May 14 2013
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Informative

What’s My Favourite Colour?

colour_paletteI don’t really like to rant about stuff because, one thing I know for sure is that a lot of people have a lot more to rant about than I do. But there’s a time and place for everything and when I tell you what happened to me this weekend I’m pretty sure you’ll cut me some slack and agree that even for a shallow person like me, this is the time. However, before I continue, perhaps it would be best for me to set the stage.

Late last week the engine light on my car came on. It’s a solid, not a flashing light, so it’s entirely possible that this situation will turn out to be “no big deal”. The thing is, over the years my car and I have developed a symbiotic relationship of sorts. I take care of her and she takes care of me. So when a light like that comes on, it hurts not only because we have become so close but because you gotta know that an eleven year old car from the old country has the potential to cost a boatload of cash to fix. Which is why I started thinking about the possibilities and next thing I know I found myself standing in the middle of my local Dodge dealer’s lot.

Now I know you’re thinking “but she said she likes small, foreign cars” and there’s no truer statement than that. Which means that at this point, and rightfully so, you may be wondering why I was meandering my way through the rows and rows of “Avengers” and “Challengers” cars, I might add, whose names belie their character. Well, as difficult as it is to believe, this particular lot is also home to the auto of my most recent dreams, (don’t get too excited, these “cars I can’t live without” dreams come and go like the goldfish I had when I was a kid) the Fiat 500. And there’s nothing smaller or more foreign than that. So it was with some anticipation and more than a modicum of excitement that I approached the nearest salesperson to see about taking one of these cute little puppies for a spin.

And now I’m afraid, I have a confession to make. As much as I openly celebrate my shallow way of life, the one thing I am not, nor ever will be shallow about, is cars. Perhaps it’s as a result of spending my formative years living with a couple of older brothers who routinely parked something cute and sassy in the driveway. Or perhaps it’s the fact that one of the two came by his nickname “Crash” quite honestly. No matter, whatever the reason I don’t take my cars lightly and I don’t expect others, especially those tasked with the job of hawking them, to do so either. So you can only imagine my disdain when the first question that emerged from my salesperson of choice’s mouth was “what’s your favourite colour?” Really! Did you really just ask me that? About a car? I mean if we were talking about a jacket, or paint or even my preference in cats, which by the way is black, orange and white, I’d understand. But cars? Not a chance.

Needless to say there was nothing left to do but leave. Oddly enough this evening I read about a new Fiat 500L due to come out this summer and it looks pretty cool. I can’t wait to take it out for a drive, and hopefully when I get to the dealer, they’ll have something in a pearl white for me to try.

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May 05 2013
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Informative, Instructive

Google This!

phoneLast week I was in my local big box bookstore which of late, to be honest, seems to have morphed into a purveyor of fashion and home decor and, now that I think about it, makes what I learned at the conference about matching books to my paint colour evermore useful. But already, I digress. As I was walking past one of those tables laden with “books you might like by subject” I was struck by the bright red lettering of one titled “The Day My Brain Exploded”. Beside the title was a cartoon-like picture of a bomb primed to detonate. My first thought was “What’s to write about? I feel like that almost everyday!” Of course, my curiosity got the best of me and so it was that I learned this particular title was more literal than figurative as the author recounts his life story of survival after a cerebral hemorrhage with, as the jacket tells me, humour. I guess that was a good enough reason for the publisher to have included the little “bomb” thing on the cover. Having dealt with the requisite guilt of making light, if only in my own mind, of this literary work I had to admit that, as my week progressed, the title stuck with me. In fact, as I continued to mull it over I realized that it provides a remarkably accurate description of how I feel a good deal of the time.

This feeling of mine became particularly intense during a recent 2 hour workshop I attended that promised to help me learn everything I need to know about Google Docs and in so doing, inevitably make my life immeasurably more productive, if not better. And this, I am led to believe, will be simple to accomplish as all I have to do is learn how to use Google Docs the “right way”. Now if you have learned nothing else from this blog you surely know that, as a shallow person I like things to be simple. I mean if I had to boil it down, along with being irreverent (see paragraph above) the one most important piece of advice I can give to those who aspire to this way of life is to keep things simple. And by simple I mean, not complicated. (Please note: I throw in these little tidbits of advice to meet one of the mandates of this blog which is to help others help themselves become more shallow). So I had high hopes as I walked into the workshop and my friend the trainer, who I must admit is perhaps just a tad overly enthusiastic about the possibilities of this suite of online tools, began sharing with us his extensive knowledge of all things Google.

Now I’m no slouch when it comes to technology as the use of it contributes substantially to my standard of living. And I’m open and willing to learn new things. Not only that, but I figure I’m kind of a Google Docs expert since I use it to write this blog. You see it allows me to access my document from anywhere which is important because I never know where I’ll be when a shallow thought strikes me. So when I sat down in my chair I was optimistic that I would be leaving with new ideas on how to simplify the work that I do, and by so doing, my life. And for the first few minutes he had me hooked as he explained how I would no longer need to share a document by attaching it to an email message and sending it to the many people who need to see it. Sounds good to me so far. I can use Google Docs to share stuff. Ok. Of course, in order to really make this work he suggested that I set up a Google Group and a Google Site so that I can put my Google Doc in the Google Site and then proceed to share it with my Google Group. He warns however, that I could run into trouble finding the Google Doc that I want to share with my Google Group so, to avoid this inconvenience, I should create a set of naming conventions to share with the members of my Google Group in order to ensure that I can find said document by searching, using boolean logic, through the potentially thousands of Google Docs I will accumulate in my Google Drive.

That’s when it happened. My brain exploded. At which time I turned to my neighbour and asked “what the heck is he talking about?” using not exactly those words. Because at this point it seemed to me that it was all pretty complicated and the better option would have been that attachment to the email we talked about at the start. Now don’t get me wrong. This revelation had nothing to do with the trainer who was very skilled in his craft and I am sure that the others in the room benefitted greatly from his knowledge. But I’m a shallow person who likes things to be simple and this simply was not.

Having thought about it for a day or two I’ve made a decision. From now on, if you want to share something with me, just give me a call…on my landline. And if you don’t know my number, you can probably google it.

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Apr 27 2013
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Informative

Happy Anniversary to Me

cupcake_lightYou’ve probably been wondering what happened to me over these past few days since I’m a bit tardy getting to this post. Well, I’ve been celebrating a little of late and, if I must admit, feeling just a bit smug. I know it’s hard to believe but this week marks one year since I started the shallow blog, and I’m still here. As I recall, it was early on in this endeavor that I mentioned that, as a shallow person, I don’t have a stellar record when it comes to sticking things out. So it is somewhat remarkable, even to me, that I have been diligent enough to write this blog each and every week for a whole year. Ok, if I have to be totally honest, this is post number 51 (really, is anyone perfect?) which nonetheless is pretty indicative of my commitment to the cause. As you can only imagine, it’s a rather important milestone for me and I have struggled to find the right words for the occasion. At the six month mark I shared with you the progress that the blog had made and promised to update you on that at the end of the year. You know I’m a woman of my word but a cursory look at the current stats made me reconsider my earlier pledge as really, at 32 followers, 2,653 views and 150 comments there’s not that much to write about. Not to mention that there have been no t-shirts or mugs sold.

So I have to admit that it has taken an extraordinary amount of thinking on my part to come up with just the right topic for this auspicious event but I think I have finally figured out the “right thing to do”. Now here’s a little secret I haven’t shared with you to date. Most of my revelations about what to write for the blog come to me while I am in the shower (TMI?). I can’t really be sure, and this is not a proven scientific fact, but I’m guessing it has something to do with the water pounding on my head stimulating my brain. But that’s not what happened this time. No, this time I was sitting on a bench, waiting for the train that would get me to work and since I had just missed one I had a whole 9 minutes to kill. At first I was kicking myself for forgetting to bring a book but as I sat down on the cold, steel bench (which may also have had an effect albeit on a different part of my body) it occurred to me that I could use this time to think about the blog. And that’s when it hit me.

Something else you may not know about me is that I have spent a good deal of my life to date studying how adults learn and, as an educator of adults I know that reflection is a really important part of the learning process. So my first inclination was to help you to reflect by looking back at the blog for the whole year and sharing with you what you have learned about me and about being shallow. And then I thought “why not take this chance to do a little reflecting myself?” because the other thing I remembered about what I learned in school was the importance of self-reflection and what better time to do that than on an anniversary such as this one. Unlike New Year’s Eve, there’s no expectations around making resolutions or promises for a better year or anything like that. Rather reflection is an introspective process through which I may or may not decide to change and, in any case, whether I do or not will only be known to me as I’m not about to share that information with anyone else. So without further ado, and with deference and apologies to my hero, Mr. D. Letterman, (yes, shallow people have heroes too) I present to you the “top ten things” we have learned about me over the past year.

  1. I’m ok with constantly being told I look like Babs and it doesn’t bother me much that I can’t sing like her. What really irks me is not having her money.
  2. I like small foreign cars. I sometimes drive them too fast. I always get caught. Maybe next time I should just settle for the Impala.
  3. When it comes to being shallow I have no problem making the grade. Not sure I’m going to be able to say the same about my course at Harvard.
  4. I’m an avid Folk Fest “goer” even though I don’t own any zip-offs or tie-dye; consider my flat iron to be my most valuable possession; and devoted three days of the blog to mocking (in my own way) this kumbaya event. Now that I’m thinking about it, perhaps I should give it a pass this year and save the 179 bucks.
  5. I don’t like lists so I have no resolutions and my bucket is empty. No matter, I still really want to to win the lottery.
  6. Shallow people get sad too although it would appear, never for more than a week at a time. Apparently we bleed just like everyone else but our skin may be a little thicker.
  7. I travel a lot for business and pleasure and I am pleased to have been able to substitute “chit chat” for that “little white pill”. I’m guessing there are a lot of people who probably wish I hadn’t.
  8. I refer to my Mother a lot. Come on people! She’s 97 years old! Just how shallow do you think I am?
  9. As much as I like Mr. Letterman I’m not as hooked on the number 10 as he is.

Well that’s it in a nutshell. I’ve paid my 18 bucks so I’m in for another round. Makes me think I just might have to change my mantra to “one year at a time.”

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Apr 14 2013
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Informative

Birds do it so why don’t I?

thanks to Cécile Graat: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1030887For the most part I’m just like everyone else and if fame and fortune happened to knock on my front door I wouldn’t turn them away. As you may recall, the raison d’etre (linked, for those of you who are not from this bilingual country of mine) of this blog was to figure out a way to monetize my gift for being shallow. Now don’t go thinking I’m “out to lunch” on this one. Just this week I was watching the news only to discover that a fellow Canadian, one from my city of choice no less, has turned her knack for sharing her 140 character (really funny) quips into a Hollywood movie. How do you even do that? Wouldn’t the dialogue be rather choppy? Nevertheless, she’s hit the big time, and we’ve come learn that hers was no meteoric rise to the top. No, she’s been blogging since 2002 and, to tell the truth, that’s a little disheartening to me since if I have to wait that long for my break, I’ll be spending my extra cash at the tuck shop in the “home”. Putting aside the fact that she’s very funny and really good at what she does which, as we have come to know is not a necessary precursor to making it big these days, the problem for me, as I see it, is that she has also worked hard at getting people to know who she is and what she does and I’m afraid that is not something I have ever been prepared to do. Mostly because, as you must know by now, I’m shallow and “hard work” (unlike raison d’etre) doesn’t trend in my vocabulary.

It’s not that I don’t get plenty of advice on how to get this puppy, which is hovering around the 32 foot mark right now, to soar. Just the other day the subject of my blog mysteriously came up in the middle of a meeting at work and, as a result, some very good ideas about kicking things up a notch were generated. Among the many worthwhile suggestions was that I should start “tweeting” about my posts in order to attract the attention of those in the twittersphere. Now I’m tech savvy enough to know that tweeting is no longer something that only birds do, and that, in fact, my fellow Canadian has made quite a splash by following this sage advice. From what I can see though, it is just so much work, what with understanding all the “ins and outs” of where to put the @, how to use hashtags, how to get people to  retweet and whatever else goes on in that world. Besides, I have enough trouble keeping these triestes of mine under 1000 words, let alone trying to figure out how to adequately express my thoughts in less than 140 characters. Not to mention the fact that I have four followers on my twitter account and they already know about the blog, so I’m kind of tapped out on that front. I was somewhat more intrigued by the idea put forward to hire someone, at minimal cost who would write my posts, thereby alleviating me of the most onerous part of this whole endeavor and perhaps elevating it to a more professional level. While worth careful consideration, even as a shallow person I think this probably negates the whole purpose of having a blog. And it goes without saying that finding someone who is at least as shallow as I am, not to mention a writer of some note, may not be an easy task, resulting in the distinct possibility that I will spend more time not doing what I should be doing.

WordPress itself provides a plethora of suggestions and opportunities to increase blog readership, some of which I like and some of which I really don’t. According to the people at WP, the “top ten” ways to increase your readership include writing well and frequently. Well I’m doing the latter and keeping my fingers crossed that I’ve come close to the former. And I’m quite confident that I have mastered their recommendation to “bug your real-life friends” (is the alternative your “imaginary” friends because I don’t have any of those, anymore) as I am sure you are all painfully aware. On the other hand, I must categorically reject their idea to “like” or “follow” other people’s blogs for the sole purpose of having them “like” or “follow” me. You see, as a dedicated blogger (even a shallow one) there is a certain amount of excitement associated with having someone let you know they appreciate what you do and that perhaps, even for just a moment, you have brought a little ray of sunshine into their lives. So it is with some dismay that when, upon reciprocating their visit, I discover they have “liked” upwards of a hundred posts on that very day with the singular goal of increasing traffic to their own site. Now I may be shallow but that doesn’t mean I don’t have a strong sense of what’s right and what isn’t and there’s just so much wrong about this. Not to mention that it’s way too much work. So if that’s what it takes to garner attention I’ll find some solace when the people at WordPress tell me that, in the end: “size doesn’t matter but rather how much you care about your audience and they care about you”. As my little Bro has reminded me, my followers may be small in number but it’s a loyal group.  As the one year anniversary of this blog approaches, I thank you for that.

Now, with all that said and done, if you happen to know someone who can make me both rich and famous please don’t hesitate to pass this blog on to them. Because, as you can see, there’s a pretty good chance that I never will.

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Apr 06 2013
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Nothing Doing

comfy chairA curious thing happened to me the other night. Kind of out of the blue I got a call from a friend I hadn’t spoken to for some time. While it wasn’t one of those “blasts” from 40 years ago, it had been at least a couple of months since we last spoke so it was good to hear from her. But it wasn’t the call itself that was surprising. I mean it started out pretty ordinary what with catching up on her kids and my kids and a few other people’s kids too, but you don’t want to know about that. The curious part was when, without any prompting on my end (I wasn’t out of breath or talking fast or anything like that which I have been known to do when I want a conversation to end), she said:

My Friend: I’ve probably caught you on your way out the door.
Me: Nope. I’m not going anywhere right now.
My Friend: Oh, well you must be busy with stuff at home.
Me: Nope. I’m not really busy right now. As a matter of fact, I’m not doing anything at the moment.
My Friend: Oh, well this must be a first for you.

Now she couldn’t see me, but if she had I’m pretty sure she would have noticed the look of puzzlement on my face because, truth be told (I know, I say that a lot but shallow people never back away from the truth) there are many, many times that I am not going anywhere or doing anything in particular. As a matter of fact, I do nothing quite a lot of the time. And as a shallow person, I’m okay with that because doing nothing is not always a bad thing. Like when I call my Mother and ask her “what’s doing” and she says “nothing’s doing” which is often better than “something’s doing” ‘cause that “something” is not always so great when you’re 97 years old. So I come by all of this honestly. Which is why I spend much of my time at home sitting in my comfy chair in my study doing not much of anything unlike the cat who, making no distinction between the chair and the multitude of cardboard scratching posts we have strategically placed around the house for her convenience, is always busy doing something when she visits me at my chair, which again, is not such a good thing.

Now ordinarily I would be fine leaving you with this impression of me in my leisure time but as an honest shallow person who is somewhat reflective and introspective I find myself wanting to explain that, just because I am in my chair appearing to do nothing, doesn’t necessarily mean I’m not doing something.  Sometimes that something is reading a book, or finding valuable information on the internet like how much the house down the street sold for or whether I’ve lost a lot or a little in the stock market on any given day. Sometimes I plan whole vacations, booking hotels, airline tickets, making dinner reservations and arranging for sightseeing tours in my temporary home away from home and, believe me, that can be exhausting. Of late, much of my time spent in my chair has been devoted to attending my class at Harvard (have I mentioned I’m going to Harvard?) listening to lectures, reading excerpts from books and engaging in dialogue with my fellow students. Well I don’t really “engage” but I do read what some of them have to say. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that taking a course at Harvard is no walk in the park. Other times I’m just thinking about things which makes it really look as though I’m doing nothing but I’m not. I will admit that I am also prone to a couple of less lofty activities like watching reality TV shows or playing computer games, but those are things too. And, last but not least, I sit in my chair to write this blog which, I might add, I have stuck to for almost a year now and that’s really something.

Well now that I’ve got this one in the bag I should get back to what I was doing before I started writing which really was nothing and, now that I’m thinking about it, I don’t even have to go anywhere to do it.

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