New Year, New Vibes

 There are few things I love more than the good energy that is gained through organization and mindfulness. When the clock turned 2016, it wasn't like I had time, or even a second, to pause and take a breath. I had things to do and accomplish right away, and a limited amount of time in which to get them done. So, I had to jump right in to 2016, and make sure I was adequately organized in order to keep myself together. With that in mind, these are some of the practices and products that have been keeping me on track going into the new year, and tricking me into feeling like I have my life together.

1. A Weekly Calendar-- I picked up this monthly and weekly calendar book by Sugar Paper from Target on January 2nd, when I realized that my old one was (literally) outdated. It has a place for your Monthly work goals, financial goals, personal goals, and important dates. In the weekly section, it has spaces for your top three most important things to accomplish, a list of calls you need to make, a to do list, a to email list, a to buy list, a don't forget category, and a "this week's goal" space. This might seem excessive, but in the three weeks I've been using it I've found that just writing things out helps to make it seem so much more manageable. Even the fullest of weeks, the ones with so many things you feel like you might as well not even try, are manageable.This is helping me to not only keep my plans and meetings straight, but keep on task with my greater goals in life.

2. Meditation and Yoga-- I've been doing each a few times a week, and I can't tell you how much it's been helping. It's so easy to say, "no, I don't have time for yoga today, I have way too much to do!" But it doesn't really help. I've realized that those are just lies we tell ourselves. We always have time. And if we don't spend those fifteen minutes doing yoga, chances are we'll find another way to spend those minutes on something much less productive somewhere throughout the course of the day. So you might as well just bite the bullet and make the time for it. I do yoga in the morning on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, and meditate a few nights a week right before I fall asleep. I feel so much better and more centered on the days I choose to begin with a simple fifteen minute yoga video.

3. Himalayan Salt Lamp-- I know it's very new age hipster of me, but I recently caved and bought one. (And not for $40 from Urban Outfitters either. If you're thinking of buying one, I'd recommend checking out Home Depot or The Christmas Tree Shops, because I got mine for $19.99.) I'm sure you've heard all about how the negative ions make things better for both your body and the energy around you. But I can attest to the fact that it actually works. I feel more energized when I'm around it, I'm sleeping better, and the air feels purer and cleaner. Anyway, if the scientifically proven health benefits aren't tempting enough, it's guaranteed to look really nice in any room.

 I hope you found this blog post as enlightening as I have found these practices and products lately. (Pun definitely intended.) I'm loving my bedroom space especially, and even though Mercury is Retrograde, I feel on top of things. I'm feeling balanced and ready for the new year and new challenges ahead. I'm not quite sure if that's all the negative ions talking, or the fact that I actually have time to make myself a cup of tea and enjoy it these days, but I'm happy about it nonetheless.

And who knows, maybe trying a few of these things will help you feel that even though it's a new year, it doesn't have to be the same old, same old.

Namaste, I suppose.

 -Fran

N e w // Y e a r

2 0 1 6

 Tonight my life felt like the end of The Holiday, which is all I've ever really dreamed for my life to be. My entire life, well, my entire adolescence really, I've dreamed for my life to feel, be, and look like a movie. And it was only recently that I realized that life isn't like that. It's messy. It's hard. People get hurt, things don't turn out the way you expect them to, accidents happen and stuff just sucks. But you choose to forgive, you choose to get back up, you choose to keep going, and one day, you realize that you left all of the bad stuff in the past.

 2015 was a year of moving on. Moving forward, taking no prisoners, and working my butt off until I got what I wanted. No one gave it to me...I worked for it. And so did the people I surrounded myself with. I'm lucky that in 2015, I found people who dream as big as I do, and are willing to work just as hard to get it. We are all on the same path-- this path to greatness, this path to dreams coming true and our lives turning out like the movies we see in our heads. And I think finding these people who dream just as big and work just as hard has helped me on my path. Because now I don't feel so alone anymore. I used to think that I was "on my own path." And I thought that meant my life was going to be a lonely one, a solitary journey if you will. But this year I learned that not only does that not have to be the case, if things keep going the way they have been...it most certainly won't be.

 Last night I stumbled upon this word: synchronicity. It is, according to the ever-trustworthy internet: the simultaneous occurrence of events that appear significantly related but have no discernible causal connection.  

 It is essentially saying that we assign meaning where there is none. But sometimes, there is meaning. I think the word synchronicity is cynical. (Say that five times fast.) Maybe I'm just nostalgic and overtired, but I think it's beautiful, the vulnerability of allowing yourself to feel. Over the course of 2015 I kept a jar of memories. Anytime something significant, fun, or particularly noteworthy happened, I wrote it down on a little slip of paper, remembering to include the date. This morning, on the first day of the New Year, I read through them all for the first time since I wrote each of them, some from January 1st, some from December 25th. There was no order, so I frequently pulled slips from random months. One from January, one from August. One from April, one from September. May, August. October, February. Seeing an entire year of my life compiled into such a small space and juxtaposed with no chronology made me realize how much really happened in the last 12 months. So many significant events, non-events, moments, friendships, relationships, mishaps, and joy. It was overwhelming to read a slip of paper from January in which I talk about finishing my first short film, and then in the next read about how I had just pitched Overdue to the library board and it had been unanimously approved. The hopeful ones made me the most emotional. It was like reading a beloved book when you already know the ending. It's not boring, but happy. You know what's going to happen, but you keep reading anyway, because it's so sweetly satisfying. It's weird to say that I felt that about my own life today. Weird, but cool. So maybe this is synchronicity in action, and I'm a silly, sappy, hopeless romantic who is bound to be disappointed by the random and uncaring nature of the universe. 

If that's the case, I may be hopeless, but I'm still hopeful. 

Happy 2016. 

 -Fran

This Week [#4: Coming Together]

 Though not technically the fourth week in this series, it's my fourth week of making this style of blog post. Sometimes the weeks get away from you, which is why I'm trying to make the effort to work on this each day of the week, which ensures the mindfulness I'm after.

 Monday: Treating yourself to a self-love day. Starting the day with a bath, writing some essays, and taking a long walk that takes you both to where you've been and where you are. It's a weird, metaphorical day.

 Tuesday: The day when you breathe a sigh of relief at all of the "FINALLY"'s coming your way. FINALLY finding the perfect Christmas presents for the people in your life who deserve it so much. FINALLY painting again, even if it's something small, after close to a year of not picking up a brush. FINALLY seeing the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them trailer, after two years of eagerly anticipating the Eddie Redmayne led return to the Wizarding World you've loved your whole life. FINALLY working on that essay you said you'd start all day.  Finally, finally, finally.

 Wednesday: Tackling huge problems that feel like the end of the world, and realizing the people that validate and support you most aren't necessarily the people you'd expect.

 Thursday: Crushing it. Accomplishing all of the things you put off, then having a miniature Star Wars re-watch and deciding you love Han Solo (among others).

 Friday: To grandmother's house we go. Nearly freezing to death taking pictures by a lake you've loved your whole life, with someone who you've just begun to love. Realizing that it doesn't take much to make certain people happy, but what matters is that you choose to do it.

 Saturday: Finally feeling useful and watching your friends' business grow and thrive in front of your eyes. Then watching the person you love geek the hell out over Star Wars, and loving it because of how much you love him.

  Sunday: Having hard conversations, watching an iconic Diane Keaton movie, and correctly guessing the writer of said movie. (Nancy Meyers for the win.)

 It's fascinating to me how easily stressful things can become fun and beautiful when you're with the right people. I used to dread trips to see extended family. But Friday I had the best time I've ever had at my grandparent's house. Maybe it's that I've grown up, and maybe it's because of who I was with, and maybe it's both. Ordinarily, I would be horrified by a movie theater packed with overly excited nerds. Saturday, it wasn't at all scary. It was beautiful and fun and light and full of giddy happiness. This week I realized something I've suspected for a while: people are the difference.

 -Fran

This Week [#3: Family]

This holiday week/weekend was a time of figuring out what "family" means, and what it means to me. It really feels like that's what this week was about, because from beginning to end, that's the message that kept cropping up.

 Mondays: Watching great shows and having adult realizations that make you want to lay on the floor, give up, and die.

 Tuesdays: Watching The Mindy Project while you bake, which you feel like Mindy would definitely approve of.

Wednesdays: Reading great graphic novels, reuniting with friends, and going to impromptu Friendsgiving gatherings with the great best friend love of your life and getting Panera at 10 pm because you're cool like that.

Thursdays: When your favorite holiday always falls on your favorite day of the week and you have a kind of crappy day but you eat pie and hang out with a two year old who loves you despite the fact that you're imperfect and it makes it all better.

Fridays: Watching a movie about emotions with your family, crying your eyes out, and then going to bed early.

Saturdays: Telling your friends you're in aisle 20B when you're actually sitting at a table waiting for them and you didn't think they'd actually go there but they did. And then playing a card game you've been playing with your family for years and feeling like this small group of weirdos just might be your new family.

Sundays: Watching TV and napping. Eating. 

(Rinse and repeat until it's 10 pm and you're too tired to do it anymore.) Question: If it's a Sunday and you're actually a productive member of society, was it really a Sunday?

 It's weird when you get to an age where "family" is no longer the extended family you were born into, but the extended family you choose. I think how our culture defines family is arbitrary. I think we make our own families, and I think it's pointless to love people just because you're supposed to. It means a lot more when you choose them yourself, when you choose to love people despite how hard it might be sometimes. My family has become much more than my parents, siblings, grandparents, aunts and uncles. It now consists of: Starbucks employees, coffee shop owners, musicians, writers, artists and generally beautiful people (inside and out). It's people who call you on their break when you're having your third existential crisis of the week, it's people who you'd drive an hour and a half just to see for two hours, it's people who sit down and help force you to write because they get that you're having trouble doing it on your own, it's people who play cards with you in an emptying Wegmans on a Saturday night because there's nowhere else to go. These people are my family. 

 -Fran

This Week [#2: A Little Out of Focus]

Welcome to my week. It was a little out of focus.

  Mondays: When you get boring, mundane things done and it makes you feel like the king of the world... Like finishing a book you've been reading for a month, finishing season 2 of 30 Rock, cleaning your car, and doing laundry.

 Tuesdays: The great thing about going out to breakfast is that it's one less thing you have to do before you leave when you inevitably get up too late because you were having a dream about Evan Peters.

 Wednesdays: When you surprise yourself by writing essays and then the world gets very exhausting.

Thursdays: When you do yoga, draft essays and then FaceTime a two year old.

 Fridays: When you get a check in the mail that you weren't expecting, which feels like a sign from the universe that you're on the right track, so you decide to go home the long way round and experience some truly gorgeous views.

 Saturdays: When you find yourself scream-singing the new Adele album, both with your best friend in her coffee shop at too early of an hour, and alone in your car at a much later one.

Sundays: When you go to "breakfast" that ends up being both breakfast and lunch, (but not brunch) and then buy too many cozy winter items at Target, and then feel the sweet relief of knowing that your favorite character is okay.

This week, I felt a little out of focus. A little all over the place. I got things done without planning to, and other things cropped up that I didn't plan either. Basically, it was a week of the unexpected, the unplanned, but not unpleasantly so. I felt out of focus, off kilter, but life was still beautiful. I'm excited for the coming week of holidays and being reunited with people I love. Thinking about that as I go into this week. I like this blog format, because it's a place to catch my thoughts as they come. It's usually formal and polished, but it's also natural.

  -Fran

This Week [#1: This Life]

 Since I've been doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month in the month of November-- in which brave writers across the world attempt to write a 50,000 word novel in a month), and have been daily vlogging the experience, I haven't been doing my Weekly Vlogs on my YouTube channel. And while I know I will get back to doing them in December, I miss the experience. I miss the routine of capturing the little, beautiful, happy moments throughout my week, and choosing how to put them together at the end of the week. I miss telling stories with those few images. So in an attempt to continue to do this during NaNoWriMo, I've been taking snapshots everyday. Just quick pictures of what my day consisted of, in lieu of taking footage every day.

 Mondays are for binge-watching whole seasons of awesome, inspiring TV shows on your boyfriend's Netflix.

 Tuesdays are for falling asleep in your bed at 4:30 watching How To Get Away With Murder because it was rainy and windy and your lights and the Medicare commercials lulled you to sleep.

 Wednesdays are for getting up too early, accomplishing nothing, and then giving up at 2:30 pm and taking a Lush bath.

 Thursdays are for accomplishing all of the things you didn't do Wednesday, like writing 1,000 words in your favorite coffee shop, listening to music, Pinterest-ing and eating too much chocolate.

 Fridays are for running about like a crazy person, scrambling to get web series minisodes ready for upload, and cupping coffees that taste like teas.

 Saturdays are for stressful but ultimately lovely meetings of parents, and impromptu road trips to middle of nowhere places, where all there is is a sign and a general feeling.

Finally, Sunday is the day on which you feel the luckiest-- where you get to spend the day taking photos in the woods for your best friend's coffee shop, then eating Sunday dinner with those same friends and watching The Walking Dead with them. Sunday is the day to spend with family. And this week, I got to do that.

I hope you guys enjoyed this collective look at my week. It was really fun and grounding to make this blog post, as it forced me to keep track of the moments that would otherwise slip away from me. As we get closer to the holiday season, it is so easy to fall into that mindset of "just getting things done." But when we do that, we get to the end of the week and can't see anything but the productivity (or lack thereof). The beautiful, lovely, fun moments get lost in the shuffle, and we forget them. We forget to be grateful for them. I don't want to forget them. I want to stay present, mindful, and grateful for the life I get to live. And I think this blog post format is a way for me to do that. So what I guess I'm saying is-- get used to this. Because I'm going to be doing it every week from now on.

 -Fran

On Observing

 Lately I’ve been trying to observe. I feel like I’ve been “doing” less, but that’s because I’m trying to observe the life happening around me. Sometimes I have to remind myself that I’m a human being, not a human doing, and it’s enough for me to simply appreciate my life for the wholly un-whole mess it is right now. It really is a beautiful mess. Full of complete and incomplete moments. It’s the best it’s ever been, and all it’s ever been. But I’m constantly afraid that it’s on the verge of coming undone. Unraveling. Unwinding. 

 But that can’t be because for once I’m not, my life isn’t, wound too tightly. It’s loose, hanging in the balance, because there is finally a balance to hang from. There’s finally something to rely on. I’ve finally found something I’d be afraid to lose. Something worth losing. But that’s great, because at least that’s something. Something worth losing was the best thing I ever had.

 The something worth losing is the fireplace warmth on the cold fall nights with the people I love who all love each other. Playing silly games and eating decadent but simple things together. I can hear it. I can feel it. The warmth, the happiness, the laughter spilling over from one person to the next. It’s catching. This season of generosity and warmth-- I’m going to keep saying warmth because that’s what it feels like. It’s so cold out but the interactions between people, between these people, we people, are so warm and friendly and growing and catching and lively and heated and energetic. There is this nervous, fervent, bubbling energy. And I'm beginning to understand, in my twentieth year, that that's what lasting friendship consists of.

 -Fran