Cool Stuff on the Intranet

I leisurely poked around the Internet yesteday while on bed rest, something I almost never do anymore. (So fun!) A few things especially resonated with me...thought I'd share...

"Live in the present, and make it so beautiful that it will be worth remembering."

--Ida Scott Taylor (via Creature Comforts)

"Let the day know more

than you. Say it is raining.

Say there is a tree. Though it does

not keep you dry, there is a swing

hidden in the branches within reach.

Swing. Though you are drenched,

my god, it is fine to swing."

--Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer (via A Hundred Falling Veils)

And this clothing line...oh, I want to fill my closet full of these clothes (and the accompanying photos are so dreamy and pretty): Sundry Clothing (via Tomboy Style)

And these pictures of San Francisco...1) They me soooooo homesick for California, and 2) Make me wish I could take pictures like this. Make me want to devote time to learning how to take pictures that rival these... (via sfgirlbybay)

XOXO

Image Credit: Sundry Clothing.

"Youthful Wonder"

Every second I spent surfing was filled with wonder...

A few lines at the end of an article in this week's (November 28, 2011) New Yorker have spent an inordinant amount of time in my brain the past days. They're from a profile of Peter Thiel written by George Packer entitled "No Death, No Taxes: The Libertarian Futurism of a Silicon Valley Billionaire:"

"An appetite for disruption and risk...reflects, in part, a sense of immunity to the normal heartbreak and defeats of a deadening job, money trouble, and unhappy children dealt out to the "unthinking herd." Thiel and his circle in Silicon Valley may be able to imagine a future that would never occur to other people precisely because they've refused to leave that stage of youthful wonder which life forces most human beings to outgrow." 

Youthful wonder...which for me I would define as waking up every day feeling like everything is ahead of you and possible, that you're lucky to be living the life you're living, and that there is so much beauty and goodness in the world...I had that for so long. Was it living in California? Surfing? Being able to spend so much time with my little brother, whom I adored? Not living a very conventional life, in terms of being married and divorced young (before most of my friends even got married at all), not having kids, not working a regular job but instead freelancing and traveling, not having any money trouble to speak of? Some combination?

All I know, is that between my brother being killed, me leaving California (directly related), not being able to surf any longer (also directly related), and I don't know if buying a house and getting married for real this time and having money stress mostly related to all the rounds of IVF we did and all the heartbreak involved in trying to have a baby and I don't know what else...I feel like that wonder...if it's not gone, certainly big parts of it have seeped away. Even though I have a terrific marriage, and these babies on the way, which is what I've wanted for so, so long...

Is the loss of wonder just part of growing up? (Which took me way longer to do than the average person...I pretty much acted like a teenager up until a few years ago.)

Or is there some way to hold onto it (or bring it back)?

I miss it...

XO

Image Credit: GAESSrhymeswithFACE via Etsy.

Why Is it So Hard for Me to Be OK With My Flaws?

Hi Everyone!

First off, those of you who have been getting my blog via a reader...it seems everyone got kicked off in the past week or so, so please resubscribe if you'd like to keep reading. Thanks and sorry for the hassle! :)

So, I was reading an essay today, out of Charles Baxter's book "Burning Down the House: Essays on Fiction," and came across the following (the writer is talking about how at funerals everyone just says good stuff about the person who has died):

"My problem was that I hadn't known the deceased well enough to know his failings--those features by which I might have identified with him--and the litany of praise only managed to distance him from me. I wanted a recital of his failures and oddities..."

He also wrote: "You don't cry at a funeral unless you have had the time to know the person who has died and to know that person in success as well as failure." 

This is something I think about sometimes. I love people for their flaws...their "oddities and failures"...to me it's what makes them interesting and quirky and human. Someone who looks and acts like they have the perfect life, I either barely know them or they are so foreign to me...I have so many flaws, I need other flawed (read: real) people to relate to, you know?

I am so open to and accepting of flaws in other people. But in myself? Not so much. In myself, I feel like flaws are something to be irradiated, hated, riled and fought against. I am not at all accepting of them, and I have lots. What comes to mind today:

• So emotional
• And sooooooooo sentimental, I get attached to/miss people and places and things with so much intensity, it is not healthy
• And I work too much
• And wish I was going to be a younger mother, but there's nothing to be done about that. Actually, I wish my body hadn't failed me so miserably in the reproductive department...that's what this one comes down to...
• I wish I could cook better...my husband is a great cook and essentially thinks I suck at it (although he does let me assist him)...which doesn't go along with my dreams of being the perfect housewife but oh, well
• My best friend dresses so much cuter than me
• I am not as good/strong/fast/risk-taking of a surfer/snowboarder as I want to be (although I AM pretty good [or used to be]...there's just always someone better than me)
• I don't really pursue my professional dreams, instead just stick with what's safe/easy
• I married my first husband for all the wrong reasons and what a disaster that turned out to be. Plus I wish I'd never been divorced
• Etc. Etc. Etc.

I don't know if it's just human nature to fight against your flaws. But a lot of what I hate are things I can't change. Some things I can change and maybe I can/should work on them. But I'm always going to have flaws.

I guess the question is how to embrace those flaws and be OK with them, you know? I am who I am, and I know there is a lot of good in me too, as there is in all my friends, whose flaws I love as they are what makes them human--what helps me, as Charles Baxter says, identify with them.

To go off on a slightly different tangent, I think this is what's behind why I love blogs so much...you get to meet people, flaws and all, whereas IRL everyone is generally just putting their best face forward...

What do you all think? How do you come to a place where you are OK with the parts of yourself that aren't so great?

XOXO

Facebook--Love It or Hate It?

First off, let me tell you what I love about Facebook:

1)    I love that it’s let me reconnect with a TON of people that may have been lost from my life forever

2)    I love that my friends are easy to keep tabs on…you can get a pretty good idea what’s going on in their lives by visiting their Facebook pages

3)    It’s also a quick and easy way to tell people hi or happy birthday or congratulations etc

I’m glad Facebook is there. I don’t want to get rid of my Facebook account.

But.

I don’t go on Facebook very often.

First of all, my friends are all over the country, and it makes me miss them. Terribly. And wish I’d lived the sort of life where everybody didn’t end up so scattered.

Then, I get envious, which is my worst personality trait, hands down. I think what it is is that I just miss people and places and things that I had in the past so very much…it’s hard to be reminded of those things. Like living in California. Seattle. Austin. Surfing. Snowboarding. Having my brother alive. Being super young and still having so much time to make choices and figure things out. Etc.

I’m also envious of things that I want that have not been easy to get. Like kids--I’m especially envious of ex-boyfriends who got girls pregnant accidentally, which is ridiculous because that’s not an ideal situation for anyone involved (although in the end there’s so much love for those kids…)

And there’s no reason for all this envy. I have a good life. I’m going to have a baby. I’m not that old. I snowboarded like crazy last year, probably more than any of my friends--had so many epic days and I’ll snowboard again. Ugh.

Also: No one struggles on Facebook. It’s just not the medium to talk about the troubles you’re having…thus, it presents this kind of skewed view of the world where everyone’s life is shiny and perfect. My life is not shiny and perfect, and it’s hard to see everyone else looking like that. (Not that I wish any sort of misery on my friends…it’s just good to know that you’re not alone in your struggles in this world, you know?)

Bottom line: I generally feel worse after going on Facebook than before. And I’m trying not to do things that make me feel bad.

Wish there was a way to use Facebook that didn’t make me feel so very sad…

Image credit: rafeejewell

Why I Envy Youth

I’ll be talking about envy on this blog on occasion, as it’s my worst character trait and directly related to the despair I sometimes feel about life. Today I want to talk about the envy I often feel for my younger friends, of which I have many, some barely out of teenage-hood. I’ve thought a lot about this and haven’t really been able to articulate what it is that makes me envy them, wish to be them, but something I read recently in Peggy Orenstein's book Waiting for Daisy made it crystal clear:

“All of us reckon with dreams unfilled, with the limits our younger choices have placed on our later lives. All of us have to figure out how to move beyond that regret.”

That’s it in a nutshell, I think. Youth means you still have your dreams ahead of you. Anything is possible. The choices have not yet been made, the limits not yet in place, the regret not yet there.

I want to be in that place again, but it’s just not possible. How to deal with that? As near as I can tell: be grateful for the good choices I did make, that everything so far is turning out generally OK, that there’s some but not a lot I would go back and change (the biggest things being I would be more open to love, and more true to what I wanted to do). Sigh. Somehow that has to be enough.

Jealousy, and I Don't Think California's for Me

And yet, we had a nice lunch in a beautiful, artsy corner of Berkeley...

I’m having a strange reaction to being in California, swirlings of longing and jealousy, not sleeping well at all. I lay awake thinking: why can’t I live by the beach? Why can’t I be a surfer and go camping and take time off work and do all these great things that my friends get to do? Jealousy is one of the worst things about me. I’m flying home tonight, can’t wait. I feel extremely unsettled being here. It’s literally painful to see the ocean, I miss it so much. I think we need to live near a beach, and somewhere that’s not California. I’m hoping there’s somewhere I can be happy. I don’t think this is it.