VeryVeryVary

I created this blog about a year and a half ago, when I first decided to accept the fact that I have more than one interest. Like a lot more. Like...a whole lot more. One of my first posts was the blog graveyard where I discussed all the very, very various blogs that I'd created and then abandoned, sometimes without so much as a single published post. The idea behind triple V was that I could post ANY of my various blog post ideas right here, even if today's post has nothing to do with yesterday's. To some extent, I think I let that get away from me. I started these series that I felt guilty about not following up on, which made me avoid blogging altogether.  For that, I apologize. (Mostly to myself - my most loyal reader!) I say all this because I was doing some digging tonight about people who have a hard time committing - not in relationships (at least not just in relationships) - but in all aspects of life, including careers and even hobbies. I have kno...

Okay, so it's been a little bit more than a week since my last "hopefully I'll post every week" post. But the thing is, I haven't actually been slacking off. I told my husband last week that I feel like "the Jake Suit" - referring to the thing in Adventure Time where Finn can wear Jake's stretchy body as an indestructible suit of armor. Jake still tires and feels all the effects from how Finn is treating his body, but Finn with his infinite energy can just keep going forever. So whatever little monster is driving me has her hand in a few different pots right now. There's the original plan I had to clean up my house and stick to a cleaning schedule, and while that's not been abandoned, per se, about halfway through, I decided to do a major rearrange of our home. Where we'd been using the larger of the two bedrooms as a den, the little one and I decided that it was time for her to have her own private space, so now I'm making the s...

Wow it's been a long time. I've been through a lot so far this year, and I'm sorry for allll those times when I didn't update you. Basically in January and February anxiety was killing me. I went to the ER twice within a couple months and they didn't really seem to think anything weird about that. After the second time, I got myself set up with a new therapist who I've been seeing about twice a month since then. My PCP also got me started on a low dose of an SSRI which helped almost immediately. We also moved house in January, during a snowstorm which was cool. We're appreciating the extra space in the new place, but more space to live also means more space to clean, which isn't something I'm good at when I'm really struggling with my mental health. I was excited for school to end and to get to hang out with my daughter all summer, but just a week or two into her summer I got some news about my health and started feeling sick all the time...

It's weird how it works. I've actually written several posts that I haven't been able to bring myself to publish. It always starts off feeling like I can't do the writing part, then transitions to feeling like it's been too long since my last post to try again now. And it's not just blogging. I feel the same way about my Bullet Journal. Hell, I feel that way about reading. At this point, I probably won't be publishing posts every day, but I don't have a reader base yet, so that's okay. In the meantime, I'll try to remind myself that it's okay to miss a post or ten, and more than that, it's okay to come back afterwards and start posting again. It's all about continuing to work, and not stopping or giving up just because you needed to take a break. I do have things to post about, so I hope I'll be back soon. To anyone reading now or in the future, ❤️❤️❤️

We all know that "time flies," but when an average person says that, they're talking about the years. They're talking about time not spent with loved ones, or time wasted on a job you hate - the things you take for granted. Today I want to talk about the hours. The minutes.   I'm sure everyone has had an experience where they sit down to the TV (or read a book, or browse Facebook….oh Facebook you are a time thief) when suddenly it's 3 hours later and you didn't even notice. For me, this happens with almost everything I do. Every activity takes me twice as long as I expect it should, which means that if I sleep eight hours a day, I only have eight hours left over to plan my day. I've adapted for scheduled, required things like doctor appointments, allowing myself 2-3 times as long as I think it should take for me to get ready and arrive on time, but in my daily life, it is crippling.   My daughter is in preschool for three hours these days. I've bee...

So the very day I wrote a post about how to make pour-over coffee, my GI advised me to try a gluten-free diet. After some discussion with my husband, I decided to do a more extensive elimination diet, mainly because if I do have a food sensitivity, but not to gluten, I don't want to go through multiple gluten-free trials to figure it out. The two most common food triggers are wheat and dairy, so those are definitely getting cut, along with eggs, soy, most grain (although I'm still eating rice and quinoa, I'm not replacing wheat with other gluten-free grains), nightshade vegetables (potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers, mainly) alcohol, and, yes, caffeine. I'm also cutting out most added sugar because I can't eat much in the way of processed food anyway, due to the other restrictions. Immediately after getting the news that I would be going gluten-free (for a two-month trial), I went to a Pizza Hut lunch buffet, because that's what you do. And I did ...

Sorry for my absence this past week. I've been on my phoneymoon - the first few days after I get a new phone and have to sort through everything and arrange my home screens and customize and organize the hell out of it until no one knows how to use it except me. (oh the poor sales guys at AT&T trying to figure out my old s7 when I traded it in) I'm still not quite finished, though it is getting there, but I tore myself away (not really though, as I'm blogging from the phone) long enough to make a post - surprisingly not about technology. Well, not directly. Instead, it's about how to make a cup of coffee so that you've got enough awareness to make a blog post when you spend all your extra money on things like phones so you can't afford to put out like $15 for a coffee pot. I expect it to have wide appeal. Seriously though, I just don't usually like regular drip coffee. I love espresso, and espresso drinks, and I bought a moka pot about a d...

If you feel like all I'm writing about is technology, then fret not. As I said from the start, my interests will wax and wane greatly, and sadly, with interest, so will the topics of my posts vary. Once I actually build the great Distracto, I will probably be done with computers altogether for months. Don't worry, though, I'll send my blog posts in by mail or something. I have a series coming up on my digital bullet journal, complete with advice and pictures and templates and all kinds of stuff. It's just proved to be a lot of work to put it together, especially since Evernote just upgraded their tables. A lot of it is typed up already, so rest assured it is coming. Just like winter.  See? My bullet journal is real!

I decided near the end of last year that I would read 24 books in 2017 (audiobooks included). I was reading a ton at the time, and that seemed like an entirely reachable goal, but not so easy that failure was impossible. Just a few days into April, I'd already finished 12 books, so my victory seemed certain. Then in May I hit the wall. I still read some, but not every day, and certainly not enough to keep up my pace. Not even enough to finish 24 by the end of the year. Unsurprisingly, it coincided with a downturn in my mental health, but as reading is one of the greatest things for keeping me happy, healthy, sane, and productive, the decline caused some major positive feedback. As I got more lost in my anxiety (and later, depression), I read less, which worsened my mood even more. But now as I'm coming out of my funk, and starting to write and keep up with my Digital Bullet Journal again, I'm also starting to get back to reading. And as part of that, I'm posting her...

From what I hear, blogging is something that takes a lot of work. That's not something I have personal experience with, despite the many, many blogs I've started in my life. Note the keyword there. Started . I've developed tons of ideas for blogs, named about a dozen of them, occasionally purchased a domain name ( VoraciousBooks.com being the best example, as I purchased it several years ago and am only now getting it off the ground), and in extreme cases, I've even written a post or two. But, then before you know it, that little demon known as anxiety poofs into place on my shoulder, and the angels of self-confidence and inspiration are nowhere to be found. It may take a couple of weeks, or it may only be hours. He convinces me that no one is interested in what I have to say. My writing isn't good enough, my ideas aren't original enough, and even if they were, I don't have enough of them to fill out an entire blog. When it comes down to it, that last...