May 20, 2013 · 10:08 am

Honesty in the age of catfishing.

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Of all the skins I’ve ever slipped into– daughter, dancer, intern, lover, leaver– the skins of the “blogger” have been the hardest for me.

I fumble around on this page. I hide behind syllables. I make you think you’ve got me figured out and then I pull out some crazy post about a girl clawing around on the living room floor and make y’all think my heart got ripped out my chest last week.

Truthfully, I don’t accept the skins of a “blogger.” I deny the fact. I don’t read any books on the topic. I don’t think this little sucker will ever have a penny to her name. I break all the rules of Blogging 101. I don’t come to you every day of the week. I don’t visit other blogs. I am unreliable when I do come to you. I don’t know that I’m even around long enough for you to crave me. And I shrink down ten sizes in any conversation about metrics, and money, and stats. I shrink to a whisper, “I don’t care about any of the way this world operates. I just want to matter to someone while I’m here.”

That is all I think about. It’s all I really care about. I think about death & funerals & last words all too often not because I am morbid but because I realize that we are going so quickly. And I want it to have meant something. I want it to be difficult for and I to sum up.

I don’t do pretty messages. And much of what I write here cannot be tied with resolutions because life has never worked that way. My blog, to me, is exactly how I view this lifetime. It’s beautiful. It’s chaotic. But sometimes it leaves you saying, what just happened here?

I get emails from people all over the world saying, “sorry for your loss” and “hope your heart mends soon.”

They’re meshed in with a tangle of old boyfriends who think I might be Taylor Swifting them on the Internet for all the world to see.  And I can only think to say sorry. Sorry, sorry. Sorry that everything about me is unreliable except for my heart and the direction it is going in. The rest might just be fiction. The rest could be a post I assembled two years ago and never thought to let it see the light until just yesterday.  The rest was probably, certainly never about you. Or me. Or the Us that was three summers ago. (See? See?! I already had you believing that some boy from three summers ago still thinks to read me from his cubicle on days when the sun just don’t feel like shining.)

I have never been honest on this page. Has my heart been true? Yes. But have I given you a depiction of my day-to-day life, or a live stream of my heart at this very moment? No, no.

My blog has never been a roadmap to my life. Not since it started. And jeepers, if it were, you’d all think me Cray with a capital C. The closest to me, the ones who know both my eyes and elbows, take these words with a grain of salt because they understand that the boy in the coffee shop is rarely ever real and that girl waiting by the train is not me or anyone we’ve ever known in this lifetime. The corner of the internet has never been the thing I send over to family and friends to say, “Hey, hey, keep up with all the fun I’m having in this world.” If that were the case, they’d have thought I buried someone on a Monday, broke up with someone on a Wednesday, all while mastering time management on a Friday.

Two years ago, at the height of my depression in New York City (that’s about the one detail that every solid stranger knows about me), I sought the solace of a therapist. He was a nice dude. And I found out that I could not afford him one month into seeing him. I was a fulltime volunteer. I was working and living in the Bronx, New York. I would trot into his office wearing my UN badge and proceed to cry all over his pillows. And when I found out that I could not afford him, that alas, we had no insurance for that, he took me on pro bono.

“You’re doing good in this world,” he told me. “I want to do that too.” And we had this unspoken agreement that he would listen and I would cry and we’d keep our lips zipped when it came to payment.

But the poor, poor man found out that I was a blogger and even he would read my writing. So I led that man on a roller coaster as he imagined me as a single mother one day and a ramshackled vagabond on the next. On occasion, he’d bring up a post or two and I’d have to say, “YO DUDE, I’M A STEEL TRAP. Nothing you read on that blog page is going to give you the lens into how I am feeling now. Half of it is made up. These tears in my eyes are the only real thing you’ve got of me.”

He understood that in time. That not every blogger is outward about their life. That sometimes a blogger is not a blogger but rather just someone who always dreamed of people reading her with cups of tea within their hands and tangles in their hair. And printing her out on nicer paper and folding her up in pocketbooks. But not every writer or blogger or human is the one to tell the truth.

This is me falling through a window while breaking + entering on the day my hands were photographed by that typewriter.

This is me falling through a window while breaking + entering on the day my hands were photographed by that typewriter.

When you enter into this page, you tour the flickering, grainy slide show of a girl who has spent her whole existence stapling the hearts of others to her sleeves. You are touching your fingertips against her creativity, her musings, her pent-up desperation for a world in which we loved one another harder today than yesterday. You are standing in the middle of her muddy grounds and not every published thing you see here is a “blog post” so much as it is this: words strung together to try to get you closer to your own humanity.

I don’t call myself a writer. I don’t call myself a blogger. I’d rather be neither. I’m just a girl. Just a girl with a golden life who is on the cusp of 25 and she is making up new dreams because all her older ones came true in the mystery of a single year. Just a girl who doesn’t come to you in a Monday through Friday sort of way but might show up in your inbox at 1:32am with 700 words that struck her fingers at midnight. A girl who welcomes you to come to her inbox at that time, too, because she’s learned that nothing is more sacred than the feet that bring good news and she will always meet you there. I will always meet you there.

I am just a girl learning how to dance in the middle of a whirlwind. A hurricane of sorts. Just a girl who would spend all her days on hands and knees placing dignity back where it was once lost if only she could. If only she could. That’s all this blog is. That’s all my life is.

And I am fake friends with all the people on General Hospital.  And the Amish.

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May 14, 2013 · 8:18 am

If we were an alphabet then thre’d be mssing ltters by now.

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“Life’s gotten so crazy.”

That’s what we say to one another. When it comes to passing by. When we haven’t seen each other in a while. When the text messages have piled. When we collide in aisle 7 and we think to search the shelves of canned food for all the time we’ve lost.

“Life’s gotten so crazy, we really need to catch up soon.”

That’s the stake we drive into the ground, like the building of a white, picket fence that separates You from Me and Us from feelings that fit like sun dresses just yesterday when we weren’t so afraid of what Forever could feel like on the fingertips.

It’s an excuse. It’s a white flag on a battle field full of To Do Lists that never stop firing their cannons and calendars overflowing with the things we vow to be important for the moment. I’ll just be the honest one: It’s been far too long since I’ve seen your name circled beside a cup of tea I’ve doodled in the box reserved for Sunday afternoons. Those Sunday afternoons used to belong to you, my dear.

“Life’s gotten so crazy. I’ve missed you so much. We really should talk more soon. We really need to catch up soon.”

That’s what I told you yesterday as I clutched my foaming latte and headed for the door. That’s what I told you instead of the truth. The truth that I am beginning to misplace the pitch in your voice. The truth that if we were an alphabet then there’d be letters missing by now. Rnning amuck, with less than prfect syllbles, I’d stll try to tll you I’ve mssed you. That I am terribly terrified of the day when I wake up to find I’ve misplaced your laughter and all the sweet things you used to say to me when either life wasn’t so crazy or we simply didn’t care to notice.

It was yesterday, as I walked away from your table to get to a meeting I thought needed me more than you, that I stopped at a red light and let the thought of your face flood my memory. I thought sweet tea. A bowl of peanuts by our side. Kittens dancing in the yard. You and I when the air was ripe enough for secrets and honesty.  And I clutched my breath and told myself, when was the last time I told you that I loved you? And I meant it more than just a hurried, frazzled 3-word statement? When was the last time I told you that you’ve made this whole thing better? That I keep you safe in memory and I think of you more than my calendar will permit me to admit.

We’re living in a God Forbid world, my dear.

God forbid, God forbid, something should happen. In a park. In a movie theater. In a school. At a race. And I wouldn’t see you any longer. And you’d never pluck my face out of a crowd again. And one of us would spend some kind of eternity wishing we’d said more, did more, tried more to hold all the pieces together even when life got so crazy.

I don’t want to wait for my Twitter feed to coax me to turn on the news and see all the people crying over yet another tragedy. I don’t want to let it get that far– to fill my bones with fear that someone has hurt you, or wronged you, or taken you away from me– to call you on the phone and crawl into your voice mail with the whispers I’ve carried with me since yesterday:

Hey you.

I hope you’ll get this message. I hope you’ll pick up soon and tell me straight that it was some kind of mistake. That you are doing just fine. That I’ve nothing to fear.

Call me back and pull me in with your laughter. I can’t go a lifetime thinking the world might rob me of that sound forever. Call me back and say anything.

Just call me back. Please call me back.

I’ll stay here. I’ll stay here just clutching my phone. I’ll wait for you, don’t worry. I’ve not go nowhere to go. Really. Just waiting for you to arrive at my door and tell me it was confusion. Confusion, yes. Chaos, yes. A tragedy, yes. But that you got out so safely. And you thought of me… and your mother… and your brother… and your friends the whole way through.

That when the cell service went down you were searching for ways to let me know that it was all a mistake. And that you loved me too. And that we were going to forget about life tomorrow and just lay in bed all day.

Come back, please. Come back to me and I promise to lay with my head against your chest and ask you no questions.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. Does it even make sense to say that now? I’ll try calling you back. Again & again & again. I’ll get good at pretending that I ain’t just calling to hear your voice tell me that you aren’t here right now, that you’ll call back soon, as soon as you get this message.

I’m waiting. I’m waiting. Get the message. Did you get the message?

Call me back and say anything.

Just call me back.

Please call me back.

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May 8, 2013 · 6:02 am

Slow down and laugh a little, baby.

Dee & Her Red Lipstick

Dee & Her Red Lipstick

I never knew much of a woman named Dee. Sepia-stained photographs tell me she knew what it meant to stand laughing at life.

Dee. She is a woman I only know from photographs and stories that slip out from behind carved turkeys and cardboard boxes full of ornaments.

You see, I knew Grandma. I knew Boccu. But I never knew the woman with the beautiful brown hair and the burlesque lipstick that shaped a mouth that gave vows to laughter.

When I found Dee, arthritis had crippled her hands after years spent holding flowers and the faces of children who cried and called her, “Mama.” Age had wrinkled her skin. Age had tattered her bones. Age, you are so fierce, can’t you tread easier on the ones who only ache to learn from you?

But the Dee I see in pictures is the Dee who believed that life was fierce. Life was bold. Life was a case for red lipstick no matter where ya’ headed. The grocery store. Central Park. Life was turbulent some days but it will required you to show up and try to laugh. Try to get the sweet sound of release slipping up through your vocal chords.

I want to remember that. And on some days, only that.

I think that Dee might laugh at me. Up to my knees is Must Do’s and Have To’s and Oh Lord, The World Will Fall Apart If This Don’t Get Done’s. I think she’d laugh at me then get real proud.

Her eyes might well up. She might bite her bottom lip, not caring if the lipstick caked her two front teeth, just the way I do.

She might remember the days when she held me, tucked me at her side to watch the Wizard of Oz with a tube of Pringles in my lap.

I was skinny like a rail and my nickname was “Boneyard” and I was never really a Dorothy type but all I really wanted was for Grandma to see me that way. For Grandma to believe that I could be a girl with a beautiful, blue checkered dress and the Most Grand of Red Slippers on my feet. That I could travel deep into this world and really get my Yellow Brick Road. That I could be someone. That I could be someone wonderful like that.

“I’ll see your name on book shelves one day,” Dee used to say. “Books are gonna love the feel of your name on their spine.”

And that is all it took. All it took for one girl to decide she’d grow up and be someone beautiful. She’d grow up and turn the Lives of Others into something really striking and rich.

Dee, if you can hear me, I know you’d care to know: I’m dancing somewhere in the middle of something really beautiful, just like our favorite moment when Dorothy first finds the poppies and she’s trudging in Red. Pure Red. And then the snow comes.

I’m doing something sort of like that lately, Dee. And there are days where I wanna run straight to Oz because I can see it so clearly. And then days where I know just what you would say, “Slow, baby, slow. I know you want to sprint, but don’t you forget that every moment you are running past is a chance to drag your finger across the map of someone else standing in that poppy field and lead them back to love. You’re young. You’re bright. You’ve got the world coming up all around you, slow down and laugh a little, baby. Slow down and treasure it because it will slip faster than you know.

Run at a pace that will let you catch the snowflakes. Let you get the Red all up in your toes.” 

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April 30, 2013 · 10:16 am

We cannot stay here any longer.

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I hold a dream job that I’ve never told a soul about.

It’s a completely, separate full-time job that (in a pretty & perfect world) would involve just me, a bucket, and Maya Angelou.

I harbor an adoration that is heavy and thick for this woman. She is, quite simply, a soul sister who hasn’t met me yet. But I love her. And I value her. And I would take every turn and twist possible if it meant I could follow her around with an upside down umbrella and a bucket to catch all her words of wisdom in one swift, scoop and keep them for myself.

It could work, really it could. I’d follow her to interviews and press conferences and poetry readings and she’d say to the people at the door, “Oh, her? She’s the one who recycles all my wisdom. Don’t mind her… or her bucket… or her umbrella…”

If this were my job, my most perfect job, then I would have been sitting beside her as her fingers got wrapped in the cords of the telephone as she talked with a reporter at the Daily Beast . I would have been with her instead of sitting here, in the middle of a Starbucks, tracing her wisdom off the screen.

Interviewer: What is something you always carry with you?
Maya: I’m a child of God. I carry that with me.

I stop. I pause. I put the bucket down. I search my pockets. I wonder, when did I stop carrying that? When did I forget that I was a child of God? And when did I forget to remember to tell you that, too? That you, yes, you are a child of God. And that makes you more special than any amount of syllables I could think to place beside your name.

I’m sitting here in the middle of a Starbucks and I am crying. I am vividly crying and I won’t apologize to anyone who wants me to clean up my tears with a napkin and a latte. I don’t really care if I ugly cry all over their Starbucks experience. Welcome to the real world, babycakes!  Youz about to get some titanical tears with your grande machiblahblahblah.

Yes, I’m crying. Right now. Writing to you weeping. Because maybe I’ve wronged you… I’ve wronged you when I didn’t tell you the truth. When I didn’t use every ounce of my energy and my syllables to tell you that you’ve never needed to match someone’s standards. I’ve wronged you when I thought you didn’t need that message more than anything else in the world… more than business advice or organizational skills. You’ve just needed to know what a worthy, worthy thing you are, no matter how ugly this world gets.

And regardless of if you believe it or not, I. Think. You’re. Freaking. Perfect.

Quite simply: I think you put the dang stars to shame. And you give the oceans a ripple & a wave for their money. And you need not change a stitch of you because I have always, always, always loved you this way.

And you think a stranger can’t love you? Baby, I can cry for you. And I can decide not sleep at night because of you. Because all I’ve ever needed to say, over & over & over again, is that I wish you knew how very lovely you are. It’ll break my heart the longer I go without telling you that. I wish you knew how very lovely you are.

And despite what you believe, I am not afraid to sit in my corner of the internet and tell you that I think you are a child of God. And please don’t get offended by me because there is nothing offensive about the idea of someone making us perfectly. And there is nothing offensive about the idea of someone stitching up the skyline for us. And there is nothing offensive about believing, if only for a half second, that we were made for victory and better things before we learned to give our little lives away to weaknesses and lies.

I believe in that.

I believe in love. I believe in a religion that never sat pretty in the church the way it raged beautifully when it was out on the sidewalks. In the hands of people who knew how to love on others right. I believe in people who use every shred of their composure to go out of their way to tell someone else how very wonderful they are. No matter where you’ve been or what you’ve done, someone should have told you that before. And if you’ve never heard that… well. let. me. be. the. first.

I don’t care that I don’t know you. I don’t care that I cannot list off all your bruises and battles like the backs of my own hands. Because if it took me knowing all of that about you then we would never get to the point where I apologize to you…

And say that I am sorry that others have judged you.

Or misread you. Or hurt you. Or screwed you over.

I am sorry for all of that and I beg you accept my apology for all the harm of humanity if it means you’ll think about moving forward today… because you have bigger work to do than feel the bitterness. You have much bigger work to do. That work is so big, so wide, so far, that it laughs at all those weaknesses that tried to hold you back.

We cannot stay here any longer.

Do you hear me? Do you hear me? We cannot sit here and wait for the hurt to pass, we must get stronger. It’s our only hope. We cannot sit here and wait to love ourselves a little more, or find worthiness in the mirror tonight. There is work to be done, there is work to be done.

We will know all those other things in time. But our lives are short & our time is fleeting & our limbs were made for a love that howls at the moon. So are you ready to go? Are you ready to go?

Take my hand. Don’t even turn your head to look back. We’re gonna try forward and I promise, I promise, you’ll weep for joy when you find it fits you like an old lover’s sweatshirt in the night winds of April. You were made for more than this. You were made to carry bigger things than your victim stories. Say it as we go, say it as we go.

You, my love, are a child of God. & you’ve always been perfect to me.

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April 23, 2013 · 6:28 am

I can leave the light on.

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Your shoes are by the door and I know I’ve done it again.

There’s only a lone pair of sneakers this time. It can’t possibly be so bad. The last time this happened I unlocked the door and pushed it open to find hiking boots, dress shoes, sandals and a pair of slippers. All Size 11. Craterly & Mammoth beside my Size 7 feet.

“I’m sorry,” I yell into the dark apartment. “I know why you’re here.”

“Do you really? And are you really sorry? I guess those are just the questions on my mind,”I hear you respond from the kitchen—a small space of pots & pans tucked tight and out of sight at the left of the apartment.

“I didn’t mean to bring you up…”

“But you did.” I wait for you to come into view. Wait to see your tousled hair. Your black ankle socks. Your casual, boyish attire.  “I’m worried because you did.”

“But…”

“Go ahead, explain it to me,” you go on. But you don’t show. You don’t show.

“Alex was having a hard time. I brought you up. I told her about us. Our story.”

“Babe, how many times do I have to tell you that…”

“ I know, I know. I get it, we don’t have a story… or at least not one that I need to keep telling over & over & over again.” I walk past the kitchen, throwing my coat on the sofa and heading for the bathroom. I play with the sink knobs. The water gushes out quickly. Soon enough, the heat pours out, collapsing and cloaking my tired hands.

“I only say it for your good. You know that, right?” He waits. For me. To answer.

Stop whispering, please stop whispering to me, I want to say.

The tears stay pent inside the crooks of my eyelids where the gold shimmer faded off nearly two hours ago. Not looking up. Not letting my eyes drift back to the sneakers at the door of the apartment.

Stop talking, just stop whispering. I don’t want to feel you so much anymore. Not in this way.

He goes on, “I only ever say it for your good because you and I both know that…”

“That I’ve got to move on. That I’m wasting time. That every time I bring your name into a coffee date, I am only hurting myself,” I steady my hands. I try to keep them from shaking. You stay talking. On & On & On. As if you were the damn genius who invented conversation. And it does no good because I cannot see you and I cannot feel you the way I used to.

 

I abandon the towel and the light switch.

I stay in the dark and crawl my way to the floor where the sofa’s legs kiss carpet. There I stay, curled up and trying to steady myself.

“You don’t get it… it’s not this hard for you,” I say into the darkness. “You are the not the one who has to live without me. I am the one who does that, every single day. In the best and only way that I know how. I am the one who gets up everyday and brace myself to lie any tell everyone I’m fine without you.

And don’t you know that you are everywhere? You are in the trees. In the leftover slices of pizza that you should’ve ate in the middle of the night. In the side of the bed that makes me want to stay filthy forever if it means I’ll never have to lose your scent on the sheets. You don’t have to go through any of that… But I do. I do. And I know, I know that every time I bring you up in conversation that I am going to come home to your shoes & nothing else, just the memory of you that doesn’t hold me right.”

I don’t hear you anymore. Nothing but the clicking of the clock all the way in the bedroom. My hands are wet and down on the floor beside me. Clawing in the darkness at what I know is a shade of maroon that you picked out back when Carpet mattered & Salad mattered & Sunday Football mattered.

I put my head down on the floor and imagined what you’d do next. I know if you were here you’d pull me into your lap and you’d change my mind. You always did that. And not because I always seemed to melt into a pile of bones when your arms wrapped me in, but because you were just one of those people who could explain the world for me. You plugged in lamps where I could not find light. You strung Christmas lights in the darkest of places throughout your whole fight. And so you say I’ve got to be stronger because you refused to leave me sitting in the dark. But it feels like dark. It feels like dark without you, dear. & maybe, maybe I wasn’t strong enough for this.

 

“Sometimes I hate you,” I whisper through clenched teeth.

“I hate that you left me here to do this without you. I hate that I couldn’t fix you. I hate that I’ve become some town tragedy where people treat me like a fogged up window that they can look through, apologize for the loss, watch me sway back & forth a bit and then head back to their own lit home. That I feel pathetic without you. That so much of this doesn’t matter without you.

I hate that I couldn’t go with you. That you left me standing here with all these secrets & things we told one another when the rest of the world fell asleep, things I was supposed to whisper back on a day when I wore white just for you. And now I’ve got to let it all go… I don’t want to let you go…. I don’t know how… I don’t want to learn.”

I cry. For your arms. For a blanket you’d place over me. For the hairs on my head I know you’d stroke. For the tears you’d wipe. The things you’d say. For the thought of you, up in the clouds, hanging your head over an image of me rendered Helpless & Heartbroken.

“Come home… Just come home again…I cant feel you anymore…” Your shoes are already by the door. I can leave the light on. “I’m sorry… I’m sorry… I’ll try again tomorrow. Just come home tonight? Please come home tonight.”

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April 18, 2013 · 10:26 am

Remember when we became the Honey Boo Boo children of time management?

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We’re all convinced we are super, uber bad at time management.

I don’t know the myth or mystery behind it but I’ve yet to meet the person who is like, “ME?! HECK YA, I DOMINATE TIME MANAGEMENT… I ROCK THAT THINGS LIMBS OFF! I AM AN ABSOLUTE ANIMAL WHEN IT COMES TO MANAGING MY TIME.”Yea, if that person does exist then I want to meet them… and maybe date them… and then marry them and follow them around drooling while I watch them tackle their day with a productive vengeance.
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Time management seems like one of those weak spots. One of those things we have not quite mastered yet but we really hope to (dot dot dot) someday. But you know what? No more, friends. NO. MORE. Today I am coming at ya’ strong and saying: We are done with being the Debby Downers of Day Planning. You hear me?!?!  If you are too weak for the contents of this post then please exit my blog now. Otherwise, guzzle a 5-hour energy shot and repeat this credo after me:
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“I, ____Insert name here or nickname you’ve always wished people would call you by____, do hereby swear to stop whining and walking around weeping in the organization section of Target. I am going to stop thinking that Etsy shops are my cure-all and that one more set of funky, oval to-do list sheets is going to make my time management skills any bit better. No one needs oval to-do list sheets… not even me.  I am vowing, today and for the rest of my life, to rock the face off time management like Honey Boo Boo child. I am going to be a beast with appointments. I am going to be a tank when it comes to tasks. And I am going to STOP telling people that I am awful at time management and instead tell them that I am the girl/boy on fire before diving into a rendition of notes that Alicia Keys will always hit better than me. And that’s alright… because my talent isn’t singing anymore, it’s time management.”
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No frills, no ruffles- you need a system.

“Buying a new planner, and new dividers, and funky post-it notes, and sweet little stickers and these oddly shaped clip thingers that are an absolute anomaly to me but cute nonetheless are going to make me an organized person! Suddenly I am going to show up to meetings early with a coffee in hand feeling like a million-and-two dollas.”

Yea, you know we’ve all eaten that idea up like cake. Like fluffy, white birthday cake. But can I debunk the lie? And tell you it’s simply not true? No amount of cute accessories will make us better managers of our time. A day planner = tool. A rack of highlighters = tool. Babycakes, step. off. the. tools. and. get. yourself. a. system.
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You have to know the inner workings of your productivity and workflow if you ever want tools to help you down this yellow brick road of time management. I may as well sacrifice this entire blog post to the gods of bad Wizard of Oz References by saying that Dorothy’s shoes, as bangin’ they looked, held no power until she knew how to click those rubies together. I don’t care how pretty we can make our organizers look, we need to get into the habit of creating a system that we go back to day after day after day. Without the system, the frills fail us.
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You need to come into the ring already knowing yes, this works for me or no, that has never worked for me. And girl, it if it has never worked for you then, chances are, it’s not going to work this time around either so please spare yourself the trip to Target for a new planner and just step off for a second.

Lock + key your week before it begins.

I schedule everything into my planner on Sundays so that I can walk into my week knowing what is ahead. I sit down, with tea in hand, on a Sunday night and I map out: what are the projects I need to finish this week? Who are the people I need to see? What emails need to be sent? Do not pent this kind of info up in your head and walk into the week overwhelmed. Write it all down and go from there.
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I walk into the week knowing the tasks I want to accomplish and, more importantly, where they are actually fitting into my day-to-day schedule. After Sunday, that calendar is lock + key. I don’t push my limits, I don’t cancel things, I stick to the tasks I know I need to get done.
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Don’t let “Where” dictate your “What.”

Let’s just be clear: most day planners revolve around where you need to be. Martha Stewart will even go so far as to tell you what day to go to the grocery store and cheer on your son at soccer practice (Martha, I don’t have a son… please hop off my swag with your assertive planner tendencies). I know that if my week revolves around the places that I need to be then I will get way less done. To have a productive week, I must accomplish tasks and push projects forward, regardless of where my meetings lie. Therefore, I use a daily planning sheet to make sure I stay focused.

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Get my daily template here.

Printing out these sheets and stacking them in a big ol’ binder has been the key for me, especially with a crazy travel schedule. I know where I need to be (but it does not dominate my whole day), who I need to follow up with, the big tasks and nitty gritty. Gratitude is also a very important chunk of my day so I make sure I keep a running list of thank you’s so I can spread them out after the day winds down.

Know thy peaks + valleys.

Hours vary for everyone. Some of us work a 9-5 day while others are up at all hours of the night cracking away at the workload. Instead of beating your head against a wall when you lose an hour of productivity, key into when you are the most focused in a day, when you get the most things done, when you tend to slump in your chair and hate your life a little. Schedule the daily workflow into those peaks + valleys.

Be realistic. & plan accordingly.

I am a retired member of the “I used to want to do 27 things in one day until I realized it was physically impossible and my limbs were weeping” club. Time management and day planning means nada if you are constantly setting unrealistic expectations. Know your limits. Know how long a task normally would take you and schedule out from there.

I try to enter into each day with at least 4-5 smaller tasks to get done of 1-3 bigger tasks. Some days I will dedicate an entire day to 1 project while other days I am in serious need of having a bunch of mini projects done. Go at your own pace and know it isn’t the end of the world if a task is not completed. You’d rather the work be on par than frazzled but finished at the 5pm hour.

This is just the first of several posts that will trot your way on time management as I learn the crooks and curves of it myself. I would love to hear from you and gather some tips on what works and what doesn’t work in your own time management habits. Let’s chat in the comments below, boo.

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April 15, 2013 · 7:25 pm

Talks with Tragedy.

yellow dressThere are days when I need to believe that Tragedy is a human being.

A living, breathing, fleshy individual. Wrinkled & Grey.

Yes, some days I want so badly for Tragedy to be an elderly man who wears a checkered newsboy cap and is too proud to use a walking cane to steady his step. And he goes up and down the boardwalk of some seaside port, the mist of salt water curling around his glum face as he grumbles about grandchildren that never visit anymore, not since his wife passed at least.

He does this ritualistic walking nearly every morning, no matter the temperature, before he settles into the Same Booth of the Same Seaside Diner he has given his quarters & nickels to since childhood. And a woman named Betsey is his waitress. And Betsey has no idea but she will regret never having stopped to hear the awe-inspiring stories that the man holds. Tragedy, well he’s seen wars & great battles & a fair share of natural disasters, but Betsey will never know that. To her he’s just a tired, cranky old man who rarely ever tips. Tragedy takes his coffee, fresh or not, sipping slowly as he stares out the window at the children leap frogging over one another in the water and then toppling into the waves.

And he breathes in deeply, forced to cut most cups of coffee short because a funeral requests his presence or the news reports are already telling anxious viewers that Tragedy has arrived, even before he even knows where the atrocity took place.

Standing off in the distance, Tragedy hangs his head low until the next job calls. Wondering when he can retire. Wondering when the world won’t need him anymore.

On these days, when I convince myself that Tragedy is an aging man with faulty vision and a grumble with no grin, I am tempted to scour through the yellow pages and call every seaside diner until I find the one who tells me, “Yes, that man is a regular. He arrives here every morning at 9:30a.m.”

I’ll scuffle into sandals and sling the morning Boston Globe beneath my arm, stuff a few old photos in the deep pocket of my tote bag, and march right over to that seaside diner with every ounce of resentment percolating inside of me while Tragedy waits, unknowingly, for a refill on his coffee and for my arrival.

“We need to talk,” I’ll say, speaking before even fully sliding into the booth across from him. Before even seeing the wrinkles that surround Tragedy’s Sad Blue Eyes and the anguish already written upon his face.

He’ll just stare at me. Let out a slow chuckle. The saddest laugh I will ever hear. I know it already.

“You think you are the first person to approach me with a newspaper? Get that outta my sight,” he’ll say.”You were going to open that damn paper up to page A6 or D1, doesn’t really matter because I am on every single page, and show me all the problems I have caused by being there. You people act like I take delight in my job, like I enjoy attending twelve funerals an hour and showing up at the bedside of sick children. You people think I take vacations when I head over to places like Japan & Afghanistan to oversee the rubble and the devastation.

And then, then, you’ll pull some photo out from that bag of yours and tell me that I took someone away that you loved very much.

And that wasn’t me kid. That wasn’t me.”

Anger will burn at my cheeks as I pull my tote closer to me, envisioning the photos of the woman laughing in the side compartment of the bag. I want him to be sorry. I want so badly for Tragedy to be sorry. Not indifferent. Not unphased.

His voice will crouch lower. Softer. Practically silent.

“I don’t plot the sadness and cruelty of this world, I just show up because that’s my job. You try to imagine doing a job every single day where you know before you even stroll out the door in the morning that people don’t want you around, that no one is ever going to be happy to see you show up. I’ve seen the look on Joy’s face when I arrive at a good pool party. I’ve had my face slapped a couple of times by Happiness and that twin of hers, Elation, when I “ruined the party” and made everyone go home sobbing. You try being the bearer of the most awful, most terrible news, every single day and then you tell me how it feels to be attacked over your morning coffee.”

“But I just don’t understand,” I’ll say, trying my best to keep composure. “You are absolutely everywhere and I don’t understand how the world can keep spinning and moving when Beautiful People pass away or a shooting kills dozens. I don’t know how to move on after you show up. After I locate you in every sad photograph, looming over victims, or I can feel your presence around me like a shawl that I wish would just stay off of my shoulders. My head hurts just thinking about all the places you’ve been and the pain that comes with you.”

“That’s not your job, kid,” he’ll answer. “Your job might be to pray that I will disappear but it is not your job to try to understand why I am everywhere or to think about the places I have been in a day. I am the one who has to take all the sadness of the world onto my shoulders, not you. If you think it’s you then you better take a good hard look in the mirror and rearrange yourself because the world wants something different from you. And if you cannot accept that then here, here, let me give you a job:

Show up, after I have gone, and help people pick up the pieces and clear away the mess. My whole life would have been different if that had been my job. If I could just stick around after I did my job as “Tragedy” and then really help people. People are really, really broken. I’ve learned that best from the funerals, and the shootings, and the kinds of events that make no sense when their jumbled and splayed on the cover of the paper. But don’t get so caught up in your anger at me that you forget to help people and give them hope. You people forget your power too quickly… you let fear win, you let me triumph when you shouldn’t. Do you hear me, girl? I don’t want to triumph. I don’t want to win. I don’t want to be center of all you people’s conversations. I don’t deserve that, I never have, so don’t let me win this one. Please look for hope and work on forgetting me.”

He’ll stand to gather his coat from the booth beside him.

“Listen kid, I have to head out. The job calls me at all hour,” he’ll say, placing two single dollar bills on the table beside him. “Remember my suggestion though… That’s a better job for you.”

He’ll reach the door, swinging it open with a vengeance that only yields the small clanging of a single bell at the top of the door.

“Oh, and one more thing,” he’ll add, stepping back through the door. “Take that picture you have in your bag and find a good frame for it. You don’t have to bother showing me, I already know she was beautiful. Maybe I should have said that first.”

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April 9, 2013 · 12:13 pm

Three ways to be.

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My mother learned how to salsa dance in between a table of sheer glittered tank tops and a rack of leather jackets.

That’s the kind of woman my mother is & always will be, the kind to wear red flip flops in mid-October and a platinum gold satchel on her hip while stepping on the toes of a 20-something Colombian named Carlos who was innocently folding men’s dress shirts in the middle of the clothing store before my mother pulled a thread within him. Unraveling his whole life story. The Seams of Carlos All Tangled Up in My Mother’s Humanity and Salsa Dancing.

Carlos was in America for the year on a futbol scholarship and had just then began to feel the waves of homesickness push in as the holidays began sneaking under doorways and into the store fronts of Sears and Macy’s.

So my mother invited Carlos to Thanksgiving dinner, but only if he taught her a dance. Hence the salsa dancing. Hence the 20-something Colombian learning to knife a turkey at my kitchen table.

My mother reeks of good human being. It pours out of her.

And even though we are often fighting over a) dishes b) bags left on the kitchen table c) student loan checks d) frying pans (all which sum up to the fact that I need a t-shirt that reads “Creativity ruins my Domesticity”), I still want to shake her by the shoulders while screaming loudly, “I wannttttttt tooooo beeeeeee jusssssttttt liiiikkkkkeee yooouuuuu.”

The key word is Be. I want to Be. Just like mother. She gets it. The Being part. She Be’s all day, every day.

She Be a blessing. She Be a lantern. She Be there. No questions asked, She Be there.

And if I can just sort it out, just unravel it the way my mother unraveled Carlos and his homesickness and his need, as if he were a pool of yellow yarn laying on the ground at her feet, then maybe I’ll Be too.

These are the notes I’ve taken thus far.

Be a blessing.

Lean in closer so that I can tell you a secret: People get all weak in the elbows when you spend time on them.

Suddenly we shrink back into the days where our teachers complimented how nicely we folded our hands in our laps and then named us Line Leader for the day. It’s that kind of weakness. A sweet, sticky glow that comes out from the cheeks. All because we stop… and think… and then act intentionally for one another in the form of care packages to cool down the homesickness like a hose, love letters to ward off the loneliness, baked goods to plump up and soften the heart, playlists to make the rains come like clouds breaking open and clearing the drought from our eye sockets.

If you are sitting here, scratching your head and thinking: I want to be someone unlike anyone else in this world then start here. Start by being a blessing. & learning the exhaustion that comes from it but the joy that pours out of it. Be sacrificial. Go out of your way. Don’t take credit. Forget yourself for the sake of someone else. And the let the awesomeness rollllllll in, darling.

People will look at you strangely at first. They will wonder what makes you different but they’re going to seriously start unraveling the parts inside of themselves that don’t look that way if they stare at you and your humility long enough. They’re gonna whisper to the lovely beside them, “What’s that light inside of that one?”

Be a light.

Or a lamp. Or a stoplight. Or a lantern. Or a flashlight. Or the flicker of a candle. Just be a light. If you’ve got light, then be light.

People are looking for it. And they will tell you they are looking for a purpose, a higher calling, a lost shoe, their car keys, a deeper meaning, a better story. And it’s really all just light. We all really just want something larger than us to pour through the cracks and light up the darkness we feel, even when the sun is out.

I think we all just want to dance somewhere in the light, shimmy and shake and hand jive and waltz somewhere in the middle of this quotation: “If you want a love message to be heard, it has got to be sent out. To keep a lamp burning, we have to keep putting oil in it.”

Somedays I truly think there will be no better feeling than when there’s Old in my bones and a rocking chair beneath me but I’ll have wrinkles & stories to prove that I was a source of light to others. That I lifted them when they felt weak. That sometimes we just sat, side by side, and said nothing at all and yet the best conversations & revelations were founded that way when we let silence dance with presence. When we just stopped telling the world how very busy we were and we just decided to be there for one another.

Be there.

You know, I don’t know anything about how it will be to die.

I’ve not a clue how the thoughts will spiral through my head when I realize that these toes are going, these hairs are going, these legs will be no more, this mouth of mine will hush, but I bet I’ll think about people like Carlos. People in my life who got all wrapped up in me. And I got wrapped in them. All Tangled. And it never even mattered that blue bled into yellow because somehow we knew that together we’d make green, something we could never do apart. Something really miraculous but something we could never accomplish on our own.

I want to say poetic things when I’m lying in that bed and the doctors are whispering that the time will be short now. And I want someone to hear me when the last breath goes, someone who will have been all the life & jazz I needed for many the years before this. I want to tell him it was wonderful. That the dancing was good. That the laughter was thick. And we’ve got no reason to look back with dismay.

That I think we done good. That I would have never wanted to go this thing alone.

“I needed you to make my green,” I might tell him in the quiet of the room. “I will always be your yellow and you are forever my blue.”

Something really beautiful like that. Something that will belong to only us and the things that only we know.

I want the angels to come when I am tracing faces with my eyes closed.  I want to spend my last air thinking on the times I needed you and you were there. When I took you by the hand and dragged your tired feet. The time when we both stared hopelessly at one another, with skinned knees but polished souls, saying into the April air, “I won’t regret a single second of this. Stay, please stay, and be the keeper of them all.”

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April 4, 2013 · 12:14 pm

25 things every woman needs to know.

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1) Life is a steep, uphill battle but it’s fierce & it’s beautiful & you’ll be sad to see it go if you live it right.

2) New people won’t stop coming into your life and opportunities won’t stop knocking on the door but you need to have the space for them. In all you currently have– be them relationships or obligations– step back and ask yourself “why.” If you can find the answer, hold tighter. If the answer escapes you, it’s time to let something go.

3) You should resolve to be awesome for the rest of your life. Right now. Do it.

4) Leggings, no matter how much we wish, will never one day magically transform into pants. Wearing them with tops that don’t cover your bum is not cute. Please, please, please stock up on pants.

5) Goals are not a January 1st kind of thing. Set them weekly. Set them monthly. Set them so that you are moving forward and always trying to progress. Life can grow stagnant without them… beware.

6) Tuna and barbeque sauce are as unlikely a couple as Sandy and Danny from Grease. However, they go together. They go together like rama lama lama ke ding a de dinga a dong. Don’t gag at the computer, I promise I am not fooling you. Mix the two together with some brown rice and you’ve got a bomb.com lunch.

7) Confidence is a sexy thing. Guys dig it. Girls dig it. We all dig it.

8) I agree with Bruno Mars and, if I were a good singer, I’d serenade you alongside him in singing how I hope he buys you flowers… and holds your hands… and takes you to parties if you like to dance. You deserve that. Always. Don’t think you should have less than that. You are worthy beyond words, gal.

9) And maybe Bruno Mars should be president because he’s also right to say that you are amazing. Just the way you are. No frill. No big introductions. You’re unlike anyone else and you should lean into that every morning. Every evening. Every hour.

9.5) Knowing your states & geography is a really precious thing. As a recovering “I didn’t pay attention in Geography class and forgot my states one by one so that boys would think I was ditzy & cute, and it was ditzy & cute until the day I asked everyone in Missouri how they liked living down south,” I can say firsthand that it’s really wonderful to know that Russia isn’t on top of the US and that Delaware is, in fact, a state. The moral of this bloated story: guys have never wanted us to be stupid. They actually like brain cells. It’s a wonder & a mystery but they really kind of, sort of, definitely like girls with a noggin. ALL HAIL THE LADIES WHO LIKE HTML CODING & MARXIAN THEORY!! HOLLAAAA!!! WE WINNNN AFTER ALL THESE YEARSSSS!!

10) Your spirit will never benefit from shallow people. You gotz to cut the toxic out of your life, boo.

11) And if you make mean comments, and you talk about people behind their back without ever trying to love them or see where they are coming from, you MIGHT be the toxic one. Oof. I’m not trying to burn you, just trying to say that relationships are too valuable to muddy them up with what you perceive to be the shortcomings of someone else. Big girls do bigger things than that.

12) So yea, I’ll drive the point home: gossip is shallow and stupid. Hobbies are better. Social good is best ;)

13) Nude pumps. They’re good for the soul. They are a must-have in any serious closet. Buy a pair one day and I can promise your whole entire style statement will benefit from them.

14) Here’s the truth: you are going to waste a lot of hours focusing on who you are not, or who you want to secretly be. But you won’t ever wake up and actually be that person. You’ve got to embrace what you bring to the table. If you don’t like what that is, have the courage to change it.

15) The world does not revolve around us. Turns out that we are just little points of punctuation in a much bigger story glittered with periods & commas & dashes. How are you helping that story to be better? How are you being the best dang point of punctuation that you can be?

16) If you ever find yourself frying Oreos on the stove top (and being an absolute BOSS at it), do not, I REPEAT, do not take the simmering pot of grease straight from the stove and pour it directly into the sink. The thing will straight up explode… And grease will fly everywhere… And you will risk burning your pretty little face off… And then everyone will probably call you “Vat of Grease Face” or “Grease Lightning” (what is with all the Grease references, Hannah?!) for the rest of your life… And, if they do, you can refer them to this blog post and tell them to read point #11. But still, dump the grease outside and keep your face intact.

17) If you want to run a serious business, if you want people to take you seriously, then start your engine and sign out some library books. Business books are proof that God loves us. Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg will make you a better leader. Seth Godin is the dude you wanted to take the prom all these years and never knew it until you cracked open his book “Tribes.”

18) No matter how tech savvy we get, there is a need to say things to a person’s face. Please, for the love of lovelier things, have the courage to call someone up and verbalize your thoughts or meet for a coffee. Breaking a heart is hard stuff, stopping a relationship is never fun, but there will never be anything as loud as this statement: You are worth my words. You are worth my presence. You are worth, and will always be worth, more than just letters on a screen and a broken heart jammed in the crooks of an overflowing inbox. Face to face connections are fading faster, please don’t let them get away…

19) First impressions are important. Really. That truth never changes. So refer to point #4. Really meditate on it.

20) No matter what kind of interview you are gearing up for, there are certain standards you should always hold yourself to: wearing something other than jeans, not talking out your phone during the interview, sending a handwritten note afterwards. An interview means you want something but it doesn’t mean they have to give it to you.

21) Regret is a real thing. It’s going to happen. It’s going to come clomp-clomp-clomping into your life at some point. Don’t hold onto things forever but learn from them and let the past go. The past will be a dictator if you let her. 

22) You never want to be the COTS (chick on the side). Girls, GIRLS!!!! IF A GUY HAS A GIRLFRIEND AND HE IS STILL TRYING TO COMMUNICATE WITH YOU IN A “YOU ARE THE ONE THAT I WANT” WAY, DO NOT FALL FOR IT. HE SHOULD MAN UP AND ACTUALLY LET THE OTHER GIRL GO. IF HE DOES NOT THEN WALK AWAY. WALK AWAY. WALK AWAY. You are worth so much more than second string in relationships. And being a COTS is not an endearing title. Be the better lady and hop off his swag; you are breaking the heart of girl you don’t even know without ever really meaning to. (And truthfully: real men aren’t interested in finding another gal, they’re too wrapped up in loving the face off the one they already have.)

23) The women’s  section of Old Navy and Target has failed us. If you ever really want to fully embrace to “oversize” look then just frolic over the men’s section. All those flannels you’ve been tugging at, wishing they would actually be “oversize,” are hanging out in the men’s section waiting to kiss your elbows with their flannelish lips. Roll up the sleeves and get going. And then wear them leggings having no shame at all!

24) Facebook is a tricky thing. This is an invitation to step back and ask yourself, should I really post that? In the days of diaries, we never had to worry about this. Now all that we say is a microphone so be very, very careful. Here’s a link to all the best quotes from Maya Angelou. The next time you feel like posting something really ugly that you are going to regret, take a stab at one of these instead: http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/3503.Maya_Angelou

25) Darling, darling–the victim song is never going to fit you. It will never be good enough for your lungs. It will never be good enough for your time. You are stronger than you know and more graceful than you know. Don’t let the parts of you that want to be a victim live on any longer. You’ve got a voice… you’ve got a story… Do us all a favor and use it. Without any apologies. Without any stepping back. If ever you need a listener, come find me…

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April 1, 2013 · 7:09 am

Leaps & Boundaries, or why Jude Law ain’t the answer.

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Can we hash out secret fears together?

Like huddle close to one another and make our voices get real low and tell each other things we’ve never admitted? Sounds o.k.? O.k. then.

You know the movie The Holiday? The one with Kate Winslet and Cameron Diaz? The one that has made nearly every female who has ever watched it wish there was a man for them with a mean Mr. Napkin head impression? So here’s the truth on that one: I am secretly petrified that I’ll end up like Cameron Diaz’s character in that movie, unable to pull herself from too long of work hours and riding off in the backseat of a car on the way to a secluded cottage in England to spend my holidays alone. Yes, it sounds dramatic but you’ve feared it too, maybe.

As much as I love that movie, I cannot actually believe  Jude Law’s character– a hunky Brit who stumbles in blaring drunk & charming one evening– is the answer to this gal’s problems. I don’t necessarily think that love stepping in is the very thing that can pull someone away from an unruly work schedule or bad habits.  It’s apparent every time I watch that movie: Girl. Needed. Boundaries. B-O-U-N-daries. Bow-chicka-wow-woundaries.

…

There’s this strange sort of paralyzing feeling that rushes over when you wake up and realize that you’ve got just two hands. And two feet. And only one mouth. And two little eyes. And that there is only 15 or so waking hours. And yikes, just 7 days in a week?

It’s not that we are running out of time, it’s that we are realizing we are just one person. That our hearts were not actually designed to be pulled in too many directions. That flesh, spread too thin, hurts more souls than it helps. That we must learn to preserve our lives, and make intentional breathing room, if we ever want to avoid brokenness and burnout to the Nth degree.

Boundaries.

I never used to put much weight on that term. I used to confine boundaries to relationships and relationships to romance. I thought boundaries were the sort of thing to break… to push your own limits. I never thought I might need to set some up, that I might need to know my own limits if I want to be happy & whole & charging forward in my professional and personal life.

So I’ve set some boundaries. Some stringent boundaries that I want to stick to more than anything: No emails after 6pm or before 8:30 am. No social media after 8pm on week days. No email on the weekends. No checking of Facebook messages, EVER.

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They’re simple. They’re not frilly. But they give my otherwise unstructured & unpredictable life a chance to shut off. They tell people, “I leave the office too,” “I shut off and get away from here too.” Because it’s healthy. Because it’s necessary. And I want to be better to you, and more attentive to you, and more intentional with you because of it.

1) Boundaries plant your feet down in an ever-marching world.

I’m realizing that there is this exhaustion that sets in if I go to sleep scrolling through a screen and I wake up to stretch my limbs and check my email. I walk out into the day tired, already influenced by the social fingerprints of 8,000 people. Already knowing who needs me for the day. And it becomes harder, so. much. harder, to just say, “Enough, I’ve had enough.”

We’ve taken a tool like social media and on-the-go emails from our iPhones that were supposed to make our lives easier and we let them mindlessly rule us. And control us. And swap real moments with a presence that is half-hearted and two-dimensional.

Boundaries make room for creativity. They make room for real conversations. They give you a space to breathe that is not always influenced by other people. They allow you to shut off, regroup, and come back stronger for the next day.

1) Boundaries set expectation & professionalism.

We gotz mah gurlllll Sara Brink to thank for this next one. Sara Brink set me straight one evening as I was sending emails at 11:30pm. She kind of looked at me with her Tay Swifty-we-are-never-ever-ever-getting-back-together-face and said, “Do you really want people to think you are spending your Friday night sending emails?”

BAM. GUTTED IN THE STOMACH. The time stamp makes me look disorganized. It makes me look like I don’t have time management in my own life so I just choose to never shut off. It makes me scream to people (unknowingly), “YO, I gotzzz nooo boundaries so email me at any time of the night and I will be at your doorstep with a bone in my mouth.” Um, hi. No thank you…

So try out this application (courtesy of Ms. Brink). Download it into your Gmail. And watch your life change for the better. Boomerang will allow you to hold an email in your inbox and send it at a specific time later on. Working through emails on a Saturday? Delay them to be sent on Monday morning. Burning the midnight oil? Hold those suckers for 10am the following morning.

Set your own levels of expectation for other people, put your “office hours” in your email signature. Let people know that you do shut off, that you do take breaks, that you do feed your soul occasionally with Les Miserable anthems and hiking.

3) Boundaries keep you out the tissue-paper heart zone.

I get anywhere from 50-100 emails daily from people wanting to share stories, and tell me their problems, and receive love letters, and I used to make false promises to myself that I would be there for every single one of them.

I can’t be. I want to be. But I cannot be.  It’s a hard lesson to learn but I am just one person. I have just one inbox. And I will never, ever be trained in fixing the brokenness of every soul that comes into my path.

You have to know when to step back. You have to know when to fuel up. When your heart actually needs pour into the faces you know and the hands you can actually hold instead of just strangers on Twitter. Don’t misread me, I’ve made plenty of best friends on Twitter but I’ve made the relationships because we benefit from one another, we pour into one another, we hold one another accountable off the screen. And that’s the essence of a relationship that works.

Without boundaries, we go crazy thinking that we need to hold the world together with our own superglue. Now I stick with the mantra, “Do for one what you wish you could do for all.” I respond when I can. I set specific hours to just plug through. I try my best to get to as many as possible. But I’ve stopped putting the world on my shoulders over what comes into my inbox. It’ll burn you out. It will break you quickly.

4) Boundaries help you seize a life back.

I used to call myself a “workaholic” until I realized that there a lot of negative connotations stuck in the pores of that word.

I am a gal who adores her work but I can assure y’all that it’s not all the prettiness you think it might be. My closest friends would tell you that they have to drag me out of the zone. They have to remind me that I am 24 and alive and breathing and capable of dancing. They have to get me to shut off, otherwise I’d spend all my nights lighting candles and hardcore dating every ounce of my professional life. Yes, I love it. No, I don’t want to look back in 10 years and realize it’s all I built up, that I missed out on the essence of relationships for Powerpoints & PDFs.

When I talked to a friend about these new boundaries the other day, specifically my decision to not check Facebook messages anymore and including that note in my cover photo, I said it was not just setting limits for myself, it was seizing a life back. It was setting up healthier habits. It was creating a lifestyle that does not let me be dictated by the glow of the screen…

The emails won’t stop coming. The tweets will keep come on rolling in. So what do we do in the meantime? What do we do in the meantime?

I’m on some massive boundaries kick these days so I would love to hear how you set them up in your own life. Any tips? Any breakthrough moments from setting them yourself?

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