The price of love is loss/ But still we pay/ We love anyway

As a post-triathlon project, Drew has decided to embark on a six-week at-home yoga course from Do Yoga With Me. Taking this literally, I decided to do yoga with him. Sadly, I’m pretty sure that my version of the program should be called “Don’t Do Yoga With Me” (sorry, Drew!). We’re a week and a bit in, and I’ve already learned so much! Specifically I’ve learned that I sort of hate yoga.

Now I’m trying to figure out why exactly that is the case. It can’t be that I dislike slow, meditative exercise. I’ve always loved Pilates. Obviously yoga and Pilates are extremely different, but you’d think that there would be some cross-over appeal. Pilates, after all, is about exacting movement done with extreme control. Yoga is quite different, as I said before, but it’s also about control and precision in some ways.

Also, it can’t be that I dislike holding static poses. I love static trapeze, after all! Static trapeze is all about the static poses.

I love static so much it doesn’t feel like a workout, it feels like a treat. Yoga does not feel like a treat.

So, why do I hate yoga? It’s hard to say. Maybe I’ll get more insight over the next few weeks. Maybe I’ll go on a crazed yoga induced rampage. We’ll see!

Don't lose what you've won/ You've struggled for years but you've only begun/ Stay with me, try again

So, as a follow-up to my finance related post, I decided to get more intentional about budgeting and the like. And as a millennial, what other way would I do this than with an app?

I opened a Mint.com account. Sadly, that's about as far as I got. I tried to sync it with my checking and savings accounts, but it didn't work and I got bored and wandered off. But as a result, things have gotten rather... odd.

Mint.com helpfully alerts me each week that I am spending INSANE sums of money ($10K+) over the past seven day period (I assure you that I am not). I tend to run over my booze budget, which Mint.com decided should be set to $109 per week. I don't actually buy booze, so I'm confused by this.

One time Mint.com alerted me that there had been a "large" deposit made in my account. So I checked, but it was just my paycheck. Hah, Mint.com. I work at an NGO and live in a state (okay, I don't live in a state; I know that) with a very high income-tax rate. That was not large, Mint.com. Get it together.

I suppose I could try to fix things and set a budget and such, but that would entail remembering my password, so...

There's a world, there's a world I know/ A place we can go where the pain will go away

I don't think that I'm reading Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas correctly. I think that I sort of hate it? It reminds me of some of my more irritating experiences dealing with people who, for various reasons, are operating with compromised faculties. My main recurring thought has been "come on guys, get it together already."

You have a right to go/ But you should also know/ That I won't be alone for long

So fun! I want to know this for more books. I want to know this for all the books.

Sing a song of forgetting/ A song of the way things were not/ Sing of what's lost to you/ Of times that you never knew

So, I'm conflicted about this. One hand, I desperately want to be crafty. And to have a really well-put-together apartment. So desperately. Plus I do have a router that I'd love to conceal. Other hand, I have issues with defacing books. Serious issues.

Sigh.

At any rate, this reminded me of this series of craft books that I worked through as a child. You could do crafts to simulate things made, used, worn, lived in, played with, or eaten by people at a specific historical time and a specific place (for the most part). They were called More Than Moccasins, Colonial Kids, Westward Ho, and a medieval one that I can't remember or find on Amazon. It's like bringing together my love of books and of crafts!

For whatever reason, though, I didn't tend to read the directions. I just looked at the pictures and tried to emulate. Mixed results. 

D: I don't wanna hurt you/ A: So why are you?

For some odd reason, reading this article made me anxious. I can't really explain why, exactly. I don't have any credit card debt (or any debt, actually; I paid off my one student loan ages ago). I have about 10 months of living expenses in savings and two retirement accounts (baby ones, but hey, they exist!). So, on the surface I'm not in a similar situation and I don't have a similar "spend it when you have it" mindset.

Nonetheless, "Most of my money is spent on snacks and treats and delicious groceries for meals for my friends. I buy presents and experiences, stuff that makes life fun and exciting and glamorous and livable, $4 iced teas and in-season farmer’s market produce." Yes. That's me. I mean, I have an insanely expensive hobby and I sometimes Uber home from it and then treat myself to a bonus spin class.

How is this relevant to the list project? Well, I read the article rather than going to the library to pick up the books that I have on hold. Yeah, that's all I've got.

Trying to fight the things we feel,/ But some hurts never heal/ Some ghost are never gone,/ But we go on,/ We still go

An article about data and reading? Of course I'd be interested. Though, I think I'm most interested in the chart. I still take issue with measuring reading based on Amazon purchases, but such is life.

I also like articles like this one, since they make me feel as though somehow my project is old-fashioned. Plus, I identified with the side point about reading more slowly when we enjoy a text. See, there are benefits to reading books that you dislike (if you are trying to reach a yearly reading quota, which WHY ARE YOU???).

And so it is/ Just like you said it should be/ We'll both forget the breeze/ Most of the time

So, the other day I was wandering around DC (like I do), thinking about the list project (like I actually don't do too frequently). This led me to think about being 32, since that's about when I will likely end this thing. Or if I don't complete it by then, it means that my life will likely have changed dramatically in the interim. Probably because I either went to grad school or I had babies. Either of those two possibilities seem intense and like they'd upset my fragile sleep equilibrium.

Maybe part of why finishing the project seems less possible than it did when I started the project, (despite the momentum that I should have at 606 books in) is that imagining finishing the project has started to mean imagining my life at 32. I find imagining that to be very hard. I also apparently find it hard to spell "imagining" since I keep putting "imaging."

I've always been bad at five year plans. That challenge is a bit ironic, since I managed to secure quite a lot of money during my undergraduate career by convincing people that I in fact did have five year and even 15 year plans. Hah. I really have no idea.

I started leafing through Getting Thing Done the other day. It's the kind of book that someone like me should be so good at and should love. Next actions! Looking at life at various altitudes! Living intentionally! I'm actually not that organized. I have a pretty good memory, a calendar system, and a tendency to precrastinate. I get things done quickly and rarely forget things, and that helps me seem like less of a scatter-brain than I am.

Projecting into the future is hard for me, and I've been trying to figure out why. It doesn't seem quite consistent for me, either. I'm serious about saving for retirement, for example. But maybe that's because, like the list project in the early days, it doesn't feel real. I just work towards it today and don't worry about what it will really mean when I need to access that money.

I do have some goals. Specifically a cutaway half and a flexus-flexus. Beyond that, though, who knows? Hmm. I wonder if I should try to get better at this.

This stream-of-consciousness post is brought to you by my headache. Stupid headache.