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Cray-cray on Vacaycay

I have at least three other blog posts sitting patiently in Word documents… all full of deep thinking, work-related, and emotional things.  They’re going to have to continue to be patient, because my brain is going on strike.  It’s time for a picture-based recap post.

Since Paul is working on a career track in the mystical land of academics, our summers are often filled with mish-mashes of side jobs.  This year, Paul worked for a local restaurant at the State Fair.  Just so you know, the state fair is NOT close to where we live, and lasts for almost TWO WEEKS.  Since I had no interest in solo-parenting for that long, we trekked out West and stayed with my parents for the first week, and Paul’s parents for the second.

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Unfortunately, I don’t have many pictures to share from my parents’ house, as they live out in the country, and the kids spent almost the entire time in varying states of undress.  Lucy barely had a diaper on for about a week. So, in the interest of not posting a bunch of nude pictures of my kids… just know that they had a lot of fun.

It’s so nice out there.  The canyon is gorgeous, and the kids love to play with my parents’ dogs.  Charlie loves helping my dad fix bikes, and my mom spends the entire time chasing the kids around the house.  It’s the big old house on the prairie, and it’s nice to feel so free for a while.  My mom took Charlie to the little indoor pool in a neighboring town, and he was in heaven.  I had no idea this kid loved water so much!

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One of the main highlights was the window-well full of toads.  I remember this being a highlight of my childhood, too.  After it rained, toads would congregate down in the wells by our basement windows, and Alli and I would lay there and play with them for hours.  Lucy spent most of her time roaring at them, and it was hilarious.

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About midway through the trip, we visited Paul at the State Fair.  It was so so so nice to see him. We rode the Ferris wheel with Charlie while Lucy screamed indignantly in the stroller with Grandma, and we took an Old West Picture.  I didn’t really want to, but I’m so glad Paul pushed it.  That picture is hilarious. I was grumpy right up until it was time to take the photo, and then, of course, I couldn’t keep a straight face.  Guh.  Oh, well.

 

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The second week was spent with Paul’s parents, and the big highlight was their recently-purchased cabin on the lake.  I need to be honest here and say that I do not like lakes.  I liked them when I was little, and now I do not like them.  I think they are gross and drowning is scary.  BUT, this cabin is slowly changing my mind.  I even went tubing and enjoyed it. Charlie went fishing, fishing, fishing, and boating, boating, boating.  That kid learned terms like “jig head,” caught three fish, named a bait-fish, dealt with the death of said bait-fish, cried a little, then went fishing some more.  It was a full weekend.

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Lucy probably didn’t have as much fun as Charlie, since she couldn’t really do everything she wanted to do, and couldn’t fully communicate what she did want to do.  Next year, though. Next year, she will have a blast out at the cabin.

 

One of my favorite parts of the whole trip was when my parents came out to the cabin. We all rode in the boat, and it was so fun to see Charlie with all four of his grandparents.  Lucy just leans back and lets the wind blow over her with a big grin on her face. I have vague memories of riding on my dad’s old boat, and seeing him on the boat brought them back a little more vividly.

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Overall, it was a good trip.  The kids got so much grandma and grandpa time, and I am incredibly grateful for the help.  I know I would have done okay if we had stayed in Omaha, because I have one of the most awesome “villages” I could ask for, but the nights would have been rough and a little scary.  We’ve ended this two-week stretch feeling pretty drained, but it’s so comforting to be reminded of the support system we have and how many people there are who love us.

Coming back after this is the perfect reset.  We are starting the school year for both Paul (as a teacher) and Charlie (as a three-day-a-week preschooler), and I’m more than ready to get some routine in our lives, because we haven’t really had once since April.

Be prepared for a bunch of super-motivated posts that will last two months, and then peter out around Thanksgiving. (Pie!!!)

Good riddance, Summer! Bring on the Fall!

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WordCamp Omaha: What I Learned

This past weekend I got to dust off my professional-lady clothes and attend WordCamp Omaha.  In an extra small nutshell (pistachio, maybe?), WordCamp is a conference for users and developers of WordPress, which is the blogging platform that I use for this website.  The cool thing about WordPress is that you can make a website that doesn’t even look like a blog if you don’t want it to, but it can be done all by yourself, if that’s something you’re into.  It’s very freeing, and is an incredible platform.

Rather than blather on with intro and flowery things as I’m sometimes wont to do, I figured I’d get a much more effective blog post out of this if I stuck to some structure.  So, here I go:

Things I learned/observed at Wordcamp Omaha, 2014:

Being at a tech conference with a smartphone is just as awesome as I always imagined it to be.

Attending Barcamp Omaha last year without a smartphone was still enjoyable, but getting to participate in the Twitter conversation while the conference was happening this year at Wordcamp definitely opened my eyes to what I was missing. I followed the conference hashtag, tweeted back and forth with other attendees, and experienced a higher level of conference participation than at any of my previous experiences.

I need to give myself more credit.

The thought of attending Wordcamp was initially very intimidating for me.  From what I could glean online, it looked like a giant tech conference full of people talking in a scary code language that I would never be able to understand.  Luckily, I powered through my feelings of insecurity and fell into a world that wasn’t as scary as my neurotic brain made it out to be.  Almost all of the code I encountered was like a different language, but it looked like a language I could (and will) learn.

It wasn’t all about code, either.  I listened to presentations about building your business, marketing your business locally, and even blogging itself.  I found that almost every presentation had information that was applicable to my business and blog, and that I genuinely understood most of what the presenters were saying.

This was basically a rambly way of saying: “Lauren, you know more than you think, and are capable of more than you think.  Take more chances and you’ll find more opportunities to learn.”

One cannot become successful on creativity and passion alone.

Something that became glaringly obvious to me last weekend was that I’ve been relying too heavily on the beret-wearing, Shakespeare-loving, bongo-tapping creative person living in the right side of my brain.  I suspect that this is the most important thing I learned at Wordcamp.  This is the reason I left Barcamp last year feeling inadequate and put-out.  All I could see were creative people surrounding me being passionate and successful.  I didn’t see the tools they used, or how many times they had tried and failed, or how they built their businesses.  All I saw were men and women being effortlessly hip and passionate, and it made me feel like I’d never get there.

Wordcamp exposed me to people using actual tools and business models to build their businesses … to attendees learning from their mistakes and learning from each other.  I need to ask people other than just my friends to look at my website and give me feedback.  I need to learn about what works technically, as opposed to what just looks pretty and fun in my brain.

Barcamp’s going to be different this year for me.  I’m going to find a presentation in the Tech or Entrepreneur tracks to listen to, rather than just staying in the creative side all day.  I’m going to look around me and acknowledge that not everybody is riding around on a magical unicorn of creativity, becoming successful overnight … regardless of whether or not it looks that way.

Finally…where are all the ladies!?

Wordcamp brought not only useful information, but also great opportunities to network.  There were two “drink-and-mingle” events, and I was shocked at how devoid of women the parties were.  Plenty of the almost 100 conference attendees were female, and yet I didn’t count more than 5 women at the Friday night meet-and-greet.  There were more at the party Saturday night, but not a staggering amount.

I’m not pointing fingers.  The thought of swimming in a sea of super-smart tech dudes can be intimidating.  When I walked up, realized that I knew no one at the meet-and-greet, and that I could count the number of ladies on one hand, I started to get embarrassingly sweaty.  What happened, though?  I ended up meeting a bunch of guys who were genuinely friendly and inviting, and more than willing to share the information they had stored in their brains.  The ladies I did meet were awesome and refreshing, and I was so glad they were there.

I’m sure there’s plenty of social commentary that could go on here… but that’s not what this post is about.  What I want to say is that the connections I made at the conference were fantastic, regardless of gender, and that there is nothing to be scared of.

 

I’ll definitely be attending Wordcamp in 2015 if it returns to Omaha, and I’m planning to have used what I learned this year to be better prepared for the next.

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Bluh.

Let me start by saying that, right now, I’m sitting in a booth at Panera with the top button of my jeans undone and the zipper halfway down because I wore the wrong jeans today. They fit me weird, and are fine when I’m walking around, but when I sit down, they dig right in to my stomach region.  Don’t worry; my shirt is covering the partial nudity, but I’m still not very comfortable.

I think that’s a pretty good metaphor for my professional life right now.

I can just almost fit everything in… at least enough to make it look like I’ve got it together, but as soon as I sit down and really try to get to work, I have something else to attend to.  Something that will take time away from progress.  I always have to undo the top button.

I’m not really even sure if that metaphor totally works… but it’s good in my head, so I’m going to just go with it.

I’ve got so many things I’d like to do and be right now.  I, of course, would like to be an active and engaging mom.  I would like to be an active and engaging wife.  I would like to make us so much money by working from home that we never have to worry about anything ever again.  We will frolic in the meadows and run the most successful cruelty-free, free-range unicorn farm in the universe.

I can have it all, right?  Cake?  Can I eat it, too?

What’s bothering me most right now is my work.  My business.  This thing I have created that brings some extra income into our home.  My business is stable and, so far, small but dependable.  This is something I’m very thankful for.

It’s not thriving.  It’s not this super-hip, wildly popular, well-paying gig that I have painted an image of in my mind.  I’ve got the time and energy to maintain, but not the time and energy to revamp, rework, or expand.  I don’t have the money to pay some brilliant web designer to create a fabulous website or the time to learn how to make one myself.

I’ve got a couple of exciting work-related conferences coming up, and I’m hoping that they reenergize me.  Even through my excitement, though, I can remember the feeling I had after the conferences were over last year… and I’m not looking forward to it.  Spending the entire day with a group of trendy young professionals doing what they looooooove has a way of fooling you into a false sense of trendy-young-professionalism.

Then you get home and step on a Lego.  Or see a bill poking out of the mail box.  Or realize that you forgot to go grocery shopping.

That’s pretty much all I’ve got right now… although I should probably add that I didn’t sit down to create an invitation to a pity party.  I’m just in a rut.  We all go through these things, and I realized that I don’t always write about it, in an effort to convince myself that I’m on top of the world, looking down on creation.

What about you guys? (She asked, for the 5th time in her blogging career) How do you pull yourselves out of The Rut?  A team of draft unicorns?

ANYWAY, it’s time to button up that top button… surreptitiously, so that nobody thinks I’m up to anything weird.  It is a Panera, for goodness’ sake.

(I’d like to mention that this post was inspired by Mardra at Grown Ups and Downs.  She’s been doing a “free write Friday” and, although I don’t think I could keep up a weekly feature, I love the idea of just sitting down and writing without worrying about structure and wit and… well, anything other than what I’m thinking.  You should check out her blog sometime; it’s completely wonderful.  I don’t even have anything cheeky to add about that!)

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Listen, Netflix, it’s not you, it’s me.

I have been fantastically devoid of motivation for about a month and a half now.

That’s fine; it’s understandable, I suppose.  We’re in the “job hunting” chapter of our collective story, and it’s pretty stressful.  Even though it’s obvious that we should be gung-ho about things now more than ever, it all kind of makes us both want to take a nap.  Add to that the fact that it’s summer, where everything is HOT and my clothes are sticking to me in every place imaginable and CHIGGERS GUHHHHHH, and you’ve got a version of Lauren who just doesn’t want to do anything.

Thankfully, though, the weather has been gorgeous this past week.  Perfect, I might even say, if I were feeling particularly excited, and forgetting about the sweet, crisp bliss that is October.

Thanks to the cooler air, my mood has improved a bit, and has led me to a revelation:

It’s time to turn off the autopilot.

One night last week, I found myself staying up late watching an episode of White Collar.  The thing about White Collar is that, for the most part, I’ve lost interest in it.  But, there I was, up late and by myself watching something I wasn’t actually interested in.

What was I doing!?

Watching entirely too much Netflix, that’s what.

So.  My new personal mid-year resolution is this: Netflix only when I’m nursing Lucy, doing laundry, or watching a show I’m definitely interested in with Paul.  Otherwise?  Reading.  Books.  Listening to podcasts.  Finding fun projects to do with the kids.  Planning meals.  You know, productive things?

I even have a book list for myself!  Here’s what I’m reading right now:

Darkfever, Karen Marie Moning:  This one’s about… well, bad fairies.  Yep, bad fairies, ambiguously good ones, cryptic Celtic mystical talk, and lots of late 90’s/early 00’s references.  And, I’m getting the impression that there’s going to be a fair amount of hanky panky… with fairies.  Some of you may be rolling your eyes, but if you know me, then you know I’m enjoying the crap out of it.

Attachments, Rainbow Rowell: Rainbow Rowell is a very successful local author, and this book is CHOC FULL of life-in-Nebraska-in-the-90’s-references, and what looks like a relationship that will bloom from an IT guy reading emails between two female employees at his work.  So far, I’m digging it, yo.

The Love Affairs of Nathaniel P., Adelle Waldman: This book is for book club, and it’s probably the “thinkiest” of the three books I’m reading now.  It’s an incredibly well-written account (by a female author) of a modern man’s relationships in New York.  There’s a lot of talking, a lot of relationship analysis, and just some fantastic writing so far.

Packing for Mars, Mary Roach: I haven’t started this one yet, but one of my favorite ladies lent it to me, and I am excited to read it.  It’s a nonfiction (if you know me well, you know that nonfiction is something I generally run screaming from) exploration of what happens in space.  Mary Roach is, according to one of the critics on the jacket, “The funniest science writer in the country.”  I think a good step into nonfiction is a funny one, don’t you?

Magical Thinking, Augusten Burroughs: I haven’t started this one yet, either, but I’ve read Running with Scissors by Burroughs (a delightful memoirist), and I absolutely loved it.  Just looking at it now, I see that it’s a collection of essays.  I’ll let you know how it goes!

I feel that I should leave you with one of my favorite quotes from Beth in Attachments.  Since the weather is heating up again, I’m going to need some hope to cling to.

“October, baptize me with leaves! Swaddle me in corduroy and nurse me with split pea soup.  October, tuck tiny candy bars in my pockets and carve my smile into a thousand pumpkins. O autumn! O teakettle! O grace!”

What about you guys?  What are you reading?  What else do you think I should read?