As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been having this weird tension headache. I’m not sure that it is entirely a headache or just some sort of nerve thing to do with the jaw. If I open my mouth too wide, I hear this strange clicking and feel a lot of muscle tension on my left ears. Anyways, I’m taking this weekend to relax. Part of relaxing means splurging on really unnecessary things like this Pikachu T-shirt from Hot Topic…
Today is officially the last day of my 30 days of no complaining challenge. While it was literally impossible to eliminate allcomplaining the month taught me to be more mindful of other people as well as play a more active role in solving problems. Honestly, I don’t know if it was the climb out of winter depression or this exercise but I had a very happy month of April.
I had less worries, but as a person that has suffered from anxiety/depression, being worry-free is simply impossible. I just focused my energy into getting things done or allowing myself more time to relax when needed. There was less of that in between period of pondering to myself or someone else whether I should or should not be doing something. Relevant to this, I read the following phrase in Amy Poehler’s Yes Please and instantly fell in love:
“The talking about the thing isn’t the thing. The thing is the thing.”
It’s the best because it implies dealing with the problem head on rather than complaining. It’s a phrase I need to write on a piece of wood and hang on the wall.
This was a great exercise to have for a month, but I am unsure if I am going to continue the same way. I will for sure be mindful and determined to find solutions but the occasional bout of unloading is not only satisfying, I believe it’s healthy. It’s day 30 and I am having the biggest tension headache and I think the biggest cause is not being able to actively off-load some negative emotions for an entire month. I’m sure I can sleep it off and tomorrow will be a new month and mark the challenge’s end!
Anyways, I tried that ridiculous Microsoft thing and I got 20 so no complaints here…
I missed the month of the originally challenge because I read about it after the fact but I really wanted to take this challenge for a month and learn from it. I’ve had a hard couple of days and this will be very difficult to start and keep going but it’s worth a try to change my current (and future) mindset.
I will start by defining what I consider a complaint to be.
Observations will not be considered a complaint. Ex “It is cold.” Exempt also will be reviews of restaurants and music etc that make it onto blogs. These are considered observations/constructive criticism.
A sentence that contains the following words will be consider a complaint: “hate”, “don’t, fuck, shit, jerk” etc.
A statement that ruminates beyond a simple observation. (Telling 10 people it’s cold)
This might seem like an impossible task as complaining is inherent in our nature and sometimes we do it subconsciously. It’ll also be difficult depending on the people I surround myself with. Other people love to complain as much as I do. I will do my best to reconstruct negative “complaining” thoughts into more positive and productive ones or simply drop them if they are unimportant. I hope to be more mindful of each situation
Last night the annual Earth Hour took place from 8:30-9:30 encouraging people around the world to turn off their lights and devices for an hour. I decided to turn off all the lights and go for a walk.
Originally, I planned to take photos of my journey with my new gear. I packed it with me and decided it would be exempt from the “no devices during earth hour” thing. However, I realized that it wasn’t a good idea to be flashing expensive equipment around on a particularly dark night (since i was walking alone). Instead, I took a mental note of the things I saw and when I got home immediately jotted them down in a notebook.
I had not taken many walks at night in my neighbourhood, but I discovered so many things:
– There’ s a coffee shop that also fixes guitars
– There are many places opened later than I thought, and are very lively
– a giant walnut in front of a nut store
– very creepy mannequins in some store windows
– a space-themed cafe
– many out of place phonebooths
– places that are beautiful to look at but I have no idea what they sell
– antique shops (tons of them)
– the fortune teller is very popular
– many popular places that don’t seem to have names
– people wondering where the ATMS are
It’s amazing how many things can go unnoticed. I definitely have to venture into some of the places sometime!
Do you ever feel like you are the embarrassing character in a sitcom? There are times where I feel like I am such a clutz that everything bad or terrible always happens to me. Sometimes at the same time. I can never seem to catch a break.
I was having such a great weekend and then I dropped my external hard drive. Thankfully it still works. Then I lost my Metropass somehow. My Monday is off to a great start.
Sometimes these things would send me into a downward spiral . It’s hard not to want to cry, and sometimes that’s okay. But really whenever bad things happen, I think about times where I have had it worse. When there was a fire on the subway and it is delayed followed by buses that couldn’t make it up the hill because of a storm. The time I was cleaning the house and then tripped over the broomstick and hit my head on the counter. A slip and fall on ice that scraped my knee, another in front of a packed bus.
Somehow thinking of myself like a weird character in my own life story makes me feel a little bit better. I can laugh it off and know that I’ll live to tell another episode.
I wish I had time to lie around like these guys!
I am having a crazy weekend running around in Hamilton for the JUNOS. It’s a busy weekend but I’m hardly evernot busy. For example here are the 10,000 things I do on a regular basis:
– I work a 9-5 job
– I run Ride the Tempo (which itself involves 10,000 mini things)
– I blog here every day
– I go to a show
– I eat at a fancy restaurant
– I vlog
– I runmanytumblraccounts
– I photograph things and then edit those photographs
– I draw/do art
– I try new recipes
– I clean the apartment
– I take care of my pet turtles
– I read a book
– I play video games
– I spend time with my boyfriend
– I teach kids how to play piano
– I see my dog
– I play with make up
– I shop online
– I watch Netflix
– I catch up on the internet
– I keepallmysocial media accounts updated
Some of those seem like rather regular things. But if you fit them all into one week, it would be one hell of a week. And that is basically my life.
Tiana Feng 