Archive

How BlogWorld Reinforced My Sense of Purpose

posted 17th November 2011    Written by: Dusti    CATEGORY: Dusti, Life Lesson, Season 5, Travel, Travel/Adventure, What I've Learned

Two weeks ago, I was bouncing up and down with anticipation. I’d managed to find a super cheap ticket to Los Angeles which meant BlogWorld was on the menu after all. There were people I wanted to meet, joint ventures as yet unmade – I was thrilled to get to go. Having not traveled much, SoCal was another thrilling destination to add to my list.

But the conference itself wasn’t that special for me. Every other event like this (mind you that number is a whopping 3) I’ve been to has been packed with excitement and invigorating new life into my business and I. This one was marred by the desolate picture the place I was in painted.

I flew in Friday morning to Long Beach Airport. That was eye-opening. I’ve never been to such a small airport before, but I recommend it. Security took 30 seconds – in the most literal sense. From there, I caught a bus and a train. Never having been to the LA area, I had expectations of it being scary on the outskirts and more glamorous as you approached the inner city. (So much for expectations.)

The train ride was fine. Much less intimidating than Chicago’s trains, at least. As I looked out the window, what I saw was a once immaculate landscape turned into a wasteland. Beautiful cacti and lemon tress weighed down with fruit surrounded boarded-up buildings with tarps filling in holes in the rooftops. Squatters. Graffiti followed the train for mile upon mile, the only bright color for much of the ride. It didn’t stop. Palm trees lined decrepit downtown areas that should have had the vibrancy of life to them. Barren, aging strip malls had been repurposed into small havens for charities and churches to give away their paltry bounty.

And then there were the tent cities.

Between decaying homes and barbed wire fences, the fake blues and ugly forest greens were strung up with bungy cords and string. Cardboard walls. To say it was desolate does not do these places justice.

As we passed one of these tented areas, I heard a conversation a half dozen ragamuffin boys were having a few rows away. They purchased bubble gum from the hecklers on the train, after the one of them who could count change had done his duty, and clung to their bicycles. Lively and happy together, the boys should have been in school at that time of the day. Instead, each was telling the story of how they had been kicked out of elementary school.

Dealing drugs to a classmate was one offense – the boy said the kids were trading so their parents could sell it later. Another couldn’t read the instructions on the board – he was kicked out of class because he didn’t know what was going on and his teacher saw it as insolence.

One of them thrust his finger in the direction of the tarps, saying his dad lived in one of them, and his mom wouldn’t let him see him until he got out and found a job. He laughed it off, but everyone knew it wasn’t funny. You had to laugh so you didn’t cry. Their voices hadn’t matured enough to change yet.

My heart sank heavy into my stomach, and my mouth was dry. These kids would never have a chance. We live in an age of abundance, and they will probably end up in jail and worse. And I felt so helpless. I was doing the trip on $20, and I had nothing to give them. Everything in me ached to tell these boys that they mattered and they had so much to offer the world and that someone somewhere out there loved them – but how could I? They don’t want or need sympathy. They don’t want more broken promises and lies.

We know these situations exist. We have the information. We don’t act. But what if we did? We know empowering women creates so much opportunity. That’s why organizations like the Acumen Fund and Girl Effect exist. But it can be intimidating to want to work with one of these organizations because of their size – that and many of us want to donate more than just money. And we are so capable of doing this.

Each of us has individual goals, but most of us on our big, lifelong list of goals have giving back listed as a major one we want to accomplish. So why not start now?

Each of us has a unique gift to share with the world. Our individual mission to help humanity is rooted in this core strength we’re probably taking for granted. So what’s your gift? The message your whole body is burning to share? You can have it all – the individual goals and the greater good ones, too – but you can’t have anything without knowing who you are.

 

divider

21, divorced, single mom; reflections on divorce and judgment

posted 10th November 2011    Written by: Dusti    CATEGORY: All Posts, Dusti, Life Lesson, Love/Relationships, Season 5

Nobody likes the idea of divorce. It’s what kills the institution. (Marriage, that is.) It signifies that ever uncomfortable mistress – change. You are admitting failure. You acknowledge you made the wrong decision. You feel like you’re being watched even more closely than the day you were married, laid open to all of the judgments, accusations, and sympathies of the onlooking.

It’s not easy – but it’s better than the alternative of staying with someone you probably shouldn’t have committed to in the first place. Add children to the mix, and it gets even more interesting. Then, you’re looking at the title “single mother.” It’s like pronouncing socioeconomic judgment on yourself. “Oh great, now my child is allegedly this much more likely to continue the cycle, become a criminal, ‘fill in bad consequence here,’ etc.” Painful. But nothing could cause more pain than not listening to my intuition and my values again.

I’ll never forget my wedding day. After burning myself with the curling iron, realizing the day was nothing like what I wanted or envisioned, we were finally on our way to the church in my best friend’s car. I never wanted to be married in a church. As we drove down the lonely highway on that flawless summer day, the golden fields swayed in the wind, and it felt like they were reaching their arms out to me, sending me a message in a language I didn’t speak. The thought passed through my head. “What am I doing?” Shaking it off as jitters, we pulled into the parking lot, and my stomach fell. I should’ve listened to my intuition.

When I said I wanted a divorce, everyone assumed it was my fault. From the beginning, the words and judgments began to fly at me.

Slut. Whore. Bitch. I even got harlot once. (But I kind of like the ring of that one.)

I was at fault in some respects. It’s never just one person’s fault in a divorce, after all.

For the two years prior, I had spent my life in denial. That much was certainly my fault. But no matter what lie I whispered to myself, it was never enough to stem the greater disillusionment happening with my marriage.

This wasn’t what I wanted at all. I didn’t want to struggle along with someone with no ambition and “lots of potential.” The need for security I had when we decided to marry was like a pothole filled with gravel. Our life together was going nowhere and fast. That wasn’t what I had signed on for. I wanted more, and we both knew that. That should have been the first indicator things weren’t going to work.

A few months after I was married, I had even fallen in love with my (ridiculously charming and handsome) best friend. But I couldn’t bring myself to tell either of them. Fear and shame and inner turmoil had ripped away at my self-confidence till almost nothing remained. My dreams were withered up on the floor, forgotten with stacks of diaries and lost hope. I was a shell of a human being.

But no one asks about those things. They pick a side. A party to blame. Someone must be at fault. It rocked many of our friendships who had always seen the ex and I as the steadfast couple they could look to, in the desperate hope that they would find something like that. When it fell apart, so did many of the things they thought were true about their friends and themselves. It was a reflection of their fears realized. Most of them couldn’t handle that, and thus, sought to blame me.

Everyone had their story of what had led up to this. “Dusti had been cheating on him for months.” (Even though I had just had a baby and was very literally incapable of having sex almost until that April.) “The baby isn’t his.” (Even though we lived in a studio in Texas and worked the same hours at the same place.) There were more variants here, but the common thread was it always ended with me being at fault.

Now, what they didn’t see was the day after I asked for a divorce, he was having sex with “my friend.”

And naturally, he wouldn’t be inclined to tell anyone. He was the victim here. His cruel now ex-wife who he had clung to like a child was leaving him 4 months after they had a baby together.

But what if he had told someone besides me? What would the reaction to that have been? I can only guess, but he likely would have received the approval of his peers.

Talk about double standards.

The second I was seen publicly with my new boyfriend, the assumption turned to fact – I must have been cheating before the divorce.

The judgments around divorce are directed at women in ways that are almost unbelievable. And women are at least as guilty as men for passing these judgments on to others.

I have had a hard time changing my own views from these norms, even after experiencing it. My ex and I get along fine now, but it’s hard not to pass judgments on his girlfriend. She didn’t do anything wrong, and she doesn’t deserve to suffer because the ex’s previous relationship was a supreme failure of youth. She is fantastic with my daughter. That is a person to give thanks for, and yet, I struggled not to think cruel things about her appearance, demeanor, and anything else that would make me feel momentarily better about myself. I knew better. But it didn’t matter. Part of me justified thinking that way, even though it accomplished zero positive results.

It’s a small thing, but I’m making it a mission to look at divorce as an acceptance of change, rather than a pronouncement of failure. If we are mature enough to realize we’re unhappy in a relationship, shouldn’t we be mature enough to acknowledge how fortunate we are divorce even exists? Thank goodness we’re not stuck in a miserable relationship – and thank goodness we have the power to have lived, learned, and prepared for the next stage in our journey.

So let’s prepare without the judgments. For all of our sakes.

divider

Adventures in Iceland, or How Living My Values Led to Magic

posted 6th November 2011    Written by: Kat    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kat, Life Lesson, Season 5, Travel, Travel/Adventure, What I've Learned

Over the course of my life, I’ve made some pretty poor choices about friends. At a very young age, I had a friend stab me in the back of the head with a pencil. (Okay, that was an accident that happened while she was hugging me to thank me for the pencil, but still. It should have been a sign. Years later, she ended a coffee date early to go do her ironing.) In high school, two separate groups of friends stopped speaking to me for no apparent reason. (Fortunately, only one of those groups decided to compose mean songs and poems about me.) In college, one of the first close friends that I made decided that we got too close too soon, and then I never heard from her again. (It was probably all for the best, as she lived in one of the dorms all the way on the other side of campus. Still, it was strange. I mean, don’t all early college friendships begin with fast bonding over something random?) These days, it usually works that a close friend starts dating someone, and then suddenly, I’m no longer needed as the partner-in-crime/adventure buddy/confidante. (Admittedly, I’m pretty sure I’ve done that to people, too – and yet, it still stings when it happens.)

Now, I’ll be the first to tell you that the friends I’ve got are the most amazing people in my life. They’ve stuck with me through: cross-country and cross-city moves; poor dating/relationship choices; job transitions; joining and subsequently retiring from roller derby; starting a business (and then determining that it wasn’t the right time); and obviously, my current travel adventure. My friends have had many a long discussion with me about all of those decisions, and I’m a lucky lady in that regard. And of course, there have been all of the fun times, too!

I always expect that those two scenarios will balance out over time, and yet, in the end, it’s often easier to get stuck in the mode of remembering the bad things that have happened. Enter: trust issues. The type where I feel like if I obsess about one more decision out loud to my friends, they’re going to tell me to get over it and stop being so self-absorbed. The sort that lead to difficulties opening up to people. The kind that make it hard to ask for help, even from those who know me best.

My time in Iceland challenged all of that.

I expected to be spending my two weeks there alone, save for a few interactions with my CouchSurfing host and the farmers. I figured I would learn about sheep and producing jam for sale, struggle with Icelandic words, and spend my evenings reading and knitting. I suspected I would excitedly await my time in England, when I’d finally get to be with friends who were fluent in English and wanted to hang out with me.

Things didn’t exactly work out that way.

When I arrived at the farm, there were already two other volunteers there. This turned out to be a very good thing, as I soon discovered that the farmer was a teacher and thus not home all day. I wouldn’t have known where to find anything or what to do if not for them – and I also wouldn’t have learned as quickly how little work there was to do. And I most definitely wouldn’t have decided to hitchhike to another farm further east that needed extra hands harvesting before the first snow.

Before this year, I probably would have stuck it out on the farm alone, even though my compatriots were leaving for likely greener pastures. I would have assumed that hitchhiking wouldn’t be safe enough to try, and that I might get stuck in the middle of nowhere – or worse. (Americans don’t really hitchhike much, at least not in my experience.) If I decided that the farm really would be too sad and lonely, I would have paid for an earlier flight to England and high-tailed it out of Iceland to a safe space with people who know me well.

I chose to try something different.

In one of my first posts, I talked about realigning my life to reflect my values, and one of those is trust. After spending two days hitchhiking about halfway around Iceland, I think I can safely say that I’m learning to live that one. For two days, I traveled with two people I’d met less than a week earlier, trusting that they wouldn’t abandon me somewhere along the way. I relied on the kindness of strangers driving past, who were giving us rides in exchange for nothing other than conversation with an American, a Belgian, and a German (and sometimes cookies, which I’d baked without a recipe before leaving the first farm – and I must say, they were a big hit). I needed to trust that our lifts would be safe drivers on winding Icelandic roads; it’s a small enough country that I didn’t need to worry that they knew where we were going. I hoped that once we got to the junction nearest the farm, that the directions we’d received from the farmer would be clear enough that we’d easily find it as we walked at dusk with all of our bags.

Two days, 600 kilometers, six lifts (including a member of an Icelandic punk band and a former Icelandic Olympian), two dozen cookies, an unexpected stay in a village called Kirkjubæjarklaustur (seen in the above photo), three kilometers walking from the main road to the farm, and countless hours waiting by the side of the road and at petrol stations, we made it. And I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

I haven’t even touched on the people that I met on the other farm or my two CouchSurfing hosts, both of whom turned out to be really rad. I haven’t talked about the connection I formed with the two other volunteers with whom I was traveling, the silly inside jokes we developed, and the ease of our time together. I haven’t shared any of the farming experiences I had and what I learned about herding sheep and harvesting turnips. All of those things were a bit part of my two weeks in Iceland, too.

What I’ll remember the most, though, is how letting other people in and trusting strangers can lead to adventure and magic, and that I’m ready to do that a little bit more than I was before.

[photo credit:  me!]

divider

Why It’s Okay That College Killed My Creativity

posted 9th October 2011    Written by: Kat    CATEGORY: All Posts, Kat, Life Lesson, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 5, What I've Learned

It might be that I have a terrible memory, or it might be that I’ve blocked out a lot of my high school years. Whatever it is, I don’t recall much of 1995-1999. Bits here and there, yes, but nothing particularly consistent.

One thing that I do remember is a quote from one of my teachers. Maybe it’s because it was particularly poignant, or maybe it’s because he gave several homilies based on that quote over the years. (I attended a Catholic high school, and we had weekly Mass on Wednesday mornings.) All I know is that to this day, I’ve got this line ingrained in my mind:

“You can’t give thanks for what you take for granted.”

I grew up believing that I could do anything. At age six, the list of careers I thought I might have ranged from fashion designer to the first female president of the United States. From reading, to painting and drawing, to Girl Scouts, my parents encouraged my hobbies. By age 10 or 11, my grandfather had me reading and discussing the business section of The New York Times on Sundays. Most distinctly, I remember winning my local spelling bee at age 13, and my dad asked me what was next. I responded that I would win regionals and compete in the National Spelling Bee that year.

And you know what? I did. And my parents were behind me 100% of the way.

I’m a little hard on my parents sometimes because I wasn’t allowed to choose a creative career/degree. Looking back on it, I don’t know that I would have been able to put together a portfolio that would have gotten me into an art school, and I don’t know that it would have been the best thing for me in the long run. I can give you a list of reasons why I feel like college made me dumber–though the more I think about it, what I really mean is that my undergraduate degree in business and the accompanying classes killed my creativity. It’s taken me years of slowly building my creative confidence again to do what I’m doing now: traveling, teaching, and building writing and photography portfolios.

Here’s the thing, though: you can’t give thanks for what you take for granted.

I forget that I was able to read at age three, and that my parents enrolled me in some accelerated classes in elementary school. Approximately one-quarter of girls in developing countries aren’t in school at all according to the Girl Effect, and I had the chance to go above and beyond basic schooling with those classes and extracurriculars.

I ignore the fact that college was a given for me, and even though I didn’t exactly choose the right degree, I learned a lot about myself when I was there, met interesting people and made some long-term connections, and was able to study and live in another culture for four months. According to the Girl Effect, an extra year of secondary school boosts girls’ eventual wages by 15 to 25 percent.

I’m fortunate that I am 30, single, and have enough money saved to travel for three months and move to another country. It’s easy to forget that when you’re living in a culture like the one in New York City, where you can’t keep up with people who are making two or more times your income, where rents are high, and where the first question anyone asks is what you do for work.

I’m lucky that I grew up with a family that pushed me to excel in and out of school. I’m fortunate that I was able to get a degree that helped me obtain a job that increased my earnings so that I could save the money to live life on my terms now. Without the foundation that I had, all of the work I’ve done over the past ten years probably wouldn’t have gotten me here.

On my photo blog, one of our recent themes was gratitude. Ending the New York chapter of my life and beginning the next part of my journey has had me thinking about my family, friends, and life in new ways.

It’s time to give thanks.

[photo credit: me!]

divider

Then, Now, and What’s Next

posted 29th July 2011    Written by: Katharine    CATEGORY: All Posts, Inspiration, Katharine, Life Lesson, Quarterlife Crisis, Season 4, Travel, Travel/Adventure, What I've Learned

Somehow over the last six months, I learned to connect the dots.  Somewhere between the Czech Republic and Australia, I learned to fix the broken pieces and repair the damage.

It’s hard to believe that this is the last time I will write for Stratejoy.  What an incredible journey its been.

Six Months Ago…

I was broken, damaged, depressed, and spiraling into a scary black hole.  I had just lost my comfortable Corporate job and didn’t know what the next step was because no one prepared me for a devastating job loss.  I decided that the only way I could save myself from an unhappy lifestyle was to leave it.  So I packed my bags, said goodbye to friends and family, and moved to Prague to get certified to teach English as a second language.

There, I met 23 wonderful people from all over the world and discovered a new passion for education and for life.  I struggled with language barriers, culture shock, and the stress of lesson planning, but I created some priceless memories in Prague that outweigh any negative feelings of the experience.

Of course, little did I know that that certificate would open so many doors for me and lead me on a journey of a lifetime.

Now…

I’m living in a 4-bedroom flat in Sydney, Australia that I share with three other men.  I’m teaching private lessons and taking on more freelance writing projects.  I’ve created a good friend-base in Sydney, connected with a blogger from back home who has been living here for over a year, reconnected with some friends from America whom I haven’t seen in a few years, and I’m in the healthiest relationship of my life.

I went sky diving, discovered forgiveness, and uncovered loneliness in the Land Down Under.  I learned to cover the scars and open wounds with new adventures and experiences full of love, passion, and gratitude.  I gained confidence in traveling solo.  I shattered comfort zones and crossed boundaries.  I struggled with language barriers and culture shock.  But most importantly, I found happiness in Australia.

What’s Next…

I’m going bungee jumping in New Zealand in a few weeks and celebrating my 28th birthday in September in my new home with my new friends (and some old ones).  I’m going to Cairns to see the Great Barrier Reef and this summer (or winter for all of you folk in America), I’m going to learn how to surf.

I’m planning trips to South Africa and South America in 2012 and I added “build a language school in Africa” to my life list.

I’m taking life by the balls and running with it.  Wherever it takes me and whatever it throws at me, I’m going to face it all with courage and grace.  I’m going to open my heart up to extraordinary possibilities and never look back. 

Some Advice:

Life doesn’t always turn out the way we want it to, but that’s no reason to stop living for the moment.  I know it’s hard, I know it can become overwhelming, depressing, and stagnant at times, but you have to keep pushing through it, figure out what you want to do with your life, and then go do it.

I won’t lie, it’s fucking scary as hell to leave everything you know and start over, but it’s even scarier to know that you never tried to make a change, chase your dream, quit your job, or travel the world.  Stop settling for a mediocre life.  Stop making excuses.  Stop complaining about not being able to do certain things with your life.  You can do whatever you want, but you have to have the will to try.

Start living with passion and intention.  Start making a list of all of the things you want to do with your life and then go do them. Tomorrow is promised to no one.  We only have today and we only have one life to be happy, live passionately, and smile intently.  So, go out there and live your best life.  And while you’re at it, stalk me stay in touch:

facebook | twitter | travel blog

Thank you to all of my readers for supporting me through this amazing experience.  Thank you to my Season 4 Sisters for letting me share this experience with you.  Thank you to Katie for all of the brainstorming g-chat sessions and ‘behind the scenes’ stuff that you do for Stratejoy.  Thank you to Molly for creating Stratejoy, letting me be a part of Season 4, and empowering women to fight the QLC and take control of their lives.

Sending you all mad love from the wonderful world of Oz!

 

divider

« Previous Page — Next Page »