Marty McFly is tuckered out after our long walk today. It was bit of an emotional roller-coaster for him as LOVES walks (obvs) but HATES puddles…and all 15 inches of snow we got this week is busy melting.
It kinda went like: Yay! I’m walking! Walking walking walking OH GOD PUDDLE WHAT DO I DO WHERE DO I GO OK OK OK JUST JUMP JUMP I’M JUMPING HERE I GO OK PHEW I DON’T THINK IT GOT ME wheee I’m walking again! La la la! Walking walking sniff sniff sniff OH SWEET JESUS THERE’S ANOTHER ONE.
After we got home I dropped him off and went for a run as the Boston and West, TX events of this week have me feeling anxious. It was only 2 miles, but I struggled to keep going throughout the whole thing. I did keep going, though, because I have an able body and am alive and I should be grateful for and not wasteful of it, and I kept reminding myself of that.
Every once in a while I’ll have a day or so where I feel incredibly anxious, unmotivated, and…defeated, I guess. There’s not really a pattern or lead-up to when these days happen — they’re just there, and I wake up, and I feel sad and lethargic and without the will to do much of anything except rack my brain about what led up to this breaking down. Sometimes there are minor stresses to which I could attribute cause, but usually the absence of a reason is more glaring than any potential reason.
I call them my Down Days, and today was one of them.
I love getting excited about things, and it often doesn’t take much to get me there. Opening the cupboard and seeing that my favorite mug is clean and ready for tea, Carl offering to take Marty for a walk even though it’s my turn, delicious delicious pizza — all are a cause for joy, a fist-pump, a minor victory dance (I shimmy in the kitchen far more than I should).
Of course, there are different levels of excitement; from those events/people/foods/ideas/circumstances that garner a whispered woot and head-nod, to all out, butterflies-in-the-stomach, so happy I’m sad, FEELING ALL OF THE FEELS, as such:
And the thing that makes me FEEL ALL OF THE FEELS most consistently is storytelling.
I am SO EXCITED that books exist and I am SO EXCITED that music exists and I am SO EXCITED that movies exist and I am SO EXCITED that television exists and I am SO EXCITED that YouTube exists and what this post is really about is witnessing a new form of storytelling that has made me SO EXCITED for almost a year now: a “modernized adaptation” of Pride and Prejudice via a video blog called The Lizzie Bennet Diaries.
I have laughed, cried, looked forward to, and fangirled over the bi-weekly episodes as much as I have any loved story in more recognizable mediums. It was a gutsy, clever experiment gone right, and it just makes me so damn giddy and grateful that it worked and it exists.
The last two episodes air next week and I’m already feeling like this:
However, the core story will live on, as it has for over 200 years (four for you, Jane Austen; you go, Jane Austen). If you want to be excited and experience this form of storytelling for the first time or for fifty times, I encourage the crap out of you to do so (and then talk to me about it, because I could always use a good squee).
The first episode is below, and here is a playlist from the beginning (don’t skip ahead! the anticipation is the best part! WAIT UNTIL YOU GET TO EPISODE 98! aldjflakjdflkadsf!)
It was supposed to be in the 60s and 70s all week, but instead it’s a cold, gray, quiet day. Happily, I love cold, gray, quiet days. For some reason, cold, gray, quiet days are even better when they’re a surprise. For some other reason, coffee tastes better, walks feel daydreamier, and music seeps deeper.
Thanks, unreliable Colorado weather. It was just the kind of day I needed.
We have a new addition to the family. His name is Marty McFly. He’s our density.
He’s brought a lot of love, activity, and strolls to the household. I also just feel more responsible; for example, yesterday I put away the laundry I did last week instead of just leaving it all in the basket!*
As the overall motto this year is “Be Ambitious,” there are a lot of things I’m putting on my goal list. (Here’s hoping that by this time next year this list won’t be a document of my failures while I sit on the floor eating a pint of Americone Dream flavored with my tears.)
Health (NATCH – are you even ALLOWED to make goals for the new year that aren’t tinged with guilt about your health? I’m not willing to find whomever it is you’d ask about that in order to ask them).
Get allllll the way through the Jillian Michaels Body Revolution (made it to Week 8 last time) (this will likely coincide with the BBL and/or April goals)
Reevaluate health goals at the beginning of June
Professional-ish/Creative-ish
Begin a fun, educational website about writing
Make 30 videos in 2013 (~one video every two weeks)
Start an online tutoring component by March 2013
Personal
Be better at getting back to people: return texts/e-mails/phonecalls/etc. within 24 hours (and create a system for doing so!)
Read 50-100 pages a week
Write at least one blog post a week
Keep up a goals notebook for sub- and mini-goals
Here’s to a productive, get-off-my-arse year of non-broken hopes and dreams! (Please?)
If I don’t make and consistently revisit specific goals, I tend to get really, really, frustratingly complacent. I’m passive and lazy and my health suffers — physically, mentally, emotionally. I nap instead of exercise, I watch hours of TV instead of read, I click link after link instead of write.
I hold on to the excuse that because I put so much into my job — 8 hours inside the classroom plus 2 outside of it every day really can be rather draining — I “deserve” to resemble a zombie/vegetable (zombieveg!) when I’m home. And yet, the lethargic pattern that I get into is not satisfying. It’s unbalanced and wasteful and makes me feel anxious because I know better. I have the luxury of time and I’m throwing it away. What the crap, self!?
Enough whining about it, though. Here’s on to the doing.
There have been two years in my adult life where I’ve managed not to let my passive tendencies take over, and my respective mottos for those years were “Make Things Happen” and “Be Adventurous.” I kept those mottos top-of-mind, and they helped push me into doing things I wanted to do, but could have easily (and would have normally) talked myself out of doing. (Notable payoffs for those years include contacting a past crush who is now my husband and securing a teaching position abroad.)
Having a guiding idea made my decisions about my life easier and more active, so here’s my motto for 2013: “Be Ambitious.”
I chose it specifically because, barring any health or other unseen complications, I expect 2013 to be my last childless year (eee! and ahh!) As such, I don’t want to waste my time. I have things I want to accomplish and goals I want to meet, and shit will change once the kids start coming. (And it’s not that I won’t still want to be accomplish-y/goal-meety when I’m a mother, it’ll just be a completely different context!)
I don’t intend to burn myself out, but I’m certainly not going to rest on my laurels. Expect to see some specific ambitions before 2013 gets underway.
I took a walk to take in fall yesterday. It was so dang fall-ish I half expected a mug of apple cider to appear in my hands and a wagon full of pumpkins to start following me (unfortunately, neither happened).
