why corporate jobs just don’t do it for us

Many of you X’ers are not thrilled with corporate life. You tend not to trust institutions in general and deeply resent the Boomers’ confident assumptions that you will be motivated by the same things that Boomers have long cared about.
She’s right.  And the list, 10 reasons gen xers are unhappy with corporate jobs, spells out [...]

remembering every little detail

As far back as I can remember, I’ve always had an awful memory.  The bright side is that I easily forgive and forget (literally).   And I can pick and choose what I want to remember (it’s easy– I just blog or take pictures about the good stuff).
Anyways, can you imagine what it’s like to have [...]

how did we end up in suburbs?

“Suburbia may be paved with good intentions, but mainly it is paved”
-architect Douglas Kelbaugh
Continuing on my previous curiosity about the decline of suburbs, I just finished architect professor Dolores Hayden’s book Building Suburbia. Did you ever wonder how we got this way in the first place? How big box stores and parking [...]

Just finished Full Frontal Feminism by Jessica Valenti. I read this book cover to cover (how else do you read a book?).
The author uses a conversational technique, woven with swear words and gramatical errors, to discuss issues of gender inequality in the US. She’s funny, honest, and real. It was a refreshing [...]

why my parents can’t sell their house in suburban ohio and I can’t afford a loft in san francisco

great article in the Atlantic this month, exploring how suburbs are becoming less desirable than urban areas. city sprawl?
A structural change is under way in the housing market—a major shift in the way many Americans want to live and work. It has shaped the current downturn, steering some of the worst problems away from the [...]

an argument for quitting

Recently, psychologists Gregory Miller and Carsten Wrosch set out to investigate the mental and physical health of people who resist quitting and of those who throw in the towel when facing unattainable goals. The second group — the quitters — were healthier than their persistent peers on almost every variable. They suffered fewer health problems, [...]

Adobe Book Shop in the Mission

[Young people today are] the social entrepreneurs, the 21st-century answer to the student protesters of the 1960s.
- Nicholas Kristof 

In terms of punctuation, semicolons signal something New Yorkers rarely do. Frank McCourt… describes the semicolon as the yellow traffic light of a “New York sentence.” In response, most New Yorkers accelerate; they don’t pause to contemplate.
-NY Times

the upside of being down

I have friends that live their lives in consistent bliss.  I have friends who underscore their life with negativity and chagrin.  And of course, I know those who take Zoloft or Prozac to suppress their sorrow and live in an idyllic mindset.
What I have learned is that the tendency to be optimistic or pessimistic is [...]

And does Facebook really connect people? Doesn’t it rather disconnect us, since instead of doing something enjoyable such as talking and eating and dancing and drinking with my friends, I am merely sending them little ungrammatical notes and amusing photos in cyberspace, while chained to my desk?
– An amusing line from an extreme, and quite [...]