Nama-sand

I'm in the midst of one of those first-world, nearing-30, existential white-girl problems.

The struggle is real with me and beach yoga right now.

As you four dedicated readers (who are my family) know, I'm big into yoga and big into it being summer right now. Naturally these forces eventually had to combine to make some sort of lululemon-induced dream come true.

So my yoga dealer roots & [then] wings got me to do a beach yoga with her on Sunday morning. In theory, this sounded like a perfect Instagram picture- except real. In actuality, it was a sandy disaster.

As an oblivious child, sand never really bothered me. It wasn't until we started vacationing with my extra-old-lady-neurotic grandmother who Cannot Abide by sand that I got weird about it. Why she vacations on an island covered in sand is still a mystery- but she passed on her neurosis and now having sand on my towel, my seat, my swim suit is unacceptable.

I am not quite sure what I thought beach yoga was going to be... were they going to just, like, remove the sand to make way for yoga mats? Nope. We just laid our mats down right on top of North Avenue Beach's mess of cigarette butts, bottle caps, and hypodermic needles and set our intentions. 

Mine quickly became to just get through one flow before having to brush off my mat. It did not help that the wind off the lake wind would occasionally flip my yoga mat (and the mats of all my companions) over exposing us to more.sand. Tree Pose with a wily mat was really not the zen experience it is supposed to be.  The deal was really dealt when I watch a number of my fellow yogis take giant handfuls of sand and plop them like little hillocks on the corners of their mats to weigh the mats down.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING? You are exacerbating the mat/sand problem!"

At the end of class, I had a long ponder about turning 30 and if this meant that I should step away from my comfort zone, and become one with the sand, or if it was finally time to just accept the fact that I am a crotchety-sand-hater. I never came up with an answer.

I feel like every couple of weeks I come to one of these moments where I feel as though I have met up with a bridge troll who is yelling at me that I'm getting old and it is time to make some gd. decisions about my life. As with many of the other times this has happened, I kind of shrugged and side stepped the question - this time by buying a 10-pack of beach yoga classes on groupon (instead of the unlimited one) - and figuring that by the end of the summer, I'll have decided one way or another. Until then, I'm just going to talk to invest in some "yoga rocks" (which are just regular rocks, but spiritual and more expensive).

Summer Friday

I wish I could bottle all the happiness I have during Chicago summer. I wish I could carry it with me throughout the cold, hibernation days of November and January.

There is nothing better than a patio and a plastic glass and a Friday afternoon stretched until the end of the weekend. There is nothing better than a Thursday night that feels like it will never end up a Friday morning. 

As I crash into this weekend, I want to remember my gratitude for how perfect this all feels and how fleeting it will all be. 

#herecomesthesun, Chicago. Get in it.

All circuses.

I thought when I left the circus, I was done with circuses.

Obviously, this is turning out to not be the case as I find myself planning two bigger, more spectacle-y circuses a year now. 

Except now I feel like I am the only one juggling, the only one balancing, the only one constantly upside-down (metaphorically). 

I love my job. I love the work I do. I love being a part of the change I wish to see in the world. 

It's just very much the same as all the other jobs. 

Anyway, we are in the home stretch, and this little guy is cheering me on from the sidelines.

Thanks Tiny Cactus!

Hockey Stress

I don't often believe in myself, but I rarely say I can't do something. I can almost always find a way to makeitwork. It comes from a lifetime of being the oldest sibling and years and years of working in hectic situations with not nearly enough support and a crowd people always saying, "It must be done."

So I do.

But I have uncovered something I cannot do.

In these weeks of stress that I am just completely drowning in - I cannot watch playoff hockey.

Playoff hockey gives me an anxiety like nothing else. I get physically ill - I can feel the stress balls clogging up my heart until I'm pretty sure they just cut off all oxygenated blood cells and I fall down.

Do the Blackhawks know that it does not have to go to overtime. That we could just end this madness in three periods and everyone can get to bed at a normal hour? Do they know they can just score all the points right away so we can all go home?

I need the Blackhawks to make it through the rest of this week of playoffs before I can reclaim my spot on the playoff bandwagon. Just a few more days guys. You can do it.

Truism five-or-six

If you're going to work too hard, and demand too much of yourself, and push yourself to your limit - the least you can do is schedule yourself one night to get boozy on fancy cocktails and pork belly with two of your favorite people.

The adorable secret (a love letter to Zooborns)

Guys, I have found the secret to positive and successful professional relationships at work.

Pictures of baby animals.

Anytime someone does something nice for me, or I do something nice for someone else - I find a reason to send them a picture of a baby animal.

It is solid gold in the professional development co-worker winning over department.

It may be that since I work in an office of predominately women, I have an edge over all of you Wall Street types. But we work hard and we are stressed and tired about 115% of the time and there is something to be said for an adorable baby otter making it all better even just for a moment.

I could not do this without Zooborns. And you shouldn't try it either. Zooborns is my go-to baby animal pick-me-up picture provider. You cannot go wrong.

Zooborns has been keeping me from crying at my desk since like 2010. Thank you for three years of adorable stress relief.

Happy Thursday, baby Otter, we're almost at the weekend.

Work friends

Since moving to Chicago, I have had only had two opportunities to make work friends. The first was people who I would have made friends with already because we all improvised together, it was just an excuse to get paid to hang out.

This new job (how long does it get to be new? Six months? Twelve? Eighteen?) is awesome because its people who I never would have scampered across who make my life feel more full. I am grateful for their experience, I am grateful for their insight, I am grateful for their willingness to be silly in an environment that does not reward silly as much as it should. 

These are the first set of people who make me realize how fun it is to work in an office where we work hard and then drink hard and then nap hard.

I left many of them to their own devices at a rainy bus stop tonight and I solemnly swear they are up to no good, but I am happy they are mine. 

truism 2014 v.1

A night where I can be in bed by 10 p.m. with a book in my hand feels like a good day. Even though it actually means I am ignoring all the work I have to do and avoiding all the cleaning my house needs - it feels good which has to be enough sometimes.

Polar Vortex Day!

I am very grateful that my current work schedule requires me to take one day off every week. It came in very handy last year when we were running all over the country and it came in even more handy when people started talking about how Chicago was going to turn into northern Canada by Monday morning.

I curled up Sunday afternoon, buzzed and joyous that I didn't have to wait for someone to tell me if I had to bundle up like an Eskimo and trek downtown.

Polar Vortex day included saying good bye to Christmas, folding approximately ALL the laundry, discovering the Good Wife on the Hallmark Channel and the Evil Apple app for iphone.

Evil Apple was perfect for a whole herd of friends with a grown-up snow day. Although it is taking one million years to get everyone to be checking their phone at the same time.

And now we'll finish off the night with a delightful boozy toast to Chiberia and having to bundle up for work tomorrow morning.

We're not actually stranded on the surface of Mars, but we might as well drink like we are. Super grateful to have had these things on hand, although, like any good WASP, I would never run out of booze during inclement weather.

Don't Pull

I hit my wall.

After running on Dr. Pepper Ten fumes and my all-consuming fear of failure for the past three weeks, last night, I could not do it anymore.

So I went to bed, hoping I would wake up magically better or magically with all my tasks complete. 

Quite obviously, neither of these things happened. So I am force to keep running up against the wall, pushing it with my weak, flabby arms and the promise of being nothere in just 48 hours. 

Push on.

Thursdays best Internet finds - the grass is greener edition

When I say my life is at Def-Con Bravo stress levels, that is only a gross over-exaggeration in that my job has very little impact on the world. It is stressful because I am bad at managing stress. I am particularly bad at managing stress that comes from things out of my control. I am stressed, but only because I am terrified of failing and I am leaving my success up to others.

That being said! One of the ways I deal with stress is thinking about all the other things I could be doing. I dream about other places, other careers, other whimsical things that strike my fancy. 

One of my favorite stress-relieving day dreams is here- at Longest Acres.

Reading this blog is like talking to the coolest girl you know who also happens to be the kindest and the most badass. Except she is a stranger. But I think we would be friends. Right? How creepy and stalker am I? I want to steal your life and be your friend. Yikes.

Her life doesn't sound perfect, in fact it sounds like it comes with all it's own stress and anxiety, but at the end of the day, when I have been sitting at a computer for 12 hours trying to make bagels appear out of thin air- it's the simplicity of her life that makes me so envious. 

It's not something I could sustain but to escape to a place where you get to control everything and find pride in that sounds pretty awesome. 

Brain waves

I have said it a million times, but I am not being facetious when I say that Boyfriend and I are up most nights until at least midnight working. And there are bonus all-day-Sunday weekend additions too.

When there isn't football on, and we haven't devolved into being too zoned out to turn it off, the TV is on, to give us some semblance of just being two normal not-overachieving people. 

For the past month or two we've been watching Arrested Development, from the beginning, six or seven episodes at a time. Last week, on the orders of all of my Facebook friends, we added Broadchurch to the mix.

You should watch both of these shows. They're both amazing. If you're like me and never got around to AD when it was on- carpe the Netflix.

Broadchurch may require your local Internet dark alley, but it's so worth it. A stunning sea-side, small town with gorgeous cliffs and vistas is really the only place to set a show as gut wrenching as this one. So that people can have the mixed emotional response of, "I am so sad and this is so awful, Oooh I really, really want to visit this, why don't our sad things in real life have beautiful ocean-reflected sunset lighting them?" 

For a few days we were watching both Arrested Development and Broadchurch back-to-back because variety is the spice of any life that is devoted to spreadsheets. 

Those were the nights of the most bizarre dreams. In a weird, sick way, my brain found a way for these shows to fit together and the result was unsettling. 

So, for me, it's back to eight hours of West Wing back to back when I need to get my work done. 

Balancing on a worklife

Since starting my new job there has been much discussion on work-life balance. It is something that my new company says that it takes very seriously. But they also work very hard and are incredibly successful - so either they are time management machines or the right hand is writing checks that the left cannot cash (it's mixed metaphor Monday!)

Either way, it is impossible. Maybe it is because I am gearing up for the first huge test of my new job or maybe because I am absolutely terrified of people thinking I do not work hard enough - but Sundays seem to be reserved for football and laptops.

It is not that I don't have a social life, I do! And I often spend parts of weekends enjoying it - but no matter what, the first thing I do every morning is jolt out of bed and think about all the things I still need to get done. The second thing I do is check my work email. 

My question is - how do you stop? How do you stop this cycle? How do you let go of the fear of failure enough to stop having it be in the forefront of every thought you have every hour of the day? 

I know that there is no way for me to stop now. I have two more weeks of living like an imminent heart attack before the situation can even be addressed. But after that - what do you do?