Why it's Awesome to be a Nerd - Wil Wheaton

"Being a nerd...it's not about what you love. It's about how you love it... It doesn't matter what it is. The way you love that and the way that you find other people who love it the way you do is what makes being a nerd awesome... Now listen, this is really important, I want you to be honest, honorable, kind, I want you to work hard, because everything worth doing is hard, and I want you to be awesome."

Who Is Your Everyone?

For this post I will be channeling my inner Oprah.

Michael Phelps is heeeeeeeeeeerrrrreeeeeee.

Sorry, just had to get in the spirit.

Last month I took a cross country road trip with my family which enabled me to get my O magazine on (otherwise this post would be like, "Did you see what came out of my son's diaper the other day?") In it I found this article and had my "aha moment."

The author Martha Beck (not actually Oprah herself so I guess I should stop throwing salt water taffies at the screen) explained that we are all programmed to care what other people think of us even when we try not to. Beck says, "We operate under the constant scrutiny of an imaginary audience. Sociologists call this audience our generalized other, or as I call it, our everybody committee. Your generalized other is actually based on the mental magnification of just a few people, often the most judgemental people you know."

Ask yourselves these questions:

Everybody wants me to_________________________________________

Everybody thinks I'm ___________________________________________

Everybody expects me to _______________________________________

Everyone's always telling me _____________________________________

Now think of the responses. Who in your life do you think gives you those responses?

Maybe all of you out there are like, "Everyone I know is my biggest fan and therefore everyone thinks I toot rainbows!!" Well good for you. You don't even need Oprah, you sound like you have things under control. You reach for those stars, girlfriend.

The rest of us might need some help. At least I did. As I answered those questions in my head I had some very negative responses.

Everyone wants me to....................................... sit on a pin

Everyone thinks I'm........................................... colossally irritating

Everyone expects me to..................................... be someone that I'm not

Everyone's always telling me............................... that I ruin lives and drink too much Diet Coke

I read on about how most people take one or two people that have expressed harsh judgement of them and project it on to "what everyone thinks of me." Aha.

I am INCREDIBLY blessed with some seriously wonderful, supportive friends and family that all really seem to love me. In fact I don't even have a few meanies on my committee. I only have one! How lucky is that? That in all my life I've only encountered one person that is kind of a judgmental cranky pants? Those are seriously good odds. But, as Oprah stared deeply into my soul and rightly pointed out, I am letting myself think that this one crank's opinion of me is everyone's opinion of me, and that is just not the case.

So what do we do if we find out that our committee is filled with cranky pants? We channel Donald Trump, fire the cranks, and hire some better people!

On my 25th birthday I made my husband give me 25 compliments. Compliments are sort of an inner struggle for him because he doesn't really enjoy putting his sarcasm on hold long enough to give them, so it was a special birthday treat. At the end of the night I remember saying to him, "Wow. I wish everyone thought as highly of me as you do." Now that is an obvious hire right there. In fact, I am appointing him the new president of my everyone committee. And he is totally going to rig all future elections, so I'm pretty much set.

Everyone wants me to....................... get cloned so that the world can be full of perfect people like me.

Everyone thinks I'm........................... prettier than Princess Kate.

Everyone expects me to..................... lay in my bed and eat cookies all day because I totally deserve it.

Everyone's always telling me............... that Candle in the Wind was really written about me.

What can I say, everyone just really loves me!

Now maybe there's another magazine out there for when reading O gave you a little too much self confidence and you've taken to walking around with a scepter.

It's Friday!

I love this story about a Dad who hacked into a video game so that his girl could win the game as a female character and save Mario.

If you're nerdy like me, here's an idea for a fun game to play with a preschooler. I can't wait to hear what my three year old thinks about some of my books.

I used to work with this wonderful woman named Brenda. We've both since moved on from that job, but have kept in touch thanks to Facebook and Instagram. She quit her full-time job to pursue her dream and I couldn't be more proud of her. She has started Hearth magazine. The blog, Instagram feed, and Pinterest board all have me so excited for the first issue.

This video of a science experiment in space has been making the rounds on Facebook lately, and it's too cool not to share.

There many many reasons I am glad summer is on its way, but one reason is this- avocado basil pasta. It's one of those recipes that is so easy that you can't believe just how delicious it is.

If you're looking for a good and uplifting book to read, I've got just the one for you: Wonder by R.J. Palicio. From Goodreads: "August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school—until now. He's about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances?"

One of my favorite podcasts (Pop Culture Happy Hour) always ends with a segment called "Here's what's making me happy this week." I'm going to be a copycat and steal their idea. What is making me happy this week is Ben & Jerry's Liz Lemon greek frozen yogurt.

5 Ways to Own Your Finances

Don't forget today is the last day to enter our giveaway!

Okay, okay. I know that finances don't typically fall into the category of loveliness. Bear with me.

My husband and I are aren't bad with money. We've never had any debt except a little student loan debt and a small moving-related setback right after we got married. But we also haven't managed to save a whole lot, and since our main current source of income was until recently commission-based rather than salaried, it could sometimes be a little nerve-wracking waiting for the next paycheck to come, especially when some months it might still not be enough.

But I'm telling you, our family started the first budget that we've really stuck to in a long time, and it feels lovely. Here are some of the things that have really helped us cut down our unnecessary spending and get money in savings for the first time in our two years of marriage. (Note: some of the things we've been doing were inspired by Brain Ford's 8 Pillars of Financial Greatness. It is awesome.)

1. Base your budget on the things you value most. If you value your family, travel, and staying out of debt, why would you spend your money on cars you can't afford, too much fast food, and expensive electronics? Sit down with your family, make a list of the things you value most, and then look at what you spend your money on. You will probably be shocked at how much you spend on things you actually don't care about at all, and how quickly little nothing purchases eat away at your money. Our list of values looked something like this (except there were a bunch more): 
   • Family - future and extended (i.e. having enough money to meet our obligations to current and future kids, and being able to visit our family in other states)
   • Security - having a place to live and a reliable car, being able to afford food and gas and stay out of debt
   • Relationships - being able to spend time together and build memories (vacations, date nights, fun outings together, etc.)
   • Health - being able to pay for insurance so we can go to the doctor if necessary; being able to eat healthy foods
   • Etc.
   Once we saw our values written out, it was easy to make some choices that had been hard before. For example, I wanted to use our tax return to buy a new computer, but when I really thought about what I valued, I realized I'd rather wait on the computer and instead put aside some savings so we can afford to have more kids, and so we can go to visit family in Texas this summer.
2. Establish an emergency fund. It doesn't have to be huge at first, but you should consistently add to it, and you shouldn't touch it except in an emergency. Your TV going out in the middle of football season is probably not an emergency. Your furnace going out in the middle of winter is. If you have an emergency fund, you don't have to go into debt when your car breaks down or you find out you have twelve cavities, and you don't have to lose your financial momentum (especially if you're paying off debt) or destroy your budget to take care of it. You have the money saved, you pay for your emergency and carry on with your life. We had a large tax refund this year and put $1000 nest egg in our emergency fund, which made me feel awesome.
3. If you can't figure out why your money disappears so fast, switch to cash and debit cards instead of credit cards. Credit cards are convenient, and some people pay them off at the end of each month and just use them to get rewards without going into debt, which is fine. (Using them to buy things you can't afford so you end up paying twice what the thing cost in the first place is probably a bad idea though.) That said, there is definitely a switch that goes off in your head when you have to hand the cashier $50 in cash. It will make you think about everything you add to the cart. (I kid you not, we have put back a bag of sausages before or decided not to buy olive oil until next week just because we have our grocery budget in cash. Maybe it's silly that we walk through the grocery store going, "$43.50! $47! $51!," but we stick to our budget.) We pull out our money for our groceries, gas and discretionary funds at the beginning of the month, and we don't spend any more than that on those things, even if we have it in our bank account.
4. If you share finances with someone else, you should each have a discretionary fund. There are things you want to buy that your partner doesn't care about. There are things your partner spends money on that you think are stupid. Establish a certain small amount each month that you can each spend without feeling like you need to justify it to your partner, and without feeling guilty about spending your family's money. Budgets feel a little like diets sometimes, and diets always go better if you get to eat some of the things you love even though you're cutting back overall. Having a discretionary fund will make you feel less stifled by your budget (so you won't suddenly splurge in revolt), but it will also make you aware of what you're spending on little purchases here or there. Because we take that money out in cash, we can also save it if we want to make a bigger purchase for ourselves, and it doesn't end up getting spent on something for the kids or the car. Last month I bought a couple of t-shirts for myself at the beginning of the month, a couple of treats for myself and my husband somewhere in the middle, and went out to lunch and to Old Navy with a friend at the end of the month. I didn't have to worry about whether I was spending money we didn't have because it was mine, and it had already been figured into the budget. 
5. Automate your budget as much as possible. A lot of your monthly bills will let you set things up so you can have them automatically deducted from your checking account. In the same manner, you can (gasp!) have money pulled directly from your paycheck into various savings accounts - then you don't even have to look at it when it comes in - you just start assuming you have less money to spend, until that day when you have lots of money to spend, on something neat like a house down payment. We have all of our monthly bills (utilities, student loans, insurance, etc.) deducted automatically from our account, plus we transfer money from each paycheck into different savings accounts: one for emergencies, one for travel, one for our next baby (so we don't have to spend nine months paying the next one off like we did with the first one.) 

Being aware of your finances is not a drag. It's liberating when you start to realize you can save a little money and you aren't panicked when the bills come in each month. It might not happen all at once, but no matter how much money you make, having good financial habits will make you feel more in control of your life. And that is lovely.

Confessions of a Former Teenager

If you ever want to feel young at heart, I have decided that all you need to do is spend extended amounts of time with your immediate family. I recently returned from a wonderful ten-day visit to my parents’ home where I was joined by all five of my sisters and, for the first time in years, no husbands or kids! Now, I love my family and we love being around each other so much that we are usually planning our next visit before the current visit has even ended, but this time around, without husbands to distract us, I realized that I am not entirely sure that my family realizes who I am these days. An act as simple as putting my own dishes away after dinner elicited the strongest reactions.

“GASP! GAH! What?! Why is Jill loading the dishwasher?!”

Oh, right. Because I never did the dishes WHEN I WAS FOURTEEN.

Everything from going to bed before midnight to not buying an expensive pair of pants I really wanted caused my sisters to choke on whatever gum they were chewing at the time. As the week went on I really had to wonder- just how bad of a teenager had I been?

Pretty bad.

Granted, I was never arrested and any actual illegal acts were kept for special occasions, but that’s about all that can be said for my friends and I.

Not too long ago I was asked to help out with my church’s youth group. For the past month these delightful young things have almost daily made me want to hop on a plane to Texas, hunt out the poor, abused adults who at one time attempted to do for me what I am striving to do for these girls today, and apologize. Unfortunately, that would take far too much time and involve hunting down far too many teachers, mentors and leaders of my past who I am sure are still questioning whether I ever made it to adulthood. I suppose all I can do, then, is marvel at the Universe’s ability to dish out my comeuppance all these years later…

Deep down inside, I’m sure that my family realizes that I am no longer that teenager and am instead a 28-year-old who will soon be a mother of my own child, but I suppose I can’t begrudge them their decade-long adjustment period to the New Jill. Heck, even I fought for a ridiculous amount of time before I finally admitted to myself that I just don’t get Justin Bieber. (Now is the moment I thank my lucky stars that have yet to jump on the Twitter train so I can’t be blasted by his five billion and three Twitter followers. Phew!) If that isn’t a sign of adulthood, I’m not sure what is.

I recently encountered one of those picture quotes that are so ubiquitous on Facebook these days. “I’m 30 but I still feel like I’m 20.” it said. “Until I hang out with 20 year olds…then I’m like, nope never mind. I’m 30.”

It’s like they could read my mind or something. My name (Jill) may mean “forever child” according to almost every baby name book out there, but for the first time in quite a while I am ready to abandon the quest for the fountain of youth and declare that this particular definition of who I am is an honorary title rather than a literal description of my life.

So, all of you out there wondering if the youngsters in your life are ever going to make it through…just hang in there. We all usually come around in the end. If you need an extra boost along the way, however, just let me know- I’ll send you my Mom’s number and y’all can commiserate.