distracting.

This is starting with me, standing in the middle of my apartment, saying outloud to myself, GURL stop your fucking around!

I finished all of my work by 5pm today, which isn't usual. I used to feel like I couldn’t work in libraries and coffee shops - I thought they were too distracting for me. But I've been diligently working in them the past few weeks, and it turns out that the opposite is true. When I sit myself down in a coffee shop and tell myself I’m working there until X time, I get a lot done.

We’re heading up to Wisconsin for the weekend, as soon as J gets home. Everything is done on my to do list, I washed the dishes, I packed a bag, and then I started pacing around looking for more THINGS I NEED TO DO. All the while ignoring that one last little thing on my to do list: write a blog post.

Anyway, I’m here here here.

I’m working on things lately like sitting up straight, getting my shoulders that are jammed up to my ears to relax, meditating, belly breathing. It’s hard to figure out how to make my body and my brain relax when they need to.

I picked up a used copy of one of Marcella Hazan’s cookbooks this week and read it on the couch last night. I know about her because of her tomato sauce and her smothered cabbage. It’s a good book to look through when winter is coming (ugh, I wish I and everyone else would stop saying that……….but I can’t). Anyway, I love being reminded how food and eating it can be full of rituals. I love having a way of doing things, something specific to who you are, however you define that. And I love simple food cooked with lots of good butter.

I’m doing a lot of things right now, mostly working and studying, which seems to mean that I’m spending a lot of time staring at a computer screen. I started reading Essentialism (self-help! so good, so bad, can’t stop) this week. I’m turning over this idea that life is about trade-offs and that we need to stop telling ourselves we can do it all or have it all. Instead, we should decide which trade-offs we’ll accept, instead of letting them be chosen for us. I have some work to do there.

It’s not that late, but it got dark while I was writing, and I had to get up to turn on a lamp. It’s cool today, and the radiators in our building turned on last night, so it’s steamy and clanky in here. I’m thinking about writing, and I’m writing. So there’s that.