styling dilemmas…

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I chopped the hair off today…again. I went a little shorter this time because my hair grows so freaking fast and I can’t afford to get it done every six weeks (since I no longer work for a salon), as most stylists would recommend. I managed eight weeks this time around and I was DYING. So, hopefully I’ll make it that long again, with a little less pain.

I must admit, though, that I’d much rather have hair that grows too fast and is too thick than the opposite. I love watching my stylist, Laura, thin out my hair. It’s a fabulous thing. Laura is a fabulous thing. With every slice of the shears I can feel my head getting lighter and lighter and my blow dry time getting shorter and shorter.

Yep, there is nothing like a good cut and color (not dye) to make a girl feel fantastic…especially when she’s had a crappy week. I feel like a new person. And I am loving the new fringe (a.k.a. bangs).

The only problem with a haircut, in my opinion, is the fear that I won’t be able to style it the same way my stylist does. Why is it that, when you walk out of the salon, you feel so great, but when you are doing your hair the next morning, you get frustrated because you can’t round brush as perfectly, or flat iron as smoothly, or apply product as evenly as your stylist can?

Well, what I discovered in my years working at Dolce is that you can ask questions. So now, that’s what I do and I have to tell you, it has solved my problems. I know what products to use, how to blow dry, when to start using the round brush and how to finish my hair. And they can not only tell you what they are doing, but they can also give you suggestions of other ways to style your new do and recommend products to facilitate the different stylings. All of those of years I spent frustrated over a cut I couldn’t style…wasted.

***Follow up – I got it styled this morning. Fifteen minutes from wet to finished. Boys may not understand this…but that is a big deal.

Oh, and this has nothing to do with my post, but it made me laugh… Math.

the nyc dilemma…

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This will be an ongoing problem until I am accepted into an MBA program (I don’t start applying until the fall) and know that I am heading there…but in the meantime, Sarah brought me this fabulous card last Friday,

…along with Cadbury Creme Eggs and a Diet Coke (the real stuff that I can’t get on campus…with caffeine…and I needed it). The card is now hanging on my half-wall so that when I get discouraged I can look at it and think, “Someday, I will be living there.”

journal dilemma…

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I am not the most consistent journal writer, although there have been periods when I’ve been really good. I call myself an all or nothing girl. I’m either 100% or 0. The same has applied to my journal keeping habits. When I was an exchange student in Belgium, I wrote everyday, same with my mission. But otherwise, my journal writing has been limited to those times when I needed to write and get all of my feelings out so that I wouldn’t explode. Translation: they are very fragmented and negative and depressing. Now that I have my little blog, I’m pretty good about recording things. I still write in a journal. Not consistently, but when there are things that are too personal for cyberspace I go to my journal.

So, here’s the dilemma. Having written in a journal pretty consistently last year (at least during a good portion of it), I have a record of my life in glorious detail. I haven’t been sure what to do. I’ve read some passages now and then, trying to make sense of my life and what happened over the last year. In reading it, I came to the conclusion that I don’t want those memories. Not in writing anyway. I made a lot of mistakes that I don’t care to remember in excruciating detail. Isn’t the whole point of learning a lesson so that you don’t have to relive it? It’s not like I want to forget the lessons I learned. I have no desire to repeat them. But I just don’t think I need the play by play.

I know there are people out there who would shudder at the thought of destroying a personal record, no matter how painful it is. I thought I was one of those people. Yesterday, I proved myself wrong. I’ve been thinking about doing it for months, but yesterday I finally thought about it when I was able to do something about it. I destroyed my journal from last year. A relatively easy task when it’s all soft copy. Just a few clicks of the mouse, and voila. Free at last!

I wonder at people who hold on to things that are negative. Is it possible to ever get out of the swamp if you are always swimming around in the mud? Don’t mistake me for someone who wants to pretend that her life has been perfect and she has never made a mistake. I’m not trying to hide anything, but there are ways to record things that I think serve a better purpose. So, my goal now is to write the type of journal that I feel would be useful and reflects who I am.

Am I lying to myself? Does this make me dishonest? I don’t know. I don’t think so. The truth is I don’t care. What I do know is that I feel much better knowing that those words are gone, that I can never read them again. No regrets…at least not about erasing the journal.

playlist dilemma…

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Only a dilemma because it hasn’t been published on iTunes yet. And I have to give Sarah credit where it is due (it was her idea…actually, it was her playlist). And it was a great idea. However, because I think reading is such a personal experience, I tweaked it a little (partly because I didn’t have some of the songs, partly because a couple just didn’t work for me, and partly because I wanted to add a few…like I thought it just needed a little Muse and Linkin’ Park, as they were an inspiration to the author). Anyway, the playlist will be an iMix on iTunes (my first one)…twilight/new moon. And yes, this is my new obsession. These books about vampires. I’m addicted.

If you’re not an iTunes person…here’s the list as submitted to iTunes…as I was listening to it, though, I think the order may need some adjusting:

Hysteria – Muse
Surrealistic – Beth Waters
Forever Young – Youth Group
Ruled by Secrecy – Muse
The Way I Am – Ingrid Michaelson
Twilight (Live) – Shawn Colvin
Closer To You – Young Love
Sleep – Azure Ray
goodnight song – Tammany Hall NYC
Starlight – Muse
City of Blinding Lights – U2
Lying from You – Linkin Park
Daisychains – Youth Group
Breaking the Habit – Linkin Park
Gotta Have You – The Weepies
World Spins Madly On – The Weepies
Love Will Come Through – Travis
Drive Into the Storm – Stationed in France
Scratch – Kendall Payne
Naked As We Came – Iron & Wine
How We Operate – Gomez
Don’t Leave Home – Dido
Oh, It Is Love – Hellogoodbye
Strange & Beautiful (I’ll Put A Spell On You) – Aqualung
Claire de Lune – Laura Sullivan

***Update – It’s on iTunes. Go to the home page, click on Music, then on iMix, then search for twilight/new moon…(there are two, the one with a Vanessa Carlton song is not mine). Also, the Young Love and Stationed in France songs got cut (probably because I didn’t purchase them from iTunes). Such is life. But they are great songs…so you may want to download them.

delusional dilemmas…

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No, I’m not delusional…well, not completely. I think we all have a little of the delusional within us. You believe things about yourself, on occasion, that simply aren’t true. The good and the bad. And sometimes, life decides to set you straight. Sometimes it’s a delightful surprise. And sometimes it knocks the wind right out of you. But either way, the healthiest choice is probably to accept what you have learned, without argument, and move forward. Accept that you are more than you thought you were when life gives you a glimpse of the great things you don’t see in yourself. Keep breathing and move forward when you realize that there is still work to do.

And while that might be the healthy option, I happen to like this one…it’s a personal favorite. You can choose to ignore the knowledge life gives you and enter a state of denial…for me, a state where I loose myself in books…or movies or shopping (an Andersen favorite) or exercise or chocolate, all the while staving off the inevitable reality that will eventually come crashing down around me (I love being dramatic :-). Sadly, I finished reading the books (not all of them, but the two I was lost in), there aren’t any movies I want to watch, I have no money for shopping (now, there’s a reality I didn’t want to accept), I don’t feel up to exercise and, surprisingly, chocolate just doesn’t sound that good…yep, it’s that bad.

I’ve never been a fan of having the wind knocked out of me. But…I’m still breathing and that’s a good sign. So, I guess it’s time to go start living my reality…Maybe I’ll clean my apartment. Maybe I’ll start rereading Twilight. Or maybe I’ll expand on Sarah’s Twilight/New Moon playlist. Yes, that’s sounds like a perfect distraction. So, I like being delusional on occasion. Is that so wrong?