The grass is always greener...

Do we always want what we can't have? Is it just a symptom of selfish twenty-somethings, or is everyone like this?

I have a great job and I'm thankful for the paycheck that's miraculously deposited into my bank account every other Friday, but when my unemployed friends flit from city to city sleeping on futons, visiting friends, and barhopping, it's hard not to feel jealous. I want the spontaneity of their lives. I want the flexibility. I want the freedom and the epic stories that come with crashing on a college friend's couch.

My unemployed friends tell me I'm crazy. "You think we want this? Roaming from place to place?" They tell me their parents harass them daily to find work, their savings are dwindling miserably, their rent feels scarily high. "The grass is always greener," they say as they hop on the bus to NY for the weekend...

But it's more than just the job thing. Not to pull a Carrie Bradshaw, but it's relationships too. As a young person, I spent months looking for a guy. The bar scene in DC is hectic and exhausting and I'm not the online dating type. But when you finally find someone who makes you happy, you second guess things. You're vulnerable again. A part of you longs for the independence and sense of self that comes from not catering to another person's needs.

A part of me feels like I should cut all ties. Remove the bindings that hold me to my current life (job, apartment, boyfriend) and see what I'm left with.

I feel antsy and in need of some serious self reflection. I want to visit Chile, San Francisco, Australia. I want to walk and run and canoe? Sitting at my desk day in and day out, 8 hours a day, 5 days a week,  351 days per year feels stifling.

I'm 23 and not getting any younger.  Now is my time.

But maybe, the grass is always greener?

Vote for my Blog! (No, not this one...)

Wow. Good thing I didn't make "blogging more" my new year's resolution. I've been pretty terrible at finding time for it outside of work. Reading Hunger Games has occupied my evenings as of late.

But. Good news! The blog I write at Wellness Corporate Solutions was nominated as one of Healthline's Best Health Blogs of 2011 and I need people to vote to move us up in the rankings! Make sure you’re logged in to Facebook or Twitter and follow the steps below:

1. Go to: http://www.healthline.com/health/best-health-blogs-contest
2. Search for Corporate Wellness Insights (or find us on the second page – we are currently in 11th place)
3. Click vote and allow Healthline to post to Facebook or Twitter

Thanks for all your support!

Thinking about getting into this whole blogging thing more...

So, I'm employed now and have been for over a year. I'm too lazy to change the name of this blog but I'd like to keep writing about the post college working world. It seems to be a pretty hot topic these days and obviously it's relevant to my life, so I guess it's all the more important for me to talk/blog about.

My position at work has officially switched from program manager to marketing & communications manager, so for the unforeseeable future, I'll be the resident blogger, online media content manager, and article writer. In general, this is a pretty low stress job and I don't have to report to anyone on a daily basis. That freedom in itself will be a wonderfully refreshing change.

More posts to come. I've got some pretty funny stories from the gym last week. It cracks me up when people make new year's resolutions to get healthy and hit the gym hard for about 6 days and then bail for the rest of the year. Def have to share my experiences with my 2 readers (thanks S and N!)

Happy 2012!

Apparntly, I'm a Murdrr of Tchnology

Things that broke this week:
* my laptop
* my blackberry
* my ipod

Also, no joke, when I'm around other people, suddenly they start having issues too. Like, when I was trying to chat with D and his skype stopped working, or when I walked into work on Thursday and the office wireless system suddenly went down. I feel like I'm sending out some weird electrical signals that have the singular goal of destroying anything tech-related.

The funniest thing about my phone is the way in which it is broken. It's almost hard to be mad when the brokenness of it is so freakin' bizarre. This is how my blackberry died: The screen lights up only when I hold down the red "off" key for about 10 seconds. Once "off" turns it "on", the trackpad only works on the main screen. As soon as I open up the bigger menu, the trackpad mysteriously fails to cooperate. So, this means I can't turn the phone off, set my alarm, or do any auto updates.

The best part of the brokenness though: The "e" key stopped working. I would text/bbm people and it would look like this: OMG my phon is so annoying. it's brokn. argggg. i hat this." Of course, I took this as a challenge and tried to send as many texts as possible with total disregard for the malfunctioning letter. If "e" didn't want to work for me, then fine. I didn't need it anyway. My texts became totally ridiculous: "arggg blackbrry did. I cant typ th lttr "". vrizon stor far away. can i gt a fr upgrad?".

Luckily, I ordered a new computer so at least I'm not "O for 3" anymore. Off to the Verizon store later today for a new blackberry (fingers crossed I don't break this one too).



***Updates to this blog have become few and far between but I also write health updates for the company blog at work (www.365daysofwellness.blogspot.com) if anyone wants to check it out. As soon as our busy season winds down (flu shot season is the busiest time of the year) I'm sure I'll start updating this one more often.

And This is Why I'm Not a Mother

Sometimes I worry how my children will turn out. I don't really know much about parenting but it seems like there are certain things that work, and certain things that don't work. But then, there's so much gray area it all just gets way too confusing. For example, something that doesn't work - hitting you kid. Something that does work - hitting your kid. And by hitting I mean spanking, or whatever it is that parents occasionally use to punish their children for bad behavior in order to teach them some sort of lesson. Anyway, this is not the point I want to make because I know "spanking" is a hot topic in mommy-world right now and people get really invested in the debate. My point is that some behaviors seem like they they would encourage a child to become the best person he or she can be, while others might stifle a child and prevent him from developing into a productive human being.

You would think that showering your only child with love and attention and investing in word-of-the-day toilet paper would produce a happy, smart, socially successful child. You might also think that leaving your 4-year old in the company of the family dog while you gulp back a few too many glasses of red wine with a man you just met on jdate would produce a bitter, mal-adjusted kid. But I now have living proof that this is not always the case.

So where do things go wrong? Clearly there's the whole nature v. nurture discussion but seriously, I guess this is why I'm not fit to be a parent. I feel like even when adults try to be the perfect parents, a child can still turn into a college drop out living at home with no job and a chain smoking habit that dulls the skin, yellows the teeth, and leaves you saying whaaaat happpenddd?

An Epic Quest for BBQ Sauce

Tomorrow, my company hosts a one-day, indoor, Farmer's Market for a law firm in downtown DC. This project has been in the works for several months, but apparently, it is an annual event.

The original market mission was to provide a team of overworked, stressed out lawyers with fresh, local produce to encourage eco-friendly habits and healthy eating. Unfortunately, farmers are busy people and they don't have time to just mosey on over into the heart of DC for a one-day, single-company event. So, in an attempt to procure enough vendors to fill the large, open space and draw the lawyers away from their desks during billable hours, the on-site coordinator requested gelato. Then chocolate. Then cupcakes. Then, McCutcheon's famous BBQ sauce.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of BBQ sauce. I don't really care for condiments in general but there's something about BBQ sauce that has always skeeved me out a little bit. I think mostly because I don't exactly understand what it is. It's not ketchup, and it's not A1. It's sort of sweet and goopy, but when it's spicy it's usually too spicy. I dunno... I guess a lot of people like it, but it's just not for me. Anyway, the law firm's event coordinator, Ebony, was a BIG fan of this famous "bone-suckin" sauce in years past and she would not allow the fair to take place without at least 2 cases present the day of the event.

So, despite the mountain of work sitting on my desk waiting to be dealt with, I drove from DC to "the historic town of Frederick, MD". What I thought would be a 45 minute drive turned into 2 hours of gnarly traffic, road construction, and bumpy back country roads. By the time I arrived at the cannery my legs had completely tightened up and my ears were ringing from hearing the same 3 songs on Hot 99.5 (Only Girl, Like a G6, Just the Way You Are).

And, while I'm thinking about it, what IS IT about 99.5? There are more than 5 songs that exist in the world right now... why do the djs feel obligated to play the same ones over and over and over and over?!? You really don't realize how little variety there is on the radio until you're in the car for several hours straight and able to memorize every ridiculous lyric in the top 10 countdown (with Ryan Seacrest! gagggg)

But I digress.

I picked up our wholesale order of BBQ sauce - as well as some apple butter and blackberry preserves (in an attempt to bring something wholesome and "farmer-y" to the table) and drove back to the office as fast as I could. What I thought would be a quick detour on my way to work ended up taking my ENTIRE morning. I returned to the office triumphant in my quest for sauce but dismayed to find it was already the afternoon. The clock read 12:02 pm. Ouch.

The worst part about this whole adventure is that my healthy, wellness-centered "market" has now become a kind of fair. Just a big, indoor fair. With BBQ sauce.

Now that I've figured out how to upload pictures, I can share my recent health fair images!

Here is a picture from a recent health fair I organized at a radio station in downtown DC.

With only two screeners, it was my smallest so far, but it went really smoothly and all the participants were wonderful. No one was squeamish, everyone bled well (sounds gross I know), and none of the employees fainted!

Even better - we had no machine mishaps and the schedule was booked solid from 9-3. Overall, the screening was a success!