Archive for category rants
SxSW in three & a half inch heels
Talk to anyone who has been to South by Southwest (SxSW), and they’re sure to have plenty of tips for you. Bring a lot of business cards. Don’t hang out with anyone you know. Carry an extra phone battery, battery extender, or battery charger with you. If you’re carting around your laptop, bring an extension cord, or better yet a power strip (you’ll be everyone’s new best friend, I promise). And specifically for the ladies, leave the heels at home.
photo credit: doug88888
These are all excellent tips. All except the very last one…
That’s right ladies, I’m recommending you bring your heels. Bring them. Wear them. Rock them proud.
Everyone tells you to wear sneakers because you’ll be doing a lot of walking. Miles and miles and miles of walking. And everyone is right. It’s incredibly important to wear comfortable shoes when you’re doing that much walking. But the advice about wearing sneakers is based on the assumption that heels aren’t comfortable. This advice is also, most likely, coming from men. Most men love a women in a pair of sexy heels, so they can’t possibly be telling you to leave your heels at home cause they don’t want you to look sexy. They’re telling you because they want to save you the pain of walking in heels.
Last year was my first year at SxSW. Despite my strong preference for heels, I took heed of the sneaker advice and packed whatever shoes had the flatest soles. I packed comfy sneakers, comfy boots, and a pair of comfy ballet flats I bought just for the occasion. I also back one pair of high heel boots in hopes that maybe, just maybe, I’d get to wear them. I wore my comfy sneakers. I wore my comfy boots. I wore my comfy ballet flats. My feet hurt every single day. On the last night, after conferencing all day in sneakers, I went back to the hotel and put on my high heel boots before heading for the parties. I walked miles that night, and my feet were never happier.
The men telling you and me to leave our heels at home don’t wear heels, and they don’t realize that for a woman who rocks heels on a daily basis, wearing sneakers isn’t necessarily any more comfortable than wearing heels. So my advice is to bring your most comfortable flat shoes and your most comfortable heels. Rock them each on different days or at different times of the day. Doing so will change the balance and pressure points on your feet, preventing you from repetitively abusing the same sore spots.
At the end of each night, when you finally stumble into your hotel room, you’re feet will hurt. Just as do the feet of every guy that told you to wear sneakers. Your feet (and their feet) don’t hurt because your shoes weren’t comfortable. Your feet hurt because you’ve been walking miles and miles and miles.
‘play school’
We have learned to ‘play school’…
We have learned to pretend to be learning,
___ so that we can satisfy others expectations of what ‘means’ to have learned.
Meanwhile, what happened to play?
Real play…
___ the do it because it’s fun
___ ___ and because I’m interested in it
___ ___ ___ because it stimulates me
___ ___ ___ ___ kind of play.
Which also happens to be the kind of play that results in learning
___ but is not engaged to satisfy learning,
___ ___ but to satisfy pleasure,
___ ___ ___ or curiosity.
It’s like reading…
How many of us used to love to read?
How many of us still do?
Did we find other diversions that we love more?
Or was it the expectation that we learn something from our reading…
___ not just any something,
___ ___ but the certain something
___ ___ ___ that he/she/they wanted us to learn.
What, then, do we really learn?
To please others?
To deny our own curiosities?
To fall out of love with that which we used to love?
I, for one, enjoy school…
___ minus the deadlines,
___ ___ and the expectation to reach pre-determined outcomes.
I enjoy school
___ because I like learning.
I like learning
___ because I love the way my head feels
___ ___ when it’s seems ready to implode
___ ___ ___ with all the cool stuff going on inside it.
*Inspired by Pay Attenion, found via Daily Sense.
rant: the resolution waiting game
Posted by Ms. Herr in events, rants, self-portraiture on January 1, 2009
I like goals. I dislike resolutions. New Year’s resolutions specifically. They go a little something like this…
Spend the last day(s) of December reflecting on the prior year. Identify one or more things that you want to change. Make sure they’re significant enough so you can feel accomplished when you succeed. But not so significant as to set yourself up for failure. Set a start date of January First. Celebrate the last hour(s) of the old year with general debauchery and proclamations of how great the new year will be.
Wake up January First and do one of two things:
- Succeed.
- Fail.
I’ve no issue with either success or failure. Each have their purpose. I do, however, have issue with waiting to start working toward some goal, whether ginormous or itsy bitsy, on some day that is rather arbitrary in the greater scheme of time. Days, months, years are just markers that while relevant to the documentation of historical occurrences and the planning of future events, are less meaningful than both history and future.
January 1, 2000-whatever ain’t nuthin’ but a number.
Whether you hope to make a lifestyle change or launch into a new project, does it really matter if the start date coincides with something so arbitrary? January First may be generally accepted as the dawn of a new year, but are the mechanics that change the dial from ’08 to ’09 really any more significant than those that change it from 2:59 to 3:00? Set a goal and start it today. Sure, today is January First, but what if today was April 17? Or August 29? Or December 23?
Celebrate beginnings.
But don’t wait for them.
-
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