This year, one of my personal goals was to create a new mix each month, partly because I liked the thought of having my year reflected in what music I was digging at the time, and partly because I like setting lofty goals that I have a good chance of failing at. (What’s the fun if your goals are immediately and easily attainable?) And despite my best & most valiant of efforts, four (six?) months in, I have to admit defeat. Which sucks, because I REALLY like winning/succeeding…blame the Type-A, makes-her-bed-every-day, organizes-her-closet-by-style/color/season, only child that I am. Though in my old(er) age, I also know where to pick my battles and this, in the grand scheme of things, is relatively minor. Let’s just pretend I’m one of those hoity magazines that does dual issues in the summertime so its staffers can go to the Hamptons. Or Betty Ford.

So, defeat not getting me down, a mere 2.5 months late, I bring you: “July Juxtapositions: Summer Hours”, the latest mix that started off as a May mix then quickly turned into May/June and now, well, we’ll just say I was on hiatus those months traveling drinking far too much champagne celebrating my birthday having minor nervous breakdowns being sad figuring out my life. You know, or something.  

Download July Juxtapositions: Summer Hours

What’s on this here belated mix, you ask? Only the best music I’ve been listening to lately. Most are new(ish) songs, though I was really tempted to put a few more tracks from The National since I’m completely obsessed with them these days (see strikethrough notes above for justification). But I’ll save that for another mix since not all of you feel like listening to what many describe as depressing breakup music on permanent repeat as much as I do. (You really should, though. The National are AMAZING.) Anyhoo, here’s what I queued up for you this month: 

1. Breakneck Speed – Tokyo Police Club
2. 11th Dimension – Julian Casablancas
3. In The Direction Of The Moon – Wolf Parade
4. Lights – Interpol
5. Younger Us – Japandroids
6. I Felt Stupid – The Drums
7. Fixed – Stars
8. Crash Years – The New Pornographers
9. Heaven’s on Fire – The Radio Dept
10. Shadows – Au Revoir Simone
11. Anyone’s Ghost – The National
12. We Did It When We Were Young – The Gaslight Anthem
13. Regina Holding Hands – White Denim
14. Skull – Sebadoh
15. This Orient – Foals
16. California – Rogue Wave
17. Pedals – The Love Language
18. Modern Drift – Efterklang
19. Go Outside – Cults

Enjoy! And you know the drill, if you like these songs, please buy the album as we wouldn’t have amazing music without our support of the artists. 

While I was recently dealing with my shit breaking up crying having more anxiety than one should have in a year reevaluating my priorities, I decided to actively take some time off from the Internet. Figured that it wouldn't hurt to gain some perspective, and honestly, y'all don't really want the full details of what I'm calling The Two Weeks Where Everything Went Wrong (and then some. And then some. And I couldn't even have a Grilled Cheese to make it better, InsultToInjuryDotCom)™ So I went on a Social media fast. And it was enlightening. (Keep reading…you know you want to.)

You know how you sometimes find yourself walking into a room and get there, only to find that you have no idea why you were going there in the first place? Was it to get that book from the shelf? Print out that doc? Find the dog's chew toy? YOU HAVE NO IDEA. All you know is that you're standing in the living room, perplexed, where you think you are supposed to be but somehow in the time that it took you to walk the twenty steps from your bedroom, you forgot your purpose? That's where I was finding myself with social media, especially Twitter. I was at a place that was familiar and comfortable to me, but why was I there? What was I doing there? Had I forgotten the purpose? 

Maybe. As I've said many times before, I wear my heart on my sleeve. I over-share. It's who I am, and I don't really apologize for it. Granted, I am actively trying to curtail my usage of colorful language (and I'm not talking about chartreuse, though I really should use that descriptor more often), and subscribe to the theory where if you don't say anything, you won't have anything to regret later. Except online, I found that I WAS saying things. Not things that I regretted, per se, but the boundaries between private and public were becoming blurred. Where was the appropriate place to draw the line? Had I crossed it? 

To caveat this, I didn't retreat entirely from social media, I just abstained from Twitter specifically, and posted a handful of things on Facebook, checked in at a few places on Foursquare, and (most frequently), shared my status on Hot Potato. The common thread between these platforms is that my social graph is much smaller on each of these, and consists solely of friends. By contrast, Twitter entails 14,000+ friends AND followers, the majority of which I don't know in person. Without realizing it at the time, I was changing my audience to see how it changed the content that I shared.

The surprising thing was that it didn't change the content, per se, it just changed WHERE I shared it to. I was clearly comfortable saying what I had been – and note that nothing was overly personal, nor too descriptive, nor including any other people in my updates – but this time, I was sharing it only amongst friends. Which, frankly, is how I got here in the first place; the proverbial reason why I walked into the living room. 

I started a website in 2000 as a way to share what I was doing on my travels en masse. I was sending out emails to a few dozen people as I was (amazingly luckily) finding myself in Australia, New Zealand, England, France, and Spain for weeks on end. And while I had a distribution list of my friends who wanted to hear about me falling asleep in my soup (again) or sleeping through my date with the hot surf instructor AND the bridge climb instructor (sporting instructors clearly liked me in Sydney in 2001), I kept leaving people off and decided to instead build one of these websites so anyone who wanted to hear about the ridiculousity that was my life could do so whenever they wanted. So I got my web team to do me a favor and teach me tools like Adobe Illustrator and lend me a server and voila! AubreySabala.com 1.0 was created. Fast forward ten years, and while the technology has changed, the core purpose of the site hasn't: I wanted to connect with people and share content. And yet it still poses the same problems.

I've always struggled with access; In many ways my life is an open book, but remember: I CHOOSE what I put out here. People often think they know me because of what they read on my website or Twitter; I quickly know if someone knows me by how they address me when I meet them. If it's someone I've never met before and they call me Aubs, I'm instantly clued in that they may have read what I've written somewhere on the internet. And that's completely fine – I'm putting it out there, but know that I'm painfully aware of what I'm saying. And who I'm saying it to. Which leads me back to access; when someone that was in your life is no longer in your life, at least in a physical manner, it seems somehow unfair that they still get the same amount of access to you as they did before. Take a breakup: Eight years ago – long before the rise of social networking – I broke up with my then-boyfriend. We didn't speak; he lived in another city. But I could tell from my website stats that he was going to my site ten, twelve, twenty times a day. I found that out, and I WAS ANGRY. I wrote a post here (it's in some old archive) basically telling him that if he wanted to be in my life, BE IN MY LIFE. But if not, GO AWAY. Didn't seem fair that he had it both ways. 

Today, we're faced with even more complications. As the CNN article recently pointed out (and astutely, I think, for all your horrible haters and commenters), breaking up today is a very different world than it was fifteen years ago. You have to deal with many social networks and online connections. And you're basically met with two choices: defriend the person, or censor yourself. Neither is a perfect solution; to me, defriending someone who just days ago knew your every thought and watched you breathe when you slept and was closer to you than anyone else seems unnecessarily cruel. (Granted, I'm only talking about the experiences I've had; I've maintained friendships with most of my exes and while probably easier in some senses, out of respect for them and what we had, I don't see the need for actions that extreme. I'm probably wrong here, but whatever. It's what I'm comfortable with.) The other option – censoring what you say – is also sub-optimal, since in essence you're changing your behaviour for someone who is no longer in your life. And so recently, I found myself with no real solution that sat well with me, and decided to change my method of sharing. Spent more time alone. Wrote in my journal. Wrote on this website. Published bits and pieces – innocuous ones – amongst a trusted circle of friends. Basically, I removed any ability I would have to be overly emotional, sappy, passive-aggressive, and if I needed to work something through, I did it by myself.

And it's been interesting. While I've refrained from posting on Twitter, I have read it now and again (disclaimer: I have to for my job.) And save for a few (what I consider) hilariously witty Tweets that I've saved as draft for another day, I found myself missing most the @ replies and connections that I was making with friends. (To note: I pretty much only follow people I know in person on Twitter, save for a few dozen accounts that make me laugh or provide me with interesting content. You know, like @shitmydadsays.) I had to hold myself back from telling someone a good place to eat in NYC or suggest a new song that I had discovered; it surprisingly wasn't the personal Tweets that I felt I was holding back. Which – had you asked me in advance – I would have said exactly the opposite. Enlightening, to say the least.

And so after a week, I'm concluding this self-imposed experiment. I've learned some interesting things about the way I communicate, the way I ingest - and more importantly, share – content, and e
xactly WHAT I feel comfortable sharing, not to mention where. 

So I'm in the proverbial living room with intention. With defined purpose. Mindful of where I'm at and why I'm here. And I'm happy to be here again, even if everything and nothing is the same.

OldSpice is doing a pretty brilliant marketing campaign. They’re responding via video in near-real time to Tweets. I was one of the lucky crew to get a response to my Tweet. 

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Glad I went out of retirement for the right reasons. And yes, those right reasons are the chance for a hot shirtless man to reply to me via video. In his bathroom. SMELLING LIKE A MAN. 

Priorities, people. I may not have much else going well these days, but priorities: I CAN DO.

My Dad left my Mom eight years ago today. He pulled out of the driveway and she took photos of him holding the dog in the front seat of the U-Haul. He was leaving her after twenty six years of marriage and she took photos.

I didn't understand it then, but I do now. You want something to remain, some sense of validation that it actually happened. That you were part of something. That, despite the current circumstances, someone, at some point, loved you.

I wear my heart on my sleeve. Every time I try to change this or ignore this part of myself, I fail. It's something that I've learned to accept, and lately my silence on my website or other places online is more of me censoring myself instead of me not having anything to say. Because I have plenty to say, just not sure it's the right forum. Not sure it's fair to others to be so transparent. But is it right for me? I struggle with that question.

Why do we share? Why do we blog or Tweet or check in somewhere? Is it self-serving or is it, like relationships, our desire to be part of something bigger than ourselves? Is it just one more way to look for connection?

There's a poignant line in my favorite movie, Say Anything, where Diane Court goes to the kickboxing gym to reunite with Lloyd Dobler. She says that she needs him; he replies: "Are you here because you need someone or because you need me?" He then quickly says that it doesn't matter. But he was wrong, so wrong. It DOES matter. So much.

I've had a rough few weeks. Hell, to be fair, I've had a rough year. I lost the person who I'm starting to think may be the love of my life. Or at least he has been, up until now. And then I recently dated a kind, caring, thoughtful, good man, who quickly became my best friend. My confidant. He has been my person, the one I turned to for anything good and bad. And since that ended I've been struggling with that very question that Lloyd Dobler asked. Am I missing him – which yes, of course I am – or merely missing someone?

And so yes, I now understand why my Mom has those photos from eight years ago saved somewhere. I – ironically – have a photo I took in the midst of our breakup of him wearing the sunglasses I bought for his birthday, taken to show him how they looked at the time. But it remains on my phone, a small piece of tangible evidence that I was part of something. The validation isn't much, nor is it easy, but it's something. And for now, on this Independence Day, it's enough.

So April was busy, what with the leaving my job and travel and getting ready for the new job and oh yeah, that little trip to Hawaii wasn’t too shabby (nor was accompanying Kevin & Alex when they went on Jimmy Fallon. Yeah, I’ll stop now; I’m well aware that I’m being an asshole.) Anyway, in the midst of all of that chaos, I had put together the beginnings of my April 2010 Mix, only I didn’t post it because I didn’t love all the ordering of the songs on it. Then I decided to tweak it early May, and possibly have it be an April/May mix, but then I’d be denying you an entire month of music and I am bound and determined to do TWELVE OF THESE, and well, anything less just pisses my type-A self OFF. So. That’s that. Which leaves us to: It’s late May and here’s the April Mix, not perfect but hell, neither am I. It’s good enough, there’s some AMAZING songs on it (*cough* The National *cough*) and May is going to be even better, don’t you worry. So without further ado, download Aww, Yeah April! and find the track listings below.

1. Tell ‘Em – Sleigh Bells
2. Factory – Band of Horses
3. Tighten Up – Black Keys
4. She’s Gone – The Bird and the Bee
5. The Weekenders – Hold Steady
6. Afraid of Everyone – The National
7. Friendly Ghost – Harlem
8. Do You Mind? – The xx
9. Go do – Jonsi
10. Good Day – Jukebox the Ghost
11. Mexico – The Soft Pack
12. All to All – Broken Social Scene
13. My Life – jj
14. Hannah – Freelance Whales
15. Into the Open – Heartless Bastards
16. Safety in Numbers – Stars of Track and Field
17. Always Already Gone – The Magnetic Fields
18. Lemonade – Braids
19. Yes, I Would – Frightened Rabbit

Every now and again I want to say "Hey, World: Here's What" and just deliver a diatribe on what you (collectively) are doing wrong. Not to be an ass, but because I honestly can't comprehend why you're doing whatever it is that you're doing that's frustrating, baffling, and irking me. And it appears that today is you're lucky day. 

People, I can't put it any more bluntly than this: Own Your Shit.

Whatever it is that you're doing – be it tangoing with a three-legged donkey in drag or making out with your boss's little sister – I don't care. Just take responsibility for it. Honestly. Be who you are, do what you do, but be accountable. 

OWN YOUR SHIT.

I'm getting sick and f-ing tired of people doing something and then complaining about the fallout, making excuses for it or – even worse – being shocked that there IS a response. Come on now, people, we know this from science: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, whether you anticipate it or not. (Oh, Newton: your Third Law of Motion actually explains a LOT about why playing hard to get actually, sadly, works. But I digress…) The thing is, though, you control your actions; you don't control the resulting reaction. So be accountable for what you do control, maybe even next time anticipating the outcome. 

That Newton…he knew a thing or two, eh?

Three years ago I made a really hard decision: to leave a company that I loved, one that had been so good to me for many years, to pursue my own path. To embrace my next challenge. It was hard, it was heart-wrenching, and it was the right thing to do. I've never looked back. And so it's somewhat ironic that I'm finding myself again faced with a difficult decision, though this one exponentially harder given the closeness and connection not only with the brand, but moreso the people, that I've been working with for the last two+ years. It's never easy to leave the best job you've ever had.

And working at Digg has been the best professional experience I have ever had, barring none. I'm sure it sounds trite…you read 'farewell' letters like this all the time, where someone waxes poetic about the people they've worked with, the experiences they've had, 'learning opportunity' blahblahblah. And I hate nothing more than potentially being cliched, so take what I say as true: 

I have never worked with smarter, more driven, more talented people than I have at my time here at Digg. I have never found such support in management and peers, known inherently that someone will always have my back, and that someone will always be there to help out when needed. I have never had a role that was more of a perfect fit for my pursuits and desires, allowed me to grow in both skill and maturity, and meet some of the most amazing people in the world along the way. I have never had so much fun. There are days where I'm sitting next to some of my closest friends, trying to solve one problem or another, tears streaming down my face from laughing so hard and think "They PAY me for this?"

So you see my reticence in saying farewell…it's been a very tough, very personal, very difficult decision, but as with the one I made nearly three years ago, I also feel that it is the right one. As hard is it is to leave behind the friends I've made here, I'm also excited about my next opportunity. You see, I'm returning to work with friends once again in my new role at Aol. Many from my old team at Google are now there, working to help redefine a legacy brand facing many challenges before it. Google's former head of sales – Tim Armstrong, a long-time mentor and former colleague of mine – is leading the charge as their CEO. And in another turn of good luck, I'll be working alongside a few former coworkers from Digg as well. In short: it was an opportunity that I couldn't refuse, and also one that I wanted to embrace.

My last day at Digg is April 16th; I'll be taking a few weeks off to recharge and get ready for what is sure to be a fun, crazy, and exciting ride ahead. I am so grateful to the people I've been able to work with over the past two+ years both here at Digg as well as with my friends at Revision3, and will genuinely miss working alongside them all every day. 

And so I echo what I said three years ago, this is not a goodbye; instead, merely a farewell for now. I know our paths will cross again soon, and I'm looking forward to it. See you around…that's a promise.

 For seven of the last eight years, I’ve made the annual trek down to Austin to participate in what many call “Geek Spring Break”. True, SXSWi (South by Southwest Interactive) brings just about what you’d expect from the name to attend: Web developers, Startup employees, and a lot of people who send very, very boring Tweets. Yet I still find ways to enjoy myself amongst the masses who are desperate to pitch you their “Geo-Facebook-Like Twitter but BETTER!” idea ad nauseum; namely, hanging out with a small group of people who also react similarly to the above-referenced pitch (shudder!), taking mid-day field trips to places FAR from the convention center, and of course, staying for the music portion. Because that’s when the vibe shifts; computer bags and internet company t-shirts are replaced by guitar cases and skinny black jeans. AND I CAN BREATHE AGAIN. 

This year was no exception, and despite my jaded, old-school initial belief that this might be the last SXSW I attended (was afraid there would be too much noise vs. signal, and that it would be too overwhelming and packed; I didn’t find either of these save for the suggestion that they limit the number of panels and up the quality) I will most likely return next year for another ten days where I consume Emergen-C in excess to counteract the three hours of sleep I received each night. 

But oh, it’s worth it. I got to see some AMAZING bands (I bolded the names of the bands I ended up seeing) and right before I left I put together a Pre-SXSW Mix with the hopes to get it up prior to leaving. Only I didn’t get it up in time…throwing an event for 3000 people kind of got in the way. I actually wasn’t loving the mix before I left, but after three days of nonstop, back-to-back awesome music (hearing many of these bands!) I listened again upon my return and it resonates with me a ton more. So, enjoy.

Download SXSW2010

1. The Loneliness and the Scream – Frightened Rabbit
2. Wide Eyes – Local Natives
3. The First Song – Band of Horses
4. Can’t Lose – We Are Scientists
5. Ultimate Satisfaction – Bear in Heaven
6. Ring Ring – Sleigh Bells
7. Thieves – She & Him
8. Harold T. Wilkins, or How to Wait for a Very Long Time – Fanfarlo 
9. That Western Skyline – Dawes
10. The High Road – Broken Bells
11. The Great Estates – Freelance Whales
12. Bear – The Antlers
13. A Far Cry – We Were Promised Jetpacks
14. Islands – The xx
15. If Only It Were True – The Walkmen
16. Say Hello – Stars of Track & Field