Millions of Pages

The best blog I've ever read.

I realize that this may sound premature, but I am announcing the best blog I have ever read.

Letters of Note

Author Shaun Usher accumulates "fascinating letters, postcards, telegrams, faxes, and memos," and posts them. It's just that simple. I am almost always consumed with happiness every time I read a well-penned letter on this blog. And there are so many.

Shaun has given a new life to these letters. And call me nostalgic, but I love the pen-and-ink format of these long forgotten, and often simple, messages. Now, I find myself longing for a culture that embraces letters over emails or text messages. I wish for a culture that adores language, one that oozes words, and leaves the acronyms of computer literacy behind.

Letters of Note has given me something to ponder - what will our generation of letters look like? A scathing email sent at 4:30 pm on a Friday? A typo-sodden text message? Will any correspondance survive the deleted folder?

My inbox remains just below the water line of acceptable storage, and often my emails are lost in an unchecked folder, or deleted forever. With no written letters or records of our culture, how will history ever know about our brief time here on earth? With our over abundance of electronic messages, I find it ironic that in a hundred years from now, no one may ever know what we wrote to one another.

I feel such a fondness returning for the written letter, and it is because of Letters of Note - quite possibly the best blog I've ever read.

My favourite letters

1. America is like that second kind of Christmas
2. For your first Christmas
3. Wretched woman!
4. I am a lousy copywriter
5. I love June Carter, I do
6. I leave it in your capable hands
7. She is my best friend
8. People simply empty out

Up at 5 a.m. for the new year?

It's happening. My worst nightmare. Books are piling up. And the pile is getting higher. Today I calculated if I read at my normal rate, which I have no time to sustain, it would take me 4 months to read everything I've got stacked up.

JK Rowling, Casual Vacancy

Stephen King, on Writing

Jack The Ripper (bought today)

Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing

Anne Lamont, Bird by Bird

Fifty Shades of Grey (Struggling to get past chapter 4)

ADKAR - A model for change in business

And I swear I've ordered more....they keep on coming. I even think I asked for Gone Girl for Christmas.

At this rate, I'll need to get up 3 hours before work just to get time to read for pleasure. A habit cultivated by our friend Benjamin Franklin, and one he seemingly swore by.

See my Pigeon of Discontent about reading for pleasure by Gretchen Rubin - a blog comment that turned into a great video!

 

Here's hope 2013 has a bit more breathing room for the printed page.

 

Happier at home. If only.

I raced out to buy this book. RACED. I wanted it so bad because when I read The Happiness Project it was a game changer for me. It changed how I felt about my life, and the direction I wanted my life to go in. I felt that Gretchen's secrets of adulthood and splendid truths were reflective of the world I was living in, and many of her resolutions were easy to apply. Almost immediately, I noticed changes in my life.

Some of my favourites are:

• The days are long but the years are short.
• You can choose what you do, but you can't choose what you like to do.
• Happiness doesn't always make you feel happy
• Identify the problem (I think about this one often!)

So, when Happier at Home hit the shelves, I was on it. I even read a sneak preview of the chapter called Time, which vaulted my expectations for the book.

So, when I finally had the book in hand, and was chewing through the pages in every spare moment I had, I closed the cover feeling a little dissapointed. Happier at Home wasn't about the home as much as I thought it would be. The chapters about posessions, now and time felt reflective of home as I interpret it but, I couldn't relate to the parallels she drew between parenthood, marriage, and strangely - interior design.

I felt Gretchen was brave to write about her marriage and her flaws, but the chapters about her relationship with her husband and her children had me thinking that she could be a cold, snappy, short-tempered maniac at times. And I just can't relate to that. I don't have kids, and can't vouch for what my behaviour would be around them, but my relationship with my husband is not about getting rewarded with gold stars, shouting constant reminders or calculating who did more chores. I question if Gretchen is missing where happiness lives in this space.

Me in New York circa 2002. Punky hair style back then.

I also felt for the first time that Gretchen's resolutions for her home were strangely...American. In her chapter on "neighbourhood" she talks at great lengths about her home in New York, and being a tourist in her own home. She doesn't necessarily downplay foreign travel, but I believe travelling abroad can give you a new outlook on home and why it can be a special place.  I got the impression that Gretchen feels like New York is bottomless, but when I travel to the U.S. I frequently observe that Americans are hesitant to experience new cultures, and they tend to immerse themselves too deeply in their own.

Still, there were some great take-aways in the book, but not as many as I was hoping for. The chapter on possessions revealed that to some degree, possessions do make us happy because we memorialize relationships and experiences with them. And this rings true for me. I especially enjoyed the William Morris quote of "having nothing in the house you do not know to be useful or beautiful."

I love my bookcase! It also frames Ryan's favourite possession - the television.

I also enjoyed her observation of pursing goals that come naturally because progress often comes quickly. A great self-reflective cue if you find yourself pursuing a goal where you feel blocked or quickly unmotivated.

By far, the most enjoyable chapters for me were about Time and Now. One of my biggest struggles is time. I love the quote that "one lives in the naive notion that later there will be more room in the future than in the entire past." And that is very true for me. Why does "later" feel so roomy, when "now" feels so tight?

I also felt that her resolutions to control the cubicle in her pocket and guard her children's free time were quite profound. I can imagine it is so tempting to cultivate your child's inner genius with hundreds of activities but, when I reflect on my own childhood, I feel like I had an abundance of time to ride my bike, eat candy and roll around in the grass. These simple pleasures felt more rewarding than the dance classes I felt forced to attend.

So, while there were some high-points for Happier at Home, there were also some low ones. I was thoroughly surprised that she didn't write a chapter on Food, which for me, is an essential component about home. And even though Gretchen admits she is not one for cooking, to me, the kitchen is the heartbeat of the home. And it's a chapter I would happily write for her.

[Thanks for reading]

 

 

Fifty Shades of Grey. Summarized.

Imagine what Twilight would have been like if Suzanne Meyer didn't edit out all of the juicy sex scenes between Edward and Bella. Now read Fifty Shades of Grey.

Just added Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy to my reading list. Picked the books up at Chapters last night. A girl standing beside me was mortified as her boyfriend insisted on reading a page to her out loud. Not sure the guy realized what a trashy romance novel is. He seemed horrified.

When you go to university, you dissapear.

Hey, what happened to all the blog posts in May? Exactly. What happened to May? Did it even exist?

Once upon a blog post, you might remember that I took the plunge and signed up for a little thing I like to call my degree in communications. I thought I was all hardcore about it and it would be easy, and then I packed my bags and started three weeks in residency. I equate the experience to living in a hostel, but with the added benefit of panic-inducing homework, instead of meeting australians in a bar.

Although, after everyone in my class go to know eachother - it kind of became like meeting australians in a bar.

My university campus. Shazaam! We have a castle.

I know, you're probably thinking I did alot of reading during school. And I did. Alot of textbooks. The least fascinating was the canadian guide to every single grammar issue you never knew existed. One girl used it as a door stop. Clever girl. The most interesting book I read was about communications theory. Sounds like a snore, I know. To illustrate the difference, this blog post probably breaks over a hundred rules in the grammar guide but last week I referenced three different communication theories in one coversation. And I gave myself 10 gold stars for that.

So, will I fulfill your dream of writing blog posts on communciation theory? Probably not. I might cleverly toss in a few new words I learned, or random academic terms like "assimilation" or "lattitude of acceptance." You don't have to worry about any textbook reviews at the moment, because my next one is History of Communications and I haven't even started it yet.

Instead, I will tell you about the book I am really reading called Let's Pretend This Never Happened by Jenny Lawson. And if that names sounds familiar, it's because she's The Bloggess. If it doesn't sound familiar, it's because you need to read The Bloggess. Right. Now.

Already the book is worth the price I paid, and I'm only seventy pages in. Her (mostly true) memoir is hilarious and already I feel I have a greater appreciation for people with strange childhoods. I just finished reading a chapter about her father who once turned a dead squirrel into a puppet for her. She wins for the weirdest childhood anyone has ever actually admitted out-loud.

So check out the book and read along with me. I'll write about it in eight months once I've read multiple textbooks in between. As for life lessons from university? I'll write about those another day.

[Thanks for reading!]

 

The Dalai Lama. Not made in China.

 Recently, I've been exploring the values of ethics, logic, compassion and caring in a more holistic sense. It started surprisingly, at work. When I joined a committee to build a more respectful workplace. It let me to this TED Talk video about moral skills and ethics. 

 

The video changed how I viewed myself at the core. How could I be more respectful at work if I didn't first understand the skills I needed to be so? Moral skills. The ability to make judgement calls. The role incentives play on our moral character. These topics just jumped out at me and made me realize, I need to define the moral skills I need not only in work, but in life.

This video just led me further down the path of exploring ethics. I peered along my bookshelves until I found what I was searching for, My Spiritual Journey by the Dalai Lama. I purchased this book about a year ago at a random Costco trip but like many of the books I buy, some get read immediately, and others I save for a rainy day. 

It's pretty clear, this book was calling out to be read now. I was stunned after reading the very first paragraph - it aligned perfectly with the words Barry Schwartz was saying in the TED Talk video. 

The first paragraph reads:

My first commitment in life, as a human being, is the promotion of human values and those qualities of spirit that are key elements in a happy life, whether of an individual, a family or community. These days it seems we don't cultivate these inner qualities enough; that is why my priority is to develop them.

The book is divided into three parts. The first part dedicated to his life as a human being, and what it means to truly be human. The second part describes his life as a buddhist monk and what it means to live the life of a monk. Lastly, he focuses on being the Dalai Lama, exiled from his homeland in Tibet and governing the tibetan people from afar.

I found the writings about our common humanity the most fascinating. He speaks about compassion as just another one of us, as equals, as humans in this world. As much as we all want happiness and to avoid suffering, we have allowed ourselves to stray into paths that involve judgement and a sense of entitlement. His most powerful thought for me comes from his analysis that humanity is "one" and our only home is this planet. We take it for granted and rarely devote any time in our minds to practice compassion for what we have. The more time I spend online, in front of my tv, or downloading apps, the more I feel my human emotions become less vibrant and less colourful.

Regardless of if you are buddhist, or a supporter of the Dalai Lama, it's hard not to support his compassionate outlook on the lives of humans. Most distinctly because he himself, has experienced humanity's worst qualities through violence between Tibet and China. I don't know if there will ever be a free Tibet, a country without the grip of another on its land, but we can all be a part of transforming ourselves to support his cause. He calls on us to become peacemakers, to live more compassionately, so that a crime against a human is a crime against us all.

[Thanks for reading!]

The Cold, Hard Truth.

Every time I see an episode of the Dragon's Den now, I feel a special connection to Kevin O'Leary. His throat-cutting remarks, which send innocent entrepreneurs running, have a sudden appeal to me now. And I can sum it up using a line from his current book: It's as if I am speaking to you as money. 

Kevin is cold about money, but why is that so strange? We humans are a touchy-feely bunch and we connect personal feelings to living beings and inanimate things. We often make decisions about money based on our feelings, moods and state of mind.

I found that as I read through Kevin's book Cold, Hard, Truth, the topics he writes about really resonated with me. By understanding how your choices can influence your money's well-being, you can determine if that money will grow or not.

Kevin is all about making money grow. He says "whatever you pay attention to grows" So if you pay attention to negativity, it breeds more negativity which infects whatever you're working on. And money will flee that inhospitable environment.

Moms know best

Kevin talks about the ups and downs of his own entrepreneurial life, and offers tips on becoming a good employee and how to be a good boss. He also discusses how he transformed his investment style and went back to his roots. After some low times, he started O'Leary Funds based on his mother's investment philosophy - one that had her live a financially stable life.

The Kevin O'Leary story from the producers of Dragon's Den

His mother, Georgette, inherited her father's company after he died of a sudden heart attack. A savvy woman, she had to learn managing a business from scratch and quickly learned that money meant freedom, and she opened her own bank account. As a young woman myself, it felt good to hear about another woman from a different era who knew it was important to take care of herself. She knew how important her own money was, and always spent the interest - not the principle. 

Her investment strategy was pretty simple. She only invested in stocks that paid a dividend or interest, and regularly saved a third of her paycheck. She knew that in order for money to grow, you couldn't touch it - doing so would produce the same results as opening the oven when you're baking a cake. Failure.

When Kevin's mother passed away in 2008, he was surprised to learn that that she had amassed a significant nest egg despite having been divorced, re-married and often generous to her family. He assumed her savings would nearly be gone. He marveled at his mother's ingenuity and while his own money was taking a beating, hers steadily grew.

Being a dragon

This turn of events had him re-evaluate his own financial investments, fire his money managers and take over himself. He offers investment advice in his book and it's not dissimilar to his advice in the Dragon's Den. Watch the news. Understand we live in a global economy. Look for warning signs.

Regardless if you agree with every criticism he launches in the Dragon's Den, it's hard to ignore the sound advice that has made him a better venture capitalist. If I was extroverted enough to work tirelessly through airports, meetings, networking events and spend my life on the go, I might even follow in his footsteps. Instead, the best I can hope for is to take the core of his advice and try to apply it to my own finances. Maybe you will too.

[Get your read on!]

 

Pinning makes me feel cool.

Today's new social media addiction is Pinterest. Apparently crafty moms everywhere having been using this tool for years completely under our noses. But I got my first invite two weeks ago. What I love about it is how I can intertwine the things I post on my blog, and post them on my pin boards. I can also scour the mega-maze of images which is Pinterest looking for things that really interest me. Or don't actually interest me very much, but I pin anyways to look cool.

Of course, pinning book-related things is awesome. I love some of the photos of people's home libraries. So jealous. My two-bedroom apartment can't really compare to some of these places. I'm guessing some are actually staged magazines photos, but a few of them must be real. So, a girl can dream about having something like that one day. 

A word of caution is that Pinterest can be a total time suck. I've noticed myself wasting hours looking through the image boards and re-pinning things at random. A task that usually leaves me feeling unhappy because I've wasted so much time. 

But if you love booky things, I encourage you to give it a try and look at some of the things I've been pinning! http://pinterest.com/millionsofpages/

[ Thanks for reading! ] 

 

I quit vegan baking (almost).

This might come as a surprise, but I have ALOT of vegan cookbooks. I know, I'm not exactly vegan but I find vegan recipes for vegetable dishes are far more inspired and flavourful than what most meat-eating cookbooks offer. However, one thing I have yet to conquer is a delicious vegan dessert.

All of these vegan cookbooks have dessert offerings, and to be honest - most leave you feeling disappointed. I even have strict rules about vegan baking. For example, ingredients must be natural, real and unprocessed. Any dessert featuring tofu, fake cheese, imitation whipped cream - those are all out. But no matter how hard I look, they all come out worse than their non-vegan counterparts.

Many recipes suffer from maple overload. They call for insane amounts of maple syrup in replace of sugar, honey or any other sweet item on the do-not-eat list. Many use bizarre flours which I can't actually find, or even when using normal ingredients, come out rock solid because they are missing a key non-vegan ingredient - glorious butter. Sorry earth balance.

So, for my next (and probably last) attempt - it's babycakes. The king of all vegan bakeries in NYC. I scored their classic cookbook for christmas, and will probably attempt doughnuts, a cookie recipe and a cake just to really test them. After that, I might be calling it quits on the vegan baked goods.

Nilla wafers, babycakes

Last night I was craving something sweet and I was out of eggs, so it was a perfect opportunity for some vegan baking. I decided to try the Nilla Wafers recipe simply because I actually had all of the ingredients. I did make some slight adjustments because my applesauce had gone bad. My solution -  I peeled an apple, steamed it, and sent it to an untimely end in my BlendTec. Instant applesauce. I also used spelt flour instead of oat flour simply because I don't stock it, rumour has it spoils very quickly.

Nevertheless, my version turned out like this:

My attempt at nilla wafers, sort of close.

Not too shabby. They tasted pretty good out of the oven, although they were a bit tacky. I also had to bake them for an extra 10 minutes because they were still raw. A proof point for the author Erin McKenna, that more time is needed for high altitude baking. Today, I'm happy to report that they are still moist, taste good, and have no maple syrup! I was pretty happy that the recipe called for so much vanilla. I have nearly a litre of vanilla extract after my friends and I went in on a bulk vanilla bean purchase last year.

Here's to the next babycakes adventure. I'll keep you posted.

[Thanks for reading]