Lenten Sacrifice

I’m not Catholic. By all rights I should be, given my parents’ background, but they weren’t religious and gave up even baptizing their kids after the first one. Bizarrely, I did make my way to Congregationalist Sunday School on my own in third grade and continued to be a steady churchgoer through college and beyond, including weekly mass at my Catholic university (hey, all the kids were doing it). But the story of my finding and losing religion is one for another day.

One thing that has stuck, however, is the practice of giving up something for Lent. I find that it is a great way for me to be more mindful of habits I’ve fallen into and to break potentially bad cycles of behavior. Generally, it has been pretty easy for me to decide what to give up; something just made sense, whether it was meat, processed foods, or alcohol (although most people just thought I was pregnant).

This year, however, I struggled. There wasn’t an obvious food issue. Plus, I’m going on vacation with family soon and that could pose a lot of problems. Television? If I did that, I might have to revert to the “cheating” version of Lent that doesn’t count Sundays.* Something Internet-related? Getting to work on time (something that started slipping during the World Cup and has never really righted itself)?

No one thing stood out.

In the end, I realized that the change I most wanted to make was to get back to my stairway walks. Although I walk to work for 30 minutes every day, it’s over perhaps the least hilly terrain in San Francisco and not very challenging physically. So I decided to give up laziness, which would potentially address a number of smaller problems as well. While concepts have never worked very well for me (giving up gossip at work was an epic failure), perhaps this year will be different. I’ll get back to you in forty (or rather, forty-six) days.

* Lent is forty days long to represent the time that, according to the Bible, Jesus spent in the desert denying Satan’s temptations. In Western Christianity, the Lenten period begins on Ash Wednesday and concludes on Holy Saturday. A quick check of the calendar reveals this to actually be 46 days. Sort of how people say pregnancy is nine months, but in reality it’s forty weeks—a technical, but big, difference, as I’m sure any woman who’s actually been pregnant can tell you.

New Year, New You 3: A Place For Your Stuff

This is the final of my New Year’s resolutions entries and we’re back to more traditional blog length. Mostly because I don’t think I can really give you much advice about getting organized. You sort of are, or you aren’t. If you aren’t, you can get great tips on organizing your work and home life at Get-It-Done Guy. He is particularly good at teaching you how to better manage your time, from controlling email backlog to streamlining to-do lists.

The best advice is probably just to get rid of stuff. Before my move from the East Coast, I read that most people could get rid of one-third of their possessions without missing them, so that became my benchmark for every category in my apartment. It was easy for furniture since the only pieces I wanted to keep were my brand-new mattress and the few pieces of furniture I had inherited from my parents. Books and kitchenware were probably the hardest items to eliminate. But I did it and it was all very cleansing. The only thing I ever regretted was this fabulous sauté pan I had gotten in France. I would kill to get another one.

For some people, clothes are the hardest. One of the books I mentioned earlier this week, What You Wear Can Change Your Life, has an entire chapter on culling your wardrobe, and another on storage and organization of your closet. Be ruthless! Beyond items that don’t fit or have stains, which should always go, I find a good test of whether or not you should keep an item is to ask yourself the following: “Would I care if I ran into my crush (mother-in-law, ex’s new girlfriend, arch-nemesis, etc.) wearing this?” If the answer is yes, get rid of it!

And remember, please don’t just throw things away, even if you aren’t using it, that doesn’t mean that someone else can’t or won’t. I found my old prom dress over the holidays and, while my first thought was that no one would be caught dead in that style today (think Laura Ashley in the 80s), I realized a tailor could probably turn all that gorgeous raspberry cotton into some lovely table napkins.

New Year, New You 2: Looking Good, Feeling Good

“Remember, my friends. Saludos, it’s better to look good than to feel good.”

—Billy Crystal in “Fernando’s Hideaway” on Saturday Night Live

Actually, I’d say it’s more likely that when you look good you often feel a lot better. Or, in the words of those wise sages of Trading Places: “Looking good, Billy Ray!” “Feeling good, Louis!”

Lots of New Year’s resolutions involve looking and feeling better, either by losing weight, exercising more, or eating healthier. These are all laudable goals, but what if you could look better right now? There are two things you could do almost immediately that will appear to take years off your age and pounds off your figure. The first is learning what colors are most flattering to you (they may not be what you think) and the second is learning what types of clothes best flatter your body shape. You may be thinking right now that it can’t make that big a difference, but I assure you, it can.

When I was bored and unemployed a few years ago and watching a lot of What Not to Wear, I decided to remake my own wardrobe as best I could with limited resources. The change in people’s reactions to me afterwards was astounding; I would even get random complements from strangers in elevators, something that I assure you never happened before. It gave me a huge boost of confidence, which of course helped me look even better—an anti-vicious circle as it were. Budgetary constraints have meant I haven’t been able to fully realize a dream wardrobe yet, but it’s nice that I at least know what I should be looking for. What follows are a few resources to help you get through the process a lot quicker than it took me.

If you can get your hands on two classics from the 1980s, I highly recommend Flatter Your Figure and Color Me Beautiful. Don’t be turned off by the ridiculous fashions and horribly outdated photos, the strategies they give for identifying your problem areas and figuring out your colors are right on the money. Modern books on style often talk about body shape and color, but don’t provide the tools for honest self-assessment in these areas. What I learned when I performed the steps in Flatter Your Figure is that one doesn’t always have a clear perspective about one’s body. Going into the afternoon, the three of us doing the measuring (it involves a stick and string and you need to do it with at least one other person) all had one “problem” area that turned out to be all in our minds.

Once you’ve identified your strong and weak points, you can get more contemporary shopping and fashion advice from books like the original What Not to Wear guide, which goes through a number of different problem areas and what shapes you should be wearing to minimize their effect on your silhouette. It was a revelation to me to finally understand why all those clothes I loved on the rack never ended up looking that good on me. It also made shopping, which I never really liked, much easier.

Color is often an even bigger part of the problem. Back in high school, I naturally gravitated to colors that look great on me, primarily pinks and purples, but my love of autumn and living in New York soon made me turned to darker hues that did nothing for me at all, especially black. But I had no clue and old habits are hard to break. (Seriously people, black is not slimming: fit, cut, and fabric are what count. Plus, if it’s not the right color for you, black is horribly aging.) Until I did a serious examination of the issue, I had no idea what a disservice I was doing myself.

Color Me Beautiful uses a system based on seasons and has a lot of tips for determining whether your skin tone is cool (winter/summer) or warm (fall/spring), but, in the end, I ended up going through every item in my wardrobe in front of a mirror in good light and making piles of what made my face look better or worse when held next to it. To an item, everything that made me look worse was a “fall” color, and everything that made me look better was a “summer color” (of which there were very few in my wardrobe). The “I have no idea” pile was almost inevitably “winter” colors. If you want to do a quick test, try holding up both fuchsia (cool) and orange (warm) next to your face and see which makes you look healthier.

While I don’t hold to a rigid interpretation of the seasonal system, having the summer palette identified and available made me try a bunch of colors, like aqua, that I never would have tried otherwise and that actually look very good on me. Even more important, it made me seek out cool (blue-based) makeup rather than the more prevalent warm (yellow-based) makeup, which makes a huge difference. After my sister and I did her colors (she’s a fall), we went shopping and I insisted she buy this mustard-color jacket we found. She hated the color, but bought it anyway, and every time she wore it received lots of compliments. This doesn’t mean you can never wear colors out of your season, but try to have something in your own colors near your face whenever possible—scarves are great for this purpose.

If you think the Color Me Beautiful system sounds dated, look no further than the recent publication of the it-costumer designer of the moment (Janie Bryant of Mad Men) who discusses this system in the very first chapter of The Fashion File (a fabulous book with lots of great advice on clothes and personal style). It is also the basic division of the color system used by Trinny and Susannah of What Not to Wear, although they leave out spring and just use “cool and bright” for winter (black, navy, jewel tones), “mid-tones” for summer (muted bright colors like lavender, periwinkle, most pinks, raspberry, blue-green), and “warm” for fall (olive green, mustard, rust, warm browns, tomato reds). I highly recommend their What You Wear Can Change Your Life for learning how to wear color. I keep this book in my closet since I am constantly referring to the great color charts for ideas. The color combination suggestions may seem radical at first, but just try them for a week or two and you will be converted.

This may seem overwhelming in the beginning, but, once you get the hang of both color and shape, shopping and dressing will become much easier, if only because the items in your closet will work together much better than before. And, remember, even if you do want to lose weight or exercise more, appreciate and dress for how your body is now, not for how it one day might be. Otherwise, you are doomed to eternal frustration.

New Year, New You 1: Improving Your Finances

I’m not a big one for making resolutions (although I really should promise to blog more consistently), but if you are one of the many that have made resolutions this year to improve your finances, look better, or get organized, then my next series of posts are for you!

First up, improving your finances. Whether you want to get out of debt, spend less, or simply save more, you need to have a plan. We live in a culture that encourages us to buy what we want when we want it, so it can be hard to see the bigger picture and tighten your belt for a distant future. But, as someone who recently got out of debt, I can’t emphasize enough how good it feels to no longer have that burden of obligation—the benefits in stress reduction alone make the sacrifice worth it.

If you are hoping to get out of debt, or just become better about money, I highly recommend Dave Ramsey’s financial advice and strategies. If you want details, he has numerous books and workbooks on the subject, probably available at your local library, but his basic plan involves a series of steps, the first four of which are 1) setting up an initial emergency fund of $1000, 2) paying off all debt except your mortgage using the debt snowball, 3) building up your emergency fund to be 3-6 months of expenses, and 4) investing 15% of your income in retirement accounts.

His plan is not easy (and I could never bring myself to follow it completely), but it does work. As I’ve said before, his radio show and podcast are great motivators, particularly on Fridays, when people call in to shout “I’m debt free!” and tell their own personal get-out-of-debt stories (which often made my own attempts at sacrifice seem like child’s play). As someone who used to work in investment consulting, I find most of his financial advice to be extremely sound. He is particularly good on how to budget, which was never something I had focused on before. But, from my own experience, I can tell you that just setting up a budget and sticking to it made me feel like I had more money.

The gist of his budgeting technique is as follows:

1) Every dollar of income should be spent on paper at the beginning of the month.

2) Monthly cash flow should be zero, with any overflow after expenses directed at savings or paying down debt.

3) Use the envelope system for as many items as possible since people have a tendency to spend far less when they use cash not credit. The envelope system works as follows: take out the monthly category amount in cash, put this cash in an envelope for that category, and when the cash runs out, spending for that category for that month is over. Personally, I didn’t use categories and just started with a gross amount per week that I used for everything, but if you have a difficult time sticking to you budget, the envelope system can be very helpful until you get used to budgeting.

Today, to further my own budgeting efforts for the coming year, I finally signed up with Mint.com. I’ve been on a pretty strict budget for the last few years in order to be able to pay off my enormous graduate school loans, which I did in March with the help of some long-awaited money from my father's estate (and I thank both my parents for being such a good savers that they were able to provide us with so much when they made so little). However, my small publishing salary means I still have to be pretty vigilant on the budget front since I am bound and determined not to borrow ever again (unless, as per Dave Ramsey, it’s for a 15-year mortgage where the payments are not more than 25% of my salary).

I haven’t been very happy with the budgeting tools on Money, so we’ll see how things go with Mint. I will say it was extremely easy to set up my accounts with them, which I hope is a sign of how easy it will be to adapt to a new system. I definitely look forward to being able to track everything online wherever I am and not have to wait for when I get home to enter items. And one thing I already love about this software is that they have an easy way to roll over budgets month-to-month for categories like clothing where you might spend far more in one month than another. That feature should also make short-term savings goals and spending, such as for travel or Christmas presents, much easier to handle. If anyone out there has tried Mint, I’d love to hear how it worked for you.

In the meantime, look out for the next installment in this series (“Looking Good, Feeling Good”) on Monday.

And now for something completely different…

If you are looking for new listening material for your commute, or simply your edification, below are some of my favorite podcasts (all available for free on iTunes):

Books on the Nightstand by Michael Kindness and Ann Kingman

This is a great podcast about (mostly) contemporary books. Begun in 2008 by two sales reps for Random House, the format usually consists of a short discussion about a current events topic or theme involving books and/or publishing and then a reading recommendation from each of the hosts.

One thing I love about this podcast is that they simply give recommendations of books that have caught their attention (not necessarily by Random House). They don’t do reviews or give anything away, but rather tell you just enough for you to decide whether you might like it. This podcast is how I discovered The Book Thief, The Lost City of Z, and Mary Reilly.

The Classic Tales by B. J. Harrison

I am a longtime fan of this podcast where the host reads classic short stories and novellas, most often adventure tales and classic horror (and, unfortunately, the Jeeves stories of P. G. Wodehouse). The episodes vary greatly in length, but most run 45 to 60 minutes. Occasionally, he will produce multiple episodes of longer works, most recently The Turn of the Screw. His accent can be a bit off-putting, but it grows on you. Unfortunately, only his most recent episodes are available for free, but, if you like his style or story selections, all of them are available for purchase on his website.

Philosophy Bites by David Edmonds and Nigel Warburton

This podcast out of the U.K. presents short interviews (15 to 20 minutes) with guest philosophers focusing on a wide variety of very specific philosophical writings, questions, or issues: Plato’s Cave, Hobbes on the State, atheism, medical consent, and so on. Over 100 episodes are available on iTunes and each topic is independent from the next, so feel free to listen to whichever title looks appealing. Philosophy has always been difficult for me to get a handle on and the specificity of the topics really helps me with that.

Out of the Past: Investigating Film Noir by Shannon Clute and Richard Edwards

This series is a must for any fan of film noir. Both professors, not only do Clute and Edwards really know what they are talking about, but they are clearly very passionate about their work. There are a total of 50 episodes, almost all focusing on a single film and generally running 30 to 35 minutes. There are a couple of instances where they pair a classic film with something more contemporary (for example, The Big Sleep and The Big Lebowski) and these run over an hour. Like a lecture course, they sometimes reference earlier episodes and discussions, so I highly recommend listening in some sort of vague chronological order. If you don’t really know the film well, I also recommend Netflixing before listening.

Watching the Directors by Joe and Melissa Johnson

This podcast ran from 2006 to 2008 and has almost 50 episodes. I don’t love the husband and wife team that hosts this series, but I love the concept and structure of looking at the entire career of one director in each episode. I also appreciate the incredible amount of viewing it must have required to put each episode together. The choice of directors runs the gamut from classic (Frank Capra, Ingmar Bergman, Michael Powell) to contemporary (Peter Jackson, Mira Nair, Steven Soderburgh) to iconic (Alfred Hitchcock, Woody Allen, John Hughes). Perhaps because of the time involved, the Johnsons, along with a third host, now host a new series that examines a single film from the angle of its theological, philosophical, and thematic content: Watching Theology is ongoing and has over 30 episodes to date including those on Pulp Fiction, Children of Men, and Fight Club.

12 Byzantine Rulers: The History of the Byzantine Empire by Lars Brownworth
In just 17 episodes (most 25 to 30 minutes long), Brownworth manages to condense over 1000 years of history into a fascinating narrative by focusing on some of the key leaders of the Byzantine Empire. While the original series is long over, his current effort is Norman Centuries, which tells the history of the Normans in England, France, and Italy. To date, there are 10 episodes.

The Dave Ramsey Show by Dave Ramsey

If you are looking to get out of debt, this podcast is a great motivator, particularly on Fridays, when people call in to shout “I’m debt free!” and tell their own personal get-out-of-debt stories. But, fair warning, he thinks you should be sacrificing more to make it happen and his plan is not easy. He also has strong Christian beliefs that he is not afraid to talk about; however, he is pretty good about keeping the show money and debt focused. As someone who used to work in investment consulting, I didn’t really need most of his financial advice (which is extremely sound), but his show played an important role in helping me stick to the strict budget that allowed me to pay off my graduate school loans much earlier than I would have otherwise.

Quick and Dirty Tips

Finally, for help in other areas of your life, I also recommend the “Quick and Dirty Tips” podcasts. This is a group of self-help podcasts each led by a different specialist and focusing on a particular area: legal issues, fitness and health, money matters, etiquette, grammar, etc. The episodes are very short, usually 5 to 10 minutes—which is extremely annoying given how podcasts work on iPods (but I digress). My favorite series are Get-It-Done Guy, who covers managing and organizing your work life, and The Nutrition Diva, who examines such vital questions as “Is high-fructose corn syrup really as bad as they say?” and “Should you spend more for natural gourmet salt?”

Do you listen to podcasts? If so, what are your favorites and why? I have a 30-minute walking commute so I'm always looking for new listening material.

Opera 101—Rock Me Amadeus

From the opening bars of Le Nozze di Figaro (familiar to anyone who has seen Trading Places, another great story of putting one over on an undeserving aristocracy), I was thrilled with my decision to explore the world of opera this year.

In New York, one of my great luxuries was an annual subscription to the New York Philharmonic. So, once my budget here allowed (food and rent are not the only things around here that cost money…), I looked into both the symphony and the ballet. Not thrilled with the programming of either, and seeing that the opera season would include a number of “warhorses,” perfect for a beginner like me, I decided to take the plunge.

Over the years, despite my love of concert music, I have seen only a few classic operas live: La Bohème (it’s an opera), La Traviata, a horrific Carmen in Paris, and a number of productions of Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte. But these have been few and far between.

So, naturally, I decided that some research was in order. I turned, as I often do, to The Teaching Company, which provides educational courses on CD and DVD. These recordings cover a range of topics, from science to history to literature, and can usually be found at your local library. I can’t recommend them enough. If you have any interest in concert music, I highly recommend Robert Greenberg’s lectures, especially How to Listen to and Understand Great Music (48 CDs) and How to Listen to and Understand Opera (32 CDs).

The Marriage of Figaro is featured prominently in Greenberg’s discussion of opera buffa, or Italian comic opera. It’s a fun opera, easy to follow, and very tuneful. Last night’s production seemed to be a very traditional interpretation, but I highly enjoyed it. I was reasonably impressed with the orchestra and singers, whose acting was particularly strong. The set was appropriately Spanish looking. My only complaint was with the supertitles, which were remarkably inconsistent, and, at times, incomplete. My Italian filled in the gaps, but I feel like they could have been handled much better than they were.

But, all in all, this was a great start to the season.

Looking good, Mozart!

[Note: If you missed the multitude of Trading Places references in this post, get thee to Netflix—it's a classic.]