Fighting.

I've been fighting a lot lately. (No, not with my husband.) With my body. With myself. 

Last night I got hit with the sort of headache that makes you want to find the nearest set of hedge clippers and snip off everything from the neck up. After waking Dan up to help me find the Advil at four o'clock in the morning, I started thinking. How the heck did I get here?

My headaches are not a rare occurrence. Lately they've been striking every few days, punishment for the stress that has my shoulders and neck riddled with knots. Lying awake last night, I realized just how much I fight with my poor, tired body on a daily basis. The conversation normally goes something like this:

Body: Hey there, looks like you're awake! How about you drink some water now?

Me: Can't. On deadline. Will drink water when I get a break in a few hours.

Body: Wow, it's nine o'clock and you've been up since six! Maybe it's time to get some sleep?

Me: I don't have to listen to you. Television is more important than sleep!

Or the classic:

Body: Hey, you haven't eaten in like, six hours or something. How about a snack?

Me: Can't. Available food isn't healthy enough. Not eating at all is clearly the healthier option. 

This has got to be bad, right? It seems like no matter what the healthy choice is, I run in the opposite direction. I've been insanely busy at work over the past couple of weeks, which the neurotic, people-pleasing, workaholic side of myself is totally relishing. Of course, the joy of running myself completely ragged is tempered by my pounding heart, tense shoulders and terribly painful brain. 

(Oh, and I got a cold last week that I still haven't completely recovered from. Of course.)

I have yet another insane week coming up, but this time I'm going to try to listen to my body instead of yelling at it for needing things. My goals: Eat. Drink water. Work. Sleep.

Do you ever find yourself putting work ahead of health?

Image via Pinterest. 

Cherry blossoms (and my week.)

Things that have fallen by the wayside this week as I wrangle sources and try to put my magazine hat on again:

1. Cooking. We don't cook anymore, unless you count putting whatever meat we have into a pan with kimchi. This is what we eat now. That and apples. (I have a sneaking suspicion that my husband has started buying sandwiches elsewhere.)

2. Cleaning: I finally got caught up this yesterday. There's something about me being stressed out that leads to me using the dining room table as my closet. Seriously, all my clothes from the week have ended up on top of the dining room table. Who does that?

3. Blogging: Sorry, y'all.

4. Running: While I haven't been running as often, I try to make it count by doing 5K runs every time. My time is now down to 38 minutes, which still seems pretty slow. I'm hoping to break 30 minutes by the race at the end of May.

Despite my protestations that I've been far too busy to accomplish said tasks, I have managed to find the time to read the entire Hunger Games trilogy in four days. (Damn you, cliffhangers at the end of chapters!) I also went to High Park to look at the Cherry Blossoms with Dan and our friend Peter, which made me feel moderately human again.

What's new with you?

Hello, April.

Things are weird lately, yo.

It's kind of a transition-y time for Dan and I right now. He's waist-deep in job hunting, which means a lot of uncertainty for both of us. Things are good. Things are exciting. But they're also crazy and nerve-wracking and erratic.

And now, in the middle of all this, I've decided to get back into writing -- the report-y kind where I submit queries and interview people and write stories. In fact, I will be writing five of these stories in April, something that both thrills and terrifies me. 

I'm realizing now how much I've missed researching and pitching stories and writing things. I thought that maintaining a blog was enough, but I need to challenge myself a little bit more. And strangely enough, taking on these assignments has actually lessened the anxiety I've been struggling with over the past year. 

Weird, right? Agreeing to do challenging work on a tight deadline on top of my full-time job makes me less stressed out? But I think my anxiety has come from the fact that I haven't been using the skills I learned in journalism school. Maybe I need to challenge my brain more so it gets nice and sleepy and doesn't make up problems to solve.

(Yes, I'm crazy. I know.)

Anyway, here are my decidedly unambitious intentions for April, considering the fact that my workload just about doubled:

- Write five stories. (Ack.)

- Be calm.

- Run lots.

What's up with y'all?

Image via Pinterest.

Happy birthday, husband!

Today you are 26. 

That sounds so grown-up to me. It's incredible that you were just 18 when we started dating and here we are, eight years later, all married and junk. Crazy, right?

Prom, 2000-something or other

In the letter to you we included in our wedding ceremony, I wrote that I genuinely considered you to be one of the best people on the planet. I wasn't kidding. You are wonderful in all the best ways and I'm super glad to be married to you.

Happy birthday!

How old am I again?

I called to activate my new credit card yesterday. 

You know how it is -- you can't just call and get the thing activated. You have to have a long talk with the person at the other end of a the line, which usually involves answering endless questions and turning down expensive insurance offers. ("Now, have you thought about what you would do about your credit card balance  if your spouse were accidentally dismembered?")

Anyway, I was only half-listening when the man asked me how old I was. And for the life of me I could not figure it out.

It took me at least three seconds to calculate my own age, which is a pretty long time if you think about it. When I was younger, each age was a new identity filled with shiny new experiences. But now? I haven't spent very much time thinking about who 23-year-old Jaclyn is. I'm not used to her yet.

I have a feeling I might think of myself as 22 forever. When I was 22, I finished school (most likely) for good, got my first job and got married. And I don't think I'm going to top that list of accomplishments anytime soon.

I'm the girl who got married at 22. That age feels like a comfy pair of pajamas, one I got to know really, really well. I'm not sure if 23 will ever feel like that. 

(Or perhaps more likely, I'm just getting on in years and my memory isn't what it used to be.)

When you close your eyes, how old are you?

Photo via Pinterest.

Remember...

Image via Pinterest.

(In)dependence.

Here's how the story usually goes.

You go to school. You get a job. You live in a crappy apartment with roommates. You get a better job. You save your pennies. You buy a tiny condo that has only enough room for you, you relish your independence, you turn 28 and look back at all you've accomplished so far and you're happy. Then you meet someone. You get married. You buy a bigger condo. You fight over the furniture and fact that somebody else's toothbrush is in the toothbrush holder. You miss your independence. You fight to keep it.

(At least I figure that's how it goes. My brain has determined this based on years of magazine articles and romantic comedies in which 28-year-olds live in New York City and make enough money to somehow own property and buy designer shoes.)

And then there's me. When I moved out, I moved in with Dan. And that was that.

To be fair, I did live on my own in university. As in, I lived in residence for two years and mostly hated it. I have lots of happy memories of university, but I also spent every weekend either at home (I still called it home, which should tell you something) or visiting Dan. 

Then, when I was 20, we moved to Toronto together. And to be honest with you, it was remarkably easy.

I didn't have to fight to keep my independence because, really? I hadn't spent the last eight years training myself to live alone. Home quickly became our apartment and our life together. We didn't fight over the remote because we didn't have cable. We didn't fight over whose furniture to keep because neither of us had any.

Easy.

I've gobbled up every single one of Michelle's posts over at Early Mama, probably because our experiences are so similar. She had a baby at 22 (which, hello, is a much bigger deal than just getting married) and wrote about the benefits of launching right into motherhood:

I went from being a broke college student to a broke intern to a pregnant entry-level employee. I didn’t ease into adulthood with a decade of “me” time that I could get accustomed to. Instead, I became a college graduate, an employee, a Horton and a mother all in the same year. To me, being an adult means being a mother; I don’t know any differently. I was used to having little sleep, little money and little time. Now anywhere I go from here seems like progress rather than sacrifice. When it comes to my job, my money and my lifestyle, I feel like I’m continuously propelling forward rather than being stalled.

In many ways, I agree with her. I'm glad I didn't get all comfy and used to the single life for a decade before meeting somebody. Combining two full lives complete with different sets of furniture, separate friends and careers would probably be a hell of a lot harder than just growing up together to begin with. 

But on the other hand, I still wonder -- is that decade of me-time somehow developmentally necessary? Did I miss out on some super important time in my life where I was supposed to figure out who I am independent from a partnership? Were the years I spent on my own as a university student enough?

What do you think -- is it important to live on your own before marriage? If so, for how long?