Sunday morning selves...

I feel like I just ingested about 80% of my daily sodium recommended value, but in reality according to the pack of almonds I just ate, it was only 6%. I rule. This is utterly besides the point, by the way.

So, striking writers, guys, how do we feel? I felt sort of grumpy about it in the first place, given the whole Office situation (it's over for who knows how long! although the most recent episode can only be described as fucking amazing, or possibly fucking transcendental, I'm not sure), and then I got briefly grumpier upon watching the video of the Office writers (most of whom are also actors) on the picket lines, because a) I want to hang out with them so bad and b) It feels weird to watch these actors and prominent writers on strike for a bigger piece of the pie. That said, I'm completely on their side, because as I'm reminded, the reality is that these are the exceptions to the writerly rule.

This brings me to my real point, which is (surprise!) Office related. I've recently decided that I need to subscribe to Mindy Kaling's (aka Kelly Kapoor's) blog, which I find to be quite hilarious and again, it really makes me want to hang out with her and the rest of the cast/writers of that show. Mindy wrote a nice piece today about why she's striking. She also wrote this great post the other day which discussed her feeling about women's "Sunday morning fantasies." I quote:

These underwear play an important role in my Sunday Morning Fantasy #27 (most women I know ages 21-31 have several dozen Sunday Morning Fantasies. I have discovered an extremely vulnerable and weirdly creative side of most women I know, that plan, cast, and set design how our Sunday mornings look in our futures. Like, somehow if a photographer where to surprise me at my house Sunday morning, I am doing something completely cool and photographable.)

Sunday Morning Fantasy #27 looks like this: Park Slope, Brooklyn. I am reading the Times Book Review and eating granola and fruit in these underwear and a tank top at my kitchen table with Pharell, my boyfriend.

I love how the little details are so key here. As in: Park Slope. My Sunday morning fantasies also frequently take place in Park Slope! Either that or in some cottage type place somewhere inaccessible where I would never actually live, like Portland, Maine (guess why?) or, like, Walden Pond. I am kidding sort of about the Walden Pond part. What I really mean is that they take place in semi-rural areas in the Northeast, where I've never been and which I can't be more specific about except to say that pretty much all my design/home decor bloggers seem to live in these places (New Hampshire!? Is this like a hidden mecca for artsy homebodies who like the Internet??). Like I said, I am never planning to live in Portland or New Hampshire. But damn if these fantasies don't appeal to me (that is, after all, why they are fantasies - Emily, stop circular writing now). Other detail: granola and fruit. Because the way I really wake up on Sundays is generally like this: "Ugh, tell me it's not morning yet. And my head hurts. I need brunch either right now or in like seven hours." Rarely do I wake up totally refreshed and ready to eat some (homemade) granola with (purchased at farmer's market) fruit.

Essentially what I'm saying here is that the Sunday morning fantasy is just another way of describing my ideal "blog self." I can't find it, but one of my many aforementioned design bloggers once wrote a post talking about how she, and her life, are not really as perfect/idealized
as they come across on the Internet. That really appealed to me because all these women (they are all women!) live, at least on the HTML page, the lives I thought I was going to lead when I was like ... um, well, more like when I was 21 than 12. I was never the think-ahead type as a little kid, so I didn't have life goals really then in the same way I do now. What I mean is that these women, on the page, seem to have it all together. I don't juts mean have a career they love, husbands they love, kids they love, etc. I mean more superficial things -- the things that to my mind can be or could be adapted to fit any lifestyle. Like, they all seem to have time to take lovely pictures of their surroundings, to send Christmas cards they made themselves, to bake seasonal treats, on and on. I guess what I mean is that they all seem to have the right thing in place for the right situation... the right upholstery for their chair, the right breakfast for that rainy day, and so on and so on. And I so frequently find myself saying, why don't I have the right breakfast on hand? Why don't I have a great digital camera to capture the way that shadow of a maple leaf falls just so next to my cat's tail. Why don't I live somewhere that I've made a home, with cute trinkets everywhere and neatly made beds and messes, if they exist, that are appropriately homey?

Perhaps it's the age... or the place... or whatever. I know that all these people I'm reading are older than I am, more settled. But I also wonder if it isn't a personality thing - or, worse, if I could have these idealized settings if I sacrificed some other things (like, the right to wake up hungover on a Sunday, or, put a better way, my tendency to say yes to every social situation, even though I'm tired)? I mean, do I really want these things if I'm not doing them? Couldn't I have them if I wanted... if I wanted to prioritize baking over bars?

I've come a ways from where I started in this entry, now, back to that eternal question of how is it other people seem to manage to have it all when I can barely keep up with what I have already... the issue of whether or not there's something fundamentally off, such that I don't grab ahold of what I want and instead get swayed by the crowd. But the point, too, is that I like my crowd... I want to be able to do everything with them, keep my job (quite frankly though, that's only really because I don't have any money without it), and take another 8 hours a day to wander around, take photos, read, stay on top of the news, and make myself dinner, and while I'm at it get some knitting and house decorating done. And let's face it, that isn't happening... and perhaps if it doesn't happen naturally it just isn't going to happen at all, like it would be forced or something.

Anyway. It's actually my opinion (as you can probably tell by the noncommital tone of that last sentence) that we should always shoot to be that most authentic best version of ourselves, that blog self, the Sunday morning self. (If that's what it is. I don't know anyone who has a Saturday night fantasy, at least not in this sense, but I couldn't say they don't exist.) And so, with that ramble as usual, I return to work... and to contemplating the ideal Sunday.