Do you ever hear your friend’s talk about an experience and think, “I want to do that too!!” And I had that same reaction when my friends were talking about Book Club, hard pass on going to Burning Man.

TL;DR

Find my friends at burning man, they will have lip/body balms
Book club read: High Achiever by Tiffany Jenkins, a true story about addiction

Burning Man Principles

Assorted lip and body balms — Homemade Balms Flavors: Calm, Peppermint, Orange made by Tanya & Patricia, the metamorphic, butterfly burners

To be a fly on the wall as your friends plan for Burning Man is fascinating. You get to see the practical aspect of packing what they need to survive and the creative side of what they’ll share and wear.

The playa has a gifting economy, to help people stay moisturized, they’ve made 150 tubes of a lip and body balm with “secret messages” in the colored letters. If you are going to Burning Man, I hope you find my friends at the red lampshade creperie camp. They have surprise food gifts and these lovely balms in 3 flavors.

Burning Man (remote)

My ideal Burning Man experience is one I can enjoy from the comfort of home while navigating through the playa via an iPad controlling a drone or GoPro’s live streaming from my friends camelbacks or bikes. I would love to tune into different cameras and be a commentator for the artwork and experiences. To be able to turn on sights and sounds from different neighborhoods like you were flipping channels on TV. I finally understand why kids watch other kids play video games on YouTube or Twitch.

Why Book Club?

Along the lines of living vicariously, I joined my best friend’s Book Club to be exposed to books I wouldn’t ordinary select and to explore topics that make me uncomfortable, to continue learning and growing. The first book, definitely hit my book club goals.

LIGHTWEIGHT BOOK REPORT

The book we read was called High Achiever by Tiffany Jenkins. The book was a difficult read because it dragged you painfully into the main character’s addiction and withdrawal. It brought me to a dark place and sadly, made reading incredibly unpleasant because I tend to experience the main character’s feelings as the story progresses. While it made me uncomfortable, I empathized with the struggles reading from a junkie’s point of view. Even though it wasn’t a fun read, I’m grateful for the chance to discuss such a difficult subject with intelligent women. I was impressed with how open people were with personal experiences which paralleled the book. I loved hearing everyone’s opinions and how the book affected them.

I love reading because it allows you experience life outside your comfort zone; to travel, to be rich or poor, see life through different ethnic lenses, and learn from the journey in the book.

This book taught me empathy and patience because you never know what people are struggling with. You often don’t know the pain they are recovering from or covering up. You never know how your words or actions can uplift or crush the people around you.

Eats

First Course

Assortment of 5 cheeses and 3 crackers
Spicy Fig Jelly
Red Pepper Jelly
Habanero Pork Rinds
Spread (ramen, Szechuan beef, flaming hot cheetos, jalepeño Fritos)

Second Course

Jasmine Brown Rice
Zoodles with Crushed Tomatoes, Corn, & Cilantro
Dry Rubbed Chicken Thighs

Dessert (not pictured)

Berry Trio
Homemade Whipped Cream (heavy cream, vanilla, cinnamon, & coconut palm sugar)

Technology Used

Samsung Galaxy S8
Evernote to write and edit
WordPress app to layout and publish

No excuses, use that little computer in your hand to blog. I wrote and edited this post after book club, while watching stand up comedy on Netflix.

If you must watch TV, create while you consume. ~Cheryl

One of my favorite events to attend are the Bay Area Girl Geek Dinners. Even though, I’m not a developer or a software engineer, these events are always exciting because you get to learn about how people use technology to solve problems and network with other women in tech. One of the best parts about attending is you get a sneak peek at the culture in the companies that host these dinners. Every time, I leave one of these gatherings, I have a feeling of inspiration coupled with a tinge of imposter syndrome.

Feeling Imposter Syndrome

Being in a room full of smart, women engineers/developers is inspiring, intimidating and sometimes disheartening when their reaction when you don’t have an engineering or developer title is “oh…”. I’m curious to learn about their journey, what were their biggest problems, how they solved them and what tools they used. I can appreciate how they attacked a problem because I can use those approaches to solve issues I’m having in one of my passion projects. Even without a developer title, I could build a website by hacking together a WordPress theme with the right framework and combination of plugins with some customizations to create the features my clients need. While some people’s passion is to “be a developer”, my goal is to be a creator, and what I lack in technical skills, I make up for in resourcefulness.

Don’t Let Titles Hold You Back

As a creator and future entrepreneur, I will continue to attend these gatherings to learn from more technical counterparts to figure out how to make what I want using the tools and resources created by developers and software engineers. When I started writing this post, it was because I thought I should stop attending the girl geek dinners because I wasn’t “technical” enough. By the time I finished, I realized the reason to go is to keep up with technology because that is what excites me. Labels and titles shouldn’t be a reason avoid going to events you are passionate about and you should never let imposter syndrome hold you back from learning.

Burning Man Gifts & Book Club