birthday post

I try to stay away from really personal stuff on here because…well, mostly no one cares (as they should) and it’s also a little creepy to be espousing all these deep, dark personal musings to strangers (no offense followers I don’t know, but you know what I mean). But I turned 28 last week and I’m just feeling the need to write about it.

I remember being 16 and thinking that 28 was the grown-up age. I remember thinking that by this time I’d probably be married, maybe thinking of having my first kid, have my awesome career, and be generally “grown-up.” I had no idea what that really meant or what it would feel like.

Here’s something that other grown-ups never tell children: We have no idea what it means to be a grown-up. We just do stuff we have to do (pay bills, go to work, be generally responsible) because that’s just what you do.

I remember turning 21 and thinking, “Okay, this is my year. The year I’ll feel like a grown-up.” But sometimes, on certain days, it still felt like I was 16 or 17, or even, on really bad days, the 10 year old who had no control over anything (emotion, choices, etc).

Being a “grown-up” is not the same as growing up. I realize I’m growing up when I look at my face and notice lines I haven’t seen before, or notice that my body shape is moving more towards the soft and weathered end of the spectrum. I’ve lived through more of the bad stuff. I’ve made mistakes and (tried to) learn from them. There is less that happens in life that’s new or amazing. There are not as many “firsts.” I’m noticing how much younger teenagers look to me. (There’s no way I looked like that when I was 16. She looks 10!)

Not to say that I’m “old” or that there isn’t a lot left to learn. There’s so much. Too much actually. It’s just like that thing they say about learning. The more you learn, the less you realize you know. It’s just funny to look back at your past ideas of what you thought life would be or who you thought you are.

I mean, I think my 16 year old self would love my 28 year old self. There’s no way she would have ever imagined that she would be living in New York City, doing what she loves, and having all the amazing people in her life that she knows now. And I bet if she saw me now from the outside, she would think to herself, “What the heck is she talking about? She IS a grown-up.”

Life is weird. Let’s eat ice cream.

rant: extraneous punctuation in the new AOL logo

With the move away from Time Warner corporate, AOL is revamping their brand to hopefully change the perception that the company is an Old-Internet dinosaur. So, how do they decide to make their brand more modern? Lowercase letters and extraneous punctuation.

There’s no need to get into a huge rant about grammar and its misuse on the Internet, but I do have to take some time here and complain about this abuse of the period. The New York Times article says, “The period in the logo was added to suggest ‘confidence, completeness,’ Ms. Wilson said, by declaring that ‘AOL is the place to go for the best content online, period.’”

But that’s not what a period is for. Anyone who can type the search query “How to use a period” will find the proper and simple usage for a period. Lousywriter.com says, “The Period is the simplest punctuation mark. It is simply used to mark the end of a complete sentence that is neither interrogative nor exclamatory.

1. After every sentence conveying a complete meaning: “Birds fly.” “Plants grow.” “Man is mortal.”

2. In abbreviations: after every abbreviated word: Rt. Rev. T. C. Alexander, D.D., L.L.D.

3. A period is used on the title pages of books after the name of the book, after the author’s name, after the publisher’s imprint: American Trails. By Theodore Roosevelt. New York. Scribner Company.”

THAT’S IT. That’s all a period is for; to punctuate a complete sentence, within abbreviations or within bibliographies. If you want your logo to suggest “confidence” and “completeness,” how about you try to do that through better design?

And sorry Tumblr, I totally blame you for starting this fad. Tumblr’s logo has bugged me since day one…

(Photo via)

French Navy, Camera Obscura

Can’t say this enough…LOVE MOS.