Ill Doctrine on the Little Hater inside us all.
The anticipation of what will come is typically so much worse than the reality. And yet it’s so hard to get started time and again, due more to self-criticism than any bystander’s judgment.
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I’ve been enjoying the trail of MEDIA DIET posts over at The Atlantic and was especially thrilled to find out what Ezra Klein reads a few weeks ago.
I’m a bit of a news junkie myself, so I thought I’d take a walk through what I read on a regular basis with the help of Google Reader trends. It is probably best to start by saying that I don’t own a TV, so RSS feeds are the basis of my news world.
As a night owl, I do most of my media consumption between 7 p.m. – 1 a.m. because it’s uninterrupted reading time once I’ve made it home from the gym and whatever afterwork commitments I have on a given day.
I start any news dive with a visit to the Huffington Post to see what’s trending. I love using it as a starting point because as I begin following the aggregated content back to its home source, I wind up pinging across a number of news sites I wouldn’t necessarily visit daily otherwise. It is also rare for me to miss the Rachel Maddow Show on MSNBC (videos are released online about an hour after the show ends each weeknight), and I catch most episodes of The Daily Show.
As I write this post, there are 167 feeds in my reader, so this post is hardly exhaustive in reviewing what I read. It is impossible to keep up with everything, but I find that each time I remove a feed, I somehow wind up adding a few more. So I let my topics of interest ebb and flow over time.
For current events I follow parts of the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Mother Jones, ProPublica, Washington Post, Salon and TreeHugger. For tech news, I head to TechCrunch and Mashable.
The blogs I read are disparate to say the least. I read Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Dish, Center for American Progress’s Think Progress, BoingBoing, BigThink, Jezebel.
Paul Krugman, Nicholas Kristof, Ezra Klein, Michelle Goldberg, Robert Reich, Jon Taplin and Jay Smooth provide lots of food for thought.
In case you hadn’t noticed, I find culture and politics fascinating, so Talking Points Memo and the latest Pew Research statistics are regular reads.
I also read for entertainment value – Indexed, ChartPorn and Joy the Baker.
The most surprising item in my reader is probably Michael Hyatt‘s blog. He’s the CEO of a Christian Publishing Company who writes excellent posts on leadership.
I’m not a huge fan of print magazines. They tend to stack up for 3 or 4 months before I finally flip through them. It is a rare day that I read a magazine cover to cover. Current subscriptions: Wired, Fast Company and Ode.
And, of course, there’s my 50-book goal each year.
In between all the reading, I keep up with some TV thanks to the Intertubes and Netflix: Bones, House, Vampire Diaries, 30 Rock and How I Met Your Mother during the regular network season and Rescue Me, The Closer, Leverage, In Plain Sight and True Blood online and by DVD in the off season.
That’s a basic overview of my media consumption. What about you?
I stumbled across a CareerRocketeer post that asks, “What Does Your Resume Say About You?” Though we spent much of election year 2008 wordling speech after speech to determine candidate’s key ideas and issues, this blogger suggests using Wordle with your resume to evaluate what message you’re getting across.
In my ongoing exploration to figure out who and what I want to be when I grow up, I’m typically eliminating things I don’t want to do. I’ve yet to hit the niche where my skills and interests fully collide. When it comes to to the things I love to engage in, it’s heartening to see my resume is actually starting to point me in the right direction.
I was pleasantly surprised by the pictoral representation of my resume because it does, in fact, use language that I talk about myself and my interests. Pushing my career trajectory towards contributing to overall community wellness (social, financial, environmental), through my ethical leadership and project management, is where the work is in progress.
I doubt I’ll ever be passionate about networking and large rooms full of people, but it’s a necessary part of the career world. Alexis Bauer helps make it a bit less stressful.
Since life seems to be turning around for me, I’m hoping I’ve put my days of epic failing behind me.
I ran across this video tonight that puts failure in a different perspective. The lesson: if you’ve never failed, you’ve never lived. And they’ve got the bio briefs of lots of household names to prove it.
Seems like some of our country’s greatest assets got the failing out of the way first, to pave the way to greater things. Here’s hoping!
I’m on the road from Los Angeles to the DC Metro area this week. Starting a new job in DC on May 12th. Since I’m not blogging, thought I’d pull together my random thoughts from the road that I’ve been posting to Facebook and Twitter.
April 26
Hence forth, people can no longer exchange jewelry, merely unprocessed mineral chunks. Visit Tucson’s Desert Museum to understand why.
who knew — deep dish pizza — cheese peeled off of course — in Tucson is darned good. Try Zachary’s.
April 27
There is a Dairy Queen every five miles in TX.
Made it Abilene Texas. 100K residents and I swear 100K motels. PS to RJL: when noting I should make Abilene my first sleep stop after Tucson, you forgot to consider not one, but 2 time zone changes making my day even longer. Left @ 8am, got in at 10:30pm.
When planning your trip route, take into consideration changing time zones. It makes a HUGE difference. Lesson learned.
Before writing off a larger up front cost for simplified moving, consider that costs of doing it yourself + the unexpected. (I could have shipped everything and just flown east for not much more than the cost of shipping/driving.)
April 28
edit: SW texas is DQ after DQ, central texas is cracker barrel over and over, NE scattered. Arkansas smells like grass & is v. green
Texas sun is so hot it melted my pilates fitness circle light and the glue off the soles of my merrell mules, thus shoes fell apart
Apparently I left my hair brush in the motel this morning, back in TX. grumble grumble. I need to go to CVS in Knoxville tomorrow
Arlen Spector changed parties? the things you miss when you spend all day on the road
April 29
As seen in Arkansas Billboard A: You will see God soon. Billboard B: Starbucks next exit. . . coincidence? I think not.
Billboard for local chicken joint in Arkansas: Milkshakes are the icing on chicken
Tennessee was beautiful the whole drive across the state. Lush and green the whole way
All those full, lush, green tree tops with vines covering tree trunks — I thought of broccoli piles at a farmer’s market all day.
Saw more state troopers in Tennessee today than in AZ, TX, and AR combined
Does going to the outlets in Lebanon to buy sports bras @ the Reebok store count as a cultural excursion in Tennessee?
Saw more cows in Tennessee than Texas. Crazy, right?
Had I left a week later, I think I might have seen all the wildflowers in bloom. Tiny bunches of pink, yellow, white, and purple popping up cross-country.
Baymont Inns are affordable places to stay when on the road. Their King size beds can fit 3 people easy, four if spooning.
Five years ago, you’d be lucky if your Hotel offered Internet Access to guest, now even the Super 8/Motel 6 posts Free Wireless on its billboards.
photo by h-d-k
Being happy doesn’t mean that everything is perfect. It means that you’ve decided to look beyond the imperfections.
– anonymous
If you’ve been out of work for a while, or plan to be, check with your car insurance agent about pricing. My agent called this week, regarding a different policy, and checked my rates. By adjusting the projected annual mileage used in the formula that determines my rate (since I’m not commuting to work everyday) I can save about $200 per year.
photo by oskay
During my blogging hiatus it appears I picked up about 10 new subscribers. I don’t know where you came from but welcome aboard! Don’t be shy about leaving comments. No blogger wants to think she’s simply talking to the trees in the forest.
photo by kylemay
In the past few months I’ve been reading A LOT more and playing with my twitter account like a kid with a new toy at Christmas.
I’m very active over on twitter, if you’d like to dialogue there.
Otherwise, I’ve been more in my head, absorbing and processing ideas and information. And I do hope to get back to a more regular blogging schedule eventually.
Please excuse the transition.
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