In preparation for my vision board party over the summer, I made a vision board of my own.
Here it is:
I kept feeling like it wasn’t done but after a month or so, I realized that this board does, in fact, reflect the life that I want.
Starting at the bottom, I want a career that is a foundation for the lifestyle I want, one that allows me to help others, to feel balanced, to continue to grow and evolve, and to have a flexible schedule.
The heart of the life I want, the middle of the board, is filled with family, friends, love, and a warm home.
And at the top, romance, relaxing, alone time, beauty, leisure, vacation.
It is my hope that each of these pieces supports the others.
With this vision in mind, I can continue to create the life I want.
Have you ever made a vision board? What are some key things you’re looking for in your life?
On my wedding day I woke up about 4:30 or 5 am. I laid in bed for a little while, wrote a line or two in my journal, tried to read or peruse a magazine. Then I just laid there staring at the wall thinking, which is one of my favorite pastimes. I was excited but I don’t think I was jittery or nervous. Actually the opposite–I think I was quite at peace.
Around 6, I drove to Starbucks to get a coffee, a muffin and some alone time. The town was quiet, there was no traffic. I sat at a stop light just because it was red, not because there were other cars that needed to go. There was peace. The sun was just coming up.
I was one of a few people at Starbucks that Saturday morning. My order was the same as the day before: tall skim latte, apple bran muffin, grande ice water. I finished one last note and then stared out the window. There wasn’t much to see. The Starbucks is in the middle of a shopping center and it was so early that there weren’t even any people to watch, just a near empty parking lot. But to me, on that morning, I saw a beautiful day. A day that would be filled with love and family and friends, and dreams coming true. I probably sent Mike a good morning message telling him how excited I was to marry him.
And the then I drove back to my mom’s. I drove singing along, maybe dancing a bit. The Black Eyed Peas song “Just Can’t Get Enough” was playing and I sang and danced along.
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After pictures, Mike and I took some time to relax and spend time just the two of us before the rush of the reception. We had a blanket set up in the grass and a plate of hors d’oeuvres and drinks brought to us. It was a beautiful day. I remember sitting, shoes off, looking out over the grounds of the Castle and the feeling the breeze blowing past us. It was so peaceful and another great opportunity to take in the love and joy of the day.
My morning at Starbucks and the time we spent having a picnic were some of my favorite moments of my wedding day, when I had the opportunity to just take it all in and appreciate the moment.
During our wedding planning Mike and I made a point to schedule down time into the plan so we could relax and enjoy the day a little bit. I’m so glad we did. It really allowed us to appreciate it all, it slowed the day down a little bit, and gave us a chance to catch our breath and stop and say “isn’t this amazing.”
Thinking about it recently, I think this is something I want to implement in my life going forward. What’s the point of creating an amazing life if we don’t have time to take it all in while it’s happening? Sure, it’s nice to look back on things and think about how fun they are. But I think a little appreciation in the moment can really go a long way.
So I’m scheduling things in now, times that we can plan to slow down and take it all in. So far, I have a new recipe once a week. I also like naps and laying in bed on weekends just looking out the window and daydreaming.
I’ll share some more ideas once I have them.
What do you like to do to slow down and take it all in?
The real world. We’ve all got to enter it at some point. It includes bill paying, work, finding a new identity that’s not student, and while all of that has its challenges, none of these are the worst part of being an adult.
Let me explain…
….
It’s about noon on Sunday and my best friends from college and I are sprawled across two beds in the hotel room we shared after LEM‘s bachelorette party wishing we could all go back to sleep for about 4 more hours. We were out til 4am, drinking and dancing up a storm. Our heads hurt and we’re so tired. But as I cuddle and chat with my best friends, all 6 of us together, this warm loving feeling spreads over me and I say “isn’t life just so good right now?” They all laugh because it’s ridiculous–we’re exhausted and the room is spinning a bit–but I know deep down they all agree.
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It’s a Sunday breakfast that turns into three hours over coffee and crepes, a lunch date that leaves you bouncing into your office, a happy hour that turns into dinner and a bottle of wine and not getting home until 10:30 on a Monday.
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It’s a text message telling you about a DC pizza place on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives or an email mid-day Wednesday asking how the week is going.
….
Yes, these are some of the best things in life.
But they point to the worst thing about being an adult: there’s never enough time for friends.
And maybe the flip side of that is realizing how valuable these people are. And finally learning to shift your priorities to make time for them. Because they are everything.
Talk to me: what do you think is the worst part of being an adult?
I was telling my co-workers about how Mike came to help me finish the dishes the other night because he didn’t want my great day to end in grumpiness.
“Wow,” they said in response. That’s good. Almost too good.
And while Mike is pretty amazing in almost every way and we’ve been going strong for 9 years, this relationship, like all relationships, takes work. Every day, it takes work.
We’re still learning what we need to be for each other and as we each continue to grow and change our needs evolve as well.
We are very different people in a lot ways–raised to express emotions differently and react to situations in ways that sometimes seem to be exact opposites of each other, and our overall demeanors, the way we process information, and the way we see the future are sometimes worlds apart.
And that poses a challenge.
The other night Mike was reacting to a situation that wasn’t going the way he wanted it to go. My initial reaction was to encourage him to get his frustration out. To fuel the fire, to get him to yell and release the stress. Which he did a little bit. He verbalized his frustrations and I continued to try to draw more feelings out of him.
But he wanted to just move on and turned our TV show back on.
And then it hit me: instead of trying to flame his anger, he needed me to say “you know, it’s fine the way it is. You don’t need to feel bad about this.”
And as I said something along those lines, I could tell that was in fact exactly what he needed from me.
We don’t always get it right the first time. We’re still learning how to respond to each other and to read each other in different situations.
I don’t imagine that this will ever change. That our relationship will be completely effortless. As we go through life together, we’ll always be working to be attentive to each others needs, which may change over time.
Friday night Mike and I were out to dinner and I had this thought “I can’t imagine us having a baby right now.” (Yes, I realize this seems contradictory to what I told you two weeks ago.)
For some reason this image of us carrying a baby in a car seat walking down Barrack’s Row popped into my head as I sat at a high-top table in the window at Matchbox, enjoying a glass a wine across from my husband on a gorgeous Friday evening.
Initial Reactions
OMG, I can’t imagine carrying a baby around, I thought. I can’t imagine having to worry about someone else 24-7.
Half the time I’m too tired to wash the dishes after dinner, where will I find the energy to take care of a baby?
I can hardly get myself together in the morning; I’m always doing a million things. How will I be able to get a baby ready for the day when half the time I’m rushing to get a lunch together before I head out the door. (I almost missed the bus the other day because Justin Beiber was on the Today Show. I mean, hello?! Does that sound like mom material to you? I think not.)
I know that you make room in your life for a baby, that your routine and schedule just shift to make it work. But I don’t want to not be able to do things we like to do because we have a baby and his or her schedule trumps everything.
And no, of course your life doesn’t have to stop when you have a baby. You can still be social and do things, just take the baby with you.
I was actually surprised and inspired by the number of couples I saw with babies strapped on them as we hiked in Great Falls. Yes! I want that to be us. I want to still be out and about when we have a baby.
I’d love to hold a baby and cuddle with a baby–someone else’s baby that I can give back. That would be nice.
But having a baby indefinitely… I can’t wrap my head around that.
After thinking about this for almost a week, here’s why…
I enjoy my life as it is right now and feel like I’m on the cusp of some major self discovery. I struggled a lot after college graduation trying to figure everything out and felt very lost at times. But I’ve learned so much about myself in the last 6-9 months, and am starting to see the light at the end of my quarter-life crisis tunnel. I’m really enjoying this time, being selfish and focusing almost all of my energy on myself and what I want.
When I imagine having a baby, I’m older and have my act together. I have a solid routine, my apartment is clean. I’m full of energy. I can stay up til 10. I imagine I’m like 35 or what I think I’ll be when I’m 35: totally with it and put together. I like to feel like I’m with it and put together right now and that I’ve got a lot of things figured out, but where I’m at currently and the level I see myself at when I’m a mom are a few steps apart.
And right now, I’m really enjoying the process of figuring it all out.
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[as you can imagine I have many more thoughts where these came from…perhaps a part II and even III are in order]
When Mike and I chose to have our wedding reception in a tent, we knew it felt right. Fonthill Castle in Doylestown, PA is a picturesque property with lots of green. Living in a city, the serenity of the sights and sounds of the property were something that instantly attracted us. It felt so peaceful, so free. This would be the best place for us to get married.
But our parents asked “what if it rains?”
My first thought in response to this was “what if it’s 75 and sunny?” Yes, there is the possibility of rain on our wedding day. But there is also an equal possibility that it’s a gorgeous spring day. And that’s what I decided to focus on.
This is my natural reaction to things. I think of best case. I’m a true optimist.
Yesterday I was chatting with a friend about which grad school she should attend. She’s deciding between two schools. At one point she said something equivalent to “if it rains, will I wish I went to the other school?”
And my thought was the equivalent of “what if it’s sunny?” What if the exact opposite of that bad situation happens? You’ll be happy you chose the school you did.
I think it’s natural to ask “what if?” and consider the potential snags in a situation. It’s smart even. Of course you want to consider less-than-ideal scenarios. But I think it’s best when we ask ourselves this question in a pragmatic way, in a way that opens your mind to a contingency plan in case x, y, or z happens. But don’t let the possibility of it not working out keep you from going after the best case, what you really want.
It’s kind of like that saying “don’t let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game.” (ok, maybe that’s from A Cinderella Story 🙂 ).
Our wedding day was exactly as I pictured it. A gorgeous spring day. Sun shining. Not too hot. And as we sat on a picnic blanket on the grounds of Fonthill before the reception with the breeze blowing past us taking in the whole day, I was glad we followed our hearts and made decisions with the best possible scenario in mind.
What if we had taken our parents concerns to heart, let their fear of rain eclipse our hope of sun, and changed our plans to a more rain-friendly site? What if we booked a hotel ballroom instead and wished we were spending our sunny wedding day at Fonthill?
The next time you find yourself worrying “what if it rains?” ask yourself this:
For months, maybe even a year or more, after we got engaged, I still wondered when Mike would propose. Things like surprises, dinner dates, random Tuesdays when he walked in the door after work, I’d still find myself thinking “maybe he’s going to propose.” I had been so accustomed to thinking this way, had been waiting for engagement longer than I’d been engaged and that thought pattern stuck.
The same thing happened with our first dance song. After our wedding, whenever I heard our first dance song, “Just Say Yes,” my mind didn’t go to the dance floor at our reception, didn’t rejoice at how fun our first dance was even though it wasn’t planned at all. I didn’t think about how Mike threw me out for a spin perfectly on cue as the song built up to the first chorus and everyone started cheering and whistling and we were both smiling from ear to ear. No, when I heard “Just Say Yes” after our wedding I was taken back to my morning commute, walking up New Jersey Avenue to the metro, listening to the song on my iPod and daydreaming about my wedding. I remembered my daydream—which was a little different than the real day (different hair, different dress)—because I had played that daydream, a montage of our wedding day, in my head over and over and over again for months leading up to the big day.
While these aren’t terribly detrimental thought patterns to have, more just strange, it makes me think about other thought patterns we can get caught up in and stay in even if realities change: body image, money worries, family concerns. “I need to lose weight” or “I have no money” or “My family makes me stressed.”
We can change our thought patterns. We’re in control of our thoughts and what pops into our heads. In choosing different thoughts, we can re-train our minds and re-program our thought patterns. We can choose thoughts that build us up, make us feel happy or confident or comforted.
If every time you think “I need to lose weight” or “I’m fat,” you change your thought to “my body is beautiful” or “I’m strong” or “I have amazing arms/hair/eyes/insert favorite trait here,” that will become the prominent thought related to your appearance.
If when you worry “I don’t have enough money” or “I wish I made more” or “How will I pay for that?” you remind yourself that “the money always comes” or “I can re-work my spending plan to allocate money for that” you will believe that the money always comes when it needs to and/or you are in control of your money not the other way around.
If you anticipate “family get-togethers are overwhelming” or “my sister/uncle/mom drives me crazy” but then remember “last we time we laughed until we cried” or “my mom knows me better than I think she does” you’ll significantly decrease your chances of getting overwhelmed or irritable.
We can choose our thoughts so we might as well choose ones that work for us. It may take some time to get the new thought pattern to stick, to become the primary thought associated with an experience, a person, a stressor. But if we keep at it, we can re-program our minds.
Now I don’t catch myself holding my breath for the proposal that already happened because I look at my ring and remember the proposal and how wonderful it was. That I have what I hoped for. And because I’ve started listening to Just Say Yes when I’m in the car alone and thinking back to our actual wedding, when I hear our first dance song, I remember our first dance and the happiness that is tied with the song. Mostly it makes me think of Mike.
Sometimes our thought patterns change because life changes. Sometimes we have to help them get there. Sometimes we choose to change our thought patterns because that’s all we can control in the moment. And other times, our life changes because our thought patterns change. But that’s a topic for another day.
Sitting across from my best friends at breakfast Sunday morning, I’m struck by how beautiful they all are and how lucky I am to have them in my life. Yes, they are all pretty women, I’ve always known that. But over the past year or so I’ve realized that my friends are all around beautiful people: they are strong, smart, funny, kind, driven, loyal, caring, comforting people and my life wouldn’t be the same without them in it.
In high school and through college I think I took my friends for granted–often opting to spend time Mike and his friends instead of my girlfriends. It’s not until I graduated from college and moved away from them all that I realized how precious friendships are, how much girlfriends add to your life.
We had an amazing weekend together. Planned about a month ago to celebrate Jordyn’s birthday and her return to the east coast (she moved from LA to DC in January), we were all so looking forward to the girl time. We each had our own reasons for looking forward to the trip, and I think it was exactly what we needed.
The girls got to DC on Friday night and the grown-up slumber party began with dinner at my apartment. (I made this.) Having us all around my kitchen table was a bit surreal. If it was in a movie a slow happy song would play as the camera slowly pans over each of our faces as we smile, throw our heads back in laughter, and raise our glasses for a toast. It’s crazy to think that we’re all adults now and our conversations focus on work, serious relationships, being moms some day, finances, goals, and dreams.
Saturday morning my living room was covered in air mattresses, blankets, and luggage just like my bedroom was in middle school when these slumber parties began. I made my favorite pancakes and we went to my favorite yoga class. We got back around lunchtime and Mike made us all homemade pizza. Then we just veged in our gym clothes for the afternoon, read magazines, books, took naps, watched a movie. Because we really didn’t have to do anything. We just wanted to be together.
We put ourselves together on Saturday night for a night out on the town. We had an 8 o’clock reservation at Zaytinya and after two sketchy cab rides we all arrived at our destination. We shared a few carafes of the Pom Fili (white wine, vodka, and pomegranate juice) and sampled a lot of menu items: salads, fritters, spreads, meats. We left dinner with happy hearts and happy bellies.
Tina, Jordyn, me, Leslie, Bridget
Next, we headed to POV at the W Hotel just a quick walk away from the restaurant. We felt pretty baller walking in and when we got to our table I was so excited we were there. POV, the rooftop bar, is one of my favorite places in the city and I’d been wanting to take girlfriends there for a while.
Unfortunately, our stay was short-lived. As we began ordering our first drinks, the server said “did anyone tell you about the policy?” “No,” we said, “what policy?” “It’s a $50 per person minimum or you have to do bottle service.” WHAT?!?! Since we were all pretty full and not wanting to spend $60 on drinks alone, we left our table and headed back to my neighborhood. We had a drink at a neighborhood bar before coming back to my apartment, making Pillsbury cinnamon buns, and going to bed.
And so quickly it was Sunday morning. Of course, I had to take my friends to my favorite breakfast place: Open City in Woodley Park. As we chat over coffee, I get a bit emotional at the joy of the experience and wish that I could be surrounded by these girls all the time. These are girls I’ve liked since middle school but have come to truly admire in the past few years. Luckily, the conversation quickly turns to when we can have another weekend like this and we brainstorm places we can travel together.
As I gave them hugs at the train station, I had to fight back tears. I really hate to see them go.
Luckily, one’s still here for good and we’re already planning our next girls weekend.
While waiting in line at Starbucks yesterday morning, I overheard a conversation between a teenager and a middle aged woman. I imagine this was a college admissions interview and the woman was an alumna and the young man a high school senior. While the senior was talking about his experience running cross country, I was struck by two things he said and how they apply to so much more than running.
Keep your own pace
He said that in cross country it’s important to find your own pace and keep your own pace. That when someone passes you it’s very tempting, almost innate, to want to run faster to catch up with him and then pass him, but you have to know your own pace and not use up all of your energy in one burst sprinting to beat the person in front of you. That you need to figure out a pace that you can maintain and just keep it at that.
You don’t have to be first to win
The teen also said that in cross country, you don’t have to be the first to win. That simply hitting a personal best is an accomplishment in itself.
I think I may have gotten tears in my eyes as I heard this, thinking “wow, this is a great reminder for life.” It can be so easy to compare yourself to friends, coworkers, people from high school or college that you’re not friends with in real life but are friends on Facebook. If they’re getting married, buying a house, having kids, getting promoted, getting a Master’s degree, traveling, buying x, y, or z. And when we see people “passing” us it’s easy to want to sprint to catch up, and to put pressure on ourselves to find a boyfriend or buy a home or whatever. But doing so only expends unnecessary energy. It feels so much better if you’re doing it at your own pace, not sprinting to get to catch up to the person in front of you. And remember that just because you’re not the first doesn’t make crossing the finish line any less significant.
I’m back from a long weekend in Florida with my friend Lauren. We planned this trip in the fall and I was so looking forward to the girl time and the sunny weather. We had a great weekend: went for long walks in the morning, did quite a bit of shopping, ate good food, and just talked a lot. As always, it was so good to spend quality time with her.
I love spending time with my girlfriends and I think it’s really important for men and women to have time with their guy friends and girlfriends on a regular basis. I’ve said before that I think spending time with girlfriends is good for the soul and I truly believe that.
When you’re in a relationship, it’s really important to prioritize your friendships and have girl time and guy time. Honestly, I’m having a hard time articulating why this is important but believe me, it is. It’s good for me to talk and talk and talk with a girlfriend over a glass of wine and dinner. And it’s good for my husband to chat with a buddy over beers and wings.
Because I value and crave girl time so much, I wonder if I may have isolated my husband from my friends. In the past, friends would ask if Mike was coming along and I’d say “nah” because I just wanted the girl time and quality time with my friend. Now that we’re married I truly do want my friends to know my husband and my husband to know my friends. But I still crave the girl time so I’m not sure how I’ll find that balance.
I’d love to know:
Can you articulate why girl time and guy is so important? (I’m hoping you’ll have the words that are escaping me at the moment.)
How can I bring my husband and my friends together?
