fingers crossed

Last weekend the Captain and I took a bus ride to the big apple. Our mission? To find an apartment...or at least figure out what area of Brooklyn we want to live in. After a lot of walking and a few bumpy public transit bus rides, we narrowed it down to two neighborhoods. The problem is that one is a lot "nicer" meaning straight out of the movies people. Brownstones and tree-lined streets, cute and trendy shops and cafes, lots of young professionals and families. The other, not quite so cute and trendy but still not ghetto, but a ton more bang for your buck when it comes to the interior living space.

To give you an idea, the apartments we were discussing yesterday: [on the south end of the"nice" area, aka: borderline not so nice anymore, but about 6-7 blocks from the cute and trendy parts] 2 bedroom 1 bath, in a charming pre-war building with large bedrooms and closet space, hardwood floors, exposed brick (which is a nice feature), lots of sunlight, probably about 700-800 SF.

Sounds pretty good, right?

Compare with [in the more "affordable" area] a 2 bedroom 1 bath, top floor of a fully renovated brown stone, stainless steel appliances, recess lighting, dishwasher and washer and dryer included. Central air and heat. Open layout with huge living room and king size master bedroom with bay windows. 1000 SF. Hardwood floors throughout with massive custom closets. Apartment is flooded with light during the day. (description taken from craigslist)

The difference in price? Oh, only $400 a month. To get the same quality apartment in the "nice" area, we would have to pay about $600 more a month. Yes, this is me validating our decision to go for the nicer place in the less trendy neighborhood, but it's the right thing to do, right? Right.

As soon as we are confirmed [meaning, the owners want to talk to us before we can sign], I'll post some pictures. This will be our neighborhood. People. Do you know what this would mean? We will have plenty of space for VISITORS!! Maybe we can finally get some family to come visit us :).

Live with Virtue

I have felt a need lately to feel inspired. Every day I wake up, go through my daily routine, go to work, sit at a desk doing mundane work just to keep the money coming in. I go home eat some food, interact with the Captain for a few short moments before I'm too tired to keep my eyes open, crawl into bed to sleep and do it all again the next day. Auto pilot has taken over.

My spiritual life has been neglected and I am almost desperately trying to fill my life back up with positive messaging.So what do I do? I sign up for email newsletters from wellness professionals and come up with lists of things I should do, like mediate more, move more, eat more veggies and less crap, accentuate the positive and minimize the negative. Translation: be more diligent in my obedience to gospel principles.

In my inbox this morning, I had a note from a philosopher, Brian Johnson (who is, mind you, an exceptional person and positive thinker, lover of wisdom, but still from the secular) about Positive Psychology.

Near the end of my masters program in Family Therapy, several of my classmates got really excited about a relatively new movement called Positive Psychology. The founders, Martin Seligman and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi started on a quest to find identify the science behind happiness. To most of you the results from the foundational research will not come as any surprise.

Brian's note:

"Guess where they started.

"They went Old School—sifting through all the classic wisdom texts where they saw the same ideas repeated again and again. Although they differ on the details, these classics (from the Bible to the The Bhagavad Gita to the Bushido samurai code) say the same thing: Live with virtue.

"In fact, the researchers identified a constellation of six core virtues: wisdom, courage, love, justice, temperance and spirituality. They set out to *scientifically* establish that, when we put these virtues in action, we’ll live with more happiness, meaning and mojo.

"The equation is simple: Happiness = Virtues in Action (VIA)."

See what I mean by not surprised? Sounds a little familiar, right?

"Let thy bowels also be full of charity towards all men, and to the household of faith, and let virtue garnish thy thoughts unceasingly; then shall thy confidence wax strong in the presence of God; and the doctrine of the priesthood shall distil upon thy soul as the dews from heaven." ( Doctrine & Covenants 121:45) 

I love finding truth out there. And I love being reminded of fundamentals that I have known my whole life.

Brian's conclusion: "As Martin Seligman, the author of Authentic Happiness and the Godfather of the Positive Psychology movement tells us, one of the keys to happiness is simple: Use your strengths often. Do so in service to something bigger than yourself and you’ll be blessed with abundant happiness and a life filled with meaning and all that goodness to boot."

The first step to using your strengths often is figuring out what your strengths are. And then remember to use them to building something bigger than yourself. 

To revisit the my self-prescribed cure for auto-pilot, meditation (aka: pondering), movement, veggies and elevating my thoughts...Translation: be more diligent in my obedience to gospel principles.

Happiness = Virtues in Action = Obedience. Period.

I love paint too!

Those who know me well know that I love to paint. I'm not talking pretty pictures. I love to paint walls, wood, furniture. I am a HUGE fan of spray paint.

As much as I love painting, there are some items that cannot be painted until their original finish is removed. Not always the most fun job, but I just found this fantastic tutorial for stripping paint on a new-to-me blog, Natty by Design.

She uses this...

to make the paint look like this...

So you can do this (in only 3 hours mind you)...

and then this...

I am seriously coveting this desk and am putting out the best and most intense vibes I can for my future workshop. Please come into my life sooner rather than later!

I need a new job!

Sitting, it would seem, is an independent pathology. Being sedentary for nine hours a day at the office is bad for your health whether you go home and watch television afterward or hit the gym. It is bad whether you are morbidly obese or marathon-runner thin. “Excessive sitting,” Dr. Levine says, “is a lethal activity.”

This article published in the NY Times last week is seriously tempting me to slip into depression. When I think of my life over the next 18 months or more, I will very likely be sitting at a desk for 9 hours a day. While I do fidget quite a bit, it still probably won't be enough to counteract the ill effects of my pseudo ergonomic desk chair/straight jacket.


Dr. Levine... is exploring ways for people to redesign their environments so that they encourage more movement. We visited a chairless first-grade classroom where the students spent part of each day crawling along mats labeled with vocabulary words and jumping between platforms while reciting math problems. We stopped by a human-resources staffing agency where many of the employees worked on the move at treadmill desks — a creation of Dr. Levine’s, later sold by a company called Steelcase. 

Dr. Levine was in a philosophical mood as we left the temp agency. For all of the hard science against sitting, he admits that his campaign against what he calls “the chair-based lifestyle” is not limited to simply a quest for better physical health. His is a war against inertia itself, which he believes sickens more than just our body. “Go into cubeland in a tightly controlled corporate environment and you immediately sense that there is a malaise about being tied behind a computer screen seated all day,” he said. “The soul of the nation is sapped, and now it’s time for the soul of the nation to rise.” 

Oh, I know this feeling too well, this malaise he refers to. I'm feeling it right now. My body was not created to sit still. Someday I will be my own boss and ditch this cube and all cubes forever! 

it's all over the news

on my way home from work yesterday and to work today I listened to a conversation between Tera Warner, the raw foodie who brought to you WISH, and Seane Corn, an internationally-known yoga teacher and social activist.

Their conversation brought up many things for me, including an intense desire to study yoga more deeply. But more present to today they spoke about the news and how amazingly bad it is. I almost shouted out loud to my ipod, "I know!! It's SO bad!"

I was watching CNN yesterday--only because it's what they keep the keep the kitchen TV on here at work--while filling up my water bottle. Suzanne whatever her name is, you know the lady with the orange skin (Is that bad? I swear I'm not judging, she really does have an orange tint to her skin. Maybe she eats a lot of carrots) was interviewing an American teacher who has been living in Japan for the last nine years about the earthquake and his perception of the damage to the nuclear plant and specifically about the Japanese government's "purposeful withholding of the truth" and the change in the intensity ratings--making it comparable with Chernobyl. This man proceeded to tell the world about the Japanese culture and how it was not an intentional withholding of truth on the Japanese government's part, but a cultural thing, and how the change in ratings did not change the levels of toxicity and presented his optimistic perspective, only to have the interviewer shamelessly interrupt him again and again to lead the conversation down dark and pessimistic paths. I was shocked as I have never before witnessed such a blatant excavation for bad news and spinning what could be looked at a little more hopefully downward into what the network media would have us believe are increasingly despairing times.

this is not the actual interview referenced here

All the more reason to practice yoga instead of watching the news. Or watch Paula Dean which is what I usually turn the channel to during my lunch break. So much more entertaining and uplifting!