Category: Katie

From Boring To Big: The Growth of My Best Life

posted 17th June 2010 Written by: Katie CATEGORY: Inspiration, Katie, Season 2

When I was two, my idea of a perfect life was one with lots of Little People and Barbies.

When I was ten, my idea of a perfect life was one with endless days of playing cops and FBI with my friends and endless nights of making videos about talking dogs with those same friends.

When I was thirteen, my idea of a perfect life was riding bikes and getting ice cream everyday with my late friend, Nick.

The common denominators of these dreams were that they were all right in front of me – right then in the moment. They were attainable, reasonable, and honestly? Kind of boring. This isn’t saying that I don’t value these little moments of wonder – because I do. Whenever I think about the little ideas of perfection that I had as a child, I can’t help but to smile a little.

As I’ve grown older, my dreams have stayed in that conservative, easy to achieve sector. It’s safe, it’s easy, it’s boring!

One of the many things I’ve learned from The Joy Equation is to dream big because if you don’t dream big, then the Universe has no idea what you want. And if the universe has no idea what you want, how the hell are you going to get it?

So.

At age twenty-five, my idea of a perfect life is big. It’s HUGE. It’s MASSIVE.

I want no, I’m going to be the to be the Carrie Bradshaw of the 2010′s. With a less awesome wardrobe, because I’m really into comfort and prefer Yoga pants over Gucci leopard print skinny jeans. I’m going to be living in a Center City, Philadelphia or Washington DC penthouse apartment, because frankly, I can’t take the responsibility and upkeep of a house.

In the winter, the temperature in the house will be 70 degrees. In the summertime, it’ll be 50 degrees. So, when you come over, bring a light jacket.

I won’t have an office in my house because I’ve learned that although convenient, working from home doesn’t exactly promote being productive. I’ll have an office in the center of the business district of wherever I’m living. It’ll be decorated with vision boards of the past and present. It’ll be very minimalistic and I’ll have my own receptionist.

I’ll be amongst the lawyers, attorneys, and high profile editors of the city and as I make my mid afternoon run to Starbucks, I’ll occasionally rub elbows with the famous people. But it’ll be no big deal, because I’m a star too. The star of my own awesome life.

Every week, I’ll meet with my closest friends at some chain restaurant that we grow to love. If I’m living in Center City, it’ll be at Tria for the wonderful wine and cheese plates. We’ll catch up on all of the nitty gritty in our lives, the men, the parties, the fact that we’re happy. Unless we’re miserable, in which case, we’ll order a couple bottles of wine instead of a few glasses.

I’m going to wake up everyday and be excited to get coffee, read the actual paper that I subscribe to, and sit on my screened in back porch to watch the sunrise and pump out a blog post because Katie Blogs.com will never die off. I’ll head into the city to work. I won’t have a car. I prefer the rushing of the public transportation system. I’ll take the elevator on days when I’m feeling lazy, but most days, I take the stairs.

After my long day of work, I head out for a cocktail with a business colleague or friend, and then retreat to my home again where I wind down, and watch One Life to Live over a pint of Ben and Jerry’s. Sometimes, I’ll write a little bit of my memoir. Sometimes, I’ll climb into my memory foam, queen sized bed and listen to my Meditation CD.

You might notice that romantic love doesn’t play a big role in my future life. It’s not that it’s not important, but I really prefer to not count on that. Do I think I’ll be in a relationship or 10 before I find the one? Sure. But will that be necessary to living my biggest, greatest life? No. It’s kind of like wanting to spend a night in a fancy hotel. You make the plans, and it happens. Once you get there you realize that the room service is complimentary and you won a free massage. I mean, you were going to get those things anyway, but it’s nice to get a little bonus.

Here’s to my biggest life, and here’s to yours. Here’s to making them happen and revisiting this post in 5, and 10 years to see where we all are in the process. I’m literally putting on my Google Calendar to revisit this post in June 2015.

Proof?

*Photo credits via and via

Accepting Imperfection is Only Half of the Battle

posted 10th June 2010 Written by: Katie CATEGORY: Job/Career/Work, Katie, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2, Tips & Tools

Being Imperfect, expectations, Forgiving yourself, Quarterlife Crisis

When it comes to family and friends, I have it good. They don’t expect a lot from me, and don’t demand that I be something that I’m not. Imperfection with my closest family and friends is okay.

I deliver what I feel to be an adequate amount of love and support to all of those closest to me. Despite the fact that I’m not expected to be some perfect being to my family and friends, I still feel the pressure of perfection on a daily basis.

The source? Myself.

While I’m working on being my own #1 fan, I am an expert at being my own #1 critic. This feeling of having to be perfect to myself and in the eyes of others has only gotten worse over the last few years. As I’ve overcome a lot of health, emotional, and mental issues, I feel this need to restate that I’m “okay” to everyone, especially myself. I dropped a lot of my destructive habits and formed healthy ones. Even so, when I falter even a little bit, I beat myself up and feel poorly about myself for sometimes days over something as trivial as eating more than 1500 calories in one day. Self-mutilation isn’t something I’ve ever done, but when the intense emotion that I feel regarding my own perfection, I can honestly understand why people take that route.

In addition to appearing “okay” to myself, I also spend a lot of time planning out how to act in front of others.

A little back story:

This past year, during my really bad time, I did some…. bad things. I stopped paying bills all together. I’m still exploring whether that was because I wanted to spend it, or if it was my own form of self mutilation by putting myself through those consequences. Some of these things affected my mother directly and while she was forgiving and understanding once I told her about the dark place I was in, her long-time boyfriend wasn’t as receptive. He and I always had a special connection where we could sit in on a Friday night, drink a few Coors Lights and vent about whatever was going on.

That’s destroyed. He barely speaks 2 words to me anymore. While it hurts, it’s also something that comes with the territory. If he doesn’t have the ability to forgive me, that’s fine. Where most would cut those folks off in their lives, I unfortunately can’t since he’s soon to be my step-father.

None of my other relationships have come to this point, but that’s mostly because I don’t approach those who may “know” about what happened last year. I avoid situations, including family functions, because I’ve become an expert at reading minds. I’m not starting my own mind-reading “take your money, here’s your future” business, but when someone looks at me, I can tell whether its a fake smile or a real one that they offer. The fake ones hurt me, especially when they come from someone that I know respected me.

Accepting imperfection was easy for me. It’s an idea that we’re introduced to at a fairly young age. We typically don’t really learn, believe, and accept it until years after that, if ever. The difficult part for me has been forgiving myself for imperfection. I know I’m imperfect, and I won’t be the best at everything. But when I get passed over for a job, or I don’t complete all of the work I have scheduled for a day, I just can’t forgive myself. I push myself for 12-16 hours a day to complete all of this work. I have to appear like a superstar to my clients. I never want to use the excuse “I had another project for someone else.”.

There’s a bright side to a near emotional breakdown – you can re-evaluate everything and come up with a plan of attack. Some things I’ve done recently to try and forgive myself for imperfection:

Schedule Makeover

I’ve revamped my work schedule to where I’m not working on more than two clients during a day. If something arises for another client and it’s an emergency, I’ll do whatever it is. However, if it’s not an urgent task, I put it off to the next day, or the day in which I’m going to be working on that project. My days? 9 hours. No more 12-16 hour days. I plan one night of the week that’s “my night” in which I do whatever I want in order to reset and reboot my brain so I’m ready to work the next day.

Set Realistic Goals

Just as I don’t work on more than two clients in a day, I don’t expect myself to finish multiple busy projects in one day. If I don’t complete them, I pickup the very next day where I left off. If I have something that’s going to take me a full day, I don’t talk myself into the idea that it should be done quicker. I’m an efficient and dedicated worker. If a project is taking longer, it’s because it’s in depth. It has no reflection on how I am as a worker. I’m a super hero, but I can only do what I can do.

Admitting to Mistakes But Not Letting Them Define Me

Though I haven’t mastered this yet, I’m still working very hard on it. If we were all defined by our mistakes, then we’d all be under words like “Stupid” and “Drunk-Mess” in the dictionary. We as women aren’t drunken, messy, stupid people. We’re women who like to have a good time, and make choices that were good in the moment. There’s nothing wrong with that, even if it was the wrong choice. It’s important to realize that mistakes are just mistakes and aren’t an accurate depiction of who you are.

“It’s never too late to be what you might have been.” – George Elliot.

*Photo Credit: [Via]

Chasing Away The Black Cloud

posted 3rd June 2010 Written by: Katie CATEGORY: Katie, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2, Tips & Tools, What I've Learned

Being True to Yourself, choosing happiness, Clarity, depression, happiness, How to Feel Better, living in the present

The last two weeks have been a little rough on my end, as if you couldn’t tell by my most recent two posts [Found here. and here too].

The awesome Molly sent me an e-mail after reading my scheduled post for last week and asked if I needed to talk. The first thing I thought to do was to apologize for the negative posts and offer to write something else a bit more upbeat and cheery. Basically I was offering to put my feelings on the back burner because I was ashamed of them.

Yeah, brilliant idea for someone who is struggling with self-image and self-worth, right? Convince myself that my feelings were shameful, and I shouldn’t feel that way.</Sarcasm>

In falling back into a depressive state, I was challenged. I was challenged to keep my head on straight, function every day, and hide a lot of my feelings until later in the day when I was alone. It was very similar to being violently ill all day during work and not being able to go home.

You’re miserable, exhausted, and just want your bed, but you have to work all day long.

Two weeks later from the onset of my near emotional collapse, I’m feeling much better. I’m not as hopeless, and emotionally crazy as I was two weeks ago. The “bad case of the blues” passed much quicker than it typically does, and this is absolutely due in part to a list that I made of things that I was going to focus on. If you’re anything like me, having things down in a list is a magical thing.Staring those “to-do”‘s in the face gives me the drive to complete them. I wanted to share a few of the things that I did in hopes that if you find yourself having a tough week or even day, that these things may work for you too.

Schedule in some “Feel Bad” Time

There’s only one thing for certain when you’re feeling depressed/sad/mad – and that’s that you’re feeling depressed/sad/mad. Denying that is not only lying to yourself but it’s also not allowing yourself to feel what you want to feel.

“Just get happy” doesn’t work. At the same time, many of us have to put on that happy face for our jobs or even family members. This is completely fine, but make sure you allow yourself an hour or so later on in the day where you allow yourself to sit with your feelings. Whether you want to talk them over with a friend is up to you, but give yourself the permission to feel whatever emotions your heart wants to.

Don’t wait for clarity – Create it.

I’m the kind of person who revels in moments of complete and total clarity. These anticipated moments come at random times. Sometimes it happens when I’m sitting in a noisy bar with friends. Other times, it’s right before I fall asleep. It’s happened while seeing the Center City skyline at night. In these moments, I feel clear and at ease. I could sit with myself and that feeling forever, but it often fades when I come back down to earth.

One of my problems recently, is that these moments haven’t been occurring. I’m always worried about something or someone, and that moment of clarity…it just isn’t coming. I got angry waiting for it. That anger did absolutely nothing for me except ruin my mood even more. That’s the thing with life, sometimes these moments don’t come willingly. Sometimes, you have to create them.

Practice creating clarity by manually clearing your mind, instead of waiting for your mind to clear itself. Personally, I visualize all of my problems circling my head as if my brain is juggling them. One by one, I flick each one away from my head, and when the final problem is gone, I just sit with that feeling of being free from worry. Even if it just lasts a few moments, it’s enough to get me through and reset my mind a bit.

Write. Write. Write. Write. WRITE

I sometimes avoid writing when I’m feeling yuck-tastic. Mostly, because I’m afraid of what’s going to come out. Recently, I’ve been pushing myself to start writing when I’m feeling crappy. Sometimes, all that’s come out has been “I have absolutely nothing to say, I’m feeling horrible today.” I go back, read that sentence, and I find myself asking “Why do you feel horrible?” At which point, I fill in the blank with an answer. “…I’m feeling defeated. The project that I was banking on was given to someone else. I really thought I had it in the bag, but apparently I wasn’t good enough, and the other person was better.” 9 times out of 10, I end up putting myself in a third-person position, and I inspire the hell out of myself without even realizing it. Before too long, I find my brain turning to think as if I were giving someone the advice and forgetting that it’s actually me.

Maybe this won’t happen to you, but at the very least, you get these feelings out into the open. It’s kind of like throwing up after you’ve drank so much. You have all of that toxic stuff inside of you, and once you get it out, you feel so much better. Throwing up or writing about your issues isn’t the easiest thing, but that yucky stuff is often better out than in.

If Nothing Else – Treat Yourself

These haven’t been the easiest last few weeks. It’s really taken a lot out of me, but I’m recovering well. I’ve been very kind to myself, and given myself extra treats (like concert tickets to see Maroon 5 and Dave Matthew’s Band). I’ve let myself sleep an extra hour in the morning and take a little extra long shower. I bought a case of soda, which I’ve been trying to give up on, but have been craving. I’m forgiving myself for little mistakes that I’ve made, and being gentle to not put myself in situations that I know will be uncomfortable.

I’m focusing a lot more on myself, and I feel a bit better. I think my mind and body really were just begging for attention. Boy are they getting it.

When you’re feeling down and out, what do you do? Treat yourself to anything special?

*photo credit: [via]

Finding My Way Back Home

posted 27th May 2010 Written by: Katie CATEGORY: Katie, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2, What I've Learned

Courage, depression, Fear, Finding My Way, Home

Nelson Mandela said “Courage is not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it.”

John Wayne said “Courage is being scared to death, but saddling up anyway.”

Growing up, I wasn’t afraid of much. I was able to go to the circus, climb the jungle gym, sleep in the dark, and stay home alone. One of my friends was afraid of clowns, and I thought that was kind of awesome, so I decided to be afraid of clowns too, even though it was all for show. Sometimes, I’d forget that I was “afraid of clowns”, find myself at the circus and someone would call me out on it. I’d then say “I didn’t even see the clown! Why did you even show me?” Eventually I kind of got tired of the effort that went into being “afraid” of the clowns, so I gave it up.

When I had a car, I spent a lot of time driving all over the place. I wasn’t afraid of getting lost. I knew I’d always find my way back home because, well, eventually after you make enough left hand turns, the surroundings start looking right. I’ve been lost in terms of physical location dozens of times in my life, and I always, always find my way back home. I don’t even think about the possibility of not making it home because I’ve been in the situation so many times and it always works out.

Chances are, I intentionally got lost for the thrill, or the chance to clear my head.

It’s the other times of being lost that I don’t enjoy. When I accidentally get lost in an area that I shouldn’t have. Or, when I get emotionally lost, which I’ve been having more and more experiences with than I would like. It’s during these times that my intense fear sets in.

What happens if I don’t find my way home? What happens if one time, I get “lost’ forever?

So far, I’ve been lucky enough to eventually find my way back to my home, sanity, or state of bliss depending on the situation. For that I’m incredibly thankful. I’m even okay with the idea of getting lost again, the inevitable doesn’t scare me. It’s the point when I realize I’m actually lost, it’s in that moment that the fear really sets in. Will I ever find my way back? Will I never know what it’s like to be “found” again?

“When you’re lost it’s amazing to find your way back to life.”

My Faith in myself, and the power of positive thinking keeps me from giving up hope, but there’s still that aching fear, “What if this is it? What if I can’t beat it this time?”

I’m finding myself in another bout of “bad” depression right now. I give myself different levels – there’s the “constant” one that I’ll always have. Kind of like the “once an addict always an addict” point of view. Or how diabetics are still diabetics even when their sugar level is “normal”. Then, there’s the rough day or rough minute. I’ve gotten really good at handling those.

I’m a “rough day” master!

Then there’s the bad where I’m an emotional timebomb ready to blow up in a pile of tears and blubbering. My heart aches out of my chest, and my Faith in myself stumbles. This one lasts more than a day, and I’m unable to shake it off like a tough day. It takes all of the energy in the world to get out of bed.

Putting a smile on your face and pretending to be “okay” enough so people won’t freak out and try to send me to the nearest crisis center is one of the hardest things ever.

It’s not the idea of crashing that I’m afraid of. I don’t mind pain all that much, either emotional or physical. As long as I know that help and relief are on the way, I’m relatively okay. The fear lies in the idea and possibility that I won’t get better this time. The fear lies in the possibility that I won’t muster up the strength to overcome it this time. The fear lies in the idea that I’ll let myself down and not find my way home again.

Never finding my way back isn’t likely, and I understand that. The sad truth that it’s very possible is what scares me more than anything. As far as I’m aware, there is no real solution to this other than to make it through each day one day at a time. When days are too difficult to take, I take it hour by hour, and when hours are too difficult I do minute to minute. The fear is going to be with me no matter what, but I’ve always pressed on in sincere hope that relief is on the way, even though it might not be.

If nothing else, I’ll try. And I’ll fight the good fight until I find my way back home.

So, Courage, please help me find my way home again. You’ve never let me down before. I’m lost and afraid and I just want to be home.

“Courage doesn’t always roar, Sometimes courage is the little voice at the end of the day that says, ‘I’ll try again tomorrow’ “.

*Photo Credit: (via)

A Roadblock on my Journey to Authentic Happiness

posted 20th May 2010 Written by: Katie CATEGORY: Inspiration, Katie, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2

authentic happiness, depression, Head VS Heart, Listening to my heart

I need to get this out there, and deviate away from my planned blog post for this week. For nearly 5 months, I’ve been journeying down my path to authentic happiness and loving it. All of a sudden, I’ve found myself miserable. I feel like I’m going through a break-up or grieving some sort of loss.

I know, I know, “Sell me on the good stuff! Tell me the Quarter Live crisis is just a phase and everything will be okay! Once I learn how to handle it, it’s smooth sailing.”

Sorry, lovemuffin. It’s not cut and dry like that. I’m quickly learning that.

The last few weeks have been what I can only describe as a blur of emotions, realizations, endings and new beginnings. For a good few months, I was riding on the high of the anticipation of a new life according to me. It was an amazing high, and I craved it. There was nothing wrong with this, of course, until the day when I realized that I was focusing more on the end result, and not enough about how to get there.

I also paid so much focus on the future that I neglected to focus on the present moment and the things around me. Because of that, I started to ignore priorities, opportunities, and MYSELF.

Every weekend, I go out. Every. Single. Weekend. Every Wednesday I go out. Every Single. Wednesday.

Both of these days are designated “roommate date nights”, and according to the unspoken roommate code, you don’t cancel on roommate date night(s). A seemingly good opportunity to get out of the house and spend time with my beloved roomies, I held true to the plans even on nights when my heart wasn’t in it. My brain would say “Katie, you HAVE to go. It’s Date Night!” Ironically, my brain says to me exactly what one of my roommates has when I’ve tried to cancel on date night. The guilt trip gets laid on me, and inevitably, I end up out until the wee morning hours on a work night.

There are dozens of similar situations in which my brain is saying “Come on, let’s go” and my heart is saying, “No”. As individual events, they all seem like just little things. When you put them all together, you get one big cluster-shit of things that my heart doesn’t want to do. Each thing that I do, my heart just keeps getting more and more pissed at my brain for doing crap it doesn’t want to do.

If my heart had a voice it’d say something like “Dude, Brain, everyday, we’re doing shit that you want to do, how about we try to do some things that I want to do?”

I’ve become really great at thinking myself out of feeling negative things. It works in the moment, and gets me back on the road to functioning with a smile on my face. I’m learning to realize though, that maybe, just maybe I need to allow myself to feel sad, or disappointed, or God Forbid “say no” to something that I don’t want to do.

Since I’ve begun creating a life of joy for myself, I’ve been very conscious of not worrying about my past and creating a future. In the process I lost sight of paying attention to not only what I want but also knowing what I need.

This past week, a very good friend of mine came over to my house. You know, the one that still doesn’t feel like home yet? She stopped by to drop a few things off to me, and she stayed for a few hours and we just played Wii, laughed, joked and had a great time.

I had a taste of authentic happiness, and I want more of it.

I’m making a commitment right here and right now to start listening to my heart a bit more, and my brain a bit less. I want to do things that really make me happy. When I’m feeling happy, I want to know that it’s my heart feeling happy and not just my brain trying to convince me.

My heart is tired of being on the back burner. My emotions and heart are tired of pretending that they’re content with things that they aren’t. I’m emotionally exhausted and my eyes are dry from crying so much over the last few days.

I just want to be happy. Truly, authentically happy.

*Photo Credit: Funkyah

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