Next Sunday, May 16, I am launching the Brazilian version of my book Quirkyalone, Sósingular: Um Manifesto Para Romanticos Irredutíveis with an event at Terra Brasilis Hostel as part of Santa Teresa’s literary festival, FLIST.

I will actually read in Portuguese for the first time, which will be kind of amazing, and we’ll chat over caipirinhas about the qurkyalone movement, the translation of quirkyalone to sosingular, and the state of quirkyaloneness (or sosingular-ness) in Rio and Brazil.

When: Sunday, May 16, 3 pm

Where: Terra Brasilis, Rua Murtinho Nobre, 156, just opposite the Parque das Ruinas

What: A book launch party for SoSingular: Um Manifesto Para Romanticos Irredutíveis. Join us to learn about the quirkyalone movement worldwide and to talk about single life in Rio. Meet other quirkyalones (or sosingulares) over cairpirinhas!

A quirkyalone is a person who enjoys being single (or spending time alone) and so prefers to wait for the right person to come along rather than dating indiscriminately; relishing equal doses of solitude and friendship; attracted to freedom and possibility.

For more information, visit quirkyalone.net.
_____________________

Quando: domingo, 16 de maio, 03:00

Onde: Terra Brasilis, Rua Murtinho Nobre, 156, em frente ao Parque das Ruinas

O quê: A festa de lançamento do livro para SoSingular: Um Manifesto Para Romanticos Irredutíveis.

This year, I am shaking up my little world by living in Brazil and traveling elsewhere. I started a new blog to chronicle my travels . . . it’s called My Unplanned Adventure and you can check it out here.

 “For me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle.”—Pico Iyer, “Why We Travel”

I am officially in a “life churn” mode. When I’m feeling more Australian and mystical, I might call it my walkabout. I like the violence in the words “life churn”; there is something comfortingly accurate about the language. There is something violent in making big life changes. For me, that was disassembling my apartment of four years. My couch is scattered to the Craigslist winds. A friend is driving my Corolla “Martha,” and my belongings are in beautifully taped purchased boxes (a move so adult and unlike all my others) and squeezed into an 11 x 6 storage unit.

Three suitcases worth of clothes for all seasons are at my mother’s house in Rhode Island, where I am staging my vagabonding adventures. I obsessively compare flights on Kayak and Vayama. I’ve purchased way too many Lonely Planets, because it’s way too hard to decide where to go. For the next six months, I will mostly be on walkabout: so far the known countries are Iceland, France, and Brazil, but honestly anything could happen. That is largely what I am seeking: the unexpected.

My friend Chris coined the term “life churn” a few years ago when we were walking through Prospect Park in Brooklyn. We were talking about our respective homes, where we had lived since college graduation (New York City for him, and San Francisco for me) and whether we should move.

We’ve both been stay-ers for the previous ten years and wondered if we were missing out by being so faithful to one city. Chris suggested that life churns are good for you: they shake things up and get you out of old patterns and into new ones. It’s part of the whole “change is good” philosophy (or assumption). The term “life churn” sounded genius to me, and I filed it away as part of my private lexicon.

Read the rest of this entry »

Without revealing too much, I have been going through many transitions with my family, work, and my dreams for my life. I don’t know what the next six months or year will hold exactly, but I know it’s all going to be brand new and I am excited about that.

That’s all sort of vague, but my real intention is to let you know that I have actually been writing, just not on this blog. Most of my recent stuff can be found at Quirkyalone and at the Huffington Post. Someday I’ll redesign this site to pull in everything I’m working on in some nifty RSS feed. For now, look here and here.

After considerable analysis and mockery (here and here), I have finally joined the Twittering masses. “Masses” is debatable as a term, since, even after Oprah issued her first tweet, the site only claims about 10 million users compared to Facebook’s 200 million worldwide.

Once inside the Twitter echo chamber, it feels like everyone’s life is being revolutionized by the ability to post 140 character status messages. Seriously, though, what’s amazing about Twitter is the contrast between content and form. Users can only post 140 characters, and everyone’s page looks pretty much the same. The “what” varies widely and is completely up for definition. The first Twitter cult member that I met told me Twitter was about sharing “peak experiences”–which I tried for about two days, but wound up feeling like an arms race of cool. Most users seem to use Twitter to share that what their cat ate for dinner last night or to communicate publicly with others (which mostly seems totally boring to me, since I have no idea what they are talking about).

The people I follow, though, tend to be either very focused on a field that interests me (such as blogging strategies or positive psychology) or simply to be interesting people sharing not so much what they are doing but what they are thinking about. As a dilettante, I’m interested in many things: language, gender, quirkyalone- and quirkytogetherness, behavioral changes as a result of technology, community, loneliness, entrepreneurship, and so on. I’m using Twitter not so much to talk about “what I’m doing” but about “what I’m interested in” and to share those links with others. I feel much more permission to be promiscuous in my link-sharing than on Facebook because that’s what Twitter is all about. For now, my Twitter fling is helping me to identify what what I want to write about, the ideas that truly capture and intrigue me. The fact that you have to sum up who you are in 160 characters in the profile has been interesting too–editing always forces you to think harder about what’s most salient about who you are.

I’m not evangelizing for the service and don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s diminishing attention span. But, if you have already succumbed, you can follow me here.

I don’t often feel the compulsion to blog, or twitter, or even update my status on Facebook. In a world where everyone is constantly sharing why would a “writer” want to “write” in such easy-to-distribute formats? There’s so much “content” in the world why would I want to add to the pile? But tonight I do feel the urge to post a random blog post, to say goodbye to a wonderful place in San Francisco that has served as a refuge for me over the last ten years.

Osento was a uniquely San Francisco women’s spa in the Mission District that has existed for over 25 years. Affordable: it only cost $12 to get in. Diverse: full of naked women in every size, shape, color, and nipple style. Unpretentious: the lounging cots offered both stacks of literary magazines and US Weekly. And divinely, sometimes dizzyingly relaxing: there was nothing like emerging from Osento, cleansed from an almost scaldingly-hot water soak and a pore-draining 20 minutes in the wet sauna, to Valencia Street, light-headed and renewed.
Read the rest of this entry »

I’ll be on this panel. . . to RSVP, click on this link:
http://gitfemmepower.eventbrite.com

Join Girls in Tech for an evening filled with extremely exciting and POWERFUL conversations. Have you ever wanted to start a company? Are you curious about the resources you need to start a company?

The Girls in Tech (GIT) Femme-POWER RoundUP was created to bring together female, company founders, CEOs and CTOs to discuss the trials and tribulations of starting and/or running a company, the Do’s and Don’ts when starting to develop a company concept, the “checklist,” and the skills and resources needed to achieve success in the short and long-term.

It is also important to show other women and girls that being a female in a man’s society should not discourage us from becoming the entrepreneurs that we’ve always wanted to be. Female founders and CEOs should serve as role models, educators and connectors to young, aspiring entrepreneurs to help them pave the path to success.

What’s the format?
We will start the event off with a quick, 30-minute Q&A with moderator, Sue Kwon asking the panelists questions about their personal experiences at work/starting their own company and the idea/passion behind it. After the Q&A, we’ll break out into four or five “RoundUP” sessions featuring two panelists at each roundtable engaging, interacting and conversing with smaller groups of attendees. This setting will also allow panelists to ask questions to the audience at their respective tables to better understand their career goals, objectives and what type of company they’re looking to create.

We will finish up with a cocktail celebration/networking event to mix, mingle and engage with the group.

Confirmed panelists include:

Aubrey Sabala, Digg
Kaamna Dhawan, Skewz.com
Rebecca Weeks, RealGirlsMedia
Vanessa Camones, TheMixAgency
Eve Phillips, Chirp Interactive
Jeanine LeFlore, LiveHit
Mary Hodder, Dabble
Jory Des Jardins, Blogher
Layne Gray, Vivanista
Sarah Lacy, BusinessWeek/Yahoo! Tech Ticker
Rebecca Parsons, ThoughtWorks
Sasha Cagen, StyleMob/Glam Media

Moderator: Sue Kwon, Anchorwoman, CBS 5

The cost is $25. To RSVP, please click on this link:
http://gitfemmepower.eventbrite.com

To request an invite, RSVP to sasha at stylemob.com.

I’ve finally arrived in the tech world. I’ve been gossiped about on Valleywag, the tech blog in the well-designed, but icky Gawker empire. I agree with all my journalist friends that these bloggers are NOT journalists.

On Thursday, Valleywag reported that Glam Media bought my company StyleMob. They also reported that I continue on as the sole employee at StyleMob and I’m not happy about the Glam deal. Hmmmm. No one asked me. Here are the facts: I’m now working for Glam as a product manager in charge of social media and community. I’m also continuing to work on StyleMob. While my personal happiness level changes on a daily basis, I think it’s safe to say that I’m happy to have sold my first company. I do, however, love the idea of a blog reporting on my happiness though. The emotional paparazzi!

I’m looking forward to building even more web communities. This time I’m coming full circle with quirkyalone. Watch out world, for quirkytogether. . . !