Life experiments: my 2011 Magic Mix

wow 2010 is over and finished on a bang...of the good kind.
After 6 years in Orange San Francisco, I started working for Gracenote...which if you know me is pretty freaking awesome: music + tech!! Oh sweet life!

A very awesome end of year doubled with family's visit, an awesome New Year with dear friends and an impending trip to India. As of right now, my status is: heart full, gratefulness in full force, too much awesomeness!

If I am trying to recap my last year, it has been a mixed one for me:

What worked:
* Expressing my gratitude: Oh dear gosh, help me, I sound like a total Californian! Used http://thankfulfor.com/ daily for a few months until it was ingrained in my brain....and it works. I still had my bitchy days but I really do believe it changed my outlook on my life, away from the "what is not working right now" I tend to dive in otherwise.
Conclusion: Worked! Definitely doing it again this year
* traveling: that was awesome, SXSW, Coachella, Camping, Burning Man, renting cabins with friends. Awesome year filled with many fun events and awesome friendly faces. I have the hitch for longer and farther traveling though and next week I am going 2 weeks in India for a friend's wedding and to spend quality time with my girl RT, oh and my husband :). Excited I am!
Conclusion: will definitely be part of this year as well
* running: before running I never found an exercise that I liked to do so much that I will continue past the first few months. I have been running now for 2 years, I am still very slow and would love to be more consistent but I can truly say that I am addicted. It clears my mind, reduces my stress, makes me feel good and gets me outdoor getting this Vitamin D at least for these 3 times a week I am running our Bay.
Conclusion: so so glad I found this, definitely part of my 2011 magic mix
This year's objective: run consistently below 11:00 minutes a mile, do at least 2 half-marathon, break the 2:15 hours limit. (I know: I am slow!)

What did not work:
* growth: I felt stagnant this last year and this is scary for me. Learning and growth are a big part of what I seek for my life, and this last year it really hit me a few times that in my day-to-day life and especially at work I was repeating myself and not challenging myself enough. I did not feel that I was growing anymore and when Gracenote presented itself, I jumped on it. Totally the right time for it.
Conclusion: Hey new job, I fixed it!
* saving: well I can't say I did not have a lot of fun this last year between trips, shows,and overall good times but my savings account reflected it by being virtually empty...and that is becoming quite embarrassing knowing that I am way past my 30s and have no student debts anymore.
Conclusion: Need to fix
* sickness: not sure what happened last year but I got sick way too often. This new year resolutions definitely include eating better (more raw, more vegan, more wholesome), sleeping better, getting stress under control, exercise, practice yoga, meditate...oh and more bodywork
Conclusion: Need to fix

What will be in my 2011 Magic Mix:
* know what I am lucky for and express my gratitude,
* travel, continue the new experiences, deepen the existing one,
* run V, run: awesome stress killer for my overworked, overworried brain,
* some quite time, more wholesome food, exercise, practice,
* spend time with friends and family (& kitties, rabbity, and hubby): a no-brainer for most but quite a new one for me. Having been away from France since 1998, I thought that, especially from a family tie point of view, I was very independent, but this last trip with them, even with its little frustrations, left me more grounded and also more in touch with whom I became. And I was pretty happy of who that person was, and I think they were too:) Same thing with my time with friend, they leave me feeling better, that's how awesome they are; for socially awkward me, that's a new feeling.

Contended I am, 2011 I am ready

My SXSW week in numbers

It has been years that I have been wanting to go to SXSW and gawd it did not disappoint, I truly, entirely, blissfully enjoyed it.
Rather than a full summary of it, I thought I would attempt to do a summary "a la Fetron" in numbers. Here we go:

• numbers of days missed of SXSW: 4 -> This was the event that I could not wait to get to, so of course I had be sick before it started. I developed a pretty bad case of bronchitis. Interdiction to fly from doctor, plus anyways I was sick as hell and did not want to contaminate all of my awesome @sfembassy roommates (not best way to make friends right?), so I hold my horses until all was cured and arrived only on Monday, therefore missing most of the Interactive conference...oh well, at least I was fresh and ready for the music!!
  
• numbers of panels and keynotes attended: 4 and 1 on that last day, as opposed to that ambitious schedule I had planned, ha! Reports were mixed on the quality of the panels, but I rather enjoyed mines and I absolutely loved the keynote I saw.
• numbers of embarrassing fall from slippy stairs: 1 -> on my first night mind you, way to impress my fellow ambassadors.
  
• numbers of bruises: 3 huge ones from the fall, and then a few other ones from Austin's apparently rough nights
• numbers of RV ridden: 1 -> the RVIP lounge, moving Karaoke awesomeness, who knew that could exist?
  
• numbers of songs sung in a moving Karaoke: 1 -> "ca plane pour moi"
• numbers of places checked in: 20, thanks Foursquare oh and thanks for that party again :)
  
• most checked-in at: @sfembassy the awesome place I had the chance to stay in, thank to Gabe & Amy from Sonic Living. An article was even written here on it.
  
• numbers of concert in my living room: 1 -> the awesome bay-area based Ferocious Few -> superbe timelapse of their live here and the whole Ustream here
  
• numbers of pedicab taken: 3
• numbers of steps taken: 151,496 steps or 65.3 miles!! Thank you Fitbit for recording that! (and okay there might be a lot of dancing and jumping in there)
  
• numbers of Tweets sent: 66 including tweets of almost all the bands/DJ that I saw
  
• numbers of bands/DJs seen: 23
  
• number one band discovered: super hard to do because there were so many awesome shows. If I had to pick only one then I would say that my favorite discovery was Bear in Heaven
• number of days that went as planned: none but thoroughly enjoyed it -> I guess that's where I can see the comparison to Burning Man, too much stimuli, too much choices to follow an agenda
  
• numbers of slices of Pizza taken: 6 -> one each day more or less
• number of breakfast tacos eaten: 4, miam by the way
  
• numbers of salad eaten: 1 -> I must have walked a few miles to find that place but oh that salad felt so good
• numbers of Bloody Mary, Beers and Vodka consumed -> yeah that is not an easy one to track but nothing too crazy boss ;)
• numbers of vitamins taken: 1 everyday religiously, did not want to get sick again
  
• numbers of hours slept: way not enough
• new awesome people met: oh many awesome new people were met <3>

Final result -> score of happy: high, very very high!

What are you thankful for?

A quick update on my journey towards contentment, I have started using everyday this little tool "what are you thankful for today?" that Ian Li recommended based on my last post and I love it. Dead simple, integrated to Twitter if I want to shout out my thanks, and as I do it everyday, it forces me to take a moment to reflect everyday and appreciate my life. A little luxury that we rarely get to do as we usually rush to the next thing.

It is a little bit of cultural shock for me this positive psychology, after all I am French and we're supposed to be doubtful, sarcastic, critical and certainly not "positive":) I don't know if I am getting totally assimilated to San Francisco and its culture of optimism but I feel that this tool is working for me, as in making me definitely more appreciative of what I have today, as opposed to having me focused on my list of "shoulda", "want" or "have to".
The website recommends to do it for 2 months straight, I will definitely try.

2010: present, aware and contented...starting my journey in contentment and personal informatics

2009 has been a really high and really low kinda year.
Highs of the election of Obama and the hope he inspired, lows of the crisis and its impact on my friends, my SO and even on me, lucky enough to have a job but type to worry anyways kind of gal.
In my highs: I remember starting the year by a nomination for an award at work, going back to France in June and spending quality time revisiting my country, hanging out with friends and family, then Burning Man, Decompression, Halloween at the Ghost Ship, my first Kayak experience, camping at Cherry Lake, that surfing lesson on my Birthday, the Japanese punk-rock show that same night, running my first half-marathon, music music music, Leonard Cohen, Bonnie Prince Billy, Rusko...just hanging out at my house with my purring machines, my friends and my guy and really enjoying it...finishing the year surrounded by friends in beautiful Yosemite, and also just the plain highs of walking/driving/biking/running in my city and taking in its energy and its beauty.
It's really interesting in one way how my Twitter, Sonic Living and my Flickr stream are a great living memories of these high and lows, (actually mostly of my highs) and how happy I am to have been documenting them so that I can reflect on how overall awesome of a life I have... if I ever dare to forget.
Side note: which is why Twitter needs to give me access to my full history, this is the closest thing I have to a living journal nowadays.

Continuing on that thread of documenting your life, I have been totally fascinated by the reports Feltron publish every year...beautiful visualization of all types of facts about his life in data. If I could do it for myself, what kind of patters would I find? What would I want to improve, what would I be satisfy with?

This year, my key resolutions are:
* to be more present and contented,
* to remember regularly to be grateful for what I have hence the documentation
*to work on some goals I set for my self: continue running (realized there were a strong correlation with feeling present and subsequently satisfied and running), talk to strangers more (one of my fear), be greener (I feel I could do much better), plan for more nature time (also correlate well with me feeling contended), live music (also so important for my sanity), be more connected with my community be it my friends & family but also other vegetarians, animal lovers, universal health care believers....and finally something I worked on last year but want to continue working on -> to fear less and try more.

As part of this process, I am going to attempt at documenting my life more this year beyond Twitter and Flickr. Some of this tracking will be done manually (trying Daytum and beta.metrics.com) but I also hope I will be able to automatize some of it. One simple area is to track my running activities where I can automatically track my runs and my progress with Nike+ and Runkeeper, but I will also look at my overall health, my sleep level (aka as no insomnia tonight = win) with Fitbit, my trips planned, my footprint...

Excited by the journey and what I will discover along the way

Tumblr FTW

I know that I am very late in the game but Tumblr is pure awesomeness and perfect for my needs for spontaneous sharing over 140 characters...so if you were so ever inclined, you can find me over on Tumblr
and of course still very much on Twitter

me lazy blogger

so as you may have noticed, I have been blogging very sporadically lately, okay very rarely lately :)

Truth is I belong to the burst generation, I like easy and spontaneous.
I am much more comfortable with the compulsory shortness of Twitter input box or the easiness of the lazy comments and quick recommendation of bubbletop, the thing I have been working on for a while now.

So 2 sites where you will be able to follow me more regularly if you're interested:

http://twitter.com/virginie -> for what I've been doing
http://virginie.bubbletop.com -> for my favorites of the moment on the internet

so sayonara for now on this blog and hope to see you on Twitter and Bubbletop

Sebadoh at Noise Pop 2007

This week is Noise Pop in San Francisco, a very cool festival celebrating Pop and Rock'n Roll mainly, good from time to time to go back to the grind grind of the guitar.
Yesterday I went to see Sebadoh at the Great American Music Hall, the concert was a sold-out and I was pretty excited to finally see Sebadoh. It was an important band from my early 20s and I allways missed them. They are pretty historical band in fact, but you would never guess it from their attitude, I really like that about them, the antithesis of the star attitude.
Lou Barlow (was in Dinosaur Jr, then founded Sebadoh, also Folk Implosion, also follow his solo carrer) is credited for having invented the lo-fi style (meaning more authentic, not over produced, sometimes meaning home recorded). The 3 of them all sing ther own composition, switch instruments and just stay true to what they started as: experimentation, freedom and chaos even if it means aking us wait 5 minutes in between songs because they are switching places and gears. In short, very very cool show.
Other very good suprises from that show were Love of Diagrams, a two girls one guy band from Australia with an interesting punky Nu Wavy sound, and Bent Moustach, a Dutch band (i have a sweet spot for anything Dutch having lived 4 years there) with a very funny energy, mixing shoegaze and Dub. Very very nice live.

For more on these bands:
Sebadoh MP3s - they are asking for bootleg on their websites :-)
Sebadoh video
Video of Love of Diagrams
Bent Moustach on My Space