Tag: 20-something

25 Is Tough

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My birthday is in a few weeks, and honestly I could vomit. In all seriousness turning 25 is really kind of freaking me out. And the more I say it the more people seem to be rolling their eyes. But in more honesty, why do I feel like the only one not holding it together?

Looking around I see two very distinct groups of people: There are those who are securely in their second or third year of a career, and those who have packed a suite case to run around the world.

Then there is me. In the corner, scratching my hives because I should have been so much further by now. In my mind 25 was always a time where I would have paid in cash for a car, have my career down pat, probably published a book, and own at least four pairs of heels with red soles.

None of these things have happened. And I’m not really sure why…

Don’t get me wrong, I am incredibly grateful for where I’m at. To have a business that lets me work with creative people, and people in my life who love me to my flawed core. To have a head over my roof and all the vegan chili a girl could need. I take none of this for granted.

But there is a part of me that wonders where the rest of it goes. Where do the big dreams go? How do we work them into our present life? And at the end of it all, do we float or do we sink?

When I was 12 I wanted to be a professional singer. I even recorded a demo in the local mall. I begged and pleaded to move across the country. The passion was as clear as a pimple. And the only thing stopping it from happening were my parents realistic mindsets. As an adult though, they aren’t the ones stopping you. Nothing is stopping you.

I hear that the days go faster as you get older, but most of the time it already feels like I’m waking up to the night. Life is a really cool thing, and we get some really great opportunities. It’s just the not being able to lay out all the options and stare at them meticulously for days on end to ensure you choose the correct one that scares me.

 

But really though. When do we get the book of answers?

After The One

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They tell you life is cut and dry. As if things work or they don’t. As if we still live in the vein existence of a black and white television coated with accurate simplicity. They tell you about princesses and the princes that carry them away. They speak on the importance of obtaining a degree, or two, or three. They suggest you fold to the pressures of our societal norms: save money, vacation with a purpose, find the one who makes your heart seep like sand through the cracks of your hands only to coat the exposed skin. Or if nothing else, pay your bills. They tell us all of these things in hopes of guiding our decision into a practical conundrum. They tell us these things in hope to spare an ounce or two of lung puncturing pain.

Of nauseating thought.

Of stomach wrenching sadness.

There was this point after college where life seemed set. In a relationship with a breathtaking man, a ground breaking career on the horizon, and a handful of close friends to lean on in lack luster times of need.

Then all of it came to an end. Came slowly breaking down onto the floor of a 400 square foot efficiency.

My career became spent through the decision to move home. My heart physically sickened by lost love. And a gaping hole pushing any ounce of security out of the world so precisely planned. The life of a washed up 20-something was starring at a sunken cheeked, black eyed, outline of the person I could never be.

It took three months to go a day without crying. Five months to let go of social stipulation. Ten to go a day without thinking of him. And twelve to understand the universe had placed me in the exact right position.

They tell you all of these things that seem great in theory though neglect to tell you pain-stakingly plausible outcomes. Perhaps it is a cover, or perhaps a constant fault of the generations before. The only problem with it, they never tell you what happens after the one.

But There Is Peace

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This weekend I pulled up my shorts, tied a shirt around my waist, and traded in heels for Keds. It all felt very unfamiliar. But I bit my upper lip and drug the hipster print wagon piled high with floppy hats, laptops and Fossil bags across a dirt filled camp sight.

I was in Marfa, and all I could really think was how this wasn’t Hawaii.

We walked streets with out seeing a single soul but our own. We viewed mind changing art installations that consist of only cement blocks in a field. Looked up to a sky full of bright beaming stars which might have actually plucked out a piece of my heart. And met people. People who had just finished law school. People that have an every day life of simplicity. And people who were biking across the country. Everyone was doing things. Everyone was living.

I watched out of the car window as dirt turned into hills, which crawled up into mountains. I noticed the definition of the sky. Shocking what one can see when their head isn’t parallel to a computer screen. I did this thing that someone once told me was the only way to live. I saw through eyes and not a phone screen.

It was a trip full of good conversation, overflowing hearts, and one incredibly awkward photo in which I hope my hap hazard stance will be something to bind us for years to come. My heart felt a burst much like the one my stomach did while eating the most bomb grilled cheese sandwich one mouth has ever met.

And while I experienced these feelings so hard to put into words, all around us was pain. Pain being construed by us. We, the bodies that carry us through life, were destroying things.

To the angry and the sad, the mistreated and misused. To the hateful and the hurt. To those who hold pride in something which is not fueled by positivity. To you I am no one. Just a girl who sucked up her city life style for one weekend to tromp around in dirt. But I am one of you. We are all one of each other.

We can choose to fight or choose to hug. It sounds simple and mildly pathetic to say in context not associated to two kids on a playground with scraped knees produced by pushing. But at the end of the day they both hold the same outcome. To choose love brings us together hand-in-hand. To choose hate brings us together in the end.

No matter what you believe in, we are all buried in the same exact ground. Our hands are laid across our chest in the same exact manner. Our bodies covered with the same exact dirt. And our loved ones grieve in the same exact way.

By killing we are only crossing paths more quickly. By hating we are only dropping others off to hold our space in line. I wish for someone, anyone, to answer this one simple thing: Is it truly worth your heart beating anger until you become part of an earth that can form nothing but love?

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I Am Irrational

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They say the answer to living a happy life is finding your passion and making that your career. I don’t know which “they” people are referring to, and I am also not sure that this is the answer. Of course, if you can find your passion and successfully make a good standard of living over night all the power. But if you are in any way a normal human being this takes time, and life doesn’t wait for you to pay bills.

Personally, I think the secret to being happy comes from a different place. I believe it comes from the place of irrational thought.

My life has been made up of only irrational gestures. From ditching my college degree’s given field of work to move home to my childhood desk, to learning every Kings Of Leon song in hopes to impress a boy I was too awe-struck to speak too. Frankly the only difference from me and someone in an insane asylum is that white is not my color, so I would never wear a straight jacket. That, and I put my irrational thoughts into action.

It is in the most insane of moments I have learned we live in a field of hope. It is in the times that we fear the most, and others fear the most for us, that great things happen.

I decided to leave an incredibly well esteemed university that was a mere hour from my parental dwellings to treck into a land of dust storms and physically pressing winds. No, Texas Tech did not hold a candle to Baylor in academia, number of students who’s parents made in the millions, and dorm room space, but it did give me the opportunity to work an internship that turned into a job and realize my future all by the mere age of 21.

Another great instance in which I used irrational behavior to shape my life was in August, when I moved from a 400 square foot efficiency into a down town apartment. My mom was less than thrilled as I packed up boxes and checked my band account once last time. It made no sense in my mind why she was so worried, the remaining $2 balance in no way concerned me.

See, irrationality is great in both life changing, and life threatening experiences.

In neither sense was it understandable for me to make the moves I did, but in both the outcome was just. I wasn’t acting on irrational impulse in hopes to make something happen, I was doing it because inside I knew my life was changing for the better. Yes, I could have easily gotten into an apartment in which my rent check would have bounced, I’m sure both my parents were stashing their credit cards for the moment I came running. But I knew that by putting myself in a position of irrationality I would be forced to do more, and take one step closer to my passion.

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Where I Wasn’t 6 Months Ago

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Here is the thing about life: I know nothing about life. But what I do know is that time moves on wether we like it or not. No human can physically stop in a moment, we can only remember to take moments as they come and capture a mental picture for those times that seem too good to be true.

The other thing I know about humans is that we are really good at focusing on the bad. when I look in the mirror every morning I am not saying how awesome my eyelashes are, or how not washing my hair but once a week has allowed it to grow into a frame fitting cut. No, I look at the fact that I could lose a few more pounds, and that my legs don’t have one of those odd gaps that might not actually exist.

So when I look back at where I was six months ago it is only fair to start thinking of all the things I have yet to accomplish. Like where is my million follower blog, and coinciding book deal? What about those 5 more clients I wanted to have? None of these things are sitting at the front of my silver platter.

Then I catch myself.

Sure, we are not where we want to be, but we have got to stop thinking that way. Not that I’m asking to neglect our condescending mentalities. Just simply put a spin on them. Like  the spin I put on the story of me crashing my car into a tree the day before senior year. It wasn’t a bad thing that little Susie was mangled into pieces. It was clearly meant to happen and invite the option for me to get the dream Jeep I always wanted. Of course that came a year after driving around a horrid bench seat Pontiac that was older than I. We simply can’t win them all.

Six months ago I wasn’t able to get through a full day without crying. I also wasn’t nine months out of a life changing break up. Six months ago I wasn’t able to go into a bar without getting crazy eyes and fearing my survival. Now I can drink a whole drink with ease. I wasn’t able to confidently smile at a stranger, or hold a conversation with someone I hadn’t known for at least 10 years.

You would have never caught me stepping foot onto the grounds of ACL, let alone running to retrieve passes. Six months ago I wouldn’t have put down my computer for even the most perfect pair of Manolo Blahnik’s, and now I can spend an entire day (minus a few hours before others wake) only mildly panicking that I will miss something.

But most of all, 180 days ago I would have never been able to tell you just how lucky I am. How taking six months to open my eyes would inevitably shed light on this thing I call life. Where in times I used to think I had no one to relate too I had these people who have been there all along. I wouldn’t have been sitting at a brunch table laughing to tears, so full of love I couldn’t even manage to eat the brunch food. I wouldn’t have understood that I am so much more than myself. I am my family. My friends. Those who have stolen my heart and don’t even know it.

We are all so much more than the things we have or have not accomplished and we so rarely understand that. When you surround yourself with the right people, and the right work, you begin to understand yourself. But until then we will think of the negative in a bad way, when really it is the best thing that ever happened to us.

And I think  that is pretty awesome.

 

I Choose Neither

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Perhaps my number one talent in life is watching TV. For a long time I kept my talent under wraps. People tend to get jealous of those who have an innate ability to keep their eyes pointed in one direction for hours at a time. For me TV is more than just a way to pass the time. It is a life lived from the comfort of my couch (or bed as this mornings work regime has it).

With each new show comes a new adventure. I take time is immerse myself in the latest shows, and breathe in the characters story lines. My latest obsession, and a rather long winded one, has been captivated in How I Met Your Mother. Not to ruin anything for those who have not seen it, and to join the masses on this statement, but I absolutely HATED the ending. And here is why:

For me the journey of HIMYM was a very real one. As those around Ted grew into lives of marriage and career changes he grew into nothing. Time after time he was left with a crushed spirit and no understanding of why life wouldn’t present his better half. He did everything right, yet was the only one who seemed to always get it wrong.

But that is just the thing about life, we don’t get the opportunity to chose. We can’t pull our careers or our love lives out of the closet like a winter coat or a yellow umbrella. We must roll with the punches and take things as they come. We can notice the good, but we can’t shield ourselves from any of the bad either.

We don’t get to decide which of our ex’s will get married before us, or how many of them wont decide they want us back. We can’t get up each morning and tell our bosses they can’t yell at us today. We can however, go through our entire lives only to think we made the wrong choice, or we can let life guide us to the right ones.

In the end I think HIMYM taught me that we don’t actually get to chose. Not at all. Not even a little bit.

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Graduation Station

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There are three kinds of college graduates in todays higher education system. Those who went to school for money, those who went to school for a dead end, and those who went to school to become crazy.

If you went to school for money you are smart. You worked hard though college and landed a great position in your JCrew suite. Sure your job might not be the most enjoyable thing going, but you will have weekends off and paid vacation to travel the world with your earnings. You will trade your 6-year-old car in for a fuel efficient, adult-like SUV right out of college as your “First Big Girl/Boy Purchase,” and you will pose with a thumbs up next to it for Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Vine. Your life will be lived in the comfort of your three bedroom two and a half bath home in the middle of the beautiful neighborhood of your choice. Most of these people end up in places like Houston or Dallas. I’m not sure why, it is just what I know. But all in all, I applaud you. You have chosen the way of survival that many are too blind to see. I also offer the advice to buy a really well suited chair with your first paycheck. 30 years of sitting at a desk can be hard on the back. Or wine. Wine always seemed to get my roommates through hard times, and Tuesday nights.

If you went to school for a dead end it is because you are in a creative field and you aren’t being creative. This might sound harsh, but I am only telling you what I know from experience. Being a broadcast journalist who copied AP writing into a 9 o’clock news cast is in no way being a journalist. I wont go as far as to say anyone can do that job, the only reason they kept me around as long as they did was because the actual producer could not, or would not do it. I still can’t decide if he was the most sluggish person I’ve ever encountered or the most brilliant. One time, an overheard conversation lead me to believe he faked an illness and went to Las Vegas for an entire week. The guy was hyperventilating at his desk and coughing up fake hack. If this is in fact true, I believe he is made of sheer brilliance and could find great fortune in teaching others his ways. Either way, my advice for you is to get out. Get out while you still can. Your life is way better than punching away at a computer screen for little to no money. And frankly, in most cases, they are lying to you. Your boss isn’t waiting for a job to open up to place your name on the slightly bigger cubical, one that faces the water jug and not the wall of cords. He likes that you do the work no one else will, and he is making sure you stick around.

Lastly, you went to college to become crazy. Well, really you have been crazy for a long time, and only now you are seeing that it could potentially pay off. You want to start your own business or change the world. You settle for an efficiency in the “hip” area of whatever large city suites the dream best. Others begin to seek pity on your lack of understanding that this is not a game, and you can no longer just play with your own rules. These people pick up the check and saunter off to their newly furnished high rise at the end of the night.

The thing no one tells you about life after college is that the real world is in many ways comparable to a play ground. You can chose who you hang out with, and which activities you take part in. You can be the popular girls who stand on the side and talk sly mess about others, or you can be that weirdo off by herself who is stacking dirt and sticks, while eating the occasional hand full of rocks. All fingers pointed at me on that one. But while everyone is going about their own fun that random kid, she is making things happen. sure it is a mess of dirt when she is little, but at some point in life it becomes more.

My Nephew, The Autistic

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I don’t remember the day I found out my nephew was diagnosed with autism. I remember they day I found out I had high cholesterol, because in the back of my mind the fear was already set that this meant my life would spiral into a land of tofu and mock chicken.

But I don’t remember the day my nephew was diagnosed with autism. Perhaps because I am a terrible aunt. Or perhaps because I didn’t really understand what it meant to be autistic.

I do however, remember the first time I realized autism made my nephew different. see, for a long time I thought he was babied to a point of no return. Being the first grand and great grandchild it made sense he was allowed to eat messy food in places us mere first generationers would have never been thought to go. And to jump on beds we only wished to touch with bare feet. But it boiled my blood to watch my family spoon feed a three-year-old through tangible and mental means.

Then there was this day that changed my mind.

My sister and I brought my nephew to our childhood neighborhood hay ride during christmas time. As most of these functions go, we waited in an astronomical line for a not so spectacular ride. As our time slowly approached and the hay ride began to fill, it was clear we were not going to make this go around.

Being the first kid to not enter a ride of any sort is a tough pill to swallow, though for my nephew it seemed different. As the disappointment dust settled for the other four and five-year-olds his only grew stronger.

“The train is NEVER going to come back.”

“We will get on the next one.”

“It will never come back.”

I looked at my sister as she began to ration with my nephew.

“THE TRAIN IS NEVER COMING BACK.”

Most children were upset that they did not make the previous ride, but he was not. His concern lay in the thought that this ride would never return.

The words quietly repeating as we stood still. A change in pitch, a change in fear, he knew all too well in his mind that train was never coming back. And though I knew all too well that was not correct, he continued to let the thought consume him.

As I looked around it became clear that it was consuming others as well. Not because grown adults were now in fear that a trailer hitched to a 2000 truck would never return, but in their eyes they could not understand why this kid didn’t get it. Why their children, who look exactly the same on the outside as my nephew, seemed to have come to terms with the situation and this little blonde headed boy just wasn’t.

I watched as they shot condescending looks in my sisters direction. And I watched as my sister who once went screaming down the street after her puppy pug which had escaped her grasp calmly comforted her child without a thought of anything else.

It was the first time I realized my nephew was autistic and the first time I was confronted with my own viewpoints head on. I looked at those parents and realized just how I had come across all these years before. Not understanding, and not caring to try. It was the first time I realized just what a blessing this skinny, toe-headed boy who thought V-necks were broken shirts was to our lives. It was the first time I truly understood what unconditional love felt like.

I boarded the hay ride with tears in my eyes, and refrained from singing carols  along with the rest of the passengers, as Brayden said he didn’t enjoy the noise. And that was okay.

Things People Tell Me

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One of my most favorite things to tell people is that “Everything happens for a reason.” May it be because I truly believe it, or simply because it is an easy way to divert having a drawn out conversation, I do not know. But I do know, because I truly believe it.

I think everyone is put in your life for a reason, and taken out all the same. I think I didn’t become a professional horseback rider because my non-existant “Frog” butt would have looked horrendous in riding pants. I believe my apartment complex allowed me to lie about my income so I could sit on my Ikea-made balcony table and chair writing you this very blog. And perhaps a little bit because they believed in me more than I did myself.

So it is not lost that I indeed take this justification to great lengths. I use the notion of everything happening for a reason as my stance on life, business, and the pursuit of happiness. (Do we know what that means exactly? No. But none the less.)

Bringing this to the business side of things, as I listen in triumph to a high school band tooting their horns in the background (this is an actual things happening in actual time and I had to share), there have been three sound words of advice that summed up my entire year-and-a-half of work being justified as happening for a reason.

 

“Trust your instincts, in the end they are always right.” -Meredith, Austin Beauty Guide

A little story for you all. When first starting out in Austin I decided it was best to say yes to every single job that came my way. They were presented to me for a reason after all, right? WRONG. There was one instance where I can be very sure that my goal was to learn how to say no, and it wouldn’t have happened without the help of Meredith.

After a long night of fretting over a meeting that started as a simple marketing pitch and turned into coffee with a man who wanted me to build a company for him from the ground up, run it all, and make profit, which I had at that point still unsuccessfully done myself, I had no where to turn. There I was, 22 and freaking out. Not because I didn’t want to make money and he was presenting money (kind of), but because for some reason this business didn’t sit well with my aspirations. Not that it was some S&M shop or anything like that.

So I literally asked every person I know what to do. Fearing making the wrong decision would send my career spiraling into a fatal demise. It wasn’t until Meredith let me in on her little secret that it all made sense. She told me that no matter how powerful someone is, if you are true to the purpose of your business they wont have a hold on your success. And she was right.

 

“I do every aspect of my business in the most difficult way possible, but I’m okay with that.” -Tim, Mitscoots Socks

Listen, I linked this guys website because he is too legit to quit. Tim was one of my first interviews back in Austin when I was working for an online magazine as an intern. He has this company called Mitscoots that gives a pair of socks to the homeless every time someone buys one. But even more than that, he employs the homeless community of Austin to package the socks, and he only manufactures in the US.

Listening to him speak, my brain immediately went into over drive. He is a marketing gold mine, but a business disaster. His words (kind of), not mine. Pretty much, he explained to me that along the way he had been told time-and-time again that the way he was structuring his business had huge faults. Like helping people wasn’t a strong enough tactic to succeed?

But that’s the thing with Tim. I have watched, from a stalker-esque distance, as Mitscoots went from passing out one box of socks a month to passing out thousands. Tim is one of those people who is so true to his heart you kind of question if he has two. Or maybe three with all the heart truth he radiates.

 

“Stay neutral.” -Emma, Sirens Salon

If I have to peg a single moment in my career thus far as being one that happened for a reason it is the moment I met Emma. Sitting in a dim corner of my very first Austin event with her brightly colored dress and over the top heels, I thought to myself as she handed me her business card and assured me to call her for marketing work “What have I gotten myself into?”

I often times still ask that very question when thinking of her, but more so now because I literally would be lost without her and my Sirens family. And her husband and his work family.  And all the other families she has introduced me to along the way. I could gush about Emma all day (as creepy as I don’t care that that sounds) but the true lesson she has taught me is to stay neutral.

It was evident early on in this town that moving home didn’t only mean moving back to my high school room, but it meant moving back in high school. Everyone knows everyone and everyones business is stirred into one big pot. I remember too well the pain from getting a pre-teen phone call that someone was talking shit about me. The buried anger you carry around when you see her in the hall. How can you be so nice to everyones face and then say those things about my green spiral behind my back? Obviously you got a new spiral, but the stink still stung.

Emma has taught me to stay neutral. To follow my dreams of having clients that I can call family, but remembering that some times even with family the answer is to nod your head politely, hug them with all your might, and walk away. Then call your mom and dish the dirt, right?

 

Is everyone seeing the common thread here? Perhaps it is the secret to life, or just the secret to everything happening for a reason… but either way, if you stay true to yourself, your purpose, and your heart things are going to work out in the way they should. And that my friends, is the only way it seems fit.

Side note: the band director just got really mad at some of the music kids. That is all.

Let The Darkness In

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darkness

There are days when I just can’t. Can’t get out of bed, can’t get my head in the game, can’t even produce words to explain this feeling of cant-ness. I just can’t.

Today is one of those days. I find myself starting on a project and ending on Facebook stalking people with deep encompassing sadness. Can’t seem to get my pants pulled all the way up without taking a break, but my impulse is exceptional when clicking through 5-year-old profile pictures. I don’t actually have feelings for these people and their lives without me, but I simple can’t, so I stalk on.

It is in these moments I feel this ever lasting fear that the world is going on without me, that those around me will succeed and strive while I will sit in the background and sink. I ask myself what is becoming of my being? Are my goals worthy? Should I stack my money in a pile and watch its very existence burn? It is in these moments that my mind fights to reflect on the good while all that is visible is the bad.

The day before my senior year of high school my group of girl friends gathered to chalk paint our car windows. It was the ultimate statement of seniority. No Junior could resist the gawking slurs like “Bow Down” and “Get On Your Knees” we garnished with hearts on our early 2000 makes and models.

As we pulled away from our clever yet completely unoriginal session my car was met with a tree’s trunk. One left turn and a small drop of water caused Susie the Isuzu Rodeo to spin out of control and screech to its demising death. Though it was not the tree that I feared, or the pile of glass surrounding me, it was the lack of feeling I had for getting out alive.

Like many my life is a battle of feeling, and like many I chose to let it settle behind my brick piled walls. I don’t share this for pity, but simply because it has become evident that many feel the same. We are all a little bit damaged, and maybe that’s okay.