Mental Health and Physical Wellness

A Simple Quarantine Breakfast Hack!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As a successful lifestyle blogger, you might expect me to be at the top of my game during an unprecedented modern global pandemic…and you’d be right! I have everything I need: a stocked kitchen of perishable and nonperishable goods, exactly one container of Clorox wipes, and the sinking dread that life as we know it has changed forever.

When you’re listlessly floating through a hellscape where every person and object feels suddenly suspicious, it’s important to be adaptable to a changing situation. Because no matter how prepared you are, you can always be blindsided by a setback. Like how I’ve spent my whole life catastrophizing about various apocalypse scenarios and never played out the first stages of a global pandemic. OR how I bought two weeks’ worth of food and forgot to get potatoes. So when I found myself craving a veggie breakfast burrito, I thought: hooray, a challenge! Then I cried for ten minutes.

At times like this, it’s important for a successful lifestyle blogger to be resourceful. And what I did have was a freezer-burned instant hash brown from Trader Joe’s, as well as a bunch of compulsions I haven’t thought about in over a decade!

So with that in mind, I spent 20 minutes looking up how much heat it takes to kill coronavirus and then set the toaster oven to 450 for ten minutes.

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Once the hash brown was cooked, I mashed it up, washed my hands, and added:

  • a scrambled egg
  • some raw kale (washed with water only, followed by seven fruitless google searches to see if that’s okay)
  • washed my hands again
  • dried my hands on a communal towel by accident, washed them again
  • diced avocado
  • Victoria salsa (medium spice)
  • a few dashes of Tapatio hot sauce
  • is the Tapatio bottle contaminated? washed hands again
  • will the hot sauce make me congested and, thus, terrified? oh well, too late

And voila! A soothing and potato-y burrito that I was very afraid to pick up. The crispiness of the hash browns added a comforting texture as I stared out the window trying to remember whether I’d remembered to wash my hands after bringing in the newspaper. The burrito was delicious, my inner monologue was not. And that, my friends, is what I call a success right now, I guess. Maybe?

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I’m going back to bed.

 

 

You Can Injure Yourself Doing Anything!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

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Metaphorically, I was doing this

We all know that injuries can happen: Olympic skiing, car accidents, or basic exercise can cause lasting damage and pain to the body. We think of injuries as big things, but it’s important to remember that even small shifts in muscle movement can have lasting results. And as a successful lifestyle blogger, I refuse to be limited by such audacious means of self-harm.

On Friday morning, I woke up with a slight headache and I was feeling stressed out about some work things, so I was holding a lot of tension in my shoulders. I got out of bed to brush my teeth and as I brought the toothbrush to my mouth, I accidentally made a sudden movement. Like magic, a stabbing pain radiated through my upper back and it hurt to turn my head!

Now, two whole days later, my neck is still in pain and I keep finding my shoulders creeping up to my ears as though they want to live there. Driving is very uncomfortable. And while the pain is surely temporary, I have bonded with my heating pad and made a lasting enemy of two of my vertebrae. And that can prove to us all that if you’re anxious enough, even small motions can make a big difference.

 

 

Photo from Wikimedia Commons

I’m Embracing Ergonomics!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

I work from home, and because I don’t have an appropriate desk area, I spend a lot of time lounging on my couch hunched over my laptop. I get to lounge all day! I’m very comfortable! Except that my neck is constantly in pain and I feel like I’m rapidly shrinking.

But as a successful lifestyle blogger, I know there’s a solution to every problem and I have no choice but to relentlessly solve it. There are dozens of ergonomic desk solutions out there, so I carefully did no research at all and bought the first thing I found on Amazon: an adjustable laptop desk that will elevate my computer on any surface and improve my posture forever immediately.

Armed with this newfound confidence, I assembled my laptop desk and discovered that it is very adjustable. In fact, it can even be used while lying down. As a result, I’ve been curled up in a perfect C-shape for the last week and a half, comfortably typing on an elevated keyboard. Getting out of bed hurts me now, but I’m using an ergonomic tool, so I’m very confident that I’m doing the right thing.

This is not a sponsored post, so I won’t link to the adjustable laptop desk I bought, but if you buy the absolute first thing you google, I personally promise that it will be a success 🙂

A Nice Dinner or a Cry for Help?

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As a successful lifestyle blogger, I’m no stranger to telling you all about what I’m eating. But usually, the meals I share on here aren’t so…balanced. But the times have changed and so have I, and now I am cooking real meals at a frenetic pace. In the last few weeks, I’ve made myself:

  • Stuffed peppers with homemade avocado cilantro crema
  • Sweet potato quinoa tacos
  • Ginger soy cucumber salad
  • Asparagus soup in a single-serve blender
  • Goat cheese pizza with fresh garlic and diced tomatoes
  • Lemon garlic pasta with mushrooms and peppers
  • Kale black bean tacos with homemade chimichurri sauce
  • Hot toddies with homemade ginger simple syrup
  • Almost-daily breakfast burritos using taco leftovers
  • Zucchini noodles with homemade tomato pesto sauce

My lifestyle is good and nothing is wrong.

Cooking a complete, healthy meal can be a way to show yourself that you’re worth the effort. Self care is a must! But after spending three hours making stuffed peppers on a Saturday night, aren’t you sending a smoke signal by way of your greasy stovetop that HI, SOMEONE SHOULD PLEASE COME EAT THIS MEAL WITH ME!

Because while making food from scratch is a very good thing to do, how many homemade sauces does it take to say PLEASE TAKE ALL THE NEWS APPS OFF MY PHONE, I CAN’T HANDLE ALL THE SCARY ALERTS?

So no matter what else is happening in your life, you too can finish out 2017 by learning how to thicken a pasta sauce. I did, and it was much easier than admitting that I HAVE MADE NO SIGNIFICANT CAREER PROGRESS THIS YEAR AND THAT PROBABLY WON’T CHANGE BY THE TIME I GO HOME FOR CHRISTMAS.

But if nothing else, at least the sauce was a success. 🙂

 

Melatonin Substitute: Reading a Book!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As all my loyal fans know, Tylenol PM is my favorite drug. What can I say? I’m a successful lifestyle blogger but a bad sleeper! And when I’m not taking Tylenol PM to pass out, I’m taking melatonin to gently drift into a peaceful slumber.

This week, though, I’ve been reading before bed. That’s right, I’ve been putting away my computer, placing my phone two whole feet away from my body, and reading words from a parcel of papers. I get tired within minutes! I don’t see blue spots when I close my eyes and feel slightly wired until 2am! I get the same drowsy feeling as I do with melatonin, but without all the…hormones and probably some other chemicals and whatever else is in there?

To get the full effect of my revolutionary new sleep aid, I recommend reading a non-fiction book with a lot of statistics and not much suspense, but any book will do. The best part is, if you use this sleep aid long enough, you’ll read an entire book! And that, my drowsy friends, is what I call a success! 🙂

Life Hack: What’s the Point?

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As a successful lifestyle blogger, it’s important for me to keep my spirits up to combat all the ways the world is horrible. But you know what’s easier? Just skipping it all and succumbing to the feeling that my limbs are growing a little too heavy to hold up.

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This is me now.

Getting out of bed is really hard in the face of constant reminders that the world is full of endless suffering, and that our government is actively making it worse. So I’m using my platform as a lifestyle blogger to tell you that you have to get out of bed anyway. Go for a run! Make a smoothie! Or you can stay there and pretend you’re living in a cave like an early human, and that maybe we can rewind and start this whole “modern history” thing over and stop climate change before it’s already out of control.

One of the most important tenets of lifestyle blogging is that you should feel great all the time, no matter what horrible thing your president just said to hurricane survivors in Puerto Rico. Your circumstances are still in your control – unless a nuclear bomb falls from the sky because of a twitter feud – so you have no excuse not to meditate.

I wanted to tell you how to keep taking care of yourself while the world is rotting from its core, but so far today I’ve eaten a bag of Cheeto Puffs and a Nestle Tollhouse ice cream cookiewich that I bought from a liquor store last night, so maybe don’t take my advice?

I don’t know. I’m going back to bed.

I Have an Exercise-Related Injury?!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As a successful lifestyle blogger who regularly updates her blog, it’s my duty to make sure I’m bringing my loyal readers the best lifestyle-based content. So, I recently started working out. My previous exercise attempts have been questionable at best, but this one is the real deal.

Because now….I’ve been going to a jazz dance class. Often. A real one, where everyone is more flexible than me, the choreography is hard to follow, and I sweat a lot. It’s been challenging and rewarding. And I know it’s paying off because after just a few short weeks of regular exercise, my left foot hurts when I put too much weight on it!

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I can tell this new workout plan is for me, because I’ve seen immediate results at getting a legitimate but mysterious injury. People might tell you that it takes time for your hard work to pay off, but those people just don’t break easily enough. If you jump into a new activity with no idea what you’re doing, you too can hurt yourself right away!

I’m looking forward to my future as an exercising person. I think this injury means I don’t have to exercise anymore, or maybe that I should start working out more often because of stretching or something. I’m not even sure what’s wrong with it – google says it could be a lateral sprain or a maybe a bone bruise or maybe nothing at all – but I’m not going to worry about it. Because like all miracle cures and mystery lifestyle programs, it doesn’t matter how it works, it only matters that it works. And what’s working for me is hitting a fitness milestone really quickly. I’m a real dancer! I possess athletic tape!

How should I get my next workout injury? Tell me in the comments!

Yoga Class Breakthrough: I Hate Yoga

Posted on by Julie Pearson


As a successful lifestyle blogger, I’m required to go to at least one yoga class per year. It’s a requirement I take very seriously.

Yesterday as I stretched in a frighteningly quiet room, a calm woman who was not stretching told me that I could replace my negative thoughts with positive ones, and that my struggle was my choice. And I had a huge breakthrough: she was right.

I can choose not to go to yoga anymore. It gives me panic attacks. I spent an hour trying to vaguely mimic what everyone else was doing, but my breathing wouldn’t fall in line. It’s hard to do yoga poses during a panic attack. Nobody should do that. I should not do that. Why would I ever do that?

One of the most important things to learn from yoga is “be where you are.” And I am not at yoga. That, my adequate friends, is what I call a fitness success 🙂

 

Photo Credit: Inae Bloom

I’m Not a Supreme Court Justice, but I Can Work Out Like One

Posted on by Julie Pearson

Even a successful lifestyle blogger isn’t immune to the turning tides in the world around her. I haven’t been operating at maximum adequacy for the last couple months – if you want to pick a totally arbitrary date, let’s say since November 8. Sometime in the late evening if we’re going to get very specific. But again, arbitrary.

As a result, I’ve been a successful lifestyle blogger in name only. By which I mean, I have not blogged. I’m very sorry. I know my inherent successfulness will only carry me so far in life. But I’ve returned, and I want to use my adequacy to make the world a better place.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg does twenty pushups a day. She’s 80 years old and very small. Plus, she’s incredibly busy being on the Supreme Court, which I guess is a pretty demanding job. She also has the advantage of working out at the Supreme Court-only gym, and I might stop being a successful lifestyle blogger to produce the reality series Justice Gym.

Anyway, if Ruth Bader Ginsburg can handle twenty pushups a day, surely I, a successful lifestyle blogger in my late 20’s, in peak physical health, can do it too.

So I did.

Ruth does two sets of ten, so that’s what I set out to do. Ten is easier than twenty, and I could take a break between sets. No big deal, right?


Pushups are very hard, it turns out. My arms are small spindles that cannot support my dense body. How does that tiny octogenarian do it?

You might have to do modified pushups. After struggling with regular pushups for a few days, I switched to modified for a while. I think my form was better with the modified ones. How am I supposed to know if my form is good or not? I don’t have a trainer. (Ruth has a trainer.)

But! If you’re lenient on yourself about what constitutes a “pushup,” it’s totally possible to do twenty of them.

Then, to make it a really ceremonious workout, I look off into the distance and proclaim, “I am Ruth Bader Ginsburg.” It gives me something to look forward to while I tolerate an entire minute of exercise.

I’ve been doing my RBG’s for almost a month, which is by far my longest run at an exercise program to date. The pushups are civic-minded in name only, and do nothing to enrich the world, but I do feel ever so slightly stronger, and at this moment that feels like a victory.

I am Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

I don’t know if I’ll continue my career as a successful lifestyle blogger next year. For 2017, we might need to be better than adequate.

 

Photo Credit: Tiffany Smith

Loneliness Hack: Make Festive Party Foods for Just You!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

If you’re like me, you know that cooking for one can be a bummer. All the work that goes into lovingly preparing a meal only serves as a reminder that you are all alone in the world. (Not even successful lifestyle bloggers are immune to this. It’s lonely at the top.)

But does a lifestyle blogger give up? No, I found a solution! This one simple trick will breathe new life into your lonely habits:

Make fun dishes that are meant for groups, and eat them alone.

 


These veggie stuffed mushrooms are a healthy, decadent party snack. They’re challenging to prepare (hollowing out those mushrooms is harder than it looks!), and the slicing, chopping, and baking process builds anticipation for what is sure to be a warm dinner party in the company of good friends. Or, a semi-satisfying dinner for one! I put them on a plate and washed them down with some wine, but feel free to hold the hot cookie sheet over the sink and go to town.


Cauliflower fritters are a healthy twist on hash browns, and they’re great for a homemade brunch with someone you love. Or, for creating an entire sink full of dishes that you, yourself will have to wash! But hovering over a hot stove and trying to flip these beauties before they crumbled? It was so worth it when I saw the look on my own face as I took the first bite, my reflection in the living room window betraying a mix of satisfaction an existential doom. Yum!


Queso dip is, technically, not food. But it is great for parties! And any event can be a party with the right snacks – even sitting on the couch and admitting that you, truly, have given up. And when you’re eating alone, nobody will ever know that you finished the entire jar yourself. I didn’t even give this picture a border, because it doesn’t deserve it.

I might be a lonely lifestyle blogger, but with this fun life hack, I’m also full of appetizers at all times! And that, my friends, is what I call a success 🙂