Virtue

I am not a patient person.

This isn't news, even for this fledgling blog. But I'm once again at the point where I have exciting, great things ahead of me. . . and WORK to do before they get here. UGH. If I decide I'm ready for the next life event, whatever it might be, why can't it just ARRIVE already? I would like change to happen immediately, not after three or four months of more miserable work. 

I'm currently on the precipice of a long, hard summer so that I can reach a few goals in the fall (financial, career, and travel). I don't even what to share my goals broadly yet (remember about keeping the good things close?) because I can feel the tiny seed of chickening out in my brain. What if I don't take a second job? Do I really want all that stuff later? Isn't that reserved for cooler, hipper, different people? Ones who live in sunny places, bigger cities? Do you really want to be working hard at two jobs again? For months? Cleaning up after other people, having someone else set your schedule, working long after you'd rather be asleep? 

. . .sigh. Hard work, here I come. Practicing my visualizations for when work sucks. And.. . 

Go. 

Joy to the World

The hardest things for me to share, even with my nearest and dearest, are the good things. I admit it doesn't make much sense that joyful, hopeful, exciting things would be hard to say out loud- wouldn't sharing them ALSO share and increase the joy, the hope, the excitement?

Well, sometimes. It depends on whom you share it with. My deepest joys have always been secret joys, held close to my heart. It's why I don't like talking too much about Harry Potter or about my favorite music. It's why I never liked watching my favorite TV shows with my family, and why I liked to hole up in my bedroom, condemning all intrusion, to read.

This is the life of a bookworm-turned-social butterfly. I take immense joy in having people around me, and am fueled by connection with others. In grand social events, though, I'm sharing only a piece of myself: Party Sarah, Funny Sarah, In-charge Sarah, Helpful Sarah. In intimate social events, all attendees (most likely) have been vetted by years of friendship. But sharing things that bring me true joy? That involves incredible vulnerability; that joy comprises my deepest sense of self. So when others respond flippantly, casually, or, heaven forbid, mockingly, it's not my public persona or one facet of my personality they are tossing aside, but the most authentic concept I have of me.

In fact, sharing this on the internet is a bit easier than sharing with my loved ones in person. Because their opinions matter so much to me, and because I tend to make assumptions about how they'll respond, I tend to keep the truly good, exciting things to myself rather than have someone respond "wrong."

I'm not ready to declare this system of thinking as "bad;" after all, I do believe it's important to keep boundaries around the important things when you know that someone else will rain on your parade. But I do think it's something to reflect on, in terms of developing more and better ways to savor my joy in life and share the joy (either particularly, or just a general cheerfulness) with the world at large.

Neighborly

This weekend was absolutely lovely. The weather was gorgeous, which made it so much easier to actually live the weekend, instead of while it away, dreading the return of Monday.

Of course, one incident, involving the neighbor kids, was not so lovely. A "slip-in" apartment building sits immediately next-door to our humble house-turned-fourplex, and the children who live there often play in and around our yard. While I always keep an eye and an ear open for anything suspicious, and I really am not fond of loud, joyous child-laughter, I recognize these kids have limited playing options near home (I'm assuming they're not allowed to head to the parks that are about three blocks away), so I don't mind them playing in our yard.

Except in instances like last evening. One of the kids started throwing bricks from the neat stack at the back of our yard onto the gravel driveway. I came outside and asked him to put them back, which he did, nicely. One of his playmates, however, apparently took great offense to my request. This little girl, who looked to be about 8 or 9 at most, started giving me more attitude than I would tolerate from any adult. She took it upon herself to hurl insults, throw a couple more bricks, and then start cussing me out when I repeated my requests that they play nicely and not mess up our things when they're in our yard. Given her un-checked swearing and obvious disregard for anything I had to say, it didn't take long for me to go find her dad and ask that he step in.

As this little girl ranted and raved at me, and told me in very inappropriate, misguided language how awful I was and all the ways I was wrong, I saw very clearly that she thought she was sticking up for herself. She interpreted my calm "You can't behave that way here" as a deep personal attack, and struck back the only way she knew how. She thought that by being (exceedingly) rude and (marginally) violent, she was really being clever and assertive and strong. So while I'm confident I handled the situation properly, I'm also concerned. I'm concerned that she won't figure out the difference between rude and assertive until the rudeness is so ingrained, changing her behavior becomes incredibly difficult. I'm concerned that she will continue to misinterpret calm, assertive people as personally offensive or as threatening authority figures, rather than as models of behavior, or simply as upholders of peaceful, respectful social boundaries. I'm concerned that in a rash of childish vindictiveness, she might cause more damage on or to our property. (Though I have my landlord's cameras to thank in case recourse proves necessary.)

So, as my brain is wont to do, I spent some time last night and some time this morning, lying in bed imagining what I would do in a myriad of scenarios. Hopefully none of them are necessary. Fortunately, aside from this post- meant to be a reminder to readers to both practice and teach the difference between rudeness and self-assertion- I'm mostly remembering a weekend of sunshine, bike rides, and gelato in good measure.

Extended Metaphor

Though born under Pisces, I definitely never felt like I embodied the characteristics of the fish. I was born a week early, so I take that as confirmation that I'm really supposed to be an Aries kind of girl. Be that as it may, my life feels like I'm under water right now. (Perhaps I'd fare better if I were a fish.)

At the beginning of this year, I was ready to jump off into the deep end of opportunity and change- to GO for it, whatever life had to offer. I was done with thinking about it, so I dove in.

At first, it was exhilarating, the thrill of wind against my face as I plummeted toward the water, the shock of breaking through the surface, slicing through this new medium, getting deeper than I thought possible. The scariness only adds to the tingling thrill of life as you feel everything all at once.

But, then. Then you're just in the water. And the options are so much more varied than sink or swim. There's the confident, though newly learned, stroke. When confidence fades, or muscles tire, there's faltering, swallowing mouthfuls of water as you gasp for air. The thrashing struggle to regain control. There's the brief wonderment when submerged, seeing light move more slowly, the noise of the world go mute, before rising again to the surface. And then there's resigning to simply float for a while, not paddling towards your destination- perhaps you remain where you are, perhaps you drift further away- until a wave crashes and it's back to thrashing, swimming, or being submerged once again.

That's what I feel. Constant internal struggle. Changes in state from week to week or even day to day. Sometimes I'm pulling through the water with strength and ease. Sometimes I fighting and failing and gulping tons of water in the process. And sometimes, I think "Is floating along really so bad?" Until I remember what I'm swimming towards, and the process starts all over again.

Thanks for bearing with me on my extended metaphor excursion. What I need are the skills- tips and tricks I can find aplenty, what I need now are solid, practiced skills- to keep the vision in mind. If I can avoid floating, and find some way to return to my slow front crawl after thrashing through the water, I think I'll be leagues ahead (get it? leagues?).

Shift

It's a quiet day at the office today, with both my coworkers in D.C. for this three-day weekend (No KXL!). but I'm enjoying it. My panoramic view of the city is blurred by some snow and rain, and I'm happy to be tucked away from the elements. In fact, I really hope the phone doesn't ring, nobody emails me, and nobody stops by. (One person has stopped by and three phone calls so far. Not bad, though.) I'd prefer to devote today to my own work at my own pace. I have lots of catching up to do, and I definitely need a calm space in which to do it. While normally I thrive on hubbub and goings-on, ratcheting up external energy also excites and agitate the gremlins in my head.

The calm and quiet should be a nice foil to the frustration I've harbored of late in making big changes in my life. I just do NOT have the patience or energy for mental clutter anymore. Anything that doesn't contribute to a more positive life, to the goals I've set for myself can just GET OUT. I'm fed up with my old fear and my old habits that are holding me back from the greatness I see ahead in this year. I can almost feel my toes grip the cusp of a new, exciting direction- no longer bogged down by jobs, I can seek a career. No longer bogged down by adolescent behaviors, I can own adulthood confidently. But ridding my life of those old mental processes is more daunting than sweeping clutter into a box for Goodwill. I want to tattoo this quote from Meg Keene at A Practical Wedding onto my forearm:

 I’m writing this post because I think that so frequently, when we try to change, we re-create the very worst elements of our past. We leave the bad boyfriend, but we repeat all of his crappy commentary of us in our heads. We change jobs, but we take the bad habits with us. We move, but we don’t let go of the stuff that just was not working. We change, but we don’t let ourselves really change. Because real change is hard. Real change is forcing a paradigm shift on ourselves, rooting around deep inside to dig out the parts we really don’t like and get them out of there. Real change is believing. And the weird part is that it’s not just believing in what we’re capable of doing; it’s believing in what we’ve already done and in what skills we have in us right now.

So here goes the paradigm shift. As much as I want a Big Event or Big Moment to set it all off, that's not really how change works (so it seems). It's small steps every day, and tough choices that shouldn't be so epic (watch another episode on Netflix? order out for dinner?), and dusting off the mistakes from yesterday. I'll let today be a calm, quiet day filled with small victories. 

Mighty

Guys, I'm going to Palm Springs, CA this year for Camp Mighty and I am SUPER JAZZED. For those of you who don't wish to click on the link to learn more, Camp Mighty is a retreat/conference that oozes positivity for all the right reasons: to declare one's goals out loud (or at least in writing) and then take action to make them come about within a community of people who want you to succeed. Goals range from charity work to career ambitions to travel dreams to sartorial experiences.

Anyway, attending Camp Mighty would pretty much be the culmination of the past ~9 months of immersing myself in the positive blog atmosphere I've come to love. After discovering A Practical Wedding, which led me to Go Mighty and other fantastic feminist and entrepreneurial blogs, strangers on the internet seem a lot more like friends, and have helped me through a rough year of change. These bloggers and the communities they've gathered about themselves have distilled so much wisdom for me about adulthood and womanhood. I'm finally realizing- and internalizing- that the time is now for all the things I want to do "when I grow up."

I was told last night that I'm remarkable- and I suppose by nature of that person remarking it, it must be so. It's hard to see the remarkability of my behaviors or thoughts or actions when I've not yet netted any of my major life goals. But I'm constantly in pursuit of them, constantly struggling and trying and striving for better and better. Usually, this is only remarkable in the amount of frustration I feel on a regular basis. I know better things are out there, though, and I want them NOW. I don't have the patience to wait for the universe to get around to aligning stars for me, and I don't have the time or space in my life for anything that's not serving my higher purpose.

Camp Mighty, though nine months away, kicks up my drive into high gear. I need to work out more- not because I'll be wearing a swimsuit in the unlikely month of October, but because taking care of my health is a priority I want to display proudly, not make trite excuses about. It's time to get my career in gear so I can confidently and clearly introduce myself and give some context about my life. And my writing will need cultivation as well. If other attendees will be looking me up before or after the weekend retreat, I want them to see a portfolio that shows strength and growth.

I'll be the first to admit that maintaining momentum is difficult for me, as my life involves a roller coaster of moods and emotions. But going to Camp Mighty is something I think I can consistently work toward. And the work starts now.

Reminder

I am a good person. I am still a good person, even when I am remiss in important communication. I am still a good person, even when I suck at my job. I am still a good person, even when I forget my phone at the office when I go to lunch. I am still a good person, even when I screw up a lot. I am still a good person, when when I fail at fulfilling my responsibilities. I am still a good person, even when I have a bad week, or month, or year. I am still a good person.

I am a good person because of how I define myself. I am not defined by my communication skills. I am not defined by my job. I am not defined by any occasional absent-mindedness. I am not defined by my screw-ups- not their quantity, nor their composition. I am not defined by my responsibilities. I am not defined by a week, or a month, or a year of my life.

I am still a good person. I am enough. And so are you.