Things I Love Friday

Posted on April 13, 2018April 13, 2018 Posted in personal developmentTagged apartment organization, cooking, erin hanson, exercise, Family, fitness, friday, happy hour, health, HomeChef, life, lifestyle, organization, things i loveLeave a comment

So, I was scrolling around on WordPress’s discover page, looking through “fitness” tagged things, and I stumbled upon a blog post by Deborah Mary. Her blog post inspired me to write about something similar. I’m in a weirdly good mood today (ok, it isn’t actually that weird, considering it is Friday), so even though I blogged yesterday, I decided I wanted to do another one today. I think implementing a “Things I Love Friday” would be a fun addition to my regular (albeit inconsistently themed) blogging.
So here goes, let me tell ya about the things I’m lovin’ today. 🙂

Things I’m loving this Friday:

Thursday dinner and happy hour with amazing people. (Of course we did Sake Bombs, I can’t even deny it, so here’s video evidence.)
I had a kind of down day on Wednesday, so when my friend asked if I wanted to meet up for drinks after work I couldn’t say yes fast enough. There’s not many things that can cheer you up quite as good as some quality, stress-free time with your friends. 🙂

Exercising!!! More specifically, squeezing in a great/killer workout before going out and meeting aforementioned friends for sushi and drinks.
I’ve been running a lot more lately, and as I’ve mentioned in previous blogs, I’ve come to love the active life quite a lot! Yesterday’s workout consisted of a 3/4 mile run, followed by another 3/4 of a mile of intervals. 30 seconds of a stationary exercise (squats, lunges, etc.), 30 seconds of fast running, a 30 second walk, then repeat. I did that and by the time I was almost done, I was dying.
I felt great after my workout, and I had just enough time afterwards to rinse off, touch up my makeup, throw my hair in a bun, and head to dinner/drinks! It made for a great start to the rest of the evening!

Family visits. 🙂
My mom, dad, and brother are all coming to visit me this weekend, and I am SO EXCITED. We have a whole day of activities planned tomorrow, and I can’t wait! They’re even bringing our dog, Reagan. (She’s a German Shepard, so obviously that is great news!!)

Poetry books by Erin Hanson are another favorite of mine right now as well. Her poetry follows a rhyming scheme, and I am obsessed with it. I also like that the poems are really long, because I have another poetry book that has primarily short poems, and it’s not as satisfying to read as this one. I’m reading a few poems each day (since they’re so long) and I have yet to finish the book, so that’s pretty awesome. This is her first book, but I have 2 more coming in this weekend. I’m very excited about them!

Home Chef meals! My mom sponsors my newfound love for cooking through her provision of two great meals for me every Wednesday! They come in, I put the ingredients in the fridge, and cook both meals (2 servings each) within a week of getting them. Each recipe has a different “cook by” date, so I cook the one that will go bad sooner, first. (For example, this week I cooked my dish with shrimp first, since shrimp doesn’t last long.) It’s one of my favorite things ever, and I love having something to look forward to every Wednesday. 🙂 It’s absolutely fantastic, and I cannot even express to my mom how grateful for these meals I am. I’m learning a lot about cooking, as well as accumulating a nice assortment of different recipes I can cook again.
If anyone’s interested in signing up, here’s their website. I highly recommend. The recipes are easy enough for a novice (which I am), and the food is fantastic. Below is a pic of some Ranch Chicken Quesadillas I made a few weeks ago, and OH MAN. THEY WERE AMAZING.

The last thing I’m loving this Friday, is having a clean apartment. 🙂
Is that a weird thing to love? No, right? I try to do at least one thing a day to maintain the cleanliness of my (already very clean) apartment. I am a clean person–I put things away immediately when I’m done with it, I never leave dirty dishes in the sink, I don’t have clutter anywhere and am altogether very organized, BUT I still have to clean. By “clean” I mean vacuuming, sweeping, swiffering, wiping down surfaces, dusting, doing laundry, cleaning the litter box, etc.
This week, I did all of those things (except dusting) in my free time after work. Last night alone, I folded laundry, swept, swiffered, and vacuumed. The night before, I cleaned the litter box and swept around it and put sheets in the washing machine. I also watered all of the many many plants on my balcony a couple times this week.
Doing things like that to maintain the appearance and cleanliness of my apartment makes me really happy to come home every day. It also makes me proud of where I live. 🙂

Anyways, there’s my first “Things I Love Friday.” Let me know your thoughts. I had fun with this blog, so I hope it’s even just slightly entertaining to read. (I might have rambled a bit too much at times, though.) ((Whoops.))

xx – A

Freakin’ Poetry, Man

Posted on April 6, 2018April 12, 2018 Posted in personal development, poetryTagged e.h., emotion, erin hanson, feelings, journal, lang leav, mental health, personal, personal development, poem, poet, poetry, thoughtsLeave a comment

“If a poem hasn’t ripped apart your soul: you haven’t experienced poetry.”
-Edgar Allen Poe

It’s such a therapeutic thing for me. I know I’ve said it before, but seriously when my mind feels like it’s spiralling inward, I just try to focus on copying down poems into a journal and it calms me. It centers me. My emotions are no longer fluctuating sporadically, but rather are at the mercy of whatever I am reading and writing in that moment. I zone out and feel whatever the poet wants me to feel, and I absolutely love it. I love it so damn much.

I cooked dinner and drank wine with a friend who is also a fan of poetry last night, and she recommended some poets for me to check out. I wasn’t a huge fan of all of them, but one stood out to me once I started doing some digging–Lang Leav. I had read some of her stuff before, but I never truly immersed myself in her work. Until today.

And holy shit, I am enamored. Her poetry is almost too emotionally powerful for me to read sometimes–it’s insane! I have actually had to sit back and close my journal a few times because I needed to take another minute or two to consider what I had just read.

Small detail, I rarely read an entire poem before I decide to write it down. I tend to read just the title and first few lines, then I start copying it down. This makes it that much more powerful as I figure out what it’s really about as I go along. Some poems take a twist that I didn’t expect, and some are exactly what I expect them to be. I am constantly baffled by poetry’s ability to fluctuate so heavily.

I also don’t just copy down every poem I see. I am actually fairly critical of the things I want to dedicate my time and energy to copying down. They have to make me feel and I have to find a way to really relate to them right now. So lately, I haven’t had any inclination whatsoever to write down any sappy love poems even though I’ve read some truly beautiful ones. They’re not what I want to read right now.

So anyways, here’s some poems that I felt like sharing today. Some are from Lang Leav and the other are from my favorite, Erin Hanson (or “e.h.”).

Enjoy!

xx – A

More Poetry

Posted on April 2, 2018April 17, 2018 Posted in personal development, poetryTagged advice, atticus, blog, erin hanson, feelings, mental health, personal, personal development, poet, poetry, quotes, therapy, thoughts4 Comments

Sorry if this is uninteresting, it’s been such a focus in my life right now, I can’t even go a day without wanting (needing?) to read some poetry. It’s just so soothing, okay?!

This past weekend was Easter weekend, obviously, and my mom got me the most amazing gift–a book of poems by the poet Atticus, who as you know if you read my last blog, is one of my favorites. I didn’t go through it immediately after she gave it to me, I have certain moments during the day in which I like to read poetry. Instead of me going through it, my mom offered to thumb through and read some of the poems to me, which I readily accepted. (Having poems read to you is almost as great as writing them down yourself.)

You see, the thing I love about poetry is how these simple words and short poems (or long poems) can make you feel so hard. Everyone feels them a little differently, but they can impact you so intensely and I love that about them. There was one poem my mom started reading to me that brought me to tears, another that made me laugh so hard my stomach hurt, one that made me feel strong and empowered, and another that brought in waves of nostalgia that made my chest tight. It truly amazes me how just some simple words printed on paper can have so much of an effect on me.

Throughout work today, I’ve been working on filling my fourth and largest journal with poetry that spoke to me, and I hope to have filled it by the end of the day honestly. As much as I thoroughly enjoy writing all of these poems down, I also find great pleasure in looking through them later on at the things I selected to write down. I’m even starting to remember what poems are in what books due to my constant reading of them. I think it’s safe to say I have a slight addiction to poetry, and I love it so so much.

Honestly, I wish I could even understand how this is so therapeutic to me, but it just is. So today, I really just feel like sharing some more poetry with hopes that someone else will be able to appreciate it as much as I have. Today, I’ve been gravitating primarily to Erin Hanson’s stuff, so that’s what I’m gonna share with you guys. (These aren’t my absolute favorites, but they’re what captured my heart and mind today.)

xx – A

P.S. For those of you who read my blogs, I cannot even begin to tell you how much I appreciate it. And if they do something for you, then that means everything in the world to me.