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yourmandevine · 3 years

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Some stuff that made me happy in 2020, in no particular order

God send you no greater loss. It’s something my grandmother said a lot — a bit of highly Irish Catholic wisdom intended to remind you, warmly but sharply, that whatever you’re currently suffering through isn’t all that bad compared to what lots of other people are dealing with. That it probably isn’t too much to complain about, in the grand scheme of things. That you should, instead, be grateful for what you’ve got, big and small and everything in between.

God sent a great many people a great many unfathomable losses this year, and as hard as it felt at times, our family wasn’t among them; we’re lucky, in the big picture. In the past, people have recommended I try writing those reasons down, to give myself a list of stuff to be thankful for, for the times it’s tough to summon up the gratitude. I figured the end of the year was as good a time as any to make that list, to highlight the stuff that helped me get through this year — the reasons big, small, and in between.

So: here goes.

Peanut butter and jelly

I haven’t counted how many peanut butter and jelly sandwiches I’ve eaten since March 11, which is good, because that would be an absurd thing to do, and a sure sign that I have succumbed to a very specific kind of madness. It’s also good, though, because I would undoubtedly be ashamed by the number; the figure would be titanic, like the unsinkable ship of same name, or the iceberg that sunk it.

Or, at least, I would be ashamed under normal circumstances. This fuckin’ year required whatever flotation device you could find, and you know what I found in the fridge and cupboard? A couple of slices of bread, some strawberry jam, and some goddamn Skippy.

Need a weird mid-morning “brunch” after not having breakfast because you went right from waking up to remote school with the 6-year-old? Crank up a PB&J with that third cup of coffee. Need to pack something in the diaper bag to feed everyone while you’re out at the playground for the afternoon? Stack ‘em up, son. Need a late snack after working the overnight shift filing weird bubble playoff columns? Three letters, one ampersand, one love.

I need to eat better in 2021. But I kind of needed to eat sort of like shit to get through 2020, and time and again, when your man needed it most, PB&J was there.

Sunday night Zoom sessions with college friends

I know that most of us started something like this back in March; I’m not sure how many have stuck with it. I hope the answer is “a lot,” because honestly, knowing that I’m going to end the week by seeing a few friends — some here in Brooklyn but mostly beyond our reach for safety’s sake, some who’ve moved away — has felt like a stabilizing agent on more than a few occasions. It’s important, and no small blessing, to have people in your life who really know you, weird messy ugly bits and all, and in front of whom you can let everything go.

That gallery view’s provided a place to vent, to seethe, to laugh, to cry, and to try to find some semblance of center before heading back into another week. I’m grateful for it, and for the people in those little boxes. Except for the time they reminded me that, when I was 18, I was pretty sure I was a Pacey, and they were all extremely confident I was a Dawson. They were right, but still: a bitter pill to swallow, then and now.

Olivia calling herself “Dr. Bloody”

She took out her little toy doctor kit and just turned into a cackling villain.

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Deeply disconcerting, yes, but also adorable.

All Fantasy Everything

What got me in the door was the conceit: three very funny stand-up comedians (Ian Karmel, David Gborie, Sean Jordan), often with a very funny guest but sometimes without, pick some topic or another and engage in a fantasy draft of their favorite aspects or representations of that topic. (It is, crucially, a serpentine draft. Now what is that? That’s a great question.) Some favorite examples: Mikes; Words That You Think Make You Sound Smart, vols. 1 and 2; Things You Yell After You Dunk on Someone; Fictional Athletes; Crimes We’d Like to Commit. Yeah. It’s that kind of podcast.

What kept me around was the friendship. Listen to an episode and it becomes really clear really quickly just how much the three hosts love each other, how much fun they have being around each other and making one another laugh. The warmth radiates, just pours out of the speakers; in a year where I sorely needed some good vibes, I appreciated my regular check-ins with the Good Vibes Gang to just ... unclench for an hour and a half or so.

Drinking beer

OK, I’ll admit: This doesn’t sound great for me. It’s true, though. I really like beer. (We brewed one in our kitchen, which I realize is something of a “bearded guy in Brooklyn” cliche, but here we are. It was exciting to complete a project, and it tasted OK-ish.) At some points this year, it didn’t feel like there wasn’t much to look forward to, and sometimes drinking some High Lifes or Narragansett tall boys — with my wife in our living room, with friends on the computer, whatever — helped take the edge off a shitty day/week/month/year. I look forward to being able to do that outside with people again.

The Good Place

I am sure some very smart cultural critics and political thinkers and social revolutionaries have forwarded compelling arguments for why this show is Bad, Actually, because that seems to be more or less true about most things, whether because said thing is Actually Bad or because the economics of the attention economy on the internet functionally necessitate the composition and publication of pretty much every position on pretty much every issue, and especially ones that present a counterargument for why you shouldn’t like the thing you like, and might be kind of a piece of shit for liking it. But I liked this half-hour comedy about the way the universe might be put together, why we should try to take better care of each other, and how doing so might be a pretty great way to take better care of ourselves.

Andrew let me write about it a little bit for a big project we did before the series finale aired, which was really nice of him. I found myself thinking about this part a lot this year:

I also thought a lot about Peeps Chili, but that happens every year.

Taking pictures of my dog

Check out this flumpy goddamn champion:

“Lugar is a good boy” is the main takeaway here. They don’t all have to be complicated.

Schitt’s Creek

I know we’re not alone in this, but we inhaled this show this year. A half-hour comedy about people being laid low, learning how to deal with who they actually are, and finding some grace and community and opportunities for growth kind of hit the spot, I guess.

One of the most wholesale enjoyable ensemble comedy casts I can remember; Catherine O’Hara was already in Cooperstown, but what she made with Moira Rose only polishes her plaque. I’ll never be able to describe with any specificity the thing Chris Elliott does, but I know it has made me laugh since I was a child too young to understand the Letterman bits or see Cabin Boy in the theater, and it’s probably going to make me laugh until I am dead.

I love that people who, for years, never got to see themselves or people like them on screen got to see David Rose on screen and maybe recognize themselves a little bit. The idea that seeing the David/Patrick relationship might make them maybe feel a little more at home, a little safer and more whole, makes me happy. Sad, about the before, but happy, about the now and the what comes next.

Past that, I just love how what was ostensibly a family-and-friends production for a Canadian channel just got absolutely everything right—the tone, the look, the sound, the theme song, the cast, the jokes, my goodness, the jokes—and before long, the rest of the world just got it. Like catching a fastball square on the barrel. Something the show clearly knew a little bit about.

Finding new outdoor places it was safe to go

Necessity is the mother of invention, and the need to give the kids a place to be that wasn’t unnecessarily dangerous but also wasn’t inside our two-bedroom apartment led us to do more exploring than we had before. Shirley Chisholm State Park is great. Canarsie Pier was a fun place to spend a Sunday morning; so’s Canarsie Playground. If we got there early enough or made our peace with some rain, the beaches at Jacob Riis Park and Fort Tilden were pretty rad this summer. I lived in Staten Island from ages 8 through 18, and during breaks throughout college, and don’t think I ever hiked in High Rock Park — that’s dumb, because it was nice!

Even if all those little excursions did was kill a little time and reduce the overall stress level of the four humans stuck in our four walls, that’s not nothing. Some days this year, it was everything.

Cobra Kai

I know I’m late here; I didn’t rush to seek it out because I don’t consider myself a huge fan of The Karate Kid, or at least not a big enough fan to sign up for YouTube’s premium service. I checked it out when it came to Netflix, though, and I honestly can’t believe how much I enjoyed this show. Give me “dumb, but with heart” every day of the week.

I believe in Miguel Diaz; I believe in Johnny Lawrence; I believe I will be firing up Season 3 next month, and perhaps drinking some Coors Banquets in its honor. (I cannot, however, believe how the “get him a body bag” thing came back around, but that’s neither here nor there.)

Closing unread tabs

I’m a serial hoarder of links, and I am bad at finishing all of them. I’ve tried to get into Pocket and Instapaper, but I’ve never been able to turn that sort of workflow — open link, save to third-party service, go back to third-party service later to read, then delete from there — into something that felt instinctual, natural, or habitual. So: lots of tabs. Like, lots of tabs.

This was a dicier proposition than usual in 2020, because cutting my work week in half to be able to more effectively coparent two kids who didn’t have school or day care for most of the year meant less time to read things.

I tried to do my best to keep up with the important stuff for work, and to read at least some stuff about how other parents were dealing with their anxiety/anger/depression/frustration at having to be on 24/7 and work, and to stay abreast of (at least some of) what was happening in the world. Sometimes, though, I would wake up and realize I’d been holding onto blog posts about Really Interesting Rotation Decisions on the 11th-Seeded Team in the East or whatever for literally nine months, and I would go against my nature and just hit the eject button on a 25-deep window, and something amazing would happen: I wouldn’t get fired for being shitty at my job. I would move on with my day, and I would feel about 10 pounds lighter.

I still keep too much stuff open. (As we speak, I’ve got three different Chrome windows open on two different laptops. I choose not to count the total tabs.) But I do so knowing that, if it gets too heavy, I can experience the momentary joy of surrendering to the inevitability that I can’t catch everything. In that moment, I feel OK with my decay.

Reading writers I wasn’t familiar with before

Two in particular stand out in my mind: Nekias Duncan, now of BasketballNews.com, who does excellent film breakdowns and statistical analysis, and Katie Heindl, who writes basketball stuff of all types all over the place, and strings sentences together in a way that scratches an itch inside my brain. I’m grateful I got more chances to read them this year, I look forward to bigger and better things for both of them, and I’m hopeful that, if things calm down and our schedules go back to something approximating normalcy, I’ll have more bandwidth to hunt out more new voices in the year ahead.

The time I ambushed my wife as she was trying to break down and put away the girls’ space tent

Pretty good.

Siobhan learning to ride a bicycle (with training wheels, but still)

The moment passed pretty quickly; Not Exactly A Mechanic over here can’t get the training wheels to reliably work right without either loosening them too much or tightening them so much that she can’t pedal it. In that first moment, though, and for as long as it lasted, it was really great to see her get excited about doing something new, big kid shit, for the first time.

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She was proud. I was proud of her. And then we went to a playground for a few hours. Pretty good day.

Tyler Tynes roasting me

Tyler did some incredible work this year — The Cam Chronicles is getting deserved praise as one of 2020′s best podcasts, and his reporting on the Movement for Black Lives was exemplary. It’s hard to top this, though:

You know what the messed up part is? I was excited to tell him what I was doing, just because I knew the reaction would be so violent. Like a body rejecting a transplant. So lucky to have such a dear, dear friend.

PUP

I’m late on everything, so I didn’t start listening to PUP until the spring of 2019, but I haven’t really stopped since. This year has been too sedentary too often; this band is too kinetic to allow me to stay there.

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“Bloody Mary Kate and Ashley Kate” is never more than about 20 minutes away from returning to the front of my mind. I would fucking love for it to be safe enough to watch these guys live at some point, and I am absolutely going to take Steve up on his offer.

Someone sending me a shirt based on a joke I tweeted

First:

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Then:

I’m not sure you should be rewarding my behavior, SnoCoPrintShop, but I appreciate it all the same.

Which reminds me:

Family dinner/family movie night

My wife works in Manhattan and commutes back on the train, and we've tried to prioritize getting the girls to bed early since they were little, so that doesn’t leave much of a window between when she gets home and they go in the tub for us all to connect; before everything shut down, we almost never really ate together. We’re still not great about it, but for a while now we’ve carved out Saturday as family dinner night, where we sit down to eat and talk about our “up” from the day — something that happened that made us feel good or happy, or something we’re looking forward to. (We used to talk about our “down,” too, but that kind of seemed like overkill. Why try to focus on more bad shit right now, you know?)

Then we settle in for a movie, with who gets to pick rotating each week. It’s mostly been Pixar, which has been great but also has its drawbacks; after she caught me crying during one of them (maybe the Bing-Bong scene in Inside Out? or Miguel singing to Grandma Coco?), Siobhan straight up told me, “You need to get yourself together, man.” We just watched My Neighbor Totoro, too, which they loved, so we’re probably going to try some more Miyazaki soon. It’s a really simple thing, but it’s one we rarely made time for before, and it’s been really nice to manufacture something positive that we can share and look forward to together.

Sometimes looking like a shiftless drifter

No shade to anyone who felt strongly about getting a lineup or whatever, but I haven’t really felt like going to the barbershop was worth the risk, and I continue to refuse to believe that my wife can actually pull off the fade she’s long wanted to give me. (It is also possible that she just means she’s intending to run my fade, and that I will before long wind up cold-cocked and slumped by my bride of nine years.) So I’ve just kind of been growing out my hair like it was when I was single, and sometimes been letting my beard get kind of out of control too, and, well, I sort of like looking a little bit like a Wildling, it turns out.

I have since trimmed things up a little. It didn’t go over well with my youngest. Oh, well. I’ll try to do better next time.

My wife and daughter singing the Pixies

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We don’t know all the words to too many lullabies, so we sing the ones we do know the words to. This will probably come back to bite us in the years ahead. For now, though: Pretty good.

Doughboys’ Tournament of Chompions: Munch Madness: Mac Attack

I can’t believe how invested I became in Nick Wiger and Mike Mitchell’s quest to determine the best menu item at McDonald’s in a 64-seed tournament that spawned hours and hours of delightfully funny audio featuring all-time home-run guests like Jon Gabrus and Nicole Byer, who gleefully feed into the often warm, sometimes antagonistic, always entertaining chemistry between the two hosts. I have also never found myself wanting to go to McDonald’s more in my entire life. I have hit the drive-thru a couple of times since, and the boys are right: The McDonald’s fountain Coke does just hit different.

Sound Only

I’ve lost track of whether or not a 38-year-old is considered a millennial, but I’m quite confident that I’m not exactly plugged into “the millennial lifestyle” as my teammates Justin Charity and Micah Peters discuss it on their podcast, which relaunched this summer. Doesn’t matter, though, because I love hearing Charity and Micah talk to each other even if I don’t know what they’re talking about.

Their conversation about Dave Chappelle was great. After listening to their Travis Scott episode, I felt like I kind of understood who he is and why he occupies the space he does in pop culture now. I had no idea how they were going to get me to give a shit about set photos from The Batman, but this they not only got me there, but wended their way toward blaming 50 Cent for needing to know who Groot is to have a conversation on the internet, which is something for which Abraham Lincoln did not die. The show is good, it's getting better, it’s fun to hear them talk their shit, and Charity’s regular bellowing of “I, TOO, AM AMERICA” has made me smile for four straight months.

Siobhan’s letters and notes

She’s in first grade now, and she’s taken to communicating her feelings through the written word. A lot.

I won’t pretend that I loved all of these in the moment. I can only get so upset, though, when she’s already writing with such a clear voice. (And trying to use proper punctuation. (And drawing little cartoons to drive the point home.)

Palm Springs

I’m having a hard time remembering too many specifics about it right now, which probably means it’d be a good thing to rewatch over the holidays. But, as I’m sure many people noted many months before we got around to watching it, a comedy about living the same day over and over again, and about trying to figure out how to make your life mean something when everything seems meaningless, scratched a pretty particular, and particularly important, itch this year. It could’ve been twice as long, and I would’ve eaten up every second of Andy Samberg and Cristin Miloti together.

I’m pretty sure I cried, although this year, that doesn’t necessarily mean much. Also, put Conner O’Malley in more things.

Joining our union’s bargaining committee

I won’t say too much about this, but I will say that becoming an active participant in the process of a labor union negotiating its first contract with management has been an extremely educational experience. It’s pushed me to have conversations, sometimes difficult ones, about our priorities as a staff and a company. It's helped me get closer with the other past and present members of the BC, and has led me to start developing relationships with members of our staff that I otherwise might not have had much of an opportunity to get to know.

The organizing work takes time, effort, and energy, but trying to do what I can to help take better care of my colleagues has been well worth all of that. Here’s hoping that in 2021 we can reach a deal that helps make our workplace even better, stronger, and more equitable for all of us.

Publishing a story about Stevie Nicks’ Fajita Roundup

I swear this is true: After I accepted my offer to work at The Ringer, but before I started, I told a friend that one thing I was excited about was that you had the chance to work on offbeat stuff here, in both the “kind of weird” and “not about the NBA” senses. That, I thought, might maybe open the door to me getting to write a story about a Saturday Night Live sketch I saw when I was a teenager about Stevie Nicks from Fleetwod Mac running a cheap Tex-Mex restaurant in Sedona, Arizona — a sketch that I wasn’t sure anyone else remembered, but that was stuck in my head forever.

That story ran on May 26.

A lot of people seemed to like it.

Accomplishing this goal was, as dumb as this might sound, a highlight of my year, and, honestly, a highlight of my career. I’d like to do some more stuff like this next year, time permitting; we’ll see. Whether or not I do, I got to do this. I’ll always have that.

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foxwatchesanime · 4 years

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How I stopped caring about comments: A rambly post by me

This is rambly so hold onto your seats, I apologies.

I’ve been thinking a lot about comment/review culture in the last few months, particularly after returning to a brand new fandom as a writer and regular content creator. Maybe this is something I’ve been thinking about for a while, maybe not, but I wanted to share my thoughts on the way I perceive comments, how it’s changed for me since I’ve been in fandom and I’d love to hear from other people what their opinion is and how they relate to comments on their work.

I’ve been creating content in fandom spaces for about eleven years now. I started out on YouTube when I joined my first fandom, Merlin, and I made my first fanvideos in 2009. In December of 2009, I published my first fanfiction, plus one sequel which remains unfinished as well as a few other smaller projects. In October of 2010, I published my first podfic and would go on to publish two more. My focus in fandom had always been YouTube, where I regularly created fanvideos. My schedule was never consistent, as with most vidders back in the day, but I’d be comfortable in saying I posted regularly discounting three unintentional hiatuses, one in 2013 following the Merlin finale, one in 2015 probably due to a lack of inspiration and one in 2017 after what I was sure was going to be my permanent comeback to YouTube, only for my hard drive to break and delete all my footage yeeeeeey.

I’ve now made an actual, official return to my original platform, this time creating videos for my new passion and fandom: anime. Since February of 2020 I’ve also been regularly publishing fic and have no desire to stop doing so. I’m thoroughly invested in new fandom spaces again and am engaging with its fans and the content.

But the one thing I have seen change drastically in my approach to things is commenting, following and general engagement.

Let’s take a step back.

When I first started posting content, comments were not something I even had in my consciousness. I think I knew YouTube comments existed, but I didn’t really pay attention to it. I didn’t even know what subscribers were until I started hearing other people talk about them and then I suddenly felt like it’s something I should be keeping an eye on myself.

In a centuries old vlog of mine that is now private on my channel, I noticed that when I hit 100 subscribers, I made a video thanking everyone because I was so excited that with more subscribers, I was going to “make more friends.” Oh dear xD

But the truth is, I have been consistently and chronically bad at keeping up with or caring about the analytics of my various platforms. It wasn’t till writing this post today that I went to check my FF.net account to see how many comments my first two Merlin fics ever got. I still couldn’t tell you my exact number of YouTube or Ao3 subscribers, how many hits or kudos my fic have and I don’t think I’ve ever checked my bookmarks for notes, or whatever you’re able to leave on there.

Commenting culture on YouTube, for all my joking earlier, was primarily about connection, at least back then. Most of the old guard have moved on and those who have remained are now vidding in other fandoms. The social aspect of YouTube in my opinion has changed dramatically since I was at my peak output on there, but I remember how interactive the comments sections used to be. They literally were, where you made friends.

A couple of years ago, me and a friend of mine started a Merlin podcast called Merlisten. We created it for fun and without many expectations of what might come out of it. And it was this that changed my relationship with commenting for good.

Doing Merlisten felt, for the first time in a long time, like pure creativity and passion without anyone’s permission. We always encouraged people to leave feedback as one does, but I don’t think either of us expected to get much, if any. Even considering the incredible support we’ve received with feedback coming in almost every single episode now, there is still a clear and overwhelming gap between the amount of comments given to an episode of Merlisten, to one of my old fanvids or fics. It’s even more interesting when one considers how much more effort and time went into creating Merlisten compared to say, editing or writing, at least for me personally. The amount of man hours spent on creating one 2.5 hour episode from pre-production to final posting often outweighs any other video or chapter I’ve created. Not always, but often.

What struck me as interesting, however, was that even though comments weren’t always consistent and I always love and continue to love reading them, it’s not what was fuelling me to work hard on this project. I was doing it because I adored it and I knew it was something I was proud to put into the world.

And that literally changed everything.

I think for a long time, I was always trying to cater my art to what might get the most attention or please the widest demographic of people. It’s how you think when you’re young and you don’t know any better. But for the first time, I was creating something on my own terms that I had no idea if anyone would even listen to and the actual creative process of making said art was ten times more rewarding than any single comment I could ever read. Which really, what I realised, is what art is supposed to be. I can safely say that if Merlisten didn’t get a single comment from here on in, I would still want to see it to its conclusion for one very simple reason: Because I had something to share.

This brings me to my recent return to writing fic in fandom and it’s not a decision I’ve regretted for a second. More than anything, I’ve realised how personal art can really be, especially when it’s in writing. I’ve found it revealing and cathartic and fascinating in a way that I didn’t ever imagine.

But more importantly, I’ve realised that the real beauty for me in engaging in art is the ability to get an emotional response from it or to relate to it. And that goes for both other people’s work and my own. I can feel just as invested in my own work as someone else’s and that’s not because I think my work is amazing, it’s because I know it’s come from something that was living in me. When I put something out there that I made with my own two hands, that feeling now trumps any sort of feedback I could possibly get and that’s the endorphin I live off.

Don’t mistake this for me not liking comments, that’s obviously not true. My brain gets the same dopamine hit as anyone’s when I get a notification for something or other, but I’ve realised that I have a very specific relationship with comments that I definitely didn’t have before, if my requests for review on FF.net is anything to go by.

Now, what I find exciting and thrilling is the thought that, if writing this fic got this sort of emotional response out of me, the writer, I wonder if there are other people out there who think the same way I do? Who have a similar way of experiencing joy or suffering or humour or who like the same things as me? That, is an insanely invigorating feeling. And then when someone chooses to take time out of their day to tell you that what came from your head is the same sort of way they feel about life? That’s not a comment, that’s not feedback, that’s a connection you have with another person. And that’s where I start to get excited. And it’s taken me this fucking long to realise it.

Honestly, I was really worried upon returning to writing and vidding this year that my experience working in digital marketing, where everything is about numbers and social media is all about engagement and nothing else, that I would be overwhelmed and not be able to switch off the part of my brain that’s been trained to think like that. I’m so relieved that that’s not the case.

As previously mentioned, I suck at giving a shit about analytics and looking at my own stats. I couldn’t give a flying fuck. But I did just go and check my YouTube videos since returning back to vidding. Not a single one of them has views over 200 at this point. Most have less than 100. My most viewed video on YouTube has 57,000 views. And the thing is, there might have been a time when I looked at that and thought, well, this means I suck. This means I can’t make art. This means there’s no point to it.

But no, that's not true.

The point is not how many people see it, how many people like it, how many people comment on it. The point is that I made it. I’m going to continue making YouTube videos despite the fact that the algorithm will destroy any chances they have at getting engagement or views. Even if not one single person comments on them. Because when I’ve finally rendered a new video, or finished proof reading a new chapter, I feel so fucking happy that everything else is just window dressing to me now.

Because not only is online engagement and following such a stab in the dark these days anyway with algorithms changing and trends moving constantly, but this is the real truth about comments, following and feedback:

The truth is, I don’t need a stranger on the internet to praise me so that I can feel good about my art. The day that I start doing that, I’ve already lost. I used to think that way on a regular basis. Guess what, it didn’t make me produce better art. It didn’t make my life better. Because being validated by others never does. It doesn’t matter how many keysmashes I might get or how many sonnets or kind words, because If I don’t like what I create, there isn’t a single human being on the planet who will make me like it, no matter what they say or how they say it. For others, this might not be the case. But this is my reality.

I know this, because I recently speed-wrote and published a fic for a fanweek. I wrote 13k in about 8hrs. So far, it’s received nothing but positive words. But it doesn’t matter. After I published it, I had a crisis about how it wasn’t good enough, that there should have been an extra arc, that it ended too quickly, that there wasn’t a climax. Even as the comments came in, it didn’t change my mind. Because other people’s comments will never really lead to fulfilment.

I want you all to know that I get emotional over every single comment that is sent to me. Every personal story, ever keysmash and heartfelt thoughtful message that took the time to analyse my work. Connecting with you guys has been one of the biggest joys of entering this fandom. But it’s not going to be what fuels me to create and to carry on doing the best work I can. All I can do is treat it as the wonderful privilege that it is, and not any part of the reason I do it.

In conclusion:

Finally, at age 27 and in the midst of enjoying fandom after a very long period of being either meh about it or lurking, I finally feel content with the fact that I want to create in order to put things out into the world that I worked hard on, that I’m passionate about and that hopefully, in whatever way it might be, it might have touched someone who feels the same things too. It makes me feel accomplished, it makes me feel like I might be contributing something small to the world and it makes me feel like maybe one other person was made happy by it. And even if they never tell me that and if no one else ever comments on what I create, or even if they comment on it in spaces that I never see; private servers, chats between friends or blogs that I don’t follow, that’s also fine. Because there’s always at least one person who is going to feel happy that she made something. And that’s me.

The short version: I never used to care about comments, then I did, and now I no longer do.

Sorry for the ramble, but I wanted this here for myself to look back upon in case my opinion ever changes on this or I ever start to lose my way again and feel overwhelmed. I’d love to hear your guys’ experiences with this sort of thing and whether you’ve ever felt bogged down by the need for feedback.

#writing #fandom #vidding #essay #personal

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thesimplyluxuriouslife · 5 years

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255: 34 Inspiring Daily Rituals to Ignite Your Creativity

We talk quite often about the importance of routine, and how by having a routine, we actually set ourselves free, especially our minds. And it is in that vein that Mason Curry shares his two books Daily Rituals. His second is focused entirely on Women at Work, sharing the routines and preferences of creative women who lived and created over the past four centuries.

I thoroughly enjoyed his second book, even more than the first which I also found great inspiration. It was refreshing to see so many women living their lives in a variety of different ways, but all in which they discovered worked well for them and the craft they most loved.

Not all of the ideas resonated with me, but it was wonderful to get into the minds for a moment of these women and how they approached their days. I highlighted vigorously from beginning to end, and would like to share 34 daily routines to consider to enable your creative ideas to flow freely and without withdrawal.

Some will speak to you, some will not, but each one is inspired by a woman's routine which is shared in the book: Daily Rituals: Woman at Work - 143 artists on how they paint, write, perform, direct, choreograph, design, sclpt, compose, dance, etc.

~Be sure to tune into the audio version of the podcast where much more discussion takes place on each point.

1.Begin with a hot glass of lemon water

Designer Elsa Schiaparelli woke up at 8 am, sipped lemon-juice-and-water and a cup of tea for breakfast as she read the papers, handled private correspondence, made telephone calls and gave the menus of the day to the cook.

2. Wake up early if that is when your creativity is most fruitful

—Lillian Hellman would wake up at 6am.

—Marie Bashkirtseff would wake up at 6am

—Maggie Hambling wakes up at 5am each morning

"I get up between three or four o'clock in the morning, because that's my best writing time." —Octavia Butler

3. If spending less time with people fuels your creativity, embrace it fully

"I enjoy people best if I can be alone much of the time. I used to worry about it because my family worried about it. And I finally realized: This is the way I am. That's that." —Octavia Butler in 1998

4. If traditional "holidays" don't work for you, create your own, or dive into what you love.

Coco Chanel worked six days a week, and dreaded Sundays and holidays. As she told one confidant, "That word, 'vacation,' makes me sweat."

5. Greet the day in a habitual way that sets the tone for a great day

6. Live your ideas, don't talk about them

"People would sit around and talk about things constantly. I never really went in for that. If you talk something out, you will never do it. You can spend every evening talking with your friends and colleagues about your dreams, but they will remain just that —dreams." —choreographer Martha Graham

7. Keep a small journal next to your bed to capture ideas

"I always have notebook and pencil on the table at my bedside. I may wake up in the middle of the night with something I want to put down." —American poet Edna St. Vincent Millay

8. If you work at home, carve out a part of the day to get out of the house and just absorb inspiration or let go of the day completely

"In the nocturnal evening, I get the hell out to some movie or damn play and I come back and sleep like a rock." —Frida Kahlo

9. Figure out the ingredients that are needed to let the ideas find you

To develop a new work of choreography, Agnes de Mille needed 'a pot of tea, walking space, privacy and an idea'.

10. Don't feel obligated to keep the same schedule when you are in the middle of creating your art or craft

Margaret Bourke-White required long periods of solitude to write, with as few interruptions as possible." In an interview with a Life photographer Nina Leen, Leen remembers after asking her if she would have lunch with her, "She told me she was writing a book and there was no hope of a lunch for several years.

11. Don't feel bad for loving your work and working on what you love beyond the traditional work hours.

"Everything seems petty and uninteresting, everything except my work . . . ". Russian-born painter and sculptor Marie Bashkirtseff

12. Do something during the day that is relaxing and keeps you present

'I relax before lunch by arranging flowers . . . When these are all beautifully arranged in bowls and vases, it's usually lunch time." —English actress Gertrude Lawrence

13. Have a studio or space of your own to create

"The most important thing is to have a studio and establish and preserve its atmosphere." —Agnes Martin

14. If you love solitude, embrace it

"But it is, as Yeats said, a 'solitary sedentary trade.' And I did a lot of gardening and cooked my own food, and listened to music, and of course I would read. I was really very happy. I can live a solitary life for month at a time, and it does me good." —poet Katherine Anne Porter

15. Trust your intuition as to what works best for you

"It's not right if it doesn't feel right." —English painter Bridget Riley

16. Find regular time to just read what you love

Rachel Whiteread [English sculptor] would "at some point stop for lunch, and she'd often spend an hour of the day reading sitting in a comfortable chair away from her desk.

17. Establish a flexible routine to work with what you need

Morning routine: "Zittel feeds her chickens, waters plants, and performs other outdoor chores before meditating, taking a shower, making breakfast and getting dressed. In the winter, Zittel's morning schedule reverses: She meditates, showers and eats breakfast first; then, once the sun has raised the outdoor temperature, she heads out on her hike and does chores. 'It's really all about establishing a flexible routine."Andrea Zittel, an American artist, in 2017

18. Don't quit trying to live the life you wish to live

"It never occurred to me that I couldn't live the life I wanted to lead. It never occurred to me that I could be stopped . . . I had this very simple view: that the reason people who start out with ideals or aspirations don't do what they dream of doing when they're young is because they quit. I thought, well, I won't quit." —Susan Sontag

19. Try a crossword puzzle like Joan Mitchell

20. Determine what view in your studio/sanctuary/work space is most productive for inspiration

"Where do I write? In a Morris chair beside the window, where I can see a few trees and a patch of sky, more or less blue." —Kate Chopin, American writer

21. End the day with a signal to your mind to relax

"During the performance I drink water with breadcrumbs, which is most refeshing. After the ballet I have a bath as soon as possible. Then I go out to dinner, as by that time I have an unmerciful hunger. When I get home I drink tea." —Russian prima ballerina Anna Pavlova

22. Let baths be your creative muse

"Baths also played a part in her creative process - a post-breakfast bath enjoyed regularly by Virginia Woolf.

23. Let lunch be a true mid-day break

At 1:00 p.m., Hambling has lunch, takes her Tibetan terrier, Lux, for a walk, and switches on the television to satisfy her tennis addiction.

24. Write when inspiration hits - even if it is in bed in the morning so as not lose the ideas.

25. Go outside and breathe in the fresh air

"Fresh air and cold water are my stimulants." —Harriet Martineau - the first female sociologist

26. Enjoy someone's company for tea, lunch or a walk regularly

Emily Post would regularly welcome a guest or two for tea in the afternoon.

27. It's okay for your personal time to be less than what others feel is acceptable

"It seems to me you have to have your personal life organized so that it takes as little of your time as possible. Otherwise you can't make your art." –Eleanor Antin

28. Don't expect the routine to come naturally, create one and stick with it as it enables you to flourish

29. Cook and walk

"The only other essential component of her day is a twice-daily walk with her dog, during which she avoids thinking about her writing project. In the evening, she makes herself a simple dinner and goes to bed at 10:00 or 11:00 p.m.." —Isabel Allende

30. Create space for your ideas to be seen

"Open a gap for them, create a space. Be patient." — Hilary Mantel

"I think the way to become inspired is to empty your mind and let things come into your mind." —Joan Jonas

31. Do you and don't apologize

"I live here as in Paris. I rise every day at 5 o'clock; I drink my two large glasses of hot water; I take my coffee; I write when I am alone, which is rare; I do my hair in company; I dine every day with the king, chez lui, or with him and les seigneurs. I make calls after dinner; I go to the theater; I return to my place at ten o'clock; I drink my hot water , and I go to bed." —Marie-Thérèse Rodet Geoffrin, a major salonniéres of the French Englightenment

32. Turn on music paired with your favorite drink to start the day

"I wake about nine, turn on the symphony and have juice, fruit and a pot of black coffee . . . " —Grace Hartigan, American painter

33. Leave evenings open for your social engagements

"In the evening, she would see a friend for dinner or attend another social engagement. But the real key to this perfect writing day, she said, was to know that the following day would be exactly the same." —Eudora Welty

34. Be patient until you find what works, then cherish it

"Trial and error, and then when you've found your needs, what feeds you, what is your instinctive rhythm and routine, then cherish it." —novelist Doris Lessing

~SIMILAR POSTS/EPISODES YOU MIGHT ENJOY:

~Why Not . . . Be Creative?

~The Benefit of Daily Rituals

~The Importance of a Daily Routine & How to Create One You Love, episode #164

Petit Plaisir:

~Chilled Cucumber and Yogurt Soup with Dill and Fresh Mint, a Patricia Wells recipe, click here for the recipe

~Why Not . . . Grow a(n) Herb Garden?

~Check out TSLL's IG account, see the Highlights and Part 3 of my FR Trip '18 - mid-roll to see the presentation of the dish in Provence.

~Chilled Cucumber and Yogurt Soup with Dill and Fresh Mint, enjoyed in Provence with Patricia Wells and the other cooking class students during the summer of 2018~

~the same dish served this past weekend as the second course during a dinner party at my home. Cool and crisp cucumber and yogurt soup.~

Tune in to the latest episode of The Simple Sophisticate podcast

#tsllpodcast thesimplesophisticate

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savingmyguts-blog · 5 years

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A month ago, I went on a blind date. My first blind date. Not only was it my first blind date, but it was also the first date of ANY kind that I had been on in years. That was actually why I told the friends setting us up that I didn’t want to know anything about him beforehand; I knew if I let myself think about the person, and thereby the whole world of dating, I would talk myself out of it before I even got to meet the guy. The date went well - like, unbelievably well. I can’t believe that was literally just 35 days ago, because I am truly crazy about this guy. I haven’t found one bad thing about him yet - until tonight.

For context: I have Crohn’s disease. It’s an inflammatory bowel disease, and I would tell you its symptoms, but one of the wildly frustrating parts about this disease is that there’s no one-size-fits-all symptoms list.

But back to tonight. It’s 9pm. I’m still at work, because I started a new job three weeks ago and have been putting in a lot of hours trying to figure it all out. I’ve had diarrhea and stomach pain day long. So my positive energy tank is already running on fumes when I get a text from my new, amazingly wonderful boyfriend. It says “I’m listening to a podcast that is super interesting about gut health and I thought you might enjoy it.”

Great. Another asshole who just heard about Crohn’s disease five seconds ago is about to ~cure me~ by telling me to drink some kombucha. Whyyyyyy? Why is he ruining everything by trying to fix a problem he knows nothing about? Why do people do that?

But, like I said, I really really like this guy. Everything about him feels so good. It doesn’t connect that he would be that person, that that would be his intention. So I ignore my brain’s massive eye roll, finish up at work, and decide to hear what the podcast has to say during my drive home.

In the thirty minutes of this three hour podcast that Dr. Rhonda Patrick was talking about gut health, here’s what she covered:

LDL proteins transport cholesterol to your cells, and the cells use the cholesterol to repair themselves. The LDL actually slices off a piece of itself to give to the cell for this process, and what remains of the LDL is transported back to the liver to be recycled out.

There are over 100 trillion bacteria in your gut. The majority of this is healthy bacteria, converting the food you eat into energy for your body. Your gut is also the place in your body with the highest concentration of immune cells.

The bacteria and the immune cells (white blood cells) are kept separate in your gut by the gut barrier, which is made of mucin (similar to mucus.)

When the gut barrier becomes compromised, the immune cells begin attacking the bacteria in your gut. As the bacteria is killed, it releases endotoxins. These endotoxins bind to the LDL that has sliced part of itself off to give away the cholesterol. This prevents the LDL from transporting back to the liver, so you just have LDL proteins covered in endotoxins stuck in your system. Your immune system recognizes all these lumps of endotoxins floating around and sends more white blood cells to fight and kill them. But it doesn’t work, because the white blood cells aren’t actually fighting bacteria like they think they are - they’re fighting LDL proteins that have bound to the endotoxins let out by the bacteria killed off in your gut when your gut barrier broke down. So you’re left with several things: a broken down gut barrier, a lack of healthy bacteria in your gut which means less energy being converted from food (and more room for unhealthy bacteria to take over), all these endotoxins just stuck in your gut/bloodstream, and too many white blood cells being produced. None of those are good things.

People with IBD will often notice mucin in their bowel movements. The gut barrier is literally breaking down and just exiting your body on a regular basis. To make more mucin and build that gut barrier back up, your body needs energy. When you don’t have a functional gut barrier, it’s a lot harder for your food to be converted into energy. Circle of death. Eating more fermentable fibers will create more short chain fatty acids in your gut which is what converts your food into energy. On the opposite end, when you eat food with a lot of refined carbohydrates, the saturated fat increases your body’s production of LDL proteins - which is not good, when you have endotoxins binding to all your LDL.

Kombucha feeds/energizes your gut cells so they can keep producing mucin for your gut barrier to strengthen.

A few years ago, she took a baseline sample of her poop and sent it off to be sequenced, to see what bacteria was and wasn’t present in her gut. Then she took “VSL #3 with sachets” probiotic every day for 30 days, and sent her poop off to be sequenced again. Huge increase in the amount of healthy bacteria in her gut (she didn’t specify how much) as well as a reduction of the amount of unhealthy bacteria. There are at least 25 studies that show effectiveness of this type of probiotic in treating IBS/colitis.

The reason she became so interested in gut health and was sequencing her own poop, etc., is because she had inflammatory bowel issues for years following an MRSA infection. Her doctor gave her three rounds of antibiotics, and when the infection still came back again, she decided to treat it herself without antibiotics. She got rid of the infection for good by using garlic/grapefruit seed extract/teatree oil/something else I had never heard of. But the damage to her gut from three rounds of super-antibiotics wrecked her system for YEARS. When she sought treatment for it, gastrointestinal doctors diagnosed her with neuropathy and suggested SSRIs and anticonvulsant medication. She refused. They never asked her about her diet, her medication history, nothing. She said “if I was a dummy - I shouldn’t say it like that - if I were a person who listened to authority, who just did what my doctors said, I might be stuck on a bunch of pointless medicines right now and would never have returned to a healthy gut.”

Do you know how much of that information I’ve been told throughout six years of being treated for inflammatory bowel disease by the “best, most-recommended” gastroenterologist in my state?

None of it.

None.

Of.

It.

When I asked if I should try drinking kombucha/taking probiotics, I was told “you could, but I don’t think it will help you. Your main concerns lately are acid reflux and diarrhea, and those aren’t the big symptoms of an unhealthy gut, so I don’t think that’s your problem.” I tried it anyway, but halfheartedly and with no guidance, and gave up faster than I should have.

I’ve noticed the mucin in my bowel movements for years, but the ONLY poop-related question I’m ever asked during visits is if I can see blood in it.

I too have had multiple experiences with MRSA infections and had to take round after round after round of antibiotics until it went away... the most recent time being a mere two months ago. TWO MONTHS AGO I got a staph infection in my eye, and now, four rounds of antibiotics later, I’m in the middle of a “flare up.”

My gastroenterologist has never asked about my history with antibiotics. When he asks about my diet, it’s never a conversation about healthy foods that might help or how different foods are interacting with my malfunctioning gut. It’s always just “these specific foods have been known to cause more pain, are you avoiding them?”

Eight months ago, I had a colonoscopy. There were no ulcers in my colon this time. He saw inflamed areas throughout my colon, but not general/total inflammation throughout the whole thing. What he actually said when I woke up was that if that had been his first/only look at my colon, he wouldn’t have diagnosed me with Crohn’s disease. So what does that mean? Am I just in remission? Do I not have it? If I don’t, what DO I have, because I’m obviously not healthy? His only answer was “I don’t know. we’ll just have to keep watching what happens and treating symptoms as best we can.”

I feel a strange combination of excitement and fury. why is htis podcast the first time this connection has been made for me? when i asked lydia about kombucha/probiotics and she said it wouldn’t help me. dr. lievens has never once asked about that, looked at my medication history, nothing. and he’s supposedly the best! i love “aha!” moments and this feels like one, but why the fuck is it just happening now?

Right now, I am just overflowing with questions. Every angle I think of it all from, I end up with six new questions and the list just keeps growing. But I also want to find out the answers. Which is more than I can say for my life lately before this.

Sorry Zach, you are still amazing and just like everything else about our relationship that seems to defy what’s supposed to be happening, that bubble has un-popped.

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empmoniitor · 3 years

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INCREASE PRODUCTIVITY| 07 TOP TIPS TO SPEND YOUR IDLE TIME DOING SOMETHING EXPEDIENT.

Sometimes after working hours, we do not feel satisfied and complete in our work. We feel like we need more time to complete, says our inner us. But what is the reason behind this shortage of time? Are we not productive enough?

No, it’s not about the productive hours. It’s about the idle time which we spend during the working hours. It’s not like we have to work like a machine without any break. But the time which we spend as idle time or break time can be utilized differently, trying to add that time in your product funnel.

Time is precious for all of us. Despite wasting it, always try to spend time with some productive activities while working during our paid hours.

So, let us take an oath to spend our idle time doing something productive. It will not only increase our productivity but also get our minds relaxed.

Let us read out together how to deal with idle time at work without being unproductive. We will also walk through some monitoring software tools to help employers identify idle employees and make them productive by the following points below. But at the beginning, let me define idle time.

WHAT IS IDLE TIME AT WORK?

Idle time is the time spent by the employees by doing nothing such as waiting for the clients or customers.

As an employee, How do you spend your break or idle time at work? By sitting idle with a cup of coffee and thinking about the time to return home? But is this going to help you increase your productive hours? Will this idle time compel your employers to give you an appreciation for your hard work? Obviously no.

So, why not spend our break time doing something productive. Let us remain active during working hours.

TIPS TO GET YOUR IDLE TIME SPEND WISELY, INCREASING PRODUCTIVITY:

1. GRAB EDUCATIONAL KNOWLEDGE:

If you do not have any work, stop wasting time by just sitting idle or hanging up with your colleagues.

You can listen to some motivational podcasts or news headlines that will cheer you up with motivation. You can also go for a new language that will help you improve your skills.

2. SCHEDULE YOUR UPCOMING WORK:

At the beginning of the day, I have a lot of things that stir inside my mind. Sometimes, I even forget to cover up a few things that need to get done for the day. So, I have maintained To-Do Lists where I note down all the work to be done for the day.

It makes me more productive and helps me complete my work in the given time. There remains no confusion about which is complete and what gets to be.

One moment…

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3. COMPLETE THOSE TINY TASKS:

There must be some work that might not be necessary, but create a bleep in your head if kept unfinished. Idle time is the best time to complete those tasks and remove them from your lists to have a few words to get focus on.

So, it is essential to make a list of pending work and current work to complete before the given time. So, creating a list is the first work. Do it every day!

4. MAKE YOUR MINDLESS STRESSFUL:

Work is necessary, but not more than your health. If you have meetings to attend, then make out some time and do nothing but relax your mind. It is necessary to keep your mindless stress to be more active and productive during working hours. So, sometimes being idle is not so harmful.

5. SHORT WORKOUT:

When you get scheduled with a lot of work, it is necessary to use idle time with some light workouts to keep you fresh and active throughout the day. Doing some idle time workout is more effective than spending idle time.

6. REVIEW GOALS:

Many people make a note of monthly goals to cover. I am one of them. It is beneficial for all the employees to make a complete note of the goals they want to achieve within a week or month. Whenever you are free and have idle time, you can see your work note and make changes to whatever you have achieved and the pending tasks.

Doing this daily will make you more confident about your work and give you more energy to be more productive. Also, you can control your mind from distractions.

7. A SHORT NAP IS ALSO ACCEPTABLE!

If you are doing all your work in a specialized manner and without any stress, then you can take a short nap to make you stress-free. So, take a short nap for yourself and re-energize yourself to increase the level of concentration.

These 07 best tips will be helpful for the employees who spend a lot of time sitting idle. If you are an employer, it is your responsibility to identify the idle employees of the company and make them more productive by following the above tips.

But here, you must have a doubt. How to identify idle employees? Will you go to every employee and see what they are doing? No, even if you think of doing it, it is impossible to watch all your employees. Here I have a solution for it. Any guess? Yes, it is the employee monitoring software.

Before you turn to use one, let me tell you about employee monitoring software? And how to choose the best one for your organization.

From the name itself, it defines its work. Employee monitoring software gets utilized to track all the activities of the employees during their working hours. It will monitor the idle time of the employees and increase the productivity of the employees that is the priority. Not every monitoring software has a complete package of beneficial features.

But if you ask me, there is one software tool that will create a magical environment in your office premises. Also, it is the solution for tracking the work of your remote employees. Without any suspense, let us move towards the software tool.

NO MORE IDLE TIME INVESTMENT BY YOUR EMPLOYEES| USE EMPMONITOR:

Empmonitor is one of the best employee monitoring tracking tools, that when installed in your systems, start to track all the activities of your employees with their device. It is a software tool with advantageous features that will never give you a chance for regret.

FEATURES OF EMPMONITOR:

1. PRODUCTIVITY REPORTS:

Want to know what your employees are doing during their working hours? EmpMonitor provides Detailed reports on the working of the employees during their productive hours.

2. HOW TO CALCULATE THE IDLE TIME OF EMPLOYEES WITH EMPMONITOR:

Idle time= available production time-actual production time.

When employees do not work or stop typing on their keyboard, EmpMonitor tracks the idle time spent by the employees, where it becomes easy for the employers to track the idle time.

3. REAL-TIME SCREENSHOTS:

When you suspect any of your employees, capture the screenshots of their screen every 15 seconds. EmpMonitor automatically captures screenshots at regular intervals set according to the owner’s choice.

4. PRODUCTIVITY ANALYSIS & MEASUREMENT:

Want to know how productive your employees are? It is easy with EmpMonitor. It measures the productivity of the employees, individuals with a detailed report.

5. WEB & APP USAGE REPORTS:

Employees cannot misuse the internet access and download apps that can cause damage to the existing files on the systems. EmpMonitor tracks the browsing history and applications used by the employees during their paid hours.

6. DETAILED TIMESHEET:

What was the time taken by the employees to complete a single task? With EmpMonitor, you can track the time spent by the employees on a particular project. Isn’t this interesting? There are more features.

7. CURRENTLY ACTIVE USERS:

Want to know which of your employees are working currently? EmpMonitor gives you reports about the employees who are working currently.

8. DASHBOARD:

An intuitive dashboard of EmpMonitor will help you monitor and manage your employees from a centralized location.

9. DEPARTMENT WISE REPORT:

To avoid confusion, EmpMonitor provides you detailed reports of your employees and their work according to their department.

10. REPORT ON DOWNLOADS:

Employees use the internet and download things during their work. You can get a detailed report on those downloads so that you can avoid malicious downloads intentionally or unintentionally done by your employees.

11. EMPLOYEE DETAILS:

You can also get employee details and their working locations through EmpMonitor.

12. EMPLOYEE WORK DETAILS WITH THE SCREENSHOT:

How your employees are working and on which tasks your employees are currently working, these all information you can get from EmpMonitor.

CLICK TO DIG MORE!

Remote Staff Management| challenges, solutions and software Why Your Business Needs To Consider Flexible Work Schedule Post Pandemic?

WRAPPING WORDS:

There is a saying that idle time is the devil’s play. So, why waste time sitting idle and having thoughts that might take you to a different circle- especially while you are in your working hours. Sitting idle may make you slow in your work ultimately, making you less productive.

So, make use of idle time by doing something productive. You can test the above points one by one and identify the positive results. And after that, you can schedule your work according to the above points written and remain more active during your productive hours.

I hope you like this article. If you have any queries or want to add any of your favorite points which I might have left, frame your voice in words and reach me through this comment box below. I would love to hear from you!

Originally Published On: EmpMonitor

#Employee Monitoring #Employee Management #Employee Monitoring Software #Employee Prdoductivity #Idle Time

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candimcart · 6 years

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Hello, Hello! So, it’s been a bit since I took the time to blog. Kassie keeps me pretty busy from day to day, especially with Mike working two jobs. But guess what, after a year and 8 months of hustling Mike is finally able to be home with us in the evenings! For awhile he was working seven days and over 70 hours a week with almost zero complaints. He came home from one job, rushed off the second, came home well past his bed time and still made sure to squeeze in time with his little girl. He is seriously, above and beyond an amazing father. But, now the rushing in and out comes to an end. We received our final adoption invoice last month and were able to pay it off the next day! I felt that since so many people were involved with our adoption journey it was best to share our total cost and how we got to that number. I will try to be brief in the only way I know, which is to not to. (Tow Mater? Cars? Anyone?)

Here it is: WAIT! Let me back up!

WE FINALIZED OUR ADOPTION!!!!!!

I was sitting in a movie theater beside my cousin, David watching A Quiet Place when I got the email. I am generally not one of those jerks who checks their phone during a movie but, I knew that on this day a judge would be deciding our fate with Kassie’s biological father. I should have been enjoying the two hour mommy break and cringing at the monsters that hunt noise but instead, I was spaced out focused on my thigh where my phone was sitting silently. When I felt the buzz I grabbed my phone and with the screen light turned all the way down read the words ” Biological Father has had rights revoked today. We can finalize!” Of all the movies I chose to loudly sob in, why did it have to be one that’s main theme is silence? I remember my cousin leaning over to ask if I was okay and I just whispered “She’s ours” and for the rest of the movie I just keep saying to myself “She’s ours” in disbelief.

Finally Forever Family May 18th, 2018!

If you don’t know me personally you may not understand that I am a crier. I’m a sentimental and angry crier. I don’t cry over sadness like I do over happiness (and at times, madness.) Well, this was the happiest day of my life. The judge said “Are you ready? Raise your right hands.” and I lost it. Shortly after, Mike did too. I love him so much for not being afraid to cry in public.

We found the perfect little shelter at the perfect little park but it only came with a 40 person limit. I cried about that. Narrowing it down from the few hundred people who joined us on our journey was not fun for us at all. But, we did our best and hopefully no one was hurt along the way.

The turnout was wonderful as well as the cake and cupcakes by Aunt Brandy. Bampaw and Bammaw surprised us with a big star cut out of a sheet for all of our friends and family to encircle for a photo shot on my Dad’s new drone. It was a wonderful way to celebrate such a long awaited end to our journey and allow for our brand new journey to begin.

Okay, here it is! Drumroll please…

$8,280.22!!!!

What? How is that even possible? Every website. Every agency. Every person. They all said $25,000-$55,000 in our state so how did we get away with $8,280.22 for our entire adoption? Well, there are several reasons that led to this for us and they are NOT as uncommon as you (I’m talking to you waiting adoptive parents) are told.

1: The stars aligned. (They can for you too, waiting parents!)

2: Bio Mom refused counseling. She was very confident and happy with her decision.

3: Bio Mom refused an attorney.

4: Bio Mom had her own insurance.

5: Bio Mom did not request any financial assistance other than $50 in gas to drive from her home to our city for TPR (Termination of Parental Rights).

6: Our Attorney was AMAZING! He is a well known Adoption Attorney in OK and he is well recognized nationally as well. He and his wife run their adoption agency which began after they adopted their daughters in the 80’s. They are hugely responsible with changing laws and adoption practices in Oklahoma. He will absolutely not take a dime from his clients until shortly before baby is due, or in our case the day baby is born. We handed him $3500. He and his wife Linda met us at the hospital with all of the paperwork ready to be signed. They seriously made this process so easy which would have been a hundred times easier had I not tried to control everything. The day they came to the hospital our attorney had to get right in my view and say “You are Mommy now. That is the number one job for you. We will be the attorneys. You just go home and be a regular Mommy now. Trust us.” I didn’t feel like I was being a control freak but if nothing else he probably saw my nerves rattled to the bone. He knew just what to say, I took his advice and I found my peace in that moment. I find it very important that every choice you make when on this journey feels like “home”. You will know that feeling when it hits you. If you make a decision and it doesn’t have that comfortable, “I’m home” feeling, change it! This is how we chose our adoption attorney and our home study worker. With that being said and out of the way, if you are looking for an adoption attorney start here: Swain Law, Adoption Attorney!

7: This may make me unpopular (not that I care) and this is coming from my personal experience combined with the experience of other adoptive parents I have gotten to know… Agencies, some…most…all (?) may have the best intentions but they don’t make money off of expectant mothers who choose to parent their child. Adoption Agencies are businesses and just like every other business they need to have income to survive. They also rule the marketing world for adoption. Google “How do I adopt?” and you you will be swarmed with agencies and guidelines that all tell you going through a private adoption like ours will end in heartbreak more often than not. Well, let me tell you. I was in the biggest adoption group on Facebook and guess what I learned… “Adoption Disruptions” are not any more common with private/attorney adoption versus agency adoption. I have seen couples shell out $3,000 and up (way up) to get he ball rolling on adoptions via agencies and the expectant mother decides to parent. I have seen babies go to adoptive homes and the biological mother decide to parent. Guess what happens? Adoptive parents are forced to return what has already been their baby and they, in most cases are out the money spent. I have seen adoptive parents lose their entire savings and end up childless and broke leaving them with only one choice: find away to be satisfied never being parents. I saw it more times than I ever thought I would. We are so lucky that we chose to have all avenues open for us. We chose to start the process with finding an expectant mother while fundraising and saving for an agency (before I know what I know now about agencies). Some couples refuse to even go the route we did for fear of disruption and STILL end up with the heartbreak of a disrupted adoption.

I made sure to listen and absorb every story I could, not only from adoptive couples and waiting couples but from adoptees and biological parents. When we began our journey I had no clue what the Adoption Pyramid was nor did I care. I just wanted to be a Mommy… NOW. My heart was getting bitter and nothing mattered more to me than being someone’s Mommy. I am so glad that I learned all about the pyramid through hours and hours of reading posts, listening to podcasts, reading blogs, watching videos, etc. Having that knowledge BEFORE Kassie was born has very much changed the path of our adoption. We didn’t just gain a daughter, we gained another family. Her biological family is our family now too. I hope they always choose to be in our lives. Okay, I trailed off as I do. I am fortunate to have used the resources available to me to learn all about the importance of the pyramid. I listened to so many adoptees and biological mothers tell their stories. So often, the biological mothers have gone through the agencies instead of privately finding a couple like Kassie’s bio family did. They go through the agencies because they feel safer, they feel like the couples are screened better, and there is less chance of anything going wrong. Unfortunately they (their words, not mine) are manipulated into placing their child when they are vulnerable and unprepared to make that huge decision. You know what…this may just be a blog for another time. I am sure I will be attacked for saying these things that I learned in the dark and speaking them into the light. So let me stop with full intention to bring this to light another time when I am better able to articulate what I mean.

So here is a final recap:

Adoption Method: Private Infant Domestic Adoption

Timeline:

June 6th, 2017: Began spreading our story and calling for Star Hunters to help get the word out.

July 27th, 2017: Contacted through our blog by Bio Grandmother.

October 2017 (week of Oct 25th) Paid $3500 to Swain Law.

October 25th, 2017: Kassie is born!

October 31st, 2017: Bio Mom signs TPR.

May 18th, 2018: Adoption is Finalized!

Total Amount Raised: Just under $4,000 if I recall(I can’t get into my office right now to grab the fundraiser papers so I will edit in the exact number when I can!

Total Amount Saved: just over $5,000!!!

Total Cost: $8,280.22!

So, there it is. THANK YOU ALL AGAIN for joining us on our journey in whatever way you did!!! ❤ ❤ ❤

-Mommy, Daddy, & Kassie Too

The Final Bill Hello, Hello! So, it's been a bit since I took the time to blog. Kassie keeps me pretty busy from day to day, especially with Mike working two jobs.

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wineanddinosaur · 3 years

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Next Round: The Art of Fine Wine Glasses With Maximilian Riedel, CEO of Riedel Glass

On this episode of “Next Round,” host Zach Geballe speaks with Maximilian Riedel, CEO of the eponymous 11th-generation glass manufacturer, about how Riedel’s ubiquitous wine glasses enhance various types of wines. As a specialty wine glass company, Riedel creates custom glassware for myriad varietals — from Chardonnay, to Cabernet Sauvignon, to Pinot Noir.

Riedel also discusses the long history and enduring process of glassmaking in Austria. Finally, Riedel and Geballe discuss the proper way to clean and care for wine glasses and decanters.

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Zach Geballe: From Seattle, Wash., I’m Zach Geballe, and this is a “VinePair Podcast” “Next Round” conversation. We’re bringing you these conversations in between our regular podcast episodes so we can focus on a range of issues and stories in the drinks world. Today, I have the privilege of speaking with Maximilian Riedel. He’s the CEO and president of Riedel. Maximilian, thanks so much for your time.

Maximilian Riedel: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Z: Yeah, my pleasure. This is an interview that I’ve been really looking forward to because, for someone like me who’s worked in the wine industry for quite a long time, your company’s glasses are ubiquitous. I touch one most days. And even at home, they’re what I drink out of personally. I will say I wanted to start with the history of the company and your family’s history as glass manufacturers.

M: Thank you, Zach. Our history is long and has obviously many, many stories to tell. We are celebrating this year our 265th anniversary.

Z: Wow.

M: We are in the 11th generation, and we take our job very seriously. The family was not always in the production of wine glasses, but always in the production of glass. Glass is what we breathe and is what we know best. We have turned art pieces, decorative glassware, and perfume bottles, all the knowledge that we had, and turned it into professional wine glasses.

Z: When did the manufacturer of wine glasses themselves start?

M: After World War II, prior to World War II, my family were Sudeten Germans, which means they were Bohemians in Bohemia. The family operated many, many factories of pressed glassware. The glassware traveled all around the world. They were also famous for glass bead production for jewelry. This is what they did originally. After World War II, my grandfather, who was in the German army as a soldier, found himself in Austria as a very young man. He was looking for a glass factory because he was searching for work. There was absolutely no communication with home, with the homeland. He restarted and was lucky to meet at the right time, the right people who gave him shelter and money to study. Then, he had a vision. He had a vision of a thin, handmade, mouth-blown glassware. This was the beginning.

Z: You mentioned a little bit about that, the methodology. I will admit my own ignorance of this, but can you give us an explanation of how a fine wine glass is made.

M: Well, the production process is not an easy one. At Riedel, we are one of the few leftovers. We have handmade production but our dominance is nowadays machine-made production. We produce everything in Europe. Handmade mouth-blown in Kufstein, Austria. This is where we have our headquarters in Tyrol. We’re surrounded by the most beautiful mountain scenery, and the machine production is in Bavaria, Germany. I always say that so people know where that is, our glassmakers all wear lederhosen and they all know how to yodel, which is obviously not true. It’s always a nice little story that I like to share. Glassmaking is a history that dates back 4,000 years in the making. The raw materials in 4,000 years have changed very little. The key ingredient is quartz sand, and the best source is in Bavaria, Germany. That’s why we and also our biggest competitors are all in a village, because this is where the raw material comes from. This is one of the key ingredients. We melt this mixture of different ingredients, and overnight, we produce glass. With many skilled glassmakers, we can actually produce our fine wine glasses. On the machine, we use the same ingredients, but we melt a bigger volume, and we have machines doing the same job as a glassmaker here in Austria.

Z: How much time does it take to make an individual glass? I’m sure that varies depending on the shape. How long does it take a skilled glassblower to make a glass?

M: Well, glassmaking is a team effort. It’s one of those few jobs where, if you do it manually, you need a team. The team needs to work together, entwined, and they depend on each other. When somebody needs to have a coffee break, the whole production comes to a standstill. It’s a team of three to five people, and each person has a very significant part of the job to create a glass. It’s not done by just shaping it. You have to remove it from the glass maker’s pipe and put it into an oven. An oven that is about 30 meters long because that’s the time that it takes to cool off. If you cool glass too quickly, it will explode and shatter into small pieces because there’s too much tension in the glass. You need this aligning oven where you start at a higher temperature of 300 degrees Celsius and it slows down as it walks itself through this cooling oven where you’re starting at 300 degrees Celsius and you end at about 60 degrees. This takes about two hours. It’s a long process, and then you have to remove the part which was connecting the glass to the glassmaker’s pipe, which is another person. Then, you have to fire-polish the rim. It’s a process. It is really a manufacturing process. I think that whoever likes glasses, Riedel glasses, and comes and visits us here in Kufstein where you can see and watch the entire process, I think the value increases, because you see how many steps are involved.

Z: With any manual process like that, does the remarkable consistency and uniformity of the glassware, is that because the people making the glassware are very experienced and skilled? How do you ensure that kind of consistency and uniformity? With an individual glass, we can appreciate something that’s unique. I imagine that when you have a business, you need them to all be the same or very close to the same.

M: Our wine glasses are fine-tuned instruments. If there is a difference from one to the next, our philosophy would not work. That’s the reason why the glassmaker blows the bowl in a shape that is pre-directed by the molds. We’re blowing it into a mold, guaranteeing that whatever comes out at the end of the production is the same. Of course, it’s handmade. It will not be 100 percent the same, but it is the same. That’s different from our decanters, which are free-formed. Each piece is somewhat individual. They all look and feel alike. But if you put them side by side, there’s a difference. This must not happen with our wine glasses.

Z: One thing that’s very interesting to me, and I would love your thoughts on, is over the years, Riedel has added a number of different types of glassware — I’m sure both machine- manufactured and hand-blown — to the product line. How do you develop new glassware? I know you’ve added some cocktail glasses and I think beer glasses, also. How does that new product development come about?

M: Well, first of all, it’s a family business. Yes, we have over a thousand employees. Yes, we produce 60 million glasses a year. We are a family business in the 11th generation, so we have never hired a designer. Good for us, form follows function. This was started by my grandfather, Professor Klaus Riedel. You need the passion and love for wine. If you don’t have it, you cannot become a wine glassmaker. You need to understand the different kinds of beverages being a wine, spirit, a beer, or even Coca-Cola, a coffee. Those are glasses that we have developed. This is where you need to have the knowledge of the beverage first, before you can shape the glass towards or create a design towards the functionality. We never do this ourselves. We design it, we develop it, we blow it. Yes, we do that part. For example, at Riedel, all the wine glasses are grape varietal-specific. Let’s talk about a grape. You’re in Seattle, Wash. You make beautiful Cabernet, you make wonderful Pinot Noir. We’re talking about a specific shape. Annually, you have a Pinot Noir festival. That motivated us to work with Washington wine producers, led by French families, to come forward with a Pinot Noir glass, which is truly designed to enhance New World Pinot Noir, Oregon Pinot Noir. Together with the winemakers, we shaped the glass. It was not a process of designing and being artsy crafty. No, we had existing glasses for Pinot Noir. We had samples of Oregon Pinot Noir, for example. And with those samples, we developed some prototypes, which we took all the way to the West Coast. We took them to Oregon, and many local wine producers participated with their own wines. We did a workshop, a Riedel workshop, where we poured their wine into the different-shaped Riedel glasses. We were looking within what we had produced, the two or three glasses where the individual winemakers agreed. This one shows the fruit best, this one the acidity, this one the minerality. The task was to come forward with existing shapes which we took back home, out of which we created more prototypes where we said, “OK, this one highlighted the fruit, this one the perfume, the minerality, the acidity.” We came forward with another series of prototypes. Again, we knocked on the doors of the winemakers, which they happily opened because they saw in the glass the messenger of the wine. With them, we finalized the process until all of the winemakers agreed on one shape, where they all said, “My wine shows best in this glass.” It’s a process, it’s a development, it’s a partnership. It’s a friendship between Riedel and the winemakers in which they see our glass as the stage on which the wine can show.

Z: I’m curious. I know when I reached out to set up this interview, one of the newer products that you have unveiled is the Winewings glasses. We’ll include a link in the show description for people who want to take a look at the collection and understand it. I would be really curious to get your thoughts on how that specific line was developed as well, because they’re a little different stylistically than the other Riedel glasses.

M: With pleasure. Riedel Winewings is brand new. Riedel Winewings is something that my father produced by himself, meaning he had the design idea, he had the vision, and he created it based on existing shapes. Obviously, the work that was done prior to craft the Pinot Noir, the Cabernet glass, was not lost. This is always the basic ingredient for us that we utilize to develop something new. What Winewings has, in comparison to all the other existing Riedel glasses, is that it has a flat bottom, which we first started internally. We created prototypes. We served friends and family in those glasses, and we learned what the reaction was. Because when we develop something new, it must keep up with the existing or be even better. This is the result, which is Riedel Winewings.

Z: At this point, I know you have a number of different glasses for different varieties. Is the intention to have the same breadth of offerings as you do with the traditional-shaped glass?

M: Well, the people are hungry for newness. It starts with the retailer. The retailer always knocks on the door of the manufacturer and says, “Anything new?” Because they want to excite their customers. This is not only new, meaning a new shape of what is existing. It’s a further development, and very important to understand is the world of wine. If you know the world of wine and you try to understand it, you know that everybody talks about global warming. Global warming, in certain areas, has a positive impact, believe it or not, in areas where wine-growing has a tradition. With the short ripening process, the wines were never up to global standards, like in Austria and in most eastern countries. On the West Coast, you have a problem with it because you have to deal with it. You have too much sun, too much sun exposure. You have a lot of fruit that has a sunburn and all these kinds of things, which the winemaker can influence. Nowadays, everybody is looking for organic wine, so the influence is very little of what we can do. The fruit is exposed to energy, which is sunlight. So the wines are very concentrated, which is good. I like those concentrated fruit-forward wines with a little bit of a side impact, which is high in alcohol. I know wines from Napa Valley dating back to the ‘70s and ‘80s. I wasn’t born then, but I’m drinking these wines, and I was growing up with these wines since my family is very close to the Mondavi family. The wines of those days from Napa Valley had somewhere between 11 and a half to a maximum of 13 percent of alcohol. Nowadays, you have them up to 15 percent alcohol. Alcohol in wine is like fat in meat. It’s nothing bad. It adds some flavor. It’s a flavor enhancer, but it is an issue that people need to deal with. My point is: Because of these big fruit-forward wines, our glasses had to change. They had to grow with the wine industry. They grew, sadly also in size, which a lot of consumers miss. They blame us for those big glasses, but those modern wines need those bigger glasses to shine. They all must be aerated. These wines are immortals. They can surpass from generation to generation. We want to have wines that are ready to drink. The only way to get these wines to open up is by aerating them in a nice decanter and serving them in a big wine glass.

Z: I have a couple more questions for you. For many of our listeners who have Riedel glassware at home, there may be a different answer depending on what they have. In your experience, what’s the best way for the average home consumer to take care of their glassware? I think for a lot of people — even for me personally — some of my glassware that I love most dearly were wedding presents. I was very proud to get them. I’m always a little bit afraid to use them because I’m worried about breaking them or worried about cleaning them. Do you have suggestions for taking care of the glassware? Beyond the obvious of “don’t drop it.” Other things that people can take some advice from.

M: Absolutely. I have many advisors because people think I live off broken glasses. It actually makes me very unhappy when one of my babies breaks. Rule No. 1: storage. Let’s say with a wedding gift, you got eight glasses of one particular kind, but it’s only the two of you at home, so you always use the same glasses. You never think of rotating your glassware, which is very bad. Because where you store them, you can have an impact. Let’s say you have a cabinet that is new and it still smells like lacquer, color lacquer. This can have a tremendous impact on your glasses. The glasses start to adopt the smell and create this stink, but also the lacquer steams, and this steaming — especially when you have a temperature change due to the seasons of the year. The hotter it gets, the more the cabinet starts to steam, the glasses absorb this and the glass surface is very porous like your skin. They adopt this, and the glasses get dull and they lose their brilliance. And people blame the glassmaker. It’s not my fault. It’s the way you store your glasses. So rule No. 1 is where you store them. Rotate your glasses. Don’t always use the same. Also, reach out to those in the back of the kitchen cabinet, rule No. 1. Rule No. 2, a Riedel wine glass is a workhorse. It was developed for you to have daily performance. You pour your wine and you drink it. You have a Chardonnay and you put it in the Chardonnay glass. If you have a Pinot Noir and many more, depending on what styles of wine you like. I like Chardonnay. I like Cabernet. I like Pinot. Those are the three glasses I would have at home. I rotate because I cook differently. I have friends that are coming. I know they like white wine, so I serve my Chardonnay. It is important to understand that you have multiple glasses at home and since the Riedel glass is a workhorse, you should treat it like this. Put the Riedel glass in the dishwasher. Don’t hurt yourself after a nice evening. Maybe you had a glass too many trying to force it into your sink and break it and injure yourself. Don’t do that, there’s no need. When the Riedel glass is in the dishwasher and you wash it more than one thousand times, yes, it can have scratches. Yes, it can lose its brilliance over time. It’s erosion. It’s very normal. That happens. Throw them away and replace them with some new ones. It’s a workhorse. Now comes the question, “I have some other brands at home” or “I have a Riedel handmade glass at home.” Riedel sommelier’s handmade — a glass that costs $100-plus. You have some Waterford at home with beautiful decorations. You have some Baccarat at home with some color. No, do not put those into the dishwasher. The color can wash off. The glass is much thicker. Tension can start in the glass because it’s a hot dishwasher. You have a cool glass. and the thicker the glass, the more tension breakage can occur. Handmade glasses, I suggest that you wash by hand. Machine-made glasses, wine glasses from Riedel, you can put into the dishwasher.

Z: This is my own personal struggle, what about cleaning a decanter? That’s the one I have the most trouble with.

M: Well, if it’s a Riedel decanter, and it can be beautiful, they can be fancy, but also very functional. The best way to wash them is, if the sink is big enough, put it into the sink. Otherwise, take it into the bathtub. That’s not a joke. I want everybody who listens to use your decanter daily, because every wine deserves this “wow experience” of decanting it. We decant old wine to split wine from its sediment. We aerate young wines. Good for them to wake up and mature during the process of drinking it and enjoying it. Red wine, white wine, rosé wine, sparkling wine. All of this can be decanted. Of course, you have to have different techniques. Sparkling wine or Champagne, I would never decant fast. I would do it slowly. Also, young Champagne can benefit from that. Prosecco, don’t decant. There’s no benefit because you will lose the bubbles which are artificially added to the wine. I would not do it. However, with Champagne, the method of Champenoise, you can definitely decant it.

Z: Well, the bathtub idea is a good one. I’ve never thought about that.

M: Zach, what I suggest is that people are always complaining about red wine stains. After a nice meal, rinse the decanter once with warm water, fill it with warm water, and let it sit overnight. Warm water has an impact. It will absorb all the color pixels that are left in the decanter. Even though you rinsed it once or twice, let it sit with warm water. The next day, empty it. Soak the outside. There’s no need to put soap into the decanter. You run the risk of having some leftovers. Soap and wine does not go well together, so I do not recommend that. So soak the outside because you had greasy fingers, etc. The inside, after rinsing it a couple of times, you should be fine. Wine is cleaner than water. Let’s not forget that. It has been filtered, etc. You know the process. There’s nothing that is bad in a decanter after rinsing it with some water.

Z: Wonderful. Thank you so much for your time. Really fascinating to hear a little bit more about how these ubiquitous glasses in the wine industry are made and look forward to seeing the continued development and specialization of the glassware. It’s a little early in the morning here. I would say I would be drinking a glass of wine, but it’s the morning here in Seattle, so I had my coffee. I will get around to a glass of wine and a Riedel glass tonight, and I will think about this conversation. Thank you so much.

M: Thank you so much, Zach. Thank you for taking the time and for letting me speak about the wonderful world of wine and obviously the loudspeaker, the Riedel glass. Cheers.

Thanks so much for listening to the “VinePair Podcast.” If you love this show as much as we love making it, then please leave us a rating on review on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher or whatever it is you get your podcasts. It really helps everyone else discover the show.

Now, for the credits, VinePair is produced and recorded in New York City and Seattle, Wash., by myself and Zach Geballe, who does all the editing and loves to get the credit. Also, I would love to give a special shoutout to my VinePair co-founder, Josh Malin, for helping make all this possible, and also to Keith Beavers, VinePair’s tasting director, who is additionally a producer on the show. I also want to, of course, thank every other member of the VinePair team who is instrumental in all of the ideas that go into making the show every week. Thanks so much for listening, and we’ll see you again.

The article Next Round: The Art of Fine Wine Glasses With Maximilian Riedel, CEO of Riedel Glass appeared first on VinePair.

source https://vinepair.com/articles/next-round-maximilian-riedel-glass/

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johnboothus · 3 years

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Next Round: The Art of Fine Wine Glasses With Maximilian Riedel CEO of Riedel Glass