Yes, I’ve Been Avoiding You

Frankly, because I have nothing nice to say, and even I’m tiring of my incessant whining. Things are, sadly, pretty status quo. I did go to the physical therapy school open house, and I could get excited about the chance, if it weren’t for figuring out how to go to school full-time and be able to earn a living. Suggestions are welcome.

So you know that cliché advice, if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say anything at all?

Well, I’ve decided that I won’t be blogging until I have something nice to say.

We’ll see how long this silence lasts.

How to Get Out of a Bad Mood

Yeah, I'll own it: the past few weeks I've been a bit of a bitch -- to my husband, my family, to strangers on the street -- and often for no apparent reason other than I feel like it.

It's not cool, I know, and I try my hardest to stifle it, but sometimes it gets the better of me. I'm not dumb enough to think that purposefully hurting others will make myself feel better, so I'm not sure why I let myself get away with such antics. Just because parts of my life suck right now doesn't give me license to act this way. Plus, it makes this blog -- purported to be about beauty and comfort -- a total trick. There's nothing beautiful or comforting about the way I've been acting.

So I set out to change it. How? By turning to the Internet. (Much like that kid in the most recent Google commercial.) Here are a few gems I found. (Sorry, did that sound bitchy?)

• Do yoga
• Listen to relaxing music 
• Start a blog 
• Spend time with people who make you laugh

Well, I've done all those things... I go to yoga at least once a week; I'm currently listening to some David Darling, and all it's doing is making me wish I was at a spa; um, hello! -- blogging right now! -- and finally, my husband, who I see on a daily basis, can be quite funny (most of the time).

And as I'm sure you can gather, none of these "tips and tricks" have worked. So short of asking my doctor for some Lexapro, I'm at a loss of how to get out of this what-feels-like-a-month-long funk.

I wonder: How do you get out of a bad mood? 

And it doesn't need to be beautiful or comforting advice. Who knows, maybe what I really need is to punch someone in the face.

2013 Was Going to Be My Year

That is soooooo not the case.

I had such a crumby 2012 that I was convinced 2013 would be great. It had to be -- it was owed to me. I started the year off hopeful, but by February, it was quite clear 2013 didn't think it owed me a thing. It started off with receiving some not-so-great-health news, followed by losing my job (six months later I'm still technically unemployed), then my cat died, the IRS came calling for a couple grand due to a prior mix up, and most recently my best friend moved to D.C. Now yesterday, I found out I didn't get this job that I really, really, really wanted.

Wah, wah. 

Sure, there have been a few bright spots, but by and large 2013 has sucked just as bad -- if not more -- than 2012. I'm so ready for 2013 to be over that when people ask my age, I reply 34. (I'm 33.) I don't do it on purpose (unless you're 20, who ever wants to get older?) but I think it just speaks to how ready I am to move on from this year, this age, and this phase of my life.

This all sounds more dire than I really mean it to be. In fact, recapping all of this, I kind of have to laugh (and believe me, I haven't told you everything). Oh, Life, that fickle frenemy. For all the crap it's thrown at me in the last seven months, it's at least shown me that losing your job isn't the end of the world, I'm stronger physically and emotionally than I've ever given myself credit for, and yes, taxes really are as certain as death.

Speaking of strength, I do still have one holdout hope for 2013: this is the year I am determined to do an unassisted pullup -- maybe even two. Trainer Chad keeps telling me he knows I have the strength to do it, I just need to get out of my own head and make it happen. Easier said than done, but I am hopeful.

Photo: CentralMass.org

Enough Already

Yeah, I know it's been a while, but there's nothing like disgust to get one blogging again.

I saw something today that made me sick: Trayvon Martin’s dead body.

The photo, posted by Gawker, was allegedly meant to spark anger, not pageviews. The Root has a great rebuttal to this rationalization, and my cynicism in Gawker’s motives is why I’m not linking to it. (As if I have that many readers!) If you really want to see it, I’m sure you can find it.

I honestly didn't realize that when I clicked on the link from another story that that is what I would see. Though I should have known better, knowing how Gawker Media operates. My immediate reaction was to look away, scroll down so it was out of sight, and close the page. What his family must feel like, knowing this image is out there, open for commentary, I thought. 

The whole thing reminded me of another recent occurrence that involved a graphic photo. A man recently committed suicide by jumping in front of the elevated line in Astoria. The event got very little press, despite the fact that his body parts wound up strewn all over the street. At 4 o’clock in the afternoon. A time that, as some of my Astorian Facebook friends noted, children where headed home from school. Gothamist linked to some tweets that had images of the severed body parts on the street (which is a whole other outrage). My morbid curiosity got the best of me, and I clicked. Then I shrugged. It looked like nothing more than a scene from a horror movie. Yes, I was disgusted with myself for several reasons, but was most struck by my “meh” reaction. Had I become that desensitized to violence?

That image of Trayvon Martin showed me that I had not. Sure, I wasn’t prepared for it, and unlike the Astoria man, Trayvon didn’t choose to die. But by clicking to see either photo, what I showed was disrespect. If I need to see gore that badly, I should go see a horror film. And so the next time I’m confronted with a graphic image of a dead body, I’m not going to look at it, morbid curiosity be damned.

Also, I’m never reading Gawker again.

Daylight Savings Sucks

There is nothing I hate more than being thrown off schedule and that is exactly what daylight savings does. I know I'm not the only one to detest daylight savings -- it turns out cows don't like it much either. Writes Bora Zivkovic in the Scientific American:

Come Sunday morning, when the milking machines get attached to their udders a whole hour too early, the otherwise placid bovines on dairy farms around the United States will snort in surprise and dismay. They may give less milk than usual. They could take days or weeks to get used to the new milking schedules.

Zikovic argues that humans are no different, and that having to "spring forward" and "fall back" every few months not only messes with our sleep and social schedules, but with our life, too:

Chronobiologists who study circadian rhythms know that for several days after the spring-forward clock resetting – and especially that first Monday – traffic accidents increase, workplace injuries go up and, perhaps most telling, incidences of heart attacks rise sharply. Cases of depression also go up.

While I had no idea chronobiologists exist, I can attest that, personally, that first Monday after springing-forward is mired in grumpiness and clumsiness as my body adjusts to beginning its work an hour earlier than usual.

So why do we do it? Zikovic sees no good reason, calling b.s. on the argument that it helps conserve energy. But perhaps even more telling, Zikovic points out that we still do daylight savings because no one seems to know who has authority over abolishing this ancient rule.

So looks like we'll be doing DST until the cows come home.

If You Mess With the Bull...

The other day, I came up with what I think is simply the best simile for my life as it is now. (I am of course, biased at its awesomeness.)

For various reasons, my current state of existence is on shaky ground. Things are uncertain (but aren't they always?), unusually challenging, and fraught with frequent doubt.

I feel like I keep making strides and then Life intervenes and says, "Oh, that? Yeah, no, that's not happening," without even so much as a "sorry," or even an explanation for why. It's like when I was kid and would whine to my father about how his denial of whatever thing it was I wanted at the time was soooooo unfair. "Well, life's not fair," he would reply, which I never found to be a valid explanation. It would just leave me feeling frustrated, angry and dejected, much like I tend to feel these days.

But unlike when I was kid, I am choosing to be defiant. No, you say? Well, I'm going to ignore that and continue on as planned.

And so I feel like I'm taunting a bull, which is either going to huff at me through its nostrils and walk away or completely ram me, possibly gutting me in the process.

Graphic, sure, but good one, no?

Photo: Drawing In

Stop Giving It Away for Free, People

This is my open letter to all of you who "write for free": 

In short, quit it.

Stop giving away your writing talent -- and I use that term loosely -- because every time you do, you diminish the profession, and my already blackened heart dies a little more inside.

Why the rant? Because today was the third time in as many weeks that I heard, "I won't pay for content." (A word I despise, for the record. Articles! The written word! Please, anything but content.) I've heard this from web entrepreneurs and high-level directors of large media corporations alike, who see how crowd sourcing content (ugh) works for traffic giants like HuffPo and Forbes, brand image be damned. And sure, it makes sense from a business standpoint: why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

But every time they say it, I take it as personal as if they just insulted my mother. Because I wanted this career for as long as I can remember. I trained for it. I studied and practiced it. I deserve to have that commitment respected and rewarded. Because right now, it feels like I trained my whole life to be an Olympic wrestler to only have someone tell me, "Yeah... We're not really doing that anymore."

Look, I get it: A lot of people harbor dreams of being a "writer" and go to any means necessary to be called one. And I don't want to discourage anyone from that dream because some of you are probably (maybe) even good at it. But for the love of god and my student loan payments that saddled me with this now seemingly worthless journalism degree, please stop saying you'll write for free just for the sake of getting published and having a few clips. Any editor worth his salt knows that it ain't hard to get published on Huffington Post and likely won't take those clips seriously anyway. You're better off starting your own blog and monetizing that -- because by doing it any other way you're just ruining it for the rest of us, and ultimately, yourself.

I mean, even prostitutes get paid, don't they? 

Photo: Pacific Ties