The Wicked Witch of the Web

If You Love Some Franchise, Move 3k Miles Away. If It Beats the 49ers It Was Meant to Be.

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 02:38:00 +0000

Months before I moved to San Francisco, when I was almost 27 years old, someone asked me to describe the most, soul-crushing, heart-wrenching devastating thing ever happened to me.

Note that at this point, I had survived my parents' divorce, the death of my grandfather, not getting into Brown, 9/11, 3.5 major breakups (not to mention a whole slew of smaller rejections) and the discovery that no matter how much I prayed, I wasn't going to get any shorter.

But the only thing I could think of, the only thing that truly came to mind when I heard the words "soul-crushing, heart-wrenching and devastating" was the time when the San Francisco 49ers beat the New York Giants in the conference finals of the playoffs, 44-3.

It was 1993.

(I just visited Wikipedia to see if the score 44-3 was something I made up. I secretly hoped to be a few digits off, but apparently the numbers were embedded in my mind when I was 9 years old and never departed. I was right.)

You see, if I remember correctly, (and knowing me, I probably do) the score was 44-3 starting in the second quarter of the game. Everyone in my family stopped watching, and I sat alone on my parents' bed until the very last second of the game, routing for a miraculous comeback. It was my first season as a football fan, and when the miraculous comeback didn't happen, I was shattered. I cried and cried. I refused to eat dinner. (#girlswatchingfootball.)

So, you can imagine my anxiety when I discovered that there was going to be a rematch, and that the Giants were not favored to win.

Not only that, but I was surrounded by enemies. For a hot second, I thought that maybe I would wear my Giants hat from the 80s with the big pom-pom on top for the whole week leading up to the game. Then I thought, "heck, they just caught the serial rapist in my neighborhood, why continue to live in fear?"

Things only got worse when I realized I was not going to be able to watch the game due an event at Stanford I had committed to attending.

Early on Sunday, I tried texting a friend in NY to see if he would send me updates, but he just wrote back, "NFL.com." I set up my iPhone so I could easily check the score throughout the game and focused on the event.

It ended during the third quarter, but I was in Palo Alto. With nothing to do but worry on CalTrain on the way home, I texted one of my best girlfriends (let's call her Emmy Lou,) in NY to see if she could chat, but she wrote back, "surprisingly, we are actually watching the Giants game."

The 9ers were up 14 to 10 and I was very anxious. But the next text she sent was, "touchdown!!!"

I texted back, "We're good luck together!" (#girlswatchingfootball.)

Emmy Lou called me during a commercial break to say that it seemed odd that they were all watching the game from our old house in Brooklyn, but I was not. We chatted for a bit until I said, "wait, aren't the commercials over?"

They were, but Emmy Lou decided it would be ok to stay on the phone with me and narrate the game. I asked her things like, "what down is it" and she said things like, "3rd and 5! But what does the 'and 5 stand for?"

I'm pretty sure I can remember asking my father the same thing in the parking lot of Giants stadium at the beginning of that fateful 1992-3 season. I remember being worried that I wasn't smart enough to be a football fan, and thrilled that the four down system wasn't all that complicated.

Fast forward about two decades and there I was, on CalTrain, whizzing by Candlestick Park, 3000 miles away from my family who was too busy watching the game to talk to me. I found myself explaining to my best friend that "5" meant the number of the yards to a first down, and that you earned a first down by going 10 yards.

"If you're passing the stadium, send good vibes," she told me.

"Ok, I will! I'm sending good vibes!" (#girlswatchingfootball.)

Meanwhile, it was nearing the end of the fourth quarter and based on the reports, I gasped, "oh my god, the 9ers are going to kick a field goal to tie it!"

"Guys," she called out to my old group of friends in my old living room. "RB says they're gonna tie it with a field goal."

Unfortunately I was right. Then I was trying to figure out what my stop was, so I had to hang up. I made a guess and stepped off the train into an abandoned area (aka the 22nd St CalTrain Stop). It was raining and very dark. I had a text message that said, "overtime."

Emmy Lou and I got back on the phone as I started to wander through the hills of Potrero and attempt to find my way back to the Mission.

Finally, thanks to GPS, I found my route. By the time I stopped being lost, the Giants had possession for the second time in overtime. I spotted a deli where the game was playing and darted in.

"Can I help you?" Asked the man behind the counter, after I'd been standing there a few minutes.

"Um, I was just watching the game." There was a shocked pause. "But I can leave."

"Well, you don't have to leave, but you're standing in the main part of the deli. If anyone comes in, you need to get out of the way."

I looked to my right, where there were lots of drinks, then I looked to the screen, where Eli was getting sacked. I looked to my left, where the Deli guys, obviously 9ers fans, were smiling.

I bolted out of the deli. I called Emmy Lou back. "Eli got sacked! I had to leave the Deli."

"But the Giants got the ball back. Somebody fumbled!" (If only all San Franciscans only knew that "somebody" fumbled, there would be fewer death threats for Kyle Williams on Twitter.)

"I think I'm bad luck for the Giants! When I watch, bad things happen, and when I leave, good things happen," I wailed. (#girlswatchingfootball.)

Meanwhile, the Giants were on the 30 yard line - and I knew what that (hopefully) meant: field goal.

"Wait, I know a bar I can get to!" I started to jog. "Emmy Lou, are they getting close enough so they can kick a field goal?"

"RB, get off the phone with me right now and Yelp that bar - then go there. You have an iPhone! Use your GPS!"

We hung up. I searched for Shotwell's, found the address and was about to start running when I saw that my phone was ringing. The caller ID read: Mommy.

When I picked up, she was screaming, "We're going to the Superbowl! RB we're going to the Superbowl!!!"

I walked to the bar just to make sure she wasn't lying. And then I left to make sure I didn't get beat up.

***

As I walked home alone in the rain, I couldn't help thinking how funny it was that 19 years ago, when I was glued to the TV, the game ended in disaster and heartbreak, but when I was off in San Francisco too busy to watch, we won. I also couldn't help thinking that getting game updates from my best friend in Brooklyn while I wandered alone and lost in the rain was almost more fitting than watching it in San Francisco with a bunch of people routing for the enemy. (#girlswatchingfootball.)

Lastly, I couldn't help thinking that it must really mean that Giants were better off without me.

"See! " I told my mother cheerily. "Everything I love is much safer when I'm 3000 miles away!"

"Very funny. But, if you remember correctly, the Giants were actually in San Francisco, with you."

She may have a point, but I don't think we'll have any real answers until we ~~beat~~ play the Patriots.

For 2012: Stop Blaming Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 22:57:00 +0000

My relationship with my brother has gone through many iterations over the years, all of them wonderful and exciting, some of them fun, others of them difficult.

I've always been conscious of this fact, but until I switched to the Facebook timeline, I forgot that in 2006, he used to make drunk posts on my wall and once suggested that I "combine my interests and make snuff films with Disney characters."

No doubt, if I'd taken his advice, I'd probably be a rich and famous movie director instead of a struggling "content strategist," (apparently that's the trendy thing to call us these days) but I digress.

However, according to Everyone on the Internet, this post is supposed to make me:

a) Embarrassed. Can you believe that my brother got drunk when he was in college??!!! Who does that???!!! Plus, now everyone is going to know that I want to be the Little Mermaid when I grow up and think it's true that I like snuff films. (Because clearly "everyone" is eagerly rushing back to 2006 on my timeline to see what my brother had to say.)

b) Sad. Remember the good old days when my brother got drunk in college? Life was so much easier back then, when we were still innocent enough to be silly when intoxicated, when we cherished our love of the Little Mermaid and were blissfully unashamed of our fixation on snuff films. I think I'm going to cry, right here, right now, on my MacBook.

c) Angry. Damn you, Facebook! If it weren't for you, I'd be able to forget the past and go on believing that I just met my brother for the first time at Thanksgiving, when we had searingly interesting conversations about the family business and politics. If it weren't for you, Facebook, no one would ever know that I used to be even less mature than I am now. And I wouldn't have to spend one split second thinking about the past and wondering if I'd be better off as snuff film director.

But seriously. It. Is. Killing. Me. to keep reading article upon article about how Facebook is making us miserable or most recently, "The Internet will Make You Sad Forever."

As a person who has been, let's just say, in touch with sadness, for much of my life, let me assure you. Facebook is not making you sad. You are making you sad.

For starters, let's get the obvious out of the way. Life is no picnic. Nor did it used to be a picnic before Mark Zuckerberg hacked the Harvard dorm directory and said means things about people. (Or whatever he did. I trust the movie.)

For example, my great-grandmother was chased out of her childhood home in [Insert-Russian-Sub-Country-Here] by Cossacks and went crazy, possibly becoming schizophrenic.

My grandmother was lucky enough to be born here, but she was beaten by her crazy schizophrenic mother, told that she was more stupid than her brothers just because she was a girl and forced to give up her music career because nice Jewish girls didn't play piano.

As for my mother, I'd say something disparaging about her life here, but thanks to the Internet, I have absolutely no privacy, she'd find out about, get furious at me, and god knows, I just switched to the Facebook Timeline, so I have enough really serious problems without getting in a fight with my mom, too.

I realize that I am over-simplifying the problem, possibly to my detriment.

But the truth is, blanket statements like "Facebook makes us miserable" or "the Internet will make you sad" are also an oversimplification of the problem, and one that prevents us from recognizing the most important aspect of all of this.

Facebook, and the Internet, are in your control. They are your playground. You can make them look the way you want, you can turn them off. You can delete posts, block friends, customize your newsfeed, etc. The number one thing you can't do is accomplish anything by whining or pouting.

And you certainly can't accomplish things by blaming, as Sam Biddle does in Gizmodo:

"Technology has not only made it easier to long for the past, it's made it tempting—and at times unavoidable—to strangle ourselves with an overload of fake nostalgia."

Kindly recall that when the Gutenberg first introduced the printing press, people were worried what would happen when the Church no longer controlled content. Think of all the crap that could be published! One luddite even worried that the monks' souls would be destroyed because they no longer had to labor over the creation of text.

Sound familiar?

And yes, while the printing press led to scientific, religious and political revolution, it is also led to Danielle Steele novels. Still, you can no more blame Zukerberg for the fact that people post about their lunch on Facebook than you can blame Gutenberg for the fact that Snookie published a memoir. Your Timeline is you.

With or without Facebook, it will be human nature to long for the past and fear the future. As always, our ability to craft our narratives will make or break our experience of the present.

p.s Just for the record, I've never even seen a snuff film.

And....This is Why We're Single

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Thu, 15 Dec 2011 22:39:00 +0000

I live in a house with three amazing women.

They are smart, beautiful, hilarious, successful and excellent cooks. I don't know how I got mixed up in the bunch (say whatever nice things you want about me, there's no pretending that I can cook) but I feel very, very lucky to live here.

Of course, we are all single.

Being single in your late 20s is like showing up at a party and spilling red wine on the white table cloth. It is cleaned up quickly. It could have happened to anyone. The host assures you that he has some amazing stain-stick and the damage won't be permanent. The party goes on.

Yet, everyone can see that there is a big, red stain right in front of you. No one can really judge you for it. There's not technically anything that bad about it. But no one can really stop looking at it, either.

Personally, I honestly have no problem with being single. My hunch is that many of my friends don't either. That said, we talk about it, because we're not subtle people and would never allow an elephant to stay in the room without mercilessly mocking it.

For example, in our house, whenever we find ourselves doing something really stupid (kitchen dance parties, eating off the floor, giving the guys we like absurd nicknames, lip-syncing to Abba, imitating Yoda, leaving our rooms in a state of disaster, completely nerding out over plants/recycling/Twitter/biblical literature/Philosophy, etc) we say, "And... this is why we're single."

I've come to realize that whenever we say, "And this is why we're single," the reason always happens to be one of my favorite things about myself/us.

And of course, (cue Romantic Music) if there is an "other half" in the cards for any of us, he will love quoting Star Wars, debating over plant species and licking the popcorn bowl, too. No worries.

That is why I have no problem with the fact that I just blogged for Forbes.com and wrote about why I am undatable. That's right. Don't even try. It will never work. RB cannot date.

You can tweet that and put in on Facebook and share it on LinkedIn if that's your pace. Or shout it from the rooftops if you're old-fashioned like that.

You see, I wrote that working for start-ups is why I cannot date. And working for start-ups is definitely one of my favorite things about myself. I don't plan on changing that behavior, and nor do I really think it's going to be a problem.

While I think I made a pretty good case for why working at start-ups makes dating hard, I also inferred that I kiss with my eyes open and there are dozens upon dozens of people who will testify that is not true. (After all, it's easy to think about work with your eyes shut, I do it in Yoga all the time.) In other words, it may be one of the reasons why I'm single, but it's not cause to panic.

Anyway this is more for my family, because they all seem really worried that I have posted my ineligibility on the Interweb:

Let it be known that I am emotionally available.

Or at least I will be when I feel a little bit better about my career.

You can help me feel better by sharing this article: (My grandma will be so grateful.) True Tales of Love and Start-Ups: iPhones, FourSquare and Being Present.

Google Loves that You're Stoopid

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 16:07:00 +0000

It seems like a lifetime ago when the Atlantic article, "Is Google Making Us Stoopid" first reminded us that the ease of search and the accessibility of pedestrian technology was causing us to lose our memories.

Neo-luddist, nostalgic doomsday articles like that are at a lull for now. Everybody loves the iPhone. And the iPad. All the people who were weeping that they were going to miss print books have pivoted and are celebrating the fact that digital actually may have saved the publishing industry.

Whew.

But now that we've all accepted technology as an essential 5th limb, it seems to me that we ought to take a more active role in its development, presentation and practices. If it's going to be that omnipresent - and more importantly - omnipotent, it needs to be held to a standard of accountability.

For example…

A recent TechCrunch post reported that Google was running sponsored ads for Zagat above mobile search results for Yelp. Google recently bought out Zagat, which was once the definitive (print) guide to dining. Now it's using professionally-done Zagat reviews to beef up on content for its Yelp competitor, Google Places.

So someone on her mobile phone searches for Yelp and sees a sponsored result for Zagat. If you're anything like anyone else in the universe, you read this article and your response is something along the lines of,"skeeeetchy…."

But of course, after that initial gut reaction, you ask, "is this kosher?" Then, if you're me, you scroll down to read the Facebook comments on the article, to see what people who know more than you do (aka people who sit around commenting on TechCrunch articles) think about it.

Well, fact number one is that Google has an AdWord policy saying it's illegal to infringe on someone else's trademark by by running ads against it, which if Yelp was trademarked, would definitely make this illegal.

Fact number two is that while the aforementioned people who comment on TechCrunch articles may know more than you do, they are still confused, and they are so busy arguing over minor details, they've lost sight of the real problem (in my humble, humble opinion.)

Ironically, the TechCrunch commenters seemed to spend an awful lot of time trying to figure out whether this ad counted as manipulating search results. They couldn't decide if paid results were part of the algorithm, whether there was a monopoly issue or how Google got the ads there.

In other words, they didn't know a lot of things you assumed they would.

Why so much confusion? Because a) most people are stoopid and b) many people, even now, can't tell the difference between the paid ads and the real results.

(I know - it's shocking. A few years ago I was a writer at the Website findingDulcinea, which was largely founded on the principle that people can't search for sh*t. The site ending up pivoting and becoming a more education-based resource, but after reading all those comments I sort of want to call up my old boss and say, "I think you were right, nobody knows how to use Google.")

So, long story short as you all know, (because I only have extremely intelligent readers), Google didn't manipulate any search results. But as far as I'm concerned, they did something worse. They took advantage of people's stupidity and the interface people were using - mobile.

We're getting to a place where our understanding of right and wrong needs to incorporate a more nuanced assessment of user experience and interface. The reality is, several years ago, there was nothing wrong with buying ad space against a competitor. If I've got a lemonade stand and you buy space on a billboard behind me advertising pink lemonade - more power to you.

But in today's world, companies like Google who created our aesthetic and technological experiences also have the power to use them against us, because these arbitrary designs are the main funnel for the dissemination of knowledge in our world. They control how we digest information, and the way we digest it powerfully impacts our understanding. Google made an obvious mistake this time, but it's a caveat that we can't be passive about the way in which we consume things.

Which, come to think of it, is probably how restaurant reviews started in the first place. And it all comes full circle....

If You're Moving to San Francisco...

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 13:49:00 +0000

With so many of my new coworkers relocating from Toronto to San Francisco, I find myself empathizing and constantly referring back to many of the blog posts I wrote about moving from NY to SF.

I decided that it might be worth it to put all of the East-Coast-transplant-related posts in one place hoping that a) I can offer them some valuable information that will make the transition easier and b) If they have any of the same observations I do, they will at least know that I thought of it first.

May 9, 2010.

Upon arriving, I immediately got homesick for pretension and self-importance, neither of which appear in SF. Then I found myself at the How Weird Street Faire and got my first introduction to adults dancing around in costumes during the day (a common San Francisco occurrence.) I started to entertain the horrifying possibility that I was going to turn 30 in this strange place.

Read the Post: No Comment.

May 16th, 2010

Everyone was so happy for me that my first full weekend in SF was Bay to Breakers, a race/costume party/early morning drinking extravaganza. They must have thought I was longing to see a very old man's penis or a giant rubber duck float, because that is the landscape at Bay to Breakers. I started to worry that I was wasting my Sunday not doing important East-Coast things like running errands, when I realized, "Hey, at an existentialist level, there is no difference between grocery shopping and interacting with a giant, human rubix cube."

Read the Post: Bay to Breakers: There's Nothing Better to Do.

May 23, 2010

I was so excited go to my first networking event as a Bay Area local - a Mashable networking event, no less. I mean, had I arrived or what? Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that even at a networking event, some F*%cking SF hippies still think, "what do you for a living?" is a rude question. After some guy reprimanded me, I screamed and yelled the F word and said I wanted to go back to NY, and I didn't care if Pete Cashmore heard me or not.

Read the Post: Take Me Home Tonight.

Jun 14th, 2010

You know when you break up with your significant other because he/she is too boring and not bringing any new adventures to your life, but then you realize that everyone else is kind of boring too and suddenly your significant other has gotten really exciting? This is how I felt about NY when one of my dearest friends ran into Lady Gaga on 5th avenue in Manhattan, snapped a picture and sold it to the tabloids.

Read the Post: Bad Romance.

July 12, 2010

At this point, the Lady Gaga wound was still fresh. Plus, I realized wanted to be in a city where jaywalking is considered a skill and pizza is edible. Instead of moving home, (which I was strongly considering doing as I'd been admitted to Columbia's MFA in Creative Writing for September) I wrote 10 hate-filled observations about the City by the Bay.

Read the Post: 10 Things I Hate About San Francisco.

August 25, 2010

I started to get really homesick. My mother wanted me to come home so badly that she was suddenly in favor of me getting breast implants - because all the best plastic surgeons were in New York. I got cranky one day and yelled in our office kitchen, "You know what I miss about New York? Being around other people who want to kill people for no reason."

Because it was San Francisco, someone actually apologized to me. Wonders never cease.

Read the Post: Exiled State of Mind.

September 15, 2010

I wrote a personal essay in which I contemplate my relationship with my single-speed bike and my fear of falling. It relates back to yoga. Jesus Christ, could this be any more San Francisco? Oh, yeah - I mention an Apple product, too.

Read the Post: Don't Fall and Sh*t.

October 1, 2010

In New York, I was notorious and renowned for my impassioned displays of public crying. I'm not the first person to observe that you can walk down the street crying in NY and no one will bother you, but it is something I appreciate. When I cried in public for the first time in SF, I was actually sitting in a Starbucks and accompanied my sobs by yelling to my mother on the phone, "Why have sex when you can have Twitter?"

Because this is SF, not only was I not ignored, but the barista told me that he would love to read the first post of a blog called, "Why have sex when you can have Twitter?"

He then told me that he didn't even have Twitter, and I avoided all kinds of awkwardness by not telling him that I only have Twiiter. Good times.

Read the Post: Why Have Sex When You Can Have Twitter?

October 24th, 2010

After six months in California, I was laid back, passive aggressive and loved recycling. It was so on.

Read the Post: Top Ten Ways You Know You're Becoming a Californian.

June 30th, 2011

I'd turned down the chance to move home, quit the job that brought me SF and taken a new job that was going to keep me there for a while. I went home for one last visit and had a beautiful, fun-filled fast-paced week in NY. Suddenly, I was energized, active and shaving my legs more than once a month. I was completely bummed when I came back to boring old SF.

Then I realized that the biggest problem with SF was that it wasn't chaotic enough to distract me from...me. I decided it wasn't about learning to live in San Francisco, it was about learning to live with myself. And then we sang Kumbaya.

Read the Post: And Since I Made it There, I Can't Take it Anywhere.

And there you have it. 18 months worth of culture shock all in one blog post. I'm still not sure how I feel about it here - I love to talk about how much I hate it and can't wait to leave because it just won't work out - but I'm having so much fun and have probably never been happier in my life.

It's definitely confusing. I just hope I figure it out before the big earthquake breaks apart California and sends us into the middle of the Ocean - because I have a bad feeling that when it happens, we're going to lose Internet.

Safety Third: A Tribute to Steve Jobs

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 13:37:00 +0000

As a friend of mine who blogs said to me yesterday, "It's impossible not to jump on the bandwagon."

You know… the Steve Jobs bandwagon. Five gazillion other people have written something on their Twitter, Facebook, blog, etc about the dude. A million other seemingly normal people have decided they need to start wearing black turtlenecks everywhere. It's on everyone's mind, and probably will be until the next exciting thing lights up on their smartphone and makes them forget them what they were thinking about it.

Such is life.

Now, probably so far I sound like a bit of a hater, which, of course I am not (completely, at least.) I think there's plenty to be criticized about everyone at any given minute of the day, but there are times when it's a good idea to put your hate aside, withhold comment and write a light-hearted, story-driven tribute in three parts.

1)

We are the kitchen, and am I worried about some out-of-character, fun-loving, free-loving behavior I've exhibited this summer, and probably plan to exhibit again.

"Well," my roommate S tells me. "Don't worry. After all, safety third."

"Excuse me? Safety third?"

"Yes," she explains, in a voice that indicates my ignorance is somewhat egregious.

"When you're traveling, and you're making decisions, or doing activities, you always need to ask yourself: 1) Am I having fun? 2) Do I look good? and 3) Am I safe? So, 'safety third.' After you do your best to have fun and look good."

"Looking good - that sounds hard," I muse. "And the rest sounds dangerous."

"What's dangerous? Safety is on the list. It's third."

Let me me assure you, it doesn't take long to love this rule. And I have a feeling I'm not the first uber-genius and tech-savant to realize that.

You know who else realized that? Steve Jobs. Think of your iPhone - and all the dropped calls - and the times it broke - back in the day when the geniuses at the Genius Bar were incompetent and bad at customer service. Think of how your Macbook came out of the box with less memory installed than it needed to function. And think of how you really couldn't use Microsoft Excel effectively on a Mac - for years.

But - you were having fun, right? And you (or your [insert Apple product here]) looked hot, right? So things didn't always work perfectly. Newsflash - if it's fun and hot, nobody cares.

Of course, jokes aside, Apple always worked to resolve problems after products were released, but they were so fun and hot, people were willing to use the products as they were and wait. In other words, safety third.

2)

After three years of locking my bike up, hanging the helmet on the handle bars and saying, "if some asshole wants to steal my crappy bike helmet, they can go ahead," some asshole actually steals my crappy helmet.

Amazing.

I get home a bit disheartened and wonder out loud, "how am I going to get to work tomorrow?"

"Very, very carefully," my roommate advises.

When I take off the next morning I am very apprehensive. (And channeling Steve Jobs - I am pretty hungry for breakfast and feel incredibly foolish.)

As I am nearing the office, I notice a very cool looking, legit, hipster bike messenger dude with a hardcore backpack and long, flowing blond surfer curls. And he is wearing a helmet.

"Omigod he's going to think I'm such an asshole for not wearing a helmet. He probably thinks I'm trying to look cool with my imitation fixed-gear bike, abrasive orange chrome bag and total disregard for safety!"

Then, he passes me and does something strange. He takes his hands off his handle bars and removes his helmet. He's still biking, but bringing his backpack around his waist so he can put his helmet away. He closes the bag, and keeps going.

"You idiot!" I think. "Put your helmet back on!" He bikes away, and I bike to work and that is all, except for the moral of the story:

If you're a company and you started out by putting safety first, you cannot try to backtrack and start putting hotness and fun first. Everyone will think you're an idiot. Because who in their right mind starts by putting safety first and then gives up?

The people who relied on you for safety will be insulted, confused and disappointed. You'll never be fun and hot enough to compete with the original fun and hot thing, and your company will be on a slow path to ruin. That's right: The BlackBerry Storm will go down as the worst phone in history.

3)

It is later in the same day, and I still have no bike helmet. Now, it is getting dark, so it has come to my attention that I also have no bike light. I am also biking on a very crowded street with no bike lane. My favorite pair of jeans has just split down the seat of my pants. I've shoved my BlackBerry in my sweater pocket and it's hanging precariously at the edge.

I'm not having fun, I am confident I do not look hot (despite the hole in my pants) and only one thought is repeating itself in my head:

"If I get hit by a truck right now, my new MacBook is not going to survive."

Since he died, I've been trying to intellectualize my response to Jobs' passing. But the writing on the wall is obvious now: "You value a piece of metal he made more than your own life."

It's a not good or a bad thing, but it may mean some require one exception to the rule:

If you're lucky to enough to land something that is both fun and hot, your number one priority should be keeping it safe.

Post-Modern Love in Las vegas

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Mon, 03 Oct 2011 22:28:00 +0000

Yesterday, I arrived for the first time ever in Las Vegas.

I put a lot of pressure on this trip because, frankly, the blogging has a bit slow lately and I figured that Vegas would be ideal place to prove that I haven't lost the Catastrophicly Absurd touch.

To make sure that I didn't slack off, I decided some goal setting was in order. To make sure that I stayed focused, I decided to only have one goal.

To make sure that goal would be plot-worthy, I decided to make that goal: Get Married.

But seriously, there's a method behind the madness.

Last week, there was a modern love column titled, "Sometimes, it's not you." The author writes about being single when she was 39 and the scrutiny single chicks must endure from themselves and others as they look at their married friends and wonder, "what did she do right that I didn't?"

Luckily for this Chick, one of her coworkers finally wants to marry her and she realizes (drum roll) that there was nothing wrong with her, she just hadn't met the right guy yet. (Or gone to the right company, apparently.)

Nobody I know liked the ending.

Wait...you're trying to say there's nothing wrong with me? Not cool.

If you try to rob single women of the belief that they need to change and/or grow in order to be in a relationship, you will leave them with basically nothing to do during the hours when they would otherwise be tending to their husbands and children.

One of those aforementioned single chicks might take this extra time to try and come up with an experiment to decide exactly whose fault it is that she's not married.

It's a very simple experiment.

Try to convince a drunk person in Vegas to marry you. If he agrees, you are clearly marriageable, and the fact that you're not married is because you haven't met the right guy yet.

If he doesn't agree, there is obviously something really wrong with you.

So far, it has been one day and I've learned many things:

My poor mother has accepted my insanity enough to send me text messages asking if I am married yet.
The idea of me getting married (in Vegas) is enough to make almost everyone (including my Barista in Noe Valley SF) burst out laughing.
My firm believe that I need to get my "first marriage and divorce over with" is disconcerting to many people, even including strange men.
It is easy to lose track of time and forget even your most important goals when you're in Vegas.

I also learned that dancing on stage at Coyote Ugly is not a great way to find a husband, but it is a great way to get girls in bikinis to pour rum directly out of a bottle and into your mouth.

Fortunately, now that I've got the wild girl out of my system, I'm totally ready to settle down, and I've got about 40 left hours left to do it.

Stay tuned for more Adventures "What the Hell (if Anything) is Wrong with Me?"

Top Ten Ways To Prove You're Not Old

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Mon, 26 Sep 2011 15:52:00 +0000

One thing I realized immediately upon moving to San Francisco is that if you don't want to grow up here, you don't have to.

It takes some getting used to. My first month here I went out for drinks with a guy in his early 40s who was a VP at an investment firm but explained to me, "I'm just trying to figure out what I want to be when I grow up."

My first instinct was to feel extremely uncomfortable. I listened politely while silently vowing: I am not going to do the San Francisco thing and morph into Peter Pan. (Although it's not a bad idea for a Bay to Breakers costume....)

But I could only hold out for so long.

After roughly a year out here, I realized San Francisco had won. It was after a very long, very fun night. The next day I was jogging and my mind started wandering back to the details of the previous evening (and morning.) My cheeks started to burn as I thought, "Oh my god, what have I done???"

Then, a more rational thought popped into my head. "I haven't felt this way this since college. Oh my god, I'm still young enough to regret everything from last night!! This.is.so.much.fun."

My blushed faded and a smile broke out on my face. I started sprinting, and I haven't looked back since. All summer, when deciding whether I'm going to do something, I just ask myself, "will this help me prove to myself that I'm not old?' If so, I do it.

I know what you're thinking...RB, how can I join you in this never-ending spiral of immaturity?

Good news, kids - Here are:

The Top Ten Ways to Prove You're Not Old

10. Dress for the Job You Don't Want. If you're still wearing the same clothes you wore in
college who's to stay you're not allowed to behave like you're in college?

9. Have a gay best friend who assures you that you can easily pass for 23 or 24. Tune him out when he says he thinks it might have something to do with the way you dress.

8. Go places where only young people go. Since everyone knows that no one
over 25 goes places like that, no one will believe you're over 25.

7. Start reading Existentialist philosophers again. As you sit with your head in your hands wondering, "what is the purpose of my life?" you will easily forget that you realized about six years ago that the purpose of your life was paying bills and doing laundry.

6. Make sure it always looks like a tornado hit your bedroom. Skype your mom so she can shake her head and say, "couldn't you at least put your shoes in the closet???"

5. Go out with guys who are younger than you are. Don't get flustered if your friends refuse to learn their names but refer to them only as "the 25-year-old" or "the recent grad." No one is judging you - really!

4. Act like you're important and you know everything. Erase from your mind the years of experience that have taught you what's really important. Abandon your hard-earned sense of humility because you're the smartest person ever and are about to conquer the world. Be frustrated. Be irritated that nothing is ever good enough. Want everything - and want it now. Fall into despair when you don't get it. Complain loudly. Rinse, repeat.

3. Call your grandparents. Compared to them, you're really young.

2. Refuse to speak to anyone other than your grandparents on the phone. Phone calls are soooo awkward and you reeaaallllly prefer text messages or even Facebook.

1. Constantly talk about how old you are. Your younger friends will be inspired to suggest things like, "what if we just pretend I'm older than you are?" just to get you shut up.

And if all else fails, see if you can get roommates who play bad 80s music on Sunday night, facilitate dance parties in the kitchen, feed you wine and suggest you all watch The Labyrinth. As you are head-banging in sync with your dishwasher and ROTFL at muppets, you'll no doubt find yourself thinking, "28? Do the numbers even go up that high?"

I'm Kind of a Big Deal in No Man's Land

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Mon, 29 Aug 2011 03:55:00 +0000

I've been afraid to blog since I wrote Top 10 Reasons Why Drinking is the New Yoga.

I don't think I've ever written a blog post that got such a uniformly enthusiastic response. I probably never will again.

I wish I could believe it meant I was getting better at writing, but I think it just means I'm just getting better at getting lucky. (Actually, I have no reason believe the latter either, but that's a topic for a blog post I'll never disgrace myself by writing.)

Anyway, I was hoping it would give me some idea of a direction to take, but it confused me, because the yoga people liked it as much as the non-yoga people.

All it really did was highlight the meandering, eclectic mess that is the poor Wicked Witch.

After all, she has no target audience, no consistent messaging and apparently a drinking problem.

(How could it possibly get worse?)

One of the main reasons I love my new job is because everything I write has a clear and distinct purpose for a clear and distinct group of people in a clear and distinct industry. The deeper I go into my marketing career, the more unacceptable it seems to have a blog that's so unmarketable.

So, why am I writing this?

I read this amazing post today by my new favorite blogger, Laurie Ruettimann, or The Cynical Girl. She's an HR blogger. (Yes, my favorite blogger is an HR blogger.) She wrote about coming back from vacation, and how vacation was so much fun but now she guessed she'd have to go back to HR blogging:

So now what? I dunno. I guess it’s time to get back to work. Writing. Talking about getting you a job. Whatever. It was great to take a break from “HR blogging” and being a “digital influencer” who makes “top 100 HR lists“.

At first I was worried. I thought, "Laurie, you're kind of making it sound like you think HR blogging is dumb, and that you don't really care about getting people jobs. But people depend on you! They trust you. You're going to hurt their feelings, and they might even hate you."

Then I thought a little more about Trust, a subject that I can safely say is light-years away from the galaxy of my expertise. I realized that inherent in the idea of "trust" is that people believe you're going to tell them the truth, as in - the real truth - not the truth that they want to hear, or the truth that will get more hits.

Laurie is amazing blogger and influencer, and I think she probably she loves what she does for a living because passion is pretty hard to fake. A little brutal honesty is not going to extinguish real passion.

But without passion, I'm not even sure honesty is possible. Passion carves out the niche - and opens it up to whoever, or whatever, wants to enter. There's room for heroes, deviants, etc, because they're all going the same direction.

When there's no clear niche, even the alleged truth-telling is a reckless guessing (and second-guessing) game. Deviants get you lost or kill you by the side of the road; heroes fade into the night.

Top 10 Reasons Why Drinking is the New Yoga

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 02:00:00 +0000

Ever since I started doing yoga every day (and sometimes twice a day) about two years ago, I have done my best to say "no" to alcohol whenever possible. I have a relatively drunk personality so I was often able to go to bars and not be called out as the sober person. But even though no one else noticed, I was definitely missing out on certain life-changing experiences such as dancing on furniture and finishing other people's martinis while they aren't looking.

Then, as it turned out, in addition to everything else that ended in June, (job, apartment, boyfriend) I also ended up breaking up with my yoga studio. As break-ups are wont to do, this one left me feeling a little angry and prepared to swear off men - I mean Yoga - forever.

Thankfully, some of the other changes in my life made it possible for me to fill my time with a great new hobby: drinking. I was suddenly immersed in a social culture on a daily basis, had no long-distance relationship pulling the guilt strings on my heart, and lived in a new apartment that was closer to places I might want to stumble home from.

I thought, there are many paths to enlightenment, right? Why not give it a try?

After substituting drinking for yoga for roughly six weeks now, all I have to say is: People, have you tried drinking? Let me tell you, it's amazing! So, pour yourself a vodka soda, sit back, relax, and enjoy....

The Top 10 Reasons Why Drinking is the New Yoga

10. If you become friends with your yoga teacher, you might learn more about their past then you ever wanted to know. If you become friends with your bartender, you might learn more about their past than you ever wanted to know - and get free shots.

9. You can eat pizza after drinking and at no point will you be thinking, "Well. I just erased all the health benefits of binge-drinking by eating this pizza."

8. You will never feel guilty if you're tired and decide to skip drinking.

7. If you meet a guy in Yoga class, he might tell you that he envisions you as a bud, bound by unseen knots in your heart that he hopes to untie by offering you bodily awareness and access to your breath -- so you can bloom and grow into a beautiful flower. If you meet a guy while drinking, he definitely will not say that.

6. When you're drinking and do crazy yoga poses, everyone thinks you are awesome. When you're in yoga and you do crazy poses....oh wait. You don't. You're not drunk enough to be fearless.

5. If you wear $90 dollar pants to yoga class, you are participating in the consumer take-over of yoga. If you wear $90 pants to drinking, your pants still cost 1/2 of what every other girl in the Marina paid for hers.

4. You might have to wait years before you really start to feel the effects of yoga. If you're drinking, you can combine a shot and a beer and start to feel the effects right away.

3. If you lose your balance while you're doing yoga, you're falling and failing. If you lose your balance while you're drinking, you're just falling, and as long as you can still hold a glass, you can keep drinking.

2. When yoga starts getting competitive, everybody loses. When drinking starts getting competitive, at least one team at the beer pong table wins.

1. If you write blog posts about yoga, your readers will tell you that they are bored and don't understand your posts about yoga. If you write about drinking, you might someday get a book deal to write, Are You There, Vodka? It's Me, RB. Get Away From That Trashy Comedian Chelsea and Come Hang Out With Me.

It's Time to Do it With Reckless Abandon

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 04:52:00 +0000

Last night, I was hanging out in the kitchen with my new roommate, S. and telling her how I never got more than 6 hours of sleep, woke up at 6am to go running and was always in the shower by 7 thirty at the latest and was never tired during the day.

This morning, I overslept, had to shorten my run, didn't shower until 7:45, was completely exhausted all day and ended up coming down with a cold.

Tonight, I told her I thought that I'd jinxed myself by speaking the words so adamantly in our kitchen.

Since I was feeling kind of crappy, I ended up telling her that when it came to things like running and doing lots of activities like yoga, I felt like I was bringing my B-game.

"I'm noticing a lot of B-game trends in my life," I explained. "I'm actually thinking of doing a blog post about it."

"Did you say a blog post?"

"Yeah."

"What's your blog?"

"Huh?"

"What's your blog about?"

"Oh, um nothing. I guess it's kind of a B-game blog, come to think of it."

"So, who reads your blog?"

"Oh, nobody, really."

"Nobody?"

"Well, I mean my family reads it. A few people I've never met before read it. Some scattered people from throughout my life get it emailed to them, I think."

She laughed. "How often do you write?"

"Well, I used to write a lot. Then I gave it up for 3 months, and now it's sort of sporadic. You know....B-game."

"Were those the 3 months when you were running and doing yoga every day?"

"Oh....no. It was the 3 months after I wrote about my yoga teacher announcing to the whole class that I was on 'Lady Holiday.'"

"So, you were mortified because she told 10 people that you had your period, and solved the problem by putting it on the Internet where everyone could read it?" She was doing something in between smiling and laughing.

I was struck, wondering why I'd done such an illogical thing, until I remembered that the purpose of my blog was to embarrass myself. "Well," I explained. "It only dawned on me after the fact how truly embarrassing it was. And then my new coworker Googled me and found my blog. I was appalled, so I locked the blog and stopped writing it."

"Then what happened?"

"Well, a few months later the same coworker told me that everyone knew my blog wasn't really me, that it was an online persona. I mean, it's a blog, but I don't exactly tell the truth all the time. It's not really real life."

"You enhance it?"

"Well, enhance it, write in metaphor, put events in the wrong order, pretend I think things that I don't, and every once in a while, I flat out lie. Anyway, after he told me everyone knew it was an online persona, I felt better and started blogging again."

"That's all it took?"

"But not everybody really gets it. I wrote a blog post about my friend's pole-dancing party and switched around a few things to make a better story, but she was so mad I don't think she's really speaking to me."

"You lost a friend over your blog?"

"Oh, and apparently people at my new company read the very same pole-dancing blog post. So my greatest concern - having a co-worker read something embarrassing about me on the Internet - has been brought to life. Except it wasn't actually a bad thing, at all."

"Wow."

"I feel like that pole-dancing post is probably the most embarrassing thing I'll ever write, and so at this point, it can't get worse. Why not just blog with reckless abandon?!"

She was incredulous. "That's your logic?"

"Yeah, I mean, what do I have left to hide?"

"But...you lost a friend over it!"

"Exactly. It can't possibly get any worse!"

She shook her head. "I can't believe you said that."

"Why? In fact, I might even write a blog post about this very conversation."

Her eyes widened. "You're going to put that in writing?"

"Put what in writing?"

"You're going to write, 'It can't get worse?' Do you have any idea what you're asking for when you actually write, 'it can't get worse?'"

"Oh my god. Yeah, and remember how yesterday I said I never got tired and today I got tired? What if our kitchen is some kind of weird mythical circle where every word you utter comes back to destroy you?"

We were silent.

"So...I shouldn't do it, should?"

"I'm not saying that."

"I mean, maybe I should do it, right? Just to see what happens. How bad can it possibly be?"

"You just said it again. 'How bad can it get.'"

"So when I talk in the kitchen, the Universe answers?"

"Or the Devil. It's not like you're getting good results." She started searching on her computer. "Maybe it's that Nordic God, Loki. I think in the Nordic tradition, life is miserable, but when you die, you spend your afterlife in a battle, until Evil eventually wins."

"So, what you're saying is I should blog with reckless abandon, because Evil is going to win anyway."

"Kind of."

"Should I be afraid to write this?"

"No."

"I kind of want to see what happens. You know.. if anything happens. I mean, how much worse could it get?"

"Well, I guess we're going to find out."

Celebrity Death Match: 7 Jewish Babies vs. 1 Jewish Mother

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 17:55:00 +0000

Six years ago, I cashed in on years of guilt, anxiety and neurosis to get a free trip to Israel with the Birthright foundation.

There were many great things about this trip, very few of which I chose to emphasize when I wrote a tell-all story for Revolving Floor called, "Eggs, Milk and Honey."While some people may remember this story as the time I insinuated a number of less than flattering things about Jewish men, others may recall the true point of the story, which was declaring to the Jewish people that I did not intend to bear them seven Jewish babies, even if it would help our race recover from the major hit it took during the Holocaust.

What I never mentioned in this story, due to word count limitations and the fact that I thought it was totally unimportant, was that at the same "Mega-Event" when the president of Birthright asked me to pop out seven bundles of Jewish joy, an organization called "Gift of Life" stood in front of the entrance asking people to give cheek cell samples.

At the time, I was not the healthiest person. I was anemic, got bronchitis frequently and signs of my low-to-no calcium diet were starting to make a timid appearance in my bones. I also hated going to the doctor and I had zero desire to go anywhere near these people.

But they tried very hard. They stopped me a few times and I avoided them, but at some point, they had blocked the exit. "I'm not healthy," I insisted. "The red cross won't even take my blood!"

"It's not for blood," they insisted. "Bone marrow is different."

I remember a lot about Israel, but I don't recall what the rest of my challenges were, or how they won me over. (I'm pretty sure this is the only argument I've ever lost in my life, which probably why I blocked it out.)

All I know is that gave my cheek cell sample, and that six years later, last week, I got an email letting me know I was a possible bone marrow donor for a 56-year-old woman with an form of Leukemia.

Scratch that. I'd been getting emails for a few weeks, and they had sent a letter to my mother's house. I'd been ignoring them. I didn't want to donate my bone marrow. Nor did I want to be inconvenienced by emails from people I didn't know, when I barely had time to answer emails from people I did know.

But for whatever reason, this time I read the email closely. A 56-year-old-woman? It wasn't like I was saving a young person, right?

Then it hit me. Just because my parents can drink me under the table and don't have wrinkles does not mean that they are not in their late 50s. Imagine if it was my mother and there was some idiot out there like me who actually thought she was too busy to answer emails?

So I got on the phone with the Gift of Life.

I learned all about the two types of bone marrow donation - one is a surgery where they put you under and extract bone marrow from your lower back. The other is a 4-6 hour blood transfusion type thing where they take blood out of one arm and immediately put it back in your other arm.

I heard somethings I didn't want to hear such as, "might not be able to work out for two days after" and "would have miss two days of work."

I started to tell her that I couldn't take any time of work, but bit my tongue. If I had a dollar for everything in my life that I have skipped so I wouldn't take time off work or skip a workout, I could quit my job, sit home on the couch, and pay someone to do an elliptical trainer while I watched.

In other words, there are many moments in our lives when we are called upon the grow the f**k up, and this was undoubtedly one of mine.

The next step, she told me, was a blood test, to see how good a match I really was.

"Can I take the blood test and then decide when we hear the results?"

"Yes, but you should think about it carefully. The further along you go, the harder it is to say no."

Only a Jew would so quickly understand the indecisiveness of a fellow Jew. Her compassion and insight struck me hard. (Let me just say, any sales guy who thinks he/she has a hard product to sell needs to call the Gift of Life immediately. These people are geniuses.)

Then she told me she knew I needed time to think about it.She wanted me take the whole weekend and I didn't have to call her, she would follow up with me next week. As someone who hates to be cornered, rushed or hounded, I was so happy I wanted to give her whatever she needed immediately.

Except for two days of my life, six hours worth of my blood, or any of my bone marrow.

Back at the office, I announced that I was a match for a bone marrow donation.

In unison, one person cried "great" and two moaned, "that sucks!"

Two things were clear to all of us. The first was that this would be a really painful process, and the second was that I was most certainly going to agree to do it.

Another person overheard the commotion and asked, "What's going on?"

"RB has to be a bone marrow donor."

"She has to be?"

"Well...."

"If I want to have a soul," I interjected. "I have to do it."

Everyone agreed.

It actually surprised me how many people in all areas of my life affirmed that this was something I had to do. It also surprised me that I agreed with them.

Given how opposed I was to the whole Birthright thing, given how I think that the world is overpopulated and people should stop having babies, given how I totally believe what they said in the Age of Stupid movie and think we're all going to be dead by 2055, given that I try to take a scientific, objective approach towards life and death, it didn't even make sense that I'd be so convinced this was the right thing to do.

It's written on the Gift of Life website that "It is said that saving one life is like saving the entire world." For me, that doesn't really resonate. Saving the whole world seems epic, impersonal and unrealistic.

But saving the life of one person transcends all logic, all eat-and-be-eaten-kill-or-be-killed philosophy. I don't care who this woman is, what she does, how she votes or whether she thinks I'm funny. Saving a life transcends principles; it is a religion of its own.

I walked away from that "Mega-Event" six years ago so mad about those seven Jewish babies that I was determined not to give life to anything, almost out of stubbornness. It reminds me of this Lawrence Peter Berra quote, "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."

So, even when the woman from Gift of Life called me at 7am on Monday and I wanted to reject her purely for being so pushy and not giving me as much space as she promised she would, I stood my ground, and signed up for the next step - blood tests.

Who even knows if I'll make it to Level 2 - as there are many tests left to pass. What I do know is that as I embark on this potentially long process, it will help if I can start thinking of it less as a moral dilemma and more as a video game.

L'Chaim!

Meet and Marry the Self-Help Book of Your Dreams

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 23:49:00 +0000

As those near and dear to me know, when I was at my last company I ended up ghost writing an ebook called "Meet the Man of Your Dreams."

It has been insinuated that I perhaps was not the most qualified person to write this book, and it has been said out loud that I would be better suited to writing a book called "How to Belittle and Analyze the Man of Your Dreams."

However, I worked off an outline from a woman who (allegedly) met a guy and got engaged in eight days. I am sure that she knows what she's talking about. While I wrote most of the words, the ideas are all hers. (I think we all know that the mantra "Never go anywhere without mascara" is no brainchild of mine.) I trust her expertise, and truly believe that certain pieces of advice in the eBook might actually lead you to become an expert dater.

I also think that some pieces of advice may not be exactly foolproof. For example, the book says that you should think of a first date as an interview, and dress accordingly. I ran this by a few people of the male persuasion who flat out told me, "Just write that you need to show some skin!"

"Absolutely not!" I told them. "Showing skin is not how you get a man to marry you! That's how you get a man to think you're a hussy and take advantage of you!"(©1954).

I stuck with the interview theme because I liked it, and was thrilled when I was able to schedule a first date on the very same day I had my final interview with my new company. I couldn't wait to kill two birds with one outfit, and prove how right I was.

Now, I don't want to give too many details about my personal life on this blog (unless they are largely exaggerated/semi-fabricated) so let's just say I was resoundingly not right about dressing for a first date the same way you would for an interview.

(I mean, the date might have gone badly because I said that I thought all of the men in Silicon Valley were all male chauvinists, but I bet if I said that wearing a halter top instead of a blazer, it would have been less offensive.)

As the veritable author of "Meet the Man of Your Dreams," I felt that it was incumbent upon me to figure out exactly what you were supposed to wear on a first date. If not your snappiest interview outfit, then what??

Well, on Friday night, I met my friend Jane* at a bar, and she was having all kinds of success with boys. Now, Jane is fantastic and deserves all kinds of success with boys, but this level seemed a bit unusual. Plus, she was wearing jeans and a pretty regular boat-necked t-shirt.

Only when we went outside to get some fresh air did I realize that Jane's shirt was backless.

"The whole time at Happy Hour guys kept coming up to talk to us," she told me. "This is why!"

"This is genius!" I told her. "You have solved the answer to the question 'how much skin should you show?' This is the perfect amount of skin to show without being a no-good hussy! (©1954), This is what I should have written in the 'Meet the Man of Your Dreams' book! I'm going to have to start a fashion/dating portion of my blog so I can announce this."

I took her picture and confirmed that she was comfortable appearing on the blog. "Wait, so do you really have a fashion blog?"

"God no. But I'm going to pretend I do because I really think is brilliant and everyone needs to know about backless shirts!"

Later, I was telling my friend that I was writing a kind of weird, pointless and uncharacteristic-of-me blog post about backless shirts, because I felt I was really doing everyone a service by letting them know.

"Oh, obviously," he said. "Backless shirts are hot. Everybody knows that."

If it was so obvious, I wondered, why he hadn't told me when I was plugging away at the eBook? Then I realized the very essential, most important truth: Nobody knows what they want until somebody tells them.

Long live the Self-help book industy!

How to Buck the Pole-Dancing Trend

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 18:13:00 +0000

While I was in Toronto training for my new job, I got a Facebook invite for something called "Girls Night Out," which would take place the Saturday night I returned to SF and would involve me and 10 of my closest girlfriends (only two of whom were actually my friends) going to a place called Sedusa Studios to have a pole-dancing class party. We'd get an entire room of poles and and a 1.5 hour lesson on "sensual dancing."

I was thrilled. Since the party was happening the day after I returned from Toronto and right before I officially started my job in SF, I had the perfect excuse to politely turn down this horrific invitation.

However, thanks to my crippling inability to actually say the word, "No," I told my friends that I probably couldn't make it, and hoped that they filled my spot.

Alas, they did not.

The day arrived, and they wanted to know if I was coming. I was exhausted, and feeling pretty solemn after a watching a movie on the airplane about a teenage surfer who lost her arm in a shark attack. I told them the chances weren't good.

Then I started to think. Maybe this was a great opportunity. As an empowered, 21st century woman, wasn't it my right - my obligation in fact - to get in touch with my sexy stripper self? I looked at myself long and hard in the mirror. Didn't I want to explore?

"Nope!" I answered my own question out loud. Not remotely interested. My sensu/sexuality was fine, thankyouverymuch.

Then I looked at myself a bit longer and harder in the mirror and remembered reading somewhere that pole dancing burned a crazy amount of calories. I texted my friend, "what time are we leaving? I'm in!"

When we arrived at the studio, we were sent into a room to pick out our stilettos. I never wear high heels, so I was legitimately excited about this, until I realized that platform stilettos are absolutely freaking impossible to walk in.

I literally stumbled into the studio, where one of my friends gasped, "Oh my god, RB you are talllllll."

I glared at her. "Don't make me sorry I came here!"

But before I could storm out, the teacher told us to take off our shoes, get a yoga mat, and sit down for the warm up.

Yoga mats! Stretching! I was definitely going to be good at this part.

"Even when you're warming up," the teacher began, "it's important to be sensual."

Scratch that.

"The most important thing about sensual dancing," she went on, "is to always be touching yourself - even if you're just playing with your hair. You have to touch yourself in the place where you want the other person to look."

A wave of nausea crashed over me. But...I surfaced. I could play with my hair! I undid my pony tail, and then re-did it.

After the warm-up, we put back on the perilous shoes and stood in front of the mirror to learn some basic moves.

"The most important thing you'll learn today is the Crawl," she told us. "Do you know why it's the most important?"

We didn't.

"Because the crawl is when you get your money!" She laughed.

We didn't.

Meanwhile, it turned out that stilettos made even crawling more of a challenge.

When we stood up, I felt like I was starting to get the hang of the shoes until the teacher directed us, "Dance like somebody you really like is watching." I started to lose my balance. While regaining it, I furrowed my brow.

"You can't be a stripper with a furrowed brow," I told myself. But unfurrowing my brow cause me to lock my jaw. Unlocking my jaw caused me to start grinding my teeth. Bad to Worse: redefined.

"Ok," barked the teacher. "Start to walk in a circle - and remember that the person you like is watching." Balance lost, again.

Since clearly I was not going to able to perform this parade for an imaginary person I really liked, I decided to come up with a more compelling scenario.

I was a sixteen-year-old runaway. I thought I'd make it as an actress, but L.A was a tougher place than I'd thought. All I wanted in the world was to call my parents and beg to come home....but I knew they'd never forgive me, so here I was.

"Now, we're going to learn something really fun, but it only works if you get over your fear of falling, and truly allow yourself to let go!"

Give me a break! I could have gotten better advice while watching a preview of the Sex and The City movie.

We were going to start swinging around the pole. On the upside, swinging around a pole did not involve walking in stilettos. On the downside, swinging around a pole involved swinging around a pole.

I decided to up the stakes of my imaginary situation.

I was a single mother. I had a six-year-old son. Maybe he had a learn disability? Whatever. Waitressing just wasn't paying the bills.

"Ok," called out the teacher. "Let's do the routine from the top."

The music began. "Don't forget to touch yourself! Move in a way that feels good and natural to you!"

I started to panic. My learning-disabled six-year-old was going to be in trouble - because I was a terrible stripper. "Sorry, honey. No new shoes this year - Mommy didn't get any dollar bills because she hasn't mastered the elusive Art of the Crawl yet."

Finally, the lesson was almost over. I turned to one of the other girls and gushed, "I've never been sooo glad I went into marketing!"

"One more small sequence!" The teacher told us. "Because I know you guys all have husbands or boyfriends waiting for you at home - you can do this for them the next time they're watching TV and you need to get their attention."

Then, she must have somehow realized her error, because she continued, "So now, look into the eyes of your husband, or boyfriend...or cat."

I tried laughing, but it was insincere. I don't even have a cat.

When that last nightmare was over, she told us we could "play around" in the room for a while. What on earth could that mean? Then I looked at the poles and had a great idea. "It would be really fun to pretend I was a fireman!"

Thanks, I suspect, to yoga, I had the arm strength to spin around the pole more times than anyone. You were supposed to land on your feet and come to standing, butt first, but I landed directly on my butt every time, and had a blast.

Sure, the crazy fireman hours might be a strain on my six-year old, but I'd be a much better role model if I chose this path...

***

As we were getting out of our heels, I asked our teacher if she had ever been a real stripper. She had been, then at some point came to the studio to take class for fun, and ended up getting hired as a teacher.

"So, before you did it for a job, did you have to take class?"

I saw her pause before deciding to tell the truth. "Well, no. You...um...can really dance professionally without much experience at all."

"Yeah, RB" my friend burst in. "Drunk, horny men don't care if you know how to dance, or not."

"It's true," the former stripper said. "It's not really an art. But when you're doing it night after night, it gets kind of old. The men don't care, but the girls turn it into an art - to stop from getting bored."

"Men don't care what you do, they're easy," my friend added.

So, I wondered, was there any point to this nonsense?

But of course, it occurred to me that the experience wasn't about what men wanted. After all, my future cat might be hard to impress.

Google +: It's Complicated

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Wed, 13 Jul 2011 01:51:00 +0000

Like many other people desperately searching for another pointless time-suck, I've joined Google +.

I was biased against it before I joined, and was expecting that I'd need to generate fake reasons to hate it to prove myself right. However, I was happy to discover that I actually just didn't like it. It was counter-intuitive. Bland.

And worst of all, it wanted me to define relationships. A lot of relationships. In fact, all of my relationships.

There is nothing I hate more than defining relationships. Except maybe being forced to analyze relationships, and Google + wanted me to do both.

From the minute I started putting people in circles, I was getting flustered.

"Well, I've known her for 15 years, she's really more like a family member than a friend."

"Technically she's in my family, but given that she's only spoken three words to me in the past year, I barely even want to make her an 'Acquaintance.'"

"No.. I mean... of course, we're not just friends. But I don't want to talk about it now. And if we do talk about it, I think we should figure out how to forget what happened and go back to being just friends."

After all the anxiety, I topped off my first experience by accidentally putting my dad in the Friend circle instead of the Family circle, a fact that I'm sure my mother (who could also go in my "therapist" circle) would be happy to discuss ad infinitum.

For some people, circles seem to be the best thing ever. "You can lead three lives!" Someone told me happily.

The thing that I don't get is - why would you want to? Of course, we all lead multiple lives, but what's the benefit of breaking them out on a social network? As far as I'm concerned, the whole point of social networks is that you are in fact, screaming into the abyss.

It ends up being a self-selecting abyss, but for some reason, the idea of narrowing communication oneself seems odd. If I wanted to narrow communication, wouldn't I just send an email?

For example, I've noticed that when I post something about my new job, a majority of the commenters are from my old job. But imagine if I had a circle of "People I Used to Work With" and only shared posts about my new job with them. That would be kind of strange, and a little bit obnoxious.

Most of the crap we put on social networks is exactly that -- crap. But we're not the first generation to realize that the mundane details of other people's lives are kind of fascinating. A friend of my friend just bought shoes for her wedding. Fantastic. Her favorite time of the week is brunch! Wow, who knew?

Facebook is obviously a kind of pointless, recreational, waste of time. As a pretty ADD writer, I love that. I love opening up a new tab, reading lots of completely and totally stupid garbage, including other people's personal conversations, reminding myself not to flip out because I'm not in grad school, running a marathon, or a home owner, and then getting back to work.

Google + is trying to streamline this process, and what's worse, forcing us to have that tough, relationship-defining (albeit implicit, and secret) "conversation" with everyone in our lives.

I don't see how these conversations are going to go well, because, well, they never do. If you have to have the "What's going on with us" conversation with someone, then the answer is usually bad news. However, if things are going smoothly, you move to the next level without too many growing pains. In other words, you don't put them in a circle on Google +, you just send an email.

Google + highlights how dumb social networking sites are, thereby killing the buzz.

I have a friend whose brother hates Facebook, and in the early days of Google +, my friend posted, "It's 3pm and I haven't had coffee yet." His brother commented, "Great! I made E's Coffee Circle."

For me, this really drove the point home. Which one of us, in Good Conscience, could clearly and distinctly ask our friends and family to care about our dumb, social network crap? Personally, I don't think I could.

I don't want to have multiple lives online, that seems absurd. I want to have two lives - one offline, and one online. As a writer, I use Facebook as a way to explore if anyone is remotely interested in what I have to say. However, I'd never want to presume that certain people really care about what I'm saying by deliberately selecting a circle to share with. If there's something I really want to communicate with a circle of people, I will email them.

Of course, I realize this makes me old-fashioned. People 10 years younger than I am think email is archaic, and Google likely acted out of a fear that Gmail might someday be overtaken by Facebook.

Probably in the future, everything, included the Communication Formerly Known as Email, will happen on Google +, and that's what the purpose of circles will be. Somethings we'll share with everyone, just like on Facebook, and other things will go to a smaller group of people.

As for me, if I have to a) lose Facebook as a procrastination tool and b) define all my relationships, I'll probably just freak out, turn in my laptop, and move to the farm. Or continue to complain, over Twitter.

Baby, You're a Firework

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 03:29:00 +0000

Despite living in the leftist capital of America, I was a little bit sad when I realized that I'd be spending the Fourth of July on an airplane to Canada. No matter how you feel about politics or hamburgers, the pleasure of mixing alcohol, a grill, and fireworks are pretty undeniable.

One of my friends pointed out to me that I'd probably be able to see fireworks all across America as I traveled East, which was a small, but semi-poetic consolation. I tried to convince myself I was looking forward to this display, but then I got distracted with leaving my old job, moving to a new apartment, figuring out how to adhere to the dress code of my new job, and packing for a two-week new employee orientation in Canada (all in the space of three days.)

By the time I landed in the seat of the airplane after nearly missing my flight, all I could think was, "The people who are actually celebrating the Fourth of July should have a drinking game where they get to drink every time I say to myself, 'Oh my god, I think I might throw up.'"

I'd sort of forgotten about the fireworks until I realized that despite the fact that it was getting later, the sun hadn't set. My friend was wrong, I thought grumpily, no fireworks.

I closed the shades so that I could focus better on my computer screen, where I immersed myself in white papers, case studies, and other collateral that made me cherish the freedoms afforded me by this great nation.

Then, just as I was thisclose to learning what it takes to triple sales without increasing your workforce, the pilot announced, "Ladies and Gentlemen, if you look out your windows now, you'll see some fireworks in Milwaukee, and then Chicago."

I threw the shade open and pressed my nose to the glass. I could see fireworks in multiple locations, as well as some flashing antennas that I sort of mistook for fireworks. In other words, the fireworks were teeny-tiny, or to put it bluntly: lame. And disappointing.

I recalled how one summer, when I was very young, we went all the way downtown to see the Macy's fireworks and got so close that embers fell on us. I asked my mother the whole time, "Is this the grand finale?" And she kept saying, "No, the grand finale is going to be even bigger than this. When it happens, you'll know." But I kept asking. I couldn't wait.

It was probably one of the most thrilling experiences of my childhood, and I found myself on the plane feeling a longing for that kind of tangible experience - the startling light, the smell of smoke, the sound of an explosion, and most of all, the sense of something that was unfathomably larger than life.

Looking at all the little fireworks stripped away the mystery. It was sad to realize that the fireworks weren't magical; that the heart-pounding thrill doesn't come from the intrinsic property of being a firework - it's an illusion of excitement induced by lights, noise, and smoke (and mirrors.) Plus, they were so common place. When you watch fireworks up close, it seems like your fireworks are the only fireworks in the world. But really, they happen everywhere, to everyone, and they can even happen to you more than once.

It's something I've been thinking a lot lately now that I'm really really really old. How can we have life experiences, collect data, become knowledgeable, and recognize patterns without getting completely cynical? It seems unfair that when you finally find yourself in a position to see something with clarity, it automatically becomes un-special.

So I gave up and went back to the white papers, which delivered everything they promised and even exceeded my expectations. (Corporate life: 1, Intangible mysticism: 0.)

Then, the flight attendant came around to collect garbage. She was older, French, very blond, still beautiful, and smiling largely at me. To get my attention, she gestured her head towards my window. "Can you see you the fireworks?"

I don't know why she singled me out, but she made me feel like a kid who was flying alone for the first time, instead of a not-at-all kid embarking on a very long business trip. I spun my head around to stare again.

Maybe it was the strange sense of youth she'd sparked in me, but suddenly, I was in awe. The fireworks were a little clearer and bigger, but instead of looking at them and thinking how insufficient each set of fireworks was, I was in awe of the abundance. So many fireworks! Close to the surface of earth, it was a dark night, but above the blackness, the broader sky was still colored by the sunset. The fireworks were not astounding, but my view was epic.

I thought (as only someone briefly possessed by the personality of a 5-year old flying alone for the first time could): "Wow, there is so much out there."

***

When I got to my hotel late that night, the girl who I have referred to as my secret twin since I was five-years old gchatted me. (She shares my first name, and apparently my brain.) "I love fireworks," she wrote. "We should have them everyday, just random bursts throughout the day. Everyone would be happier. Or they'd get really jaded to fireworks, I guess."

I guess the reality of life is that Getting Jaded Happens. There's only so many times something can blow up in your face before it stops being exciting. But one has to hope that we can gain knowledge from experience without losing our ability to surrender to an experience. Maturity shouldn't strip us of our ability to appreciate beauty just because we can no longer jump 10 ft in the air every time we come across it.

Maybe maturing means that we no longer see fireworks as the main event, or the dramatic finale as the destination. That doesn't mean that fireworks don't make us happy, it just means they play a different role. What was once an explosion becomes an arresting enhancement on a ever-expanding horizon.

And Since I Made it There, I Can't Take it Anywhere

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 17:07:00 +0000

When I first begged my friend Henry to take me San Francisco in August 2009, he said yes, but warned, "you're going to hate it."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because energy-wise, you're at about a 10. And San Francisco is at about a 3."

"So? I'm ready to slow down!"

He shook his head at me. "That will you put at about at a 6. Just wait. After a week, you'll be ready to leave."

He was wrong. After 36 minutes in San Francisco, I was convinced that I was meant to live here.

A year and a half later when I arrived off the plane from New York and met all my new co-workers in the San Francisco office, they looked me quizzically said, "are you sure you're not from California?"

In other words: I fit in. I didn't look back. I visited New York in August and thought, "Good riddance." I visited in November and thought, "overrated!" San Francisco was perfect.

Then in December, I'd been here long enough to realize I wasn't on vacation. I visited New York in January and thought, "hmm, snow and indoor heating!" I visited in May and thought, "Ahhh HOME." I visited in June and thought, " omigodthisisthecoolestplaceeveritswarmitexcitingwowwearehavingsomuchfun."

For months in San Francisco, I'd been feeling slow, unmotivated, and uninterested in doing things that used to give me satisfaction - such as shaving my legs. But from the moment the plane's wheels hit the ground at JFK, I was racing around, trying to do everything, perpetually fascinated, and desperate to get my hands on a razor (and not in a bad way. Unless you think leg-shaving is a form of oppression, in which case, see you in San Francisco.)

When the time came to leave New York, I was heartbroken. Well, heartbroken would be a very strong, over the top, potentially inaccurate term to describe how I was, but if you want to get anyone's attention in New York, that's how you have to roll. Anyway, to put it in San Francisco terms, I wasn't feeling so rad about getting back to the Bay Area.

Within two days of being back here, I was feeling lazy, passive, and was rocking a solid quarter inch of stubble. When my mom texted me on Saturday evening to let me know that Jennifer Aniston and Jason Bateman were at the table next to her at her birthday dinner and sang her happy birthday with the waitstaff, it completely sent me over the edge - kind of like some loser teenager from the middle of nowhere who has never been to NY and doesn't realize it's not cool to care about famous people.

But I started reminiscing about the days when I worked in theater in NY and we did a reading with Jason Bateman and I thought he was such a jerk but I talked back to him and we ended up laughing about it and then I met a famous literary agent and since I didn't know he was too important to talk to me, I asked for his card and then he took me to lunch and WOW did I used to be much cooler (and much more 22 years old.)

By time I met up with my friends I was on the verge of a meltdown and announced with a crack in my voice, "I think I hate San Francisco."

Despite what people would lead you to believe about how nice everyone is in San Francisco, I think some people were a bit offended. The one true California native in the group looked at me with total sincerity and asked, "how could you hate it? It's so nice here."

"Exactly!" I shouted. "Too nice! Why aren't you more angry!!!? You need to be more angry."

She laughed. "What is there to be angry about?"

"That's my point! You shouldn't need anything to be angry about! You should just be angry! Plus, it's boring."

Another friend cautiously intervened. "I don't think San Francisco is all that boring. It certainly doesn't have the same energy as New York, but it's not boring. Maybe the problem is you."

"Well-- fine! So maybe I'm not making enough of an effort to have fun. But -- it's so slow here! It's soul crushing!"

"I'm not talking about finding stuff to do. I'm saying, are you happy? As in, with your life? With what you do everyday?" Given my current state, making me answer the question out loud just seemed implicitly unfair. We changed the subject.

Then we went dancing (something people in San Francisco must make a concerted effort to do because not every street is not teeming with exuberant electric pulse.) When it got be 2am, the bars closed, and I started walking home.

I thought about what my friend said. Since I recently made the decision not to move back to New York with my company, I figured it was worth it to a) think about whether she was right about my life and b) figure out why I was sticking to this seemingly self-punishing decision. I thought about how for some people, New York was crowded and stressful and made everything worse - but for other people (like me) the noise of New York was soothing.

If, hypothetically, you're not happy with with your "Life," New York is so noisy you can't hear yourself think about it. Things like famous people and fancy restaurants and fighting just to earn your space on the curb can make you forget about a lot of other things that might be bothering you, such as your roommate or the fleeting and existential natural of life on earth.

In San Francisco, you can plan all the activities you want, but in between the activities, you're stuck with yourself. There is no noise, no excitement, and no Jay-Z song blaring from every f*cking car that rolls down the street to create the illusion that there is something more enticing out there than your own mundane existence.

I may be right - that San Francisco is bad for my brain chemistry and that a born and raised New Yorker can't be happy anywhere but New York. But I'm not going back until I can go with purpose. I'm not going back just because I've realized what millions of failed meditators know: sitting with yourself is a pain in the ass. Because as the enlightened people have learned, it's totally necessary if you ever really want to go anywhere.

Going on the Rebound is the New Learning to Let Go

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 20:43:00 +0000

As many people who follow astrology know, it's been a very intense month astrologically. As many people who don't follow astrology know, this month has kinda sorta sucked.

I was in the second group of people and really had no idea what was going on until I went to yoga class in NYC with a wonderful, former teacher of mine. She explained that the month is jam-packed with eclipses. To be specific, two solar eclipses sandwiching a lunar eclipse.

The class was the day before the lunar eclipse, and she explained that the lunar eclipse was a time when we were supposed to let go of something. The good news was, a solar eclipse was on its way, and that eclipse would signify huge growth and going to a new level, exploration of truer self, and happiness blah joy blah etc.

But of course the catch is you actually have to let go of something so the new thing can come to fill its place. This is the big yoga/meditation/holistic message!!! But it's even bigger right now -- it's like a Let Go of Something Blow Out Eclipse sale! Pick a part of yourself and get a new, cooler one for zero money down and zero interest for one year!

Of course it all sounds good until you end up hanging out in a downward facing dog trying to push your heart into your thighs so you can experience this magical release, but your brow is totally furrowed because you're stressing out about which of the many dysfunctional things swarming around you that you'd like to unload. Ultimately, you decide you're not prepared to let go of anything, because letting go sucks.

Fortunately, when the eclipse on Wednesday June 15th rolled aroud, I was presented with no choice but to let go of something: my MacBook.

Now, as anyone who knows me knows, my MacBook is a piece of sh*t. For most of the past year, it's worked slowly, screwed up, and threatened to completely malfunction at random times. Not to mention that it's been a problem child since birth.

Basically, I hate my MacBook. Except I love it - a lot. I mean - the memories! I've had it for almost four years - it's been everywhere and through everything with me. As anyone in my office knows, a typical interaction with my MacBook goes like this:

"F*(K! It's doing this again. Ugh, I hate this computer! I mean" (turns to Macbook, begins ferociously stroking keyboard) "I'm sorry, baby. I love you, and I know how hard you work, and I'm not mad. I know you can keep working! And I so so so appreciate how good you've been to me!"

(Sadly, this actually happens, verbatim.)

Now, while this may seem a bit bipolar, I think both reactions are fair. The MacBook sucks, but it has served me well and I think it's important to be grateful for what you have. Plus, it's normal to get attached to things. It's fine to hold on to them for as long as you need to!

Until, of course, you don't have them anymore. On the night of the eclipse, after taking my computer to a concert on the lower east side while I voraciously relived my early 20s dancing like a early-20-something-year old, I brought it home only to discover that a) my coffee mug had exploded in my bag and b) my computer wouldn't work.

I'm not really sure why, but it totally sent me over the edge. I mean, I was devastated. So devastated that I literally couldn't sleep. I cursed the eclipse and all the talk of letting go. All the astrology-healing-holistic crap was totally B.S. "Personal Growth" could go to Hell. I didn't want to let go. I wanted to get my MacBook back.

I wanted to reverse whatever I might have done to make it broken (such as failing to realize I'd thrown a thermos full of coffee in my bag.) I stayed awake for hours in a state of angry panic. Then I texted my incredibly cheery yoga-teacher friend in San Francisco, hoping to squeeze out some sympathy.

Instead she wrote back, "Awesome! You get to have a new Macbook!"

I wanted to be pissed off and completely disregard what she said because she's an incredibly cheery yoga teacher, but I couldn't help realizing she had a point.

Sure, having your computer break sucks, but new toys are really fun. Especially toys that happen to be fully-functioning computers.

Imagine, I thought, if I had a boyfriend or a job that was working as badly as my computer. Getting a shiny new one would be a great idea - a no brainer! In fact, it would be disturbing that I'd waited so long to make the trade.

Of course, letting go of anything, no matter how crappy it is, is hard. And that's why I think we should waste less time trying to master "the art of letting go," and spend more time getting excited about all the new toys we might be able to get.

In other words: stop knocking the rebound. Embrace it - because it's so much easier to move on from the dysfunctional thing you love when you have something bright and shiny to fill its place.

That's why this eclipse sandwich is so great - it's basically saying - rebound! Trade whatever it is that's not perfect in for something better. We can let go of even more than we would normally because we don't have to dwell on the depressing part, we can keep our eye on the prize. (Or pretty distraction as the case maybe.)

Of course, it turned out the next day that my computer wasn't actually broken, it was just out of batteries. But since I'm pretty sure it's getting close to its end, so I've been prowling around the Apple store, playing around on new computers. I'm not buying them - just looking - and it's making the thought of losing my old one a lot more bearable.

It may be shallow, and it may be the easy the way out - but who cares? After all - doing things the hard way is not a bad habit to let go of....

Identity Theft, Facebook, and a Fairy Tale Ending

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 19:43:00 +0000

As I was struggling to get myself out the house by 8am, I mean 8:05, I mean 8:10, I meanifidon'tleaveby8:20seriouslyiwillmissmytrain, I glanced down at my phone to discover that I had just joined Groupon. In Chicago. Another email told me I had purchased a deal for half-off lunch fare at a restaurant there.

Well, I've always had the urge to experience everything, and apparently, I was getting my shot at battling identity theft. After the requisite freak-out text messages to my parents and On-Bart phone call to Moommmmyyyy, I arrived at work and got on the phone with the nice folks at Groupon.

They were definitely confused for a while, but finally assured me the credit card in question wasn't mine, the new R was a resident of Iowa, and the problem was that she'd given R.B@gmail as her email. My email is RB@gmail, but gmail has a feature that ensures email addresses with or without the period go to the same place, so no one else can actually have the email R.B@gmail. The other RB had accidentally put in a fake email address.

Groupon assured me they'd try to figure it out, but since the only contact they had for her was my email, I decided to do some Googling. I quickly figured out what company RB worked for, checked the site to figure out their email format, and shot her an email asking her to fix the problem.

"I can't believe there's another RB!" My friend said.
"Actually, there are two. One is some random girl in Florida I friended on Facebook as a joke......wait. Oh my god. Wait a second...."

Several years ago, I somehow stumbled upon the other RB on Facebook and decided we had to be friends. I am one of those people with 836 friends, most of whom I can't possibly know all that well. But with R -- I had a scheme. After we became friends, I'd ask her to Facebook marry me, so my profile would say, "RB is married to RB." What could possibly be more genius? (If you're not really impressed with my maturity level right now, I don't know what to tell you.)

Sadly, R rejected my marriage request. I ranted to my friends, "She obviously has no sense of humor! Seriously, what could be better than being married to yourself!" Perhaps the other RB was more cautious about her online identity than I, or I don't know, entertained the possibility that she might get in a real relationship someday. Hard to figure out what's going on in other people's crazy brains!

Either way, we remained Facebook friends for several years.

But suddenly, it dawned on me. The RB who used my email address went to college in Florida, and the RB I was friends with on Facebook was in Florida last time I checked (several years ago.)

"Oh my god." I wrote to my friend. "I think I might actually be Facebook friends with this girl." A quick search on the good ol' FB determined that this was in fact, the very same RB I'd been digitally acquainted with for years.

My friend's quick response was: "Ah, the Internet."

Certainly, in many respects, the Internet, Google, and social media in particular make the world a much stranger place. Certain elements of this story are undeniably modern: My knowledge that Gmail would forward all email r.b@gmail to me at rb@gmail, my ability to google RB in Her Town, Iowa, find her company, find the email address format for her company through the Contact Us page, and email her at work. But in retrospect, discovering that I was also her Facebook friend is the least Internet-y part of the story.

This might not have occurred to me except that I'm finishing up a book called "Always On" by Brian X. Chen, an exploration of our "Anything-Anytime-Anywhere" society. (Look for the review later in Popmatters.)

The book explores how iPhones, text messaging, IM, social media, etc affect us. One thing that tends to show up in studies is that in lot of ways, our online identities reflect who we are in real life. For example, students who are more active on Facebook are less likely to drop out of college. It's not rocket science -- if you're having fun in real life, it's reflected in your digital life. Similarly, if you thrive on being social in real life, ditto online.

So while this story makes it seem like I have a pretty massive digital footprint, when I think about it, I have a pretty massive physical footprint, too.

I'm the kind of person who -- within three months of moving to San Francisco -- would run into three people I "knew" every time I walked seven blocks on Valencia st. A few days ago, someone stopped me to say Hi. I didn't remember her, but it turned out she was a coworker at another location of my old company in NY, just visiting SF for a few days.

The weekend before, someone came into the yoga studio and told me I looked familiar. "Everyone thinks I look familiar, " I told him. "I'm that girl that everyone thinks they went to college with." Turns out we did go to college together, and he dated an acquaintance of mine for three years.

Later that night, we started playing shuffleboard with some random kids at a bar and learned that they went to college with a friend of mine from high school. (On the East Coast, no less.) The list goes on...

So the fact I thought it would be funny to friend RB on Facebook is 100 percent a digital expression of who I am -- a person who tries to know everybody everywhere. I meet a lot of people, I ask a lot of questions, and the connections just unfold. Just like I aggressively seek them out in real life, I look for them and enjoy them online. I want to talk to people, and I feel sad when I don't.

Yes, Facebook made my network a lot of bigger than it could possibly be in "real life." But it's not some warped, fake, or absurd alternative world. It's a pretty accurate representation of my real-life behavior--just magnified.

This brings me back to Chen's book, which of course asks the question that's on everybody's mind: Is the information-overload frying our brains, making us ADD, ruining our lives, drinking the blood of our first born sons, etc.

I'm not really sure I know the answer to that question, Chen definitely thinks, "No," and after today's adventure, I'm certainly less inclined to jump on the Cynical Bandwagon.

Just think: What happened with Groupon is the modern day equivalent of somebody walking out of the gym with your navy blue peacoat instead of hers (Think --circa 1999.) If I'm going to do something like sign up for Groupon (which I think most of us will agree is a pretty cool product of modern technology), I need the technology to fix things that go wrong, because I sure can't leave a note at the front desk.

As with anything, tools are what you make of them. Not everyone is the same. For example, the other RB never responded to my "Haha, we're Facebook friends email." She's probably defriending me right now. And because I'm me, I'm actually little hurt by that.

I Won't Have What She's Having (And I Might Be Ok with That)

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Fri, 01 Apr 2011 16:37:00 +0000

It has been 3 months and two days since I last blogged, and 28 years and three days since I was born. Seems like as good of day as any to:

Find out if blogs are willing to give you a second change after you try to delete them and talk sh*t about them to all your friends.
Analyze all the ways in which I am under-accomplished for my Age.

So, for starters:

Dear Blog: I'm sorry that I thought you weren't good enough for me because you contained too many stupid posts about yoga, and in particular one really embarrassing about yoga and my "Lady Holiday." I realize now I'm the one that wrote the yoga posts, and the post about photographing half-naked wrestlers, and even the one about being afraid to ride my bike. All you did was host them on the Internet like I asked. You forced me to see myself clearly and that turned out to be difficult for both of us, though clearly not your fault.

If you're willing to forgive me, or at least hear me out, I'll give us a fresh start, and start this post in yoga class...

As yoga class on the day before my birthday drew to a close, I found myself in Savasana, in a peaceful, trance-like state of clarity, thinking: Oh my god, I'm turning 28 and I have neither a graduate degree nor a husband.

Because I was in a trance-like state of clarity, I was actually pretty ok with this. I said to myself, "your birthday is just a sensation, passing through you like ripples on the lake of life! Your present moment is full of goodness, and no alumni magazine or website with a stupid name like "the knot" can tell you otherwise."

In short, I was oozing yogic awesomeness and transcendence, and damn proud of it. Of course, everyone knows the number one rule of Inner Peace is that as soon as you brag about it (even in your own head) you lose it.

The minute I opened my eyes, I looked over to my friend on the mat next to me.

"Almost birthday time!" She said.

"Oh my god!" I wailed in response. "I'm turning 28 and I don't have a graduate degree or a husband!"

"Noo!" My friend, who has a graduate degree and an ex-husband, threw her arms me. "It doesn't matter!"

In honor my swiftly approaching Special Day, I decided to try and believe her. Earlier in the day, I'd been on the phone with my brother. He was worried about What He Was Going to Do with the Rest of His Life, and I urged him to try thinking about what he had instead of what he needed.

"Capitalism thrives on you feeling like there's something missing!" I insisted. "Try focusing on everything you already have that's good, instead!" Since he was nice enough to humor me with an emphatic, "you're right!" I figured I owed to it both of us to take my own advice.

The truth is, it hasn't been all that hard for me lately. I know I have a good life. I have a good job, a good place to live, good friends, a good relationship with yoga, and the good sense to appreciate it all most of the time.

What's more, I have a good idea of how I got here. I do feel like I'm way behind behind where I should be, but I'm not sitting around wondering where all those years went. I might not have gotten what I wanted out of them, but I was certainly trying awfully hard the whole time.

So, on the day of my birthday, I vowed to accept the fact that I'd done my best and would have to live with the consequences. I was running late to work and told myself to just deal with it. By 8 thirty am, things were already mediocre, and I was fine with it.

Then I came into work and discovered that my whole desk had been covered in wrapping paper, including the giant cardboard box I put my computer on so I can stand while I work. That was just the beginning.

Another coworker came in with a smattering of vegan raw treats and a special single drip pot he'd brought to make me gourmet coffee.

When I came back to my desk someone had left me Diet Dr. Pepper, and for the next few hours, I had a treat every time I returned to my desk, ranging from a birthday card, to balloons, to a crudite platter to a Starbucks card.

I really felt like the luckiest person on Earth. But as I did, I found myself doing the inevitable, ego-driven thing and trying to compare and contrast, toying with the thought, "this is so much better than graduate school and a husband!"

Those kinds of thoughts never pay off, because they don't tell you anything about how you are, they're about how you are in relation to a world full of people you don't know.

Personally, I've been accepted to graduate school four times, enrolled twice, dropped out once, and failed to show up on the first day yet another time. And while I'm sure husbands are fantastic, the mere thought of having even a boyfriend makes me feel like I'm coming down with the flu.

It may be that these standard "achievements" are not in the cards for me right now. Maybe they're not even things I want. They are, however, useful tools for relentless self-criticism. AKA not very useful at all. "You did your best," I reminded myself. "There's nothing you can do to get younger or more accomplished right now.

I'm not saying that my best was "good enough." (That would be unquestionably un-American.) I've made more than my fair share of misakes on the journey to this point. I cowered when I should have been brave. I whined when I should have been grateful. I held on when I should have let go and ran when I should have paused. I said "yes" when I meant "no" and "maybe" when I meant "yes." I spent a lot time worrying about being too tall that I really should have spent doing just about anything else.

But what amazes me is how none of those mistakes can be corrected in here and now by dwelling on them. At dinner later in the day, my father, who was generous and cool enough to fly in with my step-mom for the occasion said to me, "I'm very proud of who you are."

"But!" I cried out, only half in jest, "I don't have a graduate degree or a husband!"

"I didn't say I was proud of what you did. I said I was proud of who you are."

It's perfectly fine to have goals, but you've got to set them with whoever you are in mind. And if you really have a lot of problems with who you are, you'll set goals that are wrong for you, and you'll never reach them. The cycle will continue, and one day, you'll resort to solving all your problems by buying new shoes just like everybody else.

It's an easy thing to say, but a hard thing to put into practice.

The next night at Yoga class (yes, Blog, I'm still writing about Yoga class, you win, and I'm sorry) I ran into a friend who I've only seen a handful of times since I've moved here, but for whatever reason, she comes to me whenever she needs to make a decision or other advice.

"How are you?" She asked.

"Ok," I told her, "except that I just turned 28 and I don't have a graduate degree or a husband."

"Oh come on! Just think about what you would tell someone else who was saying that."

I smirked. "I don't know...what would I tell someone?"

"Oh, you know....that those things...Oh! You'd say they were arbitrary. And they didn't really mean anything about success or failure."

We both laughed. "That is what I'd say," I admitted. "But..."

Sure, in blissed-out Buddha-land, everything is arbitrary. In the world, you need to find a happy medium. You don't have to buy into society's definition of success, but you've got to have something in your back pocket.

All through class, I tried to figure out what it was that I had that could make me take joy in the present moment, despite how behind the curve I felt. I thought about how I could finally do handstand but immediately found myself angry that I didn't do it when I was younger. I started thinking of more things I should have done when I was younger. I started thinking of more things I could do that would be not so impressive because I wasn't younger.

In short, it was tough going. When we left the studio I was feeling a little sullen. We spilled out into the warm weather on Mission street, where some locals had their van parked, doors opens, and music blaring. They were doing salsa on the street to "Dancing Queen."

"Only in the Mission," I shook my head. Then, I remembered when I was 17 and we used to park the car in the street and dance to Led Zeppelin, or Freshman year when we ran around the hall dancing to the very same song.

Without thinking, I began to twirl. "Yeah, RB!" my friend shouted. A little old Chinese lady behind me started clapping for me, in time with my dancing. Another spiral around and I looked up -- right at my roommate's best friend -- who was walking towards us on the street.

"Oops....um, Hi!"

When we were two feet past him, I shouted at the top of my lungs, "Of course I would be the one to f%*king run into someone I know while dancing to "Dancing Queen" down Mission street."

And then I realized what it is that I have that no crappy comparison can take away from me: Impeccable timing.

(Blog: 1, RB: 0. Better late than never.)

Let it Flow, Let it Go

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 05:52:00 +0000

I've been doing a lot of Anusara yoga this week, which means instead of listening to the Beatles during class, I'm listening to a teacher talk -- a lot.

Now, because it is approaching the New Year, there needs to be Big Lesson about the New You and how you can find it through your practice.

The idea of letting-go-of-stuff-that-no-longer-serves-you is a big thing in Yoga all year long, but it is especially emphasized now because you get a National holiday to officially let go of stuff. Since you have the calendar and a big shiny ball in Times Square on your side, it's very important to focus really hard on something you want to get rid of and then let go really really hard so it disappears from your life in 2011.

When my teacher started class today, she told us that when you let go of something, you make room for your desires and wishes to enter into your life. She told us to think of both the thing we wanted to let go of, and the wish that would come true if we did.

I couldn't really think of anything I wanted to let go of, so when she said, "or you can just open up yourself to a sign and let the Universe give you a sign," I decided to go with that option.

Then she continued, "So today, we'll focus on drawing very closely into the midline and finding the structure and stability that will enable us to let go and truly expand."

It occurred to me that it would be hard to simultaneously draw inward while waiting wide open for for the Universe to infuse me with a message. I realized that I did have something to let go of: my refusal to focus energy on getting grounded in favor of waiting for the wind to come and blow me somewhere exciting.

As I'm sure is obvious to anyone who knows me or has read this blog--I sort of enjoy chaos. Chaos makes good stories. Chaos keeps things interesting. Chaos keeps you busy without forcing you to make any big decisions or commitments.

From irrevocably bad hair days to eternally broken hearts, I've spent a better part of my adult life thriving on catastrophe--or the illusion of it. But it's becoming increasingly obvious that while it's great to have a ear open for the suggestions of the Universe, when the Universe offers you stability, sometimes you have to accept that, too.

And accepting stability means stabilizing yourself --or drawing into the proverbial midline. Working with this teacher, I've been able to get into some really expansive poses this week. That's something I can count on-- as long I continue following the instructions and creating strong, centered muscular energy.

Of course, it's a lot easier to pull your feet isometrically together than it is to welcome new foundational structures into your real life. In my real life, I am panicked at the prospect of consistency because I think it means boredom.

But it didn't seem so bad in yoga. Maybe it wasn't in real life either. So I decided to let go of going rogue-- of rebellion for its own sake.

I didn't worry about it too much until the time came for shoulder stand.

"Don't do this if you're on your Lady Holiday," the teacher said. "Let me know and I'll give you something else to do."

Now, I have never followed the rule of not inverting when I'm on my "lady holiday." I've heard it's just some sexist rule and there is nothing dangerous about it, but I've also heard it's not the best idea. In honor of my new intention, I decided that I would follow the rules. Since the whole class was lying on their backs, I quietly raised my hand.

I expected to her come over and talk to me after everyone had gone up into shoulder stand, but instead she called out, "Oh, RB! You! You can go over there and put your legs up the wall."

I was mortified. Did she really have to announce it to the class? Desperate for an escape route, I whispered, "Actually maybe I can do shoulder stand."

"No....well..ok....what day are you on?" Her voice was at full volume.

I held up my pointer finger.

"ONE!" She shouted. "You're on day one?? No way, no shoulder stand."

I shot up and grabbed my mat, ready to put at least 10 ft in between me and the 8 strangers who now knew that I started my period today. But the teacher stopped me in my tracks as she called across the room, ""I mean, you don't want to reverse the flow of blood, do you? Or maybe you do? Do you?"

I locked eyes with her and realized she was waiting for an answer. "Um, no. I don't want to reverse the flow."

I went and put my legs up the wall and then teacher came over and rested her arm on my flexed feet. "I'm sorry, it's just my training. We learned that you're not supposed to so that's what I teach."

"Is it really that bad?" I asked, since I had no where to go and no more pride.

"Well, it does reverse the flow of blood. I don't know if that's bad."

She walked away and I was settling into my profound sense of mortification when I started to laugh.

I'd started the class worrying that if I set things up correctly, my life would get boring. But of course, trying to follow the most basic rule had lead me into yet another completely humiliating, eventful episode. Even if my greatest desire is a life filled with ridiculous stories, it doesn't mean that I should somehow make myself a ridiculous person -- or deliberately reverse the flow.

Proper alignment sets you up for what you want-- period. (no pun.) No matter what I want, the priority is still creating internal stability. Thinking that stability will make my life boring is a product of fear and weakness, not bravery or confidence.

The idea that we need to create our own chaos to keep things lively is perhaps the greatest instance of human hubris imaginable. Life is always going to be messy, unpredictable and eventful. Making things messy from the get go is just a way to try to control the future and pretend that nothing can catch us off guard.

The scary reality is that you can do everything right and things can still go completely wrong. The scarier reality is probably that you can do everything right and things will be better than you imagined. The scariest reality is that most times, you have no way of knowing which one of those it's going to be.

But ultimately, to step into the flow of Grace (number one principle of Anursara) you have to stop fighting against yourself. Reversing the flow of your own life isn't necessarily dangerous, but why would you want to? You are stuck with you, for better or for worse. It's your responsibility to do your best to make it "for better."

So this year, if you let go of one battle, let it be the one against yourself. It may sound hard, but actually, it's a lot easier than letting go of anger at your annoying neighbor, and will probably yield greater results.

Problems They Don't Have in Sub-Saharan Africa

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Mon, 20 Dec 2010 06:16:00 +0000

The other day, we got into the carpool and I tried to check my email on my BlackBerry when I ran into the same issue-- the roller ball is totally not working.

"God!" I shouted. "This is so annoying -- it's f*&cking killing me." Then I thought about what I'd said, and I added, "Problems they don't have in Sub-Saharan Africa."

Especially around the holidays when everyone is stressed out and on edge, it's easy to forget how really not-bad-at-all our lives are. Sure, perspective has a lot to do with it. And if your life is interrupted, it's frustrating.

But wouldn't it be nice if every time you felt your blood pressure rising over something (probably trivial) you had way to just stop?

I think the solution is the phrase "Problems They Don't Have in Sub-Saharan Africa." It's got a kind of fun rhythm, it makes you feel like you know something about geography, and it works for me so I'm hoping it will work for you too.

So any time you experience one of the following irritating things this week, I invite you to try squelching it with this phrase...

Problems They Don't Have in Sub-Saharan Africa

The Internet is so slow....it is taking at minimum 30 seconds to load a page
AT&T keeps dropping calls and there's no clear date on when Verizon is coming to the iPhone.
Your nail polish got smudged just an hour after you got your manicure.
The line at the grocery store is so goddamn long.
His text was so freaking ambiguous
She never responded to your text even though it seemed really obvious that she liked you
Your birthday falls during Finals so you can't party
Your birthday is the same week as Christmas so no one cares
Your birthday is coming up and you just feel sooo old
Holiday traffic
Rush hour traffic
That really long traffic light -- why is it green for 15 seconds and red for 90 seconds? What the Hell?
Two words: Christmas music
Those annoying Scroogey people who can't appreciate Christmas music
The obnoxious 22-year old that is clearly flirting with your boyfriend
You can't figure out how dressy this party is going to be. You think you have a dress, but it might too be fancy. You will die of embarrassment if it turns out you're the only one wearing silk.
Mail takes forever this time of year.
Parking at the mall is a total nightmare.
Your girlfriend totally hooked up with that guy who keeps commenting on her Facebook status in college
Nobody has commented on or even "liked" your Facebook status once this week
Seriously, could there possibly be any more baked goods at the office?
It has rained three days in a row!!
It's supposed to rain tomorrow, too....

7 Secrets of a Healthy Relationship

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Fri, 17 Dec 2010 07:06:00 +0000

One of the women who assisted my teacher training last year told us that her relationship with yoga was the first healthy relationship she ever had, and only through that relationship was she able to cultivate other healthy relationships.

Now, there's no cause for alarm. I am nowhere near having these "other" healthy relationships (although my "no 3rd date rule" has morphed into a "no 5th date rule" so I think I'm making progress.)

However, I really do feel like I have finally cultivated a strong, healthy relationship with yoga. That said, my blind devotion hasn't hindered my over-analysis, so here's what I think are:

7 Secrets of a Healthy Relationship (with Yoga)

1. Show up when you say you're going to show up.

Decide how many times a week you're going to go to yoga and do yoga that many times a week, no matter what happens. When I decided to have a relationship with yoga, I committed to going every day. However, if you also want to have relationships with other people, you might want to consider setting a goal that fits in better with your life. I'd still recommend picking the days you are going to go and always going on those days.

Why? This teaches you an important core lesson about relationships. You choose whether you want to be in a relationship, but once you're in it, you don't get to choose whether or not you participate in it. Some days, you will really really not want to go yoga, but you must honor your responsibility to show up.

In my experience, one of two things will happen: A) Half-way through, everything will start to feel amazing and you'll think, "oh, I do love you after all and you have totally inspired me to rise above my perceived limitations or B) You will hate it the whole time but probably feel pretty proud when you're done. This will still dissolve perceived limitations, and make you realize that doing something you don't really feel like doing isn't so tortuous after all.

2. Be your own person, be on your own side; avoid co-dependence.

Making a commitment does mean the conflation of two identities. I love yoga, and it is a bigger part of my life than anything. To many people who know me, yoga is something that defines me. But yoga does not define me to me. Yoga is something I do to clarify my identity, not create it.

That means that some days, it's me against yoga: "You go in there, and you kick that Warrior Three's ass..." That doesn't meant I don't like Warrior Three, or that I don't want to do it tomorrow. It just means today I won, I am psyched, and that's ok.

3. Know what you need, and ask for it.

Some days I go to yoga and I am ready to re-define the meaning of "power" flow. I used to hide in the back of the room all the time, but I realized that being a wallflower when you want to be a warrior will just distract you from going all the way. When you want to be powerful, go all out.

Conversely, there are some days when the only thing motivating me to go to yoga is the knowledge that I get to spend the first five minutes of class in child's pose. On those days, I'm near a wall (safety blanket) and during every single pose, I ask myself how I feel physically, and whether I want to try harder or lay off. Sometimes I take it easy, but at other times, just the permission to slow down makes me say, "Ok, I can do this."

4. Align, Engage, and Then Let Go

Not every pose will be Swami's equivalent of a home run, but that doesn't give you free rein to be lazy or inconsiderate. Start with the correct placement of the feet every time. Engage the legs and core muscles. Magic may happen and your torso may unfold into the deepest, most expansive, heart-opening bind you've ever done. Or your left hip will continue to be tight, your wrists will hurt for some inexplicable reason and you will feel kind down about the whole thing. Either way, this is a good lesson.

Why? You're safe, you're stable and you're being fair---you can feel good about that. Even so, sometimes you do everything right and everything goes right, and sometimes you do everything right and everything goes wrong. There's no time like the present to get used to it, because that's pretty much how life works.

5. Assume, a priori, that all problems have solutions; think "when," not "if."

I was feeling grumpy yesterday because my bound side angle is great on the right side, and kind of grueling on the left side. Then I remembered how I didn't used to be able to do gomukhasana on my left side, and then I remembered how before that, I couldn't do gomukhasana at all, with either arm. It was so hard I assumed that my body was genetically wired to fail at it.

I practiced this pose using a strap for many days (and many months.) Everyday I tried to crawl my hands a little closer together, inching my way up the strap. Then one day, I found myself able to do forearm stand (a major shoulder opener.) I was probably able to do this because of all the gomukhasana practice, then lo and behold one week later, I didn't need a strap any more, probably because of the big opening I'd gotten in forearm stand.

If you 're confused, good. The bottom line is that your body is capable of everything, but you have to do focused work on small projects, not get impatient and not ask too many questions. Lack of faith is what makes you overstretch and get frustrated. Faith is what enables you to hang on to that strap and wait for things to unfold.

6. Don't lie to yourself about what the problem is.

Bound high-lunge is one of the most challenging poses for me. I lose my balance and I cannot for the life of me look over my shoulder and expand my chest without toppling over.

I got obsessed with this business of looking over my shoulder. The harder I tried, the more scared and agitated I got, and of course nothing improved. Then I realized that I wasn't actually engaging my back leg, because my hips are tight, it hurt and I didn't want to do the work.

For a week, I focused on nothing but engaging the back leg, and it was kind of painful. Then everything started to loosen up, and today I found that the back leg went and engaged all by itself!

Not surprisingly, once I stabilized my legs, looking over the shoulder was totally possible.

7. Don't be afraid to take care of yourself, off the mat.

I'd never want to say that sometimes, yoga doesn't work, but sometimes yoga doesn't "work." When you first start doing yoga, you might start emanating pure joy and love. Your skin might suddenly become flawless and you'll feel so light at heart you're afraid you're going to float away!

Then you will have a week like I just had and you will feel like there's a 50 pound brick sitting on your chest and your skin will break out like a 16-year old's before the SATs and your people will start asking you why you're cranky based purely on things you said over Gchat. (Yes- you are sooo toxic it shines through the text!)

When the time comes to go drinking with your co-workers on Friday, you will have an anxiety attack (icing on the cake of the 6 other anxiety attacks you already had) about how you're going to have to miss yoga.

But you will recognize that goodbye drinks are not to be missed, that not drinking when other people are drinking is sort of downer, and that jumping up and down and skipping across the dance floor to John Mellencamp with your boss feels healthier than 10 yoga classes.

This is OK.

Songs I Listen to When I Crank It Out

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 03:19:00 +0000

So, I just had the most awkward weekend of my life. Those of you that know me or this blog realize that probably earns me a spot in the Guinness Book of World Records. Unfortunately, it was so awkward I actually can't write about it. However, somehow, karmically, I feel that I deserve to be embarrassed.

Luckily, I've had an absurd amount of writing to do for work in the past month, and it has required me to put on my headphones and play the kind of songs that motivate me to crank out large amounts of text.

I'm not saying my taste in music is impeccable when I'm with other people, but when I'm alone with a deadline, it totally goes down the tube. It is my hope that when I make a public confession, the Universe will stop sending me awkwardness (and I will still have friends.)

Songs I Listen to When I Crank it Out

1. One Day - Matisyahu. It kind of makes you believe that one day, you will have friends other than your laptop. I listened to it on repeat for six days straight before realizing that was not the case.

2. Hold on Loosely - .38 Special. I was writing about rock climbing. Actually I think if you're rock climbing you need to grip pretty tightly, but this got in my head and that was that -- for about 5 hours straight.

3. Miracle - Matisyahu. If you have momentary nostalgia for the traditions of your youth and play a Hannukah song on repeat for all eight days and nights, will God intervene on your behalf like he did with Maccabees? No, but I don't regret trying.

4. Love is All Around - The Troggs. In the carpool, we listen to the Love Actually soundtrack. Every time "Christmas is All Around" comes on, I scream so loud we almost crash the car. I decided to try and mellow myself out with the real thing. (This one actually worked!)

5. I Can't Stop Loving You - Phil Collins. I discovered the motivational power of this song when my ex-boyfriend had just stopped speaking to me. Turns out it's just as effective when everyone talks to you and you don't love anyone.

6. I Think We're Alone Now- Tiffany. I loved this song since Stacy Ferguson performed it on Kids Incorporated. It's sort of how I feel about my laptop, right now.

7. Say Goodbye to Hollywood - Billy Joel. No idea how this song got stuck in my head, but it's wedged deep. The lyrics say "life is a series of hellos and goodbyes," but I am beyond ashamed to report I have not managed to say goodbye to this song.

8. The Circle of Life - The Lion King. Sometimes you need to be reminded.

9. I Get A Kick Out of You - Frank Sinatra. Again, a song about my feelings for my laptop.

10. Stronger - Kayne West. For those rare, rare moments when writing is a struggle. Good reminder that words that don't kill me will at least make my text longer.

11. Candlelight - The Maccabeats. When I finally got sick of listening to Matisyahu but still was hoping God would save me, this song came to the rescue. No word from the Big Guy yet, but the song has dulled my hatred for acapella groups from Yale which probably brings me a little closer to Heaven.

12. Dynamite - Taio Cruz. When Hannukah ended, I decided I had to cut off the Maccabeats. Luckily, I liked the original song even better. Plus the double entendre of "I throw my hands up in the air sometimes" pretty much says it all.

13. Break Your Heart - Taio Cruz feat. Ludacris. Once I started listening to Dynamite, I was reminded of my absolute favorite Taio Cruz song/absolute favorite song ever written. I've been listening to it for four days and I've listened to it four times since I started this post. You might say this is Ludacris, but Taio Cruz-- tell her how you feel:

How to Gain 15 Pounds Without Trying

noreply@blogger.com (RB) — Thu, 25 Nov 2010 07:29:00 +0000

As we approach the holiday season and everyone suddenly becomes desperate to get thinner and fend off turkey, pie, and merriment-induced alcohol binges, there are sure to be hundreds of articles advising people on how to lose 15 pounds.

I thought: maybe there are some people out there who would like to gain 15 pounds. (For example, the family member who needs to dress up as Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.) Where are the articles for them? As an expert on this very subject, I felt it was my duty to step up to the plate. Here are some tips on:

How to Gain 15 Pounds Without Trying-- or Noticing It!

Treat certain foods as though they have zero calories. These foods might include tortilla chips that are broken, food that you didn't pay for, food that you ate while drinking a diet soda, and/or trail mix.

If you hear or see someone else at the office eating, take this as a cue to eat. Try some of what they're eating, and then remember that you brought your own food. Eat that, too.

Start standing up at your desk and find out how many extra calories this burns a day. Eat at least that many calories per hour while you are at work.

Whenever you eat peanut butter, eat a spoonful of it plain in addition to whatever you are spreading it on (such as apples, celery, or a waffle.) Eat peanut butter every day.

Talk incessantly about how you are going to start doing Pilates. Talk about it so much that you sort-of-kind-of actually think you are doing Pilates. After all, according to the book jacket, you can do these exercises at your desk without interrupting your work flow. Maybe you did them and just forgot!

Believe your mother when she says, "It's not emotional eating! You actually burn more calories when you're stressed."

Keep the air conditioning on very high at your office, so that you are painfully cold at all times. Eat constantly to generate heat, and wear lots of layers of clothing (ideally bulky sweaters) so that neither you nor anyone else will notice your ever-expanding figure.

Realize that walking across the street to get lunch is a waste of valuable time and start bringing food to work. To avoid feeling deprived because you don't get to ask, "what will I have for lunch today?" bring lots of options. Eat all your options.

Donuts. Just eat them.

Prepare for the possibility that you might have to skip lunch by drinking lots of calories in the morning (juice, protein shakes, soda, and coffee with cream and sugar are all good choices.) Never actually skip lunch.

When you run into problems that seem like they have no solution, consider that food may be the solution. If the first food you try doesn't work, try a different food. If that food doesn't work- don't get discouraged! The chewing motion in your jaw might open up new passageways in your brain. (Note: chewing gum does not count.)

Joke constantly about how much you eat. You and everyone else will think you are only joking about how much you eat.