Tag: change

Enough

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I usually get on my soap box on Thursday’s. 

And I’m happy to say today is no different. 

I just wanted to tell you that you are enough, in whatever you want to be enough in. You’re just that amount of extra. 

You’re kind enough, smart enough, pretty enough, brave enough to do what you want to do. 

But you’re also hard on yourself enough, alone enough, unhealthy enough to do something about it all. You don’t have to hit rock bottom in order to get to the top, your life is not a slingshot. You don’t have to be pulled back so hard, have so much tension, that you’re barely able to move before you get launched into a new phase of your life. 

You can ease into it. One toe at a time into the deep end of the swimming pool. And actually, you owe it to yourself to do that. Start making small changes. Because then you can get used to the water temperature. And you can get used to your new life. And you can discover yourself again. 

You already have what it takes to change your life for the better. The only thing you need is to accept it. That your new life will be enough. 

Excited?!?

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So, are you excited to get married?

Are you excited to move? 

Are you excited to buy a new mattress? 

Yeah, sure. I’m about as excited as getting a problem tooth pulled. I’ll be happy when it’s done, but there will be a lot of pain in the meantime. 

I mean, why do people ask if you’re excited about huge life changes? (I know. Where did my status as an optimist go?) But don’t they realize how much stuff (aka money, energy, tears, potato chips) goes into making a life change? Because I’m super tempted to tell them the truth. Just in case they really don’t know. 

And I guess it is exciting from the outside. When you’re not involved and you don’t have to stay up late picking napkin colors and wrapping yourself in packing tape. You’re blissfully unaware, and that must be so so nice. 

The point is that the next time you’re going through a life change and someone asks if you’re excited, think about telling them the truth. And then bite it back and tell them that it’s “great!” Because maybe in convincing them, you’ll convince yourself. 

Seems Fake

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Have you ever seen a person when you are out and about and they just have it all going on? Their hair is slicked back, their style is on point, and they just have that swagger? Do you know that person I’m talking about?

Well, do you want to know a secret? That person is faking it. All of it.

And I don’t mean that his or her suit is fake or that his or her hair is fake. As in inauthentic. I’m saying that his or her persona is fake. As in an impersonation.

No, really. Here’s something you should always keep in mind: The entire world is engaged in one big, long poker tournament. The people who are really successful believe that they have great cards and (make others believe it too), even when they don’t. As for the rest of us? We think our cards are okay. And in both cases, we’re right.

And when you’re faking it, the only person you have to “fool” is yourself. I mean, think about it. The people on the street don’t know you. They people in the grocery store have never seen you (but they are making judgments about you when they see your grocery cart.) Even your co-workers don’t really know the real “you,” living day to day in close cubicle quarters like you are. To them, you’re just you, whatever that means. And do you know what that actually means? You can believe that you are anyone at all, and people will have to believe you. They have no reason to think you are faking being as smart, talented, or funny as you seem to be.

I mean, really, does anyone know how to be an “adult”? Do you think that you just get a briefcase and a pinstripe suit on your thirtieth birthday, and your vocabulary expands to include words like “ROI” and “401K”? No! We’re all just children playing dress up to impress people we don’t even like. And we’re succeeding at it because we’re faking it.

So, don’t even give it a second thought. Don’t worry that people may be able to see that you are faking it. Because what you’ll really find is that the more you fake it, the more you are acting exactly like the person you are and the person you’ve been all along.

Change Happens

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Listen. I’m excited for pumpkin lattes, pumpkin pie, and pumpkin pumpkins (aka fall) as much as the next girl on social media. But does anyone else have the strange sense that we were just eating hotdogs and watching fireworks at our Fourth of July celebrations a couple of days ago? I mean, where did the summer go? It’s like I remember a long heat wave and then it all just goes blank…

And it’s in this strange amnesia that I walk around and notice that people are talking about how they can’t wait for it to be cold, and how they can already feel the crunch of leaves underfoot. (Underfeet??) And still, I’m all like, hold up! We have almost an entire month until that all happens. Why are you showing summer the door when she’s been (relatively) kind to you?

And alright, I admit it, I’m just not ready. I’m not ready for apple cider, and seeing my own breath, and mittens, and trees that look like they’ve been lit on fire, and trying desperately (but failing) to come up with a Halloween costume that doubles as social commentary. I was pretty sure that I could fight against the fall tide for a while, just a couple more weeks.

Until I saw it driving home the other day.

“It” was a small tree, maybe a few years post-sapling, standing quite proudly on the exit ramp. One little corner of her leaves had turned completely red and gold while the rest stayed as verdant as they had been in spring. It was like she was just a tiny bit embarrassed and had just started to blush.

And I thought, Not you too! It’s not even cold! 

But it made me realize something very quickly: change happens. No, really. You may not be ready for it. You may not even think that it should be happening. I surely didn’t think it was time for the leaves on the trees to start changing colors. But there it was, inarguable and steadfast, truly defying whatever internal clock I had been synced to. Change happens, whether you are ready or not. Whether you think it should or not. Whether you want it to or not. Even for that little tree. And especially for you.

So, whether it’s a change in the weather or a change in your life, you need to remember that change is inevitable. But whether you embrace it or resist it will always be up to you.

A Teeny, Tiny Yes

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Sometimes, it’s hard to make decisions. (Okay, pretty much all of the time.) Even when the hardest decision of your day is choosing what to eat for dinner, it can stump you. Well, I don’t want pizza because I had cheese last week, but if I try to cook something at home, it’ll be nothing short of a Chopped competition to put together all of the ingredients I have left over from last night…

So, what do you do? You ask for advice. Or shake a Magic 8 ball. Or flip a coin. And suddenly, the onus is not on you. You don’t have to worry about making a decision anymore because it is up to another person, toy-making skills in the 80’s, or fate itself. You’re like, I’m so glad I made the “Wheel of Food” where I just spin the wheel and out comes the menu choice! Chinese, again! Yes! I have high blood pressure and pork fried rice!

But the problem is that you quite literally lose control of your life when you leave it up to something or someone else to make your decisions for you. Because that’s all life really is in the end, the times you made a choice. Who you’ll date, where you’ll live, if you’ll go to the gym at all. Even the teeniest, tiniest yes to something can set you on the path to something great. Even the littlest, quietest no to something can carve out your place in the world. And if someone else is telling you what to do, if someone else is making the choices for you, can you even it call it your life?

So, yeah, it’s really hard to make some of the big decisions. You think, I need to talk to my elders. They’ll have more experience with choosing what to eat for dinner, and so, they’re wiser than I. But the fact is that they’re not living your life. Which makes you the only expert in that department, and thus, the only person who should be able to answer that question with any semblance of confidence.

Don’t complicate things. Just breathe, reach down inside, and pull out your decision. Whatever you choose, even if it is just a guess, will be better than any informed decision from anyone else.

To Know the Difference

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Here’s a little secret: I’m a control freak. Yes, the lady that runs a blog daily is a control freak. Imagine that! And if you’re a control freak, you’ll know how hard it is to rein in the crazy. Which is why I take a lot of comfort from the following quote from Reinhold Niebuhr:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

The courage to change the things I can,

And the wisdom to know the difference.

 Because even though this little mantra has been adopted by Alcoholics Anonymous, I think it still rings true for everyone. A huge part of life is knowing when you need to give a little more and when you have done all you can.

My problem? It’s with that little, last line. “And the wisdom to know the difference.” Because how do you know? How do I know that it wasn’t me, or that it wasn’t meant to be? What if I deserve the blame but refuse to put it on myself? What if I did what I could but it wasn’t one of those things I could change? What if it was and I didn’t try hard enough?

I mean, think about it. When you took a test in school and you studied your butt off, but you still didn’t get a good grade, what did you tell yourself? Did you get angry and ask why you didn’t study more? Or did you say that there was no way that you could have studied for that test because it was hard? The age-old debate reformed: Was it nature or nurture?

And in reality, it was probably a combination of the two. But if you are anything like me, you are going to spend the next twenty years thinking that it was you…or that it was the test…or perhaps it was you…

So, that quote is really understated. You better pray for that wisdom to know the difference. Forget the courage or the serenity. You are going to need all of the intelligence you can get. Because that’s what is going to help you sleep at night.

But I guess in the end you simply have to do the absolute best that you can and then when you have wrung every drop from yourself and you still didn’t get what you want or it still didn’t work out, then you can ask the universe why it insists on being ridiculous.

And if that doesn’t work, you can do what I do: worry your life away about things you can’t change while being too paralyzed to do anything about the things you can. In reality, if you live this way for long enough, you really won’t know the difference.

Bagels Give Me a Stomachache

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You should know that I have an addictive personality when it comes to breakfast food.

I ate Eggo waffles for two years straight. Weekend, weekday. It didn’t matter. I was pouring syrup every morning, while my mother was trying to get me to eat something else.

And then, one day … I didn’t eat waffles. And the day after that? No waffles. And any day after that? You guessed it. I never really ate Eggo waffles again. I burnt myself out by being so addicted to them that I began to loathe them. It was the epitome of “too much of a good thing.”

Now that I have a food allergy, I can’t eat Eggo waffles, even if I wanted to. I have to buy the gluten free, soy free, dairy free, black magic pancake mix if I want a waffle that won’t try to reenact a scene out of Alien and crawl out of my stomach.

But like anyone who has to tell themselves that they can’t eat something, I inevitably eat that said thing. Just a few nibbles here and there. It’s almost like when someone slaps your hand away and tells you NOT to touch the big, red button. It doesn’t take a psychologist to know that your first instinct is to do the opposite of what that bossy person said. It’s alluring in ways that nothing else is.

Of course, I’m not crazy enough to start eating waffles again. My stomach isn’t ready for that and neither am I.

No, I settled for something a little bit more benign: a bagel. No cream cheese. (What are you crazy!? It’s already bad enough the bagel has soy in it. I would be DOA if I tried to eat dairy. Baby steps, as I try to destroy my body one breakfast food at a time.)

So, I ask myself something really tempting of the universe like, “What could possibly go wrong?” and down the hatch.

Probably an hour later I had the worst stomachache of my life. I know, I know. You’re thinking, my god. This woman is like the princess and the pea. But instead of the mattress, it’s her stomach. And instead of the pea, it’s a bagel. And in fact, you are right. (Actually, the pea would have been so much less of an impact on my poor insides.)

Now, this isn’t the first time I have ever eaten a bagel. They were a close second to waffles at one point in my eating career. But alas, no more.

So, what can I take away from this? After doubling over my stomach and sobbing over the fact that it’s so picky about its contents, I realized that there is still something to be gained from this situation.

If you ever worry that you are going to be stuck in a rut or simply stuck for the rest of your life, you won’t. Things will always, always, always change. And though it may sound scary, it’s good.

When I was in the throes of my waffle love, did I ever think I would stop eating them? Even worse, never be able to eat them again? Of course not. But here we are. My body changed that forever for me.

And so it will be for you. If you’re afraid you’ll never find love, you’ll never move out, you’ll never land a job, I can’t tell you what you what will happen. (I’m not a psychic. I just have a food allergy.) But I can tell you that whatever situation you are in now, you probably won’t be in it in a few years. And that’s wonderful and horrifying at the same time. The very fabric of your body is always dying, being reborn (even your stomach). You are never immune to change.

So, if you are going through hell, keep going. And stay away from bagels if you’re allergic. I learned that lesson the hard way for you. You’re welcome.

Be Completely Irritated

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Frankly, I think the world would be better if people were a little more irritated.

Not with the mundane things. (The coffee is too hot, the office is too cold, the walk to work is too long, and the lunch break is too short…)

But with things that truly mattered.

Of course, you point out that people are plenty irritated already. Just turn on the news, and if you don’t see what people are mad about (in the physical act of carrying out their anger), you see what they are going to be mad about later.

But let’s think of it in another way first. To use an entirely cliched example, an oyster makes a pearl with a grain of sand because it irritates the oyster enough that the mollusk engulfs it in something that it can deal with and the rest of the world thinks is beautiful. (I mean, I guess you can use the same example with eye boogies, but, well. You know.)

Now, there is enough of a lesson in there for me to stop right now. Out of something harsh and annoying, oysters make something beautiful and precious. They are probably the most optimistic sea-dwelling creatures ever, and we should follow their lead. (This is also why oysters are about as cliched as butterflies in the self-help arena.)

But there is something else that you’re missing if you are just looking at the pearl in this cliche. Rather, the real lesson is that people need to become more irritated to make their own pearls in the first place, so to speak.

Often, we are angry over minor issues and complacent over major things. I mean, why is it that we may get angry about someone’s driving on our way to work but not the fact that we have an hour commute that stresses us out everyday? I understand picking your battles, but this is your life, isn’t it? Doesn’t that mean you get to choose what you do and where you work? Why not make the change if it will make you ultimately happier?

The problem is that not enough people let themselves get irritated. They just tell themselves that they will eventually get another job that has a closer commute. Or that if they play their music loud enough, they won’t even mind the hour drive. But really, they should be downright irritated. With themselves, with their life. So much so that they are motivated, like the oyster, to make a change.

And speaking of change, being irritated and pushing yourself to live the best life you can live by constantly striving for the best is hard. In fact, if it is easy, you’re probably doing it wrong.

But don’t be afraid to get a little irritated. It just means that you want change and that you are passionate about getting it. You don’t have to see the whole process; you just need a plan to rid yourself of complacency. Just ask the oyster. If he or she left the grain of sand alone, we wouldn’t have pearls.

What Do We Watch on Tuesday?

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If you were a kid in the 90s,  your parents would order a pizza for dinner every Friday night. I don’t know why this was an unspoken rule of weekly take-out, but if it was Friday, you knew that you were going to eat cheesy goodness while watching Sabrina The Teenage Witch, in that order.

Little did you know that your parents were also giving you a taste of adult living at a very young age, while simultaneously setting you up for heart disease. What was a fun way to spend the end of the week suddenly became a rut that you were trudging in by the time you were nearing puberty. Your mouth would start watering on Thursday night in anticipation of the next day: pizza day.

And so it was born: your ambition to work for/treat yourself with the weekend. (To be fair, 5 days of schooling also contributed to this, but hey, positive reinforcement doesn’t help it, either.)

And it is now that I invoke this sort of, blogger’s license, and say that you should break the routine you live in whenever possible (and at the same time, I freely admit that this is a struggle for me as well. I, too, looked forward to pizza at one time.)

But like pizza, routines are unhealthy. (I know, sad truth.)

Now, I’m not going to tell you that life exists outside of your comfort zone. Because you already know that. Yes, if I tell you what you should be doing, it doesn’t change the fact that you aren’t doing it. You’re scared and that’s obvious. We all are, and that’s why we adopt routines in the first place. That’s not a crime, it’s a fact.

No, I want to tell you it is possible to break your routine. It is possible to start something new. It is possible to stop asking, “What’s on television on Tuesday?” Not because you already know, but because you have broken the habit of doing the same thing every Tuesday. Just start small. Watch your normal shows on a Wednesday night instead of a Tuesday. I know, I know, that’s really starting small. But when you convince yourself that change isn’t life-altering, and that it won’t kill you, then you can move up. Try a new restaurant. Read an author you’ve never read.

Then, when you’re comfortable in your new uncomfortableness, keep going. And you’ll realize that the life you were living before wasn’t really living at all.

Routines can be good because they help us to remember what we need to remember in our lives: the car keys, this huge project, that night out with your friends. This is because nothing ever changes. But routines aren’t memorable for the long-term, as days merge into one another as one gray blur. That’s why we need a break from routines from time to time, to feel new things and try new things. To live the life we want to live instead of the life we feel we must.

So, we’ll do it together. We’ll both make small changes in our life so that they add up to something big. Because life is simply that: small moments that add up over the years.

(But don’t worry. This blog will always remain routine without being ordinary.)

I. Am. Tired

Bailey Gunn1 Comment

Author’s Note: This may be the last you hear from me for a little bit. Unfortunately, my computer passed away, and I will need time to find a replacement. I will do my best to post when I can. Thanks for understanding!

I’m exhausted. I’m drained. I’m tired. And I have spent the last hour debating on whether I should even write tonight, or if I should just sneak off to bed and deal with the mob and the pitchforks outside my window tomorrow. Because, as I’ve stated, I’m exhausted. I’m drained. I’m tired.

And the more I think about how tired I am and how I have virtually nothing to say to you, kind people of the blogosphere, I realize that I do have something to say to you: I’m exhausted. I’m drained. I’m tired.

Because I got to thinking: why do we say we’re tired? Just to complain? Or are we letting ourselves know? Are we finally acknowledging it out loud? Because if you’re anything like me, you’ve been attempting to stifle any exhaustion for weeks now. You’ve satiated your body with quick cat naps and promises that you’ll tuck yourself in early tonight.

But work calls. A reader out there needs you. Or maybe it’s just a really funny cat video. But we all know the end result: you’re up to see the sun rise as well. And if we don’t admit to ourselves that we’re actually in pain from ignoring our own needs, if we pretend that being tired is our norm, it becomes this heavy suit of armor that we wear all of the time that protects us but drags us down.

So, I’ve realized that this little phrase “I’m tired” is more than a complaint, more than a compromise. It is actually a part of a huge revolution. Admitting it to yourself will help you to take the necessary steps to take care of you, in whatever way possible. Sleep, health, relationships, whatever. I’m tired is the beginning and ending of any change you want to make in your life. You simply have to be tired enough of your current lifestyle to make the leap.

And make the leap I shall. Tonight, it is only the leap into my bed. But tomorrow? It shall be the world.