Caught My Eye: Articles from 2011

Yesterday, I wrote up my retrospective of 2011, so today I offer you some further great reading to reflect on for the year - pieces I've loved and wanted to follow up with. Here's to a new year and new material to come!

Guest posts
I've been submitting several pieces into the larger internet world this year, including one I didn't know was published on The Rumpus: Last Book I Loved - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao. This year I was writing for Refuse the Silence, a blog about women of color on college campuses. I blogged with HellaBus and the Barnard Zine Library blog, including a feature on the event I read at, Meet Me At the Race Riot. My interview responses were posted on the Brooklyn Zine Fest blog and I got a mention on Brown Pundits. All great work that I hope to continue in the coming year!

Life Lessons
I've been learning a lot about the power of living in the moment, having positive body image, and being mindful of break-taking. I've also really enjoyed learning about living life like it's an experiment, writing well, following your dreams, blogging, keeping balance, gratitude and habit formation.

Political/Identity pieces
I talked a lot about my South Asian identity this year. I wrote about Muslim women, becoming an activist, and embracing single sex education. It was quite an amazing year for self-exploration!

On Location
As I mentioned yesterday, I attended a lot of events this year: everything from Slutwalk NYC to Seattle Pride. I attended Occupy Wall Street, a vigil for Troy Davis, and several writing events at the Nuyorican and The Moth. I attended the Stand Up for Women's Health Rally, Take Back the Night, and the blogging event Ain't I A Woman? Such a sweet year for being out there in the world.

Series
I did a lot of series this year. There was Caught My Eye, Project x Project (and its follow-up Creative Every Day), and DIY Interlude where I explored my own creative process. I also experimented with making a zine video tutorial and another video on progress. So, on top of everything, I feel that this year was also great for experiments.

And that marks the airing of all my 2011 pieces of note. Now that the closets are cleared, let's welcome in the new year!

Ain't I A Woman? Recap

Since the last few weeks have been so action-packed, I am going to skip my typical "Caught My Eye" post this week to tell you about the Ain't I A Woman? even that I attended on Monday.

First: the background. I am a blogger for Refuse the Silence, an organization headed by the great Morgane Richardson and the people that hosted this event. And, because I am a huge nerd, I got giddy at the idea of seeing some of my favorite bloggers speak at this event about something I really care about: race in the feminist movement.

 Me and Latoya Peterson (editor of Racialicious) after the event! Don't we look chilled out?

Caught My Eye: Think Simple Now

I have mentioned before that Think Simple Now is a great website for making you feel better and learn about how to deal with complex situations, but just in case you haven't checked it out, I encourage you to! Here is a round up of my favorite articles:

Healthy Relationships

When Couples Fight (not just for people in relationships!)
Living in the Moment 

The Art of Building Self-Esteem 

How to Achieve Anything
I'm Sorry, I Don't Know, I Can't...
A Guide to Happiness via Self Forgiveness
Personal Change You Can Measure

Caught My Eye: Mark Bittman's Opinion Column

Not that I need to plug the great Mark Bittman, of How to Cook Everything and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian fame, but I recently stumbled upon his opinion column in the New York Times. I must admit, his writing really makes me think about things related to food, culture, and our beliefs about things that I often believe as "commonsense" (but that my anthropology teacher might call hegemony).

Here are two pieces that I recently read and enjoyed:

The piece "Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others" is great if you want to learn about animal cruelty and feel depressed but enlightened.

Check out the "Sustainable Farming Can Feed the World?" piece to learn about the ways that I wish I could change the world.

You may also be interested in reading my post Why Eating Can Make Me Depressed.

DIY Interlude: Cookie Dough

 

There's not much left in this batch... I wonder who's been eating it all...

As my life has been taken over by theorizing how the body works in society and reading Nabokov, you can imagine that I've been caught up in the cerebral a lot these days.
Yet, whenever I spend too much time reading or working on an essay or doing something academically stimulating, my hands start itching to be used in some other way.
And that's where cookie dough comes in.
Courtesy of this wonderful recipe blog post by Joy the Baker, I have an outlet for my 1. constant need to do something domestic, and 2. leftover Greek yogurt.
Mine is pictured above, but you should definitely try making this recipe for yourself - it's eggless so there's no fear of salmonella and if you use peanut butter instead of yogurt, it becomes a dairy free treat! Enjoy!

Rollin' Rollin'...

I have returned to Seattle! And so have my boxes (finally).
I feel as if I am still in transition from New York to Seattle; I wouldn't say that I had major jet lag, but I definitely woke up at 6:30am everyday since I touched ground and am only now getting on to a reasonable 8am. The greatest adjustments are getting back to living with my parents, obviously, and having to find a new job and means of entertainment. A lot of people are still in school, so I mostly have to make my own way around here - it's all good though because I am definitely having a blast trying out new things and finding my own routine.

New To My Life:
1. Roller skating!
I became infatuated with roller derby, so I decided I would jump right into it this summer. I bought all my first-timer gear and started to practice skating again (even going to a PFM New Skater practice and getting my butt kicked!). I haven't done it since elementary school so I obviously need a lot more work, but that is what the summer is for! I hope that I will become comfortable enough on skates before I go back to NYC that I can start trying out for practice teams there - I seriously think that this form of exercise beats walking by a mile!

2. Working at ZAPP!
Yesterday, I started work at the zine library at Richard Hugo House, and it is pretty awesome. I get to hang around the zines all day and the work is pretty chill - I get to do the same things that I had done at the Barnard library and also work on my own zine (which I was going to do anyway, but this is a happy motivator). It was a great reunion feeling when I came back to Hugo House for the first time; I am thinking about taking a summer class there too if I have the time. This time it will be for one about editing novels, since I want to get my NaNo 2009 novel up and running.

3. Driving!
This isn't really a new one, but when you've come back from a land of public transportation, it sure feels new. I am not worried about my skills, but I definitely feel more shaky on the road these days...

4. Health and fitness transformation!
No, not a crash diet and some other craziness, but I am going to start making an effort to take care of myself again. I feel like when I was in the dorms, I let myself go in favor of hitting the books or some other stupid reason, so I have decided to regularize my routine, get a few new products, and start exercising [biking, swimming] in between my skating.

The rest of the updates are my typical over-planning: read books, write blogs, watch movies, go places, be awesome. Everything that keeps me entertained is sticking around, including the writing reviews and other updates. Consider this an atypical post as I adjust to my surroundings - content to come!

P.S.
There are new links at the Cool Links section! I added a lot - does that say something about my summer internet use? Check it out!