Intentions and action

I posted previously about how I was planning on only making my own clothes (except coats and jeans). I am revising this to be “only make my own clothes unless I buy from second-hand stores.” This is out of depression that my cardigan basically was destroyed because I got some surprising and somewhat devastating news and sliced right through it with scissors. Note to self: Don’t start sewing when you hear the words “I have big news!”

I haven’t been paying attention to my mental/emotional health lately. This has resulted in about five migraines in the past two weeks. I had to bump up my sumatriptan dosage. It’s rough. I also have been looking inward, trying to find my emotional peace. It seems so hard to do when you constantly hear about the horrible things happening in the world and the country, but I need to try for the sake of my sanity.

And of course it doesn’t help that I just discovered some unhappy news about free range eggs, and apparently there have been some cases of fraud in regards to this. It’s utterly frustrating how you can’t eat anything anymore without being killed with preservatives or pesticides or scandals or horrible horrible chemicals or whatnot. I’ve been a vegetarian for years and I’ve been a dairy-reductionist vegetarian for the past year (minimal cheese, no milk or butter at all). I’ve also gone vegan multiple times but have never really committed to it.

I’m not saying I’m going vegan right away, but I’m thinking maybe it’s time to cut eggs too. It’s just so disheartening that nothing can be produced humanely at all anymore. I’m going to try it for a bit to see how easy it is (and because if I swear it off “forever” the pressure will get to me and I will get sad). So stupid.

I really want to put my money where my mouth is, to make good decisions for my health. I want to feel energetic and good, not full and heavy and lazy. I’ve switched to a standing desk at work, and I’m getting outside much more than I used to. It feels good to keep moving throughout the day – when I get home in the evenings I don’t feel lethargic anymore, just ready to continue my day. It’s good.

I want to also continue to know that my actions are so important to my life, and that I have the power to choose what sort of things I want to allow in it versus what sorts of things I want to avoid. It’s a really cool thought, knowing that it doesn’t have to be difficult, just a matter of a decision. I think we should pat our backs for every good decision we make, instead of just being like “Ugh, but I could do so much more, what’s wrong with me? I don’t deserve to feel good about making this decision because I fail in other ways.” That sort of thinking sucks and it’s time to stop that.

This is just what I’ve been thinking about lately, but it’s an important though. Believing a decision is only worth doing if it’s perfect is actually a logical fallacy. Don’t do it!

Camping

One thing that I haven’t done this summer that I reeeeeeeeeally want to do is go camping! I even found a friend who is willing to lend me his tent, and I had a campsite all mapped out and everything. You know how it is though – you get busy and lazy (mostly lazy) and you think you have the entire summer and then suddenly it’s the middle of August and it’s 65 degrees out and you’re like, wait, where did summer go?

Well, as I mentioned a couple posts ago, there is still plenty of summer left! This weekend it’s even supposed to be in the mid 70s so it might just be the perfect weekend. I’m really excited about hiking, backpacking, and camping, though I am not a jock or sporty person by any means. I’m actually pretty wimpy when it comes to lifting heavy objects or walking long distances, sadly enough, but I think I could get behind a weekend of nature.

I think I also just really want to do a weekend trip somewhere, and I want to do something really cheap. The more I think about a weekend laying in the grass watching the stars and reading books and exploring, the more I like it!

Hair

I need a haircut so badly. I’m pretty sure this is the longest my hair has been in years! Lately I’ve been neglecting it horribly and when it gets too nasty I throw it up into three little twisty buns (like this except I make the buns tighter and obviously not as pretty). It’s such a simple look, and it at least mostly hides the crappiness of my hair.

A couple days ago I threw in some colored extensions. I don’t like the way they look when my hair is down because they are TOO straight. My hair is really straight but I don’t flatiron it so when it dries it tends to follow the contours of my head and ears and neck and shoulders. The extensions stick out straight at a funny angle. When I bought the extensions, they sat in a drawer for awhile because they just looked way too artificial. But I got the idea that I could put them in an then put my hair up and I really loved the bit of colors. Looked like ribbons!

Of course, in retrospect it still looks pretty natty. Time for a haircut for sure!

10 things I would like to accomplish in May

As you know, I’m a list maker. I’m also a list doer. There are a ton of things I’d like to accomplish this month but let’s keep it down to ten. In no particular order:

• Visit Austin and Montreal
• Paint the kitchen table
• Be able to do 50 pushups
• Build an urban survival kit
• Migrate Going Postal, my penpal social networking site, to its own server
• Plan out a camping trip for the summer (including where I will get camping supplies, how long, when, where, etc)
• Finish half the afghan I’m working on
• Read five books (1 2 3 4 5)
• Finish my roll of film and get it developed
• Bake some cupcakes

Voila! Busy month but really it won’t be too busy. I’ll cross things off as I finish them. Let’s see if I can get these all done!

Movement

Pretty sure we skipped straight from winter and went to summer. The abrupt heat is confusing and stifling and disgruntling. Combined with the general humidity of, you know, living by a bunch of bodies of water (example: the Atlantic Ocean) and the buckets of rain that comes with spring, I’ve been riding the subway instead of biking and it has been HOT and filled with people and smelly.

The only things I really enjoy about the subway are the convenience and people watching. This morning I was watching how people move. You have the people who shuffle along (either with no place to go or no reason to hurry), and the people who rush (businessmen, mostly), the people with a spring in their step (usually with muscular wrists and messing with their mp3 player or phone), and the ones who don’t pay attention (usually SMSing). You have the ones who try to push past everyone else up the stairs and the ones who use the handrail to pull themselves up. We all funnel into a narrow stairway from the platform and slowly move upward. Single file lines, just like being in school again, the unspoken rule that you stay on the right.

Sometimes biking a lot gets me out of the swing of things. It’s fantastic to bike to work every morning – the wind in my hair and face, looking at the city around me as I ride, crossing over the Charles River into the city. Despite this, I miss out on a lot of direct human contact – being shoved up against someone on a crowded subway, listening to a drunk guy yelling, watching the bored looks on everyone’s faces. It may sound horrible and uncomfortable, and it is! but it makes you more able to deal with annoyances, it makes you feel more apart of the world around you, and it makes you more sympathetic to difference because you have to experience it. I’ll take my nasty, crowded subway over a car any day.

So far so good with the complaining

Although I did fall off the positivity rainbow once today when I told a coworker that “the Ikea near us really sucks.” Is it complaining if it’s the truth? Just kidding!

One day into this experiment and already I feel lighter, like things are bothering me a bit less. Something that would normally stress me out and make me worried suddenly doesn’t seem like as big of a deal now. It’s amazing how much weight has lifted off of me. Sure, things still irritate me, but five seconds after they happen I don’t remember them anymore. I would normally stockpile a list of people who did idiotic things while on my bike ride home from work (yes, I can be petty), but this time I didn’t. I just zoned out and relaxed.

Of course, it also could have something to do with my newfound addiction:

I’m totally addicted to amaretto sours now. Just the perfect blend of cherry and lemon and sweet and sour and deliciousness. That is a McSweeney’s next to it from the library. I’ve been doing so much reading it’s not even funny. Yesterday I finished a book in one evening. It’s been a VERY relaxing past few days, that’s for sure.

A week of no complaining

I was reading My Month of No Snark on Salon and got to thinking. I made the decision a long time ago that I hated snark, because more often than not snark leads to hurt feelings and drama. I love sarcasm but hate snark and I think there’s a fine line between them. Speaking of which, here is an incredibly good article on the New York Times about Snark, excerpted from Snark by David Denby. This article changed my life. You should definitely give it a read if you’re interested in learning about how snark has affected everything from politics to the news to Twitter to comedy. Anyway, back to Salon. My favorite part was this:

Either way, why waste energy assuming ill intent? Haven’t we all said something stupid and realized it sounded insulting? If we stop lashing out against perceived insults and stop subtly eroding our friendships — or even kind relations with strangers — by giving so much attention to the things that bug us, quality of life inches incrementally but noticeably closer to excellent.

A month is a long time, but I think I’m going to give “no complaining” a shot for a week. I complain a lot, inside my head and to my friends. I wonder: if I didn’t complain, would I stop dwelling on stressful things? That’s the ultimate goal – to free myself of the things that bother me, basically. If I don’t complain, it doesn’t get a chance to solidify in my head. Anyway, I’m going to give it a shot. We’ll see how it goes.

We’re all weird

Disclaimer: This is not an April Fools Joke. I promise! So, I was thinking the other day as I was spending some time exploring some of my interests that I’m terrified to tell my friends about that we’re all just a little bit strange. We all have these things that we secretly like deep down inside that we’ve told ourselves countless times we don’t actually like because dang what if someone found out? I have a proposition for you: make a list of all these things. Post it. OWN IT. Embrace your inner freak.  What do you secretly believe that you’d never tell your mom (hi, Mom!)? What do you really like that your friends have no idea? What hobbies do you have that you’re ashamed to admit to?

I’ll go first:

1. I wear a lot of black. What? I get bored of matching and I tire of colors easily. Also I like brightly colored accessories.
2. Despite being in a technically technical industry (ha!) I actually don’t like gadgets. I get made fun of a LOT for it, too. I don’t have any iJunk, I don’t have an e-book reader, I don’t have a fancy shmancy laptop or a smart phone or anything. I don’t want any of this stuff. I prefer talking to texting and libraries to e-books. I also have a landline because go real phones!
3. I do not want to have kids. Mostly people are okay with this, like my family who has accepted this a long time ago (hi, Mom!). I have a neighbor whom I adore who spends a fair amount of time trying to convince me to have kids (“You just have to meet the right guy!” “Kids are great when they’re your own!” “You do have a maternal instinct, you just need to have kids to find it!”). I don’t hate kids; I just don’t want any. Also notable: I’ve never held a baby before. People try all the time and I usually say something like, “I don’t want your baby.” I don’t even know how to hold a baby. Kind of scares me.
4. I love people but I’m an introvert. I rarely meet a person I dislike and when I do it’s confusing to me. At the same time I’d rather stay in and read a book than go out and drink. And speaking of drinking…
5. Not a fan of drinking. Having a nice glass of wine is a treat for me, not an everyday thing. And I’ve also never been drunk or anything. I’m a good kid! (hi, Mom!)
6. I secretly like tattoos.
7. I love organizing. I have a planner that I write in constantly. I make lists constantly. I plan weeks in advance. I write everything down. Maybe this isn’t so weird, but there you go.
8. I think most people think it’s cooler to hate things than to love them. It’s certainly easier to defend your hatred for something than your love for it. I will never be cool for this reason. I love tons of things, even uncool stuff. Maybe especially uncool stuff. I’m a very passionate person and I don’t look or dress or act cool and I never have. It’s hard, trust me. I’m slowly coming to terms with it and it feels okay now.
9. I’m afraid of watching new movies. I’m very critical of them and I’m not afraid to walk out of them. I’ve walked out of movie theater movies before and returned half-watched movie rentals. Because of this, I haven’t seen a lot of “classics” like E.T. and Jaws and The Big Lebowski or whatnot and as you may have guessed from a couple posts ago, The Wizard of Oz (hence why when I think of Dorothy I think of <a href=”https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/File:DorothyGaleNeill.jpg” target=”_blank”>a cute short-haired blonde girl with silver shoes</a>) I need to be more open about this sort of thing! I’m definitely trying to branch out a lot more.
10. I feel awesome in combat boots and own three pairs.

Now for your list! Once you start it’s amazing how many things you come up with. Bare your soul! Don’t be afraid – we won’t be judgmental! And when you complete your list, let me know, please! I’d like to link to as many as we can get because I think this could be really really awesome. If you have WordPress, you can permalink to this entry. Otherwise, you can just leave a comment or twitter me or something! Let’s see how much weirdness we can generate on this April Fool’s Day!

Daily walk

Visiting Stephanie was SO MUCH FUN! We ate a ton, talked a ton, and had fun… a ton. Anyway, it was great – just what I needed after a busy month at work. I took a ton of pictures of the Mall of America, so I will probably make a picture post at some point or another.

Anyway, it’s a beautiful day in the Massachusetts bay today. Despite the heavy clouds, it was 40F at 8 this morning and it’s only going to get warmer. It feels really nice outside. On my way to work, I saw the following:

1. A man opened his barbershop right as I walked by.
2. Two women finalized their car rental.
3. A man delivering cokes to the drugstore weaving through foot traffic.
4. The subway operator saying in a thick Boston accent, “Please stand cleah of the doohs – the cah is about to pull away.”
5. I got off at my non-usual stop at Park Street (which lets off at the Boston Common) because I wanted to walk a little bit more before work. I saw that they’re tearing up the sidewalk around the fountain there. I wonder what they’re doing…
6. I watched a cop watch me jaywalk.
7. Homeless people are slowly appearing again.
8. I held the door for a guy, then held the elevator for him. He said to me, “Can you just hang out with me all day and open the doors for me?” We laughed.

I know they’re just mundane things. But I love my city so much. It’s so alive! Even at 8 in the morning everyone is out and about, the city is waking up, and people are going about their daily lives. It feels amazing to be part of this community, to see all these people and know that I’m here with them. Every day is a new thing and everyone is fully connected to one another because it’s such a walking culture here. I love it!

To-do List Time

I have a ton of stuff I really need to catch up on tonight after work. I’m jotting it here for reference (I LOVE lists – this very list is also in my day planner, but I’m writing it here anyway because um LISTS):

• Check to make sure my store refund was actually processed
• Clean! (Living room, kitchen, bedroom, study)
• Go grocery shopping like a hip French woman
• Do either some yoga or DDR
• Respond to Aaron about when to do dinner
• Upload some photos (yes I actually took photos)
• Blog!

Also did I post this? Since the multi-family home we live in was built in the late 1800s, it has one tiny closet only! No pantry or anything. When we moved in, we rigged up a pantry system but it’s definitely not perfect. Recently, we bought a white bookcase from Ikea and put it in the corner:

Simple and perfect. We use both the pantry system and the bookcase now because we store a LOT of food! It’s nice to have what we need on hand so we don’t have to grocery shop every day (which gets expensive because we get lazy and go across the street to Whole Foods instead of taking the time to go to cheaper places). I know all the Snobby Design People On Apartment Therapy (lols) HATE Ikea, but seriously. It’s amazing for cheap basics! What do people do if they don’t have an Ikea?