Archive

Halfway

posted 26th October 2010    Written by: Doniree    CATEGORY: Doniree, Inspiration, Job/Career/Work, Life Lesson, Love/Relationships, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 3, What I've Learned

half moonI asked Chelsea what came to mind when I said the word “halfway” or “half,” seeing as we’re now halfway through this third guest blogging season here at Stratejoy.  Her response?

“House?”

Ok… so maybe that’s not the idea I was going for.  I was thinking halfway points, halftime shows, even Halfway, Oregon (yes, that’s really a city – I checked).  But halfway?  As in, I’ve written half the amount of posts I’ll write here this season?  That’s exciting and a little sad – I don’t want it to end!

Chelsea and I started ruminating a bit on the general idea of “halfway,” and she suggested that the existence of a halfway point signifies an end – which, in the case of my contributions to this blog – there is an end.  We’ve committed to so many weeks and that has a number and we’re halfway to that number.  But, in general – in life - we’re in a constant state of movement, moving forward, transition even.  Yeah, there’s technically an “end date” (morbid, yeah), but we don’t know it and so “halfway” is kind of arbitrary in the great big scheme of things.

However, when there is an end date or time, or a goal with numbers and steps that can be defined – halfway is kind of a big deal.  Halfway through my workout motivates me to keep working, to push a little harder until I reach my goal.  Halfway through a task on my to-do list ramps me up and makes me want to just blaze through the rest.  It’s motivating.  It’s exciting.

In this case, it’s crazy.  Really?!  Halfway?!  It’s motivating and energizing yes, but I don’t want it to end!

Blogging for Stratejoy this season has been an incredible commitment and experience.  Commitment, yes because even when I’m not keeping up with my own blog, I’ve committed to being here and showing up for you.  And I’ve loved to share my stories and hear from amazing new voices and hearts that have offered some really awesome insight along the way.  It’s been awesome to have a writing commitment that’s focused (we have topics! and deadlines!), but that’s personal.  It’s wonderful to share my stories and find so many kindred spirits who relate to thoughts and ideas I’ve shared.

So… halfway through, let me just say THANK YOU for listening and for showing up here with me.  I’m excited for the second half, the next part, and for learning more about myself along the way.  We’ve covered a lot in the first half, haven’t we?

I mean, we met way back in August and I talked about the overwhelming confusion that comes with realizing I could actually have and do anything I wanted… so then what was I supposed to do?  Hello, Quarter-Life Crisis.

It’s helpful to have a little background, so I spent the next couple of weeks talking about my history with ad agencies and media buying, move to freelancing and contract work, and my move across the country from Minnesota to Colorado.

Digging a little deeper, I talked about how I fell in love when I wasn’t expecting to and how I believe that relationships in our life are on a collision course – we find who we need when we need them, right?  Honestly, this was one of my favorite posts so far this season.

I explained how my background in homeschooling helped teach me to teach myself and be one of those self-starter kind of people that – as a freelancer – not only appreciates being able to work on her own schedule, but is learning that the same model in school of “work til you’re done” holds true in the working world.  That lesson was born out of learning that when you can work anytime, it’s sometimes easy to work all the time and I finally started to explore finding that balance.

I talked about debt and money issues and how our tastes and interests change over time, covered friendships and the rituals that surround those, and talked about brilliant joy and its presence in my life.  More recently, I talked about fear and subsequently what might happen when you throw that fear out the window.

Today, I’m reflecting.  Looking back at how much I’ve shared and excited about the second half – about peeling back another layer and moving forward.  Halfway.  Can you believe that?

I’m just curious… what’s been your favorite post so far?  What else do you want to know about me?  What can I keep in mind moving forward into the second half of this season?


{photo credit}

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If you knew you could not fail

posted 19th October 2010    Written by: Doniree    CATEGORY: Creativity, Doniree, Inspiration, Job/Career/Work, Season 3, What I've Learned

“What would you attempt to do, if you knew you could not fail?”

I saw this quote written on the chalkboard behind the counter at a Starbucks in Minneapolis.  I think I remember the Starbucks.  I think it was the one at Excelsior and Grand, and I think I’d met a girlfriend there that night for coffee.  I remember I had been considering a move – I was close to the end of yoga teacher training, and my world was opening up in ways I’d never imagined.  I was weeks away from a goal and a dream I’d set years before – be certified to teach yoga.  I was starting to contemplate another dream I’d had from years before – live a number of different places for a little while at a time, learning and loving my way through new cities.

I also knew I wanted to work from home (or coffeeshops, or the road).  I wanted to write, to help, and to create, and I wanted to do so outside of the 9-5 timeframe.  I wanted to allow myself to be creative when I felt creative and to be productive when I felt productive – knowing that an 8-hour work day did not equal the most productivity, just the most hours.  And I don’t believe in putting in a lot of hours to look busy.  I want to be busy, and then be done.

I was starting to feel like this was the right time, but I was scared.  I was nervous about my ability as a yoga teacher, and I was nervous about leaving the comforts and familiarity of friends and family in Minnesota.  I was outlining my life and where I wanted it to go and it included: teach yoga, move around, write a lot, know and love amazing people.

What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?

I remember the coffee shop, and I remember the quote.  And I remember almost immediately answering, “I’d quit my job, turn this freelance idea into something real, pack up my life, and move across the country.”

And somewhere in that moment, I started to feel the exhilaration that comes with making a decision and knowing in your gut that it’s the right one.  I did quit my job, I have learned how to freelance full-time, I did pack up my life and fit most of it into a Nissan Murano, and I did move from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Boulder, Colorado in January of this year.

And here we are again – on the cusp of new opportunities and ideas.  I haven’t started teaching yoga, but I’m committing to doing so by the end of the year.  I have ideas about what I want to be doing with my life, how I want to be spending my days, and I find myself towing the line between “dream” and “do”.  I’m really, really close.  Again.

So today, this day in October, I find myself asking the same question I did that night in Minnesota:

What would I attempt to do if I knew I could not fail?

Teach yoga.  Start writing a book.  Start teaching skills and ideas that I’m always asked about yet for some reason doubt my expertise on the subject.  Stop doubting the things I know well.  Stay healthy.  Sell my stationary and scarves in an Etsy shop.  Decorate a beautiful apartment.  Make homemade truffles (with a recipe from Nicole).  Earn a life coaching certificate.  Study Spanish again. Eat locally, sustainably, and organically as much as possible.  Live in Europe.  Grow my own herbs.  Simplify my life aka own fewer things.  Be able to pick up and pack up at a moments’ notice, grab an Airstream and leave on an indefinite road trip.  Drive a motorcycle.  Cross more items off my Life List.  Teach.  Never stop living out loud.

What would YOU do, if you knew you could not fail?

{Photo credit – card photo above.  Beach feet thumbnail is my own.}

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Meaning in the Mountains

posted 10th September 2010    Written by: Alisha    CATEGORY: Alisha, Family, Job/Career/Work, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 3, Travel, Travel/Adventure, What I've Learned

I went to Colorado to get away–to vacate.  I went to breathe the fresh air, worship the mountains, drink in the sunsets.  I went to love.  I went to share.  I went to be inspired.  I went to be still.

Instead, my days were filled with tension.  My Blackberry wasn’t on my hip, but I could hear it buzzing in my purse.  Each morning I woke up well before dawn, unable to sleep, anxious about work.

About three months ago I was propositioned by a friend to work with her on a new retail e-commerce business.  She emailed me the role and its responsibilities.  It all seemed so overwhelming so I asked her for a few days to think it over.  My gut told me to say “no”.  Intuition told me that my day-job as a stay-at-home mom was just too intense at the moment to take on another time-consuming project.  However, my mind wanted to reason with me.  It promised to deliver big in the money department; I saw the potential and the money-hungry part of me responded.  It gently coaxed me into accepting the position.  I ignored my gut–my intuition–and I have paid dearly for it.

Though I am proud of what I have accomplished in my role (contract negotiations, copywriting, hiring interns, accounting), it came with great sacrifice.  I let it hijack my life.  The time I used to spend on my morning pages was replaced with reconciling emails.  I have not written in my blog in almost three weeks and I have not read any of them either.  Time spent at the park was instead spent indoors writing copy.  Playdates were shortened or eliminated; dry-cleaning was forgotten; loads of laundry sat in corners and in closets unfolded.  If I was sleep deprived before, I was even more so now.  Coffee intake increased in order to compensate for the late-night hours I spent researching,writing, emailing.

I kept telling myself that this was only temporary; that I just needed to put in this time now in order for the reward later.   But my kids weren’t happy.  My husband wasn’t happy.  I wasn’t happy.   Around the time I started to finally accept this, was about the same time I finished up Week 1 of The Joy Equation.  As I sat there and looked at my core values (Authenticity, Abundance, Connection, Family, Freedom, Integrity, Spirituality, Trust) I realized that the way I was living my life at the moment was not in accordance with those values.  I didn’t want to quit; I had made a committment after all.

But finally, after tossing and turning for the first 4 nights of my 6-night vacation, I sent a letter to my friend requesting a decrease in responsibilities.  It was granted.  The last two nights I slept like a baby.

There was something about those mountains…. Their beauty, their strength, the stories they tell.  In a way, they reminded me of myself–of what I hope to be: a story-teller, strong, majestic, inspiring.  In those mountains I found some strength to set a boundary, to acknowledge what does and does not work in my life, and the courage to change it.  Let this be a recurring theme.

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Morning Bliss: The Best Part of Waking Up

posted 3rd September 2010    Written by: Alisha    CATEGORY: Alisha, All Posts, Family, Life Lesson, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 3, Tips & Tools, Travel, Travel/Adventure

Each morning I rise, give praise for the rays of light.  Sun salutations, cat poses, savasanas.  The warmth of the chai spreads through my chest, into my arms, down my legs.  The air inside is still; the only noise I hear is the gentle hum of the refridgerator as it toils to keep the food cold during these dog days of summer.  With a pen in hand, I scribble all my thoughts and dreams from the days before.  Every penstroke is a gentle caress on the smooth, vanilla bean paper.  My head and heart empty, ready to recieve the gifts the present day may bring.

O. M. G.  I wish.  This is how it really goes down:

Right around dawn, my daughter screams.  She doesn’t whimper, she doesn’t cry.  She screams at the top of her lungs.  I nurse her, lay her back down in her crib and cross my fingers and toes in hopes that I can get just forty-five more minutes of sleep.  I make it back to my own bed, curl up into the fetal position and pull the blankets over my head.  32 minutes pass by and at 6:47 a.m. she is ready to begin her day.  I change her diaper, get the coffee started (extra-strong please!), make her oatmeal, wash a few dishes and sweep the floor as I wait for my son to emerge.  At 7:02 a.m. he stumbles into the kitchen, rubbing his eyes and muttering something about dinosaurs.  He demands animal crackers for breakfast.

“I don’t think so little man.  How about cereal and milk?” I ask him sweetly.

“Mmmmm.  Eh-eh.  Animals.”

“Toast and butter?”  I say as I look him sternly in the eye.

“Eh-eh!  Animals!”

“No.  Cereal and milk or toast and butter?”  Hunched over and with a raised eye-brow, I repeat his options.

“Animals!  Animals!  Animals!” he protests while jumping up and down, much to the dismay of the neighbors below, I am sure.

I mean, really.  I have not had any coffee yet, I am still in my underwear–literally–and at only 7:08 in the morning, Time Out Number 1 is underway.  It is totally not the zen-filled morning I so desperately crave.  Take this morning, repeat it 4 days a week, and multiply it by 52 weeks in a year.  That equals 208.  208 out of 365 days of my year start out this way.  So it is no wonder that when I dream about my “perfect” life, I am usually alone.

According to my therapist, this is because I don’t vacate.  I do not make the time to do those things in which I take delight.  So this week, I am taking my therapist’s advice and vacating.  Well, vacating as much as I possibly can with a husband and two kids.  We are off to Colorado, my friends!  Seven days and six nights away from home, in the bright sunshine and crisp mountain air.  And while I am there, I will make time for myself.  This is not a plan, this is a promise.  I am making a promise to be kind to myself…to allow myself to vacate (at least a teensy little bit) because I know that upon my return I will be renewed, refreshed, regenerated.

I recently finished working through Week 1 of The Joy Equation and I had a breakthrough.  It was the kind of breakthrough that made me feel strong, empowered, brave, ready to take on the world with clearer vision.  You see, at the end of Week 1, I made a list of 8 core values.  Molly calls our core values ”the Habits of our Heart.”  She couldn’t be more right.  Through Week 1′s exercises I realized that a lot of the pain and suffering I had experienced over the last five or six years was kind of my own fault: I made choices that discounted my intuition and casted my values aside.  (Okay, that and the whole bi-polar thing too.)  It was a slap in the face, but I welcomed it.

I decided that I was ready for some fun again. I want to get back to a little bit of that old “Alisha”.  Old Alisha was fun, a little more free, and a lot happier.  So, on this vacation, I am going to vacate my old ways; I am going to reintegrate my core values into my life and into my choices.  I think life will be more fun that way.

photo credit

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When Long Weekends Aren’t Enough, You Up And Move

posted 17th August 2010    Written by: Doniree    CATEGORY: Doniree, Job/Career/Work, Season 3, Travel/Adventure

I’d decided sometime in the middle of a jet-setting summer (nine trips between Memorial and Labor Day) that I needed to spend longer than three days at any given time in the cities I was exploring. You just can’t do Colorado in a weekend. You can’t do Chicago, LA, or New York in a weekend. You can’t spend all of the quality family time you want to spend in Alabama in a weekend.

Turns out you CAN do Vegas in a weekend. Any longer than that and you’ll end up perma-glittered and hating life.  Or at least hungover, broke, and sunburned. And that’s pretty much the same thing.

The New Local

So I knew three days at a time wasn’t enough, and the seed was planted to actually physically move to some of these places – even for a short period of time – to really experience life there.  To know what coffee shops the locals frequent, which restaurants really *are* the best, and how to not get lost.  This idea of a career that allowed me to be mobile wasn’t going away.

It was November 2009, and I’d just graduated from yoga teacher training. I felt more capable, self-aware, and empowered than I had in my entire life. Little things mattered less. Placing ad buys wasn’t doing it for me. The promise of extra zeros on the end of my paycheck wasn’t doing it for me.  At this point, I didn’t care about money. I cared about depth, about relationships, about learning and connecting to myself and the world I existed in.  Two hundred hours of immersing myself in everything yoga over an eight-week span would do that to a person, I suppose.

I decided that if I was going to move around and explore the world, now was the time to do so.

My top two choices were easily Denver and Chicago.  However, being that it was November, and I was making this decision from Minneapolis, I ruled Chicago out almost as quickly as I’d considered it. I love the Windy City, but the idea of similar winter temps to those of the Twin Cities without the magical skyways that keep us insulated and warm? Not ideal.  Not at first.

I started looking west and had Denver map-dotted in my mind, and I visited in December with the intention of finding a cute pseudo-downtown studio apartment near coffee shops and city parks.

Turns out  my aim was about 30 miles southeast of where I was really supposed to land.

When you know, you know

I’d met Grace Boyle through our blogs and mutual connections and she invited me to come up to Boulder for an evening and an event.  That event happened to be Ignite and brought together over 1,000 of the city’s finest minds, best drinkers, and funniest presenters I’d ever seen. If you haven’t heard of Ignite, check it out immediately (and if it’s in your city, go, present, and toast your new friends).

I fell in love with Boulder immediately.  From the pedestrian mall on Pearl Street, to the balance of start-up and tech company rich culture with outdoorsy croc-wearing hippies, and the amazingly bright and like-minded people who lived there, I was hooked.  I also loved that Boulder seemed to draw a lot of wanderlusters like myself – it seems more likely to meet someone from somewhere else than meeting someone Boulder born and bred.

My plans quickly shifted from Denver to Boulder and the plan was in motion.  Six weeks later, I arrived in Boulder, moved into the first available-for-sublease condo I checked out, and started pouring every ounce of free time into earning back that relocation budget that had quickly hit sub-zero.  I wrote $8 articles for content mills, and my blogging gig for a Minneapolis media agency was my only “real” income until I took a contract job in February.

Turn the page

Since moving to Boulder in January, I’ve accomplished a lot:  yoga, volunteering, hiking, additional contract work, lots of wine, built relationships with some of the most open and genuine and intelligent girlfriends I’ve ever known, picked up a Boyfriend who blows my mind in terms of what I ever thought was possible in a relationship, taken a full-time job, and re-committed to training needed to really start teaching yoga. Yet the story doesn’t end here.  In fact – this is where it begins again.

I have plans for the fall that include even more changes and a crazy amount of learning, writing, mentoring, and yoga in a very real way.  I’ve been making some big decisions that you’ll literally be experiencing with me as they unfold over the next six months. So, get cozy because the next chapter literally begins now.

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