Five Things I Would Tell My Younger Self

I recently read an article about the ten things some famous photographer would've told his younger self when starting his career and it got me thinking about the things I would tell my younger self....about life.

I know I had older wisdom circling around from time to time, but I wish I would have dived into the resources I had at the time and truly listened. And I don't know if being confronted with an older version of myself would have made any difference, but here's what I would tell my younger self given the chance:

1. Make friends with the older crowd and learn from their mistakes.
   This doesn't have to be a mentor type of thing, but a friend kind of thing. I think there was this all-too-formal set-up that had the stench of religion on it that made me veer from seeking out relationships with an older crowd. And now that I'm becoming one of those "older" people that has a thing or two to say about life, I find that it's not a religious thing–it's a life thing. It's a fantastic and amazing resource just waiting to be tapped into.
2. Let your freak flag fly.
   Don't try to fit someone else's mold or try to live up to someone else's standards. Make your own rules, live your own life, in the way you think it should be lived. Because trying to be perfect according to some altruistic set of rules will eventually lead to a massive meltdown and set you back to square one on the path of rediscovery all over again.
3. Be content.
   Wherever you are, at whatever stage of life you're in, be content. Choose joy instead of sorrow...or moping. Choose to believe that your life can and will be abundant and awesome. Don't fall into the trap that life is boring or a grind or that some things will never happen for you. Keep your head up and your eyes open to the good things in life. It's meant to be lived with a smile on your face!
4. Listen to your body.
   It's not lying when it says it's tired. Don't push yourself to do so much all the time. Learn how to live the balanced life and give yourself permission to take days off just for the hell of it!
5. Ask questions. All the time.
   I have found that my lack of being willing to speak up at certain times has robbed me of potentially great opportunities and some wisdom. I've also realized that in not asking questions, mainly about God and who that might be, I held myself back from a wonderful part of the life journey. I could have delved deep and enjoyed the richness that is the spiritual part of my life for many years in my twenties if I had only been willing to ask those questions that I thought were maybe innappropriate or not allowed. Such rubbish! It's OK to ask questions, many of them! Sometimes  over and over again. 

I'm sure there are other things I would tell myself, but I like to imagine this conversation with a time limit....say the amount of time it takes to drink a cup of coffee. And I don't know that this is even the best stuff to be said. But I can see, looking back, there was a pattern that I think most twenty-somethings fall into: worrying about what everyone else might say or think about what they are doing.

For me, it was a pattern of fear. 

And while I may not be completely fearless in all areas of my life, I can only hope that my passion for living a life of true freedom will continue all the way to the end. 

Scaredy Cat, No More.

"Men [as opposed to boys] know what they want and they don't let you in on their inner monologue, and that is scary." -Mindy Kaling

Or for this Girl, used to be scary.

I found myself saying to a friend the other day that I just wished that So and So could have seen the old me; the scared, non-committal, skiddish me. (I wanted 'Ol So and So, who had wrongfully judged my intentions, to be fully aware that the new me is still very new.) My friend responded by rolling her eyes and said, "Yeah, you've come a long way! You used to be scared to commit to a parking space for fear of being blocked in at a party where we both knew you would end up sleeping on the couch."

It was an embarrassingly true statement. I used to be scared. Of everything, including (but not limited to) parking spaces, lunch decisions and commitment to relationships of any kind. When I got my first (and only) tattoo my friends who accompanied me to the parlor, probably to make sure I didn't back out, kept chattering on about their first tattoos and how they couldn't wait to be under the needle again. All I could think about was how many hours I would have to work before I could afford laser tattoo removal. I don't think I had that one-inch by one-inch tattoo longer than 10 minutes before I started inwardly panicking about its permanence.

Today, however, I am a different girl. One might say I've graduated from girl to woman. Although, I hate that word "woman". It sounds like I should be wearing pantyhose and a dress suit everyday. I blame commercials from the 80's. They really warped my little brain into thinking that all grown, confident women must wear suit jackets, shoulder pads and own an abundance of hosiery while having developed a very mature palette for diet soda and low-fat yogurt. I don't drink soda and I usually hate the taste of any food labeled low-fat.

Anyway, lately I've felt confused by my most recent relationship that appeared to be with a man, who at times acted like he was an old man, but was in fact with a boy. I've been remembering conversations we had that, in retrospect, were orange flags. (I would say red flags, but they weren't deal breaker conversations like him saying he wanted to ultimately live on a commune someday. Just things that should have signaled to me that he was not ready to take the next step.) And today I finally made sense of all those things that were said. Today I realized why that last guy wasn't going to work out, at least not yet. I want a man and apparently have wanted one for some time. I thought I had accidentally stumbled into a dating relationship with a man only to find out that he was just a boy parading around in a grown man's life, wearing all the right clothes, saying almost all the right things and acting like he was ready for retirement. And that's ok. He will get there someday.

But I'm not talking about possibilities in the next 3 years. I'm talking about today. I want someone who knows what he wants, doesn't feel the need to constantly fill me in on his every waking move so that he can hear himself say it to make sure it sounds right, and who isn't afriad to go after all those things he truly knows he wants to have in his life.

That idea would have sent the old me running scared in the opposite direction, but it doesn't scare the new me. Not one bit.

Trying Out For The Lead Role

"Iris, in the movies we have leading ladies and we have the best friend. You, I can tell, are a leading lady, but for some reason you are behaving like the best friend."  
-Arthur Abbott

I've been rather enlightened lately by TV shows and movies which means only one thing: I'm either spending way too much time on the couch or I've been gaining wisdom from the most unlikely sources. For the sake of keeping a positive momentum let's just say that God works in mysterious ways...via my television.

I was enjoying a few much needed hours of down time the other day, sacked out on the couch, convalescing my sick throat while watching Christmas movies. As I drifted in and out of my sore throat haze that afternoon, my brain was just about to check out when I heard Arthur, from The Holiday, challenge Iris to start behaving as the leading lady in her decision-making. She had been acting as if someone else was in the driver's seat for all of the choices she made for herself. She had let some guy take command of her feelings for far too long and it was time for her to take the reigns again or forever be playing the role of the sidekick.

There they were again: words of wisdom. From my television, no less! And they prompted a string of questions that hit me in that part of the gut that tells you you had better start paying attention or you'll soon lose the game. Had I been playing the best friend role in my own life; the one who is at the mercy of someone else's control? Or had I been behaving as the leading lady; the one who moves forward without trepidation and accomplishes what she sets out to do?

Have I been moving forward in certain areas of my life as I should or have I been sitting on the side lines scared and unmoving?

Without saying too much, I know that there are areas of my life where I've been holding back or holding out....waiting to see what will happen. When, the truth is, I should be the one playing the game, not watching it.

So, dear readers, with some shaky steps on an unmarked path, I will be bravely moving forward knowing that the risk of failing will not be greater than the risk of regret. And if all of my friends' advice is right, it will all work out for the best in the end. If I can just keep moving.

Giant Baby Steps

So many times in the past couple months I've clicked over to this blog fully intending to write some revolutionary post about being kick ass only to sit in front of the computer screen, sigh, and then close the window. I would read my latest post and realize I had nothing to report. Nothing noteworthy to shout about to The Interweb. Life was....well, exactly that. Life was.

And then somewhere, in the daily struggle to remain on my feet, to breathe in and out all day long while arguing with The Light In My Eyes to either become the man he should be or go away all together, a seed of hope was planted. Through the emotional haze, and the fog that surrounds the act of "going all in", a glimmer of hope twinkled bright enough to catch my heart's eye. A twinkle just bright enough to help this City Girl regain her balance and catch her breath.

Every day and every night I've been hearing sweet, soft words that say, "Stay here a little longer and just keep with these baby steps."There are distractions galore that I could glom onto, but this City Girl is too busy chasing the twinkle. Too enamored with the possibility of it reflecting off of something greater than itself. And too in awe of the fact that when I turn back and try to mentally relive select moments from the past my eyes can only see that those steps that seem baby-sized are really the footsteps of a giant.

Us

"I don't know if you need someone better, maybe just different." Part of a conversation I had a couple months ago with The Light In My Eyes after confronting him with the obvious truth: our relationship was starting to unravel right in front of Us. Now it's a leftover clue that still echoes in my head that will probably be the key answer to some future question. A little remnant that still has yet to be sorted out.

It's always sad when you know a relationship is coming to its end; like watching someone die. You can actually see the light fade away.

It was a mutual decision prompted by a lot of talking that sounded sad and was wishfully hoping that one of Us could magically make all things right again, because the bottom line was (and still is) that we loved each other. And it may take months before this City Girl can truly makes sense of all the details of Us. The Us that made both people better in the end. The Us that loved. The Us that grew up together for a time. The Us that is leaving the future open-ended.

And while the Great Sadness has come and gone and still comes around now and then for short visits, this little City Girl's heart is still open. It's still strong. And it's still ready and waiting.

Bringing out the best

I wanted to post this on Valentine's Day, but I got swept away on an adventure that day and since then time has simply gotten away from me. Cé la vie! And on that note, let's talk about love.

I had a conversation with my dad over Christmas that brought me to tears in a matter of seconds. We had said maybe three sentences to each other and with that my eyes were overflowing and my heart crumbled to pieces. Now, I've had a great many memorable conversations with my dad, but this one will probably be burned into my memory forever as it has changed the way I look at love. Possibly for the rest of my life.

In case you hadn't noticed, my recent view of love has been somewhat skewed. Okay...heavily skewed. I never did like the label "pessimist". I always preferred "realist". And when it came to love, I had taken a rather frank view on the situation. I left most of my feelings locked up and was decidedly resigned to the fact that most relationships I had endured had only brought out the worst in me. Therefore, all my future relationships would probably look the same way, bringing all my insecurities to the surface for all to see. Feeling extremely justified in this thought process due to all my past "research", I made my opinion known to my dad mid-conversation with a flippant wave of my hand, as if I were the pro in this arena. In fact, I think the words I chose went something like this:

"Well, if I've said it before I'll say it again, if you want to see the worst parts of yourself come out get in a relationship ASAP."
 
(Charming, no?)

And I would have held to this theory had my dad not followed up my comment with a few thoughts of his own:

"Relationships should bring out the best in you, too."

That's all it took. My mouth hung open. My heart slowed to a turtle's pace. And my eyes filled with tears. I was speechless. My emotions came rushing to the surface so fast I had no choice but to change the subject immediately, fake a yawn and pour myself another cup of coffee so I could turn around in the kitchen and quickly wipe away the tears that had started to roll down my cheeks.

Now my dad's accumulated wisdom in numbers can be boiled down to this:
A husband of over 30 years
A trooper of life for 1,642 months
A dad to me for the past 10,950 days

So, how could anyone with that kind of successful life experience under his belt possibly be wrong? How could I argue with someone who still looks at my mom, his life partner, best friend and soul mate, like she is still the light in his eyes? The answer was simple. I couldn't.

The shock of being so totally wrong eventually wore off. And with that, I allowed my theory to be obsolete, disproved and all together incorrect. I started to live with the idea that love could, in fact, bring out the best in people. Maybe even me.

Fast forward a few months and you'll find this City Girl not only living out her dad's theory to its fullest, but happily proved wrong every time she finds herself changing for the better all thanks to The Light In Her Eyes.

Because I'm Cool Like That.

I've said it before and I'm saying it again today: If you want to discover all the awful, weak and pathetic parts of yourself then, by all means, dive head long into a relationship. And don't limit yourself to commitment. Even those affairs that cannot yet be defined as a full blown boyfriend/girlfriend situation can qualify. Just get yourself involved in any sort of connection with a human you find even remotely attractive, share a few intimate things, and you'll get to see all the sad parts of your inner being present themselves in the most horrifying of ways.

Jealousy. Selfishness. Neediness. Feeling left out. Loneliness. You name it, it will come forth amidst the most bizarre circumstances. And after all of those wretched traits have come to the surface the only things left to contend with will be Humility and Honesty. Humility can be easy to take on, since it only requires you to admit that you don't know everything. But Honesty... Well, Honesty can be a tough bitch to grapple with. It's all about being truthful with yourself, and in turn being truthful with your heart's current interest, about how many levels there are to your craziness.

But fear not! As a good friend said to me awhile ago, "You just need to find someone who loves your crazy." Because, like it or not, we all posses our own version of lunacy. The trick is to find someone who sees it, loves you through it and still thinks you're great. 

Have I found this someone? I don't know. Only time will tell me that and it insists on working at its own pace. In the meantime, I'm learning how to slow myself down, tame my bouts of craziness and try not to fall into that all-too-familiar slump of thinking I'm unlovable, because I know that even on my best days I'm still susceptible to being "cool" like that. *wink*

Lessons in Learning How to Rest, Part Six.

Lesson Six: He said. She said. Cut the chatter.

When I was a little girl I liked to pretend that I was the CEO of a company on the verge of a hostile take-over. I would hold multiple conference calls all day, shouting orders to lower level employees about how "this" was a rush and "that" had to get done by the end of the work day. My favorite part of the fantasy was the conference calls with multiple people where we all dispensed our wisdom on the subject at hand. I had watched my dad hold a number of professional phone calls as a kid, memorizing his every gesture. So, I knew exactly what to say to my imaginary conversational counterparts. Ah yes, conference calls were the best!

Now, however, my life has become one giant conference call. All day long my phone lights up while simultaneously making noise notifying me of the hundreds of people waiting to have a conversation in about fifty different ways. And I have no one to blame but myself for the constant barrage of communication. I wanted it. I was convinced that I needed it. My daily dose of advice, input, the constant clicking of tongues.

I realized this week that my childhood fantasy of talking all day long had become a nightmare. There was no light at the end of the tunnel that constantly reverberated with the hum of a million voices. No peaceful land in sight away from the white noise of conversing. And while my dad taught me the art of making a well delivered phone call, he also gave me good advice last year: "Stop listening to what everyone else has to say and just do whatever it is that YOU wanna do. Cut out the constant chatter, kid." 

So, I finally decided to take his advice this week. One year later, but I'm taking it nonetheless! I've ruthlessly stopped returning phone calls. I answer only the necessary emails in short and concise sentences that don't signal a reply. I've banished my phone to silent mode and have started leaving it in other rooms of the house, out of earshot. I've turned off. I've shut down. I've cut it all out. And I've come to a conclusion: I've known what to do all along, but stubbornly insisted on hearing everyone else out first. I don't need to have endless phone calls day and night in order to make the right decisions for me. But I do need to take a serious break from all the chatter.

Hopelessly devoted.

hope /hōp/ :A feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen. The feeling that what is wanted can be had.

Hope is a funny thing. It's not an emotion. It's not tangible. It's nothing you can wrap your arms around. It's not a place. It's not a person. It's a feeling. An inkling. A special hunch that can swarm your heart and fuel your desires. It can be a strong driving force in your life. It can show up from the earliest of ages and stick with you for an eternity. And if you're not careful, it can get left behind, dumped and forsaken without your noticing.

I cried tonight. In a restaurant. Into my empty sushi plate. And it would have been embarrassing if I wasn't so emotionally exhausted. The past two years of my life haven't been a struggle. They've been a constant attempt at walking through a pit of quicksand. In case you've never seen an Indiana Jones movie, the quicksand always wins.

I couldn't tell you the exact moment I let hope slip through my fingers, but I could point to my own personal timeline and identify when my life started to fall apart and my heart and mind both decided to abandon the hope ship. It was right around the time that I had fallen hard in love with someone who woke up one morning and decided he wanted to take back all the sweet and wonderful things he had said the night before and no longer wanted to be the light in my eyes. That was also around the time that I decided to move away from all my friends and everything familiar to go back home. For what I had no idea. But as soon as I did family members started to die off. And by the end of the year I was let go from a job I had had for the past 3 years and was hoping would stay with me through my next move. In less than 12 months, I had gone from absolute bliss and ecstasy to a sad and angry mess.

Fast forward a couple years and you'll find a girl who went from sad, angry, and later bitter, to hopeless and constantly waiting for that illusive rug to be pulled out from under her. I had moved past the anger and bitterness and went straight into disbelief that anything good would ever happen to me. I had come to expect that life was supposed to fall apart. In short, good things only happen in the movies.

Fast forward a little more to the present day and you'll find a girl choking back crocodile sized tears, mid-conversation, in a sushi restaurant, because her friend just hit the nail on the head. He had just defined all her problems with one word: hope. I hadn't lost hope. I had abandoned it. I left it back in the shower of my old apartment where I cried my eyes out over a lover lost. I had left it in those moving boxes that held all my possessions between here and there. I had washed my hands of hope when all those good things that were supposed to happen didn't.

Ah, hindsight with it's perfect vision...

It's a scary move to make, going from hopelessness to belief. Hope reminds me of the feeling I had as a kid standing on Main Street in Disneyland. Everything was magical and all things were possible. As an adult it's terrifying to put yourself in a position of belief, because the let-down can be agonizing. But here I am, at one o'clock in the morning, typing out tonight's events and hoping.

The Ugly Truth

If there's one thing I learned while living in the city it's that everyone wants what everyone else has. You get up early in the morning to get the worm, so to speak, so you can have that "other" thing. The thing that everyone else seems to have that you don't. And you strive and you stress just to get it. (Whatever "it" is.)

I had drinks with an old friend the other night. We were discussing the finer points of life in the country versus the ins and outs of city living. Since I last saw her she has birthed a couple kids and a nice little mortgage. Meanwhile, I traveled the world, partied my brains out and started a business. Our lives couldn't be more opposite.

Then we got down to details: I told her how I've learned that according to the country folk, a girl my age hasn't lived life yet until she's gotten married. (As if that's the only thing she can do!) And she told me how she runs off to the city for a few days, sans the kids, every chance she gets. I was starting to think that I had it all wrong: I had partied and traveled my marrying days away. And here she was telling me that she wished she had more chances to live the single life.

Maybe it's time to cut that greener grass?

In any case, I will still be getting asked by everyone and their cousin why I'm not married yet. And she will still be grasping at her chances to live the single life again. It's the ugly truth. And it followed me from the big city to the back roads of the country. Everyone wants what everyone else has. Even in the sticks.

What am I doing exactly?

Oh that's right....I'm moving.

I'm moving away from all things familiar, convenient and comfortable to a place that I said I would NEVER move back to.

I can just hear my mother's haunting voice in my head: "Never say never!"

And in case that doesn't make you a little queasy, (because let's face it: everyone has that one thing they've sworn they'll never do) I'm thinking about buying a house there. Buying. A house. As in, let's play Pyramid!













Oh! Oh! Things that grown-ups do!

I am getting excited about it. Sort of.
There is so much potential for a new start, ya know?
New work.
New friends.
New places to see and grow to love.

As my friend so aptly put it the other day: "All bets are off. This is a whole new life. You can do whatever you want!"


















Here's a little peek at the hideous, eye-sore of a place I'm moving to. I know. I know. It's a real train wreck.