The following is a guest post from my good friend, Michal, who is a twentysomething world explorer currently navigating life in the land of Israel.

---

When I first volunteered to write this guest-post for Julie, (by the way, it was over a month ago… Sorry Jules!!! ) I was intimidated by my freedom in selecting the subject matter. I could write about anything!? Anything at all?! Where would I start? I began to go over several potential subjects in my head. The Israeli political situation? I wrote a piece on it for Julie after our elections a year ago. I re-read my old post and found that all the worst-case scenario predictions I made have come true and then some. The situation is very depressing and not something I want to write about. I thought of more subjects to write about, (business, travel, friends, weight loss etc…) but nothing really struck me as worthy until one day last week a friend and I decided to watch some classic YouTube videos. Part of a classic video that I had seen many times struck me in a new way and kind of hit close to home. While viewing the always hilarious “David After Dentist” video about a little boy being driven home from the dentist while still under the effects of novacane or gas or drugs that he had been given. At one point in his ramblings he looks straight into the camera and says, “Is this real life??” His father laughs and assures him that this is in fact real life.

I took David’s question differently this time. I think this is a question that is on the mind of many 20-somethings. After we graduate college we enter an unknown world. For many of us this was the first time in our lives where there was not a definite framework ahead of us (after middle school came high school then college etc…) The 9-5 world was looming and although some were ready to go out there and make tracks in the corporate world, others were dreading the day of their first punch in on the time clock. (Personally, I was so fearful of 9-5 and the office life that after graduation I took off to South America for 4 and a half months by myself with a backpack, but that is a story for another post…) A year and a half after I received my diploma I began working at an office. While it is not as terrible as I thought, I still get nauseated at the fact that I may be doing this for a long long time. As I have settled into the 9-5 routine over the past year and a half I find myself asking, “Is this it?” Has my real life started? After having many discussions with my other twenty-something friends I find that many of them are asking themselves the same thing. While many of us enjoy our jobs most of us are not sure if we see it as a career (or maybe just me). Those of us who are not in serious relationships wait for that to start as well (yet another subject for a later blog post)

So when does the elusive real life start? Is it when you are married? When you have kids? Could it be a career milestone, when we feel we have found our place in the professional world? When we feel settled? As someone who grew up in several countries with family all over the world, I often worried that I would never stop asking that question. I thought that I would always feel somewhat lost and while I was living in one place I would always miss another. After having resigned myself to the fact that I would always feel this way I saw a Visa commercial and while I am loathe to admit that I got an epiphany as a result of a Visa ad I did. At the end of the commercial, the announcer asks, “What are you waiting for, a written invitation to live life? You have one; it’s called a birth certificate.” This line struck me as profound. (Damn you brilliant advertising geniuses!!) Real life for me began on December 4th, 1984 and will hopefully continue for a very long time. While there will be times that I and many others of my generation will feel lost and discombobulated life is constantly moving and it is best to enjoy it while you can. In the words of one man who I considered a mentor in high school (and whose advice I should begin taking again), “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Editor’s Note: Even though I’m cruising around the Mexican Riviera this week, per my recent resolutions, I didn’t want to neglect my blog. So I asked the very talented Vicki Boykis if she’d be willing to lend her time and thoughts to me and my readers. Vicki and I met at a tweetup last year, if you can believe it. She is an international trade analyst and product manager in Washington, D.C. and just like me, is a twenty-something Russian Jew trying to figure it all out. Below, Vicki shares some really great tips for moving.

---

Everyone I know, including me and Julie seems to be moving these days.  I’ve been moving around ever since I went to college: first between dorm rooms, then to Israel on an internship, then back home, then to Philadelphia, then to DC.   In the meantime, I’ve become a packing guru.  Here are some tips I’ve picked up during and between moves.   (Clever with the acrostic, eh?)

1. Make sure you forward your (low-tech) address
Luckily, the easiest way to do this now is online.  I like to do this at least two weeks before I move and after I’ve signed a lease; that way, you can still pick up any spare mail still coming to your old address.  Also, change all your addresses for things online like Netflix, credit card bills, and anything else you don’t want to miss in your mail.

2.  Old packaging-keep as much of it as possible
Lots of apartments don’t have tons of storage.  However, what storage we did have in ours, I used to keep boxes because I knew I’d eventually need them for moving again.  I especially kept things like boxes from silverware and glasses, our TV box, and packaging for kitchen items like blenders.  This automatically makes it easier to put boxes into a bigger box and you don’t have to worry about how to wrap.

3.  Very carefully choose movers
Even if you don’t have a lot of stuff and tons of friends, it can still be a good idea to hire movers.  Last time, my husband and I moved from Alexandria, VA to Bethesda, MD (about 35 minutes each way), and it was a huge hassle.  This time, we’re hiring movers from Craigslist, but we made extra-sure to check them out online through references and making sure they responded on time.  A friend pointed me to Moving Scam, which has a list of tips to avoid when you’re looking to move.

4.  Evaluate: In my post, I mentioned that I as struggling to get rid of things.  Emotional attachments are huge blocks to moving more simply with less clutter, and we all struggle with getting rid of teddy bears from when we were 11.  The best tip I recieved on my blog was to take pictures of things I was especially attached to and keep the pictures, but to also keep a number of things you can still look back on.  The fact that there are tons of blog posts on this issue signifies that it’s a big one.

Good luck!  I know I’ll be needing it this weekend.

Friends,

I have some exciting news to share — I am about to embark on what I’ve been affectionately referring to as “Julie in DC: Part II”.

This week, I am leaving Amplify Public Affairs and will soon be joining RADIUS, a corporate travel management company (TMC) serving multinational corporations with regional or global travel consolidation needs, as their Online Marketing Manager. I have learned a lot during my time at Amplify but am now looking forward to tackling this new challenge of developing and implementing a complete online marketing strategy for RADIUS.

My last day as Social Media Strategist at Amplify Public Affairs will be Thursday, April 15th and, after a quick break to cruise around the Mexican Riviera with my mother and sisters, I will begin my new role as Online Marketing Manager at RADIUS on Wednesday, April 28th

Additionally, this past weekend, I moved into the apartment of one of my closest friends from college, Mindy. I feel fortunate to be able to share my home with a friend and we have already had a lot of fun decorating and making plans for future hostessing opportunities.

If you’d like to receive my new professional and personal contact information, just send me a quick note. I will be making the appropriate edits online in the coming weeks.

Best,

Julie

It’s always an fun day when Apple reveals the features of its newly updated Operating System (OS) for the iPhone. (Read all my iPhone-related blog posts.)

Here’s what got me excited about today’s announcement:

1. BLUETOOTH KEYBOARDS.  In a October 2008 post, I wrote: “Only once Apple takes my advice (Ha!) and creates a iPhone-compatible keyboard will I really be able to leave my laptop behind…“. Perhaps that time has come!
2. Multitasking! iPhone users have been waiting for this one for quite a while. Now, I can use other apps while listening to Pandora, etc.
3. Folders to group app – which I had been doing anyway by grouping like apps in separate pages. But this will certainly save time and make it easier to navigate. Also, for app addicts, this means being able to have 2160 apps instead of the current possibility of 180.
4. A better mail app! The ability to read by thread and to have more than one exchange account linked to a particular iPhone!

Check out the full live coverage from Gizmodo and engadget.