do you ever wonder why?

what is it that makes you who you are?

that causes you such agonizing pain?

to be so become cold and distant?

so emotionless and lifeless?

lost and confused?

tired and lonely?

- - - - -

What is it that holds you back from being free?  Free to fly, free to dream, free to feel, free to laugh and cry?

why do you imprison yourself in these walls you've constructed?

no time.

I've been working in an office the last 19 days.  I've had no time and no desire to spend a lot of time on the computer, but I do miss communicating with my friends and family.

I've learned this week that I don't smile if I'm sleepy.  When I'm sleepy, I feel like a zombie and I probably look like one too.  I guess my brain just decides it can't waste energy smiling or laughing.

However, this last year I've learned that I smile a lot more when my life is a fast paced.  When I have lots to do and everything's crazy, I think I feed off of that energy and become a lot more cheerful.  It's weird.  I don't get stressed out.  I think I'm the strangest person ever.

Maintaining a marriage sure is hard though, when things get crazy.  I feel like I've barely seen Jesse at all these last 2-3 weeks.  Actually, marriage is hard anyway.  It's hard to be intentional.  It's easy to sit around watching Dr. Who together and just be friends, but it's an effort to open up and communicate, grow together, push each other, and listen to each other.  It's definitely too easy to just "skate by" in marriage, but it sure is difficult to have a vibrant, living, exciting marriage.  It's kind of like school.  It's too easy to do the bare minimum to get an A, rather than just going all out and doing to best you can and investing a lot into it.  We're quick to become content with just getting by.  Of course, there's sometimes when you have to just accept that this is as good as it's going to be for awhile (like these last few weeks. . . ).

I'm just excited I have the rest of my life to spend with my Jesse. :)

shwoosh

tick tick tock.

time skips by with no order.  has it been a minute?  an hour?  a year?

new names, new faces, new stories, new places, new roles.

life keeps rolling along, even when I'm not ready.

questions keep coming, but the answers escape me.

the anticipation is great, but my mind wanders and my attention fades.

why i can't just stick with something, i don't know.

cooking

I haven't done much cooking lately.  It's been kind of nice.  I've been eating lots of salads and vegetables and fruits at home.  I've also eaten many of my meals at work (one of the perks of working in the food service industry).  To be honest, I've been kind of spoiled by the food there.  I eat lots of delicious (but bad for me) foods like fresh white rolls, chicken chardonnay, chicken marsala, chicken parmesan (lots of chicken), asparagus, vegetable medleys, steaks, caprese salad, potatoes, green beans, salads, hamburgers, and sandwiches.  Because of this, I haven't been as motivated to cook at home.

Part of my lack of cooking is also because I've been trying to change the way we eat.  I've started buying a few organic things, but really don't have the budget or the option of buying everything organically.  The farmer's market opens up in town this week though, so I'm excited.

I think Jesse and I are also slowly becoming vegetarians.  Not intentionally, but since meat is expensive and I'd rather buy vegetables with my money, we haven't eaten it as much.  Now when we do eat it, we don't enjoy it as much as we used to (I've never been able to finish the serving of meat I get at work).

Another thing that's made me more reluctant to cook is that I've been trying to cut back on carbs.  It seems like the majority of the interesting recipes I see are flour and sugar based.

All this has also caused us to unintentionally reduce our dairy consumption.  I love cheese and butter, but have realized we've used way less cheese, butter, sour cream, and milk (though we've been using nut milks most recently) than we used to. I don't think I'll ever cut it out completely, but it is nice to free up that portion of our budget.

When I went grocery shopping yesterday, I had a fun game of reading the labels on food.  It was crazy annoying to see food colorings (petroleum based), high fructose corn syrup, nitrites, preservatives, and other things in just about everything I picked up.

I don't want to be obsessed with this stuff though, I just want to be informed and make good choices for my body.  I want to put the right foods in my body and take care of it - the foods God designed it to use.   Similarly, I'm not going to put 87 octane fuel in a car designed for 91 octane fuel.  I think I'll occasionally indulge in something not so good for me though, I just don't want that to be a regular part of my diet.

Work work work

I've been working a lot recently.   It's been fun.  And extremely tiring.  It took me a full day to recover.

I'm really enjoying my job, which is funny considering I went into it thinking I would hate it.  My first week I got tossed right in and experienced quite a lot.  I thought for sure I would get fired after being severely cussed out by one of my co-workers.  After some thinking, I decided I was going to do my best despite the attitudes of the people I work with.

And it's paid off. :-)  This week I worked hard and did everything that was assigned to me, plus some. It was tiring, but I'm learning to love my job and love the people I work with.  No, I don't want this job for the rest of my life, but there's plenty of things I can learn here.  Most importantly, I'm learning to be committed to something and how to get along with a variety of people.  That's something I can take with me no matter where I go.

I'm excited to see how this job makes me a better person. :)