High Five for Friday: October 20

Let's see what put the sparkle into this week!

• Saturday was a very social day for this hermit! First up was a lovely brunch with Deena, my South Philly roommate and Sasha's owner!

• Then former roommate #2, Paulina (my college roommate), came over and took me to The Cheesecake Factory for a belated birthday dinner! Yay for redhead reunions!

• For Disney Week on DWTS, Val and Victoria danced to music from Steamboat Willie!! It's no exaggeration to say that Pops and I were hype AF (unlike probably everyone else haha).

Mickey's whistling while steering the boat has always cracked Pops up, so now this movie has become synonymous with him. I actually have Mickey's whistling set as Pops's ringtone on my phone!

• I woke up in the middle of the night on Monday feeling super nauseous, bleh. So I sought medical attention in the form of Scrubs at 2:30 in the morning and used that to distract me into feeling better. And it actually worked! Hooray!

• And lastly, when your worlds collide!

I did actually have Grey's on when Yoga Anatomy arrived in the mail! If only Ellen Pompeo narrated that too...

Hope you have a great weekend! xo

High Five for Friday: October 13

Let's see what brought the sparkle this week!

• On Saturday, I got my car washed (HOORAY) and went to Marshalls. I was in search of a birthday gift, so of course, I found two Christmas gifts for other people. Oh, and UNICORN + DONUT WRAPPING PAPER:

I had spotted this at HomeGoods months ago, didn't buy it, cracked and went back to get it, and then couldn't find it. So I pounced when it turned up at Marshalls!

• On Sunday, I spent most of the day cleaning/organizing my room and could not have been happier. (The things that you end up doing when you sit down to read!) In case there was any doubt that I'd lost my mind, I had "Everybody Dance Now" playing on repeat for hours on end as I cleaned. 👌

My desk has managed to stay this clean! 🎉

• On Tuesday, I found some pretty sunflower friends near therapy!

• After my flower creep, I was reunited with my dear Timmi before she jetted off to London!

Legit ride or die--she's the second friend passenger I've had in my car!

It was so good to see her, even if it was just for chicken fingers (#SHAlife) and an hour of deliberation about where to eat while her pups used us as a jungle gym.

Wherein Mieze and I both act as Biene's ottoman.

• Lastly, I've put out my one fall decoration! 👏😂

Hope you have a great weekend! xo

High Five for Friday: October 6

Oh sparkle, where art thou? We need you this week. 

• My jam this week (even before the Vegas tragedy) has been George Harrison's "Hear Me Lord." What a gorgeously powerful song. Leave it to George to make a plea to God catchy. My bffl got super into the Beatles in college and took me along with her, so we listened to all Beatles albums and solo albums in their entirety. When we got to All Things Must Pass, this song immediately drew me in--such a depth of pain and longing. Definitely where I've been this past week (although I also have the jaunty "Ballad of Sir Frankie Crisp" on my phone now too, to balance things out! You might know that one from HIMYM.).

• Because I was away at yoga TT on Saturday, I missed the chance to reunite with one of my dear high school pals and go to homecoming (or more accurately, Heartcoming!). Our school recently changed names, and we were plotting to snag some discounted swag. Well, it pays to have friends in high places like Kate--because she's that person that everyone knows and loves, one of her friends (who conveniently works at the school) was able to hook me up with two sweatshirts! SWEET!

• The thrill of moving around my therapy appointments to avoid Center City was short-lived when I remembered that I had a psychiatrist appointment in Center City on Monday. Curses! But I managed to find a (PULL-IN!) parking space for $3!! Ok, so it was a half mile walk from the doctor's office, but who cares! THE THRILL OF VICTORY! 🎉

So I decided to bury the heavy a bit in this post, so that you can just skip on over it if you don't need more heavy in your life this week!

• As I mentioned in my October goals post, I got pretty emotional during yoga last weekend. But afterward, I spent all of maybe four minutes talking about it to one of the facilitators (who is also a therapist), and it made me feel SO MUCH better. My default reaction to feelings is to immediately try to bury them, but giving them voice in this instance really helped me to let them go--and make room for new feelings, if that makes sense. Carrie had assured me that my feelings of sadness were welcome (like that I didn't have to be fake happy to be there), but once I talked about them, that was enough. They just sort of fizzled. Interesting.
   
• In the same vein, my regular therapist and I talked this week about how feelings come and go. That is something I get stuck on--panic and fear that my feelings won't change. But they do. And talking about them can help. ❤️

Hope you have a great weekend! xo

October 2017 goals

Soooo I fell behind with my August budget post thanks to vacation, and since I hadn't done any of my August goals anyway, I just rolled them into September and skipped the posting part. Now that it's October, and I've kind of done one of my August goals, I'm ready to admit defeat on the others and set some new ones!

1. Get 8 hours sleep: This one is still a work in progress, but it's getting better. I've started getting into bed earlier, which certainly helps!

2. Try envelope system (and stick to the amounts I budget!): I start out with the best of budgeting intentions, but at some point during the month, that usually goes off the rails and then I get all negative and spend more freely than I should. So I'm (sort of) trying the enevlope system--but rather than actual envelopes, I found some dividers on Etsy that I've cut out and put in my wallet, and I plan to use cash for these spending categories, to see if that helps me. (I never usually have cash on me, but it's just so easy to lose track of my spending when using a debit or credit card.)

3. Just show up: Last Saturday (the last day of September), I cried my way through a yoga class and felt old feelings of hopelessness. So this goal is just a reminder to keep showing up in my life, to keep trying, and to keep questioning feelings of despair. And also to just try things (yoga, writing, etc.) with the awareness that it's okay to be mediocre, as my therapist tries to tell me!

I decided to pick a Healing with the Angels Oracle card for the month, and this was the one I got:

"Your angels are trying to get your attention--please notice!!" 

You might recall that Signs was the first Angel card I ever picked, before I even had a deck of my own! Signs definitely fits with my interest in developing my intuition and with my discussion with the tarot card reader.

And how about "out of hiding," my Phrase of the Year? Well, I went on vacation and pranced around Disneyland with a birthday pin! 😊 And I started yoga teacher training and went back to the yoga studio near work! 

Linking up with Nicole at Writes Like a Girl!

High Five for Friday: September 29

Oh boy, let's see what put the sparkle into this week! 

• This has not been an easy week. Feelings of hopelessness and the desire to give up creep into my life a lot. (I'm not talking about suicide here, but about more benign things, like making healthy changes in my life.) Some weeks, I am more able to fight that impulse. This was not one of those weeks. (I swear, the sparkle is coming!) 

My reflexive reaction to things is giving up. I'm not proud of it, but I often feel powerless against it. If I'm not perfect at something, I don't want to do it. Just showing up doesn't feel acceptable to me. I have to be great, or else, why bother? Which (surprise!) is SO limiting.

So my therapist encouraged me to try to embrace being mediocre at things.

For instance, instead of focusing on how bad I am at yoga, and how annoyed that makes me, just keep showing up. Just keep trying. (Conveniently, I do have Yoga Teacher Training this weekend!) 

Just keep staying alive. I get annoyed with myself for not having done more in the 4.5 years since inpatient. Like, I'm actually working on my shit now! Hello, Mental Health Gods, it's me, Jess--make me better already!

Buuut that's not how it works. I still have to keep showing up in my everyday life as much as anywhere else. And get okay with the fact that I'm more able to sparkle punch some weeks than others. There's a lot of grey that gets lost amid the black and white. And THAT'S where the sparkle can come in.

• MOVING ON! I went to a tarot card reading on Friday night, and it was so freaking cool! I'm so curious about connecting with the spirits/universe and discovering my intuition. I think it might help me to feel less lost and negative about my life.

• So many things the tarot card reader and I talked about related to what had been coming up for me in therapy. She urged me to remember that "I'm in the process" and encouraged me to keep my eye out for synchronicities in life. So when I was at TJ Maxx on Sunday, this picture jumped right out at me. 

Huh. How about that.

• This has been my jam this week. (You might also recognize it from Ice Cube's "It Was a Good Day," which is what sent me down this rabbit hole in the first place!)

• This chick is back eeee! I don't have a ton of interest in current Grey's, but I was pumped about Teddy's return and literally shrieked when I saw her. 

I was so sad when she left at the end of season 8, and she didn't even die! (Such a rarity on Grey's!) 

😂❤️ 

Hope you have a great weekend! xo