My Words of "Wisdom"

Today I was asked for advice regarding some love life issues. HA! This is probably the first time in my life I felt I could actually give something worth listening to.

I told her what I wish I'd been told a year ago, well 10 years ago. Maybe someone telling me the same thing would have sunk in, made me question things, pushed me to make different choices, but in all likely hood-we all know I probably would have done everything in my power (like she will probably do as well) to forget or ignore every bit of instruction I was given.

What I told her was pretty simple...to be classy. Oh wait! Someone did tell me that, shoot!

I told her that if she was making excuses for him and things didn't seem right, they probably weren't. But when in doubt, and big shout out here to Miss Cynthia Hoff,  put Breakfast at Tiffany's on the TV, embrace Audrey Hepburn, and run the tub. Right now if you are thinking: Dammit, this is me... Pick out your favorite nail polish, find that old face mask you probably forgot you even had, shave your legs, buy a Cosmo, and for god's sake lose the phone. Do all the the things you never have time to do. Be busy!

The worst thing you can do when things aren't working out is to continue to try and make them. If he's worth it, he'll call. Sometimes it's better to forget your inner Feminist, just lock her in the closet for awhile. There's something to be said about being unavailable and just (foreign concept here) waiting. When you push it usually results directly with pushing away on the other side. In the age of technology it's too easy to throw yourself under the bus...just one little text, an accidental phone call maybe, or quick "Hey, what's up?" on Facebook. STOP! STOP! STOP! Holly Golightly didn't have a cell phone or profile, she didn't even answer her house phone. Pretend you don't either!

This morning I got ready while Superman cooked me breakfast, the car was already warm, and he even opened the door after we got coffee. He will tell any girl the same thing: if you're paying for dinner, calling him first or putting an ounce more in than he is-you're doing it wrong.

Why, why, why did I not learn my lesson sooner? Agggghhhhh! With that, good luck ladies, you've got to go through a lot of frogs to find a prince and in todays day and age-he's either gay or married.

Drynuary

Moving to Crested Butte is one of those things that changes a lot about a persons life.

Most people will tell you it changes the way you see the world, your lifestyle, how you drive, how often you need coffee, and what you do for fun. CB has a way of making people look in the mirror and see all the things they like and they don't like about themselves and the ways they have been living. What people wont tell you is that off season....when the tourists are all gone, work gets slow, and the weather is the less than the spectacular usual, people tend to add to the list of dislikes.

Spring off season is a lot colder, much slower, and longer than the off season before it and I wanted to make sure that when I looked in the mirror I didn't have to make any excuses. Instead, I decided (key word here!) that January could be a month for starting my year off right. With Spring semester starting it was important for me to have a clear head to get moving in my classes and start making the decisions I needed to with graduation looming closer every day. I needed more energy, more time, and more money.

 Let me tell you-I've found the answer! For the month of January, and much to Mikey's dismay maybe for some degree of permanency, I'm not drinking. Apparently such a lifestyle change is shocking to the good people of Crested Butte and I'm often told, "So just beer right?" or "Just drinking on the weekends then?" Nope, it's cold turkey, as in Shirley Temples and H2O. I've recently been told to call my "big decision" Drynuary. But in all honestly it's easier to ask for a lime, the same cup as everyone else and pretend nothing is happening. Easier said than done with bartender boyfriend.

Enjoy the sunshine while it last! I have a feeling that the January weather we have all been waiting for is just around the corner...

One Little Word 2014

Well hello and HAPPY NEW YEAR! I'm sorry that lately I've basically been anti blog. There's really no excuse, but busyness and carelessness. New Years resolution this year? To decide. Which brings us to this blog post… 2014 is for me, a big year and I want it to be one that is free of excuses and carelessness altogether. With all of the big "real person" choices I have coming up I needed something to push me and get me thinking deeper about what's really going on in this crazy head of mine- so I found One Little Word. It's a sort of online creative classroom to guide people for the year with the core concept of picking one word that you want to incorporate into your life for the year. My New Years resolutions never seem to pan out farther than January 1st so I think maybe the class, which has monthly assignments will keep me in tune with this years. With that…my word for the year is….

                                                  

Definition: To make a final choice or judgement as a result of consideration and thought.

Thesaurus: To determine, resolve, persuade, convince, choose, conclude, figure, pick, find, and intention.

And the one I want to make sure is in no way part of my life not only this year, but ever? Settle. 

I want to become less hypocritical when I say to people, "You can't just wait for life to fall on your plate." I want to be less reactive and more proactive This year is the year I graduate, the year I need to not only step up, but look forward, and the year that I want to decide exactly what I want in my life and what I don't. Though I am happy to say I am where I am now, after four years of college, I am still unsure if it was something I actually chose, myself, to do. I want to make sure that I stop doing what just comes naturally, take where the wind blows me into account, but actively decide to be who, what and where I am. I need to knowingly make decisions this year, big and small, that will more positively impact my life. Purposeful decisions. Right now all I am decided on is being happy, that I would have a hard time being happy in a city and that I love people. But there are very few areas of my life where I am deliberate and intentional. I am promising myself-to each day live more from intention and less from habit, to make the kinds decisions that build stories I would be proud to tell a thousand times.

In 2014, I want more laughing, smiling, happy dances, deep conversations, friends, success, time with Toby, love, adventures, faith, sunshine, stories. I want more meaning-more purpose. What I want less of is wasted time. I want less stress, drinking, tears, people with hurt feelings, spending money. I am deciding to have more of the things and emotions I want and tossing aside the ones I don't. What do I most fear in 2014? Regret. What am I most excited about in 2014? Finishing school and maybe, just maybe, finding more ME.

I invite you to pick a word-to surround yourself with it and let it bring whatever meaning you need it to into your life. Sometimes we need a push to get us to see what we should have just been jumping in with both feet for all along. So what's your New Years Resolution? What's your word?

If you want to participate with me click here and let me know!

I Should Know By Now

This is kind of the opposite of my last post, but after my day....totally necessary. I remember at 12, 15, 16, (and if I'm being totally honest) 18, thinking to myself that in college I'd have really figured it out. You know, have my life all together. I imagined myself with better style, prince charming, a rockin body, great study habits, always traveling and plans in the works for that dream job. Since 12, high school, moving out, and three years of college, there's a lot of knowledge in this noggin of mine. For example, I know that Koolaid isn't good for you and turns your mouth red, I should have listened to my parents all those years, and  the difference between a psychopath and sociopath. But the person I believed I would be at 21 apparently is still on vacation. The girl I expected to be would probably have learned these lessons long ago and would be in general, pretty freaking awesome, too bad at 21 I'm four coffees deep assessing Buffy the Vampire slayer as a career option.


So here it is, the life lessons I should have learned by now:

• Procrastinating only means that on Sunday night when you could be going and doing something fun you will be at the kitchen table trying to figure out how early you would have to wake up if you wanted to put this off till Monday morning. 

• You'll never do it in the morning.

• Besides that your mom thinks turtle necks are a great fashionable piece and your dads still think your too young to date, they are pretty much right about everything. (Ughhhh even typing that was painful).

• People's hearts, including your own, are more breakable than grammies fine china and there's no getting rid of that kind of scar.

• It's OK to stay home and do nothing sometimes...Or clean the floor that never seems to clean itself.

• If you wear white you're gonna drop something on it.

• There's a bottom to 4 ft tall snowbanks and if you try and climb over them, you're gonna reach it. 

• Always tell the truth.

• After eating chicken tenders and just one more brownie, you still wont like salad without dressing or go for a run tomorrow.  

I'm not the girl, that at 12, I imagined I would be. Today I dropped ketchup down my white shirt while  climbing over the 4 ft tall snowbank that filled my moccasins, I was told I broke someones heart, there was no way I was getting salad for lunch, and I'm writing this instead of my 60 page essay or calling my mom back. But hey, I betcha in 5 years I will, you know, have it all figured it out. Till then....you can find 21 year old me skiing in CB wondering why onions aren't what repels vampires.

Happy Sunday.

10 things I know to be true

Sarah Kay: amazing, inspirational, creative, AND amazing. 

If I Should Have A Daughter, Sarah's TedTalk is the one that got me hooked. As a spoken word poet, Sarah has a way with words that I can only dream of ever having. She stands up there and lays it out so that no matter who you are you can relate, not only can you relate, but laying in your bed late at night you want to stand up, clap and cheer. She's that kind of speaker. 

With lines like, "I would recognize you anywhere by the hiccup in your swagger." you can't help but want to hear more. 

But one of the most influential bits from her videos was from that first time when I listened to her speak in If I Should Have A Daughter. She explained that one of the ways she gets her students to write poems is to have them make a list of the 10 things they know to be true. The list shouldn't be something they have to thing about too much and should be written down pretty quickly. So here's the 10 things I know to be true. 

1. I am procrastinating writing my Forensic paper FAR too long and it's going to bite me in the ass later tonight. 

2. People should travel, the only way to understand the world is to see it with you're own eyes. And traveling alone, at least once, is the best. 

3. Loving someone is not always enough, doesn't always make it good for you, and isn't always something that will last forever. 

4. There is something calling me, deep down, and I need to go or I will always wonder. 

5. My need for a bigger and better adventure is going to get me in trouble some day. 

6. I want to find someone that wants to go on every single adventure with me and know about every one they've already missed. The likelihood of that person living in Crested Butte seems pretty dismal today. 

7. A million little pieces is not really enough to explain a person, I think we are each a million little pieces multiplied by however many people we have ever let influence us (positively or negatively) and the million pieces that make them up as well. 

8. There is a need for more time to watch sunrises and sunsets, listen to Tom Petty, and dance with someone in the kitchen. It does more good for a person than drinking or drugs and cost less. 

9. People, in general, are good natured, it's the things they come to know and hard facts they have come to face that change them. 

10. Childhood is something that should never disappear. There is a Peter Pan in all of us that is screaming to get out. Let it. Go ice skating in a disco outfit. 

These are the ten essential Jes-isms, they make me me or at least who I want to be...

Sarah goes on to say that on this list that someone has one thing the same as is on your list, someone else has something completely different, someone has something completely new to you, and someone has something you thought you knew all about but looks at it differently. So what's your list?

The long way home.

There's something about a long car ride. You forget your troubles. Forget you even are in the car at times. You have to focus on just one thing and nothing else really gets in. If you're alone it's you, the white line, the yellow lines flashing past, and the music. If you know me at all, you know this is what I believe in. I don't believe in god, I'm not big on church, that feeling, where nothing else matters is what I believe in.

I'm big on that moment just before sunset where the light is just right, no matter where you are it's beautiful and the whole world seems to have paused except for you and your car. The windows are down, your almost always passing a field, and Tom Petty miraculously comes on the radio as if the DJ were seeing the same thing you are. And for just a second you're wearing rose colored glasses, you completely zone out and there's nothing more important going on in the whole world than this moment. There's no real explaining that feeling, you just know it. Every time you feel it you want to feel the wind beneath your hand, sing a little louder and more than anything, have someone with you looking over, seeing the same thing. You don't really have to speak, you just understand. If you're alone, you don't go home and tell someone about it, you just smile a little bigger and wish they only knew.

I think somehow in the busyness and lack of sleep this year I forgot what those moments were like. Going to California I realized that those moments are not only more beautiful here, at home in Colorado, but that people here have the mindset to really appreciate them, it's when we forget that that we lose what makes where we live what it is and become the kind of people we do everything to avoid. I believe religiously in forgetting my feet are touching the pedals, feeling the wind beneath my hands and above all else, that even after the sun has gone down, that tomorrow there's another opportunity for the DJ to play Tom Petty at just the right time.

Surprise!

Today (which because this is a surprise will be days ago) was wonderful! This morning I packed as quickly as possible and went to a meeting to talk about getting my little Partner to mentor. Worked from 12-6 and then took off! After two terrible hours of super slick driving conditions, too many coffees and a very long phone conversation, I am in the land of the Mormon! Let me tell you, getting to this hotel almost made me a believer. As Toby peed on the No Vacancy sign and looked at the flashing lights on the church billboard I think I saw "oh, thank you Jesus." in his mind too. We are checked in and ready to crash, tomorrow is a 5am jump in the car and go if I want to make it in time.

Surprise!

My dad and a few other conspirators have a history of surprising me. I think I was 10 when I got the first one. Cynthia took me out shopping and I remember her coming to the house, picking me up in a little red convertible. We pulled back up to the house and things were a little weird, she seemed excited and my dad was already outside waiting. As I went inside everyone and I do mean EVERYONE yelled, "Surprise!" On my 17th birthday my dad kept asking and asking what I was doing, who was I with, where was I going. In the Target swimsuit section, I got a tap on the shoulder and (the very odd) a "Can I buy you a swimsuit?" which resulted initially in excitement and quickly became a scream and crying....you can imagine the looks two teenagers and a guy in his 40's were getting in the swimsuit section. Graduation was a biggy when Cynthia showed up in tow with my dad, lots of tears here as well. All of these surprises have left me skipping town on my birthday to avoid being surprised for fear that I will break down crying in front of a room full of people. So I figured it was my turn to return the favor. The big fears were that, one- my dad would be trying to surprise me and be here while I was there, two- that I would get stuck in traffic etc. and be late and he will have left work making finding him somewhere in Orange County difficult, and three- that being as similar to him as I am, that he would figure it out.

Well....it worked. After fourteen hours, four coffees, two redbulls (Sam you were right), and a little insider help, I walked into Nordhavn headquarters. As I walked in the front door three Leishman boys stood questioning and I quickly shushed them before sneaking around the corner and into my dads office. He stood jaw dropped, quietly, papers falling from his hands and there may or may not have been a tear. This, ladies and gentleman, is how you do a surprise. After all what do we have to be thankful for if not out families?