Wonder Woman complex

I haven't written on my blog in a while, but after the week I've had, I'm going to write today. Warning: this is not a nice post. These are all of the things I'm not supposed to say.

I'm a people pleaser. I'm not sure exactly where that falls into my religious beliefs, but after 30 years, I don't think I'm going to change that. So what do I mean? I have a hard time saying 'no.' I commit to social events, to volunteer, to take on extra work, bake something for a potluck, organize and host parties, be in weddings, pick up mail/water plants for neighbors, support kids at sporting events, and take care of friends' kids or pets. People joke that I'm Wonder Woman. For the record, I do not feel like this lately.

Now, I love doing all of these things, but it's partially because I don't like letting people down. I rarely ever sit down and relax. I'm sure all of the moms that read this blog are likely say, "Well, I do all of those things." Great, I get it, you have kids and you likely laugh at my little old life. I'm happy to say that your life is harder. I don't have kids, but I've been saying yes to everything since I was old enough to make decisions on my own, say like 7th grade. That's approximately 17 years. I think I need a break.

Here's the problem, and the point where I feel like I'm being selfish, a characteristic that I despise in myself. I just don't know if I want to live up to please everyone else anymore. I am so incredibly loved by everyone around me and that makes me so happy. But I'm scared I might not meet everyone's expectations anymore, and that I'm losing my self a little because I'm not doing what I want.

And to top it off, my friends really do miss me. I miss them terribly, too. I'm crazy busy with work, and I'm so poor I can't really afford to go out like I used to. Not getting a regular paycheck is hard. Not getting a pay check for nine weeks is brutal. And it takes such a long time to recover from that when you aren't a trust fund baby :)

And not being a trust fund baby leads me to the most shallow reason I feel like I'm not Wonder Woman: my looks. I seriously enjoy looking put together. I like fixing my hair, putting on makeup, and wearing a cute outfit. Lately, I can't stand to look at myself in the mirror. I quit wearing makeup and cute clothes because I never have a reason to put them on. Now all I see is this girl who's given up her dreams of working in fashion/music, and who feels like I can no longer have my cake and eat it, too.

I think I'm just overwhelmed with so many changes. And these are all the things that I'm feeling in my head and can't say aloud to anyone because people would tell me that I was crazy. Maybe I am crazy. Perhaps that's why I'm a singer and a writer. I feel things more deeply than other people.

All I know is that as exciting as all of this is, it's equally nerve-wracking. I just want to know that I'm going to succeed. I don't have to be happy every step of the way, but that I need assurance to know that I'm strong enough to please God, others, and myself.

Cheers,

Relationships

For those of you who know me, or who have been reading my blog for a while, you'll know that I'm a relationship-based person. I was not built to be a "loner." As much as I love working for myself, I really crave human interaction. I had been struggling with loneliness for a while and just when I least expected it, God answered my prayer for a wonderful boyfriend and companion when he sent me Mike. He's everything that I want and need in a partner. He's aloof, intelligent, an honest critic, charming, handsome, sweet, and a hard worker. I love this man. My heart at times has felt like it could explode in the last few months since I met him. He makes me want to be a better person. He makes me selfless. And he encourages me to be my best. The only problem is I think we've been in our honeymoon phase for a while, and I think my friends may think I've fallen off the face of the earth. Don't worry, I'm starting to emerge from my shell. :)

Mike and I are entering a new phase of our relationship. The one where we figure out how to be ourselves, and be a couple. That's a tricky phase, and one that often makes or breaks a relationship. I'm praying that God navigates us through it with care and ease. I know that both of us have so much going on with work, and we are both very stressed at times. That's hard for me because I don't get that out during the day, so when I see Mike, he often receives all of my emotional spewing for the day. Poor guy; he loves me in spite of this. I'm hoping that between all of his prep classes for the LSAT in December, and my work, volunteering, and travels to see friends, that we cling to our love and try our very best to always speak kindness to each other. This relationship is special. I don't want to guide this one. I want to let God keep guiding it. As a natural "controller," that's hard for me. So for now I'm "Letting Go and Letting God." He blessed me with an amazing man, and I have a feeling this is only the beginning of what's in store for us.

Cheers,

The Adventure Continues

So, I suppose that the first post that I write after I quit my job to write full time should be on an enlightened topic. I could write about the "easy way" to start your own freelancing business, how to get the gumption to walk into your boss's office and quit your less-than-stellar job in corporate America in chase of  "the dream." I could tell you that working for yourself is exactly like in the movies. Adorable casual clothes, coffee shops, all the time in the world to do your laundry, look perfect for every outing, and send all your friends birthday gifts on time.

If I wrote about all of those things, I'd be lying.

The truth is, that April 15th was my last day of work in corporate America -- for now. I don't think I publicized much how much I hated my job, but I worked as an insurance adjuster, dealing with injuries from car accidents. For those of you that know me, it was likely the most ill-suited career I could have ever chosen. I just can't do glass-half-empty all day. I need passion and creativity, something that was seriously lacking, even while on the office Events Committee. And so, I quit.

On the morning of April 18th, I woke up and went to work in my new office, my dining room. So far, working from home has been interesting. I did a lot of leg work. I got all new office equipment, including a brand new MacBook Pro laptop. It's lovely. The first few days flew by because I had quite a bit of work to do. It's the days that aren't so structured that are a bit odd. Like when I wake up and don't have any assignments from my clients, so I spend my entire morning searching for new work, doing research on writing, and brushing up on AP vs. Chicago Manual of Style; or I spend two hours comparing health plans. And then I find myself feeling guilty for having time to listen to the Fashion 140 conference online, and being able to throw myself completely into some guest blogs that I wrote.

The thing that I wasn't prepared for was all the alone time. I've lived out on my own for the last 12 years. I've had roommates at some points, and lived alone at others. I really don't have any problems spending time alone; that is until I was doing that very thing 24 hours a day, seven days a week for weeks at a time.

The last few days I've started to get a little stir crazy. I've started to doubt myself. I think, "do I really have what it takes to be a full-time writer? Do all my friends and family think I'm crazy? Are they secretly just waiting for me to fail and come crawling to them for help?"

I know these thoughts are ludicrous, but you get a LOT of time to think about your life when you don't have physical contact with the outside world. I mean, I go to the gym, and have dinner with friends, but I've never spent so many large chunks of time with myself. And I'm starting to think that having this much time to think when I'm in the last few weeks of my twenties is possibly a bad idea.

I've always been an over achiever. I set extremely high standards for myself, and I'm pretty self-critical. When I was twenty years old, I thought I'd be living in NYC and working at a big magazine by now. Or I thought I might be in Nashville following my dream of singing. If anything I thought I'd be in a serious relationship, and possibly married. I never thought I'd be single, living in Fort Worth, Texas, having just quit my job, and essentially starting my career from scratch. Over the last few months, I just felt like my life was heading in a direction that just didn't make any sense to me. The more I prayed about it, the more I felt like I was supposed to start over again. I sincerely believe that God doesn't give people talents that he doesn't want them to use. In my heart of hearts, I think He wants every person to use every bit of talent they've been given. Because of that belief, I'm hoping that this bout of loneliness and doubt will pass quickly. I know there is an extremely confident women lurking inside me who just knows that big things are on the horizon. It's one of those "heart vs. head" moments. I just don't know which one will win this round.

In the mean time, I'm recommitting to my blog again. I will share my life's adventures with the few people that choose to read it. And for those of you that do, I really appreciate it. I know that even if no one reads it, it's the most therapeutic thing in the world to me. At the end of each victory and set back, I can come here and relish in how far I've come from even a year ago. And that in itself keeps me going.

Cheers,

A New Adventure

Every teenage girl dreams of what she'll be when she "grows up." I've dreamed of seeing my name on a magazine masthead since high school. I would devour every morsel of each issue of In Style as it arrived in my mailbox; I quickly became addicted to the smell and texture of the glossy pages. My love for one magazine grew into two, three, and soon I was subscribing to upward of twelve magazines at any given time. If you asked for my vices, the check out line at the grocery store would top my list — I rarely leave the line without a shiny publication in hand. I received a B.A. in English from my beloved University, and I hit the pavement to find my dream job. After applying last-minute for a publishing institute in NYC and being wait listed, I settled for an editing job at an educational publishing company. A mere four years later, I got laid off. I sat befuddled at the young age of twenty-six; I was back at the drawing board, staring into the face of unemployment. I could not, would not, swallow my pride and move home with my parents. And so, I updated my resume and landed a new job.

Over the last four years, I've held jobs that were just that, jobs. They were not something that I in any way enjoyed. They were a paycheck, a means to an end. And slowly, I lost a little bit of what I loved most about my life; having a career that gave me real fulfillment. And so I started this blog. And after that, I began writing and editing for friend's blogs and other projects. I began rebuilding my portfolio and I've begun applying for actual writing and editing positions again. So where does the high school dream fit in? It finally came true! Since the entire point of this blog was that I would actually pursue my dreams, a friend asked if I'd like to edit and write a little copy for a start up magazine in Dallas. I kindly accepted, and enjoyed every minute of my assignments. They liked my work so much that they called to tell me that I will officially be listed on the masthead as a Contributing Editor/Copywriter. My little heart skipped several beats, and I was actually speechless. For those of you that know me, that's a rare occurrence. And so, the magazine went to print today, and I can't wait to share it with all of you. Even more importantly, I'm beyond excited to continue my writing and editing ventures for the upcoming issues. I know that the best is truly yet to come. Watch out world, L.A.J. is back in business.

Cheers,

A Big Goodbye

Big finally made his decision. And as I'm sure you can assume from the title of this blog, my finale with Mr. Big didn't end by standing on a bridge in Paris, him telling me I'm "the one." My ending was much less poetic. It began with an email that said he'd come to a decision and wanted to talk to me about it. So, on Thursday, December 2nd at 9 PM, my last phone call with Mr. Big began.

As Big began to talk about his week, I reflected on the last 5 years, and all the prayers and love that had gone into our relationship. I had a peace that whatever happened, I knew that it was God's plan. He really had no idea how to start this conversation, so after what seemed like the longest 10 minutes of my life, I finally urged him to get to the heart of the matter.

He sighed and asked me how to begin. I asked him the question that had needed an answer for entirely too long. Do you love me? There was a pregnant pause on the other end of the phone. He wavered on his answer for several minutes, and it was then I had my answer. If Big couldn't muster the courage to utter those three little words to me after all these years, he never would. The conversation went on for over an hour, & I said all of the things that I needed to say, the things that had weighed on my heart for years.


Getting off that phone call was one of the hardest things I've done in my life. I let go of my very best friend, my PERSON, in order to open the way for the future. My heart feels very empty. There have been many times in the last few weeks that I've wanted to call Big. Driving hone from work everyday is the very hardest time. We always talked then. It was our time. To admit that I cry many days on my drive now is hard. I wonder what he's doing, how his day was, and if he was able to secure the President for his big fundraiser. I wish Big nothing but happiness. I also know that letting him go will open my heart for the future & a good relationship with a man who is willing to give me his whole heart. I will continue to wait, be it for the rest of my life, to find a man to love me the way that I loved him.


I got a package from Big yesterday. A fitting way to end the year. Enclosed was the circle journal that I made him in July 2006, right after my first trip to visit him. It is something that was extremely special to Big, & something I had waited all these years to get back. He finally wrote in it. It was hard to read. To see how much my love for him had grown was much to take in, but a fitting way to close our chapter. Big was finally able to open up to me & tell me how he felt. I see how I was able to give him my heart, & how he really did know the real me, better than I ever thought he did. It was nice to know that men sometimes do notice the little things after all.

So, with another year under my belt, it's time to close this chapter and say hello to 2011. I am ready for it to bring all my passions to the surface & live the life that I was called to live. It's time to set aside all my fears & go get all the wonderful things that Gid has in store for me. Writing this blog has been such a great experience & one I will continue for many years. To all of you who read about my life, thank you. It's good to know that I'm not alone on this crazy journey. May each of you have a blessed New Year!

Cheers,

February 9, 2010: Letting go

This week is already starting to fly by too quickly. That's the way it always seems to go when you have to say goodbye. The weeks drag by when you take time for granted, but when you are trying to savor every moment, they're gone in the blink of an eye.

I'm trying to finish up all my last minute projects at work. It seems that my company is living my the same mantra I am, as I got several new projects assigned to be yesterday, including designing and implementing a workflow before I leave. Sure, I can do that in four days! I am Super Woman after all :) I can't complain, it's one more thing I can add to the skills section of my resume.

The highlight of my day was having lunch with my old coworker. This fabulous woman was the first person I worked with at my very first editing job out of college. She took me under her wing, and helped me love my job. She's a sheer delight. It was great to catch up on her life and see her looking so fabulous. She left the educational publishing field to become a college professor. All I can say is that if I had taken her class in college, she would have been my favorite prof. I can only imagine how much fun she makes Children's Literature and Reading Comprehension. And yes, I took both of those classes. I was a bonified nerd, and an English major in college. It's something I don't like to reveal, as I feel like people will start scouring my posts for grammatical errors! I tend to make mistakes when I write late at night, which is exactly when I write all of my posts. All that being said, this lovely lady helped me reinforce all of my editorial skills, and made me realize what a blessing it is to work with nice people in your job. Even with the tremendous pressures of deadlines, and error-free administrations, she made my first job such a pleasant experience.

After work, I was going to go have dinner with L&G, but sadly, the proper ingredients were not removed from the freezer in time, so we had to cancel. That's ok, it gave me a good opportunity to go get a few cards for some of my closest friends, and have some much needed down time.

Unfortunately, the down time lead to me thinking about my departure, which lead to a full on tear fest. Pete called, and needless to say our talk included lots of discussion about my impending move, which made me overwhelmingly sad. And even though I'm excited about the move, it brought out all of the feelings I've been holding back for the last year. It was like I could finally let go. You see, I'm the "strong one" in my family. I'm the oldest child, and I've always been the person who is supposed to hold it all together. And even when my entire world crumbled last year, I held it together. I think I stopped and really cried a total of four times. In an entire year. And even though I know it's not healthy to do that, I did it because I've trained myself to not fall apart. And so here I am on the brink of the hardest move of my life, and I let all those held in emotions go. I let myself be sad and vulnerable. I embraced the feelings of sadness over leaving my friends, fear over not having a job, anxiety over living with my family for an indefinite period of time, and loneliness because I may not have many friends when I move. And I tried to share these feelings with Pete, and he just didn't understand them. He tried to tell me that I was thinking about it in the wrong way. And I knew where he was coming from, but I just wanted him to listen. And even though I know that men have this innate desire to fix everything, I wanted him to understand that I didn't need him to fix it.

When we got off the phone, I cried even more because I felt like I'd pushed him away, and on top of all the other feelings I was processing, it made me even more sad. I like this guy. For whatever reason that may be, I care for him. And I want him to see the fabulous person that I am, and not the mess that I appeared to be last night. I'm not a mess, I'm just a girl in the midst of a huge like change, and I have so many conflicting feelings about it. And as much as I know that's normal, I'd really like to hear it from someone else.

And so, after I finally got the release of emotion that I so desperately needed, I slept. And it was the first night of solid sleep that I've had in weeks. I woke up to a new day, and a new outlook. I know that things will be alright, and I can still be the girl that is strong in the face of uncertainty.

~ Miss L.A.

January 13th, 2010: Time to move on

So work seemed to go on as usual, until my boss called me in this afternoon. She informed me that because both of people that I had done marketing for in the past had quit, they would be transitioning my position out to lesser duties. They are essentially making me a receptionist at work with "other duties" and are giving me time to look for another job. They are very aware that I'm overqualified and too easily bored to answer the phone all day. And so, my job search continues. And I had a bit of a meltdown about this evening. I decided that after being laid off from a job in 2007, that 3 years seems to be too soon to have gone through 2 more jobs. It just seems like I should have accomplished more by now. I should be singing more, be married, be in a long term career. I don't own a house, I can barely scrape by, and I don't have a job that I'm passionate about. This is one of the many reasons I chose to write this blog. I want some of those things. I want passion. I want to have something to show for all my hard work. I don't want to be broke anymore. Poor maybe, but not broke. So I'm hoping that this wild goose chase that I'm on leads me to a great place. I can't handle another meltdown like tonight. I don't own stock in Kleenex, but maybe I should rethink that. I've gone through so many boxes in the last year that I likely kept them in business in my city :) So, no more tears. Happy thoughts from now on. And be ready and willing to accept help that is offered to me. It might not be offerred more than once.

And so it begins ...

Today is the last day of 2009. I'm closing the first decade of my life that I feel I have real memories of in its entirety. I was 18 years old on December 31, 1999, and a freshman in college. Life has changed quite a bit since then. I sat back and thought about many of those changes, some good, some not so good. I think I had an entirely different outlook on life than I do standing here today. I've changed for the better. I've become an independent woman who doesn't just regurgitate the feelings and beliefs of my family or closest friends. I stand by my mantras and don't apologize for them anymore.

The first year and the last year of this decade have many similarities. Both share big changes and tragedies. Both share a sense of being on the brink of something new and exciting. This year, these changes seem much less nerve wracking than they did back in 1999.

I've decided to write about each day of my year in 2010. I want to be able to look back at this year of changes and embrace each victory and disappointment and gauge how I tackled each one. I don't expect my writing to be profound, or even exciting, but it it a project I feel inspired to complete, and I hope that it will give some people a chance to get to know me a little better. You may start to love me more, or even dislike me a little, but I won't be apologizing to anyone. I'm loud, I'm opinionated, and I'm a twenty-something single woman who is ready to swing my bat at whatever pitch is thrown at me next. So, sit back and feel free to join me on my journey. I'm excited to see what this year holds!