Successes

A Fun New Haircut, or a Cry for Help?

Posted on by Julie Pearson

Old Life/New Life

As a successful lifestyle blogger, I know that your look is the most important reflection of who you are. That leaves me to wonder: if I change my look, who am I exactly? I cut off 6 inches of my hair to find out!

A drastic haircut is an exciting way to update your look and make the world seem fresh and new. Or is it a desperate plea to inject a little big of excitement into your draining, monotonous life? Who knows! Either way, I love my new haircut.

I knew it was time to cut my hair because it was getting hard to wash, but I could just sense that it was time to cut off so much of my hair that I feel like I’m living in someone else’s body. Was it because I wanted a fun look for fall? Or because my soul was desperately crying out, “Someone, save me from my rote daily existence that stretches on into infinity with no end in sight?” Ray at Atomic Hair Lab did such a great job that it doesn’t even matter!

img_2697 (1)

Everything is great now.

The feeling of watching giant chunks of my own hair fall to the floor and collect at my feet was liberating and exciting. Piles of hair fanned out before me, like dismantling all the dreams and plans I made for my life and combing through them, wondering if they will ever pan out and if the journey is really worth it at all, at the end of the day. Wondering: how does one ever really know if they are taking the right steps forward, or even if they are taking steps forward, when the journey only makes sense in hindsight looking back. It’s an endless puzzle, but then, isn’t the puzzle the most important part of the journey? Will it ever become easy to live with uncertainty? Anyway, the haircut’s great.

 

(Photo Credit: Jen Aubrecht)

My Adequate Hiatus

Posted on by Julie Pearson

I ignored this mantra


I’m sure that you, my hopelessly devoted fan base, have noticed that I haven’t posted in a couple weeks. Well, even successful lifestyle bloggers need to take vacations sometimes!

I’m pleased to report that I’ve taken the last two weeks to live my life as usual. I traveled from my bed, to my couch, to my car, and back again.

I exercised one time. I ate a lot of pizza. I kept forgetting to go to the hardware store. And I realized just how important it is to recharge those batteries by changing absolutely nothing about my routine. Because now, I’m prepared to be the lifestyle blogger that you, the adequate masses, deserve.

I Don’t Need Sleep to Thrive!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As a successful lifestyle blogger, I’ve cultivated a superior amount of control over my body. While most bodies need at least 6 or more hours of sleep to function adequately during the day, mine is fully equppped to thrive on just two r three. Thatsriiihgt, even as I age, I’m just as functional as ever only now, the whole wordld looks like a hologram. Fun!

Selfie mode

For example, last night I stayepdup to 3am in the mirnong. Thing I wokeupat6. If yourrrrrrrrrrre donting the math at home then you know I got just three little tiny hours of sleep.

But! here I am, fully functioning at a work place. All it takes is just wanting it bad enough.   I don’t see any weird shapesapapses dancing in front of my eyes and I definitely didit nod off in the middle of writing this sena”””””””

And that proves that wiht just a little willpower and sherbet bicycle elevator ding noise grooggggg………… YOu too can eliminate extravagant sleeping from your life;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;’w

Successful Lifestyle Doctor: TMJ Edition

Posted on by Julie Pearson


I bet you didn’t know that as successful lifestyle blogger, I also suffer from a chronic illness. Well, I do. I have self-diagnosed TMJ. I’m a little confused about what that means exactly, but a dentist sort of mentioned it to me once in passing a lot of years ago, and told me to get a bite guard to fix it.

I didn’t get the bite guard then, but lately I’ve been getting a lot of headaches and jaw pain. So rather than going to the doctor and figuring out what’s going on, I ordered a bite guard on Amazon.

So I fixed it! I’m not grinding my teeth in my sleep anymore. In fact, I’m not doing anything in my sleep, because sleeping with a bite guard is impossible.

I thought constant headaches were bad, but sleeping with a piece of plastic bigger than my mouth inside my mouth is more than adequately unpleasant. And as I toss and turn in bed, wondering why I’m biting on something that feels like a gummy bear but tastes worse, I know I’m not making my self-diagnosed TMJ worse. I probably am getting less headaches too. I’m still getting some, but probably less?

I cured myself without a doctor, and it only cost me about $12. I think this means I am a doctor. And that’s what I’d call a success 🙂
 

I’m a Mop!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

Is the swiffer a mop? No, I’m a mop!

As a successful lifestyle blogger, I’m really, really good at being a person. But after a while, being a person isn’t enough anymore. So I thought to myself, if I’m this good at being a person, what else can I be? The answer was clear: to be truly productive, I had to also be a mop.

Successful lifestyle bloggers multi-task, and this is the ultimate multi-tasking: I’m a successful person and a successful mop. I can exercise and clean at once. I’m multi-tasking at the kind of multi-tasking I’m doing. So successful!

With these mop socks, it was so easy to transcend my humanity. I just put them on, sprayed some Green Works on the kitchen floor, and danced around for a while. It sort of raised my heart rate a little bit, and the floor got sort of cleaner than it was before.

The socks made me more successful than a person, and less successful than a mop. Now that’s what I call an adequate day’s work 🙂

 

Photo by Maggie Gottlieb

Cured by Carbs

Posted on by Julie Pearson

I felt like such a productive, healthy human all week, until Thursday when I woke up feeling weird and awful. Mostly, my head hurt a lot. And it seemed like I had some weird sinus pressure going on, but I wasn’t congested. Also I was very thirsty. No matter how much water I drank, or how much veggie curry I ate, nothing helped. I googled lots of diseases and by Saturday afternoon, I decided I was dying. But before I threw in the towel and decided that my health was a lost cause, I tried one last thing:

 

I ordered a pizza! A half hour later, I felt amazing. It might because I hadn’t eaten enough for the last three days, or because I had a chance to lie down for a while, but I think my body just needed a miracle cocktail of cheese and empty carbs. It brought me back from the brink of…I don’t know, some kind of flu? A migraine? Death?

Oh, also I took an Excedrin but that’s probably not related.

Fad Diet: Salad Week

Posted on by Julie Pearson

I couldn’t call myself a successful lifestyle blogger if I didn’t endorse a harebrained dieting scheme. So let’s go with this one:

A few weeks ago, my roommate Inae and I made a commitment to eat salads for a week. The parameters were that we would take turns making a salad every day, and the salad would be dinner. That’s it. No other guidelines. Easy diet, right?

WRONG. No, just kidding. It was pretty successful! We made it six days, which is hereby called an Adequate Week™. And the salads were, overall, pretty healthy. I was surprised how full I felt from just eating a lot of vegetables.

Though Salad Week was pretty successful, I did chronicle it poorly. There were lots of homemade dressings and delicious roasted chickpeas and marinated tofu, but I don’t remember most of what they were. Instead, enjoy these unexplained photos of salads!




I Hiked Alone and Didn’t Die!

Posted on by Julie Pearson

Hiking is so popular in LA that even I have done it a few times. It’s an activity that involves nature, strenuous activity, and general discomfort, but sometimes I’m forcibly dragged on one anyway. So I whine a lot and try to make the other person turn around and get ice cream after ten minutes. Usually that doesn’t work thought, and I go on a hike. But never alone, until now!

I took the day off work for a thing that ultimately got cancelled, so I found myself with a rare free morning. I thought a calm, solo hike would be a great way to break my routine and re-center. And because I love failing at things, I chose the Wisdom Tree. It’s a short but rugged hike that ends at the top of a peak where there is one lone tree. It’s awesome! But usually I don’t make it to the top, because I’m out of shape.

When I was alone, I whined less. I whined to strangers on the trail a little, but mostly I was quiet. The walk from my car to the start of the hike was already a steep hill, so I was tired before I began. Then my legs grew heavier with every step. But I kept going! I climbed and climbed until…

VICTORY!

….I got tired and gave up. I didn’t make it to the top. But I probably made it over halfway up, and then I went to get a breakfast burrito, so I still consider it a huge success 🙂

Recipe: Magic Eggs

Posted on by Julie Pearson

Soupy

I didn’t have a lot of time for lunch today, so I made something quick that is usually a totally passable lunch choice: spinach and eggs. The recipe is simple. You saute some spinach, then crack a couple eggs in as soon as the spinach starts shrinking up. The eggs finished cooking – I swear they were all cooked – and I crumbled some goat cheese on top. I sat down to eat.

Only then, like MAGIC, the eggs uncooked themselves! It was yolk soup. It was a disgusting lunch miracle! It was basically inedible.

I didn’t eat it.

But I didn’t give up. I popped the whole thing in the microwave for a minute, which cooked up the eggs a little too much. It didn’t taste good, but I did have lunch. And that, my friends, is what I call an adequate meal 🙂

Travel Fashion: I Wore an Outfit

Posted on by Julie Pearson

As a successful lifestyle blogger it’s important to travel a lot to expand my lifestyle, so I took one trip and will milk it for two weeks of posts. When traveling, you can’t just wear any outfit, you have to wear an outfit. So I wore one.

I wore this outfit in front of a mural.

I love this ensemble I wore one day in Chicago, so I don’t know, maybe you should wear it too? The thing I love most about this outfit is that it contains articles of clothing that go together. It features a skirt I acquired at a clothing swap, some thrift store boots, an old white tshirt from Target, and a sweater whose origin I don’t remember. So good luck finding any of these pieces, but maybe try?

I wore this outfit in front of Del Close.

I wore this outfit while I ate a sandwich. (Not pictured: most of outfit)

I wore this outfit on the brown line. (Not pictured: outfit or brown line)

img_1828

I wore this outfit while I looked at these toy cars in a parking lot. (Not pictured: me, outfit)

Photo and Train Friendship By Cynthia Bangert