rrs: life in stumptown

Muting the FB

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:54:00 -0500

A little inspired, perhaps, by friends who have dumped FB for Lent in years past, I too have put the FB on “mute” as I call it. Not necessarily for Lent, as I’m not much of a religious-go-getter, but the timing seemed good. Seeing a few friends hit pause for Lent this week reminded me that I’ve tried a few times in the last year to do the same.

I use FB as my most primary form of communication. It is fairly seamless when communicating with such a large group of family and friends— the majority of those being 600 miles away (or greater). It allows me to keep in touch, share pics of the family without having to personalize anything, and for the most part my friends and family can pick and choose how often they want to see or hear from me (unless FB changes its settings again this week).

In the past I’ve been blasted by “friends” about always being on, but I’m not sure those blasting me 1. Have a family they’ve left behind -or- 2. Are even really appropriately titled as “friend” on my friend list. Perhaps they would be better suited on my list titled “assholes.” If they don’t care about my lunch and what it looked like, why did they friend me anyway? (yes, sarcasm)

So what exactly does mute mean for me and FB? First and foremost, I’ve deleted the FB App from my iPhone. Muting FB means I haven’t deleted my account, yet I’ve dumped everyone in my restricted list, so no activity is visible on my FB page at all, except for one last public post- for friends to message me if they want to communicate in a more personal way. As I mentioned above, FB is great at letting me blast out an update without any personalization. I think now, I am craving the one-on-one communication. The last time I checked, I had unlimited data, text and minutes on my phone. And do you know how many phone calls I average a month? Four.

That said, I’m hoping to have some real interaction on the phone, and feeling as “Jetson’s” as possible, really take advantage of Skype and FaceTime. What better way is there to feel close to those 600 miles away? After today, I will only log in once from my laptop each day to see if any new messages have come through for those that want to communicate offline. I will not be posting new content or responding to any updates from friends.

In the three hours since posting that last update, two people messaged me their emails, phone numbers and Skype names. I’m assuming those closest to me already know how to get a hold of me, so it will be interesting to see which of my FB “friends” actually wants to keep in touch.

What do I hope to accomplish from this? Well first of all, a basic reassessment of the way I communicate. I am also curious to see who I think of throughout the day. Who crosses my mind? What are they up to today? As my nephew said, “I hate FB because when I see my friends, there’s nothing left to say. You already know what they’ve been up to.”

Which brings me to my blog. I began blogging back in 2006 before getting turned on to FB. I blogged as a means of creative expression. I would write short stories, poetry or musings about very personal things. It was wonderful “therapy” when I had a lot on my mind and no outlet. I also blogged about my then-recent move to Portland. Then surprisingly, people I actually knew started reading it and I found myself scaling back the personal nature of what I was posting and opting for the more generic two-line observational post.

The second and third revivals of my blog consistent on posting about living in Portland, and working in the marketing and design world. While I could pour my heart into writing about my experiences here in Portland, I found myself staggering about design and MarCom topics. In short, it was an industry I couldn’t care less about and just happened to have found myself working in for nearly a decade. My blog became something to do for the sake of doing it, everyone else was doing it as a means of self promotion.

As I finally found myself untethered once and for all from the marketing and design industries I also found myself staring at a stale blog. Unsure what to post, or if I should post anything at all. I had very little to offer creatively at that point, and as a career change was coming about, I didn’t feel I had the time or drive. I also found myself burnt out talking about how great Portland is. The blog has since been relegated to occasional posts about family life, a quirky encounter or vague posts about the new education and career I’m pursuing in Women’s Health.

I’m looking forward to this break from FB, sure that it will force more personal communication with those I love and miss from home. Hopefully the break from posting fragments throughout the day will allow me time to drum up something interesting to say on my blog. After all, as I said before it is wonderful, cheap therapy.

Reblogging this from another. I remember trying to explain this...

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 20:09:01 -0500

Reblogging this from another. I remember trying to explain this to a company back when I worked in the marketing world. had to explain it two different ways- 1- the company needed a twitter because clients were following individuals in the firm, and 2- there was nothing they could do if someone left that clients were following…

Where are the old posts?

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:16:49 -0500

I’ve been fighting with Tumblr for a while. Not able to get what I want out of it, but not exactly wanting to use wordpress again, I have sort of hacked my blog and restarted here. I have a few blogs tied into one account, and somehow, TheRRS got a little messy and I’m not able to post the way I’d like now that TheRRS is not a default blog on my tumblr account.

Not that you can tell whats going on behind the scenes…it’s still the same URL, but my old posts are still on my old Tumblr.

Here’s a link

http://therrs.tumblr.com/archive

Happy Holidays from Stumptown!

Tue, 27 Dec 2011 18:12:00 -0500

This has been an oddly cool Holiday season for us. This is the first time in fifteen years as a family, that we have spent the holidays virtually alone. As in, no extended family. Both the mister and I have a huge extended family and its not uncommon for us to be among thirty-odd guests during holiday dinners.

With the departure of my sister back to California, that leaves just us up here. The rest of our families are scattered across Northern and Southern California, Nevada, the East Coast, Honduras and across the ocean in Fiji, Hawaii, New Zealand and Australia. So, when I say alone, the six of us plus our furry kids really means “alone.”

We spent the Thanksgiving holiday “back home” in San Francisco and the East Bay with the misters family.

As soon as we came back home to Portland, we didn’t waste any time getting into the Holiday spirit. We chopped down a few trees to decorate…

…Only, the mini had a few other ideas about decorating- and since then we’ve had a tree 3/4 bare. Not to worry. We had two other trees out of reach that we stashed the presents under.

Moving along to things the mini couldn’t wreck, we decided that holiday baking would be something fun to do. Only, the mister had his wisdom teeth out a couple weeks ago and he’s still suffering. Through two rounds of baking over the last two weeks, and one last-ditch baking effort during Christmas afternoon, he really hasn’t enjoyed much of the tasty treats.

We started off making a batch of Russian tea cakes, peppermint bark with both Ghiradelli white and milk chocolates, and candy cane cookies. For round two we did another tray of peppermint bark and a batch of lemon-vanilla meringues and peppermint meringues. Finally, sick of peppermint… Christmas afternoon we made some wonderful sugar cookies. I have to admit, it was really fun to make such a basic cookie and then paint on a glaze like frosting and sprinkles. They were delicious!

And the mister, being the awesome guy he is… made an amazing Apricot glazed ham for Christmas dinner. Seeing as it was “just us” and the mister wouldn’t be able to eat much, I figured I’d only make from scratch the few things that I cared to enjoy. Not like the boys would notice the difference anyway.

So, I settled on splurging on stuffing. I started out with a Marsee bakery loaf of sourdough and diced it into cubes. I tossed the cubes in a drizzle of olive oil and Herbs de Provence and then baked them until they were crisp and slightly browned. I let them sit out over night —even with crouton capers loose in my house (son #2)! Christmas afternoon, when the ham was just about done, I sautéed two shallots, about eight cloves of garlic and sliced celery. I tossed in the croutons and doused with broth until it was nice and mushy. The mister definitely enjoyed.

The skimp items were yams (I had just made these from scratch for Thanksgiving) and the cranberry (oddly, the boys like the jiggly crap that comes from the can). The green beans I made in a skillet atop the BBQ when the mister was done with our ~~pig~~ ham. But those were not touched by anyone but myself. No surprises there. I like to avoid tears on Christmas, so I didn’t say anything about the avoidance of the greens and let the kids eat cookies. Just because, it was our “first” Christmas as a family. And, because I am a bad mom :)

I hope you all celebrated (or not) with loved ones and friends. I hope you enjoyed each others company and cheered for the small and often overlooked enjoyments in life. Here’s to 2012, friends!