Life in the Middle Lane

I was born in December of 1981. Because of a couple of educational loopholes, (and the fact that I could already read) I started kindergarten when I was four.  This was a lucky break for me. I found that it was easier to blend in as someone who was younger, than it would have been if I one of those kids that was almost a whole year older than everyone else.  It wasn’t until college that it was a pain to be the youngest. Especially at 18 and 21. But that’s a story for another day.

My birth in 1981 leaves me on the edge. I’m on the cusp of the Gen X/Gen Y split.  Sociologically, I completely identify with Gen Y. I boomeranged. I’m happily not married. I’m a job hopper. I fit all the criteria.

You would think that I would jump for joy at the prospect of having hundreds of Gen Y blogger feeds delivered to my Google Reader every day. You would think that I would be able to identify with, and be encouraged, educated and inspired by the writings of my generational compatriots.

Then I go to Brazen Careerist, which no doubt has given me access to a bunch of, in some cases, underrated bloggers who I love, but sometimes I scan the titles and think, “It this it?”

This is the best and the brightest? These are who we “feature”, who we ask to guest post, who get best blogger awards?

Are Gen Y bloggers only allowed to talk about Gen Y, social media, the internet, marketing, and entrepreneurship?

Ya know, I love a REALLY GREAT post about any of those subjects, but the “Top 5 Ways to Hack Blah Blak Blah” and the “Gen Y is different because yak yak yak” has been done to death.

Seriously. It’s dead.

Unless you have something COMPLETELY new and different to share, stop writing about being a member of Gen Y, social media, HR, marketing, career planning, or any number of boring and/or overdone topics. But if you blog about these topics because it’s your passion or brand, or it’s what you do for work, or you want to get noticed by an industry insider,  for God’s sake, make it interesting for the rest of us.

How can you make your blog posts more interesting? Make me care.

Your life is interesting. Relationships are interesting. Building bridges is interesting.  Having a conversation is interesting. Telling a great story is interesting. Making a difference is interesting. Exposing stupidity is interesting.  Overcoming is interesting. Making me jealous is interesting. Being inspiring is interesting. Being funny is interesting.

For goodness sakes, if you are going to write for the web, say something meaningful. Compel me to subscribe to you.  Be fucking interesting.

Rebecca, brilliant chick that she is, has asked for participation in a Goal Meet-Up project.  Since I was planning on posting about my new goals anyway, I’m gladly joining her experiment.

Wanna hear it? Here it go!

So I’ve moved all my stuff and have been living with the GF since the end of June.  At first, I had a hellacious transition period because I moved with to Atlanta with no job and all my job leads were in California.  Initially, my plan was to keep looking for permanent employment in Cali, and get something short term (waiting tables) in the meantime.

Well, sometimes life has other plans. After just a few short weeks of looking, I landed a great job in Atlanta.  Of course, while I was job searching and mooching off the GF, my only two priorities were 1. Find a job so that I could be a contributing member of the household 2. Don’t drive the GF bonkers.

Once I got the job all squared away, and I started believing the GF when she said she wasn’t going to kick me out, I started to relax and think about life in the A. Since I’m going to be in Atlanta, I don’t want to be miserable.  I needed to get a life (and the GF strongly agreed).

So, in typical Monica-style I made myself a list, a “How to get a life” list if you will, of goals and stuck them on the vision board.  They are in order of importance and the go a little something like this:

Five things I need to work on

1. Meeting new people and Making friends
2. Getting my bills settled
3. Learning my new environment
4. Building my brand
5. Being a better friend, partner and family member

What I’ve done so far:

1. I have joined several meet-up groups and have gone to one of the events.  I have also joined a book club, and I foresee a lot of involvement there.  I have contacted a few local branches of my sorority, in hopes of becoming more active there.
2. I have created a budget and a mint.com account (thanks, Jenny Blake). I’ve called all my creditors about why I didn’t pay them all summer, and I’ve set up payment plans to get me back on track.
3. This is supposed to me be exploring Atlanta neighborhoods by myself without the GF’s GPS, but some Atlanta neighborhoods are scary and I shouldn’t be in them by myself. I’m tabling this til next month.
4. 4. I have had one meeting with a guy that could potentially build my website, but he’s not used to wordpress and I want to keep a wordpress framework, so it probably won’t work between us.  Anyone know any good (inexpensive) web designers?
5. 5. This will be an on-going goal.   My sister lives in Atlanta and I want to make sure I spend time with her. My mom gets lonely back home, and I need to keep good communication with her.  My brother, bless his heart, has finally joined the 21^st century and has email, so I want to write to him more often.  I want to keep in contact with my NC peeps, ‘cause I love and miss them. And I need to more honestly communicate in my relationship with the GF.  I can check that I have been doing all these things in August.

Next Month

1. Calling and/or emailing my friends in NC at least once a week. I’ve gotten out of touch with my MPA family
2. Watch how much money I spend at the grocery store. (I tend to go a bit overboard.)
3. I need to (a.) join (b.) go to (5x wkly) a gym; working out outside isn’t working for me.
4. Call my mom and sister twice a week, send my brother one email a week.  Send text messages to friends when I think of them.
5. Build a marketing campaign for Cosmopolitan Urbanist (and find a web designer)
6. Attend more meet-up events
7. Contact local commercial developers.
8. Show my emotions.
9. I think I’ve found the organization that I’d like to work with next, so now I have to bring myself to their attention. I’m going to attend their September board meeting, and say something useful while I’m there.
10. (Carried over from last month) Get a map of the interior of I-285 and explore different Atlanta neighborhoods, by car.

Wow. This is a lot of goals.  But since they are (mostly) things I was going to do anyway, I think I’m ok.

I opened my email this morning, after trying unsuccessfully at work to stay on task for more than an hour at a time.

The first thing I opened was a brazen message from Ryan Paugh asking members to write a post about our #brazenblogcrush.  I briefly thought about doing it and decided that if I DID write a post about my brazen blog crush, it would have to be about the funniest married lady on the planet; my dear friend, Marie at McKinney-Oates Cereal.  I have been crushing MADLY on this woman since Rebecca at Modite linked to her a few months ago.

I was immediately sucked into her hilarious stories about her family and her husband.  After about a week, I had to find her on twitter and facebook and every other social media platform. (I mean, how else am I supposed to stalk her, if I can’t find her EVERYWHERE)

Her’s is THE ONLY blog that I comment on, and then check back later to see if she replied to my comment. Her’s is one of the few blogs that I read every post and comment on if I SQUEEZE out any bit of relevance.  And sometimes I comment just to say I love her and I think she’s funny. Cause I do.

Then the second piece of email that I opened this morning was a pingback from my website.  Since I rarely get linked to, I had to immediately see what this was all about.  Lo and behold, my buddy has already written her blog crush blog about me.  I was am flattered and humbled.

And then I thought, I can’t possibly write my blog crush about her now!!! Then I look like an obvious brown-noser (which I am, but I don’t want to look like it).

I had to pick someone else.

So I picked my new blog crush; Alex at Social Butterfly.

Apparently, I’ve been following Social Butterfly for a while.  But for some reason, after the initial site perusal, I never made it back over.  Then a couple of weeks ago, again while trying to stay on task at work, I succumbed to my Google reader.  I realized that it had been a while since I culled my feeds, so I started deleting blogs that are either boring, irrelevant to my life, or haven’t posted in a while.

I clicked on Social Butterfly to see what it was, (yes, it had been that long), and read a couple of her posts.  Then I read a couple more.  And a couple more.  Then I started clicking on the links in her posts.  The title for one of her posts is now on my vision board and is the title for a post I’m working on for CU.  And it made me rethink my thoughts on career/relationship balance.

After about an hour, I sat back in wonder.  I was already in love.  Actually I don’t know if I love her, or just want to be her.  As I read through her stuff,  I was getting more and more impressed (and more and more excited).  After I read all her new posts, I went back and read some of her older stuff.

This girl is brilliant.

Her writing is so passionate and professional and engaging.  She writes about social change the way I want to write about community development.  She’s a writer that inspires me as a writer.  So, duh, she didn’t get culled from my reader.  She got bumped from the “career” folder to the “read every day” folder with Marie and about 4 other blogs.

Yep, she’s that good.

I don’t know what the hell happened, but the last post I wrote got crazy support, from folks that I wouldn’t have dreamed would ever grace my blog!

I am feeling rather high on life right now.

In an interest to keep the goodness rolling, I am joining a group whose purpose is to help boost traffic on lesser-known blogs.

Fellow bloggers, check it out.  Everyone else, I’m so glad you’ve decided to come play with me

I have some articles in the works. Stay tuned!