Tradeoffs

"We want it all, half was never the agreement" - Drake 


What are the things you want out of life? Do you believe that you can have them all, and all at once? Do you think they are mutually exclusive ( ex. working hard and having free time, love and money, being rich and helping people)? What are your trade offs? What are you sacrificing? 


The more I think about it, we create the rules for this life. We draw a box, and then we fit ourselves inside of it. We set goals, but, more often, we set limits. Even the bravest of us all would rather expand our boxes for dreams to fit inside, rather than break our boxes to create a new reality. What boxes do you draw? What paradigms do you fit yourself into? What rules define and confine your life? 

Collaboration

I have evolved to the point where I am ready to collaborate with others, on many creative things... (learning, love, art, knowledge)... but I am not sure who I would like to collaborate with. hmm... 


To be interested in and willing to work together, is, I think, r)(evol)utionary..... am I ready to make these steps...

What's Your Purpose

I found this cool website. answer questions, and they will create a mission statement for you.

Check it out: http://www.franklincovey.com/msb/

Living in the Past...

Spent Thursday and Friday night working with some old "friends". Old in several ways. Old in that we really aren't friends anymore, but we used to be. Old in that there's a lot of old drama between us, and that seems to lurk over us. And old in that everything we seem to be able to talk about is just old. Tired. Boring. Passe.

I feel like that with a lot of people around me, lately. It's weird, I don't know how to describe it, much less blog about it. But I'll try. Do  you ever feel like, when you're around some people, you're trapped in a time warp? Like you want to talk about the present, or even the future, but they just want to talk about the past? Do you ever feel like some of your friends live in the past? 

Living in the past can manifest itself in 2 ways: Constantly bringing up old memories (rather than actively making new ones), and just being obsessed with past mindsets. Example: I have one friend who is obsessed with boys. I say boys because it seems she is unaware that real men do not keep up the level of drama that she is consistently involved in, but boys do. She's always texting about a new boy, if he has light skin, light eyes and curls, she's in love. And the relationship never pans out. I feel like I'm in 10th grade, sitting on the bleachers, watching the seniors on the basketball team walk by and dreaming. I want to tell her we've grown up from that stage. I don't think she has though.

I have another friend who's always depressed. Depression might have worked when all we felt we had were our journals in high school to scribble notes in angrily about all the wrongs we suffered. But we're grown ups now. There's therapy, yoga, church, or the ability to just get the heck over it already, and work everyday to make your life better. Seems some friends would rather wallow in the old reality than cocreate a new one. 

And my problem is I want everyone to evolve in the same way I evolve, in the same time frame. Now that I'm free, I don't know what to do with people that are enslaved to past ways of living or thinking. Its like I've got survivors guilt. I feel bad for growing up, and feel its my job to help you grow up too.... 

to be continued...

Happiness?

How often (in minutes) do you spend thinking about creating or actively improving your own happiness? How often do you actively do what you think about doing if it is related to creating or improving your own happiness?

Mission Statement

Lately I've been thinking a lot about what I want to get out of life. But what am I here to give to life? What is my personal mission statement? What is your personal mission statement? Thoughts? 

On the Road Again

"We want it all, half was never the agreement" - Drake

For a long time, I've thought about myself as a person who wanted it "all." Fame, fortune, family, freedom... As I get older that vision is more refined, but still undefined. I know, I don't have to be famous (what would I be famous for), I don't have to amass a ridiculous fortune (just enough for a roof and some extra pleasures), and that, while I can work on bringing my family together, that is something I'll largely have to create on my own through marriage and children. So I get it. Having it all ain't what it seems. But I still wonder if I can "have it all", and what my version of "all" is. 

Part of my "all" is freedom and exploration. So, in the face of all of my fears, and I have many fears, I booked a trip to London, Paris and Rome this summer. I'll be going, by myself basically, on a tour. AAAAAH! DO YOU HEAR ME? A TOUR! ABROAD! IN ANOTHER COUNTRY! WITH OTHER PEOPLE! LOTS OF PEOPLE! THAT I DON'T KNOW. AAAH. Ok. I'm breathing again. Needless to say, this is an utterly overwhelming and paradigm shattering move. But I made it. I don't think I could be in integrity with my soul (which is, btw, my new favorite phrase), if I didn't do it. So.... there is no conclusion, I'll just end it there....

Most of What I need

Most of what I need
is not in books
New clothes, new looks 
Most of what I need
is not in your arms or your eyes
your truth or your lies 
Most of what I need
Is in me
Not in my head or my thoughts
or my thoughts on my thoughts
most of what I need 
is in me 
Not in my tears
or my fears
my to do lists
my to undo lists
not written down
most of what i need 
is me

I'm Goin In!

         Today I’m going for the second part of my root canal. Wish me luck. I am deathly afraid of dentists. I haven’t been in probably 4 years. Which is part of the reason I need a root canal (take care of your teeth yall!). But I’m deathly afraid. I don’t like pain, and like most people, I do everything I can to avoid it. I’m weak. I’m fragile. When they told me I needed a root canal, I was laid out in the dentist chair, crying. Crying ugly.

            Fear is not logical. I need the root canal to save my tooth. The pain from the damaged root is more than the pain of getting it removed. But I still am afraid. Last week I had the first part of the procedure. I realize, what scares me about the dentist is the lack of control. Its like being on a plane that’s headed to the ground, and there’s a parachute, but someone is clutching it tight, not letting you have it. You have the tools to jump, but someone is holding you down (like they do in that dentist chair) and not letting you do it. That is not a direct metaphor. Its not logical. But that’s how I feel in the dentist chair. A loss of control to people I don’t trust, and pain that seems never ending. If I had a stop and go button, if I could control them touching me, if I could ask for breaks, I’d feel a lot easier. But that’s not how pain goes, not how dentistry goes, not how life goes.

          Last Thursday I got the first part of the root canal done. Part of a damaged nerve removed. It was simple, clean, and not too painful. For all those tears, it was easy. I felt unstoppable, that I didn’t die in the process.

             There are other life processes I feel I might die in the middle of. Traveling is one. I told you fear is not logical. I’ve been dreaming, especially lately, of going to Europe. London, Paris,  somewhere like that. But the idea is so scary to me. I can’t get to the root of it. I don’t know what exactly I’m afraid of. What strange fate I think will befall me…. But, since I got the root canal, I feel a lot less scared to think of Paris. If I didn’t die in the dentist chair, will the Eifel Tower really fall on my head? 

Fear....

What would you do, if none of your fears ever came true?