I’ve been listening to this song on repeat all day long. And I cannot exactly place the emotion that it brings up. I just know that I have been sitting at my desk, paralyzed for nearly a half an hour. Still. Not moving. Just breathing.

It reminds me of quite moments that are so silent, the only thing you can hear is the sound of the wind and your own breath.

And so you just stand there, breathing.

This past year has been a complete whirlwind for me – two promotions, a new job, a move from southern california to downtown San Francisco,  a new apartment, new friends, an engagement, endless parties, a wedding, a husband. Its astounding to think about about all of the change that I have gone through in the last twelve months.

While I sit and think back through all of these things, I am caught in a place between laughter and tears.

Exhausted. Finished. Weary. Yet, bright. Lifted. Full.

This year has given me so many things.

A year of gratefulness, a year of joy, a year of champaign toasts, a year of party dresses, and a year of falling to sleep to a smile.

My heart feels full. My heart feel exhausted. My heart cannot absorb any more of the things that life has to offer. I am over my limits, stretched to all sides, wearing thin.

And a heart that stretched thin with change and joy, sounds just like this song.

It sounds still.

It sounds soft.

It sounds like breathing.

Maybe this is what peace sounds like. Like that moment at the end of a yoga class, when you’ve sweat, and stretched, and given everything you have to offer your practice. And when it’s all over, you take a moment to thank your body for being amazing. You thank it for bending and pushing, and enduring everything you have asked of it. And you lay on your mat, in a silent room, and you breathe.

So, with a lump in my throat, and a smile on my face, I am sitting at my desk paralyzed. Breathing. Thanking the universe for the gift of this year. For the promotions, and the husbands, and the parties. Giving my body a moment to rest, and absorb and enduring everything that I have asked of it.

Breathing.

And breathing.

And breathing.

And breathing.

But a funny thing happens to me when I’m happy. I don’t need the writing. Or maybe, I should need the writing, but I just don’t have time. Or energy. Or feel like being quite that serious. It seems silly to write about how wonderful your life is. No one wants to get on the Internet and read someone brag about their life.  Or at least that is what I tell myself.

Except for the part where I am wrong.

I need to write when I am happy. I need to crystallize the parts of life that are amazing. It may sound like bragging, but I think somehow it has to be good for one’s soul to walk up to a microphone and say, “Ah hem. Hello world. My life is fabulous. Thank you.”

The Legacy of Carry Bradshaw

My younger sister has just discovered the show Sex and the City. Watching her discover Carry, Miranda, Charlotte and Samantha is the best thing that an older sister can experience. It’s better than Christmas. It might even be better than watching her go to Prom or get engaged. Seriously.

When I was exactly her age, Sex and the City would come on at 10:00pm on TBS. They would play two episodes, one at 10 and one at 10:30. Friends would come on at 11:00, and would play until midnight. Every single night at 10pm, I would yell out to my best friend and roommate Dana, “Dana! It’s starting!!”

And we would sit on the couch, sometimes with bowls of ice cream, watching the highs and lows and emotions and lessons of Carry’s show pour over the TV.  Dana would always try to leave after the first episode, and I would always convince her to stay up for the second one. And sometimes, if I was REALLY lucky, Dana would stay for Friends too.

Being 20 and a proper mess, there was something about Carry and her narration of the woes of a single woman looking for love and adulthood that seemed so….perfect. Fabulous. Grown up. Skinny. Smart. Deep. Wonderful.

I think I have actually seen every episode at least 5 times.

But flash forward 5 years later, and I actually  feel pretty good about my life. I’m not twenty and lost. I’m not even twenty-five and a mess. I’m twenty-seven, engaged, happy, and even beginning to feel comfortable saying that I might even be successful  (that feels like a big step). I’m by no means perfect, but I’m beginning to think I really like my own skin. I know my strengths. I even sometimes don’t care about my weaknesses. I know I’m loud, bossy, too controlling and just outright crazy sometimes. And I’m working on being better about seeing and hearing people. Not telling people how to fix their problems. Trying to remember to pay my rent, balance my check book, charge my phone, and find my keys.

But my sister – she’s in the thick of it. She’s in school, discovering herself and everything that goes along with it. She’s knee deep in love, and college, and therapy, and Carry Bradshaw.

Last night at my mom’s house she says to me, “I’m in Season Two, and I LOVE Steve for Miranda! He is such a nice guy! And I can’t believe Charlotte and Tray! I really hope they get their lives together!”

It’s like watching your first child discovering Christmas for the first time (ok, so I don’t have kids, and they’ve never had a Christmas, but I can say it if I want). I love seeing her in the thick of her life, drinking up Carry’s words of wisdom like they are water in the desert. It makes me happy.

On Happiness.

It makes me happy in my guts. In the part of you that is proud of someone you love, but subtly proud of yourself that you can even recognize where they are at, because you’ve been there, and you’re not anymore.

I’m not in 20 anymore. I’m not in “Who Am I??” anymore. I’m not in college. I’m not blindly feeling for the corporate ladder. I’m just me. Crazy, late, and sometimes lost. Often a grouch (just ask my fiance). And not nearly as nice as most of the people that I love spending time with. I can be a bitch. But on the upside, I am really good at getting shit done. And you know, there are times that doesn’t seem like a good thing, but then there are other moments when I am glad I’m me.

I need to write in happiness. It helps balance the picture. Maybe that’s just the plight of a creative artists…the happy times just aren’t as angsty – doesn’t make for nearly the same gut-wrenching-art.

I’ve spent over a year flitting around my great life like a little fairy or a forest nymph. Not caring that I wasn’t learning or growing. Not caring if I was late or on time. Working late, going to cocktail hours, and definitely NOT reading self help books. I found a great man, fell in love, and managed to trick him into thinking getting married to me was a good idea. I’ve listened to ALOT of Ingrid Michaelson, Nora Jones, Matt Wertz, Tyrone Wells, and Ernie Halter. Which I have to admit, is a nice break from The Fray – who I love with the depth of my whole heart.

This last year I got a dog, who I loved with my whole heart and wallet, and sadly she got cancer and died juts 11 months after getting her. She was like me – crazy, fierce, but the damn cutest thing you’ve ever seen. I walked her lot this year, nearly every morning walking to the Church on Orange street, just two miles from my house.

I ate a lot this year. I have a truly fabulous fiance who loves taking me out to eat. Or rather, he loves making me happy, and I love to eat. I’ve eaten more buffalo chicken pizzas, spicy sausage pastas, juicy bacon burgers, with microbrewery beers, or entire bottles of wine than I have had in my entire previous life combined.  It’s a miracle that I still fit into my pants.

But even though it is not deep and angsty, it is not always gut-wrenching and life changing, I think I like happiness. I think it’s good for the soul to write happy things. I think it’s good for the soul to read things that don’t necessarily change us, but we just like them. I think it’s good to not always be so serious. To stay late and drink too much. To write about things that don’t matter. To fall in love. To get puppies that you don’t have time for. To not take yourself too seriously. And to write.

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Twenty-seven is my scary age.

I have been dreading 27 since I was in Junior High. In fact, when I was 13 I used to pray that I would get cancer at 27 so that way I would die young, and fabulous, engrained in people’s minds as beautiful, vibrant, full of life and promise. I stopped praying that at 15 because I realized that it was a very selfish prayer. My brilliant and handsome husband would most likely be devastated by my tragic death.  So I stopped praying for early cancer.

The really ironic thing is, a) I totally don’t have a husband (which, at 13,  I never would have seen that one coming) and 2) I just had a cancer scare last month.

I haven’t actually been able to pin point what about turning 27 scares me so badly. I’m sure part of it is the ceaseless reminder that I don’t have as much figured out as I thought I would. My boyfriend turned 30 in August. Right before his actual day, I’d asked him if he was scared. He very coolly responded with, “Well, I would be, but I’ve already accomplished all of the goals I set out to accomplish…so not really.”

F-word.

Thanks boyfriend, now I really feel like the clock is ticking, (T-minus 3 years!) and I have no clue what my goals even are. And of course when you’re standing next to a guy that owns his own business, gets asked to speak at conferences about technical jargon most people can’t even comprehend, and occasionally gets written up in TechCrunch – sure there’s no reason at all to panic.

Hyperventilations aside, there have been a few things this year that I have really come to know and appreciate. And despite the fact that I used to pray to die, it is nice to acknowledge that I am growing.

Cancer, Lay-Offs, and the Living Situation from Hell

Last month had to potential to have lots of bad events, in fact, the whole month could have been deemed a failure. For those of you who have know me long enough, you’d know that I am no stranger to horrible life altering changes. In fact, they are called my early twenties.

First things first, last month I found a lump. Ladies, you know what I am talking about. I can’t actually tell you that I felt dread when I found it, I actually thought it was a gland. It wasn’t until I was in the Chiropractor’s office that I realized what it was. He was telling me that I had a swollen gland at the base of my neck, and I say, “Oh yea, I have on in my boob too. Maybe I’m fighting a cold!”

Immediately he says, “You don’t have glands in your breasts…here let me feel.” Before I know it, his hands are all over my girls, giving me a good old fashioned rub down. It is there you realize that Chiropractors are doctors, but then again, they aren’t really “doctors”….eek.

Post-accosting, it dawns on me that this might be serious. I make an appointment to get checked out by my Primary Care physician. Mentally though, I keep telling myself that it’s nothing, that I’m going to go in there and they’re going to send me home.

Except she doesn’t just send me home. Instead, she makes a slightly concerned face and says that she needs me to get an ultrasound. She could have just told me that I have 3 days to live, because that was basically what I heard. And you know, it turns out that in that moment I didn’t really mind the idea of having cancer, it was more that I didn’t mentally prepare to have cancer, so it really caught me off guard.

This moment began a pattern with me and my team of doctors over there in the Breast Cancer center. Each appointment I would show up, thinking to myself, “Jenni, this is really nothing, they’re just going to check it out and send you home.” And each and every time, I would get all worked up, anxious and crying from the needles and incisions, and then some doctor would walk in and wrinkle his brow. The nurses would rush out of the room, and come back with another doctor, and within moments they were asking me to put on my shirt so they could tell me what was going on, and proceed to break the news that I needed more tests.

And again, I was completely surprised that I was blind sided every time. I almost wanted to say to the doctors, “No, see you don’t understand. I can handle the fact that I might be dying, but you people need to prepare me a little better. Instead of telling me that it’s nothing, and then making the concerned face, I need to you to tell me that it might be something so I can at least plan for it.”

After several weeks of assuring myself it was nothing, only to be asked to come back for more tests, I was running a bit raw.  I mean, I’d had been accosted by my Chiropractor, had cold jelly poured on my boobies by a little Asian woman, had a doctor right out of med school take pictures of my lumps, sat in the waiting room sobbing, and at one point had one doctor tell me to calm down because, ”We cannot position the incision properly to get samples with your chest heaving like that. I need you to stop crying.” And after all that I had to wait a WEEK to find out my results.

Now, all this equals not fun, but as all things in life this was not the only hurricane in my life as of September. That week was the same week my employer had to lay of 15% of our work force. I’ve never been in a “start up” environment like this before, but I can tell you, it’s a totally different ball game. I’ve been through lay offs before, but lay offs were “just business,” a little rough maybe, but it didn’t feel personal. This time was so much harder.  When you watch the very people who laid the bricks in the foundation of a company pack a box and hit the door – it’s almost like a death in a way. Our whole office felt like we were mourning people who had literally died. It was awuful.

And finally, my home life has been terrible. Anyone whose lived with roommates know living with people can turn really very ugly, and this situation did…really bad. I don’t want to say too much about it; I’m not looking to slander, but just to say that the additional tension of a terrible home life was not the greatest timing for this week.

Now, here is the interesting part: in a week where I had potential for complete chaos: disease, loss of a job, complete destruction at home, I had a thought just come to me while talking to my mom on the freeway. I said, “You know what mom, I. Am. Ok.”

It was as if all of the painful and rough experiences over the past seven years came flooding back – lay offs, loss of relationships, moving around the world, learning other cultures, struggling to even find the corporate ladder – much less climb it, they were all there. And it dawned on me that in every single of of those moments, I had survived them. I had found my way. Yes, maybe with bruised knees and tears on my eyes sometimes, but I found a way to get through it anyway. And not even that, but right now my life is actually really fabulous.

I think I said to my mom, “Mom, I need you not to freak out about all of this. I’ve realized over the last few years that can be tough as nails. And you know what? I can handle cancer, I will be ok if I get laid off, and I know how to handle immature destructive people. What I simply cannot handle is the suspense of not know if any one of those things is actually going to happen or not. It’s not a matter of being brave in the midst of pain, it’s a matter of making through the suspense.”

Now I realize that I could have been having a VERY optimistic moment. I don’t want to pretend to know what it actually feels like to have cancer. But in that moment, it was a realization of how much I have grown in the last few years. It was so nice to have the confidence of knowing that you could look at pain in the face. To say, “You may be tough, but you know, sometimes I can spit nails.”

Where did THAT Jenni come from!?

Needless to say, my results from the lump came back negative. I still have to have surgery, but it’s completely non-threatening. Also, I was one of the few who got to keep my job. Which, I won’t lie – sometimes feels harder than those who had to leave, but man I cannot tell you how grateful I am to still be working for my company. And the roommate situation? Still not good, it’s very tense,  but I’m working it out like an adult, and reminding myself that at one point in the near future, she will actually move out. And that seems pretty good to me.

I almost feel like life made a mistake. Historically, I should have been the person who got the shaft, the triple wammie of bad news: roommate, job and health.  But suddenly I feel like I am that person who walked out of the grocery store only to realize they’d been given WAY too much change.  What are you supposed to do? Go back and say, “Excuse me, you let me have too much. Please take some back.”

Hell no. You get in your car and you drive. And you desperately check your rear view mirror to make sure they don’t come after you.

Maybe that’s what growing up is really all about. It’s not really about having a “scary age,” or accomplishing your goals, getting a new title at work, having people take you seriously, or having a husband. Maybe it’s really about just getting to an age where you realize that you can take life by the balls if you have to. And it might kick you in the guts, but that you won’t actually die from it. That change can actually be a VERY good, exciting thing.

One of the great parts of living in my neighborhood is that we’re close to the bay. It’s not like a bay that you’d think of boats and seagulls, but it’s more like an open wetland.

It’s one of my favorite places to go and walk, to run, or sometimes flight. My boyfriend and I go there and walk the trails when we have something to “discuss.” Maybe it’s the open air, or the open sky that make it easier to say what’s really on your mind.

Something about the bay is really relaxing. Maybe it’s because it feels so quiet. I think that we get used to the sound of cars and phones and planes, and the buzz of refrigerators in the background of life. And it’s not that those are bad things, it’s just that I’m always surprised when when those things aren’t there, life is noticeably more quiet.

When I was little, I used to hate going to bed. In fact, I used to sneak down and sit at the bottom the stairs and listen to my parents watch TV after they thought we went to bed. Going to bed made me feel left out when my parents got to stay up and watch things, talk about things, and do things. A lot of the time, I would end up falling asleep on the stairs, because I was really a little girl and I couldn’t make my eyes stay awake any longer.

I remember my mom used to always say to me, “Jenna (I was called Jenna until I started school), what are you doing here? Don’t you want to be in bed?”

It’s funny that twenty years have gone by and I’m still the same person. My roommates love watching Sixteen and Pregnant. I have to admit, I’m shamelessly addicted to that show. This morning, I couldn’t pull myself away from the TV to head out to the bay. I know that I always love walks around the bay, but for some reason I couldn’t shake that 6-year-old feeling, like I was going to miss something if I ducked out from roommate time to spend time in the quiet.

Wind.

One of the things that always gets me about the bay is that when there aren’t cars and neon lights buzzing, you can hear different noises. You can hear birds flitting and singing. And you can hear the wind in the tops of the plants.

There is this story in 2 Samuel that always reminded me of the wind. David is this guy in the bible who God really liked. And for some reason David was always running from armies that were trying to kill him. In this part, David and his army were about to attack some group that was trying to kill David. And as the David’s group lays waiting to attack, the story goes that God says, “As soon as you hear the sound of the wind in the top of the Baslam trees, you should attack because it means that I am with you and going forward for you.”

I always got this picture in my mind of all of these warriors crouching in the forest, with their hearts pounding, waiting for the quiet sound of wind in the trees. It always made me smile when the wind would whir through the trees. It made me feel less small or something.

The funny thing is,  now I don’t think so much about whether or not God is there. But I still like the feeling of letting life be that quiet. Quiet enough where you can hear the birds and the wind.

Waffles and the Artist.

I really love having a dog. I know most people roll their eyes and think I’m that crazy girl who thinks her dog is her child, but she’s really nice to have around. She has this way of being with me that makes me feel like I’m not alone. But it’s not like having to go anywhere, or do anything, or talk to anyone. She can just trot along side, and I can listen to the wind.  I can watch her sniff, and lick dirt, and smile to myself. And for someone who loves being with people, finding time to listen to the wind and watch my dog lick dirt can be a hard thing to make time for. Especially when Sixteen and Pregnant has marathons on Sunday.

Getting a dog also means that you are bound to meet interesting people. Most old people just walk right up to her and pick her up. I mean, she could be a ferocious little dog and just bite them, but old people don’t seem to think of that. They just pick her up and cradle her like she’s an infant or something.

Today, this old old gentleman with bad hair plugs stopped me on the trail. His mom had a Yorkie, and began asking me questions about Waffles. He was wearing chocolate brown pants, with a chocolate brown turtleneck, a faded black jean jacket, and some brand new black boots. He looked like he meant to wear all black but somehow missed.

He looked at me and asked, “Are you by chance an artist?”

“Well, kind of,” I replied. “I’m a writer, but well….” and then I trailed off. Do you tell total strangers about your struggles with life and art?

He smiled. “You look like an artist.”

I blushed.

Chi or Energy or  Feng Shui, or Whatever You Call It.

I told my boyfriend that when we get a house, I want to hire someone to come and check out our energy. He laughed at me.

I remember someone telling me that if a farmer plants carrots, and is angry when he plants them, then the carrot has angry energy. If that farmer takes the angry carrot and sells it, and it turns up in your salad that you buy for lunch, and you eat it, you now have angry energy. He was telling me that the whole world is connected through energy, that it’s everywhere all around us, and we have to tap into good energy.

This guy sounded crazy to me, but I sometimes get what he’s talking about. I told my boyfriend that when we lived in the Yorktown house, I remember feeling like the whole house was bright, and airy and something about it made me want to cook all the time. The kitchen was warm and inviting, and I loved having people sit down at the bar and chat with me while I concocted something delicious.

Our current house isn’t the same. We have brand new cabinets. Marble counter tops. Expensive tiled floors. But I don’t cook the way I used to. I don’t get the same feeling that I used to when I cooked in the old house. Something about this house is busier, louder, or more chaotic.

I don’t think you can hear the wind in the trees in this house.

I think when I buy a house, I want to make sure my chi is right. That when the wind blows in the trees, it comes through the windows. That the house makes you want to turn on some good music and cook. Or that I don’t get stuck watching TV shows, and I can leave and go to the bay to listen to silence and talk to artist with bad hair plugs.

Well, that’s not completely true, because I have been writing. It’s just that some of the writing has been personal, and I’m not quite ready to put it on the site.

See, I have actually been going through some changes, and to be candid, it’s been really rough. Simply put, my friend Tiffany said to me, “Jenni you’re the person who is tough in the face of the storm, but once it’s over you totally fall apart.”

She nailed it. Last year was a storm. And I wrote. I networked. I went to meetings. I job searched. I went to counseling. I cried. I dried my tears. I ran. I went to countless interviews. I learned pitches. I got denial calls. I didn’t give up. I grew. I grew a lot.

Suddenly one day in mid October, I got a phone call that changed my life. I got my dream job, and suddenly all of the other pieces of life fell into place. It was like I went from so terrible to wonderful in a matter of hours.

Things were great. For about three months. And just when the wonderful feelings of my wonderful life began to settle, it felt like a small crack started creeping through the concrete of my life. I started to crumble. Crumbles turned into shambles, and it was only a matter of weeks before I was completely falling apart. It was as if all of the pain of the last year suddenly became real, and I was feeling and processing an entire year’s worth at once.

It’s been tough to articulate exactly what that looked like. I suppose that’s why I haven’t been writing publicly. At first it felt like anger. Lots of it. Red and raging anger. And then after a while it settled into something softer than that. Maybe it looked like lots of questions. I began deconstructing lots of the foundations of my life, asking how I got there, and looking through things one at a time.

Hippies.

My boyfriend and I took my dog for a long walk yesterday. On our walk, I was telling him how I wanted a house with a garden. I can’t keep anything alive thought, so I told him he’d need to hire me a gardener. Someone would have to harvest those organic vegetables, and it couldn’t be me.  I want goats, and chickens, and a vineyard. I told him how I want to wear canvas pants, and be a hippie.

He laughed at me and asked, “What is your fascination with hippies? You’ve been talking about being a hippie for the past few months. You aren’t going to stop shaving or anything are you?”

“No” I told him, “I think I’ll keep shaving. But there’s something about hippies that I love. It’s like they get to wear flowing skirts, and not care about what they’re doing with their lives or anything. And me, I feel like I’m more of those corporate types who wears a suit and wants my life to all look a certain way. Some professional way, or the ‘right way’…whatever that is. ”

I told him that if I was really brave, I’d one day quit my job, move to a farm and write books. And I’d take up smoking. Maybe a pipe, maybe cigarettes. He hates smoking. I told him I didn’t care because when you’re a hippie, you do what you want and you don’t care.

Dirty Cars.

I just went downstairs to wipe down my car, because it’s filthy and it has been driving me crazy for the last several weeks. See, I grew up in a family where you never leave anything in your car. When the car is pulled into the garage, the only thing that stays in the car is some maps in the glove box. And cars are washed at least weekly. They oil is constantly changed, and I believe at one point our family owned custom made sponges to fit into the moldings of past cars that we owned, to ensure that detailing jobs were perfect.

Currently I haven’t washed my car in 6 months. It’s hideous. And when people get into my car I can’t help but apologize for my lack of commitment to clean my car.

My friend Shannon said to me one time when I climbed into her passenger seat, “My car is dirty, don’t judge me.”

I laughed because it was so honest. Somewhere along the lines it seems that having a clean car makes you a better person. Maybe it means that you have your life together, since you have time to make sure that your backseat isn’t filled with tennis rackets and weeks worth of old clothes.  Maybe this is why I want to be a hippie, because it means that I could have a messy car and not care if people judged me. Instead, I’d smoke my pipe. And try to convince my boyfriend not to be mad at me for doing it, because that’s just what hippies do.

The Divorce and the Massage Therapist.

Back in January, seeing that I was totally falling apart, I decided to make a drastic change. I completely chucked the rule book..whatever that is.

I don’t go to church anymore. I don’t pray. In fact, I told God to leave me alone. My close friends refer to it as “The Divorce.” I’m not trying to figure this one out. I don’t want to hash it out. I don’t want to process through it. I don’t want to write deep emotional things about it. And I’m determined not to feel bad about any of those things.

I just couldn’t help but feel like for the last several years, I’ve prayed, I’ve sought God, I’ve fought, I’ve processed, I’ve gone to counseling, I’ve found the silver lining, I’ve showed up, I’ve worked hard. And you know what? I’m ready to stop. I don’t want to follow God, and pray, and strive, and process, and seek, and find where God is in all situations. I’ve done that for years.

Instead, I want to sit in a yurt in the forest and do yoga. I want to blow bubbles. I want to smoke a pipe. I want to meditate. I want to be alone. I want to sleep.

I’m tired. I’m insanely tired.

So instead of going to church and seeking God, and singing songs that I were sometimes hard to sing, and pushing to follow God no matter what, I’ve decided to sleep.

To stop caring. And not in a flippant, angry angst filled way. But in a simple way. In a way that a hippie wouldn’t care. When I climbed in my car to wipe it down, I said out loud, “You know what? Who cares if my car is messy?” And I put away my towel and went back upstairs.

I’ve decided to be ok with not doing life perfectly. To meditate. To smoke a pipe. To tell God, “You know, you might be an ok guy, but I need some space.”

I  have been working with Andy my massage therapist for two years now. He came to give me a massage a few weeks ago, and he says to me “Jenni, this is the first time in years that your muscles feel great! They are normally so tense and you have issues all over you body, but now, they feel spongy and normal. What changed?”

He’s right. I feel great. I know telling God to take a flying leap is a really really big deal. And I’m sure that I’ve most likely offended someone somewhere. I’m sure some of you feel the compulsion to tell me that you are going to pray for me, and invite me back to church or something like that.

It’s not that I don’t think that God is God. And I don’t think that God’s not good. I’m just really tired. And I’m wearing canvas pants. And if you happen to ride in my car, don’t judge me because it’s messy.

I love your application for so many reasons. Not only can I keep in contact with old and new friends, but I can also over-share with new coworkers while broadcasting to the entire world that “Yes, I will go out of my way to step on a crunchy looking leaf.”

Despite your many benefits, I do have to tell you that I have come across a major flaw in your application that needs immediate attention. When connecting with other profiles, you only have one option; you must request friendship. While I can see how this would seem like the perfect way to share profiles and information, but I would like to point out that not everyone in a person’s life sphere can fall under the category of  “Friends.”

Let me give you an example. I just started at a new job 3 months ago. I love my job. LOVE my job. I have started receiving friend requests from people at work to join my Facebook network. At first, I will admit I was slightly hesitant to add co-workers to the inner workings of my life. Pressing “accept” meant that they would know what I was doing after work, what I looked like on the weekends, or worse, if I was playing on Facebook during work hours.

After much debate, I decided I would accept. As I said before, I LOVE my job, and wouldn’t want to do anything to impede my relationships with the people I work with. And we all know that a Facebook denial is like a passive aggressive way of saying “I don’t really like you.”

A funny thing did happen this week however. I got  a friend request from someone I work with. I didn’t immediately recognize their picture. But as I poured over their profile pictures,  I realized that I had indeed met them. In fact, I’d met them several times. They were the unfriendly person in the lunch room. The person I would smile and say, “Good Morning, how are you?” almost every morning while I poured my coffee. And they would return a closed lipped smile, say nothing, turn on their heel and rush off.

So you can imagine I was a bit baffled to find their request for friendship. We aren’t friends. In fact, I don’t know that this person has ever actually spoken to me before. If I was to see them in a dark bar, I wouldn’t be able to decipher whether or not I knew them.

Clearly, accepting a friend request would be a farce. But conversely, choosing denial would be like the kiss of death at work. It would only be a matter of days before other departments would be whispering in the bathroom about how unfriendly I am.

Clearly Facebook, a solution needs to be found. And I can tell you what that solution is. You need to add an “Acquaintance Request.” This would be made for people that you sort of know, but not really. It a good way to tell people “I like you… a lot even. I probably wouldn’t call you on a Friday night to see what you are up to, but I most likely would stop by your desk on Monday to see how your weekend was.”

In addition to the Acquaintance Request, I think you should implement an “I Know of this Person Request.” This would have saved my butt last week. It’s a polite way of saying, “I know who this person is, but I never really talk to them in real life. In fact, if I passed them in the hallway at work I would most likely ignore them even though I totally stalk their profile pictures when I’m cruising Facebook in the evening.”

Facebook, these two small adjustments would make my whole life a lot easier. With the use of these two new features, I would stop feeling guility for having Google people to remember who they are, and what party we talked for  five seconds which apparently constituted us a “Friends.” It would mean that I wouldn’t have to worry that I am going to piss off my co-workers. And even better yet, it would mean that I wouldn’t have to remember to login a week later to delete all of the “friends” I’d accepted in an effort to save face, but I really had no intention of keeping.

Thanks Facebook for your time an attention on this very important issue. Keep up the good work.

Love,

Jenni Brown

ps – can you cut a deal with FarmVille to get me some Mansions? I really want a Mansion on my farm.

“90 days is over”

When I started my job, and basically my entire life turned on a dime this past fall, I set myself an alert. I gave myself 90 days. 90 days to get acclimated to my new job. 90 days to move into the new apartment. 90 days to recover from being burglarized. 90 days to figure out how to rehabilitate an very neglected, angry, and adorable puppy. 90 days to figure out how to get settled even though in real life, nothing has settled. In fact, the last 90 days have been the most hectic, intrusive, inconvenient, and stressful days of my life.

However, if I  know that one thing in life is true, it is this: it doesn’t stop. Life doesn’t slow down. Burglars still come. The gas company will still turn off your gas right before you’re throwing a huge party. Your puppy will never care that it is 2am and you have a presentation at work in the morning, she will throw a fit and fight with you anyway. That’s just how life works. And we learn to live with it, deal with it, and still make time for the things that matter.

So, what matters to me? This blog. My writing projects. Book ideas that have never gotten onto paper. Picture cook books that have to be completed before my grandma closes her eyes a final time.

A few weeks ago, I read something on CopyBlogger that was talking about the habits of successful people. Interestingly, the author was saying that truely successful people don’t juggle a million things. They have one thing that really matters, and they focus on it, they work it, they put in the hard hours, and they do it well. And that really got me thinking, “what projects matter to me?”

So, thank you phone alarm for notifying me that the break is over. The “break” of the last 90 days was anything but restful, but if this part of my life ever going to grow, then we just must make space for it. Its safe to say that Jenni Brown will be writing again.

As should you. Find your projects. Don’t juggle all one thousand great ideas you have, find the one, and make it work.

The last gal in our group is a mom. She has several kids, the oldest of which is six. She laughed with us and said, “You know girls, it never goes away. You never get that feeling that you know what you are doing.”

She the went on to tell us that a few weeks ago, she wasn’t sure how to discipline her six year old for something he’d done. Feeling frustrated, she grabbed her head and said to him, “I don’t know what to do with a six year old!” Calmly, her son looked back at her and said, “It’s ok Mommy, can’t we look on the internet? We can just Google it.”

If Only It Were That Simple

After laughing at how cute, honest and innocent six year olds can be, I couldn’t help but agree with him. Why can’t life be that simple? You cannot even imagine the sense of relief I might have right now if I could simply type into my computer “How to do really great at my job, have my boss and my coworkers all like me, and not screw it up in the process.” And because the whole world knows that Google’s secret algorithm is like a magic spell that brings all correct and relevant information to the top 10 links on my results page, I would simply have to click around and Voila! I would know how to do the rest of my life.

The interesting thing about Google is that I use it for more than answers. I use it as my spell check – that little link asking “Did You mean…?” keeps me from all sorts of wrongs (in fact I just used it for voila, because I almost wrote viola, which is a kind of a violin, thanks Google!) I use it to find dates on the calendar when I can’t find my phone. I use it to help me explain things, like last week when my roommate didn’t know what caprese salad was. Thank you Google Images.  I use it for maps, phone numbers, email…the list goes on. But I am assuming you know all of this because if you’re around my age, your probably just as addicted as I am.

Now the question for me is, how is it that a six year old’s knee jerk reaction to life’s questions is simply to Google it? He grew up with Google ingrained in his worldview as “The answer to all of life’s questions.” At least I was in college or something before Google really came barreling into the market. In some semblance, I did know life before Google. But this kid, he has no clue. In his mind, that’s what we do for all of life’s question, simply run to the computer and look them up.

I suppose his mom doesn’t really have to sit him down and explain life to him. Eventually over time all of the kids who grew up on Google will have to sort the tough stuff out for themselves just like the rest of us. And in the mean time, it seems cruel to say to a six year old, “Honey life is hard, and sometimes there aren’t any good answers. Even Google can’t solve them.“I can tell you this though, I really wish he was right. Life would be a whole lot easier if we could just “Google It.”

It was mostly the little things that proved it. I have a Cicso phone with my name and extension displayed across the top. I have a laptop and two huge flat screen monitors across my desk. I got six meeting notices yesterday (on my first day!), and they had titles like “MarCom Team Brain Storm Shesh” and “PR Update Meeting.” The walls on my cubical are made out of frosted glass and most of the office uses whiteboard marker to doodle, leave each other notes, or brainstorm all over the walls.

Walking out the front door and saying goodnight to the receptionist was such a mind blowing feeling. If I could be this cheesy, it was like I was thinking, “This is real, I’m a creative person, and I have a creative job. I am legit. And I have a Cisco Phone display to prove it.”

Now here is the funny part, quickly on the heels of that realization comes this thought, “Of course you are legitimate Jenni. You always were. And your meeting notices and write-able walls don’t change that.” I mean, I’ve been published before. I’ve even been paid for some of my articles. I’m currently a managing editor on the side for one of my favorite Orange County volunteer story platforms. And those were all things that I did while sitting at my bar, typing into my computer while in my pajamas and drinking coffee.

So why is it that having a card with my name on it feels so rewarding? Oh right, probably the part where I have get a paycheck, and it comes every single week. And maybe it’s the part where I have to get up work in something other than workout pants. That probably helps too.

Now, if I was going to be “that Christian Writer, “this is the part where I make some connection to us being legitimate in Jesus. You know, where I take my experience and connect it to the idea that we don’t always realize who we already were. That we think we need a certain things to define us. That we look  for jobs, or boyfriends, or cars, or bank accounts to remind us of who we are. But in reality, we already were completely legitimate and affirmed, even when we didn’t have any of those things and just sat at the bar in our pajamas.

And then I would challenge you to think of the things in your life that you hold closely, to tell you who you are. To whisper that you are real, and that you are important. I would ask you what your meeting notices say, and how they make you feel.

I would do those things if I was trying to be cheesy, and draw God into this example. But, I’m I think my readers already know that they’re legitimate, and incorporating into this post would feel forced. So, I won’t remind you that your identity is found in Christ. That you are beautiful, accepted, acknowledged, received, recognized, suitable, relevant, invaluable, noble and pleasing.

See this is why I love my readers, because I don’t have to remind them, they already know.