August 29, 2014

Secrets of Effective Communication

 coffee breakfast table

I don’t speak Spanish. Until recently, this never effected my ability for effective communication. Then, about 2 weeks ago, I moved to Spain.    All of a sudden, my lack of Spanish was quite a relevant and important part of my day-to-day life.  I am working in an American setting here and could honestly probably get by without learning much of the language, but my interactions with shop-keepers, waiters and cute boys in bars classy museums now center around my very minimal command of a foreign language. Like every time I travel, I was immediately reminded of the other ways that exist for friendly and effective communication.  Get your mind…

Read more

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

August 24, 2014

How to Practice Self-Reflection

August brings up a lot of thoughts about how to practice self-reflection. Here’s why: the other activity options are terrible.  1. Gazing at my gelato-cellulite dappled pale thighs in the sunlight.  2. Sweating profusely into my flip flops.   3. Squinting adorably in the bright, burning sunlight.  In contrast to these practices, learning how to practice self-reflection sounds great. To make it more appealing, self-reflection can be completed in air-conditioned rooms.  Hence my month of deep and mindful thinking. The Practice of Self-Reflection Here’s the thing about self-reflection-its difficult.  If done correctly it’s an intense, creative process akin to art or music.  (I suck at art and music.)  It’s time…

Read more

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

August 12, 2014

Addicted to stuff

As I packed for my move to Spain, I realized I have too much stuff. Stuff I should keep, stuff I should throw away, stuff I should plan to keep in storage, stuff that can be reused or recycled, stuff I should plan to buy in Europe.  All this talk has kept me up at night, wondering:   When is enough too much? What would we have time to do if we spent less time buying/organizing/admiring/rolling around in/getting buried by all our stuff?     There is simply too much stuff in the world. The volume of material that is created, recycled, passed around and thrown away on this planet…

Read more

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

July 30, 2014

Inspiration

Inspiration: the lifeblood of creativity. Newsflash–creativity is hard work! Original thoughts isn’t just laying around out there with the empty 16 Handles containers on the sticky summer sidewalks of Manhattan.  I’ve spent a lot of time this summer considering where my inspiration comes from and I’ve had some surprising results. Though I love my forever home of New York City and most people consider it to be a hotbed of creative thought, I realized this summer that I feel most inspired in nature. I find fire to be a tremendous source of inspiration. Just to be contradictory and confusing, I also find a wellspring of creativity (especially for writing) during…

Read more

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

March 16, 2014

Dating in New York City

 car on street in daytime

As a reminder, my New Year’s Resolution was to start dating in New York City. I know. Yikes.  But now that we are easing into March, I feel have some helpful observations about dating in New York (spoiler alert: people don’t love it)Here’s what I think: Dating in New York City is hilarious.  Here are my favorite new things about dating in NYC: 1) It’s a casualhookup.com world.  It is totally socially acceptable, and almost expected, that 20s and 30s New Yorkers meet strangers on internet dating sites and then text them while intoxicated to meet up. Dinner and a movie?  Not going to happen.  Like NEITHER OF THOSE THINGS WILL…

Read more

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

March 16, 2014

Datafication

Let’s talk about datafication. Statistics.  Moniters.  Metrics.  Whatever you want to call it, our society is rapidly becoming obsessed with crouching data. At work, we feed productivity numbers into a machine to track our progress.  WHAT progress, you may ask?  Well, don’t worry about it–if the numbers are green/orange/turquoise/whatever color you set to a positive collation on your spreadsheet, you’re making progress. At home, we get e-mail updates from social media websites, comparing our ability to type nonsensical satire into the internet with the ability of everyone else in the world. I got an email from Facebook last week about my SOCIAL METRICS.  So, my social relationships should not be…

Read more

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

March 6, 2014

Beautiful Flowers, Rarely Seen

Hi reader, It’s time for some pictures of beautiful flowers because, let’s be honest:  So far, March sucks. It’s freezing in New York, monsooning in LA, taxes are due in April and all any girl has to look forward to is 3 weeks of dry skin, peeling nails and the weird jet lag feeling associated with the spring time change. Total drag. In case you weren’t smart and forward-thinking enough to book some time in the tropics (or least the Carolinas…) here are some beautiful flower pictures I received from my dear friend Tatiana, who runs the always fabulous Tatiana’s Health and Wellness, to get you through your day. Enjoy!…

Read more

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

February 23, 2014

How to Be Interesting

It is the constant lament of young adulthood–how can you and your friends be more interesting? Once you’ve cycled through the normal schedule of alcoholic painting classes, Thursday happy hours and Sunday brunch, how do you keep your friendships absorbing and enjoyable without hitting a wall of total exhaustion?   Sometimes, at the end of a day of work, I don’t want to go to a restaurant and discuss my feelings and sound interesting. I want to sit in a room by myself, reading People magazine and judging the life decisions of imperfect strangers. But at the end of the day, I’m always happy if I put down the Ben and…

Read more

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in deep fabulous, live fabulous

January 28, 2014

Friends are Fabulous

 friends

One of the things I love most about being a woman is the amount of honest thought I put into my friendships. I consider them, I nurture them, I treasure them and I watch them grow (or wither and die) with huge amounts of purpose and satisfaction.  Many aspects of my life are better when I am putting significant thought into selecting friends that are fabulous. As I was researching for this post I realized there has already been a tremendous amount written about the different types of friends women have.  Springboards, mirrors, toxic friends, peanut butter friends, cheerleaders, Lamborgihinis, Volkswagons, bicycles, etc etc, whatever. So instead of restating the…

Read more

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous

January 18, 2014

L’Eliser d’Amore (Elixir of Love)

 Lincoln Center Subway Station

Hi reader, Last night I saw the Metropolitan Opera production of Donzetti’s Elixir of Love.  Written in the 1831, the story centers around the quest of Nemorino, a young village guy in rural Italy, as she tries to win the heart of Adina, a successful farm owner.  While Adina is busy falling for an obnoxious, self-important army general, a traveling salesman passes through town peddling…..you guessed it….a magical Elixir of Love. Nemorino purchases the elixir at a premium and tragedy, confusion and comedy follow, ultimately concluding in happiness. Now I know that passion for opera is not what it used to be and I probably lost most of you at…

Read more

written by carolineschley@gmail.com - Posted in live fabulous