“I was going to say!”
July 2, 2015
The beginning and end photos from my 30-day DietBet. You can’t see much, if any, difference, but I can feel it!
Like so many women–and you know what? It’s not even a woman-thing. Like so many people, it is always my desire to just drop a few pounds. A month ago, I got back on the horse. I began going to the gym again three or four times a week. A couple of weeks ago, I figured out an alternative bike route to my office that is a little further but which I can ride in the same amount of time. I toned down some of my consumption habits. I joined a 30-day DietBet game.
Let’s start with the DietBet. For those of you unfamiliar, it’s a website where you pay money into a multi-person game to bet that you will be able to lose a certain amount of weight. You win by meeting the target, and the pot is split by everyone who made it. For the 30-day game I just completed, the goal was to lose 4%. For me, that was 8 pounds (3.6 kg). I’m not going to lie–I joined that particular DietBet because Karina Smirnoff was the host. You know how much I love Dancing with the Stars!
I went to the gym regularly for the first few months of last year and it felt great! I dislike running, but trotting on the treadmill has kind of become my thing since I discovered the Couch to 5K business two or three years ago. It only takes a couple of weeks for me to begin seeing and feeling the difference, so that’s my approach every time I start over. I fell off the wagon (er, treadmill?) when I went on vacation last July and spent the next three-quarters of a year subsidizing other people’s memberships. But my weight also crept up to the highest it’s ever been, and so finally last month I started going again and have managed to get back in the good habit.
Feeling the inspiration on foot, I also try to bike a little more, too. From about March through about October, or for as long as the snow holds off, I bike commute to work every day, a 15-minute ride through the heart of downtown. I don’t really think of it as exercise, even though it is, and so have been trying to go out for a long ride at least once on the weekends, and a medium ride in the evening every now and then if it’s not too hot.
Perhaps you are a fan of the NFL (National Football League) and know that the Minnesota Vikings are building a brand new stadium where the Metrodome stood until last year. I guess it’s going to resemble a giant, glass Viking ship. All I really know is that they didn’t spring for bird-safe glass. We’ll see how that plays out. The area of downtown adjacent to the stadium site is also going through a major redevelopment, and shiny new office buildings are rising from the backhoed rubble of a number of former surface parking lots.
Well. All of this construction activity has wreaked havoc on the very streets that I use every day in my commute. There are closures and detours which, unless I want to go significantly out of my way in one direction or, in the other direction, ride on a busy artery with cars only thinking about the freeway access a half mile ahead. Even the quieter alternative a couple of blocks beyond that is under its own construction of a sewer project. There is no good way to bike that particular vector.
Thus, I finally broke down and tried the route that takes me along the Mississippi River bike path to a bike commuter trail to the western suburbs. I can enter and exit within blocks of home and the office. I had balked at using it because it is a longer distance, and when I’m commuting, I’m all about not wasting time. But it turns out that, even though it’s 3.25 miles versus the 2.5 miles (5.2 km vs 4 km) of the downtown route, it doesn’t take me any more time because there are only a couple of interactions with streets and I don’t usually have to stop even once, and I can just go. Riding this route for the first time was an epiphany! It’s easier, it’s so much less stressful, it’s scenic, and the longer distance fits in with my increased activity desires.
These are a few of the quick (usually about 30 minutes to prepare), delicious, home-cooked meals I’ve been making.
The final component of the last month has been to be more mindful of when and how much I’m consuming. For me, the largest part of that is to cut back on the beer. Instead of three or four, I try to keep it to a couple. And instead of my favorite double IPA or big stout, I often choose ones with lower alcohol content. Along with that is the realization that it also helps to eat a lighter supper earlier rather than later. Gorging on a burger at the bar is a whole lot different than freshly preparing a meal of more sensible foods (that I actually like better anyway). A staple has been a few ounces of salmon, a pile of asparagus, and one-half cup or less of a whole grain, such as quinoa or my new favorite, farro. I have resumed documenting everything that goes down my gullet in the Lose It! app. I don’t necessarily try to meet the calorie budget that it suggests, but the act of tracking eventually causes you to more carefully consider your choices.
So doing all of these things consistently for the last five weeks paid off. I surpassed my DietBet target and lost 8.8 pounds (4 kg), and won $49.68 on my $30 bet! My stamina has increased so much from the treadmill trotting and wobbly bits are coming a little more under control. Mainly, I just feel better and that is very satisfying. The knowledge that this happens when I keep up with things is what gets me through the afternoons when I’d rather just go home (okay, that, and that I’ve been watching 30 Rock while I trot to distract myself).
But it’s my desk-neighbor at work who put the extra little spring in my step today. She’s 23 and just out of college, where she was a competitive swimmer and is still someone who you would call an athlete. A couple of weeks ago I was moaning about being sore from my first session of strength training the day before and we had a brief conversation about my activities at the gym. Well, today she asked me how it all was going and was astonished when I said I had gone fourteen times last month. We talked a little more and I mentioned that I had lost about 7 pounds (3.2 kg). In response she uttered the five words at the top of the page and that is the most gratifying and motivating thing of all!
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Addendum: Because I want to keep the momentum going, I joined another DietBet game. This one goes on for six months with a final target of a 10% loss. There are monthly official weigh-ins with their own mini-targets, and you can win those, too. I tried one last year with little success, but I feel like I have a better attitude now. Stay tuned!
A week of Christmas: don???t worry, be happy
December 20, 2011
After I went into denial about the $130 grocery tab yesterday and just started making stuff, I thought everything was fine. Until 3:00 a.m., that is.
I went to bed feeling pretty accomplished. I had:
– baked the chicken for the Tex-Mex soup
– concurrently baked the turkey sausage for the Sausage and Mushroom Strata
– concurrently cooked a bag of pinto beans, some of which to throw in the soup, the rest to freeze
– made the Tex-Mex soup
– cooked a bag of garbanzo beans, some of which to throw into the Greek Salad with Sardines, the rest to freeze
– made the three helpings of Greek Salad, hold the sardines until I’m read to eat it
– washed all the kitchenware as I went, as I have a tiny kitchen (I reused the Dutch oven for three jobs without having to wash it)
– relaxed with a delicious Bellatoria frozen pizza and several tasty beers that I picked up at the Ale Jail the day before
– relaxed with three hours of Downton Abbey on Masterpiece
However, it’s true that I did no housecleaning in preparation for having visitors, nor did I do any of the work overtime that I could and probably should have.
But, I was asleep before 11:00 and optimistic that I’d be perfectly able to get up early to go work out and then continue on with a productive Monday.
Enter 3:00 a.m.
Okay, fine, I have to get up to go to the bathroom. With the amount of water that I drink, that’s to be expected one to several times a night. Usually I’m able to fall back to sleep immediately upon regaining my horizontal position.
Not so last night.
I am a more than occasional sufferer of Sunday Night Insomnia. I’m not going to look it up now for a link to information, but it is a recognized condition in which you can’t sleep Sunday nights because you’re stressing out about the work week ahead.
I am stressed out about work. Last week, the entire office ground to a halt on regular projects so that we could bang out this iPad app that we are making in time for the Christmas hangover. That means I am now a week further behind on the work that I’m already behind on. That means that I know it won’t be long until it starts being wondered if others should kick in to help me, and once again I won’t be able to finish a couple of jobs that I have good ideas for. That means I’m stressed out. Couple that with my self-inflicted stress about my parents’ impending Christmas weekend visit, and blammo! I was awake until after 6:00 a.m.
It is not helpful when that happens.
I had a reasonably productive day today, but the specter of stress plus PMS was lurking in the background the whole time. I tried to minimize the level of interaction I had with people in order to prevent as much crankiness as possible. I don’t think I was entirely successful. I wasn’t the only one who was a little off their game today.
The evening was a brighter note, though, as I bowled well (808 for four games) and am getting to bed before midnight. Hopefully I’m tired enough that I will sleep all night and get up in the morning for that workout I missed today.
Inertia, part 4: the London dream lives on
November 26, 2011
I’m not sure I’d exactly call it progress on the moving-to-London dream, but I did do something useful last night. I looked at rents over there for the first time. I can’t believe I never did that before.
I was pleased to learn that it’s not as outrageously expensive as I had been psyching myself up for all this time. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not exactly cheap, and I don’t imagine home ownership will really be an option. But in the area where I stayed during my last visit in summer 2010, I could find a 1-bedroom place comparable to the apartment I lived in for eleven years before I bought my condo for maybe twenty percent more than I’d pay here. And anyway, London’s a big town. There will be something somewhere that’s within my budget.
So that part of the plan is going well.
Action taken: checked out rent prices.
Then I looked around my place. The stuff. Then I checked in on another unit in my building that has been for sale for well over a year, probably closer to two. The mortgage. The diminished selling price.
Depression.
Action taken: I engaged in one of my known coping mechanisms for restlessness and “depression.” I just cut off all of my hair.
The other unit is currently listed for eighty percent of what I paid for mine. And she’s got it looking a whole lot better than mine not least because she has about ten percent of the possessions that I have. My decision to purchase was rash. If I had shown interest but not acted, I probably could have waited out a reduction in price, because I think the guy had been trying to sell for a while before I showed up. But me being me, I forged right ahead. This was right at the end of the housing boom. Double whammy to me.
It was right at the end of the housing boom. Within six months the bottom had fallen out of housing prices. The market, like me, is still depressed. So part of my procrastination about London has necessarily been a waiting game for selling prices to climb a little. They haven’t. I had currently been figuring that if I put it on the market today, I’d be able to get around what my neighbor has dropped her price to. I’m not thinking that any more. Like I said, hers is nicer. The only disadvantage it has over mine is that the main water shut-off for the entire building is in that unit. Maybe that’s a deal-breaker.
Action taken: I just emailed a different neighbor who also put his place up for sale. Difference is, his sold in weeks. I want to consult with his agent.
Regardless of any issues about price, I know that I need to do a lot of spiffing up in here. The first thing to do would be to replace the carpet that I have hated since Day One. Sure, it was brand new but it wasn’t very good quality, I don’t think, and in the intervening years, the animals have kind of had their way with it, not that most of that couldn’t be cleaned, but I hate the carpet. I’ve always thought that installing that fake hardwood stuff would be the way to go. But I wonder how that would work with my ground floor floor that is always sinking and cracking because things are always shifting and settling. I’ll probably end up just putting in new carpet again.
Actually the first thing to do will be to get rid of most of my worldly possessions, because I never even glance at most of them. I mean, look at all these books. When was the last time I touched one of them? It’s been a lo-o-o-ong time. I suppose I’d keep the ones I’ve written and some of the ones I’ve designed. But all the others? I’ll get a Kindle, motherfuckers.
Actions required: 1) Figure out where to eco-dispose of books. There probably aren’t that many that would interest the used book store. 2) Re-rip all of my music CDs at a higher bitrate, then jettison their asses, too. 3) Be realistic. Even if I could fit into all those clothes again some day in the distant future, I’m not going to want to wear them. And if it’s the distant future, I’ll be in London and it will have been cheaper to buy new stuff than move old stuff overseas. Donate, donate, donate.
There are a few large items I would take with me—my cuckoo clock, Grandma Doudna’s embroidered map of my grandparents’ travels, Grandma Hetzel’s platform rocking chair, and my rabbit lamp. All other bets are off.
In addition to things, there are two cats and a rabbit. The cats are young, they’ll be fine getting their pet passports stamped. But my rabbit is almost nine, which is up there for a bun. The unofficial influence on my London timeline has been waiting out my rabbit’s life. At first blush that sounds cold, I know, but I’m only thinking of him. Rabbits are not as sturdy as cats or dogs and though I would take him along in a heartbeat if he were young, he is not and at this point I’d never subject him to the stress of air travel. He’s still going strong, bless him (though his diminished litterbox habits are part of the new carpet equation).
Eventually we must address the legal aspect to all of this. The general information that I have learned is that I must have a job lined up in advance so that my employer can get my work visa, or something like that. But artistic types such as musicians and authors seem to have plenty of wiggle room. Authors, you say? Why, I do have many author credits in the U.S. Library of Congress! It would just be too much to hope for that my kind of authoring would be the sort that would allow my to circumvent the usual employment requirements. I haven’t investigated in a number of years.
Action required: look at immigration rules again. See if I can take my US work self in a direction that allows me to take advantage of any UK immigration “other” options.
Then there’s the whole money part. I’m certain I would have enough cash to finance the move once I sold my place, even with a crummy selling price because a couple of years ago there was a significant pay-down on my principal. But before that, I’d have to pay for the improvements. To that end, I’m thinking that I ought not to spend my next tax refund on another visit to London like I would like to do. Rather, I ought to mostly put it toward the improvements. In addition to the carpet, I’m quite sure I’d be advised to get new appliances. And that’s something that would benefit me anyway. So even if I didn’t end up selling for a while, I’d be happy about that.
In addition, I was already thinking about not returning to bowling next year. That is, until I recently got a lesson and am more interested in it again. But if I didn’t bowl, I could instead put at least some of that $2700 for a year’s worth into the London Fund.
The same could be said for the money I’d save if I cancelled my cable television subscription. The added benefit would be that I wouldn’t be watching TV all the time and could concentrate on more useful activities, such as throwing out stuff or doing extra work to steer myself in the right immigration direction.
I think that about sums it up. The one thing I have the power to start doing now is getting rid of stuff. And that would be a good idea regardless.
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To read my previous bemoaning on this topic, please refer to Inertia, part 1 (history of the dream in which I compare myself to a large, brick building), Inertia, part 2 (I am lazy like a potato sitting on the couch), and Inertia, part 3 (nothing’s changed for me but the large, brick building is making progress).
The large, brick building is now open for business as the Cowles Center for Dance and Performing Arts. It got off its ass and did something.
Conscience is a man???s compass
April 21, 2011
I’m not entirely sure I have a conscience, at least not the kind that makes me want to sponsor starving children in Africa or hang out at the local retirement home. My conscience goes as far as it’s convenient, and that’s roughly it.
I have friends who do far better than me. They volunteer at hospitals, they walk and run for all sorts of causes, they organize benefits for earthquake and tsunami victims in Japan. I merely have three receptacles to separate trash, paper, and glass and plastic. Even my recent donations to Minnesota Public Radio and Twin Cities Public Television were spurred as much by the thank you gift as anything. Nobody’s life is being saved.
Not that the measure of conscience has to be as dramatic as saving a life. I do feel pretty good about my recycling habits. I was aghast recently when I was at a neighbor’s place for our condominium board meeting and he said, upon the other three of us immediately chiming in about his cavalier tossing of a piece of paper into the trash rather than recycling, “You mean I should have an additional garbage can for saving paper?” We all chirped the indignant “yes!” He just didn’t get it. Occasions like that are when I feel so frustrated when I imagine how much landfill volume would be saved if each person recycled just one more [fill in the blank].
So I recycle well and I drive a little gnat of an economy car and I do anything except drive my little gnat of an economy car for my less than two-mile commute to work. But I still feel inadequate on the life-saving, life-changing scale. It’s not that I don’t care, exactly, but my selfishness holds the trump card.
I do think about it. As my child-bearing years draw to a conclusion and I wonder how I will ever (because I sure don’t currently) feel fulfilled in my life since I didn’t procreate, it seems pretty obvious that one way to compensate would be by volunteering with some organization like Big Brothers Big Sisters, through which I could have a long-term, hands-on, influential relationship with a youngster. But even that I don’t think about foremost because I want to be a positive force in some kid’s life. I think about it in terms of how I can still eke out some measure of life-worth for my own puny existence.
But if I get to that place in the end, does it matter so much why? I don’t know.
Characters??? lives welcome
December 15, 2010
I am always open to ideas that would let me escape my current life and start a new circumstance. Sure I go on trips, but I haven’t uprooted myself since 1994. So while I work out a plan for moving to London (as friends and longtime readers will know I want to do), I instead like to lose myself in a good flick. There are three whose characters’ situations I empathize with the most.
(The latest: my plan for getting to London has basically become to wait out the crap economy until I can sell my condo and lose less than the 25% that I estimate would be the case in the near future. That, and my rabbit is becoming elderly and though he’s very spunky and healthy, I wouldn’t want to subject him to the stress. I know, convenient excuses for inaction. But I digress.)
It should come as a surprise to no one that I love Bridget Jones. I read the books, I watch the movies over and over and over. I want her life because she is a single career girl (sort of) in London surrounded by good friends. It’s mostly the London part that I want, and I know I’d have three good friends to start (hello, M, S, and D!). I’m a graphic designer and writer, and those skills are pretty portable. Though unlike Bridget, the singleton aspect of my life wouldn’t bother me very much at all.
In that regard, I might be a little more like Frances in “Under the Tuscan Sun.” That character lives out the ultimate version of my fantasy. She sees and she stays. Other than the unacknowledged dissatisfaction with her circumstances after her divorce, there is no preplanning to her hopping off the tour bus and not looking back. If I had the cash, I’d absolutely embrace that kind of spontaneity. I get weepy every time that bird poops on her head and the old woman decides to sell the house to her.
Frances worries that she’ll never find love again, but it isn’t until she stops looking so hard that it comes her way. That’s what I always say. I am quite happy being on my own and am not looking to get hitched (unlike Bridget), but figure someday love might find me in its own time (as Frances eventually accepts).
And why is it that I think I need to go somewhere else to be happy? Just ask Arthur Dent. I suppose to an outsider, my life looks just fine, but I want more. Not in a greedy, materialistic way, but in a way in which I could feel more fulfilled. Because I don’t. And like Arthur, I can’t quite muster the ambition to be better than my just-gettiing-by self. I want better, but good enough is good enough. So why wouldn’t it be fun to have your life/world/universe turned upside down in the space of an hour? I’m sure that in a new situation I would, for a while anyway, be able to become greater than I currently am.
But for now, I settle for feeling it vicariously through these movies.
Inertia, part 3
September 16, 2010
Well, it’s been a little over ten months since I berated myself and bemoaned my apparent lack of motivation to accomplish my life’s big goal, moving to London, England. The Shubert Theater managed to get off its ass and begin restoration. Let’s take a look at how I’m doing.
As a result of making new friends in the Tweak Today community, some of whom live in London, I resolved during the winter that after I got my (U.S.) income tax refund in February or March, one of the things I’d do with the cash was book a trip across the pond.
Although I have previously lamented that in this down market, my mortgage traps me unless I want to take quite a hit in selling price, one positive is that the mortgage interest credit on my tax return provides for a sizable refund. Once a year, I clear up all my outstanding financial obligations (including paying my friend who floats me for Minnesota Twins baseball season tickets for the previous summer) and take my three pets in for checkups.
This year, I took care of myself first. I spent a lovely nine days in London the end of June beginning of July and hung out with my new friends. It was a good trip.They both live “in town” and I got a lot of time walking around on my own during the work day and going about the business of locals in the evenings. It gave me a good opportunity for a better-informed evaluation of how I might actually like living there. I was not dissuaded from my desires.
I figure it would still be at least a couple of years before I could make anything happen. The notion that I’ve had in my head since London won the 2012 Summer Olympics is that if I planned my arrival for soon thereafter, there might be ample more-reasonably priced living accommodations. On the other hand, if I somehow got myself there, you know, soon, maybe it would be easier for me to find a graphic design job or otherwise in the run-up.
It’s me. It will be later rather than sooner. And so far this entry is idle chat about my vacation, not a change in behavior.
What I have started doing is going through stuff around the house with an eye to downsizing before a cross-ocean move. Or because I simply have too much crap and I had houseguests. The casual observer would be hard-pressed to notice any difference, but I know the progress I made. A couple of my neighbors have much less stuff than I and have brought out the potential in their units. I want mine to be like that when I sell.
I did pass my 15-year anniversary at work and have no doubt that I’ll make it to 16 and beyond. Changing jobs wasn’t really the point of any of this, at least not until I’m looking for a job in London.
For a while I had been watching less television and doing more writing, reading, anything, but that bloom mostly faded. I still haven’t finished The Stuff of Thought, but I did manage to breeze through a romance novel in less than 24 hours this past weekend.
I don’t think there are obvious outward signs that my state of being is any different. About the best I can say is that I am quite certain that I’ll book another jaunt to London this winter when airfare is at its cheapest and I could accomplish the trip from a couple of paychecks rather than shooting my wad on high-season summer prices. I don’t need warm weather to have a good time.
On the indisputably positive side, a year and a half later I am still working out at Curves regularly. And, after the aforementioned ten months, still writing this blog.
The links, except the one about the Shubert, are all to previous blog entries which are related to one degree or another.
I made a woodcut (follow-up)
April 8, 2010
If you have been following this blog for three or more months, maybe you remember that Christmas weekend I went on about having done a woodcut. At the time, I didn’t want to reveal the picture, because the person for whom it was intended had yet to see it. That moment of suspense passed, and I can now reveal what was originally redacted.
It is this, readers, another version of My Rabbit, and here is a picture of it. It’s the third unframed original woodcut taped to my front room wall. One of these days I should take care of that.
March 14
Chick in a tin can
January 3, 2010
“Show us the road ahead.” How apropos that this came up at the new year. This is a subject I’ve been giving a lot of thought to lately. I feel like I am at a crossroads in my life. It might even be a midlife crisis, as it is only three and a half years until I’m 50 and I don’t feel like I’ve done anything particularly outstanding in or with my life.
There. I said it. 50. God, that sounds horrible when I say it out loud, especially since most of you (who I know) are younger than I, in some cases quite a bit younger, or even so much younger you’re like the children I never had! Well, at least I don’t act that old. I take some comfort in that.
You may rest assured that I will not be purchasing a red convertible.
What this crossroads business boils down to is that I feel under some time pressure to accomplish my goal of getting to London. I have set an arbitrary time frame to do it by the time I’m 50—my geographical clock is ticking. The older I get, the less job-marketable I will be, especially in another country. Hell, the less job-marketable I am in my own country. The older I get, the older my parents get. Think being an only child’s a breeze? I’ll have no one to help me with my parents in their dotage. I would like a few years to enjoy myself in England. Selfish? Yes. When I was in my 30s, I figured reproducing was the way to achieve fulfillment. That didn’t happen. Now all I can come up with is doing this huge thing for myself that at the moment seems quite monumental indeed. I ponder the idea of volunteering as a different way of developing inner peace, but it hasn’t quite taken hold.
So what I said this afternoon was that I need to resolve to put effort into taking the steps necessary to achieve the London goal, or I accept that my life will go on as before because average is just the way I am. I have ambitions but little followthrough.
And that’s what I like about sharing, even though I hardly know most of you. I was quickly encouraged to be better than average. I was quickly admonished for “premeditating” to choose to remain average (I interpret it as admonishment, let me run with that). Both sentiments are inspiring in their own way.
I feel change pecking at the shell, trying to get out.
Image from Shutterstock
I made a woodcut!
December 25, 2009
We now interrupt our regularly scheduled blog entry so that we may brag about having made art this evening. That’s hand-done art, people. I made a woodcut! Usually I only do this in the summer at Chris Gargan’s Paint ‘n’ Party, but I haven’t had that opportunity for two and a half years.
(In case you’re interested, the topic was supposed to be about sounds that drive you bonkers, and mine is listening to other people cut their fingernails. I would rather listen to 100 people dragging their nails down a chalkboard than hear the snap snap snap of one person with nailclippers.) I decided to get motivated to do a woodcut today, after having cooked a lot, shoveled a lot, and cleaned a lot. A little me time. Fortunately, my parents, and my mom in particular, found it fascinating to observe the process. So did Robbin Rabbit. I’ve never been good at deftly sharpening my tools, but it went well enough. Until it was time to get out the ink, that is. Turns out that when you don’t open the tube for years at a time, its artery hardens and must be dug out with a nut pick. Then it also happens that the ink becomes thick and goopy and is just barely usuable. But it was usable and I got through the printing. When I’m at the Paint ‘n’ Party, the hood of my car is my mobile printing press. Tonight, it was my counter and stove. Instead of hanging the prints to dry on the side of my car, my microwave and pantry cupboard served the purpose. Tomorrow when the light is better, I will select the best one. I would like to show you, but then I’d have to kill you.A funny thing happened because of the forum
December 11, 2009
An interesting transformation is taking place. I have noticed in the last week or so that I am watching significantly less television. I have had that goal for a long, long time but didn’t really take it seriously. I don’t mind the sitting around part of staring at the tube, but then suddenly a whole Saturday will have passed without accomplishing anything of consequence or even inconsequence, and I do mind that. Not doing anything contributes to my general feeling of lack of accomplishment in the big picture of my life.
Participating in Tweak Today seems to be changing that. At first, it was just the taking of a photo everyday. A lot of the time, you don’t really have to think too hard about the assignment, but sometimes you have a great opportunity to be truly creative. I was already feeling good about that little spark. Then, inspired by Emily’s blogwriting, I realized that I could use the Tweak Today mission as the inspiration for my own daily missive. And so, since November 1, I have been doing a pretty darned good job keeping up with it. As a consequence, when I come home after work I don’t turn on the television. No, instead I grab my iBook and write the day’s entry. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where I set a timer for myself because I’m spending too much time writing. Things seem to be snowballing. Last weekend, I left the tv off for a large part of both days and instead DID STUFF. And with today’s mission to Draw a Picture (as well as a few previous drawing missions), I find myself contemplating DRAWING every day, too. What is happening to me? At this rate I may finally follow through on my frequent threats to cancel my cable tv subscription. No, not that one, that’s still crazy talk. But I might find myself finally putting together a portfolio website. I might finally finish unpacking from my move four years ago. I might sort and get rid of a whole bunch of stuff I know I don’t need to keep around. I might begin to take tangible baby steps toward the London goal. All because I drew a beer bottle.
Kelly’s Unnecessary Blog 