Hello, October.

As could have been predicted, I never posted more in September. Sigh.

September sort of flew past and October is even more insane, honestly. In the middle of September, I suddenly found myself with plans for every single weekend of October. How does that happen?!?! And who knows if I’ll actually make it to all of them, but I do try. Some of them are just events that I want to go to, and when I have to go alone, all bets are off for if I’ll actually follow through when the time comes. But a lot of the plans are things other people invited me to, and I usually do go to those because I don’t get all that many invitations so I accept all of them. Anyway. As of right now I have only one weekend day free of plans during the whole month of October and I’m kiiiind of hoping to go to climb a mountain somewhere. We’ll see what happens.

For those of you who were waiting to hear (soooo...none of you?), my goals from September were a bit of a flop. I did take 7 pictures, but I still haven’t developed any film. I did get a haircut, which I really liked. I practiced Passenger Seat only a few times. I made a pie and went to church all on the same day, but it was technically October first, so I’m not sure it counts. I never drew anything. Meh.

Lots of other wonderful things happened though, like my friend Kendra came to visit me for a few days and we went to the Common Ground Fair, and walked on the breakwater and visited lots of cute shops in Rockland and all that great Maine sort of stuff. I love her. It was really really fun to show someone around my state for the first time again- it’d been quite a few years since I had the chance (I did get to show lots of people around Minneapolis while I lived there, though, so that’s something).

But now it’s October, which means a whole new set of goals. I already got purple hair (which is separate from the haircut I got last month) and love it. A few things on my list are events that haven’t yet happened. I also want to read three books and write five letters. We’ll see what happens.

I’ve already finished one book, The Sun and Her Flowers, Rupi Kaur’s second book of poetry. It was phenomenal. I’m also in the middle of two others. Okay, full disclosure, one of the two is one I’ve been in the middle of since September. But that’s okay! I’ll hopefully still finish it this month! The other is Akata Warrior by Nnedi Okorafor, which I have as an ebook on my phone with a new app called Libby. I am kind of loving having access to a book wherever I am as long as I have my phone with me (so, wherever I am). I’m totally someone who believes you should bring a book everywhere, but sometimes it’s really inconvenient to have a book in your purse. And sometimes you don’t have the book with you in very specific situations like when you’ve arrived at a restaurant expecting the rest of your party to be there already but it turns out they were running even later than you and you’re already inside without a book. In situations like that I’ve been reallllly glad to be able to just pull out my phone and start reading. It’s seriously great.

Anyways, things are happening around here. I got to meet a cute, fresh, little baby (Alice) ten days ago and I get to see my cute niece on an almost daily basis and she has so much personality already, despite exclusively calling me and everyone else she knows “Dada”.

I’ve been to the movies FOUR times in the past month and only two of them were with my mother! Okay, to be fair, one time was with my friend’s mother, and I’m not entirely sure that’s less embarrassing, but whatever. One movie out of four with people my own age isn’t bad though, right?! Oh, it is? Okay, whatever. I made it down to a weightlifting competition last weekend and I’m going to try to attend a Rett Syndrome strollathon in Capital Park this weekend. It’s gonna be crazy, but life is just like that sometimes.

And as the days get ever shorter and I find myself with fewer hours of daylight with which to do things outside, I’m glad for every single plan that obligates me to leave my house. Winter is hard and I feel like it’s heading for me at breakneck speed. I’m clinging to the last vestiges of warmth I can possibly get.

The First of Fall.

Today is the first day of fall. The Autumnal Equinox. It doesn’t really feel like it, though. Despite sunset now being in the 6:00 hour, the next four days here in Maine have forecasted highs in the 80s, which is utterly bizarre. Global warming, man! I get that it’s bad but I’m sort of relishing its benefits all the same.

Anywho, Summer always seems to slip by with little to no time to sit down and write about it. But that’s just the way I approach blogging in general, it seems. I had (and still have?) intentions to write about my travels in Europe, but it just seems not to have happened yet. Also, I gave my personal laptop to my baby brother for college (you’re welcome, Jonny!) which lends an additional excuse/layer of inconvenience to getting the time to write. It was my goal to write twenty blog posts in 2017 and including this one I’ve posted ten. I’ve got three months left of the year...we’ll see what happens. 

At the beginning of September I made a list of goals for the month, which is something that I often do at the beginning of months. I stick it up on the mirror on the back of my bedroom door so that as I look at myself every morning I’m reminded of what I wanted to achieve for the month. It’s had mixed results so far but I’m totally “a person who makes lists” so I keep doing it anyway.

Here’s the list I made for the month of September:

1. Read three books
1. All Our Wrong Todays
2. The Moth Presents: All These Wonders
3. (Currently reading Braving the Wilderness)
2. Write three blog posts
1. (See what I did here?)
2. Also already wrote one about the first few days of my European adventure
3. Practice Passenger Seat (I’m trying to learn it on piano)
4. Make a pie or two or three
5. Climb a mountain
6. Get a haircut
7. Run at least 3 times a week
8. Go to church
9. Draw something
10. Take 7 pictures and get film developed
    
    

I typically only put about five goals on my list for the month. This one may have been a bit overambitious. I've gotten some done though. For instance, I climbed Double Top Mountain in Baxter State Park. (Although I technically made these goals after I did that, so the intent was to climb another mountain...maybe that'll happen.) Here's a panoramic photo I took at the top!

And this is a picture of my legs on one of my three runs this week. (This goal was not successful though because there was totally a weeklong span where I didn't run at all. Whoops.)

And this is the book that I spent alllll of August and a fair bit of September reading. Which makes it seem like it wasn't good, but it was actually really good and fairly quick reading when I actually got the chance to sit down and read. I just didn't make time to do that very often.

Clearly I have some serious work to do in the next week if I’m going to get it together and get these done. And I probably won’t. But that’s okay- the point in this exercise, I feel, is not really to get more done, although that is definitely still a desired outcome. Rather, the point is to be more mindful. Be aware of passing time, of things that I could get done over the course of thirty-ish days and understand that if I want them to happen I need to make moves toward them. The point is to savor my life a little more. Again, mixed results with this. I also read once that people who have make clear goals for themselves feel more of a sense of fulfillment (or something like that…) so this is partly an exercise in goal setting for the sake of goal setting. (Don’t worry guys, I know I’m ridiculous and also don’t have a damn clue what I’m talking about or why I do the things I do half the time; you are not alone!)

I'm Famous.

So a couple of weeks ago I was walking through my local Hannaford and I got sucked into the book section. "Really?" you think. "The book section of the grocery store, Aleena? The only books there are weird romance novels." Well, yes. I would mostly tend to agree with you, which is why I don't often peruse the book section of the grocery store. I can always tell when I haven't been to any bookstores recently because I find myself totally sucked in by the sight of any books whatsoever. (ALSO, I would like to state that the book section of this particular Hannaford totally had some pretty decent non-romance-novel-ish books that I actually considered buying. Just saying.)

Anyway, I was standing in the dairy aisle, glancing around at the books, when this bright pink one caught my eye.

I was like "Oh cool, a book about the Women's March that I attended! I'll flip through that!" So I grabbed it and looked at some of them. The book is pretty cool because it shows images from different marches that took place in cities all over the world. Neat, right? And I was like "I wonder if there are any pictures from the Portland, ME march!" Because, you know, I was at that one. Now, most of the pictures were from much bigger cities (D.C., New York, Boston, etc.) but there were exactly four pictures from the Portland march. And one of them featured two women wearing hijab that looked pretty familiar to me. And then as I look at the picture closer I noticed that I AM TOTALLY IN THE PICTURE, TOO!

 

That's right, folks, my face made it into the book about the women's march. How cool is that!?! Was obviously super excited and decided to buy the book, even though I'd had no intention of doing so. 

I also made a surprise appearance in the background of a picture of a high school track meet that was published in the Kennebec Current (super low-key newspaper that isn't a big deal at all haha). 

AND I did a voiceover for a PSA about service animals that my brother-in-law made for the Maine Human Rights Commission. (You can watch it here, if you would like to hear my voice and also learn alllll about service animals!)

So yeah, basically I am famous. 

BY THE WAY, in case any of you never knew this, I was totally in a music video once, too! It was filmed a few years ago, right after I moved to Minnesota; a friend of mine asked if I would be in it with her because her friend was directing it and they needed extras. The song is called "Kill the Fun" and it's by a Minnesotan musician Haley Bonar. You can watch the video here! ( I am very much just an extra in it. I'm one of the women "going to work in the factory" in the back of the truck. You can see my face if you pause the video around seconds 18-20, and the back of my head is totally in seconds 52-54ish- I'm the one in the red scarf with purple flowers. But honestly, if I didn't actually know where I was sitting and what I was wearing there's no way I'd have been able to see myself.)

All this to say: you guys should probably get my autograph now before I really make it big and don't have time for any of you anymore.