Grumpy to be grumpy

Twas a rough week. I won't go into details, but my heart was definitely pulled through the ringer and I am tired. Oh life. The fact that we're in the middle of cold, gray, ugly winter doesn't help... I try really hard to stay positive, but who am I kidding? I really hate winter. I'm cold all the time. It's grey and ugly. All I can think about are 90-degree days, sundresses and my bike. The blues are right on my doorstep, threatening to break down the door. It's the hardest time of the year for me. Once New Years is over, I'd be more than happy to skip right to April.

I've been fighting all week to stubbornly focus on the silver linings in my life. For one thing, it's not my nature to wear grumpy pants. They're too tight and itchy. I get so much joy from just living, most of time. Also, my life is blessed beyond all kinds of ridicularity and I know this. I feel so guilty when I get the blues because I know there are people in this world that have it much, much worse than I do. I have my health, I have my family nearby, I have an amazing circle of friends, my job is steady, I don't fear for my life whenever I walk out my front door (I have friends from places in the world where said safety is non-existent), I get to do what I love, I get to have crazy adventures with said friends doing things that I love... it makes me grumpy to be so grumpy, argh!

So! The silver linings!

Seeing my dance friends. We get serious separation anxiety during breaks. The initial greetings to each other after a time apart is a bit embarrassing... for others. You'd think we were separated by years and oceans... nope, just a few weeks.

Encouraging text messages from friends.

Reading and journaling next to a fire place.

My physical therapist. She's a miracle worker.

Kicking my own booty at the gym. And the dance studio.

Temps in the 40s yesterday and today. Such a welcome break from the bitter cold.

Dance projects! Oh, the dance projects I have coming up!! Nothing centers me more than immersing myself in my art/work/calling.

Making and executing plans to overhaul some areas of my life this year. Exciting!!

That's all I can think of right now. I know there were more, but that's a good running list so far. The fact that today is Friday doesn't hurt a bit, either. Here's to the weekend and more silver linings!

xoxo

J

My happy place

The wind is howling outside. If it were summer, I'd be worried there was a tornado on it's way! Today was so cold and it was so gray this morning, it just broke my heart... so it begins, *le sigh*. Several months of cold, bleary, dreary, gray yuck.

Okay, I'm leaning a bit to the dramatic side... this is Colorado, which means Thanksgiving could be in the 60s - heck, even Christmas could have freakishly warm weather like that! - and the sun prevails the majority of the time, even when the temps are in the single digits. I'm very tired, so my drama meter is running high. Bear with me.

I was at the studio tonight, of course, but instead of regular rehearsal, we were running tech rehearsals in preparation for the latest dance concert, which will take place at the end of this week. Choreographers have been calling extra rehearsals as show time draws near, per the norm, which means I'm packing even more into my already tight schedule. I'm exhausted. I'm incredibly sore. I'm bruised and banged up. My feet have floor burns and bleed if I don't keep them bandaged (gross, but the life of a dancer... we do not have pretty feet). But I am happy.

I dread the cloud that settles upon me during winter, growing a bit darker each day until spring reappears, but I realized something tonight. Dance helps me fight that dark cloud. When I'm inside my little dance universe, I'm transported to a happy place. The cold, blustery, gray yuck outside can't touch me. I walk through the doors, inhale and exhale my first few dance breaths and it's game on. All the yuck outside fades and is forgotten.

Despite my stress, exhaustion and pain I was reminded today of my happy place. And I am grateful.

Bisous, bisous!

J

Blah. Schmeh. Where the eff is spring?!?

The last home stretch of winter blooooooows... I'm very sorry to all my bloggy and real-life chums who have birthdays in February, but February and I are not friends. Every year I struggle to get through this month. Despite it being only 28 days long (and the occasional 29), it drags on and on and on and on and on and.... if I ever get annual vacation time ('cause who knows what my dance career will be like), I think February is the month to use it. Too bad Spring Break isn't in February. I'm starting to lose my sanity just a wee bit. Or a lot.

Hence my absence from the blogosphere. I think I've used a handful of excuses over the last few weeks... I'm busy, I don't have Internet at home (yup, still)... but really I think its my blues. Last week a post idea popped into my head, but I didn't even have the desire to sit down and write it out. I'm lame, I know. But I just can't write if I'm not inspired. And I think I've avoided posting because I don't want my posts to be all negative-Nancy all the time. Who wants to read daily posts like that?? I am reading all of your blogs, ninja style... you can't see me, but I'm there...

It's not just affecting my blogging, either... I avoid being at home because it gets hella lonely out in suburbia-ville, especially with no TV or Internet filling in as faux-company. I miss my student housing apartment where I could just go down to the lobby if I needed to see people. I have a HUGE tuition bill to pay off so I can continue and finish my degree (ugh, another long story, maybe another blog post?), so I'm effing broke. I feel very un-pretty these days. As in I'm comparing myself to other gals to a very unhealthy degree and when I look in the mirror at myself my immediate thought is "gross". Some days I think that my BF is going to decide that some other girl is prettier than me and run off with her. And I feel like I'm getting worse at dance and I should quit while I'm ahead.... uh, what?? Yeah, all of it is totally ridiculous, but the blues cause some pretty stupid shit to go through my head.

I'm trying to be positive and put on a happy face, but some days it just feels way too fake. And I'm not a good liar.

Please bear with me as I wait out this last stretch of winter... I will pop in here and there, but it may be on the quiet side for a bit longer...

xoxo
J

Random stuff and an award

Wow, the blog inspiration is just nowhere to be found these days... I don't know if it's my mid-winter doldrums or my busy-ness, or some combination of the two, but my mind has been blank when it's come to my blog as of late. I know I've promised a new weekly feature, and while I haven't jumped ship on it, I'm just not inspired yet. My creative intuition tells me it's still brewing and it will show up when it's ready...

I'm adjusting to no Internet at home... I either stay later at the office or the school computer lab to get my email/Twitter/Facebook fix, and when I'm at home, I'm finding other [more productive] projects... for example, I'm finally reading the Coco Chanel biography my wonderful BF gave me for my birthday (which was in, um, December). I've been feeling the cooking bug biting, so there shall be some culinary masterpieces here soon, mwah ha ha! And boxes of clothes, paperwork, and filing are beckoning me from the basement... I suspect some serious spring cleaning in my future! I do miss my shows... The Today Show, Food Network, What Not to Wear, Keeping up with the Kardashians (my guilty pleasure), Sex and the City reruns, Grey's Anatomy... but friends are coming to my rescue by inviting me over and there's always TV Shack and Hulu at the computer lab if I'm desperate...

Ugh, I'm so over winter and cold and snow and grey skies and colorless everything. Just about now is when I typically start itching for a vacay, somewhere warm, sunny and involving a beach. I've never made this fantasy reality - yet! - and I don't foresee it coming to fruition until after I'm a college student. And the more winters I go through unhappily, the more I wonder if said sunny, beachy vacation fantasies should be upgraded to future potential places to call home. Seriously. I need to keep this in mind when embarking upon my dance career, post-school...

And now to my very overdue blog awards! Well, it's really the same award from two lovely blogging gals, Melanie and Selma. I promised them last weekend that I'd repost their award "tomorrow", which was last Monday. I'm sorry ladies!!! I hope you forgive me :)


First off, THANK YOU to Melanie and Selma for passing this award on to me!! I'm always flattered when I get an award, as I just go about my business here in Blog Land, not assuming anything special about my li'l blog corner.

Part of receiving the award is to list 10 random things about me...

1. I adore the sun and warm weather.
2. I believe I'm a misplaced soul in that I was born in the wrong part of the world.
3. Retail therapy absolutely works on me.
4. The ASPCA commercials, the ones with Sarah McLachlan singing in them, make me cry. They make me want to adopt every single animal from every single shelter...
5. I have Chanel taste on a Walmart budget.
6. I have never traveled out of the country... this will change in the next 5 years, believe me.
7. I'm slightly germ-phobic. Not to the point of being OCD about it, but enough to say I have a "phobia".
8. I talk to myself... and when I catch myself doing it in the car, I pretend I'm singing so the other drivers don't think I'm weird, ha!
9. I'm very brand-loyal, sometimes to the point of ridiculousness. Nike. The North Face. Crest. Korres.
10. I want to be fluent in other languages... French, Italian, Russian, Greek, for example...

God, it's harder to think of 10 random things than it sounds. I've been given this award before, so I apologize if any of these are redundant!

Well, time to leave and head to the laundromat. A little nervous, considering #7 above, but there's a laundromat in town that I just found out about that seems all new and hip and clean and shiny... they even serve coffee from the 'Bucks! Their website makes it seem promising...

Happy Weekend everyone!!

xoxo
J