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{ Monthly Archives } November 2005

It must be my year

I was poking around the web today (like I do most days) and found myself looking at the Chinese Animal Zodiac. I was born in the year of the Rat, which according to the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco means the following:

People born in the Year of the Rat are noted for their charm and attraction for the opposite sex. They work hard to achieve their goals, acquire possessions, and are likely to be perfectionists. They are basically thrifty with money. Rat people are easily angered and love to gossip. Their ambitions are big, and they are usually very successful. They are most compatible with people born in the years of the Dragon, Monkey, and Ox.

Charm and attraction? Not sure about that, although I had two very fine specimens hit on me while I was at a conference recently. Perfectionist? Thrifty? Easily angered? I’d have to say yes to all of those, which are not my finest traits. The compatibility part is especially good, considering that the boyfriend was born in the year after me, hence is an Ox; what’s really weird is that my ex-husband is also an Ox (although one cycle prior) but has none of the Ox traits and definitely wasn’t a good match for this Rat.

I found other Rat definitions here, here, here (which also tells me that I’m a metal Rat), here and here that include a few other things that ring true, both positive and negative.

I don’t believe in all of this, but it’s been a pleasant distraction for the past 30 minutes when I should have been working.

2005 11 22 off topic Comments (0)

Macrobiotic Monday

After not posting for two months, here I am twice in one day. On the weekend, Damir (who’s genetically skinny) said “I’m getting fat, I need to get back on track with my eating until Christmas”, which made me assess my not-so-skinny state and think the same. I just came back from a business conference where I saw a lot of people who I haven’t seen for more than four years, and they universally said that I looked great and had lost weight. The weight part just isn’t true, except a normal fluctuation of +/-5 pounds, although I think that between less stress, a happy relationship and better eating through macrobiotics, I probably do look a lot better than I did back then.

Time to focus on a pre-Christmas shape-up, both in terms of eating better and getting a bit more exercise. I’m already eating pretty well: mostly macrobiotic, vegetarian (vegan, actually) half the time or more, with a bit of fish or some other animal a few times a week. The problem is the drinking: I love wine, I belong to a wine-tasting club, and Damir and I easily polish off a bottle of wine at dinner. When we go out, we stop in at the local pub and have a pint or two, usually accompanied by something that is completely not macrobiotic. This is only one or two nights each week, I’m not worried about an alcohol problem per se, but still too much of a habit of excess and too many empty calories. Besides, wine’s not macrobiotic, although beer can be considered as such if it’s suitably organic.

As for the exercise, well, anything that I do would be an improvement over the big nothing that I’ve been doing for the past year or more. Working at home, there are days when I don’t even leave my apartment, and I don’t use the gym in the building in spite of my best intentions to do so. I bought a bike during the summer, and have ridden it about three times, and now have the excuse of the cold weather and imminent snow to stop even thinking about riding. There’s a big plan in my head to start exercising, and one morning last week I actually woke up and put on exercise clothes, although I never made it to the gym. One step at a time.

I expect that all of this comes together with my previous posts about passion in my job. There’s a number of areas in my life that are a bit “broken” right now — eating, drinking, working, exercise — although not, thankfully, relationships: I’m at a better point with my personal relationships now than I’ve ever been. Is there just some sort of weird balance thing that says that if one thing in your life is going really well, then other things will falter? Or is it just laziness on my part to even think that?

I’m headed off to get a bit of exercise walking to a friend’s house; however, I’ll counteract that with a glass of wine when I’m there!

2005 11 21 health Comments (0)

Having a plan for passion

My friend Pat, the photographer, has a plan to quit her current well-paying job as a technical writer and strike out on her own as a professional photographer. I jokingly asked her at lunch the other day when she planned to do this, and she said “On my 50th birthday, I’m going to go into the office and say ‘My photography business is starting to be successful and I’m out of here’.” That’s only a couple of years away, and since Pat is one of the biggest procrastinaters that I know, it may not happen exactly on that schedule, but I admit to more than a little bit of envy that she has a plan for a major career change and has every intention of following through with it.

I have another friend who decided a few years back to throw off her project management role in a management consulting firm, join an aid organization, and since then has spent a year in Uzbekistan (or one of the ’stans), a year in Burma, and is currently in Sudan. She makes almost nothing but has managed to keep a little condo here in Toronto as a nest egg, which she rents out while she’s gone. This would not be my choice of lifestyle (a little too heavy on guns and malaria for me), but I admire her ability to find something about which she is passionate.

I, on the other hand, am filled with angst over how I’m bored with what I’m doing; I have the financial security to start something new, I just don’t have a clue what that “something” is. I keep falling back on technical ideas, since I’m an engineer and I’ve been working in IT for almost 20 years, but maybe I need to be considering something completely different. There’s a lot of things that I like to do but don’t really do well enough to do them professionally: photography, wine tasting, and cooking. I love to teach (adults, not not kids). I enjoy writing, and have been blogging on four different blogs for the past year. I love travel and would do it all the time if someone else paid the bills, and if it didn’t mean that I’d never see the boyfriend, who is more of a homebody.

I used to have a deep passion for my work, back when I owned a 40-person growing company in the boom times of the late 90’s; in fact, I still have a t-shirt that I bought on the street during that period with the word “passion” silkscreened across the front, although I don’t wear it any more. I’ve lost that passion, and I’m quite desparate to get it back.

2005 11 21 business Comments (0)