Too Weird NOT To Share

What A Difference

Here I am, sitting at a Corner Bakery with a pomegranate lemonade, enjoying the free WiFi internet and I am starting to look at things with new eyes.

It will still take some time to be fully satisfied, but I took a very important first step - I have finally moved out of my hell hole apartment!

WOOOHOOOOO!!!!

I cannot believe how much I went through at that place. And you know what, it was truly telling when I had cleared everything out of there (which should feel really weird) and the apartment really didn't feel any different to me. I knew then that the place meant absolutely nothing good to me and it will just be so much better for me to be out of there and not have to feel weighed down by the place that I live.

:)

I can't tell you how relaxed I am right now...

So I still have some things to worry about. For one, where I am now is somewhat temporary. I will be house sitting for a friend while she is trying to sell the house...but we'll just see how everything goes.

The fact is, this feels so much better.

On the road towards happiness and feeling more like myself again! Yay.

Not In A Long While

Wow, how I have let the time pass. For good reason though...I've been thinking about a lot, making a lot of decisions, taking a lot of time to take care of myself.

There are a lot of things that I want to add to this blog very quickly so I want to do a posting of highlights of exciting Plannerly things that I have been able to do in the past few (how long has it been since I last posted?)...months.

For one, I have moderated!! I am a master at the back-end of research - all the setting up, recruiting, and running of groups. And now I have finally conducted the research myself. My first group moderated was for new business for our Seattle office - awesome! I really didn't have time to get nervous about the actual group because I was handling all of the recruiting, coordinating, and setting up on my own. The day of the group I was a little nervous but decided to have fun with it, and I totally did! I also did three interviews that day. Afterwards I felt confident that moderating was something I could do and have a lot of fun with.

And I did! Just last week I moderated my second group. This time with college students which was a lot of fun. This was for my account...

That's right, my account. I have been very active on an account in our agency to the extent that I am really the Planner on it. Now there are a few things about it: 1) it's one of the smallest accounts in the agency, 2) it's led by me because the other planners don't want it or don't have time for it, and 3) it has not always been easy to work on this account. But I am growing and learning and I'm just trying to look at the whole thing as a great educational opportunity for me. I'm working with teams of AS and creative people, I'm talking directly to the client and have presented a few things to them (over the phone and in person), and I have to deal with conflicts and obstacles as they come up. The great thing is that I really feel like I'm getting to a place where I'm more comfortable with my team and that they're coming to me for my advice and direction because I have tried to always be there for them and prove myself.

Oh, so much going on!

And on to life outside of the office...I am finally moving out of my hell hole apartment!! Woohoooo!!! It is long past time to leave this place behind and I move out next week.

Unfortunately, things aren't completely certain right now. I have decided to move into a friend's house as she is trying to sell it and I am trying to save a little money. *I'm 90% sure right now that I will be moving into this house.* I'll help her out and she'll help me out by doing this. But this will be a short-term solution as eventually the house will sell and I will have to be on my way. But this is giving me the opportunity to really get out of a shitty situation while I look for something better.

So as you can see there are a few things on my mind. I have been working a TON and trying to coordinate everything for the move and it has not been easy. Yep, I'm stressing! But I wanted to get back to blogging to see if letting some of it out here would help.

I surely hope to have more good news about work as I just continue to learn and grow!

Hooray for posting after a really long ass time. :)

Kraak & Smaak

Heard this song on the new Rhapsody commercial where the woman dives into different bubbles and hears music...could not get it out of my head.

It's called Squeeze Me by Kraak & Smaak. Cool video too.

Darn Ike

Well, Ike is hitting Dallas now with a pretty steady stream of rain. We seem to have come through the windy phase and I'm glad - no tornadoes for me, please.

I've been following the storm for a few days now and I'm just trying to keep all of my friends in Galveston and Houston in mind. I texted a lot of people today to make sure they were okay and it seems like there's a lot of power outage but overall people are safe.

There's just one friend I haven't heard back from but I'm hoping that she has just turned off her cell phone to conserve battery power - Mary, get back to me when you can.

Another friend's parents' house got hit very badly so I'm hoping to get an update at some point. A tree fell on their house and it flooded - no good.

Apparently the rain completely missed Austin though they needed it, and I really didn't think we were going to get much of anything until it finally started raining. I'm on the west side of Dallas, though, so I imagine I'm getting a lot less of it than some.

All and all, millions of people are without electricity, thousands didn't evacuate from Galveston and are in bad shape, and I'm just trying to make sure all of my friends and family are okay.

Go away Ike!

Heebie Jeebies

Got this kind of gross feeling today at work...let's just say it involved cockroaches - ewww. Oh, and I mean for work purposes. Yeah.

Target Rocks My World

Target is awesome.

To celebrate it's awesomeness, here is a list of the types of things I bought last night. What I like about it is that all of these items came from one place!

body wash
frozen food
gum
clothes
magazine

I considered getting some wine but I might do that next time. Yessss!

American Boy

AP Conference - The End

Wow, I didn't think I would post that much from my other blog but there was just so much good stuff!

I hope that anyone reading can learn something from it, and please let me know if you have any questions about the conference, the sessions, or what I wrote.

Happy Planning!

"More Goodies" - AP Conference Posts

Here is the AAAA Flickr photostream of conference happenings:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/aaaaconferences/


Here is the Twitter feed from the conference (in real time).

Scroll down to the bottom to read all of the posts:
http://twitter.com/2008APConf

"Planner Wrap-up Panel" - AP Conference Post

Suzanne Powers who kicked off the conference, hosted throughout, and kept things going wrapped up the conference with a few planners in the Planner Wrap-up Panel.

Here are some of the key themes of the conference as pulled out by the panel:

• Conversations - don't plan against things that are bad (reacting), plan for things
• Doing - putting stuff out there for people to participate in, planners as producers
• We are cultural inventors and innovators, existing within a certain time
• We are storytellers that light up the marketplace, not just the agency, by making a story inspiring
• Getting people involved - interacting and dialogue
• We don't always have to have the answer, but we do have to ask the right question

I would add to that list:

• Brands need to have a point of view instead of relying on the idea that there is a unique selling point
• The digital realm is still not understood by all planners and measures need to be taken to get more involved, be organic and flexible, and use the digital world as an opportunity to get our brands talked about more
• Becoming a part of the conversation is essential in today's marketplace - help mold the conversation, help start conversations, help redirect negative conversations
• Look at the entire marketplace instead of just the world according to your category
• We must be more nimble and must act quickly, especially in the digital age
• Innovate or die

That's the end of my notes but I will be pulling in a few other sources to go over some of the other sessions I didn't get to attend. I hope you enjoyed sharing my journey to the 2008 AP Conference.

"Sidney Bosley & Rob Perkins" - AP Conference Post

The second breakout session of the day was titled "All Change: A Worm's Eye View" presented by Sidney Bosley and Rob Perkins of Goodby Silverstein & Partners.

If you're interested in Connections Planning, this is the post for you.

Bosley and Perkins presented a model for context mapping. They admitted this tool is still in development, it's a work in progress, but hopefully it's something that planners can add to their toolkit.

Instead of just creating creative, can we integrate media use that also changes behavior and gets our brands talked about? Some creatives already intuitively integrate place as part of their idea, but how can we inspire more creative media ideas?

We can't just tell them to do a tv spot or do interactive but this is where we have a gap in knowledge. Planners have developed methods for everything from research to the ad idea but the innovation and inspiration on where to place that ad idea is lacking. We currently use syndicated media research, the brief doesn't currently inspire in this area..."along with our regular day job of inspiring creative ideas, how do we inspire the media placement?"

To begin, there should be a canvas rather than an execution. One platform is too prescriptive but multiple platforms are more organic and welcome. [Let's think back to the brand POV vs. USP and platforms vs. channels.]

The tool: Context Mapping

• A brainstorm tool
• Moments on a timeline: potential interaction, event, could be media - people gather here, wait here, are here; these are the starting places
• Timeline: chronological, day in the life, product journey, scenarios stemming from the creative idea (telling a story or beginning it); tend to focus on chronological points in time, this can be actual or a "what if?"
• Context insights about specific moments: what is the target thinking, what are they doing, how can the experience be enhanced, what are their frustrations? Further research may be needed around each moment on the timeline

This tool has a lot of interesting implications for inspiring richer media ideas and purposeful media use.

"George Scribner & Elmar Webb" - AP Conference Post

The first breakout session of the day was "Planning Possibilities: Craft & Content in the Digital Age" by George Scribner and Elmar Webb of Digitas.

Scribner and Webb started the session off by saying, "We're just planners but this is an exciting area to be in." However, they also said it is wrong that what's done in digital today is still ahead of advertising and we should all be there.

They challenged us to send out not just messages but take actions. Let's stop stopping people, interrupting them like the perfume people at the mall, and let's start being a part of people's natural flow and integrate into their lives more. One way to achieve this is by approaching creative briefing in a new way.

The New Creative Brief: Active Branding

1. What are we going to do, not just say? (POV, not USP; actions, not attributes; adaptive, not pre-planned)
2. What value are we going to provide?
3. How are we going to integrate into consumers' lives?

Some other changes to the brief: strike the word "audience" from the brief and replace it with "participant" so you will never go to a medium that doesn't make sense again. Get in the pathway of where people naturally go throughout the day. Also, strike "channel" and replace it with "platform" because as digital transforms you can't just send a message down a shoot, it's more organic. Next, replace "ads" with "possibilities" which require creativity rather than just good creative. If you can imagine it, there's a good possibility that you can actually do it. This creative brief pushes us away from self-serving ideas to doing things for people that they didn't necessarily ask for but may appreciate.

In summary, there should be digital content and digital craft. To get to an idea that brings something of value and integrates well into people's lives, we must start with insights and ideas from focusing on participants, pathways, platforms, and possibilities.

Other advice for working in the digital realm: get past the latest web tool or widget that is fun and ask if it is really relevant. Only fit in the cool new application if it fits. Once found, present these new things that are striking and beautiful so people are willing to look at it and interact with it.

As far as measurement in a digital world, we need to throw away the old model of a purchasing funnel. The timeline has to stretch out a bit more. However, engagement and recommendation to others is immediate - you get a yes/no answer from customers.

In order to inspire, a few examples were called out:

• Jonathan Harris - http://www.number27.org/ - he makes physical experiences out of web/digital data, he takes something without humanity and gives it humanity
• Virtual Human Interaction Lab - http://vhil.stanford.edu/ - from Stanford, a virtual experience that is actually helping change real world behavior: people create avatars of their ideal self and this inspires them to adopt healthier habits in real life
• From TED - Photosynth Demo - this video is amazing! In short, this presents a technology that creates 3-dimensional, digitally-rendered images from photos off of Flickr. Each individual photo can be viewed as well as the full-scale image created by linking all of these individual images together
• MoMA Online Exhibit - Design and the Elastic Mind - http://www.moma.org/exhibitions/2008/elasticmind/ - a display of different scales of technology from nano to space

If you look at one thing, check out that TED video.

"Karim Rashid" - AP Conference Post

Karim Rashid of Karim Rashid, Inc. discussed the "Business of Beauty" with us - he is an industrial designer and his entire presentation consisted of pictures of his beautiful work.

Karim Rashid considers design to be essential to systems and services. He is mostly interested in the physical world and making it a better place. He tries to bring a heightened experience to everything he designs because he sees the power in one moment to elevate your spirit.

In the mass consumer market, design at one time was elitist. Now with brands such as Method and stores such as Target, the world and people in it are more physically engaged.

Karim doesn't think artists are futurists. "No, I'm just contemporary," he countered and said he sees today whereas others see the past. There is a tipping point where it takes just one person to make a change. Unfortunately, sometimes that person isn't empowered to make that kind of change. In these cases, Rashid says it takes only one believer.

Rashid believes that beauty is a word that needs to be raised more and that physical things should be aesthetic on the ouside with content on the inside. Things can still be disposable or reusable, they almost have to be these days, but they are not the same. Archetypes stay with us until we can break the norm and design something with new shape, color, and styling.

The global middle class is spoiled with options and have many opportunities to experience more. The consumer is more powerful now.

As creative people, we should look at the world objectively because to look at the world from the outside is to be able to do brilliant things for others.

Technology has given us a super-heightened image of reality or what can be in reality. Now with efficiencies and the ease of getting materials online, physical things hold more importance. If we have to have something physical, let it be beautiful and with function. Create something so engaging that it will capture your mind.

The moment something becomes a style it's a part of history and therefore a part of the past so Rashid says to design instead of style things. We must innovate or die.

"Planning for Good: Kiva and Witness" - AP Conference Post

The following session was a Planning for Good interview by Ed Cotton of two participating organizations - Kiva and Witness. Jessica Jackley Flannery, cofounder of Kiva Microfunds, and Su Patel, communications and outreach manager of Witness, spoke to these two unique programs.


As a note, several planners with less than 3 years of experience met on Sunday before the conference started and worked with Planning Directors to help "Plan for Good" by helping these two organizations.

Kiva
Kiva is about building third world businesses. They lend money to others so they can thrive. The program seems to be mainly women helping women (most of the lenders and beneficiaries happen to be women).

The system works on microfinancing which is essentially banking for the poor. By linking up individual lenders with beneficiaries, it puts giving in individual terms. This makes giving to Kiva less like a drop in the bucket and more like a real difference.

http://www.kiva.org/

Witness
Witness uses video and online resources to uncover human rights violations around the world. The idea is that these stories should never be buried so Witness empowers and equips people to capture them on tape.

http://www.witness.org/


There is consumer fatigue with donating - there's another cause, another thing to give money to, and there is a lot of bad news in the world. So how do you transform good intentions into actions? By engaging people and making causes personal.

"Gold Winner Presentation:JWT Mumbai" - AP Conference Post

Shaziya Khan of JWT Mumbai presented the case study of one of the Jay Chiat Planning Awards' Gold winners - DeBeers.

"The Story of the Diamond Bride: Imagination to Reality"

In India, the culture surrounding jewelry is very different. There is a preference for gold jewelry especially during wedding ceremonies where gold has been a bride's adornment for centuries. Gold means doing it right.

Generally, conservatism dominates during traditions. For one, most marriages are arranged. Personal choice (especially of the bride) takes a back seat and traditional ways hold sway.

Previously all targets in India for jewelry were parents who are traditionally the influencers and decision-makers. The bride's mum has as much a say as the bride herself. The conventional wisdom, therefore, is to talk to parents who would then decide what they wanted to tell the bride.

In wedding celebrations, diamonds indicate status and modernity but just couldn't stand up to gold as that traditional piece of jewelry. A gold bride is lower to middle class and very traditional whereas a diamond bride is elegant, sophisticated, and relaxed. Below the surface, it was found that diamonds provided more freedom and happiness because of that relaxation.

The final work displayed individual expression but with respect to the family. There was a private moment between the bride and the groom during the ceremony that brides liked because it was special but not disrespectful to their family and wedding guests. This campaign spoke right to these brides.

Extending this idea to new media ideas, clothing was used as a channel. The traditional wedding dress obviously matched with gold jewelry so a look for the diamond dress had to be created. By working with clothing designers, sleek new dresses were made to create a look for the diamond bride.

The client feedback and results were very positive. From the client, "It's not just about the shine of the diamond but the shine of the bride."

"A Few More Bits of Miami" - AP Conference Post

Dinner for the evening was sponsored by Yahoo! on the back lawn of the Loews. I just wanted to quickly call out the art deco vibe of our hotel and the surrounding area with a few pics.

That evening, several planners headed over to the Delano for poolside drinks. A very LA scene without the LA snobbery - it seems that image is important but you're accepted either way.

"Christopher Owens" - AP Conference Post

The first breakout session I attended on Monday was "Planning for Conversations: Let's Get People Talking" by Christopher Owens of The Richards Group.

Conversation is "intimate, real, brings you in like a part of the family." When people start to talk, they share. The definition of a conversation is "a workable balance of contribution from the partners in a conversation." Give them as much as listen to them (an exchange of social currency).

People aren't just sitting there waiting for our message. In fact, they are completely wired to the point of saturation - it's difficult to fit much more in to their lives. But people trust people, so word of mouth can break through.

A conversation can be started through points of comfort or points of tension. People talk about points of comfort because they are familiar, but points of tension cause a spark of debate. Tension will be more engaging but it can be more polarizing. Owens suggested not to run from tension, but to use it and shape it.

At what levels can a conversation be started? All levels - company, product, campaign. The brand ideas need to be a part of the actual product, and if they aren't there then work on getting them into the product. Some products are inherently conversational such as Dyson where design breaks them away from the rest of the vacuum category.

Guide the conversation about a company or product to an endpoint. Sometimes an idea of what to talk about materializes but you don't know where the conversation will go. It's important to have an idea of what you want to get out of the conversation instead of just starting one.

Some examples: Freytag Sub-Zero

• The idea was to take the current conversation of ego preservation to a conversation and message of food preservation for the brand - the brand had become too flashy and without purpose
• Owens was able to brief the designers of the product to make changes at the base level and also briefed cartoonists at The New Yorker to help utilize an entirely new medium - the changes had to come at every level
• The attributes of the product were designed with the conversation in mind to create a product that had inherent talkability
• A research method to determine what the product should include, from a consumer standpoint, involved having women stock their refrigerator - interact with it, use it - and then place red and green lights on product attributes that they would remove/dislike or would keep/like, respectively. The points of tension came out when results showed that a certain area of the fridge received many red and green lights - some people liked the attribute, others hated it
• One example of a polarizing attribute was the refrigerator door - it was too shallow to fit a gallon of milk. This attribute was specifically designed in that way because the door is the least fresh place to put the milk and so Freytag doesn't allow it. Consumers learned something about the brand and something about freshness while Freytag was willing to confront consumers' perceptions and communicate that to the very deepest level they believe in the values of their brand to the extent that the product mirrors that image

Patron

• Quick quote - "Patron flows like water down here in Miami." ;
• Patron competes as an ultra-premium spirit instead of just a tequila. Tequila is something that slams you, you don't sip and enjoy it, but by positioning it as a spirit it disrupts the category. This is an inherently conversational category so the work that was created had to be conversational
• The research - Went to bars to figure out what the current conversations were - what was polarizing? Talked to magazine editors to see what a specific edition was about - were there any debates?
• The work - "Some perfection is debatable, Patron is simply perfect" Patron is the one constant while two boxes represent two opposing sides of an argument. For example, Gas/Charcoal, Football/Futbol, Pacific/Atlantic. Some of the power of the campaign is to let people come up with a third option or an entire debate. The idea is to get them talking about it
• A nod to conversation is even in the background noise to their website: http://www.patronspirits.com/en.phtml

Planners help catalyze these conversations and the idea is that conversation should be driving all areas. Listen to current conversations in bars, airplanes, restaurants, twitter feeds and ask why they are talking about that and how it can be used. Incorporating conversation into advertising requires agility and speed in getting executions out the door quickly but can certainly cause immediate buzz.

As part of the Q+A, this thought emerged: "We should be consumer-informed, not consumer-led." Planners make recommendations based on the information we gather. Sometimes consumer info helps validate what we thought and sometimes it makes us think differently.

I enjoyed this session immensely and thought that these were some actionable recommendations on how to start conversations.

"Miami Updates" - AP Conference Post

Well, I certainly expected more time to be able to get on the Internet but I suppose that's not really the point of this conference so I will accept and embrace that tomorrow. There is WiFi access but nowhere to plug in the computer to a power source so I didn't want to kill my computer and only used it for sending a few critical e-mails today when I could. I will be able to check e-mails when I get back into my room tonight and tomorrow after 6pm or so but otherwise catch me on my cell if you need me.

My, my, my - off to a good start with the conference. A great and full first day. I will begin to post about the different sessions (probably more after the conference-sponsored dinner tonight) but I wanted to spend a few minutes updating on not just the conference, but Miami as well.

Yesterday was just a travel day but I met up with a few planner friends that I know from school and we headed out to explore the food and culture of Miami. One of our friends lives here so she directed us a few blocks from the Loews Hotel to Lincoln Road. It's more of a touristy spot but is a large open shopping area dotted with restaurants. It was quite humid but under the shade we enjoyed our lunch...

Later we enjoyed some time on the beach and the people watching led me to coin the phrase "Man on the Beach" - I have trademarked that if we want to use it later. ;)

But for the real fun, our final stop for the day was on Ocean Drive to experience a little more of Miami culture. Miami is a place of image and status. I'm sure it would be hard to rival Ocean Drive in illustrating this point more clearly. A parade of expensive and tricked out cars, people gawking and taking pictures at the opulence, and a few oddities made up what Ocean Drive, and I think Miami, is all about. We stopped at a restaurant for dinner and was promptly placed at a table right on the sidewalk in perfect view of the mix of tourists and attention-seekers.

I'll give you a few highlights - a lime green Lamborghini that created a stir for at least 30 minutes, a woman tanned well beyond a color nature would ever give her (well, I'm sure she wasn't the only one), a man with a chihuahua in the basket of his bicycle dressed in American flags, and several young girls asking for donations to be sent on trips to Disneyland or somewhere else mildly amusing.

This was surely Miami at its finest!! :p An interesting view into the culture complete with retro design and brightly colored buildings was my first view of Miami.

AP Conference Happenings

I went to the AP Conference about two weeks ago - awesome, another look into the world of Planning!

I put together a blog for people at work and other Planner friends so they could read about what I got out of each session. My plan is to post just a few of those posts here to cover what I found to be most interesting.

More Planning goodness!! :)

Happy Anniversary

Today marks my one year anniversary at my job...can't believe a whole year has already gone by.

Fairly uneventful day but a milestone nonetheless.

Another First :)

Yesterday I did one more thing that I can put in my bag of experience - in-home one-on-one interview...moderated by ME. Yes, all by myself. :)

I've done a lot of observing, mainly focus groups, and tried to pick up on some of the things that my fellow planners do to make people feel at ease, get them to elaborate, and get them to tell more than just the typical top-of-mind stuff.

The interview went pretty well. Unfortunately the guy wasn't very talkative so I felt I really had to work for it to get this experience! ;) But overall it was just a great feeling to get to do everything for the research, from set-up to the upcoming video. So I talked about the project with my AS team, developed the screener, handled the recruit with one of our recruiting partners, set-up the interview with the participant, interviewed him, captured what B-roll footage we wanted for the rest of the video with the help of one of our broadcast production people, and will soon be pulling clips and putting the video together. Awesome! Usually that all-important middle area of the actual interview is where I only observe or don't even go, but this time the whole enchilada was mine.

This is a really good feeling. I'm hoping that more will come my way as from here on out it's all about the experience - practice makes perfect and other such sayings.

Here's to completing a full project on my own. :D

Beautiful

Magnetic Ink, Process video from flight404 on Vimeo.

Feeling Out Of Place

*Fidget*...*squirm*...*shrug and sigh*...

I've been thinking too much, over thinking, every little thing that is going on.

Dallas doesn't fit me, my apartment doesn't fit me, my time doesn't fit me, my sleeping schedule doesn't fit me, and sometimes I don't feel like I fit the very nice people that I have met in Dallas - both on the job and my other circles of friends.

Do I just belong outside of the circle?

I'm coming up on my one year anniversary at my first job. I soon want to write a post on the last year - one year out of school (which I already passed in May), one year out in the real world, and one year at my job (coming up this Wednesday). Sometimes it's like, "Wow, already a year!" and sometimes it's like "Whoa, it has been only a year."

Lots of ups and downs - quite evenly split, really. I feel like every other day is an up and down, probably also within a day, definitely within a week, and then months have already gone by.

It's hard to plant my feet firmly when life insists on tossing me up into the wind...the hurricane, maybe.

Just feeling kinda weird this weekend...those ups and downs.

A Little Run Down

After a week of non-stop excitement, my body has decided to slow me down.

I have a bit of congestion and a runny nose, my voice is a little rough. Only thing is, I'm quite enjoying that it's making me slow down. I'm spending some much needed time in my apartment doing odds and ends/goofing off.

There's this new app on FB called Animoto. It lets you put a string of your pics together with a song (they offer some song selections or you can select from your own music) and then plays a short video with animation that Animoto provides. It's just a 30 second snippet of fun. I put one together with just a few pics of close friends. <3

Other than that, I've been spending way too much time on FB, did some reading, watched some TV, and I'm doing some laundry. Now I would like this little sneezy, coughy thing to go away by tomorrow but I'm feeling a lot better. With the conference and needing to be at the in-homes by 7am the day I got back from the conference, you can say that I was a bit sleep-deprived. Pack onto that the stress of having to deal with my air conditioning and you can probably see why I'm feeling a little under the weather.

But I'm just gonna take this time to catch up on some things. Thinking about friends has been a nice theme for the day. :) Now if I could just get everything done without putting in too much effort. Haha!

Mamma Mia + Confetti

Had a great movie experience with some work gals on Friday - we went to see Mamma Mia!

The movie is just fun, rocking the ABBA songs, and it was nice to have a little outing. Then we got a great big surprise right as the movie ended. I'm not giving anything away here - there's a singing and dancing sequence at the end as the credits are rolling. Right as that started, some people at the front of the theater started to blow confetti up into the audience. I mean, it was a big surprise, was really loud, and was just ridiculous with all this confetti blowing up into the audience!

The confetti was in the movie too, which at this point we couldn't even hear. I think the confetti was getting shot into the audience for a good minute straight. Finally everyone, up to the top row, had confetti falling on them and everyone was up and out of their seats playing with it. Laughing, looking around, trying to figure out what was happening.

Finally the sound and spray was over and everyone kind of starts to leave but then Meryl Streep pops up again and says, "You want another one?!!" Then they launch into another song and it was great. :D

Alright, now for the nerdy advertising part of me - while it was happening I was thinking, "huh, I wonder who thought of this stunt! And what company sends people out to do this? This is something to look into!!" Total nerd, I know, but it was a fun experience.

But I don't know how they cleaned up all that confetti - it was everywhere! We even saw it trailing into the rest of the mall as it got caught on people's shoes.

I did a quick search and noticed that a few other people blogged about it so it's causing a bit of a stir. I have to say, it was a pretty good stunt.

In-Homes

Another notch on the research belt - I attended some in-home groups!

So far I have done focus groups (lots), one-on-one interviews, in-store interviews, and man on the street. At most of the research I was an observer or did a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff (checking people in, videotaping, taking notes, etc), but several times I actually did the interviewing. My next step is to moderate a group...I think I'm okay with one person but group dynamics throw in a whole new challenge.

In-homes, however, I had not up until now been able to observe. I served as camera person for the day but it allowed me to observe quite a lot of the groups without having to worry about asking the right questions, etc.

What I can say about in-homes is that the information is so much richer. People are more relaxed, the other people in the group are their friends, they are in their own home or a place familiar to them, and they are just gabbing about something they're interested in. What's great about in-homes is that people get comfortable more quickly, they say a lot more, and they are able to call each other out/keep each other honest. It's very interesting how much they're willing to tell you and it's just a lot better experience than being in a facility.

Facilities tend to be less warm and welcoming, you're surrounded by people you don't know and the people viewing you are all behind this mysterious glass. With an in-home, it's very transparent. The person videotaping you is reacting to what you say, someone taking notes and just observing can actually look you in the eye, and people involved (from the agency-side) actually have to be involved. Too many times, behind the glass you can separate yourself - not pay attention, get bored, not really listen. But when you are sitting in someone's home and listening and perhaps even participating, it will have a lot more impact on you.

I think I would rather do in-homes than a facility focus group any day. But there are other ways...it could even be in a coffee shop, a bar, anywhere that is familiar to the person you're talking to. I think that environment and atmosphere is contextually very important to a person. How are they supposed to talk with ease when they're busy feeling out the new situation they've been put into with new people.

And forget it if you're trying to get through to a shy person - they won't even make it through the door because they'll be screened out well in advance!

It was just a great little view into what more I can look forward to. I feel like for now I'm a bit on the outside looking in - I see all of these things that I can do to help my brands, to engage the consumer, to learn more, but I'm not quite to the point of getting to do these things on my own. I want to approach a problem and decide what to do with it. I want to engage people in a different way and find out something amazing about them. I want to bring this information back to the agency and excite people with what I learned and what we can do with it.

I guess you can say that with the AP Conference and this research I had a whole week of "Appreciating Account Planning." Not that I didn't appreciate it before, but it's nice to have a little reminder of how much I enjoy this career that I have landed in. I worked hard to get in and that fiery passion that got me here is alive and well today.

Alright, I'll stop drooling all over Planning now... :p

Miami/AP Conference

So much has happened in the past week! Sorry for the little A/C snafu as there is so much exciting stuff that has happened this week - that was just the wrench thrown in there for excitement.

So the AP Conference was awesome. For one, I got to enjoy a sun-filled day in Miami with friends before it started. Next, the conference just had a lot of great information and inspiration for planning. I was excited to be a part of it. I also got to meet a bunch of planners that my friends work with and it was nice to put faces to names - these are all people I have heard about and felt honored to get to meet them. With everyone spread out across the country, it's really fun to bring it all together and share experiences.

Now I have created a blog just for the conference and I have written a lot about what went on. I think the best way for me to share info would be to just copy some of my posts from that blog here - sorry if it's a repeat read for anyone but I just want to touch on some highlights.

I will try to include some fun pics as well. :)

Air Conditioning Update

Alright folks, wanted to update on the air conditioning situation.

They fixed it on Friday. I spent a good portion of the day thinking about it and checking in with them to make sure they fixed it before leaving for the weekend. It was 90 degrees in my apartment and I was not willing to put up with it anymore. I actually came home during the day just to make sure that it was actually cooling down.

The air conditioner apparently needed freon. Okay, easy fix. Here's the thing - since they replaced the unit one of the previous times I was having issues with it, the thing is only about 10 months old. And let me tell ya', a 10-month old air conditioner should NOT need freon.

That's all I'm gonna say about it. It's fixed (for now) and I will be glad the day I get to rid myself of this place. Makes me sick how terrible this place is.

LIVID

http://www.apartmentratings.com/rate/TX-Dallas-Gleneagles-on-the-Creek-formerly-AMLI-at-Gleneagles-734485.html

Interesting Experiment

"Show us your desktop"

http://informationisart.com/desktop/

A Spree

I had a great weekend in Austin.

The main reason I was going to Austin was to shop - I was badly in need of some new clothes. For some reason, my shopping trips in Dallas haven't been that successful so I wanted to go to some old faithfuls. I of course spent lots of time with family but between some eating out and Wii playing, I went to my favorite clothes shopping spots hoping for some good fortune.

And boy did I hit the jackpot. I don't often use the word "spree" when I talk about shopping but it was one...in fact, it was a shopping bonanza!! How about that?!

I'm so excited about my new clothes and just in time for my trip to Miami next week. I'm going to the Account Planning Conference next Monday through Wednesday. I'm thinking about setting up a separate blog just for that, but I'll probably import my posts to this blog because it will be three days of Planning intensity!! There should be some great learning and I'm looking forward to hearing different viewpoints on Planning.

Not only do I get to go to the conference, but I'm meeting up with several friends there. About five of us from my grad program will be converging in Miami so it will be a mini-reunion. I can't wait to share work experiences and catch up.

Overall, I'm coming off of this weekend with a glow. I had a great time, never enough, and it was a good feeling to just do things on my own time and spend the weekend with the people I love.

Hotness Revisited

This is the newest video of Maroon 5 with Rihanna...



But let's also take a look at Maroon 5's first hit...



Why is Adam Levine so very hot??

Here's What I Haven't Learned

You know, I have tried to reflect on some of the experiences I have had working as a Junior Account Planner at an ad agency. I have learned so much and as I approach my one year anniversary with the company, I am looking ahead at my goals for the future and where I stand now. Having just had my annual review, it showed me what I am doing well and what I need to work on. I appreciate the feedback because I want to learn and grow and do better.

However, I have found that there are some things from the agency that I have yet to learn that I consider essential - it's not one-sided. If I don't have the back-up of someone teaching me then it is just giving, giving, giving and all that I learn is simply what I have made of a situation. Experience has taught me so much and I think for a while that is enough. But right now I am looking for specific skills that I expect to be taught.

In school, we learned about being creative, about understanding the target, and about boiling things down into big but concise, single-minded ideas. This is a great way to learn about planning and I wouldn't expect anything less. My experience thus far in the agency has taught me the challenges of applying this learning to the work I do. As I've said before, I have worked on every client in the house at least once and by this point there are a few key accounts that I know more about.

The next step for me is taking care of an account of my own. I am currently trying to work towards that. Here's the kicker, this is where I need my agency to step in. The things that I don't know about right now are which meetings I should attend, how and when I should provide strategic feedback, and the timelines for working on projects and with teams. To me, this is information that my agency needs to be providing me, not something I will necessarily just know to do on my own.

As a junior, you are working through other planners so you are relatively removed from this process. I'm not sure how it works at most agencies, but I think the idea is to have a junior sit in with another planner in meetings to start to understand the process and understand the role of an Account Planner in those situations. This is the experience I lack.

Part of this is perhaps agency structure - do the project managers know to invite us to meetings? They set up most of the meetings with creatives. Or is it that the team needs to understand that I am working on their account and to include me - I know that one has been done. Is it that they forget to invite me and then the project is already underway? How did we get to the point where I am invited to a meeting here, a meeting there but still expected to perform? I'm sorry but I missed a few steps and you're expecting me to just know.

At this point, I am trying to push past this wall and I'm not getting the help I need. But I feel like this is such a small part of it...maybe I should be able to just figure this stuff out on my own...? A little education goes a long way and I know that if I simply knew the process from beginning to end, I would have no problem doing the work. I'm not saying I don't understand the steps and how we get from research to strategy to creative, but I'm saying I don't know when and where to show up and nobody invited me to the party.

Sure, it's all new experiences but help me out. Give me just a little nudge and I will take it further than you would expect of me. I want to do well but I need some support.

As with any challenge, find a new way to do it. If I am not given the assistance I will find a way to help myself. Onward...

You Will Love This Video

A New Side of Research

Up until now, my main function in focus groups, interviews, etc. was more behind-the-scenes. That's fine, it helped me learn what all needed to be put in to make sure research ran smoothly and to get some good learning out.

Now that I've done all of the setting up, videotaping, organizing, and anything else you could imagine in the back room, those things come naturally to me and I don't have to think about them any more. No longer do I have to think so hard about using the camera...I just do it.

Today was a great example of finally getting to move beyond this technical back room stuff to focusing more on what was said in the interview. Sure I was behind the camera but I was looking through it at the people we were talking to.

Another thing that has helped me become more involved, besides just knowing the equipment, is my increased confidence in helping out, even on a small task. My input and opinion is valued and often, even if not solicited, is very much wanted. I know that to add something new, like a question the interviewer didn't think of or ask yet or to follow up with a thought on what was said, is to expand on the original thinking. One idea breeds more so that is always helpful. Also, the planner I went out with told me beforehand that I could interject with a question if I felt it was something that would add learning - he opened it up for me to be more involved. I really appreciated it and this is a new trend for me as my role continues to expand.

The next step will be to do more of the actual interviewing and running focus groups. I have of course done things on a small scale such as man on the street, one on ones with people we know to just get some quick scrappy research, and going with other planners that let me interview part of the time. It will just feel good to start running with projects on my own. More experience is what I need now.

On the scale of experience, a fellow planner who was actually conducting the focus groups talked about how good it felt to be able to shoot from the hip more. He didn't need a questionnaire written out, a cheat sheet to look at, he just needed to be listening and reacting and thinking of questions along the way. It was kind of cool to hear him talking about the next thing he learned, felt comfortable with, and was excited about being able to do as it shows the continual progression of a planner - the same assignment but different roles and different stages of development within those roles.

I also hear about planners, and other participants in the focus group/research experience, getting really tired of the same old thing. But when you've learned what to do and hit a plateau, maybe that's a good time to improvise and try something new. If it's getting so boring, revolutionize it.

Just keep on learning.

Some Pretty Cool Things

Alright, it was unfortunate that another bad thing happened at my apartment because this weekend was pretty cool.

If you've been following this blog at all, you'll know that I have had quite a few problems with my apartment and I will be happy to move out soon. Unfortunately, bad stuff has continued to happen the entire time I've been here but I just stopped writing about it. The reason that today seemed so sucky was because I actually spent some time trying to fix up this dump and then it turned on me again. But I'm going to try to focus on what good I did - a lot of organizing, a thorough dusting, and tomorrow vacuuming if everything goes to plan.

So on to this weekend. It has probably been one of the funnest weekends I have had in Dallas.

On Thursday night in Addison (a day before the 4th) they had Kaboom Town. Kind of like Taste of Addison but focusing on the fireworks. I had texted a bunch of people and talked to a few peeps at work earlier in the day to see if anyone wanted to go. No takers. I have a friend that lives in Addison Circle and she mentioned something about meeting up there, but I wasn't relying on being able to see her. Now came a decision I have to make quite a lot these days - do I stay in because I have no one to go do fun things with or do I go try to make my own fun? Most of the time I opt to stay in because I find that I have a lot more fun when I'm out with others. This time, I decided I was going out.

Now I've written about eating out at a restaurant by yourself which I've never really warmed up to. That's something I still need to work on, but I think that Thursday night was a baby step in that direction. I fought the traffic, was surprised when I actually got a parking spot, made my way into the crowd and found a place to sit on the grass between families on their spread-out blankets. I got a spot near the speakers so I could hear the music. At this point I didn't know if I really had any concrete plans for the 4th, and I always like to see fireworks, so I just sat and enjoyed the fireworks to the patriotic music. I have to say, Addison puts on a good show.

After the fireworks they had an outdoor screening of Rudy. I really love the idea of seeing a movie out under the stars so I stayed to watch. I had actually never seen Rudy before so it was fun to just sit out. It was a pretty nice night and eventually I even laid back, propped my head up on my purse, and nearly fell asleep out there. One of the scenes in the movie involves a bunch of football players starting a slow clap for Rudy. Everyone in the audience played right along and started the slow clap - it was cheesy but really fun (I love cheesy things) and I just had to smile and laugh. You just have to be laid back when you're outside watching a movie.

Sure, friends would have made that even more fun but I didn't want to stay home. I was rewarded for being independent and had a really great time.

On to the 4th of July. Just a really casual gathering of friends and watching the Lewisville fireworks. It was nice to not have to make a big fuss - I wasn't cooking, I didn't have to travel too far, I didn't have to fight traffic, and I just got to enjoy good company. I especially didn't want to travel to Austin this weekend because of all the holiday traffic so I'm glad I went to a celebration that didn't involve all the hoopla.

Finally, tonight. Went out with a group of friends to see a band in a small country bar. We know the drummer, and it's always fun to know someone in the band. I love to just be silly and dance, I'm not very self-conscious about it, so it was really fun for me. I don't have too many friends who like to go out dancing here and I don't often get invited, so it was a real treat for me to go dancing. When I'm in Austin, I really like to go to a bar where everyone dances and no one has to feel embarrassed about it. When everyone's moving to the music, I bust out a few of my extra moves. Now most of the time when I dance, not a lot of people are dancing so everyone feels a little more exposed. I turn the dancing down a few notches so I don't embarrass my friends. :p I just like to be crazy and free when I'm dancing...I would say it's probably my favorite thing to do.

So it's late but I just wanted to go ahead and get this down on the old blog. I meant to blog about it today but then the printer mishap occurred. I didn't want to wait until tomorrow to get it down because I'll just be doing stuff around the apartment and we all know how I feel about that! Haha. Just trying to pull through and get to the point where I get to move out of this place.

All in all, though, I had a really good time and I just really wanted to record that. I seem to have fewer and fewer things that are really making me happy these days...the last year has been rough. But I believe that's a whole other post reflecting back on my first year out in the real world.

To be continued...

Another One Bites The Dust

I'm pretty sure this apartment is cursed. I just cannot seem to do anything right here.

No, this time it wasn't an apartment-specific thing, but I'm gonna blame it anyway because this place has bad chi or karma or something. Today, it was about finally installing the printer that my mom got me for Christmas.

Yes, I understand that it has been a ridiculously long period of time that I have had this printer and not installed it. Part of me was waiting for the ink in my old printer to run out (which it just did recently) but I believe part of me knew something bad was going to happen when I tried to install this stupid thing and therefore was avoiding it.

So I'm following the directions, I'm fairly good at figuring things out intuitively, but somehow I did a misstep and it all went to hell. The directions tell you to plug in the USB cable but then not to plug it in. What I mean by that is it tells you to plug it into the printer but not into the computer. Now why tell me to plug in the USB cable but not fully plug it in - that's just stupid. Just tell me to plug it in later (like 4 steps later) when I actually need to do it. Okay, so I accidentally plugged it into my computer. Does that give the printer the right to never work? Sorry, gonna have to return this one - I plugged in the USB cable too soon!!

Well, I'm sure that wasn't really the problem. I disconnected everything, tried turning things on and off, unplugged things, and even turned my computer off and back on. The whole problem was something with the print cartridges but they were brand new (came with the printer) and I had installed them correctly.

I went ahead and loaded the software thinking perhaps I could just get the printer to "install new cartridges" as if this wasn't the first time I was doing it. After I installed, it said to test a print page. I went ahead and tried and it located one of the six cartridges as being the problem cartridge. Okay, let's take a look at that one...full of ink, inserted correctly, nothing looks damaged on the cartridge or in the printer...but it doesn't work.

At this point I feel like a caveman beating two rocks together because I am so mad that the printer cannot identify the cartridge that is obviously in there correctly and isn't damaged. I start yelling and cursing at the thing because all I wanted to do was set it up today. Why does it have to give me grief? Why does it have to be so hard?? Yaarrrghhh!!

I don't really want to go buy another ink cartridge because the one I have is perfectly fine. I also don't think this printer really sells the cartridges one at a time, but I'm only guessing about that. I can't call Customer Service because they're not open. I can't print anything until I get this fixed but that's not really how life works...well, I can always hook up my old printer. I can't just drop everything this week to call the Customer Service, which I'm sure will ask me something stupid like "did you install the cartridge correctly?" but I'll have to do it - I'll have to sit on the phone with them (mind you, I'll need to be at home to make this call) to see if they can figure out why I'm having issues. It just makes me so infuriatingly mad to not be able to get this to work. And it's a huge "I told you so" because I should have installed it months ago to make sure it worked because now I'm pretty sure I won't be able to return it. Also, if I do have to return it it means lugging it to Austin.

See, cursed. I can't do anything right. I was so on a roll this weekend too because I cleaned up my apartment (still need to vacuum but I was super proud of all I got done) and was feeling like I could get a lot of things squared away - the printer being one of them. I'm not terrible with technology but something seemingly so simple did not work for me. Cursed. I will be so glad when I finally get to move out of this dump and hopefully leave the bad karma behind. I need things to start going right again so that I don't always get my motivation squashed.

Now this beautiful printer just sits on my desk with nothing to do.

I Just Can't Win

And I'm not sure if I should try anymore...

Driving to work one day, I passed an elderly woman sitting outside her nursing home, basking in the sun. She looked so peaceful that I turned around and pulled in the drive near her bench to ask if I could join her. She invited me to sit and to my surprise asked, "What are you avoiding on this beautiful day?"

I was shocked. How did she know I was dreading my next appointment? I'm a social worker, and I'd been on my way to visit a client who had made me feel physically and emotionally drained for months with deceit and manipulations. It had gotten to the point where I dreaded each day I worked on the case.

When I told the woman about the situation, she said, "Sit for a little bit, then go home and turn this case over to someone else. You've done all you can do." I'd never given up on a case before, but I saw right away that she was right.

That very day, I made changes in my caseload that made my work rewarding again. I'm grateful for her wisdom - and for helping me to recognize when to let go.

The Giving Tree

It Has Been A While

Well, it has been quite some time since I've been able to stop, reflect, and write about my job...sharing something that I wanted to talk about, at least. I don't know if I've really been so busy (though I certainly have) or if I needed a break to get back to center.

So I started thinking back to some of the first assignments I was given as a junior and what was expected of me. I remember feeling frustrated sometimes because it wasn't always clear what was being asked of me, when I would know that I found what was needed, or even when to stop looking. Come to find out, that's all a part of the process.

Sometimes it's frustrating precisely because you are looking for answers that may not yet exist. But that actually makes you push the envelope, get to the new questions (if you can't find the answer, start asking questions), and perhaps to come up with a new way of doing the whole process.

What I'm thinking of is mainly secondary research, the staple of a Junior Account Planner's diet, but it certainly doesn't have to be boring. This ain't your grandma's research, that's for sure! It's all about getting interested in the topic, finding something new in a sea of all the same information that anyone can find, but beyond that it's interpreting what you find in an interesting way that really brings something more to the table. I don't think this is always what you are prepared to do after wading through a bunch of stuff that other people said. But it is certainly what needs to be done and those idea muscles are just as important to flex as your researchin' ones.

Bringing something new to the table usually has nothing to do with what you can find as a good Googler but how you explain what you found through the lens of your experience. Experience always trumps other things because it is the full sphere and context in which facts live. You will be surprised about what in your life will come up again either as just an interest or for your job so be interested and open to anything and everything that comes your way. Not just the fabulous trips to other countries but some of the seemingly mundane things, like talking to your coworkers about the person behind who you see for 8+ hours a day.

I had two very interesting conversations with coworkers today that were fairly short (2 minutes here, 10 minutes there), had nothing to do with work, and were pretty plain topics except they were extremely fascinating to me. I linked them to my own interests and imparted wisdom based on what I had experienced. It also just helped me connect to some coworkers on a deeper level.

I have said it and I will say it again and again - things you learn will not just affect your career but will serve you well in life also. Be open to things always and you will find new ways of thinking.

Life Is Funny

When you're feeling a little down and you need some relief, look around and life may surprisingly just hand it to you...


"FREDERICK COUNTY, Md. — Frederick County sheriff’s deputies are looking for a man who attacked a convenience store clerk with a banana.

A man walked into a 7-Eleven store in Monrovia just after midnight Wednesday and demanded money. Investigators said that when the clerk refused, the man became so agitated that he started grabbing items off the counter.

He snatched up a banana and began hitting the clerk, the sheriff’s office said.

The clerk pulled out a knife, and the man with the banana split.

— WRC, Washington"

I'm Learning A Lot

I haven't been keeping up with my blog as much as I would like lately. I will attribute a lot of that to being busy, but there has also been a lot going on and it is sometimes hard for me to be completely honest. It's hard to be honest because I've never wanted this to be a bitch-fest but not everything in life is always so pretty. Upon reflection, I am able to say things that I would never be able to say in the moment.

A few people have given me some really great feedback on my blog which inspires me to keep at it. What they told me was that this time of your life (and I'm convinced many times of your life) is confusing and hard to navigate. Just knowing that someone else is going through a similar situation and what they're going through helps you in understanding your own situation.

I originally wanted to write about this transition but I had no idea what it would do for my life. I think I've learned more about myself in the past year than I have in my entire life about who I am, who I want to work toward being, some things I want out of my life, and how I want to get to those things.

My work experience has taught me a lot about people. Not just because I study people for a living but because of the dynamics at work that include people you spend almost all day with but really have to make an extra effort to get to know behind those 8+ hours a day. And that has of course made me think about what kind of person I portray at work versus who I am whenever you just hang out with me.

I don't know, it's really hard to explain. Not that I'm trying to be a different person or that I haven't gotten to know people, just that the very inner workings of your life are only shared with a few key people.

I'm not quite sure why I'm rambling on about this but I guess it's all part of the learning process. What's scary or exciting is that I know I have so much more to learn about myself and that I'm starting to get some ideas of how that may happen. I say scary and exciting because every time I think about these things I get this feeling of wonder inside of me...that promptly makes me want to throw up. But from what I've heard and observed of other people, this feeling can be a really good thing.

Some of my blog posts have become very cryptic and an explanation I can give for some of that is because I just have a general feeling and something I want to say, but I'm still figuring it all out so I don't quite know what it means yet. But maybe you're feeling this too or maybe you have felt it before...maybe you have yet to experience it. So, like I said before, perhaps you will know exactly what I am saying because you have experienced it yourself and you will feel comfort in knowing that someone else is just as confused as you are.

But I'll leave it with I am learning a lot and I'm generally liking where it's all taking me.

Why I Plan

Have you ever seen someone light up when they talk about something they love?



-----

Yeah, that's why.

Travels

I know I want to leave,

But I don't know where to go.

Notes On The Quarter-Life Crisis

I've been feeling something very unsettling over the last year or so. I've looked into this before but wanted to share a few notes on the Quarter-Life Crisis that express what I have as of yet been unable to put into words myself:

After years of learning the system of how to succeed in school, college grads are thrown into the world of work with no real understanding of how to succeed in it.

You need to stop judging yourself by other people's standards and develop your own. [completely counter-intuitive to school]

Many drift aimlessly through these critical years because they know neither the questions to ask nor the answers they need.

It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are a lot of things about yourself that you didn't know and may or may not like. [ouch...but true]

You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.

You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you do not realize is that they are realizing that too and are not really cold or catty or mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.

You are beginning to understand yourself and what you want and do not want. Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging a bit more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and add things to your list of what is acceptable and what is not.

You are insecure and then secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused.

The past is drifting further and further away and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.

You go through the same emotions and questions over and over and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision.

You worry about loans and money and the future and making a life for yourself and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!

What you may not realize is that everyone reading this relates to it. We are in our best of times and our worst of times, trying as hard as we can to figure this whole thing out.


But it is hard to realize that others are in the same boat as you. You feel very alone in this thing. I feel like I have it pretty well together at times, that I did all the right things in school to get where I am now, but I still have feelings of insecurity. It's tough.

I'm just trying to look into this whole crazy thing called life and figure it out.

No More Excuses!

My blog post the other day was a bit harsh, but I needed a swift kick in the butt! I'm just trying to get away from so many excuses on my quest to better things.

So I implemented something pretty smart the other day and it's working pretty well so far. I have this small dry erase board that I usually put by my desk. I write short and long-term to dos on it and feel that accomplishment when checking off or erasing an item. Usually by my desk, this model wasn't working anymore. It worked when I was in school because I spent a good deal of time at my computer when I was home. Though I still spend a good amount of time at my computer, it's not every night and it's almost always for pleasure instead of work. Therefore, a list of items that take more effort near a source of fun just really didn't get any of the to dos on the list crossed off.

Plan B - move the dry erase board to a more visible location where I can be reminded daily of the things to do. Check. Now I try not to go overboard on that list. There are obviously a million things I want to get done but I decided to only put things I want to do tomorrow (with check boxes) and things I want to do at some point this week. It seems to have worked out pretty well for today.

I'm trying to exercise more and so I put something like "Workout - Mon" on there with a check box. Don't underestimate the awesome feeling of actually putting a little check mark by an item - definitely a "yay" moment. So I got most of my items done for tonight and I'll throw a few more on there for tomorrow.

Shaping it up!

Shambles

I have never felt so unorganized and confused in my life.

After a long month at work with so much going on, I am trying to return to some normalcy. Don't get me wrong, the shambles didn't happen over the past month. Ever since I moved here I have been unorganized, and it is so unlike me.

I have blamed it on moving and starting my new job first, being too busy (though I absolutely hate that as an excuse for things because it will never go away - you will always be busy), and not caring about my apartment. I finally decided that not caring about my apartment is no reason to not care about my life within it.

My organization skills for my papers, my e-mail inbox (hovering at 100 unopened e-mails and too many others to count that I need to just trash), my evening schedules, my sleeping habits, and my weekend slumps are just completely unlike me. I am starting to feel like I am a very lazy person and I know that's not what I want to be!

What's overwhelming is I think I need to fix everything all at once. This is why it's bad for me to become unorganized in the first place. There is such a hurdle to getting back to organization though, once there, it is a lot easier to maintain.

I don't want to be like this. What happened? Darn you, real world - I will blame you for this.

But the point now is to move towards organization so I don't just get stuck.

Eye-Opening Weekend

Nothing particularly amazing happened over this past holiday weekend - I went home, finally got to celebrate Mother's Day with my mom, witnessed a very quiet house without our dog Ginger and consoled a mourning Sam, spent time with friends and family, and just tried to soak up as much Austin as I could before I had to leave. I love Austin.

However, this time in Austin did make me wake up to the fact that I will need to start making some important decisions about my future and where I want life to take me (not that you have much of a say in where life takes you sometimes...I'm just saying).

I have almost been in the real world for one year and what they say is true: it's hard. I've spent time away from my family for the first time, I'm working at my first full-time job, and I'm in a new city for the first time in my life. I didn't expect it to be easy but I didn't know what to expect as far as what would be hard and how I would deal with it. Throughout the process, I've obviously started learning some things about myself:

1) I do want to spend some time away from my family. As much as I love them and I'm not saying that I can't wait to be away from them, I feel like it's a good thing to not be so accessible to them and them to me. Dallas is proving to be not far enough as it's still very easy for them to say, "oh just come home for the weekend." Eight hours of driving later, I have spent the weekend away from doing things with the new people that I have met here in Dallas, away from getting things done at my apartment, and wondering when my family will make the trek to see me instead. They've even joked that if I was somewhere more desirable they would come visit me, which really doesn't make me feel all that good.

This brings us to our second point...

2) My first job decision was very planned - where I wanted to be and what I wanted to be doing. The job part of that was not wanting some sort of hybrid planning position where I wouldn't get to be a pure planner. I accomplished this mission. The other part of that was the city. I knew I didn't want to be too far away from my family because I wasn't sure how I would handle it. That may sound defeatist but I was trying to be realistic and do what made sense for me. The urge to go far far away had not really struck me and even though some cities seemed "cool" I didn't know how living there would actually be. Both of those pieces landed me in a great job that gave me wonderful introductory learning as a planner in a city that was not too far away from home. Sounds pretty regular now.

As I near my year mark at my job, the end of my lease at my apartment, and the completion of one year out in the real world, I'm already getting the itch to look at my options.

For one, my next job choice will be based on the job and a city that I want to live in. And I will want to live in this city because of its personality, not due to the proximity to my family. Let's face it, Dallas doesn't inspire me. I know that any city I live in will have to hold its weight against Austin and I consider that to be a tall order. How can I be inspiring at work if my surroundings don't inspire me to interact with it more? And part of me knows that this is not entirely Dallas' fault...I know that I could have made more of an effort to do things and I'm sure that part of me just didn't want to like Dallas in the first place. I was certainly told by many that Dallas sucked and even though in the beginning I tried not to pay attention to that, I fed into that sentiment quickly.

Another thing is, I am starting to feel that call to move somewhere completely different. Part of me just wants to plunge into the deep end to just do it. A lot of it would be the experience, but part of me knows that I need to make a more measured decision than that. It's still obviously about the job opportunities I can find, but I just need the city to be a part of it. If I'm going to be away from all of my family and friends, then I need something else to hold on to.

3) I do love Austin. That's not going to change because it's my hometown, I grew up there, plus I went to college there and had a wide range of experiences as well as meeting some of the greatest people I know. No one can take that away from me.

I've always thought that I would go away for a while and then circle back around to be closer to my family. I feel like someday I will move back to Austin. But how do I know that Austin is the best place for me? How do I know that I won't love some other place equally or for different kinds of reasons that would make me want to settle there, start a family, or pursue other career options?

I guess it's as grandiose as saying there's a whole wide world out there that I want to see and experience, but sometimes I'm afraid. I don't want to feel like I'll fail...I guess that brings me to my next point.

4) I feel like I have experienced failure here...and I feel like that is a really good thing for me personally. I know that sounds strange. And they're not big failures by any means. It's also not that I don't think I've experienced little failures like this before. But I guess I feel that it's different now in that this time the failures are really only getting dealt with by me. Do I ask my friends, coworkers, and family for advice? Of course. But I'm starting to realize that the decisions made on these things are more than ever mine and mine alone. I take other's opinions and weigh them carefully, but my decisions have either made me succeed or have made me stumble a bit. It's fairly cliche to say that this has made me a stronger person, but I will say that and add to it that I am understanding how I function a little better. I still think I have a lot to learn about myself, actually I don't think the learning will ever stop, but I'm so glad that it's happening.

These failures are harder to deal with for me in that they aren't just a poor grade or a conflict with a classmate that I really never had to resolve because the project was over. The real world makes everything interconnected and makes those little failures matter a lot more. If I have a hard day at work, it affects my home life. If things seem unorganized and frazzled at home, that translates to my job. It's no longer the division of school and summer, or even of school and the real world. Now it's just continuous - the real world and nothing comes after that. There is no definite timeline or boundaries. It just is what it is.

So I've learned that these failures, and being scared, and crying, and having to push myself in new ways to master things that I already thought I had mastered are all just ways of getting to know myself better and clearly defining the person that I am and who I want to be.

5) Real life stinks sometimes. ;) Why is it challenging me so and why do I have to fail in order to learn? And the answer that keeps coming back to me from everyone is...

If it wasn't hard it wouldn't be worth it.

I feel late in developing this, my full person, but I'm glad that I'm getting here, even if I have to go through an obstacle course like this.


There are many many more things that I have learned about myself through this experience but I want to keep it simple.

There's a lot to think about and some decisions need to be made about my future. I'm kind of looking forward to the challenge.

Literally Dancing 'Til Your Shoes Melt

I love a man that can dance...but I would be dancing with him. ;)

Chemistry Is Awesome

2 Weeks Of Greatness

Wow, I haven't updated in quite a bit...but for good reason.

I feel a shift at work and I'm pushing for it. More responsibility - check, new role - getting there, redefining how I get work - it's all kind of moving around.

I've wanted this for a while on my own account but I didn't think much about getting in to this role simply by helping one of the other planners out. So there was too much work on one of our clients going down all at once - it's called '09 Planning - and I was in the right place, asking for the right things, at the right time.

Before I knew it, an entire brand was handed over to me, research on another brand was conducted, and I was full-on planner in an instant. I reviewed client direction, did some searching on the target, and wrote a brief. That in itself was wonderful and I was appreciative of the experience. My brief was received very well as written, and only minor adjustments were made before I got to brief creatives.

Okay, so my first brief writing experiences weren't great. I was very disappointed but what could I do? The time was over and had left the building. But all of the sudden I got to redeem my "first" experiences by doing a creative briefing all on my own. Now that was a first that went very well and renewed my faith in my abilities as a planner. I had a great first briefing experience! Woo!

So I got to write a whole brief, do a briefing - wow, thank you! Wait, there's more??

Planning for the next year is like a sped-up version of what we do all year long. It goes from client briefing, to research on the target and creative brief, then the briefing, creative development and internal review, and a final presentation deck. But they're big, broad overarching communications platforms that will direct the work done for next year. Oh, did I mention this all occurs within about a 2-week period? Yeah, crazy!

So my last two weeks have been packed solid with meetings, brainstorms, conference calls, researching, idea formation, strategic feedback, and deck writing. I have not stopped since 3 Friday's ago when I was sitting in a fellow planner's office talking about wanting more responsibility and more opportunities to do plannerly work.

And here I am on the other side just so thankful that I got the opportunity to work on such a cool project. I learned so much about what I should do at certain times in the process as a planner, but also got to put that learning to the test as I was at that instant also supposed to do what I was learning.

The other great thing about this whole experience was that I was working for a team that LOVES having a planner. And they were extra excited because they got the help of TWO planners during this process. They wanted me to be involved, they invited me to every meeting, they valued my feedback and considered it a very important part of what we were doing. I was asked questions, people looked to me for the important solutions, and I became a planner.

I know I talk a lot about not quite feeling like a planner, having moments where I kinda feel like a planner, and I've been told that I am a planner, but I needed to see it to believe it and I also needed to be able to live it. And I was. :) So it's official - I'm a planner.

Going forward, I will be this same planner. My tasks will change but I should come at it with that same confidence every time. That's part of what I was lacking.

I will stress the importance of becoming more involved and I intend on that happening.

It's a new day, the emergence of a new role, and I'm very excited about the possibilities.

My First Puppy

A very sad phone call from my mom on this night...

Our first family dog, Ginger, died today. :(

She was a beautiful dog.

Recruiter

Ahh, one last little tidbit I forgot to mention...

I got my first ever message from a recruiter today. She's based out of NY and found my information on LinkedIn.

It's crazy because it makes me think back to my first couple of months when my coworkers told me they get a couple of messages per day. It's just kinda weird, but slightly amusing. On the other hand, it gets so busy that having that many people call and sifting through those messages could get annoying.

*I count that as another point in time I felt like a real live planner. :p

Briefing

I meant to blog so much more tonight, but that's how it goes - I just wanted to make sure to touch on a few things.

So I got sick last week after a difficult week at work. Some nasty bug has been floating around our office and I picked it up big time. I was out for three days which is very uncommon of me and I still seem to be carrying something around in the back of my throat - yuck. Not only did it make me miss out on some focus groups one day, but it messed up a trip to Austin that was planned for more research. I really wanted to go because I haven't seen in-homes done up close and personal, and that's what I missed out on. Besides, it's my hometown so I had set up to see several friends and stay the weekend to see my family. I was so excited and that all just fell apart when I got sick. :(

The hard week at work was due to a lot of things, and it's hard to elaborate. It's more on the personal side of things and so is hard to talk about. I don't think I always paint the most honest picture of work here in my blog because I try to talk about specific things I did and usually it's something I was really excited to be able to do. But there are a lot of things at work I do that aren't as glamorous - not a surprise - and I just don't have a lot to write about. Or if it's something really hard or upsetting, I don't feel like taking more time to dwell over it and just bitch. Then there are things at work that are bad but I haven't figured out that balance of writing about my life, writing about work, and sharing things for all to see. It's still my job and I may affect people that I work with in my writing so I want to be sensitive to that. Just because it's a frustration of mine doesn't mean I should hurt others by being brutally honest. It's just something to keep in mind - the work is certainly not always fresh, new, and exciting.

I will say that the difficult week was ended on a particularly bad note when a bit of miscommunication made things crazy with my team again. It was somewhat similar to my frustrations from my first brief writing, and I felt it was adding on a layer of not good to what I had experienced before. Though I got my supervisor involved, she really doesn't know the whole story and so it ended up not being that helpful. Let's just say that absolute clear communication is needed from everyone so that responsibilities, limitations, and deadlines are all put on the table. A lot of the time I feel like I am reaching out enough and it ends up that there are questions I didn't ask which really would have helped. Then again, I can't anticipate every waking need or desire - I need to be met in the middle.

Grueling week, week of sickness...when I did get back to work, I needed to catch up with everyone and ended talking my voice down to a grating scraggle. It still has a hint of that which is frustrating. Frustrating - that's the word that pretty much sums up a lot of my feelings about several things going on right now and for the past several weeks.

What was a refreshing spot in all of this was last weekend (in between the hard week and the being sick week) - I had one lovely day before I fell to my sick bed. I started with a little Mary Kay action with friends from work, went to the Dallas zoo, went out with friends to a great Mexican food place Chuy's (a place I know from Austin, and apparently there's just one in Dallas), relaxed, and capped off the day with meeting my cousin at a movie. That was great times and definitely something I needed. Unfortunately, my throat had hurt since the morning and decided to turn into full blown blah by the next day.

Okay, well I guess I'm gonna go ahead and write everything out though it's late. Another frustration - not feeling like I'm getting enough done in my evenings and staying up too late.

Alright, this week meant new beginnings. My department moved into their new offices last week and I finally followed by moving away from my first real world cube home...to my second real world cube home. ;) It has been called Strategy Island, the name I like the most thus far, because it's just two cubes together surrounded by window offices. Other cubes are further away. I think I have a temporary neighbor next door but it doesn't really look like anyone's in there. That is, until we bring on a new junior which we're in the process of doing now. So it's a bit isolated in one respect but it is right next to a kitchen area so I'm kind of in the middle of everything at the same time. The reason we moved was to be with the creatives. I think that's a great idea and I like being closer to them, so I just need to settle down into my new place...and decorate a bit more so it's not so gloomy. I liked my old cube so it will be missed.

On to this week, there has been a new light. One of the planners pulled me onto a fast-moving, multidimensional project on one of our brands. Several products are planning for 2009 so it's a renewal of everything - objectives, briefs, creative ideas. On top of that, our new agency mission is coming on strong so that needs to be incorporated into everything. (As a side note, I have a new project that is solely for our agency mission and it has just bubbled up a little but will need some attention - ohhh, tomorrow! Lots going on.) So one of the planners, being stretched fairly thin on everything, brought me on to this project in a big way. He just up and handed over a whole product and I spent time (quickly!) getting acquainted with the target, wrote a creative brief, and (tadah!!) had my first BRIEFING today!! Exciting.

I was a bit nervous, and it was in and amongst a lot of other things going on - including a fun and one-day-late Cinco de Mayo festival, but I think that I spoke in an honest, clear, and knowledgeable way about my product. Oh listen to me - MY product. But it was a proud moment and one of those gleaming moments where I felt like a planner for a minute.

Those moments - feeling like a planner - are more important than ever to me right now. I want to do much much more that leads me toward feeling like a real planner. And soon, I want to BE a real planner. This is a time in my career where I'm feeling a bit of an angsty teenage struggle to be more, do more, learn more, and not necessarily be what I have been thus far to the agency. The reason there is friction is obvious - I'm wanting and acting on moving forward and the jobs I get don't always lend to that. The more cool stuff I get to work on gets challenged by some of the more basic things that I routinely need to get done. It's a balancing act that I haven't quite figured out.

But in the meantime, I am going to latch onto my assignment and go at it with full force. If it is one of the few opportunities I will get to show what I'm made of, I really want to lay it all out there on the table. It's that whole reaching straight into my chest, removing my heart, and laying it on the table. People can definitely take advantage of that and try to smash my little heart, or they can have a little respect for the fact that I'm crazy enough to do that.

We'll see what happens. ;)