Category Archives: Grab Bag

Facebook Nostalgia in Your Thirties

March 24, 2015 By in Friendships, Grab Bag Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

I was on Facebook tonight saying happy birthday to a friend when I accidentally clicked the wrong button and was suddenly transported back to 2011.

Time traveling back a few years in Facebook time brought me to London. I was visiting my then-boyfriend and was very excited to see him. I scrolled down and watched myself quote Pablo Neruda a half dozen times, recommend 3 “brilliant” plays I don’t remember seeing, sit backstage jittering before going onstage and performing, invite people to donate to numerous kickstarter campaigns, and link to The Onion as much as I could humanly link. I also posted a few things that I would laugh scoffingly at now such as “Happy. Peaceful. Joyous.” Gag.

And then there were a few things that I would absolutely still post now, including all my travel/work updates/stories such as “In Mexico City trying to work but failing at Spanish language. Thought people here spoke English but was sadly misinformed. Now being laughed at by customers as I read Espanol verbatum from product brochure.”

I was actually about to write a post for this blog when Facebook dredged up these strange throwbacks. The darn site ended up keeping me on guiltily for an extra 30 minutes, as I nostalgically read over post after post dated all the way back to 2010. I hadn’t seen any of them in years, yet, for most, I remembered exactly how I felt when I wrote them.

Though I’m prone to nostalgia anyway, Facebook has a special way of pulling up sentimentality in me, I’ve been on the site since college, and now that I’m thirty, it’s become this time capsule of so much of my young adult life…but in these strange little quippy bows that aren’t exactly how things were at all.

It’s funny to think that a lot of the younger generation isn’t really using Facebook anymore but has switched platforms to other social media… such as Instagram and …god knows what else. Haha, I can’t think of the new forms of social media. Am I really getting old? WhatsApp and Snapchat come to mind, but they’re not really social media… It’s kinda sad/kinda funny how unaware I am of the new wave of Social Media apps. And I’m usually a pretty techie person…

I actually went and looked up “Facebook in your thirties.” I wanted to see if there were articles about Facebook dying off in the younger generation while still being a mainstay of this one. Instead I ended up coming across article after article about how Facebook just introduced a new nostalgia-inducing feature called “On This Day.”  Apparently there will be a new button on Facebook, similar to Timehop, that’ll take you back to what you did on this day last year…and up to 4 years ago. This new feature was introduced March 24, otherwise known as ‘today.’ Pretty ironic, huh?

When I Facebook time traveled back to 2011, I didn’t push the “On This Day” button. I don’t even have the button- it’s apparently rolling out to users in waves and it’s not on my computer yet. I just happened to accidentally click into the past on the exact same day that Facebook rolls out a new nostalgia feature. Sometimes life can be funny like that.

But then again, life always has been sort of funny, hasn’t it?

 

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Hindsight on VH1

March 23, 2015 By in Grab Bag 1 Comment

Have you heard of the TV show Hindsight on VH1? It’s a show about a woman in her late 30’s who, on the eve of her second marriage, is magically transported back to the eve of her first marriage in the 1990’s. She basically has to decide what decisions she would make again, all with the help of her childhood best friend, with whom she reconnects after being estranged  for ten years. The show asks, if you knew how your life would turn out, what would you change? In our thirties, it definitely seems like our decisions have a lot of weight somehow – as if each choice will somehow define the rest of our decades. In truth, many of them probably will (if and who you marry, having kids, etc.), but we’re still allowed to make mistakes.

I watched the pilot today and I was impressed. Not only did the 90’s references boost my spirits, but I love TV shows and movies about 30-something women. Too often when 30-something women are portrayed in the media, we see the same hackneyed characters – the stressed workaholic corporate woman who has no time for a relationship but desperately wants one, the frazzled stay-at-home mom, or the single and unemployed artsy character – just to name a few. I’m happy to see a different type of heroine on this show, and especially thrilled that there’s a show on the air like this – a show that deals with the intricacies of female friendship and how somehow you can regret how those relationships ended even more than romantic relationships.

A few episodes are streaming for free VH1’s website for the show, so I highly recommend checking them out.

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Those Brief Moments of Brevity In Your Thirties

March 21, 2015 By in Grab Bag Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Today my uncle and little cousin came to visit me at work. I’m working an auto show in Fort Lauderdale for a few days, and they live nearby.

My cousin is 16 and thinking about the colleges he’s going to apply to next year. I know that his parents are kind of freaking out about it. The college application process is a scary thing. My uncle and aunt asked me about my memories of applying to college- specifically about writing the dreaded college essay.

Even though I’m now 30 and the college application process was more than 13 years ago, it all came back to me like a dream…sort of screwy and very vivid. My college applications were nuts- I applied to 12 different colleges and visited all of the campuses. I also wrote over 7 different essays, and took dozens of hours to complete them.

But the hardest part for me was always the editing. The essays were so hard for me to shorten- 650 words tops, and I went over every time. Once I had my essays edited down to total brevity, they were almost unrecognizable- little moments in time that never captured everything I wanted to say.

Thank god I got into NYU and the application torture ended.

But as I was walking over a drawbridge in Florida tonight, I thought about how life is like the editing process. You feel like the years go on and on, but really, in the end, you get to keep only a small collection of memories capturing the briefest essence of what came before. And then your small fragments of memory meander and cut off, vivid and dreamlike, and not exactly what you wanted to say at all.

Every moment is special. Every feeling matters. Live in the now and hold it close before it’s edited down to nothing. Because one day what feels like forever will actually fade and cut off. And our beautiful path will come to an end.

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Expert Travel Lessons Learned The Hard Way

March 19, 2015 By in Grab Bag Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

In a recent post I wrote, Are You More Confident Now That You’re Older?, I touched on how a lot of times confidence comes from being okay with failing and getting rejected again and again.
Now that I’m 30, I’ve already accumulated piles and piles of messy, crazy mistakes I’ve made and lessons learned the hard way.

Before this blog, I used to have a travel blog called YouSomewhereElse (hence my wordpress handle LauraSomewhereElse). I don’t consider myself the absolute best expert on travel, per se, but I do travel more than 2/3 of the year for work, so I consider myself at least somewhat of an expert. And when you travel as much as I do, you rack up a whole lot of experience under your belt. Some of it is good, and some of it…not so much.

Right now I’m in the middle of a 5 city trip without hitting home between cities. I’m in city 4 out of 5. I’ve probably only spent about 10 days total at home in New York since the beginning of January. I’ve been traveling like this- at an ever increasing rate- for over 8 years, and have been on the road so much that I should be great at it, right? Well, sometimes even if you’re “great” at something, it just means that you do it so much that you’re bound to do a bunch of things wrong at least some of the time.

Just to prove that being a confident expert takes lots of failure, and to encourage you to not be afraid of the really bad experiences, here are just a few of the many mistakes I’ve made on the path to becoming a travel expert..

  1. I’ve gone to the wrong airport..twice. One time I completely missed the flight and they wouldn’t rebook it. I lost $550 buying a new last minute flight, and another $100 taking a cab from one airport to the other..only to miss that flight anyway.
  2. I’ve booked a flight on the right day,..but in the wrong month..and the $400 flight cost was non-refundable.
    3. I bought a cheap suitcase and had the entire handle come off on a hill in the middle of England.
    4. I bought a different cheap suitcase and had the handle come off in the middle of a staircase in Washington DC.
    5. I’ve exploded a bottle a seltzer all over my laptop and BROKE THE KEYS FOREVER in the middle of Philadelphia a month ago.
    6. I’ve been stuck in Charlotte airport for 3 days when the airport closed because of bad weather…and I had to sleep on a cardboard box because I was on the phone when they gave out cots.
    7. I’ve booked numerous bus tickets that ended up being at the wrong time..and they were nonrefundable.
    8. I let my phone fall off my lap while sleeping on a plane and it was stolen while I slept.
    9. I opened the back of a car where my suitcase was stored, only to find my suitcase gone! I thought it had been stolen and completely panicked, only to later realize that I was in the wrong car.
    10. I’ve accidentally tried to bring my permanent plastic Contigo water bottles filled with water through security…and have had them confiscated at least half a dozen times because I was in too much of a hurry to go back and dump them.

11. I recently dropped all my suitcases off at the wrong hotel. This was two days ago.

12. Today I went running in Fort Lauderdale, got completely lost, and had my phone’s GPS stop working on me. I had to continuously ask construction workers and random passerby directions for an extra half hour until my phone suddenly started working again. If it hadn’t finally worked, who knows when I would’ve made it back home.

So don’t worry about going out and failing. Failure probably means that you’re just putting yourself out there more…or at least I’d like to think so. Go ahead and make tons of crazy mistakes..and you’ll perhaps become a confident expert along the way 🙂

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Are You Still Superstitious in Your Thirties?

March 17, 2015 By in Grab Bag Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

In honor of St Patricks day, I’m going to quickly touch on the four leaf clover.

I remember when I was a kid in Central Park one day, I was in some field and I kept finding all these four leaf clovers, one ofter another. I felt like the luckiest kid in the world. And maybe I was. Or maybe I was just in some kind of genetically modified, messed up patch of New York land. Who knows? But at that moment, I knew I was very, very lucky.

Since then, I’ve gone through phases where I’ve been mildly superstitious. I needed to keep my good luck at maximum and my bad luck at bay, so I followed certain patterns and procedures. I knocked on wood- or lacking sufficient wood, I’d knock on my head (which was of course a fine substitute). And I went around ladders instead of under them. Also, when salt spilled on a table, I threw it over my left shoulder… although this was partially because I thought it was fun to throw salt around.

Then a friend of mine said to me one day, while opening up her umbrella indoors, “I don’t believe in superstitions. I think they’re a way to control people.”

That statement changed my life. I suddenly saw her point. At once superstitions felt extremely controlling and fear-inducing. They seemed to fall in the same vein as the depressing nightly news. Superstitions said to me, “lots of bad things are going on in the world that are beyond your control and you should fear them.” These kinds of superstitions make people feel weak.

Dear god, a black cat just  crossed my path- this day’s gonna suck! Oh no, someone said “Macbeth” in my theater- they’ve just ruined my show!

Neither of those thoughts are very useful.

On the other hand, some superstitions actually seem to have started out as a way to be useful: the ladder superstition possibly began as a way to keep people out of potentially dangerous situations- perhaps a paint bucket on top of a ladder could fall onto your head below. Breaking a mirror will leave lots of sharp glass everywhere, so lets scare people into being very careful around mirrors… Umbrellas opened indoors will knock things down, so we’ll say it’s unlucky to open one. Salt spilled on the table needs to be thrown onto the floor and then the table will be nice and clean again…or something like that.

Now that I’m thirty, I’m way less superstitious. I’m actually anti-superstitious to the point of occasionally aggravating people. I won’t use the “scottish play’ pseudonym in theaters. I sometimes open my umbrellas before I leave restaurants. I get excited on Friday the 13th- it’s typically a great day for me (although maybe that’s a superstition too- albeit a reverse one).

Are you superstitious now that you’re in your thirties? Maybe more than you used to be? Or perhaps less so? And most importantly- have you found your pot of gold at the end of the rainbow yet? You know it’s waiting for you.

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“Things Women Should Stop Wearing After Age 30” (Or, Gag Me)

March 16, 2015 By in Grab Bag 4 Comments

This ridiculous click-bait listicle showed up in my Facebook feed last week: 24 Things Women Should Stop Wearing After Age 30, and all I can say is: YUCK.  Included among these 24 items of clothing are: short dresses, crop tops, graphic tees and old sneakers. Oy. It’s so dumb that I feel silly even writing about it, but any articles about what women over 30 should or should not do is ripe for commentary on this blog.

The items of clothing included on the list that bother me the most are short dresses and crop tops. That’s because there’s this nasty underlying implication that women over a certain age shouldn’t show off their bodies, that we’re no longer as attractive. Well, screw that. Personally, I think I look better now than I did my 20’s. I don’t have all that beer/weekend heavy drinking weight, I know what clothing works better for me, and of course, I’ve got that thirty-something confidence going on.

One item touched me personally: old sneakers. I adore my old, ratty Converse. I’ve always had a sneaker of choice. My life post-college can be easily traced through my shoe choices: Puma Californias, Saucony, Adidas, Keds, a brief foray with Simple sneakers (loved these), and now my beloved and dirt caked Converse.

So whip out your crop tops, leopard print shirts, and graphic tees, because when it comes to clothing, age ain’t nothing but a number.

Are You More Confident Now That You’re Older?

March 14, 2015 By in Grab Bag, Health and Wellness Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

There was one time I was acting in a play and said to the director, “my character is so confident. How can I play a character who’s more confident than I’ve ever been?”

I can’t remember the director’s response, but it was something like “you’re confident. It’ll be fine.” I remember wondering whether I was fooling people into thinking I was more confident than I felt. I think I ended up repeating affirmations over and over to myself in order to get the character feeling right: “I’m confident. I’m beautiful. I’m frigging great.” Stuff like that. And I tried to imitate confident people I knew. It worked well enough at the time, I guess.

Is confidence a fake it till you make it thing? Does it help to take on a projected mindset of confidence?

I sort of hate the idea of ‘fake it till you make it.’ I like to think of myself as a pretty down to earth person, so I find it hard to attempt faking a version of myself. Whenever I try, it works for awhile, but sometimes I end up back where I started. Of course, now that I’m 30, I don’t always have to try and fake confidence. There are definite areas where I’m naturally confident from experience alone- usually in my job and friendships and certain subjects such as travel….areas where I’ve tried different things and failed and succeeded and failed again.

I recently read a brilliant article by one of my favorite writers, Mark Manson, called The Confidence Conundrum. In it, Mark says something I’ve always wondered about confidence- that the lack of it seems to just lead to a downward spiral of less confidence.

“On the surface, confidence appears to be an area where the rich get richer and the poor stay the fucking losers they are. After all, if you’ve never experienced much social acceptance, and you lack confidence around new people, then that lack of confidence will make people think you’re clingy and weird and not accept you. Same deal goes for relationships. No confidence in intimacy will lead to bad break ups and awkward phone calls … This is the confidence conundrum, where in order to be happy or loved or successful, first you need to be confident; but then to be confident, first you need to be happy or loved or successful.”

He comes to the conclusion that the answer doesn’t actually lie in faking it and saying “i’m fucking great. I’m fucking amazing at this,” but in “becoming comfortable with what you potentially lack.” In other words, confidence is about failing and failing again…and becoming comfortable with not achieving. In other words, confidence isn’t about what we achieve (which seems to bring about more of a temporary external confidence anyway), but about becoming comfortable with dreaded things like failure, rejection, and getting hurt.

Scary stuff! But imagine if instead of worrying about achieving all the time, and wanting to have a constant peaceful mindset, we instead became comfortable with discomfort. If we could get comfortable putting ourselves out there and failing, then we could become confident no matter what. We’d have nothing to prove to ourselves or others.

Perhaps it’s a numbers game. When you put yourself out there again and again and get rejected or fail and get hurt over and over, think ‘this is normal. And it’s fine. It’s actually great. Because this is part of life and it means that I’m truly putting myself out there and living.”

It’s scary, but if it’s actually the true key to building confidence, would you do it more?

And We’re Almost Done with the First 1/4 of 2015…

March 9, 2015 By in Grab Bag 2 Comments

It’s March 9th and we’re rounding the corner on finishing the first fourth of 2015. Can you believe that? As trite as it is to say, but I’m going to say it anyway, time truly does fly. It’s so easy to get off-track on your big goals during the day-to-day of living life. I was thinking a lot about this after I received a text from a friend this morning asking about my birthday weekend. She said she hoped that my weekend had given me a chance to reflect on my year and my future. I loved this, because it’s so important to be reminded to reflect and make sure you’re headed in the direction you want to go.

So I ask you today – have you stuck to your 2015 resolutions? Did you get closer to your goals in January, February and the start of March?

Personally, I’ve definitely done some great writing, creating work I’m proud of (big goal #1). But in terms of health and wellness, I haven’t been eating all too well or exercising much lately. Can I blame this on graduate school? Perhaps. I did make a somewhat small-ish New Years’ resolution that I’ve kept so far – not being hungover at all in 2015. And so far, so good. It might seem small to some folks, but I have social anxiety sometimes, and I end up drinking too much at parties or events where I’m around strangers. Also, for me, 3 drinks or more usually results in being hungover. An extra glass of wine can be the tipping point to losing my Sunday to low energy.

So as your first 1/4 of 2015 rounds down, ask yourself if you’re directing your time and energy in the way you set out to in those inspired early days of 2015.

Because, where do you want to be when….

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rolls around?

Advice for your 30s from Judi Dench

March 6, 2015 By in Grab Bag Tags: Leave a comment

Who doesn’t love the powerhouse actress Dame Judi Dench? She’s talented, elegant, classy and makes getting older seem like a gift (Can you believe she’s nearly 80? She has such a youthful spirit!). The other day I saw this article, Judi Dench’s advice to her 30-year-old self on Stylist.co.uk and as I suspected, her kick-ass insights into living your best life weren’t cliche or broad like “follow your bliss!”.

One of her best pieces of advice was “Use fear to your advantage.” I love this, because one of life’s greatest motivators is fear – fear of failing, fear of not finding stable job, fear of not finding love or connection, etc. While you can try to fight against that fear, why not embrace it? Use the fear to guide you. For me, fear tends to be one of my most energizing emotions (that and anger, of course). Fear pushes me to work harder and do everything I can to avoiding ‘losing’ things – friends, jobs, opportunities, etc.

Two others pieces of advice that I loved were “Never stop being surprised by things” and “Fill your house with pets.” After spending a week with our first foster dog Chase last week, I realized how much happier I felt on the whole. All the cliche things you hear about dogs ended up being true – I talked to our neighbors more and I felt more lighthearted and less anxious.

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Thanks, Dame Judi Dench! (Now if you could just let me know how your skin looks so awesome. Thanks.)

Oh, and P.S. – We’ll be making the “Advice for your 30s” a regular part of this blog going forward, so stay tuned!

Birthdays That End in the Number 9

March 3, 2015 By in Grab Bag Leave a comment

I recently read that we have a tendency to make big life decisions in the last year before we enter a new decade – basically in our 29th, 39th, 49th and onward birthday years. This was documented in a research paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published in 2014.

Apparently and somewhat intuitively, right before we enter a new decade of life, we begin to contemplate how we can change our path forward. It’s our step-back, re-evaluation period of life. We want to find meaning in our lives as we head into another decade.

What was interesting about the study was that people either made positive life changes (choosing to run their first marathon) or quite drastically negative ones (committing suicide).

Here’s an article published in NY Mag that talks more specifically about the life changes people are drawn to during their end of decade year(s).

Did you make any big changes/goals when you turned 29 or 39? Personally, I had three major life changes. I decided to go to graduate school (though I did know I wanted to go before 30). I also got engaged soon after turning 30. And I knew I wanted to try living somewhere other than New York City, where I had spent my whole life.

How about you?

Happy Birthday Leap Year Day Baby!

March 2, 2015 By in Grab Bag Leave a comment

Are you in your thirties but born February 29th? Then we want to say a very happy belated birthday to you, Leap Day Baby! How exciting that you’re in only 7 or 8 years old!

For those of us that know leap day babies, or are just curious about leap year (which wasn’t this year but will happen next year, here are some interesting leap year facts:

Leap year happens every 4 years and will next occur February 29, 2016.

Leap year occurs in February because February used to be the last month of the year.

Leap Day Babies got that nickname (as opposed to calling them Leap YEAR Babies) because the whole year is leap year. They were born ON Leap Day IN a Leap Year.

People born on February 29 are all invited to join The Honor society of Leap Year Day Babies.

Guinness Book of Records verifies a family with three consecutive generations born on February 29- the Keogh family. Peter Anthony was born in Ireland on February 29, 1940, his son Peter Eric was born on Leap Day in the United Kingdom in 1964. His daughter, Bethany Wealth, was born in the UK on February 29, 1996.

Julius Caesar introduced the leap year around 45 BC.

About 4 million people in the world have been born on a leap year.

 

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30 Is the Age of Candidacy to be a United States Senator

February 28, 2015 By in Grab Bag Tags: Leave a comment

Did you know that at age 30 you become officially able to run for US Senate? It’s a fact that makes me happy – that idea that this particular age is valued, for whatever arbitrary reason, for being an important turning point. And at age 35, you are able to run for President of the United States. There’s something I actually like about that – that by someones standards, I’m still growing into myself, into my maturity and wisdom.

Since I have no high level political ambitions (no higher than someday writing President Fitz’s lines for Scandal), it doesn’t bother me that I can’t run for President now. But, I do realize there are probably lots of very qualified candidates for both Senate and President who are under 30 and 35, respectively. And some folks have very strong opinions about this issue. This article The Right to Run in Slate made some solid points as to why we should be able to run for office at the same age we can vote.

“Here is a seldom discussed truth about our democracy: The citizenship enjoyed by American adults under the age of 35 is a second-class citizenship. We gain the right to participate fully in American democracy on our 35th birthdays, and not a day before. For on that day, provided all other requirements are met, we become constitutionally eligible to run for virtually all federal, state, and local offices, including the presidency. The fact that very few of us will ever exercise the right to run for any office is irrelevant to the milestone’s significance.” – Osita Nwanevu

After 35, what’s our next real age marker in American culture/government? I think it would be 62 for social security checks or 65 for Medicare? Am I missing any?

Are You Sick of Blue and Black, White and Gold? Or still fascinated?

February 27, 2015 By in Grab Bag Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

In case you’ve been under a rock (and it happens to the best of us), there’s been a major viral sensation going on since Thursday night easily dubbed Dress-Gate. It nearly broke the internet. Or at least my Facebook feed.

Is the dress blue and black or white and gold?

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This debate divided the internet so fiercely last night that everyone from Mindy Kaling to Kanye West to Taylor Swift to top researchers on colorblindness from universities all over the world have weighed in…and everyone seems to disagree.

Some people even saw the dress change colors from white and gold to blue and black or vice versa right in front of their eyes! These people include my very own mother.

And my social media experience today consisted of comments like:

– “Am I on acid? This thing changed color!! Woh!!”

– “You are not on acid. The same thing happen to me. I saw the picture today at work it was gold and white, I looked at it again with my wife and it was gold to me and blue and black to her. Then we scrolled up the page and it changed colors colors back and fourth several times. Crazy”

Then today I received a phone call from my brother and I was shocked to hear him ask at the end of our conversation: “Oh yeah, blue and black or white and gold?” I had my response ready (I see blue and black). But man, if my brother, who could care less about colors of dresses, said he’d been “researching this fascinating phenomenon all morning,” then it really must have hit a nerve with everyone.

But why such fascination over a dress?

My guess is that not believing our eyes here is kind of equivalent to seeing a ghost. Or suddenly time traveling. Whether or not you believe in ghosts or time travel, if you haven’t experienced either of these things your entire life, and then suddenly do, it’s a major shock. Whether or not we consider ourselves “pretty open” human beings, by our thirties, we pretty much know the limits of our physical senses. So when we see or experience something we didn’t believe existed before, we kind of freak out.

In this case, we experienced something normal (viewing a photo of a dress) and then freaked out that our trusted friends or relatives seemed to see a completely different dress. BUT HOW CAN THAT BE??!

It’s now been proven that the dress is blue and black, whatever that means. The company that makes the dress said so themselves:

“We can confirm #TheDress is blue and black! We should know!” http://t.co/qAeIIHzJxkpic.twitter.com/kkxjUbmgI3

— Roman Originals (@romanoriginals) February 27, 2015

There have been various explanations for the differences in how the dress colors are viewed, but I have a feeling none of them are truly satisfying anyone right now. We’re still too busy being fascinated about our newfound five sense discoveries that can be had even later in life.

No matter what your age, stay open to new information still to be found out about your body and senses. Never assume you know everything about yourself. We’re probably not even close to discovering all that’s out there.

Though hopefully ghosts aren’t some of those things…

And if you’re interested in more info about Dress-gate, here are a few expert theories on the phenomenon:

“Your interpretation depends on several factors, such as which part of the figure you attend to.” -Dr. Joseph Toscano, Villanova University Department of Psychology and an expert in illusions.

“This photograph was probably taken on a phone camera and is very poorly exposed. It depends if your retina is interpreting this photo as over or under exposed, or more scientifically if your rods or cones are dominating the image interpretation.” -Dr. Reena A. Garg, an Assistant Professor of Ophthamology at the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai

“It can be slightly different in different individuals and the spectrum of wavelengths dedicated to any color could be slightly shifted in some people.” -Dr. Steven Galetta, the chair of the neurology department at NYU Langone Medical Center.

“I’ve studied individual differences in color vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I’ve ever seen.” Jay Neitz, a color-vision researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, told Wired.

“It has to do with the tiny cones in the back of our eyeballs that perceive colors in a slightly different way depending upon our genes,” -Elizabeth Cohen, CNN Senior Medical Correspondent.

Business Insider has even has a great way for you to see both color schemes. Check it out- it’s like  finally decoding one of those crazy optical illusions you couldn’t figure out as a kid.

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A Sweet Compromise

February 25, 2015 By in Grab Bag 4 Comments

I’ve always been a dog person. Ever since I can remember, I’ve dreamed of having a dog and having that solid, cuddly companionship. But I grew up in Manhattan, and my parents told me that it would be unfair to have a dog in a small apartment with two adults who had full-time jobs. They were right. My dad ended up hooking me up with dog walking gigs in the building.

Now that I’m in my thirties, I feel like I can give myself those things I so desperately wanted as a child. Since I moved to California about a year and a half, I’ve been pressuring my fiancé for a dog. He’s been the voice of reason (amen), and we’ve avoided getting one because he’s mildly allergic AND our apartment is a one-bedroom. Even though we’re in California, our space is Brooklyn-sized.

So we decided a that fostering would be a sweet compromise. We ended up fostering a sweet pooch who I picked up yesterday. Meet Chase. Two month old German Shepard mix, who was picked up roaming the streets of Palmdale, California, hungry and dehydrated.

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I’m writing with a sleepy brain now, because I’ve been on high alert all day, making sure this small animal is safe and sound. I’ve been on bathroom duty all day, and I’m pooped (pun intended!).

Taking care of a puppy is TOUGH – I definitely underestimated how tough it is. OY.

But at least now my childhood dream is somewhat realized. I’ve had a dog for a full twenty-four hours!

What did you want a child that you’d like to give yourself as a bona-fide “grown-up”?

The Stigma Attached to Not Wanting Children

February 20, 2015 By in Grab Bag, Health and Wellness Tags: , , , 1 Comment

Have you noticed there seems to be a stigma around being a woman of a certain age who doesn’t want children?

To preface this post, I’m not writing about myself and my own desires not to have children. I personally do want children, but I also wouldn’t be devastated if I couldn’t have children. I am an only child and I’ve always had a desire to have a bigger family, and naturally I feel pretty maternal.  I’m nearly 33, so this whole ‘having children’ thing is on my mind.

Despite wanting children, at this stage in my life, I identify more with the woman who wants time to work on her projects and her career than have children. I love my alone time to think, ponder and daydream. I love vast swaths of private time with no particular place to be or people to see. Is this me being an INFP? Perhaps. But, I’ve always been a late bloomer in my life, and in this particular area, I don’t have the luxury of being a late-bloomer. Of course I could wait till I’m nearing 40 and chance it with having kids, but that is indeed, chancing it.

When I say I want children, it sometimes feels like the “I” I’m thinking about my future self; specifically, the needs and desires of my future self. The same way I might plan for retirement financially or dream about having two dogs and a jacuzzi, deep soaking bathtub when I’m older and have more money.

I’ve just noticed lately that there’s such a stigma to not wanting to have children. The stigma seems to be this notion that if you don’t want children, it’s because you really did but you put your career first or didn’t find a husband/boyfriend in time, and now you’re subconsciously justifying your ‘choice’  And I hate that! Choosing not to have children can be a very active choice and not some by-product of running out of time, as it is often portrayed.

Another aspect of the stigma seems to be that there’s something inherently not ‘natural’ or ‘feminine’ about not wanting children. So many characters in films who don’t want children are tough and mean, like the evil corporate bitch that is Sigourney Weaver’s character in Working Girl.

This whole post was inspired by an interesting article I read on Dailyworth.com, Why I Never Wanted Kids. The article touched a nerve because I was surprised and intrigued by all of the reasons the author listed for not wanting children. There was one in particular that I never thought about: Having a negative experience as a child and not wanting to subject another person to that. I thought that was intriguing. While I had a good childhood, it wasn’t a reason I could relate to, but I could certainly empathize.

Do you have friends that know they don’t want children? How do you view their choice?

But Thirty is So Young…

February 19, 2015 By in Grab Bag, Health and Wellness Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 4 Comments

It’s funny how on your journey through your twenties, you always think “Oh man, I can’t believe I’m going to be thirty. I’m getting so OLDDDDD…’

And once you hit thirty, you exclaim ‘Am I an adult now? I’m not a kid anymore… I’m so old. I’m expected to be mature.’

And then, once you’re in your thirties, and especially your later thirties, you try to hide your age because you feel like you’re so old since you aren’t in your twenties anymore. Even the clothing store ‘Forever 21’ reminds us of this every day.

But on my way to work today, I was in a taxi with my coworkers, and we made a remark about how beautiful the beaded gems were that were hanging from our driver’s rearview mirror. We told him how much we liked them.

He thanked us. Then he said that the gems were memorials for his sister and his best friend who had both died tragically of cancer in their thirties.

Their thirties.

A heavy moment of sadness hung in the air. We were silent. We stopped complaining about how we had to work long hours. We stopped complaining about the cold. We definitely weren’t complaining about how old we were in our thirties.

All we could think was ‘they were so young.’

I realize I take so much for granted.  I remember the story of Brittany Maynard, who died at 29 of a terrible disease. I start to grasp what a gift it is to live to 30. Even when things seem terrible, I have to recognize how amazing it is to simply still be alive.

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