It is that time of year again. Time to reflect on what kind of person I want to be and what I can do to become that person.
2016 was one of the best years yet with regards to achieving personal goals and growth. I made more time for friends, I got and kept a great new job in a brand new career, I have been reading, and I have been blogging on a regular schedule since I actually committed to doing so in February! (With the brief exception of the change in schedule that I made and then immediately realized was a huge mistake.)
So what can I do in 2017 to continue with my self-improvement? With my personal stake in world-improvement? Here are my CONCRETE RESOLUTIONS that I will resolve to have achieved by December 31, 2017…Read More »
… but I was also born on that day! I turn 25 today! (And I’m delighted to be birthday buddies with Beethoven, Austen, and throwing tea into the Boston harbor!) (Sorry about your parents, Iron Man.)
My birthday often gets lost in a frenzy of end-of-year pushes, holiday plans, and exams — despite the fact that I have not had to take a December exam for over 3 years, the anxiety lives on! By the time I got to high school, I stopped doing larger celebrations for my birthday so that I could focus on studying for midterms and, later in college, finals. (This coincided with the time I stopped having joint birthday parties with my younger brother, whose birthday comes just a few days before mine!)
25 is an arbitrary milestone but a milestone nonetheless. I am at the mid-way point between 20 and 30. I am not longer in my “early 20s” but firmly the most “mid-20s” I will ever be. It’s the quarter century mark and, to me, it feels like the year that my teenage years truly get left behind. There are still times when I start telling people I’m 19 when I stop and realize that I haven’t been 19 for a long time.
25 feels like it might be the year that adulthood stops patiently waiting for me to be ready for it and shows up, ready or not. I had planned to welcome it in with 25 goals for my 25th year, or 25 lessons I’ve learned over the past 25 years…
… but I got a bit tired. (Oops, it’s been an exhausting few weeks.) And I have a resolutions post coming up really soon, so I will shelve sharing my goals until then.
By the time this post goes up, I will be wrapping up a morning rave and emerging into the well-below-freezing DC air. On the one hand, I feel like 25 isn’t very different, and maybe I’ve been ready to be 25 for quite some time. On the other hand, I have this inkling that this milestone will be felt by a marked change in myself.
If you are older than 25, what is some advice you might give to yourself at this age?
If you are younger than 25, what are the things you want to accomplish at this age? Do you have any fun birthday traditions? Mine seem to be… shout-outs to my favorite birthday buddies and avoiding talking about my birthday to see who remembers it. I have learned that this is annoying to some people who don’t like being “tested” and would rather people not be so secretive about their birthdays, but I tell myself that I do this to keep my ego in check.
I hope everybody had a great Thanksgiving holiday and was able to take advantage of sales to get some gifts for your friends, family, and yourself!
If you are able to spend a little more time and money, please consider #GivingTuesday. 2016 has been a pretty crazy year (remember when we all wished 2015 would end?), but I think that sitting and feeling crummy about it for more than a few minutes isn’t the way to go. This year, I have been trying to at least actively think about what I can actually do to make the world a better place, rather than just thinking about how it isn’t better yet.
Giving is so important, especially during the holidays when those who are without may feel it more acutely. It connects us to other people and adds a little more goodness into our world that so desperately needs as much as it can get.
#GivingTuesday is a global day of giving fueled by the power of social media and collaboration.
Celebrated on the Tuesday following Thanksgiving (in the U.S.) and the widely recognized shopping events Black Friday and Cyber Monday, #GivingTuesday kicks off the charitable season, when many focus on their holiday and end-of-year giving.
One of the best ways to get involved is in your own community. We’ve created a directory to help you find organizations, charities, events and more in your own community.
If you aren’t sure how or where to give, GivingTuesday.org has some resources to help you get started. To break down how you can give, roughly in order of time commitment, you can:
Donate money – This can be a one-time donation or you can set up a regular donation with an organization you care a lot about. Think local if you can, as you can often more easily make a large impact on your local community, and you may be able to more readily see that impact yourself! GivingTuesday.org has a great resource to help you get started with finding local organizations. Even if you’re only able to donate a small amount of money, it counts. If you’re just saving pennies from your change to donate, it counts.
Donate items – Whether you are leaving boxes of old clothes outside your house or organizing a canned food drive, giving items can be a really impactful way to give. I highly urge you to think a little bit outside the box with your donations. Check out this list as a place to start with items that are in high demand, and also please consider picking up extra feminine hygiene products to donate! It’s something that gets overlooked because we don’t like thinking about it, but imagine how difficult it is to not like thinking about it and not having options when you have to.
Volunteer – One of the most valuable assets we are able to give is our time, along with our energy. A lot of folks will volunteer at soup kitchens on Thanksgiving, and I’d love to see that continue on. Sometimes volunteer work isn’t fun or glamorous, but you just need to remind yourself that you are giving your time for the sake of someone else and not for the sake of your own personal enjoyment. For example, I once volunteered at a pet shelter with a group that was disappointed to learn that we were not volunteering to play with dogs! Because the shelter really needed us to help with wiping things down and filing folders away, so that’s what we helped them do. You can do one-time activities or find a cause that you want to give your time to more often.
Do pro bono work – Check Taproot+ to see what skills you can give and what organizations need. As a Ruby developer, I can recommend Ruby For Good, which gets Ruby devs together to work on projects for non-profits that can’t afford to spend their limited budgets on hiring developers to put together great tech solutions that they may really need. There are a lot of ways to work pro bono for organizations, and that can be an immensely valuable way to give your time and energy to groups in need.
Another thing you can do is make your purchase with an organization that gives back. Hereareafewlists to start with, if you still need to buy any gifts. Giving a gift that gives back is nice because the recipient knows the impact of your gift is goes beyond him/herself and that’s very special.
When in doubt, reach out and ask how you can best help. The folks at the organization you are thinking of will know best what they need the most if you’re not sure whether you should be giving money or items or your time and know that you can’t do all three. And if you aren’t able to give any of those right now, think about at least giving these organizations your attention. Be aware of what their goals are and maybe promote them and how other people can help them through social media, so that someone in your network who is looking to give but isn’t sure how can get a little nudge in the right direction.
Sometimes giving can feel very overwhelming. You might need to research the charity you are giving to, to make sure it’s legitimate and using most (if not all) of their proceeds for the actual cause itself. (When in doubt, check Charity Navigator.)
What I find makes regular giving a little easier is not to think about it. I know this is counter-intuitive to what I just said about actively giving organizations your attention, but what I mean is try your best to automate your giving so that you don’t need to actively think about it – it just happens. Two ways I do this are through Amazon Smile, which lets you give by allowing Amazon to donate a proceed of your purchase prices to an organization of your choice, and Tab for a Cause, which donates a little bit for every new tab you open in exchange for showing you some ads that fund those donations. (I also just really love Tab for a Cause as a new tab page with handy widgets on it.) With these two tools, I am able to give a little bit without even having to change my routine. I just make my Amazon purchases at smile.amazon.com and keep opening a bazillion tabs and I am still able to do a little good.
What organizations will you give your attention, and possibly more, to this #GivingTuesday? What was your best experience with giving? Remember that you can give to one single person and it still counts – a lot! As cheesy as it sounds, as long as you can help one person, you are making the world a better place.
Brushing aside what I have said in the past about slowing down, I stayed busy again this weekend. Despite that, I didn’t feel like my schedule was jam-packed. The activities I did were really relaxing, and I was able to feel very present in the moments that I was enjoying. This is kind of an ideal way to experience these memories – not rushing through them but savoring them.
RENNFEST // I finally had my first-ever Maryland Renaissance Festival visit on Saturday! While my initial impression of the RennFest was that it was for super nerds, I later came to realize that I am a super nerd and these are my people. The best decision I made was attending in costume, because I felt too cool for school with my red cloak billowing behind me and the butterflies in my hair made me feel like a little fall fae. Also, the weather was so perfect that I often found myself just standing there, breathing in the crisp air, feeling the wind in my cloak and my butterflies, soaking it all in.
Do not put your faith in a cape and a hood, They will not protect you the way that they should…
It was actually the 40th anniversary of the Maryland RennFest! We didn’t eat as much as I thought we would! Just a turkey leg (fun to wield but actually really annoying to eat because it’s tough and tendon-y) and a berry tart. We got to see Danger Committee (a comedic stunts show that makes you laugh and gasp and was featured on America’s Got Talent), Puke and Snot (some of finest and fastest wordplay I have ever heard, from an act that has been around for over 40 years!), and a great jousting match. Did you know the state sport of Maryland is jousting? Some folks think it was modernized to be lacrosse, but lacrosse is only the state team sport. Jousting remains the official state sport.
We chose this past Saturday specifically to see a gathering of Game of Thrones cosplayers, but there were so many people at RennFest (they sold out shortly after we arrived!) that we weren’t able to find them among the masses. We did see several cosplayers on their own: Daenerys, Sansa, Melisandre, Joffrey, Robert, Cersei… it would’ve been nice to have seen all of them together though. (Especially when Cu Dubh played the show theme song for them!) I still had a really lovely time with my friends and look forward to coming back many more times in the coming years.
Steampunk!Don and FallFae!Starr enjoying turkey legs
A bee sting is 3/4 hard cider, 1/4 mead, and 100% not consumed by Starr
FLEET WEEK // Maryland Fleet Week ended yesterday with US and Canadian Navy ships leaving Baltimore’s harbor. My family went out on Sunday to have a peek at the newest naval destroyer, the USS Zumwalt, which was actually commissioned in Baltimore on Saturday. It looks very different from the other ships and is claimed to be the most technologically advanced surface combatant in the world. While we couldn’t get a closer look, we did get a chance to quickly tour the deck of the USS Letye Gulf.
See how different the USS Zumwalt looks?Super different design, super different tech and strategy
While an air show roared overhead. Yep, while we waited in line to board, we got to see the Blue Angels do their stuff (deafeningly) above us.
We wrapped the evening with a seafood dinner. Successful visit back home with my brother, and still very relaxing to boot!
ROCKET LAUNCH // NASA launched an Antares rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia last night! I didn’t know about this until yesterday morning, so I went to the Marine Corps Memorial to watch the launch with a coworkers in the evening. This was the first launch of an Antares rocket since 2014, with a failed launch, so it was very exciting for everyone. The livestream on NASAtv proved to be a little bit delayed because before we even saw liftoff on the video, we could already see the light from the rocket shooting up into the sky. While it’s not as ~cool~ as watching the footage of the explosive force that sends the rocket into the atmosphere, it was still pretty phenomenal to watch a manmade rocket go up… up… and away. The fact that we were still able to see it as it reached 180,000 ft altitude was a testament to just how bright and explosive the rocket must have been. I’ve never seen a rocket launch in person before, so this was really surreal to experience!
Also, is anyone watching Westworld? I didn’t love this week’s episode, but I think I like the show. I am a little bit in love with James Marsden’s face, so that doesn’t hurt at all. Plus, science fiction has been one of my favorite genres of everything since I learned to read.
Okay, I really am going to take it a little easier from here on out… until Halloween, of course!
East Coast friends, were any of you able to spot the rocket launch? It looked like a little red star for us a few miles away, but with its speed, you would’ve noticed a bright point in the sky going up, up, up, and then disappearing into the atmosphere.
Have you seen an air show before? I never thought about how much my dad probably enjoys them but we’ve seen the Blue Angels a few times over the past few years (Fort McHenry is a popular spot for them because of its historical significance) and I have a very early memory of seeing an air show with him… probably the Blue Angels!
Would something like the Renaissance Festival be your type of thing? You know I looooove dressing up, but I also really liked the historical aspect of the festival and just the… festival aspect! The shows were top-notch, the crafts were beautifully-made, and the people were all there to have a great time together.
Can you believe we’re almost halfway through October already?
It seems like just yesterday that I was sweating through the end of September and wondering when it would feel like fall. I could see my breath when I went out this morning, and I’ve started contemplating posting a cover of “Sweater Weather” up (don’t worry, I won’t), so it really is that time of year already!
Spoopy time!
The spoopy season is upon us, and it kicks off 3 months of festive fun, but I feel like I’ve barely had the chance to settle into October. Remember how I was supposed to “cool down for fall“? I’m not great at it, but I am getting better!
So let’s do a quick catch up of what I’ve been doing instead of taking it easy since I resolved to do just that…
DEVFESTDC // Maybe I wrote that post because I was staring down the barrel at a packed itinerary, because that Saturday I attended Day 2 of DevfestDC, a Google Developer Group mini-conference. I found out that my friend Yufeng (still waiting on your wedding photos, friend!) was one of the speakers, and with the venue so close to home, I had to go! It was nice to learn about machine learning and Google’s software (in advance of their big hardware announcement shortly after). It was especially nice to get to spend time with Yufeng, who I haven’t seen since his wedding. And seeing him twice in one year is like a new record!
SEEING RED // I dyed my hair!
It’s a lot more subtle than I was going for, but I am still happy to have red in my hair for autumn! And to be honest, maybe it’s safer for work that my hair isn’t as vibrant of a red as I was going for?
TWO YELPER PARTIES // I worked at not one but two Yelper parties, one week apart! You know I’m a sucker for a good themed party, so for the famous rivalry theme, I quickly donned an Ursula getup and convinced Ben to do an Eric Disneybound.
And at the DC Halloween bash, I gave Little Red a little test drive. (You’ll be seeing her again later!)
(And of course, I ate a lot of great food.)
HOMECOMING // I went back to my alma mater for yet another rainy homecoming. It feels very different now, when I go back to campus. I feel super out of touch with the campus community as the neighborhood changes. The student involvement suite – where I used to spend hours of my week running different clubs and meetings – had been completely redone and I was invited to the ribbon-cutting. It is so new and snazzy now, and I am really excited for the student orgs who are going to get to use that space. The homecoming leadership reception – which I’ve attended for the past 4 years – was held in a different building than usual because the old building… is not there anymore. They are redoing it. I remember feeling super tethered to my alma mater as my first job after graduating was research on campus, but I definitely do not feel that anymore.
I’ll be honest: part of the reason I come back for homecoming is the delicious food they feed me.
TREVOR NOAH // I got to see Trevor Noah, who currently hosts The Daily Show, perform standup at the Kennedy Center while he promotes his upcoming book, Born Illegal. He was really funny, and I didn’t know that he did so many great impressions and accents! I appreciated his commitment to his one-man skits, which less-bold comics would not sustain the way he did. And then, because my friend Krystal is going to marry him and got the chance to get a photo with him… and bring some friends… I got to meet him!
I like to think he’s laughing because when Annie and Krystal walked up, he exclaimed “Oh, you guys are tiny, I love that!” and then I approached him and said, “I see how it is, no love for a tall girl?” He then performed a 10:30 show about 5 minutes after this photo.
SETH MEYERS // Late Night with Seth Meyers is filming in DC this week, and I was able to attend Tuesday’s taping! It was very stressful because even though I left work quite early, Metro was hell-bent on making me late. When I escaped from underground and decided to bike over instead, the first three Capital Bikeshare hubs I got to were full! No where to park my bike! This was one of the rare times I ran in the streets and I immediately stopped when I saw the line wrapping around the block. My friends already had their wristbands to sit in the orchestra section, and I was sure I wasn’t going to make it because there were hundreds of people in line in front of me. But I made it!!! Here’s the episode I watched them film, with guests Lena Dunham and John Mulaney and Nick Kroll as their characters from their Broadway show, Oh, Hello. It was fun to get to see them film live, and I liked seeing Seth Meyers again. (I saw him perform standup in college, shortly before he hosted the White House Correspondent’s Dinner in 2011.)
CIRQUE DE LA SYMPHONIE // I just saw this last night: it’s the NSO Pops performing Cirque de la Symphonie: classic Halloween instrumentals to accompany some incredible circus acts. I’m talking aerial artists, strongmen, a juggling clown, a contortionist. There was a woman doing these amazing fast changes! It was awesome, and the set list included a lot of my favorite orchestral Halloween pieces. To top it all off, the weather is beautiful, so we walked to and fro the Kennedy Center and thoroughly enjoyed the stroll.
#FALLINTODISNEYSTYLE // I’ve been occasionally participating in Disney Style’s fall Instagram challenge, and I have been getting to know a lot of really cool Disney Instagrammers through it!
I’m not as hardcore as most of the community is, but it’s still a really fun community to get to know.
Otherwise very unaccustomed to posting photos of my socks or my desk!
Believe it or not, this is actually a slightly slowed-down few weeks for me. I have been very consciously giving myself days at home to cook dinner, clean, and prepare for future activities. (Halloween is rapidly approaching and then the holiday season will be upon us before we know it!)
What have you been up to lately as fall kicks into full gear?
What are your favorite politically-minded comedy shows? I don’t really watch a lot of TV anymore, and I definitely don’t stay up late to watch them, so I actually don’t watch much of The Daily Show or Late Night with Seth Meyers.
Sip of Starrshine 