Thinking About Food

(Sorry for treating my blog like a tumblr…)

Awesome motivating post about food choices: Summer: The Vegan Adventure.

“I hate rules, especially when it comes to food. Because your meal should never make you feel like a failure.”

“It’s remembering that seasonal eating & time to cook isn’t a sacrifice.”

Personally, this is why I’ve been getting such a great thrill from grilling and cooking so much lately. Cooking whole, unprocessed foods makes me proud of my choices. I’m supporting farms, I’m pushing myself to develop better skills and habits, and I’m spending time with awesome friends. It’s a great way to kick off summer!

Recent masterpieces on the grill: Grilled bratwursts and asparagus, grilled peaches with pound cake and whipped cream, grilled balsamic chicken, peppers, and squash with israeli couscous, grilled asian shrimp with rice and grilled onions and peppers, grilled old bay and barbeque wings with grilled green beans, bananas foster (from a grilling recipe but modified to a skillet when it rained). Coming up in the future: burgers, salmon, ribs, steaks, bbq pork, pineapple…so many things!

And the farmer’s market opened today – yay! Only thing that’d be better would be if I had the place for an herb garden.

Zen Daily: Why You Should Write Daily

Zen Daily: Why You Should Write Daily

Why blog? Because it really helps you to write regularly, and forces you to think in different ways, when you have an audience. Even if the audience is small.

Writing helps you reflect on your life and changes you’re making. This is incredibly valuable, as often we do things without realizing why, or what effects these things are having on us.

Writing clarifies your thinking. Thoughts and feelings are nebulous happenings in our mind holes, but writing forces us to crystalize those thoughts and put them in a logical order.

Pondering Suburbs and Vacations

After talking about discipline, I found it interesting to read two blog posts that sort of relate.

First, this author is talking about living in the suburbs: 4 Reasons I Hate The Suburbs. Her first point is hating driving – I don’t mind it. The second – everything looks the same – is usually true, but in older or smaller towns isn’t. Some towns retain character. The mediocre food in massive quantities, well, yes, but also – large kitchens, fresh produce from nearby farms, and more dinner parties with neighbors. With that, in suburbs people make more of an effort to know their neighbors and integrate into their community. The last point, however, is the one that resonated. The issue here is falling into a routine of averageness and never leaving the suburbs. Leaving aside, the routine of averageness…well, that appeals to me.

I lack routines. I enjoy adventure and trying new things, and I like having lots to do at my disposal. I really wouldn’t mind limiting those things to one day on a weekend and having routines and outdoor/country or homebody things the rest of the time. Averageness of schools and PTA and work…sounds kind of awesome. It sounds like a life that could easily be just as fulfilling as one spent going to different happy hours and events. (It also sounds more economical.) This is how I know I’m not meant to stay this close to a major city. I need to be further out in the suburbs or in a smaller area. I need the built-in slower pace so that my inclination to be busy and speed things up isn’t on top of an already hectic pace.

A second article I read today was about How You Let Loose on Vacation. The author wrote:

Do you take the opportunity to do something you’d never do in your regular life? Does “letting loose” mean collecting as many beads as you can on Bourbon Street, or would you rather get your kicks from trying something that scares you?

Personally, I love all of these things. My perfect vacation would be a medium-luxury style hotel or a nice cabin in the mountains on a a large lake, in mid to late summer – or a beachy town/driving distance to beach. It would involve photography (of nature and/or architecture), a bonfire with marshmallow roasting, stargazing, hot tubs, boating, and copious sex. It would also involve something I’ve never done, whether that be learning to fly fish, taking a helicopter tour, going hanggliding, cooking class, local winery visit, etc. For the perfect vacation, it would have at least one day spent in a nearby major city (think Denver, Minneapolis, Seattle, Portland, etc.) with some shopping, a museum or two, a really nice dinner, and maybe a massage or pedicure. Basically…time to relax, read, and pamper; an adventure; connecting with nature; some social moments; all tinged with a tad of luxury that makes me feel like I’m not at home and I’m special for the week.

I was thinking about this because more than ever, my vacations are spent visiting family or cramming in some fun in an “urban adventure.” I haven’t had a vacation with the things I enjoy most since Gulf Shores my first year of grad school. I used to prioritize it quite a bit, but that was when I had built in breaks. Now my time with family is also my vacation time, and my vacation style doesn’t mesh with my family’s.

Tips to Getting Your Shit Together

A friend’s tumblr referred me to a few great articles lately: 50 Tricks to Get Things Done Faster, Better, and More Easily and 9 Beliefs of Remarkably Successful People. Below are the things that I need to remind myself of regularly.

Things of note from the first article:

• One In, One Out: Avoid clutter by adopting a replacement-only standard.  Every time you but something new, you throw out or donate something old.
  
• Slow Down: Make time for yourself. Eat slowly. Enjoy a lazy weekend day. Take the time to do things right, and keep a balance between the rush-rush world of work and the rest of your life.
• Don’t Break the Chain: Use a calendar to track your daily goals.  Every day you do something, like working out or writing 1,000 words, make a big red “X”.  Every day the chain will grow longer.  Don’t break the chain! That is, don’t let any non-X days interrupt your chain of successful days.

Things of note from the second article:

• The people around me are the people I chose. If the people around you make you unhappy it’s not their fault. It’s your fault. They’re in your professional or personal life because you drew them to you–and you let them remain.
  
• Failure is something I accomplish; it doesn’t just happen to me.  Ask people why they have been successful. Their answers will be filled with personal pronouns: I, me, and the sometimes too occasional we. Ask them why they failed. They’ll say the economy tanked, the market wasn’t ready. They’ll say it was someone or something else. And by distancing themselves, they don’t learn from their failures. Occasionally something completely outside your control will cause you to fail. Most of the time, though, it’s you. And that’s okay. Every successful person has failed. Numerous times. Most of them have failed a lot more often than you. That’s why they’re successful now. Embrace every failure: Own it, learn from it, and take full responsibility for making sure that next time, things will turn out differently.
• Volunteers always win. Whenever you raise your hand you wind up being asked to do more. Doing more is an opportunity: to learn, to impress, to gain skills, to build new relationships–to do something more than you would otherwise been able to do. Success is based on action. The more you volunteer, the more you get to act. Successful people step forward to create opportunities.
• People who pay me always have the right to tell me what to do. The people who pay you, whether customers or employers, earn the right to dictate what you do and how you do it–sometimes down to the last detail. Instead of complaining, work to align what you like to do with what the people who pay you want you to do.

Discipline: I lack it.

I lack it.

Don’t get me wrong, I get shit done. I know very well how to accomplish things, and I am good at achieving the goals I’ve set (even if it takes dogged persistence to get there). That said, when it comes to exceeding my goals, I often fall short.

I have a very rigid set of standards for myself. In addition to that, I have a level of success I want to achieve in order to maximize my happiness. I am good at achieving the latter, but not always the former. For example, I know I want to make Dean’s List or Honor Roll and I do so, but I get the minimum grade necessary to do so. The standard would be to get a 4.0.  Often, I prioritize happiness or fun over reaching certain ideals as long as I’ve achieved a certain level of success.

This trend is carrying over into life, and it worries me in terms of long-term happiness. I’m doing well at work, with family, with friends, etc. I’m living my life and I’m not unhappy with things. That said, I could (and should) be working out regularly, planning meals more regularly, reading more, maintaining better contact with loved ones, spending less money, and spending more time at home. Basically, I need to prioritize taking care of and bettering myself over fun sometimes…and I lack the discipline to do so. Not doing so isn’t penalizing me (I have enough money, no one is mad at me, I’m eating meals, I’m healthy)…but it is in the long run. My health won’t last forever, and it would serve me to have more money saved. I’d be more focused and less stressed were I to spend more time at home.

A lot of my lack of discipline comes from not wanting to do things alone or not wanting to say no to things. I want to spend time with my friends living life to the fullest. That’s not a crime, but I need to feel more empowered by taking care of myself.

Often, I long for a Dominant because I’d love to entrust someone to keep me accountable. Friends keep me accountable sometimes, but not always. The size of this city doesn’t really help out in that – it’s hard to have a gym buddy when potential ones live 30 minutes away. I don’t want someone to create goals for me and hold me to them, train me to be a different person…but someone assisting in behavior modification at my initiative to help me achieve my goals – that’d be awesome.

Anyhow, I will say that at the very least I have two routines in my life. I have few routines normally, other than going to work. Seriously – I haven’t had routines in forever. For the last several months, however, I’ve spent every Sunday night with my roommate watching Game of Thrones and every Tuesday night potlucking and playing games with two other friends (Settlers of Catan, Kingdom Builders, and Dominion are our frequent games). It may seem minor, but this consistency has done wonders for my life and sense of self.

Moral of this story: I need a meal planning routine and a workout routine.

Interesting Article

Christian Kink: Why Traditional Religion and Non-Traditional Sex Are a Good Match

Not sure if I agree with the author entirely, but the parallels between religion and kink are interesting and apt. I agree that a religious history with an emphasis on service and ordeals for transcendence does resonate in my kink self. I disagree, however, in seeing kink as part of my spiritual practice. If anything, that perspective just reinforces that I may be using one as a substitute for the other. While my passion and faith in others isn’t negative, it isn’t a practice I’m using to exalt God, and thus it isn’t part of my spiritual practice.

Faith, Kink, and Who am I, really?

Lately, I’ve been struggling more with the balance of who I am and how kink plays into that.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m still kinky. I love learning new knots and ties, being tied up, escaping and not escaping, etc. I love bondage of all types, really. I love sensation play and different type of pain and power exchange.

I still enjoy my kinky friends, particularly doing vanilla things with them. I’m great on still participating in the social and educational side of things. Classes? Sign me up! Fiber circle? Count me in! Tubing? Just say when!

It’s the playing with people I’m not in a relationship with – and even more, going to events where the focus is on sex and play – that I’m less comfortable with. Things have been heading this way for a while, but even more so lately.

Part of this stems from a need to protect my feelings, part of this stems from needing more connection than I’ve been getting, and the rest is me generally trying to mesh who I am with what I want and what I’ve been experiencing.

Things have been brought into even more focus lately as I’ve been pondering religion more. I’ve always been very connected to my spirituality – it’s how I made it through some very rough patches in life. Some of my closest friendships were formed because of religion of some type. While I don’t regularly read the bible or attend services, and I have no idea what label fits my beliefs, I prioritize God in my life.

Sometimes, though, I wonder if I’m living the best life I could be living – if I’m living a life God would be pleased with – and what does that mean, really? My logic questions aspects of religion and God, but I feel a connection to a higher power that I can’t deny. It’s part of who I am. Thing is, my experiences with faith are all with very conservative folks, and so I feel like my faith and natural self are in contradiction. Recently, I’ve learned about a few religious practices that may be more liberal and not quite as strict. It’s disconcerting – did I give up on finding a community of like-minded individuals too soon? Or am I really the nuts one for being into the things I am but also believing what I believe?

I’m still not sure. Part of me thinks that if I had more faith in surrendering control to God, I’d have less of a need/desire to participate in power exchange. Part of me wonders if I had more release and comfort from faith, would I still need/desire the cathartic release of pain?

Despite all of that, I do know that I live my life with honesty and integrity to the best of my ability (and I’m always learning and growing in that). I try to give back and treat others with kindness. I try to do things in moderation. I try to make good, logical decisions.

I don’t know. I don’t have answers, I don’t know what I’m thinking or where things are leading. I just know that I want to find someone, someday, with whom I can share both parts of my life with – the spiritual side and the sexual kinky side – without judging/condemning me and without/condemning judging my friends.