Netflix and Feeling Burned Out

Happy Monday everyone! I feel like to most of you that sentence may seem like an oxymoron, but I say it with sincerity. This morning I woke up at about 6:30, after going to bed at about 1 am, did some grading and then begun reading for one of my classes. I then proceeded to fall asleep for about an hour and a half. Then, I remembered that the pest control people were coming to my condo building so I had to jump up and start cleaning out ALL of my cabinets. Which sounds terrible, except this is what my kitchen looks like: (*Disclaimer: this is what my kitchen looked like when I toured it back in June, so that kitchen aid is not mine, sadly.)

Yeah, not very big or intimidating, just more of a giant pain in the butt because we've only been in that apartment for about a month. So after running around, waking up Sean and getting him to help, I made myself some coffee and cereal, then starting watching season 2 of Sister Wives. I just felt so burned out. Mostly because I spent Friday and Saturday literally doing nothing of importance and Sunday almost ALL DAY I did my homework. I am still procrastinating, and I'm getting better, but this is a 15ish year problem, so I'm just going with the theory Rome wasn't built in a day, and that allows me to sleep better at night. 

In other news, Sean and I finally decided to figure out the "Smart" portion of our "Smart TV", yeah it took all of 10 seconds for us to hook up to the wifi, so that was kind of saddening that it took us so long to finally make the decision to just try. Then, we got Netflix! 1st month free! And now I have no will to move from my couch. Which is a serious problem. (Hence my giving up on homework this morning in order to watch Sister Wives. [And yes, Sean is thrilled that I'm addicted to this show... Ha!]) 

I am just starting to feel incredibly overwhelmed, which explains my complete lack of motivation Friday and Saturday. It's been a strange adjustment being so far from home. Especially because Saturday was my Mom's birthday, first one without her own kids being home for it. So because the NE Patriots had a 1 o'clock game that wasn't being televised locally I brought Sean to a local bar that shows all of the games and I spent the afternoon in a nice, quiet, and completely comforting apartment. Since Sean has been having a hard time getting the job thing going, we've been spending a LOT of time together. So this little reprieve was fantastic. I got a lot of reading done, plus laundry, and I got to just enjoy the silence. That has been part of my moody problem for the past few weeks, not only do I miss my friends and family, but I also missed the time I got to be alone at home. I'm alone constantly when I'm on campus doing office hours (like right this very moment) but being able to do it while I'm in my pj's and enjoying my still warm cup of coffee is just tremendously comforting. It always takes me so long to realize what I need. I generally have a rough time figuring out what I need to function and to thrive, so when I have these mini-epiphanies it is phenomenal. Even when it is the same epiphanies over and over again. 

So my goal this week is to continue to get myself situated academically, as well as continuing to figure out what I want and need to thrive here. True to form I found a pin that describes what I'm feeling perfectly, so here it is:

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/96053404526169099/

So what do you do to "center" or "find" yourself when you become burned and/or stressed out??

Inspiration and Comparing Myself to Others

Happy Tuesday!!

So this week is moving right along, I've had a couple of speed bumps, but overall I'm just chugging along. I can't wait for this weekend, not because I have any grand plans, but because I don't have any grand plans. I know that I need to stop working for the weekend, so I'm trying to work on that. It's just difficult when every weekend is a 3 day weekend... at least for this semester!

So I didn't get my normal time to ponder life in the quad before my GTA class, so in a few quick moments here before class begins I went looking for more inspiration on Pinterest. I came across a couple of gems:

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/173529391865037155/

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/173529391864335028/

These two pins are definitely my favorite so far today. They embody exactly how I feel and who I am. Not many people know about my Rheumatoid Arthritis and even fewer know about how depressed I've been the past few years. But each day I am getting up and I am working towards a better Elizabeth. Some days it's easy and some days I don't even want to get out of bed. But I'm learning with a good helping of trial and error. And I'm finding that the more I accept myself and the things that make me happy, the more inspired I become.

I have lived a long life of self degradation and comparing myself with others, and that was long before Facebook helped me out with that... So to be able to get up and fight against all that I've lived these past 24 years, I'm over the moon. I realized the other day that I don't have my life exactly in order, but I'm choosing to live everyday. Even if that choice is to have a glass of wine and watch The Blind Side after a really, really long literary criticism class. That is how I take care of myself, by accepting my limitations and knowing that after some rest, I will be able to move forward past these limitations. Understanding and embracing that I love inspiration and helping others has been great these past few days. That's right, it's taken me years to really find a spark. I always knew I wanted to write/blog and it wasn't until I had my own clear(isn) vision that I have carved out the time to write each day. (This many blog posts in a row is something brand spanking new! And I'm loving it.)

It was just the other day that I realized how my undergraduate degree was not a time of exploration and development, but just a continuation of my high school days with shitty self-esteem and doing what everyone else wanted/expected of me. Being able to accept that, but to also know that I can move beyond it is tremendously freeing. I'm ready to take on the world and my life. Last night, just before my brain turned to mush in lit crit, I was writing about how I wanted to take control of my life. But really, who do I think I need to "take" it from? It's already belongs to me, doesn't it? So I need to embrace the life I'd like to lead. Part of that stems from watching the healthy choices my classmates are making and wanting to make positive changes in my eating and exercising habits. I want to completely embrace and accept my body, I want to treat it with far more love and respect. So this morning I did something a little different with my hair and put on some makeup, and while it hasn't made a tremendous difference, I definitely feel more pride in myself. I may not have started the day with some kind of gluten-free, "clean" breakfast, but I took care of myself and feel much more confident because of it. My Tuesday is shaping up to be pretty amazing :) Hope you find your inspiration for change, without expecting perfection!

~E

Dance and Other Things

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/1688918581744178/

Last night while I was reading Aristotle or Plato, or one of those other dead philosophers that are making my Literary Criticism class hard to handle, I began to point my toes, and move my arms around. I was laying in bed reading and I probably looked like a floundering fish. But as soon as I was done with my little section of reading, I got up (closed my bedroom door so my boyfriend wouldn't get a glimpse of what I was doing) and I proceeded to dance. No music, no instruction, just moving my body around in a ballet/lyrical-esque way. I was wonderful. I haven't felt so free and just in tune with myself in a long time. It made me realize how much I miss my Zumba classes. But it also helped me realize how my muscles and my body have been trying to communicate with me. I have been having a really hard time trying to diet, I just can't get into it, especially where I live at Starbucks on campus sometimes (foreshadowing much). But I have been watching too much TLC and one of the shows that has captured my attention in a big way is Cheer Perfection. Partially because I couldn't sleep one night and that was what was on, but mostly because I have always been flexible, but never very strong and this idea of having the ability to be flexible and use my body to better express myself (more through the gymnastics portion) is definitely piquing my interest. I want to be able to move my body and really own it in a much different way than what I'm used too. When I was younger I used to be so jealous of the cheerleaders, not because they were popular (although when I was in middle school that would have been cool too) but because of what they could do with their bodies. How they could catapult themselves all over the place and just have complete agency. So while I have no interest in becoming an adult cheer-leader, I'm definitely going to be listening to my body more, stretching out while watching tv, and doing more strength training at the gym so I can finally master that elusive cartwheel... Happy Monday everyone!
~E

Self-Help and Pinterest

Happy Football day!!! (AKA, Sunday) I've gotten to enjoy a wonderful ugly-as-hell Patriots victory over the NY Jets thursday, then today I went with a couple of girls I work at GWU with to the Phillies v. Nats game this afternoon (Nats kicked butt), and now I'm watching the Manning Bowl. It's been a tremendous weekend, aside from the impending homework that I've obviously been avoiding.

What I haven't been avoiding is how much I love inspirational / self-help-y things. Which is how Pinterest plays into this. I have this board named Strength on Pinterest and it all started because I needed some help, I needed some inspiration and some self-love.I felt that I just needed a lot of interior strength. So that's where I started, just repinning stuff that I loved reading. (Even with it's silly fonts and backgrounds.) So go ahead, mock the hell out of me, I don't care. I love it. And it's not that I've been denying it, just that I wasn't sure how I really felt about it, it's taken be a while to really own how intrigued by it all that I am. I could sit for hours reading all kinds of articles on positivelypositive.com, I have far too many self-help books, and I found different podcasts and blogs that I just can't imagine not having in my life.

Today, I began to think about how I wanted to incorporate these things into my blog and more predominantly into my life. So around here I want to share more of what I'm pinning and what I'm finding that is inspirational, whether it's about exercise, eating, life, love, or anything! I just want to share more of what I find lovely. I have always had this attractions to words, not necessarily in an academic way (hello procrastinating my homework), but just by seeing words on a screen, page, or wall. That's why I love to write so much, just to see words being created, not necessarily creating a huge paper for a class. I've been having a really hard time adjusting to school, so this change of my blog is partially because of that, because I need some help getting through my schoolwork. So, welcome to my new space :)

~E

Almost All-Nighters

So last night, for the first time in a long time, I went to bed somewhere around 2am. I had decided, or avoided really, starting my 20th century Lit homework last night at 5:45pm. This homework was to read 300+ page memoir plus, write a couple of responses to different prompts. I went to read for about 6 hours last night and got to page 275. What was a LONG time. (Technically, I called it quits around 1am, but in the 12 o'clock hour there was Taco Bell...) It was about 45 pages per hour, which slow? fast? Who knows. All I know is I spent a whole lot of time in my bedroom reading last night. And I needed it to happen that way. Allow me to back track a bit.

I have not been really studious these first few weeks of school. Something that I am NOT proud of, but it happens. So things have been happening waaaay last minute and last night was the epitome. But I also haven't been feeling too hot, a little hormonal crap, a little homesickness, a little OCD that is driving me bat-shit-crazy, you know, normal things when you are a girl who just moved 500+ miles away from home. Coming to GWU was a complete culture shock. I am not used to this large campus with all of these seemingly well-off people and it is intimidating. Along some fantastic academic insecurities I have just really been questioning what I'm doing in school, and telling myself how crazy I am for being here (especially with a BOY!). So obviously reading was not high on my priority list (though Sister Wives on TLC totally was...). But then last night I had to close myself off to the boy and our TV and just become engulfed in the story, and this was exactly what I needed. I needed to focus on what was really a priority, I needed to feel uncomfortable about my current academic situation. And I needed all of these things because this morning when I woke up and finished the last 50-ish pages I was so proud of myself. I was so involved in the text and just felt a connection to this story. I finally feel like I am "enough" for my classes, I needed some cold-hard proof that this was what I wanted. I'm still learning how to accept that life can be hard (not that my life in particular is all that difficult in the grand scheme of things) but that I can fight through it. I also learned that I don't EVER want to do that shit again. So tomorrow, on my day off, I will NOT be lounging all day watching TLC, I will be doing my reading for my classes next week. Time management, I'm finally starting to understand you!

~E

About Life, School, and Living with Someone Else...

I think I found my favorite spot on campus. It's this little square area surrounded by perfectly manicured cherry trees with a beautifully simple water fountain in the middle. I have sat on the benches that surround the fountain every Tuesday and Thursday before I have to go TA. It's called Monroe Court and I have even begun to fall in love with it so much that for one of my classes we are supposed to observe an ecology, and I chose this spot. I love watching the sparrows hop around the court and stand on the water fountain. I am so jealous that they get to stand there, mostly because it is already in the mid 80's here in DC and I'm ready for Fall (which I think we talked about this). And for the record, I did some research and I think those are sparrows, but I'm not entirely sure, I've never tried to qualify birds before. I find it amazing how I am so comfortable here in this completely man-made structure, yet I feel so connected to nature. I guess I'm falling for the landscape architect's plan.

So other than me enjoying my little refuge, this weekend I had the boyfriend's parents down. It was great to see them and spend some time with them. I wish I had been able to take them to the airport yesterday, but my office hours and 2 grad classes needed to be tended to. We did a good amount of walking in Alexandria and DC, but mostly we did a lot of eating together. (Which made me think of Jim Gaffigan's quote about getting something to eat...) But either way it was a nice weekend, especially because I was able to get rid of almost all of my boxes that had been hanging around a little too long, so that was an added bonus. I find that there is no greater pressure to unpack/clean than having visitors who flew from home to be with you. So now that it's Teusday, obviously my place looks like we haven't cleaned since, and I really don't think we have... Oh well.

Which brings me to my next fun topic, co-habitating is hard. I've never lived with a boy before and when I was in college I had some wonderful roommate issues, to which I always wondered if it was me that was the problem. These past few weeks have shown me it probably was. I have turned into the worst version of my mother... I never really understood her need to make sure the house looked pristine. Oh I do now. I also realize that being organized and keeping things clean is a hard thing to manage, especially when the other person you live with just came from a 3 guy bachelor pad that I don't think had ever really been cleaned. So breaking the habits of over 5 years living on his own is going to be quite the feat. But I will not give up! Mostly because I'm sick of turning off every light in my apartment and he needs to learn how to do that himself. (And for the record, me turning off all of the lights is me channeling my dad... He would be so proud, if I admitted that to him haha.) How do you balance the nagging with the "Goddamn it I will just do it myself!"? It's sad that at 24 I'm just learning how life is hard when you're on your own. But really, I'm just learning about myself as well. I'm still working on my likes and dislikes, my eating habits, and my exercise habits. It's weird to look back and think of my undergraduate career as more of a continuation of high school, I did what was expected of me and followed all the rules (okay, most of the rules). This is the first time that I feel complete freedom and that is terrifying. Which is probably why I keep channelling my parents' control traits, it's much easier to follow their example than to figure out life for myself... yeah that sounds horrendous. But I am trying to combat it, trying very hard to enjoy my life and make the best of it. So off to class I go, I'll be around later with more and more updates!

Also, I have NOT forgotten about my 101 project, I'm obviously just terrible at posting about it.

~E

Summer is Officially Over ...Kind of

Happy Faux-Monday! Tuesdays that pretend to be Mondays are pretty much terrible, except by the time you get to Wednesday you realize how many days until Friday, and life suddenly seems worth living again right?!? I have to say the fact that it is a "cool" 77 degrees in DC is making it INCREDIBLY hard for me to believe that it's September. I'm used to New England, where some years we've already broken out the parkas at this time of year. But this continued heat is unreal. It's supposed to be 90 later this week, as in 90 degrees Fahrenheit!!! This is not the middle of Summer, this is SEPTEMBER and I really expect it to start acting like it soon, cause I want nothing more than to go shopping for some Fall clothes and get the chance to wear them before Christmas! (End of rant, I promise.)

I'm currently sitting in a quad at GW waiting for a good time to go to my GTA (Graduate Teaching Assistant) class, where I will sit awkwardly through 75 minutes of advanced Mass Comm lecture that I have very little interest in or knowledge of, but at least I'm getting paid! I always seem to make it to this class incredibly early which is quite the accomplishment for me. But as my graduates studies are mostly focused on reading right now, I have a lot of interest in writing, just not anything to really do about it. So, here I am!

I had a good weekend overall, there were definitely some not-so-awesome moments, courtesy of my unshakable belief that I must be perfect, but also because the Boyfriend's parents are set to arrive in DC this Saturday. While I'm thrilled to see them, it has been a little daunting trying to get the last of my pesky boxes unpacked and put away. Plus, the Sean has been working so much that I've had to do a lot of the house maintenance alone while trying to juggle school stuff. Being at home all the time all alone kind of sucks. But this is the week that I get things accomplished! That I finally tie up some loose ends so that I can enjoy this weekend, while also being super-prepared for Monday classes.

Also causing me a lot of stress: Thursday is my first time really teaching!! I have an hour Thursday morning where I have to teach a lesson on WID (Writing in the Disciplines) and I am nervous as hell! So hopefully tomorrow at my meeting with my fellow GTAs for the course we can come up with a definite plan and I can scrounge up some confidence to attack this Bad-Larry.

Well I'm off to class, I'm definitely going to try to make regular appearances here while my course load is relatively small.
~E