November 29, 2012

I don’t watch the show, but I’m flying off to Portland, Oregon tomorrow morning to visit some family. This might be my first taste of winter. Izzy dear, will you make me a spot of tea?

Izzy doesn’t exist because I just made her up. Or maybe she exists now that I’ve made her up. It’s nearing 1:30am here in the state of California, Los Angeles to be not specific, and whatever I say goes. I just wanted to bid you farewell, because I’m leaving for Portland tomorrow morning to visit some family.

I know, I’m just tired.

I’ve been working on betterment the past 6 hours, and betterment aftermath sucks. Your eyes feel weird. Some kind of eyeball drumming sensation? Potentially related to direct eyeball to computer screen copulation. And I have to pack still. That’s me packing in the picture. Me packing and finding this cool little yellow brick road sign and thinking it was cool to take a picture of, because I bought it at an antique store somewhere and shoved it in a jewelry box till just now. This is my effort to breathe life back into it. Maybe a more popular blogger will steal this picture and call it their own, and my little yellow brick road sign will have it’s five seconds. I’d say the yellow brick road has had more than its fair share of five seconds, though. I’d say we’re about spent on yellow brick roads.

What I mean to say is I’m off to Portland tomorrow to yadda, yadda, yadda. I’ll be back on Saturday, brushing snow off of my shoulders, ready to party it up at that Great Gatsby themed shindig I mentioned last post, somewhere in Los Angeles. Sunday, I will  be recuperating from all of it, and the betterment will be back in full swing.

If you think of any cool places I should check out, press your favorite social icon in the upper right hand corner and just reach out to me about it why don’tcha.

Till then, goodnight, fellow reader. Thanks for taking the time.

With a frizzy head buried in business school applications, book reviews, math/technology classes for “fun”, blogging, personal brand creation, and a social life teetering on non-existent, it doesn’t surprise me that I haven’t taken a breather to notice that oh shit it’s practically December, and there needs to be money saved for Christmas shopping.

Well okay. I do have money saved up, but it sure isn’t for Christmas. Can somebody say Australia getaway, summer of 2013?

I digress. Christmas is approaching, and I should be saving money for others, and start getting together a list of who I need to buy for, right? WRONG says the id, the very moment I step inside a Forever 21, knowing that the INSTANT I see fringe, all bets are off.

Let’s take a step back. Not only have I not noticed we’re three days shy of December, but I haven’t bought myself anything spoil-worthy (besides Starbucks coffee) since my Lighten Up days with Peter Walsh, where he absolutely convinced me that my bi-weekly earnings were better left in my bank account, and I was worth way more than any kind of fringe outfit concoction or spoil-worthy thing.

And for awhile, it totally worked. I took on a sort of Buddhist persona, where I didn’t really want or need anything than the shit I already had in my closet, bathroom, car, room, bed, head, etc. I was completely content with spending money on coffee and actual needs like toilet paper and iTunes and cheap wine and Chipotle and happy hour and…well you get the idea.  I wasn’t buying any clothes, jewelry, make up, or manicures. Essentially, no grooming accouterments. No lavish things.

But this Saturday I’m going to a Great Gatsby themed shindig, and I had to do a little shopping. Nothing big, just maybe a cheap dress. Nothing more than $35. I was only going to wear it once! So there I was, with my “I’m so Buddha” mentality and my “I don’t need any of this stuff” mantras, and I walk into this.

Cute shit.

Fucking everywhere.

This led to the kind of unhealthy chain reaction you only read about on Web MD. Not only did I buy an outfit, I bought jewelry, more jewelry, a hair piece, a flower for that hair piece…I spent nearly $70 on this fucking outfit that I am telling myself I will wear more than once.

(Bare with me folks, it gets worse).

Because of this retail romp, all day today I fantasized about how I wanted to re-decorate my room, blog, and basically my entire self. I was looking up curtains at Bed, Bath, & Beyond, contemplating $80 Studio Press themes for my blog, researching the cost of ANOTHER big computer monitor to match the size of the one I have (all in the name of productivity of COURSE)…you name it! All of this shit I do NOT need right now. All of this shit BEFORE Christmas? Are you mad?

Now don’t get me wrong. I didn’t spend anything else. (Aside from $20 for a resume redesign on Fiverr and $20 more on two e-books by Darren Rowse but they were STEALS okay).

The point I’m trying to make here, is when you succumb to the damn shopping mall, even on one small occasion to get yourself a little something for a damn themed party (repeat of my Halloween costume spends), you succumb all the way. It follows you out of the store, and all the way home, like a ghost, when you’re writing a blog post about your defeat and also simultaneously wondering if your desk could use more candles….

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Subscribe in the upper right hand corner for email updates on my mostly meatless misplaced musings.

….I am talking about how the neck of a turkey, pulled out of a turkey, looks like a penis.

Last night my sister and I went to my dad’s house to help prepare food for today. What ended up happening was a lot of wine, historical talk of how we gave the natives syphilis, and me documenting the entire process. Please enjoy this holiday video of the night before thanksgiving.

And a Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

(If video does not play, click the YouTube symbol on the bottom right corner of the video. It will play on YouTube.)

November 15, 2012

Having been so swept up in my business school applying, I haven’t given a shred of soul to anything other than word processors and junk food. But tonight I took a few hours out of my night to see my good friend Jax read her poetry at The Wine Crush in Long Beach.

Jax and I met at Cal State Long Beach, and remained friends through our shared love of poetry. Seeing her read tonight, along with all of the others, took me home. It’s been so long since I sat down to read poetry, let alone write it, that I forgot how moving it was, and how much of a poet’s life was put into each line.

I remember how obsessed I was with it, struggling to find my voice, while imitating the voices of other, more prosperous and well-known poets. It was so hard, but in that awesome way that learning an instrument is hard. The hard that you love, the hard that you know will one day become easy, and even enjoyable! Imagine that? An enjoyable effort! Kind of like this blog.

And the cool thing about this place where I went, aside from the fact that I scored the last toilet seat cover in the bathroom, was the rocks in the sink. Imagine that! I was in a rain forest.

And the wine glasses were huge! (Huge shout out)

And just so you know where I’m at mathematically, I’m going to go look up some ways to get extra credit for my Finance class, and purchase a math tutor.

Please subscribe to stay posted on my mostly molecular majestical molestations of the numerical variety. AKA, how I end up doing in this math class, and whether or not I sound off some more on wanting to get back into poetry.

Tempestuously yours,

November 13, 2012

Hi knees,

Keep up the good work. Really. You are the most undervalued commodity of this entire bodily arrangement, and an asset to my life as a whole.

We’ve gone great places together, seen great things, visited many a pew, grassy knoll, and hardwood floor. But something happened tonight I felt I should address. We’ve never had communication problems before, and I don’t expect any to arise now, so I’ll go ahead and shed some light on this dreadfully unfortunate oddity.

Tonight, after about 2.5 miles of light jogging, one of you started to whimper a little bit. I’m not saying any names, I don’t want to point fingers, but I’m just saying. I heard a little bit of a whimper. Now a whimper every now and again is fine. I understand the pressure placed upon you, and you have my utmost sympathy, as not all knees were fit for hundreds of miles in sometimes inclement whether, and God knows I’ve knocked you face-first into many an unassuming coffee table or two.

But I want you to know that what I heard tonight turned into more than just a whimper, at mile 2.6. This was a straight up wail. A sharp cry of defeat, a painful shriek of surrender, one in which all other muscles were completely unprepared for, not to mention the overwhelming disappointment felt deepest in the heart and mind.

There. I said it. I’m disappointed in you. I’ll take your silence as a sign that you respectfully agree. I didn’t want to say anything earlier, because I was worried it might affect your performance, but you’ve been kind of dispirited since that last half marathon. And while this minor speed bump is a bit unwarranted for us, having thus far built a relationship founded upon love, trust, and plenty of give and take, it is perfectly healthy to want to express how you feel once in awhile, and we will get through it.

Tonight I have iced you, massaged you, stretched you, bathed and swaddled you with love. I’ll take a day off from the running tomorrow. Maybe I’ll do a little yoga, would that help? But we’re going running again the day after next. I’m not sure if you understand how vital this is to good health, and, call me selfish, how fucking amazing it makes me feel afterwards.

I truly hope you will try and see things from my perspective, and take my undying love and affection for you into account.

Yours truly,

November 11, 2012

My stress points are chest and stomach. Those are the places I feel it. If I wake up in the morning knowing it is a big day for busy, busy, busy, my chest tightens, and my stomach aches a bit.

Right now, my chest and stomach are aching a bit, because I have an entire day to myself. It is the only day to myself for another week, because tomorrow is Monday. That’s nonsense. I shouldn’t be stressing out about a time 24 hours from now, but my body somehow understands this as routine, and aches none the less.

I am sensible some of the time about issues that overwhelm me, so when I start feeling achy about stress for no good reason, I ask myself the cause of it. While my brain starts populating reasons in my head for why I am feeling stressed, (business school, work, projects, classes) I realized that each of these thoughts came so quickly like BAM BAM BAM and thinking about them at that speed was actually speeding up my heart beat and the uncomfortable churning in my stomach. It made me wonder if by somehow thinking quickly and chaotically, I was directly causing my body to do the same.

So how fast am I thinking? We can measure the speed of sound and light, but what about thought?

I experimented a little by thinking slowly, as if I were drunk or on some kind of lethargic drug, or a child seeing things for the first time. Why was I thinking of a billion things at the same time? That kind of chaos would surely crash the system, and those billions things aren’t happening right now. 

Right now, my roommate is in the next room with his brother playing video games. I am not at work. Right now, there’s a plane humming outside my window, I am not in class. Right now, is Sunday, 1:33pm, I am publishing a blog post. I am outside of tomorrow. I can’t even see it. It doesn’t even exist.

For a few blissful moments, thinking about one thing at a time actually warmed my chest a little, and there was a small bit of relief. It didn’t last long, but I feel like there is hope in thinking this way. Slowly, one thought at a time. Doing things slowly makes absorbing the present easier, the moments we often breeze past because we are constantly thinking about and working towards those billion things that haven’t even happened yet.

I know. We live in a fast-paced world, and the sometimes the city won’t let you slow down. But that’s because maybe we have to learn to get out of its way. The slower traveler on the side of the road may not get there on time, but gets there eventually.

This song helps.

November 3, 2012

They say when you drink, your true feelings start coming out, or average things start to look and feel incredibly satisfying. Take double-doubles for instance. Cheeseburgers. They always taste great, but after a couple of beers, there isn’t a single thing that could stop me from going after one of those cheesy, melted pieces of divine light.

I realized this evening, first hand, something quite novel about my love for writing. I stayed in tonight to do some laundry and work on my admissions essays for business school. I was pretty successful. I finished one of them, and was fairly pleased with it. Halfway through the second one however, I was stuck and decided to have a beer. This helped me relax, and ultimately un-stick myself.

Then I decided to have another beer, because golly this stuff was really working well! But halfway through that, something odd happened. My writing turned…fictional. It started to turn a little too ‘story-time’ and a little less ‘here’s why I want to go to your business school’. Before I knew it, I was opening up a new Word document and starting a story, a short one. (I’ve been working on a short compilation of stories in my copious free time).

I couldn’t help myself. It was like, writing is the one thing that I am 100% passionate about, and after a beer and a half I found myself flocking to it, in much the way drunk people flock to IHOPs and Dennys after a night on the town. They go for what they crave. They don’t think about it, they just decide it’s time for a treat, and they boogie the fuck down there and score themselves some Moon over my Hammy. It’s simple logic.

And that’s what I did. I was completely unprepared for that distraction, but it happened. And after it did I realized that writing was my Moon over my Hammy. My juicy double-double. My living end. My humble companion when all things turn sour and dank. My Rhett Butler to that one chick in Gone With the Wind who was in love with him, but he was in love with Scarlet (and yes, I spelled Rhett Butler right on the first try).

So my advice to you this Friday evening, or any evening if you’re struggling with figuring out what to do with your life, is to watch a couple of inspirational videos by Lady Gaga, start writing an admissions essay and have a beer. I’ve heard good things.