What I Don't Know

That Time of Year Again

I received an invitation to a bridal shower in March, and a 'Save the Date' for a wedding a month later. There's another wedding in June that I've been verbally invited to, but it remains to be seen whether or not I'll receive an invitation.

I'm working the day of the bridal shower so I can get out of that one easily. The weddings, not so much. See, here's the thing: I don't like weddings. I find them incredibly boring. The church part is okay; I mean, that's the only part the matters to me. The actual 'I do' part. But the rest of it, I don't see the point in. This is compounded by the fact that at both of the weddings I may or may not be invited to, everyone I know is in the bridal party.

It's not even a lack of interest in everyone's weddings but my own. Though I am a voluntary spinster, I imagine my own wedding to be a trip to a courthouse and then lunch for the approximate five people involved. I have far too much of a nervous personality to deal with catering, centerpieces, MOBs, FOBs, SOBs, and the like.

Luckily, I only know two people who are at the wedded bliss state, though I am dreading the venture into my late 20s. I will be sure to receive more wedding invitations in the future.

I just keep telling myself I'm saving them money.

Lucy

I have a cat who feels more like an unwanted college roommate. I do all the cooking and cleaning and grocery shopping, and in return, she sleeps in my bed when I'm not there, makes a mess of the bathroom, wakes me up at all hours of the night, and bothers me when I'm busy, but when I want to have a conversation, she either doesn't pay attention or walks away. Also, she drools.

She's definitely not what I had in mind when I considered bringing a cat into my home. I've had cats before, and am well-acquainted with their stereotypical aloofness and general lack of caring about humans unless there's food involved. This one is different. Sometimes I'm convinced she's not a cat at all.

I know she's been abused. I could tell that in the first week, when she'd run from the room every time I set foot on the floor, and I could see that she's been kicked. She's skittish but will purr and knead anything in sight if you so much as look at her, and she barely holds a passing interest in catnip, let alone anything shiny, crinkly, dangly, feathery, or a combination thereof. The only cat-like thing she seems to be interested in are my rats, but I think it's more curiosity on her part than some base predator instinct.

We share a house and put up with each other, and sometimes she'll let me pick her up and sometimes she'll actually sit near me and allow me to pet her head without butting up against me and walking all over my lap and digging her claws into whatever soft body part she's just stepped on. I wish she would sleep on my feet at night and sit quietly in my lap without drooling, and that I could dangle some string for her, but that's just not who she is. She probably wishes I would put up with the drooling and feed her more often, and not randomly chuck things about when I get frustrated, but that's not who I am.

Both of us were probably expecting something different when we met each other, but we're stuck now, so we just have to learn to like each other.

Group Dynamics

Or, what happens when you get 100 geeks together and watch them try to run things.

Like a true geek, I play an online strategy game called Ikariam. I've been playing it for nearly a year, and was fortunate enough to be recruited early by an alliance. Recently, my alliance merged with another alliance in an attempt to improve our overall reach and score. This means that we went from around 30 players to over 100. One hundred people with their own ideas on how to run things.

We've had quite a few people leave, be banned, and engage in fights over how much spam we get from members throughout the day (adding to the number of messages, of course) and whose girlfriend is hotter--well, being geeks, over whose girlfriend actually exists. It's been interesting to watch from the sidelines, and what amuses me is that there is a simple way of solving this. The leaders of the alliance created a forum off the game site for everyone, and someone else signed everyone up for a chat program, again off the game site, where all us of can chat.

Except no one will actually take this option, even when it's thrown out there every other message. I'm sure things will settle down eventually, once we've lost a third of our members and everyone's mother has been insulted. In the meantime,it's interesting to watch.

My To-Do List

One of the things I've been experimenting with lately is my to-do list. I am a born procrastinator, but I love crossing things off lists, so this seems to be the productivity tool that helps the most. This weekend, I wrote down all the things I wanted to get done, then split them up by day. I even gave them approximate times they would take to be completed. Now, Sunday evening, I've managed to complete nearly everything on my list, and then seem. Yet I still feel like all I've done this weekend is busy work.

Certainly all the stuff I did this weekend was necessary, though the bulk of it was spent on my writing workshop. But I don't feel like I was productive.

Lately I've been reading a lot of personal development books, like Escape From Cubicle Nation, Four Hour Work Week, and Never Eat Alone. They are full of great ideas, and I always put them down, inspired to do more to start improving my life, but I can get past the implementation part. I've written down my skills, I've dissected my workday, I've taken classes in computer programming and I've researched far more than someone not in school should be researching. And I can't figure out what I'm good at. This goes back to my pursuit of being well-rounded, but you'd think by now I could figure out something I'm actually good at that's a marketable skill.

I'm sure that there's some kind of mental block preventing me from seeing my best skills. Other people have tried to help me by pointing out what they think I'm good at, but truth be told, a lot of the time I'm going through the motions, and what I do enjoy doing, I can't figure out how to sell. For instance, to-do lists. I like making them, and crossing things off them. I also enjoy organizing data. Not in a pie chart and bar graph sort of way, but I like keeping track of things. When my family was planning my grandfather's funeral I had my notebook out when we still hadn't even left the hospital, writing down everything that needed to be done. I also have the ability to recall certain facts, such as client names, current issues, and who may or may not be working on it. However, this seems to be at random, as I'll sometimes remember a lot of detail about something I'm not even working in, but can't remember the last person I spoke to on the phone.

Something I tend to spend the most time on is reading random trivia. But I don't intend to try out for Jeopardy.

So that's where I am. The books are fun to read and very interesting, but sooner or later I'm going to have to stop reading them and actually do something. I just can't figure out what skill to use yet. Kind of like the theme for this blog.

Being

The AF referred to me as a writer this week. This surprised me, because I don't actually think of myself as a writer. Sure, I've been writing off and on since I was about twelve years old. I've done National Novel Writing Month (and won) three years in a row. I've twice been a forum host at Toasted Cheese, and I'm in their Engage the Snark 12-week writing workshop now. But I still don't think of myself as a writer.

It's not that I've never published anything. It's more that I think of myself as still being in the learning process of writing. I've never taken it very seriously before, but the past few months, I've started to. Now that I am, I'm polishing my skills, getting my feelers out to see what I can do and where I can go with this.

The same thing happened with my dancing. Until about 6 months ago, I didn't think of myself as a dancer. I was still struggling, still trying to force my body to obey my mind. Sure, I'd performed, but it was awkward and amateur. After three years, I'm still in that learner's phase, but now I have plans for my dancing. I can see what I want to do with it, where I want to go. I can probably perform and not look half bad. 

And then there's adulthood. When I was a younger, I always thought the process of becoming an adult meant something spectacular, that you'd wake up one day and feel mature, stronger, and secure in your life, and all you had to do was be patient and wait. Then my grandfather passed away, the first of any of my immediate family to die. It was 3 months before I graduated college, and I was in the middle of moving, trying to graduate, and working near full-time while going to school full-time when he got sick. I came home and did what I knew I was supposed to do, and my father told me he was proud of me.

On the other side of that week, I looked back and realized that there was nothing to becoming an adult. It had already happened. There was no moment, no magical CGI sequence, like you have in The Sims when your character ages. It was really weird.

And I still don't know what I'm doing half the time. But I don't think there's supposed to be this zen moment you have to wait for, where everything just falls into place. I'm performing, and I'm not doing half bad.

So now I'm an adult, a dancer, and a writer. Next up is photography, and despite some gorgeous shots I have of Yosemite, I still don't think of myself as a photographer! I'm sure though, that one day I'll be messing around in Photoshop, and I'll just be a photographer.

Little Things

A lot of things are really impressive if you think about them hard enough. For instance, the earthquake in Haiti. It's hundreds of miles away, and I know no one directly affected by it. But there's countries all over the world, getting planes together, and food, and unfathomable amounts of money to send to all the people in Port-au-Prince and the surrounding areas.

I try to ignore the news unless something interesting pops up, but I still see all the depressing things that happen day after day. It's just so...weird to me that this big world where people are constantly fighting and warring and hating each other are just going "Oh, crap. Here, take some money. Take some food. What else do you need? We've got that."

One of my favorite stories so far was on MSN this morning, about the members of a church in Allentown, PA, who hopped a flight to the Dominican Republic with tons of supplies and, as last reported, are crossing the border into Haiti to assist an orphanage they are affiliated with. Armed. Apparently they didn't want to try to bring firearms across the border, even though they weren't averse to actually using them, so they're bringing knives instead. And if they get turned back from the border, they know how to get across without going through a checkpoint.

That is awesome.

Another of my favorite stories is of Deborah Rodriquez, of Kabul Beauty School, who took took a course in disaster aid and went to New York after 9/11 to help out, then flew off to Afghanistan after the start of the war, found her niche (teaching salon business skills to Afghan women), and wound up starting a beauty school and aiding and empowering Afghan women. 

My irrational mind thinks about doing something like this.

My rational mind reminds me I do not have a passport, and that I once got lost on the same exit on the same freeway twice in one weekend.

But it's nice to know that we can actually think of someone other than ourselves for a little while. 

Obligatory Donation Links:

ShelterBox USA -- a neat organization that sends boxes of tents, survival equipment, even coloring books for children

Doctors Without Borders -- definitely a necessity right now

Oh, just go to this page and pick one.

Diconnect

I left my cell phone at work today. At least, I think I left it at work. It certainly wasn't in my purse when I got home.

I decided not to go back for it, partly because I had things to do before my dance class, and partly because I just didn't want to. After all, I rarely get phone calls from people. And, since I don't have a land line, I've now been without a phone for a few hours. It's kind of nice.

I've got a Blackberry, which tells me when I've got e-mail, or gives me Facebook or Twitter updates, and I'm always checking it to see if I've got any messages. But it's nice to not have my phone around. There's no checking Facebook on it, or checking to see if the AF has sent me a text, or checking my e-mail. I feel a little anxiety, of course--what if something were to happen and I have no way of getting help? What if I can't get into work tomorrow and I can't call to tell them?--but really, the chances of any of those things happening are probably next to nothing.

No, it's more likely I'll find my phone on my desk tomorrow morning, with about 20 e-mails and 3 calls from my father. But it's nice to have a phone-free evening, even if I won't voluntarily repeat the experience.

Gypsies Never Get Tied Down

A lot of the time I have to force myself to connect with people. I am both a loner and an introvert, and it usually ends in a lot of evenings by myself with the cat. And even though I often get lonely, the thought of spending time with a group of people exhausts me.

Over Christmas I played host to two different friends overnight. As exciting as the prospect of spending time with two of my best friends was, I was sure I'd be so exhausted from the housecleaning and having to be 'on' that I'd end up in one of my easily irritated moods. Well, friends came, stayed, and left, and to my surprise, I felt no more irritated then I typically do (though it was nice to just wander around an empty house for a few hours after they'd both left).

A few weeks ago I had accepted a vague offer of going to see the new Sherlock Holmes movie with a group of friends. When I didn't hear from them, I was ready to give it up, believing they'd forgotten about me, but then I decided to contact the person who had originally coordinated the outing. I ended up with a concrete invite and had a good time. One begets the other--if I refuse to connect with people, they will forget about me.

I've been experimenting lately with just asking. The worst someone can tell me is no, and if anything, they'll probably forget about me immediately. But if I don't take the time to ask in the first place, then I'll just wind up spending another evening with the cat.

Stage Presence

I am a dancer, and the two styles of dance I do, Flamenco and American Tribal Style belly dance, rely heavily on Attitude. When you go on stage, you are supposed to display confidence, feminine power and strength, and a healthy amount of pride. This is usually communicated through the posture, lifted chest, shoulders back and down, looking straight ahead with energy flowing through your body, down your arms and legs, out your fingers and toes. Watch any video of a flamenco or tribal dancer, and you can see the power and confidence that radiates form the dancer.

While any good dancer should have the feel of these postures memorized, you still need feedback. Which is where looking at yourself in the mirror comes in. 

I'm always ashamed to look at myself in the mirror when I'm dancing, because I don't want my fellow dancers to think I'm vain, but if I don't look in the mirror, I can't always tell when my shoulders have hunched up, or my feet have turned inwards, or my hands have started looking like claws. And depending on the number of people in the class, the instructor doesn't notice it right away either.

Last night in my Flamenco class we had to practice strutting across the room, over and over again. The instructor was trying to teach us confidence in our posture. One of the dancers is extremely confident, having taken Flamenco when she was younger, and had an easy time of it. I had a hard time with the feet and keeping my chest lifted, so it took me a few tries. The third dancer is very unsure of herself, and had trouble most of the time.

The thing about having confidence in yourself is that it shows in your posture. My belly dance instructor is always showing us the difference between perfect posture and lazy posture. Lazy posture makes the dancer look timid and unsure, where the perfect posture makes her look like someone you don't want to take your eyes off of. I sometimes practice my posture when I'm outside of dance class. If I'm feeling unsure of myself, I roll back my shoulders and lift my chest a little, and I feel less insecure.

Feminine Role Models

As a woman in a male-dominated field, I don't have many female role models. Not too many women are successful and respected in IT and are very well known. There's another post in that somewhere, but another time.

So, there's not too many women I can look up to. This morning, though, I realized that I've found two women I admire, but for somewhat different reasons then you would like up to anyone.

The two women I follow regularly are author Elizabeth Gilbert and blogger Penelope Trunk. I found Elizabeth Gilbert through her book, Eat Pray Love, when a coworker lent it to me. I was taken in by her way of writing, and when I saw her TED talk on Nurturing Creativity, I was taken in by the way she says things. I love how zen she is, and I love that she was willing to chronicle her descent to her rock bottom in a book that became a best seller--and people still read and buy her book. Her new book, Committed, is on my Amazon.com wish list. 

I found Penelope Trunk through I Will Teach You to be Rich's private boot camp. I wrote about her talk in a previous post--I enjoyed her very blunt manner and searched out her blog, which I've been following, as well as her Twitter. She writes about her life, which doesn't always make her look perfect, but she still writes about it. I like that she's honest.

I realize that it's kind of weird for me to admire two successful women who write about their less-than-perfect moments, but successful women in business are expected to become more like men. Just look at Hilary Clinton during the presidential race. Both these women are successful at what they do, and they are still women. They still have relationships and children and business meetings and break up with significant others and get sad. And they can still be successful.