Meeeeeeee Blog Archive
Posted April 27, 2011 at 12:17 PM in Meeeeeeee | Comments (2)
Another year has passed. Now I am 36.
I wanted to have a party this year. I wanted to celebrate the 20th anniversary of my 16th birthday. To me, this sounded like the perfect way of acknowledging how I feel — older in reality, but still celebrating my youth. But I’ve just been too busy to make it happen. And there have been more important things for me to worry about than a party for myself.
So instead I’m celebrating by writing this post.
What have I learned this past year?
I’ve finally realized that overcommitting myself does me no good. A year ago I would’ve acknowledged that it didn’t do anyone else any good, but finally I can see that it does ME no good. I already said no to one opportunity that came my way recently, and it was really hard. But I need to keep saying no to doing for others. I need to keep saying yes to myself. Being selfish is okay.
I also learned that it’s easy to get back into good habits, like working out every day — but it’s even easier to let yourself break those good habits because you think you’ll go right back to them. I did lose about 8 pounds this year, but I’ve also gained it back. Once I establish a goal and a set of habits around the goal, I need to stick with it. (Part of that whole “it’s okay to be selfish” thing.)
I think I’ve finally gotten the hang of not needing “stuff”. I got rid of one of my cars right before my last birthday, and since July my other car has been in storage. I’ve been to conferences where I don’t take the swag. I’ve been taking more books out from the library (and realizing that many of them just weren’t that interesting). I took about a quarter of my clothes to Goodwill last year and now I’m looking at my closet and thinking about getting rid of half of what’s in there. I take more digital pictures of things that are cute or visually appealing, rather than buy them to hang on to. Most significant, perhaps, is that I haven’t been able to write a “want list” of any kind. I’ve learned that I have everything I need. I probably don’t need everything I have.
Finally, in the past few months I have come to realize how incredible hard it is to take care of another person. It’s a huge mental drain, even when it’s not physically draining (which it often is). And managing other people’s expectations when it comes to caretaking is probably the hardest part of the whole thing. I’ve always been a supporter of assisted suicide for the terminally ill, but I think we need to have more conversations about allowing the elderly to choose to leave this Earth in a dignified manner of their choosing.
What have I achieved in the past year?
One goal that I’ve stuck with for a few years is getting out of debt. When I got laid off in 2008 I established a set of financial habits that I have successfully maintained. I won’t give specific numbers, but I will say that I now have more money saved as an emergency fund than I owe on all of my credit cards. In fact, I will be out of credit card debt by October! I check the numbers carefully every month (actually, daily), because part of me still can’t believe it will happen — but the other half of me doesn’t quite know what to do with the free time I’ll have soon, once I’m done obsessing about getting out of debt! I hope I can channel it towards my health goals.
Other “achievements” from this past year have weighed heavily on me, because I was giving too much of myself to make those things happen. So, in my mind, I’ve only achieved stressing myself out, which isn’t all that great of an achievement.
Favorite experiences from the past year
- Finding my old friend, Rose, and being able to tell her how much she influenced my life
- Seeing the re-formed (reformed?) Revolting Cocks perform in Chicago
- Running 5 kilometers with no pain, and actually enjoying the run
- Waking up to my cat pawing me (her new-ish thing, so that I get up early to feed her)
- Getting up early on a Sunday morning to drive to the shore for pancakes with Scott
What I’m looking forward to in the year ahead
- Getting out of debt!
- Completing two back-to-back terms on the Bryn Mawr College Alumnae Association Executive Board
- Losing 10 pounds
- Figuring out what I want to do when I grow up
I think that’s pretty good for one year. Happy birthday to me.
Posted January 20, 2011 at 12:21 PM in Meeeeeeee | Comments Off
I tried a little writing exercise this morning, and here’s what came out:
I have too many and not enough things to do today. Maybe autonomy is not what I want. Autonomy when I was the most skilled developer was great. I wanted to be in front of people because I wanted recognition — I wanted everyone to know I was smarter, more dedicated, contributing more than then. How terrible a person was I?
And what now? I am realizing I have so much to learn, so I want to hide away, don’t want anyone to see me, because who am I to say or know anything?
Or, is it just the environment? Everyone caught up in problems I’ve solved before but am no longer interested in, so I just sit and fume about the way things are and how other placed I’ve worked were so much better.
And over-committing myself — WTF? Yes, I’ve always been like this, to a degree. But I used to push myself to meeting every deadline — then it became trying to be only a day or two late — then more… Now it’s like I agree to things with no intention of ever doing them. (Not true, I exaggerate — I want to do them, I mean to — I just let other things get in the way.)
I keep looking backwards, at how I used to be — how I was so neat, so productive, so skinny — but I was also unhappy at home so of course I immersed myself in my work. Now I am happy at home but unhappy elsewhere. Where is the balance? I must start looking forward.
It’s about solutions, right? That’s what I do — solve problems and fix things? I need to get on this
Then someone (Jared Spool, I think) posted a link to something written by
Justin Maxwell and I read this:
This is why you never go work for a “Windows shop” if you’re a Mac person. You’ll be in hell, and that hell will be reflected in the work you do.
I’m a Windows person, working in a Mac shop, and OMG am I in hell. I’m also a process-oriented person working in a pseudo-agile shop, and OMG am I in another level of hell. And I’m a CMS person, working in a shop that can’t get CMS strategy right, and so I’m pretty much in the 9th level of hell. It just makes so much sense — this isn’t the right place for me.
But then up shows a link to this piece about the miserable programmer paradox. If you don’t know it:
A good programmer will spend most of his time doing work that he hates, using tools and technologies that he also hates.
And I remember that these problems — fixing process and implementing better tools to make others more productive — these are the problems I really love. So why am I so unhappy?
No answers, just more questions. And still, no work done.
Posted September 25, 2009 at 8:35 AM in Just Sayin, Meeeeeeee, Web Standards, Work | Comments Off
Most mornings, I hit the Starbucks near work for a double tall non-fat no-whip cinnamon dolce latte. Yes, it’s a mouthful to say. And apparently it’s a really tough drink to get right… at least for the morning crew at this particular Starbucks. Despite seeing the same crew regularly, I almost always have to correct them on some aspect of my drink that they’ve screwed up (espresso shots sat too long, wrong milk, wrong size drink, scorched milk, etc.). When I do point something out, rather than get an apology, I’m usually given some excuse as to why it’s not right. I’m starting to suspect that either they’re making my drink wrong on purpose or they just don’t care about their craft — but in either case, they send a clear signal: a job’s a job, and they don’t care about theirs all that much.
Web developers can’t have this attitude. We absolutely must care about our craft and continually ensure that our work is demonstrative of best practices (both industry and our own signature practices). Sloppy execution of our work leads to cross-browser problems, inaccessible features, confusing user interactions, and time lost refactoring code in the future. We don’t get to give excuses to our customers — if it doesn’t work, end users don’t use the site, and clients don’t pay. Messy code shows that we don’t care about leaving something our fellow developers can learn from, and it demonstrates that we don’t care to take the time get our code right.
I shudder to think about the kind of code the baristas at the local Starbucks would write, were they developers. If only they could be more like so many of the awesome developers/craftspeople I know… then I’d be happily caffeinated each morning. And if fewer developers wrote code the way those baristas make drinks? Well, the Web might just explode from all that awesomeness.
Posted February 12, 2009 at 5:53 PM in Education, Meeeeeeee, STEM | Comments Off
While reading another story about the lack of diversity in STEM I was newly struck by the following statement, which I’ve heard in various forms over the years (emphasis mine):
“I think science is seen as a man’s world by a lot of people,” said Candy DeBerry, associate professor of biology at Washington & Jefferson College. “All the studies show that somewhere around sixth or seventh grade, girls start losing their interest in science but might be equally interested in it in the third or fourth grade.”
For me, sixth grade was spent in elementary school. I had one teacher, unless you counted the music, art, or gym teachers. We almost always had one computer (a TRS-80 or an Apple II/IIe) in our classroom, which the teacher actually knew something about and which we kids would typically fight over using. Even the few kids who had computers at home (like me) wanted to use the computer at school, and we’d rush to finish an assignment so we could get in some computer time.
Seventh grade was the start of junior high school for me, and thus began the hourly switching of subjects, teachers, and classrooms. In none of these classrooms did we have a computer, and I don’t ever remember my teachers mentioning computers. In junior high, the only computers I can recall were in the library, and they weren’t the sort that you “played” with. In addition, all of the extra-curricular activities I was starting took away from potential computer time at home.
So when I keep hearing about this crucial sixth/seventh grade time period for young girls, I can’t help but think back to my own experience around these grades. I didn’t lose interest in computers (or science or math) in seventh grade, but I was certainly separated from them. As time went on, I had less time to pursue those interests myself, and in some cases I was discouraged from pursuing them.
Sure, times have changed, but as the old saying goes, “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” Thus I’m inclined to assume that my experience may not really be that different from what kids experience today. Kids can’t stay in the elementary school environment forever, but with middle schools now starting at fifth and sixth grade, are we pushing change — not just academic and environmental, but social! — on them too soon, thus potentially losing more future scientists, technologists, engineers, and mathematicians?
Posted December 20, 2008 at 7:57 AM in Duran Duran, Meeeeeeee | Comments (1)
The past 13 months have been a mixed bag of successes, failures, changes, growing pains, and learning opportunities. This time showed me who my real friends are and helped me realize what’s truly important to me. Silly as it may sound, the eleven Duran Duran concerts I was able to attend during this helped greatly with the process of finding and re-centering myself.
Now the tour is over and life must return to normal. I’ve come to learn that normal for me isn’t what it is for others — the expectations I have of myself leading an extraordinary life constantly drive me to seek out unique opportunities. For a while, there were people in my life who made me feel as though this was an odd way to live, and I was always apologizing for doing the things that I loved to do. But the events and activities of the past year — and the love and support of friends — have helped me find myself again, and have shown me that an extraordinary life isn’t wrong. In fact, it’s what my whole life has been preparing me for.
2009 is going to be a very interesting and exciting year!
My collection of photos and videos from Duran Duran’s Red Carpet Massacre tour on Flickr
Hi, my name is Kimberly Blessing. I'm a computer scientist, Web developer, standards evangelist, feminist, and geek. This is where I write about life, the Web, technology, women's issues, and whatever else comes to mind.
