Lately I’ve been consumed with goal setting and planning for 2009. Which I know sounds like something corporate-types do when they want to look busy, but I swear, it’s a real and important thing: If I don’t take the time to pause and prepare, pretty soon it’s October again and I’m so swamped I can’t find my way out of my in-box, and I’ve not improved anything from year to year because I never had a plan.
So I plan.
Part of the process is stepping back and looking at the big picture and answering big questions like, “What do I want out of life?” (Want to know how this relates to keeping your junk drawers more organized? Read on!)
Disorganization and chaos, stress, always being “so busy”, reacting to each day and never feeling as though it turned out quite as you intended—well, I just hate this state of being! It is no way to live an exceptional life!
I’m coming to realize that these are all symptoms of dis-ease - in ourselves, in our culture. We’re admired and applauded for our ability to juggle fifty three things at once, and to “go the extra mile” for others, never for ourselves, and especially for work - YAY US! Great job! We rule!
We complain about being “too busy” and can find a sympathetic ear attached to just about any warm body we encounter. Nobody says, “Awww, that’s so sad, you should take more time to smell the flowers like I do, look how HAPPY I AM!” If you’re lucky, someone will scribble down the title of a particularly enlightened time management book for you.
The last couple of months have been overwhelmingly stressful and I’ve been reflecting on how to alleviate/prevent some of the pressure in the new year. While of course taking on a whole lot more and setting bigger goals.
At first I thought the answer was for me to hire a personal assistant to help get me organized, free up some time so I could recharge my batteries and sharpen my tools and insert other cliche metaphors here.
Then I realized that if I were more organized, had a better system, I would probably save so much time that I wouldn’t need a PA. I’m a fairly together and organized person, but spend about 3.5 hours per day looking for my car keys.
In the process of getting organized, which I’ve been working on for a couple of weeks now, I’ve had to face a few difficult and painful truths about myself. The biggest one is the realization that I keep myself “busy” because I am afraid of facing the voids and empty spaces in my life: What if I get so organized that I actually HAVE that coveted free time?
Uh.
So my task now is to make a list. Or two or three. Of things that I want to fill my life with once I eliminate the clutter, the waste, the inefficiencies. I have an appointment with a business/leadership coach who is going to help me fine tune all of this, which I’m pretty excited about. A much better investment than a personal assistant, I’m thinking.
2009 is going to be the best year ever. The most fun, the most relaxed, the most profitable, and the most personally fulfilling. Maybe I’ll blog more, read more, travel more, get laid! Not so bad facing the painful truth of empty spaces when there are so many wonderful things to fill them up with.
The last month has been a flurry of activity and emotional turmoil, which I should have been blogging about, but I wouldn’t have known where to begin.
For weeks, I had been looking forward to my trip to Washington DC—a trip that was to serve multiple purposes: First, one of my favorite clients was speaking at Blogher (a conference for women bloggers) and since I’d always wanted to attend a Blogher conference, what better timing? Secondly, I was going to have a chance to finally meet “Mr. Big”—if you don’t know the story, let’s just say he is somebody I’ve known and admired for a really long time but never met in person and always wanted to. He cleared his schedule, we made plans. Such as a real. live. date. In a real city. With a real man with a real job. And everything. I was pretty psyched, it was going to be my first date since my breakup. And while I had no delusions about a future beyond the weekend, it meant I was moving forward, taking a chance.
I had spent months “on my own” after my last breakup, focusing on an internal and external makeover and had been working REALLY HARD without a break for a really really long time. Not to be overly dramatic, but DC was to be a trip that would represent the beginning of the next chapter of my life as a more confident me.
All I wanted, all I expected, was a night on the town with my new figure and my new little black dress and fierce stilettos.
Unfortunately, it totally didn’t work out that way.
Big and I, after a six year “friendship”, had a falling out just a week prior to my trip. Yeah, right? There he was on a pedestal for all those years and turns out, he was just another pedestrian douchebag. Sigh.
Truth be told, I was absolutely gutted. It was supposed to be this big ego boost of a trip, and I found myself fighting to not take it all personally, to not get depressed and undo all the hard work I had done.
I decided not to internalize, but just to go ahead and be angry with him. I bounced back pretty quickly and had a GREAT time at the conference.
Since my return, I’ve been absolutely - and I’m not lyin’ - SLAMMED WITH WORK. But in a really exciting and good way. Great clients, great projects, business is good.
Today, on my 10th annual 29th birthday, I reflect upon this last month and realize that I don’t need a man to make me feel proud and confident and good about myself and my life choices—I look great, I run a thriving, rewarding, fulfilling business with happy and wonderful clients, I have great friends, I have passions and many more I intend to pursue, and life couldn’t be more perfect.
So hey me, happy birthday, you’re doing alright kid.
I’ve always had a modest disdain for beauty pageants. I believe they are sexist and vulgar. If you’re into them, don’t be offended, I don’t care all that strongly about it. I’ve had friends that were into them big time, and I totally get that little girls want to be “pretty” and have fun participating in them. I think it’s weird, and harmful to women, and I could argue the point all the live long day, but who listens to a feminist’s ideological rants with interest anymore?
What’s always struck me as particularly strange about pageant gals is how they all develop and keep “that look”—you know what I’m talking about—Sarah Palin has it: the perfectly coiffed hair, the always-present/perfectly-applied lipstick, the gobs of eyeshadow just teetering on trashy but never crossing over ... how do they do that?!
The purpose of the beauty pageant ritual, I suppose, is to prepare young women to be poised, elegant, articulate, and well-rounded. Therefore such as. Ugh.
I went out on a Saturday night for the first time in oh, five years? My sister and her very adorable 20-something friends insisted. I must admit, it was fun, although it felt like I was older than everybody by about 10 years. Because I was.
I forgot how fun it was to get hit on by 23-year olds, and to eat pancakes and onion rings at 3:30 in the morning, and most of all, how awesome it is to wake up at an obscenely irresponsible hour with hair that smells like musty beer-soaked bar carpeting.
This video was taken just before the posse assembled, and right after I picked up my little sister when we debated the merits of Will Smith’s song, “Miami.”
