Category Archives: Self Reflection

#SmashYourStack Read Your Own Books in May

Posted in Books, Self Reflection by

I am not the best at spending money wisely. I am really bad at impulse buying and my favorite implies buy are books. In the last six months, I’ve attended three huge book sales and acquired too many books to count or store. I have got to do something so I’m at least reading and then, hopefully, giving away all these books.

Enter Andi, Melissa, and their pragmatic book challenge. 

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The concept is simple:

Set a percentage of your own books to read for the month. 

Pick a number!

Go hard and read ALL your own books!

Considering that I have library holds I have to read in May as well, I’m setting my goal at six books. It seems low, but I like to under promise  and over perform. If the first half of the month goes well, I’ll increase my goal. I know that’s technically cheating, but it’s all I got.

Shoutout to The Shrinkette for bringing  this challenge to my attention when I truly needed it.

Let’s see how this goes!

Why This Raccoon Is a Big Deal

*Spoiler* in the full video he figures it out and manages to eat the cotton candy, a.k.a. candy floss internationally (learned something new), on the third try.

I almost cried real tears the first time I watched the original video clip. I couldn’t believe how moved I was by this, but after thinking about it it really boils down to this.

  1. This raccoon was given a good thing – cotton candy.
  2. The treat disappears suddenly; he isn’t even able it enjoy it.
  3. The raccoon has no idea what happened to this great thing he had.

As a young adult who is frequently getting kicked around by life, I. Get. It. That look of total despair as he searched for a treat that we all know has just dissolved into the water. That is real life. That is adulthood. Sometimes, *cough* often, things just go wrong in life and we have no idea why.

But just as often, we figure it out after 1 or 2 more tries and we get to actually eat our treats.

Here’s to figuring it out in 2016!

View post on imgur.com

 

Poverty and Privilege

Yesterday, I read a Washington Post article, A Lonely Road, about a young, black, mother, who lives in poverty and the struggles she — and others in similar situations — face as she searches for employment.

This paragraph stood out to me particularly:

“The others in Scott’s life were largely out of touch. One of Scott’s siblings had just gotten out of prison; another was in the military. Scott’s old boyfriend — Za’Niyah’s father — was who knows where, out of contact for a year and probably for good. Scott, who long ago lost contact with her mother, spent many years in the foster system and several more with her grandmother, sharing the home Immediately after I read this paragraph, I realized that I was something I would have never considered myself — privileged. with 15 others.”

“A Lonely Road,” is a beautifully written long form article that made me hyper-aware of my own privilege as a child of educated, employed, middle class, parents. I have a vast network of employed family and friends, many of whom would be willing and are assisting me in various ways. I realized my situation would be much more similar to this woman’s were it not for that network. I’m very grateful.

Reading about the early feminism movement 

In my ample free time, i.e. time I should have been doing graduate school work, I’ve been reading Jill Lepore’s The Secret History of Wonder Woman. It’s fascinating non-fiction about William Marston, the creator of Wonder Woman, the women of his life (all of them were feminists and birth control advocates) and their influence on what later became the Wonder Woman comic strip.

They were all amazing women — all white, all middle and upper class. Continue reading →

Weak Ties and London

Posted in Awareness, Books, Pop Culture, Self Reflection by

I came across the term weak ties in Smarter Than You Think by Clive Thompson. Weak ties are people within your network, social or physical real, who are not your close friends. Thompson says,”In a world of status updates, tangential, seemingly minor ties become part of your social fabric. And they can bring in some extremely useful information.”

Reading about this made me think about my trip to London this past summer. It was wonderful, btw, and I can’t wait for an opportunity to return, but a huge part of that is due in no small part to my connection with an associate who was studying abroad in London at the same time.

I posted on Facebook that I planned to make an impromptu trip to London at the end of my own study abroad trip to Ireland. My “weak tie,” a former teammate from undergrad saw the post and responded, saying that he would be in London at the same time I was planning to go there. It was to most serendipitous thing!

Books and New Media: Super Sad True Love Story

Posted in Books, Media in Media, Self Reflection by

My last post about new media and culture, RE: Mockingjay Part I, was well received, so I thought I’d do another one concerning my favorite subject ever… Books!

I read Super Sad True Love Story last year. It is so obviously a satire of our current situation as a nation that it’s more uncomfortable than funny.

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Everyone carries around these devices, äppäräts, the ultimate smart phone. They even can aggregate all the data produced by and about you, compare it to those around you, and spit out “hotness” and “compatibility” scores. The apparat then projects these scores constantly to all the apparats around you at all times. Imagine that your Klout score was taped to your forehead. Eek! If you haven’t calculated your Klout score… Don’t.

Needless to say this was another example of a possible path advanced tech can take that also freaks me out. The tech of itself seems fine i.e., not a weapon, but the characters dependence upon devices to determine other characters worth and value was terrifying! I was reminded of Sheryl Turkle’s Alone Together.

Reading this book, just like watching Mockingjay, made me wonder if society as a whole is really thinking about where technology is headed and if that’s a place we actually want to go. It’s the passive acceptance attitude of the characters in these works and in the real world that is just a little unnerving.

World AIDS Day 2014

Posted in Awareness, Self Reflection by

Speaking of missing journalism, I was first introduced to World AIDS Day when fulfilling the last journalism requirement for my bachelors. I did a Storify of activities in the D.C. area throughout the day. Writing the story and compiling the Storify attached me to cause. It has been close to my heart for several years now.

You can find the link to my original story here.

To learn more about World AIDS Day or to donate click here.

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Surprise! I Miss Journalism

Posted in Self Reflection by

I never thought I’d say that. Ever.

I thought I had chosen the wrong major, but my scholarship wouldn’t pay for me to reroute and take a fifth year, so I trudged through. Once I graduated I never looked back… Until a month ago.

I have been participating in a Twitter chat with the American Copy Editors Society, ACES. (The hashtag is #ACESchat. They’re every other Wednesday. The next one is December 3, just FYI.)

I love them.

I look forward to them. They’re the highlight of my week. I love taking an hour out of my day to just talk editing with other people who regard it highly. That’s uncommon, even among journalists. I’m planning to attend their conference in March 2015.

Then two weeks ago a professor of mine asked my class to live tweet a political panel of journalists who’d covered the midterm election. My heart soared to hear so much journo talk. After, my professor told me that he could tell that I missed journalism.

I thought,

“no I don’t… Do I? I miss journalism? I miss journalism!”

I still can’t believe it. I’m slowly starting to accept it’s truth though and I’m making plans to get back in the swing of things very shortly. We’ll see how it goes.

Am I alone in this? Did you ever leave something you thought you’d never miss and then suddenly miss it?