When I started writing for Stratejoy, I had just up and moved to San Francisco with no job, no money, no friends, no place to live, and no plan. I had a crush on a boy and a love for the Golden Gate Bridge, but that was about it.

In the time that’s passed between then and now, I have found an incredible job, a stable income, a place to live, some of the best friends I’ve ever had, a plan for the future, a relationship with a new (and infinitely better-for-me) boy, and a continually renewing love for the Golden Gate Bridge.

Taking this weekly pause to write about the more serious side of my life has helped me frequently reflect on who I am, who I want to be, and how to best close the gap between the two. In those moments of reflection, here are the lessons I’ve learned:

Take the time to talk things out with the people you care about. Honest communication solves most problems before they become problems at all. And don’t just talk, listen.

Understand that different doesn’t have to mean bad. I’m me and you’re you and our differences can help us bring each other closer to where we want to be.

Send thank you cards. Sincere expressions of gratitude let someone know that what they did mattered to you, and most of the time what we need is to feel appreciated.

Make plans. The only thing better than having something delicious to look forward to is feeling the plans turn to memories and knowing you’ll be able to fondly remember them forever.

Treat yourself better than you treat anyone else. Understand that selfish and self-care are two different things, and that you can’t show up for anyone else if you don’t show up for yourself first.

Remember that your greatest freedom is the freedom to choose. You can choose which impulses to follow and which to ignore. You can choose who you let into your life, how you spend your time, and what occupies your thoughts. Think good thoughts.

Find what inspires you, and then mainline it on the regular. There’s no such thing as too much inspiration.

Stand up for the people you love and the beliefs that move you. Let yourself be passionate, even if it means your ideas and feelings will be isolating to some. We’re not here to please everyone and there’s no glory in being watered down, overly accommodating versions of ourselves.

Stop wanting what you don’t want. Learn to tell the difference between what you actually want and what your ego wants. Tell your ego to shut the hell up.

Ask questions. Other people can’t read your mind, so don’t assume you can read theirs. The fastest way to find out what you want to know is to just ask.

Give people room to make mistakes. High standards give you great results, but unrealistic standards give you nothing but disappointment.

And lastly, take risks. If you don’t jump to try to reach your best possible life, who will?

[Note from the editor: Nicole Antoinette, it's been an absolute JOY, to have you in my life these last 8 months.  Can you believe that's all it's been?   From our very first emails that crossed paths in the ether, to lunch in SF, to phone calls asking the Universe to just get you to California, to the amazing hot mess you pulled off in Vegas- you are a bundle of energy, an amazing friend, and a woman to be reckoned with.

I thank you from the very bottom of my heart for sharing your passion, your killer writing skills, and such an intimate slice of your life over here.  The Tribe and I will never be the same, sweetness! Here's to the big dreams coming true, finding happiness in the small moments, and being utterly and deliciously YOU.  'Cause you're so damn good at being YOU.   Love, Love, Love,   Molly]

photo credit: Jamie Varon

It has been a lovely pleasure sharing the Stratejoy stage with such fun ladies these past few months. And now, for our second to last week as Season 2 bloggers, we’re doing a little interview. We each picked three questions, and all four of us are answering the same twelve questions. Ready? Cool.

What can’t you live without? What do you wish there was less of in the world?

There aren’t many things I couldn’t live without, but there are definitely some that I wouldn’t want to live without. Like cheese. And eyeliner. And hugs. And hot tubs. And The West Wing. And Jamie. (Okay fine, that last one is more of a need than a want.)

There are a lot of things I could always use more of – More is Better, right? Well, except when it’s not. The world could definitely use a little less of some things. Like plagiarism. And selfishness. And people who can’t admit they’re wrong when they’re wrong.

Inspiration List (Person? Song? Book? Website? Place?)

Yes, I’m totally cheating and linking to my inspiration list.

What’s your favorite food memory?

I saved this question for last and then came back to it because it makes my brain hurt. Favorite food memory? FAVORITE FOOD MEMORY? I was a Food Studies major at NYU, how in the hell am I supposed to answer this question? Okay, deep breath. Eating handmade pasta in Florence. No, wait, baking this cake. No, wait the cheese plate at Otto in New York City. No wait! Ah!

::head explodes::

If you had to spend $10,000 in one day, what would you do with it?

I’d split it in half. Half for a round-the-world plane ticket and half to pre-pay as much of my parents’ rent as possible.

Describe your priorities in four words or less.

Laughter, words, food, and sex.

What is the one thing you most want to be known for?

Encouraging people to speak up about who they really are, how they really feel, and what they really want, no matter what.

You’re in a bar for karaoke night, you have three songs to sing – and each has to be one that you relate to on each of these things: Love – Life – Friends. Which three songs do you choose, and why?

Love | Edge of Desire | John Mayer | His voice alone is everything I love about love.

Life | Dog Days Are Over | Florence + The Machine | This song just makes me think, “The best is out there. Go get it already.”

Friends | Here’s The Thing | Girl Talk | My ultimate “underwear dance party with your girlfriends” song.

What’s the weirdest thing that you’ve cried because of? (Maybe a movie, an unexpected song, something someone said that wouldn’t normally inflict emotion.)

I cry hysterically when I see young children performing (singing, dancing, anything). Like, absolutely unstoppable tears. You can imagine how it went at the end-of-summer talent show when I was Director of a children’s summer day camp…

I’m coming to visit your city for just 2 hours during a layover flight for a business trip. Where would you be certain to take me and why?

Well, do you like cocktails? I doubt you’d be coming to visit me if you didn’t like cocktails, so let’s assume that’s a “yes.” I’d take you for a drink at Top of the Mark, because the panoramic views of the city are perfect.

If you could have any super power, what would it be and why?

Is having unlimited money a super power? That would totally be my super power.

If you could live anywhere in the world for six months (money being no object), where would you live and why?

Santorini, definitely. I loved Greece when I was younger but never made it to Santorini. And the pictures of it? The white and the blue and the water and the overwhelming gorgeous of it all? Yeah, I could handle an all-expense-paid six months of that.

What do you consider the most important event in your life so far?

Moving to San Francisco – nothing has been the same since. I feel like my life has two parts, the part before San Francisco and the part now. It’s unquestionably the most defining thing in my life, the thing I can point to and say, “This, this right here is why I am who I am.”

photo credit: Stefan Baudy

Here’s a shockingly simple realization: I’m an adult and I can choose who I spend my time with. I know this isn’t a bizarre or novel idea, but for some reason it’s like I’ve only recently started to understand it.

Even since my play date days, I’ve been the type to have a best friend. I always had lots of friends, but it was important for me to have a best, and for other people to know we were bestfriendsforever. Of all the best friendships, most fizzled out as we got older and realized that liking the same kinds of My Little Ponies wouldn’t hold our relationship together through adolescence and early adulthood.

The friendships that didn’t fizzle out went one of two ways, either we’re still friends, just in a different “we don’t spend every second together but still love each other” capacity, or they exploded in brilliant turquoise and orange flames, taking down egos and borrowed sweaters in their paths. I’m not proud of these violently flashy friendship meltdowns, but sometimes when you’re so closely connected to someone and that connection silently turns toxic and passive aggressive, the disaster that hits when it reaches the surface is almost inevitable.

Such was the case with my college best friend.

“Are you in room 530?” she asked. I nodded. “Yah, we’re roommates. I’m going downstairs to get some more toilet paper.”

And that was that. Direct, unfrilly, no squee-ing, slightly edgy, a little cynical, no holds barred. That was the girl I met at freshman orientation at NYU, the girl I was drawn to because of our similarities and fascinated by because of our stark differences.

She was from middle America, she liked the type of music that really just sounds like angry, aggressive shrieking to me. She spoke some French, was wildly dedicated to school, and seemed to believe that her priorities were somehow more important and more relevant than anyone else’s. She was gorgeous in a way that was both classic and exotic. She was excellent at applying makeup and making pancakes, and was the kind of friend who would never leave you at the bar because a guy she’d been flirting with had invited her back to his place.

By the second night of the two night orientation weekend in June of 2003, most of these facts were still a mystery to me. After some middle of the night discussion, we decided that the little we did know about each other was better than everything we didn’t know about all of our other potential freshman year roommates, and so we signed up to live together. Just like that.

Sometimes, I wonder how I seemed to her back then, during those first days. She knew I was from California. She knew I spent the whole weekend flirting with a really cute guy named Mike who later turned out to be a pretty sizable douchebag. She probably thought I was spunky and honest, sexually charged, maybe a little too loud and a little too “This Is Who I Am,” even though I now realize, looking back, that I had no clue who I was at all.

When I think back on the three years I spent at NYU, I sometimes try to picture how different my experience would have been if our last names weren’t alphabetically close enough to warrant our placement as orientation roommates. It’s interesting really, how the tiniest thing (like both having names that started with the same first two letters) can wind up determining such a big part of your life. And she was great, really great, we just wound up not being so great for each other – and it took us much too long to admit it.

We had that type of friendship where too much revolved around us. We were consumed with each other in a platonic kind of way, and I always found myself obsessing about her opinion of me and seeking her approval, which she almost never gave out. That was one of our biggest and most insurmountable differences, the way we expressed ourselves and our emotions. She was always more private with hers, less free with the complimenting and the sharing; whereas I am and always have been too crazy not to live my life out loud as much as possible and fiercely make sure that you know you’re special to me if you’re special to me.

When I think of how explosively our friendship ended, I usually start to berate myself about it. And then I remember that with a relationship like ours, where we lived all over each other and yet weren’t able to communicate, there just wasn’t another possible ending.

Four years have passed since our friend-breakup, which in most cases is much harder and more painful than a romantic breakup, and it’s easier now, with so much geographic space between us, to softly and lovingly remember the good in each other, the nights we’d lay awake giggling and giving each other game-show-style quizzes on trivial things like our favorite time of day and favorite type of candy bar. We were convinced that we’d someday be asked to be on a “how well do you know your roommate” game show, and we were not prepared to lose.

{photo credit: CarbonNYC}

For the 18 years before I was born, my mother was a flight attendant. Shortly after giving birth, she again took to the skies, and then promptly quit after realizing that sitting on the jump seat, starring at a picture of your baby and sobbing hysterically don’t make for a fun high-altitude hostess.

So she stayed home with me, which I loved, because she was my eternal playmate.

It was different with my dad though. He worked long hours, took frequent overseas business trips, and wasn’t involved in the every-second-of-the-day-ness of my life like my mother was. But when he was home, he’d always take me on adventures around the city.

New York City was our playground, something I didn’t fully appreciate with my five tender years of life experience, and the fun was everywhere. It was always this museum and that street fair and this park and that exhibit and everything else the city had to show us during our Saturdays on the town.

Most often, if the weather allowed, we’d wind up in Central Park. The rocks around the park were mountainous in my eyes, and climbing to the top of them was a sought after feat. We’d routinely walk from one end of the park to the other, stopping uptown at Citarella so my dad could buy fresh fish for dinner.

Which is where the wheels usually flew off the wagon of our picturesque adventure day.

The Enormous Father Daughter Fish Debate would start as soon as he began steering us toward the park’s exit. I might have only been five, but I knew when it was fish time.

“No thank you,” I’d say.

He would look down at me calmly, “I didn’t offer you anything.”

“No thank you for fish,” I’d reply.

“The fish isn’t for you,” he’d say. “Although it wouldn’t kill you to taste some.”

My eyes would go wide. Was he serious? He couldn’t be serious. Definitely not. But maybe? No. Fish? Would I have to? No. But maybe? Ah! Disaster!

“It maybe would kill me,” I’d answer thoughtfully, at which point he’d take my hand and we’d cross the street toward the store.

“I said no thank you!” I pleaded, trying to pull him back toward the park.

“We’re going inside,” he’d try to say, interrupted immediately by my desperate argument that it smelled too much like fish and so we’d have to stay outside. To which my father would reply that well, it is fish, and what did I expect?

Exasperated, my next attempt was to shout about how I DON’T EAT THINGS WITH WEIRD GOOGLY EYES BECAUSE OH THE DISGUSTING HORROR. I then made fish faces and pretended to die a disease filled, ‘why would you ever even think to eat me’ type of death, which is more or less when I was given The Look.  Meaning that I got my ass inside and did my best to stare at the floor and breathe through my mouth.

After we’d been going on these outings for about a year, my father thought (for some insane reason) that it was time I learned about sushi, and he told me all about it. I was disgusted. I just, I couldn’t for the six-year-old life of me imagine how anyone ate raw fish. My father assured me, year after year, that I would grow to like it. I told him, year after year, that it was more likely that I’d grow twelve more legs than a taste for raw fish.

And yet here I am, twenty years later, loving sushi. Loving sushi! Me! When I first called my dad to tell him that I was on my way home from a sushi dinner, I thought he was going to have a stroke. The truth though, is that for me, the hardest part about loving sushi didn’t have anything to do with the way it tastes.

The hardest part about loving sushi was allowing myself the freedom to change.

There’s a tea house here in San Francisco that sells, among it’s regularly priced items, a $60 pot of tea.

When I first saw it on the menu, I thought it had to be a typo. I mean, $60? For tea? I called the waitress over and asked and she told me that no, it wasn’t a typo and that a singular pot of that particular tea really did cost $60. I stared at her. She stared back.

I asked if the tea would either a) make me high or b) come over and do my laundry. She said no. I told her I was kidding. She didn’t laugh.

But I did. Well, until I didn’t. Until I realized that there are seriously people out there who spend $60 on tea. $60! On! Tea! Maybe everyone who does this is considerably older than me, I thought. Or maybe they’re trust fund babies. Or maybe they just know what in the hell they’re doing when it comes to being 25 and being smart with money at the same time.

Not that I’m bad with money, I’m not. I’m a meticulous (read: anal) budget keeper, I pay my quarterly taxes on time, I don’t have any credit card debt, and I still can’t fathom being able to spend $60 on tea without having a stroke over it. Being 25 feels like a weird financial age. It feels like an age where if you took a sample of the financial situations of the people I spend my time with, everything would be scattered and you wouldn’t get anything close to equal results.

In college, I felt like people were more or less operating on similar budgets – namely, everyone was broke.

Being broke was almost the hip-ish thing in college, wasn’t it? We all bonded by complaining about how expensive everything was, searching out the best possible drink deals, and signing for student loans we couldn’t imagine having to pay back. But after we graduated, we all went in different directions. I have friends who went the serious relationship route, joining their finances with someone else and plunging on toward marriage. I have friends who went straight to grad school, friends who jumped into the corporate thing, friends who moved back in with their parents, and then there’s me. I went from graduating early to a series of non-traditional jobs, one after another, and I’m still following a similarly road-map-free path. I’ve never had a 401K, never had any formal financial guidance, and am only now starting to give some thought to how I’m ever going to get out from under my student loans.

Which is why this little tea incident got me thinking. I mean, if being able to taste $60 tea without simultaneously crying about potentially being homeless is on my goal list, I should probably start forging a path to get there.

The hardest thing for me when it comes to money, though, is trying to figure out where to start. It all just seems so… surreal. Having enough money to retire one day? Owning a house? Paying off my student loans? Thoughts like that seem like some sick fantasy land that I’ll never reach. I took this financial fitness quiz last night, out of curiosity, and I scored a 51. Out of 100. Which seems like a rather epic failure, but apparently I’m pretty in line with other people in their 20s, struggling to find that balance between playing hard now and saving hard for later.

I find that that’s the biggest difference between people my age when it comes to money – the now vs. later question. I have some friends who will run up their credit cards for a good time, and then I have other friends who won’t pay more than $20 for dinner. Would it be easier if we were all in the same financial situation? Sure.

But, more than anything, I think it would be easier if money weren’t such a taboo topic, if friends were more comfortable discussing it in detail as if it were any other conversation.

{photo credit: Photos8.com}

Over the past few years, I’ve built up a small arsenal of go-to sources of inspiration. Things to click on, watch, listen to, read, and re-read when I’m feeling stuck in the hole.

Sometimes I’m in the hole because I’m sad. Sometimes it’s because I’m anxious. Sometimes it’s because I’m overwhelmed, or lacking control, or feeling overly sensitive. And sometimes I just need to stop, push the reset button, and regroup. No matter what pushed me down into the hole though, these are the things I consistently use to get myself out:

The Things That Make Me Think

Do Interesting Things | by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits

How To Be Awesome | by Chris Guillebeau of The Art of Non-Conformity

The sign of a great career is having great opportunities, and saying no | By Penelope Trunk of Brazen Careerist

Quest for Balance | by Carlos Mic of OwlSparks

The Things That Make Me Laugh

Kittens Inspired by Kittens

This photo. And this one.

This is Why I’ll Never be an Adult | by Allie Brosh of Hyperbole and a Half

I’m pretty sure it’s pronounced “Wesley Ann.” | by Jenny Lawson of The Bloggess

Things I Don’t Understand Even When People Explain Them To Me | by Jamie Varon of A Life in Translation

The Things That Tickle My Creative Fancy

Pink Sherbet Photography

Charm City Cakes

Six Sentences

The Things That Spark My Daydreams

Fuck Yeah, Tattoos!

lululemon goaltender

Where The Hell is Matt?

Now, what are some of YOUR favorite sources of smiles and inspiration??

photo credit: Pink Sherbrt Photography

The day my mom told me we were moving to London was the day I decided that I hated her and was, in fact, ready to live on my own. I was 8 years old.

“But WHY,” I yelled in her face, more a tear filled, gurgling statement than a question. “I like New York, how could you do this to me! I can’t move. What about my friends who will I talk to I don’t speak British at all!!” I was more or less hysterical, bites of pizza falling out of my mouth and landing on my lap, on the floor, on my mother.

“Relax Nicole, it’s going to be okay,” she said. “Relax?!” I thought, because telling me to relax is like waving a red button in front of someone while yelling, “Don’t touch this red button!!” It makes me totally crazy and irrational, eyes whirling around inside their sockets. I hated it then as much as I hate it now.

“I don’t need to relax, I am relaxed. I’m FINE I just hate London and I hate you.” Clearly, I was more relaxed than ever.

“I know you’re worried about everything changing, about losing your friends, but please don’t worry sweetheart; just because something changes doesn’t mean it changes for the worse, and it certainly doesn’t mean it’s over.” Yeah right, I thought, how am I going to hold hands with Matt at recess from another continent? She doesn’t know anything.

But, as it often turns out with mothers and their seemingly infinite wisdom, she did. She knew then what I know now, that change, although inevitable and most likely the only constant factor in our lives, doesn’t have to spell disaster. Instead, it can just spell different. Sometimes I get stuck thinking that whenever I’m happy, all of the current factors in my life need to remain exactly the same in order to continue being happy. But, if this were true, how boring would our lives be? Different isn’t bad, different is different. Change is coming, it’s always coming, and people move and flow into and out of places and jobs, into and out of each other’s lives, and that’s okay. The human capacity for adaptation is highly underestimated.

“You’ll make friends quickly, you’ll see, because there’s no such thing as ‘speaking British,’ silly. Everyone in London speaks English, just like you, and all those other 8 year olds over there are just waiting for their spunky, new friend to arrive, they just don’t know it because the change hasn’t happened for them yet.”

“Because of the time difference?” I asked.

My mother laughed. “Sure,” she answered. “It’s because of the time difference.”

photo credit: markhillary

When I was younger, I used to get so excited about having homework. Back then, homework meant responsibility and responsibility meant I was getting older, getting closer to being a grown up, closer to freedom.

The definition of freedom was frequently changing though, and soon enough homework became something to be despised, something that got in the way of all of the other, cooler, more grown up things I wanted to be doing. Dramatically important things like going to the movies with my friends and gossiping about whether a kiss with no tongue still counted as a real kiss.

Freedom came and went in phases: being allowed to go out with a boy for the first time, driving, having an extended curfew, flying alone, and finally, going away to college. I’ve always been independent, but I never really knew from freedom until I moved to NYC for college.

Once again, the meaning of freedom shifted, because I had all the damn freedom in the world. I was swimming in freedom, diving into it, living it the hell up. I could go to class (or not), I could stay out all night (or not), I could have casual sex (or not) with whoever I wanted (or not), I could keep in touch with my parents (or not), drink shot after shot of bottom shelf vodka (or not), and on and on (or not and not).

At some point though, I think I maxed out on the freedom. Maxed out on the skipping class and pounding shots. Maxed out on the making out with random guys in bars, maxed out on coming home at ridiculous hours. I had ceased to be swimming in freedom; in fact, I was drowning in it. Because the thing with freedom is that it indicates that you’re free from something. For most people, it’s freedom from their parents, from authority, from having to report to anyone else. And being independent is great, being free is great, but I quickly found that with all my new freedoms came the weight of my conscience, the weight of answering to myself.

And while I’ve gotten a few (or more) things past my parents over the years, I’ve learned that it’s pretty hard to pull one over on yourself.

And so, like always, the grass became greener. I started to think longingly of the times when I didn’t have to do my own laundry, the times when I didn’t know how tempting happy hour was, the times when I never had to suffer through an all nighter to write yet another paper that I had procrastinated on.

Now, almost four years out of college, I still sometimes I forget that I’m a grown ass woman, that this is what being an adult actually is, even if it never seems to feel like it. I complain about never having enough time or enough money, as if it’s someone else’s responsibility to teach me how to better manage either one. I eat cookies late at night in a dark kitchen, as if no one seeing me will mean it doesn’t count. I start sentences with “when I grow up,” as if that’s some far away time that’s yet to come. I look in the mirror and wonder what other people are doing and how other people feel, thinking that in comparison I’m probably doing an awfully bad job of pretending to be a Real Adult.

But what is a Real Adult anyway? Where did all this damn pressure come from? And really, can’t we just step away from the spray of pressure hose for a second and define what being an adult means for ourselves and then just go LIVE it?

Love is what we all have in common. And yet it’s the most impossible thing to describe. More than anything, love is our intangible common denominator.

I’m a logical person, a person who thinks things through, and then over-thinks them, and then thinks about them some more, and some more still – and yet I don’t know that I can define love. And the cliche about love, of course, is that you’ll know it when you’re in it, right?

I used to think it happened explosively. That love was something astronomically powerful that not only swept you off your feet, but knocked you down on your ass and soaked through your skin and became an overarching force that was impossible to ignore. But, what if that’s not it? What if love is quiet and soft? What if love is gradual and delicate? What if love isn’t an explosion, but is instead this calm feeling you get when you wake up one Wednesday morning and realize that there’s no where else you’d rather be than next to this person whose quirks make you laugh until you can’t breathe? What if, more than anything, love isn’t what all the romantic comedies have made us believe it is?

Over the past six years, I’ve thought a lot about love. I’ve defined it, I’ve been in it and out of it, I’ve thought I was in it and then realized that I wasn’t, I’ve wanted it, not wanted, and on and on.

Lately, I think I’ve stopped trying to define it and have started to believe that being in love is about more than just explosive emotion. And yet, it’s also about more than just finding someone to coexist with in the same space at the same time. Love is about finding someone who lights even your tiniest parts on fire, and everyone’s tiny parts are different. It’s about finding someone who makes you more you, who will even surprise you every now and then by knowing you better than you know yourself.

For me, it’s about finding someone who is as enthusiastic about cheese plates as I am, someone who thinks that when it comes to laughter, sex, and alcoholic drinks, the more intense the better. Love, for me, needs to be somewhat spontaneous, I need someone who will just up and take me on a cruise. Someone who won’t tease me because I have to wash things in a specific order in the shower (shampoo, face, conditioner, body), or who won’t laugh (too hard) when I’m hungover and can’t do anything except lay on one side with my eyes closed and ask repeatedly for someone to squeeze my head.

And you know what? Even after all the thought and the over-thought, after all the defining and the re-defining, what I want from love is actually quite simple: I want (as Chelsea said) a safe place to rest my lips. I want someone who will keep me in his heart because that’s where I’ll be warm and safe. I want someone who will look at me when I’m at my messiest and kiss me on the forehead, someone who thinks I’m lovely in the morning, and at night, and during all the in between times. I want someone who isn’t afraid to live, really live, who identifies what he wants from life and then demands it, loudly and without hesitation.

I want someone who won’t tell me that I’m his everything, because he has a full life of things that don’t revolve entirely around me. I want someone who can handle me, who can tame me in a way, simply by running his fingers down my spine and settling his hand on my lower back. Someone who knows how much I like to be whispered to and who isn’t scared off when I’m crying. Someone who can sense when I’m overwhelmed, who just knows when life is too much and who will, in those moments, stand close enough to me to block everything else out.

photo credit: le vent le cri

I catch myself doing it all the time. “I’ll be happy when I have more money” or, “I’ll be happy when I’ve traveled all around the world,” or, “I’ll be happy when I’m in better shape” or, “I’ll be happy when I publish a book.” When, when, when.

There always seems to be a “when,” doesn’t there? A point in the future that when you pass it, you’ll definitely be happier than happy.

Except what happens when you do get there? What happens when you look around and realize that you have everything you ever thought you wanted, and yet you feel like you still want more? When does ambitious become greedy?

When does chasing a dream turn into chasing a mirage?

Maybe this is what the Quarterlife Crisis is all about: learning how to be happy. Maybe being an adult means learning how to not get stuck in the agonizing cycle of the When Syndrome and appreciate what you have while setting challengingly realistic goals for the future.

I don’t know.

But, what I do know is that getting stuck in the cycle of “when when when” is one of my biggest fears. I’m constantly trying to assess what I want to understand where it fits among the puzzle pieces of everything else that makes up my life, and I’m terrified of wanting so much that I’m constantly doing the “when” thing and am never just wholly satisfied with where I am at any given moment.

Part of the fear, I think, comes from feeling that if I let myself be satisfied with where I am, I’ll get lazy. I worry that, “I’ll be happy when” will turn to, “Oh, I don’t need to pursue anything more because it’s fine the way it is.” And yes, even as I say that I understand how ridiculous it sounds. I get it. I get that like most every situation, there’s a middle ground between the two unwanted extremes; I just can’t seem to get there.

I think, really, that the heart of it is that I don’t know how to just let myself be happy.

I don’t know how to live so that I’m simultaneously content with where I am and proud of what I’ve accomplished while also staying focused on my big dreams. I’m much more comfortable operating at one of two ends of the spectrum, either being deliriously happy with what I have and not needing/wanting more, or being completely dissatisfied and struggling to change.

How is it possible for people to feel a combination of both of those at the same time?

Do people actually feel this way?

photo credit: Pink Sherbet Photography