I made a blog post on my other blog: http://coconutseatsnow.wordpress.com/.

 

It’s about mornings.

 

I really have no idea why I couldn’t have posted it here. But, well. What’s done is done. If you read this blog, go ahead and give the other one a look – it’s my first post there since March.

Frustration

I feel like I’m at the head of a new start, but I have no idea where I’m going. The thing is, I know I’m going somewhere, because this doesn’t feel like a standstill. But there’s no direction. I can’t see out of the window.

It’s so frustrating.

In other news, NaNo is almost here, I’m busy as hell school and workwise, going to receive my student support money today, and life is more or less okay.

I’m waiting for the end of this week so I’d have more time to figure out how to give something back to the world, even if it’s something really tiny. Every little thing counts, doesn’t it?

These challenges are obviously not working out. I haven’t kept up with a single one. Oh well.

I’m constantly tired, constantly overwhelmed by not much of anything really. My brain just keeps overworking itself. Guess I’ve finally slipped back into my regular going to school mode.

Bleh. Can’t wait for Christmas.

October Challenges!

So. First big news: I didn’t win the NASA trip. Instead, the most pointless entry in practically the whole competition won, at least in my eyes. I would not have been even half as bitter about losing if it would have been to someone who would have actually deserved it – someone who actually did something creative. All the winner submitted was a recollection of an unfunny prank he played on a friend. The story was short and not exactly well written, and pointless in general. And yet, it won.

That is the power of luck.

Whatever. I’ll get over it. Eventually.

Moving on to the subject of challenges, September was mostly made of fail. I only managed to hold up to the no alcohol challenge in the end – I missed the earliest class on the 30th, because I went to sleep too late. Oh well.

I’m planning to continue with the lecture attendance dare throughout October, though. It is a useful and not a very difficult challenge, so it is in my best interest to keep up with it. Besides, it felt kind of nice to be a good student for a change. I’ve also just decided to add another school-related challenge to the new list – not be late on any homework assignments. I was late with one in September and, even though the consequences were not catastrophic to anyone, it didn’t make me feel very proud. It’s not really all that difficult to get things done in time. All it takes is some willpower.

Another thing I’ve (just now) decided to challenge myself with is following my SparkPeople.com meal plan the whole month. It’s about time I regained control over my diet and started thinking again about what I’m doing to my body. These past few weeks I’ve let myself go completely and it doesn’t feel good at all – neither physically nor mentally. I need to be in control, and I’ve noticed that if I feel in contrl over what I eat, I feel more in control over the rest of my body as well.

Somewhat connected to the previous challenge is my desicion to stay away from any kind of sweets. I need to to this for the sake of my teeth. Not that there is anything wrong with them right now (I hope), but it’s always better to be safe than sorry, and sweets are the main culprit of most dental problems people face today. Then again, as it would be cruel to forbid myself sweets for the whole month, I’ve decided to allow myself something sweet once a week, as long as it accords with my SparkPeople meal plan, of course.

It’s not so much about losing weight (although that would be a nice bonus) as it is about being healthy and feeling good about myself and the way I treat myself. It is my way of respecting myself and my body and taking control over my everyday life. Once that first little step has been made, the success and feeling of power will start to spread to the other areas of my life, and I love that feeling. It has happened before. It can happen again.

To conclude this (probably) uninteresting rant, my current goals for the month of October (they are still subject to change, since it is still the beginning of the month):

1. Attend all uni lectures.
2. Be on time with all homework.
3. Follow SparkPeople meal plan.
4. No sweets, except once a week, as long as it is consistent with the meal plan.

There we have it. A new month, new challenges, another chance to be slightly more awesome than I already am. I swear I’ll try not to fail this time.

Stay tuned.

Challenge Fails And Wins, Penpal Angst, And a Little Thank You to Terry Pratchett

Last night, just as I was going to bed, I got a terrible urge to write a blog post, but since I was tired, I decided to scribble the main points down on my iPhone and write the thing today. So I did it. I’m in school now, in class, and there is nothing to do here but write, so here goes.

So, I’ve been failing on the majority of challenges I’ve put up for myself. In fact, the only two that I’ve managed to hold up to so far are the decision to attend all lectures and stay away from alcohol. But those are the easiest. It’s easy to not do something I’m not used to doing anyway. And it’s easy to show up in school where I’m supposed to be at certain times anyway. It is much harder to gather up the willpower to sit down and learn Korean for 30 minutes a day. It is much harder to restrain myself from spending money on food if I get all kinds of freaky cravings and the store is right next door and I have people coming over and I feel like I deserve that piece of blue cheese… And it is just so easy to forget to blog for ten minutes every night, because I’m not used to it.

Habits die hard.

Oh well. Shit happens. I’ll try to be better in October – I already have some challenges thought up for next month – I’ll decide which ones to take up by the end of this week.

On another note, I owe a huge ginormous immense gigantic apology to Matti. A letter to him is long overdue and, even though I’ve had plenty of time on my hands, I haven’t managed to sit down and write him. I don’t know why, but writing letters is hard. I promise I will write to him at the end of this week, though, by which time I might have some more or less exciting news to share.

Also, I’m (finally!) almost done with Terry Pratchett’s Going Postal, which I have been reading since June. It is still as good as I remember it to be. I love Terry Pratchett. I love him to pieces for creating Discworld, for giving people all over the world the opportunity to immerge themselves in a world so delightfully odd and parodical of ourselves that we don’t even mind being mocked – in fact, we enjoy it, we expect it.

Thank you, Terry Pratchett. You rock. And not in a mineral kind of way.

This should be it for this post. I hope everyone is well (all the three people that read this, heh) and eating a lot of vegetables. Vegetables are good for you. Yes. Hum.

Fail, Fail, Fail

I keep failing. Damn.

Forgot to blog yesterday. And I spent shitloads of money again. But at least I spent it on real food that will last me for a while. Healthy food. I did manage to learn some Korean, though. And no alcohol. So not total fail yet.

That’s pretty much all I have to say at the moment. I was going to write something else as well, but I forgot.

So see ya.

Already Failing a Bit

Since I havent gone to bed yet, I’ll just go ahead and pretend it’s still Thursday.

Today could have gone better in terms of the Epic September Challenge.

Good:

• I didn’t drink any alcohol, even though Mari came for a visit and did.
• I spent a whole hour on Korean today, learned some Chinese numbers (Korean has two number systems – one Korean and one Chinese) and got started on verbs. I’m getting better at Hangul – my reading skills are improving every day and my written letters look almost decent.
• I’m writing this blog post, which is totally awesome, even if it isn’t technically Thursday anymore.

Bad:

• Caved in money-wise and bought myself some junk food. Or, well, Kristel bought it for me, but now I owe her 32 something EEK. Also, since Mari came for a visit, I bought cookies and juice. Earlier in the day I had already spent most of my actual ‘allowance’ on apples and mushrooms. Overall, not a good day financially.

Still, I got 3 out of 4 right, and maybe tomorrow I’ll get them all. I know I totally suck for failing with money because that is in essence the most important part of this challenge, but today was a bit exceptional, I guess. I hope.

Korean is FUN.

Mari is learning Japanese, by the way. So we had a lot to talk about.

We also talked about NaNoWriMo, which is basically all but around the corner.

Exciting stuff, no?

Good night, you silly things.

P.S. Maybe we should have named Ninja Lolcat.

Epic September Challenge

I have decided to challenge myself in several ways, starting today:

1. No alcohol until the end of the month (for weight loss as well as financial reasons).
2. Spend no more than 210 EEK a week on food. I’ve done this before – it’s doable. This is just an experiment to see how healthy it’s possible to eat on such a tight budget and how much planning it takes.
3. Spend at least 30 minutes every day learning Korean. Yeah, that’s right – I’m learning Korean now. On my own. I can already read Hangul and am getting the hang of numbers, so it’s not hopeless.
4. Not miss a single uni lecture (except maybe Law, because it’s boring as fuck).
5. Blog about all this every day. This is a safeguard to make sure I actually DO all of the aforementioned.

I was tempted to add more challenges, but these seem more than enough to start with. I’m also planning to take up regular exercise, but that will have to wait until I manage to buy myself a decent pair of shoes and pants for it, and right now I’m still waiting on an unknown amount of money Disney owes me (at least 500 frickin’ Euros total – with frickin’  lasers). Until that money arrives, I cannot really know my real financial situation. It could very well turn out I can’t even afford going to a gym, what with driving school and other living expenses.

Eeeeverything revolves around money.

So you know. Read and comment and congratulate me when I’m doing well and threaten to come into my home at night and tickle me to death when I’m doing bad. Y’all have my permission.

So. How have I done so far today? Well, I spent 31.70 EEK at the store today, which is slightly over the 30 EEK a day limit that I’m supposed to have, but that’s alright – I’ll just have 1.70 less to spend tomorrow, which is fine, because I bought myself breakfast stuffs that will last at least a week. So everything is cool, yo.

I’d definitely like a beer, but I won’t have any. Because, you know.

Korean I’ve already spent more than 30 minutes on today, but I’m planning to sneak some more of it in between work.

So far so good. Day one is going well.

See you tomorrow, people.

Also, if you want me to have a shot at winning a trip to NASA, go to http://www.ttu.ee/nasa/muinasjutt-vaikesest-tudrukust/ and click the like button at the end. Even if you don’t understand a word of it. I’ll bake everyone cookies if I do win.

Last exam of the semester: done

Just a quick post before I go to the store and start being all productive (at home, not in the store).

I had my last exam of the semester yesterday. Ecology. I got a 5. I didn’t really expect it, since I started studying for it on Sunday, and the first question the professor asked me I didn’t really know the answer to. But well, it was the only thing I hadn’t quite understood, so I guess fate or whatever was on my side.

So many good grades this semester. Im proud of myself. Maybe I’ll fix that 3 in Economics next year as well, just because I can.

I took time off yesterday, because I felt like I had earned it. The urge to just go home and start writing those million emails that I need to send was immense, but I forced myself not to think about it. And it paid off. There’s no way I can really explain it other than that I can feel it – that one night of rewarding myself really helped.

I had cake and cider and the Simpsons and the kitty.

OOOOOH right: we got a cat! She is tiny and cute and incredibly awesome, and we named her Ninja.

That’s right.

No one’s cat is as awesome as ours, because ours is named Ninja!!

I might or might not have a job for June, but if I don’t, I’ll just use the time to rest and write some and plan for JulNoWriMo before going to Disneyland.

And that’s kind of it. Nothing else to say. I’d write more, but I want to get on with the day, and this post was only meant to list the news.

What I like about living on my own

Hm. I found this in my journal, written in February. And it’s all still more than true. Enjoy.

AKA what I like about being a student away from home.

I moved out of the family house at the end of August last year to go to university in another town. My life moved 185 kilometers south, from Tallinn, the capital, to Tartu, the second largest city in Estonia.

So what do I like? To put it briefly: I, and no one else, am the boss of me, which, unfortunately, is not always as wonderful as it might seem (and commas for the win). So here are some of the best (and worst) aspects of the mess I call my life.

1. No one drags me out of bed in the morning.

If I don’t want to go to school on a particular day, I can choose not to. I can switch off the alarm, turn a side, and fall back asleep to enjoy another splendid dream about potatoes. Or whatever rocks my world that particular morning. Some days, though, we all need that someone who will go to unbelievable lengths to get us out of bed and make sure we get educated. Every day. Some mornings it takes a little push to get up and go to class. I don’t get that anymore, and I find myself missing it just a little on those mornings when I know going to class is in my best interest but I just can’t be arsed to.

2. I make my own coffee.

I make it just the way I like it. Yeah. *puts on sunglasses and thinks she looks cool*

3. I get to buy my own food.

When I want a bag of chips, I buy a bag of chips, and no one looks at me patronizingly saying it isn’t good for my health. Not that I eat chips that often. But still. Also, I get to choose the brand of sausage, I get to choose the brand of cheese, I get to choose what kind of bread I want under my sausage. Even though I still eat mostly the same stuff I ate at home, it feels good to be able to choose for myself. I do eat a different kind of macaroni, though. Yeah, I’m a rebel.

4. More free time.

University doesn’t eat up as much of my time as high school did, so I have more of it to do nothing. Yay!

5. I rule my own schedule.

I can do (almost) everything at the most convenient time for me. More free time means I can be flexible, which allows me to meet other people’s needs and expectations better. It allows for greater productivity. Productivity all around!

6. No more chores!

Well, that’s not true. I still have to clean up after myself, even in this apartment (just like everyone else). BUT… No more: washing floors (we have carpets eeeeverywhere), firewood drama, furnace duty (for heating, you know), other tiny annoying stuff. I still have to do all those things when I go to Tallinn for a visit, but they’re not as infuriating anymore, because I don’t have to do them every day.

7. More responsibility.

It’s great to be trusted – my mom had no choice but to trust me with all the stuff that she had always thought I was incapable of handling: cleaning up, paying bills, buying my own food and planning my expenses. This experience has brought my relationship with my mother to a whole new level – she can see now that I really have grown up and can take care of myself. Then again, more responsibility isn’t always fun. Somehow it came to pass that ALL the financial responsibilities in the household fell on my shoulders. I pay ALL the bills, and the rent, and talk to the landlord, and make sure all the contracts with various providers are up to date (and that we have enough toilet paper, salt, soap, dish washing liquid, you name it). Okay, I overdid it in the parentheses a little bit, but generally that’s the way things work around here, and it can get stressful. I have to keep a million deadlines in mind all the time, and make sure I get the right amount of money from everyone at the right date. Then I have to make sure said money goes where it should. And if it doesn’t, it’s all my fault. Not awesome. Nevertheless, I have managed to handle these responsibilities decently enough for the past months. Self-confidence, here I come.

All in all, I’m convinced moving away was the right thing to do. From day one in Tartu, I felt like everything was falling in place. I had been dreaming about leaving home for a while, mostly because I was feeling suffocated in Tallinn – by high school, by my home – so this was literally a dream come true. It hasn’t always been easy or pleasant, but it’s definitely rewarding.

I’d drink in honor of this, but I’m out of beer.