Hey guys! If you missed the announcement somehow, I’ve moved the blog to a new site, Apples and Porsches.
Today’s post is a list of resources for National Eating Disorder Awareness Week. I wanted to make sure that any stragglers here got a link over. It’s too important to miss!
Posted: February 24th, 2010 under Uncategorized - No Comments.
It’s with immense pleasure that I’d like to announce my new site Apples and Porsches!
After a long time to think and some great chats with some great ladies, I’ve decided to move my digs. While it’s been an invaluable learning experience here at JTP, I set up some expectations for the site and for myself that I’ve found to be not only naive, but completely useless. I’ve gotten a bit of perspective and decided to make some changes. I needed a new home with no strings attached (at least in my mind) – somewhere I can really be myself.
So update your bookmarks!
Thank you all for sticking with me and being so awesome. I’ll see you on the other side!
Posted: February 11th, 2010 under Uncategorized - 1 Comment.
Yep, that’s me – calculator in-hand at two. An omen of nerd-dom that should have been heeded.
Today is my 26th birthday. At 4.20am (go ahead, make some jokes), February 2, 1984, I poked my lil’ peanut head into the world, stuck my tongue out at my mother, and promptly became a joyous pain in everyone’s ass. It’s been a good ride so far.
Every birthday I like to take a look at the previous year and see what I’ve done, how far I’ve come. This is what Year 25 held for me:
In all, it’s been a fairly quiet year. We’re so far away from our family and friends out here that not much happens in my life. Even my introspection has come to a standstill (which bothers me immensely). A lot of amazing and huge life changes happened last year, for which I am immensely grateful to the universe, yet I look back and feel that I could have done so much better on a personal level. I could have done better by myself, could have been more in touch with and respectful of myself.
Here’s to Year 26.
Posted: February 2nd, 2010 under observation, personal - 7 Comments.
Hey loyal awesome people! I know you’ve all been dying to see more in my little space since I’ve been on vacation. Hopefully those Mexico pics will satisfy your voyeuristic needs. But! There is a little bit of temporary bad news.
While I was away, I had a heart to heart with my momma and realized exactly how much I do in a day that’s not necessarily what I want to do and how stressed out that makes me. In light of that, I’ve decided to take a break from the blogsphere for a bit (blogcation?). Let’s call it until February after my birthday. That means there’ll be no postage here and no wholestyle roundups until I get back.
No, I’m not quitting. Yes, I’ll be working on other sekrit projekts in the meantime.
Here’s what I’ll be working on (besides, yanno, work):
Sound like a plan? Awesome. I’ll see you back here in February, then! And, just to tide you over, here’s a hair update for you:
Posted: January 9th, 2010 under management, personal - 1 Comment.
Over the holidays, my brother and I traipsed down to New Mexico to meet up with my mom, her boyfriend, and his son in anticipation of a week-long sunstravaganza on the beaches of San Felipe, Mexico. Whoohoo! We ate soooooo many tacos and drank soooooo many margaritas. We fished, we camped, we shopped. And no one got kidnapped, stabbed, robbed, or contracted Montezuma’s Revenge. Hooray!
You can flip over to my Flickr page to see the other good ones (the not-so-great and the family pics stay safely on my hard drive, thank you). And keep watching this space! Got a short announcement coming up soon (nothing terrible special, I promise).
Posted: January 8th, 2010 under personal, travel - 3 Comments.
Main Entry: abide
Pronunciation: \ə-ˈbīd\
Function: verbtransitive verb 1 : to wait for : await
2 a : to endure without yielding : withstand b : to bear patiently : tolerate
3 : to accept without objectionintransitive verb 1 : to remain stable or fixed in a state
2 : to continue in a place : sojourn
This year has been a time of change for me. I moved to a new country, established a home, planned a wedding/got married, cared for a dying car, had a kitty crisis, joined a gym, started a blog, and founded a philosophy. That adds up to a lot of stress on my part; historically, something I’ve not been very good at handling.
But this year, it’s been different. I magically found myself able to roll with (most) punches instead of freaking out (although I did fall into hystronics occasionally). Wedding details blew up, and I managed to ignore my inner control freak to smooth them over, and I never turned into a Bridezilla (even after people told me I’m totally that kind of person). I’ve gotten a stronger grip on my irrational jealousy, as well as my desperate need to please other people. While it’s not all perfectly erased, my tendencies toward despair are melting away. Maybe it’s maturity, maybe it’s short-term memory loss. Either way, I’m welcoming the change.
And thus my word of the year is abide.
Not in the I’m-a-doormat kinda way, but in that The-Dude-Abides kinda way.
I’ve learned the art of abiding.
Posted: December 31st, 2009 under best of, observation, personal - 2 Comments.
You guys can probably already guess this one; I talk about her enough that you guys probably think we’re “special friends”. My favourite new person this year is Birdie.
I met her through Twitter (after stalking her site and twitterfeed for about a month) during the setup period of my blog. I’d been bitching and moaning about how very little I know about CSS, and she swooped in with DMs and eventually email to help me get on my feet. Sweet, right?
We got to talking one day after exchanging personal email/Gchat info, and I explained my wholestyle idea to her. Through a series of conversations spanning days, she helped me put my nebulous feelings into words, effectively translating all my crazies into a coherent and real philosophy (which you can read here). I couldn’t ask for a better partner in crime!
After getting past all the initial “are you a crazy person from the internet” weirdness, both of us opened up and we started talking every day about just about anything. Turns out we get along awesome (although that’s not to say we haven’t butted heads (cos there’ve been some doozy days)). We bounce creative ideas off each other, vent when shit’s fucked up, confide our fears, get each other out of “the hole”, crack each other up, drool over fashion we can’t afford, and generally wish we didn’t live on completely opposite sides of the continent.
So yeah.
Birdie,
Thank you for doing everything you do; I couldn’t have done any of this without your help, encouragement, and persistant ass-kicking. Thank you for sharing your fears with me and listening to mine. Thank you for making me giggle at completely immature things like poop and farts. Thank you for enduring my obsession with Robert Downey, Jr. Thank you for reminding me that I’m amazing when I feel the least worth the dirt I’m made of. Thank you for lending me writing space when I had none. Thank you for sending me links to Bloggess articles and LOLcats all day. Thank you for letting me comfort you as best I can when you’re sad. Thank you for valuing my opinion. Thank you for putting trust in me.
Like everything in our lives, we’ve had ups and downs in our short time knowing each other, but I think every minute has been supremely worth it.
Thank you for being my Super Twin (or Borg Sister, whichever it is today).
xxxooo,
Posted: December 28th, 2009 under best of, bloglove, personal - 3 Comments.
You may remember a while back when Gala Darling raved about the Canadian miracle vitamins that she bought while in Toronto. It seems like everyone, including me and the lovely Ginger (who reviewed the Daily Greens), hopped on that bandwagon and rushed to check out Genuine Health’s line of supplements for themselves.
Now, I’ve had a long history of un-professionally diagnosed mood disorder (which runs in my family) and Canada’s got long, dark winters, so I thought I’d give their happy-pill formula a shot, Multi+Joy. Here’s the breakdown of “special” ingredients from their site:
Selenium: Clinical studies show Selenium supplementation can improve anxiety and depression.
Chromium: Studies show Chromium supplementation can improve symptoms of depression and control carbohydrate cravings.
Magnesium: Proven to help mood disorders including bipolar, chronic fatigue syndrome and PMS.
Folic Acid: Studies show Folic Acid may have a beneficial effect on mood-regulating neurotransmitters.
Vitamin B12: Those with mental disorders have been found to be low in B12. Leading health experts recommend 800 mcg of Folic Acid and 1000 mcg (B12).
Vitamin D: Studies show 400-800 UI can improve mood during winter months. Also proven to positively influence attention, motivation, and alertness.
Sounds pretty good, right? And it’s actually been fairly great. Coming up to the end of the bottle, I’ve noticed the following things:
I’ve been on SSRIs before (several years ago) because I was crying at cat food commercials and any not-100%-positive comment would send me into a two-day spiral. Not a happy place to be. But I went off them because I hated feeling so muted all the time. Everything about me had been turned down a few notches, including my good feelings and perfectly normal emotional reactions. I couldn’t stand feeling like my natural highs and lows had been wiped out in favour of a grey in-between. So I quit.
And I noticed a slight resemblance with the Multi+Joy, but only in one very specific way: I can’t cry. I know that sounds great, but it’s kind of not. I still have the wonderful highs, I’m able to let small/medium things go much easier, I’ve got more emotional control. But there are certain things that should make you cry. Like little old ladies in the mall cooing over their baby grandkids, puppies and kittens snuggling each other, getting your feelings hurt by something meaningful, missing your SO/mommy/best friend. Since I’ve been taking these vitamins (and I just noticed this recently), I’ll get the upwelling of emotional response, but there’s no release. It’s very frustrating.
So that’s weird. I’m not sure I’ll keep taking these, at least not at the two-pill-a-day dose. I love that I’m not muted while getting the intended benefit; even Mr. Man has noticed that I’m not sad anymore. But is it worth giving up being able to tear up a little when it’s totally normal? I’m not sure yet. I’ll keep you posted.
Posted: December 24th, 2009 under health, personal - 4 Comments.
My best project of 2009? It’s a two-way tie between starting Jaka’s Tea Party and rolling out the Wholestyle Manifesto. Which works out since they’re inter-related anyway.
Back at the launch of this site, I wrote a little intro explaining how I got here. I’ll repost the important parts for those too lazy to go back and find it (including me):
Enter Doe Deere and the ever-popular Gala Darling. Cliche by now, I know. I stumbled on these lovely ladies completely by accident and it opened up a whole new wing of the internet for me. So colourful! So positive! So hip! So sassy! I was totally agog. And so I dove deeper and deeper, discovering so many fashionable nooks and explosive crannies (my, but that sounds dirty, doesn’t it) that my head nearly imploded. What a wonderful section of blogsphere I’d stumbled upon! I fell in love.
Then the pieces matched up and I thought, “Hey…I should do this!”
[...] Jaka’s Tea Party is a work in progress. I’m still searching for a solid theme to follow and a gajillion other things too boring or terrifying (for me) to mention. I have no set posting schedule, no backlog of articles, no lists of topics, no general plan whatsoever as of yet. But it’ll come. The best advice I’ve read so far has been from the inspiring Ms. Nubby Twiglet – “While preparation is great, perfection is impossible. Waiting isn’t doing you any favors.” It’s hard for me to swallow, I’ll admit, but I’m taking baby steps toward changing my neurotic need for everything to be justright before I unveil it.
Six months later, I’ve gone through some good times and some tough times, finding out a lot about myself in the process. I love that I have this little space in the web, but I often wonder why I do it. There’s a lot of introspection that goes on every day to see where I want to take it, along with all kinds of metacognition about blogging.
The wholestyle project is actually the seed of my entire foray into the web and the impetus for this site. I wanted to come up with a term for what I feel is the key to true style: knowledge and culture. I’m so freaking passionate about this idea and I’m having a hell of a time getting the word out. I want to shout it out from the rooftops, hand out flyers like a weirdo on the street, send postcards to strangers. Thankfully, Miss Birdie has been absolutely incredible in her support and her help has gotten lots of amazing people to hear the gospel.
The dream is to have a network site where people can come to exchange ideas, share information, chitchat, write, and generally just create a community for the philosophy. With any luck, my purchase of a supersekrit domain name will pay off in the next month or so and we’ll be able to move forward with the project. I wish I had more to write about this, but I find that I have trouble putting the emotions into words when it comes to my passions (something I’ll have to work on).
Thanks to all of you for supporting me and my wacky ideas. Yes, I struggle with it, but it’s wonderful people like you reading this right now that keep me at it and sorting out the kinks. I’m glad you’ve all buckled in for the ride.
Posted: December 21st, 2009 under best of, personal - 1 Comment.
Only six more shopping days ’til Christmas! Thankfully, the wholestyle roundups are blissfully free of stress-inducing holiday posts about parties (attending and hosting) and gifts (giving and receiving). Dive into this batch of articles and take some time for you!
And as an administrative note, Jaka will be out of town until January 5th, so there won’t be any roundups until the second full week of the new year. I know, I know, you’re all heartbroken. But there’ll be great pictures of Baja when she gets back.
Arts & Entertainment
DIY
Education
Fashion
Food
Positive Life
Sexuality
Travel
Work, Money & Organization
Posted: December 18th, 2009 under bloglove, wholestyle - 2 Comments.
