Currently... mixed with a little Happily Wasted

Last week, well, Thursday, was graduation nation. I went to my youngest sister's 8th grade promotion in the morning and then went to my lovely friend Rachael's graduation that evening. I managed to stay relatively pale instead of sunburned which is always a plus when I've been exposed to that much sun in one day. 
I took some time to job hunt via craigslist (which I usually consider my job hunt nemesis) and was surprised this morning with a phone call, an interview and a job offer! Look at me go!
I could go on about everything that's happened this week but I'll just stick to the categories. Found this one over at Kelli Murray's blog and I added another prompt or two from Vanilla & Lace.

thinking about:
How bad life can see and then how great it can get in just a few short week. I'm in no perfect position but things are definitely better than they were a couple of weeks ago and that gives me a lot of hope. I was able to drop a couple things that were spinning around in my mind, and I have something to be very excited about (new job)!

looking forward to:
payday honestly...

watching reading:
The Girl Who Played with Fire, Instant Love, The Dolphin In the Mirror, The Fire Starter Sessions

Listening to:
Lights new album: Siberia
Lana Del Rey: Born to Die
Sia & David Guetta: Titanium

cooking: 
Mac and Cheese... horrible I know, but oh so delicious

working on:
The Fire Starter Sessions worksheets. Blog changes, resume tweaks and the like

Wishing:
This is not an unusual wish in my life: a romantic adventure. I've dropped the last crush I mentioned in previous currently posts and I'm totally fine with that now. It was an interesting two months but hopefully I've learned from it and I'm moving on. Now that I've let that go there is plenty of room in my mind for possibility. I am a very big believer in synchronicity (all of my jobs have come when the timing has felt right) and I would love to happen upon someone that I click with really well. I don't want it to be a lot of hard work to get it started. I don't want to feel ashamed or shy about liking someone... Giddy, I want to feel giddy and full of possibility.
With all that being said, I'm in a pretty good place right now. I'm not actively looking but I'm not shutting down people that approach me either. I just want to relax and enjoy this summer and work to make some goals happen. Moving out and having a steady income are my main goals, I'd just love a little romantic fun to go with it. :)

Happily Wasted:
Amanda Genther talks about how to be amazing at being yourself. While I feel I'm pretty good at being myself, I don't always like who that is... so I'm taking this more as "how to be your amazing self."

Summer Reading List Part IIn over at Sometimes Sweet... I'm going to have to do one of these here real soon!

A really honest post that reminds me that happiness is a choice and can be achieved despite the past. 

I love Show + Tell... I really love this post of tips for owning your own business. One day it will be for me!

And what's a Happily Wasted without a Coffee Cup Chat link? This one is keepin on... just keep swimming.



What's been happening in your life lately?

xoxo

taking the work out of working out

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It's been a rocky road that fitness and I have been on since my toddling days. I fluctuated between feeling great by physical activity and wanting nothing more than to curl up on a soft, cushy place with a book.

When I was little and learning to ride a bike without training wheels there were some spills, unlike most kids, I remembered those spills quite well and after each I would become more and more careful. Not only that, but my dad's family was (is) super athletic and any time I would go along for a family day of roller blading or bike riding I would find myself frustrated and terrified the majority of the time. They were so good, my brother doing spins and racing my stepmom around, weaving in and out of other people on the sidewalk. I would trail behind, relying hard on the breaks, doing my best to avoid other people at all costs.

As time went I didn't get better, and they did. They were already so much more comfortable on bikes, hikes and wheels than I was. I didn't practice when I was at my mom's house, though at the age of about 10 I did get into gymnastics. I wasn't a completely lost cause.

But family outings of the physical activity variety always left me with dread. I'm not going to hold back here, they still do from time to time. I know when my stepmom suggests a hike I'm going to want an oxygen mask by the end. Okay, maybe that's a taaad extreme, but the last "hike" we went on was sold to me with a promise of relative ease and a view of at least 3 waterfalls...

the truth looked a little more like my dad and I at the back of the group asking for the pregnant lady trail. I found myself wondering why I didn't bring my spiked hiking shoes (oh yeah 'cause I don't own any) and my stepmom merrily chugged up the path.

There were no waterfalls... and that hike is now talked about as that one time we mountain climbed in Oregon.

All joking and ribbing aside, my love for fitness has always had strings attached and I've done more than my fair share of running away. 

A little extra fitness history:

I loved swimming when I first learned how and many years after. I lost my love around puberty and wanning eye sight. I never swam competitively, nor do I know any of the strokes well, but I did love pretending I was Ariel (or a dolphin) and would spend hours in the water (if it was warm enough). 

When my eye sight started going a little wonky (I wear glasses or contacts or else I would not be able to do anything now) I stopped wanting to be in the pool as much. I like to open my eyes under water (could that have been what ruined my eyes?) and you can't do that when you wear contacts (unless of course you want to lose them). Sure, goggles you say, but those fog easy, they hurt my head (true story) and are just a pain. Yes, excuses I know....

And then there was puberty... feeling awkward in my own body and totally self conscious in a bathing suit kept me out of the pool and ocean for a good amount of time. Being as pale as I am, I decided not to subject friends and fellow beach goers with my sun reflecting body. (Don't worry, I'm okay with making them suffer now... I tell them to bring dark sunglasses.) 

Then there was the problem of make up and hair and ugh being a teenager had me worrying about every inch of what could possibly be wrong with my looks. 

So like I said, there went swimming.

I'd like to say I've come back to it, but there's still that annoying issue with the eyes... and as vain/shallow as it sounds, I would love to find a mascara that stays on with chlorine, I am just not a fan of how pale my eyelashes are by themselves. Seriously... (and I call myself a feminist...psh)

Moving on... Gymnastics came into my life and swept me off my feet. It all started with gym camps at the YMCA during summers and then going to classes with my childhood best friend. Those were some awesome, and scary, times. I loved gymnastics, I was good at it. I was (and still am) more flexible than a lot of the girls, I picked up handstand and cartwheels pretty fast because my stepmom had taught my brother and I long ago how to do them in our extra large room (those were the days).

Gymnastics help me for a good while. But then I reached my fear threshold. Once I found the level where I was suppose to be doing things on the high beam or doing flips without a pit to fall into, my confidence waned. Cartwheels on the low beam, YUP. Cartwheels on the high beam... heck no. 

One thing gymnastics really gave me was confidence in my physical abilities. In school I was one of maybe three girls that could do a number of pull ups. This girl Danielle, total tomboy, beat me on the number though... she also beat the boys so I wasn't too upset about it.

Despite my early love for the gym, I left gymnastics in middle school for a bit but decided to try out for the cheer team. Somehow I put my shyness aside (I was shy in junior high, go figure) and made it. In cheer I was somehow able to master a back handspring,  something that had alluded me in those years of gymnastics. Not only that, but I also got my roundoff back tuck. Those were the golden years. I was tricked into working out (even burn outs had some sort of fun and level of friendly competition behind them) and I was a body full of strength.

Before my freshman year of high school I tried out for an all-star cheer team... and made it. But there were excuses abound in my head over why I didn't want to actually join so I told them I couldn't do it and only now, on this day, do I wonder if I made the right choice there. Not that there's anything to regret, it happened, I chose, but fear definitely guided that decision. 

So freshman year I changed over to a new school and stopped most of my physical activities. I no longer needed to go with when my family went on their outdoor adventures so I chose not to instead of being behind all the time. I burrowed into my homework and made it harder than it needed to be. 

I think I found exercise again my sophomore year. Sure we had P.E. classes but they were a joke. Seriously we were allowed to have any time on the mile, we didn't have to run AT ALL and most of the other activities were very low impact. My exercise came from dance. I tried out for the dance team after seeing them perform at assemblies and the like and just wanted so bad to be a part of it.

I tried out, made the B team and was told more than a handful of times that I had talent that I just needed to keep working with.  (Don't get me wrong, they weren't telling me to audition for Juliard...) 

I stuck with that for a year and a half, maybe two and then the original team disbanded and was taken over and I didn't want anything to do with the change.

Sometime in the summer before senior year I decided to take ballet. Oh ballet, beautiful, difficult ballet. I wrote one of my personal essays for college on ballet. I would point my toes so hard in my sleep that I would wake up with cramps in my calves. But my excuses came again (this time monetary) and I left ballet too. 

Between ballet and now there were several times of good intentions. Times where I would force myself into the house gym for a couple days. But my resolve would soon fade and I would stop again.

This year I decided it was time to really and truly make a habit. I found dance classes I really wanted to take and I put some money into them. Then I asked for classes for Christmas. For the first time in, well ever, I didn't waste one single class. I went to all in the package I bought. 

As if that's not enough, I have found inspiration to work out on days that I don't have those classes. Why? Because I want my body to be the strongest and most flexible it can be so that I am prepared to learn new things.  I have weeks where I only go to dance class once or twice, and then I have weeks where I go to dance class and work out in Dad's home gym three times. My enthusiasm waxes and wanes from week to week but I feel a need to go back when I miss too many days. I feel so good when I'm done with a work out. I've become even more flexible and I'm starting to really see the changes in my body. My arms are stronger and the muscles are really starting to show. People are telling me how fit I look. It's so great.

I don't care about weight loss or gain, I just love feeling strong, and fit. I still have so many fitness goals to meet and I'm not sure I'll ever reach a finish line (always something new to strive for) but I am really content with how my relationship with fitness has improved.

xoxo

The Meaning of Home

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Today I received a text stating simply "come home." It made my heart ache. It was sent by a very close friend of mine still residing in Portland. I miss her so. And there are many times where I miss Portland so and I wonder if my choices were correct.
Then I remind myself that it isn't about right or wrong, it's about taking it for what it is (done) and making the best life I can out of each day. Most days that settles me. Today it even settles me. But I still miss her.

Her and three other ladies were my lovely sanctuary in Portland. None of them were close to the other, they all had their own things going on, and I knew each of them from different places, but those four were unbeatable adventures and friendship in the ever maddening but beautiful Portland.

Don't get me wrong, I have close (best) friends here too, and my closest friends (time known etc) reside in San Francisco. But Portland's relatively small city limits made it easier to see any one of the four ladies within 20 minutes. I don't have that same ability here. Some friends are closer, some are... well, hundreds of miles away.

The text just made me miss the proximity. Here in the burbs life is not so bad, I mean, Target and Starbucks around every corner ;), gas stations that stay open late, grocery stores that serve hard alcohol, less crime (? is that true, I don't know) etc. But there's something about the city, even the Portland kind of city (a big town posing as a city most days) that calls to me. The ease of getting to friends and being able to enjoy a cup of coffee or sit in each other's living room and just chat the days away, or even nap them away if it's me and M...
The range of foods and shops and types of people milling around, the ability to go to the bins and dig around and buy things for SUPER CHEAP... the art, the bookstores... oh the bookstores.

There are many good things that have come from me moving back home to San Diego. I do enjoy it here and this part of California will always, always have a place in my heart. Always. I don't hate it like I use to but I do understand the frustrations I would have with this city every time I have come back.

I'm torn.

I'm torn on where home is going to be in the future and where I want to be now. I'm torn about leaving friends and such but that will always happen with a person like me that likes (has) to try new places. I feel the most "at home" with a certain few people. Some of them I've known way longer than others, but their friendships all give me that sense of security and belonging.

Since I've been back I've spent a lot of time at home, most of which was self imposed. I get into projects or start reading blogs, or find a cleaning project and then I can't be bothered to get out of the house after 8pm, even on weekends. Totally self induced seclusion. Worst part, I'm not even in hermit mode, I'm just not into bars or shopping mode either. I have yet to find things to do not involving either. And we're all busy. Yes we were all busy in Portland too, but being closer together meant small amounts of time were actually available to hang out, catch up, walk down 23rd or Hawthorne or Belmont and just enjoy life.

Technically I'm home but I don't feel like I belong here. I know why I came back and I'm sticking to those goals but this isn't forever, just like Portland wasn't. The good thing about having friends all over is that you get to visit them and the cities you love whenever you want (read: and you have enough money in the bank.)

I should consider myself lucky (and most times I do) that home to me is being with certain friends (and family) and not a place. I figure that means I could be just about anywhere and feel at home as long as I had a best friend beside me. What I wish right now, during this stage of semi isolation from best friends, is that I could have them near. A solid dose of home.

xoxo

52 photos in 52 weeks: Week 21 & 22

Week 21 was filled with random this and that. I met up with a lovely friend I haven't seen in quite a while and heard some good news from her. During that time I found a lovely suitcase (not yet pictured) at an unbeatable price ($8) and had pizza and conversation. 

This week saw many more hours of free time due to issues at work but I did the best I could with a not so great (for the bank account) situation and enjoyed myself as best I could.

Week 22 didn't see many more hours at work but there were many hang outs had and a wedding to top it off. This week I let go of a crush, spent many a late night drinking with friends and even had some flirt time. 

I know it's been mentioned a bit already but by Wednesday I will definitely have newly developed 120 film to share. 

xoxo

happily wasted

There was a bit of a stretch (a week, maybe two) where I was reading posts I liked but nothing that really inspired me to do a Happily Wasted. It probably was more that I would find one post and not want to go through the task of getting to the real link out of bloglovin and then put it in the draft of Happily Wasted, blah blah blah. But yesterday there were a few posts in a row that just grabbed my attention and so I am taking the time and sharing them with you.

graduation speeches... Ellen is my favorite by far.

Yet another Coffee Cup Chat to link... Summer Reading List!

I've been reading Smart Women Finish Rich and so seeing this post about investing in a Roth IRA was a nice find

I still love wedding photography though I've stopped looking at wedding blogs

I wish I could afford THE WILD REST put on by Becka over at my favorite Life as an Artistpreneur. Seriously that would be a dream come true. I'm just going to have to start saving for next year... please let there be one next year.

Maybe this summer I'll do this Canvas Stitch DIY

I would love to try archery once or a bunch! Brandi talks about it here

Where has your time been happily wasted this week?

xoxo