Monday, November 30, 2009

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

Collage Workspace

Schedules

Friends
the next few posts will be pictures of a past notebook -

I have kept a journal since I was given a leather covered sketchbook for my 15th birthday. I have bought the same notebook and kept the same cover since then. I have kept schedules, articles, comics, sketches, journal entries, notes, pictures, lists, and plans in them. Some of them are quite insightful. Some of them are crap. Some of them are important because they reveal what I have forgotten.

So.
The next few posts will be pictures of some of them.
I believe the next bunch will be from 2006-2007. I will explain what I can remember.

Danny's Burnt House + A Picture or Two From a Hike








Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Internet Surfings

Again, I have been perusing the blog-o-sphere and found several thoughts in my journey:

- There are so many artists that sell their papercrafts online and show their beautiful sketchbook photos, that I kinda want to try my hand at it. I have been making my own cards since I was 2 and have always come back to these crafts eventually. Perhaps my yearning to start some kind of online business means I should spend more time on my furniture – but it’s winter and there is no space to do it, so maybe I should just change by hobby to sketching and painting small cards and see where it goes and call it a day.

- I still feel a need to supplement my education and am trying to find an online course to take – I found one for Travel Writing at the community college, but kind of want to find one on ecology or Environmental Biology. I just found one course I would enjoy taking that runs 3 hours a week Jan through May but it costs $409!!! For ONE COURSE! Jeez!!! If you’re paying for the credits and don’t need them – can’t they give you a discount for passion??

- I JUST WANT TO GET RID OF THIS DAMN CAR!

- I’ve been harboring a bit of a Design fetish lately and can’t seem to find enough beautiful things to look at – furniture, interiors, decorations, nicknacks, patterns etc. anything. Yesterday I spent a good three hours looking at random people’s wedding photos on a wedding website because a) I just got my period and wanted to cry a little bit and b) they are just so damn beautiful and inspiring in a crafty I-want-to-go-to-the-variety-store-and-spend-my-night-making-christmas-cards-out-of-confetti type way.

- I will never have enough house plants, but I have entirely run out of room to store them.

QED. I think I’m bored.

Monday, November 23, 2009

Hipsters

Today I started to do a little digging into the dreaded Hipster phenomenon, inspired by my roommates UNNECESSARY name calling the other night. First of all, no hipster self-identifies as one. Apparently, even hipsters hate hipsters.

Wikipedia gives a long entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hipster_(contemporary_subculture) that follows the Hipster lineage from the Beatniks and further to Whites Who Love Jazz. A general consensus is the “Alternative” movement that focuses on Black Culture.

Urban Dictionary gives an entry:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hipster in its usual user-pitted argumentative style that again defines it as an Alternative lifestyle choice.

There are many other attempts to define what a Hipster is, and all of them agree on these things: the appearance of a hipster is a major component; a liberal education and a focus on the arts, philosophy, and little-known music and its roots in the origins of rock and roll; a love of PBR; their birds-of-a-feather mentality; and all agree on the ever important appearance of the male hipster, with the greatest discrepancy in the haircut and whether it should be androgynous with bangs or angular (both should be unkempt and longer) (Basically the descriptions vary from Mr. Sailor to Daddy Hanover). There are even DIVISIONS amongst the hipster milieu – Natural Hipsters, Hip-Hop Hipsters, and hipsters in Chicago, NY and San Fran. Apparently, they are all, however, “Deck” (have you even HEARD this word before? And WHERE?).

The appearance of the female hipster, however, is widely disputed. Some places claim the female must have an equally androgynous haircut with wide-swept bangs while others say just long and unkempt. Some hipster girls must wear long vintage dresses, some tight jeans and leggings, some matching big-belts-and-heels, others cutoffs and converse, etc. Tattoos aren’t even mandatory on the females!!!! WHAT?!! But yes, scarves are. According to all of these descriptions the following of our female friends are hipsters: K the Roommate, L in Florida, Braines, Thompson Girl, Aurora, Ms. L. Wright, Everyone in Santa Fe, The Flemings, Nicholson, etc. and of course, myself. We can’t ALL be hipsters?! Some of you don’t even drink PBR! I rarely wear scarves anymore! And L’s hair is NEVER messy.


Here is a funny article dedicated to finding the Most Alternative Couple: http://www.hipsterrunoff.com/2009/01/in-search-of-the-most-alternative-couple-on-earth.html

NYPD has even RENAMED hipsters: http://gothamist.com/2009/10/12/nypd_has_new_name_for_hipsters.php (Hint, the new name is Marshmallow).

A journalist must defend his love for McSweeneys against the hipster ID: http://archives.secretsofthecity.com/magazine/blogs/cracking-spine/2008/04/defense-hipster-literature

2003 saw the publishing of a Handbook: http://www.hipsterhandbook.com/clues.html

Happiness Project

Have you heard of the site the Happiness Project? http://www.happiness-project.com/ This lady has made a name for herself! She has spent a year investigating and blogging about every attempt at happiness imaginable, and has inspired many many others to do the same. What a great gift – to inspire quests into happiness in a lighthearted, earnest, and open minded way!

I guess, though, what I was wondering is if this is perhaps my Happiness Project? Not the blog, per say, but all of the various experiments that I write about in it. The cooking, the love, the lifestyle design, the personal improvement, the laziness, the fitness, the friends, the goals, the ignoring of goals, the writing, the sleeping, the drinking, the waking up. My friends, I want you to tell me some of the things you do consciously to move towards happiness.

Digression:
One pet peeve I have in all these blogs I read about is the endnote question. It seems there is some unspoken rule on certain more “successful” bloggers that they write a post about their day or their trip or their thoughts or their project and then, at the end, usually in bold face with *** surrounding it and italics, a question, such as *** what pumpkin recipes do you cook with*** or ***what are your running challenges*** or ***what do you do on your birthday*** (these are referencing my own past posts so you can see how related they are). Basically, these take the place, I think, to a) make bloggers feel like they aren’t just writing an online journal b) inspire comments, which in turn pull up the blogger in the google ranks so it can be more findable and popular, thus making the blogger feel like they are writing what is NOT just a very popular online journal.

This, however, is my personal blog and reader feedback is much appreciated, but unnecessary fundamentally to the success of this blog. However, if I were working on a blog that I was attempting to profit off of, or that was in connection to a site that I was trying to profit off of, I would probably try all these various little attempts to interact with the readers that occur – endnote questions, contests and giveaways, polls, etc.

BUT again, this is a personal blog, with a goal to help keep in touch with friends. So, friends, I ask again - ***what are your personal happiness projects***


P.S. That was a joke. That last bit being an endnote question. But I do want to know. K. I know you write and read Faulkner, L. you draw anime and watch obscure movies with particular humour, S. you read Austen and watch 007, R. you ride and think and run, but is there anything else that you have found recently? What are the little things (think Amelie) that make you pleased to be around? I am intensely curious… and I don’t really have the attention to ask you all individually. Is this weird?

Running Update

This past weekend’s run was not at all what I thought – it was a beautiful, glorious warm Nov. morning and the nine miles were comprised of a mix-and-match of various length routes around my house. The first five miles were relatively easy, flowing and gentle, and the next mile before I paused to refuel was a bit harder than I expected, which should make the Turkey Chase 10K interesting (Note to self- pick up race packet this evening!). The next three miles were easy again, I barely remember them. The entire time I guess I just tuned out to my headphones and went one foot in front of the other. The yoga I did after was hard from being so stiff, and Sunday I rested my legs except for some yoga, which was much needed. Today my hill run was harder than the last one I did – but I did notice that I was going much, much faster than I expected on the uphills and even grades. I LOVE getting to work, seeing the clock at 10 AM, and realizing I have already run, done my yoga, ate a great breakfast, read, showered, cleaned, and worked for an hour. The day is already successful!

I have been reading a lot about designing training programs and diet associated with it. More specifically, on how NOT to gain weight during marathon training. Apparently this is a pretty big deal. All these long runs and increasing mileage also increases appetite. Go figure. Well, this appetite combined with the knowledge that you have just run all those many miles, allows for increased greasy food consumption, or GFC, such as several pieces of pizza, regularly. This, of course, leads to gained poundage, which is pretty much NOT the anticipated result of marathon training.

Now, I would like to not gain weight. In fact, I wouldn’t mind it if I shed a few pounds for the effort of 40 mile weeks. But a few pieces of pizza aren’t uncommon for a Saturday night dinner. I have taken to occasionally mapping my day’s diet and breaking it up into percentages of fats, carbs and protein to see if it meets the ideal 25-50-25 ratio (don’t worry, I’m laughing at myself too). Just to check, you know? And the result is – I don’t care that much. I think I’m fine. I don’t eat that much, and when I occasionally do eat more than my allotted calorie intake, its in booze and pizza and I’m not about to give that up because I’m worried last night’s fifteen miler won’t shave off the extra pounds I’m not even holding onto. On that note, what if I’m not eating enough and instead I produce a lot of cortisol and start gaining weight conversely? Again – whatever. People don’t die of this stuff. They just freak themselves out.

But I think I am feeling the results of the strength training – knee and ankle are almost back to 100% and apparently I am increasing in speed. Yay! Now, I just have to get through this first wave of training that focuses on building mileage, and I’ll be set to focus more on speed and strength and less on injury prevention. The goal is to remain at or around 35 mile weeks for 2/3 of training, and to build the long runs so that I run one 26 mile run, and a bout three over 20 miles (I know, a lot of training plans say never to run over 22 miles, but I believe that I will hit the wall at wherever I have stopped training, and I am afraid of the wall, and I also believe that if I keep my total week’s mileage around 35-40, then if half of this is compiled in one run, then that’s okay.)

Now, on to doing some work (yeah right…)!

UPDATE: i remember why I started writing this post: i'm hungry.sorry.

Birthday

Now friends, most of you know how I thoroughly dislike my birthday. It is a combination of bad birthday’s past, and the general belief that every day of my life is a cause for celebration. I do believe, however, that my dislike should be surmounted and that it is a pretty good marker for reflection and goal setting.

That being said, this past birthday was pretty close to perfect. I slept long, woke early, cleaned the way I had planned for weeks, ran a great 9 miles (more on that later), did some yoga, made great food, showered, and listened to my records, hung out with people I love, and generally exhausted myself. There were no extravagant gifts, so I did not have to get upset (I am silly) and yet there was just enough love that by the time we went out with friends I was pretty much ready to burst with happiness. I spent a good four hours dancing around my living room to the amusement of my boyfriend and my roommate, and needless to say, myself.

My mother brought me roses and a cheesecake, my godmother a comfy sweater, and my brother a great big hug. My friends were utterly thoughtful and gave me things that I had broken but loved and wouldn’t both to get again myself. A great gifts came from Danny and the records that make me feel like I am RICH beyond belief. I never thought that these things could make me feel like I had a million bucks in the bank, but great music, I guess, is riches to me!

The second great gift is my boyfriend. I am going to rant a little on him so if you aren’t into hearing gushiness then stop reading here! This weekend he proved, yet again, how much of a great man he is. And ladies, you know what I mean, we have had the discussion on what it takes to be a man, and applied to our friends, dissecting them, pulling apart pieces of what kind of strength it takes. Well, here is this man. He is attentive at every possible moment. He listens to the point of remembering details that I don’t, and past the words too (His birthday gift was a big French press- which he decided on after remembering how I disliked the small size of the last one that I broke, and how I had been lamenting the lack of early morning coffee since the coffee shop closed. Not too much, but still enough to prove something. And PRACTICAL and USABLE – not just stuff!!). Sunday I woke up weird – I was sore from the run, sore from cramps I had not expected, tired, dehydrated, I apparently had a weird dream where I yelled at him because I woke up feeling like we had fought, and was just unhappy. He wrapped me up, squeezed some of the pain away, asked if he could make me breakfast in bed, and took me for a walk. He was gentle enough so that I couldn’t tell until later how he had used his tremendous strength to a)soak up my sadness b)understand it was not personal and c)try to empathize. I am so surrounded by love in his presence that I decided it feels like being in a womb (weird comparison?). WHAT A MAN! What a lucky woman I am!!!!

Of course, I am lucky. I have you as friends to read my inane thoughts! Thanks for being around guys – I love you !

Friday, November 20, 2009

Cards



I did these at work. I promise they are nicer looking in person. Scans do notecards no justice.

Updates

First of all,
Which bag do I like better?


i like the pockets of the one, and the interior of the other, but they do not show the interior of the one with pockets!!!

Second of all,


Why did I not know about this before? Sophie found it on wikipedia - Matisse even spelled my NAME correctly!! (the picture is named Annelies).
It is a BLONDE girl with A BOOK with my name spelled CORRECTLY.
Clearly, Matisse knew me.
Clearly, I am artwork.
Best. Birthday Gift. Ever.
Thanks Sophie!

A growing list of resolutions

I resolve, in my 24th Year, to execute the following:

- I will not drink without the company of another individual
- I will move out of Maryland
- I will run the Paris Marathon on April 11, 2010
- I will sell my car
- I will practice yoga daily
- I will develop my furniture portfolio
- I will do more nice things for those I love
- I will send more letters and packages
- I will bake more cookies
- I will listen to more records
- I will read more and watch TV less
- I will volunteer for causes I love

Thursday, November 19, 2009

november thunder

these deep thunders occur long after sleep should happen - the lightening resonates as if they were the same flood lights that last night's road restoration graced our popular corner. The growls are not soft, nor are they worth ignoring. these storms should be months too old. instead, they are remminder. these past thirty days have been too warm - so warm coats stayed dry, deep sweaters remain buried under winter pants and our fireplaces are still smelling of mold instead of fresh air and oak. this lightening reminds us that we are not expected, that we should be curled up in arguyle and wool, that short sleeves are not resplendant right now.

is this fixable?

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Thoughts on Lifestyle Design

In the dwindling days of my 23rd year, I am adventuring. I am seeing all the great changes I have gone through in the past year, all the goals I have accomplished, and most importantly, all the new ones I have made.

Increasingly, I have found myself drawn towards the concepts involved in location independence, nomadic lifestyles, lifestyle design, etc. I read many many blogs by people who are living this lifestyle and who pertain to teach you how to do it themselves. Interestingly enough, most of them have read The Four Hour Work Week, and maintain the same principles behind their progress: create a blog, save money, travel, earn money off blog.

But I have several thoughts on this: The first is more or less summed by this article: http://www.dropofchange.com/why-lifestyle-design-is-self-indulgent/. Traveling and seeing the world is all great and good, and even necessary I believe for the utmost education of a person (as at least fifty percent of philosophers would agree, the others maintaining that we can derive all we need from home. They, I believe, were just highly introverted. And sex starved. But I digress…) and there are many other virtues that I agree with, as I am burning with the desire to do it myself. However, we cannot all do it, and we cannot all do it forever. There has to be some end to it, some other purpose, such as learning about one topic, or language, or about yourself, or finding your roots or discovering life principles, etc. Even adventure is enough of an end. But endlessly wandering off earned money from a passive site about your endless wanderings is, more or less, pretty selfish. I know, you are not using up commodities as other more sedentary lives do, and I know, you are contributing to the world through experience and positive juju and relationships etc. But there are jobs that need to get done, and good deeds to do and people to help and crises that need to be solved and living every day towards enriching your own life without further thought to what it is going towards is, I am sorry, selfish. I could go on forever.

Another thought is Hell, I could do this! I hate the idea of coming up with yet another travel blog because as many of them as I peruse, I cannot imagine that I could come up with some angle that has not already been taken. I can, however, probably come up with something else, that does not involve 35 Ways to Become a Better Minimalist or 47 Things to See in the Phillipines or 72 Reasons You Should Give Up On Regular Society, Avoid Real Work, Leave Your Family and Friends, and Selfishly Travel Forever And Ever Just Like Me. However, I can write. And I can write about things. And I can publish them to the internet to try to earn a few cents on it and I can keep up with friends, learn a language, research water management, learn to cook, meet people, see beautiful things, and develop values that will last a lifetime all in the process. I think. I hope.

This is a long process. A process of fully immersing myself in the values I have discovered in the past year in order to move forward. Such as minimalism and trying to sell my car and not buy new clothes, such as health and eating well and not drinking every night and a no-excuses training plan. But it is also about acceptance and, as this article says, real growth: http://www.illuminatedmind.net/. It doesn’t, in the end, matter if I am accomplishing anything unless I am passionate about it, as it is passion that fuels the world towards a better place. If I don’t ever get to travel the world or write a book, or whatever, it will be okay. Because there are other equally beautiful things I can experience right here. Even here, at my desk, with my great orange happy Buddha smiling at me from my cubicle wall, and the pekoe tea I can smell and the comfort of quiet productivity and endless possibility that resides in every turn around me.

Oh, also here are some more thoughts: http://www.freepursuits.com/theres-a-long-road-ahead-so-choose-a-beautiful-one#more-3097

No Rest for the Wicked

First of all, why does the world get in the way of my best laid plans? Here is a summary of last night: frustrating and anti-Annelies. I spent the afternoon salivating over several different fall weather recipes, eagerly awaiting a hot toddy, some good tunes on the record player, and a long conversation with a friend before an early bed time and an early morning hill run. What actually happened was not that. At all.

I came home, pulled the boxes of records from the car to the living room, put away my laundry, and walked out back to go to the grocery store to pick up the goods for the great evening, to promptly view our property un-manager’s friend’s car parked in a t to my very own Toyota. Blocked in. Too grumpy to try to face the man and make him move, and having decided that I was even too grumpy to walk the mile to the liquor store, I instead walked across the street to the co-op for overpriced veggies, and called my mother to complain, during which I was advised to, and quickly did, send a passive aggressive text asking whose car was blocking me in. I learn well, roommate.

So that having happened, it was okay because I still made a great dinner, albeit sans cocktail, or brussel sprouts, the grumpiness gave me a great excuse to forget to do yoga. So early to bed I went after a nice bath to try to break up this knot I have in my shoulder, and early I woke up. An hour later. To bright lights, loud shouts, and the rapid shaking of my mattress that made me feel like I was on some motel’s dirty coin-machine. There was a road crew outside of our corner house, on both sides, breaking up the pavement. At midnight the roommate called the police, finding out they had a permit to operate until 2 am. WHICH IS ABSURD!!! Because WHY IN THE WORLD DO WE NEED TO SHOUT TO BE HEARD AT ONE AM IN THE MORNING??? Sleeping should be happening, NOT SHOUTING!

So, grateful at my roommate’s inquiry, I read some, drank some warm milk, and decided it was worth the fight against sleep since the fight to see the meters failed and robbed me of it the night before. So, in and out I go until 2:01 am when roommate goes outside and asks Big Shouting Boss Guy why he is still working. He said they have a permit until 5 am. FIVE AM!!!!!! DIRECTLY OUTSIDE MY WINDOW!!!! I don’t have enough caps ability or room for exclamation points to declare just how confused and pissed off I am at this outrageous atrocity.

So, no sleep, no run in the morning, no anything I had planned. But this is why life is okay, right? Because I am not all that miffed. Not at all like after I ruined my routine after the beach this summer. And certainly not at all like younger Me. I am like water, cool and flowing with this change of NO SLEEP. At least I am lucid enough to begin the several day trip into self inquiry that my birthday always brings around.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

My good friend Science

I love science.
I love it. Science is like an old friend that was always better at sports than you, always had the coolest stuff, and was always beautiful, but who never knew it and loved you because you made it laugh. Science is this friend that you admire purely, without even a hint of jealousy and only gratitude at your friendship.
That is why I dragged the boy out of bed at 1 am last night to see the Leonid Meteor Shower. All the blogs said that was the best time. I was SUPER stoked to stand out in the warm-for-November night and see millions of particles of dust creating fire in a way that called to mind Lion King references and total awe. But, alas, I read the blogs today and they said it was unseeable from North America. I could have told them that. All we saw were normal stars. Millions of normal stars. Nothing moving in our peripheral vision. SCREW YOU SCIENCE.
No, I don’t mean that. I still love you, my dear friend.

On another note, Guess who is the super lucky one this week? That’s right, it would be me. This weekend we went to clean out Danny’s house of valuables and old memories, and I walked away with four and a half milk crates of old records. Beatles. Rolling Stones. Cream. Bob Dylan. Think of what sounds awesome on vinyl, and it’s there. Tonight will be a party with me and myself. Some food will be cooked, some vodka distilled (maybe) (or maybe some wine) and records played. I must go through them all to see if any of them are not ruined from the heat. I doubt it. I am both terribly worried at that thought, and pretty sure it must be true. Again, it is science’s fault.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Being and Light

I walked home yesterday with the exhausted temperament of emptiness, an existential cleanliness that is reserved mostly for the rich and bored or the worried. The purpose of all of our efforts forward meant nothing in the presence of such soft air, which rested on my skin as I plowed through life one heavy human step at a time. Where was I going, anyway?

This morning’s sun shone mustard through the emptying fog, diffuse and soft in its own sleepiness yet never resting to invite us along. Kundera’s lightness had been lifted now that I had my prized company, but still the energy of days that repeat and people that walk forward to their offices to live again the tedium of yesterday’s hours permeate my empty halls. I am alone on this floor, I sit at a desk, and I drink tea after my coffee.

I have a day off tomorrow to fill with boredom and tasks that get me no closer to any ultimate goal. I have been content to love and revel in beauty as life goes on, and yet I still am, but this contentedness is becoming more and more pointless as I wake and rise to ever more love and ever more beauty. What good does an increasing and limitless supply of life’s purpose give you? How do I go about spending my vast wealth of gratitude and my over abundant supply of joy in each minute’s revelation? Every cell is overwhelmed. Yet it is not appropriate to walk from place to place in tears because you are besieged by life and living.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

On Working Downtown

I have a confession: I love working in this city. There is an elegance, a grandeur, to the whole aesthetic. Hundreds of giant office buildings, some brick, some stone, some concrete, red, brown, and grey, with brass details or stone monsters or giant windows, with doormen and revolving glass doors, elevators, rooftop gardens. Each of these buildings has many, many floors and hundreds of people. Each of these people is completing a task, creating another form of revolving door for the millions of details, billions of documents, trillions of files, that have to be managed every second of every day.

We are, truly, a “No Vacation Nation”, a place where, as Thompson Girl explained, we have none of this ‘I work 35 hours a week and that is so hard’ Bullshit. We work, and we work hard. In early, lunch at the desk, leave late. Corporate lunches are the only breaks – albeit they are no longer Three Martinis Long – and Business Happy Hours are often happy only because of the plastic puckers plastered to our faces. But we like it This Way. It makes us America.

Walking down the street, on my way to one bank or another, I feel accomplished. I may not have an office, but with my Big Girl haircut and sensible shoes, I appear at least one step up from my Assistant’s position. The form of Assistant takes its shape as slightly smarter than Intern – and not readily noticeable to anyone but a female. These entities are sharply dressed in short dresses or flouncy skirts or snugly fitted dress pants, with the new bright colors, the not-so-smart high heels, the well dried hair. Lipstick maybe. They are excited to wear Lady clothes. Sometimes I wish I had their money. The rest of the time I am glad I have my independence, my street smarts, my Point of View. They will have boring children who grow up to raid their liquor cabinets.

Men walk past in suits, variants of each others’ haircuts, leather shoes, satchels, ties. They wear cologne and are just as nervous about each other as they were when they were fourteen, but now they have more money and more worries. Women walk by with sneakers over stockings, unfortunate, rumpled hair, or smart suits and pearls, all very busy. They grab lunch, they grab coffee, they grab at hours, they grab at opportunity, it is a selfish culture of Getting Things Done, efficiency, accomplishment, details and ever growing lists of lists that tell you what to do. I am not a part of this.

I take the metro in and the metro out. In the mornings you can smell everybody’s soap, see their tired eyes, their slow pace, their night at home with the family and the television that is slowly rubbing away with every station we stop at. In the evenings everyone is much busier, their tired eyes are no longer puffy but strained, they need a cookie and a nap, they need a hug, they need to take a deep breath. All you smell is the sweat of shuffled paper, the strain of shaken hands, the soap of the germicide we are all forced to pump on us for fear of communicating something substantial.

I hope one day I can work down here, during my own hours. I want to choose when I come in and when I go, when I can leave for a run around the capital building or the white house, when I can go sit in a coffee shop to watch the busy people. I want to choose when I can get things done myself, when to shake hands and when to sit down and when to turn off the telephone. I want to observe this world, not be in it. I want the aesthetics of accomplishment surrounding me, with the purpose of the individual, the success of the undeniable independent. But, honestly, I feel I can at least convince people I have grown up a little.

A Note on Flirting

I have never actually “known” how to flirt. It has always just happened. I talk to a guy, pretty much any guy, and out comes witticisms and allusions and smirks and jokes and, voila, someone tells me I was flirting. Or they try to kiss me. Only then do I know. So I have thought that it was always second nature, that when I felt the heat of a blush on my cheeks, or the tell-tale knock-out-drag-down- war between the desire to stare into their eyes and the total aversion to eye contact, that then, okay, I was flirting. Even through all of the other relationships I have had, I have never been able to not flirt, it could not be helped. I spoke with a male-person, and up came the blush.

I guess flirting has to do with withholding, with temptation, with teasing. The smallest promise of sex has to be there and one, or the other, will jump into playing a cat-and-mouse game, trying to get the other person to admit attraction at the very least.

I visit at least two out of five banks daily. Four of them have young foreign male tellers. BOA has an Hispanic dude who asks me questions about what I do. EagleBank has an Indian who comments on what I wear, joking about the day I wore all black because I had a funeral to go to. HSBC has a middle easterner who knows the secrets of our firm. And Cardinal Bank has the bluest-eyed man whose grandparents must be Scandinavian, or Eastern European. On top of this, there is a new lawyer on the floor, whom I shall call Fit Lawyer, who shaves his balding head and has the face of someone who would sit next to you in a scary movie and make fun of your reactions the entire time, but also holding your hand so tight it loses feeling. I pass him in the hallway sometimes. Until today, when I had to notarize his DC Bar Application. I now have his address. And license number.

These men talk to me almost as a peer. Which is a change from many of the other men I meet around DC during my work, who talk to me like what I am, the Young Female Assistant. Some days it makes more sense than others, because some days I dress nicer, or care more, or am more or less intimidated by them.

I always expect myself to have been flirting back with these young men when they ask what I do, and what that entails, or where I am going next. I wait for the blush to appear, I find a spot on the desk to stare at so that when I feel I need to look away I have some place I am concentrating on. I expect that I button my coat so that I don’t have to worry about revealing the slob shirt I am wearing that day.

But now things are different. My interactions with men are weird. I realized that the blush doesn’t come, I have no problem making only necessary eye contact, I button my coat because I am cold. I smile to be kind, not to be coy. I avoid cleverness. I close the door of the banks behind me with the thought; “It must be hard, being them. I mean, it must be so hard existing as The Inferior, when The Perfect is out there somewhere, texting that Young Female Assistant that just walked out the door, about where they will go together this weekend. What do you do when you try your entire life to write the perfect sentence, but it has already been written, and you know you will get nowhere close?”

And it is while I am thinking these thoughts that a giant, coy smile crosses my face, and I start tapping out a message with a joke and an allusion in it, skirting the subject, avoiding eye contact, blushing.

Another almost-post

I am struggling with a new personal concept: minimalism.

My mother informed me yesterday that we had to clean our storage unit. This unit has been a surprisingly prominent in my life in the past few years. When my family moved into a smaller apartment, I was in Seattle. The new apartment had only two bedrooms, one for my mother and one for my brother. Everything that did not fit went in to the storage unit, and when I returned to this coast I went through and sorted out all my children’s toys, my children’s books, some old lava lamps, etc.

That winter we pulled out our Christmas ornaments and carefully placed them back the month after. Every summer subsequently I have dedicated a day or two to sifting through the stuff that accumulates and re-organizing. I have since widdled down my files and my art supplies and my books to half of what was originally put in there. I have had tiny apartments for the past few years, barely larger than a dorm room, and the books and portfolios that are stored in that room is the last of what I keep at my mother’s house.

I have always applied my life to the principles of “spring cleaning”. I periodically go through my files, my clothes, my STUFF and de-clutter. My clothes find a new home in a drop-off bin, my books at my old high school’s book barn, paper get trashed, etc. But the past year or so I have felt the burden of what I do still own even more as I move from small place to small place (within a calendar year I have lived in four separate places). As my goals move towards expatriatism (for a small amount of time) I am ever attracted to the backpacker’s mentality – own only what you can carry with you.
Now, that may be a bit much, as it is unnecessary when you have a place to live to reduce your life to that resembling a Beduin’s, but the aspects of multi-use and re-usable are admirable.

(Here is the post that inspired this thought: http://zenhabits.net/2009/08/the-minimalist-principle-omit-needless-things/)


The more I read about the fundamental principles of minimalism, I admire it more. The principle of “Omit needless things”, a phrase I am borrowing from the zenhabits post, who in turn borrowed it from Strunk, resonates.

Most of my beliefs, and my anxieties (about society, about life), seem to circle around this concept of the importance of making everything count, of relieving yourself of the burdens of pointlessness. Our environmental crisis

Old notes from an almost-post

Difficulty our generation has to specialize – how do I know what to do with my life?

Most of us who have somehow made it to twenty-something, and have not yet entered the strange worlds of graduate school, face a dilemma. We, perhaps against our wishes, or at least not without trying, have landed in a waste land with no one particular passion in life. This is not to say we are not passionate people - in fact we are a rather passionate group – it is more that we have yet to choose which passion is worth its risks. We face a future in the next few years of risks, coupled with coming to terms with whom we were raised to be, and who we are now. Our personal goals are fighting a war with our community responsibilities, and we chug onward, stymied between personal happiness and global effectiveness.


Our worldview – what we have grown up with :
- divorce
- pressure (over scheduling etc)
- rise of learning disabilities and over prescription
- wars in Afghanistan and iraq
- 911
- Financial crisis

Benefits and - trade schools, seventy billion majors, and
Costs of specialization

Benefits of liberal application - modern renaissance person
And costs



What is the issue?
We don’t know what to do with our lives
Why?
We are stuck between being responsible and doing what we love, and most
importantly figuring out what those are


I do not understand why I m having such trouble moving forward with my future. A strange thing, perhaps, because your future comes to you with you having anything to do with how quickly, and there is

Training beginnings

My running weakness is an anomaly. I have done copious research – of my own experience, and online. Nobody actually knows what causes this problem, but we all have our own theories. I am one of a group of women that experiences “extreme abdominal cramps” during what is predominantly shorter runs, either at a fast pace or going uphill, and regardless of what time of the month it is in our cycle. These cramps are ridiculously painful, they have been described as “debilitating”, “like getting shot in your pelvis” etc., and necessitate a slow walk, or more commonly, a fetal slump on the side of the trail, for its cessation.

I mention this because this occurred yesterday morning. Still a “successful” run, as I did indeed wake up at 6:15 am and get out and complete two fast miles before said slumping, it is nevertheless a brutal enemy. As the time has now changed, I have moved by weekly runs from running around the business district downtown after work to the careful navigation of leaf-piles in the neighborhood at a significantly earlier time. As of now, my schedule is comprised of shorter runs during the week (one hill run, one speed, one medium-length run, one easy run or a cross-train day), a day off before my long run on Saturday, and a short run the day after the long run. This is designed to maximize recovery after and resources during the long run that will be the crux of the training, along with the regularity of very slowly increasing daily runs. The goals are: do not overtrain, maintain the schedule, listen to your body, complete the long runs.

Paraphrased from Rory as she mentioned in relation to her previous half marathon trainings, ‘it is often the first five miles that are the hardest’. After this last Saturdays’ six mile run, I say “True Dat”. Especially in this cold, I look forward to runs that take two to three miles to warm up my body, and two more miles to locate the internal rhythm that, once synched with the subtle movements of the orbiting and gravitational earth, can slide you along for forever. Thus yoga and stretching and careful listening will become more and more primary as the temperature drops and the miles rise. Also I have to remember to eat more. Please don’t let me forget guys, I have a habit of doing that – I prefer the second beer to the second helping.

Today I opted out of my morning run for a long yoga session, as my shins and hips were noticeably as tight as a rubber band pulled around a basketball. I am terrified of developing shin splints as bad as sophomore year. Unbearable. Unwalkable. Certainly unrunnable. So I have dedicated myself to a run this evening from work, around the white house, around the capital mall, it is one of my favorite runs. Mom, I know you are worried, it being dark and dangerous things being possible, but it is precisely worrying about the possibilities of these things ALL THE TIME that has kept me from pursuing just this goal previously. It will be rush hour, there will be police around, I will not wear my ipod, and I will wear white so as to be seen. And, I will thoroughly enjoy it.

I will be posting thoughts on my training for the 2010 Paris Marathon during the next 23 weeks. I apologize if it is seemingly irrelevant, or sometimes an overshare.

Beginning thoughts on the American Dream

Polls show that recently we have lost faith in “the American dream”. The nineties, particularly, during our great peak of capitalism claimed this loss of trust, and perhaps more so as that bubble burst. The American Dream has been an endlessly fascinating subject to writers and artists as our teenager country enters into its introspecting, brooding phase. It has perhaps played a quite visible and prominent role as we look back on the Depression, the Wars, the Return of the Veterans and as those who clung to the promises of the shared vision grew, and the dream became less of a goal and more of a presence. As a friendship begins full of ideals and plans and fades to a partnership, a company of shared experience, you can begin to ask of each other what happened to our plans? Who are we now? What is there left to do?

The American Dream arose in a time of common lowness, an ideal necessary to pull our spirits out of the muck of poverty and ugliness. Recorded by writers as Fitzgerald, ______, etc. and painters _____, it was a striving for a commonality of chance and possibility. With the glee of small children who walk in to a toy shop, we rallied and hurled ourselves head first into a nation where we could have any toy we wanted. In the beginning the Dream was one of ideology, of equality, of opportunity, but as it matured and we held the toys in our hands, it became one of comparison and consumerism, a step forward not into the chance of comfort but into the game of the most comfortable.

It is quite easy to lay blame on our Great Recession on people – on greedy businessmen, on selfish credit organizations, the mortgage lenders, the money people. But truly it is our fault as well – our over-zealousness to purchase, to acquire, to own. Our search for the Ultimate Americanism has brought us to the Eternal Fountain of Debt.

The Most Comfortable Place We Could Be, which is where we thought we had arrived, reveals itself to be the Place That Is More Comfortable Than Our Neighbors. And in a time when more and more are losing their jobs, becoming homeless, squishing into tiny apartments, as long as we get paid minimum wage and have yet to offer tea or coffee to the repo men, we are in that More Comfortable Than You Spot. But financially stretched and psychologically beaten is decidedly NOT the American Dream our nation set out to find eighty years ago.

We have come to believe, in a way, that we have a RIGHT to this American Dream, as we have the right to Pursue Happiness. But certainly these terms are not synonymous – and can one have a right to pursue a dream that by nature we, as Americans, are surging towards on a wave of social movements regardless of whether we care?

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2009/04/american-dream200904?currentPage=1

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Love me an Almond Joy

Last week, a representative from a printing supply company called me, asking for the legal assistant that had been here five years ago. The representative said that we had done business with them then, and asked if she could stop buy with a price list. Oh, and she would bring candy, she always brings candy.

I said sure, fine, okay, dropping off a price list isn’t going to take anything from my day, and will even offer an opportunity for me to get up out of my chair, which I usually am glued to unless I have to take the tremendous sojourn to the bathroom or the kitchen, or maybe the other printer in the filing room. I admired her dedication, as usually I hang up on anybody offering anything, but I was in the mood to let her make the walk. She said she would call back on Tuesday before she dropped by. I said sure.

So this morning I receive a call from the representative from the printing supply company that we used five years ago, and she asked if she could still drop by. I say sure, fine, okay, no I had not been to lunch yet (I eat at my desk), and she can come by whenever. She said great, she’d bring candy.

So she calls up a few hours later from outside the office. To be clear, our office is a giant open paddock, fenced in by two glass doors that are locked with a system similar to the ones in our dorms. We need a key card to get in and out of our penned-in area every time we leave to pee. The rest of the floor is surrounded on the edges by windowed offices, and secretarial work cubes outline the conference rooms in the middle. So I have to answer the phone when someone is outside, get up out of my cube, and walk around the corner to the front reception area to let her in.

She is young, of course, and asks to sit down. The first thing she does is hand me a big white envelope bulging at the sides, bulky and awkward. She apologizes if I was on candy overload. Standing before her I neglect to mention that not only am I too young to go trick-or-treating with my children, or am I young enough to enjoy a good all-out Halloween bash, but I also habitually do not buy candy. So we sit down and she talks quickly, offering services like “we’re just down the street” and “we keep a lot of HP supplies in stock” and “we always bring candy”. Apparently, this candy is a big deal.

The representative thanked me, and I thanked her, and she left and I went back to my desk. Inside the envelope was a whole bunch of what looked like somebody’s leftover Halloween bowl, apparently a standard mix of Fun Size candy bars. Sitting it down on my desk I think about how the entire morning I had spent reading articles about how sugar is bad, and we need to be more mindful. I read articles about meditation and running and spiritual aspects of relationships and how death is a benefit to life, etc. But still, this giant bag of candy is a huge draw. I don’t think this company has much of what we need, but I am sure I will try to call them for supplies. No, not for the big karma-plus and environmentally friendly aspect of using a small, local supplier, but for the fact that the representative took the time to walk down the street and hand me a giant bag of Halloween candy. I do love me an Almond Joy.