NaBloPoMo’09: Oscillo-Whatever-You-Call-It

I can say with authority that I do not have the flu, swine flu, HamAIDS, Hamthrax, or Hammonia in any way, shape or form. So, cheers to that.

I can’t even tell you what I do have, except to say that it feels like I have a dust bunny in my throat at approximately clavicle level that won’t move at all when I cough.

Right now, I took oscillococcinum as a preventative (again, I know I don’t have the flu), and drinking a lot of water (any water for me is a 100% increase than what I usually drink – pass the Diet Coke, please), and my three-cigarettes-a-day is now whittled down to nothing.

I don’t feel any better or worse than yesterday, so I think that’s an okay sign.

The thing that makes me nuts, though, is that I finally feel the drive to take care of my body when it is broken. Obviously the smoking is not helping, and I make excuses about my hydration with the Diet Coke as a substitute for water. But I just feel gross right now, and I want to feel better. More importantly, I want to feel better all the time, not just when I get over not feeling well.

I’m at the point where I’m really just tired of smoking. It’s more of a pain in the ass than not, so I’m really working on being done. Not eating like a little kid and having healthy and balanced meals is even a fun challenge: I like to cook, I like to be organized, I like to plan meals, no sweat. I can stick with that.

It’s the working out that’s going to suck. It hurts a lot for me to work out – and not even in that “ooh! Feel the burn!” kind of hurt. As in, “I am laid out on my back for two days after 30 minutes on the elliptical” hurt because of persistent hip and knee problems. I would like working out if I weren’t so terrified of being crippled for days afterword.

The best part? Presentation tonight – I think I’m going to lose my voice midway through. Charades, anyone?

State of the 101 Union

As of today, I have completed 35 of 101 tasks.  This means:

• I am only 34.6% completed with my tasks.
• Average completion should be one task completed every 10 days; I have completed an average of 1 every 18 days.
• I have 382 days left to finish my tasks (September 28, 2010), which means I need to increase my rate of completion to 1 every 6 days.

Some other points of interest in my 101 List:

• I already did not complete 1 of my 101 (one failure)
• There are at least three different tasks that I want to change out
• I follow Day Zero’s Twitter for other good ideas for my list (for next time),
• Experience is definitely the best teacher, so when I hit this again on January 1, 2011, I will know how to write the next list.

If you’re interested in starting your own 101 in 1001 list, go to http://www.dayzeroproject.com/

Unfettered

This weekend, I filled two Hefty bags full of my belongings I was “hanging on to” and threw them away. It was the beginning of my push to rid myself of the clutter I’ve been accumulating for more than half of my life. Hoarders usually keep things because they are terrified that they will be deficient in some way because they don’t have these things: they will forget, they will need it as soon as they throw it away, they don’t want to be wasteful…   (I don’t think you need to worry that I am going to hoard myself into a single room of my home. No, I keep my clutter fairly tidy – I have not impaired my mobility or anything that would qualify us as having OCD by the DSM-IV.)

I keep things because I feel like throwing things away will mean that I am going to forget the memories they are attached to. The irony is that I’m an unsentimental person saving years of sentimental objects.  I have saved hundreds of thousands of pieces of paper tracing my journey through this mortal coil recounting that I don’t even look back at and events that I don’t pine for.  Perhaps I never miss any of these past experiences because I know that the physical evidence is safely tucked away in boxes, ready for me whenever I need to call on them.

I shared an office with someone (Lovely Wedded Co-Worker, if you remember), who was exactly the opposite. She never hung onto anything. Every few weeks or so, she would go around her apartment and discard vast amounts of “trash” away. Her position was that it was all just meaningless stuff – stuff that she didn’t need. I’m not sure how it happened, but I woke up one morning and came to the conclusion that it was time to do the same. I am not defined as a person by a movie stub from a forgettable movie from three months ago. (I plan on saving some of the sentimental things that are truly sentimental to me, and even scanning things and saving them digitally – a myBook takes up a lot less room than three cardboard boxes full of letters from my high school boyfriend.)

My friend, K can’t wait to get elbows-deep into my boxes of stuff and help me throw things away.  Her husband and I laugh that she and I are dating: we’re getting through the honeymoon period and now she wants to throw out all my stuff. But I say that with a certain amount of my tongue firmly embedded in my cheek. I’m ready to be cleansed of my stuff in an effort to not only metaphorically weigh less on this earth, but to streamline my life and to take a big leap on emotionally maturing.

Keep On Keepin’ On

I wrote about getting in shape, and how I was going to some leg work to starting the process.  Oy, did that ever not happen, but Rich gave me a reference for a friend of his in Cleveland who does some personal training work, so I have to follow up on that.  Until them, I’m going to try and get all of my measurements in this weekend, and maybe set up an at-home program and a plan.

Project 365 is going well, but it’s only been three days, and it’s really hard to fall off the wagon when you’re three days into a goal (unless we’re talking about physical fitness, and then I can’t even get one day into it).  I’m also discovering that I need to either buy or make a light tent.  I made one light tent already – but my mother, who told me to put it where I did to protect it, ended up busting through it like a football team through a banner at the homecoming game.  Buying a pre-made light tent, however, seems ridiculous because a lot of the prices are completely obscene.

I finally got the tuition thing squared away, so I won’t have to put a semester of graduate school on my credit card, and I might even be able to get my company to pay for some of the cost in the future.

The birthday went splendidly.  I got all kinds of things that I wanted, spent time with my family, and The Boy is taking me to Steak on a Stone tomorrow for birthday dinner.  At one point in my life, there was a somewhat ill-fated Melting Pot incident in which I swore I would never go to another restaurant where I had to cook my own food.  But, I love me some steak, and it’s a lot harder to mess up cooking steak than poaching raw meat.  At Steak on a Stone, the waiters bring out a rocket-hot stone, a slab of meat, and you cook your steak on that stone until it’s done to your liking.  In the famous words of one of my favorite co-workers, "What could possibly go wrong?"

I hope there’s no birthday trip to the burn unit this year.

Project 365

Your year-long photo album will be an amazing way to document your travels and accomplishments, your haircuts and relationships. Time moves surprisingly fast.

An age that I have been really looking forward to – for whatever reason – is 26. I just feel as though I will actually feel as old as I am; that I will really feel like an adult. In some way, that’s true: I will have been able to drive for ten years, smoke for eight, drink for five and rent a luxury car for one. I will be out of the early 20’s I was still considered too young to know any better, but I’m still young enough that I can be “upwardly mobile youth” with fresh ideas and energy to spare.

But, I have an entire year to wait for my perceived “golden age”, and I feel as though I were having a quarter-life (if I can be so lucky that I’m only now reaching a quarter-life) crisis. This isn’t where I thought I would be in my life. In the immortal words of Val-Kilmer-cum-Doc-Holliday, “There is no such thing as a ‘normal life’, there’s just life. You get on with it.”

So, am I disappointed? In some ways – frankly – yes, I’m very disappointed; but at the same time, all of a sudden, I’m coming into my own, I am finding the confidence in myself do the things that make me happy, and cultivate relationships that are important, nurturing, and fun. Options for where I want to take my life have been presenting themselves. These are options that may not have even come to be without the unsaid events that have been my disappointments.

Even though I’m going to be only 25, in some ways, I just feel very, very old: I feel like I’m too old to go back to school, I’m too old to start on a “career path”, I’m too old to like certain things, I’m too old to get into really decent physical shape. I’m panicking, because I’m too young to feel this “left behind”.

In an effort to face my fears, to confront these issues, I have decided that I need to capture the “year I feel ‘old’” up until “the age I can’t wait to be”; so for an entire year, I’m going to participate in Project 365 and capture an entire year in pictures.

StyckyWycket Project 365