What's New?

Lately, I've been paying more attention to questions such as "How are you?" and "What's new?" I've always been able to give a pretty standard answer and not feel weird about it: "I'm fine" and "Nothing new, just school and work." When I answer that question now, I answer it in the same manner, but I am lying now. I'm not "fine" per se-- not fine in the way I used to be--and everything is "new."


I lost one of my best friends in February. Best friend not necessarily meaning a person I talked to daily and saw frequently, but best friend meaning a person that I had always been close to, no matter how often we interacted. Best friend meaning the keeper of most of my good memories from high school. Best friend meaning the person I ached for when things were bad, and cried tears of joy for when things were good.


To say it has been a difficult time would be an understatement. I miss her more than I ever thought I could miss someone. I honestly thought that I would handle this differently than I have. I thought that since I did not talk to her frequently, that it would be easier for me. I have always prided myself on my ability to be positive when I have to be, and take care of everyone else before I take care of myself... but this (understandably) has thrown me for a loop. I think about her all the time. When I am not thinking of specific memories, I just find my brain repeating her name over and over again. I want to talk about her all the time. I tell everyone stories about her, and anytime someone says anything that jogs a memory of her, I mention it. It is so difficult to deal with real life at this point, because my life is centered on this.


What no one really tells you about these situations is the good that can come from them. I have been able to reconnect with so many old friends that I thought I had lost and have been so comforted by all of them. I have literally never felt this much love in my life. I love everyone, and I feel like everyone loves me. It has also been remarkable to watch my own personal changes. Shortly before this happened, I started to feel as though I had lost sight of myself; like I had lost my spirit, and was becoming a shell of my former self. The years made me negative, pessimistic, critical, and downright boring. Now I feel my bounce coming back. I feel positive once again, despite my sadness. It’s such a crazy feeling to have, and honestly, I never want it to leave. This has been the hardest couple of months that I have ever been through, but I never ever ever want to forget this feeling. I don’t know if that makes sense to anyone else, but it sure makes sense to me!


So that, my friends, is what’s new.

Oops.

Remember that time I said I would blog once a week? Yeah. I was just kidding.

January was an absolutely insane month, with extreme highs and extreme lows. I've become superstitious about January; I consider it the most dreadful month, where everything that can go wrong will go wrong. This was definitely true for January 2011.

And that's all I have to say about that.

I've been focusing on myself a lot lately. I've spent the past year or so not doing enough for myself, and I need to change that before I go crazy. I started running, a little obsessively. I've never been very active before, so running 2 miles is a big deal to me. But I'm doing it! I wish I could say my goal is just "to be healthy," but really, I just want to look okay in shorts this summer.

I also chopped 6-7 inches of my hair off. I hate it, but at least it dries quickly now.

Until next month.

Resolution-ary Road

I've decided that blogging is an efficient way for me to talk about things without actually having any human interaction. In middle and early high school, I wrote very detailed journal entries in little spiral bound notebooks that usually had a furry cover and the word "Princess" or other generic tween phrases on them. My sophomore year of high school, I made the switch to online journals-- first Blurty and then LiveJournal. If you knew me in high school, you know that my LJ was an amazing record of my adolescent thoughts, feelings, and experiences. I wrote in it at least one time a day, and I am so thankful that I have such a great record of what I consider the best years of my life.

So what happened?

Simple. Facebook happened.

After signing up for Facebook the summer before I went to college, I neglected my little LiveJournal that had seen me through the years and instead used Facebook to catalog my life. As easy and useful as Facebook is, I feel like it has made me disconnected from my own life. Instead of sharing my thoughts with other people, I just write a status about it. Instead of announcing big occurrences to my friends and family, I just write about it on Facebook. When times are hard, I just write a cryptic status about it and move on. As a result, I don't talk about things anymore, which is very strange for me. At first I thought that I was just growing up and had nothing more to talk about, but I've realized that I'm just completely out of touch with how I think and feel.

So this brings me to resolutions, specifically ones for a new year. I always make several resolutions, but this year I have one main resolution with smaller secondary resolutions that stem from it:

Blog at least once a week.

I realize this is kind of a pathetic new year's resolution, but I think it would be helpful to my sanity. I want to use this blog as a blank canvas to talk about anything I feel like talking about-- just like the good ole days of LiveJournal.

Along with blogging, I also resolve to:

• Make better use of the clothes that I have. I spend far too much money on clothing, mostly because I don't plan ahead well enough and don't utilize enough pieces in my closet. The first step I need to take is to organize my closet more efficiently. I also need to stop buying clothes and start spending a little money on accessories.
  
• Save, save, save. In exactly a year, I will be forced to give up my job and start student teaching; therefore, I will be broke. I need to plan for this.
• Take better care of myself. I've made great strides in this area in the past year. I don't really drink anymore, I try not to eat out as much, and I go to the doctor 3 times a year. I really need to start an exercise regiment though. Hopefully 2011 will be the year for it.
• Read more! For a person with a bachelor's in English, I really don't read enough. Hopefully my nook color will inspire me to read.

So there you have it! New year, new Erin.

As Promised

I said in my last post that it would be an eternity before I posted another entry. And it kind of felt like an eternity. My first semester of graduate school was busy, and I was working 35+ hours a week and taking 9 hours of graduate classes. But now, all of that is over (until next week) and I was inspired by Kimmy's A+ blogging to fire mine up again!

(BTW, I'm pretty sure the computer I'm on right now is about to blow up).

I don't have much to say right now except Christmas 2010 was the best ever. Why? Because I finally had a white Christmas!!

I am an obsessive weather checker... sometimes, I think I have a problem. So I knew it was going to snow on Christmas, but I didn't expect that much snow! To be fair, these pictures make it look like a lot more snow than it really was because they were taken on the golf course behind Travis's house... but still, it was a certifiable white Christmas. I'm not a huge fan of living in the South lately (I need to remind myself to write a post about my love affair with the Midwest soon), so I love any occurrence that makes me feel like I live somewhere different. Christmas day made me feel like I was living out my dream of living in a small town in Illinois.


Oh! And my sweet boyfriend got me a nook color!I've been somewhat of an e-reader hater ever since they came out, but reading the New York Times on my BlackBerry every night before I go to sleep has made me realize that reading on a LCD screen really isn't so bad. Plus, I get really sick of carting around a million different books to campus/the airport/work/etc. so it will be nice to have a portable library! How cool am I?


Excellent gift-giving skills are just a small slice of Travis's greatness. Since he moved to Texas, I've been better able to appreciate (and miss) all of his wonderful facets. Distance has been hard, but not as hard as it has been in my past relationships. We both made extremely mature and forward-thinking decisions to do graduate school apart, and it will pay off in the end. In10 years. When he finally graduates with his PhD in Physics. And I'll probably be working at Starbucks because I'll never find a teaching job. So basically we're going to be extremely poor. But at least we'll be educated. Kind of.

Well, that's about all I've got for now. Fall 2010 in a very tiny, very focused nutshell.

An Update

My life is painfully boring now. I had a great summer filled with graduation, wonderful trips, family time and easy classes. But all good things must come to an end... so, enter graduate school, my boyfriend moving to Texas, and working almost full time. Let's divide and conquer, shall we?

My graduate classes are... well... not the most exciting. I'm chalking that up to the fact that they are "prerequisite" classes, which is code for "mandated by No Child Left Behind." The material is interesting, but I feel as if it's not really anything I don't already know. The assignments are easy, but tedious. I also have to use APA format, which I absolutely hate. I started my observation hours at two locations: Wenonah High School and New Rising Star After-School Program. I had a very enjoyable first day and many of my previous misconceptions about Birmingham City Schools have been diminished.

At the beginning of August, Travis moved out to Austin to start graduate school. I helped him move out, pack up his whole life into a Ford Taurus, and drive 13 hours to Austin. I spent about 10 days out there helping him adjust to his new life aka helping him find his way around town, furnishing his apartment, and sharing pizzas. Austin is such an interesting city, and I'm loving that I have the opportunity to make it my vacation spot. There's just SO much to do there compared with Birmingham. We saw movies, kayaked on the lake, learned how to two-step, and ate raspberry-jalapeno gelato. It was wonderful.

Now my days are pretty boring in comparison. Let me give you a break down of my daily activities:

• Wake up to my alarm at 6:00 and continue to press the snooze button until 6:45.
• Shower, makeup, hair, and if my outfit was not planned in advance, try on at least 3 things before I finally decide on an outfit.
• Drive to work, try to find parking, and make the trek to the office.
• Head straight to the coffee maker upon arrival, sit down at my desk, cross my fingers for exciting emails, feel disappointed when all I see are emails from Papa John's and Domino's Pizza.
• While checking email, consume one(1) Nature Valley Oats & Dark Chocolate granola bar.
• Check my bank account to see if any money has magically been deposited.
  
• Spend the next 2-3 hours avoiding schoolwork by Facebook stalking, adjusting my Fantasy Football Team roster, tracking packages, and reading the news.
• When this starts to get old, send Travis an email with the subject "!!!!! :) :) :)" which contains links to 5-7 dogs that I found on Petfinder.
• When Travis responds, email back and forth about what accessory each dog needs. For example:

This dog really needs a top hat and/or a monocle.

• Work on schoolwork and take breaks to google medical ailments that I have
• Repeat all steps until 5:00.
• Go to class and feel confused and defeated.
• Drive home, immediately change into sweatpants, and get in bed by 10:00.

The really sad part about all of this is that my weekends don't look that much different. Blurg.

Well, I think that was a good enough update! See you in 5 months!

Procrastination: A Love Story

In 11.5 hours, I have to turn in a paper for my British Victorian Poetry class. All fine and dandy, except I just started on it an hour ago. In my defense, I've tried really really really hard to write it over the past week or so, but couldn't even nail down a topic until tonight. Let me walk you through the progression of my procrastination over the past 5 days...

Thursday: I woke up early, intent on heading to the library before my 11:00 class to work on the paper. That flew out the window when I realized that it was storming outside, and nothing beats sleeping in during a thunderstorm. So I slept in. Until 10:00. Which made it impossible for me to make it to my 11:00 class. I went to my next 2 classes, but felt so guilty about skipping my first one that, with the immense help of BlackBerry Sudoku and Al's, I goofed off the rest of the afternoon. And into the evening.

Friday: Friday afternoons are usually a great time to get schoolwork done at the office. But nooooo. Friday afternoon consisted of a gchat marathon with Libby, searching for hilarious houses to buy in Austin, and using successful Facebook stalking skills to track down this annoying guy that posts on a pre-med forum that Libby and I laugh at. I told myself I'd go work on the paper that evening, but my new bunion-friendly shoes had been delivered to my parent's house and I had to go try them out. For 4 hours.

Saturday: I had set aside this day as my "fun day" in the midst of what was supposed to be a productive weekend. It was definitely a fun day, but was not necessarily a break from paper-writing.

Sunday: Ok, ok. This day was a major fail, no excuses. I told myself to go to the library... but it just didn't happen. Sudoku and napping won that battle. And then I cleaned. That's how you know I'm desperately not wanting to write a paper... I clean.

Monday: I've now reached that hilariously awful point in Erin-style procrastination.

1. It starts with excuses not related to schoolwork in general. I went to the library this morning, sat down with my venti latte, and then decided I hated the outfit I was wearing and went home to change.
2. Next, food becomes a method of procrastination. Generally this involves me texting someone and asking them if they want to go grab some lunch. This makes me feel like I am doing something good because I am having social interaction. Camp Taco, I do not regret you.
3. Then I reach the point where I work on assignments for other classes. While sitting at my desk at work, I thought of EVERYTHING else I needed to do in my other classes. I finished my portfolio for my Education class and even completed an extra credit assignment. Before I knew it, it was 4:25 aka Sporcle Wind-Down time.
   
4. The next mode of procrastination comes in the "just trying to get situated phase." This consists of me cleaning my already clean living room, making 2 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and searching through Netflix to decide which movie I'll watch while I gather my thoughts.
   
5. Usually at this point, I feel hopeless and decide to switch my paper topic.
   
6. Once I've actually started writing some Faulkner-esque stream of consciousness crap, I start to realize how screwed I am.
7. After this realization, I'll usually pull out my syllabus and begin to tally up my hypothetical grade in the course. How much of my final grade is this paper worth anyway? 35%? Oh. Good.
8. Repeat steps 1-8.

As I typed this, Mulder threw up a hair ball. Time to go take care of that.