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Sharing My Gratitude

posted 30th November 2009    Written by: Robyn    CATEGORY: All Posts, Quarterlife Crisis, Robyn, Season 1

Robyn's FamilySo I am starting off the blog this week with the theme of the month: Gratitude.  Of course, Thanksgiving was the perfect time to really think about what you are grateful for and all the things you should be appreciating on a daily basis.

When I narrow it down, here’s what I am grateful for:

My Family and Friends

Despite the freezing temperatures in Chicago, I always look forward to the winter season because that means the holidays are here, and that means my loved ones will all be together.  I have a small extended family, which should make it easy to all get together, but sadly, getting everyone together under one roof is actually a rare occasion.

That’s why the holiday season is so important to me.

I have family members fly across the country to come home for the holidays. I have two younger sisters in college out-of-state.  I have cousins who have grown up and scattered themselves from California to New York to Texas.  I have high school friends and college roommates who come home for the holidays.

Between job commitments and school and geographic locations, it’s tough to find time to get everyone together. During the year, I can always count on phone calls, emails, and even Facebook statuses to know what everyone is up to, but those things could never compare to being face-to-face with those I care about most.

I’m so grateful for this one time a year when we can all gather to catch up and hear about each other’s lives in person.

My Health and Well-Being

I have been quite lucky this year!  I can’t even complain of a simple cold that I got this year, let alone H1N1!  (Knock on wood)…

I have never felt better.

After leaving my horrid corporate job, I truly rid myself of a lot of stress and negative energy that I had built up day after day. At the time, I didn’t even realize what an effect it had on my well-being.  Many times, I would feel tired or sluggish or just plain lazy after a day at my desk, but now it’s just the opposite.

I have been revived!  I am bursting with energy and so over-the-top happy that I have actually been stopped in the middle of the grocery store and asked why I was so “smiley”. I didn’t even have an answer… I am just plain happy with my life and happy with myself.  I find that I am more active and taking better care of myself, and I am so grateful for my recent life changes and the positive effect they have had on my body and mind.

Speaking of happiness, I’d also like to do a little shout out for Molly’s online course, The Joy Equation: A 30-Day Guide To Living Life On Purpose.  I recently completed The Joy Equation and found that it gently guided me as I dealt with my Quarterlife Crisis head on.  It helped me to get all my thoughts out on paper so that I could consider what my current concerns were and work through each one.  It guided me through forming a plan to take one day at a time with the only goal being to lead a happier and more fulfilling life.

I definitely give this course some credit for my current level of satisfaction regardless of all the uncertainties that lie ahead. And I am definitely grateful for that!

robyn-bio1

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Time to Smile

posted 26th November 2009    Written by: Marisa    CATEGORY: All Posts, Marisa, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1, What I've Learned

time to smileI take the streetcar to work every morning.  It’s a simple ride, easy and smooth while listening to my ipod.

Recently it’s been more fun in the mornings.  People are smiling when I walk to and from my stop.  People are smiling at me.

And I only just realized it’s because I’m the one smiling first.

For the first time in a very long time, I have the confidence to say that I am truly happy.  I’m happy with who I am as a person, who I’ve become in the past six months and who I am in this very exact moment.  I smile a lot more lately and express myself more too.

These passions of mine, these interests and outlets, have shaped and polished me to be more, well, ME.

I’m desperately trying not to fuck this up.  I have a job.  I have a life.  I have confidence.  I can do anything and everything. And the best part about it is that I know it’s from my Quarterlife Crisis and how I chose to deal with it. In the past, certain ideas and limitations about who I should be or what I should be doing with my life bogged down and hindered my confidence to truly believe in myself and believe that I am worth it.

I am worth it.  Sometimes it feels like a switch or a light bulb spurted to life in my soul and the world somehow recognized it.  I used to think of myself as someone plain in all aspects.  I never gave myself credit with my wants, desires and dreams.  I hid from the world and lived just enough to fulfill a basic existence without risking anything new or even true.

I don’t know why I’m reflecting so heavily right now.

It’s insane how happy I am. Who knew you could reach those dark crevasses in life without a traditional plan and still come out rosy on top? The unknown always symbolized a frenzied panic in me.  This uncontrollably entity was something I always chased and never caught.

I can’t pinpoint exactly when or where life for me became something ideal. It’s most certainly ideal now, and perhaps not meant to always be, but I am strong enough and smart enough to know when I have a good thing going and appreciate the hell out of it.

Having this QLC forced certain unknowns to be present and while I still get that panicked tickle in my stomach or that rush of blood throughout my body, I smile and let that light bulb slowly flicker on to brighten my day.

And smile.

marisa-bio1

photo credit: flickrohit

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The Geography of Happiness- Part 2

posted 25th November 2009    Written by: Andrea    CATEGORY: All Posts, Andrea, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1, Travel, Travel/Adventure

world mapIn my last post I talked about an amazing book I read while traveling on my Eastern Europe Adventure called, The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World.

I wanted to share some insight and ideas from the book about happiness and the search for the Good Life.

Seemed very appropriate for those of us living through a Quarter Life Crisis, since travel and moving are re-occurring themes.

Excerpts from The Geography of Bliss: One Grump’s Search for the Happiest Places in the World

  1. “We create our own happiness and the first step in creating is imagining.”
  2. People who live in Iceland have the right mentality, in that no matter how bleak life seems, things will always work out. I like that theory.
  3. Some cultures are collectivist, while some (like America) are individualistic. Collectivist are happier than individualists cultures. Go figure.
  4. “Happiness and unhappiness are not opposite sides of the coin. They are two different coins.” Think about that the next time you are unhappy.
  5. Happiness is a choice.
  6. “Helping others makes us feel good.”  As humans we are programed to help others, it makes us happy. So maybe if you are unhappy, try helping someone in need.
  7. “People are not likely to be happy if they don’t have control over their lives.”
  8. I think this line was written specifically for me, ” Happy people have no reason to think; they live rather than question living.” Thinking about happiness makes us LESS happy.
  9. “Add up all the pleasurable aspects of your life, then subtract the unpleasant ones. The result is your overall happiness.”
  10. “The worlds happiest nations tend to be the most ethnically homogeneous.”
  11. Americans hate unpredictability, while some cultures thrive off it and are happy because of it.
  12. Love is higher than happiness.
  13. Ambition may sabotage happiness. If you constantly are striving to reach some extraordinary level of happiness, you will strive your entire life.
  14. “America’s current fixation with finding happiness coincides with an era of unprecedented material prosperity.”
  15. We as Americans are less happy than we were 50 years ago. Which is ironic because compared to many countries we have access to different things that could make us happy, where most cultures do not.
  16. Some Americans move because they think it will make them happier, however, people give themselves permission to be different in different geographic regions so moving may not necessarily be the answer.
  17. “We may be fairly happy now but there’s always tomorrow and the prospect of a happier place. We can’t love a place or a person though if we have one foot out the door.”

*Spoiler Alert: If you plan on reading this book DO NOT read the next paragraph!!

In the Epilogue of the book, Weiner summarizes and says: “Money matters, but less than we think and not in the way we think. Family is important. So are friends. Envy is toxic. So is excessive thinking. Beaches are optional. Trust is not. Neither is gratitude.”

I want to know what is your happiest geographic place and why? Are you there right now? Why or why not? What do you think about geography, travel and happiness?

Andrea (new) bio.

photo credit : pearlsofjannah

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Voices Carry

posted 24th November 2009    Written by: Kendra    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kendra, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 1

open heartSo every week I write this blog, and when it goes live I send a mass e-mail out to my friends and repost it on Facebook.

Almost every week I get a phone call, or an e-mail, or a comment on either the blog or on Facebook from a friend or stranger telling me that they understand what I’m feeling, because they’re feeling it too and they want to reassure me that I’m not alone, or that they find comfort in my words and in knowing that they’re not alone.

We are an odd species aren’t we?

We crave companionship; humans – even the most introverted amongst us – are by nature a communal animal.

We need each other.

But we spend most of our time pretending that we don’t.

It is hard to be emotionally vulnerable. I know. This may sound contradictory given my status as a blogger, but I am an intensely private person.  Anything beyond the broadest outlines of my life’s experiences is only known to the people who have lived through those experiences with me.

Put another way, what I’ve written on this blog is probably about as much as most of the people that I consider my friends know about my life, excluding direct experiences (I am, however, more than happy to discuss my bowel movements and my current emotional state with aplomb, I do an excellent job of creating intimacy without being actually intimate).

Case in point, I was at lunch about a month ago with a friend, when he made a passing comment based on a banal but false assumption about a member of my family.  I paused for a moment, wondering if I should correct him, before reluctantly informing him that his assumption was actually incorrect (I have this thing about lying, even by omission, I mostly don’t do it).  He looked at me, shocked, before stating in hushed tones “that he didn’t know that”.

What he didn’t know wasn’t that important (but, no I’m not telling you). It wasn’t anything dramatic like my dad being in prison (he’s not, it’s just an example), it was on the level of finding out that I’d gone to Catholic school, but the detail wasn’t about me and so I’d felt zero need to share it, even with someone who’d become a fast friend and who I was regularly chatting with for several hours every day.

He didn’t know the detail, because among the many things that I don’t talk about a big one is I don’t talk about my family. My friend Kam says I talk about my family so rarely it’s almost as though I don’t have one.  To me this is funny, because when I’m not living at home I talk to my family as often as once a week and at least once a month. I just don’t talk about them.

But lately I’ve been wondering if this need for privacy, to erect barriers between us and the world is always such a good thing. On the one hand, we do end up protected from people who might deliberately or not-so-deliberately be emotionally harmful. On the other hand, however, we end up suffering alone during these periods of transition.

And so maybe, in order to lighten up, we should open up, even if we’re picky with whom we open up to.

kendra-bio1

photo credit : lady-bug

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Things I Don’t Miss About the Corporate World

posted 23rd November 2009    Written by: Robyn    CATEGORY: All Posts, Job/Career/Work, Quarterlife Crisis, Robyn, Season 1

Alarm clock 6amFirst of all, I don’t miss my alarm blaring in the morning. Desperate to start my days right, I used to try to trick myself into getting excited for the work day by having my alarm go off with a funny song. I rarely fell for my own tricks.

These days I wake up when I feel like it. There’s no alarm involved, and there’s no bribing myself with Dunkin’ Donuts to get out of bed and get to office on time. Actually, I now naturally wake up earlier than I did when I had my 9 to 5. I think I am happy to get an early start and do my own thing.

Secondly, I don’t miss the boredom, the meaningless work…the unimportant deadlines. I think the biggest problem I had with my past job was that my company seemed to be comprised of people who always took themselves so seriously. Everything was so structured and needed to be so flawless. There was no room to be creative or flexible or even to just question something and try a different way of getting it done.

There was always protocol. And it needed to be followed.

I always had a hard time taking my meaningless work seriously because it meant nothing to me. In the back of my mind I was constantly thinking about all the things that were important to me—things I truly cared about that could better benefit from my energy and dedication.

Now, I choose the work I take on. I make sure it’s interesting and challenging and forces me to use the skills I want to use. I aim to always have a variety of work so that my days never feel routine. I make sure I like the people I work with and that they are constantly open to change. Of course there is still the “bitch work,” but along with that comes the good stuff, and I get to put my hands in it all. Every ounce of work can be traced back to me, and that gives me a sense of accomplishment. Even when I have busy days or deadlines, I am doing it all for myself, and I get to reap all the benefits of it.

Lastly, I don’t miss being fit into this little box of “marketing coordinator.” At my past job, I was hired to do a certain type of work. Expectedly, I was given that type of work day after day. Even when I went above and beyond, I never got rewarded with different work or more challenging work… Instead, I got more of what I was good at. The position never offered me room to grow or to explore and develop new skills.

When I wake up each morning—whether it’s to edit a manuscript, write a blog, or take a dog for a walk, I am constantly thinking of new things I could learn or try to do.

Some days I think I need to take a cooking class or join a triathlon training team. Some days I think I should really start writing a book or learning some basic web design techniques. Some days I think I should go back to travel writing and photography.

The options are endless, and as of right now, I am the only one who can really stand in my own way.

robyn-bio1

photo credit: Living Now

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