reading my old posts

after hitting 100 blogposts (and honestly after receiving an un-processably nice comment about my blog), i've been going back and reading my past posts. 

three things stood out to me. first, that none of the posts were as bad as i thought they were at the time. it's even kind of funny, because in several of them i talk about how bad previous posts felt and how down i got about how hard writing is and how impossible it is to ever make any sense. but for the most part i was perfectly sensible. at least, sensible enough! 

the second was that not only were none of them awful, some parts struck me as genuinely pretty good! i was shocked i had written them, to be quite frank. my perception of my writing as i write is that i overuse conjunctions, lean too much on passivity, and generally lack any real spark. but reading past posts, plucky verbs and unique turns-of-phrase abounded. i was very pleasantly surprised. 

the third thing that stuck out to me was all the little things i almost left out. i distinctly remember hemming and hawing about throwing in a passing description of something that happened—not because i wasn't sure it was worth saying, but specifically because i felt it was worth saying more about, and that i would be doing it injustice by just tossing it in and walking away. but some of those drive-bys reminded me of things i genuinely would have forgotten otherwise—especially little things about my fiancé, which also made my heart sing, that i had been able to capture here and there a glimpse of what makes him special. 

overall, i'm very proud of myself for what i have accomplished. i still get scared, i still feel hopeless, i still worry it's all for naught, but despite it all, i wrote and wrote and wrote. i'd like to keep going, as long as i can. i've been slacking a bit the past couple weeks, letting myself skip some days here and there, and i think that was the right call, but i think it's time to hunker down again and be strict about posting something daily. in the beginning i didn't want that to become a rule, but honestly as rules go it's a pretty good one. it keeps me in the habit at just the right frequency. 

one thing i'd like to keep in mind is to just get in there and start writing, and not pre-worry so much about knowing what to say. i'm always pleasantly surprised at how the way forward shows itself one stepping stone at a time, if only i can find the courage to start. 

a hodge podge of updates

i'm so tired today, and this weekend i didn't write many blogposts because we had friends visiting. things i want to write blogposts on are quickly outpacing the energy i have to write them, so i thought i'd jot down some of them briefly in case this is the only form they'll ever exist in. 

we just watched drive. it was the first time i'd seen it and i had no idea what to expect. much more intense than i expected, but a well-done movie with interesting characters. i liked one shot in particular that showed a character leaving, not by actually showing the character, but via a closeup of the main character's eyes following the leaving character back to his seat. watching the movie made me feel a particular kind of anxiety that has been creeping up recently, where watching intense things makes me worried we'll get mixed up in similar things in real life. i don't think this happened much before, but now that i have a fiancé, sometimes the stakes feel higher; i have more to lose, so things can be scarier. 

a few days ago we watched another ryan gosling movie: the most recent one, project hail mary. that was truly a knockout. expertly done, incredibly funny throughout, and with appropriately religious undertones for an easter release. watching it in english in a german theatre meant sometimes i was the only one laughing at minor quips, but thankfully i love to be a giving and easy-to-laugh audience. i'd definitely go see it again, and in fact the book version just came in the mail today and i will be reading it immediately. 

perfect timing, because i just finally finished reading "being wrong." it was very good, but i guess nonfiction just doesn't pull me in as much as fiction can, so it took me what felt like an eternity to finish. some nights i'd only read a single page, and then feel bad about that, until my fiancé would say something like, "you gotta read them eventually, and now you already have!" or something more inspiring, and i've probably butchered it, but it sticks with me now whenever i feel bad about how little progress i'm making on something. 

i got a uti for the first time in a few years and gosh, i forgot how awful they can be. the process of getting anti-biotics was a trip, but thankfully after two courses (the first wasn't enough), it seemed to be resolving. and just in time for my period to start! i shuddered at the thought of having to wear pads for a week after the irritation and pain the uti inflicted upon me, so i thought hey, why not try a menstrual disc (i've used disposable ones before, but this was my first time trying a reusable one). i also figured that i'm finally functional enough to try using a menstrual product that requires sterilizing in boiling water every cycle. for some reason, however, the one i got was a size medium, which was apparently the wrong choice. i inserted it, then immediately attempted removal just so i knew i could—and quickly realized i could not. discs, unlike menstrual cups, are to my knowledge not supposed to form a vacuum seal in the vaginal canal, they're just supposed to sit behind the pubic bone and be super easy to remove. but this one definitely seemed vacuum sealed inside of me. i could touch it, but any attempt to actually grab it was proving impossible. i would have immediately started panicking if my fiancé weren't right there with me. after several of my failed attempts, he offered to give it a go, and thankfully, gripped and removed it on the first try. it was one of those moments that made me thankful i found a partner who doesn't flinch at humanness, and would gladly remove foreign objects from my body, no matter how bloody. 

i'm gonna sandwich this in here and maybe no one will read it. what if i'd be much better at being behind the camera instead of in front of it? at the end of the day i really don't think i have what it takes to be a "successful," model, but i do just enjoy the process so much, it would be cool if i could find some other role i'd be better at. i often joke that the only time i get bossy is when i'm behind a camera; in those situations it's easy to have a vision and direct people accordingly. and it seems fun to work with model friends and be able to put them in creatively interesting shoots, rather than waiting around and hoping someone could do that for me. the thought of honing the skill is intimidating, though, particular being seen trying. 

my fiancé's friends visited this weekend and we had a lot of great food and good wine. i was elated at how healthy i felt the whole weekend, namely in two aspects: i felt barely hungover at all, despite drinking a decent amount each night, when previously any amount of alcohol at all would leave me sick; and i felt almost completely zero amount of difficulty with any of the food we ate, when previously i was incredibly sensitive to tastes and textures. i was proud of myself for making so much progress that i was able to fully enjoy all the pleasures of the weekend. i also conquered at least two specific fears: eating raw fish, and eating fish with bones in it. we also had a cool bone marrow dish served in a halved bone, little tiny fancy delicate tacos, and a dozen other very delicious and strange foods. 

yesterday i really didn't feel like going to the gym, but went anyway, and i felt really good about how i did. the weight i'm lifting is still increasing, and this time even though i'd been away from the gym due to my uti, i didn't have to start much lower like i do when coming back from something like a cold. i keep realizing that my impression of how much weight i'm lifting is totally off, because i'm lifting in kilograms when i'm used to thinking in pounds. so unbeknownst to me at the time, my 45kg romanian deadlifts were actually me moving 100 pounds. that sounds insane! i'm feeling much more confident in my form, and continue to see visual changes in my body. recently i noticed my arms actually do change in appearance when i flex them, even though i haven't even been targeting biceps at all. it's simply very very cool to see. it feels like cracking open a deep part of me that was convinced i couldn't effect any change in my life: this is a clear cut case of my body changing in response to the work i am putting in. i still can't quite believe it! 

the region beta paradox of enjoying your beloved's company

my fiancé and i realized lately that we can accidentally go weeks without doing any big fun thing, or even something smaller like going out to a restaurant or going to the movie theatre. part of this, we agreed, was that we have so much fun just living our boring, everyday lives together, that we forget to want anything more. 

the funny thing, though, is sometimes this means a bit of sadness or insecurity or anxiety sneaks in undetected, and we're likely to attribute it to something bigger than just "we haven't seen our friends in a while." (i noticed a version of this when i was single, though i, uncharacteristically i might add, cannot seem to locate the tweet in which i described the phenomenon, where i noticed that whenever i was feeling insecure, i tried to mentally replace it with "i am in need of connection/community," and it seemed to work quite well). 

thus the region beta paradox of enjoying your beloved's company: if we were less happy at home, we'd perhaps be more likely to seek out bigger fun stuff outside of the home; but we're so happy at home, we can forget to do bigger fun things, and then end up experiencing negative feelings almost unbeknownst to us. 

at the end of the day, it's not a huge deal, and i'd much rather totally forget that other fun things exist than to need them at all costs in order to escape an unhappy home. but it's an interesting thing to ponder, and a reminder that things can be a complex mix of positives and negatives. and that  even when you meet your soulmate, you still might have to put in some effort in order to ensure you're both living as happily and healthily as you can—which includes remembering that friends and restaurants and concerts and movies exist. 

swedish ups and downs

i tried out a new swedish tutor and it went really well. it felt like i could speak better than i have before, and she seemed to really believe in me, which helped me believe in myself. i liked her style better than the previous tutor, who used a texbook and went very by-the-book, even though i didn't need help understanding low-level stuff, just help speaking it. the new tutor felt much more able to deal with my asymmetric levels. i felt confident and motivated after our lesson. 

however, it feels like when it comes to real-life situations, i still panic and no swedish comes out. we video called my fiancé's family for easter, and it was almost entirely in swedish, with me keeping up most of the time in terms of comprehension, but still answering in english. and today we had a video call with our wedding officiant, entirely and swedish, and i felt pretty dumb being so silent, because no swedish would come out of my mouth. though that also felt like the conversation was difficult enough that it made sense that i would struggle (though i could still mostly follow along). 

then we watched a short "documentary" as my homework from my new tutor so we could discuss it next session (the assignment was to watch it, write down three questions and write down 20 new words, so i would remember them when it was time to discuss what i'd seen). i sat down with my notebook and pencil, eager to jot down notes as we watched. we've watched challenging material before, most recently the lawyer drama hundarna, with many pauses so my fiancé could explain vocabulary or phrases, but this one felt like it was entirely new, challenging words. i put down my notebook and decided to just watch, resolving to watch it again later in a more studious mode, looking up words as i went. morale took a hit. i was confident about my level during my lesson, but now the homework was way too hard. but who knows, we'll see how it goes. i'll do my best, and also be honest with my tutor that it was overwhelmingly hard. 

it feels like my brain is constantly searching for a binary answer of "can i handle swedish," when the reality is that it depends on the context, the level, my emotional state, and so many other things. it feels like no matter how much or how fast i improve, i'm chastising myself for all the things i don't know or can't do still. i'll just keep going, though, and trust that the process will work itself out (i know it will).

big day!

a few weeks ago i joined a therapist directory as a "life coach," and today i got my first client inquiry and had an intro call. it's been a little over a year since i did anything this close to therapy, and though i was a little unfamiliar with how to structure a brief intro call (i'm used to full-length first sessions as a therapist), it felt amazing to be doing work like this again, with the changes i wish i could have made as a therapist (like not diagnosing). it made me more excited to flesh out more marketing materials and really go for it, so that i can get more client inquiries and make this a real thing! i've wanted to have my own practice for probably four or five years at this point. i tried to set up a therapy private practice once before, but it was too much to juggle at the time, and i still didn't like diagnosing, so even going out on my own didn't fix that fundamental disconnect. i'm very excited to pursue this direction more!

i also started the day with a swedish tutoring lesson, which taught me some interesting new things, but i also want to try out some different tutors as well, so i can better evaluate fit. i like the tutor i'm seeing, but i'm wondering if there might be someone better suited to handle my particular level. so i ended up booking a tutor whose profile i had seen before and liked. the only problem is she lives in australia, so her available times are not quite convenient for me. the trial lesson i booked with her is tonight...at midnight! she does have some more reasonable times, but i wanted to strike while the iron is hot (before today it had been a whole week since my last swedish lesson, and that was enough time for my nerves to build back up—i'd like to minimize the chances of that happening again!). 

all this talking today, and my throat is already a bit sore from all the singing i did over easter weekend. after some quick mental math, i estimated that my fiancé and i spent over 8 hours in church over the long easter weekend. it was especially nice because of a few things: 1. it was my fiancé's first time spending easter in a church, let alone a catholic one. 2. he played guitar (and sang!!!) at easter vigil mass and sounded and looked so lovely. 3. it was my own first time in several years to attend more than just easter sunday mass. and my first time in germany too! there were lots of differences that surprised me, but also a lot of comforting similarities. 4. i felt connected to the meaning of easter for the first time in a very long time. to the point where i actually got confused why there were bunnies everywhere, lol. it felt good to appreciate the sacrifice and the love behind the holiday. 5. i finally felt comfortable to sing at normal volume during mass! often there aren't a ton of people at the mass we normally attend, so it feels quite vulnerable to sing aloud, and i either just read or whisper along. but we recently attended a cool adoration event with more contemporary songs (including english ones that i know and love!) and i got out of my comfort zone and sang louder than usual there, and since then i've felt much more comfortable to finally sing out! it also helps that my fiancé says how much he likes to hear my singing voice. 

oh yeah, and i got back on twitter yesterday! it felt a bit strange. i think the break really severed something, in a positive way. it feels like when my phone broke in college and i subsequently fasted from social media for months, then when i returned to instagram, i never felt the same draw to it afterwards. i'm not sure what my relationship to twitter will be moving forward, but i'm thankful for everything it brought into my life. 

this is my 100th blogpost!!! 🎉

somehow i have written and published 100 blogposts! feels like the time it took to get here was simultaneously quite short and quite long. it kinda feels like not that big of a deal because it's not exactly 100 *effortful* blogposts, but i guess 100 of what-i-could-muster-at-the-time is better than 0. this one too, i'd like to put more effort in, but oh well. it's easter! happy easter!

i made kimchi fried rice!

to my surprise and delight, sometimes my mood greatly improves when i cook an elaborate meal. this was never true before, as cooking anything seemed to only deplete me rather than the opposite. but now if i'm feeling a bit down about my self or my abilities in general, cooking a meal is an almost surefire way to lift my spirits. 

the other day i decided to attempt kimchi fried rice. i made this a handful of times on my own a few years ago, but the results were inconsistent. once or twice it was great, and the rest it was varying degrees of awful. so trying it now was a gamble. 

i cooked it with bacon, which i had never done in the past. the result was fantastic! the fat from the bacon really added to the taste. i was worried it might be too salty or bad some other way, but my fiancé loved it, and requested i make it again sometime. 

friday rolled around, and since we're trying to not eat meat on fridays, it was the perfect time to attempt the dish again sans bacon. this time it turned out a bit more like my previous attempts: the flavor wasn't quite as deep. though still pretty good! 

next time i make the meatless version, i make make some other changes to improve it. but overall i'm very satisfied with the results, and it feels great to finally have a use for the lonely, untouched kimchi in our fridge.