Being Honest And Real..

I did something weird last night. Weird for me anyway and after my little baby rant about lifestyle blogging last week a lot of you responded and said that you actually want to hear what is going on in a blogger's real life. So, here's something weird.
Be careful what you ask for.

Last night I had a huge to-do list. I'm leaving for Vegas tomorrow and yea, my to-do list is enormous. Uh, so obviously I came home from work and watched a few (several, a lot, so many, too many) episodes of Chicago Fire (highly recommend that show by the way). Which of course meant that I accomplished very little (read: none) of the things on my to-do list. In other words, a perfect Tuesday evening.

But around 1am I heard something outside, so I peaked out the window and thought I saw something on my car and I went outside to my front landing to check it out. Nothing was on my car, I'm a dummy and apparently seeing things, but it was really nice outside last night. You know those perfect summer nights? Not too hot, slight breeze and the smell! Oh the smell.. it smelled like summer. Do you know what I mean?

So I just kind of stood outside, leaning against the railing, and started getting really dramatic.

See, I've been really stressed lately. And not the kind of stressed that I'm used to and I'm not handling it well. Actually, that's a lie.. I'm not handling it at all. I mean, why confront a situation head on when you can avoid and ignore it? Am I right?

Since I don't want to be all vague and such, I'll spill it. I'm still stressing out about this apartment thing. Stressed and angry, lots and lots of angry feelings happening. I'm stressed about a weird "friend" situation because I really don't want to hurt his feelings. I'm stressed about money. Man, I'm always stressed about money, who isn't? I'm stressed about an old guy situation that has gotten.. complicated (?) and I've now had to call in reinforcements to help me handle it and that also stresses me out because I hate calling in favors and asking for help. I'm stressed about turning 25, which is hard to explain to anyone, so I'm not going to try. I'm stressing about what the hell I'm going to do with my life.

In fact, My mom and I have gotten into a few little tifs the last few weeks (months?). I hesitate to even call them arguments, because the minute she brings up anything even remotely close to the subject, I shut down. Not exactly the best response, but I'm not always perfect, so there you go.
Oh, these "tifs" also stress me out, so add that to the list.

I've not really been eating and I've not been sleeping and it's actually starting to become a problem. So last night I'm standing outside and I guess I realized why people use the phrase "I need some air". I needed some air.

I didn't have some huge epiphany or anything. I wish. But I did give myself several minutes to just breathe and think it all out. I ended up standing outside for over half an hour. Which was weird, because I don't think I've ever done anything like that before. I just stood outside, mostly staring at the stairs and the top of my neighbor's cop car, thinking through all of my stresses. Putting some of them into perspective and working through some solutions to others.

I also took some time to make a few decisions. And in this situation, I am going to be vague. Mostly because I'm a bitch.

To be clear, I am so very, very aware that my "problems" are barely that. Oh trust me, I know. Better than most.

So anyway, there you have it. An entire post that is a little (a lot) boring and very wordy. I'll see you lovely people tomorrow.

5 Thoughts On Bandwagon Fans

My two cents, for what it's worth..

1. Why wouldn't you want everyone to like your team? Isn't that sort of the point? You spend all this time and money and effort to support your team. You argue for your team. You make erroneous claims about your team being THE BEST EVER IN THE HISTORY OF EVER. Only to then get upset when someone decides to agree with you?

2. Sports bring people together. They just do and I will stick by that claim for forever and ever. Do I watch a lot of swimming meets or figuring skating outside of the Olympics? No. Honestly, when's the last time you watched a cross country skiing event? Yea, exactly. But every couple of years I get obsessed with the Olympics and I watch a ton of swimming and I DVR figure skating so I don't miss one single skate. And every couple of years, I'm not alone in this. I live in the USA and everyone I know does this exact same thing and we all talk about it and root for the USA in our favorite events and get excited. This applies to more than just the Olympics. World Cup, The Superbowl, The World Series, The Stanley Cup, Wimbledon, and March Madness anyone? Yea.. How many of you filled out a bracket after watching approximately 2 NCAA basketball games all season? But you did it right? To feel included, right? To have something to get excited about with everyone else, right? Why is this a bad thing?

3. Advertising and promotion. Let me explain to you really quickly how life works - Money matters. To make this easier to understand, we're going to use the MLB as examples. The New York Yankees have won 27 World Series titles. That's a lot. The 2nd most World Series titles goes to the St. Louis Cardinals with 11. So like I said, the Yankees have won a lot.
Because the Yankees have won a lot, they also seem to have a lot of fans. It isn't a strictly regional thing either. There are Yankee fans in Indiana, Yankee fans in Florida, Yankees fans in Texas, Yankee fans all over the USA. They have a large fan base. A large fan base that is very vocal and will tell anyone within ear shot how wonderful the New York Yankees are and a large fan base that is very supportive, that is constantly wearing Yankee gear to show support. That's a lot of free advertising and promotion for the New York Yankees which results in a lot of revenue. Revenue they use to pay players more than most MLB teams can afford to pay players. Which means the Yankees can afford to have very good players. Very good players that win them World Series titles. Wins manage to get them more fans, which starts the cycle all over again.
*The exception to this cycle are the Chicago Cubs. They have a huge fan base, but they can't seem to win. It boggles my mind.*

4. Sometimes bandwagon fans become diehard fans. This happens all the time! I've seen it happen! I'm an example of this! I just recently, in the last 2 years, started watched hockey. I have a friend who is a HUGE diehard Detroit Red Wings fan. Hockey is her favorite sport, she knows all there is to know about it, and she'd watch hockey over anything else. She took me to my 1st, my 2nd, and my 3rd hockey game. She's forced me to watch so many (so many!) on tv with her. After so many times, I really started to enjoy it. I actually watched the hockey playoffs this year by choice. But because I've just started watching hockey, I don't have a team. So instead, I've just been watching a little of every team and right now I'm seriously considering hopping on either the New York Rangers bandwagon or the Anaheim Ducks bandwagon. The thing is though, whichever team's bandwagon I do officially decide to jump on, I'll end up being a lifer. So yea, sometimes bandwagon fans become the diehards.

5. There's always room. I know I'm actually in the minority here, but I firmly believe that there is always room on the bandwagon of my teams.

Indiana University Hoosiers.
St. Louis Cardinals.
Chicago Bears.
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.

Come on over guys, because there is plenty of room! I don't understand why anyone wouldn't want you to hop on their team's bandwagon! Personally, I'm under the belief that everyone in America should love the IU Hoosiers. Because, obviously they're the best in everything, ever. Duh. I love me some STL Cards and I spend a lot of time converting my friends into Cardinals fans. I've gotten a couple to hop on board already and guess what? There's still room for more.

IT BLOWS MY MIND that a person can spend years supporting something like.. I don't know, let's say something like soccer in the United States. That seems like a good example that I totally and obviously pulled out of no where..
Anyway, they spend years supporting soccer. Years promoting soccer. Years trying to get everyone to like soccer. Then something like, I don't know, The World Cup maybe, strolls into town and all of a sudden all of those people you spent years trying to convince to care, actually care. They're excited, they're watching games, they're cheering for the USA, they're buying merchandise, they're getting others to care too, they're signing their kids up for soccer. Oh but now, NOW you don't want anyone to like soccer. Everyone is just a bandwagon fan, you're the only true fan.

*insert picture of myself giving you an extremely shitty look*

Everyone wants to have their cake and eat it too. 

Ps. If anyone needs some Hoosier gear or needs someone to take them to a Cardinals game, I'm available for assistance at all times.

What Is Blogging? And Who Defines It?

Here's the thing..
This is a legitimate question.

"What is an online Dairy? Are there virtual cows?" - Alison
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH *dies laughing*

I love blogging. I honestly had no idea how attached I would become to a hobby, but I've become very attached to blogging. I love it. I'm not gonna bullshit you, there are quite a few things about blogging that I'm just simply not a fan of, but for the most part, I love this.
And actually, I guess I'm going to be talking about one thing I don't necessarily like about this hobby. The categories you're put into and specially what it means to be a "lifestyle blogger".

Let me set the scene, so to speak.
I had a bad day yesterday. If you follow me on Twitter, you're probably more than aware that I had a bad day yesterday. I don't want to be vague about it because it isn't a big secret, so basically long ass story short - my landlord sold his house/our apartments and a new management company has taken over and it was all very (very, very) short notice and now I have until July 31st to decide whether or not I want to sign on for a year with a 34% increase in my rent a month or move. So yea, in the next 28 days I need to make that huge decision and I'm stressed about it. Stressing about it doesn't solve the problem, but no one seems to have told my stress level that. The majority of this situation happened yesterday and it made for a very bad and very stressful day.

Also, I really want to go on record saying that the way this entire situation has been handled by my old landlord and my new landlord has been sub-par, at best.

So anyway, when I sat down last night to write a blog post for today THAT was all I wanted to talk about. It's on my mind and I'm stressed and honestly? I just really needed to vent it out a little. However, as I opened up Blogger to write about it a few different things went through my mind -

• Well, I didn't post yesterday and my post on Tuesday was kind of weak and really my post on Monday wasn't that great, so I really need to write a creative post for tomorrow to make up for the week.
• Do I really want to write an entire post complaining? That will make me seem like a glass half empty person and I really like being a glass half full person. Can I be glass half full and still complain?
• I don't have any pictures to go with a post like that.
• Maybe I could make some random PicMonkey graphic and pass that off as a picture for the post?
• I won't get any comments because who actually cares about my living situation? Not a damn person besides me and the people close to me.

So I changed my mind and I just spent the last hour getting creative and writing a long unique "pin able" post with plenty of jokes, a little sarcasm, and several pictures that I spent entirely too long cropping, resizing, and adjusting. It ended up being a post I should have been proud of.. but I wasn't. And when I was done, instead of hitting Publish, I deleted it. The whole entire thing.

A big part of my issue tonight is just the mood I'm in, which isn't a good one and I can admit and acknowledge that. However, I was so annoyed with myself for not spending that hour writing what I wanted to write.

What is blogging? On one hand, yea, maybe it isn't necessarily an online journal, and yet.. In the other hand I read blogs every single day and some of them discuss their recents dates, pregnancy updates, their weekends, their half marathon training schedule, and I could go on and on. Isn't that a little like an online journal?

But then I guess, it's not always like that is it? I've posted things like Man Candy posts or my Top 5 Christmas Movies and neither of those are things I would've put in a journal. I wrote them because they were going on my blog and I needed to be creative. I read blog posts every day that sound more like a Buzzfeed article and less like an online journal (which is in no way a bad thing, i love that shit), but both are tossed into that "Lifestyle Blogger" category.

What does that even mean? Lifestyle Blogger?
One would assume that it meant if I was having a bad day then I could write about it on my blog. Since that bad day happened in my life and does that not fit into "lifestyle"?

But blogging pressures are real sometimes. The pressure to grow and the knowledge that you're only as good as your latest post are both very real things. I'm usually decently good at ignoring both of those things, but clearly I slip up. And now here we are.

I also find it mildly interesting that this post will get very few views. Even worse is that probably half of those views will be people who won't even read this whole post. I mean, why would they? This isn't a great post by any means. It's not well thought out or planned, it isn't going to have any pictures, and it's wordy as fuck. In this social media and digital age where we need to be entertained at all times and if you don't capture our attention in the first 7 seconds? Then we're moving on and clicking that X in the corner.

But that's a different topic for a different day.

Mornings. Ugh.

Yesterday morning went so well, especially for being my first morning back to work after vacation. I mean, I hated everything about it, but things ran smoothly and I started the day in a decently good mood.

Today was exactly the opposite.

First of all, this happened this morning -

Yea, my phone rang at 3:48am. It scared the shit out of me and once I realized it wasn't a call I actually needed to answer, I was instantly pissed off. I just not finally Google'd that number and it turns out it's a scam. Which isn't that weird, I get calls like that all the time, but at 3:48am? I wish I had answered just so I could give them a piece of my mind. That's F-ing ridiculous. I'm getting crankier just thinking about it.

ANYWAY - I need to bring my blood pressure back down before I injure someone.

So yesterday morning I woke up without hitting snooze, which is weird, then I went straight to the gym without thinking angry thoughts on the way. I came home, got ready, made eggs for breakfast, packed my lunch for the day, got to work early, and just in general it was a pretty decent morning for a Monday. I had even written my blog post the night before, so I didn't even need to worry about that! Bloggers understand what a huge weight lifted that is in the mornings.

But today, apparently during the 3:48am wake up phone call craziness I managed to turn off my alarms. Which resulted in me waking up late, miraculously on my own, and having another mini freak out that I was late. I wasn't, but there wasn't any extra time for the gym OR a shower. So I had to dry shampoo my hair and make the best of it (it actually turned out mostly ok, so i shouldn't complain about that too much) and I only had time for a banana for breakfast and I didn't make my lunch, so I'll have to go home and figure that out at lunchtime, which annoys me. ALSO, I didn't write a blog post last night because my DVR is still 80% full and I really need to start cleaning it out, so I forced myself to start working through the TV shows that I only DVR and watch later (as apposed to the shows i watch live weekly). That's a lame excuse not to have a blog post ready, but it's the truth.

So no blog post was scheduled for this morning, which meant that the entire time I was getting ready I was trying to plan out a post in my head. Clearly I didn't do a very good job of that because now you guys are stuck with me complaining about my morning.

Mornings are unfair. 

They're either really good or really bad and there isn't really any kind of in-between.

I do have something fun for you today. Yea, I was supposed to post this yesterday, because it technically started yesterday. Yea, I forgot all about it. I'm not a very good blogger, you guys. Welcome to the shit show.

Becca is a good blogger though. Very good. Really, really good. So good that she's great. And she put together a giveaway. $110 paypal cash giveaway. Yea, $110. Ugh, I need $110. Shoot, I need $10.
Anyway, ENTER ---> This giveaway ends next Monday night!

Vivian | Rachael | Kelly | Kiersten | Ashley | Kay | Becca | Rebekah | Jenn | Hannah

a Rafflecopter giveaway

 

I'll see you tomorrow, party people.
Thanks for sticking with me even when I don't deserve it.