Where I've been, what I'm doing

Oh my goodness, dear readers, I have not forsaken thee. I apologize, blog, that you have gone a full week without an update. For shame!

Working several part-time and freelance gigs is exhausting. Ensuring I have some income, the bills are paid, the dog is cared for, and all the other nuances of life seem more complicated when I'm not going to ONE workplace for a set period of time... and getting a paycheck directly deposited into my account. Invoicing is another element that freelancers don't get paid for that, alas, must be done!

What has happened in the meantime?

I'm excited about the possibilities in store, even if none of them include a full-time job... yet. I'm working hard at accepting what I have, enjoying each day, figuring out what I really want, and pursuing only what I truly desire. That in itself takes more energy than I have on most days, but the allocation of my talent is my own responsibility and if I waste my time and energy doing things I don't like or wishing for things I don't work for, then I deserve what I get. I want to deserve what I get and earn it in the sense that I brush hands with others trying to earn it.

So here's the past week...

I've started kicking my own butt to get to my running group. Tuesday evenings at the track or designated hill (for the beloved hill repeats) are now a must. I have directed my boyfriend to demand that I go when I waver (because goodness knows that I always feel better after I go).

My eyes are closed, but I think I look pretty darn good for
having run seven miles then climbed 45 floors!

Last Saturday I also made it to the group run downtown. It's kind of an expensive long run for me if I don't have other plans in the city before/after it (it's 20 miles there, 20 back), but I went. I ran about seven miles.

After the run, I did the Fight for Air stair climb downtown. Holy moly, stair climbing is a horse of a different color when it comes to exercise... I definitely don't consider myself a stair athlete!

Last week I completed my first set of fifteen freelance articles for a new client. It was a little tough to complete them so quickly without being repetitive, but I did my very best and they were pleased. :)

In the past few days, I've made a few strategic purchases, both of which I will be reviewing in the next few months. Because I have been tutoring a Korean woman for almost a year now and she recently asked me to begin working with her very young daughter, I decided to get Rosetta Stone in Korean. I have some reservations about the program, considering that my background is in language teaching and I have some strong opinions on how people learn language (otherwise how could I teach?!); however, I decided that with the program's guarantee and my current available time that I had nothing to lose.

I also purchased a full month of the Arbonne Fit Kit detox from Becki at Fighting for Wellness. The kit includes protein shake mixes, chews, drink mixes, and a few other items, which accompany an altered diet in order to help the user determine what foods or food entities might be causing distress. I've had issues with food for quite a while now and I'm at a loss for what else to try. I feel uncomfortable no matter what I eat and I don't seem to have enough energy. I decided that I would try the Arbonne detox to try to narrow down some of my issues. Nonetheless, since my half marathon is coming up in just five weeks, I will wait until after the race to begin the detox. I don't want to change anything right now; it's too close to the race. Even if it's for the better, it could affect my running and I might not recuperate properly.

Finally, I started some seeds for my garden! I don't have all the seeds I want yet, so I don't have a full set. I do, however, have lettuce, lavender, lemon balm, shasta daisies, and broccoli planted in my spare room under a grow lamp. Hooray!

Get noun

The verbing of nouns is nothing new. This poem, which, according to this post, was originally published in the St. Paul Pioneer Press, provides myriad examples of the English language's morphology.

Did I lose you? Morphology happens every day, like when you make up a word by using parts of existing words. This is just a drop in the ocean compared to what English has been through over the hundreds of years of its linguistic development.

Today it seems we're verbing nouns at what some linguists find to be an alarming rate. Words like "PDFing," "texting," and "staffing" come from a PDF document, a text message, and a staff for a business/event. But these are now things we can also do.

Fascinating.

Without further ado, I present to you the Verbing of America, an unsigned poem.

Relativity in comparisons: perspective in the past

I've heard this quote about there only being four stories in the world, that we just tell them over and over with new characters in new places... but I never thought it was true. Recently, though, I can't help but think that it must be. At the very least, I have grown tired of media referencing past events without considering that current events have their own legs to stand on. It's frustrating when each new story is merely a comparison to an old one. Two examples in the news right now come to mind: NPR-gate and the Fukushima, Japan reactors = Chernobyl or Three Mile Island.

NPR-gate: If there's a scandal, it becomes Something-gate... a reference to Watergate, the scandal that led to President Nixon's resignation. The name came from the hotel where the wire-tapping scandal was born, not because of some actual gate (a hinged, removable barrier to an enclosure). It's unnerving how every single little scandal that pops up in the news these days becomes a "gate" of some sort... Links in that last sentence go to cry-gate, robo-gate, NPR-gate, and climate-gate (and all it took to find them was a Google News search for "gate scandal").

Is there not some more original way to state that something is scandalous? (For starters, how about calling it scandalous?) What were scandals called before Watergate happened? To what other pariah or sinister deed were they compared? While I'm certain there were scandals reported in the news prior to 1970, it seems we've latched on to the one in which a nation's elected leader voluntarily stepped down. Momentous, yes? A worthy label for each shocking incident thereafter? No. And no matter how you slice it (or write about it), the resignation of NPR's president and CEO is not on the same level as President Nixon's resignation. The story is interesting in its own light for various reasons, but the comparison to Watergate is too simplistic. This story, like others with unwaveringly popular "gate" suffixes, has its own legs and should be allowed to use them without the "gate" crutch.

Fukushima, Japan: And if there's some kind of nuclear problem on the horizon, it's a Chernobyl (Soviet Union, 1980) or a Three Mile Island (Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, 1979). (Even that link above includes a picture of Three Mile Island and a mention of Chernobyl in the headline. The saving grace for that article is a source who declares the past events are "very, very different from Japan's current situation.) Right now, the focus is on Fukushima, Japan. Poor Japan—they suffer the worst earthquake in their country's recorded history, endure a phenomenal tsunami, and manage to keep their nuclear reactors under control despite all that and a rising death toll as search parties canvas the islands, and all the news can do is repeat pictures and memories of other actual disasters.

But it's NOT a disaster (as of the writing of this blog post, 7:20 EST on 3/14/11) and I hope and pray, with the rest of the world, that it doesn't get to that point. I don't deny that there is significant danger involved with a damaged, nonfunctioning or malfunctioning nuclear reactor (let alone several reactors in such bad states). Commercial nuclear power hasn't quite earned its stay in the U.S. yet (though it is used more elsewhere in the world) so there are a lot of critics. There are always critics. But comparing a dangerous situation to past catastrophes is not exactly a boost of confidence. Nor do the comparisons let these life-changing situations stand on their own. Japan's current situation will never be Chernobyl or Three Mile Island. Those places are in other countries; heck, they're completely different continents! The situation is unique, the people handling it are different, the circumstances should be seen for what they are, not compared to something that seems familiar... just for the sake of making it familiar.

I think I just hit a nerve. Maybe that's the reason for the comparisons: they're familiar. We don't tend to like change or new things, as a human race, so we want to compare, to make things familiar, to prove to ourselves that we've seen this before and that we know how it will end (for better or worse) so we can prepare ourselves for that ending. Maybe we just need to tamp down our senses with references and comparisons so that we can get on with our lives instead of being caught up in the tragedies of the world, so much so that we can't think straight because our hearts go out to the Japanese people made homeless by forces of nature, searching for lost loved ones, fighting to keep their country's power sources safe and within reasonable control.

Naturally, everything is relative to everything else, meaning that something is only as good (or bad) as whatever it's being compared to. The beauty of similes and metaphors is that we need them to make sense of abstraction in our lives. What's sad is when they're overused to describe circumstances that would be better described in their own light.

It's like a curve on a grading scale when the is one kid who managed to get 100% on the test and screwed the curve for everyone else.

It's like eating a meal with no flavor and then going for dessert at a new place and declaring it the best dessert you've ever eaten.

It's like seeing the scandals and suffering in the news and sizing up the latest stories in accordance with similar older stories so that the latest feels more reasonable (or, depending on your perspective, blown out of proportion).

Yeah, that's what it's like. Only it's not. Because that is a comparison. Experience it for yourself so it's not a comparison, okay?

Boundaries in blogging and tweeting

I came to blogging at the latter end of its prime (2003) and came to tweeting late (last month). Since moving my blog, I've tried to reinvent myself as a blogger (a little, since who I was with Sugarpacket was not a bad thing!). But now that I am also tweeting, I'm having issues regulating myself.

Sometimes I read a great article, watch a video, or see something offline and think (as I have conditioned myself over years of careful blogging), "Wow, I should blog this!" Now, though, I have an internal battle... I wonder, "Should I tweet this or blog it? Can I do both? Will anyone read the blog if I tweet this? Should I blog it and then tweet my blog?" (And then I thank goodness that I'm not on Facebook and don't have that as a third option to consider for sharing my thoughts with the world... This conundrum is difficult enough!)

Am I only conflicted about whether to blog or tweet based upon my past history with blogging? I suspect this is part of the problem. My blog was always a personal dais, a blank slate of exploration in writing, a think-tank for scholastic endeavors, and a pseudo water cooler for discussions. Having to move my blog, having to begin again, was a dramatic (and somewhat melancholic) leap into the cold(er)-hearted world of online communication. I knew I was sheltered at blogs.setonhill.edu—I had a lot of control over my blog, I knew how things worked, I was given readership, and my expectations about how a blogosphere works were consistently met. Now, on the other side, I'm learning that my readership is essentially gone, it's up to me to build (or retain) readership, and the person I built to stand behind Sugarpacket doesn't matter to these readers because they may not know, want to know, or care to investigate who I am/was with that blog (despite this post being littered with links to it—ha!).

But at nearly the same time I moved my blog, I introduced myself to another medium for communication, one that I had been reluctant to adopt for several reasons. Now that I'm on Twitter, though, I'm seeing some of its merits. It's quick, just-in-time delivery of multimedia with limited effort, time, or dedication. Conversely, blogging takes a little longer, might not be as immediate as tweeting (especially since tweeting can be accomplished from a cell phone, which could be cumbersome at best for blogging), and requires, in this blogger's opinion, more effort, time, and dedication.

People used to do liveblogging of events. Now they livetweet (and clog up your Twitter timeline!). People used to post thoughtful blogs about articles or events. Now they tweet and retweet links to extend a massive reverberation of tweet-tweet-tweet across the globe.

What I don't like about tweeting? It seems a little more direct (in-your-face) than blogging. Tweets can't be edited (or I haven't figured out how to do that yet). Identity building appears to take a much longer time (or is there truly any identity construction taking place by piling up links and tidbits of conversations fit for fortune cookies?).

I still prefer blogging. Tweeting has its place, but I'm still learning how to carve out that place in my online life. I haven't quite figured out the balance or the boundaries between blogging and tweeting.