Post #10: Week Three: Untaken Risks

“Often the difference between a successful person and a failure is not one has better abilities or ideas, but the courage that one has to bet on one's ideas, to take a calculated risk - and to act.”

- Andre Malraux

When Kyle and I had been dating only a month, he took off to study abroad in Spain for three months. No, I didn't make him want to flee the country. At least I don't think I did. He had paid for the trip before we had started dating. Either way, to a 19-year-old, three months seemed like forever. I mean, come on, it was three times longer than our relationship had been. We "broke up," cried at the airport, and said goodbye. Then we e-mailed and talked on the phone every day that he was there. A week after he had left, my friend asked, "Have you thought about visiting him?"

WHAT? ARE YOU CRAZY? That is so not me. I don't fly six or seven thousand miles to chase after some guy. No way. But...maybe if my sister wants to go to Europe with me over Spring Break...

And, so, I called my sister, we checked flights, I picked up extra shifts for a month, and we took off to spend 10 days in Paris and Barcelona. My sister hadn't ever met Kyle before. I was a nervous wreck. I didn't know if he and I were still dating or if my sister would approve of him or, or, or...

Then I let it all go. The first night we arrived, after a huge ordeal with switching flights at the last minute, sleeping at the airport for hours, and meeting a friendly Brazilian woman who helped us find the metro at midnight, my sister stayed at the hotel while Kyle and I went on a walk. That night, it rained for the first time since Kyle had been living there (and continued to do so until the morning we left for Paris). At one point, as we walked through a crowd, he put his hand on the small of my back to guide me through the hoards of people. Right at that moment, I knew this trip, this risk, had been well worth it. Three and a half years later, we were married.


Some of the best experiences in my life have not happened to me but because of me. I don't mean that to sound arrogant; my point is that, for the most part, people aren't successful or happy just because they were super lucky or especially qualified. I believe we can all have a taste of success and happiness if we decide to work toward our goals and take more risks.

Happiness doesn't just happen. We have to do some of the preparation for it. I took a risk with Kyle, and I'm about to take a risk starting a new job in a couple of weeks. If it turns out half as well as my decision to fly to Europe, then it will have all been worth it.

Taking (calculated) risks is something we're all capable of in our lives. I have found that, in addition to "knowing the right people," life is about knowing the right times to leap. As so many wise people before me have said, you have to be willing to risk if you hope to gain. To (calculated) risk taking!




(Next week's thing my life doesn't need: Drama.)

Post #9: Posting on a Whim

"I don't even know what I was running for - I guess I just felt like it."

- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

I don't really have anything in particular that I plan on writing about; I'm just glad that I'm feeling the compulsion to write again! I've been reading other people's blogs tonight and just feel inspired to start transforming mine into something worth reading. I used to share short stories, poetry, pseudo-intellectual observations, etc., on my Xanga blog in high school. I even had another blogspot blog in college, but I left it in the dust.

Interestingly enough, I stopped writing right around the time I started dating my husband. This kind of makes sense because a lot of my writing stemmed from the pain of unrequited love or just general teen angst. I met him just before my 19th birthday and started dating him about eight months later. So it might just all be a coincidence, but who knows?

That also ties in my quote that I used at the beginning of this post. I chose it because I felt like posting for the heck of it, and The Catcher in the Rye is my all-time favorite book. It all makes sense now though because I gave my husband a copy of it for Christmas; he had never read it before! Can you believe that? Anyway, I think he read it within a day or two of my giving it to him. I felt like I was sharing a part of my past with him because I fell in love with that book when I was 12 and then again at 16. The first time I read it, I remembered feeling like I wasn't alone in this world. That might give you the impression that I was a really cynical, frustrated young girl. I wasn't. Quite the opposite, actually.

I was always optimistic and outgoing, but I still related to something about Holden on this deeper level. Salinger really knew how to get to our age group, I suppose. I wasn't as unique as I thought, which I guess is part of the irony of the whole story. We think we're alone and special in some dark, tragic way when, in reality, we're just in the middle of a phase that everyone goes through at that age. We just haven't lived long enough to be objective and realize it isn't the end of the world.

For a while, I was worried that I had outgrown blogging. It seemed like its only purpose for me must have been to get out all that angst I mentioned earlier. Without it, I felt like I wasn't creative or interesting; it was my drug. Now that I'm in what I think may be a state of full recovery, I'm starting to realize that life can be just as deep and meaningful in a simpler way. Being happier and more content need not mean that life is boring.

Oh, and I may be a married woman, but my husband won't deny me my handful of celebrity crushes. Here is my all-time favorite, James McAvoy:

Post #7: Week One: No Self-examination

"One of the greatest discoveries a man makes, one of his greatest surprises, is to find he can do what he was afraid he couldn't."

- Henry Ford

A few weeks ago, I happened upon an interesting blog about making the most of every aspect of your life. As I browsed this site, I found that its author, Sam Davidson, not only runs this inspirational blog but has also started two companies (Cool People Care and Proof) and written two books (New Day Revolution and 50 Things Your Life Doesn't Need). Way to make us feel lazy, right?

Anyway, as I was browsing, I found a tiny typo in Sam's "About Me" section. I figured I would want to know that I had a typo on my website if I were him, so I shot him an e-mail to let him know. (I was worried he might think I was crazy because that seems like the kind of thing one would only do if she had nothing better with which to occupy her time.) To my great relief, he didn't think I was crazy. Or, at least, he didn't say that. These days, it's quite shocking to ever get a response from an e-mail, so I was pleasantly surprised when Sam wrote back. He thanked me for pointing out the typo and asked me for my address...to send me a complimentary copy of 50 Things Your Life Doesn't Need.

WOW. Now this, THIS, is how you do business, I thought. So I sent him my address (and even got a reply explaining that he would be traveling that weekend but would send out the book when he got back). WOW again.

Last Friday, January 14, 2011, I came home after a long day at work to find that the book had arrived. I hate to sound jaded, but I have to admit that, even after the follow-through with his correspondence, I wasn't sure that Sam would still remember to send me the book. In my 23 years on this earth, I've gotten my hopes up enough times to know what it feels like to be let down when someone forgets a promise, a plan that was made, etc., so I had prepared myself for the fact that the book might not ever make its way to my house. But it did.



I had company that night and couldn't look through the book like I was hoping to, but I finally got to sit down the next morning to begin reading. All I can say is that I was inspired by Sam's passion, insight, and excitement about life. In the last year, I graduated from college, landed my first full-time job, and got married to a man who is about to go through fire academy. With so much going on in my life, I've been trying to find a bit of clarity and peace. I've been trying to simplify things. Because I've been searching for my passion for a long time now (like all of us, I'm sure), I wrote Sam a thank-you e-mail and told him the book couldn't have come at a better time for me.

But, seriously, it couldn't have come at a better time. January 14, 2011, marked the end of the second week of 2011 and the beginning of the remaining 50 weeks of the year. From that day, I decided that I would have 50 weeks to gradually rid my life of 50 unnecessary things. This past week has been Week One of this journey, and I must admit that I've barely had time to focus on this task (hence my post that should have been written the day I received the book). So what is the first thing that my life doesn't need? No Self-examination.

Sam says that it's very important to check in with yourself on a regular basis to determine what makes you feel successful, disappointed, happy, or incomplete. Staying in touch with your emotions and how the world around you affects them helps you to get closer and closer to your ultimate goal of finding your passion in life.

As I said, I haven't had much time this week for focusing on self-examination; however, I believe writing this blog is the first step to resolving that problem. Seeing as how it took me all week to finally get this thing started, I would venture to say that I've already begun to successfully rid my life of No Self-examination.

This week, I will be focusing on Small Dreams and how to replace them with bigger and bigger hopes and goals for the future. I'll expand on that more later, and I promise that future posts will be a bit deeper and, hopefully, more insightful. But we all know that introductions like these tend to be lengthy and heavy with facts, so I'll let you rest up for now and start thinking about your dreams both great and small.

P.S. Yes, I have already neglected my New Year's resolution. I think trying to focus on other people all year was a good goal, but I've come to the conclusion that I just need to take care of clearing the clutter from my life first so I can be better at giving of myself. These days, it barely feels like there's enough of me to go around in a quality way. I plan on cutting down on the quantities of things in my life to enrich its quality. Let's see how this goes.

Post #6: Self-reflection. Literally.

“Maturity is that time when the mirrors in our mind turn to windows and instead of seeing the reflection of ourselves we see others.”

-Author Unknown

I think that's my favorite picture of me from our wedding. I just thought I'd share it because it kind of captures how I wish I would be seen at all times and how I hope I'm seen most of the time. I'm thinking about this because I just had a weird moment. Have you ever looked yourself in the eyes in your reflection long enough to feel like you have an entirely new perspective on yourself? Like there's this paradigm shift where you suddenly have this strange intimate moment with yourself and realize that you've had yourself all wrong? I just had one of those moments. As weird as it sounds, it made me cry.

I feel like all this stress and worry just came to a head, and I realized that if I were anyone else looking at me then I would give myself a huge hug and say, "Relax. Seriously. It's okay."

I faced this struggle I've had for a long time between seeing myself as a polished woman versus a carefree child. I'm always afraid being the former will make me boring, but then being the latter always makes me wonder if I'm just avoiding growing up. I mean, I fully intend on always staying a kid at heart, but it's hard to find your place in a professional setting and as a married woman, etc., when you aren't quite ready to be an adult just yet. I want so badly to feel prepared, but this playful child inside of me keeps tugging at me to not forget her.

There are a lot of things that, no matter how "grown up" I will ever be, I just don't have control over. I don't have control over what other people will think of me (though I can take actions to shed a better light on myself), I can't control who likes me or wants to be friends with me, I can't control car accidents, natural disasters, or almost anything in the outside world really. However, I have control over my own actions. I think for way too long I have felt subject to my personality. Why do we think it's okay to blame things on our personalities? I say this because we all do it. "That's just who I am."

Yes, to a certain extent, that's a healthy attitude to have. It's good to have self-confidence and be able to weed out your typical nay-sayers from people who have something legitimate to tell you. But the key is to listen to those people who really have something to say. In this particular case, that someone is me. I have a lot of things to say to myself, and I'm going to do it. Hopefully I listen.

I apologize for the confusing nature of this post. It's almost 4am. The point I was eventually going to get at is that I want to fix myself so I can stop being so focused on myself. It's like getting a car tuned up so you don't have to worry about it for another 3,000 miles. I must tell you, my soul is way past it's check-up date, and it causes me to worry about it on an almost daily basis. I would like to fix my internal world so I can focus on everything that's outside of it. I'm going to start by cleaning out my closet and getting rid of clothes I don't need.

Please don't ask how that's going to help my soul because, if you don't understand that, then you could never possibly understand me.

Did I mention it's 4am?

Edit: (February 17,2011) I just saw this poem on a friend's blog and couldn't believe how well it goes with my post above:

Love After Love
by Derek Walcott

The time will come
when, with elation
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror
and each will smile at the other's welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.

Post #5: The New Year

"So this is the new year, and I don't feel any different."

-Death Cab for Cutie, The New Year

I'm somewhat disappointed that I didn't have a post for October because then I would have at least been posting once a month since I started this thing. Oh well, new year, new start. Tomorrow marks the beginning of 2011, and I still can't believe it's been 11 years since the big Y2K scare. Ridiculous, right?

I have to tell you, I struggled with publishing all these posts again. I had them hidden for the last few months because I always end up critiquing the way I sound when I look back and read them again. I decided it's time to let that go.

I just realized how unfitting that quote up top is for the actual tone I plan on having for this post. It just made me nostalgic because I remember driving in my best friend's car in high school listening to that song as we rang in 2005. You want to know what embarrassing shenanigans we were up to that night? We were driving past a party where this guy I had a monster crush on at the time was hanging out. What did we think we were going to do if he saw us driving by? Act nonchalant and say something like, "Oh, fancy seeing you here! We were just in the neighborhood...marry me?" Oh to be 17 and stalk guys who never deserved your affections in the first place.

It's scary to me that I was up to such nonsense only six measly years ago. Oh well, it was fun at the time. My life is much more uneventful these days, but I have to admit I like it that way. The memories are enough for me.

So, the real reason I think I started posting is to list a few things I plan on changing. Yes, I know everyone does this. I know it's uber cliche. But I don't care. I want to have a more carefree attitude this year and every year after it. So bear with me.

[Actually, scratch that. I wrote out a list of five things and then just deleted it. Man oh man, were my resolutions ever boring.]

I think I just want to have one resolution for the whole year. I'd been tossing ideas around in my head, but this is the best thing I've been able to come up with so far. All of the resolutions I listed before deleting them were really self-centered. Yes, we could debate for hours about how totally and completely genuendo it is to do things for others and think it's selfless when it's really self-serving because it makes you feel good. However, at least it's one small step closer to being focused on others rather than blatantly focusing on myself. So let it go. I'm trying.

My One and Only Resolution for 2011:

Each week, I resolve to pick one person and do something, whether anonymously or not, to show them that they mean something to people in this world. Heck, there are so many people flooding into my mind right now that I think I may even make it two or three people some weeks. By the end of the year, at least 52 more people will feel special or appreciated. That still wouldn't be enough, but it's better than nothing, I suppose.

The main guideline for the whole thing is that whatever I do for them has to be well-thought-out and geared toward that specific person and their interests. I have this friend, Pam, who I've known since first grade. She gives the most personal, thoughtful gifts of anyone I've ever known, and she is my inspiration for the way I'll be showing people they matter.

Also, my mother-in-law gave all of us gratitude journals for Christmas because she thinks it's an important thing to focus on, especially in times like now with the economy looking somewhat bleak. She is my inspiration for focusing on the positive things that I'm thankful for rather than the negative things in life.

This has been the most helter-skelter post I've written thus far. I sure am out of practice. I'll be posting more often, so hopefully my thoughts will become more coherent as time goes on. Hopefully.

Happy New Year, everyone!