Category: Uncategorized

This time of year is always a bit rough in terms of motivation in the Pacific Northwest. Short days and dreary weather make spending all day on the couch sound like a worthy life goal. I still so much stuff I want to achieve, dangit, and I do my best to fight through the apathy of winter.

One of the best ways to provide incentives to get through some of the grind of January/February is providing rewards for yourself. Generally my favorite treats come in edible forms, but since I’m limiting my calories I’m actively avoiding junk food and alcohol. Other great forms of treating yourself often involve spending a lot of money, which is also something that does not fit into my Ultimate Life Plan for 2018. Therefore I’ve devised a list of “healthy” indulgences. At the very least, the only regret I could possible have for these is wasted time, not extra pounds or a lighter wallet.

• Watching childhood movies/tv shows
  • There are a lot of these available on Youtube and a few on Netflix as well. Some of my favorites are Disney Channel classics like Lizzie Maguire and Even Stevens.
• Bath Bombs/Bubble Baths
  • I have bought Lush products before which are $$$$, but you can also make these yourself or get cheaper versions on Amazon. I would like to try my hand one of these days at making a bath bomb.
• Reading childhood books
  • Specifically, my favorite fantasy/sci fi books as a kid. And honestly, even reading newer YA fiction is one of my guilty pleasures. Diana Wynne Jones was one of my favorite authors when I was younger and I still enjoy her writing today; she has just the right mix of whimsy and profoundness in her fantasy stories.
• Video Games
  • The only video game I ever really got into was Final Fantasy X as a kid. We still have our old PS2 and I will occasionally play it as another guilty pleasure.

I’m working on creating a longer list of ways to treat myself without consuming excess calories or spending a ridiculous amount of money. When I’m stressed or bored, I need to have options so I don’t resort to unhealthy habits. None of these activities is particularly productive, but sometimes it’s nice to take a break and do something just because it’s plain fun.

My latest obsession is watching vlogs on Youtube. I’ve always been a fan of reality TV, especially when it gives you insight into someone’s way of life that is very different from my own. My favorites when I was younger were MTV’s Made (also just an inspiring show), The Girls Next Door, 16 and Pregnant, and The Amazing Race. I’ve never been a fan of shows with gratuitous drama however, so that was always a major downside to a lot of reality TV shows. Holly Madison (one of the Girls Next Door) actually wrote a book about her experiences and revealed that Hef ironically wanted his show to appear “wholesome”, which explains part of why I liked it so much! I guess he didn’t want it to be a “Girls Gone Wild” type of situation.

Nowadays, the hot new form of social media is vlogging, and I think it’s starting to eclipse blogging. My favorite thing about vloggers is that they are perfectly normal people who share pieces of their lives on the internet. I get my reality TV totally drama-free, commercial-free, plus I can pick the topics that interest me out of tons of content. My current favorites (or ahem obsessions) are:

• Homemade Wanderlust: She’s a former engineer from Alabama who vlogged through hiking the Appalachain Trail and most recently the Pacific Crest Trail.
• Simply Mander: I followed her on tumblr and when she began vlogging I was seriously impressed by the quality of her work. She does healthy eating, crossfit, Olympic Lifting, and lives in Florida.
• The Ginger Runner: Not a regular vlogger but has fantastic videos about ultrarunning and hosts a weekly live interview session with ultra athletes.
• Less Junk, More Journey: Family who lives full-time in an RV and explores lots of  National Parks and other outdoor activities with their toddler.
• Stephanie Buttermore: Health and fitness (body building-ish) content by a woman who just got her PhD in cancer research.
• Obese to Beast: He lost a ton of weight and and has a great personality, more healthy eating and fitness plus crossfit.
• Wonderfully Ale: Flight Attendant and Mom, for some reason flight attendants have been fascinating me lately.
• Jenny Ernst: Another Flight Attendant who also talks about meal prepping for healthy eating on her trips. She is also just very organized in general.
• Kara and Nate: They have been traveling around the world for a couple of years now and vlog about it. Lately I’ve been watching their older videos on the Everest Base Camp trek.

I think you can tell my interests pretty easily from that list: basically fitness, healthy eating, and travel. I also really love HGTV so I could see myself getting into some DIY videos. Another topic I enjoy, strangely enough, is cleaning videos; they really do inspire you to clean your house (something I tend to avoid). The people who make them seem to really enjoy the cleaning process and it’s oddly satisfying to watch a sped-up version of cleaning a house.

I’ve also thought about starting my own YouTube channel; however, I am not in the least photogenic or charismatic, which is something most successful YouTubers have in spades. I think I would enjoy the filming and editing process, at least. Vloggers are also putting themselves out there in a major way, which is a pretty big con. I can imagine the pressure to maintain a good image with makeup/hair done, a tidy house, and the million other imperfections that can easily be spotted by viewers. Not to mention the embarrassment of filming in public, which is much worse than just taking pictures like a blogger.

The pros include the fact that it’s pretty obvious that vlogging is becoming a huge, potentially lucrative field of social media. I don’t think most people make much money off of the ads on YouTube. The real money comes from sponsored videos, affiliate links, Patreon, creating fee-based courses, etc. Patreon is a very interesting phenomenon to me because it allows people to let their viewers choose whether or not to pitch in money. The basic premise is that someone works hard to create amazing content, puts it out there for free, and then proposes that people who enjoy the content offer payment for it. You would think that nobody would pay but surprisingly there are a lot of supporters for some creators (including a few that I mentioned above). I also just have to say that I am insanely jealous of the people who make a living by doing really awesome, cool stuff and creating crazy good content off of those experiences. Clearly they’ve worked hard and deserve it, but man is that the good life. There’s definitely a part of me that envisions retiring early and just living that life (obviously minus support from paid content)!

Anyone else have favorite YouTube channels or considered starting one yourself?

A while back I saw a friend’s facebook pictures of Oneonta gorge and immediately put it on my mental bucket list for the PNW. When I was brainstorming places to visit for Labor Day weekend, a trip to Portland and the Columbia River Gorge seemed perfect. We decided to leave late Saturday morning, spend some time exploring downtown Portland that night, and then do the hike in the gorge Sunday morning.

It’s about a five hour drive from our house to Portland, and it was Blair’s first time in Oregon! We parked at the Powell’s garage and walked from there to Killer Burger for dinner. The burger was good but honestly not amazing, and the fries were just okay. It seems like breakfast/brunch and Asian food are all the rage right now in Portland, not burgers. After that I really wanted to try Voodoo donuts (a Portland classic), but the line was very long and I have no patience for that. So we walked back to the bookstore to browse for a bit and ended up buying a few books. Powell’s is also a Portland classic and a huge bookstore with an interesting mix of new and used books. There’s multiple color-coded rooms (like the Red Room) with different genres. As a book-lover, I could probably spend all day in there! However, we wanted to get out of the city and head to our hotel.

We reserved a night in a Comfort Inn on the outskirts of town about 20 minutes from Oneonta Gorge. On the way we stopped by a game store; it was more of a board game store so Blair was unimpressed by their video game selection. I bought a scrabble game that we played in the hotel that night. I’m not much of a city person, so it was nice to break away from the urban environment. Unfortunately, the gorgeous waterfalls in such close proximity to the city bring out crowds almost as dense as downtown on holiday weekends. I’m not sure if it’s a result of social media or what, but interest in the outdoors has spiked lately. I’m conflicted between being happy that more people are getting out and feeling like the insane crowds ruin the experience.

That said, I knew the crowds would be crazy this weekend and we tried to get going early-ish while also sleeping in as much as possible. We arrived around 8:45, and ended up leaving just as the huge crowds were descending. Supposedly if you get there around 7:00 AM on a weekday you can have the place to yourself (reason #3,006 to retire early). Anyways, I don’t feel like I need to describe this place in words when the pictures do a perfectly good job. It’s about a mile back to the waterfall but feels like less than that, perhaps because it’s so beautiful. Definitely one of my all-time favorite places I’ve ever been! The water is freezing but you get used to it after a few minutes.

After Oneonta gorge, we drove along the scenic highway past a few other beautiful waterfalls. This area is chock-full of them and there’s quite a few right next to the road. We didn’t stop at iconic Multnomah falls because the crowds were unbelievable and parking was nonexistent. We did stop at Latourell Falls because I had seen a video of it that looked amazing, and yep, it was amazing! It was surprisingly not crowded but one of the coolest waterfalls I’ve ever seen! After that we had enough time to go back to the hotel and shower before checkout. We don’t like to leave out cat for more than one night, so we started the drive back up to Washington. Oregon is definitely a really amazing place and I would love to have more time to explore everything!