The weather was absolutely gorgeous this weekend. Full sun, blue skies, warm temps. No reason to complain…except that I’m highly allergic to pollen and grass. So what started off as a wonderful weekend, ended with me in bed at 3 p.m. on Saturday with bee-stung eyes, a runny nose, a sore neck (from sneezing maybe 50+ times), and a huge pile of used tissues. I swear, I felt like I was on a muscle relaxer or something. Everything felt so tingly and weak. Yes, I took Zrytec. Yes, I did the nasal spray. It was simply a beautiful day with blooming plants, and well, my body just couldn’t hack it. So Saturday, sadly, was a bust. I didn’t wake up until this morning (Sunday).

Thankfully, today fared much better. John and I ran a bunch of errands to prepare for the week: farmer’s market, Trader Joe’s, Costco. In the afternoon, I did laundry and basked in the warm sun through our office balcony. I tried to use up the remaining couple dollops of self-tanner (which had expired last year). Yeah, nothing happened. No sunless color. What a drag.

Later on, John went to the gym (since he skipped paddling practice this morning) and I dusted off my old xlider skates. What a workout! I was glad to see I still had enough coordination to skate around the rink a bit, but boy, my abs were feeling it. Maybe I’ll get into this whole fitness thing. As it is, I’m trying to bike during the week at lunch and then add some kind of activity in the evening. As you can see from my tweets, I recently read an article about achieving and maintaining the highest level of fitness… normally, I have little interest in physical fitness, but this article actually intrigued me. Deep down, I think I just want to have a dancer’s body. Ha. Anyway, I suppose it’s a good thing to schedule regular daily exercise and to try and change it up to have some diversity. We’ll see how long this lasts…

Anyway, this evening I got to surfing around on some sites I used to read when I lived in Shanghai. Next thing I knew, I started to miss the old stomping grounds. Maybe it wasn’t even so much the city, but rather, the adrenaline… the constant motion, the diversity, the risk-taking, the new ideas… not mine but others’. As I read posts from bloggers I used to follow, I recalled how important my blog used to be to me… how throughout the day, I used to jot down notes about my experiences. I would write them down, so that I could return later to write about them. And I actually did.

I barely even posted twice last month. And just like that, I felt deflated. Disappointed that I had let up on something for which I had once felt so much passion, and sad that I no longer seemed to have stories and experiences worth sharing. In essence, I had become boring. While I obsessed about filling up my Google calendar with the tedium of my daily life, others were writing about their continuing explorations and discoveries in the ever-changing Shanghai cityscape. All these months, I had thought I was making progress, progressing towards my life goals: becoming active, learning Spanish, cooking, doing my makeover, and so on… and yet in the end, I felt quite ordinary and unaccomplished. It’s difficult to explain really, but it seems to return again to this endless search. What is it that I want from this life? I want to be happy but what the fuck does that mean? Why does my rubric for happiness seem to always shift? It used to be that I wanted to have the experience of living overseas. Then, I wanted a kickass job… Perhaps I am just destined to never be satisfied. I don’t know.

Is it that I want it all? I don’t even think I’m that greedy. I just want to be the best that I can be. Does that sound totally ridiculous? Am I just all demands without the necessary efforts. For example, I want to be smart, but I don’t read. I want to have a dancer’s body, but I don’t follow the dancer’s workout regimen. I want to be musical, but I don’t practice. I want to be multilingual, but I think/speak/write only in English. I want to be stylish but I resist/question expert fashion advice. Wtf is wrong with me? Maybe my parents are right: I’m intractable and freaking unruly and in many instances, a know-it-all. I’m downright annoying. Seriously, I’m annoyed with myself. Ugh. Swear to god, this “work in progress” shit is a frickin’ pain in the ass. Time for a hot shower. Gotta re-examine this bullshit tomorrow and figure out what the hell is going on.