Crazy Day!

Where were you when the earthquake hit the EAST coast?

The question of the day. I was in a meeting. V. interesting. Much more interesting once the building started shaking and it was like I was on a creepy roller coaster. It wasn't until after it ended that my heart started pounding and the gravity of the ground shaking beneath me started to fit in. Earthquakes are thrilling but certainly not something I would like to invite into my life on a regular basis.

I was up at the awful hour of 2:30am this morning. After too few hours of sleep I was up and after my futile attempts to visit the Sandman again I was driven to a middle of the night movie. After donning my wireless headphones (so as not to wake my sleeping husband) I popped in a dangerous movie: 'P.S. I Love You'.



Oh goodness me. Perhaps I knew I needed a good solid cry-- we all do sometimes. I love watching this movie and save it for desperate and solitary times. Through all the stress and all the pressures of life it always brings me back to several themes I need in my life:

1) Love: this is essential. Love for your partner. Love for your sister, your mother, your father and your friends. Love. The passion that is presented in the first 30 minutes of the film is palpable. Gerard Butler's Gerry loves his heroine passionately. It is evident and it is so intense you can feel it. As Gerry holds Holly, I can feel my own Love hold me. Holly's relationship with her girlfriends and her family are both thematic in my life and I strive to keep the girls and keep mia familia as high priorities in my life.

2) Death: As none of you know, my grandmother passed away in April and I have been struggling with her loss ever since. Far too young, at 66 years old she passed away after fighting with her own body for her whole life. While I understand that for the loved one who has passed there is relief and the benefit of moving into the next life, it is no fun for those left behind. Morbid moments, such as finding letters left behind, painful moments-- working through the physical objects once loved and now meaningless. There are so many poignant moments of death that the film covers it truly hit home.

3) Finding Yourself: Whoa. At the time I picked the movie I hadn't even thought of this aspect of the film (and realizing the struggle of choosing what you'll do with your life, finding your passion, only made me cry more). But it is strong. It wraps up the movie that not only can you survive emotional demolition at the loss of a loved one, you can rethink yourself in way you never thought possible. It brings me back to the innocent and free days of college where I could make my dreams come true by moving to a new city and BAM! I would be there. But the truth hits and it is coming out of that that makes you strong and gives you a fresh perspective on life. I've got hope! Take those leaps of faith and you may actually wind up among those stars! (I am so mixing my metaphors here.)

But I say we should READ more right? I still hold to it friends. The book is an even better journey. A massive tome in comparison to other adapted novels, P.S. I Love You by Cecilia Ahern shows that the film changes some key aspects, but the message is the same: moving on and making it. I do recommend this as a great read and something you will laugh, cry and make a few smiles come across your face.

Cinema thereapy meets a passin for reading. I love those moments don't you?

Radical Self Nothing?

I've been perusing the tomes available to me on the vast internet and have come across a "Radical Self Love-r" Gala Darling. She's full of beauty and self-love that many wish they had. Reading her blog has inspired me for more than a few life changes and I hope that she realizes the impact hat she has on the world today. Which makes me think? Where is my impact?

As many of my friends and family could relay I am a freak for film and I will recall scenes of movies and television shows at a moments notice. I find the impact film has had over the last 70 years as incredibly relevant to the way we live our lives today (only few pockets of people live in the world where this medium has not touched them). Honestly, I also find it an easier avenue to speak of in conversation. Mainly because you can generally find someone who likes the same movie-- but not always the same book.

I read. I read Book Club finds and random things I pick up in the bookstore. I read internet news and blogs. There is so much I read and when I try and talk about it, there is so little that anyone else is interested in. Today, I found the largest dog in the world, I found that the Starbucks CEO is being a personal hero of mine right now and that Jerry Lewis was married to his first cousin once removed for many years and that they were married when she was 13 years old and had 2 children together over their 13 year marriage. I know random stuff. I read random stuff and I am afraid that my random reads are making me a bit confined to my own head.

Promotions at work and opportunities galore, what is it that makes reading my thing? Random knowledge that no one will ever want to know? They won't ask me that at the job interview! And so my passion is radically self-destructing me. I have transported a formerly adventurous spirit in body to adventures in the mind and I think it may be holding me back a bit....

So how do we love ourselves and our passions at the same time? How do I draw the line between my passion for reading and knowledge and my love of myself? Sometimes passions can get in the way no? I think this leaves me at Nothing.

Being Motivated

Doesn't everyone want to be motivated? Do the Laundry, Wash the dog, Go to the Doctor. A frightening place, the doctor. And there are so many. You start life nice and easy: Pediatrician. Easy enough, you get horrifying shots and poked and prodded all the live-long day. Then you get older. Maybe you play sports. Now you have your general physician AND a sports medicine guy (I say guy only because I have seen men for my Sport Medicine docs). Good enough, he generally only takes X-Rays as long as you don't abuse yourself too much.

Then you need glasses. Helllloooooooo Optometrist. My you get really closet to my face. But OH! Not as close as the Dentist and your Orthodontist! Sheesh. So by 18 you've had at least 5 doctors. Lets add a few more shall we? Dermatologist for that bad skin that you though would clear up by your 20s but only seems to be getting worse..... then there is the Lady Mechanic for the luck women of the planet who choose someone through a random process to pop open your hood and check you out.

Now, here is where motivation becomes a downer. SO MANY doctors to see! You would think that there would be one person who could take care of your woes... but no! You have to see nearly more doctors than you have hands. What is the driving force to do so? I like to think that there are many millions--perhaps billions of people who have successfully gone to the doctor and lived to tell the tale, but I seem to be the type that always has something wrong with me. So then they all jump to the knife. The surgeon who would gets his/her jollies off of seeing your insides splayed out on their table. *Note: I have only undergone a Wisdom Teeth removal but I feel that most surgeons want inside you like a parasitic alien*

So why, despite my husband's pleas, comments, and that one time where I had to do it before he married me, do I put off the inevitable? I just don't have any motivation to go. The rationale being that OK, say I don't go to the doctor, and I miss my tetanus shot. I don't do anything outdoors on a normal basis so my chances of stepping on that rusty old nail (yes I've done that) are pretty slim. I've managed not to step on one since I was about 10. So I miss getting felt up by a person whom I see every year (or in my case 4 years), I think I am making out OK.

But no, nagging guilt and this propensity to do right by myself and my family (including future babies) makes me driven to pick up the phone and make those terrible appointments, most likely putting myself through physical and emotional pain, just so that the physician can say in the end, "Well we were taking every precaution."

Blargity. Here's to motivation.

Growing Up Woman

Just watched this and it is awesome. I find myself falling into this pit. My first job out of college saw me working extremely hard to gain my voice and I managed to do so quite well in the two years I was there. I was respected and valued as a member of a team that was doing something to change the world. Sure it was thankless at times and there were many a day that I wanted to shout from the rooftops but I was seen.

Then came the job of my young dreams. Writing and outreach for a wildlife conservation non-profit, wow. I didn't care that I was making next to nothing-- this was the start of something amazing. And I started sitting at the table. I had earned this, I was going to be seen. But slowly I began to along the walls creeping deeper and deeper into my shell. I was given work and did as I was told and was in response wholly miserable. I watched myself become someone I was not and it was mind-blowing. I was not introverted. I was not quiet. I let my voice be heard. I was someone to listen to and came to the table with experience. And in the end, when I stood up for something, I was put in my place. Antiquated ideologies won out and I was neutered. Embarassed and heartily discouraged at the lack of progressive thinking, I bailed. I cried, I struggled and I yelled and I beat myself up for quite a long time. This was supposed to be it!

And now I find myself in a particularly fateful place. With little power and not much acknowledgement of my abilities I am happier than ever. Sure I would like more power but at the same time, I am helping people around the world work towards their future. And at the same time I am going back to school. Education is about to get a boost in enrollment because the way I see it, your Bachelor's degree is about as useful as your High School diploma at this point. Those moving up in the world need Masters and there can be no more kicking around the idea. It has to become a reality. There is no way that I am going to allow myself to be that girl sitting on the sideline any more. I am a player. I am a leader. And it is time, as a woman of the next generation, to get in the game.

Inspiration and a Loss of Abilities

A little bit about my life without giving the world too much. I'm an educated twenty-something who has had a lot of opportunities and is having trouble focusing on one thing. In my short time on this planet I have worked my butt off to be something and finding myself in the ever-so-familiar Admin Assistant position is something of a drag. But I'm not here to whine. I am here to share some of the most extraordinary things that I find on the internet in my day and see where the conversation takes me.

The odds of someone reading this seem less than great. But I find that most days I want to read about things that are not mainstream. The smallest byline on CNN or the 'Also in the News' on BBC is more fascinating to me than what celebrity named their child something outlandish. I won't shirk from things that are trending though--I just can't jump on the trial of the century news.

Take my find of the day:


Timeless crafts are being wiped away for something a bit... simpler.

Indiana Schools no longer find it important to teach kids cursive. I cherish cursive. I write it in birthday cards and sympathy cards, as well as my journal and pretty much everything else that I place pen to paper and the idea of a generation growing up and not knowing how to do it at all is mind-blowing. What I truly love is this memo that was put out in April about the matter.

"Indiana’s Academic Standards for English Language Arts include cursive writing in the 3rd grade. The Common Core State Standards do not include cursive writing at all. Instead, students are expected to become proficient with keyboarding skills."

I get that without my mad keyboard skills I wouldn't be able to share my ever-so-meaningful opinions with the world but come on! When the computers rise up and take us out how will we communicate if we don't have cursive?! Alright, I know there is printing and that that will still be taught in schools but really what will happen next? Once we embed keyboards in kids arms why will they need to know how to write? If when buying a house all you need to do is teleconference and digitally initial all of the documents, why bother producing pens or pencils anymore? OK, now I sound like an extremist.

My point is, we are already messing up children's education with questionably scholarly textbooks and teachers that don't have the heart for it? ("Nothing is more important to the future of our state than ensuring that today's students receive a first class education and integrity in testing is a necessary piece of that equation," Deal said. "When educators have failed to uphold the public trust and students are harmed in the process, there will be consequences.") Should we send kids on when they can't read or write? Does anyone notice? They don't need to, now that we don't require them to write it out. All they need to do is write their name on a bubble sheet and hand it in. When their scores show they can't hack it, we'll change them and send them into the work force. I'm frightened and there is nothing that can be done when teachers live in fear of the impossible standards that have been lain before them. It's OK though. We can still text and as long as we can text, we shall remain an advanced civilization.

B kewl kidd & u wl go 4r.