The Experience

I read somewhere recently that you should spend money on experiences, not material goods. Well, today I tried.

See, a while back, I did what every poor college kid does, and bought the cheapest stuff I could find at the grocery store. I bought corn tortillas, which ended up being a baaad decision really. What can you do with corn tortillas? They're dry, flaky, and mostly flavorless. Anyways, after a few failed food attempts, I decided I would worry about them later and just focus on my crazy week. So the weekend rolls around, and my mind drifts back to those tortillas...

I started researching recipes, finally landing on taquitos. It felt like a perfect opportunity to cook for the house--and an opportunity to try out a new recipe after my brilliant success with Thai peanut sauce the other day. Because I'm cheap, I decided to go with the corn and black bean recipe and forego the chicken. I already had black beans, so voila! I was in business.

Well, I had to go grocery shopping to pick up some extra stuff: corn, cilantro, garlic, onion, cheese, and guacamole. I also bought a dessert because why not? Family dinner deserves a dessert. I splurged a bit. Anyways, my roommate Alicia and I started our marathon in the kitchen, chopping the onion, garlic, and cilantro. prepping the corn and beans, sweating the garlic and onion, etc. Well, we get to the step in which we had to roll the taquitos and my tortillas just are not cooperating. No matter how hard we tried, they wouldn't hydrate or would just pathetically split. I googled technique after technique and didn't have any luck. Laid out in the pan, they were kinda hideous. Here I had spent all this time and money to try to make a nice dinner and I thought it would be ruined by a bunch of stupid tortillas.

During the prep, I kind of taught Alicia how to dice onions and prep garlic for the first time. We had a lot of good laughs at being domestic. And when I started freaking out, Alicia simply told me that we still had dessert and that McDonald's was just down the street. She even insisted on setting the table, lighting a candle, and putting up the flowers that Katelyn brought home from work. It was a full blown family dinner.

So the taquitos come out of the oven, and while some of them looked a bit rough, they tasted pretty dang good. We also had salsa, sour cream, and guac which helped. After serving after serving of taquitos and a strawberry cheese danish, we agreed that it had all worked out. Not to mention the sheer hilarity of the things that are said when you sit us all down together at one table. Afterwards, Alicia and I cleaned up and did all the dishes, all while joking that perhaps we would not completely fail in being able to complete domestic tasks in our future.

Hell yeah I splurged. Hell yeah it was nerve wracking to think that dinner would fail. And hell yeah it was an awesome experience. To be entirely honest, tonight was one of the best days of my summer so far. Forget my frustrating morning at work, the exhaustion, the tough week ahead. Today I watched a lot of soccer, drank a lot of tea, and spent a lot of time over onions, a hot stove, and a hotter oven.

The experiences are what we want. It's not necessarily the food, but the people you share it with that make a perfect meal. It's not the movie, but the people you get to lean into during the scary parts. It's not the financial cost of taking a trip to Scotland, or moving to Seattle, it's the thrill, the sights, the sounds, the adrenaline, the feeling you get when you hold up that pair of hiking boots that took you 98 miles across the West Highland Way along Loch Lomond.

Spend money on the experiences? don't mind if I do.

Be well. Share your happiness. Live the epic life.

-Megan

Relaaaaax

Hello Reader!

I got back home last night around 8, riding in style with a very dear friend of mine who was driving a 2011 Malibu.  Talk about luxury!

I'm so glad to be on break, it was definitely needed even though I wasn't under a lot of stress or deadlines towards the end.  Still, simply being in such close proximity to so many people causes stress.  I feel like I can breathe a little bit now.

I was just excited to spend a night in my nice warm bed, but things got a little hairy.  I was restless all night and pretty much thrashed for a few hours before finally getting up, grabbing a container of frosting, and heading downstairs to fall asleep on the couch.  I was definitely stuck in my head and so desperate to get the night over with that I turned on Jersey Shore in an effort to numb my brain.  Jersey Shore for Pete's sake!  Hey, if I have one good thing to say about that show, it makes me feel better about myself.  I knew I would feel better in the morning, but I just had to get there.

I finally fell asleep, woke up, went shopping with my mom, and am now sitting on my bed listening to music and drinking some cranberry apple tea.  I can feel myself getting progressively more stressed simply by being home, which is unfortunate since I'm really quite glad to be here.  It's just full of different stressors to which I haven't be exposed or really needed to adapt to.

It's a bummer, but the good thing is that it will get better eventually.  I think there's this weird paradox in human thought where we think negative things will last forever and positive things are fleeting.  I remember times of feeling so good and then having the thought of "This isn't going to last." How unfortunate to think that I never remember having that thought when things hit the fan.  The truth is that things do and will get better, even because of simple little things like the sunrise, and how wonderfully comforting to know that the sun WILL rise.

So I'm going to continue trying to relax and be calm, and maybe I'll watch a movie that will make me cry (since I feel ridiculously emotional now for no reason whatsoever) and later tonight I'll probably work on penning some things.

Oh but I'm listening to a Ryan Farish playlist at the moment.  He's absolutely wonderful and you must check him out.  His music makes me feel better about humanity.  Have a great evening, and smile!

-Megan

Walking on Diamonds

'Ello Reader,
Sorry for the long delay--it's been kind of a crazy week.  I'm actually sitting here redoing my hair since it's looking a little minty green.  It's supposed to be purple... it turns out blue.  Don't ask.  So I'm sitting here, a bit bored, I haven't blogged in about a week, and it's a good way to procrastinate on my homework.  OH!  I'm going to a conference from Friday to Sunday and I am super excited about it!  So yep, that's what is new with me.

Hmm, so let me talk about thought and the mind for a bit.  Our minds are incredibly powerful and incredibly mysterious.  I mean, why else would a branch of psychology (cognitive) be dedicated to the mind and how it works?  We can slip into altered states of consciousness through things like meditation or hypnosis, which are really solely due to the mind. Our minds can also cause physiological symptoms, especially those associated with pain or anxiety.  There's a whole slew of psychosomatic disorders out there, and I don't know about you, but stress and worry wreak havoc on my body.  I especially carry stress in my shoulders and as someone put it quite eloquently to me, "You have knots on your knots!"  So yeah, it's a little crazy to think something so intangible can manifest thought and worry into physiological symptoms.

What I think is a little bit cooler though, is the concept of attention.  If we don't pay attention to something, especially something visual, it's as if it doesn't exist!  I find it both interesting and a bit freaky to think about the extent of what we miss on a daily basis, simply because we're not paying attention.  The other night, I was walking back to my dorm sometime around midnight. The temperature had just dipped below freezing and the very thin layer of moisture left on the street and sidewalk was beginning to freeze.  I wasn't really paying attention, but when I looked down everything seemed to sparkle.  It was as if I was walking on diamonds.  It was the most beautiful thing I had seen in quite a while,  though I must admit it was rivaled by the hoar frost we've had on the trees for the last two days.  Stunning. Here's a photo my friend took of that by the way.  I feel so lucky to be living in such a beautiful place.

I think I was lost in thought before I noticed the sidewalks and roads.  I love just sitting around and thinking.  It's why I kind of like blogging--it forces me to organize and summarize my thoughts.  I think a lot of people enjoy thinking, and especially having the time to think, but what gives thought it's value?  It is valuable because we enjoy it? or do we enjoy it because it's valuable?  Also, does the value of thinking come from the sheer fact that we do it and enjoy it, or from our explicit application into our daily lives?  I'll leave that last one up to you. Whatever answer you come up with, I'm sure it will be epic.

So, go enjoy a few minutes of that epic thinking, but don't forget to look down--you never know when you'll find a diamond.

Please be well and be excellent!  Have a good week!

-Megan