Update

Remember the list I was talking about in an earlier post - how to live a better life in 100 ways ? I just wanted to update you on my progress.

The waking up early didn’t work so well: first couple of days were awesome – even though I fell asleep at around 1:00 or 2:00 am I woke up pretty early, feeling rested and amazing. It was as if my brain acknowledged my decisions and intended to do everything he could in order to make me happy. But then, exhaustion struck.

I’ll have to admit, I did not stick to any schedule and I threw any plan I might have had out the window – I didn’t even use an alarm clock – because hey, look at how good my brain is at following orders. That was mistake number one, but there’s a whole party following it: I didn’t go to sleep when I started to feel tired, because 10:00 pm is just not an appropriate bedtime hour, I stayed on computer till the very last moment, I ate a lot in the evening, I didn’t have a routine which involved going to sleep and waking up at the same hour and in the morning I would just go online and not do anything productive. So there you have it – the chaotic approach. Now that I know everything I did wrong, I think I’ll give it another try, this time doing everything by the book.

And in addition to that, I am going to start doing something else…

64. Meditate Daily

It’s the easiest thing you can do. True mediation acts like a mind emptier, leaving you open to the whole flow of the sensations and experiences you would otherwise ignore. You don’t even need a complicated technique, meditate as you see fit.

I swear, it’s like I read that list and thought “Hm, let’s just take the most ridiculously not-me suggestion and see where it takes us.”. It’s crazy and all I can say is that hopefully I am not going to turn in some religious freak who always smiles and advocates the miracles of the universe and how love is the cure for everything.

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A later edit: What the fuck have I gotten myself into?! Googling “how to meditate” is like opening the freaking Pandora’s box!

” [...] As we breathe out we imagine that we are breathing away all disturbing thoughts and distractions in the form of black smoke that vanishes in space. As we breathe in we imagine that we are breathing in all the blessings and inspiration of the holy beings (you have got to be kidding me…) in the form of white light that enters our body and absorbs into our heart.”

Maybe this is too extreme for me.

The photo challenge

A further proof that lately the internet really hates me: instead of publishing this post and the previous one after, in a perfectly logical order, it just fucked them up without me even realizing it. Anyway, just read on…

In an attempt to force myself to disconnect and go out more, I have taken a new pet project – one which revolves around photography. Ta-dam!

The fact that I’m so overly excited about this is probably related to the wonderful weather we’ve been having nowadays. Still, I should hang on to this positive attitude as long as it lasts – hopefully more than two days.

1. A street

I guess I forgot to mention what a hard-working girl I’ve been today, wandering around, taking pictures and all…

Day four

The find-a-new-habit challenge has not been forgotten. Here’s what I accomplished so far:

1. I realized I cannot draw in the morning no matter how many cups of coffee I drink – afternoon just works better.
2. I realized that this is a really dumb thing to make a habit of.

I constantly have to remind myself why the hell I am trying so hard to do this and bottom line,  it’s just not habit-material. Staring at a blank piece of paper is a real catalyst for thought so I have a considerably large list of reasons why this isn’t working but I’ll just limit myself (for your sake) to saying this (for my sake) : you cannot rush a creative process. Oh my god, I am such a poet.

All in all, I managed to draw every day, as I had intended,  for four whole days -actually just three, since yesterday I was out all day – and now I’m ready to throw in the towel. Fuck, I don’t even care about the reward anymore: my birthday’s coming, then Christmas, then sales season and I’m going to buy myself something pretty anyway, despite this complete failure.

Trains and charming desserts

Yesterday I went outside.

I hopped on the 8:52 train from Switzerland and got off in Freiburg, Germany just before noon. There’s much to tell about the city, but in my head there’s nothing else to it than the cubic stone paved streets and all the libraries along them, because whoever knows me, also knows that the quickest way to get my heart racing is to show me a pretty journal. Now take that piece of information and put it next to the fact that a library contains douzens of said pretty journals – my heart was practically galloping by the time I got to the second floor of the first library. And the books…hundreds of books with soft pages, that amazing smell of paper and their beautiful covers, just begging to be opened and read.

The sad story is that even though I’d managed to convince my mom to buy me something (“anything, just anything pleaaase!”), I realized there was no way I could choose one thing: at first I wanted a book –  it was even on sale – but then I saw another another one that I could’t live without and then another one that I just had to have and then I saw the “Books about design” section and my heart stopped and that was the end of it. So I just kept sulking from one shelf to another muttering something about one day having enough money to buy every single book and pretty journal in the world.

The highlight of the day, however, that turned the freezing my butt off the entire day and not being able to buy myself anything into a blur, was me finally getting to eat macarons. Macarons always seemed to me like the perfectly sophisticated and unattainable dessert – pretty french cookies in millions of colors – and I was just dying to know what they tasted like. They were being sold in a konditorei in the Basel train station and once I set my eyes on them, I wouldn’t leave without buying.  My mother and I feasted on them while riding the train home, debating whether they are called “macarons”, “marroni” or “luxemburgerli”.

  In case you are wondering, they taste like heaven. Especially the chocolate ones.

Success!

It is 9:39 am and I am up and at’em. And feeling great, to be honest. I had actually set an alarm the night before, but were I to rely on it, I would have probably slept the entire day because my phone apparently thinks that if you change the timezone, 9:00 becomes 21:00. So according to the little guy, it is now night and I might as well go back to sleep (but I won’t).

Another list!

I was wandering around the internet and i stumbled upon this article – “100 ways to live a better life”, which I thought was too cool not to share. And by “cool” I mean “long, elaborate and with a lot of useless advice”. However, I am going to go through every single point on that list and when I reach the 100th one I’ll decide: bullshit or no bullshit. Right, here we go!

So, I’m going to ignore the long-term solutions, like, for instance, the first two:  1. Accept your mistakes and 2. Accept your friends’ mistakes

Number 3 talks about creating a new habit so I guess I’m on the right track. But number 3 also takes me to another article, which promises to help me do that in just 15 days. Now, 15 days sounds sufficiently good, but then you start reading – first day, “name your habit”. Exactly, if you want to, say, start running every day, the very first thing you have to do is write it down. I mean, that seems like the perfectly logical thing to do, not putting on your damn running shoes and dash out the door. But on the other hand, the whole plan revolves around writing about your habit for a seemingly more amount of time than you spend actually creating the routine you wanted. Moving on!

I skipped some more numbers (later  to be reviewed) and we’re down to number 17: wake up early. I love waking up early! It feels like time morphs into a giant bubble just to give you endless hours to do every little thing you planned to do in one single day. What sucks about waking up early, though, is the fact that when you jump out of bed 3 hours before you usual waking-up time, a little being  magically appears and follows you throughout your day, smacking your head with a gianormous wooden bat every 10 minutes just because it’s fun. It’s not fun for me, bitch!

Time to turn to google again, which has quite a lot to say about waking up early (or “missing the most delicious part of sleep” as I like to call it). The thing is, every one is so big on lists and if post yet another one here, this article becomes a cascade of numbers and bullet points, a true listception, and that is not something I want. So suffice it to say that the best solution is probably setting an alarm and moving it 5 minutes (or 10…15?) earlier every day. Stay tuned, tomorrow you’ll find out if I’m typing a post alone or there is a small armed creature waiting for me to make the slightest mistake and whack me in the head. “IT’S  «YOU’RE»! USE THE FUCKING APOSTROPHE, YOU USELESS INCOMPETENT!!”

Day one

Here’s what happens when I decide to do something new:

- I get over-excited about it

- I plan every detail about it

- my expectation level goes through the roof

So because of that, I couldn’t get much sleep and in the morning I wanted nothing else than to just lie in bed with the blanket over my head and the cat purring next to me. But eventually I woke up, I had my coffee and I did draw for a short period of time, until I felt that the internet was sad without me so I turned on my laptop and that was the end of it.

The point is, day one wasn’t a complete failure because I did sort of do what I had planned to do. Sort of. If you are puzzled by the fact that I actually have to make myself draw and not do it for my pleasure, here’s a little drawing to help you understand why:

And then I decide I will never draw again.

New habits

Now, changing your approach to life is no easy thing. It’s just the thing that makes you say ”Well, maybe I’ll just start tomorrow” day after day. The first motivational blog (I find it embarrassing to even read these things, let alone write about them but I guess that’s just one of the things that need changing) is zenhabits.net and the goal is to create a new habit.  So this woman wrote a 5-step guide to creating a new habit, all while using the word “pee” one too many times. But don’t worry, you can just tl;dr that article if you’re really lazy (and go seat in the corner because that is not the right attitude) because I’ll break it down for you. In other words, yay, lists!

1. “Make a plan”, she says.

Right. I’m already sort of stuck, but I’ll just try to go along with it, so here’s a nice story first: I often find myself wishing I could draw better. Then, I’d just turn on the computer and google “how to draw better”. And then I’d read some tutorials and then visit some more art-related sites and then read on every damn site how working hard is immensely important and you have to constantly draw until your hands bleed and the universe becomes a giant paper for you to spit pretty drawing on. And I feel like shit because googling “how to draw better” is basicaly all that I do in order to draw better. So there it is – the plan: I am going to make at least a sketch every day.

2. “Choose a trigger” – pretty self-explanatory.

I choose coffee. In the morning. I wake up, I drink the delicious liquid and start drawing, away from the internet.

3. “Report your habit” (I just skipped the “4.get some positive feedback” part because fuck it, I’m going to be my own feedback, ha!)

Sure, I’ll report it. I also expect it to sound something like “I don’t understand, why am I doing this, I hate it, I want the internet, I need to go online, I’ll just finish this line and I’ll just turn on my laptop and lie about it on the blog”. Except in reality, I am not going to lie. Not even a bit. No.

5. And now my favorite – “Reward yourself”

That I can do! Forming a new habit takes a lot (“anything from 18 to 254 days” according to this article) but I’ll just try to stick with it for, say, 7 days before I get myself something pretty for all the effort. What that means is that I have 7 seven days to decide what my awesome reward will be and it also means that I sort of feel like a dog right now.

The not-introduction

I have spent an unreasonable amount of time trying to come up with a brilliant introduction to this blog.  I’m actually planning future posts in my head, which I know I won’t be able to publish just because I lack the brilliant introduction, so, no intro. I’m just going to dive right in and if you want some additional information, just visit the About page.