stellargirl returns

about me: circa 2005

While doing some TypePad account maintenance, I couldn't help but notice the content I had written for my about page many years ago. I think that most of it still rings true, just funny to read your own voice a number of years later...

stellargirl has been in existence since the winter of 2000.  i remember the house i lived in at the time and my bedroom that was painted yellow... after a mishap involving flat army green paint (the theme song to M*A*S*H was stuck in my head for weeks).  it was a snow day in the late days of the first dotcom boom and i decided  that it was high time i carved myself out a little space on the web. thus stellargirl was born.

stellargirl has changed many times over the years, different designs, different contributors, even a brief hiatus here and there (wish i myself had such a glamorous life).   i have never really made up my mind about exactly what i'm trying to share with the world, but fundamentally, it's always acted as an avenue to my latest photography, which is really just a documentary of my life and friends.  

as for me, the girl behind stellargirl (who always plays it a little stealth), i'm getting dangerously close to turning 30, i like a lot of different things, so many in fact that i have about 10 different career paths that i would like to follow at any given time.  i seem to be happiest behind the camera lens or at the stove.  my kitchen is my favorite room in the house, because it's the most utilitarian.  i'd rather buy cooking implements than clothes. i am fond of run-on sentences.  i have a deck that's screaming out for me to become an urban gardener.  i'm happiest when i am practicing yoga all the time, which hasn't been so much the case since leaving behind my beloved studio in nyc.

i'm an idealist, not a realist... a daydreamer and let's hope i'm not a fool.  i've got the best friends on earth, and all over the earth as a matter of fact.  i guess i'm doin' all right.

thanks for stopping by and checking out my scene.

gettin' all detoxy

Just over a week ago, I decided to do something crazy. How crazy you ask? Depends on your relationship with coffee, meat, cheese, cookies, beer, wine, etc.

For 21 days, I have signed up to remove all traces of caffeine, dairy, sugar, gluten, alcohol and animal products from my diet. Before I began, I was really quiet about it and I didn't tell many people. I didn't want to fail. I mean, I was sure I would fail. It just seemed like it would be too hard. But here I write from Day 9 and I'm totally hangin' in there and feeling pretty good about it. Guess I'm not out of the woods yet!

The first week has been an absolute culinary adventure and has really started shifting the way I look at food. I'm actually really enjoying the experience and looking forward to creating some new good habits as a result.

The inspiration for this detox comes from Kris Carr's Crazy Sexy Diet. I wasn't looking for a diet book when I stumbled upon her book. I kept seeing it at Whole Foods and thinking "What's up with that book? What's so Crazy & Sexy about it?" Mind you, I'm not trying to be too crazy or sexy, but I am really very extremely (yes really) interested in food and healing.

Kris' original gift to this world was a documentary called Crazy Sexy Cancer (which I haven't seen). She suffers from a rare form of cancer that is untreatable. That is, no chemo, no radiation, just lots of wait and see. She, like many other wellness warriors out there, decided to take matters in her own hands and educate herself in the ways in which diet can improve your total health. She doesn't stop there either, she's got a lot of ideas about incorporating meditation into your daily life as well as many other tips & tricks to give your life a giant shot in the arm.

I celebrated my last night of freedom by weaning myself off a wine hangover from the night before and enjoying a big old bowl of drunken noodles from my local Thai delivery joint. I savored all that gooey noodley gluteny goodness, knowing that my life was about to become an austere prison of vegetables. I couldn't have been more wrong. After just one week, I like to think that my life has become a vibrant, colorful menagerie of fruits, veggies and leafy greens! 

I hope to follow up with some posts featuring more of the play by play / day by day stuff, but I thought I'd share some of my favorite snacks and meals from the first week so you could get some idea of the yummy foods one can eat while on a restricted diet. I don't feel restricted at all, I feel empowered!

Any links below go right to a photo of that dish, to see an overall set of images from last week, check out the detox! set on flickr.

corn/quinoa/sesame thin cakes with raw almond butter 
celery sticks and miso cilantro white bean dip
butter lettuce salad with shallots, sunflower seeds and raw apple cider vinaigrette 
spicy ginger lime braised tempeh
gluten-free angel hair with cilantro pesto
lemon garlic roasted brussel sprouts
lots and lots of GREEN juice featuring cucumber, celery, romaine, apple, pear, ginger
coconut chickpea curry
collard green wraps filled with caramelized onions, sweet potatoes, black beans & corn 

Thankfully, I have a special buddy on this adventure with me, which makes it all the more fun. We're cookin' up a storm over here, so look us up if you're hankering for a healthy meal!

here and now

Laughing Lotus Yoga School Teacher Training Graduation, May 2005

I've been doing yoga on and off for nine years now. By on and off I mean that I'm either fully immersed in it (and loving every second), or I've fallen into a lazy pattern where I'm longing for it but not doing it. I'm sure there are many things we wish we were doing, but aren't, for whatever reason. Excuses are easy to come by.

Returning to practice has been slow, but steady. It's definitely not a question of soreness or loss of flexibility. It's all in there, written deep into my muscle memories. The interesting part has been acceptance. I was part of a very intense and vibrant yoga community in NYC and have not found its match in my current locale. I've thought that many of the studios I have tried here are not hard enough, not sweaty enough, not challenging enough... 

But I realized that none of those things are true. Yoga isn't always exactly what you want it to be. The only consistent thing in your yoga practice (and let's face it, in your life) is YOU. You're the one who is bringing whatever you are bringing onto your mat every time you roll it out. Bringing negative emotions and missed expectations won't improve your practice nor will it encourage you to keep trying.

After my last post about finding and creating community, I couldn't help but draw parallels between the two. If I really think that "just showing up" is important, then I better have that attitude about yoga as well. I've found that the more I show up, the easier it is to let go of my expectations of how I think it's supposed to be. I can feel the resistance begin to break up and reveal new sensations: openness, curiosity, flexibility, adventure!

I find that most yoga classes have lessons in them if you are open to it. This morning was no exception. A typically busy Saturday morning class was presented with new challenges when we had to practice in the smaller of the two studios. A great example of real world collaboration is watching yogis make space for a few more mats in a packed room. It's pretty amazing how there's always just enough room. If you've ever done yoga, you know that the physical practice of yoga is also often about discovering space that you didn't realize was there.

The words that we began class with are what inspired this post in the first place. I think the rushed mat moving and craziness diverted the teacher's intention a little bit, in a good way. She asked us, what does yoga mean? A few people responded with "union" (the literal translation), uniting the mind and body, getting the mind out of the way, etc. The words we landed on that stuck with me were "here" and "now".

TEDxPhilly t-shirt. Design by Sean Martorana, Photo by Kevin Monko.

As I'm currently in a period of reflection and transition, I couldn't help but think about how that's where last year's theme for TEDxPhilly came from. Right Here, Right Now was actually a modified version of Being Present -- being in the here and now. Funnily enough, the visual representation of our theme was two right arrows, each above the words Here and Now. If you didn't catch the cleverness of the right arrows (Sean Martorana is a very clever designer!) then you saw it as Here and Now, which in itself, is something.

If you are anything like me, here and now is a place you don't often frequent. Sometimes I think I spend too much time looking back or looking ahead, but definitely not spending enough time in the here and now. It's quite a different picture. My yoga practice is just part of the adventure, writing this blog post is another. 

So if I said the other day to just show up, today I'm suggesting (mostly to myself), enjoy the present moment. Take it all in, look at it, laugh at it, and just be all up in it.

Enjoy.

my community story

The vibrant community of TEDxPhilly, photographed by Kevin Monko of Monkophoto.

Earlier this week I was given the opportunity to share my experience with TEDxPhilly at an Innovation & Entrepreneurship class at UArts. When first asked by the wonderful Hilary Jay of DesignPhiladephia, I hesitated. Public speaking is not my comfort zone at all, and organizing TEDxPhilly this year was pretty damn challenging on many levels. What would I talk about? How would I close with a message of positivity? I was unsure how to proceed.

Before I go too much further, I want to say that Hilary gets it. DesignPhiladelphia is an amazing 10 day event that descends on Philadelphia each October, showcasing incredible design talent in the community, through exhibits, lectures, open studios and more. I'm in complete awe of the annual undertaking. The truth is, I reached out to Hilary independently, because when I see people pulling off such meaningful events, I want to reach out to them and ask - how do you do it!?

So back to class, back to this presentation. I was thinking about winging it and just riffing on the experience, but I realized it was a good opportunity to sit with it and think about it. I've had a canned answer for how things went, how I pulled it off (with an amazing group of volunteers), etc, but this was my chance to tell a story of how I got there and where I am today. 

This is how the story goes…

In the Spring of 2007, I came upon a group of likeminded individuals -- web developers, designers, and generally enthusiastic people who wanted to change things up a bit in Philadelphia. Tired of the same old same old, you need to do things in this order, etc. While we ultimately all became great friends, this was also one of the first professional communities I had ever been a part of. Need design inspiration? Check. Wanna get that WordPress question answered? Check. And so on and so forth.  I always found this group to be very welcoming and everyone had something to contribute. And if you didn't, you thought of something. That's how it worked. 

It was this group that gave me the guts to co-organize the first BarCamp Philly in the fall of 2008.  It was a very pivotal moment for me. Oh hey, turns out I like this community organizer thing. BarCamp Philly gave way to Refresh Philly which gave way to UX Book Club Philly and ultimately my largest project to date: TEDxPhilly. Each project had different requirements, different community overlaps, different stresses and rewards. 

One of the best thing to come out of TEDxPhilly from my perspective was that it was the most diverse audience I had ever created an event for. Young, old, professional, student, musician, artist, scientist, nonprofit, corporate, techie, luddite, the list goes on. The TED brand is very powerful and draws people out the of the woodwork. That's why I wanted to bring it to Philadelphia -- to help people discover new people and projects and get inspired again!

So what was the message I wanted to leave with these students? It was simple and this is how I put it:

Find community
Create community
Have fun (the most important thing)
Pass it on

When asked, "how do you find community?" I said this… Just show up. That's the first step. Inevitably there's going to be someone else there who is also there for the first time, and better yet, someone that's there to welcome you and learn more about you and your interests.

Maybe you ultimately decide you want to start your own community project -- figure out how to do it, either dive right in, or ask someone you look up to how they went about it. Learn from your mistakes, and share them with others.

Make things happen. Don't complain, just do. We're all in this together.

switching gears

I'm not yet ready to write about the things that went down in 2010 (mostly good things), but whatever happened has led me to start 2011 looking out over the horizon and wondering what's next.  I've been reflecting a lot on the twists and turns my path has taken me over the last decade. Looking back, I realize I've always maintained an element of restlessness and independence in my choices. These two factors make it difficult for me to really dig into something unless it's something I absolutely totally love.

When I was in college in the late 90s, I read articles and watched stories on tv about the startup world. Lots of creative people working all hours at jobs they loved, wearing t-shirts and crazy sneakers as they wheeled about their office on skateboards or razor scooters. Even though I was studying Art History (and photography more than anything else), I knew this was for me. I wanted to go to work and have fun and make stuff and work with great people.

Fast forward to today and not too much has changed. I still want that kind of electric workplace where you just feel the creative energy zapping you with inspiration.  Wanting this kind of environment is one thing, finding it is another! And perhaps creating it yourself, is yet another.

These are the things I am thinking about right now. Who am I, what do I do, who can I help, where do I belong? You know, the light and easy stuff. I have a lot of interests, and skills, and ideas... lots and lots of ideas. I'm talking to lots of friends and mentors, writing things down (like this!), and reading good stuff. I'm just not one of those people who wants to take that sensible job and take the paycheck. I want to CHANGE things, and help everybody around me lighten up.

I'm figuring it out, just like everyone else.

eons

Last week a friend pointed out that I haven't blogged in eons, which is true. It's been ages. I can't tell you how many blog posts I have started over the last year that start with a very similar sentence. Truth is, I used to blog a lot, a long time ago. I had a lot to say, or a lot to vent about, and I was also pretty anonymous about it.  That reminds me, in addition to the blog, I used to do quite a bit of livejournaling too. 

So back to all these posts that start with me lamenting my lack of blogging. You've never seen them because I draft them and abandon them forever, because I'm sure that's the last thing you want to read about! This time I'm going to click publish, because I need to. I have a lot of stuff I want to share with anyone who will read it. It's good to get ideas out there and keep a record, whether anyone reads your blog or not.

I care about a lot of things, some of which may not seem so obvious. I'm going to try to write more so that I can share them with you. I'm not going to make any promises here, but this is a start. Right?

One last thing, I can't decide which blogging platform to use. From 2000-2005 I did it by hand in HTML and in 2005 I joined TypePad. I truly can't decide whether or not I should just stay here, or move to WordPress, Posterous or Tumblr.  Too many choices!!! (Now that's a blog post waiting to happen...)

More to come.

on to the next one

There's a song that's been stuck in my head for quite a while now. It's on one of those mixes I make for running or taking to the gym. Those same mixes double as the best possible music for stomping around the city with ferocity. Every step set with intention and meaning.

On To The Next One by Jay-Z is a damn catchy song, but that phrase alone is my anthem of late. Bet you didn't know this, but tomorrow, June 25, 2010, marks the ten year anniversary of my blog. Scroll down and see the first post here. A lot has happened in 10 years. I started out in Philly and made my way out west to San Francisco. I dot-bombed with the best of them and packed up my pink slips and moved to the Big Apple, just a few months before September 11th happened.  While volumes can be spoken about that particular experience, I'll say this: I wasn't going to walk away.

And I didn't. I soldiered on in a broken city, without a snowballs's chance in hell of getting a job in the web industry and decided to attend a chef's training program. I followed this experience up with a summer cooking meals for bendy yoga people from England on the island of Crete. I returned to NYC with more uncertainty than ever, but somehow followed a path back to my previous internet career, all while managing to squeeze in a 200 hour vinyasa yoga teacher training. Namaste!

During the five years that I called other cities my home, I never stopped loving and visiting my hometown of Philadelphia. I look back and think about how many things have changed... and how many haven't. In a good way.  Here I thought I was finished with crazy-frenetic-I-can't-afford-to-live-in-this-city adventures, and life in Philly might be kind of easy going. I was wrong.

I met a group of people who switched the train tracks of my life. I found new trailblazing mentors and learned how to be a leader. I reconnected with old friends and made many new. I changed jobs not once, but... several times, how could I not? Opportunities have been plentiful.  I'm lucky and I'm grateful. 

A lot has happened in a decade. Now I'm on to the next one. Please stay along for the ride.

vacation all i ever wanted

I've been singing the lines to that Go-Go's song all summer, but it wasn't until the very last gasps of summer until I finally took the plunge and got the hell out of Dodge.  For those of you who don't live in Philadelphia, it's probably one of the worst places to be during the month of August and I really thought I was going to lose it this year.

Thankfully, my very old and dear friend Christine convinced me to visit her in Los Angeles, California for a few days to get some good old fashioned sun and fun. She was looking for a reason to take a staycation, so it was a win-win situation!

We spent every single day in LA either hitting the beach or hiking up mountains and through chapparals.  We drank pints of Guinness at a pretty damn near authentic English pub, drank margaritas on Marina del Ray, and sipped lattes (soy chai for me) in some of the coolest coffee shops around.

My favorite parts of the trip centered around staring out into the horizon of the Pacific ocean, looking out into the mountains and valley and seeing for miles, thinking about life, thinking about nothing. Never before have I been so grateful to just unplug.

Our big night out was seeing Pink Martini play at the Hollywood Bowl on Saturday night. Their music is a blend of jazz, vintage, lounge and really, just a plain old good time. The Hollywood Bowl is all outdoors and pretty huge. We sat way way way far back, the concert shell seemed a million miles away, but it didn't matter. There were moments that I couldn't believe I was really there, tucked away in the Hollywood hills among thousands of people, perfect southern California weather, the outline of mountains against the night sky.

Sometimes I forget about that nature stuff, here in this dirty old town.

It was an awesome trip and a HUGE reminder and kick in the pants that it's really important to get away if you can. 

You might be surprised what you find.

i have a lot to say!

I have a TON of blog posts that are just waiting to happen. Having trouble finding the time, but just wanted to drop in and say they are coming soon...

2009, a fresh start indeed

So hey wow yeah 2008 was flipping awesome! 2009, what's your deal?

I believe everything happens for a reason, so here goes: I was laid off from my job last week.

It wasn't entirely unexpected as these tough economic times have affected many friends of mine, and people all over the country. I am already following up on a lot of great leads, which I have access to through being a member of this solidly amazing creative community in Philadelphia. (You can read more about Philly's geeky awesomeness in this great article from last week's Philadelphia Weekly).

I am sure something interesting will pan out, just wanted to give you all a heads up, because maybe there's something exciting out there I don't know about (how could I not know about it!?). In the meanwhile, I will briefly contemplate the indie lifestyle, and look for my next adventure.

(update 1.28.09: job acquired!)