prospective employers seeing this email and thinking, "Wow, this girl is so talented. I must hire her now." But these days, this email I spent all that time crafting invites cackles instead of compliments on my creativity. Apparently my email address is showing my age.

I don't use Hotmail, or even AOL (and I won't lie, I kinda judge people who do). I use Yahoo!, and apparently that is "old" enough for some people, usually those in the Y generation, to snicker. "You don't use Gmail?" they say, somewhat condescendingly. "I have a Gmail," I reply, always defensively, "but it's mostly filled with spam because I never check it."

You see, I explain to these Gmail groupies, I created the email when Gmail was first on the market -- you know, back in the day when you needed an invite to even create an account -- and I didn't click with it. I like to keep a very clean and organized inbox, and Gmail's then-lack of folders and all this business about "archiving" didn't appeal to me. I liked Yahoo's folder system, so I stuck with it. And that was fine by me. Until now.

Now that I'm back on the job market, the last thing I want is to be judged by my email address. And so I've forsaken my Yahoo!, which has so far treated me well, for Gmail. Things are going okay. I've learned to enjoy "Send and Archive" (helps me keep a clean inbox), though I do still miss my folder system (sorry, labels just aren't the same).

I haven't completely abandoned my Yahoo, though. I'm holding on to it in the hopes that one day it will be considered vintage and in vogue, and all those who once snickered at me will think, "Wow, if only all the Yahoo! email addresses weren't used up, I could be cool like that girl I remember with the really creative email address who clearly spent a long time crafting it."

Photo: StepbyStep.com

I wonder: Do you judge -- or have you felt judged -- by your email address?

Friday, February 8, 2013

What It's Like Filing for Unemployment

 Call me cocky, but filing for unemployment is something I never thought I'd have to do.

I'm 33, and up until now, I'd never been let go from a job. I know I'm a good employee, and my bosses tend to love me because I am insanely organized -- and who ever wants to let someone like that go?

Well, someone did, and so today I found myself on the New York State Department of Labor site answering questions about whether I left my job voluntarily and if I earned more than $402 in the last week. The process was easy, and (good tip forthcoming!) didn't even require half the paperwork it forewarned gathering before starting. They even offer direct deposit! So there went my visions of waiting in line in some drab, DMV-like office with my unemployed brethren, and I couldn't have been more relieved.

Why? Because I'm ashamed. I know I shouldn't be, but I am. I know the layoff wasn't personal, but it feels like it was, and I often wonder what I could have done differently in order to have kept my job. (Even if it is a bit of relief to no longer be working 15-hour days, I would have preferred to be the one initiating the leaving.)

I should know by now that life is what happens when you're busy making other plans, and so doing something like filing for unemployment should in a way come as no surprise.

To that end, here's is a list of some other things I think I will never do in my lifetime, so life, if you're reading this, you can thank me later for making your job easy enough so that you don't find yourself on the unemployment line. 

5 Things I Will Never Do: 
  • Go to Russia 
  • Have a boy 
  • Be a size 00
  • Win the lottery 
  • Kiss Jake Gyllenhaal
I wonder: Is there anything, positive or negative, that you never thought you'd do but ended up doing?

Photo: Rockford Register

Thursday, February 7, 2013

Debbie Downer No More?

I'm not gonna lie: Part of my reason for starting this blog is a way to vent, as I've been a bit down lately. I was laid off while simultaneously dealing with some health issues, and as a result, have been forced to put some life plans on the back burner.

Recently I was turned on to the book Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl, a psychologist and one-time prisoner at Auschwitz. I'm only 17 percent through it (insane accuracy courtesy of my Kindle) but I'm constantly coming across passages that resonate for my life as it is now. That's not to trivialize what happened in Auschwitz, or even claim that my life is as bad as a concentration camp. It's not. Not even close. But suffering is something a lot of us can relate to, and Frankl believes -- and is a good example of -- how we give our suffering meaning by the way we react to it.

Howard S. Kushner points out in the forward how Frankl saw three possible sources for meaning: in work (doing something significant), in love (caring for another person), and in courage during difficult times.

When I first read that passage, I thought you choose one and hone in on it in order to find meaning in your life. Easy-peasy. But the more I thought about it, I realized I have all three of things in my life right now, and they are all complicatedly intertwined. And so, much like a bag of Lay's potato chips, it is near impossible to choose just one and be satisfied.

Still, I'm trying to remain optimistic (despite a tenancy toward Debbie Downer Syndrome) and follow Frankl's advice to, well -- just not think about it. He writes:  
For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: You have to let it happen by not caring about it. I want you to listen to what your conscience commands you to do and go on to carry it out to the best of your knowledge. Then you will live to see that in the long run -- in the long run, I say! -- success will follow you precisely because you had forgotten to think of it. 
So while this blog may seem the antithesis to all that, this is me, not caring. We'll see how it goes.

I wonder: How do you find courage during difficult times? 

Photo: Notes From a Scattered Mind

Wednesday, February 6, 2013

Yes, Really.

I know, I know... a blog is so two-thousand-and-late. But this has been a long time coming.

For as long as I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. I went to school for journalism with a minor in English, and was lucky enough to land a gig at a magazine before I even graduated. In my first few jobs, I did a lot of writing. I wasn't winning Pulitzers, but I was living my dream. But somewhere along the way, something changed. Writing became about "stickiness" and "click-yness" and traffic and pageviews, and suddenly, all the fun had been sucked out of the process.

This blog is my attempt to get back to basics. It's an outlet I've been craving for quite some time, and regardless of what my traffic is (though I will, of course, monitor it as I have been trained to do) I plan to blog every day.

I hope you'll come back and visit every so often.