Been Gone So Long

I feel as if summer passed me swiftly by, and I’m left wondering where the past 3 months went. I’ve been working full time at the tea shop, and loving almost every minute of it. I had to drop my summer classes, but I feel like I made the right move. I’ve come away with a renewed appreciation for my current college enrollment and am more than thrilled to return to school at the end of September. I’ve learned more about tea than I ever thought there was to know, and I haven’t even gotten past the tip of the iceberg. My personal favorite tea of the moment is a variety of oolong. A lovely orchid top note and a smooth, sweet finish. It’s divine.

My body and brain are itching for fall to make it’s first appearance. I’m looking forward to my classes and to cooler weather. Sweaters, wool socks, crunchy leaves underfoot, pumpkin, squash, cinnamon sticks, cloves, and the unmistakable scent of autumn. I can’t wait.

I plan on working more on my crafty projects this fall. Time to bead, work with wire, and maybe explore some deconstruction and creation with old watches, skeleton keys, and cameos. Steampunk literature, Victorian mourning jewelry, and a few varieties of feldspar are my current inspirations.

Cuppa Good Things

I accepted a new job with a tea company that is opening a store in my city. Training and team building has been fun so far, and I think I’m really going to enjoy working for this company. I’m a huge tea nerd so the chance to learn more about it and have fun with customers while doing so is awesome.

I’m taking a French course this summer to catch back up and finish my GEC requirements for my undergraduate degree. I feel a bit overwhelmed by the teaching style, but I think it is helping my comprehension. C’est trés difficile, mais bon pour moi.

I’m trying to be more diligent about keeping up with schoolwork and house work and balancing out the various areas of my life that seem to feel overwhelming at times. The more I stress out the more I seem to wreck my life, so I’m really trying to keep myself in line.

Moblogging

Now that I have mastered the skill of moblogging, I will tackle photoblogging tomorrow. I’m so excited. This iPhone has come in very handy. Yay creative outlets!

Progress

It has been a few weeks since I started following my Naturopath’s suggestions. I’m excited at my progress and the changes in my body.

I joined a gym and started cardio and strength training 3-4 days a week, with a goal of 5 in mind. That had been something I’d talked about doing but never followed through with until now. My body is still adjusting, and I’m pretty sore, but I’m also very out of shape, so I know it will get better in the coming weeks.

I’ve been taking extra magnesium and zinc. Both of these vitamins seem to be helping with my premenstrual symptoms, well, at least the physical ones. I’m also having fewer migraines, and when I do have them they are less severe than before. I’ve also been keeping a food diary so I know exactly what I am eating and

I’m trying to incorporate more stress releaving activities in my life as well. I’m trying to be more organized with planning and follow through on school work during the summer, so I can build better habits for fall quarter.

Overall I am pleased with my progress and can’t wait to take a look after a few months and see the changes.

On The Hunt Again

I’m on the look out for a new job again, and within this week I’ve applied for 2 positions at a new tea bar/tea emporium that is opening up in my city, and received a pseudo job offer to help out at my Naturopath’s office. I would be thrilled with both.

The tea company seems like a good bet with flexible scheduling, and it’s still a privately owned company, which pleases me. I’d get to learn even more about tea and put my(if I do say so myself) excellent customer service skills to use for a company that actually appreciates them.

My Naturopath’s office is set back in a wooded section with beautiful landscaping and tons of wildlife. That would make me so happy. It’s such a calming and beautiful facility. The thing that struck me the most during the informal interview I had with the clinic’s owner, was that she said being committed to constantly improving your health was a job requirement. Who wouldn’t want that?!

I’m excited about moving on from where I am now. I’m just not as passionate about the position anymore, and feel overworked, underpaid, and unappreciated by the company. I know I know, join the club, right? I suppose it’s the curse of being Generation Y. I expect far to much out of my employer. I know how far I’m willing to go if an employer will support me and encourage growth, and it is pretty far. I’d like to see some reciprocal growth, both mine and the company’s.

Mother Nature is my MD

Next week I will be embarking on a new adventure. No, I won’t be scaling Mount Everest, or swimming the Amazon River, though at times it feels as big as those tasks. I will be entering the world of health care with active hands. In an effort to become more involved in my own health and wellness, I will be going off the grid of the American Health Care System, and into the world of Integrative Medicine.

I have an appointment with a Naturopathic Doctor on Friday. Unfortunately, in the State of Ohio, Naturopathic Physicians are not licensed, so I will continue to keep a primary physician licensed by the state for blood work and other tests that my ND won’t be able to request. The MD I will be keeping works with an Integrative Medicine center, so they won’t be prone to looking at me like I am crazy when I say I’m taking herbs as part of my treatment.

I’m really excited. I feel like I can really take control of my own health and provide good care for myself in times of sickness. Through the process of research, I feel I have been able to locate a very competent ND, and I really hope this will be a positive process. I have also learned quite a lot about health insurance and HSA’s(Health Savings Account) and the medical system in the US as a whole.

I’ve been studying herbalism in my spare time for over a year now, and I love the learning process, so I see this as just another step in the right direction. I’ll be posting about my experiences and what works and doesn’t work for me, as well as my impressions of  Alternative Medicine as a whole.

For The Love Of Tea

Who’s that girl in the bottom of my teacup
Her wet reflection breaking over
The cracks in the glaze
She blinks, wavers, and is eclipsed as
The last amber drops slide down my throat

Buzzword: Green

The neighborhood is green, the trees are green, my eyes are green. Having woken up to realize that it’s the middle of June and I’ve yet to unpack many boxes all over the house, I attempted to put away random assorted things. I was distracted by the offer of swimming and dinner with friends. The swimming won.

Today I discovered that my new neighborhood offers curbside recycling. It’s a subscription program, but at under ten dollars a month, you can’t beat someone hauling away your bottles, bags, and cans for you.

I’ve been trying to implement little changes in the way I keep up the house. I started washing every load in cold water to help with energy consumption, and only do one or two loads a week, when I absolutely need too. I am in the process of switching all the bulbs that burn out with compact fluorescent lights. I’ve been trying to unplug appliances when they’re not in use and utilize the surplus of natural light so I don’t need to have the lights on.

Classes start again for summer quarter tomorrow. I am excited about the prospect of learning new things in a more laid back environment. I’m really looking forward to my History of Design lecture. I want to see just how interested and enthused I am about design, in a practical sense. All in all this is starting to be a brilliant summer.

Reconciliation

After a very needed session of yoga this evening, I’m retiring to bed with one particular topic on my mind. Reconciliation. In the past 8 years, maybe even a bit longer, I’ve been to each end of the spirituality spectrum and back. After forays into everything from Buddhism to Wicca, and ending up back in the Christan realm, I find myself at odds with most orthodoxy I come in contact with. I’m coming to except that this is a journey, not a destination, and that it is taking steps forward that matters.

What I’m wrestling with, is how to reconcile some traditions and practices that I still find valuable with my world view as filter through the lenses of the Biblical story and Jesus’ love. Having a crisis of faith once a week is healthy practice or me. It keeps me humble. Such is life in a relativistic culture, where one questions absolute truth every 5 seconds or so. At least I know I don’t have all the answers, I never will, and understand that it’s okay.

I’m a big fan of yoga, herbalism, meditation, environmentalism, and a few other odds and ends that frankly, don’t mesh with most people’s idea of what a Christian is. Most have a very “New Age” connotation in current culture. Really though, that is not important, since it is my journey. I realize that there are others out there, just like me, who are forging new paths for themselves and proving that faith can and does look different from the way popular media portrays it. In fact, it looks a whole lot different for me in all ways.

I had lunch with one of my professors and a few fellow classmates today. After making the comment that I was glad I wasn’t the only one who spent sleepless nights awake after reading The Flight of Peter Fromm, he looked across the table, smiled and said, “I think we have very similar histories”. Which is half true. His journey took a much more extreme venture to the fundamental, conservative, orthodox side of the religious spectrum. I don’t doubt that had my adolescence been different, I could have ventured there. It is comforting to meet other people who’ve been down this road in some facet. I seem to have made many new friends this year who have struggled with these same issues. I know in time this will all work itself out. It is true that ignorance is bliss. Once you cross that line from ignorance into knowledge, there is no going back.

Once you know, you can not forget.

Watching The Dust Settle

It’s amazing how packing up your belongings into big brown boxes and carting them from one place to another can change your perception of the way you live. Seeing things, and I do mean things as they really are, for what they really are. All the junk you accumulate suddenly isn’t so important. Those objects that matter most come clearly into view.

Having moved several times in the past 3 years, I feel in a constant state of flux. I barely become at home in my surroundings. I hope this new space will change all that. I’m making the effort to set up a physical space that will affect my disposition in a positive way, instead of just being a reflection of my mental and emotional state by the level of clutter and disarray.

Settling in to a new space really feels like purging your soul of all the gunk it collects in day to day life. I really do hope I’ve left behind some of those old habits.