Level Up Saho …a day in the life. Or maybe "How To Get Better At Life"? ♦ Music ♦ Weight Loss/Fitness/Diet ♦ Non-Farm ♦ Mental Health ♦ Pop-Culture ♦ And Whatever Else I Want! ♦
My Mo’ and talk all day long. . . (the song thing does not pertain to this conversation. haha!)
Well. I must say – this new Pinterest update is awesome.
Back up. I’m the type of person who does not like change. Like seriously, quit messing with my shit, man! Therefore, I know that the ability to make sub-categories on my all of my crazy – A-D-D driven – boards has been there for a while. Meh. Why bother with that? I’ll just make 20,000 different boards and that will be just ducky by me.
But wait! I also need (NEED) my life to be organized and neat and tidy. Yet the devil in me wants that to be easy so I procrastinate. A lot. All of that equates to me waiting until today to take advantage of this option, and let me tell you that I LOVE it. I really do. It’s not perfect yet, but apparently having a job means that you actually have to do work in order to get paid, so that goes on the back burner.
Go to my Pinterest page now, please. Thanks! That’s just a taste of how all over the place that I am. Weee! That’s what’s in store for my blog as well. So POO POO on you, you blog purists that want me to only write about one thing ever.
I love Pinterest. I don’t want to, but I really do love it. It’s freaking fantastic.
I need to be more consistent! I guess I’ll give it a shot again. . . I have so much older content I need to post! I’m sure some of you are chomping at the bit to have me finish up a couple of things!
In the mean time, check these two songs out!
xoxo
-S
P.S. – and also this, because it’s nuts and I love it.
Just. . . THIS for starters. GRRR! I found it on Pinterest this morning and it really is a summation of how I’ve been feeling about the world lately.
It’s disgusting and it’s really starting to annoy me. I was watching a documentary last night while I was on the treadmill (big surprise) about some cultural stuff from the late 80s early 90s in New York City. One of the people on there made a comment about how people today don’t do anything but take pictures of themselves having “fun”.
It’s true. It’s shitty to say, but the majority of people I hang out with are SUPER guilty of this crap. I get sucked into it too. It’s really hard not to when you fight it and go out of your way not to bust your phone out and then everyone in your group has their face buried in their phone, of course you want to join in! What else are you going to do?
I’ll tell you what you’re going to do! Not do it. Here’s my challenge to myself, and to you – put the phone away. Do something else. If you’re already doing something else, you don’t need your phone to be your security blanket! If you get a phone call, or want to show someone a picture of some cute shit your dog did last night, that’s one thing, but then put it back down! Make fucking eye contact! Have a fucking conversation! Do a fucking THING!
If you know me and you think this might be about you, it is. If you don’t know me. . . it’s about you, too.
It can be tough for you addicts out there, so try this: put it down for one hour. Just one hour. Then tomorrow do it again. But! It doesn’t count if it’s one hour while you are at work or at home by yourself. You have to do it when you are out with people. This ABSOLUTELY includes Snapchat.
Just go here. I know it’s a little strange, but sometimes I like to just sit and watch it. More on this if I ever get my Andy Warhol article out to you! 😉
It’s been nearly a week since I’ve shared anything with you all. I plan to get something fun out tonight. But! Let me explain!
My goodness!
I’ve hit on this wall of watching endless documentaries that play into my web of interest and learning about equipment I want and the culture based around it.
I’m watching documentaries and doing tons of research and taking notes and starting articles, but not finishing them!
I’m on information overload and I’m so excited about everything I’ve learned and that I have to share and I can’t shut it off right now! So. Bear with me. I’ll get you some wonderful bits and in the meantime it will probably just be teasers.
Sorry about that. I promise it will be worth the wait!
This is a spoken word project by Shane Koyczan that I first discovered when I was dancing in college. It’s very moving and it hits me hard, in a different way, every time that I watch it.
You’ve seen before in my ramblings a few posts and references to PostSecret. I believe this site started in 2006. Maybe a little before that? I’ve been visiting it weekly since about 2006 at any rate. – Thank you, Frank.
I really want to write often about my mental health in hopes that it will help my sanity and bring some hope to others who are feeling similarly crummy, but I’m afraid to fall into pity-party rants. I’m going to strive to not get into that mode.
Also.
And I feel strongly about this. Speaking about depression and the struggles you face is not a pity-party. When you take advantage of your listener and use that as a way to feed off of the attention that you are getting then THAT is a pity-party. There are far better, more positive ways to acquire attention. That is healthy.
Let’s start off with this statement: I have depression. I was recently diagnosed with a bi-polar anxiety disorder, but I don’t know if buy into that. At that point I was prescribed a mood stabilizer and an anti-anxiety medication. Now I must say it is very hard for me to agree to see a doctor and even more difficult for me to agree to take a pill. I have a problem with the idea of medicating because it does not cure (I do think diabetics need insulin, et cetera). It simply doesn’t. It suppresses the symptoms. That is most definitely not what I want.
I took the lamictal and the buspar from July 4th – October 31st and then I decided I was done. It didn’t help that much, it messed with my already crappy sleep, and it made me feel crappy. Plus, the long term affects of these medications are not something I’m interested in. I’d much rather make a promise to myself to not do anything final and keep a good bag of tools to help myself than take this crap. I would prefer to be my depressed self feeling like every breath I take (at times) is ripping my heart out of my chest and still have some me in there than feel like a zombie because I’m taking a happy pill.
That being said, if that works for you, please follow your doctor’s prescription plan for you. Mine is not necessarily the healthiest of ways to deal.
I don’t do therapy. I don’t. I worked for an inpatient, acute care, mental health facility for a couple of years and what I saw really turned me off to the world of mental health care. Except for the doctor I worked specifically for and one therapist in the outpatient clinic. These two were amazing and will really make a difference in the lives of their patients. The rest of them stand in the break-room and bitch about their patients or make fun of them. Or play right along in the corporate game of dollars and cents being the bottom line and not the well-being of the patients.
I fall into the pit of self-loathing sometimes often and sometimes once in a great while. When I’m down I put in my headphones and listen to sad songs and go to my secret board on Pinterest that I labeled “Saddness” (I know it’s spelled wrong. I LIKE it like that.)
I pin statements and imagery others have made that correlate to how I am feeling. I don’t know why I do that when I’m feeling down, but it helps me wrap my mind around things. I can accept that that is how I feel in the moment and I can gather it all up and lock it away and then it starts to feel better. Like I am validating that part of me and I’m making it make sense in a way. This helps me. I can’t explain better than that.
Many people in my life don’t understand it and tell me ignorant things like “You don’t have a reason to feel that way. Mind over matter. Just don’t feel that way. Get over it.” So I don’t like to talk about it very much.
I’ll post more about this at another time. It’s hard for me to put this all into words, but this is at least a start.
If you are ever feeling alone and depressed – or suicidal, please seek help. Go here. Utilize the tools they have for you.
I’ve tried to write today and don’t have it in me, I suppose, to create something worthy of you all.
Instead, I’m going to share with you a list of beloved movies that I jotted down last night. Maybe it will spark something. Maybe it won’t.
The saddest journey in the world is the one that follows a precise itinerary. Then you’re not a traveler. You’re a fucking tourist.
― Guillermo del Toro
Total Recall – 1990. Paul Verhoeven, TriStar Pictures
The Last Unicorn – 1982. Arthur Rankin, Jr./Jules Bass, Jensen Farley Pictures
These movies are pretty well rooted in my childhood and I have seen all of them several times. They aren’t the only ones I could have put on the list, but it was still a nice jaunt down the memory rat hole.
Sorry about the size inconsistency. I need some image software I think. Or a better working knowledge of how to do this! haha!
I might just write a post about influential (to me) music from these movies.
I couldn’t wait. I had to get this one out to you babes tonight.
If you know me you know that I love music. Not like an emo teenager who can’t take her headphones out and join the real world, but like a real MUSIC person. I love something from just about every genre. I can’t subscribe to one and I can’t tell you why I like certain songs, exactly. I just like them if they are good. I had a teacher in high school tell me that I need to work for Rolling Stone.
I think what I’m going to do here is periodically post some playlists with themes for you all. You know – since I can’t make mix tapes anymore. . . I don’t know where to buy tapes and I don’t have a tape deck. Wait. Yes I do. In my record player. But I can’t make mix tapes with it, shoot.
I subscribe to Apple Music because they bought out the Beats by Dre music app and I really liked that a lot. I sincerely recommend this to anyone who loves music in any capacity. You can get a plan for $9.99/month and find damned near any song. Yes, I will admit that some songs that I’m looking for are even too abstract for Apple Music, but this is a rarity. I make tons of playlists and am constantly adding to them and creating more. I stopped listening to the radio voluntarily in about 1999 or 2000. . . whenever I discovered Napster, which at the time was an illegal peer-to-peer music sharing program. And I’ve never turned back. I would say this ranks right up there with deleting my Facebook account as one of the best decisions I’ve ever made.
So. Without further adieu – here is my first Mix Tape for you!
Saho’s Quintessential Proto-Punk:
A Side
1.) Lou Reed – This Magic Moment
2.) The Sonics – Psycho
3.) Monks – Shut Up
4.) Love – 7 and 7 is
5.) The Velvet Underground – White Light/White Heat
6.) MC5 – Kick Out the Jams
B Side
7.) Iggy & the Stooges – Search and Destroy
8.) New York Dolls – Trash
9.) Patti Smith – Free Money
10.) The Modern Lovers – Road Runner
11.) Pere Ubu – Final Solution
12.) The Clash – London Calling
*disclaimer – I started this playlist a long long time ago and several of the songs were drawn straight from an article that I would have no idea how to find anymore or I’d be very happy to reference the article and credit the author. That being said, he’s not wrong. It’s very good music!
**double disclaimer – some of these don’t fall in the parameters of traditional Proto-Punk, but what are parameters anyway? It’s good to color outside of the lines.
Let me know what you think! Post your own favorite Proto-Punk songs below!
Diet Coke and Hair-Spray 