Happy Tax Day Uncle Sam

Its gloriously sunny outside today, still chilly enough to need a jacket (and scarf...and mittens) but the sunshine makes it feel refreshing rather than frigid.
Yesterday afternoon I went running in my cardigan sweater after work. That was a little ridiculous, but it was cold enough to need a coat (and I hadn't brought one appropriate for running) so I figured that my sweater might work--and it did, though it is certainly as dirty as it is ever likely to get(when its cold out my nose runs harder than I do).
I've been running most days for the past three weeks or so--I'm trying to make a habit of it, and so far the easiest way to do that is to run before I leave work for the day (even if I do it after the actual work day, I don't go home and then go running, I go running and then go home). Something about coming home at the end of the day seems to prevent me from getting a run done--this hasn't always been the case, when I was living by myself I think I was sort of in a routine of running before I did anything else for the evening, but living with roommates (several of whom are about as inactive as you can get) there seems to be a certain amount of inertia contained within the building.
I've read a couple of things on your friends and acquaintances impact on your health and size
and I understand the idea, I think: a lot of it has to do with the social norms you create as a group--whether or not seconds or thirds or extra poundage are accepted creates a way of eating and living that either is or is not conducive to weight gain. Its all about being creatures of habit. Which certainly we all are at least to some extent.
So I am trying to create in myself a habit of daily running--I've never been successful at it before--in the past when I've been training for specific events I have hurt myself every time I've tried to make the sessions daily rather than having a "light" day in between, but right now I'm not actively training for anything--and so some of my running days are very "light", but they're still days I run. I'm liking it a lot so far. I'm generally pumped to go out and do it, even if "it" is only three miles, I love that my weekly mileage is creeping up and my hips are disappearing (the more mileage I log, the smaller my hips seem to get, everything certainly tightens as a matter of course, but my hips specifically seem to shrink away-- I have no idea of exactly why, other than it is perhaps where I carry excess weight). I have more energy and am sleeping better. Its great! I suppose we'll see how long it takes me to hurt myself this time--I always seem to find a way!

the handbook of misinterpreted activities

Its very Gray here and hard to remember that it is officially spring.
They've boarded up the windows in my office so even the gray doesn't penetrate--my whole world is brick-and-beige. If it weren't for the doorway (and sobriety) it would feel like a Poe story.
Its for progress that they've gone and bricked up my view, but it doesn't make me very happy. My understanding is that this is a temporary situation, but that doesn't really make it suck less.
I've been thinking about that, the temporary: Mostly my time lines for things in a "Your money or your life" way: I want to be living it not working for it, you know?
Sometimes I could kick myself for going to graduate school the way I did. If I hadn't, I would still have had school debt, but on a much smaller scale. I would also, however not have had the work opportunities that I've had with the extra degree. But maybe that would have made me get off my ass and get writing, something I tell myself I would like to do more of but rarely manage to do more of.
And I really like my job. I do. When I first started it, I wondered several times the first month if I hadn't actually hallucinated it: its that good. But (as my father always has said) there is still a reason they pay you to go there: right now that reason is that I can't see the outside world or any natural light at all from my desk: I'm pretty much in a packing crate. This is really sad given that I used to have a great view of the river.
So: how long am I here for anyway? Is this what I want to do with my life? What could be next?
Always the questions, huh?
I know I would like to try my hand at self-sufficiancy. Living off the land as much as possible. I've read a lot on the topic and it is exciting and also scary to me: mostly in that big-bad-world/woman-alone way. So (don't laugh please) I've been doing some weight training and taking a karate class. damned if I will be a girl in distress if I can help it. There is a school of traditional building an hour or so north of here that does timber framing workshops a couple of times a year(and once you take a class they'll let you host a workshop on your property--i.e. lend their help to put up your house, which is quite appealing), or there are always Yurts--which as they are lightweight might actually be a better option for a girl to think about putting up on her own. These are not exactly low-cost things though, The timber framing course is around $800 and a Yurt can run close to $10,000 (that was for a used one with some sort of deluxe snow package, which this year might have come in handy here). So I've got a little ways to go. But I do think (well, obviously) that that is the direction I'm headed in: I'd like to pay down as much of my school loan as possible and build myself a fat little efund and also buy a little piece of the planet to call my own and live as close to it as possible. At the rate I'm going, I think I'm looking at 5-8 years. Is 5-8 years in a packing crate worth it? Hard to say, and who knows, maybe I will have changed my mind by then anyway.

we're gonna gonna

Sometimes life is easy to forget about. Sometimes you just sort of roll with it and things go along fine and you don’t even need to look deeper or think that maybe you ought to be finding a reason or drive or need to push you onward outward forward.

But then things get slow, there is nothing on television (or you don’t have one) and your boyfriend is out of town (or he left you) or you read all the books from the library already (or the ones you bought from Amazon still haven’t arrived) and then you start to wonder. What in the hell should I be doing with myself anyway? Shouldn’t there be something: a driving desire to write and have the writing be readable / be read by someone, or a craving for entrepreneurial enterprises: to go out on your own and start a dynasty, a hegemony, an institution of a small business? Shouldn’t I need something like that? Surely it would be a hell of a lot easier to get up in the morning if I could just picture something that concrete.

I think often in novels the main character has such a drive, such a need to succeed and re-create themselves in such an image of success. But I am not sure if that isn’t just a plot device rather than a common life plan. Damn it.

Well, I guess at least that means that I shouldn’t feel so bad for taking so long to figure mine out.

whipped up

Okay, hi there, sorry.
Its been a long little while. I have been lazy and introspective and reading too much shameful genre fiction. But I get like that sometimes. Some weird combination of sudden (long-planned) abandonment and the cold of winter are making me want to hibernate, huddle under covers and not move much, possibly for a month or more.
However, I am trying to resist the urge. Besides all the delectable genre fiction I've been reading (and ordering from amazon and waiting with baited breath for) I have also signed up for a new activity (Karate) and gone to dinner at a friend of a friends house (generally when offers like this come my way I say "no" with very little pause, but I figured I really ought to make some sort of effort not to hermit myself forever). So I think I'm doing alright, thank you very much. And so far Karate is very cool. I have almost no skill whatsoever, but I am going back tonight in the hopes of learning more. Soon I will be kickass. Or something.
On the missing/ leaving frontier, he left and I miss him--but it has been suddenly nice to see / know that he is going to miss me too, and that he was ultimately sad to go (there was a whole lot more crying than I expected at that final farewell--not all of it mine, for a change). I've actually gotten several updates from him since, which I hadn't really expected--I mean, the lack of communication was one of his reasons for not wanting to be together during all of his travels, and yet he hasn't been gone a week yet and I've already gotten both a phone call and email from him. Its nice. But we're still "broken up" or whatever, so its not that nice I guess.
Why can't things be less complex? I don't want to be the wait around girl who is all faithful in the manner of a puppy dog until he gets his crap together and comes back. But I don't really want to not either. Grrr.
Enough about the boy--all I can really worry about right now is me.
I have this problem, you see, with being insanely early for things.
I get out of work at 4. I have Karate at 6 about 1/2 way home. So it doesn't really make sense to drive by it and go all the way home for the scant hour I would actually have there before I had to leave again to go back, right? But it doesn't really make any sense to get there an hour early either. I'm still working on how this one will work out. I think I might go to the gym on this campus before I leave today--only I took the bus in from a satellite lot, so I need to first figure out how late that bus runs so I don't have to walk the five miles to the parking lot in freezing weather. I guess the walk would definitely ensure I wasn't super ridiculously early any way.

Well, its worth a try

I've been half-assing it for years, saying I want to write and not actually doing anything to change the fact that I'm not. So the plan for right now is to try and write 500 words a day (any words at all--preferably sensicle but not necessarily all-linked-together) for the month of November (Its like my own WriMo --which I need, because I've tried that before and its too huge a jump for me at this point: I just need to get a baseline and then I can think about upping the output into something novel-istic). I'd like to punctuate it by submitting things to various online writing communities: hopefully once a week I will submit something to either thisisby.us , 365tales
, Writer's Beat or Writing Gather so that I am actively putting stuff out there and interacting as well as doing that type-type-type into cyberspace that is what I understand blogging basically is.
So yeah, happy Halloween and here goes nothing. I wish Blogger had a word-count feature.