Working out

I like working out, to some extent.

By that I mean I like the way it makes me look and feel. My muscles are tighter. They feel more powerful and thus I feel more powerful. Plus it makes me look all sleek and svelte (as sleek and svelte as I get) and helps me do stuff like fit into that size 6 dress I bought from Target last year. Then there's stuff like the pink cheeked glow that I try to recreate with blush every day, or the satisfaction that comes from knowing I got up and moved instead of just sitting around, pretending that extra hour of sleep actually did me any good. Plus, sometimes I just need to move, need to work out the restless kinks in my body and mind, push the bad feelings out with every pound of my foot on the pavement or cycle of the elliptical.

So I think of these things, and then I go to work out. Like today when I tried to work out in my backyard with the Nike Training App on my phone. I felt like an idiot, but did it anyway, in full view of my mom, sister, and neighbors. Not to mention my dog, who decided to gleefully run toward me and sit on my phone, turning off the app as I struggled to do modified push-ups. Which brings me to my next point....

I also hate working out.

I'm not sure if it's the same for me as it is for everyone, because I feel like "omg I hate working out" always comes from people who cannot possibly hate it as much as I do. First, I look stupid doing it. I know this. I know that a lot of people also look stupid trying to run, but growing up with a sister like mine who looks like a freaking gazelle every time she begins running (seriously, all graceful and natural-like) and going to the gym and seeing similarly graceful athletes is enough to make me supremely self-conscious of how much effort it takes for me to avoid looking like...well I don't even know what. But it's very awkward, I'll tell you that. Combine how dumb I look with how bad I am at performing any physical activity and you get step two of why I hate working out. I can never get the breathing quite right, and thus have very little stamina. My muscles can handle the exertion, my lungs can't. Take today, for example. My chest hurt, my stomach hurt from all the panting, and since it was outside and I was cold that part of my mouth below my tongue was throbbing like crazy. I couldn't catch my breath. For the trifecta: I give up too easily. I start to feel crappy, wonder why I'm even work out in the first place, then throw in the towel.

Today was salvaged by a power walk around the park. Not sure what I'm going to do about tomorrow.

Till then...

Hello, Blog

I'm being a lame-o and not really blogging as much as I should. And of course, this "should" is self-imposed and in no way reflects any actual blog rules or regulations. Are there even such things? Probably not.

I think my main problem is that I self-edit too much. When I think about stuff to write, I end up thinking about how embarrassed I'd be if someone I knew read it, or if someone I blogged about read it, or....well you get the idea. Basically, I have a fear of not fitting into the blogosphere. I have anxiety about something, who'da thunk?

But really, though, I'm going to try to change all that. Starting right this very second. This is an empty promise, as you know, because I've made it a million times before. But this time I'm not promising to be a better blogger or a better writer or a better friend or anything FROM NOW ON or any other delusional grandiose statements. I'm just going to write a lengthy post right now and see what I feel like doing tomorrow.

This weekend was strange, mostly because it's the weekend before finals and I'm doing that thing where I feel like I should be stressing because everyone else is...but I really don't have anything to be nervous about until probably Tuesday or so. My only test is on Friday. I'm not really one to study for something WEEKS in advance, a few days will do. Tomorrow (today, I guess...) I have my fiction portfolio due. I finished my short story and compiled all my drafts and my short shorts for my portfolio. I'm not sure I'm 100% proud of my stories or not. But I've learned that with both painting and writing, I am too much of a perfectionist. But not in a good way. I work things until I kill them. My painting professor actually has to come up to me and say "Stop. You're done. Put the brush down." Oy. I went through my story today and changed the name of one of my character's dad's colleagues. This character appears in one sentence. I decided it really was important that his name be Richard instead of Jack. How silly. But despite my crazy, I have finally declared it finished. I will print it out in the morning, turn it in, and then hopefully go to the gym. We'll see how that goes.

I feel like that's good for one post. I was going to wax poetic about crushes (and current lack thereof) and various awkward things I've gone lately and maybe even this really cool piano mashup that involves Rebecca Black's "Friday" ...but I think instead I'll watch an episode of "Arrested Development" and go to bed. Fascinating, yes?

My online presence....or lack thereof?

Due to conversations with a very nice professional illustrator I had the pleasure of talking to, it occurs to me that I need to increase my online presence. For the industry I'm hoping to break into, I need all the help I can get. No one's going to promote me; I gotta do it myself.

It's so awkward trying to brag about myself and make up things I could have possibly learned while doing various activities and how those skills would apply to my future career. Or at least what I hope will become my future career. We'll see!

For now I have to be content with finishing up my homework, finalizing selections for the review, listening to throwback Killers songs on my itunes (yay for shuffle...), and trying in vain to avoid giving into the temptation to watch Breakfast at Tiffany's for the second time in two days.

Actually writing a new post...

It's been brought to my attention lately (Liz, Kaitlin...) that I haven't blogged much lately. In fact, I haven't blogged at all for approximately 8 weeks. Which is about how far into this quarter I am. Coincidence? Probably not.
The past eight weeks have been incredibly strange. In good ways, like taking steps to be more of a grown up and in bad ways....like taking steps to be more of a grown up.
What's particularly strange to me is how much everything's changed without anything really changing at all. I've used this analogy before in my writing, but I like it, so I'll say it again: it's like everything is exactly the same as it was before, just moved two inches to the left.
If there was a way for me to sum up the past couple of months in a blog post, I would surely do it. But for now, I think I'll just have to be content with my intent to begin to update this blog more regularly again. Fingers crossed that I'll actually do it...

On Self-Portraits

I'm writing this instead of packing. And because I just went to change the song on my itunes and saw in the next window, my open "Pictures" folder, a sub-folder entitled "self." I was curious, so I clicked on it (sob story of the internet...). I almost laughed at the pictures I found there. Back in the day, I had a brief foray into photography. And by "brief foray" I mean I worked my point-and-shoot canon to the bone in high school and upgraded to a nikon dslr in college. I also mean that I tried really hard to be artsy and took a lot of pictures of flowers. And then went on to upload those pictures to flickr and beg people to pay attention to me. Luckily for everyone I"m over that now (mostly) and tend to opt for taking bazillions of pictures of my unsuspecting friends whenever I re-discover my camera. You're welcome.


Anyway. The point. I found all these old self portraits. I rarely took pictures of myself for various self-deprecating reasons, most of which were simply due to the fact that I was in high school and puberty is a bitch. The rest of them are due to the fact that I hate self portraits, mostly in painting or drawing terms but in photography terms as well. For no real reason, really, other than I hate having to stare at my own face for that long and I hate that everyone can tell when it doesn't turn out as intended. As far as the photography self-portraits went, half of them are too close to my super-smiley face, the other half were me looking away from the camera, being "moody" and "angry" and whatnot. [High school Hallie would be so mad at me right now. Anyway, moving on...] There were also some random pictures of just me that I didn't know where to file (I have an extensive filing system for my pictures that's only half-carried through. Thus I have lots of categories of organization but nothing's really organized into said categories. I'm gong on an awful lot of tangents tonight, my apologies). Right at the end there were two recent pictures of me that I'd taken off my camera and dumped in the appropriate folder.

The difference was both astounding and hilarious; I sat there for a good solid minute just flipping back and forth between a picture of me at probably sixteen and a picture of me from the beginning of the summer. It's not that I look better in either picture, necessarily, I just look different. I remember taking the picture at sixteen. It was supposed to go next to a bio of me for something and thus had to be just me and my smiling face. My mom took the picture. I felt awkward. I didn't know what to do with my arms. Or my hands. Or my face. The result is a shot my mom took of my as I was about to laugh, which I deemed good enough and turned in even though I didn't like it very much. The recent picture was taken this summer, right after I had gotten a haircut. I wanted to send the picture to a friend because the haircut was ever so slightly different than my usual fare and I was feeling sassy and all that. Oh, what a difference a few years make.

That's really the point I'm trying to make here, if I'm trying to make a point at all instead of just aimlessly procrastinating, is that I'm a lot different from the person I was in high school. In a lot of ways. In a lot of good ways. And that's all I have to say about that. 

"Be pretty if you can, be witty if you must, but be gracious if it kills you." - Elsie de Wolfe


Another sample from the aforementioned "Quotes" Word doc...this one came from Matchbook Magazine's facebook page. I recently discovered this charming online magazine and, let me tell you, it has become my guide to life.

Oh. Hi, Blog.

So I haven't been around much lately. I'm not sure whether you noticed or not but I'm going to pretend that I did. I''m not really sure why I've been gone or where I've been. I thought when I started this blog that it would sort of be the dumping grounds for all my super great thoughts. Turns out, I don't have that many great thoughts that I'd like to share with the whole wide internet.

I had some thoughts today, though. I'm not sure if they're internet-worthy, but I'm going to write them down anyway. I'm starting school again in a week. I went to get Chinese food for dinner tonight and as I drove back, with the windows down and the cool summer evening rushing around me and the baseball game on the radio, I thought about my summer. It's been a weird one, not necessarily because anything has or hasn't happened, but because of that blank space in between the two extremes. I'm trying to be deep here and it's not really working, but basically I'm glad that I finally seem to be accepting the fact that everything moves forward, myself included.  

Stay tuned for the remainder of my summer posts...I've been crafty lately and I want to share the stuff I've made with you. :)