New Glasses

I bought new glasses recently. Buy one, get one. I need to upload pics of the frames to use elsewhere, so I'm just going to post them here. Enjoy my new glasses...

When I Grow Up

Career Inventory Test Results Extroversion ||||||||| 23% Emotional Stability ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% Orderliness |||||||||||||||||||||||| 73% Altruism |||||||||||| 36% Inquisitiveness ||||||||||||||||||||| 70% You are a Planner, possible professions include - management consultant, economist, scientist, computer programmer, environmental planner, new business developer, curriculum designer, administrator, mathematician, psychologist, neurologist, biomedical researcher, strategic planner, civil engineer, intellectual properties attorney, designer, editor/art director, inventor, informational-graphics designer, financial planner, judge.

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Emotions

Skimming through this article: Emotions - How To Understand, Identify, Release Your Emotions




Some excerpts:

Dr. Maurice Elias says, “Emotions are human beings’ warning systems as to what is really going on around them.  Emotions are our most reliable indicators of how things are going on in our lives.  Emotions help keep us on the right track by making sure that we are led by more than the mental/ intellectual faculties of thought, perception, reason, memory.”

There are only two basic emotions that we all experience, love and fear.  All other emotions are variations of these two emotions.

When we have an experience that we find painful or difficult, and are either unable to cope with the pain, or just afraid of it, we often dismiss this emotion and either get busy, exercise more, drink or eat a bit more, or just pretend it has not happened.  When we do this we do not feel the emotion and this results in what is called repressed, suppressed or buried emotions.

The following are a few examples of the methods people use to avoid feeling their emotions.

• Ignoring your feelings
• Pretending something hasn’t happened
• Overeating
• Eating foods loaded with sugar and fat
• Excessive drinking of alcohol
• Excessive use of recreational drugs
• Using prescription drugs such as tranquilizers or Prozac
• Exercising compulsively
• Any type of compulsive behavior
• Excessive sex with or without a partner
• Always keeping busy so you can’t feel
• Constant intellectualizing and analyzing
• Excessive reading or TV
• Working Excessively
• Keeping conversations superficial
• Burying angry emotions under the mask of peace and love

The following are some major symptoms of buried and repressed emotions.

• Fatigue
• Depression without an apparent cause
• Speaking of issues/interests rather than personal matters and feelings
• Pretending something doesn’t matter when inside it does matter
• Rarely talking about your feelings
• Blowing up over minor incidents
• Walking around with a knot in your stomach or tightness in your throat
• Feeling your anger not at the time something happens but a few days later
• In relationships, focusing discussions on children/ money rather than talking about yourselves
• Difficulty talking about yourself
• Troubled personal relationships with family, friends, acquaintances
• A lack of ambition or motivation
• Lethargic – who cares - attitude
• Difficulty accepting yourself and others
• Laughing on the outside while crying on the inside

When you have repressed emotions, your behavior and reactions to events in the present moment are really reactions to past events as well as the present.  This has a negative effect on all relationships in your life.  You cannot be fully present with those you love in today until you have released your emotions from the past.  You buried emotions because they were too painful and difficult to deal with when they occurred and your reactions to today’s events are affected by this pain and hurt that remains buried in your body.

Record What Makes You Feel Strongly For Two Months:  Keep an ongoing record of strong emotions for 8 weeks.  Regardless of the cause, if it’s the weather, the traffic, your husband, wife, children, politicians, the stock market, your fellow church members, whatever and whoever, add it to your list.  Try to identify what really made you angry.  Sadness is a mask for anger, and anger is a mask for fear.  If you can identify yoTu real fears, what you are afraid of losing or not having, you are well on your way to emotional health. Again, writing this down will help you see things much more clearly, increase your awareness, and help you to know your emotional self at a much deeper level.

If you have had a very painful experience, write one sentence and sit with this sentence and cry.  Then write another sentence and sit and cry.  In time this process will relieve some of the sensitive pain around your experience and eventually make it endurable.  With time, the pain around the situation will lesson, as long as you allow yourself to feel it.

We can play all sorts of games with our minds, denying reality is something we all do.  However, it’s much harder to do that when we write things down.

You might want to consider seeking the assistance of a counselor, therapist, or minister.  They can help you to see things in a more balanced fashion, and help you understand more fully what you are observing in yourself.  It can be difficult at times to be objective about yourself.

We need loving friends in our lives.  Many people pay for a therapist to listen to them because they cannot tell their friends about their experiences.

One of the most important things about releasing an emotion is to concentrate on the emotion rather than what caused the emotion.  Forget who did what that caused the emotion, forget about the person who did something to you, concentrate on the “I hate” or “I am angry” or “I am so hurt”.  It’s the emotion you need to release.

Secrets are shame-based and incidents kept secret or feelings hidden from others will make these feelings deeper and longer lasting.  Emotional secrets lead to emotional and mental illness.

   Detach Yourself:  When your emotions are running high and you are having difficult reducing the intensity, try to detach yourself from the situation and the emotion.  Try to imagine the same situation happening to someone else. Try to see if the behavior would be the same if someone else were in your situation.  If the answer is yes then you can begin to see that the experience is not necessarily being focused at you.  The other person is probably acting unconsciously, and you just happen to be the individual “in their way”. Detaching yourself in this manner can help you move through very difficult situations without taking the abuse personally.  You might need to terminate the situation  causing the emotions, but your detachment allows you to look at things more rationally and quietly.

What are the fears underlying your emotions?  You will need to know and understand your fears.  To do this you will have to swallow some pride and admit and accept that you have many fears that are affecting what you do each day.  These fears are often not at the conscious level.

Mary Kurus

http://www.mkprojects.com/fa_emotions.html

Another Essay Thing AKA Promotion of Google Calender

I'm an avid user of Google Calender (I usually have a tab open on any computer, as well as syncing to my phone). I have 11 (yes, eleven!!) separate calendars. This might be a little overkill, but I have one for nearly every category I can think of: general things that I "share" with people who need to know my schedule, personal things, work, class schedule, assignments due, bills due, etc...

I love this method so much because I can focus on one calender if I need to, or view them all and get an overview of the whole week. Aside from that, each calender has default settings that can be changed to a variety of things. For example, any time I add something to my "class assignments" calender it automatically creates a couple of reminders, example, email me 3 days ahead of due date and email me the night before (just to make sure it's done :]).

Like I said, it might be a little overkill for some, but for those like me who thrive on visually seeing everything laid out and could use automatic email reminders, I find this method quite helpful.

So, I had to write an essay AKA Work-Life Balance

So, I had to write an essay... thing... for one of my classes. It was based on a few essential questions responding to a Computerworld article that we had read. I might have gotten a little carried away, I sound like I've been reading too much Zen Habits (I don't know if too much is possible, but I do read a lot there...). Anyway, it amused me enough that I thought I'd post it. And here you have it...

Work-Life Balance

My current work/school/life balance is undergoing significant change as of this week. I will address this discussion as of last week and the first half of the semester and talk about what led to the current changes. Today, Monday, is my first day unemployed/ being only a full-time student in several years. Prior to this weekend, I have been working 20 hours a week in an IT position, finishing my CIT Independent Learning courses, working on several bi-terms classes, working on one full-term class, trying to keep up a house solely by myself, attempting to take care of myself mentally and physically (sleep?!, what’s that?), planning for graduation, planning a wedding (not to mention trying to find time to spend together), preparing to move, and looking for a job in new location. It has been literally impossible to do everything, on a scale of one to ten, I felt like I was at about a 9; something had to give.

I would say I took the advice of the first suggestion listed in the article, Ten Tips for Achieving a Better Work/Life Balance, to establish and maintain my own priorities. Once I realized that my work/school/life balance was insane, I took a look at my options and had some serious discussions with the important people in my life. While the article is suggesting maintaining one’s priorities to realign work tasks, etc, I took it a step farther and put in my two weeks notice. As my position was considered that of a student worker, I would have found myself unemployed upon graduating in a matter of 7 weeks or so, anyway. Due to this and other personal factors, my fiancé and I decided it was in my, and our, best interest for me to go ahead, quit my current job, focus on finishing out my classes, and start the task of looking for post-graduation employment. This priority change comes with the obvious downside of several months of serious penny-pinching, but we both feel this is worth dealing with for the benefit of my sanity.

Beyond this, I will still be in need of balancing personal work, school, and the impending rest of my life. A suggestion that I’m going to recommend to myself, and anyone else facing similar days of “unstructured time,” is to create and stick to a daily routine that will form constructive habits and have some semblance to “normal life.” This is appropriate for me, personally, because I know myself well enough to know that I would quickly slip into habits such as going to bed at 2-4 AM, getting up at noon, never really getting dressed, and procrastinating on homework worse than ever. To implement this suggestion, I started this morning, as this is Day One of my new plan, by getting up at an acceptable time, writing down the specific things that I did and making a list of things that I wanted to accomplish (actually make the bed, cook breakfast, get dressed (whether I plan to go anywhere or not), read for X amount of time, make x number of posts, etc). Tomorrow I plan to look at what I did today, tweak my daily timeline where necessary, and focus on making constructive habits out of my daily routines. I feel this will help me gain control of my unbalanced life and continue to accomplish my work/school/life priorities.

Many Roles

I play many roles in life.

Contestant
Student
Photographer
Etc...



I'm working on going through, cleaning out junk...

posted from Bloggeroid

New Step in Life

Well, I put in my two week notice today...

"Do you have a job lined up?" No.

"Isn't that a bad idea?" Er, well... it depends on who you are, your particular situation, and what you want out of life.

I have no guaranteed plan in place... But I have plans, if that makes it better?

I'll get three more paychecks between now and when... well, when I don't.

I'm going to minimize my spending, bills, etc.

Place more focus on finishing my final classes on high notes.

I'm going to put quite a bit of effort (almost job like) toward selling (eBay, Craigslist, Etsy, classifieds, ...) as much of my stuff as I can - a) to make money b) I need to get rid of a lot of junk (aka valuable possessions to someone else) and c) so I have less to move in a couple months.

Going to try working through what I want to be when I grow up. Or maybe more of how I want to earn a living between now and growing up. I've decided that I definitely want to enjoy what I do. I've known that, but I'm realizing how important I think it is in my life. I'm not sure what that means for me yet, but I'd rather live a life where I need less money than needing to play corporate politics to make what I need for how I live. I suppose that's nearly as much mindset as occupation, but none-the-less, I want to do work that I want to do.

I'll spend some time wedding planning.
And as soon as we know where we're going (or not going), I'll start doing what is necessary for us to go in that direction.

So, no, I don't have a "job" lined up, but I do have some life lined up that needs to be worked on.  And anyway, I'm just getting a 7 week, or so, jump on my already impending unemployment, upcoming with graduation.

New step; next step; life's a journey...

Thoughts on God and Truth

An interesting site worth some reading time. Realistic struggles are confronted and he makes you think:
Thoughts on God and Truth

Don't Speak

Oh dear... the things that cannot be blogged...

Cotton and Vinegar Kind of Girl

My parents were in town tonight, saw my place, helped me with a few things and the like. While they were here, my mom and I were kind of 'comparing notes' on house cleaning things. She likes the 'new,' 'high-tech' stuff - windex and microfiber cleaning clothes. I tend to prefer the more 'old fashioned' cotton knit sort of wash things and clean most of my apartment with things like vinegar and baking soda.
She called me "a cotton and vinegar kind of girl" - she didn't really mean it as a compliment or as an insult, but I found it very amusing.

The Naming

To those who have asked, those who should know, and anyone who is interested, humor me for a few moments:
The cat has been named. (Yes, it is very Hebrew-esque.)

Name: Tsala

pronounced: TsAleUh
Ts (bets, nets, middle of pizza)
long a - ale (as in Ale 8 :) ).
uh as in... "uh"
Tsala.

Meaning(s):
Tsale (the same Ts +Ale) is Hebrew for shadow (/shade).
Tsalaw - side, ribe, supporting beam; the word used in the Adam & Eve story. she is my companion, it works.
and there are some other similar words that kind of tie in as well...

note: My philosophy for naming pets greatly differs from naming children. I hate it when people name their children things that no one else can pronounce/spell and will provide great frustration for the child for the rest of their life. My cat on the other hand, will not be bothered by what you call her and I will have the satisfaction of knowing I came up with something appropriately obscure from within my second language of choice. ;)

The story, for those who have not heard.

Saturday I got a cat from the Humane Society. She is a "brown tabby," is about a year old, has already had a littler of kittens (she was brought to the HS with them), and is very small.
There they had named her Adora. It really didn't fit her at all and I felt the need to give her a more personal (from me) name.
She is settling into my apartment nicely and is glad to have more than a small cube in which to live.

Tsala

more pictures of my beloved fur ball can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/sarahehowell/Tsala

Apartment II

The past four days have been spent in a fog of cleaning and paint fumes. I didn't go to work Friday or Monday. Instead, myself, my mom, my sister, (and my 1 year old nephew) attempted to make my apartment livable.
We have scrubbed, scraped, and peeled in an attempt to get to the bottom layer of all the surfaces. In the case where the bottom layer was no longer in existence or impossible to find, we simply added our own layer. In the words of my sister, "Paint covers a multitude of sins."

Apartment

I officially got the key to my apartment this afternoon.
So excited...

My Cave (aka Apartment)

I finally found a place to live! and as the title might give away, it is quite 'cave like' (some say it suites me well...).
The price is good and the location couldn't be better. I will have a less then 5 minute walk to all my classes and to work (and to ags :) ). What could be better? (I'm even closer than anywhere that I could possibly live if I stayed on campus!)
If you know me well, I'm sure you will see the place - at some point after it has had much cleaning. Otherwise, just suffice to know that I will be happily abiding in my cave (hopefully along with a cat :] ).

Union County, where it's all relative

So....
my ex-boyfriend's
ex-girlfriend
is engaged
to one of my
prom dates.

...amusing, eh?

Good Buys

So today, in the process of helping AGS move and going from one house to the new, we passed this yard sale like 3 times, each time with me eying an amazing black leather chair "thing" (more on that in a moment). Finally I had the chance to go check the sale out and at this point it's like 5pm. Maybe crazy people, maybe smart, for not putting things away by 12 (or so), they had the stuff all over their front yard and were just hanging out there all day.

Anyway, so I go to check out this chair, which had been there all day so I was afraid it was going to be outrageous expensive or bad condition or something. None of the above. Apparently just no one else was interested. And I should mention it wasn't really a chair, it was the curve of a sectional couch... awesome none the less. AND because the guys were moving today they had a trailer to haul the thing back to my (current and very temporary) place.

And the girls having the yard sale were conveniently my size (which meant lots of shoes and clothes to look through :]).

I shall leave out other fun details and let it suffice to say I left there with one awesome leather chair "thing," 4 pair of shoes, 5 shirts, 1 dress, and 1 framed picture all for -- $30.
A good buy indeed.



(on the porch, as it won't fit in the front door!!)

Chuck Palahniuk

“Your heart is my piñata.”

“The unreal is more powerful than the real, because nothing is as perfect as you can imagine it. Because its only intangible ideas, concepts, beliefs, fantasies that last. Stone crumbles. Wood rots. People, well, they die. But things as fragile as a thought, a dream, a legend, they can go on and on."

“The lower you fall, the higher you'll fly.”

“We all die. The goal isn't to live forever, the goal is to create something that will.”

“You have a choice. Live or die. Every breath is a choice. Every minute is a choice. To be or not to be.”

“If you don’t know what you want, you end up with a lot you don’t.”

“Game shows are designed to make us feel better about the random, useless facts that are all we have left of our education.”

curious ramblings about not being here

I often find myself wondering what will happen and how people will react when I die.
I'm not afraid to die. I don't want to, but I'm not afraid to, I just don't see myself living to be grown.
Maybe it's just b/c I can't possibly imagine how things will be. idk. but I just cant picture myself living in the future, but I'm not exactly picturing myself dying, either.
I just wonder what will happen to everything when I'm gone. My notebooks, my journals. Who will see what. I'm not worried so much about what people will see/read, but what they won't read.
The only way my writings, and such, can get in the "wrong hands" (after I'm dead that is) is if it's all put away and no one sees it. When I'm gone, It's free game. I want people who know me to be able to know about me and know what I thought about them.