Graduation...

The realization of graduation being this weekend and moving out of my apartment/Pullman for good just hit me like a ton of bricks.

I know I'm ready to leave, but at the same time, I don't feel like I'm ready for this at all.

Why...

Whenever I decide to take charge of my life, do other people like to shit all over it so my plans don't work?

I've fallen off the wagon. I have so many things to do and not enough time to do them all. Should I be on here writing this? No, but I'm sick of trying to come up with ideas. My week was already bad enough, then someone royally effed it up. I don't have a break from doing school work until Saturday night, only cause I'm supposed to have a cast party. Then it's back to doing work straight up until I leave for Vegas.

I honestly don't want to know how I'm going to get everything done between now and graduation. I'll never sleep it seems. Seriously, it sucks. I'm excited to be done with college because my life won't be consumed by papers, scripts, research, group projects, editing.... I'll have hours to devote to myself! 38 days! And 30 til my birthday, woohoo!

Priorities...

Motivation sure can make you rearrange what you make important in your life. This entire semester I've spent going out with friends and doing homework late into the night. Well, realizing how soon April 9th is, you could say my ass got kicked into gear. I've shifted my priorities from my friends and school work to myself. Isn't it weird how often we forget about ourselves? You don't want to make your friends mad so you go out with them even when you don't really feel like it. It's been drilled into your head to do well in school so you focus solely on that.

Well, for the rest of the semester, I'm done. I'm not saying done completely, but I'm coming first. Tonight my friend wanted to go to dinner but I didn't want to

be tempted to not eat well the 3rd day of doing this. So I kindly said no maybe another time, I was busy. I came home and made that delicious salad. Everyone should make their own pesto! It's so easy and delicious. After that, I should've started an essay due tomorrow. However, I finally uncovered my Nordic track that's been unseeable all semester and worked out. It felt really good.

I watched a video that said if you really want to drop pounds and be able to see it, you need to work out 5-6 days for 30 minutes, plus do some weights. Of course eat healthy as well. So, since I didn't work out yesterday, I need to keep it up the rest of the week. However, I forgot the natural high your body gets from working out and it's a feeling I missed. A feeling I want to have every day. It's good.

Kate Beckinsale in a bikini is always good motivation, her body looks a lot more normal that those stick thin actresses.

Las Vegas!

Well, not only do I have a speech that I want to get in better shape for. I am now going to be spending a week in Las Vegas for an internship with Sony to show their new equipment at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Las Vegas! It's really exciting, the whole trip is paid for. That, however, is April 9th... really effing soon!!

So, I seriously need to get hardcore about this. I hate how busy my final month of school is. I really need to plan out when everything is due and schedule around that. Sometimes, I wish there were more hours in a day. I'd be able to get a lot more done. I need to look at the time I'm not doing anything though and utilize that time to be productive.

Here's a video for the recipe for the salad I talked about in my last post, so delicious and so easy!

One month...

Well, I forget about this thing way too easily. This semester is insanely busy. I'm writing and directing a scripted TV show for the school's cable channel and that feels like a full time job most weeks in addition to school. Easy last semester.... yeah right.

Anyway, I'm going to at least for the next month be really good at writing in this. Why? Because, in one month I will be speaking in front of a lot of people at a donor dinner and I want to wear a particular dress. Do I have dresses that fit just fine now? Yes. Do I want to wear those? Eh, not really. This is the dress I want to be in:

Yeah, wore it to prom senior year. Simple black dress. That halter band is actually removable and I want to wear it without the halter part for the dinner. Can I get the dress on? Yes... however, it doesn't fit like it used to. Go figure... that's what four years of drinking at college will do to you I guess.

So, with other things in life just becoming ridiculous, I've decided with my final time at college I'm going to focus only on myself. Well, and school ha, need to graduate still. But for the next month I will be working out everyday and eating better. I'm really busy but I'm going to make this work. Which is why, I'm going to give up my beloved sleep to wake my ass up early and get working out done in the morning. No excuses of things popping up later like they have been this semester.

My plan is to do the Nordictrak most days in the morning. Then I'll do strength exercises as well. On days I have more free time, I want to go to the rec center as well. I'm totally into getting this done. It helps when you have a goal... oh and when you're a little vain and want to look good in a dress in front of a lot of people.

The second, and honestly most important, part of the next month is eating well. I've always known how I should eat. It's just expensive and takes time to prepare. So with spending my days on campus, I find the excuse to eat up there. Not good. I've dieted enough times to know the things that I like and that I don't really get sick of. The hardest part is going to be to cut down/out drinking. Those 11 beers in one night aren't helping anything... at all. It'll be hard because I know most of my friends will want to go out for our last month in college. But, I'm going to limit myself to one night of drinking and light drinking at that. I'm sure there will be nights I won't follow this, but I really am going to try. Eating well won't mean anything if I follow it with pints of beer and mixed drinks.

So, after a trip to Costco before coming back and going to the store tonight, I'm prepared to begin the eating healthy. I've planned out most meals and snacks. Breakfast will be eggs. They're good, have protein and keep you full longer. Lunch will be turkey (my mom found delicious turkey from Costco, it's the best store bought turkey I've eaten) and cottage cheese and carrots. Dinner, for the first little while, will be salad. I made this salad two summers ago and it's delicious. It's just lettuce, chicken with a little pesto and mayonnaise, celery, and tomato. So good! For snacks, I have fruits, vegetables, yogurt and pita chips. I'm also cutting out all soda, including diet. I'll be drinking water and a glass of milk everyday.

Really, it seems fairly simple written out. However, everyone knows that applying everything to that hectic schedule we call life is no where near as easy. So, I'll be putting down my progress in here or things I find inspirational along the way.

Can't go wrong with Kate Beckinsale for inspiration:

Fencing...

Yes, that fencing. My friend and I are taking a class this semester on fencing. I guess the reason I took it was because it seemed mildly entertaining and pretty damn easy. Well, who knew that fencing was such a good workout.

Today we spent most the class in a squat position going back and forth across the gym floor. Then, when we weren't doing that, we were doing lunges. It was a half hour straight of squats and lunges. Can you say incredibly tired legs?? They're already sore, I don't even know what tomorrow will feel like.

All I can say, is doing this all semester is definitely going to tone up my legs and I am quite happy with that. Not only will my legs be toned but I'll be able to know how to fence someone... if that occasion ever arises in my life, ha.

Fresh start...

So, I'm back at school and today was the first day of my new eating plan. I guess you would call what I'm doing right now a detox. I got it from the book The Fat Smash Diet by Dr. Ian Smith. He used to be part of that show celebrity fit club. Anyway, for 9 days you basically eat fruits and vegetables, brown rice, beans and yogurt. And you drink all the water you want. Eating that gets all the bad stuff out of your body. And I've got to say after the last break, I just feel gross. So I think doing this will be good. Now I'm not going to continue on and follow that complete plan in the book. I'll do similar stuff but that restricts a lot for awhile. And you know, as a college student, I don't have all the time/money in the world to eat a certain way. I also can't see cutting alcohol completely out of my diet. I know it would be for the best, but it's my last semester at college. I'm going to have fun, but definitely going to try to cut back on the amount I drink.

I know it sounds like you can't eat much on this but it's really not bad. Right now I'm cooking lentil soup. You can eat rice and beans. Oh yeah, you can have tofu too, I just don't like it all that much so I'm not going to eat it. All the salad you want. I mean, it's just super healthy foods for you. The one thing I'm happy about is my friends here agree about not being as healthy as they want. So they're also trying to eat better and work out more.

After dinner, I'm going out with some friends to walk then come back and do a work out video. We're avoiding the school's gym because it's insanely packed with everyone getting to work on their new years resolutions. We'll be there in 2 weeks when most people give up with the resolutions.

Anyway, we'll see how this goes.

I've decided another goal for this year is to keep my apartment clean/organized better than I have. I feel like I'm going to do some spring cleaning this week and really go through all my stuff and throw out things I don't need. I wish I could rearrange my apartment but it's super small so I'm not quite sure it'd work any other way.

Only had one class today, but tomorrow I'm in class from noon-7pm with no breaks. We'll see how that goes.

Work it out...

Well, working out is what I need to get back to. One thing I hate about break is how much less I move around. I walk all over the place at school, home, I walk from upstairs to downstairs? Yeah... so I need to get back on the work out wagon.

If you don't haven't been to the site, self.com, is a great website that has a bunch of free tools/videos. I'll probably be posting lots of videos from there, hopefully after I've tried them. However, this one I haven't tried yet but I plan on it tomorrow.

Hello 2010...

I'm not sad to see 2009 go. It was a year that was full of ups and downs. My grandma died. I got the internship I wanted and spent a summer living in Los Angeles. Experienced some new things with new people, both good and bad. All in all, I learned a hell of a lot. I have no real regrets from 2009, but I'm definitely going to take things I learned and hopefully not repeat the same mistakes. With that said, I'm leaving quite a few things behind in 2009. My goal is to leave certain people and habits in 2009, we'll see how that goes.

I don't think you can say I have any real resolutions for 2010. I don't like resolutions much because they just seem like they are things meant to be broken or not completed. However, I do have a list of things I hope to accomplish in 2010, which in my mind is entirely different than resolutions. These are just life goals and this is the year to make them happen.

1. I'm graduating in May, which is actually a really exciting, sad and scary thought all at the same time. I'm looking forward to going back next week but at the same time it'll be sad knowing this is the last semester I'll be spending with people I've spent the last four years with. So with graduating, I have a goal of finding myself a relatively good job in the field I want in Los Angeles. Ha, kind of high hopes. To go with that goal, I hope I have enough money saved to move down there with my friend Michael.

2. Write and finish my script. I have the idea, I have characters, I have some plot lines. I just need to get to it and start putting it all down on paper. I'm going to schedule a time of day that's dedicated to writing. If I want to be a writer it needs to be a daily habit. I'm taking a creative writing class and I think that'll help me stay motivated and challenged writing.

3. Lose weight. See this isn't a resolution because I've been saying it for the past how many years? It's just something I need to fucking do already. I have better motivation this year I think though. I was informed I'll be a bridesmaid in a little over a year, so yeah, I refuse to be the fat one in someone's expensive wedding photos. My graduation present is going to New York and I really want to be in shape for that. If for nothing else, to be able to go shopping and know I can walk into any store and can try anything on. Also, must find a job. It’s a sad truth, but how you look can greatly influence that. Your looks are someone’s first impression of you so it makes sense to look as good as I can as I’m job hunting. Not only does it help people’s first impression of me, but obviously my confidence would be higher.

I think those are really my main goals for 2010. Of course I want other things to happen but I don’t see those as goals. Life will happen as life chooses to happen. The only thing I can hope is for me to be open to things and not make stupid decisions.

I’m optimistic for this year, I seem to say this about every year. For some reason, I believe what I’m saying this time more. Maybe it’s because it’s an entirely new decade. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Oh, I guess one more goal is to write in here more. I kept saying that but I never did. So now I will. Not everyday, lets not be crazy. But at least a few times a week.

Here’s to a great 2010!