Greetings from the Fishbowl

I write to you from a fishbowl, or rather, through my new glasses. I love them. The frames are lager than I'm used to but they look fantastic. There is one tiny problem: they are causing distorted vision. Like... the walls are warped and I can't walk up or down steps straight distortion. The Internets say to let it ride and my brain will adjust accordingly. I say, take them back to the glasses place and double check the prescription to make sure we're not an axis off or something. I just hope this doesn't cost me more money. My boss complimented my glasses today and I was all, "If I stumble around like I am drunk today, I assure you I am not drunk. Its my new glasses."

In other news I went on a healthy adventure yesterday. I took the RiverLine train to Bordentown, NJ and biked the Delaware and Raritan Canal trail. It was a little hot but a beautiful sunny day for a ridiculously long bike ride. I biked a little over 8 miles yesterday. The ride to the marina was easy but the ride back was a bit treacherous. I was tired. I made it to and from without incident.

I did manage to get hit on by an older guy at the Marina who was a few seconds away from driving back to his house to get his motorcycle and bringing it back to offer me a ride. Fortunately, I had my own bike. haha and under NO CIRCUMSTANCES could I leave it unattended. Also, I'm very familiar with "stranger danger" so there is that.

I feel pretty healthy today, minus the lack of coordination and overall feeling of being drunk. Got a 3.5 day work week ahead, some fun 4th of July week festivities up my sleeve and a trip to Boston next week. All good things.

Now if only I could find a journalism job.

Until next time...

A Little Stroke of Luck

I'm alive. Everything and nothing have been happening at the exact same time.

This past weekend I went to Jersey to hang with my best friend. We had a terrific beach day and then went to our favorite All You Can Eat seafood/sushi place in New Brunswick. On Sunday we traveled to the Columbus Farmers Market which is always fun. They have tons of stuff both old and new to browse and well..buy of course.

Yesterday I started back up at the gym again. After gorge-fest 2014 (aka my weekend) I knew it was time to cut the sugar/fats and get my fat ass back to the gym. I just set up a circuit training schedule so I'll mix and match cardio with the circuit training. This should yield results along with the portion control and influx of vegetables/lean means I've been consuming. It is summer and the world is half naked. I can't be jiggling around in my shorts/skirt. No one wants to see that.

Another awesome thing happened yesterday. The Fourth of July is my favorite holiday. Every year I head down to the WaWa Welcome America Festival on the Parkway and watch the Philly 4th of July Jam. I've never been able to win/obtain tickets to the seating area by the stage. EVER I enter the contests and stalk to promotions to no avail. This year, I tried the Instagram contest and failed. BUT they also have trivia contests on Twitter and Facebook. I memorized the event schedule in case they asked a question about it and low and behold they did!

Yesterday they asked what was the first movie that would be shown and where in the Philly at the Movies series. I knew it was Frozen at Franklin Square. I tweeted that as quickly as I could and I WON!!! I got seats by the stage area for the concerts! I was so excited yesterday I was literally shaking. This was finally my year! I'd have to say that overall 2014 has been pretty good to me.

Until next time...

Today is Brought To You By The Word "Slump"

I did everything right. Almost. I unfortunately missed yoga yesterday because a client scheduled with me at the last second, thus forcing me to cancel my enrollment in Weds night's yoga class. Such is life. But after that, I did everything right. I went home, I got my things in order for early morning spin class for this morning, I cooked a nice healthy dinner of chicken, carrots and quinoa. I watched a show, ate my dinner, and got ready for bed. I was asleep by 10pm. Bam.

Slept through the night, had cinematic dreams. Like, my dreams were a movie. I didn't recognize the characters or understand why they were happening, but I basically watched some random movie in my sleep. At one point an elderly woman's kitchen caught fire.

I woke up at 6am. I went to get out of bed. I heard the rain pounding on my ceiling. Crap, torrential downpour this morning. My gym bag has a leather base and I have to walk from the gym to work which is about a 20 minute walk. I was going to get soaked even with an umbrella and my bag ruined. I tried to cancel my enrollment but it was too late. You have one hour before the class to cancel online, otherwise you have to cancel in person a half hour before the class begins.

I'm going to be charged $5 and I may have blocked someone from taking the class. I feel bad about that.

I rolled over, thinking, it is just $5. Fell back asleep and within 10 minutes jumped the sleep cycle and had more cinematic dreams. I was back in REM at 6:30am. Not good when your alarm goes off at 7:40am. Which it did, which I had a horrible time getting up because I felt like a human brick, cemented to my bed. I eventually got up and got dressed with much apathy towards my makeup and trudged out the door into the rainy, gloomy Thursday.

I ordered iced coffee with expresso, hoping that would wake me up a bit. It didn't. I almost missed my EL stop. I was sitting there daydreaming when I realized I had to get off the EL or I'd be heading north towards the end of the line. I'm 100% unfocused, kind of dissociating as if I am in a dream. I don't feel awake, I don't feel present and I've got a gauntlet of meetings and even baby sitting later this evening at work. Of course I am dreading all of it. If I could focus on one task it wouldn't be so bad. Crap.

I did everything right until I decided not to get soaked for spin class. Had I got up and just planned an alternative bag, I would have exercised. I would have avoided losing $5. I would probably feel more awake. I would feel myself. I would not feel like a zombie. I would be happy.

But I didn't and now I'm paying for it.

Until next time...

The Rise and Fall

All throughout your life you are constantly motivated to achieve. You're supposed to set and achieve goals, do your best, work hard and get far. That is the common motif. What "they" don't tell you is that after riding a massive wave of achievement, there is a sort of decent back into the ordinary. A crash, if you will.

As the pomp and circumstance died down, the cards stopped coming in and my graduation photos became a little outdated, I realized I had fallen back into ordinary territory. May was a big month for me. I had a lot of doctors appointments but got a clean bill of health. I ran a 5K in record time, for myself, at 36:33. I graduated Temple. A bunch of goals checked off my to-do list. The praise and accolades have died down and I'm left wondering what is next in the silence of it all.

This isn't a bad thing. But when you do great thing after great thing, the constant motivation and sense of achievement feels amazing. Like I said, it is like a high. Which makes someone like me frantic to build a new goal list. I've been doing some out of the ordinary things like getting up before work to go to the gym, taking late night yoga classes, biking 7 miles, watching my spending, and trying to meet new people. I've been job hunting, writing daily, trying to figure out if now is the best time to start my book. I've been plotting summer adventures, trying to muster up the confidence to complete an open mic night for stand up comedy, and creating little nuance goals in between all of that.

Which is great, live life to the fullest and what not. But there is some value in just sitting back and relaxing, enjoying the quietude. Except quietude scares me. I'm so worried I'll get too comfortable in the static state that I'll get stuck and stop achieving goals. Yet the reality of it all is this is the one time in my life where I have the opportunity to just chill for a hot second and breathe in the world around me. I'm only accountable to myself, no one else. There is great value in this grey area that I need to quickly learn to appreciate until it is gone.

Until next time...