SO important to remember...

I stumbled across this image recently - I can't for the life of me remember where, now - and it is something that is so, so key for me to remember as I go through life, trending towards harshness on myself and as a by-product, on others. No one is amazing at everything. But we're all amazing at something.

tsk!

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I had a whole post written, apparently didn't save the draft appropriately and now it's gone. And I wouldn't do it justice trying to re-write it from memory. So I'm going to have to try again tomorrow. Well-played Tuesday, not even 8 am and this day is starting out less-than-ideal...grumble, grumble, grumble...

back to it!

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Hello Gang! Today is a Monday, and today is the day that  I brought with me my gear, and my dedication to getting back to working out. After a youth of being advised to try this sport, try that sport, I completely and wholly despised the idea of being fit - sports were always presented as a means to keep one healthy and my parents - who presumably enjoyed competitive sports in their youths - considered them to be a fun way to bond with your peers and maintain a healthy lifestyle. I hate competition (why yes I did move to New York City, not for school but to work, does that not jive with your image of a non-competitive person?), and when someone is watching me - even over my shoulder in a workplace - everything comes slower and I second-guess my every move and I become a nervous, twitching disaster. So you can imagine the sort of participant I was in any number of those team sports. I didn't even like tennis because I was always fairly sure my opponent was constantly annoyed by how our games would start-stop, start-stop as I missed ball after ball. I did enjoy swimming growing up.... (Wonderfully solo. I didn't even mind that everyone outside of a pool could see that I swim how I walk - which is to say in diagonals. I'm a veer-er.) When all I have to focus on is me, I can excel to great heights. The trouble is that life is not lived in a vacuum. ;)

Anyway, in college, I discovered the gym. And I loved it. I discovered weight training classes and kickboxing classes and aerobics classes and classes focused on ab work and lunges and I actually became quite dedicated. I discovered weight lifting in a sweaty room populated almost entirely by guys, though always with one dedicated gal lunging her away across the floor. And I loved watching my body transform and gain strength and feel capable. Physically capable to lift a weight I couldn't have lifted previously, to do the harder oblique work, to do the extra push up. I loved feeling my body grow and gain abilities. I would have competitions with real athletes in my dorm to see who could hold a plank longer, and the competition felt fun, not forced. The endorphins didn't hurt either, I'll admit. But my gym enjoyment fell away after college. A lot of it was my social circle, after college my friends in the working world didn't find going to the gym together to be a fun way to spend an hour or two. Plus, once the gym wasn't covered in tuition, most couldn't scrape up the cash to join one.

Still, all the past aside, today I am happy to say that I am excited to find that familiar rush of doing, that familiar soreness of muscles that will surely come tomorrow. I'm excited to march out to the weight room populated with dudes, nod to my fellow sweaty-weight-room gal who will surely be lunging around back there, trip on over to the smallest side of the weights rack, and start toning up. While my fellow sisters slog away on treadmills I will work on building back up the lean muscle mass I know is still lurking down there...someplace. I have faith it's been waiting all these years to return my body to its most capable state, and I'm excited to help it emerge. Happy Monday all!

Awesome

A coworker sent me this. I had to share it. Hilarity.

swirly

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This morning I was walking to work on rain-slicked streets - the air claustrophobic, heavy with humidity - when I happened to look down and see the dirty sheen of the city. Under my feet, iridescent in its twists and turns and swirls, was a layer of oil, slicked out over the cement, and visible in its reflection on the dampened sidewalks. As I am a magpie in human form I found the images beautiful, breathtaking almost in their hidden colors and glitter, visible only when the skies and city are all damp, gloomy and gray. But, in reality, that's a pretty disgusting thing to exist - when the actual facts are examined. Yet its funny - even with visible oil, grime, garbage, excrement, with air so thick with pollutants and smog that I may have literally developed a skin condition, and with so many people constantly fighting, pulsing, pushing and rushing - this city exists within its own pulse, with its own level of better-than-you importance, and its almost an otherworldly experience to be a part of it. Because some weeks its nearly impossible to take a breath and remember where you are. But once you do, you're pretty impressed you've come this far. Happy Friday!

for no reason at all....

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this image just struck me this morning. Maybe it's the grey skies and soggy air, but for some reason the peachy color with black overlay randomly reminds me of the browns, golds and oranges of the living room in my grandfather's house - all burnt colors of 70's chic - but coupled oh-so-glamourously with her lacquered hair and painted on face. And in the baby doll cut of the gown I see little figurines perched just so along the mantlepiece of little-child pharmacists and mothers in the sort of ceramic styling that surely was popular in the 60's. In sum, just a little something my eye found pretty this morning. Hope you enjoy!

childhood revisited....

 As all my childhood friends, and family members, can tell you - I was obsessed with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." I will forever love Sarah Michelle Gellar as a direct relation to my dedication to the show. As someone who also read the first of the "Twilight" series a few years ago for a book club and found the insipid "forbidden love" story irritating beyond words (although please bear in mind I am also a very single girl in her late-twenties who seemingly daily teeters ever-nearer the brink of cynical bitterness regarding the lore of successful relationships. I openly admit this), I was tickled pink when I saw this image. With which I whole-heartedly agree.Happy Wednesday all!