My new 'tude, part 3

In part 1, my friend accused me of drinking too much.

In part 2, I disagreed, but admitted that my drinking had taken on a new dimension - drinking to forget the things in my life I'm not happy about, instead of just drinking for fun.

In all honesty, I never wanted this to become some drawn out blog saga. I intended to start and finish, to present the problem and then wrap it up all nicely with a bow, within the same blog post.

The problem is that now, 2 weeks later, I have no desire to finish what I started. I no longer believe the things I felt so strongly about when I wrote part 1 - the new me, the new attitude I was going to take towards my problems. But maybe if I put them out there, I'll rediscover what so inspired me. So here we are.

I recently started reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which, aside from the fact that it takes way too long to make each of the 7 points, is a really fantastic book.

The first habit, "Be Proactive," is all about taking responsibility over your life. It's about no longer finding a scapegoat on which you can blame each and every shitty thing that happens to you. While you can't influence your external environment, you can influence what you do, and how you react, in response to them. It teaches you to stop playing the victim and to start taking control.

When I read this I was really inspired. My mood lifted almost immediately, and I experienced what for me can only be described as near-mania. I walked around with my head held higher, and I felt as though I had a new power that I didn't have before. I didn't have to just sit back and accept my fate in life. Wah wah I lost my job and all this other crap - so what? While I didn't have the ability to just snap my fingers and have everything be perfect, I had the ability, nay, the responsibility, to not just sit around and be helplessly bummed about it. It was in that moment that I wrote part 1.

Much like with most new and exciting things, the novelty wore off quite quickly. I realized that telling yourself that you refuse to be sad is much easier than actually refusing to be sad. After all, how can you really just change the way you naturally react to something? You can't help how you feel.

So I've realized it's not as easy as I thought. But even though I'm not as elated as I was 2 weeks ago, even though the light at the end of the tunnel is slightly further outside my grasp, I'm not giving up. I keep trying to train myself to think more positively and to keep a mindset of motivation to do better, not one of "woe is me."

So we'll see how it goes. I'm definitely someone who enjoys the occasional good wallow in self-pity, so it's going to be a struggle for me to really try and always look on the bright side. But people under much higher levels of duress have made it happen (the book gives some particularly amazing examples), and hopefully, so can I.

I'll drink to that! (Kidding)

My latest obsession

This isn't even an exaggeration. I really do spend a lot of time looking at pictures of Martha Stewart's chow chow. His name is Genghis Khan. AND LOOK AT HIM. I stole all these pictures from Martha's blog, which is not a thing I would ever have thought I would read seeing as I am craft-inept.

Oh there he is, just enjoying TEA AT THE PLAZA IN HIS NAPKIN BIB.

More hanging out at the Plaza before Westminster. Where he won best in breed, OBVIOUSLY, because how could any chow be better than this one? HOW GREAT IS HE?!?!?!

Tra la la, Genghis Khan just waiting to start taping the Today Show.

Tell me this is not the best dog you have ever seen in your life. Tell me you do not want to just hug him because HE IS SO FUZZY. I cannot even deal with this. You know that video that was all up on everybody's Facebook last week with Kristen Bell completely flipping her shit over the prospect of meeting a sloth? Well first of all, my roommate is also obsessed with sloths and is verging dangerously close into Kristen Bell territory when she talks about maybe hanging out with some in Costa Rica later this year. But more importantly, I feel like I would be that way if I were to meet Genghis Khan. The dog, not the Mongolian leader.

Okay, I'm done now. Not really.

Sweatpants clubbing

When I was in college, a sorority sister and I came up with the idea for what we called "sweatpants clubbing."

The idea behind sweatpants clubbing was simple. Clubbing is fun, because dancing and generally being foolish to pop and hip hop music is fun. But there are a few parts of clubbing that are not fun. They are:

1) Wearing heels and hurting your feet
2) Wearing some kind of cute outfit that ends up riding up or falling down or boobs popping out or bra straps showing or SO TIGHT NEED AIR or the myriad other things that can go wrong when you try to look nice (just me?).
3) Gross guys coming up behind you and trying to sketch all up in your business when all you want to do is jam out
4) See #3. It bears repeating how annoying this is.
5) Cover charges, yuck
6) Drinks are expensive

Sweatpants clubbing, you see, gets rid of all of these problems. Sweatpants clubbing is girls only, so there are no creepsters. It is completely free, as it takes place in the basement of our sorority house, and you wear whatever you feel comfortable in. Hence, the sweatpants. You can drink whatever you want to, or not drink at all.

It was glorious. But that was then, and this is now, and I don't have a sorority house basement in to host sweatpants clubbing anymore.

Until I discovered this: Dance Dance Party Party

DDPP is where a group of women get together and dance for an hour or so. That's it. There are only 3 rules to DDPP:

1) No boys
2) No booze
3) No judgment

They recommend that you wear workout clothes since you'll get sweaty, and they seem to mean it when they say "no judgment" which means you can bust out your best (or worst) moves and no one will care.

There's one in New York and I am kind of dying to try this. Sweatpants clubbing returns! I can't wait.