we packed our first moving box

our international move is quickly approaching. i've been putting off packing anything because there's no point packing all the things we frequently use until we're actually moving, and all the other stuff seems so easily done it's not even worth doing yet. 

however, after packing the first box, i found the latter was not true at all. my mission today was to pack the cds and vinyls. easy, right? apparently not as easy as i thought. 

the moment i started putting the first vinyls into the box, i realized it's quite a big box, to the point where i'd certainly have to think about weight before i ran out of space. that was the first complication. what seemed like an easy "put some things in a box" now became mental math and shape rotation to find the optimal balance of space and weight distribution, while still maintaining thematically appropriate contents. 

i had started this task while my fiancé was out, and i resisted the temptation to just call him and ask what he'd do—i knew he'd have a plan sooner than i would. but there are already so many moving tasks that he's in charge of due to my inability to do it (like calling our german landlord about things and calling swedish moving companies about other things), i've been trying to take as many other tasks off his plate as i can. so i decided to persevere on my own. 

i hesitantly filled a box and didn't realize until afterwards that maybe i should have taped in together on the bottom. moving out of my apartment in the u.s. flashed in my mind—i had packed a couple boxes without taping them together, and they of course bottomed out. but these boxes seemed a bit more secure...i decided i'd tape them anyway, just to be safe. 

what followed was the worst tape job you could imagine. i realized i didn't really know what the tape was specifically supposed to accomplish, so i just placed it along the bottom seam, and a bit up the sides. it was clear packing tape, and i tried to rip it with my hands, which accomplished little more than tangling the tape up in on itself and rendering it surely more useless than it had already been placed. i tried to bite it, which worked to finally tear the tape, but tangled it just as much, if not more. 

by this time, my fiancé was home, and i gave up doing it on my own, to at least ask him how he would go about taping the box. this was the correct choice: as expected, he had a strategy immediately. he also mentioned how the vinyls i had already placed should typically be placed upright rather than laying down, which to my credit i did at least wonder about. 

after re-taping the box more securely, i managed to pack in all the vinyls and cds into that one single box, thinking there was simply no way it would be light enough to carry. but after breaking out the bathroom scale, my fiancé declared it was actually 10 kilos below what it was rated for on the outside of the box. 

so, our first moving box is officially both packed and not overweight. now that i've done one decently well, with the help i ended up asking for, i feel empowered to pack more on my own. and honestly, i don't think i was doing as badly as i thought anyway, i just didn't immediately have confidence and efficiency, but both are simply a product of doing something enough times. i'm glad i asked the questions i did, because even though i want to take things off my fiancé's plate, it doesn't really help as much when it's done poorly, so better to make sure it's up to snuff before i really go to town. 

oh, and for the record, the box that felt so big to me that i'd surely have to consider the weight of the items i put in it? apparently it's one of the smallest moving box options available...

hannah montana plot hole

today i watched the hannah montana 20th anniversary special, a heartwarming walk down memory lane. but one thing that stuck out to me is a giant plot hole in the series. 

in the show, miley is a normal girl who has a secret double life as a super star, hannah montana. she goes to great lengths to preserve this secret, including disguises for her friends and changing limos to avoid suspicion. 

throughout it all, however, her dad is incredibly un-disguised. miley the normal girl and hannah the popstar have the same dad, save the faux mustache he puts on when with hannah. but his name and identity as a famous country star (billy ray in real life, but "robby ray" in the show) stay the same whether he's miley's dad or hannah's dad at the moment. 

so how did no one discover this very easily discoverable secret?

i'd wondered this before, but today i decided to search to see if anyone else was talking about it, because surely they had to be. indeed, i found several articles about it, as well as other lengthier lists of further plot holes. 

in the end i don't actually mind too much, as long as i'm not the only one wondering about it, feeling insane. as long as we all acknowledge the absurdity of it, i'm more than happy to suspend my disbelief and accept that no one caught on, or that there's just some in-universe logic that makes this make sense. 

the best döner in berlin

ok, i haven't had enough döner to declare which is the best one, but this one was pretty delicious. my fiancé and i were out last night for a church event, and heading home, we passed a kebab spot with a line out the door. we had been rushing home because my bladder was about to explode, so we kept walking and agreed to come back and try it sometime. we took two more steps, then i realized, since we're here, why don't we try it? i can hold it a little longer. 

so we did. we waited in line—which surely would have been shorter if they had more than one vegetable frier and more than one vertically spinning meat contraption. the place is nondescript, looking like they've either just moved in or have been operating on bare bones for several decades. seems like a mix of both, as my fiancé tells me they used to have just a food truck on the other side of the street, and the storefront location is relatively new. 

the menu shows exactly two options, other than the drinks listed on the side, and a mysterious third option which has been unceremoniously covered with a swath of tin foil. the two options are straightforward: a veggie kebab (which is what they're known for, apparently), and the same thing but with meat: a chicken döner. you can order it with "everything" or specify whatever you want left out, especially of the sauces and final touches of greens and onions and such. i didn't expect many customers would request modifications, but we heard quite a few while we waited in the cramped space inside—there's no seating room, just a narrow rectangle of space to place your order, and of course the whole sidewalk when the space indoors fills up. 

we had already had dinner that night but were hungry after lifting hard at the gym. we ordered one chicken döner to share and headed to the subway, eating it on our way. the thing was massive, and it was a challenge to fit the whole thing in your mouth because it stretched so wide across. it tasted incredible. we traded off every few bites, and after each of my turns, i couldn't help but stop to say how delicious it was. 

we had eaten maybe a third of the way through the döner before we made it onto our subway car. we didn't want to drip it everywhere, so for our entire ride home we simply held it, tauntingly, not taking a single bite. the warmth and aroma wafted upwards. i couldn't tell what was harder: holding my bladder (you remember, i still had to pee) or holding myself back from the döner. 

finally we arrived at our stop and exited the train, immediately resuming our alternating bites. then soon enough we were home, and my bladder was blissfully emptied. i'd been struggling to eat enough the past few days, and after eating the döner i felt so satisfyingly full and content. 

today rolled around, as did the topic of what to eat for dinner. i hadn't thought about it, but a little voice in my head said the döner wouldn't be a bad idea...but logically it seemed like a long shot. it was kind of far away, and we just had it yesterday. to my delight, my fiancé said, "i wouldn't mind having that döner again..." and before we knew it, we were back on the subway, headed right to it. 

this time, the line was out the door when we arrived. we were maybe third or fourth from the door, and as we wait, the line swelled to perhaps a dozen behind us. the indoor waiting area was cramped full of perhaps another dozen. i'm not sure how long we waited, but as we did, my fiancé—after noticing the awning outside was repurposed from a coffee shop, with "COFFEE" still visible on the inside border—pondered the power of private equity and how they really could improve efficiency and queue times here so easily with just a few changes...

but honestly, the line felt like all part of the plan, with no intention to change it. as we waited, several people stopped to take a gander at what could possibly garner such dedicated queuers. i looked up their website, which was as sparse as their interior, yet one of the few items included was that they "often have a long wait." it's simply part of the experience! sure, waiting in line is tedious and annoying, but it also feels good to care enough about something to endure the sacrifice.

and man, did it pay off. this time we got one chicken döner each, and wanting to avoid the same subway-temptation-trap as yesterday, i suggested we walk down to the next subway stop as we eat. i only had forgotten how cold it was today, so my fingers stung with cold as i gripped the giant döner, bobbing my head around like a chicken to find the optimal bite positions. 

it was one of those moments i'll always remember: stride by stride with my beloved, eating the best döner in berlin, tromping all over the city because we get to do whatever we want whenever we want, and because we're more in love than anyone has ever been in the history of the world. 

my tutoring session went so well!!!

i had a trial lesson with an online swedish tutor today. i was so nervous, but ended up not having much time to sit in the nerves; we got home with mere minutes to spare. i had just enough time to log on and be nervous for sixty seconds, that's it. 

it was only a half hour lesson, and was mostly introduction and discussing goals and lesson format and whatnot. so in hindsight perhaps i didn't need to be so nervous, but if it had gone poorly, then maybe i would have thought my nerves were justified. 

conversation flowed nearly effortlessly. she asked if i wanted to speak in english first, which i did. then about 2/3 of the way through the session, we had settled all the introductory logistics, and she asked if i wanted to jump right in and try speaking swedish. 

something about her made me more comfortable to speak than i have been before. she's calm and kind, but also smart and thoughtful, without lacking cheekiness or candor. she gently corrected some verb forms just by noting the correct form and moving on, then later she could tell when i didn't understand a more advanced word she used, and stopped to explain it in both english and swedish. 

most importantly, i left the session on my tiptoes, prancing into the other room and beaming a grin at my fiancé. i didn't feel bogged down or embarrassed or stressed. i felt like this (speaking swedish) is actually something i can and will do. 

(i've been thinking a lot about therapists and coaches and things of this nature recently, including how you can tell if you've found a good one: one of the most important bits of information on this front is how you feel afterwards. and then i thought about how that's true of romantic partners too, and how sometimes i used to feel like i'd lost a part of myself after spending time with someone i was seeing, and how with my fiancé, it always felt like i was discovering new parts of myself. find someone who makes you feel like you can fly!)

ok, never mind, i'm being too hard on myself

i just published two posts today, and have done that several times this month, meaning the month isn't over and i already have over 30 posts from this month. and yeah, sometimes my posts are pretty short! but "pretty short" is undeniably more than "nothing at all." like, i've literally written more words the past three months than many before that! and all of them are longer than a tweet (or most of them at least). and i've kept up the habit almost without fail. and even when i skipped a few days, i got right back into it. 

i wonder if there's a way i can add a word counter to my blog? or if that's some app that already exists, or if i can make it via an llm or something. i should ask my fiancé. i like not having to figure everything out all on my own anymore. 

hey, me again. am i chickening out?

what am i even doing this for! i feel like i haven't given a real effort in my last several blogposts. i forget what my goals were and literally why i'm doing this. i thought i would naturally put some effort into my posts here and there, but lately it feels like it hasn't been much of a priority, and i can't remember the last time i actually tried to edit a post for clarity or improve it in any way other than at the level of an individual sentence. i'm just taking the easy way out and writing whatever comes to me and calling it a day (or night, usually). 

i do still think this is a useful process, and i'm glad i'm doing it. but i feel like it's not scratching the itch of doing actual writing that takes effort and intention, i'm just using it to journal. which, to be fair, is also one of my goals, so i guess i'm not totally failing. it's just hard to keep all the goals in mind and meet all of them occasionally; i fall into one or the other and forget to strive for the other ones. 

one benefit i think i'm getting out of the process is an overall further unfurling, settling in, and overflowing of my creativity. it feels like i actually have cleared out friction and gunk in my creative channels, and posting daily keeps it that way, even if the posts themselves aren't anything special. i'm free to pounce on any lightning flash of an idea, and quickly spin something out of nothing, rather than just endlessly ideate and never get to the follow-through stage. maybe i should just trust that a few more months of solidifying this habit will mean i'll have that much more room to put more effort into each post. 

but perhaps the most frustrating thing is that it's not even that i don't have enough time. this is perhaps the period of my life where i have the most time i'll ever have. and yet! what do i have to show for it! ...a lot i guess, but also, not enough. and i have learned before that doing more actually does beget doing more, rather than an excess of time leading to things being easier necessarily. 

sigh. i don't know. i'm just doing what i can, and hopefully i can look back and be proud of what i've done, without disclaiming and minimizing. i'd like to be able to do that. 

my swedish class keeps getting postponed

i was supposed to start a swedish conversation course this week, but it has now been postponed not once, but twice, for lack of sufficient participants. as of now it's supposed to start april 9th, but who knows if it will be delayed once again. 

so today i found an online language tutor instead, and i'll meet with her tomorrow. the prospect is at least ten times scarier than the conversation course—and i was already scared for that one too! at least with the conversation course, i wouldn't be the only student, and could adjust to whatever was happening in the class, rather than being the sole focus. 

i'm not sure why that's so terrifying, especially considering it's probably the best option for what i want anyway—as much improvement as quickly as possible. any time there are other students, the pace of the class naturally is constrained by the average level, rather than being able to cater to any one student in particular. 

i can at least promise to give it one go and see how it is. the tutor seems nice and prefers a conversation-focused, natural method sort of approach, which is also well-suited to my needs. 

i feel bad about modeling when i haven't done it in a while

the worst feelings i have about modeling always seem to arise when i simply haven't done it in awhile. i get tangled up in lamentations of the futility of my efforts and the never-nearer-ness of greatness. then every time i do it, i think, "wow, this is so much fun, who cares if i'm not great, i simply love doing this." 

proposed solution: make sure i do one modeling thing per calendar month. if i don't get an actual gig, then reach out to photographers and set something up myself, on a tfp (time for prints)/collaboration basis. 

expected flaw in this plan: i already have a modeling gig scheduled (or completed) for the calendar months of march and april, thus absolving me of any additional effort for these two months. by the time may rolls around, i expect i will have lost my courage to follow through with the plan (if another actual gig doesn't happen to fall into my lap). 

one thing i learned from my photoshoot yesterday is that, although i felt more comfortable in front of the camera than i expected i would, i still come off as an amateur when it comes to posing. there's simply no way of getting around the fact that it is a skill that needs to be developed—not some divine download that happens without my involvement. 

but what i also learned is that as long as i'm actively modeling, i actually don't really care that much about being bad at it. i just care about being able to do it—and developing more skill certainly is one way of ensuring i'm able to do it more often. 

another thing i realized is that i was afraid i had been chosen for the photoshoot yesterday out of desperation—that the designer surely would have gone with someone else if she had had more choice. what actually happened at the shoot was the designer put me in two looks instead of just one, specifically because my body would suit it better than the substitute model she had put in it for the group photos (one model had dropped out last minute, meaning one of the assistants stepped up as substitute). 

i have a fashion show booked in about a month. we'll see how my feelings about modeling go in the meantime! 

why did no one tell me about "minced oaths"?

almost an entire lent's worth of censoring my profane exclamations, and i only just now find out there's a word for that! 

a "minced oath" is a polite substitution for a profane or blasphemous expression. well golly gee willikers, that covers all the bases of what i gave up for lent! (googling golly willikers to find out how to spell it for my last post is how i stumbled upon the phrase "minced oath" in the first place.)

examples include things like: "oh my goodness" instead of "oh my ***," and "darn" instead of "****," and so on.  

anybody have a personal favorite minced oath?

edit: my favorite so far is my fiancé saying "fecal demonstration" in place of "sh** show." 

oh right, modeling is incredibly fun

some days i want to give up on modeling. then some days i have a modeling gig where they dress me as a pirate and i think, "this is the most fun a person can have." 

i love working with student designers. their projects are so creative and fun and kooky. this is my second time modeling for a student designer in berlin, and by happenstance, the other model at the shoot also modeled at the other student show i did! 

it still boggles my mind that somehow i have met enough people in my short time here that any time i go to a new modeling gig, i'm almost certain to know at least one person there. in a city as big as berlin! that's insane. and it's not even that i've met that many people, it just really is the same few dozen people all ending up in the same places i do. it's so fun! 

i'm sure you're all wondering how i did...especially with posing...and i'm happy to report i think i did "not very bad"! the thing about working with student designers is i don't expect very skilled photographers, so i expect i'll be on my own when it comes to posing. 

but wow, the designer and photographer were great directors! "chin up a bit, switch arms, strong look to the camera, now look to the side with your face but back at the camera with your eyes," and so on. very helpful! 

even if the photos turn out bad, it was enough that i didn't feel like i was floundering in front of the camera, because i trusted them to make the small adjustments to a pose that would make it at least not awful. 

perhaps the best part was right before i left the shoot, the designer offered to airdrop all the bts photos and videos she had taken during the shoot. golly gee willikers, that's perhaps the best thing a designer has ever done. there's nothing worse than getting home all jazzed up from a fashion event and completely deflating when you realize you have exactly zero footage on your phone to relive the splendor, and you have to wait until someone else (hopefully) posts something. 

so if you need me, i'll be swiping through one hundred photos and videos of me dressed as a pirate until further notice.

i've been so busy today i forgot to be nervous for tomorrow

i've been so productive all day, i legit forgot to be nervous for my photoshoot tomorrow. life hack for reducing anxiety: be so in the moment you forget future moments even exist, let alone remembering to be nervous about them!

what i've been working on all day is finally taking my transition from therapist to life coach seriously: getting a profile set up on a therapist/coach directory, defining my "brand" and what clients i'm excited to work with, and even setting up a new tiktok page to market myself. 

it's been about a year since i left my therapist job, and basically since then, i've been wrestling with the problem of how to find coaching clients who would be the right fit. as an attempt to solve this problem, i fleshed out a whole poasting-coaching idea, which was how my e-book even came into being: intially planned as marketing for the coaching offer...but then it became its own thing, and i didn't really push the coaching part very much. 

but now it feels like i woke up one day, after essentially a year sabbatical, and felt ready to get back into the thick of things. i miss the work i did (well, not all of it, specifically not diagnosis). i miss the way i was able to help people and the support i was able to provide. i also feel like i have grown immensely in the past year, in ways that i'm excited to let influence my coaching work. 

i think it would be fun to also market my coaching on twitter, but would perhaps warrant an entirely different "brand" and marketing approach. i'm not quite sure what my relationship to twitter will be once my lenten fast is over, so tbd on that anyway, but at least for now, my focus is on reaching an entirely different client base. 

it feels good to put a lot of work into this. i'm enjoying being creative: from the naming to the branding to the video content to the editing the video content (my previous stints on tiktok were almost exclusively from-the-hip and unedited; i'm also now trying to actually give valuable, more advice-style information, rather than just personally pontificating). the prospect of using my skills to help other people makes me feel alive! 

and now it's 10:44pm and i still haven't remembered to be nervous for tomorrow. i plan to attempt going to bed early tonight, waking up early tomorrow, then going to the gym, showering, and drying my hair, all before the photoshoot is scheduled to start (late afternoon). i've been told i will be wearing a hat. i'm not sure if that makes me feel more of less nervous about posing. 

maybe i should dramatically give up more often

time and again, the moment i well and truly give up, that's when opportunities come pouring in that convince me to keep going. usually this happens with modeling, but it happens with writing and other things too: precisely the moment when i need it the most, i'll get a compliment or a sign that what i'm doing is worthwhile. 

last night, i was lamenting to my fiancé that modeling takes up such a frustrating, strange real estate in my mind. not enough that i'll do whatever it takes to get better and get opportunities, but just enough that i can't seem to ever fully give up—despite being too scared to do what it would take to get better outside of the few opportunities i do get. 

he scrunched his face in confusion. "aren't you doing it now?" he asked, because i literally have a photoshoot coming up on wednesday. "yeah, i guess so..." but i should have been doing more! i should have practiced posing so that i would be sure i wouldn't screw this one up. i've been modeling for four years, you'd think by now i'd be confident in my ability to pose—but you'd be wrong; in truth i haven't really needed to get better at posing. for runway it's simply less important; it doesn't carry the whole show like with a photoshoot, and in the four years i've been modeling, i've only done that one very first photoshoot back in 2022! 

(as a side note, maybe calling it four years is a bit unfair to myself; yes it has been four calendar years, but i only did one thing in 2022 and one or two things in 2023; it was really only in 2024 that things picked up and i was modeling with any real frequency. when i talk to people about language learning i often say it's not about the years you've been learning, it's more about the hours you'e put in; but i guess it's hard to transfer that perspective to this domain for myself.)

i think i was feeling particularly down on myself yesterday as a sort of emotional whiplash from the success of getting the gig on wednesday. throughout my modeling journey, i've discovered a pattern where sometimes feel ugly or inadequate is a defense mechanism against the amount of attention that's involved in being a model—the emotional aftermath after my first fashion show was almost enough to make me never want to model again. 

so it makes sense that i would actually be feeling worse right after finally finding some success—i'm terrified to go through with it and possibly do badly, so perhaps part of me is trying to convince me not to try at all. 

after all this, today i wake up to a voice message. it's the organizer of the cluster of fashion shows i did late last summer. at the time, she had told me that designers often reach out to her needing models, and that whenever she sends them some, she makes sure it's a paid gig, even if the pay is low. i figured the message now would be asking me to participate in this year's summer cluster of shows. 

i think about procrastinating listening to the message, but instead i click it open before any fear can convince me otherwise. she asks if i would like to do a fashion show in april! i respond affirmatively and she says it will be paid, though low. 

i actually can't believe it. one little voice message, and all of my doubts have been directly addressed. one of them, namely: she's not picking me out of desperation—the show is weeks away. i had been minimizing my wednesday gig by saying she probably just settled for me out of desperation, needing any body at all, even if she wouldn't have ever picked me otherwise. 

another was that sure, i broke into this network of incredibly talented designers and models and organizers in berlin, but that i was the worst of them and every thinks i'm a terrible model but nice enough to keep around. i thought surely she would exhaust her network before even approaching me; though maybe she has, but that she asked me at all expels that worry for now. 

it would be super cool if, moving forward, i could stop agonizing about modeling, and focus on just doing it or not. though i don't think that will happen, so perhaps instead, i will at least give up so dramatically and entirely that the world cannot help but conspire to make me reconsider. 

go girl, give us nothing

the hairstylist from the first proper photo shoot i modeled for four years ago recently reposted some photos from the shoot. they were actually photos i'd never seen before—unedited versions of the final shots, which had been edited into a digitally rendered, alien-like background. these new photos the hairstylist posted were straight from the camera, with the plain white background we'd had in the studio that day. 

the one of me was my favorite from the shoot: a shot from the back, which showed my intricate avant-garde bun, the cutout back of the stiff feathered dress i wore, and, most importantly, not my face. 

now, don't get me wrong. as i said, this was my very first proper photo shoot, ever. the first time wearing original designs, the first time working with a team that was more than just my cousin or my sister shooting pics in our basement or a random alley. this was a full day, full hair and makeup, full professional studio sort of situation. 

i had been asked to be in it because the designer said i fit the exact measurements of the mannequin they had used to make the collection; so none of them would need to be altered to fit me. i was scared and nervous, but also felt up to the challenge. 

when it came time to get the shots, i posed like my life depended on it—or so i thought. i could swear i was making grand, giant shapes and gestures, full of emotion and story and intention. 

looking at them today, years later, and my reaction is a bit like, "go girl, give us nothing!" my poses are minuscule, my energy is tense, and my face is giving, well, pretty much nothing. 

and to be honest? it feels quite bad. i feel embarrassed and ashamed, especially because i had been so proud of them at the time. i shared them on my story today before i really took a good look at them, and now i felt a twinge of regret; why hadn't i just left them in the past and not reminded anyone of them? 

my regret didn't last long (though the embarrassment still lingers...); a few hours later i saw and responded to an instagram story looking for a female model for a project on wednesday. i've done a similar thing probably a half-dozen times in the past week, and i was ready to delete instagram from my phone rather than continue to apply to opportunities and hear no answer back. 

but lo and behold, this time i got a response! the designer mentioned more about the time and location of the shoot, and the crucial fact that since she's a student, it would not be paid. i said that's not a problem and gave her my measurements with my breath held—i was thrilled she had responded at all, but figured this is where it would fall through, that her samples would be too small for me to fit into. but that didn't happen! she said that's great, then said she'd send me more details tomorrow, apologized for the last-minute-ness of everything, and expressed her excitement to see me. 

well shiver me timbers. this might actually happen! maybe making this post will jinx it; i'm always hesitant to talk about modeling gigs before they happen, because they always feel an inch from falling apart entirely. but even if it does fall through, i'm proud of myself for trying again after so many rejections recently. 

wish me luck! 

nature outing in the city

hang out with your friends, even if it's only for an hour or so! we helped friends with an errand today then went to a forest for a walk and to forage some ramps (a type of wild onion; the green thing in the photo below). we'd all been stressed recently, and a walk in the forest with friends was refreshing and relieving. 

when i feel bad, either physically or emotionally, oftentimes the last thing i want to do is see other people. i just want to crawl in bed and feel worse, quite frankly. but sometimes the thing you need the most is being with other people! even if it doesn't make a dent physically (i still had a headache after hanging out), the emotional benefits can still be reaped. 

it's also so lovely to do something with someone who knows what they're doing! i had no idea what ramps were before today, though i once having them pointed out to me, i recognized them as something i've seen a lot recently, that felt very spring-like to me with their vibrant green and supple appearance. once i knew what they were, we saw them everywhere! the air that wafted through the forest smelled incredible from the sheer quantity of them. birdsong also filled the air, and we talked about how birdsong feels relaxing because subconsciously we recognize that it must mean a lack of predators or danger in the area. (a few hours later, cooking with my fiancé in the kitchen, i told him i love when he's silly; that it feels like birdsong to me). 

we ended up only having an hour-ish to spare, as we had to get home, drop our dog off, then get to church on time. which we did! sometimes it's tempting to skip out on potential plans if you don't have much time to spare, but an hour was so much better than nothing. 

the forest was generally much prettier than this, but the silly graffiti is what got me to take out my phone and snap a photo. so berlin, unfortunately

 

life vibes rn

shedding the epistemic arrogance of adolescence (just in time to close out my twenties)

reorienting my life around "maybe responsibility is good actually," rather than something to avoid at all costs

ointments and creams and thinking about taking vitamins

face so close to my beloved's that i spontaneously comprehend picasso's paintings

surprised how i can meet a new person that is just the kind of person i'd be friends with; that somehow everyone suited to be my friend is not already. how many more are out there?

facetiming his parents yesterday and mine today

preparing for an international move, never feeling in the same spot twice on the spectrum between "sell it all" and "bring absolutely everything" 

"should i give up on modeling?" for the fifth day in a row, then applying to three casting calls the same day 

thanking my lucky stars i don't have to wait a year or more to wear my wedding dress

currently reading: "being wrong: adventures in the margin of error"

it's taking me a while to work through, but i'm currently reading and enjoying "being wrong: adventures in the margin of error" by kathryn schulz. it's surprisingly good (i think i have been realizing lately how much of a feat it is to make anything actually good, not that i didn't expect this book in particular to be good), though at times dense enough in an every-sentence-could-be-a-pull-quote sort of way that it takes me a long time to get through it. 

it's a perfect time to be reading it, because being in the first serious relationship of my life, i've been wrong more times in the past year than in recent memory before that. i've also been right more times than in recent memory! 

basically, it's the most time i've spent with another human being in perhaps the last decade. experiencing so much with one person means we're constantly negotiating our understanding of the past and the present—not in a super intense way, but little things like "how much milk is currently in the fridge" and "what country were we in two months ago again?" stuff that's either constantly changing (like the presence or lack of milk in the fridge) or that's out of view of the present moment and requires recalling in order to determine specific details. 

very often we're on the same page, but the sheer amount of little moments like this means now and again we are not on the same page, which usually means one of us is wrong—which can feel very bad! 

while living alone prior to being with my fiancé, reality was a one-person residence: i was experiencing most things alone, and thus not checking my work with another person basically ever. relatedly, at that time i also took feedback much harder in general, because it wasn't often that i received any. i had a hard time being wrong; it either made me defensive or question my own judgment, and honestly sometimes both. 

reading "being wrong" makes me feel a bit saner for my strong reactions to being informed of my errors, and also gives quite an optimistic and accepting view of error in general. i highly recommend it!

productive day!

aha, maybe i had a productive day today because i finally got back in the gym yesterday after my illness. the sickness was receding, but i was left with just feeling weird and bad and struggling to identify the cause. i had a feeling the gym would do me good, and good it did. i definitely felt weaker after so much time off, but it was great to get back into it. even in my first few warm-up sets, i already started feeling better. 

today i made progress on several things that felt huge, that i haven't felt ready for previously, and that felt totally okay to do today. that's all i'll say on that, but if any of the things go anywhere, then i'll talk more about them later!

in other big news: we found an officiant! we had settled on a wedding date, but it wasn't fully locked in until we could find an approved officiant who was willing and able to make it to the ceremony. and now we have! she seems great, and now we can move forward with confidence that our date is solid. 

in further other news, i was rereading several of my posts and thinking, "wow, this would be so much better if i had put any effort into trying to make it better (rather than just writing and posting without reading or editing)" and then also read my blogposts from when i studied abroad in 2017 and thinking "wow i was a much better writer back then." at least i know i have it in me?

breaking news: best language app ever

as i mentioned yesterday, i'm getting back into learning languages, and have recently made a list of all the resources i'd recommend. this list is incomplete, though, as i don't remember perfectly all the resources i used to know and love. however, several of the apps i used to use are still on my phone, even though they have been offloaded to the cloud. 

i just started learning japanese, which i haven't really dabbled in very seriously before, though i have learned a good chunk of one of the alphabets, simply because i found a cute and fun enough gamified app that i literally couldn't resist. so this app stuck in my head, and i opened the language app folder on my phone in order to re-download it and start learning more japanese. 

lo and behold, i see an app i had totally forgotten about, called lingodeer. back when i used it, i think it only had three languages: chinese, japanese, and korean. at the time, it was right up my alley, as an asian studies major specializing in chinese and korean language (many other more popular language apps at the time, like babbel, only had european languages). i specifically remember lingodeer being a good app for learning the korean alphabet. 

as i tried it out anew, i was blown away. it basically felt like if duolingo was actually very good. i've defended duolingo before and i stand by it; it functions perfectly fine as daily practice for your target language, if the features of the app don't get on your nerves too much (they don't get on mine). though i must say, this can vary wildly across different languages. in my opinion, duolingo is more fun to use for languages that they spend less time developing. for the ones they put a lot of time and effort into, for the user this just means more lessons, not necessarily at a helpful pace: in other words, more fluff. it's been perfectly lovely for me learning swedish, but i didn't love using it for german. 

anyway, lingodeer has many of the same features as duolingo, but with several improvements. namely, entirely much less fluff. this does mean it's harder, and sometimes it's nice to have a super easy no-brainer app to use as your daily practice, but for me learning japanese, my priority actually is getting as good as i can as quick as i can, not it being easy and brainless. 

along the same lines, the lingodeer activities are just a bit more interactive than those on duolingo. for example, instead of clicking full words to form a sentence like on duolingo, lingodeer had me click each character/syllable and form the entire sentence by myself. on the first or second lesson, mind you! i'm several lessons into duolingo and it's still going over the same half-dozen vocab words. 

the best part is, in the years since i've been away, lingodeer has also added several more new languages! i'm excited to poke around and see how useful it might be for other languages too. they don't have swedish, but other than that they have all the other languages i need!

the lingodeer logo

feeling bad < doing something about it (on refreshing language skills)

lately i've been feeling bad about my language skills, because as i learn more languages, i feel my abilities in all of them start to waver and i struggle with word recall in all of them, even my native language. which obviously feels bad! 

it feels a bit ridiculous to feel bad about it though, for two reasons. one: i should be proud of what i can do, not sad about what i still can't! having some degree of competency in four non-native languages is nothing to sneeze at, even if i'm not anywhere near native-level. two: why feel bad when i can do something about it instead?

so i'm officially dusting off my old languages and getting them back up to speed, while still working on my two new ones. and maybe adding a sprinkle of a fifth, just for kicks and giggles. (can anyone guess what it is?)

i've been really liking 8 sidor for swedish, so i tried to find something similar for chinese, korean, and german as well. i'm really liking du chinese, but haven't yet found a free one for korean—ttmik stories is nice but i don't really want to pay for anything if i don't have to, since i'm spread so thin with so many different languages, i'm not sure i'd get a decent value from it compared to if i was dedicating my time and energy to one single language. 

so far, it's much less demoralizing than i expected to get back into chinese and korean; i remember much more than i thought i would, and many more words i just need a refresher or two, even if i don't recognize it fully right away. this is especially satisfying for chinese, when i can remember the pronunciation of a word i haven't read in literal years, since chinese characters are not actually straightforwardly phonetic (which sounds insane, now that i'm returning to it after spending some time with germanic languages). 

i also broke out a "korean stories" book i have, one of the few books i kept when i cleared out my apartment last year to move to europe. if you can't tell, i'm all for reading right now! back in my language-learning heyday i would say i was much more listening-focused, but reading is my jam right now. 

oh and by the way, i have a master doc of all language learning resources i have used and would recommend. i just added several new ones! 

and on a related note, so much of successful language learning is about assessing and addressing your needs now, rather than using and sticking with resources that aren't what you need. so the resources i listed in the doc above are not "use these because they are perfect!!1!" it's "here is a list of resources that you can evaluate for yourself if they fit your specific immediate needs, which for me at some point or another they have." 

excited and scared for future job-seeking

we're moving to sweden soon, and that will mean a lot more employment opportunities will open up for me. while in germany on the freelancer visa, i can only do work that was approved through my visa application, which for me is model and coach. in sweden, i'll be able to just get any ole job, though i still can't do what my education and training are in (mental health therapy) because my license is only valid back in my home state. 

i constantly go back and forth between excitement and frustration. sometimes the constraints themselves feel exciting; not being able to do my previous job means i get to try something new! but other times i get down about my ability to find a job that i would be qualified for, since i can't use my main qualifications. 

my fiancé and i brainstormed some possibilities tonight, after i cried out some of my fear and frustration. once i had calmed down, it actually felt fun and expansive. it helps to have a partner who understands me so well, and also sees the best in me and can recommend avenues i hadn't thought of before. 

if anyone has any ideas or recommendations for me, i'm open to hearing those as well! 

sometimes "imposter syndrome" is just "this isn't for me"

before my bridal appointment yesterday, i thought i was feeling a bit of imposter syndrome, which i chose to describe as "disbelief" instead. imposter syndrome was more accurate, but i didn't really feel like getting into it, or investigating what the feeling was, i just wanted to note it and move on. 

the feeling was something like "i feel like i don't belong at a fancy bridal appointment like this...even though i totally do, because i am indeed a bride-to-be." i think my feeling was correct, but my reasoning was faulty. 

previously, i have indeed felt a certain imposter syndrome when my fiancé and i first started dating. after nearly three decades of being officially single (i had dated around of course, but had never been in an official relationship), i now had a boyfriend. and i was a girlfriend. it felt jarring to reorient my identity as someone who now belonged to this club of being partnered, that i had absolutely never experienced before. 

so i thought this time it was something similar! i assumed it to be an extension of that feeling, rearing its head again because now i was a member of a new and even more exclusive club, that of the officially-soon-to-be-married. 

after experiencing the appointment, however, i know see a bit more clearly. my feeling of not belonging was actually just that i accurately intuited it would not be the sort of bridal experience for me. not that i don't belong because they'll discover i'm actually a terminally single girl who managed to slip through the cracks and find someone to marry her, but because the nature of the appointment did not suit my needs. 

though to be fair, according to the research i had done, i thought i had found something within the traditional bridal appointment realm that was different enough that it did suit my needs; it's not like i just went in blind! i knew for sure that a totally traditional bridal appointment was not the right match for me: the made-to-order dresses would take too long for my timeline, and would likely be primarily out of my budget anyway. 

i remember watching say yes to the dress when i was younger and having it seared into my brain that any budget under 2k was impossible to work with in these sorts of bridal stores. i know what wedding dresses can cost! i also knew that no dress could be magical enough to persuade me to consider spending far above budget—i knew i could be happy with a cheaper dress! 

anyway, even if the appointment had been exactly how i had expected it to be given what i booked (with only in-budget, off-the-rack dresses showed to me), i realized that it still would not have been the experience for me, due to one thing: the pressure. the format of the appointment itself is such that there is inherently pressure to buy. you get an entire hour+ dedicated to just you, with the help of a professional stylist, and if you don't buy anything, then the stylist basically just wasted that hour on you. so there's a bit of an adversarial undercurrent, one might say, as the stylist as i had somewhat competing incentives. 

this became extremely clear when we visited the next store, and experienced what felt like exactly the right sort of bridal shopping environment for me—exclusively off-the-rack dresses at lower prices with no pressure but still help from a stylist in what turned out to also be one-on-one help as we were the only ones in the store! 

if i had to go back and change anything though, i don't think i would. even though the traditional bridal appointment wasn't for me in the end, i think if i hadn't tried it, i would still wonder if maybe that would have been super fun and lovely. this way, i got to get that out of my system first, let it thoroughly disappoint me, then be primed to be perfectly satisfied with finding my dress at the next store. 

ladies and gentlemen...we found The Dress

well, that was easy! my sister and i went to two total places today, and ended up really finding The One. and exactly a month after my fiancé proposed!

but first, we went to my off-the-rack bridal appointment i mentioned yesterday. however, to my dismay, the dresses they had me try on were mostly made-to-order; only one was truly off-the-rack. this was despite them having an explicitly "off-the-rack" option when booking, that's an entirely separate type of appointment on the booking page, and despite me explicitly making sure on the phone that that's what i would be trying on. 

alas. they had preselected a few gowns for me around my size and inspired by the photos i had sent in of gowns i like. they were nice, but none felt like anything special. as mentioned in my previous post, i've been cognizant of proportions lately, especially my bust in comparison to everything else—for several of these dresses, that was precisely the problem: very bust-heavy in an unbalanced sort of way. i mentioned this to the stylist, but i think she thought i was being self-deprecating, as she responded with a compliment that my proportions looked great in all the dresses! she also assured me that sometimes it isn't like they show on tv, with a big dramatic moment and tears and the whole shebang. sometimes you just find a nice dress and that's that! sure...but the ones i tried on were both not The One and would be logistic nightmares—because again, i had specifically wanted something off-the-rack, not that i'd have to wait months for!

in the end, i left the appointment ready to check out our next place: an outlet store. we arrived and it was much more my style. no pressure, lots of options i could browse myself, lower prices, and most importantly, entirely off-the-rack. i expected basically a thrift store sort of vibe, but to my delight, the employee in the store was quite helpful and was the ideal amount of involved. she let us browse, but offered to help us put clips on the ones that were a bit too big (to show how they might fit i got them altered), unsheathed the covered gowns for us, and suggested accessories to try. we arrived an hour before close, and at first there was one other group inside (looking for non-wedding gowns), then pretty quickly it became just us in the store. 

the gowns were organized by (european) size, which sounds very helpful, except that i have no idea what my size is. that ended up being neither here nor there, because the sizes fit me wildly different anyway. one that i liked was a size 40 and fit almost perfectly, and the dress i ended up getting was a size 34 and also fit perfectly! i just picked whatever gown caught my fancy in terms of both style and price and tried them on. 

after about five, i was starting to prepare for the scenario in which i had to settle for a decent dress, because at this point i wasn't having any particularly strong feelings about any of the dresses; they all just felt "fine." i pictured myself a month out from the wedding, still searching, and making a choice on a time-crunched whim. then i tried on one that was an "almost," and started envisioning getting married in that one. i still didn't love it, even though it looked great. 

next was a gown that i had liked on the rack, but wasn't anything special on me, even though it seemed like it fit well enough. as i looked at it on me in the mirror, the saleswoman mentioned that they had the same gown in a size below, if i wanted to try that one instead. sure, why not! 

i pushed aside the curtain and emerged from the mirrorless little dressing room wearing the dress in the smaller size. my sister caught sight of me at the same time that i caught my own reflection in the mirror. my jaw dropped, and so did hers. tears sprang to both of our eyes. it was the infamous moment! this was the dress, this was the one. it really did happen like it does on tv! it fit incredibly perfectly. so perfectly that i'll likely only need to get it hemmed, no other alterations. and it was significantly below my budget! "ok, i'll take it!"  

thinking about it now, i'm recalling the phone consultation i had for the bridal appointment, where the stylist recommended i stay open to different styles. i had joked to my sister that open to different styles is my middle name. and indeed i was! i don't think the dress i chose is something i would have pinned to my wedding dress inspo pinterest board, but on me, it was simply something special. 

i only wish i could show my fiancé already! 

p.s. i forgot to mention; as i was trying on the too-big version of The Dress, which i didn't find to be anything special at the time, i noticed a family outside the store was looking inside and making "wow!" facial expressions to me in that dress. my sister said, "that was a sign!" 

wedding dress shopping tmrw!

tomorrow i have an appointment to try on wedding dresses! i had to search a bit to find a store that did the whole bridal shebang specifically with their off-the-rack dresses rather than their made-to-order ones, since the made-to-order ones take about as long to make as i have until my actual wedding, leaving no time for alterations. on the other hand, off-the-rack dresses are already-made sample dresses that i can purchase right then and there and then get altered. much more appropriate for our timeline!

i'm very excited, and maybe also feeling a bit of disbelief. thankfully i have my sister coming with me tomorrow! though i do wish i could have more loved ones come with us as well. stuff like this makes it really sink in that i'm establishing a life so far from so much of my family. 

we went to some thrift stores today and i tried on a wedding dress at one of them, but it didn't really feel like anything. it was a nice shape and not ginormously too big. but it was in a ramshackle little fitting room in a (very inexplicably toasty) thrift store, my hair was a mess, etc. so i didn't have any big, "wow, i'm trying on a wedding dress!" sort of feeling. 

for tomorrow, i've done my whole pre-fashion-show model prep routine. i'll do my hair and makeup before the appointment as well, so i can see as best as possible what the dresses would look like for real, not just a whisper of it. i'll be wearing nude underwear and probably nude pasties? i don't have any strapless bras that i love but i think i have some kind of strapless adhesive one that would do in a pinch. but it's hard to know what kind of bra i'd need (and like, preferably i won't need one at all) without knowing what my dress looks like! 

i've also gotten my nails freshly done. an almond french tip as usual (she says after a whole two times ever getting my nails done), but this time with a white chrome finish on top,  it turned out very lovely, though the white chrome is more subtle than i would have liked. i got this style as a potential wedding style, but we'll see. 

3 years ago i made my twitter account

3 years ago i made my twitter account, and now i'm sitting on the couch with the love of my life, whom i met because of twitter, and will soon marry. if you need a sign to do that thing you're afraid of but really want to get out there and do, this is your sign! 

i'm tired and sick

b l e gh . 

hair makes such a difference

when my hair's all greasy and i throw it up in a dissatisfactory bun, i feel positively yucky. today i went from that to gorgeous hair and man, what a difference. 

hair is hard, and much of the time i am displeased with mine. it's thin and fine and usually frizzy. 

however, in the past few months i have made incredible strides in being able to make it look nice. my current routine (on days i want to go all out) is as follows: 

1. shampoo and conditioner from the blue lagoon
2. while damp, in this order:
1. keratase leave-in conditioner
2. l'oreal dream length heat protectant spray
3. hair oil my sister got me from japan
3. blow-dry with t3 aire 360 
4. curl with t3 aire 360
5. add dry shampoo
6. hairspray

i did this today and my word my hair has never looked better. the t3 aire 360 does a great job even on its own (it was a gift from my fiancé last year and greatly improved hair-related morale), but the recent addition of the blue lagoon shampoo/conditioner and the hair oil from my sister really sealed the deal. 

my hair is literally not even frizzy at all right now! and it doesn't hold the curl much from the aire 360, but it does still have a slight, blown-out sort of wave that looks quite nice. i think for lasting curls i'd need a hair straightener (ironically), which i haven't bought yet in europe. 

and for the record, on days when i want it to look decent but don't want to put any effort in, i just douse it in dry shampoo and call it day. 

together these products hold together my sanity on these premenstrual days when looking put-together is a balm for my sheepish spirit (i'm also sick and we just watched two more episodes of pride and prejudice). 

save-the-dates and pride and prejudice

save-the-dates are printed, addressed, and mailed! at least for my side of the family, which will take longer to arrive. it feels delightfully good to do things quickly, rather than let them drag out and weigh on you.

tonight we watched the second episode of the bbc pride and prejudice series, which i had recently heard good things about. unfortunately i am still partial to the 2005 keira knightley version. i'm finding the bbc version quite cheesy; though one thing i like is that they subtly explore mary and mr. collins, which my fiancé and i had just said would make a good match. 

my fiancé just finished reading the book, and i read it earlier this year. it was my first time finishing a jane austen novel. last year i attempted sense and sensibility, but i think my attention span was still lacking at the time, and i didn't have the advantage of being familiar with the characters, as i was when i read pride and prejudice. 

 

we have planned a whole wedding in a week

the moment you get engaged, people begin asking you, "so when's the wedding?" i get it though; what else is there to ask?! 

we got engaged on february 14, and didn't start talking about a date until two weeks later. that was a week ago, and now we have quite nearly planned the whole wedding. 

i mean, it will be a so-called micro-wedding, but still! we have summoned it into existence in a week flat. save-the-dates have been designed (by me, on canva, though they like quite nice if i do say so myself) and will be printed and mailed tomorrow (optimistically). we tried to print them ourselves and ended up with teeny tiny save-the-dates and eventually gave up. 

in the past two days, i have whipped up a thirteen-page google doc of anything and everything pertaining to the wedding—mostly for my family, as they're the ones who will be traveling for it. i have included names, photos, and relation-to-the-bride-or-groom of each invited guest, suggested packing list, fun facts, language tips, e-sim recommendations, and a list of what we will and will not have at our quaint little  wedding. 

although my head hurts from staring a screen for several days straight, i'm quite pleased with our progress. and i'm getting very excited about the wedding! 

time feels so long with you

find someone who makes time stretch out like a sun-drenched cat. 

like i'd die young and happy at any moment, because every moment with him feels like a thousand. 

find someone who meets you fresh in every moment, subtle-strangers never taking familiarity as a given. 

life is now, and now is vast and slow and deep. 

i took a really hot bath

and thought a lot of interesting thoughts, but now that i'm out, i'm just pleasantly tired. 

the water was hot enough that i called my fiancé in to check if it was too hot. then i had him look up why humans don't cook very easily. like, we've been in saunas at the same temperature we cook steak at (90 degrees celcius). why aren't we cooking in half an hour like the steak?! 

the answer from chatgpt was pretty funny. it listed a bunch of characteristics about humans that make us not cook (like temperature-regulating bodily functions and escaping from the sauna if we feel extreme discomfort), then stated, "the dead steak is doing none of that." 

i'm surprised i remember any of the reasons why, because what i really wanted to know was whether i would ever accidentally cook myself, it didn't really matter why. i mean, i was curious, but the fear was the main emotion. 

one time i tweeted that the ideal temperature for anything was "enough to feel something," and i feel that with my bath today. i've been taking more tepid baths lately precisely because of the fear of cooking myself, and boy was i missing out on what i'm feeling now, post-bath. 

when i take a too-tepid bath, then if i stay too long, i get cold and stuck because i don't want to brave the cold air getting out of the bath. but if the water is hot enough, then i want something cold to refresh me. normally i don't rinse off after a bath (i know, i probably should, but i'm only now adjusting to having more capacity for hygiene tasks; that wasn't always the case), but today i rinsed off, and in cold water!

i'm writing this post with my stress relief spotify playlist still filling the room—well, the living room now, the bathroom before; i switched speakers once i got out of the bath and i came out to the living room to write. 

i listen to this playlist every time i take a bath. i used to flinch when one song transitioned to the next, and the differing keys resulted in a moment or two of discordance as one song fading in and the other faded out. it bothers me much less now, both because i'm more used to it now and because i'm generally more regulated these days. the only thing that still regularly bothers me is the dread drafties (when air gets in your blankets at night). 

my view from the bath

one thing i remember thinking about in the bath was how any moment is different from another. i was lounging in silence when i heard an ever-so-gentle crinkling sound, which i deduced was the shower curtain, which i had haphazardly shoved to the side. it was some indeterminate amount of time away from falling down and knocking over the book it rested on, and i wondered how that was possible.

like, if the conditions were such that it would fall, why wasn't it falling now? what would make the difference in the minutes or seconds it took to finally fall? 

i've often had a similar thought. like at any significant number, what's the difference between one number and the next? how does anything matter once you've reached a certain scale?

but it does matter! incredibly small amounts of things matter. i still haven't quite grokked how. but i reconciled this particular moment by thinking about all the different factors affecting the shower curtain where it perched. gravity of course, but that's constant. the air? that's always changing. and any little change makes more little changes. so maybe if this moment stayed like this, the curtain wouldn't fall. but one little draft of wind maybe moved it a millimeter more, which then meant it exerted force on the cover of the book in a different way, which maybe moved the curtain another millimeter more, and so on. 

yeah. maybe there's constantly little tiny changes all acting on each other and causing more changes. 

that's what i thought about in the bath. 

how lent is going

as expected, giving up twitter was very hard for a couple days, and easy since then. the first week or so, my iphone screen-time was particularly low, because twitter was basically all i was using it for. 

i think my screen-time will be back up a bit this week, as i've had a few days where i've scrolled more on instagram or tiktok because i was a bit more stressed out than usual. and today i spent a ton of time on my computer browsing pinterest, aggregating wedding inspo. 

it's been surprisingly easy not to curse very much, though it's fascinating how quickly it comes back when i hear other people cursing, either with friends or in music or in a show. i don't really feel the difference when i'm not cursing, but all of a sudden when around it again, i'm like, woah, those are strong words! it feels like they've regained their power after years of dilution. which feels like a good thing! 

oh, this isn't lent-related but just remembered (because i was thinking about how my fiancé and i sometimes disagree about what counts as a swear word): my fiancé taught me an english phrase recently that i had somehow never heard! he said, "well, that's all she wrote on the anti-histaminies!" and i fell befuddledly silent, trying to parse what in the world came out of his mouth. 

apparently, "that's all she wrote" is a very common phrase! and in america, no less (sometimes when he says an english phrase i'm unaware of, like "washing up liquid," it's some weird british usage). then we were at an audrey hobert concert on my birthday (it was so fun!), one of her lyrics was "i guess that's all she wrote," and my fiancé immediately turned into the leo dicaprio pointing meme. 

one more lent thing, we starting not eating meat on fridays! today we tried a new vegan indian place and it was gut und günstig. 

my bust is huge, actually (on proportions in styling)

a few days ago, i had a styling consultation with a twitter mutual of mine. i've been thinking about my wardrobe a lot recently, so i jumped at the opportunity when i saw her offering complimentary consultations to a few mutuals. 

during the consultation, she asked a lot of questions that helped me identify what exactly is important when thinking about styling, like the weather where i live, my height, my body type, what i tend to wear. both being asked about these things as well as the act of formulating an answer for them helped clarify a lot about the process and has kept me inspired for several days after. 

one thing i imagined might happen in the consultation is she would give me solutions to the things i find challenging about styling. instead, i found that she actually validated that, yeah, those things are just hard! for example, i have different contexts that i wear completely different styles of clothes in—there's no magic fix for that that will make them overlap! it's fine to have different sets of clothes for different contexts! 

when we talked about my size, i also felt validated that, yeah, having a bigger bust proportional to your other measurements can mean having to size up. so much from the session felt like seeing what i already knew but with new eyes: like yes, if a top fits my bust, then often that means it doesn't fit my waist, and that's why a lot of my stuff just looks a bit off, even if it somewhat passably fits. 

so for several days, i have been pondering my bust. i once tweeted that girls with big boobs think i have tiny boobs, but girls with tiny boobs think i have giant boobs. i remember trying on dresses with a friend once, and one dress was super tight on my chest, but she refused to acknowledge that, saying, "it's not like you have anything there for it to be tight on." so i have often felt confused about whether my chest would be considered big or not, as it seemed to depend on the eye of the beholder (there's a joke in here somewhere...the eye of the behålder maybe ((behå is "bra" in swedish))). 

a photo of my outfit yesterday (so the thumbnail isn't the bad outfit photo below lol)

anyway, since the consultation, i've been looking back on past outfits, especially with the lens of "my bust is huge, actually," and noticing when they have knocked (heh) the proportion of an outfit out of whack. i'd like to give two examples here: one where that happened, and one that's better-proportioned. both are from a few years ago. 

example 1: way too bust-heavy

this photo (example 1) was the one that made me be like: "oh wow, my bust IS huge, actually." like, it's completely overpowering the outfit! and the fit of the shirt emphasizes the bust, but then hangs down from there instead of hugging my waist, which makes me look boxy and weird. all this contrasted with the tightness of the skirt makes it look like i have no hips, when in reality my bust and hip are the same measurement, with my waist being smaller. this outfit shows none of that, and makes my shape look completely different.

example 2: way better!

this outfit is much better! it fits at my bust, but then nicely tapers in at the waist, even tapering out a bit again slightly below the waist, giving a nice flattering shape without being too tight. the lack of turtleneck here also helps to not make it super top-heavy like the outfit above. the jeans sit a bit below where the black skirt hit as well i think, which helps further even out the proportions. 

i feel like this realization has unlocked a lot for me when i conceptualize styling and putting together outfits in the future. and i think i always knew this was affecting how things fit on me, but also felt like acting like i had a big bust was stolen valor. but it is simply the truth that it's big enough to throw off the proportions of my outfit if i'm not careful!

current swedish language learning stack

• daily duolingo (i'm on a 434-day streak)
• reading a novel (den förlorade liljan) for pleasure
• reading and listening to easy news articles on 8 sidor and looking up unfamiliar words with the native dictionary and translation features on the site
• watching hundarna, a drama series on svt play, with swedish audio and swedish subtitles, with much pausing and explanation from my fiancé whenever i don't follow something 
• watching love is blind, with english audio but swedish subtitles (this one is the most passive, but helps a lot to just increase exposure and also helps with what one would say in swedish in specific circumstances; this is how i learned the phrase "låta bli," which i had seen a lot while reading, but didn't know the specific way it's used)
• watching this interview with zara larsson in swedish (side note: i love her dress and kinda want to pin it on my pinterest). i haven't seen much of her but like her in a general sense, and got a video recommended on youtube of her talking about what makes her proud to be swedish. i noticed i liked her voice in swedish and wanted to hear a full conversation, so i found the aforementioned interview. i'm watching it without any subtitles to practice listening comprehension (she speaks very clearly, as opposed to the oft-mumbly or faster/less clear dialogue on hundarna)
• workin through form i fokus, a language workbook my fiancé got me for my birthday <3 

don't cry over spilled radlers

after the gym today, we stopped at the grocery store for a few things, including our beloved alcohol-free radlers. our favorite kind was sold out, so we got some blood-orange flavored ones to try, and some regular flavored ones from a different brand than usual. 

we checked out and started to leave, when suddenly one of the paper bags bottomed out and bottles came crashing to the floor. we stared for a second in disbelief, then sprung into action mode, moving our other bags out of the way and salvaging what we could from the broken bag. my fiancé reentered the store to get new bags, and alerted a staff member on the way. 

the employee appeared with a hand broom, dust pan, and trash can, sweeping up the bottle shards. my fiancé returned and asked if they had any paper we could use to mop up the liquid. the employee shrugged and said it's fine, they have a mop (which turned out to be a big industrial zamboni-esque mop device). 

then we re-bagged the loose items, making sure to distribute the remaining bottles adequately, and went on our merry way home. as we were walking, we remarked that things like this just happen sometimes, and it's nice how we can just accept that and treat it like no big deal. 

maybe the coolest part of being an adult is accidentally breaking and spilling things and no one yelling at you. though my fiancé pointed out it would still be no big deal even if the employees had been sour about it—we're still adults and it's still something that just happens sometimes. 

when i was kid, i was notorious for spilling things. which sounds kind of funny now that i say it; it's like saying, "when i was a kid, i was notorious for being a kid." anyway, i was even dubbed "the spill queen." i never got in super big trouble for it, but it definitely could put everyone in a bad mood, which felt awful. 

something about this identity stuck with me as i grew up. whenever i spilled something, i'd chuckle to myself and say, "long may she reign." but lately i've been realizing just how much spills and messes are simply something that happens sometimes, not a special idiosyncratic flaw of mine. 

i hope when we have kids, we can hold on to this ability to not cry over spilled radlers. i don't think it's the end of the world for a parent to get upset about a spill, but it sure does feel amazing to remain chill, and just clean up the mess and move on. 

the broken blood-orange radlers

 

every day feels like my birthday

i used to care a lot about my birthday, to the point of having a days-until-my-birthday countdown as soon as christmas ended, and wearing a designated birthday dress for several years in a row. 

this birthday and the last, i find myself caring about my birthday less and less. i think part of my lingering enthusiasm for the day, after accounting for the childhood passion for the occasion, was enjoying feeling special and prioritized and extra extra loved on my birthday. 

but now, i feel extra extra loved every day, so my birthday stands out much less. of course it's still nice to have a day to celebrate me, but my fiancé loves me so well, i already feel celebrated on a daily basis. 

i keep thinking about a lyric from taylor swift's song i can do it with a broken heart: "i'm so depressed, i act like it's my birthday every day." 

i feel the opposite. my version would be, "i'm so in love, i feel like it's my birthday every day." 

my fiancé on valentine's day last year

ideally i'd add a photo to every post

in an ideal world, every blogpost of mine would have a photo accompanying it. as you can see in the photo below, it's much nicer when the thumbnail for each post is a photo, rather than just a placeholder letter. 

some days i don't have a relevant photo to add. i guess i could just put an unrelated photo and specify "photo unrelated." or try a bit harder to see if any photos i have could, by some stretch of the imagination, be relevant. 

but you see, try being the operative word here. any extra trying means more friction, and i generally try to reduce any and all friction on the road to hitting publish. 

we'll see. perhaps as i get more comfortable with the process, adding a photo will feel less and less burdensome, such that i end up able to add one every day. i did also consider retroactively adding them to past posts, but something about that feels dishonest—i guess, again, i could just specify "photo added later."