Listless

The last time I wrote here, on this blog was almost three weeks ago, when I pledged to begin an every-single-day regiment of posting here for at least a month. No one reads this, I know. But the point was to prove to myself that I could and to begin to change some of the terrible, horrible lack-of-stick-to-itiveness habits that I have lived with since I was a child.

When I made the decision to move with my boyfriend and our friends to Boston I had planned to make some Real Changes in my life. I figured that with leaving NYC the temptation to go out, to spend money and to party would die down and that I would make this natural shift over to being a productive, healthy-living, high-earning adult. I planned to read books all the time, work hard at writing and yoga and cooking and take many steps towards becoming a better housekeeper; skills that are critical for me to learn.

While the geographic change and my impressive lack of money have made some of these goals rather easy, I was genuinely surprised that my personality, habits and discipline-or lack thereof-didn't change with the immediacy of an on/off switch. Sure, I wanted to post everyday, but somehow it just wasn't happening.

It wasn't all due to laziness, shiftlessness and sloth; learning to live with four people when one has previously only been used to living with one is a significant challenge. Add to that the fact that we are trying to make a very old, very poorly maintained and very rarely cleaned house livable AND find a legitimate source of income, and you have a high-stress situation that doesn't leave a whole lot of time where one feels comfortable just sitting and writing. But that, to me, is precisely WHY it's critical that I post everyday. I cannot let external situations dictate everything, and I must learn to produce and continue to create and move forward even under less-than optimal conditions. This is something I must do.

Lots of times I wake up in the morning and I make a "To Do List". For some reason this makes me feel particularly productive, almost as though I have actually DONE all of those things, instead of just having listed them. the reality is, I rarely if ever complete a list and oftentimes things on the To Do List stay on the list for weeks, undone. I decided yesterday that it's stupid. It makes me feel like I failed and I haven't and it is a reductive way for me to plan my days. It may work for some people and I think it's useful for remembering tasks or items, but to use it as a "this is how your day will go" schedule, well, it just doesn't work for me.

Instead I made a list of Things I'd Like to Do. It's an overall, comprehensive list of what I'd like life to look like. I feel like writing those things down was critical; it let me list my real, actual goals, rather than a series of chores. It also helped me see the day to day bullshit as part and parcel with these larger goals. Not a bad way to gain perspective. Here are some of them...

Things I Want To Do

• Develop a serious and regular yoga practice
  
• Have a Spotless Kitchen, Bathroom and Bedroom
• Lose 15 lbs (it's vain but I'm being honest here)
• Only have 2 beers/glasses of wine MAX on a weeknight
• Get up no later than 9:30 every weekday
• Be in bed no later than 12:30 am every weeknight
• Complete a craft project once a month
• Keep in good e-mail touch with certain of my friends
• Cook for myself, lunch AND dinner 4 times a week
• Read all of Jane Austen before 2010
• Get something published for reals before I turn 30
• Take photos and post them on this website
• Buy a beautiful coat for winter and some sick sick sick ankle boots.
  

So there we are. I'm going to take it one day at a time and see what happens with this, with all of this.

FAIL, But Not Forever

So yeah, I know. I know that I said I would post every single day for a whole month and then immediately failed to post at all for days. I know that. And I know how that would make my mom, dad, third grade violin teacher Mrs. Felder, 7th grade social studies teacher Mrs. Carson and Barack Hussein Obama feel: disappointed. Disappointed in me for wasting my potential they would each say, shaking their head and looking like not one single thing in this world was more important than me posting on this blog like I promised I would.


Well guess what guys? A little something called LIFE? It gets in the way sometimes.
After only 4 days of being a "resident" of Massachusetts, I came back to NYC for a fun-filled weekend of birthday celebration with my friends. Not my birthday, other peoples, but... Things were lovely and alcoholy and fun and my friends are awesome is the bottom line. But prior to that I was trying to open bank accounts and clean bathrooms and use giant packing boxes as makeshift dressers so yes, shit got in the way of my posting. And the truth of the matter is that I didn't have What It Takes to post anything of substance and if you know me well (which, of course all zero of you who are reading this do) you know that I don't like to do things half-assedly.

So today's the day we begin FOR REAL. FOR REALSIES. From now until September 9th, barring an ACT OF GOD, I will post every day. About something. So there.

Right now I am on the BoltBus back to Boston and there is a kid across the aisle and one row in front who will NOT. STOP. STARING AT ME. I mean, I own mirrors, people. I KNOW I look good. But one would tend to think that in this digital day and age a child of about ten would only even be able to look at me for about 7 seconds without immediately requiring some other type of ocular stimulation. But apparently my exhausted, sleep deprived, makeup-less visage is as captivating as a Dora the Explorer movie or whatever it is that kids are into this days. (I always swore I wasn't going to be one of those people who doesn't know what the hell is going on with Kids These Days as far as their pop cultural shenanigans go, but lo and behold it's happened. Ah, well....)

You would also probably be inclined to think that the magnitude, consistency and duration of this staring is the type of thing that a mother would have trained a child against but you would be wrong again folks, because said mother is seated in front of the daughter gabbing away at her cell phone like we are in her home. Apples and trees, people. Apples and trees.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but these are also people who are carring bagS (note the PLURAL, meaning more than ONE) from the M&M store, (which apparently needs to exist) and American Girl Place. These are the kinds of people who come to New York to shop in chain novelty stores and then drag their wares home to Boston on a bus which they treat like their own personal living room.

In additon to staring this young girl is also profoundly fidgety. She keeps shifting and moving and turning around in her seat &c and the poor young woman unfortunate enough to be seated next her had been TRYING to do some work on a laptop but was forced to close it up from all the jostling and is now sitting with her hands folded atop her closed laptop, staring dejectedly out the window , most likely rueing her decision not to take a urine-soaked Greyhound.
This bus is rawther cozy though; perfect temperature and if I didn't feel so completely that I needed a shower I would be able to comfortably doze off.

I want to have an "image" because I like when people have visuals with their posts but I can't think of much to insert here. So I'll do the next best thing to relevance; Google Image Search!

Some artist made collages of images that came up when she subjected certain words (love, marriage &c) to a Google Image Search. My first thought was "oh shit, that counts as art?" and my second thought was "not a bad social thermometer".

So here goes. I'm picking the very first image that I see for each with NO exceptions.

Fidgety Child:















Okay pretty much the opposite of what I googled, but okay. Next.

Rude Mother:

This one almost didn't post but I PERSEVERED. See, Mrs. Carson?












Innocent Bystander:

















Perhaps a bit too literal, but so be it.

And finally.

Angst:


















Again, we are literal. but oh well. Also, is that supposed to be Harry Potter? Dunno.

Well that's all for today, folks! I'll see ya tomorrow. And I really will.