Tag Archives: vote

Things to Do When Everything Feels Terrible

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If you’re like me and have been living in the sadness –> outrage –> dumbfounded –> rage –> sadness cycle for the last couple weeks, this past weekend has probably felt like the worst cherry on top of the shittiest sundae in hell.

Everything is just awful.

I’ll be honest – I thought I’d felt the worst of it after election night in 2016… boy howdy was I wrong. I suppose that, as bad as 2016 felt, there was still a sliver of hope that perhaps our elected officials would protect us from the inevitable insanity of the incoming administration. Now, it’s evident, that they will not – and we will have to live with those consequences for decades. I am incredibly disappointed in the shortsightedness of the leadership in Congress, and my heart is broken for every survivor who has put his or her story into the world and hasn’t been believed, has been laughed at, and has been told their trauma doesn’t matter.

Getting out of this rage cycle has been difficult – and isn’t being made better by the fact that everything else this weekend seems to be imploding too (I’m referring to the Packers, because good grief this game is painful to watch). Football is usually a good way for me to distract myself… but apparently not today. THANKS, GREEN BAY.

So, instead of football, I’m relying on a few other tried-and-true things to help me feel a little less despairing about what is happening in the world.

Baking

This is an easy one – I’m tapping in to my sourdough recipes and making some loaves to share. This particular recipe is actually one from my mom, so it’s special in that way, too. Anything that reminds me of my mama is a good way to make me feel better. Since I’m still alone for another month and half, I can’t eat two loaves of bread by myself in a timely enough fashion, so I’m sharing the fruits of my frustrations with my coworkers. Few things are better than fresh, home-baked bread. That’s a fact.

Westworld

Clay and I watched season one of Westworld when it came out last year (or the year before? I can’t remember.) but when season two started, life was just a bit too hectic to find time to sit down and watch it. I’ve found that’s generally the case with most shows on tv – I’m either too busy, or I’m prioritizing sleep, but I don’t have (or make) time to watch tv when it’s on. So. Clay and I decided to “watch” Westworld together while he’s gone – though he finished season two this weekend, so I’m currently working on catching up. It’s not exactly and uplifting show, but it is REALLY good, so it works for the distraction-from-reality thing.

The Gym

This should come as no surprise to anyone, but the gym is the place I go to take a break. Nearly every day, I know I can go in there and just focus on the work I need to get done. Each workout is a task – and I can just put my head down and grind until I get every task completed. This past week, the gym and the people I work out with have been necessary in finding something positive in every day. Lifting heavy things and getting my heart rate up are also just really good outlets for the aforementioned rage – it’s pretty good fuel when you need it.

Registering to VoteI’m registered, but I’m doing my damnedest to make sure everyone around me is, too. Helping people make a plan to get to the polls or securing their absentee ballots if they will be out of town. Election Day is less than a month away. The only hope I have to hang on to now is that come November, we will see some big changes in Congress. Something has to give – where we are right now is untenable. It won’t happen without people actually showing up to the polls. If we want change, we have to make it ourselves.

Anyways. This post has little to do with running – and I’m sure plenty of readers aren’t interested in hearing (reading) my politics, but avoiding what’s happening right now is a pretty privileged position. I’m not going to give up, even though right now it feels like we are in the darkest timeline.

We may very well be, but to quote Albus Dumbledore, “Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light.”

I’m choosing to find and be a light.

2017 Goals: Revisited

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It may seem a bit premature to be revisiting my goals for 2017 and beyond, knowing we still have a month and a half left of this year. However, I like to think of this review as a last-ditch effort to accomplish as many of my goals as possible before 2017 ticks away and we welcome a new year.

TO REVIEW. I wrote about my goals in this post.

“We hear so much talk about #newyearnewme that is almost seems like a requirement that we all resolve to be skinnier or stronger or whatever. I have a hard time with that, because 1. The me that I am right now seems pretty okay, and 2. Shouldn’t we focus more on being a better human being and making meaningful changes in our lives than just the superficial?

Similarly, I don’t think the beginning of the year has cornered the market on when we’re allowed to set goals. Who says you can’t make resolutions at the end of January, or in May or in August? No one, that’s who.”

My mindset now is pretty much the same as my mindset back in January. I’m still working on being a better human in general – a process that I’m pretty sure should never end. It’s always a work in progress.

Some of the goals I set for myself are super easy to measure. Others are a little more subjective. But, let’s see where I’m at, so that I can see what I can work on through the holiday season.

Goal #1: Get More Sleep

I would love to say that this has been a rousing (or not?) success. Unfortunately, that hasn’t been the case. I haven’t been terrible at sleeping, but I haven’t been nearly as dedicated to achieving 7+ hours of sleep a night as I probably should be. I’m always working on this – this weekend for example, I was in bed at 8pm on Saturday night. Mind you, I didn’t go to sleep until around 10, but I was allowing my body to relax and that felt good. As it starts getting darker earlier, getting to bed earlier will be easier. I will do my best to use this to my advantage.

Goal #2: Read More Books

Going hand in hand with getting to bed earlier was making time to read more – I used to be a card-carrying bookworm as a kid, but since college, I haven’t made as much time for reading as I should. I had a goal of reading 30 books in 2017. I think I’ve read… *counts* eight or nine. Fail. Well, maybe not a total fail – I still technically have read more books in 2017 than I read in 2016, so that’s a win. Of those eight books, three were Game of Thrones books, and honestly those should count for at least three books… each. They are effing long. Great, but long. Oof. I’m in the middle of Celeste Ng’s Little Fires Everywhere right now and I’m really enjoying it. Happy to be back on the book train and totally riding it into 2018.

Goal #3: Balance My Workouts

I definitely worked on this one all year – mixing up my weightlifting with running and Kaza, and now making the jump to CrossFit. CrossFit has definitely given me balance without my having to think about it. Since each workout incorporates cardio work along with strength, I feel like the hour I spend in the gym nearly every day is well-spent and I feel a lot less guilty about missing a workout or taking a rest day (or two) because I know that my body needs the break.

Goal #4: Get More Involved in My Community

Ugh, you guys, this one is a hard fail. I hate admitting that. After the election last year, and after the Women’s March, I was so jacked to fight back through activism and involvement. But, aside from keyboard activism, and voting in my local elections, I have yet to really get involved locally. I can make excuses, but that’s all they’d be. I’ve been educating myself a lot in the last year. Time to turn that outward.

Goal #5: Adjust My Five Year Plan

This goal just makes me laugh out loud. Literally. I think I’ve changed or adjusted my five year plan about four times, significantly, in the last 10 months. Some of that has been because my priorities have changed, but mostly it has to do with external factors dictating some of that five year picture for me. Military life, you guys, it’s a bucket of surprises. Planning anything becomes an exercise in extreme patience and flexibility – something I’m not always good at, but am constantly trying to improve. Perhaps a new goal would be to work on being more tolerant of things that are not within my control. Yes. I think that’s it.

As I said in my post from January, these goals aren’t necessarily time-stamped, and they certainly don’t have an expiration date. I’ve just been trying to mindfully working on them little by little all the time. I will continue to do so through the next month and a half and as 2018 begins, I will have more goals to add, I’m sure.

Did you set goals for 2017? How successful have you been at keeping them? What challenges have you faced?