Speaking of #lifeasweknowit, I am beginning to tire of stories and op-eds and random musings of people talking about my generation. Or hearing people call someone else the “voice” of my generation (ahem, Lena Dunham of “Girls” fame/infamy). If you are talking about Millenials, meaning people who came of age in the 21st century, then the oldest of us are right around 30. I’m sorry, did I miss that part of history where everyone born before 1980 had their shit together at age 30? Lumping us together and writing a tongue-in-cheek advice column doesn’t really inspire or spur us to get in shape.
More interesting and less pedantic is an analysis of what skills will be valued in the future. I’m particularly interested by this “10 Skills for the Future Workforce” story in the Atlantic last year. Cross-cultural sensitivity? Cognitive load management? Transdisciplinarity? Wordmakingupiness? It’s clear that my contemporaries who learned laziness and ignorance from the digital revolution are going to lose out, while those of us who manage to adapt and improve our skills in the evolving world will succeed. The only difference between us and other generations is that the skills we need are so radically different from others. Perhaps that’s where there’s such a ‘them’ mentality.
Anyway. No more reading Millenials articles for me!
I’m doing that thing where I have like 30+ tabs open and am only reading part of an article before moving on to another article, and sometimes tweeting about an article before I’m even done with it, and also not working on things that I’m actually supposed to be working on and feeling guilty about it. And also reading media diets of people who read a lot and feeling anxiety about not reading as much as them and also feeling anxiety about not having a better way of reading everything I want to read. (Should I better curate? I read a lot and am pretty sure it’s all from Twitter but at the same time have no idea where I get any of my information.) I also have a half-written email in my Gmail tab that was supposed to be a quickie but turned into a longer update about how busy I am, which is really, really obnoxious, so now I’m considering just taking out most of what I’ve written except then it feels like even more wasted time.
The resolutions are going well, thanks for asking. I never got that last taste of fried chicken, though, which is a damn shame. It was too late by the time I had time to get dinner, and I always feel skeezy eating fried foods after 9pm unless I’m drinking. Instead, I had some broccoli and cheddar soup as my ‘last hurrah,’ to which my roommate BG said,”You’re so bad, Bettina,” in his typical mocking tranny voice.
In the meantime, I managed to down two ginger ales at the bar on Wednesday as we sent off a friend who’s moving to Boston. I also accidentally ate ONE fried chick pea. At least I think it was fried. It was referred to as “crispy” on the menu.
It’s sad to watch people come and go. I’ve lived in the Chicago area for a long time, and I used to think of myself as a well-traveled person, but it’s pretty obvious that that’s all a ruse. I love the idea of starting over completely - although I’m petrified completely of doing it - because it just seems like another life challenge that needs to be taken on. Or am I just romanticizing something that sorta sucks? No one likes moving to a city where they have no friends. And let’s face it guys, I’m not great at making ‘em.
Yeah, scratch that. I love Chicago. I’ll be here for a while.
I should take advantage of this time when SD is furiously applying/interviewing for jobs to catch up with her in post number.
Does that make me a bad friend?
Anyhow, today is April 30 which is significant for completely contrived reasons. Specifically, I contrived a plan to be healthy in the month of May. I will officially be drinking only once per week, exercising 3 times a week, abstaining from fried foods, and participating in Meatless Mondays. Here are my reasons, in order of importance.
Mo money, less problems.
Resident bearfriend JC is traveling in Europe. Therefore, I have a lot of free time to fill.
I really don’t like cooking meat. I could probably not cook meat on the same day every week to make myself seem trendier.
I need to stop drinking alcohol solely because I’m thirsty at a restaurant with a nice (or cheap) booze offering.
I’ve been steadily gaining weight since sophomore year of college (not a lot, but enough), and it’s time to reverse that trend.
Swimsuit season?*
Uh, something about healthy living.
Today is April 30, and it is a Monday, therefore I will be having fried chicken for dinner.
Wish me luck!
*reason #6 contingent upon cooperation with Chicago weather patterns
Junior year, as an oh-so-fresh editor at NU Intel, I had the idea of interviewing Justin Kim, a fellow junior on campus who was a bit of a YouTube celebrity, for our “Talented People We Love” feature. It involved a broadcast-style interview that is now on YouTube. It was more than eight minutes and has 1,387 views. It also cemented my exit from standard TV news. (“Um, um. Yeah. Laugh. Sooo. Are you dating anybody? Haha.” I think my straight-laced philanthropist friend Hiro Kawashima generously watched it and informed me that it was “really awkward.”) I will not embed that here, though if you care enough to watch it, you’ll be able to find it.
We also made a quirky YouTube-style video where Justin pretends to me. I forgot about it until just now, and I still find it kind of funny. It currently has 23,768 views, most of which are probably from JKim’s tween girl fans in Thailand. One of the views is from my boyfriend, whom I forced to watch it just now. (He didn’t get it.)
I partly find the video amusing because of the comments. Things with my name on it have gone online frequently since I’ve become a journalist. A couple times, those things have gotten hundreds of comments. For example, I wrote several national AP stories that were obediently displayed on Yahoo News, or where Internet commenters go to die. And in NU Intel’s first year our content was regularly criticized for not being newsy enough. Some of the comments were pretty nasty, and for us very new editors who had worked very hard on the site, it could feel harsh. Of course, many people soon embraced our niche-style, and those sort of comments greatly diminished, if not disappeared completely. Regardless, the comments have always focused on the work, or the news, or news value, or whatever.
But comments on entertainment YouTube videos are different. Your face becomes fair game. And JKim’s devoted followers let ‘er rip. The top comment, with 47 “likes”?
“Dude Jkim, don’t be offended but you make a much prettier girl than the real one in this Vid.”
I’ve come to the party several years late and am now obsessively listening to past episodes of Marc Maron’s WTF podcast. It’s fantastic. For those of you who are late to the party also, he’s a comedian who rants about something for ten minutes and then spends 50 minutes talking to a comedian, usually about how they became a who they are. It’s so good, I’m even considering paying for premium episodes and buying better headphones to cancel out train noise.
I’d listened to a couple before—Ira Glass, Anthony Bourdain—but never consistently. My late onset motion sickness means less reading on the train, so I’ve downloaded like seven episodes in the past week or so. Donald Glover, Adam Scott, Diablo Cody, Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman…(Megan Mullally, by the way, has one of the most sensual voices I’ve ever heard—a surprise, considering she made her career off if Karen Walker’s high-pitched whine on Will & Grace.)
It’s always great to hear people get real about how they came to be. People know that it’s going to get real on Maron’s show, too, so they don’t come on the defensive. He says he “interviews the comedians,” but that doesn’t give the podcast enough credit. It really does feel like a pure, honest conversation.
I like that Marc Maron does not hide his admiration for these people. I like that Marc Maron is not shy about talking about himself. I like that he’s honest but also human in that he doesn’t really want to hurt the person’s feelings. Take the Adam Scott podcast for example. Scott is the straight-man of comedy, the person set up to make everyone else funny. He clearly felt that he just isn’t as funny as his co-workers (and with co-workers like his, I can’t blame him). Maron responded that Scott was funny, and that his reactions often made a joke. Scott was tepid. Maron: “Wow, you have some real self-esteem issues there.”
What Marc Maron does is journalistic but not necessarily journalism. His interview style might break ethic rules for some people. The best material comes out of interviews that feel less like interviews and more like a conversation, but in my experience, there’s still a certain wall when both people know that the journalist needs something. It’s an awkwardness that journalism students spend the bulk of their time in school trying to overcome. “I’m going to be nice to you. Then, ideally, you will tell me your deepest fears, joys, and dirty secrets. I will then make a judgment about them, call it the truth, and publish them for friend and foe to read. Then I will never speak to you again.”
The journalist is not a real friend—almost not even a real person, more of a conduit for information—and both people know that, no matter how many quips and laughter is had. Marc Maron can be a friend. I guess I’m a little jealous of that.
I’d like to write a quick ode to a t-shirt dress I lost after I moved out of Miami. To this day, it’s one of the saddest losses of a clothing item I’ve ever had. RIP, wherever you are, my black off-shoulder cotton t-shirt dress. I miss you almost everyday, and that’s the truth.
SIGH. You’d think something as basic as a loose, short-sleeved cotton t-shirt dress would be easy to replace. For god’s sake, it cost me ten dollars from American Eagle’s website. It didn’t seem like it was anything genius, except that goddammit it was.
It was soft. It was loosely fit but not too loose. I would wear it to sleep. I would wake up, put a oversized, patterned scarf on and go to class. In New York’s fall, I’d throw on leggings, booties, and tie a silk scarf around my waist. In Miami, I’d throw it over my swimsuit to go to the beach. It allowed a soft breeze to brush my skin.
Let me tell you: I am always on the lookout. I am always on the lookout because I’ve spent hours and hours trying to find a replacement, and it’s been so miserable that I’ve essentially given up and now take a “wait and see” approach. A couple times, I’ve gloriously found something similar, and it’s cost about $70. I love it, but in no way is it worth $70.
Now it’s at that point that even if I do find something similar, it will probably never be the same because I’ve built it up in my mind so much.
Sigh. RIP black off-shoulder cotton t-shirt dress. RIP.
My primary goal is to not let the job hunt stress me out too much. Now that I’ve started, it’s taking over my every thought. A running list of who’s responded and who hasn’t runs as a scroll on the bottom of my mind. The cover letters I haven’t started yet pick at me, too. School work takes second tier. My own sanity takes third tier. This blog, apparently, takes no tier at all, stuck in a pile of forgotten projects that also includes “eating properly” or “reading things.”
Yes, yes. I know I will be fine. But it’s kind of like riding up on a roller coaster, where you knew what you’d be getting into before you even went into Disney World. Yet, you still psych yourself as you get closer to the front of the line, and even more once you’ve strapped yourself into car. And then I guess it goes like for for a while because up-down-up-down etc even though we all know how it turns out in the end.
Thank you for visiting the office of Ms. Bettina Chang, the Editor Extraordinaire. What type of edit would you like today? Here are your options:
Level 1: Copy edit. I’ll make sure you don’t look like a douche because of stupid typos/misspellings, subject-verb agreement and blatant misuse of commas and other punctuation marks.
Level 2: Line edit. I’ll go through line by line and make sure your ideas make sense in the order that you put them down, which they probably don’t. Just sayin’.
Level 3: Structural edit. Utter and complete destruction of your carefully constructed piece. Think of it as prose Armageddon or the molecular gastronomy of the written word. I will deconstruct that sucker to its barest ingredients and rebuild it into something that looks completely foreign to you, but is nonetheless delicious. And then I’ll charge you up the wazoo for it.
Just kidding. Everyone knows that editors don’t get to charge up the wazoo for anything.
By all rights, I feel like I should have to deduct days now because I have abandoned this blog for so long. SORRY.
I hate to use this excuse again, but things have been bat-shit crazy. I was so exhausted Sunday night that when I went to rinse my mouth after brushing my teeth, instead of cupping water from the faucet, I spit the toothpaste foam into my hand. Not my best moment.
In other news, sometimes I wonder about the types of people you get used to. My friends all tend to be a little nuts, and we talk really fast and jump from topic to topic within 30 seconds. We rarely cope with silence. We rarely tolerate mundaneness. It makes for very exhausting (but extremely awesome) hangout sessions.
Maybe that’s why I always feel like I need recovery time after being social. In addition to my natural introversion, I deal with an extreme level of social engagement when I am hanging out with my friends.
Then, when I end up hanging out with other people, I must seem completely off my rocker. Obviously, I tone it all done because I don’t have anyone off which to bounce, or jettison, depending on how you view us.
