The Curse of Being Interesting

The curse of being interesting

Honestly, I rarely tryto be interesting. I actually like to be in the background. Even though I speak in front of people, present classes every week and have danced in front of hundreds of people, I secretly like working in obscurity, which makes my writing habit an excellent fit for me. However, I have made some non-standard life choices. 

It all started out normal: I got married right out of college and had three children within five years. I was a stay-at-home mom. I converted to Catholicism and I followed all their rules for a good eight years.

But after a while, the façade started to wear out and the real me started to poke through the thin spots. I started writing again, and the writing led me to evaluate my life. I wasn’t exactly happy. I went back to graduate school at about 30, while I still had three young kids. I got a job as a bartender to pay for my tuition. 

Eventually, my marriage wore out, too. When my ex and I split up, we arranged for shared custody of our children, and I felt like had to quit and look for a “real job.” I spent whole days applying for jobs online. It is rough to find a job when you’ve been out of the normal workforce for a while, and all you can put on your resume is bartender and mother of three. Aware of my shortcomings, I wrote a cover letter that tried to bend these experiences into a useful work background. 

I remember once, when I was in high school, a history teacher returned one of my term papers with the comment, “This paper is a little too ‘creative.’” He knocked five points off my grade, but I scoffed. How could creativity ever be a bad thing?

Well, it can be bad when you want a steady job.

As the application process went on, I felt like I was getting rejected by companies where I had never even applied. Eventually, I received an enthusiastic phone call from the editor of The Postal Record, the magazine of the National Association of Letter Carriers. He was moving up in the company, and they were looking for a new writer and copy editor. He said they found my application interesting,and they wanted to meet me in person.

Delighted, I scheduled the interview and found someone to watch my kids for the day. I went out and bought a new interview suit--a very adorable brown number with a fit-and-flare skirt. It was businesslike, but still attractive. I got brand-new brown spectator pumps to go with it. I bought a Metro card. 

On interview day, I got up, took my kids to my friend’s house, drove an hour to the Metro, then rode 30 minutes into the city. I was early, but I ended up walking about a mile in the wrong direction before I realized my mistake and went back. So far, the day had cost me about $150 that I did not have. But it was fine, because this job would be a perfect fit. I had trade association experience. I had worked magazines in the past. Yes, it would be terribly far from home and the logistics of getting kids to and from school would be tough, but lots of people did it. I could find a way. 

I finally arrived at NALC, and was quickly shown into the interview room. It was to be a group meeting, with two or three staff members. I was ready to love them from the moment we met. There was an older man and woman, a man younger than me (who currently held the job for which I was applying). The older two reminded me of college professors. I felt that I could come in to work wearing hemp sandals and do yoga at my desk during lunch break, and that would be okay.

The mood broke about five seconds after I sat down, when the young man said, “To be honest, we actually think we’ve already found someone who is an absolutely perfect fit for this job and has the right job experience. We just wanted to meet you, because we thought your cover letter was so interesting.”

Interesting. Yes. My brain started ticking off the expenses of my trip to the city, the lost time with my kids, the blisters sustained from walking two miles from the Metro station…and I felt a strong surge of yuck wash through me.

Things did not get better. Although this was a job interview (with a labor union, no less), my interviewers asked how I would manage to juggle my children and a full-time job. Just in case you’re wondering, you’re not actually allowed to ask those questions in an interview.

Since there was no way I was getting this job now, I decided to go full-out interesting. In response to their questions about my childcare, I told the interviewers I’d “work it out with my partner,” which I knew would make it sound like I had a same-sex life-partner somewhere. I was actually talking about my mom, but that wasn’t nearly interesting enough.

As if the interview weren’t bad enough, I also had to take a copy editing test. I was consumed with a sense of wasted time at that point, so I made the most flaccid effort I have ever put forth on any sort of contest.

Needless to say, the other girl got the job. But I got a lesson—whether or not it was a good one remains to be seen. Don’t be too interesting your applications. Just interesting enough. Save the really kooky stuff for after they get to know you a little. And if that means fewer interviews, fine. Hopefully it means a more precise job-hunt where you are showing them exactly what they need to see for you to get the job you want. Another lesson: always insist on a phone interview first, and get serious about the questions you ask in that first screening, to see if it really is right. Because you need to make sure that once you get there for good, you’ll be able to be your real self, and your office won’t just tolerate it: they will need it. 

My view of PTSD

In my yoga trainings, we talked a lot about PTSD. This is also something I deal with personally, so I thought I'd share what it looks like in my life, just a little, not the full picture, because it's too much.

PTSD is standing in the rain with a friend, scraping off any conspicuous markings on your car so that you'll be harder to find in a parking lot. 
It's knowing how to check your car for tracking devices, because the sheriff showed you.
It's surveying a room thoroughly before you enter. It's looking out the windows before you leave, and sticking your head out the door before you commit to walking outside. 
It's jumping through your skin when someone in the gym drops a heavy weight.
It's building up anxiety for a period of days, before you have to go do a thing, so much that you actually feel sick, but you go anyway. And then it takes two days to feel ok again. 
It's moving and not wanting to share your address with anyone, and when you do, admonishing them not to share it with anyone else. 
It's a feeling of dread upon opening your email, or hearing your text message chime.
It's not being able to sleep, and waking up every few hours when you do, thinking you heard that noise...
It's worse if you've experienced the same type of traumatic event multiple times in your life.
It's people telling you it can't be that bad, or you are exaggerating, that you are making too much out of things...

It's so much more, but it's not me. It doesn't define me. I keep going, I keep doing the things. Even when they are hard. Especially when they are hard.

Meal prep: Saving your sanity, one meal at a time.

It’s a fact of modern life that we are all crazy busy. As a yoga teacher, I could tell you about the value of simplifying, cutting back, and prioritizing, but this is reality. We all have struggles. We all have some combination of demanding jobs, kids, aging parents, social obligations, volunteer commitments, fitness needs, and recreational habits. Plus the stuff we actually want to do. This is what makes it so tempting (and sometimes necessary) to order pizza or stop for McDonald’s on the way home.

When I was a kid, McDonald’s for dinner was a way of life. It was just my mother and I at home during my middle and high school years, and by the time she finished her commute home from work, the lastthing she wanted to do was cook. So we ate a lot of burgers and fries. We ate so much takeout that I actually got sick of it. This is when I started learning to cook. She was the only working parent she knew who could look forward to coming home, most days of the week, to dinner made by her kid—without even having to guilt me.

Things are a little different for me now. When my kids were home, I made good use of my Crockpot to create meals with something for everyone. But now that the kids are mostly gone and it’s just me, my cooking strategy has changed. It’s hard to find the motivation to make dinner every night for just myself, and although I don’t do McDonald’s, there’s the lure of the Thai House just down the street, with their $13 shrimp Pad Thai waiting to destroy my caloric and monetary budgets.

This is where meal planning and prep comes to the rescue. I spend about two hours, one day per week preparing most of a week’s meals. Sometimes I end up with even more than I can eat in a week, like when I make chili or spaghetti sauce, and I can put half away in the freezer for a bonus on another week. I try to portion out each meal in individual serving containers, unless it’s something that needs to be stored separately until eaten, like pita sandwiches. 

If I plan my meals well, there is very little waste when I cook this way, because I cook it all at the start of the week. You know how sometimes, you have great ideas when you go shopping on Sunday, and you think you’re going to make something like salmon en croute, but by Wednesday, you are exhausted and you just end up eating a bowl of cereal for dinner and then all your expensive food goes to waste? Well, if you have already prepped your food, heating it up is exactly as much work as making cereal, and a lot more tasty. 

Here are some of my top tips for meal planning success: 

·     Keep everything simple.Don’t imagine you are going to make five elaborate dishes that each take an hour to prepare. Think quick, easy, mix and match.    

·     Pre-cook one starch per weekand store it as a base to put under your sauces. You can cook one round of quinoa, rice, faro, millet, or whatever else you crave and store it in the fridge for three to four days.

·     Cook one protein, use it multiple ways. This week, I made delicious turkey meatballs that I ate over quinoa with jarred marinara sauce. Another day, they’ll appear on a flatbread with melty fresh mozzarella. For lunch, they will crown some romaine lettuce and cherry tomatoes.

·     Use prepared foods where it makes sense. Rotisserie chickens save you about an hour and a half of cooking time, and you can shred that cooked chicken and use the meat to make salads, pita sandwiches and hearty soups. Jarred pesto and marinara can elevate a quick meal into next-level awesomeness. Hot smoked salmon is amazing on a salad. It keeps perfectly unopened and you don’t even have to heat it. Best of all, for singles, it comes in 4oz packages, which happens to be an exactly perfect serving size. 

Where to find meal prep ideas

If you don’t yet feel comfortable coming up with your own meal prep plans, there are lots of places online where you can find ideas. Many sites will want to charge you, but I say ba-humbug to that. If I am so cheap that I am trying to save money by eating in every meal of the week, clearly I don’t have the cash to spend on pre-arranged meal plans.

So here are a few places I’ve found with ideas. Keep in mind, I am gluten free, but not all of these suggestions are. I made my own GF adaptations.

·     The Kitchn: Meal Prep Plan: A Week of Easy 1500-Calorie Days. The turkey meatballs recipe here is amazing, and it really gets into the details of how to prep and pack everything. https://www.thekitchn.com/meal-prep-plan-for-1500-calories-261270

·     Eating Well: 14 Day Gluten-Free Meal Plan 1,500 Calories. This list is more about meal planning than prep ahead, but still some great ideas that capitalize on reusing the same ingredients to save you money and simplify prep. I love the Salmon with Chimichurri. http://www.eatingwell.com/article/289222/14-day-gluten-free-meal-plan-1500-calories/

Don’t want to try a whole lot of new things? That’s ok, just keep it simple. Stick with your favorites. Try to think of things that hold well in the refrigerator or freezer, like veggie chili, spaghetti sauce with ground turkey, and grilled chicken. One day when you have some time, make a big pot of chili, another of spaghetti sauce. Grill a family pack of chicken breasts (or pull apart a rotisserie chicken). When the chili and the spaghetti sauce are done, portion them out into two-cup containers and cool them in the fridge. Cut up the chicken and store it separately in two-cup, freezer-safe containers.  Evaluate how much you think you can eat in a week, and put the rest in the freezer (use a strip of masking tape and a sharpie to label and date the containers).  Wash, dry and tear some lettuce into salad-sized pieces. Portion the salad greens into two-cup containers. Put some cherry tomatoes, beans, and whatever other sturdy vegetables you like into the containers. Prepare as many salads as you think you can eat in 2-3 days.  

And there you go. On any weeknight, you can come home and toss some chicken onto a bed of lettuce for an instant salad, or heat up your chili, or put on some pasta for spaghetti in 15 minutes. Ta-da.

Personally, I love having my prepped meals to look forward to, and knowing that I don’t need to exert any effort to make them, except heating them up. I also love knowing that it only costs me about $100 to buy all of my food (breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks, and coffee) for the week.  That is less than $5 per meal, and includes coffee! And snacks! And I know all the ingredients of my food, so I can manage my salt, sugar and fat intake as necessary. So even if you don’t go all-in and make a whole week’s worth of food at once, I do hope that maybe you are a little inspired to spend about 20 minutes planning the week’s meals before you shop, and that you adhere to the concepts of keeping meals simple, using similar ingredients so you don’t spend a ton of money or waste a lot of food, and using prepared foods where it makes sense.

Have a healthy and prosperous day!