Month: July 2018

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TV Show Ideas

As someone who hates most TV, here are some ideas I have for actually good shows.

  • Beyoncé and Jay-Z engage in home maintenance projects using only a book for reference
  • LeBron James plays against various people in basketball. Each episode progresses in difficulty. For example, first he plays against 4 4-year-olds, then works up to 40 4-year olds. Every season, there is a special robot-themed episode where he plays against robots. (In the scifi horror version of this show, when the robots get skilled enough to win the game, they sacrifice him on the court and in that instance, robots all over the world, rebel against their human overlords).
  • A person goes on a date with two people wearing a hidden earpiece. On the first date, they are advised in their actions by a panel of competent adults. In their second date, they are advised in their actions by a panel of children. Each date-ee then rates their experience of the date.
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Pregnancy Week 11

Okay, because I still can’t understand how pregnancy weeks work, this is dated at the start of my 11th week (I think…). I thought I would write short weekly synopses to document my experience.

This week I felt mostly fine. I got to spill the beans in person to one of my closest friends which felt really, really nice and we got to have a long conversation about parenting, pregnancy, birth, etc.

There were several nights where I slept 12 hours and then still needed a nap the next day. My workout motivation was looooow — I hit my walking goal every day but couldn’t get myself to yoga. Just felt very low-energy in general.

Emotionally, I started to feel a bit better and less irritable. I attribute it to fish oil in the forms of salmon, sardines, and capsules, but could have been something else too.

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Book Review: The Year of the Runaways

Book Review #24: The Year of the Runaways (Sunjeev Sahota)

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Ooof. A real heavy book. Hard to read almost entirely throughout. I know that’s purposeful – to make the reader feel the same lack of hope and constant struggle that the immigrants in the story are experiencing but wow. As someone who generally has a favorable attitude towards immigrants – both documented and undocumented – it made me despair.

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News

So…my two blog readers (Hey B! Hey R!) both already know this, but I am pregnant. Currently in week 10, though part of my brain has stopped understanding how weeks work since I’ve become immersed into pregnancy weeks. If your first birthday is technically celebrating the closing of your first year of life, is the 10th week of pregnancy celebrating the closing of the 10th week?

I have been feeling pretty ambivilant. I’ve written a fair amount about fertility anxiety here, so I was initially very thankful it happened naturally. Physically, I have been feeling almost fine. Just like a 80% version of myself most days, meaning instead of doing anything after work, I’m prone to just vegging out, very often laying down on my sofa half-listening to a podcast. I haven’t felt very nauseated (though did more so when it was earlier on), and haven’t felt very different overall.

Last week and this week, I have started to feel very emotionally grumpy. Just not really in the mood to interact with anyone, uncomfortable in all situations for all sorts of reasons (I don’t want to be wearing pants, something smells weird, I could be taking a nap right now instead of doing this). I mostly do not want to hang out with people.

I haven’t been thinking too much about the longer-term yet because when I do, I get very overwhelmed. But am trying to slowly break the news to more people, so thought this would be an easy start.

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Book Review: The Great Alone

Book Review #23: The Great Alone: A Novel (Kristin Hannah)

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This book started off strong with a great plot — a teenage girl, her abused mother, and her violent, unstable father are moving to Alaska to homestead off the land. While there, they’ll have to learn how to hunt and grow all of their own food; meanwhile, the father becomes increasingly erratic as the winter lengthens. It’s basically the Shining plus homesteading. But then it meanders into an extreme soap opera including unintended pregnancy, cancer, police department confessions, brain damage, etc. Just way too much and totally unrealistic by the end.

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Book Review: Pachinko

Book Review #22: Pachinko (Min Jin Lee)

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I had really high hopes for this book given that I had read rave reviews everywhere and had to wait for it to become available at the library for several months. In the end, it was a satisfying read but I also felt let down. I found the writing and plot sometimes to be overly simplistic and not prone to giving enough depth to characters. I know part of that was out of necessity because the book had to cover an absurd amount of time, but I would have rather read an even longer novel that filled in some more details for me. I will say it was the first book I read from start to finish in quite some time.

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Monthly Review: June

Here is my monthly review for June. If you want to read May’s, check it out here.

1. What went well this month?

Honestly, I can’t think of much. It was a hard month that felt off the rails.

2. What didn’t go so well this month?

  • Routine. For a variety of life reasons, it just felt like every structure in my life fell apart. Rhino and I were out of town for consecutive weekends, I had a week-long business trip where I could never leave the hotel, my workout friend and I had ZERO weekends we could both make, and my office was closed for a problem in the building so I was working from home everyday. And, there was an insane heatwave (reaching into the 100s every day) so even my usual long walks were difficult. I came out of the month just feeling so ungrounded and so unhappy.
  • Meditation. Because of strange timing, I had two weekend meditation retreats this weekend. And I haven’t meditated since. I feel totally burned out on the experience and like I never want to meditate again.

3. What did I work on last month and how did it go?

  • Mindfulness. Terribly. I never want to meditate again, though I have been fine with more general mindfulness.
  • Summer fun. I had a hard time enjoying myself just because everything was so busy and I couldn’t find any structure in the enjoyment. Without any disciplined time (working out, walking, eating well, productive work, etc.) it was hard to enjoy downtime.
  • Being accepting of where I am. This is fine. I have been self-compassion but I don’t know that self-compassion is what I need as much as structure and discipline.

4. What am I working toward?

  • Better structure and routine. I just really need this. I want to create a daily schedule for myself everyday that creates space for working out, the meals I will eat, my work hours, etc. I especially want this for working out because skipping the gym for me is a spiral that leads to doom. This is it. The sole goal for July.