May 12th, 2008
Blogging about blogging…
I started this blog two years ago as a way to maintain my interest in and expand my knowledge of urban matters after graduating from college with a degree in urban planning and geography. I wrote my first post about immigration – a topic that I remain very passionate about. I intended to write book reviews, research good urbanists, and catalog noteworthy urban initiatives. I aspired to be Geoff Manaugh.
About a year ago, I became disillusioned with urban planning and decided to go back to college for a second degree – in computer science. That ended up not working out and I still don’t know what I want to do “when I grow up” – but I have attempted to maintain my blog despite my faltering passion for urban planning. I tried writing more personal posts for a while and noticed more readers visiting my blog – some even leaving comments – but instead of feeling flattered, I became nervous. I felt pressured to write something meaningful every day.
When I was younger, I started several journals and diaries with the expectation that I would write masterpieces and treasure them forever. However, I would ultimately reread what I wrote a few weeks later, rip out the embarrassing pages, and cry at my inability to attain perfection. I haven’t changed much because I found myself stressing over the quality and importance of my blog posts as well. A few months ago, I made all personal posts private and then, a few weeks later in a fit of low self-esteem, went so far as to delete them along with the wonderful comments that readers left. I now regret this.
I preserved all of my urban planning-related posts because I want to want to write more like them. I want to articulate my hope for the future of suburbs as I seem to be in the minority advocating them. I have also begun writing more personal posts again. I realize that even though I don’t have children or even many friends, I do do a lot of cool things worth writing about – at the very least, I will have a record of what the hell I did with my time before I have kids. So I apologize in advance if write multiple posts about playing World of Warcraft and watching Stargate for ten hours every Saturday. It’s what I do.
I might also post a lot of pictures of my cats.
As I resume blogging, I am unsure how to categorize my posts. I created a “Daily” category for random personal posts, but I also like to write urban planning related posts that reference personal experiences. Should I group all of my old urban planning posts into a single category and be more descriptive about personal posts from now on? I tried categorizing my old posts because there aren’t too many of them, but I still couldn’t figure out what to call the categories for some of them and those are still “Uncategorized”. This troubles me. The process of categorizing posts seems so subjective that I am tempted to not use them at all. But then what would fill the space in my sidebar?
Comments Off
May 11th, 2008
Three people in the past two weeks have mistaken me for a 14 year old. The first person to make this mistake was a young man working at the Guess store who was helping my mom and I return a dress we purchased for my little sister to wear to the 8th grade dance. She is actually 14. When my mom was explaining to the cashier the reason for returning the dress, she noticed that he was glancing at me rather than at my sister and hurriedly explained that I was her other daughter and that the young lady standing next to me (who is nearly my height and already has bigger boobs than me) is actually the 8th grader. The cashier mumbled an apology and finished our transaction, but I could tell that he was still confused.
The next week, my parents were interviewing a man for a job when I walked into their office as I do every morning searching for food. During their discussion, they discovered that the man they were interviewing has a daughter in the same grade as my sister at the same school she attends. When my mom introduced me as her other daughter, he must have neglected to hear the word ‘other‘ because he asked why I wasn’t in school. He thought that I was in 8th grade.
At a baby shower with my mom and sister yesterday morning, my mom was telling this story to some of our coworkers when one woman (not a coworker, obviously) interrupted, “Wait – you’re not 14?” When I told them that I am 22, several women gasped in disbelief and confessed that they thought I was a teenager. Of course, they all ensured me that I would appreciate looking young when I am older, but that doesn’t make me feel better at the moment.
Admittedly, I am often told that I could pass for 17 or 18. Just a few months ago, I auditioned for a seat in the Virginia Tech Honor Band in the place of a 17 year old who could not attend. I hid my wedding band and fooled everyone there. It was quite a thrilling experience, but I have never been told that I look as young as a 14 year old in middle school. FOURTEEN!
I celebrated my 22nd birthday in December, I graduated from college nearly three years ago, and I’ve been married for over two years. I have a mortgage, a 401(k), and an IRA. I don’t wear makeup, but I tweeze my eyebrows and blow-dry my hair every morning. I wear clothes from The Limited and Express and I am conscious of my posture. I’m not sure what else I can do to look my age.
Comments Off
May 8th, 2008
As part of our effort to simplify and minimize our stuff, I scanned all of our photographs taken and developed before we owned digital cameras. I made a backup of the photos and threw away the originals, reducing the clutter in our storage closet by two shoe boxes. I imported the photos into iPhoto and then forgot about them until earlier this month when I started experimenting with Photoshop by following The Pioneer Woman’s tutorials. As I rediscover my old photos, I am challenged by three questions.
What is the best way to organize my photos? Currently, I use iPhoto on my Macbook with photos separated into Events such as “Honeymoon” and “New Year’s Eve”, although I do have so many pictures of my cats that I have created a single event of cat photos for each year – “Cats – 2007″, “Cats – 2008″, etc. Another concern is whether or not to delete photos. Obviously, I will delete irreparable blurry or unflattering photos, but what about the fifteen identical photos of my cat licking her paws? Will I ever look at all fifteen of them again? Or should I choose just one to keep forever?
How can I integrate iPhoto with Photoshop? Specifically, should I re-import into iPhoto the photos edited with Photoshop or should I use iPhoto only to store the original photos and create a separate directory for Photoshopped images? Furthermore, I only have Photoshop for Windows. This means that when I want to edit a photo, I must export it from iPhoto, save it to a shared directory, and open it on my desktop computer. Currently, my Photoshopped images are stored on my desktop computer while the original photos are on my laptop. This inconsistency troubles me.
How can I make my old photos meaningful? I am afraid that leaving them unorganized on my computer will mean that I will never look at them again. By uncovering them, giving them some attention in Photoshop, and uploading them to Flickr, there is a higher likelihood that the pictures will be remembered. At the very least, they will be organized and catalogued for future review, possibly by children or grandchildren.
Comments Off
