After only a month and a half of working for SHH, I’m inspired by the efforts of the people both within this organization and volunteers, donors and other constituents. Each person I’ve encountered dedicates extensive time and energy to support our mission to end hunger through community partnerships.

Whether we’re personally affected or not, thousands of our neighbors in the community will struggle to find food this week. And the saddest, yet most motivating fact is that hunger is a solvable problem. SHH’s volunteers, corporate and individual donors make a tremendous impact – but we have a long way to go.

Consider donating today to Second Harvest Heartland or other local food bank, food shelf or other charity. Times are tough for all of us, but even tougher for some.

Things you can do this week:

Come to City Pages’ Iron Fork tomorrow night – Proceeds benefit Second Harvest Heartland, or join us for the Taste of the NFL on Monday – meet your favorite Vikings players and help support our mission.

Mary Parker Follett

While it would be easy for me to stick around, I’ve never been one to sit still for long. A new adventure is upon me, and although I will miss a lot of things about Vibrant, it’s time for me to force myself to grow.

I’ve been offered the E-communications and Marketing Manager position at Second Harvest Heartland – a non-profit organization for hunger relief in the Midwest. I’ll be helping Second Harvest to establish a presence in the social media world, in addition to managing other aspects of e-marketing within the organization. I can’t wait to start helping get the word out about Second Harvest and the generous, charitable individuals who work and volunteer there.

My last day at Vibrant will not be without tears, but I have the highest of hopes for my future at Second Harvest.

“Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble.”

“Sometimes a scream is better than a thesis.”

-Emerson

Now that I have a better understanding of social media/networking and its role in my personal and professional life, I’m dealing with a bit of a juxtaposition in e-personalities. I’ve considered completely deleting my Facebook account to recreate a more professional, more grown up version… sans the pictures and videos and other college history that follows me there. But I haven’t – mostly because I use Facebook differently than I use other tools I’ve become active using lately. I keep in touch with college friends, high school friends, even middle school friends through Facebook. Most of the things I am talking about on, say, Twitter – are not going to be relevant to these people. And likewise, most of the wall posts, status updates and so on that populate my Facebook account, are neither going to be interesting nor relevant to my other social media contacts and friends. When these contacts want to connect on Facebook, I’ve found myself adding them to my Limited Profile list. I don’t want to lose the opportunity to make another connection, but I also don’t necessarily want new contacts and friends having full access to the less professional parts of my college life.

I guess I’m wondering if any other people are keeping Facebook (or other tool) separate from others. Are you experiencing multiple e-personalities? If not, have you had this problem in the past – but found a way to merge the two (apart from the Limited Profile list)?

I’ve come to realize, however, that I am too obsessed with social media and other aspects of the web to ever be completely anonymous online. So I’m on a mission to establish the opposite. Complete non-anonymousy. What? Okay, so I don’t want to be famous or anything. Really, I just want to recreate my long lost hub for friends, family, and fellow geeks and other web fanatics. Somewhere outside of Facebook walls, Twitter, Ning and the rest of my fellow Minneapolis bloggers’ comment sections. (Although those outlets are mostly what I’ll be talking about here.)

So here I am. And I promise, I’ll do my best to offer some occasional entertainment and spark some controversy, although there may be some intermittent jabber including personal takes on politics, local venues and other topics like restaurant reviews… for which I promise I’m not being compensated. (Yet.)