10 Things I’m Loving Lately | May ‘18
It's time for another edition of 10 things I'm loving lately! In which I make a list of 10 things I'm loving lately. Ready? Here:
My mom introduced me to cloudLibrary while I was home this past weekend. Three words: free audio books. I can now read while driving. Everything has changed. (I think that’s a haiku.)
If you follow me on Instagram, you know my deep love for nearby Erwin Park. Thanks to daylight savings time, my visits are no longer relegated to weekends, and I’ve spent a lot of weeknights lately trail running. It’s my favorite way to end the day by far — all the head-clearing and motion I crave after sitting at my desk for hours, but without the shin splints, and with dirt and creeks and big ol’ trees. It is the best.
I splurged on tickets to Texas Monthly Live earlier this month. An edition of the magazine, but delivered orally and visually. (And in the Paramount Theatre in Austin, to boot! Haven’t been there since I was in high school.) Writers and photographers presented the same stories that would be typically found in the magazine’s pages to an audience small enough for interaction and empathy, with live music mixed in. Some were as quirky and humorous as the stories they shared, others palpably out of their element; but their personalities and emotions each lent new dimension to their pieces. I was totally enchanted. Left wanting to write and photograph all the things forever — and even more obnoxiously in love with Texas than before, if possible.
All my friends are either getting dogs or having babies, which means the amount of dogs and babies in my life is increasing but my level of responsibility is not. I think it is obvious why this is something I’m loving.
The other day I went to Target for a snack and I left with these shoes and you know what I love them very much and do not regret the impulse purchase.
While we’re on the topic of Target finds, I love this perfume. I’m really, really picky about scents (I don’t like them too strong, I don’t like them too sweet, I don’t like them too perfume-y, etc.) but Target’s Good Chemistry collab caught my eye, and upon further smellspection, I found that I liked not one, but TWO of the scents. AND I loved the packaging. AND I loved the ingredients list. Unheard of, truly. (This is the other scent I liked, if you’re curious — if anyone wants to like, buy it for me, I would not be opposed.)
I’m awful about getting into music ruts — I like listening to music I already know, which I’m aware makes little sense when you consider that in order to know any music at all there has to be a time when you first listen to it. But my default is simply to run stuff I already like into the ground and only explore out of necessity. With that in mind, I've been making an intentional effort to avoid the slumps by exploring more music. I rely primarily on recommendations from my sister and a few choice friends, and my ears have been so happy. A few new-to-me favorites: Good Old War, Shakey Graves, Old Bear Mountain, Lake Street Dive, and Greta Van Fleet. (Hit me up with your suggestions!)
Creative juice. I’ve just had a lot of recently, for some reason. There are a number of things I could chalk it up to, probably, but the truth is that they kind of come and go, and I just do my best to enjoy and leverage it when they’re flowing. I’ve written more in the past month than I have in a long time. How much of it will actually see the light of day is TBD, but thankful to have put a bunch of words on paper.
Taking my own advice. I had to make a hard decision recently. I'm an emotional person to begin with, and I was an internal mess over it. Finally, I grabbed a pen and paper and did something I've made teenage girls I mentor do a handful of times: I wrote down a list of things I was feeling, then I went back through the list and gave each one a good old-fashioned true/false test. For example, "this sucks" was labeled "true." But I found that a few of the things I was most worked up about were, in fact, false. Or at the very least, unconfirmed. Which is of course the whole point. Truth is true, no matter how strong the feeling. It was a good reminder on multiple levels — a comfort in and of itself, and a reminder to always approach others sorting out the kind of mess that requires a T/F list with loads and loads of grace. It is hard to be human.
On a less serious note, I have always been a postseason-only baseball kind of fan, if a fan at all. It is too slow, it is too boring, I sat through one too many games growing up, idk. But my family went from fringe Astros fans to full-on when they moved to Houston, and with last season's story arc (POST-HURRICANE WORLD SERIES WIN? WHAT IS THIS, A DISNEY MOVIE CRAFTED ESPECIALLY FOR ME?), I was finally sucked in, too. I am actually, like... watching regular season baseball games of my own volition. And before you accuse me of bandwagoning, A) I do not root for Dallas teams on principle, so don't get after me about how I would have been a Rangers fan if I'd been watching the past couple years, yadda yadda yadda, and B) I am, and do not care. Although I do promise that I am the type of fan who will not jump off of it when times get hard. I'm committed. I will go down with this wagon, should it come to that. Onward!!!
That's my list — what's on yours?
