Category Archives: Feelings

Someone gave this little book to my mom for her birthday and I saw it on the couch and started flipping through it. I was lured in immediately. My mom was like, “My friend bought that at Anthropologie. I’m going to return it for something cute.” And I was thinking, what can you buy at Anthropologie for $15, a heart-shaped BUTTON? So I snuck it upstairs to my room and continued reading.

You know when you need something so desperately in your life but you don’t know what it is until it lands in your fingertips?

The book, if you didn’t check the link, is called How Now: 100 ways to celebrate the present moment. This is something I struggle with always, the inability to embrace this for this, to soak up the now. What’s going on later? I can’t wait for this weekend! In just a few months, I’ll be home free. In just a few years, I’ll be there. My disconnection from the present puts a seatbelt on those big, hearty laughs and those therapeutic tears. It makes it hard to feel life, to experience life.

Anyway, I’ve enjoyed reading the little hippie exercises that help you snap back into the moment.

For instance:

Celebration # 2 Inner Smile
Feeling joyful is not necessary for presence, but it’s one of the most powerful ways to induce it. Joy creates an almost instantaneous sense of expansion­an inner smile that’s like a warm bath. Some call this warm bath “flow” or “spirit.” No matter the name, experiencing it naturally connects us to ourselves and to everyone and everything around us.

The Practice:
Think about someone or something that you love. This could be a child, a place in nature, or a favorite memory. Whatever you choose, make sure that just reflecting upon it creates an automatic inner smile. Then surrender to that inner smile. Let it light you up. Feel it spread through your body and even beyond it, uniting you joyously with your surroundings.

Try it!

Can you imagine being so good at something that people would want to meet you and read about you and go out of their way to shower you with kind words? I think about that almost every day.

I need to get a life. No, really.

Happy new year, friends. I had compiled a list of resolutions in my brain (exercise, learn new skills, cook, keep my room clean, pluck more often, get famous — you know, the usual stuff), but for now, only one really tugs at my heart. In 2008, I would like to be more honest with myself, even if it hurts.

Sorry to be such a bore, but my mom says my goals won’t happen unless I write them down.

As a 26-year-old woman, it is programed somewhere in my double-X chromosomes that I am supposed to think about things like marriage and weddings and The One. (That’s a scientific fact. Wikipedia it. If you don’t find it in there, let me know, wait 10 minutes and then hit refresh.) It’s just been difficult because, lately, I’ve just been thinking about those things all the time. I don’t know if it’s Tiff’s wedding or Heidi and Spencer or what. But at this stage of life, it suddenly seems that I have a massive decision to make and that in itself is what leaves me gasping for air in the middle of the night. It’s true. A couple years ago, I would keep a mental journal of all my wedding fantasies (think red carpets and spotlights), but I can’t any longer due to a rare nervous twitch.

I’ve expressed my anxieties to my boyfriend, declaring at random moments of the day, “I’M NOT READY TO GET MARRIED!” Unfazed, he always gives me the same response: “Nobody’s asking you.”

I often believe that such psycho-girl episodes are brought on by the fact that everyone seems to have advice on “how it should be.” You know, like that whole thing about when you know, you just know. A recently-married pal explained it like this: Finding The One is like having an orgasm. If you don’t know for sure if you’ve had one, then, chances are, you haven’t. Strangely, I understood.

A less-explicit friend described her own test for how she’ll know. She said when she was young, she used to walk past this lady on the street who sold pencils for a living. It was such a simple, thankless life. She swore to herself that her future husband would be someone she could be happy selling pencils with. Being with him is all she would ever need. Sweet, huh?

Another friend put it differently. Recently married, she admitted that she spent nearly her entire engagement period coming to terms with her new permanently-attached life. There was no orgasmic epiphany. However unromantic this sounds, I think she’s smart. After five years of dating the guy, she realized that throughout her marriage, there will be days when she’ll wake up next to him and be sick of seeing his face. But she’ll still love him. And he’ll love her. Because they promised they would. And that to me, for now, is an incomprehensible, yet beautiful thing.

I don’t know where my life is taking me, but I guess that’s OK. I do know that I am loved every day. I know that I love every day. And for now, no matter what people may tell me, that is enough.

Though I still dream of time warps.

I promised myself that tonight or tomorrow or one of these days in the very near future, I would write A Real Post. I don’t exactly know what that requires, but I figure it probably entails stringing a sizable number of words together. And that, I have not been able to do lately. You see, I’ve been very busy and very tired and very cranky. Oh, and I haven’t fed my fish today. Hold on a sec. Alright. Anyway. Yesterday, I thought about writing A Real Post, but I spent my evening cursing the universe instead. It’s just this flood of anxiety that comes, say, every 23rd day of my lady calendar and, yeah, it’s torture. I pouted and cried and wondered WHY, WHY, WHY CAN’T I JUST BE HAPPY? and then, almost suddenly, the earth rotated and a new morning arrived and today I feel fine and dandi-lee-doo. I had an acupuncture treatment (for work), got some new happy clothes and ate Matt’s mom’s chicken stew. Life is not so bad, ya know? So I’ve been thinking I should maybe keep a menstrual cycle diary — you know, kind of like Charlotte’s VJ journal. I can write about my feelings each day of the month and then track them with charts and graphs and stuff. Wouldn’t that be fun? Or maybe I can even start a BLOG. Boys, you know you’d bookmark that shit. I just think something like this is important for me so that the next time I feel like quitting just about everything in life, I can glance at my chart for proof that it’ll all be better soon. And then I can down a glass of merlot and wait patiently for that new day to come.

I totally forgot what I originally meant to write about. Oh well. Here’s something awesome (or, at least, mildly amusing). Get out your glasses.

I’m going to try to post more non-lame stuff from now on. It’s one of my many New Year’s Resolutions. Please keep me accountable.

The only thing I’m sure of is that I sure change my mind a lot.

Yesterday evening, as my computer was at the repair shop (Matt’s house) and there was nothing urgent that I needed to accomplish, I found myself in a peculiar place. Sitting in silence in my oddly clean room, I realized how much I missed being alone.

For the past many months, my life has been a constant jigsaw puzzle of events. There’s a guaranteed sense of anticipation that comes with crowding the GCalendar with dinners and birthday parties and date nights and family festivities. Despite the exhaustion, it’s surprisingly easy to live this way. I find comfort in knowing there’s always something to look forward to.

I haven’t had a good Internet-free ‘me’ session in a while (yeah, go ahead and disregard this post, would ya?). I had no idea how much I needed it.

Somehow, in the quietest of moments, my brain fills the empty space with my truest thoughts. As I was sitting on my bed, quadruple-coating my toenails, I suddenly needed to get up and write. I guess I had some sort of life-altering ephiphany. Standing on my heels, I shuffled my way over to my desk and rummaged through my stuff for some scrap paper. I ended up spewing my heart onto the back of a three-page Macy’s credit card application. I wrote fiercely, thinking that if I stop, I’d forget something. When I had scribbled the last word, I felt energized and exhausted, like I had just gotten back from a run.

I haven’t felt that sense of urgency to write in quite long time. I mean, writing is cool. It’s what I do for a living. But lately, it’s become a job, and that has always been my worst fear. It’s a liberating feeling to write something that’s just for me. To not have to worry about The Man or the AP Stylebook or the eight readers of this website (hi!). It reminds me why I fell in love with words in the first place.

Tonight, all I see on the paper is an unpoetic, barely-legible mess. Doesn’t matter. No one’s gonna read it but me, anyway.

I think I’m gonna make ‘me’ time a regular thing. As a matter of fact, I’m typing it into the GCal as we speak.