I just raided the Young Adult section of my local library. I also discovered, to my delight, that a book called Girls from da Hood is considered a CLASSIC. Oh the hilarious double-entendre of "classic" makes me laugh inside.
I think I may soon abandon this blog. I am no longer passionate about my de-cluttering project. In effect, I have already moved on just by virtue of being away from the cluttered home I sought to fix. I tried to remain informed about clutter and design and the related reflections and psychology those things brought on, but I can't pretend to be interested in something that falls more in the margins of my interests list than in the actual #1 slot.
My interests are always evolving though, and this is not to say that the project will forever have dropped off my list. It has definitely been a year of interesting randomness, emotions, and amazing internet finds.
Now, my interests have focused themselves more on writing and reading than de-cluttering, as may be clear by my mysterious teenager-book raid. In any case, I would like to devote some attention to a new project: I'm excited to exercise my creative muscles by blogging one vignette for every writing prompt suggested by Twitter user @writingprompt. I haven't started just yet, but keep your eyes peeled for new stuff at Vignettweets (just a working title so far). Wish me luck! And always feel free to e-mail me at alexandrayf at gmail dot com or comment on old posts here to stay in touch.
Here are some tools that I love using to organize my life, since today has become such a frenzied organizational jubilee.
Food & Calorie Finder iGoogle gadget: I decided I wanted to keep better track of my health, so I installed this gadget on iGoogle. You can search kajillions of food items to create a rundown of the food and calories you take in each day. Then, you can indicate how many calories you've burned, either by actually working out or just by going about your day. ("Desk Work" burns like 100 calories an hour!) I like this because it also has a calendar and calculates all your info for you. I found out you have to burn like 3500 calories to lose one pound, so this is a great way to keep track of how close you are to your goal.
Firefox bookmarks toolbar: It's so much easier than typing in URLs all day long. When I'm on a site, I highlight the URL and drag it into the toolbar space. Firefox's default option is to show the site's icon with the URL next to it, but if you right-click the icon and hit "properties," you can erase the URL so that a bunch of beautiful icons pop up in your toolbar! One click, and you're there. Easy peasy. Here's mine! Which ones can you figure out?
Mozilla Sunbird: I never figured out how to use Office Outlook but I wanted a calendar that I could use on my desktop that works like Outlook and Google Calendar/iCal without needing an internet connection. So I found Sunbird, and it is great! It lets you customize the colors of all your life categories (school, business, personal, travel etc.) and alerts you if you want it to. It's very customizable, which I like. It's not perfect, but it works for me! The to-do list pane is super useful.
Google Reader: I subscribe to so many stupid blogs. :P No, most of the ones I subscribe to are adorable, creative and girly. One I found recently was pretentious and pop. ♥ But I need to keep track of these blogs and sites! I can't be trekking all over the internet every day, that takes too much energy. So Google Reader culls them all together and updates when my blogs update, so I have a nice digest to read through every morning or night.
CCleaner: I actually have to run this again soon - CCleaner is a registry cleaner-upper for your computer. I'm not entirely sure all the magic spells it conducts within my hard drive, but it makes it work faster and smoother. It's like a Swiffer for your computer!
click for larger Originally uploaded by Globe Trodden
I love this picture from Salon columnist and pilot Patrick Smith. Photos like this exist everywhere - on the sidewalks, calling out to tourists so the vendors can make a neat profit off a couple wide-eyed buffoons; in museums; in coffee table books around the world, I'm sure. But I'm glad to say that I'm not quite jaded enough to scoff at the grandeur of this skyline, especially as photographed from inside the cockpit of an airplane.
It also makes me really excited for New York, I Love You coming out in October. When Paris, Je T'Aime came out, I went through crazy pregnant lady mood swings about it. First I loved the idea and wanted intensely to see it. Then when I heard it was not a long-form single plot, I thought I would hate it because I hated Love, Actually at first. (I was 16 and had to be critical like the budding editor I believed myself to be becoming.)
But I saw Paris, Je T'Aime this year and thoroughly enjoyed it. It's a cute movie to watch in bed while having tea and pita. I think I'll be even more enthralled with New York, I Love You because I have actually lived here. And, similar to the fact that I feel very patriotic for America at the very heartmost part of my heart, I will always have a soft spot of memories for New York and the Bay Area. One of my deepest, most imagination-frenzied dreams is to live in and befriend as many cities as is reasonable for a lifetime.
I wonder which other cities people could make similar movies about that would be romantic enough to do well. Often, I feel that New York, Paris, San Francisco, Venice and London are all so overly romanticized in the movies that they've become clichéd. What amazing other cities can we appreciate? Surely creative minds have thought of Moscow, Kyoto, Montreal, São Paolo, Nairobi...
So The Intern is a really interesting blog. She does what I can't quite do - talk about interning in the publishing world in a funny way while still managing to keep things anonymous! I am super bad at hiding things and keeping secrets, so I probably will not write much about my internships.
In any case, she works at a publishing house/company rather than an agency, but nevertheless I find myself agreeing with her and learning from her. The internet is a wonderful thing.
I try to live my life in terms of the themes I think about. They are usually discrete in one way or another, and thus quantifiable. Spring semester, when I was taking courses more or less about society and all its minor injustices, I thought about that. It was a theme. That and spirituality/sense of self really permeated my thoughts this spring.
It felt good to have strong thoughts, but as usual I was stuck in the academic bubble. I've never been active in any school or purpose-led community, because I am selfish and antisocial - I'll admit that because it's true. And one thing A taught me while I lived with her this past year is that it's stupid to hide the truth from yourself, more so from anyone else who needs to know it.
Now it's summer, and I'm isolated from the people and the community that made me think. My jobs are essentially free of critical thought, because a) in one of them, my position is so low that I'm not considered responsible enough to take on truly thoughtful work beyond being critical of others; and b) in the other, the higher-ups value every possible idea that the interns can dream up but aren't organized enough to make good use of them.
I'm living with people who aren't like me. I'm discovering just how hard it is for me to open up to people, whether it's out of stubbornness or pure personality. I'm unwilling to make the effort to befriend new people these days, because I am afraid we will just drift apart that much faster, when my time in New York is up. This is incredibly pessimistic, but I am too stubborn and in too deep denial to change.
The one benefit of being so introspective and introverted means I have time to realize these things about myself. I've grown up a very selfish person, a result of strange emotional cocktails downed over twenty-one years of strange maturation. I notice my self-absorption even in my journals - personal or otherwise. It's interesting to have glimpses of other people's personal journals; they extend so far out in ways very unlike mine. The thoughts they have trickled onto paper or digital media are more like wandering spindles, touching various aspects of life and the thinker's relation to the world.
Mine are more like inward-turning spirals.
God only knows why we (or why I) decide on the ideas we do to share with people like this. But we choose, and I choose, because somehow it seems the most satisfying place to discover things. This self-indulgence, combined with my other hyphenated self-nouns (self-absorption, -centeredness etc.) has made me realize that I am a very lazy person. I dislike honest work, except when I masochistically enjoy it under circumstances of very high stress. It has to be the perfect pinnacle of stress, otherwise I just scuttle away and avoid the effort.
Don't get the wrong idea: I'm hardly worried about this strange condition. I'm just curious to see how it grows and mutates as I get older. Let's call this the diagnosis stage.
This picture looks so delicious. When I was younger, my mom used to cut up millions of strawberries for me and mix in a spoonful of sugar. I was a spoiled little fatty, but at least I had good taste. Then again, I also had so much McDonald's as a child that when I had a McNugget meal for the first time in years the other day, it smelled like my childhood.
I have probably said this before, but I don't think living alone is the best choice for me. (Haha I didn't intend for this to be my segue from talk of fast food indulgence.) Don't get confused, I'm not living alone now. But every time my roommate(s) are out, and I have the place to myself, it turns into a couple hours of gleeful me-time followed by abrupt boredom and feelings of uselessness.
At the same time, however, I decided I don't particularly enjoy sharing a room with someone,at least until I get to know them. Close quarters in New York have caused this to be my living situation for the past three years during school, and now summer, and I've discovered some things about it. My main discovery is that I become overwhelmed with embarrassment when I hear the key in the lock while I am talking in silly voices to my roommate's cat.
Seriously, though, I am stuck in this weird limbo of roommatehood that I don't understand. Surely I'm not the only one...
I saw Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince last night at 12:40 (we weren't die-hard enough to get the 12:01 tickets), and I have a lot of thoughts about it! However, I'll keep them to myself because I am content with appreciating this movie on my own and don't need the internet to be the reason I have an opinion.
Anyway, I just decided that I want to go running tomorrow morning. I am incredibly tired, so now (10:32 p.m.) is the perfect time to go to sleep, and therefore I could get up around 6 if I want to (right?) and go run. I found this site calledrunyourcity.comthat has a really cool list of places to run in various cities. New York is especially good, since it's so big and there are a) so many great places to run and b) so many crazy New Yorkers who are hard core into being fit.
We'll see how it goes, I love sleeping so it may be a struggle with myself.
I've been thinking about writing a lot, where "writing" is a lot of different things.
It's the profession: I'm interning at two publishing companies (yeah bad choice, interning is already kind of terrible without having to do it twice concurrently). One is an agency, and another is a small independent publishing house.
It's the art: Some of the slush I have to read through at the agency is unspeakably bad. The agent I'm working with is known for representing Young Adult writers, which unfortunately means that people submit stuff to them that seems like it is actually written by (untalented) young adults. Don't get me wrong, I fully believe that young adults are capable of writing well, but the people who submit to us aren't young adults and don't write well, most of the time. I find myself using Harry Potter as my standard for good quality writing, but I re-realized while re-reading a bit of the sixth book last week that Harry Potter is amazing and JK Rowling is a wonderful writer. Maybe it is too high of a standard?
It is the act: In general, I want to write, and find the time to write, very badly. But I watched this documentary (about JK Rowling) and she says, in one of many inspirational epigrams, that she needs to write. I don't think I'm there yet. I don't have enough of any kind of story in me to need to write it. However, I do still try to write the few meager stories I have. They come out poorly and generally unfinished, because I haven't yet allowed myself to write for the story rather than for myself or the reader.
Thinking about writing might just be my sense of purpose trying to break out into the world and see where it might tentatively begin to dip its toes. Writing might not be it, but now's a good time to be thinking about it.
Since I am putting off doing several boatloads' worth of work, I thought I would post about something that interests me lately. I was browsing YouTube and realized I was finding a pretty striking pattern in the successful music-related videos out there: so many of the successful artists now in the limelight are strong, style-savvy young women 18 to 30 years old.
Here are some musical ladies I'm seeing and hearing a lot about. What do you think? Are they actually phenomena, or just silly and over-publicized?
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Lady Gaga - 23 (Song: Paparazzi)
My roommate first mentioned Lady Gaga to me a couple months ago, and I hadn't heard of her or heard any of her songs. But I kept hearing her name after that, and her song "Poker Face" has been everywhere. She reminds me a lot of one of my idols, Gala (:D) in her style and love for sequins and girliness. Apparently Lady Gaga dropped out of NYU, which is interesting, and she has a very provocative side that I think shows just how mainstream dirtiness has become...
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P!nk - 29 (Song: So What)
Unfortunately a lot of the official music videos on YouTube have disabled embedding, but this is still a great song minus the actual video. P!nk has been around for a while, and I remember being skeptical of and even disliking her earlier stuff, because it was too something for me. Maybe it was too aggressive, too rock, too overt for my teenaged self. But I think P!nk is really good at being an empowering woman figure and her songs are bitingly clever. She also just looks like a badass.
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Beyoncé - 27 (Song: Ego)
Beyoncé has also been around for a while, and I think she is genuinely talented. She has also been a consistently good role model for girls and their body images. She has a really great team behind her, and she does so much with her time. She's just an overall impressive individual.
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Miley Cyrus - 16 (Song: The Climb)
This one is kind of the exception to the age range I posted above (Miley Cyrus is 16), but it's the same idea. You can hate on her all you want, but Miley Cyrus is genuinely successful right now, and she has so many fans I barely understand it. But her vocal chops are kind of awesome for her age.
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Katy Perry - 26 (Song: Waking Up In Vegas)
Katy Perry is great. I thought her song "I Kissed A Girl" last summer was annoying because of how much it got played, but it's still really catchy, and her voice is so unique that you have to like it. Again, you can hate her songs as much as you want, but she's out there and she's doing well.
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Taylor Swift - 19
This one's a bonus video of Taylor Swift rapping as T-Swizzle with T-Pain. This girl is famous too, and I hear a lot about her, but I haven't really looked into it more than that. I just thought this video was funny.
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Did I miss anyone that you think is really in the spotlight these days? It's not to say that there aren't successful men doing music right now, but I feel like the artists getting the most exposure are women, for whatever reason. Maybe I think that way because I am also a woman, and I have my own tastes that make these ladies stand out to me. In any case, this is what I'm seeing, and I think it's really cool.
It's unprofessional to include any form of begging in a cover letter, right? Yes, I suppose you're right... But jeez, every time I send another job application somewhere, I am sorely tempted to include a dash of "Please give me something to do this summer - I don't care if it's worthwhile or not, I will pretend it is and do a great job because I feel useless and uninteresting without a job. :("
I suppose I just haven't hit on that magical formula for my own cover letters yet. Right now I think they're good, but I'm too focused on impressing with my hook instead of promising them I'll do a great job, which I should probably do...
I'm into formulas. I'm sure I've said it before, and you probably just got deja vu. As an organized person (when I put some effort into it - not like lately, with my Moleskine planner gathering dust in the heap on my desk), I consider patterns and order to be the most important part of being successful in what I do. In high school, I figured out the magic formula of getting an A, and I put it to use and got those As. I couldn't really tell you what the formula is, because I didn't discover it outright, but I fell into a rhythm that worked for my individual self, and with the rhythm came success.
Of course, right now, what I do is not entirely useful, because I am not bogged down with my usual course load, and my brain is deteriorating. But the work I am doing is just as frustrating, and I haven't yet found the rhythm to do it as well as I do schoolwork. That work is the job hunt, and it is making me angrier every day.
It makes me angry, for example, that I can't seem to get more than one interview after hours of pouring my thoughts into cover letters and convincing myself that I want these jobs. Some of them are really great, and I get super into writing my cover letter, and I get my hopes up that maybe this will be the one. And then I never ever hear from the company. Are there really that many other people as qualified as me - with my unique skills of translation, childcare/educational background and research achievements? Pardon my arrogance. But seriously?? I can't get an interview for BABYSITTING??
Something is wrong, and I don't know if it's me or them.
The article is long - on purpose. It challenges you, in the first paragraph, to forgo your modern distractions (Twitter, e-mail, Facebook, the Crackberry/iPhone) and devote yourself to reading it. To focusing your entire, undivided attention on the article and what it has to say. Now, despite my opinion that the article is not well organized enough to relay its very powerful message in a powerful way (to my own half-assed attention span, it was mostly an ongoing meta-thought stream about attention and how we have none of it yet could have lots of it)... it does hit you hard. That is, if you make the effort to read all of it.
I'll be frank (or maybe Mary haha /overdone joke) - I had my own distractions while reading the article. My roommate came home and we talked about her miserable day, I had to blow my nose about five times because I'm sick, and that e-mail reflex whined at me to see if a job prospect had written me back yet.
But that's kind of the nature of things. I like to focus on the nose-blowing, the roommates. I mean, if I really devoted ALL my attention that article, my nasty post-flu snot would trickle to the back of my throat, compromising my immediate health! I had to succumb to that distraction, at least. And sometimes the main criminal distractions Anderson discusses, like e-mail and technology, are similarly life-necessary. Is it really wise to ignore the building blocks of our careers, our futures? I like to stay up to date on that distraction, myself.
Maybe my personal take-home revelation from the article is about living in the moment, how it can be dangerous but unavoidable. Even though that's not exactly what Anderson says. But personally, I enjoy living in the stupid mindless moment of things like these... our sorely belated Junk Drawer links.
Death Row game. This is a well-designed, good-humored game if I ever saw one. It took me a long first try to figure out how to master the game, then a delightful second try to beat it. I don't often show my video-game nerd side, but I'm a sucker for a good RPG/story-based game. If it has minigames built in... I'm sold. Play Death Row! Don't judge it by its controversial premise.
White Oleander by Janet Fitch. I read this book for the first time when I was a budding adolescent, 14 going on 15. It was touching and beautiful then, but I sped through it in a haze of emotional ignorance, and the only mark it left on me was its lyrical style. I've always valued lyricism above many things, so that was fine with me. But rereading it this past week, after almost six summers, I found a new tension and breathtaking connection in this novel. If you like stories about California, about mothers and daughters, about poetry and art, about women and men and life, read this. Read it.
This blast from the past. I'm probably "uncool" for wanting to listen to the solo albums some of the old members made. But I don't care! When they were good, S Club was gooood. I got the urge to Google them while listening to this song:
The Sims 3 torrent. You gotta be a little tech-savvy to download and do this right, but you can download The Sims 3 from an, ahem, questionable source, before the official release on June 2nd... or just buy it on Monday, since that's only 4 days away. I'll attest that I made a conscious effort to do this download safely, so I haven't had any problems. But you probably shouldn't mess up your computer if you don't know what you're doing.
Straslin. I don't think I've linked my friend Iseul before (it's a pen name, I'm not used to calling her that!). This is her online comic, which she's drawing during her year abroad. Some of the literary and cultural references I don't get, but in general the comic is adorable and very Iseul-like!
Empire Mag's Cryptic Canvas. 50 famous films hidden in a painting. Can you guess them all? I got to like 34 before having to search for hints. I'm sure you can do better!
If you didn't know by now that the swine flu is no worse than any other typical flu we have in the world, then I am sad for you, and don't wish to explain that my flu may be swine flu or other but that I will not die from it. Because it's normal and I was smart enough to go to the doctor when I didn't feel well, and he told me how to take care of myself.
The end!
But I will say that, after yesterday's fun experimentation with seeing how much phlegm I could spit out in one cough, today's dry hacks are shredding my throat...
I'm out of groceries, but people's inevitable dirty looks on the subway and in the store will probably lead me to order take-out. Are restaurants open this weekend?
I haven't posted in a while. I've been lost in that strange limbo of emotion that is moving to a new (temporary) home, and I've felt uninspired. Not a lot of clutter-noteworthy stuff has been going on. I have been working at the elementary school where I am a teacher's aide/tutor/paper-cutter-outer full time, and it's enjoyable, but it feels so much more like an obligation than it ever did during the college school year. Must be because it used to feel like an escape from my peers, into a world of imagination and young human development, and now it's just the way I pass my otherwise unfilled time.
Today, I hit up the library as I walked to Central Park from my place - not that long of a walk, if you're wondering - and picked up White Oleander, Mysterious Skin and The Great Gatsby. It's been six years since Oleander, four since Gatsby, and Skin is brand new to me, although I saw the movie.
Summer is the most picturesque of seasons in my mind. In reality, I love all the seasons equally - their equality is so ingrained in me that I rarely realize it is true until I try to rank them and find that I can't. But summertime, more than the others, makes me write, makes me trust, makes me want to change, makes me happy. It makes me want summer stories and summer feelings. For a long time now, I have associated Janet Fitch's luscious prose and smoky-masked characters with the haze of summer. And my childhood summers were always so full of library reading "challenges" that I wish, several times annually, that I still had the kind of free time to be so dedicated to reading again.
That ^ is a Scandinavian restaurant I passed while exploring my new neighborhood. And this is a 10-minute post before work!
I can tell you, a couple things get old really fast. Here are some of the gems I am dealing with in my life right now:
- Waking up at 6:30 every weekday to work full time at an elementary school, to finish up my work study allowance. That got old after about a day.
- Dealing (passively?) with the fact that, during my move from Gramercy to a new place on East 49th, I LOST MY CLARINET. Now, you probably realize that, not having heard much about my clarinet-playing before, I'm not a virtuoso. But it still means a lot to me... to lose that clarinet in the trunk of a cab. Updates to come, if I ever get myself out of this pickle.
- Hearing my flatmate's poor sad kitten cry every day because she wants attention (food?) but not letting her out because she is not allowed in the main area of the apartment...
- Waking up at 6:30 every weekday to -- oh wait, I said that one already, didn't I? Well PARDON ME
Now it is time to brave midtown Manhattan rush hour!
O Bagel, You are my world My whole wheat everything, toasted please ya heard Your salty brown self, with veggie spreaded hat Don't you know that that is where it’s at? YEAH Riding on the bus, my writing hand slack, I looked in my tummy’s mind for a perfect post-final snack. Cookies too rich, PB&J too bland, I was running out of time before my bus would land. That’s when I saw, out of the window by my head Pick a Bagel on Third! My tummy stopped dead. I descended from the bus, excited and nervous For your sweet crispy body, oh so curvous Just a few short minutes, and I had you in my hands, The tastiest snack ever, man oh man Ran up to the dorm, ate a corner on the way, Crazy and happy, you made my day. Crunching poppy and sesame, Salty tastes so good ta’ me And that silky veggie spread got the colors I need Carrots, onions, green things make me so free My teeth tear at you, my round bready G, Cause sometimes, bagel buddy, you’re kinda hard to eat But it’s ok cause you made my day SUPER SWEET
Before you go all 21st century on me, yes I do have a phone with space to store contact info, no I do not want an iPhone or a Blackberry, yes I do have a Moleskine planner that I could use but for heaven's sake it's a PLANNER, and no I do not want to have to log in to my e-mail or get to a computer every time I want to look up my grandfather's zip code. And yes I am using every ounce of my boredom to waste my time writing about address books right now.
I kick it old-school with paper a lot of the time, which I realize is somewhat eco-unfriendly. For that I am sorry. But I do my part, so I should be allowed a planner and an address book, right? But in looking through my address book, I am reminded of a very simple time wherein I thought I would have to record the address and phone number of every girl I ever talked to in middle school because I thought one day we would be good friends/pen-pals and I would have so many girl pals that I would need to keep them all in a book. So I copied a bunch of useless people's info from the middle school directory.
Now I have a little purple book full of minutiae like Sharon Never-Talked-To-Her's parents' house and Jennifer Lost-Touch-After-Graduation's ancient cell phone number. I do have useful family contact info and important best friend addresses, but it's not working for me.
In considering how much we twenty-somethings move around, for college and for jobs, things in address books begin to look a little creepy and obsessive, since we accumulate 3+ entries for single individuals. But now. Now all will change.
I have a revolutionary idea. I want to design an address book that is simple and not ugly, and it will have regular single-entry pages for Joe & Sarah Married-for-Fifteen-Years-and-Living-in-Napa, but also it will have a page under each letter for my college peeps. These college peeps entries will have a section for FOUR ADDRESSES! WHOA! College 1, College 2 and then Real Life 1 and Real Life 2! Because honestly who really sticks with their first life plan after college?
It's revolutionary and I bet I could make a sweet $17 from all six people who would buy it from me. (Listen, I don't have great mass-production resources ok) Here is a schematical blue/turquoiseprint because I know you're just itching to wrap your mind around this awesomeness.
Hey guys! This is the 100th post for 13 Years of Clutter!
Ahh brings back awful awful memories of Myspace. Does anybody still use that?! ha. Here are my random links for the week.
Cool Iris Pictures. This page full of pretty eyes is an "Untitled Document" according to the internet, but if it were up to me the title would be "AWESOME." (Scroll horizontally.) Maybe you can help me figure out the purpose of this, and why there are no brown eyes... :/
Psyblog: The Science of Psychology. This is a page of links to their super-interesting articles, a lot of which are about our attention spans and why they are so funky. Lord knows I don't need a scientist to tell me about that...
Fix the Top 6 Causes of Clutter. Hey this one is relevant! :) I like the way CNN wrote this article - they take the clutter personality concept and offer realistic suggestions and useful links. For example, they cite the advice of the ApartmentTherapy.com founder: "[with gifts you received and are reluctant to get rid of even though you don't like them,] your duty is to receive it and thank the giver -- not to keep the gift forever."
Retro Renovation. I just like this entire site, because it seems that retro is always in fashion, and they at least do it well at rr.com.
Candy Sushi. This amazing mom created a foody craft that is great for any age group. Older folks can supplement with real sake haha.
Savings Techniques for Women Who Can't Save. A friend of mine showed me this link, and I think it's great. It often seems that clutterers also have problems with finances, and these tips are very realistic and doable for both financially stable people and those who are getting themselves into deep sh*t with money every day...
The Unclutterer tells how to organize a shared drive. I love having an organized computer (hmm someday maybe I should post evidence of my pride and joy organization system) as you probably know. This post from The Unclutterer gives tips on a business-type shared network but they can work well for a personal computer too. Wow did I really just say "personal computer"?
Multicolor Search Lab Flickr Set. Plug in up to 10 colors and this handy doohickey comes up with some really beautiful Flickr photos featuring those colors. I love it.
I've been struggling a lot with insecurity lately. I'm not sure if it's because I didn't write in my personal journal once for the month of April, or if it's this crappy weather or what. But not only have I been feeling particularly down in the dumps about my body and schoolwork, but I'm in a pessimistic mood about people in general.
You can call this whole thing - this not wanting to hang out with anyone/not wanting to talk to people unless I think they will grant me a rare conversation of more than the typical two minutes/general grumpiness - whatever you want. Call it depression or post-adolescent angst (my preferred term), but I think it's probably just a very long mood swing phase thing. Yeah I should be a psychologist!
The other day I just felt so put down by the idea that society apparently has a programmed paradigm of beauty that I don't fit. After reading through that site, I resigned myself to never being appreciated as a beautiful human being by anyone but my mother ever again, and I was complacent for about a day. I felt that I could act however I wanted and not feel weird if people ignored or judged me because I simply wasn't worth their time, as a non-beautiful person.
But I'm starting to realize this is bullshit. (Yes, "starting to" - my heart is a slow learner.) Mostly because tonight my gray mood lifted itself from the grave like a weird heat-sensitive Lazarus around my ring finger of sadness.
- Seeing that my dorm will be bringing puppies in on Wednesday for us to play with during finals stress? DING, gray to misty blue! - Coming home to a delicious late dinner of spaghetti and meat sauce made by my amazing roommate? DING, whirlpool of amber! - Finding out I got a $1,500 Dean's Undergraduate Research Fund Grant for next year? DING, jubilant yellow! - Listening to the piano arrangement of the Debussy piece I just played with my chamber group? DING, joyous sea green! - Laughing with aforementioned roommate at life and at Accigone / The WTF Blanket? DING, best mood ever. I can't put a color on that kind of priceless happiness. Can you?
I've been thinking about age a lot lately. My translation professor is in the throes of old age, medical problems and all, and it worries me (except when he reminds us with vigor that he is still a crazy old Frenchman). I'm growing up, myself, and I'm learning things and getting customarily frustrated by how little I'm actually helping out in the world.
And I'm seeing just how much age can affect interpersonal relationships. The people I spend time with at school are no more than three years ahead or behind me, but sometimes those few years make a difference. (Or do they?)
I am such a different person than I was freshman year, and I can't help thinking that the current freshmen are only the beginnings of what they'll become next year, the year after, and the year after that. Can I really trust the ways they act now - their insecure, judgmental arguments and generalizations? If I can't trust that, what about the parts that seem genuine, the nice comments and the good times?
What makes me even more confused is that people my age are getting married. Engagements are popping up like crazy, and I think it's unwise. True, I do not know these frantic fiancés intimately, but I find it very hard to believe that they have grown up enough to be planning the rest of their lives when I have barely begun to understand the current part of my life.
Sure, sure, I haven't had a very exciting life. But I do consider myself a mature and reflective person, and I think I am thoughtful enough to consider the consequences of turning a fledgling relationship (less than a year in some cases! seriously, people?!) into a permanent life choice.
Maybe I'm misunderstanding. Maybe these people aren't planning their entire lives, and they're just planning the first of several marriages. If that's the case... well, it's really no better than what I originally thought it was and I'm super depressed about the world.
Google Loves Denmark. This is a fun trick: you type in "why are [nationality] so" into Google and delight in the suggestions it gives you in the dropdown menu.
Ok enjoy, and hope this brings an extra junk drawerful of happiness to the end of your week. :)
I read this essay on "structured procrastination"in hopes that it would enlighten me in a way relevant to de-cluttering, as well as justify my incessant habit of procrastinating. (The latest task I'm dreading: a 10-page synthesis of my school observations and readings in a class about the sociology of education... due Thursday, nothing written, and the outline is pitiful. My F will be such a surprise.)
But sadly... I think it's missing a few things. Maybe turning "marginally useful things" into structured to-do lists with the real, important stuff at the end of the chain works for some people, but that's some people. The author, John Perry, makes sweeping statements about "procrastinators," but I think he might be forgetting the theory-defying new generation of procrastinators who don't do anything useful while they put off their lives. Today's skilled youth procrastinators don't really pretend Facebook is an immediately "more important" task that is just leading up to later real tasks... No, the smart ones actually realize that Facebook is unimportant. They simply dread doing real work at one point or another, and the Internet is there to soothe them with its warm, motherly bosom of vapidness.
These young people can accomplish an amazing slew of awesome things. To wit: brains at MIT change the world. And I can guarantee you that a good percentage of those kids spent some highly useless time online or on their iPhones buying stupid apps while they made their way to stardom. They had no delusions about the uselessness of their activities, but they knew how to manage their time. They're procrastinators - definitely structured procrastinators by Perry's definition - but they don't really fit the mold.
Maybe I'm wrong. (Lord knows the Internet has shown its wrath when I've had an "incendiary opinion" before.) Maybe these electronic brain-cell killers popular with the youth actually do have some "marginally useful" quality to them. Since you're probably procrastinating right now, I'm sure you can tell me what you think of this whole question. But you're probably more interested in going on your dimly lit interwebby way... Facebook calls, after all.
I've been thinking about movies lately. I've become a movie person, it seems. I love when movies happen to strike very neat chords of relevance in my life, such as when Im Juli (In July) reminded me to welcome and be open to destiny.
Wall-E was also great because it came out right in the middle of my de-cluttering project(s), and Wall-E had a great system for organizing his treasures. :)
Anyway, this got me thinking: what are your favorite movies or TV shows that feature themes like clutter and, for those of you coming here for NYU info, the NYU area/New York?
Clutter movies/TV could have a character who's into organizing (I can think of one you might know of...), or maybe a clutter-related conflict. As for NYU and New York, I know I liked seeing Washington Square Park in scenes from When Harry Met Sally, but there are plenty of others. Which ones do you like?
Martha Stewart's super-organized junk drawer, via Organizing LA.
Well, I'm home sick and I'm feeling legitimately guilty that I'm missing work, because normally today I work in a class of fifth graders and I miss them a whole lot. But, to brighten up my day and yours, I'm introducing a new post idea for the blog.
Every week, I will bring to you a hodgepodge of links that bring me unabated joy - the Junk Drawer of links, if you will. Most people in real life have that one drawer in the kitchen or the office that holds everything you can't be bothered to organize properly. Mine has printer paper, a sewing kit, cough drops, and old Blue Books.
That is the idea of the Junk Drawer post: everything I can't be bothered to organize into 13 Years of Clutter relevant posts, but that I want to share with you anyway. :)
Aladdin from Compton. This hilarious re-dub of some scenes in Aladdin may be overdoing it, but it makes me laugh all the same.
The Top Ten Benefits of Play. Even after seeing all those annoying "Be a player" ads (seriously, they couldn't find a better wording?) with Shrek on them all over the city, I never realized that playing is essential until I saw this. As for how I'm going to put that knowledge to use, well that's another story.
Toilet paper roll sculptures. This is amazing. I feel like this type of thing is the ideal way to de-clutter: do something crazy awesome with some old trash, make it famous, and get people to buy it so that trash becomes worth something. Kinda far-fetched for other stuff like used paper plates though.
Street With a View. Some awesome people in Pittsburgh, PA decided to make their "street view" on Google Maps more dynamic than others.
Sushi no Suki. I played this game for hours the other night while avoiding work. I can't figure out what the title of the game is supposed to mean though. "Sushi no suck"?
SkyDance. Beautiful aerial views of France. I just wish the video lasted longer!.
SFGirlByBay. The title alone makes me homesick, and the photos on this blog are very pretty.
Over the years, I have had so many e-mail accounts that I am almost ashamed. "Almost" only because I know in my heart that many people my age have also had similarly embarrassing Internet pasts.
I always just kind of dealt with the inefficiency of crap like Yahoo, Hotmail and once, when I was 12 and "rebelling" against my anti-e-mailing-strangers mother (yeah that whole debacle made everyone involved look real wise or whatever), Email.com. Wow, those were the days. I mean, when I look at Email.com now, it looks like a batch of email keywords threw up on itself.
In any case, I took a deep breath and switched from my most recent, main account at Hotmail to Gmail. It was a daunting task, because of how much personal stuff I accumulated in my Hotmail account. But now. Oh, now.
I am so in love. So in love that I have had to remind myself that saying "I love you" out loud to an abstract, unfeeling entity like Gmail would make me feel really stupid later. Here are some reasons why I love Gmail so much.
The themes. Mine is the "Bus Stop" one, and it was already great before I discovered that it changed with the real-life weather! When it rains, my Gmail is adorably rainy. Yesterday, when it was nearly as foggy as San Francisco, my Gmail was foggy and SUPER ADORABLE (see above, click for larger). Maybe I'm just a huge girly girl, but I love when my inbox is adorable.
The labels. I am a very organized person when it comes to my computer and my e-mail. Call it OCD, call it endearing (by all means), call it whatever you like. When my inbox is fresh and clear because my messages have all been tucked away in their proper folders, I feel in control of my life. And Gmail makes that very easy with labels - you can even attach multiple labels to one message.
The neatness and efficiency. I love how Gmail keeps track of your "conversations" so that each new reply between you and the other person is encapsulated in one little clickable bundle of joy.
The Labs. I consider myself pretty tech-savvy. I like knowing as many keyboard shortcuts as possible, I type like 100 words a minute (srsly, I checked with the uber-scientific Typeracer), I've troubleshooted (troubleshot?) a fair share of epic computer disasters. I like when I can make my Internet work for me. So the labs feature is perfect; I can customize my way up the wazoo. That said, I only have one enabled right now (toolbar drag-and-drop cause that shit is useful), but it's nice to know I have options.
The prestige. I may be a superficial girl only just out of my teenage years, but I'm not afraid to admit I'm a sucker for brand names. Especially nerdy ones like Google/Gmail and Sony. I can't help it, they're just so alluring and sexy. Having @gmail.com attached to my very own name makes my heart swell with ridiculous, misplaced pride, and God damn it, I like it.
Gmail. Switch today. This message not sponsored in any way by Google or its affiliates. :)
The past couple of weeks, the weather in New York has been a super weird tease. It gets beautiful for a few short days and then rapidly descends back into awful awful rain and cold. So people are talking about it like it's the only interesting thing in life. This may be true (probably not), but it got me thinking about the irony of the fact that people demean small talk about weather so much yet allow it to dominate conversations when it acts up.
We're such slaves to the elements, and we barely even realize it. We talk about the rain and then the sun and the temperature because it is this huge thing that we can't control. Sure, we can try to stop global warming (which, according to one of my first graders, is caused by cows' farts), but beyond our measly efforts, we really can't control the weather.
So talking idly about the weather really isn't as lame as it always seems. Or maybe that's just my rationalization of the fact that I unashamedly indulge in that kind of conversation now that I live in a place where weather exists (in California, the rain is always good and the only kind of discomfort I felt from the weather was delicious delicious sunburn - hey look at me all idealizing woo).
I'm not entirely sure if I've ever met someone unaffected by Seasonal Affective Disorder, because to me, and people around me, the sunshine level so heavily influences our moods. When that sun comes out, I want to shout glorious, ridiculous things like "HOW WAS I LIVING BEFORE?!" Then again, I've also said that about the feeling you get when you shave your legs for the first time in a while. TMI right?
Incidentally, 1000awesomethings.com is a fantastic burst of optimism for rainy days (and all days)!
Click for larger. Here it is, friends. The holy grail you've been searching for. I'm about to explain this uninteresting image into the ground, so hold on to your hats.
Please note: I am not intimately familiar with every single room or floor in Gramercy. I am not responsible for the ultimate accuracy of this description. If you catch a mistake or have something to add, please comment below and I might make an updated version of this post in the coming days.
Do NOT post questions about specific rooms that I have not discussed in this post. I will not be able to answer them. If somebody comes along and provides accurate information about any other rooms, I'll add it. Until that happens, I do not know anything more than I have written below.
My advice to you
If you're looking for a certain type of room, e.g. studio double, don't worry about figuring it out from this floor plan. When you go online to pick at your lottery time, you will be able to see all the studio doubles (or other setups) you wish. I'm merely posting this so you can get a feel for the placement of rooms on each floor.
When you go into the lottery, try to be as clear with your card-members on what you want in a room. There will be a lot of information on the lottery site for you to take in, and if you don't act quickly, especially with Gramercy, you could lose the room you want.
About the floors
There are 21 floors and a penthouse, plus a cellar and subcellar. There is no 13th floor. So, technically, there are 20 floors available for NYU students (no rooms on ground floor), with approximately 18 rooms on each floor. Keep in mind that there are some non-NYU families living here, or at least there were in 2008-2009.
On the 2nd floor, the room numbers are completely different because of the huge study lounge (-02 position), CDE/ACDE offices and the rabbi-in-residence (ok I'm not sure if the latter lives on 2, but he and the other faculty- and people in-residence are scattered throughout the building). So, the first room available to NYU students is 202, which corresponds to -06 on the above image.
Floors 4, 5 and 6 have lounges in the -03 position, so that throws the numbering off as well.
Room sizes/numbers might be different on the 17th floor and above, because there is a terrace/balcony on 17.
I believe most RA rooms are in the -16 position. They have a single the size of a double studio and they have a nice leather couch. Make friends with them. :)
From floors 2 to 9 or 10, the -14 rooms, which on other floors have nice corner setups, are flush with the building next door, so the views might not be ideal. I have not been in these rooms though.
(Same image as above. Click for larger.)
About this floor plan image
If there is no (#) indicated, then I do not know how many people are in that particular suite. Sorry!
I based it on the miniature floor plans given on the Housing site for Gramercy. It is accurate for the pieced-together knowledge I have of rooms on various floors. Specifically, I am familiar with the following rooms and can attest to their accuracy, if you're interested: 202 (-06 position), 204 (-08 position), 705, 1018, 1101, 1109, and 1114. However, because I know that rooms are generally the same on different floors, I can say this is a good general view of a Gramercy floor plan. /disclaimer haha.
For the rooms I have actually been in, I have drawn lines to show the approximate location of the A and B rooms (-05 has a C room too). The small square in the suite marks the bathroom. -05 has two bathrooms that I have not marked. Keep in mind that the rest of the space in suites will include kitchen space (counters, fridge, dishwasher etc.), possible closets and room for a table. Non-RA rooms in Gramercy do not have couches.
The number in parentheses shows the number of bed spaces in a given room. For example, -14 is a four (4)-person suite with (2) in the A room and (2) in the B room.
The grayed-out areas from left are: stairway, laundry (on approximately every other floor), and elevator/trash/other stairway.
The space between -18 and -01 is occupied by a terrace on the 2nd floor. This means that all -18 room residents can see into -01 rooms and vice versa etc. Same for -14 and -02 I believe. This was fun in the beginning of this year when everyone had their blinds open, but people got shy soon enough so it's harder to spy now. The views from these rooms are still decent because the windows are sufficiently large. For more on an -01 see my 1101 picture post.
The "best" rooms
Honestly, I think they're all decent. And frankly, you're living in Gramercy with amazing kitchen appliances and building facilities, so don't complain if you don't get the exact room you think is the best. But if you're looking for a corner room with floor-to-ceiling window options, you'll want either -02, -05, -11 or -14. This only goes for floors 7 and above, because 2 through 6 are so weirdly configured.
The higher floors I'm sure have great views, but remember that that means you have to go down 15+ stairs for fire drills. We had upwards of 10 fire drills this year.
The rooms within some suites (to cite some, -09 and -05) are fairly small. They are livable, but they're not grand open spaces. The kitchens are likewise fairly modest. In updating Gramercy Green for dorm living, many of the apartments formerly destined for luxury family living were separated into several dorm-style apartments, so sometimes the shapes and sizes of rooms are awkward. For example, -01 and -02 on some floors used to be one full apartment.
All right everyone, hope that was helpful. If you have further clarification or information to provide, please add a comment below (it's the honor system, I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and trust your accuracy because this guide will be helping people in learning about Gramercy), and I may get around to adding it to the post soon.
Hey kids, here is an announcement to ease the fears of you NYU people fretting over the lottery:
Before the end of the weekend, I will have a post about Gramercy Green and the types of rooms, including a wide schematic of the floorplan (but not individual rooms). I do not know about every type of room but I will make it as complete as I can.
Now, I know that sounds supremely unexciting. But if you hadn't realized that recycling is a big deal yet, then you're kind of like those people who don't know what's going on with the economy, and those people are just a damn shame.
I know from personal experience that the mere thought of taking my old, useless printer cartridge all the way down to Staples (an absurdly un-horrifying twelve blocks) struck fear and laziness into my heart for nearly all of last semester. I even considered throwing the cartridges away - our course of action last year when we weren't quite sure of what was going on with this whole "ink cartridge recycling" notion.
The whole thing is pretty simple: your little baby cartridge gets taken with its myriad brothers and sisters to a plant where it gets disassembled (I can't vouch for any lack of pain here) and its components are used, along with those of its brethren, to make BRAND SHINY NEW INK CARTRIDGES. It's like they came out of nowhere!! Isn't that amazing! I mean, can you imagine the landfill buildup caused by those of us ignorant of this beautiful process? I'm sure big businesses and schools like mine go through tons of ink cartridges a day. I would really like to be able to know that those sad old cartridges were being used for something as glorious of out-of-nowhere-new-cartridge-making...
Check out the other recycling galleries and articles on TheGreenGuide.com for more moments of amazement!
Just a quick note with the purpose of directing your eyes to the right of the screen: I've finished de-cluttering my labels. I'm sure I might think of other stuff to put in that list, but for now this is a much better way of organizing the labels (tags) for my posts than what I had before. Now things are separated into clutter and life and stuff in between. Enjoy.
Sometimes I wonder where human beings get off critiquing the value of what other human beings do or create. Honestly, what right do we think we have to say that something is "good" or "bad" or "right" or "wrong" based on our own insignificant judgments of quality? How dare we think we can decide the value of something belonging to someone else - especially their thoughts?
I'm getting really fed up with arrogance lately, and surprisingly, it's not solely because of any personal injustice that I feel. It's just something I'm observing more and more of in this academic community, and online as well. I would like to think it exists to a less outrageous extent in other sectors of the world and life, but I'll be honest - I can't know that. I'm stuck in this little bubble of bullshit for the next year and a half, and there's not a whole lot I can do about it while I'm under the control of tests, papers, self-righteous professors and university administration. I'm just glad I'm in this situation at the same time that I'm in a place like New York, where it's relatively easy to "get away" from it all.
♦ In 10 Words. This is an interesting linguistic exercise. It reminds me of this book my French translation/"voices of the projects" prof told us about that was written in French and avoided use of the letter e. Language is amazing, if entirely frustrating*.
♦ More Music, Less Bullshit: Why Dudes Dress Bad. Hilarious and stylish. It also opened my eyes to the fact that, as a girl, I probably dress bad a lot out of laziness of the time too, without realizing it. Owning good clothes doesn't mean you are fashionable haha.
♦ Si Dawson: These Are Not Your Stories. For your own peace of mind, I'll let you read it for yourself, and decide if you agree or not. Sometimes it's hard to remember that, on the Internet and elsewhere, no matter how convicted people sound or how retarded they seem, they might be smarter or less astute than their words make them appear.
♦ jouez. Although a bit feminism- and politics-heavy for my taste, there are some really intelligent, debate-provoking things in this girl's blog. For the record, I don't know her.
♦ Fathering On. It may be creepy that I'm reading the blog of jouez's father, but whatever, I like his idea, and I find it a really interesting concept: a "solo" father (not single, per se) trying to enlighten society's ignorance of the dad's experience of single parenting. It's a really interesting sociological question that really is not treated in the media.
♦ CNN: Catcalling: creepy or a compliment? I've always felt uncontrollably offended when this happens to me, partly because of my upbringing, partly because of my own personal psychology, and apparently, partly because of a more general psychological female trend.
* - Another story for another day.
And there, ladies and gentlemen, goes my Friday night.
You all are so fucking irresponsible. You are supposed to be teachers-in-training, but you aren't even disciplined enough to do ten minutes' worth of measly research on the educational system in England? I hand-fed you instructions on what to research and what to send me, and I sent out a million e-mail reminders and tried to make shit easy for you. I know that maybe the million e-mails was too much, but is it really my fault in the end, when none of you even had the balls to stand up and take responsibility for this project, for the constant e-mailing that it required? I'm looking at the syllabus and this is one of the main components going into our grade.
I sincerely hope that that ambiguous line in the syllabus about "class members grading each other" means that our group gets to grade each of its members, because I'm going to give all of you very honest grades that reflect your amount of effort in this ridiculous dance of not e-mailing me back/being late for meetings/refusing to offer suggestions/utter laziness.
I can understand that, because we are future teachers, we are all busy. We are busier than anyone else could ever comprehend. I am not even a future teacher and I'm busy. But none of you are busier than me, and none of you should have ever gotten it into your head that my assuming the responsibility meant that I had to do all the work myself.
I'm sure I'm overreacting. In fact, I'm about 90% sure that this project is going to go down really well and be pretty well-received, because of our combined efforts. I am just extremely bitter and extremely pissed that I had to be the one constantly worrying about all our asses in this course that no one cares about, despite it being one of the most relevant and useful classes we will ever take. I don't judge any of you for not thinking it's valuable as a class, but I really wish you could see that everything you do has value, and everything you do affects other people.
In fact, that is what this class is about: EDUCATION AS A SOCIAL INSTITUTION, bitches. Education is a social monster, life is a social monster, and you are all failing at it because all you're concerned with is managing your own lives instead of trying to interact with the people who have stumbled into it and are thus A PART OF IT, however minuscule and worthless, according to you.
I've discovered a great new method for superfast de-cluttering. Yes, I am getting cluttery at school. I blame it on my high levels of busyness and low levels of actually caring about stuff other than food and sleep.
Anyway, my desk looks pretty horrible right now. My camera's dead, otherwise I'd show you. The desk looks like a colorful, toddler copy-machine android vomited on it. It got to be too much, so I took everything unnecessary off of my desk and put it on the floor. (The bed would also work.) Now the clutter was in my path, and at least for me, I can't stand a messy floor, because I feel quite obligated to clear it up. So, it got cleared up!
For those of you who don't mind paths obstructed by clothes and confused papier-mache gone wrong, the bed really would work better. Just pick somewhere that you're going to need to clear to use in the near future, and put all your clutter on it so you're motivated to clean it up. My desk was not a good place for my clutter, because I could easily work around it. Find what works for you, as always.
Now, this may end up taking you in circles, as you find more and more places to relocate your clutter, and eventually end up sleeping in a dresser drawer and bathing in the neighbors' kitchen sink. But it works short-term, and that's really all you need, to start.
It started as a simple summer project to de-clutter a messy apartment. It was put on hold while I finished college, and now it's time to face the facts: it's a lot more than just clutter, and it's not going anywhere unless we make it.
