Tripping the Friday Fantastic: Fresh Start

I generally don't give a new year much thought. I've never changed jobs or relationships or houses or anything big at the start of a year. Same ish different date. And, as I previously discussed, I don't really make resolutions. This time around, I'm treating 2016 as a fresh start. I am actively working to make changes in my life and plan to re-evaluate at the end of the year to see if the hullabaloo is worth it. The following fantastic sources might just help:

1. I've been considering a capsule wardrobe for a looonnnggg time. My closet is out of hand (and in the floor and on my bed and on top of the dryer). I hate most of my clothes and getting dressed is a chore. Something has to give. Check out Un-Fancy for tips if you are interested in the concept.
2. 26 Tiny Things You Need to Start Doing For Yourself This Year. I recently started number 3, thanks to my mom. I've always been pretty good at 8, 10, 12 and 26. I refuse to do number 16 because I can't stand the smell. 
3. Let's get real for a moment. How do you choose to suffer? Happiness requires it. You have to want the benefits and the costs.
4. I love the Lively Show Podcast. I need positivity in my ears and Jess Lively has it in spades. The episode on diversifying self-worth with Tal Ben-Shahar is great.
5. 52 Ways to Awaken Your Spirit in 2016. Number two!

2016 To Do List

Resolutions. Just typing the word makes me itchy. I'm far more comfortable with a To Do list. In 2016, I want to: 

1. read (at least) one career related book per month (in addition to usual entertainment reading)
2. get back into regualr yoga routine
3. eat more "real" food (i.e. stop eating out of boxes so much)
4. make a more structured quiet time/Bible study (choose a specific place, dedicate a notebook, set an amount of time)
5. revive my blog
6. revive my etsy store
7. spend at least a little time learning Spanish EVERY DAY
8. illustrate every day items EVERY DAY
9. get rid of lots of stuff - think curated instead of cluttered
10. send mail
11. paint master bedroom and office/craft room
12. host a dinner party
13. go on a weekend roadtrip
14. write, illustrate and self-publish a children's book
15. plant a vegetable garden
16. clean out the fridge and pantry every month
17. be thankful EVERY DAY
18. get my email inbox cleaned out
19. sew a legit quilt
20. stop apologizing for my opinions / be more outspoken

That wasn't so hard. No itching. No pressure. No formality. Just a list. A list of things that I have an entire year to work on. A list of things that I actually want to do instead of a handful of resolutions that look just like everyone else's and include only big, daunting ideas (looking at you, weight loss).

What's on your list?

What Had Happened Was / 2016

So you know how sometimes you start a blog and write in it a lot and then suddenly just stop doing that for two and a half years? Yeah, me too. 

A lot happened during that time. I started a new position at work, became a beekeeper, learned to crochet and barely knit, helped build a house in a foreign country, got a pixie cut and grew out a pixie cut, added four new tattoos to my skin, let a piercing grow over and finally had one of those pears wrapped in gold foil from Harry and David. My name is the same and I still have a body that is 60% Mexican food instead of water. So there's that. 

I'll always come back to you, blog.
Partly because I hate talking.

I miss this blog. I miss writing. Since I claimed this space of the internet, I have revamped it many times - into a place for DIYs, a place for recipes, a place for humorous stories. I just couldn't settle on one thing. Blame it on my ADD, baby (the other 40% of me is made up of song lyrics that people stopped using conversationally a long time ago). Instead of settling on one thing, I'm going to settle on all of the things in 2016. Just what big time bloggers tell little time bloggers not to do. Does that put this space of the internet into "lifestyle blog" territory? Meh. Maybe. I kind of don't like the way that sounds. This will just be a blog about stuff and things. That's a category, right? Squirrel (see note above about ADD). 

Ready or not, here I come.

Touché Tuesday Advice Column

It's been a minute since the last Touché Tuesday Advice Column! Need some Whitfield Awesome advice (about anything)? Fill out this form.  

Dear Jen,
I just moved far away from home for college. I'm also a little shy. Do you have any suggestions for meeting new friends?
Sincerely, Party of One

Dear Party of One,
Not so very long ago I was a new-to-college girl with tons of friends (if you count inanimate objects). You came to the right advice column!

I made all of my friends by going directly to class, doing homework at lunchtime and not joining clubs. If you would like to take a more direct indirect (that's not a typo) approach, try AIRing. Walk up to a small group of people and throw out a subject followed by "am I right?" They'll go one way or the other before you make a commitment.  For example:

• Spot a few nerds? Say "Ben Affleck as Batman, am I right?"
• Catch up to a few jocks during your run? Say "sports words, am I right?"
• See a pack of hott girls chewing gum and not saying much? Say "Miley Cyrus, am I right?"
• Spy a gaggle of music lovers? Say "vinyl, am I right?"
• Eyeball an environmentalist? Say "reusable bags, am I right?"
• Professors the only people that will talk to you now? Say "vodka in a water bottle, am I right?"

AIRing isn't about compromising your beliefs. If the new people you happen upon turn out terrible, peace out. You have a 50/50 chance of the next group turning out great. 

Or just buy a few pizzas and open your door. 

♥ Jen

Thirsty? Head over to my food blog, Turning Mediterranean for a fresh raspberry soda. 

Safety first, y'all.

Let's recap. I'm the chick who falls down stairs, gets second degree burns from a curling iron, breaks her tailbone during the first week of roller derby practice, checks boiling pasta with her fingers and almost burnt down that one apartment. My middle name used to be "Safety" but a judge made me change it. 

Because I have only been at my current job for one year and they don't know any better am a pillar of excellence, my boss appointed me safety coach for our department. Safety. Coach. After a few training sessions, I will be responsible for things like locating fire extinguishers, ridding the community fridge of toxic mold, making sure our environment is hazard-less and reminding smokers that we are smoke-free (because that won't get me punched in the throat).

AND drills. Surprise fire drills. 

I am nothing if not thorough. I have decided to implement my own additional surprise drills: 

• Tornado Drill: Run screaming into a coworker's office tossing two-by-fours wildly about. Make sure you mess up some stuff. Leave.
• Hurricane drill: Choose a coworker target, stand far away and stare at them. Move slowly in their direction. Suddenly turn and run into another coworker and blow all over them. Leave slowly. 
• Crazy MoFo Drill: Hide in a coworkers office. Wait until they are in the zone, slowly rise up behind them holding dandelions. Include pee if you want.
• Hipster Drill: Speak incessantly of fake bands. Hit any coworkers who pretend to know the bands with your smelly, floppy hat. Don't leave. Just stay and stay and stay in your stupid pants.
• Anthony Weiner Drill: Oh who am I kidding? We perform this drill so often already that it's a wonder we get any work done. Hiyo.

No one cares for you as much as you care for you. Except your safety coach. If your office does not have a safety coach, appoint yourself. Because safety first, y'all. Feel free to use my ideas.

Don't be surprised if my next post is about being appointed Vice President.

Rhymes So Fresh...

I'm still 107 rap fortune cookie prints away from a trip to Japan. That sentence definitely makes sense. 

If you just asked yourself, whhhaattt?, click here. Then get yourself some super grown-up rap cookie art for your office. Your boss will be impressed and you will have much financial gain. Also your lucky numbers are 1, 7, 32, and 578390. 

 Rap lyric fortune cookie prints available in my Etsy shop.

Hungry? Head over to my food blog, Turning Mediterranean, for snack week! 

Slow your roll.

Appropriate 

I used to think of time as a lumbering concept. Almost drowsy. I remember aching to be done with high school  and being afraid I would never watch my graduation cap drift back to earth with the 326 caps of my classmates. 

I enjoyed the next chapter of my life far more but it continued to move with the slowness of cold honey. I was mostly okay with this tenor but the familiar whens and how longs and will I evers crept in.

When I give thought to years now, I realize they have become more akin to class five rapids. And I think, ever so eloquently, "s^%t".* 

Six months or eight months or eleven years -eleven years- and I'm no closer to seeing my name on a book cover. Or being a mom. Or wearing a size 10. Or becoming the type of person who never leaves dishes in the sink. Hey time, plod for me, baby.

At the beginning of 2013, I resolved to live with intention. To be aware of the minutes of my life. To experience and remember. I'm not doing that. I didn't write about my intentions to be intentional because I knew that I wouldn't follow through, albeit unintentionally. 

I don't think I know how to be intentional. I do know how to very crudely and inaccurately illustrate the inside of a chicken. So I still win adulthood. Clearly.

Tell me, how do you slow your roll?
 
*Great Grandmother said a lady never uses the s-word unless she is referring to literal s-word. I'm nothing if not a lady.

Florida Places to See: St. Augustine

Way back in June, I took a road trip to St. Augustine with my sister and a former co-worker of hers. If you are like us and fancy forts over night clubs, it's worth a visit. In December. Florida is hot.

We fed muffins to hotel cats, met a nutty lady with exposed lower butt cleavage, missed the turns for several Cracker Barrels, got inappropriate with some coquina and made friends with a cemetery ghost. I had so much fun that I forgot about the bone I had to pick with the place. "America's oldest city" is St. Augustine's claim to fame, but Pensacola, my stomping grounds, was actually America's first European settlement. Had it not been destroyed by a hurricane, P'Cola would hold the title. I guess "America's oldest continuously inhabited city" doesn't look as nice on t-shirts. 

I took a lot of photos of things that are not us, which I will show you in place of repeating all the reasons you should visit St. Augustine that you could read on a travel website.

Feeling 32

I've been 32 for exactly one month and I'm pretty boss at it. Boss means fumbly with the unfortunate fashion sense of Hannah Horvath, right? Here are a few things I've learned, so far, about this year of life:

1. The skin creams you just started using will pay off - people will compliment your nice complexion! And then note that your twenty-six-year-old sister's complexion is better.
2. People discuss poop. With concern. Don't giggle.
3. College students will begin to think that you are a "mam".
4. Middle-aged ladies working in department stores will treat you as if you have enough money to purchase the pricey watches you ask to try on instead of rolling their eyes. This is kind of cool and kind of a bummer.
5. The other 30-somethings around you who seem to have everything together are faking it at least part of the time.
6. Everything in this video is true:

The 107 Fortune Cookies Project

Do you know how much it costs to fly from Florida to Japan? About 107 Whitfield Awesome rap fortune cookie prints, that's how much.

I have to get to Japan soon to visit with THE Kacey from Kacey's Kitchen and Where in the World is Kacey (currently in Japan). It's a must. For me and Japan. They ain't never seen two white girls go through so much food - it'll be fun all around. 

I have decided to take the most sensible route for saving travel dolla dolla bills, y'all. Rap lyric fortune cookie prints in my Etsy shop. It's the "That's a Rap" series. See what I did there? At $14/pop, it'll take roughly 107 prints to get me to Japan. I'll be debuting the prints here as I go. Let's start with the basics: The Cool Kids, M.I.A. and Tone Loc.

Baby; ya jingling.

Looking in the rear view swagger going swell.

 Put a little Medina in your glass & the girls'll come real quick.

Do you have any tips for travel savings? (Like how to not buy things in Target.)

All this talk about fortune cookies make you hungry? Head over to my other blog, Turning Mediterranean, for a Watermelon Gazpacho recipe!

The One with the Friendly Reminder

http://www.etsy.com/shop/WhitfieldAwesome, y'all (because my goal for this year is to make more from Etsy than I pay in fees - a.k.a. the big time)

Cold turkey. That's what I went all over this blog (and my other blog). I didn't do that thing that bloggers do: write a post about how life is just so much that they need a break. I just didn't feel like writing. Didn't feel like illustrating. Didn't feel like sharing. So I didn't. 

Monday, as I waved my blow dryer about my head with one hand and readied a print of Mr. President Bill Clinton for shipment to Seattle with the other, I remembered: Oh yeah, I like being creative in ways that don't involve a scope of work or a security deposit or clients who fancy themselves designers. I like doing things I like to do and I haven't done them in months. 

So thanks, A., in Seattle, for the reminder. 

 The reminder that:

• I need to pay my Etsy bill. 
• I have a master plan. I want to write and illustrate humorous children's books. Hopefully this will lead to mild success and a demand for handmade character plushies. I'll hire wacky family members to produce said plushies and soon A&E will make reality television stars of us. After a good five season run, I'll have enough TV money to feel comfortable with the risk of opening a small food stand. I have the place picked out already. It's near the bike trail and downtown (convenient considering I'll become the type of concerned citizen who bandies about phrases like -downtown revitalization-). American dream.
• Maybe a few folks besides my mom and those two people who hate me actually look at my stuff once in a while. (Let's not pretend that public blogs are all about introspection and views don't matter...no two people do not groan when bloggers pretend things like that.)
• I really liked blogging. I want to do it again.

P.S. I accidentally typed "The One with the Friendly Reindeer" as the title of this post. What is on my mind?

Things that make you uncomfortable...

This post is part of the series "Blog Every Day in May".
Day 3: Things that make you uncomfortable.

Wet socks.
Unattached hair.
Babies.
Meetings.
Swimsuits.
Shredded Wheat.
Other people’s showers.
Waiting alone.
Talking about money.
Cooked fruit.
Meth teeth.
Sharing food.
“What are you thinking?”
New people.
Werewolf hands.
Waterpark bathrooms.

*This list not exhaustive. 

Educate us on something...

This post is part of the series "Blog Every Day in May".
Day 2: Educate us on something you know a lot about or are good at. 

Oh man. I am so good at so many things. Like, 

• saying I’m going to tackle a project after work but watching television instead. 
• sit and reach. 
• consuming large amounts of food in one sitting. 
• not learning to play guitar. 
• making people feel uncomfortable.
• imitating Forest Gump on accident. 
• being terrified of snakes. 

But today, friends, I shall educate you on “The Carlton”. 

1. Put on some sweet tunes. Might I suggest something by Tom Jones? Something like “It’s Not Unusual”.  
2. Make sure no one else is around. (You might want to do this first. Don’t.) 
3. Grab a microphone-shaped prop. Sing into it. 
4.  Swing your arms and snap your fingers to the beat while slightly bending forward. 
5.  With knees bent, shift your weight from one leg to the other. 
6.  Don’t be afraid to add flair – wiggle your hips, add a spin, wear a sweater vest, and maintain a freakishly large grin. 
7.  If you have access to stairs, or a couch, run up them for dramatic effect. 
8.  Return to number 4 and repeat until you notice someone noticing you.

You’re welcome.