One year, after three cities and seven moves

It’s already been a year, and I can’t believe it. Today is the second of my two first anniversaries — June 30 was a year in Edmonton, and today is a year at my current job. Maybe that’s not a big deal for most people, but for someone who has moved through three cities in one-and-a-half provinces (the closest I got to Saskatchewan was a block from the border, though my office was in Saskatchewan), resulting in seven moves in four years, staying in one place for a year is huge. Planning to stay for even more years — which I am — is even bigger (and scarier).

Plus, after a year in Lloydminster, I was starting to look to leave the job that I was at (though it would take another six months). That’s not the case here, and it can’t be illustrated more perfectly than an exchange that happened last week on vacation with a friend.

I’d already asked that we detour through downtown to check out one of their arts buildings because it’s relevant to my job, which was fine and made sense. A couple days later, we were walking through Golden Gate Park, and came upon a statue of Verdi. I got really excited and exclaimed to K. that it was pretty cool to come across a random statue of Verdi where you would least expect it, and she’s looking at me like I’m crazy. So I had to explain that he was an opera composer, and it’s the 200th anniversary of his birth this year, in October. Her response? “You’re pretty passionate about your job, you know?”

It’s a little weird, but yeah, I am. When I was offered the position, I knew of at least two friends who told me that they had heard of the posting, but they thought they wouldn’t like the work, so they didn’t apply for it. Yes, I was unsure too, but I love it. I have to learn crazy facts that I would never bother with otherwise, which means I do get excited about a random statue of Verdi in San Francisco.

I started blogging when I was in Lloyd, and I know there are some posts that note my one-year blogging anniversary, one year of living on my own (not counting summers) and my one-year milestone of living in the Border City, with promises to blog about those thoughts. I never did, and yet, I’ve been excited about this anniversary (seriously) since about May.

This is the city that I want to be in, I’m lucky enough to work in my chosen field with some really smart people, and that I get to call some other really smart, interesting Edmonton people my friends on top of all of that.

Watering my patch of Internet

Everything that I know about gardening is … not a lot. I managed to nearly successfully raise a tomato plant two summers ago, even carting it to a friend’s house so he could look after it for the 10 days I was on vacation. However, last summer, with minimal effort, I managed to kill my second attempt at a tomato plant in record time. Possibly due to minimal effort.

After acquiring a pallet late last August and inspired by Pinterest, I plan to build a vertical garden this summer. I expect to kill a couple tomato plants while doing it, but it’s a start, and will hopefully yield something.

In that case, I’m well aware that I’m starting from square one, and that’s OK. I don’t know a lot about gardening, and I’ll learn something this summer.

What I do feel I have a fairly good handle on, however, is the Internet. Give me a couple of hours and allow me to sigh loudly when frustrated, and I can probably have at least the basics of any digital media platform worked out shortly. I love analytics, and some days, it just seems like there’s too much interesting content on the Internet and not enough appropriate time/ways/channels to share it.

If the Internet were a community garden, the plots that were most attractive and produced high yields would use analytics smartly, incorporate a variety of media, and both curate and create good content.

I am not an accountant

Nor do I want to be one.

The title of this post comes from an interview I did, and I can’t for the life of me remember who it was with. But I’m sure the context was that an organization was short on volunteers, so while working on a story about it, I asked about the qualifications and positions they were looking to fill.

Communication articulation

You know when you hear (or, in the case of social media, see) those opinions, and you know they’re wrong, but you can’t immediately articulate exactly why?

In that sense, blogging for me is a challenge. I want to respectfully point out when people are wrong, but at the same time, I want to propose a plausible solution, and that’s usually where I get stuck. You’re wrong, but…

Clear head, clean copy

Apparently because I like to torture myself, I went to another social gathering (Friday) morning. I am now trying to write this furiously between actually being productive, because I know if I don’t, the thoughts will be lost forever, and I’ll know I’ll have had something that seemed like a good thought, but I can’t for the life of me figure out what it is.

Full sentences not required

I wasn’t going to do NaBloPoMo month this year — National Blog Posting Month. It’s not like last year went horribly, it’s more like I made a conscious decision not to do it this year. But I made that decision for no reason in particular, even though it sounds like a really good reason to start posting more (because I certainly haven’t).

Three tumbled Tuesday thoughts

It’s funny that whenever I think I can do a combination post, I always end up with more than enough content, usually on one topic alone, to stand alone as a blog post. But, three of the thoughts that are running through my head today, anyways.

Break it

Honestly, I’ve never paid much attention to the articles that say the sky is falling and journalism as we know it is ending. I’m much more interested in the articles that say yes, journalism and communications is changing, but this is how we can apply what we already know to what we don’t know, and the new skills that we need to learn.

When the sky is falling

As a consequence of moving so often, every now and then, in the millisecond between asleep and awake, there are times I can’t remember what city I’m in. If I’d gotten into Lloyd really late one night from Edmonton, it was sometimes really heartbreaking to remember where I actually was. Not the best way to start a day.

It happened again this morning. In that half-conscious millisecond, I thought I was in Calgary. I’m going home next week, and I’m really looking forward to it — I haven’t been home since May, for a variety of reasons — but I’m happy here too. No reason to wish I were in Calgary specifically.
But that’s kind of set the bar for my day. When I was making my coffee, I dropped the full mug because I didn’t have a good enough grip on it and my hands just, for lack of better term, gave up.

If that’s not enough:

Skyscrapers for grain elevators, and canola fields for a river valley

In the last two weeks, I kept having minor, five-minute freakouts. They were based on the fact that I didn’t know if I was doing the right thing, quitting my newspaper job, accepting a new job in communications, and moving to Edmonton. Usually the calming factor was a mix of old text messages from friends and just talking to friends, but still, a five-minute freakout is a five-minute freakout.

All things considered then, this week has gone very smoothly.