goals

“It’s Time To Trust My Instincts, Close My Eyes & Leap! It’s Time To Try Defying Gravity”: New Year, Old Challenges

Standard

FullSizeRender

Today’s Mood Ingredients: Determined, Fearful, Obstinate, Risky, Adventurous.

Happy New Year! It’s taken me the past 10 days of January to decide if I was even going to make any resolutions this year. I, along with many of you I presume, am notorious for making a resolution & promptly forgetting it ever existed pretty much within the same week. This year I decided to “trick” myself. I’ve never broken a promise to someone, but I always shatter the ones I make to myself with some excuse or another. However, if challenged..by anyone, including myself..for better or worse, I rise to the occasion. Therefore, for 2018 I made those pesky little resolutions, but I’m going to take them as challenges & hopefully gain even more insight & clarity into what kind of a person I want to evolve into. So, here we go:

I. Anxiety: My very own version of a “Dark Lord” (you know I can’t go too long without an HP reference). This is my biggest struggle. I am plagued by this never-ending sense of abject terror when it comes to my family & them either being hurt or lost to me. My creative imagination (a bane & a boon, depending on when it acts up) goes from zero to catastrophe before I have any chance to try & make some sort of logical sense of any situation. The scenarios I’ve come up with in the midst of an anxiety attack are truly capable of earning quite a few creative writing prizes (or of getting me committed with a straitjacket, but I choose to see the positive – it’s new)! I’ve taken this challenge upon many times before, but this is the year that I’m finally truly fully focused on my mental health. Anxiety can be crippling, & my goal is to not only to keep it at bay this year, but to get a handle on this shitty thing once & for all. Goals: Write in a journal (not like Dear Diary, I like this boy), meditate more (Tibetan monks chanting playlist on YouTube, though!), think things through with a little more logic & actual thought (more Sudoku, less Word Search), & a little less death & destruction. I’m gonna be anxiety’s Avada Kedavra (sorry, last one).

II. Diet: Yeah, yeah, we all have this one. Mine is not to lose weight, it is to stop being internally toxic. Going to have to swap the daily Doritos & Taco Bell & never-ending pasta bowls for kale chips & quinoa this year so that my genetic tendency for “35-children-at-a-time bearing hips” does not come into fruition any time soon..or ever. Also cutting out liquor in 2018. I hate how it feels the day of, the day after, & I can’t be taking shots of anything that isn’t wheatgrass anymore. HOWEVER, touch my beer & lose a hand! 😛 Soda’s gone by the wayside & therefore my waistline is going to do the same. Goals: Meal prep (Can I pay someone to do this for me?), H20 toxicity (the new “chug chug chug!), & more green shit that isn’t a jalapeño pepper.

III: Friendships: This one is the hardest. I’ve spent my entire life being a Golden Girl (I prefer Sophia – sarcastic & scrappy) & in that, I’ve constantly gone out of my way to do/be the friend who will pull out all the stops for a friendship. My nickname is “Doormat,” & I’m way over being the base for muddy prints. I’m slowly learning to (& recommending to) remove toxic & “taker” friendships from my life. The energy it requires to keep people around just because you’ve been friends for years is taxing & unnecessary. I prefer a symbiotic relationship with the people that I spend my time & heart on (don’t be gross) & that doesn’t necessarily mean that I need to “get” something out of the other person, but someone else doing at least half of the advice-giving/taking interest is really the key to my healthy 2018 right now. Goals: “You may hate me but it ain’t no lie, baby, bye bye bye.”

IV: Relationships: A lot of the above, but maybe actually put time & effort into finding a long-term homie to hang with. Goals: Re-title my online dating app folder on my phone from “Painful” to something slightly more positive. 😛

V: Fear: Just face it. Look that beast in its beady little eyes & be my actual self before experiences & relationships & the darker parts of life dulled my innate fighting spirit. Goals: Do things that scare me (for me, that’s like not calling my mom the whole day or something). :O

VI: Creative Integrity: For all of the paths I’ve taken in my life, professionally or personally, I’ve always only had one true ambition; to be happy & content by living creatively. More than that, to extend my creativity outwards, rather than keeping it in its tiny bubble that no one else can experience but me. This is my year. This is the year that I post about something or say something to someone or articulate an idea & follow through. Not just think about it & “try” to do it & fail for whatever reason be it lack of time, support, or any other excuse. Uphold my creative integrity & see how far I can fly. Goals: Don’t talk about it, be about it.

VII: Positivity: Goes hand in hand with number 1. I’m a natural-born pessimist trying to transform into my brother. That sounds weirder than it is. He’s this ball of possibility & positivity, kind of like The Secret spit up all over him. I’m more like Eeyore meets Daria meets Chuckie (the Rugrats one, not the creepy psycho doll one) trying to be Olaf meets Happy dwarf meets Dory. I’m a true believer in you get what you put out into the universe, so I’m going to actively make it a point to do some drugs. JKJKJKJKKK..I’m going to actively make it a point to change my negative mindset so that I want to hang out with my mind more often. Goals: Think happy thoughts.

I truly have no idea how much of this I’ll be able to have success with, but if I don’t challenge myself now, then I know I’m going to become this old complacent lady with nothing to show for myself but mediocrity & that’s just a longtime fear that I’m not willing to realize. Wishing you all a kick ass 2018..full of lots of Netflix bingeing, granola eating, juice cleansing, booty shaking, fear facing, goal fulfilling insanity.

See ya on the flip side, y’all.

Today’s Interlude: 

“Don’t Go Cryin’ To Your Mama, Cuz You’re On Your Own In The Real World”: My Advice To The Youth & Slightly Aging

Standard

ImageToday’s Mood Ingredients: Frustrated, Mentor-y, OverUnderqualified.

So, it’s been quite a while since I’ve written a post & that’s mostly due to the fact that life caught up to me & I was too busy making a list of observations to actually have a chance to sit down & write about ’em.

Jobs. We all either have them, need them, or are retired from them. We either love them, hate them, or are apathetic towards them. For some, they’re a means to an end; for some, they’re the only consistent things in life; for some, they’re the greatest love affairs; and for some, they’re the bane of their existence. So, what’s my input? They suck. Unless of course, you’ve known what you want to do your whole life & were afforded the opportunities to strive for success in your chosen field from a very young age. Below, you’ll find my unsolicited, but in my humility-laden opinion, spectacular and priceless, advice to the classes of whatever year you did/will graduate, be they from elementary, junior high, high school, college, grad school, or some other institution. Read & heed, my friends!

DO WHAT YOU WANT. That’s all. Simple. If you have an inkling of what you want to do your whole life at whatever age you are, GO FOR IT. Don’t allow doubts, fears, or pesky little things like crippling anxiety overshadow your passion and desire for a specific route for your life. Live for yourself. It’s always nice to be selfless, but sometimes, you need to be selfish. I found out the hard way. I drastically changed my career path at the ripe young age of 30. I dropped out of medical school, I launched my own fashion line, and I continued to look for odd jobs to support my business. IT SUCKED. I wish I had gone to FIT or Parson’s right out of high school. I wish I had interned for Valentino or Marchesa or Rodarte. I wish I had apprenticed in Bombay with a designer I know. I wish I had done a lot of things, but I didn’t. I couldn’t. So, at the age of 33 with a graduate level education, a creatively obsessive background, and a small business, I worked (until a week ago) at a daycare center. I wiped other people’s children’s poop and noses (not with the same wipe, don’t worry), I cut up hot dogs for toddler lunches, I woke up at the crack of dawn (NOT ideal for an insomniac/nocturnal creature), I stood for 8 hours a day, and I dealt with the worst boss known to mankind. Lucky for me, I adore children and teaching both, so I made the best of what it was. A measly job with minor pay, but it allowed me to go to LA and go to Bombay and teach dance classes 3 days a week. It allowed me time to design & sketch at home, it allowed me time to spend QT with my nephew, and it allowed me time to go back to seriously building my business.

Unfortunately, I was forced to quit last week because that aforementioned “Horrible Boss” (without an ounce of the attractiveness of Jennifer Aniston), did not allow me a day off to attend a family funeral. Bitches be trippin’, yo, and karma isn’t always kind. Anyhow, so now here I am, back on the job hunt while working 20 hours a day on this and what do I find? I’m too overqualified for jobs like a cashier at Target or a counter person at a bakery, but too underqualified for the jobs relevant to my field. Do I have 2-4 years of retail experience if I want to apply as a Fashion Assistant at DKNY? No. I was at a science research program at Marymount. Do I have 1-2 years of previous mailroom experience in order to apply for a MAIL SORTER position at Armani? Nah. I was in medical school in Antigua.

I’m noticing that there are more and more people out there experiencing this kind of rock and a hard place situation when it comes to gainful employment (especially after a career shift), no matter what area it’s in. There are articles upon articles out there about what “experience” really even means in the social media obsessed, Vine celebrity, hired-from-Twitter-feed-to-become-a-TV-writer world (hello, Harvard Business Review!?!), but nothing actually being done about the seemingly ubiquitous situation. So my point of this rant is, until there is some evolution with today’s times, take my advice: START YOUNG. Yes, everyone will tell you it’s never too late. I mean, for the sake of full disclosure of my hypocrisy, one of my favorite quotes is “It’s never too late to be what you might have been” by George Eliot. HOWEVER, if you want to be who you might have been with a little more ease and comfort and a slightly quicker success rate, be who you might have been…..NOW.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Today’s Interlude: “Everybody’s Free To Wear Sunscreen” by Baz Luhrmann