Category Archives: The Geek

Ironic Happiness

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It’s hit me a few times in the last couple of weeks: For the first time since I can remember – possibly ever – I’m actually, truly, fully, HAPPY. I mean the kind of happy where you fall asleep with a smile on your face and wake up ready to dive into the next day with nothing but excitement and determination.

Which is totally nuts, when you think about it. Right now I should be totally stressed out and panicky. I don’t have a “real job.” I don’t have any sort of income. I’m living on a very specific budget. Despite that, between living expenses and expenses for Accompl.sh, I’m still pretty quickly emptying out my savings account.

When I left Etsy I said I was giving myself until March to get my act together. It’s March and, well, my act still isn’t together, but for the first time everything seems like it’s starting to come together. My development skills are the best they’ve ever been, I have a super clear picture of where I want to take Accompl.sh in the future, my relationships with friends and family have never been stronger, and my health is in a much better place and still improving.

I find myself working from 10 or 11AM straight through until 3 or 5AM and I can’t think of anything else I’d rather be doing. It’s the most amazing feeling in the world.

Apparently money can’t buy happiness. But having enough money to sustain being able to do what I love for the last 5 months has made me so incredibly happy and fulfilled. I don’t have a yacht or a penthouse or even a new iPad, but I wouldn’t trade these last 5 months for ANYTHING and I’m going to do everything possible to make sure that I can buy this kind of happiness for the rest of my life.

Variables

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I’m generally the type of person that does best lots and lots of under pressure. I usually set up the circumstances for myself: waiting until the very last minute to start writing a paper, having a whole ton of commitments at the same time, you know the deal. It’s probably why I loved working in the newsroom of a daily paper – it’s a pressure cooker.

I have a pretty high threshold for what kind of pressure I can work under – but there’s one type of pressure that’s just the breaking point for me: having too many variables in my life at the same time. When I know exactly what’s going on, what needs to be done, what the pros/cons, consequences, etc., I’m just fine and dandy (now do you see where my list-making tendencies come from?). Throw in a few major uncertainties – say, not having a job, not having income, and having to move? Yeah… not the best recipe for a healthy, sane Jenn.

The whole wanting to find another apartment thing was really wearing on me. I could tell it was a problem because I was completely avoiding/ignoring it. While I should have been out and about looking at new apartments last weekend, I holed myself up in my current apartment and came up with every excuse possible not to go out and do it.

A few days of stewing on the weirdness of my behavior and I realized the problem: finding an apartment in my current state would just be WAY too much of a hassle. Like I said: I don’t have a job, I don’t have any income, and I have a dog. That’s not exactly a shining rental application.

So I had a thought. I called my landlord and asked for a 6 month extension on my lease. Time to think. Time to figure out the next steps in my life. THEN I would have a better idea of what I want/need in an apartment, I’d hopefully have some form of income, and I could make a less hasty decision.

I wasn’t sure if he’d go for it. I was waiting on a call back. Meanwhile, I decided that if he said no, I’d renew my lease. Even the thought of the 6-month extension was enough stress-relief to make me realize that staying here is the right decision, despite the high rent that I was trying to get away from.

Thankfully, I got a call back today. He offered me what basically amounts to a month-to-month lease. Which is absolutely perfect and even better than I had asked for. Now I just have to give him 30 days notice and I can leave with no penalties on my 1-year lease. This means I can stay here for a month or I can stay here for 8 or even the whole year. I have all the wiggle room in the world. Phenomenal.

Things immediately fell back into place. That whole part of my brain (apparently a large portion considering I was basically sitting on my couch for 3 days with analysis paralysis) was freed up and I found myself getting back into the things I SHOULD have been paying attention to: working on Accompl.sh, thinking up new projects, re-acquainting myself with old hobbies.

I feel like I’m back. I didn’t realize what an affect that one added variable of needing to find a place to stay was having on me. Apparently other people were feeling it too. After talking to my mom today she mentioned that I sounded completely different and less snappy.

So lesson learned: Keep the unknowns in my life to a reasonable number. There’s only so much a person can handle at once. Sometimes you have to take the loss of paying more rent than you’d like just to keep your sanity. Also: ask for what you want. It worked out even better than I thought it could have!

Phew.

Reflection and Direction

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I found myself reading through old posts on forever-digital this evening. With 2012 just about 24 hours away I’ve been feeling kind of… adrift. I thought I’d go back and read some of what I’ve written in the past to see if it helps me uncover some sort of forgotten dream or direction.

It’s weird. Having taken myself off the standard path to work on my own stuff, I’m finding that as time passes I’m getting more and more confused about what it is I should be doing with my life. I realized this a few weeks ago, but now that I’m sitting down to write my 101in365 for 2012, I’m starting to see that so much of my life is just up in the air at the moment: I’m technically unemployed (considering Accompl.sh doesn’t provide me with any real income at the moment, so I’m living off of my savings), my lease is up at the end of January so I’m starting to look for a new place, and I generally have NO IDEA where I’m going to be in the next 2-3 months let alone 10-12 months from now!

I’ve been trying to figure out where I’d like to be this time next year, hoping that it would give me some sort of direction, but all it’s really revealed is that I’m completely out of sorts. I’ve pondered the idea of selling everything and traveling for a bit. I’ve pondered the idea of applying for grad school (especially now that Cornell got the NYC tech campus). I’ve pondered the idea of buying a farm in the middle of nowhere, working completely remotely and growing vegetables. And, of course, I’ve pondered the possibility of getting a job again. But that’s a whole other level of confusion.

So this got me into looking back at my 20- and 21-year-old self to try to get an idea of what she wanted and to see if I’ve somehow strayed from that. While digging through the archives I found a line that piqued my interest:

I really loved being involved in the production of anything – books, websites, music, videos, newspapers, you name it. I like to see how all of the pieces fit together and spend more time watching “behind the scenes” bits from movies than I do the actual movies. I’d love to have a production company some day that lets me dabble in a little of everything. – 25 things, Feb 2009

And it’s totally still true. It’s why I enjoyed Product Management so much – it was more of a production role. It got me thinking that maybe it’s not that I don’t like being a PM anymore, but that maybe I should look into producing something else – something besides a website? Anyway… it’s just a thought that I’ll have to stew on. Thanks, 22-year-old Jenn, for the reminder.

Direction is something I’m really struggling with lately. So I’m going to try Reflection and hope that it gives me some sort of Direction or inspiration at the very least. I found this in my forever-digital archives from the end of 2008 and figured I’d give it a try to see what’s changed 4 years later: (edited out a few questions that don’t really apply to my mission here, but here are my original responses from 2008 for reference)

1. What did you do in 2011 that you’d never done before?
A few different things: Moved to NY, quit my job, went skiing for the first time.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
Ha! Well I don’t make resolutions so much as goals, but yes, I kept to them. I actually did better on this year’s goals than I have any previous year. So yay! I’ll obviously be making another list of goals for this year… hence this post.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No humans, thankfully. We did have to have Buddy put down in January, though.

5. What countries did you visit?
I’m kind of upset about not completing this goal. I didn’t travel outside of the US this year. Boo.

6. What would you like to have in 2012 that you lacked in 2011?
Strangely my response is exactly the same as it was in 2008: love, travel, new experiences.

7. What dates from 2011 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
There actually weren’t many specific dates that stand out for this year. A few that stand out (after looking through my flickr stream)
01.10 – my first day at Etsy.
07.04 – fourth of july in a cabin in maine. sparklers, bbq, relaxation.
10.18 – erin and I went to see Hanson in concert. (yes, seriously.)
10.26 – my last day at Etsy.

Everything else just sort of melds together!

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Hmm… I’d say maybe 2 things: 1) launching Etsy Shopping pages (which continue to be awesome) and 2) getting up the guts to do what I’ve wanted to do my whole life. (Even if it has created all of this confusion about things!)

9. What was your biggest failure?
I’d say missing a few close friends’ weddings, not reaching my fitness goals, not traveling anywhere.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
I had pneumonia which kicked my butt for over 2 weeks in December. Still getting over it, but that was pretty un-fun.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
I actually had a very specific goal about valuing experiences over material things this year. I can’t think of anything un-necessary that I bought this year…

14. Where did most of your money go?
Mostly the same as 2008: living expenses. Add in college loans and accompl.sh stuff this year too.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
I was really excited about getting to work at Etsy. I was still excited when I left. I also got really excited about working on my own stuff. I’m still pretty excited now, but also slightly stressed over it!

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
a) happier or sadder?
Happier, definitely.

b) thinner or fatter?
Thinner.

c) richer or poorer?
Richer, but if I keep things up at the current pace that probably won’t be true for much longer!

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Traveling. Spending time with friends. Taking photos.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Worrying, stressing, eating, and more worrying.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
At my mom’s. With pneumonia.

21. Did you fall in love in 2011?
I thought I did for a little while. But no.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Glee. Hands down. (How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory are also in the running, but not nearly as high on the list as Glee).

24. What was the best book you read?
I technically finished Tuesdays With Morrie on new years eve last year, but it was a fantastic book. I bawled at the end. I also really liked The Help.

26. What did you want and get?
Freedom from “the grind.” New friends. A better relationship with family members.

27. What did you want and not get?
Clarity. Love.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
Water for Elephants. I actually haven’t seen many of the movies that came out this year. I’ll have to wait for them to come on Netflix.

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
I turned 25. It was during Yom Kippur so a good number of my friends were out of town / fasting. Got to hang out with a bunch of friends at various places on the Lower East Side. Good night overall!

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Traveling. Making more progress with Accompl.sh than I did. Spending more time with friends.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2011?
“Growing out of geek”? I rarely wore startup t-shirts. My work wardrobe was actually pretty similar to what I’ve worn in the past, but I’ve gotten better at not looking like a web nerd when I go out.

32. What kept you sane?
Different things at different times. Accompl.sh sometimes. 750 words occasionally. Friends at other times.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2011.
Happiness isn’t about things. It’s about creating the circumstances that help you do what you love. Happiness follows.

Not sure if that actually helped anything, but it didn’t hurt to try. The questions about what do I wish I had more of or what I didn’t get were probably the most helpful: I obviously need to do more traveling in 2012. I also need to take more photos. Clarity… that’s going to be a tricky one.

So I guess it comes down to this: time to put up a flag somewhere out in the distance and head toward it. Have some direction, even if it’s not the perfect direction, is better than no direction at all. I need something to aim for. The question is… where will I put that flag…?

Minimizing

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Catbird, a long-time user, posted a Challenge on Accompl.sh a few days ago that’s had me thinking ever since – Shed 100 possessions in 6 months.

I tend to do something drastic in my life around new years – typically I’ve either completely rearranged my room, painted it, rearranged my apartment, or up and moved to another coast. This year I’m planning to move into another apartment in NYC, but only because this place was a one-year holdover until I figured out where I wanted to live!

I’ve been thinking of downsizing the “stuff” in my life for a while now, but this Challenge plus some of the points in a book I was reading this morning (Tynan‘s Life Nomadic
), were the tipping point and I decided to take the idea more seriously. Plus, I love making a good list. So here goes: an attempt at shedding 100 possessions in 6 months. By August 4, 2012 I should be at least 100 possessions lighter.

This post will track that. Possibly sometimes with photos. I’m still debating that.

So far:

  • 5 old issues of Lucky Magazine
  • 1 random, crappy giveaway notebook
  • 1 somewhat broken umbrella that I was going to try to fix.
  • 2 old issues of Wired Magazine
  • 1 somewhat broken umbrella
  • 1 iPad cover I wasn’t using
  • 7 books
  • 1 knickknack eyeglass thing
  • 1 fancy, but overly girly hair clip
  • 1 large picture frame I never filled
  • 25 bits of clothing (donated)
  • 1 Aerogarden (sold on craigslist)
  • 1 acoustic guitar I never used (sold on craigslist)
  • 1 violin (actually just sent it down to my mom’s house for safe keeping)
  • 1 decorative plant vase looking thing
  • 4 clocks. yes, 4.

OK, so that’s a pretty slow start – just a few things that were in plain sight. Good thing I have 6 months for this…

Music

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One of my favorite things about being a bit of an internet junkie is that I often forget that I’m feeding data into a particular service until one day it comes back to surprise me. This happened today when a friend asked me if I had a flavors.me profile. I do, and went to check it for the first time in ages. One of the sites I had linked up to my flavors.me was last.fm – another site I haven’t used in a good 2-3 years. I almost disconnected the link, but my curiosity was piqued and I went to check on my account.

It turns out that I’ve been unknowingly scrobbling every single song that I’ve listened to for the last who knows how many years! I’m trying to figure out how to get an export of that data because I’m dying to dig into it!

Anyway – I was setting up my Christmas music playlist on Rdio and got to talking to that same friend about favorite songs, etc. I realized that I don’t particularly have one. It just sort of depends on the genre and my mood. But I went off to find one anyway. There has to be SOME song that I just absolutely love.

This whole thing sort of spiraled into me spending about 3 hours with my headphones on just going through all sorts of songs that I haven’t listened to in ages. It was the first time in a good, long while that I just sat down and listened to music for entertainment’s sake instead of as background music or to drown out the noise around me. I’d forgotten how much I love just listening to music!

There really isn’t a point to this post other than to say that I’m still in search of a favorite song and as I was looking through my last.fm profile to see if it would tell me what my most played song was (I figured that may be a good indicator) it showed me this:

Save for some missing Adele/P!nk/Florence and the Machine and Bon Iver/Muse/Arcade Fire type music, it actually sums me up really well!

Gotta love when the internet acts as a giant mirror.

I may pop back in here when I finally figure out what my favorite song is. Or maybe not. We’ll see. (But if you’re curious, current contenders include Pavarotti’s Nessun Dorma and Bab’s Piece of Sky from Yentl, but there are still thousands of songs to go through!)

Leap of Faith

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I did something kind of crazy.

I left my job. My awesome, amazing, fantastic, ridiculously cool job where I got to work on interesting things with even more interesting people.

WHAT?! WHY!?

Yeah. That’s been the common reaction. And honestly, I think the answer only makes sense to me, since it’s something I’ve been thinking about for quite a long time now, but here’s the gist:
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Twenty Five.

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Holy hell. Twenty five. This is my 10th annual birthday post. TEN.

That seems to be the big realization of my life lately: things aren’t being counted so much in years as in decades. My best friend and I have been friends for TWO decades now. I started high school a decade ago, which is when I met one of my other closest friends. Everything is in decades. 2.5 of them so far.

I was just reading my 24th birthday post as a point of reference and it’s really crazy to think back on how much has changed since I wrote it.

For starters, I moved from San Francisco to Brooklyn. I left Flickr behind for Etsy. It was a really tough decision but one I am still SO happy I made. I LOVE living back on the east coast. It’s brought me closer to all of my friends and family and I’m just enjoying life so much more here. It’s odd because I never even considered New York as a place to move after college. It was San Francisco all the way. I think living there for those 18 months really pointed out to me how much of a New Yorker I really am (…despite growing up in NJ).
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Internet Reset

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our dock

Over 4th of July weekend, my friend Jimelle and I took off on a bit of an adventure. Or maybe it was more of anti-adventure. We hopped in her car and drove 10 hours up to the tippy top of Maine on a mission: to detox our internet/phone addictions. A real vacation.

We had 3 criteria for our vacation and set 2 rules for once we got there:

  • It had to be a cabin
  • It had to be on a lake
  • It had to be in Maine (we still don’t know how we ended up making Maine a requirement, but it worked out!)
  • No computers, phones, or any electronic devices that would connect us to the outside world
  • Hide any forms of time-keeping (clocks, watches, iPad clocks, etc)

For anyone who knows me, the idea of going for any period of time without my phone within arm’s reach and without any sort of internet connection is basically laughable. But I was determined. I knew I needed a bit of a detox. And detox I did.
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unadventure

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(admittedly, the following is totally a white whine. this being my personal blog and all I’m ok with that. but you’ve been warned)

I’ve been struggling with an annoying sense of unrest lately. I feel like I’m stuck for some reason. I’ve been dying to travel, but keep coming up with a million and one excuses not to. Some are more legitimate than others, but for the most part they’re just excuses.

The other day I was sitting on my couch just kind of staring and trying to suss out why I’ve been so out of sorts lately. I was absentmindedly glancing at the photos I have hanging on the wall over the couch – mostly pictures from my senior year of college and a few months after – and it hit me. I AM stuck. Every one of those photos was taken in a 6-8 month span of time that I would very easily call the best time of my life thus far. So I dug into that…

That period of my life was defined by one thing: growth. I traveled, I made friends, I learned a LOT. I took risks. I did things that weren’t necessarily characteristic (like paragliding in the Swiss Alps) but that pushed the limits of what I knew and caused me to grow and have new experiences that have informed who I am now.

I’d even argue that this was true for the time I lived in SF. Mostly because I had friends who introduced me to whole new worlds of things (even things as simple as good vs. bad beer (I can thank Tilly for that one)).

Now that I’m back East, everything has been about reacquainting myself with my comfort zone – I grew up around here. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE being back here. In fact I haven’t been this happy in a long time, but on the flip side of that I haven’t felt this restless in just as long.

I guess it comes down to that: I need adventure. I need to stop making excuses and start taking risks again. I need to not over-analyze everything (see above) and just start DOING things. I need to remember that packing up and going somewhere for the weekend is as simple as that: throw some stuff in a backpack and go. And I also have to remember that I had a perfectly amazing time traveling by myself for 6 weeks, so relying on other people for travel plans isn’t an excuse either. I’m too settled and I’m too young to be this settled. Time to change that.

So what’s my first adventure? Your guess is as good as mine, but I’m open to suggestions. I’ve been religiously following airfare deals lately so maybe I’ll go somewhere that way. Or maybe I’ll just rent a car and drive. Who knows. But I have to make this happen before I drive myself nuts.