I have no idea where I’m going to be in a year. I’m not even 100% sure I know where I’ll be in six months. Yes, most of this is a life choice, but the larger part of the reason is that I have to accept that there is a large part of me that WANTS this.
It’s hard to explain, but the unknown is something my body craves like a woman on PMS craves chocolate dipped in chocolate. I can tell you what my life plan is for the next five years, but I cannot tell you WHERE, because WHERE is something that has to change or I begin to wilt.
I like to think that I’m not a flake. I like to think that my friends love me despite the fact that as we grow older their lives become more stable as mine becomes less so. Even when I think about my future and what I would like to accomplish and what stable would mean for me, I still think of it in terms of dividing my time between a couple different countries during the year.
Contrary to popular belief, I do not enjoy being different. I am almost ashamed when I tell people where I’m going next, and I wince when people ask, “Where are you living now?” because the context is different when you’re asking me. In fact, it causes a lot of anxiety in my life.
I have no idea if I will be able to pay the rent in two months. I need a couple oral surgeries, but have no idea how long I will need to postpone them to save up the money for them, because at this point I can’t actually save ANY money. My car is literally rusting out, and all I can do is hope that it continues well past the 250,000 miles it’s about to turn over.
All of this is because I wanted to be different: I wanted to make money doing what I loved on my own terms. Here I am: living the life I wanted, on my terms, and having no idea of those terms will support me. I am justifiably, secretly, UTTERLY afraid.
They say that you have to give a business three years to become profitable. I am not even officially out of my first year of having a business. I have a product that will come out before Christmas that should ease the tension, especially if it does as well as I think it will, and also because I will do many things different this time than I did with the first book. I tell myself these things all the time; I have all sorts of logical reasons that I have absolutely no need to be afraid. First of all, I can get a job if I need it. Second, even if I never sold another cookbook in my life, I still would reap a year’s worth of experience in publishing, writing, wine-pairing, recipe testing, networking, marketing, accounting, website design, project management and the importance of work-life balance. Logically, I tell myself that it’s okay that I’m different, that I wanted to take this risk, that it all will be worth it, whatever the outcome is, because all experiences are learning experiences. Emotionally, none of that makes any sense to my poor overworked brain that wants to know what was so wrong with a corporate job with benefits. This part of me doesn’t listen when I tell it that I wouldn’t actually be any happier there, financial security or not.
The world is full of stories of people who made it through this point, and they are all told from the other side of it, when they are swimming in personal glory. They all say how hard it was, but we get to the point where we nod and accept what that means without actually knowing what it means to be there, with your deteriorating bank account, only so many hours in the day, and the need to turn down social engagements because you just can’t afford a nice meal out. It is rare that you hear this side of it: the gritty, what-the-f*ck-am-I-doing side of it that sounds romantic once it’s over but just seems overwhelmingly impossible in the moment.
If you had asked me a couple years ago what experience had shaped me most as a person, I would have unhesitatingly replied that it was my year in Spain, when I painfully learned Spanish in a dialect similar to backwoods Mississippi English. Even more recently I would have said the year+ I spent at Zango, where I decided that I couldn’t live like everyone else after all, in work, lifestyle or love. From the middle of this, I have a feeling it’s going to be my most important formative experience yet – the question is simply what my form will be when I’m through it.
Love and formative kisses
Morgan
Showing posts with label life balance. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life balance. Show all posts
Tuesday, August 16, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Sleeping on the Floor
When I can’t sleep for an extended amount of time, I get out of bed with my pillow and a blanket and lay down on the floor. It almost always works: regardless of how long I’ve been tossing and turning, moving to a different surface does the trick and I immediately fall asleep. After a couple hours – when my arm has gone numb or my back screams at me to wake up – I can haul myself up off the floor, get back into the bed and fall asleep with no problem at all.
Strange, I know. I don’t think that this trick has anything to do with my body craving hard surfaces. I think it has a lot more to do with removing myself from the space I was in and putting myself in a new space. Somehow the shift off the mattress works as a switch on my brain, and whatever it was that was keeping me awake – because obviously it wasn’t the bed – clicks off with the change of location.
You would think that knowing this would have changed how I handled other problems too, but that is not the case. You would think that I would be able to draw some parallels between being able to sleep on the floor and moving out of any other space that made me restless. You would think…and you would be wrong.
It has only recently occurred to me that the things that make me angry or hurt have everything to do with how I handle a situation and very little to do with who hurt me or made me angry. Basically, instead of shooing these people out the door, I could change the way I react to them, or * GASP * tell them how I feel and ask them to stop.
If this seems like a simple concept, you’re way ahead of me in the game of life. I have only just identified my ego as my biggest enemy, and for the first time in my life I actually get it when my dad tells me that you can’t change people, you can only change how you react to people.
But just because I get it doesn’t mean I can follow through with it, or I would be sleeping on my proverbial floor more often. If I got it completely, I would be able to demand more for myself, and stop trying to sell myself short. I would be able to ask for what I need instead of hoping others will recognize what I am worth and treat me accordingly. That approach hasn’t worked so far, so I think it’s time I try a different approach. So I’m getting out of the bed and choosing the hard uncomfortable floor to help flip the switch in my brain, the switch that says I’m not worth something unless someone else has noticed it and said so.
So, instead of waiting for someone else to notice how much I’m worth, I’m going to just tell him or her myself. Perhaps by doing this I can also convince myself that it’s true. Maybe, eventually, I will be able to start sleeping the bed again, because I will have moved it to a new, better, more restful, space.
Love and floored kisses
Morgan
Strange, I know. I don’t think that this trick has anything to do with my body craving hard surfaces. I think it has a lot more to do with removing myself from the space I was in and putting myself in a new space. Somehow the shift off the mattress works as a switch on my brain, and whatever it was that was keeping me awake – because obviously it wasn’t the bed – clicks off with the change of location.
You would think that knowing this would have changed how I handled other problems too, but that is not the case. You would think that I would be able to draw some parallels between being able to sleep on the floor and moving out of any other space that made me restless. You would think…and you would be wrong.
It has only recently occurred to me that the things that make me angry or hurt have everything to do with how I handle a situation and very little to do with who hurt me or made me angry. Basically, instead of shooing these people out the door, I could change the way I react to them, or * GASP * tell them how I feel and ask them to stop.
If this seems like a simple concept, you’re way ahead of me in the game of life. I have only just identified my ego as my biggest enemy, and for the first time in my life I actually get it when my dad tells me that you can’t change people, you can only change how you react to people.
But just because I get it doesn’t mean I can follow through with it, or I would be sleeping on my proverbial floor more often. If I got it completely, I would be able to demand more for myself, and stop trying to sell myself short. I would be able to ask for what I need instead of hoping others will recognize what I am worth and treat me accordingly. That approach hasn’t worked so far, so I think it’s time I try a different approach. So I’m getting out of the bed and choosing the hard uncomfortable floor to help flip the switch in my brain, the switch that says I’m not worth something unless someone else has noticed it and said so.
So, instead of waiting for someone else to notice how much I’m worth, I’m going to just tell him or her myself. Perhaps by doing this I can also convince myself that it’s true. Maybe, eventually, I will be able to start sleeping the bed again, because I will have moved it to a new, better, more restful, space.
Love and floored kisses
Morgan
Friday, October 29, 2010
Bad News, Mexico
Dearest Mexico,
I have some really bad news. For reasons totally within their rights that make complete sense, the people that I dogsat for in Mexico don’t need me this year. Despite the logic of their decision, I am heartbroken. Despite my heartbreak, I am now excited and curious about where I’ll end up instead.
I haven’t forgotten you, Mexico, and I may still end up lost in your huge expanse of spicy foods and welcoming people. I can’t help but wonder, however, if this change in plans was meant to be a shove to push me in another direction, one I haven’t yet determined.
Immediately upon hearing the news – curse those smart phones and their instant email updates! – I became morose and self-pitying. Well, now I would simply have to move, and settle into a more regular routine, and punish those around me for the fact that I couldn’t leave. Of course I knew that this attitude wouldn’t last, and that my life is NOT that bad simply because I have lost my trip to Mexico, but sometimes you just have to let the emotion wear itself out or it will start to eat at you.
My mother was not impressed. “You’ll find something else; you always do.”
She’s right; I do always find something else, because when you’re looking for opportunities, they’re always there. It is simply time for me to look for a new one.
I’m sorry, Mexico. I told you before that I couldn’t guarantee my fidelity, and it looks like fate might be pulling us apart. You see, I wanted to come back to you, but now that I’m going to be left more to my own devices – and more dependent on my own savings – I am very likely to pick somewhere else that I haven’t seen to see if the sparks fly. I can’t tell you what will happen, because I honestly don’t know, but I do know this: future memories cannot replace the wonderful things I have already experienced. I will never forget you, and I'm sure I'll see you again soon.
Love and new adventure kisses
Morgan
I have some really bad news. For reasons totally within their rights that make complete sense, the people that I dogsat for in Mexico don’t need me this year. Despite the logic of their decision, I am heartbroken. Despite my heartbreak, I am now excited and curious about where I’ll end up instead.
I haven’t forgotten you, Mexico, and I may still end up lost in your huge expanse of spicy foods and welcoming people. I can’t help but wonder, however, if this change in plans was meant to be a shove to push me in another direction, one I haven’t yet determined.
Immediately upon hearing the news – curse those smart phones and their instant email updates! – I became morose and self-pitying. Well, now I would simply have to move, and settle into a more regular routine, and punish those around me for the fact that I couldn’t leave. Of course I knew that this attitude wouldn’t last, and that my life is NOT that bad simply because I have lost my trip to Mexico, but sometimes you just have to let the emotion wear itself out or it will start to eat at you.
My mother was not impressed. “You’ll find something else; you always do.”
She’s right; I do always find something else, because when you’re looking for opportunities, they’re always there. It is simply time for me to look for a new one.
I’m sorry, Mexico. I told you before that I couldn’t guarantee my fidelity, and it looks like fate might be pulling us apart. You see, I wanted to come back to you, but now that I’m going to be left more to my own devices – and more dependent on my own savings – I am very likely to pick somewhere else that I haven’t seen to see if the sparks fly. I can’t tell you what will happen, because I honestly don’t know, but I do know this: future memories cannot replace the wonderful things I have already experienced. I will never forget you, and I'm sure I'll see you again soon.
Love and new adventure kisses
Morgan
Sunday, April 25, 2010
My Relationship with Me
The moonlight is bright outside, illuminating the waves as they beat against the shore. There are birds calling from the water’s edge, and I imagine they are feasting on their kinsman with a broken wing that the dog wouldn’t stop bothering on the walk today. I should be disturbed by this, but I am too busy feeling the breeze’s fingers through my hair, still damp from my afternoon dunking. My ears are full of so many sounds I cannot yet discern – I think I hear frogs, now and then a gecko, once in a great while a Mexican song, whistled or sung. I am here to heal, and these sounds will become a mother’s hum to me, rocking me to sleep.
I am here to heal, but I am fighting disappointment in myself that I need it at this point. I have had a year of complete bliss – of living on an island in the Puget Sound, followed by time far up a river valley, with only the mountains and the fresh pine air, followed by this: the beginning of three months next to a beach in Mexico. I am not coming off of a drug addiction, out of a bad relationship, away from a death in the family. I am not alone and drifting without direction, regardless of what it may look like to some. In many ways, I have gotten to know myself more in this past year than I ever thought possible – gotten to know what I need to be happy and begun to strive for it. Yet, despite all this, I am still here with open wounds.
In the past few months, I have been working too much with the idea that I could rest in Mexico. I have forgone sleep, healthy meals, time alone and exercise with the idea that I will get to do all or nothing that I desire in Mexico. The problem is that this is a recurring theme for me: work too hard with the idea that it will all be over soon. If it will all be over soon, there is no need to spare myself, my heart, my body, my sanity, because one day soon I will have the time for all of it.
But that’s not what I want. I don’t want to live for the times I get to escape – the times that I pick up my bags and leave my worries behind. I want to own my worries and take them with me – to appreciate and pack them along with my favorite books. I want my worries to be things that make me excited to get up in the morning, not something I am looking forward to leaving.
I want to be able to maintain something constant and healthy. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and wish for my responsibilities – to be able to leave them alone or scoop them up like sand dollars and take them with me to the beach. I want something that I think is falling farther and farther away in American society: the kind of serenity in my everyday life that most people only find on vacation.
Am I crazy? Of course I am. Is it possible? Of course it is. I’m not sure – I’m new at this, remember – but I think the secret is to work on your relationship with yourself like you would with anyone else. People who have been in long marriages, relationships or friendships for that matter always talk about finding the time to be together – reserving time for the two of you to remember why it is you like each other and why you’re important to one another’s lives. This doesn’t have to be as touchy-feely as it sounds: a nice dinner out, a barbecue, a ski date, a movie night with take-out. Enjoying the things you love to do together, together. Why shouldn’t you have to do the same for yourself?
However, I think I may need more time than most. A friend told me once that I probably didn’t really need human interaction more than once a week. This might insult some people; I was relieved that someone finally got it.
Between leaving Chelan and getting here via Mexico City, I heard it many, many times. “Just one person?” “Only one ticket?” “Are you here alone?” “Many people wouldn’t do this alone.” “I admire people who can travel alone.”
The thing is…I don’t get lonely. I enjoy my time by myself. I don’t feel alone…when I’m alone. Which is perhaps why I feel that I have been missing my time with myself – because there have been too many distractions, people, places, things -- and I haven’t been able to enjoy my time with me.
So here I am. Like any good relationship, you can’t fix it once and expect it to stay fixed just because you said so. I feel like I should have discovered this about myself already, but there are some things that you must continue to practice, even after the lesson has been learned. I will continue to spend time with me, heal the rift that has grown between myself and who I am, and spend some time – much needed time – on my relationship with me.
I am here to heal, but I am fighting disappointment in myself that I need it at this point. I have had a year of complete bliss – of living on an island in the Puget Sound, followed by time far up a river valley, with only the mountains and the fresh pine air, followed by this: the beginning of three months next to a beach in Mexico. I am not coming off of a drug addiction, out of a bad relationship, away from a death in the family. I am not alone and drifting without direction, regardless of what it may look like to some. In many ways, I have gotten to know myself more in this past year than I ever thought possible – gotten to know what I need to be happy and begun to strive for it. Yet, despite all this, I am still here with open wounds.
In the past few months, I have been working too much with the idea that I could rest in Mexico. I have forgone sleep, healthy meals, time alone and exercise with the idea that I will get to do all or nothing that I desire in Mexico. The problem is that this is a recurring theme for me: work too hard with the idea that it will all be over soon. If it will all be over soon, there is no need to spare myself, my heart, my body, my sanity, because one day soon I will have the time for all of it.
But that’s not what I want. I don’t want to live for the times I get to escape – the times that I pick up my bags and leave my worries behind. I want to own my worries and take them with me – to appreciate and pack them along with my favorite books. I want my worries to be things that make me excited to get up in the morning, not something I am looking forward to leaving.
I want to be able to maintain something constant and healthy. I want to be able to wake up in the morning and wish for my responsibilities – to be able to leave them alone or scoop them up like sand dollars and take them with me to the beach. I want something that I think is falling farther and farther away in American society: the kind of serenity in my everyday life that most people only find on vacation.
Am I crazy? Of course I am. Is it possible? Of course it is. I’m not sure – I’m new at this, remember – but I think the secret is to work on your relationship with yourself like you would with anyone else. People who have been in long marriages, relationships or friendships for that matter always talk about finding the time to be together – reserving time for the two of you to remember why it is you like each other and why you’re important to one another’s lives. This doesn’t have to be as touchy-feely as it sounds: a nice dinner out, a barbecue, a ski date, a movie night with take-out. Enjoying the things you love to do together, together. Why shouldn’t you have to do the same for yourself?
However, I think I may need more time than most. A friend told me once that I probably didn’t really need human interaction more than once a week. This might insult some people; I was relieved that someone finally got it.
Between leaving Chelan and getting here via Mexico City, I heard it many, many times. “Just one person?” “Only one ticket?” “Are you here alone?” “Many people wouldn’t do this alone.” “I admire people who can travel alone.”
The thing is…I don’t get lonely. I enjoy my time by myself. I don’t feel alone…when I’m alone. Which is perhaps why I feel that I have been missing my time with myself – because there have been too many distractions, people, places, things -- and I haven’t been able to enjoy my time with me.
So here I am. Like any good relationship, you can’t fix it once and expect it to stay fixed just because you said so. I feel like I should have discovered this about myself already, but there are some things that you must continue to practice, even after the lesson has been learned. I will continue to spend time with me, heal the rift that has grown between myself and who I am, and spend some time – much needed time – on my relationship with me.
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