Last night I was tinkering on one of my many projects when, in a moment of clarity, I took a step back and looked at the number of social media channels I had tied into my Buffer account. It looked like I had a mild case of schizophrenia. Or at the very least an undiagnosed case of A.D.D. I realized it was getting a bit ridiculous.

Completely coincidentally, or perhaps not, I had been listening to some podcasts and TED talks over the course of the day (because, as you now know, I can’t do one thing at a time). One stuck with me. It was from Andrew Stanton from Pixar. Which again shouldn’t come as a surprise because I basically worship anything Pixar does.

While the talk itself is about storytelling, what stuck with me was his idea of the singular driving force behind a character. The thing that compels it to do what it does even if it’s not the best choice. I’m not sure what my singular driving force is yet. I have some ideas, but it’s not fully baked. But what I do know is that I need to learn to harness whatever it is into something of meaning instead of spreading myself so thin.

I’ve always been a breadth person. A classic generalist. A Jane-of-all-trades. A utility player. It’s worked really well for me up until now, but I think I’ve reached the point in my life where it’s time to focus downward. Time to pick the things that I do best and do them even better.

So I took stock. I wrote down everything I have on the burners. Everything that takes up even a small piece of my day or my attention. And then I ruthlessly started to cut things out. The choices were all pretty clear. To succeed in what I want to do, I need to go all in on it. I can’t keep throwing everything at the wall and hoping some of it sticks.

I made some decisions.

I decided now is the time to focus on my freelance and consulting career. It’s the thing that will let me do everything else. It’s the thing I love to do most. It’s the cause rather than the effect. It’s the thing I’ve been trying to do for the last 3-4 years to no avail, because I’ve been trying to do 100 other things at the same time. Now is the time for focus.

What does this mean for my projects? Well, earlier today I posted on Ready Jet Set that I’ll be going on an indefinite hiatus. I put Accompl.sh up for sale on Flippa. That one has been a long time coming. I also listed the domains for the random projects I’ve had in the back of my mind but haven’t had the time to dive into. Getting them out of the way will clear that space for other thoughts. Wanderling will remain my only side project because it’s fun and takes about an hour a week of my time. I figured that’s an acceptable compromise.

This leaves me with little ole me and my professional work. No more side projects. No more maintaining a thousand different blogs and twitter accounts. Just doing what I do best: leading teams toward building awesome products for the digital world. It’s kind of a relief, really!

It’s also pretty daunting because not having the safety net of all those other projects means this one is a sink or swim affair. And to swim, I need to be the very best. But now that I have no other distractions other than to eat, sleep, and breathe working toward my goal, there’s really nothing to stop me from getting there.

So here’s to focus. And to letting go. And to keeping my shiny object syndrome at bay.

I’ll be counting on all of you to keep me in check.

PS: My current client will be wrapping up next month and I’m looking for my next few projects. Details on Accomplsh.co.

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Coincidentally, I’d had a trip to Boston planned to see some friends I’d long promised to visit. That came with about 4.5 hours on the Amtrak each way. And we all know what happens when I spend too much time disconnected from the internet and Thinking. I come to terms with reality, that’s what!

I took my foot off the gas a bit. I was waiting to hear back from 2 companies, one of which I’d been eyeing for a few years and would have said yes to in an instant. Sadly, though, that one didn’t work out. Combined with my Thinking on the train, I realized: hey, why am I in such a rush? And more importantly why am I willing to settle for something that I don’t actually want but is just the logical, easy next step?

I did some bank account calculations and concluded that, with some careful spending and some side income, I could make it to the end of the year. I’d done it before. Many, many times. Those few months would give me the space to sort stuff out and really try to do what I’ve been trying to do all along, the thing I’ve been taking two steps forward, one step back on for the last two years: being self-employed.

And, as a Plan B, the end of the year is much “easier” to find headcount at larger companies that are looking for new hires to onboard in January, so if my plans failed, I’d actually be in a better position to find a job later this year than I am in the middle of the summer. It’s all about timing. At least that’s what I convinced myself of.

A photo posted by jenn vargas (@jennjenn) on Jul 19, 2015 at 2:00pm PDT

Around mid-August a series of serendipitous events started to unfold. Apart from going to Boston and getting my reality check, I also happened to sync up with an old friend/mentor who happened to have some freelance work that needed to be done. I dove into that project, letting me work completely remotely, and may (fingers crossed) have some future work lined up as well.

Meanwhile, during the last few weeks of August, I’d planned to take a vacation with my cousins and then spend some time at my mom’s house at the Jersey Shore. My freelance gig started just before I left and I managed to set up shop wherever I was – a hotel lobby, the back seat of the car as we drove from LA to Las Vegas, my mom’s yard. I was living the dream.

A photo posted by jenn vargas (@jennjenn) on Aug 14, 2015 at 1:59pm PDT

All making me realize that this is what I’ve been wanting all along and I’m closer to achieving it than ever before. Being the master of my own calendar and my own destiny. Being able to work from whatever corner of the planet I happen to be in. Having enough flexibility that I can function well and do my job from anywhere I have a wi-fi connection. Working on different projects. Learning new things all the time.

I keep falling into the ease of working somewhere “stable,” but if the last few years have had any lesson for me, it’s that startups are really no more stable than anything I could attempt to do on my own. Part of me likes to think I’m on the pioneering wave of this type of life. That offices are a vestige of the past and I’m just ahead of the curve and the rest of the world will think I’m not insane in 10-20 years. Or maybe the real world will be the one with the last laugh. But this is something I know deep down I need to pursue and see where it ends up.

So maybe I’ll be eating my own words in 6 months. Or maybe I’ll be writing my 6-month update post from a farm in Colombia or a couch in Boulder. Maybe I’ll be sitting in my apartment with my PJs on already 4 hours into the day. Or maybe I’ll be typing it away during my lunch break at whatever company I end up joining because this whole experiment was a massive flop. Who knows. I’m excited to find out.

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The more I think about it and the more I have to answer the question, the more I’m realizing that it’s not so much about the particular company or the particular product (though the product itself is still a major factor). What’s most important to me in my next role is more about how we work on it.

Over the last 6+ years that I’ve been doing product work, I’ve worked on teams of all shapes and sizes. I’ve worked at places with deeply embedded and amazing cultures and at places that have struggled to even find a culture. Culture, though, extends beyond whether you have a ping pong table and free lunch or tech talks and unlimited vacation policies. The culture I find most important is the introspective culture. The one that embraces the idea that the process of working is just as important as the product of that work.

This idea is often most visible in engineering teams who have the ability to quickly iterate on the tools they use or to build the tools to suit their needs. But this needs to extend beyond just the tech org and incorporate everyone involved in the product development process and beyond. As fast-moving companies (or to become faster-moving companies), we need to be as conscious of the work habits we’ve fallen into as we are of the friction points in our user-facing products. We need to constantly evaluate how we approach solving problems and communicating with each other and empower every single person in the company to do something to address it. Settling for the status quo doesn’t scale. It’s frustrating for everyone involved to try to use processes that worked for a company of 10 people but aren’t really working at 100.

And changing process / the status quo in companies that aren’t introspective is ridiculously hard.

One other important factor in this equation is where the introspection comes from. Processes need to be built around people, not vice versa. They should grow organically within the teams that use them. A system that works spectacularly in one company may do miserably in another. For this to happen, everyone in the company should feel empowered to try to address any friction points they’re experiencing rather than waiting for some mandate from above. The best people to try solve a quirk in a process are the people who use that process most often.

Then there are the norms that have fallen into place just because that’s how it’s always been done: face-time/in-office expectations, etc. But that’s a whole other topic itself.

None of this is to say that I’m a huge fan of massive codified processes or even the concept of “process” as it might be defined in a big corporation where you have to go through 8 levels of approval before you change a button color. I am a fan of making the flow of work as easy as possible. Ultimately, a company that makes a habit of looking inward and improving itself will be better-equipped to produce better products for its users because the friction along the way will be minimized. And at the end of the day, that’s what we’re all in it for: building awesome stuff that our users love.

So when I’m asked what I want in my next role? It’s a great user-focused product, a user-focused product culture, and a company that approaches how it works in the same way it approaches its products: iterate, test, adjust, evaluate, repeat.

But I also wouldn’t mind the ping pong, free lunch, unlimited vacation policies, and tech talks. ;)

The post How We Work appeared first on Jenn Vargas | Geek of All Trades.

It was totally the right choice.

I firmly believe that working at early-stage startups is like living your life in dog years. Everything happens at lightning speed. You build faster, you fail faster, you learn faster, you’re always jibing and tacking. In the time it takes a “normal” company to change some copy in an email, you’ve already launched, iterated about 10 times, maybe even pivoted a few times, and learned a whole ton as a company and as an individual.

Part of the downside of living life in dog years is that major changes also happen more quickly. Two weeks ago, nearly 8 months after I signed on to join this awesome company, I had to say goodbye. Being an agile dog-years-startup also means quickly reacting to the information you’re given. As part of the pivoting process and trying to be as lean of an organization as possible, a few of our roles were no longer necessary. It’s a known risk of joining something so inherently volatile as a startup, and objectively the choice makes complete sense. But it still sucks to be on the wrong end of it.

So here I am. Currently funemployed.

Exactly a year ago, following a consulting position at yet dog-years startup, I sold everything to buy a one-way ticket to Thailand. If I didn’t know any better, I would think this last year didn’t even happen. This is all so eerily familiar. Except for a huge difference: I’m a completely different person than I was a year ago today. Between the travel that changed me in innumerable ways and all the amazing things I learned in the last 7 months as the Director of Product at a company with a huge mission under the mentorship of two amazingly successful women where I got to wear so many different hats outside of product, I’ve had a crash course in life and business. I wouldn’t trade the last year for anything.

Even if I am right back where I started.

Part of me wants to buy a plane ticket somewhere and have my own little Groundhog Year. But the realist in me knows I need to put all of this new-found knowledge into use somewhere. Maybe not a dog-years startup this time. Maybe a normal company. Or maybe something in between. Maybe I’ll go back to consulting for a while. Or maybe I’ll write that travel blog I left to collect dust.

Meanwhile, I’ve been furiously interviewing at tech companies all around NYC. And while I hope I don’t have to write a similar post again a year from now, if living these dog-year cycles means I get to learn and grow and adapt as much as I have in the last year, is that such a bad thing? I’m not sure how sustainable it is. Dogs, after all, don’t generally live as long as humans, but currently I’m pretty thankful for my reset button.

I just have to figure out what’s which direction to take my next step in.

(Let’s work together! I’m open to contract, short-term, or full-time work. More info here.)

The post The Reset Button appeared first on Jenn Vargas | Geek of All Trades.

I’d been thinking a lot about “values-based living” and what my values have evolved into over the last few years. I have a lot of thoughts on that front, but I’ll make this one quick.

I don’t follow any particular religion, but I do think that the values religious teachings provide to their followers can be really useful tools in decision-making and figuring out how to lead your life. I thought, instead of prescribing to the values of a religion, I’d write down my own and live by them. So that’s what I did. It’s been interesting to sort of have some guideposts to make my decisions around (and re-evaluate as needed).

Without going through each one, I’ll summarize it with my note from a few weeks ago, a mission statement of sorts:

Get shit done. Be happy. Make the world better.

It’s that simple.

Do you have a mission statement? I’d love to hear it!

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“I think you travel to search and you come back home to find yourself there.” – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

(This is a long one. If you want to skip the intro, hop to the good part.)

A few months ago, in the midst of my travels, I jotted down some notes in my journal: “Conditions under which I can return to the tech world.” It was a list of requirements for any potential job I was evaluating. Next to it I started diving into all the things I like to do for fun or the things I find myself doing naturally and why I find those things fun or naturally interesting. I broke it all down until I got to my base motivations. It was enlightening stuff to say the least.

I knew there would come a point where I would be tempted by some job posting that came my way and I wanted to remind myself of the reasons I had decided to step away in the first place. I knew I would need to take on some freelance work to, you know, pay the bills and things. I also knew that the idea of a steady income and a shiny new project would cloud my judgement when the time came, so I wanted to have my thoughts in writing before I put myself back into the ring.

I’d been funemployed/consulting/without 9-5 employment for well over a year. An amazing year. The best year ever, in fact. But I was also becoming keenly aware of my dwindling bank account and the holes in my socks. When I got back from my last trip, I took on a few freelance projects and started interviewing at full speed. I don’t even remember the number of companies I was in touch with. It was getting in the way of my blogging spree, but sadly the blogging wasn’t buying me new socks.

My heart wasn’t in any of it. Deep down I knew I didn’t want to sign on to just work on any ole thing. I didn’t want another blip on my résumé. I didn’t want to do e-commerce again. I didn’t want to work at a growth-stage company. I was putting on my happy/friendly/hire me face, spitting out all the lines I knew they wanted to hear, when underneath I was hoping it wouldn’t work out so I didn’t have to convince myself that I wanted to work there. Hashtag Millennial Problems? Probably. But I’d done a lot of work over the previous year to learn about what it is that I like to do, what it is that I’m good at, and following my heart and my instincts has been the right choice every time. This was against everything I’d learned. I wasn’t standing up for myself and what would make me happy in the long run.

But reality is reality and I’d resigned myself to the idea that I might have to work on something less than ideal and I would figure out how to make the best of it. Or I could get a part-time job at a coffee shop or something to fix the holes in my socks and buy myself some more time. Christmas was coming and I knew new job reqs tended to open up in the beginning of the year as new budgets and headcount opened up. So I continued the interviews.

I was reaching the later stages with some companies when I got a phone call from a woman I’d met while speaking on a panel for a class at Cornell. We’d met on the bus to Ithaca. Less than an hour after I’d left Birchbox on my last day there. The same bus ride I wrote my Medium post from. Funny how things work out.

Anyway, I remembered the company she was working on from the panel and they were in need of some Product/UX help. She asked if I would be available to work with them. Ideal: A consulting gig through the end of the year and I could keep my interviews going in the background but reduce the urgency.

Then I got there. It was a bit of a fixer-upper situation, but just the kind I like. And the people were cool. And the problems were interesting. And it wasn’t a “Building Uber for X” or “Airbnb for Y” kind of situation. It was something I could sink my teeth into.

Just before we left for the holidays they popped the question: Would I join them full-time? I consulted my trusty list. To my amazement, it checked all the boxes but two (work remotely and not based in NYC or SF). It even hit the ones I thought might be a bit of a stretch given how startups usually work. Not to mention the company is run by two of the coolest and most successful women I’ve ever met, in a space I’ve had on my list of wanting to tackle for years, and it’s got a full engineering team ready to go. When does that ever happen? IT DOESN’T.

To my own surprise, especially given the commitment I’d made to trying to travel full-time only a few months before and the issues I was having with my earlier interviewing, I couldn’t come up with a reason to say no. My heart was finally in it. The stars were aligning. When I looked at things in the grand scheme, the only con I came up with was “cuts into my travel time”. Poor me. I’d make it work.

As of January 1, I’ve joined Kandu full-time as their Director of Product. When I signed on in early December, Kandu was a bit of a nebulous idea with the mission of creating digital tools for kids to be able to build and play. Since then, we’ve evolved that idea into something even more interesting (at least I think so!) that I’m super excited to dig into. It’s an incredibly collaborative place and it’s run in a way that’s unlike any startup I’ve encountered in the past. Everything about it is refreshing and for the first time since around 2010 or 2011 I feel like I’m not building a different take on something that I’ve built before.

I’ve been holding off on writing this for a while because it all happened so serendipitously it almost seems unbelievable. Everything has been going so well I’ve been paranoid about jinxing it. Plus, I only recently made the bold claim that I wanted to be a full-time traveler and this is pretty much the polar opposite of that – save for my daily 6-hour commute. I felt ridiculous changing course so quickly. I’ve been hinting that I’m looking for an apartment in the NYC area, so I figured it was time to share the good news and maybe that would make it feel real.

It just goes to show that you should always put your best foot forward and opportunity knocks when you least expect it. I’ve been in search of this job (without being able to really define it) for at least 3 years now, but it took meeting someone over a year ago, traversing the world, figuring things out, learning, and coming back home for it all to come together. I don’t think I would have been ready for this job a year ago. I had a lot of growing to do. That quote about luck, preparation, and opportunity comes to mind and I believe it now more than ever. My crazy experiment worked out.

“I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.” – Douglas Adams

PS: I have to thank Prof. Deb Streeter for organizing that fateful panel, Jessica for passing along my phone number, Jimelle for being my ever-reliable sounding board when I was worried I was suffering from shiny object syndrome, and Cornell for once again proving that it’s totally worth it to still be paying off my student loans.

PPS: We’re hiring a designer. If you are one, you should get in touch. If you aren’t, you should tell all of your friends. :)

PPPS: Yes, I bought some new socks.

The post A Fresh Start for 2015 appeared first on Jenn Vargas | Geek of All Trades.

I think the fact that I can barely remember all the way back to my birthday last year shows just how much has happened in the last 365 days. A lot of it feels like a lifetime ago. I guess I’ve had a pretty packed year. Sure, it was a little directionless, but looking back at my photos to remind me of what’s happened, I’m actually really surprised by how much I’ve done.

I’ve written a lot about building the life I want and making myself available to new opportunities, but I didn’t think I was making much progress on actually making that a reality until I went back and looked at the year as a whole and realized that I spent the majority of the year taking advantage of those opportunities. I got to travel. I got to see a bunch of Broadway shows. I got to see my favorite musicians perform live. I got to spend time with family and friends. I got to do silly things like apple picking, planting a garden, and building a snowman, but they’re exactly the kinds of things that make me happy.

I need to work taking leaps on a smaller scale: the little everyday decisions that can change your life’s trajectory.

It turns out that all of those little decisions I talked about back in February actually managed to change my trajectory in a big way. I never had a real plan for this year. I had a general direction and the freedom and confidence to make decisions based on what I thought was right instead of what was expected of me. It’s made a huge difference.

Funny enough, a few days ago I found this article on Thought Catalog about 27 being your crisis year. I wasn’t quite in crisis, but it definitely rang true!

This year has involved a lot of questioning the life I’d been living, the career choices I’ve made, the opinions and assumptions I’ve held. Maybe it’s a result of having a lot of time to reflect, or maybe it’s a result of developing a stronger sense of self and confidence through all of the experiences I had this year, but I finally understand what it means to feel “grounded.” I’d never go as far as saying I “found myself” this year. That’s way too cliché. But I did manage to learn a lot about what makes me tick. I’ve accepted a lot of my idiosyncrasies and started to work toward changing the ones that I realized were holding me back. I even questioned my technology choices and made the shocking switch to Android. Crazy stuff.

I realized a few important things this year that led to my making some radical decisions including subletting my apartment in NYC, downsizing my belongings, and moving back to my mom’s house. A few weeks after that I booked a one-way ticket to Thailand for what turned out to be 7 weeks of backpacking around Southeast Asia. I wouldn’t have come back as soon as I did if I didn’t need to get my passport renewed. The trip was eye-opening in a number of ways, but most importantly, it reminded of my “secret” dream of traveling the world and taking photos that I’d filed under Childhood Fantasies and brushed aside for a more practical career path.

What I discovered, though, was that traveling around the world, meeting and learning from new people every day, facing the challenges of being in a foreign place, and trying to capture what it feels like to be there with my camera made me feel completely in my element. That discovery is what’s carrying me into my 28th year.

I jotted down 4 “goals” for this year in my 27th birthday post. The biggest one was obviously travel, and I think I tackled that one thoroughly. I visited Seattle, Vancouver, Oslo, LA, San Diego, San Francisco, Ithaca, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Malaysia in addition to lots of trips home and to Connecticut to visit family. Relationships were a bit of a mixed bag. Things on the family front continue to improve, but I haven’t had as much contact with my friends since I left NYC. This is definitely something that I still need to find balance with. Health-wise, it went downhill for a while, but I managed to undo a lot of that during my backpacking trip. I’ll need to put some serious effort into this in the coming year if I want to reach my goals. Then there’s “do something with a positive impact”. I failed on this one for sure, but I do have some ideas for how I can work on it going forward.

The odd thing is that I never actually felt 27. For some reason the year always felt wrong to me. I accidentally slipped and said I was 28 on more than one occasion. I think I’m meant to be 28. I’ve grown into my age. I think this will be a good year.

Lacking any sort of consistent income at the moment, it’s really difficult to make any guesses about what the next year will hold. I’ll need to support myself and my travel habit somehow, so I have a few things in mind, but only time will tell what will stick. I’m going to follow suit from last year and list some themes instead of concrete goals:

• Support myself through work that involves consistent travel or living abroad.
• Integrate improved health and fitness into my everyday life.
• Improve how I develop and sustain relationships when distance is involved. I’m far from my old friends, far from my travel friends, and not in one place long enough to get serious about dating.
• Speaking of dating: The whole being single thing is getting old. Yes, I move around a lot, but that’s not an excuse.

I get the feeling that my goals will follow a lot of the same themes over the next few years. Work, health, relationships: that kind of sums up life! Of course, I’ll continue to keep some form of my Accompl.sh list, but it’s good to have a direction to point toward and check off my Accompl.sh goals along the way.

I feel like I’m in a place where I’ve figured out what it is I want to go after and have put almost all of the pieces in place that I need to tackle it. It might mean forcing myself off of my old path and onto a new one, or maybe the two will merge somehow, but I finally have the confidence to ignore what other voices may think or say and to do what I think is right and what makes me happy.

So 28? I think we’re going to be friends.

This is my 13th annual Birthday post. Past posts live here (except for when they were lost in time): 27, 26, 25, 24, 23, 22, 21, 20, 19, 18, 17, 16.

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That was pretty vague.

Rule #1 of setting goals: Be specific. Clearly I failed on that front. I knew what “the future” looked like in my head, but I never actually wrote it down anywhere. I never gave myself anything to be accountable to. I never put checkpoints in place to be able to gauge whether or not I was moving in the right direction. Needless to say, I’ve been all over the place these last 9 months.

That’s not to say the time hasn’t been interesting / exciting / educational / etc., but it’s involved a lot of zigging this way and zagging that way without a lot of forward momentum. More importantly (or perhaps more concerning), it’s involved a lot of decisions that were contrary to my goals. I put myself in the situations I was specifically trying to avoid and often made the comfortable and expected choice instead of the one that was riskier, but more inline with what I’m trying to accomplish longterm.

Despite (or maybe due to) all of the zigging and zagging, I’ve actually learned a fair bit over these last few months. I’ve gained some new skills, met some new people, and had some experiences I’m glad I had. The problem, though, is that all of these experiences managed to exacerbate the frustrations I was already feeling. I mean, it makes sense: I did the things I expressly didn’t want to do because they frustrated me or left me unfulfilled and surprise, surprise, they’ve left me even more confused than I was before.

I think I’ve mentioned this a few times in the past, but as time goes on and I work with more startups and tech companies, the more I wonder if I even want to continue my career in tech at all. I haven’t found any really interesting problems to solve lately and doing “product” work feels less and less challenging and therefore less exciting and fulfilling. It almost feels like there’s a formula everyone is trying to follow and I’ve had to do those same things over and over for years now.

It makes me wonder if I should shift industries altogether. The skills of a Product Manager translate to all sorts of roles. Maybe I’d be happier working in education or government. Or maybe I’d be happiest ditching a traditional career and going to start that farm. I still love the thrill of improving systems and building something from nothing, but maybe that something doesn’t have to be a piece of technology?

These days I find myself with more questions than answers. More ideas and options than I even know how to sift through. There are so many different paths laid out in front of me that I’m stuck at the intersection and have no idea which direction to take my next step.

So I decided I needed to change things up dramatically.

I sold a whole bunch of my stuff. I sublet my apartment in NYC. I moved to my mom’s house in NJ. I booked a one-way ticket to Thailand. JFDI, right?

I leave in 2 weeks. I have no idea what I’m going to do when I get there and I don’t know when I’ll be back. I have a pretty limited budget and I haven’t really figured out how I’m going to support myself yet, but I have some ideas and (hopefully) enough time to figure something out.

I realize it’s going to be monsoon season. I realize there’s a coup and a curfew. I realize that I only have 2 weeks to get all of my shots, packing, and life in order before I hop on a plane for 22 hours to the other side of the world.

But it feels like the right decision.

Maybe I’ll realize how much I miss tech. Maybe I’ll realize how much I hate routine. Maybe I’ll finally get my seemingly insatiable wanderlust out of my system and “settle” into a job for the long term. Or maybe I’ll realize that I’m never going to be one of those people who can have an “office job” or a clear career path and accept that I’m one of those people who always needs to be on the move and doing new things. Who knows. And that’s kind of the point, isn’t it?

All I know is that in just about 2 weeks me, my backpack, and my camera will be landing in Thailand. I’ll figure out the rest when I get there.

The post Time for Some #RealTalk appeared first on Jenn Vargas | Geek of All Trades.

I’ve always enjoyed imposing random little rules on myself to make decisions easier, to challenge myself, and sometimes “just because.” Starting right then and there, I decided I would keep a vegetarian diet and see how long I could go.

managed to go 1 solid week eating vegetarian so far. it’s not easy when you’re eating out / going to events. carboloading for the lose.

— Jenn Vargas (@jennjenn) May 21, 2013

And here we are a year later.

I’ve chosen to break it twice: once on Thanksgiving where I had a slice of turkey about the size of credit card, and the second time during my annual Rolf’s dinner with Jimelle and Ioanna. I decided that I would break my rule ahead of time in both of these cases, both for the sake of tradition. Both times I felt horrible after the fact. Not for the poor animal, but for my poor stomach which was very confused and unhappy.

I also had a few accidental slip ups where I was told something was vegetarian but it wasn’t. (The taste of meat becomes very pronounced when you haven’t eaten it in a year). In all of those cases I just ate something else.

It turned out not to be a very difficult undertaking. I’ve never really had a very meat-heavy diet and living in New York means that there are a lot of food options around all the time. Basically any place you go will have at least one vegetarian option. It was, however, noticeably more difficult when I left the city.

Now that I’m coming up on the one-year mark, I want to re-evaluate why I’m doing this and whether it’s something I want to continue with. I figured I’d put my thoughts out there as a way of thinking through what to do next and maybe getting some new ideas from those of you out there on the internets.

When I first decided to do this, I had a few assumptions:

Eating out would be really difficult

This wasn’t true at all – at least in major cities. I rarely have a problem going out to eat and can find something to eat almost anywhere I go. Once I head out of major cities, though, it gets significantly more difficult. The “vegetarian option” on many menus is often the house salad or one of the least healthy options on the menu (hello giant plate of spaghetti). That said, eating vegetarian in restaurants was actually a big part of what forced me to expand my horizons and try new things since it was either that or a plate of fries.

I would feel hungry all the time

A mixed bag, really. In the beginning I was hungry ALL. THE. TIME. But it was mostly because I hadn’t yet learned to compensate my protein sources. I’m pretty sure my overall nutrition was a mess in the early days. Luckily I have a few vegetarian friends who realized what was happening and pushed me toward the protein.

Now I know what to look for, but that doesn’t always mean it’s an easy fix. This goes back to the availability of nutrient-complete vegetarian meals. When I would go to my mom’s house, or my aunt’s house, or in a lot of my travels, I would essentially end up carbo-loading because there wasn’t any protein in the “vegetarian” salad or because the only option in the restaurant was a plate of fries. Clearly not the best choice for a meal. It often left me feeling bloaty, cranky, hungry, and off-balance.

I would become “that friend” that was a pain to go out to eat with because my diet was limited

This was probably more true in the first few months, but there came a tipping point somewhere around the middle of summer last year where I became more adventurous in the foods I would eat (or at least try). That opened up a whole new world of eating options and the frequency with which I requested substitutions or alterations to a dish decreased. (Except tomatoes. I still hate tomatoes.)

I would crave meat

As the weather has warmed up lately, I’ve found myself craving a hot dog. It’s been weeks now. I haven’t had one, and the more I think about it, the more I believe it’s totally a psychological thing. As a kid, at the first signs of warm weather, my mom would fire up the grill in the yard and we would have hot dogs. It meant the school year was coming to an end. It meant no more snow. It meant eating outside. So in my mind warm weather = hot dog time. I’m actually in search of some vegetarian hot dogs, but in the meantime, I’m taking an alternate route home from the subway so I don’t pass Papaya King.

The only times I wished I didn’t have this rule in place were when some of my favorite family dishes were in front of me: empanadas (beef) and my cousin’s chicken kebabs. Empanadas have been my favorite Colombian dish since forever. I would eat them every meal if I could. And my cousin makes amazing chicken kebabs on the fire pit – they’re somewhere between middle eastern and spanish flavored and they’re oh so good. I never actually craved them, but I certainly missed eating them when they were right in front of me.

Lessons Learned:

Limiting my diet forced me to expand my preferences within those limits

I mentioned above that I now eat all sorts of new foods. My mom is a happy camper because she can (finally) take me to seafood* restaurants and I won’t have to order the plate of fries or just eat oyster crackers. I also don’t hate tofu anymore. If nothing else, this experiment was a fantastic tool to force me to become a less picky eater. I do find it ironic that by restricting my options I actually expanded them, but hey, whatever works!

Eating a plant-based diet doesn’t actually mean you’re eating more healthfully

Again – the availability of nutrient-complete vegetarian meals. It’s not a problem at all when I’m eating at home and in complete control of the food, but eating out (which I do about 80-90% of the time) is often a game of Russian Roulette. The vegetarian option is often not the healthiest option on the menu. Also, those “meat substitutes” and other things they do to food to make it veggie-friendly are actually more processed than eating a hunk of chicken.

The Verdict:

When it comes down to it, my goal is to eat more healthfully. Somewhere around the 6-month mark I debated calling it quits, or even adopting what I called an “antisocial vegetarian” diet (which is the equivalent of a “social meat-eater”). I was frustrated by having to order dishes I knew were less healthy than the meat option just because of the vegetarian rule. The rule should be to choose what’s most healthy.

To be honest – I still haven’t come to a decision. I’m glad I stuck it out for the year, and the idea of eating meat again isn’t all that appealing to me, but I do like the idea of having the option to eat meat if I need to / want to / if it’s the best choice for me. It also makes the idea of eating well while traveling less daunting. Going to Ireland or Germany as a vegetarian? Not a lot of options there.

In that case, maybe being an antisocial vegetarian is the best path forward. But I think that still leaves too much wiggle room. I prefer clear rules for making my decisions.

I’ve wondered if maybe something like Paleo is a better option. That’s almost the opposite of what I’m doing now in terms of protein sources, but it will generally mean I can choose the healthier menu options.

So with all that said, I’m at the point where tossing a coin may be the best way to choose. You might say “Why bother choosing at all? Why do you want the rules in the first place?” And that’s a totally valid point. But I like having the rules. So even if it’s something simple like “choose the healthiest thing,” there still needs to be a rule. The question is: what should it be?

I’m open to any suggestions!

* Speaking of seafood: many have said that I’m actually sticking to a pescatarian diet. I’m not picky about labels, so call it whatever you will. The only seafood I eat is (some) shellfish. I don’t eat actual fish. Not because I feel bad for the fish or anything. I just don’t find them to be tasty.

The post About those vegetables… appeared first on Jenn Vargas | Geek of All Trades.

On Thursday morning I showed up for work and while I was waiting for a meeting to start, I spent a few minutes poking through my various feeds. It was then that I saw an awesome flight deal for a weekend trip to Oslo. The rub? The flight was that evening.

I have a few travel-related goals on my Accompl.sh list this year and it turned out this trip would fit in perfectly. I did some quick research to verify the deal and ran through a bit of a mental checklist to see if it was even feasible for me to do (Did I have any commitments? Do I have the budget? Am I crazy? What’s the catch?). Knowing United’s 24-hour refund policy, I booked the tickets and figured I had time to decide whether or not I would go after my meeting.

Before I booked the ticket, Norway wasn’t very high on my list of places to visit unless it was in the context of seeing the Northern Lights. I had nothing else planned for the weekend and, come on, how fun is it to buy a ticket, pack a bag, and fly to another continent just for the weekend all on a whim? That’s kind of the dream. It’s the type of experience I wished I’d be able to have when I set out on this more independent lifestyle.

That sold me. I was going to Oslo by myself for the weekend. I had no idea what I would do once I got there, but that didn’t matter. I’d traveled around Europe on my own after college and it was an amazing experience. It was time I gave myself another good challenge. I found an Airbnb, booked a shuttle to the airport, wrapped up the work I needed to get done for the week, and headed home early to pack.

A few hours later, with my college backpack in hand, I was sitting in Newark airport waiting to board.

The wonderful thing about travel is you get to mash a bunch of great experiences and adventures into a small period of time. Even just halfway through the day on Saturday, I felt like I’d already had 3-4 days’ worth of experiences – and I still had many hours to go!

Wandering around on your own in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language can be an incredibly lonely experience, but that alone time can also be wonderfully refreshing. I had hours on end to walk around, see new things, hear new sounds, taste new foods, and just let my mind float from topic to topic. It was amazing. And cold. But that’s what gloves are for. :)

Olso is a city that can easily be explored over the course of a weekend. By the time I got back to my room on Saturday night, I felt completely satisfied with what I’d seen and done. If I had another 3-4 days, I’d consider a trip outside of Oslo, but for the city itself, I traversed nearly the whole thing!

A weekend well worth it.

How I Make It Work

Flying to Europe for the weekend may seem incredibly extravagant. And in many ways, it is. But it’s totally do-able on a budget. The entire trip, soup to nuts, cost me under $750. It also helped me to accrue about 9,000 miles and points to use toward a free award flight later this year.

This is possible using a few tools:

Every month, automatically transfer some money into a savings account earmarked for Travel. When I have a steady paycheck, that can be up to $100/month, but in less certain times, I try to put at least $20 into the account. It adds up over time! When it comes time to go on a trip, if I have enough money in my Travel account, it makes the decision easy.

Follow flight deals. I set up a Twitter list for Travel Hacking that you can follow. I check it a few times a week (more if I’m in the mood to go somewhere). This is great for finding deals to places you don’t necessarily have plans to visit. For the specific destinations I want to keep an eye on, I set up airfare alerts with Airfare Watchdog and Hipmunk. I’m also subscribed to the newsletters for JetBlue and Virgin America which can be useful for domestic flights.

Be flexible. I’m fortunate to have a work life that allows me to have a very flexible schedule and to work remotely when needed. Being able to leave on a Thursday night instead of a Friday is helpful. Being able to come back on a Tuesday instead of a Sunday night or Monday morning also helps keep your flight costs lower. This isn’t for everyone, but if you have the option: use it!

Explore Grocery Stores. This is actually one of my favorite parts of traveling. No matter where I go, I always pop into a grocery store or two just to explore and see what interesting / strange goods are available. A souvenir I always bring home is local candy / snacks. The types of snacks you can find in the grocery store tell you a lot about the local culture AND you can eat them! Double win. I always buy a few staples to stash in my backpack to minimize the number of times I have to eat out. It’s easy to carry around a few apples, a bottle of water, and maybe some nuts and crackers to keep you full as you wander around.

Use your legs. One of the best ways to explore a new place is by walking. Buzzing from point A to point B in a vehicle decreases your chances of serendipitously stumbling upon something cool, or stopping to take a picture when you see something interesting, or to go down a street that looks interesting. Wear comfortable shoes and walk it. As an alternative, a transit pass is your best bet.

Avoid hotels unless you have points/status. I don’t have status or free nights in any hotel chains, and while I could work to start accruing them, I enjoy staying in Airbnbs or hostels. It often means you get to stay in a less-touristy neighborhood and, if you’re traveling alone, have a better chance of meeting some interesting people to talk to.

Keep the basics on-hand. Once you start to travel more regularly, being “ready to go” with short notice becomes a necessity. I can pack and be out the door in 30-45 minutes. Less if I planned it out in my head in advance. I always have a toiletry bag ready to go. I have a small Tupperware bin in the back of my closet that holds all of my travel goods: silk hostel sheet, international plug adapters, travel towel. I also keep a Ziploc baggie of various currencies that I have left over from previous trips so I can grab those and go as needed. I have a very organized packing system and can get my clothes into a pretty small bag in no time. Once you start doing it often, you’ll find what works for you and it’ll become old hat.

You can do it too!

Traveling doesn’t require a lot of planning. And contrary to popular belief, it isn’t difficult or prohibitively expensive. It’s an adventure! I hope these tips help make travel less intimidating for you. If you have any questions or other tips, please comment below. And if you have a trip coming up that you’d like help planning on a budget, get in touch! I love organizing travel!

The post A Spontaneous Weekend in Oslo: How You Can Do It Too appeared first on Jenn Vargas | Geek of All Trades.

Goodbye, forever-digital. You’ve been great to me, but it’s time to move on.
It’s not you. It’s me. Really. I just need a fresh start.

I’ve set up shop over at jennthegeek.com. I’m excited about starting from the beginning using everything I’ve learned from years of keeping this blog going. It should be fun. A new adventure.

I’ll keep this domain and the blog here for sentimental reasons, but I won’t be updating anymore.

So goodbye, f-d. It’s been a good 7 years. Enjoy the retired life. Adieu, Adieu, Adieu.

On August 25th I’ll be celebrating my 7th recorded year here at forever-digital. I say recorded because the older posts were somehow lost wayyy back in the day when I was a n00b and still fighting with the likes of greymatter (Remember those days? Ancient times, indeed!). That’s a REALLY. LONG. TIME. A third of my life, in fact.

But, the sad thing is that posting here for 7 years has really become my only motivation to continue posting here. Why stop now? Will I regret stopping? Will stopping make these past 7 years all for naught?

The why stop now question is the only one I have a definitive answer to and that answer is leading me closer and closer to closing the doors, so to speak. You see, with all of these newfangled modes of communicating and recording, I find that I have less and less to talk about when I actually sit down to write something here. I’ve been updating Twitter pretty frequently for the last 2+ years. My flickr stream is almost always current and a good representation of what I’ve been up to. And then there are my Tumblr and delicious (and now even my Google Reader activity) which collect all of the miscellany I find in my travels on the interwebs.

With all of this fragmentation, I’m left with little to talk about here, especially now that school is over and I likely won’t be talking much about what I’m doing at work until after the fact. This blog has always served as more of a personal diary or journal. I’ve gone off on tangents here or there, but for the most part I consider it a time capsule of my high school and college years. With those years behind me and with so many other services out there to cover my incessant need to share and collect and record, this blog has become a bit of a relic.

I think it would be fun to have a fresh start. A place where I can write about whatever suits my fancy without taking away from the dairy aspect of this site and where I don’t need to worry about people stumbling upon my horrendous use of 14-year-old teeny bopper internet speak to talk about the kewl thingz i did in skool that day!!! :) :) :)!!!1! But, the sentimentalist in me doesn’t want put this place out to pasture.

I do have some ideas for what I would like to do with a new blog, should I decide to finally cut the cord and move on. I even found a domain I’ve had lying around that would fit the bill (another part of mission:organization – finding domains that I forgot I had!). I suppose the only thing that’s stopping me from moving on is that same fragmentation that’s leading me to move on in the first place.

I don’t like fragmentation. I like things to be neat and organized. Documented and easily accessible. An organized mess.

Right now I just have a mess. A mess of services and updates and usernames and accounts and it’s just all over the place. I think the only thing I have going for me is the Yahoo! Pipes stream I set up a few years ago to funnel the majority (if not all) of my online activity into one neat little feed. Had I been gifted with a bit more foresight, I would have sent all of that activity to one place so that it was archived for posterity in a nice timeline of internet nerdery and growing up. But, alas, I was not that insightful.

Which leaves me right back where I started. Do you see my dilemma? I’ve been on this loop for a while and I’d really like to make a decision, and soon. Any words of wisdom?

like I all but disappeared since I graduated from college, but I have, in fact, been keeping up on my 101 in 365 promise to blog at least once/week. It’s just been at a different blog. I know, I know, a good blog-keeper would have posted a link to that new blog, but I forgot. Oops!

Just over a week ago I returned from my 6-week European Adventure. I traveled all over, saw things, did things, and had an AMAZING time. The time of my life. I have all sorts of thoughts about the trip itself, but I think that needs to be saved for another post. This one will just be a catch-up.

So when we left off I was fresh out of the car from my final drive from Ithaca. I’d just graduated from Cornell and I had a few days to get my act together before leaving for a few months in Europe. I’ll start from there:

As I said, the trip to Europe was absolutely fantastic. I couldn’t have asked for a better six weeks. I met so many amazing people and learned a lot along the way. I was originally blogging about it from notesfromabroad.net, but after that domain expired, in an effort to streamline (more on that later), I let the domain go and moved the blog to travel.jennvargas.com. It’s all there from start to finish so if you want to know what I’ve been up to since May 24th, that’s your best bet!

I ended up cutting the trip short. I originally gave myself 5 days between getting back from Europe and moving to San Francisco, which, as time went on, became apparent as a completely idiotic idea. Given my state of jet lag and general post-trip disorientation there’s no way I could have managed to pack up my entire life and ship it to California in 5 days. That would have been nuts. So the trip went from just about 9 weeks to 6 weeks. I don’t regret that decision at all.

Since I’ve been home I’ve spent some time just relaxing and enjoying the first real vacation I’ve had since I was 14. No work. No internships. No responsibilities at all, actually. It’s pretty wonderful. Not something I’d like to do permanently, but it’s good to be able to do whatever I want whenever I want and just take it easy without any sort of major deadline looming. I’ve been keeping my neighbor’s pool company (She’s about 75 and doesn’t really use it anymore.) I’ve been catching up with friends from high school and college both in person and online. I’ve been catching up with what’s going on in the world (Traveling really does put you in a current events vacuum. I think it’s the lack of TV and consistent access to information). I’ve been doing the things I should have been doing for the last 8 years.

I’ve also been, almost inadvertently, working on my 101 in 365. I had a bunch of things to cross off once I got back from Europe, but there were also a few side effects that I got to cross off along the way (it turns out that 6 weeks in Europe on a tight budget is an excellent diet plan!). Check out the list! Considering there are still 165 days left in the year I think I’m in pretty good shape!

Mostly, though, I’ve been focusing on the next 3 weeks. I’ve spent hours and hours on craigslist looking for an apartment in San Francisco. My mom and I have been spending a bit of time each day cleaning out the garage and the attic – setting things aside for a garage sale that we’re going to have next week I think. It’s amazing how much crap I’ve accumulated. It doesn’t help that we moved a few days after graduating from HS so none of that stuff was ever sorted through, but then tack on four years of basically using my room at home as a storage closet and you can imagine the amount of clutter. I’m hoping to take the bare minimum with me to CA – I don’t particularly want to start out this next stage of my life already burdened by clutter!

The apartment search is only going OK. There aren’t as many options as there were in the beginning of the summer, and after spending so long focused on every single penny I spent, some of the numbers I’m seeing on craigslist are outright scaring me. When you’ve gotten used to spending no more than 20 Euro a night on a place to sleep, it’s tough to rationalize spending over $2000 for a month! Then there are the other expenses that make me nervous. I’ve dealt with bills and things for the last 4 years at least, but now that there are going to be MORE bills and a regular paycheck and retirement plans and taxes and all of that, it’s a bit overwhelming. Hopefully, though, when I finish reading I Will Teach You To Be Rich , I’ll be less panicky and will have that aspect of my life all sorted out.

So that’s been my summer so far: lots of travel, lots of planning to move, and lots of relaxing. Not bad, if you ask me!

I leave for Madrid in 6 days so my life is pretty much consumed with getting everything in order for that and my move out to San Francisco in August at the moment. Hopefully I’ll have more to say in the coming weeks other than “I’m going to miss the place, but I SURVIVED!!!”

forms over the course of the last few months as I tried to figure out exactly what I wanted to tackle and what I could feasibly accomplish in one semester.

It came in baby steps. I knew I wanted to do something with the Flickr Commons so the first thing I did was write a few scripts that would pull a bunch of data via the Flickr API and stick it into a database that I could hopefully do something useful with. A few days and a lot of queries later I had a solid database of just about 19,500 photos, over 40,000 unique tags, and nearly 210,000 tag instances. I haven’t worked with that much data before and it was certainly intimidating!

We all know that I’m not a huge fan of having to code anything. And that part was difficult, but not nearly as difficult as narrowing down this giant concept into a few research questions and then devising a way to actually go about testing them. I read everything I could find on the topic in hopes of finding something that piqued my interest yet was specific enough to turn into an actual project – still no luck.

After meeting with Evan Earle, a masters student here who, it turns out, is also working on a project involving digitizing archived photos, specifically with the Cornell University Library (he showed me a bunch of photos from the archives and Ezra Cornell’s wedding socks. Yes, his wedding socks) I walked a way with a bit more direction and a few ideas for things that I wanted to test.

A few nights of coding away until 5AM and I had it: commonality. The system is intentionally vague to avoid priming and bias and all of that fun stuff, but it’s essentially a data collection tool that will hopefully help me to prove (or at least better understand) my hypothesis about tagging these types of images.

The system is pretty straightforward and I like to think that I picked a decent selection of photos that will keep people interested as they tag. It takes about 10 minutes to complete depending on how quickly you click and how thorough you are in filling out the survey afterwards. Have 10 minutes? Give it a shot!

There’s still a lot to do: I need to collect as much data as I can (read: get as many people to use the system as I can) and then I need to actually analyze the data and write a paper about it, but I’m already really happy with having managed to complete this much! Depending on my level of senioritis after finishing the paper I might post it here, or I might just go out and celebrate having finished college. Whichever.

Two finals, this project, and five days to go!
(please please please go try out commonality!)

Getting down to the very end.

Most of my time these days is spent enjoying what I can of Ithaca before it’s too late. I’ve been out taking photos, just walking around campus, hanging out with friends, and I suppose doing some actual school work too. Actually I lie. Most of my time is spent working on the finer details of my summer adventure. I’ve been blogging pretty consistently at Notes from Abroad a domain that I’d forgotten I’d bought until recently when I was trying to decide what to do about blogging while I’m gone.

I ordered my plane tickets this week and have been doing a lot of logistics type things – looking for a backpack, figuring out what to do about a laptop, finding some decent shoes (I think I’ve decided on the obvious: tevas) and stuff like that. I suppose I should start to decide about my Eurail pass soon…

We’re down to the last few weeks of actual classes here at school. Apart from the weather getting better, it really doesn’t feel like the end of the year (I say this every year). This year every once in a while I realize that not only is it the end of my school year, but it’s the end of my schooling. Period. (Yes, grad school is always an option…). I’ve been in denial for the most part, but have been using the trip and virtual apartment hunting on craigslist to keep my mind on the light at the end of the tunnel. There was one place that I really loved but it was a bit pricey and I would really like to see it in person.

It’s crazy to me that only a few months ago my major concerns were the paper I had due the next week or some sort of Sun-related and now they’ve morphed into things like traveling for 2 months by myself, finding an apartment and moving across the country. Things have gotten a lot more “grown up” around here. It’s about time, too. I’m ready for college to come to an end. I feel like I’ve already moved on, but I’m just here going through the motions so that they’ll hand me my diploma. I’m not exactly ready to part ways with the friends I’ve made and all that, but it’s time for the next chapter.

One month and one week to go!

with money – in fact I’d say I’m pretty good with it. They’re there because I think I could be much better about it.

In the next few months I’m going to go from tuition-paying student to college grad traveling Europe on a budget to full time employee who now gets to pay off student loans in addition to rent, car insurance, food, taxes, cable, electric, internet, health insurance, 401K and all of that fun stuff. Sure, I’ll have income rather than outgo for the first time ever, but that doesn’t mean that I’m going to be sitting pretty just yet.

With this whole new set of bills and lifestyle on the horizon, I’ve recently realized that I need to get my financial act together. I’ve been reading “be better about your money” type blogs for good while now, but since most of them are geared toward people in the real world, I haven’t really been practicing what I read. That is until I read The Money Diaries on I will teach you to be rich. These people are pretty much my age and they have -terrible- spending habits. I don’t want to be like that. I know I have a few leaks in my budget and seeing how just $5 here and $6 there can really add up or how an extra $5 can make my Europe budget all the better, I’ve decided to try to do my own little money diaries. This week I’ve just tried to cut back – not eating out as much and staying off of ebay – but if I find that I can’t stick to it for more than 2 weeks I’m going to do a legitimate diary, tracking each and every purchase and finding where my problems are. I already have mint set up, but I think seeing your transactions in a giant list versus in the context of a given day or week has a very different effect on how you interpret them.

The best part about it so far is that I’ve been cooking dinner more so that I don’t let food go bad as often. It’s teaching me to be a better cook because I’m using what’s around rather than going to out buy meal-specific things from a recipe all the time. Last night’s chicken was quite tasty and it’ll be for leftovers tonight too!

I’ve also begun to love half.com for my reading habits. I used to go to barnes and noble or Amazon.com all the time and just order a bunch of books because I had the reading bug. Then I realized that based on the quality of books that I’ve been selling on half.com, it’s probably true that other people are selling books that are in great shape too and it would be stupid of me to pay $20 for a brand new book that I could probably get on half.com for $15 or even cheaper AND…yes AND… it’s giving money to someone like me – someone who’s trying to offload the excesses to make a few bucks rather than paying into the Amazon piggybank. I love Amazon, but I’m going to love sleeping in a bed instead of a train station every night this summer a whole lot more.

That’s not to say that I’m never going to splurge on anything fun ever again. That wouldn’t be a very good way to live, but especially for these next 2 months, the more I can save now means the more I can enjoy when it really counts. It’s all about mind over matter. At least that’s what I keep telling myself…

I’ve been trying to put up a brave face these last few weeks, but truth is, despite all of my counting down and desperate squinting to find the light at the end of the tunnel, as that light grows brighter, I’m getting more and more freaked out about leaving here!

It’s not that I’m scared of going into the “real world” or anything like that. It’s more that I’m scared that I won’t have accomplished everything that I wanted to do in college or that I’ll have found something I really enjoyed or would be interested in when it’s too late. All of a sudden four years just doesn’t seem like long enough. I still have so much to learn and there are still so many things that I want to try, so many classes I want to take, so many people I’m not ready to leave.

On the one hand, I can’t wait to get back out to the West Coast – to reunite with some friends who are already out there, to get myself an apartment, and get this next chapter of my life started already. But, on the other hand, I don’t know that I’m completely ready to let go what very little is left of my “childhood.” Or, I guess it’s probably “pre-real-adult-hood.”

Every once in a while it just sort of smacks me in the face – I’m almost done with college. It feels like yesterday that I was sitting in my high school graduation rehearsal. These four years have gone by in a snap. It’s like I took a quick nap sometime during freshman year and when I woke up here I am smack dab in the middle of my last semester of college. Where the heck did the time go?

I think that most people my age count life in years that go from September – August instead of January – December, and “chapters” are counted in four-year blocks. I can’t think of a time where things weren’t divided into four-year (or even fewer) segments. High school, college, even the way my grammar school years ended up being divided – everything had a definite beginning and ending. I think the thing that’s freaking me out the most about what happens 56 days from now. It’s that there is no clear end. There’s no clear finish line. There’s nothing to countdown to. It’s just the rest of my life. It’s really no small order.

It has me thinking of what I actually

want to do with my life. What do I want to be? What do I want to do? Where do I want to go? I’m not a huge fan of jumping out into the abyss with no idea of what’s ahead. I’m a planner. I like to at least have some sort of “big picture” goal in mind, even if it’s not all that defined. I’d rather go in to a situation with a purpose, with a finish line. I feel like I don’t have one right now and that’s really throwing me for a loop.

So now all of a sudden the “only 55 days” has turned into “just 55 days.” Hopefully these 55 days will give me some time to get my act together, to figure some things out and to either develop some sort of plan or come to terms with the unknown. Let’s hope that 1 prelim, 2 finals, and 4 projects don’t get in the way.

So I decided to stay here. Unless I was going somewhere fun (read: SXSW or SF, or really anywhere besides the tri-state area), it wasn’t worth making the drive home. I could be a lazy bum here.

My mom came to visit last weekend instead. We did the Ithaca thing – gorges, food, etc. and then when she left I began to take advantage of the Netflix Instant View / XBox setup on my 48″ TV. I’ve slept, cooked, taken some photos, watched movies, TV, documentaries, and generally lazed about. It’s been wonderful. I haven’t even been on my computer! -gasp-! I like to think that I’ve learned a lot over break via the documentaries and things I’ve watched. Right now I’m watching a documentary on Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Not to worry, though. I have gone outside. A few times. Margot and I had a girl’s night on Sunday – Chili’s, a movie, popcorn, and all that good stuff, and we also went out with a bunch of people for St. Paddy’s Day. I also went food shopping for the necessaries to make the guacamole that I’ve been craving. It was my first time making it and I have to say it came out pretty spectacularly. I might make some more later.

All in all I’d say this has been a pretty perfect break. Sure, I didn’t go to some tropical locale or London or Europe like a lot of other people, but I think being a complete bum is exactly what I needed. Time to regroup and recharge for this final push. My last bit of college. 65 more days. Holy heck.

32/365 – cayuga lake

I think this is how I’m going to remember Ithaca. Ok, well probably not, but it is a cool scene. In the four winters I’ve spent here, I’ve never seen people actually walking on Cayuga Lake. Perhaps it’s just because I don’t find myself down by Stewart Park all that often, but wow. Insane. I wish I had some sort of way to measure how far out the ice actually went, but from the shore, I could barely see the people who were all the way at the edge. There were people running, sledding, skiing, dogs, babies, the works! I was wayyyy too scared to go out there by myself, plus with my camera equipment and no “buddy” to make sure I didn’t fall into the ice, I didn’t think it was the wisest idea. I do kind of regret not going back with a friend to walk out there, but hey, it was 50-something degrees out. Better safe than sorry.

41/365 – lost dog

This shot is here for one reason: I like it. It doesn’t have a particularly strong memory attached to it (though the dinner with Matt and Ann was fun and very tasty), but I really love the lighting.

55/365 – brunch

This shot isn’t all that wonderful, but the omelette was! Natalie came to visit for a few days – our second in-person meeting in about 8 years! We caught up on our lives and pretty much just hung out, cooked, watched TV, movies, walked around campus, etc. Apparently the story of how we met/how we know each other was quite perplexing to the border patrol guy Natalie had to talk to on her way here. I guess I can’t fault him for not grasping how two 13-year olds from different countries met online through a mutual online friend, started an online magazine, and only met in person for the first time 4 years later, when they were in college. It is a rather bizarre story.

59/365 – new and old

I’m not going to beat a dead horse with this one, but this shot was taken at the Sun’s post-elections bar tab at The Nines. It was an incredible night and the perfect way to end an incredible year. I’m pretty sure that these were Peach Kamikaze’s.

That’s it for February! Pretty simple. February was more of a month about the “little things” with a few big things thrown in there. Here’s the rest of the month:

But that’s in the past now. This last week was great. It look a bit of getting used to and after my exam on Tuesday I’d say that I fell into a pattern that I’m going to enjoy for the rest of the semester. (holy heck, only 77 days!) In between classes I tend to spend a lot of my time in Libe Cafe doing work or just chatting with the endless stream of Sunnies who wander in and out. It’s great – we don’t even talk to each other most of the time, we just share a table and get our individual work done. It’s like being alone without being alone. Not to mention, having people busily working all around me keeps me focused. Though my large-iced-chai habit has seen its revival in this last week, the fact that I’m not just holing myself up in my room after classes is a good thing, good enough to make the daily and occasionally twice-daily large-iced-chai OK.

In this last week I’ve also picked up a second independent study (no thanks to the College of Arts & Sciences…argh), but that’s OK too, because it’s something I’ve had brewing in my head as a pet project for a while and will now give me some reason to actually do some work on it. It’s nothing spectacular, but it’s something I find interesting and I always do better when I actually enjoy what I’m doing.

I’ve also started to read “leisure” books again. Some are in the paper form and others are via the Stanza iPhone app, but it’s nice to get some new/different information flowing into my brain. I feel like I’ve kind of let it stagnate these last few months. I haven’t actually finished them yet, which is going to be the true test, but I’m optimistic. Especially with good weather and practically zero responsibility? I definitely see a few days of lounging around the Plantations with a book or two in my future.

On Friday I hosted my second pot luck of the year and I think this one was even better! I was beginning to feel a bit on the germy side Thursday afternoon, but decided to push through in hopes that it would just go away. Unfortunately it didn’t and I didn’t have much of an appetite for the pot luck, but everyone loved the food that people brought! The things that I did nibble on were quite tasty! It was also fun to get a bunch of my different groups of friends together in one room. They all hit it off really well which is always a good thing! I’m hoping to have one last pot luck before graduation. Perhaps sometime in April.

I was completely out of commission yesterday. I made myself get up and go out to shoot a few things for a DAZE feature (I’m keeping my Sun commitments to a minimum these days), but after that I was down for the count. I don’t really remember much except for dozing in and out of sleep. I know I had a fever – the thermometer and my ridiculously bizarre dreams are proof of that. I pretty much slept the day away. It’s mostly gone today, but again I made myself get up and go out to be a productive human being (I had a lot of “work” to do at Borders that involved reading about 2 dozen magazines).

That’s about it. I’m settling quite nicely into this post-Sun lifestyle and the days seem to be absolutely flying by. I hope the rest of this semester is as nice as this past week, save for the bad weather and the gross cold. Here’s to the final chapter of college!

I spent literally all day Saturday with Sunnies. We had elections from 10:30AM until about 5:30PM, then I went out to dinner with some of the photo staff, then went home to change and back out to meet everyone at the traditional bar tab. We hung out all night – until about 1-1:30AM. I couldn’t have asked for a better way to end the term. I think it could easily be one of the best nights of my college career.

I woke up late today – sometime around 11 if I recall correctly. I immediately opened up my laptop and pulled up my email. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then it hit me. I only have MY OWN EMAIL to check. That’s it. Just one account. Luckily I had some facebook notifications waiting for me from the night before and that occupied my time for a bit, but the “out of sorts” feeling I’ve had these past few days pretty much turned into a mini state of depression. I IMed some of the editors who were online because I needed to do something and one of them reminded me to post the photos from the night before. I’d had the camera sitting across the room because I kind of felt that if I waited to upload them, I would be able to extend the night – pretend that it never actually ended.

So I grabbed my camera (it was the point and shoot) and downloaded the photos. I was IMing with Emily at the same time and mentioned to her that in each and every one of these shots, every single person – from the main subject to those who are just in the background doing their own thing – has the biggest smiles on their face and look like they’re having the night of their lives. It brought a smile to my face – a desperately needed smile considering the reality that was beginning to set in.

Every Sunday that we’ve been at school for the past year and then some, I’ve had to go to The Sun at 5PM for the weekly edit meeting. I’ve called Sundays my Sun-Days because I literally do nothing but Sun Stuff on Sundays. This Sunday was the first in a very long time where I had literally no responsibilities

. I had NO IDEA what to do with myself.

Today pretty much felt like the longest day ever. I really couldn’t tell you what I spent my day doing because I don’t remember at all. Oh wait… I watched a movie. That’s right. I popped in Kate & Leopold (one of my Netflix movies), but kept dozing off. I’m pretty sure I saw the whole thing though. After that I think I just stared at my inbox for a while hitting the refresh button. I also checked my phone every five seconds. Do you know how weird it is not to get any emails or text messages for over an hour, or MORE?! I only got about FIVE emails today. TOTAL. And the only reason I had text messages was because I sent some out and one because a friend felt bad for my sorry state and sent a pity text.

After talking with Sarah (the now-former Managing Editor) and admitting that I felt like there was a giant hole in my life, she said she’d been feeling the same way all day. It seems that the post-elections Identity Crisis is something that happens every year but is something no one warns you about. A little heads-up would have been nice. Because this feeling? It’s not fun. I’ve been moping around all day mourning the loss of something that has consumed my life and has really defined my life for the last year as photo editor and another year before that as a staffer/senior photog. I’ve obviously known this entire time that some day it would come it an end. I even knew when and how

it would come to an end, but I don’t think there is anything that could have prepared me for the huge sense of emptiness that comes along with it.

While I don’t particularly miss the whole checking-email-and-staying-up-til-ungodly-hours part of it just yet, I already miss the comfort of knowing that I will see the other editors all the time. I mentioned in my last post that we’d become a family over the course of this last year. I really don’t think I could find words to describe just how much of an impact these people have had on my life and how big of a role they played just by being there. Yeah yeah, so I said that I take comfort in the fact that I know we’ll see each other again throughout life, but there’s something different about a meeting here or there. There’s nothing like the relationship you have with people when you see them on a daily basis. When you spend hours and hours together and are working together toward a common goal for over a year. There’s really nothing that can make up for that.

So Sarah and I decided earlier today that we needed a reason to get up, get dressed, and leave our apartments. We decided to go to Ruloff’s trivia night but ended up going to CTB instead. I think that’s one of the best parts about going through this whole process as a team – we always know there’s someone else who’s feeling the exact same way you do. There’s comfort in numbers and it’s even better when you know you’re not alone in feeling like a pathetic, directionless loser who can’t even keep herself awake through an episode of How I Met Your Mother because you’re just that sad.

Back in my RYLA days we had a term called “RY-withdrawal” and it was used to describe the feeling of emptiness and loneliness that comes after a week at RYLA – when you get home and look around you and realize that your life is about to return to what most people would consider “normal,” but you want nothing more than for it to stay exactly as it has been. I remember getting RY-withdrawal, but it was nothing compared to the withdrawal you get after spending years doing something.

Sarah mentioned that a former EIC had told her earlier in the day that the SunSickness lasts for about 24 hours and then life begins to put itself back together. If that’s true then I should be back to normal in the morning, but considering that Monday was also a Sun-Day for me, I think it might take slightly longer. I think (I hope?) that by this time tomorrow night I’ll be back to my usual chipper self. This all may seem quite melodramatic and exaggeratory, and maybe it is. I might look back on this post in a week, a month, a year, and thing “wow, Jenn, what the hell was your issue? It’s not like it was the end of the world,” but right now it really does feel like the rug was just yanked out from beneath me. It’s the end of life as I’ve known it for almost 3/4 of my time in college. That’s a long time and to go from that to absolutely nothing is going to take a lot of adjusting.

Luckily tomorrow is a class day and I have a lot of work to do so hopefully I’ll be able to put this all out of my mind and get myself to move on. I don’t want to waste my last few months here being sad over what was. It’s just going to take some time.

It’s 5AM and I just got home from The Sun. Tonight was the last night of publication for the 126th Editorial Board where I’ve served as Photo Editor for the last 363 days. This Saturday afternoon I will be handing off the Photo Department to Matt.

It was an insane and intense evening. I walked down to the office around 8PM and arrived to an office full of outgoing editors, incoming editors, staffers, music, noise and beer. Though I suppose the only thing that was really different was the beer…

Camera in hand, ready to document the evening, I popped open a bottle of Dos Equis and joined in the fun. It was an interesting dynamic – there were the outgoing editors, myself included, who were absolutely giddy over the fact that we were a mere 40 or so hours from officially handing off our departments and only 6 hours away (in theory at least) from sending our last ever edition of The Cornell Daily Sun to the printer. Then there were the editorial compets, those who are still technically “in training” and will be facing the torture of elections on Saturday. They weren’t nearly as giddy. They were actually kind of scared – heads down, typing away frantically because to them, it’s only the beginning. There’s still a whole year ahead of them and they know they’re only just embarking on the journey of sleepless nights and a deadline-centric existence.

Anyway – we set about the business of actually putting out the paper. We did the usual things, but it was with all of the outgoing editors instead of the compets who have been pretty much running the show for the last six weeks. There was also the matter of our goodbye spread – the page of the paper that we take over as an homage to the outgoing editorial board. We’d been throwing around ideas for it for about a week now but hadn’t settled on anything until someone brought up the idea of using obamaicon.me and making Shepherd Fairey HOPE posters for each of our editors. PERFECT! But then I read the Terms and Conditions and we couldn’t use them in the paper. Not so perfect. I sat down at one of the computers and fired up Photoshop to try to recreate the poster in as few clicks as possible. I ended up settling on using the Cutout filter, some toning, and some pattern-fills to get the “look”. Luckily the page was running in black and white. Normally I would see that as a detriment, but not having color meant that I didn’t have to color-adjust until I could get each and every photo to use just the 4 colors used in the Fairey posters. I could just greyscale them and pray that no one counted the colors.

Then we hit the next hitch – our usual mug shots were way too boring for this page. Who wants to look at an entire page of people just staring straight ahead? Not me, that’s for sure. So now, in addition to having to make 35 or so individual posters, I needed to take and edit about 25 new mug shots. Joyyy. Keep in mind that it’s at least 11PM by this point and the paper is usually due to the printer by 1:30AM. Luckily by this point most of the board had had a good amount of beer and that saved me from having to take 15 shots of each person because they wanted it to be just perfect. Good stuff.

Now we’re around midnight and I’m just loading up the new mug shots. I finished about…3 and it was time for the midnight edit meeting. It’s a Daily Sun tradition and it could not wait until after I finished the other 30 posters. Upstairs we went, alcohol in hand and sleepiness setting in.

We arranged the chairs in a circle and got comfy. Then the bottle of really cheap, disgusting, reminiscent of rubbing alcohol that has been sitting in your medicine cabinet Light Rum came out. It’s also tradition to take a shot out of it once you’ve said your piece. The bottle was passed around the circle as the editors, one-by-one, shared their feelings about The Sun and each other (meanwhile one of the editors was passed out from a bit too much to drink). It was really sad, actually and I found myself on the verge of tears on more than one occasion. The end of my term at The Sun is one of the major “ends” that I will be facing in these next 86 days and let’s face it, I’m the sentimental type.

The midnight edit meeting made me realize, once again, how much of a family we’ve become over this last year. We went from being almost complete strangers to very close friends and will gravitate toward each other even when we’re not at the office. We hang out in Libe Cafe a few times a week and if there’s a completely unrelated event that some of us just happen to be attending, we tend to hang out with each other there, too. We stop to talk to each other in the middle of the road as we’re walking to or from campus. We spend more time with each other than we spend with nearly anyone else in our lives. It’s kind of nice, actually.

So the bottle continued to be passed around with some bathroom breaks in between and a few more breaks to make sure that the passed out editor was still conscious. We reminisced about the fun times we had and the adventures we went on as a group over the course of the year. It’s been truly a great year. It’s nearly 2AM at this point and we’ve pretty much halted production of the paper so that we could get together to reminisce. We knew that we had to get back to work, but leaving our edit room was like acknowledging that it’s almost over. I know I wasn’t ready.

But it had to be done. As soon as the EIC finished his shot, I ran downstairs and sat down in front of the computer to crank out the rest of the HOPE photos. I had the design editors pull old mugs for me to try to streamline the process and I magnetic lassoed, feathered, cropped, scaled, typed, and keyboard shortcutted faster than I’ve ever done before, and ask anyone, I’m a master of keyboard shortcuts.

Enter 3AM and I’d just about finished up. Carol, the outgoing Design Editor, placed the last of the mugshots onto the page as everyone looked on. The page was printed and I had the honor of signing it out. The one and only time. Off to the printer it went. Now all that was left was for Sammy, the Associate Editor compet, to finish the full mast. We all stood around waiting with our coats on and half asleep (though some did actually fall asleep) until he finished and then basically sprinted out of the office and started walking up to the State Street Diner. It’s now 3:45AM.

Another Sun tradition, the State Street Diner has been around since 1936. It’s a few blocks from the office and was frequented by the likes of Kurt Vonnegut and other former Sun editors during the days when the paper was finished at midnight and they all went out to eat after. These days we tend to stick to Shortstop Deli, home of the Poor Man’s Pizza (a.k.a. the PMP). Absolutely starving, we took up the entire back of the diner and inundated the kitchen with orders of bacon, eggs, pancakes, toast, and pretty much every other breakfast food imaginable. I love diners and this meal was just what we needed after a long and somewhat drunken and somewhat emotionally draining evening. There’s really nothing like grease and carbs to make your sorrows, sleepiness and intense hunger disappear. We stacked ourselves six to a table (though we probably could have used 5-6 tables, we decided to go for 3 and we just sat around and talked. I don’t remember what we talked about at all. Time just kind of slipped away as we relished our last moments together as a board and our stacks of pancakes, toast, eggs, and goodness.

I remember thinking at one point that it was funny how we ended up arranging ourselves into tables – it had nothing to do with who our closest friends were on the board or who we hung out with the most, it was just a matter of the order we walked into the diner. We honestly could have arranged ourselves in any combination of six people per table and would have had a great time. We get along that well and that just astonishes me. After an entire year of working together under such intense pressure, we actually came out of it as really close friends instead of wanting to kill each other. That, right there, is a testament to the type of people I had the opportunity to work with.

It’s now just about 5AM and we filed out of the State Street Diner and walk back to the office. Luckily, by this point, everyone had sobered up and we piled into the four cars we had at the office. It was time to go home. It wasn’t sad, it wasn’t happy, it just was. I think by this point we all just wanted to get our heads onto our pillows and not wake up until well after noon. We knew we were going to see each other again. After all, there was still the matter of elections on Saturday.

We just sort of sat in silence as we drove up the hills of Ithaca in the wee hours of the morning. It was an absolutely gorgeous night out – low 40s and unseasonably warm. Just perfect, really. Into the doors of Eddygate we went (a good number of us live in this building) and we parted ways at the elevator. “See ya Saturday.”

As I looked through today’s paper, my last as the Photo Editor, I couldn’t help but think back on how far we’ve come in this last year and the amazing friendships I was able to develop with some of the smartest, most talented people I know (and arguably some of the smartest people around). It’s kind of poetic, though, that despite the changes and passing of time, it all ended in the same way that it began.

And as the twitters and facebook updates streamed in this afternoon, I chuckled at our shared haggardness – we’d all woken up sometime around the 2PM hour and some of us ended up finding each other around campus. So much for “See ya Saturday.” It’s these random meetings that keep me from becoming too sad about this particular ending. I know we’ll see each other again and again as we go through life. Sunnies always find each other. It’s just the way the world works.

I’ve had my avatar pretty much since I started college. I took it during my freshman year and it’s been my default avatar on nearly every place I go on the internet ever since. It’s my identity here. Weird, I know, but since I really only started to take the internet seriously once I got to college (it was just an insomnia-inducing hobby before that), it’s really the only one I’ve ever used.

I know that when other people change their avatars it takes me a while to get used to them. I think avatars are a huge part of internet-based interaction and over the years I’ve come to associate certain avatars with certain people. It’s their stand-in for when I can’t see them in person to talk to them. But, this isn’t anything new…

I’ve known for a while now that I needed a new avatar. I don’t look like my avatar anymore and it’s 3 years old. I gave a new one a shot on Twitter, but it was taken with my iPhone and wasn’t really what I wanted. After taking some shots of my haircut today as required by my mom whenever I get it cut away from home, I realized that I should probably just try to take a new avatar photo while I was at it. 80 shots later, I had a decent range to pick from. But I couldn’t make a decision. I picked my top six and sent them to some trusted friends:

I got some differing opinions, but most were for the top, right. After Alex pointed out what had been bothering me about the bottom left (the smile doesn’t look as real), I was set on the top right. After some minor tweaks (it was looking kind of yellow), I was ready to upload. At least in terms of the photo. I wasn’t emotionally ready to click the “Upload” button just yet. Especially not on Flickr. I seriously felt like I was cheating on myself! Like I was officially acknowledging that I’m growing up. I felt like I was about to turn my back on the avatar that had treated me so well.

Imagine that! Feeling sorry and somewhat apprehensive about changing an image! That’s what made me blog this. Because it just blew my mind that I had become so attached to this “identity” online and that I was nervous about replacing some PIXELS! Absurd. But I did it. It had to be done. And I’m happy about this new one. I think it’s accurate and shows that I’m no longer 18 years old. As Natalie pointed out oh so painfully today, “well. we’re old. / jenn, you’re in your MID TWENTIES… / after this bday i mean.” I perish the thought.

So that’s the story of my new avatar. Somewhat boring, somewhat pathetic, but quite telling of how I’ve managed to get myself so embedded in this series of tubes that something as simple as changing the tiny image that appears next to my username caused such a ruckus.

Here’s to my old avatar. It lived a long, fulfilled life.
Goodbye, old friend.

Hello new beginning. :)

I slept in today. A lot. I’m talking 12 hours of sleep. Do you know what that feels like? It feels like heaven. I woke up AFTER NOON. That never happens. Even though I set my alarm for 10:08 (my birthday, I’m weird like that), I shut it up and went back to sleep. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to just wake up when I wasn’t tired anymore. That time, apparently, is 1:30PM. I think the last time I slept that late was because I was confused by the time zones. It was wonderful.

Anyway, so I woke up and dilly dallied around my room for a bit – I poked around Flickr, caught on my feeds, the usual. The perfect Sunday morning, I think. If I had been thinking I would have made some chai to go with my banana bread, but alas, you live and you learn…

I headed down to The Sun at 4:30PM for the weekly 5PM edit meeting. I wasn’t particularly excited to go down because, to be honest, I’m getting kind of tired of the routine of it all and we’re at that awkward point between editorial boards where I’m pretty much just a lame duck so I feel kind of useless.

The good thing about this interim, though, is that I can focus on some of the cool projects that I’ve wanted to do all year but was too busy managing the day-to-day issues to really focus on many big picture things. There are a lot of things I’ve had on my list – things like figuring out a better system for storing our photos because right now it’s not very searchable. It’s a bit of a mess. The one project that I’ve been dying to do, though, is sifting through and digitizing the many, many thousands of negatives we have filed away around the office. I’d been thinking about it for a while now, but I’d never really had the time or the energy to take some sort of action.

I finally did today. I dusted off the old negative scanner, dug out the old software, and poked around the web looking for updates and drivers so that I could getting working on our computers. After a bit of trial and error, I finally fed in my first strip of negatives. It was just a crappy one that had been lying on the desk for ages, but I figured if there was something wrong with the scanner and it decided to eat or otherwise ruin the negative, losing this one wouldn’t be a huge deal. By golly, it worked! I was so excited!

In between editing photos for tomorrow’s paper, I poked through the oldest negatives we have – beginning in 1967 – until I found one that would be fun to scan in. I decided to look for a photo from around today’s date in 1969, so it would be a “40 years ago today” photo. I wasn’t able to find one for the 16th, but the 17th actually had some photos from a protest outside of Day Hall. Perfect!

I picked a strip from that series and loaded it into the scanner. About 15 minutes later I had one strip scanned in and saved to my new “Scanned Negatives” folder where the digitized archive photos will soon live. Matt, equally excited to see this project beginning to see the light of day, began to dig through the old prints from the 1990s. The candids were amazing and so full of life! This campus looked like a completely different place. It was sunny. People were happy. There seemed to be a better sense of community but at the same time people were very unafraid of being individuals. Fascinating, if you ask me, but the 1990s will have to wait. I want to get through the 60s and 70s first since those negatives would deteriorate sooner than the 90s.

I’ve mentioned before that I love “artifacts” and I think photos are a very big part of that. I would love to spend days and days in the basements of museums just combing through the photos they have filed away for safe keeping. So much history! Luckily for me, I have my own mini museum to play in at The Sun and apart from Matt and I, no one really ever looks through the negatives. Jackpot!

So anyway, after scanning in that one strip of negatives I realized that I would need to come up with some sort of system before I began to scan large quantities of negatives into the computer. Since we don’t have any sort of record or database of exactly what’s in the negatives archives, it’s really just a lot of manual sifting through each drawer or binder. And there are a lot of them. I’d rather focus on major events and things, but at the same time I think being able to have the more candid “life at Cornell” style photos available to us would be equally valuable. Though, I suppose that could just be my own personal nerdiness. I put the scanning on hold until I could figure out some sort of method because otherwise, it will indeed be madness. Instead, I wrote a blog post about my new project.

I ended up staying at The Sun until about 1:30 in the morning. And this is the part that got me thinking about how much I’ve missed days like today, because as I was walking to the parking lot to load my camera gear into my car and head home for the night, I remembered back to this time last year when I was just beginning my term as Photo Editor and would stay at the paper until 1:30am a few nights a week, not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Because I was caught up in something that made me excited and because I was working on something that I thought would make the department better, make the paper better, or just make things a little easier. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to do things like that because it didn’t take long for me to get so bogged down in firefighting and routine and pretty much abandon progress in favor of survival. It’s a shame, really.

As I walked to my car the first overnight flurries began to fall and I drove home with my window cracked and took in the wonderful silence and calm of Ithaca at 1:30AM in the winter. It’s the days like this that I’m going to miss next year. Hopefully I’ll be able to fulfill the exciting projects part, but making my way home from a long night of doing exactly what makes me happiest because I wanted to do it, not because I had to do it, with many hours of homework ahead but perfectly content in the peace and quiet and serenity of an early morning snow flurry with crisp air and a clear, starry sky where the only signs of life are the lights coming from the windows of those burning the midnight oil in the warmth of their apartments? Only in Ithaca, only at Cornell, and only as a Sunnie.