Quote of the Week: Life is Resilient

"There's no such thing as ruining your life.  Life is a pretty resilient thing, as it turns out." 

- Sophie Kinsella

Resolutions

In January I made two resolutions for 2012: (1) Be Thankful and (2) Be Healthy. The first one was easy.  I work in it weekly and take time regularly to be thankful for the amazing things in my life.  Being Healthy has proven to be more challenging.  I was talking about health in a holistic way.  I was talking about my financial, emotional, spiritual and physical health.  I've made some progress.

Financially I am in the best place I have ever been.  I have an actual savings account and am working on saving a comfortable cushion and enough to put a good chunk of change down on a new car.  I'm still working on budgeting and making sure that I don't spend all my money in the first two weeks of the month leaving me struggling in the last two weeks.  This is a learning process and I was never taught how to manage money, so now that I'm 33, I am finally getting the hang of it. 

Emotionally & Spiritually - eh, well, I'm working on it.  I think that writing in the blog again is part of the process to keep myself connected to my emotional and spiritual health.  I am throwing myself back into SLTP which is always a place the feeds my emotional, spiritual and intellectual side.  I am taking time for myself.  I am allowing myself to have the full range of emotions.  I am working on communicating and being more fearless.  I am taking time to unplug from technology to sit outside, to breath and to be mindful.  These are all baby steps and I don't do them consistently. All of these changes are about trying to build healthier habits. 

Physically I am making slow progress.  I am exercising more regularly.  I renewed my membership at the aquatic center and have been swimming and taking water aerobics.  I also joined Weight Watchers.  I think that WW is really helpful for me in being thoughtful about what I am eating and when.  It gives me a picture and forces me to think about the choices I am making.  Food has always served as a comfort to me, so I eat when I'm sad, when I'm angry, etc.  And I don't eat a little when I feel this way, I eat too much.  That isn't a healthy relationship with food.  So WW is helping me think about my food choices and to start making other decisions when I want to eat emotionally.  So, I have been making a concert effort for 4 weeks.  I notice that I feel different physically and that is important.  The scale reads that I have lost weight and the body measurements show that I have as well, but honestly, that isn't really the point.  I want to feel good. 

So, it has taken 8 months but I have made progress on all of my resolutions.  That makes me proud. 

Say what you need to say...

My BFF and I have had a long-term argument about John Mayer's song Say.   The question has always been do you "say what you need to say" when it might hurt someone else.  Or if it is coming from a place of anger or hurt.  I tend to err on the side of silence around saying what needs to be said.  I worry about my motives and my impact.  My BFF is more direct and clear about what he needs to say.  He declares that it isn't about saying what you want to say but about what needs to be said in the moment.

I have really been thinking about this concept a lot lately and think I am leaning more toward the side of my BFF.  I still think that I need to understand my motives for saying things that may cause pain or anxiety or have a negative impact but I think that sometimes it is inevitable.  Sometimes the fear that causes us not to ask for what we want, communicate our own pain, or express our own love locks us in a box and keeps us from forming real, deep, and meaningful connections with the people in our lives.

I have spent a lifetime building walls that protect my heart.  As I have gotten older I have start to allow people to chip down those walls a bit from the outside and I have started to chip at them from the inside.  Everytime I say what I need to say in a way that leaves me vulnerable, I take down one more brick from that wall.  Loving leaves us vulnerable and being vulnerable leaves us open to hurt.  That is the truth and it is scary.  It also requires me to trust myself more and to put trust in other people.  That is the biggest fear, right?  Not the fear that someone will hurt me but that I will have put my trust in the wrong person.  The fear that I will have been wrong and have made a bad decision.  That fear can keep me paralyzed forever.

Last night I made the decision to say what I need to say to people in my life.  I shared my feelings fully with someone last night and left my heart open.  It was absolutely frightening but once I did it, it was done and we talked, laughed and loved.  It was nice not having the truth sitting silently yet so loudly in my head.  I still am scared of the aftermath.  I'm scared of what happens next.  There are a couple of other conversations I need to have with people that I care deeply about because I want those friendships to thrive and I can't expect that to happen if I don't participate in the conversation.

One day at a time and facing one truth at a time. 

My Best Friend is back....

My BFF has returned from his vacation. I know he was only gone a short time. I knew that he was coming back. I know that he and I spoke a couple of times while he was away. It doesn't matter. I missed him and I am super glad he is back in town. I feel better, safer, more supported and more loved when he is in town, even if he and I haven't talked in a few days. He is a big piece of my safety net and I feel more secure when he is around.

Dracula Opera

"Forgetting Sarah Marshall" is an underrated movie.  It is on TV right now and I love it.  One of my favorite scenes is Peter (Jason Segel) singing pieces of hit puppet rock opera about Dracula.

Love

Love.  There are a lot of things that I want to say about love right now and yet I am also not entirely sure what I want to say about love. 

I looked up love on Wikipedia.  (have you stopped laughing? )  I know that Wikipedia is not the best source of information in the world but in a pinch, it will do.  I just wanted to read what someone else said about love.  The very beginning of the entry is a definition.  And of course, with something like love, the definition isn't actually a real definition at all.  It is complicated and complex but was what I needed to read. 

In English, love refers to a variety of different feelings, states, and attitudes, ranging from pleasure ("I loved that meal") to interpersonal attraction ("I love my partner"). "Love" may refer specifically to the passionate desire and intimacy of romantic love, to the sexual love of eros, to the emotional closeness of familial love, to the platonic love that defines friendship,or to the profound oneness or devotion of religious love, or to a concept of love that encompasses all of those feelings. This diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, compared to other emotional states.

That's just it, isn't it.  Who the hell knows what love is?  How the hell do we know?  

I love lots of people.  I love my friends.  I love the staff I work with at SLTP.  I love my family. All of these "loves" are different.  There is more than enough room in my life and my heart for all of those kinds of love.  

What I am struggling with is the idea of romantic love?  Or that love that kind of fills you up? The love that you read about in books and stories.  Is that real love?  

I think in the thinking about the idea of "going for it", the concept of love overwhelms me.  I want to be in a relationship.  I want to have a partner.  I just don't have lots of good role models of healthy relationships.  I don't know if I trust the feelings.  Love may be the most terrifying cliff - the precipice that would require real courage to jump off of...  Is it always worth it? 

 

Jacked-up Straw & Iron Man's House

Today I had lunch with one of the great student's that I get to wok with.  We were sitting in the restaurant enjoying each others' company.  The waiter delivered our beverages.  He order a water.  I ordered a water and a lemonade.  Molly's, the restaurant we were at, has wonderful bendy straws.   I opened my straws and noticed something strange.  My straw was jacked up.  The straw-making machine did not do its job and did not trim the end properly.  While the straw didn't allow for drinking, it did create laughter.

 

 

 

 

Jacked-up Straw

Right now I am watching Iron Man on television.  I want his house.  I want it now.  I want to live in this amazing house perched on the edge of a cliff with endless windows that look out on the ocean and other beautiful things.   Curved walls, big fireplace, endless windows...just what I want. 

Song Obsession of the Week: 50 Ways to Say Goodbye

As I parked the car at the Aquatic Center a song came on the radio.  I was intrigued by the sound and the lyrics.  I didn't know the name or the artist.  Then I heard it again and again.  It got stuck in my head.  Finally on the drive down to Connecticut yesterday I heard it on the Top 40 Countdown with Ryan Seacrest.  There it was 50 Ways to Say Goodbye by Train.  I downloaded it immediately and have listened to it about 500 times.  I just saw the video for the first time.  David Hasselhoff, lions, the mention of Yom Kippur, a crappy purple scion.....what's not to love.

Happy Birthday Annalisse!

 Tomorrow, August 20th, is my niece's birthday.  She is going to be 7 years old.   I think she is the most beautiful, intelligent and just amazing young girl I have the pleasure to know.  I am very blessed that I live close enough that I can drive down to my mom's house for the birthday party.

Her birthday party was held at this place called Bounce U.  It is basically a giant indoor bouncy house.  There are bouncy obstacle courses and bouncy slides and a whole myriad of bouncy items.  The kids had a really great time.  It was kind of strange to be at a kids party without a kid of my own but at the same time I didn't have to take care of any kids.  There are plenty of perks to not having kids.

A Slideshow is worth a thousand words...

When I returned to work after my vacation there were plenty of people that told me that I hadn't had a "real vacation".  In many ways, I certainly did not have the traditional vacation - but, as I have said before, it was exactly what I needed.  These slideshows tell the whole story so clearly.

Why start writing again?

In the last few weeks I have been making small changes to my life.  I was motivated by my two weeks volunteering at SLTP.  That experience this year was exactly what I needed.  By working in a place with people I love, doing work that I love, I was reminded of who I was and what matters to me.  I was reminded that one person can make a difference.  I was reminded that taking care of yourself is not selfishness.  I was reminded that asking for help is not a sign of weakness.  I was reminded that caring deeply, loving fiercely and laughing loudly are things to be celebrated not silenced.  While I was supposed to be teaching the students, I believe I may have learned just as much if not more than they did.

With that experience at my back, I am starting the blog again in order to intentionally find ways to hold onto the joy, the love, and the courage that filled me when I left Dudley two weeks ago.  This year I am going for it.  I am going to work to more fully embody myself and to bring all that I am to the table all of the time.  I am going to take care of myself, make time for myself, and not apologize for it.  I am going to laugh as loud as the moment calls for.  i am going to love as deeply and fully and fiercely as I am able.  I am not going to apologize for being smart, for knowing things, for working hard, or for making decisions.  I am going to remember who I am and not allow naysayers to convince me of something that isn't true.

I am excited to start writing again.  I'm excited to examine my life, reflect on my experiences, and share with people I care about (or random strangers that stumble across this blog in someway).

It's time to live out loud and savor the quiet reflection.