30 before 30

Today is my half birthday. 

I’m now on the downhill slope from 29 to 30. 

Crazy. 

But if I've learned one thing in the past 29.5 years, it’s that time is only going to go faster.

I mentioned in my last post that I was working on a list of 30 things to do before I turned 30. I finished it and then left it to collect dust in my drafts folder for 4 months with about a hundred other blog entries. Oops.

So here is the official list, with commentary:

1. Complete a GRE Test Prep course. This is to help Hannah prepare, and also because I’m a total nerd.
2. Take a BYU class. One work perk I’m ashamed I haven’t taken advantage of yet.
3. Complete Spanish 101-102 Workbook. It’s sad how much I've forgotten. Also: Again, nerd.
4. Health goals. I have some specific plans here, but I’ll leave you to use your imagination.
5. Stop being a dating hater. Ugh. This one is hard. But I’m committed to being more open and vulnerable in this area. Including reversing my stance on blind dates. Hint, hint. (;
6. Train for ½ marathon. Also sign up for another one. But specifically train because I've never actually finished training before race day…
7. Giveaway-a-day for a month. This means get rid of one piece of junk every day for a month. Because one man’s trash and all that…
8. Passport stamp. I already finished this one but I’m up for more travelling anyway (:
9. Plan 52 letters of thanks project. This is one of my NYR for next year but I need to do some prep work for it ahead of time.
10. General Conference blog. This is an idea from my friend Tyler that I really like. Details to come.
11. Organize photos. I have about a million GB of photos scattered over at least a dozen devices. Gotta rein in that chaos.
12. Photo collage. This is a crafty project I’m depending on Taylor to help me with.
13. Pay off 1 loan. I've been chipping away at my student loans, time to pick up the pace.
14. Get a bike. I've wanted a bike for over a year. I think that puts it officially past an impulse buy. This may be a birthday present to myself or part of my tax refund.
15. Personal history – 1 entry per week. Because I miss writing. And am still terrible at journaling.
16. Inbox zero every Friday for a month. In an attempt to control my wildly out-of-control work email. I currently have 4000+ emails so this will be intense.
17. Create and practice budget. I half-finish this one all the time. Time to seal the deal.
18. 100% visiting teaching. Because I’m the worst at this.
19. Temple habit (2x month). My life was so much better when I had this habit.
20. Take a last-minute trip. Just for funsies.
21. Complete Mr. Downs/other reading list. I haven’t settled on which list yet but I want to get back to the classics.
22. Finish listening to all episodes of this American Life. I do this when I exercise, so I’ll have to exercise a lot. Two birds, one podcast.
23. Start a quote of the day/week. Probably an Instagram project. My kind of craft (:
24. Start a book club. For how much I love reading this shouldn't be as hard as it seems!
25. Look into contract work. Another way to pay off loans faster.
26. Cancel subscriptions. I spend a little money in a lot of places unnecessarily.
27. Facebook-free February. I really liked doing this last February.
28. CWP. Mine’s expired.
29. Finish quilt. From Christmas 2012…
30. Learn to drive stick. Seriously, how is this still a goal?!?

The next 6 months are going to be BUSY!

Strike That. Reverse.

Ever since my birthday I've been kicking around the idea of doing a “Thirty by 30” project over the next year. I like the idea of having some middle-term goals to work towards and lists and even numbers are appealing to me. But having a “What do I hope to accomplish in life?” conversation with myself is distinctly unappealing for probably obvious reasons: the odds of my getting married before 30 are pretty slim, and the chances of my having a kid before 30 are days away from being a biological impossibility. It's very depressing to think about, so I tend to try not to. And this idea stayed just an idea.

But last Sunday I went to a fireside where I had the epiphany was prompted by the Spirit to stop focusing so much on things I cannot control and spend some time improving areas that I do. (Side note: The Church is true, guys.) I started making a list that night, but it turns out that thirty things is a LOT of things, so I started Googling some other lists for ideas. And as I looked I was struck by how many goals other people made that I've already accomplished. And how many dreams other people had that I've already fulfilled. And I felt a little bit of the worry about the future dissipate in the wake of a strong feeling of gratitude for the life I've already lived so far. So instead of a “Thirty by 30” list, I started working in reverse and made a list called “Twenty-nine by 29”. Twenty-nine popular accomplishments that I've already achieved -- some I was already proud of, and some I had never thought of before as noteworthy:

1. Fly on a plane
2. Buy a car
3. Move away from home
4. Go to college
5. Go to grad school
6. Get a passport
7. Travel to a foreign country
8. Live in a foreign country
9. Pay off credit card debt
10. Run a half marathon
11. Fall in love
12. Survive a heartbreak and come out stronger
13. Go skinny dipping
14. Get a real job
15. Quit a real job
16. Touch a snake. Voluntarily.
17. Sing karaoke. In public. While sober.
18. Win a championship
19. Live alone
20. Climb to the top of a mountain
21. Sleep on the beach
22. Hold a spider. Voluntarily.
23. Win a contest
24. Get something published
25. Volunteer
26. Learn a foreign language
27. Go on an epic road trip
28. Present at a conference
29. Hold a Guinness World record

I am actually working on my “Thirty by 30” list now, to help me progress into the uncertain future, but I keep this list to remind me of the past that gifted me my present. And at the end of the day, I wouldn't return it for anything in the world.

Facebook-Free February

It's March 1st and my sister Lauren just texted me the password to get back on Facebook. One of my resolutions this year was to go a month without it and I picked February because it's the shortest. Plus, hey, alliteration! Before jumping back on the bandwagon I decided to take a few minutes to distill this experience on paper, at least in broad strokes. Mostly for my own benefit, but maybe for others' as well.

Pros

1. I had a lot more time on my hands. I rarely parked on Facebook for long periods of time, but I would check it in spurts of 30 seconds to 5 or so minutes many, many times a day. So at first I had just these small windows of time on my hands. I used them to read other things: links on Twitter, blogs and articles in my Feedly, actual physical magazines and books. Later I would use the breaks to take short walks around my building at work, and in my neighborhood at home. Later still when I stopped unconsciously navigating to Facebook.com only to come to awareness when confronted with the login screen (this happened with depressing regularity for a lot of days), I would plow through those windows, instead grouping those small breaks into bigger and bigger sections of time. I took long lunches, longer walks, bigger book breaks, earlier bed times. It was awesome.
   
2. I spent a lot of time alone. While this was also the biggest "con" (see below), it was also very good for me. I learned just how much I depend on the validation of others and then learned how to depend on it less. I'm under no illusion that this is a complete or even permanent state of being, four weeks is only four weeks after all, but I used to be a lot more comfortable and complete with only my own company and approval and having lost my way from that for the past year or two, it feels good to be making my way back in that direction. I was also able to do more of the things I loved to do. I read a lot of books. I went to bed earlier and had better sleep. I went to museums and art galleries and lectures. And lest you think I've become completely insufferable, I also binge-watched the entire second season of House of Cards in a day and a half. Then I watched more of the Olympics than I ever have before as well as every single YouTube clip of The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon and the bulk of Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Love.
   
3. I remembered Dunbar's Number. The basic principle is that there is a limit to the number of people with whom you can develop deep, meaningful, ongoing relationships. The research indicates a range of between 100 and 230 people with 150 being the most common conclusion. The recent rise of social media has opened a lot of questions about this idea and in fact I was first introduced to Dunbar's Number in 2010 by a boy who didn't have Facebook precisely because he believed that being "friends" with hundreds or thousands of people would be detrimental to his relationships with those who fell within the limits of his Dunbar's Number. At the time I thought his idea had some merit, but believed (and still do) that there are benefits to Facebook that outweigh those risks and we moved on to other things. During February, however, I thought a lot about this idea. I think most people, if asked, could easily list the 100-200 people who are most important to them. There would probably be a lot of family, friends from various phases of life, maybe mentors, teachers, heroes. But how recently or frequently do we actually interact with these people in any meaningful way? Has social media been quietly eroding these relationships? For me the answer was yes. Deep, meaningful, ongoing relationships require action. You must seek out ways to connect with those you love. They need not be time intensive, but they need to be genuine, sincere, and fairly frequent. I found that I knew which of my closest family and friends were getting married, having babies, losing loved ones, getting new jobs, getting laid off, going on vacation, proud of their kids, worried about life, having a hard time, or celebrating a good one. But for the most part,  my sharing of these moments extended only so far as a "like" or maybe a short comment, or worse, just a brief act of voyeurism as I scrolled through the newsfeed. I wasn't really talking to very many of the most important people in my life at all. It was an epiphany.

Cons

1. I spent a lot of time alone. For the first several days, this was excruciating. I was desperately lonely and felt completely cut off from everyone and everything. ( Reading this, I realize I may have been a little overly hysterical.) I realized that while I have a lot of "friends", I don't really have a lot of friends. At least not the kind that you can call up at a moment's notice because you're bored or don't have plans. A better person than me would of course have taken the initiative to seek people out and as the month progressed, I did get a little better at that, but part of the problem was my discovery that I'm not actually as good a friend as I could be (see below). Another aspect of this excess of time by myself was that I foolishly wasted a lot of it. For example: At the beginning of the month, I put together an admittedly overly ambitious schedule of exercise. Ask me how that went. (Pro tip: Don't. It will only end in tears and guilt-chocolate.) While I did spend a lot of time doing good things, I'm pretty disappointed in myself for neglecting some of the better and best.
   
2. I'm less-than-impressed with the quality of my friendship to other people. One of the books I read during the month was The Color Code. I don't know how I'd never taken the test before, but I hadn't. It turns out I'm very Blue, with nearly equal amounts of White and Red, and next-to-no Yellow. I found the description of that color type to be eerily accurate and was fascinated to read about it and all the other types in detail. I understand a lot more about myself and others. One unpleasant discovery, however, was in how it revealed flaws in my character in regards to friendship. Blues are motivated by altruism, and this true for me. I like to do things for other people. I like to be useful and helpful. I worry about my friends a lot more than they probably even think about me. But Blues also need to be remembered and appreciated. And I've discovered that my altruistic nature may not be that altruistic after all. Because I wasn't on Facebook, I wasn't as aware of the needs of my family and friends that I could help with and that was very hard for me. But I also didn't hear from very many family or friends at all during the month, and that was very hard as well. And in the end I didn't do much reaching out to others. There was a hodgepodge of reasons: I'm an introvert and initiation is hard for me. I easily feel rejected (another Blue trait) and think that if you're not talking to me, you don't want to hear from me. I'm not at my emotional best in January and February and didn't have a lot to offer others.  I was eventually enjoying being disconnected. But at the end of the day, if I'm really honest it boils down to the need to be remembered. Validation. If you don't remember me, I won't remember you. Very Law of Moses, no? And very stupid. Because I am still remembering you because I care about you and worry about you and love you because you're important to me. I'm just selfishly choosing not to do anything about it. So I just get bitter and miserable. Which doesn't help you and really hurts me. Definitely something to change.

So that's basically it. More Pros than Cons means it was a good thing, right? I think so. I feel refreshed. I feel like I've straightened out my priorities and have clear, actionable areas of self-improvement. Am I getting back on Facebook? Of course. Will my activity rise to its earlier levels? Probably. But I hope to continue to use those windows of down time for other things as well. I hope to maximize the time I spend by myself doing as many of the best things I love to do and need to do and minimize my waste of time. I'm committed to actively working on my relationships with those who fall within my Dunbar's Number. I will stop being so selfish, start being more giving and try to be better at initiating (no promises). 

But I will also work to be a part of the lives of those not so close to me. Because that is the beauty of social media. We can relate to many people in many ways, and if I can engage, enlighten, or encourage anybody, even if it is briefly, sporadically, or superficially, I want to do that. Heaven knows many, many people have done the same for me.

I get by with a little help from my friends. And my "friends" too.

Recalculating: A Story Of My Life

On Sunday morning I plugged an address into my GPS for a church building in Spanish Fork where a friend was giving his missionary homecoming talk. It was an estimated 20 minutes away and at about minute 18 I saw the telltale white steeple come into view and turned a corner to see what I thought was my destination on the left side of the road. According to my GPS, however, this was not the place and rather than turning into the parking lot, I was directed to keep driving. I looked from my phone out my windshield in surprise: The road I was on did not continue very much farther. In fact, it ended rather abruptly at a dead end  in a field pretty much in the middle of nowhere:

Perplexed, I pulled to the side of the road and reentered the address, sure that the church I was seeing was where I was supposed to be. But the GPS returned the same results, so I slowly drove down the road. To my surprise and relief, just as I reached what I thought was the dead end, a small road -- a path, really -- branched off to the right. As I followed the next set of directions and turned onto it, another steeple came almost immediately into view. Reassured, I continued on my way to my final destination in perfect time to hear my friend speak beautifully on the challenges of this life: "Because He loves us, God will not leave us sitting where we are", he said, "He will move us to where we need to be. Or, more correctly, he will move us to move."

I was reminded of the experience I had just had getting to the church building and was suddenly struck by the overwhelming relevance it has to my life right now.

• I wanted to go to church that morning. I knew it was where Heavenly Father wanted me to be and I also had a strong desire to make it there. 
• I found a church building I thought was the right one. It wasn't. There was nothing wrong with it, I'm sure I could have gone inside and learned wonderful things; but it wasn't where I was supposed to be.
• I was instead being pointed in what seemed an impossible direction. From my perspective, the road I was on ended. There was no progress to be made, no satisfactory end in sight. 
• Instead of continuing on down the road, I pulled over and sat in the car, doubting the directions I was receiving. Not moving in any direction.
• When I finally decided to continue with the directions and see what happened, it wasn't very long before I saw that my perspective had been limited and that, in fact, there was a way to where I was supposed to go -- where I wanted to go.  
• The GPS had a bigger, more complete picture of my destination that had been sitting just out of my sight all along. I just had to trust it to see the destination for myself.

-------

Ever since I finished grad school and moved back to Utah, I have been struggling to find purpose in my life. I no longer have tangible, measurable goals to prove I am progressing. I have desires that are unfulfilled. Dreams that are deferred. But more than the disappointment of these is the ache of not feeling useful. Necessary. Needed. Over the past several months, this lack of purpose that has been viciously corroding my sense of worth. Over the past few weeks, it has left me hollow. 

I reached a point in my life where I thought I was supposed to end up. I was heartbreakingly incorrect in that hope. But I am not moving on. I am parked on the side of my life with a view of where I wish I was, but where I know I don't belong. Yet as I look ahead of me, I can't see anything to suggest that a better destination is ahead. From my perspective there are only dead ends and empty fields in my future. 

I believe in God. I believe He loves his children. I believe that because of that love, He has a plan for them so that they can return to Him as their best selves. But I find I am lacking the faith that God, His love, and His plan apply to me.

Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

Follicular Ruminations

I found my first gray hair when I was twenty-five. It was summer and it was traumatic.

I'd come home to surprise Ian for his high school graduation and my hair, used to the cool, damp climate of London, was freaking out. After an intense battle, I was finally able to beat my bangs into submission by dutch-braiding the heck out of them, like so:

The battle won, I leaned in to inspect my handiwork when what to my horrified eyes should appear but a silver hair making itself exponentially known by snaking in and out of the braid across my entire forehead. I may or may not have screamed and immediately shaved my head. Just kidding. But I thought about it.

Every few months since that summer another gray hair pops up in exactly the same place. A little bit back from my hairline, just to the right of my part. And every few months I pull it out and lament again the loss of my innocence.

Tonight I found another one. Only, I’m pretty sure I found the last one on Christmas Eve, so I think they’re coming faster.

The time has come to just admit and embrace it:

I've gone Rogue. 

Flashback Friday: Mary the Phlebotomist

So I had my annual physical today which unfortunately included blood work. This didn't used to bother me as I had grown used to the magic that was Mary the Phlebotomist. Unfortunately, however, she has gone to work elsewhere so I was forced to endure the poking and prodding of her replacements. A 30-minute-plus torture session that included an honest-to-goodness fainting spell (I've never had that happen before) and these lovely tokens of battle:

When you're alone and life is making you lonely you can always go

Talk about a good movie show. 

Series I is out on DVD and Series II premieres on Masterpiece in January.

It's airing right now in the UK though. And it is epic. I'm just saying...

Flashback Friday: Summer 2011

Wow. That was fast.

Top 10 Tuesday: Twofer #2

Well folks, it's Tuesday, so it's time for another total cop out exciting referral to my Top Ten Tuesday post over at the Blue Bookcase. In fact, my post today was sort of a sequel to one I did a few weeks ago and never mentioned here, so I'm giving you another twofer. But don't worry, Flashback Friday is going to be "dam" good.

But until then, here are:

Mean Girls I Want To Punch In The Face

and

Where I Rant About Stupid, Stupid Boys

If you're looking for a little stress relief, I highly recommend the exercise (:

Flashback Friday: Happy Earth Day

Happy Earth Day!

Last year, I celebrated like this:

This year I'm in San Francisco hoping for a glimpse of this:

So that next year I might wear this legitimately, if ironically:

I just realized...

... that this:

Is all my fault.

I went shopping after the second session of General Conference yesterday and was late getting to girls' night out so I left the bags in my trunk.

I only remembered them when I was in a different car on the way to my parents' house and I maybe said a quick prayer that the aerosol cans wouldn't explode in the heat. (It was 65 degrees after all.)

Well, they didn't explode!

Sorry.

In other news, I now have a testimony of Malachi 3:10. I've always believed it in principle; I just never expected my little prayer to be answered quite so literally...

Top 10 Tuesday: Google is crafty. I am not. Even so...

Search Engine. Analytics. Feed Reader. News. Images. Chat. VoIP. YouTube. Blogger. Is there anything Google doesn't do and doesn't do pretty well?

Sometimes (always) I'm pretty sure Google is (way) smarter than I am. For instance, you know when you accidentally misspell a search term:

How does it know that's what you meant? My old coworker Wes wrote about this phenomenon much more intelligently than I ever could here.

But Google doesn't just stop there. When Riley and I were in Cambridge last year, I was shooting off a quick email for school when Google gave me this error message:

If you can't read it, it says, "You wrote 'I've attached' in your message but there are no files attached. Send anyway?"

I forgot to attach the file and Google knew it. Besides the kind of creepy Big Brother undertones of a search engine reading my mail, how cool is that? I was totally blown away (ask Riley) and I didn't think I'd ever be more surprised by Google.

But I was wrong.

Maybe you've seen those Facebook statuses or blog posts going around saying something like this:

"I promise to send something hand-made to the first five people who leave a comment here. You must in turn post this on your blog and send something that YOU make to the first five people that comment on your blog! The rules are the item has to be HANDMADE by YOU and sent sometime in 2011! How fun it that!"

Well, you only need to look at my sad history of glue-smeared, paint-spattered, ink-stained, over-sized t shirts to know that crafty I am not.

However, Adriane posted one of these challenges, and she always makes the cutest things. So I had, had, had, to sign up. And now I have to pay it forward...

But, before I made the same offer, I decided to do a little research. So in preparation for this behemoth task, I sat down one Saturday morning to look for some crafty ideas. And what better place to look for a lot of ideas in one place than Etsy? So I typed the URL into my browser and this is what I got:

Just kidding.

But I kind of wish I weren't. Wouldn't it be great if Google warned you when you were about to do something crazy? Imagine:

• Google says, "If we send you to this shopping website, you will spend all of your discretionary income for the year in one fell swoop. Send anyway?"
• Google says, "If we send you to Facebook now, you will waste your entire lunch hour stalking your latest 24-hour crush only to find out he has a girlfriend and she's gorgeous. Send anyway?"
• Google says, "If we send you to this YouTube Video you'll end up staying up until 3 a.m. watching literal music videos and you'll wake up exhausted with really sore abs. Send anyway?"

I probably wouldn't listen, but forewarned is forearmed, right?

Anyway, it was in fact my first time ever logging onto Esty (I know, I'm totally nebbish.) And nearly two hours later it was one rabbit hole I'm still not sure I should have gone down...

However, I think I'm ready to get crafty. And I think it's time I go big or go home.

So I'm paying it forward on Top 10 Tuesday. This means that I'll make something for the first ten people who comment and I won't make you turn around and do the same (unless you want to).

So, enter at your own risk.

And incidentally, if you enter, can you please let me know if you have a favorite quote, poem, song, or book? Awesome.

Top 10 Tuesday: Characters That Make My Family Look Like Saints

This week's topic is another post I did for The Blue Bookcase.

The original idea was to list ten fictional characters I'd like to have in my family, but I answered a question about my favorite fictional best friends a few weeks ago and felt like I would be reinventing the wheel. So instead I wrote about some of the worst characters I could think of. I wrote this post sometime between 1 and 2 this morning, and by the end I was so angry it took my about an hour to calm down and get to sleep. During which hour I had an epiphany: We've all heard the warning to not go to bed angry, so if it's ever a family member that's got you resentfully counting sheep (and let's be honest, it almost always is, just mentally compose your own nasty character list. You'll be hugging the annoying right out of your relations in no time.

So here you go: Characters That Make My Family Look Like Saints

Going Native

Having the worst lungs on the planet isn't easy, but I somehow manage to live what feels like half my life with some kind of chest congestion or another. However, earlier this year I had a cough that just would not quit. We're talking weeks and weeks and weeks. Since none of my usual coping methods were working, I finally I decided to go to the doctor. I've had pneumonia no less than five times, bronchitis pretty much every year I can remember, and smoke-induced asthma since the 2003 Control Burn Debacle of Provo Canyon, so I was expecting that it might be something along those lines.

Nope. Diagnosis: Pertussis.

You know, Pertussis? A.k.a. whooping cough. That disease that like consumption and cholera was pretty much eradicated in developed countries by the end of the 19th century? Yep, I had that.

Lucky me.

Luckier me that there's an app for that. Skipping the part about how I was allergic to the first round of medication with disastrous results, I was eventually quickly cured of the worst of it and have lived to see another day.

Friends and family were often shocked and surprised as to how I developed such an archaic illness, so I took to joking that after having spent several months researching 19th century British social history I had simply gone native. My interest in graduate school was history from below, or the history of the common people. I read about their customs and traditions, I guess I just got a little too into their common complaints (: The idea added a bit of humor to a not-so-fun situation.

So fast forward a couple months to my annual physical. I got a call this morning from my doctor to go over the results of my blood work. The pertussis is all gone and everything else looks good except for one thing: I have ridiculously low levels of Vitamin D.

You know, Vitamin D? That thing you get mostly from the sun that makes your bones strong? Yep, I'm lacking that in a big way. Kind of like most of those 19th century British common people I was researching not too long ago. And given my apparent propensity to take things a little too far I think I can see where this is heading.

Rickets.

Thee lift me and I'll lift thee and we'll ascend together. -Quaker Proverb

I know I've talked about it a little bit before, but I really am a complete failure at keeping a journal. The sum total of records I've made in my life is paltry, and each of the few entries is usually headed with a variation on a common theme: I'm sorry I haven't written in so long but I promise to do better...

Usually I am frustrated when I flip through these few pages. I often do in fact do better, but for such a laughably short time I sometimes feel I shouldn't have bothered to make the effort at all.

But that is where I've been wrong.

I'm learning with my journaling efforts, as in practically every other area of my life, that as long as I keep trying, every single step is worth it. Even if I feel I'm taking two steps forward and one step back.

In a syzygy of events over the recent days I've come to realize that my life has reached a point equatable to most of my journal entries: I haven't been doing what I should for a long time. But this is me promising to do better.

I don't find it necessary or appropriate to air my dirty laundry over the interwebs, but I also think I can be more successful if I have someone more than myself holding me accountable to sustained change.

So, this is the syzygy of epiphanies I had this weekend:

1. The Temple: I went to the Provo Temple on Friday for the first time in far too long. I was blessed to attend a session that was bursting with missionaries on a field trip from the MTC. I was shocked at how young most of them looked (which was compounded by the realization that my baby brother will be joining them in just a few short months). But despite their youth, I can't describe the feeling of sitting with over fifty elders in and sisters in the celestial room and seeing them gather the strength from the House of the Lord that they would need to sustain them all over the world as they worked to preach the gospel. I am not making anywhere near the sacrifice they are making, but I can be better about attending the temple, especially when there are so many so close to me, and taking the strength I receive there to work in my own little corner of the field.

2. Financial Planning: We had a combined Sunday School class this Sunday. The speaker was a senior in the BYU business school and will soon graduate with a degree in accounting. He talked to us about the importance of financial planning. This is something I've been almost as successful at doing as I have been at writing journals. I need to be better.

3. CES Fireside: Elder Perry has been one of my favorite speakers ever since the time I was weeding in the front garden and heard a voice behind me asking if I could use a hand. It was Elder Perry and he was kind enough to not notice the dirt on my face when my jaw literally hit the ground. His talk tonight was inspired and I need to do much much better at prayer. At scripture study. At temple worthiness. And at service.

I'm committing to make time this week to come up with concrete goals in each of these areas which I may or may not share, but please know that I truly would appreciate any suggestions for success, calls to repentance, and requests for progress reports.

Every time I try develop a journaling habit, I feel confident that this will be the time it sticks. But I know that no matter how good my intentions are, it is so easy to falter, fall, and fail. I also know that it is just as easy for us to lend a hand to guide, steady, or even pick each other up in those circumstances.

I promise to help you if you'll do the same.

Top 10 Tuesday: Twofer

Okay so this blog is beginning to look like every journal I ever started and then promptly abandoned as a kid with each entry beginning: "Sorry I haven't written for a while but..."

This just cannot go on.

While I'm getting my act together, please enjoy a twofer on me. Here are the last two Top 10 Tuesday posts I did over at The Blue Bookcase:

The Books I Wish I'd Read As A Kid

and

My Favorite Debut Novels

Happy Reading!

Flashback Friday: London Calling

So remember that one time I lived in England? I do, it seems like it was just twenty-four days ago.

Psych.

I don't mean that time. I'm mean the time before that time.

Well, this week marks the five-year anniversary of the beginning of that best decision of my life, so I wanted to give a quick shout out to all the awesome friends I made and a nod of thanks for all of the amazing, life-changing things I experienced from January through April 2006. If you look at any of my posts from that time, I think it's obvious we rocked the Argyle socks off London. (Then London rocked the Argyle sweater off Stephanie. Rude.)

Side note: I'm in San Diego for the week for work and I am SHATTERED, but I didn't want to fail on my first week attempting to resurrect Flashback Friday, so I compromised and made this post short and sweet. Don't think the brevity is a reflection of the awesomeness of this subject though, because it's not. It just gives me an excuse to bring it up again. (Because, if you actually looked at the posts I mentioned, you'll see I was just about as awesome at consistent blogging as I am now. Oh the stories I have yet to tell...)

Top 10 Tuesday

Okay, so remember that one time I decided to try and do this? (And succeeded a total of thirteen times...)

Well, this year it's coming back bigger and better than ever! And to keep it company, I'm going to go crazy and add another meme to the mix!

Top 10 Tuesdays will basically be a list of whatever I decide to numerically rank.*

There's no boundaries on how ridiculous epic these lists will be. Sort of like my listless phase.

So obviously this comes as part of my new year, better year plans, the reason being I am a horrible blogger, but I'm also the worst journal writer ever, so I'm choosing to tackle the lesser of two evils and then go from there.

For my inaugural Top 10 Tuesday post, I'm going to (re)introduce you to something else awesome I'm doing. Remember that one time I tried out for this? Well, thanks to your awesome feedback (seriously: *tear*) I got the gig! Now I periodically post book reviews, bookish essays, and bookish Top 10 lists (so you see where this is going) and I love it.

So, when a Tuesday, my turn to write The Blue Bookcase Top 10 List, and this blog align (oh look, another syzygy!) that will be the topic of the week.

So, without further ado, let me introduce you to The Top 10 Books Meagan Read in 2010!

*If you have any suggestions for Top 10 ideas please pass them on! (However, you should know I may be ranking them in order of awesomeness for one of my posts so make sure they're good suggestions :)

An Open Letter

Dear Boys,

Some advice on roping a girl into a confession session days before she is moving to another country during which you profess your love and ponder at length the truly mysterious circumstances as to why you never dated before now: Don't do it.

At the very best, she'll think you're either really slow on the uptake or simply a coward. At the very worst she'll think you're nothing but a shallow opportunist angling for a little NCMO.

And trust me, you don't want that to be the last memory this girl has of you.

Sincerely,

Meagan 'Do I look like a girl who's easy?' Brady

AWOL

I can't believe it's been over a month since my last post. My bad.

And I have so much to talk about, I don't even know where to begin.

I could talk about the miracle of finishing my dissertation on time.
Or my new B-list celebrity project.
Or that one time I accidentally went to the Strictly Come Dancing premiere.
Or how I won the Weakest Link.
Or saw Michael Ball perform.
Or GLEEKed out with Jonathan Groff after is new London show.

Or walked the red carpet next to Keira Knightley.

Or attended a cat funeral.

Or played leap Prague.

Or ate in a Lebanese harem.

Or successfully survived the Spider Wars of Fall 2010.

Or got a new gig as a book reviewer.

So much awesomeness, where does one begin?