Recurring Series

Friday Questions (v. 15)

Happy Friday! I have a pretty low-key weekend planned, although I’ll be spending the majority working on a side project since it’s due on Monday. In the midst of that, I have a massage planned and my nephew’s birthday party. I’m also hoping to put together my gallery wall (nope, didn’t do it last weekend!) and assemble a small, three-shelf bookcase I picked up from Target a few weeks ago. So I think I’ll have plenty to do to fill my time!

It’s the end of the month, which means it’s time for another round of Friday Questions from the Real Talk Radio podcast. Let’s dive in!

1) Fast forward five years. Your future self is talking to you. What advice does your future self give you right now?

I think my future self wouldn’t want me to spend so much time worrying about my love life and that I’ll never find someone to spend my life with. Because maybe I won’t! And isn’t that okay? I’m so happy with what my life looks like today – I have a career I love, friends I adore, and two perfect cats to dote on. I’m financially independent, self-sufficient, and have so many hobbies that I’m never bored. That’s a beautiful life, even if it doesn’t include a partner. My future self would want me to be happy with where I am now – while still continuing to put myself out there and be open to meeting new people – and to stop wasting mental energy worrying about what the future holds.

2) What’s one thing that helps you when you’re feeling very overwhelmed or stressed?

Making lists! Work right now is insane and I’ve been feeling very stressed about my workload (it should all calm down around October 8th). So I wrote out a list of every single thing I needed to do this week and next week and then organized all the tasks into a daily schedule. So, I know exactly what I need to do every day for the next two weeks. It helped my stress levels immensely. There’s a lot going on, yes, but as long as I stay focused, I can get it all done.

When I’m stressed about something not work- or deadline-related, it still helps to make lists. Maybe a brain dump of my thoughts if I’m feeling stressed about a personal situation. If it’s my budget, it’s listing out my upcoming expenses to get a better grasp on my financial situation. I’m a visual person and just being able to see everything laid out and understanding exactly what I need to do helps me to take a deep breath and feel less stressed.

3) What’s the one thought that gives you the most butterflies right now?

I’m pretty excited about NaNoWriMo. I’m looking forward to immersing myself in my book for the month of November and making serious progress on it. I’ve attempted NaNoWriMo a few times and only succeeded at it once, but I remember how much fun it was the one time I succeeded. I was so fully committed to writing each and every day, and I had the time of my life. This time, I have a much better plot and more fully fleshed-out characters so I’m hopeful the process will be easier and even more fun than last time.

4) What’s one thing you’ve had to learn to accept about yourself?

My quietness. I used to be very self-conscious about it, especially because I’d always have to answer the fateful question, “Why are you so quiet?” (Which, how do you even answer that?! I don’t ask people why they talk so much!) I’m never the loudest person in the group and even with my best friends, I’m the one sitting back and letting everyone else talk. Maybe I’ll interject a comment here and there, and if it’s a topic I’m especially amped about, I’m happy to jump into the fray, but mostly, I let everyone else do the talking. It took me a long time to come to terms with my quietness because I always used to view it as a negative part of my personality. I always thought it meant I was boring and that was why I’d never have friends. But it’s not! It’s just part of who I am and it means when I do speak up, it’s because I have something to say, something I feel is important and worth opening up my mouth for.

5) Who’s someone (writer, blogger, podcaster, etc.) who has had an impact on your thinking this year?

Robin DiAngelo. She wrote the book White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism and it was a life-changing read for me. No matter how “woke” you think you are (“you” being the collective white person), we all have implicit racism. We all laughed at a racist joke, even if we didn’t think it was funny because we wanted to “belong” to a group. Robin’s book digs into why whiteness is considered the superior identity and it has helped me recognize all the tiny ways we engage in racist behavior. It all matters. Robin DiAngelo does such an amazing job at unpacking how we interact with racism in so many ways, from our schools to our neighborhoods, and it’s astonishing all the ways people of color have to care for white people’s feelings. (Ugh, we are so damn fragile. It’s disgusting.) Anyway, she has changed my worldview and helped me to better understand my own racism so I can try to be a better ally. I still have a long way to go and I work every day to dismantle my own implicit bias. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

What’s something you’ve had to accept about yourself?

Categories: Recurring Series

A Day in the Life: Friday, September 20th

Happy Monday, friends! Typically, on Mondays, I have a reading recap for you. But I didn’t read much this week! I’m basically reading the same books this week as I was last week so it wouldn’t have made for a very exciting update. Instead of that, I thought I’d take you along on a day in my life! Friday was a very busy day for me – much more than it normally is – so it seemed like a good day to document. Enjoy!

6:10AM: My body insists it’s time to wake up, but it’s not. I go to the bathroom and then go back to bed, but I don’t sleep very much since Lila jumps on me and demands pets.

6:45AM: My alarm goes off. I get up, turn it off, and then read a chapter in Anne of Windy Poplars.

7:10AM: I finally get out of bed and make myself a bowl of cereal and iced coffee. I eat breakfast while reading blogs.

7:35AM: I start getting ready, which basically entails pulling my hair back in a ponytail and throwing on yoga pants and a tee. I also pack a bag for this morning. I’m accompanying my mom to her endoscopy, so I pack my laptop and a book.

7:50AM: Drive to my mom’s apartment.

8:00AM: I pick my mom up and drive to the surgery center, which is only about 20 minutes away. It’s busy in there this morning but I find a chair tucked away in a corner next to an outlet. They have WiFi, thankfully, so I decide to spend the time I’m waiting doing work for a side project.

9:30AM: An entire hour after her procedure was scheduled, my mom is finally taken back for her endoscopy. I continue working on my project and finally wrap it up around 10:30, right around the time the nurse comes to get me.

10:35AM: Mom looks good and isn’t too groggy from the anesthesia! Funny story: she had so many people asking her if she was cold and/or wanted a blanket. She was wearing a tank top and shorts while everyone else was covered up. My mom just naturally runs hot (she keeps her AC at 70!) but it was funny how many people expected her to be freezing in what she was wearing. She’s given a soda and her doctor meets with her to discuss what he did (took some biopsies and widened her esophagus), and then we can leave! Yay!

11:00AM: We leave the surgery center and we’re both starving at this point so I drive us to IHOP. Another story that’s very indicative of our relationship and how much we both hate making decisions: I asked her where she wanted to eat and she immediately responded with, “Oh, no, I’m not allowed to make any decisions for the next 24 hours.” (Since she was under anesthesia, she was told not to make any crazy decisions until it’s worn off completely. FUNNY, MOM.)

11:15AM: We get to IHOP and it’s surprisingly packed. We get a seat quickly, though, and order. I’m nearing a hypoglycemia episode at this point, as it’s been four hours since I last ate and what I ate wasn’t very filling. Thankfully, our food comes quickly before I’m in a full-blown episode. (I’ve been doing pretty good at keeping these episodes at bay, and this was the first one I’ve had in a few months at least!) I get an omelet with a side of toast. Mmm! So good!

11:50AM: After eating, we stop by Publix because my mom wanted to pick up some supplies. She’ll be confined to her apartment for the rest of the day, until my stepdad arrives home late in the evening, so she needs to make sure she has food on hand.

12:20PM: We’re back at her apartment, yay! I decide to come in to help her with Chip for a bit. We take him on a walk and then I play with him.

1:00PM: I leave my mom’s place and drive back home. Right now, I’m regretting the fact that I didn’t cancel my therapy appointment because all I want to do is take a nap! Alas, no rest for the weary today.

1:15PM: I’m home and I get the mail. Is anyone else terrible at getting their mail regularly? I probably pick it up once a week when I need to be getting it every three days. Oops. Anyway, my Sephora PLAY! box has arrived, woohoo! I open my box when I get inside (after loving on the kitties for a bit, of course). It’s a decent box, although some stuff I’ve gotten before.

1:25PM: I have about 30 minutes before I need to leave for therapy and as much as I want to just lie on my couch and read, I know I’ll fall right to sleep if I do. So, instead, I put in some more time with my side project.

1:45PM: I close my laptop and put it away. Then, I get dressed in workout clothes, fill up a water bottle, and head out. I drive to my therapist’s office.

2:15PM: I have a great therapy appointment! It was surprising how much we had to talk about, but then again, not really. My therapist is just so good at figuring out exactly what I need to talk about, even when I show up with nothing on my mind. We discussed an issue I’m having at work (#impostersyndrome), dating, and a whole bunch of other stuff. It was a really great appointment and I’m glad I didn’t cancel it.

3:07PM: After therapy, I drive to my gym and get in a solid workout. I spent 20 minutes on the recumbent bike and then 15 minutes using some of the weight machines.

4:18PM: I’m home and I take a hot shower. So nice! So necessary! I’m trying not to wash my hair as much as I used to (I wash it every three days now) so I just wash my body and shampoo my bangs.

4:30PM: I use dry shampoo for my roots and then dry my bangs and quickly run the blow dryer through the rest of my hair.

4:41PM: I lie down on my bed to read but I only read one chapter before my eyelids feel heavy and I’m zonked out.

6:00PM: My alarm wakes me up. Oh yes, don’t you worry. I had a distinct feeling I would fall asleep if I lay in bed and read, so I set an alarm beforehand. It was a really perfect nap, though. And I made sure to sleep on my back so I didn’t disturb my bangs. I wake up in what I call my “cat sandwich,” where I have one cat lying next to me (although I guess it’d be more of a Stephany sandwich?!) It was so hard to get up with my girls snuggled next to me, and they definitely gave me an annoyed look when I did, but up I go. I do my hair and makeup for tonight.

6:45PM: I leave my apartment and head to a friend’s house for her birthday party!

7:10PM: I arrive and show up right as a friend and her husband do, so we give each other hugs and walk in together. I hand the birthday girl her gift, which she opens up right away (on my insistence).

It’s a really fun party, made even better because it’s a combination of my book club girls (my faves!) and former coworkers. It’s so much fun to catch up with some of them and chat about lives and jobs and travel. There is pizza and brownies and a really cute doggo that I can’t help loving on. He is the sweetest!

10:22PM: I leave the party and I am pooped. This was a really full day and I am looking forward to tomorrow, as I plan to do nothing but sleep, read, and play with my kitties.

10:48PM: I’m home. I say hi to my girls, put on my nightgown, take off my makeup, and then do a face mask.

11:15PM: I wash off the face mask, brush my teeth, and then start my nighttime routine of cleaning the litter boxes and tidying up the apartment.

11:33PM: I’m finally in bed! I plan to read a few more chapters of Anne, but mostly I scroll through Instagram and then watch 10 minutes of an ASMR video on YouTube.

12:04AM: Lights out! Here’s hoping I can sleep in tomorrow.

Categories: Recurring Series

Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow

Happy Friday! I haven’t done a “Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow” post on my blog in over a year, so I thought today would be the perfect time to bring it back. Let’s chat!

Yesterday, I…

Woke up early to go to my first BodyPump class in over a year. I can’t remember the last time I took a BodyPump class – it must have been early 2018. But my new gym has a class at 5:45am on Thursdays and while I like to try to sleep in on Thursdays (since it’s my work-from-home day), I knew I’d feel better if I woke up early and got in a great workout before 7am. It was a hard workout but felt so good to be back pumpin’! I think those early morning Thursday workouts will be a new part of my schedule.
Got to snuggle with my kitties during my work-from-home day. Having a work-from-home day once a week has been life-changing for me. It is so nice to have a day at home every week where I can get a lot of work done but also be in my pajamas and spend time with my kitties.
Had my weekly mom date night. My mom and I have started this routine of hanging out on Thursday nights. It’s perfect for me because it allows me to have some social interaction on my WFH day. (Although, let’s be real, I really enjoy not talking to anyone all day!) We usually go out to dinner and lately, I’ve been coming back to her place to watch Thursday’s episode of Big Brother (and to play with Chip, of course). I don’t know what we’re going to do when Big Brother is over!

Today, I…

Took the day off from work so I could take my mom to a doctor’s appointment. She’s getting an endoscopy to check out this weird issue she has sometimes where she can’t swallow while she’s eating. It doesn’t happen all the time but it’s frequent enough that her doctor wants her to get it checked out. (Not to mention scary!) It’s likely she needs her esophagus widened (she’s had it widened before) so I don’t think it’s anything serious. Anyway, she needs a driver to take her to and from the appointment, and I’m more than happy to be that person!
Have therapy. I was actually considering canceling my appointment today because I’m feeling really good and my anxiety has been at an all-time low. I can’t even pinpoint why. I just feel good! I’ve been going to therapy for a little over a year now, and while I’m not someone who thinks you ever “graduate” from therapy, I do think I’m in a place where it’s not as vital to my mental health as it once was. That’s such a great feeling! Even still, I think I’ll continue with monthly appointments (or maybe appointments every other month) because it’s nice to have that mental health check-in and chat about things going on in my life.
Will celebrate a friend’s birthday with a pool party! It should be a fun night. I don’t know how many people are coming but I do know there will be lots of pizza and a dog to love on. That’s all I really need!

Tomorrow, I…

Will sleep in! It has been a very busy week and a half for me and I have been looking forward to Saturday because I have no plans. I’m mostly excited to wake up without an alarm and try to sleep in to the best of my ability. (Why does my body insist on waking up early on the weekends?)
May try to go on a long walk. I’m debating between a long walk or going to the gym. The high for Saturday is 90 degrees, so the gym may win out. But I have to do something active because I need to work out every day from now until the end of the month to reach my goal of reaching 100 workouts for the year.
Will attempt to put together my gallery wall. This is one of my goals for September and it’ll be nice to mark it complete! (And to clear off my kitchen island, which has been housing all the stuff that I’m using for my gallery wall for weeks and weeks.)

What’s your “yesterday, today, tomorrow”?

Categories: Recurring Series

Friday Questions (v. 14)

Happy Friday, my friends! I am happy to see this long weekend, although I am not happy about Hurricane Dorian. At the moment, it seems like the west coast of Florida will miss most of the nastiness. It could land at a Category 1 for us (which is what Irma was for us in the Tampa Bay area) or it could miss us completely. Right now, it’s leaning towards missing us completely, but we’re told to be prepared for high winds, rain, and power outages. Fun times! I’m just worried about the east coast of Florida since it could land as a Category 4 there and that could be devastating. Fingers cross Dorian veers south and disappears into the Atlantic!

Aside from all that craziness, my weekend should be low-key. I have a massage this afternoon, some errands to run tomorrow, and game night with the fam on Saturday night. I was hoping to take Chip to the dog beach with my mom and stepdad, but it’s going to be a rainy weekend so no-go for that. Time to hunker down, read lots of books, and pray my power doesn’t go out!

Anywho… let’s dive into today’s post! I’m reaching into the archives of the Real Talk Radio podcast to pull out some of the community questions to answer. Enjoy!

1) How do you typically spend the last hour of your day?

Typically, I’m doing my nighttime routine, which involves tidying up my apartment, washing any dishes that are in the sink, and cleaning the litter boxes. I also brush my teeth and face and then snuggle up into bed with my book and my phone. I alternate between reading and scrolling through Instagram for about 30 minutes before setting my alarm, plugging in my phone, and saying goodnight to the kitties!

2) What’s one area of your life that’s challenging right now?

Hm… there are a few areas, but most of those I’m not willing to talk about on my public blog. Haha. But something I am willing to discuss is friendship and finding ways to reach out more. I have a very hard time reaching out, even just texting a friend to ask about going to dinner. There are a few friends I want to do this with, but I’m so fearful of rejection (and the way I downward spiral when someone says no, even if they give an entirely reasonable answer as to why), so I just… don’t. Of course, if I do make plans, then I have to worry about social anxiety and spending all of my time leading up to dinner dreading it. Even though I know I’ll enjoy it! And feel great afterward! But my social anxiety likes to be that little devil on my shoulder beforehand. It’s exhausting. Hence, why I don’t reach out.

3) When it comes to money, what is one thing you purposefully don’t spend money on and what is one thing that is a totally worthwhile splurge?

I purposefully don’t spend money on shoes. I’m not someone with multiple pairs of shoes for every different scenario. I have one pair of flip-flops, one pair of sandals, a pair of black flats, a pair of nude flats, one pair of heels, one pair of TOMs, etc. I pay as little as possible for shoes and only replace them when they have fallen apart. (I just threw out a pair of sandals that I had worn a hole through. I wore those suckers to the bone.) Shoes hold so little value for me.

As for something that’s a totally worthwhile splurge for me, definitely expensive haircuts and color. I probably pay close to $1,000 a year for my haircuts and colors. Every two months, I visit my salon to have my hair colored (and every four months, I get it cut) and it’s not cheap at all. But it’s so worth it to me. The coloring products they use are of higher quality and my hair holds the color pretty well, and there’s just something decadent about these hair appointments for me. I love them and very much look forward to them every other month!

4) If anything were possible, what is one of your big dreams or fantasies?

I’d love to start a silent reading party here in St. Petersburg. I loved the silent reading event I attended earlier this summer, but it takes place in a small room at a meditation center and I don’t think most people know about it. My dream is to partner with a well-known restaurant or bar in the area that would allow me to host the event on a Saturday morning (preferably when they’re closed). People could get a drink and maybe a snack, sit down with their book and read for an hour or two. There’d be time for socializing before and after. Similar to what Silent Reading Party RVA is doing. But I don’t even know how to get started or how to get the word out! Just a dream I have in the back of my mind.

5) What’s one activity that you can always count on to make you feel good?

I mean, this is easy. Reading! Especially if it involves a hot bubble bath. 🙂 Reading is the one thing I try to do every day, even if it’s only for 10-15 minutes at the end of the day. It allows me to escape my mind for a while and focus on something else, and I just love it so much.

What’s something you don’t splurge on and something you do?

Categories: Recurring Series

Quick Takes on a Friday (v. 5)

1) My car has been doing this weird thing lately where sometimes my key fob will lock my driver’s side door and sometimes it won’t. The key fob always locks the other doors… just not the driver’s side. I can’t explain it! It will work fine for a while and then stop working for a few days and then work again. It’s so strange.

2) For my cat parents out there, do you trim your cat’s claws? Eloise lets me trim her claws without too much fuss (she’ll give me a mournful “meow” and try to jump out of my arms, but generally, she’s good about letting me trim her front paws), but Lila is a nightmare about it. It’s honestly traumatizing. I have to somehow wrap her up like a burrito in a blanket but she’s too fast for me! If I do manage to get her, she brings her back claws out and up to scratch me and will hide her front claws from me. At this point, it’s not worth it for me to try to trim her claws myself. They aren’t terribly long (and she uses scratching pads regularly), so I’ll just keep an eye on them and make sure they don’t grow into her paws.

3) This year, my book club has started a different way of choosing our monthly read. Usually, we all throw out some ideas and pick from that batch, but we didn’t feel like we were choosing really great books that way. So instead, our fearless leader A. assigned us a month where we would be in charge of coming to book club with three recommendations and we’d pick the book from those recs. It’s been wildly successful so far. August is my month to pick and you know, I’m oddly nervous about it! I have two great selections picked out (which I won’t reveal here since some of the girls read this blog!) and I’m mulling over my TBR list to figure out the third book to suggest. I feel like I have a reputation in my book club since I read the most out of anyone in the group, so there’s a little bit of pressure to choose great books. Here’s hoping I don’t disappoint!

4) This week did not start off on the best note. There was a work issue that popped up along with some personal life drama that brought me to a low place. I felt overly sensitive and the littlest, most innocuous things were setting me off. When I feel like that, it’s just so hard to pull myself out from the undertow. I just want to be able to be a person who can go through life without being so sensitive about everything. I had dinner with my mom on Tuesday and talked through some of the problems, and that really helped because a) as a sensitive person, she gets it better than anyone in my life, and b) mom time is always therapeutic for me. I have a hard time reaching out when I feel this way because I don’t want to bring anyone else down (as someone who takes on the energy of people around me, I’m sensitive to the fact that I can be the one to bring someone else into a sad, depressive state), but I’m always reminded of how much I need to do this when I’m feeling low like this.

5) I’m reading White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk About Racism by Robin DiAngelo right now, and man, it’s so good. I have highlighted so many pages and my book is filled with stickies. I’ve been taking photos of certain passages and putting them on Instagram Stories because I just can’t keep this knowledge to myself. It’s uncomfortable to read about all the insidious ways we all practice racial inequality, even when we think we are “woke.” Some passages to ponder:

One of the greatest social fears for a white person is being told that something that we have said or done is racially problematic. Yet when someone lets us know that we have done such a thing, rather than respond with gratitude and relief (after all, now that we are informed, we won’t do it again), we often respond with anger and denial. Such moments can be experienced as something valuable, even if temporarily painful, only after we accept that racism is unavoidable and that it is impossible to completely escape having developed problematic racial assumptions and behavior.

Whiteness rests upon a foundational premise: the definition of whites as the norm or standard for humans, and people of color as a deviation from that norm. Whiteness is not acknowledged by white people, and the white reference point is assumed to be universal and is imposed on everyone. White people find it very difficult to think about whiteness as a specific state of being that could have an impact on one’s life and perceptions.

People of color may also hold prejudices and discriminate against white people, but they lack the social and institutional power that transforms their prejudice and discrimination into racism; the impact of their prejudice on whites is temporary and contextual. Whites hold the social and institutional positions in society to infuse their racial prejudice into the laws, policies, practices, and norms of society in the way that people of color do not … When I say that only whites can be racist, I mean that in the United States, only whites have the collective social and institutional power and privilege over people of color. People of color do not have the power and privilege over white people.

6) This is quite an interesting book to read, too, in conjunction with this week in politics, where the president of our country used racist language when talking about four congresswomen of color. It’s appalling but not surprising, infuriating but expected from someone like him. Also, isn’t it great to know that there are rules forbidding lawmakers from calling the president racist, but no rule to forbid a president from being a racist? Interesting, that. It’s almost as if we care more about how white people are perceived than how people of color are treated! /sarcasm

7) Oof, I have a busy weekend planned and while I’m looking forward to all of it, I’m also crying at the lack of naps. (Naps are life, okay?!) Tonight, I’m meeting up with a friend for a reading date. Tomorrow, I’m going to a pool party to celebrate a friend’s birthday and then, potentially, going to a painting event in the evening. Sunday, I have my usual writing date and in the evening, I’m going axe throwing! I’ve been wanting to do this for a while and it should be super fun!

What are your weekend plans?