High Holy Mass of Contradictions

The Ethical Dilemma of Providing Marketing Services and Tools « Internet Marketing Blog

It's been almost a year since Sitening and I parted ways, and it was clear even at that time that their hearts were wrapped up in Raven, not in providing consulting services. My understanding is that, since then, they've been whittling down the clients they were consulting to, but this post declares services entirely gone.

Kudos to Sitening/Raven for taking a bold, decisive step to eliminate the chance for conflict of interest, or even the appearance of it. And of course, if you get good leads for SEO work, you can always refer 'em to [meta]marketer. ;)

If you're following along at home, you may recall that I switched to a raw diet over two months ago. I wasn't sure how far I would take it, but I just wanted to give it a good solid effort. A lot of people have asked me if I see this as a permanent thing, and my answer is always that I don't know. Based on how good I've felt since I switched, I'd like to, but it definitely requires an investment of time and money that have been considerable.

Perhaps I should give a more detailed update. ( Week by week... )

I had a great pilates workout this morning, and I'm feeling peaceful. It feels like a lifelong change, but maybe it isn't, who knows. Either way, I had a conversation with Karsten yesterday about the label I use to describe myself (hey, I'm a language geek at heart - of course this matters) because I've run across terms like "rawfoodist" and "living foods" and "sun foods" and they all seem to miss the point for me. I pointed out that "raw vegan" appealed to me a lot more because being vegan is much more the identity that matters to me. Not only my diet, but also my lifestyle, my politics, and my entire worldview are first and foremost about compassion. Raw is just a modification of my vegan diet to make me feel as healthy as possible.

So yes, apparently, I've become a raw vegan. And so far, I'm doing great, thanks.

At a Chamber of Commerce mixer the other night, the woman who is my membership representative was telling a story about how she met me to someone else there. (She was in the audience when I was on a panel on women in technology at last year's BarCamp Nashville.) She mentioned that, at one point, when the panel was discussing children and family and I said that I had no interest in having kids, the woman next to her in the audience muttered something like "what an empty thing to admit."

I'm glad she told me that story because I do like to have a read on people's reactions to my choices and lifestyle. But that woman in the audience? Fuck her.

(P.S. - Also? I can't believe I didn't already have a "child-free" tag. Have I truly never talked about this here before? I mean, Karsten and I organized the Nashville Child-Free Meetup for the first few years we were here. How did this never come up before?)

I've decided to switch to a raw diet for a while. Again. I've done it a few times before and I always feel incredibly healthy and energetic, but it takes so long to prepare enough food for a day that I usually find I don't have enough time.

And that will probably happen this time, too, but at least I can get a few good days of it in, hopefully, or learn to mix it into my lifestyle as a day or two each week of raw eating.

The other side effect I'm hoping for, predictably enough, is to shed some of the extra me I've gained since my thyroidectomy last year (and there's a pretty generous amount of me gained). I'd prefer to be a somewhat thinner me again. (I want to stress that I'm not dieting in the women's magazine sense of the word - I'm changing my lifestyle in a way that feels great and has historically resulted in my body dropping some of its excess.) We'll see how it goes.

(Ooh, and I went for a pretty decent run Saturday for the first time in weeks, if not almost months. I think just the idea of eating raw gives me energy. :) )

Anyway, the above article caught my eye because Karsten and I were just chatting yesterday about making a trip to Germany. We weren't specific about whether we meant for our next vacation or just sometime in the indefinite future but I kind of think it might be within the next year, which is exciting! I haven't been back to Germany since I spent a summer there as an intern in 1993. But I was also not vegetarian then let alone vegan, let alone raw vegan, and I was totally unaware at the time of the groundswell of alternative diet support there seems to be throughout pockets of Germany. This time it will be essential, but also exciting to explore and discover veggie-friendly places to eat and shop. Basically, I want to be a food tourist. :)

From The 237 reasons women have sex - Holy Kaw!

"Nobody has really talked about how women can use sex for all sorts of resources." Their main reason was "orgasm, orgasm, orgasm."

That this was in any way elusive is a mystery to me. :)

In my Remember the Milk account, my lists generally correspond to the greater goals I have for my life. (I borrowed that concept from Life Balance, actually.) I just changed the name of a list in Remember the Milk from "Reach Out" to "Develop Relationships." Functionally, the tasks that go into the list are basically unchanged, but I think this renaming appeals to me because it reflects a significant shift in my thinking over the past months, which is two-fold:

1. The nature of the company I started this year lends itself to meeting a lot of people, all the time. (It's a web marketing agency, and the billable work is done almost entirely by freelance and independent talent so that we can fit the right people to the tasks. So I'm always recruiting.) I naturally meet a lot of people that [meta]marketer doesn't have any current work for, but I have been paying attention to when I can make introductions between people who might be able to help each other. So I'm interested in developing relationships between other people. So some of the tasks that go into this list read like "send email introducing so-and-so to so-and-so."



2. My social networks are growing, and I'm less interested in having a vast collection of people around me that I have no connection to than I am in having at least SOME connection with most of them and always deepening the connections with as many as possible. So I'm interested in developing relationships between myself and others. Some of the tasks that go into this list, then, are things like "Follow up with so-and-so from the mixer the other night."

I also have a daily recurring task that reminds me to check Facebook for birthdays. I really enjoy wishing people a happy birthday, and it means that I can count on at least one interaction with most of the people in my network (some don't list their birthdays) every year. That may not sound like much, but that one birthday wish has often led to messages back and forth catching up a bit and getting to know people I may have only gone to school with or hung out with at a conference.

How do you approach developing relationships? Is it something you just do, or do you have methods of organizing it into your life, as well?

I know, folks are probably sick of me having so many sites. But I like the idea of a Posterous-style tumbler blog, and I want to see if I actually use it.

Subscribe or don't, it's up to you. :)

Posted via email from Kate O'Neill and then some

I'm trying to get a local sushi place to create a menu item based on a custom roll I devised. Some friends have since named it the "Kate O'Roll."

It's avocado, cucumber, and mango inside with seaweed salad over top.

Yummmm.

I got it into my head yesterday that I needed yellow flats. This morning I was browsing online shoe sites, trying to find the ideal pair. I'd narrowed it down to a few, of which the lowest-price pair was $35.

Then Karsten and I randomly stopped in a thrift store on our way to a party, and I found yellow shoes. Not quite flats, but low wedges, so they're almost better, because flats actually make my size-11 feet look huge. (Well, they are huge, but they don't have to be so obvious about it.) 

And they were only $6. Yay!

> From: karsten soltauer
> Date: July 15, 2009 3:25:12 PM CDT
> To: Stone Fox
> Subject: techno sapien
>
> have you seen this? would you like one? let me know.
>
> http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2106/2414194397_9a484b1d75.jpg
>
> love you.