Sepideh Saremi

I’ve been watching, with fascination, the development of the Internet micro-celebrity - or “cewebrity.” I am lucky that I get to spend some of my time at work looking for good things on the Internet. The Internet is awesome, and I love it. But lately it feels like there’s something really sad and empty and tinny about it, manufactured and contrived and hollow. Like a miniature, more pathetic version of reality television.

Becoming a success on the Internet has become more about persistent personal marketing and strategy and “buzz” (a word that appropriately describes an annoying, ceaseless sound), and less about quality of content. That is, there is a lot of clamoring for attention, but not much follow-through on the part of the clamorers once the attention has been delivered. 

I know the message is not the medium, that the Internet is still awesome, but I’m tired of the blatant fame-whoring without some pay-off for all the people being forced to look at the fame-whores. 

That is, I don’t understand the use of blogs and social media to self-promote, and all the energy expended to get attention… only to dance around in the spotlight rather than use that attention to some end (and I mean an end that’s not just about getting more attention).

Sometimes as I do my research, looking for the next big whatever online, I find myself wishing people would just DO something or MAKE something that has nothing to do with them or what they are wearing or eating or buying or with whom they are sleeping.

And that’s all I’m going to say about that.

It seems the more velvety and inviting the paper in a literary journal, the further I’ll feel from my own stories when I’ve finished reading it. I haven’t written anything in a very long time.

I used to write quite a bit, and over the last year, I feel like I’ve got nothing to say and no way to say it. In my head, there’s a rambling essay about freeways, and how much I love them, and why. I have an unusual affinity for them. But difficulty in getting out the words.

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Lately, too, there’s a feeling of floating away from what I was holding on to for a long time: I needed to disconnect from everything Iranian, because it doesn’t feel as though it belongs to me. And I don’t feel I belong to it. “My people” weren’t my people, “my culture” wasn’t my culture. Neither people nor culture are static.

After many years of longing for some homeland, I’ve realized I’m in it, so the desire to visit Iran has diminished so much. I have to find my own people, make my own culture.

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And about people: after half a life in this city and then just over a year away from it, I realized recently I have no friends. That is, I have a few, but none I see with any regularity besides the one I am married to. I made an effort when I moved back and settled in, but there’s only so much you can do. So I’ve given up.

I suppose it doesn’t help that I’ve never really had a scene. I’m not very arty nor a club-hopper, I don’t like pubs, I detest politics and religion. And I’m not in school.

So, c’est. The thought of making an effort in this arena really exhausts me, and that doesn’t bode well. Even the biggest misanthrope needs friends. But to be honest, I’m rarely happier than when I’m at the library.

—

But I have tried writing a few times, and I can’t finish anything.

sepideh on 12seconds.tv

12-second video posts. I started trying to use Seesmic but I like this a lot more. I can’t wait for them to make video commenting plug-ins… no one should talk for more than 12 seconds, pretty much ever.

I’m bored of the Internet.

I’m going to start a new category on this blog, one that highlights cool lady tycoons who are my role models. Most of the CEOs of the companies I care about are old white men (Rupe, Barry D., Si, even Denton, who may not be old but def qualifies as a silver fox) which is boring, but I think the Internet is going to change that. I have no real data behind the Internet being a catalyst for changing the gender breakdown of the tycoon landscape, but the Internet has changed a lot of stuff and it’s just a hopeful hunch on my part.

First up, Wenda Harris Millard, co-CEO at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and the Chairman of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) - no Wikipedia entry, which is a total shame but she seems like an un-fameball so I guess it makes sense. Millard used to work at Yahoo , and my favorite thing about her is that she really understands that the Internet rocks so hard that we should (paraphrased) "not commoditize Internet advertising before figuring out its ‘value proposition’" (i.e., stop selling shiz for so cheap, you dumbasses). Except the way she said it was, "We must not trade our advertising inventory like pork bellies." Here she is, saying very smart things in an interview with Kara Swisher:

Disclosure: I used to work at an online ad agency and MSLO was one of my clients (well, a client of the team I was on - I wasn’t in charge or anything and though I worked closely with the contact at MSLO, I never got to talk to WHM, but I am probably more cognizant of her coolness because of where I worked).

I’ve been married almost three weeks now and here are my observations on this fine institution (and on the less fine one - weddings):

1. Marriage makes all your fights seem like nothing. We don’t fight a lot anyway, but our few fights in the last three weeks have been so chill. Mostly, fights are my fault. I am the full-Iranian one, so the hot head is mine. Plus I get really mean when I’m PMS-y. But now that this relationship thing is all locked and loaded, I lose my steam during fights right away, because there’s no real point. Storming off in a huff has no real impact when you are just going to run into him in the kitchen and probably he’ll be washing the dishes.

2. Calling your dude “husband” is a lot less lame than “fiance.” Ugh, what a horrible word “fiance” is. I felt like a real jerk every time I uttered that word, so I am relieved for the upgrade to “husband.” I still prefer using his name, though.

3. No more Persian-store weirdness. I always felt kinda bad doing our Persian shopping together before we got married, because I felt like all the old people of my parents’ land were judging me for hanging out with a man that I wasn’t married to. Probably they couldn’t have cared less and hardly noticed such a generically white-looking couple anyway, but now we are married, so what a relief that is in case they did notice and were judging me! Now I can buy my lavash and bamieh with peace of mind. I definitely flash my left hand around as much as possible, though, because the best defense is a good offense.

4. Compromising on a wedding is stupid. We wanted to elope, and our parents wanted a wedding. So we did this kinda in-between deal that involved just them. Obvs it had its good parts, but my recommendation for people who are the elopey types? Just elope. Then you aren’t stuck wearing fake eyelashes for 12 hours and having to make conversation over dinner when you are already so tired and just want to go to bed already.

5. This is closely related to #4, but dieting for your wedding day and freaking out about all the stuff like the dress and the shoes and whatev? I bought my dress the week before the wedding and I was fat on my wedding day. I was freaking out about it for a while because I am, right now (and was then), the fattest I’ve ever been. But who cares. I finally realized the wedding day is one day out of the jillion of a marriage and yes the pictures are forever but I just bought a cool dress that fit and got a pro hair-and-makeup job and I got over myself. I keep getting annoying comments from people who were projecting their own wedding fantasies on my life but I don’t like most of their marriages (or divorces, ahem) so why should I listen, right??

6. Getting married at a young age = awesome (if you are ready, which I was/am). I think a lot of people are confused about why I decided to get married at 24 and my answer is too long to put in one bullet point but it is mostly comprised of the words love, teamwork, and awesomeness.

So, after a long time of seeing my dream professional life as a big mystery or something out of reach or very convoluted, today I had a clear glimpse of what I want as an attainable thing, something that combines a lot of the things I am good at with a medium I’ve never tried. I saw a glimpse of a path. And tomorrow I’m going to try to convince some people that I should get a try at it, that I might be great at it. It took an email from Penelope Trunk to make me realize that I can see myself like this and that I can try for it. It doesn’t mean I am not scared, which I am, but I am going to try.

So I am setting myself up for possible rejection. All rejection is awkward and totally uncomfortable, and anyone who says different is lying or a masochist, but if I don’t gun for this, I will have wasted a big chance. And by writing about this here, I’m holding myself accountable to actually going for it.

I am also thinking about this as setting myself up for the opposite of rejection. Which is acceptance? Or opportunity? Whatever you want to call it. I am trying to visualize that, to make it more possible.

I think more than all that, it is exciting to have identified what I see as a possible path, because even if this chance doesn’t pan out, I know what I need to do to prepare myself for future chances. To make it happen for myself, eventually.

Besides, what is more awkward and uncomfortable than getting rejected is spending the rest of your entire professional life wishing you had tried something (or in this case, asked to be allowed to try) when you were young and didn’t have much to lose. That is a regret I’m not prepared to face when I am an old lady.

Also, I do firmly believe I will rock at this thing I want to try. So there.

I’ve always been really resistant to linear thinking or absolutes, especially when it comes to people. I try to see people in a way that’s respectful to their humanity, and for me that means not seeing someone as just one thing - their job, age, race, whatever - and especially not their nationality or cultural background.

But applying that respect and logic to myself has been very hard. And I have struggled for a long time with my own varied and shifting multicultural and socioeconomic background. I won’t get into specifics in this post but suffice to say that I am still very confused about my cultural identity because, I think, I am so intent on pinning myself down as one thing. Iranian. American. Iranian-American.

But if you want the real story about a person, there’s so much more. Like, for me, it would be: Born to Iranian parents in Germany, I came to America at age seven and have never been to Iran and grew up with a single mom that raised me Pentecostal but I’m not any longer and we didn’t have a lot of money and in fact it was so little that I still feel anxious about money a lot even though I don’t really need to.

But that is a mouthful. And really, none of these things feel comfortable to me. So for now I have pushed these questions to the back of my mind. And they surface when I am up late, working and wondering if I am doing the right things. And if not having resolved these questions for myself is why I wonder if I’m on the right path.

I had an amazing photojournalism professor in my senior year at USC, someone who made me wish that I’d had his class in my first year so that I could switch my major to journalism and be a shutterbug instead of a writer. Something I still think about.

It was a hard class for me, because photography is a very technical thing, and I was an English major, which is all theoretical, even in the tangible product - papers full of ideas that I would write the night before they were due, for the most part.

But photojournalism is something you can’t half-ass, and it’s about luck as much as it is about patience, and so much of it is about looking at your work in a measured and impartial way after the shooting is done. It’s really honorable and really difficult. I spent a lot of my semester in his class biting my nails from the back of my boyfriend’s motorcycle, hoping this sort of high-concept (and slightly dangerous, in hindsight) project I was working on would gel. And my professor made me feel like I was awesome for trying. And he helped me figure out how to make it work.

I have a lot of respect for him, and he saw me at my most high-strung and anxious, because I really wanted to do well in his class. He also was one of very few profs that actually cares about you as a person, and he checks in with his former students all the time, as they do with him. Last night was his retirement party, which made me sad for all the kids that will never get to learn from him. It was a relief to talk to other people there and realize I am not the only person who would email him every few months after graduation, freaking out because I didn’t know what I was doing with my life. And he always replied with long, analytical, thoughtful emails and useful contacts that helped me dig myself out of my self-pity so I could spring into action and adjust my life. He has always reassured me that I can do more than I think I can do, and that I just need to chill out and work and create a good network for myself, and I’ll end up where my life needs to go.

And also - and this is the best thing about this man, the part that makes me so inspired and happy - he is proof that one person can change the life of many people for the better, by caring about and working with them one at a time.

I don’t know if this is about disillusion or just hitting a new point on the learning curve, but yesterday I realized that 99% of the people I admire, I don’t actually admire. That is, I admire the things they’ve accomplished, but I’m not necessarily into them as people. It is unfair to them and has always set me up for disappointment, so this realization that I ought to allow people more dimension than their resumes afford should vastly improve my life from this point forward.

There’s a book called Literary Lives, by Edward Sorel, that taps into this perfectly, as it’s basically a tell-all of famous revered figures (Jung, Rand, etc.). I saw it once in New York and reading it made me feel better about things. Now I’m buying it so that the next time I want to elevate someone to demi-god status for their accomplishments, I don’t.