In personal on
23 December 2010 with 2 comments
It’s apparent that I’m skipping the prompts I don’t like right? If they don’t resonate with me at all I’m not forcing myself to write something.
December 16: Friendship
How has a friend changed you or your perspective on the world this year? Was this change gradual, or a sudden burst?
(Author: Martha Mihalick)
I saw a lot of changes in friendships this year including the blossoming of a few friendships into some of the most important relationships in my life. How has this changed my perspective on the world? It’s expanded my capacity for love and understanding.
One of these friends loves like nobody’s business. She tells me she loves me, she thinks of me and does all sorts of nice things for me. One is so stoic she can be confused for being emotionally distant. And the third is so fierce in all the best ways that sometimes I’m just in awe of how she makes her way in the world.
They are very different women, they relate to people very differently. I love them all fervently but have had to learn to respect how they interact with the world, with me and with emotions and affection.
For example I’m all out “I love you, give me a hug!” all the time. That’s just the way God made me I swear. That doesn’t really work with Ms. Stoic. Showing restraint, withholding affection is hard but it has given me the opportunity though to channel my love into other outlets. I did something for Ms. Stoic that is important for her physical well being. It took planning, time and not a little money. She couldn’t really say thank you or even talk about the gift/gesture until one day a couple weeks later she said with great softness and true wonder in her voice “I’m still amazed that you would do something for me, that someone would want to take care of me.” It made me feel like the gift I gave was the best gift she’d ever received. It wasn’t the deep hug and squeals of joy that I confess are like jolts of happy drugs to my emotional system and it didn’t induce euphoria but it did give me a feeling of deep satisfaction that I had done something good. So yeah, expanded capacity for giving love in different ways and being more understanding of how people can and want to receive love.
In personal on
17 December 2010 with 1 comment
December 11 – 11 Things.
What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?
(Author: Sam Davidson)
I don’t have plans for how I’m getting rid of all this stuff so I’ll just throw in when I do.
1. Extreme Self-Doubt
I have no idea how to go about losing this. It permeates so many things in my life.
2. All these books on my shelves that I won’t read again.
I gave away a lot of books before we moved last year but not enough. I need to go through with brutal honesty and decide if 1) I’ll really read it again 2) if I’m sentimentally attached enough to keep it anyway and if not give it away. Even though this house is bigger than our other house I feel a bit disorganized right now and not having overflowing shelves and actually have space to put things on will help i think.
3. Emotional drama
Though the exact opposite is true it feels like I’ve courted emotional drama over the past couple years and I’d really like to avoid it in 2011. I’ll let you know if I figure out how to do that.
4. The last of the credit card debt
We racked it back up with moving and remodeling the bathroom last year. I’ve taken care of it all but one card. By this time next year I will have paid this credit card off and paid off B’s car. Then it will just be the house and med school loans. That will be an achievement.
5. Excess weight I am once again packing around
5b. But if I struggle losing that excess weight I want to lose the guilt/shame/self-loathing I feel over having it again
7. Such a strong need for external emotional validation.
I want to be loved sure, everybody does, but I have this hangup where sometimes when I know, I know in my head that I am loved, I don’t feel it. There’s a heart/mind disconnect I need to work on. And I need to work on better recognizing and accepting love in the different forms that people give. It’s a little bit cheesy but I read this book about the “languages of love” and it was actually helpful getting me to realize what makes me really feel loved. What makes me feel loved and what people do because they want to show me love aren’t always the same things and I have to just deal with it and take what people can give. That’s a hard one.
8. Kitchen gadgets I don’t use
We’re going to have some custom cabinetry built to get better organized. This will help figure out what needs to stay and what needs to be donated.
9. Guilt
Separate from weight guilt I’ve got some emotional baggage guilt. My dear friend Bonnie said to me recently “you are truly Jewish, the guilt will get you every time.” I need to work on that.
10. Art on the shelves and on the table etc.
I can’t help myself, I have a gift for finding great, affordable prints. Then they sit here and sit here because it’s crazy expensive to get stuff framed. I’m going to watch this video on framing your art from 20×200 for some tips for DIY and if that doesn’t work I’m just going to have to commit to maybe getting one piece framed each month.
11. My car
I’m not letting go of cars in general but it’s time for this one to go. It’s been hard for me to even think about spending the money on getting a new car but after enough months of a steady job and the plan to move to full time at that job in January I feel confident that now is the time. So I’m going to start researching with the plan to buy by at least my birthday. If you’ve got a car recommendation let’s hear it!
In personal on
16 December 2010 tagged work with 2 comments
December 10 – Wisdom
Wisdom. What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?
Author: Susannah Conway
I think the wisest decision I made this year was to accept a job offer.
It had been a long time since I’d done a real “day job” (I’m not even counting that last debacle) and even longer still since I’d felt fulfilled in any way by a day job. Doing my own thing professionally worked well for me- mostly. Varied work, interesting clients, short term projects, working from home, my time and my schedule was my own. But the money wasn’t as great as it could have been, or more accurately the unpredictable cash flow was a challenge. And the “always be on the grind to get more business” hustle certainly took its toll.
So when the guys who are now my bosses approached me I was at first very hesitant. I dug their vision for Music WithMe though and they were open to all of my weirdo conditions for taking the job (flex time, work from home part time, off on all Jewish holidays and Shabbat, etc). And they promised they didn’t do any of the crazy office politics bullshit that had made previous jobs so unbearable for me. They’ve lived up to that promise by the way. One of the most surprising things about my job is how much I actually enjoy going into the office. Everyone at the company is a genuinely nice person and there is no bullshit office politics or passive aggressive memos or “it’s not my job” task shirking or any of that. It’s a good place to work filled with good people. So I enjoy going there and doing my work in proximity to those people.
The work is both challenging and interesting. My bosses (seem) to trust me a great deal and they listen to my opinions on things and (again, seem) to like the work I’ve done and they never, ever micromanage any of us. Bosses take a lesson: trusting and empowering your employees makes them really want to do good work for you.
This job has been really good for me both personally and financially. It’s good for my sense of self worth to be doing interesting work on a product whose future I believe in. It’s good to be working for people who value and trust my opinion, my knowledge and my skills. Financially it’s been really nice to have a consistent cash flow. Really nice. So nice in fact that I’m finally feeling secure enough to make one big purchase that is long overdue (a new-to-me car) and one big purchase that will make me really happy (new stove! electric oven with a gas cooktop). And it’s made us comfortable enough financially, as a family, to do yuppy things like hire a cleaning lady that boost happiness and reduce stress in serious magnitudes for both B and I.
So yeah, I think the wisest decision I made this year was accepting a job offer.
In Uncategorized on
10 December 2010 with no comments
December 7 – Community.
Where have you discovered community, online or otherwise, in 2010? What community would you like to join, create or more deeply connect with in 2011?
(Author: Cali Harris)
Well if I can be a little bit full of myself I’ll answer this one with a community that I built instead of one that I discovered. Over the last year Let Them Tweet Cake, a tech meetup geared toward women that I founded, has really started to grow. It’s grown in number of attendees and in number of events. And it’s grown in the passion that people have for the group. Last month a group of attendees asked, nay practically demanded, that I started having
For 2011 I'd like to move the Let Them Tweet Cake community forward. I don't yet know exactly how to do that. I'd love the group to be more involved with do gooder community activities. I'd love to develop a sort of women in tech mentoring program. I'd love to do an interview podcast featuring women talking about tech tools and gadgets that they love. I'd like to grow the Let Them Tweet Cake audience and diversify it over age, race and socioeconomic background.
Basically I'd like Let Them Tweet Cake to be a force for more good in the world. Like I said, I'm not sure exactly yet how to do that. Should Let Them Tweet Cake be a more formal organization? A non-profit so we can get grant money and the like to fund programs? Should we host one day conferences? I don’t know. I want to figure it out and at least get the ball rolling on making it happen in 2011.
The other community thing I’d like to focus on in 2011 features a subset of my chosen family. We’re nerds so we connect on the intertubes. We’re writers so we connect via letters and blog posts. We’re photographers so we connect with Flickr and Twitpics. In 2011 though I want more in-person connecting. I want more of us exploring cities together, I want more photowalks, I want more laughs over drinks and hugs right before late ass bedtimes. I want more serious conversations over brunch and nerdy ones over drinks. I want us in a cabin in Vermont enjoying the foliage in the Fall and then sipping bourbon hot chocolate by the fireplace.
My friend S. goes on two vacations a year with his very tight knit group of friends. It’s just a given that every spring and every fall they’re going to get together. When on one vacation they start planning the next because it’s just going to happen. I want that for us. I want us to make it happen.
In Uncategorized on
7 December 2010 with no comments
December 6 – Make.
What was the last thing you made? What materials did you use? Is there something you want to make, but you need to clear some time for it?
(Author: Gretchen Rubin)
The last thing I made was a cake. A cake that was supposed to be a tiramisu cake but I didn’t read the recipe fully to see that it needed to chill for three hours before serving. So a last minute change up was required. Tiramisu cake became butter cake with chocolate sour cream icing. Basically it was a cake and icing combination that I threw as many dairy ingredients into as possible (milk, butter, sour cream, buttermilk). The couple who were having us over for dinner keep strict kosher. Two dishes, two sets of pots and pans, never ever mix meat and dairy. Since B and I keep a vegetarian home they usually serve meat when I’m coming over for dinner (meat on the table means all the vegetables are without dairy and thus safe for vegan B). When they host us I always make dessert. Since most of the time it’s a meat meal it has made me seriously step up my vegan baking game. This time though we were having latkes and Mrs. Z’s latke recipe includes a little milk. Thus a dairy dessert was in order and much excitement ensued.
Years ago I wrote a maudlin short story about taking such care in baking a cake and putting emotion and love into every ingredient and every step of the baking process. The point, in the story, was to shower affection upon someone who was uncomfortable with traditional forms of affection and emotional earnestness. I feel this way nearly every time I bake these days. It’s not that everyone is uncomfortable with affection it’s that I’m more emotionally honest and affectionate than I know what to do with and I need to channel all that love. This is the case with the Z family. Well actually, I’d say they are a little less comfortable with outward signs of love and affection than I am comfortable with (hugs are our friends!) so in particular I do try to infuse everything I make for them with extra emotion. As silly as it is to say I want them to feel loved when they eat a cake I made for them.
Over the past year and a half this family has become really important to me. I’d go so far as to call them part of my family but see the above note about them being less comfortable with affection than I am. It all started at a Passover seder. Two years ago we were all invited to a seder. Mrs. Z’s father, 98 at the time, and I sat beside each other and that was the beginning of one of the most important relationships in my life. When he is here in town we have breakfast together every Thursday, I bring him coffee and eat with him at kiddush. When he is back in Chicago I send him letters every week and speak with him on the phone every Shabbat. At the seder though I was nervous because Mr. Z is, well, he’s a little intimidating, and Mrs. Z is amazingly smart and interesting. Prior to the seder I don’t think I’d ever spoken with either of them. Mrs. Z and I share the same Hebrew name, Miriam, and she had brought a tambourine (it was a very musical seder) that was hand painted with Miriam dancing and playing the tambourine. Mrs. Z gave it to me to play during the evening and said, with such kindness “I’m just so glad to see you here.” The rest as they say, is something like history. Now Mrs. Z and her dog walk to our house once or twice a week and Grace I do the same to their house. We have spent every Jewish holiday with them in one capacity or another for almost a solid year now. Having a family to celebrate the holidays with is a wonderful feeling. Having something akin to a new family is a wonderful feeling as well. Obvious that’s not a slight on my family of origin, just an acknowledgement that I need a little more love and family in my life than that standard lineup comes with. Call me greedy, call me selfish, call me lucky.
So yeah, I made them a cake and it was a delicious dessert after an amazing dinner of latkes and homemade applesauce and it was a happy Hanukkah.
In personal on
5 December 2010 with no comments
All my nerd people are doing Reverb 10 and I’m nothing if not a follower so let me jump in here a little late.
December 5 – Let Go.
What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?
(Author: Alice Bradley)
I struggled for many months to let go of a relationship, a friendship, that had run its course. Then, over one cup of coffee, it was done. The months the relationship languished were difficult. The truth is though I wasn’t overly sad about the relationship ending because I have a really good pragmatic, self-defense mechanism. Meaning when my heart knows, it knows and I just move on. The months were difficult though because I was anxious about the potential for “drama” that the collapse of the relationship could cause.
After several months we met in person at a coffee shop. It was awkward and uncomfortable and ultimately very illuminating. While I hadn’t been terribly sad about the end of the relationship I think I had been hopeful that things might turn out different than the way I knew they were going to. And actually they did turn out a bit different, just not in any way I could have anticipated. The details of the difference aren’t important but what I do think is important though is this: the difference was painful, it cut straight to my heart but I maintained my kindness toward the other party. I didn’t lash out, I didn’t try to hurt as I had been hurt, in fact I tried to extend an additional kindness. I feel good about that.
When the coffee cups were empty and we, separately, left the cafe it was done. The relationship is done and I have let go. Let go of hope for the friendship to be revived, let go of sadness that a friendship has ended, let go of bitterness and hurt feelings. Now, instead, I can look back and be grateful that for a few years this was a good friendship that added happiness and meaning to my life.
In personal on
6 November 2010 with no comments
My home office is a wreck of a place currently. It’s in need of one of those emergency organization rescue shows to swoop in and make it better. Since that’s not going to happen I’ve been slowly going through the piles of stuff I’ve let accumulate. I’m getting rid of some stuff (ok, I’m trying to get rid of some stuff, attachment is difficult) and putting things where they actually should be instead of where I’ve just pitched them. Under one mountain of stuff I found the journal I was writing in most frequently during…”the incident.”
It is so interesting to read your old journals, particularly journals that were written during times of great emotional distress. What’s most interesting about this particular journal isn’t the “woe is me” parts of it but instead the parts where I was writing about trying to figure things out, specifically trying to figure things out to get better.
Though I’m nowhere near where I was at the time of “the incident” I’m not great right now either. That hole inside me that seemed mostly filled up and forgotten for a while has made its presence known again. So finding this journal right now is an auspicious stroke of serendipity.
There are four journal entries that seem most apt for me to revisit their subject matter now.
Figuring Out What Success Looks Like
1. More financial stability
2. Contribute more to the good of the world
I need to feel connected and that my life is meaningful. I need to feel that I’m not just part of something but that I’m part of many somethings; many lives.
Part one of this topic is an area that I’m actually doing really well in. A few months ago a job opportunity came to me rather unexpectedly. I hesitated to take it but now I’m really glad that I did. My bosses, the company’s founders, are good, ethical people who truly want to create excellent products. Yeah of course it’s a business and they want to make money but they want to make money by making a good product that adds value to the customer’s experience. That impresses the heck out of me and inspires me to want to do a good job for them. And I really enjoy the work. I don’t want to be too over dramatic but I can’t think of many jobs that would be more perfectly suited for me. It’s a small company with good people building tools at the intersection of music, the web, mobile devices and social media. I get to help people with their technical problems, talk about music a lot, write about music and technology, help plot the course of growth and development for my company’s tools and spend time researching what’s going on in that sweet spot where music and technology meet. And my bosses are very cool about flex time and telecommuting. What is perhaps most shocking though is how much I actually enjoy going into the office. I like being around my colleagues and splitting my time half and half between the company’s office and my home office (with a good amount of coffee shop time thrown in) is awesome. It’s weird that some projects I can do from either location but some tasks I can really only get into the groove of if I’m in the right place. So yeah, financial stability/job is good.
The second part I’m not doing as well in. I feel like I’m spinning my wheels a little bit in my do-gooder efforts. I don’t feel like I’ve had a real public service success in a while. “Let Them Tweet Cake” is still going strong but it needs to be better. I need to make it better for the women who come (better content, better networking, more diverse attendees) and I need to make it better for the community (I’ve got to come up with a community service project that we can actually make happen).
That being said my monthly visit to the bubbes in the retirement community is still a highlight in my life.
Happiness Activities (this exercise came from a book but I can’t remember which one)
1. Expressing gratitude
2. Practicing kindness
3. More engaging activities
4. Committing to goals
5. Religion
1 & 2 I’m doing pretty well with. Writing thank you notes is one of my most favored activities in life so I’ve got that one covered. I very selfishly like being kind to people because when I’m kind to people I love and it makes them happy that makes me happy. That’s actually a little bit of a stumbling block as well though. Someone can be appreciative of a gift or gesture but not be emotionally moved by it. I don’t perform acts of kindness because I need someone to be grateful to me but when the pure functional benefit of a grand gesture is appreciated but no real emotion is inspired I get far more wounded than I should be. I’m sure a psychoanalysis of this would find that I’m far too needy for emotional connection. Whatever.
Number 3 is an area that I definitely need to work on. I am less engaged with the world around me and I can’t gear myself up to be more engaged. Actually that’s not quite true. My job is making me be a bit more engaged with the world professionally but on a personal level I’m kind of in my own personal bat-cave more than I should be.
Number 4 will get addressed below.
Number 5 almost goes without saying. As bad as things can get with me they’d be 50 times worse if I didn’t have my religion and religious community to lean on.
Goals
1. Read Torah
2. Health goal that I’m not going to say out loud on the internet
3. Buy a house
4. Be better
I thought this was stupid when I first read it but in the end having concrete goals to work toward was actually really rewarding. Off these four goals the last one was far too mushy to mean anything, one I have utterly failed to reach and the other two I accomplished quite quickly after putting together this list initially.
Reading Torah is an ongoing challenge because it’s different and hard every time you do it. I haven’t done it since Sukkot so it’s probably time to sign up to do it again. To take the challenge up a notch though I should probably ask for a longer portion or even perhaps chant a Haftorah.
In the past few months I’ve made progress toward the health goal but not nearly enough. It makes me beat myself up a lot.
We bought a house. There are still lots of little projects to do around the house but none of them have the heft or give the emotional satisfaction of “buying a house.”
Trying to look at this objectively I’d say I need to focus on goal 1 (read Torah more often, do it better, chant a Haftorah) and then aggressively look for goals that excite me in the areas of learning/education, creative endeavors and relationship building. Wow, I just kind of pulled those three areas out of thin area, which means I’m probably just bullshitting trying to make it sound like I’m going to set goals and work toward them instead of going deeper within myself. Well, at least I caught myself and called myself out on the bullshit.
How would I like to be remembered
I’d like to be remembered as someone who tried hard to make Louisville even better and who worked to support Louisville’s unique culture.
I’d like to be remembered as someone who contributed to and positively impacted the Jewish community in some way.
I’d like to be remembered as someone who tried and succeeded in some very small measure to make the world a better place.
These three all still hold. If I were hit by a bus tomorrow I don’t think I’d be remembered for either of these three things so I guess that means I’ve got a lot of work to do.
In personal on
5 October 2010 with 1 comment
I won’t lie and say I remembered all on my own. It was Jason’s strong return to blogging that made me sweep up the cobwebs and dust around here. Also I’ve got a content creation itch going on right now. I love all the stuff I share on Tumblr and elsewhere but I found myself being irritated at a report that said Facebook users create 80 pieces of content a week where content is defined as shared links, etc. Dude, I’ll share a link as fast as anybody but that does not meet any weak ass definition of creating content. If I’m going to whine about that I better step up to the plate and do a little personal content creation of my own.
In Judaism, conversion, personal on
23 March 2010 with no comments
On the Hebrew calendar the eighth of Nisan began last night at sunset. That means, again according to the Hebrew calendar, it’s been exactly one year since the big dunk. Even though the year has gone by quickly it seems like it’s been forever. It just feels like me=Jew has just always been.
My rabbi never, ever, ever calls me Michelle. He always calls me Miriam and it feels right. It feels like there was this piece of me missing my whole life until I found my place in the tribe, the religion and the community. I didn’t lose any pieces of myself, I’m still a Southern girl who grew up on a farm, I’m still a reader, a baker, a geek, sarcastic by nature, I’m still in love with Louisville, I’m still Michelle, I’m still me. The addition of Miriam just made me…more me.
A great deal of my life and my time revolve around my shul*. Services, volunteer projects, even actual paid work and I couldn’t be happier about it. It’s the place I’m meant to be and I’m lucky I found it.
Thank you for your love and support while I found my way here and for your continued love and support once I got to where I was going.
*And possibly even more time soon, I’ve been asked to lead the morning minyan once a week. I’m not sure I’m ready to do that but I’m thinking about it.
In recipes on
17 February 2010 with 1 comment
I Twittered about how good this currently smells cooking in my crockpot and a couple people asked for the recipe, so here you go:
No Hurry Vegetable Curry
1 tablespoon peanut oil (I used canola)
2 large carrots, sliced on a diagonal
1 medium yellow onion chopped
3 Garlic Cloves minced
2 tablespoons curry powder
1 teaspoon ground coriander
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 large Yukon Gold potatoes peeled and diced (I did not peel)
8 ounces green beans, end trimmed and cut into 1-inch pieces
1 15.5 ounce can chickpeas, drained and rinsed
1 14.5 ounce can diced tomatoes, drained
2 cups vegetable stock
1/2 cup frozen green peas, thawed
1/2 cup canned unsweetened coconut milk
Salt
1. Heat the oil in a large skillet over medium eat. Add the carrots and onion, cover and cook until softened, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic, curry powder, coriander and cayenne, stirring to coat
2. Transfer the vegetable mixture to 4 quart slower cooker. Add the potatoes, green beans, chickpeas, tomatoes and stock; cover and cook on Low for 6-8 hours.
3. Just before serving, stir in the peas and coconut milk and season with salt. Taste to adjust the seasonings.
From Fresh from the Vegetarian Slow Cooker by Robin Robertson
