Now look what you did.
Mistakes. They’re a fact of life. Unavoidable, sometimes excusable, always inevitable. Whether they’re grand or dismissible, whether they’re rectifiable or complete, they happen. We’re not born perfect, with perfect brains or perfect thought processes or perfect reasoning skills or perfect processes of deduction. And so we make them.
What we do following a mistake is really where all the difference in the world rests. Do we beat ourselves up over it, damning our actions and berating our choices, dwelling on what we did, refusing to move forward? Do we wonder in bewilderment how it happened, yet continue doing the same thing we were doing before we made the mistake, sure to repeat it again because we are unable to see? Do we evaluate what we’ve done, take away the tough lessons, and correct our methods for the future, secure in the fact that what occurred had meaning for occurring?
For as flighty and impulsive as I am (or may seem), I am generally decent at learning from my mistakes. It might take a little while – I tend to be stubborn or bullheaded, at times – but I come around. Sometimes in my own time, sometimes in good time, but more or less, in time. I am a firm supporter of the mantra, “Everything happens for a reason,” and as long as I can find a reason, I believe it. The desperate brain will concoct the strangest of things when it wants to see the light. But mostly, humans thrive off of having the answer. I’m no exception.
Some mistakes, however, plague me. Even if I logically understand why I did what I did, and why it needed to happen the way it did, I still have trouble letting a few particularly notable mistakes go. I ask myself how I could’ve been so stupid, why I simply didn’t listen to myself, how I could’ve been so numb to the reality. I don’t come up with excuses. I knew better. I continued anyway.
Because, as you can see, although I’m fully capable of processing why something happened and I’m also quite adept at making sure I will avoid said circumstances or situations again, I kick myself over and over for some mistakes.
No, it’s not healthy. And no, it’s not fair. And even though it’s a fact of life that mistakes will come and mistakes will go, sometimes, regret lingers far longer than any ol’ lesson ever does.
A-ha! 30. You are so mine.
Photo by Karen Walrond.
Hello.
Have you seen me lately? Have you talked to me lately? Have you smelled my aura lately?
Yup. By golly, they’re all sprayin’ and emittin’ the same thing.
I. Am. So. Happy.
Around my 30th birthday, things got messy. Okay, let’s be honest. Shit hit the fan. Wonderful women a few years my senior were telling me, “30 was the best year of my life.” But I wasn’t seeing it or feeling it. I thought, “Dammit to hell, 30 sucks!”
But there’s something that comes with getting older, you know. It’s called wisdom.
I began to realize that 30 was turning out to be a massive disappointment because I let it be so. I LET IT BE SO. It was my fault. I allowed my 30th year to progress in a sucky way. Therefore, it was my responsibility to take back 30, and fucking fix it.
And damn skippy, I did.
It’s March. I’ve been 30 since October. I am happy. Very happy. So, so very happy. My life in all respects is great. No, no, not just great. Fantastic! Amazing! Fabulous! Phenomenal! Astounding! Terrific! And it’s taken me this long to shout it from the rooftops simply because I’ve been too busy. Too busy being happy.
It’s been years since I’ve been this happy. Wait. Have I ever been this happy? It’s not quite clear. The happiness is clouding my vision. And I’m not turning the misery windshield wipers on.
While I’d love to dote on the science behind why I wasn’t happy and how it came to evolve that I was happy, truthfully, I’d rather focus my happiness-blurred vision on the present than fixate on the past. Because the here, the now makes me happy. Genuinely happy. And I’m gonna roll with it.
Best of 2009: The Best-of Ketchup Edition. Yes, already.
Uh. As might be painfully evident to the naked eye, I’m woefully behind on the blog challenge.
I have a defense, though, I swear.
Well, you see, there was this beautiful, raven-haired fairy – she kinda looked like pre-Whenever Wherever Shakira, truth be told. She fluttered up to my earlobe, her hair falling over her delicate little face, and whispered in my ear, “If you eat this cube of cheese-flavored sugar, all your dreams will come true.” I know there’s no such thing, and it was really mean of her to taunt me like that.
I said, “Listen, lady, your hips may not lie, but your mouth does. Sugar never tastes like cheese. And I certainly don’t need any sugar, anyway.” She took one look at me, buzzing steadily and glowing merrily. Then she pulled this amazingly iridescent sparkling bat from behind her tiny wings, and clubbed me right over the damn head.
You wouldn’t think something so miniscule would cause so much agony, and yet, there you have it (that’s what she said).
It happened that way. I kid you not.
December 4. Book. What book – fiction or non – touched you? Where were you when you read it? Have you bought and given away multiple copies?
I would generally call myself quite derelict in the “touching reading” department this year. I spent too much time doing other things that made curling up with a book a luxury for which I longed much more than engaged in. With that said, I can’t recall any books better than White Teeth and The Princess Bride. And yes, I read Twilight. Okay, half of it. That was all that necessitated my attention.
December 5. Night out. Did you have a night out with friends or a loved one that rocked your world? Who was there? What was the highlight of the night?
Ah yes, there were a few good, good times.
December 6. Workshop or conference. Was there a conference or workshop you attended that was especially beneficial? Where was it? What did you learn?
While I loveloveloved NTEN, and I learned oodles and oodles and gobs of practical, useful, invaluable information, there truly was nothing that quite compared to or paralleled SXSWi.
December 7. Blog find of the year. That gem of a blog you can’t believe you didn’t know about until this year.
If you are gainfully employed at all (hey, stay-at-home-moms, that includes you, too!), and if you count your lucky stars for the black bean burritos at Taco Cabana, you should all be reading and taking notes from Dr. Miggy’s Healthy Blog for Busy Folks on Tight Budgets. Of all the blogs that pass by my peepers, Dr. Miggy’s blog is the one that I want to bookmark most, and actually try the recipes that she artfully depicts. She happens to be one of my dearest, most valued friends on this earth, so there’s your disclaimer. I’m clearly biased in favor of a really effing rad blog. Sue me.
December 8. Moment of peace. An hour or a day or a week of solitude. What was the quality of your breath? The state of your mind? How did you get there?
Striking this one. It’s way too hokey for me.
December 9. Challenge. Something that really made you grow this year. That made you go to your edge and then some. What made it the best challenge of the year for you?
Adventure racing. And events associated. Hands fucking down.
What made it the best challenge of the year for me? You be the judge.
Call it like you see it. I’m a badass.
Best of 2009: Best Article
December 3. Article. What’s an article that you read that blew you away? That you shared with all your friends. That you Delicious’d and reference throughout the year.
Before I answer this question, there is a huge list (yes, a list; I cannot avoid lists for the life of me, my friends) of disclaimers that I must promulgate and publish. Because I am really unable to answer this question simply. That’d be too easy.
- I work and practically live in the Internet industry (yeah, you ever heard of “the Internet”? It’s all the rage these days). Therefore – a conclusion you really should be able to draw yourself, but okay, I’ll help – I come across amazing content all day long. Like, it blows my socks off how good some of the stuff is that I read. So, you’re really asking me to narrow it down to one, single, solitary article? I can’t do that.
- Enumerated List Item #2 is also going to be a spirited discourse on why I simply cannot tell you what article was the absolute best of the best that I’ve read in 2009. But I was only going to say that I really don’t use Delicious (or Reddit, or Digg…you get the point), and it was going to end there.
So, now that you’re convinced that I should not be obligated to dive so deeply in order to narrow down all the brilliant content I’ve read in 2009 and deem one and only one THE BEST, I’m merely going to share with you something awesome that I saw today. Oh, and to add more fuel to the fire, it’s not even an article. It’s a video. Suck it; that’s how I roll.
Now that’s what I call “righteous.” You go, lady.
Let it play.
I’m awake, I’m tired, and I’m getting older by the minute. I can see it in my hands and on my face. There’s a small earth quaking in my belly, and I can’t get a read on it. But it prevents me from sleeping, which is all that really matters at 12:52 a.m.
I feel immobilized right now. By something chilly in my head and in my heart. But that’s all I know about it.
Something’s wrong. Rather, something’s not right in the universe. In my universe. It could be a myriad of real things, or it could be a glut of imagined circumstances. I lean toward reality, but I don’t always live in it. So it’s hard to say.
Neko Case’s “The Needle Has Landed” won’t vacate the annals of my brain. I mean, for weeks now. I haven’t tried very diligently to eradicate it, but I expected it’d leave eventually. Neko is amazing and brilliant and would be my girlfriend if I liked girls, but seriously, is the everlasting gobstopper presence of this song trying to tell me something?
I hear my neighbor moving around in his apartment, creak-creak-creaking along the old wooden floors of this sinking little home, and it feels like a ghost tiptoeing through mine. Although I know better, it unsettles me. But the things that go bump in the night are nothing compared to the thoughts that run ’round my head in the day.
My cat has decided that I’m a worthy buttress for his nighttime nap. Now I can’t possibly move myself to the bed. I suppose that’s simply another excuse, but I’m looking for justification here at 1:07 a.m. on a school night.
I wish someone would wash my face, brush my teeth, and remove my contacts for me. I know that’d jump start the slumber. Alas, I’m thirty years old, and unless I contract that responsibility out to someone else for substantial financial resources, I’m most likely the only one enlisted for the job.
Already, I’m thinking, “What else could I write about? Perhaps I should make a list!” I do enough list-making in my writing these days. And look at these neatly-spaced, nicely-topic-ed brief paragraphs. They’re so close to lists, even lists’ mother would get them confused.
In all the madness you see spewed above, I do believe I have pinpointed the cause of my insomnia, and they are trifold: skepticism, doubt, and disappointment. Three separate situations, to a degree, but more precisely, two related and one isolated. I am not certain which weighs on me more heavily. I simply know that, at 1:13 a.m., exactly none of them are resolvable right now.
This is me, chasing away the regular onset of “Bah humbug.”
Look. Your friend (or frenemy, whatever you refer to me as) Fayza here is an incredibly busy girl. Uh, really, I am, and she is, too. But because she nor I can never ever seem to say no to any project that appears even remotely shiny or sparkly from a distance, here we are. This is both her downfall, as well as mine. And by golly, she can’t say no to blogging. Like, ever. Again, that’s why we’re here today.
More specifically, when Gwen Bell tempted me with a writing/photography/brain dump project called The Best of 2009 Blog Challenge, hell, I took the bait and gulped it down with glee (and with a hefty sprinkling of Tony Chachere’s, of course). Besides, I have every reason in the world to reminisce on the tumult (did I say that? I meant joy!) that was 2009. After all, it was the final year of my twenties, and a lot of, well, things happened. You know, thing things. I may or may not share them all with you. I will probably be elusive with most of the details. You’ll just have to live ’til the end of December to find out.
Every day this month (okay, if I’m being perfectly honest, when I remember or properly allocate my time away from Facebook), I will write or post photos about something that I’d dub “the best” of the year that’s going, going, gone by. And you, in turn, will or won’t like it. I’m not really doing this for you, I suppose (sorry)(I’m not really sorry). But you are welcome to come along for the ride. I require that all riders buckle up and use the cup holders for open beverages, thank you.
Man, I just realized that I really didn’t take enough photos in 2009. I’m already starting my Best Of with a Worst Of moment. Pffft.
Without further ado, let’s begin at the beginning, shall we?
December 1. Trip. What was your best trip in 2009?
Okay, this is a sore spot. I never left the country in 2009, so, I’m salty about it. That American obligation dubbed “work” and, similarly, “ambition” really get in the way of vacation time methinks. But that doesn’t mean that I sat on my arse in Houston all year long. If that’d been the case, well, you might as well pronounce me dead. Clinically, not metaphorically.
All the photos aren’t quite uploaded yet (and maybe they never will be…?), but here’s a photo from the beginning of the weekend of my favorite trip of 2009:
Oh, the glorious outdoors.
December 2. Restaurant moment. Share the best restaurant experience you had this year. Who was there? What made it amazing?
What taste stands out in your mind?
I’m somewhat of a restaurant snob, but only because I once had this job that exposed me to the very best culinary delights that Houston has to offer. But the best restaurant experience I had in 2009 really didn’t have to do with the food at all. It had everything to do with the people, the occasion, and the fact that I had no idea it was coming.
Surprise!
Yes, it was an evening, all about me. I mean, who wouldn’t enjoy that? The rules don’t say that it had to be a completely altruistic event. So whatever. It was an incredible, best-of experience indeed.
I love you cheese. I love you monkeys.
Meat and potatoes. Bread and butter. Hollywood and Vine. Abercrombie and Fitch. Barnes and Noble. Britney and white trash. Brandi and coffee. I, too, love two things so very, very much that they are inseparable in my mind, which makes them inseparable for all time.
One of these things is cheese.
Cheese, how I love you. You are the tastiest, most delicious, most glorious curdled coagulation ever invented. You are delectable on sandwiches, in soups, on a salad, all alone, paired with wine, coupled with beer, as a meal, as a snack, as a treat, as dessert! You are the reason that I will never, ever achieve veganism in this lifetime. Because I am so in love with you, cheese. You’re the one that I want. Cheese, if you were a human being, we’d have almost nothing in common, but at least we’d have a good time together. I mean that in a PG-sort of way, I swear.
I don’t have anything more to say about cheese, really. I just thought you should know how I feel.
The other thing I love is monkeys.
Oh, hello there, lil’ monkey. YOU WEALLY CUTE!
When I say “monkeys,” I really mean “primates.” I only use those two words interchangeably because I have creative license to do so, and no one can stop me.
And no, it’s absolutely not okay that monkeys/chimpanzees/orangutans/gorillas/lemurs/tamarins are that cute. In fact, it’s completely unfair. The whole animal kingdom really should revolt, actually. If I was an elephant, I’d throw a very hysterical fit immediately. And stomp my big fat feet a whole lot. If I was a giraffe, I wouldn’t even sign on to the next iteration of The Jungle Book unless the producers made sure that all members of the incredibly lovable primate population were excluded from the cast. It’s not right. How can one animal usurp so much wonderfulness in the world? It’s completely, ridiculously biased. And unjust. And weally, weally cute.
Anyway, well, do you know that certain foods contain palm oil, and palm oil plantations actually contribute to the extinction of orangutans? Yes, that is true. It’s a crisis. What’s even truer is that many of the foods that you will consume or distribute – particularly Halloween candies at this time of year, ahem - contain this dastardly palm oil nonsense. So educate yourself. Don’t buy Halloween candies with palm oil in them. Just don’t. I said don’t. There’s a lot of candy out there; you won’t miss a few cavities here and there, I promise. This handy dandy list will help you chocolatize and sugarize the kiddos without snuffing out the most amazing animal that the jungle has to offer.
Okay, look. I’ll level with you. If I’m ever going to cuddle with orangutans, you’re gonna have to work with me here. You gotta make sure they stay alive long enough for me to get to Borneo or Sumatra, and that’s not going to happen right now. Not unless National Geographic plucks me out of obscurity for my awesome journalism and photography prowess (hola, NatGeo, I’m waiting!). Since my cellie hasn’t blown up with NatGeo on the other end yet, lay off the Three Musketeers and Dum Dums this Halloween, you dig? Pull your weight in my quest to hug an orangutan.
Okay. And that’s all I really have to say. Aloha!
DISCLAIMER WHICH SHOULD’VE GONE AT THE BEGINNING OF THIS POST: This post is entirely incoherent, highly irrelevant to a whole lot of everything, and generally worth reading because it’s as ADD as you are. Please read with caution. Take your meds. No other safeguards will be provided. Carry on.
If Barbie can do it, so can I.
Photo by one of my favorite Schipulites, QCait.
A week ago, I turned 30. No, not tricks or vinyl records or seasons, mind you. Years of age, that is. I am 30 years old.
30 is a particularly perplexing and unique milestone, but not for the reasons you may think. No, turning 30 is much, much more than a single, solitary day of the year or the number of candles on a cake that will sit in your fridge until you’re 40. I knew that 30 – the build-up and the associated mental mayhem, not the actual date, you see – had been hurtling toward me for quite some time now. I thought I could navigate my way through the accompanying storm a-brewin’ with ease. After all, like Aaliyah said (and famously adhered to), “age ain’t nothin’ but a number.” Right?
But I was wrong. I couldn’t bushwhack my way through the impending dread, uncertainty, and discontent that would accompany the gale-force winds, and, even if I did, try as I might, I couldn’t locate the checkpoints. And to be perfectly honest, you are simply unable to enjoy much of anything about 29 with the monster of 30 looming on the horizon.
As soon as I conquered the salmonella that dominated the arrival (and departure) of my 29th birthday, I was already three million cognitive steps beyond the last year of my 20s. Indeed, there’s a great process of self-stock that you undertake when the end of anything is nigh, and the steep cliff of an era in my life was no exception.
I’d begun my 20s as an incurable, indecisive student, then passed the middle of the decade praying that Oprah would pluck me out of obscurity and near-poverty to magically erase my debt, with the end of my 20s spent wishing that higher education didn’t have a price tag or a recommended cessation point. The 29th year of my life was like a giant magnifying glass for all the missteps, disappointments, and shortcomings that manifested themselves in my 20s. It was safer underneath that lens – stagnating, rotting, and becoming entirely too comfortable – but the damaging glare was unbearable.
In between 19 and 30, there were countless weddings, mortgages, births, promotions, and relocations, wherein I mostly watched curiously and in a state of complete vexation from the outside (except for the relocations part, that is; I’m pretty adept at that). And even though I knew that we’re technically supposed to be capable of growing up and being adults, I still felt like everyone was playing dress up with their parents’ clothes and roles in this giant game of life.
Could we really be old enough to commit eternity to one another in holy matrimony? I was still tossing out last year’s model of my beloved camera as soon as the newest one was released, and zigzagging across the country every two months (or so it seemed) to set up an entirely new existence. Were we really mature enough to be responsible for the upbringing, health, and happiness of another human being that was 100% dependent upon us? I could barely keep my cat flea-free and without matted feces on his rear.
When I used to play Barbies with my sister, all of my Barbies would always die off by their 30th birthdays. It wasn’t because I was necessarily a macabre youngster or anything fatalistic like that. But to me, life ended when you turned 30. The age of 30 was simply the absolute stop to everything good that could possibly happen to an individual in his or her lifetime.
And now I’m 30.
And, for that matter, Barbie’s 50.
I feel that this number – 30, I mean – should somehow suddenly make sense of everything now. Either that, or I should lay down next to Loving You, Dream Date, and Day-To-Night Barbies in the graveyard of 30 year-olds. I realize I’m probably putting too much pressure on a mere turning of the calendar page, and yet, I feel that if any age deserved pressure, this would be the one.
I feel like I’m the only one left that still doesn’t get it. For example, there’s a man animatedly dreaming next to me, and he calls me his girlfriend. I call him my boyfriend. Apparently this is normal for a woman of my age (I’d posit a guess that women even younger than me have boyfriends, too), and yet, I still don’t know what the hell I’m doing with any of that. I really don’t. But I am trying.
And there’s more. My company recently hosted a conference, and I had the opportunity (and privilege) to speak to attendees on large and small scales. Some of these attendees stopped me in the halls to thank me for the information I provided in my presentation and to praise a job well done. But still, I don’t see myself as the purveyor of any great knowledge, nor the deserved recipient of any such commendation. I’m just a chick who does what she does.
To me, I’m still 19. I don’t know why 19, but I haven’t gotten any older in my own head than that. And a girl of 19, such as I am, is certainly not equipped to be a wife, a mother, a homeowner, or an expert. That’s poppycock.
Strangely, I am not actually 19. I am 30. I’m not sure how, but my birth certificate doesn’t lie.
It goes without saying that I have a lot of expectations for the onset of this thing, this 30. Supposing my 30s will thank me for all of the confusion and tomfoolery that characterized my 20s, that is. Experience is a great teacher. Now I simply have to take it all and learn from it.
But I really just hope that it all starts to make sense sometime soon. And that it clicks. And that I “get it.” And that I am at least able – in some small part – to figure things out. ‘Cause now that I’m 30, I intend to make it to the ripe ol’ age of Barbie. And then some. But I’ll never survive if I keep at it the way I did in my 20s.
Barbie, look out for me. I’m going to follow your line.
If you don’t care, I don’t care either.
I have no desire to explain where I’ve been since June. In fact, if I did explain where I’ve been since June, then I think I should change the title of this blog from “I’m Awesome” (which is still entirely true, mind you) to “I’m Full of Awesome Excuses.” Which is also technically true, since everything that comes out of my mouth, ends up on paper, or is posted to the web due to my creation is, summarily, really awesome.
Was I going somewhere with this?
I want to claim I was talking about how awesome I am, but I fear that would be erroneous. I suppose I was talking about how I have absolutely nothing to say about not posting on this blog since June. I could say things, I just don’t want to. Right? I can do that. It’s my blog. Seriously, who’s reading this blog anyway? I mean, obviously I’m completely full of myself; that’s why I have a blog. But no one is actually consuming this drivel. Most of you get enough of my buffoonery in person. Why would you want to devote your precious free time to swallowing mouthfuls of my…you know, my stuff?
Dammit. You fucking love me.
I needed to throw in “fuck,” because this post was entirely too much. Am I writing for a G-rated audience or what? Fuck that. And fuck this. Fucking shit. Fuck ‘em. Fuck it. Fuck it all! Man. That makes me feel so much fucking better.
I am still not sure what my point was.
Anyway, so, wow! Is this blogging thing cool or what? Yeah, fuck. This shit’s hard. Remember when I used to have nothing to do at work and I’d not-so-covertly blog all day about how terrible my job was? Oh, and boys. I also blogged about boys. That part was better than the work part. Most of you didn’t know me then. But getting paid to blog was cool. Not that that was in my job description. Yeah right. But that’s exactly what I did. Is that what I do now? I dunno. Sorta. Except it’s technically okay now. Well, not blogging all day. But fucking around on the Internet all day is. Because now it’s like, a skill set and shit. Just think – all that screwing around on MySpace and Blogger in the olden days actually helped land the gig I call “a living” now. Man, life is great.
Is that last paragraph going to get me in trouble?
Why exactly am I writing like this? Is it because I so desperately wanted to throw in the word “fuck” one more time for posterity? Hahahaha, I said “fuck” again. It’s like I’m fuckrolling you.
Dude, I’m so out of touch. I don’t write enough anymore. Wait a minute. Yes, I do. So now I have no excuse.
Fuck.
Fuckrolling 15, Fuck 0.
Shit. This is going to drive up traffic to my site, but for all the wrong reasons. Ew.
I was going somewhere with this, wasn’t I?
Truthfully, I probably wasn’t. Fuck. I’m so irrelevant. I should, like, something. Yeah. I’ll something sometime really soon.
Drugs? What drugs?
I’m about to rip a man a new asshole. No, wait, I hate that saying.
I’m about to dissect a man from the outside in. Errr. I’m not gonna do that either. That’s kinda too Trent Reznor. And is that even possible? I do not want to fuck you like an animal in any way, shape, or form, however.
I swear these thoughts are all linked. I promise. They all make sense to someone that isn’t you. Perhaps it’s me. Perhaps not.
This entire post would be better in tweets. Sigh.
