Day 21

Wow. I have discovered it is super easy to stay on a diet when you are rocking the scale and dropping some serious lbs.  But what about when you stall? Or worse yet, when you GAIN weight after you have been diligent to a fault and faithful to a T to your diet menu?  And you are starving and miserable. Yeah, that sucks!

Motivation has been tough for me this past week.  I have been kind of quiet on the diet journal as I had an extended plateau, a big drop, then a gain then a slow drop again and all with no cheating.  This diet roller coaster has been frustrating and challenging and yes, disappointing at times.  Especially given that I have not deviated from the program in the least.  A gain?!  What the heck!

It forced me to look at how hard it is to remain motivated and on track with something when the results aren’t ideal even though logic tells me eventually things will start moving in the right direction again at some point.  Then you make a decision: to cheat or not to cheat. I will tell you the desire for a glass on wine was so strong in me last night it was almost aggressive!  I held off the craving had a cup of sleepytime tea and hit the hay instead.  Hungry, as always.

I started this diet because of my leg injury and my inability to exercise as much as I wish I could.  I do feel successful about the 12 lb loss I have accomplished to date and am hoping I can find a way to successfully maintain that weight when I switch to a less restrictive maintenance type diet mid-week next week.  Please pray for me that I do not go bonkers the second I get off the restrictive diet and get a bucket of KFC!  I am hoping for a more sane and measured transition that allows me to stay in control of my cravings and hunger and keep this weight off until the leg fully heals.

Here goes nothing!

Day 12

Today is Day 12 and I have some awesome news to report.  With some menu modifications and slight changes, this diet is becoming much easier to stick to/tolerate. I am now sounding like one of those heinously annoying people who were pissing me off on all the message boards as I was suffering looking for help with my misery and starvation. “This diet is so easy!” and “I am not even hungry, I can barely eat all the food I am supposed to.” Needless to say I wanted to kill those people last week, this week I am on the border of morphing into one of them.  I doubt I will ever say I am not even hungry, this diet is tough and it is a commitment.  But I will say it has gotten easier, which is nice!

Happy to report 12 lbs total losses to get me to an 8.5 net loss. I am halfway through and a little concerned I won’t get to the 20lb net loss goal I wanted to get to, but hey I will take what I can get.  Coming up on another weekend, but after making it through the 4th of July and following work holiday I am thinking this will be child’s play.  Wish me luck!

I like to keep my blog personal and separate from my work life.  I usually blog about how I feel about world events, gadgets, news or just mindless tidbits of information.  Work has been really busy for me recently, so I also haven’t been blogging as much as I would like.  I am a recruiter by profession and because I have been so busy, I feel compelled to “cross the streams” and blog about something that has to do with work for the first time.  Alert the media!

As a recruiter for a large, global advertising agency – I look at resumes, portfolios, Linked In profiles, Coroflot and Creative Hotlist profiles, you name it – I look at it for a living.  I have a job that is all about the hunt.  I am constantly searching and my job is never done.  I get paid to talk to people and surf the web all week long to find the best and the brightest and hopefully entice them into joining my company which has pretty high standards for hiring.  I look for sharp resumes, visually compelling design portfolios and technically proficient IA samples.  Once I unearth these gems, I try to get them on the phone and begin the dance.

It is because of the fact that I HAVE to look at these things all day long that I feel the need to offer some public advice on how to make them better.  And how to look for a job – better.  To inform you on what works and what doesn’t, what will land you the job and what will lose you any possible chance at it.  Granted it isn’t an exact science, but I guarantee you that there are some rules of thumb most recruiters agree on that can really help you in the hunt.

Social media is pretty much all you hear about these days.  It started in a functional way to network and share common interests, sites like Linked In and MySpace and eventually Facebook.  Now it is a complex roster of so many sites I can’t even keep up with the ones I am registered for and the ones I am not.

The face of social media changes monthly for sure, if not weekly or even daily.  That makes it next to impossible to the average person to keep up at times and if I venture a guess – it might even overwhelm the savvy users too.  I freely admit my prowess with social media is at the beginner level.  I can’t keep up with what the next best thing is, and when I find out about something it is usually way behind the curve.

Case in point, Twitter. I have had an account since last year after hearing about it at SxSW, but didn’t start really using it until about a month and a half ago.  One of the main reasons I did was because someone told me about Tweet Deck.  It is an AIR application that allows you to manage incoming tweets, replies, direct messages and search for content.  Before Tweet Deck I found Twitter a little too hard to manage and keep up with, even using a tool like TwitterFox.  Other tool that people use ar Twhirl and aggregators like ping.fm.

I definitely rely on the knowledge and opinions of others when trying to find the next best site and the optimal way to participate.  And things change all the time.  Twitter is now widely being used to network for job opportunities, especially in the first couple months of this year.  It wasn’t as widely used for this prior to the epidemic of layoffs since the beginning of 2009.  I really love how these sites and morph and change and stay relevant.  And I don’t analyze it or research it – I just watch it with average eyes and never cease to be amazed by the power of the WWW and a collective group of people.

I think that social media is all about the early adopters.  They get going, use it, comment on it, spread the word in their communities.  If something is worth a damn, the news inevitably gets out and then everyone wants to be a part.  Sometimes it sticks (Twitter, Facebook, Linked In) and sometimes it fizzles and fades (Doostang, Naymz and in my opinion – eventually MySpace).  I definitely look to the experts to lead the way and develop the applications and interfaces that allows me to use these great social media sites in the best and most efficient ways and to skip the ones that aren’t worthwhile.

So all of you bloggers and tweeters and social media mavens out there, keep on trucking.  In the immortal words of Smokey and the Bandit, “I’ve got a long way to go and a short time to get there.”  Your insight, leadership and help in this area makes it easier for the everyman.  And I bet I am not the only novice who appreciates it!!

I am moving on up in the world!  In an effort to make it easier for people to find me I have a brand spanking new URL that is easier to remember:  www.emily-brewer.com.  Same great blog, different channel.  Don’t forget, you can always subscribe to my blog feed by going here and you can follow me on Twitter by going here.

Since I work in advertising, I look at campaigns and other agencies all the time to see what is going on in the industry.  Someone brought the following ad to my attention this morning and I must say I almost threw up:

Seriously?  Did anyone think this was a good idea?  That it was cute?  The scary part is that someone obviously did.  I don’t know if I am overly sensitive, but I must say I think this ad is in poor taste and doesn’t really deliver the right message to the consumer.  The “Yes We Can” sale?  It is an example of how much advertising and corporate executives can miss the mark when putting a campaign together.  Surprisingly it came out of one of the largest and most prominent ad agencies in North America.  I think it just goes to show how out of touch these larger traditional agencies can be.

Day 1 in DC couldn’t have been better.  Ok, well maybe a liiiiiittle better if it was like 10 degrees warmer.  But honestly, it started off unbelievable and stayed that way all day.

My gracious cousin Samantha and her roommates are letting us crash at their house in North Capitol Hill.  We walked out of the house to head down to the Longworth Building to pick up our tickets for tomorrow and what do we see 2 blocks from their house?  A mob of people outside the Sasha Bruce House waiting for a glimpse of something special.  We heard that Obama was inside helping to paint the emergency shelter for homeless teens.  Seriously?  Is he for real?  HE IS!!  And that is what makes him so great!  He was volunteering his time the day before one of the biggest moments in his life!

We were lucky enough to get a peek at him as he left and hopped into his awesome pimped out armored caddy.  Unfortunately we didn’t get a pic of him because everyone was mobbing and pushing, but we did get a nice shot of the car.  So literally 5 minutes after we stepped out of the house, we ran into Obama on the street.  This was a good start to the day.

We then made it to the House and Senate office buildings and they were all MOBBED.  Hundred of thousands of people lined up to get their inauguration tickets from their respective congresspeople and senators.  We stood in line for over an hour and a half in the frigid cold, but once we got in Lois Capps definitely made up for the long, frozen wait.  She is the representative for California’s 23rd District and she was very hospitable.  She had food and drinks and stopped to shake our hands and pose for a picture.  We received our tickets and an amazing invitation and commemorative program.  I think this really made it real for us as started to get us excited for tomorrow’s events.

We came back to the house to drop off the tickets and finish the Facebook application our company has been working on with NPR, apps.facebook.com/inaugreport.  It is carrying the live NPR audio feed as well as picking up tweets, pictures and videos that are tagged with #inaug09 and #dctrip09.  It is a great way to experience the inaugural events through the eyes of the average attendee and not the major news networks.  Check it out!

Well, that is all I have for tonight.  I have to hit the sack soon so I can be up at 4 AM to go out and stand in the masses and frigid cold for hours in anticipation of what just might be the greatest political event I will see in my lifetime.  I can’t tell you how privileged and fortunate I feel to be here.  It is truly a sight to behold!

Props to Marc Van Norden for the photography.  I am not sure who took what picture, s0 we will have to share the credit!

WASHINGTON DC

PHOTOS – DAY 1

Click here for DAY 2 PHOTOS

Yesterday is history.  Tomorrow is a mystery.  And Today? Today is a gift.  That is why we call it the present. — Babatunde Olatunji

Ok, maybe not so uplifting, but I have this ee cummings quote on my desk.  Like with many of the things on my desk, after a while I just started to tune it out – not even see it anymore.  Well I looked at it today and it really resonated with me.  It inspired me and it made me feel exhausted at the same time.  Whichever way it might make you feel, it is worth a read:

To be nobody but yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting.

e e cummings
US poet (1894 – 1962)

Usually the term “2.0″ means then next version, the latest upgrade, the next best thing.  Well, when it comes to flying it means the exact opposite.  I took a trip this new year to Chicago and had the extreme misfortune of flying Northwest Airlines.  I am sure flying any airlines during the holiday season would be a misfortune, but Northwest really took the cake in some special ways!

Starting with the fact that even though the price of fuel is a third of what it was this summer when they instituted all sorts of new fees and service cuts, we were still charged a fee to check our bags.  $15 a piece.  For ONE BAG.  Now I understand they probably took a bath on futures when the oil prices started to fall, trying to lock in better rates for themselves.  And let me just say it is my utter pleasure to help them pay for their bad business models and investment decisions.  But one bag?  Really?  I pay them hundreds of dollars for a ride to Chicago and I am expected to go with what?  No bag?  If you are paying that much for a ride, shouldn’t your stuff be included within reason?  Apparently not!

Then, when we get to our layover destination, the balmy Minneapolis, we were snowed in an extra three hours.  We went to another gate where an earlier flight was maybe, eventually going to depart for Chicago.  Only to be told we had to pay $50 to get on the standby list!!  EACH!!  And there was no guarantee that we would actually ever leave any earlier than the one we were scheduled on.  And if we didn’t, we didn’t get our money back.  I am all for creative ways to improve your business, but that just sounds like a hustle to me.  I was glad the gate agent didn’t say it to me, that I overheard instead.  Because I might not have been able to be civil.  I decided to spend my money in the bar versus donate it to Northwest.  Seemed to be a better investment.

This, on top of the ridiculous TSA experiences, overpriced slop they serve in the terminals and belligerent attitudes of bitter gate agents and flight attendants make me wonder why I even attempt to fly anymore.  The sad thing is it used to be one of my greatest joys, and now the getting there and getting back often times has a negative effect so large that it diminishes the enjoyment of the travel experience for part of the trip.

Lucky for me Chicago was amazing and it wasn’t an issue.  We had very gracious hosts, saw good friends, ate great food and drank enough to probably throw an elephant into liver failure.  It was an excellent new years.  So great in fact that even Northwest couldn’t spoil it!