Month: October 2012

Odds & Ends, Take 1

Lauren2 Comments

Odds:

You know when you’ve been reading a book and the thoughts in your own head start to take on the same format/style as the book?

The thoughts in my head automatically format themselves into blog posts. This is totally normal, right? Anyways, I thought of a great opening line the other day, didn’t write it down and completely forgot it. I’ve been spending the past 3 days trying to remember what it was. To no avail. Oh well, it was probably just something about socks. But don’t worry, I’m saving that for another post!

Last week I was lamenting the disappearance of warm weather and claiming I wasn’t “in the spirit.” Then I woke up to this on Thursday and was all “THANKSGIVING!!!” and “How early is too early for Christmas music?” I’m hoping it’s just a fluke.

Jenn and I signed up for a race on December 1st. You know, when it could easily be snowing or freezing or both. This was a voluntary decision. It doesn’t get odder than that.

On Chipotle Thursday, I got chicken tacos and Joey got a steak bowl.  It was the first time that either of us has ever ordered such combinations at Chipotle.  Totally weird.

Is it normal to feel more rested by sleeping less?

Ends:

Ended Monday with a basketball lesson.

Ended Tuesday with dinner OUTSIDE on the patio at Whole Foods. I had a Cuban on the softest ciabatta roll ever. Also, I’m now making any excuse to go into Boulder and pretend I’m still a college student.

Ended Wednesday at Old Chicago, where I sat in the middle of a live Fantasy Football draft. Someone please tell me Fantasy Football is just a fad that’s going to play out. I was obviously only there for the pizza and seasonal beer.

Ended Thursday with spaghetti and meatballs. There’s seriously nothing more comforting on a cold snowy night than spaghetti and meatballs.

Ended this week happy and ready for a good weekend.

Happy Friday!

Balance

Lauren10 Comments

Whoa, I just almost wrote this post through my old blog site.  Oopsie.

Anyways. I’ve just come to a very serious realization.  An epiphany, if you will.

All this time I’ve thought working out made me feel good, but it’s really just wearing comfy workout clothes that makes me feel good!  Okay in all seriousness, I do have something that I’ve been thinking about and finally just decided I should write about it.

I’m very aware that I’m the kind of person who gets stressed out extremely easily.  I don’t know where I get this from or if I’ve always been this way, but the smallest things can stress me out.  This includes TV shows piling up in my DVR, my jeans being an inch shorter than I want them to be and my food not being hot enough.  Stupid small things.

The result is that my skin freaks out, my dreams get all sorts of weird and I’m just in a bad mood.  So I cut back.  Cut back on a lot of the things I used to fill my days with.  Cooking, running, blogging, cleaning.  Just kidding about that last one though.  This doesn’t mean I stopped liking these things, I was just exhausted trying to fit them all in everyday.  These days, I only do those things a few times a week, as opposed to 5-6 days a week and it’s made my life so much simpler.  The trade-off, though, is that they’re harder.

I used to be a one post a day kind of blogger.  As soon as I graduated college and traded in a job where I could blog while I was working for a grown up 8-5 one, that became an unrealistic blogging schedule.  So I cut back.  And if you hadn’t noticed, lately I’m lucky to get one to two posts up a week.

I realized that while I love writing, taking time out of my too-short-as-it-is weeknight to sit behind a computer screen wasn’t what I wanted to be doing.  Especially when sudden invitations to burger night or catching up on episodes of Dexter and Revenge are much more fun.  The trade off is that I feel a lot less connected to this blog and my blogging voice in general.

Does that make sense?  I’m here so infrequently that it’s become a random jumble of weekly happenings.  Part of me is just fine with this.  It’s easier and I have a lot more to share.  But the other half of me hates struggling to put my thoughts together in a clear and organized way when I do write a post.  I no longer feel like I’m sitting down to tell a friend about my day.  Instead I feel uncertain of the things I write and like I’m losing my voice as a writer.  Like with anything, practice makes perfect and cutting back on practice makes less perfect.

When I started this new blog, it was because I wanted to move on from having one focus and because I was having some doubts about the community that I had targeted with the things I was writing about.  I wanted to be honest about the not-so-perfect, not-so-easy, not-so-one-dimensional parts of my life, and I feel that I haven’t done much of that.  I guess I’m just struggling to balance my need to have simplicity in my life with my desire to keep evolving as a writer.

Running and cooking are a whole different conversation.

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Why do you blog?

Do you ever have a hard time finding your writer’s voice?

Any and all feedback is welcome!