46. BRING A HOUSE PLANT INTO MY WORLD

house plants clean the air & balance a room's chi.

if you believe in that last part.

i picked out a spathiphyllum. i thought it looked green & also like many house plants i have seen in 90s family sitcoms.

i didn't know it was a peace lily. but that is OK.

the salesman told me it was called a "closet plant," but i can't find any reference to the plant being called that on the internet.

he also gave me a rose, which was an act of kindness i really needed. it gave me joy, and i don't think i've ever received joy from an interaction with a stranger before.

later i felt cycnical like the rose was given so i would be happy and would ignore that i was being overcharged. but even if that was the case, the moment of joy was worth it, i think.

for now it is in my office, where there are no windows.



i will have to take it out and expose it to sunlight — like walking a dog.

i read an article about a year ago on how humans are becoming more and more emotionally dependent on their pets. i can't do that.

48. MAKE TAPES

you are probably bored with me. or annoyed. i am these things with myself as well. i am sorry for so much.

anyway.

i'm making a tape. there is a girl i've been writing letters to. my penpal. i have been writing letters & not mailing them. i don't know why.

i am making her a tape of me talking about ideas and reading poems. i am going to carry around the tape with me on some of my adventures this weekend. then i will mail the tape to new orleans. and i found an extra tape recorder in the newsroom, so i am going to mail that to her too so we can send tapes to each other.

this is me lecturing on accouuntability at like 4 a.m. or something. i cannot imagine myself ever looking like this.



i admit i played the tape back to hear myself wax. i was surprised i didn't sound as inarticulate than i thought i would, although i do say "like" a lot. when did that start?

and to make this post even more about myself and not the outside world, let me quote myself from the tape:

"i just can't believe so many people live these terrible lives and why anybody believes this is how life should be. obviously we all live in this system where we are completely unhappy and yet so many people think this is the best evolution has to offer us. ... i've had a hard time reaching out to others. ... if i could i would just be by myself all the time. ... i know that there's not a normal way to be and there's not a normal amount of socializing a person should do. ... like i really am a firm believer in the collective unconscious and people belonging to one large kin group. ... i believe community is really important and i'm not really aligning my actions with my beliefs in that sense. ... while it's not a way to live i wanted so badly to try to live with other people umm and like figure out what it is to live within a community and be a part a community even if it is like within my own apartment. sigh. like. i don't want my epitaph to read: didn't play well with others. ugh. so."

then i read her some letters from dear everybody.

47. DO YOUR JOB EVEN WHEN YOU DON'T WANT TO

like i said, hard week.

the entire office is performing poorly tonight.

but i'm not going to lose my cool.

we are all going through a lot of tough stuff, i think.

this is why all managers should be women, i think.

46. SWIM SWIM SWIM

i feel at home in the water. my mom taught me to hold my breath in one of those baby swim classes when i was only 3 months old. however, i've almost drowned thrice.

it's what i'm doing to destress, because i am literally too stressed to do yoga/meditate. too much stuff surfaces. i saw my professor at the natatorium. felt awkward. when i'm there i'm there to do it and do one thing. i'm single-minded & don't want any other things to confront--such as social anxiety.



it's nice when you're in the water to feel like you aren't weighted down.

45. CUT LOSSES

if you know me, you know what. it's going to be a hard week.

44. WEAR A MASK WHEN SICK

to prevent the spread of infectious disease.

it works. an australian study said so.

people are looking at me weird. but i don't care. i'm doing them a favor.

43. TURN BREAKDOWNS INTO BREAKTHROUGHS

this is an idea i took from tim ferriss' blog. he wrote that 4-hr workweek book, which i haven't read but read about.

today was hard. i am sick and had insomnia the night before. i really started to question everything. i feel stuck in a bad living situation and i feel like there is always more to do/more i could be doing at work. as a result, my schooling is suffering. i'm in one of those candle burning at both ends situations.

and i've stopped trying to keep up some of my goals. i've let go of a lot of self-restraint. i've allowed myself to be unkind to others. i even went out of my way to be unkind at one point. i've stopped working out. i've been eating poorly. when i'm driving, i'm speeding and honking. and i've stopped being consistent with my blog.

i am really losing my ability to see beautifully and optimistically.

how long has it been since new year's? Six weeks? is this the breaking point? i think this is the time when lotsa people start walking away from their goals. i don't want to do that, though. i really want to stick with this.

i need to talk a small amount of time for myself each day.

i need to eat nutritious raw vegan food.

i need to schedule in efficiency breaks.

i need to keep my energy up, and i need to work off stress so i don't divert those energies into negativity.

i don't know how to balance restraint with liberation. if i could have it my way i would be hopped up and dancing naked all the time. but i stop liking myself after spending too much time with that sort of hedonism.

why does hedonism have a bad connotation as a word?

anyway, this is incoherent, but this post is about keeping trying keeping on and on and not giving up.

i think all my posts are like that.

this blog is existential suicide.