TMI

I don't know exactly how many so I can't say I can count on one hand, but I've definitely missed fewer than 5 days -- of showering before work since I started my new job (2 months ago). This, from the woman who had never - ever (I think) showered more than three days in a row before -- did I say ever already? Wow. And make-up too, the whole nine yards. And last night, I appropriately ironed a shirt, and it took me under 20 minutes.

Baby's all grown up.

Wednesday Wambles

In an effort to understand the other side of the political debate, I went to Fox News to see how they were framing the debate discussion. (As usual, I like Ezra Klein's take.) I thought this would be one story that was twistable but transparently so. I was wrong. The first half of Fox's story makes McCain look brilliant and patriotic and Obama petty and political. I didn't read the second half. I was shocked by how subtle the pro-McCain slant was. I'm not sure I would call the story pro-McCain, but when I finish reading it, I find McCain's approach more likable and less the actions of an impulsive candidate. Makes me worry about November 4.

In other news, I'm also anxious about the White Sox, who only have a 1.5 game lead over the Twins to make it into the play-offs. The two teams are playing right now, and the Sox are down (I hope by the time you read this, they've won!). With five games left, each win means less likelihood that they'll be gonzo.

I'm in Baltimore for a work meeting and enjoying having a hotel room by myself. A year ago, when I first slept in a hotel room on my own, I was shocked and appalled at government waste and slightly creeped out in the 23-year-old equivalent of being afraid of the dark. Now, I relish the vacation. This appreciation is made more poignant by my last work meeting, when I shared a room with a coworker. She was wonderful and I reminisced about our experience together for days afterward to friends, but it did limit the Judy-time I got. I also forgot to pack the single worst item to forget if you're going to share a hotel room with a coworker: pajama bottoms. Oops.

Has anyone joined TimesPeople on NYT? I did! Let me know and I'll start following you. Hehe.

That's all for now :)

Best. Feeling. Ever.

Not really, but I love superlatives. Anyway, it's AMAZING to get home on a Friday afternoon and have nothing to do before Shabbat but clean.

Here's to cooking Thursday nights! (Though next time I should try to get to sleep before 2 AM.)

Shabbat shalom!

Monopoly?

I don't want to make light of a serious situation, especially one that is causing distress and soon financial hardship to so many people, but does the discussion of America's financial system remind anyone else of the end-game in Monopoly?

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/business/19fed.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

You've mortgaged everything and each person has a hotel on each property. Then, it happens. You land on the other person's property twice in a row. Is it over? No. You offer to hand over properties (unmortgaged!) to your opponent, and it begins to seep into other parts of your life - I'll make dinner for you tonight if you just roll one more time. Ok, maybe the comparison between a property/finance game and the financial sector is a little too obvious, but I was just thinking about how the way the Fed/Treasury/Congress/world are handling the meltdown is vaguely reminiscent of the way my siblings and I played Monopoly.

Oh, and here's my favorite line from the article:

"Still, the evening discussions took most of Washington by surprise, especially since Congress had been trying to finish up its business and head home to campaign for re-election."

Of course. Why stick around and save the economy?

Finding a Job through Facebook

I was able to sublet my apartment through a facebook status update, so I'm intrigued by this idea: http://www.onedayonejob.com/blog/use-facebook-ads-to-make-employers-hunt-you-down/

Figured I'd post for all you job seekers out there! Maybe this should be in the comments section of my last post.. hehe.

(I saw this link on Freakonomics.)

Wishing I was 40*

My whole life I've looked younger than I am. When I was 21 and stopped by the public library in my hometown to renew my library card, the librarian asked me if I was 14 yet. On a train in Chicago a fellow passenger asked me where I was in school, and when I said it for the third time, she looked at me abashed and said, "Oh, I was so sure you were in junior high that it didn't make sense."

Whenever I complain about my youthful looks people always tell me that I'll appreciate it when I'm 40. I smile thinly, and then spend the two months before my new job obsessing over how to put on make-up so that I can be taken seriously.

It's amazing that so many of my capable peers are not allowed to do real work until getting a degree, putting in serious time in their career fields, or both. I have to wonder what U.S. productivity charts would look like if we could cut through the nonsense and let people work at capacity, with the goal of improving everybody's capacity. What are people afraid of, that there will be no one left to do undesirable jobs? Let's cross that bridge when we come to it.

Last week, I was at a dinner meeting and found myself in a conversation about everyone's children. In general, I find it awkward to identify more with the children in the story than the parents/my colleagues, but this time was particularly pronounced because I had just met them, cared a lot about my own credibility, and their children were all 24. After the third person in a row told a story about her 24 year old daughter, one of my colleagues looked at me to include me more in the conversation. "How old are you?" I admitted that I was a month shy of 24. The next day, as we were saying good-bye, she mentioned to me that she was just so surprised about how young I am. There goes a month of carefully crafted emails (no smiley faces or exclamation marks!).

It's dissonant to me that this month's Glamour does a series on looking good in your 20s, 30s, and 40s, and the description of the 20s sounds like the pinnacle of everything good in this world. But then I get to work and I wish that my voice were lower as I contemplate using some white out for some in-a-pinch years (I think it would probably look like I whited-out my hair, but I'm certainly not above trying). I don't mean to suggest that I'm as capable now as I hope to be in 20 years. Or that I'm more capable than people who are doing these 'more challenging' jobs. But after spending a day -- in my dream job -- struggling to focus long enough to 'synthesize' meeting notes, I have to wonder if there's a better way to make good use of young people than pretending that the learning curve is really this steep.

*By the way, I don't really wish I was 40. While it would help me to be taken seriously, I'm pretty excited about the next 16 years.

McCain's health care plan

I don't understand how anyone can read Bob Herbert's NYT op-ed or even McCain's plan and not be appalled. I'm trying to understand why people would vote for McCain. I like to think that I'm a reasonable person and that I make my own decisions, so it's not just that it's McCain's plan. But turning health insurance over to the free market, commodifying a product where decision-making is anything but rational and due to its complexity, cogent, even-handed information is shockingly absent, is a recipe for benefiting those who make money from bad decisions in health insurance (insurance companies, ER techs, no one), and raising the burden for families who can least afford it. Maybe I need to review my high school economics, but aren't rational decision-making and availability of information two required assumptions for free market solutions to work? Can someone help me understand why McCain's plan helps anyone?

On My Mind

I've been looking for places to volunteer for a while, and Megan recommended looking on craigslist. I just submitted my application to volunteer with Sasha Bruce Youthwork, so hopefully that will pan out. It's surprising how many places can't make good use of volunteers. I think I could learn a lot about myself if I paid attention to where I was interested in volunteering. A thought experiment for another day.

I signed up for a free GRE from Kaplan, so the plan is to take it on Sunday. It's time to get the ball rolling, since I'm thinking seriously of PhDs, law school, and business school, so I could end up needing to take the GMAT or the LSAT. I'm secretly hoping that the interest will fade, just like how it's no longer exciting to do laundry when you don't have a paper to write. It would be good to figure out what the laundry is in this equation (good metaphor, huh). I'm also bargaining with myself that I will take two but not three tests, so there's at least some mitigation for the disaster.

I stayed at work late to counter the amazing amounts of time I spent on google reader today. Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive. I would be interested in hearing thoughts on how people manage their productivity in the face of boring work or the lack of imminent deadlines. Not that things were boring, just wondering.

I had no idea how funny this would be!

http://www.nbc.com/Saturday_Night_Live/video/clips/palin-hillary-open/656281/

I'd heard lots of people talk about it, and for the first time in my life I actually watched SNL (but missed the opening bit), but I completely underestimated its funniness. Totally worth being late for work.

Update and Re-entry

Hello world! (I know only enough computer science to understand that some people would find that funny/weird.) I have been absent for 7.5 months, but I'm back. I actually have an entire post outlined but I left it at work (as I *just* realized). I think I'm going to try to post once or twice a week, though of course as I ease back in I'll probably post a lot. Hehe.

So, how are you? How have you been? I've been pretty good. Busy as usual, but busy getting back into a routine. I 'quit' my old job in June (quit implies drama, and it was hardly dramatic except for a few tears about people I now miss), spent two months in New York City studying Judaism and getting yelled at for calling the subway the metro, discovered gratuitous hyperlinking, moved back to DC and into a lovely little apartment with an even lovelier roommate, and started my new job working at a non-profit and doing community building (I swear that I'm banning any person who comments on this post that community building must be like being a small-town mayor. I'm not even a community organizer, though I'd probably do something more extreme than banning if I were). And I'm done with my long-distance relationship, for the happy reason that we're now both in DC. So, there's a quick update.

I've also started keeping up with friends' blogs on google reader, and getting used to year 2 post college -- way more settled, way less stressful. I'm thinking about going to grad school (applying in fall 2009), trying to find something meaningful to volunteer for, and getting less skittish about people knowing I have a blog (though that could be because I haven't posted in so long, so those posts aren't really me, right?). I recently discovered the parenthesis (just kidding, though I apparently use them like seventh grade girls use exclamation marks). I now type exclusively in Dvorak (I'm sure that will merit a post at some point). And I decided that I spell 'canceled' with one L.

My 1,010 Word Jewish Journey

The following essay was originally prepared last week for an application for a Jewish learning summer program. It has been modified to fit your television. Edits were made to achieve some slight semblance of anonymity, and to tone down areas that would unnecessarily concern me to post publicly.

In college, I managed a carefully intertwined existence that allowed me to feel that my Judaism was always an important part of me. Although my time was not necessarily spent at Hillel, my experiences in leading Hillel, in keeping kosher and observing holidays, in davening, and in having conversations with friends about Judaism, were so central that they kept Judaism as a primary thrust. Having graduated from college last June, I am now intent on building a Jewish community that allows me to be a Jewish professional. In the process, I have found that only in limited situations am I Jewish before everything else. Inexplicably, writing a paragraph on welfare policy in rural America has not felt as informed by my Judaism as did writing my senior thesis on college mental health. Although both topics were similarly connected and distant from Jewish tradition, my past seven months have allowed me to compartmentalize my Judaism.

I come from the south suburbs of Chicago, where I was one of five people in my high school of three thousand who kept kosher. I loved my Jewish community growing up. I clearly understood that I was in a small minority, but I was in a small, wonderful minority and part of a very loving community. I felt a strong Jewish identity. Yet, in a certain sense, I was also raised Jewishly at Camp Ramah. It was at camp that I participated in my first vibrant Jewish community. Even as a twelve year old, I understood the difference between the five hundred kids excited about Jewish summer camp and the aging and strained community at home. At camp, I learned additional elements of the communal aspect of Judaism.

When I applied to college, I wrote my personal statement about reading haftarah and my activity essay about the B’nai Brith Youth Organization and Camp Ramah, and my high school guidance counselor told me that my application was “too Jewish,” and that I should write about one of my other activities. At the time I felt that they were most important in presenting me to the college admissions office so I held strong.

I arrived at college and quickly fell in love with going to Friday night services at the conservative minyan. I co-planned a big social event during my freshman spring and then started to feel comfortable at Hillel.

Sophomore year, I became close friends with my first traditionally observant Jews. Over the course of the fall semester, my Jewish community became fuller and stronger and I had extended conversations with people who hadn’t had any non-Jewish friends until college. I was bewildered by that experience, but I also learned a lot about their sense of being defined by Judaism and the importance of Judaism in their everyday lives. I was starting to want to keep Shabbat, rather inexplicably. In part this instinct was both driven by my new Jewish community and what drew me to build that community for myself. I started keeping Shabbat slowly, first by not spending money, then by not using my phone or email, and finally by considering myself traditionally Shabbat observant, though flexible.

The summer before my junior year, I went on a three week trip to Israel that was attached to retreats during the year. The trip focused on Jewish selfhood, community, and social action. In my application essay, I wrote, “More than content, what my Jewish education lacked was a framework to think critically about Judaism… As I struggle now to relate myself to my Judaism, and my Judaism to Judaism, I find that I am relatively unequipped. Growing up I was provided with a solid background, and from that derived commitment and faith. But now as I try to mature in my relationship with religion I find that my Jewish education does not provide the scaffolding I need. I have learned to ask questions, but now struggle to answer them.” I went on that trip looking for a rationale for traditional observance, and came back with the provisional answer that my Jewish practice was founded in the joy of doing something that my ancestors did before me, participation in a community, spirituality, and personal fulfillment.

When I started keeping Shabbat, I saw it as a two year trial period. Although I found my reasons compelling, I did not and do not have the learning requisite to understand Jewish tradition in a framework, so on some level it feels more like aping than practicing. I also could not imagine that I would be able to organize my life post-college such that I could remain observant. However, as a senior I found myself applying only to jobs that would be flexible with my work hours for the holidays and that would let me leave early on Fridays. I have continued to keep Shabbat and I have found my spiritual home in a community that sits observance-wise somewhere between traditional egalitarian and Shira Chadasha style.

In spite of this renewed commitment to Jewish observance, I have felt my Judaism growing somehow more distant. Adjusting to life post-college has been challenging for me, in terms of how I relate to my time, defining my goals, and understanding my identity. I graduated with the tentative plan to work for three years, apply to grad school and then defer, so that I could go to Israel for a year and learn about Judaism. I find now that this approach has two important flaws: first, that I cannot compartmentalize my Jewish learning to one year in the abstract future, and second, that three years from now is far too long to go without working on my connection to God and without starting to structure the basis for my future Jewish education. In my essay for the Israel trip three years ago, I wrote, “I am not prepared with tools to strengthen my faith by questioning its foundation.” Today, my faith is more mature and the tools I need are different, but I find that kick-starting my adult Jewish education is both urgent and electrifying.

Lame Lame Lame

I had kind of forgotten about this blog until a friend starting his blog this week reminded me about my own. I still love the idea of posting and intend to resume my goal of posting once a week. I come up with several (let's say 5) topics every day that I would love to tease out on this blog, but when I do have the energy to work on one at the end of the day, it ends up being super lame. My theory is that it takes about 5-10 excellent stories and anecdotes that are loosely thematically related to comprise a good blog entry, and I've only been coming up with 3-4. It also needs a thrust.

Today, my ideas were:

* trials and tribulations with PageMaker -- my experience laying out our massive report (that could be 12 blog entries, but would they be interesting? Stay tuned...)

* role models, and obsessive behavior towards thereof (hehe, "thereof" doesn't mean anything here)

* posting my application for a summer program, which I probably will do once it exists

* apologizing for my extended absence

* asking my dear readers (hahahaha) to post comments

* considering going public with the blog

See what I mean? They all turned out to be bad topics on further inspection. I've already written too many posts about blogging, no point to writing about it, etc.

But that's ok. Because in the process of writing about why they are bad topics, I've learned a little bit about what makes a good post. Stay tuned. And don't make fun of me if this list turns into a table of contents for my next 6 posts.