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Jiffy Snippets - 1/8/11

A crisp beer, a book, a chair with sunlight on it 

Personal: Late last month I helped one of my high school best friend's raise nearly $8,000 in an evening for her younger sister that's sick with stage four Hodgkin's Lymphoma. We held the silent auction/fundraiser in our tiny hometown and people donated beforehand and also arrived in droves. It makes me even more proud to call that place home, a notion I never imagined possible given my fierce and undying love of it. Seeing so many people open their wallets to her rekindled my faith in humankind in a way that's never happened to me before. Humbled.

Screen: Downton Abbey's entire first season on Netflix. Second season begins tonight. I never tire of period television and Masterpiece Classics is a complete goldmine. Watched the Any Human Heart series as well (also on Netflix), a screenplay adaptation of a book that tugged at every literary heartstring beneath my sternum.

Books: Any Human Heart by William Boyd (did you see that coming?), Twenties Girl by Sophie Kinsella because FB likes her and I want to be her (FB, not Twenties Girl), and On Writing by Stephen King because all of the bourgeois things I've been enjoying in the past few weeks make me want to journal like a madwoman. 

Online: Stanford University is offering some of their popular computer sciences online to the public, free. Check out the two entrepreneurship courses: The Lean Launchpad and Technology Entrepreneurship.

Tara recently blogged about My Permissions, a website that allows you to log in to your social channels and revoke various permissions from years past. Mine was sort of horrifying. The clean slate feels nice. 

Dan Nolan is a friend that geeks out about personal finance as much as I do. He recently wrote about the daily spend value method, a trick I've been using for two years (although I didn't come up with a cool name for it like he did). If you find yourself spending too often and out of cash long before pay day, this will cure you.

Working in social media, I find myself constantly explaining why amounts aren't as important as matter. Jeremiah Owyang sums it up perfectly in Number of Fans and Followers is Not a Business Metric - What You Do With Them Is. Thanks, Nick, for introducing me to his blog.

Given my twelve years of ballet history that began when I was only three years old, this video demonstrating the tragedy of first position made me smile pretty hard:

Hope you have an amazing work week. Go get it.

Pivots and Pirouettes

Hi, it's me. I went from barely known blogger working a dead end web position at a university in Colorado to the only social media manager of a hugely successful company and concept (believe me, it was successful before me). I love what I do. I pop out of bed. I curl my hair in the morning. I go to the gym. I walk to work and back every day, almost 4 miles. I participate in my life. I'm soulfully alive again.

My Twitter account links to my Tumblr. My Tumblr links to here, where I have poured my heart out more than once. That said, this space is getting far more traffic from colleagues and applicants to our program than it ever had when it was just me, whoever I blackmailed into reading it on a regular basis, and any of you wonderful people tuning in now.

So...if I told you this space was about to become more tech / career / entrepreneurship / travel / personal finance oriented, would you stick around? Stil no niche, but more polished? Hope you will stay on the journey with me.

2011 Goals - Recap

Be more independent.

Debatable. I'm fairly clingy with D. and all my close friends. I need to get it through my brain that "aloof" and "independent" are not the same. I haven't mastered how to do my own thing without feeling like I'm being cold to someone else.

Spend more time with girlfriends.
Check.

Read voraciously.
Check.

Run a sub-hour 10K.
Run a half marathon.
Nope.

Travel to Europe.
Nope. 

Volunteer.
Check! But I need/want to do more of it.

Save $2,500 towards a Roth IRA.

I did open an IRA this year and saved $3,300 towards retirement. I have every intention of maxing it out at $5,000 for 2012 and opening a second one.

Begin to invest.

Check. Thank you, DailyWorth for telling me about Betterment. I still have a lot to learn. Book recommendations?

Stay active, exercise 3-4 times per week.
Fail. I went full steam at mach 12 and then injured my knees. Was a sack of potatoes for most of 2011 even though I just recently joined a gym. "The first wealth is health," has really hit home recently though and I've been going at least every other day now.

Purchase a nice (used) car.
I scrapped this goal earlier this year when I decided to attack my student loan debt instead. For now, D. and I share his car and costs. He's very generous.

Decide next big move - stay put or run away?

Made a big change and staying put, for all the right reasons. I love where I'm at in my life right now.

O Hai, Christmas Nostalgia.

Ashley recently wrote about the annual nostalgia that's felt when you're a twenty something and you travel home for the holidays - how it ebbs and flows and as she has gotten older, it doesn't feel as melodramatic. This morning, another friend tweeted, "At JFK JetBlue terminal and have not seen anybody from high school. Might finally be aging out of that particular inevitability." Then I decided to walk two miles across town in foot high snow to cuddle with a dog I know. During my snowy journey, When You Say Nothing At All came on Pandora in my headphones and jarred me back to my first flight home from University of Hawaii for Christmas during my freshman year, one of the first times I listened to it. I had decided that the song would be my song for my first-ever boyfriend. It was naively sweet at the time but looking back I realize that I only chose it because he never had anything nice to say - his kindest moments were silence.

I've come a long way since I was eighteen and the best thing that I thought I had going for me was a guy who could be mistaken for kind if he wasn't talking. I realize that sounds bitter but that's not my point. I'm way too old to be waxing nostalgic about the first guy that didn't treat me well. This one's about me-- I'm ten years older and working in a job I genuinely love in a beautiful town. I'm paying off my student loans in the next 16 months, maxing out a Roth IRA, nurturing the relationships that matter, and cutting toxic situations out of my life bit by bit. My personal net worth is higher than it has ever been. I am drinking less. I am walking to and from work and getting healthier. It's all by choice. I used to be convinced that I had to have a guy to validate whether I was a worthwhile human being. I've spent far too many years worrying about whether or not I'm lovable. Trying to be liked by everyone is as futile as absorbing a sea. When Christmas rolls around, I don't worry anymore about who will be in town when I'm home or who will be offended if I don't visit them or why someone hasn't called me yet either. I let it all go. I'm okay with it, all grow'ed up. I'll go home, clink wine glasses with my mother, drink all of the coffee that my father brews for ten people even though it's just the four of us, exchange in the usual self deprecating joke-off with my brother and take high-contrast phone pictures of the Rocky Mountains.

I'm a real woman, self-made. I'm flawed and obsessive, too hard on myself, quick to judge and faster to forgive, but above all stubbornly self-sufficient. Now that I'm living with The Guy, it's interesting to watch all of the insignificant stuff fall away with little to no effort on my part. When the blinds in our bedroom come crashing down after I yank on them too hard, he just smiles and says, "Babe, you're so strong." And 10 Christmases after that first plane ride home, I know I am... maybe for the first time.