Thinking Travel

Tuesday: Back from vacation, I focus on getting caught up. With renewed energy for my projects, I look forward to diving back into things.

Wednesday: I’m packing up my cube and driving home in the middle of the day (along with numerous colleagues). What a difference a 5-minute meeting makes.

While I wasn’t surprised by the layoff (we knew they were coming), I was a bit shocked, if that makes any sense. It hurts and I’m sad, and that’s to be expected. But when I got the news I felt an overwhelming sense of peace and freedom, so I know this is going to be good transition.

I’m so grateful for my husband, family, and friends whose support made this sudden transition easier. I’m also grateful that I already have consulting projects and am in the process of launching a cool new collaborative thing (which will be the focus of one of my weeks in August)!

I did something very, very small this week that had a huge impact.

On Friday morning, the first day of my 4-day long weekend the first thing I did after getting out of bed was brew a cup of coffee, grab Fast Company and Better Homes & Gardens, and snuggle into a lawn chair.

I sat in the early morning sun and simply read and drank coffee. It was heavenly. Soooooo relaxing, soothing, and at the same time energizing. I sat out there reading for about an hour before getting started on my day. It was delicious and set the tone for a fab long weekend – one of relaxation and productivity.

This is a practice I will definitely continue!

As I type, people throughout the US Eastern time zone are watching the first hour of the Lost series finale.

I am not.

If I had a TV that picked up the ABC broadcast signal, I’d be on the couch glued to the TV like everyone else.

Alas, I do not have a TV that picks up the ABC broadcast signal. (I’m not even sure the 14-year old mini-TV that I bought during my first year of grad school even qualifies as a TV anymore. I mean, Aaron’s computer screen is bigger than my old TV.)

Anyway. I’ve been watching Lost since the first episode in fall 2004. I was staying with a grad school friend in Michigan when we channel surfed to the pilot. We were hooked. I lean towards the obsessed side of things when it comes to Lost (by that I mean reading Lost message boards and theorizing with colleagues, not taking notes during the show or plastering my home office walls with theories like some really obsessed Lost fans), and I’ll be sad when I no longer have new episodes to theorize about. But I’m also kinda relieved that the show will be over and I can stop spending so much time thinking about a freaking TV show.

Tomorrow, as soon as we get home from work, Aaron and I will settle into the Lost series finale. Even though we can’t watch the final episode until tomorrow, I’m counting this as my thing for this week because it officially airs tonight (right now! oh, I can’t even think about it). Maybe next week’s thing will have to be making it through my first week with no new Lost to look forward to. Lol.

Last week my husband celebrated a birthday. A big birthday. One of those important entering-a-new decade birthdays. And since it was on a Friday, I planned fun times from Friday afternoon through Sunday for my fabulous husband.

Since I’ve put myself under strict orders to write and publish these posts in 10 minutes or less so I’ll just post the damn thing already, I won’t go into details about the entire weekend. But I will say that there were several new things in this weekend. One was going to the Carolina Inn for afternoon tea. Another was eating a late-night dinner on Guglhupf’s beautiful patio. The third was trying all sorts of new kinds of cheese, and actually liking most of them.

Sometimes I start feeling kinda guilty that my things are too easy, too fun. I think I should do things that are hard and really challenge me. I DO do hard things, all the time. But since I actually feel guilty that I’m doing fun things, part of me thinks I should do even more fun things each week.

Over the weekend I noticed how many times I wanted to do something spontaneous (jump into the ocean even though I was fully clothed or ride around the beach town on a tandem bike) but talked myself out of it (don’t jump into the ocean, you’ll just get wet and cold and sandy! don’t rent a tandem bike for $10/hour, just walk for free!). I don’t think I need to jump on every spontaneous thing that rolls through my brain, but it really bothers me that I so quickly talk myself out of things that could lead to new experiences and insights. Hmmm. I need to work on this.

Here’s a re-cap of my things for the past, eh, several weeks:

Week 5 :: Connect
I tend to be more of  a lurker than a participator in online spaces, so my goal was to make a concerted effort to connect with people – when it felt natural – in an online group I joined. I’m happy to report that I connected…and connected…and connected. And I actually enjoyed it.

Week 6 :: Celebrate 12 wonderful years with my husband
February 13th is the day my husband I met, 12 years ago. We often celebrate the 13th more than Valentine’s Day. So for this week, I decided to make celebrating 12 years my new thing. (12 years! omg! One entire decade + 2 years! This is freaking me out a little.)

Week 7 :: Tell someone who means a whole heck of a lot to me just how heck of  a lot they mean to me.
I did this, and I’m so glad I did. I should probably do this more often.

Week 8 :: Coordinate a webinar.
Due to freaky North Carolina snow, the day-long workshop I was coordinating at work had to be canceled. I suggested doing a webinar the following weekend instead. We (me, my colleague, and the presenter) then very quickly learned how to pull off a pretty fantastic webinar, and now I’m really looking forward to doing more. I heart technology.

Week 9 :: San Antonio
This week my thing was to go to San Antonio, Texas for the ASCD education conference. I’ve never been to ASCD or San Antonio.

The good: my session got great reviews from the awesome educators who attended, and I enjoyed strolling along the Riverwalk and seeing the Alamo with a colleague who attended the conference with me.

The bad: the lack of veg options. At one restaurant I asked if they had anything vegetarian on their menu and the waiter laughed.  At the conference center I had to break down and eat meat twice (I’m not 100% veg so it was ok).

The ugly: getting up at 4am to fly home. Why do I book 6:30am flights?!

Week 10 :: Read a book. For fun!
On my super-early morning flight back to Raleigh, I relaxed in my business class seat (hooray for upgrades!) and read a fiction book my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas. She thought it would be a fun book to read on a flight, and she was right. I really need to read more fun books and not just academic-y stuff.

Week 11 & 12 :: ???

I know I did things during these two weeks but for the life of me I can’t remember what. If I ever remember, I’ll update this post.

Week 13 :: Unplug and hang with visiting family.
Aaron’s brother and family visited us over the Easter weekend. It was fab-u-lous to unplug for nearly 2 days to just hang out, eat, and enjoy the suddenly summer weather.

Week 14 :: Bike to campus and experiment in the kitchen.
It actually felt like spring this weekend, rather than mid-summer like last weekend, so biking 30 minutes to campus to hear a tech entrepreneur panel discussion was both relaxing and energizing. Aaron often bikes to campus for work but Saturday was the first time for me.

On Sunday I made a lets-try-to-use-up-the-random-things-in-the-fridge-before-going-out-of-town dinner of salad and roasted fingerling potatoes, garlic, and other veggies. I was inspired by the roasted fingerling potatoes Aaron and I love at Glass Half Full, and as I realized this evening, they’re extremely easy to roast. Just slice in half, toss with olive oil, sea salt, rosemary, and pepper and roast in a 500 degree oven for about 20 minutes. Yum.

Week 15 :: Sunday afternoon in Spokane

I went out to Spokane, WA for the SIETAR-USA conference. I couldn’t get a flight out until 7pm so after enjoying breakfast with conference friends I spent 5 lovely hours walking all over downtown Spokane. It was sunny and warm and just simply relaxing to walk along the river, sit in the park, and spend a few hours by myself after a busy conference. That will be an afternoon I remember.

Week 16 :: Sit in the last row of a tiny plane with propellers without freaking out at all

Oh man, I really need to just click “post”. Anyhoo, the only flight I could find back to Raleigh was a crazy Spokane-Portland-Atlanta-Raleigh overnight flight. Not ideal, but ok. Until I realized that my Spokane-Portland leg was with Horizon in a teeny tiny prop plane. Ugh.

I used to love flying. And then it absolutely terrified me. So much so that I’d throw up in the airport bathroom just before boarding (ok, I only did that once). I could always will myself onto the plane but I was miserable from take-off to landing. Tiny planes were the worst. Especially sitting in the back of tiny planes with propellers.

My Spokane-Portland flight confirmed once and for all that I’m longer afraid of flying. I sat in the last row of a the prop-plane and didn’t freak out once. How nice it is to let go of that irrational fear!

Week 17 :: Buy a MacBookPro

I took the plunge last night and bought a MacBookPro. I’d considered switching from PC to Mac for the last year or so but couldn’t in good conscience fork over a paycheck until my Lenovo gave me good reason to chuck it in the recycle bin.

Well, 2 weeks ago my Lenovo slipped out of my hand and fell like 2 feet to the carpeted floor and broke into a million pieces. Ok, it didn’t break into a million pieces, but it did break, as in the screen shattered and the hard drive died (good-bye Argentina videos that I’d finally organized but forgot to back up!).

Fortunately, the updated MacBookPros came out about a week later. After much deliberation (Mac or PC? Mac or PC? Mac or PC? Mac or PC?) I decided on a 13 inch MacBookPro. It feels strangely familiar and foreign at the same time (a MacBook got me through senior year of college, one year of teaching abroad, and a Master’s Degree but since the late 90′s it was a PC that graced my lap). As soon as I remember that the command key = the control key, the more I think I’m going to like it.

Ok. I’m going to click post now.

I have a lot of ideas. Projects, travel, businesses for me, businesses for Aaron…lots and lots of ideas. But I bet there are people who know me who wouldn’t guess that about me.

My problem isn’t coming up with ideas. My problem: believing in my ideas.  Telling people about my ideas. And taking action on my ideas.

Reasons? Oh, there are many. But I don’t want to go into them. I’d rather get out of them.

So. Over the weekend I read Seth Godin’s Brainwashed: Seven Ways to Reinvent Yourself e-book promo for his new book (which I haven’t read) and saw his list of “seven levers available for anyone (like you) in search of reinvention”:

1. Connect
2. Be generous
3. Make art
4. Acknowledge the lizard
5. Ship
6. Fail
7. Learn

I’m not really trying to reinvent myself. Rather, I’m working on getting the ideas out of my head so I can take action so I can achieve my goals/dreams and stop talking Aaron’s head off about all of the ideas I have that I never do anything about.

I like this list of 7 levers and thought they’d be good things for the next 7 weeks.

I’m starting with connect.

The easy: I just joined a thing that will help me take action on my ideas. I’ll have lots of people to connect with, and I think it will be a supportive environment.

The hard: I tend to be a lurker more than a participator. When I’m figuring something out, I prefer to mull it over on my own or possibly talk with someone I know very, very well, as opposed to throwing out half-baked ideas to a bunch of people I don’t know.

My commitment: I will make a concerted effort to connect with strangers every day in this new thing I joined. Instead of lurking, I will participate above my normal level of participation. I know I’ll make more progress on putting my ideas into action that way.

I may or may not tweet about my progress on this thing throughout the week. We’ll see. But I always welcome accountability, supportive comments, and hearing about your own projects for 2010!

As I predicted, last week was a crazy, crazy week. As in very, very busy. But several great things happened:

• I was interviewed by @CindyKing and got to talk about CulturallyTeaching.
• We had an awesome turn out at our January SIETAR-NC event.
• Chapel Hill got 5+ inches of snow. It’s been a beautiful weekend.

And I did my week 4 thing: I cooked a new vegetarian meal.

Here’s what I made: baked tofu with mashed potatoes and mushroom gravy. I’ve never marinated and baked tofu before but it actually turned out well.

Next time I make it, though, I’ll broil it because even after 50 minutes at 375 the tofu looked as white and squishy as when it went into the oven. But after about 7-10  minutes under the broiler the tofu finally browned and the edges got crispy.

It was filling, satisfying, and will become one of my veggie comfort food meals.

For the past 6 or so weeks I’ve eaten mostly vegetarian. My thing for this week is simple, and hopefully delicious: cook something new and veg for dinner during the week.

The easy: I want to do this. Wanting to do something makes doing it much easier.

The hard: My week is going to be crazy, crazy busy. I don’t often cook when I have crazy, crazy busy weeks.

My commitment: Go grocery shopping for the ingredients before the week begins.

I’ll tweet about my progress throughout the week. And I welcome accountability, supportive comments, and hearing about your own projects for 2010!

Wow. Going to bed at the same time each night – and before midnight! – was awesome. The week I committed to doing this I actually felt rested instead of feeling like a jet-lagged zombie all day. Go figure.

I planned to continue going to bed by 11pm after finishing this thing for week 3 — but I fell of the bedtime wagon almost immediately.

My excuse: So. Much. Work. To. Do.

So I let myself stay up late to work on projects. And wouldn’t you know it, I started feeling like a jet-lagged zombie again.

Go figure.

I nearly spit out my coffee laughing when I read this (from a blogger’s post about her battle over bedtime):

And there’s a big piece in all of this about not wanting to miss anything. I’m like the little kid—I was that little kid—who wails, “Do I have to go to bed? Can’t I pleeeeeeze stay up longer? When I grow up, I’m going to stay up as late as I want!”

This woman so gets me.

I battle my nocturnal inner child every single night. I know I should go to sleep but I let my nocturnal self sweet-talk my rational self into working a little longer, watching something on Netflix, looking for Lost spoilers, catching up on Facebook.

Then, at 6:15 the next morning my rational self wants to whack my nocturnal self. My nocturnal self promises to go to bed early that very night. Later that very night my nocturnal self sweet-talks my rational self into…you get the idea.

When I get down to it, I think forcing myself to go to bed at the same reasonable time every night makes me feel like an adult. And there’s a big part of me that doesn’t want to accept that I am, in fact, an adult.

Regardless, I’ve got to get over this. And if I’m honest with myself, I feel creative late at night, but I’m most productive early in the morning.

So. All this to say: 11pm = my new bedtime.

My thing for last week was to learn how to do something new on lynda.com while I still have access to it. I’m happy to report that I learned about screencasting and Illustrator.

I don’t yet have screencasting software so I couldn’t actually create one, but that’s ok because for now I’m satisfied with seeing what goes into making one. But I did play around with Illustrator ’cause Aaron has it on his laptop. Over the weekend we spent a couple hours watching lynda.com videos and creating a square badge/button type thing for CulturallyTeaching.com. I’d show you the badge/button thing but it’s just one piece of a larger web project I’m working on over the next few months.

So, week 2: mission accomplished. On to week 3!