Quite a while back, I told myself I was going to try new things, and push myself outside of my usual ruts and routines, which resulted in a few minor forays into things like eating cherimoyas and jujubes, and then kind of fizzled out. Well, I'm catching up on that a bit now.

Some things I've done recently to change things up a bit (to the extent that it's possible to change while staying mostly the same):

1. Went on a 45 minute ziplining course through a redwood forest, up to 150 feet off the ground. I'm not a fan of heights, and I'm usually pretty lazy about active activities, but it was actually really fun. This was part of the team offsite for the new team I've picked up (the one that does robot cars). 
2. On that same offsite, I got back on a climbing wall for the first time in almost two years. My physical therapist had banned me from climbing until my wrists got better, and she finally cleared me to climb again, so that was exciting. I think Boyfriend and I might start hitting the climbing gym again soon.
3. I've been making my first calls relating to my new product. I've done lots of calls before, but never relating to experimental hardware, and never in a business or policy capacity. It's scary but exciting. This must be what it feels like to be at a start-up, where everyone has to do more than they really know how to do. It has been a while since I've had that kind of complete fear and lack of knowledge at work, and it's a little bit fun to be back on an extremely steep learning curve again.
4. The new product group itself introduces me to all kinds of other firsts.

One radical change that I didn't make (partly because the re-org worked out, and partly because the logistics and 80% paycut would have been horrific) was to apply for a job in Tanzania. But I seriously considered it, and it's good to know that I'm not so deeply entrenched in my current life and habits that I wouldn't consider something like that.

Now for a quick check-in on my original goals for 2011:

• Keep calm -- This is a repeat from last year, but I think it's important enough for me that I need to keep it as a priority. [I think I still stress about things a lot, and it adds up to a certain level of background anxiety, but it doesn't completely rule my life, which is a good thing.]
• Carry on -- I need to get used to the idea that everyone I know is growing up, and stop letting it make me sad. [Still working on this one. More of my friends are getting married and having kids, and I try not to worry too much about how much our paths will diverge in the next months and years.]
• Be well -- I need more calcium and an occasional trip to the gym. [I've been good about calcium and vitamins. I'm also eating more healthily. I still don't go to the gym.]
• Be good -- I'm going to find more ways to be good. More charitable donations and volunteer work. More kindness and patience with my friends and family. More treats for my dog. [I'm doing well on donations, and having fun doing it, and will do more in the last few months of the year, in order to take advantage of our company's gift matching program. Not sure that I've been particularly good to friends and family, but my dog is definitely getting more treats, so at least he's happy.][Edit: I looked over my progress report and decided it could use some improvement, so I made some donations to two of my existing charities, and picked two new ones, too. All that money I haven't been spending shopping over the last year can be put to better use by someone else.][Another edit: I suppose I've also made an effort to be nice to my officemate, too. Does it count as being nice if you're doing it because of serious illness?]
• Stay on target -- Stay on top of all of the other stuff, like reading, working, saving, and figuring out how to do everything better, faster, smarter. [I've read 93 books so far this year. Work is going well. I save most of money, since there isn't much to spend it on, other than rent/car/loans, although with the markets and exchange rates behaving badly, I ought to figure out what I can do to keep the savings from losing all of their value.]

So my new 50% project still hasn't been announced within my department, but things are already off to a running start. I think I'm going to finally have to learn how to ride a bike, because it's getting absurd driving back and forth between the Legal building and the other building for meetings every day or two. My dog will have to learn how to ride in a bike basket with my laptop, I suppose.

This is my second day officially on the team, and I've hit a couple of personal firsts already:

1. First Engineering meeting (my meetings till now have mostly been with people from Legal or Business). This is kind of obvious, but Engineering meetings are all dudes. There were maybe 55 people in the room, and only five women. That was an unsurprising surprise. 
2. First meeting with one of the founders. The founders are their own kind of geek celebrities on campus, so it was sort of like walking into a room and finding out that the star of your favorite TV show is there. And he's going to be there every week. What was interesting over the course of the meeting was noticing that he does what the rest of us wish we could do in meetings without fear of repercussions. He fidgets, he interrupts people if they're taking too long to get to the point, he interjects with random questions, he plays with the demo, he tunes in and out, but whatever he does, it's all OK. It's a pretty good gig, being a rich genius.
3. First assignment on the "product counsel" side. I've been doing commercial work up until now (drafting and negotiating contracts), but this new role is a hybrid position, and my advice is no longer limited to the boundaries of the contracts I draft. Now I have to give advice on whether we can launch certain features in various countries, or what we need to do so that a product complies with all applicable laws, or what we do if everything goes horribly wrong. I kind of thought there would be more time before this happened. Initial thoughts: intriguing but terrifying. 

It has been 22 years since I decided to be a lawyer, thirteen years since I applied to law school, and eight years since I finished law school. I'm still not always convinced that this was the "right" career for me (I'd be curious as to what percentage of the population knows whether or not they have chosen the right career for themselves), but I have to admit that it has worked out so far, even though the vast majority of jobs in law are not jobs that I would want or wish on anyone I liked. I worked at a big New York firm for less than a year, but was lucky enough to work for a really great partner while I was there. On little more than a whim, I took a random job that transplanted me to Europe and the magical world of 40 hour work weeks for four years. I took another job that brought me to California and the world of technology transactions. Every time something starts to get uncomfortable or unsustainable, something else has come along, something has shifted, and things have worked out for the best (although that still doesn't make the transitions any more pleasant). I have been extremely lucky.

It's official -- I'll be spending 50% of my time on special projects, including robot cars and other wacky things that show up all the time in movies about the future, but we're trying to make real. I'm excited to start working on new stuff, with new things to think about, but I'm also a little scared.

What if the work is crazy? (Possible.) Or worse, what if it's boring? (Less likely.)

What if the team is hard to get along with? (Possible, and this makes a huge difference.)

What if the other 50% of my time is allocated to products or teams that I don't like? (This has a decent chance of happening.)

What if I have to take on the 50% special projects and 50% other products before I have time to transition my existing work, so that I end up with 150% or more on my plate? (This is much too likely for my taste.)

What if there's something else I should be worrying about that I can't think of right now? (Almost guaranteed.)

Our department is going through a big, fat re-org, and it has been agonizing, just waiting to see what will happen. Everyone will still have a job, it's just unclear what groups we will be in or who our managers will be. I've been particularly antsy, because none of the new groups that we're re-org-ing into really match the stuff I currently work on, and the group that my manager (whom I really like) will be going into is a group that I'm not terribly interested in, so chances are good that I'll end up working on fewer products (which is frustrating, because I really like the diversity of my work now), and I'll either have to work with a different manager (if I follow the products that interest me) or on a set of products that I'm not that I'm not that excited about (if I follow my manager).

There is one glimmer of hope. I've thrown my hat in the ring to work 50% of the time on whatever group I end up in, and 50% of the time on "special projects," which are mostly confidential, but include robot cars. That would pretty much be the perfect solution for me, because I could still work with my manager, dabble in a variety of products, learn a bunch of new stuff that pretty much rides the bleeding edge of legal issues, and I might get to try out a robot car as part of my job.

So now the waiting begins (or rather, now the waiting continues). In the next couple of weeks, I'll find out what group I'm going to be in, what products I'm working on, who my manager will be, and whether I'll get to split my time and work on robot cars.

Once you're working in a "real grownup job," even if the office has a casual dress code, there are just certain things that do not belong. 

For context, these things are perfectly acceptable in a Silicon Valley office:

• Jeans
• Flip flops
• Sneakers
• Going barefoot
• Baggy t-shirts
• Pajama pants
• Sweatsuits

That's a lot of flexibility, people. So why do you decide to push the envelope too far? Here are a few things that should not be part of any office dress code, no matter how casual it is:

• If you're going out to a skanky club after work, you really should not be able to wear what you wore to work straight to the club.
• If you're a woman, you should not wear pants or shorts tight enough to show any camel toe.
• If you're a man, moose knuckle is never OK.
• You should never have to worry about your underwear showing over the top of your pants or skirt.
• You should never have to worry that if you sit down or if a sudden breeze comes, that your underwear (or lack thereof) will show underneath your skirt or shorts.
• If your clothes smell enough that someone can smell them from three feet away, that's not a good sign.
• Tube tops are not office appropriate.
• Neither are hot pants.
• Hooker heels are called hooker heels for a reason.
• If your nipples sometimes pop out to say hi, your shirt is probably not great for work.

Wow, it has been a couple months since I posted. I'm getting really bad at this, but that's partly because I update my public blogs more frequently now.

Since the last major status update:

• Had a few good dinners with Superman and various friends and family
• Had a fun visit from my college roommate (without her husband or kids, so it was like old times)
• Convinced the high school student I interviewed for college admissions to go to my college (she's the first one I've interviewed who got in, and I'm so excited for her)
• Went to Chicago to see get Kanga and Roo married (and to have a second dinner at Alinea)
• Hosted a girls' night in
• Went to Z-town for part 2 of Kanga and Roo's wedding
• Closed deals in Z-town just in time for a big launch (it was kind of crazy -- my schedule wasn't terrible, but Superman pulled two all-nighters)
• Caught up with lots of friends in Z-town, and got to know Kanga and Roo's families a bit
• Got a promotion

Now, summer is finally here for good (very late for California), and I'm starting to do my usual lolling around the house, reading and watching DVDs until my eyeballs hurt. I've finished 58 books so far in 2011, which is better than last year, but not on track to hit 150. Maybe I should set my sights a little bit lower. 120? 130?

I'm getting restless, and I'm starting to plot out upcoming travels to soothe the itch:

• LA in September for a work thing (maybe stay an extra weekend to eat with friends?)
• Maybe somewhere in Europe in October or November (work part of the time?) although I think my mom would probably go full martyr if I went and she knew, because I'm avoiding a trip with her this summer.
• Maybe Fiji or Papua New Guinea in April or May?

Quick word of advice to job hunters (or at least to job hunters that I'm going to interview):

• No typos or misspellings in your CV. Ever. I will judge you. 
• Also, no lame mission statement up top that talks about being "results-oriented" or "committed to excellence and integrity." Seriously? 
• If you claim that you have a deep interest in cloud computing, then you had better be able to explain to me what you think cloud computing is.
• If you are interviewing at my company for a job in the legal department, which makes it into the news pretty much very day (for better or worse), then if I ask, "Can you think of any news items or product launches involving [my company] recently that raised interesting legal issues?" you should never answer "I don't really keep up with any of that." Maybe you don't usually keep up with tech news, but you should at least cram a bit before your interview.
• If you claim to be experienced in software licensing, then don't be surprised when I ask you about it, and be able to say whether you work with object code or source code, and why that matters.
• When we're near the end of the interview, and I ask if you have any questions, and it's the first interview of the day, you should probably have something better than, "Uh, how long have you worked here?"
• Also a bad idea: asking about work-life balance and whether it's a 9-to-5 job. Even if you're applying somewhere that has good work-life balance, you should probably wait until you get an offer before bringing that one up. You ask that when we're still evaluating you, and I'm going to assume that you're a slacker and recommend someone else be given the job.
• If I give you my business card at the end of the interview, you should probably write me an email afterwards. I had no idea how uncommon thank you notes (or thank you emails) were until I started interviewing people for college admissions and jobs. A well-written and personalized thank you email = big bonus points.

Who teaches these people how to job hunt??

So last year, in early August, I decided I wasn't going to buy any new clothes or shoes for some period of time. Maybe six months, maybe a year. It wasn't really for any particular reason -- I'm not a radical environmentalist or an anti-capitalist or anything like that. It was just an experiment. In the past, I've always just bought things like clothes and shoes whenever it occurred to me to do so (especially when I was living in New York), and it was often my stress relief of choice. I realized that in my current job, I can wear whatever I want to work, and I pretty much end up wearing a uniform: t-shirt, jeans, sneakers, and some kind of sweater or sweatshirt, so I didn't think I really needed to buy anything. (The limits were only on clothes and shoes -- I still bought lots of Kindle books, plane tickets, and food. There are limits on how far I was willing to go in this experiment.)

The limits on wardrobe in the past eight months have been compounded by a few other things:

1. My own laziness: I moved into my new house about a year ago, and I still haven't unpacked about 80% of my clothes. I've got probably about two or three weeks' worth of t-shirts and sweaters unpacked, and everything else is still in boxes.
2. Wear and tear: My favorite things that I wear all the time (especially since I haven't unpacked anything else) are starting to wear out.
3. Donations: In addition to not acquiring anything new, I also donated several bags of clothes and shoes in December.
4. Returns: I even returned a few things that I had bought before August.

Even so, I've been kind of surprised at how few things I've had the urge to buy in the past eight months. There are really only four things I've been tempted to buy: replacement Chuck Taylors and replacement stretchy pants (see above about things wearing out), some five-toed shoes (they're supposed to be amazingly comfortable), and a lightweight fleece hoodie for travel (I'm always on a quest for the perfect travel clothes). I think I'll make it to a year of no-buying without much trouble.

OK, so it has been a long time since I posted -- much longer than usual. There are a few reasons for that, and some are better than others. Superman and I were in the Philippines for two weeks of diving, which was lots of fun. For people who like diving, I'd say that Dumaguete was amazing for critters and muck diving, but Tubbataha didn't live up to the hype of being super-amazing reef diving.

Basic trip stats:

• 25 dives
• 7 books
• 6 flights
• 5 nights at a resort
• 7 nights on a liveaboard dive trip

I took some pictures while we were there, and here are a few.

If you can't get summer to come to you, sometimes you just have to go find it, even if it's halfway around the world:

Dumaguete had the best muck diving I've seen so far:

This is a pair of ornate ghost pipefish, which are related to seahorses:

This is a tiny little shrimp that is smaller than your pinky nail, and looks exactly like the leaves he lives in:

You can't really come back from a dive trip without a picture of clownfish:

And I still have my special fondness for nudibranchs:

Most people go to Tubbataha for the sharks. This one is resting and getting cleaned by two little cleaner wrasses:

I thought Palau was better. But it was still just good to get back in the water:

And for your amusement (or disgust), this was probably the most horrifying thing I saw while I was in the Philippines:

It was good to get away for two weeks, but the time leading up to vacation (and the time since getting back) ended up being three times as busy. I had a really big launch right before leaving on vacation, and that got insane for a while (there's nothing quite like trying to "negotiate" (I'm using the term generously here, because that implies a certain level of rationality) with publishers, except for perhaps trying to "negotiate" with record labels -- I don't know which is more painful). We've been back for almost two full work weeks now, and there have already been a few days where I was pretty dubious that the work that needed to get done would fit into the time available. So for much of the time, I have either been very busy, or completely unplugged.

The other reason is that I'm feeling a bit unmotivated and adrift about most things in general right now. I do what I have to get done, but the extras, like blogging, attending meetings where my absence won't be noticed, or taking out the trash, have been falling by the wayside a little bit. 

I'm feeling kind of fat. I know, I'm not fat. But I feel fat. I don't care how many times Superman says I'm not fat, or how low my BMI is, because I have my own ideas about what I should weigh, and I weigh three pounds more than I should. Things like this bother me much more when I feel like I don't have control over other stuff in my life. If I'm unhappy about something, then I at least want to control my weight and make it a number that I like (and yes, I know that I have a weird relationship with numbers). 

My wrists and back got better while we were on vacation, and promptly got worse again once I got back to work. It's frustrating to know that physical therapy can't fix my issues (which are annoying enough that sometimes, I can't open jars or play Wii, and can never lift or carry heavy objects, and sometimes have difficulty driving or walking), and the only thing that makes me have these problems is the one thing I have to do every day -- sit at a desk, use a mouse, and type.

I'm stressed and I've been feeling kind of conflicted about work. I'm still not sure, after spending almost eight years as a lawyer, that I want to be a lawyer "when I grow up." I like my job as much as I think I could possibly like a job in law -- there are even times when I love my job. My company is great, the products are cool, and the work I get to do is often very unique and quite interesting. My coworkers are fun, my boss is ideal, the money is excellent (our bonus checks for 2010 dropped into our accounts while I was out on vacation, and I ended up getting about 60% of my base salary, which is something of a miracle in this economy, and I feel really stupid complaining about whether it's my destiny to be a lawyer when I should really just be glad to have the job that I have), but sometimes I still stop and think, "Is this what I want to be when I grow up?" and I try to calculate how long I should work in order to retire (I'm hoping to do so by 2020, but I'm not sure I can last that long)... I wonder if maybe a change of scenery would help -- our department has "rotations" to other offices, so I could go work in Asia or London for six months, maybe, but then I wonder if what I need is something completely different. I kind of think that if I have such a great job, and I still have doubts, then maybe I should be doing something else. Coming up with "something else" is the hard part.

For now, I've been using small things to distract myself from the malaise -- making donations (giving money to good causes provides a distracting lift; my high school exchange program host family lives in Sendai, Japan, so I've been alternating between emailing with them, donating to disaster relief, reading the news, and avoiding the news), researching life-changing jobs (some are short stints that I could potentially do for a few months, and come back here afterwards), and reading as many books and watching as much TV as possible.

Having some plans also helps:

• Dinner Saturday with Superman and two of his friends, at a restaurant we've been wanting to check out for a while
• Dinner in a few weeks with my sister for her birthday
• Chicago at the end of April for Kanga and Roo's wedding, and to go back to Alinea
• Z-town at the end of May for Kanga and Roo's "second wedding," and maybe to hit up some restaurants in Europe

Sigh. I just had a big vacation, and... I feel like I need a vacation.

“If you look at a thing, the very fact of your looking changes it… if you think about yourself, that very fact changes you.” -- Robert Penn Warren