Adventures of the Former Elginista

Memories don’t always present themselves as important as they’re happening. Rather, as time passes and you gain distance from the event, you start to realize what was really important in the greater scheme of things.

That’s why today’s #reverb10 prompt intrigued me:

5 Minutes: Imagine you will completely lose your memory of 2010 in five minutes. Set an alarm for five minutes and capture the things you most want to remember about 2010.

I don’t yet know what was really important in 2010. Sure, there are big things, but which of the little moments will I come to treasure as time passes by?

Hence, this challenge:

Decisions. I remember the moments I made big decisions. Sand squishing between my toes in Coronado in February. Holding an acceptance letter in hand as I stood on my front porch and opened the mail one stifling August day, backpack still heavy on my back.

Accomplishment. I’ll treasure those moments finishing my very first 5k, and I’ll always remember the Cross Country Challenge, sliding down a snow- and ice-slicked hill on my ass, loving the freedom of it.

Worry and uncertainty. There were a lot of worrisome moments, when my company was acquired, when I wasn’t sure about grad school, when I willed myself to land on my feet after a breakup. But they pushed me to work harder and see things for what they were.

And so many breezes. Warm breezes on a sticky summer night, escaping the air conditioned cocoon, flopping a blanket in the grass of the backyard, lying quietly and stargazing, when all was right in the world. The first really cold wind of fall in October, when I realized one of the best summers ever was over.

The ticking of the clock, so many evenings when my house, finally quiet after too much TV for too long, the gentle hum of the whirrings of the house itself – the furnace, the dryer, the snoring cat.

The taste of the couple good tomatoes from my very first real garden, paired with fresh basil from the same land, picked barefoot for lunch one day while working at home. I stood in the middle of the backyard and wrapped the cherry tomatoes in basil leaves and bit in, letting the juice dribble down my chin.

The freedom of more working from home, of not working under those horrible fluorescent lights that give me a headache. Working while the cat curls up in my lap and purrs.

Christmas lights and my stained glass lamps casting soft light around the living room while I lounged on the new couch with wine, feeling very adult and peaceful.

Lying in bed on chilly fall mornings, watching the sun come up over the Fox River once the trees lost their leaves, stretching every muscle in my body slowly, gently while the sun transformed my bedroom from a dark, cold chamber into something warm and alive, the sunlight reflecting off the mirror. This is the very best way to wake up.

Late nights on the Metra, coming home from class, so very very tired but energized about all I’m learning and doing, and the possibilities. Then, getting home and being too wired to sleep, singing and dancing along with a random song on my iPhone until I finally fall into bed.

Note: apparently grammar goes out the window when on a timer. How would you capture your year in five minutes (or less)?

This post is part of #Reverb10, a month-long project to reflect on the year nearly gone. Read all my #Reverb10 posts, or learn more.

Another day, another #reverb10 post. Today’s prompt prompts us to appreciate and consider, “What’s the one thing you have come to appreciate most in the past year? How do you express gratitude for it?”

Sitting through an Intro to Statistics workshop this evening, trying to frantically absorb all the basics I’ll need for Statistics I next quarter, I realized my answer to this question:

It’s about the questions, not the answers.

This, of course, is a ginormous shift from what we’re trained to do in school. Throughout our standard K-12 education, we are taught that it’s the answers that matter. Sure, by high school the teacher wanted to see the “work” associated with getting an answer, but as long as the answer you circled or the number you scribbled onto the blank was accurate, it was good enough for at least partial credit.

As an undergrad, many of my professors used the Socratic method – that is, they asked questions of questions of questions and rarely gave us a straight answer. Rather, we came to understand the problem at hand in a whole new detail. It meant that our exams weren’t simple multiple choice or fill-in-the-blank affairs. Instead, we wrote long (loooooong) papers, sometimes due at the same time for solid weeks of caffeine, writing and CSPAN (then, my background-noise-of-choice). One hellacious week my third year, I wrote over 60 pages worth of double-spaced exams. Thank goodness it wasn’t all in blue books.

It suited me, and I flourished. My mom says I was always asking questions as a kid.

But in the real world, so much of the Socratic method fell by the wayside. Especially in my first job out of college, no one cared about method, reason or strategy. Instead, we were very focused on the end result, even if that meant fudging the methods a bit. The people who set our priorities had a concrete idea of what they wanted to see, and they really didn’t care how we got there.

The curiosity was largely beaten out of me. Sure, I still popped off with questions in meetings, but nobody cared.

In my next/current job, that largely changed. Asking questions was no longer verboten; in fact, in a small startup, it was encouraged.

But really, in the past year, working with social media for my job and starting graduate school, I’ve come back to the realization that the questions do indeed matter, sometimes more than the answers. In social media, there are no answers, no right or wrong, no real bottom line magic ROI metric that clinches your case. We’re all still learning, and the technology and communities are evolving much faster than many of us can keep up.

And while that can be frustrating, really, it’s exhilarating. Such a lack of answers has lead to a whole fleet of social media networking and best practices groups. One of my favorites met this morning: the Social Media Breakfast of Chicago group is fantastic because it breaks participants into small roundtables, where we all raise questions, challenge assumptions, and walk away with stacks of business cards, twitter handles and new ideas.

School has really reinforced it, too, thanks in part to my excellent Marketing Management professor who refused to just give us answers and formulas. Instead, he urged us to think through the problem and determine what was actually being asked rather than immediately plugging and chugging through numbers. It reminds me of what my dad used to do when I came to him for homework help. It annoyed me as a teenager, but now I realize how useful it is.

Tonight, as class ended and we stared at the professor like deer in headlights (“Though the car hasn’t hit us yet,” a classmate quipped), he urged us to stop and think about what was being asked.

And I realized that I finally really appreciate the questions. I promise to keep asking.

This post is part of #Reverb10, a month-long project to reflect on the year nearly gone. Read all my #Reverb10 posts, or learn more.

How do you translate ideas into action? Today’s #Reverb10 prompt directs us to consider: Action When it comes to aspirations, it’s not about ideas. It’s about making ideas happen. What’s your next step?

Well, first you have to get beyond that pesky idea stage and make sure the idea has some legs to it. So many ideas are – rightfully – fleeting and never receive further consideration. (These are often the same ideas that wake me to scribble on a post-it. The next morning, 90% of the time, the idea either makes absolutely no sense or has already been done. (Hence, my morning Googling.))

So I massage that idea for awhile to weigh its merits. I go for a run or a bike ride and play devil’s advocate with myself. Will this idea benefit my greater vision? How does it fit in with other plans or actions or opportunities?

If it doesn’t, the idea gets filed away in some dark area of my brain, where, if it deserves a second chance, it will someday bubble back to the top. Otherwise, it remains on the island of misfit ideas forever.

But if the idea is worthy… oh, then the fun begins.

I love lists. Specifically, I love crossing things off of lists, staring at a list of items that can barely be seen beneath their completion.

And so, for me, action requires lists. It requires taking the big idea and breaking it down into a dozen, a score, a hundred individual items (depending, of course, on the scope of the idea), each one manageable.

And then those lists get put EVERYWHERE. I use Evernote as a centralizing tool, but usually also have a post-it at work, one at home on my desk, one on the coffee table, occasionally one on the corkboard on the cabinet in the kitchen. (When those post-its migrate, chaos ensues, especially when I find a cryptic note in the pocket of a coat I haven’t worn in six months.)

From there, action requires seeing those notes and reminders in my face enough times that I start feeling guilty about inaction. (Guilt is a huge motivator.) Every couple weeks, when I re-consolidate the lists and post-its, I have guilt pangs over the untouched items.

So really, it’s pretty simple. I have no shortage of ideas, and constantly weigh them against each other. I’ve got the theory of action down.

Ready, set, go!

What motivates you into action?

Today’s #reverb10 prompt asks, “Body Integration This year, when did you feel the most integrated with your body? Did you have a moment where there wasn’t mind and body, but simply a cohesive YOU, alive and present?”

I’m experiencing this more and more, as my workouts get better and I get stronger. I’ve already blogged about the 2010 moment when I felt most alive – finishing my first 5k – and in those moments, I felt completely integrated. My mind and my body were in complete harmony, working towards the same goal.

Every morning, while lying in bed, thinking about getting up, I stretch, starting from the tips of my toes, through my calves and hamstrings and abs and shoulders and neck, bit by bit, waking everything up. I flex my feet and wrists and shrug my shoulders and stretch, slowly and deliberately. It’s a good way of rousing the mind and body, reconnecting them for the day ahead.

I do something similar after I run, investing some time in thoroughly stretching my legs and hips so I don’t pay the price in the morning. And it’s always worth the time.

How about you?

This post is part of #Reverb10, a month-long project to reflect on the year nearly gone. Read all my #Reverb10 posts, or learn more.

Today’s #reverb10 prompt asks for a list of the 11 things you could do without :

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?

I love lists.

1. Cable – I’ve never watched very much TV, and since I started school, I watch even less. I realized that the only reason I really have cable is for the DVR, since I never watch anything live. I’ve done some research (Hulu? Netflix via Wii?), but I need to make a decision and cut the cord.

2. Old clothes – I’m four or five sizes smaller than I was two years ago, so why am I still holding onto the old clothes? I’m never going to wear them again, so they need to be donated.

3. Taco Bell – I used to have a terrible habit of stopping by Taco Bell on my way home from grocery shopping. I do this far less frequently now, but every time I eat it, I feel gross. There is much better, more authentic quick Mexican food at a place right across the street.

4. Music I don’t listen to – My iTunes is full of songs left over from when my ex merged our accounts, many of which I always flip past. I need to invest some time in deleting the ones I really don’t listen to.

5. Clutter – I used to move every year, which kept the clutter under control. But now that I’ve been in this house nearly five years, the closets and basement are getting full. If I haven’t needed it since I’ve lived here, it needs to go.

6. VHS tapes – Really, why do I still have a stack of blank VHS tapes?

7. Staying up/sleeping in for the sake of it – I often find myself staying up way too late, puttering around, just because I feel like I should stay up to a certain time. Conversely, on rare sleep in days, I often force myself to sleep later than I really need to just because I can. Both are counterproductive.

8. Magazine subscriptions – As I’ve blogged, I have way too many magazine subscriptions that I never read. (The problem – and the piles – have gotten worse since school started and I’m not commuting as much.) While a couple are certainly read, I’m going to let the others all lapse.

9. Store-bought granola bars – I eat a lot of granola bars, usually as a pre-run or mid-class snack. I recently started making my own (based on Jenn’s recipe), and they’re fantastic. Then I ran out of the homemade ones and bought more from a store. Blegh. I can do better.

10. Negative people – You know how some people always bring you down? I don’t need that.

11. Excuses to not blog – I love to write but it’s so easy to find excuses not to. I think #reverb10 is proving that frequent writing is possible, even during the busy holiday season and finals.

What’s on your list?

This post is part of #Reverb10, a month-long project to reflect on the year nearly gone. Read all my #Reverb10 posts, or learn more.

Today, #reverb10 asks about Wisdom: What was the wisest decision you made this year, and how did it play out?

I’ve made lots of decisions this year, some wise, some less than thought-out. But for argument’s sake, let’s say the wisest ones are the most pervasive, the ones whose effects ripple through every single day.

I said yes.

And that empowered me to say no.

Early this year, I decided to say yes to everything, to every invitation, to every newsletter subscription list, to every book a friend recommended, to exotic new foods, to running. Try everything once, I repeated like a mom to a picky eater. It won’t kill you to try it on, to see if you like it.

I’ve said yes to dozens of ideas, activities, groups, tweetups, clubs, etc. I’ve shed some that I realized definitely weren’t for me. I embraced some that are such perfect fits, like a worn pair of jeans, that I feel like they’ve always been part of my life.

In short, I decided to say yes to the possibilities that surround our lives, circling around us, if only we stretch just a bit to reach them. In doing so, I’ve found so much intrigue and joy. It’s liberating. You really can be who you want to be, if only you’ll say yes to the possibilities and take a little leap of faith.

And by deciding to say yes, I learned I can also say no. I said no to a life I realized I didn’t want.

Wisdom always seems clearer in retrospect. When I decided to start saying yes, I did so to expand my horizons. I didn’t realize that my horizons were already nice and wide – I just had to reach for them. I can’t wait to see what I grasp in 2011.

This post is part of #Reverb10, a month-long project to reflect on the year nearly gone. Read all my #Reverb10 posts, or learn more.

I was doing so well with my #reverb10 posts! Yesterday was the first time I didn’t get a post up promptly. In my defense, this has been an insane week, with finals for my first two classes. (I am now 13% done with my graduate program. My goodness how time flies!)

Last night, as we finished our exam, my classmates and I gathered at Elephant & Castle for drinks. As I sat there and drank cider and watched the snow fall, I thought about the prompt:

Party. What social gathering rocked your socks off in 2010? Describe the people, music, food, drink, clothes, shenanigans.

And I couldn’t think of any one specific gathering. I didn’t go to any big blow-out parties this year. (I’m okay with that.) I only went to one wedding, and it wasn’t a traditional one with music, dancing, etc.

Instead, I went to many, many more small social gatherings than I ever have before, even ones where I don’t know people. I’ve gone to events for social marketing people, book signings, running events, local tweetups, all of which I would have been reluctant to do a year ago.

Many of my friends now have kids, so some of the bigger parties I used to count on every year have changed, with kid-friendly activities, nap rooms, and an 8 PM curfew.

But that’s fine. As we grow up, so do our expectations and definitions of “fun.” I was never a drink-till-I-black-out party girl. And really, it’s about the people you spend time with. If dear friends are hosting a third birthday party, I’m there. And if party time involves a Scrabble board and some wine, so much the better.

What about you? Did you have a memorable party experience this year?

This post is part of #Reverb10, a month-long project to reflect on the year nearly gone. Read all my #Reverb10 posts, or learn more.

Twelve hours of mulling over today’s #reverb10 prompt hasn’t made it any clearer:

Beautifully Different. Think about what makes you different and what you do that lights people up. Reflect on all the things that make you different – you’ll find they’re what make you beautiful.

I’ve read at least a dozen posts on this prompt, and the responses are widely varied. Grace Boyle nails it in her post, “Letting YOU Shine.” Matt Cheuvront took an approach with an homage to Rocky in his: “Are You a Fighter?”

And I think that in itself is what’s beautifully different: our perspectives. Each of us is molded and shaped by our experiences and backgrounds. A random off-hand comment made to (or by) our eight-year-old selves may forever color how we see something.

Each experience adds a new lens to our glasses, whether rose-colored or otherwise. A particularly vivid memory tinged with extreme joy or sorrow will sharpen how we see similar incidents. Things we’d rather forget get blurry, like Vaseline smeared over the lens, a trick to enhance less-than-ideal events.

I’m just finishing a class on Consumer Insights (the final is tomorrow, in fact), and  learning how different market segments view the world has opened my eyes to an entirely new world. This one class, over ten weeks, has given me an entirely new set of lenses (with nerdy frames) to look at advertising critically and determine which consumer values marketers are trying to leverage. What does each group – whether ethnic, religious, cultural, or fans of a given product – value? Why?

You can make sweeping generalizations – and you have to, sometimes – but the truth is, we can never really know exactly what makes someone tick, what drives them, what they see when they look at an ad.

And that’s what makes me different. The year I spent in Hungary completely transformed me at the impressionable age of 14. Being a big sister gave me another set of experiences with corresponding lenses, as did the high school debate team. Heck, girl scout camping trips and grocery shopping with my mom left indelible impressions that reverberate today, whether I realize it or not. Each and every experience – no matter how seemingly insignificant – contributes to the mosaic that is me.

You can try to walk in someone else’s shoes, but unless you know what glasses they’re wearing, you’ll never fully understand their perspective.

This post is part of #Reverb10, a month-long project to reflect on the year nearly gone. Read all my #Reverb10 posts, or learn more.