Life – Page 43

Categories: Life

On July

If July had a theme, I think it would have been simplicity. July was a simple, enjoyable month. I worried less about things that are out of my control and for the things I can control, everything felt a little less chaotic, a little less overwhelming. I’m not where I wish I was, but I am where I’m supposed to be. There are many things I want from my life, many things I want to chase after, but it’s okay if it takes me a while to feel ready to take the leap.

The Fourth of July was a fun, fun day. I haven’t done much for the holiday in years past, but my uncle opened up his home for a day of barbecuing, family catch-ups, and relaxing out on his dock. It was wonderful, most especially because my brother, his wife, and my adorable nephew came. And my favorite family from Georgia came down for the holiday week, which was so great. They are the best and our time with them was way too short. We ended the night with drinks on the dock and watching the fireworks, which took place just a few feet from where we sat. It was so amazing!

My mom’s birthday is in July, so we celebrated that, of course. I took her to see the movie Tammy, which was funny and we had a great time. Then, I was able to have her all to myself on her birthday because my brother couldn’t make it to her birthday dinner. (We had a second birthday dinner the following weekend, which coincided perfectly with her fiance’s arrival home after four months on the road!) Anyway, I enjoy celebrating her birthday and I think it was a good one for her!

As mentioned above, my mom’s fiance is back home. I used to get annoyed when he was in town (he stays with us now because there’s no sense in him keeping an apartment when he’s only home 10-14 days every 3-4 months), but I’ve gotten used to him. We have a much better rapport and we’ve even had times when it’s just me & him in the apartment, and it doesn’t feel awkward at all. I’m so happy about that! And Dutch is just thrilled when he’s home and has a buddy to hang out with all day. Things are so good on this front, though. Phew!

For the better part of a year, I’ve been slowly developing feelings for someone. He makes me laugh, makes me think, and makes me feel very good. And it’s lovely, but it’s just a crush and I’ve never had a crush evolve into something more. Who’s to say this one will? Then, this week, I received an email that said this: “Believe you’re worth going after what you want. Maybe you’re gonna get hurt. Maybe you’re gonna get bruised. Maybe you’re gonna stay waiting at the window for a long, long while. Maybe, just maybe, it’s worth doing it anyway.” I’ve known for a while that it’s time to take that next step, but it’s terrifying for me. Rejection is something I’m way too familiar with and it’s easier to stay in this comfortable space where “maybe he does, maybe he doesn’t.” Laying my heart on the line, being that vulnerable and honest, it makes me want to throw up. But getting bruised is all part of the journey, isn’t it? We only regret the chances we didn’t take, after all.

This month, I’ve been thinking a lot less about the goals I want to accomplish and a lot more about how I want to feel. Don’t get me wrong – I still love goals and I will continue to set them, but I also want to tune more into myself and discover what emotions make me come alive. It’s a lot more difficult than setting goals because, with goal-setting, it’s more about extrinsic rewards. And those are easy to set. But what about intrinsic rewards? What about the emotions we want to embody in our lives? That takes a lot more soul-searching.

I’m looking forward to August, even if it won’t be a terribly exciting month. I’m planning on purging my closet and creating a capsule wardrobe, knocking off a few adventures on my Tampa Bay Project list, and maybe taking tiny, itty bitty steps toward opening my heart up to possibilities of more.

How was your July?

Categories: Life

The Tampa Bay Project

I want to go on an adventure. I mentioned this in my monthly goals post last week, about how I’m anxious to get out and do something. The truth is, I live in such a beautiful area and there is so much to do. Between Tampa and St. Petersburg and the beaches, the options are really almost endless for all the mini-adventures that await me. And, to be brutally honest, even though I’ve lived in this area my entire life, I haven’t explored it as I should. It’s hard for me to give a suggestion for restaurants to try or things to do around Tampa when people come to visit because even though I’m a born and bred local (and proud of it!), I tend to stick to my old favorite haunts.

So, in the interest of getting out more, trying new things, and exploring my beautiful city, I have come up with a list of 20 things I want to do, something I have labeled “The Tampa Bay Project.” The mini-adventures I’ve given to myself aren’t scary or crazy or way outside my comfort zone. They’re just things around town I’ve always wanted to try or experience, but have never put in the effort to do so. I don’t have a timeline for when I want to finish this project… I just want to take myself (and friends?!) on a little mini-adventure every month or so.

Here’s the list I came up with!

1. Bike around Tampa

2. Visit the Dali Museum

3. See a broadway show at the Straz Center

4. Take the Ghost Tour of St. Petersburg

5. Visit Lowry Park Zoo

6. Take a nature tour of Fort Desoto on a stand-up paddleboard

7. See a show at Tampa Improv.

8. Participate in a murder mystery show at The Spaghetti Warehouse

9. Spend a night at the Vinoy

10. Go kayaking at Weedon Island Preserve

11. Watch the sunset at Clearwater Beach

12. Rent a boat and spend a day on the water

13. Go jet-skiing at Clearwater Beach

14. Take a walking tour of Ybor City

15. Attend the Gasparilla parade and participate in one of the races

16. Visit the Florida Aquarium

17. Go to First Friday in downtown St. Petersburg

18. Attend a “Movies in the Park” event at Straub Park in downtown St. Petersburg

19. Try 10 new local restaurants (no chains!)

20. Take a day cruise to Cabbage Key

When’s the last time you explored the city you live in?

Categories: Life

On May

Top row, L-R: first drinks of our cruise; ocean in the Bahamas; five cruise ships in the port of Nassau
Middle row, L-R: mama selfie on Mother’s Day; dilated eyes; lunch with old coworkers
Bottom row, L-R: nephew baking cookies; brunch book club; and a selfie I took after getting my hair colored and cut

May was a fun month! I really enjoyed it. I went on a fabulous vacation, bought new eyeglasses, and had my book club girls over for a really fun brunch book club at my apartment pool. The weather was just beautiful this month, too!

The high point of my month was going on my sixth cruise with my mom. We had so much fun!

The low point of my month was when I got sick almost immediately after getting home from my vacation. I even had to take a half-day off work because I felt so bad! (My first actual sick day in years.)

The best thing I spent money on this month was new eyeglasses! They are the cutest. 🙂

In May, I blogged about my vacation and also did a fun q & a!

The progress I made toward my obsessive goal for this year (losing 40 lbs) was ugh, nothing. Let’s move on. I am so disappointed in myself this month. (How vastly different than last month, eh? Sigh.)

The best recipe I made last month was this ground turkey mash recipe I found on Skinnytaste (my favorite recipe site!). It is straight-up comfort food but also feels slightly healthy with the mix of veggies. I’m a fan and will definitely make it again!

I am looking forward to June because I am beginning a spending freeze. It may not sound like fun, but I know it will be a worthwhile challenge to help me get my focus back, on both my weight loss goals and money goals. Weight loss because it means I’ll be eating out less and cooking more wholesome meals, and money because I’ll hopefully have my $1,500 emergency fund completed* and have started paying off one school loan. I just really want to end the month feeling way more successful and accomplished than I did in May.

1. Get to a healthy BMI and lose at least 40 lbs.

I made no progress in May. I need to lose at least 5 lbs in June to keep me on track with this goal.

2. Pay off my credit cards, start an emergency fund (have at least $1,500 saved), and pay off one school loan.

Credit cards are paid off; emergency fund is at $320. May was not a good month for debt goals, so I’m hoping I can change that in June.

3. Read 75 books, including 10 off this list.

I read 8 books in May, putting me at 35 books read this year, and around 4 books ahead of schedule. Doing well, though I need to pick up the pace on reading the books I selected from the Rory Gilmore Reading Challenge. So far this year, I’ve read 1.5 books (in the midst of one of the novels on the list), so I am aiming to finish two more books off the list in June.

4. Get a tattoo.

No progress made yet.

5. Travel to Miami to attend a Miami Dolphins game.

No progress made yet. But my brother and I have been looking at ticket prices and discussing which game we want to attend. (I’m eyeing the season opener against the Patriots.) I am hoping to buy the tickets within the next month or so.

*Completed for this year, at least. I will continue to increase it until I reach a $10,000 emergency fund.

How was the month of May for you? What’s the best thing you spent money on in May?

Categories: Life

On March

March was a bit challenging. There were some really great moments, and then some really low moments. All in all, though, it’s one I can look back on and be happy with. It was just one of those slow, busy, tiring, enjoyable months.

The highlights of my month were participating in Run or Dye, meeting Lisa, and Dutch having a clean bill of health.

The low point of my month was dealing with a lot of panic and anxiety due to a work issue. I struggle with Impostor Syndrome a lot and it reared its head big time when I received feedback on something I wrote. It was a bit of constructive criticism and I probably took the email out of proportion and analyzed it more than it needed to be, but the fact remains that it really brought me down for a while and I had to deal with those feelings. I took time away to process and be with my thoughts, and I’m ending the month feeling much better than I did even a week ago. Growing pains, and all that jazz.

The best thing I spent my money on this month was another year of blog hosting through Whiskey Cloud! This is my second Whiskey-versary and I have been super, super happy with their service. I recommend them to anyone!

In March, I wrote about how I’m curbing my spending this year, my process for soothing myself when life gets overwhelming, and 10 things I like about myself.

The progress I made toward my obsessive goal was very little. In March, I had hoped to lose 10 lbs to put me on track to lose 40 lbs this year, but I only lost 3 lbs. Womp, womp. Just have to keep trying and figuring out how to make this work for me!

A habit I would like to change in April is being lazy about exercising. I know, I know – you can’t outexercise a bad diet and I know there are some eating issues I need to rein in, but I also really want to establish a more regular exercise routine. Right now, I’m getting in about 3-4 workouts a week, around 30 minutes, which isn’t terrible, but I know I can do much better than that.

I am looking forward to April because of the DietBet I’m participating in! I think this will be a great motivator for me to get serious about weight loss and drop more than a few pounds before my cruise in early May. (Still time to sign up – go here!)

1. Get to a healthy BMI and lose at least 40 lbs.

I need to lose 3.3 lbs per month to achieve this goal, which means by the end of March, I needed to be down around 10 lbs. Unfortunately, after losing 5 lbs in January, then gaining those 5 lbs back in February, I ended March only down 3 lbs from my starting weight. So I’m off track and in April, I need to lose 10 lbs to get back on pace to make this goal.

2. Pay off my credit cards, start an emergency fund (have at least $1,500 saved), and pay off one school loan.

My plan has been to spend four months tackling one part of this three-part goal. My credit cards are paid off and now I’m working on that emergency fund. I haven’t been able to put as much toward my emergency fund as I would like due to other expenses that popped up in March (more on that in my budget post on Friday!), but I’ll get there. I’m still on track to meet this goal.

3. Read 75 books, including 10 off this list.

I read 8 books in March, putting me at 20 books read this year, so I’m a wee bit ahead of my goal, which is good.

4. Get a tattoo.

No progress made yet. Thinking about doing this as a reward for hitting a certain weight loss number (30 lbs, maybe?).

5. Travel to Miami to attend a Miami Dolphins game.

No progress made yet, waiting on tickets to go on sale sometime this summer.

What was the highlight of your March? Any fun plans on the horizon for you in April?

Categories: Life

When Life Gets Overwhelming

So I took a break from blogging last week. It feels so narcissistic to announce something like that, but well, I have a blog that I use to talk about my crazy exciting (#sarcasm) life. So, I’m already slightly narcissistic anyway. I digress.

I took a break. I took a break because I was feeling incredibly overwhelmed about life. Sometimes, day-to-day living can be a lot to handle, you know? It seems that there is always something that needs to get done, some way we’re not living our full potential. I was feeling… overstimulated, I suppose is a good word for it. Every day seemed to take so much energy just to get through it.

Over the course of the last few weeks, a few not-great things happened in my life. Nothing traumatic or life-changing, and some of it might not have even been a big deal for some people (oh, how I wish I had the “dirt off my shoulders” mentality!), but I tend to make mountains out of molehills, overanalyze every situation, worry about every possible scenario.

I guess this is where I can sense I have a little bit of a perfectionist attitude about life. I want to be the best! at! everything! Between my work and my blog and my personal life… I want to be an all-star at it all. And when I’m not, when it all seems to fall apart or not go the way I imagined it would… it zaps my energy. It steals my joy and clouds my vision. I forget about all the great things in my life and only focus on the parts that aren’t where I want them to be.

So I was having a hard time. I felt a bit weary and worn down. If there’s one thing I do right, it’s being in tune with my emotions. I was telling a friend the other day that I should have majored in “emotions” in college because they are honestly my favorite thing. I love talking about them and learning more about emotions and how they affect our lives. So I know when I need a break. I know when to pull back the reins and learn to trust that inner voice that’s giving me a tiny nudge that I need to slow down and calm my mind.

So that’s what I did last week. I took a break. And while ideally, I would have loved to have spent a week in a tropical paradise, sipping a mango daiquiri poolside, away from work and responsibilities and reality, that wasn’t possible. (Womp, womp.)

But I still found a few easy ways to soothe the overwhelm, and today, I’d like to share my process (and hopefully help YOU if you’re feeling a bit stressed out and overstimulated by life!):

1. Clear out the distractions. For me, this comes in the form of my online presence, most specifically blogging and Twitter. So I took a week off both. I’ve been consistently churning out 3-5 blog posts a week for months now and I was getting a bit burned out and uninspired by my blog. And since my full-time job involves almost 100% writing and editing, plus I started freelancing, plus my passion project involves writing a novel… it all got to be a bit too much. (That’s a lot of writing, yo!) So I stepped away. I cleared my blogging schedule and didn’t open WordPress once for an entire week. It felt so good to give myself that break to clear my mind and quiet my thoughts.

And taking a social media break is also so good for clearing out the clutter and distractions. I always notice how much more quiet my mind is when I’m not on Twitter, when I don’t have dozens of conversations bouncing around in my brain and feeling a nudge to write profound yet witty tweets multiple times a day.

When you’re feeling overwhelmed by life, find simple yet effective ways to clear out the distractions. Maybe it means a TV break for a week, or only checking your email once a day, or not using technology after 6 p.m. Figure out what distractions you can cut out for a short period of time, so you can find your inner peace once again.

2. Rest your mind. At work, I usually spend my lunch breaks at my desk, working on blog posts, responding to personal emails, and reading blogs. Last week, I decided to shake things up so I spent my lunch break reading. While I was still at my desk, I turned away from my computer and simply focused on enjoying my lunch and enjoying my book. It gave my eyes a break from the computer and my mind a rest. It truly felt as if I were escaping for a short hour into a different world.

Find your own way to rest your mind, even if you don’t have an hour to spare every day. Whether that means simply taking five minutes out of your busy day to close your eyes, take deep breaths, and meditate, or slipping into a hot bubble bath at the end of the day, with nothing but the sound of silence to keep you company. Find your bliss and what helps you recharge, even on busy days.

3. Honor your feelings. Honoring your feelings comes easy when they are fun emotions, like happiness, joy, elation, or excitement. But when they’re not so great? When those feelings are stress or sadness or grief or worry or anger? It’s hard. It’s so hard for me not to take those emotions and shove them deep down as far as they can go, and pretend life is sunshine and butterflies. But the truth is – our feelings are there for a reason. I had to look at my life and take apart the emotions I was feeling. Why was I feeling worn out every evening when I left work? Why did I feel so much jealousy when I compared my blog and my life to others? Why did the simple act of grocery shopping make me want to fall to the ground in the parking lot of Publix and bang my head against the pavement?

Oh, feelings.

Feel your feelings. They exist for a reason. Your job is to find out what is causing them. And sometimes, just the simple fact of acknowledging their place and letting them have their moment in your heart is enough. There’s no fixing, there’s no solution. They are just there and we have to give them their place. And other times, there is a solution. We have to sit down with that emotion, take it apart and discover the cause, and learn to move past it.

4. Take care of yourself. I’ve never really been a big believer in self-care for myself. For others, absolutely. But for me, and my boring, mundane life? Not really. I mean, I’m not a busy working mom or working two jobs or trying to get a business off the ground. I’m just… me. I have a full-time job, yes, and a vast array of hobbies that require a lot of attention, but self-care? What do I need that for?

Oh, friends. We all need good self-care habits. And that doesn’t include reaching for a bottle of wine and some chocolate at the end of a stressful day. For me, it means not using my laptop when I come home from work, going to bed early, doing morning workouts before I start my day, and reading silly, trashy romance novels. These are my escapes. These are what make me feel good.

For you, maybe it’s journaling or Skyping with good friends who get you or yoga or knitting or whatever makes you feel good, authentic, and present. Find your self-care habits and own them.

Last week was restorative for me. I felt that nudging that I was on the brink of a major breakdown and I put the brakes on for a short while, to slow down, quiet my mind, and recharge. I found my inner peace once again. Be true to you, be true to how you are feeling (even if you feel silly for your hurt feelings or anxious thoughts or sadness!), and take care of yourself. Nobody else is going to do that for you.

I’d love to hear in the comments: what are some of your self-care rituals?