Month: November 2015

Eat, Pray, Love

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Yin to My Yang.”

When I think of what constitutes a “soulmate,” I think of the following quote from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat Pray Love:

I won’t say that I embrace the quote in its entirety for my own life (though perhaps that’s my twenty-something-year-old romantic hopes speaking), but I love the idea of a soulmate helping you forge your own best self by fire. I’ve always found it rather unrealistic to think that one will simply bring permanent bliss to your life and help you transform without a certain amount of struggle. Instead, he will “bring you to your own attention so you can change your life…shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life.” If I find that, and in the same someone who will lead me to sing just because I’m happy, I will count myself a very lucky woman.

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When Timing Doesn’t Match

The photo below would probably be really funny if it weren’t so accurate, but I feel like this experience is incredibly relatable for so many women! I know it is for me:

His-and-Her Diaries

Sometimes, I wonder how men and women ever really make relationships work. Lots of learning, compromising, communication (humph, when we can wrangle that), and diversions/friends/exercise/wine, perhaps. I just feel that we really do speak different languages a lot of the time, and it becomes harder to translate accurately when you really care about someone.

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Mizzou, Racism, and Social Justice: On-Par with My MU Experience

Though it is unusual for me to do so, I have largely kept my silence about the recent events at Mizzou in favor of sorting out my own unresolved feelings. It has been intriguing watching from the sidelines, and an altogether exhausting and anger-inducing experience reflecting on my time as a graduate student at Mizzou, a coach in and resident of Columbia, and an advocate in an atmosphere that is altogether hostile of any person who dares critique the status quo. It was—and still is—incomprehensible to me that so many people are unwilling to even entertain the idea that racial inequality is a problem in Columbia and at the University. Let’s talk for a second about comfortability.

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Money Blues

Just thinking about my finances today, I am overwhelmed. From loans for graduate school to the car note (my car was totaled last November when I got rear-ended) to surgery bills to regular old “life” bills, it feels like I don’t even know where to start. After graduate school, I moved back home to help my parents with a lot of much-needed, much-overdue work on their house and yard. I felt they more than deserved that help, and after how miserable I was during my time in Missouri, I just needed to be able to work with my hands and be near people who love me. We’ve made wonderful progress on that on renovations and organization, but it has been a real challenge to my identity. I hadn’t lived at home since high school, and my tendency toward financial independence at a young age and working ridiculous hours had been big parts of who I was.

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Surprise, Surprise

“Every day we come across so many things – some mundane and some quite out of the ordinary. … Share one (or more) of those funny/interesting things of your week every Saturday.”

This week was my significant other’s birthday, so naturally, I had some surprises up my sleeve. I met him at work during lunch to get his house key (see, he trusts me!) and headed over to get things ready for the evening. Knowing that he had an extremely busy couple weeks ahead, and that he wanted to have his place straightened up before his siblings, their families, and cousins came in from out of town (and out of the country), I figured I may as well get some cleaning and organizing done while I had the time. And I certainly had plenty of time: he would soon be busy enjoying the professional massage I had arranged as the first of his birthday surprises.

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My Future Reduced to Six Words

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “Six of One, Half a Dozen of the Other:”

And she laughed ’til she cried.

One of the most memorable things my mother ever said to me during my childhood was, “Sometimes you’ve got to either laugh or cry, and I would just rather laugh.” It should be noted that this frame of mind comes amidst a peculiarly high number of tragedies and mishaps happening to one family: friends and family refer to this as our “curse” (we jokingly apologize when bad things happen to them, since it must just be the ol’ family curse rubbing off).

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Self-confidence Sunday #1

“Let’s start each week off with a positive, go-get-’em bang! Post a photo (selfies encouraged–really!), quote, poem, or story that makes you feel accomplished, strong, attractive, or just otherwise awesome. The fun part: tell me what about it is so inspiring and/or how you’re going to use that newfound motivation the upcoming week.

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No Time To Waste

In response to The Daily Post’s writing prompt: “No Time to Waste.”

“Life is too short to: let fear of failure rob you of life lessons and beautiful memories.”

If there is anything I regret (despite the popular cliche advising against ever regretting a thing), it is the many times I let fear keep me from trying something new. There is plenty of psychological research behind the rationale for this, especially where “gifted girls” are concerned…but no matter how well I have come to understand why I shied away from certain pursuits, I still remain a bit sad that I cared so much about upholding an appearance of seemingly effortless perfection that I sacrificed my own happiness. Looking back on these tendencies from my high school and college days, my 25 year-old self must ask: where is the sense in that? Whether it was letting softball pitches go by rather than possibly swing and miss, turning down choir solos in case I choked at the performance, or neglecting to try out for sports and/or musical honors I easily could have earned, I cannot think of a single time it was truly beneficial to let caution be my life guide.

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