getting back in the journaling saddle
Hello, livejournal land! Or should I say "Hello Cyn," because she's really the only one here... which is awesome, by the way. I mean, not that she's the only one, but that she is here! We went years without really talking and I was so excited to reconnect, and I love reading her journal every day. We've only had a chance to chat in real time--just like the old days!--a couple times so far, but it's nice having her journal to keep up with what's going on her life. :) Boy I missed her! Over the past few weeks I've been meaning to get back to journal-writing myself, partly because I've enjoyed reading Cyn's so much, and partly because this used to be my THING, you know?
There are certain things that used to be such a part of me that I've neglected lately, or that just aren't really a part of my life anymore. One being Blue Man Group, which I half "outgrew" and half fell away from because the nature of the fan community that made it so special deteriorated over the years. Nothing was ever quite like the original BMMB! The new facebook group is fun, but most of the people on there that I still feel a connection to have been my facebook friends all along. Funny how rarely any of us ever post about BMG though, so it's kinda fun to take a little stroll down memory lane. I'm willing to bet that there are as many photos of me with dudes in blue makeup as there are photos of me with normal people, haha.
Another thing I've lost touch with is music--I haven't written a song in years, and I barely touch any of my instruments. I miss my college days when music was basically the center of my life, between my music major, chorus, orchestra, harp lessons, and Caffe Lena. I think unrequited love and loneliness was a driving force for a lot of my songwriting, so I suppose I'm glad that I don't have that sort of motivation anymore, but I do miss being so drawn to playing/writing music.
I guess part of it is just falling into a routine, and oftentimes having enough time to get stuff done like housekeeping and catching up on favorite TV shows, but not the big expanses of time that eventually led to the kind of boredom that makes you find stuff to do, you know what I mean? Like if you just have a few hours after work, it's easy to just read emails and watch some TV and before you know it, it's bedtime. And living with another person takes up time, too--not in a bad way, but like, it's different than having all your free time be yours and yours alone.
Today I have the day off work and of course, being a Tuesday, Jesse's at work. I can't say I've gotten much done (yet), but being the person that I am, sometimes I really do just need a good stretch of time to myself to "reset." In my piano tech shop jobs back in MA, I pretty much got that at work, because oftentimes I was working alone and could zone out with podcasts or CDs all day. I'm not sure I thought of it that way before, but it was like built-in alone time. My job now (as a receptionist at an animal hospital) is pretty much the opposite, since most of the time I'm answering phones or helping customers--there's a certain amount of work that doesn't involve dealing with people (inventory, cleaning, and auditing charts), but even then I have to be prepared to be interrupted at all times. Just a bit of a different scenario that my piano tech jobs or even my bill-auditing job in NH (which was, for the most part, solo paper-pushing). I do really like all the details and organization involved with being a receptionist, though, and I get to see cute dogs/cats every day. I think it's something I could see myself doing indefinitely, especially since the parts that are harder for me (all the phone stuff, responding to tough situations) get easier the more I do them. The scheduling is great for some things (three days off a week, easy to get certain days off when needed and without using PTO) and not so great for others (hard to commit to a weekly class or activity, working some weekends). But overall the job is a good fit for me, and I don't have to deal with all of the self-employed stuff that comes with trying to make my tuning business a full-time thing. I think for me it's better for that to be a side-job, at least if it's tuning only--I've always preferred shop work to tuning, but couldn't find any shop-work jobs out here. Maybe someday when we get a house I'll be able to have my own little shop in a garage, or something.
Anyway, life is pretty good despite my feeling a little disconnected from my old self and some of the stuff I've really liked doing in the past (including little stuff like video games and cross-stitching). We've lived in Colorado for over a year now and we really like it here. It's much sunnier than back East, Jesse loves his job (and his short, easy commute), people are nice, and we can see ourselves living here a long time. We're hoping to start house-hunting this summer, after the wedding.
Speaking of which, we're getting married in June and that's pretty awesome. :) We just got our invitations today and they look really nice--there's a lot we have to do before they actually make it into the mail, but having them here is a pretty big thing to cross off our list. Most of the big things are crossed off, and it's down to the details... and there sure are a lot of those to figure out before June! My shower and bachelorette party are in late April and I'm really excited for that, because I haven't seen a few of those gals in a long time! All of my/our visits back East since moving out to CO have been kind of hectic, since there's always so much wedding planning to squeeze in... This trip will be much the same, but at least there will be a few days in there where the only plan is to spend time with my bridal party and have a good time. :)
The weekend before the shower, I've got a 5k to run... I signed up for this maybe a month ago with good intentions but have only gone for two runs (last week) since then and at this point I definitely won't be all that prepared for the race. I ran my first 5k early December (after 12 weeks of training, using a specific program)--the first time I've ever done anything like that, and I even ran the whole time! I could never even do the mile in gym class fitness tests without walking, haha. Anyway, after that 5k I took a little break and it became kind of a big break, because I lost the momentum of training, and I guess let myself give up on it over the winter. I don't think winter is quite over yet but at the same time, the last few days we have had record highs of 75-80 sooooo I can't really use the "but it's cold and icy out!" excuse anymore. So I should go for a run today... According to Cyn's journal, she's kicking butt on her (clunky--doh!) new elliptical, so I should take her lead and get back to it, right?
Ummm I think that's probably all of the updates I can think of. For some reason I always feel like I need to recap and fill in the blanks since my last entry (which in this case was a couple years ago!); I think it's part of my perfectionist nature. But I should try to just like, write what I want to and not what I think I "have" to, from now on, yeah? I'm gonna try!
Until next time!
There are certain things that used to be such a part of me that I've neglected lately, or that just aren't really a part of my life anymore. One being Blue Man Group, which I half "outgrew" and half fell away from because the nature of the fan community that made it so special deteriorated over the years. Nothing was ever quite like the original BMMB! The new facebook group is fun, but most of the people on there that I still feel a connection to have been my facebook friends all along. Funny how rarely any of us ever post about BMG though, so it's kinda fun to take a little stroll down memory lane. I'm willing to bet that there are as many photos of me with dudes in blue makeup as there are photos of me with normal people, haha.
Another thing I've lost touch with is music--I haven't written a song in years, and I barely touch any of my instruments. I miss my college days when music was basically the center of my life, between my music major, chorus, orchestra, harp lessons, and Caffe Lena. I think unrequited love and loneliness was a driving force for a lot of my songwriting, so I suppose I'm glad that I don't have that sort of motivation anymore, but I do miss being so drawn to playing/writing music.
I guess part of it is just falling into a routine, and oftentimes having enough time to get stuff done like housekeeping and catching up on favorite TV shows, but not the big expanses of time that eventually led to the kind of boredom that makes you find stuff to do, you know what I mean? Like if you just have a few hours after work, it's easy to just read emails and watch some TV and before you know it, it's bedtime. And living with another person takes up time, too--not in a bad way, but like, it's different than having all your free time be yours and yours alone.
Today I have the day off work and of course, being a Tuesday, Jesse's at work. I can't say I've gotten much done (yet), but being the person that I am, sometimes I really do just need a good stretch of time to myself to "reset." In my piano tech shop jobs back in MA, I pretty much got that at work, because oftentimes I was working alone and could zone out with podcasts or CDs all day. I'm not sure I thought of it that way before, but it was like built-in alone time. My job now (as a receptionist at an animal hospital) is pretty much the opposite, since most of the time I'm answering phones or helping customers--there's a certain amount of work that doesn't involve dealing with people (inventory, cleaning, and auditing charts), but even then I have to be prepared to be interrupted at all times. Just a bit of a different scenario that my piano tech jobs or even my bill-auditing job in NH (which was, for the most part, solo paper-pushing). I do really like all the details and organization involved with being a receptionist, though, and I get to see cute dogs/cats every day. I think it's something I could see myself doing indefinitely, especially since the parts that are harder for me (all the phone stuff, responding to tough situations) get easier the more I do them. The scheduling is great for some things (three days off a week, easy to get certain days off when needed and without using PTO) and not so great for others (hard to commit to a weekly class or activity, working some weekends). But overall the job is a good fit for me, and I don't have to deal with all of the self-employed stuff that comes with trying to make my tuning business a full-time thing. I think for me it's better for that to be a side-job, at least if it's tuning only--I've always preferred shop work to tuning, but couldn't find any shop-work jobs out here. Maybe someday when we get a house I'll be able to have my own little shop in a garage, or something.
Anyway, life is pretty good despite my feeling a little disconnected from my old self and some of the stuff I've really liked doing in the past (including little stuff like video games and cross-stitching). We've lived in Colorado for over a year now and we really like it here. It's much sunnier than back East, Jesse loves his job (and his short, easy commute), people are nice, and we can see ourselves living here a long time. We're hoping to start house-hunting this summer, after the wedding.
Speaking of which, we're getting married in June and that's pretty awesome. :) We just got our invitations today and they look really nice--there's a lot we have to do before they actually make it into the mail, but having them here is a pretty big thing to cross off our list. Most of the big things are crossed off, and it's down to the details... and there sure are a lot of those to figure out before June! My shower and bachelorette party are in late April and I'm really excited for that, because I haven't seen a few of those gals in a long time! All of my/our visits back East since moving out to CO have been kind of hectic, since there's always so much wedding planning to squeeze in... This trip will be much the same, but at least there will be a few days in there where the only plan is to spend time with my bridal party and have a good time. :)
The weekend before the shower, I've got a 5k to run... I signed up for this maybe a month ago with good intentions but have only gone for two runs (last week) since then and at this point I definitely won't be all that prepared for the race. I ran my first 5k early December (after 12 weeks of training, using a specific program)--the first time I've ever done anything like that, and I even ran the whole time! I could never even do the mile in gym class fitness tests without walking, haha. Anyway, after that 5k I took a little break and it became kind of a big break, because I lost the momentum of training, and I guess let myself give up on it over the winter. I don't think winter is quite over yet but at the same time, the last few days we have had record highs of 75-80 sooooo I can't really use the "but it's cold and icy out!" excuse anymore. So I should go for a run today... According to Cyn's journal, she's kicking butt on her (clunky--doh!) new elliptical, so I should take her lead and get back to it, right?
Ummm I think that's probably all of the updates I can think of. For some reason I always feel like I need to recap and fill in the blanks since my last entry (which in this case was a couple years ago!); I think it's part of my perfectionist nature. But I should try to just like, write what I want to and not what I think I "have" to, from now on, yeah? I'm gonna try!
Until next time!