A running theme through everything I learn about happiness and well-being is that we as humans need other humans in our lives. In nearly every study I’ve heard about, the happiest and healthiest people are also the people who interact with others socially. They have all three types of social connections: the person or people you can share your innermost self with and be most vulnerable with, friends to shoot the breeze and hang out and have fun with, and connections around a shared belief or interest, like church, or a bowling league, or a book club.
I have all of these people in my life. The problem is that none of them live near me. Excepting my husband and kids who live in the same house with me, and excepting the couple of times a year I get together with family, my girlfriends, or work colleagues for a few short days, all of my socializing happens digitally.
I feel mostly okay about this, but as our kids grow up, and as my time expands while my in-real-life circle of people contracts, I’d really like to have more people in my physical life to hang out with. When our daughter moves out and it’s just my husband and me rattling around the house together, we’ll need other people in our lives if for no other reason that to have something to talk about. But finding friends as an adult is challenging. When I meet and interact with people, it’s too easy to give up because I compare my reserve with new people to the ease I feel with existing deep friends, which isn’t fair because some of those friendships go back 35 years.
But before an interaction can even happen, I have to find people in my town to interact with, and I’m not sure how to do that. I’m not interested in church, I don’t play team sports, and my closest coworker lives three hours away, so I can’t go to a work happy hour for a beer on a Friday night. I don’t need a lot. Coffee or a cocktail would be great. A book club would be excellent. I live in a University town. I should be able to find this kind of thing, right? How do you all meet people?
I’m headed down to North Carolina this weekend for two full days of WordPress nerdery: I’m going to WordCamp Asheville. Yeeaahhh!!! I went out today and bought school supplies and was like a kid again picking out my composition book and writing implements. Crisp paper, inky blue pens… My laptop is a dinosaur and if I can’t sit next to an outlet it will die within minutes, so despite the high tech world we will be discussing, I’ll be the cave woman in the corner chiseling my notes on stone tablets.
I’ve spent the week studying the WordCamp Asheville schedule and I have finally nailed down the sessions I plan to attend. I know many of you, dear readers, are fellow bloggers, and I know many of you use the WordPress platform. Take a look at my course schedule below and if you have any questions you would like me to ask of the instructors, please let me know. If time and the instructors permit, I am happy to be your ambassador. (Blurbs in italics and the little icon below courtesy of WordCamp Asheville).
Blast off with Jetpack: Amazing Features powered by WordPress.com, taught by WordPress.com Happiness Engineer Evan Zimmerman: …In this session we’ll give an overview of Jetpack and talk about the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. We’ll dive into popular features such as Stats, Widget Visibility and Contact Forms, and discuss the available Social and Media options…
Photos and Colors and Layouts Oh My!: Resources to Help You Make Good Design, taught by web designer and filmmaker Nancy Thanki: You’ve got your perfect theme picked out! It has this amazing layout that you know will be perfect for presenting you and yours in the best possible way. Bought, downloaded, and ready to rumble. Now the tricky part: how to make it look as amazing for you as it did in the developer’s demo? …
Getting Help with WordPress – a Beginners Guide to Getting Unstuck, taught by developer Russell Fair: No matter where you are with WordPress, a beginner, intermediate user, or ninja developer there comes a point where you just get stuck. This presentation will show attendees who are new to WordPress how to figure it out on their own…
Customize your Website with CSS for Beginners, taught by developer and designer Lydia Roberts: Ever wanted to change the color of a font, position of an image, or appearance of a page layout without having to rely on built-in theme options or calling a developer? You’d be amazed at the changes you can make with small edits to your site’s Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)…
Work, Life, Blog, Balance taught by Alicia Murray, founder and editor of BalancingMotherhood.com: Tips, tools, and action steps to a balanced blog life. This presentation will discuss how to organize and balance priorities between your day job, your life, and your passion for blogging…
Getting Found on Google taught by professional blogger and SEO consultant Rich Owings: Not showing up on Google? This introduction to search engine optimization (SEO) will fill you in on all the basics, from title and alt image tags to pretty permalinks, SEO plugins, and Google authorship. There will time for more advanced questions too, all to help you improve your rankings.
5 Steps for Building a More Active Online Community taught by Disqus pioneer Michael G. Calvert: There’s no magic behind building a successful online community (unless blood, sweat and tears count), but there are a few key actions that lead to increased engagement. With over 5 years of experience in building communities online (in various forms), plus data gathered from 4 expert bloggers, Michael G. Calvert of Disqus will offer real-world examples as a guide…
Working with Media in WordPress taught by digital media instructor Jonathan Ross: It’s no surprise that WordPress has been updated with a lot of features specifically dedicated to adding, managing and displaying media (images, audio,video). More and more, websites rely on images and other media to tell the story… instead of text. In this photo oriented session, you will learn about media settings, adding/deleting media, managing thumbnails, metadata, featured images, and essential plugins…
Using Google Analytics with WordPress taught by data analyst Chip Oglesby: In this talk, we’ll look at the basics of what you should be tracking on your site and why. There will also be a hands-on period for help and Q&A.
Intro to PHP taught by programmer John Dorner: WordPress is built with PHP. It helps to know the basics so you can understand and make changes to your theme’s templates. This session will not make you into a programmer, but will explain a lot of what you will see when you look at the code that powers your site. He’ll also share where you can find help to answer your PHP questions.
Cold rain drips
into dirty black puddles.
Punch down dough!
I’m in a mood. It has been gray and gloomy for three days, and it is affecting me. Like a million other bloggers out there, I don’t have a focus. This isn’t a how-to blog, or a blog about, well, anything. I chose the name Butterfly Mind deliberately – because my mind is all over the place, and I’m working to embrace my fluttering (See There’s power in that adjective for the story). When I introduced myself to a local writing group and explained that I blog, but I have no theme, I have no focus, one writer raised his hand and said, “Excuse me? Do you really need a focus?” And I fell in love with the group.
But as my “to-write” list grows, the topics ranging from hiking conversations, to housekeeping, to memoir, to haiku, I’m feeling more scattered than even I am comfortable with, and I find myself overwhelmed and wondering “where do I begin?” Do I write about winter in Maine? Or continue the Dear Diary, story? I could write about my adventures in homemaking. Or courting my husband on the Appalachian Trail. Or maybe I should write haiku about baking bread today:
Forearms bulge
like Popeye on spinach – Push!
And turn the dough.
I’ve considered starting all over with another blog. A blog with a focus. My resolution to learn how to keep house this year has my wheels turning, and I’m thinking about writing a housekeeping blog for beginners. A blog that traces my journey through learning the basics of keeping house, and of why it’s important to make a house into a home. I even wrote out a list of domain names and checked into their availability.
My recent post, Would I know how to do this if I had taken Home Ec?, which I thought would be a total flop, stimulated inspiring discussion that has encouraged me. One reader commented that self-sufficiency at home is “one of the parts of [our son’s] education that I look forward to most.” Her thoughtful comments have me thinking its time for me to start teaching our kids about housekeeping. I even wrote “Start teaching kids housekeeping” on my calendar for this summer, once I’ve gotten the hang of it myself. And boy would that provide fodder for an amateur housekeeper blog.
But I’m still not sure. It would be an awful lot of work, and I’m not sure I’ve got the personality for it. My first housekeeping post was the most boring post ever. And to be honest, I’m not sure if housekeeping is what I want to write about. Or what you want to read about.
So why don’t you tell me – would you be interested in a homemaking blog? I would likely still keep this one. I can’t stand the thought of limiting myself to one topic. In fact, the thought of having a focus almost makes me balk and not even publish this post.
We weren’t even in our new place before packages started showing up on our doorstep. Since we were geniuses and crammed our move into the two weeks between our kids’ birthdays (and only four weeks before Christmas), we did a lot of online ordering to make sure we didn’t screw up and forget to shop for our kids amidst all the moving-in hubbub.
As a result, our mail carrier and UPS man have been frequent visitors to our front stoop. I introduced myself to our new mail carrier – she comes during daylight hours, and her arrival was easy to anticipate. But our UPS guy? The other night, our doorbell rang, and we answered it within 10 seconds. Seriously, it was that quick. There lay a package at our door, with not a man nor a brown truck to be seen. I swear to God, there was no UPS truck or deliveryman anywhere in sight, no tail lights disappearing down the street, no diesel engine gurgling away into the night. It was kind of creepy.
When it came time to leave our holiday tips, the mail carrier was easy. I wrote her a card, slipped some cash in it, and left it with the outgoing mail. But the UPS man? I don’t even know what he looks like. Or when to expect him. Or if I can catch him the next time he comes to our door.
So yesterday, when I saw the brown UPS truck pull into our parking lot, I stole the card I had set aside for the kids’ librarian, scribbled a thank you note, and ran out in my slippers waving the red envelope, “Excuse me! Excuse me!” chasing him as he sprinted from our neighbors’ stoop to his open-doored truck.
“I wasn’t sure if we’d be getting any more packages delivered before Christmas, but I wanted to give you a card. So here you go. Merry Christmas!” Panting as I said it.
He stopped mid trot, looked at me real funny, like “Who the hell are you?” and then his face gentled and he said thank you as he accepted my card.
I realized after his funny look that a) he was here way earlier than we usually get our deliveries, so I don’t even know if he’s our UPS man, and b) since he hopped into the passenger side of the truck, I’m guessing there was a driver with him, whom I did not tip. Sigh. I’ll get it right one of these days.
If you are bewildered by the art of tipping like I am, my husband sent me this excellent guide to tipping. It even includes the percentage rates for hair cuts – I never know how much to tip my stylist! Now to figure out how to catch the garbage men. I don’t know when they come or how many serve our building. But after the sickening volume of waste we generated from our move, you’d better believe I appreciate those guys enough to sit by the window all day Friday to wait for them.
Butterfly Mind 