Monthly Archives: February 2017

Large Purchase Item and General Apathy

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I’ve been feeling a lot of general apathy lately. I go from 0 to 100, nearly bawling my eyes out when thinking or doing something for a cause or person I really care about to not feeling anything when my brain says “Hey, this should make you smile.” “Hey, this should be fun.”

Life is super mundane right now. Unfortunately, most of my excitement is coming from food and that’s non-diet friendly stuff too. I need to refocus badly so I’m sobering up my routine March 1st.

I don’t want to place all my eggs in a happiness basket but I think I’m due for a vacation soon. Something to shake up my surroundings. I have a very fun day planned in March and I just keep telling myself to chug along and grasp on to little tidbits of rest in the meantime.

I’ve been very observant of spending lately because I have a large purchase to make. My mac is a fossil in tech years and it’s becoming more apparent that, to my chagrin, my 9 year old laptop isn’t cutting it anymore. I wouldn’t be so hesitant if the price tag on a new Macbook Pro wasn’t $3,000 for what I need it to do as a designer. Or if I hadn’t have spent thousands on trying to figure out my (still unresolved) health ailment.

One of the things that bothers me is that while I am blood clot and circulation issue free (thousand of dollars later, I’ve got that at least) is that I might put myself at a bigger risk for a clot flying now that I’m dealing with edema. That means no long flights or road trips when I’m craving one so badly. :-/

Ignoring Ignorance. Choosing to Love.

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First of all – my ultrasound results for my legs came back negative for a circulation issue. That’s a big praise report! I still have no idea what is causing my issues but I think it NOT being blood clot or circulation related is a definite positive.

With some of the health issues of late, I’ve gotten constant reminders, not from doctors but my mom, to lose weight. She loves to chime in with “maybe your problems would go away if you just lost X pounds.” (Yes, there is some potential truth to that) She also drives me batty because she’s one of those people who watches infomercials and thinks it or what Dr. Oz has to say will be magical for me. “I’ll buy you this 30 day fix.” “Dr. Oz says to lose weight you should…”

Most recently I showed her passport photos I got done. My hair was down but placed behind my shoulders. The camera angle was rather unflattering because it was angled slightly up instead of straight on. I showed it to her to let her know I was proactively working on getting my passport ready but her first response was, “Did they tell you to put your hair back like that? It’s better in front of your face.” Without being direct, she hinted that my moon-shaped face looked slimmer and more flattering with hair covering the sides and elongating.

My aunt who lives in town was over a while back and I was a little more done up that usual in a dress and wearing makeup for church. Before she left she grabbed my face and told me how beautiful it was. She said if I could lose weight I’d have a beautiful body to go with it. She tried to encourage me with her double sided words, assuring me that some people have a nice body but can’t change their face, but I had the face and my body can change.

I’m still surprised I made it through teen-hood and my early twenties without an eating disorder. I don’t mean that flippantly. I’m serious. My family and extended family have been my worst offenders throughout my life. I still remember the holiday I locked myself in my bedroom after my uncle offered to give me $1/lb that I lost. I thought “wow, I cost less than steak per pound. My total worth is about $220.”

Why am I bringing this up? Because I could be very bitter and hate these family members for their words. Instead, I choose to forgive their ignorance and ignore their implications. I am more comfortable with who I am than ever although I do wish to lose weight. And their hurtful comments are now easy to shake off because I know I don’t need to process their unfiltered nonsense.

I wrote about sending comments to spam here. It’s been a life changing way of dealing with negativity and unsolicited comments. I can be conscious of my present state and plan of action without letting the thoughts of others invade my feelings.

I’m changing for me. No one else.

Unroll.me: The Purger and Merger

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Sometimes I feel like I live under a rock. Like, didn’t sign up for spotify until the end of last year type of rock.

It’s no surprise that with my fossilized tech sense of living that I also just used unroll.me for the first time ever. And goodness, is it awesome.

You go to the site, then allow it access to your contacts and sign into your email account. Then, magic happens. And if you’re drowning in junk mail like me, this might take a couple minutes.

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There is one catch. They let you unsubscribe from about 10ish things and then tell you to share it to be able to unsub to more. I just shared it privately to my FB and voila. All the unsubs.

Look at that number! I am a worm! I used to shop in person and online A LOT. And what do they do at checkout? Ask you for your email.

It also had blogger subscriptions which makes it easy to clean up blog subs from multiple places like blogger and wordpress. I mostly kept my blog subs but there were a few style/beauty ones I said adios to.

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Step one. I cleared out 57 my first attempt and then realized I had no idea what rolling up emails meant.

Round 2:

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I looked in the FAQ and rolled up emails means instead of getting 80 things you can get them all in one place merged in one email. I rolled up most of my shopping subs, art/event subs, concert subs, and etcetera emails and went from a cleaned up 97 emails to 43 kept in inbox. Glorious.

Here’s what I didn’t roll up:

– My blog subs I love and want to know about ASAP or be able to read via email.
– My top 5 shopping spots only because I do appreciate knowing what’s in season there and getting those quick sale codes when offered. Because 50-75% is amazing. With stuff I’ve already planned to buy, anyway. Not to impulse shop(at least, not as much as before).
– Anything related to banking/medical/bills

It’s a life changer.

While I keep a very uncluttered new email account, I still like holding on to my old one for sales posts and blog subs. It helps me separate things. I like that with the rolled up email I can still keep my retail subs from pertinent places without being tempted to look at them unless I need them. And that my inbox won’t get 30+ emails a day from mindless sources.

So 29 Happened. Still Quarter-lifing?

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Guys. I’m 29 now. My last little slice of 20’s.

I’m not sure how much longer I can claim quarter-lifing. If this is a quarter I’ll be making newspapers for being the eldest woman in my county or something. Hah! But I’m not also into my thirds, God willing! I’d like to live past 60 if that’s in His plan. So I’m kind of floating. I’m still dealing with a lot of quarter-lifer issues, so I think the blog name still is very fitting.

My birthday was a mixture of doing taxes, dog sitting, just chilling with my boyfriend, and then a delicious teppanyaki dinner (my first teppan ever).

Being a glass half full person and someone who likes new starts, I’m sure I’ll embrace 30 next year like a boss. I’ll be pumped to enter a new decade of life and ready to take it on. This year being the tail-end of a decade though? That was kind of hard on me. Am I wrapping up my twenties right? Am I where I need to be? Did I do enough? Those kinds of thoughts went through my mind.

To be honest, as a teen, I thought I’d get a good job straight out of college, be married by 27/28 and ideally have my first kid by 30. I’d be so well into my career I could freelance and do the whole STAHM/lady boss mom thing. But the reality is I’m not married yet and that doesn’t bother me. I’m more hard pressed about my job. I have a great job with solid benefits. It’s not in any way ideal, but it’s close to home and pays the bills with a little extra. It’s not anything to brag about or that would make me notable in the design world though. I also live in an area that is high cost so things like buying a house seem like a world away. And I guess part of my humble pie is realizing the greatness I wanted as a teen is going to take more effort than I’ve put in and longer than I desire. And so does the rest of plan A.

In 2015 I promised a whole bunch of stuff and it didn’t all work out, and in 2016 my birthday was spent at the hospital as my uncle was dying, so I’m keeping 29 year old plans simple.

1. Open that darn IRA/IRA-ROTH already!
2. Continue to learn about adulting in the realm of finances and “future” smarts
3. Get myself on a better habit/schedule of life tasks. And that includes self care
4. Work on keeping up to date with design skills
5. Spend more quality time studying my faith and acknowledging God’s work in my life
6. Be braver in making local friends.