New Experience #98: Little Merry Sunshine Joins ChicagoNOW!

Image from ChicagoNow.com

Effective today, November 17, 2013, Little Merry Sunshine has joined ChicagoNow, the blogging platform of the Chicago Tribune Media Group.

Writer Jessica Gardner describes this move as an enormous honor and opportunity. "It has always been my dream to become a published writer and this opportunity to partner with ChicagoNow is the first step towards making that dream a reality. I am thrilled and honored to be associated with such a notable publication. Little Merry Sunshine will be exposed to a much wider audience and that presents endless opportunities."

As you may recall, Little Merry Sunshine has previously been recognized by the Chicago Tribune. In March 2009, LMS was named one of Chicago's Best Blogs and then appeared on the front page of the Tribune online on April 17, 2009.

These were enormous honors and and joining ChicagoNOW is the logical next step.

The original Little Merry Sunshine site will not disappear. The articles and all of your comments will continue on into perpetuity. New Little Merry Sunshine blog posts will appear at ChicagoNow.com/Little-Merry-Sunshine. Please bookmark the new site.

This will be the last post on the original Little Merry Sunshine blog. The first Little Merry Sunshine post on ChicagoNOW will appear on Monday, November 18th.

What does this mean for current Little Merry Sunshine readers?

• If you receive LMS via email, your subscription has been moved to the new blog on ChicagoNOW. You don't need to take any action.
• If you read LMS via a reader, you'll need to grab a new feed. You can do that by visiting the new site here.
• If you read LMS on the website, please update your bookmarks and visit the new site.
• If you link to LMS on your website or blog, please update your links to direct readers to the new Little Merry Sunshine.
• And if you haven't done so already, please like Little Merry Sunshine on Facebook.

What does this mean for Little Merry Sunshine and me?

• I still own all of my content. It will simply live on the ChicagoNOW site.
• Being part of the ChicagoNow network means that I will be exposed to many more readers.

I make this promise to you: You've been a loyal reader since I began blogging on July 1, 2007. You've stuck with me during my down periods and times when I had no idea if I could write anymore. You have always come back. That means the world to me and I'm grateful for each and every one of you. I will not forget you and I will not let you down. 

Little Merry Sunshine will continue to be all the things you love. I'll talk about my 100 New Experiences, what inspires and/or amuses me, politics, sports, dreams, Sammy and Zoey, and much more. Hopefully, I'll continue to be funny sometimes. At least for a little while, however, I'll probably cut back on some of the more personal things I've written about here. At least until I get my footing.

I hope you'll follow me over to ChicagoNOW and continue the conversation.

BTW, that's 73 of 100 New Experiences completed!

100 New Experiences: 7 Month Update

I've been working on my 100 New Experiences list for exactly seven months today and I've had 68 new experiences so far!

WOW.

So I have a new goal: 100 by December 31st and 150 by April 10, 2014.

Yep, you read that right. I've upped the ante 50%. Not to worry, I've got a plan.

By November 17th, I'll reach 73 New Experiences:

• Reupholstering my dining room chairs (#29)
• Hiking Lake County (#97)
• Become a Deputy Voter Registrar (#131)
• Apply to become a Notary Public (#132)
• Build a futon (#138)

By November 24th, I plan to reach 76 New Experiences:

• Workout everyday before work for 1 week (#80)
• Visit the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library & Museum (#56)
• Get my personal Inbox to ZERO (#66)

By December 1st, I will have had 81 New Experiences:

• Complete the Plank Pose Challenge (#125)
• Complete NaBloPoMo (#126)
• Visit the Illinois Holocaust Museum (#46)
• Try acupuncture (#107)
• Open an Etsy store (#69)

By December 7th, I will reach 85 New Experiences:

• Make curtains for my guest room (#119)
• Move Little Merry Sunshine to its own domain (#98)
• Pay off someone's layaway at Walmart (up to $100) (#77)
• Climb an indoor rock climbing wall (#99)

By December 14th, I will reach 90 New Experiences:

• Visit Zoolights (#109)
• Visit the Chicago Cultural Center (#127)
• Stand on the ledge at the Sears Tower (#26)
• Find 2 more new experiences for this week

By December 22nd, I will have had 95 New Experiences:

• Visit the Milwaukee Art Museum (#103)
• Dine at the Hob Nob Supper Club (#60)
• Have dinner at the Heartland Cafe (#136)
• Visit the Field Museum (#35)
• Have one more new experience this week

By December 31st, I will reach my goal of 100 New Experiences:

• Ice skate at Millennium Park (#102)
• Go to the Green Mill (#115)
• Serve dinner in a soup kitchen (#41)
• Visit the Museum of Science & Industry (#30)
• Sing karaoke (#19)

And there you have it. That's my game plan for the next 6 1/2 weeks. Want to join me on any of my adventures? Let's team up!

Victory is Mine! New Experience #65: Get My Work Email Inbox to ZERO

Hi. I'm Jessica and I am an email hoarder.

(The first step is admitting I have a problem)

When I got to work on Friday morning, I had over 2,500 emails in my Inbox. I have no idea how many I had in my Sent Mail folder, but my Deleted folder had over 9,000 emails all waiting for me to hit the button and permanently delete them.

My entire mailbox was 1,058,359 kilobytes (that's 1.00933 GIGAbytes for you techies) in size. That's pretty big.

My goal for the day was to reduce my overall mailbox size by as much as I could. I know that's not very specific, but it honestly wasn't even within my realm of possibilities that I could achieve the infamous Inbox Zero status.

I simply wanted my email to easily convert easily from life on our servers to life in the Cloud so I would be able to work this morning without incident. The smaller the mailbox, the quicker the conversion over the weekend and the less risk for problems.

Immediately, I understood that there was no way I could review every single email and I was going to have to make some decisions. I started by deleting everything in my Inbox from 2011 (when I started working at LFGSM). That knocked out some, but didn't make a dent.

Next, I organized my email by sender and this was the key to my success. I started by deleting all unsolicited emails from businesses trying to sell me something, all emails from listservs, all one-off emails, and all personal emails (there were only a small handful of those, really). Now, I'd gotten somewhere. That took me down to about 750 emails.

Up next on the chopping block were emails from former employers. I was able to quickly glance through those, file any that I needed to keep, and delete the rest. This cut my Inbox in half.

375 emails were manageable, so I reviewed what was left by sender and subject. If I'd answered the email, there was nothing for me to follow-up on now, and the project was complete, I hit delete. If they were emails I needed to follow-up on, I created a "to do" on my calendar for tomorrow. If they were emails that contained valuable information for a project that's active, I filed them in the appropriate project folder. This took me to 20 emails.

Twenty emails that required immediate action. I took action, deleted the emails, and viola! I had achieved Inbox ZERO!

Now, my whole mailbox is 179,973 KILObytes (0.17164 Gigabytes)! That's right, I reduced by mailbox size by 83%! That's so great, I've got to say it again, but slightly differently. My mailbox is a mere 17% of its former self. Damn. I'm good.

How does this feel? It feels freeing. I am liberated from the stress that I've overlooked something in my email. I'm not worried that I should go back through my email and find out what's there. 99% of it wasn't important.

My goal now is to maintain this and to go home nightly with nothing pending in my Inbox. To achieve this goal, I've created new rules for my listserv emails and other low and high priority emails and I've unsubscribed to vendors who have nothing to offer me.

What types of folders and rules have I created? I created folders for emails for my boss, for departments, for subscriptions from LinkedIn and CASE, and out of office replies. Emails from my boss are obviously high priority, so I have directed them to one folder where I can easily find and reply to them quickly. Out of office emails from alumni often contain valuable information (e.g., "Bill Smith no longer works at Xerox") and they're mildly important, but I only need to review them weekly. If they're in one place, I can quickly scroll through and extract the important information. Likewise, my CASE, LinkedIn, and Listserv emails sometimes contain information I like to know about, but I don't need to review them daily.

Those are just a few of my secrets to keeping my email organized and reduce my stress level.

What are your tips?

P.S. I came home tonight at Inbox Zero. Day 2 is in the books.

Here's what Inbox Zero looks like.

Next Year's Watervale Goal: Climb Baldy at Night

The view from the top of Baldy would be 1000 times better than this.

Over the last few years, as I am planning my Watervale trip, I have developed the habit of challenging myself physically. In 2004, I climbed Baldy for the first time in almost 15 years. In 2008, I learned to kayak and kayaked from Lower Herring Lake through the Outlet and over the dam to Lake Michigan and back. This year, I climbed Baldy and swam to BooHoo. Accomplishing each of these goals makes me truly proud and confident in myself.

And now, thanks to my friend Benny Jay*, who I have known for close to 20 years because he and his family have the great sense to vacation at Watervale, I know what I'm going to do next summer . . . I'm going to climb Baldy at night.

Benny Jay's daughters climbed Baldy one night while we were there. (Go read about their adventure here). Now, I will grant you, these amazing women are half my age and they run Baldy everyday, but I can do this too.

I've always wanted to climb Baldy at night, but never really let myself entertain the thought for more than a few fleeting moments because I didn't think I could. But that's the benefit of making the decision to do it now: I've got 11 months to get into shape for it and all the exercise will help me in my plan to lose weight before I turn 40 (see Bucket List Item #22).

I can only imagine the sight of a sky with a full 360 degree view of stars without the glare of lights or trees blocking the way. Maybe I'll see some shooting stars or even the Northern Lights.

Plus, I think that climbing Baldy at night may be a terrific way to celebrate my 40th birthday.

*Benny Jay is the best writer in Chicago. Seriously. He keeps all the politicians on their toes with his work for The Reader and his exposure of Mayor Daley's favorite slush fund: TIFs. In his spare time writes for the second best blog in the city, The Third City. If you're not already doing so, you should read Benny Jay's work every day.

Never Give Up On Your Dreams

I have heard this story about Barack Obama attending the 2000 Democratic Convention a number of times, but it bears repeating.

From The Economist:

EIGHT YEARS ago Barack Obama was thoroughly humiliated at the Democratic Convention in Los Angeles. He had recently lost a congressional primary in Chicago, and both his political and personal bank accounts were empty. The rental car company rejected his credit card. He failed to get hold of a floor pass and ended up watching the proceedings on a big screen in a car park. He returned home with his tail between his legs before the week was out—and lef the celebrations to the people who mattered, not least the Clintons, who took every chance to seize the limelight from the Gores.

This year Mr Obama is the Democratic convention. The Pepsi Centre in Denver will be chock-a-block with people cheering about “hope” and “change”. On August 28th Mr Obama will deliver his acceptance speech at a local football stadium, Invesco Field, before an audience of more than 70,000. The man who could not get a floor pass in Los Angeles has a better than even chance of winning the presidential election in November—the current Intrade market odds are running 61 to 38 in his favour—and thereby becoming America’s first non-white president.

Eight years. That's all it took from the time Barack Obama was arguably at one of the lowest points in his life to reach the pinnacle (and hopefully an even higher pinnacle on November 4th) of his life.

Clearly, he never gave up on his dreams. What could we achieve if we kept our focus clear in our sight, our dreams pure in our heart, and ignored all the nay-sayers?