Stacey 2.0

As I tend to do every now and again, I was really excited to start blogging on a normal basis, and then I let myself get so busy that I abandoned the blog for a period of time.  A blessing and a curse, really; I'm not sure I had much to say during these past few months I was absent, but it doesn't help me in my quest to become something other than the cubicle farm drone that I am for 70% of my waking hours. I kind of hate New Year's resolutions - if I want to start bettering myself, why not start today ? - but I manage to come up with a whole list of them anyway.  Things I want to do to improve myself or something around me, but that I'm not quite ready to start pre-January 1.  I am really good at coming up with excuses for why or why not...  So, 2014 Resolution #1:  I want to write a blog post at least once a month.  It's a meager goal but one that I think I can not only achieve, but surpass.  And if I don't, I think I am okay with 12 average quality posts.

To the guy I cut off today while driving, I'm very sorry.  I was in a lot of pain and fatigue from my post-10.5 mile run, looking into the sun, and obviously not thinking clearly.  I know you were pissed, I've been feeling bad about it ever since... But it has me wondering, how do you ask (and hopefully receive) forgiveness if you are in a similar situation?  Where what you did was an accident or unintentional, but you will probably never see the person you affected ever again? For now, I'm going to take the experience and learn from it.  I obviously need to be a more attentive driver, and avoid driving when I'm in a post-run/pain/fatigued kind of state.  I just wanted to get home so bad, I guess, to get my chores done and take a nap.  But it's not worth risking my life or someone else's! 

About 5 years ago, I started counting calories as an answer to all of the diets I hated trying.   I love eating and I love food, so it's hard for me to try a diet that excludes something.   A nutritionist I used to work with said, "It's just calories in, calories out."   I created this fancy little Excel spreadsheet and became anal about weighing out all of my portions.   But I lost about 20 pounds that year and kept it off so I must have been doing something right. It was during this period that I took up drinking diet soda on a pretty frequent basis.   It was oh-so easy to track the calories in those things (zero!) and I could still have sodas with lunch or dinner instead of boring old water.   My doctor and my dad hated that I drank the stuff.   "Even drinking coffee is better than drinking diet soda," my doctor would say.   "Coffee at least has some health benefits."   My dad's comments were a little more colorful than that, but al

“ The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised. ”  - George Will , author I spent the better part of the past 32 years living by this philosophy.  I have always felt there’s that little black cloud hanging over my head, no matter where I go.  I have some pretty bad luck – thankfully nothing particularly tragic or sad – but things would happen to me that don’t normally happen to other people.  I just don’t remember it being any other way.  And so, as long as I didn’t get my hopes up too high, I couldn’t get crushed.  Family, school, jobs, money; everything applied. I became particularly sad after turning 30, because nothing on my life plan seemed to be getting accomplished.  That’s not entirely accurate, because I was far from rock bottom: I have a husband that I think loves me the majority of the time; I bought a house; my cats and dogs are healthy and provide a wealth of entertainment value.  But it wasn’t

I’m always looking for apps that help me do something better/faster/smarter.  So in my quest to be happier, I had to find out if there was an app for that.  It probably won’t surprise you, but there  are  apps designed for this purpose.  I have tried two of them so far and I wanted to share my thoughts.  Juice – FREE in the Apple App Store I first heard of Juice when I was poking around tinybuddha.com looking for tips on teaching myself how to meditate.  Meditation, or just the simple act of learning how to relax, I thought could help me navigate through some of the stress in my life.  Anyhow, I think I first saw it mentioned in a tiny banner ad on the website, but a more in-depth article about the app can be found  here  from tinybuddha.com’s founder, Lori Deschene.  (Just as a side note,  tinybuddha.com  is pretty awesome and has a lot of good ideas and articles about change in your life.)  This is the very first “happy app” I’ve tried and I like a lot of things about it.