…that there will be more coming soon. I feel like I’ve fallen out of the habit of blogging regularly, but I will be posting more soon. I”m also planning on a redesign. Stay tuned!
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Adventures in Exercise: Insanity
At the end of last year, as you could probably tell from this post, I was not in the best frame of mind and had once again fallen off the exercise wagon. So at the beginning of this year, I decided I needed something I’d stick to, preferably something I could do from home. Winter 2015 in Boston, if you haven’t heard, consisted of basically nonstop snow for two months, which sometimes made it hard to go for a run or get to the gym. This year hasn’t been anywhere close to that, but I didn’t know that at the time. In any case, I’m glad I decided to do what I ended up doing: Insanity.
I think I was a latecomer to hearing about it. Most people I told I was doing it had already heard of it, but I had no idea what it was until the end of last year. If you’re like I was then and have never heard of it, basically, it’s an intense at-home DVD workout with a lot of cardio and bodyweight exercises led by Shaun T. You do it six days a week for nine weeks, with one day off and one recovery day, with a less intense workout, per week. The workouts are about 40 minutes each for the first four weeks- warmup, stretching, then the main workout. Then there’s a recovery week with a less intense routine, and then for the next four weeks, the routines are more like 50-60 minutes each. You do a fit test on the first day to see how many of certain exercises (switch kicks, power jacks, suicide jumps, etc.) you can do in a minute, and the fit test comes up again about every two weeks so you can track your progress.
I started on New Year’s Day, and the first two days were the hardest. When I did my first fit test, I had to keep pausing the DVD so I wouldn’t puke. And the second day was even harder because I was so sore from the first day. But after that? It was surprisingly manageable. Hard, yes, but do-able. The circuits had a lot of exercises I’d never even heard of before, and I liked trying something new. Shaun T. is a good leader for this kind of thing, too–he’s just the right amount of pushy.
There’s a meal plan that goes along with it, too, and I tried to follow it fairly closely. I’m a bit of a picky eater, so there were some suggested meals I didn’t like as written, but did like when I used one of the substitutions listed in the back. I loved smoked salmon, so I did the lox and bagel one a lot, and I would sometimes substitute it for something like turkey. The pizza English muffin is another one I enjoyed, and this gave me a lot of ideas for healthy meals even when not doing Insanity.
All this said, I was definitely ready to be done with it by the end. Even though there are several different DVDs that go into this, I got tired of the same routines eventually. And it was HARD trying to find time six days out of seven to do it- so I’m even more satisfied to say that I never did miss an Insanity workout. Even when I went to New York, I brought my laptop and the DVDs with me and did the workouts in the hotel!
Since I’ve finished it, I’ve been trying to do a bunch of different types of exercise…but that’s a topic for another post.
Song of the Moment: Back to Before
There are some musicals I’ve never seen but would love to, having listened to the music from them. The Secret Garden is one. Ragtime is another. And this is my favorite song from Ragtime: “Back to Before.” It’s so beautiful and has lyrics that apply to so many things besides the specific situation in the show. Back in college, it made my AIM away message quite frequently. Those days are over, but I sing it in the shower quite a bit.
ALL the Theater!
I’ve always loved musical theater—see this post, and all the ones about Les Mis—but lately I’ve been obsessing about it more than usual. I think seeing Les Mis over the summer triggered something in me.
I traveled to New York twice in seventeen days. The day before New Year’s Eve, I just took a day trip there (it’s about a four-hour bus ride if the traffic’s not bad) to see Allegiance on Broadway. I had a feeling it would be closing soon and I wanted to see it before it was gone, and the subject matter—a Japanese-American family in an internment camp during World War II—interested me. Plus, Lea Salonga, who has one of the most gorgeous voices ever, and George Takei! The show had gotten mixed reviews, but I liked it a lot. The music was okay, but the story and performances were what made it really strong. I’m sorry to hear that it’s closing in a few weeks.
Then last weekend, I went down Saturday and Sunday for two shows. One was, for the third time since it’s come to Broadway, Les Mis. I’m quite sure I’ll never see a Jean Valjean better than Ramin Karimloo, but his replacement, Alfie Boe, played Valjean in the 25th Anniversary concert and is also very good. Unfortunately, Alfie ended up being out sick that night, but the understudy, J. Michael Finley, did a good job. Other standouts in the cast—Adam Monley was an excellent Javert and Brennyn Lark was great as Eponine.
The other musical I saw, at the Sunday matinee, was the second-to-last Broadway show for A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. I didn’t know very much about it before I saw it, other than that the lead role was played by Bryce Pinkham, who graduated from BC a year before me (I don’t know him, though) and that Jefferson Mays played multiple characters. I’m glad now that I didn’t know more, because it turned out to be hilarious and delightful and if I’d been spoiled about much of the plot, I don’t know if I would have enjoyed it as much. The entire cast was excellent, and my head is spinning thinking about the quick costume changes Jefferson Mays, who plays NINE characters, must have had.
I have another trip to New York planned for Memorial Day weekend, which I’m really excited about because I’m going to see…Hamilton! I had to spend a ton of money on StubHub to get the ticket, but I’m dying to see it with the original cast, so I think it will be worth it.
I bought the Hamilton soundtrack recently after several listens on Spotify. Before I listened to it there, I’d heard a lot about it and thought it sounded interesting, but I was hesitant about it because I don’t like rap—like, at all. So when I finally heard the whole thing, I was shocked at how much I liked it, and it gets better with every subsequent listen (partly, I think, because you know the story better). If you’re like I was and think it sounds interesting but don’t like rap, have a listen to this song, “You’ll Be Back,” first. It’s sung by King George in the play (the hilarious Jonathan Groff), and it’s essentially a breakup letter to the colonies:
Now listen to the whole thing:
I’m really excited to see it in May—it’s one of the things to look forward to that I’m giving myself. I hear there’s some awesome choreography in it as well, so even though I’ll know all the music, seeing that will be new.
I’m also hoping to see Waitress on Broadway at some point. It’s moving there after premiering in Cambridge last fall, but unfortunately, it sold out very quickly and I missed it. The music is by Sara Bareilles, whom I LOVE, and she recently released an excellent album where she sings some of the songs from Waitress. Again, listen:
The other show I might see on Broadway this spring is She Loves Me. There are a lot of cool people in it—Zachary Levi, Laura Benanti, Jane Krakowski—but I mostly want to see it because of Andrew Kober, who until recently was in the Les Mis cast and featured heavily in Ramin’s vlogs.
Plus, my friends and I are thinking about seeing The Sound of Music when it’s in Boston in a couple of months. I love the movie but have never seen it on stage.
So this is shaping up to be the year of ALL the theater, and I’m really excited!
Look Forward
This was not a good year for me by any stretch of the imagination.
And honestly, it’s only partly because of the fire. While that sucked, it’s pretty much behind me now. What’s not behind me is the persistent loneliness that was the dominant feeling of this year.
I remember back in 2008, I had a coworker who lost her apartment in a fire remarkably similar to mine– it was a fire that was caused by someone else’s cigarette, it killed one person, she had renter’s insurance, and her apartment wasn’t damaged as badly as the others, although she still had to move out. At the time, I felt so bad for her. Now that I’ve been through it myself, I find myself envying her, because there is one key difference between her experience and mine: she was (and still is) married. I had to go through the whole thing alone.
A few days ago, someone asked me who I call when I have a bad day. The question surprised me, because…I don’t call anyone when I have a bad day. Like, it doesn’t even occur to me to call anyone. And I realized that it’s something that people in good relationships take for granted: that when they have a bad day, someone will be there for them.
I might never have that.
The year certainly had its bright spots (my new job is definitely one of them), but overall, I spent too much of this year very unhappy. I’m doing my best to make changes in my life, although I know there’s no guarantee that I’ll be successful in making those changes.
But if I had to tell you one thing I’ve learned from this year, it’s this: it’s important to give yourself things to look forward to.
Buy a ticket to that thing you love. Plan a trip. Sign up for a race. Take a class. Mark your calendar for when that book/movie/TV show comes out. Do what you need to do to keep yourself going.
Because when your future seems uncertain, when you don’t know if your life will ever turn out the way you want it to, when it seems like all the good things in your life are behind you, the best thing you can do is give yourself a reason to look forward.
Why I Can’t Get Into Vlogging
It’s been said that blogging is dead, which is a shame, although I’ll continue to do my part to keep it alive. But one thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of people who used to be prolific bloggers are now channeling their energy into vlogs instead.
I’ve changed my mind before, so who knows if I will at some point in the future, but right now I feel pretty comfortable saying that I won’t be one of those bloggers-turned-vloggers, for a lot of reasons. The first is that, as I said in this post, I blog because I love to write. And vlogging is not writing. It’s talking to a camera, which doesn’t come naturally to me at all. I have a much harder time articulating what I want to say when I’m talking rather than writing. The few times I have vlogged were for Snark Squad’s Segue Magic, and I feel like what came out in those vlogs would have been much more articulate if I’d written it down instead.
Also, vlogging means that you have to look at yourself. A lot. I forget that there are people who actually like looking at themselves, because I hate it. But I guess it makes sense—I mean, look at people who vlog regularly. Literally ALL of them are attractive. Looks don’t matter quite so much in blogging.
It’s a shame, too, because while there are a lot of now-vloggers whose blogs I loved, that love has not transferred to their vlogs. And it’s not that their vlogs aren’t good or entertaining. It’s that I wish I was getting the same information in blog format. I read very quickly, for one thing, but YouTube videos have a set time, and I know that reading whatever the vlogger has to say would be quicker for me. And usually, if the vlogger is someone who’s regularly blogged in the past, there’s nothing that comes across in a vlog that wouldn’t in a blog post. I’ve never seen a vlog by a former blogger and been surprised by it or thought that they seemed different speaking than they do in writing—I find that most good bloggers are pretty good at writing how they speak. Consequently, I very rarely watch vlogs, even by bloggers I really love.
This isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy the occasional vlog. But I think in order to choose to vlog something rather than blog, it has to contain some kind of content that doesn’t come across in writing. Like it involves singing or music, or a point of the vlog is pronouncing something or using a particular accent.
The other thing that can make a vlog worthwhile to me is a vlog that shows us something other than the vlogger’s face. Good example: I love the vlogs that different actors do and have done for Broadway.com—they show us interactions with other people and what things are like behind the scenes of different shows. (I’m particularly fond of these ones.)
The Internet is changing, and not always, in my opinion, for the better. I think it’s great that people find community in vlogging the way we used to at Twenty-Something Bloggers, but it’s not for me, and I wish blogging didn’t seem so dead.
I guess blogging joins the radio star in the list of video’s victims.
Maybe I’m a Runner Now
Two weeks ago, I ran half-marathon number five. It was my best half marathon, both in terms of my time and in terms of how I felt. Here’s why this one was different.
I’ve posted about how miserable and lonely I was this summer in the aftermath of the fire. Early in the summer, I was making an attempt to eat healthier and exercise, but I abandoned that completely as the apartment situation got more and more depressing. It’s a cruel irony that you need healthy living the most when life is hardest, which is also when it’s hardest to do it. I stopped paying attention to eating healthy and ate a lot of crap, and I couldn’t force myself to exercise. One day, when I was particularly down and it was good running weather, I tried to get up and out of the house to run. I made it a total of two blocks.
I haven’t weighed myself in a long time, but I know I gained weight. A lot of my clothes weren’t fitting me right, and when I saw pictures of myself taken in July, I burst into tears. I looked hideous, and much heavier than I should be.
So when things calmed down, I signed up for the Bay State Half Marathon, the same one I did last year. I’d come so close to breaking two hours before, and I felt like I was really capable of it now.
While this was my fifth half-marathon, the training for it felt different from any of the others. Before, I often felt like I had to force myself to get up and run. This time, I got into a good routine and was actually looking forward to my runs. I think it helped that I started my new job a few weeks into the training—having a new routine in general helped me fit in a new running routine. I started using MyFitnessPal more consistently and keeping better track of what I ate.
When I set that goal of breaking two hours, I’d thought that I would barely make it. Instead, while I was running, I looked at my watch at one point to see how I was doing and thought, “Wow…you totally have this!” I ended up finishing in 1:54:56—ten minutes faster than last year. The weather undoubtedly helped (it was nice and cool that morning), but I’m still thrilled with my time.
I’ve never really gotten the “runner’s high” that I hear people talk about, but during this training, I had way more runs where I felt great afterwards than runs where I felt lousy. I still haven’t weighed myself, so I don’t know if I actually lost weight, but I certainly feel better, and definitely more motivated to keep working out. When I first started getting into half-marathons, I blogged about how I still didn’t think of myself as “a runner.”
Well…it took a while, but I think now, maybe I do.
Dancing About Architecture
Last month, I watched a movie on Netflix that I hadn’t seen since high school. Jon Stewart was, sadly, about to leave The Daily Show and I was remembering how I saw him in the 1998 movie Playing by Heart, which I’d sought out as a teenager because Gillian Anderson, whom I loved on The X-Files, was in it. Pre-Daily Show Jon Stewart plays her love interest. It’s a pretty good movie, although not likely to be anyone’s favorite- an ensemble drama about love with a cast that also includes Angelina Jolie, Ryan Phillippe, Dennis Quaid, Sean Connery, Ellen Burstyn, and Gena Rowlands, among others. It was trying to do what Love Actually did more successfully a few years later– show a big group of people and their various romantic scenarios, although it’s more of a drama than Love Actually (there’s one storyline about a guy dying of AIDS). In one scene, Angelina Jolie is yelling at someone on a pay phone, which amused me.
The notable thing about this movie, though, is what it was almost titled– Dancing About Architecture. It was only changed because there was a movie out at the same time called Dancing At Lughnasa. But Dancing About Architecture would have been a much better title. It comes from a scene where Angelina Jolie’s character recounts how, when she tried to talk with a musician friend about his music, he told her that “talking about music is like dancing about architecture,” and she countered that talking about love was the same way.
I tend to agree. But for now, let’s focus on talking about music– though it might indeed be like dancing about architecture, I’m going to make an attempt.
I have the hardest time discussing music. When someone asks me what kind of music I like, I wince. There never seems to be a good answer to that question. Back in middle school, people started to define themselves by what music they listened to and would make judgments about you based on your own music taste.
Here’s the thing, though–it never ends. Even as an adult, people judge you by the music you listen to. You might not make fun of someone who’s bad at sports or isn’t into partying, but judgment about music never ends. When I read this post I wrote a long time ago, I cringe at how defensive I sound. But I feel that way because I can’t believe that even as we’ve grown up, we haven’t evolved beyond these petty judgments we made as pre-teens.
There’s much more music that I like than music I dislike and, ironically, I feel like a lot of people would say that means I don’t really love music, as if you can’t love many different things. It’s hard for me to talk about music to the kind of people who consider themselves music lovers by virtue of being picky about what they like, prizing the obscure and wanting to be ahead of the curve with popularity, and making a hobby of seeing live shows. I don’t think I’ll ever be a very picky music consumer, as my tendency is to go with my instinctual like or dislike without thinking too much about why. And while I get how it feels good to like something before it becomes popular, I seem to be missing the disdain-for-popularity chip.
I think I’m coming around on live shows, though.
I wrote about it a bit here and here— how I don’t like most concerts, at least ones in small venues, and how I don’t seem to get the high from live music that so many people seem to. I did go to a concert earlier this summer in a larger venue, and I really enjoyed it. Due to that middle-school judgment factor, I’m hesitant to say who the artist was–it’s a popular artist about whom people tend to have strong opinions, both positive and negative. But I started to understand that high-on-live-music feeling that people have described to me.
Then I got that feeling myself in August when I went to New York to see Les Mis again. Ramin Karimloo was leaving the show at the end of August and I wanted to see the show one last time with him in it. So I did, and it was fantastic. My obsession with Les Mis is well-documented, but this seriously put me in a good mood for the next week. It was actually kind of amazing– I spent way too much of this summer in absolute misery, and not without good reason, and yet the thing that made me happier than I’d been in months was the power of this show’s music. (I was brought out my misery by a show called…Les Miserables. Heh.)
This led to me spending a truly embarrassing amount of time watching clips of Ramin Karimloo on YouTube. I got really disappointed that I wouldn’t be able to see him in Les Mis again–my new job (which I’m liking so far) started the day after Ramin’s last show, so going down for that was out of the question. But then I remembered that he was playing two concerts at BB King’s in New York the following weekend- and I was pretty sure I could make it down for the Saturday show.
So I did.
I have Ramin’s album and, like I said, have spent a ridiculous amount of time watching him on YouTube. He does these shows in a style he calls “broadgrass”–everything from Broadway to bluegrass, and sometimes Broadway in the style of bluegrass (like singing “Bring Him Home” on a banjo). I love, love, love this guy’s voice, and I was excited to see what he’d do at the show. (And, let’s be honest, also a bit excited to look at him.)
The show was at BB King’s on 42nd Street, which has first-come, first-served seating. It started at 7:30 with doors opening at 6. I got there at 5 and the line was already pretty long. I’d brought a book to read while I stood there. The crowd was, hilariously, about 90% female.
I was standing there in line when suddenly I heard screaming coming from up ahead in line…and the next thing I knew, Ramin was standing right in front of me. Because he’s freaking awesome, he’d decided to come out and say hi to everyone waiting in line. I said hi, and he shook my hand and said, “Thank you for coming.” I think I started to tell him that I’d come in from Boston, but he’d moved on by then.
So it was a pretty amazing night already. I had not been prepared for Ramin walking right up to me, so unfortunately, I didn’t have my phone out and didn’t get another picture of me with him, but I did get a shot of him with the people behind me. (Random side note: when I ended up sitting at a table with some random people, whom I talked to, they told me that a minute after Ramin came out, George Takei walked by! I didn’t see him at all and wouldn’t have believed it if they hadn’t shown me the picture they took with George.)
I settled in at the table once they let us in and talked to the people around me. There was an opening act, Jamie Cunningham, who told us about how he became the opener after connecting with Ramin on Twitter. And then it was time for broadgrass!
He sang all kinds of things- songs from his album, songs from shows he’d been in, songs from shows he hasn’t been in, bluegrass, Broadway in the style of bluegrass, original songs, covers, mashups, you name it. He also made me tear up when he sang “Bring Him Home” and dedicated it to Kyle Jean-Baptiste.
Most of the concert ended up on YouTube, and I’ve been rewatching obsessively. A few favorites: here he sings “Make Them Hear You” from Ragtime, a fantastic song that his voice is perfect for:
I wasn’t familiar with James Bay, but after Ramin covered his song “Scars,” I looked it up and…sorry, James Bay, but I think I like Ramin singing it better: :
And here’s “Oh What a Beautiful Morning” from Oklahoma!, broadgrassed-up. Beautiful morning, beautiful man.
I think I get it now– how people get a high from live music, because while it had happened to me with musical theater before, this was the first time I got it from a concert. I don’t know how many artists could provoke this kind of reaction in me, but I understand now the feeling people get from live shows.
What I understand even less now, though, is looking down on other people because of their taste in music. Ramin’s music does something to me that I can’t even describe, but I know it’s not everyone’s cup of tea. And there are people out there who have the same kind of experience I just had with music I don’t like or am indifferent to.
I wish I could do a better job explaining the feeling I’ve had since that concert last week. But it’s like dancing about architecture.
I Quit!
So…I quit my job on Monday.
…Okay, that makes it sound a lot more dramatic than it really was. As much as I’d love an opportunity to yell, “I quit!” and storm out of someplace angrily, that’s not what happened here. In reality, I accepted a new job and quietly gave my two weeks’ notice.
Since it’s generally not a good idea to blog about looking for a new job while you currently HAVE a job, I’ve kept quiet about the job search here. But in reality, I’ve been contemplating a career change for a long time. I thought about leaving a couple of times prior to this, but every time I did, a really good reason to stay came along. Like I was going to make my number. And then I was going to make my number again. And then I got offered a free trip to Grand Cayman. (Yep. I’m quitting the company that just sent me to Grand Cayman.)
Finally out of reasons to stay, I started job searching. I’d been thinking about moving out of higher ed publishing and into…higher ed. Research showed me that there were plenty of jobs out there for which I was qualified and that paid as much or more than my current job. And since this is Boston, where there are so many colleges that I can’t think of all of them off the top of my head, jobs in higher education are not exactly scarce. I applied, I went on interviews, and I eventually accepted a job in faculty affairs at a university in the area.
The job offer came, funnily enough, on my eight-year anniversary at this company. It’s so weird to think that I have been at this company for EIGHT YEARS. So much has happened since then. My first year at this company, I was twenty-three and so broke that I spent months looking forward to my first business trip. After that trip, I also got to go, for the first time, to Philadelphia, Chicago, DC, St. Louis, Savannah, Atlanta, Cincinnati, and, of course, Grand Cayman, among other places. I met so many awesome people, many of whom have also left by now. I gained confidence, especially after being promoted from my first job quicker than I ever dreamed I would. I had a lot of success working in SALES—if you told me in college that one day not only I’d work in sales but become one of the company’s top salespeople, I would have said you were crazy. And there have been a lot of good times: crazy holiday party stories, hanging out in bars after work, playing on our terrible (but fun) softball team, the sales meetings in various cities (including that one time we were almost two days late and my luggage went missing), getting to know a host of new coworkers after a big merger, and Obama’s first inauguration, when, after realizing we’d have a hard time watching it in the building, basically the whole office got up and migrated to the restaurant on the corner to watch it there. This company has been such a huge part of my life for so long that it’s going to be really weird to work anywhere else.
There are a lot of reasons I’m leaving, none of which have anything to do with the people at my company. I won’t go into all of them, but the simple version is that, while I’m glad I made the move to sales almost four years ago, I did so because I wanted to move up within the company, and that is no longer a goal of mine. Education is something I’m passionate about, and I realized that working in higher education in some capacity would be a good fit for me. I don’t know exactly what my future holds career-wise, but, although I did have a panicky OH NO WHAT HAVE I DONE moment after I resigned, I hope I’ll enjoy my new job and the people I work with there and that it will open up some great opportunities for me.
Right now feels like the right time for a change. So I’ll take it.
Heaven and Hell…Aka Grand Cayman
Okay, I’m finally going to write about the Grand Cayman trip. Here we go.
I found on New Year’s Eve that I’d been chosen to attend my company’s CEO Summit. Essentially, I had two good sales years where I made my goal, which, by some measurement of performance over time, placed me in the top 10% of sales professionals company-wide. I’m not quite sure how that happened, but if the result is a free trip to Grand Cayman, I don’t really care.
Everyone could bring a guest, so, since I don’t get to see her nearly enough, I asked Christina. She was going to be in Boston the preceding weekend anyway for her sister’s graduation, so she stayed in Boston a night longer. This was during the two weeks post-fire when I wasn’t in the sublet yet, so we got a hotel room near the airport. I figured out how to stream the Mad Men finale online (even though we had to be up super early for our 6 AM flight the next day, there was no way I was missing it), and the next morning we were off.
I knew the trip was going to go well when we got to the hotel and, within about five minutes, someone handed us a free rum punch.
There were, I think, a total of eighty-eight people from sales there, plus a bunch of higher-ups and everybody’s guests. There were a handful of people I’d met in passing before, but no one I knew well. They were from all over the place—all over the country but also foreign countries. I met people from Australia, England, and Tunisia, among other places. I met a lot of people from LA. Other than some managers who work in the Boston office, I was the only person from Boston there. I was also one of the youngest people, which was weird—in the office in Boston, I work with people who were born in the 90s and don’t have the same pop culture touchpoints as me. And I’m almost positive I was the only person there who was both single and childless. The vast majority of people brought their significant others and most of those who didn’t either brought one of their kids or at least had a significant other back at home. I’m pretty sure everyone thought Christina was my girlfriend until we explained that we were friends who lived on opposite coasts.
But most of the colleagues and guests that I met were really nice and interesting. On Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday there were mandatory dinners that we attended with everyone at the summit, one of which culminated on releasing these lanterns over the ocean. We also had went on a couple of sponsored activities with colleagues. One was a sunset boat cruise on our last night there. The other was a trip that included snorkeling and a visit to Stingray City, where you can swim with stingrays!
Christina and I also rented a cabana and spent a whole day there, lounging on the beach and having food and drinks brought to us.
On another day, we went to Hell. Literally.
Yep, Hell is a rock formation in Grand Cayman. There’s even a post office so you can send post cards from hell. Christina sent one to her dad’s church.
Also, free booze. SO MUCH free booze.
It was an awesome trip that came at the perfect time—and it was all free since it was a work trip!