Category: Nicole Antoinette

The Fine Line Between Bending and Breaking

posted 18th May 2010    Written by: Nicole Antoinette    CATEGORY: Love/Relationships, Nicole Antoinette, Season 2, What I've Learned

I’ve been thinking a lot about boundaries lately, about the point where I end and everything else begins, and about how to let people in in a way that’s far enough but not too far.

I bring this up in conversation one afternoon, during hour three of a six hour road trip, and he tells me that I’m better at setting boundaries than I think I am.

“What do you mean?” I ask.

He tells me.

While he talks, I drive. I drive, and he reminds me that our entire weekend was a web of boundaries. Emotional boundaries, like deciding to date exclusively. Geographic boundaries, like driving from San Francisco to Oregon to cross another state off my list. Physical boundaries, like trying things in bed that we had never tried before.

As he talks, I realize that he’s right. I also realize that with him, I’ve been able to set warm and comfortable boundaries that inch along as time passes and as we change. I realize that our boundaries are soft enough to be malleable as we outgrow them, but hard enough not to let us grow too quickly.

And I decide that this is the most important part of any relationship: setting boundaries that are tight enough to contain you, but not so tight that you suffocate within them.

Our conversation slips to silence and I think.

I think about the ways in which I am stubborn and the ways in which I am flexible. I notice that I am stubborn about how information is shared; I like to tell the other person things on my own terms. I notice, though, that I am flexible on how I absorb information. Communication is communication when I’m on the receiving end.

We keep driving. City to city, little boundary after little boundary, and I think about which parts of myself I’m willing to bend for other people and about which people I’m willing to bend them for. Then, I wonder where the fine line is between bending and breaking. I ask myself, “When are we holding two sides of the same wishbone, pulling on it gently, and when have we snapped it, leaving each person with only one uneven half?”

He stirs the silence. We talk about the learning curve that comes with removing a previous boundary and establishing a new one. I tell myself that you have to break in new boundaries like you’d break in new shoes, and that the key to making any relationship work is to honor the learning curve and let yourself become naturally accustomed to the new framework.

I nod quietly to myself about all of the times I’ve jumped too soon, all of the times when I went from boundary A to boundary F without touching all the letters in between, and I see that each time, I wound up dizzy and covered in learning curve blisters on the other side.

I realize, though, that I’m stubborn about loving these blisters, the ones that have since turned to scars, because they remind me that we can cross boundaries too quickly and yet still always manage to find our way back.

photo credit: woodleywonderworks

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You Deserve Authentic Happiness

posted 11th May 2010    Written by: Nicole Antoinette    CATEGORY: Inspiration, Nicole Antoinette, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2

The breaking point in my Quarterlife Crisis came this past summer, when I left an emotionally crippling job and took off on a three month backpacking trip across the country. Traveling was harder than I thought it would be, proving the cliche but oh so true saying that, “wherever you go, there you are.”

Constantly on the move, one of my biggest challenges was staying balanced and trying to maintain an emotionally grounded life while all of the physical aspects of it were constantly in limbo.

A few weeks into my trip, before I ever knew I’d wind up blogging over here at Stratejoy come 2010, I signed on to complete Molly’s happiness course, The Joy Equation: A 30 Day Guide To Living Life On Purpose. Going through this course, which includes journal prompts and audio sessions and a 40 page Joy Plan Workbook, put me in touch with myself at exactly the right time, gently challenging me to think about who I am and who I want to be, and what I have to do to bridge the ever widening gap between the two.

Throughout the 30 days, The Joy Equation inspired me without being preachy, made me think without being overwhelming, kept me interested without requiring a huge time commitment, and remained consistently fun. My favorite part about the course was that it inspired me to evaluate and reevaluate my definition of happiness and really give pause about what it means to show up for the world every single day.

During week three of the course (the part where you’re examining your big dreams), I came across one of the most thought provoking quotes in the Joy Plan Workbook, a quote that said, “Failure’s hard, but success is far more dangerous. If you’re successful at the wrong thing, the mix of praise and money and opportunity can lock you in forever.”

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately, about how much easier it’s been to get over the things that haven’t worked, the things I haven’t succeeded at, than it has been to walk away from situations that I excelled at, but didn’t love. I think a lot of people experience this same feeling, actually, the feeling of being trapped by things that are just good enough to not require an immediate fix. That’s what settling is, right? Accepting something simply because it works and it’s there and we’re either too lazy or too afraid to climb one rung higher on the ladder of unknown possibilities to see what we could have instead.

With my 25th birthday only a month away, I think it’s time for another authentic happiness gut check. I’d really like to start all over again with this course and go for round two of Nicole Gets to Know Nicole, especially given how much has changed in my life since my initial foray into happiness exploration.

You should do it too. And then we can all talk about it. Over margaritas and hugs.

p.s.  Editor’s note:  Um, yes. This is some subtle foreshadowing of the “Big Announcement” on Thursday!  If you’re not on the Jolts ‘o Joy eNewsletter list, make it happen.  Upper right corner.  And then just sit tight, because some help with the “pricing” (hint, hint) of the Joy Equation Course is coming soon.  A.K.A. Thursday…

photo credit: alicepopkorn

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Sleepless Summer Nights

posted 4th May 2010    Written by: Nicole Antoinette    CATEGORY: Nicole Antoinette, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2

If this story had a clear beginning, I’d start there. But it doesn’t and I can’t, so I’ll start somewhere in the middle and tell you that I spent the past five summers as Director of a children’s summer day camp in Southern California, and that those 15 collective months were the best and worst of my life.

Maybe I was too young that first summer. Maybe a 20 year old college student shouldn’t be put in charge of a failing camp that needs to be entirely rebuilt, a 40 person staff that needs to be newly hired and trained, and hundreds of children who need to be well cared for and entertained six hours a day. Maybe.

Or maybe not, because that job was an absolutely perfect fit for me.

In all honesty, I’m not sure I’ll ever be better suited to do anything than I was to run that camp. It was a match made in career heaven in every way and I couldn’t have worked harder or done more on any level to make that program a blow out success.

And I blew it out, that’s for sure. Over the five summers I spent there, profits increased over 700% and the camp earned a reputation as one of the area’s best.

That’s what I did for the camp. That’s what everyone saw. What they didn’t see was what was happening to me on the sidelines of it all: the birth of my mood disorder.

For most people, summer means warm sand and cool ocean and backyard barbecues and sundresses and freshly squeezed orange juice. For me, summer means frenzied hypomania and sleepless nights and the bad decisions that follow.

When I was in it, when I was living those summers, I couldn’t see out of them enough to realize what was going on. The last two years were the worst; my moods were all over the place and I was awake more nights than I was asleep.

Some nights, I didn’t sleep at all. I’d pace back and forth through my apartment, back and forth, worrying about small things and enormous things and everything in between from midnight to morning and then I’d leave for work and begin another day of being the person everyone counted on. There were so many days where I was awake but not really alive.

And so the cycle went: the insomnia heightened the manic mood spikes, the mood spikes heightened the insomnia and soon I was drinking with people I shouldn’t have drank with, sleeping with people I shouldn’t have slept with, and setting my life on fire just for the brief moments in which I could hide behind the smoke.

There were external factors too – working for people who didn’t appreciate me, almost getting fired for my blog, almost taking legal action against a drug accusation that couldn’t have been farther from the truth – and at some point during the middle of last summer it all just became too much to handle.

I broke down. Barely making it through the camp day, I used every ion of my emotional energy to give the kids the experience they deserved, but then I’d come home and melt into myself every evening, laying on the cold tile floor in my kitchen, crying hysterically, positive I’d never find a way out since I was too dizzy to even open my eyes long enough to find my bearings.

It was a disaster, I was a disaster, and by the end of last summer I knew it was a now or never moment: either my mental health or my job.

Luckily, I quit my job.

Have things calmed down in the eight months between then and now? Enormously. Am I terrified that it’s almost summer? Absolutely. Because what if the mood spikes and the summer months are inseparable, even without that job?

What then?

photo credit: fesoj

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What Do You Believe?

posted 27th April 2010    Written by: Nicole Antoinette    CATEGORY: Nicole Antoinette, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2, Spirituality

Should religion be a taboo topic? I don’t know, but it is.

Probably because our spiritual beliefs are so intertwined with how we understand ourselves and our world that the line between different and intolerant is wispy and translucent. This line, the line between “I don’t believe what you believe but I accept you” and “I don’t believe what you believe and therefore you’re wrong” is so fine that it often gets swept away in the heat of feeling that what we believe is not just one choice, but the choice.

And I don’t agree with that, with the taboo-ness of it all. Just like I don’t think there’s only one way to love someone, one way to succeed, one way to learn, one way to give back, one way to leave your mark on the world, I don’t think there’s a single way to connect and express your spirituality.

You know what I do believe?

I believe you’re either a good person or you’re not. And if you are, if you treat yourself with respect and you treat other people with respect and you’re kind and compassionate and understanding, if you’re honest and you’re open and you live your life on purpose, then it doesn’t matter. You can go to church (or not), to temple (or not), you can meditate (or not), feel close to God (or not), and we can all still exist together and crash into each other in big and meaningful ways.

I believe that every single person can learn something from every single other person.

I believe in the interconnectedness of it all and think that every cause has an effect and every action a reaction. I believe that you get what you put out there and I believe that there’s an enormous and vibrantly dynamic universal energy and that throughout our lives, doors won’t open for us until we’re ready to walk through them.

I believe in creating your own reality, in taking responsibility for your happiness and not being passive in the flowing current of your life. I believe that there’s a difference between fair and equal, and that things don’t need to be equal to be fair. I believe in the power of creating your own set of beliefs and then living them, really living them, each and every day. I believe we’re not just capable, but powerful, far more electrically powerful than we ever give ourselves credit for.

I believe in giving yourself the credit you deserve.

I believe it’s up to us to lay the groundwork for who we want to be, to camp out in our souls and build and rebuild until the foundation we’ve created fully supports us. I believe in introspective reflection, in celebrating when we’re right and openly admitting when we’re wrong because we, each of us, are wrong all the time.

And I believe that’s how it’s supposed to be, that being wrong and tripping up and falling into the hole is how we learn, how we’re able to test the strength of that foundation we’ve built and fill in the cracks along the way.

photo credit: kevin dooley

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Two Month Countdown

posted 20th April 2010    Written by: Nicole Antoinette    CATEGORY: Job/Career/Work, Love/Relationships, Nicole Antoinette, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2

In less than two months, I’m going to be 25.

Um, WHAT?

That’s not a rhetorical question. Seriously, what? Can someone please come over and sit me down and explain how I went from high school to college to being four years out of college to being in my two month countdown to turning 25 years old? Because I sure as hell can’t seem to figure that one out.

When people bring up my birthday and my eyes go all dinner-plate-big, they remind me that “age is just a number” and that “25 isn’t any different than 24.” To which I say, “flkjgflkghj,” because 25 sounds like a much more serious adult age than any age I’ve ever been, and let’s not forget that at 25 I can much more inexpensively rent a car. Let’s not forget that.

Truthfully, I have no idea what will be going on the day I turn 25. I know it’s only two months away, but in my current roller coaster life, two months is two eternities. It was only four months ago that I signed on to write for Stratejoy, and I did so from my parents’ couch in Arizona, surrounded by no job, no place to live, no life plan, and a crush on a boy in San Francisco. In the four months that have screeched by between then and now, I got off their couch, got in my car, and drove my no job, no place to live, no life plan, and big crush from Arizona to San Francisco to see how things played out. Here’s how they played out:

I arrived in San Francisco on a Sunday night and checked into a hostel in a questionable area in the pouring rain. It took three minutes for me to question my sanity, three hours for me to call my mom hysterically crying, and three days for things to unravel with that boy.

And so, less than a week into my “Nicole is so brave and moved to San Francisco!” plan, I had lost the only real connection I had to an entirely unknown city and was staring down an overwhelming case of “What now?”

I needed to regroup.

I needed a friend and a bubbly drink and a plate of cheese and I needed them now. Jamie agreed to come out with me, to take our we-met-through-Twitter friendship offline and finally squeal and jump around together in person. A drink later, we realized we were best friend soulmates. A day later we signed a lease together. A week later we decided to join creative forces to relaunch Shatterboxx Media, her kickass awesome graphic and web design company. And four months later we’re really doing it, working from home, expanding the business, pursuing our writing, exploring the city, and drinking a damn impressive amount of wine along the way.

Which makes me wonder, if four months can give me an entirely new life, top to bottom, can something equally as soul changing come about in the next two?

I don’t see why not. Stay tuned.

photo credit

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