push and shove

yesterday i had a mini breakdown.  i was laying on the couch watching project runway and all of a sudden i was like--i have to go to work tomorrow.  i have so much to do.  i had fun this weekend but i just didn't do enough.  i never do what i need to do.  etc etc etc crying etc being mean to mike etc etc turning my anxiety into: "and i need my own desk to do work!"  poor mike...he doesn't know what to do when this happens to me (because there isn't really anything to do).  he knows i am unhappy at work but yesterday i really tried to verbalize what it was about my job that made me so unhappy.  i no longer feel like i am good at my job.  i feel like every day i am failing, and a part of me feels like i have been set up to fail--albeit unknowingly.  i didn't always feel this way.  i used to feel quite the opposite in fact. 
today's work day was more of the same.  however, today my mindset was very different than usual.  i decided that the shove of a bad day where i couldn't seem to do anything right was going to push me towards a new goal.  i've mentioned before that i have been training for a 5k.  i finished the interval training and have just been jogging at an easy pace, trying to increase the amount of time i jog.  these runs have been ending at around the 2.5 mile mark.  not too bad, but not enough for the 3.1 miles i'll need to do to complete a 5k.  on saturday i had a really good run and felt like i could have kept going.  when i got home i kept wishing that i had pushed myself to run an even 3.  after a day where i felt like i was falling short from 8-4, i wanted to meet a personal goal.  as usual, i spent the first 10 minutes getting into a comfortable pace but then the minutes just flew by.  i'm not working on speed right now so it took me awhile to get to 3 miles, but it felt great to have reached a goal that i've been slowly building on over the past two and half months.  i probably could have gone further, but i don't want to hurt myself. 

join together in song

 

fridays are the hardest days of the work week for me.  not only is every. single, person. ready for the weekend, but i have less time to get things done during that day than other days during the week.  after working hard all week it seems like friday pushes me even more to need the weekend.  after weeks of sort of pretending to plan it, a group of friends and i finally made plans to go to karaoke this past friday.  we met for dinner ahead of time, and then picked up some beers and snacks to bring into our private room (the only way to do karaoke in my opinion).  my afternoon had ended on a semi-sour note and i was really looking forward letting off some (a lot of) steam.  

since this year has been so tough for me, i feel like i've been appreciating my evenings and weekends more and more.  getting together with everyone reminded me, yet again, that these are the moments that i need to focus on.  it also felt good to be enjoying the city for one of the many reasons on the list of why i love new york.  

i hope that soon my work life can feel as positive and rewarding as my personal life, but until then it feels great to think about great friends and how i 100% killed "super bass" and "seether" on the mic.

oh get out...no, but really

i was 23 when i moved to new york from providence and VERY excited to take advantage of the unlimited possibilities a huge city offered.  my job required early (and long!) hours, so i wasn't very fun during the week, but on the weekends...watch out.  i knew every bar, had tried every little hole in the wall restaurant in the lower east side and east village.  i stayed out until dawn, visited museums, saw friends, and didn't consider my weekend complete unless i was dragging my exhausted body into bed on a sunday night.
let's just say things are a little different now.  my typical weekend consists of:

work, nap, gym, nap, catch up on tv, fall asleep at about the same time that i fall asleep during the week, maybe see one or two friends, be depressed about how fast my weekend is going by, bed

this weekend i was in my pajamas at 10:30 am debating whether to take a nap or go to the gym first when my friend becky asked me if i wanted to go to a pickling class with her.  my first response was "no! i have too much work to do and i haven't even watched pretty little liars yet!"  then i decided that like, what is the point of the weekend if i don't DO things? so i went.  i made pickles for 2 hours.  then becky decided that we should also go get pizza at spumoni gardens--something i'd wanted to try for awhile but who has a car to get to bay ridge?  no! i have to take a nap!  and hopefully find out who A is!  but i went and it was great.  i went out to dinner with two other friends later and then met up with people for drinks after.  i did ZERO work.  nothing.  i didn't go to the gym. i don't know if toby is really dead.  i did take a 3 hour nap so i crossed one thing off my to-do list.  the point is, i had the kind of saturday that i haven't had in years.  i forgot how to enjoy my weekends because i'm so worried about getting ahead of all of the work and cleaning i feel like i have to do.  i have so many lists of all of the things i want to do in and around new york and that list mostly just takes up space on my refrigerator next to the curling new york magazine 100 best restaurant list that has not been touched. my sunday was a little crazy with all of the "catching up" i felt like i had to do but in reality, it was no more stressful than any other sunday.  and this week i've felt no more or less prepared than any other week.  sure there were more things i COULD have done, but there will never really be an end to my mini-notebook to-do lists and if i hadn't just taken advantage of a beautiful saturday afternoon i would not have 3 jars of pickles to try next weekend.