Self Improvement

2010. Our first glance at the tens column of the 21^st century and our last look back at the decade that we haven’t even hammered out a name for yet. This Friday at 12:00 AM, every alive person on the planet will have survived 2009. And every second of the 31, 556, 926 seconds in the upcoming year will determine whether in 2020 we will say, “2010 – what a great year,” or “what a hard year,” or, “what happened that year?”

I’ve never been that much into resolutions because I’ve never needed to lose weight, but this year, I’m taking change seriously. I don’t want to just “get through” 2010; I want to conquer it. I want to arrive at 2011 the way that I finish 5k races: smiling triumphantly and wheezing like I’ve simultaneously gotten pneumonia and had an asthma attack. So here is my list. It’s short (if you disregard all of my commentary), but it’s meaty. I’ve got a lot of work ahead of me.

1. Blog more.

I admit it: I don’t just write this blog because I want to share my valuable revelations with the world. Revelations are 90% of the reason that I write it. But there’s another 10% that I’ve been keeping a secret until now because it’s embarrassing to say. Here it is: if I get enough people to read this blog, Google will pay me (in money) to keep it up. This may seem like a natural cause and effect to you, but for young writers, being paid to write gives us this odd sensation that we are scamming people. In my writing classes, professors are tirelessly reminding us that they are teaching us how to get paid to write. I imagine this is less of a topic of discussion with accounting majors, who rarely seem to fear that they will end up living in their step-grandparent’s basement because they won’t be able to support themselves from the compulsive 2 AM budget balancing that they do by candle light in a cat hair covered Snuggie. So every time one of you adds yourself as a “follower” on the right hand side bar of my website, I feel like Jesus did every time he recruited another disciple: overall excited about my extended ability to do good in the world, but initially just shocked that I could con another sucker into buying this thing.

Therefore, I must blog more. By resolving to provide you with more thought-provoking and entertaining posts, I am increasing the chances that someone will want to advertise hand-carved, polished, stone beads on the sidebar of Three Squares blog. I can just imagine myself, hands trembling as I open my first envelope from the internet/money people. My eyes will widen, and then a sly smile will curl up on my face as I shove that $10 check in the face of my tuition bills.

2. Send myself out to play more.

There are two types of memories: ones that you remember and ones that you forget. Over the course of this past fall semester, I have forgotten most of my essay writing memories, and my tv watching memories, and my working at the gym memories. The stuff I do remember tends to be activities that were more daring, spontaneous, and just plain different than what I usually do. I remember dance parties, the photoshoot in Scott’s hats, the night we played Queens, the night me and Trevor worked on the France puzzle for like 5 hours and finished it, the one night of the semester Allyson and I did crunches, Fakesgiving, the fire out at Ian’s Bear Grylls-inspired shelter, and the World’s Tallest Filing Cabinet *.

The reason I bring this up is because those nights – the ones I remember most –weren’t necessarily more fun than staying in and watching Say Yes to the Dress, but they do have a story behind them, which automatically makes them better memories. Going on an adventure -- especially if it’s freezing cold, late at night, and a little dangerous – puts you in an exclusive club. Only you and who ever you were with can claim to have done what you did, even if it seems more fun in retrospect than it really was. Our stories belong to us. And that’s what the value of a life comes down to, isn’t it? The great and terrible things we remember doing. I figure if I’m going to do something in 2010, it might as well be something I remember. That’s why I’m resolving to try new things, do old things that I know are good for me, and send myself out to play more often.

I realize my list only has two items on it, but I figure I might as well do a super job on two resolutions than do an okay job on many. If I set too many goals, I’ll probably just get overwhelmed and not start anything, anyways. Plus, it’s 2 AM and I’m getting over-heated in my Snuggie. Happy New Year to all and make it a good one.

* The World’s Tallest Filing cabinet resides in Burlington, VT. If you would like to know what it looks like, picture a rusty filing cabinet with all the drawer handles broken off in the middle of a barren field/abandoned lot. Now vertically multiply the filing cabinet by 15. That’s more or less how it is, but I encourage you to go have a look for yourself.

Store Bought: Part 13

When Judy died, she branded her initials, JDP, in swirly blue letters on everyone who remembers her. And with that one dramatic stamp, we each became her. Everything that we loved about her – how she knew when to laugh at herself, how she could choose the perfect shade of paint for a room, how she let people enjoy each other’s company by giving them a big kitchen table and a bag of M&Ms – became our tradition to keep. And we have. For every medium regular coffee, and bunch of yellow roses, and puff of Chanel No. 5 in which we have indulged to make Judy sensory and tangible again, there has been another time that we have scheduled election day into our calendars, had the courage to be no-nonsense about an issue, and decided to turn up the radio and sing when it’s midnight and we’ve got seventy five more miles to go. Those are what make us whole again. The products are our comfort, but her character is our salvation.

Store Bought: Part 12

Our brands do not define our legacies, but they do fill them out and give them shape, which is why what we buy says so much about who we are. I am satisfied that my history will include TJ Maxx, Prismacolor colored pencils, and the pancake recipe on page 126 of the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook. They aren’t particularly luxurious items, but they make me truly happy, which is a rare quality in the products that I use.

Store Bought: Part 11

Gaudiness, tackiness, or impracticality has no relevance when you sort out someone’s house after the funeral. Everything from their diamond rings to the Cream of Wheat in their pantry can be an heirloom. Their personality becomes an heirloom as well. They will always be the person who ate toast with jam for breakfast, and was not afraid to buy herself diamonds, and stubbornly asserted that everyone should have a nice, neutral suit in their closet because they don’t want to have to be rushing out to Filene’s Basement at the last moment to get one. Death is an opportunity to accept this. Even if you consider yourself a humble and non-material person, wearing a gold ring that has the pull of ten diamonds at your finger keeps reminding you, “This is your mother’s. Make her proud.”

We don’t need Chanel No. 5 and Tiffany’s to remember who Judy was. We love them because they were her indulgences, and therefore ours. What we really need are the memories of her that we are surprised to find in each other.

Store Bought: Part 10

In high school, we talked about middle school. I went to St. Augustine Catholic School, where gym class was held in the carpeted basement off of the girls’ bathroom. Our sixth grade English teacher wore flamingo-print shirts and spent a week’s worth of class time showing us slides from her vacation in Alaska. The cafeteria served baked bologna. These stories speckled our high school lunch tables and bus trips to Mt. Blue for cross-country meets.

In college, nobody else has ever heard of baked bologna, so we have to talk about the only things we have common: TV, video games, and cereal. Everyone at college remembers Legends of the Hidden Temple, Mario Kart, and Count Chocula cereal. Except me. I remember Zoom, Klutz books, and Berry Berry Kix. Consequently, during these conversations, I usually direct my attention back to the television or think about what I should make for dinner, because there’s no use in trying to change the subject. A conversation about childhood nostalgia is a freight train. Every detail reminds someone of something else, so the conversation picks up momentum quickly, and pretty soon if any non-video-game-playing pansy who doesn’t know a single Hanson song steps in the way of it, she’s going to get squashed.

People are passionate about their childhood products. Walk into a room filled with children of the 90s and shout, “I hate Spice World! Nerf guns are for losers!” You’ll quickly find that you have just made a lot of enemies. The interesting part of this phenomenon is that the crappier the products were the more protective people are of them. Think of pogs and wax lips and Sabrina the Teenage Witch. They are all intensely stupid, and that’s what makes them so popular. It’s instinct for us to stick up for our childhood products, because those are our personal histories. If you tell someone that the TV show they spent 500 hours of their childhood watching is dumb, you are insulting 500 hours of their existence. Nobody ever remembers that for 465 of those hours that they watched TV it was because they were bored and no one would play UNO or basketball with them. People remember the time they were watching the show with their brother and he laughed so hard that Sprite squirted out of his nose. They remember that snow day when they came in from epic fort–making and watched the show while they drank hot chocolate and felt their toes tingle back to life.

It’s impossible not to be biased about our childhood products because they are our personal histories. Nobody else will ever understand as precisely well as I do how wonderfully purple my milk turns when I eat Berry Berry Kix. However, this nostalgic bias can create new bonds between people as well. Every girl with the memory of buying her first Backstreet Boys CD and listening to it on repeat for all of sixth grade will appreciate every other girl that hums, “you are (beat, beat) my fiiiiii--rrrrre” while flipping through the sale rack at the mall. Other times, our biases give us baked bologna, which our new friends will never understand, but which will always bond the graduates of St. Augustine Catholic School in a way that no other food could have. When television shows and salted, baked lunchmeats become our legacy, we must extract the best parts from them to claim as ours – their humor, their back-stories, and their familiar disasters.

Store Bought: Part 9

I remember that week in Belmont as stained peach and yellow and soft orange. The walls of the guest bedroom where Judy had moved were the color of a strawberry banana smoothie. The leaves outside were fiery yellow, red, and orange. People had pumpkins on their front porches, except us. The new comforter was goldish brown with autumn-colored smudges all over. The cancer had made Judy’s skin jaundiced. Yellow roses were Judy’s favorite, and even though it was late in the season, we noticed one blooming in her garden after the funeral.

Judy was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer on October 16^th, and she died less than a month later on November 4^th. I was 12 years old. A few weeks before, she had asked my mom to take her shopping at Bed, Bath, and Beyond. She wanted a new comforter.

It is a testament to my grandmother that I feel comfortable calling her by her first name. My sister, Rebecca, my brother, Josh, and I were the oldest grandchildren by a decade. Judy was too classy to be the “Grammie” type of grandmother back then. The three of us still feel smug that we were the only “Judy” grandchildren.

During the weeks before and after her death, every time someone came in the house in Belmont, they were carrying at least one of three things: chocolate Halloween miniatures, a tray of four medium regulars from Dunkin Donuts, or a CVS bag of prescriptions.

For months after she died, there were still calls to the house asking if she’d like to picket for so-and-so issue for the Democratic Party.

I think I was about seven years old when Judy decided to have the kitchen remodeled. They took out a wall and expanded it into where the other living room used to be. Judy decided on chestnut-colored cabinets and a granite-top island in the middle. There were hardwood floors and a big table with leafs that could be added on for Thanksgiving.

Judy and Baba had the biggest bed I had ever seen. When we visited, I would go into their room in the morning and climb onto the vast mattress with the old blue and white comforter. Baba read the newspaper. Judy wore those pink silk pants and button shirt pajamas that people had in the movies. She bought me a pair to match.

Judy came into the living room where I was playing Barbies behind the couch one morning and I said, “What’cha up to, Judy-ba-doo-di?”

I loved visiting Judy and Baba’s house because there were different Barbies to play with and a dozen aunts and uncles patient enough to play with me. Once, Judy tried to take an old suitcase and line it with fabric for a Barbie box. She stapled all the material in and realized too late that she had also stapled the suitcase to the table. My dad told that story at her wake and we all laughed with red eyes and tight throats.

Judy surprised me with a giant shopping bag full of new clothes one spring. There was a green and yellow stripe FUBU shirt in there and neither of us knew that FUBU meant For Us, By Us. I proudly wore it around the streets of Boston.

There was also a spring dress in the bag. It was yellow with a band that tied around the waist. There were three daisy appliqués on the front of the waist ribbon that I will never forget. I hated them. When my mom made me wear the dress to my piano recital, I announced on the way that I wished a bolt of lightning would come and singe the daisies off of my dress.

The day after my 9^th birthday party, mom and I drove to Belmont, and on the way there I discovered hives on my face and belly and arms. I made reports up to my mom in the front seat along the way. Judy was a nurse and Baba, a doctor, so I was under close supervision for the whole weekend. When I came down for breakfast in the morning, Judy would inspect me, but she knew to be discreet. I didn’t want the whole family to see my speckled stomach, or worse, my pink cotton bra.

Anyone who knew Judy could tell you that she wore Chanel No. 5. She was the only person I ever knew to own a real fur coat, too, though I never saw her actually wear it. On holidays at Judy and Baba’s house, we used china plates and Waterford crystal.

I wasn’t born yet when she worked there, but my mom told me that she was a pediatric nurse at Boston City Hospital. Many of the patients she worked with were HIV positive.

Judy loved show tunes and she was determined that we, too, would know the classics. By the time I was seven, I could sing along to “Mein Heir,” “Two Ladies,” and “Don’t Tell Mama,” some of my favorites from our soundtrack of Cabaret.

In my dad’s barn, there is a framed photo of Judy in nylons and a skirt, sitting on Josh’s red Honda 100 dirtbike.

Store Bought: Part 8

No matter what my age, I will defend Barbies against any feminist with good, (but ill-directed) intentions to eliminate the plastic – and yes, generously proportioned – women whom I have loved since my childhood.

People say that Mattel is demeaning women by selling chesty dolls in skimpy suits. The truth is that Barbie-haters are not taking the time to get to know the young women who they are ruthlessly tearing down. The Barbies I grew up with were much more than long legs and a head full of air. My Barbies were scuba divers. They camped out in pillow caves on my couch. They opened their own shoe shops, complete with Lego display cases. They willingly wore the outfits that I made out of tissues and tape without a flinch in their uni-tooth smiles.

I say, if a girl can go camping in stilettos and her salsa dancing dress, more power to her!

Store Bought: Part 7

Belmont, Massachusetts was the magical land of stuff that I visited twice a month for the entirety of my childhood. It was the land of Chinese take-out, of Macy’s, of tickets to the Omni Theater, the planetarium, the movies, STOMP, Blue Man Group, the Museum of Fine Arts, and Boston Duck Tours. Everything could be done with the help of money in Boston – even parking. People paid to have their nails painted and their houses cleaned. They called taxis. They went to drive-thrus every day.

Belmont was where my grandparents lived and spoiled us rotten. One Christmas at their house, my brother burst into tears and announced, “I DON’T WANT TO OPEN ANY MORE PRESENTS!” It was Baba who funded my sticker collection and my connect-the dots-book collection and my jungle-themed stuffed animals collection. Judy would buy outfits for the three of us, and then, to our ungrateful dismay, pose us for pictures in the garden.

The Belmont house was fascinating to me. I would shift from room to room, holding cockle shells in my hand, admiring the china cabinet, running my fingers down the spines of books. There were four bathrooms, a baby grand piano, and bookshelves filled with CDs.

Besides my grandparents, the greater Boston area was also overflowing with aunts and uncles and great aunts and great uncles who would slip me ten dollar bills when they stopped by the Belmont house to visit. I would always save my money for weeks and then ultimately end up spending it on one of two things: Klutz art books from Barnes and Noble, or more art supplies at Michael’s Crafts.

Belmont became my other life. The one my friends didn’t know about or understand. The one that made me giddily impatient during the three-hour drive there. It was my glamorous life. The money fascinated me. I loved the shock of seeing the things people would pay money for in Boston. I don’t remember wanting to buy things with my own money while I was there. It was thrilling enough to watch other people shop and tip and order delivery. The lifestyle seemed foreign, but natural and lovable.

Store Bought: Part 6

My dad taught us that you don’t buy anything that you already have. When my parents purchased our house, there was no plumbing, just an outhouse in the backyard. My dad used the boards from the outhouse walls as wainscoting in the new, real bathroom that he made for us which has plumbing and electricity.

My dad taught us that you don’t buy anything you can make for yourself. A few winters ago, he asked to borrow my sewing machine and spent a weekend cutting and stitching together new fabric for his snowmobile seat. It didn’t look like a craft project when he was done with it, either. It was sleek and professional. Dad taught us that you don’t throw away something you can reuse. When the old movie theater in town was being demolished, my dad went and found old wrought iron railings that were going to be thrown out. They now adorn our staircase.

He taught us that you don’t buy something new that is just as good used. Our kitchen stove was made in 1917. It’s the kind that’s pearly white, and has long sleek legs, because the oven and stove are side by side. No one had thought to stack them yet.

He taught us that you don’t throw things out if you can fix them. My dad bought his snowmobile suit the year I was born for fifty cents at a yard sale. He still wears it, and every few weeks during the winter, he sits on the couch with a sewing needle, dental floss as thread, and patches the knees or the pockets or the zipper.

My dad has systems for cutting wood, stacking wood, and storing wood. Every year he makes new plans and sometimes draws little sketches in his notebook of how he will stack the wood this year so that we can fit enough in our garage to last us from the end of September though the beginning of May. Last year we didn’t have to turn on the thermostat for the oil furnace once, because we were able to keep the woodstove burning all winter long. My dad taught us that you don’t buy stuff you don’t need.

As a kid, these were difficult concepts to accept. New stuff is exciting. Did you know that other families have linoleum floors? In other houses, there’s a window on the oven door, and you can see dinner cooking without even opening it. Have you ever seen a movie on a big screen TV? It’s amazing.

As a young adult with a budget, though, it’s convenient to have grown up with a “cheap, cheap man,” as my brother, Josh, used to call him. There are so many things that people think they need – or want to need. Like anyone, I covet the unnecessaries – trendy nail polish, cell phones with lots of tiny buttons, cell phones with no buttons, and limited edition ice cream – but it’s more comforting than inconvenient to know that I will never be a victim of stuff.

Store Bought: Part 5

Check in later for more Store Bought posts.

Store Bought: Part 4

For us, Judy’s death was like one of those scenes when a guy walks through a door, looks down, and realizes there’s no floor and he’s just stepped off the edge of a cliff. None of us saw it coming and afterwards we realized that everything that we thought was normal and reliable about our lives was not.

Store Bought: Part 3

In my family, you were not allowed to open your toy until you finished your Happy Meal. Not that I ate Happy Meals very often. I bet I’ve eaten less than fifteen of them in my life. I’ve eaten enough, though, to remember that after you eat your french fries, your fingers get all greasy and it’s difficult to pry the plastic packaging open to get your miniature Barbie out. I remember the excitement of holding a warm bag of salty food on my lap on the way home from one of Rebecca’s hockey games. I remember sitting at the McDonald’s in Gardiner, Maine, with my Dad, dipping greasy nuggets into sweet and sour sauce and thinking that I was experiencing fine dining.

Around eleven or twelve – the prime age to switch from Happy Meals to Number Five Meals with soda instead of milk, and cardboard, not paper packages for fries – I stopped eating fast food almost entirely. I’m not sure why it happened. Maybe once my sister went off to college we spent less time on the road. Maybe I had learned to pack my own dinners by then. Maybe once I started running track my body craved more wholesome food. Maybe I was finally old enough to sit through the entire three hour trip to Belmont, Massachusetts to visit my grandparents a few times a month without needing to stop at the Kennebunk rest stop on I-95. Most likely it was a combination of all these things. It wasn’t a sudden decision on my part to protest fast food. It just happened.

During the fall of my sophomore year at Cony High School I was in cross country, jazz band, jazz combo, pep band, symphonic band, and piano lessons. Eating at the Bangor Street McDonald’s became a necessity some days, but I was surprised to find that I wasn’t hungry for Number Five Meals. I didn’t particularly want anything on the menu, except, perhaps, a Happy Meal. My memories of them endured, and I can truthfully admit that they were happy meals.

I didn’t get Happy Meals anymore, though. Usually I bought the Fruit and Walnut Salad. It wasn’t particularly good, but it at least didn’t make me queasy to look at like the burgers did. McDonald’s had slipped out of my identity. When I walked in, I no longer saw la vie en rose. I saw dusty corners and plastic forks in plastic wrappers. I saw a line that stood between me and symphonic band in fifteen minutes. And when I saw it like this – all naked and splotchy – I couldn’t defend it. I couldn’t convince myself that yellow-green pickles and moist hamburger buns tasted good.

Store Bought: Part 2

When somebody dies, the first thing you do is think about walking in their front door and seeing them look up from the magazine they are reading on the couch. You drop your keys on the counter and give them a quick hug. Then you think about how you can never, never do that ever again. Even if there is a God and you both somehow end up in heaven, you think about how it couldn’t possibly be as good as being able to see them in real life, with their worn in skin and marble eyes.

What you realize much later after someone dies is that the person will be gone forever, but the front door and the magazine and the keys are still there. Home & Garden will be what heals you. You’ll see it on the coffee table while everyone is clearing away plates and cups after the post-funeral brunch. For a few minutes, you’ll settle on the couch and flip through the pages. You’ll stroke the creases in the pages and fall into the advertisements for cabinet stains and luxury vacuum cleaners. An article about raised-bed gardens will catch your attention and a photograph of them will make your vision all blurry. Now every time you see Home & Garden, it’s like a squeeze on your hand.

Store Bought: Part I

For the last few months I have been working on a memoir called Store Bought, about how products can become heirlooms and what the limitations of comfort are in commercialism. The piece will be posted in sections, so keep in mind that to read the sections in order, you must read the oldest ones first.

Newsflash: There’s More Than One Way to Get News

The last time I watched the news voluntarily for more than two minutes was the 2008 presidential elections.  The time before was that was the 2004 elections, I think.  I try to read the New York Times more often, but that endeavor usually turns out to be as successful as my sporadic flossing regimens.  To be honest, I usually find traditional news simultaneously boring and overwhelming.  There are a few sources that do keep me in the loop, though.  This American Life and The Daily Show are my two regular media fixes that I can enjoy while keeping track of the world outside my window.         

 

1.  If you’ve never listened to This American Life on public radio before, you’ll think it sounds stupid when I say that I was stirring my boiling macaroni in captivated suspense this afternoon while I listened to a story about a man trying to produce a puppy channel on TV and why guys like Rupert Madoff rejected the idea.  Without encountering This American Life before, you couldn’t understand how this weekly radio show breaks apart the folklore of American life – faith, disaster, love, entrepreneurship, history, and epiphany – and separates it into the tiny, personal stories that created these mega-themes.  This American Life is not a news show.  However, it does spend a lot of time explaining American trends and culture that I hadn’t understood before listening.  For me, the one hour show is the opportunity to reflect about the unique and sometimes absurd directions people's lives can take them and consider the route that I am taking.  Download a podcast of the show for free from itunes and check out their site at thisamericanlife.org. 

 

2.  Okay – it’s not a real news program.  Real news doesn’t make poop jokes or have nearly as diverse a team of reporters.  However, despite the fact that The Daily Show is intended to be entertainment, you still get more truth per minute (tpm) than you would from watching FOX and you can catch quick highlights of the day’s events without having to pretend that you are a current events/world affairs expert.  Of course, The Colbert Report is another legitimate fake news option if a faux depiction of right-wing conservative republicans is what you are after, but I still find Jon Stewart’s satire a more daring attempt to unveil the biased, misleading, and self-serving beast that American news media has become.  

 

Traditional TV news is just not right for me, and for all I know, my methods might not be right for you.  However, I do think that keeping up with the news is important, and should not be painful to injest.  If you need a new method, try reading blogs; checking out local newspapers (which are usually much thinner/quicker to read than The Globe); or reading newsmagazines like Time, which give more in-depth stories once a week, rather than brief stories every day.  Be realistic while you’re looking at your options; if the source bores you on the first day, you’re not going to be able to force yourself through it week after week, so don’t waste your time. 

Even though keeping up with the news seems geeky, it provides many useful skills, like being able to relate history to current events in essays for class, and being better at shouting out answers while watching Jeopardy, not to mention molding you into an informed and engaged citizen.  Once you find a good source, it can be easy to do thoughtful, interesting, and intellectual activities all on your own!          

Playing Tricks on Yourself ... in a Good Way

Those looming essays – “How the Invention of the Barometer Effected Modern Society,”  “Political Trends that Impacted the Renaissance Movement” – always tend to pile up at the back of your head, building intensity until the night before they are due, and then KABOOM!  You remember you have to do them.  You freak out.  You try to start, but you can’t concentrate.  You panic.  You finally resign yourself to doing it.  You take a late dinner break.  You crank out a conclusion in the morning and when you pass it in, you feel like you are getting rid of a slimy piece of uncooked animal fat that has been rolled out and stapled to a works cited page.                

 Procrastination. 

            Everyone puts off work at some point, but the problem with procrastination is that it can be stressful and it can take all the enjoyment of a task that isn’t even that bad.  The truth is that writing essays (or cleaning the bathroom, or balancing your checkbook) can be boring, hard work, but it doesn’t have to be the terrible beast that you’ve imagined. 

            The most common thing that people do to make their homework less enjoyable is to go at it unprepared.  You wouldn’t decide to go out for a 5-mile run, stand up, and run out the door in your jeans and socks, holding a mug of tea.  So why would you torture yourself with spontaneous homework?  Instead, try coming up with a brief ritual to get yourself warmed up.  You might already do a few things naturally, but take some time to think about what you need.  I know that I don’t like to start my work until after I’ve, got 1) a mechanical pencil, 2) a comfortable chair 3) a snack 4) my books and computer within reach and 5) a snack.  What is it that you need?  A 15-minute walk?  A cup of juice?  Some Mozart?  Pamper yourself before you get started, and hopefully you’ll find that it’s easier to concentrate when you have already taken care of all your needs. 

            Another reason that people procrastinate is because the project that they have before them seems so huge and intense that they are afraid of getting started.  This, of course, is an illogical way of looking at a problem, but everybody does it at some point.  One way to solve this is to coax yourself into getting started.  Gather everything you need for a project and get to work, but only for 30 minutes.  Time it.  It will be much easier to concentrate without stressing when you know you only have to work for half an hour.  And once you’ve gotten started, it will be less painful to get to work on it again tomorrow. 

            The final piece of anti-procrastination advice I have is this: get excited, even if you have to force yourself.  Homework is much easier to do if you enjoy it, so when you have to work on something that doesn’t seem interesting, MAKE IT INTERESTING.  Think of a creative way to present your information; choose an essay topic that you are passionate about; bring your own hobbies and interests into a topic that you find boring; and most importantly: be open minded.  Usually assignments don’t turn out to be as bad as we imagine them, so stop worrying and start writing.     

A Conversation about Talking

          Yesterday, Allyson and I were talking about how people complain so much.  Our conversation began when we were getting on the bus for our 10-minute ride home and by the time we unlocked our apartment door and threw our stuff on the kitchen table, we had come to three conclusions.  1.  The art of complaining is a mastery of clichés.  2.  Complaining is the easiest way to murder conversation.  3.  Complaining involves generous amounts of lying.  That wasn’t exactly how we said it, but in essence, that was what we decided.  Let me explain. 

            1.  Clichés:  Read Facebook statuses to become acquainted with America's most beloved complaints.  “Tired”, “lame,” and my personal favorite/least favorite, “FML - fuck my life” are a good place to start.  Allyson especially enjoys/hates the “if I was in charge of this, it would be so much cooler” scenario.  (For example: “Calculus is so lame.  There’s obviously no point to the quizzes he gives us.  Why don’t we just have one test at the end of the year like a normal class!?”)  These phrases are so versatile, that one could easily keep ongoing Facebook statuses going for a year just based around different variations of these 4 complaints.  For example: “Had and 8 AM class AND dropped my phone in a gutter today.  FML” and “Raining outside.  Lame” are both wonderful takes on a few simple pessimism must-haves.      

            2.  Murder:  Everyone knows the problem with clichés.  The first time you tell your friends a funny story about how bad your day was, and then finish it off with a crisp and satisfactory, “fuck my life,” everyone laughs at your clever use of pop language.  The next time you say it they sympathize with you by letting out a kind-hearted, “awwww..”.  Once you’ve really begun to over use it, they hurry through the conversation with a distracted, “ya, dude.”  After a while you’ll stop getting any reaction at all.  This can lead to problem #3 with complaining: you have to make up your story a little to get the amount of reaction from your audience that you deserve. 

            3.  Liar:  Aside from embellishment, there’s another type of lying involved in complaints.  I’m going to use the word “tired” (as in, “How are you?” “Tired”) for an example.  The problem with tired is that it can partially mean that you are literally fatigued or sleepy, but it often has a meaning in context that says much more.  “I’m tired” can mean, “I’m bored and don’t want to admit it.”  It can mean, “I’m feeling self-conscious about how lame I look right now.”  It can mean, “I’m trying to imply that I was up late partying last night.”  It can mean, “I think I like you more than you like me, so I’m going to seem distant and uninterested.”  Or it can simply mean, “I can’t think of anything to say to you right now, so please go away.”  Sometimes it can be tricky to determine which type of tired is being used, but the good news is that actual tiredness is usually quite easy to detect.  It typically involves lying down, choosing not to do things that one would normally enjoy, and it can sometimes be followed by some sort of actual resting.  (p.s. don’t be fooled by gangsta slouching.  This is when someone sits in a chair with their knees apart and their arms all strewn and relaxed, so that they look really cool.  It is the epitome of faux-tiredness.)

            My point here is not to bash pessimists.  It is in some people’s nature is to be sulky and I respect that, even if I don’t understand it.  What I don’t appreciate is spreading bad-will for no reason, which is why I’m starting an experiment with myself.  I recognize that as much as I hate it, I complain too, so my goal is to stop.  Before I open my mouth to say something negative I need to think, am I saying this because it is constructive or funny or helpful?  Or am I saying it because I want sympathy, or I just can’t think of anything else to say?  Please don’t misinterpret my goals.  I don’t think people should stop talking about bad things.  We can’t fix what is wrong if we don’t talk about it.  What I do think is that many people -- including me -- over indulge in complaining as a way of filling in the blank spaces of our lives with unmemorable little scribbles that prevent us from having to spell out the things that are most important to us, and often, the most difficult to discuss.  

Baby with a Credit Card

The only issues that my roommate and I get really heated about are motorcycles and computers.  Neither of us is particularly computer-oriented (though we do check our Facebooks and use word processing quite frequently) and neither of us ever rides a motorcycle.  I am Mac and she is PC.  She is Harley and I am… anything but Harley.  Regardless, we are fanatically passionate about these products.  She argues that it’s crazy to spend $1000 on a computer when she only needed to spend $600.  I argue that my computer is twice as fast and will last twice as long.  Truthfully, though, I didn’t pick my Mac because of its processing speed.  That was a factor, of course.  But there was something deeper, more instinctual about my decision.  Macs are nostalgic for me.  I remember playing KidPix and Dark Castle on our old Mac, where you had to choose the “365 color” button on games to make them run better.  That is, if they had color.  I used iMovie on my dad’s Mac to edit my first movies.  I watched my sister head off to college with a blue and white MacBook.  I get that comfortable and homey, “fresh from the oven” feeling when I use my laptop that I just don’t get from the PCs at the library.    

            One could argue, of course, that I am simply more comfortable using the applications on a Mac, but what about the Harley debate?  The only time I rode a motorcycle, it was a Honda 50 on the trails behind my house.  The activity ended with me haphazardly driving across a small stream, up onto the banking again and stopping about 3 inches from an ash tree on the other side.  That was the beginning and end of my motorcycle career.  So why the hell do I care that Allyson used to clunk around her high school in a pair of black leather Harley Davidson boots?  The origin of my product preference is again from my childhood.  My dad and brother and uncles all ride motorcycles and I grew up a victim of endless dinnertime conversations about Gas Gas and KTM and Kawasaki and KDX.  Even though I didn’t ride them or know a single thing about them, they became the motorcycles of my childhood.  Likewise, Allyson had an uncle in Mosinee, Wisconsin with a Harley shop and she has fond memories of visiting her family there, and doubtless listening to Harley stories just like I heard Honda stories. 

            These debates got me thinking about other products from my childhood.  I started to wonder, “do I really love the products I love?  Or do I love that the people I love love them?  And is that reason enough to be loyal to a brand?”  My fondest retail memories from childhood were Barbie; Cinnamon Toast Crunch; Klutz books; Dunkin Donuts; and Chanel No. 5, which my grandmother was famous for wearing.  I remember flipping through Tiffany’s catalogues and picking out my engagement rings with my aunts when I was 7, and now, the Tiffany ring given to me by my mom when I turned 16 is one of my most treasured belongings.  My new self-awareness about the products I subconsciously love made me realize how dangerously routine I can be with brand loyalty.  I was surprised at how deeply shocked I was when I discovered that my college roommates used margarine, not Land O’Lakes butter.  Margarine just seemed wrong.  It made me uncomfortable to realize that I was so affected by the margarine that it felt like an ethical issue turning over in my stomach, not an issue of what to spread on my bread.             

            Even while I write, I still can’t help myself from smiling as I think back to Nerf guns and Double Bubble and dinner at the Olive Garden.  Of course, it was what I brought to these products, not the items themselves that make me so nostalgic.  If the job of a brand is to make you happy, then clearly all of the above have succeeded.  The issue is not that I still consider myself a PBS kid and an American Girl, it’s that the commercial decisions I made in the 3^rd grade are still affecting the products I value the most today. 

            When I asked Allyson to describe those old Harley boots to me, she couldn’t stop talking about how chunky and horrible they were, but when she finished her description she paused and said, “man, I love those boots.”  

What to Wear on Halloween

           In Burlington, Halloween is the biggest holiday of the year.  The celebration usually starts the Saturday before October 31^st and continues until the night of September 1^st, which is always filled with tired, stained costumes from its previous nights of being worn.  With this in mind it’s easy to see why we college students need to begin pondering our Halloween costume options around the beginning of August.  After many thoughtful costume discussions with my roommate, Allyson, I have come up with a set of guidelines for sporting the proper attire on All Hallows Eve. 

            1.  Don’t order a fully made costume from online.  It shows that you have no creativity or style, and you will be forced to wear a cheap, 100% polyester outfit that is highly flammable and highly shiny. 

            2.  Don’t spend a lot of money or brag about how much you spent on your costume.  Halloween is all about being resourceful and frugal.  If you want to blow your paycheck, go celebrate Christmas instead.  Usually, clever and inventive costumes made out of items you have in your kitchen drawer are as popular as expensive props bought at a costume store. 

            3.  The best costumes are unexpected and catchy.  Everyone has seen pirates and cowboys and hippies and it’s time to move on from these clichés.  An easy way to come up with new ideas is to think of very specific things, like a flying squirrel, mayonnaise jar, or a red blood cell.  It’s not hard as you think to make these costumes either.  For mayonnaise, all you need is a clear laminating sheet to make a label to wrap around your stomach and a mayonnaise jar cover to wear as a hat.

            4.  Use caution with indecent exposure.  Many girls think that the fun part about Halloween is that they get to wear their lingerie out in public.  While this may seem fun at first, it’s actually trampy and annoying.  I’m not saying that you shouldn’t wear something that you feel good in.  I’m saying that sexy for the sake of being slutty automatically becomes immature.  A costume that is geeky and fun and happens to be sexy is cool. 

            5.  Incorporate something that you already have as your “base” item for a costume.  While it’s fun going to second hand stores to find Halloween apparel, it can be frustrating when you have a specific idea in mind and you can’t find all the parts that fit into it.  That’s why it’s a good idea to build a costume off of some weird hat or funny prop that you already have at home.

            6.  Consider the weather.  October nights are cold in Vermont and it’s no fun walking around Burlington with miniskirts and cut off shorts in 40 degree weather, so keep the forecast in mind while you plan. 

            7.  If you’re thinking of doing a group costume, make sure you are working with motivated, reliable people, or keep the idea very simple.  Groups are hard to coordinate and take a lot of planning, especially if each person needs a unique and specific outfit.  It’s usually best to have a back up idea, in case your crew leaves you hanging.    

            Thursday is October first, so it’s time to start getting ready if you haven’t planned your outfit yet.  Of course, it may end up that you won’t get a burst of creative inspiration for your costume until the night of the 30^th, but even so it’s time to start collecting possibilities and keeping an ongoing Post-it note of your ideas.  Happy October to all and best of luck with your costume endeavors!         

My Guide to a Busy Lifestyle: Time Machines and Outer Space

            Now that I have embedded myself in a Jenga-dangerous schedule of academic and extra curricular activities this fall, I wake up panicking.  Whenever things are busy, I come to my senses every morning with high blood pressure and my teeth clenched, worrying that I’m forgetting the books that I need for class, or that I’ll double book myself for meeting, or that I’ll disappoint someone who will be writing me letters of recommendation someday. Today I found a remedy for that.  It came to me during a discussion in Scientific Revolutions, and I scribbled, “wake up on Pluto” in my daily planner so that I wouldn’t forget about it later.  It’s a sort of quasi-meditation activity to make me feel better when I am feeling like the Pentagon will implode if I don’t post my online response to the reading questions 3 days before it’s due.   

            Before you start the process, make sure you have someplace moderately relaxing and where you won’t feel self-conscious for closing your eyes.  (Just put your earbuds in and pretend you are sleeping).  It’s a good mental exercise to do when you wake up or anytime throughout the day that you find yourself panicking. 

            First picture yourself on Pluto.  Stereotypes work.  I’m thinking about cratery purple terrain and frigidness.  As soon as you get the feeling of being on Pluto take one giant jump through space and land on Neptune.  Then, before your other foot even has time to touch the ground, push off onto Uranus.  When you land on Uranus, say the Uranus/Your Anus joke once to yourself, and then skip to Saturn and Jupiter.  Dive face first through the asteroid belt and do some sort of cartwheelish gymnastics move over Mars and onto Earth.  Just so you know, you landed on Earth in year infinity BC and time is now moving at 5,000 years per second.  Before your eyes plants spring up, and then animals, and then dinosaurs.  Eventually, you see a caveman inventing a wheel, which rolls into Greeks statues, the renaissance, the Revolutionary War, and BAM it’s you being born.  Now your entire life zips before your eyes in exactly one second.  Any more time than a second is boring and difficult, so get yourself to the present pronto.  Congratulations, you have just traveled through an immense amount of space and time. 

            Now picture the current set of problems that you have to fix.  They should feel small in comparison.  If not, keep worrying, because there is probably about to be a nuclear explosion or something extremely monumental about to happen.  If your problems do seem more manageable, get to work.  And if you can, give all those planets and history a tiny, tiny nudge.        

            

The Road Never Before Traveled

          Anyone who’s taken high school English knows “The Road Less Traveled.”  Important choices, Robert Frost, one clear and breezy path, one rooty and dark path, etc.  In class, I remember discussing how the easy path makes boring, unchallenged people and the trickier path makes inspired, happier people.  Then the bell would ring for my next class and I would continue to be manhandled into a traditional, rule-following, white collar-destined person bound to a diploma, college, marriage, kids, career, retirement, death. 

            In truth, I am satisfied with the notion of experiencing all of these stages, but I have decided that I need to do it on my own terms.  That begins with rethinking everything.  There has never been a lifestyle designed to precisely fit my personality, so it would be unfair to my existence to recycle anyone else’s.  It is my challenge to create a personal biosphere, and I already have some ideas about where to start.  1.  I need a habitat that allows me to be synched with nature.  Sunlight should ribbon through my window when I wake up in the morning (unless its cloudy), and I should be able to experience the awesomeness of a forest or a river to chastise me whenever I am feeling too smug about the beauty of my existence.  2.  I need the company of someone who I love.  We should to be able to support each other without constricting our personal independence.  We should never have to be ashamed of how much we love each other, and we should never have to lie when our feelings change.  3.  I need to have enough quietness to be able to reflect.  Being I writer, I cannot produce anything worth reading without making a discovery about myself.  I should have a place and time when I am not bothered by others.  4.  I need to be busy with activities that always lead me towards a more meaningful and happy lifestyle.  Otherwise, I will fill my life up with unimportant “obligations” that waste the significance of my existence.  I should set myself up to make charity, gentleness, and understanding habit, not circumstance. 

            Now that I have arranged my priorities (which are changing by the second), I am already aiming myself towards a life that I desire, not just one that I can accept.  I hope that my life will prove that traditions (even pleasant ones) give people a limited view of their options.  I do plan to take a road less traveled, and I expect there to be some rocky ledges and prickly grass in it, but I’m not going to choose a dark path for the sake of having some gloominess in my life.  Instead, I want a path that will let me trip and fall in a gross, leafy mud puddle, and know it was totally worth the trouble.  That, I am sure, is what will make all the difference.  

Dessert for your Health

It seems like everyone has been ganging up on dessert lately.  They’re bad for your body.  They’re high in fat.  They don’t have any nutritional content.  And that’s true if what you’re eating for dessert it chocolate cake and fudge brownie ice cream.  Everyone knows that.  What I’ve discovered is that dessert can be more that cake, ice cream, and cookies.  Of course, I do enjoy some fudge brownie ice cream on occasion, but I’ve also found that most of the time I can settle for a lot less calories and much more nutrition to satisfy my sweet cravings.  The most important part of my dessert conversion was simply a habit change.  Instead of reaching for the Chunky Monkey as soon as dinner was over, I had to take a bit more time to think about what I really wanted.  Not what I thought I wanted. 

            The first and most important thing to do when picking a dessert is to think about how hungry you are.  Do you really want the double scoop ice cream?  Or will a single scoop satisfy your need?  Next, think about all of your options, not just the obvious ones.  Clearly you could have a cookie.  But what about dried fruit?  Popsicles? (Edy’s  coconut pops are my favorite.)  How about Stonyfield chocolate yogurt for a taste of organic dairy?  Maybe canned pineapple would suit you. Or, if you can’t live with out ice cream, try topping it off with some delicious (and filling) banana slices, walnuts, strawberries, frozen blueberries, or even a handful of granola.  Oftentimes I am satisfied with a small bowl of honey nut cheerios or frosted flakes when I’m craving a new flavor in my mouth after eating dinner.  This might sound absurd, but sometimes, an orange or an apple might be sweet enough.  If you’re craving something in the middle of the day, try some chocolate Graham Crackers instead of a chocolate bar.  Once you find some favorites, they will be easy replacements to some of your blacklisted items with some more nutritious alternatives.    

            Now that I’m in the habit of thinking twice, I find that I don’t really ever feel like having a gigantic piece of cake or a double scoop of ice cream.  Suddenly, just enough feels like enough.       

                 

A Wardrobe Diet: How to Make Your Favorite Jeans Fit into Your Closet!

                      The August heat was so dense in my upstairs bedroom last night that it made me uncomfortable to even look at the cotton sweaters that I was pulling from the depths of my walk-in closet.  Despite the temperature, I was able to reduce the amount of clothes and in my closet, dresser, and shelves by 23.4%.  I went from an ostentatious 254.5 articles of clothing (and shoes) to a slightly trimmer 195 pieces in a little more than an hour’s worth of spontaneous energy.

            I got the idea to sort through my clothes on my way home from Ogunquit, Maine yesterday.  I had just bought myself a pair of brown, leather, 60% off boots at the Bass Outlet.  If I could have designed a pair of boots to be made for me, they would look just like these babies.  The problem was, I felt guilty about even having them.  Although they were perfect, I knew it was ridiculous to spend half a week’s worth of pay on a pair of boots when I already have so many clothes and shoes at home.  Plus, my goal had been to bring less stuff back to college this year, so why was I buying more? That’s when I got the idea to do a total closet cleansing ritual.  Even without boot guilt, I usually drop off a shopping bag’s worth of clothes at Goodwill every 3 months or so, but this was going to be a wardrobe liposuction to tell my great-grandkids about. 

            I started a chart on the back of a used piece of computer paper to keep track of how much I was ditching.  At first, my categories were broad, like “shirts” and “shoes,” but I realized that I needed to narrow my listings because I was losing count.  I had to separate my “shirts” category into “tee shirts,” ”sports shirts,” ”tank tops,” and “dress shirts,” which doesn’t even include my separate “sweatshirts” and “sweaters” groups.  I also decided to keep track of how much I was donating and throwing away so that I would know exactly how much progress I had made.  Here are the numbers:

 

	Shirts	Skirts	Dresses	Jeans	Pants	Shorts	Sport shirts
Original	23	7	15	4	3	3	25
Toss	4	0	0	0	1	0	2
Donate	2	2	2	0	1	0	2
Keep	17	5	13	4	1	3	21

 

	Sport shorts/pants	Pairs of socks	Bras	Underwear	Bathing suits	Tank tops	Sweatshirts
Original	11	36.5	13	22	6	18	13
Toss	0	9.5	1	4	1.5	0	0
Donate	1	4	4	0	1.5	3	3
Keep	10	23	8	18	4	15	11

 

 

	Sweaters	Dress shirts	Sneakers	Flip flops	Boots	Shoes	PJ pants/ shorts	Belts
Original	10	8	7	6	4	8	4	8
Toss	0	3	0	2	0	0	0	0
Donate	3	0	0	1	0	1	0	3
Keep	7	5	7	3	4	5	4	5

 

 

            I found these numbers shocking.  For a girl who considers herself a minimalist, 13 dresses seem a bit extreme.  And even though I only ever wear the same 2 belts over and over again, I still could only part with 3 of my 8.  What I found most surprising was that even after getting rid of 19 shirts I could still wear a different top from my closet for 54 days straight (not including dresses)!  That’s almost 2 month’s worth of shirts. 

            I’ve definitely still got some work to do to slim down my closet, but I did make a lot of progress last night.  I was able to get rid of 57.5 shoes and clothes combined, 31.5 of which was donated to Goodwill.  I also discovered 2 systems that I plan to enforce in my closet.  The first is to make trade offs.  When I come home from the Gap with 3 new shirts, I need to get rid of 3 old shirts.  The second idea addresses the clothes that I always keep but never seem to wear.  I had a blue sweater with sleeves that may have been inspired by the elves in Lord of the Rings in my closet for years.  I never wore it, but I always thought that an occasion might come up when I would want it.  There’s other stuff that I don’t wear, but keep.  Shirts with memories.  Pants that are nice, but I never seem to notice in my drawer.  Instead of keeping them all eternally, I put aside 10 questionable pieces at the beginning of the summer.  They stayed in the back of my closet and I didn’t look at them for 4 months.  Last night, I took them all out and realized that I didn’t miss a single one.  For some reason it was much easier to let go when I knew that I had already lived without them and, for the most part, forgotten about them completely.  I recommend these two systems to anybody who, like me, has a morbidly obese wardrobe.  It sounds silly, but I felt lighter this morning when I got out of bed.  It was like I had been carrying those 57.5 clothes and shoes on my back until today, when I noticed the load was gone.

            Even if you don’t have 13 dresses like me, I recommend taking a guillotine to your wardrobe.  Get out a pencil and paper and blare the radio.  It only took a few extra minutes for me to write down my progress, and it made me more motivated to let stuff go.  Knowing that I had 36.5 pairs of socks exactly shamed me into getting rid of some questionable ones.  Another piece of advice I have is to not skim anything in the sorting process.  Even stuff you wear regularly.  Does it have a tear?  Armpit stains?  Bleach stains?  Ditch.  Chances are you put it on out of habit, but if you saw it at a store in its current condition you wouldn’t consider wearing it.  Not only are you getting rid of stuff you don’t need, you are also refining your style.  By trashing the crap you are making sure you will only go out dressed in your best!