Category: Katie

Following My Heart, or the Benefits of Being Selfish

posted 4th March 2010    Written by: Katie    CATEGORY: Inspiration, Katie, Season 2, Tips & Tools, Travel

I’m breaking the news to my family and friends of my move gradually.

Did I tell you guys yet? No? Oh, well, I’m moving.

If you did know this already, and you’re thinking “Yeah, Katie, we know you’re moving in February 2011″– you’re only half right. I’m moving, but much sooner than expected. Much sooner as in, within 2 months.

You could say, I’m following my heart.

Some of my friends are relatively happy about it. The majority are experiencing nothing short of surprise in epic proportions. To most of my friends I’ve become known as the girl who has big ideas, makes big plans,  but does nothing with them.

I’m really good at starting things. From spring cleaning, to a new life direction, to journals, I’ve developed a certain level of appreciation for starting things fresh and new. It’s my own personal way of alleviating past mistakes and starting with a clean slate.

However great I am at beginning, I lack the follow-through necessary to create lasting experiences. No matter how good it feels to start things, they only remain “brand new” for so long until it feels old, used, and no longer worth dedicating time to. Even during the duration of the Joy Equation, I had a very difficult time committing time to myself everyday to do self-discovery. As I mentioned before, I expected myself to fail, and it was starting to become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Because of this unfortunate habit of mine, no one really believes that I’m moving.

Even more, they believe that they can simply offer me an alternative solution that will keep me in my home state forever. How convenient for them, but really it’s an open invitation for me to not follow through on yet another set of plans.

I’d be lying if I didn’t say that their ideas weren’t tempting:

“Move in with me!”

“Move in with your aunt!”

“Just grin and bear it!”

Yes, they all sound like perfectly great ways to stand still for the rest of my life. I’ve realized that I don’t want to stand still anymore. I want to move – not only in physical location, but emotionally, mentally, and in any other way one can move; that is, in every way but backwards.

I’m leaving a lot behind in New Jersey. my family, my friends, my car, my apartment, my life. In following my heart, I’m leaving it all behind to start fresh. One of my friends got very emotional when I told him that I was moving. “Why are you being so selfish?” he said. I was speechless and really gave his accusation some thought.

Was I being selfish?  Should I be thinking more about my family and friends and their needs?

Like any awesome Generation-Y person, I instantly Googled “Selfish” prepared for some slap in the face definition that would make me realize that I was wrong, and that my true destination shouldn’t be miles away. I found this:

selfish -\ˈsel-fish\ Holding one’s self-interest as the standard for decision making.

That just solidified my decision. Shouldn’t we all be a little selfish? Try it, you just might like it.

As many of us tend to do, I’ve lived a majority of my life attempting to please others. I’m a people pleaser, which tends to be my biggest appeal and my biggest downfall. After twenty-five years of putting other’s needs and wants before mine, I want to give myself a chance. My heart has been on the backburner for such a long time, it’s just begging to be able to do what it wants to do for once.

For the first time, I’m going to listen.

One of my most difficult parts of the Joy Equation for me was the realization that I was not able to remember the last time I felt happy. I wasn’t able to answer the simple question of “Describe in detail how you feel when you are happy.”

(Hey, Molly, ask me again what makes me happy. Ask me one more time how I feel when I’m happy.)

Whenever I imagine my life according to my terms, I feel this sense of exhilaration. I feel like my world is much bigger, and my possibilities are endless. My heart races, a smile comes on my face, and I’m excited to transfer money into my savings account for the move which I have appropriately named “Road to Happiness Account”.

In these moments I am happy. In these moments I feel whole. It feels amazing not only to have life coming straight at me, but to be walking towards it with open arms.

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Quarterlife Crisis Anyone?

posted 1st March 2010    Written by: Katie    CATEGORY: All Posts, Inspiration, Katie, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2, What I've Learned

I’m the exception to every rule.

No, I’m serious. Every. Single. Rule.

As women, we are expected to be emotional, prepared, successful, happy creatures who know exactly what we want and how to get it. I don’t know who created these expectations, but I want them shot, or at least put through a super-scientific experiment where we inject their lives with the Quarterlife Crisis.

When I heard about Stratejoy, I was, I’d say, 430% skeptical. I had bought every self help book there is to buy from every bookstore on the east coast. I spent countless hours sitting in my room, reading through books that tried to tell me how to get out of the slump that I was in based on other people’s experiences.

I don’t know if it’s me, but relating to others who have nothing in common with me just doesn’t work.

Before I committed to doing the Stratejoy Joy Equation program, and long before I applied to be a guest blogger, I decided to look into it a little bit more. I wanted to find the loophole where it said that the program was not for me. Maybe it was just for professional women;  Or married women;  Or women who knew what they wanted; None of which described me at all.

So… I read a few of the blog posts by Molly and her group of  Season One bloggers.

At one point, I had to get up and walk away from my computer.  Who were these women? How did they know exactly how I was feeling? You mean, I’m not a freak of nature? It was in that moment that I was sold on the idea of giving the program a try. If nothing else, to prove Molly wrong. To prove that there was someone out there that this program wouldn’t work for.

It might sound like I was being a bit negative – and I was.

When you go through a bunch of disappointments in life,  you learn not to expect too much from anyone or anything. I didn’t want to expect a life changing experience from Stratejoy, not get it, and be eternally depressed that I am truly a freak of nature who can’t be helped.

But I did it.

Within 3 hours, I had my first e-mail from Molly. A welcoming ‘hello’ and the very first writing assignment. I buzzed right through it, and waiting patiently for the next day. It was one of the first few assignments that knocked me out of the water and changed the way I looked at things forever. I was asked to recall the last time I was truly happy, and to describe how I felt.

Easy, right? For most people, sure. But not for me, not the exception to the rule. I realized after 30 minutes of steady thought cramming that I wasn’t able to remember when I was happy. Or how I felt when I was happy. Or anything with the word happy in it. Except Happy Gilmore. Awesome movie.

It was in that moment that I made the realization that I don’t pay enough attention to the moments in which I’m happy, and I focus a lot on the negative. This was a powerful thing for me to realize, and since that revelation, I’ve focused a lot more on living in the moment and being totally open to all of my emotions, especially happiness.

And that realization came on the third or fourth day. I still had 20+ days to go.

The Stratejoy program was a month filled with laughter, tears, life decisions, and mending. All of my life questions weren’t answered at the end of the program, but I do feel like I know what I want next, and how I need to go about doing it.  I had made a new friend in Molly, who when she called me for our “Jam Session”, was easier to talk to than I had ever imagined.

The other day I was talking with a friend and we got to the game of “20 Questions”. He asked me what person inspired me most in 2010. I answered a proud, “Molly Hoyne. Because her Joy Equation helped me find myself underneath the years of pain, frustration, and fear. I now wake up and am excited to spend the day with myself. That says a lot for someone who hated her skin for years.”

He replied; “So really, your most inspiring person is yourself.”

Touche, Friend. Touche.

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The $480 Anger Theory

posted 18th February 2010    Written by: Katie    CATEGORY: All Posts, Inspiration, Katie, Season 2, What I've Learned

I never really considered myself an angry person, so when I was seeing a therapist last year and she told me I had “anger issues”, it took all of the energy in the world not to kick her in the head walk out.

She, of course, could see the hostility in my face, and she went on to explain that I don’t have a violent anger problem;  I do the exact opposite.  I hold it in and direct it internally, which is equally as damaging – but only to myself.

She then asked me to define anger. I said something obvious like “to be mad”. She kept pushing me to refine my definition, telling me that I was naming emotions, but I needed her to shine the light on it.

“Anger is not getting what you want.”

It took me a few moments, weird looks directed at her, and thoughts about how she was a quack, but I eventually understood.

All of the times I’ve been angry, it’s been because I’ve not gotten when I wanted. Whether it was attention from a significant other, silence when I’m trying to work, or money when I’m low on funds,  it’s been because whatever I wanted, I wasn’t getting.  The anger part of it all was simply an emotion.

I had to go to the root of the problem to solve it.

That same day in therapy I made some breakthroughs and realized where my anger was coming from. It could be attributed to regressing all of my feelings from childhood. I felt kind of… free when I realized this. My therapist was super supportive too. She even “promoted me”.

“I think we should meet once a week instead of once every other week.”

It’s funny how the same words coming from a potential love interest would have me smiling from ear to ear, but coming from Dr. Mental Sortout, I felt like the slow kid in class who had to stay after school and be enrolled in “Special Gym”.

(Yes, special gym exists. My 4th grade gym teacher made me go because I wasn’t able to run a mile or bend all the way down and touch my toes like the other kids. Hello, “not being good enough” complex.)

For as long as I can remember, when I would wake up in a bad mood, or a not-so-awesome moment strikes me, I’d  instantly get huffy and puffy about it.

I hate being in a bad mood and I’m not afraid to show it, even if it means that I give the people around me little dose of New Jersey attitude. It doesn’t exactly make the situation better, but when I’m in a bad mood, I don’t want to see other people’s shining and glorious faces. It’s like eating lots and lots of candy in front of a diabetic – sad and cruel.

Especially when you’re the diabetic, or in my case the angry one.

In honor of my therapist’s brilliant breakthrough I figured I would humor her and give her whole theory a whirl. After all, I might as well make the most of that $120/hour that I’m spending on each (then weekly) session. If the reason for anger is the fact that I’m not getting what I want, then why I don’t I just, you know, get what I want. I decided that the next time that I was angry, I would try and pinpoint what it was that I wasn’t getting, and find a way to get it.

I found myself getting pretty angry at a lot of things. The house was too noisy for me to work in. Instead of screaming and yelling for quiet, I put some relaxing music on my iPod (Kenny G. Don’t Judge Me) and worked through it.

I found myself angry that I didn’t have any money to go out on a Friday night. Instead of becoming a whiny little girl, I decided to take that Friday night to find some freelance side jobs and put that money into a “Girls Night Out Fund.”

I was angry because I had a horrible headache, but had a lot of work to get done. Instead of sitting in front of the computer angry, straining my eyes and head further, and being non-productive, I took an Excedrin, took an extra little nap and e-mailed my clients and told them I was under the weather.

So, I had my anger in check. Score!

And it only took me $480/month to figure that out.

Recently I’ve found myself in more bad moods than good moods. Even the bright sunny days have me down in the dumps and wanting to disappear under the covers. According to the “Therapy Theory of Anger”, I’m apparently not getting what I want.  Surely, on rainy days, I’d rather have some sun.

However, I can’t control this. I wish I could. So, maybe it was something deeper. What the heck was it?

After some soul searching I figured it out.  When I was going through my depression last year, I spent my days just trying to get from one day to the next. Now that I’ve “come out of it’, living day to day just isn’t cutting it.

I want something else, I want more,  I’m not getting it, and I’m pissed about it.

This realization doesn’t have a solution.

But I’m working on it. Instead of sitting around wondering where the universe it going to take me, I’m taking life by the balls and making things happen. I’m saying ‘yes’ to things I typically wouldn’t.

I’ve decided to move clear across the country next year to a city I’ve never been to, and don’t know anyone in. Are these the things that I want? Maybe.

But there’s only one way to find out.

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Love Flashes

posted 11th February 2010    Written by: Katie    CATEGORY: All Posts, Katie, Love, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2, What I've Learned

I get a lot of sex.

In the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening, underneath the moon. Sometimes I’m actually physically exhausted from having so much sex that I need to relax for the rest of the day just to recover.

This WOULD be true if I had the power to rewrite Webster’s Dictionary and make the definition of “Sex” a synonym to the word “Sleep”.  Until then, I’m not exactly what you would call “sexually active.”

This is partly by choice, but mostly not.

I’m one of the lucky ones who is going through the Quarterlife Crisis without a significant other in their life. Some argue that this is the way that it should be – after all, the QLC is about YOU and not anyone else. However, I know many people who went through this thing, and they were in a relationship in the beginning, and in the same one in the end. It just so happened that they found one aspect of their lives that they knew they wanted, and that feeling didn’t change after many “a-ha! That’s what I want!” moments.

You can’t really control how parts of your life hit you. You just have to take them in stride and realize that this is part of the plan, even if you don’t know exactly what that is… yet.

For as long as I can remember, when someone was interested in me,  it wouldn’t phase me much. I wouldn’t get the butterflies or the excitement for each anticipated phone call or communication from them. Dates were just “another day”, and intimacy was just “eh, riding the boney pony. whatever.” I think that part of me knew that entire time, that whoever my potential suitor was interested in wasn’t really me – I was simply a product of what I thought I had to be, what I was expected to be, and only minimally of what I wanted to be.

Bottom line: not me. Not at all.

Now that I’ve been working on finding out who I really am, and working on displaying these traits and habits that I’ve found to be most rewarding, I’ve run into a bit of a snag. When someone is interested in me, I fall in love.

No, I’m serious.

I fall in love with each and every potential lover that enters my life. From a significantly older client who flatters me to bits, to a handsome (and drunk) guy that I have a connection with in a bar, to the gay bartender at a nightclub that I knew was gay the moment I laid eyes on his Britney Spears suspenders. In each case, we meet, they like, I fall in love and inevitably suffer from a broken heart when things don’t work out, even when I know they’re not going to.

What it all boils down to is that going through the Quarterlife Crisis is a major life change and if you’re someone like me who finds out that every single aspect of your life is in dire need of a makeover, it’s almost like starting from scratch. These “falling in love” feelings that I get are like high-school crushes. I’m reliving the years that I missed out on.

The walls are not closing in on me, I’m just having “Love Flashes”.  I think I’d rather get Hot Flashes.

I’m confident that one day, I’ll meet someone who appreciates where I’ve been, where I’m going, and most importantly who I am. It’ll be a mutual appreciation and the sky will be the limit. Until then, I gotta go, there’s an adorable guy in Starbucks– I think I’m in love.

*photo via: nataliedee.com

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Learning to Let Go of the Past

posted 4th February 2010    Written by: Katie    CATEGORY: All Posts, Katie, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2, What I've Learned

INTRODUCING KATIE

I had a moment that changed the way I think about everything

I was blindsided by the Quarterlife Crisis, but in retrospect, I can pinpoint moments as far back as high school when I could have realized it was coming.

When I was 17, when everyone else was studying and prepping for college, I was working full time hours and had a much older boyfriend. I met him at work, he gave me the attention that I always wanted, and he had me at “you’re adorable. I love being around you.”

From there, it was a tumultuous 5 years filled with some ups, mostly downs, cheating, and financial ruins.

After I finally let that relationship go, but not enough to say I was ‘over it’, I dated a man closer to my age, without any experience. Anywhere. (Catch my drift?) He was into Psychology, and loved to analyze every hair on my head. I was interested in psychology and I liked to analyze him right back.  He was a student, he had a car, he had a job, he had a future planned that at times would include me.

I loved him, but had a difficult time showing it. Eventually we got tired of fighting, and we broke up. After a brief rekindle, we broke up again for good.

This breakup rocked my world, and not in a Michael Jackson kind of way. It was more of a “put my tender heart in a blender” kind of way.

2 months later,  last December, I got hit with a layoff.  The job that I was content with, at best, decided that they weren’t content with me, and let me go. The economy was horrible, I had no education, I was getting over a breakup, I was alone.

Everything had fallen apart, and I had no relationship, job, or education to lean on.

Super freakin’ Duper.

I lived the next 6 months in a depressed spending-haze. Unemployment checks would come in, and I’d head right out and buy things that I surely can’t remember or show you now. It felt good in the moment, but as with all unhealthy things, it ends up being something you lean on for support, but it doesn’t really do you any good.

As I spent those days, months, weeks, and years in emotional confusion and turmoil, I really didn’t grasp how much time was passing. Living for the moment worked for me, but I think I relied on that too much, for I didn’t make anything of those moments.

I gave up on opportunities. I started projects and never finished them. I accepted my depression and figured I’d just live with it forever.

I had a moment about a month ago that changed the way I think about everything. I was driving past my old high school, and each time I do, I do a little math in my head and think of how long it’s been since I “graduated”.  I realized it’s been 7 years.

7 years of feeling sorry for myself. 7 years of making excuses of why I would never make it. 7 years of unwillingly sabotaging myself of having a life that I deserved. In that moment I realized that it was time to not only live in the present, but to make the best of every moment.

So, here I am. I’ve made the realization, and am now trying to figure out what I want. I’m learning to be a little bit more selfish and a bit less selfless at times. I’m learning how to find my inner-most desires and making them happen. I’m learning to let go of the past, in order to make a happier future.

I’m learning to be me.

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