DScottGRRL

After a wonderful vacation and way more delicious food than my body needed, I decided a cleanse might be a good way to start the new year.

Yeh, no.

Cleanses take discipline and maple syrup and cayenne pepper taste yucky.

I wasn’t really in a place (in my head) to commit.

Then I started thinking of other ways to cleanse my life.

Feng Shui

I actually went through this period where I swore there was “bad energy” in the house and got all the books on feng shui to “cleanse” the air.

Yeah that didn’t last too long.

What the bf and I did accomplish, however, was ridding our second bedroom of junk and finally turning it into a livable, breathable workspace.

I walk in and I smile. Before I had to keep the door shut because seeing a teeny little glimpse of the disastrous mess that lurked inside would drive my blood pressure up.

I feel 10 lbs lighter. How’s that for a cleanse?

And then I really started picking up steam. What do I really need to detox from my life.

Um, probably my shopping habits.

Stuff

I like to separate myself from “Americans” but, truthfully, I have bought (ha ha) into American consumerism in a big way.

I love stuff.

I love the act of purchasing.

It makes me feel good.

Sparks those synapses.

It’s bad bad bad.

So for the month of January, I have put myself on a shopping cleanse.

No trips to CVS for knick knacks, no shopping online, definitely no Nordstrom Rack (it’s right across the road from my work and my biggest weakness), no nothing, nada.

It’s been 7 days and I feel fine.

Lists be gone

I generally have two or three (exhaustive) lists of things I “need” to buy whether it be for a trip, for the house, beauty products, etc.

And then I would get frantic about making sure I remembered to put something on the list, where I would find time to go to all these stores to get this stuf and how I’m supposed to pay for all of it.

And to top it off, I would usually lose the lists after a day or two and have to make new ones.

What a self-imposed load off of my shoulders.

This month my goals are clear:

1. dont buy anything

2. focus on school

3. focus on my everyday work

4. focus on my freelance work

5. focus on my association work

6. re-learn how to ride a bike

Life is good once you keep it nice and simple.

I think.

I’ll let you know for real in a month.

Technorati Tags: riding a bike, master cleanse, consumerism, detox, shopping, stuff

Ok so I don’t have my plan yet, but I will. And maybe it will be six months, maybe it will be longer. I just have to figure out something, man.

I’ve been simulating forward motion by starting my MBA and I thought that would suffice for the next 2 to 3 years it will take me to graduate.

Nope. Sorry, not cutting it.

Goals are king.

And I need some.

I don’t like to think of myself as Type A even though I know I exhibit some of the qualities from time to time. On the one hand, I’m quite busy–busier than I’ve been for over a year, so I really should just shut it and enjoy my life. Which I am. I love my life. It’s a sweet, charmed life and I’m incredibly grateful.

But I want more.

Bigger, better, faster, more.

At least something!

What’s life without goals? If you’re not working towards something you might as well just die because seriously, what is the point?

So I need something.

Maybe I just need to start writing regularly again and getting out of my head. A mind is a dangerous thing, after all. Overthink and what not.

I don’t know yet. But I’mma think about it reaaaaaallly hard. And maybe I’ll even put a thing or two into motion.

We’ll seee. There are a couple things brewing.

Technorati Tags: overthink, goals, type a, mba

I’ve always wanted to go to therapy.

Maybe there were a few times when I actually felt something was wrong and needed “professional help,” but for the most part, I just liked the idea of having someone’s undivided attention while I talk about myself for an hour.

Self-obsessed much? Probably not more than anyone else, I reckon.

So I’m taking this Behavior class (I heart school), which, while not at all therapy, has gotten me on this self-improvement kick that has been, I think, quite a positive thing.

Much like my Two Weeks to a Breakthrough phase, one of the self-help tenants is to broadcast the things you’re trying to work on so that your peeps can call you out when you start flaking.

So I’ve come up with three blog-related goals for the rest of 2007. And in any case, blogging is kind of like therapy.

1. I will post at least 3x a week.
2. I will start writing book reviews.
3. I will not go over to the dark side and become one of those angry, bitter bloggers whose only purpose is to bitch about the world and “tell it like it is.” That’s not me. I just want to write pretty things. That’s all.

If you can come up with another two that you can possibly conceive of me achieving, go for it.

FYI: You’ll probably see a post like this everytime I start back posting after a break.. wait! that’s self-defeatist! There will be no more breaks. Ha ha! Take that, negative thought.

But hey seriously, if I falter every now and again, don’t hate. Britney can have a “comeback” every week, and goddamit so can I.

Technorati Tags: therapy, britney, goals, self-improvement

The farther I get physically from my family, the stronger my need to be a part of it; the undeniable need to connect.

People talk about the happy quiet that can exist between two lovers, but this was too great; sitting between his sister and his brother, saying nothing, eating. Before the world existed, before it was populated, and before there were wars and colleges and movies and clothes and opinions and foreign travel—before all of these things there had been only one person, Zora, and only one place: a tent in the living room made from chairs and bed-sheets. After a few years, Levi arrived; space was made for him it was as if he had always been.

Looking at them both now, Jerome found himself in their finger joints and neat conch ears, in their long legs and wild curls. He heard himself in their partial lisps caused by puffy tongues vibrating against slighlty noticeable buckteeth. He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.

~ Zadie Smith, On Beauty.

There’s something so delicious about re-reading one of your favourite books and finding new passages that excite you by their ability to get it so unbelievably right.

It’s summer. I do a lot of re-reading in the summer. In less than a week I’ll have some really heavy reading to contend with so I’m hanging on to these few precious moments of do-nothingness I have left (decadence!).

So… on siblings.

The instance of the above passage is when a sister and two brothers fortuitously bounce into each other at a bus-stop in Boston. Entirely unplanned and ridiculously serendipitous.

Once we grew up and moved out, my dad would always get a kick out of that the three of us being together, wherever we were, even if he and mums weren’t there. I didn’t get it then. I do now.

It’s funny, the less I see of them–and now that I’m in LA it’s considerably less–the more I’m amazed by the wall of love I run into whenever we’re together.

To paraphrase, I most definitely do not consider the if or how or why of loving my brothers. But it is absolute and unfailing and… so comforting. And now that they’re having kids, I can feel it in the wall of love that hits me (no words) to be in the presence of these newest blood members. A love like they were always there. I’m botching it up. She said it better:

They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.

How comforting not to need words (and the three of us all have a bit of the over-explainer in us), to know that words are superfluous to the flow of understanding that comes from a shared history.

I think I’m going to extend this to my cousins. By virtue of our age gaps, I spent as much time with my eleventy first cousins (four in particular) as I did with my brothers. We’re not as close as we used to be, which makes me kind of sad.

But it still hits me so profoundly to be with them, to know that in the deepest, most true sense that they understand it all, that they “get it.”

To feel the pull of blood.

Technorati Tags: zadie smith, on beauty, siblings, brothers, cousins, blood, family, love, reading

So there’s no real good reason why I haven’t posted in 10 days.

And it’s not that I haven’t felt like or have nothing to post about. I probably have at least four posts at least 50% written swimming around in my head.

But you know how it is.

Laziness is self-perpetuating. And since completing the GMAT (650–not shabby, but nothing phenomenal, just about what I deserved for the time I put in, I would say) two weeks ago, I’ve had no compelling reason to be productive outside of the workplace, and so I’ve been reveling in inertia.

So there you have it.

Well, no more.

Now I have a new, delicious project to work on and I’m feeling fine

Only a few days ago I was worrying that I was having another one of those months and maybe I should just sleep it off  until September when I start b-school. (That’s right I’m in!!!)

So there I was, hoping for some outside force to come and rescue me (everyone needs a little push every now and then) and, for once, my prayers were answered.

More on my new, fun project later.

I’m so excited I can’t contain myself!

I be back.

Technorati Tags: b-school, inertia, laziness

My gut talks to me on a daily basis.

It tells me how I’m feeling. It acknowledges insults, picks up “bad vibes,” and generally tortures me into picking at what’s wrong in my life at any given moment.

I’m a big advocate of the gut.

Like today.

I’m taking the GMAT tomorrow and my conscious mind doesn’t seem too worried about it. Nevertheless, my tummy is in knots, clearly awaiting impending doom.

Or maybe I’m just hungry.

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the wheels have been set in motion and there ain’t no turning back now…..

whoot, I’m exhausted.

Technorati Tags: MBA, GMAT, b-school

Alright.

Well clearly I’ve been taking my sweet time “easing back into life” after my trip to Trini (18 days, 5 cupcakes, and 7 donuts, to be exact).

Yes I have taken this time to find my centre (I have an increasingly delicate equilibrium) and do a whole lot of what I’m best at… self-paralyzing Overthink and absolutely no action.

Oh yeah and lots of carb-binging.

Well, the buck stops here, cowboy.

Here are my top 5 goals for… now

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Sometimes I think I’m an idiot savant.

I mean, all in all, I consider myself highly intelligent, but mostly in the book smarts area, I’ll admit. I’m really good at memorizing things and standardized tests and all of that stuff that doesn’t matter for shit once you leave school.

Street smarts, common sense, whathaveyou–I have serious problems. It has to do with my dreamer gene, I think, which I recently learned may have a name.

Anyway, on with my story. Yes, on with the story. (not-so-obscure Sesame Street News reference)

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So as part of my job, I was poring through stock images of business people for our website.

In itself, not that interesting.

What was interesting, however — and more than a little disturbing — was the plethora of images of grey suits with WMDs aimed at their coconuts that popped up.

Page after page.

Website after website…

Is the universe trying to tell me something?

What exactly should I expect from b-school?

As a communications undergrad and admitted stargazer who deigned never to touch a business course (way too much of an idealist for that sort of down-and-dirty work) am I in way over my head?

Should I be scared?