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Dreaming in the City of Angels

posted 25th August 2010    Written by: Nikki    CATEGORY: All Posts, Inspiration, Job/Career/Work, Nikki, Season 3

I gotta be honest with y’all, I’m having a really hard time writing this post.  Even though I’ve been incredibly open in my last three posts, this, somehow, makes me feel more naked.  I have to tell you my dreams – dreams I’ve wanted since I knew how to dream, dreams I’d thought were dead and then were rekindled, dreams I’ve recently discovered I have.  I find myself gauging your reactions – will you think my dreams silly?  Stupid?  Selfish?  Boring?  Generic?  I’m showing you a little hidden piece of my heart, so please, be kind.  Here goes…

I dream of being onstage, with an audience’s adoration roaring in my ears and lights glinting off my eyelashes.  Of standing ovations and acceptance speeches.  I dream of sitting in a dark theatre and forgetting it’s my face onscreen, sharing a cathartic moment with a  group of strangers.  I dream of collaboration; long, long days on set or in the wings, knowing we’re making something amazing and working through that giddy sense of exhaustion to an explosion of creativity.

I dream of creating everyday.  Of the freedom and discipline in sitting down and writing, every day.  I dream of the perfect words to describe a feeling or a place, and the perfect reading of a line.  I dream of a book jacket with my name on it.  I dream of a paycheck earned in ways that make me feel more alive instead of less than human.

I dream of a home that is mine in a city I love.  A home that is cozy and colorful and full of sunshine.  One that welcomes laughter, music, and comfortable silence.  I dream of an ever-blooming garden with twinkly lights in the trees and cocktail parties in the grass.  Of soft puppies and snuggly blankets.

I dream of a big big love.  A man who thrills me beyond reason but has all the reasons to justify that thrill.  My partner in every sense; balanced in respect, love, trust, and passion.  I dream of knowing it’s right beyond all my doubts and fears and stubborn independence.  I dream of an ability to communicate honestly and a shared view of life as much more than the white picket fence.  Of a marriage where we choose to be together while both retaining our sense of self.  I dream of a loving healthy little family that explores together and is not limited by money, location, or outside expectations.  I dream of best friends and family being much closer than a plane ride away.

I dream of adventure.  Of traveling the world and stepping foot on every continent, in every ocean.  I dream of eating with locals and learning languages, of getting lost and proving to myself I can find my way again.  I dream of scuba diving caves and wrecks, of stomping grapes and exploring pyramids, of total immersion bringing me totally present in the moment.

I dream of the self-awareness, clarity and balance to pull me through whatever lies ahead, and keep me grateful for the joys in my life.  Of self-confidence and complete comfort in my own skin.  I dream of eliminating “should” and “settle” from my vocabulary.  Of re-cultivating my inner 5-year-old and her imagination.  I dream of costume parties and cartwheels through sprinklers on hot days.  I dream of goofy grins and laughing till my sides hurt, and then laughing more.  I dream of sweet tea and hammocks and watching for shooting stars.  I want bubbling, tear-inducing, uncontainable joy.

“Nothing happens unless first we dream.”  -Carl Sandburg

[photo source]

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Collision Course

posted 24th August 2010    Written by: Doniree    CATEGORY: Doniree, Love/Relationships, Season 3, What I've Learned

I had this crazy revelation not too long ago about love and relationships that changed the way I looked at them.  It changed what I was looking for out of all of that, and despite every single romantic comedy telling me otherwise, I knew this to be true:

I do not want someone to complete me.  I do not want to complete someone else.  I don’t want to be a puzzle piece, a void-filler, an other half.  I am a whole person.  I want another whole person to complement the whole woman I am, to make me twice as loving, giving, and powerful as I am on my own, and I wanted for me to be that to him.

I also realized that went against just about everything our culture tells us, everything Jerry Maguire taught us (you…. complete… me), and everything Hallmark wants us to believe about love and relationships.

Rollercoasters and Wild Rides

I didn’t decide to be single for so long – at first.  One pseudo-relationship ended, and it was years before an actual real one began again and in those years I became a media buyer, kicked blogging up a few notches, decided to become a yoga teacher slash freelance writer slash freelance jack-of-all-trades slash nomad.  And maybe I didn’t have time for dating, maybe I didn’t notice if guys had been interested in me, maybe I was so fiercely independent that the idea of bringing someone else into the equation that was my life seemed like the worst possible idea, or maybe the right guy was still halfway across the country living in a mountain town and plotting his own move to Boulder, Colorado.

Or maybe it was all of the above.

The one thing I was at least conscious of was that fiercely independent part.  I remember telling a friend at some point that it seemed like torture, this idea of subjecting some innocent man to my Wild and Big Dreams Life on top of the fact that I didn’t want to settle in any one place in particular for years on top of the fact that I was becoming some hybrid of geeky granola hippie blogger that was still sort of being figured out.

Collision Course

Sometime in the middle of my yoga teacher training (which started in September 2009), I decided I was going to move out of Minnesota.  By mid-December and after deliberations around Chicago and Denver, I finally knew I needed to be in Boulder, Colorado.  I felt it in my heart – I was supposed to come here.  I was never not coming here.

Right around the time I made the decision to pursue the teaching certification, a certain web designer with his own curious spirit and adventurous heart moved from a Colorado mountain town down to Boulder-town,  seeking a more social social life and new relationships.

In February 2010, our paths crossed for the first time – thank you Twitter.  By mid-March, we were buds and randomly running into each other at happy hours around town.  The first week of April, that all changed somewhere over the course of one particular happy hour that turned into bar-hopping that turned into trivia night that ended with the realization that this guy was Something Important.

We shared the same framework, the same geeky interests, and the same overwhelming desire to travel and experience our world – even the places we wanted to see were the same.  I moved to Boulder and met this man who knew that he wanted to spend a few years moving around and living in different cities to really experience life and culture in each of them.  Oh, I do believe I’ve said that before, have I not?

Hint: your high school English Lit teacher would call this foreshadowing.  Stay tuned on that one.

Going my way?

It’s funny.  We have the story we tell people about how we met, and it usually starts with “Well, the short story is on Twitter.”  And then we launch into the longer story about the business he owns, about how I found them online, and about how we then met in a coffee shop one afternoon because of all that.  That’s what we tell other people and our friends when they ask.

The story we tell ourselves is much simpler:  We were on a collision course, our separate decisions leading us to the same place, turning the same page to a new chapter.

The chapter that was born out of a complete upheaval of decisions, of career, and of direction.  A page that turned only after I followed my heart to a big little town in Colorado, to a commitment to myself and my yoga mat, and to a career made possible by an Internet connection and an obsession with writing.

There was an idea of this whole person who needed to be as sure of herself and decisions as she was sure of the sunrise every morning and the sunset every night.  My intentions and convictions were tested and put through the fire, and at some point I emerged a more authentic and complete version of me.  And it was almost immediately after that that my heart opened and our worlds collided, and here we are.


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A Love Celebration

posted 23rd August 2010    Written by: Molly Mahar    CATEGORY: Love/Relationships, Molly

I’m marrying the love of my life on Saturday, August 28th, 2010.  I’m holding space, energy and love these next 2 weeks to be really present for my friends, family and to the Big Man.  I know each of you understand and will forgive me for my lack of “online presence”…

What do you need to be present for in your life right now?

Sending you wishes of joy and love as you live your life these next few weeks.  Living vibrantly, honestly, and with best intentions and actions.  Dance, laugh, celebrate and do good.

I’ll be back soon enough and we’ll continue this quest to rock our lives together.  That’s a promise, sweetness.

XOXO

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Life Lessons Learned While Traveling

posted 22nd August 2010    Written by: Lindsey    CATEGORY: All Posts, Life Lesson, Lindsey, Season 3, Travel

The lessons I’ve learned, and the experiences I’ve had in places I’ve lived are absorbed into my soul. Rather than living to travel, I travel to live. I  had a “permanent” life in college until I had my first extended travel-living experience in Istanbul. There I defined my personal travel style: I prefer to integrate into a place, for a month or longer, to gain the full experience, and really just vibe with the culture.

For someone who lived in the same house until age 18, I have called quite a few places “home” in the last 6 years. Currently, I have a California driver’s license but I live at home in Michigan. Even I have a hard time explaining this!

Since each locale is a chapter in the humor-adventure-drama-saga that is my life, it’s only proper to tell my story in sequence.

South Haven, Michigan. How to Feel Disconnected.

I am a big dreamer from a small rural tourist town. A beautiful place, but at 17 it is my prison.

Ann Arbor, Michigan. How to Build a Resume While Bonging a Beer.

(It really is quite a skill. Especially when you have a shot of tequila in the other hand.)

I learn a lot in college, especially about the trajectory of my life towards a cubicle. The true value is in the friends I meet. My heart isn’t fully in the whole Engineering thing, but I am determined to prove myself, and also, to be done with the responsibility of school that has dominated my life thus far. I find hope in an internship, and discover Green Building and Sustainable Development are what I really care about out of this whole engineering game.

In this same summer, I compile my life list and realize I have a lot to do besides work.

Istanbul, Turkey. How to Use “Ditzy American Girl” as an Advantage.

You want a crazy experience? Travel alone. You may be ditzy, and you may be so white than a random Turkish person on the bus will look you straight in the face and say “YOU are one hundred percent American.” But you will still learn a lot of things. Do not take my advice if you are afraid of insane shenanigans, random people with guns busting in your hotel room, police officers stalking you, or figuring out how to get an abortion in the Middle East (NOT mine, FYI).

Life gets real when you really displace yourself. I get addicted to the adrenaline of displacement.

Big Sky, Montana. How to Not Be In School.

After graduation, I get a waitressing job at Big Sky Resort and an apartment with an old friend. I ski, snowboard, party, and finally catch up on all the sleep lost in the past four and half years of engineering school all-nighters. I am running from a job offer in my field: managing an oil rig, making insane amounts of money and probably dying in an explosion on April 20, 2010.

I think I made the right choice. I know I made the right choice.

Hawaii. How to Live Consciously.

While browsing the internet over the most amazing vegetarian biscuits and gravy in Big Sky, I found a plane ticket from San Francisco to Hawaii for a reasonable price. Since I had no clue what else I was going to do with myself after the snow stopped falling, and had told myself that in 2009 I was not allowed to think about engineering or jobs, I went to Hawaii to WWOOF.

I wanted to learn about yoga. And hang out in Hawaii. And eat some pineapples. What I got was so much more. It is not even possible to summarize Hawaii in a short space. Just know that when I went to Hawaii, I lived in a fog of disconnect between who I was and who I wanted to be. And by the time I landed on the mainland 5 months later, I was conscious.

Oklahoma. How to Be a Yogini.

I meet a boy in Hawaii and fall head over heels for his world experience, yogic nature and French-Canadian accent. So I bail on Hawaii, fly to his home in Montreal to begin a road trip without a destination.

End up in Oklahoma with his yoga friends, practicing Ashtanga yoga every day, eating a vegan, gluten-free, soy-free, peanut-free diet and living the healthiest life ever. Spent all remaining money on quinoa and vegetables. Went into credit card debt over health food. (I laugh hysterically – at myself! – when people say they’d like to eat healthier but simply ‘can’t afford it.’)

Plan to go to Montana to pick up Everything-I-Own (which was left behind when I left for Hawaii with a backpack) with intentions to sell it to temporarily finance my life. One crazy long drive later, find out that all my possessions evaporated when the person storing my boxes went to prison and her daughter turned the house into a meth lab. (Seriously, I could NOT make this shit up.)

Lake Tahoe, California. How to Be Independent.

End up here completely on accident. End up nearly marrying the boyfriend on a whim. Freak out, send him off to Canada with promises to follow soon. Question everything. Stay in Tahoe instead of moving to Canada.

Start thinking about how to live free for real. Snowboard every day. Meet amazing new friends. Start setting real goals that don’t involve boring engineering jobs ever, but making good things happen on my own terms. Consider staying for good in California. Settling down. Having a home. Starting a business.

Meet another boy. (Sigh… boys!) Make dinners. And plans.

But then I wake up in the middle of the night this May, realizing that home is anywhere and everywhere I want it to be. But also realizing, despite all the amazing friends I have and know, everyone in my Tahoe life at this point has only known me for 2 months. No one knows me. Freak out that South Haven is the only place where I have any semblance of home but I am completely resistant to going back. I love my freedom.

Recognize the resistance as something I need to be brave about and deal with. I have to love where I come from. I have to make peace with the only place I have ever left on bad terms. I can’t hold these negative emotions towards my home, or I will never be truly free. Also, I need to figure out how to not live in complete waitress poverty. (Mental stability wanes dealing with people who treat you like a slave.)

Decide to cancel life in Tahoe. Back out of living situations, life plans, shitty jobs, etc to come home to small town Michigan for the first time in 6 years.

South Haven, Michigan. How to Love What Matters.

Freak out. Question everything. Lie on the floor of my childhood bedroom crying in the agony that I’d left everything to move to a place where no one “gets it.” Break down when I have to do my grocery shopping in WalMart. Break down multiple times in WalMart because it represents everything I can’t stand about the rural midwest. Break down completely and emotionally drive away friends who are already physically distant.

Finally, completely, totally alone but with South Haven. Forced to face it. Embrace the place for what it is, and embrace how I fit into it with what I have become. Become “that girl on a skateboard” and “that girl with a camera” and start to jive with the fact that I am me, and I will always be, and this is good.

Suddenly, find friends in the strangest places. Get multiple opportunities that fit my missions in life – working with green initiatives online, entrepreneurship and sustainable community building. Blogging for Stratejoy. Blogging for myself.

Feel hope.

{photo credit : me :) }

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Defining My Values

posted 21st August 2010    Written by: Renee    CATEGORY: Inspiration, Renee, Season 3, Spirituality

I completed the Joy Equation in February 2010.  As part of Week One, I was instructed to identify my eight core values. This was new territory for me.  My values?  No one has ever asked about my values. The only time I ever hear the word “values” is when the religious right shouts about “family values” which is really just a band-aid for bigotry. I had to warm up to the word. What are my values?

At first, with my Catholic background, I thought about the Beatitudes, from Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount.

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are the meek: for they shall possess the land.
Blessed are they who mourn: for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after justice: for they shall have their fill.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.
Blessed are the clean of heart: for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God.
Blessed are they that suffer persecution for justice’s shake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
(Matthew 5:3-10)

Peace? Yeah, okay, that sounds good. Justice? Sure. Merciful? Acceptable. Poor in spirit? Meek? Mourning? I get it, but those aren’t my values. I don’t want to lie down at the end of each day and ask myself, “Renee, were you poor in spirit today?” It doesn’t seem motivating.

I had to dig deeper. My Catholicism still clenched me in its grasp. I thought about the seven spiritual works of mercy.

1. Instruct the ignorant.
2. Counsel the doubtful.
3. Admonish sinners.
4. Bear wrongs patiently.
5. Forgive offenses willingly.
6. Comfort the afflicted.
7. Pray for the living and the dead.

Ah! Here we go. Teach. Counsel. Console. Forgiveness. Compassion. Patience. Peace. We’re getting closer. Thanks, St. Thomas of Aquinas, for teaching me about mercy.

The Joy Equation states, “Our core values are the habits of our heart.” What makes my heart cry out? What moves me to action? What would I fight to for the right to enjoy and experience?

I narrowed down a long, long list with notes in the margins reminding myself “not what I should choose, rather what resonates with me.” Finally, I came up with eight. And then I defined them.

Honesty – Being honest with myself and others, telling the truth, saying what I mean, and always having good, open communication.

Peace – Being at peace with myself, things in my life that I can’t change, and cutting back on the arguing to focus on the greater good. “Good enough is good enough.” –Jane Fonda

Love – Keeping love in my heart and showing it at all times, making everyone feel special and worth of my time. Radiate Love.

Patience – Knowing what matters enough to stress me out and what’s not worth my worries. Keeping my temper in check. Taking deep breaths and going slowly. Keep calm and carry on.

Joy/Humor – Smiling and laughing more than frowning and crying. Finding humor in unfavorable situations. Being able to laugh at myself. Enjoying the company of others. Finding my fun.

Compassion – Knowing when others need my help, a second chance, or a compromise. Putting myself in others’ shoes. Being flexible to accommodate the needs of others when they need it most.

Passion – Recognizing the drive I need to go after what I want. Taking life by the horns. Fearlessly pursuing the things I love. Making time to do things for me.

Authenticity – Knowing what’s best when I need it most. Staying true to myself. Putting my needs first. Taking time to fix #1. Not compromising my values. Doing what I need to do. Not being fake. Giving 100% all the time but knowing what 100% is.

When you wrap up my values and put a pretty bow on them, you can see the Beatitudes and spiritual works of mercy trickling through them… but you can also see my liberal arts education and my ferocious feminism. I can tell where I’m trying to reel in my Type A, Arian personality, trying to cool off my fire sign. I can tell where I’m trying to open my heart just a little more, to soften my rough edges and let a little more light in.

There’s something empowering about naming your values and doing your best to adhere to them, something very tenacious and gritty that I love.  It makes for one hell of a personal journey.

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