Month: January 2016

If I had to pick a spirit animal, I would be a cat. I wouldn’t have to pick one, I would be one. No questions.

I don’t enjoy getting wet. I like being pet. I can be very particular. There are times I don’t want attention, and times I do (you will know when these times are). Sometimes I have the urge to do something crazy just because I want to (knock over something, say something wild, but don’t because that’s not acceptable).

I have never had a cat, so I can only speak from the stereotypes of cats and the videos on the internet.

But I cannot even imagine myself as any other spirit animal. I have always had a fascination with them, I got cat ears, I was a cat for Halloween. I like whiskers on my face, not from a cat, the look of them on my face. I like a form of makeup dubbed the cat eye.

I can’t deny the truth anymore. Nor would I.

This will make it the first week, to my knowledge of posting every day. I am pretty on top of the posting schedule (I have to be because of my anxiety and scheduling). When I am ahead I am more relaxed about my schedule and my writing is better. It’s better for everyone around basically, readers and writers alike. I just can’t push posts out when I am anxious or feeling stressed. So because of this, I know that I have a post out every day of this week, the normal MWF and on Tuesday and Thursday. Lucky! It won’t happen every week (so if these feel like too much emails or posts, don’t worry! Stick in there!)

I wanted to update you all on a 30 day challenge I am taking on. I am still continuing the writing one. It’s for writing prompts mostly when I want a change of something.

But look out for, in the future a lot more of these posts. I have a few in the works now that I am really excited about and I hope you will be too.

For reference, and planning sake, I will have the writing prompts, this daily yoga reflections, and a question/answer calendar responses (based on a gift I gave).  I am pretty excited and I hope you all can be too!

Anyway I have been trying to get into yoga the whole past year. I participated in a class my last semester of college and loved it. I dabbled on and off since then. But this yoga month is designed to encourage daily practice (videos consisting of about 30 minutes) and is not only physical awareness and fitness, but also mental awareness. It is about changing perspective and body health. For reference, it is the Yoga Camp with Adrienne. I hope this encourages me not only to practice yoga daily (from earlier this week on, since I arrived from Munich), but also to change my mentality.

Due to all these exciting things happening, I have more post ideas and things to talk about. And with my posting the quality of the posts shouldn’t change. If anything, maybe this will give people an even better way to get to know me, if the past 270 or so posts didn’t!

When I was younger I dreamed of smelling nice, not that I didn’t smell nice, but with a specific scent. A scent that was all my own, unique, luxurious, and beautiful. It seemed to me that adults wore perfume. But my mom is allergic to perfume scents. So it was something that I looked upon with envy.

I did experiment with floral scents, all preapproved, that faded quite quickly and were purchased at Bath and Body Works.

But as soon as I went to college, I bought a perfume. It was, and is, a DKNY Golden Apple. My best friend had a series of these apples and I smelled one and thought, this. This is fruity and fun and it comes in an apple. What other questions could I have?

But now that I’m more mature and mellow, I find myself thinking, it’s not always what I want to smell like a golden apple. I want to find something more mature, more deep.

So I am on a scent hunt, a hunt to find my new scent. One that I can identify more with as I am older, and realize that, while I love apples, I want some more complexity, new notes, differing concentrations.

I want it to be sophisticated, complicated, sweet, but also spicy. I want to smell it and fall in love with myself every time I smell it. I want to be excited to wear it.

I want my perfume to reflect the person I am, not the person I want to be.

My jet lag has been better than most. The first day I took a few naps (having slept not at all on the plane). Then I was able to sleep around midnight here and wake up at 10. The following day I was forced to take a nap during the day.

But my body is actively rebelling against me. I have had a fever since I got here and almost a constant headache…except right after I wake up. It’s like my body has high hopes, then realizes how wrong it is for the time, and then immediately starts to protest throwing just enough feelings at me that it is uncomfortable to be anywhere vertical or with my eyes closed (since opening them is physically painful).

So plus side? I am more or less time wise, doing well. Con? I feel pretty terrible.

But I am hoping every day I get a bit better and more adjusted and my body stops throwing chaos at me.

That’d be nice.

I can be angry unreasonably, like most right? I can be angry for many reasons, some more valid than others. So I’ve decided to compile an anger checklist. A checklist I will try to run through when I’m angry.

1. Are you hungry?
2. Are you sleepy?
3. Are you stressed about something? Are you anxious? – Can you do something about it?
4. Do you feel guilty about something?
5. Do you feel like it’s your fault?

Hopefully this simple checklist will keep my anger in check and make sure when I am upset, it’s for an upset reason.

I have said before that I am an anxious person. Because of that I have stressed sleep sometimes and have noticed that I click my teeth at night. It’s horrible and it’s so loud it wakes me up.

But it is unconscious, why would I do that on purpose? And the only way I can think to stop it, is to relax and not be so anxious and stressed.

In an attempt to do this I have started to implement daily yoga, as well as going to bed with plenty of time, but something I have recently tried is coloring books (adult ones, so not ones for children).

It is designed to relax and calm people and I couldn’t be happier or more excited to try it out. I love coloring and graphic design type things have been the things I have doodled. So it’s my best dream and so I’ve decided to buy some books and try it out.

It’s very relaxing, and absorbing. It feels creative, but also a bit of route movement. It’s a pattern of movement, but it also feels like I’m doing and making something beautiful. Which is ideal and satisfying.

I can’t say if it’s worked at the moment, it will need lots of trial (yay), but I will report back!

Hey I’m still doing this! There are many days I haven’t done. It’s not a write every day for thirty days, although that’s what it is trying to be. For me, it’s 30 good starters, often just words, that inspire something in me to write. I go out of order, and I just pick something on a day that feels right to me.

What better one than home? I am home. But what does home mean to me? The more I leave home, the more it means to me, and the more I realize how intricate that word is.

I have many homes, many places, many people that feel like home. For me there are a variety of things that feel like home, but for me, it’s people. People feel like home. When there are people I love, it feels safe, comfortable, and loving. Like a warm hug. As a by product, where there are people I love, there are also things I like. For me it’s a combination of the two. If there are people I love, but no things that resonate with me, it can feel a little like a vacation, or a holiday. I love knick knacks, thinymabobs, tiny treasures. I decorate book shelves, I hang up cards, wrapping paper. I love to put the things I love around me. For me,  being surrounded by things I love is home, whether that be people or otherwise.

I like being with the people I love, surrounded by the knick knacks that have memories for me. I am tremendously forgetful. I don’t remember memories that well, but having a visual remembrance really helps me. I can see it, instead of it getting lost in my attic brain.

That is what home is for me. The feelings it produces are safety, security, and love.

Home tastes like hot coco. And it smells like lemon, honey tea.

While we’re on the topic of the new year, it’s important we shouldn’t forget the issues that still exist.

I was watching this video and for the women who read my posts, how many times have you heard these in your life? Genuinely. Because I’m not even that old and a lot of these I’ve heard to me, or people around me. I can’t even imagine how many more I will hear in my life. They don’t even surprise me any more because I’m used to a lot of them – especially the ‘don’t be so emotional’ thing (but many more as well).

I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even really hear them on one level because they’re pretty tired, yet also pretty common. And I wonder, have I internalized them?

And the answer to that, is yes.

I am very conscious of the way I act and the way I want to be perceived. I don’t want people to say those things to me. I’ve written previous posts about thinking about how I say things, etc. And it’s totally true. I have done that. So I have internalized it. It has been ingrained into me.

So my new years resolution, is to try to start changing my mindset. I can’t say I’ll go all 180 and change completely, because these things are internalized and they’re learned. They are things you hear a thousand times and don’t realize that on the thousand and one time you hear it, it actually makes you feel ashamed.

But it’s about interrogating your feelings, looking at them, questioning them, getting to know them, and seeing where they lie.

 

Hello everyone, I hope you all have a beautiful happy new year. I can already tell things will be good for the new year and I am excited to start again! or rather to improve. Enjoy your first day of the year!

It has been really difficult for me to think of my Best of 2015 List.

My memory is pretty bad, so my best memory of 2015 is hard to place. I don’t want to do less to all my other memories. And it’s pretty easy to think of my most recent best memory. But the best memory of 2015 is pretty hard to pin point.

Maybe I should do a series of best moments of the month that way I can look through those and find the one of the year. <GOAL FOR NEW YEAR>

So maybe I don’t have a best memory?

For now I will settle on driving through the pass in Switzerland and getting to the top of the mountain so we could park and look out on the sights. The expanse of the world below me, feeling like I was literally on the top of the world above the tree line was pretty spectacular.

So yes, that will be my best and most unique memory of 2015.

I will be better next year I promise!