RaeAnna + A Nerdy Lifestyle
I hate motivational mantras... But my least favorite are the "If past you could see you now, they'd be so proud." No. Past me would be very disappointed and even angry at the way my life looks now. I don't think this mantra is targeted at over achievers who were abused emotionally/psychologically/financially/physically/sexually over the course of 23(ish) years. But I'm not dead!
I have not so slowly or subtly been losing my Christmas spirit over the last few years. I've gone from Lady Buddy the Elf to the only reason I have a Christmas tree is because someone else made it happen.
"To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering." Friedrich Nietzsche
Happy 168th Homecoming to Cornell College. I doubt they've had 168 homecoming celebrations. Did homecoming even exist in 1853? (Cornell University sure didn't. Ha! We're the older, smaller, and better (not a subjective opinion, at all) cousin—literally—in Iowa. Easily confusable, I know.) As a die-hard alum, I filled my house with flowers in school colors in honor of homecoming.
I spent 2019 and the beginning of 2020 working really hard to form a consistent and healthy lifestyle. Then February 2020 arrived with a pregnant rescue dog and quarantine quickly followed. My life changed almost instantaneously and all those habits I worked hard to maintain disappeared. I replaced my former self with a frenetic couch schlub, pack mom. I had wanted to have a slew of healthy habits in order by my 30th birthday. Oh hey, that arrived, and I don't have any of those good habits anymore. So I'm slowly working on bringing them back and maybe even some good new ones.
In a week, I turn 30. I'm very much looking forward to it, but a small part of me is dreading it. Society deems women of a certain age unworthy of... everything, and I am now about to be a woman of a certain age. There are so many exciting things about aging, but my existence has always and almost solely been validated for the way I look. Who I am is just a bonus to the way I look for the man I'll one day trap/catch. The world has told me so many things about aging and my existence in the world. I would be lying if I said I hadn't ended up on the kitchen floor in a full on panic attack about aging in society.