Category Archives: deep thoughts

how the sea pines…

Honestly, I never would have thought that a comparison of the sea to a book could work quite this well.  I’m reading this poem over and over and over again, and it’s pulling my thoughts towards finding a beach to pitch my tent this weekend…
(note: more of Claire’s poetry can be found here).

Aquinnah

by Claire Åkebrand

Midnight rain gusts against the tent’s drape.
What height might the already tall waves since noon
have reached. No light illuminates the felted seascape.
Just a dim glow of froth, and dune,
waves all ruffled up pages of a book
no one has entirely read. How the sea pines
for a reader. I hear her slinging her hooks.
No one walks the shallows at this hour. Her brine
would tow me quickly to her heart. What sea
creatures might gape for me there.
Drowsing off, I’m swallowed, and reeled
again and again by the wake and snared
to a place each human has been before
to find nothing but the sallow ocean floor.

easter

Last Easter weekend was momentous for me–during my long drive to northern California I did a lot of important thinking, and made some significant decisions about what I wanted from my future.  To see the consequences of decisions made that weekend play out in the year since, is a remarkable thing.

Though I no longer celebrate a Christian holiday at this time of year, it remains an important time for renewal for me.  A time for daffodils and decision-making and peace.

Image above is of the Pysanky eggs that Catgirl creates each year while at the Quaker Easter retreat.  That she spends her Easter holiday among F/friends makes me happy, even if it’s a time that she spends with her father and not with me.

this is how it works…

I will confess, I haven’t listened to Regina Spektor in a long long time, having removed her from my playlists over a year ago (the songs reminded me too much of my ex, and I had one spectacularly awful breakdown-moment when “Samson” came on while I was on a date–egads, I didn’t need that reminder). But….”On the Radio” appeared on my Pandora playlist this morning and I found it as utterly delightful as the first time I heard it. Perhaps even more so, because I think I understand even better now what she means when she sings “you’ll just do it all again…”

This is how it works
You’re young until you’re not
You love until you don’t
You try until you can’t

You laugh until you cry
You cry until you laugh
And everyone must breathe
Until their dying breath

No, this is how it works
You peer inside yourself
You take the things you like
And try to love the things you took

And then you take that love you made
And stick it into some
Someone else’s heart
Pumping someone else’s blood

And walking arm in arm
You hope it don’t get harmed
But even if it does
You’ll just do it all again

*It’s interesting to me, too, that I first met this friend while at a Regina Spektor concert two years ago, and she’s been such an incredible support to me ever since… 🙂

exploring the edges…

Because I’m such a fan of Steven Johnson’s The Ghost Map, I chose to download another book by him that Amazon recommended, called Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation. Usually I avoid books like that that sound like the latest evolutionary-biology-turned-pop-psychology type of text. But based on my enjoyment of his other book, I downloaded it and began reading anyways.

Lately I’ve been mentally debating the risks of big change versus the comfortable rhythms of my mostly-suburban lifestyle. Some of this line of thinking comes from my desire to buy a house in an urban-ish SoCal neighborhood and some of it has to do with my thinking about what I want to do with my life once I’m an empty-nester. I feel torn between a desire for nature and quiet and places with ponds and lots of trees (and perhaps, an ocean nearby), and the hustle of an urban space filled with noise and smell and remarkable public transportation options. As I was mulling through this possibilities recently, a friend suggested that cities are more generative spaces, where more innovation occurs–and that if I want to stay in a world of high-tech, I would be better served by making a leap to such a space. Johnson argues along these lines, too, saying:

“Recall the question we began with: What kind of environment creates good ideas? The simplest way to answer it is this: innovative environments are better at helping their inhabitants explore the adjacent possible, because they expose a wide and diverse sample of spare parts—mechanical or conceptual—and they encourage novel ways of recombining those parts. Environments that block or limit those new combinations—by punishing experimentation, by obscuring certain branches of possibility, by making the current state so satisfying that no one bothers to explore the edges—will, on average, generate and circulate fewer innovations than environments that encourage exploration.”

While I don’t think that cities have an exclusive market on “innovation” or “experimentation,” I do feel convinced that I need to surround myself with a lot of novel input in order to foster my curiosity about the world and my place in it. Often, my best ideas come when I’m outside of familiar territory (i.e. my living room couch or the neighborhood where I’ve lived for 20 years), so I think I need to continue to find ways of doing that, more often.

My Top-10 clothing-packing tips

Inspired by this Profhacker post, here are my Top 10 clothing-packing tips.  I believe in keeping things simple, and developed the strategies below so I can minimize the worries that I have before an upcoming trip, and so I can prepare at a moment’s notice.*  For me, that means carrying on one small roll-aboard suitcase with my clothing/toiletries and a shoulder bag with my travel documents and electronics.  For long trips with many transfers, I’ll carry it all in one backpack.

1) Travel light.  If in doubt, don’t bring it. (I can’t emphasize this enough–one can definitely travel in Europe for two weeks and wear the same clothes everyday)

2) Related to #1, Carry on.  If you carry on your bags, you’ll be forced to travel light and can make smoother transfers, and can get where you’re going without needing an assistant or a trolley to get you there.  But egads, don’t be that carry-on person with the too-large expandable-zipper suitcase.  If you can’t lift it over your head and into the bin easily, it’s too much.

3) Make a universal packing list and then customize it for each trip.  I keep my universal packing list in a googledoc (so I can access it from work or phone or home), and then create a new list for a specific trip using the universal list as a template.  Or if my travel is so last-minute that I don’t have time for a custom list, I just use the universal one.

4) Include an outfit list with your packing list.  I print out this list and put it in the inside mesh-zipper pocket of my roll-aboard, where it’s visible every time I open my bag.  I didn’t use to do that, but I found that if I make a list of each outfit that I’ll need for my trip, I’m less likely to forget something like the shoes or the tights that I need to make an ensemble work.  And I’m also less likely to be packing items that I won’t actually wear and will add unnecessary weight (see #1). Also, I rarely bring more than three outfits on a trip–even one that’ll last two weeks.  By outfit list, I mean something like this:

Conference day #2: black slacks; brown sweater with black tank layered underneath; black trouser socks; black flats; gold chain necklace and gold hoop earrings; grey raincoat and blue flowered scarf

As a sidenote:  I’ve you’ve seen me at many conferences you’ve probably realized that I wear the same outfits to most of them.  I like having a “uniform” and making things easy on myself that way–so I can focus on the content of the event and not on fretting about what I’m wearing to and from.  While I also get a lot of pleasure from looking nice when I travel, for me keeping things simple offers that, rather than worrying too much about the details of my clothing choices (and knowing that and being stress-free is more important to me than accessorizing).

5) Wear black and grey items with colored accessories.  It’s true that I probably wear too much black, but it’s so seductive when one is packing light–it not only doesn’t show roadgrime, but it can go from casual to classy just by changing a necklace or a scarf.  For example, one of my must-packs is a black knit dress like this one.  It can go from beach to opera house** depending on whether I wear tights or a belt or boots or chandelier earrings.  I can layer a long-sleeve tee underneath it for winter, too.  My black travel staples include the dress mentioned above, a tanktop, wash & wear dress-slacks, and a long-sleeve tshirt.

6) I try to make sure that every item I bring can be both dressed-up and dressed-down, particularly my bulky outerwear because I don’t want to bring along more than one coat or jacket.  For example, for winter I’ve got a hip-length grey wool peacoat that looks good with jeans and a t-shirt, as well as over a cocktail dress.  For fall weather I bring along an artsy-looking black velvet blazer with a bright-colored lining that can be worn with tailored clothes, casual, or dressy.

7) I wear one pair of shoes and pack another.  Usually I wear something more casual (i.e.  Cons) and pack a pair of black flats.  If it’s winter and I need to bring boots along, then I sacrifice a lot of suitcase real-estate to do so (it’s rarely worth it to me).

8) For me, going through TSA checkpoints can be a bit of a hassle (i.e. I always get the patdown), so I tend to wear as little clothing as possible for those encounters.  Usually that means a knit dress over leggings or a tank top with slacks or jeans.  That way, there’s no mystery about what I might be “hiding” under my clothes.  Most importantly, I carry the same bags every time I travel so I’m familiar with exactly what they look like and how they feel in my arms. So I can easily tell if I’ve forgotten anything, or left an item behind on the conveyor belt–even when my mind is preoccupied about whether I’ve got time for my flight transfers.  Also, I tend to wear socks when I travel because I don’t like the idea of walking barefoot through the TSA area (oh, and I also like going sock-footed while at my seat on the plane).  But maybe I’m just weird that way.

9) Have dual-purpose clothing.  I pack pajama pants that I can also wear to the gym, and a spandex tank-top that can be paired with a skirt for a night out, layered under a sweater for warmth, worn for a workout in the hotel fitness center, or also worn for a dip in the ocean/hotel swimming pool/WaldenPond.  I will confess that I’ve done all of those with the same tank-top in the same trip.  It works, and one can always rinse it out in the sink and let it dry overnight if one doesn’t want eau-du-pond lingering for the rest of your travel.

10) This is only tangentially clothing-related, but is so important to smooth travel, that it warrants being the capstone on this list.  Keep your travel documents in one place, and make that the same place in the same bag every time you travel.  I carry a file folder in my shoulder bag with my travel documents, including itineraries, reservation conformations, train passes, addresses/phone list, and conference schedules.  If I take a document out of that folder, I put it right back in as soon as I’m done.  I also use that same folder to collect receipts for travel reimbursement, or brochures from places that I visited.  If I’m having to jot down some important contact information for my trip on the fly (i.e. my hotel reservation was changed to a different place and I’m copying down an address for a cab driver), I’ll write it directly on the outside of the folder so it’s easy to find.  Then when I get home from the trip I put that folder into my file drawer for future reference.

And a bonus:
11) Streamline electronics.  In an ideal world I would bring my Canon 50d and my MacBook and my phone and e-reader along on every trip.  Instead, for freedom and mobility I allow myself one large (read: heavy) electronics item and I forgo the others.  For example, if I’m headed to Europe for pleasure, I’ll bring my nice camera and leave the laptop.  However, if I’m traveling domestically for work, I’ll probably leave both home unless I’m giving a conference talk and I need to present from my laptop (although Prezi for iPad might mean I no longer do that, soon enough).  I tend to bring my iPad (non-3G because I’m cheap like that) and iPhone on every trip now.  On the iPad I load guidebooks and layover-reading materials.  Given its longer battery life, it’s well-worth the weight of that in addition to my iPhone, which works better for mapping and communicating with fellow travelers or family members back home.

*one day last summer I spent time in three different countries with social obligations in each one that required changes of clothing.  Pulling that off has convinced me that traveling light and simple is the way to go–so I can enjoy the journey more and fret less.
**or to an on-the-spot cameo appearance in the LDS Conference Center
musee d'orsay

timeline

Recently, I switched my Facebook profile to the Timeline format.  I resisted the change for awhile, thinking that it was better if some parts of my last few years remained in deep-storage.  But I knew that FB was going to force me onto Timeline soon enough anyways, so I decided it was time to set it up.

As I looked over at the early months of 2011, I was surprised at just how excited I was at everything I was experiencing–so many new places, new friends, roadtrips, adventures.  Wow (funny how I’d even forgotten many of the details, and just how close together many of those events actually occurred). I was a woman who was simply thirsty for everything–I think I must’ve hardly slept at all, I was moving and evolving so fast as I shed the trappings of marriage and everything else that had been holding me back..

But…perhaps what’s been most interesting to me about perusing the timeline and considering just how much my life has changed in the interim, is my near-silence about some important people that I met then–most specifically the person that I dated for many months, and who is now an integral part of my daily life.

And…I still don’t have a lot to share here (or on Facebook) on that topic.

Of course he’s a quiet presence in many of my tales and tweets and photos, and many of my “in-real-life” friends and extended family members have become acquainted with him over the past year.

But I find it a hard balance to share my personal life–a space intimately shared with my children and my partner–and my desire not to erode the singular identity that’s come at such a price over the past few years.  Added to that, is the fact that I no longer need the validation that comes from sharing certain personal happenings in a public venue.  Maybe that will change over time, but for now it feels right…
freedom

 

wearing my heart on my sleeve (or not)…

photoFor a good long time (most of the life of this blog), I wrote a lot of super-gooey happy stuff about my spouse and my kids and and my canoeing and my schooling and just about everything else wonderful I could think to write about.  Of course there’ve been some hard times, but the balance has been tilted towards the joyful/remarkable/magical.

I think, since my divorce, it’s been a bit harder for me to be so celebratory in this space.  It’s true that I still tend to post a lot of happiness here, but I think it’s toned down a bit.

Now it seems a bit harder for me to celebrate my own successes or happinesses, because I fear it would hurt those of my friends who aren’t experiencing those themselves.  When there is so much unemployment in my social circle, it’s hard to feel joy in having job security.  When a friend’s car is becoming unreliable and they don’t have the resources to fix it, I’m a bit embarrassed by the two new-ish cars in my driveway.  When I hear of a health diagnosis that’s the worst-case-scenario rather than the best-one, it’s hard to find pleasure in my own health.  When others have lost love in their lives, I don’t want to cause pain by speaking about my own romantic adventures.  Perhaps a lot of that sort of feeling comes to a head on a day like today, where half of my friends are celebrating their relationships and the other half are decrying a holiday that’s so overwrought/commercialized/saccharine…

Maybe it’s because I know (all too well) what it’s like to be alone on a special holiday, to face financial uncertainty, to get bad results from the lab tests, and to have news that wounds so deep inside that it takes days for the sun to shine again, that I’m feeling for friends who are experiencing those now.  And I wish I could find a way to salve the hurts and difficulties and make things easier again…

On Sunday at sunset I stood at the top of Griffith Park and looked over the whole huge city of Los Angeles and saw more stories and people and places than I could hardly process in a glance.  I’m sure there was all kinds of horror and heartbreak out there in the city, but I couldn’t see it in that moment.  For me, it was simply beautiful.

But…I wouldn’t know how beautiful it was to be there and to see that if I hadn’t also had days where I couldn’t ambulate well enough to get out of the house, or times when I didn’t have the resources to travel across the city, or moments when I didn’t have a person to share it with walking at my side.

standing

For the past few weeks I’ve been sitting in a chair at a computer for so many hours a day that my body started rebelling. I knew I couldn’t keep it up–it was getting too hard to stay in the same position for so many hours straight. So I decided maybe it was time to experiment with a standing desk.

I decided that I shouldn’t buy a standing desk if I wasn’t sure whether I would use it, so I kluged together a desk at about the right height with a milk crate and a few other odd-n-ends from around my office. The first few days of standing went really well–I liked how it felt to get out of my chair and the change kept me focused and productive.

But I noticed one major problem. I do a lot of one-on-one meetings with faculty, and they became awkward if I was standing at my desk instead of sitting. But I needed to stand to work at my computer (usually I’m demo-ing some software with faculty during our meetings, so I turn my big iMac screen so we can both see it as I’m talking with them). The person I was meeting with invariably felt like they needed to stand up, too. It made our interactions less personable and chatty. I noticed that they apologized often about ‘interrupting me,’ even if we had an appointment to meet together.

On Day four of my standing desk my left knee began to bother me, an IT-band issue, apparently. By Day 5 it pushed me into a chair more often–the tightness in my knee becoming more unbearable as the day wore on.

So the upshot of the experience is that I’m still unsure whether I’ll invest in a standing desk. I think it feels good to have a different workspace, especially one that gets me out of my desk chair. But I think the same types of problems that I have with sitting all day will also happen if I stand all day (perhaps even more so, since I’m standing on one organic leg and one bionic one).

What about you, have you experimented with a standing desk? If so, did you find that it worked well, or did you lose interest in it once the novelty wore off?

because it’s that time of year…

Since it’s almost V-Day, I’ve got romance on the brain…

Last year around this time, my friends helped me to create a list of criteria for a future partner.  It was a fun exercise to see what they hoped for me, to add a few of my own desires, and to comment when I think they missed the mark.

Based on my dating experiences since then, I’ve added a few things to my list:

  • I’d like my partner to be flexible and adaptable.  To be the kind of person that when you take a wrong turn when you’re heading somewhere, doesn’t panic or get angsty.  But who sees it as an opportunity to explore somewhere that neither of you had anticipated.
  • Enjoying good food is a must.  Having an adventurous palate and knowing one’s way around the kitchen is also pretty important.  Because I get so much pleasure from creating and eating food, I want a partner who can appreciate the effort that goes into preparing a meal, and who enjoys the subtleties of spice and fresh ingredients.
  • I’d like for my partner to be a naturally happy person, whose default mood tends toward the positive and who radiates enthusiasm.  While we all have our down days, I like being around people who feel hopeful, and for whom negative experiences are an exception rather than the norm.  They should smile often and easily, and even be prone to fits of occasional giggling.
  • I also want my partner to be passionate.  About their life, their work, their hobbies, their goals, and their future.  Ok, and a little passion for me should be somewhere in there, too  🙂

One thing that was a surprise to me this past year, was the realization that dating inside of the ivory tower isn’t a necessity–because for a long time I only imagined myself with another professor-type.  Since then I’ve learned that I spend so much time with other academics, it’s actually quite refreshing to get outside of that bubble.  But…on the flip side, I’ve found that some of the non-academic people that I’ve dated don’t like hanging out with intellectuals, or are intimidated by a group of friends who all have advanced degrees.  So I’d have to say that anyone I date that’s from outside that world, needs to also appreciate that my social circle tends to revolve around the university, and not find that too daunting.

This dating stuff has been quite a wild ride.  I’ve found some people who were “right” in all of my categories but for whom I had zero romantic attraction.  And then there were those who were so different from me that I didn’t even know what we find to talk about, but who made me so weak in the knees that I didn’t care much at all about the conversation.  And of course, I have found those that I was attracted to both mind and body (and what a delight).

I never expected to go through dating or courtship again after I settled on marrying John, so this has been totally unexpected phase of life…but also one that’s both more exciting and more satisfying than I could have ever imagined.

While I’m still not thrilled that my ex left me, I am glad that I get to choose a new partner now.  Especially being so much wiser and more practical than I was at age 18 when what was paramount in my future husband was that he was a faithful Mormon.

Previous Valentine’s Day posts