In my 30's

Yesterday I graduated to the 30-34 age bracket. Leading up to my birthday I was a little sad that my 20's are over... but then I realized that I can still act as ridiculous as I always do. Age is just a number, and I definitely feel younger than I have in a long time.

It was a rainy gloomy day, but I had such a great birthday. Had some drinks and awesome Nutella pizza at my favorite restaurant with a few of my favorite people. My dad asked if I wanted to go to pick out Barbies for my birthday present (we didn't but I'm seriously considering). I heard from all of the amazing people in my life. It was a great day.

When I was younger I never really thought about getting older. I sure as hell didn't think about what I would do when I was an adult... which I guess I seriously am now. The only thing I really ever cared about was that I was having fun. That was always my priority. And while "having fun" has changed it's form, it is still a priority to me.

I hope you all are having as much fun as I am!

(If not...what are you waiting for?)

Hunger Pains

I'm not talking about physical hunger, like "I haven't eaten in hours and my stomach is growling". I'm talking about the hunger pains you get when something in your life is missing, or maybe a lot of things in your life are missing. How do you feed that hunger for love from others, a career you love, a life you love? SHOPPING!

I used to shop my hunger pains away and the degree of my shopping sprees were based on how miserable I was at the time. I think I figured out why so many people buy so many things. Getting new things fills the void.

When I was living in Atlanta I was at the height of hating my life and thus my bank account suffered. I hated my job and felt like I was stuck there because I had signed a year lease on my apartment and made the move from Savannah to Atlanta. I made a commitment to my employer. Plus, I wasn't ready to move home yet, which was pretty much my only other option at that point. I had no serious love interests and within months of moving to ATL all of my friends had serious boyfriends and became much less available. That was the first time in my life that I was truly lonely.

So I shopped. I bought clothes, shoes, more shoes, furniture, and sporting goods for my new hobbies to fill the alone time I had so much of. No wonder I was always running low on funds. I was shopping every week, several times a week. I would buy new things and then lose interest in them rather quickly. Like with clothes. I wore something a few times at the most and then didn't like it anymore. So I would go out and buy new.

Fast forward to now and I feel the exact opposite about most everything in my life. Aside from the fact that I'm completely and totally single, I am really happy about everything else that is going on in my life. I am finally (!!!!!!!) doing something that I love and that I actually think will make a difference in people's lives, I love where I live, I love my friends and family, and I just got a beautiful new car! And guess what I have zero urge to do? SHOP!

I'm not kidding, this is probably the happiest I've ever been in my adult life and the least I have shopped. EVER! I went shopping once at the beginning of May and bought a few things that I needed, but other than that nothing. My favorite past time is usually digging for hours in the racks at Marshall's and I haven't been there in many months.

Happiness is a work in progress and I think for a lot of people (including myself) it is something that has to be worked on constantly. Instead of buying my happiness, I am working on filling those voids with substance.

So the question of the day is if you are filling your life with stuff, what void are you actually trying to fill? 

Making Changes

So sorry for the minor interruption in my posting last week. I had a lot going on in my head that I had to work out. First of all, I was seriously considering moving in with my sister. She's moving back to NYC and needs a roommate. I had to make a decision rather quickly because if I wasn't going to move in she had to find a roommate. I thought about it at first and was like 'am I really going to uproot my life almost on a whim?' and then I was like 'this would be a great opportunity to advance my career and help build Raw Generation.'

This was the struggle I had in my head for 5 days. I have been very comfortable here in my awesome (very spacious) apartment 6 blocks from the beach close to all of my friends and most of my family. I have spent the past few years slowly making changes so that I was less stressed out, more calm, and healthier. On the other hand, I have always wanted to live in NYC. It would definitely be fun, but very different from what I am used to.

In the business coaching program I am doing, they talk about getting out of your comfort zone so you can grow. I am realizing that maybe I am too comfortable and I need to stretch myself. So I was like 'I can just sell my car, find someone to sublet my room, put all of my stuff in storage, continue working, and move in 5 weeks!' (That sounds like a Jess type of agenda) Well, I went up to the city Friday to look at the apartment. It's such a beautiful place, however, it's small. I stood in it by myself for a solid half an hour trying to figure out if just the bare minimum of what I needed to survive and work from home would fit. Not happening. And then I looked at the "kitchen" and asked 'where the hell am I going to cook?' Not happening. And then I asked myself if I could get by without cooking as much as I do.

This was the point where I had to checkin with myself to see if this was actually right for me right now. I have been working on this blog for almost a year now. My goal in writing to all of you is to share my experiences and the things I have learned about living a healthier life. Food and cooking have been my main topics (although more recently I have broadened my scope to other aspects of living a healthy life). And more recently, I have been "cooking" and testing for Raw Generation. Can I really live somewhere that is going to be physically impossible for me to have the space to cook and prepare?

As much as I would love to tell you that I am spontaneously moving to NYC in a few weeks, I had to stick with my more logical roots, be honest with myself, and listen to my gut.

ME: 'I would love to be in the city to explore and meet new people and live with my sister.'
GUT: 'This is not right for me right now.'
ME: 'I can do all of this. Work and get all of my ducks in a row in a few weeks.'
GUT: 'I need to plan this out so that in the next year I can make a move into something that is going to fit the lifestyle I have created and want to maintain.'

So there you have it. I am going to stay where I am and set myself up so that in the next year I can move into the city if that's what I still want to do. Everything has been changing so fast lately. I have a hard time keeping up with myself.

So there is a 2nd reason for my mild absence last week. I finished my first e-book. It was a 2 day writing marathon to get it to the point where it was 99% complete. I am getting it reviewed by a few people right now for some constructive criticism, and then I am going to get it posted up here on my blog as well as Amazon. I have no idea how this process works with Amazon so if any of you have any idea shoot me an email at jessicageier@gmail.com. I'm sure it's not that difficult, but any advice would be much appreciated. This is my next step... to get it selling. I'll be writing a post dedicated to explaining it when I am ready.

So, last week was hectic but super productive. I feel good about my decision and am glad that I was able to weigh the pros and cons and listen to my gut feeling. As much as I love being spontaneous, moving to the city on a whim is just not the type of thing I think I should do right now.

The moral of this story: listen to your gut!

I'M TAKING A BREAK

For the past week or so it has been a struggle to eek out my daily posts. I've been pulling whatever I could out of my ass just so that I didn't leave you all hanging. I'm assuming I'm just in a writing rut right now and I will find my flow once again. So I've decided to take a small break from writing. I need to get my head out of all the seriousness that I've been working on. Don't be alarmed if you don't hear from me until next week.

I'm signing off and going to spend some quality time with myself, my family, and my friends. Everyone should take a mental break every now and again. It's no good to be so serious all the time. Get out and enjoy the beautiful weather.

Until next week...

How much damage can you do in 36 hours?

(source)

Apparently a lot.

We had a friend's bachelorette weekend and it was by far one of the most fun weekends I've had in a long time. 10 girls in a beach house, Friday & Saturday nights, lots of beer, wine, and jello shots. We all had to bring food and supplies since it was a rental, and I made some "healthier" options- potato salad, tuna salad, watermelons and other fruit, hummus.

Guess what I ended up eating?

Cheez-its- lots of them. Potato chips and dip. Italian subs (with white bread). Peanut butter filled pretzels. I pretty much survived on snacks and refined carbs Friday night and all of Saturday until dinner at 8:30 PM, and then housed some more snacks when we got home from the bars at 2 am.

Needless to say, yesterday morning when I woke up I felt like a tornado had been tearing up my stomach. That was by far the worst I've eaten in a long time, probably since I started caring about all this stuff 2 years ago.

Time to start over. I feel like Mondays are the perfect start-over-because-I-destroyed-my-life-this-weekend day. It's literally 12:30ish right now and I haven't felt hungry until about 30 seconds ago.


We'll see how long that lasts, but I am actually looking forward to taking a partying break because the last month or so of summer weekends have really been taking their toll. This happens every summer. I go nuts for about a month and burn myself out. I'm over it! Time to get some S-H-I-T done.

This is my bold statement of the day: I am not capable of drinking like I used to and am going to take it easy for the next month (until the wedding). 

Falling in the Rain & Rolling Around in the Grass

Funny story. So Friday night we all went out for one of my bestie's birthdays at this really fun bar/club close by. I made the point of telling everyone to wear flip flops because they have an outside area with gravel (picture a camp ground with boccie ball and picnic tables). Long story short I fell in the gravel a few weeks ago because I was wearing crazy insane heels. So, I gave everyone fair warning.

After hours of dancing (in my flip flops) and drinking prosecco (yes I drink champagne when I go out) we were about to leave. The only problem was that the gusty wind turned into gusty wind + monsoon like conditions. Picture a hurricane minus the dangerous flying debris.

BEFORE

On the count of three we all sprinted to the car. I took a graceful leap off the curb to try to hop over the river puddle that was not draining into the over-flooded sewer. Well, have you ever miscalculated how deep something is? Haha, I did. I thought the puddle was about a foot shallower than it really was which sent me palms first, fully submerged under water. (OMG I can't even type I'm laughing so hard). I stood up and looked down at myself in complete shock that in 15 seconds I went from being doused with raindrops to looking like I jumped in a pool. Makeup running down my face, perfect hair turned stringy mess. COMPLETELY SOPPING WET!

AFTER

(PS...I'm almost 30 years old. When does ridiculous S-H-I-T like this stop happening?)

And the kicker was that my flipflops came off and were floating down the street. AWESOME! So apparently flip flops do not protect you from falling when you are falling into water. Take note of this.

So not only did I get wet, but so did everyone else with me as we were all paralyzed with laughter while they were trying to collect me and my things. I wish we got it on video so you all could've seen it. PRICELESS!

Anywho, when we got back to the house I got the great idea that since we were already soaked we might as well go play in the rain. And by play I mean roll around in the grass like we were 6 years old. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND IT. 

When was the last time you played in the rain? Or took off your shoes and sat in the grass. If you are a beginner I would work up to rolling around. You might go into shock.

Anyway, it was so refreshing (not to mention fun) acting like I was a child again. Maybe that's why people drink? So they can feel okay about letting loose. If you watch kids play, and then watch adults drink, sometimes it's pretty similar.

The moral of this story...feed your inner child and have fun. There is no point in eating healthy if you aren't having fun at the same time. Assignment: take off your shoes, go outside, lay in the grass, then start rolling around (rain optional).