#LivingInSin

It's official: Year One of #LivingInSin is on the books!

Going into this, as you know, I was a bit apprehensive. And I had a freak-out (aka total meltdown) about all my stuff, as I attempted to squeeze my life into a shared space. BUT, I was also stupid excited about living with the beau.

Pre-move, in my glass case of emotion.

So... how did it go? We've officially been through four seasons, haven't murdered each other, and still cohabitate. So, something is going right. But was it as expected? Looking back at my original thoughts, pre-move (aka the posts linked above), was it par for the course?

Just as I thought

• While cohabitating, I still refuse to pee with the door open and walk around naked. Because I'm a g'damn lady and I am not comfortable flaunting my flub with anyone, no matter how much rent money they pay.
• Sadly, I was right. I don't dance as often. Making mental note to amend this. 
• I miss a good old fashioned full-bed, starfish sprawl. Luckily, the beau leaves for work an hour before I do, so for that last glorious time after he leaves, that bed is allll mine. All the blankets. I get to have them all perfectly arranged and stationary. 
• The access to Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, etc. is pretty sweet. I watch way more TV than I used to. And all the choices stress me the heck out. 
• The beau balances me. Sure, I don't get to dwell in my anxiety and slip-slide around my doubt spirals all alone and unsupervised anymore, like I did when living alone, but that's probably a good thing. My freak-outs don't go unchecked. He checks me. It's comforting.
• I talk on the phone way less. Kind of a bummer. I try to save my chit-chat for when I'm in transit, or out for a walk, etc. so I'm not creeping around our apartment whisper-gossiping. Not that he'd be dropping any eaves anyways, but I feel like in a confined space it's hard not to overhear. 
• Hosting is more epic. Co-hosting and being able to split prep is fantastic. 

Didn't see that coming... 

• I still eat like a ten year old and have no qualms with being judged. I worried that my days of laying on the couch with a full pot of mac were going to be guilted away, but never fear, I've held strong in resolve to dump trashy food into my maw when I'm having a bad day. And the beau bakes. Which just adds to it. 
• Speaking of eating, yeah, I kind of thought we'd end up being one of those cute Insta-couples who meal preps every Sunday and grocery shops together. But honestly, we're busy. We don't often coordinate that much in advance. When we grocery shop, we both get what we want, and for the meals we want together, we each grab some of the stuff for it. It's not a total roommate situation where if I eat one of his apples he leaves a passive-aggressive note. (But if he eats one of my yogurts, he knows I'll panic. Yogurts are different, because I only bought four even though I need five to have breakfast every day at work, and if that goes down to three then I'm a starving angry bear for half the week).
• Oldies music still bumps out on a regular basis, just less so from my glow-dial radio and moreso from Alexa (that demon she-bot who moved in with us).
• I thought I'd be more assertive about taking me-time, but I honestly suck at it. My "me-time" is usually going to grab happy hour or a movie with the gals. (Lady time has not been dampened by living with the beau - huzzah!) On the occasions when I get the apartment to myself, I usually just hulk out cleaning / doing laundry and then frantically text everyone to spend time with me. It's actually not a great thing, because it comes with the occasional spaz out over needing alone time, even though I don't take advantage of it when I get it. Need to find some chill. 
• Paranoia. It's virtually gone (KNOCK ON WOOD). As someone who used to occasionally have a paranoia attack and lock herself in the bathroom with a kitchen knife and end up sleeping in the tub, this calmness is refreshing. I'm still 99% sure that someone is fucking with me though when things wind up in weird places or randomly moved. But that's just, some sort of karma probably.

With living together, I've loved our location, our creepy old apartment, our proximity to cool shit and friends, my commute, and above all, my time with the man who agreed to dwell - he's swell. The main thing I haven't loved: myself. After so many years of living alone, all my very worst traits crept back out to play as soon as they had a roomie present to put on a show for:

• My OCD over stupid things: Like, how there IS a RIGHT way to hang your wet towel on the bar so it dries quicker and doesn't get moldy. Or how to load a dishwasher so you can fit the most things, so you save water and energy and little dishwasher tablet thingies. I really try to not sweat the small stuff, but sometimes I just sweat it out. It makes me seem like a g'dman nag. NO one wants to be a nag.
• My hangry attitude: Seriously. When I'm hungry, I'm just an awful person. Living together and seeing each other all the time vastly increased the likelihood of the beau seeing me famished. To his peril.
• The exposure of my post-work-day angst: Living alone, I had time to come home, fume a bit and blow of steam so I could be all smiles by the time I interacted with other humans. Now, on stressful workdays, I have a 5 minute commute home before I'm stomping in on the man I love, with fire in eyes and rage in my voice. He gets hit with the brunt of it unless I awkwardly run away and hide while I decompress. (Usually I go to the bathroom and putz around in there. He probably thinks I have awful digestive issues...)
• Social anxiety: You'd think that always being around another person, I'd have my fill of socialization. But honestly, I get worried about being one of those people who only ever spends time with their significant other. We all have a friend like that. You know... what's her name. She started dating that one guy and was never seen again. I can't. That scares me. 

I don't want to point out every little baddie, or pretend that everything is always shiny when living with someone else. It's just not realistic. I have been so so lucky though that I get to live with someone who makes me smile and laugh. Who lets me paint radiators or closets at a whim. Who kills centipedes (if I can't get to them first). Who loves me even when I'm wearing that ratty old pair of PJ shorts from college (how did they survive the moving purge??). Who knows my Erbs and Gerbs order and preemptively orders it as he sees me having a rough day (because that Quatro always makes things better). So yeah, overall, I'm thrilled that #LivingInSin year two is going to be a thing. Cheers to another year!

What if we don't want to yield? #CantStopWontStop

The '017 Files: June: Breaka Breaka

As 2017 rolled into view, I made a decision to buckle down and become more "goal-oriented" in my daily. Each month, I wrote up a new set of to-do's and evaluated how I'd done the month prior. As June approached though, I hit that most annoying feeling: exhaustion.

It's not as if I was setting extremely laborious goals for myself. They weren't out of reach, and many of them were just centered around life improvements that I should be making anyway. BUT something about having a list for life bothered me. Having a bucket list never bothered me. Having goals and deadlines at work never bothered me. But the more months I plotted out a list for myself, the more it started to irk me. Everything just felt like such an obligation.

Maybe it's just a temporary feeling because of the ramp up in summertime busy-ness. Or a spillover in exhaustion from my work life that makes me want to shake a stick at any form of productivity in my non-work hours. Or that I wasn't focusing on the right type of goals for myself to bring joy (or whatever goals are supposed to do). Regardless, as June arrived, I decided it was time for a hiatus.

For the past month, I haven't even opened up this little blog, because for some reason, it stressed me out, too. Maybe my postpartum* struck two years after giving birth to it, because I didn't even want to think about it. I've been a bad mother to GTTP this past month.

And you know what... it's okay. There is so much pressure these days to maintain every form of communication, every social channel, to post every day-to-day moment. There's pressure to live fabulous lives to fill those channels with, and to keep up on everyone else's channel, too. I had a freak-out a month back that I'd not kept up with viewing Instagram stories and had MISSED something. Because it expires in 24 hours, so you HAVE to keep up with it.

But no you don't.

None of it really matters. It's great to pass the time. To check in on friends. To oogle the lives of beautiful strangers. But, dear friends, there's a big world out there to be enjoying beyond that.** Even if you don't Instagram every minute of it, that doesn't mean you didn't live it. Taking a month away (in which, to be honest, I did still liberally Insta my life) to not be so plugged in - it was good for the soul.

So here it is. My goals for the rest of the summer, that I hope to follow based on my experiences in June:

• Don't check my phone after 9:30 pm (except to set alarms / see if I have any last minute meetings added to my work calendar that would make me have to get up earlier) - they say the blue light messes with your sleep anyways, so maybe this'll help me sleep better too on accident
• Only 30 minutes max each night of random Insta/FB scrolling. (Thank goodness I never fell to far down the Youtube watching wormhole.)
• Unfollow a few more people on social media. Too much clutter. Need to focus. 
• No browsing on the internet while having conversations. OH my goodness, it's so awful. I realized the other day how often I do that and it is really just kind of sad. And so rude. And I need to cut that habit entirely. I don't need to keep up that badly that I can't be fully invested in a conversation happening right in front of my face.
• Spend more time writing. Because even though blogging wasn't on my mind, storytelling sure was. It's an outlet that I love. And I have SO many things to share. May as well put them "to paper" here!
• Make time for people. Don't just say you'll make plans, make them. 
• Make time for myself. Don't just say you'll relax and enjoy some free time to read a book and lazy about, do it. 

So, friends. If anything super exciting happens this summer - if you have a baby, or get engaged, or buy a house, or adopt a dog, or have an epic vacation, or eat an amazing sandwich that I should definitely go get to eat too - please point it out to me next time I see you. Because I may miss it on the interwebs... #SorryNotSorry.

Promise I'm not ghosting you. Just out there living.

* Promise I'm not trying to make light of postpartum here. Postpartum is serious shit and absolutely horrifying. 
** Don't get me wrong, I'm happy you're here to share a little bit of my world. But if you've got other plans and don't have time to hang out with me anymore, it's cool. I don't mind. We're still good. I still love ya. You'll come visit if you find the time, no worries.