Well, I'm clearly awesome at blogging.

According to blogger, my last post was almost a year ago to the day.

Well, shit.

I'll do a quick recap of last year's events I guess.

-Got promoted.
-Got a cat. His name is Roscoe, he'll be a year old in like a month or so. He's adorable, but he's also evil.
-The fam came to visit! Like, the whole fam! Crammed them all in my tiny ass apartment. It was neat.
-Moved to Oakland! Actually love it, won't lie.
-Went to Michigan in January, where it was still like -20. Made me appreciate my winter much more.
-Turned 24. Joined a gym.
-Realized I absolutely HATE school and what I'm studying. Seriously considering trying to convert credits to an AA and taking time off.
-Emergency flight to Wisconsin. Got food poisoning.
-Decided I want to do roller derby for real. Got skates. Trying to get into a fresh meat program, but it's harder to get ahold of them than I thought it'd be? Iono.



So, that's pretty much it.

I'll do a more thorough update hopefully in a bit.

I Probably Should Have Noticed When My Stutter Returned

This one isn't an easy one to write, folks. But here we are. It's been almost two months since I've written anything on this blog, and that doesn't really bother me to be honest.

I've been having an existential crisis of sorts. I don't know what a true one entails, and I don't particularly want to blow things out of proportion, but here's the facts. I think having them written down will help me recover or move on, or whatever it is that I need to do.

When I was younger, I distinctly remember having English language issues. Not anything severe, just a little mispronunciation here, some dyslexic tendencies there. Normal kid stuff, though, it never really effected school or social performances.

As I got older, I grew out of it. Mostly. I had a pretty wicked stutter when I was nervous, and still frequently have to force myself through it if I have to speak publicly. It's not inhibiting, just irritating. Thankfully, I don't really have to present often, so it's rare that it effects me.

About 7 weeks ago, my stutter started occurring in every day situations. I would get so hung up on words that I'd mentally shut down and have to start over, or shut down completely and have to stop. It went from a rare occurrence spurred on by stress and nerves, to an every few sentences issue that was debilitating.

Still, I didn't think anything of it.

Things in my life started getting hard. Most of my life I've been fortunate in that I just got things without trying. Not material things, more like concepts. I caught on fast and ideas kept growing like weeds. I've never really had any issues academically as a result, shit just made sense right off the bat, so I've never really had to struggle with that. Even into college, I thrived with this.  Well, until I started getting bad critique after bad critique. Now, I've been in this world for a while now, bad critiques aren't anything new. But weeks on end, coupled with the sheer lack of time and resources to devote on improving begins to wear on a girl. I began to doubt everything.

This doubt and nervousness started to cause me to doubt everything. Why am I studying this if I'm so bad at it? Why am I going to school for this? Maybe I picked the wrong major? Wow, I'm really just not good at any of this. I'm wasting my life. I can't do this. I don't want to do this. I don't like any of this. I don't like anything. I don't want to do anything except sleep.

I don't want to do or be anything. I just don't want to do this anymore.

I started having social anxiety symptoms, and frequent panic attacks. Any time I had to do something that required me to exit my apartment caused a full on meltdown.

To add to my stress, I also managed to get promoted. This is something I've been trying to do for over a year, and it didn't give me any satisfaction. It just made things worse on an anxiety level.

I must've said something to my dad in one of our phone conversations that caused concern, cos he decided to come down for a weekend unplanned. He was here three days, and witnessed two panic attacks and a breakdown. I was pretty much nonfunctional, and I've never seen him so worried about me in my life.

After a long talk with him, he made me start realizing some things. First, he thinks I'm depressed. Which, I'm hesitant to fall into because I think true depression is something that gets overlooked a lot and I don't want to add to that problem. So back burner that.

Second, we decided that its likely in my best interest to take the summer off school and just enjoy life and try to find myself a little. I literally graduated high school and went to college a week later. Ignoring burnout isn't helping anyone, and a good indicator of my being burnt out is my disinterest in creating anything, even things I like to do. Like, I used to knit and crochet as means of a creative outlet. I can't even do that anymore. Everything stresses me out, and the idea of adding something else to an already full schedule makes me so nervous I could puke and also just go take a nap until everything just goes away.

The third thing I've come to realize is that I don't deal we'll without having set expectations anymore. I've been an adult adult all on my own for a mere five years, and I don't know how to process that. Like, I don't have anything to maintain that I don't want to, and there really isn't anything that I have to do. So what's the point? I hate everything right now, so I don't really give a shit to go to school, but not going is also not an option because I don't want to be in this position forever. But what about after that?

My mind isn't making any sense, but nothing else is either. I just legitimately don't understand how to process things anymore, and apparently that's alright but at the same time it isn't because it's not progress? I don't even know. What am I progressing toward? More shit I don't want to do? And if that's the case, then why am I doing the steps toward that?

This is a small portion of what I'm dealing with. I'm hoping against odds that taking some time off will help me, but I don't know what I'm expecting it to help. How do you fix something you don't understand?

I really just would feel better if the panic and anxiety issues would subside, but I don't even know where to begin with that.



This got longwinded, and there's so much more but I'm starting to lose motivation and attention, so my train of thought is all jumbled.

Cheers if you made it to here. Looks like this is gonna be an ongoing journey.

Pulled a muscle in my ass, and other things.

So, in an effort to stop spending so much bloody money, I went shopping.

Whoops.

Majority was food, though, so does that actually count? I can't be sure. I bought one of those fancy Evernote notebooks because I've been drooling over it for months, and just found it in store accidentally. My brain just went what the hell, I need that. And it's glorious.

Also went bowling, but I won't say whoops to that because it was hilarious and I love the people I went with like family. But, I definitely pulled a muscle in my ass and work the next day was painful. Today, too. Anyone who tells you bowling is not a workout clearly isn't as competitive as I am. But I won. So, worth it.

I need to step up my game school-wise, but plans. I'm working on it, I'm just really unmotivated when it comes to school. Really need to get over that.

I also got some work done on my giant freelance project, which is a lovely feeling. Truly. I'm less stressed about it as a result, and it's coming along nicely.

I've also started (slowly) taking crochet and knit orders again, but shhhhh, don't tell yet because I don't need to get anymore overwhelmed than I already am, and that's a hella fast track to get there.



This is a tiny, essentially pointless blog post, but I felt the need to write one.

I'm slowly turning into a health nut.

Surprisingly. I wasn't expecting this, I didn't ask for this.

I like it though. And today, I bought a Nutribullet. Do you know what that means?

That means this shit just got very real.
(and also that Macy's was having a baller sale and I feel like an adult when I buy appliances)

So, lets talk about my full time job.

No, I don't mean the one I get paid for. I reckon I'll be bitching about that soon enough.

I'm talking about the fact that I'm a major league procrastinator, 12 years running. I'm staring to hate it, though, and I'm trying to convert to being a perfectionist. Shit is hard. Kudos to all you perfectionists out there. I think I spend more time avoiding things (namely homework and like, dishes) than I do actually working on them, and that's kinda bullshit.

So, as a result of this, I had a small panicky mental breakdown the other day. And I bought a weekly planner. One of those ones that look like a calendar and have tear away weeks. That you actually have to write on. Because if its a situation where I can easily delete something, girl you know I'm gonna.

So far, it's going alright. I missed a bunch of the points yesterday, but hit them all on Monday. It's only Wednesday, and I'm not hella stressed about things thus far. I know it's early in the game but just having a plan written out is exceptionally helpful, at least so I know where I'm headed and what I still have to do.

So I guess organization isn't all bad, even if it started as a homework stalling tactic.

I am really bad at blogging.

Outside of tumblr anyway. But alas, here we are again.

This year is the year I've decided I'm going to try and better my life. 2012 wasn't bad - in fact, it's probably one of the better ones I've had in a while. But I find myself wanting to better myself, do greater things, become a more interesting, well rounded person. I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with me at this juncture, but I'm always into improving what I can, so I think that I will.

The goal for this blog is to document that, and at base just document my life. And also share recipes and pictures and shit, because that's a big part of my life these days.

So, let me get around to an introduction.


My name is Miranda Johnston. I'm 23, and I live in San Francisco. I work in a pretty well known coffee chain, at a fairly busy location about 10 minutes from my house. It's a job, and you'll probably get to read about my days there quite often.
I'm also a full time student majoring in Web Design / New Media. Probably graduating this fall. Possibly.

Short version, a la my Twitter, is I'm 23, I live in San Francisco, I make shit and I think I'm a lot cooler than I probably am. Which is all true.


See you around. :]