It's getting colder.

It's been a while. . .

Soooooo. . . it's been a while since I've posted. I've had a turbulent few months, but things are settling down and I've got more time to do silly things like post blogs.

I'm moving into my new condo in as little as ONE DAY!!!! I'm sooo psyched to finally have a place that is just mine. I guess it's kinda like my first house, but since it's a condo, I don't have a HUUUGE backyard or tons and tons of space or anything, but it's still going to be awesome.

Summer is such a great time for fresh fruits and veggies. . . I've been floating on cloud nine eating so many blueberries and cherries and tomatoes. The only thing that is hindering me right now is that I need to stop smoking. It's not like I smoke a ton, but when I do smoke, I can feel the consequences for days. I'm super tired, I'm irritable, my throat hurts, and I'm less inclined to exercise. It's ridiculous that humans are the only animals that will do what they know isn't good for them, even if it makes them feel like crap.

Okay well off to pack and get ready to move. . .

Perhaps I'll be back later.

Training for a 5K and then???

Today was my first day of training for a 5K! There are a ton of them at the end of May/beginning of June, so I want to be in shape to do a few. The first one is on May 17, and although it might be pushing it to be in my best shape for that one, at least I know I'll be able to run it and run it well. This kind of training is the best way for me to keep myself accountable to my fitness goals. If my goals are simply just "to run" or "to look better in a bikini," then I have a less concrete finish line than if my goals are a specific distance or event, such as a 5K. The newest issue of Runners Magazine has a beginning training program that I'm going to use as my guide.

Other than that, I'm kinda bogged down with work and trying to find a condo. I have walked through a few really nice ones, but there always seems to be something not quite perfect about them. For instance, the perfect-est one was $400,000, which is not a price I'm looking to spend! A few others are in my price range, and are actually nice little places, but too far away from OSU's law school to be feasible. The one I'm looking at at 6:30, on paper, seems perfect. It's in the short north, right in the middle of all my favourite restaurants and bars, and it's a reasonable distance away from OSU. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this one might work.

Shower-time - I'm sure I'll update later in between work breaks.

SPRING FINALLY!!!

Like the title says, spring is finally here! I feel much happier and much healthier just being able to go outside and walk around without freezing to death. There's something about a natural environment towards which I feel strongly drawn. I feel like I'm supposed to be there and that it's where I thrive the most. Perhaps this feeling is one of the reasons I decided not to go back to New York City for law school. I miss the city immensely, but I just can't imagine living there for more than a few months at a time. Maybe at some point in my life, but not right now.

The beginning of spring is a perfect time to start, or strengthen, a detoxing regime. I have been ho-humming around starting one for the past few weeks, but I can't seem to find time for myself. It's SO stupid that I can't - every single day I say, "Tomorrow I will clean out my room, " or "Tomorrow I'll go to the store and get what I need to nourish my body," but I never do it. Something else always comes up that causes me to put my needs second. Then, I wonder why I'm so stressed all the time and I so often feel taken advantage of. It's not really that everyone is taking complete advantage of me, but also that I am, in a way, taking advantage of myself. I had a major wakeup call this afternoon, though, and I can tell you, this neglecting my own needs will not happen again. I'm not for being a selfish bitch - it's not like I can't balance what I want with what the people who I care about want, but it's that I refuse to sacrifice that 50% of what I want, even if I kinda don't mind it because I care about the other person so much. I can't have relationships that constantly ask me to give up taking care of myself and meeting even the most basic of my own needs, like having a clean, organized living space.

Beyond that, because I have been neglecting myself, I use the time I should be doing my work to do the other things I don't have time to do and need to do, like laundry or cleaning. I basically get myself way behind, and then I STILL don't do what I need to do to catch myself up because I'm too busy, once again, neglecting myself to make sure others are comfortable and happy. Done.

And, not to anyone's surprise (especially not mine), my diet reflects my state of mind. When I'm stressed and neglected, my diet is reflective of it - I eat crappy, easy to make food because I'm too exhausted mentally to prepare things that are good for me. If I ever want to reach any of my goals, I can't continue like this.

Something has to change.

And I hope it can be an easier change rather than me having to make difficult, painful, or unwanted ones.

Breaking the Fast

I juiced fasted for two days - and I felt PHENOMENAL! Then, this evening, I made some organic salmon and some brocoli, and now I feel SO sick. I really wish I stuck with the fast. . although I'm not sure how long it's safe to fast for.

So then I had a few pieces of easter candy. . . damn easter lol - I feel like I should fast again! Maybe I will for the next few days.

My friends want to go out, but I feel nauseous. I just kinda wanna stay in and clean my room and go to sleep early so that I can have a productive day tomorrow.

Ahhh well - so it goes. . .

I'll post tomorrow about whether or not I'm going to fast and what the results will look like.

xx
Rawgurl

Back :)

Okayyyyy fun few months!!!

Yesterday, I got to go to see the premier of "21" - It was a really good movie - and it made me want to learn to count cards, go to Vegas, and earn lots of money just for being smart. Too bad I'm conceptually and synthetically intelligent and not soo good with numbers. It's all because I haven't taken a math course since high school. I don't know how I got through Princeton without EVER taking a math course.

Anyway, on the way to the movie, this guy kinda went through a stop sign and hit my car. It wasn't a bad accident, but it's possible my car is totaled just because it's so old. Having my car totaled would probably lend itself to good things and bad things - for one, I have such an emotional connection to that car that I'd definitely be sad not to be able to drive it anymore. That's the bad. The good is that, if it is totaled, I could possibly get the money to get a nice new car (lease one, I mean), and that would be awesome. Either way, I have a feeling my dad is going to be a jerk about the whole process. He absolutely doesn't think I am capable of dealing with anything in the real world, so he gets overly involved. I am capable, and, if I wasn't capable, then getting overly involved wouldn't help me become any more capable because I wouldn't learn anything.

Foodwise -
I got kinda offtrack - boys eat gross food (at least gross for my body), and I started to eat like them - you know, mashed potatoes, lots of butter, ranch dressing on everything. Luckily, it didn't last long, and now I'm back on track. It's ridiculous how much better your mind and body feels when you don't eat that kind of dense, processed food that I was eating. I'm in the middle of a fast right now - having "Green Lemonade" and raw veggies. Things are going much more smoothly this time than the first time, probably because my body already went through the main couple detox sessions. It seems like it remembers what to do :)

The weather here is beautiful today, so I'm going to get dressed and go outside before I waste any more of it here on the computer.

xx

Meh

I finally worked out today. It's been forever since I've worked out religiously! I feel so good now that I think I'm going to have to restart the habit.

Cars and Coffee?

It was finally not freezing today! I think the temperature actually crept up to about 50.


SO - what would be the best thing to do on a nice winter afternoon? How about drive fast, expensive cars around the highway and then stop and get a coffee with Bailey's for lunch/dinner? Sound nice? It was. Too nice, actually. I miss the summer, I miss warmth, I miss excitement.

I think I'm finally totally detoxing . . . I'm nauseous and I have a headache. . . not to mention quite the intense dose of anxiety. . . I know I've just gotta stick it out . . . It's only a month until I'll reach almost all of my goals, so I can at least do that. I bet by then, I'll be feeling pretty phenomenal - at least if what everyone else says is true. Honestly, I already do have tons more energy, but I just feel kinda sick, too.

I'm at a crossroads right now. Which way should I go? What direction should I turn? My instincts are strong, but I've come to see they may, in many cases, be wrong. Instead of being logical, innate knowledge, sometimes they represent how the environment in which I live has shaped me. Experiences do not always reflect what is true. Sometimes they reflect a very small pocket of life where things are not as they are in other more prominent pockets. Taking risks is not necessary, but it may be true that the best things in peoples' lives come from their letting go of their inhibitions and taking the risk. It's not even that I know how it feels to fail all that well - not to sound conceited, but, so far in life, I haven't failed all that much. That's not because I'm above failure, it's simply because I have not taken that many risks. When I have failed, when I have felt inadequate, I've never felt worse, and so I avoid it at all costs.

Whatever, I'm probably just over-analyzing the situation. It's probably one of those situations like in high school when you think that nothing will ever matter as much as what you are going through at that very moment and then when you look back at it a few years later, you realize it wasn't really that big of a deal in the long-run.

Whatever. I should just go to sleep.

Stop Poisoning your Cells

Heath Ledger's death totally overshadowed all the other news yesterday. Not that I'm complaining - he was one of my favourite actors, and he seemed like an honest-to-god good guy. Today on the news, the reporters interviewed all these random actors, asking the actors what they thought about Ledger's untimely death. The undercurrent of all their comments had to do with Heath having so much potential, and I think that's totally true.

The Adventures and Opinions of . . . Me?

I'm not really sure if I'm qualified to have a blog where I talk about what I want to talk about. After all, who would really want to read this? I guess I'll find out -
First, I'll talk a second about me so that, if by chance you do decide to read what I write, at least you'll have an idea of the person behind the words.
I'm a 23 year old girl living in Columbus, Ohio. I work for the Institute for Human Services, doing research and writing articles, mostly discussing children's rights and child advocacy. This past spring, I graduated from Princeton University with an A.B in English. I decided to take a year off to gather my sanity, and it was totally worth it. Princeton was hard, and transitioning into the period of life I'm in right now was not an easy task for me. Don't get me wrong, I had tons of fun at college, but the fun and the work took up most of my time and caused me to push the personal discovery/personal evolution to the back of my priority list. Now that I'm back on track towards continual personal development, I'm totally excited to get back to school. This coming fall, I'll be heading off to law school, hopefully somewhere in California, Boston, or NYC.
I'm a vegetarian, and I firmly believe in the rights of animals as ends in themselves. I was lucky enough to have Peter Singer as a professor while I was at Princeton, and his class changed my life. Although I think that sometimes PETA is a bit sensational, everyone should watch the "Meet Your Meat" video on their website. I also recommend Singer's book "Animal Liberation."
Not only do I not eat meat, but I also follow a raw-foods diet. Somewhere in the middle of my junior year of college, I experimented with raw foods, and I felt AMAZING. Unfortunately, it was too hard for me to upkeep while I was in college, so I stopped. This past summer, I'd dabble from week to week, but nothing too serious. Recently, I took the plunge, and I feel amazing. My energy has doubled, and my mental concentration is sharper than it has ever been. I no longer need coffee to feel awake in the morning, and I always feel like gettin' in my afternoon workout. I totally recommend that you try a raw diet, even just for a week, to see a preview of the benefits. Head out to the library and pick up Natalia Rose's "The Raw Food Detox Diet," or "Raw Food Life Force Energy" if you want to know more about a good way to transition from your present diet to a raw diet or if you just want know more about raw foods in general.
This blog will be a general reflection on the things going on in the world as well as a personal reflection of a rawfoodvegetarian's experiences with normal, everyday life. Hopefully, you can find something that grabs your attention, or maybe even some aspect of my life or my thoughts that personally relates to something about you!

Okay, so now that you know something about me, time to get into the thick of things. Unfortunately, it's too late tonight to start blabbing, so I'll get to it first thing tomorrow.