Simplicity. Happiness.

After almost six years, I think it's time to end this blog. I've had trouble keeping up the posts, as you can tell by the dwindling number of posts per year. I'd like to blame it on my perfectionist streak - I can't even post a Facebook album without meticulous photo editing and caption writing, so it takes forever to publish a blog.

But, more importantly, I think my life has taken shape. When I started this blog in 2008, I needed an outlet. I wasn't happy, though I was trying to pretend (fake it 'til you make it, right?). My life felt out of focus and all over the place. It seemed like an interesting experiment to flex my creative muscles, write it all down and see if I was any good at that. And it was a fun experiment! For kicks, just read back through some of these posts. Some still feel really poignant and bring me back to those days, others make me roll my eyes.

My story isn't unique. I think these are feelings and issues most people have during those in-between years, right after college ends and you're spit out into the real world. Man, did I do some fun things while trying to "grow up," though. Travel (including a once-in-a-lifetime solo trip to France!), goofy nights with friends, ill-advised drunken decisions, beauty experiments, shopping addictions, adventures in cooking, finding my way into and out of debt... I kept it interesting.

With less than a month until my 29th birthday (cringe), I have to say, I feel pretty grown up. My life has a calm, happy rhythm, and I think it's primarily due to these three guys. They are my world and make me smile every day.

Having a job that allows me to write and be artistic, an apartment I can be proud of, and loving friends and family I can rely on helps, too. In a few words, the lessons VIPS in my life have taught me about being an adult:

Mom - love others, faults and all, always
Dad - dream a little dream, and keep it alive until it comes true
Evan - challenge yourself to do something great (this kid runs marathons!)
Regina - be strong, be kind, be open to what the world gives you
Rita - do your research and be bulldog for the things you believe in
Bryan - stay focused, be organized and be on time! (a lesson I still need sometimes...)
Mary - laugh at yourself, at others, at life
Sarah - embrace change, sometimes it can be pretty great
Theresa - never stop exploring; be a good friend to others
Jen - be poised and gracious (and a charming Southern belle if possible)
Amy - cooking is love; look for the deal everywhere
Minna - be spontaneous!
Karyn - it's okay to be exactly who you are, all the time

Though I will not be updating this blog anymore, I do still love sharing my musings and view of life in NYC. Here are two channels I do intend to keep up: Twitter and Instagram.

Catching Up and Making It Count

I know, I know - it's been nearly a year since I've updated this sucker. Truth is, girl's been busy! Good thing is, I'm happy. Career life, love life, friend life...all on the up and up!

Over a year ago, I made the transition from public relations to social media marketing. What an exciting time to be in this field! It's all so new and ever evolving; some days it feels like we're making it up as we go along and other days it feels like we're riding a wave and on the brink of something big.

I work with many amazing beauty and lifestyle brands that you probably love and use often, but we're always striving to do bigger and better social campaigns, to be like the Gatorades, the Coca Colas and the Nikes of the world. In our team meeting this week, my boss shared this Nike #MakeItCount branded video and I can't get it out of my head:



It makes me feel things - I want to make it count, get up and do something and appreciate life! And, as a nice bonus, it reminds me how much I love Nike. Granted, the company has its faults, but I look past that. I love Steve Prefontaine (do yourself a favor and watch the movie, Without Limits), the story of his coach Bill Bowerman creating the original Nikes, and I love their empowering brand philosophy. I continue to purchase their sneakers, despite being told that Asics are better for runners (pssh, whatever).

And this was exactly how Nike wanted viewers to feel with the #MakeItCount campaign. The song is stuck in my head, I have a renewed drive to travel and mind is dwelling on whether I really make each day count.

The brand personality is strung right through the video, without throwing images of sneakers in your face. Nike understands that their fans love their products, but that their fans have many interests and there are many ways to reach them and talk to them.

Acting as the voice of brands and developing the content you see everyday on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Pinterest accounts, I aspire to have this kind of effect on people and I'm learning that I can't do it by talking about makeup until I'm blue in the face (I work for many beauty brands).

Overall, I just love that I'm a part of a unique and cool social media movement, and proud to write for such well-known brands. I learn more everyday and can't wait to see what we come up with next...

Until then, I'm just going to work on making each day count. :)

Censoring our Love Lives

I caught this video on the Glamour magazine blog, Smitten the other day and I LOVE it. It's hilarious, sad and oh so true.

Why do we do this to ourselves? And when did we learn to do this? I want to say at some point in my life, before I was cynical and before dating was a group activity where everyone weighed in with their personal rules and guidelines, I spoke the first draft of my mind to boys.

Ahh, sweet sweet naivety.

God forbid we look foolish, or put ourselves out there when we're unsure of what the response will be. Don't get me wrong - nobody should bring out the crazy too early in a relationship, but there's something to be said about acting honest and being yourself. In the video, they erase every twinge of emotion from their conversation. In an effort to look cool, they make sure that neither one knows that they like one another at all.

At my first real job post-college, my boss was blunt and no nonsense. Her first comments on an email I drafted for an editor? Way too long and WAY too many exclamation points.

I learned to bland-ify my emails and make them more business-like, which was important for sure, but I always felt like they read as a tad rude. Emails and the written word can be so easily misconstrued. I'm a friendly person and I want editors and clients to see that through my correspondence.

Now at my second agency and with more freedom and trust from my boss, I write emails the way I want to. Are there exclamation points used? Yep. Even -gasp- emoticons from time to time. But, I learned my lesson from my first boss, and I keep my exclamation points and smiley faces to a minimum. I don't ever want to come across as cheesy, which is apparently my weakness.

The lesson here? Send your second draft.

I try not to obsess over what I say to the opposite sex, or anyone for that matter through email, gchat, facebook... BUT, I do try to keep my crazy in check, and read it over once to make sure I get my point across without going overboard.

San Francisco and the Perfect Aura

A wise fortune cookie once told me (well, last month), 'The attitude within is more important than the circumstances without." I needed to hear that.

See this summer started out really fun, but somewhere towards the end of July, things started going sour. Financial issues, family stuff, career ruts....I started feeling a bit lost.

In the midst of all this, I remembered that I had planned to go to San Francisco over Labor Day. It's always good timing to go on a cross-country trip when you have no money! Argg. Well, I picked up weekend shifts at two different bars and worked hard to play hard. Despite the crazy work schedule, the trip gave me something to look forward to through the month of August (and my fortune cookie reminded me to refrain from getting too cynical or negative about things).

Well, the SF trip has come and gone. The outcome? I love San Francisco and my bank accounts haven't been frozen (...yet). It's the only city I've visited in California and it was only my second time there, but both times, the city completely brightened my outlook on life right when I needed it.

I love that people in SF seem happy and healthy. I love that dogs are treated like people, that everyone has one and that they run free in the parks. I love that people have active, balanced lifestyles and that laidback attitudes are more prevalent than stressed and unhappy ones.

During my stay, I got to do so many fun things. Our first day we spent doing touristy things (bang 'em out and get them out of the way in my opinion). We wondered through the streets until we found crooked Lombard St. and then headed to Fisherman's Wharf for chowder bread bowls. On a whim, we decided to go on a $15 boat ride around the Bay (the BYOB sign was calling us) and took lots of pictures. It was a great way to spend a sunny and windy first afternoon. That night we headed down to Chestnut St. in Cow Hollow for dinner and drinks with friends we knew in town.

Over the weekend, we headed to Napa. So pretty! We went on the Napa Wine Train one evening for a gourmet meal...our attempt at being classy after the previous night's debauchery. It was really scenic and the food was great, but we were clearly the youngest people there, and we were so tired and hungover that the older couples showed us up! They were partying and having fun while we were trying not to fall asleep and just wanted off the train, haha. I'd skip it unless you're 40+. The next day we did lunch at Mustard's Grill (yum!) and visited Rubicon Estates for some wine tasting. Rubicon happened to be Coppola's fancy pants vineyard (compared to his more family-friendly Francis Ford Coppola Winery in Geyserville). It was so picturesque! The wine was good, too...I suppose that's more important.

Back in SF for the remainder of our time, we did sushi and sake bombs off Chestnut St. the Sunday evening before Labor Day. Of course we were THAT group being loud in the restaurant while other people were on dates...oops? We followed it up by sake-fueled dirty dancing until who-knows-what-hour. We spent Labor Day laying in Golden Gate Park (hungover) and soaking up the sun when it peeped out from behind the clouds. Perfection. The other girls left a bit earlier than me, so I spent the rest of my California escape hiking through Sausalito and the Marin Headlands, and thrift shopping in the Mission and along Haight. I even hit up a Yang Yoga class at a climbing gym in true West Coaster fashion - I could get used to that life. Sigh, why does California have to be SO far from my family in Pittsburgh and my friends in NY?

More than just having a great time, being away from work and stress in NY gave me time to do some soul-searching. For laughs, the girls and I visited a psychic in Napa and the strangest thing happened. The woman read everyone's palms but mine! She actually stopped, looked at me and said, "I'm sorry sweetie, but I can't give you a reading today. You don't need one. When you walked in here, I saw your aura right away, and it was full of bright, beautiful colors. Your life and your karma are perfect, and everything will figure itself out within a year."

Um, what?

I mean, I just wanted to give the lady my $25 and have her tell me if I should stay in NY or consider a move, and if I was meant to have a career in PR like everyone else. But hearing that made me happy. It was quite an oddball thing to tell someone, but I think it was a reminder that I don't need to worry. All the issues I've been having are temporary (and there will always be issues and pitfalls to deal with), and all-in-all, my life is coming together. More importantly, my life is fun.

Thinking back on 2010 so far, I have to agree that this has been a pretty great year (and my horoscope tells me that the rest is gonna be fab, too. The Pisces is the luckiest sign for the remainder of 2010!).

Despite the bumps in the road, I've been able to look inward to figure out who I am and what I really want this year. I finally released an old sadness that I held onto for far too long, developed a lot of new friendships and strengthened old ones. I set goals to try new invigorating activities (running a 5k, learning yoga), and remembered to keep up with the things that make me happy – other than boozing with friends (painting, reading, Marlon, being independent...I like sober activities, too!).

I also accepted going with the flow this year, and embraced trips and people that landed in my lap. Going to a wedding in Alabama where I didn't know any other guests? Sure why not? And now I have new friends, a couple of which were just in SF with me. Planning a trip to SF for no particular reason with a girl I only met once (at said wedding)? Sounded like a great opportunity to get back to a city I love and get to know her even better. And it was.

I can't wait to see what else is in store for me...I think I'm on the cusp of something big. Hi life, I'm here, along with my perfect aura. Help me figure out what to do next!

Freedom.

Well ladies and gents, I did it.

After about six months of thinking and debating...I bought a non-refundable roundtrip ticket to Paris for a two month solo trip and quit my job in PR.  Eeek!  I don't normally do daring things like this!!

Yesterday was my last day on the job and after a celebration to remember with all of my wonderful co-workers, I woke up this morning, grabbed a huuge iced coffee and hit the open road to Pittsburgh for family time before shipping out to France.

The road trip was exactly what I needed to sort my thoughts.  What is it about open windows, loud music and interstates that makes it so freeing?  During my seven glorious hours in the car (glorious=sarcasm...seven hours cooped up in a car without cruise control is never quite glorious), I sung, I cried, I used the steering wheel as my own personal drum set, I yelled, I daydreamed, and I tried to comprehend all that is currently happening in my life.

I basically pretended I was the only car on the road-- I bet those cars driving near me on the PA turnpike got quite the entertaining show, ha.  The level that I rocked out to Kanye, Lucky Boys Confusion, Danity Kane, Jay Z, Fall Out Boy and Dave Matthews Band normally does not come out unless I'm drunk at a karaoke bar.  And yes, I realize that is quiteee the variety of music; don't judge.

I don't know about any of you out there...but I'm kind of over this "transitional," early twenties phase of life.  It's so confusing and so many things are changing.  That simple, fun and protective shell of college is gone, people are coming and going in and out of your life, and I swear the thoughts in my head are completely spastic.  One minute I want one thing, the next I want something else.  And really, at this age, we can do whatever it is that we want to do, but most of us are just so utterly indecisive that no one can figure it out.  I know my life will unfold as it should, but could the Big Guy just give me a little heads up and point me in the right direction, or lend a clue of what the future holds?  It would be much appreciated.

What's funny is, I bet when I'm 40 and hunkered down with a family and a never-ending job (...because maybe that's how I'll be when I'm 40?), I'll look back and miss these exciting times when I could go out 3 nights a week and survive, and quit my job and hop to France on a whim. Such is life.

But, oh my god...I really can't believe I'm really going to France for practically two months by myself.  Ahhhhhh it's going to be great.  I'm feeling excited but scared shitless, adventurous but very nervous.

The countdown is on.  I leave September 2nd...18 days to prep.  More is definitely to come.

Anberlin - The Unwinding Cable Car

Happy Easter! 

Unfortunately, I feel sick as a dog today.  Fortunately, I'm back home in Pittsburgh so mom and dad have let me be a permanent fixture on the couch today, and catered to my every sicky need.

I feel too crummy to try and write real coherent thoughts, but here is an awesome music video I caught the other night on tv, and wanted to share.  Really makes you think...

Anberlin - The Unwinding Cable Car

Once I'm feeling better, I plan to write about the cool things I saw and did this weekend in my home city of Pittsburgh.  Not living here anymore has really allowed me to appreciate the place in a whole new way.