January was a rough month for Aloysa’s Kitchen Sink. So was the beginning of February. Hopefully from this moment forward it will be smoother sailing. One can only hope for it, right?
A lot of you asked me what happened, why I pulled the plug so unpredictably. A few of you asked me to come back! I do owe you some answers. At least, I feel that I do.
What happened
Somehow it is difficult to believe that today is the last day of 2010. Time seems to fly really fast lately. Even though I don’t set up goals, I still like to look back and see what I have achieved over the period of one year. Could I have achieved more if I’d set goals and specific measurements? I don’t know. But what I do know is that I don’t limit myself by goals. There is a certain feeling of freedom and of endless opportunities when there are no measurements set in stone.
More Writing, More Reading, Less TV Watching
I injured my shoulder a while ago playing ping-pong. You are probably thinking “How in the world can you injure your shoulder playing a harmless game of a ping-pong?” If you have a couple of cocktails and swing too hard, that’s how. I finally dragged myself to the doctor and found out that I cannot lift weights for about 6-8 months after I am finished with physical therapy.
I learned the word “frugality” from my American friend. We were at lunch talking about shopping. She said that she likes good bargains, thinks about herself as “frugal” and doesn’t settle for “cheap.” Even though my English was really good by then, I still didn’t know what “frugal” meant. My friend explained that it meant “spending wisely.”
Lately the life style of being frugal has become somewhat of a phenomena. Everyone is having heated discussions about it. Bloggers passionately write about it. People try to accurately define it. Why being frugal is such a popular notion? Probably because it is very difficult to be frugal in a consumerist culture (read about my financial discoveries in Saving Money Today). Then I thought about my own life experience and decided to compare my Russian definition of frugality with American definition.
About The Kitchen Sink: the blog celebrates a two months anniversary in October. I am getting to know a lot of you, my loyal readers. When I started this blog I was not sure where it will take me and what I was going to write about. So many subjects I wanted to discuss. A lot of questions I wanted to raise and search for answers. So I created The Kitchen Sink and decided it will be about:
- living a life filled with writing and blogging;
- exploring personal finance;
- trying to live a healthy life;
I always thought that making and keeping a commitment to fitness takes years. Not a day, not a week, not even three months – years! I could not be any more wrong. It took two weeks! But let me start from the very beginning…
In high school I hated physical education class and barely attended it. It was a really bad idea because I failed a running test. Instead of running, I walked most of the track and botched the test miserably. My PE teacher called my mother and told her that if I don’t shape up and run or at least attempt to run, I won’t be allowed to take graduation exams (the school system in my country is different from the school system in the US).
I have spent an awful lot of time in my life worrying. I worried about bills, approaching deadlines, driving in the traffic to work, flu, shrinking budgets, layoffs at work, expenses, the economy, the real estate market and so on. You get the picture. I even worried about my husband driving to work and making it there safely. Do you know anyone else like me? I bet you do.
I worried so much that these worries became debilitating to a certain extent. Sometimes I could not function because I was obsessing about so many things (see my list above). Finally I have decided that I cannot live every minute of my life in a agonizing state of anxiety. I started wondering what I could do to reduce my fixation.
