Interests:christianity, photography, reading, writing, camp counseling, children, college, volunteering, hanging out in coffee shops or at the beach, shows, concerts, car rides, friends, randomness, violin, piano, guitar, the season of autumn, seasons in general, nature, camping, traveling, knitting, baking, sleeping, dreaming, people watching, learning, rebelling, eating, Occupation:Program Director Industry:Other
I have been feeling stressed lately. Good therapy for me when I"m stressed involves making a list of little things that make me smile. I got this idea from a book I received as a Christmas gift when I was 11 entitled "14,000 things to be happy about." (Only costs 1 cent used on Amazon!) This woman started making a list of "happy things" as a teenager and added to it over multiple decades until she had a list of over 14,000 things that made her smile. She published it as a coffee table book, and I often look through it when I'm feeling down. Every once in awhile, I will make my own short list. So here are some recent smile-worthy things in my life:
Big dogs that are gentle with small children A tiny nondescript gnome painted in a nearby gutter Coffee shops within walking distance with dog-friendly terraces Wall decals involving birds Cheery paint The 10 year old neighbor boy and the girl next door who will probably grow up to accidentally make out Unexpectedly warm November weekends Playing the violin again Webbed footprints in the sand Pretentious hipsters on bikes Apple cider Beer bread Sesame seed bagels spread with cream cheese My husband's homemade Chai Old couples holding hands Spaghettios When carved pumpkin faces start aging and their little mouths shrivel to resemble denture-less gums Bananas decorated to resemble specific people Re-living Season 2 of The Office The way dogs convey emotions from snout to tail The way Indie doesn't notice when something resembling a hitler 'stache is stuck to the end of her snout Tickling sleepy puppy paws Baby kicks that make me jump Ordering something edible, exchanging bites with a friend, and then simultaneously saying, "wanna trade?" Squash saturated in butter and brown sugar Crab rangoons Sleepytime tea + sleep-inducing lotion + sleep Mechanical timers that tickticktickticktickticktick then DING! when time is up Dominating at Dr. Mario Time lapse videos of people accomplishing things:
(and yes, I may have made the above video. Nothing more motivating when it comes to doing dishes than the possibility of getting to watch the dishes get done in rapid fashion upon completion)
My little sister has always known the answer to this question. When she was little, she would shoot off whatever her current interest was: What did she want to be? It depended on the day, but she always had an answer: A chef! A teacher! A firetruck! Yes. For a good year of her life, my little sister wanted to grow up to be a fire truck. She was a veritable genius.
I, on the other hand, would always squirm uncomfortably when asked this question. Avoiding eye contact, I would reply something that sounded like "mmpfrph" or shrug my shoulders and mumble "dunno..." It wasn't that I didn't have interests. If anything, I had too MANY interests. In truth, I just hated being boxed into little categories. If I committed to wanting to be a particular thing when I grew up, if I spoke it out loud, then my mother would inevitably bring it up in her next conversation: "and we have our little aspiring dentist over here!" she'd say, proudly. And then God forbid I decide I didn't want to be a dentist the next day. Then I would have had to sort out a ton of misconceptions with everyone my mother had told about the dentist phase. "No," I would have to tell people, "I don't want to be a dentist anymore. Now I think I would like to be a pastry chef." Then I would inevitably have to explain my change of heart. This just seemed like too much work to me. So I kept my dreams to myself, never allowed myself to voice them, and thus never did anything about them.
Maybe I have never exactly had concrete dreams. I have 99 certainties concerning what I would NOT like to be when I grow up, but do not have a clear picture of my ideal future. I don't see myself doing just any one thing, and in terms of career, I have not yet figured out how to combine all of my passions, so I stutter haltingly in one direction, become disenchanted, and then stumble off in another. Sometimes I freak out and feel like I should just find the most lucrative option and stick with it, saving my passions for my free time. Other times I am determined to become something specific, only to realize it simply isn't all-encompassing enough for me. In truth, I don't entirely care what I do with my life career-wise, so long as it's something positive, involves fantastic co-workers, involves a variety of ever-changing tasks, is relatively stable, and pays 'dem bills. Ok, so I kind of have a lot of criteria for what I would like my perfect job to be. Only trouble is, I haven't exactly found it yet.
Recently, I took a risk and went to grad school for recreation administration. I figured if I was going to get a grad degree, I might as well go for one that I could get in a year, and that would be in an area that I enjoyed. I have always enjoyed working for camps and with children in a recreational setting. I figured a rec. admin. degree would not only be useful, but also apply to a lot of passions in that area. But now that I am done with grad school, I am, as usual, second guessing myself. I do not yet hold a job in a recreational field and am wondering if I even want one. In college, I majored in english with a minor it art for two reasons. 1. I enjoyed reading, writing, and photography (three more things I am passionate about) and although I didn't have any type of concrete career plan, I decided to just pick majors that I enjoyed. 2. For awhile I really did consider being an editor, or a writer, or going on to grad school for English in order to become a professor. I often think that, given all my interests, the "perpetual student" lifestyle would suit me. And as a professor, you not only get to work with people, you get paid to learn. This was an exciting possibility to me for awhile, until I realized I had absolutely no drive to remember pointless facts about various authors, nor did I possess the organization required to form months of lesson plans, write regular scholarly papers, and in short, complete most of the "grunt work" involved in being an english professor. I just had a brief fantasy involving me showing up to class with my briefcase in hand, patches sewn on my overcoat, enlightening the youth of America with my knowledge in between sips of strong coffee. I had regular dreams about becoming somewhat pretentious, living largely in coffee shops and libraries (while working on my best selling novel on the side, of course), and remaining eccentric and interesting enough to keep students wondering about me while at the same time inspiring them to become better versions of themselves.
As I look back at my pretentious professor dream, I realize that it will likely never happen, not only because of my lack of drive and motivation, but because I already went to grad school once, and reeeally can't afford to do it again.
Other days I wish I would have focused more on art, specifically the photography end of things. While I enjoy drawing and painting and other mediums as a hobby, photography is the only art form I have ever seriously considered as a career. I started taking a lot of photos back in high school and really got into it after taking a few classes in college, where I always got compliments on my work from professors. When my now husband and I first started dating back in high school, Christmas came up way too quickly after we'd just met. He had to ask my best friend what kind of things I liked, and she listed photography among my interests. He ended up buying me a photography book, and I remember sitting there with my garage-sale Minolta, studying it, my bedroom plastered with photos I'd taken. In college, I was the photographer for the school newspaper and have shot one wedding, which I enjoyed. On occasion, I will still consider dropping everything and doing free-lance photography work, but I think I'm still intimidated by all the improvements I would have to make, as well as the competitive nature of the business.
Music has always been another one of my passions, and something I could have easily made into a career. I have played the violin from the age of two, piano since the age of seven, and guitar since the age of fourteen. With the violin, I have been earning money playing for weddings and other events since I was about ten years old. In high school, I was very VERY good, winning several competitions and placing among the top ten or so students in state auditions (even against all those awesome Asian violinists from the Chicago area). Several people told my mom that they thought I had what it took to be a performer, but I fought against that idea from the start and rolled my eyes and rebelled against everything violin-related. See, my mother played violin. Her career involved playing in several orchestras, getting "gigs" and teaching suzuki violin. I always thought she was so annoying and old-fashioned and I detested her taste in classical music. Rebelling against her, there was no way I was going to grow up to do exactly what she did for a living, no matter how good I was at it. Blech. Nobody wants to become their mother. But now that I'm actually out on my own with my own family, I often think about how nice it would be to have a free lance musician job. But without a degree in the field, I lack the connections needed to truly succeed. I love kids and would probably make an excellent violin teacher, but lack the specific knowledge and education needed to establish myself and charge a decent rate. I rejoice whenever I get a violin job; it seems like easy money: a few days of practicing, a few hours of rehearsel, a performance and bam, I'm a few hundred dollars richer. But these days the only jobs I get are those that I have been doing since I was ten. Coming up in December, I am performing The Messiah with a community orchestra for about 200 bucks, just like I do every year. But other than that, I don't think I have picked up the violin since last march. Sometimes I'm jealous of my little sister, who decided to take advantage of her talent and go into music. The free lance nature of the work that appeals to me as well as the sense of accomplishment I get from working on a piece of music and then performing it is something that I can still do, but I will never make as much money at it without the knowledge and degree.
On some days, I am completely frustrated that I think about passions at all when considering careers. Why the heck didn't I major in something lucrative? If I'm going to work 9-5 at something, it may as well be something that will bring in some more money, so that I can better enjoy my time outside of work with my family. I could have become a pharmacist like my uncle; I don't think I would have detested the work; it would have been helping people and I would have been able to make a great living. I could have gone into something a bit more useful with more lucrative career potential like biology, which always fascinated me, or even business, always fairly practical and applicable to almost any passion.
But here I sit, two degrees under my belt, a smattering of developed skills I am fairly passionate about, and absolutely no clue about what I would like to do with the rest of my life. Where do I turn next? I don't have any money to go back to school at the moment, so I have to work with what I have. Where do I focus my efforts? Do I want to work hard at saving money and developing a business plan in order to start my own recreation-related business? Do I use my recreation degree to get a job at a park district or recreational center or camp and work my way up in the field from there? Do I combine the english professor dream with my recreation degree and become a professor in a recreational area? Do I use my english degree to do something writerly? Do I attempt to start writing things of substance again and start a blog with an actual audience and ads? Could I ever write a book? Do I want to ignore the degrees I've obtained and focus instead on further cultivating skills in photography or music, paving my own career path in either of those fields despite the professional challenges I would face without degrees? Should I take my love for children and open a daycare? Or do I forever remain a mish mash of conflicting passions, doing a little bit of this, a little bit of that, but never exactly putting my all into anything? Unfortunately, it feels as though I'm destined to follow the latter option. Here's to the product of a liberal arts education, I guess. Yay for being fairly well-rounded and completely unfocused.
Yesterday something happened that renewed my faith in God and humanity.
As some of you know from reading my last post, a week and a half ago, some stupid kids broke into our car and did a LOT of damage. The car was sitting right out back the entire time. We were home, but the alarm never went off. They were able to do their work discreetly under cover of the alley behind them, and by the time we discovered the car, the back window was broken, over $400 worth of camping equipment was missing from our trunk, our fuel pump was stolen, gas tank destroyed in the process, they had destroyed some weather stripping around other windows, stolen our radio knobs, broken a rear view mirror, etc. The insurance estimate on the vehicle came close to 2 grand. To add insult to injury, it was raining.
The next day, I spent the entire day on the phone. First with police, then with the insurance company, then with various mechanics. I had to get the car towed immediately because the window was broken and it was pouring rain. Unfortunately, we don't have a garage. But there was a delay in communication, so it was late afternoon before a tow truck was finally able to come out and pick up my car. Around 1 p.m., I happened to be sitting where I could see out my back window, and saw a person walking through my back yard. Upon closer inspection, I saw it was a teenager, maybe 16 or 17, his hood pulled up over his head, sauntering "casually" through my yard. When he got near the car, he pulled on the handles, probably testing to see if it was open. That's when I sat up on high alert and watched as he strolled into the alley, looked both ways to see if anyone was coming, and then stuck his hand through my still open window, hit "unlock," opened the front door, and popped the hood, like he knew exactly what he was doing. It was clear he was one of the thieves from the night before who had come back to do some more damage or pick up something he had forgotten.
When I saw him pop the hood, I lost it and didn't behave reasonably. What I should have done was stand by the window and take a bunch of pictures of him while calling the police. But adrenaline kicked in and I just wanted him AWAY from my car. So I opened the back door a crack and screamed at him to get away from it. I dunno what I was thinking. Maybe just hoping to scare him, to make him realize that I was watching. In reply, he started "fronting" and screamed "SHUT UP, F*cking N*gger!" Wow. First of all, he came off as highly unintelligent, second, if he was trying to insult me, I"m fairly certain I fall firmly into the "cracka" category. So I tried to be reasonable. Ha. I said: "really? Come on, there is NOTHING left to steal in that car." At that point, genius boy picked up a rock, and started rushing the door, lifting his arm to chuck it at me. MMmmhmm. Great. So of course I did what any human being would do. I slammed and locked the door and called the police while squeaking out "I called the cops!" Naturally, the kid ran off while I was still on the phone, and the cops took an hour and fifteen minutes to arrive. I love my neighborhood.
In short, it was quite the ordeal, and not a thursday I would care to repeat, thank you very much.
But back to the good thing that happened yesterday. We finally went to pick the car up from the mechanics. And while that was good enough, the best part was the kindness we were shown. Not only did the mechanics fix the damage to the vehicle, but they cleaned it, inside and out, threw in a free oil change, and rearranged the bill so that insurance covered everything and we didn't even have to pay our $100 deductible. Amazing! Basically, I have a nicer, newer car than I did before for pretty much free. Not having to pay that $100 deductible was HUGE. But even nicer, in my book, was the free oil change and car cleaning. It has seriously been FOREVER since I've cleaned my car. And I was almost 1000 miles overdue for an oil change. I'd been meaning to get both things accomplished but couldn't seem to find the time. The car cleaning was especially annoying to me. Once about a year and a half ago I went to one of those teen car washes and they shop vac'd the car out, but didn't do a very thorough job. I have also wiped down the dash board oh, maybe once in the last year. But for the most part, the car was getting pretty bad. Dog hair covered the back seat, crumbs littered the center console, a bag of trail mix had spilled over the floor in the back, and then had gotten wet and some of the seeds had kind of molded and attached themselves to the carpeting. Not to mention the usual litter of gravel, salt from last winter, trash from fast food, etc. Since I don't have a garage, there is no convenient way for me to vacuum out the car without hauling an extension cord to the curb. So this little act of kindness on the part of the mechanics was priceless. They didn't have to go all out and clean my entire car. They could have just vacuumed up the glass and mopped up the water and called it a day. They certainly didn't need to wash the outside, or change my oil. But they did. And as a result, I've gained a little bit of renewed faith in the capacity of humanity to do good things on this earth.
So what's the moral of the story? There are three. 1. Sometimes good things come from bad situations. 2. Kind people do exist. 3. And you should never keep anything in your car, ever. Especially not camping and recreational equipment you care about. Even if you think it'll be safe in the trunk. My current resolution is to keep absolutely nothing in the car except the emergency car-related trunk items that are covered by insurance if stolen and my insurance/registration cards in case I am pulled over. I may even remove my graduation tassels from the rear view mirror. Education implies money. I will replace them with an air freshener and call it a day. That way, if someone does break into my car, they won't be able to get at anything that isn't covered by insurance. Despite everything working out nicely with my car, I'm still out $400 in camping equipment.
I truly don't believe I would be happier if I were rich. Oh, I know, you're probably thinking "that's just what poor people say when they're resigned to being poor." Jokes abound: "we all know money doesn't buy happiness but have you ever seen somebody frowning in a hot tub?"
Now I would love more money. Everyone would. I would love to pay off some debts and student loans and travel the world some at leisure. But I also believe: "mo' money, mo' problems" and "with more money comes more responsibility." In short, having a ton of money would probably make me paranoid.
It would be fine if I had a ton of money and could keep it in a bank somewhere, spending it largely on non-material things like trips and experiences, donations and good food. But in reality, I wouldn't operate that way. If I had a ton of money, once my debts were paid off and I'd squelched the travel bug some, I would need to stop and live somewhere. And with a ton of money, why not buy a house? And since I can afford it, why not buy a NICE house? And what good is a big empty nice house? I might as well fill it with some nice furniture, nice art, nice interior decorating. And then, since I"ve still got money left over, why not spend it on things I will use and enjoy? I would definitely like a nice kayak. And some rock climbing shoes. And just for fun, I have always wanted a moog synthesizer. Why not get a nice drop down projector screen for watching tv and movies and entertaining friends? A bar in the basement? Yes please. Aw hell, might as well throw in that hot tub, and a pool table I may or may not ever use.
And pretty soon, there I am, with a huge house filled with a lot of STUFF. And all that stuff takes work. Family members pull it out and forget to put it away, things need to be dusted, areas need to be cleaned, floors need to be vacuumed, security systems need to be purchased, money needs to be tracked. Pretty soon I'm hiring maids and accountants and taking precautions to supervise them as they manage my stuff. Then letters begin arriving in the mailbox. Charities have smelled my money and are requesting my presence at this auction or that dinner, and that will mean shopping for more stuff-fancy clothes and jewelry, a tux for the husband, a babysitter for the kids. And then it's the tiresome cherade of keeping up appearances with the neighbors, discussing and comparing stuff, all the while balancing treasured life activities like spending time with my family.
Last week, somebody broke into my car. They did over $2000 in damage to the vehicle itself, and stole all the car and trunk contents. I was going to blog about this in greater detail, but the whole thing has made me tired. I've always been something of a minimalist. In fact, I've done such a good job with purging and donating my unused possessions this year that I had a really difficult time finding a halloween costume without turning to the store, as I lacked materials to reuse for its creation. I can deal with one day a year being slightly more difficult, however, because every other day of my life is so much easier. I can put my things in order in next to no time, make my house look presentable in fifteen minutes at the drop of a hat, and largely live very comfortably. But being a minimalist has its downsides too. It means that the possessions I do own are ones that I either need, cherish, or use. They are all things that make me smile, and when they stop making me smile and become a burden, I now get rid of them. So when something is stolen, it hurts.
My husband and I are able to fit our entire lives into one small 3 bedroom apartment with four closets, a kitchen, and two bathrooms. The stuff we own is literally EVERYTHING we own. We have both even gone through our childhood possessions at our parents' homes, taken what we want to keep, and tossed or donated the rest. In our bedroom we have our bed, dresser, and night stand, and a closet containing clothes, bathroom towels and a few extra sheets and pillow cases, a dirty laundry basket, our Christmas tree/holiday decorations and one smallish rubbermaid bin for memories. Our bathrooms are small; one has no storage and is just used to brush teeth and take showers, as well as for guests. The other has a small cabinet under the sink in which we store toilet paper, a few bottles of lotion, perfume, extra razors, my hair dryer, etc. All of it used regularly. The vanity over the sink holds a few basic first aid items and medications, cough drops, eye drops, tylenol, tweezers and bandaids, none of them expired. Our second bedroom will be the baby's room, and it is small, so we definitely won't have a lot of room for excessive games or toys. Currently it houses a crib, a stroller, and a few items I found at a consignment sale. Our third bedroom is a number of things all at once: office, game room, music room, art room. We have a bookshelf full of books in there, which I regularly lend out or re-read, a table that supports a printer and our laptops when not in use, acting as a desk and doubling as a card/game table in a pinch, another shelf holding board games and photo albums, a stereo on a low table with cd racks nearby, and a couch that also serves as a guest bed sometimes. The closet in that room contains our music and photography equipment as well as coats, shoes, and arts supplies. Our living room has a smaller couch in it, a fish tank, a little cabinet for vhs tapes, a dvd rack, and a tv on a wooden corner tv stand with room underneath for our wii, N64, dvd player, and video games. Our eat-in kitchen has a kitchen table, some appliances and dishes (no dish washer) and a cabinet we use as a pantry, as well as a small broom closet for our broom, vacuum, tool box, and some reusable grocery bags. Our bikes, tent, cooler, and fire pit we keep in the basement.
So why the heck am I listing all my possessions? Just to show that everything we own is stuff that we use. I have gotten rid of most of the "extra" stuff and I'm down to the basics plus the fun extras we will use and the items we cherish. So when somebody steals a trunk full of my possessions, including our inflatable kayak and paddles, sleeping bag, disc golf discs, and a scarf I got from my sister that I wore all the time, it actually really sucks. Because we aren't rich people. We don't have a ton of extra "toys" just laying around. The things we own we work hard and save up to purchase and then we USE them, and if we don't, we do a good job of re-gifting them. We simply don't have room for excessiveness. We've culled our possessions down to the nicest and most useful or most enjoyable things we own. Sometimes, like with the kayak, we get a really nice gift (in this case a wedding gift) and we cherish it. Mike disc golfed regularly and we used that kayak every summer. We go camping a lot and that sleeping bag was our only sleeping bag. We had a grill once, that we used almost every other weekend in the summer, but that was stolen a few months ago. And it makes me angry, it really does. I work so hard to surround myself with the essentials and just a few extras for enjoyment: laptops, wii, music equipment, art supplies. And then someone comes and just takes it. In fact, there is good evidence showign that they didn't even take it. Several trunk items were scattered around our neighbor's garbage can (which had just been emptied by the city), suggesting they may have tossed the majority of our trunk contents in the trash trying to get at the fuel pump, which they stole.
Lately, the things I own have been making me nervous and uncomfortable. Because if they're taken, it's an ORDEAL. it's hours on the phone with insurance companies and police, days out of work without a car, grimaces of loss when you realize what was taken. Already I cringe thinking about more things that are important to me being taken. What if my laptop was taken? Or my violin? Or my camera? Or worse, my external hard drive with all my picture and document backups from the last 5 years on it? It shames me to realize how upset I would be over the loss of any of these things. After all, they're only things. So imagine how much I would spend my days needlessly worrying over the loss of even more things that I enjoy? I'm sure I would acquire them fast, with more money. And that's why I think I'm ok with not being rich. I have enough to take care of and keep track of in this world, thank you very much.
My husband never eats breakfast. He likes breakfast foods alright; sometimes we have eggs, bacon, pancakes, etc. for lunch or dinner. If we wake up extremely late on a saturday morning, he will sometimes give in to consuming a few bites. But on the average work day, he will wake up early, around 6:30 a.m., and will be unable to eat a bite of food until well into the afternoon. He'll drink plenty of morning coffee, but the sight of food just makes him a little sick. Sometimes he will even skip lunch, and will arrive home for dinner absolutely ravenous. It's not that the boy doesn't like to eat. He just simply DOESN"T. He will forget to eat. Or eating won't sound good at the moment. And then when he remembers that food exists, he will pig out. He is the champion of big dinners and late night snacks and has always enjoyed cooking. In fact, I hardly ever prepare dinner because he usually takes care of it.
I have tried several times to get him to eat breakfast. Somehow I just knew it wasn't good to skip breakfast so often, especially when it carries over into skipping lunch. But it's only been recently that I've actually grown concerned about it. He's started to complain lately about digestive problems. He'll have issues in the bathroom or feel nauseous out of nowhere. Once we were driving home and he complained that his stomach "just felt weird." I honestly couldn't get him to explain what he meant. Weird like sick? Weird like pain? "I dunno, just weird." He was grimacing the whole ride home and I suggested we see a doctor. But by then, it had just gone away. I told him that he was likely experiencing digestive problems because he never ate breakfast. It's not good for a body's food intake to be so inconsistent.
Today he complained about feeling nauseous again at work, so I started googling digestive problems and breakfast. Just as I suspected, I found that skipping breakfast and eating other meals late or on a poor schedule can definitely cause digestive problems. Skipping breakfast can lead to vomiting, constipation, diarrhea, and gallstones. Not to mention a lack of energy needed in order to effectively start the day.
After I told my husband about what I read, we agreed that he needs to start eating breakfast. So now in order to motivate him, I am in charge of making us both breakfast every morning, whether it be yogurt and fruit, cereal, or eggs and bacon.
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