the balancing act

I've been talking about balance a lot recently.  Balanced diet, balance doing weird butt-firming isometric moves at Pure Barre, balancing my check book, and of course, work-life balance.  I'm awful at some of them -- Lean Pockets and Rockstar do not a healthy diet make, and my checkbook has been the family joke since I was about 8 years old.  My sore buns are hard evidence that I must be at least semi-decent at the barre, but the work in progress is that pesky work-life balance. 

I should probably specify what I mean by work-life balance.  As someone who shows up at 7:59:59 AM and leaves at 5:00:01 PM Monday through Friday, I have exactly zero difficulty with work-life balance.  It's the life-life balance.  The life-cooking-exercise-boyfriend-alone time-family-friends-cleaning room- doing laundry balance.

I've always struggled with this, largely due to my persistent need to appear "fun."  So in the balance boxing ring, I pretty much always let family/friends/partying kick the crap out of boring stuff like doing laundry/exercise/reading books in peace and quiet.  Fun>No fun.  Simple enough, and very mature and adult-like (heh).  It's gotten even hairier in the past, when boyfriends were added to the mix.  I'll spare you the gory details and sum it up real quick:  Boyfriend > everything else.  Eep! This is concerning for many, many reasons, but I can narrow it down to two big ones.  First, it isn't cool to blow off your friends and the rest of your life for a guy.  And second, when things end (probably due to the clinginess involved), you won't have any friends or life waiting for you.

So I've been making a conscious effort to bring a little balance to my life.  My method so far is to spend my time on things that have higher priority.  It sounds simple, but it's really not-- priorities can shift depending on the circumstances.  For example:  If Friend A, Friend B, and Boyfriend all want to hang out and I have a couple of loads of laundry to run and I need to go to the gym... BUT I hung out with Boyfriend last night and I see Friend A all the time, and it's been weeks since I've seen Friend B and I do have plenty of clean underwear left anyways, and I need a rest day anyways... Aren't you glad you don't live in my head?  Fighting through my crazy inner monologue is half the battle, and I'm trying my hardest to make the right choices.

I'm finding that the temptation is still to blow off exercise and chores for greener pastures, but nonetheless, my room is cleaner than it's ever been in my adult life and I'm starting to rack up some mileage on the treadmill.  So far, there's been a distinct lack of staged interventions from my friends to get me to hang out more, and yesterday, my boyfriend told me that I'm clingy but he "can tell that I'm trying not to be."

I'm gonna call all of those signs of success. 

the lmh defriending method

It seems laughable now, but when Facebook first became a "thing" I wasn't going to join.  Quick cut to the end of the first week of college, and I'd already given in and joined.  Don't judge! -- I've never claimed to be a non-conformist.  So there I was on The 'Book, looking up my high school and adding every person I'd ever talked to or had a class with in high school, and rapidly adding my new college friends.  And random people I meet at bars.  And classmates that I need to work on group projects with.  And random people I meet on trains in Chicago on St. Patrick's Day.    And friend's significant others.  And the lifeguard at the Vegas pool. I've been doing a lot of friending since August 1, 2005  (Fun fact: timeline can tell you when you joined!), but --with the exception of ex-boyfriends--not a lot of defriending.  

It never really bothered me to have absurd amounts of "friends" on Facebook, because it's occasionally fun to look up random people from high school and see how they're doing.  The thing is, I never stopped to think that people might be doing that to me.  And then recently, I got a notification that I had been "poked."  Shocked and confused  that someone was poking me in 2012, I was also a little weirded out when I saw it was from a creep-a-licious kid (now married) who I had never really spoken to, even when he was in my AP Calc class in high school.  I promptly defriended him, and got to thinking about who I should be allowing in my social network. 

I didn't come up with any hard and fast guidelines as to who should be included, but I determined that one should NOT be my friend if:

1. I hate his or her guts.
2. I can't figure out who the person is after looking through a couple of profile pictures.
3. I can't remember his or her real last name.
4. I haven't had any interaction--in person, or on the internet, however small it may be-- with the person that I can remember (I assume that my memory is good for 18-24 months).

I opened up my friend list and started to go at it, but it was a huge hassle, and I only made it halfway through the As.  And that's when I devised the perfect solution:  I defriend people on their birthdays. 

Every day, someone has a birthday, and I get a Birthday notification at the top of my homepage.  I click on it, wish my friends a happy birthday, and defriend anyone who falls into one of the 4 categories above.    It may seem harsh to pull the plug on someone's birthday, but I've been doing this for a couple months and no one's said anything yet.  I figure that even someone who checks every day to make sure their number of friends hasn't changed isn't going to do it on their birthday, when they're getting blown up with hundreds of wall posts.  And if they do happen to notice that someone went missing, it's their birthday and there are hundreds of more fun things to obsess over.  I figure that in a year's time, I'll have made it through my whole friend list, but without the hassle of doing it all in one day.  So there you have it --Easy, clean defriending without a huge time commitment.  

Want to avoid being defriended by me?  Like a status or two, message me, hang out with me, or exploit the loophole and have your birthday on Saturday or Sunday this year... I don't clean house on weekends! 

resolutions

It's that time of year when the gym is packed, Lean Cuisines are on sale, and everyone's talking resolutions--except me.  (Until now.)  You see, I don't really buy into the whole New Years resolution thing.  For starters, in the navel-gazing world of Lindsey Marie, the year starts on my birthday.  August 13.  In my crazy head, it has always made more sense to track my mile markers relative to my age, not the calendar year.  In the past when I've tried to do New Years resolutions, they just haven't stuck.  I've chosen either completely arbitrary goals (you should ask to see my journal entry every day from 2010), or completely unreasonable goals (still waiting to walk on the moon).  There's also the obvious reason not to make resolutions-- I'm perfect and there's nothing to fix.

KIDDING!  The truth is, while I'm not perfect, I really don't hate myself.  And in the words of my darling sister Kiwi regarding New Years resolutions, "I like myself.  And if I don't, I fix it.  Immediately."  I don't need to wait around for January 1 to make a list of things to work on.  I already have one, and it's in a state of constant growth and modification.  This is what I'm working on right now (in no particular order of importance):

• Be on time for things.
• Be better to my body.  Wear sunscreen, drink less, eat healthier, sweat once a day.
• Save more money.
• Get a passport.
• Write more, whether I post it on the internet or not.
• Be more even-tempered.
• Run faster.  
• Stop trying to lose the imaginary 3 pounds and accept and love myself.
• Be a better sister/daughter/friend/lover.
• Tell the truth.
• Do the things I don't want to do, especially when I'm not in the mood to do them.

Before I got uber-serious on you with this little list of mine (such a buzz kill, oops), the point where I was headed toward?  My only resolution for 2013 is to work on my list for all of the 365 days of the year.  And to anyone who has New Years Resolutions, I hope they stick.  Self-improvement for all! 








PS:  I kind of changed my blog title.  Let's just call this what it really is.  :)