Tame Tuesday: Why I didn't go out last night and liked it

Seattle is a place where there are always things to do. There are literally at least five shows that I could hit up on any given night, a few friends that I'd love to see, a bar I'd like to try a new drink at, a new restaurant opening on the hill that wants for a yelp review - well not by me because I hate writing those damn things, but at least a restaurant I can tell I should eat at yet last night I decided not to do any of those things and stay home.

STAYING IN FOR ALL THE RIGHT REASONS

Reason #1: Exhaustion 
When I was younger, I thought this was a lame excuse for staying in.  
"Sleep is for the dead!"  "YOLO!" "Life is something that happens when you're not asleep." 
What do I say to those sayings now?    Nonsense! Tomfoolery!

I think we know by this point that sleep is actually essential to living, to being productive, to being healthy, to not wanting to punch out your coworkers the next day, and to not getting tired hunger (the omg I'm so tired that I need to shove a gallon of sugar via as many donuts as possible into my body so I stay awake, paired with a little sugar infused coffee).

I love resting and sleep. I love the way it feels to get in bed and curl up with my laptop and watch a good episode of Scandal or Lost Girl, a semi decent book, or using my phone to play sudoku or solitaire as I prepare for slumber. Then I enjoy those last moments right before sleep while I complete Pranayama breathing exercises for extra relaxation. I drift off into the other world my mind creates. While I'm there I sometimes get to fly, eat glutenous dairy covered pizza's, and I do the splits. It's a great place that I hopefully get to inhabit for 7-8 hours every night.

That place is amazing and I know that while I'm there I'm also helping my body detoxify and rejuvenate after the hard day I likely just put it through. It helps keep me from getting multiple colds per year like all of my friends suffer from as they push their bodies to maximum limits.
This could just be my almost 33 year-old self finally understanding the importance of something so important, but I personally think that it's okay to stay in now and say yes to numerous hours of beautiful sleep.


Reason #2: Accomplishing tasks I've been procrastinating on
How many things do you put off because you'd rather go get happy hour or dinner with friends? There's a bar or club that you just have to go to because they're having a 70's, 80's, or 90's dance night?


I've been known to forego tasks or projects without a hard deadline by believing once again that yolo is in effect and that I need to have more friend time, because being social is shown to be good for your health too. What I realized last night is that a project I'm working on that I had a soft deadline of March 1st, was never realized because I've been busy, busying myself everywhere else.

Last night I decided to dedicate a few hours to finishing up said project - my first podcast ever.
Part of my hesitation when it came to finishing up this project was partly due to there being so much other stuff I could be doing and part came from realizing that I would have to be learning a whole new skill set. Once I immersed myself in the project, I realized the skill set is not actually hard to learn and I very much enjoyed sitting, re-listening, and piecing together the interview I did almost a month ago.


Reason #3: Self Time (Relaxation Time)
This is self explanatory. In a day and age where we feel like going, going, going is the definition of  productivity, even though there are enough studies that tell us this is UNTRUE, it is important to have some self care time.
Some people equate self care time with spa, bath, relaxation time. For people like my roommate and many friends it means sitting down and spending time with a guitar or instrument of choice and playing or writing music.
It could mean journaling, it could mean cooking a meal, or anything that is ultimately very relaxing for you and gives you a chance to feel re-energized.

I should say here that I know a few people who are very re-energized when hanging out with groups of people (those darn extroverts), so if you know that being around people is your thing, spend time with them. I would try to find arena's that are not alcohol centered like playing sports or seeing a sporting event, dinner parties, dancing. The reason I say not "alcohol centered," is that generally, even when it's relaxing you and you're having a good time, it's not relaxing for your body to drink alcohol and that is key here.

Your body has a hard time resting, recovering, and repairing while it is detoxifying alcohol in your system. It's of utmost importance to clear this toxic substance from the body as quickly as possible before doing anything else like caring about your immune system, your digestion, or your motor skills. It takes the liver approximately 1 hour to metabolize 1oz of alcohol. That's not bad you say? Well that would be true if all of us were just having about an ounce of alcohol when we're drinking. The standard drink has between 1-2 ounces of alcohol depending on what you're getting. If you're drinking more than one or two then you're setting your body up for a lot of extra work.
When you have that hangover feeling in the morning it's usually because your body is either super dehydrated or it's having a hard time clearing the alcohol from your system. Either way, tiring out the body consistently is not a good thing in the longterm. To read exactly why hangovers happen, check here.

Reason #4: Catching up on Chores
Most people hate chores, though... I did once have a roommate that really enjoyed washing dishes. For those of us who would rather watch grass grow than scrub the toilet, sometimes we just need to set aside some home time for it.
If you live alone - do it for yourself. Having a clean space tends to make people feel more positive and productive in the long run.
If you live with roommates - respect your roommates and get stuff cleaned. If you don't have a cleaning schedule, now might be the time to implement one.
If you have a family - You're likely not reading my very singles oriented blog, but I'm sure you're cleaning all of the time, maybe don't use your very precious free time for chores. 


Reason #5:  Catching up on your favorite TV shows or your favorite stupid pet tricks
It's okay to sometimes watch your favorite shows. I lived with a lot of TV guilt for a long time living in Seattle. I had so much guilt that I eventually just got rid of owning a TV altogether, which has actually been a great thing. I don't have a TV on in the background anymore to distract me, I can't just sit on the couch and become a cushion like I used to. Now I have to be much more intentional about my viewing choices because I watch online. My favorite thing is that there are a lot less commercials inundating me about fast food, something I hate!
Pick a show or two that you're okay to committing with (if you want to). Don't apologize to me or anyone else for actually liking television, it's not one of America's favorite pass times for nothing. Take one or two hours a week to enjoy these shows. Talk to your coworkers about them around the... are there water coolers anymore? Let's say copy machine, I'm sure you are there more.

Bonus Reason: Save Money
Luckily in Seattle there are tons of free things to do, but sometimes it's hard to get groups of friends to do those free things when costly things like dinner and drinks sound so much better. Pocket some of that money by chillin' at home an extra night or two a week. It's okay, watch that money add up to extra cash for that vacation you can actually take because you stayed in.  

It's okay not to go out. I enjoy it on the regular and even if no one is "seeing" me living, I know that I am.  If you need someone to know you're doing something fabulous in the privacy of your home, that's what social networking is for, go ahead and tell the world! Or at least tell all 564 of your friends!

Top 5 things I loved and hated about this past weekend

 I’m a fairly positive person and so I like to freely talk about the things I love. I love a lot of things, including but not limited to all baby animals. Sloth, owls, kittens, ewes, whatever, they are all cute. I also love Crime TV, elderly couples holding hands, the sound of Ira Glass’ voice, the sound of Rachel Maddow’s voice, the smell of freshly cut lawn, and more. I could go on for longer because I really do love a lot of things and I’m not super into hate, but sometimes I need to vent. There were some things I really loved about the previous weekend and some things I wanted to punch. Here we go.

5 Things I loved

5. Matty the baby sloth

This video is unimaginably precious. Last week Matty the baby sloth gave a hibiscus flower petal to a lady. I watched this 31 second clip ten times in a row, the first time I watch it. The little sloths tiny smile and the sweet way he gives her the petal then grabs her hand made a few tears trickle down the sides of my nose. If you haven’t seen this adorable viral video yet, then take a few seconds to lose yourself in his kind slothly little eyes, it might just make your day, your week or your year.

2. Learning

I suppose learning should be higher, but there a few things I loved more than learning this weekend. This weekend was one of the weekends where I was a group leader for the nutrition class I graduated from in 2011. I love going to this class because I learn even more about nutrition every time I’m there. This weekend we reviewed the Immune & Allergy and Endocrine system functions.

For anyone who knows me (s)he will know that I love nutrition and enjoy talking about the way food heals us.

            Food = Life

            Food = Health

            Food = Happiness

People often ascribe to the old adage, “you are what you eat.” I truly believe this, meaning if you’re eating processed foods, your body does in fact become an interminable waste land of preservatives and fake nutrients. These make cells less supple, create a stressed body, a stressed/depressed mind, and more.

Your body is your house. How do you feel about walking into houses that are dirty and uncared for? How does that make you feel? Do you want to live in a well cared for house the rest of your life?

I want to state that being overweight is not synonymous with unhealthiness. Eating and acting in ways that mess up and tear down your house are, not weight.

3. Central Co-op (Madison Market)

I can’t say enough good things about this co-op. This is a member-owned natural foods cooperative that I affectionately call the Mad-mart. That means that people buy into ownership there to help the store and community thrive while sometimes getting discounts on food. There are lots of locally grown-organic foods with a variety of price points. I will always shop here before Whole Foods any day because I know I’m supporting my community.

            The real reason I’m putting Central Co-op here is that this weekend on my two lunch breaks from class I went here for at least part of my lunch. I bought a sesame, ginger, garlic kale and chard salad on both days and some Synergy Raspberry Chia Kombucha. I did have more for lunch as well, but these are the things I’m most grateful for from the weekend. I literally lust after the Kombucha and when I ate the salad, my eyes teared up. If you notice, my crying reflex is a sign to me that something is really awesome.

I love this store and shop here and at Trader Joe’s almost exclusively for everything. I’m in the lower income range, so I basically get my bulk items like spices, grains, legumes from here and the rest from TJ’s. You should go here if you’re in the area, check it out, love it and become a member!

2. Dinner with friends

Six to seven months is far too long to go without a friend sighting. On Saturday night I met up with a group of wonderful ladies that I hadn’t seen in about that long. These ladies are part of my old Starbucks crew from when I worked down in Leschi. We headed to Saffron Grill in Northgate area for a bit of Indian food.

I felt a pregnant tummy for the first time in my entire life at almost 33. Who really knows what I’d been waiting for? I have this secret fear of holding babies kind of like Robin in How I Met Your Mother and I suppose that fear extends to getting too close to the makers of those babies.

It’s been decided we won’t wait another six months. Friends are important for health too.

1. Scandal

            No, I’m not talking about any outrageous events that have recently happened. I’m talking about the show by one of my favorite drama creators, Shonda Rhimes. I didn’t actually happen upon this show until early last week. I kept hearing rave reviews about it, but wasn’t sure if it was going to be for me. I’m never sure if a show is going to be for me until I’m in bed feeling exhausted; not quite exhausted enough to sleep, but too much so to do anything productive. I queud up my Netflix and started the first episode. I was hooked after the first minute. Quinn… got a job for no reason! Ooh… I’ve gotta find out why. And so it goes.

            The first season was only 7 episodes and so I had to move onto season two, which is currently airing on ABC.com. I figured out a way to start on Season two and currently I’m in the middle of Olivia helping… oh wait, I don’t want to ruin it for you. I suggest if you haven’t seen this yet that you check it this weekend. It might just make your list of top fives. It’s deliciously well written and oh so Scandalous!

5 Things I hated

5. Matty the baby sloth

I realize I just said I love these. The only reason this is on here is because I realized after I had watched it for the kazillionth time that I actually wasted a lot of time loving this little dude. I also watched some other compilation of cute animal videos too. There are many other things I could do in place of watching all these wonderfully tear jerking vid’s, like finishing up a podcast or… perhaps I would have just used it watching more Scandal.

4. The Oscars on my facebook, twitter, instagram feeds

The cold hard truth here is that I don’t give a shit about The Oscars. Part of it is because I watched only two of the movies on this years list of contingents: Les Miserables and Django Unchained. I generally don’t have time or money to watch a majority of movies.

The other reason is that I just don’t ever have the urge to sit through what I would characterize as one of the most boring four hour shows ever to grace the television screen. I have seen it in the past and almost gagged on most of the inane jokes told by normally very funny hosts. I can only assume that the comedic guidelines keep them from being funny or maybe it’s just the venue.

From what I hear, missing last nights Oscars was one of the best choices I’ve ever made because of Seth MacFarlane’s miss and diss jokes. I’m sure a few people laughed, but apparently the Family Guy and American Dad creator told a lot of unseemly jokes about race, gender, and class that hit all the wrong places and elicited quite a few groans from the audience.  

I woke up today and realized that the Oscars aren’t going to go away for a few days due to the objectionable humour of MacFarlane as well as some unsavory tweets by the satirical humour website The Onion about Quvenzhane Wallis, a 9-year old black actress up for Best Actress for her starring role in Beasts of the Southern Wild.

One of The O’s staffers tweeted, “Everyone else seems afraid to say it, but that Quvenzhané Wallis is kind of a c—, right?” I’ve got plenty I could say about this, but at this point most of it has been said, why the hell would anyone in their right mind say anything about a 9 year old being a cunt? I don’t really give a shite if you’re in the game of satire, there are limitations and this is one of them.

Thank you Onion for apologizing, but in the wise words of TV show Last Man Standing,  “words are like toothpaste, once they’re out of the tube, you can’t put them back in.”

Well, I suppose now that The Oscars are over we’ll go on to caring about the Kardashian’s and The Bachelor. I would also be okay with not seeing those in my news feed either, but I suppose I should just get used to it because people are always gonna love crappy television. It’s what people watch to realize that their lives are actually on the up and up. I’m one of them.

3. Realizing my period is about to start

That’s all.

2. Getting up for class

As I said earlier, I love learning. What I didn’t love about it was waking up at 6am on both of my days off this weekend just to be in class for 10 hours. I already hate waking up at 5am for work during the week. I just have to remind myself that learning is a privilege.

1. White Male Privilege

I am not going to state any names because of right now I will still have to see this particular offender. What I can say is that I was astounded by this particular white male’s lack of listening skills as a clearly smart, savvy, and sophisticated woman brought to his attention that often women are not listened to and need to make sure they have even more resources and knowledge than men in order to garner their respect.

What did this guy do? He dismissed her concerns by telling her that she has a “negative view” and that this can of course only hinder her progress. He then turned away from her so that she could not even have a chance to dispute him.

I could say so many things right now to refute his stance on this position, but clearly he was not even up for a debate. What do I say to men that refuse to acknowledge that there are particular social problems that women have to deal with while they can go about their merry way?

Well to you I say sir, “go take a women’s studies class or intro to sociology!” (I need to note that I deleted at least 10 other not so savory things I would rather tell him). It gets rather old having to deal with this kind of patriarchal thinking, but today I’m not going to fight it out. I’m going to continue to love people and just remember that all we can keep doing is educating ourselves and hope that others decide to open themselves up to learn and listen with us.

As the deadline approaches

It's getting ever closer to my This American Life submission date and I've only got one thing left to finish - My Resume!
Is there really anything more daunting than staring in the face of resume yet unwritten? Writing out accomplishments and all those skillz that have been accrued throughout the years of work. The only thing I've found more frustrating than a resume is the cover letter to go atop it. Making a cover letter and resume standout in pools of applicants these days is a lot like finding good Mexican food in Seattle, difficult.

Yesterday morning I decided to stare my enemy in the face and go all in because the worst that could happen is I come out at the end with yet another crappy unusable resume, but at least I'll have learned something throughout the process.

I googled at least forty different phrases that I thought might lead me to the description of the perfect resume and what I found at the end of my search is what I found at the beginning that "one size does not fit all." The articles told me that one resume is not enough and that I should have at least five resumes tailored to a variety of positions that I would like to pursue. Many compared it to having different outfits for different job interviews. Would you wear the same outfit for all of them they asked? My answer to this question is "hell yes!"  I know that's the wrong answer, but they are asking me, a girl that can barely pick out my own daily outfits because fashion sense isn't one of my gifts; I barely know how to match black with other blacks. I mean come on... if I can interview in one outfit, then that's definitely what I'm gonna do, but... I do see their point. I decide to think of it in terms of what other people would do and I suppose that means they surely would have separate interview outfits, so I guess this means that I need to start working on a variety of resumes.

Things to know about the resume I'm about to write: 
1. I have decided to "change careers"
Technically I don't know if I'm changing or actually starting. I've been stuck in admin positions for the past few years and it is definitely not where I want to stay it was mostly a place I landed when trying to make enough money to pay off some student loans after college. Now I'm changing to the career field of "writing, publishing, advertising, marketing, etc." in order to utilize my writing background a little more.

2. I don't actually have a varied background in my newly chosen career field so what do I do about the resume. Do I lie? 
Well that was a big question for me as I was writing because what does one do to spruce up a sparse resume?  It was in this instance that I realized I actually did have to rely on transferable skills. These are skills that you have already acquired via all of your other occupations, hobbies, volunteer experience, etc. I decided to create a list of all the skills that I am at least 70% sure I already have and even added a few that maybe I'm a little iffy on (because I'm 100% sure I could learn them quickly if needed). If you need a quick place to find lots of these skill sets checkout ONET.com.

3. I'm not sure if it should be a functional, chronological, or combination resume. 
After reading through a variety of articles for the career changer I decided to go with combination. A combination resume has the ability to show off your transferable skills as well as help you focus on all the practical things that apply to your future career. Going chronological keeps you a little more boxed in because it only showcases what you have already done, while going functional apparently scares some employers off because it looks like you've done nothing.

4. 1 page or 2? 
My previous chronological resume that was getting me no interviews was two pages long and I'm pretty sure that I've had enough career experience at this point to have two pages, but as I said the resume has gotten me nowhere. I decided to google search "best resumes of 2013" and came to this page. All of these beautifully designed resumes are only one page long and are probably getting more interviews than mine, so I decided to stick to a one pager. My favorite is the resume on fabric, I am contemplating getting at least one of those, but for this one I decided to go for design #7.

Once I picked a design I decided it was time to start going for it. I had my old resume in hand and was able to transfer at least a few things over, but for a majority of it I decided I needed to redefine some of the responsibilities I had, using better key words. There are plenty of skills checklists you can use, but here is an easy go to one provided by Rogue Community College.

After some researching and writing I came out with a resume in about four hours. The only thing I realized at the end was I didn't actually finish a writer's resume, I wrote one that's more tailored to Sales & Marketing, which is fine because I do in fact need those five resumes. Sales & Marketing is a direction I'm definitely okay with going, but this leaves me with a vacant writer's resume spot, which I will be attending to today.

This all just means that This American Life is going to have to wait another few days for my application, but my goal is to have it in by March 1st anyhow. By the way, if you know any TAL staffers, please feel free to put in a good word for me!

Anyways, here is yesterday's finished product sans my contact info!  Sample Resume