[Mental Health Break] This is pretty awesome

Can all car commericals look like this?

A recent favorite: Lisa Congdon

A few years ago, I bought two prints from 20x200 without knowing much about the artist.

Well, 20x200 shutdown (and is apparently soon coming back to life), and I re-discovered the artist, Lisa Congdon, through the blog, Brain Pickings.

She's way cooler than I knew back then.

Not only did she make the two prints I bought, but she's also worked on these two super cool projects (I've pasted a blurb about each project below).

The Reconstructionists:

"Every Monday in 2013, we'll be publishing an illustrated portrait of one such trailblazing woman, along with a hand-lettered quote that captures her spirit and a short micro-essay about her life and legacy.

The project borrows its title from Anaïs Nin, one of the 52 female icons, who wrote of “woman's role in the reconstruction of the world” in a poetic 1944 diary entry — a sentiment that encapsulates the heart of what this undertaking is about: women who have reconstructed, in ways big and small, famous and infamous, timeless and timely, our understanding of ourselves, the world, and our place in it."

A Collection A Day:

"I came up with a few ideas, but A Collection a Day resonated most. It would be a project that would span exactly one year, from January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010. On each of those 365 days, I would post a photograph of one of my own collections or a drawing or painting of an imagined collection on a blog called A Collection a Day. I am an voracious collector and I wanted to share some of my collections with the world."

Here's her blog & some of her work below so you can become a fangirl (or fanboy) too!

Sassy Octogenarians

These ladies are sassy -- they love fashion, life and basically, just being awesome.

The documentary "Fabulous Fashionistas" explores the lives of 6 women between the ages of 75 and 95.  It's free to watch on YouTube and totally worth it.

PS - Did you know this woman is 80 now & just released a new album?

Anais Nin on a Monday

Martin Klimas

Risk
And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to Blossom.
- Anais Nin (a very cool chick)

People from the End of the Earth

10% of the world's photographs have been taken in the last year.
350M photos are uploaded per day on Facebook.  It's the same on snapchat (insert eye roll).

It's hard to imagine that a photograph could still seem novel, but it is for the people of Chukotka, Russia.  Two years ago, Californian photographer, Sasha Leahovcenco, decided to travel to one of the most remote parts of Siberia to photograph the unphotographed.

Our world is vast.

Here's a video of his journey.  You can check out some incredible photos from the project below.

Pre-planning an Adventure

Photopin - Transiberian

Research shows that folks take anywhere from 5 hours to 30 hours planning their next vacation.  According to a travel conference in Singapore, it's 40+ hours (looks like there's some propaganda at play).

I spend approximately 0 hours planning, much to my boyfriend's dismay.  

I like "winging it" 

Note: This might explain the time I slept 3 days on the deck of a boat using my Eurorail pass from Italy to Greece (did not read the small print), or the time I was turned away at the airport 3 weeks ago on my way to the Philippines (apparently, you need to renew your passport 6 months in advance ... news to me).

I find my every day existence overly routine; therefore, I like making my vacations impromptu.  I won't even get a SIM card because it reminds me of backpacking in college, pre-smartphone.  

Regardless, I'm starting to consider the benefits of pre-planning
(besides being better organized and not sleeping on ship decks).

If you've read my blog before, you know I'm basically a disciple of Alain de Botton, reading everything he publishes.  

Here's two points he made about travel that resonated with me:

Point 1:

“A danger of travel is that we see things at the wrong time, before we have had a chance to build up the necessary receptivity and when new information is therefore as useless and fugitive as necklace beads without a connecting chain.”  - Art of Travel

Takeaway: 
You need to prepare your mind beforehand so you're able to fully experience your travels.

Point 2:

"If the rich are fortunate in being able to travel to Dresden as soon as the desire to do so arises, or to buy a dress just after they have seen it in a catalog, they are cursed because of the speed with which their wealth fulfills their desires [...]  They therefore have no opportunity to suffer the interval between desire and gratification which the less privileged endure and which, for all its apparent unpleasantness, has the incalculable benefit of allowing people to know and fall deeply in love with paintings in Dresden, hats, dressing gowns, and someone who isn't free this evening." - How Proust Can Change Your Life 

Takeaway: 
Although not rich, I'm able to quickly fulfill my desires with a mix of online shopping and super accessible travel from Singapore.  To really appreciate the art of travel, it's important to dwell on it beforehand -- experiencing the longing of being in a new place.

This being said... I'm starting to anticipate my next BIG trip in January.

We're going on the Trans-Siberian.

The trip goes a bit like this:

Singapore --> Helsinki: Two days solo in the design district
Helsinki --> St. Petersburg: Meet up with Alan.  Really excited for the Hermitage Museum
St. Petersburg --> Moscow: Board the Trans-Siberian
Moscow --> Ulan Bator --> Beijing: Cross the frozen tundra, spending 7 days on a train 
Beijing --> Harbin: Go to the largest ice festival in the world

And, here's some eye candy that's increasing the desire:

Helsinki photopin

St. Petersburg photopin

Trans-Siberian tracks

Harbin photopin

Advertising Technique: Social Commentary

I love how this commercial by Goldieblox doesn't tiptoe around the issue at hand.  

Girls toys suck.

Let's make them better (to the beat of the Beastie Boys).

[Mental Health Break] Dynamic Shape Display

Pretty trippy, no?

30 Days of Awareness

Source: My Modern Met

I downloaded an app this week -- the Gratitude Journal -- with a goal of recording things I'm grateful for every day for 30 days.  Maybe it will turn into a habit, but at the very least, it's a good personal experiment.

I've known for awhile that the practice can reduce depression, improve health and strengthen relationships; I just haven't been very disciplined about doing anything with that knowledge.

As human beings, we are subject to hedonic adaption, which means that humans quickly return to a stable level of happiness despite major negative or positive life events.  The thrill of positive events -- whether it's a new job, the beginnings of a romantic relationship or getting a puppy -- all wear off.  Thankfully, the same goes for the stress and sadness from life's more unfortunate events.

Because of this tendency, humans don't stay satisfied or grateful for very long.  Therefore, it's important to develop habits to see the world from a new perspective.

I finished the book, How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Botton this weekend about life lessons we can learn from the (very eccentric) French writer, Marcel Proust.

I found this excerpt about societies' flippant attitude on the telephone quite applicable:

By 1900, there were 30,000 phones in France.  Proust rapidly acquired one [...] He might have appreciated his phone, but he noted how quickly everyone else began taking theirs for granted.  As early as 1907, he wrote that the machine was:

"a supernatural instrument before whose miracle we used to stand amazed,and which we now employ without giving it a thought, to summon our tailor or to order an ice cream."

Moreover, if the confiserie had a busy line or the connection to the tailor a hum, instead of admiring the technological advances that had frustrated our sophisticated desires, we tended to react with childish ingratitude.

"Since we are children who play with divine forces without shuddering before their mystery, we only find the telephone "convenient," or rather, as we are spoilt children, we find that "it isn't convenient," we fill Le Figaro with our complaints."

I complain about the weather being too hot, air travel taking to long or the internet being too slow on my phone -- but, in reality, it's a miracle that I'm able to work half-way across the world in Singapore, take flights to places like Bali on the weekend and carry a mini-computer in my pocket that can access all of the information in the world.

The world we live in and our every day experiences can be pretty mind-blowing -- it just requires us to be aware in order to appreciate it.

Silicon Valley Needs Some Grown-ups

Caution: This post is about to get pretty hypocritical

I don't use Snapchat.  
I don't need to send photos that disappear after 10 seconds to my friends & boyfriend.
My life just isn't that interesting or risque to need a service like that.

I'm okay with everyone viewing my Instagram photos and tweets
I've even befriended my managers on Facebook before I quit the social network (maybe that was career-limiting, who knows)

Regardless of my preferences, I understand why Snapchat is useful.  

There is a need to interact with people without it being archived -- whether that is sharing a mundane detail of your life that your entire social graph doesn't need to know (i.e., I just ate a banana!) or more intimate online behaviors, like sexting.

As this investor states, our online trails can follow us:

On Tuesday, Benchmark Capital partner Bill Gurley, whose firm currently invests in Snapchat, tweeted that people still confused about Snapchat should look at a tweet from the account of the FCC noting that “30% of college admissions officers look at applicants online… They loved your GPA, then they saw your tweets…”

What I don't understand is the valuation.

Today, Snapchat founders, Evan Spiegel & Bobby Murphy, age 23 and 25, respectively turned down a $3 billion dollar offer from Facebook.  They think they are worth more.

It's been in operation for 2 years, makes $0 in revenue and has ~25M users (as a reference point: Instagram had 100M users in 2012 when it sold to Facebook for $1 billion).  

On a positive note, it has 300M "daily snaps," which is very close to the 350M photos uploaded on Facebook per day, coming from a user base that's 2% the size.  It's sticky.  I guess there is some truth in the assumption that people will share more if it's immediately erased.


Since 2003, there's been 39 other tech companies that have been valued at $1B or more.  These companies have been nicknamed "the unicorn club"

It includes the likes of Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Groupon, Square, Twitter, Linkedin etc (note: Google's actually a "double decade unicorn", so not included on the list) 

All household names.  Mostly consumer-facing tech, not B2B.  I like a lot of the products.



Now, here's my rant.  Get ready for it.

Is Snapchat really one of the top 40 things we've invented in the last 10 year?  

I f*ing hope not.  It's a toy.  It lets people erase embarrassing or trivial behavior.  

Shouldn't we be aiming to improve our collective self-control and online etiquette, rather than finding ways to make it disappear?

We have lots of talented and creative young people out there solving problems that don't really matter in the scheme of the world and history.  They are lured by the promises of quick fame and quick money -- praying at the alter of VC money and nerdy celebrityhood.

That's why we need more grown-ups in tech.

By grown-ups, I mean men and women with a vision.  It has nothing to do with age.

We have a lot of challenges: "A billion people want electricity, millions are without clean water, the climate is changing, manufacturing is inefficient, traffic snarls cities, education is a luxury, and dementia or cancer will strike almost all of us if we live long enough."  

We need more "John F Kennedys" of tech to guide us on the right path -- someone that inspires and funds people to do big things, like go to the moon.

Here's an except from Kennedy's speech at Rice University in 1962:

“But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? . . . Why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? . . . We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills . . .”

Don't get me wrong -- we have some of these folks in tech -- the Elon Musks, Larry Pages and Bill Gates of the world.  They are awesome and visionary, challenging the status quo.

We just need more of them.  We especially need them on the investor side.

It's too easy to get overshadowed by the noise and hype of Silicon Valley.

And, here's where my hypocrisy comes in (as promised).

I know that there are big problems to solve.  I wish start-ups stopped trying to solve trivial problems.  

But, in reality... 
... I wish I could make something like Snapchat and become rich overnight
... I'm not currently solving any "big problems."  I go to work, do some tasks and go home.  In order to ease my internal monologue, I remind myself that there are people at Google solving big, life-changing problems.  It's just not me.  I'm fueling the money engine that allows those things to happen.

Maybe it's not just Silicon Valley that needs a grown-up.  It's me too.

Learning to Breathe

Mindfulness is close to becoming a buzzword.  A quick scroll through the Google Play store shows that there are 100+ Android apps available on meditation.  And, some are even using it to get ahead

Regardless, it's a good practice.   It's linked to lower stress and greater happiness -- a pretty sweet deal, right?

Mindfulness actually has several definitions (according to wikipedia):

According to various prominent psychological definitions, Mindfulness refers to a psychological quality that involves one of these: 

• bringing one’s complete attention to the present experience on a moment-to-moment basis,  

•  paying attention in a particular way: on purpose, in the present moment, and nonjudgmentally,  

• a kind of nonelaborative, nonjudgmental, present-centered awareness in which each thought, feeling, or sensation that arises in the attentional field is acknowledged and accepted as it is

As previously posted, I went on a 2-day silent meditation retreat in Thailand to practice mindfulness and learned one thing -- it's really f*ing hard.

That's why I like SCUBA diving.  

You're forced to be mindful.  The only way to control your body in the water is by breathing.

Want to go further down?  Breathe out more
Want to go up?  Breathe in more 
Want to stop freaking out that some gear is the only thing keeping you alive?  Breathe slower

I say forget the phone app.  Go diving instead.

PS - Here's some photos from my most recent diving trip to Puerto Galera, Philippines.

Advertising Technique: Visual Pun II

I've blogged about visual puns before, but I thought this Pepsi ad from Belgium was especially clever.  

I love when a brand doesn't take itself too seriously.  I like my people the same way ;)

[Mental Health Break] Let your inner child out

Thank god I was born in the 1980s...

On growing up

Source: Photopin

My twenties are coming to a close in a few months.  I'm okay with that.  In fact, I've enjoyed telling people lately that I'm almost 30. 

I feel older.  I feel a bit more wise.  For lack of better words, I feel more adult.

But, ironically, the older I get, the less I want "adult" things.  As a newly minted college graduate, I had goals -- specific "deadlines" in mind for earning an MBA, getting married, having kids and buying a house.  I had visions of being a successful businesswoman with picture perfect kids in the picture perfect prep school.

Who knows if I could have ever achieved those goals.  Likely not.

But, now that I'm almost 30, I don't want any of that.  At all.   

They say that my generation suffers from "delayed development".  Sociologists have traditionally marked adulthood by completing 5 milestones:

1. Completing school
2. Leaving home
3. Becoming financially independent
4. Marrying
5. Having children

(Note: I assume buying your first house is somewhere in the mix)

In 1960, 77% of women and 65% of men had checked off all 5 milestones by the age of 30.  As of 2000, only 50% of women and 33% of men had done so.

I'm 3 out of 5 for milestones, and I'm not sure I ever want to complete the list.  

I originally thought I just had "Peter Pan" syndrome (i.e., never wanting to grow up), which heightened during my time in San Francisco.  The Bold Italic sums up life there perfectly:

People talk a lot of shit about this city's Peter Pan Syndrome, but the truth is, many of us live here because San Francisco fully embraces a unique breed of youthfulness, ridiculousness, and willingness to experiment like no other urban center we know. We're a city of ageless dreamers and costume collectors, a place where folks will back a Kickstarter campaign to bronze Jeremy Fish's Silly Pink Bunny just because. We're the home of Bay to Breakers and the start of Burning Man, and the city where Halloween is on par with national holidays.

It's true.  I have some Peter Pan in me, but it's more than that.  

I now think my changing goals and frame of mind are actually signs of maturity.

I used to want what everyone else wanted, which Hunter S. Thompson aptly describes in a note penned to a friend, Hume Logan, captured in the book, Letters of Note:

“To be, or not to be: that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles…” 

And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you’ve ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don’t see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect — between the two things I’ve mentioned: the floating or the swimming.

Now, my goals are more short-term based on the most recent version of myself.  As Thompson describes below, it's the most rational thing to do since we change as people with every new experience:

Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

 So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis? 

I may not have the most "adult" life based on assets or dependents on my insurance plan, but I've gained something more than that -- the ability to want different things for myself than my peers and the realization that the person I am today will not be the same person I am a year from now.

So, hear hear, to new experiences and a new version of myself in my 30s.

My Modern Met