Window Watching

How can I say this without sounding like a total creep?

....I give up. I'm just going for it.

I love looking in people's windows.

I don't walk up to their houses to peer in, or climb trees to get a better look. I just mean that if I'm driving past someone's house, or in a conference room at work that's directly across from someone's window, I like looking in and seeing what's going on. I like seeing how it's decorated. At Christmas time I love looking for Christmas trees. 

Yesterday during a meeting I'm pretty sure I saw a therapy session happening in the building across from us. I could only see the woman who I thought was the therapist, but she seemed very attentive to whoever was facing her, and she was taking notes. Or maybe it wasn't a therapy session at all--maybe I just got that idea in my head and then I just made all the things I saw happening fit into that narrative. 

I remember being on buses when I was in high school or college on my way to track meets and looking down into people's car windows wondering what their story was, or where they were going. Usually, I was wishing I was in the car with them--wherever they were going had to be better than running the 400. And now that I'm riding in cars more often than buses, I find myself looking up into the tinted windows of the buses, wondering where those people are going. Or if they're watching a movie on their iPad. Boy, do I wish I was watching a movie in my car.

Nighttime makes everyone's houses look more inviting. The lights are always glowing yellow. And they're always having family dinner, or watching a Red Sox game on TV, or doing something else adorable that I always kind of wish I could be a part of.

One time when we were in Italy my family walked past someone's window while they were in the middle of some sort of aggressive dispute. Maybe if our cell phones had worked we would have called the cops. But anyways...I did not wish to be a part of that. That was one window I was perfectly happy to bypass.

Maybe looking through someone's window is like when you first meet someone but don't know too much about them. By glancing in a window, you can't really know what someone's whole house looks like, or what's going on in all the other rooms--all you see is the yellow glow of their lamps, and what TV show they're watching. It's a rosy picture, and an incomplete one. But if you were to open the door and walk in, you'd get a whole different view--a more complete view. And maybe your opinion of them would change. Maybe you would see a mess on the floor, or rotten food in the fridge, or worse. Maybe their house wouldn't seem as put together when you're looking from the inside as when you're looking from the outside.

People are always messier than they first appear to be when you glance at them. And I think that's fine. I love looking in people's windows, but I would much rather walk through a friend's door instead. Even if it's messy inside. 

That was really corny. Sorry.


"I don't understand what Dad was doing in the middle of the street?"
"What was it George? Bird-watching?"
"What, Lorraine?? What??"
-Back to the Future

Go for a Spin Around my Mind

I'm not even sure this can really be considered a blog post. It's more just a single thought I had yesterday.

But I guess a blog post can sort of be whatever I want it to be, right?

Anyways, recently I've started taking spinning classes, and one of the hardest things to get used to is knowing how much resistance to put on the bike when the instructor tells you to.

Sometimes instructors will say a "quarter turn" or whatever...but you never really know from what point you should be starting, and all of that.

And then I started thinking about all of the technology we have these days. I actually wrote a post about it awhile back. And I thought to myself, why can they not make spinning bikes that quantify resistance so the instructor can just say "turn your resistance to 10?" They have that for other stationary bikes at the gym.

Now--a lot of times, people think thoughts like that and then they just shrug and go, "well that's dumb. I can't believe no one has thought of that." But, I like to give people a little credit where I can, so I need to bring this a step further. It cannot be true that no one has ever thought, "let's quantify the resistance on these bikes." There must be a good reason for it.

There must not be a demand for it. Maybe it would change the dynamics of spin class. Maybe it is an important aspect of spinning class that everyone is working at their own resistance. Every person has their own effort scale of 1-10. And that effort scale may not correspond with the 1-10 resistance scale on the bikes. So a 6 on the bike for one in-shape person may feel like a 6 on their effort scale. But, for the poor schlub that just started taking the class (that would be me) a 6 on the bike may feel like an 8 on my effort scale. And what's most important about class is how hard you (personally) are working.

Maybe this is just one of those things that's always been obvious for everyone else...but I felt like I had a breakthrough when I pieced this all together.

So, I figured I'd share.

"The distance the shotput goes is determined by the effort you put into it...PERSPIRATION!!"

-Ms. Trunchbull, Matilda

A Life-Ruiner for a Day?

So, I just read a Thought Catalog post entitled A Warning To The Girls Who Will Idolize Daisy Buchanan and it got me thinking...

(An important explanation if you don't know anything about The Great Gatsby: Daisy Buchanan is essentially a woman that married a rich, mean guy who is exactly her equal but she somehow still makes herself into the victim of everything. Gatsby is in love with her, but because she's a life ruiner ["she ruins people's lives!!"] she's pretty much his downfall.)

I have this running joke with my friends about how I want to ruin a guy. 

I will take a moment right here to restate the word "joke." You have been warned.

 It seems like so many guys out there are scarred from one Daisy Buchanan-like girl who trampled all over his life, and now he can't even look at pizza, or hear a song by Maroon 5 without thinking of her and getting chest palpitations. I want to be so careless that I destroy an entire genre of music for someone. Or accidentally get them arrested for trespassing. Or unwittingly become the cause of some giant bar fight between my boyfriend and half of the bar because I complained to him that a guy looked at me the wrong way. I want to smile and giggle unaffectedly as I look over my shoulder to see the giant ball of exploding fire that is my now ex-boyfriend's life. "Woops...did I do that??"

I want every new girlfriend this guy has after me to absolutely hate me because of all of the ways I ruined her boyfriend. "Sorry honey, I'd love to go to (insert name of most popular bar in city) for our anniversary but I'm eternally banned from there ever since I got in this huge fight defending my ex-girlfriend Jenny's honor."

Here's where I'll remind you once again, this is a scenario that we joke about. The reason this is a joke is because in reality, that is not what I want at all. I could never go through with something like that. But sometimes it just seems so tempting. Sometimes I get this epiphany that I would get so much more attention if I lived my life as a Daisy Buchanan.

(By the way, I feel comfortable admitting all of this here for two reasons. Firstly, most of you who read this know me personally and know that if I so much as cancel dinner plans with someone I feel guilty about it for 2 weeks--I'm not really going to go around stomping on people's lives. And secondly, because I am confident that while you may judge me for a second, you will then do that introspective thing where you think to yourself, "Have I ever done anything, or been tempted to do anything because I wanted attention?" and you will sympathize.)

I wish there was a day like Halloween, only with personalities instead of costumes. I just want to try being a life-ruiner for one day. But then have there be no actual consequences. I don't want to get anyone arrested for something they didn't do, or, you know, get anyone shot in their pools or anything. But I want to know what it feels like to be the type of girl that could if she wanted to.

Are you terrified of me yet?

Please don't be. Read this post I wrote last August about how all I want to do is not inconvenience people and you can be reminded that I'm really not this scary.

That is all :)


“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

-F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby