Electrolicious

Observations Category

I’ve studied Sociology both in college and out in the field. It’s about about observation. This is also known as “people watching,” but much more academic. Oh yes. So much more academic. (And no: I’m not being serious.)

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Creature of habit vs. Lover of routines

29 Jun 2008 In: Observations

It was 85° yesterday, and Andreas and I were walking four blocks from our house to dinner. I noticed he had his backpack on, and asked “What’s with the big ol’ backpack? Are we going somewhere after dinner?”

He looked at me and thought. “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t need anything in my bag at all. I guess it’s just habit.”

I had to laugh, because it’s true. Dre’s famous for pulling on thick socks and his work shoes when it’s broiling hot out and he’s wearing shorts, just because he’s used to that. His brain is like “Whaaaat? You mean, I own flip flops?!”

I mean, I’m a creature of habit too … so I almost get it. But not quite. I’m not so much a creature of habit that I lock the door while I’m pumping gas, which is another thing Dre does without thinking. (Exit car, lock door.)

When I mulled over my own habits, Dre stopped me and clarified. “You like routines,” he said. “But you’re not blindly habitual like me. You seem to actually almost enjoy every little detail of your set ways.”

While that’s not totally true (I can go autopilot as much as anyone else), I do get a sick pleasure out of my routines. I like gloating over the efficiencies as I run through my patterns, noticing the minutes I’ve shaved off of my tea making routine (so effective!), and marveling at my own cleverness when I perfectly anticipate a need — say, having chapstick at exactly the right dry-lip moment (so smart!).

It may all come down to self-absorption. While Dre’s brain is thinking about history and politics and music as he pulls on his huge, unneeded backpack, I’m ticking through my lists thinking, “Are my lips dry? Are my feet hot? Does my back hurt? In a few hours, might I have a headache and want some Ibuprofin?”

• 7 Comments
• Tags: andreas, habits, routine

Earmuffs

22 Apr 2008 In: Observations

Tonight, I watched from the window of the bus as a college-aged couple stood canoodling on a street corner, standing close together and touching each other’s faces. While my bus sat at the red light, an ambulance screamed by. The young man held his hands up over his girlfriend’s ears. She grinned, and lifted her hands up to go over his.

• 7 Comments
• Tags: capitol hill, people-watching, romance

The difference

13 Apr 2008 In: Observations

While in Missoula this weekend, we saw a guy in a cowboy hat on a trike sort of like this one. The trike was covered with silver mylar fringe and muti-colored flags, fluttering and glittering in the spring sunlight.

Hey, I thought to myself. A burner!

Dre’s dad nodded towards the biker and said, “That developmentally disabled fellow rides all over town.”

• 3 Comments
• Tags: burning man, mistaken identity, montana

21st century gossip sesh

22 Mar 2008 In: Observations

Sure, I’ve enjoyed Facebook in the past. But it wasn’t until today, when I was catching up on a gossip session with my best friend from high school, that I TRULY appreciated the stalking power of Facebook. It was so awesome to have an illustrated gossip guide right there in front of us — oh, what’s HE doing, we’d say. And then read, Oh, mmhmm. I seeeee. Best/worst moment: illustrating which hottie had fallen the hardest since high school. The tragedy was almost tangible.

• 3 Comments
• Tags: facebook, gossip, high school

Playing games

4 Sep 2007 In: Observations

At Shambhala last month, one of my camp-mates was a 19-year-old Polish woman named Ola. She was visiting her American aunt for the summer, and somehow her aunt had decided Ola should get out and see things, so she’d come to Shambhala with a family friend.

Ola was beautiful. I mean, stunningly perfectly beautiful with a kewpie doll mouth and huge blue eyes and an impeccable figure. She’d packed jeans and t-shirts to wear at Shambhala, but of course she’d ended up camped with a dozen freaks with tupperware tubs full of festival finery, so it was only a matter of time before Ola became our living barbie doll.

“Here, Ola — wear these raver pants!” we’d say, and she’d oblige. “Wait, put on this fuzzy purple hat!,” we’d hollar, and she’d oblige.

One afternoon, as Dawn and I were helping Ola dress up in yet another outfit, I told her how great one of my dresses looked on her — how it complimented her figure perfectly. Dawn agreed, but Ola just shook her head.

“I am fat,” she said in her thick accent. “My butt is big.”

Dawn and I looked at her, and then looked at each other and said in unison, “Oh, don’t play that game.” Then we both went on a friendly harangue.

“That game’s a waste of everyone’s time — especially yours,” I said.

“Your figure is perfect and you don’t need to pretend it’s not for OUR sake,” Dawn said.

“Seriously,” I laughed. “Don’t play that game.”

It was interesting to see how strong both Dawn’s and my responses were. The “I’m so fat” game is one that I think everyone’s played at some point with their girlfriends, and it’s always silly. But somehow it wasn’t until I saw a 19-year-old with an impeccable Eastern European figure try to play it that I realized just HOW silly it really is. We compliment her, she degrades herself, and we’re supposed to feel better about ourselves and then compliment her further. Silly! I’m glad I don’t feel the need to play that game any more.

But then I started wondering … what other games am I still playing that are equally silly?

• 4 Comments

Respect vs. Like

25 Aug 2007 In: Observations

It used to be that I only had one toggle switch for how I felt about people: I either liked them, or I didn’t like them. Sure, there was a gradation of like (from obsessively adoring all the way to Arch Nemesis), but it was pretty much a single scale. I categorized people on the scale and went about my business with them accordingly. It was pretty simple.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that it’s infinitely more complex of course, with a lot of contextual factors thrown in. Stuff like “Oh, I like them — except when they’re really wasted.” Or “I don’t like them at work, but I love ‘em once we’re out of the building.” Or “They’re awesome when they’re single, but get sorta psycho in relationships.” Or even the very simple “I like them — but not right now.”

But there’s also this concept of liking someone vs. respecting them. Used to be, if I didn’t like someone, I couldn’t respect them. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that there are an endless stream of colleagues and cohorts and peers and associates who I may have almost nothing in common with, but who I respect deeply. Sometimes I find myself in the odd predicament of realizing “Huh, I actually don’t like this person — but I really admire what they do, and just because I can’t see myself being buddy-buddy with them doesn’t mean that I don’t still have profound respect for them.”

It’s been an interesting facet of relationships to understand — that sometimes you can respect someone’s work, values, ethics, choices, etc, but not see yourself wanting a slumber party with them. Alternately, just because I don’t like someone on a personal level (Bah! Too uptight, too conservative, too elitist, too flighty, too hipsterish, etc. x a bazillion for all the various lame judgmental thoughts in my head) that they still have value and I treat them well accordingly. (Because yes, I’m notorious for treating people poorly when I’ve decided I don’t like them. Let’s just say I’m not a “pleaser” in that way and pretend it’s not a major personality defect.)

I’m undecided about how I feel about the inverse combination — people I like but don’t respect.

• 7 Comments

Gen Y vs. Gen X

26 Apr 2007 In: Observations

As part of my new job, I’ve been reading a lot about the work-styles of Gen Y (aka the Millennials). Although my birth-year (1975) technically puts me into Gen X territory, after reading various articles discussing how Gen Y is hyper communicative and assertive but also plagued by narcissism and an obsessive need for connectivity, I would like to proclaim that I identify more with Gen Y. Then I wonder if perhaps this is because I spent so much time at raves in my early 20s — raves where most everyone was 5 years younger than me. Is Gen Y contagious? All this makes me want to read Generation Me: Why Today’s Young Americans Are More Confident, Assertive, Entitled–and More Miserable Than Ever Before.

• 12 Comments

My husband the jock

23 Mar 2007 In: Observations

One of the more interesting factors in being partnered with someone for a big long stretch of time (almost a third of my life — weird) is getting to watch them change. For instance, my artsy-fartsy musician “lover not a fighter” male-lesbian husband has become a jock.

Again.

I wasn’t around for Andreas’ first wave of jock-hood, which was in high school and early college when he was an three-hours-a-day soccer player and obsessive rock climber. By the time I met him he’d been rejected from WWU’s soccer team and had traded in his cleats for dancing shoes and turntables.

But a funny thing happened on his way to his early 30s: Dre’s totally jocked out. The last year has been a whirlwind of road biking, weekly soccer games, jogging, regular circus classes (both aerialist and acrobatics), lunchtime gym-bunny routines, and Ashtanga yoga. Dude is a jock machine.

Not that I’m complaining. Dre’s still the same ol’ sweety, so while I can’t relate when he starts going on about muscle fatigue, he’s got these gymnast arm muscles now that are all ROAWR! I want to eat them.

• 6 Comments

Crippling my wit

12 Feb 2007 In: Observations

Alison muses on whether quoting others’ jokes instead of making up your own is crippling to one’s wit.

Here’s my tangential question: are inside jokes actually funny? Or is the humor simply the giddiness of exclusion? My college best friend/roommate and I used to speak what was almost our own language, a stoner liberal arts patois peppered with weighted nouns like “bane” and multisyllabic forms of the word “dude” that turned into the word into an expressive melismatic opus. Up and then down, ending on a puntuative “… uuude!”

Our language was rapid fire. We reached a point where we could actually speak at the same time and keep track of the conversation.

… we were also intolerable to hang out with. Our own entertainment was at the expense of accessibility. No one knew what the fuck we were saying, and all we talked about were the cool things we did just the two of us. Remember that one trip? That one time? That one day? Oh HA HA HA! That was hilarious. Here, we’ll tell you all about it …

Where-as the joy of sharing a popular culture joke is the inclusion (we can all laugh at public jokes like Paris Hilton and Ted Haggard), the sharing of these inside jokes was less about humor, and more about us laughing at the fact that no-one but us knew how hilarious we were. “Remember that one time in Joshua Tree with the red pen on my finger?” That is not a joke! That’s a shared experience that we could rub in the faces of everyone around us — WE knew what we were talking about, did you?

In this way, inside jokes are less like comedy and more like elitism. But then there’s Andreas and my inside jokes, where one of us will reference something, and we’ll both laugh and then say “What’s that from, anyway? Didn’t you start doing that in 1999 or something? Do you remember why? … me neither.”

• 4 Comments

Flavas of conference networking

27 Oct 2006 In: Observations

As I mentioned, I’ve been at the Blog Business Summit for the last few days. This is my second blog conference in three months, and so comparisons are inevitable. I attended BlogHer this summer primarily to socially mingle and talk about Electrolicious and my book. I’m attending the Blog Business Summit on behalf of of my employer and to explore ideas about my work blog and learn more about the business of social media. Clearly, these are different events that I’m attending for very different reasons.

Even so, it’s interesting for me to see the contrast in how people network at these events. At BlogHer it was all very personal, lots of chatting and getting to know you and intimate confessions and laughter. At the Blog Business Summit it’s lots of talk about work, strategies, ambitions, business plans, etc. This contrast was pulled into particularly acute focus over lunch. I found myself sitting with Zoe and Gretchen, the founders of JobSyntax.

I’d run into them yesterday and we’d spoken a bit about how our work was related and how we should talk further about content linking and blog strategies, but then today at lunch we just ended up chatting. We talked about trying to “pick up” girls to befriend, and about the legendary Seattle Freeze. I learned that both of them were Seattle transplants and they heard about my back neighbors who, when I introduced myself, dismissed me with a quick “Um, hi?”

Then a fellow-conference attendee interjected for a second. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” he said. “But can we talk about work for a second?” We all nodded and put aside our conversation and launched into a discussion of the recruiting/HR landscape, etc. But my internal response surprised me. I felt like I’d been … chastised. Like I’d been caught talking in the back of a classroom. Why were we chatting about socializing in Seattle when we could be talking about work!?

You might say, It’s a business conference! Can you blame the guy for wanting to talk about work for a minute? Here’s the thing though: I can’t remember the name of the conference attendee who joined us in conversation, even though we talked about interesting industry issues. The personal “chatty” conversations I had with the ladies from JobSyntax made for an infinitely more valuable, “real” connection. I didn’t just take their business cards, I actually got to know them a little. We didn’t focus on talking about work, and as such, I’m more likely to do business with them in the future.

I’m not going to say that this is a gender thing, but I will say that it’s an interesting difference between the way people networked at BlogHer vs. how it’s being done at the Blog Business Summit.

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