I've wasted all those years...

After falling asleep on my couch on a Saturday afternoon, I stumbled upon the Cougar Town marathon on SOAPnet. I had very low hopes for it; I mean a show about a 40-year old divorcee does not seem appetizing for someone who is 2 weeks into the last year of her 20's. Sadly, I love it! But not because it's a good show, but because I feel an odd connection to these women.

In one of the episodes brings up the fact that Jules didn't enjoy her 20's because she was married with a baby, so she tries to relive them. After one night out with 25 year olds she realizes that she doesn't have enough energy to live like that now that she has the time. This makes me think back over the past 12 years of my life, and I wonder, do you have a finite amount of youth?

I had a great run. From age 16 to 27 I had crazy amounts of fun; the kind of fun that people don't believe when you retell the stories. This is also the same kind of fun that leaves people torn between jealousy and thinking "God she's a dumbass". I am pretty sure I lived 20 years in those 11 years, and because of it, I'm the only 38 year old, 29 year old in the world. The idea of going out to bars after happy hour is over, unless it's for drinks after a fantastic dinner out, is pretty much the last thing I want to do.

This is, however, making my life suck, because finding new friends in a new city is tough when all you really want to do is sit on your couch and watch marathons of crappy sitcoms.

Blame it on the Rain

There are a few things in this world that you can always count on with me:

• If I get less than 8 hours of sleep for more than 5 days in a row, I start to lose interest in being friendly;
  
• My tolerance for other people's drama goes down when they don't care about anything else;
  
• Rain makes me sleepy, no matter how much coffee I've had or how many hours I've slept;
  
• If pressed I will lie, but it won't be good, and I'll think about the much better lies I could have told for hours afterward;
  
• If you are self-conscious, there is a pretty good chance I'm already judging you before you have the chance to realize I might be;
  
• If you make me go to a restaurant where I can't eat anything, do not expect me to be happy to be there.
  

That's not all, but I'm too exhausted to continue to think about my faults.

Is it better to have loved and lost, or to have never loved at all?

Contrary to the title, this post has nothing to do with love, unless you are a huge dork like I am. For the first time in my life, I'm facing an interesting health coverage issues. As a person who is studying and will be working for the US health care system, I am torn between being personally cautious, and being socially conscious. I'm forced between potentially having unnecessary testing done, or waiting until my coverage starts at my new job, and potentially paying more out of pocket for the testing.

Where, along the way, did we really learn how to make those kinds of decisions? The obvious ones we know: don't eat all the bagels at a meeting because no one else will get to enjoy the delicious bagels, if you're really sick you shouldn't go to the office so you don't infect other people, don't buy all the sale size 7's at Saks' shoe sale because others might want those pink Miu Miu peep toes. But how do you decide if you're adding to the problem, when really it's a drop in the bucket compared with $100,000 cancer treatments?

So I think, when it's all boiled down, my main question is: can I practice what I'll be preaching? Or is my own comfort, and being in a better place for my first day on the job, a bigger issue? This is the main reason I know I'm not anywhere near ready for kids... my own cleanliness and the ability to stay up and watch trashy TV is much too important to me right now.

Don't Stop 'till You Get Enough

I've spent the past few days remembering my childhood. I grew up listening to Michael Jackson, trying to do the Moonwalk, and fighting with my brother to play his records instead of KISS or Guns n' Roses. It's always strange to think back to times you haven't thought about in years, and it gets more strange the older you get.

I had a good childhood. I spent my summer days riding bikes all over town with my friends. I longed for allowance day so that I could go with my friends to Veneziano's store and buy Swedish Fish and Sour Patch Kids by the penny, and Slush Puppies with an extra squirt of flavor for 10 cents. The only care I had in the world was making it home when I needed to so that my parents wouldn't be mad.

How, as adults, can we get those carefree days back? Can it be done? How do you forget about bills, and jobs, and your health long enough to fully relax? I'm not sure it can be done. If you are able to deal with one, another pops up.

I think the closest we can get now, is to find time each day for something you love. Whether it's running, dancing, cooking, reading, or writing; forcing yourself to take time, even for a few minutes, to feel carefree, I think it will help to keep stress levels lower, and be healthier.

Of course, it's easier said than done. Right now I'm looking at 3 loads of laundry on my floor, a dishwasher full of clean dishes, and a sink starting to fill up with dirty ones, papers and books from finals surrounding my couch and coffee table: how can I take time to act like a kid when I've got life piling up around me?

On that note, I'm going to get off my computer and get to work on some of this mess, also known as life.

I keep forgetting...

Michael McDonald was onto something with this song. I've recently realized that I think I'm either OCD or technically psychotic. I have a tendency to do the same thing over and over again, although I'm not so sure that I expect to have a different outcome. So would that make me a masochist? Do I put myself through these ridiculous things knowing exactly how they will end? Possibly. Still under review.

As a kid, I apparently grabbed hot pans because I wanted cookies. I did it several times; even after I got second degree burns I continued to do so. I still love cookies, but have learned to wait for the pans to cool down. Waiting for myself to cool down, however, is an entirely different story.

I've always thought of myself as non-confrontational. Over the past few years, I've learned that I am, to a point. Over small things, I'm definitely outspoken. If you ask me if I like your shoes, and I don't like them, I will tell you. I will then tell you why, and, not because I mean to, put you down in the process. Over bigger things, however, I tend to hold it in until I can't deal with it anymore. This is where my OCD or psychosis comes into play. I have had the same arguments with people over and over again. I don't even want it to turn out differently, but I start it again anyway. I need to find a happy medium in my life. This time, I need to find my Purgatario, so that I can find my Paradiso.

In other news, my first piece of original art is ready for me to pick it up. I'm so excited. I'm picking it up at the Gallary on 43rd in Lawrenceville. The artist, Scott Davidson, has been fantastic and helped me find the perfect photo to make into a print. He also told me about an upcoming Artists Market in the South Side that I cannot wait to go to. I might be addicted to buying art now. This is going to be a more expensive habit than my purse, shoe, clothes, or lip gloss obsessesions I've gone through. It's a good thing that I'm moving into a new apartment and starting a new job.

Spring flowers make it hard to concentrate

I am an impatient person. I can't really remember a time when I wasn't impatient. I'm so impatient that I hate cooking meals that take a long time, if I'm not able to be working on something else while I'm doing it. I love how my hair looks when it's been straightened, but hate taking the hour-plus to complete it. I get angry when I have to wait in lines that don't need to be that long.

This is something that I absolutely have to deal with before re-entering the workforce into a huge, bureaucratic corporation. There's definitely something to be said for just biting my tongue, and working out a lot, but I feel like I will always be frustrated and stressed out. I'm not sure how to deal with this but am taking opinions.

I think part of my issue now is that I'm not making any money. So if my time is being wasted in class, I'm actually paying to have my time wasted. If it was the other way around I'd feel a little better about the whole thing. I really need to just become the happy person I was before I got stressed out with school. I'm looking forward to having a job, where walls and deadlines exist in a different way than they do in school.

In my current life, there is always something I could be reading, because there's just no way to read it all. Due to this, I always feel like I'm behind. Thankfully, in my final semester, I've come to a happy place about just not doing everything. I am still learning, just not spending hours each day reading things I don't care to read. Unfortunately, I know I'm not always going to love every part of my job, but I'm still going to need to do it. I've put up with it before, so I'm confident I can do it, as long as I love other parts of my job.

Oh the joys of adulthood. Every day you learn your flaws, learn to deal with them, or peril.

The fine line...

After watching little hockey over the course of the season, I decided to be part of Pittsburgh for Game 7 of the Stanley Cup finals. I put on white, yellow, and black and prepared to pretend that I understood hockey for a night. With hockey, however, comes beer. I'm not normally a beer drinker. I've just never enjoyed the taste of it, but will drink it if that's really my only choice.

Through a few hours of trying to get everyone to get excited about my hand penguin, "Let's go Pens" chant, I continued to drink beer with my friends, and after the Pens pulled out an amazing win, we celebrated with more beer, and hot dogs.

Why is it that even though I've set standards for food and beverages for myself, I become a 22-year old college student again when everyone else is doing it? I had spent nearly 4 hours working out yesterday, and killed it all, plus some, in a few hours, and with things I don't even like. I don't feel like this is something that real adults deal with, or maybe it is an I just don't realize it. I need to go back to my pre-marathon mentality, and just not drink it or eat it unless I really want it. I'm definitely not any happier today, if anything I'm less happy because it's as if I didn't push myself to the point of exhaustion at the gym only to kill it.

Being an adult the first time didn't count because I was in DC, it's like Cancun with jobs. Questioning a random night of drinking just didn't happen. Now that I feel like I'm an actual adult, it just seems like I wasted a night, and essentially part of today, for something that would have been just as fun without it.

Part-time lover...

I feel like I'm back in high school again. Weird, since it's been 10 years since I've been there, I know. Mostly, I feel like I'm in high school again because I'm only in class 3 days a week right now, I feel like I'm working Summer Rec again. Those fantastic days when I worked for 4 hours, taking kids to fun places, and forcing them to be nice to each other. It was great!

Class is not nearly as fun, but I feel like I have so much time on my hands I don't know what to do with myself. I've even started regularly vacuuming and dusting my apartment. It's crazy! This is good practice for my move, though. Since I'm attempting to have my first really "adult" apartment, keeping it clean is going to be a must. On that note, I'm going to need a new vacuum, but don't want to shell out the cash for Dyson... any thoughts?

I'm also going through the issue of really wanting to use fuchsia, or another shade of hot pink in my new living room, but knowing that within the next 3-5 years I'll be forced to get rid of it all since my boyfriend will have none of it in our future apartment/house. I had originally wanted to get a big fuchsia chair, but am now leaning towards sticking to accent pillows, throws, and other accessories that I'll be more willing to part with down the line.

I'm still looking for brilliant ideas to fill my extra long weekend (5.5 days this weekend). Any ideas are welcome!

Another day, another chance to procrastinate

If I had to choose a literary location for where I feel my life is right now, it would be Purgatario. I spend the first part of my day at the gym, I spend the next part of my day avoiding the reading I should be doing for class, usually the class I have that night. Class, however, only happens 3 days a week, so in theory, I should be able to accomplish everything I need to get done over my 4 day weekends. Of course, this would make too much sense.

I'm quite confident that my procrastination is due to my need for scheduling. I have too much free time on my hands. My apartment isn't big enough to take up much time being cleaned. I can only be at the gym so long before I just get bored. Pittsburgh, while it is a lovely city, doesn't offer the same amount of entertainment and visual stimulation opportunities that I was used to in DC, and certainly not what I'm used to when I'm in New York.

Over the past week I've explored Lawrenceville, the Three Rivers Arts Festival, and found a great new organic grocery store, Right by Nature, in the Strip District. I think I am going to make a "Bucket List" of sorts to help me find ways to fill my schedule, and hopefully stay on track with my final semester of classes.

Where should I go and what should I do in the Pittsburgh area before I leave? Hmmm... this should provide entertainment for class tonight.

"For his part, every beauty of art or nature made him thankful"

Art has always been a guilty pleasure of mine. Not guilty in that I spend tons of money on it, but in that it wasn't a "cool" thing to like until college. And once I was in college, I loved my art history classes, my professors loved me, but I wasn't an Art History major, so I was looked down upon by that group.

I've also never really fit into the Art crowd. Just a little too preppy, a little too comfortable with fitting into the world, to really be an Art person. I used to love to draw and paint, but was much better at copying than creating my own emotions on paper or canvas.

Yesterday I decided to put that all aside and recapture this guilty pleasure; after all, what's a guilty pleasure if you don't enjoy it? This was partially propelled by my desire to fill my new, more adult, apartment with art, and partially because I needed something to entertain me outside on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I decided to explore the Three Rivers Arts Festival, enjoy a gorgeous spring afternoon, and work on not only filling my next apartment with great art, but doing it all alone.

There are two things that have become apparent to me over the past week or so:

• Being an adult isn't something that comes with age, marriage, having children, or even a great job, it comes when you realize that sometimes you have to be alone. It's how you deal with being alone that makes you lonely, or not.
  
• Only you know how you can truly be happy. Doing what you think others want you to do, or following in someone's footsteps will never make you happy. You'll always be chasing happiness down a long, winding, road.
  

With that, I made plans to purchase a piece of art, and fell in love with a piece that I just can't afford. And yes, I'll be going back to make sure I take in everything that is offered.