I Love...

This week I've been doing a fair amount of thinking about the kind of thoughts I've been having and the positive to negative ratio. Unfortunately there has been a lot more negative thoughts then positive ones, which I believe has a lot to do with my frustration at being in my current situation. I feel angry all the time, and I'm not necessarily at anything in particular, I'm just generally frustrated at my situation because I know I can only do so much to change it.

In order to change this I've decided that for the next 30 days I'm going to think of 1 thing that I love about myself, whether its physical or non-physical, I'm going to write each thing down in document and post it at the end of 30 days, and if you want to do it too and send it to me that'd be really cool.

People have an easy time saying they "love" something, like "I love chocolate" or "I love skiing", but rarely does someone use it to describe themselves. I've almost never heard anyone say that they love or even like the way they look. And its not just women, I've had guy friends question how they look, and say they need to gain more muscle or lose weight. Not to sound cliche but I think that everyone is beautiful just the way they are, and with all of my friends and family I wouldn't change a single thing.

I'm also hoping that the self-love I'm giving myself will help me see people differently and in a more positive way, I know that we all cave into secretly judging others and comparing ourselves to others. So during my 30 day challenge I'm going to spread the love, and luckily for me I'm just in time for Valentine's day ;)

To get this started here are some things that I generally love:
I love chocolate covered strawberries, and most chocolate in general.
I love goofing off with my housemates and friends.
I love my parent's cooking, I don't need a 5 star restaurant.
I love both of my doggies, both Wrigley who's with me now and Pepper who is in a better place.

Wrigley

Pepper

I love the view from my lake house, and I can't wait to spend time there this summer:

Last of all I love all of my friends, family and boyfriend who've been super supportive of me during this transition.

And for day 1 of the challenge: I love my eyes, I've always loved the color of my eyes I think that they're beautiful and unique and I think they are one my best and defining features.

Get out there and spread the love! :*

A new zone

This weekend I realized that I've entered a new zone of friendship that I wasn't quite sure existed. Since my boyfriend is abroad at graduate school, I've been hanging out with his friends while he is away. Its been a fun experience but I seem to be in this weird new zone that I've never experienced before. With my boyfriend's friends I feel strangely comfortable because everything is purely platonic and I feel like I can relax around them. This weekend we went out to a snazzy bar/club in Bellevue. I thought we were bowling but it turned out we were going to a bowling alley/club. It was for a friend of a friend's birthday, and there was bottle service which I had never had before and there was a weird club atmosphere. While at the bar it occurred to me that I had crossed into a new zone of friendship. My one friend asked me about potential girls and which ones I thought he should go for. With my other friend I was his "girlfriend". It was an odd zone to be in and I learned more about what guys think of girls, it was quite the eye-opener.

While I'm still on the job-hunt I'm spending my time exercising, reading and spending time with the family. I have a few leads and I'm hoping that I'll be employed by Valentine's day.

Things I'm reading: The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Listening to: Bangerz by Miley Cyrus
Still obsessed with: Gossip Girl
Craving: The Kirk Park Medium Maise by Kate Spade


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xoxo

Time flies

So things got crazy after Thanksgiving, all the holidays seemed to come right after another, it seemed like just yesterday I was celebrating my birthday.


I had a fairly uneventful Thanksgiving and Christmas, my family always spends Thanksgiving with my dad's family down in Saint Louis and my mom's parents came up here for Christmas. It was great seeing so much family so closely together. The highlight of my holidays was going down to Chicago to see my boyfriend and my friends from high school. Over my 7 day adventure I ate like a princess, I'm still surprised that my stomach hasn't expanded to the size of an elephants. I enjoyed everything from squid ink noodles to lamb to escargot to scallops. I have a deep love for seafood and fortunately my boyfriend treated me to all the seafood that I could eat. We also got to see some real live seafood, we met up with a college friend of mine and went to the Shedd Aquarium. The Shedd is hands down one of my favorite places in the city of Chicago. Although I'm terrified of deep water I've always had a deep love of sea life. We checked out the jellies and the sharks and the dolphin show. However after watching Blackfish the other night I felt bad about watching the dolphin show. The documentary really causes you to question what you saw in your childhood and what to do with big marine animals.

For New Years Eve this year I went out with my bf and a good friend from high school and her boyfriend. We started the night off like champions by splitting a bottle of Andre and then headed out to a bar in Lincoln Park that for a mere $60 you could have all the alcohol you wanted and a champagne toast. Supposedly there was food as well but I didn't notice. The night was super fun and super snowy! The only downside of the evening was that I had accidentally worn my skirt inside out and the fact that I may have had one too many cran and vodkas.

Chicago was a great winter adventure, for the Midwest is truly a winter wonderland. In my time there it snowed about a foot as well as the temperature dropped down into the negatives. It was a good throwback to my childhood and spending many long winters in the snow. It was great to see both my boyfriend who I hadn't seen since early September and my high school friends who many I hadn't seen since last year. It was great how no matter how much time had passed that things never really changed and we could just pick up where we left off.

Since I've been back in the PNW I've started seriously training for my half-marathon, so far I'm on week 2 and doing a variant of the run-walk and getting above 2 miles. It gets a little boring running the same routes but I hope as I increase my distances I'll find better places to run. With my return to Seattle my contract ended so I've been enjoying a lot of me time as I look for a new job. So far I've been feeling fairly positive and haven't quite given into the unemployment despair quite yet.

As for now I'm going to keep reading and running and looking. Tomorrow I'm going down to help my sorority house practice for their upcoming recruitment.
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