A MODERATE PASSION

I went to see "Julie and Julia" last night. I loved the movie, and found that it stirred up an interesting mix of reactions in me. First, of course, it made me ravenous. Spending two hours watching Powell and Child serve up one glorious dish after another was delicious torture; thank goodness we want to the early show so we'd have plenty of time for dinner afterwards.

The movie also gave me a serious case of cooking lust. I like to cook but tend to do much less of it in the summertime when the kitchen is hot, appetites are light, and you never know who's going to be home for supper from one minute to the next. But after seeing this movie, I wanted to rush right home and start peeling something.

The other reaction the movie triggered--and this surprised me--was envy. I found myself envying the intensity of the passion these two women brought to cooking. What must it be like to love something that much?

My sister and I have had many conversations about our "life themes." We've concluded that hers is excess. She is an actor, so every experience--no matter how wild and crazy--is like a deposit in her creative bank. She embraces it all. That's passion.

My life theme, on the other hand, is moderation. I have a thousand interests, and I'm enthusiastic about all of them--to a point. But passionate? Dedicated to one thing to the exclusion of all others? I can't imagine investing that much of myself in any one pursuit.

It took Julia Child eight years to write her culinary Bible, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." What commitment. What focus. What passion.

Julie Powell decided to spend one whole year of her life cooking every recipe in Julia's book--365 days, 524 recipes. She did it--with commitment, focus and passion.

Does moderation preclude excellence? Is it possible to live a balanced life and still excel? Is passion a prerequisite for exceptional achievement? What do you think?

LITTLE GIRL WITH A CURL

I remember a nursery rhyme that went like this: "There was a little girl who had a little curl right in the middle of her forehead. When she was good, she was very, very good; but when she was bad, she was horrid." I thought of that old chestnut last week when Twitter, Facebook and other social media sites were shut down by a hacker attack.

When our internet technology is working as it should be, we take it for granted. Email, blogging, Twitter and Facebook have become part of our daily routine, at least for a fair number of people.

Since I began my exploration of social media back in March, I must confess that I've developed a Twitter addiction. I love reviewing a.m. Tweets while guzzling my morning coffee, and I usually take a few minutes to review the evening's posts before I hit the sack at night. It would take a separate blog column to tell you how much I'm enjoying the relationships I've developed on Twitter.

I'm on Facebook every day too. Since many family members are on FB, I rely on daily checks to see what's going on with aunts, uncles, cousins, nieces, etc. That's how I found out that my Uncle Len's painting company (Pekkala Painting) had been selected to work on the new home being built this weekend in Duluth, MN by the ABC-TV "Extreme Home Makeover" crew. How cool is that?

I've also become a LinkedIn fan. As a member of several PR-related groups, I find lots of useful information in the group discussions. The other thing I love about LinkedIn is that every day it tells me who was looking at my profile. It's kind of like having secret admirers!

So my daily routine now includes Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, at a minimum. That is, it did until last week, when it suddenly became impossible for me to post Tweets or update on Facebook by computer or via cellphone.

The dastardly hackers who rocked our internet world last week were apparently after some guy from the Republic of Georgia who said some things online they didn't like. I don't know whether they intended to bring the whole system down--maybe they hit the wrong button, realized what they had done, and had one of those stomach-churning "WTF did I just do?" moments. Or maybe they didn't even blink.

But I can tell you--I sure blinked. It drove me nuts not to be able to Tweet in response to the messages I was seeing. I couldn't block sleazy spammers who followed me. I couldn't answer direct messages. I couldn't comment or post on Facebook. It threw my whole evening schedule off. Everything was still out of commission on Saturday.

Now those problems have been solved, but our electrical storm on Friday blew out my broadband internet service, and the technician can't come fix it until Tuesday. Until then, I'm online courtesy of an AT&T USB wireless device that's only giving me two bars worth of reception. Periodically, the connection just disappears, leaving me feeling helpless, frustrated and tempted to heave my computer out my office window.

This on top of the hackers. It's just too much. Technology is a mixed blessing. When it's good, it's very very good. But when it's not working, it is really, truly, absolutely without a doubt--horrid.