Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Dear Crystal Ball...

I had another rather splendorous weekend with the boyfriend. We made tons of food, as per usual, and I made cranberry nut bread. More than the meat and butter concoctions Eric dreams up, these things are the death of me. I am such a sugar addict, and I'm always chasing that sugar high with one more tiny slice of cranberry nut bread. Thankfully I have Eric who I'll implore to regulate me. It's funny, because I, under my notions of health, tend to eat more in the morning and during the day, whereas Eric is the king of after dinner food, including his inexplicable bowl of rice krispies or whatever after a big dinner. Why not just eat more dinner? Anyways, my 'I eat more during the day so it's okay to eat more quick bread' is not going to fly, at least according to the numbers on the scale when I got home after the weekend.

Yesterday I went to see Capitalism: A Love Story with Eric. Normally I don't talk about movies on the personal blog (ugh, I've had enough!), but since this one is more personal and political, I have to say a few things. One is, see the movie! Second is, in my opinion Michael Moore's films aren't the strongest in breadth or depth or accuracy, but challenging conventional wisdom. He's great at coming up with different thought experiments--like, ways to visually depict Wall Streeters as bank robbers--that help equate white collar crime with its more violent cousin. I also liked the personal stories, and his description of how the $700 billion bailout bill was passed was eye-opening. Finally, he talks a lot about America's glorification of capitalism, including why we equate Jesus and religion with capitalism. I liked the film, and hope it comes out a success like Farenheit 9/11. I also need to watch Sicko, which I think I missed and certainly has a lot to say about our country's health crisis.

Finally, I've been thinking a lot about job security and my career and my future--and by a lot I mean not enough. Frankly, journalism isn't the greatest field to be getting into. People are doing it for free. There's also a lot of talk about changes and shutdowns and layoffs that occur periodically and stress me out. My plan before, when I heard this four and six months into the job, was that I have money saved and I will travel the world, something I never got to do, and then come back when the recession is over. Although now having a boyfriend complicates everything. I really hope that my job, and those of other magazines, won't be eliminated--everyone would like to move on at their own time and of their own accord. But I updated my resume tonight slightly, and did some searches for jobs I think I would be interested in. From looking at my resume, it gave me some ideas about how to grow my position. I have the opportunity to really invent things, I think, and break ground in the new media area. But I certainly don't know how to monetize that for the company. I'm trying to think of ways I can excel at what I'm doing, to learn the ropes more aggressively, and break new ground. I have so few peers at my job, so I think I want to seek out more people in my field so I can learn more about the state of the industry. I also did some job searching, for the type of job I would be interested in a year or two from now, since it's understood that my position is not a growth position and would require me to move on. I'm interested in doing qualitative research, like being a moderator or an analyst or what have you. Turns out most of the jobs I found there require much more experience than I have. And some have more quantitative requirements than I would care for. But they seem like they pay well, and most require lots of traveling--which is both a good and a bad thing. I'm really glad that I spent some time--seriously, like an hour max--thinking about my future. It's something I need to do more often and actively, and not out of fear but out of desire for personal growth.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Peaches, Peaches, Peaches!

Now, the slideshow:

Double-click to see the big-screen version with captions