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Life Is Not a Lottery, Winning and Happiness are a Choice

posted 15th August 2010    Written by: Lindsey    CATEGORY: All Posts, Life Lesson, Lindsey, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 3, What I've Learned

Ever since I grew into the moody little sparkplug of twelve or so, I’d always have the same wish when I blew out the candles on my birthday cake: “To be happy.”

Vague, right? But, I figured, if I were just happy, everything else in my life would magically fall into place. Woo hoo! Happiness fairy! Thank you for finally granting my wish! Now I am truly alive!

Yep. Not how life works, much to the chagrin of my naïve young self.

I wouldn’t say I lived an unhappy life, just unconscious. Unaware of who I was or what I wanted, and therefore, unable to even begin to understand my happiness. I didn’t have my priorities worked out, because that required introspection. To just exist, glide along, and fill the societal-defined mold of “success” as I had done, doesn’t really require any inner work.

The ability to Do-What-I-Want and Live-My-Best-Life didn’t exist in my mind, when obligations to grades or career responsibilities were more valued than taking time to explore the concept of passion and authentic happiness.

Happiness, for me, is a choice to be passionate rather than stoically blindly driven towards someone else’s vision of success.

Last year, I left on a post-college freedom fighting tour of the country, seeking to do only things that made me happy. It was amazing. I had time to breathe, and be introspective, and get the butterflies you can only get from fully immersing yourself within your passions and experiencing complete happiness.

But I hit a wall. Enter: Quarterlife Crisis.

Or, several months of optimistically flipping from “ah, I’m a snowboarder and a traveler and I’ll start a business and be free to do whatever I want!” and “life is awesome and full of happiness. I can just keep on livin’ on the fringe and do what I love.” to “holy shit I am a complete failure!” and “If one more jackass drinks 8 diet cokes with their Applebee’s Fiesta Lime Chicken dinner I will bring a samurai sword to work!”

(Oh, hi, by the way, I am kind of crazy. In an endearing way.)

I was successful in defining my happiness and dreams, but achieving them with a minimum wage job sucks. Turning towards a responsible life: well… but… I DID that already…and it definitely didn’t feel authentic. Yet something was still missing from my life.

There is a part of me that loves to dance like crazy, jump off cliffs, laugh far too loud than any situation will demand. That feeling I get snowboarding deep powder or lifting off in a trans-continental jet or (well, there is a lot, I will spare you). These things make me happy. They are my passions; they make me feel alive.

On the flip-side, I have deep sense of responsibility. Not the lame “oh, I must make money to put in my 401K” but a sense that I have something to contribute to the world (other than awesomely-bad dance moves). And just thinking about following through on this, makes me feel even more alive.

I know what makes me happy, and I now know how to have it. But my mission has evolved to more than be happy but rather to define, create, and live out loud, a completely authentic life.

I’m a person of extremes. Driven, passionate, and hopelessly dramatic. Since I don’t actually plan on living in Crazytown forever, finding balance is super important. Actually, I am working on my Joy Equation this month and have declared BALANCE one of my Core Values!

This Quarterlife Crisis revolves around finding balance in the far edge of extremes. In creating a life where it’s okay to live completely, authentically as yourself. Sometimes that means cliff jumping and hiding out on a secluded beach for weeks on end. But other times it’s about contribution, of the mind and heart, to something greater, evening if that something greater is simply being the best person you can be, and sharing that with your world.


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Practicing Passion And Action

posted 24th June 2010    Written by: Katie    CATEGORY: Inspiration, Katie, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2, What I've Learned

Whenever someone is good at what they do, they’re said to have passion. Moreover, when they do something admirable, a firm “Way to take action!” is thrown in their direction.  Passion and action are two things that have driven me my entire life – just not at the same time. Unfortunately, until recently, I didn’t realize that though I was being driven, it was mostly in one big huge circle.

When I was in grade school, I was placed in smart kid classes. They were called “Academically Talented” classes, but the other kids just called them “smart kid classes”.  Of course, when they said “smart kid classes” they’d turn their sarcasm level on high to match the position of their nose in the air. I get more honor out of being in the classes now than I did then because I now realize the importance of intelligence and being recognized for such talents.

Regardless of the lack of due respect from my peers, I still went to the classes. I didn’t want to. I just wanted to be “normal”, “regular”, “average”, even.  I took the action everyday to go to the classes, mostly because I had to. What I was lacking was the passion to make the best of the situation. I could have cared less about what my grades were in that class, because they always got rounded up to A’s.

I continued in the smart kid classes up until my sophomore year in high school. My success in the classes eventually went down the toilet because I never gained passion for being smart. I didn’t want to be. I didn’t look at being in these classes as recognition so much as segregation. Eventually, I was placed where I always wanted to be – with the average kids. As much as I banked on things being better, they weren’t.

5 years later, when I was 22, I found myself in a dead end job. I wanted so much more out of my life. All day long, in place of work, I’d think back to my younger years and remember that I wanted to be a dancer (without the pole), a teacher, and a master of computer repair. I had wished I had more passion. I had plenty of it at 22. I wanted out of that job, out of unhealthy relationships, out of the life slump that I was in. I’d dream of my life being enjoyable, of waking up everyday and wanting to go to a job that I loved.

Unfortunately, with all of this determination, drive and passion, I didn’t take any action at all. I stayed at my dead end job, until I reached the dead end, and I had no where to go.

Over the next 3 years as I went through my Quarter Life Crisis alone before I knew that it even existed, I would teeter between having a lot of passion with no follow through, and a whole lot of action toward a non-existent goal; without passion. I was too down on life and myself to realize that no matter what I did, I still wasn’t happy and that something had to change.

The realization that I had to combine passion and action didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks. I didn’t have an “a-ha” moment – or at least not a dramatic one. Recently, I’ve been trying to do more things that I want to do. If I want to go to bed early, I do. Id I want to look into going to college, I do. If I want to dance naked around my bedroom to Michael Bolton, I do.

In the same light, if I have to do something that I don’t necessarily have the choice to do, like not-so-fun project, or tedious favor for someone, I don’t “just do it”. I get myself into a state of “want to” and realizing that sometimes there are things that you have to do. I inject a little passion into my veins (metaphorically), and I do whatever it is that needs to be done. I’ve noticed that even those mundane things are more fun to do, and the completed project is of much higher quality than it would have been without passion.

It took me 25 years to learn, but the lesson is life changing. My quality of life has increased a boat-load. I do things that I’m passionate about, and I’m passionate about things that I (have to) do.

Passion and Action just go together. Kind of like peanut butter and jelly, pen and paper, and sour cream and…well, anything.

(photo credit: via)

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Chasing Away The Black Cloud

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

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]


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Confession: Moving Did Not Make Me Happy

posted 14th May 2010    Written by: Katie    CATEGORY: Katie, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 2, Stratejoy the Biz, What I've Learned

I’ve been moved into my new place for a little over a month now. I thought for sure this would be it; the end of my long battle with depression. Over the last few months, I did some intense soul searching and discovered some things that I wasn’t happy with in my life and made a commitment to change them. Number one on my list was my living conditions.

The opportunity to move in with two awesome roommates presented itself, and I jumped on it.

I pictured my move in day in my head a million times. It would be similar to Carrie walking into the apartment of her dreams with Mr. Big. (Shameless Sex and the City reference. I’ve been reliving the entire season on DVD courtesy of Netflix. And now I’m constantly making references, or pretending my life has a voice over like Carrie Bradshaw. “…And then, I made dinner. And then, I watched a sappy love flick. …and then I whipped out my rabbit, and thought, ‘is this what life has come to? Dinner, a Movie and Sex. Alone?’)

…moving on….

I pictured my move in day to be perfect. I’d walk into the house and all of my troubles, fears, and bad memories would disappear. We’d all sit around and play board games every night, and whenever I had a problem, I’d sit down and talk to my roommates and we’d find a solution. At the end, we’d hug it out while 90′s love ballads  played in the background. And I’d live happily ever after.

My move in day came and I excitedly packed my things and moved. No one was home to welcome me, and no one helped me move. I did it alone. I’ve taken part in a lot of moves, and the majority have been big parties of people drinking beer and eating pizza. Then, sitting around a table playing cards.

That didn’t happen for me at all.

The days that followed my move in weren’t what I thought they’d be either. My roommates both work many hours, and I work from home, so for the most part I’m alone. Which, ideally may sound great but I’m literally in bed right before or after my roommates get home from work. We don’t play board games around the kitchen table.

I haven’t shared my problems with them yet.

I haven’t shared it with you guys over the last few weeks, but I’m going to now; I’ve been having… just a tough time. Several times people close to me have caught me staring off into space and said  ”Katie, where are you? You look like you’re in your head.” They’re right. My mind is constantly going. Moving wasn’t enough to make me happy. I want more. I need more. I deserve more.

I need to make a confession right now. I never finished the Stratejoy program. I started it, did a decent amount of it, told Molly I wanted to blog on behalf of the clan of twenty and thirty somethings, and I just… stopped. I was in a happy place, and I stopped. You might not consider this a big deal, but I feel like I’ve been leading you all on. How many posts have I encouraged you all to do the program? How many times have I said it saved my life, literally? These claims aren’t lies, not in the least.

However, I never got the full benefit of the Joy Equation: A 30-Day Guide To Living Life On Purpose. Because, like most things, I didn’t finish it.

So, what does this have to do with my move and being miserable?

How I realized that I wanted to move was by making a list of things I wanted to change. As I said, Number one was moving. I did that, and while it was liberating and made a big difference, I stopped there. Soon, my “new house” wasn’t my “new house”. I’m not introduced as the “new roommate” anymore. I started my list, but stopped. I felt good for a moment and tried to live off of that life high forever instead of constantly creating new experiences.

It takes a lot of courage to start something, but it takes even more to keep on going with it.

Here and now, friends, family, people I haven’t met, I’m making a commitment. Two, actually.

Number One: I’m moving on to number two of my “Life Changes” list. “Save $1000 over 6 months by not going out as often.”

Number Two: I’m heading over to get another brand new Stratejoy plan today and I’m going to complete it, beginning to end. Can you do me a huge favor? Will you do it with me? I kind of like being held accountable, and if I know others are doing it too, it encourages me to stick with it. Kind of like running. Or streaking through the streets of Philadelphia.

Just kidding about the last part.

Kind of.

Come on. Will you do it with me? (Yes, Of Course! /  No)

…I dare you to click ‘No.’

If you are doing this with me, leave me a little comment here, so I know who you are, and can have us T-shirts made with Molly’s face on them. Nothing says “I love you” like wearing someone’s face across your boobs.

At the very least, promise me that you’ll take the next step in something in your life right now. Maybe it’s your life list. Maybe it’s the next step in a home/apartment remodel. Maybe it’s the next chapter in the novel or memoir that you’re writing. Whatever it is, promise yourself that you’re going to move forward.

And when it doubt, remember to just take the next step.

Sometimes it’s a blind leap, but take it anyway.

*photo credit: aesum

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The Big Announcement! Joy for All!

posted 13th May 2010    Written by: Molly Hoyne    CATEGORY: Inspiration, Love/Relationships, Molly, Quarterlife Crisis

OMG.  Finally!

CLICK HERE TO SEE WHAT ALL THE BUZZ IS ABOUT

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