FutureSarah

Havi at The Fluent Self has a wonderful habit (among many) of checking in with herself every Friday, to reflect on how the week went. I like it. I don’t have a better name for it, so for now I am stealing quietly borrowing hers.

The Hard Stuff

Tired. Still. Every time The Boy visits it is (mostly) wonderful, and then as soon as he leaves, I get in a mini-funk. I know he doesn’t like it when I talk about him, but this is really about me and recognizing my patterns. My blog. My words. My feelings. I try to be as abstract as I can when working through this stuff.

Allergy time! Autumn in Las Vegas has, by far, yielded the worst seasonal allergies of my life. This is an awesome thing for my office-mates to experience. *Sneeze* *Sneeze* *Cough* *Yawn*

Ugh, Fatso. My current work pace (while otherwise a good thing) and general blah-ness is starting to have an effect on my body. DO NOT WANT. Ballet two times this weekend, then will start gym at lunch next week. The worst part is that I know how good I will feel if I just get up and move, but I haven’t been able to bring myself to do it.

The Good Stuff

Busy work. In a good way. I’m not overwhelmed, I just have lots to do. It feels like things are moving along at a nice clip. And unlike previous experiences with a semi-leadership role, this time I am being taken seriously. Awesome!!

Labor Day was excellent. I made pie!! Double-crust perfect peach pie, from The Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Berenbaum. I have a picture around here somewhere. Hang on a sec….

There! So much tasty! I definitely cannot say that I had no breakfast pie this week.

Also, The Boy. He was here. Enough said.

Objectives Quests!

Blegh. Objectives sounds so cold and business-like, but I really do want to add a section for looking forward to next week. I need a list.

These Friday Checkins, while I’ve kept up with them for 3 weeks (!) now, are showing me how quickly time is flying by for me. I’ve got a couple of blog post seeds in my head that I’d like to expand on and write down, and then I look up and it’s ALREADY FRIDAY AGAIN. Damn! Long story short, I haven’t worked on my previous weeks’ quests yet, so they look the same as last week:

• Talk to monsters.
• Flail.
• Unclutterify.

Regardless, I remain committed. I would say I will persevere, but that sounds like punishment. I will indulge in my happinessification!!

Havi at The Fluent Self has a wonderful habit (among many) of checking in with herself every Friday, to reflect on how the week went. I like it. I don’t have a better name for it, so for now I am stealing quietly borrowing hers.

The Hard Stuff

Tired, still. I’m pretty sure this is just my lazy monster doing her thing. She is still giving me the silent treatment (or is she putting me in a time-out? hmm….).

Difficult conversations are difficult. There is one in particular I need to have, and I won’t go into any detail about it here, but it is definitely weighing on my mind. I’ve been making excuses in order to put it off, and I’m out of excuses. I continually imagine the worst-case scenario, knowing throughout that really I just need to trust the other party to do the right thing.

The Good Stuff

Ballet! I love it! I did indeed drag myself to class twice last weekend, as promised (although it was the only outside-the-house time I really had). The second time I was even nursing a headache – but I got there, started moving, filling myself with music, and waaa laaa! My headache didn’t go away, but I still felt better in every other way.

Cooking? Oh yes. Sesame-crusted seared ahi, with steamed rice and a green salad with totally improv salad dressing. Delish.

Of course, I didn’t really cook anything else of note the rest of the week – but man, that was a helluva Friday dinner. Best thing ever!*

The Boy is here! It’s Labor Day weekend, which means BBQ with friends, an extra day off of work, and one Very Important Visitor who will go with me to the David Gray concert tonight. Our game for the weekend is to see how little money we can spend while still having an awesome time – we’ll be using Groupons and Restaurant.com coupons, and hanging out in the pool. Happy monkey!!

Objectives Joyful Target Practice

Blegh. Objectives sounds so cold and business-like, but I really do want to add a section for looking forward to next week. I need a list.

Talk to monsters. I know which one is unintentionally hurting me the most right now. I need to figure out how to give her what she wants without holding me back anymore.

Flail. Practicing Shiva Nata, I have a sneaking suspicion, will help me with the monster-talk. I just need to tickle my brain enough to be able to go inward for a while in a meaningful (and not mind-numbing) way. Also, I feel awesome afterwards! I wish wish wish for this to become a regular practice once again.

Unclutterify. Specifically, my closet. There is a boatload of unloved clothes and shoes hidden behind the door, and it really needs to go – for my organizational sanity, peace of mind, and to help sate my eternal gadget lust (damn you, Apple press conference!). I will start with eBay to see if I can reclaim some of the value; otherwise, the Goodwill can always use nice things. Part of me hopes that by the end of this quest, the gadget lust will have calmed, and I’ll be able to just put away any money I make for a rainy day.

Everyone, have a fantabulous Labor Day! Try not to labor too much. At the very least, if you must, do it with a spring in your step and a whistle on your lips, and think about double rainbows that go full-on, all-the-way!

* I say that a lot, if you hadn’t noticed.

Every once in a while, a comment spammer makes it through the filter, and about 10% of those are hilarious. I shudder to think what this will do to my search terms, but I just have to share this pearl of wisdom:

“Whenever i have diarrhea, i just take some Diatabs or Imodium tablets and it gives me some relief after a few minutes..*;”

Which post did this appear on, you ask? Maybe the one where I was totally sick in bed and incapable of doing anything but blog posting? Nope. It appeared on my No-Blammo post from last November, where I surrendered to NaBloPoMo halfway through the month.

Thanks, Filthy Spammer! You totally read between the lines on that one!

<delete>

Havi at The Fluent Self has a wonderful habit (among many) of checking in with herself every Friday, to reflect on how the week went. I like it. I don’t have a better name for it, so for now I am stealing quietly borrowing hers. You will see me borrow a lot of her practices, because she has wonderful practices that are worth adopting.

So, let’s begin!

The Hard Stuff

Medication weirdness. For reasons that are mostly my own fault, I missed a couple of days of medication last weekend. My body is still adjusting. Tuesday was particularly bad – chest tightness, panic, panic about chest tightness, the usual. Note to self: don’t do that again.

Missing sleep. I am still trying to figure out what to call this monster that keeps me from going to bed at bedtime. I’m not usually doing anything productive or entertaining; it’s more of a zone-out. If I don’t get my hours, after a couple of days of build-up, I find myself dizzy, irritable, and unable to focus. Plus I overeat. And don’t exercise, because I’m too tired. We’ll have a conversation about this soon, my monster and I.

Hurry up and wait. I am still adjusting to the role of Producer at work, after having been an in-the-trenches Programmer for the last decade. Mostly, I really enjoy it. I feel like my work enables the people actually working on the games to do their work. I get to rally the troops. I get to make lists (I lurrrve lists). I get to plan parties! The hard part is that, since so much of my to-do list involves communicating with outside people, I end up waiting. A lot. I frequently look back on a day of work and can’t point to anything tangible that I’ve done, besides send a few e-mails and talk on the phone a couple of times. I’ve been told that “hurry up and wait” is the heart of a producer’s job. I guess I will just continue adjusting, then.

Game Industry Night. This monthly event that I organize is generally a good and fun thing, but I am a pretty committed introvert, so I have to work myself up to being comfortable around a large group of people. It worked out in the end (see: The Good Stuff), but there was a not insignificant amount of dread in the days beforehand.

The Good Stuff

Playing Dress-Up! This was seriously one of my favorite games as a kid, and though I can’t role-play for shit, wearing costumes is still awesome as all get out. I had a big breakthrough this week (Havi-inspired, of course) where I realized that I could use costumes as a tool to get things done! These are not big elaborate costumes (although they could be) – just symbols of an activity that help set boundaries and align your mind with the project you’re working on.

Project #1: house-cleaning. I put on my handmade apron, the awesome yellow one with pink and orange polka dots, and – blammo! – I was Martha Stewart. Two hours passed in a heartbeat, and all of my anxiety about having a messy home was gone. Dot is now my Apron of Craftiness!

Project #2: networking (blegh). Getting myself psyched up for Game Industry Night was not easy this month. I needed to be ready to meet and greet old friends and new, and it just did not sound exciting to me. I costumed up with my Painted Nails of Handshaking, and – excelsior! – I was ready! I felt professional, I felt dressy, and ready to attack the party!!

Game Industry Night! Thursday’s Vegas GIN mixer #2 was a great success! Once I got in the mood to play with everyone, it was easy. We had about 50 guests, I think, and everyone seemed to be having a good time. I am already hatching devious plans for next month’s event, *insert evil laugh here*.

Objectives Devious* Plan-Hatchery

Blegh. Objectives sounds so cold and business-like, but I really do want to add a section for looking forward to next week. I need a list.

More of Dot, the Apron of Craftiness! I’ve had serious blockages around being crafty when my house is a mess. If I can just get back to a state of normal, I’ll be able to sew! knit! plant! organize! improve! I don’t want to be stressed about it, though. I want to be like Martha Stewart, or better yet, Mary Poppins!

Be Outside! This Sunday is supposed to be quite the cold spell for Vegas in August – a chilly 90 degrees! Must take advantage. I’d love to finally get out on my bicycle (and not get killed by crazy Vegas drivers).

Dance! Ballet always makes me feel wonderful. Wonderful and tired. And sweaty. But mostly wonderful. I get to stretch, I get to focus, I get to revel in the music. I would like to dance not once, but twice this weekend.

Cook! Now that my refrigerator is all cleaned out, I want to fill it with good things. Simple things. Things that are all the best thing ever. I want to prepare them with love, and then eat them up. Anyone want to come over?

*Maybe devious isn’t the right word. I’m not evil; I am really quite a nice girl. I want to make things better. I want to have fun doing it. Mischievous? I’ll keep looking. Suggestions welcome.

Have a great weekend!!

<insert obligatory acknowledgement of procrastination here>

I’ve had a lot of stuff running through my head lately, trying to put things in order so I can put them down on paper the Internet. What usually ends up happening is that the fragments of ideas come out on Twitter, but I never get to expound beyond the 140-character boundaries. Also, not many people read this blog, so what’s the point?

The Point

The point is that maintaining a blog, or any journal, is very therapeutic. When things start to run a bit out of control, like they are for me now, writing things down helps me organize. Making lists lets me relax my mind and focus on one thing at a time, instead of spending my energy worrying about all the things I mustn’t forget.

I think a lot of people go through this, so it’s useful to put it all down in public. Plus, telling the Internerds means I don’t have to tell it quite so much to my loved ones that really don’t want to hear it all the time.

More to come, I promise. Craftiness, liveliness, fill-in-the-blankiness. Progress is being made!

Ack, NaBloPoMo fail!  I thought I was being all awesome by working on some knitted gifts last night, and completely forgot to make my post here.  Oh, well.

Now I’m free to post only when I have something real to say, instead of telling you all that I am eating organic honey-nut O’s for breakfast.  Future topics shall be limited to craft (non-surprise) projects, Shiva Nata progress reports, and all of my mental baggage and verbal diarrhea.

I’m under a self-imposed cone of silence at work today, so this is it for now.  TTFN!

OMGYAY!  Yaaayyyyyyyyy!!!!

I found a ballet class in Vegas – a GOOD one!  It’s not really near my house, but it is so worth it to have a class at a nice challenging level for me.  To top it off, there were only three other girls in the class, so there was a lot of personal attention.  The teacher was Russian (who danced with the Kirov ballet and was trained at the Vagonova Institute), as were two of the other girls – so the teacher was seamlessly changing languages when she was correcting us.  It was all extremely cool, except for the part that I haven’t danced in 6 months and it shows.

Other than that, I got some more chores done, practiced Shiva-ing it up again, hung out at the mall for a little while, and made myself a tasty stir-fry for dinner.  GREAT weekend!  I like this motivation thing!

Wow, it feels *really* good to get stuff done!  I did sleep in this morning, but I also CLEANED and ORGANIZED the kitchen!  I moved here in early June – and since then have had one corner occupied by liquor bottles, and another corner occupied by all my spice jars.  I couldn’t find anywhere to put them – or wouldn’t – until today!  I just shuffled stuff around a bit, and voila!  Kitchen counters!

Happy birthday, Jon!  Can we now stop the incessant teasing about you being 30 now, and me being a year older than that?  Not likely…

Read the rest of this entry »

Ugh.  Wordpress is freaking out.  I don’t want to deal with it now, though, so I’ll just write this post and get on with the rest of my evening (disclosure: I’ve been poking around for 30 minutes to no avail but frustration).

Santana was great!  I crashed on the sofa as soon as I got home, woke up at 5:30, thought “oh – that happened – again – I should go to the bedroom.”  Then I went to bed for reals.

Got to work in the nick of time this morning.  Again.  This is getting old.  I’ve already decided to clear my calendar for the entire weekend and take care of myself – gym, healthy cooking, house cleaning, organization, and hopefully some crafting (I haven’t forgotten about you, Eileen!).  Then Monday, we are down to business with the waking up thing.

If I have taken anything from the little Shiva Nata practice I’ve had, it is that the power is there if I want it.  I have started to become aware of that, but I haven’t taken advantage of it yet.  I’m not sure why I’m holding myself back.  Coming back from the indulgences of last weekend, seeing the scale, looking around at the disaster site that is my apartment, and just feeling dumpy in general has woken me up.

Work is already improving – my focus is up, and I am feeling much more productive.  I find it easier to “activate” myself there, because there I am answering directly to my team members.  I just need to carry it over into my personal life, where I am the only one who directly benefits. Realizing that I am carrying all of this mental baggage around with me, indirectly affecting others, should help me along on my path.

p.s. Gym 3 days this week!  And counting!!  Yay!!