What do you want to be when you grow up?

CW and I got cable back. Nope, we didn't even make it a whole year. Yup, hundreds of channels and thousands of commercials now flood into our home every day.

We were sitting on the couch one night this week, basking in the glory of the most passive of entertainment, and suddenly I snapped.

“What the fuck is up with all these commercials?!?”

“We were used to just two per break on Hulu, and short ones,” CW replied in his typical calm fashion.

“Well what the fuck?? Do you have any idea how many hours of marketing we’ve just consumed? How many millions of dollars were invested in those hours to try to manipulate our brains in the most cost effective way to get us to buy shit we don’t need or that’s going to rot our innards??”

“Shh, 1000 Ways To Die is back on.”

That’s basically how the conversation went.

There are days when I envision my future thusly: I’m a manager or mid-level type person in a marketing department or at a hip marketing firm in Boston, tracking web analytics for our various campaigns, pushing reports up to my bosses, talking to designers about what’s new, managing underlings doing data entry and teaching them about the magic of marketing.

Of course, I’d probably be making good money doing that. And, ideally, I’d find a marketing job for products that are awesome, helpful, and improving society and the world. But really, how many of those products are there? More likely, I’d wind up helping some evil corporation sell worthless shit to dumbasses.

That’s not a very happy dream.

I think I’d be pretty good at that sort of job, but over the last few months, that vision of the future has popped into my head less and less often. Instead, I want to tell people that stuff and shopping wont make them happy, and neither will TV or cruising the internet vacantly. That’s the opposite of marketing.

I’m sick of the jargony, pretentious, oh-so-happy marketing and social media stuff I have flowing into my Google reader every day. Yeah, technology is cool, but only in so much that it makes people’s lives better. Not in how much money it gets people to spend.

What to do when you’re not ok

This is not professional or clinical advice, this is just me talking about what I’ve decided to do now that I’ve admitted to myself and CW that I am not ok. And now that I've admitted it to you.

It’s a hard thing to do. Even when things are really bad, I tell myself I’m ok, or at least everything will be ok. I’m the rock, that’s what I do. I think that’s what most people do. But after a while, I couldn’t even fool myself. I’d let so much slip over the last two years that I was barely functioning on a civilized level. Not difficult stuff, people, we’re talking basic necessities: eating and sleeping and hygiene.

CW and I have accomplished the goal we set out to achieve two years ago. It was a long and difficult road that shook me up badly, but now that the mission is accomplished, I can take a step back and say

“I’m not ok. I need to make myself ok now.”

That means every morning:

• taking Maddie for a long walk,
• eating something healthy for breakfast,
• brushing my teeth, and
• looking decently professional for work.

• It means focusing on work while I’m at work.

• It also means eating something marginally healthy for lunch every day.

• And it means getting some exercise in the evening, having a healthy dinner, having a conversation with my husband, and brushing my teeth again before going to bed at a decent hour.

Just writing all of that down makes me a little nervous. These are ambitious steps for me right now.

Especially brushing my teeth – for some reason, when I’m angry or sad, I can’t bring myself to go in the bathroom and take the two minutes to clean my teeth after they’ve worked so hard all day. I’ll pee right before going to bed, hop under the covers, and groan because I didn’t brush them, but feel that it is completely impossible to go back into the bathroom now. It’s too late at that point. Tomorrow morning, I promise myself. But of course I don’t brush them then either. I probably have a dozen cavities after two years of sporadic brushing.

So after admitting that I am not ok right now, I’ve decided to brush my teeth twice a day. Maybe after a few weeks of that, I’ll add flossing at night (something I’ve never been able to do regularly my entire life). Maybe by 2011 I’ll become a model of dental hygiene that my formal self won’t even recognize, bringing a toothbrush to work to brush after lunch or some such nonsense.

The good news is for a Monday morning, and a holiday on which I'm working, I'm surprisingly optimistic. Cavities, watch out.

It's ok to be alone

For my whole life, I'm not sure that I've ever been alone as much as I have this week.

Technically, I'm not really at all. I'm "with" CW, even though he's not here right now. I'm living in OUR apartment, and he'll be home on Saturday.

But it feels like I'm alone. I have to do everything for myself, like buy new filters for the Brita pitcher, unclog the toilet, clean the floors, plan the meals, make plans. It's weird to not have someone else I can call or text to ask "hey pick this up" or "bring this upstairs".

When I was a kid, there were 3 or 4 or 5 other kids running around my house. Plus my mom and dad. And then I was in school surrounded by people. Then I went to college and had basically no privacy. Then I lived at home again, then I lived with CW and MC (and the other MC for most of the time), and now I live with Chris.

Every once in a while, I'll have a few hours or an afternoon or even a whole night to myself, but during this past week, I've woken up, eaten most of my meals, and gone to bed alone.

I have been hyper aware and very careful to make as many plans as possible this week so I wouldn't be alone for any real length of time. I was afraid of being with just myself, at least I was for the first few days. Last Thursday night I consoled myself with disgusting pizza. I ran away for the weekend to Maine to be with my family. I cried on Sunday night after I hung up the phone with CW - that was the last I expected to talk to him until Friday or Saturday. (For almost 6 years, I've always been able to call him, no matter the time of day or where he was in the world; maybe there was a day or two at a time when we coudn't touch base, but never 10 whole days. In fact, I don't think I've been unable to reach someone I loved for that long in my whole life.) Monday I worked until 10pm, and Tuesday I went out to dinner and went shopping.

But then Wednesday, I woke up so happy. It was a beautiful day, I was so comfortable, I had a delicious breakfast. And even though I had plans with AG later in the evening, I didn't feel the need to schedule every minute to keep busy until I'd be with someone again. I puttered around the house cleaning up. I had a cocktail and read a book. It was ok.

This morning, I watched this video, which both put into perspective how very not alone I actually am, and made me happy that I was enjoying, to a certain extent, having the apartment to myself. In fact, I thought to myself, I ought to be alone more often.

Sometimes I spend too much time in my head, and I need CW, or someone else, to snap me out of it. But maybe if i let myself get lost in my own head more often, I'd be better at finding my way back out of it.

Confusion about Verizon and Net Neutality

Actually, I'm more confused about Google. Actually, I don't understand the whole thing. All I heard was that Verizon and Google proposed a payscale for the Internet, so people who pay more get their stuff pushed to the front and those who don't pay won't get found the same way they can be found now.

Which sounds like a terrible idea to me. So why is Google, my champion of Goodness on the Internet, signing on with this?

So what do I do? I google more information. Naturally.

This is where I found good explanation of exactly what Google and Verizon are proposing. Basically, it doesn't sound that bad. But none of the restrictions they are proposing apply to wireless? Which is, experts say, is going to become how we all access the Internet?

This source explains:

It seems that the prevailing logic is that there's simply not enough spectrum for this idyllic "play fair" scenario to truly work, so fewer restrictions would be necessary for the wireless internet space to blossom as the wireless side already has. Moreover, we get the impression that these guys feel the wireless space as a whole is simply too competitive right now to withstand any red tape.

I'm not convinced. A significant (and we're assuming growing) percentag of Verizon's business is in wireless, but they won't have to submit to any of these regulations?

And this is where I learned just how sneaky they are being.

Google...after all these years...why?

This article, on the other hand, says Google and Verizon have the right idea, saying they are only advocating "bandwidth shaping that is vendor-neutral but traffic-specific", which is important:

All of us involved in running networks pay attention to the types of traffic flying about on our lines. We wouldn’t be very good network admins if we didn’t ensure that traffic that needs to get through fast gets through fast and traffic that can tolerate some latency tolerates a bit of latency when it needs to.

But he goes on to say that his mom's Skype call should take precedence over her neighbor's porn downloading. That doesn't sound vendor neutral to me. He argues that we have to do something to prevent the giant traffic jams coming our way since the Internet is growing so fast. How about just developing more efficient ways to deliver more bandwidth, instead of rationing an arbitrarily small amount? I don't have the technical knowledge, but I'll definitely be finding out.

Facebook, of all things, is criticizing this in the interest of openness and fairness. Really, Zuck? But more importantly, really Google? Facebook is in a position to criticize you for this?

I hope this gave you guys a little bit more clarity on the issue; it helped me understand it better. I'll be following this though, so check back for updates!

Getting sleep and reaching goals

There is a pretty cool thing going on called the 30-Day Personal Revoltion Lifestyle Challenge. I was reading about it, checking out peoples' "bucket lists" for the upcoming month, following the Twitter conversation, and getting kind of excited. I could totally do this: publicize my efforts for the next month to accomplish all the goals I keep setting for myself but never complete.

For those who are new:

• exercising every day
• taking my dog Maddie on a long walk every day
• eating three healthy meals each day
• and flossing.

But then, after I made this list, I realized. The last thing I need to accomplish my goals is another list. I write lists like there's no tomorrow, people, ok? And I've tried the getting-the-public-to-hold me accountable thing. Frankly, that's not your responsibility. Who wants to do that?

Then I was reading Peneleope Trunk again, just re-reading archived posts because I like reminding myself of the little nuggets of wisdom she has that resonate so much with me, and stumbled across one about sleep. And how you don't necessarily need 8 hours, but they reccomend 6 or 7, and if you don't get enough, that grogginess you feel is the equivalent of yu after four beers.

(All of that is linked to in her post, I just can't find t now. Besides, I think you should go poke around on her site anyway.)

And I thought: what if I just stopped trying to make myself get up after 6 hours of sleep and exercise? When I get 7 hours, I don't need to drag myself out of bed.

It's important when you set goals to also set yourself up to succeed, not undermind yourself. How often have we heard or read that? But there I was basically doing that.

I keep saying 'I exercise more reliably when I do it in the morning.' And although whenever I do work out in the morning, I feel great, I DON'T ACTUALLY DO IT. EVER. So what the hell am I talking about??

Penelope also had a post about how, when you insert self-discipline into one small area of your life, it creeps into others on its own. I've already decided the real goal I need to have is to be more disciplined, and now I have the perfect way: just get 7 whole hours of sleep every night.

That means going to sleep by 1130pm and getting up when my alarm goes off at 630am. Then going on a 30-minute walk with Maddie, eating a healthy breakfast, taking a shower and going to work.

(Is there something wrong with me that I need to spell that out for myself?)

I can always exercise in the afternoon when I get home when I'm alert and have energy And 30 minute walk in the morning is both not challenging and exercise, to an extent.

Awesome: the key to reaching my goals is more sleep!