These are a few of my favorite things

Poynter had a story today about how blogging might be good for you. An article in Scientific American says:
"Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery. ...
Our limbic (primitive) brain may have an innate need to communicate -- akin to our drives for food or sex. Thus, as we blog, our bodies may release the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine.

So my thought was that if researchers think blogging might have positive effects on mental state, what if I blogged about the things that make me happiest? Too meta for you?

In no particular order, I love:
-- lounging in the sun, lazily reading a book or magazine
-- laughing so hard it makes me snort
-- spending time with friends who can make me laugh so hard I snort, and friends who are comfortable enough not to be embarrassed
-- teaching someone to do something that had previously confused them, and hearing the "a-ha!" in their voice
-- a big ol' fruity girltini, or just about any cocktail that can wear a parasol
-- listening to old jazz, tapping my foot or bopping my head OR
-- turning up old rock a little too loud and shouting the lyrics to Van Halen or AC/DC OR
-- dancing around the apartment to '80s techno that reminds of long-gone college days
-- getting a love note from my husband
-- eating a great meal -- whether that's an elegant multi-course affair with wine and such, or a pizza from Lombardi's with garlic spinach, olives, mushrooms and extra sauce
-- just barely catching the bus or subway, instead of seeing it speed away
-- hearing from friends who have good news (not that I don't like hearing from friends when they *don't* have good news)
-- solving a puzzle that previously eluded me -- figuring out a complex problem in Excel, taming PowerPoint, pulling together a business plan that suddenly clicks together
-- playing yenta and introducing friends to friends, or otherwise connecting people who might not have otherwise met
-- getting a genuine hug from someone who's truly happy to see me
-- researching hotels, restaurants and things to do on vacation, enjoying the anticipation of the fun we'll have, then exploring a new town with my hubby
-- coming home from vacation to a clean home (yes, I really do clean before I leave town, because it feels nicer to return that way)
-- learning something new and beginning to feel it click
-- related, talking to really smart people and hearing ideas that are new to me
-- the afterglow of a good workout
-- sleeping in
-- reading the paper and getting sucked into an article about something I previously didn't care at all about

What about you? What do you love? Share the psychological benefits with me and comment!

Technological hyphenate

For the first year or so after we moved to New York, I mainly chronicled our goings on via this blog.

Then I started to get hooked on Facebook and began putting more of my energy into that new social media and less into my blog.

Lately I've been playing with Twitter to try to understand its appeal. And even more recently, I signed up for BrightKite, which is like Twitter but with an even more narrow field of play.

What? You haven't been paying attention to social networking and you're still stuck at email?

OK, so Facebook is sort of like having a Web site, where you can post things that interest you like photos and videos. It's also a little like Evite, as you can create events and invite others, and it's a little like Craigslist, because you can post things for sale. But where it gets interesting is that unlike the Web, which relies on users stumbling onto whatever you post, you can connect to your friends' pages, and whenever they do anything, you'll get a notification.

Example: a friend from b-school posted pictures of her baby. We haven't been in touch lately and I'm ashamed to admit I didn't even know she was pregnant. Facebook let me know she'd put the photos up and in a passive way, I was able to keep up to date on her life.

Twitter is like blogging for severe ADD. All it does is ask "what are you doing?" and it gives you just 140 characters to answer. It forces an economy of language not unlike haiku. What makes Twitter different from blogging, though, is that most people see it as primarily a wireless toy. You send a text message to Twitter -- a Twitter message is called a tweet -- from your cell phone and tell the world that you're having the best burrito of your life or that there's a big accident on the highway, or ask a question like where to get the best Chinese food in D.C.
Like Facebook, your Twitter account connects to others. You can follow other people and they can follow you. Different from Facebook, where the people you connect to are likely to be people you know in the real world, Twitter culture seems to encourage following people you've never met, based on shared interests or common geography. It builds community instead of just reinforcing community that already exists.

Brightkite doesn't care what you're doing. It's like Twitter but it only wants to know where you are. I'm a little creeped out by the Big Brother potential for that, but you can limit who gets access to what level of detail. And let's say you see on Brightkite that a friend you don't see enough of is at Whole Foods and you're on your way there? You can make a quick call and arrange an impromptu meeting in the coffee bar.

I have Joe Serwach to thank for shaming me into trying Facebook, and Bill Couch for being my Gen Y social media sherpa. I'm still not sure what it's all good for, but as a media exec, I feel like I at least need to give it a try.

And since all this stuff is taking time away from my blogging, you'll see that I've now added my Twitter tweets to the right nav bar of my blog, as well as a link to my Facebook profile. If you really want all Colleen all the time, you've got plenty of ways to keep up to date.

Oh, and if you've lost patience for checking back here to see if I've written anything, you know you can add a Blogger feed to your personalized Google page, right? That way it'll push my latest headline to your Google home page whenever I post.

Leavin' on a jet plane

This is our first weekend at home in a while, and it feels nice to just sit on the couch and read the Times with a cup of coffee. Yes, I really am *that* domesticated.

First weekend of May was New Orleans Jazz Festival. New Orleans was a troubled city long before Katrina hit and it's struggling to bounce back -- many people haven't returned, businesses have closed, critical infrastructure isn't in place. BUT it's still a magical place where the homogenization of America seems not to have encroached. Its music, food, architecture and culture still feels like no other part of the country I've ever visited.

In some ways, it's like the Caribbean. You know that "no problem, mon" ethos where people in the islands get things done if and when they feel like it? New Orleans has that kind of laid back, almost to the point of comotose, work ethic. To enjoy New Orleans, you've got to lower your expectations and get into its pace, which is shock to a New Yorker's system.

In other ways, it's all about individual responsibility, sort of libertarians sipping sazaracs. In a city with a reputation for hard partying, not only can you still smoke in bars, but you can buy a drink in a bar then wander out the door with it. No open intox bans here. All over town you'll find sidewalks with giant chunks missing and not so much as a cursory splash of orange spray paint warning you to watch your step. If you got drunk and tripped in a pothole the size of a Buick, whose fault is that? You should have been paying attention. Ditto the amount of marijuana smoke we smelled all weekend, bands set up informally playing in the middle of the street in the French Quarter and various other activities that just wouldn't fly in most parts of the U.S.

I think it would be horrifically frustrating to live there but after this visit, I could see making Jazz Fest an annual pilgrimage. Who'se in for 2009? We'll be there the first weekend of May.

Here are some of my favorite images of us hanging out with Matt and Lisa, Bob and Kathleen, Cara and Doug, enjoying food, drink and music -- not always in that order, but, well, probably in that order a lot of the time.


































































































































































American Airlines screwed us over on our flights to and from New Orleans -- John had found direct flights at perfect times, and without notifying us, they cancelled those flights and put us onto connecting ones that drastically cut into our fun time in NOLA. So thanks to a very understanding boss, we didn't accept the lousy red eye flight they wanted us to take home, which would have trimmed one whole day from our vacation, and instead we added another day to our stay.

That meant we got home, and I only had three days at work before we headed out for a long weekend in Chicago. This was Dad's idea, sort of to celebrate his birthday, and somehow because I think even though he's retired with nothing but time, he would rather visit us in a place he can drive to than one where he's got to pay for airline tickets.

Sadly, we took no photos of hanging out with Dad, or with John's nephew Ian and his girlfriend Jess, John's sister Tracy who came in from North Muskegon with her daughter Amanda and her daughter Bela. But a good time was had by all, with still more eating and drinking.

It's a miracle my work clothes still fit.