It’s interesting how life works out where a small, tiny thing can
completely turn my day/week/life around. An inkling of something good is
all I need for all aspects of my life to get affected by that. And it
goes both ways, so it works for an idea of something bad too. It colors
everything else I do and everything I feel. It even colors how I feel
about future possibilities.
This reminds me about the dual
self post I had made a long time ago. I think I am now feeling my
centered and happy self. I feel like I am at my best. There’s still a
tiny nag deep within, the part that won’t let go but I’ve been kicking
it regularly and telling it to fuck off.
The best part is, I am happier at home, nicer to Jake, more patient with
David, more relaxed about my other commitments, just in general more
pleasant to be around. Which then makes the people around me happier and
then they go home and affect the people in their lives. And next thing
you know, it’s a snowball effect.
And all it takes is a tiny idea. A change in perception. A change in
perspective. The possibility of a good thing and not the promise or
guarantee of one. I think that’s phenomenal. A tiny stirring in one
person results in tons of happier people.
If that’s not magic, I don’t know what is.
Today was a really good day. Really good.
It reminded me why I am here to begin with and what I was thinking when
I decided to leave my little boy and go back to work full-time.
Sometimes it’s good to remember these things and remember why you did
what you did and keep a record of them. So when the days are like
yesterday, I can come back and read this post and feel good. And
remember that there were days like this one.
I can feel the beginning of something big here. And I hope, hope, hope
that I am not wrong.
Some days things just magically fall into place. On other days, doing
the right thing is a major struggle. Constant uphill battle.
Today was one of those days. In the grand scheme of things, I suppose it
doesn’t have to matter but it’s so frustrating that it taints the rest
of your day or your overall outlook on things.
That’s when you know it’s a good time to go to sleep and start over
tomorrow. Sorry for the short entry but I think I need a good dose of
sleep to feel full again.
One of the reasons I love having a little kid like David is his
incredible ability to share joy. He’s so expressive with his happiness
that it’s contagious. Last week, we went to the Google Halloween party
and they had an inflatable cauldron where a witch came in and out of it
and each time the witch came out, David shrieked with joy. Pure,
unadulterated joy. It was so amazing that everyone around him was
laughing at his intensity.
It’s funny how such things become socially unacceptable over time. It’s
sad how we don’t feel (or at least) express that kind of happiness
anymore. I honestly can’t remember the last time I felt that good and I
wonder if I ever expressed myself the way he does. But this is sort of
why I wish it was okay to be straightforward with people. Not only is
expressing outlandish joy pooh-poohed upon, but so is telling people you
think they’re great. If you say things like that you must either be
hitting on the person or have an ulterior motive.
Some days I wish it was okay to tell people that you think they’re
awesome and interesting and you’re glad they’re in your life. Like an
official “go tell people you like that you like them” day or something.
I wish people knew how to take compliments and say thank you. I wish
people heard you and believed you and it actually made them feel good. I
certainly value the bad more than the good. When someone compliments me,
they mustn’t know what they are talking about and when they bash me,
they must be right. But I wish I was good at listening and hearing, too.
Even if just for one day.
National express-joy-like-a-toddler and take-compliments-well day.
I’ve always had this theory that there’s no one like me out there. This
is not in the boasting, “aren’t I great” way. On the contrary, it’s more
like wondering “what’s wrong with me that there’s no one else like me?”
When I was in Turkey, I could use that as an excuse. Surely, there would
be more people like me in the United States. College would do the trick
for me. After all, people came from all over the world to go to college.
Well college came and went, New York came and went, and I never met
anyone who made me feel like I wasn’t a complete anomaly of a human being.
Until yesterday.
I was at my first ever scrapbooking event and the speaker went on and on
about her life, her approach to things (including scrapping) and I
couldn’t stop thinking how she was a kindred spirit to me. The funny
thing is, on the surface, I’ve met many others who seem to be much more
similar to me: people who love computers, books, writing, or anything
else I like to do. But this woman, she felt like she was similar
to who I am and not what I do.
To be honest, I don’t even know if she really is. I’ve only heard her
give a speech and maybe chatted with her for 30 minutes. We may have
almost nothing in common. But the few words she mentioned were exactly
what I’ve said/felt at times and that’s all I needed to hear for this
“aloneness” to disappear. And pooof! it went.
Amazing how great it feels to let go of something I’ve been carrying
around for over twenty years.
I just posted around twenty layouts that mean that the site is now
caught up to all my recent scrapbooking. I also separated the two sites
for those of you who don’t care for scrapbooking and those of you who
don’t care about my non-scrap related thoughts. The scrapping has its
own site and the link is permanently on the top right.
I also separated the rss feeds. If you want the main site, here’s the feed for all but
scrapbooking. If you want the scrapbooking one, here is the scrapbooking one.
If you want both in one rss, here is both.
At some point, I might join all back, but for November, this is how
things will be.
One of my non-ending struggles is to find a way to “have-it-all.”
I am constantly trying to decide what I should do and what I am willing
to give up in return. Often times, I am not willing to give up anything
completely so I try to do it all and I don’t have enough time to spread
across all so I end up doing a sub-par job at each and I get really
frustrated.
Back when I used to write, I’d always get annoyed that people around me
seemed to send out their stories more often or write so much more than I
did. Of course, many of them had no job or an easy 9-5 job as opposed to
my Wall Street insanity. Today, I face the same struggles. When I don’t
reach a goal as fast as the person next to me, or don’t reach it at all,
I get endlessly disappointed in myself. I feel like life is unfair. I’m
working just as hard as this person but I am not getting the credit.
The fact is I am not. This person is only doing the one thing. I am
doing seventeen things. When I distribute my attention and brain power
across that many things, there’s low chance I will do as well as the
next person (unless they are naturally a lot less skilled than I am,
which is rarely the case.) and it’s not fair for me to expect to.
Yet, I still do and I still get sad when I don’t get the recognition or
the opportunities others do. But then I try to step back and remember
why I do what I do and remember that the next step may not actually be
the best step for me to take. Sometimes opportunities aren’t actually in
the direction I want to go and it’s hard to pull myself away enough to
remember that point.
So this is here to remind me. The next step in the ladder isn’t always
the best step for me. There’s so much more to my life than the
accomplishments. Recognition. Being over-accomplished is over-rated. And often not
worth giving up the “other stuff” for.
For the next time I forget.
I miss New York City.
Even though I was completely ready to leave it when we did, I never
realized how very much I was going to miss it. Sometimes it’s as bad as
craving. There are many reasons why I miss the beautiful city, but one
of them is the variety of friends I had there.
Mostly due to the fact that I did more differing activities when I
lived in NYC, but also because the city draws so many different people.
When I look back upon the years I spent there, the people whose faces
jump out at me are from so many different backgrounds, not just Wall
Street. I remember the artists, the musicians, the readers, the goth,
the programmers, the deaf, the teachers, the executives, the Turks,
childhood friends, fleeting friends, random acquaintances.
It was wonderful having such a wide variety because it was a constant
reminder that my way wasn’t the only way to live life. And it’s too easy
to forget that sometimes. It’s easy to get lost on the Wall Street life
or the Silicon Valley life. I’ve been blessed to have worked at the best
of the street and the best of the valley, but it’s still crucially
important for me to remember that these are small microcosms of
humanity. They may be where the money is concentrated but they
definitely are not the only place to look for interesting people
(sometimes just the opposite in fact.)
So I need to find a way to build that variety in my California life. I
have a bit of it with the scrapbooking I do. But not enough of it. Not
nearly enough of it.
So I’ve been experiencing a new bout of giddy with
new friendship syndrome. And I was trying to remember the last time
this happened so I was looking through my archives and spent the day
going down memory lane. The last time I blogged about it was in 2001
but I did have another one of these in 2003, when I moved to San Diego.
It’s interesting to see that they are not as frequent as they seem and,
over time, I am not actually even friends with half these people. I am
with some and in those cases, they are solid, strong friendships that
feel good and not messed up even though the intensity is gone. It’s good
to know it can last but it doesn’t matter too much to me if it doesn’t
each time. Some people have staying power, others don’t. Each plays
his/her role in my life and that’s the part that matters.
I’ve also noticed today that the intensity with which I go to this phase
can freak some people out. This has happened before when people
interpret it as more than friendship or aren’t used to people being
really this straight with them and not having it be sexual. But it’s
not. And generally, eventually they come around. But, maybe not every
time. Who knows?
Anyhow, another important thing I thought today is that I miss writing
this blog. I mean properly writing it. Where it’s not photos or
scrapbooking or books, but it’s me. My thoughts. Not just about David,
though those too. But about me, what I think. What’s going on. Why it
matters.
So I’m going to try to do a lot of that. Daily, in fact. Let’s see if I
can manage every day in November.
A few years ago, I wrote about how music
gets intertwined with memories. There are thousands of songs that
within seconds transport me a certain time, location, and emotion. Once
a song is infused with a certain feeling, it’s pretty much impossible
for me to disassociate it ever again.
But not fully impossible.
There’s a Dixie Chicks song that I used to love. I was listening to it
on continuous repeat for a few weeks. It just turned out that I also had
some things happening in my life that were less than ideal and beyond my
control at the same time. So, pretty quickly, this song got entangled
with the situation and got associated with very sad and frustrating
feelings. Months passed and I still could never listen to this song
without reliving the events of that time and I quickly started avoiding
the song. Which really bummed me out since it was a fantastic song with
amazing lyrics that would have otherwise made me feel stronger and inspired.
Last night, on my way home, the song came up on my ipod and, to my
surprise, instead of the typical resentment, I felt the sense of
strength and empowerment I had felt before the song had gotten
associated with the sad events. I had finally completely given up my
resentment and finally moved on so it allowed me the space to reclaim
the song that I loved.
What a great way to feel the power of closure.
I must admit, I’ve been rejected from many things before and for many
reasons, but I have yet to be rejected for being too young. A book club
here just rejected me because they said I was too young to join them. If
at 32, I am too young, I suppose I should take that as a compliment!
What’s amazing is how much rejection hurts, even being rejected from the
smallest things. Even when you know you have no hope of getting
accepted. I try out for things, just to encourage myself to get projects
completed. And then when I don’t get accepted or win, I feel so sad.
Sometimes I feel sad for days. Even though, mentally, I know there was
no chance or that it doesn’t mean anything, emotionally it’s not
possible to ignore the rejection.
The good thing is, it doesn’t seem to have stopped me from trying to
submit, however I don’t know if that’s the answer either. Why is it so
important to me that others accept my work? Why do I need an “official”
stamp of approval? Why can’t my work be enough for me? I think I really
need to think hard about the answers to these questions so that I know
what my motivations are. If all this is just to seek approval, I need to
find other forms of it. If it’s to stretch myself and give myself
deadlines, those are good reasons. The best thing about those reasons is
that they don’t depend on the outcome. By the time I submit my work, I
have already completed something and I have also stretched myself. Those
should be enough to feel good.
If I am going to submit my work and keep putting myself out there, I
think it’s important to keep that in mind.
Rejection is part of day to day life. We get rejected in small and big
ways regularly. Just like we get accepted in small and big ways. It’s
important to celebrate the acceptances and grow from the rejections
without taking them personally. I need to remind myself of this
regularly. I need to stop diminishing the good and exaggerating the bad.
I know I have this terrible personality flow where if someone thinks I
am great, I quickly stop respecting or looking up to that person. I
figure they must not know what they are talking about. And if someone
doesn’t think I am hot shit, why they must be totally right.
And you thought you were fucked up.
I have been a big Elizabeth Berg fan for quite some time. During my
pregnancy, I went through a period during which I read all of her adult
novels. I’ve also spent a good four years writing novels of my own, so
it should come as no surprise that I picked up and devoured Escaping
into the Open, the Art of True Writing.
Back in the days when I wrote all the time, I read every book known to
man on writing. Anne Lamott, Lawrence Block, Natalie Goldberg. You name
it, I read it. And while this book may be a bit more about her than
writing compared to some other books, a bit less inspiring than Anne or
Natalie, a bit less instructional than Lawrence, it’s actually a
balanced combination of all. It’s inspiring. It’s full of good,
practical ideas, and it covers all aspects of writing. It talks about
fiction and non-fiction. It talks about how to come up with ideas. It
gives plenty of prompts. It talks about getting published. It even talks
about reactions from friends and loved ones. (while many at amazon
thought this was vain, I actually really thought it was pithy to mention
it.)
Most importantly, it made me want to write again. And isn’t that the
point, after all?
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projects for twenty twenty-four
projects for twenty twenty-three
projects for twenty twenty-two
projects for twenty twenty-one
projects for twenty nineteen
projects for twenty eighteen
projects from twenty seventeen
monthly projects from previous years
some of my previous projects
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