On doing what comes naturally....

I have a good friend that runs a really fantastic blog about her adventures in home ownership. She and her husband are wildly talented at building and decorating so seeing their home and it's progress is simultaneously motivating and jealousy-inducing (in only the best ways). More often than not, she does something to her house and I respond with, "That's what I wanted to do, but didn't know how!" which makes me laugh. I find it entertaining that I can have these ideas in my head, but can never get them out into reality. My favorite thing she's done so far (of the umpteen things they've done to their house in the 12 months they've owned it) is the giant mirror over the fireplace. I've always wanted to do that, but couldn't ever figure out if it would look right. Turns out, it's beautiful! So, if she doesn't mind, I might end up "stealing" that idea.

None of that is really what this is about.

What I find so wonderful about her blog is that she's found a way to pour her expertise into something she truly loves and enjoys. I get the feeling that she likes her job (which is interior design, but on a much larger scale than homes), but she thrives, really comes alive, when she's working on her home. We should all be so lucky to have that combination: skill and passion (and get paid for it, to boot!). So often, it seems like what we're passionate about isn't always what we're skilled at...and vice versa. I'm good at customer service and paperwork, but I get exhausted by it quickly. I love decorating and making things pretty, but I kind of suck at it. I do, however, love food and am VERY good at eating it. Too bad I can't get a job doing that! I digress.

I think this might be the time in my life when I find a hobby that I'm either good at or can become good at. I want to start with making my house a home. We've lived there for about eight months and in that time, I've just been too busy with other (somewhat more important) things to really make that place "homey." I'm ready for it to feel like we really live and belong there.

Whatever I end up doing with this free time I now have, I had better enjoy it. Because what's the point of doing something if you don't enjoy it? Hmm...this statement suddenly rings true on so many levels.

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On figuring out who you are....

I feel like most of us spend a substantial portion of our lives trying to define ourselves. What is it that makes us who we are? What is that one "thing" that we do or are that tells the world (or, at the very least, our friends and family) what makes us tick? For some, that "thing" is a job or career. For others, it's a hobby. Maybe it's an emotion. Maybe it's "wife" or "husband" or "parent." Whatever it is, however we choose to define ourselves, it takes work. We become fully invested in cultivating, sometimes even perfecting, the definition we've chosen for ourselves. It becomes a job, in and of itself.

So what happens when that definitive "thing" suddenly changes or stops altogether?

For the last several years of my life, I've defined myself primary as "student." I've done and been other things at the same time, but "student" has always been the big one. Almost my whole world was consumed with the idea of being a student and everything that goes along with it. My studies were the first and last thing I thought about every day. I spent nearly all my lunch hours doing homework and most of my evenings were absorbed by the same things...reading, writing, testing, etc. If someone asked me "what I did," the response was almost always, "Well, I'm a full-time student and...". Everything else beyond my studies was basically secondary. Everything else took a backseat to me being a student. Being a student was everything to me. I didn't want to just do well in my classes. I wanted to kill 'em. I wanted a 4.0 so badly I could taste it (Biology and Latin really screwed me in that department, but whatever...Cs get degrees!). I spent eleven years in some college or university, applying myself to whatever classes I was in at the time.

Then it finally started to kick in and I saw a tiny light at the end of this massive tunnel I'd dug for myself. I was actually going to graduate by the time I was 30. I'd spent so much time screwing around with my life and education that I honestly never thought I'd finish a degree. It took forever to finally figure out what I wanted to do with my education (which, in and of itself, is hilarious because I ended up coming back to the one thing I've always loved). I started over no less than four times so I just resigned myself to being a life-time student. That's just how it was going to be. And then I came to the final semester of my senior year and it hit me that I'd completed this previously-unattainable goal I'd set for myself. I powered through all my classes and kicked their asses. I finished strong and well.

And then...

It was just...over.

Eleven years of defining myself as a student and it's all just gone. Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't go back to it. It was hard and I took a path that is 100% unrecommendable, I assure you. I think that I'm just a bit confused on how I'm defined now. What do I call myself? What do I throw myself into now that the ONE THING that consumed me for so long is just gone?

Now before anyone gets all up in arms about this, don't worry. Being defined as "Todd's wife" is by and large one of the most enjoyable things to be called. And one day, I'll look forward to being defined as "mommy."

I just don't know what to do with all this free time. I had a very strict schedule that I stuck to for years so not having that structure now is very foreign to me. I don't want to just be a bump on a log and watch TV all night, every night. I like to read and I started going to the gym again. I'm quite enjoying that. I've considered going back to mentoring junior high and high school girls, but I'm not sure I'm in a place to do that again. I really really really want to have my Martha Stewart house that I've always dreamed of, so I'm very much considering pouring myself into that venture. I have a list a mile long of things I want to do to the house and I'm willing to put in the time to make it all happen. I just need the money, too...and I tend to be impatient when I get my head set to something.

The point here is that, more often than not, when one things ends, something else is usually right around the corner. For me, that hasn't been the case. My one big thing just ended. So I struggle with my definition now.

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A decade in review....

So...it's January. The beginning of not only a new year, but a new decade! It's exciting to think about what the future holds (I have my hopes for what my own will hold) and interesting to think about all the things that have happened over the last ten years, to me and to the royal we.

In 2000, I dropped out of school (for the first time) and started working for a cabling company in town...my first "big girl" job. It was exciting and overwhelming and about a year and a half later, I chose not to work there any longer.

In 2001, a couple of guys thought it would be a good idea to run some planes into some buildings, forever changing the way I (and probably most of us) viewed the world at large. It was an epic day, for innumerable reasons. My boss at the time was from NYC and had family there as well as in the Pentagon. That day (and the following week) was a bit of a wash at the office. Two of my friends were in the Navy and I was sick every day until I found out where they were and that they were "safe" (I airquotes that because being in the military, is one every really "safe"?). That's about all I remember from that year.

2002 - 2005 were a bit messy for me, though I did start going back to school (only to drop out again about half-way through those three years). It was a time in my life that I don't really enjoy thinking about and that's okay. I did, however, meet my future husband in 2005, so that made the year a bit better for me, to say the least.

In 2006, I moved into a house with some remarkable ladies and we shared much food and laughter in that space. I miss living and learning with them. The TMJ was a fantastic place to live, no question.

In late-2007, I married the aforementioned man in the lovely town of Golden, CO. Sharing that day with most of our family and so many of our friends is something I'll never forget. I never tire of looking at our wedding photos and remembering all the magic that happened that day. The dancing, the singing, the vows, the weather...it was all perfect. I'd do it a hundred times over again, just to relive how fantastic Todd and I felt that day.

In 2008, I kicked my education into high gear by transferring to CU, which (in my estimation) has a vastly superior English Writing program to the one I was in at the time. Not only that, I started taking classes like I was a full-time student with a part-time job. I assure you, I was not. My advisors recommended that I scale things back a bit, but after having been in college since 1999, I was ready to push through and get done. I learned a lot about myself in that year and came to define myself as a "student." School consumed me, in both healthy and not-so-healthy ways.

2009 defines itself as the year we traveled like crazy. Between Japan and Alaska, our bank account dwindled, but we fell in love with parts of the world I never thought I'd see. I kind of want to move to Japan. At the very least, I'd like to visit again, hopefully at Christmastime. I hear they're nuts about Christmas over there...so I'll fit right in!

2010 brought with in about as much drama and happiness as 2005 did. I hope this isn't a pattern. Between some heavy personal things, work, school, and church, life got pretty nuts. I choose to focus on the good and eliminate the bad. I finally graduated from college, a feat that took forever, but that I refuse to diminish just because it took as long as it did. We also bought a house which, in and of itself, is worth being excited over! I love finally having our own place and being able to set it up and decorate just how we want.

So with a new decade and new possibilities in front of me, I refuse to let anything but the "good" happen to me. I resolve to live a drama-free life. I choose to be happy and joy-filled and surround myself with only the best. I've had about enough "bad" to last me several years, I think. I resolve to let GOD and Karma take care of the bullsh*t and to press on knowing that I can control much of what happens to me.

Here's to another year and another adventures!

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Top Ten of TwentyTen

(I forgot to publish this on December 31, 2010...so just pretend).

Being the last day of the year and all, it's the time of year when many of us bloggers reminisce on what we did (or did not do) over the last twelve months. So here is my official Top Ten of TwentyTen for your enjoyment. A departure of typical musings, yes; but fun (for me) nonetheless.

10. Visited Paris and Versailles, France with the Husband in June...one part congratulatory trip for Husband's book publishing, one part European getaway, and one part wedding for friends, this was an incredible trip for the both of us! I'm still trying to rid my body of all the cheese and wine I consumed.

9. Went on an epic ski trip with good friends to the far away Crested Butte (or, as I like to call it - because of how it looks - Mount Crumpit). There's really nothing like fresh, groomed powder and stopping halfway down a run for an ice cold beer at a bar made out of ice. I'm very much looking forward to our next trip in a couple weeks.

8. Got an iPhone 4! Blah blah blah to all the AT&T / Apple haters. This thing is fricking awesome! The organizational crazy head in me loves this handy little device. It went all Jerry MacGuire on me. It completes me.

7. Turned the ripe old age of thirty and celebrated in style! Todd threw me fancy schmancy affair and with the help of my family and dear friends, it was the most perfect party I could have imagined. So far, 30 is a pretty stellar age!

6. Stupidly took 12 credit hours during the summer semester and managed, miraculously, to only have one meltdown. While the meltdown resulted in a complete failure of my pink laptop, Todd was able to fix it (though not before the damn thing lost ALL of my data and schoolwork) and I pulled off a 4.0 that semester. It helped me prove to myself that I could do pretty much anything I set my head to.

5. Bought a house!! In January, we started looking earnestly for a house of our own and with some amount of dumb luck and a fantastic realtor, we found the perfect house in the perfect location. By April, we closed and on May 1, we moved in a started making it our own. It's a bit of a work in progress right now, but we love every bit of it and the dogs totally love the backyard (as do we)...I'm looking forward to spring and summer to start working on making the yard a lovely litte haven for us.

4. Made prime rib for the first time. Okay, so it's not an overwhelming accomplishment, but it leads somewhere. And hey, prime rib is a bit of an undertaking. And an expensive one, at that!

3. Threw my very first formal dinner party! I needed to do this to test out making a prime rib as it was going to be the main course for Christmas dinner, something I REALLY didn't want to screw up. The party, as far as I could tell, was a success and the June Cleaver in me can't wait to host more and more parties!

2. Hosted Christmas and Christmas dinner at our house! I've been wanting to hose a killer Christmas since I was about 12 years old. I love my family's traditions and the ones that Husband and I have created over the last five years, so it was nice to get the chance to do that at last! My plum pudding turned out amazingly and the prime rib (which I did a practice run on in #4) was too big but that just means left overs for us. Oh darn.

1. Probably the most epic thing that has happened to me in recent years (outside of getting married), I finally graduated from a university! Eleven long years and plenty of screwing around with my education, I finally finished and did it with some amount of success. Made the Dean's List a couple of times, impressed my advisor with my gumption, and created some of my best writing to date...I can't complain! It feels good to be done.

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On feeling underwhelmed...

Maybe this is a common feeling for people, but finishing school - completely finishing - is about the most underwhelming thing I have ever experienced. I just don't know what to do with myself right now.

I no longer have papers to write or research to do. I don't need to log on to my online classes and get discussions posted. I'll never have another spring or Christmas break which means I'll never need to cram as much as I can into a week or two, for fear of missing out on something while I'm doing homework. I won't ever utter those three little words so many people have heard from me the last few years: "I have homework."

I woke up last night from a medicated stupor, sure that there was something I needed to be concerned about (other than my puppy who ate a couple chicken bones yesterday). And there was nothing. Really. Just...nothing. So I went back to sleep and that was that.

I'm likening this feeling to the 4th of July. It's sort of the same thing. Everything starts out a little slowly, then ramps up until CRASH! BOOM! The giant finale we've all been waiting for! The pinnacle of the show...they break out the big guns and give us the best they've got! And it's all very exciting for a few minutes and then....it just ends. There's no winding down. It's just over.

So now I'm struggling with the idea of what to do with myself. I need to clean and rearrange much of the house. I have a ton of recipes that I'm dying to try out (though with Christmas only 2 weeks away and me hosting dinner, I don't know that many new recipes will get tested in the near future). I want to start consulting brides again. I definitely want to start writing in earnest. There are plenty of things that I want and need to get done, but for now? I think I'll just revel in the fact that, while it took me waaaaay too long to complete, I've just finished my degree. I'm just going to be okay with that and get the massage I've been (quite literally) aching for, for so long.

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On taking stock of life....

Thanksgiving, much like the dreaded Valentines Day, is a day when the retail industry seems to prey on our overly-consumerist brains. We spend tons of cash on food, to say the very least, and Black Friday...well, let's not even go there.

People tend to rag on Valentines Day quite a bit for being a consumer driven man-made holiday designed to guilt us into buying expensive chocolates, flowers, and jewelry to prove to that we love someone. I, for one, used to be adamantly opposed to Valentines Day. Unfortunately, I did not have a good reason. I just was. But then, after finding someone who could make me like Valentines Day for all the traditional hullabaloo (yes, I get flowers every year), I began to think differently about the day.

We all lead very busy lives. None of us seem to have enough time in the day to manage all the things we need to do and people we need to see. I have three calendars for three different parts of my life and I still can't seem to keep everything straight (though I do manage to keep a good portion of it under control). So isn't it kind of nice to have that automatic reminder every year on February 14th to tell the people in our lives that we love them?

Sure, sure. We should tell people we love them every day. But honestly, the only person who gets a daily "I love you" from me is my husband. That leaves a substantial portion of the people in my life to whom I definitely do not say that to often enough. While Valentines Day has taken a romantic tone, there's no reason that we shouldn't be reminded to say "I love you" to everyone that day.

The same is true of Thanksgiving. A holiday that's riddled with tradition, at least in my family, is also a good excuse to take stock of the things for which we are thankful. I was challenged by a friend to try to find something to be thankful for each day this month. Some days were easier than others, that's for certain. But I have a hard time believing that any of us could go a single day without finding something to be thankful for. Even on the hardest, darkest days of this year, there has been a glimmer of thankfulness (even if it was hard to find and I really had to hunt it down).

We should be thankful for many things every single day. Thanksgiving is just a good reminder of that...even if you spend the entire day drugged up on tryptophan, watching football (which is what I usually end up doing).

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On being SAD....

I have Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD). Winter is, without question, the worst time of year for me. This is not surprising or new information for anyone who knows me. I survive the first half of winter through the knowledge that Christmas is coming which means baking and parties and music and general excitement are well on their way. I survive the latter half of the season through the knowledge that spring and summer are mere weeks away.

When I first found out I had SAD, I muddled my way through it by going to a tanning salon every day at lunch for a few minutes of my ever-needed UV rays. For many years of my life, I was a bronzed goddess not in the dead heat of July, but in the blizzards of January. The humor in that is another thing that helped me get through the winter season.

For a long time, I never told anyone why I was a) so damn depressed for four to five months out of the year or b) why I was so incredibly tan (thereby leaving myself open to the scrutiny of vanity). Anytime someone asked how I was doing, I would typically respond with, "I'm okay...just ready for winter to be over." The reaction was (and remains, to this day), "What?! I love winter! Winter is great! How can you hate winter? You're from Colorado!"

I hated that reaction. I hated it because no one knew why I hated winter so much and I really had no interest in telling anyone WHY I hated winter. I still hate that reaction. The first big snow of the season is rough on me. The time change makes it worse (though, mercifully, this year both happened pretty close to each other so it's been a little easier).

About five years ago, I finally started telling people why I was so depressed during the winter and why I hate the season so much. All my friends know that I live for Christmas, so I'm sure it was a bit of a relief to finally understand why I was so schizophrenic about winter. I'll never forget where I was or who I was with the first time I really opened up about what is "wrong" with me. See, all of my friends (my husband included) really love winter, cold, snow, all that jazz. I'm pretty much the only one that would rather have it be 85F and blazing hot than have to deal with layers of clothing and scraping my car, blah blah blah.

I remember getting a card from some of my girl friends shortly after letting everyone in on my SAD secret, reminding me that they'd be on my case to get me out of the house and that it was going to be their mission to make me enjoy winter (one friend actually got me to enjoy small-ish roadtrips recently so I have faith that she can work the winter idea).

Winter is still torture for me. I still hate it. Looking out my window right now, there's nothing but hazy fog and cold. And wind. Gross.

But winter is becoming a warmer and warmer time of year for me, thanks to the community I've surrounded myself with and engaged in. It's what I love so much about being in community. It's the place where we can lean on each other at our weakest and celebrate at our strongest. Contrary to what Simon & Garfunkel would have me believe, I am not a rock. I am not an island. None of us are, if we're completely honest with ourselves. I have always believed that we, humans, are designed to be in community. It wasn't up until very recently, however, that I really started believing that for myself. The beauty (and often, the challenge) of being in community is being able to admit when we need help. In it's purest and most basic form, community is the place where we all have needs and we all have something to offer. We don't trade bread for meat anymore, or clothing for milk. Rather, we trade jokes for laughter and dinners for togetherness. I can buy just about any physical "thing" I want. What I can't buy, and what I desperately need my little community for, is those very intangible and very necessary "things": laughter, comfort, peace, understanding, conversation.

I need my friends and my community every day of every year. But when I need them the MOST, they are ever present, ever ready. They know that I just need a little nudge (and a cute pair of winter boots) to get me out the door, into the cold to be with them when they are at their best and I, at my absolute worst.

That is the essence, I believe, of true community and true friendship. Knowing that where one of us ends, another can pick us up and keep us going...it's a perfectly lovely way to live life. We fill in each others gaps. We are wonderfully broken individuals for whom togetherness has provided a safe place to be put back together, in whatever tiny ways we can do that.






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