tales of a girl trying to make sense of it all.
I hurt. I hurt all over.
Oddly enough, it’s from yoga this morning, not the ridiculously intensive spin class I took tonight.
I slept for three hours this afternoon. I was amazed, given how much pain I was in. I must have needed the rest.
I don’t sleep much any more. Since I started the gym last week, I finally have. It feels nice.
But I still like to take naps when I can.
Okay bloggies, listen up. I know that many of you are creative types. I know that many of you are giving types.
Through a strange twist of fate called Twitter (yep, that very beast that I vehemently ignored for so long), I was connected with an amazing woman, Tamara, Chief Imaginator at Imaginibbles.
Tamara has what she calls a “Dream Big Promise” – that every man and woman and child on this planet deserve the opportunity to dream big. Problem is, when your most important thought is finding clean drinking water, that can be hard to do. So Tamara donates one Life Straw® for every purchase made in her shop.
Some of you know that I recently hosted a contest on my photography blog (I was in desperate need of inspiration) and the winner received this fabulous journal starter from Imaginibbles.
I just flipped through it before sending it on and I love it. I must have one. And I think you should too. I think it would be really helpful for the days that you want to write, but have no idea what to write. Check it out!
Well, in the vain of achieving #50 on the 101 list, I joined a gym. I figured that was the likely first step of accomplishing that goal.
But I didn’t just join a gym. I joined the YMCA (ha! Now that song is gonna be stuck in your head too). In fact, I signed my whole family up. Mwa ha ha…
I’m considering modifying the goal to “Get to the gym five times a week.” I kinda like my Thursday night TV. Although re-runs will be starting soon and it won’t matter. I did go twice on Monday, so that has to count for something.
Monday, my mom and I went to a spinning class. It was our first time attempting such a workout, and I have to admit, I was scared. Of all the things I’d ever heard about spinning, I had always been afraid to try it. Which I think says something about what I have heard because even Bikram Yoga didn’t scare me, and that’s a tough workout. But spinning just sounded daunting. Fortunately, all of us in the class that day were rookies, so she went easy on us. We survived.
Tuesday, we took a yoga class in the evening. It was a little strange for me as I’ve been studying Sivananda Yoga at a local studio here in town, so this “Gentle Yoga” seemed more like the yoga class I took in college. But after cycling, it was darn hard.
Wednesday, we hit the machines, and I managed to run past the 5k point, which was encouraging. A few more weeks of training and I can look into running a 5k this summer/fall to cross #7 off the list.
Thursday is my off day, as I mentioned before.
Friday, we did spinning again. This time, with a different instructor. And it was hard. My mom actually had to stop and throw up at one point. Yikes. I sweat my little buns off, but I pushed myself. Hard. And I felt great.
I’m already looking forward to next week. And the point when I can fit into my cute khaki skirt that I had to squeeze into on my first date with Dan last summer.
Yesterday was a rough day. As some of you may know, my dad suffers from bipolar disorder. His lows are pretty bad. As in, he will disappear for days at a time after saying things like, “I’m done,” which leaves us wondering if that was a suicide comment or if he’s just out cooling off and will be back.
It’s draining.
What makes it worse is that my mom exacerbates the situation by yelling at him as though he can just snap out of it. It’s bad enough that she treats me and my siblings like children; it’s worse that she does it to my dad as well.
The only person that heard from my dad at all yesterday was my brother, who managed to get him to answer his phone in the morning. He still didn’t come home until well over 24 hours after he left.
This is hard on me. I hate being around when the energy at the house is so negative. I feel so helpless in trying to make things better. I try to comfort my mom, and she can’t be comforted. I try to comfort my dad and he gets upset with me. I feel, sometimes, like I can’t win.
I climbed into bed last night, feeling totally lonely and isolated and cried myself to sleep.
Here’s hoping for some good days in the future.
Dave Barry has got to be one of my favorite columnists of all time. I got hooked on him in Ms. Cox’s 11th grade English class. Aside from my 6th grade teacher, Ms. Cox was one of My. Favorite. Teachers. Ever.
Maybe it was because she was determined to teach us proper grammar.
Maybe it was because she taught us words such as “ubiquitous,” “exacerbate,” and “pedantic.”
Maybe it was because she could do a crossword puzzle just by having someone read it to her (seriously, the talent was insane).
Or maybe it was just because she read us Dave Barry’s column every Monday.
I always looked forward to Mondays in Ms. Cox’s class. Getting Dave Barry was some sort of special treat for all of us. Much of his column was probably humor far beyond our stunted maturity level, but we enjoyed it nonetheless. Ms. Cox read the column with a panache that I’m sure made it all the more interesting.
So I was super excited to see this on Twitter this morning, from another favorite author of mine, Jen Lancaster: In Terms of Badassness. Brings back some good memories.
I picked up a copy of Atlas Shrugged yesterday. I’m sure I already own a copy, given that I have a zillion books, but since they’re all in a box in a basement in Denver, I figured I’d just get a new copy so I can tackle this goal (#45) already.
The book is almost two inches thick. The print is super tiny. There are. One THOUSAND. Sixty Nine. Pages.
I’m trying to remember why it is that I wanted to read this again? Oh yeah, because my best friend said I should. I always do what she tells me. Okay, maybe not always. But a lot.
I have to admit that I’m a little more than terrified to start this book. I picked it up last night, thoroughly exhausted, but determined to start it. Read all of two paragraphs and then fell asleep. Just the sheer weight of the book was a little daunting.
With just a three week break from school (one of which I just burned, being utterly grateful that I pulled off an A in my web design class), I am attempting to read this sucker in three weeks. Seeing as it took me nearly two years to finish East of Eden, which was just as thick, but the print was much larger, I’m not so sure I can. But I’m gonna try.
I also pitched an idea to my best friend the other day, which will simultaneously accomplish both #98 and #101 – we are going to start reading some books off of that list together for our new tradition. We’ll each pick a book, we’ll both read it, and then we’ll get together and talk about it. Sort of a little best friend book club. She loved the idea. Cheating? No. Efficient? Absolutely.
You all know how much Sarah Noel and I love a good contest! Recently, after much brainstorming for a new series, I was struck with an idea – why not incorporate the multitude of talented writers that participate in the Musings blog into a piece somehow? Better yet, why not make it a contest (since we love to see people win stuff!)? So here it is — a haiku writing contest!
What, exactly, is haiku? It’s a Japanese form of poetry that has 17 “moras” or syllables. In English, we separate these syllables into three lines of 5, 7, 5 syllables, respectively. They typically contain a seasonal reference as well. Check out the image above, that’s a haiku I wrote about the contest.
What does Japanese poetry have to do with photography, you ask? During one of my favorite photography classes, we were given a haiku and asked to interpret it using our cameras. I loved the assignment and would love to do it again! Sure, I could Google ‘summer haiku’ and come up with hundreds, I’m sure. But that’s no fun and there would be no prizes!
If any of you have experienced the insane winter weather (clear through spring) like we did here in Flagstaff, you can empathize with how ready for summer I am. I’d like to see 70 degree days for a consecutive week. Is that too much to ask? Let’s drown our winter blues with some summery creativity!
To help us get into the spirit of summer, I want to see your best summer themed haiku!
To enter, email your haiku to me here at eunice@eunicebrownlee.com by May 10th at midnight, PDT.
I will post all entries here on the blog on May 12th for the readers to vote for their favorite haiku. Voting will be open from May 12th-15th.
Top ten picks – Your haiku will become a photograph! I will take each haiku and attempt to interpret it photographically. I will send you a fine art print of your haiku to enjoy.
Top five picks – The photographs and haiku will be displayed at Il Posto starting June 21st (the first day of summer)! Il Posto is an Italian restaurant in Metro Denver where I currently have my photography on display. It’s time for a new series to hang and this project will be it! All writing credits will be given to the respective authors.
Top pick – The poem with the most votes will win this fabulous journal starter e-book from Imaginibbles (you know you want it).
(image retreived here)
This prize was chosen to help benefit the Dream Big Promise that Imaginibbles is sponsoring. For every item purchased, Imaginibbles is donating one Life Straw® to a third world country in need of clean drinking water. They have several great items designed to unleash your creative power. Please check out the other items they have to offer and shop around, won’t you?
What happens when you take a little ink, smooth it across a (usually) hand-cut block and squeeze it through some rollers with a nice piece of paper? The sheer beauty that is letterpress, of course.
I am freaking obsessed with letterpress right now. The velvety look of the paper. The bold blocks of color. The pretty way the design dimples the paper. It’s heavenly, I tell you.
I used to love to write letters to people. Mostly because I love getting them. I have a bit of a stationery fetish as it is. I mean. I simply cannot. Pass. Up. Adorable stationery. I have boxes full of the stuff. Who wouldn’t want to get a nice handwritten card that looked like this?
Sadly, I don’t take the time to sit and write letters to people much anymore. The advent of email has made the act of correspondence quick and easy. I still correspond with my sixth grade teacher. She’s the only one I seem to send handwritten letters to any more. We have tried the email thing, we have tried to connect on Facebook, but there is just something that doesn’t feel right about it. Kind of like getting used to calling her “Susan” and not “Mrs. T,” which she granted me permission to do upon my high school graduation 13 years ago. I still call her Mrs. T. And I still write her letters.
When I was a little girl, my dad traveled a lot. He would be gone most of the week, sometimes for a couple of weeks at a time. Back then, long distance calls were fairly expensive, so we didn’t talk to him on the phone, save for a quick conversation to let us know he was still alive. It was well before the days of email, so all we had was the good ol’ US Postal Service. He would send us postcards from wherever he may have been that week, with a note scrawled on the back about how he was enjoying wherever-it-was that he happened to be, something interesting that happened, and a reminder to obey our mother. I still have every single one of those cards in my box of special correspondence.
I’ve had to purge some of the letters from other people over the years, though. As a highly sentimental person, I found value in every letter that anyone took the time to write to me, even those goofy little notes that my best friend and I passed back and forth in junior high school. I tossed most of those letters not long after I stopped being friends with whoever had written them to me, although I do still have the letter that my high-school sweetheart broke up with me (for good) with. It’s tucked inside the graduation card he gave me.
My ex-husband and I had a tradition that I started the first time we spent the night apart: I wrote him a letter for every day that he was gone — some reminder of me and a way for me to tell him that I loved him – and tucked them into his suitcase for him to find. It turned into making a $20 expenditure on greeting cards (thanks to my obsession with them) for the departing half, which then grew into us exchanging a handful of cards every time we had to be apart. We kept up the tradition even into our divorce, when the cards began to express sorrow and pain, rather than, “I love you and I’ll miss you.” I had hundreds of these cards from the seven years we were together. I kept them in a half a dozen Victoria’s Secret boxes for years. One afternoon, as I was moving out of my townhouse, I found the boxes, shoved into the crawl space to be all but forgotten. I opened the box and started reading some of the letters, was momentarily saddened by the notes inside, and then promptly carried them all to the garbage without finishing. No need to keep that around.
Anyway. Back to the letterpress.
After reading Sarah Noel’s ode to letterpress business cards post last week, I decided that to accomplish #77, I’m going letterpress. I like my current business cards okay, the moo card with a photo on front and my info on the back, but I want a really impressive business card. Something totally unique. Sort of like my dad’s coworker, back when he worked for the sawmill, who had his cards printed on actual wood. If that’s not cool, I don’t know what is.
Now if only I can decide whether I want to go elegant or mod with the design…what do you think?
Wow. I really can’t believe that I did it. I did!! *clink*
I made this goal because I used to love blogging, but I’ve kind of gotten away from it. I’m also a terrible procrastinator and not a fan of routine. So to commit to something daily for a month has been a big stretch for me. Really.
Maybe this means I’ve primed myself to take on #55.
Not only have I managed to post daily for a month on this page, I’ve managed to get a lot posted over on my other blog, although my photography blog got quite neglected the past two months. Sorry. I am still only one person.
I’ve also managed to keep up on all of my friend’s blogs, which is awesome. I think part of my challenge with blogging is really taking the time to enjoy what other people have to say.
So I hope that this is the revitalization my blog needed and that I will continue to write here regularly. And I hope you’ll join me.
“Finish each day and be done with it. You have done what you could. Some absurdities and blunders no doubt crept in. Forget them as soon as you can. Tomorrow is a new day; begin it well and serenely and with too high a spirit to be encumbered with your old nonsense.”
I first heard this quote the day after I quit the job from hell. I was in a screaming match with my former boss about whether or not I was allowed to contact old clients. The job had been poisonous to me and yet I stayed out of some sense of heroic duty to people I’d never even met. For months, I laid awake, worrying about clients who I’m sure were also laying awake, worrying about their futures. I wished I could have done more to help that day, but like a triage unit with blood everywhere, I could only do so much.
The past few weeks, my Pilates instructor has been out of town and we’ve had the delight of practicing yoga with a real life yogi who studied for 12 years in an ashram in India (yeah, as soon as he said it, I reminisced back to Eat Pray Love too). The coolest thing that I learned in practicing with him for three weeks was this: stand in mountain pose (feet together, hands down side) and lift your toes off the floor. In most people, this creates a state of imbalance before the body corrects itself. The thing to note is to pay attention to the direction your body goes — if you fall forward, you’re looking to the future, if you fall backward, you are looking to the past. If you don’t sway at all (the ideal result), you’re living in your present, which is where you should be.
I teetered back.
No surprise there. I am constantly looking to the past for answers to my present. I have a never ending game of “what if” that runs through my head for every critical decision I made in life.
But when I read that quote for the first time, it gave me pause. I really pondered what it meant and how I could apply it to my life. I let go of all the worry about all the clients I had let down by letting my personal needs trump theirs. I haven’t looked back, and even when I get together with my former coworkers, I disallow them to spend a lot of time talking about those months. Those long, bad, painful six months. That day, it was easy to let go of the nonsense.
There are other things I haven’t been able to let go of yet. Like the fact that I hope every single day that it will be the day that Alissa’s dad decides to be a dad, or that Kevin can admit he loves me too, or that my ex husband will apologize for his role in the destruction of our marriage. I know, realistically speaking, none of those will ever happen, but it’s my past that keeps me hoping. But I don’t mind letting go of some of that nonsense. After all, tomorrow is a new day.