How are you Feeling?

Really feeling?
Me? Not so great.
I'm all over the place these days--or in all actuality, these past few years. Goddess help us all or at least the hubs.

Job Hunting and the Pains it Brings

I sit here crying and it's pathetic. I'm nearly 40 and I'm crying in bed because I didn't get a job.

I'm Baaaaack!

No, but really. I'm back.

My Addiction to Online Shopping

I might be a bit over-dramatic because it could be a lot worse than it is. Some people out there have a real problem and need actual help. Still, this is a big problem for me right now, and I am telling myself that it is okay because I am fighting this depression in the most unhealthy ways with booze and shopping.

What's My Story?

I do not know what I am doing.

I do not have a plan for life.

I am confused. Sad. Scared. Unlike the fun inspirational saying, this wanderer is fucking lost. 

That One Time I Nearly Lost My Mind

So I don't know if y'all have realize that the husband and I had made this big move last year. You surely had to have noticed, right?

Ha! I kid. 

What to Expect When You're Expecting to Live in Los Angeles. Part 1.

Since the husband and I have one year of living in Los Angeles under our belt, I thought it would be nice to compose a post - or actually a few posts - about what it's like living here for us, so far. This is specific to us and what we've taken from this city, but I think it might be of some use to someone out there. Since this will be a series, it will be ever-changing and updated. As long as I am here and writing, you'll get the lowdown on living in Los Angeles. The pressure is on.

It is official. One year down.

So, we made it. One year down.

The Big Move West: Or How The West Was Won.

So we moved.

"What?" you ask. "I thought you were dead."

No, no, no. I am not dead. I am still here. I have had moments of utter total breakdown, but I am still here. Barely.

I am well aware that I have this little corner in the blogosphere and that I have ignored it successfully for over a year now. I do have this tiny annoying voice in my head reminding me that my audience awaits for my return, but I just ignore it. It's what I do best. However, I don't think I can ignore it any longer.

I'm here now. Better late than never, right?

Like I mentioned earlier, we moved, the husband and I. It's been a little over 11 years since last we did something like this--something where we just up and move with a little plan and all of our crap whittled down to just our essential items and a small nest egg in savings.

"Are we crazy?" you ask. YES!

The first time the husband and I did a move like this I was a year (he was two years) out of college, and we craved a change.

I grew up in the Upper Midwest and I met my husband at an Upper Midwestern university.

After college we dicked around a bit, trying to "find ourselves" (it's quite pathetic, but I am still trying to find myself, and it is annoying). While all our friends were getting married and thinking of the "bigger picture"--a house, car payments, 401Ks, and babies--we just wanted to enjoy our twenties. We were in no hurry whatsoever to get married and finally tied the knot after 15 years together.

We did not want our lives to be the typical Midwestern story, starting off at an entry-level desk job with the potential of moving up the corporate ladder to another crappy desk job all so we could make a bunch of money to buy that house in the suburbs and start that family.

There is nothing wrong with that life. It just wasn't something we wanted.

We made a list of some cities that we thought would be fun to live in. I liked Portland, Oregon or Boulder, Colorado. The husband liked those cities, and he added Austin, Texas to the list.

I was hesitant about Austin because it was in Texas. TEXAS! But the husband threw me in a car, and we road tripped to the second Austin City Limits Music Festival. I fell in love. The decision was made, Austin, Texas was our town. We packed up two cars and drove through the night. We had become Texans, y'all.

This isn't our first rodeo. We have done this before, a move like this. But everything has changed.

I might still be in shock. We moved to Los Angeles, California. Oh, boy! We are no longer in the small* Central Texas town. Our cocoon, our security blanket. We had lived in Austin for over 11 years. Austin had treated us well.

*Austin's growth the past 11 years has been outrageous. When we first moved to Austin, it was a cute "little" college town. Now it is a sprawling city, and its essence is slowly being destroyed. I could go on and on about Austin, but not today. These are my personal thoughts on Austin, and many would disagree, but I am allowed to have my opinions.

Now, we are well into our 30's. What are we thinking?

Unlike our move to Austin 11 years ago, this move to Los Angeles comes with a tiny plan.

When we moved to Austin, there was no plan. We just showed up on Austin's front door (we did have an apartment lined up on South Lamar, something we did not have before moving to Los Angeles). 11 years ago we had a tiny nest egg; today we have a bit more. When we arrived in Austin, all we needed to do was find jobs. Cost of living was cheap, and we were 23-year-olds without a care in the world.

Now, everything is different. I keep on repeating myself, but EVERYTHING HAS CHANGED.

Are we crazy? YES.

Can we do this? I am not sure.

Will I be here to write about it? I think I can manage it. We'll see.

I haven't worked in over 2 months, I'm hoping I'll find the time.

XO

hello, are you still there?

it's been a while, and i am still here.

are you excited? i'm super stoked.

actually, i have had a very busy 8 months. no i did not have a baby - do you guys even know me? - but i did have a few major events happen that took up a great deal of my time. so instead of trying to come up with some kind of balance in my life, i just freaked the fuck out and ignored this corner of the internet. too much to do and not enough life skills to help me tackle the ever-important ability to balance the many life events that are in one's life. you know, the basic, living kind of stuff.

so you ask, what has happened? the boy and i got hitched. we did it. but a few months before our big day the mister and i decided to spend all our savings - a savings that should have been used on our wedding - and embarked upon a trip to Amsterdam, Paris, and Brussels. you know where our priorities lie.

now that things have calmed the fuck down, i've been staring at this blog for some time. just eyes glazed over staring at this blank blogger post page with the cursor just blinking at me, mocking and judging me. it's time to shit or get off the pot, so here i am. and i changed up the design to make it look less like a boy-crazy-thirteen-year-old-girl's blog and more like a fifteen-year-old-girl-who-is-trying-to-be-an-adult's blog.

we'll see where this road leads us. xoxo.

my lack of self-discipline and how it's ruining my life

oh self-discipline, how i miss thee.

all summer, i've been telling myself how i want to write more on this blog. or how i want to walk more or exercise (at all) when i get home from work. or how i want to take it easy on the ice cream because two helpings of ice cream a day will certainly kill me. or how i want to read more because i am extremely behind on my reading goal for this year. my list of wants goes on and on, yet i've accomplished nothing. 

i keep on blaming my lazy life on being just that, lazy. i keep thinking to myself that maybe i'm even a little bit depressed. sure, i had a small bout of depression in January but i feel like i got over that in the spring. i keep telling myself that surly this inability to accomplish anything is a side effect of being depressed; again. but i'm not feeling depressed. work is going surprisingly well, my personal life is kicking some ass -- an upcoming European vacation and a winter wedding in the works -- it all has kept me occupied and happy. so if i'm not depressed, why can't i get shit done?

then it dawned on me. i have no self-discipline. none.

where i used to have self-discipline oozing out of my pores, i now have none. maybe i spent all of the self-discipline i built when i was an athletic teen. years and years of schooling followed by after-school activities and sporting teams. years and years of coaches and teammates, of someone depending on me. followed then by years of college and having to get shit done -- even if i was less dedicated, i still had teachers to impress and grades to be earned. but since i've been out of school and on my own for the past 13ish years, all the self-discipline that i'd built up is gone. i would say that this last year i used up the last bit of it. 

now i am desperate to re-teach myself self-discipline -- when i was learning it in my youth through sports and schooling i didn't think i really knew what i was learning and how useful of a tool it would be. the other day i did the whole google search thing; searching "self-discipline" and "learning self-discipline". i came across a lot of people in the same boat as me. who'd have thunk it? a few of the web articles i scanned -- because i don't have time to actually read these articles -- linked happiness to people having self-discipline. so right there, my idea of being depressed could be nipped in the bud with some self-discipline. i just blow my mind sometimes.

one helpful web article i came across from the blog Penelope Trunk suggested that if i have self-discipline in one small area of my life it will create a snowball effect and could lead to being discipline in other areas of my life. for some reason that advice just clicked for me. it totally makes sense.

i have a goal. it is to go on a walk everyday after work. something small and simple. if i want to jog, i can, but this is just a simple walk. i notice that this walk then gets the gears going in my life. usually on my walks, i come up with ideas that i either walk to blog about or ideas for stories. and this walk helps with exercise and my eating choices. i can see the snowball effect. love it!

up until now, my life has been in shambles -- it sounds melodramatic and really hasn't been that bad; but when you get complacent in areas of your life where you never thought you wanted to be, you just kind of give up. these past few years have been a long period of me giving up. i'm in a job that i enjoy but has no forward progress -- or the movement forward available is not where i want to go -- and i know that at some point i wont be able to physically do my job anymore. i kind of painted myself into a corner, and it's scary. but realizing i want to do something else gives hope. unfortunately having the discipline to go after it is hard to find, especially if you've lost said self-discipline.

whoa. i just went really heavy. i got to bring this back to something light.

so, let's just work on walking. every day after work. easy. i can do it. xoxo.          

(photos taken from around my apartment)

teenaged food issues while in my thirties

let's talk food, a favorite topic for mine. 

actually, let's talk binge eating. NOT a favorite topic of mine because i have some issues with food.

i've always had a "healthy" appetite. growing up i was an athlete and very active so i had a high metabolism and could pack away the food. it was amazing. it felt great to eat and eat and not put on a pound and still be "skinny". i always thought i ate a lot because i had to keep my energy up for all the activities i was involved with. but it seems that i have feelings that go along with overeating. oh boy! 

my eating habits and food issues seem to run deeper than i realize, and i'm finally figuring this shit out. good lord, i can't believe it's taken me this long to connect the dots. i should've put two and two together from my post about over eating on National Doughnut Day. but that's what i do, i over eat and don't think twice about it. i've always been okay with that philosophy, just ignore the problem. 

all my food issues are starting to catch up with me and my mid-thirties body. i should've realized this 10 years ago when we first moved to Austin. it's about time that i caught on to this. when we first moved here i was amazed by all the food options, especially the late night ones. back home, the 24 hour fast food restaurant didn't really exist. so after closing time we just went home, or if you were really hungry you could go to so some sit down restaurant (Perkins, Country Kitchen) but who wants to do that while drunk and tired because someone always passes out in the bathroom. i could just go home and make a box of Velveeta Shells and Cheese and devour the entire thing by myself.

for the past 10 years i packed on the pounds. tex-mex, bbq, fast food and beer is what's done me in, and my emotional state is the offender. at first i was emotional because of the move and living in a new city and state and having to make new friends and knowing no one -- only the boy. it's a lot harder than one would imagine making new friends (especially when i'm an introvert homebody). when that's followed by years of just having a good time and living like a teenager, it catches up with you. 

now i am in my thirties and my emotions are all over the place and this year, THIS YEAR has been a test of my convictions -- it's been a year of extreme lows and highs because some very good stuff has happened this year too. so for the past few months i've been binge eating and out of all the food options i have out there to binge on, i've chosen fast food (McDonald's is my main go-to). ugh! my stomach wants to kill me now because fast food, and my stomach and i never really got along in the first place. so now World War Three is taking place in my stomach, and i think i might die.

basically i need to get my shit together.    

        

adult troublesome pain-in-the-butt ACNE

let's talk about acne -- i don't really want to talk about acne, but someone's got to have the adult acne problems in this relationship and that person is me. ugh.

boy, do i hate acne. for as long as i can remember, i've been plagued with acne. i had it in high school and well into my twenties. however, the closer i got to my thirties, the more my skin started to mellow out. i thought to myself that i did it, i defeated the evil that is acne. i waltzed into my thirties with just a blemish here or there, nothing too big that could freak me out. then, all of a sudden, this past year my acne has come back full force -- not as bad as when i had it in high school, but bad enough to curse the gods. curses!

i was told promised while in my teens that my skin would get better and by the time i was well into adulthood i would no longer have acne. but they all lied, every single one of them.

now i am trying to revamp my skin care regimen, and it's quite difficult. there are so many products out there these days that i don't know where to begin -- i am totally lost. i am that person you see at Target just staring at all that face products not moving or making a sound. it's pathetic. and i am on a limited budget, so that throws a wrench into this depressing process. i don't have hundreds to spend on facial products y'all, i am poor!

so where to begin? i have no clue. there is way too much out there.

i am in my thirties. i have acne. and to top it off, i now have wrinkles to deal with. WRINKLES! where did they come from? this getting old thing is no bueno.

the list of products:

• i had been using Cetaphil for years until recently. it had worked just fine. i liked it. it was gentle and it did a decent job cleaning my face. but then the acne came back.
• Neutrogena. i could keep this business afloat with the amount of facial products i've purchased from them. i'm using the Oil-Free Acne Stress Control wash and the Fresh Foaming Cleanser right now. both are okay, but haven't hit me in that sweet spot. then of course there is the Oil-Free Moisture, which i've been using for a very long time. 
• i've added Aveeno's Clear Complexion Daily Moisturizer because of the salicylic acid, which is what i need to fight acne i hear.  
• at night i've added a night creme by Neutrogena as well, because i've got to start fighting the wrinkles too now.

nothing seems to be really working, at least not yet. i guess i should give this crap a chance to work, right? i'm super close to just throwing in the towel and just getting Proactiv, people seem to be pleased with that stuff. and with all of my years of battling acne, i've never tried the stuff. what works for y'all?

now i just have to remember to wash my face at night before bed. that would probably help me out tremendously. i just have to get my lazy butt out of bed -- because i crawled into bed at around 7:30pm to "watch" TV or "read" a book (which really means to fall asleep then). we'll see what i can accomplish.  

life via pictures

as always, it's been awhile.
i'm still here. living, working, reading, watching way too much television and doing nothing of importance. ugh.
the boy and i fell into a tv watching pit -- you know that pit. the one you fall in over a show that has been on tv for awhile so you are able to watch episode after episode until you catch up to it -- for us it's Pretty Little Lairs. i can't get enough of that show. who the fuck is A? how much money does this A person have (because he/she/they are spending a small fortune making life hell for four high school girls)? why? so many questions, so few answers.

here are some pictures of life lately. i am obsessed about making stick figure pictures at work. i can't get enough of it. they are usually the same figure but i can't stop.