Welcome to the first post of 2017! This week has been moved
me in a positive direction and I hope it has for yourself as well. I realize
that many people do not keep their New Years Resolutions but seeing people do
the work required to set out goals for themselves…it brings joy to my heart.
New Year’s Resolution
This year I have resolved to strengthen my friendships. I
posted to following on Facebook:
“Happy
New Year friends!
My
new years "resolution" is, in part, to strengthen my relationships
and thus strengthen my world. I set this past Jewish New Year with the goal of
focusing on "tikun olam" which loosely translates to
"healing/fixing the world." I am choosing at this point of the
secular year to re-prioritize my relationships and allow space for my
relationship to myself to remain #1. I look forward to including you in this
journey.
I
hope this new year finds you peace, prosperity and
happiness!!
With love,
Sara Be”
The way I hope to
enact this is very methodical so I’d like to break it down in case anyone would
like to copy and/or join me on this journey. The first step was that I
identified about 140 people I would like to remain close with or get closer to.
This is inspired by Dunbar’s Number of how many people humans can
realistically be close with. I then broke down levels of intimacy based on what
my current relationships are. For example, PartnerPenguin is on my “Every day”
list. The categories of intimacy are thus:
· Every day
· Every week
· Every 2 weeks
· Every month
· Quarterly
In some ways I am
doing this to track the way my energy currently flows. I have found that in a
lot of habit building/dismantling I have succeeded when I have allowed myself a
period of judgment free observation. My motivation for working on relationships
is specifically instigated by the changes I have already seen in my friends’
lives since the election. I may not be able to realistically change the world
for the better but I can change my friends’ lives for the better by being there
for them. In order to best do this, I need to care for myself and make sure
that the energy I’m spending on helping others isn’t ruining my own ability to
enjoy my life. I feel like this is something that’s been a very difficult
balance for me, in the course of my life.
I will certainly
also continue to write my blog as I have received a lot of positive feedback
that folks who regularly read my blog enjoy feeling connected via this medium.
Y’all might be getting some new characters to read about!
New Year’s Eve, the Party
W00t. What a great
adventure. New Years being on a weekend this year meant party central!
PartnerPenguin and I were invited to at least five parties, which made me feel
super popular. Also a little sad that I had to turn down an opportunity to party.
The party we chose
was well attended and had a hot tub. And best of all, The Outdoorsy Sage and
her new Beau attended!! It felt really wonderful, albeit anxiety producing, to
introduce one of the non-assholes I met at TLoTH to my broader friend group.
She talked hydrology with one of my incidental geonerd friends. [I have
intentional geonerd friends, those whom I went to college and worked with. Then
there are my incidental geonerd friends because I attract geologists, surveyors
and civic engineers. Must be my cologne. Which is odd because that cologne
comes from Cologne, Germany. And I’ve only had it for ten months. Yet the
incidental geonerds I’ve had for much longer…]
The Outdoorsy Sage,
her Beau and I all went hot tubbing. PartnerPenguin joined for a bit but left
most of his clothes on so he looked ridiculous. I like being in hot, preferably
ionically saturated water. The party got a bit raucous and I re-discovered that
when those around me are drunk I could just dial back my filter and just be
myself. I don’t mind being sober around dunk people in that way. I have worked
hard on building my filter and it’s continues to be a lot of work. It feels
nice to be able to take it off for a bit.
The next morning we
all went out to Dim Sum. Two years running, we might have to solidify this into
an actual tradition. 0_0. Dim Sum turns out to be excellent hangover food that
was good because the other friends were all hungover. I like the part where you get endless tea and
the texture of the BBQ Pork buns. So fluffy!!
We all parted ways
and presumably went to take naps and good poops.
However, New Years
day was that day that PartnerPenguin and I got:
The Haul of History!
Anyone who has ever
visited our home or gone on walks with PartnerPenguin knows that he likes
to…find things. (We are both such
Hufflepuffs.) We used to have a great many milk crates that I joked
were very expensive furniture, due to the fines we could potentially
pay on them. We have a bunch of hipster weird stuff like a cold-brew coffee
system and a toaster with “a bit more” button (did not pay list price) that we’ve found or
bought along our street or in the neighborhood. One of PartnerPenguin’s
favorite pastimes is to go “Sale-ing” which is what he calls going around
neighborhoods on a Sunday morning and hitting garage and estate sales.
So this week, when
we hit the Haul of History, it made him ecstatic. What happened was that this
guy posted on Twitter that he was selling all of his stuff. First, we checked
to make sure he wasn’t planning on committing suicide. When he assured us he
wasn’t, we circled in. All in all, we figure we probably got about $1500 worth
of stuff for $300.
Inventory of what we got:
·
Very nice bicycle, aluminum frame ($600ish) Has
brakes! And gears!
·
iPhone 6s plus w/cracked screen ($300 used, $500
new)
·
Magic Bullet blender with 10 cups and cup lids
·
Bag of cables, ranging from mini extension
cords, microphone, stickers (necessary), those weird non-velcro thingies that
are imminently useful, charging cables, a dsl modem,
·
Swiffer with 2 boxes of Swiffer pads
·
6 qt crock pot ($60)
·
hooks for walls and pads for feet of furniture
·
a towel
·
a giant transit map of The Golden State
·
3 cookie drying sheets
·
ceramic pour over thing for hipster
coffee
·
Towel rack for bathroom
·
Unused $25 Apple Gift card
DUUUUDES. Eating
blended food is the smuggest way to consume food! I have using the blender and
drinking out of all the fun cups for 4 days and I already feel at least 30%
morally superior to everyone I meet. ^___^ The hipter-ization is setting in!
But seriously, the
best thing about this haul is that PartnerPenguin and I can now go for bike
rides together. His previous bicycle didn’t have gears or brakes. Gears are
kinda take it or leave it, but no brakes + literal sawed off
handlebars=Murderbike. New bike comes with 70% less murder! Always wear a
helmet, children because even if your bike doesn’t kill you, some driver
mindlessly opening their door can.
Career Check In
I haven’t posted
about my unemployment as much because it’s not interesting to me and stresses
me the fuck out. But I wanted to just do a check in on where I’m at in case
people reading this blog know someone.
My current career
goals are to work in a environmental consulting firm for 3-5 years and obtain
my PG license. I would like to pair this with a Masters in Public Policy
(probably going to apply next year for grad school) done in my off time: bye
bye social life for a while. Hence part of why I want to strengthen
relationships now so some of my friendships will hopefully survive that. From
there, I would like to work in environmental policy making or possibly
enforcing. Please keep in mind (and stay gentle) that these are new-ish goals
and I am sharing so that friends can support me. I’m not sure if I’m ready for
real accountability quite yet, but I’m working towards that.
Another goal is
that I am seriously committing to writing my novel. I feel like even
uttering that sentence makes me come across as someone whom I want to detest.
So I still gotta do a bunch of work on that internal attitude. But have set
aside time and space to do the research. This will be a work of historical
fiction about geology.
With this goal in
mind: are there any scientists, former or current academics who would like to
be interviewed for source material? I would like to use this book as a voice
for those who have not fared well in a man dominated world of science. The book
is going to be from the point of view of a woman who gets her research stolen
and is written out of history. I have some personal experience but I would
really love more source material. I know this is an incredibly delicate and
painful subject so please contact me privately and we can talk about how to
talk about this matter.
Well that about
wraps up this tardy post. Here is Duane Allman’s “Little Martha” as a quiet and
chill close to the day, close to the week and opening into the year.
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