Archive for Life Lessons
On Being the People We Used to Be.
Posted by: | CommentsI have always pushed myself to write about the things that I couldn’t speak. In high school I would hide in my bedroom and tap the keys of an old typewriter. No, I didn’t grow up in the era of Typewriters but we didn’t have a computer and I liked the sound of each letter hitting the page. I would spill all of my feelings and stories and the things I wished that I would have said to that person I didn’t say anything to.
I have a box in my house filled with those stories, those moments, those secrets. I have never been able to bring myself to read those moments.
To go back.
To re-live that time.
I have spent the past year and a half trying to figure out how to write a book on the project that I started so long ago. I felt like I needed to weave my stories into your stories and make some cohesive message. So I pushed myself to write about things I didn’t want to write about. To share parts of my life that you won’t find in the archives of this blog regardless of how deep you dig.
I hired a writing coach and I sent these pages over to her. She read the proposal and then she read my blog and she gave me some insight that changed everything.
When she read my blog she found this young single mom living in the middle of nowhere who had it “going on” working for a PR agency in New York When she read my proposal my voice didn’t match who I was online.
My voice seemed forced.
It seemed hesitant.
I have always felt guilty for not sharing my whole life on this blog. In a world where transparency is the key to life I am about as transparent as a brick wall. I would try and write the stories I felt I needed to share, the stories the world might need to hear, the stories that would prove once and for all that I wasn’t the girl you thought I was.
I have been walking around thinking that I wasn’t the girl you thought I was.
Waiting for the moment when you pulled the curtains open to reveal that I was simply an actor playing the part without a single notion that I actually knew what I was doing.
The thing is, I DO know what I am doing. And just because I haven’t always known and there are things that I don’t share in this online space, that doesn’t mean I am hiding.
In the past three years my life has changed dramatically. I have achieved things I never imagined achieving and I have been trying to figure out how to deal with it. How do I make sense of all of this good when things were so bad for so long?
I can make sense out of it now because the people we used to be don’t own the people we are.
Things Move Too Fast.
Posted by: | CommentsLast weekend Aiden lost his first tooth. When he first told me he had a loose tooth I thought he was joking. Children lose teeth, not my baby.
The night after we pulled his tooth out I heard him crying in his bed. When I asked him what was wrong his tears turned into a full on sob.
“I just want my tooth back in my mouth. I just want everything to go back to normal.”
It took all the strength in the world not to say “me too” and curl up with him and cry.
Things move too fast.
I have been thinking about going back to school. Actually, I have never stopped thinking about going back to school but I think I found a program I might actually want to do. A program that would work with my current life schedule. I am not ready to tell you what the program is but I can tell that if you thought I was crazy for getting a Philosophy degree? You are going to totally lose your mind on this one.
Last weekend I started working on my entrance essay and found myself pouring on to the page words that I didn’t know I had in me. What came out of it was a twenty-page memoir type essay about a story that I have spent the past five years trying to figure out how to tell.
I want to tell more stories.
Wednesday I wore a dress and tights and was probably over-dressed but I really didn’t care. I took the day off and instead of sitting in my office, building beautiful things and talking to myself, I went to see people! People! I decided that people seeing required tights and a dress. Because sometimes that is just the way it is.
I really want to re-invent this blog, or maybe delete and start a new blog from scratch. Sometimes I imagine that I could be a food blogger, or a craft blogger or maybe a humor blogger. But then I realize that I would have to learn to cook, or sew, or craft. These feelings aren’t just applicable to this blog, its how I think about my life sometimes too. Maybe I can erase and start anew as a baker, or a musician that travels the country, or maybe even a celebrity. Perhaps, I could be more Paris Hilton like?
It’s not that I don’t enjoy my life, I really do. I just wish there was more consistency in being me. I wish I had a specific talent or hobby or personality trait that perfectly described me. I try to imagine if I were a character in a book who I would be, but I am pretty sure that I wouldn’t fit into a book because my character would be too messy and all over the place. A good friend of mine describes me as “un-categorically strange,” because I can’t even fit into the traditional definitions of strange. I am my own kind of weird, my own kind character and sometimes that is completely annoying.
Today I am linking up with Just Write.
On a completely unrelated note you can find me over here this week talking about what trends we are going to see in the next year. I am also over here talking about How-To get press for your blog.
